GI Special:

thomasfbarton@earthlink.net

4.10.06

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GI SPECIAL 4D10:

 

He Died In Iraq

He Was Not A Criminal

April 9, 2006: Beatrice Saldivar holds a picture of her nephew, Daniel Tores, who was killed in Iraq, at a march to defend immigrants from proposed legislation that would make 11 million immigrants criminals.  The march in downtown Dallas drew hundreds of thousands.  (AP Photo/Erin Trieb)

 

Halliburton Negligence Linked To Iraq Troop Infections:

Soldiers Told To Brush Teeth And Shower With Disease Carrying Water:

And The Assholes Have The Nerve To Say They’re Not Sorry

 

April 7, 2006 By DAVID IVANOVICH, Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

 

WASHINGTON:  A U.S. Army doctor serving in Iraq has linked a small outbreak of bacterial infections among U.S. troops to allegedly contaminated water supplied by Houston-based Halliburton Co.

 

In the latest broadside against Halliburton and its performance in Iraq, Senate Democrats produced an e-mail Friday from Capt. A. Michelle Callahan, a family physician serving at Qayyarah Airfield West, recounting how she treated six infections over a two-week period in January, at the same time she was noticing the water in base showers was cloudy and foul-smelling.

 

Follow-up testing of the water soldiers were using to bathe, shave and even brush their teeth revealed evidence of coliform and E. coli bacteria, Callahan wrote in an e-mail to a staffer for the Democratic Policy Committee, led by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.

 

Halliburton subsidiary KBR was responsible for treating water at that base, under a contract to provide logistical support to U.S. troops.

 

Once Callahan raised the alarm, Halliburton chlorinated the water in the area where the infections had occurred.

 

But the water was still cloudy, Callahan said.

 

Further investigation revealed that the water the troops were using was actually wastewater from a purification unit, she wrote.

 

In response to the issues Callahan identified, KBR installed an additional water purification unit.

 

Concerns about possible water contamination first arose in March 2005, when a KBR employee at Camp Ar Ramadi reported spotting what looked like larvae in a toilet.

 

Wil Granger, then KBR's water quality manager, and colleague Steve Outain conducted what they called a "cursory investigation."

 

But the report they issued two months later was explosive, warning that troops could have been exposed to "potentially harmful water for an undetermined amount of time."

 

Halliburton officials have distanced themselves from Granger's report. Indeed, they told Dorgan that Granger's findings, titled KBR Report of Findings & Root Cause Water Mission B4 Ar Ramadi, constituted Granger's "personal conclusions."

 

Noted Dorgan: "That is almost unbelievable to me."

 

Dorgan's panel learned about the water quality issue and went public with Granger's concerns in January.

 

Then in February, Jerry Allen, KBR's senior manager/practice leader for the Environmental/Water Resources Department, issued a "final report" disputing many of Granger and Outain's findings.

 

Allen conceded the water for showers was not chlorinated, but said military regulations required water for such uses to be chlorinated only "if prescribed by the command surgeon."

 

Jeffrey Griffiths, a professor of public health and medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, scoffed at that assertion.

 

"You don't shower with water that's not chlorinated, at least," Griffiths said. "It's called common sense."

 

 

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

 

 

Marine Killed In Action In Al Anbar Province

 

April 08, 2006 MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE WEST PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE Release A060408d

 

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq:  A Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 died from wounds sustained due to enemy action while operating in al Anbar Province April 7.

 

Beavercreek Family Awaiting Wounded Soldier's True Return

 

04/09/06 By Margo Rutledge Kissell and Jessica Wehrman, Dayton Daily News

 

WASHINGTON:  In a tiny and sweltering hospital room at an Army hospital, Ethan Biggers' family waits for him to come back from the war.

 

Physically, the 21-year-old Army specialist from Beavercreek has been back since he was medically evacuated from Baghdad in early March after he was shot through the head by a sniper.

 

Now, they wait and hope that he heals.

 

Until then, Ethan sleeps in a coma, occasionally grimacing, coughing and opening his eyes, a stuffed toy duck tucked under his long fingers.

 

His sister, Liza Biggers, 24, arrives each morning and keeps vigil by his bed. She stays until hospital staff tell her to go home.

 

"I think it's really important he knows he's not alone right now," she said.

 

Ethan's twin brother, Matt, who joined the Army with him and who also has served in Iraq, flew from Germany to the United States with Ethan, holding his hand the whole way.

 

In Beavercreek, Ethan's 20-year-old wife, Britni Fuller, will give birth to the couple's first child in early June. Experiencing a high-risk pregnancy, she was granted medical clearance to fly to Washington to visit Ethan three weeks ago.

 

As she stood by his bed, she pressed his hand against her swollen abdomen and told him to hang in there.

 

He's pale and thinner than he was mere months ago, but now he's breathing on his own.

 

"He's beat a lot of odds," said his father, Rand Biggers, a physicist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base who has been with his son since he arrived back in the United States. "It's a miracle he's got this far.

 

"We keep asking for more miracles."

 

 

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

 

 

“This Is The Only Language America Understands,” He Says.

 

April 8, 2006 David Enders, The Nation [Excerpt]

 

"On the bus people talk about the American soldiers losing the war," says Ghaith al-Tamimi, a member of the Sadriyyin press department. "Someone else must fight the terrorists."

 

But Tamimi does not hide his disdain for the United States.

 

Smiling broadly, he picks up a Kalashnikov from one of his guards and cradles it, squinting through the sight. He then raises it slightly and smiles again. "This is the only language America understands," he says.

 

Assorted Resistance Action

A police vehicle hit by a roadside bomb which injured two policemen April 9, 2006 in Baghdad, Iraq.  (AP Photo/Assad Muhsin)

 

April 09, 2006 Associated Press & REUTERS & By Kirk Semple, The New York Times & (Reuters) & Deutsche Presse-Agentur

 

An attacks targeted police near a Sunni mosque in the western neighborhood of Ghazaliyah, wounding at least three people, police said.

 

One policemen was killed and two civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol exploded in Baghdad's Mansour district, police said.

 

Four Iraqi contractors employed on an American military base near Tikrit, were found dead in the district of Hamreen, between Tikrit and Kirkuk.

 

Two Iraqi troops were killed and four others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded while their patrol was passing through Iskandariya, 40 kilometres south of Baghdad.

 

An Iraqi soldier was shot dead in an ambush in the eastern part of Duluiyah, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, a security source said.

 

Two Iraqi troops were injured in a blast targeting a US army vehicle near Tikrit, an Iraqi police spokesman said.  But it was unclear whether there were any US casualties in the blast.

 

 

 

“The United States Is Now Facing Two Robust Insurgencies”

 

April 6, 2006 By Robert Dreyfuss, Tomdispatch.com [Excerpt]

 

In fact, the United States is now facing two robust insurgencies in Iraq: a Sunni-led resistance of Baathists and army veterans and a growing Shiite-led, Iranian-linked resistance.

 

The former is not weakening, blowing up and shooting down Americans at a steady pace, with 13 U.S. troops killed in the first three days of April.

 

The latter, however, is potentially more deadly, because it has the ability to mobilize so many among the country's 60% percent Shiite majority, and because it has the support of Iran.

 

Parts of the Shiite majority have already gravitated into outright resistance to the American occupation, including Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

 

By its assault in late March on a fortified building in Baghdad held by Muqtada's forces, in what may or may not have been a mosque, the United States formally launched its fight against the incipient second insurgency, the Shiite one.

 

If things spin further out of control, as it's likely they will, U.S. forces may soon find themselves fighting a Sunni insurgency to the north and west of Baghdad and an urban Shiite paramilitary army in the south.

 

AP Says Falluja Again “The Insurgent Stronghold”

 

4.9.06 Associated Press

 

BAGHDAD, Iraq It's Freedom Day in Iraq, marking the third anniversary of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad, but there's been no holiday from insurgent violence.

 

As Iraqi troops beefed up security in the capital, many residents tried to relax and schools were closed.

 

Reports from the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah say classes there are in session in defiance and denial of the holiday.

 

 

 

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

 

 

“My life not availeth me in comparison with the liberty of the truth”

Mary Barrett Dyer (1611 - 1660)

[Thanks to NB]

 

“The Case For Immediate Withdrawal”

 

March 21, 2006 By Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet [Excerpts]

 

Review of Anthony Arnove's latest book, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal.

 

It's not hard to see why the majority of Americans now think the war in Iraq was a colossal mistake, according to just about every major poll taken over the last few months.  Every claim the Bush administration used to justify the illegal invasion has turned out to be flat wrong, as the anti-war movement publicly predicted before the war began.

 

Of course, we still have lots of true believers arguing that it would send ''the wrong message'' if the U.S. decides to ''cut and run.'' (It's amazing how war supporters tacitly acknowledge that violence and military action speak for us and yet act surprised when our enemies have something to ''say'' too, with both sides claiming the other only ''understands force.'')

 

It's the same ol' tired argument used by the ruling elite during the Vietnam War.  In fact, when my father touched down at Marble Mountain as a 19-year-old Marine, it was the same year that Howard Zinn published Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, which argued that getting out of Vietnam was the only realistic option.  It was the first book to argue for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.

 

Then, as now, historical amnesia seems to have reached epidemic proportions, blinding masses of people to the lessons of empire. Ask yourself: Did our occupations of the Philippines, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and countless other interventions in Southeast Asia and Latin America produce democracy in those places?

 

As history repeats itself, a new book hitting the shelves in May should be required reading for every American concerned not only about the security of the United States but future prospects for global peace.  Anthony Arnove's Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal makes a bulletproof case for why the U.S. should leave Iraq immediately.

 

Arnove begins by acknowledging that the parallels being drawn between Vietnam and Iraq are not exact, but still significantly similar.  ''In both cases, the greatest military power in human history has encountered the limits of its ability to impose its will on a people who do not welcome its intervention. In Iraq, like Vietnam, soldiers themselves have begun to question the rationale for the war given by politicians and daily echoed by the dominant media.''

 

But, Arnove argues, the stakes are much higher in Iraq. ''Politicians and planners in Washington know that their ability to intervene in other countries will be severely hampered if the United States is forced from Iraq,'' partly explains why the Democratic Party talks about ''winning'' the war -- ''a position that ties it in knots and leaves it incapable of leading any antiwar opposition.''

 

The first chapter lays out in considerable detail how the war in Iraq was/is a ''war of choice.'' He then goes to provide a realistic picture of the occupation on the ground, as opposed to the lofty rhetoric coming out of the White House.

 

What distinguishes Arnove's analysis from the wishful thinking you hear from war apologists is he actually provides some historical context by looking at the history of all occupations of Iraq; the U.S. was not the first to conquer Iraq, claiming to be its liberator.

 

Those who thought we would be greeted as liberators apparently weren't aware that Iraq ''has a long tradition of secular nationalism and anti-colonialism that means Iraqis will not quietly accept occupation by a foreign power.''

 

The last two chapters make the case for immediate withdrawal by essentially observing that is the presence of U.S. troops that is fueling the insurgency.

 

Arnove's book is a wake-up call to reality and a call to action -- before it's too late -- to stop the expansion of the war into other countries.

 

Seeing And Confronting The Lie

 

From: Richard Hastie

To: GI Special

Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2006

 

Seeing and confronting the lie, is the most powerful stage of experiencing Post-Traumatic-Stress.

 

Mike Hastie

Vietnam Veteran

April 9, 2006

 

 

 

Democracy Hypocrisy

 

March 2006 by Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde diplomatique [Excerpts]

 

[T]he US has no qualms about setting itself up as the global arbiter of democratic observance.  The Bush administration is in the habit of branding opponents as undemocratic, or even as rogue states and outposts of tyranny.  The only way to change is to organise free elections.

 

But with those free elections everything depends upon the outcome. 

 

Hugo Chلvez has been elected president of Venezuela several times since 1998, under democratic criteria guaranteed by international observers, and will submit again to the ballot in December 2006. 

 

Much good may it do him.

 

The US, which sponsored a failed coup in April 2002, continues to attack him, calling him a danger to democracy.

 

Iran, Palestine and Haiti demonstrate that it is no longer enough to be democratically elected.

 

The Iranian election of June 2005 met with worldwide approval.  A massive voter turnout was able to choose between candidates representing a wide range of different opinions within the framework of official Islamism. 

 

The West's favoured candidate, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, fought a brilliant campaign and was expected to win.  Nobody mentioned a nuclear threat. But everything changed abruptly after the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has made a series of unacceptable pronouncements about Israel.

 

Iran is being swiftly demonised.  Although it has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and denies any military nuclear ambitions, France's foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, recently accused it of pursuing a "secret military nuclear programme"  The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has already forgotten last year's election and has asked Congress for $75m to promote democracy in Iran.

 

Much the same has happened in Palestine. The US and the European Union insisted upon genuinely democratic elections monitored by an army of foreign observers, only to reject the result on the grounds that they don't like the winners, the Islamo-nationalist Hamas movement, which has been responsible in the past for attacks on Israeli civilians.

 

In Haiti the international community was desperate to prevent the election of René Préval because of his association with the former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, democratically elected but overthrown in 2004.  But despite their best efforts, Préval was elected president on 7 February.

 

Winston Churchill said that "democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".

 

What seems to upset people now is their inability to predetermine the result of an election.  If only democracies could be made to measure and guaranteed to fit.

 

 

 

“What You Have Therefore Caused Me To Understand, George, Is That Even Impeaching You Is Not Sufficient”

 

Apr 01, 2006 by Zbignew Zingh, Alternative Press.org [Excerpts]

 

I think, George, that quite frankly you scare a lot of people.

 

No, I'm not talking about little people like me.  I think you scare the bejeezers out of the mucky-mucks who own and run you, the people who bankrolled your career and who pull your puppet strings.

 

In short, you, George, have the capacity to single-handedly rip the veil off the 200-plus year illusion of American exceptionalism, economic aggression and exclusionary politics that has sustained our national ego for all this time.

 

You, George, seem to have the innate ability to disillusion oh so many millions of people with our hollow economic, political and social orders so that, more than any progressive, more than any liberal, more than any revolutionary, you could actually kick out the psychic props that hold up the whole rotten edifice. 

 

Thus are you most frightening to those who desperately want to paint the smiley face back on capitalism, who want to re-clothe the iron military fist in silken gloves of “diplomacy” and who want to restore the myth that America is somehow better than everyone else. 

 

You, George, have not even bothered with the niceties of gloving your bloody hands in silk.  You have not trifled with the diplomacy of manners or the perfume of noble causes.  Yours is the face of raw, naked power. 

 

You have dropped the mask, George, and the face you show us is not the one that our Owners and Leaders want us to see.

 

Equally frightening to the Leaders and Owners and String-Pullers of our world is how effectively you have discredited most of the major institutions they rely on to command respect and obedience from all of us.

 

By packing the Courts with right wing radicals you have denigrated the judiciary.

 

By cozying up with fanatical religious bigots, you have undermined the respectability of the religion you profess.

 

By claiming the power to eavesdrop, kidnap, torture, incarcerate and wage war, literally at will, you have debased the presidency and proved the need for a weaker, a more constrained Executive Branch of Government.

 

By manipulating world financial institutions, discarding treaties willy-nilly, and force-feeding your authoritarian brand of top-down “democracy” down the throats of the unwilling, you have caused disrepute for everything that you tout.

 

What you have therefore caused me to understand, George, is that even impeaching you is not sufficient.  Replacing you with a prettier face or a nicer president or a Democratic Congress is not enough.  Nostalgia for a better time is not enough.  George, what you have taught me is that there really is nothing to be nostalgic for.

 

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't cherry-pick the best from whatever any culture or economic or political theory can offer.

 

It simply means that we have to look forward to creating new and better systems, rather than just dumping your kind and returning to a mistaken nostalgia for