News from the Colonies - America's War in Iraq

[Tiassa]

Dona nobis pacem

Source: The Independent
Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-the-cult-of-the-suicide-bomber-795649.html
Title: "The cult of the suicide bomber", by Robert Fisk
Date: March 14, 2008

Robert Fisk of The Independent attempts to calculate the scale of the suicide-bombing phenomenon in the era of the Bush Wars:

What is astonishing – what is not mentioned by the Americans or the Iraqi "government" or the British authorities or indeed by many journalists – is the sheer scale of the suicide campaign, the vast numbers of young men (only occasionally women), who wilfully destroy themselves amid the American convoys, outside the Iraqi police stations, in markets and around mosques and in shopping streets and on lonely roads beside remote checkpoints across the huge cities and vast deserts of Iraq. Never have the true figures for this astonishing and unprecedented campaign of self-liquidation been calculated.

But a month-long investigation by The Independent, culling four Arabic-language newspapers, official Iraqi statistics, two Beirut news agencies and Western reports, shows that an incredible 1,121 Muslim suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Iraq. This is a very conservative figure and – given the propensity of the authorities (and of journalists) to report only those suicide bombings that kill dozens of people – the true estimate may be double this number. On several days, six – even nine – suicide bombers have exploded themselves in Iraq in a display of almost Wal-Mart availability. If life in Iraq is cheap, death is cheaper.

This is perhaps the most frightening and ghoulish legacy of George Bush's invasion of Iraq five years ago. Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed at least 13,000 men, women and children – our most conservative estimate gives a total figure of 13,132 – and wounded a minimum of 16,112 people. If we include the dead and wounded in the mass stampede at the Baghdad Tigris river bridge in the summer of 2005 – caused by fear of suicide bombers – the figures rise to 14,132 and 16,612 respectively. Again, it must be emphasised that these statistics are minimums. For 529 of the suicide bombings in Iraq, no figures for wounded are available. Where wounded have been listed in news reports as "several", we have made no addition to the figures. And the number of critically injured who later died remains unknown. Set against a possible death toll of half a million Iraqis since the March 2003 invasion, the suicide bombers' victims may appear insignificant; but the killers' ability to terrorise civilians, militiamen and Western troops and mercenaries is incalculable.

Never before has the Arab world witnessed a phenomenon of suicide-death on this scale. During Israel's occupation of Lebanon after 1982, one Hizbollah suicide-bombing a month was considered remarkable. During the Palestinian intifadas of the 1980s and 1990s, four per month was regarded as unprecedented. But suicide bombers in Iraq have been attacking at the average rate of two every three days since the 2003 Anglo-American invasion ....

.... Even more profoundly disturbing is that the "cult" of the suicide bomber has seeped across national frontiers. Within a year of the Iraqi invasion, Afghan Taliban bombers were blowing themselves up alongside Western troops or bases in Helmand province and in the capital Kabul. The practice leached into Pakistan, striking down thousands of troops and civilians, killing even the principal opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto. The London Tube and bus bombings – despite the denials of Tony Blair – were obviously deeply influenced by events in Iraq ....

.... Throughout the five years of war, suicide bombers have focused on Iraq's own American-trained security forces rather than US troops. At least 365 attacks have been staged against Iraqi police or paramilitary forces. Their targets included at least 147 police stations (1,577 deaths), 43 army and police recruitment centres (939 deaths), 91 checkpoints (with a minimum of 564 fatalities), 92 security patrols (465 deaths) and numerous other police targets (escorts, convoys accompanying government ministers, etc). One of the recruitment centres – in the centre of Baghdad – was assaulted by suicide bombers on eight separate occasions.

By contrast, suicide bombers have attacked only 24 US bases at a cost of 100 American dead and 15 Iraqis, and 43 American patrols and checkpoints, during which 116 US personnel were killed along with at least 56 civilians, 15 of whom appear to have been shot by American soldiers in response to the attacks, and another 26 of whom were children standing next to a US patrol. Most of the Americans were killed west or north of Baghdad. Suicide attacks on the police concentrated on Baghdad and Mosul and the Sunni towns to the immediate north and south of Baghdad.

.... One of George Bush's most insidious legacies in Iraq thus remains its most mysterious; the marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity, the birth of an unprecedentedly huge army of Muslims inspired by the idea of death.

(Fisk)

It is an interesting—and chilling—perspective, one we are not likely to hear from our own American media. In truth, the scale of the phenomenon is puzzling. While eleven hundred suicide bombers seems a tall number, it is actually lower than I would have guessed. The low-end figures of thirteen thousand dead and sixteen thousand wounded, however, are ghastly. Stunning. The power of the suicide bomber is a repugnant reminder of our imperial inefficacy, a further indictment of our disingenuous leadership.

Not only does the suicide bomber reiterate a concept ingrained in a generation's conscience by a fantasy—a stunt fighter against the Death Star—it calls into question the collateral American warlords were willing to write off. Immediately after the fall of Baghdad, days of bloody chaos including chilling reports of murder and riot, looting, and even the mass rapes of psychiatric patients reminded of prewar criticism about troop levels. Coalition forces were insufficient to manage the situation, and so in a sickening breach of the Geneva Conventions, they didn't even try. And yet, at the outset, making the obvious point about holding Iraq ended at least one general's career.

Despite President Bush's declaration that major combat was finished, regardless of the infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner and flight-suit propaganda, the decay of Iraq does not represent a theater Americans ever held and then lost. It does not represent a consequence of returning political authority to Iraqis. Coalition forces never secured Iraq. Ongoing plans for permanent bases and Senator McCain's suggestion that we should stay for a hundred years if that is what the situation requires only reinforce the growing suspicion that war planners never intended to leave Iraq. Deliberate understaffing, the choice to never secure the theater, even the dubious measure of arming local militias who could, at any given provocation, turn those guns against our troops: it becomes harder and harder to simply dismiss the notion that this outcome is not one of administrative incompetence, but rather of administrative will.

If our enemies could drop laser-guided bombs from airplanes, or launch missiles from a thousand miles away, they would. But they cannot. The evolution of the suicide-bomber in the Iraqi and Afghani theaters seems to have been both foreseeable and inevitable. The toll exacted by what Fisk calls a cult—and that sum yet to be collected—are, indeed, part of what the Bush administration was willing to spend in order to institute the New American Century.

 

[S.A.M.]

My God, its even worse than I thought.

 

[Mr.Spock]

the suicide bomber is always the victim. the dozen or hundred he killed? :shrug:

 

[Tiassa]

All as a matter of why

the suicide bomber is always the victim. the dozen or hundred he killed?

Any proper examination of why someone would choose to commit suicide in order to kill other people must consider the perpetrator's reasons. Whether or not we agree with those reasons is a political question.

Let us consider for a moment the American capacity to countenance such a difficult decision. After the Columbine massacre, parents, pundits, and the American community at large kept asking, "Why? Why?" And yet, they had the reasons, from the killers, scrawled in their own hands and spoken in their own voices. It seemed such a harsh reaction to the classism of American teenage life that years later, people still haven't come to understand what they've done. There's a woman in the middle of the country who coordinated a campaign to alienate a teenager via a social-networking site. The girl killed herself, and the mother, who attempted to silence a teenager who participated in the harassment, thinks of herself as a victim. We don't necessarily accept her reasons for why she did it, but we have them: the target of the harassment had a falling-out with the woman's daughter. Revenge. Nothing more, nothing less.

In the case of suicide bombing, the reasons start with a culture of victimization and either grow of their own accord or are carefully cultivated from there. Watching the Israel/Palestine conflict from afar, and listening to the Israeli governments justify themselves, it is actually fairly easy to develop a certain sympathy of acknowledgment toward the suicide bombers: Well, it seems pretty stupid to me, but, hell, there's a f@cking war going on.

The idea is quite simple. An enemy might see an airplane coming. Or a gunman. A suicide bomber can get really close to the target. A truck bomb at traffic checkpoints. A vest bomb at a mosque or standing in line at the police academy. In theory, someone might stop me if they see me walking toward a church with a rifle in my hand. But a well-made suicide vest I could walk right into the sanctuary and take out a portion of the congregation during the first hymn.

What gets me about my American neighbors is that the concept surprises them. After years of watching the conflict over the Palestine, we're somehow surprised by the concept of suicide bombing. There was, years ago ... maybe 1990 or so ... a television movie about the arrival of suicide bombers in the U.S. I forget what it was called. I didn't even watch the whole thing. But I remember it opened with an Arabic-looking man driving a truck to the gate of an Army base and blowing himself up. Point being the idea has been in the culture for a while now, and we're still surprised.

Which is part of the problem. We shouldn't be surprised. And we can bet safely that the war planners aren't. And weren't. They knew this was coming or else they had no right even talking about going to war.

Really: Who didn't know this was coming?

Khaled is – or was, for I no longer know if he is alive, since I met him a few weeks ago– influenced by his brother Hassan, whose journey to Iraq was organised by an unknown group, presumably Palestinian, and whose weapons training beside the Tigris river was videotaped by his comrades. Hassan's mother has shown me this tape – which ends with Hassan cheerfully waving goodbye from the driver's window of a battered car, presumably the vehicle he was about to ram into the American convoy at Tal Afar ....

.... On an individual level, it is possible to see the friction and psychological trauma of families. Khaled's mother, for instance, constantly expressed her pride in her dead son Hassan and, in front of me, she looked with almost equal love at his still-living brother. But when my companion urged Khaled to remain alive for his mother's sake – reminding him that the Prophet himself spoke of the primary obligation of a Muslim man to protect his mother – the woman was close to tears. She was torn apart by her love as a mother and her religious-political duty as the woman who had brought another would-be martyr into the world. When my friend again urged Khaled to remain alive, to stay in Sidon and marry – eerily, the muezzin's call to prayer had begun during our conversation – he shook his head.

Not even a disparaging remark about those who would send him on his death mission – that they were prepared to live in this world while sending others like Khaled to their fate – could discourage him. "I am not going to become a 'shahed' [martyr] for people," he replied. "I am doing it for God."

It was the same old argument. We could produce a hundred good ways – peaceful ways – for him to resolve the injustices of this world; but the moment Khaled invoked the name of God, our suggestions became irrelevant. Rationality – humanism, if you like – simply withered away. If a Western president could invoke a war of "good against evil", his antagonists could do the same.

(Fisk)

If there is not an element of victimhood in that mentality, many of us must reconsider our entire outlook on religion. Indeed, for crimes and violations far less apparent we see a victim in the perpetrator. The American Christian zealots, especially the bigoted youth, are victims. And yet we would indict them for the effects of their hatred. And their violations seem insignificant next to a suicide bombing. They don't murder. They merely alienate and harass and hate and strive to create secondary effects of human suffering that still pale next to, say, the secondary effects of corporate greed. American homosexuals, for instance, have nothing on the third world when it comes to being victims.

What separates the victimhood of the "mere" zealot hater from the murderous zealot hater? Aesthetics? The pride of the judgmental? Should we be ashamed to see in such a tragic outcome the exploitation of the guilty? If it wasn't murder, if it was, instead, American Christians trying to silence their women and make them cover their heads, would we ignore the doctrinal manipulation? Would we ignore the greedy, self-serving manipulators who dazzle their flocks with tales of paradise and encourage the faithful to hate?

So to start small and work up: The Christians who have for so many years fought against the theory of evolution are victims of desperate, greedy superstition. The contemporary fight is an echo of an original insecurity, a fear born of ignorance and superstition, that had such power as to actually fracture a sect of Christianity. The Christians who fought to institute religious faith in our government as a protest against "godless Communism" were victims. The Christians who have spent decades fighting rock and roll are victims. They're all exploited; their fearful superstitions encourage them to irrational and hateful action. The Christians who fight tooth and nail to install sex discrimination in our Constitution are victims of perverse and hateful manipulation. They cannot see the inherent paradox in claiming that if they are not the superior group, they are not being granted their equal share in society. And they have a legion of religious authorities encouraging them to believe such things. Our few lethal Christian terrorists are victims. They shoot doctors or bomb clinics in the name of God, and suddenly we're frighteningly close to the issue at hand.

You can reach back to the Inquisitions and see the victimhood. Do unto others. Whatsoever you do or do not do unto the least of His brethren. One does not want to be left to the Devil, so he tortures an innocent victim accused of witchcraft. All from the Bible. All a tragic consequence of superstition.

We look at these suicide bombers for whom God and self are everything, and what are we supposed to think? The same irrational insistence, the same deflection: "I am not going to become a shahed for people," said Khaled. "I am doing it for God."

Pam Stenzel, a Christian abstinence advocate, says the same about her ineffective programs. In 2003, she recalled being asked if her abstinence programs worked. And then she appealed to her evangelical audience: "People of God, can I beg you to commit yourself to truth? Not what works, to truth! I don't care if it works, because at the end of the day, I'm not answering to you. I'm answering to God."

The only real differences—and not insignificant at that—are the immediacy and severity of the outcomes. Khaled will attempt to kill other people while taking his own life. Stenzel merely seeks to encourage conditions that increase suffering and bring social injustice.

And they're all victims.

As to those killed by suicide bombers? They are, in the end, all victims as well. The contrast you propose—

the suicide bomber is always the victim. the dozen or hundred he killed?​

—is essentially a false dilemma. There are considerations of guilt. What happened on 9/11 was brutal and wrong, but there is a certain logic and, by some perspectives, propriety in striking after such a symbol and nexus of American financial power. There is definitely a logic and propriety about striking the center of American military operations. But there were needless victims that day. Certes, Americans are generally guilty of perpetuating suffering abroad. Our luxury requires that suffering. But it doesn't mean the people on the airplanes, or the people in the twin towers, or the firefighters and police officers needed or deserved to die.

The perspective of the suicide bomber as a victim is one necessary to comprehending the scope of the challenge facing humanity. It is an essential component of the problem, and therefore something that must be included in any effective solution. The point comes to prominence in responding to those who would ignore or deny it. Those people do not want solutions. They do not want peace or justice. They seek only triumph, supremacy, and glory. All of which are ephemeral at best.

A place for everything, as the saying goes, and everything in its place.

There are two colours in my head.
There are two colours in my head.
What is that you tried to say?
What was that you tried to say?
Tried to say, tried to say.
Tried to say, tried to say.

Everything in its right place.

(Radiohead)​

____________________

Notes:

Fisk, Robert. See #1784342/722.

Stenzel, Pam. See #1586886/283.

 

[S.A.M.]

This is sad.

One of George Bush's most insidious legacies in Iraq thus remains its most mysterious; the marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity, the birth of an unprecedentedly huge army of Muslims inspired by the idea of death.

And to think that Iraqis are known throughout the Middle East for their sense of humor.:bawl:

 

[Mr.Spock]

Any proper examination of why someone would choose to commit suicide in order to kill other people must consider the perpetrator's reasons. Whether or not we agree with those reasons is a political question.

Let us consider for a moment the American capacity to countenance such a difficult decision. After the Columbine massacre, parents, pundits, and the American community at large kept asking, "Why? Why?" And yet, they had the reasons, from the killers, scrawled in their own hands and spoken in their own voices. It seemed such a harsh reaction to the classism of American teenage life that years later, people still haven't come to understand what they've done. There's a woman in the middle of the country who coordinated a campaign to alienate a teenager via a social-networking site. The girl killed herself, and the mother, who attempted to silence a teenager who participated in the harassment, thinks of herself as a victim. We don't necessarily accept her reasons for why she did it, but we have them: the target of the harassment had a falling-out with the woman's daughter. Revenge. Nothing more, nothing less.

In the case of suicide bombing, the reasons start with a culture of victimization and either grow of their own accord or are carefully cultivated from there. Watching the Israel/Palestine conflict from afar, and listening to the Israeli governments justify themselves, it is actually fairly easy to develop a certain sympathy of acknowledgment toward the suicide bombers: Well, it seems pretty stupid to me, but, hell, there's a f@cking war going on.

The idea is quite simple. An enemy might see an airplane coming. Or a gunman. A suicide bomber can get really close to the target. A truck bomb at traffic checkpoints. A vest bomb at a mosque or standing in line at the police academy. In theory, someone might stop me if they see me walking toward a church with a rifle in my hand. But a well-made suicide vest I could walk right into the sanctuary and take out a portion of the congregation during the first hymn.

What gets me about my American neighbors is that the concept surprises them. After years of watching the conflict over the Palestine, we're somehow surprised by the concept of suicide bombing. There was, years ago ... maybe 1990 or so ... a television movie about the arrival of suicide bombers in the U.S. I forget what it was called. I didn't even watch the whole thing. But I remember it opened with an Arabic-looking man driving a truck to the gate of an Army base and blowing himself up. Point being the idea has been in the culture for a while now, and we're still surprised.

Which is part of the problem. We shouldn't be surprised. And we can bet safely that the war planners aren't. And weren't. They knew this was coming or else they had no right even talking about going to war.

Really: Who didn't know this was coming?



If there is not an element of victimhood in that mentality, many of us must reconsider our entire outlook on religion. Indeed, for crimes and violations far less apparent we see a victim in the perpetrator. The American Christian zealots, especially the bigoted youth, are victims. And yet we would indict them for the effects of their hatred. And their violations seem insignificant next to a suicide bombing. They don't murder. They merely alienate and harass and hate and strive to create secondary effects of human suffering that still pale next to, say, the secondary effects of corporate greed. American homosexuals, for instance, have nothing on the third world when it comes to being victims.

What separates the victimhood of the "mere" zealot hater from the murderous zealot hater? Aesthetics? The pride of the judgmental? Should we be ashamed to see in such a tragic outcome the exploitation of the guilty? If it wasn't murder, if it was, instead, American Christians trying to silence their women and make them cover their heads, would we ignore the doctrinal manipulation? Would we ignore the greedy, self-serving manipulators who dazzle their flocks with tales of paradise and encourage the faithful to hate?

So to start small and work up: The Christians who have for so many years fought against the theory of evolution are victims of desperate, greedy superstition. The contemporary fight is an echo of an original insecurity, a fear born of ignorance and superstition, that had such power as to actually fracture a sect of Christianity. The Christians who fought to institute religious faith in our government as a protest against "godless Communism" were victims. The Christians who have spent decades fighting rock and roll are victims. They're all exploited; their fearful superstitions encourage them to irrational and hateful action. The Christians who fight tooth and nail to install sex discrimination in our Constitution are victims of perverse and hateful manipulation. They cannot see the inherent paradox in claiming that if they are not the superior group, they are not being granted their equal share in society. And they have a legion of religious authorities encouraging them to believe such things. Our few lethal Christian terrorists are victims. They shoot doctors or bomb clinics in the name of God, and suddenly we're frighteningly close to the issue at hand.

You can reach back to the Inquisitions and see the victimhood. Do unto others. Whatsoever you do or do not do unto the least of His brethren. One does not want to be left to the Devil, so he tortures an innocent victim accused of witchcraft. All from the Bible. All a tragic consequence of superstition.

We look at these suicide bombers for whom God and self are everything, and what are we supposed to think? The same irrational insistence, the same deflection: "I am not going to become a shahed for people," said Khaled. "I am doing it for God."

Pam Stenzel, a Christian abstinence advocate, says the same about her ineffective programs. In 2003, she recalled being asked if her abstinence programs worked. And then she appealed to her evangelical audience: "People of God, can I beg you to commit yourself to truth? Not what works, to truth! I don't care if it works, because at the end of the day, I'm not answering to you. I'm answering to God."

The only real differences—and not insignificant at that—are the immediacy and severity of the outcomes. Khaled will attempt to kill other people while taking his own life. Stenzel merely seeks to encourage conditions that increase suffering and bring social injustice.

And they're all victims.

As to those killed by suicide bombers? They are, in the end, all victims as well. The contrast you propose—

the suicide bomber is always the victim. the dozen or hundred he killed?​

—is essentially a false dilemma. There are considerations of guilt. What happened on 9/11 was brutal and wrong, but there is a certain logic and, by some perspectives, propriety in striking after such a symbol and nexus of American financial power. There is definitely a logic and propriety about striking the center of American military operations. But there were needless victims that day. Certes, Americans are generally guilty of perpetuating suffering abroad. Our luxury requires that suffering. But it doesn't mean the people on the airplanes, or the people in the twin towers, or the firefighters and police officers needed or deserved to die.

The perspective of the suicide bomber as a victim is one necessary to comprehending the scope of the challenge facing humanity. It is an essential component of the problem, and therefore something that must be included in any effective solution. The point comes to prominence in responding to those who would ignore or deny it. Those people do not want solutions. They do not want peace or justice. They seek only triumph, supremacy, and glory. All of which are ephemeral at best.

A place for everything, as the saying goes, and everything in its place.

There are two colours in my head.
There are two colours in my head.
What is that you tried to say?
What was that you tried to say?
Tried to say, tried to say.
Tried to say, tried to say.

Everything in its right place.

(Radiohead)​

____________________

Notes:

Fisk, Robert. See #1784342/722.

Stenzel, Pam. See #1586886/283.

to view a suicide bomber as a victim, is a mockery to intelligence. go ahead, tell to the man who lost hes legs and half hes brain during a suicide bombing-tell him how hes suffering is meaningless, while the suicide bomber is the victim, therefor the attention is hes.

having mercy on suicide bombers, and having much less for their victims, if any at all.

 

[hypewaders]

Mr. Spock: "go ahead, tell to the man who lost hes legs and half hes brain during a suicide bombing-tell him how hes suffering is meaningless, while the suicide bomber is the victim"

Tiassa made no suggestion here that anyone's victimhood is meaningless.

 

[Tiassa]

Steel on the wounded

Source: The Independent
Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...soldiers-go-round-getting-wounded-797762.html
Title: "How dare these soldiers go round getting wounded?" by Mark Steel
Date: March 19, 2008

I thought to share this bit from our former colonial masters. At any rate, if the whole Walter Reed scandal wasn't shocking and embarrassing enough for the United States, well, at least this one's not ours. I can't wait to see what we come up with to top it.

But more important, what a strange idea that the only true way to support someone is to cheer them into a situation that's likely to get them killed. If these "supporters" ever find themselves looking up at a tower block, with someone 15 floors up threatening to jump off the balcony as friends delicately try to coax him back, they must shout, "Don't undermine him – it's up to all of us to support him – jump, man, jump! Go on – here's Zoe, 22 from Clacton in a G-string and paratrooper's cap. She supports you, so dive!"

Inevitably, once the supported boys started returning from war with bits missing, the governments and newspapers that backed them most enthusiastically decide that they're an embarrassing nuisance. Then their attitude becomes like that of the First World War general who, when he visited a hospital full of soldiers back from the Somme with shell shock, shouted, "Why are you shivering? Only drunkards and masturbators freeze." This must be what causes so many old people to conk out from hypothermia every winter, the filthy minxes.

But that general has been challenged for callousness by defence minister Des Browne, who yesterday went to the High Court to try and prevent a coroner from criticising the Ministry of Defence, during inquests on soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The trouble is that a coroner reported, in the inquest into the death of Capt James Phillipson, that the soldier had been given, "a lack of basic equipment". Whereas from now on, presumably, he'll have to say, "The soldier had piles of equipment, so much he didn't know where to put it all. What must have happened is, well, obviously, I've got it – the Taliban magicked it away, with their equipment vanishing cream. So there we are, no one to blame, just one of those things, I'm afraid."

(Steel)

Perhaps the most bitter irony is that there's a paragraph in there where Steel sounds like one of his old bits from Solutions. But he's not doing comedy. Well, he is, but still ....

Actually, you know what? I'm pretty sure we can top it. Truth told, though, I don't want to know.

 

[Tiassa]

Our Friends, in Four Frames

I'm So Gonna Get Us In Trouble
Well, I hope not.

There is something I wanted to share with you. A moment worth preserving. True, the years many of us have spent with these friends make it all the more poignant, but that's kind of the point. I can't really explain it. If you don't know who Andy was, or Lacey ... if you don't know who Kim is in relation to the story, or what is so important about B.D.'s hair, I can only urge you to take some time to find out.

This hurts:

G. B. Trudeau, Doonesbury, March 17, 2008​

And the reader blowback:

• I blinked and B.D. grew up. (Grace, Michigan)

• Yeah, I started to cry when I read today's strip. Not only are Toggle and his mom two great characters, but B.D. is growing in ways I never dreamed he was capable of. (Shellybear, Michigan)

• Thank you for the Toggle strips. Today's acknowledgement that "Toggle is sad" nearly broke my heart. These strips bring the war home in ways that no news account, no matter how sensitively drawn, can. (Susan, Michigan)

• As a physical therapist, I know the enormous and mostly misunderstood impact that TBI has on soldiers and others in bad accidents. Thank you for including this in your strip with Toggle. The frustration alone that people go through when they have difficulty verbalizing after TBI is beyond what most people ever consider. It is devastating. Thanks for giving these people a much needed voice. (Elizabeth, Illinois)

• Read today's strip on my widget. Please stop making me cry. Will have to resort to reading only "Cathy" or "Garfield." IQ will drop. Children will be left with idiot for mother. All your fault.

Go get 'em, Toggle. (Jennifer, Washington)​

Links:

• The Doonesbury Daily Dose

• Doonesbury: Blowback​

 

[hypewaders]

Militias gain ground in Basra

Militias Gain in Basra NY Times

Al-Maliki has personally staked his reputation on the success of the Basra assault, fulfilling a long-standing American desire for him to boldly take on rogue Shiite groups. But at the same time, as criticism of the assault has risen, it has also brought into question yet another American benchmark of progress in Iraq: political reconciliation.

Oh-oh.

 

[Tiassa]

It's the American Way

It's the American Way!
Afghan military supplied with third-rate munitions; Pentagon suspends contract

If theres a task that must be done,
Don't turn your tail and run.
Don't pout! Don't sob!
Just do a half assed job!

If you cut every corner then its really not so bad;
Everybody does it,
Even Mom and Dad.
If nobody sees it then
Nobody gets mad:

It's the American Way!

(The Simpsons, #3G03)​

To start with The New York Times:

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan's army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company's president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company's purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.

(Chivers)

It is, if not a disaster, a thorough embarrassment in a bad week for the Pentagon. And, certainly, the situation does not reflect well on the United States of America in general because it suggests much about the American way of doing business.

The New York Times describes AEY Inc. as "one of many previously unknown defense companies to have thrived since 2003", and noted that its "rise from obscurity once seemed to make it a successful example of the Bush administration's promotion of private contractors". But that rise seems to have come "minimal vetting" and a "vague" contract.

And while the Pentagon told the New York Times that AEY had been suspended for a finding of fraud, the company's CEO, Efraim Diveroli, told the newspaper that he was unaware of any such action. The Army may not have informed him at that time.

But problems with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station's dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966.

"This is what they give us for the fighting," said the colonel, Amanuddin, who like many Afghans has only one name. "It makes us worried, because too much of it is junk." Ammunition as it ages over decades often becomes less powerful, reliable and accurate ....

..... Mr. Diveroli, in a brief telephone interview late last year, denied any wrongdoing. "I know that my company does everything 100 percent on the up and up, and that's all I'm concerned about," he said.

(ibid)

And well the company's actions may be on the "up and up". A second article from The New York Times notes that "AEY's Afghan contract did not set an age limit for any munitions or require it to be tested".

On Friday's Diane Rehm Show, UPI editor Martin Walker described the situation as such:

(15:45)

It is like fiction. And the background to this is there is something of a worldwide shortage of ammunition. And if you're going to try and ... re-equip the Afghans, you need an awful lot of this stuff, and if you think about it, the average factory can turn out something like 150,000 rounds a day; it's going to take about a year to produce the hundred million rounds that were required.

But the really bizarre thing is that while the Pentagon was going to the wonderful free market of private enterprise looking for cheap ammunition for the Afghans, they were destroying and blowing up, by the ton, by the container ... exactly that kind of ammunition, exactly that kind of Soviet-style weaponry that they'd captured in Iraq. It's absolutely bizarre. It would have been easier for them to ship it out of Iraq into Afghanistan. Instead, they got this sixty or fifty year-old Chinese-made ammunition from Albania, which had been rotting steadily. And they then had to take it out of the Chinese boxes, which were at least hermetically sealed, because they didn't want to show how old the ammunition was. They put it into cardboard boxes. By the time it got to the Afghans, the cardboard boxes were falling apart, there were rounds going everywhere, there were loose RPG rounds rolling around inside the trucks ....

(17:00)

(Diane Rehm Show)

Lt. Col. Amanuddin surveyed 42-year-old Chinese ammunition from AEY that arrived in crumbling boxes at his Afghan police post.
(Tyler Hicks/New York Times)​

In addition to the poor condition of the ammunition—some of it unusable—AEY was linked in May of last year of buying to shady arms traffickers. The Czech government contacted the American Embassy in Prague alleging that AEY was attempting to obtain ammunition through Petr Bernatik, who was accused of illegally shipping firearms to Slovakia and RPGs to Congo. The Czech government's accusations were enough that the State Department included Bernatik's name on the Defense Trade Controls watch list, which is used to monitor black-market weapons networks. Nonetheless, the U.S. government did not attempt to block the transaction.

Furthermore, the way some deals worked, apparently, was that Evdin Ltd., a Cypriot company, purchased ammunition from the Albania and, repackaged it, and then sold it to AEY at a hefty markup presumably used to grease the palms of Albanian officials, including former defense minister Fatmir Mediu, who resigned only last week after ammunition depot explosions killed 22 people, injured hundreds, and destroyed nearby homes. The former director of the Albanian arms export agency, Ylli Pinari—who dealt with AEY representatives—has apparently been arrested in connection with the explosions.

Add to that the Swiss arms dealer Heinrich Thomet, who apparently has done business with Taos Industries on a contract for U.S. Special Operations Command, and has been accused in the past of participating in the illegal arms market. Mr. Thomet and Evdin Ltd. are on the Defense Trade Controls watch list as well.

On June 11, 2007, Mr. Trebicka and Mr. Diveroli commiserated by phone about problems with doing business in Albania. Mr. Trebicka surreptitiously recorded the conversation, and later gave the audio files to American investigators.

The conversation, he said, showed that the American company was aware of corruption in its dealings in Albania and that Heinrich Thomet, a Swiss arms dealer, was behind Evdin.

In the recordings, which Mr. Trebicka shared with The Times, Mr. Diveroli suggests that Mr. Thomet, called "Henri," was acting as the middleman.

"Pinari needs a guy like Henri in the middle to take care of him and his buddies, which is none of my business," Mr. Diveroli said. "I don't want to know about that business. I want to know about legitimate businesses."

Mr. Diveroli recommended that Mr. Trebicka try to reclaim his contract by sending "one of his girls" to have sex with Mr. Pinari. He suggested that money might help, too.

"Let's get him happy; maybe he gives you one more chance," he said. "If he gets $20,000 from you ... "

At the end, Mr. Diveroli appeared to lament his business with Albania. "It went up higher to the prime minister and his son," he said. "I can't fight this mafia. It got too big. The animals just got too out of control."

In e-mail exchanges, Mr. Thomet denied an official role in Evdin. His involvement in the Albania deal, he said, had been in introducing Mr. Diveroli to potential partners and officials. Bogdan Choopryna, Evdin's general manager, also said Mr. Diveroli's allegations were not true. "We listen to the words of Mr. Diveroli, and then I am responsible for what he is saying?" he said. In addition to being an official with Evdin, Mr. Choopryna, 27, markets products for a Swiss company run by Mr. Thomet.

The dispute about Evdin's role and who owns it remains publicly unresolved. Evdin had incorporated on Sept. 26, 2006 — the week after Mr. Diveroli bid on the Afghan contract, according to Cyprus's registrar. The company listed its office in Larnaca, Cyprus, and its general director as Pambos Fellas.

A visit by a reporter to the address found an accounting business above a nightclub. Evdin had no office or staff there. And Mr. Fellas, who was inside, said that he was not Evdin's general director, but "a nominee director" whose sole role was to register the company.

He had registered hundreds of such companies for a fee, he said, and knew nothing of Evdin's business.

Some signs point back to Switzerland. Mr. Pinari initially told two reporters that he worked with Evdin via Mr. Thomet. (After a reporter told Mr. Thomet this, Mr. Pinari changed his story, referring the reporter to Mr. Fellas and Evdin's office in Cyprus.) Mr. Diveroli also said the Cyprus company was run by a "Swiss individual."

(Chivers)

To the one, it seems hard to countenance the notion that this is what it takes to have a war. To the other, the Iraqi Bush Adventures are going rather quite poorly. And to yet a third, such a story only reinforces the presumption by so many peaceniks that war is inherently corrupt. Once again, the Bush administration's policies have brought the war effort into what seems a direct conflict with the principles and goals of these imperial ventures. The United States government is bankrolling fraudulent arms dealers as part of its latest experiment in state-building. At the same time it undermines the fledgling "democracy" in Afghanistan, the administration is pouring money into corrupt markets. (And, yes, while there is much about domestic business practices that seems corrupt, this is just flagrant.)

You know, the funny thing is that I find myself recalling the Boy Scouts, who preach a two-word motto: Be Prepared. But adequate preparation, as we've known since before the invasion of Iraq, is too bothersome for this administration, and not nearly nefarious enough for Bush's sense of romance.

So how about a deal? "We" broke it, so "we" bought it, right? Let's bring home the troops, and send Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, and the lot of 'em over to do the fixing. And they can hire Blackwater to cover their asses while they're there. With private funds. It wouldn't be too expensive. After all, they tell me the war is going well.
______________________

Notes:

SNPP.com. "[3G03] Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala-D'oh-cious". Revised July 12, 1997. http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3G03.html

Chivers, C. J. "Supplier Under Scrutiny on Arms for Afghans" New York Times. March 27, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/world/asia/27ammo.html

Chivers, C. J. and Eric Schmitt. "Finding of Fraud Led to Suspension of Company Supplying Arms to Afghanistan". New York Times. March 28, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/world/asia/28ammo.html

WAMU. The Diane Rehm Show. March 28, 2008. http://wamu.org/programs/dr/08/03/28.php#19489

The Arabist. "The arms trade and Iraq". May 13, 2008. http://arabist.net/archives/2006/05/13/the-arms-trade-and-iraq/

Reuters. "Bush yearns for 'romance' of front line". News.com.au. March 15, 2008. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23377927-401,00.html

 

[Vkothii]

What's important here? Iraqi oil? Iraqi people? Human rights? Decency? Freedom? Democracy? What? American egotism?

The sustenance of an industrial-military system that requires ongoing conflict, to give some impetus to the evolution of that system, particularly new weapons, and so the use of existing weapons, or field-testing.

Also the political expedience of "doing something" to change the situation; to assist the downfall of some political system that's in the way, of the establishment of a Western beachhead, and eventual hegemony.
Total military and political domination, and control of an essential resource which, in the ME, comes with Israel attached. The Romans had to divide their empire too, though.

P.S. It fell apart fairly quickly after it split, but arguably that was because of all the illegal aliens.

 

[Tiassa]

Goddamn Muslim terrorists ....

Source: Los Angeles Times
Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-harman31mar31,0,5399612.story
Title: "Rapists in the ranks", by Rep. Jane Harman
Date: March 31, 2008

Blame this one on Muslims. I dare you.

The stories are shocking in their simplicity and brutality: A female military recruit is pinned down at knifepoint and raped repeatedly in her own barracks. Her attackers hid their faces but she identified them by their uniforms; they were her fellow soldiers. During a routine gynecological exam, a female soldier is attacked and raped by her military physician. Yet another young soldier, still adapting to life in a war zone, is raped by her commanding officer. Afraid for her standing in her unit, she feels she has nowhere to turn.

These are true stories, and, sadly, not isolated incidents. Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.

(Harman)

Note the wording of that sentence, of course. The numbers seem to compare rapes in the military in general against casualties in Iraq specifically. This doesn't justify or mitigate the problem; rather, I make that note as a concession to political correctness on behalf of the war party, masculists, and rape advocates.

Doctors at a Veterans' Administration clinic in Los Angeles say that 41% of the female veterans they see report sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped. Sexual assault reports, according to Department of Defense statistics, are up 73% between 2004 and 2006.

At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through "nonjudicial punishment," which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action; more than a third of the time, that was because of "insufficient evidence."

This is in stark contrast to the civilian trend of prosecuting sexual assault. In California, for example, 44% of reported rapes result in arrests, and 64% of those who are arrested are prosecuted, according to the California Department of Justice.

(ibid)

Rep. Harman notes in the article that she has discussed the issue with Secretary Gates, who apparently described the situation as inexcusable. Nor, writes the Venice, Calfornia Democrat, has Congress managed much better. She does, of course, include the mandatory praise of the troops, but manages to turn the issue to reflect her point:

Most of our servicewomen and men are patriotic, courageous and hardworking people who embody the best of what it means to be an American. The failure to address military sexual assault runs counter to those ideals and shames us all.

(ibid)

Any "war against terror" must necessarily start at home.

 

[S.A.M.]

So what about the Iraqi women?

Earlier this month it emerged that an Iraqi woman in her 70s had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib and another coalition detention centre after being arrested last July. Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who investigated the case and found it to be true, said, "She was held for about six weeks without charge. During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/20/iraq.gender

 

[John99]

so the whole family of the only person able to corroborate your story^ has moved. and not only that but after her ordeal her family killed her and then they all disappeared. and the 70 year old women cant be found either?

 

[John99]

This story is from 2004. These are the same rape photos that were proven to be from a porn site. You even posted them a year or two ago and this was pointed out to you at the time.

 

[Tiassa]

Be the voice

So what about the Iraqi women?

Apparently I somehow failed to post this one back in August:

The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces or have their real names used. They have been driven to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their children -- for as little as $8 a day.

"People shouldn't criticize women, or talk badly about them," says 37-year-old Suha as she adjusts the light colored scarf she wears these days to avoid extremists who insist women cover themselves. "They all say we have lost our way, but they never ask why we had to take this path."

A mother of three, she wears light makeup, a gold pendant of Iraq around her neck, and an unexpected air of elegance about her.

"I don't have money to take my kid to the doctor. I have to do anything that I can to preserve my child, because I am a mother," she says, explaining why she prostitutes herself.

Anger and frustration rise in her voice as she speaks.

"No matter what else I may be, no matter how off the path I may be, I am a mother!"

• • •​

Karima, clad in all black, adds, "My husband died of lung cancer nine months ago and left me with nothing."

She has five children, ages 8 to 17. Her eldest son could work, but she's too afraid for his life to let him go into the streets, preferring to sacrifice herself than risk her child.

She was solicited the first time when she was cleaning an office.

"They took advantage of me," she says softly. "At first I rejected it, but then I realized I have to do it."

• • •​

Violence, increased cost of living, and lack of any sort of government aid leave women like these with few other options, according to humanitarian workers.

"At this point there is a population of women who have to sell their bodies in order to keep their children alive," says Yanar Mohammed, head and founder of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. "It's a taboo that no one is speaking about."

She adds, "There is a huge population of women who were the victims of war who had to sell their bodies, their souls and they lost it all. It crushes us to see them, but we have to work on it and that's why we started our team of women activists."

Her team pounds the streets of Baghdad looking for these victims often too humiliated to come forward.

"Most of the women that we find at hospitals [who] have tried to commit suicide" have been involved in prostitution, said Basma Rahim, a member of Mohammed's team.

(Damon)

Victims and survivors of sexual violence and exploitation around the world do need a voice here at Sciforums.

Be that voice.
_____________________

Notes:

Damon, Arwa. "Iraqi women: Prostituting ourselves to feed our children". CNN.com. August 16, 2007. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/15/iraq.prostitution/index.html

 

[John99]

No one is listening.

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/1307/context/cover

And TiaSSa doesnt want to hear it.

 

[John99]

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/444213

 

[John99]

Be that voice.

Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime