Dead on....

Z Magazine - Suicide Spike:

"For many mental health professionals, especially governmental ones, a 'good treatment outcome' consists of a troubled person adapting to a miserable, dehumanizing environment in a way that causes the least problems for authorities. Too few mental health professionals tell authorities that the best 'treatment' sometimes means helping a troubled person to exit from a miserable environment. Whether it is a troubled soldier in a horrifying war zone or a disruptive child in a boring school, mental health professionals are far less likely to recommend a radical altering of an environment than they are to recommend a chemical altering of the person suffering in it."

So true... so very true.

Vietnam in reverse?

Trying to Redefine Role of U.S. Military in Iraq

Even though the agreement with the Iraqi government calls for all American combat troops to be out of the cities by the end of June, military planners are now quietly acknowledging that many will stay behind as renamed “trainers” and “advisers” in what are effectively combat roles. In other words, they will still be engaged in combat, just called something else.

“Trainers sometimes do get shot at, and they do sometimes have to shoot back,” said John A. Nagl, a retired lieutenant colonel who is one of the authors of the Army’s new counterinsurgency field manual.

Nice chess move...

who didn't see that one coming?

quote of the day... and the Bush Legacy....

From Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly:

No, there was no Lewinsky during Bush's presidency. But my standard for "honor and dignity" has always been a little higher than that.

this at the end of his post on the Bush Legacy Project currently going on to rewrite history on failures such as Iraq

Why the shoe?

Could it be...

One shoe the living?
4 million Iraqis displaced since war began: Oxfam

The report by Oxfam and NCCI, a network of aid organizations working in Iraq, also highlighted other dire statistics:

Four million Iraqis regularly cannot buy enough food.
70 per cent are without adequate water supplies, compared to 50 per cent in 2003.
28 per cent of children are malnourished, compared to 19 per cent before the 2003 invasion.
92 per cent of Iraqi children suffer learning problems, mostly due to the climate of fear.

One shoe for the 151,000 dead?

The authors of the WHO/Iraqi study, published last night in the New England Journal of Medicine, say that the new number, which could be anywhere between 104,000 and 223,000 allowing for misreporting, "points to a massive death toll in the wake of the 2003 invasion and represents only one of the many health and human consequences of an ongoing humanitarian crisis".

I dunno...

but some folks are baffled...

Juan Williams: we destroyed your country, how dare you disrespect our leader!

Because Bush has been such a defender of the views of governments who were being responsive to public opinion

sigh....

corruption in Iraq

Bush Asleep While Iraqi Fraud Funnels Millions To al-Qaeda

former Iraqi officials revealed that more than $18 billion intended to rebuild Iraq may have been lost to local fraud and that millions have been funneled to al-Qaeda by corrupt Iraqis

More from Think Progress:
Rice: No ‘American Money’ In Iraq Was Lost To Corruption

Throughout the U.S. occupation of Iraq, billions in tax dollars have been lost due to corruption and incompetence. Some of the most egregious losses have been via “American programs”:

– The Coalition Provisional Authority delivered 363 tons of cash on an airplane, totaling $12 billion, to Iraq “without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for.”

– The State Dept spent $36.4 million dollars on weapons and equipment that could not be accounted for because “invoices were vague and there was no backup documentation“.

– Top contractor KBR came under fire last year from government investigators for overpricing its contract by $2 billion, which, for example, included overstating labor costs by 51 percent.

– State Dept. employees testified in May 2008 that the U.S. “allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government,” resulting in the loss of billions in U.S. tax dollars.

The use of private contractors, a major source of the corruption, has skyrocketed under Bush. The government has spent $85 billion on contracts in Iraq and other countries in the first four years of the war. “Taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars,” observed Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who has spearheaded investigations into waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq.

Thus far, some $50 billion in taxpayer dollars have been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, which anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International listed as the third-most corrupt nation in the world.

good point

Juan Cole on the SOFA 2011 withdrawl date:

Whether the U.S. withdrawal will allow a resurgence of violence is a question we can't know the answer to. But it should be pointed out that, while the United States has been there, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, have died in violence. Entire cities have changed their social complexion through violence. There's been ongoing killing and destruction.

So the U.S. presence has not been a guarantee of social peace in any case.

It speaks volumes that Zinn can be publish by Al Jazeera but not the New York Times...

Zinn: US 'In Need of Rebellion'
by Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera speaks to Howard Zinn, the author, American historian, social critic and activist, about how the Iraq war damaged attitudes towards the US and why the US "empire" is close to collapse.
Q: Where is the United States heading in terms of world power and influence?

Howard Zinn is the author of, most notably, A People's History of the United States, a National-Book-Award-nominated text that investigates US history from the standpoint of the oppressed. Other books by Zinn include Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology and his 1995 autobiography, You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train.HZ: America has been heading - for some time, and is heading right now - toward less and less world power, less and less influence.

Obviously, since the war in Iraq, the rest of the world has fallen away from the United States, and if American foreign policy continues in the way it has been - that is aggressive and violent and uncaring about the feelings and thoughts of other people - then the influence of the United States is going to decline more and more.
This is an empire which is on the one hand the most powerful empire that ever existed; on the other hand an empire that is crumbling - an empire that has no future ... because the rest of the world is alienated and simply because this empire is top-heavy with military commitments, with bases around the world, with the exhaustion of its own resources at home.

[This is] leading to more and more discontent and home, so I think the American empire will go the way of other empires and I think it is on its way now.

Q: Is there any hope the US will change its approach to the rest of the world?

HZ: If there is any hope, the hope lies in the American people.

[It] lies in American people becoming resentful enough and indignant enough over what has happened to their country, over the loss of dignity in the world, over the starving of human resources in the United States, the starving of education and health, the takeover of the political mechanism by corporate power and the result this has on the everyday lives of the American people.
[There is also] the higher and higher food prices, the more and more insecurity, the sending of the young people to war.

I think all of this may very well build up into a movement of rebellion.

We have seen movements of rebellion in the past: The labour movement, the civil rights movement, the movement against the war in Vietnam.

I think we may well see, if the United States keeps heading in the same direction, a new popular movement. That is the only hope for the United States.

Q: How did the US get to this point?

HZ: Well, we got to this point because ... I suppose the American people have allowed it to get it to this point because there were enough Americans who were satisfied with their lives, just enough.

Of course, many Americans were not, that is why half of the population doesn't vote, they're alienated.

But there are just enough Americans who have been satisfied, you might say getting some of the "goodies" of the empire, just some of them, just enough people satisfied to support the system, so we got this way because of the ability of the system to maintain itself by satisfying just enough of the population to keep its legitimacy.

And I think that era is coming to an end.

Q: What should the world know about the United States?

HZ: What I find many people in the rest of the world don't know is that there is an opposition in the United States.

Very often, people in the rest of the world think that Bush is popular, they think 'oh, he was elected twice', they don't understand the corruption of the American political system which enabled Bush to win twice.
They don't understand the basic undemocratic nature of the American political system in which all power is concentrated within two parties which are not very far from one another and people cannot easily tell the difference.

So I think we are in a situation where we are going to need some very fundamental changes in American society if the American people are going to be finally satisfied with the kind of society we have.

Q: Do you think the US can recover from its current position?

HZ: Well, I am hoping for a recovery process. I mean, so far we haven't seen it.

You asked about what the people of the rest of the world don't know about the United States, and as I said, they don't know that there is an opposition.

There always has been an opposition, but the opposition has always been either crushed or quieted, kept in the shadows, marginalised so their voices are not heard.

People in the rest of the world hear the voices of the American leaders.

They do not hear the voices of the people all over this country who do not like the American leaders who want different policies.

I think also, people in the rest of the world should know that what they see in Iraq now is really a continuation of a long, long term of American imperial expansion in the world.

I think ... a lot of people in the world think that this war in Iraq is an aberration, that before this the United States was a benign power.

It has never been a benign power, from the very first, from the American Revolution, from the taking-over of Indian land, from the Mexican war, the Spanish-American war.

It is embarrassing to say, but we have a long history in this country of violent expansion and I think not only do most people in other countries [not] know this, most Americans don't know this.

Q: Is there a way for this to improve?

HZ: Well you know, whatever hope there is lies in that large number of Americans who are decent, who don't want to go to war, who don't want to kill other people.

It is hard to see that hope because these Americans who feel that way have been shut out of the communications system, so their voices are not heard, they are not seen on the television screen, but they exist.

I have gone through, in my life, a number of social movements and I have seen how at the very beginning of these social movements or just before these social movements develop, there didn't seem to be any hope.

I lived in the [US] south for seven years, in the years of the civil rights movements, and it didn't seem that there was any hope, but there was hope under the surface.

And when people organised, and when people began to act, when people began to work together, people began to take risks, people began to oppose the establishment, people began to commit civil disobedience.

Well, then that hope became manifest ... it actually turned into change.

Q: Do you think there is a way out of this and for the future influence of the US on the world to be a positive one?

HZ: Well, you know for the United States to begin to be a positive influence in the world we are going to have to have a new political leadership that is sensitive to the needs of the American people, and those needs do not include war and aggression.

[It must also be] sensitive to the needs of people in other parts of the world, sensitive enough to know that American resources, instead of being devoted to war, should be devoted to helping people who are suffering.

You've got earthquakes and natural disasters all over the world, but the people in the United States have been in the same position as people in other countries.

The natural disasters here [also] brought little positive reaction - look at [Hurricane] Katrina.

The people in this country, the poor people especially and the people of colour especially, have been as much victims of American power as people in other countries.

Q: Can you give us an overall scope of everything we talked about - the power and influence of the United States?

HZ: The power and influence of the United States has declined rapidly since the war in Iraq because American power, as it has been exercised in the world historically, has been exposed more to the rest of the world in this situation and in other situations.

So the US influence is declining, its power is declining.

However strong a military machine it is, power does not ultimately depend on a military machine. So power is declining.

Ultimately power rests on the moral legitimacy of a system and the United States has been losing moral legitimacy.

My hope is that the American people will rouse themselves and change this situation, for the benefit of themselves and for the benefit of the rest of the world.

Keep calling me a coward

Keep calling me a coward.
by Jim Nichols
June 21st 2008

In 2002 and 2003 I joined with men and women of all and ages and walks of life–young and old, conservative and liberal, veterans and wide eyed college kids–together we worked hard to organize and educate on the catastrophic foreign policy of the Bush/McCain ilk. We spoke out on how their approach, their faith in bombs and war rather than diplomacy and calculated toughness, instead of blind force would undermine our national security, overextend our military unnecessarily, and strengthen our adversaries.

Beyond the policy itself, the fundamental principles, the essence of our American way of life: sound economic footing, respect for human dignity and the innate value of human life; would be at best strained beyond necessity and at worst fundamentally ignored and discarded. For our efforts to participate as an active citizenry that involves itself in public policy–something our Founding Fathers expected of us–we were labeled childish, naive, un-American...cowards.

Now the question must be asked–who was wrong on the policy? Who was truly putting American security, American lives, Americas future at risk? Who upheld the standard of our Founding Fathers and the millions of nameless hero's throughout our history who stood with integrity and fearlessness to protect our nation from those who want to take, waste or relinquish the gifts we have been blessed with? Is Iran not rising? Is the middle east more secure? Was Iraq producing the oil to pay for this war that was fought on slam dunk evidence that would cost next to nothing for American taxpayers?

The economist Joseph Stiglitz recent found that nearly 40% of our solder are coming home needing long term physical and mental care for the rest of their lives–and that we are not budgeting for these obligations we owe to them. The efforts of Republican Chuck Hegal and Democrat Jim Webb to get our solders the money they need to get a college degree was opposed by a shockingly large number of elected officials. Why were the likes of John McCain and my congressman Lynn Westmoreland deciding that we need to be stingy with the budget when it comes to our troops?

Osama Bin Ladin is still on the loose, Afghanistan is neither stable and secure, and Al queda is on the rise rather than on the run. America has lost its footing and the public has lost faith in the essence of American resolve. 6 years later I hope that others have learned what I have from this period, these policy, this environment. I no longer pause and question my own patriotism when I am challenged. I want to improve our way of life and I am proud of that fact. I stand my ground and work to organize an active citizenry who believes that our Government is supposed to protect and empower its citizens rather than divide the public and enrich the few.

Even though attacks on my character continue because of my belief that every American deserves affordable health care and that our solders deserve only the best after their service–one and only one tour of duty with no obligation to ever do more, is that too much to ask?

Keep calling us un-American, keep calling us cowards. American's aren't stupid, they see who is truly fighting for them and who is simply pandering fear and hopelessness–and it only makes people like me work that much harder. To those younger than I who wonder what their elders have handed to them. Don't let the talking heads and community curmudgeons fool you. Register to vote, participate in the process, and never say our people can't achieve whatever they put there sights on. And let us learn from our history so that we never ever repeat this sad chapter.

Jim Nichols lives in Stockbridge GA and is an undergraduate at GA State University.