Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts "The Pig-Pen Ambassador." Chris Hill, nominee to be US Ambassador to Iraq, declares, "March 25th I told the Senate that Nouri al-Maliki was paying the Awakenings -- all of them. Last week the US military said maybe next month. I called Kirkuk 'just an old fashioned land dispute.' Yeah, I'm a moron. But at least I'm well groomed." Isaiah archives his comics at The World Today Just Nuts.




the world today just nuts
comic
chris hill
the pig-pen ambassador
the common ills

UNDER the cover of darkness and warfare, five US soldiers broke into an Iraqi home to rape a young girl, murder her family and set the house alight to cover their crime.
The alleged ringleader - a soldier discharged for a "personality disorder'' before the slaying was discovered - faces the death penalty in a trial set to begin with jury selection Monday. Four other soldiers have already been sentenced in the March 2006 atrocity and the details which emerged during their court martials are chilling. The plan was allegedly devised over whiskey and a game of cards at a traffic check point in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.
Specialist Steven Green told his friends he "wanted to go to a house and kill some Iraqis,'' said Specialist James Barker, who received a life sentence for his role in the crime.
The soldiers changed into black silk underwear and masks so they would look like insurgents and headed for the house of a 14-year-old girl they had seen walking through the village. They had decided the girl would make an easy target for their plan to "have sex with an Iraqi female'' because her father was the only man in the house, said Sergeant Paul Cortez, who also received a life sentence. Cortez testified that he raped Abeer Kassem Hamza al-Janabi while Barker pinned the sobbing girl to the floor. The men switched positions and then heard about four or five shots from a bedroom where Green had taken the girl's father, mother and six-year-old sister, Cortez said.
Green shot the girl when he was finished raping her and the soldiers set the home on fire by tossing a lighter onto a Kerosene-soaked blanket covering her naked body, the other soldiers said.

The above is from AFP's "US soldier faces death for murder and raping Iraqi girl" and Olive noted it. We last noted Steven D. Green in the April 1st snapshot. Jury selection begins for his trial tomorrow in Kentucky. We'd noted that he'd removed his motion claiming the prospective jury pool would under-represent African-Americans and e-mails came in asking about Green's race. My apologies, I assumed every one knew he was White. Green, through attorneys, has maintained he's innocent in the pass. When the trial begins, his attorneys may, however, argue innocent by reason of insanity based on remarks and motions that have been entered. Green was out of the US military when the events were revealed which is why he is being tried in the federal court. The others participating in the conspiracy faced military courts. Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi is often rendered nameless in the press (always by the New York Times -- which really needs to issue an apology and correction for one article ahead of the Article 32 hearing in August 2006). Abeer remains, however, one of the few victims of War Crimes whose name is known. Many, many more are unknown. In fact, there's a military court hearing a case right now where the attorney (what a proud moment) for the defense has argued, among other things, that the fact that the dead man (Iraqi) has no known name mitigates the 'incident.' It matters when victims are named and it matters when they're not. When they're given names, they are people that the world can relate to. When their rendered nameless, they are faceless, they are unknowns. The decision by the New York Times not to name Abeer wasn't an accidental one. It was as intentional as that ridiculous article they published ahead of the August 2006 Article 32 hearing which was nothing but propaganda for the defense -- the defense which has since either all confessed or been convicted. Not a proud for the paper of record, not a proud moment for the US military, not a proud for the US government, not a proud for those of us who are US citizens.

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 4261 and tonight? 4266. Today the US military announced: "TIKRIT, Iraq – A U.S. Coalition forces Soldier died as a result of operations in Diyala province, Iraq, April 5. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin and release by the Department of Defense." For those paying attention, that's three deaths announced in three days. Sort of a slap upside the face to all the 'reporters' writing their 'deaths have trended down' stories on April 1st and April 2nd. They know who they are and, thing is, so do we.



Turning to some of the violence reported today . . .

Bombings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 police officer killed in Samarra by either "a thermal charge or an armour-penetraing grenade" (four more were wounded), a Falluja roadside bombing which claimed the life of 1 police officer and left another wounded, a second Falluja roadside bombing resulted in one police officer being injured, a Kirkuk roadside bombing which wounded seven people, a Mosul roadside bombing which claimed the life of 1 "small boy" and left his mother wounded, one al Jazair (Ninevah Province) grenade attack which injured one Iraqi soldier and one Mailyah (Ninevah Province) grenade attack which injured another Iraqi soldier. Reuters notes two Baghdad home bombings which claimed the life of 1 man and left two women injured -- one home was of a Sahwa leader and "It was not clear if the target was the 'Sahwa' leader's house."


Shootings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Dr. Yasir Khdaiyir ("well known surgeon") was assassinated Saturday night in Baghdad, the Ministry of the Interior's Brig Gen Ahmed Kathum Breesem was shot dead in Baghdad tonight, a Sahwa ("Awakening") was shot dead in Baquba (in the latest of continual attacks on Sahwa) and 1 Peshmerga (Kurdish security forces) was shot dead in Kirkuk City, 1 person shot dead in Mosul.

Corpses?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 corpse was discovered in Mosul "late Saturday" ("body covered with evidence of torture").

Yesterday morning's second entry. Two things, I put a correction in the post. I'd missed
Rod Nordland "Ex-Blackwater Workers May Return to Iraq Jobs" in Saturday's paper (Elaine addressed the article Friday night). That was my mistake, my apologies. (Including to Rod Nordland.) Second, the same entry included this: "Wisam Mohammed and Khalid al-Ansary (Reuters) report that gays are being targeted in Baghdad, with four corpses discovered March 25th and 2 gay men were murdered Thursday 'after clerics urged a crackdown'." The attacks on the LGBT community has actually gotten some press. Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reports the two were first "disowned" (by their homophobic and hateful families) and "The shootings came after a tribal meeting was held and the members decided to go after the victims." Tawfeeq reports the other were also disowned (and gives the date of their deaths as March 26th) and
states a cafe in Sadr City was torched when it was said to be an LGBT hangout in Baghdad. Billie points out that the Dallas Morning News wrote a brief on the topic. UPI summarizes Tawfeeq's report. AFP reports that the two corpses discovered Thursday "had pieces of paper attached on which was written the word 'Pervert" and that the two men were aged sixteen and eighteen and had also had "their arms and legs broken". In addition, AFP reports another man presumed to be gay was found on Friday -- which would bring the toll to seven -- and this follows Sheikh Jassem al-Muatairi's 'inspiring' sermon denouncing "new private practices by some men who dress like women, who are effeminate. I call on families to prevent their children from following such a lifestyle." And I call on the heavens to rebuke Sheiky asshole who is clearly in the midst of his own sexual denial leading him to launch attacks on others and encourage their murders. Hate preachers should be locked away -- they're the real indecency.

And these are the people the US government put in charge, these thugs and fundamentalists. That is in part why you had the "brain drain" to begin with -- educated people fleeing Iraq after the thugs were put in positions of power. Before the US invasion, Baghdad, Mosul and Basra were all said to have active LGBT communities. After? They had to go into hiding. Why was that? Because the people the US put in charge were worse than Saddam Hussein. They attacked the rights of the LGBT and they destroyed the rights of women. Iraq was the most advanced of the MidEast countries when it came to women. There were many women doctors, police officers, government workers, you name it. Women had rights. The US undid that and undid it because they thought getting in bed with Shi'ite fundamentalists thugs would mean thse thugs would 'whip' the Iraqi population into obedience and the US and other nations could quickly take part in the tag sale on Iraqi assets. People are suffering for the US government's greed. People are dying because of it.

Easing into the topic of the "Daughters of Iraq." These are women paid 20% less than their male counterparts -- although whether anyone gets paid or not these days is a matter of immense confusion. But when both were on the US payrolls and both were doing the exact same job, the US government thought it was okay to further the attacks on Iraqi women by paying them 20% less than Iraqi males for doing the exact same jobs. And then people want to wonder how Iraq became more sexist and more hostile to women's rights? Patterned behavior. Again, women were police officers in Iraq prior to the US-led and started illegal war. And now? Aseel Kami (Reuters) reports:

In her old Baghdad house, policewoman Bushra Kadhem serves breakfast to her children, finishes her tea and readies herself for a day manning checkpoints in one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Kadhem, 43, became one of Iraq's first policewomen in 2005, joining when an insurgency raged and militants made a point of targeting recruits in the fledgling security forces. Being at the wrong checkpoint at the wrong time meant death.
Now, with violence falling across Iraq, Kadhem says she faces a more persistent challenge: persuading a conservative husband and society at large to accept her choice of career.
"We have to change the perception of women which says they should stay at home or only do certain kinds of work," she said. "At the beginning female policewomen were seen as a very odd phenomenon, but I hope society can progress beyond this."

We started with the report of War Crimes and we begin winding down with this from Corinne Reilly's "U.S. soldier charged in contractor's slaying in Iraq" (McClatchy Newspapers):

A U.S. soldier has been charged with murdering a foreign contractor at an American base in Taji, Iraq, the military said Sunday.
Pfc. Carl T. Stovall III, a 25-year-old soldier from Kennesaw, Ga., is accused of shooting the foreign laborer on March 26, the military said in a written statement. Military prosecutors handed down the murder charge Saturday.
Stovall's unit has been in Iraq less than a month, said a military spokesman, Master Sgt. Nicholas Conner. He declined to provide any more details about the shooting.

Kat's "Kat's Korner: When you build your house . . ." went up earlier today and Isaiah's latest comic goes up after this. He's addressing Chris Hill who's been nominated to be the US Ambassador to Iraq. Hill is completely unqualified for the position. Thursday, I planned to write about that but we went with something else for the Thursday night post. To be clear, I am not saying Hill won't get the position. He will. But while James Carville and others think 2010's Dem wins will come by a 'strategy' of demonizing Alaka's governor Sarah Palin, the Republican are preparing their own strategy. I'd argue it's a smarter one because Sarah Palin's is one governor and we already heard through 2008 how 'small' and 'unimportant' Alaska was so the Democratic Party's efforts to demonize Sarah Palin again are going to look very small and petty. By contrast, what the GOP has decided is to raise questions about Chris Brown. That's what happened in his hearing. The GOP senators were offering carefully worded questions, delivered very carefully. Why was that?

That doesn't happen in most hearings. No one comes off rehearsed (mainly because few have the time to be). So what was going on there? Turns out, they were preparing for clips that they can air if Iraq goes straight to hell between now and the 2010 elections. Chris Hill is unqualified and has no MidEast experience. Iraq is among the most important diplomatic posts at this point due to the perception that violence is down (and some say gone -- it's not gone, it hasn't even ceased).

It is a good guess that Iraq will yet again slap the Operation Happy Talkers in the face and this time the GOP's the one prepared to benefit from such an event. They're going to attack if that happens (I think it will happen) and they're not MoveOn. Meaning? They're not attacking Ray Odierno. They're going to point to Chris Hill. They're going to point to his ambassadorship. They also know that the 2007 benchmarks were never met. Three years later and they're not met. The GOP line of attack is going to be: "Hill had the progress that Peteraues and Crocker built and created and he wasted it. He is completely unqualified and we raised these issues when he appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee." (I don't know Sam Brownback and I have been told his objection is very real to Hill's appointment. I'm not stating or inferring he participated in political theater. I am saying that those Republicans on the committee did.)

I think Hill's going to be confirmed. I believe he's unqualified for the post and, based on Iraq events since the start of the illegal war, Iraq will be the same quagmire where nothing is accomplished. The GOP's going to hang that on Hill. The Dems think they can turn Palin into the 2010 issue and that makes no sense at all. I've been told that it's the same as when the Republicans go after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And they went after her before she was Speaker. But the difference is that Pelosi was on the national stage as a member of Congress. Palin's a governor, it's a different level and she's got no huge impact on the national stage from her position. It would be as if Bully Boy Bush had decided to attack Governor Jennifer Granholm. It makes no sense. And since the attacks on Palin never end, you're begging to create a backlash of sympathy for Palin and you're also risking looking incredibly petty by making a governor the focus of all your scorn. It's ploy based on sexism and maybe it'll work but far more likely will be the GOP betting on Iraq.

The administration has no clue what a huge mistake they're making. The Republicans are not going to stick with Iraq forever. We've noted that here in 2007 and 2008. But by naming someone with no MidEast experience as ambassador to that country, the Democratic administration just gave the Republican Party their out on Iraq. It becomes, "We supported it. We supported the work Crocker and Petraeus did. And we stood firm and managed to get the violence down. And then President Obama appointed someone completely unqualified and all the progress vanished." That will be the argument and that will be how Republicans begin walking away from the Iraq War which is now Barack Obama's. And if the GOP plays this well, it takes the only card that Dems have had for the last few election cycles: That they're right on Iraq and the Republicans are wrong.

The smartest thing the administration could do is announce that Hill is withdrawing his name from consideration, find a Republican with MidEast experience and appoint him or her because that would make it harder for the GOP to use Iraq to score political points. But the current administration is neither that smart or that on the ball. (For those late to the party, Ava and I advocated with friends in the administration on behalf of several different women to be the US ambassador to Iraq. They went with Hill. I think he'll be confirmed. I'm not advocating on behalf of a Republican being placed in the position. I'm noting what the Republican strategy is and how the administration could prevent it from working. Also my judgment of Hill as unqualfied came after his appalling Senate performance and following speaking to several people who worked under and above him.)

New content at Third:

Truest statement of the week
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Editorial: Where it stands
TV: Skimming the Surface
Katha Pollitt, Bronze Booby Winner
The Katrina goes to . . .
From The (Male) Vault: Sexism rules at Pacifica
Roundtable
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No surprise
With or without a village, it takes an idiot . . ....
Don't Steal These Looks!
F**K YOU, MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD
ETAN
Highlights

Independent journalist David Bacon has a new article that we'll offer an excerpt of tomorrow (I'm too tired tonight) but you can read it here. Pru notes Matthew Cookson's "Protesters tell G20 leaders end the 'war on terror'" (Great Britain's Socialist Worker):

Some 5,000 people joined the anti-war demonstration in central London on Wednesday to call for troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, freedom for Palestine, and an end to nuclear weapons.
The march was organised by the Stop the War Coalition, CND, the British Muslim Initiative and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign as part of the protests in the run-up to this week's G20 summit in London.
Protesters gathered outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square before marching to a rally in Trafalgar Square. There was anger at the continuing "war on terror", which Barack Obama is intensifying in Afghanistan, and at the economic crisis that is ripping through society.
Large delegations of students from places such as the University of Strathclyde and the University of East London (UEL) attended the demonstration.
Students at both these universities have occupied recently in solidarity with the people of Gaza, as part of the wave of occupations against Israel's assault on the Palestinians that swept campuses across Britain this year.
Students from UEL told Socialist Worker, "The world leaders are spending huge amounts of money on war that would be better spent on ending hunger and poverty around the world.
Campus
"Our university is closed today and tomorrow as the authorities are scared that we will occupy the library. There are police on campus. They didn't expect us to go into occupation over Gaza.
"But we are students not terrorists, and we have never shown any sign of violence. Since the occupation everyone seems to be really political on campus. We are taking up lots of different issues, such as fair trade. We are spreading awareness."
Amber Griffith-Monk and Ella Harrison-Hodge, school students from Walthamstow in north east London, joined the protest.
Amber and Ella told Socialist Worker, "With the G20 here, we want to make sure the world's leader listen to us. They are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and say they are getting out, but will they?
"They are not doing enough to stop the war. Barack Obama says he will try to stop it – and we are here to try to make sure he does."
Jeremy Corbyn, the left wing Labour MP, told the rally, "Free market capitalism has created enormous wealth for a minority and unbelievable poverty for the majority. This cannot go on.
"We are demanding that jobs are protected and workers are not thrown onto the scrapheap. We demand that the £25 billions spent on arms and war is spent on dealing with social problems here and around the world."
Miners
Arthur Scargill, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) who led the Miners' Strike of 1984-5, also spoke at the rally.
To great applause, he said, "The miners and the women's support groups all stand full square with the movement against war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and against Israel's attacks on the Palestinians.
"We have the credit crunch and the government is giving billions to banks to give golden handshakes to bankers. I'd put them all in brass handcuffs and take them away.
"They should give the money to people to pay off their mortgages and debts. We need a change in the system. Capitalism has demonstrated its inability to deal with the issues at stake."
Dr Daud Abdullah from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) addressed the protest. The government has recently witch-hunted him, demanding that the MCB remove from his elected position of deputy general secretary because of his support for the Palestinian people's struggle against Israel.
He said, "We want the world leaders to reaffirm their commitment to human rights before they leave London. We want an end to discrimination, racism, oppression, injustice and occupation. The people of the world want peace not war, food not guns, medicine not bombs – give it to us now."
Protests
Lindsey German, the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition, urged people to join the protests at the G20 summit tomorrow.
"We have put protest back at the centre of politics this week," she said. "We are told that the demonstrations are all about violence, but it is the police who repeatedly try to hype them up, put on their riot gear and make demonstrations as difficult as possible to go on.
"Politicians and the media describe us as 'troublemakers', but the real troublemakers will be at the Excel Centre tomorrow. They have bombed the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Come to the Excel Centre tomorrow and help send our message to the G20 leaders."
The following should be read alongside this article: » G20 protesters converge outside Bank of England» Police tactics questioned after man dies during G20 protests» Marchers condemn police G20 tactics
Assemble 11am, Thursday 2 April, roundabout at end of Tidal Basin Road, E16 1AD. Nearest working tube/DLR: Canning Town.
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Kat: When you build your house, call me.



For a huge number of readers that just said it all. They're already adding lines like "Well I think I had met my match . . ." For those who are searching a more distant memory or just confused, it's "Sara." A huge top-ten hit for Fleetwood Mac in 1979, one that's never really left rock radio's playlists.



1979. Fleetwood Mac was America's biggest rock band and the country was geared up for the follow up to the mammoth seller Rumors (still the best selling studio album by a rock band). There was joy in some parts over the decision to release a double album -- two sides of vinyl. Wow, some thought, it would be like Rumors doubled. Or squared.



Square more like it. Lindsey Buckingham, the faltering and failing songwriter. Is he really as bad as he seems in retrospect? I think so. By 1979, he'd lost the sex appeal that some had seen. I never saw it and always pinned it off on his being onstage with the biggest band and being the guy holding the guitar. Guitar heroes, sort of an automated response, Pavlovian for many.



Christine McVie was part of Fleetwood Mac as well. Some idiots, like Danny Goldberg, forget that. They take, for example, her amazing pop confection "Don't Stop" and insist (wrongly and deceitfully) that Lindsey wrote it. He didn't. It's all Christine. But he sings on it, so he must have written it!



Right there you have all the answers as to how Warner Bros ended up with the turkey that was Tusk. Christine McVie could write wonderful melodies and lyrics and there's not a rock band (especially not a British one) that she couldn't have held her own in during the rock era. By contrast, if Lindsey showed up with any of his 'songs' at a Beatles session, you get the feeling even Ringo Starr would have snickered.



Throughout the seventies, Lindsey attempted to crib from the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys. He'd steal a phrase here, a line there and try to make it his own -- mainly by taking something brilliant and making it banal. Which is how you end up with, for example, "Monday Morning" and "Go Your Own Way" (think "Monday, Monday" and "Go Where You Wanna' Go"). He couldn't compete with Christine. 1975's self-titled Mac album (the first with Stevie and Lindsey) and 1977's Rumors found Christine grabbing attention with "Say You Love Me," "Sugar Daddy," "You Make Loving Fun" and "Don't Stop."



Christine was already in the band when Nicks and Buckingham joined. She was the band's keyboardist, a songwriter and a vocalist. She wrote her songs by herself. She was married to John McVie. Lindsey couldn't claim any credit for her success.



Stevie? She and Lindsey were involved back then. She was a songwriter and a singer, brought into the band, she's often said, as part of a package deal because the band wanted Lindsey. And while Christine was already an established part of the rock group, Stevie was a newbie like Lindsey and his lesser, right? He was the big bad boy on guitar, right?



Well, no. Because Stevie was like no other. The songs she wrote, the ones Lindsey frequently dismissed, the ones he'd end the decade dismissing and mocking on stage, were the ones that brought the fans to their feet. "Dreams" (the band's only number one hit), "Landslide," "Gold Dust Woman" and "Rhiannon." Songs for the rock canon.



But, hey, Lindsey wrote some good ones too, right? Like "Crystal" and "I Don't Want To Know."

Nope, Stevie wrote those. Lindsey sang on them. And that's how it was in seventies rock and roll and how little pigs like Danny Goldberg still see it: If a man sang on a song he must have written in. By this way of thinking, Lindsey was letting Stevie and Christine bask in his alleged manliness. Reality was the gals were carrying his ass and he knew it.



Which is how you get Tusk. There's one disc worth of material worth listening to: All Stevie and Christine. Eleven tracks and you've got an album that would have performed on the charts for months. But there are twenty tracks.



Christine and Stevie were the songwriters, the proven ones, the ones who could point to repeated chart success. Going into the recording of Tusk, each could point to having written (all by themselves) multiple top ten hits. Lindsey, by contrast, had managed only one top ten hit. ("Go Your Own Way," one of four top ten hits from Rumors, squeaked up to number ten -- the lowest charting 'hit' from the album.) On pop radio or rock radio, his songs got the least spins. So it's past time the question was asked: How did the least successful songwriter of a group with three songwriters end up with nine tracks?



Combined, Stevie and Christine, the group's hitmakers, got eleven. Christine got six songs on the album, Stevie got five. And songwriting failure Lindsey got nine.



In what world did that make sense?



In the cock and roll world of the seventies.



Since he couldn't write a hit, Lindsey decided to take his weirdness and market it as intentional. Which is why photos from this period (including inside the double album) show him with dark circles under his eyes and his curly locks ironed and cut into some sort of homage to Edith Piaf. He thought it passed for punk and the coming new wave. But then, he thought his songs did too. And if the hair didn't have you laughing, the songs would.



"Counting on my fingers, counting on my toes . . ." Trite and with no where to go, Lindsey slapped "The Ledge" on top of the ditty that sounded like it has been 'written' in thirty seconds and called it a song. Needless to say, it did not work itself into rotation. "Not That Funny Is It" was another of his musical disasters on Tusk and, no, it really wasn't. But it was funny to watch the male rock critics lavish him with praise and declare these non-punk songs were punk (by way of Walt Disney?) and that Lindsey was reshaping rock. "Tusk" did hit. Mainly because Lindsey's weird voice doesn't sing on it and also because of the outstanding work of USC's Trojan Marching Band.



The wounded ego of a barely talented male is part of the story of Fleetwood Mac and of rock criticism of that era. What should have resulted in a loud critical slap upside Buckingham's head instead became a revisionary tale of him as the force behind the scenes, the real power. Which is how, after the disaster of Tusk, he'd be able to call the shots on the disaster that was Mirage. Seven of the twelve songs worked. Wanna guess who wrote those? Stevie and Christine. And the hits from the album? Stevie and Christine. Five songs written by the non-songwriter Lindsey while hitmaker Christine only got four songs on the album and hitmaker Stevie only got three songs on the album. As usual, he sang on a Christine song ("Hold Me") and, as usual, a lot of people pretended he wrote or co-wrote it.



Between Tusk and Mirage, Stevie finally went solo. It had been a longtime building and for years before and after (and even today), she spoke of how she just had too many songs and Fleetwood Mac would only allow her to have X number on each project. So she had this huge stockpile of songs, screaming to be released.



If the details above didn't make it clear for you, examining the solo careers of the three singers from Mac will. Stevie got multiple hits off her albums, Christine racked up two charting hits off her self-titled 1984 album and Lindsey? "Trouble" (number nine) and "Go Insane" (number twenty-three). Both 'quirky' and from a solo recording career that spanned six albums -- six poorly selling albums. The press created 'brain' of the band wasn't any more successful on his own than he was pretending to front the group. (Mick Fleetwood was awfully kind to Lindsey's ego all those years he let Lindsey pretend.)



But Stevie went after a solo career and actually had one. Multiple tours, multiple hits, multiple albums, Grammy nominations. Even a three disc boxed set charting her solo career (Enchanted), as well as two greatest hits collection (Time Space and Crystal Visions). The one thing she's never had was a live album.



Until last Tuesday. The Soundstage Sessions is Stevie's first live album (with 'sweetening' added after the live performance -- added in a Nashville studio). It's an interesting mix especially when you grasp that live albums are stand-ins for greatest hits. Joni Mitchell, for years, refused all offers of greatest hits. She knew that once you had your best of, the stores stocked that and cut back on your catalogue. Avoiding a greatest hits meant any real music store had to stock her Court & Spark, yes, but also her Blue, Ladies of the Canyon, Hejira and one or two others. You couldn't sell what the stores didn't stock and keeping, for example, Blue on the shelves, through multiple formats, for decades allowed that rock classic to finally hit the one million mark. But even Joni had to make a concession of some sort to her label and it was the live album Miles of Aisles from 1974, a live recording collecting all the favorites ("Both Sides Now," "Woodstock," "You Turn Me On I'm A Radio," "Big Yellow Taxi," etc.) and two new tracks. The format, especially the inclusion of new tracks, would be followed by many others over the year. For example, Fleetwood Mac's monster selling live album, The Dance (1997), would follow that format as would their previous live album, Fleetwood Mac Live (1980). And as that became the format, there wasn't a great deal of difference between live albums and greatest hits except for the applause and whistles.



So Stevie's just released The Soundstage Sessions and it would be easy to assume that it would just be her recording a sampling of her forty or so tracks that have gone on to become hits. Maybe she'd divide it up by album, offer up two or three to a solo album?



This being Stevie Nicks, she, of course, went another way.



And, as is usually the case for her, it works.



She does two covers, Dave Matthews Band "Crash Into Me" and Bonnie Raitt's "Circle Dance."

At Third, we already weighed in on "Crash Into Me" and what an amazing cover it is. "Circle Dance" was a big surprise for me and it seemed vaguely familiar. I started thinking maybe it was on Buckingham Nicks (the album Lindsey and Stevie recorded in 1973). But that wasn't it. It finally hit me it was a track off Raitt's Longing In Their Hearts (1994) -- an album so strong that the track was really buried on it. Vanessa Carlton duets with Stevie on this song and the vocals mesh perfectly. They mesh so well that I wasn't even paying attention to the lyrics being sung the first few listens and just enjoying the notes.



So you've got two covers, what else? Stevie picks through her solo songbook as well as the songs she penned for the Mac. And the choices really aren't obvious.



"How Still My Love" is a great song from her first solo album (Belladonna, 1981); however, it wasn't one of the four hits singles and isn't an obvious choice. (Of non single tracks from that album, the title track and "Outside The Rain" are popular Nicks' concert staples -- the latter often merged with "Dreams.")



My favorite Stevie solo album is Wild Heart (1983) and it fairs best in terms of the songs here. "Stand Back," the huge hit, is the live album opener and it's probably one of 1983's sturdiest songs. While many other hits from that year can be mucked with (and have but I'll be kind and not name names), "Stand Back" can be done pretty much anyway and still stands up. It's sort of the "Louie Louie" of its decade. And a foot stomping opener. "No one looked, I walked by . . ." Even what sounds like the electronic equivalent of a car backfiring (drum machine?) before the second verse can't harm the song. "If Anyone Falls In Love" was another hit from Wild Heart and here I think Stevie's strongly improved on the original. She's added a bit of a range to expand the original vocal and she's also got some brighter shading that really works. In the second verse, she's just as likely to speak the lines as sing them but, check out the first verse. The live version also honors the wonderful interplay with the backing vocals so evident in the original although there's less call and response on the bridge which quickly becomes a Stevie solo. "Beauty and the Beast" is the song that closes Wild Heart and is the closer proper for the new live album.



"Fall From Grace" and "Sorcerer," two tracks from Trouble in Shangri-La (2001), make the album and "Sorcerer" wasn't one I really cared for prior to the live versions. The studio arrangement of this song always struck me as too fussy and reserved. Here, with what I'm assuming is some amazing work by rock guitarist god Waddy Wachtel, the song really comes alive.



You may be wondering which of the above tracks is my favorite? I haven't gotten to my favorite. C.I. has sworn by "Sara" as the best for over two months and I have been so curious to hear it and so sure that it wouldn't be. I remember a live version from Stevie's solo tour in the early eighties that used to get played constantly on rock radio. It wasn't piano based, it was guitar based, and it had higher tones in it. For years, that was the best version of "Sara." Then Mick Fleetwood did some dates with her on her 1986 Rock A Little tour and I heard a version of "Sara" that had my bawling my eyes out in the second row. This version has those high tones in the guitar work and a degree of the reflective nature of the vocals Stevie laid down when I saw her live in 1986. It sort of blends those and the version most of us know best. And it's not only an amazing song, it really underscores how Stevie is never finished with any song. Her songs touch so many of us and possibly that's because they're still alive.



One of my sisters has two nine-year-old girls. I called her Thursday to check on a few things and also to tell her about "Sara." It's one of her favorite songs and not just because she's also named "Sara." I didn't have to tell her too much. She'd gotten the CD at Best Buy. She told me, "strangest thing," when "Sara" comes on, her girls rush to the center of the living room and start twirling around the room. Doesn't the song have that effect on most of us? I can remember a horrible break up (he went back to his ex-wife) in March 1980 that left me unable or unwilling to get out of bed for the bulk of the day. Done with my pity party around 10:30 that night, too late to go out, I put on "Sara," blasted it and danced and twirled around the room. "Drownin' in the sea of love," indeed. "Where everyone would love to drown."



(We covered "Landslide" at Third, as well, so for thoughts on that track, click here.)



And that's pretty much the album . . . if you buy it. Well, if you buy it at Stevie's website, with the DVD concert, you can get various extras (including an autographed lithograph). If you buy it at Amazon as a download, you can get "Enchanted" as a bonus track. If you buy it at iTunes, you can get "Gold Dust Woman" and "Edge of Seventeen" as bonus tracks.



So, Kat, what are those three tracks like?



Well, what I'll tell you since you asked (nod to Judy Collins) is iTunes remains the crap-fest of downloads. I downloaded the album from Amazon with no problems as is generally the case. To get the two extra tracks, I also downloaded it from iTunes Tuesday. And?



If iTunes was my first stop or only stop, I'd be pissed as hell. I got error messages on "Circle Dance" and "Fall From Grace" and if there's a way to reload them (without paying), I'm not figuring out how. I've got the tracks via the Amazon download, so I'm fine. But that's the sort of problems that community members repeatedly have with iTunes and why Amazon is the download choice community wide.



So with that little bit of consumer reporting, let's turn to the tracks.



"Enchanted" (also from Wild Heart) is a powerful closer to the Amazon download and is really something. I didn't expect to feel the same about the iTunes bonuses. But I was surprised. "Edge of Seventeen" is so strong that I would actually argue it, and not "Stand Back," should have been the opener for the live album. An over twelve minute track might have seemed too much, however. Back in the day, we would have grooved on it endlessly but we live in the age of short attention spans. ("Land of snap decision, land of short attention span," Joni Mitchell, "Dog Eat Dog.") And "Gold Dust Woman"?





Amazing. You have to imagine the background vocalists repeating, "Running in the shadows." And over that you need to hear Stevie ripping into:



Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, you don't feel me now

You don't feel me

Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, you should see me now

You should see me

Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, you can't save me now

You can't save me.



But you can buy the concert. And you should. As a CD, DVD or download, it's an amazing testament to one of rock's greatest and most unique artists. And what men refuse to correct, history sometimes does. Which is why Stevie is the rock legend coming out of Fleetwood Mac, the one surviving, the one standing. The Soundstage Sessions captures all the reasons why that's the case.


stevie nicks
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Today the US military announced: "AL ANBAR PROVINCE, Iraq -- A Multi National Force -- West Marine died as the result of a non-combat related incident in Al Anbar Province April 3. The Marine’s name is being withheld pending next-of-kin notification and release by the Department of Defense. The incident is under investigation." The announcement brings the total number of US service members killed in Iraq to 4265.

There was an announced death yesterday as well. Pity the so-called paper of record fancies itself Women's Wear Daily today. In the real world, Khalid al-Ansary, Tim Cocks and Charles Dick (Reuters) report,


Iraqi forces have arrested two Sunni Arab neighbourhood guards, a security spokesman said on Saturday, after a string of other arrests in Baghdad that raised tensions.
U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters who switched sides to fight al Qaeda in late 2006 have been key to reducing violence in the capital and elsewhere, but many have been dismayed by the past week's arrests and attacks on guards accused of criminal acts.
Baghdad security spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi said the two were detained in the capital's southern Dora district four days ago. He did not say why.
Last Saturday, Iraqi forces seized Adil al-Mashhadani, head of a patrol unit in central Baghdad's Fadhil neighbourhood, sparking clashes with his supporters that killed three people. Moussawi said 32 others were detained in Fadhil, 11 of them already released, with the others staying in for questioning.

Meanwhile, staying with "Awakenings" but turning to PRESS CAUGHT WITH THEIR PANTS DOWN AGAIN news . . .

A number of e-mail drive-bys (including from one paper, not the New York Times) have come in insisting that the US isn't paying for the "Awakenings" and that it's only a few hundred that weren't already under control of al-Maliki's government. A number of the e-mails from non-reporters cite a really bad AFP article as proof that it was only a "few hundred."

Oh, you poor, pathetic fools. Grow the hell up and quit e-mailing me your damn garbage. Reality, every word here was correct. Reality, anyone saying otherwise didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

From M-NF's press release on the Thursday turnover of the last "Awakenings" [entitled "Final SoI transfer in Northern Iraq (Tikrit)"] which was issued today:


Coalition forces turned over complete authority of the Sons of Iraq program in Salah ad-Din province to the Government of Iraq in the final SoI transfer in Multi-National Division-North at Forward Operating Base Dagger, April 2.
Iraqi government officials, provincial government leaders, sheikhs and military members from the 4th Iraqi Army and 25th Infantry Division celebrated the formal transfer of control with a signing ceremony in a palace on the banks of the Tigris River. More than 10,000 men in Salah ad-Din registered with the Sons of Iraq program and are scheduled to receive their first paycheck from the Iraqi government in May.

A "few hundred"? "More than 10,000." al-Maliki's been paying them and not the US? They are now "scheduled to receive their first paycheck from the Iraqi government in May." Now the way I read "their first paycheck from the Iraqi government," that means their first-ever pay check from the Iraqi government. It seems pretty clear to me.

But then, it always clear to me because I actually checked my information and didn't grab a half-sentence in a press report, run with it and make it into a paragraph, into a full-blown story. M-NF has been laughing at the press and the way they've covered the "Awakenings" (in terms of payment and who had been turned over and who wasn't). Doesn't anyone call and check? That was my question. No. And I laughed with friends in M-NF at certain reporters (including one who wrote an e-mail so filthy he should get some sort of Henry Miller award).

I'm sorry your press and education systems failed you but that was never my problem. We stand by what went up here and would continue to stand by it even if the press release hadn't been issued.

With the exception of two Kaye Whitley defenders (actually, Kaye's friends hold the record for filthiest e-mails -- what a point of pride for Kaye), this week has seen non-stop e-mails insisting that the "Awakenings" were all handed over in March except for a "few hundred" and that the US hasn't paid any "Awakenings" in months.

I don't read the bulk of the e-mails. A huge number of people help out and it's not worth their time to put up with that nonsense.

In other, know reality news: Alsumaria is reporting that a cache of weapons has been found . . . yeah, Fadhil. No, all the weapons weren't discovered and taken in the house-to-house search. They also note Moqtada al-Sadr has issued an order for a "Million Men March" in Baghdad April 9th. Also from Alsumaria:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki announced that defunct Baath Party and Al Qaeda have infiltrated Sahwas stressing at the same time that these forces which have contributed to ascertaining security by fighting extremists will not be abandoned. Al Maliki added that Al Fadhel incidents do not concern Sahwas but an organized armed party. "This is a message sent to the people taking the same path as organized criminals", he said.

Violence reported today includeds . . . .

Bombings?

Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing which wounded seven people and a Baquba bombing which one person.

Shootings?

Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Friday night home invasion in Tikrit which resulted in one death (the police officer, it was his home).

From from ETAN:

East Timorese Deserve Justice!
Statement by the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) on the Anniversary of the Liquiça Massacre
Contact: John M. Miller +1-718-596-7668; +1-917-690-4391
On the tenth anniversary of the massacre at the Catholic Church in Liquiça, ETAN urges the international community to finally respond to the demand for justice of the victims of this and other horrific crimes committed during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor (Timor-Leste). Those responsible for the many crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide committed during Indonesia's illegal occupation of East Timor between 1975 and 1999 must be held accountable. The victims of the Liquiça massacre and their families should not have to wait another decade for justice.
Calls for justice are not calls for revenge.
Only through credible trials and respect for the rule of law will victims find closure.
Only through real accountability will genuine friendship flourish between peoples of Indonesia and East Timor.
The brutal attack on those seeking refuge in Liquiça churchyard was part of the ongoing campaign to intimidate the East Timorese people into opposing independence and to create the illusion that any violence arose spontaneously among the East Timorese. At that time, the Liquiça killings were a clear statement that Indonesia's security forces had no intention of allowing an uncoerced vote. However, a month later, the UN, Indonesia and Portugal signed the May 5 agreement, which called for the Indonesian police to provide security for the coming UN-organized vote and for the Indonesian military to be left in place.
The events of 1999 and the preceding years of illegal occupation continue to affect the East Timorese, who continue to suffer from largely unhealed mass trauma. This is one of the underlying causes of the 2006 crisis in Dili. The failure to hold accountable those responsible for organizing and implementing the violence in Liquica and throughout the occupation has created a culture of impunity. Perpetrators believe they will not be held accountable for their crimes and victims often feel that they must take justice into their own hands. These attitudes contributed to the attacks on the President and Prime Minister early last year.
In Indonesia, impunity for past human rights crimes undermines the rule of law and democratic progress. Instead of facing trial, key figures in East Timor's oppression are running for prominent political offices. BackgroundOn April 6, 1999, hundreds of East Timorese and Indonesian militia, soldiers and police attacked several thousand internally displaced refugees taking shelter in the Catholic church in Liquica after slaughtering several civilians nearby the day before. According to a report commissioned by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [ http://etan.org/etanpdf/2006/CAVR/12-Annexe1-East-Timor-1999-GeoffreyRobinson.pdf ], the attack left up to 60 people dead, although the precise death toll is still unknown. The refugees had sought shelter in the churchyard after fleeing earlier militia attacks.
Eyewitness accounts and subsequent investigations showed that members of the notorious police unit BRIMOB played an active role in the attack as did the Besi Merah Putih militia (BMP, Iron Rod for the Red-and-White). Military units, including members of its special forces, Kopassus, were also involved.
According to the OHCHR report, "Although the attack was carried out mainly by BMP militiamen, eyewitnesses have testified that TNI (including Kopassus) and Brimob troops backed up the miltias and fired their weapons during the attack.""The systematic disposal of corpses... [t]ogether with the substantial evidence of TNI [Indonesian military] and Police involvement in the massacre itself, the presence of key officials at the scene of the crime, and the responsibility of those officials for creating and coordinating the BMP... makes it a virtual certainty that the Liquiça church massacre was planned by high-ranking TNI and civilian authorities," the report added.
The assault on the refugees did not end on April 6. Less than two weeks later, more than a dozen survivors and others were murdered on April 17 at the house of Mario Carrascalão in Dili, East Timor's capital.
These murders followed an officially-sponsored rally by militia. Those seeking to provide aid and comfort to survivors in Liquiça had their convoys attacked in subsequent months.All of the security officials tried in Indonesia's Ad Hoc Human Rights Court for their involvement in the massacre and other crimes were acquitted either at trial or on appeal, including police chief Timbul Silaen, regional military commander General Adam Damiri and East Timor military commander Tono Suratman.
In November 2001, the UN-funded Serious Crimes Unit (SCU) indicted nine Indonesian officers and 12 local militia for the massacre. The massacre was also cited in a wide-ranging indictment issued in 2003 by the UN-backed Serious Crimes process. It accused senior officials, including General Wiranto, former Indonesian defense minister, who is now a candidate for Indonesian president, of responsibility for crimes against humanity in East Timor in 1999.
All are currently residing in Indonesia. The Serious Crimes process in Dili convicted and jailed one militia member, who had been indicted separately of three murders, including one during the massacre. Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and brutally occupied the territory until October 1999, with backing from the United States and other powers. The United Nations never formally recognized Indonesia’s claim, and as many as 200,000 East Timorese were killed as a result of the Indonesian occupation. In 1999, Indonesia agreed to a UN-organized referendum on East Timor's political status.
After the referendum, in which East Timorese people voted overwhelmingly for independence, Indonesian security forces and the militia they controlled laid waste to the territory, displacing three-quarters of the population, murdering more than 1400 civilians, and destroying more than 75% of the buildings and infrastructure. Recently, the Timor-Leste NGO Forum urged the international community to "now implement the UN's repeated promises by allocating the necessary political, financial and legal resources to end impunity for these crimes against humanity."
In February, representatives of 60 organizations signed a letter to the UN Security Council urging concrete action to ensure justice and accountability for crimes committed during the Indonesian occupation. They decried "a double standard of justice, undermining the rule of law and respect for human rights in Timor-Leste, Indonesia and internationally." They wrote "A decade has passed since Indonesia's violent exit from Timor-Leste, and Indonesia has repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot or will not credibly try or extradite perpetrators of crimes connected with Indonesia's occupation of Timor-Leste."
ETAN was formed in 1991. The U.S.-based organization advocates for democracy, justice and human rights for Timor-Leste and Indonesia. ETAN opposed the nomination of Adm. (ret.) Dennis Blair, who as Pacific commander, delivered a message of 'business-as-usual' to General Wiranto in the immediate aftermath of the Liquiça massacre.
For additional background on the Liquiça massacre see ETAN's web site: http://www.etan.org.

The following community sites have updated since yesterday morning:


The Common Ills
Sometimes you just have to laugh
11 minutes ago

Cedric's Big Mix
Barack wears f-me pumps
12 minutes ago

The Daily Jot
THIS JUST IN! FEM FATAL OR JUST FEMME?
12 minutes ago

Thomas Friedman is a Great Man
Friday
17 hours ago

Mikey Likes It!
World Can't Wait, Tony Blair and more
17 hours ago

Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude
etan, baby formula
17 hours ago

SICKOFITRADLZ
Devin C. Poche, death "under investigation"
17 hours ago

Trina's Kitchen
Corn-Rice Casserole in the Kitchen
17 hours ago

Ruth's Report
Iraq ambassador and veterans
17 hours ago

Oh Boy It Never Ends
Bells Are Ringing
17 hours ago

Like Maria Said Paz
Blackwater, Chris Hedges
17 hours ago

Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills)
Who will be punished?
17 hours ago

FYI, Kat will have a review up here this weekend of Stevie Nicks' new album. It will probably go up Sunday morning but it may be Sunday evening. (She's written it in longhand -- and it's long -- on the flight back. It's completed and just needs typing.)


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

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thomas friedman is a great man
trinas kitchen
the daily jot
cedrics big mix
mikey likes it
ruths report
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oh boy it never ends

For instance, when you read the opening sentence of Karen DeYoung's "Congress Moves to Set Terms for Pakistan Aid" (Washington Post): "Just as it did with Iraq, Congress is moving toward imposing benchmarks that the Pakistani government must meet to qualify for billions of dollars of U.S. military assistance." What benchmarks did Congress ever enforce?

Not a damn one.

If they had, no funds would have gone to Iraq. This is the White House benchmarks from 2007 that DeYoung's referring to. They were not achieved in 2007 or 2008 and have, thus far, still not been achieved in 2009. Yet the money continues to pour into Iraq.

Benchmarks?

There's really no point in them if you impose them and then forget them. (And for easy graders who want to insist "Provincial elections!" -- only 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces held them so far. They were all supposed to hold them and Kirkuk was supposed to participate.)

The do-nothing Congress . . . did nothing. Over and over. Iraq disregarded the benchmarks and still got money. It disregards (present tense) the benchmarks and still gets money. It gets away with refusing, four months after ejecting their Speaker of Parliament, having anyone in charge and still they get money.

There is no accountability.

If you want to laugh some more, this time at 'reporting,' read this garbage by Kevin Sullivan (Washington Post) and, for reality, check out Laura King (Los Angeles Times). Reality goes beyond the fact that the ad Kev's all ga-ga on, the Turkish ad featuring a lookalike of Barack, actually mocks the US. Turns out the 'Barack' says of a Turkish bank (so reliable) , "If only our banks were like this one." Whore a little and they throw you in jail, whore a lot and they make you king as Bob Dylan might sing it. From King's article:

Obama's planned visit to Turkey beginning Sunday night, his first as president to a predominantly Muslim country, is being greeted with eagerness and excitement here -- but also with a trademark dose of prickly nationalism.
The stopover is viewed with pride as an affirmation of Turkey's importance as a bridge between East and West, a moderate and strategically positioned NATO ally with the ability to mediate with hard-line Muslim governments. For a partnership bruised by the perceived highhandedness of the Bush administration, particularly during the run-up to the Iraq war, the visit is also seen as a much-needed balm.
"Maybe Turkey needs the U.S., but no one should forget for a moment that the U.S. definitely needs us too," said Emrah Goksu, a 24-year-old student watching the crowds go by in Istanbul's Taksim Square.

If you want to see a populous nation turned into a group of extras who exist as a backdrop for the US, read Kevin's bad article.

The New York Times has nothing in the international news section on Iraq. We could go to town on what they want to call 'news' in the international section but that works into something Mike and I were already setting aside for Third.

Wisam Mohammed and Khalid al-Ansary (Reuters) report that gays are being targeted in Baghdad, with four corpses discovered March 25th and 2 gay men were murdered Thursday "after clerics urged a crackdown".

Yesterday's snapshot included this:

Let's drop back to the US Defense Dept report [PDF format warning] entitled "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq March 2009" which we were discussing yesterday. The report went out of the way to lavish the provincial elections held in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces on January 31st. You had to go deep to find out 'irritating' facts such as only 51% of Iraqis voted (many -- largely Shia -- have lost faith in the process as a result of the ones elected in 2005 having done little; Sunnis boycotted the 2005 elections and had they done the same this year, the percentage would have been even lower). Deep in, it did note that "no party won the majority of votes in any province. As a result, most of the 14 prvoinces where elections were held will face a period of complex coalition-building before they can form governments."

You need to remember that, that there was no majority and that DoD said a "complex coalition-building" effort will take place. With that in mind, Anthony Shadid's "In Iraq, Political Ambiguity" (Washington Post):

One belonged to Karim Hussein, known as Abu Maarouf, who holds sway in the outskirts of Baghdad, the kind of place where a skittish soldier can be seen carrying an assault rifle in each hand. The Shiite-led government, he said, is out to destroy the Awakening, the name for Sunni fighters and former insurgents who joined hands with the U.S. military. "Not only the government, but the American forces, too," he declared.
The other view belonged to Ahmed Abu Risha, brother of the slain founder of the Awakening. That same government, he said, was absolutely right to crack down on the fighters in Baghdad and arrest their leader. "No one is above the law," Abu Risha said.
Politics in Iraq have long been facilely described as a competition among Sunni Arab, Shiite Arab and Kurd. Divisions have long beset each community. But as Hussein and Abu Risha's views suggest, at no time since the fall of President Saddam Hussein six years ago have politics been so fluid and old assumptions so discredited, with traditional alliances crumbling and new ones emerging in the wake of January's provincial elections. Iraq's politicians are trying to forge the grand coalition that can deliver victory in national elections by January.

For some strange reasons, Shadid also includes the following -- and does so as a rah-rah: "In a visit unimaginable a year ago, Iraq's Sunni vice president visited a hospital this week in the Sadr City section of Baghdad that is the stronghold of Sadr's militia." Golly, Tone, does the man have a name? Why, yes, he does, Tariq al-Hashimi -- a detail left out of the report. Now when the US press regularly ignores candidates who actually ran in the provincial elections to focus on al-Maliki, that's bad. When a vice president of Iraq is mentioned without being named, we're into some troubling xenophobia. But, more to the point, want to rah-rah, Tone? To do so, you have to leave out those prickly little things the rest of us call facts, right?

Right. Yes, Tarqi al-Hashimi visited Sadr City, a hospital there, last week. Wednesday in fact. And, if you can put down the pom-poms, Tone, how about telling us what happened during that visit? Oh, right, an attempt on al-Hashimi's life via a rocket attack. Guess that doesn't make for the ez-breezy Cover Girl type concealer, eh?



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


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Yet, in a March 26 interview, no less an anti-war icon than Joan Baez cited Sheehan as one of a line of inspiring anti-establishment figures who plowed the ground in preparation for Obama's ascension.
"There was Cindy Sheehan, and now Obama," Baez was quoted as saying in a a recent interview in Canada's Edmonton Journal. "I've never felt that there was any government that spoke for me. Never. But you could say that anyone running for president that has the Life of Mahatma Gandhi in his top 10 book list, and puts compassion back in the English language, or considers speaking to heads of state that are supposedly "enemies" of ours, well, you have to take that seriously."


The above is from Matt Smith's "Anti-War Smackdown: Baez vs. Sheehan on Whether Obama Deserves His Own Camp Casey" (San Francisco Weekly) and we've been really, really kind and we've bit our tongues when it comes to Joan And a ___ To Sing With Baez. I'm really damn sick of Joan Baez at this point.

We could take this any number of ways. We could note how 'brave' bi-sexual Joan gets tons of snickers because it wasn't just Kim and her interest in Kim had to do somewhat with Kim also being Janis Joplin's lover. I'll set Mimi aside because I still appreciate Mimi and doubt very seriously Mimi, were she alive, would have pimped Barack. But the difference between Joan and Mimi was always that Mimi did her own work. She never needed an Ira or some other sap to give her a Little Golden Book entitled Political Complexities Made Simple.

Joan of course thrived on such things and was more than happy to let anyone and everyone else do the work for her.

Most of the time, I just roll my eyes and bite my tongue when it comes to Joan. Most of the time.

But then she decided to endorse a presidential candidate. For the first time ever. And please note, I've bit my tongue. I was asked to. I was told how hard life was for Joan these days, losing so many family members in such a short span of time, her mother moving in with her, blah, blah, blah. I even stared at Joan dumbfounded as she explained how Gabe (her son) 'brought her to Barack'. A conversion experience. That was hilarious.

So Joanie Phonie, as Al Kapp once dubbed her, found herself bathed in the blood of the War Hawk Barack and she had to testify. Sister Joan had to to convert others. So she WHORED out what little was left of her reputation, that small modicum of decency her name still carried, to endorse the War Hawk Barack.

She knows nothing about him. And best as most of us can tell, her endorsement was just some sort of penance for her continued use of the word "Negro" to describe anyone Black or African-American. She always thinks she's cute and funny when she does that. And you can tell her it's offensive and you can ask her to stop it and she refuses to. She's the Queen. The queen of what? Don't ever ask her that, she'll stare at you dumb founded. While many might take offense at many Americans thinking she was the basis for Bob Dylan's "Queen Jane Approximately" (it's not a nice song), Joan loves it. She loves it because she gets to be a "queen" but most of all, she loves it because it convinces her that even though Bob had Sarah, he must have felt something for her, just a little something. She wrote the pathetic "Diamonds and Rust" and he burned with "Queen Jane Approximately." What's really pathetic is she wrote "Diamonds and Rust" about him long after her he'd skewered her in "Queen Jane Approximately." But again, she saw the song as a compliment. It has to do with an oversized ego.

Queen? She's not a peace queen. A peace queen doesn't endorse Barack. Forget Sammy Power for a moment, forget Dennis Ross and just zoom in on Sarah Sewall and how she has worked extensively with the military throughout her adult career. Ava and I covered Sarah "Sewer," December of 2007, in "TV: Charlie Rose by any other name would still be as bad:"

For those not in the know about Sewer, when not appearing on TV to look like an unwashed freak who just pulled her hair to one side, is a Bloody War Hawk. Some call her a War Whore, but we try to avoid that term and just call her a War Hawk with an "ugly" sometimes tossed in. As a War Hawk she operates out of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy which is really just a fancy way of saying she's a Destruction Pusher. There's no place on the globe that she doesn't feel her big nose can be stuck in and should be stuck in. Granted, it is a large beak, a ski run -- if you will, and it probably is difficult for her to contain it in her so-so dwellings, but not only does no one need to see it, no one wants to.
As an Ugly War Hawk, she needs a running buddy and, as many stunted woman know, when you're butt-ugly, you hook up with someone even more butt-ugly so that you can be the 'pretty' one of the pair. Hence her hooking up with Monty who currently bastardizes and betrays the social science of anthropology in order to target populations for military operations.
Monty and Sewer teamed up with Mad Maddie Albright and other demented nut jobs to offer up the International Women Leaders Global Security Summit, which Rose was more than happy to promote. 'Global Security' isn't about peace and none of the women involved are 'leaders' -- though calling them criminals wouldn't be stretching the truth.
Monty's official bio by the org notes she's "a cultural anthropologist who works on defense and national security issues" and that she's a professor ("adjunct," not full) at the War Hawk institution John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. It's a threadbare bio but, when you're having to hawk that she published in Joint Forces Quarterly, there's not a great deal you can say about her work in her alleged field. Sewer's official bio brags about her work on "counterinsurgency and U.S. strategy in the 'long war'." It says nothing to the effect that "in her free time, Dr. Sewer likes to bite the heads off of kittens and set puppies on fire," but maybe that's implied?
Monty and Sewer worked on a little thing called the US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. You may have seen that piece of War Porn advertised. Ourselves, we remember the third of the page advertisement that ran in the October 2007 issue of The Progressive (page 28) which included a blurb from The Problem From Hell Sammy Power. When Our Modern Day Carrie Nations is blurbing you, you know you're on the path, if not the eve, of destruction.

On that broadcast, Sarah's bragging about having Barack's ear, bragging about getting stuff in his speeches. And that is who Joan Baez endorsed, this century's LBJ.

She's still babbling about Barack because, apparently, Afghanistan lives don't matter to the 'Peace' Queen. Apparently, ending the war in Iraq doesn't matter to the 'Peace' Queen. Here's reality for Joan and her flunkies have shielded her from it but if she weren't so eager to live in ignorance, they wouldn't have been able to: She can't tour.

Joan toured Canada for a reason, she's destroyed her base in the US. In 2003, she had a very successful tour. It did better business than anyone could have predicted and it was supposed to be the comeback of Joan. She didn't just go to the safe spots like Boston, she went all over the country and she was received with this huge outpouring of love. That was in part for an incredible album (Dark Chords On A Big Guitar) which is probably the finest thing she's done since the sixties. But it was also because of who she was seen as. Her tour attracted crowds and these included large numbers of people who had never seen her live. The US had started the illegal war and people went to Joan's concerts knowing she would say something, she would speak out. And she didn't disappoint. She sewed up a fan base that should have carried her through the last act of her life.

They were there for her. And then she endorsed Barack. She's got the holdouts that will always be there. That demographic? It wasn't big enough to get her a recording contract in the eighties. Translation, twenty years ago, when she was quite a bit more fresh faced and her voice a lot more flexible, no label would touch her because she couldn't move units. Her audience was too small. She worked it up -- despite cat fights left and right. (And cat fights is the only word for it. When she can't, for example, get along with Sheena Easton, when Joan Baez feels Sheena Easton is a threat, Joan has a problem, a very serious one.) Though she'd never done s**t for any other women, she worked the 'we're all sisters in music' vibe during the 90s to try and increase her audience. But it was the Iraq War and that amazing Dark Chords On a Big Guitar album that gave her the chance to be legendary and not just weren't-you-someone-in-the-sixties?

She blew it.

She shot herself in the foot and slit her own throat.

The "Peace" Queen might endorse a Ralph Nader or a Cynthia McKinney, but she would never endorse a corporatist candidate and certainly not a War Hawk.

Joan's fans, the new ones, the ones who were going to allow her to have a career for two more decades, they're gone. They split the second she endorsed Barack. They're not coming back. The woman who stood up to LBJ and Richard Nixon, the woman who bragged that she was for peace and left or right didn't matter, peace did, that woman doesn't exist. If she ever did, current day Joan killed her off.

Now in fairness to Joan (whom I've known for many years), there was extreme pressure placed on many. And the biggest arm twisters, believe it or not, were the losers who endorsed Ralph Nader in 2000. I call them losers because they won't endorse him now. They ran from him following the 2000 election. The beared couple, the lavender one, with the infamous kiddie porn collection (they've learned to be more careful about where they have that film developed), for example. They ran from him. And they and a Jeff Chandler who fancied himself a star decided they were "Political Hollywood" and went around threatening and bullying people. (Their power has hugely eroded -- in part due to the election, in part due to box office proving they're non-stars and in part due to the fact that everyone's so damn sick of them and the orders they think they can issue. And, honestly, in part because the years are giving them bodies and faces that match their insides.) So you saw a lot of people, who quite frankly intended to stay out of the presidential race in the general election, make some mealy mouthed pro-Barack statement.

So that pressure and her own stupidity may account for why she makes inane remarks like the one Matt Smith's quoting above. But when she decided to hop on board, it hadn't come to that. She made her endorsement because she was told it would help with California's Latino vote. (She was already supporting Barack by that point, Gabe had brought her to him. When that became known, she was urged to make a public statement by several Barack Cultists at higher level. Hence her badly written San Francisco Chronicle column.) Now Hillary carried California and carried the Latino vote. That wasn't a surprise. Joan's name doesn't mean a damn thing to the Latino community because she's spent so many years avoiding it. This isn't Rita Moreno who has proudly embraced her roots and been embraced back.

Not only could she not pull in Latino support, she destroyed her own support. It was pointed out, by many, that in the Bay Area, she works with the Green Party more than any other so what the hell is she doing endorsing anyone not of the Green Party?

Her downfall is not unlike Michael Moore's. They were seen as truth tellers, not party hacks. Fat Ass Michael Moore is just an embarrassment. He's always been a bad film maker (for all the reasons Pauline Kael explored when trashing his first 'documentary') but he was seen as independent and someone who would call out anyone. Then he became a Democratic Party cheerleader. Convinced that if he didn't his career was over. He's craven and disgusting and that should have been clear to everyone when he was making 'jokes' about Mumia. They weren't jokes. Mumia Abu-Jamal is on death row and Michael Moore's writing 'C'mon, we all know he did it.' That wasn't funny. And to try to say it was a joke after? How about this, Michael, when your fat ass is on death row, we'll all make jokes about whether or not the first ten minutes in the electric chair would smell like someone was melting Crisco? Will that be funny?

Moore's no longer seen as independent (and his latest nonsense posted at Information Clearing House explains why) and he's not even seen as smart. Sicko should have been his biggest hit. It was an 'easy' topic and he had all the Democratic Party organs pimping that bad documentary. With all the easy publicity, it didn't top his Iraq film. Nothing ever will and the reason is because he has run off his audience. He did that, no one else. Now he may be able to have the level of 'success' Robert does (Robert Greenwald) in the future, but Robert's not box office. And Moore really isn't anymore either. He could have been the Hitchcock of documentaries (he certainly had the vanity for it) but instead he became a Democratic Party cheerleader.

Reality for Joan and Michael, the country has more non-Democrats than it does Democrats. That's not to say "more Republicans."


Check the voting records. See who shows up of those eligible -- not just those registered. A huge portion of Americans are not interested in the yes-you-did-no-you-didn't partisan shouting that passes for political dialogue in this country.

Joan and Michael could have been embraced by Democrats and Republicans and by those who were Greens, independents, swing-voters, etc as well as those who did not wish to participate in the election system in this country. Instead they allowed themselves to be turned into Democratic Party hacks. There's really no career in that or in being a Republican party hack. Find a Democratic Party hack with a career and chances are she (or he, but usually she) has a large, large gay following (meaning she's a gay icon). Otherwise?

There's really no career. And it's not that America abhors politics, it's that they don't care for hacks. Opposing the illegal war was never going to be a kiss of death career move. It was brave and even those who might disagree with you, could still respect you. (Provided you didn't go to Baghdad and deliver speeches asking for US soldiers to defect.) Because as Americans, we are taught to respect that brave stand. We don't all do that but enough of us do that someone taking a brave stand on the Iraq War didn't have to worry about a career ending. (Equally true is that taking a brave stand can turn a minor act into one with a lengthy career, much longer than would have taken place otherwise.)

But there are brave stands and there is cheerleading. Michael Moore's columns are 'wonderful, wonderful Dems.' His latest nonsense is praising the firing of the head of GM and, thing is, no intelligent person reading that column will not immediately wonder, "If Bush had done this would Moore be praising it or calling it a huge abuse of presidential power?" When that happens, you've lost your credibility. Truth tellers should never attempt to be party organs, it is the, roll credits, end.

This wasn't the planned entry. The planned entry was going to be about why Republicans in the Senate want Chris Hill to be the new ambassador. I may go into that in tomorrow's snapshot but may save it for Sunday night instead. But if the press trying to present Joan and Cindy Sheehan as two voices of peace with conflicting messages then it's important to stress that Joan's not a voice of peace and hasn't been for some time. She's a Barack cheerleader. That's all she is. And, no, Joan, it doesn't make up for using the term "Negro." You need to drop it, it's offensive.

It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)

Last Thursday, ICCC's number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war was 4259. Tonight? 4263.

iraq
i hate the war
the ballet
cindy sheehan
joan baez
michael moore

Thursday, April 2, 2009.  Chaos and violence continue, Iraq's LGBT community remains under attack, Gareth Porter reports on the assaults on the "Awakenings," a new DoD report spins 'progress' and more.   As Gather notes today, "Gays are now apparently going to be executed in Iraq, for the 'crime' of being gay.  How nice that the neocons instilled that form of vicious hatred into this fledging experiment of theirs."  Kilian Melloy (Boston's The Edge) reports:   The country Iraq, liberated by U.S. forces and purportedly on the road to democracy, is set to execute more than 100 prisoners accused of the crime of homosexuality, says a GLBT group headed by an exiled Iraqi gay man. The charge comes from Iraqi LGBT, which is run from London by exiled gay Iraqi Ali Hili, according to a March 31 article posted at UK Gay News.      Hili claims that the prisoners face execution from the Iraqi government in groups of 20 starting this week.          A total of 128 Iraqis accused of being gay face death.   The group has posted a petition at its Web site to protest the reportedly imminent executions, and has issued an appeal to the United Kingdom and to the UN's Human Rights Commission to exert political pressure on the Iraqi government to stop the executions from taking place.          Kelvin Lynch (San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Examiner) notes, "The men were all convicted and sentenced to death by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI), which the group says ignores international standards against torture, and consistently falls short of giving those arrested a fair trial."  Lez Get Real posts a video chronicling the targeting of Iraq's LGTBT community.  Over photos, the following text appears:   Amar, abducted and shot in the back of the head (2006) Ameer, abducted by militias and found shot dead (2006) Emad, lived as a woman and was crushed to death (2006) Hosam, found shot dead (2006) Khalid, taken by police. His family collected his body a week later (2006) Othman, abducted and strangeled to death (2006) Haydar, a transgender person, beaten and burned to death by Badr militias (2005) Karar, killed and set alight by Badr militias (2006) Men [3] suspected of being gay gunned down (2006)   In another section, Peter Tatchell explains, "Wathiq, age 29, a gay archietect, was kidnapped in Baghdad.  Soon after, the Badr militia sent his parents death threats accusing them of allowing their son to lead a gay life and demanding an eleven-thousand pound ransom.  The parents paid the money, thinking it would save Wathiq's life but he was found dead a few days later with his body mutilated and his head cut off."  At Change.org, Michael Jones observes, "If true, this is shocking, and quite possibly one of the gravest consequences of the Bush administration's War in Iraq. Groups like Amnesty International have called for investigations into executions in Iraq based on sexual orientation discrimination, but sadly little has been done to address LGBT discrimination in Iraq. If LGBT people are being systematically murdered in Iraq, it's something the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress need to address. The U.S. government shouldn't be in the business of propping up administrations around the globe that execute people because of their sexual orientation. We've created an action here where you can write your members of Congress, express concern about the reports coming out of Iraq that people are being executed simply because they are LGBT, and ask them to investigate these atrocious killings."    Investigate the killings?  What might happen if all the killings in Iraq were investigated?  January 16, 2008 snapshot included this: "Today the US military announced: 'Three Multi-National -- North Soldiers were killed by small arms fire while conducting operations in Salah ad Din province Jan. 16. Additionally, two other Soldiers were wounded and evacuated to a Coalition hospital'." ICCC notes the three who died:   US Private 1st Class Danny L. Kimme  Balad - Salah Ad Din Hostile - hostile fire -- small arms fire, grenade   US Private 1st Class David H. Sharrett II   Balad - Salah Ad Din Hostile - hostile fire -- small arms fire, grenade    US Specialist John P. Sigsbee   Balad - Salah Ad Din Hostile - hostile fire -- small arms fire, grenade     The links all go to the same DoD release which reads: The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died Jan. 16 of wounds suffered in Balad, Iraq, when they were attacked by grenade and small arms fire during combat operations. They were assigned to the 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.             Killed were:                           Pfc. Danny L. Kimme, 27, of Fisher, Ill., who died in Balad, Iraq.            Pfc. David H. Sharrett II, 27, of Oakton, Va., who died in Pallouata, Iraq.          Spc. John P. Sigsbee, 21, of Waterville, N.Y., who died in Balad, Iraq.        For more information media may contact the Fort Campbell public affairs office at (270) 798-9966.           The three weren't killed by enemy fire nor were the two wounded actually injured by enemy fire.   James Gordon Meeks (New York Daily News via US News & World Reports) reports that the David Sharrett was killed by US !st Lt Timothy Hanson "during a botched night raid" in what is being called "friendly fire" and that Robert McCarthy ("the unit's ex-commander") states "he knew within days of Sharrett's death that a soldier had killed him".  If the unit's ex-commander knew it why didn't the platoon leader and others also know it?  Platoon leader Lt Tim Cunningham told Corey Flintoff, "We assaulted through their [insurgents']  position, we confirmed by kicking or moving their bodies, to make sure that they're dead, and then we secure the site around our casulties." That was for a NPR report which All Things Considered aired January 25, 2008 -- nine days after, recorded eight days after.  "Within days" the unit commander McCarthy says he knew what happened.  So why, eight days later, did Cunningham tell Flintoff the (now known to be) false story?  Yesterday, Corey Flintoff updated his story and noted that the fathers of Kimme and Sharrett say there was no reason for any of the deaths:   Sharrett and Kimme cite a list of mistakes that were documented by the Army investigator. There was no need for the soldiers to approach the enemy position in the dark, Kimme says, "there was no hurry. They owned these guys." In other words, the regiment knew where the six insurgents were hiding and had them under surveillance by helicopter. The insurgents were pinned down. They could have been forced to surrender or killed from a distance. Kimme says the general consensus among soldiers he spoke with "was that [McCarthy] wanted those prisoners, he wanted his trophies," and that the effort to capture them was hasty. There was also no reason to assume that the insurgents were unarmed. "Looking at the casualty report," Sharrett says, "we compromised ourselves tactically, and we assumed that the enemy was unarmed, although we knew it was a well known tactic of these guys to cache weapons in the groves and then run to them." There was no reason to approach a group of six suspected enemy fighters with a team of only eight soldiers. "They violated the three-to-one rule," Kimme says, referring to Army guidelines that recommend soldiers outnumber their opponents by three-to-one when attacking.   James Gordon Meeks quotes Douglas Kimme stating, "McCarthy should be relieved of duty and Hanson should be court-martialed."  In other Iraq shooting news, September 17, 2007 Blackwater mercenary workers staged a slaughter in Baghdad. That's the most famous one but it is far from the only one. It is the one, however, that has nudged Blackwater/Xe out of Iraq.   Elaine covered the news yesterday on the US State Dept's decision to turn security tasks over to Triple Canopy noting Charles Keyes (CNN), Sharon Weinberg (Wired) and Wednesday's State Dept press briefing.  Quoting ABC News' Kirit Radia on how Triple Canopy and Dyncorp were in northern and souther Iraq, Elaine pointed out that meant they were under less scrutiny seems Bagdhad, due to the press concentration there, gets more oversight from the press corps.  Elaine concluded with , "So let's recap with what we learned: Blackwater, now Xe, is no longer going to be in Baghdad. I say 'in Baghdad' because everytime Blackwater is allegedly out of Iraq, it turns out they've found a loophole. Again, I would also caution that just because a mercenary isn't 'Blackwater' doesn't mean it's a group of Santa's happy elves out to save the world."   Today Matt Kelley (USA Today) reports  that John Frese ("top security official at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq" when the slaughter took place) made the decision not to take "disciplinary actions" because to do so, he felt, "would be deemed as lowering morale". Frese was aware Blackwater mercenaries were "making fales statements". When did the incident take place? February 16, 2005 ("previously unreported," Kelley notes)and Blackwater had attacked an Iraqi vehilce "with more than 70 bullets". Had that example not been hidden and those involved not escaped punishment, the Sept. 17, 2007 slaughter might not have taken place. But the State Dept repeatedly sent the message that they would look the other way when it came to the wounding and killing of Iraqi civilians.   The challenge for the IqAF [Iraqi Air Force] will be to expand current capabilities and build the foundation of a credible and enduring IqAF for the future.  Currently, the IqAF has minimal capability across the spectrum of capabilities, but progess is being made in ISR, airlift (fixed/rotary wing), and developing its Airmen, with a focus on the COIN [Counterintelligence] fight.  These areas should achieve foundational capability by December 2010.  Ground attack, airspace control, and C2 lag behind with these foundational capabilities expected by December 2012.  Despite its rapid growth in the past year, the IQAF lags behind all major Middle Eastern air forces, and achieving a credible and enduring IqAF will require continued Coalition support.   The US Defense Department released the report.  Zoom in on one sentence above: "Ground attack, airspace control, and C2 lag behind with these foundational capabilities expected by December 2012."  Now how would the US military leave Iraq December 31, 2011?  Is Iran going to cover and protect Iraq's air space?  Will the US allow that?  (If you answered "yes," read the report.) Turkey?  No, that won't fly either.  Long before the treaty masquerading as the Status Of Forces Agreement was signed, you could find various Iraqi military figures holding press conferences in the Green Zone and explaining the US would help with the Iraqi Air Force till at least 2014.  What's changed?  A piece of paper?   The new report was released at the end of last month (March 25th) and is entitled  [PDF format warning] "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq March 2009."  Every two months, the Defense Deprt does an update and sends the report to Congress.  The actual report is 55 pages of text and updates the situation since the last report with the March report covering December 2008 through February 2009.  Information included is basic such as the fact that the following countries have left Iraq since the last report (which covered through November 2008): Albania, Armenia, Azebaijain, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Tonga and the Ukraine.  It also includes problematic sections such as the evaluation of Iran that seems based on something other than facts and that, in fact, really has nothing to do with the period that report is allegedly covering.   For example, the report insists, "Despite repeated promises to the contrary, Iran atttempted to derail the negotiation of a security agreement between the United States and the GoI [Government of Iraq], but ultimately achieved little success in affecting the SFA [Security Framework Agreement] or the SA." The "SA" refers to what the US government calls the Status Of Forces Agreement.  It is what the White House calls it.  It is what the document itself, the document Nouri al-Maliki and Bully Boy Bush both signed, called it.  Why the Defense Dept feels the need to call it another name -- one not used by the US government -- is a question to put to them.  If and when you do, ask them what the hell that sentence is doing in the report to begin with?  Allegedly this report covers December through February.  Nouri al-Maliki's Council of Minister signed off on the SOFA November 16th, November 17th the agreement was signed by US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari.  The Status Of Forces Agreement passed the Iraqi Parliament on Thanksgiving Day,  November 27, 2008.  While it still had to be ratified by the presidency council (December 4th) and signed by Bully Boy and Nouri (December 14th -- the shoe heard round the world press conference), those were ceremonial events and after it passed the Parliament, the treaty was no longer in doubt.  Nouri controls the Cabinet and without his approval, it would not have passed his own Council and gone to the Parliament.  The presidency council is a three person council: Jalal Talabani, the president, and Iraq's two vice presidents Tariq al-Hashami and Adel Abdul Mahdi.  Who would Iran have pressured?  Talabani's a Kurd, al-Hashami's Sunni and that leaves only Shi'ite Adel Abdul Mahdi.  However, Iran was already doing cartwheels public (check Iran's Press TV) on the treaty masquerading as a Status Of Forces Agreement after it passed Parliament.  Any objections or attempts to derail the treaty on Iran's part would have required Shi'ite channels.  Any objections or attempts to derail the treaty on Iran's part would have had to have taken place prior to Thanksgiving.  Why are November events making it into a report allegedly covering December through February?    Another problematic area is their rates on unemployment and underemployment which I was not able to verify with any NGO working in Iraq.  It was thought by the one that the percentage the report refers to might be a percentage increase since the previous report but no one believed the percentages in the report were the acutal rate of unemployment or underemployment.  We're skipping that section of the report for that reason.   The report hails the "progress" in Iraq but reminds "gains remain fragile and uneven throughout the country."  That phrase has been a mantra since the first anniversary of the illegal war (March 2004).  No commander in Iraq goes before Congress without repeating it and no one occupies the White House without repeating.  From Bully Boy Bush to Bully Boy Barack, it is the phrase of choice and that's really frightening and sad.  Six years after the start of the illegal war and the US government continues to trot out the "gains remain fraigle" excuse is sad.  Frightening comes in when you grasp that if something can't be done in six years, it can't be done.  It never could.  The first sentence of the introduction to the report lists US goals and, while the goals change from time to time, these are -- more or less -- the generally cited goals: "The United States seeks an Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant; an Iraqi Government that is just, representative, and accountable; neither a safe haven for, nor sponsor of, terrorism; integrated into the global economy; and a long-term partner contributing to regional peace and security." Sometimes those goals are wrapped in the words "democracy" and/or "liberation."  Those really aren't goals the US can do anything about other than stand and cheer.  But for six years, the US has used it as an excuse to be in Iraq and for how many more years will they continue to use it as an excuse?   Stars & Stripes notes the report referred to the drop in the price of oil per barrell and how this might harm "the training and equpping of Iraqi forces."  I don't know what report Stars & Stripes read, but the one I read stated clearly that the hiring freeze did not apply to bringing people back into the military.  So what's stopping them from doing that?  We'll get to it.  Yesterday Marcia addressed Reuters' report that "basic services . . . such as sewage treatment and power supply" will have to be cut.`   The Government Accountability Office found in their most recent report, [PDF format warning] "Iraq: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight," that "many Iraqis are without water or have access to water that puts them at risk of diseases such as cholera and dysentery, as evidenced by outbreaks in 2007 and 2008.  According to the United Nations, only 40 percent of children have reliable access to safe drinking water; with water treatment plants operating at only 17 percent capacity, large voluments of untreated waste are discharged into Iraq's waterways."  And what does the Defense Dept's report say about the basic services?  Quote: "Simarly, many Iraqis continue to have limited access to clean water, and challenges continue with respect to sewage services and water treatment plant operations, maintenance, and sustainment."  And yet this is what will be cut?  The report lists billions and billions being spent on military hardware by the al-Maliki government, but apparently cholera outbreaks every summer is a-okay.  On electricity, the report noes, "Only 43% of Iraqis feel they have been able to get the electricty they need at least some of the time, twelve percentage points less than the previous ten-month average.  Only 18% of Iraqis are somewhat or very satisfied by the zmount of electricity they receive, down from 34% who felt satisfied in November 2007."  If the Kurdistan Regional Government was removed from the polling, the percentages would be even lower since their provinces have very high averages of daily electricity with Erbil topping all of Iraq with 22 hours per day on average.   Remember those fragile 'gains' and how we'd also get back to the issue of members who have left the Iraqi military returning?  We're getting to it.    Constitutional reform is the responsibility of the 29-member Constitutional Review Committee (CRC).  The original deadline for the completion of the CRC's work was March 2007, but it did not issue its final report until August 2008.  The CRC's final report left all of the major constitutional issues, including revenue distribution, federalism, and the status of Kirkuk, entirely unresolved.   Yes, it did.  And the census the report's so ga-ga over?  That too was already supposed to have taken place.  As with the Constitution reform, these dates just pass and yet the US continues to want to hail 'progress.'  (During the period of review, the Speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, was forced out of his job -- December 23rd -- and there is still no one in that position.  The 'report' handles it by stating he resigned.  A very simplistic version of the events which went down.)  So there's a sort of show-progress or non-progress, what does that have to do with the military.  Paul Bremer de-Baathified Iraq.  He drove the Baathists out.  One of the benchmarks the US White House devised for Iraq (which was never met) was for the Baathists to be brought back in -- a kind of de-de-Baathify.  The DoD report notes, "Despite the January 2008 passage of the Accountability and Justice Law, the GoI has not begun implementation.  The Council of Ministers (CoM) has yet to nominate the individuals to head the new De-Ba'athification Commission, leaving the original Coalition Provisional Authority-appointed commission in place, but with no authority."  No, there's been no progress.  Nouri al-Maliki signed off on Bush's benchmarks, agreeing to them, and then did nothing.  The law referred to, even if implemented, has no oversight mechanism to ensure that it's working.  But it's not been implemented.  So those who served in the military prior to the 2003 invasion can't be easily brought back in.  Bremer purged the Baathists from the government.  It should be pointed out that Nouri al-Maliki and his toadies love to scream "Baathist!" whenever they target a Sunni and claim some conspiracy/coup.  Nouri doesn't want the Baathists back in and that's why there's been no progress on this issue.  Just as he doesn't want to absorb the "Awakening" Council members.    The report notes that he agreed to absorb 20% of the 94,000 "Awakenings" within the Iraqi Security Forces.  The others would be considered for civil service jobs or for training for other jobs.  Considered.  Only 20% -- despite the nonsense the Guardian of 'London' -- see Rebecca's post last night -- and AFP have been reporting -- were pledged to be given jobs.  Not all.  He doesn't want the "Awakenings" and he doesn't want the Baathists. Over the weekend, Nouri launched another attack on the "Awakenings."  Gareth Porter (IPS via CounterPunch) reports:   Despite reported U.S. efforts to reassure Sunnis that they are not being abandoned to repression by the Shi'a government, the U.S.-assisted operation against Sunni militiamen protesting the arrest of Adel al-Mashadani in the Fadhil neighbourhood has already prompted threats by Sunni militia commanders in other neighbourhoods to go back to armed resistance.      Given the present U.S. definition of its mission in Iraq, U.S. forces are likely to be directly involved in more such operations against Sunni militiamen in the future, analysts of Iraqi military affairs say.            The Awakening Councils or Sahwa, which U.S. military officials have generally called "Sons of Iraq", were created in 2007 through arrangements reached by Multinational Forces-Iraq with Sunni tribal chiefs and some commanders of armed resistance groups, under which former Sunni insurgents became paid local security forces in Baghdad neighbourhoods as well as in nearby Diyala Province and in Sunni-dominated Anbar province.                    But al-Maliki has never hidden his hostility to the U.S. scheme to set up neighbourhood Sunni security units. "These people are like a cancer, and we must remove them," one Iraqi general was quoted by Shawn Brimley and Colin Kahl of the Centre for New American Security as saying last summer.             Iraqi army units and special operations forces which were controlled directly by al-Maliki began arresting SOI leaders in Diyala and Baghdad, and the arrests continued through the fall.                         Despite the evidence that al-Maliki intended to destroy them, the United States agreed last October to turn over control of all 90,000 Awakening Council members to the Iraqis. The government agreed, in turn, to continue paying the neighbourhood Sunni security forces 300 dollars a month.             What Gareth Porter's describing was known as a very real possibility.   April 10, 2008 Senate Foreign Relations Committee discussed agreements the then-administration was attempting to make with al-Maliki.  The then-proposed agreements would require the US "to take sides in Iraq's civil war," then-Committee Chair Joe Biden noted, and "there is no Iraqi government that we know of that will be in place a year from now -- half the government has walked out. . . . Just understand my frustration. We want to normalize a government that really doesn't exist."    We'll come back to the report tomorrow.  On violence it notes that from Dec. 2008 through Feb. 2008, the average number of "insurgent initatied attacks a day" was 12 but in February it increased to 13.75.   Moving on to today's reported violence . . .   Bombings?   Laith Hammoudi and Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) report a Mosul roadside bombing which wounded five people, a Tal Keif car bombing which claimed 1 life and left three more people injured and a Baquba bicycle bombing which injured five people.  In addition to the Mosul roadside bombing which wounded five, Reuters notes another left four Iraqi service members wounded.   Shootings?   Laith Hammoudi and Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) report the Iraqi military shot dead 1 suspected 'insurgent' "and arrested another in Baghdad.   Corpses?   Laith Hammoudi and Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) report 2 corpses discovered in Sulaimaniyah.   Quickly, last night Stan covered Nouri's cabinet minister, Abdul-Latif Jamal Rasheed, blaming Turkey and Iran for Iraq having a water shortage.  As Stan observed, "Who would want Nouri al-Maliki for a neighbor?"  Ruth noted that the US is supposed to abandon the 75 combat outposts across the country as they retreat from Iraqi cities (some, Nouri has noted it will be only some, despite what the SOFA says). And Mike covered the press on Iraq's new fleet of unmanned drones and he observed, "Because the way I'm taking it, it means that the drones must be weaponized. How else would they have 'engaged' and 'managed to eliminate their threat'?"   David Solnit, author with Aimee Allison (Allison co-hosts KPFA's The Morning Show with Philip Maldari), notes this event by Courage to Resist, Bay Area Iraq Veterans Against the War & Unconventional Action in the Bay:  Friend and filmmaker Rick Rowley comes to town with three films just shot on the ground in Iraq-- in typical high energy in-your-face style. Rick is joined by local IVAW organizer Carl "Davey" Davison and cutting-edge movement analyst Antonia Juhasz to do some collective thinking-discussing about how we can take on Obama to make the world a better place. Hope you can join us!                Please Invite your friends:                 Bay Area Premiere                from the makers of "Fourth World War" & "This is What Democracy Looks Like" OBAMA'S IRAQ          A Big Noise Film         followed by a Public Discussion:  How Do We End Occupation & Empire Under Obama?              Carl Davison, organizer with Iraq Veterans Against the War, served in the Marines and the Army, and refused deployment to Iraq.             Antonia Juhasz, analyst, activist, author of Tyrany of Oil; The World's Most Powerful Industry--and What We Must Do to Stop It             Rick Rowley, Big Noise film maker recently returned for Iraq.            Friday April 3, 7pm        ATA THEATER 992 Valencia Street (at 21st), SF       Everyone welcome, $6 donation requested, not required.   Obama's Iraq is an evening of short films never before seen in America. Shot on the other side of the blast shields in Iraq's walled cities, it covers a very different side of the war than is ever seen on American screens. It reports unembedded from war-torn Falluja, from the giant US prison at Umm Qasr, from the Mehdi Army stronghold inside Sadr City -- from the places where mainstream corporate channels can not or will not go. Obama's Iraq asks the questions -- what is occupation under Obama, and how can we end the war in Iraq and the empire behind it? After the film, a public discussion will begin to answer that question. Join us.     iraq killian melloy kelvin lynch lez get real james gordon meeks u.s. news and world reports the new york daily news npr corey flintoff all things considered matt kelley usa today kirit radia david solnit obama's iraq like maria said paz sex and politics and screeds and attitude mikey likes it ruths report sickofitradlz oh boy it never ends