Toxic entrenchment — U.S. in Iraq story

U.S. State Department staffer Peter Van Buren’s account in We meant well: How I helped lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people is illustrative of an endemic pattern of criminal recklessness in U.S. foreign relations.

Excerpting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

“This story really began in the early 1990s,” says the Foreign Service Officer who had been posted in Iraq with an embedded-with-military U.S. State Department  Provisional Reconstruction Team (ePRT) before writing We Meant Well. From that time forward, Van Buren writes, “Iraq had been continually under siege by the United States. It was a seamless epic as the war of 1990-91 continued through the non-fly zones and the sanctions of the nineties — to be capped off by the 2003 invasion and the ensuing years of occupation.

“During Desert Storm, we [U.S. and allies] destroyed large portions of Iraq’s infrastructure. We had gone out of our way to make a mess, using clever tools such as cruise missiles that spat metallic fibers to short out entire electrical systems we would have to reconstruct.

“In the years that followed Desert Storm, three [four] U.S. Presidents bombed and rocketed Iraq, running up the bill we would later have to pay.

“Sanctions meanwhile kept [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] fat and happy on black-market oil profits while chiseling away Baghdad’s cosmopolitan First World veneer and plunging most of Iraq’s population into poverty.…

“The Script for the 2003 invasion did not include an extended reconstruction effort.” What the Americans imagined, Van Buren says, was a greeting “as liberators like in post-D-day France with cheerful natives rushing out to offer our spunky troops bottles of wine and frisky daughters.”

63 billion, still counting

However, “the reconstruction of Iraq was the largest nation-building program in history, dwarfing in cost, size, and complexity even those undertaken after World War II to rebuild Germany and Japan,” Van Buren writes. “At a cost to the U.S. taxpayer of over $63 billion and counting, the plan was lavishly funded, yet, as government inspectors found, the efforts were characterized from the beginning by pervasive waste and inefficiency, mistaken judgments, flawed policies, and structural weaknesses” [Chapter 1 “Help Wanted, No experience necessary,” pp. 3. 5-6].

Reconstruction a lot like the war itself — almost existential, he says.  

We fought the war because we were in Iraq to fight the war.

We ran projects because we had money for projects [Chapter “Midcourse correction,” p. 149].

Burning billions

“What the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) called a ‘legacy of waste’ in an August 2010 report included —

A $40 million prison that was never opened,

A $104 million failed sewer system in Fallujah,

A $171 million hospital in southern Iraq (that Laura Bush ‘opened’ in 2004 but that still has never seen a patient), and

More totaling $5 billion

“Audits resulted in the restitution of only $70 million worth of embezzled funds, practically a rounding error, given the $63 billion spent overall on reconstruction” [Chapter “Everyone was looking the other way,” p. 214].

Vatican-size Emerald City U.S. Embassy

“The World’s Biggest Embassy” sits on “104 acres with twenty-two buildings, thousands of staff members, and a $116 million vehicle inventory.” Physically, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq was “larger than the Vatican” — a sign, Van Buren says, “of our commitment, at least our commitment to excess.

Vice President Biden
U.S. Embassy
Baghdad

“‘Along with the Great Wall of China,’” he quotes the U.S. Ambassador, “‘it’s one of those things you can see with the naked eye from outer space.’

“The new Embassy compound isolated American leadership at first physically and soon mentally as well. It generated its own electricity, purified its own water from the nearby Tigris, and processed its won sewage, hermetically sealed off from Iraq.

Vice President Biden
U.S. Embassy
Baghdad

“In the process of deposing Saddam, we [the United States Government] placed our new seat of power right on top of his [Saddam Hussein’s] old one…. Saddam’s old palaces in the Green Zone were repurposed as offices; Saddam’s old jails became our new jails. …The place you went to visit political prisoners who opposed Saddam [had become] the place you went to look for relatives who opposed the Americans [Chapter “The Embassy laws, where the grass is always greener,”154-155].

Notes and sources

We meant well: How I helped lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people Peter Van Buren. New York: Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company, 2011

TERMS:

ePRT: embedded Provisional Reconstruction Team

FOB: Forward Operating Base

SIGIR: Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction

FSO: Foreign Service Officer

Author Peter Van Buren at the time of the book’s publication had served with the 

U.S. Foreign Service for more than 23 years. The book jacket notes say, Peter Van Buren has served overseas as a State Department Foreign Service Officer for more than two decades in places such as Thailand, Japan, and Iraq, among other places.

BRITANNICA NOTES
1990-2011
Bush dynasty through Barack Obama

Occupied Persian Gulf 

Persian Gulf War (1990–91)

The international conflict that was triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990.

Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the invasion and occupation of Kuwait with the apparent aim of acquiring that nation’s large oil reserves, canceling a large debt Iraq owed Kuwait, and expanding Iraqi power in the region.

On August 3, the United Nations Security Council called for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait; on August 6, the council imposed a worldwide ban on trade with Iraq. (The Iraqi government responded by formally annexing Kuwait on August 8)

Occupied Kuwait

Iraq’s invasion and the potential threat it then posed to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer and exporter, prompted the United States and its western European NATO allies to rush troops to Saudi Arabia to deter a possible attack. Egypt and several other Arab nations joined the anti-Iraq coalition and contributed forces to the military buildup, known as Operation Desert Shield. Iraq meanwhile built up its occupying army in Kuwait to about 300,000 troops.

The Persian Gulf War began on January 16–17, 1991, with a massive U.S.-led air offensive against Iraq that continued throughout the war. Over the next few weeks, this sustained aerial bombardment, named Operation Desert Storm, destroyed Iraq’s air defenses before attacking its communications networks, government buildings, weapons plants, oil refineries, and bridges and roads. By mid February, the allies had shifted their air attacks to Iraq’s forward ground forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq, destroying their fortifications and tanks.

Operation Desert Saber, a massive allied ground offensive, was launched northward from northeastern Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and southern Iraq on February 24; and within three days, Arab and U.S. forces had retaken Kuwait city in the face of crumbling Iraqi resistance.

Meanwhile, the main U.S. armored thrust drove into Iraq some 120 miles (200 km) west of Kuwait and attacked Iraq’s armored reserves from the rear. By February 27, these forces had destroyed most of Iraq’s elite Republican Guard units after the latter had tried to make a stand south of Al-Baṣrah in southeastern Iraq. By the time that U.S. President George H.W. Bush declared a cease-fire for February 28, Iraqi resistance had completely collapsed.

Occupied Iraq

No official figures for Iraqi military operation

Estimates of the number of Iraqi troops in the Kuwait theatre range from 180,000 to 630,000; estimates of Iraqi military deaths range from 8,000 to 100,000.

By contrast, the allies lost about 300 troops in the conflict.

Sanctions

The terms of the peace were, inter alia [among other things], that Iraq [should] recognize Kuwait’s sovereignty and divest itself of all weapons of mass destruction (i.e., nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons) and all missiles with ranges exceeding 90 miles (150 km). Pending complete compliance, economic sanctions would continue.

Post-U.S.-led Gulf War on Iraq

[KURDS: Estimated to be the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East after Arabs, Turks, and Persians, important Kurdish minorities are in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria, and Iraq’s Kurds are concentrated in the relatively inaccessible mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, which is roughly contiguous with Kurdish regions in those other countries. Kurds constitute a separate and distinctive cultural group. They are mostly Sunni Muslims who speak one of two dialects of the Kurdish language, an Indo-European language closely related to Modern Persian.]

No-fly action

Kurds in the north of the country and Shīites in the south rose in a rebellion that was suppressed by Saddam with great brutality.

The United States and Britain then prohibited Iraqi aircraft from operating in designated ‘no-fly’ zones over the areas in conflict. Other allies gradually left the coalition but U.S. and British aircraft continued to patrol Iraqi skies and UN inspectors sought to guarantee that all illicit weapons were destroyed.

Operation Desert Fox  and no-fly zones

Iraq’s failure to cooperate with inspectors led in 1998 to a brief resumption of hostilities (Operation Desert Fox). Iraq thereafter refused to readmit inspectors into the country, and regular exchanges of fire between Iraqi forces and U.S. and British aircraft over the no-fly zones continued into the 21st century.

Rising U.S./UK aggression

In 2002, the United States sponsored a new UN resolution calling for the return of weapons inspectors, who then reentered Iraq in November.

Member states of the UN Security Council differed in their opinion of the degree to which Iraq had cooperated with inspections.

2003 U.S./UK re-invasion of Iraq, “The Iraq War”

The United States and the United Kingdom had previously begun to mass troops on Iraq’s border. On March 17, 2003, the U.S. and UK dispensed with further negotiations.

[Pattern similar to that used this year by the U.S. and UK before invading Libya]

U.S. President George W. Bush — seeking no further UN endorsement — issued an ultimatum demanding that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein step down from power and leave Iraq within 48 hours or face war.

President George W. Bush even suggested that if the Iraqi leader did leave Iraq, U.S. forces might still be necessary to stabilize the region and to hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

When Saddam Hussein refused to leave, the Untied States and allied forces launched an attack on Iraq on March 20 and thus began what became known as the Iraq War.

U.S. PRESIDENTS’ 21 years of United States INVASIONS, OTHER AGGRESSION, OCCUPATION of IRAQ and Persian Gulf

            41st     George H.W. Bush 1989–93

            42nd    William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton [William Jefferson Clinton, original name:  William Jefferson Blythe III] 1993–2001

            43rd     George W. Bush 2001–09

            44th     Barack Obama 2009–

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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High-placed killer among us boasts

Portrait of Peace Laureate whose role no one should model

Excerpt from Stop the War Coalition, re-reporting, comment by 

Carolyn Bennett

“In comments that were surprisingly bellicose even for the current political environment, President Barack Obama bragged loudly about the number of people he’s killed, urging hawks who don’t think he’s hawkish enough to ‘ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field.’

U. S. 2012
presidential crew

“He could’ve also advised them to ask thousands of Pakistanis, Afghans and Iraqis as well, or the family of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen he assassinated earlier this year, but the point was already made: an Obama Administration kills lots of people, and they’re pretty sure that’s what voters are in the market for.

“Moving beyond that, Obama went on to more familiar hawkish territory, trotting out his usual ‘all options are on the table’ threat against Iran, comments which appear timed to resonate through the Republican Jewish Coalition Conference, which itself centered on potential Obama foes bragging about how quickly and on how little pretext they’d attack Iran.

“‘Today Iran is isolated and the world is united in applying the toughest sanctions that Iran has ever experienced,’ added Obama, saying his administration had done more to unite the world against Iran than the Bush Administration had.

Unconscionable role to model

  

ECHO

“‘Peace’ president Obama brags about how many people he's killed”

December 9, 2011 (Jason Ditz USA and the War on Terror … Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama is waging war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Uganda and bragging about starting another in Iran), http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/peace-president-obama-brags-about-how-many-people-hes-killed 

My count of countries in this entrenched U.S. global war is even higher and I don’t think my count comes close to the real total.  

The United States is at WAR with the world’s peoples and their countries —

Arming and bankrolling to create domestic and regional pressure • assassination with impunity •    direct aggression • direct/indirect threat/intimidation • displacement/destabilization • economic/financial sanctions • failing nations • failure to negotiate with words or nonviolent diplomacy • provocation/incitement to protracted violence • occupation • unlawful search and detention • torture…

1.     Afghanistan	2.     Bahrain
3.     Cuba	4.     Djibouti
5.     Eritrea	6.     Ethiopia
7.     Haiti	8.     Honduras
9.     Iran	10.  Iraq
11.  Japan (Okinawa)	12.  Kenya
13.  Libya	14.  Mexico
15.  Nigeria	16.  North Korea
17.  Pakistan	18.  Palestine
19.  Russia	20.  Saudi Arabia
21.  Somalia	22.  South Korea
Syria	24.  Turkey
25.  Uganda [dominoes The Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa)]	26.  Yemen

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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GSRBO — Presidentially certifiable

Center for Responsive Politics
image

Lethal mixture of insanity, ignorance, prone to violence

Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

We can do better than this staged “leadership”

Madison was right: “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”  Knowledge — not threats and drones. Critical judgment, independent thought — far from the herd, moneyed politics and partisanship, celebrity and fan worship, messianic mentality.

Without it, we are screwed — as in what goes for “leadership” in the United States of America today. This cast is not only antagonistic to U.S. public interests but it is the Number One enemy of global well being. Glaring examples are to be found in the U.S. presidential candidates declaring war on countries, increased destabilization in the Middle East, and assassination of foreign nationals.

U.S. presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on the record

“… [T]here are a number of ways to be smart about Iran and there are also a few ways to be dumb, and the administration has skipped all the ways to be smart.…

“First of all, maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems, all of it covertly, all of it deniable.

“Second, maximum coordination with the Israelis in a way which allows them to maximize their impact in Iran.

“Third, absolute strategic program comparable to what President Reagan, Pope John Paul II and a Margaret Thatcher did to the Soviet Union of every possible aspect short of war of breaking the regime and bringing it down.”

Daniel Larison comments on Gingrich

“Many Republicans flatter Gingrich by treating him as one of the party’s intellectuals, but Gingrich frequently shows that he is unable or unwilling to make crucial distinctions in his treatment of international problems.

“He complains on his campaign website that ‘we currently view Iraq, Afghanistan, and the many other danger spots of the globe as if they are isolated, independent situations,’ and that America ‘lacks a unified grand strategy for defeating radical Islamism.’

“However, these conflicts are largely separate from one another, and there is no such thing as a monolithic, global, radical Islamism that can be addressed by one strategy. No conflicts around the world can be properly understood except by focusing on local circumstances, but for Gingrich, the ideological emphasis on a unified global threat takes priority over proper analysis.

  

“There is every reason to expect that U.S. foreign policy under a President Gingrich would become even more militarized and confrontational, and America’s relations with much of the world would deteriorate quickly.

U.S. presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s quest to murder scientists

“On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead … I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly.…

“I think we should send a very clear message that if you are scientist[s] from Russia or North Korea or from Iran, and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a nuclear bomb for Iran, you are not safe.”

In addition to his quest for murder and the U.S. presidency, he was a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and on occasion has “declared that life was a civil right” not extended apparently to “scientists in other counties.”

American Iranian Eleanor Ommani comments on candidates’ Iran “cover”

Ommani said she was appalled by “American political figures’ talk against all international laws and the U.S. Constitution [which any student knows] “do not advocate assassination, killing scientists, breaking down the regime …”

However, she suggested that both major U. S. political parties and candidates are using Iran as a cover. The reasons being, “To boost their own career and at the same time strengthen U.S. capitalism, U.S. imperialism, which has been dealt a blow by Washington failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and changes in Egypt and Tunisia, and the fight going on in Yemen.

“It is truly regional uprising of the oppressed people,” she said, “of poor people against the very wealthy people; and the center of wealth exists in the United States, in my country.”  

Former U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate Mike Gravel also responded to the rhetoric of murder.

“I can't tell you how dangerous this kind of rhetoric is in the United States,” Gravel said, “and how the American people have been hoodwinked by these people and by U.S. mainstream media organizations that give credibility to these statements, which have no credibility.

“They’re immoral. They’re dishonest. They’re wrong, internationally. I just can’t give you enough reaction to the stupidity of Newt Gingrich, the irresponsibility of Mitt Romney, and the insanity in the others in articulating this.”

For the past five, six to eight years, the American government has been doing this …  Congress has been appropriating money on average about $200 million a year to bring about regime change in Iran. … Now we see this [latest] incident with the drone that was over Iranian territory.”

“Iran is doing nothing illegal. The intelligence community has repeatedly said that Iran is not pursuing any weaponization program. Yet the president has said it twice — once he said that they [Iranians] are not pursuing, and then on another occasion he said that they are.”

Even if weaponization were a fact in Iran, Gravel said, “In this insanity of our global situation,” to acquire such use, “is for self defense. Morally, international law dictates that any country is entitled to pursue its self defense.”

However, “to go out and advocate war when we’ve just been through ten years of it … and for these people to be considered as presidential candidates in the United States, [this is] really a sad reflection on the state of our government.

“… As an American, I am deeply ashamed of the ridiculous nature of these charges,” Gravel said. “The kindest thing I can say about [the candidates] is that they are morally bankrupt and somewhat insane.”

SOMEWHAT?

Again, Madison, “Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty but also by the abuse of power. …

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”

I believe the progressive must take the best from the past — not entrench or merely reference leaders such as Lincoln or Roosevelt (FDR or ER), Eisenhower, Kennedy or King; but intelligently, critically, consciously (with conscience and care) push constructively forward, beyond ideas and actions and leadership which might have, to the best of our knowledge, seemed to contain the best.

Sources and notes

James Madison (1751-1836) was the fourth President of the United States (1809-1813).

 “Newt Gingrich Advocates Assassinating Iranian Scientists as Drum Beat for War Continues at GOP Debate,” posted November 12, 2011, at http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/newt-gingrich-advocates-assassinating-iran

“Newt Gingrich’s dangerous, self-aggrandizing foreign policy” (Daniel Larison The Week), http://news.yahoo.com/newt-gingrichs-dangerous-self-aggrandizing-foreign-policy-104800717.html

“Santorum: Dead Foreign Scientists a ‘Wonderful Thing,’ posted October 27, 2011, at http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/santorum-dead-foreign-scientists-wonderful-t

“U.S. Gingrich says kill Iranian scientists — U.S. presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has openly called for sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program through terrorism and assassinating Iranian scientists as part of Washington’s policy,” November 14, 2011,

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/210013.html

Press TV has conducted an interview with Co-founder of American-Iranian Friendship Committee Eleanor Ommani.

“‘Insane’ U.S. politicians to wage more wars — Republican presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich  and Rick Santorum U.S. Republican presidential candidates have renewed calls for covert operations including acts of sabotage, assassination and aid to terrorist groups against Iran”  [Press TV interview], December 8, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/214513.html

More related news context, update

Bachmann, Obama

U.S. Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann reveals plans to close the U.S. embassy in Iran though the U.S. has had no embassy there since 1980.  The candidate reportedly told a crowd in Waverly, Iowa, “‘That’s exactly what I would do [if I were president]. … We wouldn’t have an embassy in Iran. I wouldn’t allow that to be there.’”

The sitting president apparently “slipped up when “denouncing the storming of an ‘English’ embassy in Tehran, which is actually ‘British.’”

“Oops! Presidential hopeful plans to close U.S. embassy in Iran,” December 1, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/213227.html

“Speaking at a Wednesday gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington D.C, former House speaker and leading Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said he would resort to ‘covert capability’ to bring about ‘regime replacement’ in Iran. ‘They only have one very, very large refinery. I would be focused on how to covertly sabotage it every day’ [AFP quoted him as saying].

“Last month, Gingrich proposed that Washington kill Iranian scientists to disrupt the country’s atomic energy program. At the Wednesday gathering, former senator Rick Santorum redoubled the call for assassination of Iranian scientists. ‘We need to say very clearly that we will be conducting covert activity to do everything we can to stop their nuclear program.’

“The other Republican presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, called on Washington to even openly help seditionists in Iran. ‘We should also have covert and overt activities to encourage voices of dissent within the country. Ultimately regime change is what's going to be necessary in that setting.’

“On November 12, during a debate among a number of Republican presidential hopefuls, calls ranging from executing covert operations such as terrorism and assassinations to launching a military strike on Iran to subvert Tehran’s nuclear program were made.

“The calls for assassinations and terrorist acts directed at Iran are not idle threats as a number of Iranian scientists have been assassinated over the past few years, including Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, who were both killed in 2010.

“On Nov. 4, 2011, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, announced that Tehran had irrefutable evidence proving that the U.S. government was involved in anti-Iran conspiracies and dispatched elements to carry out acts of sabotage and terrorism in Iran and other regional countries.

“The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Tehran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used the false charge as a pretext to push for the imposition of sanctions on the country.

“Iran argues that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

“Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that such a measure could spark a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.” [ASH/GHN/MA], Press TV transcript of news report

“GOPers call for covert ops on Iran,” December 8, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/214448.html

MIKE GRAVEL

A former U.S. presidential candidate (2008) Maurice Robert ‘Mike’ Gravel (b. May 13, 1930)   is a former U.S. Senator (1969-1981) from Alaska most prominently known for his release of the Pentagon Papers, the secret official study that revealed the lies and manipulations of successive U.S. administrations that misled the country into the Vietnam War. After the New York Times published portions of the leaked study, the Nixon administration moved to block any further publication of information and to punish any newspaper publisher who revealed the contents.

From the floor of the senate, Gravel (a junior senator at the time) insisted that his constituents had a right to know the truth behind the war and proceeded to read 4,100 pages of the 7,000-page document into the senate record. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Senator Gravel did not have the right and responsibility to share official documents with his constituents.

He then published The Senator Gravel Edition, The Pentagon Papers, Beacon Press (1971). This publication resulted in litigation, Gravel v. U.S., resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision (No. 71-1017-1026) relative to the Speech and Debate Clause (Article 1, Section 6) of the United States Constitution.

.

Mike Gravel is said to be “a passionate advocate of direct democracy and the National Initiative” and ran for the presidency on these ideas in the 2007-08 campaign/election season.

Gravel served in the Alaska House of Representatives (1963-66), and as Speaker (1965-66). He then represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate (1969-81) where he served on the Finance, Interior, and Environmental and Public Works committees, chairing the Energy, Water Resources, Buildings and Grounds, and Environmental Pollution subcommittees.

In 1971, Gravel waged a successful one-man filibuster for five months that forced the Nixon administration to cut a deal, effectively ending the draft in the United States.

Senator Gravel served in the U.S. Army (1951-54) and as special adjutant in the Communication Intelligence Services and as a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps. His academic credentials are in economics (B.S., Columbia University); and in law and public affairs (four honorary degrees). Mike Gravel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to French Canadian immigrants.

He was founder and president of The Democracy Foundation, Philadelphia II, and Direct Democracy, nonprofit corporations dedicated to the establishment of direct democracy in the United States, through the enactment of the National Initiative for Democracy by American voters.  Senator Gravel is author of Jobs and More Jobs, and Citizen Power. He lectures and writes about governance, foreign affairs, economics, Social Security, tax reform, energy, environmental issues and democracy. http://www.mikegravel.us/bio

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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900,000 widows — hardly “well meaning”

U.S. in Iraq

Beyond “credibility deficit”

Compiled, edited, re-reported with comment by Carolyn Bennett

The U.S. military’s version of ‘creative destruction,’ driven directly into the oil heartlands of the planet … have unified the region in misery and visceral dislike, Tom Engelhardt writes in an article published today at Middle East online.

U.S. in Afghanistan

“‘Mistakes,’ ‘incidents’ ‘collateral damage,’ slaughtered wedding parties and bombed funerals, ‘mishaps’ and ‘miscommunications’ continue to pile up — as do dead Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, and Americans, so many from places you’ve never heard of if you weren’t born there.”

IRAQ

Washington remains — as it has been since September 12, 2001 — engaged in a fierce and costly losing battle with ghosts in which … perfectly real people die and perfectly real women are widowed.

In this country an estimated 900,000 wives have lost their husbands since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. According to reports, many of these widows are in states of desperation and receiving next to no help from governments of Iraq or United States, Engelhardt writes.

Their 900,000 husbands undoubtedly died in various ways — warlike, civil-war-like, and peaceable — but the figure offers a crude indicator of the levels of carnage the U.S. invasion loosed on Iraq during the last eight and a half years.

Afghans protest

After almost nine years of war and occupation, the United States is reportedly shutting down its multi-billion-dollar mega [military]-bases in Iraq, withdrawing U.S. troops. However, the USA is leaving behind a monster State Department mission guarded by a 5,000-person army of mercenaries, a militarized budget of $6.5 billion for 2012, and more than 700 mostly hire-a-gun trainers.

Vatican-size residual occupation 

U.S. anti occupation
anti war actions

Peter Van Buren, a  U.S. State Department official suspended for publishing We meant well,  said this week on Democracy Now that in countries of Iraq’s size, the U.S. State Department typically has a mission of 100 to 150 people. Before the 1991 Gulf War, he said, the U.S. embassy in Iraq was relatively small, about the size of a college mathematics building, with about 100 people working in it. 

Around the world, it is typical for the U.S. to have a medium-sized embassy in a country of the size and complexity of Iraq; but “the State Department has created the world’s largest embassy in Baghdad — literally the size of the Vatican, something seen from space.” 

For this residual occupation, the U.S. Department of State “has hired over five thousand mercenaries, contract security people similar to Blackwater under some different names; as well as its own armed Air Force, its own blood system to supply people who are injured, and a whole lot of other militarized functions that have no place in diplomacy.

Iraqis protest U.S.-built
WALL
separating Iraqis

“In many people’s minds, the sixteen thousand personnel who are going to occupy the State Department facilities are nothing more than an extension of the occupation of Iraq, albeit, under civilian control rather than military control.”

On this week’s U.S. vice presidential photo op in Baghdad, Van Buren said he (Van Buren) “would like to propose that no VIP be allowed to go to Iraq — certainly not to announce anything using the words ‘victory’ or ‘success’ — until he or she is willing to do that on an announced visit with the airplane landing in the day time.

“As long as the visits have to be kept secret and the planes have to land at night, I would like to suggest we not use the words ‘victory,’ ‘success,’ ‘completion’ or anything equivalent.”

The author of The American Way of War (How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s) concludes a segment of his Middle East article with the inevitable: “Iraq is visibly a loss for Washington.”

News this week from IRAQ

Explosion in Iraq

Iraqi political and community leaders, according to Press TV, routinely cite the United States and U.S. close ally Saudi Arabia “as the States sponsoring the terror campaign in Iraq.”

On Wednesday this week, thousands of Iraqis including clerics, lawmakers and city councilors took to the streets of Baghdad and the southern cities of Najaf and Basra … “to condemn an unannounced visit to the oil-rich country by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.”

Believing this high level visit was aimed at convincing Iraqi leaders to extend the occupation of U.S. military forces in their country, the demonstrators chanted, “‘Biden, get out of Iraq’ and ‘No to America.’”

U.S. war helicopter

Yesterday in Iraq, ten people died and 25 others were injured when a bomb exploded in the Iraqi town of Khalis, 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.

On Monday outside a prison near the capital, 19 people died and 22 others were injured when another car bomb exploded.

PAKISTAN

U.S. drone

Meanwhile in Afghanistan’s neighbor, Tom Engelhardt writes, “the U.S. drone war combined with the latest ‘incident’ on the Pakistani border, evidently involving U.S. Special Forces operatives, has further destabilized Pakistan and the U.S. alliance there.”

A major Pakistani presidential candidate is calling for the end of the U.S.-Pakistan alliance and anti-Americanism is growing fast and far.

Pakistanis'
anti-U.S. actions

News this week from PAKISTAN

Violence and militancy have displaced thousands of people across this country. 

More than 35,000 Pakistanis have died in bombings and other militant attacks since 2007 [Press TV attributing AP]. Since late 2009, militant attacks in Pakistan have increased.

Lahore, Pakistan
protests

On the United States’ Thanksgiving weekend, NATO helicopters and fighter jets had attacked two Pakistani military border posts in the country’s northwest. Twenty-four Pakistani troops died and Pakistanis were angered.

Pakistan’s government then closed border crossings that the Western military alliance uses to transport fuel and other supplies to foreign forces in Afghanistan. The government also called on the United States to vacate Shamsi Air Base in Balochistan Province.

Yesterday demonstrators took to streets in the cities of Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Rawalpindi and Sheikhupura to strongly condemn the NATO attack in the tribal Mohmand Agency of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

Pakistanis' anti-U.S. actions

In Karachi, protesters shouted slogans and set fire to portraits of U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In Lahore, 170 miles (275 kilometers) southeast of the capital Islamabad, lawyers dressed in black suits staged a rally and chanted anti-U.S. slogans.

Since the Thanksgiving incident that left two dozen Pakistani soldiers dead, thousands of people in Pakistan have held protest rallies. Protesters also are calling for the immediate end of the Pakistan’s alliance with the United States “in the so-called war on terrorism.”

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, reportedly told a Senate committee on foreign affairs, “‘Enough is enough — the government will not tolerate any incident of spilling even a single drop of any civilian or soldier’s blood.’”

Pakistan’s Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani said on Thursday that Pakistani troops would counter with full force any attack on the country’s soil.

Not only against Pakistanis

U.S. drone

HORN OF AFRICA’s Somalis

A people on their knees suffering poverty, drought, disease, want of necessities

The United States has used drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. “Somalia is the sixth country where the United States has used drones to launch deadly missile strikes. On October 28, the United States admitted to flying the terror aircraft from a base in Ethiopia to carry out attacks in Somalia.”

Displaced Somalis

This morning near the border with Kenya, 24 people died and dozens suffered injuries when “U.S. assassination drones launched aerial attacks on southern Somalia.”

Somali military officer Abdi Hirsi told Press TV the remote-controlled aerial vehicles fired several missiles at Buzar village, which is located close to El Wak city in Somalia's southwestern region of Gedo.  

The aerial attacks came a day after U.S. drones struck Bilis Qooqaani town 278 miles (448 kilometers) southwest of the capital, Mogadishu. Eleven people died and 50 others suffered wounds.

U.S. in Afghanistan

News from [Pakistan’s] Neighboring AFGHANISTAN

Despite thousands of foreign troops, insecurity rises daily across Afghanistan. Civilian casualties already at record levels rose 5 percent in the period June to August 2011. According to the United Nation’s September report, the monthly average in the number of security incidents recorded for the year through the end of August has risen nearly 40 percent. Hundreds of thousands (est. 130,000) of people have been displaced by the conflict in the first seven months of the year, up nearly two-thirds from the same period a year earlier.

Today 19 miles (30 kilometers) south of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, near the entrance to a NATO military base in the eastern province of Logar, at least 70 civilians suffered injuries, one person died, three government buildings were destroyed when a truck bomb exploded.

Yesterday in Balablok district of Afghanistan’s western province of Farah, “two soldiers serving with the U.S. military” were injured when a roadside bomb exploded. The report said a “vehicle carrying American troops stumbled on the explosive device along a road. … The vehicle was completely destroyed in the attack.”

OURSELVES

U.S. Values

U.S.
Neglect

“Our wars and national security spending,” Engelhardt recounts, “have drained the U.S. of trillions of dollars in national treasure, leaving behind a country in political gridlock, its economy in a condition “close to ‘shock-and-awe,’ its infrastructure crumbling, and vast majorities of angry citizens convinced that their land is not only ‘on the wrong track,’ but [also] ‘in decline.’”

Related to U.S. foreign relations overall in the region of the Middle East, Engelhardt concludes, “the sole lesson Washington seems capable of absorbing is that its failed policy is the only possible policy.”

This means, among other things, “more ‘incidents,’ more ‘mistakes,’ more ‘accidents,’ more dead, more embittered people vowing vengeance, more investigations, more pleas of self-defense, more condolences, more money draining out of the U.S. treasury, and more destabilization.” Indeed. 

Whether Biden in Iraq in the dead of night or broad daylight or Hillary Clinton in Burma, the words do not match reality or any essence or grain of truth. They strain belief. U.S. citizens may well be blissfully oblivious to the sham and show but ancient countries know better. 

Even without gadgets — people bombed, brutalized, intimidated, their “dictators” leveraged against them, weapons sold to them are trained on them — they break through the rhetoric. They are desperately aware of the United States’ unpardonable failing.

U.S. hegemony 
Arabia to the Horn of Africa

Credibility deficit

Writing in 2006, American University professor and Middle East analyst R.S. Zaharna said, what U.S. officials fail to register “is that no amount of information pumped out by U.S. public diplomacy will be enough to improve the U.S. image.

“The problem, ultimately, is not lack of information but lack of credibility. … Without credibility, no amount of information holds persuasive weight.…

“The region [of the Middle East] and its people have suffered greatly by the U.S. reluctance to engage diplomatically on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. … Without the active involvement of U.S. traditional diplomacy, U.S. public diplomacy will remain paralyzed by the weight of this conflict, and America’s credibility deficit will only deepen.”

STRETCH OF MIDDLE EAST

The Middle or Near East consists of the lands around the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. These lands extend from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula and Iran, sometimes beyond. 

STRETCH OF U.S. AGGRESSION

Arming and bankrolling to create domestic and regional pressure • assassination with impunity •    direct aggression • direct/indirect threat/intimidation • displacement/destabilization • economic/financial sanctions • failing nations • failure to negotiate with words or nonviolent diplomacy • provocation/incitement to protracted violence • occupation • unlawful search and detention • torture…

The United States is at WAR with the world’s peoples and their countries —

1.     Afghanistan	2.     Bahrain
3.     Cuba	4.     Djibouti
5.     Eritrea	6.     Ethiopia
7.     Haiti	8.     Honduras
9.     Iran	10.  Iraq
11.  Japan (Okinawa)	12.  Kenya
13.  Libya	14.  Mexico
15.  Nigeria	16.  North Korea
17.  Pakistan	18.  Palestine
19.  Russia	20.  Saudi Arabia
21.  Somalia	22.  South Korea
Syria	24.  Turkey
25.  Uganda [dominoes The Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa)]	26.  Yemen

Sources and notes

Middle East Online: “He was 22... She was 12...  Lessons From the Dead in a No-Learning-Curve World” December 2, 2011, http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=49328

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published. Copyright © 2011 Tom Engelhardt

“State Dept. Veteran Peter Van Buren Defies U.S. Censors to Recount Failed Reconstruction in Iraq,” November 30, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/30/state_dept_veteran_peter_van_buren

Author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Peter Van Buren is currently on administrative leave from the U.S. Department of State, where he has worked for 23 years.

IRAQ

“10 killed, 25 injured in Iraq bombing,” December 1, 2011,  http://www.presstv.ir/detail/213159.html

PAKISTAN

“Gunmen kill 4 policemen in Pakistan,” December 2, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/section/3510204.html

“Pakistanis slam NATO cross-border raid,” December 2, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/213338.html

Press TV Pakistan protest caption: Sunni Tehreek activists set fire to the portraits of US President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as they shout slogans during a demonstration in Karachi, Pakistan, on December 1, 2011.

“Pakistan to retaliate future NATO raids,” December 2, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/213352.html

Not only Pakistan - SOMALIA

“U.S. terror drones kill 24 in Somalia,” December 2, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/213360.html

AFGHANISTAN

“70 Afghans injured in NATO base blast,” December 2, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/213346.html

“Two U.S. soldiers injured in Afghanistan,” December 1, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/213234.html

Press TV caption Afghanistan

A U.S. military vehicle burns after it was hit by a blast in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. (file photo)

Press TV caption soldiers killed

At least 259 US-led soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year.

CREDIBILITY DEFICIT

“The U.S. Credibility Deficit” (R.S. Zaharna was writing as an American University professor in public communication and Foreign Policy In Focus Middle East analyst; edited by John Feffer), December 13, 2006, http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_us_credibility_deficit

Author of Battles to Bridges: U.S. Strategic Communication and Public Diplomacy after 9/11 (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), Dr. Rhonda Zaharna specializes in intercultural and international strategic communication, with an emphasis on culture and communication in the Arab and Islamic regions; and is an American University professor of Public Communication in the School of Communication.

She has taught strategic communication for nearly 20 years and has advised on communication projects for multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, diplomatic missions, and international organizations, including the United Nations, World Bank, and USAID.  She has also testified before the U.S. Congress and has addressed diplomatic audiences and military personnel in the United States and Europe on cross-cultural communication and public diplomacy.

Her credentials are from Georgetown University (B.S. Foreign Service) and Columbia University (M.Ed. Communication and Ed.D. Communication), http://www.american.edu/soc/faculty/zaharna.cfm

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