This AP article, which you can also find here (Washington Post) and here (Los Angeles Times) is ticking people off this morning because it's repeating FALSE claims long ago called out by the New York Times (Alissa J. Rubin and Sam Dagher). Why, wonder twenty-one in e-mails, is an article that's written today repeating things disproven in January? (Specifically the 25% quota which was tossed aside by the Parliament.) Why?

Because Hadeel al-Shalchi hasn't written a real article. He's grabbed *Kim Gamel's AP article from October 6th* (before it was discovered that Parliament had ditched the quotas for women) and written around it. Which is how you get al-Shalchi offering today:



Iraq's constitution provides that men and women have basic legal rights such as voting, owning property and suing in court. But deep differences exist on the role of women in society.

And Gamel offering in October:


The constitution provides that men and women have basic legal rights such as voting and owning property and suing in court. But deep differences exist within Iraqi society over the role of women and of Islam.

Use the links, you'll see that the only difference between the two articles is some new quotes. Today's article leaves out this important point by Gamel:

Under heavy U.S. pressure to promote gender equality, the Iraqis agreed to a 25 percent quota for women in the last elections for parliament and provincial councils, both held in 2005. A law paving the way for the new vote to be held by Jan. 31 maintains that requirement, opening the door for women to make up at least a quarter of the provincial councils.

The Feb. 12th snapshot included: "January 14th, Alissa J. Rubin and Sam Dagher (New York Times) broke the news that although the 25% was supposed to be set aside, it had not been." Is it all too confusing for AP? Rubin and Dagher's article was entitled "Changes in Iraq Election Law Weaken Quota for Women" and here's an excerpt:

A little more than two weeks before Iraq's provincial elections, there is widening anger that the published version of the election law has only a weak provision to set aside seats for women.
Early versions of the law, which governs the election of Iraq's 18 provincial councils, included a firm guarantee that women would have at least 25 percent of the seats -- the same percentage mandated by the Constitution for the numbers of women in Parliament.
In the male-dominated Arab culture, the framers of the Constitution and the Americans who were involved in drafting it thought that the quota was necessary to ensure that women would be represented.
But the provincial election law was changed several times, and the quota language was gone by the time it went to the Presidency Council, whose approval is needed for it to become official. It went back to the Parliament with several unrelated changes and was published in early October. The lack of a strong guarantee for women's council seats has begun to gain widespread attention only in the last few days.

I'm real sorry that grabbing an article AP sent across the wires in October and missing a MAJOR update in January didn't allow for easy cribbing. Maybe next time people can attempt to know the subject that they're allegedly reporting on or is that standard just too high for some to reach?

At the New York Times' Iraq blog, Jehad Nga's photos are featured and Sunday Sam Dagher shared the stories of some Iraqis making the pilgrimage last week.

Yesterday, the US military announced:

BAGHDAD -- Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) and the Government of Iraq (GOI) reached another milestone Feb. 14 when the total population of detainees in Coalition custody dropped to about 14,500.
This month, Task Force 134 Detainee Operations began releasing an average 50 detainees a day in accordance with the Security Agreement. The signed agreement between the U.S. and the GOI requires all detainees to be released in a safe and orderly manner or transferred to Iraqi custody pursuant to a judicial order.
Those being released this month represent the first group of case files that were reviewed by Iraqi authorities under the Security Agreement.

For those not paying attention, the treaty masquerading as a Status Of Force Agreement stated the US would turn over all prisoners to Iraqi control on January 1, 2009. That didn't happen, now did it? (Last week, Alissa J. Rubin did a post about the prisoners at the New York Times' blog.) But don't worry, obviously the US intends to meet other 'promises,' right? Keep kidding yourself.

Or be a Patrick Cockburn. He's one of the flaming idiots that pimped the SOFA as ending the Iraq War. While one of many on that, he appears to be the only flaming idiot to develop a hard for Nouri al-Maliki and his out of control lust has led to commentaries that could pass for stand up. He's also the topic of an e-mail this morning where it's noted that Sunday's New York Times story "is a subject he's reporting on!" Cockburn's fans are almost as funny as he is. No, he's not reporting a damn thing. He has no information other than what he read in the New York Times. He pimps it but he's done no reporting and we'll stand by what went up here Sunday:

On the front page of today's New York Times, James Glanz, C.J. Chivers and William K. Rashbaum offer "Inquiry On Graft In Iraq Focuses On U.S. Officers." The article might have been better with only one writer and Glanz has covered the beat the longest, so it should have been. Is it possible that military officers, overseeing reconstruction, took bribes? It is very possible. Two names are listed that are under investigation of some form. I'm not interested in naming those two people because I don't see in the article that justifies them being named. That's a very serious charge to make, to assert that while someone was serving in the military, they were also profitting from it, lining their own pockets. It does happen. And the paper's covered one example of it very well -- from investigation on forward -- though they really weren't that when the conviction came in. But I'm looking at this article, reading it over three times and attempting to find a reason why two people -- not charged with anything -- are named? I'm not comfortable including those names here. If they are charged with something, we'll note it and that's different. But it really reads -- rightly or wrongly -- as if prosecutors who can't do their own job are hoping the press will do it for them, are hoping that a conviction can take place via the media and spur their case forward.

I could be wrong on that (and I'm wrong all the time) but that's how it reads to me and I'm not interested in floating the two names here. If you're interested, you can use the link and read the paper's article.

Cockburn runs with the names with no confirmation of his own. What a proud moment for the Independent of London! We're not opposed to covering corruption and certainly not opposed to covering US corruption in Iraq. Unlike the New York Times, when a woman in the military they'd reported on non-stop was finally convicted, we noted it here with links to all the Justice Department's announcements, statements and evidence. The two named in the New York Times article are presented as crooks by Cockburn. The two have been charged with nothing and should they not be charged, they may consider a libel suit against the Independent. They already have grounds to sue because the threshold for libel is not as great in the UK as it is in the US. Cockburn makes a fool out of himself because he's so in love with Nouri. He's convinced US graft will mean Nouri's innocent! Nouri's guilty. Has there been US graft and corruption? Yeah and it's been well documented. There is no doubt more (that doesn't mean the two who are charged with nothing currently are guilty of anything). That doesn't change the fact that Nouri's lining his pockets (the same way the US thefts didn't change the fact that the members of the earlier provisional government stashed millions in UK banks). If the Independent of London had any standards left, they'd have long ago pulled Cockburn who is supposed to be a reporter -- though the 'reports' he churns out resembles columns -- and a reporter so enamored with the foreign ruler of the country he's allegedly covering violates every rule of journalism.

If the two are charged -- or anyone's charged -- we'll be happy to include it. But people like Cockburn never learn anything. They like to lecture about journalism 'ethics' but they're always the first to run with a story that they didn't investigate themselves. They have no concern that innocent people's lives might be destroyed. US prosecutors have repeatedly used the press in the last two decades to 'prosecute' weak cases. "Person of interest" is the relatively new way to use the press to prosecute your case for you. Person of interest is not anyone charged with a damn thing. And you might hope the press would rise up against being used as a tool of the prosecution but then you get people like Patrick Cockburn who don't care about the truth or about guilt or innocence, they just care about anything that advances their propaganda. Patrick's been loose with the facts for some time and his Iraq reporting has been shoddy for some time. He's not a trusted source or even a reliable one -- as he proved when he tried to glom on to the sensationalistic story of the Iraqi women stoned but he had to 'improve' on it by having her lynched. That was your first clue that Cockburn was putting facts low on his totem pole. As Elaine noted then (August 2007):

Cockburn doesn't reassure me of the facts when he writes, "The public lynching of a Yazidi girl who converted to Islam in order to marry her Muslim Kurdish boyfriend led sectarian strife earlier this year." She was stoned. She wasn't lynched. Lynching is with a rope. The woman was stoned. Dua Khalil Aswad was the woman's name.

Dahr Jamail's latest report is "Boys With Toys" (MidEast Dispatches):

It is not the threat of violence that weighs on the people of Iraq. It is the omnipresent occurrence of violence that has resulted in the desperate nation wide chant, "We are tired. All we want is for normal life to return."
Recently, an eight-year-old Iraqi girl was shot by US soldiers when their convoy ran into a crowd of Shiite pilgrims traveling to the holy city of Karbala in southern Iraq.
Sunday, a week ago, three explosions echoed across Baghdad, leaving one person dead and wounding another 20.
The very next day, a suicide car bomber struck a US patrol in the northern city of Mosul, killing four American soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter. It was the single deadliest attack on US forces in nine months. Two days later, an off-duty security guard of Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi was wounded along with a pedestrian when a bomb attached to his car detonated. On the same day, back in Mosul, a car bomb targeting a police patrol wounded three Iraqi policemen.


Feb. 9th's snapshot included the following:

David Bacon's latest book is Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press).

Brandon e-mails to note Bacon's article is up online (click here). (Link in snapshot went to the magazine itself because the article wasn't then available online.) And Mia highlights Chris Hedges' "Bad News From America's Top Spy" (Information Clearing House):


The specter of social unrest was raised at the U.S. Army War College in November in a monograph [click on Policypointers' pdf link to see the report] titled "Known Unknowns: Unconventional 'Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development." The military must be prepared, the document warned, for a "violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States," which could be provoked by "unforeseen economic collapse," "purposeful domestic resistance," "pervasive public health emergencies" or "loss of functioning political and legal order." The "widespread civil violence," the document said, "would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security."
"An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home," it went on.
"Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD [the Department of Defense] would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance," the document read.
In plain English, something bureaucrats and the military seem incapable of employing, this translates into the imposition of martial law and a de facto government being run out of the Department of Defense. They are considering it. So should you.
Adm. Blair warned the Senate that "roughly a quarter of the countries in the world have already experienced low-level instability such as government changes because of the current slowdown." He noted that the "bulk of anti-state demonstrations" internationally have been seen in Europe and the former Soviet Union, but this did not mean they could not spread to the United States. He told the senators that the collapse of the global financial system is "likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging market nations over the next year." He added that "much of Latin America, former Soviet Union states and sub-Saharan Africa lack sufficient cash reserves, access to international aid or credit, or other coping mechanism."
"When those growth rates go down, my gut tells me that there are going to be problems coming out of that, and we're looking for that," he said. He referred to "statistical modeling" showing that "economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period."
Blair articulated the newest narrative of fear. As the economic unraveling accelerates we will be told it is not the bearded Islamic extremists, although those in power will drag them out of the Halloween closet when they need to give us an exotic shock, but instead the domestic riffraff, environmentalists, anarchists, unions and enraged members of our dispossessed working class who threaten us. Crime, as it always does in times of turmoil, will grow. Those who oppose the iron fist of the state security apparatus will be lumped together in slick, corporate news reports with the growing criminal underclass.


Reuters reports that today's violence includes 2 Baquba roadside bombings that resulted in 2 deaths and ten more people injured while a Baghdad roadside bombing injured one person.

Today Germany's Minister of Foreign Affairs is in Iraq. Yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted:





16 February, 2009

Foreign Minister Receives British Ambassador

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, received on Monday, 16/2/2009, the British ambassador in Baghdad, Mr. Christopher Prentice upon his request. The meeting dealt with bilateral relations between the two countries and ways of developing them in addition to the results of provincial elections that took place late last month, and the British Ambassador congratulated the Government on Iraq's success..

The two sides also touched on the subject of exchange visits between officials of both countries to promote the development of relations, stating that a broad investment conference on Iraq will be held in Britain next April, in addition to the meetings of Iraq's neighboring countries and the situation in the region.

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

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Next month, the Iraq War hits the six year mark. The illegal war has not ended, Barack Obama is not planning to end it, US broadcast networks are pulling their correspondents, but no one's supposed to notice and the reality is no one notices or no one cares.

We called out the nonsense of 'Mother Of All Bombers' in real time. Of course, it ends up being the only thing that interests some sites online. Why not? It can't be verified but it's the kind of topic perfect for Trash TV and that's really all we have online, mental midgets who can't wrap their tiny minds around anything more complex than a Lifetime woman-in-danger tele-flick.

So they post this nonsense that requires you believe the Iraqi police can capture the women on January 21st and hold for all that time without trumpeting their 'victory.' You have to believe that no one is tortured in Iraq and that confessions are 'pure' and 'honest.' To believe that, you have no grasp of reality and have missed all the reporting by Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) to cite only one example. You have to believe that the only reason a woman would become a bomber is because she was raped and that there is this team of rapists -- controlled by the Mother Of All Bombers -- watching and profiling potential victims to select just the perfect one. That Mother Of All is able to control every move and every movement in a country where mobility for all is severly restricted but even more so for women.

You have to ignore all of that and just be titilated by the lurid claims.

And you have to be historically ignorant, unaware that women have always risen up against occupations. You have to see this natural instinct in humans (one that also exists in the animal kingdom) as 'unnatural' when it surfaces in women.

Most of all you have to be a natural patsy for propaganda.

Which is why that garbage traveled around the web (and I'm not speaking of right-wing sites -- I have no idea what they do -- I'm talking about left-wing ones) and became the only Iraq 'news' most sites offered this month. Or this year.

Some of the losers thought they were doing something by 'remembering' the day Collie Powell lied to the United Nations.

Oh, how wonderful. How very brave. It must take a lot of guts to call out testimony that was discredited mere minutes after it was given.

How wonderful that their Iraq War 'work' is in noting a speech that took place . . . before the illegal war even began.

Dahr Jamail is back in Iraq. That may be the only link in this entry, this is a talking entry. But Dahr's back and I don't imagine he'll be there for long. I could be wrong, but I assume he'll be there for a few months tops. So you'd think it would be something that all the allegedly left websites would note.


And when Dahr's back in Iraq --- whether you personally like him or not -- it is news for the left and it is something to highlight. Maybe they don't link to Truthout? We don't link to that site. It is not pro-democracy as it demonstrated. You're more than able to advocate for someone to run but when you tell someone not to run or to drop out, you're not about democracy. So we link to Dahr's reports via his website. The reports are reposted in other places as well (Dissident Voice, to name but one).

For some online, Iraq doesn't matter because they're too vested in (still) pimping the lie that Barack will end the Iraq War. He won't. Not in his first term and if he can't do it in his first term, why does he deserve a second one? The only thing that will change that is huge pressure from the American people. But we're talking about a public that's been repeatedly and deliberately lied to. And has bought it.

Recently the Congressional flunkie posing as a journalist David Sirota pulled a trick and no one caught what went down. It's not that unfamiliar.

When the Iraq War went to pieces early on, Judith Miller provided a handy scapegoat for the bulk of the media spectrum. They were able to keep their heads down and allow her to take the fall for their own actions. Some of them have 'restyled' themselves as 'opponents' to the war (these 'opponents' make their 'opposition' about the way the illegal war was fought and not about the fact that it was started -- and started with lies -- in the first place). They're able to get linkage-love from around the web these days and no one holds them accountable.

David Sirota is only one of many who attempted to lie throughout the primaries. It is obvious that Barack's presidency is a disaster. (It is a disaster. And it will only get worse with more fawning.) Sirota's trying to reposition himself. It's the same trick many in the MSM pulled with Iraq. And some of them were called out for that (not many, again Judith Miller became the scapegoat for everyone) but they didn't bicker or argue, they just ignored it and managed to sail back into 'respectable' gas baggery.

Sirota's doesn't have the brains or tempermant to lay low. This is the man who endorses lying. This is th eman who praised a governor's campaign for tricking voters. Sirota's not about honesty, he's never been about honesty. He's a Congressional flunkie and not a journalist. He doesn't have a journalist's ethics or temperment. He's still the suck up on The Hill that he started out as and that he will end as.

Open government requires honesty. A democracy does not thrive on lies. When Sirota found a candidate lying and tricking people into voting for him to be a good thing, that really was it for him. It made clear he was not 'a friend of the people' or embracing democracy. Anyone who applauds lying to the public can't say, "Oh, but it was for our side!" No, that's not how it works. The ends do not justify the means.

And it appears that's really going to be the lesson of Barack's presidency.

His enablers and cheerleaders can attempt to hide the truth from the people but it's not going to work. And Barack campaigned -- in people's minds -- on ending the illegal war. He did that by using weasel words and by having a bunch of LYING WEASELS (Laura Flanders, Tom Hayden, CODESTINK, etc.) lie for him.

The lies are already hurting Panhandle Media. People are walking away from Pacifica and from various 'opinion journals,' refusing to donate for that crap after the stunt they all pulled. The ends do not justify the means but they do discredit liars and they do run off supporters.

America's going to awaken to the fact that Barack LIED about ending the illegal war. The refusal to call him out now on it and to force him to take the action people believe they voted for just means he has a very strong chance of being a one term president.

Republicans are not stupid. Already they're demonstrating they know how to act as an opposition party.

And here's the campaign they may try to run in 2012.

1) George W. Bush provided the framework to get us out of Iraq but Barack has kept us there despite campaigning on the promise to end the Iraq War.

2) Billions of American dollars have been wasted on the war in the last four year while Americans struggled to make ends meet.

3) For our nation's security -- national and economic -- I am calling for an end to the Iraq War and, if you vote for me, that is what you will get.

Barack used weasel words. He lied repeatedly. And a huge bulk of Americans honestly believe he promised them he would end the Iraq War and that this meant all the US service members would come home. When that hasn't happened by 2012, Barack's a liar. And the public turns on him. There will be no economic recovery in 2009. It's doubtful there will be one in 2010. Serious measures -- ones Barack is thus far unwilling to pursue -- need to be taken and, even if they are, most Americans won't feel any real improvement until 2011 at the earliest.

So with Barack's incredibly weak stimulus package (and the reality that most Americans are not going to look kindly when he comes back to beg again this year), he's really begging for the economic ills to continue through 2012. If so, that ought to make for a wondeful position to run on: "I told you I'd end the Iraq War and didn't and, four years later, the economy's still in the tank. But believe me, if elected to four more years, I will end the Iraq War this time and get to work on improving the economy. I'll pose for less magazine covers and require far less fawning."

But the Iraq War that he ran on will be the Iraq War that harms him more than anything else. Do people really think that in July of 2012, Americans aren't going to notice that US service members are still in Iraq?

"I was right! I was right!" he crowed about his sparsely attended speech before the illegal war started. That was never reality -- it was about as much 'reality' as the lie that he had to recreate an audio version because no record of it existed (video of it can be found online and we've linked to it before -- it was a poorly delivered speech) -- and when you make assertions on your behalf, when you ego-stroke in public repeatedly, don't whine when people expect you to live up to it.

What the liars for Barack never seemed to grasp was that the bill would come due.

The lies could not continue through eternity. That's George W. thinking and a sign of just how much lunacy exists among Barack's cheerleaders.

And the press can pack up and insist that the story is over but every time they attempt to tie a pretty box around it, they get slapped in the face with reality.

There's an action calling for an end to the illegal war next month. For information, you can refer to Iraq Veterans Against the War, A.N.S.W.E.R., Pentagon March and World Can't Wait.

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

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Over the weekend, AP reported that Iraq War veteran Timothy Scott took his own life Thursday. Timothy killed himself in Nova Scotia ("at his mother's home") after self-checking out and going to Canada. WITN (link has text and video) adds, "Reports indicate 59-year-old Bonnie Scott called police Thursday to say her 22-year-old son was in her driveway and had a gun. Officials say when they arrived, Marine Lance Corporal Timothy Scott fled, then shot himself." Michael Macdonald (The Canadian Press) adds:

A base spokeswoman confirmed Scott served in Iraq from January to August 2007, and then from April to October in 2008.
Having joined the Marine Corps in November 2005, he was later awarded two Sea Service Deployment Ribbons, an Iraqi Campaign Medal, a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the National Defence Service Medal.
He is thought to have left his unit sometime around Feb. 10, crossing the Canada-U.S. border at Woodstock, N.B., early the next day.

Of the recent suicide reports at the start of the month, Veterans for Peace (PDF format warning) notes:

The United States military is scrambling to head off what has turned into an epidemic of suicides. As reported on CNN, 24 service members killed themselves in January of this year, six times as many as in January of last year. 2008 was the fourth consecutive year of increases in soldier suicides.
Veterans For Peace Executive Director Michael McPhearson said this is not a surprise to him. "It is tragic. It is the culmination of years of continuous deployments and general stress the Armed Services have been put under because of an invasion and subsequent occupation that should have never happened."


Meanwhile AP reports a "big send-off" is planned Tuesday in Madison, Wisconsin for the 3,000
Army National Guard soldiers who are deploying to Iraq.

Iraq Veterans Against the War's Adam Kokesh (at Adam Kokesh: Revolutionary Patriot) has a recent post up detailing his travels and more and we'll note these two paragraphs on political races and on upcoming actions:

Meanwhile, back in the homeland, there is a serious effort underway to get Peter Schiff to run against Chris Dodd for his US Senate seat. It looks like it would be tough race, but the line up of Schiff's puritan philosophy of a true free market against Dodd's corrupt version of corporatism would be juicy enough to make it a race worth supporting for our movement. For those of you wondering about his positions outside of the economy, take heart in this quote from the man himself: "I have no faith in government. There is no evidence that they're going to do the right thing." I guess that makes him one of us! If you haven't yet, please pledge to contribute to the Schiff money-bomb scheduled for February 21st. You can use the widget at the top-right of this page or click here to go straight to their site.

We do plan to get a couple days of surfing in (embarrassing photos to come) before I fly back home, but then it's back to business. I'll be in California for a week, San Diego, LA, and San Francisco before visiting my Mom for her birthday on Valentine's Day in Pebble Beach. Then on to Colorado for a week. Ok, yes, I will take a day or two for Ron-ski and get some snowboarding in. Then Texas for the Freedom and Liberty Movement State convention. I went to their regional convention in Houston a couple weeks ago, and the way they are organizing there from the bottom up before there is even a name for the new organization let alone a structure is truly amazing. I will also be helping out with Winter Soldier Austin on February 28th. Then it's on to DC for a few days for a workshop, then up to Nashua for the New Hampshire Liberty Forum and on to an event at Kent State. Then I'll be in St. Louis supporting Matthis Chiroux resisting deployment at his US Army separation hearing. Then of course, back to DC to mark the sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq, and finally, back to Santa Fe. Did I mention that I will be driving the whole way?

That's at Adam's blog so it should be obvious he's speaking for himself. For those who did not grasp that, he is. IVAW is a non-partisan organization and the veterans in it are from a wide range of political beliefs. No veteran need be, for example, a Democrat to join up, they only have to be a veteran who wants to end the Iraq War.

We've noted A.N.S.W.E.R.'s announcement and participation in the upcoming March action; however, we haven't noted their press release in full. It's too lengthy for a snapshot (which is why it's only been excerpted in those) but we'll note it this morning in full:

Why We're Marching on the Pentagon
Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine... Occupation is A Crime

We are organizing a Mass March on the Pentagon on Saturday, March 21, and it is important that you and your family, friends, co-workers and fellow students put on your marching shoes that day. People are coming from all over the country. Simultaneous demonstrations are taking place in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Download the 2-sided color ANSWER flyer, which has this statement on the back

Why are we still marching even after the war criminal George W. Bush has left office? Because the people must speak out for what is right. More than 1 million Iraqis have died and tens of thousands of U.S. troops have been wounded or killed.

The Iraq and Afghanistan war will drag on for years unless we act now. The cost in lives and resources is criminal regardless of whether the Democrats or Republicans are in charge of the government.

We must also act to end U.S. support for Israel's ongoing war against the Palestinian people. The Bush Administration gave the green light and provided the weapons and the money for Israel’s recent war against the Palestinian people in Gaza. More than 5,000 Palestinians were killed or wounded; the majority of casualties were civilians, including hundreds of children, in this high-tech massacre. "We the People" pay the bill as the U.S. provides $2.5 billion a year for Israel's massive military machine.

Why We Say: Bring All the Troops Home Now Not Later!

If Bush’s war and occupation of Iraq was an illegal action of aggression--and it was--how can the new government say that it can only gradually end the war over a number of years? The Iraqis don't want foreign military forces running their country. No one would!

The Pentagon has employed 200,000 foreign contractors (mercenaries) and 150,000 U.S. troops to maintain the occupation of Iraq. They have no right to be there. A few thousand are being brought out of Iraq only to be redeployed to occupy Afghanistan, and the fools in the media proclaim "the war is winding down." That is not true.

President Obama decided to keep the Pentagon just as it was under Bush. He even selected Bush appointee Robert Gates to keep his position as chief of the Pentagon. Gates announced that the new administration would double the number of troops sent to Afghanistan. That is certainly not the "change" most people thought was coming following the end of Bush’s tenure.

These are wars for domination in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The people of the United States want change. We are sick and tired of wars of aggression waged abroad under false slogans of "national security." These are wars that reap massive profits for corporate weapons-makers with the promise of winning control over the vast oil and natural gas reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Working people may have another definition for "national security." What really makes the people "insecure?" Ask the 2.3 million families who are losing their homes because they are being foreclosed when they can’t pay their steep debts to the banks. Ironically, when these same parasitic bankers couldn’t pay their debts, the federal government rushed in with a $2.5 trillion bailout using our tax dollars.

Or ask working-class students who are being laid off from their jobs just as tuition costs soar out of reach. What defines "security" for millions of young people whose future is at stake? Do they want tax dollars spent to kill poor people abroad or to finance education?

We will march on Saturday, March 21, the sixth anniversary of the start of the Iraq invasion, to demand that taxpayer dollars be used to meet people’s needs--here and everywhere. This year's real Pentagon war budget will top $1 trillion.

This amount could create 10 million jobs, provide healthcare and education for all, rebuild New Orleans, and repair much of the damage done in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. We need money for jobs, housing, health care and education, not for wars of aggression.

The occupation of Iraq alone costs $12 billion each month. This amounts to $400 million each day, $16.7 million per hour and $278,000 per minute.

The Pentagon war machine does not act in our interests. Its wars benefit the biggest corporations and banks that seek to control the markets and riches of the Middle East. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are not our enemies. They want to live free from colonial-type domination. Only a people’s movement demanding an end to U.S. wars and militarism can win justice for people here and abroad.

Go to PentagonMarch.org for details about transportation, meetings and to get involved. Buses will be traveling to Washington, D.C. from across the country.

Sidney notes Ann McFeatter's "Grim news on Iraq" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) and I've added "[one]" because I believe the word's left out of McFeatter's sentence (Barack had only one question that mentioned Iraq):

On the day of President Barack Obama's first prime-time press conference, four more Americans were killed in Iraq. Yet the new president, who was elected in part because of his opposition to the war in Iraq, got only [one] question on Iraq, and that was whether he would override the Bush administrations refusal to permit the news media to cover the return to U.S. soil of the caskets of soldiers killed there and in Afghanistan. (Obama said the matter is still under review.)

Obama noted that the moment the burdens of his new office were driven home to him came as he signed letters to the families of fallen soldiers. Americans killed in Iraq since 2003 number 4,244. Officially, another 31,035 have been wounded. There is no official U.S. count of how many Iraqi civilians have died; the number is believed to be nearly 100,000.

The invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003; next month, the sixth anniversary of the war will be observed. Is the United States any closer to winning the war or withdrawing its troops?

With the end of the Bush administration came a flood of new memoirs about the war and candid observations from military officials in charge. All offer gloomy prospects for Iraq, despite Obama's promise to withdraw combat troops within 16 months. (Note the emphasis is on combat troops. Thousands of support troops are expected to stay.) There are 145,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Dahr Jamail is back in Iraq. In his most recent report, he covers "construction" and Anbar. As you read through the excerpt below (use link for his full report which also contains photos) note the last name mentioned who has been in the news a great deal recently:

Today, leading sheiks like Aifan will tell you that they are in "the construction business." That’s a polite phrase for what they’re doing, and the rubric under which a lot of the payouts take place (however modest actual reconstruction work might be). Think of it this way: Every dealer needs a front man. The U.S. bought the sheiks off and it was to their immediate advantage to be bought off. They regained a kind of power that had been seeping away, while all the money and arms allowed them to put real muscle into recruiting people in the tribes they controlled and into building the Awakening Movement.

The reasons -- and they are indeed plural -- why the tribal leaders were so willing to collaborate with the occupiers of their country are, at least in retrospect, relatively clear. Those in al-Anbar who had once supported, and had been supported by, Saddam Hussein, and then had initially supported the resistance became far keener to work with occupation forces as they saw their power eroded by al-Qaeda-in-Iraq.

AQI proved a threat to the sheiks, many of whom had initially worked directly with it, when it began to try to embed its own fierce, extremist Sunni ideology in the region -- and perhaps even more significantly, when it began to infringe on the cross-border smuggling trade that had kept many tribal sheiks rich. As AQI grew larger and threatened their financial and power bases, they had little choice but to throw in their lot with the Americans.

As a result, these men obtained backing for their private militias, renamed Awakening groups, and in addition, signed "construction" contracts with the Americans who put millions of dollars in their pockets, even if not always into actual construction sites. As early as April 2006, the Rand Corporation released a report, "The Anbar Awakening," identifying America’s potential new allies as a group of sheiks who used to control smuggling rings and organized crime in the area.

One striking example was Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who founded the first Awakening groups in al-Anbar and later led the entire movement until he was assassinated in 2007, shortly after he met with President Bush. It was well known in the region that Abu Risha was primarily a smuggler defending his business operations by joining the Americans.

Not surprisingly, given the lucrative nature of the cooperative relationship that developed, whenever an Awakening group sheik is assassinated, another is always there to take his place. Abu Risha was, in fact, promptly replaced as "president" of the Anbar Awakening by his brother Sheik Ahmad Abu Risha, also now in the "construction business."

Sheik Ahmad Abu Risha is the thug who got his way, the thug who got the elections results changed. The thug that both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have 'paid their respects to' and been photographed with. He didn't like the results of the January 31st elections so he threatened violence. Instead of being shut down right then and there, he was catered to. The results were changed for him. If you're late to the party, refer to the following:

1. The Common Ills: Sheik Risha stomps his feet and threatens

   Oh, yes, that voice of peace Sheik Risha. And what did LAT quote him saying? "If the percentage is true, then we will transfer our entity from a political ...
   thecommonills.blogspot.com/2009/02/sheik-risha-stomps-his-feet-and.html - 75k - Cached - Similar pages -

2. The Common Ills: Iraq snapshot

   But it's rush down to make nice with Sheik Risha when, if it was anyone else, the US military would be ..... More of Common Ills' photos tagged with image ...
   thecommonills.blogspot.com/2009/02/iraq-snapshot_05.html - 88k - Cached - Similar pages -

3. The Common Ills: Iraq snapshot

   The party issued a statement on Sunday accusing Sheik Ahmed and Mr. Mutlaq of practicing "intimidation and extortion" in order have ... "Ahmed Abu Risha is a bandit and thief," he said. .... More of Common Ills' photos tagged with image ...
   thecommonills.blogspot.com/2009/02/iraq-snapshot_10.html - 86k - Cached - Similar pages -

4. The Common Ills: Iraq snapshot

   Oh, yes, that voice of peace Sheik Risha. And what did LAT quote him saying? "If the percentage is true, ..... More of Common Ills' photos tagged with image ...
   thecommonills.blogspot.com/2009/02/iraq-snapshot_04.html - 85k - Cached - Similar pages -

5. The Common Ills: And the counting of ballots continues

   We get our way, the sheik appears to say, or out come the bullets and the guns. .... More of Common Ills' photos tagged with image ...
   thecommonills.blogspot.com/2009/02/and-counting-of-ballots-continues.html - 68k - Cached - Similar pages -

6. The Common Ills: Iraq snapshot

   Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, "Sheikh Sattar Abo Risha, the head of Anbar awakening council .... permalink posted by Common Ills @ 2:45 PM ...
   thecommonills.blogspot.com/2007/09/iraq-snapshot_13.html - 78k - Cached - Similar pages -

7. The Common Ills: Iraq snapshot

   On Tuesday, Sheikh Saleh Fezea Shneitar, his son and nephew were killed outside of Falluja -- the sheikh ..... More of Common Ills' photos tagged with image ...
   thecommonills.blogspot.com/2007/10/iraq-snapshot_19.html - 93k -

Thursday the Kurdistan Regional Government announced:



Last Wednesday the Foreign Ministry of Iraq issued the following:



11 February, 2009

Foreign Minister Meets Iranian Counterpart in Baghdad

His Excellency Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari met on Wednesday 11/2/2009, at the Foreign Ministry headquarters with Mr. Minoshehar Mottaki, Iranian Foreign Minister and his accompanying delegation visiting Iraq for discussions that concern the two countries .

Minister Zebari and his Iranian counterpart discussed in a closed meeting the political aspects and issues that concern the relations between the two countries. Minister Zebari congratulated the Iranian Foreign Minister on the thirtieth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and praised his efforts in resolving outstanding issues between the two countries, such as borders, water and oil.

His Excellency Minister Zebari stated that the path was paved and open for the development of relations between the two countries in all fields and the need for continued support for Iraq's Government, adding that Iran was one of the first countries that supported the new Iraq and its national government since the formation of the interim Governing Council after the fall of the former regime.

On his part, Mr. Mottaki expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad, adding that one of the major reasons for his visit is to convey an invitation from Iranian President Ahmadi Nejad to His Excellency President Jalal Talabani to visit Iran in the near future, and praised the efforts of His Excellency Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in the development of relations between the two countries, especially during the past three years in reaching high levels, commending the efforts of the Ambassadors of both countries in developing them. Mr. Mottaki congratulated the Government and people of Iraq for the success of the provincial elections and its high participation rate in addition to security and stability in the country, describing it as a translation of the will of the Iraqi people for self determination.

The two foreign ministers held a press conference attended by many local, Arab and foreign media where they touched on the nature of Iraq and Iran's relations and their growing stages in addition to future projects between the two countries.

The meeting was attended Foreign Ministry Undersecretaries and Ambassadors and the Iraqi ambassador in Tehran and Iran's ambassador in Baghdad.

Foreign Minister Mottaki arrived this morning to Baghdad International Airport heading a large delegation which was received by Mr. Labeed Abbawi, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary, and senior officials from the Ministry.

Look at the photo on the Iraq side and note no women. Marvel over that and the nonsense claims of 'progress.' Marvel over who the hell does Iraq think it's fooling with its claims to be concerned about the rights of women. One side of that table is Iraq's and there's not one woman seated. It's not a surprise that the theocratic government of Iran is hostile to women and women's rights but remember that photo the next time the puppet government in Iraq wants to pretend they care at all about women's rights.

In the New York Times today, Steven Lee Myers' "Reopening of Museum in Baghdad Is Uncertain" reports on the power struggle between the Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities and the Culture Ministry as to whether or not the museum will open next Monday. The Culture Ministry's Jabir al-Jabiri is stating that the museum is not opening and his ministry is over the Ministry for Tourism and Antiquties while MfTaA's Baha al-Mayahi states yes, they are opening next Monday. Meanwhile Michael Christie, Missy Ryan and Elizabeth Piper (Reuters) report 8 dead and twenty-six wounded in two Baghdad roadside bombings today.


Missy notes this from Ralph Nader's "It's Going to Take a Civic Jolt" (Information Clearing House):

Some staffers in Congress privately assert that the Democrats are not acting like a majority party. It is worse than that. They are not acting-period.
From their majority status in 2007 to 2009 and a Democratic President in the White House, the Congressional Democrats are not moving swiftly to repeal the ban on Uncle Sam negotiating drug prices from volume discounts under the drug benefit law. They are not moving to amend the Patriot Act, regain control of warrantless surveillance, strengthen the corporate criminal laws and enforcement budgets. Congress is not even pushing to require taxing Hedge Fund manager's income as ordinary income not as capital gains.
I cite these policies because they are policies much favored by many Democratic lawmakers. But in practice lawmakers duck and duck and duck from translating their beliefs into contentious action vis-à-vis the lobbyists and their captive legislators.
Senator Chris Dodd and the vast majority of the American people want to do something about credit card company abuses and gouges. But he is surrounded not just by the Republicans on the Senate Banking Committees but high-ranking Democrats beholden to the financial goliaths who, are demanding and receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts.
There is word from the politicians that consideration of health care insurance-apart from a quickly enacted expansion of some coverage for more poor children-will be put off for a year. The trade unions' top priority to enact labor law reforms, supported by Obama during his presidential campaign, are being held back by the Democrats.
There is even doubt whether the District of Columbia will get a voting Representative in the House when push comes to shove in the Senate.
The one-subject-at-a-time attitude is coming from the White House. "Obama doesn't want it now" is a common phrase used by legislators to excuse themselves from exercising the separate but equal Congressional powers. This pretext applies to taking away some of the hugely expensive and unnecessary weapons systems like the F-22 aircraft decried by many military and retired military analysts. The vast, bloated military budget is sacrosanct on Capitol Hill as it is in the White House.
At a time of widely perceived needs for Congressional action, with large corporations busy applying for corporate welfare and on the defensive, the Democrats are not generating any momentum for standing for and with the people. Even in the midst of food contamination, illnesses and fatalities, they cannot turn around forty years of delay on giving the Food and Drug Administration adequate authority and inspectors to protect our food supply.

Bonnie reminds that Kat's review of Schuyler Fisk's debut album, "Kat's Korner: Download The Good Stuff," went up yesterday as did Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The Rose Ceremony."

And today? I didn't realize it was a holiday. I think the only ones in the house who knew were Jim and Dona. Ava, Wally and I woke up and did our normal routines. Dona popped in a second ago to ask if anything was planned for the day off? We (Ava, Wally and I) didn't know it was a holiday or that we had a day off from speaking on the road. Wally quickly called Kat and said, "Go back to bed." If I'd known, I would have slept in at least another hour. But e-mails are asking if there's a snapshot today? I don't know. If I do a snapshot, other community sites will feel they have to post. So I probably won't unless there's some big news out of Iraq. I will do another entry today and that may or may not be about Iraq. It might be about the non-stop attacks (Monica Davey joins in this morning) on a senator opposed to the illegal war and, if so, it will ask why alleged 'left' sites are attacking the man? It will ask why those allegedly so 'hurt' over being called racists are smearing the only Black senator in the US Senate with lies. I'm really sick of those right-wingers posing as lefties. I've had with them, with their racism and with their ignorance. Really, do not post another word if you do not know your facts. It was embarrassing enough when that idiotic site was ripping apart Kim Gandy for her refusal to endorse Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party's presidential primary. Kim Gandy can be ripped apart in any language, using any tone anyone wants. (I like Kim. I've called her out numerous times here.) But there is one rule. It's not "you must be polite." It is, "You must be accurate." Kim Gandy personally endorsed Hillary during the primaries, Kim Gandy took to the road to speak out in favor of Hillary's campaign. Attacking Kim Gandy for not supporting Hillary just flaunts that site's incredible ignorance and how fact free they are.

They refuse to be bound by the facts. And then they want to whine to other sites about how mean people are to them and how they're called racists and how that's so mean and blah, blah, blah. Quit attacking the only Black senator with lies if you don't want to be called racists. Quit using right-wing talking points about immigrants if you don't want to be called racists.

So that might be the topic of the other entry today. But there will be three today.


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

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Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts "The Rose Ceremony." A teary-eyes Barack Obama holds a rose while Nancy Killefer, Judd Gregg, Bill Richardson and Tom Daschle flee. Little Dicky, with his dog by his side, declares, "If he had picked me, I would have been Mrs. Barack Obama, Secretary of the Whatever so fast, his head would have spun."

the world today just nuts
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the common ills

Trenton Daniel and Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) report that a public trial has been scheduled for Iraqi journalist Muntathar al Zaidi who threw two shoes at George W. Bush on December 14th. The journalists note, " Zaidi was poulled to ground by another journalist and then pummeled into submission by bodyguards for Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki." Australia Network News states, "A judicial official has announced that Muntazer al-Zaidi will face the charge of assaulting a foreign leader and will appear at the Central Criminal Court." Ahmed Rasheed, Peter Graff and Louise Ireland (Reuters) add that an effort to have the charges reduced was lost on appeal according to Abdul-Sattar al-Birqdar, spokesperson for the Iraqi Judiciary Council and, as a result, if convicted, Muntather could be sentenced to as many as fifteen years. Bush was hit by neither shoe. That's the 'freedom' Iraq is under.


They're just there to try and make the people free,
But the way that they're doing it, it don't seem like that to me.
Just more blood-letting and misery and tears
That this poor country's known for the last twenty years,
And the war drags on
.-- words and lyrics by Mick Softly (available on Donovan's Fairytale)

Last Sunday, ICCC's number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war was 4237 and tonight? 4239. Today the US military announced: "BAGHDAD -- A Multi-National Division–Baghdad Soldier died from a non-combat related incident Feb. 8. The Soldier’s name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. The incident is currently under investigation."
Just Foreign Policy's counter finally moves up and the current number is 1,311,696.

In some of the weekend's reported violence . . .

Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing that claimed 2 lives and left eleven people injured, another Baghdad roadside bombing that injured two people, a third Baghdad roadside bombing that left five injured and a Mosul roadside bombing that wounded one person. Saturday McClatchy reported a Baghdad roadside bombing left two police officers wounded, two Diayala Province roadside bombings which claimed the lives of 1 Iraqi soldier and 1 Iraqi police officer, a Mosul grenade attack that wounded a police officer and, dropping back to Friday, a roadside bomb targeting Sheik Balasim Mohammed Yihya al Timimi "between Baladroz and Kanan towns" that left the sheik injured.

Shootings?

Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 2 people shot dead in Sinjar. Saturday McClatchy reported Iraqi police shot dead 3 people who were 'suspects' and a home invasion outside Baquba in which attorney Kanan Majeed was shot dead. Reuters noted 2 people shot dead in Tal Afar on Friday.

Corpses?

McClatchy noted Saturday 1 corpse discovered outside of Mosul.

That was far from the only violence and far from the only violence reported. For example, Reuters reported Saturday, "Gunmen kidnapped Talib al-Masoudi, who ran in Jan. 31 provincial elections as a candidate from the Shi'ite Fadhila party, from the Husseiniya neighbourhood in Kerbala, 80 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, police said." Oh those wonderful, glorious and 'democratic' elections. Whose results are still not official. Apparently counting ballots isn't the difficult thing, it's rigging the results that's creating the hold up.

Meanwhile Moqtada al-Sadr apparently didn't learn the only real lesson of the elections: Threaten violence to get your way the tallies. Which is why AP explains al-Sadr is appealing the results of the elections: "The allegations are among a chorus of questions raised by Shiite religious parties and Sunnis about the outcome of provincial elections, in which allies of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki won a sweeping victory." Tahir al-Kinani is quoted citing two sets of number: one from al-Sadr's observers in the provinces and the other from Iraq's laughable and discredited "electoral commission."

"It's not our fault that some people couldn't vote because they are lazy, because they didn't bother to ask where they should vote." That's the 'electoral commission''s chief speaking. And al-Sadr should have taken a lesson from that. To widely documented problems that is Faraj al-Hadiari's response. To the thugs of Anbar's allegations that couldn't be proven and the thugs threats? al-Hadiari leaps into action and 'massages' the results. Because heaven forbid thugs aren't pleased with the results. Heaven forbid that while giving lip service to democracy, no one actually expects in Iraq.

Democracy? That would require checks and balances. For that to work, you'd have to have a strong, independent judiciary in Iraq (yes, we are all laughing) and a strong legislative branch able to check al-Maliki's never ending power grab. Strong legislative branch? The Parliament has been without a speaker since December 23rd when they ousted Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. 48 days later, who is the Parliament's speaker? Still no one. AFP reports there "are five candidates" but that Parliament remains "deadlocked."

Before get to the other governmental news out of Iraq, we need to remember what's taken place recently. On Jan 22nd, AP reported that Bayan Jabr has told Iraqis that the drop in the price of oil means "hard days to come" and that they should be buying gold or putting money in the bank. Yes, that was hilarious advice. And indicated how out of touch the exile government was with the inhabitants of Iraq who have no option of 'summering' elsewhere. From the Janaury 7th snapshot:

At that time it was expected/estimated by the GAO that Iraq's oil revenues for 2008 would be somewhere between $73 billion and $86 billion (the oil prices dropped significantly after that hearing). Mariam Karouny (Reuters) reported Monday that "Iraq earned about $60 billion from average crude oil sales of 1.85 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2008, a top Iraqi oil official said on Monday." Qatar's Gulf Times gives the figure as $60.9 billion and notes this is a 49% increase from the oil revenues the country brought in for 2007.

The government had to make 'choices' and what got cut? Nawal Al Samarrai announced last week that she was resigning as Iraq's Minister of Women's Affairs noting that it was a for-show position that was drastically underfunded. AFP reports today that she has revealed "her budget was slashed from $7,500 (BD2,8282) to $1,500 (BD566) per month as part of this year's government spending cuts due to plunging oil prices." We'll get back to the reality of what the puppet government spends money on but first let's note that a country with over 25 million people (CIA estimate) and more females than males -- especially among the adult population -- really should be ashamed for spending only $7,500 -- forget for cutting it to $1,500. $7500 was never going to be enough for a monthly budget. The US military had nearly 100,000 "Awakenings" on the payroll (a huge number still remain on the payroll) and paid $300 a month. That was $300,000 a month being paid to thugs so they wouldn't attack the US military -- the infamous fork-over-your-lunch-money-in-the-playground 'strategy.' In other words, 35 Awakening members a month were making the same amount of money as the entire monthly budget for the Ministry of Women's Affairs. 35 men. That number is outrageous and offensive. If you've missed it, the KRG continues to highlight -- sometimes slyly, sometimes outright -- how their region at least makes a show (they may do more than that, but at least makes a show) out of having women involved in the government and in governmental function via their press releases. Iraq's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, their State Dept, may be the only ministry currently functioning and yet they earn no praise when time and again their appointments to other countries, the people they choose over and over to represent Iraq, are males. And when it's time to note a meeting with a woman from another country, they generally not only bill her as "Mrs." even if she bills herself as "Ms.," they also tend to spell her name wrong. There's a huge level of disrespect being shown towards women and other countries could address that indirectly -- it would be great if they did so directly, but they could do it indirectly -- by ensuring that women from their country are part of the diplomatic missions.

Let's be really clear that al-Maliki and his other religious freakazoids who think women have no rights -- and that's what al-Maliki thinks -- get away with their nonsense because they're not called on it. Bremer, Garner, go down the list. No one thought women were important enough to fight for. Since the start of the illegal war, when women achieved anything in Iraq, it was because Iraqi women took to the streets. They have regularly been undercut by foreign governments and by NGOs. Undercut? Try attacked by.

When every fall you know there will be a cholera outbreak because NO money is being spent to improve the water and sanitation systems, you know what the problem is. So shame on any NGO who attempts to attack women and blame the yearly cholera outbreak on them. That is exactly what happened in a Baghdad press conference last September. People like Dr. Naeema al-Gasseer are not helping anyone and they are a public menace to the women in Iraq. How dare she blame Iraqi women. How dare she scapegoat them.

Which country is going to step up to the plate and stop babying Iraq and stop assuming that women's rights are 'secondary issues' and that other issues can be 'fixed' and 'addressed' and that after all of that takes place, then they'll take up "the women's issue." In which country in the world has that ever happened? In which country have we ever seen a government declare, "We've worked on everything else. So now we can devote time and attention to 'the women's issue'."? It's never happened. Women have to demand their rights.

And the Iraqi women have. When everyone else has frequently been scared to take to the streets and march for their rights (post-invasion), Iraqi women have always marched. And they are undercut and betrayed by the international system that marks down their rights and treats them as if they are a side-oder and the rights of men are the main dish to be served immediately.

It is past time to see Iraqi women supported by the US, by England, by all the countries who just knew the 'right' thing to do was to start an illegal war. Just like they knew the 'right' thing to do was to take a secular nation and put religious thugs in charge. That decision was made because it was 'easiest' for the US. It wasn't 'easy' for Iraq. And that's the point regarding women's rights. They aren't add-ons, they aren't perks. If the society doesn't value the rights of all, the society's not a democracy.

Iraqi women would greatly benefit from other government's utilizing such indirect actions as ensuring that Iraq's (male) officials grasped that they would be dealing with women. British women, French women, Australian women, American women. And making sure women were present in the photo ops. al-Maliki's fundamentalist government is an attack on women. Something as simple as making the diplomatic envoy going to Iraq next week or next month a woman does send a message and, much more importantly, the message isn't to the thugs, it goes over them to the Iraqi people. They see it and they recognize it because Iraq, before the start of the illegal war, actually did have a government that recognized women's rights. Not to the degree that was in their Constitution, no. In practice, it wasn't at that level. But it was recognized. The US has 'succeeded' in turning Iraq into the Taliban's Afghanistan. The idea that they can now pretend that women's rights are a side-order and they can address it or not is ridiculous. The US government is directly responsible for the damage and destruction Iraqi women live with.

Remember the issue of money was not being ignored, we were just setting it aside for a moment. In 'good' times, al-Maliki thought $7,500 was more than enough for a ministry (dealing with women) to have as a monthly budget. Now he's slashed it to $1,500. But not everything gets slashed. And not everything gets underfunded. Dropping back to the December 11th snapshot:

October 31st, AP reported the puppet government in Baghdad's latest boo-hoo: Oil prices had dropped and their budget for 2009 had to be cut by $13 billion. The Guardian of London (via Iraq Directory) was writing that there was talk of raising production due to the drop from the expected $80 billion 2009 budget to the $67 billion budget. In 2008, they couldn't meet their spending targets and sat on a ton of money while infrastructure remained unrepaired and Iraqis suffered without electricity and potable water. This week they're on a spending spree. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency made several announcements yesterday [all links of announcements take you to PDF format]. DSCA announced: "On Dec. 9, the Dfense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq of 36 AT-6B Texan II Aircraft as well as associated support. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $520 million." And they announced: "On Dec. 9, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq of 400 M1126 STRYKER Infantry Carrier Vehicles as well as associated equipment. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $1.11 billion." And they announced: "On Dec. 9, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq of 20 T-6A Texan aircraft, 20 Global Positioning Systems (GPS) as well as associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $210 million." And they announced: "On Dec. 9, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq of (20) 30-35 meter Coastal Patrol Boats and (3) 55-60 meter Offshore Support Vessels as well as associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $1.010 billion." And they announced: "On Dec. 9, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq of 140 M1A1 Abrams tanks modified and upgraded to the M1A1M Abrams configuration, 8 M88A2 Tank Recovery Vehicles, 64 M1151A1B1 Armored High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV), 92 M1152 Shelter Carriers, 12 M577A2 Command Post Carriers, 16 M548A1 Tracked Logistics Behicles, 8 M113A2 Armored Ambulances, and 420 AN/VRC-92 Vehicular Receiver Transmitters as well as associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options are exercised could be as high as $2.160 billion." And they announced: "On Dec. 9, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq of 26 Bell Armed 407 Helicopters, 26 Rolls Royce 250-C-30 Engines, 26 M280 2.75-inch Launchers, 26 XM296 .50 Cal. Machine Guns with 500 Round Ammunition Box, 26 M299 HELLFIRE Guided Missile Launchers as well as associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $366 million." And they announced: "On Dec. 9, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq of (80,000) M16A4 5.56MM Rifles, (25,000) M4 5.56MM Carbines, (2,550) M203 40MM Grenade Launchers as well as associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $148 million." And they announced: "On Dec. 9, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Iraq of (64) Deployable Rapid Assembly Shelters (DRASH), (1,500) 50 watt Very High Frequency (VHF) Base Station Radios, (6,000) VHF Tactical Handheld Radios, (100) VHF Fixed Retransmitters, (200) VHF Vehicular Radios, (30) VHF Maritime 50 watt Base Stations, (150) 150 watt High Frequency (HF) Base Station Radio Systems, (150) 20 watt HF Vehicular Radios, (30) 20 watt HF Manpack Radios, (50) 50 watt Very High Frequency/Ultra High Frequency (VHF/UHF) Ground to Air Radio Systems, (50) 150 watt VHF/UHF Ground to Air Radio Systems, (50) 5 watt Multiband Handheld Radio Systems as well as associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $485 Million." That is over six billion dollars being committed "if all options are exercised" -- which is a little over 10% of their entire budget for 2009. There's always money to spend when it comes to weapons. And human life is always done on the cheap.


New content at Third:

Truest statement of the week
Truest statement of the week II
A note to our readers
Editorial: Barack backs off Iraq, the Cult showers him with love
TV: Three hours worth watching
NYT goes tabloid
US war resisters Andre Shepherd and Cliff Cornell
What Iraqi elections taught the world
Music roundtable
Michael Phelps Adult Swim
And one little piggie went wah-wah all the way home
Highlights

Brandon notes Thomas E. Ricks' "The Dissenter Who Changed the War" (Washington Post) on Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq:

Sent back to Iraq in 2006 as second in command of U.S. forces, under orders to begin the withdrawal of American troops and shift fighting responsibilities to the Iraqis, Odierno found a situation that he recalled as "fairly desperate, frankly."
So that fall, he became the lone senior officer in the active-duty military to advocate a buildup of American troops in Iraq, a strategy rejected by the full chain of command above him, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then the top commander in Iraq and Odierno's immediate superior.
Communicating almost daily by phone with retired Gen. Jack Keane, an influential former Army vice chief of staff and his most important ally in Washington, Odierno launched a guerrilla campaign for a change in direction in Iraq, conducting his own strategic review and bypassing his superiors to talk through Keane to White House staff members and key figures in the military. It would prove one of the most audacious moves of the Iraq war, and one that eventually reversed almost every tenet of U.S. strategy.



Kat's "Kat's Korner: Tracy Chapman's truly amazing Our Bright Future" went up earlier today and her "Kat's Korner: Springsteen's serving up a dud" went up Saturday. And they're wonderful. Isaiah had planned to take the weekend off ("off" here, he did illustrations for today's El Spirito) but he's had a last minute idea so his latest comic will go up after this. For anyone wondering, there was no news article in today's New York Times. Pru notes this from Great Britain's Socialist Worker:

Obama’s economic plan won’t fix the crisis
Debates about protectionist policies miss the real problems of a deep recession, writes Sadie Robinson
Barack Obama’s plan to save the US economy has been caught up in a growing panic among world leaders over protectionism.
The $819 billion scheme was passed in the House of Representatives last week and will be debated in the Senate this week.
The key elements of the plan are widespread tax cuts and funding for infrastructure projects – which Obama claims will create millions of jobs and stimulate economic growth.
The plan also includes a clause that would require companies engaged in the infrastructure projects to use US steel and iron rather than import them – the so-called “Buy American” clause.
It is this that has led to a debate over protectionism.
Union leaders in the US have backed the Buy American clause. Leo Gerard, the international president of the United Steelworkers union, says that workers have to be “economic patriots” in response to the recession.
But neither Obama’s plan nor the clause address the fundamental causes of the crisis – declining profitability and overproduction.
The constant drive for profit lies behind the housing and debt bubbles that were allowed to build up. It also lies behind the increase in speculation and trading in debt that triggered the credit crunch. This has now developed into a full-blown recession.
Governments have responded with various bailouts. All have failed and the recession has deepened.
According to the Federal Reserve, the US government has allocated a whopping $7.8 trillion in various bailouts and stimulus packages since December 2007 – around $3.3 trillion of which has already been spent.
This does not include Obama’s latest scheme.
But even if banks do increase their lending – which is not guaranteed – this will not solve the problem, as businesses will only invest if they are confident they can make profits.
What’s more, the US cannot insulate itself from the global economy. Protecting some jobs in the US steel industry can have a negative impact on industry in other countries, which then impacts back on the US.
The growing recession in China, for example, has meant that the Chinese government is becoming more dependent on exports and is limiting imports to try to protect its own economy.
This has provoked fear in the US ruling class. Obama’s treasury secretary Timothy Geithner has accused China of manipulating its currency, keeping it low to encourage exports.
Protectionist measures have been used in the past to try to save jobs.
They failed. The British government tried to limit imports in 1931, especially in industries such as coal, iron, steel, shipbuilding and textiles.
In 1929 there were around 2.3 million workers employed in these industries. After eight years of protectionist policies this had fallen to 1.8 million.
The rate of unemployment in these industries was double the average for the country.
The key factor behind workers losing their jobs was not how many imports were allowed into the country but the fact that the system was in recession.
The steel industry in the US today is in trouble because there is less demand for steel.
There are fewer cars being produced because the market for them has dried up. The problem is not steel imports – it is the recession.
At the same time as Obama introduces the latest bailout, his government is looking at how to use the second half of the $750 billion bailout that was passed late last year. Part of this will try to tackle the problem of bad debts in the financial system.
Geithner has said he is considering creating a “bad bank” to buy up these toxic assets, which some have estimated could cost over $1 trillion.
Again, there is no guarantee that this would have an impact on lending. And it would mean the US government taking on these debts – raising questions of how they will be paid for.
Obama has brought in several positive measures in his short time in office. He has signed three executive orders that give workers and trade unions in federal government more power.
And his Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act makes it easier for workers to challenge pay discrimination.
These are all changes that should be welcomed.
But the question is – are any of them a solution to the crisis?
Unfortunately for the millions of Americans who are bearing the brunt of the recession, they are not.
© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.
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Kat: Somewhere around track five of The Good Stuff, you wonder how many singer-songwriters are slitting their wrists or at least tying a nasty one on? That's because The Good Stuff is the debut album of Schuyler Fisk, it's independently released (available at iTunes and Amazon.com) as a download and I can easily name fifty releases in the last five years with huge recording budgets that didn't come close to achieving what Fisk does.

I wonder who you're loving now?
I'm guessin' we won't work things out.
You know what they say,
You can't have it so you want it bad
I'm way past that believe me.

That's track six, "Hello" -- a song you can easily imagine pouring out of car speakers all summer long. A bouncy, number with Fisk's calm vocals that catches the ear with a sing-along melody and has lyrics that you start absorbing a bit after you duh-duh-da-da-duh along with the song. That's when the "I made you hate me" and "you've erased me" lines really start to register. You may be in the midst of a duh-duh-da-da-duh when you grasp this isn't like "Soak Up The Sun" or any other perfect-for-summer-radio song.


Liz Phair put "Soak Up The Sun" over the top with her backup vocals and showed up shortly after with a self-titled album that sounded nothing like her previous work and seemed like a forty-year-old woman trying desperately to sound 17 while including a song about smearing cum on your face to try to pose as the eternal rebel. That heavily labored over (with Avril's production team), impossible to listen to, big label album is just the sort of thing The Good Stuff stands in contrast to. There's no desperation factor here.

Which is so surprising when you start to think about it. Fisk is an emerging actress who probably has a lot to prove (you don't write songs like she does if you don't). It wasn't all that long ago that Minnie Driver was savaged for recording cover songs. Here comes Fisk, and without the Wallflowers to back her up or a label behind her, stepping into one of the most restricted fields for women. Women can sneak in as a cupie doll or a pop tart and, once in the door, strut their stuff and prove they've really got the chops but Fisk's not posing for the cover of Rolling Stone in her underwear, she's not being interviewed while in bed with the (male) reporter Spin sent over. I've yet to read or hear her talking about what line of make up she uses.

Though her voice is nothing like Joni Mitchell, she reminds me of Mitchell. She reminds me of Carly Simon. She's got the same confidence of both women, the same kind of self-assurance about the art. Joni had everyone -- everyone -- doing covers of her tunes and also a huge string of ex-boyfriends who weren't threatened by her and were happy to offer her accolades publicly. (And don't think male artist approval didn't make the critics straighten up their spine and treat Joni like the artist she was as a result.) Carly's path was a bit different with far less help and, therefore, a real need for the audience to discover the songs on their own -- which they did. Both women have many accomplishments to their names and continue to make strong music (Shine and This Kind Of Love being the most recent examples) but think of how many women tried to do it their way and got ground down and ignored.

It's enough to make me half wish Schuyler was shopping for underwear-to-turn-into-outerwear with Britney Spears, getting tips from Madonna about how much skin you can get away with exposing, letting Beyonce tell her about the wonders of having the whole world praising your ass -- anything but doing the actual work required to qualify as a genuine artist.

But then she does a song like "You're Only Lonely," which stands on its own while also paying homage to Roy Orbison's "Only The Lonely," and I toss out concern for where she goes next and am just damn glad she's given us The Good Stuff today. And take comfort in the fact that, should things get especially difficult (as they most likely will), this is the woman who wrote, "It's hard for me to breathe, but you can't keep me, I only showed up because they said you wouldn't be there" ("Cold Heart") and "At least we know we were high but we came down" ("Other Side Of Love"). Maybe she's up for what follows?

Let's hope because the album she and Dave Bassett have produced is one of the great pleasures of 2009. Not "so far" -- period. When you hear something like this, you know it's among the best, you don't need to wait until November to figure out if it'll make the end-of-the-year list.

The only struggle you really have listening to The Good Stuff is figuring out which song is your favorite? Tuesday, Mike wrote about the album and noted he was stuck on the first five tracks because he loved them so much on first listen that he had no idea what the other nine sounded like. I can understand that because track five happens to be my personal favorite, "Fall Apart Today."

Oh my baby please
Don't forget you love me
Don't forget you love me today
Oh my baby please
Don't forget you love me
Don't forget you love me today

The above lyrics do nothing for you if you haven't heard the track because you really need to hear the guitar and hear the vocal. And that's one of the problems with an independent release, getting the sound out -- and not just the word.

Fortunately, you can visit Schuyler Fisk's MySpace page and hear two of the tracks from the album (plus a third track that's not on the album) for free. If you listen, I'm pretty sure you'll be downloading (from iTunes or Amazon) shortly and then attempting to play The Good Stuff for as many friends as you can round up.

Hello, it's me again,
It's three days now
You've been in my dreams.
And I don't know,
I guess you've just been on my mind.
I don't know,
I guess I think about you all the time.

I have no idea who the "you" in "Hello" is, but my "you" that I think of when listening to that song is the album itself. And I picture this seeping into a generation, like a dream, like Sarah McLachlan's Surfacing did a decade ago.

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Yesterday's snapshot includes:

Today Thomas E. Ricks reminded everyone, "Remember the elections a couple of years ago, puple fingers, people coming out? Followed by a civil war. So I think there's a lot of reasons that Iraq '09 is going to be very tough and harder, in fact, than the last year of Bush's war. And I think there's a good chance that Obama's war in Iraq will last longer than Bush's war." We'll come back to Ricks and that CBS interview in a minute.
[. . .]
"I think there are a lot of reasons Iraq '09 is going to be very tough and, in fact, harder than the last year of Bush's war. And I think there is a good chance that Obama's war in Iraq will last longer than Bush's war." That's Thomas Ricks speaking today on CBS' Washington Unplugged (link is video). Thomas E. Ricks has released a new book:
Two excerpts from my new book The Gamble are running in the Washington Post Sunday and Monday. There also are some cool on-line only things -- not just another excerpt, but also a great video about how one officer, Capt. Samuel Cook of the 3rd Armored Cavalry, conducted counterinsurgency operations in one part of Iraq last year. (To read more about how Cook talked an insurgent leader into cooperation, read this excerpt from the book, a section called "The Insurgent Who Loved Titanic.")
Yesterday's snapshot included two paragraphs of Ricks' book on where the top US commander, Gen Ray Odierno, he sees the Iraq War in 2014. Today on CBS News' exclusive webcast, Ricks spoke with Slate's John Dickerson about the reclassification game -- Barack's promised on the campaign trail that he would withdraw "combat" troops within 16 months of being sworn into office -- and noted "there is no pacifisitic branch of the US Army." He detailed the realities everyone tries to avoid, "Newsflash for Obama, there is no such thing as non-combat troops."

For those who can't stream online, Michelle Levi's "Thomas Ricks: Obama’s Iraq War Will Be Long" (CBS News) is a write up of the interview. Excerpt:

Dickerson then turned to Afghanistan, asking what effect ground conditions in Iraq have on its neighboring battleground. "The odd thing about Barack Obama’s promise to get troops out of Iraq so that he can use them in Afghanistan is that it is not a departure from Bush, it is a continuation of Bush," Ricks said. "It's the same unwarranted optimism."

Also NPR's Fresh Air featured Thomas E. Ricks as their guest Monday. Sunday's Washington Post will have Ricks' "The war in Iraq isn't over. The main events may not even have happened yet:"

In October 2008, as I was finishing my latest book on the Iraq war, I visited the Roman Forum during a stop in Italy. I sat on a stone wall on the south side of the Capitoline Hill and studied the two triumphal arches at either end of the Forum, both commemorating Roman wars in the Middle East.
To the south, the Arch of Titus, completed in 81 A.D., honors victories in Egypt and Jerusalem. To the north, the Arch of Septimius Severus, built 122 years later, celebrates triumphant campaigns in Mesopotamia. The structures brought home a sad realization: It's simply unrealistic to believe that the U.S. military will be able to pull out of the Middle East.
It was a week when U.S. forces had engaged in combat in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan -- a string of countries stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean -- following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, the Romans and the British. For thousands of years, it has been the fate of the West's great powers to become involved in the region's politics. Since the Suez Crisis of 1956, when British and French influence suffered a major reduction, it has been the United States' turn to take the lead there. And sitting on that wall, it struck me that the more we talk about getting out of the Middle East, the more deeply we seem to become engaged in it.
President Obama campaigned on withdrawing from Iraq, but even he has talked about a post-occupation force. The widespread expectation inside the U.S. military is that we will have tens of thousands of troops there for years to come. Indeed, in his last interview with me last November, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told me that he would like to see about 30,000 troops still there in 2014 or 2015.
Yet many Americans seem to think that the war, or at least our part in it, is close to being wrapped up. When I hear that, I worry. I think of a phrase that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz often used in the winter of 2003, before the invasion: "Hard to imagine." It was hard to imagine, he would tell members of Congress, the media and other skeptics, that the war would last as long as they feared, or that it could cost as much as all that, or that it might require so many troops. I worry now that we are once again failing to imagine what we have gotten ourselves into and how much more we will have to pay in blood, treasure, prestige and credibility.
I don't think the Iraq war is over, and I worry that there is more to come than any of us suspect.

On the front page of the New York Times today, Steven Lee Myers offers "A New Role for Iraqi Militants: Patrons of the Arts" which is a feature article and does not belong on the front page or in the news section. Excerpt:

This week in Baghdad, the city once terrorized by those killings, Sheik Mazin mingled in a white-walled art gallery as the patron of an exhibition of paintings and sculptures that would not, exactly, be out of place in Chelsea or SoHo: abstract art, expressionist paintings and conceptual works larded with symbols of Iraq's ancient history and today's reality.
The goal was "to show the entire world that we are not as the media portrays us, a movement that believes only in bearing arms and knows no culture other than that of violence," Sheik Mazin said of Mr. Sadr's movement, which is widely blamed for its part in the violence that followed the American invasion in 2003.
"The Sadr movement," he said, "is also one that believes in ideas and encourages and patronizes the arts."

The natural response to the last statement is to point to Leni Riefenstahl and, most infamously, Triumph of the Will. But grasp that while this nonsense makes the front page, Marc Santora's bad (and lurid) article on yesterday's bombing -- the worst single act of violence in Iraq so far this year -- is buried inside the paper. What's the take away? Front page, prominent with color photo, ARTS COME TO IRAQ! Pimping the illegal war.



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