Tag Archives: Navy

Prefering to rank the next to high score

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I remember a guy in college who just by looking at him you could see he was ahead of the electronics learning curve. Sophomore year he disappeared from campus to complete a project for the Navy. It turns out in high school he’d taught himself an obscure programming language, which happened also to have military applications. The Navy requisitioned the teenager for want of sufficient specialists.

I thought about that classmate today as I watched a precocious gamer blaze through Galaxy Mario. Every household member has a player ID, and for each game a unique folder. And the console connects to the internet. In a couple years he’ll be playing serious first-person-shooters against others online. Who knows when we’ll get a call.

We think about our privacy when we consider that Google and Internet Explorer are logging our activities online. We worry about crackers getting our access codes and credit card numbers. Does it occur to us that our aptitude might too be of interest to others? We know military recruiters are looking at many signs that our children might be ripe for their pitch. Whether troubled, antisocial, low grades, dim prospects, these are easily discerned from school records. Imagine such information enhanced by cable TV or internet records. We think in terms of privacy rights, about protections from revealing our weaknesses and secrets. What about our strengths?

What of a government or military wishing to requisition our unwitting collaboration? What of an intelligence department holding all the marbles, in a position to make an offer we can’t refuse?

Defense industry’s so-called gravy train

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Senator Ken Salazar described Colorado Springs as a crown jewel in our nation’s defense arsenal. The Pikes Peak area is indeed a magnet for the weapons industry because of our military installations. We have Fort Carson (3rd Armored Cav), Peterson AFB (Missile Space Command), Schriever AFB, of course NORAD and the Air Force Academy.
Mysterious Navy Pier 13We even have a land-locked high-altitude facility for the Navy.

We’re often reminded that the military keeps Colorado Springs afloat. In fact the County Commissioners, City Council and the Chamber of Commerce, egged on by car dealers and land developers, seize at every chance to lure the Defense Department budget to this city. Currently they’re trying to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, against the unanimous desires of the Southeast area ranchers, the state legislature, even much of the city population.

Now, consider this incongruity: over the last several years, both El Paso County and the City of Colorado Springs have had to cut back their services to save money. At a time when the war business has been flush with income! County offices have reduced their hours. The city has abandoned many services altogether. Street medians are no longer maintained by city crews. Toilet facilities at city parks have simply been left locked. The only reason we’ve been able to grow the police force is by paying for them by issuing more citations. Let’s call that a nuisance tax.

The gravy train is a lie, isn’t it? We pay for the military presence in Colorado Springs with higher crime, predatory retailers, porn joints, all the low wage jobs required by businesses which cater to soldiers, and as a result, a disproportionate drain on our social services. What do we get in return? An impoverished infrastructure and the dubious privilege of schooling our kids with offspring very likely disadvantaged by troubled families and questionable role models.

The Woolseys- a Mom and Pop War Profiteering Team

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Suzanne Woolsey is vice chair of the Colorado College Board of Directors. Her husband will be speaking this Thursday at the school, and all three of their kids graduated from there. The following opinion piece by Evelyn Pringle is reprinted in whole below.

January 17, 2005
Mom & Pop War Profiteering Team – Woolseys
By Evelyn Pringle
Miamisburg, Ohio

The Defense Policy Board (DPB) is a hand-picked group of 30 people that advises Bush administration officials on matters such as whether and when to go to war, or not. The current group was selected by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, and approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Everyone who is anyone in the arms and defense industry knows that palling up to DPB members is the ticket to getting a Pentagon contract.

Shortly after the war in Iraq began, the April 10, 2003 New York Times pointed out that several board members stood to benefit financially from the war. It reported that the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) documented that 9 of the members were “linked to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002.”

Promote War & Garner Positions For Profits

One of the members mentioned who stood to profit was R. James Woolsey. In addition to being a member of the DPB, Woolsey also sits on Navy and CIA advisory boards; and he is also a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), a private group that was specifically set up by Bush in 2002, to find ways to increase public support for a war against Iraq.

Let me say right here and now that I think bold lines are crossed when people like Woolsey, who promote a specific war, financially benefit from their successful promotion. There should be a law that requires a standard recusal from all war profits by any policy advisor who advocates sending our young men and women off to die in that same war.

And I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve never heard of our government forming a group of promoters to rally support for a war before. I dare anyone to try and convince me that this war profiteering scheme wasn’t well planned and managed from the get-go.

Mom & Pop Team Of War Profiteers

I would rate the husband and wife team of James and Suzanne Woolsey up there as one of the most blatant examples of war profiting that I‘ve ever seen. They both remain policy advisors on Iraq, even though they both work for private firms that do business there. James has long wanted to use US military might to transform the Middle East. “And he has pushed for war with Iraq as hard as anyone, even before the terrorist attacks of Sep 11, 2001,” according to the April 8, 2003 Global Policy Forum.

That’s right – long before 9/11. In January 1998, James signed the now infamous letter to Clinton from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) calling for regime change in Iraq (which Clinton trashed). In 1998, he also successfully lobbied to pass the Iraq Liberation Act (ILA), which allocated nearly $100 million for the Iraqi opposition, mainly the Iraq National Congress (INC), headed by none other than Ahmed Chalabi.

9/11 – Gift To Profiteering Team

The lobby for the war in Iraq immediately moved into high gear after 9/11. Within days, the DPB convened to discuss how they could use 9/11 to justify a war in Iraq. James was sent overseas to try to find a link between Saddam and bin Laden. He returned with the tale that an unnamed source had told the Czech intelligence that in April, 2001, he had observed a meeting between the lead 9/11 skyjacker and an Iraqi agent in Prague.

Even though the tale was deemed not credible by US, British, Israeli, and French, intelligence agencies, it became the basis of a major neo-con disinformation campaign against Saddam on cable news shows and editorial pages in major US newspapers.

James himself wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that said a foreign state had aided Al Qaeda in preparing the 9/11 attacks and pointed to Iraq as the prime suspect. In fact, James even went so far to allege that Saddam was behind the 1993 WTC bombing and the anthrax letters sent out after 9/11. In large part, the propaganda campaign was successful. A poll conducted in late 2002, showed that over half of those polled believed that Saddam was somehow linked to 9/11.

Woolsey & Chalabi – Secret Long-Time Buddies

Just when I think I have seen every dirty filthy angle by which money can be made in the war profiteering trade, something else turns up. I recently discovered a little tid-bit that I was unaware of. In addition to getting $100 million tax dollars allocated for the INC and Ahmed Chalabi in 1998, James also became lawyer and adviser to Iraq’s “President in Waiting” in the same year.

With the help of the media, James must have forgot to mention this obvious conflict of interest while he was alleging collusion in 9/11 between Chalabi’s enemy Saddam and bin Laden. This relationship definitely should have been made public before the war began because of its relevance to the truth or falsity of the justification given for waging war in Iraq to begin with.

Back in 1998, Chalabi sought legal help from Woolsey to secure the release of 6 of his INC associates from the detention center in Guam, even though the CIA said they were threats to US interests. James successfully freed Chalabi’s minions and mowed a path for the so-called Iraqi defectors to feed bogus information to US intelligence teams.

The false information about WMDs and collusion between Saddam and bin Laden, that originated from the relationship of Chalabi and Woolsey, along with the resulting diversion of financial and military resources to Iraq, and away from the real terrorist bin Laden, has left the US with a limited ability to project military power anywhere else in the world. Any unexpected conflict would be a disaster with the military so overstretched in Iraq, and it looks like in large part, we can thank Woolsey and Chalabi for this predicament.

And as it turns out the CIA was right. One of men Woolsey freed, Aras Habib Karim, went on to become Chalabi’s Chief of Intelligence, and has since leaked classified information to Iran, and is currently under investigation by the FBI. I wonder if James is representing the guy now?

James & Booz Allen Hamilton

At the same time that they were advocating for war in Iraq, its more than obvious that James and Suzanne Woolsey were positioning themselves for a future in defense-related firms, with an eye on the anticipated war profits.

James is a shining example of how the revolving door policy works in Washington. Although he left his position as director of the CIA in 1995, he remained a senior advisor on intelligence and national security policies.

And he also now works for several private firms that do business in Iraq. According to Citizens for Public Integrity, in July, 2002, James joined Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that “had contracts worth more than $680 million” that year.

In May, 2003, in his capacity as a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, James was a featured speaker at a seminar entitled “Companies on the Ground: The Challenge for Business in Rebuilding Iraq.” He spoke of the potential business opportunities in the reconstruction of Iraq and how Bush planned to steer the contracts to US companies. Approximately 80 corporate executives paid $1100 to listen to what he had to say.

May, 2003 was only 2 months after the war began. If not for his advisory positions in the Bush administration, how would James possibly be able to put together a investor seminar with information on how to make money in Iraq?

In addition, “Booz Allen is a subcontractor for a $75-million telecommunications project in Iraq. The company does extensive work for the Defense Department as well. Recently, the Navy awarded it $14 million in contracts,” according to the Aug 15, 2004 LA Times. In true Dick Cheney style, James said in an interview that “he had not been involved in Booz Allen’s Iraq contracts,” the Times reports. But then it really doesn’t matter whether he was involved in a particular contract or not, because as a Vice President of the firm, he benefits from profits resulting from all contracts.

Besides his recent statement to the Times belies the title of his own May, 2003 seminar which was: “Companies on the Ground: The Challenge for Business in Rebuilding Iraq.” What is he trying to say? That he never got paid for speaking at that seminar? That none of the 80 executives that attended ever contacted Booz work in Iraq? Yea right. James & Paladin Capital Group

James positioned himself all over the map. He is now a principal in the Paladin Capital Group, another defense-related firm. In part, here is how the firm describes itself on its web site, Paladin Homeland Security Fund, L.P. Investment Strategy

As widely reported in public media, billions of dollars are being appropriated by the United States and foreign governments for replenishment of military stockpiles, deployment of new means to create more secure societies and creation of new standards, equipment, technologies and policies for coping with and recovering from the myriad forms of terrorism and attack. … the General Partner believes that the Federal and State governments … and indeed governments throughout the world, will look to … private enterprise to address these issues. The General Partner believes that the private sector thus will look to expend billions of dollars to execute defense and security plans for security in the public sector and to deploy growth equity to produce the products and services that non-governmental organizations will require.

Fund Management

Operation of the Fund starts with an experienced management team. … additional individuals who have prominent and distinguished records in relevant fields, including security, defense and information and technology sciences, have associated with Paladin Capital in connection with the Fund. These additional principals of the Fund include R. James Woolsey, …

The Fund’s Principals have extensive domestic and international experience in fund investments and in originating, underwriting, closing, monitoring and exiting investments similar to those that are proposed for the Fund. The additional Principals, including Mr. Woolsey, … have extensive and distinguished track records in service within the security, defense and related fields.

Investment Guidelines Characteristics

Small to medium-sized, worker-friendly companies with the following characteristics: Must relate to defense, prevention, coping or recovery from disaster. Dual use: commercial and government applicability for products and services.

Surely no one could ever allege a possible conflict of interest between James serving on 3 defense-related boards (Navy, DPB, & CIA) with the US government and his involvement with this firm.

Global Options – James & DPB Member Livingstone

James is also plugged into Global Options, which is headed by his fellow DPB member Neil Livingstone. In addition to sitting on the DPB, Livingstone has served as a Pentagon and State Department advisor and has long called for overthrowing Saddam.

Livingstone was already promoting war against Iraq back in 1993, when he wrote an editorial for Newsday that said the US “should launch a massive covert program designed to remove Hussein.” Well 11 years later, it looks like he finally got his wish, and just like his pal James, Livingstone is a regular speaker at investment seminars on Iraq.

Global Options provides contacts and consulting services to firms doing business in Iraq and “offers a wide range of security and risk management services,” according to its website. Although James admits that he is a paid advisor at Global Options, he again says the work he does at the firm does not involve Iraq. And of course I believe him (not).

Suzanne – Better Half Of Profiteering Team

From 1993 – 2003, Suzanne was an executive with the National Academies, an institution that advises the government on science, engineering, and medicine. There’s probably no big money to be made in that position and that’s probably what motivated Suzanne seek a more potentially profitable government position.

And she sure found one. According to the Aug 15, 2004 LA Times, Suzanne is a trustee of a little-known arms consulting group that had access to senior Pentagon leaders directing the Iraq war.

Although she had zero experience with military or national security matters, in 2000 she became a trustee at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a nonprofit corporation paid to do research for the Pentagon. During the attack against Iraq, the IDA provided senior Pentagon officials with assessments of the operation.

Through this position, Suzanne had unlimited insider access to valuable information. For instance, the Times reported that in a June 3, 2003, briefing, Brigadier General Robert Cone of the Army, described the group‘s operation. ”This team did business” within the Army Central Command ”on a daily basis, by observing meeting and planning sessions, attending command updates, watching key decisions being made, watching problems being solved, and generally being provided unrestricted access to the business of the conduct of this war,” Cone said, according to a transcript of the session.

The question is did Suzanne use the info to benefit the family business? I’ll let the reader be the judge. She was appointed to “Fluor’s board in January 2004, while Fluor and a partner, AMEC, were competing for two federal contracts to do reconstruction work in Iraq. A little more than a month after she was named, Fluor and AMEC got both contracts, with a combined value of $1.6 billion,” according to the LA Times.

Although a Fluor official refused to discuss why Suzanne was chosen for the job, the official confirmed SEC filings that show, “Fluor pays outside directors (like Suzanne) $40,000 a year, plus stock options and additional fees for attending meetings,” the Times reports.

As for the financial worth of her stock in the company, its looking good. Fluor’s stock has risen steadily since the war in Iraq began. The Times reports that in August, 2004, it was $45 a share, up from a little more than $30 a share in March 2003. Reports filed with the SEC show Suzanne owns 1,500 shares of Fluor stock.

With Fluor making a bundle, it only stands to reason that all the more money can be funneled back into the Woolsey piggy bank. SEC filings show that Fluor reported that its revenue for the first quarter of the current fiscal year from work in Iraq totaled ”approximately $190 million. There was no work in Iraq in the comparable period in 2003,” reports the Times.

I would be willing to bet that any defense related firm would have given an arm and a leg to find out what was being said during those IDA meetings and war planning sessions. Oh of course I’m not suggesting that Suzanne was feeding Fluor information before she came on board and that‘s why she was hired. But at the same time, its sure difficult to think of any other reason why she would be hired.

Here’s another profiteering trick that I would never have thought of. Suzanne even managed to get paid while she gathered the insider information. Tax records show that in 2003, she was paid $11,500 for serving on the IDA. Who wouldn’t want this gal on their team?

The overlapping public and private associations of the Woolsey’s are merely 2 examples of the all too familiar pattern in the Bush administration, in which people who play key roles in advising officials on policies, are involving themselves financially with firms in related fields. And it should be noted that the profiteering is certainly not limited to war policies. Its rampant in every area of policy within the Bush administration.

Long-Term War – Thriving Family Business

Hands down, James should be awarded a plaque for being the #1 Iraq War Monger, and it should say: “What could be more sickening than a war-hungry non-combatant? A war-hungry non-combatant reaping profit from the blood of slaughtered women, children and men of Iraq,” (Bill Berkowitz).

War-hungry James is still hard at it; promoting war for as far as the eye can see. On August 15, 2004, the LA Times reported that, “Last month, Woolsey appeared at a … news conference to announce the creation of a group called the Committee of the Present Danger, which he said would attempt to focus public attention on the threat ”to the US and the civilized world from Islamic terrorism.”

On September 29, 2004 he participated in a forum entitled: “World War IV: Why We Fight, Whom We Fight, How We Fight,” sponsored by the Committee on Present Danger and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. I wonder how many people who went to the polls on Nov 2, 2004, realized that a vote for Bush meant rubber-stamping more of World War IV?

Plan To Destroy and Conquer Iraq

The Iraqi citizens had no say-so in the Bush administration’s decision to bomb the hell out of their country and the Iraqi people, now suffering the most as a result of the war, are not allowed to be involved in making decisions about the reconstruction of Iraq.

In comments that could have been made yesterday, Naomi Klein described what would happen to the Iraqis under Bush’s war plan in the April 14, 2003 issue of the Guardian, “A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country had been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their new-found “freedom” – for which so many of their loved ones perished – comes pre-shackled by irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling. They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy. ”

Every one of her predictions has come true and Iraqis may be worse off than we realize. Klein reports that on October 13, 2004, Iraq’s “health ministry issued a harrowing report on its post-invasion health crisis, including outbreaks of typhoid and tuberculosis and soaring child and mother mortality rates,” while at the same time the “State Department announced that $3.5 billion for water, sanitation and electricity projects was being shifted to security.”

How can anybody in their right mind expect the Iraqi people to be grateful to America for all this good fortune?

Stop The War Profiteering

It seems to me that we’ve taken our eye off the ball here. Granted, the web of corruption is bad enough in itself, but too little consideration is being given to the Iraqi lives at stake. Every profiteering dollar bilked or wasted is a dollar that could be spent on improving Iraq’s basic living conditions like getting water, sanitation and electricity up and running again, or training Iraqi police and military forces, or developing jobs for Iraqis.

Instead our tax dollars are being funneled back to profiteers like the Woolseys, over the backs of not only our dead soldiers; but over 100,000 dead Iraqis as well. The administration had the chance to rebuild Iraq, and at the same time earn the trust of the Iraqi people, but instead it chose to rape and torture innocent Iraqi prisoners, raid the reconstruction fund, and deprive the Iraqis of everything essential to normal human life. The blatant acts of corruption by the occupational authority and US contractors have given the Iraqis every reason under the sun to mistrust the motives of Americans who say they want to help rebuild their country. And how can we expect their opinions to change as long as the obvious corruption continues?

If we ever expect to regain the trust of Iraqis, we have to stop the Woolseys, and others like them, who engage in this filthy, disgusting trade. For starters, I say all Bush war profiteers should be given 2 options: they can either recuse themselves from advising government officials on any matter of national security period, or they can donate all profits made through affiliations with defense-related companies to soldiers wounded in the war and families of soldiers killed in the war.

While this would definitely be a good first step, I won’t hold my breath while waiting to see which option the greedy war-mongers choose.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0501/S00107.htm

Eisenstein at the Colo Springs symphony

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Battleship Potemkin -Sergei EisensteinI’m really impressed that
the Colorado Springs Philharmonic was able to attract a nearly full house for a screening of Sergei Eisenstein’s BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, the 1925 Soviet revolutionary call to arms that became even too subversive for Stalin’s taste.
 
The newly restored version adds more graphic pieces to the Odessa steps sequence, but my favorite scene remains aboard the battleship deck, when the rebellious sailors cower under a tarpaulin, awaiting the bullets of the firing squad.

It reminds me of my favorite story about the few proud Marines. The Marine Corps, now its own branch of the Defense Department, evolved from a very particular function in every nation’s navy. (Like MARINE biologists, their function has obviously to do with the sea.) On warships since the Napoleonic Wars, marines were the only enlisted men entrusted with guns. Their role, beside serving as landing parties, was to protect the officers from mutiny by the sailors; a function they were prepared to serve on the Potemkin until thankfully the revolutionary rhetoric held sway.

Battleship Potemkin Soviet propaganda poster

I wonder if our few proud US Marines will have brains enough to side with their families and comrades when Bush orders them to fire on his insurgents.

Panzercruizer Potemkin -German film posterIn promoting the Toons film collection, I’ve made a preoccupation with data mining for every poster incarnation of our diverse films. Since the Toons website has been down for a bit, I thought I’d represent here our gathering of Potemkin posters.

Kudos to the Pikes Peak Center team for delivering Eisenstein to the Rocky Mountain art Bourgeois. We showed up three generations deep, each age this evening running into others they knew. And everyone loved it.

La Corazata Potemkin -Italian film poster
A highlight of the event for me occurred when the battleship fired its salvo into the city. After the sailors had rebelled, the city populace had risen in support. To subdue the masses, Tsarist Cossacks marched down the Odessa steps, shooting into the crowd. In angry response, the crew of the Potemkin aimed its big guns at the headquarters of their Tsarist oppressors, or so explained the inter-title cards, further specified in the text as the Opera House! We were Colorado Springs symphony-goers, at the town’s premiere performing arts center, rooting for the Russian workers as they united against their ruling class.

Battleship Potemkin call to arms

Battleship Potemkin -contemporary Soviet poster

Battleship Potemkin uprising leader

Battleship Potemkin

Battleship Potemkin -Modern Russian print

Battleship Potemkin

Battleship Potemkin -stamp

?????????? ???????? - Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein

Are we not men?

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Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
 
A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder- monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined.

Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts–a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity…

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies….In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

March on Washington Sept 15

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Answer Coalition MARCH ON WASHINGTON Sept 15 2007A broad spectrum of national groups have united to mobilize for a massive fall anti-war mobilization called the Days of Action. Sept 15-21 will be a major showdown in Washington DC at the very moment that the Petraeus Report is released and Congress takes up spending over $100 billion to prolong the war. Led by veterans who have returned from Iraq, there will be seven days of actions to send a shockwave through Washington and the nation with the reverberating demand: End the War Now!

Sponsors of the march include:
The ANSWER Coalition; Ramsey Clark; Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation; USLAW; Mounzer Sleiman, Vice Chair, National Council of Arab Americans; Cindy Sheehan; Cynthia McKinney; Veterans for Peace (National); Garett Reppenhagen, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Chair of Board of Directors; Tina Richards, CEO of Grassroots America; Rev. Lenox Yearwood, CEO of Hip Hop Caucus; Code Pink; Father Roy Bourgeois and Eric LeCompte, School of Americas Watch; Kevin Zeese, Democracy Rising; Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, co-founder Appeal for Redress; Liam Madden, Pres., Boston Chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War and co-founder of Appeal for Redress; Malik Rahim, founder of Common Ground Collective, New Orleans; Howard Zinn, Author and Historian; Carlos & Melida Arredondo, Gold Star Families for Peace; Rev. Graylan Hagler, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice; Latino Movement USA; Hermandad Mexicana Nacional; Ron Kovic, Vietnam Veteran, author, Born on the 4th of July; Leonard Weinglass, Cuban 5 attorney; Michael Berg; National Lawyers Guild; Father Luis Barrios, Iglesia de San Romero de las Americas – UCC; World Can’t Wait; Frank Velgara, ProLibertad Freedom Campaign; Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal

‘Global Fleet Stations’, AFRICOM, and demanding intervention

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West Africa: U.S. Navy Plans Six-Month Regional Training Mission is to be done under AFRICOM direction. Both AFRICOM and this US militarization program for Africa that also includes bombing, invading, and occupying Somalia must be OK for all the activists calling for intervention into the Sudan. Why do I say this? It is simply because they want the US and Europe to intervene in Africa, rather than stop intervening there.

In fact, none of these groups speak out against these current activities of the Pentagon on the African continent. This is not an oversight at all. Many in the supposed world ‘peace’ camp actually unfortunately are not all that anti- US military use at all. They are what might be termed pseudo pacifists. These people just seem to think that it would be better for them to direct the war machine, and not Bush. That will not be the case though. The US war machine will bring about more suffering and bloodshed, and not greater peace, in Africa, if allowed by us to be used there.

Do not go along with all this call for intervention against Sudan. Intervene against your own reactionary government first.

US Armada poised to strike Iran

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I found video images of our Persian Gulf Armada taunting the Iranians and restricting their movement. What would our flag waver, ass-kicker types do if some other country sent a navy to aim their guns at our shores? Indeed what did the English do when the Spanish mounted their celebrated Armada? I think the Iranians are showing incredible restraint.

Cuban doctors vs Bush’s US floating militaristic showtime

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The bankruptcy of US foreign politcy in Latin America will become highlighted later this week when Bush deploy’s himself into Latin America with a Navy ‘floating hospital’ in tow. What the world will see is Top Gun military doctor Dubya diplomat in action, and it is assured ahead of time, to underwhelm rather than ‘shock and awe’.

The gigantic US navy war vessel accompanying the donkey is to perform surgeries at high cost to the US taxpayer, and minimal real long term medical value (if any) to the chronically malnourished and ill of Latin America.

Meanwhile, Cuban doctors quietly and with little fanfare continue to run medical clinics in country after country when allowed to do so, and Hugo Chavez continues to offer low cost fuel supplies to the not so well off, in addition. The main tool the dumbest ass neo-con gringo rulers have to provide in response, is an creased militarization everywhere in the region using the drug war as excuse. Cops, soldiers, prisons, death squads, and neo-liberal imperialist inforced privatization is DC’s way to winning ‘hearts and minds’! What a formula for success!

Eventually Washington’s war on many fronts will turn into defeat on many fronts. Nowhere is that day nearing faster than in Latin America. Imagine the ridicule that this Pentagon ‘floating hospital’ will arouse. The US is widely known as providing inadequate medical care to its own population(to children in Texas, for just one example), let alone to other nations. While the Pentagon is most noted for its constant ‘collateral damage’ to innocents, not being any angel of mercy.

Latin America will watch as Bush hobnobs with ruling elites that the mass of people despise rather than considering them as potential saviours from their economic insecurity. People need help, and America offers up a clown and a media circus. What a contrast to the Cuban doctors doing real work. US elite intellectual bankruptcy at its finest.

For Allison

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I did a yahoo answer for her, on the subject of how to apply for a discharge from the Navy. She is a young ensign, married, and recently found out she is expecting. She doesn’t really go into specifics as to why she is fed up with the military lifestyle, I could only remember my experience and judge from that, I got out of the Air Force because there was no room for individual morals, individual thought, individual decision making, you are basically a half machine, a person brought to the level of being a tool or weapon which kills, or refrains from killing, only by orders.

She needs help finding people who will can help her dealing with the Navy. I know the Chaplains Corps and the JAG aren’t legally allowed to actually help somebody out. Not in that way literally.

Nor are the Medical divisions.

When my niece was experiencing similar problems, her child was about to be born and with a health problem involving his stomach, they had to deliver him C-section and rush him to surgery immediately,

Poor kid was under guarded condition for the first year of his life.

There’s a provision in the UCMJ and Navy (she was a Marine, but same story) protocols that provide for and even mandate that at least one parent be allowed to care for a critically ill child, if both are in the military. Her husband was already in Iraq, they were expecting her to leave her child in the care of God only knows who, say Sir, yes sir! and march off to Iraq to join the rest of her unit.

The chaplains and doctors and military lawyers kept telling her there was nothing she could do about any of it, but fortunately her mom, (my sister) and her dad, who had been in the Army, and a whole lot of my family and friends who were ex-military knew about it and some of them helped her file the right papers to be waived from foreign duty.

She was already exempted from combat duty, because she broke some bones in her foot on the Confidence Course in boot camp.

They don’t call it an Obstacle course any more because Confidence is more positive.

She has had more surgery on her foot about the same day I got surgery on mine, in July. 4 years after she broke it.

My niece that is.

Back to Allison, I know there is still a hardship waiver for duty stations, and a hardship discharge available.

I am just not very confident that an employee of the Navy will help her find out all the information.
If somebody here can help find those links I for one would surely appreciate it, and Allison will as well. Thanks. Jonah.

Navy Seals virtual unreality

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Screen shot of combat sim hours you can log at home
You hear soldiers in today’s documentaries make the crack all the time: “[Iraq] isn’t a computer game.” In war you get injured, you die, and it’s all for keeps. Yet the military still uses virtual combat games to interest recruits. In the Navy Seals game, you get to fight side by side as part of a team. And sacrificing individual for the good of the team hints at what real military service requires. First Person Shooters differ from real war zone experience in that very fundamental manner.

In a video game, because you’re your own center of the universe, you decide what action to take. You move forward or don’t. You decide how to do it and when. In real war, you are following orders. You may be taking fire, you may see a better action than the one you are ordered to do, you don’t get to do it. You are subjected to the violence, not raining it upon someone else.

In a video game, after each successful run, you advance to another level, you are rewarded for your talent, your sense of initiative is offered a greater challenge and the promise of more after that. In real war, you return to base and start again at the same task. Each exposure increasing your chance of getting hurt or killed. There are no saves, there are no energy-replentishing packs, there is no instant healing. Your injuries accrue, your load becomes more difficult to bear as the mission goes on, you run low and run out. And if you succeed, you are expected to succeed again.

In real war, you are a checker piece which is never kinged. You do not ascend to the next terrain, earn extra weapons for your at-hand inventory, find and don protective cloaks. You are a pawn ever expendable. You incur injury, and injured enough, you die, then you’re out.

In real war, you’re like set of brake pads on a car, you serve a purpose. Not a glorious one, not one over which you have any control, but an important task to be sure. You take the heat, you wear out, that’s all. When you’re worn through, you are discarded for another set. How long you lasted is to the credit of your commanding officer in the driver’s seat. Your score adds to his. The end.

A Pearl Harbor timeline

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I found this timeline which addresses the lead-up to what Franklin D. Roosevelt knew would be a day to live on in infamy. His.
Japanese attempt at SHOCK AND AWE, our permission slip to go to war

1904 – The Japanese destroyed the Russian navy in a surprise attack in undeclared war.

1932 – In the Grand Joint Army-Navy Exercises, 152 aircraft carrier planes caught the defenders of Pearl Harbor completely by surprise. It was a Sunday

1938 – Admiral Ernst King led a carrier-born airstrike from the USS Saratoga successfully against Pearl Harbor in another exercise.

1940 – FDR ordered the fleet transferred from the West Coast to its exposed position in Hawaii and ordered the fleet remain stationed at Pearl Harbor over complaints by its commander Admiral Richardson that there was inadequate protection from air attack and no protection from torpedo attack. Richardson felt so strongly that he twice disobeyed orders to berth his fleet there and he raised the issue personally with FDR in October and he was soon after replaced. His successor, Admiral Kimmel, also brought up the same issues with FDR in June 1941.

7 Oct 1940 – Navy IQ analyst McCollum wrote an 8 point memo on how to force Japan into war with US. Beginning the next day FDR began to put them into effect and all 8 were eventually accomplished.

11 November 1940 – 21 aged British planes destroyed the Italian fleet, including 3 battleships, at their homeport in the harbor of Taranto in Southern Italy by using technically innovative shallow-draft torpedoes.

In a letter of January 24, 1941, the Secretary of the Navy advised the Secretary of War that the increased gravity of the Japanese situation had prompted a restudy of the problem of the security of the Pacific Fleet while in Pearl Harbor. The writer stated: “If war eventuates with Japan, it is believed easily possible that hostilities would be initiated by a surprise attack upon the Fleet or the Naval base at Pearl Harbor. . . . The dangers envisaged in their order of importance and probability are considered to be: 1) air bombing attack; 2) air torpedo plane attack; 3) sabotage; 4) submarine attack; 5) mining; 6) bombardment by gunfire.” The letter stated the defenses against all but the first two were then satisfactory.

The Secretary of War replied February 7, 1941. Admiral Kimmel and General Short received copies of these letters.

11 February 1941 – FDR proposed sacrificing 6 cruisers and 2 carriers at Manila to get into war. Navy Chief Stark objected: “I have previously opposed this and you have concurred as to its unwisdom. Particularly do I recall your remark in a previous conference when Mr. Hull suggested (more forces to Manila) and the question arose as to getting them out and your 100% reply, from my standpoint, was that you might not mind losing one or two cruisers, but that you did not want to take a chance on losing 5 or 6.” (Charles Beard PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND THE COMING OF WAR 1941, p 424)

March 1941 – FDR sold munitions and convoyed them to belligerents in Europe — both acts of war and both violations of international law — the Lend-Lease Act.

23 Jun 1941 – Advisor Harold Ickes wrote FDR a memo the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, “There might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if we should thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid the criticism that we had gone in as an ally of communistic Russia.” FDR was pleased with Admiral Richmond Turner’s report read July 22: “It is generally believed that shutting off the American supply of petroleum will lead promptly to the invasion of Netherland East Indies…it seems certain she would also include military action against the Philippine Islands, which would immediately involve us in a Pacific war.” On July 24 FDR told the Volunteer Participation Committee, “If we had cut off the oil off, they probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had war.” The next day FDR froze all Japanese assets in US cutting off their main supply of oil and forcing them into war with the US. Intelligence information was withheld from Hawaii from this point forward.

14 August – At the Atlantic Conference, Churchill noted the “astonishing depth of Roosevelt’s intense desire for war.” Churchill cabled his cabinet “(FDR) obviously was very determined that they should come in.”

On October 16, 1941, the Commanding General, Hawaiian Department [Short], and the Commander in Chief of the Fleet [Kimmel], were advised by the War and Navy Departments of the changes in the Japanese Cabinet, and of the possibility of an attack by Japan on Great Britain and the United States.

18 October – diary entry by Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes: “For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan.”

November 24, 1941, the Chief of Naval Operations sent a message to Admiral Kimmel in which he stated that in the opinion of the Navy Department, a surprise aggressive movement … by the Japanese . . . was a possibility.

November 27, 1941, the Chief of Staff of the Army informed the Commanding General that hostilities on the part of Japan were momentarily possible.

On the same day (November 27, 1941) the Chief of Naval Operations sent a message to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, which stated in substance that the dispatch was to be considered a war warning.

November 28, 1941, the Commanding General received from the Adjutant General of the Army a message stating that the critical situation required every precaution to be taken at once against subversive activities.

The Navy Department sent three messages to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet; the first of December 3, 1941, stated that it was believed certain Japanese consulates were destroying their codes and burning secret documents; the second of December 4, 1941, instructed the addressee to destroy confidential documents and means of confidential communication; and the third of December 4, 1941, directing that in view of the tense situation the naval commands on the outlying Pacific islands might be authorized to destroy confidential papers.

On December 6, the Japanese government began sending a long message to its diplomats in Washington. The last part of that message arrived in the early-morning hours of December 7. Japanese diplomats Nomura and Kurusu prepared for a final meeting with Secretary of State Hull, knowing that they were being ordered to break off all negotiations with the U.S. What they didn’t realize was that the same message had been decoded and rushed to President Roosevelt and to the high commanders of the U.S. Army and Navy. The U.S. was now aware that Japan might strike somewhere in the Pacific, but a warning did not reach Pearl Harbor until nearly 8:00 a.m., Hawaii time. By then, Nomura and Kurusu were in Secretary Hull’s office, and Japanese bombs were falling onto the neat lines of U.S. warships in Pearl Harbor’s “Battleship Row.”

At about noon E.S.T. (6:30 a.m. Honolulu time) December 7, an additional warning message indicating an almost immediate break in relations between the United States and Japan, was dispatched by the Chief of Staff. . . . The delivery of this urgent message was delayed until after the attack.

The Commanding General [Short], the Commander in Chief of the Fleet [Kimmel] and their principal staff officers considered the possibility of air raids. Without exception they believed that the chances of such a raid while the Pacific Fleet was based upon Pearl Harbor was practically nil.

Enlist – accelerate your lifespan

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Can you believe this is the new JOIN THE NAVY slogan?Can you believe this new recruitment slogan: Join the Navy: accelerate your life TM? It looks good on video with a rapid progression of tracking shots of incredibly busy warfare technicians. Sign up and before you know it you’ll be dropped into the thick of the action. Maybe your grave as well. Accelerate your lifespan TM.

The No Child Left Behind by military recruiters opt out form

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Tomorrow we’re meeting in front of William Palmer High School to urge students to fill out their opt-out forms.
 
The No-Child-Left-Behind Act had a provision that gave military recruiters access to all secondary school student records. The act also provided an opt-out clause which allowed individual students to exclude themselves from the information exchange. To do so, their parents have to file the proper request, each year, one copy with their school, a second copy with the Defense Department. Every school district in turn was expected to inform the students and their parents about this option.

In Palmer High School’s District 11, letters were recently sent to all families with the forms and instructions. Whether this qualifies as adequate notice, is subject to question. The letters were sent without fanfare two weeks before the deadline.

Other Colorado Springs districts have done nothing about notifying the parents. The deadline is October 13.

On October 13 every student record from every high school and junior high will be sent to the Pentagon. Not just name, address and phone number, but complete school records. Military recruiters want to be able to profile students to best tailor their approach. Certainly there are typical profiles for present enlistees and recruiters will be able to spot students susceptible to heading that way. Children getting into trouble perhaps, failing certain subjects, showing signs of problems at home, requiring certain medicines, are all green flags for recruiters. A recruiter’s tools could be special field trips, peer groups, free X-Boxes, access to the school premises and your telephone.

There are probably a good number of civil liberty reasons why you wouldn’t want the military to be handling your child’s school records. Right now what your school knows of your child’s medical record, or criminal justice record, or mental health record, or personal counseling, goes no further than the school yard. This information would now travel on laptops in the cars of Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines/Coast Guard recruiters as they court your children between stops at the pawn shop, the strip bar and their home on the wrong side of town.

Not to mention if they succeed with your child, they could get him killed.

Sept 11 – America Reaps What It Sows!

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By Black Liberation Army prisoner of war Jalil Muntaqim.

U.S. International Warfare Initiates World War III Human Rights During Wartime
By Jalil A. Muntaqim

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Americans have displayed their true colors of jingoism, a militaristic spirit of nationalism. Similarly, it was witnessed how the people of Iraq rallied in support of their President, Saddam Hussein, after the U.S. bombed to death 250,000 Iraqis, and continued devastation of that country with collateral damage of 1 million dead women and children. Hence, people rallying in support of their government and representatives is a common phenomenon when a country is attacked by an outsider. The U.S. has been foremost in the world extending foreign policy of free-market economy, to the extent of undermining other countries cultures and ideologies expressed as their way of life. Such conflicts inevitably positions the U.S. as the centerpiece, the bulls-eye for international political dissent, as indicated by demonstrations against the U.S. controlled IMF, WTO and World Bank conferences. The attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not occur in a vacuum. The people that carried out the attacks were not blind followers or robots with an irrational hatred of the U.S. peoples. Rather, this attack was part of an overall blowback to U.S. imperialist policy in support of zionist Israel and opposition to fundamentalist Islam.

There are essentially three primary world ideologies or world views: the capitalist free-market economy/democracy; the socialist production economy; and Islamic theocratic government, of which has been in competition for many decades. However, in the last 20 years the socialist economies has been severely subverted and co-opted by free-market economies, the ideals of American style democracy. This isolated, for the most part, Islamic theocratic ideology and system of government as the principle target of the U.S. in its quest for world hegemony. This reality of competing world views and economies is further complicated due to religious underpinning of beliefs that motivates actions, especially as they are expressed by U.S. and Western European christianity and Israel zionist judaism in opposition to Islam. From the struggles of the Crusades to the present confrontation, the struggle for ideological supremacy reigns, as the faithful continue to proselytize in the name of the Supreme Being.

When geopolitics are combined with religious fervor in the character of nationalist identity and patriotism, rational and logical thinking is shoved aside as matters of the moment takes historical precedents. It has often been said that “Truth Crush to the Earth Will Rise Again”. Since truth is relative to ones belief, can it be safely said that America has reaped what it has sowed? The American truth of capitalist christian democracy and its imperialist hegemonic aspirations has crushed both socialist and Islamic world views. It has extended its avaricious tentacles as the world police and economic harbinger of all that is beneficent, in stark denial of its history as a purveyor of genocides, slavery and colonial violence.

The U.S. was the first to use biological-germ warfare on people when it distributed blankets infected with smallpox to Native Americans; it has refused to apologize for Afrikan slavery acknowledging it engaged in a crime against humanity requiring reparations; it is the first and only country to use the atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and intern thousands of Japanese and Italians in this country; it used carpet bombing and defoliates against the peoples of Vietnam; it has initiated embargoes, coup d’etats and assassinations against those it opposes, while propping-up right-wing military dictators; as well as continued military bombing of Vieques. In essence, the U.S. governments hegemonic goals has created the ire of millions of people throughout the world. While domestically, racial profiling, police killing and mass incarceration of Black and Brown people has eroded patriotic sentiments in opposition to white supremacy.

As America weeps and laments its loss, the public find itself joining the torn ranks of those whose heartaches beat opposing U.S. greed and international profiteering. The American public acquiesce to U.S. international folly has cause them to feel the economic pains of those who live daily in poverty. Indeed, Americans should brace for years of economic uncertainty, where the American ideal of freedom and liberty will resemble plight of those who live under the right-wing dictatorships the U.S. has supported. The tyranny suffered by others in the world as a result of U.S. imperialism, has come full circle to visit this country with the wrath of the U.S. own mechanization. Since the U.S. taught and trained right-wing military dictators in the School of the Americas, including the CIA training of Osama bin Laden in the Afghanistan proxy war against the Russians, it will be this same kind of terrorist activist that will be unleashed on American soil, as El-Hajj Malik Shabazz stated after the assassination of John Kennedy, a matter of the chicken coming home to roost. Therefore, American civil liberties and human rights are being garrotted by the yoke of the right-wing in the name of national security. The legalization of U.S. fascism was initiated with the war against political dissent (Cointelpro); the war against organized crime (RICO laws); the war against illegal drugs (plethora of drug laws) and now culminating in the war against terrorism with the American Joint Anti-Terrorist Taskforce and Office of Home Security, further extending police, FBI and CIA powers to undermine domestic civil liberties and human rights.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recently stated that the U.S. need to create a new language in defining how to combat terrorism. This Orwellian propaganda in the media espouses the U.S. is venturing in a new type of warfare to defend the American way of life. However, what this double-speak propagates as a long-term and sustained initiative against terrorism is essentially a way of embellishing and enlarging U.S. counter-insurgency activity it has been engaged in since the advent of the Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force and Navy Seals. The U.S. has been involved in counter-insurgency activity in Afrika, Latin America and Asia for decades. But due to the September 11, 2001, attack on U.S. soil, the government has seized the opportunity to offensively pursue left-wing revolutionaries and Muslim insurgents throughout the world. This U.S. military action extends and substantiates its position as the international police.

Since the establishment of the Trilateral Commission that initiated the process for the development of one world government, the U.S. has broaden its capacity to impose and enforce its will on oppressed peoples globally. The FBI and CIA has been operating in Europe, Afrika, Asia and Latin America establishing the long arm of U.S. law and order. Its bases of operations have conducted surveillance, investigations to arrest, prosecute or neutralize left-wing revolutionaries or Muslim insurgents. As the U.S. consolidates its political and economic influence throughout the world, it will seek to protect its overall hegemonic imperialist goals. After the Gulf War, and the air (bombing) campaign in Yugoslavia, the U.S. has employed its military might to ensure its foreign policy are achieved.

Because NATO has evolved into a European military entity that Russia is seeking to join, today, the U.S. has positioned itself beyond the mission of NATO. The U.S. now concentrates its military might in opposing Islamic countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc.) and those the U.S. deem as rogue nations (North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.). The new military initiatives will be directed to towards Southeast Asia as the secondary target, as it continues to direct the Middle East conflict to preserve its oil investments and zionist interest. As the U.S. expand its imperialist military mission, as seen with committing military troops in Uzbekistan to also protect oil interest in the Caspian Sea, it has sought to redefine itself by targeting what it identify as the terrorist thereat wherever in the world it might exist. Hence, with the employment of conventional warfare combined with counter-insurgency tactical activities, the U.S. has pronounced itself as the military guardian of the world.

Although, the U.S. states its actions are in its self-interest, in terms of what is euphemistically defined as defending the free world, the truth of the matter is this action is a prelude to evolving one world government with the U.S. as its governing authority. Once the Peoples Republic of China becomes a full member of the WTO, and North Korea and Vietnam has been compromised, with Russia becoming an ally of NATO, the U.S. political-military influence in the world will be consolidated. The U.S. geopolitical strategy is not confined to the present crisis in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack and targeting Osama bin Laden as the world’s nemesis. Rather, the U.S. strategy is to preserve its capacity to establish one world government as originally envisioned by the Trilateral Commission.

Nonetheless, there are some serious obstacles to this hegemonic goal, of which the world of fundamentalist Islam has become the principle target. Here, it should be noted that Islam condemns suicide or the mass killings of women, children and non-combatant males. Yet, the U.S., Israel, western Europe, Russia, India and China all view Islam as the enemy. Although, there are over 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, the current alliance of economic interest headed by the U.S., are united to vanquish what they consider the growing menace of fundamentalist Islam. It is with this understanding of U.S. geopolitics one is able to comprehend why the U.S. has redefine its military mission, as opposition to globalization and U.S. imperialism metamorph into a political struggle without borders or territorial imperatives.

The ideological struggle between capitalist free-market economy and Islamic theocratic determinates has exploded into an international conflagration of insurgency with the potential of initiating World War III. The Islamic fundamentalist movements throughout the world has the potential to test the U.S. military, political and economic resolve as the world’s leader and authority of an one world government. With over 1.2 billion adherents, Islam has become a formidable foe to contend with for ideological supremacy in the world’s geopolitics. Even without discussing the religious (moral and ethics) aspects that motivates the geopolitics of Islam in opposition to U.S. imperialist hegemony, the call for Jihad/Holy War against the U.S. presents a serious threat that could precipitate WW-III. Therefore, the U.S. find it necessary to redefine its military mission, develop new language to codify warfare and legitimize its international political and economic purpose. Yet, many of the world’s oppressed peoples’ have already experienced U.S. military counter-insurgency tactics (Ethiopia, Somalia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile, Congo, etc.), including parts of the Islamic world. No matter how or why the U.S. attempts to persuade Americans that it is entering a new type of warfare, in reality it is more of the same, only extending the military arena to further protect its authority to establish one world government.

However, the U.S. is not the homogeneous country that people are deluded into believing exist. Rather, the U.S. has been held together due its ability to exploit the world’s resources and distribute (unequally) the profits amongst its citizens with its culture of conspicuous consumption. But, the recent attack on the U.S., and its aftermath may very well lead to the untangling and unraveling of the U.S. fabric as has been witnessed with the USSR and Yugoslavia. In understanding this true history of U.S. imperialism, outside and within its borders, essentially tells a story of why U.S. imperialism has been and will continue to be attacked.

Ultimately, the U.S. will eventually find itself at war with itself, as the ideology of a free democratic society will be found to be a big lie. This is especially disconcerting as greater restrictions on civil and human rights are made into law eroding the First and Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As during the Vietnam conflict, internal contradictions of racism, poverty and inequality will be exacerbated as a result of the U.S. military campaign and domestic undermining of civil and human rights. It is expected that strife in America will eventually become violent dissolving any semblance of the illusion of America the Beautiful. In anticipation of U.S. progressive activist opposing this claimed war against terrorism, the federal government will pass new laws to severely restrict protest, demonstrations and dissent. In the ’60s, U.S. progressive activists evolved the slogan “Bring the War Home!” – the question is what will be the slogan this time, now that the war has been brought home?

Free the Land!!

I am going to be sick

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From a Navy Seal Kodak momentOne of 17 techniques authorized by Rumsfeld. This is non-fatal duress, permitted so long as it does not induce organ failure. Here Navy Seals put a hood over a detainee and strike his head unpredictably from directions unforeseen.

Today an American doctor was forced to reveal through an affidavid that he and the medical staff at Guantanamo have been force-feeding the hunger-striking detainees through nasal tubes.

Remember Guantanamo? When the Abu Ghraib photos emerged, the White House responded indignantly that Rumsfeld had never authorized such interrogation methods for anywhere except Guantanamo.

Guantanamo is where we’ve been sending suspected terrorists. We’ve now already released most of the Gitmo detainees for lack of charges. We hang on to several hundred more but still have not filed any charges.

Over 80 prisoners at Guantanamo are currently protesting their general inhumane treatment and their detainment without charges, some for up to four years. They have been maintaining a hunger strike, now nearing its sixth month.

The hunger strike has been kept largely out of the American press. Thus the doctor’s recent confession would have little context for typical American viewers.

To counter the hunger-strike, the prisoners are bound at up to “six points of restraint” and force-feed through tubes which are inserted through their nose and wind down to their stomachs.

I have experience with that tube.

A couple years ago I had a ruptured appendix. My recovery required the use of a nasogastric tube through my nose. It was the most miserable experience of my life.

Having the tube inserted into your nose, coaxed around the bends of the nasal passage and down the throat meant an interminable sequence of gagging, regurgitating, and frantic reflexive swallows. Afterward the first order of business was to dry both patient and bed of what was thrown up.

Never before had I felt my life so fragile and helpless. I could not help but reflect that I had gone within minutes from being a defiant patient to being utterly subdued. My sense of dominion over my physical self was gone. I hoped only to emerge from that first night with my sanity.

Torture
I myself have no concept of torture, nor even of physical violence. I can read about the torture we have sanctioned and applied against our enemies and it all looks awful, although perhaps most of us can comprehend its awfulness only in the abstract. Is that perhaps why we permit it?

The nearest I have come to identifying with the terror felt by a torture victim was hearing of the Iraqi general who was shoved head first into a sleeping bag and sat upon until he suffocated. Probably we can all recollect in our youth the panic induced by the combination of claustrophobia and being unable to catch our breath.

From my hospital experience I have a very vivid first hand experience to compare to the treatment meted to the Gitmo detainees. And we’re not even talking about interrogation or punishment, we’re talking about medical procedures. My nasogastric tube was for emptying my stomach. It was not the 3 millemeter tube they are using to feed the prisoners. Nor certainly was it the 4.8 millemeter tube the US medical staff was originally using because they wanted to feed the prisoners more quickly and get them back to their cells. Which suggests that they are repeating the insertion process for each feeding.

Torture is illegal. The United States ratified the 1996 Torture Convention. Torture is wrong regardless of whether you are signatory to an agreement. It’s inhumane, it’s abhorrent, it dehumanizes those who commit it, and it may invite our opponents to justify it as well. As if it were even our place any longer to expect their mercy.

Force-feeding a person who is intent on fasting is another sort of crime. It is assault, plain and simple. And committed by a medial practitioner it is against their professional oath.

I don’t know how to be afraid of the depths to which we are sinking. I do know I feel sick to my stomach.