Justin Raimondo - Antiwar.com Blog

The wanton murder of Zaydun al-Samarrai, a 19-year-old Iraqi, by a group of U.S. soldiers who forced him to jump into the Tigris river was first revealed by Zeyad, a pro-American Iraqi blogger, who happens to be his cousin. Here is Zeyad’s reaction to the slap on the wrist administered to one of the murderers:

“The verdict against one of the soldiers involved in the drowning of Zaydun was a major disappointment. The defense continues to claim that no body was found, hence no murder. No one brought up the point that US authorities in Samarra kept postponing the exhumation of Zaydun’s corpse using the excuse of the security condition in the city.

“The National Guard unit which helped Marwan out of the water was not brought in to testify and the court seems to have brushed aside the fact that they are important witnesses to the case. The lying and conflicting statements by the soldiers and their commanders was also not discussed.

“Maybe we were simply naive to be led to believe that pursuing the case in a US court would help bring justice. But this is hardly the end of it.”

Zeyad is right on both counts: he was naive, and this isn’t the end of it. The lying commander, Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman, who coached his soldiers to cover up their crime, may have gotten away with murder — so far — but Lieutenant Jack Saville, the platoon leader, goes on trial March 15.

Iraqi Election Update (II)

A large explosion has been heard in the center of Baghdad…

In Like Flynn

This looks interesting. Pricey, but worth it.

The career of John T. Flynn, an old-style liberal who was one of the leaders of the America First Committee, exemplifies the course followed by many other liberals and progressives of the 1930s: his opposition to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s warlike foreign policy — and super-centralism on the home front — exiled him from the precincts of the Left and drove him into the ranks of the “isolationist” (i.e. pro-peace) Right. After reading Lew Rockwell’s recent piece on “red-state fascism,” I thought of Flynn, who foresaw our present predicament in 1943, the year his book As We Go Marching (now sadly out of print) was published:

“When you can put your finger on the men or the groups that urge for America the debt-supported state, the autarchial corporative state, the state bent on the socialization of investment and the bureaucratic government of industry and society, the establishment of the institution of militarism as the great glamorous public-works project of the nation and the institution of imperialism under which it proposes to regulate and rule the world and, along with this, proposes to alter the forms of our government to approach as closely as possible the unrestrained, absolute government – then you will know you have located the authentic fascist.

“But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that we are dealing by this means with the problem of fascism. Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans, as violently against Hitler and Mussolini as the next one, but who are convinced that the present economic system is washed up and that the present political system in America has outlived its usefulness and who wish to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing millions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fascist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy.”