Antiwar.com Blog

Liam Madden from Iraq Veterans Against the War sends the following:

In 1969, the My Lai massacre helped fuel popular opposition to the Vietnam War. U.S. political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. Members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War knew differently.

In January of 1971, over one hundred Vietnam Veterans gathered in Detroit to testify their experiences to America. Their testimony, called the Winter Soldier Investigation, revealed that atrocities were systemic and responsibility laid at the highest levels of government.

The U.S. Government lied to get us into war and continues to conceal the true nature of military occupation.

On the weekend of 13-15 March, 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will assemble history’s largest gathering of US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Iraqi and Afghan survivors. They will provide first hand accounts of their experiences and reveal the truth of occupation.

Click here to sign the statement of support.

Headmaster Sullivan tells us to clean our plates:

Imagine an Obama-McCain race: adult, graceful, necessary, and good for us.

Ah, Mr. Platitude vs. Mr. Come-Unglued: yep, it’ll be a regular Metamucil martini. Very adult!

Today’s nugget of conventional wisdom comes from liberal hawk George Packer:

In this election, the isolationist candidate is the Texas congressman Ron Paul. He frequently attacks the core rationale of Bush’s foreign policy, and receives enthusiastic applause for doing so, which indicates that Republican views about the war in Iraq might be more heterodox than the leading candidates and their strategists assume. But his brand of anti-interventionism reduces the Republican debate to hawks versus cranks. “They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for ten years,” Paul said at a debate in South Carolina. “I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it.”

Packer, who worked so hard to get us into Iraq that he cannot bear the thought of leaving, begins the very next paragraph as follows: “The room for genuine discussion in the Republican field is so limited…” Yes, it’s a shame that there are such narrow limits on our foreign policy discourse. How did we ever reach this sorry pass?

Link.

The November 21 Iraq Weekly Status Report, published by the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs of the US Department of State:

Senior military commanders now portray the intransigence of Iraq’s Shiite dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaida terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias. Several U.S. military officials have expressed growing concern over the Iraqi government’s failure to capitalize on sharp declines in attacks against U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians. A window of opportunity has opened for the government to reach out to its former foes, said Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the commander of day-to-day U.S. military operations in Iraq, but “it’s unclear how long that window is going to be open.”

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/scott/07_11_21_parry.mp3]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry, of ConsortiumNews.com and author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, discusses the Iran-Contra model for running the government, the failure of Colin Powell and allies to adequately stand up to Cheney and the neocons, the current state of the situation in Iraq, the rules of engagement, the second phase of the El Salvador option, the weakness of al Qaeda’s position in Iraq, the occupation’s benefit to them, the purpose behind the policy of backing the Ba’athists at the same time as the Maliki (Da’wa/SCIRI) government, the Bush administration’s bogus theory of unlimited power and technologies of control, the possibility that Iraqis may eventually tire of fighting and accept occupation, the neocons’ belief that it’s time to expand their triumph to Pakistan, the history of the mujahedeen’s CIA -backed war against the Russians in Afghanistan, the U.S. policy of ignoring Pakistan’s drive to obtain nuclear weapons in the 1980s, the impossibility of the Kagan/O’Hanlon plan for invasion, the neocon s’ history and mentality, their exaggeration of the Soviet threat as the USSR was falling apart, their taking of credit for it when it did and Adm. Fallon’s recent statement to the Financial Times against war with Iran.

MP3 here. (44:05)

Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, runs ConsortiumNews.com, and is the author of Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and the brand new Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.

Australian voters kicked Prime Minister John Howard out of office yesterday.  Howard was even more of a groveler to Bush than Tony Blair. 

One step Bush took to try to help Howard win reelection was to release Australian David Hicks from Guantanamo earlier this year.  As part of the deal for his release, Hicks had to promise to keep his mouth shut about how he was tortured until after the Australian election – and to sign a statement swearing he was not abused while at Gitmo.  The  release deal stunk to high heaven, but it was typical of the candor & ethics of the Global War on Terror.

Here’s the segment on Hicks’s case from a story I wrote in July for the American Conservative:

The torture of David Hicks, an Australian seized in Afghanistan and sent to Gitmo in early 2002, became an international cause célèbre. Hicks, who joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, a terrorist organization supported by the U.S. government, before fighting alongside the Taliban, was sexually assaulted, beaten with a rifle butt, kept in isolation in the dark for 244 days, prohibited from sleeping for long periods, threatened with firearms during interrogations, and psychologically tormented.

He was one of the first people tried by the Gitmo military tribunals. Though former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called him one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, after Hicks agreed to plead guilty to material support of terrorism, he was sentenced to nine months confinement—a typical sentence for a misdemeanor in most states. As part of his plea agreement, Hicks was obliged to declare that he “had never been illegally treated by any person or persons while in the custody and control of the United States” and to swear that his guilty plea was made voluntarily, despite all the beatings he had received.