Tuesday, April 10, 2007

THIS JUST IN! DEMS DESTROY THEMSELVES!

 
THE PARTY OF CAVING HAS DONE IT AGAIN.
 
ELECTED ON A MANDATE FROM THE PEOPLE TO END THE WAR, CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS HAD TO BE FORCED TO EVEN INCLUDE IRAQ ON THEIR THINGS-TO-DO LIST.
 
AFTER MUCH STRUTTING AND BLUSTERING, BOTH HOUSES MANAGED TO PASS TOOTHLESS, NON-BINDING MEASURES THAT WOULD ALLOW THE WAR TO CONTINUE WELL PAST THE 2008 ELECTIONS.  SMOKE AND MIRRORS ALLOWED DEMOCRATS TO CLAIM THEY HAD "BENCHMARKS" AND "TIMELINES" BUT THE MEASURES OUT OF BOTH HOUSES HAD ESCAPE CLAUSES FOR THE BULLY BOY.
 
DESPITE THIS, DEMOCRATS STROKED THEMSELVES. 
 
THEY WOULD STAND STRONG, THEY SAID, ON THEIR PIECE OF PUFFERY EVEN IF BULLY BOY VETO-ED IT. 
 
LIKE THE SPINELESS COWARDS THAT THEY REALLY ARE, NEW SIGNALS WERE SENT BY CARL LEVIN ON SUNDAY WHEN HE DECLARED CONGRESS WOULD NOT CUT OFF FUNDS.  WAY TO GIVE THE COW AWAY WHEN BULLY BOY JUST WANTED THE MILK, CARL..
 
LIKE ANY BULLY, BULLY BOY SMELLED THE FEAR AND HIS OPENING SO HE HAS NOW INVITED DEMOCRATS TO THE WHITE HOUSE.  FROM A POSITION OF POWER IN JANUARY, THE DEMOCRATS 1ST SOLD OUT VOTERS BY REFUSING TO END THE WAR, THEN SOLD OUT THEIR OWN LEGISLATION AND ARE NOW POISED TO SELL OUT THEMSELVES AS THEY SCAMPER OFF TO THE WHITE HOUSE TO SAY "YES, SIR" AND "NO, SIR."
 
 
Starting with the final section of Robert Knight's "Knight Report" on yesterday's  Flashpoints:
 
Meanwhile, there's little indication from London or Washington that the occupation will end any time soon.  In London a confidential planning document drawn up by the Defence Ministry, called the "Operational Tour Plot," was obtained by the London Telegeraph which today disclosed that British troops will be serving in Iraq and throughout the Arab gulf at least until 2012.  And finally in Washington, Congressional Democrats  made it perfectly clear they have no serious intention of bringing the war in Iraq to an end before they can capitalize on it in time for the 2008 presidential elections.  After a week's recess and backtracking on the non-binding and loophole laden timeline legislation which permits the Bush administration to continue the war in until the next presidential term Democratic leaders retreated even further than they did during the legislative debate.  Among the retreaters Senator Carl Levin, the chair of the Armed Services Committee told ABC's This Week that, "We're not going to vote to cut funding."  He said that after a veto "There's  a number of options.  Either we can keep the benchmarks part of the bill without saying that the troops must begin to come back and if that doesn't work what we will leave will be benchmarks for instance which would require the president to certify to the American people that the Iraqis are meeting the benchmarks for political settlement which they have set themselves."  And that's some of the news of this Monday April 9, 2007 from exile in New York, I'm Robert Knight for Flashpoints.
 
Flashpoints is archived at its own website and at KPFA (which right now is having archive problems and has archived nothing since early Monday morning) and airs live from 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Monday through Friday online and over the airwaves of KPFA, KFCF, KPFB and other stations.  (A full transcription of Robert Knight's "Knight Report" appears in Hilda's Mix today.)  Knight was speaking, first, of the news from the UK.  Sean Rayment (Telegraph of London) notes approximately half "of the country's armed services have now served in Iraq since the war began in March 2003" and that the revelations that UK forces will be in Iraq through 2012 and that report is "in marked contrast to a statement made by Tony Blair in Feburary giving the impression that British troops would remain in Ira for less than two years."  On the earlier issue of the Democrats caving, as Joshua Frank (CounterPunch) notes, "The Democrats may not have enough votes to overturn a Bush veto, but they certainly have enough to filibuster the war-funding bill, which at this point is the only way to stop this god-awful disaster.  One brave Democrat could take a stand, filibuster, and 40 more senators could then abstain from breaking the filibuster.  That is all it would take.  Bush would then have to be the one to compromise and produce a plan that was acceptable to the 41 Senate Democrats who want to end the war.  But of course, we are more likely to see Dick Cheney drinking margaritas with Cindy Sheehan on the White House lawn before we'd witness this scenario play out."  Tabassum Zakaria and Richard Cowan (Reuters) report that Bully Boy has "invited congressional leaders of both parties to the White House next week" to discuss the non-binding, toothless Congressional measure.  That is the same measure he has stated he intends to veto and that Senator Carl Levin says, if he vetos, Democrats will immediately rush to fall in line (no power of the purse for Levin).
 
From the madness of the governments
To the vengeance of the sea
Everything is eclipsed
By the shape of destiny
So love me now
Hell is coming
Could you do it now?
Hell is here
Little soldier, little insect
You know war, it has no heart
It will kill you in the sunshine
Or just as happily in the dark
-- "No One Would Riot For Less" written by Conor Oberst, off Bright Eyes' Cassadaga
 
Turning to the topic of war resistance, Paul Rockwell (CounterPunch) offers an open letter to Major General Charles Jacoby Jr. where he reviews the court-martial of Ehren Watada.  In June 2006, Watada became the first officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq.  In February of this year, he became the first officer to be court-martialed for refusing to deploy.  Rockwell notes that the court-martial ended in a mistrial over the objection of the defense, argues that "now is a good time to drop all the charges against the Lieutenant, to bring closure to a trial that, in my opinion, should never have taken place" and concludes that "history will vindicate the courage of Lt. Ehren Watada."  Pretrial motions are currently scheduled for May 20th through 21st and the court-martial for July 16th.  Watada is represented by the Seattle based Carney Bradley Spellman and his attorneys are Kenneth Kagan and James Lobsenz.
 
 
 
Ehren Watada is part of a movement of resistance within the military that also includes Joshua Key, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson,  Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Dean Walcott, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum. 


Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
 
 
At a rally to show support for Ehren Watada, Sara Rich (AfterDowningStreet.org) writes, she and her daughter Suzanne Swift turned out to show their support and Swift asked, "Mom, where are the kids my age?  Where is my generation?"  Rich goes on to tell her daughter's story, sexually abused and harassed for the apparent 'crime' of thinking a woman could serve in the military, Swift was betrayed by the very system she attempted to defend.  As Rich explains, her daughter did not self-check out because of an objection to the war but to save herself when the military refused to do so.  Rich: "Confronting imminent redeployment she went AWOL.  Later the Army would contend that she went AWOL because of her mother's political beliefs.  I only wished it was that.  If it was because of my political beliefs she never would have gone to Iraq the first place.  Then they tried to say it was because of her own anti war beliefs.  That would have been a dream come true.  But the truth was that my daughter went AWOL out of pure fear; fear of what her command had done to her in the first deployment and rejection of being treated like a 'deployment whore' again.  This was not a decision it was a reaction." 
 
Though Suzanne Swift's reaction was perfectly normal, even before you get to the fact that she suffers from PTSD, not only was she abandoned by the military command that damn well should have prevented what she went through, the US Congress -- all those brave talking Senators, male and female -- sat on their collective asses which apparently kept their lips from moving.  The military conducted a whitewash investigation (that still found validity and confirmation in some of Swift's charges), her offer was sign a paper saying she lied or face a court-martial.  Swift was court-martialed, stripped of her rank, sentenced to 30 days and then placed back in the same system that not only did not refuse to ensure her safety, but failed to after she sought help.  To repeat, Congress sat on its collective ass.  That's Hillary Clinton, that's Carl Levin, that's Barbara Boxer, that's Russ Feingold, that's Susan Collins, that's Mr. uber-goodness Joe Lieberman. 
 
Rich concludes, "It is amazing to me how much we have to be thankful to the Army for.  They tried to break my daughter down and shut her up, and in the process created a strong advocate for women around the world.  Imagine if they had done the right thing and protected from MLester in the first place or given her an immediate medical discharge when our attorney contacted Ft. Lewis right after she went AWOL and was diagnosed with PTSD.  How simple and right it could have been.  But the US military did not understand what they were doing or Suzanne's fortitude."  A number of Congressional members who are also attempting to campaign for president have issued the "If only we knew then what we know now . . ." junk to excuse their support for an illegal war.  What's their excuse for doing nothing about Suzanne Swift?  She should have received an honorable discharge.  Congress should have immediately initiated hearings into what women serving in Iraq are actually having to endure.  It's not too late for that nor is it too late to push for Swift to get the honorable discharge she more than deserves.
 
Rich offers that the people her daughter's age are waking up to the realities and will be showing up at protests in greater numbers.  In Iraq yesterday, hundreds of thousands participated in a Najaf rally against the occupation of the nation by foreign forces.  Hiba Dawood (Free Speech Radio News) reported by speaking with Iraqis (an apparently novel and new thing to do when you consider how few others bothered to do so) taking part in the protest.  One man noted 4 years have passed since the occupation of Iraq and what happened?  Hundreds of thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands were wounded and arrested. They humiliate the Iraqi homes every day.  The Constitution says that the Iraqi homes are protected but they invade homes anytime they want.  We have to always remember Abu Ghraib and the abuses that has happened there including the sexual abuse against Iraqi women and the killing of those Iraqi women with their families."  Ahmed Ali states: "The demands in this demonstration are different than the ones we had in 2005, for example.  Then people demanded the condemnation of Saddm Hussein and called for the total and immediate departure of the occupation forces.  Today, we demand that there should be at least a timetable set up for troops to leave.  Our other demand is that want people in the occupying countries in the removal of their military forces from Iraq."
 

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