Monday, September 27, 2010

Veterans issues

Seth Meyers: But you know what else is crazy? Anyone who says we need to attack Iran because we're definitely in two wars already. Yes, two. Because saying combat operations are over in Iraq when they're are still 50,000 troops is like saying, 'Hey, I quit drinking . . . tequila shots!'

Amy Poehler: Really.

Seth Meyers: Really.

The above is from Weekend Update on this weekend's Saturday Night Live (click here to stream the episode at NBC, click here to stream it at Hulu and click here to stream the Weekend Update clip at Hulu). Both entries this morning open with it and this one gives you the explanation. One friend performing on the show Saturday and one friend who's an SNL writer had a fit and couldn't believe that Ava and I didn't note SNL at Third, especially the above which the writer says should have been a "Truest statement of the week." We didn't watch SNL. The opening sketch was so awful we turned it off in the middle. (Really? We're going to play a skit with two men and one woman and the woman's a witch? And after sexualizing Sarah Palin we're now going to have another woman speak in a voice higher than the woman she's parodying? Really?) We were actually being kind by avoiding SNL and we also had a real report to do ("TV: It Takes Two") and the other piece ["Week in TV recap (Ava and C.I.)"] was just odds and ends that we threw together in about five to six minutes so that the writing edition would be over. OVER. Because we wanted to get to sleep. Two friends made clear in Sunday night phone calls that they were pissed off -- but Third had already published (here's a hint, stop rushing to the after-party and call then and say, "Hey, we're really proud of one bit and we think it needs some acknowledgment"), so I stated we would open both Mondy morning entries with the above. It is worth at least one morning entry. It may be worth two. The Weekend Update "Really" sketch was funny (it often is, it was funny long before it was ever a SNL skit -- remember), topical and worth noting. Had we heard about the above, we would have voted Seth a "Truest statement of the week." It was deserving.

No, the Iraq War is not over. Sam Cooper (Waterbury Republican-American) reports, "A procession of friends and neighbors somberly filed in and out of the family home of Army Pfc. Gebrah P. Noonan on Sunday to pay their respects to a man described as an American patriot." Meanwhile 700 members of the Texas National Guard are en route to DC today and then on to Iraq at the end of the year. Yesterday, there was a send-off ceremony for them in Austin. Patrick George (Austin American-Statesman) reports that among those joining the ceremony were Texas Governor Rick Perry and also adds, "The unit's history includes combat in France during World War I and then landing in Italy to ultimately help retake Rome in World War II. They also liberated some of the subcamps of Germany's Dachau concentration camp in 1945." Rhonda Lee (KXAN -- link has text and video) reports on the send-off ceremony with an emphasis on the families. (Note, the male anchor intro-ing Lee's report is not only incorrect, he's insulting and I would assume National Guard members and their families have already complained about his assertion. The Guard has been in Iraq from the start of the illegal war.)

In veterans news, Nick Carey and Murray Waas (Reuters) report on a new study on Virginia's Iraq and Afghanistan Wars which is being issued tomorrow and finds over 1/4 suffer from head injuries and 2/3 experience depression. In North Carolina, Jennifer Calhoun (Fayetteville Observer) reports the VA Medical Center next to Fort Brag is seeing a record number of veterans, 4,000 Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans from January 2010 through June 2010 alone: "The caseload for the Fayetteville VA appears destined to grow as more soldiers leave active service and become part of the veterans health-care system. The active-duty mental health system is already overwhelmed: Fort Bragg sent 1,519 soldiers to civilian providers between October 2009 and August because they couldn't be seen in a timely manner." Calhoun also writes an article zooming in on Iraq War veteran Francisco Hernandez Jr. which puts a face on the issues at stake:

The memories get to him. He sees buddies with faces full of shrapnel and bloodied children crying at the feet of dead men. He remembers the fear and the ambushes as if they were still happening.
He keeps a suicide hot line number on his refrigerator.
Anti-depressants help. Regular therapy sessions do, too. But some days, the depression takes over and he's sad, angry or unable to focus.
"I'm just tired of the pain, you know?" he said. "It's just sometimes, you start asking yourself, 'Why am I even here?' "
Those are the days he wishes he'd died in the war. The dead ones, he said, are the real heroes.

Bonnie notes that Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Priorities" went up last night. We'll close with this from Coleen Rowley's "Inspector General Criticism Doesn't Faze FBI Raids on Midwstern Anti-war Activists" (War Is A Crime):

The war on dissent, rather than terrorism, continued full steam with FBI SWAT teams breaking down doors at 7 am Friday (Sept 24) morning and raiding the homes of several anti-war leaders and activists in Minneapolis, Chicago and possibly a couple other Midwest cities. Members of the FBI's "Joint Terrorism Task Force" spent a few hours at each Minneapolis residence, seizing personal photographs and papers, computers and cell phones as well as serving Federal Grand Jury subpoenas on the various activists.

Obviously the scathing review of post 9-11 FBI "terrorism investigations" targeting various peace and social justice groups completed by the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) and just issued four days ago gave no pause to the FBI to reflect before continuing to do more of the same. Nor did accompanying media revelations about the FBI having improperly conducted surveillances of an antiwar rally in Pittsburgh; the Catholic Worker peace magazine; a Quaker activist, the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, of members of the environmental group Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and of a small student group of anti-war activists in Iowa City, Iowa who were targeted for 9 months in 2008.


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Sunday, September 26, 2010

Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Priorities"

Priorities

Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts "Priorities." Ken Salazar notes Barack posing and asks, "What's going on?" Eric Holder explains, "He's rehearsing for Tuesday. He prefers mass adulation to actually governing." Isaiah archives his comics at The World Today Just Nuts.







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And the war drags on . . .

BBC News reports the Iranian government sent their Revolutionary Guard into Iraq's borders where they killed at least 30 Kurds whom the Revolutionary Guard decided were 'militants.' Nasser Karimi (AP) reports that the raid took place on Saturday but Iran announced it today. And, yes, a functioning government would be aware if another country's military crossed the borders onto their soil. Meanwhile Burhan Nawprdani (Rudaw) reports, "The Iranian government has been building a wall and setting up several military outposts on its border with Iraqi Kurdistan, an attempt that could lessen trafficking between the Iranian Kurds and Iraqi Kurds. Rudaw has found out that one of the outposts will be located in the Iraqi territory. Iran's pretext for building these military outposts and the wall is the prevention of smuggling of goods and drug trafficking. According to an anonymous source from Kurdistan’s Border Police, the Iranian government has already built six military outposts in the Haji Omaran area." Lara Jakes (AP) reports on the Iranian bases here.

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, the number of US military people killed in the Iraq War since the start of the illegal war was 4424. Tonight? PDF format warning, DoD listed the the number of Americans killed serving in Iraq at 4425. Since that was the count on Thursday (last updated on Friday) it does not include Saturday's news that Marc Whisenart was killed in Kuwait while on his second tour of duty in the Iraq War but it may or may not include Pfc Gebrah P. Noonan whom Middletown Press reports died Thursday in Falluja and that Governor Jodi Rell has ordered that state flags be lowered on Noonan's behalf. Whisenart may or may not be covered in the following USF announcement made Friday but Noonan most likely isn't, "CAMP LIBERTY – Two United States Forces - Iraq service members died of injuries sustained in a non-combat-related incident today. One other service member was injured and evacuated to a military medical facility for treatment."

In other violence . . .

Bombings?

Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) reports the Green Zone was attacked with mortars this morning. Reuters notes a Baquba car bombing injured three people (alternate figures are 1 dead, five injured), a Garma car bombing claimed the lives of 3 police officers and left two more injured, a Baghdad roadside bombing injured three people, a second Baghdad roadside bombing injured six people and a third Baghdad roadside bombing injured three people.

Shootings?

Reuters notes 1 person was shot dead in Mosul, 1 Iraqi military officer shot dead in Baghad, 1 police captain shot dead in Baghdad, a Mosul home invasion in which 2 brothers were shot dead, the Integrity Commission's Laith Muhanad was shot dead in Baghdad and "a Ministry of Culture employee" was wounded in a Baghdad shooting.

As the violence continues, so do Nouri's little mind games with the Sunnis. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reports that Anbar is about to get even more tense and possibly more unstable as police officrs there ("hundreds") are about to kicked out because they were Sahwa -- known at the time they were hired, in fact, the reason they were hired. The blame is being laid at the Ministry of Interior whose minister, remember, is appointed by Nouri. Not noted by Fadel is that the Sunni-stronghold could be the location for strong protests should an announcement be made that State Of Law's Nouri will remain in place as prime minister despite his slate coming in second and despite the fact that he is both controversial and unpopular.

March 7th, Iraq concluded Parliamentary elections. The Guardian's editorial board noted last month, "These elections were hailed prematurely by Mr Obama as a success, but everything that has happened since has surely doused that optimism in a cold shower of reality." 163 seats are needed to form the executive government (prime minister and council of ministers). When no single slate wins 163 seats (or possibly higher -- 163 is the number today but the Parliament added seats this election and, in four more years, they may add more which could increase the number of seats needed to form the executive government), power-sharing coalitions must be formed with other slates, parties and/or individual candidates. (Eight Parliament seats were awarded, for example, to minority candidates who represent various religious minorities in Iraq.) Ayad Allawi is the head of Iraqiya which won 91 seats in the Parliament making it the biggest seat holder. Second place went to State Of Law which Nouri al-Maliki, the current prime minister, heads. They won 89 seats. Nouri made a big show of lodging complaints and issuing allegations to distract and delay the certification of the initial results while he formed a power-sharing coalition with third place winner Iraqi National Alliance -- this coalition still does not give them 163 seats. They are claiming they have the right to form the government. In 2005, Iraq took four months and seven days to pick a prime minister. It's six months and nineteen days with no government formed.

Timothy Williams and Yasi Ghazi (New York Times) observe:

The voters have since watched winter turn to spring, and now summer become fall -- and the people they elected still have no leader. They are waiting for their parties to come to an agreement so they can start work. And while the summer months were marked by a surge in violence and by riots over the lack of electricity, drinking water and other basic services, in Baghdad, members of Parliament have lived out a workers' fantasy: a vacation of more than 200 days (and counting), with full pay and benefits, each free to do his heart's desire.

New content at Third:

Isaiah's latest goes up after this. Pru notes "School students to relaunch School Students Against the War" (Great Britain's Socialist Worker):

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An important meeting of school students will take place this weekend.

School and FE students from across Britain will gather for the relaunch of School Students Against the War.

School students played a huge role in the anti‑war movement in 2003 and continue to do so.

Young people walked out of lessons and out of school in protest at the war in Iraq. There were teach-ins and occupations.

The meeting is on Sunday 26 September, Marchmont Community Centre, 62 Marchmont St, London WC1N 1AB. Nearest tube:Russell Square

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