War on Iraq

News and analysis on Sunni, Shiites, Kurds, oil, Blackwater, terrorism, anti-war protests, and troop withdrawal debates. Comprehensive coverage available here.

Pentagon’s Spin On GI Bill Is ‘Offensive Nonsense’
Posted by Jon Soltz, Think Progress on May 7, 2008 at 4:42 PM.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress highlighted the latest reason from the Bush administration to oppose a real GI Bill for troops, offered by Senators Webb and Hagel. The Pentagon spokesperson said, in part:

[W]e are certainly concerned that this would be eligible to them after only two years of service. We think pegging it to a longer period of service — the number we have in mind, at this point, is six years of service — that the longer you stay in, the sweeter the benefits are to you. Six years would show a commitment to service. … The last thing we want to do is provide a benefit — or the last thing we want to do is create a situation in which we are losing our men and women who we have worked so hard to train.

Wow. There are a few very serious flaws in this logic:

First, the time of service isn’t a measure of commitment to service. What about the troops who served under six years, did a few tours in Iraq, and came back without a limb, and could no longer serve? Have they shown less of a commitment to America? I would love for this spokesperson to go to Walter Reed and tell anyone there who served three years, but now cannot continue their service, that they haven’t shown a commitment.

Second, no one is leaving the military after two years. I’d note that when you sign up, it’s for an eight year contract, most for four years active. They can serve in a number of ways. For example, I served four and a half years active (because I was Stop Lossed), went to grad school and served in the reserves, but was called back up after ten months. So, the point remains that you’re not talking about a flood of people breaking their contract after three or four years. The overwhelming majority of men and women serve out their contract for eight years, so even if they do begin school when they’re done with their active duty commitment, the military can call them up at any time they need them, for the life of the troop’s contract. A GI Bill isn’t going to change it.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Shifting the Blame in Gender-Motivated Violence
Posted by Lucinda Marshall, Feminist Peace Network on May 7, 2008 at 8:02 AM.

Anna Greer has a very thought-provoking piece in Wo! Magazine about the use of the passive voice in describing gender-based violence. She writes:

“One of the first things journalism students learn is to avoid the passive voice. So, you have to wonder why journalists are drawn to using passive voice when the subject of their article is male violence against women. What classically happens is that the actors in these stories are sidelined and we’re left with the women who get raped, sexually harassed, or beaten.”

“A recent story in the Sydney Morning Herald was a perfect example of passive voice subverting the object/subject relationship. ‘Don’t Want to Be Harassed? Stop Acting Like a Man’ read the headline. The article reported on a Canadian study which found that, in the workplace, men were more likely to sexually harass women who didn’t conform to traditional gender roles. In the process, it used passive voice to shift blame from the perpetrators of sexual harassment and placed it squarely on the shoulders of the victims.”

“The use of passive voice in articles such as this, subconsciously shapes the way people view violence against women. It is an insidious and unquestioned practice. In the passive voice version of the above story, men apparently don’t harass and intimidate women, women just run around getting themselves harassed. If active voice had been used, would the same conclusions be drawn? Would it have the same headline? No.”

“This is not merely an isolated incident or slip of the sub-editor’s metaphorical knife. It is a wide-spread practice - in news articles on the subject of rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and domestic violence - to have the perpetrators painted out of the picture, either partly or completely.

Positioning a male abuser as the actor in a news article on sexual assault isn’t accusing all men of being abusers, just as identifying women as victims doesn’t imply that all women have suffered from sexual harassment or intimidation in the workplace. But let’s be real here. Men are the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of violence against women — as they are the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of violence against men, for that matter. And using the passive voice in articles on gendered violence positions female victims as somehow the root of the problem. It shifts the responsibility and blame from the actor to the person on the receiving end of the abuse.”

“When women are identified as the victims of gender-motivated violence and intimidation, the perpetrators must be identified as the actors. The use of passive voice cloaks this reality. Let’s place the blame where it belongs — squarely on the shoulders of the abusers.”

Kudos to Greer for totally nailing it. We cannot hope to end gendered violence until we accurately report and name what is happening and like UK activist Jennifer Drew, Greer is absolutely right that we have to place the blame on the perpetrators, not the victims.

King David (Petraeus)
Posted by Spencer Ackerman, Huffington Post on May 7, 2008 at 6:46 AM.

Originally appeared on the Washington Independent.

While commanding the 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, David H. Petraeus famously mused to journalist Rick Atkinson, "Tell me how this ends." Asked today by The Washington Independent how he would answer that if one of his own division commanders posed it, Petraeus replied by phone from Baghdad's Camp Victory, "I would just reiterate what our objectives are, and that is what we're trying to help the Iraqis achieve. And that is: an Iraq that is at peace with itself and with its neighbors; and can defend itself; that is a democracy in Iraqi fashion -- I would also say a government that is represent of and responsive to all its citizens."

(Matt Mahurin) But would that answer have satisfied Maj. Gen. Petraeus in 2003? "What I was asking was 'How?' in a couple respects," he said. "What that was about was, I think, very early on a recognition of how complex and challenging this was going be." He mentioned Amb. Ryan Crocker's comment to the Senate, that Iraq was "just plain hard," adding, "I think that's a very clear-eyed and, in a sense, coldly realistic appraisal of where we are, and how difficult it is."

Petraeus is no stranger to either difficulty or realism. His obstacles have come from many places, and long before he took command in Iraq, his most daunting challenge yet. In the Army, Petraeus studied counterinsurgency (COIN) early in his career in the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when the Vietnam-wounded service wanted nothing to do with methods of warfare used to draw a civilian population's political and personal allegiance away from a guerrilla force. "Students of counterinsurgency know that counterinsurgencies are not quick endeavors," he said during an hour-long conversation. "To state the obvious, they take time, enormous perseverance, [and] they are exceedingly complex."

Indeed, Petraeus's 1987 Princeton dissertation focused on how the military systematically stripped away its institutional knowledge of counterinsurgency in the wake of the Vietnam trauma. He did not realize that he would ultimately become the military's most important advocate of counterinsurgency -- a discipline that, despite the traumatic experience of the Iraq war, is on the rise, thanks to a new generation of defense theorist-practitioners. Many of them refer to Petraeus as "King David."

Every army of liberation has a half-life after which it turns into an army of occupation...You can extend that half-life by being considerate of the population ... But over time, again, you are not one of them.

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Both Decrease And Increase In Troop Deaths Prove The Surge Is Success
Posted by Ali Frick, Think Progress on May 6, 2008 at 6:49 AM.

Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot is one of the most vocal supporters of a neocon foreign policy. He says those who favor withdrawal from Iraq engage in wishful thinking and claims there is copious evidence that Iran is training al Qaeda. He said former CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon's hesitation to bomb Iran embolden[ed] the mullahs, and claimed that the recently-revealed Pentagon propaganda program is simply part and parcel of the daily grind of Washington journalism.

He has also been a vociferous defender of the Iraq troop surge. Today, in an online debate on the surge, Boot points to the overall decrease in troop deaths as evidence of its success:

I could cite statistics to show how the “surge”—not only an increase in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq but also a change in their strategy to emphasis classic counterinsurgency—has been paying off: Civilian deaths were down more than 80 percent and U.S. deaths down more than 60 percent between December 2006 and March 2008.

Just two days ago, however, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Boot argued that the recent increase in U.S. troop casualties showed the surge was working. Acknowledging that April was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since August (Boot says 52 soldiers died; in fact 54 did), Boot says the U.S. is approaching “the enemy’s defeat“:

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Pentagon Backs Plan to Build "Zone of Influence" in Iraq
Posted by Satyam Khanna, Think Progress on May 5, 2008 at 2:15 PM.

The White House has repeatedly insisted that the United States has “no desire for permanent bases” in Iraq. Nevertheless, the Bush administration is seeking to leave its footprint on Iraq through other means. The AP reports that the Pentagon is backing a $5 billion dollar plan to “transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone” into a “centerpiece for Baghdad’s future,” resulting in “big paydays for early investors:“

For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a “zone of influence” around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.

“When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time,” said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.

An incentive for the project, which would include hotels, resorts, and commercial development in the Green Zone, appears to be lining the pockets of investors and allies rather than re-building Iraq’s economy. In fact, Karnowski acknowledged that American officials would vet potential investors because of a “vested interest” — mirroring the cronyism of Saddam’s Hussein’s regime.

Some Iraqi leaders even have drawn parallels to the U.S.-backed development plan and what Saddam Hussein did in the area — known by its Iraqi name of Tashri during his regime. Hussein stocked the neighborhood with family and tribal allies, political loyalists and members of his elite Republican Guard. Karnowski called the accusation “partially true.”

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In Iraq 70 Percent of People Lack Clean Water
Posted by Abigail Brown, Water For The Ages on May 1, 2008 at 12:00 PM.

Less than half of Iraq's population of 29 million people have access to clean, drinkable water. And, according to a recent report by Oxfam, the number of civilians in Iraq without water has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent during 2003 to 2007 (the continued US occupation).

Recent History of Water in Iraq

In the recent past, Iraq had over 140 drinking water and treatment facilities in operation. Air attacks in 1991, during the Persian Gulf War destroyed many of these water treatment plants.

At the same time, UN imposed sanctions disallowed trade between Iraq and other countries. This made import of needed chemicals and supplies for upkeep of the water treatment facilities difficult.

By 2003, Iraq's 140 major water treatment facilities were operating at about 35 percent of their design capacity. In March 2003, the US government launched a direct-attack on Iraq. This continued war, for over five-years now, has rendered useless the already deteriorating water infrastructure systems across the country.

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McCain's Elitism and the New GI Bill
Posted by Mike Connery, AlterNet on April 30, 2008 at 12:33 PM.

Jim Webb and John McCain are throwing down over the new GI Bill and the dividing lines are pretty startling, especially when the current threads of the presidential race are considered. Charges of elitism are being thrown at Obama left and right, as are questions about his patriotism. Meanwhile, John McCain is actively working against a bill that would provide robust support to our troops as they transition back to civilian life.

The bill is the updated version of the GI Bill that helped so many soldiers finance their education after WWII. Sen. Jim Webb has proposed a bill with broad bipartisan support that would provide serious support to our veterans:

• Make benefits available to all members of the military who have served on active duty since 9/11/2001, including activated reservists and National Guard.

• Provide benefits for tuition, housing, and books for up to 36 months of education for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

• Link amount of benefits to amount of time served on active duty.

• Increase amount of time after leaving active duty to collect educational assistance to fifteen years compared to ten.

• Allows additional payments for tutorial assistance as well as licensure and certification tests.

• Create a new program in which the government will agree to match, dollar for dollar, any voluntary additional contributions to veterans from institutions whose tuition is more expensive than the maximum assistance provided.

McCain has proposed a much watered down version of this bill that would provide most benefits to career officers. If shortchanging the grunts to enrich the officers isn't elitist, I don't know what is. What's worse, now that he's come under fire for his weak-ass proposal, he's trying to shift the blame to Sen. Webb.

From the Politico:

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Politico Reporter Plays Fast and Loose with Anti-War Organizer's Words
Posted by Matt Stoller, Open Left on April 26, 2008 at 1:41 PM.

Journalist Martin Kady II wrote a story today in the Politico that I criticized here.  Here's the specific problematic passage.

Leaders of the anti-war movement are also accepting that their best hope is a symbolic vote.

We're advocating putting as many of the provisions in the first round" of the legislation, said John Isaacs, executive director of Council for a Livable World, which is part of a larger anti-war coalition led by MoveOn.org. "We recognize that ultimately the wars are going to be funded, ... that some type of supplemental will be passed.

John Isaacs denied saying that this would be a symbolic vote, and it's quite obvious that a war funding could have conditions - a timeline for withdrawal for instance - attached, obviating the point of Kady's paragraph.  Furthermore, I have confirmed with Moveon that neither Eli Pariser, Nita Chaudhary, or Ilyse Hogue spoke with the Politico for this article.

I am emailing Martin Kady II to ask him which leaders of the anti-war movement he means, why he quoted a member of a different group to represent Moveon, and whether he will provide the full context of Isaacs's quote.

UPDATE:  I have gone back and forth with Kady numerous times, and he will not provide me with information on which anti-war leaders he or other Politico reporters talked to, nor would he provide evidence to back up his claim about anti-war groups.  Furthermore, when pressed, he changed the wording from 'leaders' to 'members' when characterizing the anti-war proponents he apparently is citing.

Ryan Grim, who helped Kady write the story, instantly sent me the full quote by John Isaacs, which, as you can see, undercuts Kady's article.

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Labor's First Strike Against the War Gains Momentum
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on April 24, 2008 at 6:11 AM.

The following is a release put out by the Vermont AFL-CIO, with thanks to reader Richard M. for sending it along ...

The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their "unequivocal" support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq.

Montpelier, VT -The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their "unequivocal" support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq. The strike, being organized by the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), will seek to shutdown all west coast ports for a period of 8 hours on the day of May 1st 2008. The Vermont AFL-CIO is the first state labor federation to publicly back the Longshoremen; other state federations are expected to follow.

The resolution, among other things, calls the war in Iraq "immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary", states that the vast majority of working Vermonters oppose the war, and contends that the war will only be brought to an end by "the direct actions of working people." Many other Vermont labor unions and organizations, including the Vermont Workers' Center, have also made official statements condemning the war.

The resolution also calls on working Vermonters to "discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008."

"Workers in Vermont and all across this nation are against this war. We have already demanded that the government end it, but they have consistently failed to heed our words. Therefore working people are beginning to take concrete steps to make our resistance known. If the war does not immediately end we, the unions and working people of Vermont, will also be compelled to take appropriate action," said David Van Deusen, a District Vice President of the Vermont AFL-CIO.

Traven Leyshon, President of the Washington, Lamoille & Orange County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said, "Vermont labor has long called for an end to this war. The untold billions being spent on the war could instead be used to address our domestic needs. It is working people who pay the cost of the war - in some cases with our lives, but always with our sacrifices."

Full text of the resolution after the jump ...

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"A Big Promotion" for General Petraeus
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on April 23, 2008 at 8:48 AM.

In a press conference this morning, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that General David Petraeus will be replacing Admiral William Fallon to become the head of U.S. Central Command, or Centcom, which oversees military activity throughout the Middle East.

It is a "major promotion" in the words of several CNN pundits, for the man currently leading our wildly successful mission in Iraq.

Fallon, who resigned abruptly in March after Esquire quoted him saying that he was opposed to military aggression against Iran, had a notoriously bad relationship with Petraeus; at one point last March Fallon allegedly called him "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and said "I hate people like that." ("Bad relations?" one official told the Washington Post in September, "That's the understatement of the century.") The acrimony between the two had much to do with opposing ideas about how to move forward in Iraq -- but that conflict has clearly been resolved, what with the success of the surge and all.

Petraeus's nomination must be approved by the Senate -- a forgone conclusion -- after which he will be in charge, not only of the U.S.'s broader mission in Iraq (whatever that is), but the war in Afghanistan too. Because you know, if he can bring the magic of the surge to Afghanistan, democracy is as good as formed.

According to the Associated Press, "Gates said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other problems in the Central Command area of responsibility, demand knowledge of how to fight counterinsurgencies as well as other unconventional conflicts."

"I don't know anybody in the U.S. military better qualified to lead that effort," Gates said.

Be afraid.

(The AP has more.)

One in Three Returning Vets Suffer from Brain Injuries, Mental Health Problems
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on April 18, 2008 at 6:00 AM.

Last month, hundreds of veterans who had served in the "War on Terror" gathered at the Winter Soldier hearings in Washington. They had come from across the country to give testimony about what they'd experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere).

They were young -- young enough to make this 38 year-old observer feel over the hill. Some fit the stereotype of the rough-and-ready American soldier -- the invincible John Rambos of American lore -- but most were average, some skinny. Many appeared small without the bulky body armor with which we're accustomed to seeing them in news reports.

They are our nation's kids. They might have been young men and women on any American campus -- there was the usual abundance of tattoos and piercings -- but there was a difference.

Many were broken, some grievously injured in battle, some missing limbs. All of the vets with whom I spoke had obvious psychic scars; several exhibited unconscious facial ticks as they spoke. As I talked to one young woman -- she couldn't have been more than 22 or 23 -- I thought to myself, 'oh, that's what those Vietnam vets mean when they talk about a thousand-yard stare.'

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Hey George: How's That Plan to Lower Gas Prices by Sucking Up to Oil Producers Working?
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on April 17, 2008 at 10:22 AM.

Hey, remember 2000? We had an election that year!

Let's recall then-candidate George W. Bush's pitch about how he'd lower gas prices, which at the time were averaging $1.66 per gallon [ht: Jill C.]:

Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by creating enough political good will with oil-producing nations that they would increase their supply of crude.

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply," Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. "Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot.''

He'd just build up a boatload of goodwill within the Arab world and then tell those rag-heads to open up the spigot! Unlike that loser Clinton ...

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Don't Kid Yourself: a Dem Congress Won't Have the Fortitude to End the Iraq Occupation in 2009
Posted by Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog on April 14, 2008 at 4:39 AM.

Here's a real kneeslapper from the new Frank Rich column, about what's likely to happen with regard to Iraq starting in 2009, even if John McCain wins:

A Republican president intent on staying the Bush course will find his vetoes unsustainable after the Democrats increase their majorities in Congress in November. No war can be fought indefinitely if the public has irrevocably turned against it.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

No, wait -- I think he's serious. I think he really believes the Democratic Party would have the intestinal fortitude to rebuff an Iraq Forever policy on the part of a McCain administration. And I think he really believes that sooner or later public opinion would be so difficult to ignore that even a war-happy Republican White House would have to to sit up and take notice.

Apparently Frank Rich has been in a coma for the past two years.

Rich comes so close to understanding what's going on that it's frustrating to watch him completely miss the point. Here he quotes Senator George Voinovich at the Petraeus-Crocker hearings -- after which he draws precisely the wrong conclusion:

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