Stories in America

Governor Palin, Women Want to Know...

2008-10-02T07:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Gwen Ifill,

It’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, the national media were fixated on lipstick. What a difference a Wall Street crash makes. It’s been remarkable to hear conservatives on the Sunday talk shows discuss the growing income gap, stagnant wages, and job losses. If it weren’t for the economic crisis, who knows what the inane topic of the day would be.

It’s a good time to be the moderator of such an important debate. If the lead story were lipstick, you’d probably be criticized for asking “gotcha” questions, but because this country is on a downward spiral, I’d be willing to bet that most people expect you to ask tough questions about issues that actually matter.

The women I’ve interviewed over the past few months are tired of questions about flag lapel pins and the petty back and forth. They’re also tired of being ignored. Other than polls, it’s all too rare to hear from actual voters.

Over the past few days, I've asked women, both in person and over the phone, what question they would like you to ask Sarah Palin at tonight’s debate. These women have dedicated their lives to fighting for the poor, affordable housing, abused and neglected children, the constitution, social justice, equal pay, veterans, equal rights for all, the uninsured, reproductive rights, civil rights, and innocent civilians whose lives have been forever changed by U.S. sanctions and bombs.

When I tell women about this article, they first chuckle, then take a deep breath, and say, “Where do I begin?” You're probably experiencing similar feelings. I would love to know what your preparation process has been like.

Here are the questions the women I interviewed would like you to ask Sarah Palin:

“Could you please describe your understanding of the obligations and authority assigned to the three branches of U.S. government as set forth in the Constitution?”
-Elizabeth de la Vega, former federal prosecutor, Los Gatos, CA

“Governor Palin, 248,000 children in Ohio are without health insurance. How do you stand on funding programs to help our poor and disadvantaged children? Senator McCain supported President Bush when he vetoed SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Where do you stand on SCHIP?
-Marian Hann, Receptionist, Children's Defense Fund-Ohio, Columbus, OH –- Senator John McCain received a 10 percent rating from the Defense Fund -- Alaska ranks near the bottom for providing children's health care

“John Mccain’s voting record on veterans does not reflect what comes out of his mouth. How will you improve care for veterans' families left hanging? What will you do to ensure the VA hospitals give the vets the treatment they deserve so they don’t have to jump through hoops to get it? The VA didn’t treat our son. The number of veterans committing suicide is on the rise. A lot more needs to be done.”
-Joyce Lucey is the mother of Jeffrey Lucey, who committed suicide after being in Iraq for five months in 2004, Western Massachusetts

"If you were to become Commander-in-Chief, would you require military women who've been raped to pay for their own rape investigation kits as the constituents of Wasilla do? Nearly all soldiers found guilty of raping a fellow soldier do no jail/brig time. What would you do to change this policy to serve justice? Do you think this is justice? There are reports of female soldiers dying of dehydration due to fear of being raped on the way to the porta-johns. Would you appoint an independent investigator to look into both this and the claims that women servicemembers who are murdered in country are being wrongly classified as suicides? Why did you delete rape kit funding from the budget when you were mayor? Alaska's rape rate is 2.5 times the national average."
-Wendy Barranco, 22, President, Los Angeles Chapter of Iraq Vets Against the War, Los Angeles, CA -- Wendy Barranco served as an anesthesia technician at a Tikrit field hospital from October 2005 to July 2006

“What’s your platform for issues of importance to Native Americans and Indian health services? It’s getting worse here. We’re constantly losing our funding.”
-Naomi Harjo, Patient Service Coordinator, Native American Health Center, a nonprofit, community-based organization, San Francisco, CA

“Governor Palin, this is the first time I’ve paid such close attention to politics. I was shocked to learn that you allow people to shoot animals from airplanes in Alaska. Why do you allow aerial hunting? How many animals have been killed as a result?”
-Angela, 70, Thrift Shop Volunteer, Petaluma, CA

“Even though the U.S. has for decades been the richest nation the world has ever seen, it has never been able to eliminate poverty by depending on trickle-down from wealthier sections of the economy. Now that poverty is growing again, and a rising number of people with full-time jobs are in poverty, and the burden of poverty falls most heavily on women and their children, what are the proposals to get these women on their feet and out of poverty?
Our country's escalating health care crisis - 47 million uninsured, many millions underinsured and health care benefits under siege from employers - has just as devastating an impact on women and their families as the financial crisis has on people in the finance industry. Maybe more of an impact. Would you say it's time for the institutions that are bailing out Wall Street to also rescue the people of Main Street from our failing health care system?”
-Ethel Long-Scott, Executive Director of the Women’s Economic Agenda Project, an organization committed to attaining economic human rights for all people, Oakland, CA

“Will the McCain/Palin ticket implement work supports--especially paid maternity/parental leave?”
-Sylvia Allegretto, Economist, Institute for Research on Labor & Employment at UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA

“Governor Palin, you have said that you believe that climate change is a real occurrence and the immediate effects can be felt all across your own state of Alaska, but when asked if ‘man’ is the cause of climate change, you argue that it matters not who or what is ultimately to blame for this phenomenon, rather, that we accept it as a reality and move on from there. Simultaneously, you are a firm believer in ‘drill here, drill now’ as the solution to our nation's energy crisis. How do you reconcile these two positions, particularly given that there is scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels, primarily oil, gasoline and coal, is the primary cause of climate change and, more importantly given your position on offshore drilling, that drilling in waters depths greater than 500 feet releases methane, a green house gas at least twenty times more potent than carbon dioxide in its contribution to global warming? If we do not acknowledge that the oil, gas, and coal industries and the consumers of these products are the cause of climate change, but rather aggressively pursue the expansion of these industries, how can we possibly expect to change course and save your state from melting in the ocean in the process?”
-Antonia Juhasz, 37, Activist and Author of The Tyranny of Oil, San Francisco, CA

“If you’re so pro-life, why are you so pro-war?”
-Pauline, 72, Real Estate Agent, Petaluma, CA

“Congratulations on being able to pull off being a working mother of five children. As vice-president, what are you going to do to guarantee that all American women have access to the same kind of childcare that you clearly have access to?”
-Jo Kreiter, 43, Choreographer, San Francisco, CA

“How do you intend to address the fact that an estimated 10,000,000 American children a day go hungry? What is your policy on helping working mothers get affordable childcare? What are your views on the successful re-entry of prisoners back to the community? What are your views on drug laws? Are they effective in stemming crime? Is incarceration the best way to deal with drug-related crimes? How should girls be protected from sexually abusive male relatives/fathers so that they don't get pregnant?”
-Margo Perin, Restorative Justice Teacher, CA

“According to an Alaska Eagle Forum questionnaire you completed in 2006, when you were running for governor, you said you opposed hate crime legislation. You were asked, “Will you support an effort to expand hate crimes laws?” You answered, “No, as I believe all heinous crime is based on hate.” If someone is physically assaulted because she is Jewish, Christian, African American, a woman, or gay, why shouldn't the law provide for an increased penalty?”
-Kathryn Russell-Brown, Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Race & Race Relations, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

“If you were to become President, and then you were offered the opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court Justice, whom would you pick, and why?”
-Joni Eisen, 61, President, Potrero Hill Democratic Club, San Francisco, CA

“Do you have any friends who are pro-choice? How do you feel about women who are pro-choice?”
-Donna

“How would you ensure that U.S. intelligence agencies focus their warrantless surveillance resources on real terrorism threats rather than on prying into the private lives of law-abiding Americans?”
-Nancy Talanian, Director, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Northampton, MA

“Women across the country are battling low-wage or lower-paying jobs while often being the sole provider of the family. What is your position on wages and the right to organize, particularly as it affects women?”
-Sushma Sheth, Miami Workers Center, Miami, FL

“Do you truly believe that the earth was formed 6000 years ago with all flora and fauna in place? What do you make of all the scientific studies on the age of the earth?”
-Bea Kreloff, Art Workshop International, New York, NY

“What is the job of the vice-president? What are five qualities of a good leader and how do you exemplify them? Where have you traveled? Why should I vote for you?”
-Mary McGloin, 35, Actor and Grad Student, Washington DC

“You campaigned for governor of Alaska on a ticket of open and transparent government. Yet, you are now refusing to cooperate with a bi-partisan investigation into your own abuse of power and instead allowing Senator McCain's campaign such interference that the legislature has asked the Alaska State Troopers to look into witness tampering. How can the American people trust you?”
“You publicly acknowledge that Alaska, as the only Arctic state, is suffering from the effects of global warming. You also like to champion yourself as having taken on the oil industry. Yet, you recently challenged a Bush Administration attempt to list polar bears as a threatened species, citing studies by scientists known to question the human contribution to climate change and stating the designation would "deter activities such as...oil and gas exploration and development". Explain these contradictory positions.”
“You've stated that you don't support a women's right to have an abortion, even if she is a minor who's been raped by her father. Would you, as vice-president, seek to uphold the law, which protects a women's right to choose or would you seek to overturn Roe v Wade?”
-Karen Button, Writer and Activist, Spenard, AK

“What are your plans to strengthen services to help women and children recover from abuse?”
-Cathi Martarella, Invest in Kids Education Coordinator, Every Child Matters, St. Louis, MO

“Why won’t you give other women the same choice you made when you decided to have your latest child?”
-Lisa Soldavinia, Yes! on Prop 2, Petaluma, CA

“You don’t support reproductive rights or raising the minimum wage, so why are you capitalizing on running as a female candidate? Your policies run counter to the interests of women. Please explain.
-Loretta Ross, Founding Member and National Coordinator of Sister Song: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, a network of grassroots agencies representing women of color -- Loretta was one of the first African American women to direct the first rape crisis center in the United States in the 1970s

“Governor Palin, I’m very concerned about our country and the impact we are having on the rest of the world. What foreign policy issue is at the top of your list? Not Senator McCain’s list. Your list.”
-Tina, Concerned Citizen

“Do you support the Community Choice Act and the right of people with disabilities to live free from fear of living incarcerated and in institutions? Senator McCain opposes it. How do you feel? Also, please share your plan for affordable and accessible housing.”
-Marsha Katz, Community Organizer, ADAPT, a grassroots group fighting for people with disabilities, Missoula, Montana

“What would you do to support women who are struggling to support their families?”
-Susannah Morgan, Executive Director, Food Bank of Alaska, Anchorage, AK -- the food bank serves 83,174 people annually -- demand is growing

“What’s our responsibility to the promises we made to Afghan women, many of whom have seen no improvement? The situation is actually getting much worse. It was safer to be in Afghanistan in 2002 than it was in 2007. Also, there’s never any mention of the lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan due to the U.S. invasions. What role should the U.S. play in ensuring the safety and security of the civilians living in the countries we enter?”
-Anne Brodsky, Associate Professor of Psychology, The University of Maryland, Author of With All Our Strength, Baltimore, MD

“What is your position on the bailout plan? What do you think of Reagan’s deregulation position? Are you in favor of deregulation? Also, what do you think about the crisis that’s happening across this country? The unemployment rate is 11 percent in the African-American community. If you look at black men between the ages of 18-35, it’s at 35 percent. People are hurting.”
-Jeanette Foreman, Media Justice Activist, Prometheus Project, Atlanta, Georgia

“John McCain has said he would like to close Guantanamo. What should happen to the approximately 250 detainees who are being held there?”
-Stacy Sullivan, Counterterrorism Advisor, Human Rights Watch, New York, NY -- she recently returned from Guantanamo

“As a woman and a mother who has a disabled child, what do you think about the impact the war and the sanctions have had on the Iraqi people? Over 500,000 Iraqi kids were killed during 12 years of sanctions. Tens of thousands of children have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. What is your response to this violence? Also, you say you prefer adoption to abortion. What do you think of the United States’ adoption policies? What should change?
-Malihe Razazan, Host, Voices of the Middle East on KPFA 94.1 FM, Oakland, CA

“You told Katie Couric that you consider yourself a feminist. What does feminism mean to you? You also said you have a gay friend who ‘chose’ to be gay. Do you really think that being gay is a choice? Do you think gay Americans should be treated with the same equality as everyone else? Why do you think the vicinity of Alaska and Russia being close gives you foreign policy experience?”
-Candace Nichols, Executive Director, The Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada

Feel free to share this list with your colleagues. As painful as they've been to watch, we’re hoping the McCain campaign 'allows' Sarah Palin to do a few more interviews before the election.

Good luck tonight. We’ll be watching.

Sincerely,
Rose Aguilar

This week on Your Call Radio

2008-09-08T00:06:00.001-07:00

Here's what's coming up this week.

Your Call, a live call-in radio show, airs from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz.

You can call in at: 415.841.4134 or 866.798.8255

You can also listen live or podcast the show.

*Monday - A conversation with pollster John Zogby. Do you pay attention to polls? Do you trust them? Do they matter?

*Tuesday - A conversation about our voting system and electronic voting machines. Do you believe your vote will be counted in November?

Guests: Dorothy Fadiman, producer & director of the new documentary Stealing America: Vote by Vote

Richard Hayes Phillips, author of Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election - If you live in the Bay Area, be sure to check out his events this week.

*Wednesday - We're giving a voice to the polar bears. Scientists predict that two-thirds of the world's polar bears will disappear by the middle of the century. The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that sea ice could reach all-time record lows in the last weeks of the Arctic summer making it incredibly difficult for polar bears to survive.

*Thursday - A conversation about a new documentary about women and body image called America the Beautiful. Why is America so obsessed with beauty?

*Friday - How did the media cover the week's news?

What is your water footprint?

2008-08-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

We need to spend more time thinking about this! It takes 2,400 liters of water to make one hamburger! Watch this Reuters video:

The concept of 'virtual water' reveals the shocking amounts contained in the products we consume.

The concept can build awareness in consumers of their ''hidden'' water usage, or that contained in the whole production chain of goods and services.

The scientist behind the innovation, Professor Tony Allan, has personally reduced his virtual water usage by becoming a vegetarian!

Op-ed pages dominated by men

2008-06-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

Surprise?

The authors of the study are Bob Sommer, who teaches public policy communications and is president of Observer Media, publisher of The New York Observer, and John R. Maycroft, a graduate student in public policy. They combed through 366 opinion articles written by college teachers or researchers and published by three newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Star-Ledger, the largest-circulation newspaper in New Jersey. Their study will be published in the journal Politics and Policy.

At each newspaper, 90 to 95 percent of the published articles agreed with the editorial page stance on the issue at hand, they wrote, and when the opinion pieces disagreed, “it was usually in a point/counterpoint format where at least one of the authors by definition had to take a view in opposition.”

The study says that men wrote 78 percent of the academics’ opinion pieces in The Star-Ledger, 82 percent in The Times, and 97 percent in The Journal. “Of all our analyses,” the authors wrote, “this is perhaps the most astonishing.”

This Week on Your Call Radio

2008-06-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

Here's what's coming up on Your Call this week.

A live call-in radio show, Your Call airs from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco.
You can listen live or podcast the show.

*Monday - What do the decisions of the Supreme Court's term tell us about the direction of the court? What are the most significant rulings? What impact have Bush's appointees had on this term? What's at stake if the next President nominates new justices?

Guests: Michael Waldman, director of the Brennan Center for Justice
Professor Neil Kinkopf of the College of Law at Georgia State

*Tuesday - How can theatre heal and empower children living in conflict zones?
Guests: Juliano Mer Khamis, director of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, and director of the documentary, Arna's Children

Jujuana Williams of the Destiny Arts Center in Oakland

*Wednesday - Can the airlines be fixed? Is it time for an airlines passengers' bill of rights? Deeper de-regulation? Is the era of cheap travel over? Given the carbon footprint of a 727, is that a bad thing?

*Thursday - What will it take for San Francisco's African-American community to progress socially and economically? Can the sharp decline of the African-American population in SF be stemmed?

*Friday - Media Roundtable: How did the media cover the week's news?

Iraqi Refugees Living in the Bay Area

2008-06-18T22:34:00.000-07:00

Friday, June 20th, is World Refugee Day. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates the number of refugees and internally displaced people swelled to 67 million last year. A record 11.4 million people were driven from their home countries last year alone, and another 26 million were displaced within their own countries.

Afghanistan and Iraq are the two leading countries of origin for cross-border refugees. Afghans made up 27 percent of the total refugee population, with almost 3.1 million living in Iran and Pakistan. Iraqis were the second largest group, with 2.3 million living outside the country. Of those, 2 million live in Jordan and Syria.

According to Amnesty International, the international community is evading its responsibility towards refugees from Iraq by promoting a false picture of the security situation in Iraq when the country is neither safe nor suitable for return.

In its new report, Rhetoric and Reality: The Iraqi Refugee Crisis, which is based on recent research and interviews with Iraqi refugees, the organization said that the world’s richest states are failing to provide the necessary assistance to Iraqi refugees, most of whom are plunged in despair and hurtling towards destitution.

We're marking World Refugee Day by speaking to two Iraqis who recently arrived in the Bay Area. The show airs from 11 am - noon PST.

Here's an article written by Ali, a recent Iraqi arrival:

I woke up one Sunday morning because my cell phone was ringing. The voice on the line had a Jordanian accent, and told me my period of waiting had ended. It was an employee from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) telling me my flight to the U.S. was scheduled in ten days. I was so sleepy when I answered the call, but was now wide awake. My feelings of happiness were so great that it woke my roommates. Even though I hadn’t made a sound, they must have felt a sort of wordless spiritual connection. Although my roommates asked if something was wrong, I told them nothing. I didn’t tell anyone about the call - not even my family - for at least a few days.

In spite of my happiness, I began to think about my last ten days in Iraq. I don’t know why. Maybe because I found myself waiting yet again - just as I was still waiting for a safe morning to dawn in my country. My family sacrificed everything. We sold our house and furniture, spending all our money searching for a new home where we could be safe. We would often settle into a neighborhood, renting a house for only a few months before things became so dangerous that we were forced to move again.

These last days in Iraq were the worst of my life. We had no furniture and owned only the clothes on our backs. During the night, militias attacked our neighborhood, killing and stealing (We were constantly afraid that the militias would attack our neighborhood). Every family would designate one man to keep watch at night in case of attacks. During those days, I stayed awake through the night and slept only a few hours during the day. I was protecting my family. Each night I kept sentry between the gate, door and window. Our door had 5 locks, which I checked every hour. The last house my family lived in before I left was also dangerous. However, it had the advantage of being in the middle of the neighborhood, rather than the end. This position gave us time to prepare or escape if militia or terrorists attacked.

Despite any precautions, I was not reassured. We never felt safe. I found myself waiting for my flight to the U.S. in the same
way I waited for the safety each new morning would bring, ending the darkness of night. I would fly to the U.S., to my new future, and rebuild what was destroyed in my life. I would reclaim my days and nights, sleeping and waking with the setting and rising of the sun. I would put my feet on solid ground after years in quicksand. I would have a car, a wife, and a house with a backyard and BBQ. I would go out at night and walk the streets without fear of killing, kidnapping, bombs, or the restrain of curfew.

It is a great responsibility to write about the situation in Iraq, about what has happened and is still happening. Because the situation is so complicated, I am afraid my words will not be enough to explain things. I’m afraid I’m not capable enough to speak about what’s going on, but I know that every Iraqi wants to talk about our misery and our sadness. I saw this in Jordan when I was working with journalists. I witnessed Iraqi refugees overcome by emotion. They wanted to speak, yet many of them just cried into the microphone. They had so much to say, so many feelings and emotions that they struggled to express in words, just as I struggle to write this story. Iraqis want me to tell their story, so it is a story I must write. I owe them that much.

They will envy me because each of them wants to tell the world what has happened. In Iraq, you can’t trust anyone: neighbors, cousins, or people in the street. When you walk next to a car, you pray that it doesn’t contain a bomb. Neighbors and friends once gathered at night in Iraq to talk, eat, and play games. You can’t do that anymore because of the curfew. You have to cut ties with cousins because they are from a different denomination of Islam (Shi’a or Sunni). We are simply waiting to die. Since the war began with Iran in 1980, we Iraqis spend our lives waiting to die. But things have changed for me. Now I am in the U.S.

Winter Soldier on Capitol Hill Tomorrow (Thursday)

2008-05-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

From Iraq Vets Against the War:

Congress has heard from politicians, pundits, and generals, but not, up to this point, from the average boots-on-the-ground soldier.

On May 15th, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) begin the process of righting this imbalance with Winter Soldier on the Hill. Nine members of IVAW will testify before the CPC about rules of engagement, the killing and abuse of civilians, the use of drop weapons, and the true consequences of the "surge."

Winter Soldier on the Hill will allow the US Congress to be more fully informed about the situation in Iraq through soldiers’ eyewitness accounts of the on-going military occupation, while they debate (more than likely for the last time during the Bush-Cheney administration) the funding for U.S. military operations in Iraq.

Listen live

Pacifica Radio station KPFA will be broadcasting Winter Soldier on the Hill live from 9AM – 1PM Eastern Time on May 15th. You can listen to the testimony on 94.1 FM if you live in the Berkley, CA area, or listen on their website at www.kpfa.org.

More details
Who: Iraq Veterans Against the War & The Congressional Progressive Caucus
What: Winter Soldier on the Hill – An Open Forum
When: 15 May 2008 9:30 am – 12:30 pm
Where: 2261 Rayburn House Office Building

Veganism -- the new front in the battle to cut carbon?

2008-05-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

Going vegan makes much more of an impact than driving a Prius:

We all know the health benefits of a vegan lifestyle but now vegan businesses are arguing that eating less meat can significantly help reduce our carbon footprint.

“Scientists are saying we need to look at a 90 per cent reduction in carbon emissions just to stop global warming getting any worse, never mind reversing the process,” explains Alex Bourke, who set up his Vegetarian Guides publishing company in 1991.

“Burning fuel to produce fertiliser to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it – and clearing vegetation for grazing – produces nine per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide. So there is a strong environmental argument in favour of veganism.”

Indeed, a United Nations report entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow” which was released at the end of 2006, backs up Bourke’s claim and further helps put things in perspective.

The report stated that livestock farming is responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, whereas all transport combined only produces 13 per cent.

“So it’s not possible to achieve a 90 per cent reduction in emissions by cutting back in all the other sectors - the world needs to reduce its meat and dairy consumption by 50 per cent. Now I think that is achievable - world veganism would be nice, but most people aren't ready for it!”

This Week on Your Call Radio

2008-05-04T11:08:00.001-07:00

Here's what's coming up on Your Call this week.

A live call-in radio show, Your Call airs from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco.
You can listen live or podcast the show.

*Monday - What's the status of Healthy SF, the program that aims to provide healthcare to the city's 82,000 uninsured?

*Tuesday - In honor of Mother's Day, we'll have a conversation about how our relationships with our mothers change as we age. How has your relationship with your mom evolved over the years?

*Wednesday - Israel and Palestine at 60: What happened in 1948?

*Thursday - TBD

*Friday - Media Roundtable: How did the media cover the week's top stories?

200-Pound US Bomb Kills 2-Year-Old Iraqi Boy

2008-05-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

This is just one of how many deaths?

Two-year-old Ali Hussein is pulled from the rubble of his family's home in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, April 29, 2008. (Karim Kadim/AP Photo)

Haider Abbas, 10, was brought to the hospital with what appeared to be a gaping hole in his back and shrapnel injuries across his stomach. The boy screamed and whimpered in pain, barely able to answer a doctor’s questions.

“My friend brought me to the hospital, but we had to leave the other wounded kids behind,” he said. “The Iraqi Army refused to allow them to be evacuated, but my friend took me anyway.”

The doctor, Abdul Rahman Hadi, said the boy was bleeding internally. “He needs surgery quickly,” Dr. Hadi said. “The irony is that not one of his relatives has come because he is an orphan.”

Haider Abbas, 10, was brought to the hospital with what appeared to be a gaping hole in his back and shrapnel injuries across his stomach. The boy screamed and whimpered in pain, barely able to answer a doctor’s questions.

“My friend brought me to the hospital, but we had to leave the other wounded kids behind,” he said. “The Iraqi Army refused to allow them to be evacuated, but my friend took me anyway.”

The doctor, Abdul Rahman Hadi, said the boy was bleeding internally. “He needs surgery quickly,” Dr. Hadi said. “The irony is that not one of his relatives has come because he is an orphan.”

Happy Mission Accomplished Day

2008-05-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

"My fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. (Applause.) And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country."
-The Decider, May 1, 2003

Remember the flight suit he wore as he bravely landed on the USS Lincoln?

And how did the liberal media respond?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)

"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNNare going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

Disabled Activists Arrested at McCain's Office

2008-05-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

A group disabled activists, most in wheelchairs, from the group ADAPT wait to be processed after they were arrested in Washington, April 29, 2008, in Washington, by Capitol Hill police outside Sen. John McCain's offices. The activists were refused a meeting with McCain over a bill to expand Medicaid coverage to more people who want in-home care. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
If you need a break from Rev. Wright:

At least 20 disabled activists, most of them in wheelchairs, were arrested outside Sen. John McCain's offices Tuesday after being refused a meeting with the GOP presidential nominee-to-be over a bill to expand Medicaid coverage to more people who want in-home care.

"If he should be president, it would be ironic that he comes from a party that talks a lot about family values," said Bob Kafka, national organizer for ADAPT, a group advocating for passage of the bill. Without the legislation, many disabled and elderly people don't have the choice to apply coverage to anything other than institutional care, he said.

"Families are devastated because they don't have a choice to keep people at home," Kafka said.

McCain was not in his office during the protest. He was campaigning Tuesday in Florida on his health care plan.

The bill, S. 799, stuck in committee since last year, would amend the Social Security Act to allow people who are eligible for Medicaid coverage of nursing home costs to spend it instead on home-based, or community care.

Sponsored by Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., it also would grant extra money to states that participate in the program, according to a summary of the bill.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, are co-sponsors of the bill, but McCain is not.

White House Admits Fault on "Mission Accomplished" Banner

2008-04-30T18:13:00.001-07:00

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended," Bush said at the time. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and still goes on."
-Bush, April 1, 2003

August 21, 2006

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing.

At least 49 U.S. troops died in Iraq in April, making it the deadliest month since September when 65 U.S. troops died. And an untold number of Iraqis have been killed.

The White House said Wednesday that President Bush has paid a price for the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was flown in triumph five years ago but later became a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war in Iraq.

KBR Workers in Iraq Stole Weapons and Art

2008-04-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

In case you need a break from the non-stop coverage of Rev. Wright:

KBR employees working in Iraq stole weapons, artwork and even gold to make spurs for cowboy boots, two former company workers told Senate Democrats on Monday.

Appearing before a Democrats-only panel looking into allegations of contracting abuses in Iraq, the witnesses accused their former co-workers of widespread improper activity.

KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company would not comment at length because the claims are part of ongoing lawsuits.

"The witnesses who testified today raised claims that KBR has previously addressed. The government has reviewed the claims and refused to join lawsuits asserting them," Browne said.

Linda Warren, a 50-year-old Abilene woman who worked as a laundry foreman and recreation director for the Houston-based contracting giant in Iraq, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Monday that some of her American colleagues doing construction work in Iraqi palaces and municipal buildings took woodcarvings, tapestries and crystal "and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots."

This week on Your Call Radio

2008-04-28T00:34:00.000-07:00

Here's what's coming up on Your Call this week.

A live call-in radio show, Your Call airs from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco.
You can listen live or podcast the show.

*Monday - Why aren't military contractors held responsible for the crimes they commit in Iraq, including murder and rape?
We'll speak with two attorneys and a woman who says she was raped while working for former Halliburton subsidiary KBR in Iraq. She's spent the past two years fighting for a trial.

*Tuesday - A conversation with Michael Eric Dyson, author of April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How it Changed America

*Wednesday - Do vitamins work?

*Thursday - On May Day, we'll talk about the state of American workers. Guests include a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The union's 25,000 members plan to shut down all 29 West Coast ports on May 1 to protest the occupation of Iraq. Truckers across the country are planning a diesel shutdown to protest high gas prices.

*Friday - Media Roundtable: How did the media cover the week's top stories?

Laura Berg's Letter

2008-04-27T22:15:00.001-07:00

NYT Editorial:

The PEN American Center, the literary organization committed to free expression, is honoring an American most people in this country have never read or even heard of: Laura Berg. She is a psychiatric nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital who was threatened with a sedition investigation after she wrote a letter to the editor denouncing the Bush administration’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.

That’s right, sedition: inciting rebellion against the government. We suppose nothing should surprise us in these days of government zealotry. But the horror and the shame of that witch hunt should shock everyone.

Ms. Berg identified herself as a V.A. nurse when, soon after Katrina’s horrors, she sent her impassioned letter to The Alibi, a paper in Albuquerque. “I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government,” she wrote. “We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.”

Her superiors at the hospital soon alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and impounded her office computer, where she keeps the case files of war-scarred veterans she treats. Then she received an official warning in which a Veterans Affairs investigator intoned that her letter “potentially represents sedition.”

It took civil rights litigators and Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico to “act forcefully” in reminding the government of the Constitution and her right to free speech. The Department of Veterans Affairs retreated then finally apologized to the shaken Ms. Berg.

Even then, she noted, one superior told her it was preferred that she not identify herself as a V.A. nurse in any future letter writing. “And so I am saying I am a V.A. nurse,” Ms. Berg soon boomed out in a radio broadcast. “And some of my fire in writing this about Katrina and Iraq is from my experience as a V.A. nurse.” Thus declared Ms. Berg, well chosen to receive the new PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award.

Millions in Iraq Contracts Never Finished

2008-04-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

Even more money well spent by the Bush administration:

Millions of dollars of lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts were never finished because of excessive delays, poor performance or other factors, including failed projects that are being falsely described by the U.S. government as complete, federal investigators say.

The audit released Sunday by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, provides the latest snapshot of an uneven reconstruction effort that has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $100 billion. It also comes as several lawmakers have said they want the Iraqis to pick up more of the cost of reconstruction.

The special IG's review of 47,321 reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars found that at least 855 contracts were terminated by U.S. officials before their completion, primarily because of unforeseen factors such as violence and excessive costs. About 112 of those agreements were ended specifically because of the contractors' actual or anticipated poor performance.

In addition, the audit said many reconstruction projects were being described as complete or otherwise successful when they were not. In one case, the U.S. Agency for International Development contracted with Bechtel Corp. in 2004 to construct a $50 million children's hospital in Basra, only to "essentially terminate" the project in 2006 because of monthslong delays.

See this Film: Motherland Afghanistan

2008-04-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

Here's a clip.

Do you think health conditions are improving for Afghan women?

No. My opinion about U.S. work in the health sector in Afghanistan has not changed. There is still a lot of waste.
-Dr. Nafisa Mojadidi

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in October of 2001, Afghan hopes were high that democracy would bring enormous progress for Afghan women in the arena of health and education. But as of 2006 one of their most fundamental rights—adequate health care—has not been met.

In MOTHERLAND AFGHANISTAN, Afghan American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi journeys to the heart of this medical tragedy by following her father's return to Afghanistan to battle one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Dr. Qudrat Mojadidi is an OB/GYN who was forced by political pressures to emigrate from Afghanistan to the U.S. in 1972. In 2003, nearly two years after the Taliban’s fall, he is invited by the U.S. government to help rehabilitate the largest women’s hospital in the country, Rabia Balkhi, now under U.S. sponsorship with a newly re-named Laura Bush Maternity Ward. He returns to his homeland with great hopes that with U.S. funding, he can help set in motion the large-scale changes necessary to stem the epidemic of maternal mortality in the country.

But when Dr. Mojadidi arrives at the Laura Bush Maternity Ward in Kabul, a city still plagued with danger and unrest, he finds deplorable conditions, with limited supplies and unsanitary facilities. As he tries to bring hope to the ward and make the best of archaic equipment and an untrained staff, the film introduces the women behind the statistics and exposes how the U.S. government's Department of Health and Human Services has impacted Afghan lives, particularly in terms of the devastating epidemic of maternal mortality.

After several months, Dr. Mojadidi leaves the hopeless conditions at Rabia Balkhi in frustration. Despite his disillusionment, he continues to search for ways to make a difference in his homeland. Two years later, he returns to Afghanistan, this time with Shuhada, an Afghan-led non-governmental organization that runs hospitals, schools and shelters in the rural Jaghori district and throughout central Afghanistan. At the Shuhada hospital, Dr. Mojadidi attempts to pass on his knowledge to the over-worked and under-trained doctors and to help the hundreds of women who have traveled days to see him. He encounters patients who will test his ability to make a difference, but also finds that despite their lack of financial and human resources, Shuhada has an encouraging vision for change based on education and prevention.

Set against the backdrop of a land in turmoil and transition, this inspiring film reveals the devastating stories behind a reproductive health crisis essentially neglected by the Western media and provides a rare glimpse into the heart of humanity through the quiet deeds of those who attempt to heal.

Americans Tell It Like It Is To the Iraqis

2008-04-25T20:34:00.000-07:00

Follow the Oil Money

2008-04-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

Oil company contributions brought to you by Oil Change International:

Oil company contributions:

McCain - $291,685

Clinton - $289,950

Obama - 163,840

Giuliani wins with: $659,158

12,000 Veteran Suicide Attempts Per Year

2008-04-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

Unbelievable. And the national media is still talking about flag lapel pins? This is from CBS:

In a recently filed lawsuit, the Department of Veterans Affairs is accused of deliberately misinforming the American public about the number of veterans committing suicide. Armen Keteyian reports.

How the Pentagon Spread its Message

2008-04-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

Excellent investigative reporting by the New York Times. Here's the audio and a link to the article:

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Iraq Vets Seize National Archives Building

2008-04-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

IVAW members seized the National Archives Building on March 19th, 2008 in front of hundreds of surprised museum visitors. Response from visitors including teachers, students, vacationers was highly positive, though there were a few horrified faces in the crowd. IVAW read the terms of their Citizens Arrest Warrant and stood their ground for 90 minutes. They were allowed to leave without being arrested in a spectacular civil disobedience display. Next stop was the Justice Department, where the call for Bush and Cheney's impeachment was repeated, then to the White House where similar demands were made.

This action comes on the heels of IVAW's Winter Soldier Investigation: Iraq and Afghanistan, held at the National Labor College in Silver Springs, M.D. in mid-March, where these and many other vets from the Iraq and Afghanistan war testified about their experiences.

Iraqi: We Just Want All the Foreigners to Leave

2008-04-13T15:15:00.001-07:00

From the Washington Post:

The congressional testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker has barely registered in Iraq.

Several parliament members were unaware of what was said at the hearings. Many Baghdad residents had no idea they had taken place. Even on Alhurra, a U.S.-funded Arabic satellite channel, the testimony was the 10th and final report on Wednesday's evening newscast, following dispatches on Egyptian politics and the state of emergency preparedness in Syria.

"The Americans have hundreds of meetings and testimonies like this, and what has it done for the Iraqi people? Nothing," said Allah Sadiq, 49, a carpenter in the capital's Karrada district. "So why do we care? We just want all the foreigners to leave and stop causing disasters for our country."

Excellent Article on the Future of the Environment

2008-04-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

by Margaret Kriz of the National Journal:

The Environmental Protection Agency is failing to live up to its name these days, its legions of critics agree. At a time when the nation's top environmental regulators face increasingly complex pollution problems, President Bush is pushing for dramatic cuts in EPA's budget, his administration's strained, pro-industry interpretations of environmental laws have repeatedly been laughed out of court, and the White House is widely perceived to be running roughshod over agency scientists and lawyers.

In the meantime, disgruntled EPA professionals are longing for the day when the next administration takes over their agency. "It's not a Republican-versus-Democrat issue," said union representative Hirzy. "It's just that in the last eight years we've had a reactionary operation here that has just been murderous. 01/20/09 -- that's the magic number."

American Colonel Killed in Green Zone

2008-04-13T06:51:00.001-07:00

The Green Zone is the most heavily fortified compound on Earth. This is from Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell:

For years, the deaths of U.S. military personnel in Iraq have often been reported to the press and public by the Pentagon on extremely sketchy ways, while remaining "under investigation." These are often cases, it turns out, involving death by illness or accident or suicide. Often, the efforts of local newspapers bring out the truth while the lengthy investigations go on and on.

Yesterday, The Huntsville (Ala.) Times revealed that Col. Stephen Scott, 54, had died on Saturday while working out on a treadmill in the U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone after it was rocketed by insurgents earlier this week, according to his sister. He was only the ninth officer at his level killed in the war to date. The treadmill symbolism is painfully apt, of course.

Another officer, Maj. Stuart Wolfer, 36, who leaves behind a wife and three young children, died in the same place at the same time while exercising. He had been serving in the Army Reserves when called to duty. His name was invoked by Rep. Robert Wexler in questioning Gen. David Petraeus in Washington, D.C. yesterday.

The Associated Press earlier this week carried an item, based on the Pentagon's offiical release, which stated only that "two soldiers have died in Iraq of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit with indirect fire."

Rep. Wexler said that he had talked to Len Wolfer of Boca Raton, Fla., the night before and asked what he wanted to ask Petraeus. That family was relieved that their son "was in the Green Zone, for they hoped he would be safe there. He was not." Wexler said the father wanted to know: "For what? For what had he lost his son?"

Wexler urged Petraeus not to simply say it had been "to remove a brutal dictator."

"That's not good enough," Wexler said. "There are many dictators in the world. For what did Stuart Wolfer and the other 4,024 sons and daughters (killed in Iraq) die for? And how do we define victory so we can bring this never-ending war to a close?"

Petraeus told Wexler and members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that "what we are fighting for is the national interest....Ambassador Crocker and I, for what it's worth, have typically seen ourselves as minimalists, we're not after the Holy Grail in Iraq and we're not after Jeffersonian Democracy."

Iraqis Want the Occupation to End

2008-04-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

Iraqi woman shouts slogans demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq during a demonstration organized by the Independent Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions downtown Baghdad, Saturday, April 12, 2008. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency the Worst

2008-04-09T17:33:00.001-07:00

From a great site, the History News Network:

“As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.”— George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb10, 2008

A Pew Research Center poll released last week found that the share of the American public that approves of President George W. Bush has dropped to a new low of 28 percent.

An unscientific poll of professional historians completed the same week produced results far worse for a president clinging to the hope that history will someday take a kinder view of his presidency than does contemporary public opinion.

In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.

Hurricane Katrina Quotes

2008-04-05T18:15:00.001-07:00

I ran across these quotes while going through some old email. Sadly almost three years later, not much has improved.

"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them."
–Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the hurricane evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 5, 2005

"Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"
–House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 9, 2005

"I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving."
–Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Sept. 6, 2005

We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
–Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) to lobbyists, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal

"I also want to encourage anybody who was affected by Hurricane Corina to make sure their children are in school."
–First Lady Laura Bush, twice referring to a "Hurricane Corina" while speaking to children and parents in South Haven, Mississippi, Sept. 8, 2005

Rapists in the Ranks

2008-04-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

I'm sure this is at the top of the DOD's list. Don't worry, girls. Your government will protect you. After all, you are a member of the military:

The stories are shocking in their simplicity and brutality: A female military recruit is pinned down at knifepoint and raped repeatedly in her own barracks. Her attackers hid their faces but she identified them by their uniforms; they were her fellow soldiers. During a routine gynecological exam, a female soldier is attacked and raped by her military physician. Yet another young soldier, still adapting to life in a war zone, is raped by her commanding officer. Afraid for her standing in her unit, she feels she has nowhere to turn.

Numbers reported by the Department of Defense show a sickening pattern. In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported -- 73% more than in 2004. The DOD's newest report, released this month, indicates that 2,688 reports were made in 2007, but a recent shift from calendar-year reporting to fiscal-year reporting makes comparisons with data from previous years much more difficult.

At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through "nonjudicial punishment," which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action; more than a third of the time, that was because of "insufficient evidence."

MLK: Beyond Vietnam

2008-04-04T08:34:00.000-07:00

A year to the day before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, King gave a speech, Beyond Vietnam, at the Riverside Church in New York City:

"The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing Clergy and Laymen Concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.
"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

What's the cost of today's military industrial complex?

A congressional report released Tuesday said the U.S. Defense Department's spending on weapon systems has surged to a record high of $1.6 trillion in 2007 from $790 billion in 2000.

Despite budgets being strained by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department still plans to invest about $900 million over the next five years in weapon systems' development and procurement, including more than $335 billion, or 37 percent, for new major weapon systems, the report added.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

2008-04-04T08:29:00.000-07:00

Today is the fortieth anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination. In his famous essay, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King responded to religious leaders of his day who publicly criticized him for being "impatient" and "disruptive:"

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have become gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season". Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

Why America Lost Iraq

2008-04-03T18:57:00.000-07:00

If you truly want to know what went wrong in Iraq, please read Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq, by Guardian correspondent Jonathan Steele. He knows the history well and he actually interviewed Iraqis before and after the invasion to hear their opinions. Everything they predicted came true. He also writes about the arrogance of Paul Bremer, the man who went into Iraq with an iron fist and literally wrote their constitution.

Unlike most reporters, Steele was not "embedded" with the U.S. military.

The narrative we're hearing in the U.S. media is extremely simplified and fails to provide any sort of historical context.

PLEASE read this book and share it with friends.

Jonathan Steele will be on my radio show tomorrow at 11 am PST.

This week on Your Call Radio

2008-03-31T15:20:00.000-07:00

Here's what's coming up on Your Call this week.

A live call-in radio show, Your Call airs from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco.
You can listen live or podcast the show.

*Tuesday - A look back at Barbara Seaman's life
We'll pay tribute to writer and health activist Barbara Seaman. Her 1969 book, "The Doctors' Case Against the Pill," is credited with launching the modern women's health movement. According to Cynythia Pearson, "The kind of journalism that Barbara started doing back in the 1960s affected most of the women in this country." Barbara Seaman died of lung cancer earlier this month. She was 75.
Guests: Barbara Brenner, Executive Director Breast Cancer Action, and Norma Swenson, one of the founders of Our Bodies OurSelves

*Wednesday - A conversation with Matt Gonzalez, former president of the SF Board of Supervisors and VP candidate on the Independent ticket

*Thursday - A conversation with David Wilcove, author of "No Way Home: The Decline of the World's Great Animal Migrations"

*Friday - A conversation with Jonathan Steele, author of "Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq" `

HUD Chief Quits After Giving His Friends Lucrative Contracts

2008-03-31T08:07:00.000-07:00

Another one jumps off the sinking ship:

The Bush administration's top housing official, under criminal investigation and intense pressure from Democratic critics, announced Monday he is quitting.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said his resignation will take effect on April 18. The move comes at a shaky time for the economy and the Bush administration, as the housing industry's crisis has imperiled the nation's credit markets and led to a major economic slowdown.

Jackson, 62, has been fending off allegations of cronyism and favoritism involving HUD contractors for the past two years. The FBI has been examining the ties between Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by Jackson's department as a construction manager in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

McCain Doesn't Know if Contraceptives Stop the Spread of HIV

2008-03-30T16:31:00.001-07:00

This is pathetic:

Q: “So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “You’ve stumped me.”

Q: “I mean, I think you’d probably agree it probably does help stop it?”

Mr. McCain: (Laughs) “Are we on the Straight Talk express? I’m not informed enough on it. Let me find out. You know, I’m sure I’ve taken a position on it on the past. I have to find out what my position was. Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception – I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.”

Q: “But you would agree that condoms do stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Would you say: ‘No, we’re not going to distribute them,’ knowing that?”

Mr. McCain: (Twelve-second pause) “Get me Coburn’s thing, ask Weaver to get me Coburn’s paper that he just gave me in the last couple of days. I’ve never gotten into these issues before.”

Lawyer: Guantanamo Trials Pegged for '08 Election

2008-03-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

The Navy lawyer for Osama bin Laden's driver argues in a Guantánamo military commissions motion that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 campaign.

The Pentagon declined late Friday to address the defense lawyer's allegations, noting that the matter is under litigation.

The brief filed Thursday by Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer directly challenged the integrity of President Bush's war court.

Notably, it describes a Sept. 29, 2006, meeting at the Pentagon in which Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, a veteran White House appointee, asked lawyers to consider Sept. 11, 2001, prosecutions in light of the campaign.

''We need to think about charging some of the high-value detainees because there could be strategic political value to charging some of these detainees before the election,'' England is quoted as saying.

Winter Soldier: GI Resistance

2008-03-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

The "liberal media" forgot to cover Winter Soldier. Watch testimony here:

Iraq veteran Camilo Mejia (chair of the IVAW board of directors) describes the long history of resistance in the military and salutes those who continue to speak out about their experience. “We live today in times of universal deceit,” he says, “but throughout the past four days, we have witnessed firsthand accounts that challenge that universal deceit… We have become a dangerous group of people, not because of our military training, but because we have dared to challenge the official story.”

Iraqis forced to flee the occupation

2008-03-27T21:25:00.001-07:00

It's so rare to read or hear stories in the American press about the millions of Iraqi who've been forced to flee their homes and are now struggling to get by. Last week on Your Call, we spoke to an Iraqi writer who was forced to flee with his family to Damascus and is now trying to find work to make ends meet. Out of a country of 27 million, 2.5 million have been forced to flee the country and another 2.5 million are internally displaced. Thanks to Deborah Amos for writing this story.

Since he had been threatened by both Sunnis and Shiites, I asked Arshad whether he identified himself as a Sunni or a Shiite. "I don't really know, but you have to know to live in Iraq," says Arshad, who has a Sunni father and a Shiite mother—not unusual among Baghdad's urban elite. "This is one of the reasons I left. One reason I won't go back. I have to feel myself as a human being, and I can't be a real human being if I have to declare whether I am Shiite or Sunni."

This is a common fear among Iraqi exiles. Returning to Iraq means choosing to live in Sunni or Shiite enclaves divided by high concrete walls. It means choosing a side and staking your life on that decision. The real-estate dilemma dictates the choice. Arshad's family home is now lost, because it is occupied by another family, which is likely to have been cleansed from yet another neighborhood. Moving back to Baghdad means choosing a new neighborhood, a new Iraq.

"Iraq is not a suitable place to live as a human. There are no dreams left in Iraq," says Sam, who didn't tell me his last name. "Everything is broken there." For Sam and thousands of other Iraqi exiles in Damascus, the recent lull in the killings in Baghdad is not enough to entice them home. They have middle-class values and middle-class dreams. As long as Iraq cannot accommodate their vision for an ordinary future, they will struggle in the uncertain life of exile."

Escalating violence in Iraq

2008-03-26T16:28:00.001-07:00

The Bush administration and most in the corporate media continue to insist the "surge" is working. That couldn't be further from the truth, according to people like Iraqi-born Raed Jarrar:

"Preparations for the next Iraqi elections are underway now. The Iraqi executive branch, controlled by the five Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish separatist parties, wants to make sure their rivals won't win the next provincial elections expected to take place before October. But unlike other pre-election preparations that might include TV advertisements and sticking posters around the streets, the separatist Shiites in the Iraqi executive branch sent 50,000 Iraqi troops, backed by U.S. troops, to Basra to destroy and kill their rivals (the nationalist Shiites)."
Jarrar added: "This Shiite-Shiite fight is an excellent example of how the Iraqi civil conflict is more about political/economic issues rather than sectarian and religious as the U.S. mainstream media and politicians have been repeating for years."

Be sure to read Juan Cole's blog for the real story.

4,000 Dead American Soldiers

2008-03-23T19:33:00.001-07:00

More Progress in Iraq

2008-03-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

Rockets hit the Green Zone, the most secure place in the world:

The shelling sent thick plumes of dark gray smoke over central Baghdad and ignited a spectacular fire on the banks of the Tigris River. It ushered in a day of violence that claimed the lives of four American soldiers and at least 58 lraqis around the country.

American military officials said the soldiers were killed by a homemade bomb about 10 p.m. as they patrolled southern Baghdad in a vehicle, pushing the number of American service members killed in Iraq closer to 4,000. Another soldier was wounded in the attack.

The intensity of the violence added to the sense that insurgent and sectarian attacks had been on the rise in recent weeks.

Japanese Protest U.S. Base

2008-03-23T19:25:00.001-07:00

Thousands of Okinawans rally in Chatan town to protest against crimes committed by U.S. troops and to demand a smaller U.S. military presence on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa March 23, 2008, after last month's arrest of a Marine on suspicion of raping a schoolgirl. REUTERS/Kyodo

80,000 Angry Men - Is the "Surge" Collapsing?

2008-03-21T16:08:00.000-07:00

Watch this:

In an investigation carried out by GuardianFilms for Channel 4, we uncover how thousands of Iraqis employed at $10 a day by the US to take on al-Qaida are threatening to go on strike because they say they have been used by the 'Americans to do their dirty work' and haven't been paid

Five Years of Hell in Iraq

2008-03-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

President Bush declares the end of major combat in Iraq as he speaks aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast in this, May 1, 2003
"I think it will go relatively quickly...weeks rather than months."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/16/03

"Now, it isn't gong to be over in 24 hours, but it isn't going to be months either."
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

"The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 11/15/02

"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
- Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03

"It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could be six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/7/03

"It won't take weeks... Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
- Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03

"There is zero question that this military campaign...will be reasonably short. ... Like World War II for about five days."
- General Barry R. McCaffrey, national security and terrorism analyst for NBC News, 2/18/03

"The Iraq fight itself is probably going to go very, very fast. The shooting should be over within just a very few days from when it starts."
- David Frum, former Bush White House speechwriter, 2/24/03

"Our military superiority is so great -- it's far greater than it was in the Gulf War, and the Gulf War was over in 100 hours after we bombed for 43 days... Now they can bomb for a couple of days and then just roll into Baghdad... The odds are there's going to be a war and it's going to be not for very long."
- Former President Bill Clinton, 3/6/03

What is the real death toll in Iraq?

2008-03-19T17:42:00.000-07:00

People gather at the Baquba hospital morgue next to caskets containing the bodies of six of their family members who were killed by a roadside bomb south of Baquba, Iraq. Photograph: Ali Yussef/AFP/Getty images
From the Guardian:

The Americans learned one lesson from Vietnam: don't count the civilian dead. As a result, no one knows how many Iraqis have been killed in the five years since the invasion. Estimates put the toll at between 100,000 and one million, and now a bitter war of numbers is raging.

This week on Your Call Radio

2008-03-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

Here's what's coming up on Your Call, a live call-in radio show. Listen from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco or online. You can also podcast the show.

We're doing a weeklong series of shows to mark the five year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

More than one million Iraqis have been killed, according to ORB, a British polling agency. Four million have been displaced.

So far, 1.6 million U.S. troops have served in Iraq, more than a third of them for two or three tours. Almost 4,000 soldiers have been killed, and 60,000 wounded. According to a Pew poll released last week, only 28 percent of Americans know that almost 4,000 American soldiers have died. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the percentage of news stories devoted to Iraq has sharply declined since last year, dropping from an average of 15 percent in July to just 3 percent in February.

The U.S. government is spending $275 million per day on the occupation.

*Monday - Women and War
What impact has the occupation had on Iraqi and American women?
Guests: An Iraqi professor who taught at Baghdad University for 30 years -- she recently left Baghdad after receiving death threats
Basma Al Khateeb, gender and youth project manager at Iraqi Al Amal Association
Wendy Barranco, a 19-year-old who served as an anesthesia technician in Tikrit for two years - she was sexually harassed multiple times by her superiors

*Tuesday - Coming Home
The occupation has had a devastating effect on communities in Iraq. Many have been ethnically cleansed. Two million Iraqis have left the country; another two million are internally displaced. In the U.S., soldiers with serious wounds, both physical and mental, have had a difficult time returning and putting the pieces back together. Who should be held accountable for what's happened to Iraqis and Americans? Will anyone ever be held accountable?

*Wednesday - Rebuilding
The rebuilding efforts in Iraq have been full of corruption and mismanagement. Is it possible to rebuild Iraq? What would it take for the UN and other international aid groups to return? Where should the money come from and who should administer it?

*Thursday - Justice and Healing
Iraq has been hit hard by two invasions and years of sanctions. What's next? What would be just? What do we, as Americans, owe the Iraqi people?

*Friday - Media Roundtable
We'll hear from Iraqi journalists. According to the Union of Iraqi journalists, 272 Iraqi journalists have been killed since the invasion.

Winter Soldier - Hear directly from U.S. soldiers

2008-03-14T07:08:00.001-07:00

Watch live testimony from U.S. veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Take a break from the 'pundits' who've never been to Iraq to hear from the people who were on the front lines:

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan will feature testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.

The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support.

The $3 Trillion Occupation

2008-03-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

The members of an Iraqi family look at US soldiers from the 2nd Battallion 12th Field Artillery Regiment, 4-2 SBCT, searching for weapons in the village of Mullah Eid, February 2008 during operation Fox Hunt. Al-Qaeda may be shifting tactics back to the big, headline grabbing attacks in Iraq that helped plunge the country into chaos, a senior US commander said. (AFP/File/Patrick Baz)

Iraqi Refugee Crisis Worsens

2008-03-12T18:40:00.000-07:00

An Iraqi refugee returning from Syria in 2007. Squalid and dangerous conditions, lack of shelter and scarcity of food are threatening to worsen living conditions for those displaced by the war in Iraq, refugee experts said Tuesday. (AFP/File)

The rich get richer

2008-03-05T09:54:00.001-08:00

and the poor stand in five hour lines for food you probably wouldn't eat:

In 2007, the CEOs of America's top 500 companies made a total of $7.5 billion, or $15.7 million apiece. The average compensation of a CEO in 1980 was about 42 times that of the average worker in the company; in 2005, it was about 411 times.

Tammy Buckley, a food pantry volunteer, hands out food on a cold morning. Most people in line will get bread and a few cans of carrots, beans and peas. (Tribune photo by Nancy Stone / February 25, 2008)

Iraq violence surges in February

2008-03-03T18:15:00.001-08:00

The number of Iraqis killed in February rose by 33 percent over January, official figures showed on Saturday, reversing a six-month trend of reduced violence, in a setback to the US military plan to curb Iraq's bloodshed. The combined figures obtained by AFP from the interior, defence and health ministries showed that the total number of Iraqis killed in February was 721, including 636 civilians, compared with 541 dead in January.

Car bombing in the Bab al-Mudham area of central Baghdad, Iraq, arrives to a hospital Monday, March 3, 2008. At least 15 people were killed and 38 were wounded in the bombing. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

The widows of Falluja

2008-03-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

From VOI:

Abu Waleed had a bad rendezvous with destiny; he lost his two legs in an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attack in Falluja, and his wife – Um Waleed, suddenly found herself responsible for providing her family’s daily requirements. She worked hard toward her education degree during afternoon classes at Falluja Education Institute, and graduated as quickly as possible to start a career as a school teacher in Falluja, that nowadays offers her a monthly salary essential for her family's life to continue.

There are other women like Um Waleed; victims of the difficult circumstances that Falluja city has experienced. The number of women in Falluja that were widowed after 2003 is at least 5000. These figures imply that since April 2003 until February 2008, 86 women a month (almost 3 women a day) were widowed, according to a recent survey conducted by the Employment Center in the city in coordination with Falluja’s City Council.

"My husband was a taxi driver, and due to an IED explosion, he lost his two legs, and his car was totally devastated; thus we lost all our sources of living in that incident," Um Waleed told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI), adding "It was my turn to be responsible for my family's living; the situation was rigid, but I did not step aside watching. In addition to having four kids going to school, I joined afternoon classes at the Falluja Education Institute where I earned the degree that enabled me to work as a school teacher."

The Three Trillion Dollar Occupation

2008-02-27T18:32:00.000-08:00

In figures:

$16bn
The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defence spending

$138
The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war

$19.3bn
The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq

$25bn
The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war

$3 trillion
A conservative estimate of the true cost - to America alone - of Bush's Iraq adventure.

$5bn
Cost of 10 days' fighting in Iraq

$1 trillion
The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war

Poverty is Poison

2008-02-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

From Paul Krugman:

“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.

So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America’s record of failing to fight poverty.

L. B. J. declared his “War on Poverty” 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969.

But progress stalled thereafter: American politics shifted to the right, attention shifted from the suffering of the poor to the alleged abuses of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, and the fight against poverty was largely abandoned.

In 2006, 17.4 percent of children in America lived below the poverty line, substantially more than in 1969. And even this measure probably understates the true depth of many children’s misery.

This is stability?

2008-02-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

By Patrick Cockburn:

People in Baghdad are not passive victims of violence, but seek desperately to avoid their fate. In April 2004, I was almost killed by Shia militiamen of the Mehdi Army at a checkpoint at Kufa in southern Iraq. They said I was an American spy and were about to execute me and my driver, Bassim Abdul Rahman, when they decided at the last moment to check with their commander. "I believe," Bassim said afterwards, "that if Patrick had an American or an English passport [instead of an Irish one] they would have killed us all immediately."

In the following years, I saw Bassim less and less. He is a Sunni, aged about 40, from west Baghdad. After the battle for Baghdad between Shia and Sunni in 2006, he could hardly work as a driver as three-quarters of the capital was controlled by the Shia. There were few places where a Sunni could drive in safety outside a handful of enclaves.

What happened to Bassim was also to happen to millions of Iraqis who saw their lives ruined by successive calamities. As their world collapsed around them they were forced to take desperate measures to survive, obtain a job and make enough money to feed and educate their families.

In the US and Europe, the main measure of whether the war in Iraq is "going well" or "going badly" is the casualty figures. The number of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians being killed went down to 39 US soldiers and 599 Iraqi civilians in January. The White House is promoting the idea that the United States is finally on the road to success, if not victory, in Iraq.

38 women accuse Halliburton/KBR of rape

2008-02-15T23:38:00.000-08:00

A Houston, Texas woman, who says she was gang-raped by her co-workers at a Halliburton/KBR camp in Baghdad, says 38 women have come forward through her foundation to report their own tragic stories to her, but that many cannot speak publicly due to arbitration agreements in their employment contracts.

After months of waiting for criminal charges to be filed, Jones decided to file suit against Halliburton and KBR.

KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom, as provided under the terms of her original employment contract.

Halliburton, which has since divested itself of KBR, says it is improperly named in the suit and referred calls to KBR.

Marines in Japan investigated for rape

2008-02-15T23:34:00.000-08:00

From the AP:

U.S. military authorities held preliminary hearings Friday to determine whether four Marines who had been charged with raping a Japanese woman last year should be court-martialed.

The four U.S. Marines — accused of an attack on a 19-year-old woman in October — were charged by the military in December, said Master Gunnery Sgt. John Cordero of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni in southern Japan.

Bush lawsuit: Vets have no legal right to medical care

2008-02-07T17:20:00.000-08:00

Support the troops:

Veterans have no legal right to specific types of medical care, the Bush administration argues in a lawsuit accusing the government of illegally denying mental health treatment to some troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The arguments, filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, strike at the heart of a lawsuit filed on behalf of veterans that claims the health care system for returning troops provides little recourse when the government rejects their medical claims.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is making progress in increasing its staffing and screening veterans for combat-related stress, Justice Department lawyers said. But their central argument is that Congress left decisions about who should get health care, and what type of care, to the VA and not to veterans or the courts.

Five Years Ago: Colin Powell's Misleading Speech

2008-02-07T17:09:00.000-08:00

From the Columbia Journalism Review. The liberal media apparently forgot about Colin Powell's infamous presentation:

Amidst Super Tuesday hoopla, it’s worth remembering that today is the five year anniversary of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation before the United Nations. This speech moved the U.S. closer to invading Iraq more than any other single event of the period.

All in all, the press telegraphed Powell’s claims with far too little skepticism. Of course, we now know that not only was much of what he said false, but that even Powell’s own intelligence analysts warned ahead of time that many of his central claims were weak.

In a 2004 CJR piece, Gilbert Cranberg recounted his multi-agency odyssey of trying to track down one deception from that day. Why did Powell create and add incriminating phrases in his dramatic reading of what purported to be an incriminating Iraqi radio exchange?

Five years later, and still no answer. That is, except the obvious one: the truth was nowhere near as damning as the administration needed it to be.

Another woman says she was raped and assaulted by Halliburton employees

2008-02-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

A mother of five who says she was sexually harassed and assaulted while working for Halliburton/KBR in Iraq is headed for a secretive arbitration process rather than being able to present her case in open court.

A judge in Texas has ruled that Tracy Barker's case will be heard in arbitration, according to the terms of her initial employment contract.

Barker says that while in Iraq she was constantly propositioned by her superior, threatened and isolated after she reported an incident of sexual assault.

Barker's attorneys had argued that Halliburton/KBR had created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at their camps and that sort of condition is not the type of dispute that she could have expected to be within the scope of an arbitration provision.

District Judge Gray Miller, however, wrote in his order that "whether it is wise to send this type of claim to arbitration is not a question for this court to decide."

"Sadly," wrote Judge Miller, "sexual harassment, up to and including sexual assault, is a reality in today's workplace."

Barker says it was a reality at Halliburton/KBR. From the moment she arrived at the Halliburton/KBR camp in Basra, Iraq, she says she was treated like a sex object.

This week on Your Call Radio

2008-02-03T20:25:00.000-08:00

Here's what's coming up on Your Call, a live call-in radio show. Listen from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco or online. You can also podcast the show.

*Monday - How do the presidential candidates differ on military spending, the global economy, and trade?

Military spending in the U.S. ($623 billion) exceeds the rest of the world combined, yet the candidates are rarely, if ever, asked about it. On Monday, the Pentagon will release its proposed 2009 budget of $515.4 billion. The Bush administration has increased baseline military spending by 30 percent. Will this change under an Obama or Clinton administration?

Guests: Chalmers John son, author of "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic," and Todd Tucker, research director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

Chalmers Johnson, TomDispatch.com: "Going Bankrupt"

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com: "The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending"

Iowa Fair Trade Campaign: Where do the candidates stand on trade?

*Tuesday - Who'd you vote for and why?

*Wednesday - We'll analyze the primary results

*Thursday - A conversation with Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants!

*Friday - Media Roundtable - How did the media cover this week's news?

The most dangerous country in the world for journalists

2008-02-03T19:19:00.000-08:00

This is from Patrick Cockburn, a journalist who has actually been to Iraq, not a talking head who doesn't know the meaning of progress:

Iraq confirmed its reputation as the most dangerous country in the world for journalists this week when a roadside bomb killed an Iraqi television cameraman, Alaa Abdul-Karim al-Fartoosi, the first journalist to be killed in Iraq this year and the 126th since the start of the war.

The great majority of the journalists killed--104 out of the total--were Iraqi. Thirteen were European and two were American. In addition, 49 media support workers have also been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York.

Iraqi journalists have died in almost every circumstance and at many hands. Sometimes there were direct attacks on buildings in which the media worked, such as the suicide bomber who drove a refuse lorry packed with explosives into the entrance of Baghdad TV's offices on 5 April 2007, killing the deputy director, Thaer Ahmad Jaber.

Cost of U.S. Wars

2008-02-02T21:44:00.000-08:00

HISTORICAL COSTS OF U.S. WARS (In 2007 Dollars) from The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

World War II $3.2 trillion
Iraq and Afghanistan To Date $695.7 billion
Vietnam War $670 billion
World War I $364 billion
Korean War $295 billion
Persian Gulf War $94 billion
Civil War (both Union and Confederate costs) $81 billion
Spanish-American War $7 billion
American Revolution $4 billion
Mexican War $2 billion
War of 1812 $1 billion

Source: Congressional Research Service and Office of Management and Budget data.

Soldier suicides at record levels

2008-01-31T19:44:00.000-08:00

When is the "liberal media" going to ask the GOP hawks (with the exception of Ron Paul) running for President about this:

Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who was waiting for the Army to decide whether to court-martial her for endangering another soldier and turning a gun on herself last year in Iraq, attempted to kill herself Monday evening. In so doing, the 25-year-old Army reservist joined a record number of soldiers who have committed or tried to commit suicide after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"I'm very disappointed with the Army," Whiteside wrote in a note before swallowing dozens of antidepressants and other pills. "Hopefully this will help other soldiers." She was taken to the emergency room early Tuesday. Whiteside, who is now in stable physical condition, learned yesterday that the charges against her had been dismissed.

Whiteside's personal tragedy is part of an alarming phenomenon in the Army's ranks: Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.

At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

Up to two million desperate Iraqi widows

2008-01-31T09:16:00.000-08:00

More progress:

Every week, letters from Iraqi widows spill across Samira al-Moussawi's desk. One wrote to ask whether she should spend what scant money she gets on her infant or on school books for her older son.

The member of parliament and head of a parliamentary women's committee is at her wits' end as to how to answer the desperate pleas from what could be as many as one to two million women.

Vote or pay $20

2008-01-27T23:22:00.000-08:00

I'm doing a radio show about Australia's new left-wing government on Tuesday night at 9:00 pm PST. It was a stunning defeat of another Bush ally. The new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promises to ratify Kyoto and pull Australia's combat troops out of Iraq.

I'm doing research and just found this Washington Post article. What would happen if the U.S. had compulsory voting?

It certainly helped that in Australia, there's no choice when it comes to voting, either; it's compulsory. So rather than be fined $20, about 95 percent of Australians turned out on Election Day. It also helps that our elections are always on a Saturday and the sausage sandwiches served off hot plates set up in the parking lots are pretty tasty. We also have only one kind of ballot for the whole country, instead of ! leaving the design to state or local governments (Florida, you listening back there?). Because everyone has to vote, there's no need to spend a billion dollars to inflame passions and divide the electorate just so that people will pick a side and care enough to fill in a ballot come November.

One Day in Iraq = $720 Million

2008-01-24T18:05:00.000-08:00

Video from the American Friends Service Committee.

Iraqi refugees: "We can't return"

2008-01-23T21:03:00.000-08:00

"The Iraqi government claims lots of people have returned home because of the improved security. That's not true. They have been forced to go back because they cannot get residency in Syria."

This is progress.

IRAQI REFUGEES
2.4m Iraqis internally displaced
2m Iraqi refugees abroad
Iraqi government offering $800 to those who return
3,650 families registered in Baghdad for grant
6,000 families waiting to register for grant
Source: International Organisation for Migration

From the BBC:

Noor, who is Sunni, and her family arrived in Syria 18 months ago and settled in Damascus.

We left Baghdad because we were threatened by the Mehdi army.

We had to go immediately, leaving everything: clothes, furniture, all the things you accumulate when you live more than 20 years in the same house.

Things had been getting worse for a while. One event especially, sticks in my mind.

Neighbours of ours had been forcibly removed from their home three houses down from us.

One morning a few days after they had disappeared, one of my daughters walked down the road and saw the heads of our neighbours lined up on the wall of the house.

She was hysterical and couldn't leave the house for weeks. If someone went out we never knew if they would return. So, we left for general security reasons as well as the specific threat.

It was a sad departure. Leaving our country and heading for the unknown, without any planning or financial resources. It's hard to describe how it felt.

Here in Syria we live in a third-floor flat. It's very cold - but the price of fuel is high. We lack many basic things: blankets, fuel for cooking and heating.

The biggest irony is that we fled an oil-rich country - for a place where we cannot afford the fuel bills.

Our situation frightens me. I cannot stress enough - there are no jobs for us here in Syria.

I am 55 now and life is a struggle. We spend long hours looking for work so we can put food on the table. It's survival, no more and no less.

Deception on the path to war

2008-01-23T16:27:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Center for Public Integrity for their incredible investigative journalism. If we had ten more of them, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:

On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?'"

In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn't requested it.

In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear."
On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.

On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."

On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources." As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government]."
The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.

War is hell: "We were taking out women and children"

2008-01-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

“I felt like I was in the middle of a duck shoot and we were the ducks,” said Mr. Smith, who was a SAW - squad automatic weapon - gunner. “I don’t know how many R.P.G.’s we took. One landed about five feet to the right of me and my buddy. I don’t know how it did not detonate, but instead it bounced. Bounced! I can’t believe we’re still alive.”

The fighting did not let up for many hours. “Whether or not I actually killed anybody with my own bullets, I don’t know,” Mr. Smith said. “I suspect so. But there were two to 12 guns going off at once, and only the snipers knew for sure.” At a certain point, the Iraqi fighters commandeered civilians’ cars, taking them hostage and ordering them to drive straight at the Marine positions. The marines were forced to shoot at everything headed their way.

“We were opening fire on civilians,” Mr. Smith said. “We were taking out women and children because it was them or us.”

Sergeant Major Lopez, his superior officer, said that his marines were “put in that position” and “trained to protect themselves first.”

“Our marines tried to limit civilian casualties,” he said. “Not a person there didn’t feel bad. But it had to be done.”

That day traumatized the reservists. Mr. Quiñones recalled a father carrying toward them the limp body of a young child. His voice cracking, he described a 5-year-old boy screaming as his car “turned into Swiss cheese.”

“I called cease-fire and I wanted to run and grab him, but there were machine gun rounds flying all around,” Mr. Quiñones said. “I watched this kid’s head get blown away, his brains splattering while his screams still echoed. Those images haunt me - haunt many of us - to this day.”

Happy MLK Jr. Day

2008-01-21T10:32:00.000-08:00

I have to laugh when I hear conservative talking heads talking about MLK Jr. like a soft teddy bear. If he were alive today, he would be their worst nightmare.

Happy MLK Day. Here's an excerpt from a letter he wrote from a Birmingham jail on April 16, 1963:

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved South land been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken .in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor. will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

Huckabee's wife speaks...

2008-01-19T20:29:00.000-08:00

Thank god for well-paid reporters who know how to ask good questions and dig for interesting facts.

Innocent 10-year-old shot in Oakland

2008-01-19T12:24:00.000-08:00

Have you heard about the 10-year-old boy who was hit by a stray bullet at his piano lesson in Oakland a few weeks ago? It's such a sad story. I've been following it to see how he's doing and unfortunately, he's paralyzed from the waist down.

The San Jose Mercury News has a story about the community and his classmates raising $30K to pay for a wheelchair friendly home and hospital fees.

There's also a blog and an easy way to donate.

It seems like there are at least two shootings a week in San Francisco and the East Bay. They're all tragic, but this one really got me.

I wanted to pass along the information in case you feel like donating. I'm sure anything will help.

Do you know what you're eating?

2008-01-17T00:10:00.000-08:00

Some U.S. groups have demanded that food from clones be labeled to give consumers the "right to choose."

But James Greenwood, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include the nation's biggest farm-animal cloning companies, rejected that idea, as has the FDA. He said cloning is simply a way to make offspring. Other methods of farm animal procreation, such as in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination, are not listed on food labels.

He and other industry representatives specifically rejected proposals to label food from conventionally conceived offspring of clones.

While the now-expired FDA moratorium sought to keep both clones and their offspring off the market, the new USDA moratorium requests only that clones themselves be withheld, so the offspring might make it to store shelves within a few years.

But imagine the labels that would appear if certain rules were in place, Greenwood said:

" 'This steak's father was a clone.' 'This steak's grandfather was a clone.' 'This steak's great-grandmother was a clone.'

"At what point does it become absurd?"

Real question for the candidates

2008-01-16T15:18:00.001-08:00

The moderators of last night's debate spent an entire hour trying to incite a fight between Clinton and Obama, but it didn't work. How about some real questions? From Bob Herbert of the NY Times:

The sexual mistreatment of women in the military is widespread. The Defense Department financed a study in 2003 of female veterans seeking health assistance from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Nearly a third of those surveyed said they had been the victim of a rape or attempted rape during their service.

The Associated Press reported in 2006 that more than 80 military recruiters had been disciplined over the course of a year because of sexual misconduct with young women and girls who had considered joining the military.

There continue to be widespread complaints from women about rape and other forms of sexual attacks in the military, and about a culture that tends to protect the attackers.

To what extent are the candidates of either party concerned about these matters? Do they have any sense of how extensive and debilitating the mistreatment of women and girls really is?

We’ve become so used to the disrespectful, degrading, contemptuous and even violent treatment of women that we hardly notice it. Staggering amounts of violence are unleashed against women and girls every day. Fashionable ads in mainstream publications play off of that violence, exploiting themes of death and dismemberment, female submissiveness and child pornography.

If we’ve opened the door to the issue of sexism in the presidential campaign, then let’s have at it. It’s a big and important issue that deserves much more than lip service.

This week on Your Call Radio

2008-01-13T22:44:00.000-08:00

Here's what's coming up on Your Call, a live call-in radio show. Listen from 11 am - noon PST on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco or online. You can also podcast the show.

*Monday - Clorox recently bought Burt's Bees. Colgate now owns most of Tom's of Maine. L'Oreal owns the body Shop. When environmentally-friendly companies get bought up by corporate giants, will you still buy their products?
Guests: Dara O'Rourke, associate professor of labor and environmental policy at UC Berkeley -- he's working on a database designed to inform consumers about the environmental, health, and social impacts of the everyday products they use
Gary Hirschberg, president of Stonyfield Farms - French food conglomerate Danone now owns 80% of Stonyfield Farms

*Tuesday - A conversation about the new documentary THE BUSINESS OF BEING BORN
Midwives attend over 70 percent of births in Europe and Japan. In the U.S., they attend less than eight percent. Cesarean-delivery rates are now at an all time high in the U.S, standing at 1.2 million, or 29.1 percent of live births. That's a 40 percent increase in the past 10 years. Is it time to rethink the way we give birth?
Guests: Teresa McLean, a doula who is studying to be a midwife - she's attended births in hospitals for over 25 years
Maria Iorillo, a licensed midwife for 22 years

*Wednesday - Why do so many immigrants in the Bay Area choose to live in cities within cities -- such as Chinatown, Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, and Fremont’s enclaves of Southeast Asians and Afghans? And how do people in these neighborhoods interact with the broader community?

*Thursday - A conversation with Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day
First introduced in Freakonomics, here is the full story of Sudhir Venkatesh, the sociology grad student who infiltrated one of Chicago's most notorious gangs

*Friday - How did the media cover the week's news?

Veterans who kill at home

2008-01-12T21:51:00.001-08:00

As the national media continues its obsession with Hillary Clinton's tears, young men so haunted by the brutality they saw in Iraq are losing their minds and taking the lives of innocent victims at home. This is a must read piece in the Sunday New York Times.

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

Snow in Baghdad

2008-01-11T20:42:00.000-08:00

Iraqi girls enjoy playing in snow in Sulaimaniyah, 260 kilometers (160 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq on Friday, Jan. 11, 2008. Further south, Baghdad residents saw snow for the first time in memory on Friday. (AP Photo/Yahya Ahmed)

Talib Haider, a 19-year-old college student, said "a friend of mine called me at 8 a.m. to wake me up and tell me that the sky is raining snow."

"I rushed quickly to the balcony to see a very beautiful scene," he said. "I tried to film it with my cell phone camera. This scene has really brought me joy. I called my other friends and the morning turned to be a very happy one in my life."

An Iraqi who works for The Associated Press said he woke his wife and children shortly after 7 a.m. to "have a look at this strange thing." He then called his brother and sister and found them awake, also watching the "cotton-like snow drops covering the trees."

Surge is working...

2008-01-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

Breaking news from CNN. The surge is working.

This is from Juan Cole:

I am often struck by how clueless the American public is to the vast destruction we have wrought on Iraq and its people, directly or indirectly. It strikes me as a bitter joke that 4 million are displaced, often facing hunger and disease, and the rightwing periodicals and presidential candidates are talking about how the "surge" has "turned things around." For whom? How many orphans have we created? How many widows? How many people who weep and cry every night while trying to fall asleep on straw mats? I estimate on the basis of a UN study of refugees in Syria that as many as 600,000 or 700,000 Baghdadis were ethnically cleansed from the capital under the nose of the American troops implementing the surge. There is an old Chinese proverb, "Children throw stones at frogs in jest, but the frogs die in earnest."

This week on Your Call Radio

2008-01-09T00:38:00.001-08:00

The time of my radio show Your Call has moved to 11 am PST. If you can't listen, you can podcast the show. Here's what's on this week:

*Monday - A conversation with Molly Bingham and Steve Connors, the filmmakers behind "Meeting Resistance"
Synopsis: What would you do if America was invaded? MEETING RESISTANCE raises the veil of anonymity surrounding the Iraqi insurgency by meeting face to face with individuals who are passionately engaged in the struggle, and documenting for the very first time, the sentiments experienced and actions taken by a nation's citizens when their homeland is occupied.

*Tuesday - A conversation with Craig Unger, author of Fall of the House of Bush - Is George W. Bush the beginning or the end of the Republican Party as we know it? How much influence do the neocons still have? What about the Religious Right? Who will this unholy alliance back in November?

*Wednesday - The first in our yearlong series about the commons. Who controls space? Do military and commercial uses of space threaten its status as a shared resource?

*Thursday - Teen pregnancy rates are on the rise for the first time in 15 years. Is it time to rethink how we educate kids about sex?
Guests: Shelby Knox, a Baptist teenager who fought for sex-ed in Lubbock, TX
A roundtable of high school students

*Friday - How did the media cover the week's news?

How Bush became the new Saddam

2008-01-06T13:39:00.000-08:00

If you're sick of the rhetoric and really want to know the truth about Iraq, add this piece by freelance journalist Patrick Graham to your reading list:

Its strategies shattered, a desperate Washington is reaching out to the late dictator's henchmen.

Iraqis resort to selling their children

2008-01-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

Even more progress:

Abu Muhammad, a Baghdad resident, found it difficult to let go of his daughter's hand but he had already convinced himself that selling her to a family outside Iraq would provide her with a better future.

"The war disgraced my family. I lost relatives including my wife among thousands of victims of sectarian violence and was forced to sell my daughter to give my other children something to eat," he told Al Jazeera.

Meet the Republican winner Mike Huckabee

2008-01-04T16:00:00.000-08:00

Here's more on last night's winner. I'm sure the liberal media will give you the information you really need on Huckabee. How many times have you heard, "He's such a nice guy?" This was written by Max Brantley, editor of the Arkansas Times:

Huckabee insists he's not one of those harsh, punitive, "angry" conservatives, but again, there are witnesses who might say otherwise if anyone's interested.

Ask the retarded Fort Smith teenager, raped by her stepfather, who sought Medicaid funding for an abortion as federal law required. Huckabee stood in the hospital door, at least figuratively, to prevent state funding. Ask the gay people belittled by his cracks about "Adam and Steve." Ask the scientists who've seen evolution virtually disappear from the textbooks and classrooms of Arkansas with his administration's acquiescence.

Social issues alone should give moderates pause. He championed a law in Arkansas making it harder to get a divorce, the so-called covenant marriage law that has been widely ignored except when he and his wife recommitted in a Valentine's Day publicity stunt held in a 17,000-seat arena.

Huckabee's administration worked hard and unapologetically to prevent gay people from being foster parents. He avidly supported the state amendment that bans gay marriage as well as civil unions and bans any equal treatment under the law -- such as in health insurance coverage -- for same-sex partners. He professed opposition to alcohol and gambling, but he allowed passage of legislation that made it easier for restaurants to obtain private-club mixed-drink permits in dry counties. Over the angry objection of the church lobby, he sped final action on a bill to allow video poker at the state's racetracks, an act followed not long afterward by a $10,000 campaign contribution from the owner of the state's biggest race track, at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs.

All this is sometimes done with humor, but rarely the sort of gentle humor the national media has encountered. Huckabee prefers sarcastic putdowns and hyperbole. Because Arkansas Democrats tried to enfranchise more citizens with weekend voting in Arkansas, he called his home state a banana republic on the Don Imus show. He's compared weight loss with a concentration camp. Abortion, even in the earliest microscopic stages, he's called a holocaust. He referred in a Farm Bureau speech to "fruits and nuts" and "wacko environmentalists" in decrying environmentalists as a threat to agriculture. (Yes, this is the same man that gullible mainstream columnists praise for his ringing environmental proclamations.)

But the national press has more to examine than rhetoric when it comes to Huckabee. He is not the man of principle that credulous commentators describe. Though Huckabee doesn't support embryonic stem cell research, he took a hefty honorarium and bulk book sales this year from a diabetes drug maker, Novo Nordisk, which performs embryonic stem cell research. He has lied when there's been no other way around admitting embarrassing missteps, such as his advocacy of freedom for a convicted rapist.

There are also legitimate questions about his skills as a manager. He left Arkansas with a bill of more than $40 million for overcharges of the federal government's Medicaid program. A State Police director left after a tiff over Huckabee's demand that the agency improve his private lake property in the name of security. Troubles dogged both the state's computer services agency and its workforce agency. Youth services have been an unending series of tragedies. The buck never stopped at Huck's desk, you can be sure.

The governor's office records -- triumph and tragedy, sage advice and venom-filled screeds about members of the press and Legislature -- would tell this tale. But, as I've mentioned, the computer hard drive destruction ensured that would never happen.

If I could resurrect one batch of files, it would be those reflecting the advice of his staff that he not pursue his desire to free convicted rapist Wayne DuMond. By "advice," I mean I think some of them all but pleaded with Huckabee not to do it.

Though DuMond's prior record included a conviction for assault and his alleged involvement in a slaying and one other rape, by the start of Huckabee's governorship DuMond had become a national figure thanks to Republican efforts to depict him as a victim of the Bill Clinton machine. The rape victim was a distant relative of Clinton's.

Huckabee, perhaps persuaded by DuMond's supposed conversion to Christianity, announced his intention to commute DuMond's sentence without talking to the victim. Outraged, she stepped forward to protest publicly. The backlash was swift and powerful. Huckabee backed away from commuting DuMond's sentence, but in a private meeting lobbied the state Parole Board to release him. Huckabee said, in writing, that he supported DuMond's release. DuMond moved to Missouri in 2000, where he molested and killed one woman and was suspected of doing the same to another, but died in prison before he could be charged in the second case.

To this day, Huckabee tries to minimize his responsibility for DuMond's release. Huckabee's 2007 book "From Hope to Higher Ground" also fudges the facts, implying that DuMond died before being convicted of either Missouri murder. In one recent interview, he even suggested that he had fought DuMond's parole, a statement his own writings prove to be a lie.

More women soldiers returning with PTSD

2008-01-03T21:21:00.000-08:00

Even more progress:

Thousands of U.S. military women are serving in what amounts to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and large numbers of them are coming home with stress disorders.

The Defense Department reports that 182,000 women have served in the region, USA Today said. While they are barred from certain military roles like ground infantry, they drive trucks in convoys and go on neighborhood patrols.

For Master Sgt. Cindy Rathbun, Camp Victory in Baghdad was her first experience of a combat zone after 25 years in the Air Force.

"There are no lines, so anybody that deploys is in a war zone," Rathbun says. "Females are combat veterans as well as guys."

Rathbun said her hair began falling out. When she flew back to the United States in February 2007, she asked a medic on her way out if that was normal and was told it is one way of reacting to stress.

More than 16,000 Iraqis killed in 2007

2008-01-02T16:21:00.000-08:00

Making progress:

Some 16,232 Iraqi civilians were killed during 2007 as a result of sectarian violence and bombing and mortar attacks, an official media source in the Iraqi health ministry said on Tuesday.

"The health ministry has accurate statistics confirming the death of 16,232 civilians during 2007. From this number 481 people were killed during December 2007 alone," the source, who refused to have his name mentioned, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

"In November 2007 the number of deaths were 2,000," the source said, hoping "the Iraqi security forces would manage to reduce Iraqi civilian death tolls during 2008."

On the military front, a statement by the U.S. forces noted that U.S. fatalities in 2007 "reached 899 soldiers, of which 21 were killed in December," compared to "December 2006 during which 112 U.S. soldiers were killed."

The figure is the highest annual count of U.S. deaths since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Arrests at Huckabee's office: Who would Jesus Bomb?

2008-01-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

Kathy Kelly, Mona Shaw, and Robert Braam were arrested in Huckabee’s Des Moines Campaign Headquarters.
Three members of SODaPOP were arrested in Gov. Mike Huckabee’s Des Moines Campaign Headquarters on Monday, December 31, 2007, while asking the former Baptist minister, “Who would Jesus bomb?”

Mission Accomplished: Oil hits $100 barrel for the first time

2008-01-02T10:02:00.001-08:00

Oil prices reached the symbolic level of $100 a barrel for the first time on Wednesday, a long-awaited milestone in an era of rapidly escalating energy demand.

Crude oil futures for January delivery hit the $100 threshold on theNew York Mercantile Exchange shortly after noon New York time, before falling back slightly. Oil prices, which had fallen to a low of $50 a barrel at the beginning of the year, have quadrupled since 2003.

The rise in oil prices in recent years has been driven by an unprecedented surge in demand from the United States, China and other Asian and Middle Eastern countries.

Happy New Year...

2008-01-01T15:05:00.001-08:00

2007 was deadliest year for American troops

2008-01-01T15:03:00.000-08:00

This is progress:

The year was the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion, with 899 troops killed.

As the $15 Billion occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan continue...

2007-12-29T11:18:00.000-08:00

The number of people hungry and homeless in US cities rose dramatically again in 2007, according to the annual report on hunger and homelessness from the US Conference of Mayors. The 23-city Hunger and Homelessness Survey was released in late December.

Requests for emergency food increased in four of every five cities. Among 15 cities with quantifying data, the median increase in requests for food was 10 percent and in some cities it was much higher. Detroit and some other cities reported seeing more working poor among those seeking food.

In Detroit, emergency food requests shot up 35 percent over the 12-month period ending in October. Officials there noted that “due to a lack of resources, emergency food assistance facilities have had to reduce the number of days and/or hours of operation.”

Thirteen of 19 survey cities reported they could not meet the demand for emergency food. Los Angeles was one of the major cities reporting difficulties in serving the growing need.

An official in LA said: “Emergency food assistance facilities have to turn away people. According to the LA Regional Foodbank, over 30 percent of their food pantries have had to turn clients away and pantries that don’t turn clients away are providing less food.

“In 2002, a food pantry would provide an average of eight to ten different USDA commodities per distribution. This holiday season, food pantries are providing three USDA commodities. Food pantries are tasked to serve more clients with the same amount of resources they had six years ago. Twenty-one percent of overall demand for emergency food assistance goes unmet.”

Across all cities, an average of 15 percent of families with children looking for emergency food must be turned away. Nine in 10 of the cities sampled for details on the urban hunger crisis say they expect increases in food requests next year.
City officials said specific factors exacerbating hunger over the past year were the foreclosure crisis, the high prices of food and gasoline, and the lack of affordable housing. Decreased social benefits such as public assistance and the eroding value of food stamps were also listed as particularly acute problems. Lack of donated food and commodities and insufficient funding were listed as the most important reason for turning away the hungry.

Economic issues such as unemployment and poverty along with high housing and medical costs were most cited by responding cities as the major causes of chronic hunger. Substance abuse and mental illness were the least cited.

Men dominate UK newsrooms

2007-12-28T09:56:00.001-08:00

From the Guardian:

The journalists making key editorial decisions at newspapers and broadcasters are overwhelmingly male, according to a survey published today.

The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality and published the research, said the media was missing out on a "huge pool" of female talent.

Its study showed that only two out of the 17 national newspapers editors were women - the Sun's Rebekah Wade and Tina Weaver of the Sunday Mirror - while there was just one female deputy editor, Jane Johnson of the News of the World.

It also found that while 15 out of 34 radio and TV presenters were women, just one out of 17 news programme editors were female.

The study said the problem extended to reporting at Westminster, where one in five MPs are female.

Only 26% of political journalists registered at the House of Commons - 104 out of 395 - were women, the society said, while just two out of the 16 political editors of national newspapers were female.

Katherine Rake, the director of the Fawcett Society, said viewers, listeners and readers were "missing out" because women were under-represented in the media.

"Women must not only be presenting the news, they must be making the decisions that determine what gets broadcast in the first place.

"We now need to see positive steps taken to make sure that women can break through the glass ceiling and fulfil their potential at the highest level.

"We know that women are more dissatisfied with politics and feel more disengaged from the political agenda.

"Women need to play an equal role in setting the political agenda, both in parliament itself and within the political media. This research shows just how far there is to go until that is achieved."

This is what democracy in the United States looks like...

2007-12-27T16:28:00.000-08:00

From MediaBistro:

We couldn't help but notice that, during yesterday's press conference by President Bush, he did not (for the first time in a weally long time) call on CNN, making CNN's Ed Henry and Helen Thomas (who almost never gets called on by Bush) the only two front-row journos not to be called on.

Any reason why? Who knows (an email to the White House went unreturned), but the conspiracy theorist in us wonders if it the snub is perhaps punishment for CNN's tough questions to Dana Perino in recent days over the CIA videotape case.

Take a look at this transcript at cnn.com of Henry's Wednesday package (one day before the president's presser, by the way) about how Perino is handling questions about the CIA tape case.

I'm mad as hell...

2007-12-26T13:17:00.001-08:00

I love this clip. Happy Holidays...

Lakota Indians withdraw from U.S. treaties

2007-12-23T12:09:00.000-08:00

The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website.

The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.

The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means.

Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.

"Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young.

"We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime.

Alive in Baghdad

2007-12-19T20:13:00.001-08:00

This is a great site giving average Iraqis a voice. It seems as if Iraq has all but disappeared in the American media, even on the 'progressive' blogs.

Sites like Alive in Baghdad are more important than ever. Listen to Iraqis tell their stories and donate if you feel like assisting Iraqi journalists.

Sadly, Ali Shafeya, a journalist for Alive in Baghdad, was killed on December 14th, two days before his 23rd birthday.

Iraqi Refugees at Work in Syria:

Damascus, Syria - Although there are many reports of Iraqis returning to Baghdad, there are still hundreds of thousands of refugees and resident Iraqis struggling to get by in Syria. This week Hayder Fahad brings you some of their stories.

There are so many refugees still in Syria, that the UNHCR has just begun distributing financial aid to refugees as of Sunday the 16th. Alive in Baghdad has written stories previously about Iraqi refugees in Syria, this week we focus not on the reasons why they have left, but how they get by. It is illegal for Iraqis to work in Syria, but the underground economy of Iraqi workers is thriving.

Despite this, many Iraqis are still without work, and many more cannot afford to pay their bills even with the small incomes they do make. Iraqis are filling some of the traditionally least desired jobs, particularly that of janitors, and others are forced to engage in sexwork and prostitution. Many Iraqis are choosing to remain in a desperate state in Syria, despite reports from Baghdad that unemployment is down and refugees are returning.

Liberal Media

2007-12-18T19:03:00.000-08:00

From the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

A new study has found that C-SPAN overwhelmingly favors conservative think tanks in its coverage by a three-to-one margin over all left-of-center think tanks. The paper, “Tilting Rightward: C-SPAN’s Coverage of Think Tanks,” by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), found that conservatives received 44 percent of total think tank coverage, while conservative/libertarian received another 7 percent, for a right-wing majority of 51 percent. Everything left of center received only 18 percent, with center-left and progressive think tanks garnering 13 percent and 5 percent, respectively. Centrist think tanks got the rest of the coverage.

“C-SPAN is failing to live up to its mission of providing ‘a balanced presentation of points of view,’” said Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of CEPR and co-author of the study. “In a significant amount of its coverage – events and analysis by influential organizations shaping policy – C-SPAN is presenting opinions that, most of the time, are far to the right of most Americans. It is also lopsided by any common definition of the political spectrum, with a very large bias toward the right.”

The media on torture

2007-12-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

Isn't it amazing that the media are still asking if the U.S. tortures? I'd like to read the psychological assessments of the torturers:

Today, a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive. A victim of the CIA rendition program-kidnapped, held in secret jails and tortured-speaks out in his own words. His name is Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, one of hundreds of men to have passed through the CIA's so-called "black sites." Today, he tells his story.

"When we arrived at the airport, they took me to a hall. And without any precautions or anything, I felt that I was being pulled violently by some other people. They took me to another room. They started tearing down my clothes, from above all the way down. And I was being stripped completely naked. They started taking pictures from all directions. And they also started to beat me on my sides and also my feet. And then they put me in a position similar to the position of prostration in Muslim prayer, which is similar to the fetal position. And in that position, one of them inserted his finger in my anus very violently. I was in terrible pain, and I started to scream. When they started taking pictures, I could see that they were people who were masked. They were dressed in black from head to toe, and they were also wearing surgical gloves."

Life on earth

2007-12-17T21:39:00.001-08:00

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel Prize 1921

New Jersey abolishes the death penalty

2007-12-13T14:12:00.000-08:00

From Human Rights Watch:

The New Jersey General Assembly today passed legislation abolishing capital punishment and replacing it with life imprisonment. Governor Jon Corzine has said he will sign the legislation, making New Jersey the first US state in more than 40 years to legislatively abolish the death penalty.

David Fathi, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch, is available for comment.

“This is an historic day,” said Fathi. “The elected representatives of a US state have definitively rejected the death penalty. We urge other states to follow New Jersey’s example and abolish this cruel and archaic punishment.”