September 30, 2005

Exposed and Crumbling

 
Bush's Presidency
 
 Is
 
Exposed and Crumbling
 
by Margaret Carlson
 

Back in the days when President George W. Bush preferred his endles summer at the ranch to storm chasing, few mistakes stuck to him. He was like the guy who drove through the car wash with his top down but never got wet.

No weapons of mass destruction in a country we're stuck in? Well, you must understand, he really thought they were there. At this year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner, Bush showed a video of himself pretending to look for the weapons under his desk.

Oh what a difference a hurricane makes. Katrina exposed something we couldn't know before: Bush's claim that he would keep us safer than that wishy-washy senator from squishy Massachusetts is false. Not only are we not safer than we were before Bush took office, we're worse off.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, as its Katrina response made tragically clear, is a mess. The Department of Homeland Security, which Bush built from scratch, is mainly known for a color chart, wasteful spending, a mixed bag of airport screeners and a new chief who didn't know the New Orleans Superdome was filled with starving, homeless hurricane victims.

Duct Tape Defense

Here in Washington, there's no feasible evacuation plan. If terrorists struck, the president and vice president would helicopter out. The rest of us -- and that includes many members of Congress -- would be stuck.

I picture myself with duct tape and Saran Wrap, huddling in the basement or in a VW with a leaking sunroof idling for hours on the 14th Street Bridge.

The White House press, which laughed at Bush's video, has been rightly chastised for turning out pool reports on what the president is wearing, eating or chopping. Now they're pounding away at his multiple fuel-squandering trips to hurricane-stricken regions where he can repair little but himself.

A pool report on Sept. 26, the day Bush discovered energy conservation and suggested we all forgo non-essential driving, detailed the gas-sucking trip he took that evening to dinner five blocks away from the White House, commandeering five sport- utility vehicles, four vans and two limousines that kept their motors running for the duration of the meal.

Brown's Lament

Until recently, Bush's attitude toward governing -- it's easy, don't sweat the small stuff, do it on the cheap -- was tolerated, if not admired.

Why not pick Michael Brown, a guy who knows a guy, even to run a life-or-death agency like FEMA? Why not, after he screws up big time, praise him? Why not, after you finally ease him out, keep paying him as a consultant?

At the Kabuki hearings two days ago that pretended to get to the bottom of the fiasco, Republicans who'd been given the word by Karl Rove to concentrate on scapegoating and Swift-Boating Louisiana's Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco were shocked by Brown's arrogance.

Brown said faith-based institutions, not FEMA, were supposed to help low-income people and that he warned folks higher up the food chain that FEMA was ``emaciated.'' In one Rodney King moment, he said everything would have been fine if only Louisiana officials had all gotten along.

It didn't work. When Republican Christopher Shays, off Rove's script, said he was glad Brown was gone, Brown whined, ``I guess you want me to be this superhero that is going to step in there and suddenly take everybody out of New Orleans.''

And Now DeLay

The unmasking of Brown may force Bush to withdraw the nomination of another pal of a pal to head up a crucial agency, Immigration and Naturalization. Pre-hurricane, Julie Myers, General Richard Myers's niece and the wife of the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, would have sailed through.

It wouldn't have mattered before, but now her non-relevant experience working on Bill Clinton's impeachment and her lack of relevant experience working on immigration may hold her up.

In the realm of when it rains, it pours, other pillars of Bush's carefully constructed world are crumbling. The latest is Tom DeLay, the majority leader who yesterday was indicted for campaign contributions that helped give Bush four more Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Even Bush's hand-picked Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist wouldn't be taking quite such a pummeling if his sale of stock in his family founded HCA Inc. had happened during Bush's glory days. Both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating.

Lights Out

Frist, who always contended he didn't even know if his blind trust held HCA stock, had an imminent need to sell what he didn't know he owned just before its price fell almost 10 percent this summer. He may not be Martha Stewart, but his new-found desire, after two terms in office, to avoid a conflict of interest when he considers health-care legislation no longer gets a pass.

When your mojo fades, little things mean a lot. Two days ago, White House press spokesman Scott McClellan said the president is so gung-ho on saving energy (this after a previous spokesman said Bush's answer to the prospect of energy conservation was a ``big N-O''), he's personally reminding staff ``to turn off lights and printers and copiers and computers when they leave the office.''

Someone should remind the president of an earlier chief executive whose decline was hastened when he made a point of turning down the thermostat and donning a cardigan. When you elevate the trivial to policy because the meaningful stuff has gotten away from you, someone will soon be turning the lights out for you.

Margaret Carlson, who was a columnist and deputy Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, is a columnist for Bloomberg News.

© 2005 Bloomberg L.P

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

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Posted by EvansMediaUSA at 07:47:51 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

September 28, 2005

Citizen Soldiers

 
National Guard
 
 Sent to Protect Oil, Not People
 
by Stacy Bannerman
 

Hurricane Katrina blew apart President Bush's rickety arguments about how invading Iraq would make us safe.

We don't know Hurricane Katrina's death toll, or how many Americans might have lived had the thousands of National Guard troops trained to help in the wake of hurricanes and floods not been protecting oil in the desert.

But we know 35 percent of Louisiana's and 40 percent of Mississippi's National Guard troops were in Iraq while their towns were leveled. National Guard officers repeatedly had warned officials about the catastrophic impact of having so many Guardsmen deployed in the event of a major natural disaster.

More soldiers and equipment are now stateside. But hundreds of high-water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators the Gulf Coast desperately needs remain overseas. Not only Gulf Coast residents are in jeopardy; the Iraq war endangers the nation.

More than a third of the U.S. soldiers based in Iraq belong to the Reserves or National Guard. Weekend warriors intended to supplement full-time active duty troops now fight for 14 months on average. But most are still treated like part-timers, and prepped and outfitted for combat accordingly. New equipment goes to the Army while Guardsmen and Reservists get hand-me-downs. This bodes badly for part-time soldiers who have become a major fighting force in Iraq.

August was the deadliest month for citizen soldiers. Five Pennsylvania Guardsmen died when the second-class humvee they were in was blown up. They had requested permission to use some of the 12 brand new, fully up-armored vehicles issued to a nearby active duty unit. The request was denied. The trucks stood idle when the Guardsmen died.

A total of 46 National Guard and Reserve soldiers were killed in August, more than half the 83 troop deaths. The disproportionately high -- and rising -- casualty rates of citizen soldiers are part of a trend. Pentagon statistics released at the end of 2004 showed losses sustained by Army National Guard soldiers in Iraq were 35 percent higher than that of regular enlisted. The elevated mortality rate of citizen soldiers is unparalleled. Of the 58,209 U.S. deaths in Vietnam, 94 were Guardsmen, and none were killed in the Persian Gulf War, USA Today has reported.

Long, hazardous duty is one reason why Army National Guard and Army Reserve recruitment numbers are off by 23 percent and 20 percent, respectively. In the first half of 2005, the Seattle Army Reserve office missed its target of about 100 recruits by 75 percent. Oregon recruitment is down 40 percent. Several battalions have lost more than half their members. One Reserve unit saw 70 percent of its members leave within a few months of coming home.

Half the soldiers leaving active duty service have traditionally joined the Guard, but since that likely means a quick trip back to Iraq, the number has dropped to about 35 percent. With so many first responders in Iraq, we have fewer first responders -- fire, police and emergency medical technicians -- in our communities.

While the Guard and Reserve are particularly hard hit, our entire country is suffering from the Iraq war. Rep. Michael McNulty, D-N.Y., recently noted that more than 16,000 U.S. troops have been killed or wounded in Iraq, and that the government has spent more than $200 billion on the war so far, saying, "The war has been a tremendous failure by both measures." He was announcing his support for legislation to require that U.S. troops begin their withdrawal from Iraq by October 2006.

It's time we add Homeland Security to the growing list of casualties of the war in Iraq.

 

Stacy Bannerman is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org). Her book, "When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Citizen Soldiers and the Families Left Behind," will be released by Continuum Publishing in 2006. Her husband deployed to Iraq with the Army National Guard 81st Brigade in March 2004 and returned home earlier this year.

© 2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 
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September 27, 2005

The K Street Project

 
The Silent Coup The Media Forgot:
 
 K Street vs. Pennsylvania Avenue
 
by John Atcheson
 

While the media's been dazzling us with wag-the-dog wars in Iraq and Jennifer, J-Lo and Jacko non-news here at home, a far more important battle has been taking place right under our collective national nose.

In what amounts to a silent coup, an unholy alliance of corporate power brokers and conservative Republicans have spent the last five years attempting to hi-jack democracy and move the seat of governance from Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street.

But you won't read about this coup, you won't see it played out on the evening news, and you won't hear about it on talk radio. Why? Because the mainstream media are major combatants.

At the center of this takeover is the K Street Project – an attempt to purge industry's lobbyists of any and all Democrats, and to make sure that "...even the secretaries..." are "conservative Republican activists."

They've just about succeeded.

Over the past five years the relationship between government and industry has been transformed. Now, an assortment of K street Corporate shills write legislation, develop tax proposals, and formulate foreign policy, sometimes in their industry's self-interest, sometimes at the behest of a few right wing ideologues in Congress or the Administration.

This complicated dance between corporate and political power gets played out daily along K street, and a variety of devil's deals that would've made our forefathers weep has become routine business.

The grease that lubricates this new model of government is greed; the fuel that feeds it is money. Lots of it. And overwhelmingly, the hard-line, right-wing conservative branch of the Republican Party are both its architect, and its beneficiary.

Thus, those that crow the loudest about patriotism, the flag, and moral values, do the most to subvert the political foundations and ethical precepts that shaped this nation.

Thus, the marbled halls of Congress are fast becoming a Mausoleum in which are buried the civics lessons from a simpler time.

The results are most undemocratic. For example, Grover Norquist, an unelected ideologue and professional government-hater and one of the chief architects of the K Street Project, wields more power in Washington than all but a very few elected officials.

Norquist is famous for saying , "Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub."

Here's where the K Street Consortium comes in. And here's where we get screwed.

The imperative to gut government collides with the needs and wants of the rich and powerful.

One result of this collision was that in 2004, Mr. Bush's tax reforms gave the average millionaire a $123,595 cut, but cut the middle 20% of income earners by just $647.

The K Street Consortium also explains why all of that $647 and more got eaten up by increased medical, energy, and educational costs.

Take the Prescription Drug Plan passed in 2003. As many as 3000 lobbyists spending hundreds of millions ($116 million in 2003 alone) worked diligently to pass this Porker. The payoff for industry, according to a study by Sager and Socolar of Boston University, is that as much as 61% of Medicare's costs will be pure profit for the Drug companies, an increase of as much as $139 billion (that's billion with a b).

Why?

Because the lobbyists from PhRMA – one of the most powerful K Street Players – made sure that the US was actually prohibited from using its buying power to negotiate for lower cost drugs under the new prescription drug plan. Net cost to tax payers? $720 billion over ten years.

Or take the Energy Legislation: $66 billion dollars worth of pork, the majority of it going to the fossil fuel industry at a time when oil companies are earning record profits. This piece of K Street legislative pornography scarcely addresses demand, so the oil industry gets billions, and Americans get guaranteed high prices.

But if the imperative for the K Street consortium is to simultaneously shrink government and provide corporate Pork, how do the Republicans propose paying for it?

Easy. First, cut programs that benefit people, to help fund the pork. As Jonathon Weisman reported in the Washington Post, over the next several months, Republicans will try to cut Medicaid growth by $10 billion, trim $7 billion from the Student Loan program, sell out ANWR for $2.4 billion in oil revenue; cut the food stamp program by $600 million, among other cuts.

Of course, no matter how much you screw the people, you can't afford to give rich people massive tax cuts while you give trillions to industry. So, the second part of their strategy is to simply pass on the inevitable bill to our children. If the K Street Consortium implements their policy agenda, in ten years, every child born in the US will "inherit" $36,000 of additional debt.

And that was before Katrina burst through levees weakened by budget cuts; before New Orleans and the gulf coast spun into a national purgatory as a crony-ladened FEMA bumbled around for five days.

Since Bush and his K Street cronies refuse to delay their tax cut for the rich, we'll have to cut more programs and shovel more debt onto our children and grandchildren to cover Katrina's and Rita's $200 billion plus price tag.

So much for Republican fiscal conservatism.

Ironically, the K Street Consortium not only hurts the average American, it hurts American industry.

For example, when GM spends more than $1000 per vehicle on health care for their US workers, but Toyota spends next to nothing for theirs in Canada or Japan because they have universal health care, it's hard for GM to compete, and it's hard for the US to retain or generate manufacturing jobs. The same is true of cuts to education. The US worker is falling behind the rest of the developed world's labor force in terms of skills so we're losing one of our primary competitive advantages. And testing required under No Child Left Behind is all well and good, but when the testing reveals problems, the Bush Administration has not been willing to pay for improvements.

Republicans accuse Democrats of being "tax and spend liberals." The reality is, Democrats do tax a little more, but they spend less, and Americans get more for their money.

Republicans tax less but spend much more and the borrowed largesse goes to corporations and the likes of Ken Lay and Paris Hilton, while the debt gets passed on to future generations.

Look beyond rhetoric to the record. Clinton gave us a smaller government with better services. And we now know that programs supporting jobs, education, and health care – the ones that Bush and the K Street Consortium want to cut – not only foster an equitable and just society, but they also promote a prosperous economy.

So, next time you visit Washington to see the seat of our government, forget Pennsylvania Avenue. Stop by K Street.

And while you're there, ask Grover why you can't get a college loan; why the US has the most expensive, but one of the least effective, health care systems in the developed world; why we're closing factories but opening Wal-Marts; why wages have flatlined; and why your child is born into debt so that David Ovitz' $100 million plus bonus for failing as Disney's number two man isn't taxed too heavily. Or ask Grover why New Orleans' levees weren't kept in good repair, and why FEMA fumbled.

Then ask yourself Dr. Phil's famous question, "How's all this working for you?"

John Atcheson's writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, as well as in several wonk journals.

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 
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September 26, 2005

Your Privacy Threatened Again by FCC

 
FCC Extends Wiretapping Rules
 to Broadband Internet Services
 
 
Late on Friday, September 23, the Federal Communications Commission issued a lengthy order explaining and attempting to justify its rediculous August 5 decision to force broadband Internet access and "interconnected VoIP" services to be designed to make government wiretapping easier, under the terms of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).
 
CDT and others are likely to challenge the FCC's order in court, arguing that the decision exceeds the terms of the statute, imposes undue burdens on innovation and threatens the privacy of YOU, an Internet user.
 
 
***************
 
Choice America Network urges you to click on the Center for Democracy and Technology website at:  http://www.CDT.org  to learn how you can join the fight to protect your privacy rights on the World Wide Web. The FCC and this administration are getting just a little too carried away with themselves these days so it might be a good idea if We, the people, reminded them that We don't need them exceeding the terms of the statute and inviting themselves to our dinner table without invitation..  This is America and We, the people do have Rights and one of those Rights is our Right to Privacy thank you very much.
 
 
 
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September 21, 2005

The Enemy From Within - Part III

 

THE ENEMY FROM WITHIN

 

Part III of V

 

PTSD

 

POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

 

 AND THE

 

 CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

 

BY TOM SCOTT

 

 

We all have it. The capacity to hate, the capacity for anger.  It is born out of chaos, and it requires years of experiences with comments made in anger, actions created by hateful reactions, people we care about hurt before we learn to control this enemy.  Some of us will never learn.  Some of us will never be in a position to see what the passion that comes in anger can do to another human being.  

 

The worst chaos imaginable, WAR, has the power to bring this anger and hate to a place where it can no longer be controlled, no matter how strong we are.  And the strongest of us, when the time for "hating the enemy" is over, in many instances turn our anger on ourselves, for what we have become – for what it was that we allowed to control us.

 

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a complex health condition that can develop in response to a traumatic experience – a life-threatening or extremely distressing situation that causes a person to feel intense fear, horror or a sense of helplessness.

 

Soldiers returning from combat in Iraq face a high risk of suffering from PTSD, due to the unprecedented need for vigilance, not only regarding their own safety, but also for the safety of civilians in the midst of non-stop guerilla warfare.

 

If the soldiers who suffer from PTSD are not given the care they need, if they are not given the time and the calm places in which to heal, they will be driven deeper into their anger, and eventually pushed over the edge. 

 

A crime against humanity, and sadly, the worst crime of all for the citizens of this country who continue to support war, for it is against those who have made the sacrifice to defend us, who have trusted their leadership to respect them because of the significance of that sacrifice.   They have been, and continue to be, let down and disrespected at every level.

 

Where is the leadership that understands the significance of what these soldiers have given???  More importantly, when will the people of this country see that the sacrifice hasn't been given, it has been taken, by leaders who believe they deserve complete servitude; that our soldiers give up all humanity when they VOLUNTEER to defend what our constitution stands for. 

 

There is nothing worse than blind indifference to the pain of those who give all that they have for lies; those who know that they cannot get out of the madness without the help of people who just can't wake up to see the anguish our soldiers are in.  This sense of violation is the final straw that will push these soldiers over the edge.  When they reach out for help and their leaders tell them they are "malingering;" they need to "get back to the front and back into battle to keep the adrenalin flowing," to cure their lack of confidence, or the people they count on will not listen when they try to express their concerns, the people they reach out to are disregarding the needs of fellow human beings. 

 

CRIMES… we are all complicit until we see war for what it is, and take a stand to stop the madness. 

 

Where are the leaders?  When will those responsible be held accountable for what they have done, and continue to do, in the name of an illusion? 

 

These leaders have not been at Ft. Stewart, Georgia.  The 3rd Infantry Division has a history of ensuring that every soldier is "in the fight" regardless of what the fight does to the soldier.  The popular creed these days seems to be "Mission First.  Take care of the soldiers by completing the mission, at all cost.  We'll get more soldiers.  They're just kids, a dime a dozen.  They're just fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters.  We can throw them away.  Oil matters, egos matter, the illusion of leadership matters, POWER, CONTROL, not letting anyone see the incompetence, all matter more than the humanity of our soldiers."  THIS.. is leadership????? 

 

At Ft. Stewart, soldiers must go to war, no matter what their humanity says differently. 

 

One soldier requested compassionate reassignment because a brother, their only sibling, was dying.  The command of Ft. Stewart turned down this request, citing that "105% of all military personnel were needed in Iraq, so no compassionate reassignments were being considered."  It took months of letters, hounding the administration, and this soldier deployed.  Finally, months into the deployment this soldier received word that they had been given their reassignment.  By this time, it was not much longer before they redeployed home.  Why do we have to apply that much pressure to get a "leader" to do the right thing? 

 

Soldiers on medical profile were treated as "malingering," or came face to face with a physician who was willing to tear up medical profiles and re-write them to show that soldiers who had never received treatment for their conditions had miraculously become deployable. 

 

One of the soldiers at Ft. Stewart was on medical profile for a condition that caused him to be deaf.  He had his records, and was scheduled to report for treatment and a medical discharge.  One night, this young soldier was wakened by his sergeant barreling into his barracks room ordering him to get up and get his equipment.  He would be deploying with his unit, or he would face 11 years in jail.  In the night, hearing impaired, and young, what is a soldier to do?

 

A soldier attempted suicide on the morning of deployment.  For months after his return from Iraq, this soldier requested treatment from the mental health counselors.  His commanders refused to listen, saying that he was "malingering."  Rather than give him the help he needed, and asked for, they threatened him, abused him emotionally, and the abuse took its toll.  He was taken to a local hospital, but the command didn't want his story to be told, so they hastily moved him to the Army hospital, refusing entry to his spouse.  He went AWOL, and then returned after his Rear Detachment commander made promises of help. When the mental health counselors informed his commander that this soldier required treatment under their care for at least 5 weeks, the commander ignored the recommendation and sent this soldier to Iraq, back to the same command that disregarded his health to begin with. 

 

On the night before his deployment, another Ft. Stewart soldier grabbed a bottle of prescription medication and a gun.  He got into his vehicle, drove off post to a highway not far away, pulled over to the side of the road and swallowed the pills in the bottle.  As the pills began to take effect, this soldier, a veteran of the invasion, then got out of his vehicle with his gun and walked along the edge of the highway away from his car.  The medication worked, in more ways than one, and he passed out along the side of the road before he could use the gun. 

 

This soldier was placed in the Psych unit of the Army hospital, where he was observed throughout the following week.  Doctors in the Psych unit told him that he was "malingering" and threatened with jail time.  He was ordered to deploy, and was sent to Iraq less than two weeks after he had attempted suicide.  Why did he take the pills?  He was scheduled to leave the military that same month, but the Army stop/lossed him, and rather than getting out, he was looking forward to another year and 4 months in combat, never having had his emotional condition addressed. 

 

There are uncounted cases of these stories on Ft. Stewart.  Doctors and commanders, self-proclaimed leaders who care about their soldiers, give the illusion, but actions present a different perspective.  Soldiers have gone AWOL, 12 from one unit, and have stayed away for so long they were dropped from the rolls.  Where is the accounting?  How many more have suffered that will never be known, because leaders chose to hide the truth, to cover the facts, to distort reality? 

 

Many in America want to know why more soldiers don't speak out against war, and the atrocities from it, if indeed they exist.  They do exist, and soldiers are speaking.  Their actions are telling us so much more than their words ever could.  But no one can hear because their voices are being muffled by those who claim to lead them. No one can hear because the outcry of these soldiers has been turned off with rhetoric, documents lost and access to the installations cut off for civilians who could make a difference if they knew the truth. 

 

PTSD manifests itself in so many ways.  Every aspect displays itself in the emotional turmoil that exists within each soldier.  But just as a soldier is an individual, the outward demonstrations of PTSD are as well.  There are many victims when a soldier suffers. 

 

On a small grassy median just in front of the Ft. Stewart PX complex, was a memorial that stood for 2 months.  One hundred and ninety one small blue pinwheels spun in the breezes during the spring months.  On a poster behind the pinwheels words read, "A memorial to the 191 confirmed cases of child abuse in the 3rd ID, on Ft. Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield, in the last year." 

                              

 WHO KNEW??        What more needs to be said?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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September 16, 2005

Ignorance and Abdication

 
Ignorance and Abdication
 
 That Amounts to Madness


All political leaders sometimes parry with the truth,

but with Bush the disconnections are systematic


 
by John Berger
 

As a consequence of the catastrophe that occurred in New Orleans, people in the US and throughout the world have started to re-examine the record of the present leaders of the first world superpower. A shift in opinion has taken place almost overnight. History, throwing us all back into our seats, suddenly opened its throttle.

Katrina - everyone refers to the hurricane by her name as if she were some kind of avatar - revealed that there is dire and increasing poverty in the US, that black people are typically treated as unwanted second-class citizens, that the systematic cutting of government investment in public institutions has produced widespread social disequilibrium and destitution (40 million Americans live without any aid if they fall ill), that the so-called war against terrorism is creating administrative chaos, and that within and against all this, voices of protest are being raised loud and clear.

All this though was evident before Katrina to those living it, and to those who wanted to know. What she changed was that the media were there for once, showing what was actually happening, and the fury of those to whom it was happening. With her terrible gesture she wiped the opaque screens clean for a little while.

In some gnomic way the as-yet-innumerable dead on the Gulf coast spoke not for but with the 100,000 Iraqis who have died as a consequence of the ongoing disastrous and criminal war. Time and again in the US press, Katrina and Iraq are being mentioned together. Yet Katrina was regular. She belonged to the familiar weather conditions which affect the Gulf of Mexico. She was not hiding in Afghanistan. And merciless as she was, she did not belong to any axis of evil. She was simply a natural threat to American lives and property, and she was heading for Louisiana.

It was in the self-interest (as well as the national interest) of the president and his chosen colleagues to meet the challenge she threw down, to foresee the needs of her victims and to reduce the ensuing pain and panic to the minimum possible. If they, the government, happened to fail to do this, they would be able to blame nobody else, and they themselves would be blamed. A child could foresee this. And they failed utterly. Their failure was technical, political and emotional. "Stuff happens," murmurs Donald Rumsfeld.

Is it possible that this administration is mad? Let us try to define the variant of madness, for it may be that it has never occurred before. It has very little to do, for example, with Nero when he fiddled while Rome burned. Any madness, however, implies a severe disconnection with reality, or, to put it more precisely, with the existent.

The variant we are considering touches upon the relationship between fear and confidence, between being threatened and being supreme. There is no negotiation between the two. Their "madness" operates like a switch which turns one off and the other on. And what is grave about this is that it is in the long periods of negotiating between fear and confidence that the existent is normally surveyed and observed in its multitudinous complexity. It is there that one learns about what one is facing.

Five days after Katrina had struck, when President Bush finally visited the devastated city, he astounded journalists by saying: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." On the same day, in the wrecked small town of Biloxi, the president's flying visit was preceded by a team who quickly cleared the rubble and corpses from the route his cortege would take. Two hours later the team vanished, leaving everything else in the town exactly as it was.

The calculations of the present US government are closely related to the global interests of the corporations, and what has been termed the survival of the richest, who today also vacillate abruptly between fear and confidence.

The lobbyist Grover Norquist, who is a talking head for corporate interests and to whom Bush and co listened when planning their tax reforms for the benefit of the rich, is on record as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

All political leaders sometimes parry with the truth, but here the disconnections are systematic and crop up not only in their announcements but in their every strategic calculation. Hence their ineptness. Their operation in Afghanistan failed, their war in Iraq has been won (as the saying goes) by Iran, Katrina was allowed to produce the worst natural disaster in US history, and terrorist activities are increasing.

An ignorance about most of what exists, and an abdication from the very minimum of what can be expected of government - are we not approaching disconnections which amount to what can be called madness when found in the minds of those who believe they can rule the planet?

John Berger is a novelist and critic.

© 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 

 
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September 02, 2005

The Enemy From Within - Part II

 

THE ENEMY FROM WITHIN

 

Part II of V

 

UNDER FALSE PRETENSE

 

SUMMER 2005 - AMERICA AWAKES

TO THE LIES OF A MADMAN

AND HIS ADMINISTRATION

 

BY TOM HAMILTON AND SCOTT EVANS

 

 

Even the most fanatical of United States president George W. Bush's supporters have to acknowledge that we went to war in Iraq under false pretenses. We were deliberately misled about weapons of mass destruction and secular dictator Saddam Hussein's support of radical Islamic terrorists in the Bush administrations rush to war.

 

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell's brief for war against Iraq, delivered to the United Nations Security Council, was a diplomatic charade laced with cynicism and deceit. The event was predicated on the colossal lie that the coming invasion was about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Baghdad's supposed threat to US security and world peace.

 

The Security Council meeting was staged on false pretences. The American media had promoted the event as a the pivotal moment when the man of the hour, Powell, would unveil secret intelligence to prove to skeptical allies and reluctant Arab regimes that Iraq was defying the UN and had to be "disarmed" by force and the sooner the better before a major US city was enveloped in a nuclear mushroom cloud.

 

Americans now recognize that they've been deceived and have embarked on a policy that cannot succeed.  The days where the administration can decry all criticism as unpatriotic are over. Gone too are the days when we are told that if you were against the war in Iraq or the Patriot Act you were giving aid and comfort to the enemy for many now realize that the enemy is from within.

 

There was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Quada and never was. There were no weapons of mass destruction and what is most disgusting is the latest argument of justification for war that we went to war for the sake of the Iraqi people and to bring them democracy.

 

The invasion has been about the "Bush Doctrine" of pre-emption and world dominance all along. This doctrine formerly known as the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" named for Paul Wolfowitz, the former No. 2 man at the Defense Department under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a key Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld confidant, who coincidentally was recently appointed head of the World Bank by president Bush.

 

The Wolfowitz Doctrine argues that America's political and military mission should be to "ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge. With its focus on this concept of benevolent domination by one power, the Pentagon document articulates the clearest rejection to date of collective internationalism.

 

We were told by vice president Dick Cheney, before the war started that Iraqis would throw flowers at our feet as liberators, instead our brave soldiers have been met with roadside bombs. 

 

We were told, "mission accomplished," by our president, but have found instead that over 1,800 of our bravest young men and women have died and another 14,000 have been seriously maimed and wounded with no end to the carnage in sight. 

 

The U.S. involvement in Iraq has become a disastrous quagmire and one of the primary reasons is that our army is not trained for occupation duties. Ironically a policy that based itself on flexing military muscles has evolved into a new reality, which has resulted in a reduction of military might.

 

To preserve our own freedoms and best serve the rest of the world, our foreign policy should be noninterventionist, non-threatening and non-militaristic. With economic strength and a politics of fairness and nonintervention, we can prosper and keep our own freedom. America is simply incapable of any other consistent foreign policy. America should be a beacon for the world because we can't be a competent policeman as we are learning in Iraq.

 

Last December when Spec. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to the very vocal approval of 2,300 other soldiers:

 

"Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

 

Rumsfeld's incredibly inadequate and offensive response was: "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have." 

 

Now we learn that because of mismanagement, the much needed tactical equipment was being stolen and sold to the highest bidder in of all places Ebay where the very enemies our troops are fighting could purchase them as long as they have a Paypal account and shipping address.

 

Indeed, Rumsfeld assured the troops who had been cobbling together their own armor, "It's interesting." In fact, "if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored humvee and it can be blown up." Good point Mr. Secretary. Indeed, why have armor at all?  Especially when initial war estimates said U.S. forces might need as many as 800 heavily armored vehicles in Iraq, but current estimates call for as many as 6,000.

 

Perhaps Rumsfeld simply had a bad day. But then, what about his statement earlier that week, when asked about troop levels?

 

"The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that's really out of my control." Really Mr. Secretary, out of your control? Rumsfeld also added this misleading statement, "the number of troops we had for the invasion was the number of troops that General Franks and General Abizaid wanted."

 

Leave aside the fact that the issue is not "the number of troops we had for the invasion" but rather the number of troops we have had for postwar stabilization.

 

Leave aside the fact that Gen. Tommy Franks had projected that he would need a quarter-million troops on the ground for that task -- and that his civilian superiors had mistakenly promised him that tens of thousands of international troops would be available.

 

Leave aside the fact that Rumsfeld has only grudgingly and belatedly been willing to adjust even a little bit to realities on the ground since April 2003.

 

Leave aside the fact that if our generals have been under pressure not to request more troops in Iraq for fear of stretching the military too thin, and this is all a consequence of Rumsfeld's refusal to increase the size of the military after Sept. 11.

 

And leave aside the fact that decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort which includes Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld himself.

 

Rumsfeld acknowledged this fact to an extent with his statement: "I mean, everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person and I guess that's fine."

 

Except Secretary Rumsfeld fails to take responsibility and has readily passed the buck time after time.

Another soldier, from a logistical support unit based at Fort Bragg, N.C., complained that she was being kept in the Army against her wishes by a Pentagon "stop-loss" order.

Critics of the policy have rightly called it a "backdoor draft".

"My husband and myself both joined a volunteer Army," said the staff sergeant. "Currently, I'm serving under the stop-loss. I would like to know how much longer you foresee the military using this program." 

"It is something you prefer not to have to use, obviously, in a perfect world," Rumsfeld responded "My guess is it will continue to be used as little as possible, but that it will continue to be used."

A group of soldiers have filed a lawsuit challenging the policy as about 7,000 U.S. soldiers have been affected by the stop-loss order according to Army officials.

With Military recruiting at all time lows one High School principal was recently shocked when she received a letter from military recruiters demanding a list of all her students, including names, addresses, and phone numbers. When questioned as to why the recruiters needed such information the recruiters cited of all things, the No Child Left Behind Act, president Bush's sweeping new education law.

There, buried deep within the law's 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student  or face a cutoff of all federal aid.

"I was very surprised the requirement was attached to an education law," the principal stated. "I did not see the link."

Recruiters are up-front about their plans to use school lists to aggressively pursue students through mailings, phone calls, and personal visits even if parents object.

"The only thing that will get us to stop contacting the family is if they call their congressman," stated one U.S. Army recruiter. "Or maybe if the kid died, we'll take them off our list."

For the federal government to ignore or discount the concerns of the privacy rights of millions of high school students is not a good thing, and it's something we should all be concerned about.

The Army and Marines are having a particularly tough time meeting recruitment objectives, in part because of Americans' concern about the war in Iraq. When you dig deeper into the reason for this phenomenon, it turns out that parents of potential soldiers and sailors are becoming one of the biggest obstacles facing military recruiters. Even top military officials acknowledge this and unveiled a new series of ads this spring targeted at "influencers" such as parents, teachers and coaches.

It should now be very apparent that we are on a course of no return. What will be the conditions that we leave Iraq? Will it be another "Peace with Honor" as in Viet Nam, with little peace for Iraqis and even less honor for America?  Will it be when all the so-called terrorists are dead? Unfortunately there isn't a finite number from which we can gauge the extent of terrorist as more and more become allied against us.

The Iraqi war hasn't made us safer, unfortunately it has done just the opposite, for the enemy is and has been from within all along.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Posted by EvansMediaUSA at 04:15:24 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

September 01, 2005

The Enemy From Within - Part I

 

THE ENEMY FROM WITHIN

 

Part I of V

 

Where is the Body Armor?

 

 

Ft. Stewart Command Exposed

 

Army Supplies Missing

 

 

Since before the second deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division began in January 2005, there has been question among units at Ft. Stewart regarding accountability of valuable equipment.  Many soldiers from several units on post have reported these difficulties.

 

We have heard the New York Times and practically every news source in America question "Where is the Body Armor?"  We have heard the cry from our troops in Iraq, yet nothing has been done.

 

In an on-going investigation, it has now been revealed the answers to many of the questions. The following is a five part series of an inside investigation of Fort Stewart and it's command.  As this first story is published, it is reported that official base documents are being shredded to aid in the cover up.

 

__________________________

 

During the year 2004, the time between the return from their first combat tour in Iraq and the deployment for their second, much of the 3rd Infantry Division at Ft. Stewart was off-line for re-organization of brigades into seemingly more effective units of action.

 

As the re-organization progressed, units became more disorganized.  Commanders lost control, and took control in their own manner.  This led to severe mismanagement of entire companies in many instances.  This also led to a greater opportunity for corruption within the units, and over time, it has been learned that valuable equipment, life-saving equipment for our soldiers has been lost, stolen, and in some instances re-sold to the highest bidder.

 

Equipment has repeatedly come up missing and the burden of accountability is placed on Junior NCOs who have been asked to "pencil-whip" reports, and bear the punishment when the misrepresentations are discovered.

 

In the weeks prior to deployment, late 2004, equipment reported missing and unaccounted for included radios, sensitive pieces of equipment which should have been secured under lock and key and signed for with documentation before and after each use, body armor which was in short supply, and approved gas masks. 

 

As a result of the shortage of equipment, soldiers went to Iraq from the 3rd ID with inadequate protection from the horrors of combat they were due to face.

 

During the course of this past spring, one reason for a lack of body armor was discovered.  A company commander from one unit was found guilty of selling armored plates from the body armor (valued at $2000.00 a piece) on E-Bay for $4,000.00 a plate.  How many soldiers are casualties of this war now, as a result of his bad judgement?  It was reported that there were 15 casualties in this captain's brigade alone during the second weekend in February, the first weekend that this unit was in Iraq. 

 

The commander received a mere 45 days in jail for selling life-saving equipment that should have been given to our soldiers.  This is a striking comparison to the 15-month sentence imposed recently on an Army Sgt. who requested Conscientious Objector status against the wishes of his command.

 

While the forward units are deployed, Rear Detachment units are assigned to re-align the offices and motor pools for the 3rd ID.  In the past two months, in a division wide inventory of equipment left at this installation, it was learned that the same brigade that had one of its captains selling valuable body armor for profit, over $300,000.00 worth of equipment could not be accounted for.  Among this equipment was a number of M-16's, have they been accounted for, has the paperwork been re-created, or is it that no one cares?

 

There is a little known stipulation in the Army, one which the upper echelon would just as soon leave in the dark, that no soldier can be certified to deploy if they have "inadequate training, inadequate education, lack of proper medical care or faulty equipment."  Before any soldier can deploy, he is supposed to receive a certificate stating that all of the above mentioned criteria are in place. 

 

It is well known to most soldiers serving, or who have served in Iraq, that the safety equipment they have been issued is faulty.  In many instances, the protective suits used against chemical warfare are pieced together and repaired with duct tape.  It is also well known that the gas masks issued do not provide adequate protection either. 

 

There are many identified instances of soldiers being placed in missions in which they have not received suitable training.  This is common occurrence within the 3rd Infantry Division now serving in some of the most dangerous hot spots in Iraq.  Even during the initial invasion, soldiers were repeatedly ordered to perform missions for whom they had never trained, led by officers and Sr. NCOs who had no responsibility for the orders they were giving.

 

There are also many identified instances of soldiers who have been deployed to Iraq without proper medical release.  Soldiers were deployed to Iraq against the recommendation of mental health counselors who requested that they remain in Rear Detachment at Ft. Stewart until they had completed their counseling for PTSD related issues.  Soldiers have been deployed with medical conditions that should have been treated here in the states.  In some instances, these soldiers went on family leave prior to deployment listed as undeployable status due to medical conditions, only to return from leave within a week of deploying to learn that even without treatment, their conditions have miraculously improved enough so that they could deploy.

 

As the war has progressed, a question has been posed in a variety of editorials, articles and presentations questioning the circumstances of this war.  "What if war were declared and no soldiers came?" 

 

What if this war had been declared with the general public totally aware of the price our soldiers would pay for being sent to a combat with no justification and no exit strategy?  What if this war had been declared with our soldiers 100% knowledgeable of what they were being sent to face, and what quality of tools they would be given to perform their missions?  What if this war had been declared with our soldiers educated in the weapons of war they would be asked to unleash on innocent civilians that also held a death sentence for themselves?  What if this war had been declared with the families of these soldiers fully aware of the lack of leadership their sons, daughters, husbands and fathers would have to serve under?  What if this war had been declared with our soldiers and their families fully aware of how little regard existed for the value of their lives, their safety and their sacrifice by leaders who, to this day, have not expressed a true awareness of what it's like to serve their country with honor and integrity? 

 

IF THE TRUTH were told – there would be no war.

 

 

 

 CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 

 

Posted by EvansMediaUSA at 07:39:58 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |