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The Common Ills


Thursday, May 17, 2012
Moqtada waits on an answer

Moqtada waits on an answer

Alsumaria reports that the home of a member of the "military personnel" was blown up in Mosul by unknown persons andd that the house collapsed.  No one was killed or injured. In addition, police have closed down streets and are conducting a search in Kirkuk after a peshmerga was leaving his home this morning when two cars with unknown assailants pulled up and kidnapped him.  That's one of two searches and raids going on in Kirkuk today.  In addition, a neighborhood was raided after rockets attacked the Kirkuk airbase. At least one person was detainedIraq Body Count counts 14 killed yesterday: "Kirkuk: 11 bodies. Mosul: 1 by gunfire, 1 body.  Shirqat: 1 pharmacist, by gunfire."

As the violence continues, so does the political crisis.  May 28th is supposed to be the deadline for Nouri al-Maliki to announce he is implementing the Erbil Agreement or face a no-confidence vote.  Moqtada al-Sadr publicly announced the deadline.  If you don't stick to a deadline, there's no point in announcing one.  And Nouri may believe that this is just one of many deadllines he's been given (such as the one regarding Article 140, the Constitutionally mandated deadline) which he can actually blow off.  And he may be right.

March 7, 2010, Iraq held parliamentary elections.  Iraqiya, led by Ayad Allawi, came in first, State of Law, led by Nouri, came in second.  Nouri did not want to give up the post of prime minister and, with support from the White House and Tehran, Nouri dug his heels in creating eight months of gridlock, Political Stalemate I.  This only ended in November 2010 when the US brokered a deal known as the Erbil Agreement.  At a big meet-up in Erbil, the various political blocs signed off on the agreement.  Nouri got his second term as prime minister in exchange for concessions to other political blocs.  But once he became prime minister, Nouri refused to honor the agreement.  By the summer of 2011, the Kurds were publicly demanding that Nouri return to the Erbil Agreement and Iraqiya and Moqtada al-Sadr joined in the call.  More recently, April 28th, another meet up took place in Erbil.  Participants included KRG President Massoud Barzani, President of Iraq Jalal Talabani, Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi, Ayad Allawi and Moqtada al-Sadr.  The demands coming out of that meet-up were a return to the Erbil Agreement and the implementation of 18-point plan by Moqtada.

Who would replace Nouri?  A number of names have been floated.  Ibrahiam al-Jaafari has been the most promiment.  al-Jaafari has held the post before and, in 2006, the Iraqi Parliament wanted to name him to anotehr term; however, the US refused to allow that to happen and demanded that their puppet Nouri al-Maliki be given the post instead.  Just as Bush protected Nouri in 2006, Barack did in 2010.


Al Rafidayn reports today that Kurdish leaders say they are comfortable with the choice of al-Jaafari to replace Nouri as prime minister.  They also report that if Nouri doesn't meet the deadline, the plan is for Moqtada to meet with the National Alliance (Shi'ite slate that includes Nouri's State of Law, Moqtada's bloc, the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq and more) and to address the issues and options.  Alsumaria reports State of Law's Bahaa Jamal al-Din has declared in an interview with them that withdrawing confidence from Nouri would pull the country into a series of crisies.  The obvious follow up to that would be: Is that really a warning because it sounds like a threat?  Alsumaria also notes that al-Din states Moqtada's meeting with the National alliance today.  Al Mada reports National alliance MP Jawad Albzona confirms the meet-up but places it more up in the air with details not nailed down yet about issues such as the time of the meet-up.  Dar Addustour notes the National Alliance has already postponed one meet-up on this issue this week (they cancelled the planned May 15th meet-up).  Alsumaria reported earlier today that Moqtada al-Sadr is waiting on formal response from the National Alliance and it's expected to be in written form, delivered in a few hours, informing him of the National Alliance's position on the issues raised.  Moqtada  tells Alsumaria that the response will determine the next moveAl Sabaah  is reporting that  Nouri's calling for a face-to-face sit-down with political blocs.


Al Rafidayn reports on rumors that include threats to publish "secret documents" in an attempt to stop and/or start a no confidence vote.  The latest round of whispers today follow yesterday's allegation by Iraqiya that State of Law was intentionally circulating false rumors as part of a disinformation campaign.  (It's an allegation many will believe because State of Law has been doing that for weeks now.)

Nouri's got other troubles as well.  Al Mada reports that his proposal of one firearm per household continues to be criticized.  Women for Peace's Shaza Nagi declares that a group of NGO members met to discuss the proposal and to put forward various counter-proposals.  The biggest concern remains, according to Nagi, the presumed acknowledgment of this move: That the government's making clear it cannot protect the citizens.  Also troubling for Nouri is the report of mass arrests yesterday.  Al Sabaah reports 57 people were arrestedAlsumaria notes that attorneys staged a sit-in today in Diayal in protest against the random mass arrests taking place.   The arrests came on the same day Nouri gave a speech promising to punish the 'Ba'athists.'  Al Mada notes Nouri is promising to avenge the crimes of the Ba'ath Party.  He declared that the uninformed and the intellectually deviant were participating in the political process and, sadly, he wasn't confessing to his own issues.  He spoke of "mass graves" and how he will expose the crimes of the Ba'ath and that he's called on the Minister of Human Rights to assist with that.  Meanwhile Al Sabaah notes the Ministry of Health is warning that some tribes are objecting to doctors and pursuing tribal prosecutions of them which is putting medical health at risk in Iraq. 








Yesterday, the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health held a hearing.  The House Veterans Affairs Committee issued the following after the hearing:

VA Prosthetic Care at a Crossroads

May 16, 2012  
Issues: Health Care, Veterans
 
 
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, the Subcommittee on Health held a hearing to examine VA’s current capabilities to provide state-of-the-art care to veterans with amputations. The Committee heard testimony concerning VA’s proposal to change procurement processes for prostheses, potentially hindering a veteran’s ability to acquire the latest prosthetic and corresponding care and support.
“VA has been struggling to keep pace with the rising demands of younger and more active veterans with amputations,” stated Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Health. “VA must continue to provide multi-disciplinary care to maintain long-term and life-time quality of life. Placing prosthesis procurement into the hands of contracting officers is alarming. VA needs to match the determination and spirit demonstrated by our wounded warriors and recommit themselves to becoming a leader once again in prosthetic care.”
Currently, VA provides care to approximately 42,000 veterans with limb loss. As of August of 2011, 1,506 servicemembers had experienced amputations on active duty from Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. An additional 2,248 veterans underwent major amputations at VA in 2011. VA prosthetic costs have more than doubled in the past five years, yet, VA’s care has fallen behind that of the Department of Defense (DoD).
“Prosthetics are a truly individualized extension of one person’s body and mobility, not your typical bulk supply purchase,” stated Jim Mayer, a Vietnam veteran, double amputee, and wounded warrior advocate and mentor. “When today’s warriors are referred to VA and seek the newer, cutting-edge, technologically superior prosthetics they have been accustomed to [through DoD], will VA be able to meet that demand? DoD centers of excellence provide state-of-the-art and often newly evaluative prosthetics that have allowed warriors to thrive, not just in walking, but also run competitively, compete in the Paralympics, rock climb, play myriad sports and other endeavors.”
“Prosthetic technology and VA have come a long way from the Civil War era. Following World War II, veterans dissatisfied with the quality of VA prosthetics stormed the Capitol in protest. Congress responded by providing VA with increased flexibility for prosthetic options and federally funded research and development,” said Buerkle. “As a result, VA has been a leader in helping veterans with amputations regain mobility and achieve maximum independence. This is why I am troubled by VA’s proposed changes in procurement policies and procedures which shifts the emphasis from the doctors to contracting officers.”


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.


Posted at 07:14 am by thecommonills
 

Burnpits

Burnpits

Iraq War veteran Spc Dominick J. Liguori died Friday.  Bob Kalinowski (Times-Tribune) reports he died of sarcoidosis, "Family members say Spc. Liguori developed the disease from exposure to open-air burn pits while serving in Iraq, and the ailment slowly scarred and destroyed his lungs."  Denise Hook says of her 31-year-old nephew, "They did scans of his lungs.  You could see on the scans that most of his lungs were destroyed.  You'll see a lot more in the future.  You really will."  She also states, "Since he was little, he wore camouflage for Halloween every year.  He painted his wagon camouflage.  He painted his little trucks camouflage.  He hid in the trees with camouflage.  All he ever dreamt about was being in the military.  That was his lifelong dream.  I think if God could have made him better, he would have rejoined."

Burn pits have resulted in many service members and contractors being exposed to chemicals and toxins that have seriously harmed their bodies. Back when Democrats made more of an effort for veterans, it looked like the issue might be addressed.  Instead, burnpits are still being used in Afghanistan.  After all the work of now former-Senator Byron Dorgan and others, the burn pits are still being used.  Dorgan was Chair of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee and they held many hearings on this very serious issue.  Click here to go to the hearing archives page.  As a result of those hearings, there was a push for a burnpit registry, similar to the Agent Orange registry (finally) created for the veterans of Vietnam.    October 21, 2009, then-Senator Evan Bayh appeared before the US Senate Veterans Affairs Committee explaining the bill for a registry he was sponsoring, advocating for it.


 
I am here today to testify about a tragedy that took place in 2003 on the outskirts of Basra in Iraq. I am here on behalf of Lt Col James Gentry and the brave men and women who served under his command in the First Battalion, 152nd Infantry of the Indiana National Guard. I spoke with Lt Col Gentry by phone just this last week. Unfortunately, he is at home with his wife, Luanne, waging a vliant fight against terminal cancer. The Lt Col was a healthy man when he left for Iraq. Today, he is fighting for his life. Tragically, many of his men are facing their own bleak prognosis as a result of their exposure to sodium dichromate, one of the most lethal carcinogens in existence. The chemical is used as an anti-corrosive for pipes. It was strewn all over the water treatment facility guarded by the 152nd Infantry. More than 600 soldiers from Indiana, Oregon, West Virginia and South Carolina were exposed. One Indiana Guardsman has already died from lung disease and the Army has classified it as a service-related death. Dozens of the others have come forward with a range of serious-respiratory symptoms. [. . .] Mr. Chairman, today I would like to tell this Committee about S1779. It is legislation that I have written to ensure that we provide full and timely medical care to soldiers exposed to hazardous chemicals during wartime military service like those on the outskirts of Basra. The Health Care for Veterans Exposed to Chemical Hazards Act of 2009 is bipartisan legislation that has already been co-sponsored by Senators Lugar, Dorgan, Rockefeller, Byrd, Wyden and Merkley. With a CBO score of just $10 million, it is a bill with a modest cost but a critical objective: To enusre that we do right by America's soldiers exposed to toxic chemicals while defending our country. This bill is modeled after similar legislation that Congress approved in 1978 following the Agent Orange exposure in the Vietnam conflict.

And that should have been the start of something.  Instead, Senator Jim Webb managed to keep the burnpit bill from leaving the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.  Why?


Because Jim Webb may be a veteran -- one with a cushy government pension and health care that go beyond military benefits -- but he really doesn't care about them.  That's why he had to announce he wasn't seeking re-election.  Veterans in Virginia can't stand him.

September 23, 2010, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki appeared before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee to respond to questions about his decision to expand the  pool of recognized victims of Agent Orange.  Read the report on that hearing (use the link).  It was an embarrassment.  As I noted, we never got a Senate hearing about the VA's failure to deliver the Post-9/11 GI Bill checks in a timely fashion but we got a hearing where Webb could play cheap and Tester could paint veterans as some sort of 'welfare chislers.'  From that day's snapshot:


Tester being convinced that 'bad' veterans are hidden away somewhere who  "pounds a couple of packs of cigarettes a day and a like amount of alcohol" to get extra monies from the government claiming heart disease.  I'm not really sure what "a like amount of alcohol" is to a "couple of packs of cigarettes" -- one is liquid.  Is Tester that stupid, really?  And could he next hop on a scale since we're paying his medical bills as well since he serves in the US Congress and since, when he was in profile returning to his seat, he so closely resembled William Conrad.  What are you pounding, Tester?  And why are we paying for it?  If you want to talk risk factors on veterans and claim that its your playground to do so because of tax payer monies, let me repeat, we the tax payers pay for your health care Jon Tester -- for the rest of your life.  Maybe it's time we started imposing penalties on Congressional members with "risk factors"?  Especially those who know they can't win an argument against Agent Orange exposure so they try to create this little side dialogue that's both meaningless and insulting.
There were many members of the Committee that were geniunely concerned about veterans in that hearing -- members from the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and Socialist Bernie Sanders.  But Webb and Tester were bound and determined that the 'wrong people' were getting money.

Let's point out that Barack Obama loves to give a false history of Vietnam and claim that the American people abandoned veterans.  (In his more 'creative' moments, he says much worse than that.)  The American people did no such thing and you have to be a real piece of work to make claim like that in public.  The government turned its back on veterans.  And you saw that with Jim Webb continuing to fight efforts -- in 2010, continuing to fight efforts -- to give the veterans exposed to Agent Orange the benefits they needed.  But grasp that Barack is forever claiming "never again' and blah blah blah.  The victims of Agent Orange were not officially recognized by the US government until almost two decades after the end of the war.   It was 1991 when Congress finally passed the act that created the Agent Orange registry.

For those too young to remember, prior to 1991, the US government offered one lie and one cover up after another to deny the veterans effected by Agent Orange the care they needed.  Many died as a result.

And Barack wants to grand stand (on a false 'history' of Vietnam) and claim "never again" but his administration has done nothing to create a burnpit registry, not one damn thing.  The next time he gives another one of his ass-backwards speeches on Vietnam, the public would do well to remember that the burnpit issue is the equivalent of Vietnam's Agent Orange issue (and in both cases, the native populations were left to live in the chemical dump the US government created) and that Mr. "Never Again" can't even mention "burnpit."  He won't mention it.  He won't lead on it.  But damned if he doesn't think he deserves veterans'  votes.

Currently, US House Rep Todd Akin is proposing a burnpit registry in the House.  If Barack wants to earn veterans votes or to stop his empty grand standing and actually have an accomplishment to his name, he could throw some public support being Akin's bill. 

People are dying.  It's as outrageous as when the government was denying the effects of Agent Orange.  And there's no excuse for it.

 Iraq War veteran Leroy Torres and his wife Rosie Torres have continued to battle on behalf of veterans exposed to burn pits -- which includes Leroy Torres -- and they have contiuned to educate the nation on the issue. The Torres have a website entitled BURNPITS 360. They are also on Facebook.  Last month, she was interviewed by Rachel Cole (KRIS -- link is text and video):



His wife, Rosie, has been battling for years with Congress to get legislation passed that will recognize a connection with toxic exposure for soldiers and their poor health conditions. "To sum it up, at 39-years-old, he's lost both his careers that he's worked very hard for because of his health. Toxic exposure is something that it slowly takes over one organ at a time." Rosie said.
According to Rosie, her husband is in stable but she says others aren't so lucky. "There's several soldiers awaiting lung transplants and others on full liters of oxygen constantly." She said.


Today Bob Kalinowski reports:


U.S. Army Spc. Dominick Liguori, 31, who completed a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq in 2009, died Friday after suffering from a disease that damaged his lungs the past three years, his family said.
Hundreds of other military veterans have claimed respiratory problems linked to the burn pits, prompting U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, to propose a bill to investigate the issue and create a database of potential victims to determine if there is a link.
"We have received numerous reports from individuals who have the same concerns," Akin's spokesman Steve Taylor said Wednesday. "There seems to be a certain degree of consistency among the complaints."


So today's veterans will have to wait until 16 years from now to get burnpit registry?  Is that how it's going to work? Again, Barack could provide leadership on this issue.  If he wanted to.


Yesterday's snapshot included coverage of yesterday's House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health hearing.  Quickly in reply to e-mails.  1) I stated we could revisit the hearing in a later snapshot.  I have no problem doing that.  The e-mails indicate we need to because there's a large amount of "I hadn't heard about the VA's proposal."  I hadn't either until yesterday's hearing but just assumed I'd missed it.  Not the first time that's happened.  Judging by the e-mails, a lot of veterans also learned from the hearing about the proposal to make it more complicated for veterans to receive prosthetics.

We'll again quote Iraq War veteran Jonathan Pruden on what VA's proposing.

Jonathan Pruden:  Under the change, only a contracting officer could procure a prosthetic item costing more than $3,000.  This policy would effect essential items including most limbs like mine and wheel chairs.  It would require the use of a system designed for bulk procurement purchases that involves manually processing over three hundred -- that's 300 -- individual steps to develop a purchase order.  This system may be great for buying cinder blocks and light bulbs but it is certainly not appropriate for providing timely and appropriate medical care.  Equally troubling, this change offers no promise of improving service to the warrior.  Instead, it would mean greater delays. The change could realize modest savings but at what cost?  A warrior needing a new leg or wheel chair should not have to wait longer than is absolutely necessary.  I know warriors who have stayed home from our events, stay home from school, from work, can't play ball with their kids or live in chronic pain while they wait for a new prosthesis.   I know first hand what it's like to not be able to put my son into the crib while I'm waiting for a new prosthetic, to live in chronic pain and to have my daughter ask my wife once again, "Why can't Daddy come and walk with us?"   With VA moving ahead on changing procurement practices, wounded warriors need this Committee's help.  A prosthetic limb is not a mass produced widget. Prosthetics are specialized, medical equipment that should be prescribed by a clinician and promptly delivered to the veteran.  We urge this Committee to direct VA to stop implementation of this change in prosthetic procurement.

Due to the large amount of e-mails on the hearing, we'll return to it in today's snapshot, that's a promise.  2) Memorial Day's coming up a few people note -- some veterans, some not.  Are we going to promote any giving?  No.

The economy's still awful.  And it's not my place to tell you what to do with your money.  In yesterday's snapshot, we covered the second panel which was "  Disabled American Veterans' Joy Ilem, American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association's Michael Oros, Paralyzed Veterans of America's Alethea Predeoux and Southeast Wounded Warrior Project's Jonathan Pruden."  When we cover a hearing and there are advocate organizations present, I do try to include links to them.  Any organization from yesterday's hearing would appreciate a donation, any organization from any hearing we've covered where someone with the organization spoke and it registered with you is someone you could consider donating too.  If you have the money to spare and I know many don't.

Second, I am friendly with several organizations and people with them.  If I promoted X and not T, then T would feel slighted and wonder what they did?  (And most likely all they did was run into me not focusing or thinking clearly so I forgot to include them.)

They'd also run into the time issue.  At the end of last week, a friend with the VFW asked if I would note something.  I said sure but that it might take a few days if they wanted it noted during the week.  They were fine with that, so here it is today:




 On Monday, three representatives of the Center for American Progress attacked the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. in an opinion editorial published in Politico. Entitled “VFW, Allies Mislead On Pay, Benefits,” they criticized the VFW for opposing Pentagon budget-reduction plans that would reduce military pay increase percentages, civilianize the retirement system, and shift more TRICARE health program costs onto military dependents and retirees. VFW National Commander Richard L. DeNoyer responded to the attack in a 300-word letter to editor that was published in today’s issue of Politico. Below is the expanded version.  
By Richard L. DeNoyer 
   
Monday’s opinion editorial by Lawrence Korb, Alex Rothman and Max Hoffman would have readers believe that the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is misleading America into believing that the Pentagon’s proposals to reform military compensation, retirement and healthcare are bad for the nation.  
   
As the national commander of America’s oldest and largest combat veterans’ organization, I can guarantee that nothing the VFW says about protecting military pay and benefits is misleading. The Defense Department’s “budget first, people second” proposals are bad for America because they threaten the continued viability of the all-volunteer force. It takes people to fight and win our nation’s wars — to put boots on the ground as well as to operate our ships, planes and tanks. The VFW makes no apologies for wanting to protect those military programs that attract and retain our best and brightest in uniform.  
   
The authors would have you believe that proposed military pay raises between .5 and 1.7 percent over the next five years will help rebalance the budget, yet they make no mention of the effect a resurging economy will have on recruiting and retention, much less the still volatile and unpredictable world that awaits our military of 2015 and beyond. They and others seem to have forgotten the huge recruiting and retention bonuses the military services had to offer just seven short years ago.  
   
It is the constitutional responsibility of Congress to raise, support, and make rules for the regulation of our armed forces. And while DOD input is crucial for informed decisions, Congress must not be rushed into any “up or down” decision, similar to Base Realignment and Closure Commission votes, that could put a professionally-led, all-volunteer force at risk.  
   
Based on earlier trial balloons, DOD wants a new military retirement system that would resemble more participatory, 401(k)-type civilian programs, with the delayed receipt of retirement benefits until almost age 60. Since less than 10 percent of the force stays 20 years or more — not 17 percent as reported by the authors — a civilianized military retirement system will hurt retention because a 401(k)-style retirement plan can be earned virtually anywhere, and in professions far safer than serving in the military.  
   
Congress needs to carefully review and determine the potential impacts of such proposals on the force, because the immediate receipt of retirement pay and inexpensive healthcare for life for the retiree and spouse are the only two incentives the Pentagon offers to entice someone to first donate 20 or more years of their youth to the nation.  
   
Our entire nation faces a health cost crisis, but change advocates want all military dependents and retirees to shoulder more TRICARE health program costs. They cite national averages and what federal civilian employees pay in an attempt to justify plans to more than quadruple TRICARE premiums for some retirees. They call military healthcare and the retirement system “too generous,” with some even referring to these earned benefits as something far more insulting — “entitlements.”  
   
The authors would also have you believe that the Pentagon’s proposals are reasonable and fair, and should be supported by groups like the VFW, the Military Officers Association of America, and other veteran and military service organizations. They even wrote that “Reforming the system of military compensation is necessary — and should be supported by all Americans.”  
   
Yet the authors failed to present the whole picture in their argument. They focus on the overall monetary cost, but not the human cost that first requires decades of faithful service just to qualify — the multiple moves and hazardous deployments; children constantly uprooted from schools and spouses from any semblance of careers; zero home equity; potential age discrimination when applying for post-military employment; and now, being relegated to the expense ledger by the very department that was supposed to have your back.  
   
Only 1.9 million of America’s 22.2 million veterans are military retirees. Their ranks include former military service chiefs and commanders, and exponentially more from the enlisted ranks — the rank and file who also help to define a professionally led, all-volunteer force. But during this budget debate, nobody seems to care about the people side of the equation; they only want to compare military pay, healthcare and retirement programs with civilians who choose not to serve.
   
Putting the budget ahead of the troops is going to signal an end to the all-volunteer force, which for 39 years and more than a decade of continuous war has served our nation extremely well. That is not a misleading statement; it is a dire warning, and we urge Congress to focus on the difference. 


I haven't followed that issue so I have no intelligent or even faux intelligent remark to make on it.  I am happy to note their statement. 

The following community sites -- plus The Diane Rehm Show, Adam Kokesh, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Antiwar.com, CSPAN, the House Veterans Affairs Committee (we'll note that in the next entry), Jody Watley and Susan's On The Edge -- updated last night and this morning:



The Diane Rehm Show will be covered by Ruth (it's the topic she's been covering for weeks now -- Edwards trial).  In addition to the above, Blogger/Blogspot is STILL NOT READING Trina's site.  Her posts this week are:





Senator Patty Murray is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and the Committee issued the following yesterday:
 
 
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Contact: Murray Press Office
(202) 224-2834
 
Senator Murray's Statement on Sweeping Army-Wide Review of Behavioral Health Evaluations and Diagnoses
 
Investigations Will Review Mental Health Diagnoses Since 2001
 
(Washington, D.C.) -- Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, released the following statement after the Army announced that they will begin a comprehensive, Army-wide review of soldier behavioral health diagnoses and evaluations since 2001.  This major announcement comes after Senator Murray spurred an investigation into inconsistencies in diagnoses at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in her home state of Washington.  The Army has since returned PTSD diagnoses to over 100 servicemembers that sought treatment there.  Murray has repeatedly pushed Army leadership to investigate whether problems similar to those at Madigan were being seen at Army bases across the country.
 
 
For more information on the Army's announcement visit:
 
 
"The Army clearly realizes they have a nationwide, systematic problem on their hands. I credit them with taking action, but it will be essential that this vast and truly historic review is done the right way.  That means continued engagement from Army leadership at the highest levels, prompt attention to the problems of servicemembers identified during the review, and not only the identification of problems but quick action to implement and enforce solutions.
"This comprehensive review is born out of a review I helped initiate in my home state that has already returned PTSD diagnoses to over 100 servicemembers since the beginning of this year.  That review has been successful because the Army identified and reached out to affected servicemembers and veterans, conducted reevaluations using the appropriate tools and best practices, and was made a priority by top military leaders.  This nationwide review must be given the same attention from leadership in order to succeed.
"But the bottom line is that the Army needs to fix the inconsistencies we have seen in diagnosing the invisible wounds of war.  Out of this review, the Army needs to provide a uniform mental health policy so that service members are given the care they need.
"This is an issue that affects every aspect of the lives of those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Without proper mental health treatment we will continue [to] see see servicemembers struggle to readust to family life, contine to self-medicate, and in far too many cases, take their own lives.
"Servicemembers, veterans, and their families should never have to wade through an unending bureaucratic process to get proper access to care. The Army has an extrordinary opportunity to go back, correct the mistakes of the past, and ensure that they are not repeated."
 
###
 
 
Matt McAlvanah
Communications Director
U.S. Senator Patty Murray
202-224-2834 - press office
202--224-0228 - direct
 
 
 


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.


Posted at 06:32 am by thecommonills
 

Burnpits

Burnpits

Iraq War veteran Spc Dominick J. Liguori died Friday.  Bob Kalinowski (Times-Tribune) reports he died of sarcoidosis, "Family members say Spc. Liguori developed the disease from exposure to open-air burn pits while serving in Iraq, and the ailment slowly scarred and destroyed his lungs."  Denise Hook says of her 31-year-old nephew, "They did scans of his lungs.  You could see on the scans that most of his lungs were destroyed.  You'll see a lot more in the future.  You really will."  She also states, "Since he was little, he wore camouflage for Halloween every year.  He painted his wagon camouflage.  He painted his little trucks camouflage.  He hid in the trees with camouflage.  All he ever dreamt about was being in the military.  That was his lifelong dream.  I think if God could have made him better, he would have rejoined."

Burn pits have resulted in many service members and contractors being exposed to chemicals and toxins that have seriously harmed their bodies. Back when Democrats made more of an effort for veterans, it looked like the issue might be addressed.  Instead, burnpits are still being used in Afghanistan.  After all the work of now former-Senator Byron Dorgan and others, the burn pits are still being used.  Dorgan was Chair of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee and they held many hearings on this very serious issue.  Click here to go to the hearing archives page.  As a result of those hearings, there was a push for a burnpit registry, similar to the Agent Orange registry (finally) created for the veterans of Vietnam.    October 21, 2009, then-Senator Evan Bayh appeared before the US Senate Veterans Affairs Committee explaining the bill for a registry he was sponsoring, advocating for it.


 
I am here today to testify about a tragedy that took place in 2003 on the outskirts of Basra in Iraq. I am here on behalf of Lt Col James Gentry and the brave men and women who served under his command in the First Battalion, 152nd Infantry of the Indiana National Guard. I spoke with Lt Col Gentry by phone just this last week. Unfortunately, he is at home with his wife, Luanne, waging a vliant fight against terminal cancer. The Lt Col was a healthy man when he left for Iraq. Today, he is fighting for his life. Tragically, many of his men are facing their own bleak prognosis as a result of their exposure to sodium dichromate, one of the most lethal carcinogens in existence. The chemical is used as an anti-corrosive for pipes. It was strewn all over the water treatment facility guarded by the 152nd Infantry. More than 600 soldiers from Indiana, Oregon, West Virginia and South Carolina were exposed. One Indiana Guardsman has already died from lung disease and the Army has classified it as a service-related death. Dozens of the others have come forward with a range of serious-respiratory symptoms. [. . .] Mr. Chairman, today I would like to tell this Committee about S1779. It is legislation that I have written to ensure that we provide full and timely medical care to soldiers exposed to hazardous chemicals during wartime military service like those on the outskirts of Basra. The Health Care for Veterans Exposed to Chemical Hazards Act of 2009 is bipartisan legislation that has already been co-sponsored by Senators Lugar, Dorgan, Rockefeller, Byrd, Wyden and Merkley. With a CBO score of just $10 million, it is a bill with a modest cost but a critical objective: To enusre that we do right by America's soldiers exposed to toxic chemicals while defending our country. This bill is modeled after similar legislation that Congress approved in 1978 following the Agent Orange exposure in the Vietnam conflict.

And that should have been the start of something.  Instead, Senator Jim Webb managed to keep the burnpit bill from leaving the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.  Why?


Because Jim Webb may be a veteran -- one with a cushy government pension and health care that go beyond military benefits -- but he really doesn't care about them.  That's why he had to announce he wasn't seeking re-election.  Veterans in Virginia can't stand him.

September 23, 2010, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki appeared before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee to respond to questions about his decision to expand the  pool of recognized victims of Agent Orange.  Read the report on that hearing (use the link).  It was an embarrassment.  As I noted, we never got a Senate hearing about the VA's failure to deliver the Post-9/11 GI Bill checks in a timely fashion but we got a hearing where Webb could play cheap and Tester could paint veterans as some sort of 'welfare chislers.'  From that day's snapshot:


Tester being convinced that 'bad' veterans are hidden away somewhere who  "pounds a couple of packs of cigarettes a day and a like amount of alcohol" to get extra monies from the government claiming heart disease.  I'm not really sure what "a like amount of alcohol" is to a "couple of packs of cigarettes" -- one is liquid.  Is Tester that stupid, really?  And could he next hop on a scale since we're paying his medical bills as well since he serves in the US Congress and since, when he was in profile returning to his seat, he so closely resembled William Conrad.  What are you pounding, Tester?  And why are we paying for it?  If you want to talk risk factors on veterans and claim that its your playground to do so because of tax payer monies, let me repeat, we the tax payers pay for your health care Jon Tester -- for the rest of your life.  Maybe it's time we started imposing penalties on Congressional members with "risk factors"?  Especially those who know they can't win an argument against Agent Orange exposure so they try to create this little side dialogue that's both meaningless and insulting.
There were many members of the Committee that were geniunely concerned about veterans in that hearing -- members from the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and Socialist Bernie Sanders.  But Webb and Tester were bound and determined that the 'wrong people' were getting money.

Let's point out that Barack Obama loves to give a false history of Vietnam and claim that the American people abandoned veterans.  (In his more 'creative' moments, he says much worse than that.)  The American people did no such thing and you have to be a real piece of work to make claim like that in public.  The government turned its back on veterans.  And you saw that with Jim Webb continuing to fight efforts -- in 2010, continuing to fight efforts -- to give the veterans exposed to Agent Orange the benefits they needed.  But grasp that Barack is forever claiming "never again' and blah blah blah.  The victims of Agent Orange were not officially recognized by the US government until almost two decades after the end of the war.   It was 1991 when Congress finally passed the act that created the Agent Orange registry.

For those too young to remember, prior to 1991, the US government offered one lie and one cover up after another to deny the veterans effected by Agent Orange the care they needed.  Many died as a result.

And Barack wants to grand stand (on a false 'history' of Vietnam) and claim "never again" but his administration has done nothing to create a burnpit registry, not one damn thing.  The next time he gives another one of his ass-backwards speeches on Vietnam, the public would do well to remember that the burnpit issue is the equivalent of Vietnam's Agent Orange issue (and in both cases, the native populations were left to live in the chemical dump the US government created) and that Mr. "Never Again" can't even mention "burnpit."  He won't mention it.  He won't lead on it.  But damned if he doesn't think he deserves veterans'  votes.

Currently, US House Rep Todd Akin is proposing a burnpit registry in the House.  If Barack wants to earn veterans votes or to stop his empty grand standing and actually have an accomplishment to his name, he could throw some public support being Akin's bill. 

People are dying.  It's as outrageous as when the government was denying the effects of Agent Orange.  And there's no excuse for it.

 Iraq War veteran Leroy Torres and his wife Rosie Torres have continued to battle on behalf of veterans exposed to burn pits -- which includes Leroy Torres -- and they have contiuned to educate the nation on the issue. The Torres have a website entitled BURNPITS 360. They are also on Facebook.  Last month, she was interviewed by Rachel Cole (KRIS -- link is text and video):



His wife, Rosie, has been battling for years with Congress to get legislation passed that will recognize a connection with toxic exposure for soldiers and their poor health conditions. "To sum it up, at 39-years-old, he's lost both his careers that he's worked very hard for because of his health. Toxic exposure is something that it slowly takes over one organ at a time." Rosie said.
According to Rosie, her husband is in stable but she says others aren't so lucky. "There's several soldiers awaiting lung transplants and others on full liters of oxygen constantly." She said.


Today Bob Kalinowski reports:


U.S. Army Spc. Dominick Liguori, 31, who completed a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq in 2009, died Friday after suffering from a disease that damaged his lungs the past three years, his family said.
Hundreds of other military veterans have claimed respiratory problems linked to the burn pits, prompting U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri, to propose a bill to investigate the issue and create a database of potential victims to determine if there is a link.
"We have received numerous reports from individuals who have the same concerns," Akin's spokesman Steve Taylor said Wednesday. "There seems to be a certain degree of consistency among the complaints."


So today's veterans will have to wait until 16 years from now to get burnpit registry?  Is that how it's going to work? Again, Barack could provide leadership on this issue.  If he wanted to.


Yesterday's snapshot included coverage of yesterday's House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health hearing.  Quickly in reply to e-mails.  1) I stated we could revisit the hearing in a later snapshot.  I have no problem doing that.  The e-mails indicate we need to because there's a large amount of "I hadn't heard about the VA's proposal."  I hadn't either until yesterday's hearing but just assumed I'd missed it.  Not the first time that's happened.  Judging by the e-mails, a lot of veterans also learned from the hearing about the proposal to make it more complicated for veterans to receive prosthetics.

We'll again quote Iraq War veteran Jonathan Pruden on what VA's proposing.

Jonathan Pruden:  Under the change, only a contracting officer could procure a prosthetic item costing more than $3,000.  This policy would effect essential items including most limbs like mine and wheel chairs.  It would require the use of a system designed for bulk procurement purchases that involves manually processing over three hundred -- that's 300 -- individual steps to develop a purchase order.  This system may be great for buying cinder blocks and light bulbs but it is certainly not appropriate for providing timely and appropriate medical care.  Equally troubling, this change offers no promise of improving service to the warrior.  Instead, it would mean greater delays. The change could realize modest savings but at what cost?  A warrior needing a new leg or wheel chair should not have to wait longer than is absolutely necessary.  I know warriors who have stayed home from our events, stay home from school, from work, can't play ball with their kids or live in chronic pain while they wait for a new prosthesis.   I know first hand what it's like to not be able to put my son into the crib while I'm waiting for a new prosthetic, to live in chronic pain and to have my daughter ask my wife once again, "Why can't Daddy come and walk with us?"   With VA moving ahead on changing procurement practices, wounded warriors need this Committee's help.  A prosthetic limb is not a mass produced widget. Prosthetics are specialized, medical equipment that should be prescribed by a clinician and promptly delivered to the veteran.  We urge this Committee to direct VA to stop implementation of this change in prosthetic procurement.

Due to the large amount of e-mails on the hearing, we'll return to it in today's snapshot, that's a promise.  2) Memorial Day's coming up a few people note -- some veterans, some not.  Are we going to promote any giving?  No.

The economy's still awful.  And it's not my place to tell you what to do with your money.  In yesterday's snapshot, we covered the second panel which was "  Disabled American Veterans' Joy Ilem, American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association's Michael Oros, Paralyzed Veterans of America's Alethea Predeoux and Southeast Wounded Warrior Project's Jonathan Pruden."  When we cover a hearing and there are advocate organizations present, I do try to include links to them.  Any organization from yesterday's hearing would appreciate a donation, any organization from any hearing we've covered where someone with the organization spoke and it registered with you is someone you could consider donating too.  If you have the money to spare and I know many don't.

Second, I am friendly with several organizations and people with them.  If I promoted X and not T, then T would feel slighted and wonder what they did?  (And most likely all they did was run into me not focusing or thinking clearly so I forgot to include them.)

They'd also run into the time issue.  At the end of last week, a friend with the VFW asked if I would note something.  I said sure but that it might take a few days if they wanted it noted during the week.  They were fine with that, so here it is today:




 On Monday, three representatives of the Center for American Progress attacked the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. in an opinion editorial published in Politico. Entitled “VFW, Allies Mislead On Pay, Benefits,” they criticized the VFW for opposing Pentagon budget-reduction plans that would reduce military pay increase percentages, civilianize the retirement system, and shift more TRICARE health program costs onto military dependents and retirees. VFW National Commander Richard L. DeNoyer responded to the attack in a 300-word letter to editor that was published in today’s issue of Politico. Below is the expanded version.  
By Richard L. DeNoyer 
   
Monday’s opinion editorial by Lawrence Korb, Alex Rothman and Max Hoffman would have readers believe that the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is misleading America into believing that the Pentagon’s proposals to reform military compensation, retirement and healthcare are bad for the nation.  
   
As the national commander of America’s oldest and largest combat veterans’ organization, I can guarantee that nothing the VFW says about protecting military pay and benefits is misleading. The Defense Department’s “budget first, people second” proposals are bad for America because they threaten the continued viability of the all-volunteer force. It takes people to fight and win our nation’s wars — to put boots on the ground as well as to operate our ships, planes and tanks. The VFW makes no apologies for wanting to protect those military programs that attract and retain our best and brightest in uniform.  
   
The authors would have you believe that proposed military pay raises between .5 and 1.7 percent over the next five years will help rebalance the budget, yet they make no mention of the effect a resurging economy will have on recruiting and retention, much less the still volatile and unpredictable world that awaits our military of 2015 and beyond. They and others seem to have forgotten the huge recruiting and retention bonuses the military services had to offer just seven short years ago.  
   
It is the constitutional responsibility of Congress to raise, support, and make rules for the regulation of our armed forces. And while DOD input is crucial for informed decisions, Congress must not be rushed into any “up or down” decision, similar to Base Realignment and Closure Commission votes, that could put a professionally-led, all-volunteer force at risk.  
   
Based on earlier trial balloons, DOD wants a new military retirement system that would resemble more participatory, 401(k)-type civilian programs, with the delayed receipt of retirement benefits until almost age 60. Since less than 10 percent of the force stays 20 years or more — not 17 percent as reported by the authors — a civilianized military retirement system will hurt retention because a 401(k)-style retirement plan can be earned virtually anywhere, and in professions far safer than serving in the military.  
   
Congress needs to carefully review and determine the potential impacts of such proposals on the force, because the immediate receipt of retirement pay and inexpensive healthcare for life for the retiree and spouse are the only two incentives the Pentagon offers to entice someone to first donate 20 or more years of their youth to the nation.  
   
Our entire nation faces a health cost crisis, but change advocates want all military dependents and retirees to shoulder more TRICARE health program costs. They cite national averages and what federal civilian employees pay in an attempt to justify plans to more than quadruple TRICARE premiums for some retirees. They call military healthcare and the retirement system “too generous,” with some even referring to these earned benefits as something far more insulting — “entitlements.”  
   
The authors would also have you believe that the Pentagon’s proposals are reasonable and fair, and should be supported by groups like the VFW, the Military Officers Association of America, and other veteran and military service organizations. They even wrote that “Reforming the system of military compensation is necessary — and should be supported by all Americans.”  
   
Yet the authors failed to present the whole picture in their argument. They focus on the overall monetary cost, but not the human cost that first requires decades of faithful service just to qualify — the multiple moves and hazardous deployments; children constantly uprooted from schools and spouses from any semblance of careers; zero home equity; potential age discrimination when applying for post-military employment; and now, being relegated to the expense ledger by the very department that was supposed to have your back.  
   
Only 1.9 million of America’s 22.2 million veterans are military retirees. Their ranks include former military service chiefs and commanders, and exponentially more from the enlisted ranks — the rank and file who also help to define a professionally led, all-volunteer force. But during this budget debate, nobody seems to care about the people side of the equation; they only want to compare military pay, healthcare and retirement programs with civilians who choose not to serve.
   
Putting the budget ahead of the troops is going to signal an end to the all-volunteer force, which for 39 years and more than a decade of continuous war has served our nation extremely well. That is not a misleading statement; it is a dire warning, and we urge Congress to focus on the difference. 


I haven't followed that issue so I have no intelligent or even faux intelligent remark to make on it.  I am happy to note their statement. 

The following community sites -- plus The Diane Rehm Show, Adam Kokesh, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Antiwar.com, CSPAN, the House Veterans Affairs Committee (we'll note that in the next entry), Jody Watley and Susan's On The Edge -- updated last night and this morning:



The Diane Rehm Show will be covered by Ruth (it's the topic she's been covering for weeks now -- Edwards trial).  In addition to the above, Blogger/Blogspot is STILL NOT READING Trina's site.  Her posts this week are:





Senator Patty Murray is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and the Committee issued the following yesterday:
 
 
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Contact: Murray Press Office
(202) 224-2834
 
Senator Murray's Statement on Sweeping Army-Wide Review of Behavioral Health Evaluations and Diagnoses
 
Investigations Will Review Mental Health Diagnoses Since 2001
 
(Washington, D.C.) -- Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, released the following statement after the Army announced that they will begin a comprehensive, Army-wide review of soldier behavioral health diagnoses and evaluations since 2001.  This major announcement comes after Senator Murray spurred an investigation into inconsistencies in diagnoses at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in her home state of Washington.  The Army has since returned PTSD diagnoses to over 100 servicemembers that sought treatment there.  Murray has repeatedly pushed Army leadership to investigate whether problems similar to those at Madigan were being seen at Army bases across the country.
 
 
For more information on the Army's announcement visit:
 
 
"The Army clearly realizes they have a nationwide, systematic problem on their hands. I credit them with taking action, but it will be essential that this vast and truly historic review is done the right way.  That means continued engagement from Army leadership at the highest levels, prompt attention to the problems of servicemembers identified during the review, and not only the identification of problems but quick action to implement and enforce solutions.
"This comprehensive review is born out of a review I helped initiate in my home state that has already returned PTSD diagnoses to over 100 servicemembers since the beginning of this year.  That review has been successful because the Army identified and reached out to affected servicemembers and veterans, conducted reevaluations using the appropriate tools and best practices, and was made a priority by top military leaders.  This nationwide review must be given the same attention from leadership in order to succeed.
"But the bottom line is that the Army needs to fix the inconsistencies we have seen in diagnosing the invisible wounds of war.  Out of this review, the Army needs to provide a uniform mental health policy so that service members are given the care they need.
"This is an issue that affects every aspect of the lives of those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Without proper mental health treatment we will continue [to] see see servicemembers struggle to readust to family life, contine to self-medicate, and in far too many cases, take their own lives.
"Servicemembers, veterans, and their families should never have to wade through an unending bureaucratic process to get proper access to care. The Army has an extrordinary opportunity to go back, correct the mistakes of the past, and ensure that they are not repeated."
 
###
 
 
Matt McAlvanah
Communications Director
U.S. Senator Patty Murray
202-224-2834 - press office
202--224-0228 - direct
 
 
 


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.


Posted at 06:32 am by thecommonills
 

Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Iraq snapshot

Iraq snapshot

Wednesday, May 16, 2012.  Chaos and violence continue, Nouri wants his 'accomplishments' acknowledged (if only there was one to point to), State of Law insists a conspiracy is a foot!, a US House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee hears that a change VA wants to make will actually hurt disabled veterans, and more.
 
 
"Our nation's commitment to restoring the capabilities of disabled veterans struggling with devasting combat wounds resulting in the loss of limb began with the Civil War," declared US House Rep Ann Marie Buerkle this morning shortly after she brought the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health to order.  "Restoring these veterans to wholeness was a core impetus behind the creation of the Department of Veteran Affairs and then, now, it continues to play a vital role in the Department's mission."
 
Buerkle is the Chair of the Subcommittee and this morning's hearing was entitled "Optimizing Care for Veterans With Prosthetics."  Chair Burerkle also noted, "Following WWII, 1945, veterans disatisfied with the quality of VA prosthetic care stormed the Capitol in protest. "  How is the care today?  To answer that question, the Subcommittee heard from four panels.  Gulf War Veteran John Register and Vietnam Veteran Jim Mayer.  Disabled American Veterans' Joy Ilem, American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association's Michael Oros, Paralyzed Veterans of America's Alethea Predeoux and Southeast Wounded Warrior Project's Jonathan Pruden.  The third panel was the VA's Office of Inspector General's Linda Halliday accompanied by Nicholas Dahl, Kent Wrathall and Dr. John D. Daigh Jr. and Dr. Robert Yang.  The fourth panel was the VHA's Dr. Lucille Beck accompanied by Dr. Joe Webster, Dr. Joe Miller and Norbert Doyle.  Some of the issues were outlined in the Ranking Member's opening remarks.
 
Ranking Member Mike Michaud: I've said it on this Committee before, but what seems to be the case, there is little accountability in management and, once again, procurement procedures and policies were not in place or not followed in managing nearly $2 billion worth of prosthetics and sensor aids.  The VA, in the last year's budget submission, claims $355 million in savings in the Fiscal Year 2012 and 2013 due to aquistions improvements.  But if the VA can't follow its own policies and procedures, how much faith can we have in the claim of acquisition savings?  I hope the VA can help us understand today what accountability we should expect and to make certain that the VA does not continue to overpay for prosthetics in the future, that taxpayers and veterans receive the best value for their devices, and for management to ensure that the prosthetics and sensor aids services is fully meeting veterans needs. Finally, it has come to my attention that VA has proposed changes in the procurement of prosthetics and that there is a high degree of concern among some of our witnesses today as to the effectiveness of these changes. I look forward to hearing from the VA on these changes as well.
 
 
A proposed change that's bothering some veterans?  What proposal is Ranking Member Michaud speaking of?  On the second panel, Jonathan Pruden explained the proposal (and here we're using his opening written remarks which differ some what from what he delivered):
 
Under current practice, VA physicians and prosthetists are able to see a veteran, make a determination regarding the most appropriate type of prosthetic equipment for a veteran, and relay that information to a Prosthetics Service purchasing officer to complete a purchase-order to obtain the needed item.   Those purchasing officers exclusively handle prosthetics' purchases, and are specialists in ordering medical equipment specified by health care providers.  A major change that the Veterans Health Administration intends to institute on July 30th, would require that any prosthetic item whose cost exceeds $3000 -- to include such essential items as limbs, wheelchairs and limb-repair components – must be procured by a contracting officer.  This is not simply a matter of substituting a generalist for a specialist.  Under the proposed change, these contracting officers would use a labor-intensive system (the Electronic Contract Management System (eCMS)) designed to achieve cost savings.  That system, designed for high-dollar bulk-procurement purchases that benefit from using the Government's purchasing power, requires over 300 individual steps to manually process a purchasing order.  While well-suited for buying widgets, the system was neither designed for nor well-suited to procuring highly specific, individualized medical equipment. Ill-suited to prosthetics, this new process would also require increased coordination between clinicians and off-site contracting officers who would be responsible for purchasing everything from light bulbs to now highly specific prosthetic legs.
This is not a small change.  Moreover, it not only increases the margin for error but also the potential for prolonged, delaying "back-and-forth," with the likelihood of clinicians having to justify why a more expensive wheelchair is clinically necessary when a seemingly-similar less- costly model exists.  We see no prospect that this planned change in prosthetics procurement holds any promise for improving service to the warrior.  Instead, it almost certainly threatens greater delay in VA's ability to provide severely wounded warriors needed prosthetic devices.
 
This would be "the wrong path" Iraq War veteran Jonathan Pruden stated.  He was injured in a July 1, 2003 Baghdad bombing resulting in multiple surgeries including the amputation of his right leg.  This next excerpt is from his oral testimony.
 
 
 
Jonathan Pruden:  Under the change, only a contracting officer could procure a prosthetic item costing more than $3,000.  This policy would effect essential items including most limbs like mine and wheel chairs.  It would require the use of a system designed for bulk procurement purchases that involves manually processing over three hundred -- that's 300 -- individual steps to develop a purchase order.  This system may be great for buying cinder blocks and light bulbs but it is certainly not appropriate for providing timely and appropriate medical care.  Equally troubling, this change offers no promise of improving service to the warrior.  Instead, it would mean greater delays. The change could realize modest savings but at what cost?  A warrior needing a new leg or wheel chair should not have to wait longer than is absolutely necessary.  I know warriors who have stayed home from our events, stay home from school, from work, can't play ball with their kids or live in chronic pain while they wait for a new prosthesis.   I know first hand what it's like to not be able to put my son into the crib while I'm waiting for a new prosthetic, to live in chronic pain and to have my daughter ask my wife once again, "Why can't Daddy come and walk with us?"   With VA moving ahead on changing procurement practices, wounded warriors need this Committee's help.  A prosthetic limb is not a mass produced widget. Prosthetics are specialized, medical equipment that should be prescribed by a clinician and promptly delivered to the veteran.  We urge this Committee to direct VA to stop implementation of this change in prosthetic procurement.
 
We'll note this exchange from the second panel.
 
 
Chair Ann Marie Buerkle: Mr. Pruden, in you testimony, you talked about how VA prosthetic research has lagged in recent years.  Now Mr. Oros talked about outcomes but I think you're talking more generally in terms of the research.  What impact -- and I shouldn't speak for you.  I should let you say what research you were referring to.  And then, if you could, after you tell us that piece, what impact has that had on veterans and the service that they need?
 
Jonathan Pruden:  VA has-has stepped up in a number of capacties in the past few years.  But, as Mr. Mayer pointed out earlier, DoD has taken the lead on the development of the DEKA Arm [a project DoD and the VA work on together] and all of these advanced techonology things.  In years past, VA has been -- One of its key roles and one of the reasons it exists is to provide specialized medical equipment for our combat wounded, for our veterans.  And VA really needs to have the capacity and the focus on research for durable medical equipment when DoD and Global War on Terror Dollars go away.  And this also ties into the discusssions about the centers of excellence at Walter Reed, Brooke Army Medical Center and so forth.  When these dollars go away, those DoD facilities will certainly scale back their capacity both for rehabilitation and for research.  And what we're calling for is for VA through the amputee system of care and enhancements and research to be prepared to meet the needs as DoD scales back.
 
Chair Ann Marie Buerkle: Thank you.  Miss Predeoux, I'm extremely concerned with regards to your comments about the filing system being outdated and the backlog that it creates.  Could you comment on that for us?
 
Alethea Predeoux:  Yes, in my written statement with the filing system, it refers to medical records in one VA medical center.  And if, for instance, one veteran was to relocate -- For example, our director of benefits relocated to this area from San Diego and it took quite a bit of time for the medical records to be delivered from San Diego to DC simply because there's not one central system in which all the medical centers are able to locate and actually view  the medical records of a veteran.  And as the panel before us testified, it's not just a wait time, it's a matter of being able to be comfortable and actually to be mobil.
 
 
Noting that Wounded Warrior was favoring a freeze on VA's proposed change, Ranking Member Michaud asked Oros, "Do you think we should ask the VA to freeze the reorganization? Bringing everthing in house?"   Oros responded, "Absolutely. Absolutely." US House Rep Gus Bilirakis wanted to know about the real life effects if VA went through with their change in procurement?
 
 
Jonathan Pruden:  Under the current system, there are safeguards in place to ensure that VA is being fiscally responsible. And it can take a month, two months.  Some of this is predicated on the clinical needs of the patient and the availablility of the product in their area  which is appropriate.  Our real concern is that -- is that with the new system, it would be supposition but it may take months and months longer to get purchase orders for needed equipment. And the veterans should not have to wait and the clinician's hands should not be tied.  If they feel that a device is appropriate and going to provide the best care for a warrior, they should be able to prescribe that device.  I have had the opportunity to speak with over a dozen VA clinicians and prosthetists who are currently serving in several former chiefs of prosthetics.  And every single one of them said that they share our concerns about the ability to remain timely and potential delays in veterans receiving needed prosthetic devices under this new system.  Dr. Bechel and she'll say that, 'One of the things that we're going to consider is if a device is generally available and interchangeable.  Then it will fall under the federal acquisition regulations.'  Who is determining what is generally available and interchangeable? It's going to be somebody in acquisitions , not a physician, not a clinician who has the patient's best interest at heart.  And that -- that's our real concern.
 
 
 
That's one of the main points from the hearing.  Time permitting, we may cover some other issues or go deeper into this one in another snapshot.
 
 
 
From the House to the Senate, Senator Patty Murray is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and the Committee issued the following today:
 
 
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Contact: Murray Press Office
(202) 224-2834
 
Senator Murray's Statement on Sweeping Army-Wide Review of Behavioral Health Evaluations and Diagnoses
 
Investigations Will Review Mental Health Diagnoses Since 2001
 
(Washington, D.C.) -- Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, released the following statement after the Army announced that they will begin a comprehensive, Army-wide review of soldier behavioral health diagnoses and evaluations since 2001.  This major announcement comes after Senator Murray spurred an investigation into inconsistencies in diagnoses at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in her home state of Washington.  The Army has since returned PTSD diagnoses to over 100 servicemembers that sought treatment there.  Murray has repeatedly pushed Army leadership to investigate whether problems similar to those at Madigan were being seen at Army bases across the country.
 
 
For more information on the Army's announcement visit:
 
 
"The Army clearly realizes they have a nationwide, systematic problem on their hands. I credit them with taking action, but it will be essential that this vast and truly historic review is done the right way.  That means continued engagement from Army leadership at the highest levels, prompt attention to the problems of servicemembers identified during the review, and not only the identification of problems but quick action to implement and enforce solutions.
"This comprehensive review is born out of a review I helped initiate in my home state that has already returned PTSD diagnoses to over 100 servicemembers since the beginning of this year.  That review has been successful because the Army identified and reached out to affected servicemembers and veterans, conducted reevaluations using the appropriate tools and best practices, and was made a priority by top military leaders.  This nationwide review must be given the same attention from leadership in order to succeed.
"But the bottom line is that the Army needs to fix the inconsistencies we have seen in diagnosing the invisible wounds of war.  Out of this review, the Army needs to provide a uniform mental health policy so that service members are given the care they need.
"This is an issue that affects every aspect of the lives of those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Without proper mental health treatment we will continue [to] see see servicemembers struggle to readust to family life, contine to self-medicate, and in far too many cases, take their own lives.
"Servicemembers, veterans, and their families should never have to wade through an unending bureaucratic process to get proper access to care. The Army has an extrordinary opportunity to go back, correct the mistakes of the past, and ensure that they are not repeated."
 
###

 

 

Matt McAlvanah

Communications Director

U.S. Senator Patty Murray

202-224-2834 - press office

202--224-0228 - direct

matt_mcalvanah@murray.senate.gov

News Releases | Economic Resource Center | E-Mail Updates

 
 
 
 
Yesterday the Presidency of the Republic of Iraq's website deleted the image of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi.  Alsumaria reports that the deletion is being blamed on a "technical issue" and that they are in the process of rolling out a new website design.  Though some worried this might mean that al-Hashemi had been stripped of his post, others no doubt found it shocking that the Presidency still has a web domain.  The Ministy of Higher Education & Scientific Research has lost its domain as has the Ministry of Trade. and the Ministry of Displacement and Migration and the Ministry of Culture and . . .
 
Due to Nouri al-Maliki's targeting of Tareq al-Hashemi, some were worried about the disappearnace.  At this point, the President's office is insisting it was merely a "technical issue."  Nouri targeted al-Hashemi at the same time he did Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq.  He wanted al-Mutlaq stripped of his post for the 'crime' of telling CNN that Nouri was becoming a dictator.  Nouri always feels the need to punish truth tellers. 
 
For an overview of the political crisis, we'll note this from Marina Ottaway and Danial Kaysi's [PDF format warning] "The State Of Iraq"  (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) reviewed events and noted:


Within days of the official ceremonies marking the end of the U.S. mission in Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved to indict Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi on terrorism charges and sought to remove Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq from his position, triggering a major political crisis that fully revealed Iraq as an unstable, undemocractic country governed by raw competition for power and barely affected by institutional arrangements.  Large-scale violence immediately flared up again, with a series of terrorist attacks against mostly Shi'i targets reminiscent of the worst days of 2006.
But there is more to the crisis than an escalation of violence.  The tenuous political agreement among parties and factions reached at the end of 2010 has collapsed.  The government of national unity has stopped functioning, and provinces that want to become regions with autonomous power comparable to Kurdistan's are putting increasing pressure on the central government.  Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart.
 
 
Alsumaria reports that an Iraqiya offshoot, White Iraqiya, is stating al-Mutalq will be at a Council of Ministers meeting next week.  Ali Hussein (Al Mada) offers a column on the drama of Nouri and Saleh and notes that, throughout, there was always the pretense of shedding tears over how this was preventing the people's business. Iraqiya made clear that they are fine with the various names tossed around as possible replacements for NouriAlsumaria reports that Nouri's political slate, State of Law, is insisting that there's a conspiracy to replace Nouri and that KRG President Massoud Barzani is behind the conspiracy.  In addition, Nouri says that his achievements should not be overlooked.  Presumably, Nouri doesn't mean for people to look at the potable water issue.  Though Nouri's been prime minister since 2006, potable water is still an aspiration in Iraq.  The cholera season will soon, once again, be upon Iraq.  Al Mada reports that only 15% of Nineveh Province are serviced by networks of potable water. 
 
 
Not a ringing endorsement.  May 7th, the Iraqi government  acknowledged that it can't protect the people, Al Rafidayn reported that Nouri's agreed to allow every Iraqi household to keep one gun provided they register it with the nearest police department.  Dar Addustour added that Nouri's spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh has explained the one gun can be either a rifle or a pistol.  Al Sabaah noted that the Ministry of the Interior will issue guidelines on how the new procedure will be implemented.  Kitabat explained that the current policy had been for the Iraqi forces to confiscate any weapon they found during a house raid.  May 10th, the pushback began.  Alsumaria reported that State of Law MP Shirwan Waeli is questioning the wisdom of the decision and stating State of Law shouldn't be giving legitimacy to arming people and that, futhermore, it suggests that the government is unable to protect Iraqis so it is now the direct responsibility of the citizens to protect themselves.  Supporters argue that the move was an attempt to limit guns and that the one-gun rule will greatly reduce the number of firearms in each home. Alsumaria noted that objections to Nouri's one-gun policy are also coming from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and the Kurdistan Alliance.  Ala Talabani, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Alliance, spoke publicly today about the issue and declared that they fear making each household register their one gun with the nearest police station in their areas will provide temptation for corruption.  Talabani also states that they fear the rule could lead to an increase in so-called 'honor' killings as well as an increase in domestic violence.  Mustafa Habib (Niqash) reports:
 
 
But a source inside the Ministry of Interior said the authorities actually felt this was an acknowledgement of the reality in Iraq, an idea that would allow them to better control security inside the country. By getting locals to register their firearms, the government would get a better idea of what kinds of weapons were in the country and how many there were.
 
Up until recently, the right to own a firearm in Iraq was reserved for members of the security forces and those in certain other professions. However, in reality, it would be fair to say that most Iraqi households own at least one gun, whether permitted or not.
 
 
UPI notes, "A prison that Iraq's government said it closed a year ago is still open and being used for torture and unlawful detentions, a human rights group said Tuesday."  Al Mada notes Human Rights Watch published their report yesterday  and that the secret prisons are in the Green Zone, one of which is Camp Honor which the government insists was closed. Mohammed Tawfeeq and CNN quote Human Rights Watch's Joe Stork stating  "It's a matter of grave concern that Iraqis in so many walks of life, officials included, are afraid for their own well-being and fear great harm if they discuss allegations of serious human rights abuses."   Al Arabiya adds, "The rights group called for Baghdad to start an independent investigation into allegations of torture and mistreatment, as well as other issues, at Camp Honor and other jails."  Ahram Online explains:
 
 
The HRW report cited testimonies and acknowledgments by former prisoners, lawyers, parliamentarians, family members, government and security officials. Based on the interviews, HRW concluded that the Iraqi government carries out mass arrests, illegally detaining hundreds of citizens, dozens of them transferred to Camp Honor.
Two particular waves of mass arrests were mentioned in HRW's account. The first occurred in October and November 2011 when officials and officers were targeted. Those were allegedly Baath Party and Saddam Hussein loyalists and were ordered detained directly through Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki's military office.
The "Baathist arrests" were supposedly to round up plotters against Iraq's regime. Testimonies said those released were forced to sign pledges against public criticism of the government as well as false confessions. Threats of torture (or further torture), family member raping and prolonging imprisonment preceded the signings.
The second wave of arrests was prior to the March 2012 Arab summit in Baghdad. This wave was preemptive, an effort to secure the summit not hosted in Baghdad for decades because of insecurity, claimed now to be secure by Iraq's government.
 
 
Alsumaria reports a Kirkuk roadside bombing injured one police officer and the burned corpse of 1 young man was discovered in Kirkuk  "handcuffed and blindfolded."   Xinhua notes that a Jalawla roadside bombing left four police officers injured, a garage continer bombing in Jalawla left a young boy injured, a Baghdad construction cite bombing left three construction workers wounded.  In addition, KUNA adds, "Up to three Iraqis were killed and 11 others suffered injuries violent incidents close to the nothern cities of Kukuk and Mosul on Tuesday."  Noting 96 deaths from violence in Iraq so far this month, Iraq Body Count notes 10 dead yesterday: "Mosul: 2 by gunfire.  Shirqat: 2 by gunfire, 1 body.  Al-Zaeraiah: 2 Sahwa members by fungire.  Taza: 2 bodies found in grave.  Mosul: 1 by mortars."
 
 
Meanwhile some of the targeted in Iraq do get out of alive.  Suheil Damouny (SBS' World News Australia, link is text and video) reports that a group of Iraqi Palestinians have made it to Sydney where they have family, "They say they have suffered great human rights violations in Iraq, especially since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003." 
 
 
Suheil Damouny:  Almost as soon as the government fell in 2003, Iraqis wanted Palestinians out -- anywhere, except Iraq.  Human rights groups are still cataloguing the intense harassment, kidnappings and even murders.  Shia landlords wanted to reclaim properties Saddam's government had forced them to rent to Palestinians virtually for free.
 
Shhadi Ameen Badwan:  They would come to our homes and draw a noose on the door, saying that they will hang us if we do not leave. We were targeted as Palestinians.  They would say that the buildings we live in are theirs.  They say that Iraqi families are living on the streets while we are living in buildings.  They say they do not want us there at all and we have to leave.
 
Suheil Damouny: Subhi and his wife left Iraq with their daughter in 2007.  They left behind a son.  His fate?  Still unknown, another kidnapped in Iraq in 2006 presumed dead.
 
Rihaneh Ibrahim Khalil Badwan:  They too my son.  They took him from the shop and he was never seen again!  Until now I have not seen him.  The Mehdi Army took him.   We were humiliated.  How many times have we been displaced! From Palestine we were kicked out.  They do not want us in Iraq.  We went to Syria and look what happened there.
 
Suheil Damouny:  They made their way into Syria using forged Iraqi documents.  In Damascus, left with nothing, they turned themselves in. They were then sent back to the border where they remained in barren refugee camps for five years.  It was as far as they could go.  No country would let them in.
 
Subhi Ameen Badwan:  For Palestinians, this card, our passports, wouldn't even allow us to travel for 20 metres.  They would fight us simply based on this Iraqi card. Once someone is idnetified as a Palestinian we would be kidnapped, then they would demand ransom money. 
 
Suheil Damouny: Amnesty International's Graham Thom visited the camp.  The conditions were appalling.
 
Graham Thom:  There were scorpians, there were snake bites.  And, again, these camps were on the sides of busy highways and so we had small children who were being run over and killed by trucks in the middle of the desert.
 
 
Lastly, Peter Van Buren works for the US State Dept.  He wrote We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.  He's a whistle blower.  And the administration has gone after him like crazy.  A friend asked that we note Kim Zetter's "ACLU Warns State Dept. Against Firing Worker Who Criticized Government" (Wired):


The American Civil Liberties Union has come to the defense of a former State Department employee who looks likely to be fired for blogging and writing critically about the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
The ACLU says doing so would violate the constitutional rights of veteran State Department employee Peter Van Buren, according to a letter the group sent the government on Tuesday.
The letter further accuses the government of unlawful retaliation against Van Buren for publishing critical comments about U.S. foreign policy on his personal blog last year.
"The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that public employees retain their First Amendment rights even when speaking about issues directly related to their employment, as long as they are speaking as private citizens," and as long as they're writing about matters of public concern, the ACLU wrote in its letter (.pdf). "There can be no dispute that the subject matter of Mr. Van Buren's book, blog posts, and news articles -- the reconstruction effort in Iraq -- is a matter of immense public concern."
 
 
 

Posted at 07:20 pm by thecommonills
 

Your history lessons aside, what is to become of the residents of Camp Ashraf?

Your history lessons aside, what is to become of the residents of Camp Ashraf?

Thank you, Justin Raimondo, for ruining my morning with your sexist b.s. Antiwar.com is not concerned at all with building a right-left coalition.  For all his whining, Justin just wants things the way he wants them.  Which mainly means he wants women in no positions ideally but in token positions if they have to be present at all -- which is why there are three and only three women at Antiwar.com.  But tons and tons of men.  And don't you dare point that out because they get so damn sensitive and start acting as if making a very basic and obvious observation has now somehow harmed them greatly.

I'm really sorry for whatever Justin's Mommy did or didn't do for him or to him.  But he really needs to grow the hell up.  His piece is called "Hillary's Terrorists" and that's because stoning a woman is a lot of fun to the misogynist Justin Raimondo.  Remember, boys and girls, libertarians are all for individual rights!  Except at Antiwar.com when it comes to abortion rights . . .  And birth control . . . And anything else that has to do with women's lives more than men's lives.  The men of Antiwar.com write about every topic under the sun -- not just war -- but they don't fret over the status or rights of women.  Not domestically, not internationally.

And then they can't understand why women try the site out and then flee it in disgust.  This despite the fact that many women over the years -- including TCI community members -- have left comments on posts calling out the sexism.  But they just dismiss it while still whining about how they want to grow their audience.

They want readers . . . if the readers have a penis.

So the 'scary' vagina results in another attack from Antiwar.com on Hillary.  It really is something to watch little boys play Kill Mommy.  Hillary's what?  Secretary of State?  Barack's president.  But the little boys scared of vaginas and hating women don't care about that.  They're just hoping to put their toxins out in the environment and they do as much damage as air pollution.  The world is weary of this crap. 

Forget what was said in open court just last week, Antiwar.com wants to 'report' things that didn't happen.  We covered this yesterday in the snapshot -- in fact, I continued that thread at Betty's site last night where I wrote "The Glenn Greenwald Brigade (C.I.)."

They're completely nuts, we're talking loony conspiracy world.

It is no secret that I do not care for Barack Obama.  I would not be idiotic enough to call the MEK "Barack's terrorists" (or Hillary's or Joe Biden's or Arne Duncan's or . . .).  The administration has not sought to do anything with the MEK's status.  A court has ordered them to.  Over two years ago.  They have resisted and resisted.  That's why it's two years later and nothing's been done.  The legal system wasn't really impressed with the foot dragging and maybe if Antiwar.com -- an alleged 'news outlet' -- had gotten someone into that courtroom, they'd be able to report on what was said.  Or maybe if they interviewed someone in that courtroom, they'd be able to report that. 

But that would require dealing with reality and instead it's so much more fun to them to foam at the mouth repeatedly and act like crazy people.

The State Dept's position -- as stated in court by the attorney of record -- is that they are currently in the process of a review.  They state that they expect to form a conclusion.  In sixty days?  Possibly but they can't promise sixty days because, among other things, they will be evaluating the move of the Camp Ashraf residents to Camp Liberty and they will also be searching Camp
Ashraf after it's empty.  During that period, they might discover something they didn't previously know.  As a result, the ideal 60 day time period might be extended.

That was stated in court to the judges.  Yet Antiwar.com continues to proclaim that the State Dept will be taking the MEK off the terrorist list in 60 days.  That's not what was stated in court.  If you've got reasons for thinking the judge was misled, why don't you make that argument but don't provide us a link to yet another report from an outside source that Antiwar.com has failed to read properly -- leading them most recently to claim that Ed Rendall was convicted of a crime (hasn't happened yet and, again, falsely reporting that is actionable) and that the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler decleared 600 people had died in Iraq since the start of the year (no, he didn't say that, he said 600 in Baghdad) -- both of these things were covered in yesterday's snapshot.  Again, your outlet's inability to accurately address facts from other outlets doesn't instill confidence.

But if Antiwar.com knows that the State Dept lied to the judges, please come forward with that information.  I'm sure that the judges wouldn't appreciate being lied to and would move to sanction the State Dept in some manner.

Saturday, we were sent something that Antiwar.com had posted and I spent an hour debating whether or not I should write about it.  It was one error after another.  I finally justified ignoring it with there was too much out of Iraq that day.  And then finally got to work on writing the two Saturday night entries so I could go on help out on Third's edition.  I don't set out each day to trash Antiwar.com.  I would prefer not to have to say a damn word about it.  But that would require them doing their job and apparently their job is making up 'facts' and distortions and repeating them.  Where's the accountability?

I'm happy to put up any message of error and happy to write "My mistake, my apologies."  And admit that I was wrong and have been many times before and will be many times more.  I'm not seeing the same from Antiwar.com although it does love to criticize other outlets for getting things wrong.

Ditz article from Monday still wrongly states that Ed Rendell violated federal law -- a charge that has not been proven.  (Again, I know and like Ed.) I'm tired of trying to run interference.  If you get sued, go whine to someone else.  I've stated it as actionable and I have noted that as someone who knows Ed, I would suggest you correct your error by putting in the term "allegedly."  If Ed does decide to sue you in a few months, it's really your own damn fault at this point.  And if he does sue, he wins.  There is no defense for your false assertion that Ed's been convicted of a federal crime when he's not been.  You can call him a "dirt bag" or "scum" or a "whore" or any other judgment call you want and be on firm ground.  But when you say he's been convicted of a federal crime, the courts don't see that as opinion.  It's actionable and a real outlet would have rushed to have added "alleged" while being embarrassed that they didn't in the first place.

Maybe we should just be glad Justy's finally found a woman he can praise?  Elizabeth Rubin for her "remarkable piece"?  Except what was remarkable about Rubin's column for the New York Times isn't how fact-free was it but how fact mangled it was.  She deliberately distorted a RAND report to come up with a "fact" that was clearly not a fact (and not in the RAND report but in an appendix). We called out that awful report.  Justin rushes to embarace it because he's apparently ethically challenged.  If the left (Justin's not left) wanted to be smarter, we would have tried to pursue Bob Somerby's path and not Media Matters' path.  Somerby's path means you do criticize your own.  Media Matters path means you spend all day hurling stuff at the people across the aisle hoping something sticks and you ignore it when shoddy work comes from your own side.

That relates to Raimondo in that he slams the New York Times repeatedly but he rushes to embrace a bad column (bad factually, badly written) just because he agrees with the opinion of the writer.  He's just like the looniest lefty enthralled with one of Frank Rich's bad columns a few years back.  Frank Rich couldn't even get the facts right when he was reviewing plays.  Nothing in his body of work -- columns, reviews -- stands up to a serious fact check.  But he said just what some on the left wanted to hear so they rushed to embrace him.  (I am particularly harsh face to face with a friend who cried over what Rich wrote about one of her performances but suddenly found Rich to be a genius in the Bush years and began praising him publicly.  He's the same ass who distorted her to attack her.  That's all he's ever done.  And he is an ass.)

The US will never get anywhere until a left-right coalition is formed against wars.  But a coalition will not be formed when women are either tokens or targets of public stoning.  When those are the only roles are offered, there will be left-right coalition. 





And apparently Antiwar.com isn't too concerned about that because the criticisms of it in this piece are not unique to me, I'm not the first one to make them, I'm not even the first one to make them publicly. 





And nothing has changed at Antiwar.com.  It remains a place where -- on staff -- women are a tiny, tiny number and where women are mentioned most frequently (and prominently) to attack them.

On another topic, as I explained at Betty's site last night, if the MEK is their big issue -- the Glenn Glenn Brigade -- they're idiots because they should have spent the last years addressing the issue of Camp Ashraf, not ignoring it or attacking the residents.

Justin wants to give the world a history lesson on the residents -- at a time when Antiwar.com's already seen as estranged from the factual -- and anyone reading it will most likely think, "What a dick?"

And they'll be right.

What is to be done with the residents of Camp Ashraf?

It's a point that doesn't concern him.

They can't remain in Iraq and countries are reluctant to take them because the MEK remains on the US terrorist list.

So what's supposed to happen to them?

According to the shrill Raimondo, they apparently get whatever comes to them because they worked with Saddam Hussein.

Petty minds with petty scores forever intent to hold the whole world back.  What happened in 1980 or 1970, it really isn't the issue right now.  The issue right now is getting Camp Ashraf residents out of Iraq before the end of the year.  If he's got any suggestions on that, he should offer them.  If all he's got is more hate, the world has enough.  I don't care what they did or what they allegedly did.  They are protected persons under international law -- a fact that the writer Justy loves ignored in her NYT column --  those of us who care about the law and who care about human rights wonder how they get out of Iraq safely?

Then there's Justin Raimondo with his nasty little rants and skewed history lessons, stomping his feet and not understanding why the whole world won't embrace him and his site.

(I'm not looking for a world embarce.  My role is the critic.  My role, in fact, is to be the bitch who annoys the hell out of so many.  That's fine and dandy.  I'll live with that online role.  And we'll continue to be the advocate for those who are ignored whether it's Iraqi women or Iraq's LGBT community or Iraqi youth or the religious minorities or the Camp Ashraf residents or -- get the point?)

My apologies that this is going up late but there was a lot to cover and I had to do it in shifts because we're in a hearing and I'm also taking notes on that. 


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.




Posted at 08:11 am by thecommonills
 

Two went to illegal war even if only one remembers

Two went to illegal war even if only one remembers

Already today, the Guardian's Lisa O'Carroll has been live blogging on testimony Jack Straw has offered:


10.54am: Straw denies that the discussions to go to war in Iraq in 2003 was influenced by Rupert Murdoch or his newspapers. "It would have been disgusting were it true," he says.
Straw was foreign secretary at the time of the invasion. He is asked about the three telephone calls between Murdoch and Blair in the runup to war.
Straw says he was vaguely aware of them at the time, but emphasises the speed of events in those weeks.
"Frankly who Mr Blair was talking to on the telephone was neither here nor there, unless it was about getting support for the [EU] second resolution."
He adds that it was certainly important to have newspapers onside, but that it was never part of his discussions around the war.

Straw was giving testimony to the Leveson Inquiry.  BBC reports, "The ex-foreign secretary denied Daily Mail claims that the UK would not have committed to war in 2003 without the backing of News International papers." The Leveson Inquiry is an inquiry into the UK phone hacking scandal.  British judge Brian Leveson is presiding over the inquiry.

In England, the Iraq War is never long out of the news.  In the US, except for the stupid bromides of Barack, it's rarely in the news cycle.  It's almost as though the Iraq War was a UK-led invasion and the US sat it out a la France.  It's amazing how much silence and denial there is in the US media.  The economy remains in the toilet and, all around the country, the effects of borrowing money to fight an illegal war can be seen.  But the Iraq War is a topic to be avoided.

War Criminal Colin Powell is attempting a celebrity makeover as he refashions himself into a motivational guru and the press doesn't question it.  We have (see the May 3rd snapshot and Sunday's "Hejira").  At Huffington Post -- the largest US outlet to question the makeover and revisionary history -- Jonathan Schwarz not only calls out the lies Powell served up to the UN but aslo the media gloss applied to Colin The Blot Powell.  More recently, the notion that Tony Blair might be trying to inject himself back into British politics stirred outrage.

In both the US and the UK, the Iraq War can still be used as a backdrop for a report or column from a major outlet, but see if you catch the difference in two random pieces in the current news cycle.  At the Guardian, Seumas Milne uses it to explore conflicts:


Libya was supposed to be different. The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan had been learned, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy insisted last year. This would be a real humanitarian intervention. Unlike Iraq, there would be no boots on the ground. Unlike in Afghanistan, Nato air power would be used to support a fight for freedom and prevent a massacre. Unlike the Kosovo campaign, there would be no indiscriminate cluster bombs: only precision weapons would be used. This would be a war to save civilian lives.
Seven months on from Muammar Gaddafi's butchering in the ruins of Sirte, the fruits of liberal intervention in Libya are now cruelly clear, and documented by the UN and human rights groups: 8,000 prisoners held without trial, rampant torture and routine deaths in detention, the ethnic cleansing of Tawerga, a town of 30,000 mainly black Libyans (already in the frame as a crime against humanity) and continuing violent persecution of sub-Saharan Africans across the country.


No one should argue that the US press doesn't 'reflect' on the illegal war as well -- or, at least gush.  Like when David Rising (AP) opens with, "American military advisers in Uganda are drawing on lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan to help train African Union soldiers to fight Somalia's most powerful insurgent group, al-Shabab."  See, that illegal war, that cost millions of lives and billions of dollars, it was a wonderful test run -- that's how the US press treats it when referencing the war.  That's even more clear when Rising's article is run by non-US outlets and the title changes from "Americans train Ugandans for Somalia mission" to "Americans use Iraq lessons for Somalia mission training."  Americans use Iraq lessons for Somalia?  Oh, okay, that makes it all worth it!  The deaths, the library closings in the US, the public schools that can no longer afford a full time nurse on campus, the people who've lost jobs, the cuts to the safety net?  Suddenly it all seems worth it!

If you believe the US press which is still trying to stamp a happy face on an illegal war.

And as they continue to whore for that illegal war, they'll make sure not to inform about the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission and its findings of guilt. They'll insist it's not important because it didn't carry any legal consequence.  But strange, isn't it, the US press that lives to ridicule will work very hard to avoid ridiculing that tribunal . . . almost as if they fear giving it any publicity at all.

 And the 'alternative' press is no better than the corporate press in the US.  Robert Parry was once so brave and became a boot licker for Barack.  But I was told he gave a great speech at a conference in Germany last week.  I doubted it.  He sold his soul long ago. But I could be wrong.  Have been many times before and will be many times again.

But I was right.  Middle East Online posts the speech.  It's 81 paragraphs.  For those afraid Robert Parry's crush on Barack Obama would mean he didn't mention Barack, rest assured, he did mention in.  It was a blistering speech, calling out the press for many crimes including the Iraq War coverage and calling out several past US presidents as well.  Did Barack get called out?  Did the press get called out for fawning over Barack?  What do you think:




Upon taking office in 2009, President Obama saw little choice but to “look forward, not backward.” And, in all honesty, given the state of the American political/media process, it is hard to envision how he would have proceeded against what would have been a powerful phalanx of Establishment forces opposed to prosecuting Bush, Wall Street CEOs and their underlings.


That's paragraph 77 of an 81 paragraph speech and that's all the 'tough' 'criticism' Robert Parry had for Barack.  If he seems a little grumpy, apparently the conference woke in the midst of a wet dream.  He "saw little choice."  Poor Barack.  Who knew when Parry was whoring for him in 2008 that, if elected, Barack would be so powerless?  Poor little tyke.

Well at least he's not started new wars or upped the drone war -- Oh.  Right.  He has.  Well at least he's gotten Congressional authorization for those wars and -- Oh.  Yeah.  He hasn't.  Well at least whistle blowers are better off with him in office, especially when compared to Bully Boy Bush's days in -- Oh, right, the current administration goes after whistle blowers like they're foreign spies. 

Peter Van Buren works for the US State Dept.  He wrote We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.  He's a whistle blower.  And the administration has gone after him like crazy.  A friend asked that we note Kim Zetter's "ACLU Warns State Dept. Against Firing Worker Who Criticized Government" (Wired):


The American Civil Liberties Union has come to the defense of a former State Department employee who looks likely to be fired for blogging and writing critically about the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
The ACLU says doing so would violate the constitutional rights of veteran State Department employee Peter Van Buren, according to a letter the group sent the government on Tuesday.
The letter further accuses the government of unlawful retaliation against Van Buren for publishing critical comments about U.S. foreign policy on his personal blog last year.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that public employees retain their First Amendment rights even when speaking about issues directly related to their employment, as long as they are speaking as private citizens,” and as long as they’re writing about matters of public concern, the ACLU wrote in its letter (.pdf). “There can be no dispute that the subject matter of Mr. Van Buren’s book, blog posts, and news articles – the reconstruction effort in Iraq – is a matter of immense public concern.”

Ivan Eland remains one of the last grown ups in the room.  From his "The Already Forgotten Iraq War" (Antiwar.com):




Of course, all this neglects what was best for the average Iraqi, which none of America’s, Iraq’s, or Iran’s leaders much cared about. As bad as the oppression was under Saddam, a foreign invasion followed by a violent insurgency and sectarian civil war probably ruined the social fabric of Iraq even more. Throughout history, wars — even good-intentioned ones — usually don’t make countries better places. The result of an increasingly fragmented postwar society portends ill for Iraq.
Remembering the similar effects of the Vietnam War, “the Vietnam Syndrome,” cooled American passions to remodel political systems of countries by armed force, but only for a time. Because the U.S. finally seemed to contain the Iraqi violence until it could get out and didn’t suffer an embarrassing all-out humiliation à la Vietnam, the “Iraq Syndrome” unfortunately has apparently been attenuated. Even while the Iraqi misadventure was trailing off, President Barack Obama couldn’t resist providing crucial air power to help rebels in Libya overthrow another old American nemesis, Moammar Gadhafi. With all the armed tribal militias running around that country now, a renewed civil war is also possible there. But as Bill Clinton before him learned from Somalia in the early 1990s, President Obama seems to have learned from Bush’s Iraq fiasco only that when meddling abroad, try to avoid a quagmire with ground troops.

The following community sites -- plus Adam Kokesh, FPIF, the Guardian, Reporters Without Border, Chocolate City, the World Can't Wait, Antiwar.com and On The Wilder Side -- updated last night and this morning:


We'll close with this from ETAN:

10 Years after Timor's Independence, Where Is the Justice?

Contact: John M. Miller, john@etan.org

May 16, 2012 - The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) congratulated the people of Timor-Leste as they prepared to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the restoration of their country's independence on May 20. 

"This important milestone is the result of the persistent struggle and great suffering of the people of Timor-Leste," said ETAN's National Coordinator John M. Miller. "ETAN is proud to have played our part in supporting Timor's self-determination and now independence."

"The nation faces many challenges. With independence, its people are in a position to decide its future rather then have Indonesia impose its will on them," he added.

Timor's independence was prevented for nearly 25 years by the U.S. and other governments' support for Indonesia's illegal invasion and occupation. Yet, no senior officials of any country have been held accountable for the horrific human right violations and war crimes that took place.
 "The U.S., other governments and the United Nations must commit themselves to achieve justice for the victims and their families." said Miller. "ETAN will not rest until justice is done."

"Human rights violators from elsewhere have been prosecuted, often long after their crimes were committed. But Indonesia and others continue to obstruct holding accountable those who facilitated and carried out crimes during the occupation," he added.

“Ongoing impunity for the systematic Indonesian military and police crimes prevents the people of Timor-Leste and Indonesia from consolidating their democracies and moving on with their lives. While Timor-Leste is now independent, its people will not be able to overcome their tragic past without justice for what was done to them and their families,” said Miller.

Neither Congress nor the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have responded to the recommendations of Timor-Leste's Commission for Truth, Reception and Reconciliation, although many of them are directly addressed to the U.S. and other governments. These include the Commission's call for an international tribunal to try perpetrators of crimes against humanity during the Indonesian occupation, reparations from Indonesia and other countries that supported the occupation, and restrictions on foreign assistance to the Indonesian military. 

"The U.S. and others should press President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to immediately release all information that can help identify and locate those who were disappeared during the occupation,” said Miller.

The recent conviction of former Liberian President Charles Taylor for his support of rights violators in Sierra Leone should sound a note of caution for members of the Obama and former US administrations. This ruling provides a precedent for prosecuting those who arm, train and politically support those who commit the worst abuses, even if they do not directly organize or carry them out. 

"The Obama administration should restrict U.S. military assistance to Indonesia until the Indonesian generals and political leaders who organized and directed numerous crimes against humanity during the 24-years of illegal occupation are credibly tried," Miller added. Instead, the Obama administration is considering the sale of deadly Apache attack helicopters to the Indonesian military.

Background

As detailed in declassified documents released by the National Security Archive and elsewhere, on December 6, 1975, then-U.S. President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger gave Indonesian dictator Suharto a green light to invade East Timor, which his military did the next day. The U.S. supplied 90 percent of the weapons used during the invasion. From Ford to President Clinton, successive U.S. administrations consistently backed Indonesia's occupation, providing Jakarta diplomatic cover and billions of dollars in weaponry, military training, and economic assistance. 

During more than two decades of occupation of Timor-Leste, Indonesian soldiers committed serious crimes with impunity, taking as many as 184,000 Timorese lives and torturing, raping and displacing countless others. Timor-Leste became independent in 2002.

Timor-Leste's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation researched and documented the nation's experiences during the occupation. The Commission's comprehensive 2,500-page report recommended establishment of an international criminal tribunal and also advocated that countries (including the U.S.) which backed the occupation and corporations which sold weapons to Indonesia during that period should pay reparations to victims. The Commission urged the international community not to support Indonesia's military until it was thoroughly reformed and respectful of human rights.

Last year, ANTI (Timor-Leste National Alliance for an International Tribunal) demanded that the United Nations Security Council "cut the chain of impunity in Timor-Leste and other countries by establishing a credible International Tribunal in order to judge the principal perpetrators of serious crimes and crimes against humanity in Timor-Leste during the Indonesian occupation."

The UN-supported serious crimes process filed a number of indictments of a number of Indonesian officials and East Timorese militia leaders for crimes against humanity committed during the referendum on independence in 1999. 

ETAN was formed in reaction to the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre, when hundreds of peaceful demonstrators were gunned down by Indonesian troops carrying U.S.-supplied weapons. On May 20, ETAN members will be honored by the Timorese government with the Laran Luak medal for its contribution to the liberation of Timor-Leste. The U.S.-based organization, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last December 10, advocates for democracy, justice and human rights for Timor-Leste and Indonesia. For more information see ETAN's web site: http://www.etan.org .
see alsoHuman Rights, Accountability & Justice page

ETAN at 20: Reflections and Reminiscences


etanetanetanetanetanetanetanetanetanetanetanetan

Congratulations to Timor on 10 years of independence

Read about ETAN's 20 years of work for for human rights, justice and democracy:http://etan.org/etan/20anniv/default.htm ETAN needs you support in 2012. John M. Miller, National Coordinator
East Timor & Indonesia Action Network (ETAN)
PO Box 21873, Brooklyn, NY 11202-1873 USA
Phone: +1-718-596-7668 Mobile phone: +1-917-690-4391 
Email: etan@igc.org Skype: john.m.miller

------

Website: http://www.etan.orgBlog: http://etanaction.blogspot.com/Facebook:http://apps.facebook.com/causes/134122?recruiter_id=10193810Twitter: @etan009



The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.


Posted at 06:44 am by thecommonills
 

Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Iraq snapshot

Iraq snapshot

Tuesday, May 15, 2012.  Chaos and violence continues, the secret prisons and torture continue in Iraq, Tareq al-Hashemi's trial starts without him, Jason Ditz is a dunce, and much more.
 
 
Today is a really sad day as the BBC spits on human rights and treats 'confessions' most likely stemming from torture as being real.  Americans (wrongly) built a shrine to the BBC in 2003.  And, yes, by comparison to American outlets, the BBC coverage of the lead up to the war was better.  But compared to the basic standards of journalism, the BBC didn't even cut it.  It was as much a failure as the American outlets.  (And the providing of a confidential source's name to Blair's cabinet goes far beyond any known crimes of US outlets.)  No surprise that it would again be Iraq that saw the BBC reveal its true nature.
 
 
KUNA reports, "The first session for the trial of former Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi began here Tuesday with the charges being guiding and financing terrorist attacks."  Tareq al-Hashemi (pictured above) has been a vice president since 2006.  He is currently serving his second term.  Currently serving.  He has not been removed from office so this trial is legally not supposed to take place.  But the law's never mattered in Nouri's Iraq.  Nouri waited until the bulk of US forces had left to Iraq to suddenly declare his political rival al-Hashemi a "terrorist."  The vice president remains in Turkey.
 
Iraq practices forced confessions and, despite the Iraqi Constitution insisting upon innocence until proven guilty, the Baghdad court declared al-Hashemi guilty back in Februray.  Tareq al-Hashemi has repeatedly requested that the trial be moved elsewhere -- a request that should have been honored the moment the Baghdad judges declared him guilty in February at their press conference and while one judge was stating that he had been threatened by al-Hashemi! (He actually claims to have been threatened by 'supporters' of al-Hashemi -- he can't even make the claim if press for proof that it was by a bodyguard of al-Hasehmi.) Today, after being pushed back twice, the kangaroo court finally hopped into session.

Chen Zhi (Xinhua) reports that, as the trial started this morning, the court sent out spokesperson Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar to insist, "There are many crimes that Hashimi and his bodyguards are accused of and we have confessions from them, including the assassination of six judges."  A court that's dropped even the pretense of being impartial is exactly the sort that would send out a spokesperson to declare they had confessions.
 
AFP had a confusing report which was confusing for many reasons including: "Three other witnesses gave testimony, accusing Hashemi of masterminding the assassinations, before reporters were led out of the room."  If reporters are led out of the courtroom while a trial is going on, hate to break it to AFP, but that's your lede, not the fifth sentence and fifth paragraph of your report.  And that's all the more true when there were calls for international observers in advance of the trial and that call does not appear to have been heeded.  Equally true, if reporters are led out of the courtroom, you explain why they were.  And if no reason given to the reporters, you include that: "Reporters were ushered out of the courtroom.  No reason was given for the removal."
 
AFP declares there were three witnesses who testified after "families of three victims whose deaths Hasemi is accused of orchestrating."  They tell you nothing about those three witnesses.  As noted this morning, "But I do expect to know if these people could even offer any testimony against al-Hashemi. By that I mean, victims families can testify to losses. That's all they can do unless they're eye witnesses.  Even if they are eye witnesses, they have no testimony on al-Hashemi."  This was confirmed by this afternoon by Sinan Salaheddin (AP) when Salaheddin reported of the family witnesses, "They said they did not witness the attacks, and only complained against al-Hashemi after hearing the accusations against him in Iraqi media." Salaheddin also states there was one other witness, someone who was an ex-employee of al-Hashemi's (worked in the vice president's "media office") and that reporters "were ordered to leave the court during" that testimony. Suadad al-Salhy, Ahmed Rasheed, Barry Malone and Alistair Lyon (Reuters) note two bodyguards and "five relatives of people allegedly killed by the death squads" and that the court is now adjourned until May 20th. 
 
BBC files a report that indicates they had no one in the courtroom and that they didn't bother to do anything other than scan the wire reports quickly and then (also quickly) dash off a 'report.'  It's very shoddy.  But let's skip their bad journalism to note their shame: "Mr Hashemi's supporters have also claimed that some of his bodyguards made allegations about death squads under torture. The Iraqi judiciary dismissed the accusations of torture." How very sad that the BBC chooses to self-embarrass and self-shame on a day when the world learns (yet again) that Nouri al-Maliki is still running secret prisons and torture chambers.  Equally true,  Human Rights Watch and Amnesty are not "supporters" of Tareq al-Hashemi.  They are human rights organizations. 
 
March 23rd, Human Rights Watch called for an investigation into the death of Amir Sarbut Zaidan al-Batawi, a bodyguard of al-Hashemi's who died in custody, whose family states he was tortured to death and whom photos show "a burn mark and wounds."  The Iraqi government tried to say his kidneys failed.  As though he had some pre-existing condition (which the family denies). If he did, that would still be on the Iraqi government.  If someone has a medical condition when you take them into custody, you're having custody of them means in you're responsible for their well being.  Had the alleged kidney failure resulted from natural causes, the Iraqi government would still need to explain how they failed to provide treatment for a known condition?  But most likely the kidneys were damaged in torture which isn't at all uncommon, especially in Latin America.  Especially in Latin America?  The US government taught the thugs of Iraq to behave like the death squads of El Salvador in the 80s.
 
 
The Prospect has learned that part of a secret $3 billion in new funds tucked away in the $87 billion Iraq appropriation that Congress approved in early November will go toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. Experts say it could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baaathists up to 120,000 of the estimated 2.5 million former Baath Party members in Iraq.
"They're clearly cooking up joint teams to do Phoenix-like things, like they did in Vietnam," says Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counterterrorism.  Ironically, he says, the U.S. forces in Iraq are working with key members of Saddam Hussein's now-defunct intelligence agency to set the program in motion.
[. . .]
But the bulk of the covert money will support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revenge-minded, Iraqi security force.  "The big money would be for standing up an Iraqi secret police to liquidate the resistance," says [John] Pike. "And it has to be politically loyal to the United States." 
 
 
Rasha Narneer Jaafer al-Hussain and Bassima Saleem Kiryakos were arrested by security forces at their homes on 1 January.  Both women work in the media team of Iraqi Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi, who is wanted by the Iraqi authorities on terrorism-related charges. 
Al-Hasehmi has denied the charges, saying the accusations are politically motivated. 
"The arrest of the two women appears to be part of a wider move targeting individuals connected to Tareq al-Hashemi," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnest International's Deputy Director for Middle East and North Africa.
"The Iraqi authorities must immediately disclose the whereabouts of Rash al-Hussain and Bassima Kiryakos.  At the very minimum they should have immediate access to their family and a lawyer.
"The circumstances of their arrest and their incommunicado detention when we know that torture is rife in Iraq can only raise the greatest fears for their safety," she said.
 
 
One of the two women working for the Iraqi Vice-President's Office who were arrested on 1 January has been released. The other woman's whereabouts are still unknown. 
Rasha Nameer Jaafer al-Hussain, who was working at the Iraqi Vice President's Office, was arrested without a warrant at her parents' house in Baghdad's al-Zayuna district on 1 January 2012. The security forces claimed they were taking her away for questioning and that she would return two hours later.  Since her arrest her family has not known her whereabouts.  However, the Iraqi media reported on 30 January that a Human Rights Parliamentary Committee had visited several of the Iraqi Vice-Preisdent's employees, including both arrested women, who claimed they had been tortured in detention.  It is believed she was arrested in connection with a warrant for the arrest of the Iraqi Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi, who has been wanted by the authorities since December 2011.  He is accused of terrorism-related offenses, an accusation which he has publicly said is politically motivated.
 
 
But let's all make like the BBC and pretend as if torture never happens in Iraq and that the only ones claiming it does are "supporters" of Tareq al-Hashemi.
 

Let's stay with the topic of torture and then we'll do an Iraq fact check.  Human Rights Watch issued the following today:
 
 
 
(Beirut) -- Iraq's government has been carrying out mass arrests and unlawfully detaining people in the notorious Camp Honor prison facility in Baghdad's Green Zone, based on numerous interviews with victims, witnesses, family members, and government officials. The government had claimed a year ago that it had closed the prison, where Human Rights Watch had documented rampant torture.
Since October 2011 Iraqi authorities have conducted several waves of detentions, one of which arresting officers and officials termed "precautionary." Numerous witnesses told Human Rights Watch that security forces have typically surrounded neighborhoods in Baghdad and other provinces and gone door-to-door with long lists of names of people they wanted to detain. The government has held hundreds of detainees for months, refusing to disclose the number of those detained, their identities, any charges against them, and where they are being held.
"Iraqi security forces are grabbing people outside of the law, without trial or known charges, and hiding them away in incommunicado sites," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The Iraqi government should immediately reveal the names and locations of all detainees, promptly free those not charged with crimes, and bring those facing charges before an independent judicial authority."
The government should appoint an independent judicial commission to investigate continuing allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, disappearances, and arbitrary detention in Camp Honor and elsewhere, Human Rights Watch said.
Multiple witnesses told Human Rights Watch that some detainees arrested since December 2011 have been held in the Camp Honor prison in Baghdad's International Zone, known as the Green Zone. In March 2011 the government announced it had closed Camp Honor prison, after legislators visited the site in response to evidence Human Rights Watch provided of repeated torture at the facility.
The two most sweeping arrest dragnets occurred in October and November 2011, detaining people alleged to be Baath Party and Saddam Hussein loyalists, and in March 2012, ahead of the Arab summit in Baghdad at the end of that month.
In April two Justice Ministry officials separately told Human Rights Watch that since the roundups began in October, security forces often have not transferred prisoners into the full custody of the justice system, as required by Iraq law. Instead, the officials said, security forces have transported dozens of prisoners at a time in and out of various prison facilities, sometimes without adequate paperwork or explanation, under the authority of the military office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Fourteen lawyers, detainees, and government officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that recent detainees have been held at Camp Honor prison. Some of the officials said that detainees have also been held at two secret detention facilities, also inside Baghdad's Green Zone. These allegations are consistent with concerns raised in a confidential letter from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) obtained by Human Rights Watch in July 2011 after the letter's existence was made public by the Los Angeles Times.
Officials, lawyers, and former detainees also told Human Rights Watch that judicial investigators from the Supreme Judicial Council continue to conduct interrogations at the Camp Honor prison. Between December and May, Human Rights Watch interviewed over 35 former detainees, family members, lawyers, legislators, and Iraqi government and security officials from the Defense, Interior, and Justice Ministries. Without exception, they expressed great concern for their own safety and requested that Human Rights Watch withhold all names, dates, and places of interviews to protect their identities.
"It's a matter of grave concern that Iraqis in so many walks of life, officials included, are afraid for their own well-being and fear great harm if they discuss allegations of serious human rights abuses," Stork said.
"Precautionary" Detentions ahead of March 2012 Arab Summit
The most recent mass arrests occurred in March as the government dramatically tightened security throughout Baghdad in preparation for the Arab League summit there on March 29. Family members and witnesses told Human Rights Watch that arresting officers characterized the roundups as a "precautionary" measure to prevent terrorist attacks during the summit. Six detainees released in April told Human Rights Watch that while they were in detention, interrogators told them that they were being held to curb criminal activity during the summit and any "embarrassing" public protests.
Legislators from Prime Minister al-Maliki's State of Law party have denied in the news media that any preemptive arrests took place, claiming that all arrests were of suspected criminals and in response to judicial warrants. All detainees and witnesses interviewed, over 20 in all, said they had not been shown arrest warrants.
In Baghdad neighborhoods where multiple arrests were made, including Adhamiya, Furat, Jihad, Abu Ghraib, and Rathwaniya, residents told Human Rights Watch it appeared that a large proportion of those detained had previously spent time in prisons run by the US military, including Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, and Camp Cropper. Some family members and legislators concluded that people were being arrested not because of suspected current criminal activity, but simply because they had been detained before.
In May an Interior Ministry official told Human Rights Watch that "security forces, in the interest of keeping security incidents to a minimum during the summit, while the world was watching, sometimes decided it was easier to just round up people who had been imprisoned years before, regardless of what crime they may have committed." In April a Justice Ministry official told Human Rights Watch that of the hundreds arrested, "some have been released, about 100 will be officially charged within the justice system, and the rest are somewhere else. We do not know where."
During an April 9 parliament session, Hassan al-Sinead, head of the parliament's Security and Defense Committee and a member of Prime Minister al-Maliki's State of Law Party, held up what he said were official security reports of Baghdad Operation Command and said, in response to allegations of pre-emptive arrests by other legislators, that there were only 532 arrests in all of Baghdad during the month of March, and that none were pre-emptive.
Two other members of the parliamentary committee subsequently told Human Rights Watch that this figure greatly underreported arrests that month. At the April 9 session an investigative committee was formed, made up of members of the Security and Defense and Human Rights committees. Members of the investigative committee told Human Rights Watch that plans to visit detainees never happened. To date, no investigation results have been released.
"Baathist" Arrests
In October and November 2011, security forces arrested hundreds of people in Baghdad and outlying provinces, almost all during nighttime raids on residential neighborhoods. State television reported that Prime Minister al-Maliki ordered these arrests. Government statements, including by the prime minister, claimed that those arrested were Saddam Hussein loyalists plotting against the government. Family members told Human Rights Watch that security forces came to their doors with lists and read off names. Some of those listed were former Baath party members and others were not, including people who had died years ago. Three officials separately told Human Rights Watch that the total number arrested in the campaign approached 1,500.
A man whose 57-year-old father was arrested along with 11 neighbors on October 30 told Human Rights Watch in December, "A week after my father was arrested, some of the same police officers who arrested him came back and found family members to give them belongings [of neighborhood men who had been arrested], like clothes or money or IDs, but they still said they had no information about where they were being held, or what they were being charged with."
The man's son showed Human Rights Watch a document the police had given to him that listed the date his father was arrested but left blank the space reserved for the name of the detention facility.
Upon learning that some prisoners were being held in Baghdad's Rusafa prisons, run by the Justice Ministry, Human Rights Watch asked Justice Minister Hassan al-Shimmari on January 4 for access to the prisoners. The request was refused.
Though not all arrests have been on the same scale as those in October, November, and March, regular arrest campaigns have taken place, often in largely Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad as well as in several outlying provinces, said witnesses, family members and media reports. Strict government secrecy regarding the number of arrests and exact charges makes it difficult to assess the scope.
While some prisoners were released within hours or days and say they were not mistreated, others told Human Rights Watch they were tortured, including with repeated electric shocks. Most said interrogators forced them to sign pledges not to criticize the government publicly or to sign confessions. They said interrogators threatened that unless they signed these documents they would suffer physical violence, female family members would be raped, or they would never be released. Some families told Human Rights Watch that they were told to pay thousands of dollars in bribes to secure their loved ones' release. In two cases known to Human Rights Watch, detainees were released after the families made such payments.
Camp Honor Prison
Camp Honor is a military base of more than 15 buildings within Baghdad's fortified International Zone, which Iraqis and others continue to refer to as the Green Zone. The Iraqi Army's 56th Brigade, also known as the Baghdad Brigade, which falls under direct command of the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, controls the Camp Honor complex and is responsible for the security of the Green Zone.
On March 29, 2011, Justice Minister al-Shimmari told Human Rights Watch that the government had closed the camp's main detention facility, Camp Honor prison (often simply referred to as "Camp Honor"). Al-Shimmari said that authorities had moved all its detainees, whom he alleged were terrorists and Islamist militants, to three other facilities under the control of his ministry.

Contrary to this assurance, Human Rights Watch has received information from government and security officials indicating that some detainees from the "Baathist" and "Summit" roundups were held in Camp Honor prison and that it is still being used at least as a temporary holding site, or as a place to extract confessions before moving detainees into the official correctional system. This use of military prisons outside the control of the Justice Ministry is consistent with known procedures at other publicly acknowledged facilities outside of the ministry's control, such as Muthanna Airport Prison and a facility in western Baghdad run by the army's Muthanna Brigade, both of which have also housed hundreds of detainees from the recent arrests, according to government officials and former detainees.
A security official from the Defense Ministry told Human Rights Watch in April that judicial investigators attached to the Supreme Judicial Council go to the Camp Honor prison on a regular basis, where they participate in investigations and interrogations, alongside military investigators from the 56th Brigade. A lawyer who works for the government but did not want his department identified corroborated this allegation in an April interview with Human Rights Watch.
Three former detainees who spoke with Human Rights Watch between December and April gave credible accounts of what they said were their interactions with judicial investigators in Camp Honor prison. These allegations are consistent with judicial procedures known to have taken place there in the past. One detainee told Human Rights Watch in April that he had been held for over a month in Camp Honor prison, from late October to early December.
In a March interview, another man told Human Rights Watch he had been detained in Baghdad in early November and taken to a prison inside the Green Zone, which guards and other detainees told him was Camp Honor prison. His description and a sketch he made of the layout of the cells and interrogation trailers were consistent with the known layout of the facility.
Another detainee said in early December that he could confirm that he was in Camp Honor prison in May 2011 by the proximity of clearly recognizable surrounding buildings. When he was taken from the main holding facility to adjacent trailers for violent interrogations on three separate occasions, he said, he was not blindfolded. "The Defense Ministry and the old Council of Ministers [Hall] are right there," he said. "I'm a former military man, and I used to work very close to there, so I knew right where I was."
In July Human Rights Watch obtained a copy of a May 22,2011 letter written by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which said the ICRC had "collected reliable allegations" of two separate secret detention facilities attached to Camp Honor military base, plus another facility next to the headquarters of the Counter-Terrorism Service, also in the Green Zone, "that are used to this day to hold and conceal detainees when committees visit the primary prison."
In the letter, the ICRC also documented the methods of torture used inside Camp Honor prison and affiliated facilities, consistent with torture methods Human Rights Watch had previously reported.The ICRC addressed the letter to Prime Minister al-Maliki and copied Farouq al-Araji, head of al-Maliki's military office, General Mahmoud al-Khazraji, commander of the 56th Brigade, other defense officials, Justice Minister al-Shimmari, and Judge Midhat al-Mahmoud, head of the Supreme Judicial Council.
After the Los Angeles Times made public the letter's existence on July 14, the ICRC released a statement declining to confirm or deny its authenticity, as per long-standing policy to confine its communications to officials of the government concerned. In July and August, two Iraqi government officials and one former official familiar with the letter assured Human Rights Watch of the letter's legitimacy.
Two defense lawyers separately told Human Rights Watch in May 2012 that clients of theirs had been held in Camp Honor prison as recently as August 2011. Another lawyer told Human Rights Watch that while working at the Supreme Judicial Council over the past year he encountered frequent references in comments by judges and others, as well as in court paperwork, to prisoners being held in Camp Honor prison and in "two other prisons in the Green Zone also run by the 56th Brigade." Four officials from the Defense and Justice ministries, plus two former officials, also told Human Rights Watch of the existence of these secret prisons, one also part of the Camp Honor complex, unofficially called "Five Stars," and another outside the base, but still within the Green Zone.
Treatment of Detainees
Statements to Human Rights Watch by those captured in the roundups and detained in various prisons, including those run by the Justice Ministry, varied in describing the treatment they received. Some said they were not physically mistreated. Three people detained in the "Summit" dragnet told Human Rights Watch that security officers assured them that they just had to wait until the Arab Summit was over and they would be released -- that holding them "was just a precautionary measure." Others described multiple beatings and threats and some described abuse that amounts to torture.
In May, a 59-year-old man told Human Rights Watch that he was arrested in late October in a southern province of Iraq and transported with more than 60 other prisoners to a detention facility in Baghdad, which he identified but asked Human Rights Watch to keep confidential. "When I first arrived, I was blindfolded and had my hands tied behind my back, and I had to walk down a long line of men, each of whom punched me in the face and hit my head with wire cables as I passed them," he said. "After that, I was in solitary confinement for some time, and then they brought me before the judicial investigators. I couldn't believe that they beat so hard and gave me electric shocks for three continuous hours, without even asking me any questions."
He also said that during other interrogations his captors stripped him naked, hit him with wire cables, boxed his ears, poured cold water over him, and shocked him with electrodes attached to his back.
He was released in March, five months later, after his family paid over US $10,000 in bribes and an influential politician intervened on his behalf. Before leaving custody, he was forced to sign what he said was a confession, though he is not sure of its contents, as well as a pledge to never speak "against the government" and never to talk to the media about his arrest. "They told me that if I break any of these rules, they will bring in my sons and destroy them, and rape my wife," he said. "As I left, they told me, 'We will arrest you again, and make sure you're executed.'"
Family members of detainees who spoke with Human Rights Watch said they had no idea where their loved ones were being held, despite multiple inquiries to the Ministry of Human Rights and the headquarters of the security forces that arrested them. In cases in which the government disclosed where prisoners were being held, security forces hindered or completely blocked detainees' access to legal and family visits.
"On paper, a defendant can be defended by a lawyer, but in real life, it is next to impossible," said a defense lawyer who is attempting to represent two men arrested in the "Summit" sweep in March. He told Human Rights Watch that when he is actually informed of the location of a detainee and allowed in, he is kept waiting for hours, and then told to go home because it is the end of the day. "Any lawyer attempting to see his client will be subjected to threats by the security forces holding the detainees," the lawyer told Human Rights Watch. "Several times in the past few months, they said, 'So, you want to represent a Baathist and a terrorist? I wonder what is making you do this, why you are on his side.' This is clearly an attempt to intimidate attorneys from standing up for their victims."
Families who tried to hire lawyers to defend relatives arrested in the "Baathist" sweep gave strikingly similar accounts. In December, one man told Human Rights Watch that his family went to four separate criminal defense lawyers who were at first cooperative. But when they learned that his father was taken in the "Baathist" arrests, he said, "each immediately told us that they could not interfere in this case because the arrests were by order of the prime minister's office." He cited one lawyer as saying: "This case is already decided. It's a lost case, and I can't be part of it, because they were arrested by the order of the prime minister.'"
"It is amazing that all four had the same reaction and this made us lose hope," the family member said. "We did not try to get another lawyer, and have no idea where my father is."


 The Los Angeles Times can't find a writer in Iraq to touch it so it's left to Carol J. Williams to note, "The continued operation of the Camp Honor detention site was disclosed by Los Angeles Times staff writer Ned Parker in July, four months after Maliki's government said the facility had been closed at the urging of Iraqi lawmakers and human rights advocates."  Ned Parker can't cover it because he's currently on sabbatical (he's an Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations).  The Telegraph of London adds, "Amnesty International also said in a February 2011 report that Iraq operates secret jails and routinely tortures prisoners to extract confessions that are used to convict them."

 
What can I say this time
Which card shall I play
The dream is not over,
The dream is just away
And you will fly
like some little wing
straight back to the sun
The dream was not over
The dream has just begun
-- "Straight Back," written by Stevie Nicks, first appears on Fleetwood Mac's Mirage
 
 
Which card shall I play?  How about the fact check one?
 
In a post, Margaret Griffis (Antiwar.com) at one point includes this, "Martin Kobler, head of the U.N. mission in Iraq, said, 'all our figures indicate that there is no deterioration in the security situation of the country' and that 600 people have, so far, died in violence this year."
 
That is wrong.  That is false.
 
It is not, however, surprising.  Drop back to Friday's "Iraq snapshot" and you'll find:
 
 
Kobler also attempted to spin the violence today insisting 600 people died this year.  Pay a little closer attention and you realize he's just talking about Baghdad.  Since the UN's supposedly concerned with all of Iraq, Kobler's little stunt is pretty offensive.  Iraq Body Count not only notes 55 dead so far this month, they noted 290 dead for the month of April, 295 for the month of March,  278 for the month of February and 458 for the month of January.  That's 1376 reported deaths from violence in Iraq since the start of the year.  That's twice as many as "600."  Again, Kobler was being deliberately misleading.  When the United Nations whores what people remember are the rapes by UN peace keepers (many, many times, but try these two who raped a 14-year-old boy in Haiti), the times the UN did nothing while countries were attacked (Iraq for starters -- and then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan declared the Iraq War illegal) and so much more.  Kobler didn't just make himself into a cheap whore with that little stunt, he reminded everyone of just how flawed -- some would say criminal -- the United Nations can be.  A far more realistic picture on the continued violence came not from Kobler but from a business decision.  Jamal al-Badrani (Reuters) reports, "Mobile phone operator Asiacell has closed its offices in the Iraqi city of Mosul, an al Qaeda stronghold, after attacks and threats by militants, security officials and employees said this week."
 
 
 
See, we called it out for a reason, Kobler's wording ensured that there was a good chance people would misunderstand the 600 figure and assume it applied to all of Iraq when it only applied to Baghdad.  Griffis' mistake will most likely be made by many others and Kobler seems to have intentionally sought that rection.
 
 
While Griffis' mistake may be understandable, there's no excuse for what Jason Ditz has done here. He laments that the residents of Camp Ashraf might be taken off the terrorist list, this "is almost certain to be delisted in the next 60 days, in a mover that is likely to dramatically increase tensions between the US and Iran."  And he amplifies his error and ignorance with this: "Technically speaking, officials say, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hasn't made an official decision on the matter, but has promised to do so in the next 60 days."
 
 
No, she hasn't.
 
 
Maybe before you write about something, you should read several different reports and not just one outlet.  Had Ditz bothered to do that, he would know that the attorney representing the State Dept and Hillary in court refused to give a deadline when prompted by the judge and specifically stated that anything they discovered in the 60 day time period, in the search of Camp Ashraf, could add additional time.
 
Again, we covered this Friday in the snapshot:
 
Ashish Kumar Sen (Washington Times) maintains, "Mrs. Clinton will decide on removing the MEK from the list no later than 60 days after Camp Ashraf has been vacated, and data gathered from the relocation has been studied to verify the group's claims that it is not a terror group, Mr. Loeb said."  However, that's not accurate.  The sixty days is a projection, it's not a promise and Loeb stated in court that information may result from a search of the then-empty Camp Ashraf that could delay any decision by Hillary on the issue beyond the 60 days.  How far beyond the sixty days?  Loeb didn't have specific numbers.  This is among the reasons Dinh made the argument that the residents want a decision even if it's a decision against them because they can appeal that.  The limbo status that they've been in for two years now is something very different.  
 
How very sad to show up days after (Ditz published Monday) and not have nailed down any of the facts.
 
But what do facts matter to Antiwar.com?  Apparently damn little.  Ditz has been allowed to be 'creative' with 'news' if the topic was the MEK.  He does so again in a way -- take a warning, I know Ed -- that could result in a lawsuit.
 
Ditz writes, "The move would be a great relief to several officials, including former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who violated federal law by taking funds from a still-listed terrorist organization in return for giving speeches on their behalf." That's not just a lie, Jason Ditz, it's one that can get your ass sued. 
 
Again, I know Ed and I wouldn't be the least surprised if, months from now, he filed a lawsuit over that statement.  He'd win too.  Justin Raimondo better start providing supervision of his little outlet and that includes telling Scott Horton and Jason Ditz that they can't liable (Ditz) and slander (Horton).  They've been given free reign by Raimondo on the MEK and allowed to say any crazy ass thing they wanted.  Not as opinion, mind you, but to lie and present as fact.
 
Does Justin want the next fundraiser to be about Antiwar.com's legal fees?
 
If you click on the link that Jason Ditz has supplied, what you find is another bad article by Jason Ditz from March with a link to this Philadelphia Inquirer article that speaks of "reportedly" in terms of a probe. 
 
Ed Rendell has not been found guilty of anything nor has he entered any plea on any charge.  In what's supposed to be a news report from Antiwar.com -- an outlet that promotes itself as a news outlet every time they beg for money -- Jason The Ditz is declaring that Ed "violated federal law by taking funds . . ."  Jason The Ditz can't prove that.  If he can prove it, he should consider filling in for the federal prosecutor.
 
If Antiwar.com wants to be an opinion journal that's fine and dandy but while they're promoting themselves as an alternative news outlet and while Ditz is billed as the "news editor," they need to learn that you can't write a news story and call someone guilty before they've either admitted guilt or been convicted.  One careful word could have taken Ditz's 'report'  from potential lawsuit to just bitchy.  That word is "allegedly."  Ditz should try to familiarize himself with the term.
 
 
The superficial libertarian media lobby has spoken, if you missed it, Glenn Greenwald among them.  He weighs in today playing tough talker. ("Superficial libertarian media lobby" does not refer to all libertarians in media.  Adam Kokesh, certainly, is not superficial.  But there is a set among the lobby that is.  Glenn Glenn represents them.)
 
Everytime Little Glenn Glenn tries to legalize, you realize just how uninformed he is and why he's such a joke in legal circles.  He dealt with civil liberties -- specifically those of people accused of -- and convicted of -- violent crimes.  There's nothing wrong with that and there is a need for it but don't turn around and try to pimp that as "I'm a Constitutional lawyer."  No, you weren't. 
 
Glenn manages to fool people because most don't know what a litigator is.  That's not about the Constitution and, as he rightly notes sometimes, he was a litigator. 
 
There are Constitutional attorneys.  Glenn doesn't have the academic background or the courtroom history to be trusted with those issues by anyone but the most desperate.  Constitutional cases go before the Supreme Court.  Glenn argued before them how many times?
Yeah.  Exactly.
 
In his bad column today, Glenn provides an 'update' where he explains, having just learned (oh, he's a smart one!), that the Bush administration originally declared the residents of Camp Ashraf terrorists -- specifically the residents of Camp Ashraf not just MEK.  That would be news to anyone not paying attention to the issue.  Good going, Glenn, you 've established that you've written repeatedly about a subject you knew nothing about.
 
Being on that list is why the US had them disarm.  This was all known by the adults long ago.  Who knows what Glenn was doing while the rest of us were paying attention?
 
Camp Ashraf residents have to leave Iraq.  That is a reality.  They have been twice attacked by Nouri's forces.  That is a reality.  It is why Amnesty issued an alert.  Glenn and his boy squad of faux crusaders want to pretend they're doing something.  But all they're doing is slamming the residents of Camp Ashraf.  The residents -- my opinion -- have been used as a political football by many including some MEK spokespeople.  It's a damn shame that here in the US you have the Glenn Brigade working overtime to trash a people who are basically a sinking lifeboat and need assistance immediately.
 
But that's how the Glenn Brigade rolls. 
And Antiwar.com better their act together real damn quick because, as I understand it, their house of cards could collapse real quick and they can't afford a law suit.  The very smart thing to do right now would be for Jason Ditzy to do a correction to that post -- immediately.  But, again, Justin's provided no oversight and allowed Scott Horton (Antiwar Radio) and Jason Ditz to slander and libel repeatedly if it was MEK related.
 
I'm going to repeat it one more time and hope that even Jason Ditz can grasp what I'm saying: What you have written is actionable.  You can be sued for it.  I would not make a point to go after Ed Rendell period (I like Ed) but, if I were to do so, I'd be damn sure I didn't say or write anything that left me open to a lawsuit.  Hopefully that's clear enough for even Jason Ditz.
 
 
In Iraq, the political crisis intensifies, Al Rafidayn reports that MP Mohammed Jawad (of Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc) is stating that, should a no-confidence vote take place, the names on the list to replace Nouri al-Maliki are Ahmed Chalabi, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Hussein al-Shahristani and Khudayr Musa Jafar Abbas al-Khuzai.   Ahmed Chalabi -- like Nouri -- has very tight connections to Iran.  So much so that his compound was raided by the US military despite the fact that he was once one of the prized exiles (he was also Dexter Filkins' favorite Iraqi source for 'reporting').  Ibrahim al-Jaafari was previously prime minister.  (The US refused to allow him a second term in 2006 and demanded that Nouri al-Maliki be named prime minister.)  Hussain al-Shahristani is the Deputy Prime Minister for Energy. He was educated in London and Toronto.  He's a nuclear scientist who fled Saddam Hussein's Abu Ghraib prison during the first Gulf War and went through Iran onto Canada. al-Khuzai is the Shi'ite Vice President.  Alsumaria notes that MP Abdul Amir Mayahi (also of the Sadr bloc) stated that Ibrahim al-Jaafari is their ideal candidate, calling him a national figure and a moderate. (al-Jaafari was prime minister from April 2005 until May 2006.)  Meanwhile Al Mada has interesting article where State of Law and Dawa officials state that, if Nouri is replaced, the replacement must come from the National Alliance.  The argument goes that Nouri wouldn't have been prime minister without the consolidated support and backing of the National Alliance therefore they should be the pool from which a different prime minister was selected.  All the names being tossed around are from the National Alliance (a slate of various Shi'ite political groups).  What makes it interesting is that Dawa -- Nouri's own political party -- and State of Law -- Nouri's own political slate -- appear to be preparing for the possibility that Nouri might be replaced.  Prior to this, they've insisted that it wasn't happening.  Now their public presentation is: If it does, the prime minister has to come from the National Allaince.  This shift in public strategy may result from the meeting Alsumaria reports took place last night and was chaired by Ibrahim al-Jaafari.  All the political blocs of the National Alliance were present.



Posted at 06:21 pm by thecommonills
 

Nouri The Terrible backed by the White House

Nouri The Terrible backed by the White House

Today Human Rights Watch offers another damning release on the prime minister of Iraq.

Nouri al-Maliki has a second term as prime minister not because the Iraqi people wanted him but because the White House wanted him.  Nouri was installed by the Bush administration in 2006 to block Ibrahim al-Jafaari (the choide of Iraqi legislatures).  His term was an overwhelming failure by every standard possible.

He signed off on the White House benchmarks and these were a set of goals Bush and company came up with as Congress was (rightly) noting there was no progress in Iraq.  Congress wanted metrics.  The White House wanted funding.  So they proposed a set of measurements.  These were not things that would be achieved in 2012.  These were things that were, at the time they were proposed, thought to be possible by 2008 if not in 2007.  And Nouri agreed to them and signed off on them.  He accomplished none of them.  Even now, there is no benchmark which can be checked off as "completed in full."  Five years later and he never finished them.

He failed legally and did so repeatedly.  Nouri took an oath to uphold the 2005 Constitution.  It was written before he became prime minister, he should have been familiar with it.  Article 140 mandated that, by the end of 2007, a referendum and census would take place in Kirkuk to determine the fate of disputed Kirkuk.  Nouri al-Maliki never implemented Article 140.  He was (and remains in his second term) in violation of the Constitution -- the one he took an oath to uphold.  If the prime minister of the country is not bound by the Constitution, who is?

If the prime minister doesn't have to follow the law, who does?

The ethnic cleansing took place during his first term. And that didn't matter apparently.

Iraqis remained without basic services and he repeatedly promised improvements that never came.  And that didn't matter.

He sat on billions while he played cheap.   He refused to use them on public services despite claiming he would.  He refused to use them to help the Iraqi refugees in surrounding countries despite claiming he would.  When widows and orphans needs were exposed in the media, he would insist that money would be forthcoming.  It never was.

Time and again, on every measure Nouri failed.  But among the most awful aspects of Nouri al-Maliki was his continued reliance on secret prisons and torture chambers.

This reliance has still not ended.



Human Rights Watch issued the following today:











(Beirut) – Iraq’s government has been carrying out mass arrests and unlawfully detaining people in the notorious Camp Honor prison facility in Baghdad’s Green Zone, based on numerous interviews with victims, witnesses, family members, and government officials. The government had claimed a year ago that it had closed the prison, where Human Rights Watch had documented rampant torture.
Since October 2011 Iraqi authorities have conducted several waves of detentions, one of which arresting officers and officials termed “precautionary.” Numerous witnesses told Human Rights Watch that security forces have typically surrounded neighborhoods in Baghdad and other provinces and gone door-to-door with long lists of names of people they wanted to detain. The government has held hundreds of detainees for months, refusing to disclose the number of those detained, their identities, any charges against them, and where they are being held.
“Iraqi security forces are grabbing people outside of the law, without trial or known charges, and hiding them away in incommunicado sites,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The Iraqi government should immediately reveal the names and locations of all detainees, promptly free those not charged with crimes, and bring those facing charges before an independent judicial authority.”
The government should appoint an independent judicial commission to investigate continuing allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, disappearances, and arbitrary detention in Camp Honor and elsewhere, Human Rights Watch said.
Multiple witnesses told Human Rights Watch that some detainees arrested since December 2011 have been held in the Camp Honor prison in Baghdad’s International Zone, known as the Green Zone. In March 2011 the government announced it had closed Camp Honor prison, after legislators visited the site in response to evidence Human Rights Watch provided of repeated torture at the facility.
The two most sweeping arrest dragnets occurred in October and November 2011, detaining people alleged to be Baath Party and Saddam Hussein loyalists, and in March 2012, ahead of the Arab summit in Baghdad at the end of that month.
In April two Justice Ministry officials separately told Human Rights Watch that since the roundups began in October, security forces often have not transferred prisoners into the full custody of the justice system, as required by Iraq law. Instead, the officials said, security forces have transported dozens of prisoners at a time in and out of various prison facilities, sometimes without adequate paperwork or explanation, under the authority of the military office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Fourteen lawyers, detainees, and government officials interviewed by Human Rights Watch said that recent detainees have been held at Camp Honor prison. Some of the officials said that detainees have also been held at two secret detention facilities, also inside Baghdad’s Green Zone. These allegations are consistent with concerns raised in a confidential letter from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) obtained by Human Rights Watch in July 2011 after the letter’s existence was made public by the Los Angeles Times.
Officials, lawyers, and former detainees also told Human Rights Watch that judicial investigators from the Supreme Judicial Council continue to conduct interrogations at the Camp Honor prison. Between December and May, Human Rights Watch interviewed over 35 former detainees, family members, lawyers, legislators, and Iraqi government and security officials from the Defense, Interior, and Justice Ministries. Without exception, they expressed great concern for their own safety and requested that Human Rights Watch withhold all names, dates, and places of interviews to protect their identities.
“It’s a matter of grave concern that Iraqis in so many walks of life, officials included, are afraid for their own well-being and fear great harm if they discuss allegations of serious human rights abuses,” Stork said.
“Precautionary” Detentions ahead of March 2012 Arab Summit
The most recent mass arrests occurred in March as the government dramatically tightened security throughout Baghdad in preparation for the Arab League summit there on March 29. Family members and witnesses told Human Rights Watch that arresting officers characterized the roundups as a “precautionary” measure to prevent terrorist attacks during the summit. Six detainees released in April told Human Rights Watch that while they were in detention, interrogators told them that they were being held to curb criminal activity during the summit and any “embarrassing” public protests.
Legislators from Prime Minister al-Maliki’s State of Law party have denied in the news media that any preemptive arrests took place, claiming that all arrests were of suspected criminals and in response to judicial warrants. All detainees and witnesses interviewed, over 20 in all, said they had not been shown arrest warrants.
In Baghdad neighborhoods where multiple arrests were made, including Adhamiya, Furat, Jihad, Abu Ghraib, and Rathwaniya, residents told Human Rights Watch it appeared that a large proportion of those detained had previously spent time in prisons run by the US military, including Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, and Camp Cropper. Some family members and legislators concluded that people were being arrested not because of suspected current criminal activity, but simply because they had been detained before.
In May an Interior Ministry official told Human Rights Watch that “security forces, in the interest of keeping security incidents to a minimum during the summit, while the world was watching, sometimes decided it was easier to just round up people who had been imprisoned years before, regardless of what crime they may have committed.” In April a Justice Ministry official told Human Rights Watch that of the hundreds arrested, “some have been released, about 100 will be officially charged within the justice system, and the rest are somewhere else. We do not know where.”
During an April 9 parliament session, Hassan al-Sinead, head of the parliament’s Security and Defense Committee and a member of Prime Minister al-Maliki’s State of Law Party, held up what he said were official security reports of Baghdad Operation Command and said, in response to allegations of pre-emptive arrests by other legislators, that there were only 532 arrests in all of Baghdad during the month of March, and that none were pre-emptive.
Two other members of the parliamentary committee subsequently told Human Rights Watch that this figure greatly underreported arrests that month. At the April 9 session an investigative committee was formed, made up of members of the Security and Defense and Human Rights committees. Members of the investigative committee told Human Rights Watch that plans to visit detainees never happened. To date, no investigation results have been released.
“Baathist” Arrests
In October and November 2011, security forces arrested hundreds of people in Baghdad and outlying provinces, almost all during nighttime raids on residential neighborhoods. State television reported that Prime Minister al-Maliki ordered these arrests. Government statements, including by the prime minister, claimed that those arrested were Saddam Hussein loyalists plotting against the government. Family members told Human Rights Watch that security forces came to their doors with lists and read off names. Some of those listed were former Baath party members and others were not, including people who had died years ago. Three officials separately told Human Rights Watch that the total number arrested in the campaign approached 1,500.
A man whose 57-year-old father was arrested along with 11 neighbors on October 30 told Human Rights Watch in December, “A week after my father was arrested, some of the same police officers who arrested him came back and found family members to give them belongings [of neighborhood men who had been arrested], like clothes or money or IDs, but they still said they had no information about where they were being held, or what they were being charged with.”
The man’s son showed Human Rights Watch a document the police had given to him that listed the date his father was arrested but left blank the space reserved for the name of the detention facility.
Upon learning that some prisoners were being held in Baghdad’s Rusafa prisons, run by the Justice Ministry, Human Rights Watch asked Justice Minister Hassan al-Shimmari on January 4 for access to the prisoners. The request was refused.
Though not all arrests have been on the same scale as those in October, November, and March, regular arrest campaigns have taken place, often in largely Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad as well as in several outlying provinces, said witnesses, family members and media reports. Strict government secrecy regarding the number of arrests and exact charges makes it difficult to assess the scope.
While some prisoners were released within hours or days and say they were not mistreated, others told Human Rights Watch they were tortured, including with repeated electric shocks. Most said interrogators forced them to sign pledges not to criticize the government publicly or to sign confessions. They said interrogators threatened that unless they signed these documents they would suffer physical violence, female family members would be raped, or they would never be released. Some families told Human Rights Watch that they were told to pay thousands of dollars in bribes to secure their loved ones’ release. In two cases known to Human Rights Watch, detainees were released after the families made such payments.
Camp Honor Prison
Camp Honor is a military base of more than 15 buildings within Baghdad’s fortified International Zone, which Iraqis and others continue to refer to as the Green Zone. The Iraqi Army’s 56th Brigade, also known as the Baghdad Brigade, which falls under direct command of the Office of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, controls the Camp Honor complex and is responsible for the security of the Green Zone.
On March 29, 2011, Justice Minister al-Shimmari told Human Rights Watch that the government had closed the camp’s main detention facility, Camp Honor prison (often simply referred to as “Camp Honor”). Al-Shimmari said that authorities had moved all its detainees, whom he alleged were terrorists and Islamist militants, to three other facilities under the control of his ministry.
Contrary to this assurance, Human Rights Watch has received information from government and security officials indicating that some detainees from the “Baathist” and “Summit” roundups were held in Camp Honor prison and that it is still being used at least as a temporary holding site, or as a place to extract confessions before moving detainees into the official correctional system. This use of military prisons outside the control of the Justice Ministry is consistent with known procedures at other publicly acknowledged facilities outside of the ministry’s control, such as Muthanna Airport Prison and a facility in western Baghdad run by the army’s Muthanna Brigade, both of which have also housed hundreds of detainees from the recent arrests, according to government officials and former detainees.
A security official from the Defense Ministry told Human Rights Watch in April that judicial investigators attached to the Supreme Judicial Council go to the Camp Honor prison on a regular basis, where they participate in investigations and interrogations, alongside military investigators from the 56th Brigade. A lawyer who works for the government but did not want his department identified corroborated this allegation in an April interview with Human Rights Watch.
Three former detainees who spoke with Human Rights Watch between December and April gave credible accounts of what they said were their interactions with judicial investigators in Camp Honor prison. These allegations are consistent with judicial procedures known to have taken place there in the past. One detainee told Human Rights Watch in April that he had been held for over a month in Camp Honor prison, from late October to early December.
In a March interview, another man told Human Rights Watch he had been detained in Baghdad in early November and taken to a prison inside the Green Zone, which guards and other detainees told him was Camp Honor prison. His description and a sketch he made of the layout of the cells and interrogation trailers were consistent with the known layout of the facility.
Another detainee said in early December that he could confirm that he was in Camp Honor prison in May 2011 by the proximity of clearly recognizable surrounding buildings. When he was taken from the main holding facility to adjacent trailers for violent interrogations on three separate occasions, he said, he was not blindfolded. “The Defense Ministry and the old Council of Ministers [Hall] are right there,” he said. “I’m a former military man, and I used to work very close to there, so I knew right where I was.”
In July Human Rights Watch obtained a copy of a May 22,2011 letter written by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which said the ICRC had “collected reliable allegations” of two separate secret detention facilities attached to Camp Honor military base, plus another facility next to the headquarters of the Counter-Terrorism Service, also in the Green Zone, “that are used to this day to hold and conceal detainees when committees visit the primary prison.”
In the letter, the ICRC also documented the methods of torture used inside Camp Honor prison and affiliated facilities, consistent with torture methods Human Rights Watch had previously reported.The ICRC addressed the letter to Prime Minister al-Maliki and copied Farouq al-Araji, head of al-Maliki’s military office, General Mahmoud al-Khazraji, commander of the 56th Brigade, other defense officials, Justice Minister al-Shimmari, and Judge Midhat al-Mahmoud, head of the Supreme Judicial Council.
After the Los Angeles Times made public the letter’s existence on July 14, the ICRC released a statement declining to confirm or deny its authenticity, as per long-standing policy to confine its communications to officials of the government concerned. In July and August, two Iraqi government officials and one former official familiar with the letter assured Human Rights Watch of the letter’s legitimacy.
Two defense lawyers separately told Human Rights Watch in May 2012 that clients of theirs had been held in Camp Honor prison as recently as August 2011. Another lawyer told Human Rights Watch that while working at the Supreme Judicial Council over the past year he encountered frequent references in comments by judges and others, as well as in court paperwork, to prisoners being held in Camp Honor prison and in “two other prisons in the Green Zone also run by the 56th Brigade.” Four officials from the Defense and Justice ministries, plus two former officials, also told Human Rights Watch of the existence of these secret prisons, one also part of the Camp Honor complex, unofficially called “Five Stars,” and another outside the base, but still within the Green Zone.
Treatment of Detainees
Statements to Human Rights Watch by those captured in the roundups and detained in various prisons, including those run by the Justice Ministry, varied in describing the treatment they received. Some said they were not physically mistreated. Three people detained in the “Summit” dragnet told Human Rights Watch that security officers assured them that they just had to wait until the Arab Summit was over and they would be released – that holding them “was just a precautionary measure.” Others described multiple beatings and threats and some described abuse that amounts to torture.
In May, a 59-year-old man told Human Rights Watch that he was arrested in late October in a southern province of Iraq and transported with more than 60 other prisoners to a detention facility in Baghdad, which he identified but asked Human Rights Watch to keep confidential. “When I first arrived, I was blindfolded and had my hands tied behind my back, and I had to walk down a long line of men, each of whom punched me in the face and hit my head with wire cables as I passed them,” he said. “After that, I was in solitary confinement for some time, and then they brought me before the judicial investigators. I couldn’t believe that they beat so hard and gave me electric shocks for three continuous hours, without even asking me any questions.”
He also said that during other interrogations his captors stripped him naked, hit him with wire cables, boxed his ears, poured cold water over him, and shocked him with electrodes attached to his back.
He was released in March, five months later, after his family paid over US $10,000 in bribes and an influential politician intervened on his behalf. Before leaving custody, he was forced to sign what he said was a confession, though he is not sure of its contents, as well as a pledge to never speak “against the government” and never to talk to the media about his arrest. “They told me that if I break any of these rules, they will bring in my sons and destroy them, and rape my wife,” he said. “As I left, they told me, ‘We will arrest you again, and make sure you’re executed.’”
Family members of detainees who spoke with Human Rights Watch said they had no idea where their loved ones were being held, despite multiple inquiries to the Ministry of Human Rights and the headquarters of the security forces that arrested them. In cases in which the government disclosed where prisoners were being held, security forces hindered or completely blocked detainees’ access to legal and family visits.
“On paper, a defendant can be defended by a lawyer, but in real life, it is next to impossible,” said a defense lawyer who is attempting to represent two men arrested in the “Summit” sweep in March. He told Human Rights Watch that when he is actually informed of the location of a detainee and allowed in, he is kept waiting for hours, and then told to go home because it is the end of the day. “Any lawyer attempting to see his client will be subjected to threats by the security forces holding the detainees,” the lawyer told Human Rights Watch. “Several times in the past few months, they said, ‘So, you want to represent a Baathist and a terrorist? I wonder what is making you do this, why you are on his side.’ This is clearly an attempt to intimidate attorneys from standing up for their victims.”
Families who tried to hire lawyers to defend relatives arrested in the “Baathist” sweep gave strikingly similar accounts. In December, one man told Human Rights Watch that his family went to four separate criminal defense lawyers who were at first cooperative. But when they learned that his father was taken in the “Baathist” arrests, he said, “each immediately told us that they could not interfere in this case because the arrests were by order of the prime minister’s office.” He cited one lawyer as saying: “This case is already decided. It’s a lost case, and I can’t be part of it, because they were arrested by the order of the prime minister.’”
“It is amazing that all four had the same reaction and this made us lose hope,” the family member said. “We did not try to get another lawyer, and have no idea where my father is.”


 The Los Angeles Times can't find a writer in Iraq to touch it so it's left to Carol J. Williams to note, "The continued operation of the Camp Honor detention site was disclosed by Los Angeles Times staff writer Ned Parker in July, four months after Maliki's government said the facility had been closed at the urging of Iraqi lawmakers and human rights advocates."  Ned Parker can't cover it because he's currently on sabbatical (he's an Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations).  Hopefully, he'll do a video a paper on it for CFR this week or next.  He has owned this story and one of the things that the Los Angeles Times can point to with strong pride in the last decade was Ned Parker's repeated coverage of this topic.

The Telegraph of London adds, "Amnesty International also said in a February 2011 report that Iraq operates secret jails and routinely tortures prisoners to extract confessions that are used to convict them."

Nouri's record of secret prisons and tortures was well established before March 2010 when the parliamentary elections were held.  All of this was known.

And despite the fact that his political slate came in second, despite the Constitution, despite the will of the Iraqi people as expressed at the ballot box, the White House sided with minature despot Nouri.  This administration can claim to give a damn about human rights, but it's hard to take that claim seriously when they chose to trash the will of the people, the Iraqi Constitution, the notion of democracy and the safety of the Iraqi people in order to keep Nouri al-Maliki on.

If they hadn't backed him, if the White House had cut him loose after the 2010 elections, he would not be prime minister now.  Would something worse be in office?  Maybe, maybe not.  But the reality is that Iraqis wanted something else, that's what they voted for and the White House demonstrated as little concern for the results of a democratic election as they did for the safety of the Iraqi people.

And now?  Now they've got US Ambassdor James Jefrrey trying desperately to shore up support for Nouri al-Maliki, meeting with blocs and trying to cut deals and offer 'gifts' (bribes) if the blocs will support Nouri.  Even now, the administration refuses to do the right thing.

Again, they can claim to value human rights but they can't back up that claim.



The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.


Posted at 06:59 am by thecommonills
 

The kangaroo court convenes on Tareq al-Hashemi

The kangaaroo court convenes on Tareq al-Hashemi

tareq al-hashemi
KUNA reports, "The first session for the trial of former Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi began here Tuesday with the charges being guiding and financing terrorist attacks."  Tareq al-Hashemi (pictured above) has been a vice president since 2006.  He is currently serving his second term.  Currently serving.  He has not been removed from office so this trial is legally not supposed to take place.  But the law's never mattered in Nouri's Iraq.  Nouri waited until the bulk of US forces had left to Iraq to suddenly declare his political rival al-Hashemi a "terrorist."  The vice president remains in Turkey.

Iraq practices forced confessions and, despite the Iraqi Constitution insisting upon innocence until proven guilty, the Baghdad court declared al-Hashemi guilty back in Februray.  Tareq al-Hashemi has repeatedly requested that the trial be moved elsewhere -- a request that should have been honored the moment the Baghdad judges declared him guilty in February at their press conference and while one judge was stating that he had been threatened by al-Hashemi! (He actually claims to have been threatened by 'supporters' of al-Hashemi -- he can't even make the claim if press for proof that it was by a bodyguard of al-Hasehmi.) Today, after being pushed back twice, the kangaroo court finally hopped into session.

Chen Zhi (Xinhua) reports that, as the trial started this morning, the court sent out spokesperson Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar to insist, "There are many crimes that Hashimi and his bodyguards are accused of and we have confessions from them, including the assassination of six judges."  No, you don't have "confessions."  Leaving aside that Iraq forces "confessions" by torture, what you have is testimony -- and it may or may not be convincing.  Someone needs to educate the IDIOTS posing as judges in Baghdad and their little spokesperson on the law and on how the judiciary is always, ALWAYS, to come off impartial.  If a columnist, a police officer, a pundit wants to call them "confessions" that's fine and dandy.  But with a judiciary, we're always supposed to believe that they weighed the comments seriously before coming to a decision.

Chen Zhi has the best report on the day thus far.  AFP's report would be stronger if they had taken the raw information they had and done journalism with it.  AFP notes that the first witnesses were "families of three victims whose deaths Hasemi is accused of orchestrating."  In addition, there were three other witnesses.  It would be nice to know who they were.  I don't mean names, I don't expect names -- it's not like this is a truly public hearing, get real.  But I do expect to know if these people could even offer any testimony against al-Hashemi.

By that I mean, victims families can testify to losses. That's all they can do unless they're eye witnesses.  Even if they are eye witnesses, they have no testimony on al-Hashemi.  So this was to set a mood for the court and nothing more.  Those other three witnesses?  Who were they?  Are they in the position to have seen something or are we just getting accusations and hearsay presented as direct testimony?

Most importantly, this sentence from AFP doesn't cut it: "Three other witnesses gave testimony, accusing Hashemi of masterminding the assassinations, before reporters were led out of the room."  Why?  Was secret testimony being introduced?  What was going on?  If reporters are led out of the courtroom while a trial is going on, hate to break it to AFP, but that's your lede, not the fifth sentence and fifth paragraph of your report.  And that's all the more true when there were calls for international observers in advance of the trial and that call does not appear to have been heeded.

As the political crisis intensifies, Al Rafidayn reports that MP Mohammed Jawad (of Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc) is stating that, should a no-confidence vote take place, the names on the list to replace Nouri al-Maliki are Ahmed Chalabi, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Hussein al-Shahristani and Khudayr Musa Jafar Abbas al-Khuzai.   Ahmed Chalabi -- like Nouri -- has very tight connections to Iran.  So much so that his compound was raided by the US military despite the fact that he was once one of the prized exiles (he was also Dexter Filkins' favorite Iraqi source for 'reporting').  Ibrahim al-Jaafari was previously prime minister.  (The US refused to allow him a second term in 2006 and demanded that Nouri al-Maliki be named prime minister.)  Hussain al-Shahristani is the Deputy Prime Minister for Energy. He was educated in London and Toronto.  He's a nuclear scientist who fled Saddam Hussein's Abu Ghraib prison during the first Gulf War and went through Iran onto Canada. al-Khuzai is the Shi'ite Vice President.  Alsumaria notes that MP Abdul Amir Mayahi (also of the Sadr bloc) stated that Ibrahim al-Jaafari is their ideal candidate, calling him a national figure and a moderate. (al-Jaafari was prime minister from April 2005 until May 2006.)  Meanwhile Al Mada has interesting article where State of Law and Dawa officials state that, if Nouri is replaced, the replacement must come from the National Alliance.  The argument goes that Nouri wouldn't have been prime minister without the consolidated support and backing of the National Alliance therefore they should be the pool from which a different prime minister was selected.  All the names being tossed around are from the National Alliance (a slate of various Shi'ite political groups).  What makes it interesting is that Dawa -- Nouri's own political party -- and State of Law -- Nouri's own political slate -- appear to be preparing for the possibility that Nouri might be replaced.  Prior to this, they've insisted that it wasn't happening.  Now their public presentation is: If it does, the prime minister has to come from the National Allaince.  This shift in public strategy may result from the meeting Alsumaria reports took place last night and was chaired by Ibrahim al-Jaafari.  All the political blocs of the National Alliance were present.


The following community sites -- plus Antiwar.com, Susan's On Edge, Salon,  CSPAN, Black Agenda Report and Chocolate City -- updated last night and this morning:



We'll close with this from the Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan:

Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 15, 2012
CONTACT:
LuAnne Kozma, Campaign Director, 231-944-8750 <luanne@letsbanfracking.org>
Maryann Lesert, <maryann@letsbanfracking.org>
Ellis Boal, <ellis@letsbanfracking.org>
Citizen-led Ballot Initiative To Ban Fracking in Michigan Begins
CHARLEVOIX, MICH. " A citizen-led ballot initiative to amend the Michigan
state constitution to ban horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, statewide began this
week. The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan, a ballot question committee,
received approval of its petition from the Board of State Canvassers. The proposed
amendment would also ban the storage of wastes from horizontal hydraulic fracturing,
preventing Michigan from becoming a frack wasteland. Michigan has over 1,000
injection wells and over 12,000 conventional gas and oil wells that could be converted for
that purpose. The campaign website is: http://letsbanfracking.org.
Michigan is the only state in the nation where citizens are attempting to ban
fracking by amendment to a state constitution. Vermont’s legislature passed a ban on
fracking on May 4 and with the governor’s approval, became the first state to ban
fracking.
The Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan is required to submit 322,609 valid
signatures from Michigan voters by July 9 to the Bureau of Elections, in order to place
the proposed amendment on the ballot in November.
“Michigan’s constitution invites citizens to amend it,” said Committee to Ban
Fracking in Michigan’s campaign director LuAnne Kozma, of Novi, and a co-founder of
the non-profit public interest group Ban Michigan Fracking. “We chose to form a ballot
question committee and amend the constitution because we cannot count on our current
elected officials to do the right thing. Proposed ‘frack reform’ bills in Lansing are only
attempts to regulate and tolerate fracking and put studies in the hands of State regulators.
New legislation (HB 5565) introduced last week, touted as a disclosure of frack
chemicals bill, contains language that forbids physicians treating frack victims from
disclosing the chemicals, even to patients. We knew we had to act to stop the toxic
invasion about to devastate our state. We will not recognize Michigan in a few years, if
we do not ban fracking,” said Kozma.
The citizen effort has the support of Vermont legislators Tony Klein and Peter
Peltz who sponsored the Vermont ban bill. “It was clear in Vermont the dangers of
fracking to our natural resources. In Vermont our natural resources are our number one
priority, so it was not a difficult thing to prohibit fracking forever. It passed
overwhelmingly,” said Klein. “We encourage all states, when they have the chance to do
so, to ban this dangerous technique.”
New York ban groups also praised the amendment to ban fracking in Michigan.
Maura Stephens, a cofounder of the Coalition to Protect New York and other grassroots
groups, has been working on fracking issues for five years and will soon publish a book
on the subject. "Only massive public resistance to fracking will stop the horrific
industrialization of our beautiful states," Stephens said. “This truly is a matter of life and
death for your way of life.”
Earlier this month, a Michigan House of Representatives Natural Gas
Subcommittee report recommended that the State lease all of its mineral rights, asserting
Michigan’s “natural gas renaissance is upon us.”
The State auctioned off mineral rights in 23 Michigan counties on May 8 in
Lansing, including the rights under Yankee Springs State Recreation Area (a state park)
in Barry County and highly populated areas in Oakland County. Residents attempting to
save their communities attended the auction, registered as bidders and tried, but failed, to
purchase the mineral rights to the areas around Yankee Springs.
The entire Lower Peninsula now stands to be fracked. Devon Energy is looking at
the A-1 carbonate layers in Gladwin County along with other areas in the middle of the
state. Encana is drilling the Utica-Collingwood shale in state forests, with several
operations in progress and more pending. Densely populated areas such as Ann Arbor,
Grand Rapids, and Jackson-- communities historically not affected by oil/gas drilling
within their borders--are now facing the threat.
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, which issues frack permits
and at the same time, depends on revenue from the production of gas and oil,
continues to publicly confuse the facts, claiming that hydraulic fracturing has been done
for over 60 years, while not always informing the public that horizontal hydraulic
fracturing is a new, as of 2002, experimental process, often referred to as a marriage of
technologies between hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.
To volunteer to circulate or sign petitions, see: http://LetsBanFracking.org
The petition reads: A proposal to amend the Constitution by adding a new Section 28 to
Article I to read as follows:
“To insure the health, safety, and general welfare of the people, no person, corporation,
or other entity shall use horizontal hydraulic fracturing in the State. “Horizontal hydraulic
fracturing” is defined as the technique of expanding or creating rock fractures leading
from directional wellbores, by injecting substances including but not limited to water,
fluids, chemicals, and proppants, under pressure, into or under the rock, for purposes of
exploration, drilling, completion, or production of oil or natural gas. No person,
corporation, or other entity shall accept, dispose of, store, or process, anywhere
in the State, any flowback, residual fluids, or drill cuttings used or produced in horizontal
hydraulic fracturing.”
Links:
Committee to Ban Fracking in Michigan
http://LetsBanFracking.org
Ban Michigan Fracking
www.banmichiganfracking.org
Michigan House Bill 5565 (Physicians gag-order bill)
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(v5fzuf2quwfkkeb0ik05v145))/mileg.aspx?page=BillSta
tus&objectname=2012-HB-5565
Michigan Board of State Canvassers draft minutes to April 26, 2012 meeting
http://www.mi.gov/documents/sos/4-26-12_DRAFT_Minutes_383873_7.pdf
Michigan House of Representatives Natural Gas Subcommittee Report, April 2012
http://gophouse.com/publications/80/NaturalGasReport.pdf
###


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.



Posted at 06:33 am by thecommonills
 

Monday, May 14, 2012
Violence, executions, political crisis

Violence, executions, political crisis

Yesterday there was violence in Iraq.  Not at all surprising.  What is surprising is that if you open today's New York Times, you'll find Jack Healy's report on it.  And that's a good thing.  The headline isn't: "Period of Relative Calm in Iraq Is Brought to End by Fatal Bomb Blasts."  We're told, in the article (Healy's not responsible for the headline), that six people died from bombings.  But . . .


ibc



As Iraq Body Count notes 12 people died from bombings, 1 corpse was discovered and 1 police officer was shot to death.  (Also note 75 dead for the month so far.)   Healy had a deadline that closed before all the deaths were known, that's fine.  But what's not fine -- and this is with the headline writer and not with Healy, criticism of the headline writer -- is that Sunday didn't see violence return.

I state repeatedly here that violence has not stopped and it hasn't.  But 6 deaths on Sunday wasn't even the most deaths in the last 7 days.  Thursday there were 12 deaths (check IBC) and 7 of those were corpses and maybe the headline writer at the New York Times doesn't count corpses?  Well Wednesday saw 6 deaths -- five from shootings and bombing in al-Hadith and 1 from a Baghdad bombing.  Monday saw 9 dead -- three from Basra bombings, 1 from a Balad bombing, 2 from Baghdad bombings and three from Baquba bombings and shootings.

So how does the New York Times get off presenting the FALSE 'reality' that yesterday's deaths were the first big numbers in some time in Iraq?  That's irresponsible.


The press has stopped covering violence in Iraq so I do appreciate Healy's article and I have a few quibbles here and there with it (I'm a tough grader) but I do appreciate it and I even applaud it.  It's a real shame that a headline degrades what Healy did accomplish by presenting a false picture of what's taking place in Iraq.

Today's violence?  Alsumaria notes a Kirkuk roadside bombing has left four people injured -- at least two of which were police officers, a Baquba roadside bombing targeted a teacher's home and left a 12-year-old girl injured,  and late last night there was a Baghdad home invasion which left a police officer and two members of his family injured.  In other violence news, Al Rafidayn reports that Iraq's Human Rights Minister Mohammed  Shiya al-Sudani has declared that over 300,000 Iraqis were killed by "insurgents" since 2003 and that the international community must understand that when Iraq is handing out death sentences today.  He refers to it as a process of transition.  Of course, similar excuses have been given before.  Clare O'Dea (Swiss Info) reported in 2009 of then Iraqi Minster of Human Rights Wijdan M. Salim, "Salim said the death penalty might be abolished at some point but not at present.  'The violence in Iraq is so high, the number of terrorist victims is so large.  It's not for me to stop it or not.  I think it will not stop until another time."  Meanwhile Alsumaria reports Nouri is still having to defend his policy to allow every home a firearm (either a pistol or rifle).

Yesterday Al Rafidayn reported that the prime minister stated he was willing to dialogue about the issue of Saleh al-Mutlaq -- Deputy Prime Minister whom Nouri's State of Law is still trying to have stripped of his post in Parliament -- but that there would be no discussions or meetings on the issue of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi. Al Mada notes that al-Hashemi declared yesterday that he was optimistic about the possibility of returning to Baghdad and that he feels negotiations will result in the charges against him being dropped. Alsumaria reports that Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc is declaring that they have candidates to replace Nouri and are ready to go forward with a no-confidence vote if Nouri doesn't meet the demands.  The demands include a multi-point agreement by Moqtada which the press still hasn't reported on in any real depth.  The demands also include the implementation of the Erbil Agreement.

The March 2010 elections were followed by eight months of political stalemate after Iraqiya (led by Ayad Allawi) came in first, besting State of Law (led by Nouri).  Nouri didn't want to give up the post of prime minister and with both Tehran and the White House backing him, he knew he could dig his heels in.  The US-brokered the Erbil Agreement in November 2010.  Allowing Nouri to have the second term the White House wanted meant that Nouri would conceed on various other points.  Nouri used the agreement to become prime minister and then went back on his word and refused to honor the agreement.

This is the cause of the current political crisis in Iraq and it's been ongoing for over a year and a half.  Moqtada al-Sadr has given Nouri a 15 day deadline to take action on the demands agreed to at the April 28th meet-up in Erbil attended by, among others, Moqtada, Allawi, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, KRG President Massoud Barzani and Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi.  Al Mada reports State of Law states that they don't understand the deadline and that Nouri didn't attend because the meeting was with the Kurds and the Kurds follow their bloc and the KRG Prime Minister and not Nouri.  State of Law does love the insults.  But, reality, Nouri wasn't invited to the April 28th meeting.

Oh, well, at least Nouri has the love of a good man -- check out this photo of Nouri and the Islamic Supereme Council of Iraq's Ammar al-Hakim locked in an embarace.

When not exhibiting PDAs, Nouri and State of Law thunder, Al Rafidayn reports, that Speaker of Parliament al-Nujaifi must declare where he stands on the disputed areas of Iraq.  Presumably, since Osama al-Nujaifi took an oath to the Constitution, he stands on the idea that a referendum and census should be held.  That is what Article 140 of the Constitution requires.

Maybe it's confusing to Nouri?  That would explain why it never took place in Nouri's first term even though the Constitution said it was supposed to take place by the end of 2007.



Bonnie reminds that Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Barack's Shrinking Stature" went up last night.  On this week's Law and Disorder Radio -- a weekly hour long program that airs Monday mornings at 9:00 a.m. EST on WBAI and around the country throughout the week, hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights), topics exploredinclude the federal government spying on the Occupy movement -- a topic they discuss with attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard,  the Chino Hill murders with J Patrick O'Connor, the late Karen Detamore and a lawsuit against Yelp.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.



 wbai
law and disorder radio
michael s. smith
heidi boghosian
michael ratner

Posted at 07:12 am by thecommonills
 


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