Gen. Petraeus, Sen. John McCain Agree the use of Torture is Counterproductive

Many leading voices in the American national security debate believe the use of abusive techniques is both unnecessary and counterproductive. Recognizing adherence to the rule of law under international agreements outlawing torture as a major American asset in the fight against extremism, CENTCOM head Gen. David Petraeus has said "it is important to again live our values to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those."

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that he thinks "the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture," and the "interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit." In a recent critique of strategic communications, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen noted that deeds matter more than words, saying that "we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate." Given the prominent role torture (and U.S. support for regimes that employ it) has played in the radicalization of extremists from Ayman al-Zawahiri on down, America's willingness to investigate and hold accountable those who tortured would send a strong positive signal about how a free and democratic country deals with official abuse.

RIP Ted Kennedy. Supporter of Terrorism?

Ted Kennedy was a longtime supporter of the IRA - classified as a Terrorist organization. Only after 9/11 - when Americans discovered on their own soil how loathsome terrorism truly is, and how far from a noble romantic struggle - did Kennedy cynically distance himself from former Terrorists Gerry Adams and fellow Sinn Fein stalwart Martin McGuinness, refusing to meet them in 2005 after the IRA brutally murdered Robert McCartney in a Belfast bar in January that year.


Ted Kennedy has been accused of poisoning US-UK relations over Ulster during the long decades in which he has castigated successive British governments. Rather than expressing any genuine commitment to peace in Northern Ireland, he would always play exclusively to his own Catholic-Irish voters in Massachusetts.

President Bush Invaded Iraq ... to Prevent the Apocalypse?

Incredibly, we read that President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Apparently it isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.

The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”

Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”

It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

Let's look at those scores again:

WMDs Found: 0

Americans Dead: 4,000

Was it worth it?

Ireland Will Take Guantanamo Detainees

The Irish government has said it will accept two detainees from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The men are reported to be Uzbeks. "I am conscious of the intention of the United States to close the center at Guantanamo Bay, in part by transferring detainees, no longer regarded as posing a threat to security but who cannot return to their own countries," said Ireland's Justice Minister Dermot Ahern.

Obama's Popularity Helping US Interests Abroad?

A new Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, conducted May 18 to June 16, found that "the image of the United States has improved markedly in most parts of the world, reflecting global confidence in Barack Obama." The poll even found that in Germany, Obama enjoys greater confidence than Chancellor Angela Merkel and French citizens are more confident in Obama than they are in President Nicolas Sarkozy. The Pew report found that the United States' image has not only improved dramatically in Western Europe, but "opinions of America have also become more positive in key countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, as well." Even countries with a Muslim majority, Indonesia in particular, where the United States was incredibly unpopular during the Bush Administration, have seen an increase in favorable American sentiment since Obama was elected.

"However for the most part, opinions of the U.S. among Muslims in the Middle East remain largely unfavorable, despite some positive movement in the numbers in Jordan and Egypt. Animosity toward the U.S., however, continues to run deep and unabated in Turkey, the Palestinian territories and Pakistan." At the same time, Pew's survey also "confirms a drop in confidence in the United States among Israelis." Immediately after Obama's Cairo speech, Israeli confidence in him to do the right thing slipped from 60 percent before the speech to 49 percent. On policies, Obama's personal popularity doesn't always translate. For example, Obama's plan to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan "is the only Obama policy tested that does not engender broad global support. In fact, majorities in most countries oppose the added deployments."

KBR "Burn Pits" on US Bases in Iraq Cause Serious Illness

Josh Eller, a military contractor stationed in Iraq in 2006, was driving through Balad Air Base when he spotted the wild dog. He wasn't sure what was in its mouth—but when Eller saw two bones, he knew he was looking at a human arm. The dog had pulled the limb from an open-air "burn pit" on the base used to incinerate waste. Eller says it's "one of the worst things I have seen."

Since hearing Eller's story, lawyer Elizabeth Burke has signed on 190 additional clients with complaints about burn pits at 18 military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan. By now, she says, all pits should have been replaced by pollution-controlled incinerators. She's filed suits in 17 states against KBR, the company contracted to provide waste-disposal services at these bases, accusing it of negligence and harm. Burke was shocked to learn what her clients saw incinerated: Humvees, batteries, unexploded ordnance, gas cans, mattresses, rocket pods, and plastic and medical waste (including body parts, which may explain the arm). Fumes containing carcinogenic dioxins, heavy metals, and particulates, according to an Army–Air Force risk assessment, waft freely across bases.

KBR is accused of allowing thick, noxious smoke – coming off of flames sometimes colored blue or green by burning chemicals – to hang over U.S. bases and camps across Iraq and Afghanistan since 2004. It’s alleged that round-the-clock hazardous emissions from the burn pits caused serious respiratory illnesses, tumors and cancers in the Plaintiffs. It’s alleged in the lawsuit:

U.S. soldiers and other residents of the military bases and camps have become seriously ill, been diagnosed with serious and potentially fatal diseases and in some cases have died from the physical injuries and diseases caused by the exposure to hazardous smoke and fumes. KBR promised to minimize the environmental effects of the burn sites they operated in Iraq and Afghanistan and to minimize smoke exposure to people in and near the bases and camps. Instead, by forsaking safety for money, KBR willfully endangered these men and women who honorably served their country in military service or in support of the military.

Conservatives Criticize the Pullback that Republicans Stipulated

Say what??? A number of conservatives have criticized the U.S. pullback, seeming to forget that the date was stipulated in an agreement hammered out by the Bush administration (and hailed at the time by the war's supporters as a victory for President Bush's Iraq policy). Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute called the pullback a "projection of weakness," and warned that the day "will likely mark another milestone: the end of the surge and the relative peace it brought to Iraq." Vice President Cheney -- who assured Americans in May 2005 that the insurgency was in its "last throes" -- used the occasion as another opportunity to cast the Obama administration as irresponsible, warning that he "would not want to see the US waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point." Responding to Cheney's attacks, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke said on MSNBC's Countdown this week, "He's trying to predict disasters -- another al Qaeda attack, more violence in Iraq; and say, in advance of these things happening, if they happen, it will be because of something Obama did. Even though in this case, it's something that Bush did.

Rightwing Extremists?

The Department of Homeland Security. What a joke.

No we learn that "Right-wing extremist groups may be using the recession and the election of the nation's first African-American president to recruit members,". Huh? The nine-page report said it has "no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence," (no information ...sounds about right) it said real-estate foreclosures, unemployment and tight credit "could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past."


Christ. If these guys aren't hiring idiots like "Brownie ", waving container ships in to port* or taking bribes** they are obviously sitting round making stuff up.

*Through 2008 the DHS repeatedly attempted to cut funding for port security

even as we learned of more vulnerabilities in port security

programs.

**Stephen Payne, a Bush pioneer and a political appointee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council, was caught on tape offering access to key members of the Bush administration inner circle in exchange for “six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.”

POST SCRIPTUM: OK so maybe I was wrong on this one...

Beer & Football For The Troops

For one night, U.S. soldiers in Iraq are getting a "taste of home: football and beer." On Wednesday, Gen. Ray Odierno issued a waiver, allowing troops to have two alcoholic drinks on Super Bowl night, marking "the first time all American service members in Iraq will be allowed to break the ban on liquor in combat zones without risking being court-martialed."