Friday, July 17, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces multiple deaths, at least 40 pilgrims are wounded in Baghdad bombings, US war resister Robin Long speaks, increasing tensions between the north and the central government, and more.
This morning the
US military announced: "BAGHDAD -- Three Multi-National Division-South Soldiers were killed when Contingency Operating Base Basra was attacked by indirect fire at approximately 9:15 p.m. on July 16. The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of next of kin. The incident is under investigation." The announcement brings the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to
4326.
Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times) reports, "Shortly after the attack, the Iraqi army gave the U.S. military permission to carry out aerial searches northwest of the airport, the area from where the rockets are thought to have been launched, U.S officials said. Troops chased a car to a house, which they searched. A joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol raided another home. Three Iraqi men were briefly detained, the military said."
Violence rocked Iraq as usual today but a lot of it targeted pilgrims.
Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) explains the pilgrimage "is expected to fill the streets of Baghdad on Saturday in the first major security challenge for Iraqi military forces" with "a limited curfew" being imposed and "thousands of additional Iraqi soldiers and police officers . . . on the streets".
Alsumaria reports, "While thousands of pilgrims have poured in to Al Kazimiya to mark Imam Kazem Anniversary (AS), citizens are complaining about closing main roads which is usually caused by religious occasion."
Muhanad Mohammed (Reuters) observes, "Despite intensive security, some bombers made it through." Turning to the reported violence today . . .
Bombings?
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing which wounded thirteen pilgrims, a Baghdad roadside bombing which wounded eight pilgrims, a Baghdad roadside bombing which wounded five pilgrims, another Baghdad roadside bombing which injured five pilgirms, a Baghdad roadside bombing which injured three pilgrims, a Baghdad roadside bombing which claimed the life of 1 pilgrim and wounded six more, a Baghdad roadside bombing which injured two men, a Falluja roadside bombing which injured nine males who were playing football and a roadside bombing attack on the home of police chief Abdulsalam Khawarm in Anbar Province resulting in the deaths of two of his children and leaving eight more people injured.
Reuters notes 1 dead in the Falluja bombing on the football players, a Mosul roadside bombing left two Iraqi soldiers injured and a Shirqat sticky bombing injured one police officer.
Shootings?
Reuters notes 1 person wounded in a Kirkuk shooting today and, dropping back to yesterday, one wounded in a Kirkuk shooting as well.
Today on the second hour of NPR's
The Diane Rehm Show, Diane and the
Wall St. Journal's Youchi Dreazen, the
Washington Post's David Ignatius and
Foreign Policy's Moises Naim discussed Iraq.
Diane Rehm: Alright and let's turn now to Iraq and the latest on violence there, David? You had three American soldiers killed Thursday after insurgents fired mortar rounds into a US base in southern Iraq. You've also got problems with the Kurds. You've got lots of issues still going on even as the US is planning its pull-out.
David Ignatius: This was a week, Diane, that reminded us of the underlying fragility of Iraq. We've gotten in the habit of not paying much attention to it. Our troops are pulling back from the cities under the timetable we agreed to with the Iraqis. And-and, these last weeks we saw in these-these bombings and the political conflicts just how easily Iraq could spin back into a very chaotic situation. Take the bombings that happened on Wednesday. By my count, there were about eleven people killed, something like fifty or sixty wounded. But what was striking was that one of the bombs was in Ramadi -- in the Sunni heartland, the area we thought had been stabilized by our counter-insurgency work. Another bomb was in Sadr City. Another was right in the heart of Baghdad, in Sadhun Street. Those latter two were really going after Shi'ites, the first, in Ramadi, was going after Sunnis. More of these bombings are going to again make Iraqis frightened that they can't be secure without militias and then you're back in the sectarian killing game and you're going to start finding fifty bodies -- dead bodies -- every morning in the morgue.
Diane Rehm: At twenty-seven [after] the hour you're listening to The Diane Rehm Show. And what's going on with the Kurds, Youchi?
Youchi Dreazen: In many ways, this is the most dangerous aspect of Iraq right now. You've had recently [June 28th] a standoff between Kurdish fighters and Iraqi national army fighters. Last year there was an incident that did not get much attention here in which US drones that were monitoring a similar standoff saw columns of armed Iraqi army soldiers and columns of Kurdish peshmerga racing towards each other. By the account of everyone who was watching it, bruising for a fight, and they stood down only amidst much mediation by US embassy and military -- as was the case here where there was US mediation. And what you have is this very thorny issue about what will be the boundaries between Kurdistan, what will be the boundaries between Arab-Iraq? How will they divide oil? How will they divide Kirkuk? These issues have been kicked down the road again and again and again. And now they're at the end of the road. They have to at some point be resolved. I think what you've seen is, when the US invaded, there was a status quo that existed under Saddam that was toppled, there was a Sunni-led status quo. Then there was a new status quo that was not sustainable where you had fighting between Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds were kind of left off to their own devices in the north. Now you have a new status quo where the Shia-Sunni tensions are much reduced -- the Arab tensions -- and now their focusing much more again on the Arab-Kurdish tensions that were there under Saddam decades ago.
Moises Naim: And the Kurdish prime minister yesterday said that the Kurdish autonomous region was closer to going to war with the central government than ever before, since 2003, since the US invasion. And that points, as Youchi said, to the tensions about the divisions -- federalism, they're trying to find out what is the divisions of authority, power between a centralized government and a regional government. And this is a region that is quite different in its governance, in its function, in its economy, in its politics, than the rest of the country.
Diane Rehm: And the United States population is certainly concerned as is the Iraqi that what if the violence continues to uptick, gets worse? Do troops reinvigorate, US troops? What do you do?
David Ignatius: Well for the administration, I think there's a recognition that, as we reduce our military presence there, it is inevitable that violence will increase. That's accepted. And it's just a price of our getting out. The Iraqis want us out, we want to get out. So some increase in violence, it's understood, will happen. And the question is: Will the Iraqi forces be strong enough to contain it within acceptable levels? And what's-what's-what's your choke point? If you're President Obama and you're seeing ten people die a day, well, what do you say? Suppose it gets up to fifty, what do you - what do you do then? And that's -- it's-it's grisly. But that's the kind of decision I fear that the-the Obama administration going to have to make about Iraq over the coming year.
Moises Naim: It's very hard to imagine that there's a political environment in the United States that will support a massive increase of troops -- of US troops -- in Iraq. The-the line their will be crossed if Iran becomes very influential country in Iraq. If Iranian influence there which it hasn't seemed to be the case but that will be then the-the political base for it.
[. . .]
Diane Rehm: To Charlie in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Good morning, you're on the air.
Charlie: Good morning. I'd like to go back to the MidEast a little bit in terms of I think that Iraq is a lost cause. I think Sadr, Ayatollah Sadr's militia has only stood down under orders from Iran and under realization that the US military would destroy Sadr City. They will res -- they will resurge and they will take over the south and if -- have this very informal reunion with Iran. The Sunnis were bought off with US money and viagra pills for their ancient sheiks -- and that's the truth, not a joke. And the Kurds, our most loyal allies, are the largest tribe, as far as I know, on earth without a homeland. And I'm afraid that they -- especially with the oil money -- do not intend to be left behind this time. I think also I'd like one more comment, on the Gaza situation again. [. . .]
What about Gaza? This isn't the Gaza snapshot. And by bringing that up, Gaza, it's what everyone quickly glommed on after David's initial remarks on Iraq.
David Ignatius: Well, I think the -- it's too early for me at least to say that Iraq is a lost cause. One interesting fact about Iraq is that our greatest potential problem -- which is Iranian influence, Iranian support for extremist militias, like Moqtada Sadr who the caller was referring to, Iran politically is imploding. That threat, the ability of Iran to destabilize Iraq, is, I think, somewhat reduced, I want to say signifianctly reduced -- becuase of the chaose following the election. And I think you can generalize that to potential Iranian clients all ove. Political parties in Iraq that are supported by Iran must be worrying, "Holy smokes our paymaster are in trouble."
As noted in Diane's discussion, things are very tense between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government.
Anthony Shadid (Washington Post) reports, "In separate interviews, Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and the region's president, Massoud Barzani, described a stalemate in attempts to resolve long-standing disputes with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's emboldened government. Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. military in northern Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani said, fighting might have started in the most volatile regions."
Quil Lawrence (NPR's All Things Considered) reported this afternoon on the tensions quoting Barzani, "Whoever wants to get ahead in Iraqi politics does so by criticizing the Kurds." On territorial disputes and what may have been an attempt by al-Maliki's government to enroach on Kurdish territories June 28th, Lawrence quotes Barzani stating, "Our problem is that we do not believe there is any political will in Baghdad to solve this problem."
Gordon Duff (Salem-News) addresses the June 28th confrontation and offers his opinions:
News stories reporting on this conflict conveniently omit Kurdish history. Our NATO partner, Turkey, that refused to allow US troops access to Northern Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, has long been an enemy of our Kurdish allies. If Turkey had joined with the US, the military disaster that led to years of conflict might have been averted. Instead, the US depended on Kurdish armies to defeat Saddam in Northern Iraq.
Reports of Kurdish incursions in and around Kirkuk fail to mention that the Arabs in the region are remnants of Saddam's occupation forces, not residents. The efforts by the Baghdad government to continue control of this Kurdish region is driven by need to control the regions oil revenues and continue to fuel Iraq's massive corruption.
Elizabeth Dickinson: With [US Vice President Joe] Biden as the U.S. envoy for reconciliation in Iraq, what priorities should he be pushing for?
Jay Garner: No. 1, a referendum on disputed lands, because I don't think you can ever have a stable Iraq as long as you have an unstable Arab-Kurdish border. No. 2, a resolution on the oil law because it's a thorn in everybody's side. No. 3, continue to exert whatever leverage we have on the Iraqi government to get these things done.
Anything that happens here, whether it is Kurds versus Arabs or Shiite versus Sunni -- and those are huge flash points -- is not an Iraqi problem; it's a regional problem. It's huge. It's much greater than Iraq, because if it's Shiite-Sunni you are going to have Iranians on the side of the Shiites and you are going to have the Gulf region on the side of the Sunnis. If it's Arab-Kurdish, you are going to have an ethnic war, and lives will be gone and other countries will get involved because they are going to want to shape how it comes out.
I don't think the [U.S.] administration wants to pull out in 2011, run for the presidency in 2012, and have this whole damned thing blow up on them, you know? So it is good that [U.S. President Barack Obama has] appointed Biden; it's good that he's made a special envoy; and it's good that Biden is drilling in on this. Biden is a guy that has studied a long time. He is more thoughtful about this than the other people, and I think that's a good first step. But you've got to have some leverage to execute that. So whatever leverage we have left, we need to make sure that those flash points are solved before we leave.
Garner mentioned the oil law (aka the theft of Iraqi law) and Nouri's sending messages on that today.
Missy Ryan (Reuters) reports that the Oil Ministry's spokesperson Asim Jihad declared today of talk that unions might stop the British Petroleum and China National Petroleum Corporation oil deal (jointly, they were awarded a contract from the puppet government in the oil auction -- that was the only awarded contract from that auction), "The government will protect the companies." 'At all costs' was left implied.
Yesterday's snapshot noted the House Veterans Affairs Disability and Memorial Affairs Subcommittee's joint-hearing with the Subcomittee on Health.
Kat covered the hearing last night and noted the discussion on rape victims. That was the first panel,
Service Women's Action Network's Anuradha Bhagwati,
Wounded Warrior Project's Dawn Halfaker and National Association of State Women Veterans Coordinators, Inc and the
Texas Veterans Commission's Delilah Washburn.
Grace After Fire's Kayla Williams raised an issue during questioning about suicide rates. Asked of the number of females, she explained she didn't know that number and then explained that the military is only tracking the suicides for those on active duty and not the number of suicides among veterans. (Or, at least only releasing the data for those on active duty.) Something to keep in mind as the
Los Angeles Times reports: "About 37% of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have mental health problems, a nearly 50% increase from the last time the prevalence was calculated, according to a new study published today analyzing national Department of Veterans Affairs data. The study, which examined the records of about 289,000 veterans who sought care at the VA between 2002 and 2008, also found higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression."
Turning to war resistance, last week Robin Long was released from the brig. Today he spoke on
KPFA's
The Morning Show "Not for a second do I regret or wish I'd done something different."
Philip Malderi: You're listening to The Morning Show on KPFA, I'm Philip Malderi. I'm joined in the studio by Robin Long. Robin was in the US army. He enlisted shortly after the Iraq War got under way in June of '03. He was guaranteed by his recruiter that he wouldn't be sent to Iraq but of course those promises were not exactly fulfilled. In 2005, realizing he had made a mistake, he went to Canada and decided to resist serving in Iraq. Canada ultimately sent him back and he went to a navy brig down in San Diego to serve a year in prison. And now he's out. He joins me in the studio. Robin Long, welcome to KPFA.
Robin Long: Good morning.
Philip Malderi: Uh, again why did you decide to join in the first place? Why don't we start there.
Robin Long: You said initially I'd joined in June. I'd actually signed up for the delayed entry program in about February. You know, I'd always grown up thinking I want to join the army and, you know, a lot of people in my family are in the military and I just thought it was something I would do my whole life and so I signed up for the delayed entry program. And shortly after we went and invaded Iraq. And at the time I actually thought, you know, this is the right thing to be doing, you know there's connections with al Q-al Qaeda and there's weapons of mass destruction there but by the time June came when I was actually, I was getting ready to go to basic training in October, but around June, I was talking to my recruiter and said, "Hey, I have-have some moral qualms with what's going on over there." And he, uh, at that time, he assured me that I wouldn't go to Iraq, I'd be sent to a nondeployable post and --
Philip Malderi: And you believed it.
Robin Long: Oh, yeah, I believed it. They-they kept true to their word. I was stationed at Fort Knox for two years but speaking out while I was there, saying stuff, that's when they decided to give me orders to go to Iraq -- the only person in my unit. I don't know if it was punishment or what it was but they, uh, they ended up sending me to a unit that was already in Iraq .
Philip Malderi: They pulled you out of your unit in Kentucky and only you and sent you to a unit that was already in Iraq?
Robin Long: I was --
Philip Malderi: But was going to send you actually?
Robin Long: Yeah, they were - they were going to send me. They were sending me to Fort Carson, Colorado to join up with Second Brigade, Second Infantry and they were already in Iraq at the time so I was just supposed to report there and meet up with them in Iraq. They'd already been there for like four months.
Philip Malderi: So what did you decide to do?
Robin Long: Well I told them when they told me where I was going that, "No, I'm not going to go there. You know, if you're going to give me these orders, I'm going to - I'm going to refuse them. I'm not going to show up at Fort Carson." They said, "Yeah, you are. You're going to show up." Eventually, you know when the time came to hop on the plane, I-I didn't, I didn't get on the plane to go to Fort Carson and it took me about two months to actually decide to go up to Canada. I lived underground in a friend's basement for-for a good two months.
Philip Malderi: So what happened in Canada? Was there a system of support for war resisters?
Robin Long: I initially went up there by myself. I didn't now anyone. I was up there for six months before I even found a group called the War Resisters Support Campaign. There based out of Toronto but they have chapters in cities all across Canada and they help with financial needs, finding you a place to stay. They raise money to-to pay for lawyers and stuff up there so there's like a legal avenue people are trying to do up there by applying for political refugee status and they just kind of help out with everything with that. So.
Philip Malderi: So where did you settle down?
Robin Long: Initially, I settled down in a little town called Marathon, Ontario on the most northern tip of Lake Superior. You don't know cold until you've lived there, negative forty for months at a time.
Philip Malderi: (Laughing) This was -- this was your punishment.
Robin Long: Yeah, you know, nice in summer time but the winter? It's definitely cold.
Philip Malderi: Uh, now, during the Vietnam war, those that can remember it, people who resisted going to Vietnam and went to Canada, the Canadian government of that time protected them and did not send them back to the States to be prosecuted. What changed? What happened this time?
Robin Long: Well, the -- the Canadian people and the majority even of Parliament still want the war resisters, actually all conscientious objectors from any war to be able to stay in Canada. Parliament voted -- has voted twice in the last two years to allow war resisters and their families to stay. But the Conservative government that is in charge -- you know, that Parliament votes on laws and everything, but the government that's in charge has to actually implement the laws. They're just ignoring the votes. And they're ignoring their constituents and what most people want. [C.I. note: No law has been passed. We'll go over that point at the end of the transcript.] So they're just acting like this vote never even happened. So it's really just the Conservatives, a Bush-supporting Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that's changed.
Philip Malderi: And how did they capture you?
Robin Long: The RNC, the Mounties, came to where I was staying and said I had a nation-wide immigration warrant, picked me up and I didn't get hand cuffed or anything, they just put me in the cop car, brought me to the Nelson city cell. I was staying in Nelson, British Columbia at the time. And took about seven days and I was handed over to the US authorities in Blaine, Washington.
Philip Malderi: And then the Army prosecuted you?
Robin Long: Yeah, they, about forty days later, they prosecuted me for desertion with intent to remain away permanently which, uh, has a maximum sentence of three years but, uh, I -- there was no refuting it. I-I had deserted. It's all paper work so to get a lesser sentence, I pled guilty to it and only received fifteen months. The judge -- because there's a pretrial agreement -- the judge what she actually does is she gives you a sentence and whichever's less, what your pretrial or what she gives you, is what you get. So she gave me thirty months and a dishonorable discharge but the pretrial gave me fifteen.
Philip Malderi: So where did you serve this time?
Robin Long: I served it down in San Diego.
To be clear, Parliament didn't pass a law. Both votes were non-binding. That's why Stephen Harper can ignore them. Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, would be forced -- as would any future Prime Minister -- to follow the two motions passed already if either had been legislation and not a non-binding motion. Why the political parties haven't pushed for a real vote on real legislation may be due to the Senate or higher up. The only one passing anything -- another reason it couldn't be a law -- is the House. Both times that the non-binding motion was brought before a body, it was brought before the House.
Canada has a bi-cameral Parliament with an upper and lower house. The Senate is the upper house and it has never voted on it. In practice, usually the Senate goes along with what the House does becuase the House is directly elected by the Canadian people. The Senate is staffed, not elected. They are rubber stamped by the Governor General of Canada . . . on the say so of . . . the Prime Minister. Meaning, Stephen Harper's recommended people since he was in power. Once recommended, they serve until they retire (with a mandatory retirement age) or die while in office. The bulk of the Senate shouldn't be Harper supporters or even Conservative Party supporters because the last decades -- as far back as the sixties have seen the Liberal Party the primary party in power. So where's the problem in the Senate?
Noel Kinsella. Who is he? He's the Speaker of the Senate. How does someone become the Speaker? In the House, they're elected. In the Senate, they're appointed. In his position, he could refuse to allow a vote or do any number of things. But it's also true that you've got barriers above him. Say the Senate went along with the House (either out of tradition or conviction), you don't have a law yet. It has to be signed off on.
The first who could sign it into law would be Michaelle Jean. She's Queen Elizabeth II's representative. Her posts is Governor General of Canada and the queen appoints her. If a bill passed both houses, Michaelle Jean could allow it to become a law, nix it or leave the issue up to the Queen. Nixing it -- no reason needs to be given -- means no law. Passing it onto the Queen who can say yea or nay. (The Queen also has two years after the Governor General to decide, no, it's not a law. It would be a law throughout that time but the Queen can reverse it.) So if we follow all of that, the ultimate reason why the House does non-binding measures may be due to the fact that they grasp the pressure from the Bush administration and now the Obama administration (which makes their opinions known through an acting ambassador, Terry Breese, because they've not filled the post of Ambassador to Canada) on Canadian officials would also be conveyed to the Queen of England who, having refused to stop the illegal war in 2003 (she could have), wouldn't allow this to become law. While the British are largely out of Iraq (approximately 400 British troops remain), they are still in Afghanistan and have had war resisters. Queen Elizabeth II is not about to go along with that (or give Canadian troops an argument for not serving in Afghansitan). Repeating because England has kept their monarchy (Canada didn't "keep it" -- they remain endentured to England because they never had a revolution which is why Queen Elizabeth is their head of state), Queen Elizabeth could have prevented England from entering the Iraq War. She didn't. It's another reason why you have rumbles of doing away with the monarchy in England.
But Canada has no real independence. If England declares war, Canada has as well, whether they delcare it themselves or not. Which means that while Canada chose not to send soldiers to Iraq, as part of England, they officially are in support of that war. (That illegal war.) And that's the difference that Philip Malderi was asking about: England didn't take part in a war on Vietnam. Not the Indochina War or the later American conflict. That's one reason why Canada could take the stand they did during Vietnam. Also true, a strong prime minister, like Pierre Trudeau, could take that stand right now. The Queen is head of state but Harper is head of government and, in a face off on a popular issue, the Queen might go along. Harper being Harper, such a face off isnt likely to take place.
The above is a very complicated process and one that's very different from the US -- which fought a war to have their independence from England and fought the 1812 war when Canada was being a proxy for England. What's not complicated is that the Iraq War is not ending. There are over 130,000 US troops in Iraq presently. So it was amazing, on allegedly left radio, Philip Malderi tried to declare that the Iraq War was winding down. Well, as a colleague of his on campus said during 2008, "
Phil's no longer just drinking the Kool-Aid, he's drinking the urine." We wished that Phil could have been in Harlem Tuesday night so Carl Dix could have set him straight on the Iraq War (Dix was in a dialogue with Cornel West at Aaron Davis Hall). But Robin Long was present and tried to walk Philip through, "What's going on in Iraq, they say all combat troops are leaving but, if you look at it, they're just changing the name. They're being called the same thing they were being called in Vietnam. They're being called 'advisers' now. And we have 30 permanent bases in Iraq. Just because they're not being called combat troops, there's still a lot of people there."
Turning to TV notes. Tony Blair's appearance at The Hague may be delayed for a bit; however, the War Criminal can be found this week on your TV screen via
NOW on PBS:
Once one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the West Bank, Jenin was the scene of frequent battles between the Israeli military and Palestinian fighters, and the hometown of more than two dozen suicide bombers.Today, however, there's been a huge turnaround. Jenin is now the center of an international effort to build a safe and economically prosperous Palestinian state from the ground up. On Jenin's streets today, there's a brand new professional security force loyal to the Palestinian Authority and funded in part by the United States. But can the modest success in Jenin be replicated throughout the West Bank, or will the effort collapse under the intense political pressure from all sides?This week, NOW talks directly with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the international community's envoy to the region and an architect of the plan. We also speak with a former commander of the infamous Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin about his decision to stop using violent tactics, and to residents of Jenin about their daily struggles and their hopes for the future.To Blair, the Jenin experiment can be pivotal in finally bringing peace to the Middle East. He tells NOW, "This is the single most important issue for creating a more stable and secure world."A war criminal, an architect of the illegal war on Iraq, wants to tell the world what our "single most important issue" is and expects to be trusted? Tony Blair belongs behind bars, not on your TV screen. On PBS'
Washington Week, Gwen sits around the table with USA Today's Joan Biskupic, the New York Times' Mark Mazzetti (aka The Little Asset Who Could), and Time magazine's Karen Tumulty and Hedda Hopper Lives!' Jeanne Cummings who will continue her efforts to be seen as the tabloids' new Jeane Dixon.
Bonnie Erbe sits down with Bay Buchanan, Avis Jones-DeWeever, Tara Setmayer and Amy Siskind on PBS'
To The Contrary. Check local listings, all three PBS shows begin airing tonight on many PBS stations. And turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS'
60 Minutes offers:
Gun Rush
Americans are snapping up guns and ammunition at an increasingly higher rate despite the economic downturn. But as Lesley Stahl reports, the economic downturn, as well as the election of Barack Obama, may be the reason for the run on guns. | Watch Video
