Antiwar.com Blog

The expansion includes;

training rooms, offices for special operations and military communications, backup generators, a barbershop, shower rooms for those who work round-the-clock shifts and a 10-car garage for commanders.

The key to the expansion seems to be an attempt to avoid base closure;

The Defense Department’s hit list, due in May, isn’t likely to omit bases from closure just because they’ve had recent construction projects, he said, because a $50 million investment is “chicken feed” compared with the billions of dollars the Pentagon wants to save by closing a quarter of the nation’s bases.

However, referring to the new project, Hellman said, “It seems they’re making themselves pretty cozy there.”

The “Casualties in Iraq” page now tallies the total US troops killed since the January 30th election in Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan, Mother of Solider Killed in Iraq, Responds to William Rivers Pitt

Dear Will,

My son was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. I think you have already made up your mind that our troops need to remain in Iraq..which is very sad. This is in response to your blog question yesterday and your answer to antiwar.com today.

I admire your tireless efforts to get the truth out…but I seriously have to disagree with you. I think that our presence in that country is fueling the insurgency that killed my son; which has also killed many more of America’s sons and daughters (many more than the official count); has maimed almost 30,000 of our kids; and has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and demolished their country.

Don’t you think that the Iraqi people can rebuild their own country? Before the US invasion in March of 2003, they had a very capable work force filled with construction workers, contractors, engineers, etc. I think the 81 billion dollar appropriation’s bill that this president wants Congress to pass would better be a reparation’s bill.

Also, I know you know the despicable condition that the VA system and military hospital system are in right now. Are you suggesting that we create thousands of more mentally and physically wounded of our children who will be dependent on a system that is so flawed? Not to mention the even more serious implications of depleted uranium syndrome which will probably never be recognized by our government. I know some soldiers who have returned who are suffering terribly from PTSD and they have been waiting for over a year for VA approval to get treated. PTSD is rarely diagnosed, so they don’t receive the help they need.

And, most importantly and devastatingly, this war is based on lies and betrayals. Not one American soldier, nor one Iraqi should have been killed. Common sense would dictate that not one more person should be killed for lies. One of the people, my son, was more than enough for me and my family. I will live in unbearable pain until I die. First of all, because my first born was killed violently, and second of all, because he was killed for a neo-con agenda that only benefits a very chosen few in this world. This agenda and their war machine will chew up and spit out as many of our children as they can unless we stop them now.

Also, your views have the effect of invalidating what I, my organization, Gold Star Families for Peace, and other peace groups are doing to bring our troops home immediately, if not sooner.

In 1967 it was recognized by our government officials that Viet Nam was unwinnable…I don’t even know how many more of our troops and innocent Vietnamese were killed before we finally pulled out in 1975. Please use your forum to expose the lies and the devastation this invasion/occupation is causing. We should not stay. We should not let Israel/USA invade Syria or Iran. The consequences of this would be too shocking to even contemplate.

In addition, my family and my group are offended by hearing this administration say that our troops have to remain in Iraq and complete “the mission” to honor our loved one’s sacrifices.

First of all, no one can explain the mission to us and we don’t want any more innocent blood spilled just because it is too late for our soldiers and our families.

Thank you for your time and your courage in speaking the truth.

Love and Peace!!
Cindy Sheehan
Mother of Hero: Spc Casey Austin Sheehan KIA 04/04/04
Casey’s Peace Page
Co-Founder of Gold Star Families For Peace

William Rivers Pitt has responded to my post yesterday "William Rivers Pitt Falls Into War Party’s Trap."

Like a social worker sending an abusive husband back into the home of the battered wife to "fix the problem he made," Pitt asserts:

I agree wholeheartedly that we have no right to control the lives of the Iraqi people. But we invaded their country, smashed their infrastructure, killed 198,000 of their civilians, toppled their government, opened their borders to extremists who kill not for the good of the Iraqi people but to win a political/religious argument with the United States, and yes there is a big difference, we did all these things and more, and so the argument about whether we have the right to do anything is a horse that has already left the barn.

What a break for the War Party! All they have to do is invade a country and do enough damage, and then everyone will say we can’t leave. Is it possible that was the plan all along?

Most Iraqis want the US to leave now. Every survey has shown that, and the only Iraqis clamoring for us to stay are the politicians who are in the US’ pockets. Yet Mr. Pitt says that we should ignore the will of the battered Iraqis and continue to try to "fix" their problems.

Actually, upon closer examination we see that Mr. Pitt is not so concerned with the poor Iraqis:

Like it or lump it, but the world economy is addicted to Mideast oil. An immediate U.S. withdrawal could precipitate a total collapse of the oil industry there, causing a global oil shock. That chaos could spread to Saudi Arabia, where the regime is not on the most stable of ground. If the House of Saud were to fall, all that oil could fall into the hands of Wahabbist extremists, and at that point, chaos would be given a whole new definition. The best-case scenario for an immediate withdrawal has Iraq becoming a Shia fundamentalist state allied with Iran on top of all that oil, a scenario that frightens anyone with a long-term foreign policy and economic outlook.

In addition, Mr. Pitt totally misses my point about the Vietnam antiwar movement. I said: "During the Vietnam War, many in the Antiwar Movement argued against immediate, unconditional US withdrawal for exactly the same reason, that it would create chaos. Cries of ‘Negotiations Now’ competed with the principled ‘Out Now’ stance of committed antiwar activists"

Mr. Pitt responds:

While there are a number of comparable points between this war and that one, I would disagree with the premise that this situation exactly mirrors Vietnam. It doesn’t, for many reasons.

Those who argued that an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam would cause chaos were thinking in a Cold War domino-theory mindset, i.e. Communist forces would roll up South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, South Korea, etc. This thinking does not apply here, and is in fact reflected in a Bizarro-World kind of way by Bush administration policy: With Vietnam, we were worried about the destabilization of regional governments; With Iraq, the destabilization of regional governments is one of the primary goals.

I was not comparing Vietnam and Iraq, but rather comparing the weak-willed, pre-neocon, antiwar types who insisted that we had to continue dictating to the Vietnamese people (and now the Iraqi people), instead of just leaving them to themselves. In his response, Mr. Pitt reveals that he has quite a bit of dictation for other peoples as well.

Remember how everybody just knew that the mother and husband of Chicago judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow had been murdered by white supremacists? If you’ve been following the case in the media over the last week, you likely had no doubt where the guilt lay.

White supremacists are nasty dudes and make great villains. Too bad the actual culprit is just some guy whose malpractice suit was thrown out by the judge. The truth is so boring sometimes.

Not that I’m drawing any parallels to the Hariri assassination or the Yushchenko poisoning, you understand…

I don’t buy the theory that the attack on Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena’s car was an “assassination attempt” by the U.S. for the same reason I don’t buy the Syria-killed-Hariri theories: they make no sense. Killing Hariri would have been a truly suicidal bombing for the Assad regime; assassinating not only a journalist but also a government agent from an allied country would have been a totally unnecessary self-inflicted gash for the Bush administration. What’s truly noteworthy and disturbing about the Sgrena incident is that it wasn’t exceptional. Shooting up civilian vehicles is the status quo in occupied Iraq.

But while we’re talking conspiracy theories, ponder this: what if, God forbid, an anti-Syria journalist in Lebanon dies some time in the near future? What if he or she is killed by some Syrian troops who get a little overzealous about crowd control at a demonstration?

If that happens, you can bet your firstborn child that the belligerati will lay a detailed plot on the desk of Bashar al-Assad. It’s a gimme.