As Congress prepares to receive reports on Iraq from General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and readies for a debate on George W. Bush's latest funding request of $50 billion for the Iraq war, the performance of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has become a central and contentious issue. But according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki's government is "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki's office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government.
[. . .]
The report depicts the Iraqi government as riddled with corruption and criminals-and beyond the reach of anticorruption investigators. It also maintains that the extensive corruption within the Iraqi government has strategic consequences by decreasing public support for the U.S.-backed government and by providing a source of funding for Iraqi insurgents and militias. The report, which was drafted by a team of U.S. embassy officials, surveys the various Iraqi ministries. "The Ministry of Interior is seen by Iraqis as untouchable by the anticorruption enforcement infrastructure of Iraq," it says. "Corruption investigations in Ministry of Defense are judged to be ineffectual." The study reports that the Ministry of Trade is "widely recognized as a troubled ministry" and that of 196 corruption complaints involving this ministry merely eight have made it to court, with only one person convicted. The Ministry of Health, according to the report, "is a sore point; corruption is actually affecting its ability to deliver services and threatens the support of the government." Investigations involving the Ministry of Oil have been manipulated, the study says, and the "CPI and the [Inspector General of the ministry] are completely ill-equipped to handle oil theft cases." There is no accurate accounting of oil production and transportation within the ministry, the report explains, because organized crime groups are stealing oil "for the benefit of militias/insurgents, corrupt public officials and foreign buyers." The list goes on: "Anticorruption cases concerning the Ministry of Education have been particularly ineffective….[T]he Ministry of Water Resources…is effectively out of the anticorruption fight with little to no apparent effort in trying to combat fraud….[T]he Ministry of Labor & Social Affairs is hostile to the prosecution of corruption cases. Militia support from [Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr] has effectively made corruption in the Ministry of Transportation wholesale according to investigators and immune from prosecution." Several ministries, according to the study, are "so controlled by criminal gangs or militias" that it is impossible for corruption investigators "to operate within [them] absent a tactical [security] force protecting the investigator." The Ministry of the Interior, which has been a stronghold of Shia militias, stands out in the report. The study's authors say that "groups within MOI function similarly to a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) in the classic sense. MOI is a 'legal enterprise' which has been co-opted by organized criminals who act through the 'legal enterprise' to commit crimes such as kidnapping, extortion, bribery, etc." This is like saying the mob is running the police department. The report notes, "currently 426 investigations are hung up awaiting responses for documents belonging to MOI which routinely are ignored." It cites an episode during which a CPI officer discovered two eyewitnesses to the October 2006 murder of Amer al-Hashima, the brother of the vice president, but the CPI investigator would not identify the eyewitnesses to the Minister of the Interior out of fear he and they would be assassinated. (It seemed that the killers were linked to the Interior Ministry.) The report adds, "CPI investigators assigned to MOI investigations have unanimously expressed their fear of being assassinated should they aggressively pursue their duties at MOI. Thus when the head of MOI intelligence recently personally visited the Commissioner of CPI…to end investigations of [an] MOI contract, there was a clear sense of concern within the agency."
The above is from David Corn's "Corruption is 'Norm' Within Iraqi Government" (reposted at Information Clearing House). Carlton noted it/found it and wondered if this was the reporting I mentioned on Thursday? Yes, it is. And thanks to Carlton for finding a repost of it.
I'm not interested in linking to the original source and no one in the community is either. Their now declared war on Cindy Sheehan is shameful and embarrassing for a supposedly independent magazine. You'd think it was 2004 and she'd announced she was running for president (instead of for the House seat in the eighth Congressional district in California) the way they carry on. That's not to support the "Ralph Don't Run" campaign in 2004. I wasn't a part of that but I did understand the (reactionary) motivations behind it for some. With Sheehan, there's no excuse for the nonsense. There are no hard (and wrong) feelings that she cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000. This is one Congressional seat and such is the sycophant nature at the allegedly independent Nation magazine today that one House race sends them into a tizzy. In a democracy, everyone has the right to run. Katha Pollitt can try to rewrite history all she wants and claim she was being nice but the reality was the thrust of her first piece (and the headline to it -- it was a blog post so she's responsible for the headline) was that Cindy shouldn't run. And adding "please" to the "don't run" doesn't make Pollitt any less pathetic.
The idea that Pelosi might (finally) have a real challenge in a Congressional race frightens The Nation and that's really pathetic. Pelosi has never had a challenge before, the area will not get on board with a Republican. The fact that she's never had a real challenge before has allowed her to avoid debating her opponents in past races. Pollitt's probably not aware of that but, then, she's not aware of much. A truly independent magazine would be applauding the fact that the eighth district will finally get some form of contest for the House seat and not big-monied Pelosi up against a weak and unelectable Republican while everyone pretends that's 'democracy' at work.
Will Cindy win? She might. She might not. No one knows, not even the 'omniscient' Katha Pollitt. What is known, by people who live in the area (I do, Pollitt doesn't), is that Pelosi's spent this decade betraying her constituents. Heaven forbid she be tagged with the "San Francisco Democrat" label. I hate that label but the reason for it is that San Francisco is a very progressive area and Pelosi's worked over time (as Stahl pointed out in October on 60 Minutes) to make sure she's seen as representing the middle of the Democratic Party (slightly to the right on the political spectrum). That might be well and good in some areas. But she's not representing the eighth district. She's gone weak on reproductive rights, she's gone weak and gay and lesbian rights, she's gone weak on one issue after another. Now in NYC, where they elect the likes of Rudy G and Michael Bloomberg, that might not be such an issue. But in San Francisco we expect a little more than lip service from our representatives. Possibly, Pollitt's been so compromised by her elected officials that she feels it is the 'norm'. It's not.
Sheehan chose to make the line in the sand about impeachment. Impeachment is heavily favored in the eighth district and has been for years. But that is not the only manner in which Pelosi has refused to represent the voters who elected her to Congress. Pollitt would do democracy a great service by fretting less over a 'first' elected by her peers and instead asking herself exactly how Pelosi's 'first' serves the district she's supposed to represent because the reality is that's Pelosi's first job. The eighth district sends her to Congress. If she's not representing the district, she's not doing her job.
And any joy the district might have that our representative is elevated to the position of Speaker of House flies out the window when we see her repeatedly refuse to use the power granted/given her by allowing the illegal war to drag on.
They're just there to try and make the people free,
But the way that they're doing it, it don't seem like that to me.
Just more blood-letting and misery and tears
That this poor country's known for the last twenty years,
And the war drags on.
-- words and lyrics by Mick Softly (available on Donovan's Fairytale)
Last Sunday, ICCC's number of US troops killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war was 3728. Tonight? 3739. 81 is their count for the month of August and the amazing thing there is that when filing their mainstream reports on August 1st, 'reporters' ran the false number of 72 deaths for July and trumpeted that as a sign that the escalation was working. With the figure up to 81, you will note, no one's rushing in to say, "The number increased! It's not working!" They find another detail to focus on instead. 1,019,627 was the number of Iraqis killed in the illegal war (not a full count) last week. This Sunday, Just Foreign Policy lists the death toll at 1,028,907. That's nearly a thousand people in one week so the mainstream's flaunting of the approximately 2,000 figure for the month (2,318 is the figure James Glanz ran with in Sunday morning's New York Times) is a cute little lie but a lie nonetheless. Drop back two Sundays ago and Just Foreign Policy's count was 1,012,979.
Do your own math on those figures because I'm tired but what I'm getting from subtracting today's current JFP number minus two Sundays ago is a difference of 15, 926. How someone then ends up with 2,000 is a mystery until you grasp the Iraqi government supplied those figures.
In more news waiting to be spun, KUNA reports that a Baghdad police station was closed by the US military "due to failure of its staffers to prevent insurgent activities in the area" according to the US military. No doubt this will be spun as 'progress!'
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 13 corpses were discovered in Baghdad, a Baghdad roadside bomb wounded three police officers, and two Baghdad car bombs claimed 5 lives (fifteen people were also wounded). In other Sunday violence, Reuters notes an Iraqi soldier and a police officer were shot dead in Riyadh, 6 corpses were discovered in Diwaniya, 6 corpses were discovered in Kut, a police officer was shot dead in Kut, ups the number of corpses discovered in Baghdad by 2 (fifteen from thirteen), notes a Mosul bombing claimed the life of 1 woman ("two girls and a child" were also wounded -- and it was "a cluster bomb left from the U.S.-led invasion in 2003"), and a Baghdad mortar attack claimed 1 life (one more person was wounded). From Reuters and McClatchy alone, that's 37 reported deaths on Sunday.
Aseel Kami has been a Reuters correspondent since 2005. She reflects on her job in "WITNESS-For Iraqi reporter, the hardest job is being a mum:"
People ask if it is tough being a journalist in Iraq. For me the hardest job is being a mother.
The daily fear for my son overwhelmed me last year when a car bomb exploded near our home during the fasting month of Ramadan.
My son Hani, who was six at the time, had just finished playing soccer with his friends in the street. He came inside, sweaty and cheerful, washed his face and hands and sat down at the dinner table to break the fast with my mother and I.
The noise of the explosion was deafening. Glass from a window shattered on my mother. We jumped from our chairs. I grabbed Hani and ran to the safest place in the house.
Moments later I remembered my job as a reporter and rushed out to see what had happened. I could see only dust and hear people screaming. I shouted: "What happened for God's sake!" and heard a neighbour answer: "A car bomb, a car bomb."
Six people were killed including a five-year-old girl. One of Hani's friends who had been playing soccer was hurt in the stomach, another lost the sight in one eye.
Let's turn to Texas because that's what a lot of members (from Texas and outside) are writing about. "How Not To Stage A Rally" and "A Day in Dallas and time wasted at Parkland" are both pieces that ran at The Third Estate Sunday Review today and everyone's asking that they be linked to again. (For any visitor who doesn't know, I work on pieces there). Jim's the only one up besides me. We got back to California and all hit the beds. About an hour before I pulled up this entry, we were laughing at Gareth's e-mails (he sent some funny stories intending to make us laugh -- England has a lively press) and we also (he was helping to go through the e-mails to members accounts here -- the non-public e-mail addresses) saw that the Texas 'leadership' failure is the thing most members are writing about.
Neither of us came across anything negative on the stories (and Jim also checked The Third Estate Sunday Review's e-mails, nothing there either) but, in the public account, one visitor did ask how the articles were helpful to the peace movement?
September's a month of action. 'Leaders' blew it in Texas. Everyone else coming after better do a better job. Second, Texans shouldn't be blamed for not attending an event that it was made very clear (throughout last week) that they were not welcome at.
'Leaders' blew it. They refused to publicize the event within Texas. They refused to post fliers (or visit) campuses or libraries. They created a website. Big-woop-te-do. How was anyone supposed to know about that website?
If someone speaking at the event hadn't called me last Tuesday, I don't think I would've known about it until the event flopped. Members living in the area didn't find out about it until Tuesday when we noted it in an "Iraq snapshot" here. The 'leaders' issued a press release (nationally) on Wednesday.
I did my best to build excitement but I learned long ago (in a debacle in 1988 or 1989) that when something's not going to work, it's not going to work. By Thursday, it was very likely not going to work. Isaiah, who does the comics for this site, stepped in to try to help. People had been blown off repeatedly. So Isaiah used the contact info (as you were encouraged by the 'leaders' to do) and explained who he was and how he would like to take picture (as you were encouraged to do). He e-mailed three times and got no response.
I have no control over any member. Texas community members were outraged and Isaiah's effort was a last ditch effort to try to drum up support for the event. Members were willing to see if, even though they were repeatedly ignored (as was the media), Isaiah got a response by 5:00 pm Friday. The Friday snapshot included the point (via a CounterPunch article) that if something's not to your liking, plan something else and the reason was because the 'leaders' of the event had soured that event through their own inaction. 5:00 pm came and went and nothing. (Nor, as of Sunday morning, did Isaiah get a "I meant to get back to you but there just wasn't time" e-mail.) Texas members knew the score (and knew it better than I did).
After Isaiah called me Friday (I believe it was 7:00 pm EST, we were at Mike's at the time), I made the decision to go to Texas on Saturday for the event hoping that would get a few members to go as well. We'd all hold our noses and attend.
Everyone (and the visitor points out this isn't clear to her so let me be cleared -- all writing but Cedric went to Texas; Cedric did not go because he had a family wedding to attend, we'll try to make that clearer in the second article) ended up agreeing to go. It was last minute. We get to Texas and I'm working on the Saturday morning entry in the airport and others are going through e-mails and calling members in the area. The mood is soured on the event. But I said, "Tell them we'll do a party after the rally and march." We hadn't planned to stay in Texas. At that point, we were in Texas for the rally, the march and then catching the next flight out. Billie and others got the word out on that. So some did decide to go. (Three were already going and they are the only three members that did attend the event.)
We made it to Union Station (read the articles) and Dona needed a cigarette so we got off the train (which was stopped for a bit -- the article says ten minutes, but I think the stop was 15) and immediately saw about sixty members. It was hot (and I'll get to that in a moment) and the attitude was, 'They [the 'leaders'] even got the time for the TRE runs wrong!" There was anger, there was disappointment. Pre-1988 or 1989, I would've said, "Oh, come on, we can do this." But after that debacle, I finally learned a lesson. And when something causes so many internal warning signs, you should probably listen. So I stated we'd all forget the trip to Fort Worth (which would have had us arriving well after the rally began -- Betty would know exactly when, she checked with a TRE employee, I didn't) and instead start the party early. That's what we did.
Apologies to Texas members who didn't get the word on the party and thank you to those who wrote they would have been there if they'd known about but understood it was last minute. It was very last minute. Friday night was when the decision was made to go to Texas. Saturday morning, at DFW, was when the decision was made to have a party.
The heat? Texas is hot in the summer. That's not a surprise. It is a suprise that a mid-day rally and march would be planned on a Saturday (on a Saturday of a three day weekend). Since the event started at nine in the morning, the rally should have started then and the march should have began well before noon. That was bad planning. There was no reason the rally couldn't have begun earlier.
Announcing that the event starts at nine and ends around five was bad as well as some wondered if they were expected to be there for the full thing?
Fort Worth was bad planning. Billie lives in Fort Worth and as she pointed out, "Who comes to Fort Worth?" The Dallas area has the State Fair (with two college teams matching up) in the Fair Park area of Dallas (the city proper). It used to have the Dallas Cowboys (they're now in a suburb of Dallas, I don't remember which one). It has the Dallas Maverkicks (basketball team), the Dallas Stars. The Texas Rangers (baseball team) are in Arlington (Dallas suburb). Dallas has concerts, conventions, etc. The Dallas area is known. Asking people outside of Dallas to come to Dallas and navigate the area might be frustrating but many could do it. Asking them to navigate Fort Worth? As Billie asked, "Who comes to Fort Worth?"
To hop on the anti-pollution bandwagon, the 'leaders' were pushing that people come into Fort Worth via the TRE (Trinity River Express, a real train). That was really insanity. You can't visit Texas without grasping that the bulk of the population drives in their own cars. So if 'leaders' are going to give out TRE information, they better be correct about it. But more importantly, if public transportation is your concern (to cut down on pollution), you damn well don't hold your event in Fort Worth. Dallas has a light rail for commuters. Fort Worth is building one (who knows when it will be completed) but it doesn't have a light rail. How was any aspect of the environment helped by promoting an event in a city with out a light rail? (They have over thirty bus routes.)
It wasn't. Now a lot of people come into Dallas each year (I believe it's this month) for the State Fair. They do park around the city and grab the light rail (often to avoid traffic, often to avoid the parking prices at Fair Park, often for both reasons). So a number of people do know their way around the light rail. Those who don't usually have some idea about downtown, especially people over thirty because so much is or used to be downtown (the Mavericks, the Stars, the Cotton Bowl that was used for more than the UT and Oklahoma game each State Fair -- apologies, I'm not a football watcher and I don't know Oklahoma's team, the West End, Reunion Arena, Reunion Tower, etc.). Fort Worth? Eddie (who doesn't live in Fort Worth but does live in the area) remembers visiting Fort Worth often with his grandfather when it was time for the cattle auction. That is among the reasons Fort Worth is known as "cow town." Maybe they were staging the event in Fort Worth to go for the out of town ag crowd?
Who knows?
But Fort Worth (a wonderful city) was not the place to stage the event. A rally in the noon-day sun and a march in the same hot afternoon sun, was not the right time. Refusing to do reach outs was not going to get the word out. Refusing to respond to attempts to contact them soured people on the event.
What it ended up being (intentionally or not) was a few who put in their time as 'leaders' got to have their own meet up with various figures. Well party down!
It was the worst planned, the worst staged and the worst managed event in every way possible.
It is a complete and utter failure on every level including 'planting seeds' because any of the 260 or so people that did attend who might be learning for the first time doesn't begin to offset (carbon emissions?) the tremendous anger the 'leaders' instilled in a huge portion of people.
The event failed and the 'leaders' have no one to blame but themselves.
The 'leaders' are isolated and their actions with regards to this event not only suggest why, they suggest that they want to be isolated. It came off like a nice little 'We Were Always Right' event.
Well good for you and your little gaggle but let's not pretend that you want to do anything other than pat yourselves on the backs.
It was a huge failure and that fault lies soley with the 'leaders' planning and staging the event.
Had some of the speakers brought in not been involved, we would have stopped pushing the event by Wednesday evening when the first waves of e-mails came in saying, "I don't think they want people to attend." Speakers did not travel all that way to be part of a select few. They thought they would be reaching out to the public.
I don't know if this made it into the features at Third or not (I haven't read them since we wrote them in long hand and didn't participate in the editing) but one thing speakers need to do is find out ahead of time what's being done to promote the event. That's not, "It's the speakers' fault!"
It is not their fault in any way. But people would not have traveled all that way, on a holiday weekend, if they'd known how little (how nothing!) was done to promote the event by the 'leaders'. One member knows a 'leader' and, after seeing the event mentioned here on Tuesday, called the 'leader' and asked, "Is this really happening?" She was told, this is a paraphrase, "Oh yeah, I was going to tell you." So let's be really clear that the 'leaders' weren't even getting the word out in their own friendship circles. If you don't grasp that, the member sees this leader all the time, speaks to this leader all the time, they'd had at least four conversations between Sunday and Tuesday evening when the member called to ask whether it was true that an event was taking place on Saturday. The 'leader' hadn't even mentioned it to her and she's known for being firmly against the illegal war before it started, she's known for going to DC for rallies. But the 'leader' didn't even bother to mention it to a woman who puts herself out there regularly to oppose the illegal war.
So speakers who are going somewhere, traveling there, for an event would be wise to ask "How are you promoting this event?" before agreeing to take part.
And I'm going to close (Pru's highlight will go in the next entry, Jim just pointed out the time to me) with this ticket nonsense.
I got a nasty little e-mail on Thursday about how I needed to stop saying you could attend without a ticket. For those late to the event, to get a head count on the number participating, they wanted everyone to print up tickets. There was no cost for the ticket, and the e-mail told me that was to be welcoming to all, but the ticket was not welcoming to all.
Maybe the 'leaders' don't know their own areas they live in? Just visiting and reading e-mails from members, I have a better grasp on their area than they do.
Not everyone in the area has a computer and those who do will not automatically have a printer.
You are staging a physical event. There is no need to impose some 'online' thing to it. If Eddie's mentioning it to his next door neighbor and, early Saturday, the neighbor decides to attend, if s/he doesn't have computer access, what's he supposed to do? Run to the public library? If Eddie's next door neighbor is elderly and doesn't know the first thing about computers maybe s/he won't even know to run to the library.
Thank you to Callie who e-mailed Sunday morning in reply to a question I had for her Friday. She says it's a quarter to print up one page at the Dallas libraries. Now maybe people who live in the area, every single one of them, knows that. Maybe they don't. But if you don't have a printer (assume you have a computer for this), you may not have any idea how much it will cost to print up a page at the library -- provided you know that you can print up at the library.
A rally should never prevent obstacles to attending. A rally should always be about getting the largest number of people present as possible. The ticket nonsense was nonsense from the start. It also went to the issue of they only 'promoted' the event via their website. Had they bothered to go around and speak to people face to face, they would have immediately heard, "I don't have a printer" or "I don't have a printer or a computer." Each week, Gladys (who lives just outside of the city of Dallas proper) e-mails and she's been doing that for about two years now. She writes wonderful e-mails and I frequently wait on reading them until I need a pick me up. The way she starts is always the same, noting the price of tomatoes at her grocery store. For her, that's how she tells whether the economy is doing as well as the press keeps telling you it is. She's an elderly woman on a fixed income. She does have a printer. She's also had three grandchildren celebrating birthdays in the last six weeks. She's been out of computer paper forever. When the ticket nonsense started, the first thing I did was call Billie and ask her to print up a ticket for Gladys and to call her and say, "Don't worry about the ticket." Gladys e-mailed on Friday that she wasn't attending because of the rudeness so many had already experienced (Isaiah's 5:00 pm deadline hadn't been reached, but Gladys already knew the score) and she mentioned how nice it was of Billie and me to remember that she had no computer paper. You're planning an event in an area, you need to know the damn area, you need to know the people, you need to know their needs. And if you're recommending people take the TRE, you don't just need to get the time right for how often it runs, you need to post the price of a ticket. ($2.50 for a day pass for everyone except students and seniors -- the latter two pay $2.00.) Now someone from Sherman, Texas or from Lindale, Texas is supposed to know that price how? They're supposed to know where to buy the tickets how? The 'leaders' website didn't give that information. Yes, many who found the website could then Google to get the information but why should they have to? If you're really trying to get as many people there as possible, you give as much information as possible.
I'm not even sure that, prior to Diana explaining in the Tuesday snapshot, that they told where the TRE could be picked up at. (Union Station is where Diana suggested and I believe the 'leaders' website later made the same suggestion. The TRE cannot be picked up at all Dallas railway stations.)
Now the disaster that was Saturday in Fort Worth never needs to happen again. This is the month of protest. Other events need to have some actually planning (that means reach out work). But there's another reason to note it. Heath (who doesn't live in Texas) e-mailed to say, "David Swanson's got the same Dallas Morning News article Third Estate linked to up at his site now and no explanation or nothing. It makes it look like Texans just don't care." Yes, it does. If that's going to be the story ("An event was staged, no one was interested), it does make it look like Texans don't care about ending the illegal war. That's not reality. Now Texas members have been community members forever. From the earliest, they have been members. And I will not let them be trashed, true. But there's another lesson here. When an event has a low turnout, we should all now realize that the automatic assumption shouldn't be, "Oh, people didn't care." In this instance, the 'leaders' didn't care. They didn't care about reaching out, they didn't care about getting the word out. People were not made to feel welcome so they grasped last week that they were not welcomed. As a result, they stayed away. The failure was all the 'leaderships' and a lesson needs to be learned there.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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