Antiwar.com Blog

NPR has posted the unedited Sites video of the Fallujah mosque shooting, as well as an audio interview with Sites. The interview begins with a discussion of the reasons the US military declined to prosecute the Marine who shot the unarmed wounded Iraqi on tape.

Four other unarmed wounded Iraqis were executed in that mosque as well by Marines who arrived at the mosque just before the squad with which Sites was embedded. You hear Sites’ Marines ask, “Anyone in there? You shoot ’em? Were they armed?”

According to Sites, the five living Iraqis, along with ten corpses,had been left in the mosque the day before after having been treated for their injuries and disarmed. Sites entered the mosque and saw the Iraqis they had treated the day before lying on the floor bleeding to death. The two bodies you see in the foreground of Sites’ video are two of these Iraqis. As Sites filmed the two dying Iraqis, the next extraordinary scene unfolds. A Marine walks over to two other dying Iraqis and realizes one isn’t dead yet. After shouting that the man is “playing dead” and “fucking faking it” he splatters the man’s brains against the wall with a shot from his weapon. Another Marine deapans, “Dead now.”

The most interesting part of the interview is Sites’ account of his situation once the tape had been made, both with regard to his relationship with the Marines and NBC as well as the vicious reaction from the “patriots” back in the US. For a sampling of the warbot hysteria we blogged about at the time, see here and here.

Via Dan Gilmore and Boing Boing.

So? It’s a week old. I missed it, maybe you did too.

The Washington Times: House moves to raise U.S. debt ceiling

Washington, DC, May. 3 (UPI) — The U.S. House has sent legislation to the Senate that would raise the federal debt limit to nearly $9 trillion, a $781 billion increase.

The House agreed to the increase under an automatically executing provision in the 2005 budget resolution approved by the House and Senate late last week.

The House officially sent the Senate a separate piece of debt-relief legislation increasing the limit as mandated by the self-executing provision in the budget resolution.

Gaining approval of the separate bill through the gambit avoided the need for a politically costly debate on the House floor over increasing the debt ceiling again and highlighting the inter-party split on the issue.

Fiscal conservatives within the GOP have been clamoring for greater fiscal discipline on budget matters considering the massive federal deficits, estimated to reach another record in dollar terms this year, for the second consecutive year. [emphasis mine]

How much is $9,000,000,000,000? (nevermind the interest)

One million seconds is about eleven days. One billion seconds is almost thirty-two years. One trillion seconds is 31,546 years

So if the victims of the American tax man can shell out a dollar per second for 283,914 years, our limited republic should be back in the black – as long as we stay out of any more stupid wars.

As soon as the final touches of translation are completed, Venezuela is to formally submit a request for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, accused (and pretty much known even by the CIA) of bombing a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing the 73 people on board. He is also an admitted accomplice and planner of multiple bombings of tourist areas in Havana, including one which killed a young Italian tourist. The plane bombing was planned in Caracas.

The Venezuelan ambassador to the US expressed concern over Washington’s silence on the issue, and the Venezuelan VP complained of the US’s ambiguity on the issue of terrorism.

Though the US State Dept. says it has no information on whether Posada “is, was, or has been” in the country, his lawyer confirms that he did indeed cross the border from Mexico and is now seeking asylum in the US.

Washington may see an anti-communist terrorist as a non-threat to Americans, but that is clearly not the case, as the late 70s/early 80s bombings in Miami prove. If and when the embargo comes down and Americans begin flying to Cuba from Miami, nutballs like Posada will remain a real threat to those flying to Cuba to exchange experiences — and goods — with the people of that island. He and his ilk do not necessarily want an end to dictatorship — just the end of Castro’s and the beginning of theirs.

Just look at the way they run Miami.

The idea of replacing the felled twin towers of the World Trade Center with a “Freedom Tower” — the design of which seems, at least to this eye, self-consciously grandiose — always was a bit … overblown. Now we learn that the design originally approved by the city of New York would make the structure too accessible to a nearby highway — making it an inviting target for attack. The project has now been indefinitely delayed.

It seems to me that this development reflects a similar learning curve when it comes to our response to 9/11 in terms of U.S. foreign policy. Our first response was to embark on some impossibly broad and generalized “war on terrorism,” one that eventually came to include the “democratization” not only of the Middle East but of the entire world.

As we approach the fourth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in Amerian history, we are beginning to realize that our initial response — an enraged lashing-out at the nearest target — was in large part profoundly misdirected. Instead of taking on the entire Muslim world — and signing on to a futile crusade to “export democracy” to places that have never known it — our aim must be to restore what was: to make ourselves whole again by rebuilding what has been lost, rather than destroying some foreign country. The majority of Americans now believe that going to war with Iraq and occupying that country was not worth it.

The people of New York City and environs have had enough of the posturing politicians, and a movement has grown up to restore the twin towers to their previous glory — no more, and no less. Go here to look at the plan. This scaled-down project, it seems to me, is a worthwhile effort: bereft of the imperious and overbearing design of the “Freedom Tower,” this campaign to restore what has been lost seems like a metaphor for what has to be done in the rest of the country.

These guys should read this guy.

(Hat tip: Scott Horton)

If we peel back the outer “democratic” skin of Ukraine’s much-touted “Orange Revolution,” we find the same old same old: the newly-installed regime of Viktor Yushchenko is pulling the license of independent television station NTN to expand beyond the Kiev area. NTN had previously been given the go-ahead by two government agencies. The station is owned in part by Eduard Prutnik, a former advisor to Viktor Yanukovych — Yushchenko’s opponent during the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election.

Demonstrating the ridiculously easy time Yushchenko has in the “mainstream” media, exhibit “A” is a San Francisco Chronicle story about these shenanigans, with the Orwellian headline: “Yushchenko Vows to Safeguard Media Rights.”

Yeah, if you say so….

Ah yes, George W. Bush’s U.S. government-funded “global democratic revolution” is sweeping the world — ain’t it grand? And remember: you paid for it!