GI Special:

thomasfbarton@earthlink.net

12.26.05

Print it out: color best.  Pass it on.

 

GI SPECIAL 3D56:

 

 

HOW MANY MORE FOR BUSH’S WAR?

Members of the U.S. Army 3rd US Infantry (The Old Guard), carry the casket of Sgt. Jeremy M. Campbell, of Middlebury, Pa during funeral services at Arlington National Cemetery Sept. 27, 2005. Campbell died on Sept. 11, 2005, in Baghdad. An improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee during patrol operations. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

 

Look Carefully:

You Could Conclude That Something Is Happening Here That Should Warn A Reasonable Man That He Has Been Weighed In The Balance, And Found Wanting

Mosul, Iraq, December 24, 2005. REUTERS/Jim Young

 

At the Al Faw Palace in Baghdad Dec. 24, 2005. (AP Photo/Jim Young, Pool)

 

U.S. soldiers Major Anthony Hale, left, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan Renaud providing security for Rumsfeld in Baghdad Dec. 24, 2005. (AP Photo/Jim Young, Pool)

 

Mosul Dec. 24, 2005.  (AP Photo/Jim Young, Pool)

 

The Mask Slips:

150,000 Troops To Stay In Iraq In 2006, Rumsfeld Says:

1^st AD 2 Brigade Homecoming Cancelled

 

12.25.05 & December 22, 2005, By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

 

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said on Friday that he foresees a period of "churn" in the political process. 

 

That is why he has decided to keep the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division at its staging base in Kuwait rather than sending those soldiers home.

 

The brigade originally was scheduled to deploy to Iraq, but Casey put them on hold after reaching Kuwait, as part of a decision announced Friday by Rumsfeld to reduce the number of combat brigades in Iraq next year from 17 to 15. 

 

Asked whether he’d made the decision to hold back those two brigades, Rumsfeld made a distinction between his decisions as defense secretary and final announcements by the U.S. government.

 

“Until it’s announced, the government’s decision hasn’t been announced. Therefore it’s not final,” he said.

 

[Brigades range from 3,500 to 5,000.  Assuming the maximum, this means cutting by 10,000.

 

[Now here’s the really big news.  160,000 minus 10,000 is 150,000.  Them’s the metrics, folks.  At least if Rumsfeld has his way. 

 

[The citizens and the troops will have something to say about that.  There is an avalanche waiting to happen.  When it begins to move, the force will be irresistible.]

 

 

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

 

 

Two American Soldiers Died

 

December 25 (Itar-Tass)

 

The American military command reported deaths of two servicemen.  One of them was killed in an explosion in Baghdad, and another hit a mine east of the Iraqi capital, Al Jazeera said.

 

SOLDIER KILLED IN ACTION NEAR HAWIJAH

 

December 25, 2005 HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS RELEASE Number: 05-12-29C

 

Baghdad, Iraq – A Soldier assigned to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade died of wounds sustained from a rocket-propelled grenade attack on Dec. 24 while on a routine patrol near Hawijah, in northern Iraq.

 

IED Gets U.S. Tank Near Baghdad

“A U.S. tank” after it was hit by a roadside bomb in Baghdad December 25, 2005. REUTERS/Ceerwan Aziz

 

12/25/05 By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer

 

A roadside bomb damaged an American tank on a highway east of Baghdad.  There were no immediate reports of injuries.  AP Television News footage and photos showed an Abrams battle tank in flames.

 

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO COMPREHENSIBLE REASON TO BE IN THIS EXTREMELY HIGH RISK LOCATION, EXCEPT THAT A CROOKED POLITICIAN WHO LIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU THERE, SO HE WILL LOOK GOOD.

That is not a good enough reason.

Waynesberg, Pa. native Lance Cpl. Steven L. Phillips, left, followed by Albany, N.Y., native Lance Cpl. Paul J. Kolkhorst with Company I, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 2, in Nov. 15, 2005.  (AP Photo/ U.S. Marine Corps, Sgt. Jerad W. Alexander)

 

 

TROOP NEWS

 

 

No More Parades For Camp Pendleton Marines:

“It's Not Like We're Finishing The Job; It Just Drags On”

 

December 24, 2005 By Tony Perry, L.A. Times Staff Writer

 

OCEANSIDE, Calif. - The signs in the windows of downtown businesses here carry a variety of messages aimed at Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton.

 

Some offer payday loans or used cars and furniture with no down payment. Some proclaim "God Bless Our Troops" and "Good Luck."  Others say "Welcome Home Troops."

 

A visitor would be excused for not knowing whether the Marines are leaving for Iraq or just coming home.

 

Like the harried homeowner who leaves his Christmas lights up all year, Oceanside has decided that, after four years of local Marines serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, it cannot accommodate the changing seasons.

 

And so the announcement this week that 25,000 Marines and sailors of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force would deploy in the next few weeks to the violent Al Anbar Province in western Iraq was greeted almost with a civic yawn.

 

It's not exactly compassion collapse.  Respect for the uniform remains strong here. But this city of 170,000 outside the sprawling base no longer can readjust its metabolism with each deployment announcement.

 

"It's become so commonplace.  It's not that we ever forget about them, but it's become part of the daily routine," said Mayor Jim Wood.  "We see one crew come and another crew go."

 

At a downtown barbershop with a cheery "Welcome Home Troops" sign still in the window, a barber who makes his living selling quick haircuts to Marines merely grunted and continued reading his magazine when a reporter asked for his reaction to the deployment announcement.

 

It wasn't this way when the U.S. launched the war.

 

In 2003 the city threw a huge parade for Marines returning after toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein.  Flags lined the streets.  But there were no parades in 2004 and 2005.

 

"The sense of Oceanside is that we all believed that a quick victory seemed a reality," said one of the 2003 parade organizers, Tom Reeser, executive director of community television station KOCT.  "But now we've come to realize that we're in for the long haul. We all realize they have to go back."

 

Indeed, 4,000 Marines from Camp Pendleton-based units have spent several months in Iraq this year, bolstering units from Camp Lejeune, N.C.

 

It's not just military boosters who seem to lack the energy they once devoted to watching the Marines leave and return.

 

An antiwar memorial on a wire fence around an empty lot on Pacific Coast Highway, festooned with small bits of silver-colored paper to symbolize the dog tags of Marines, soldiers and sailors killed in Iraq, has been untended of late, the flowers wilted and the signs gone.

 

This despite the fact that more service personnel have been killed from Camp Pendleton than any U.S. military base and that Marines in general constitute one-third of the U.S. casualties, but only one-sixth of the overall force.  Many residents know a family that has lost a son or daughter in war, and funerals are a common part of life here.

 

The Marines say they're on a "7 and 7" rotation, seven months in Iraq, seven months home.  Most have served two tours; some have served three.

 

The Oceanside-based North County Times still reports each Marine death on the front page, but the San Diego Union-Tribune no longer devotes its second page to daily news from Iraq, and now runs such news on a back page.

 

Carl Luna, professor of political science at San Diego's Mesa College, said he thinks a certain weariness has beset the public, particularly because with an all-volunteer military, the burden of service is not spread evenly.  Luna has a family member who is a Marine and will soon return to Iraq for his third tour.

 

"We've gone from shock-and-awe to a revolving door," Luna said. "It's not like we're finishing the job; it just drags on.  It wears down the home front."

 

While the public may have been unmoved, the deployment announcement, which also includes Marines from the base at Twentynine Palms and the Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego, seemed to increase the pace at downtown businesses that cater to Marines.

 

Some arrived at laundries with uniforms to be pressed.  Others looked for weaponry and other gear at equipment stores.

 

One young Marine dashed into a Marine-themed clothing store to find a Christmas gift for a kid brother back home.  His selection: A T-shirt with the Marines logo and the slogan "Fixing the Army's Mistakes Since 1775."

 

The local paper ran a story about the deployment announcement, but if there was any buzz, it was lost in the pre-Christmas bustle.

 

"You don't see (a deployment announcement) weaving its way through the community as much," said David Nydegger, chief executive officer of the Oceanside Chamber of Commerce.  "People are busy with their lives."

 

In Memory Of Gordon Gentle:

“I Will  Not Give  Up I Will Fight On  For  The Troops”

 

[This is a message to Americans from Rose Gentle concerning the news item below.  Her son Gordon was killed in Iraq.  She leads a campaign to bring all the Scots and other troops home from Iraq, now.  T]

 

From: Rose Gentle

To: GI Special

Sent: December 21, 2005

 

we did not  get our court case  but to let  yous all know

 

i will  not give  up i will fight on  for  the troops  blair and  bush  have killied

 

my  boy will  be 21 on the 23rd of this munth, so gordon,  i will  fight

 

for  you and the rest of the  troops,  love  mum.

 

bring  the  troops  home,

 

                                       merry  xmas  from  scotland  x x

 

********************************************************

 

“Our Sons And Husbands Were Sent To Their Deaths On The Backs Of These Lies”

 

December 21, 2005 Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian

 

Families of British soldiers killed in Iraq failed to force the government to hold a public inquiry into why Britain went to war yesterday. They want Tony Blair "to be held accountable" for taking the country into a war which they say was unlawful and "based on a series of lies".

 

Rabinder Singh QC argued on behalf of the families that article two of the European convention on human rights obliged the state to conduct a proper investigation when lives were lost. That obligation could only be disregarded in relation to Iraq if the war was lawful under international and domestic law, he said.

 

But Mr Justice Collins ruled yesterday that the familes had not made an "arguable case" for the high court to consider.

 

Rose Gentle, from Glasgow, whose son Gordon, 19, was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra last year, was one of those who brought the case. She said after the ruling: "The families believe the decision to invade Iraq was based on deceit and lies. 

 

“Our sons and husbands were sent to their deaths on the backs of these lies.  Their deaths were unnecessary, as were the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi people."

 

 

 

 

“Shoot If Me You Dare You Ass-Hole”

 

From: Mark Shapiro

To: GI Special

Sent: December 25, 2005 6:20 AM

Subject: Greetings from Hanoi

 

Jackie and I are in Hanoi for an old friends wedding, we love driving around on a small motorbike.

 

Here's a quick little story.  We stopped in front of the American Embassy to take a 'thumbs down' photo, an Embassy goon came running out of the font door and pointed a machine-gun straight at me and said 'no photos.'

 

I said 'shoot if me you dare you ass-hole.' took the photo and left

 

Hope all is well at your end.

Mark

 

Military School Sexual Harassment Marches On:

“Nearly 40 Percent Said They Experienced Repercussions”

 

December 24, 2005 By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer

 

WASHINGTON -- Sexual assaults and harassment are still significant problems at the nation's military academies, polls of students at the schools show, despite recent scandals that triggered intensive training to prevent the behavior.

 

Up to 6 percent of the women at the Army, Navy and Air Force academies said they experienced sexual assault during the 2004-2005 school year, and about half or more said they were sexually harassed, according to a survey released Friday by the Pentagon.

 

The survey comes more than two years after a sex abuse scandal rocked the Air Force Academy, leading to a purge in its leadership and a new, intensive focus on training to prevent abuse and sexual harassment.

 

The Pentagon's new emphasis on training and awareness, however, has not seemed to resonate on the campuses.  While nearly all the students said they had received training in sexual assault and harassment prevention, half to two-thirds said it was either slightly or not at all effective in preventing the incidents.

 

Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., reported the highest number of assaults and sexual harassment.  According to the survey, 6 percent of the women were sexually assaulted, and nearly two-thirds were sexually harassed.

 

Of those assaulted, about 4 in 10 reported it.  And among those who reported it, nearly 40 percent said they experienced repercussions.

 

At the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., 5 percent of the women said they were assaulted and 59 percent said they were sexually harassed.

 

[Air Force Academy students reported a significant improvement.]

 

 

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

 

 

General Strike In Falluja

 

12/25/05 By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer

 

In Fallujah, hundreds of demonstrators took part in a demonstration organized by the local government to protest the elections.  All public offices were closed in the former insurgent stronghold.

 

"We decided to have a sit-in today and stop work in government offices to convey our demands for a rerun of elections," Fallujah Mayor Dhari al-Arsan said.

 

Assorted Resistance Action

Dec. 25, 2005. A car bomber detonated his car near a fuel station for Iraqi police in Baghdad, wounding four officers, police said. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

 

12/25/05 By PATRICK QUINN, Associated Press Writer & IRIB & Reuters

 

A policeman was wounded when a mortar round slammed into the high-security “Green Zone’ which is home to government offices and to the US and British embassies.

 

A car bomber slammed into two Iraqi army vehicles in central Baghdad, killing five soldiers and wounding seven police and civilians, police Maj. Mohammed Younis said.

 

A vehicle parked in eastern Baghdad blasted a police patrol, wounding three officers.

 

Unidentified militants killed a police officer in civilian clothes in southern Baghdad, a hospital official said.

 

Police Lt. Col. Fawzi Ali Uklaa was killed when a roadside bomb exploded as he was getting out of his car in eastern Mosul, Police Brig. Saied Ahmed Al-Jubori said.

 

Iraq's Minister of Justice, Abdel Hussein Shandal, has survived a shooting attack on his car that killed two people, the Interior Ministry said Sunday.

 

Shandal's car came under attack by gunmen Saturday in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of al-Dora, in an incident that saw one of his companions killed.

 

In Baghdad, a civil servant from the interior ministry was shot dead while on his way to work.

 

A car bomb, which exploded as a senior local official drove by in the centre of Kirkuk, wounded three of his security guards.

 

MAHMUDIYA: Mortar rounds landed at a military base in Baghdad on Sunday, killing two Iraqi soldiers, police source told Xinhua.

 

"This morning mortar rounds hit the gate of the base, about 30km south of Baghdad, wounding another nine, including three soldiers and six civilians," the source said.

 

 

 

“A Gas Station On Big Fire”

Photo shows a gas station on big fire in the west of Baghdad on Friday night, Dec. 23, 2005. Two insurgents attacked Friday fuel tanks of the gas station causing explosion and big fire. (AP photo /Xinhua News)

 

 

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

 

 

“The One Way You Can Justify An Ongoing Catastrophe Is To Posit A Greater Catastrophe If You Don’t Continue With The Present One”

 

November-December, Howard Zinn interviewed by Tomdispatch, The Human Quest [Excerpts]

 

Zinn: There was a point early in the Vietnam War when no major figure and no critic of the war was simply calling for immediate withdrawal.

 

Everybody was hedging in some way.  We must negotiate.  We must compromise.  We must stop the bombing north of this or that parallel.

 

I think we’re at a comparable point now, two years after the beginning of the Iraq War. When my book came out in the Spring of ‘67, it was just two years after the escalation in early ‘65 when Johnson sent in the first major infusions of American troops.

 

What’s comparable, I think, are the arguments then and now.  Even the language is similar.  We mustn’t cut and run.  We mustn’t give them a victory.  We mustn’t lose prestige in the world.

 

TD: Credibility was the word then.

 

Zinn: Yes, exactly, credibility. 

 

There will be chaos and civil war if we leave....

 

TD:  and a bloodbath.

 

Zinn: Yes, and a bloodbath, because the one way you can justify an ongoing catastrophe is to posit a greater catastrophe if you don’t continue with the present one.

 

We’ve seen that psychology operating again and again.

 

We saw it, for instance, with Hiroshima. I mean, we have to kill hundreds of thousands of people to avert a greater catastrophe, the death of a million people in the invasion of Japan.

 

It’s interesting that when finally did leave Vietnam, none of those dire warnings really came true.  It’s not that things were good after we left.  The Chinese were expelled, and there were the boat people and the reeducation camps, but none of that compared to the ongoing slaughter taking place when the American troops were there.

 

So while no one can predict what will happen, when the United States withdraws its troops from Iraq, the point is that we’re choosing between the certainty of an ongoing disaster, the chaos and violence that are taking place in Iraq today, and an eventuality we can’t predict which may be bad.

 

But what may be bad is uncertain; what’s bad with our occupation right now is certain.

 

It seems to me that, choosing between the two, you have to take a chance on what might happen if you end the occupation.  At the same time, of course, you do what you can to mitigate the worst possibilities of your leaving.

 

 

“Asserting The Divine Right Of Presidents”

 

December 24, 2005 Tim Rutten, LA Times [Excerpts]

 

WHEN George W. Bush promised that his administration would promote faith-based initiatives, who would have guessed that one of them would involve asserting the divine right of presidents?

 

Well, now we know.

 

The president's argument that he has the power to order warrantless wiretaps on suspected Al Qaeda terrorists, and apparently others, has twisted and turned through the week's news like a corkscrew.

 

At the end of the day, it boils down to little more than: I want to do it because I think it's the right thing and I want to, and besides that, Congress told me I could, unless it didn't, in which case I can anyway because I'm the president.  Oh yeah, and getting these warrants is really inconvenient.

 

(As a fuller picture of the operation of the secret judicial panel that grants 99.5% of all such warrants requested emerges, it appears that the only way to make it more convenient would be to install a drive-through window.)

 

Bush called the report "shameful" and said he expected the Justice Department to look for the source of the leaks.  (Somebody had better check to see if they're sweeping out Judith Miller's cell.)

 

That was predictable enough, but then conservatives began to allege that the story's publication had been timed either (depending on who was making the charge) to embolden Senate resistance to extension of the Patriot Act or distract attention from positive news of the Iraqi elections.

 

On one of the many conservative talk radio shows that would unequivocally support Bush if he unilaterally ordered the imposition of martial law, weekly human sacrifice and readoption of the Julian Calendar, John Eastman, a law professor from Chapman University, went so far as to allege that "the New York Times and whoever in the Department of Justice or in the National Security Agency leaked this ongoing tool in (the war on terrorism) have very likely committed treason."

 

 

 

OCCUPATION REPORT

 

 

 

2003: SEW THE WIND

2005: REAP THE WHIRLWIND

“A U.S. Army soldier stands guard at a check point in a highway in Baghdad May 30, 2003, as his comrades search Iraqis.”  (AP Photo/Ali Haider)

 

[Fair is fair.  Let’s bring 150,000 Iraqis over here to the USA.  They can kill people at checkpoints, bust into their houses with force and violence, overthrow the government, put a new one in office they like better and call it “sovereign” and “detain” anybody who doesn’t like it in some prison without any changes being filed against them, or any trial.]

 

[Those Iraqis are sure a bunch of backward primitives.  They actually resent this help, have the absurd notion that it’s bad their country is occupied by a foreign military dictatorship, and consider it their patriotic duty to fight and kill the soldiers sent to grab their country.  What a bunch of silly people.  How fortunate they are to live under a military dictatorship run by George Bush.  Why, how could anybody not love that?  You’d want that in your home town, right?]

 

Welcome To Liberated Iraq:

Collaborators Un-Elect Members Of Parliament

 

December 23, 2005 Nancy A. Youssef and Huda Ahmed, Knight Ridder Newspapers

 

BAGHDAD, Iraq:  An Iraqi court has ruled that some of the most prominent Sunni Muslims who were elected to parliament last week won't be allowed to serve because officials suspect that they were high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

 

Knight Ridder has obtained a copy of the court ruling, which has yet to be circulated to the public.

 

The ruling is likely to dampen Bush administration hopes that the election would bring more of the disaffected Sunni minority into Iraq's political process and undermine Sunni support for the insurgency.  Instead, the decision is likely to stoke fears of widening sectarian divisions in a nation already in danger of descending into civil war.

 

Adil al-Lami, the chief electoral official of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, told Knight Ridder that he would honor the court's decision and that none of the accused Sunnis would appear on the final list of parliament members.

 

 

 

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

 

 

 

Rumsfeld Says Majority Of Iraqis Stand With Resistance

 

12.25.05 By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

 

"In this fight, the vast majority of Iraqis stand on the side of freedom,"

 

The Antiwar Movement, The Democrats And The Delusions Of Bushworld

 

 

December 19, 2005 By RON JACOBS, CounterPunch

 

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden.  He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net

 

Back when LBJ and then Richard Nixon were presidents, their nationally televised speeches were must-see events for me and millions of other folks opposed to their policies.  Even when I was living in Germany during the early 1970s, I would stay up late and listen to Nixon making things perfectly clear over Armed Forces Network Radio.

 

After all, one never knew what country he might be invading or--as the walls began to crumble because of Watergate--what outrageous things he might say or do.  These speeches and press conferences were genuine theater.

 

Since Mr. Nixon gave that final wave from the White House lawn back in 1974, however, I have not been a regular viewer or listener of presidential speeches or conferences. When Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter sat in the Oval Office, I was just plain tired and cynical.  Sure, I was politically active but that activity essentially ignored the halls of power, having realized that the personalities of Ford and Carter were not only less dynamic than Nixon and LBJ, they also seemed to have less to do with the way the country was going.

 

By the time Ronnie Reagan moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it was clear that the guy in the White House was not a truly independent or even conscious individual.  The president was just an actor on the payroll of the rich playing a part he barely understood and, as time went by and he remained in office, he could not even remember his lines.

 

Then came George Bush the Elder and Bill Clinton.

 

Bush the Elder was such an obvious CIA plant that there was no point in listening to his lies on television.  In fact, given his inability to form a correct sentence, it was much easier to understand his speeches by reading the version released to the press in the next day's paper.

 

As for Mr. Clinton, let me put it this way: the man was (and is) a clever speaker and his press conferences exhibited his great ability to think on his feet, as they say.  

 

However, this man not only spoke out of both sides of his mouth, he spoke untruths out of those two sides.  And at the same time!  Not being a person who likes to be lied to, I stopped watching his speeches and appearances long before he claimed that he didn't have sex with "that woman."

 

Now we are up to the present inhabitant of the White House--Bush the Younger.

 

I have never watched or listened to an entire speech by this man.  His inability to express himself is but one reason.  Another is that face.  I can't decide if its a sneer or a grin, but I know I hate looking at it, especially when he's talking about the death, poverty, repression, and hatred that hallmark his administration.

 

So, I was a bit surprised to find myself anticipating Bush the Younger's speech the night of December 18, 2005.  I kept getting flashbacks to Richard Nixon's April 30, 1970 speech where he announced the incursion (this is not an invasion, he insisted) into Cambodia.  Hoping against hope that this speech would not be akin to that one, but would be instead another propaganda exercise attempting to once again sell the war in Iraq to the people of the United States, I turned the TV on.

 

As I waited around doing various household and pre-holiday chores, one of the things I was thinking about was the recent announcement by one of the national organizations in today's antiwar movement-United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ).

 

In essence, the leadership of this huge organization representing several hundred smaller antiwar groups just disassociated itself (again) from working with the other national group that has organized most of the national antiwar protests of the last five years--ANSWER.

 

While this split is not necessarily a bad thing and is probably irrelevant to many folks opposed to the US war on the world, the underlying politics of the split are disturbingly reminiscent of that period when LBJ and Nixon used to give those speeches.

 

The reasoning provided by the UFPJ leadership for its announcement was that they wanted to continue reaching the largest numbers of people.  In their minds, this means that the antiwar movement must slip backwards into the fold of the so-called progressive wing of the Democratic Party (an oxymoron for sure).

 

In short, the leadership of UFPJ seems to be convinced that the Democratic Party is going to quickly withdraw US troops and allow the Iraqis to have their country back on the Iraqis own terms.  Or, even worse, perhaps this leadership agrees with what appears to be the Democratic true party line: the troops should only come home when the US installed Iraqi government can hold its own and do more or less what Washington wants it to do.

 

This is the sovereignty that George Bush and most of Congress wants for Iraq--how can it be what a movement opposed to that war and occupation wants?

 

Maybe the rationale the UFPJ leadership is using has something to do with the recent ABC poll that showed 57% of those polled want to the US military to stay in Iraq until the country is "stabilized."

 

Of course, the poll also showed (and this is what the antiwar movement should be looking at) that 36% of those polled want an immediate withdrawal.

 

Furthermore, the numbers favoring staying until the job is done have dropped 15% since the same poll was conducted about twelve months ago.  This is substantial progress for the antiwar movement and should be built on.

 

 

Now, as someone who used to work with a left organization that saw the US working class in a similar manner and then tailored its program to that perception (which is when they lost me), let me state that this is a mistake.

 

It is the job of the antiwar movement to make the world a more tolerant place so that people can not be led into wars as easily.  

 

As long as any element of the antiwar movement hitches itself to either party of the Empire, they will negate their raison d'etre.  

 

Furthermore, as long as any antiwar organization ignores a substantial part of the population they want to organize, that organization will be ineffectual at best, and destructive of the entire movement at worst.

 

The working people in the US and around the world are not any single hue, religion, ethnicity or gender.  They are as capable of seeing beyond the propaganda of the warfare state as any antiwar organizer.  It is our job to realize this and work with that as a starting point.

 

Liberals who are afraid to take a stand on issues like the Palestinian right to a homeland or the dismantling of the US torture chambers around the world should not be leading an antiwar movement.

 

Anyhow, with all that in mind, I sat down to watch the speech.

 

Welcome to Bushworld

 

That smirk (or grin or whatever it is) that I referred to earlier is still there.  Even as Bush the Younger talked about the sacrifices made and the sacrifices to come, it was there. Perhaps because he knows that it won't be his family or the families of any of his friends who will be making those sacrifices if he can help it. It never went away the entire speech.  Talking about terrorism-smirk.  Talking about democracy--smirk. Talking about those who oppose the war--smirk.  Quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow--smirk.

 

The speech itself was a broadcast from Bushworld.  The current occupant of the White House described the paranoiac nightmare he lives in.  

 

This is a world where all the enemies of US capitalism are part of a giant terrorist conspiracy to take away the riches that he believes his family worked so hard for.

 

It is a world where those who don't want to draw the enemies of his country on a hill into a fight are no better than the enemies themselves.  In Bushworld, the only way to get rid of the terrorists is to bully them into a fight in order to destroy them.  Of course, even the leader of Bushworld knows that by doing so he will create enemies of the terrorists' families. Which means, of course, that the armies of Bushworld must fight and kill them as well.

 

In Bushworld, it doesn't matter if the facts don't match this perception, because in Bushworld, that perception is reality.  If it isn't yet, the policy of "Bring 'em on" will make it so.  Bushworld doesn't want the facts, only a reason, no matter how flimsy, to kill its ever growing list of enemies.  The world really is out to get the citizens of Bushworld and none of them can figure out why because the citizens of Bushworld are blameless in their own minds.

 

The speech contained nothing new.  It was a public relations exercise in the style of Ronald Reagan delivered by a man who can't even contrive the false sincerity that Reagan exuded like a sewer plant exudes methane gas.

 

In a Clintonesque twist, Bush the Younger pretended to reach out to his opponents in the opposition party, asking them to forget their arguments against his bloodthirsty attempt at conquest and accept that they too are in danger and must accept nothing but the total destruction of Bushworld's enemies and the installation of Bushworld kingdoms around the world.

 

Chances are, this appeal will reach some of these supposed opponents and the president's poll numbers will show a slight jump.  Holiday good will will allow those US residents who aren't sacrificing a damn thing in this war to give the smirking leader guy another chance.  At least until tax time, when only the wealthy will smile.

 

The most revealing part of the entire speech was the end, when Bush the Younger quoted the US poet Longfellow.

 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep.

"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep!

The wrong shall fail,

The right prevail,

With peace on earth, good will to men!"

 

Mr. Longfellow wrote these words in December 1863, in the middle of the War Between the States.

 

He had just learned that his son, a Union soldier, had been seriously wounded in battle. Heavy with sorrow that had accumulated since his wife's death in 1861 and become greater as the US Civil War exacted a greater and greater toll in human life and the destruction of civil society, Longfellow wrote the poem "Bells on Christmas Day."

 

It is a poem that wreaks of despair more than hope.

 

Bush's use of it contradicts Longfellow's abolitionist sympathies and celebration of the universalist aspects of early US history. In that respect, it's like Reagan's misinterpretation of Springsteen's "Born In the USA."

 

The only difference is that Longfellow isn't around to tell us what he really meant.

 

 

 

 

 

Received:

 

Hint On Health Of The US Troops In Iraq

 

 

From: Jouna P, Finland

To: GI Special

Sent: December 24, 2005

Subject: Hint on health of the US troops in Iraq

 

Thank you for everything you have done!

 

Paradoxically the gravest concern the US troops in Iraq face is not the Iraqi Resistance, but depleted uranium, which has already killed 11000 troops participating in the first Gulf War and disabled some 320,000, a number increasing by 43,000 a year, meaning that soon all the US troops in the first Gulf War have become casualties, and not only them: also their girlfriends have been contaminated too, and their children born with malignancies.

 

As basically nothing on Pentagon use of DU has changed since the first Gulf War, the same fate waits perhaps all the US troops who have served in the second war (over 300,000 altogether) now, the only uncertain factor being, where the actual casualties of DU in Iraq (now proven to be the cause of the ‘Gulf Syndrome’) have been hidden.

 

As I got an idea concerning this few days ago, I’m hinting you now to check out the article Iraq: Depleted Uranium aka Baghdad Boils?! (http://uruknet.info/?p=18948&hd=0&size=1&l=x), and if you have contacts to US combat troops in Iraq, to warn them of this (my article contains several links to related articles on DU), and besides it contains (cf. the final words) a suggestion how the war   can be stopped if the US tank crews get this info. 

 

So this is my present to you as I wish you Merry Christmas

 

jouna, iraq-war.ru

 

p.s. Once more, thank you for everything you’ve done!  

 

Before I realized because of DU, that it is the US Government and the Pentagon and US top officers, who are deceiving the US troops as well as all the other world, I used to think that the US troops get what they deserve.

 

Now, I’ve changed my mind, I want to help them too, and this is how I start.

 

Received:

 

No Patience For “These Unaccountable Public Serpents!”

 

From: Marilyn

Sent: December 20, 2005

 

Subject: RE: Tips for a Successful Lobby Visit, from The Friends Committee On National Legislation

 

"Listen and gather information.  Ask for your legislator’s view on an issue.  Be patient and passionate; don’t react angrily if you don’t get the response you want.  Remain polite."

 

Propaganda DEEP all write.  PURE BUSHIT! 

 

Good eye Jazz...wow!

 

Demanding we "remain polite; don't react!"   Be paytient with these unaccountable public serpents!  OMG, the historical "end days" of the cycle of tyranny!

 

Well Merry Christmas if you can.

 

Thank you for your anticipated service in 2006.

 

Hope it's a winning year.

 

 

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