Heralding the Rise of Russia

Panel Discussions Calling for Chaos in Armenia - February, 2012

2012-01-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

Projections of massive egos, expressions of utter ignorance, exhibitions of gore, predictions of doom, feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and despair... I was finally able to experience firsthand one of our community's newest circuses in which Armenia was presented as a house-of-horror, and the only thing missing was the scary costumes. But, of course, after about two hours of lies, half-truths, exaggerations, sky is falling rhetoric and fear mongering, we were all kindly asked to consider moving to Armenia, if only to civilize the local savages there. Did the organizers of this evening-of-horrors even realize the utter irrationality and counterproductive destructiveness of what they were doing? From the looks on their faces, I don't know the answer to that question, but the event sure felt like a nightmare.

After all that psychological torture, move to Armenia? There were in fact moments during the night when I found myself actually cursing destiny for having made me an Armenian; I'd be much happier as a yodeling Bavarian. Why God, why did you make me an Armenian? Move to Armenia? I think I will need to purge my body and soul of the massive dose of poison I was administered by the wonderful panel of "experts" if I am ever again to even think about repatriating...

Panel discussion in Saint Leon Church in New Jersey

On the evening of January 27, and in an Armenian church of all places, a gathering of so-called experts on Armenia participated in a so-called panel discussion. Every single piece of dirty laundry that could be found in Armenia was brought to these shores and washed one-by-one in front of the shocked audience. For about two hours all we heard about was - murder in the military, corruption, murder in the household, corruption, murder in the police department, corruption, murder in Poplavok, corruption, assaults in hotels, corruption, massive police brutality, corruption, tanks being driven upon protesters, corruption, domestic violence, corruption, human trafficking, corruption, ecological disaster... beatings, maimings, blackmail, suicides, robbery, shootings, bribery, oppression, poverty, rape, unemployment, depopulation, did I mention corruption (?), the total absence of rule-of-law, severe human rights abuses, entrenched government corruption... [catching my breath] and government hit squads mercilessly shooting down diasporans as they step off airplanes in Zvartnots!

I was kidding about Zvartnots. They are not shooting down akhpars at the airport. But after the lecture/torture session I was subjected to, I'm no longer very confident that our luck there will last much longer.

Having said that, and as bad/ugly as it was, having seen what was done in a similar panel discussion not too long ago, believe it or not, I was actually expecting worst. No, unlike what Washington agent Richard Giragosian did recently (please see second half of this commentary), panelists this time did not get into calling for revolution, upheaval or chaos in Armenia as a way of "fighting corruption". However, with their terribly narrow political perspectives, Western biases, apocalyptic visions of doom and multiple doses of concentrated poison, with one notable exception, the only thing the experts on Armenia did manage to do, besides gleefully dragging Armenia's name in the shitty gutter for a couple of hours, was to maim and kill, spiritually/psychologically speaking, many Armenians that were present at the event that night. Of the more than two hundred people present, God only knows how many of them went home in anger, despair, hopelessness, disgust and depression... forever lost to the Armenian republic. After watching this senseless self-mutilation, I no longer wonder why our sheeple prefer spending their vacations in Turkey, Lebanon, France and Mexico, instead of that shitty, stinky, crime filled, little, nasty dictatorship called Armenia.

The following is the Armenian Radio Hour's whitewashed reporting of the nightmarish event in question - http://www.snkcreative.com/arnj/upload2/newsl020512.pdf

Simply put, what occurred in Saint Leon on the evening of January 27 was an emotionally scarring public relations fiasco and a merciless propaganda assault on the Armenian homeland. If the intent of the event was to help Armenia's development as a nation-state, it failed miserably. If the intent of the event was to fight corruption and human rights abuses, it failed miserably. If the intent was to spread lies, poisonous rumors and half-truths about the sociopolitical situation in Armenia, it was a brilliant success. If the intent was to spread anti-Armenia/anti-Hayastantsi sentiments in the diaspora, it was a brilliant success. If the intent was to turn-off and/or scare off the diaspora from Armenia, it was a brilliant success. If the intent was to prepare the political field for chaos before the next presidential elections in Armenia, it was a brilliant success!

What our politically-illiterate community leaders and activists continue to fail to realize is that our diasporan communities are terribly incapable of absorbing or assessing these types of information in a healthy and/or constructive manner. The average Armenian today is still incapable of understanding politics or appreciating his/her newly created statehood. Most Armenians today are still hopelessly stuck in a "community mentality" and are incapable of comprehending the serious implications of having an independent state. To the detriment of the Armenian republic, the Armenian peasantry continues to treat sociopolitical matters in Armenia as if they are family disputes or a street fight.

As an Armenian nationalist and a long-time political observer, I cannot keep my mouth shut about what has been occurring in our diasporan communities in recent years. I will not wait for Syriafication or Libyafication of Armenia before I open my mouth. Terminal aliments are most successfully fought when we react to them as soon as their first symptoms appear. Symptoms of a serious cancer in our communities have already been manifesting themselves in recent years. This situation is potentially very serious for the health and well-being of our embattled homeland in the Caucasus. Therefore, we must act now. And if by opening my mouth I will make enemies of friends, then so be it. These types of situations have gone way beyond personal matters, in my opinion. Our statehood is at stake. My political convictions and my ideological commitment to my homeland far outweigh my feelings towards family or friends.

Discussions on Armenia are seriously flawed

The entire premise upon which discussions about "democracy" or "human rights" in Armenia are taking place are fundamentally flawed. Washing Armenia's dirty laundry in public by political activists and individuals connected to Washington-based organizations, and in the United States of all places, is seriously counterproductive... if the intent of the washing is meant to be in Armenia's interest. I am all for civil society and human rights, but what has been going on here has gone well beyond simply promoting democratic values in Armenia. What we have here on our hands is a persistent and powerful information war against Armenia. This is ultimately Washington's psychological warfare campaign against Armenia. Since they cannot bombard Armenia with bombs, they are bombarding Armenians with poisonous rhetoric. Their intentions are to break the Armenian national spirit and to break the emotional bond Armenians have with their homeland; after which they can brake the Armenian state. And since many Armenians cannot see past their noses, many fall victim to the machinations of the American empire time-after-time.

Seeing our activists in action on the night of January 27, I have little doubt now that the diaspora may be the final resting place of all Armenians. If these kinds of reckless psychological warfare operations continue to be carried out by our shortsighted, overly-emotional, narrow-minded, self-righteous and ego-driven community members, I'm pretty sure that the diaspora will be dying sooner than later. Nevertheless, this newest circus in town somehow did managed to refrained from openly calling for revolution or chaos in Armenia. Knowing just how destructive Armenians can get when it comes to matters pertaining to their homeland, I guess this could be considered an improvement. Although the scope of this blog and the intent of this commentary is not to describe in detail what occurred on the night of January 27, I do, nevertheless, would like to say a few words about the featured panelists.

The panel of experts

Arda Haratunian: Commenced the event by arrogantly making references to how badly this or that Western institution thinks of Armenia. This veteran of the Armenian Assembly of America (i.e. Washington's mouthpiece in the American-Armenian community), in her usual - we wonderful Americans need to teach you third worlders a thing or two about civilization - condescending tone, more-or-less managed the circus as its ringmaster. It was a fitting decision to have her play this role given her background in service of the American empire.

Simon Payaslian: The simple fact that this historian become a historian with the blessings of a pseudo-historian, Richard Hovanissian, should say a few things about his intellectual caliber and his integrity as an Armenian. Despite his aforementioned handicap, however, Simon did give the audience a fairly decent if generic lecture on the historical development of political thought in Armenia. Although he did not directly point it out, perhaps for fear of sounding too Armenian, too objective or too honest, his lecture did reveal clear progress taking place in Armenia's political environment in recent years. Again, perhaps not wanting to sound too Armenian, too objective or too honest, or simply concerned about preserving his comfortable salary at Boston College, Simon also made some very ridiculous comments about Armenia. After more-or-less lamenting that political due process does not exists in a backward Armenia, he stated that during the political protests of early 2008, the government sent "tanks" against demonstrators. He also stated that Armenian police regularly disperse protesters with brute force. The "historian" was telling us lies and half-truths. First, "tanks" were not driven against protesters during Levon Petrosian's revolution attempt in 2008. Second, demonstrators in Armenia sometimes get dispersed with force when the protest gatherings are unlawful or disruptive. Regardless of how our dear historian wants to portray it, what happened back in early 2008 was clearly an attempted revolution (most probably a color revolution). Faced with a revolution, any government anywhere on earth (especially Washington) would have reacted with deadly force; as a matter of fact, with a LOT of deadly force. Given that fact Armenia's self-destructive peasantry at the time was violently trying to put back into power a treasonous criminal that had already once raped and pillaged the country throughout the 1990s, I personally think the authorities in Yerevan acted quite restrained. Simon needs to be intellectually honest with himself if he wants to be taken seriously. Maybe Simon was so damn busy trying to dig up dirt on Armenia that he did not even notice peaceful demonstrators in his dear and democratic homeland of America being brutally crushed by a military style police force - from Wall Street to Oakland! At one point Simon mentioned political evolution. Although he did not use the term in a positive context, I nevertheless agree with him that Armenia today needs political evolution - not a Western funded revolution. Had Simon been a real historian, or a man of moral integrity for that matter, he would have realized that there are, unfortunately, more political freedoms in Armenia than in America. But people like Simon are more concerned about preserving their salaries and professional contacts than worrying about academic integrity or political reality. I hate to think of all the young minds this so-called "historian" is poisoning at Boston College.

Karen Hakobian: What should have been expected from someone who is a Levon Petrosian supporter, an activist for Raffi Hovanisian and from someone who makes his living via "rights" NGOs? An ugly individual in all senses of the word, disdainfully telling the audience "let me show you the real Armenia", Karen began showering the audience with virtually every single bad story that has taken place in Armenia during the past ten years. Murders, violence, human trafficking, beatings, suicides, robberies, shootings, bribery, oppression, poverty, rape, depopulation, corruption... According to Karen, this was the nightmarish reality of Armenia today. Every single nasty story that could have been dug-up about the country was meticulously presented to the shocked audience. Drenched in jaded negativity, pessimism and horror, Karen scornfully assaulted the audience's senses both verbally and emotionally. Karen did not say a single encouraging, positive or even a neutral word about Armenia. The filth even took at shot at the Hay Dat, insinuating that its pursuit is a distraction that is blinding the diaspora to the nightmarish realities of Armenia. Due to his assault on people's emotions, Karen's house-of-horrors presentation may have made the most lasting impression on the audience.

Garo Yegnukian: Assuming the title of Senior Fellow at Policy Forum Armenia (a Washington-based subversive political group), a well-respected New York businessman who recently repatriated to Armenia with his family, Mr. Yegnukian read a ten minute lofty speech in which he basically maintained that the entire system of government in Armenia is corrupt "from top to bottom" and that there is absolutely no political due process in the country. He later went on to mention that the only way to help the situation in the country is to send some "twenty thousand" diasporan businessmen to start businesses in Armenia. Mr. Yegnukian failed to realize that scary circuses such as the one he enthusiastically participated in have the exact opposite effect on the people's psyche. Mr. Yegnukian may have thought he was shocking the community into action in Armenia. He may have convinced himself that he had a positive impact on his audience. If so, he is terribly mistaken. After having witnessed the horribly distorted way in which his homeland was being presented, no sane person would even remotely think about ever stepping foot in that corrupt and miserable dictatorship. But of course Mr. Yegnukian wants us to think about starting businesses in Armenia. Besides which, Mr. Yegnukian is thinking way too highly of the diaspora's true capabilities. Did our dear Senior Fellow really think through his skit? Although clearly well-meaning and not vicious or condescending as some of the other panelists, Mr. Yegnukian utterly failed to see the senselessness of his speech in that negative and pessimistic venue, and he failed to realize the senselessness of having called on thousands of Armenian businessmen to move to Armenia. In his speech, he did, however, allude to one lucid realization that I have been pointing out for many years: Armenia is too small for the Armenian. Our people's many cutthroat business sharks (the ones we are so proud of when they do their throat-cutting elsewhere) are currently swimming in a little understocked pond. Our nation's voracious sharks (the ones we are normally so proud of) need a well-stocked ocean to operate in. Until we find them that ocean, we simply have to figure out a way to deal with them. In the meanwhile, men like Mr. Yegnukian have to stop looking at Armenia through a politically naive utopian prism and realize that Armenia is going through natural growing pains. Mr. Yegnukian exemplifies what I mean about well-meaning Armenians being blinded by their utopian expectations and pursuing matters pertaining to Armenia in counterproductive manners.

Aram Hamparian: Of the announced group of speakers, one individual that initially struck me as odd for being there was Aram Hamparian of the ANC. I asked myself, what is the ANC doing participating in such an event? What does foolishly airing Armenia's dirty laundry in public, in America of all places, have to do with our Hay Dat? I thought to myself, Mr. Hamparian would serve our community much better by staying in the viper's nest known as Washington and finally figuring out a way of convincing his empire's severely corrupt leaders to stop working against Armenia. I also suggested Mr. Hamparian's reputable organization to stop lying to us every four years about genocide recognition being just around the corner so that they could stay in business - knowing full well that the empire they work under could careless about a tiny, remote, poor and landlocked nation in the Caucasus. A man who represents an organization (ARF) that has been amongst the most corrupt in the Armenian world was going to complain about "corruption" in Armenia, and from inside the most corrupt of empires of all places? Ridiculous, I thought. Well, although the ANC had no businesses being at the event, I have to now say that I'm actually very grateful that Mr. Hamparian showed up. Mr. Hamparian was the only light in the utter darkness that had descended upon us. Mr. Hamparian did his best to refrain from senselessly attacking his homeland. He was objective, positive, constructive, rational and comforting. He was the exception I referred to above. I was also very impressed that Mr. Hamparian had the clarity of vision and the courage to emphatically state that Washington is not really concerned about democracy in Armenia and that it is only interested in breaking Armenia away from Russia and Iran. This may have been the first time such a thing has been publicly admitted by a prominent community representative in America. Thank you Mr. Hamparian for being there that night. The ANC/ARF is lucky to have a man of your moral character and intellectual caliber amongst their ranks.

The Hartounian family

Although he was not on the panel group, at the end of the event, Saro Hartounian spoke briefly about his family's plight in Armenia. It then became apparent that the event was at least in part organized by those in close communion with the Hartounian family. Many already know about the Hartounian family's problems in Armenia. A couple of years ago the Hartounian family was brutally betrayed by a close friend of the family who, incidentally, happens to be a diasporan/Dashnaktsakan type. As a result of this betrayal by Sevag Artsruni, the Hartounian family got seriously tangled in the country's murky business/political world. Sadly, the situation has snowballed out of control in recent months. While I fully and wholeheartedly sympathize with the Hartounian family, and I did my share in trying to help Nareg Hartounian when he was temporarily arrested on trumped-up charges in Yerevan several weeks ago, the Hartounian family needs to realize that their business related problems in Armenia is being hijacked and exploited by activists and organizations with dangerous political motivations and their story is becoming a convenient venue for disseminating hate and hopelessness within diasporan circles.

The absence of hope is the single most dangerous thing Armenians face today. We all know that Armenia is far from being perfect when it comes to the rule of law, but let's bare in mind that there are countless Hartounian stories in America as well. The Hartounian family is not helping their case by bringing the fight here to the shores of the American empire, under the very nose of the emperor; they are not helping their case by spreading ugly disinformation about Armenia; and they are certainly not helping their case by employing activists connected to Washington to do their bidding.

Moreover, instead of featuring disgusting activists like Karen Hakobian, organizers of this event should have made sure that a representative of the republic was present at the gathering. Using their powerful community connections, the Hartounian family needed to have somehow convinced the Armenian ambassador to be present at the event. According to my sources, the Armenian ambassador was not formally invited. For the event to have been considered legitimate or effective, it needed the presence of a ranking official from Armenia. The official in question needed to hear the community's complaints, he needed to address the gathering, he may even needed to have been scolded by the community... but all this should have occurred without the presence of pseudo-historians like Simon, Washington's mini-apparatchiks like Arda and doom&gloom smut-peddlers like Karen.

The Hartounian family also needed to have realized that diasporan communities are utterly incapable of absorbing or processing the kind of information they were bombarded with on the evening of January 27 in a constructive or healthy manner. If the Hartounian family wanted community help, they should have invited community representatives for a closed-door meeting to discuss their problems. Keeping the event politically clean and hosting the Armenian ambassador would have been a display of healthy and/or constructive political activism. Instead, what took place in Saint Leon church was a psychological warfare against the Armenian state on behalf of imperial interests in Washington.

Regardless of the realities of their case, the way in which the Hartounian family's plight has fermented in the Armenian community of America is this: A philanthropic family went to Armenia to help Armenia - and Armenia screwed them!!! End of story. The moral of the story: Stay way from Armenia. Exploiters of the story: Washington-based NGOs. Victims of the story: Armenia.

As one who wholeheartedly supports the Hartounian family in their fight for justice, it is my opinion that the event that took place on the night of January 27 did absolutely NOTHING to help the Hartounian family. The event only managed to hurt the Armenian republic and in the process it most probably killed the Armenian in quite a few of the people present.

If the Hartounian family seeks constructive community help, they first need to make public all the details of their case. Instead of all the vicious gossip and hearsay we are currently exposed to, the Hartounian family needs to show concerned members of the community exactly who did what and when. Armed with this information, concerned members of the community can thereafter appeal to influential individuals, celebrities, legal experts, legitimate activists and legitimate Armenian organizations to figure out an effective way of advocating for the Hartounian family.

For instance, I keep hearing that the brother of the Armenian president is somehow involved in this mess. Thus far, however, no one is willing to explain exactly how he is involved. If the man is indeed involved, the Hartounian family should be revealing the details of his involvement. If the brother of the Armenian president is indeed involved, the Hartounian family needs to figure out a way of taking the fight directly to him. I'm sure he's got a house, a place of business, an office... Gather celebrities, lawyers, activists, politicians and journalists and pay him a visit. In other words, keep the fight against individuals - not the state.

Do whatever it takes to teach our Armenia's wealthy chobans a lesson - but leave the Armenian republic out of this fight! Fight the thugs in Yerevan - without fighting for the bigger thugs in Washington. Keep the fight in Armenia, keep the fight against individuals and keep the fight free of Washington. I feel embarrassed that I have to even mention things that are this obvious. Our diasporan communities are terribly incapable of processing Armenia's dirty laundry in a healthy and/or constructive manner. The average Armenian today is still incapable of understanding politics or appreciating his/her statehood. Armenians today are still stuck in "community mentality" and seem incapable of comprehending the implications of having an independent homeland. Although Armenia gained its independence some twenty years ago, many Armenians today are still suffering from Ottoman or Bolshevik ailments.

Again, I am ashamed to even be mentioning things as obvious as this but anytime we attack the Armenian government as a whole, we are attacking the Armenian statehood. Anytime we attack the statehood, we are attacking the nation. Anytime we attack the nation, we are attacking ourselves. Being that our homeland is located in the Caucasus and not in a happy-go-lucky place like Scandinavia, we Armenians simply do not have the luxury of mindlessly tampering with our statehood today, despite its flaws. Being that the Caucasus has been turned into a volatile powder-keg on the verge of explosion, this is no time to mindlessly throw stones at our state, despite its perceived flaws. Being that the government in power in Armenia today is incomparably better than previous ones, we need to figure out ways of working with it. This is no time for a regime change. Regime change in Yerevan is exactly what Washington wants, and it has its numerous activists today exploiting sociopolitical matters in the country to acheive it. Imperial interests in Washington are currently trying very hard to prepare an explosive political environment in Armenia before the next presidential elections.

Therefore, when there are grievances in Armenia our political activists need to stop acting like a bunch of pathetic cowards by enthusiastically running their noses up the emperor's ass in Washington with hopes that the master-of-global-corruption will help them.

When there are serious grievances in Armenia, our nation's well-meaning political activists need to somehow figure out a way to make officials in Yerevan listen to them. Saying that such a thing cannot be done is a lame excuse simply because such a thing has never been seriously tried before. The political "opposition" in Armenia is either being led by criminals/traitors from the 1990s or by Western operatives. Armenia does not currently have a real grassroots political opposition. Again, I reiterate that the current government in Armenia is by-far the most professional Armenia has yet experienced. Our well-meaning political activists need to figure out a way of working with the system or within the system. More importantly, our well-meaning political activists need to consciously work free of individuals and/or organization connected to the political West. This is key to successful and constructive political activism in Armenia.

Despite Mr. Hamparian's presence in the panel group (it was essentially one against four), and regardless of the event's ultimate purpose, the gathering in an Armenian church on January 27 was yet another example of just how disassociated Armenians are from the realities of the political world they live in. Typically, as the world around Armenia crumbles under the sheer weight of various regional powers, and as nations get ready for a major global confrontation in the region, our overly-emotional, politically-illiterate and self-destructive sheeple is busy throwing stones at our state for their self-righteous, ego-based and often times petty reasons. Are we Armenians damned to forever repeat the same mistakes of our forefathers?

Propaganda assault against Armenia

Some Armenians who ostensibly share the concerns I'm conveying in this commentary think that I am exaggerating the dangers Armenia faces from the West. Some ideological partners of mine are also of the idea that subversive individuals and organizations in service of the West are in the small minority within Armenian society. I strongly disagree. This type of a false sense-of-security has turned many nations into war zones in recent years. Moreover, even if our people's dangerous elements are indeed in the minority currently, then what we are facing is the - seeding - of chaos. If left unchecked, these elements, who may be in the minority today, may grow out-of-control in the future. Armenians continue to grossly underestimate the power of propaganda and the dangers of the political West.

Through the exploitation of various powerful global networks and institutions, the political West currently controls the world's financial, political and cultural life. We must realize that all the levers of global control are effectively in their hands today. Therefore, cancerous elements in service of Western political interests need to be effectively reacted to as soon as they are discovered. Shutting one's eyes to this serious danger will not make it go away, it will only make it worst. Armenians cannot risk being complacent or politically blind.

Washington's propaganda assaults against the Armenian republic has been increasing in both frequency and scope. Washington has also begun employing many organizations and individuals to do their bidding within Armenian society. One subversive character that readily comes to mind is Ara Manoogian. This particular diasporan weirdo, also a PFA member, recently went as far as calling on Armenians to refrain from donating to perhaps only diasporan organization of integrity, the United Armenia Fund (UAF). After he was criticized by members of the American-Armenian community, he somewhat toned-down his rhetoric. This weirdo engages in relentless and vicious propaganda assaults against Armenia using various public venues in the United States. Similar to what his colleagues do today, he simply complies all the negative stories that takes place in Armenia and uses them to shock the audience. And at the end of his doom&gloom monologues, he almost always calls on people to repatriate to Armenia. If you have the stomach, or the patience, please take a look for yourselves -

Return to Armenia, Interview with Ara Manoogian, October 19, 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5msv3sc03ZY

Return to Armenia - Interview with Ara Manoogian - May 25, 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMpLgqylX_k

Exploiting Harry Bronozian's political illiteracy and severe naiveté, this garbage collector/smut peddler spends 99% of his time describing Armenia as nothing less than hell on earth... he then calls on people to move to Armenia. Is this a nasty joke? I wish it was merely a joke. This is in fact their modus operandi. This approach has clearly become a discernible pattern, and it is being repeated again-and-again by various interconnected individuals and organizations - all of them in one way or another connected to Washington. They put together a collage of bad news from Armenia and they exploit them using emotional rhetoric to spread hopelessness, frustration, anger and desperation within the community. And then they call on the community to repatriate. Their approach serves to destroy hope and enthusiasm. This approach also serves to gradually break down the Armenian spirit thereby weakening the emotional bond Armenians have with their homeland. With the distraught look on the faces of the people present on the evening of January 27, I'm afraid their approach is working. For more information on Washington's information war against Armenia and the world, please read the following two blog entries -

Washington's Media Blitz Against Armenia: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2011/02/american-media-blitz-against-armenia.html

US Launches Cyber Spy Operation Against The World: http://theriseofrussia.blogspot.com/2011/04/us-launches-cyber-spy-operation-april.html

Garbage collectors and smut peddlers like Karen Hakobian and Ara Manoogian are not the only ones engaged in psychological warfare against Armenia today. In varying degrees, there are many organizations and individuals currently engaged in this information war. Some that readily come to mind are: Policy Forum Armenia, Armenian Assembly of America, Radio Liberty, ArmeniaNow, Hetq, Lragir, Asbarez, Armenian Weekly, Tony Halpin, John Hughes, Rick Ney, Richard Giragosian, Raffi Hovanissian, Garin Hovanissian, Onnik Krokorian, Levon Parseghyan, Nanore Barsoumian, Edik Baghdasaryan and Liana Aghajanian and Arthur Sakunts. When observing some of their work, some similarities become quite apparent, as if they have been cut out of the same mold. The observable similarities are most probably a result of "workshops" and "seminars" they get to attend during their NGO "meetings" or "conventions". For instance, consider the following are two articles by Nanore Barsumian that recently appeared in the Armenian Weekly. Certain parts of the work in question, as well as its overall spirit and scope, is almost identical to what Karen Hakobian was doing during his house-of-horror show on January 27 -

To Maim and Kill with Impunity: http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/01/27/to-maim-and-kill-with-impunity/

Barsoumian: ‘The Army in Reality’: http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/02/06/barsoumian-the-army-in-reality/comment-page-1/

I don't want to come across as if I'm justifying the actions of Armenia's thugs or whitewashing the bad things that occur there. I am appalled by some of the things I see happening in Armenia - as much as I am appalled by some of the things I see happening in the United States of America. Yes folks, we all know there are severe problems in Armenia, as in much of the world. We also know that Armenia is far from being perfect, as is most of the world. We also know, however, that Armenia is slowly yet surely progressing in the right direction. The Armenia of today is better than the Armenia of five, ten, fifteen and twenty years ago. At this pace, the Armenia of five years later will be better than the Armenia of today. We also know that the current president in Armenia has been a great improvement over the previous two. We also know that despite the many odds stacked up against it, Armenia is the most stable nation in the region today. Although small, impoverished, remote, landlocked and embattled, Armenia is also the only nation in the southern Caucasus that has not only held onto its territory but it has also expanded. It's the responsibility of each and every one of us to protect Armenia's evolutionary process.

The approach of our "rights" activists isn't simply that there are problems in the republic that need addressing, their approach is - everything in Armenia is terrible and there is no hope. Therefore, according to them - Armenia needs regime change. Similar to what the West has accomplished in other former Soviet nations, the tactical (short-term) intent of their psychological warfare against Armenia is to sow hopelessness and discontent, and their strategic (long-term) intent is to replace Armenia's pro-Russian government with one that meekly serves the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance. Again, as I have pointed out in numerous previous occasions, it all boils down to Armenia's alliance with Russia. Had Armenia's leadership been comfortably in bed with Washington they would be considered the darlings of the Caucasus and our nation's garbage collectors and smut peddlers would be unemployed today.

In my opinion, Western operatives are more dangerous to Armenia than Turkey's Gray Wolves - for they are terminal cancers within our national body. Whereas the Turk can only threaten to harm Armenia physically, Western operatives can destroy Armenians spiritually. Spiritual destruction is much more dangerous than physical destruction because it is irreversible. Nations die only when their spirit is compromised. Officials of the empire fully understand this basic concept, and that is why their operatives are given the tasks of actively working on eroding the Armenian spirit. In a strong sense, the unsavory characters and subversive organizations I noted above are the Armenian version of Libya's NTC and Syria's SNC. These are some of the filthy low-lives we will see on television excusing and explaining why NATO forces, for instance, will have to bomb Stepanakert to save freedom loving Armenians in Yerevan from Nagorno Karabakh's brutal dictators.

Armenians are running away from negative propaganda

By relentlessly obsessing over every single social problem they can get their hands on in the country, what Armenia's Western led/inspired activists and "opozitsia" types have been doing in recent years is creating mass hysteria. This mass hysteria is what many Armenians today are running away from. It astonishes me that more people don't see this. Our people's tunnel-vision isn't allowing them to realize that practically the whole world today is plunging into severe economic and political hardships. Due to Armenia's societal culture (shortcuts to the law is deeply ingrained within Armenians), its size, its geography and its lack of natural wealth, there will continue to be socioeconomic hardships in Armenia despite our best efforts to curb "corruption". Even if every single one of Armenia's nasty "oligarchs" suddenly turned into pretty-little-angels-with-white-wings, Armenia will continue to suffer from severe economic hardships simply due to its size, lack of natural wealth, geography and societal mentality. Thus, the never ending Washington-led fight against corruption, even in the best of circumstances, is merely a distraction.

Having said that, with positive propaganda and constructive political activism, any people will be encouraged to tolerate any kind of hardship. With a healthy and positive approach to sociopolitical matters, any people will stay put and partake in nation building. Therefore, Armenians don't need to disseminate to the world every piece of bad story they come across. Indulging in apocalyptic news stories has become a sadomasochistic sport for many Armenians these days. The nastier the news, the more excited the Armenian gets today. The constant negativity and relentless anti-state hostility is causing serious despair, hopelessness and hysteria. At the end of the day, the people are running away from this hysteria.

Therefore, it's not Dodi Gago, it's not Nemets Rubo, it's not Chorny Gago... the damn "opozitsia" and Western activists are the main reasons why the nation is emptying today. What Armenia's political opposition has been engaging in for many years has been destructive, corrosive and poisonous anti-state propaganda. This climate has only managed to destroy the spirit of the people. Therefore, next time anyone of you get that powerful urge to badmouth the Armenian state by disseminating negative/poisonous news stories to your friends, try coupling it with at least one or two positive ones. If you don't do this, you are in a way participating in the demoralization/depopulation of the Armenia. And if you are only able to find the bad in Armenia, then please seek psychiatric help for the problem lies within you. The sooner our people's sincere political activists understand these very basic concepts, the sooner will Armenia become a normal nation.

The dangers of Western meddling

Again, for the hard of hearing, Armenia is a work in progress. A tiny, poor, remote, embattled and landlocked nation in the volatile Caucasus coming out of one thousand years of Asiatic/Turkic/Islamic/Bolshevik subjugation is going to have severe sociopolitical matters. Armenia's ailments will most probably require several generations to remedy. Having said that, every bad thing that occurs in Armenia can also be observed occurring even in the finest nations of the West, including the United States of America. The last thing we need,however, is Washington's whores making matters worst.

Beware of the wolves in sheep's clothing. Beware of their lofty rhetoric. Beware of their seemingly humanitarian agendas. And beware of their impressive resumes. These people are the tools that the rabid empire is using to undermine targeted societies. Armenia has been one of the West's targets. The troubling irony is that practically every single one of Armenia's "rights" activists and NGOs are in one way or another under the payroll of an empire that will never recognize the Armenian Genocide and will never see Armenia as a true or worthy ally. Simply put: Armenia is too small, too poor, too remote, too weak, too landlocked, too pro-Russian and too Iran-friendly for the West to take it seriously. Moreover, having serious problems with their regional allies such as Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan does not help Yerevan's standing in Washington either.

The one and only geostrategic agenda of the West in the Caucasus is to oust Russia from the region. In numerous previous blog posts, I have covered the many reason why the West wants Russia out of the Caucasus. To put it in as few words as possible: The West is seeking unhindered energy exploitation in the region as well as the political isolation of the Russian Federation. Without a Russian presence in the Caucasus, the region in question has the propensity to turn into a Turkic/Islamic cesspool. Therefore, the formula is simple: No Russia in the Caucasus means no Armenia in the Caucasus. Thus, any individual within Armenian society that publicly criticizes Armenia's close alliance with Moscow or tries to undermine it, is ultimately a traitor to Armenia.

Armenians also need to be aware that starting with Levon Petrosian's attempted color revolution in 2008, foreign interests have also began exploiting anti-Artsakh and anti-Artsakhtsi sentiments throughout Armenian society. Thus, make no mistake about it, they have already sown the seeds of an internal tribal conflict within Armenian society as well. And if allowed to cultivate, this destructive seed will bear fruit for them sometime in the future. Therefore, the disturbing scenario in which Hayastantsi Armenians and Artsakhtsi Armenians picking up arms against each other sometime in the future as a disinterested diaspora watches from abroad is a very real possibility.

A panel group that called for revolution and chaos

The ugly event at Saint Leon church on the evening of January 27 reminded me of yet another more high-level panel discussion that only recently called for revolution, chaos and upheaval as a means of uprooting "entrenched corruption" in Armenia (to view it please access video link below this commentary). This particular gathering of much bigger "experts" was sponsored by none-other-than the impressive sounding "Carnegie Endowment For International Peace" and it was proctored by none-other-than John Evans, the former ambassador to Armenia. The topic of discussion was, of course, Armenia and the panelists were Richard Giragosian, Emil Danielyan, Levon Parseghyan and Alexander Iskandaryan.

Of the four Armenians featured, the only respectable individual present at the event was Alexander Iskandaryan. Besides Iskandaryan, who tried hard to remain nuanced and refrained from attacking his homeland, all the rest took their turns enthusiastically spewing poison against their government.

Emil Danielyan, who writes for the CIA operation known as Radio Liberty, claimed at one point during his propaganda assault against Yerevan - "...unfortunately, I am not an optimist... there is no such change on the horizon... and I think it would take some major upheaval, some kind of a revolution to put Armenia on a really democratic path".

Not to be seen outperformed on his home turf by his colleague's words, one of Washington's main servants in Armenia, agent Richard Giragosian, went a step further. Replying to an Azeri audience member who was apparently under the hopeful impression that Armenia is descending into chaos and isolation (in large part thanks to how the republic was portrayed by panelists), agent Richard Giragosian said - "if it's chaos [in Armenia], then I like chaos, because it may threaten entrenched power".

Well, there you have it folks! Major upheaval! Revolution! Chaos! All this simply to set Armenia on the wonderful path to "democracy" - as envisioned by Washington of course.

Like I have been saying, these self-destructive peasants and mercenaries presenting themselves as representative of Armenia are the Armenian version of Libya's NTC and Syria's SNC, minus the Al-Qaeda connection. Nevertheless, these filth would be the ones on CNN and BBC enthusiastically explaining and excusing the NATO bombing of Armenia if, God forbid, that day ever arrives. And believe me, that day would arrive the very next day after Armenia is deprived of its Russian military presence. We all know that the West does not care about women's rights or even gay rights; all they care about is their rights to exploit cheap central Asian oil and gas free of Russia and Iran. Without a Russian military presence in the region, the West is fully capable of placing Armenia under Turkish, Azeri or Georgian oversight... or just simply shatter it into pieces like they have done to Serbia, Iraq, Libya and Syria.

In a certain sense, Western agent Giragosian's fear-mongering rhetoric and Western mercenaries Emil Danielyan's and Levon Barseghyan's utter pessimism were amusing to observe from my vantage point. These shameless servants of the Western alliance obviously felt very confidant and empowered that they were speaking on behalf of the empire and within the empire of all places. In essence, these shameless servants of the empire happily arrived at the imperial court to publicly kiss the emperor's ass. As the jubilant public (including many Azeris) watched attentively, the kissing was carried out flawlessly. And I'm sure the servants were wined and dined and their pockets lined afterwards.

But let's please not talk about "bribes" because in the exceptionalism of the empire, giving bribes is called providing "aid" or giving "donations" - similar to how Western mercenaries are called "military contractors", terrorists working for Western intelligence agencies are called "rebels", torture in Western prisons is called "enhanced interrogation techniques", invasions of sovereign nations by the West are called "military interventions to protect civilian populations"...

How the empire exploits its assets

Nevertheless, besides the enthusiastic public display of ass kissing, the only thing the panel group accomplished was to simply air Armenia's dirty laundry for the emperor to smell. After all, Washington is the holy anointed one that decides who is clean, who is dirty, who is good and who is bad in this world. And more recently, the all-mighty one in question has been busy deciding who lives and who dies.

These types of gatherings are one of the manners with which the empire exploits it well placed assets against targeted nations. By taking Armenia's natural growing pains and laying it at the feet of the emperor, what these self-destructive peasants and mercenaries accomplished was participating in Washington's decades long information war against Armenia. By taking Armenia's internal matters and displaying it in the imperial court, what these self-destructive peasants and mercenaries accomplished was the further demoralization of an already demoralized Armenia.

Gatherings such as this is how Western powers organize, inspire, fund and sometimes arm "opposition" groups similar to what they have done in Serbia, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Iran. Having said that, the only ones I blame here are the Armenian participants. Armenians need to wake up and realize that Armenia's natural growing pains are being exploited by imperial powers to undermine the fledgling republic due to Armenia's strategic partnership with Russia - and they are using Armenians to get it done.

Most of the traitors and mercenaries posing as professors, historians, journalists, political experts or humanitarian activists on television these days get their primary training within various prestigious US universities. Many of them are imported into the United States on grants. After graduating, they enter various prestigious Washingtonian institutions where they are trained further by experienced "experts" in their respective field.

This is how these low-lives become the well-dressed and well-spoken mercenaries we see on CNN and BBC. It's basically a large network of well paid whores from around the world. But that's not all. There are also many Washingtonian grants that encourage the establishment of politically motivated None-Governmental Organizations (NGO). Even the name NGO is disinformation. Generally speaking, American NGOs are as non-governmental as the Federal Reserve is federal. Many NGOs, if not most, are in fact connected to or exploited by the vast political establishment centered in Washington. There are well-funded NGOs today for virtually anything and everything under the sun. Then there are so-called political "think tanks" that play the role of adviser and/or analyst in targeted nations. Simply put, what we have is a very well organized, well funded and highly interconnected network of individuals and organizations engaged in projecting the political agendas of the Western alliance within targeted nations.

These organizations often look very innocent or even quite benevolent on the outside but the reality is that many of them play subversive roles in targeted nations around the world. We have seen enough of these types of organizations in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, South America, Central Asia and the Far East to know how they operate and in fact how dangerous they are. We are currently seeing them at their bloody worst in places like Libya, Syria and Iran.

As mentioned, Armenia is a work in progress. Armenia is a nation that has suffered a thousand years of damage. This damage - cultural, psychical as well as genetic - won't be fixed overnight. Tiny, poor, landlocked, remote and surrounded by historic enemies and dubious friends in one of the nastiest of political environments, our embattled homeland will naturally have many sociopolitical problems. But it's our duty as its loving children to be understanding, objective, rational, constructive, positive and patient. The following statements need to be imprinted within hearts-and-minds of all Armenians and used as a ideological template when it comes to sociological and political matters pertaining to Armenia -

Armenia's natural growing pains are being exploited by imperial powers to undermine the fledgling republic due to Armenia's strategic partnership with Russia.

Had Armenia's "corrupt" leadership been comfortably in bed with the leadership in Washington, none of our nation's doom&gloom activists today would have been given the opportunity to spew their poison against our fledgling homeland. Since some farsighted leaders in Yerevan have courageously made the decision to remain firmly within Russia's political orbit, Washington has its lackeys running around Armenian society acting hysterical over sociopolitical matters in Armenia.

Our "rights activists" and "opozitsia" types need to shed their Western connections if they want to be taken seriously; they need to keep their fight strictly in Armenia; they need to provide rational solutions and alternatives to the problems at hand; instead of calling for the whole government or the president to step down, they need to begin targeting select individuals known to be engaging in crime or corruption; they need to figure out a way to work with the government or within the government; they need to be clearer in their demands; and they need to understand that if the current regime falls, it wont be Armenian patriots that will be taking over.

As bad as it may seem at times, what Armenia has been going through is natural growing pains. Historically speaking, twenty years is merely a blink of the eye. Due to Armenia's particular circumstances, its growing pains may at times be severe. We must not lose sight of that. We must also not lose sight of the fact that most nations on earth today (nation in much better circumstances than Armenia) are in fact much worst-off than Armenia. Armenia has in fact made notable progress despite all the odds against it.

Who gave Washington the right to judge nations? Who says the West is the standard all the rest have to follow? Why do we care what politically motivated Western organizations have to say about Armenia's ranking in anything? Was the Western world born this developed, this progressive or this wealthy, or did it have to travel a very long path to get to where it is today?

The Western world, including the United States, took hundreds years to reach where it is today. The Western world is where it is today due to wars of plunder, grand theft, genocide and human exploitation. A little over century ago, during our great-grandparents' time, America's robber barons (e.g. Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans, Goulds, Vanderbilts, Du Ponts, etc.) used their immense fortunes to buy into the American political system, forever blurring the line between politics and business. These oligarchs used their powerful influences to impact the making of political legislation. The political system in the United States was manipulated by America's oligarchs to serve their businesses and to preserve their immense wealth. Although it has been in a decline in recent years, the American middle class essentially grew as a result of feeding on the crumbs that were falling off the lavish banquet tables of the nation's super wealthy.

The Western world has severe forms of all kinds of corruption. It can be argued that Western corruption is by-far the most egregious, albeit more sophisticated. The main difference between corruption in the West and corruption in a place like Armenia is that corruption in the West is reserved for the political/financial elite, whereas in a place like Armenia all layers of society can engage in it. Moreover, Armenia is tiny, any form of wrong doing can immediately be seen or felt. Through legislation, the practice of corruption has evolved to become fully institutionalized in the Western world; therefore, in the West, corruption is not for the common folk. Whereas Armenia has a conglomeration of mafia type "families" engaging in corruption, corruption in the United States, for instance, is reserved for the empire's elite entities (e.g. military industrial complex, political lobbying groups, pentagon, oil industry, Wall Street, pharmaceuticals industry, etc).

Who gave the political West the right to criticize and attack nations that are not as developed? What right does the West have to impose its system upon others? Why do tyrannical nation that are allied to the West get a free pass, while those who are not politically aligned to it cannot do anything right? What right does the West have to rate, label or categorize any nation? And how foolish are the rest of us to actually listen to what they say?

Similar to what imperial powers did in the past with religion, the very notion of democracy and human rights today have been weaponized by Washington. As a matter of fact, everything today is becoming weaponized by Washington. Money is weaponized. Religion is weaponized. Energy is weaponized. Food is weaponized. Atheism is weaponized. Scientific research is weaponized. Gay rights is weaponized. Feminism is weaponized.The news is weaponized. Entertainment is weaponized. Humanitarian aid is weaponized. The English language has become weaponized. Globalism has become weaponized. Fighting corruption has become weaponized. Anything and everything that can be used against a targeted nation for a political and/or economic purpose is systematically becoming weaponized by Washington.

The thing called democracy for an immature nation like Armenia can very well prove fatal. As the events of early 2008 clearly showed us all, Armenians are not yet politically mature enough to actually be given the responsibility of electing their leadership. We have seen the destruction "democracy" has visited upon undeveloped or underdeveloped nations throughout the world. Which may be why some vulnerable nations on Washington's black list are being prescribed a heavy dose of democracy. A nation like Armenia, just coming out of under a thousand years or Asiatic/Islamic/authoritarian rule, simply cannot have the proper national institutions with which to flirt with a liberal democratic process. For the foreseeable future, a Russian style - top heavy - democracy is what Armenia needs.

Similar to situations in nations such as Greece and Italy, corruption in Armenia is firmly rooted in the nation's culture. Therefore, toppling the Armenian government will not solve the problem of corruption in Armenia. Governments are an accurate reflection of their constituency. When we look at the Armenian leadership, what we see is an accurate reflection of the population's character/nature. Besides which, corruption in society, any society, cannot be eliminated, it can only be managed.

Diasporan Armenians need to stop treating Armenia as their laboratory experiment or their playground. Diasporan Armenians need to realize that those amongst them that have gotten into trouble in the country are the ones ones that have arrogantly or foolishly bitten more than they could chew. Due to Armenia small size, its normal growing pains (domestic problems that are normal in much of the world) seem magnified. Severity of problems in Armenia are often times simply matter of perception.

In the irrational/utopian pursuits of building the Armenia of their fantasies, a significant portion of Armenians today are actually hurting the Armenia of our reality. Armenia's many natural growing pains need to be addressed rationally, responsibly, objectively, constructively, with patience and, more importantly - free of Western manipulation! What Armenians need to realize is that Armenia needs political and social evolution, not a Western sponsored revolution, chaos or upheaval!

It's high time to wake up

The Cold War is long over. It is time to wake-up from our deep sleep and see that Washington has become a source of evil around the world. Due to Western interventions, the world today stands on the brink of a major global catastrophe. Those who do not see this are blind. Fearing that emerging powers may effectively compete against them, the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance is on a global rampage. They are after strategic reserves of energy and control of major transit routes. They want to isolate Russia and they want to keep China dependent. For the foreseeable future, nations such as Armenia will remain an obstacle for them. Therefore, any Armenian that maintains any ties with the political West is ultimately a traitor to the Armenian homeland - regardless of their intentions. Therefore, such men need to be under constant surveillance by Armenian and Russian counter-terrorism units alike. Moreover, Yerevan needs to either shutdown or closely monitor any organization inside Armenia that is being funded by Western countries, regardless of the nature of their activities.

Armenians must finally learn that the last thing on the minds of Western officials is human rights, democracy or freedom. Armenians must learn that the political West is simply interested in pushing Russia out of the region, defeating Iran and exploiting Central Asian energy. Armenians must finally understand that the political West will always side with Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan due to their strategic location, size and natural wealth. Armenians must understand that in the grand geopolitical scheme of the current world we all live in, Armenia is nothing but a nuisance for the Western alliance. Armenians, diasporan Armenians in particular, urgently need to stop participating in Washington's destructive games regardless of how well intentioned they seem.

Moreover, the panel discussions sponsored by the "Carnegie Endowment For International Peace" should also finally put to rest the silly idea that John Evans is one of the "good" officials from Washington. What happened with John Evans several years ago may very well have been staged so that he could become the overseer/manager of the empire's Armenian community. Soft spoken and "well intentioned" characters like John Even is how the empire manipulates/controls its subjects. Governments regularly play good guy/bad guy routines; ambassador John Evans and Congressman Frank Pallone are supposedly the good guys.

The following link is to the notorious panel discussion in which chaos was called for in Armenia by a well respected American intelligence agent working in Armenia. This Carnegie Endowment sponsored event was called "Lessons Learned From 20 Years of Independence and Statebuilding". I would just like to add that the only real lesson that should have been learned during the past twenty years was to stay as far away from Washington as possible. Sadly, that is a lesson that has not yet been learned by our diverse peasantry.

Lessons Learned From 20 Years of Independence and Statebuilding: Armenia: http://www.carnegieendowment.org/2011/11/28/lessons-learned-from-20-years-of-independence-and-statebuilding-armenia/7w0z

In closing, I would like to introduce the following two articles, one written by a highly respected American-Armenian community leader, Harout Sassounian, and one written by former Under-Secretary-General of UN, Benon Sevan. Their articles are directly related to this very urgent subject matter plaguing Armenian society today. When I first read Mr. Sevan's work in particular, I thought to myself - finally, objectivity, rationale and wisdom being spoken by an Armenian about Armenia. Please read Mr. Sevan's lucid commentary. For many years I have been talking about what Mr. Sevan describes as "excessive negativism and constant attacks jeopardiz(ing) Armenia's development". A positive, constructive, objective and a well-informed approach to Armenia's problems is something that been sorely missing within Armenian circles in recent years. We are being bombarded with poisonous rhetoric regarding our fledgling homeland and the resulting demoralization is being exploited by certain intelligence agencies against the Armenian state. I am glad that a public person has finally spoke up about this very dangerous situation Armenia faces.

Arevordi
February, 2012

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EXCESSIVE NEGATIVISM AND CONSTANT ATTACKS JEOPARDIZE ARMENIA'S DEVELOPMENT

By Benon Sevan (former Under-Secretary-General of UN)

It is truly disheartening to read the ongoing negative reports and columns in some news outlets in the Diaspora and Armenia regarding the current political, economic and social conditions in the Republic of Armenia, as well as the constant efforts by certain personalities and political parties to denigrate the Government of Armenia and its record.

Of all the hundreds of negative reports, is not there at least a single positive development to report on? Contrary to the ongoing politically motivated negativism, there are indeed many successes and improvements achieved in Armenia which deserve to be congratulated and encouraged. One gets tired of reading what is being said by all these so-called pundits, rabble-rousers, including self-serving former government officials pursuing their own personal agenda to bring about a regime change not through the ballot box but through encouraging a mob culture. Unfortunately, what we have been witnessing is indeed tragic with the potential of dire consequences to the stability of the young Republic that recently celebrated its 20th Anniversary.

No country has become democratic right away. It is categorically wrong and naïve to measure democracy in Armenia, which gained its independence only twenty years ago, with the same measuring stick used for democracies in other countries, such as France, the United Kingdom and the United States, which took centuries to reach their current stage of democracy. I ask all those who have adopted a negative attitude to read history. It was not the Armenians who invented the guillotine; it was not the Armenians who hanged their opponents from the Tower of London; and it was not the Armenians who practiced slavery and/or segregation based on color or race. How long did it take for some of Europe’s democracies to give their women the right to vote?

In as much as one can understand the impatience and frustration expressed with regard to the current situation in Armenia, we have no alternative but to be patient. One cannot simply bring about democracy through legislation alone; nor can it be imported or imposed through the barrel of the gun or by rousing the mob. We must fully bear in mind our history: over 70 years of communist rule, preceded by about two years of a most fragile independence, and by over five centuries of Ottoman rule.

We simply cannot divorce ourselves from the burden and dire consequences of having lived under occupation for so many centuries. Regardless of our impatience and desire to witness a truly democratic state of Armenia, we have no alternative to being patient, because it takes time to develop democracy, economic and social development, and civil society, as well as true democratic reforms. We need to develop, among other things, political maturity, change of mentality and outlook, which take time and cannot be achieved through legislation alone. Nor can they be achieved through the mob.

Undoubtedly, the Republic of Armenia, similar to many other countries, has its own share of serious difficulties, compounded by the current political and economic crisis and uncertainties worldwide, and its geographical location in a rather dangerous neighborhood, blockaded by Turkey and Azerbaijan, and with an ambiguous relationship with Georgia. Undoubtedly, there is much to be desired with regard to the prevalent political, economic and social conditions in Armenia. There are, among others, corrupt practices, inconsistencies in the application of the justice system, as well as poverty and unemployment that forces many Armenians to emigrate. Are these conditions unique only to Armenia? How about the current high unemployment figures and the deteriorating social conditions in some of the strongest democratic states as well as their financial difficulties requiring massive bailouts, and facing possible defaults?

It is long overdue for Mr. Levon Ter-Petrossian, the first President of the Republic of Armenia, to stop his corrosive activities pursuing his personal agenda through endless rallies to bring about a regime change. He should look into the mirror and remember what went on during his own administration and should review his own record and legacy before throwing stones at others. Some of the current practices, which he has been so critical of, started during his own administration. Mr. Ter-Petrossian, if you want to become the next President of the Republic of Armenia, organize yourself peacefully and put your candidacy during the next election. Let the people decide who should be the President through their ballots. Stop your divisive and destructive actions, calling constantly for demonstrations which might get out of hand with very serious consequences.

Irrespective of the negativism prevailing among certain circles, both within Armenia and the Diaspora, Armenia has indeed a considerable number of talented and fully committed professionals, both within the Government, the Ministries and the private sector, as well as in different segments of the society. We should recognize and give credit where it is due for all the progress being made. We should all unite and spare no effort in supporting and encouraging them to speed up the development of democratic institutions, as well as strengthening the economy and raising the living standards.

In conclusion, I appeal to all political leaders, political pundits, and the media, both in Armenia and the Diaspora, to refrain from any action that may incite violence. I should also like to appeal to all my compatriots to concentrate their efforts and energies towards the strengthening of the young Republic. All Armenians should unite because we complement each other; our survival as Armenians is truly inter-dependent. The strengthening and the security as well as good governance, economic and social development of the Republic of Armenia should be the primary objective of all of us, above all other interests.

Benon Sevan

Sassounian: Hanging Armenia’s Dirty Laundry in Public

Harut Sassounian, the publisher of The California Courier newspaper, is the President of the United Armenian Fund

President Serge Sarkisian made an important appearance at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg last week. In a whirlwind 30-minute speech, he covered Armenia’s internal and foreign affairs, presenting his country in the best possible light before a distinguished foreign audience. On the domestic front, Sarkisian spoke about fighting corruption, holding “fair and transparent elections,” and overcoming “the consequences of the tragic events of March 2008.”

The president then reminded the European Parliamentarians about Armenia’s “shared historical and cultural legacy” with Europe and discussed the ongoing negotiations to resolve the Artsakh (Karabagh) conflict. He condemned “the extreme level of Armenophobia and racism” in Azerbaijan and spoke of the difficulty of making “a concession to the side that is looking for a convenient excuse to shoot at us.”

Sarkisian went on to accuse the Turkish government of undermining the “normalization” of Armenia-Turkey relations “by setting preconditions and failing to honor its commitments, which rendered the ratification of the signed protocols impossible.” He called on Turkey and Azerbaijan to end the “unlawful blockade imposed on Armenia” and accused Turkey of “not only failing to recognize, but also engaging in a policy of blatant denial of the genocide of Armenians committed in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.” He pledged that Armenians and all those concerned with crimes against humanity “will henceforth remain focused on the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.”

After his speech, Sarkisian spent another 30 minutes answering questions from PACE delegates representing Lithuania, France, Switzerland, Russia, Moldova, Holland, Armenia, and Ireland. Five Azerbaijanis had placed their names on the list of parliamentarians to ask questions, but none of them did so. The delegates from Turkey had also made a unanimous decision not to question the Armenian president, as reported by Hurriyet Turkish newspaper.

The question that attracted the most attention was the one asked by Parliamentarian Zaruhi Postanjyan from Armenia, a member of the opposition Heritage Party. She told Sarkisian: “Since an authoritarian regime has been established in Armenia and all elections from 1995 on have been rigged,” wouldn’t it be preferable if he organized special and fair elections and then “resigned”?

As the Turkish president of PACE, Mevlut Cavusoglu snickered at the question, while Sarkisian calmly responded that he was well aware of Postanjyan’s views, which she had freely expressed in the Armenian Parliament, on the street, and in the media. He added that he was not prepared to hold special elections because it is neither necessary nor constitutionally feasible to organize such elections. He urged Postanjyan to participate in the next regularly scheduled parliamentary elections.

Not surprisingly Sarkisian’s PACE speech was welcomed by his supporters and criticized by his opponents at home. The most important issue for all concerned should have been whether the president’s impressive words would translate into action in the near future. However, the immediate controversy revolved around the appropriateness of Postanjyan’s criticism of the president while on foreign soil.

Some Armenian politicians were of the opinion that it was improper for Postanjyan “to attack” Sarkisian in the chambers of the European Council. Others felt that her “harsh words” inadvertently made the president look good, because in a truly “authoritarian regime,” she would have been excluded from Armenia’s delegation, stripped of her parliamentary immunity, and prosecuted. In fact, some European Parliamentarians wondered whether Turkish or Azeri delegates would dare to criticize their president at PACE.

American politicians use the expression “politics stops at the water’s edge” to indicate their willingness to set aside internal disputes for the sake of presenting a united front to outsiders. Applying that adage to Armenia, one could question the wisdom of making such disparaging comments before the Council of Europe, regardless of whether one agrees with the president or his policies. Since Armenia is routinely attacked by Turkish and Azerbaijani delegates in international forums, it is unwise to add one’s voice to those tarnishing Armenia’s reputation.

This issue also comes up when some Armenians try to pressure their authorities by taking their internal disputes to foreign governments and international courts. While their frustration is understandable, dragging a foreign entity into an internal dispute detracts from Armenia’s image overseas. In such cases, however, the blame must be shared by the Armenian government for failing to ensure the integrity of domestic courts, thereby forcing citizens to turn elsewhere for justice.

Before making critical comments about Armenia’s leadership outside the country, especially by parliament members who have ample opportunity to express their views at home, one must weigh the benefits of pressuring the authorities to respect the people’s rights with the damage caused to the country’s international reputation.

Source: http://www.armenianweekly.com/2011/06/28/sassounian-hanging-armenia%E2%80%99s-dirty-laundry-in-public/

Western War Crimes Around the World - January, 2012

2012-01-13T10:03:00.000-08:00

"Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy"

Henry Kissinger

More than ever before, US servicemen (and sometimes women) are enthusiastically living up to Kissinger's expectations of them... Having discussed the geopolitical aspects of the American war machine in previous blog posts, I would now like to briefly discusses the cultural decay plaguing the forces of freedom and democracy. We are finally seeing the face of the ugly American is all its glory. US Marines, once a honorable fighting forces worthy of warrior's respect, have again been documented desecrating bodies of dead enemy combatants. This most recent war crime involving Western troops in the region is said to have occurred sometime last spring or summer. Thus, it can be safely surmised that the incident was already known by at least some military leaders and only became a matter of contention inside Washington as a result of the incident becoming public knowledge.

Despite how the incident will now be portrayed by civilian and military officials in Washington, I want to point out that such acts are much more common than they are portrayed by the empire's propaganda outlets.

This latest incident comes several months after Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine published leaked photographs showing American troops gleefully posing for pictures with dead militants in Afghanistan. When we juxtapose these inhumane acts with the frequently occurring indiscriminate killing of unarmed civilians and the utter destruction visited throughout Afghanistan, what we have are ghastly war crimes being committed by the forces of freedom and democracy on a regular basis. But Afghanistan is not the only place Western forces have turned into a shooting gallery.

A little less than two years ago Wikileaks released a video clip graphically depicting how scores of civilians, including two Reuters reporters, were killed in an American helicopter assault in Iraq. For more information on this incident, please see link called collateral murder below this commentary. We learned about these quite common occurrences in Iraq after the egregious war crimes that took place in Haditha and Falluja and information on widespread torture and murder in Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay prisons were leaked out to the public. And, just like in Afghanistan, when we juxtapose these barbaric acts in Iraq with the frequently occurring indiscriminate killing of unarmed civilians and the utter destruction visited throughout the country, we have had in Iraq are ghastly war crimes responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Shootings and bombs are not the only way innocents have been murdered by Western forces. Economic sanctions imposed on Baghdad by Washington during the 1990s utterly devastate Iraq. Economic sanctions alone have killed an estimated five hundred thousand Iraqis just during the time period in question. And there's more.

American Use Of DU is "A crime against humanity which may, in
the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time."
US Iraq Military Vets "are on DU death row, waiting to die."

James Denver

One of the least talked about horrors of the war in Iraq has been the devastating effects of depleted uranium on the Iraqi population and Western troops alike. The use of thousands of tons of ammunition containing depleted uranium has polluted the landscape throughout Iraq; drastically increasing the rate of cancers such as leukemia. For more information on the horrible impact the use of depleted uranium has had on the civilian population in Iraq, please see the article posted towards the bottom of this page.

History will recognize the barbaric occupation of Mesopotamia by Western forces as one of the most horrific episodes in the region's long and troubled history.

In an effort to rearrange their military assets in the region in preparation for a possible showdown against Iran, Western officials have officially ended their mission in Iraq. After utterly destroying a nation (by essentially breaking it up into three pieces) and being responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children by bringing Western style "democracy" into Iraq, US troops have for the most part finally departed from Iraq; although the occupation of the country by continues by other means. After being administered a heavy dose of Western style democracy, Iraq today lies fractured, desolate and, as noted above, contaminated by thousands of tons of depleted uranium.

Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently Libya are the glaring examples of Western style "freedom and democracy" at work in the world today. Are Syria and Iran next?

Ugly incidents such as the ones below this commentary (and far-far worst things you and I are not allowed to see or are simply not informed of) are nothing unique when it comes to Western style warfare in the 21 century. From Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Pakistan, such war crimes have been played out thousands of times during the past twenty somewhat years. We may even get to see such things happening in places like Iran and Syria and God knows wherever else they are next 0planning on turning into a shooting gallery.

This blatant disregard for human life and the alarming absence of even the most fundamental aspects of human decency amongst the "civilized" forces of the "democratic" West today speaks volumes about the cultural and spiritual decay of the Western world in general and of the United States in particular.

The barbaric acts of US servicemen have been made public not because the nation's news press have courageously reported on them, but because the rest of the world is talking about them and the empire's propaganda organs posing as news outlets are forced to address the matter. Although horrific incidents involving US troops will, as usual, be portrayed as "rare events" carried out by "stressed" and/or "rouge individuals", I know enough about military culture in the US to know that devilish acts are much more common than they seem. In fact, the psychology (or the pathology) that allows such beastly behavior by US military personal is very common within the armed forced of the United States today.

Thanks to Hollywood's ubiquitous displays of sex and violence and the very popular computer gaming industry (both of which have been fully politicized and weaponized by officials in Washington), a generation of Americans have become totally desensitized to debauchery, murder and gore.

To imagine that some of the Western world's bloodthirsty criminals in uniform have gotten medals for their "heroic" combat duty is sicking to even think about, and it is an absolute insult to all the courageous fighting men and women that have walked this earth. I never thought I'd be this ashamed of the US military. But I also realize that this is no longer the America we once knew and loved and this Pentagon no longer serves the best interests of this nation. The ugly beast lurking within, having suppressed its urges for decades during the Cold War, finally came out of the closet the very day the Soviet Union fell some twenty year ago.

Humanity today desperately needs for Russia and China to get their act in order to stop the Anglo-American-Zionist alliance's global rampages and finally put Washington back in its rightful place - before obscene scenes such as those you are about to learn about below are played out in other nations as well.

Some readers may say: If given the opportunity nations in opposition to the Western alliance would do things just as inhumane and much worst.

Depending on the enemy, that may or may not be true. But that is not the point. The first thing one needs to realize is that the invasion and destruction of Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya were unwarranted, and Iraqis, Afghans and Libyans posed absolutely no threat to the West or any other nation on earth. Thus, what the West has been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is simply put - criminal. What the West most recently did in Libya and what they are currently trying to do in Iran and Syria is criminal as well. Moreover, none of Washington's main enemies/targets today (e.g. Russia, Serbia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq) have ever threatened any Western nation; unlike the war machine serving Washington. The Washington-led Western war machine has invaded quite a few nations during the past thirty somewhat years.

Moreover, and more importantly, it is precisely the United States and not any other nation that is claiming to be upholding "humanitarian" and "democratic" values around the world and it is the United States that is claiming to be the "policeman of the world."

Thus, when underdeveloped/backward nations resort to cruel behavior during war, it is expected and somehow understood. On the other hand, brutality, torture and heinous crime against humanity is being carried out by a political system that proudly touts its adherence to humanitarianism and democracy. When an all-powerful entity that claims to be upholding "western values" around the world resorts to animalistic behavior and frequently engages in war crimes, the situation at hand becomes very-very troubling for the global community.

I have also included on this page links to a two part documentary called "Soldiers of Conscience". I would like to make one important observation about this documentary. After watching it, I was astounded to learn that according to collected data dating back to the Second World War, about 3/4 of American soldiers in the battlefield hesitated to fire on the enemy even in the heat of combat. Human instinct, as it turned out, was/is by nature anti-war and anti-murder. I could imagine just how alarmed the military establishment in the Pentagon would have been about the results of this study.

How can they conceive of offensive and/or illegal wars in the name of plunder when their young soldiers are not bloodthirsty beasts? That Second World War study may in fact explain why Hollywood's products have been so violent in recent decades.

The world revered "pop culture" produced by the entertainment industry of the United States for the past several decades is fundamentally based on three principals - materialism, sex and violence. These are the three basic elements that appeal to the lowest aspect of human nature. In other words, American pop culture appeals to the primordial/animalistic side of our nature. Moreover, because it naturally lacks sophistication and cultural refinement, American pop culture is rather easily disseminated within the masses via music, motion pictures, television programing and radio talk shows. From the senseless violence we see constantly portrayed by Hollywood films to American "rap" style music to the excessively bloody electronic simulation games tens of millions of children play today - killing, in all its glorious gore, is a major theme in American pop culture today.

This is essentially why we have young men and women in America behaving in the manner featured in news reports on this page.

I firmly believe that the ubiquitous violence we see in pop culture in America (and by extension all around the world today) is in no way a product of chance. I strongly believe that the conditioning of America's youth is commissioned by special groups in higher echelons of government and it is being done to desensitize them to death and murder. In my opinion, the military's alarm about the ethical dilemma/handicap of young American soldier's on the battlefields of Second World War and the program to desensitize America's youth to killing through pop culture is intimately connected.

Nevertheless. imagine the military of any other nation on earth today behaving in the manner Western troops have behaved in recent years. Does the following information, which is essentially only the tip of the iceberg, reveal the barbaric nature/character of the much touted forces of "freedom and democracy"? Are these actions crimes against humanity? Are Western forces in fact guilty of egregious war crimes? Weren't actions such as these the excuse Western officials used to invade nations such as Serbia and Libya? Wasn't the West persistently attacking Moscow for its alleged crimes against Chechen civilians? Why aren't we being persistently bombarded with "full coverage" of these actions by the Western press? Why aren't Western officials holding around-the-clock press conferences to discuss these matters?

American exceptionalism may explain why the empire's officials feel free to make and break nations. The following comment by Max Boot (a Russian born Jew who at one time worked for the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal and is currently a Senior Fellow at the CFR) explicitly explains why the arrogant empire is engaged in wars around the world:

"The US military presence abroad has underwritten the expansion of liberty and freedom and free markets over the course of the last 60 years. It is our Army, our Navy, our Air Force, our Marine Corps which defend liberty around the world and prevent conflicts from breaking out. Their most important role is not even to fight wars; it’s to deter adversaries and prevent aggression from occurring. They have kept the peace, in large part, in places like Europe and Asia which have known nothing but war in the past, and they have allowed for the peaceful expansion of those regions, all of which has been very much to America’s benefit. The defense budget is actually very cheap by comparison with what we get for it. We’re spend now well under 5% of our Gross Domestic Product, roughly half of what we were spending during much of the Cold War. And for that, we basically underwrite global security which allows us to be the most prosperous nation in the world and benefit from this international trade of which we are much a major part."

Max Boot

In other words, it's all about money. Nevertheless, the audacity of Max Boot in making such statements is nothing less than breathtaking. Having said that, I'd be the first to admit that I have enjoyed the fruits of the empire's global bloodletting. However, my conscious, my humanity, my ideological convictions and my intellectual integrity will never allow me to excuse or justify the actions of the American empire. Simply put, unlike Max Boot, I am not blinded by my material possessions or a narrow worldview to realize that Washington has become a genuine source of evil around the world in recent decades. Moreover, being a student of history, I also realize that sooner-or-later, large empires fall, and the larger they are the harder they fall. And due to the peculiar dangers of Globalism, this particular empire's eventual fall may drag down with it many nations around the world.

I am willing to tighten my belt and live more simply if that means helping America return to its roots as a republic, and I ask the ruling elite in the American empire to so as well.

In the name of the founding fathers of the United States of America and in the name of humanity, I call on the empire's ruling elite to turn America back to the republic that it was envisioned to be. Downsizing, living frugally, making more with less and redirecting funds to social projects is the very secret to America's survival as a normal nation. But will their imperial arrogance, economic pursuits and gluttony ever allow them to accept this wisdom? I don't know. These convictions of mine, however, make me a true American patriot; but I don't expect the empire's new breed of patriots, its overweight and ignorant Chinese-made American flag waving cattle to understand any of what I'm saying.

One day the global community will come to the sober realization that the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was most probably one of Afghanistan's golden eras; if it ever had one. Where the Soviets built infrastructure, educated Afghanistan's peasantry and eradicated opium production there, the glorious armies of the Western alliance has turned into killing fields and poppy fields. As much I personally dislike communism and was never a fan of the Soviet Union, my ethical and intellectual integrity compels me to admit that mankind will one day look back and realize that one of the blackest pages in world history, the event that led to the sudden rise of the beast, was the sudden fall of the Soviet Union.

We desperately need powerful nations like the Russian Federation and China to put the fear of God back into the hearts-and-minds of the modern American. The world today desperately needs the emergence of multiple political system, the world desperately needs multipolarity in global politics.

Arevordi
January, 2012

***

Collateral Murder (video): http://collateralmurder.com/

WikiLeaks editor on Apache combat video: No excuse for US killing civilians: http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday#p/u/6/7QEdAykXxoM

Soldiers of Conscience: To kill or not to kill? (part 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxrLM21_2f4&feature=video_response

Soldiers of Conscience: To kill or not to kill? (part 2): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3g7PZf4vnA&feature=related

American-British war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoK-HpkVKT4

Video of US marines urinating on Taliban sparks outrage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SljHO-b4YEs

Iraq Miscalculation: America's greatest mistake? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HR6ZWc-NLg

Men of Steal: US troops make a killing in Iraq: http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday#p/u/5/VgP43e1OXbg

US War Crimes in Iraq: http://www.albasrah.net/warcrimes.htm

***

Shock, Outrage Over Marine Urination Video

Officials in the United States and Afghanistan expressed shock and outrage Thursday regarding a video purporting to show a U.S. Marine sniper team urinating on dead bodies, possibly in Afghanistan. "I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a statement. "I condemn it in the strongest possible terms."

Panetta said he has ordered the Marine Corps and International Security Assistance Force Commander Gen. John Allen "to immediately and fully investigate the incident." "This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards of values our armed forces are sworn to uphold," Panetta's statement said. "Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent."

A senior Pentagon official said Panetta was "deeply troubled" after viewing the video. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos said in a statement the behavior is "wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos that we have demonstrated throughout our history." Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, deputy commander of ISAF, called the actions on the video "disgusting."

"Any acts which treat the dead, enemy or friendly, with disrespect are utterly unacceptable and do not represent the standards we expect of coalition forces," Bradshaw said in a video statement. He said he was speaking on behalf of Allen, who is out of the country. An earlier statement from NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said, "ISAF strongly condemns the actions depicted in the video, which appear to have been conducted by a small group of U.S. individuals, who apparently are no longer serving in Afghanistan."

The statement appears to indicate that military officials believe the video is real, even though the Marine Corps says it is still working to verify its origin and authenticity. A senior U.S. military official said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service is the lead investigative agency on the incident. A Marine Corps investigation was also announced Wednesday.

Amos said he has pulled together a team "to thoroughly investigate every aspect of the filmed event." Also, he said he will assign a Marine General Officer and senior attorney, both with combat experience, to conduct an internal preliminary inquiry into the matter.

"Once the investigation and preliminary inquiry are complete and the facts have been determined, then the Marine Corps will take the appropriate next steps," Amos said. "We remain fully committed to upholding the Geneva Convention, the laws of war and our own core values." "We are aware of the video. The hate in it does not represent the U.S. Marine Corps," said Col. Ricco Player, a spokesman for the Marines in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province. "An investigation has been initiated."

The story broke Wednesday when a number of websites, including TMZ and YouTube, posted a video showing four men dressed in Marine combat gear urinating on what appeared to be the dead bodies of three men on the ground in front of them. One of the men says, "Have a great day, buddy." A voice asks, "You got it on the video?" to which another voice responds, "Yeah." Another jokes, "Golden, like a shower."

It was not clear who shot or posted the 39-second video, who the people pictured in it were or where it was shot, though a U.S. official said it was a "reasonable conclusion" it was filmed in Afghanistan. The official, based in Afghanistan, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the U.S. government to investigate the video and hand down the harshest punishment possible.

"The government of Afghanistan is deeply disturbed by a video that shows American soldiers desecrating dead bodies of three Afghans," according to a statement released by the presidential palace on behalf of Karzai. "This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms." A Taliban spokesman called the video "barbaric." "And no religion that follows a holy text would accept such conduct. This inhuman act reveals their real face to the world," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said via text message Thursday.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said in a statement Thursday it "strongly condemns" the actions in the video. "Such actions are reprehensible, dishonor the sacrifices of our military and the American people and violate the core values of both our societies," the embassy said. "Islam gives values and respect to every human being," regardless of which religion the individual follows, said Islamic scholar Mawlawi Enayatullah Baligh. "The value and respect is the same for an alive person and a dead body. Even the body of your enemy in the battleground is respectable in Islam." The video surfaces at a critical time for relations between the United States, the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Earlier this year, the United States outlined its plan to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, beginning by pulling out 33,000 "surge" troops who had been deployed to help quell the violence by the end of 2012. The remaining 68,000 troops would be withdrawn by the end of 2014. Meanwhile, the Taliban tentatively agreed in recent weeks to open an office in Qatar's capital city of Doha, a decision widely seen as an overture aimed at establishing an outside forum for political talks with NATO-led forces and the current Afghan administration, among others.

A senior Marine Corps official who has examined the video said Wednesday that the Marines are carrying 30-caliber sniper rifles and wearing helmets issued to members of Marine sniper teams. The helmets are designed with a shorter front and sides so that snipers can place rifles and scopes near their faces. The official added that the desecration of a body by U.S. troops could be considered a potential war crime.

"We recently became aware of an inappropriate video on a public website that appears to involve members of our military," International Security Assistance Force spokesman Col. Gary Kolb said from Kabul. "We will not speculate on the details but will take all necessary actions to determine the facts."

He said an investigation was under way but would not comment on the video's authenticity. The faces of the bodies are not identifiable. "While we have not yet verified the origin or authenticity of this video, the actions portrayed are not consistent with our core values and are not indicative of the character of the Marines in our Corps," said Marine Corps Media Officer Kendra Hardesty. "This matter will be fully investigated and those responsible will be held accountable for their actions."

Hardesty said the Corps was working to identify the Marines in the video. "Regardless of the circumstances or who is in the video, this is egregious, disgusting behavior," said Department of Defense spokesman Capt. John Kirby. "It's hideous. It turned my stomach."

In a statement released Wednesday, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the video. "If verified as authentic, the video shows behavior that is totally unbecoming of American military personnel and that could ultimately endanger other soldiers and civilians," wrote CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad in a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. "Any guilty parties must be punished to the full extent allowed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice and by relevant American laws."

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/12/us/video-marines-urinating/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

US Army Apologizes for Horrific Photos from Afghanistan

The images are repulsive. A group of rogue US Army soldiers in Afghanistan killed innocent civilians and then posed with their bodies. On Monday, SPIEGEL published some of the photos -- and the US military responded promptly with an apology. Still, NATO fears that reactions in Afghanistan could be violent.

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol. The United States and NATO are concerned that reactions could be intense to the publication of images documenting killings committed by US soldiers in Afghanistan. The images appeared in the most recent edition of SPIEGEL, which hit the newsstands on Monday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already telephoned with her Afghan counterpart to discuss the situation. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon has likewise made contact with officials in Kabul. The case threatens to strain already fragile US-Afghan relations at a time when the two countries are negotiating over the establishment of permanent US military bases in Afghanistan.

In a statement released by Colonel Thomas Collins, the US Army, which is currently preparing a court martial to try a total of 12 suspects in connection with the killings, apologized for the suffering the photos have caused. The actions depicted in the photos, the statement read, are "repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States."

The suspected perpetrators are part of a group of US soldiers accused of several killings. Their court martials are expected to start soon. The photos, the army statement said, stand "in stark contrast to the discipline, professionalism and respect that have characterized our soldiers' performance during nearly 10 years of sustained operations."

Major Public Backlash

At NATO headquarters, there are fears that the coming days could see angry protests in Afghanistan or even potential attacks against NATO units. "The images have an enormous potential here in Afghanistan," one NATO general told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Experience shows that it might take a couple of days, but then people's anger will be vented."

NATO, under the leadership of the US Army, has been preparing for possible publication of the photos for close to 100 days. In dozens of high-level talks with their Afghan partners, military leaders have sought to pursue the same strategy used by the US diplomatic corps in the case of the sensitive diplomatic cables released late last year by WikiLeaks. They warned those most directly affected and made preparations for the photos' appearance in the public sphere. This "strategic communication" was aimed at preventing a major public backlash.

The high ranks of those involved in the talks show just how seriously Washington has taken the problem. US Vice President Joe Biden recently spoke about the case with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The head of all NATO troops in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, likewise met with Karzai. By apologizing and by promising that those responsible will be prosecuted, the US is hoping to prevent Karzai from making any angry public statements on the case.

Whether the effort will ultimately be successful remains to be seen. On Tuesday, Karzai is scheduled to address his country to talk about the transfer of responsibility for his country's security from NATO to Afghanistan. With him will be members of the NATO leadership and the US ambassador to Afghanistan. Karzai's address contains no mention of the so-called "kill team," but the Afghan president is notorious for being unpredictable.

Political Conflict with the US

Observers say the fact that there hasn't been any serious reaction or demonstrations so far doesn't mean the danger has passed. One fact could be that Monday is a holiday in Afghanistan. A high-ranking official in the Afghan Foreign Ministry, who is close to President Karzai, said he believed the development would trigger a serious political conflict with the US.

"I assume we won't see the full effect of this matter until tomorrow, at the very soonest, when people return to work. Many people have Monday off," he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. He said the incidents had been "too outrageous" not to spark protests. "That this is engaging people can be seen by the fact that it is already being discussed on the Internet," he added.

In neighboring Pakistan, where relations with the United States are likewise strained, officials are also watching the matter closely. "We are acknowledging it, but for now it is a matter for the Afghan government to make any charges," a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad said. The release of CIA employee Raymond Davis, who shot two men at the end of January and was let go after paying blood money, as well as the increase in US drone attacks in the western part of the country, triggered angry protests in Pakistan.

The SPIEGEL story printed on Monday includes new details about a series of murders of innocent Afghans committed by a group of US soldiers. One of the accused, Corporal Jeremy Morlock, 22, confessed to the murders three months ago. Morlock is scheduled to face a general court-martial on Thursday. In total, 12 US soldiers who were allegedly part of what has been described as a "kill team" in Afghanistan are expected to go on trial soon.

'They Mowed Him Down'

The piece in SPIEGEL reconstructs some of the atrocities and includes three previously unknown photographs. Among other things, they show two of the suspected killers posing next to a corpse. The victim in the image is Gul Mudin, an Afghan man killed on Jan. 15, 2010 in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. In total, SPIEGEL and SPIEGEL TV has obtained a significant number of photos and videos.

The suspects are accused of having killed civilians for no reason and then of trying to make it look as though the killings had been acts of self-defense. Some of the accused have said the acts had been tightly scripted.

In one incident, which has been reconstructed based on documents from the investigation, the soldiers themselves detonate a hand grenade in order to make it look like they were the subjects of an attack before killing a man. One of those who allegedly participated, Adam Winfield, 21, described the incident to his father in a chat on the social networking site Facebook. "They made it look like the guy threw a grenade at them and mowed him down," SPIEGEL quotes Winfield as having written in the chat.

In a second incident on Feb. 22, 2010, one of the members of the "kill team" who had been carrying an old Russian Kalashnikov, fired it before pulling out another gun and shooting 22-year-old Afghan Marach Agha. In a third incident on May 2, 2010, it appears that a hand grenade attack was again staged before the shooting and killing of Mullah Allah Dad.

The 12 men are also facing further charges of desecration of corpses, illegal possession of photos of corpses, drug abuse and acts of bodily injury against comrades.

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,752310,00.html

Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq

One by one, the Marines sat down, swore to tell the truth and began to give secret interviews discussing one of the most horrific episodes of America’s time in Iraq: the 2005 massacre by Marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha. “I mean, whether it’s a result of our action or other action, you know, discovering 20 bodies, throats slit, 20 bodies, you know, beheaded, 20 bodies here, 20 bodies there,” Col. Thomas Cariker, a commander in Anbar Province at the time, told investigators as he described the chaos of Iraq. At times, he said, deaths were caused by “grenade attacks on a checkpoint and, you know, collateral with civilians.”

The 400 pages of interrogations, once closely guarded as secrets of war, were supposed to have been destroyed as the last American troops prepare to leave Iraq. Instead, they were discovered along with reams of other classified documents, including military maps showing helicopter routes and radar capabilities, by a reporter for The New York Times at a junkyard outside Baghdad. An attendant was burning them as fuel to cook a dinner of smoked carp.

The documents — many marked secret — form part of the military’s internal investigation, and confirm much of what happened at Haditha, a Euphrates River town where Marines killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair, women and children, some just toddlers. Haditha became a defining moment of the war, helping cement an enduring Iraqi distrust of the United States and a resentment that not one Marine has been convicted.

But the accounts are just as striking for what they reveal about the extraordinary strains on the soldiers who were assigned here, their frustrations and their frequently painful encounters with a population they did not understand. In their own words, the report documents the dehumanizing nature of this war, where Marines came to view 20 dead civilians as not “remarkable,” but as routine. Iraqi civilians were being killed all the time. Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar, in his own testimony, described it as “a cost of doing business.”

The stress of combat left some soldiers paralyzed, the testimony shows. Troops, traumatized by the rising violence and feeling constantly under siege, grew increasingly twitchy, killing more and more civilians in accidental encounters. Others became so desensitized and inured to the killing that they fired on Iraqi civilians deliberately while their fellow soldiers snapped pictures, and were court-martialed. The bodies piled up at a time when the war had gone horribly wrong.

Charges were dropped against six of the accused Marines in the Haditha episode, one was acquitted and the last remaining case against one Marine is scheduled to go to trial next year. That sense of American impunity ultimately poisoned any chance for American forces to remain in Iraq, because the Iraqis would not let them stay without being subject to Iraqi laws and courts, a condition the White House could not accept.

Told about the documents that had been found, Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the United States military in Iraq, said that many of the documents remained classified and should have been destroyed. “Despite the way in which they were improperly discarded and came into your possession, we are not at liberty to discuss classified information,” he said.

He added: “We take any breach of classified information as an extremely serious matter. In this case, the documents are being reviewed to determine whether an investigation is warranted.” The military said it did not know from which investigation the documents had come, but the papers appear to be from an inquiry by Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell into the events in Haditha. The documents ultimately led to a report that concluded that the Marine Corps’s chain of command engaged in “willful negligence” in failing to investigate the episode and that Marine commanders were far too willing to tolerate civilian casualties. That report, however, did not include the transcripts.

Under Pressure

Many of those testifying at bases in Iraq or the United States were clearly under scrutiny for not investigating an atrocity and may have tried to shape their statements to dispel any notion that they had sought to cover up the events. But the accounts also show the consternation of the Marines as they struggled to control an unfamiliar land and its people in what amounted to a constant state of siege from fighters who were nearly indistinguishable from noncombatants.

Some, feeling they were under attack constantly, decided to use force first and ask questions later. If Marines took fire from a building, they would often level it. Drivers who approached checkpoints without stopping were assumed to be suicide bombers. “When a car doesn’t stop, it crosses the trigger line, Marines engage and, yes, sir, there are people inside the car that are killed that have nothing to do with it,” Sgt. Maj. Edward T. Sax, the battalion’s senior noncommissioned officer, testified.

He added, “I had Marines shoot children in cars and deal with the Marines individually one on one about it because they have a hard time dealing with that.” Sergeant Major Sax said he would ask the Marines responsible if they had known there had been children in the car. When they said no, he said he would tell them they were not at fault. He said he felt for the Marines who had fired the shots, saying they would carry a lifelong burden.

“It is one thing to kill an insurgent in a head-on fight,” Sergeant Major Sax testified. “It is a whole different thing — and I hate to say it, the way we are raised in America — to injure a female or injure a child or in the worse case, kill a female or kill a child.”

They could not understand why so many Iraqis just did not stop at checkpoints and speculated that it was because of illiteracy or poor eyesight. “They don’t have glasses and stuff,” Col. John Ledoux said. “It really makes you wonder because some of the things that they would do just to keep coming. You know, it’s hard to imagine they would just keep coming, but sometimes they do.”

Such was the environment in 2005, when the Marines from Company K of the Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment from Camp Pendleton, Calif., arrived in Anbar Province, where Haditha is located, many for their second or third tours in Iraq. The province had become a stronghold for disenfranchised Sunnis and foreign fighters who wanted to expel the United States from Iraq, or just kill as many Americans as possible. Of the 4,483 American deaths in Iraq, 1,335 happened in Anbar.

In 2004, four Blackwater contractors were gunned down and dragged through the streets of Falluja, their bodies burned and hung on a bridge over the Euphrates. Days later, the United States military moved into the city, and chaos ensued in Anbar Province for the next two years as the Americans tried to fight off the insurgents. The stress of combat soon bore down. A legal adviser to the Marine unit stopped taking his medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder and stopped functioning.

“We had the one where Marines had photographed themselves taking shots at people,” Col. R. Kelly testified, saying that they immediately called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and “confiscated their little camera.” He said the soldiers involved received a court-martial. All of this set the stage for what happened in Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005.

A Tragedy Ensues

That morning, a military convoy of four vehicles was heading to an outpost in Haditha when one of the vehicles was hit by a roadside bomb. Several Marines got out to attend to the wounded, including one who eventually died, while others looked for insurgents who might have set off the bomb. Within a few hours 24 Iraqis — including a 76-year-old man and children between the ages of 3 and 15 — were killed, many inside their homes.

Townspeople contended that the Marines overreacted to the attack and shot civilians, only one of whom was armed. The Marines said they thought they were under attack. When the initial reports arrived saying more than 20 civilians had been killed in Haditha, the Marines receiving them said they were not surprised by the high civilian death toll. Chief Warrant Officer K. R. Norwood, who received reports from the field on the day of the killings and briefed commanders on them, testified that 20 dead civilians was not unusual.

“I meant, it wasn’t remarkable, based off of the area I wouldn’t say remarkable, sir,” Mr. Norwood said. “And that is just my definition. Not that I think one life is not remarkable, it’s just —” An investigator asked the officer: “I mean remarkable or noteworthy in terms of something that would have caught your attention where you would have immediately said, ‘Got to have more information on that. That is a lot of casualties.’ ” “Not at the time, sir,” the officer testified.

General Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar Province, said he did not feel compelled to go back and examine the events because they were part of a continuing pattern of civilian deaths. “It happened all the time, not necessarily in MNF-West all the time, but throughout the whole country,” General Johnson testified, using a military abbreviation for allied forces in western Iraq.

“So, you know, maybe — I guess maybe if I was sitting here at Quantico and heard that 15 civilians were killed I would have been surprised and shocked and gone — done more to look into it,” he testified, referring to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. “But at that point in time, I felt that was — had been, for whatever reason, part of that engagement and felt that it was just a cost of doing business on that particular engagement.”

When Marines arrived on the scene to assess the number of dead bodies, at least one Marine thought it would be a good time to take pictures for his own keeping. “I know I had one Marine who was taking pictures just to take pictures and I told him to delete all those pictures,” testified a first lieutenant identified as M. D. Frank.

The documents uncovered by The Times — which include handwritten notes from soldiers, waivers by Marines of their right against self-incrimination, diagrams of where dead women and children were found, and pictures of the site where the Marine was killed by a roadside bomb on the day of the massacre — remain classified. In a meeting with journalists in October, before the military had been told about the discovery of the documents, the American commander in charge of the logistics of the withdrawal said that files from the bases were either transferred to other parts of the military or incinerated.

“We don’t put official paperwork in the trash,” said the commander, Maj. Gen. Thomas Richardson, at the meeting at the American Embassy in Baghdad. The documents were piled in military trailers and hauled to the junkyard by an Iraqi contractor who was trying to sell off the surplus from American bases, the junkyard attendant said. The attendant said he had no idea what any of the documents were about, only that they were important to the Americans.

He said that over the course of several weeks he had burned dozens and dozens of binders, turning more untold stories about the war into ash. “What can we do with them?” the attendant said. “These things are worthless to us, but we understand they are important and it is better to burn them to protect the Americans. If they are leaving, it must mean their work here is done.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/world/middleeast/united-states-marines-haditha-interviews-found-in-iraq-junkyard.html

Wikileaks Releases Video of US Copters Killing Iraqi Civilians

The website Wikileaks.org today publicly issued a classified US military video from July 12, 2007, showing Apache helicopters killing at least a dozen civilians, including two employees of Reuters. The video had previously been sought by Reuters in its own investigation of the killings, and an encrypted copy had reportedly been smuggled to the website, who finally decrypted and released it. The video (see below) shows the soldiers in the helicopter watching the group of civilians walking casually down the street, and then declaring that one is holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (apparently the camera held by one of the Reuters employees). The helicopter then opens fire on the civilians, killing all but one, who is seen badly wounded as the crew discusses whether or not to kill him. When a van arrives and begins to cart off the wounded or dead bodies, the helicopter attacks it as well, killing several others and wounding two children. One of the voices on the video then glibly remarks that the injuries of the children are the fault of the van driver for “bringing their kids to the battle.”

US officials have confirmed the authenticity of the video but have largely declined comments on the question of why the troops so eagerly attacked the group, let alone attacked the people trying to rescue them. The State Department officially declined comment at today’s press conference, while the Pentagon maintains that the soldiers acted appropriately in the killings and no investigation would be held. At least as troubling is the Pentagon’s unwillingness to explain why, at the time of the killings, they claimed troops were “engaged in combat operations against a hostile force,” when the video clearly shows no action at all taken by the civilians in question, who are summarily mowed down by helicopter gunfire and never had a chance to react one way or another.

A retired US intelligence officer speaking about the video on MSNBC said that it appeared to show violations of the military’s rules of engagement and that the soldiers should have made some effort to capture any suspects instead of just killing them en masse. He described the period after the initial firing, in which the troops mull killing the wounded Reuters employee (who is eventually killed when the van is attacked) as particularly disturbing. Though Wikileaks’ release was scheduled well in advance, the release comes at a particularly inopportune time, as the US military is still scrambling to explain away the killings of several civilians (including pregnant women) in an attack on an Afghanistan home. In that case as well, the military lied about a “firefight” which never happened, and even blamed the deaths of the pregnant women on insurgents that were never present at the site.

Source: http://news.antiwar.com/2010/04/05/wikileaks-releases-video-of-us-copters-killing-iraqi-civilians/

Whistleblowers on US ‘Massacre’ Fear CIA Stalkers

Activists behind a website dedicated to revealing secret documents have complained of harassment by police and intelligence services as they prepare to release a video showing an American attack in which 97 civilians were killed in Afghanistan. Julian Assange, one of the founders of Wikileaks, has claimed that a restaurant where the group met in Reykjavic, the capital of Iceland, came under surveillance in March and one of the group’s volunteers was detained for 21 hours by police. Assange, an Australian, says he was followed on a flight from Reykjavik to Copenhagen by two American agents. The group has riled governments by publishing documents leaked by whistleblowers.

Last week it released the cockpit recording from an American Apache helicopter as it killed Iraqi civilians, including a Reuters photographer, in Baghdad in 2007. Assange claims surveillance has intensified as he and his colleagues prepare to put out their Afghan film. It is said to concern the so-called “Granai massacre”, when American aircraft dropped 500lb and 1,000lb bombs on a suspected militant compound in Farah province on May 4 last year. Several children were among those killed. In messages on Twitter, the internet social networking site, Assange complained of “covert following and hidden photography” by police and foreign intelligence services. There have been thinly veiled threats, he says, from “an apparent British intelligence agent” in a car park in Luxembourg.

“Computers were also seized,” another member of Wikileaks said on Twitter, raising alarm among supporters with a subsequent post: “If anything happens to us, you know why ... and you know who is responsible.”

Their apprehension is perhaps understandable. America’s defence establishment has made clear that it would like to silence the site. In 2008, the Pentagon produced a report on how to undermine and neutralise Wikileaks. This, too, emerged on the website. Assange, who is believed to be 37, founded Wikileaks three years ago with a group of like-minded computer programmers, academics and activists. The site says it has had more scoops since then than The Washington Post in three decades and has become a global clearing house for sensitive documents. It has exposed crimes from toxic dumping and tax evasion to extrajudicial murders in Kenya.

Assange says the 38-minute Iraqi video broadcast by the group is evidence of “collateral murder” by American forces. It shows a group of Iraqi men being killed by gunfire from the helicopter. A helicopter then shoots at a van arriving to take the bodies away. A crew member is heard saying: “Nice shooting.” When it emerges that two children in the van have been injured, someone else says: “Serves them right for bringing their children into a battle.” The film, in which American forces kill with the seeming detachment of video gamers, has been seen by millions on the internet since it was first aired on Monday. The website, which claims to exist on a shoestring budget, says it has since received more than £100,000 in donations.

America’s military defended the killings, saying no disciplinary action had been taken at the time of the incident. However, Reuters has striven in vain since 2007 to obtain access to the video under freedom of information laws. Broadcasting such a film could expose Wikileaks to prosecution in America but the organisation appears to have put itself beyond the reach of court injunctions by existing only in the digital sphere. There has been speculation that Wikileaks might be part of a sophisticated “psy-ops” campaign by the CIA. If that is the case, says Assange, “I only wish they would step forward with a cheque.”

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7094234.ece

War Crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan

War crimes, massacres, and, as Al Jazeera properly calls it, "collateral murder," are all part of the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. The release last week of the Wikileaks video, thirty-eight grisly minutes long, of US airmen casually slaughtering a dozen Iraqis in 2007 -- including two Reuters newsmen -- puts it into focus not because it shows us something we didn't know, but because we can watch it unfold in real time. Real people, flesh and blood, gunned down from above in a hellish rain of fire. The events in Iraq, nearly three years old, were repeated this week in Afghanistan, when trigger-happy US soldiers slaughtered five Afghans cruising along on a huge, comfortable civilian bus near Kandahar. As the New York Times reports:

"American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near Kandahar on Monday morning, killing and wounding civilians, and igniting angry anti-American demonstrations in a city where winning over Afghan support is pivotal to the war effort."

The Kandahar incident is only one of many, of course. Over the past year, dozens of Afghans have similarly died in checkpoint and roadside killings. Not one, not a single one, of these murders involved hostile forces. In other words, when the smoke and dust cleared, in all of the cases over the past year the bodies recovered were those of innocents. As General McChrystal himself recently said:

"We really ask a lot of our young service people out on checkpoints because there's danger, they're asked to make very rapid decisions in often very unclear situations. However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I've been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it."

My question is: if so, then why aren't the rules of engagement altered? Why is it that US forces can fire wildly at an approaching vehicle, if in none of the cases that have happened thus far were there hostile forces involved? In the Iraq case, as revealed in the stunning Wikileaks video, a group of eight men on a Baghdad street, in plain sunlight, is shot to pieces under withering fire from above. Then, when a van carrying four or five other men arrives to pick up a wounded man who is crawling painfully along the gutter, the van too is blasted to smithereens when the airmen request permission to "engage." An analysis by Politifact takes apart Secretary of Defense Gates' callous assertion that the murders were "unfortunate" and "should not have any lasting consequences." We've already investigated this, he said, so what's the big deal?

The military's rationale for the slaughter is that US forces a few hundred yards away had taken small arms fire, and so the airmen in the copters circling above concluded that the men they'd seen carrying what they thought were weapons and RPGs -- although the "RPG" turned out to be a cameraman's telephoto lens -- were bad guys who could be shot to pieces at will. There was, of course, no evidence at all that the dozen or so Iraqis butchered were involved in what may or may not have been a shooting incident nearby. But, you know -- war is hell. Politifact, to its discredit, defends Gates on these grounds, quoting David Finkel, a Washington Post reporter and author of The Good Soldiers, who writes in blase defense of the slaughter:

"What's helpful to understand is that, contrary to some interpretations that this was an attack on some people walking down the street on a nice day, the day was anything but that. It happened in the midst of a large operation to clear an area where U.S. soldiers had been getting shot at, injured, and killed with increasing frequency. What the Reuters guys walked into was the very worst part, where the morning had been a series of RPG attacks and running gun battles.
"More context. You're seeing an edited version of the video. The full video runs much longer. And it doesn't have the benefit of hindsight, in this case zooming in on the van and seeing those two children. The helicopters were perhaps a mile away. And as all of this unfolded, it was unclear to the soldiers involved whether the van was a van of good Samaritans or of insurgents showing up to rescue a wounded comrade. I bring these things up not to excuse the soldiers but to emphasize some of the real-time blurriness of those moments.

"If you were to see the full video, you would see a person carrying an RPG launcher as he walked down the street as part of the group. Another was armed as well, as I recall. Also, if you had the unfortunate luck to be on site afterwards, you would have seen that one of the dead in the group was lying on top of a launcher. Because of that and some other things, EOD -- the Hurt Locker guys, I guess -- had to come in and secure the site. And again, I'm not trying to excuse what happened. But there was more to it for you to consider than what was in the released video."

Finkel, who apparently is not going to write a sequel to his book called The Bad Soldiers, cavelierly dismisses the deaths of a dozen Iraqis as something that happens in the "real-time blurriness of those moments." In Afghanistan, the repeated killings of innocent civilians has angered an embittered President Karzai, who has strongly and repeatedly condemned the killings of Afghan citizens by American troops. In a Washington Post story today, "Shooting by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan fuels Karzai's anger," the paper reports:

"Twelve days before President Hamid Karzai denounced the behavior of Western countries in Afghanistan, he met a 4-year-old boy at the Tarin Kowt civilian hospital in the south.
"The boy had lost his legs in a February airstrike by U.S. Special Operations forces helicopters that killed more than 20 civilians. Karzai scooped him up from his mattress and walked out to the hospital courtyard, according to three witnesses. 'Who injured you?' the president asked as helicopters passed overhead. The boy, crying alongside his relatives, pointed at the sky.

"The tears and rage Karzai encountered in that hospital in Uruzgan province lingered with him, according to several aides. It was one provocation amid a string of recent political disappointments that they said has helped fuel the president's emotional outpouring against the West and prompted a brief crisis in his relations with the United States. It was also a reminder that civilian casualties in Afghanistan have political reverberations far beyond the sites of the killings."

But I suppose Finkel can justify that one, too.

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/13-3

Covering up US War Crimes

The US mass media "reports", the style, content and especially the language, echo their Nazi predecessors of 70 years ago to an uncanny degree. Coincidence? Of course! In both instances we have imperialist armies conquering countries, levelling cities and slaughtering civilians — and the mass media, private in form, state appendages in practice, disseminate the most outrageous lies, in defense and praise of the conquering "storm troopers" — call them SS or marines.

Both in Nazi Germany and contemporary US, we are told by the mass media that the invading armies are "freeing the country" of "foreign fighters" and "armed terrorists", who are preventing "the people" from going about their everyday lives. Yet we know that of the 1000 prisoners there are only four foreigners (three Iranians and one Arab); Iraqi hospitals report less than 10% of casualties are foreign fighters. In other words, over 90% of the fighters are Iraqis — most of whom were born, educated and raised families in the cities in which they are fighting.

Like the Nazi media, the major US radio and TV networks only report what they call "military casualties" — failing to report the civilians killed since the war started and the thousands of women and children killed and wounded since the assault on Fallujah began.

Like in Nazi Germany, the US mass media feature unconfirmed reports by the US military of the bloody murders, beheadings and kidnappings "by the foreign terrorists". The unconditional support of Nazi/US mass media for the killing fields is best captured in their reports of the massive bombing of densely populated city districts. For the US network NBC, the dropping of 500-pound bombs in the city of Fallujah is described as targeting an "insurgent tunnel network in the city". And the houses, markets, stores — the mothers and children above those tunnels — vaporised into "pink mist", their existence never acknowledged by the leading reporters and broadcasters.

Almost the entire population of non-Kurdish Iraq is opposed to the US military and its puppet regime — yet the media refer to the patriots defending their country from the imperial invaders as "insurgents", minimising the significance of a nationwide patriotic liberation movement. One of the most surreal euphemisms is the constant reference to the "coalition forces" — meaning the US colonial conquerors and the mercenaries and satraps that they direct and control.

The terror bombing of homes, hospitals and religious buildings by hundreds of airplanes and helicopter gunships is described by the media as "securing the city for free elections".

"Freeing the city of insurgents" includes the systematic murder of friends, neighbours and relatives of every Iraqi living in the city of Fallujah. "Surrounding the insurgents" means cutting off water, electricity and medical aid for 200,000 civilians in the city and putting tens of thousands who fled under threat of a typhoid epidemic. "Pacifying the city" involves turning it to absolute desolate poisoned rubble.

Why do Washington and the mass media resort to gross, systematic lying and euphemisms? Basically to reinforce mass support at home for mass murder in Iraq. The mass media fabricates a web of lies to secure a gloss of legitimacy for totalitarian methods in order that the US armed forces can continue to destroy cities with impunity.

The technique perfected by Goebbels in Germany and practiced in the US is to repeat lies and euphemisms until they become accepted "truths", and embedded in everyday language. The mass media by effectively routinising a common language implicates the listeners. The tactical concerns of the generals, the commanders directing the slaughter (pacification), and the soldiers murdering civilians are explained (and consumed by the millions listening and watching) by the unchallenged authorities to the compliant journalists and famous news anchors.

The unity of purpose between the agents of mass murder and everyday US public is established via "news reports": The soldiers "paint the names" of their wives and sweethearts on the tanks and armoured vehicles that destroy Iraqi families and turn Fallujah into ruins. Returning soldiers from Iraq are "interviewed" who want to return to "be with their platoon" and "wipe out the terrorists".

Not all of US combat forces experienced the joys of shooting civilians. Medical studies report that one out of five returning soldiers are suffering from severe psychological trauma, no doubt from witnessing or participating in the mass killing of civilians. The family of one returned soldier, who recently committed suicide, reported that he constantly referred to his killing of an unarmed child in the streets of Iraq — calling himself a "murderer".

Aside from these notable exceptions, the mass propaganda media practise several techniques, which assuage the "conscience" of US soldiers and civilians. One technique is "role reversal" to attribute the crimes of the invading force to the victims: It is not the soldiers who cause destruction of cities and murder, but the Iraqi families who 'protect the terrorists' and "bring upon themselves the savage bombardment".

The second technique is to only report US casualties from "terrorist bombs" — to omit any mention of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed by US bombs and artillery. Both Nazi and US propaganda glorify the "heroism", "success" of their elite forces (the SS and the Marines) — in killing "terrorists" or "insurgents" — every dead civilian is counted as a "suspected terrorist sympathiser".

The US and German military have declared every civilian building a "storehouse" or "hiding place" for "terrorists'—hence the absolutely total disregard of all the Geneva laws of warfare. The US and Nazi practice of 'total war' in which whole communities, neighbourhoods and entire cities are collectively guilty of shielding 'wanted terrorists'—is of course the standard operating military procedure of the Israeli government.

The US publicises the cruel and unusual punishment of Iraqi "suspects" (any male between 14 and 60 years old) taken prisoner: photos appear in Time and Newsweek of barefoot, blindfolded and bound young men led from their homes and pushed into trucks to be taken to "exploitation centres" for interrogation. For many in the US public these pictures are part of the success story — they are told these are the "terrorists" who would blow up US homes.

For the majority who voted for US President George Bush, the mass propaganda media has taught them to believe that the extermination of scores of thousands of Iraqi citizens is in their best interests: they can sleep sound, as long as "our boys" kill them "over there".

Above all the mass propaganda media has done everything possible to deny Iraqi national consciousness. Every day in every way the reference is to religious loyalties, ethnic identities, past political labels, "tribal" and family clans. The purpose is to divide and conquer, and to present the world with a "chaotic" Iraq in which the only coherent, stable force is the US colonial regime. The purpose of the savage colonial assaults and the political labelling is to destroy the idea of the Iraqi nation — and in its place to substitute a series of mini-entities run by imperial satraps obedient to Washington.

Sunday morning: November 14. Today Fallujah is being raped and razed, captured. Wounded prisoners are shot in the mosques. In New York, the mega-malls are crowded with shoppers. Sunday afternoon: the Marines have blocked food, water and medicine from entering Fallujah. Throughout the US millions of men sit in front of the television watching football.

Shirer reported that, while the Nazis invaded and ravaged Belgium and bombed Rotterdam, in Berlin the cafes were full, the symphony played and people walked their dogs in the park on sunny Sunday afternoons.

Yes, there are differences between Shirer's account of Nazi propaganda in defense of the conquest of Europe and the US media's apology for the invasion of Iraq and Israel's slaughter of the Palestinians: One is committed in the name of the Fuehrer and the Fatherland, the other in the name of God and Democracy. Go tell that to the bloated corpses gnawed by dogs in the ruins of Fallujah.

Source: http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/30903

Torture at Abu Ghraib

In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women—no accurate count is possible—were jammed into Abu Ghraib at one time, in twelve-by-twelve-foot cells that were little more than human holding pits.

In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks. The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however—by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers—were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints. They fell into three loosely defined categories: common criminals; security detainees suspected of “crimes against the coalition”; and a small number of suspected “high-value” leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces.

Last June, Janis Karpinski, an Army reserve brigadier general, was named commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade and put in charge of military prisons in Iraq. General Karpinski, the only female commander in the war zone, was an experienced operations and intelligence officer who had served with the Special Forces and in the 1991 Gulf War, but she had never run a prison system. Now she was in charge of three large jails, eight battalions, and thirty-four hundred Army reservists, most of whom, like her, had no training in handling prisoners.

General Karpinski, who had wanted to be a soldier since she was five, is a business consultant in civilian life, and was enthusiastic about her new job. In an interview last December with the St. Petersburg Times, she said that, for many of the Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib, “living conditions now are better in prison than at home. At one point we were concerned that they wouldn’t want to leave.”

A month later, General Karpinski was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army’s prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was under way. A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. (The 372nd was attached to the 320th M.P. Battalion, which reported to Karpinski’s brigade headquarters.) Taguba’s report listed some of the wrongdoing:

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

There was stunning evidence to support the allegations, Taguba added—“detailed witness statements and the discovery of extremely graphic photographic evidence.” Photographs and videos taken by the soldiers as the abuses were happening were not included in his report, Taguba said, because of their “extremely sensitive nature.”

The photographs—several of which were broadcast on CBS’s “60 Minutes 2” last week—show leering G.I.s taunting naked Iraqi prisoners who are forced to assume humiliating poses. Six suspects—Staff Sergeant Ivan L. Frederick II, known as Chip, who was the senior enlisted man; Specialist Charles A. Graner; Sergeant Javal Davis; Specialist Megan Ambuhl; Specialist Sabrina Harman; and Private Jeremy Sivits—are now facing prosecution in Iraq, on charges that include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty toward prisoners, maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts. A seventh suspect, Private Lynndie England, was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after becoming pregnant.

The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.

Such dehumanization is unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, explained. “Being put on top of each other and forced to masturbate, being naked in front of each other—it’s all a form of torture,” Haykel said.

Two Iraqi faces that do appear in the photographs are those of dead men. There is the battered face of prisoner No. 153399, and the bloodied body of another prisoner, wrapped in cellophane and packed in ice. There is a photograph of an empty room, splattered with blood.

The 372nd’s abuse of prisoners seemed almost routine—a fact of Army life that the soldiers felt no need to hide. On April 9th, at an Article 32 hearing (the military equivalent of a grand jury) in the case against Sergeant Frederick, at Camp Victory, near Baghdad, one of the witnesses, Specialist Matthew Wisdom, an M.P., told the courtroom what happened when he and other soldiers delivered seven prisoners, hooded and bound, to the so-called “hard site” at Abu Ghraib—seven tiers of cells where the inmates who were considered the most dangerous were housed. The men had been accused of starting a riot in another section of the prison. Wisdom said:

SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile. . . . I do not think it was right to put them in a pile. I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick. . . . I left after that. When he returned later, Wisdom testified:

I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open. I thought I should just get out of there. I didn’t think it was right . . . I saw SSG Frederick walking towards me, and he said, “Look what these animals do when you leave them alone for two seconds.” I heard PFC England shout out, “He’s getting hard.” Wisdom testified that he told his superiors what had happened, and assumed that “the issue was taken care of.” He said, “I just didn’t want to be part of anything that looked criminal.”

The abuses became public because of the outrage of Specialist Joseph M. Darby, an M.P. whose role emerged during the Article 32 hearing against Chip Frederick. A government witness, Special Agent Scott Bobeck, who is a member of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or C.I.D., told the court, according to an abridged transcript made available to me, “The investigation started after SPC Darby . . . got a CD from CPL Graner. . . . He came across pictures of naked detainees.” Bobeck said that Darby had “initially put an anonymous letter under our door, then he later came forward and gave a sworn statement. He felt very bad about it and thought it was very wrong.”

Questioned further, the Army investigator said that Frederick and his colleagues had not been given any “training guidelines” that he was aware of. The M.P.s in the 372nd had been assigned to routine traffic and police duties upon their arrival in Iraq, in the spring of 2003. In October of 2003, the 372nd was ordered to prison-guard duty at Abu Ghraib. Frederick, at thirty-seven, was far older than his colleagues, and was a natural leader; he had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections. Bobeck explained:

What I got is that SSG Frederick and CPL Graner were road M.P.s and were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run. Bobeck also testified that witnesses had said that Frederick, on one occasion, “had punched a detainee in the chest so hard that the detainee almost went into cardiac arrest.”

At the Article 32 hearing, the Army informed Frederick and his attorneys, Captain Robert Shuck, an Army lawyer, and Gary Myers, a civilian, that two dozen witnesses they had sought, including General Karpinski and all of Frederick’s co-defendants, would not appear. Some had been excused after exercising their Fifth Amendment right; others were deemed to be too far away from the courtroom. “The purpose of an Article 32 hearing is for us to engage witnesses and discover facts,” Gary Myers told me. “We ended up with a c.i.d. agent and no alleged victims to examine.” After the hearing, the presiding investigative officer ruled that there was sufficient evidence to convene a court-martial against Frederick.

Myers, who was one of the military defense attorneys in the My Lai prosecutions of the nineteen-seventies, told me that his client’s defense will be that he was carrying out the orders of his superiors and, in particular, the directions of military intelligence. He said, “Do you really think a group of kids from rural Virginia decided to do this on their own? Decided that the best way to embarrass Arabs and make them talk was to have them walk around nude?”

In letters and e-mails to family members, Frederick repeatedly noted that the military-intelligence teams, which included C.I.A. officers and linguists and interrogation specialists from private defense contractors, were the dominant force inside Abu Ghraib. In a letter written in January, he said:

I questioned some of the things that I saw . . . such things as leaving inmates in their cell with no clothes or in female underpants, handcuffing them to the door of their cell—and the answer I got was, “This is how military intelligence (MI) wants it done.” . . . . MI has also instructed us to place a prisoner in an isolation cell with little or no clothes, no toilet or running water, no ventilation or window, for as much as three days.

The military-intelligence officers have “encouraged and told us, ‘Great job,’ they were now getting positive results and information,” Frederick wrote. “CID has been present when the military working dogs were used to intimidate prisoners at MI’s request.” At one point, Frederick told his family, he pulled aside his superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Phillabaum, the commander of the 320th M.P. Battalion, and asked about the mistreatment of prisoners. “His reply was ‘Don’t worry about it.’ ”

In November, Frederick wrote, an Iraqi prisoner under the control of what the Abu Ghraib guards called “O.G.A.,” or other government agencies—that is, the C.I.A. and its paramilitary employees—was brought to his unit for questioning. “They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower. . . . The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away.” The dead Iraqi was never entered into the prison’s inmate-control system, Frederick recounted, “and therefore never had a number.”

Frederick’s defense is, of course, highly self-serving. But the complaints in his letters and e-mails home were reinforced by two internal Army reports—Taguba’s and one by the Army’s chief law-enforcement officer, Provost Marshal Donald Ryder, a major general.

Last fall, General Sanchez ordered Ryder to review the prison system in Iraq and recommend ways to improve it. Ryder’s report, filed on November 5th, concluded that there were potential human-rights, training, and manpower issues, system-wide, that needed immediate attention. It also discussed serious concerns about the tension between the missions of the military police assigned to guard the prisoners and the intelligence teams who wanted to interrogate them. Army regulations limit intelligence activity by the M.P.s to passive collection. But something had gone wrong at Abu Ghraib.

There was evidence dating back to the Afghanistan war, the Ryder report said, that M.P.s had worked with intelligence operatives to “set favorable conditions for subsequent interviews”—a euphemism for breaking the will of prisoners. “Such actions generally run counter to the smooth operation of a detention facility, attempting to maintain its population in a compliant and docile state.” General Karpinski’s brigade, Ryder reported, “has not been directed to change its facility procedures to set the conditions for MI interrogations, nor participate in those interrogations.” Ryder called for the establishment of procedures to “define the role of military police soldiers . . .clearly separating the actions of the guards from those of the military intelligence personnel.” The officers running the war in Iraq were put on notice.

Ryder undercut his warning, however, by concluding that the situation had not yet reached a crisis point. Though some procedures were flawed, he said, he found “no military police units purposely applying inappropriate confinement practices.” His investigation was at best a failure and at worst a coverup.

Taguba, in his report, was polite but direct in refuting his fellow-general. “Unfortunately, many of the systemic problems that surfaced during [Ryder’s] assessment are the very same issues that are the subject of this investigation,” he wrote. “In fact, many of the abuses suffered by detainees occurred during, or near to, the time of that assessment.” The report continued, “Contrary to the findings of MG Ryder’s report, I find that personnel assigned to the 372nd MP Company, 800th MP Brigade were directed to change facility procedures to ‘set the conditions’ for MI interrogations.” Army intelligence officers, C.I.A. agents, and private contractors “actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses.”

Taguba backed up his assertion by citing evidence from sworn statements to Army C.I.D. investigators. Specialist Sabrina Harman, one of the accused M.P.s, testified that it was her job to keep detainees awake, including one hooded prisoner who was placed on a box with wires attached to his fingers, toes, and penis. She stated, “MI wanted to get them to talk. It is Graner and Frederick’s job to do things for MI and OGA to get these people to talk.”

Another witness, Sergeant Javal Davis, who is also one of the accused, told C.I.D. investigators, “I witnessed prisoners in the MI hold section . . . being made to do various things that I would question morally. . . . We were told that they had different rules.” Taguba wrote, “Davis also stated that he had heard MI insinuate to the guards to abuse the inmates. When asked what MI said he stated: ‘Loosen this guy up for us.’ ‘Make sure he has a bad night.’ ‘Make sure he gets the treatment.’ ” Military intelligence made these comments to Graner and Frederick, Davis said. “The MI staffs to my understanding have been giving Graner compliments . . . statements like, ‘Good job, they’re breaking down real fast. They answer every question. They’re giving out good information.’ ”

When asked why he did not inform his chain of command about the abuse, Sergeant Davis answered, “Because I assumed that if they were doing things out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something. Also the wing”—where the abuse took place—“belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse.”

Another witness, Specialist Jason Kennel, who was not accused of wrongdoing, said, “I saw them nude, but MI would tell us to take away their mattresses, sheets, and clothes.” (It was his view, he added, that if M.I. wanted him to do this “they needed to give me paperwork.”) Taguba also cited an interview with Adel L. Nakhla, a translator who was an employee of Titan, a civilian contractor. He told of one night when a “bunch of people from MI” watched as a group of handcuffed and shackled inmates were subjected to abuse by Graner and Frederick.

General Taguba saved his harshest words for the military-intelligence officers and private contractors. He recommended that Colonel Thomas Pappas, the commander of one of the M.I. brigades, be reprimanded and receive non-judicial punishment, and that Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, the former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, be relieved of duty and reprimanded. He further urged that a civilian contractor, Steven Stephanowicz, of CACI International, be fired from his Army job, reprimanded, and denied his security clearances for lying to the investigating team and allowing or ordering military policemen “who were not trained in interrogation techniques to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized” nor in accordance with Army regulations. “He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse,” Taguba wrote. He also recommended disciplinary action against a second CACI employee, John Israel. (A spokeswoman for CACI said that the company had “received no formal communication” from the Army about the matter.)

“I suspect,” Taguba concluded, that Pappas, Jordan, Stephanowicz, and Israel “were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib,” and strongly recommended immediate disciplinary action.

The problems inside the Army prison system in Iraq were not hidden from senior commanders. During Karpinski’s seven-month tour of duty, Taguba noted, there were at least a dozen officially reported incidents involving escapes, attempted escapes, and other serious security issues that were investigated by officers of the 800th M.P. Brigade. Some of the incidents had led to the killing or wounding of inmates and M.P.s, and resulted in a series of “lessons learned” inquiries within the brigade. Karpinski invariably approved the reports and signed orders calling for changes in day-to-day procedures. But Taguba found that she did not follow up, doing nothing to insure that the orders were carried out. Had she done so, he added, “cases of abuse may have been prevented.”

General Taguba further found that Abu Ghraib was filled beyond capacity, and that the M.P. guard force was significantly undermanned and short of resources. “This imbalance has contributed to the poor living conditions, escapes, and accountability lapses,” he wrote. There were gross differences, Taguba said, between the actual number of prisoners on hand and the number officially recorded. A lack of proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly being detained—indefinitely, it seemed, in some cases. The Taguba study noted that more than sixty per cent of the civilian inmates at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society, which should have enabled them to be released. Karpinski’s defense, Taguba said, was that her superior officers “routinely” rejected her recommendations regarding the release of such prisoners.

Karpinski was rarely seen at the prisons she was supposed to be running, Taguba wrote. He also found a wide range of administrative problems, including some that he considered “without precedent in my military career.” The soldiers, he added, were “poorly prepared and untrained . . . prior to deployment, at the mobilization site, upon arrival in theater, and throughout the mission.”

General Taguba spent more than four hours interviewing Karpinski, whom he described as extremely emotional: “What I found particularly disturbing in her testimony was her complete unwillingness to either understand or accept that many of the problems inherent in the 800th MP Brigade were caused or exacerbated by poor leadership and the refusal of her command to both establish and enforce basic standards and principles among its soldiers.”

Taguba recommended that Karpinski and seven brigade military-police officers and enlisted men be relieved of command and formally reprimanded. No criminal proceedings were suggested for Karpinski; apparently, the loss of promotion and the indignity of a public rebuke were seen as enough punishment.

After the story broke on CBS last week, the Pentagon announced that Major General Geoffrey Miller, the new head of the Iraqi prison system, had arrived in Baghdad and was on the job. He had been the commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center. General Sanchez also authorized an investigation into possible wrongdoing by military and civilian interrogators.

As the international furor grew, senior military officers, and President Bush, insisted that the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military as a whole. Taguba’s report, however, amounts to an unsparing study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership at the highest levels. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority.

The mistreatment at Abu Ghraib may have done little to further American intelligence, however. Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as a C.I.D. agent, told me that the use of force or humiliation with prisoners is invariably counterproductive. “They’ll tell you what you want to hear, truth or no truth,” Rowell said. “ ‘You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say.’ You don’t get righteous information.”

Under the fourth Geneva convention, an occupying power can jail civilians who pose an “imperative” security threat, but it must establish a regular procedure for insuring that only civilians who remain a genuine security threat be kept imprisoned. Prisoners have the right to appeal any internment decision and have their cases reviewed. Human Rights Watch complained to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that civilians in Iraq remained in custody month after month with no charges brought against them. Abu Ghraib had become, in effect, another Guantánamo.

As the photographs from Abu Ghraib make clear, these detentions have had enormous consequences: for the imprisoned civilian Iraqis, many of whom had nothing to do with the growing insurgency; for the integrity of the Army; and for the United States’ reputation in the world.

Captain Robert Shuck, Frederick’s military attorney, closed his defense at the Article 32 hearing last month by saying that the Army was “attempting to have these six soldiers atone for its sins.” Similarly, Gary Myers, Frederick’s civilian attorney, told me that he would argue at the court-martial that culpability in the case extended far beyond his client. “I’m going to drag every involved intelligence officer and civilian contractor I can find into court,” he said. “Do you really believe the Army relieved a general officer because of six soldiers? Not a chance.”

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fact?printable=true#ixzz1jHGU2sw5

Study: US Wars Cost $4 Trillion, Killed 258,000

A new study from Brown University’s Watson Institute has set an estimated that the post 9/11 costs of the assorted wars of the Bush and Obama Administrations has been in the realm of $4 trillion and has directly killed 258,000 people. If this death toll seems a tad low, its because it is. The study readily admits that it is only calculating “direct” kills, and not the indirect deaths from shoddy healthcare, lack of access to food and water, etc in the various occupied nations. The toll includes 137,000 civilians directly killed in Afghanistan and Iraq and notes that there are no reliable figures for the number of civilians killed in Pakistan, but says 35,000 more there is a conservative estimate. The cost of the wars includes direct appropriations as well as the increased liability for long term care for wounded soldiers, etc. It does not include the CIA’s drone wars, because the cost of those is not known.

Source: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/06/29/study-us-wars-cost-4-trillion-killed-258000/

America’s Peacetime Crimes Against Iraq

Between the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the United States enforced a comprehensive sanctions policy against the Iraqi people, under the auspices of the United Nations. Whereas the hot conflict of 1990 and the one that has run from March 2003 to this day have occupied American attention, the sanctions, beginning even before Operation Desert Storm and persisting until Shock and Awe, implemented by three presidential administrations, were largely ignored. Trade restrictions simply do not elicit the primetime excitement that bombs and aircraft do. Yet the devastation from depriving a nation of international trade is easily comparable to that of war.

Philosophical, legal, and political lessons

On the eve of the Iraq War, moderate voices for “peace” even insisted that the sanctions were “working” in undermining Saddam’s regime and preventing it from rearming — as though such were worthy U.S. goals in the first place. But putting that question aside, the prospect of all-out war struck many Americans as imprudent, displeasing, perhaps even immoral — even as many of those same Americans defended the sanctions regime and advocated their continuation in lieu of war.

But more principled voices for nonintervention, and those aware of the enormity unleashed by the sanctions, had been protesting them for years. Indeed, as a practical matter, the sanctions ran counter to defending American lives on U.S. soil. Osama bin Laden cited the sanctions on Iraq, among other U.S. policies, as a main motive behind the attacks of September 11. Perhaps no single example of such policies is more horrific than the sustained and systematic destruction of Iraqi economic life — which is to say, Iraqi life — that took place in the “peacetime” era between the two wars. To this day, thanks to the sanctions as well as the wars, the Iraqis have “never [come] close to restoring the standard of living that most Iraqis had up to 1990,” according to Joy Gordon, whose new book, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, is a powerful and rather comprehensive treatment of the topic.

War by other means

The sanctions began in August 1990, in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. During the actual Gulf War, 160,000 bombs were dropped on Iraqi forces and infrastructure. A UN envoy soon found 75 percent of the water access and 85-90 percent of the electricity infrastructure destroyed. The bombing and sanctions demolished Iraq’s relatively modern economy, turning the nation into a third-world country, and preventing it from recovering. “Between August 1990 and December 1995, food prices increased by 4,000 to 5,000 times.” The result of these policies was mass devastation:

The destruction from the 1991 bombing campaign of electric generating plants, water purification, and sewage treatment facilities resulted in cholera and typhoid epidemics. In 1990 the incidence of typhoid was 11.3 per 100,000 people; by 1994 it was more than 142 per 100,000. In 1989 there were zero cases of cholera per 100,000 people; by 1994 there were 1,344 per 100,000.

Meanwhile, major surgeries fell to “30 percent of the pre-sanctions level.” Most terribly, child mortality rates skyrocketed. Although there is disagreement over the data, “the majority of the studies over the course of the sanctions regime strongly suggest that, for the period from 1990 to 2003 ...at least 500,000” children died of malnutrition and disease who would most likely have otherwise lived.

All in all, “according to 1990 testimony before Congress, the sanctions eliminated 90 percent of Iraq’s imports and 97 percent of its exports. As a result, per capita income went from $3,510 in 1989 to $450 in 1996.” Iraq’s GDP, which had been $54 billion in 1979, sank to $10 billion in 1993.

At first, the goal was to pressure Iraqi forces to retreat from Kuwait. But sometime after the war began, the goal shifted to one of general containment and disarmament — at least as far as the UN Security Council was concerned — while the U.S. government and Britain upheld the more ambitious goal of regime change. That was a bipartisan policy in America. Bill Clinton said in 1993, “There is no difference between my policy and the policy of the [George H.W. Bush] Administration.... I have no intention of normalizing relations with [Saddam Hussein].” And as his secretary of State Madeleine Albright made clear in 1997, “We do not agree ... that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted.”

But if the goal was regime change, the policy was virtually destined to fail. Gordon writes, If Saddam Hussein was supposed to be motivated by self-interest, and wanted sanctions to end, then there was no reason for him to comply with the demands of the Security Council, since sanctions could not be removed without U.S. agreement and the United States repeatedly made clear that it would never remove them while Hussein was in power.

In a chapter called “The Magnitude of Catastrophe,” Gordon documents the extent of that destruction and finds that only the combination of war, restrictions on imports, central planning of exports, and a systematic undermining of Iraqi infrastructure could produce the calamity that occurred. The destructive policies, such as the bombing of Iraq’s water treatment facilities and the UN ban on the importation of chlorine, worked together. “Or take, for example, the ceiling on oil exports: once the ceiling on oil sales was lifted, Iraq was blocked from obtaining the equipment necessary to increase oil production. Or consider the blocked contracts for electrical equipment: even if Iraq had been allowed to buy the equipment and chemicals for water and sewage treatment, there was not sufficient electricity to power the plants.” Gordon writes,

The perversity and irony of the sanctions regime, imposed under the auspices of international law, is that it may have done more human damage than Saddam Hussein’s persecution of ethnic groups and human rights combined.

Imperialistic central planning

How did the program work? Initially, the UN forbade all member nations to import any Iraqi goods, and required them to prohibit their nationals from shipping any goods or sending funds to either Iraq or Kuwait. From August 1990 to March 1991, that included food. The program soon came to involve “a labyrinth of UN agencies as well as the establishment of an entirely new agency within the UN.” Beginning in August 1991, Iraq was allowed to export up to $1.6 billion every six months to trade for food and medicine. All humanitarian goods, food, and medical equipment would be purchased through the “661 Committee,” which came to possess “extremely broad responsibilities for the overall implementation of the sanctions regime.” The 661 Committee, made up of 15 delegates, “few of whom had expertise in economic development, emergency relief, oil, or any other of the committee’s substantive areas of work,” made about 6,000 decisions a year about what would be allowed into Iraq. From 1990 to 1995, that was “the sole legal means for Iraq to import any goods.” By 1995, food was so scarce that an Iraqi government rationing program provided “1,100 calories per person per day.”And before Iraq could buy any goods, it would have to present a “distribution plan,” giving a

detailed description of the areas of need in each sector.... The plan then listed every single item to be purchased, how it would be used, and where it would be used: every piece of equipment for electrical production, and the specific power plant where it would go; every chemical or instrument for water treatment, and the specific laboratory or plant where they would be used; every dose of vaccine for poultry and cattle, and every syringe, needle and scissors for veterinarians; and so forth.

Even as Iraqi imports were controlled in this totalitarian manner, so too was its principal export, oil. By determining how much oil could be sold, the United States and UN exercised total domination over the Iraqi economy. Altogether, war and sanctions “meant an 85 percent decline in oil production.” In 1995, the UN set up the Oil-for-Food Program, in response to problems with and criticisms of the initial sanctions regime, but the control was still cruel and becoming of a total state. “The Oil-for-Food Programme originally allowed imports totaling $130 per person per year. Together with existing imports, which averaged $20 per person per year, total imports came to $150, well below the level of the poorest Arab countries.”

Moreover, Iraq never handled any of the funds. The “proceeds of all oil sales were deposited in [a UN] account and all payments to vendors were made from this account.” The U.S. meddling with oil prices through a socialist scheme of “retroactive pricing” also interfered greatly with trade with Iraq. “The chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute asked, ‘How can you do business if you don’t know what the price is?’”

The United States calling the shots

Although done through the UN, the sanctions were essentially a U.S. policy. “The United States exercised singular influence over every aspect of the structure and extent of the sanctions.” The Multinational Interception Force, which enforced the policy, “for its entire history was under the command of U.S. naval officers.” The United States first created the policy by intimidating and bribing member nations to vote for it — offering aid to Colombia, Ethiopia, and Zaire to vote for the sanctions; making deals with China and the Soviet Union; and canceling aid to Yemen for refusing to go along. Then, by exercising its veto power over the implementation of the sanctions, the United States would put a “hold” on various importation contracts — blocking agricultural goods, children’s milk, food-packaging materials, raw cotton, and glue. The United States even “blocked the purchase of salt on the grounds that it could be used for the salinization of leather, which contributed to Iraqi industry.” These holds were at times both absurd and devastating: “Vehicles in general were targeted by the United States on the grounds, for example, that a vehicle that could carry a bulldozer could conceivably be used by the military to carry a tank.... Sixty percent of transportation contracts on hold were for accessories such as tires, car batteries, or spare parts, making it impossible to maintain or repair whatever vehicles there were.”

This “dual use” rationale for blocking items that could supposedly be used for both civilian and military purposes was taken to obscene levels. The United States “blocked a contract for 1,000 water tankers on the grounds that they were lined with stainless steel and therefore were ‘WMD dual use.’” A “catering truck was blocked because it was refrigerated.” Propellant used to make inhalers was disallowed. Vaccines were blocked, because it was supposed to be possible to turn the weak viruses into biological weapons. Pesticides were blocked because “Iraq might extract chemical components ... to make chemical weapons.” Although the UN monitored how imports were used, the United States insisted on blocking such important goods outright. And although the holds were supposedly for security reasons, the United States was willing to reverse itself to benefit nations that went along with its sanctions policy.

All the while, Congress was content to allow the executive branch to handle the sanctions, blindly accepting State Department propaganda and only occasionally speaking up insofar as it concerned the disarmament of Iraq and regime change. Only a few legislators spoke in behalf of the devastated Iraqi people. Gordon provides a very good chapter on congressional dynamics. Of course, even with the Democrats running “both houses of Congress until 1995, for the most part they had little interest in the humanitarian situation.”

The UN itself is to blame as well, but, notably, most other member nations, the elected members of the Security Council, and the humanitarian organizations within the UN tended to protest the policy as framed by the United States and to an extent Britain. UN agencies produced damning reports of the humanitarian disaster. UN secretaries general complained. Starting in 1991, nations such as India, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Cape Verde, and Morocco proposed reforms to allow for more humanitarian aid. In 1999, UN panels issued reports finding that the Oil-for-Food Program could not be sufficiently reformed to deal with the horror. In 2000, delegates from more than 20 nations, at this point even including the United States and Britain, gave presentations urging reform. But at every turn, “the United States either prevented the reforms from being adopted or undermined their implementation after they had been adopted.”

As for the well-publicized Oil-for-Food scandal, Gordon has a whole chapter detailing the facts, showing that the corruption involved was overblown compared with the destruction and corruption of the sanctions policy itself. Even without the Oil-for-Food corruption, the Iraqi people would have been virtually no better off. And even here, the United States is hardly blameless: “By far the greater part of Iraq’s illicit funds came from ongoing trade with Jordan, Turkey, and Syria.... The United States blocked any punitive action by the Council against either Jordan or Turkey.” The amount of misallocated money involved in the scandal was dwarfed, for example, by the waste and mismanagement of Iraqi funds by the Coalition Provisional Authority established by the United States in 2003:

From 1990 to 2003 Iraq averaged about half a billion dollars in illicit trade annually. By contrast, in fourteen months of occupation, the U.S.-led occupation authority depleted $18 billion in funds, a good deal of it on questionable contracts with little justification, but much of it just an outright giveaway of cash.

None of this is to defend the Iraqi government, which Gordon writes about extensively in one chapter. Some people mistakenly place all the blame on Saddam’s regime for its corruption and cruelty; the Iraqi state did exacerbate the problem but not as much as is often believed. “The more serious failings concerned the basic structure and policies of the Iraqi government itself: the centralization, the reliance on oil income, reliance on imports and on foreign professionals, and the reliance on advanced technology.” Indeed, the centralized nature of the Iraqi state and the widespread public dependency upon it meant that its bankruptcy under the sanctions regime impoverished the whole country. Gordon credits the government for some of its rationing and subsidy efforts, but it is telling that one of the effective and positive things the Iraqi government did was to allow “the expansion of the private sector in health care, to compensate for the state’s inability to meet health care needs.”

Gordon finishes with a couple of chapters exploring the implications for international law and political and ethical philosophy. Libertarians will not be overimpressed by the sanctions’ incompatibility with UN guarantees such as the “right to health care,” but they will find very compelling the discussion of the Geneva Convention, war crimes, and the like. Gordon finds little legal recourse for the Iraqi people in the form of prosecution or judicial oversight of the Security Council. The sanctions, she concludes, probably do not rise to the level of “genocide” or “a crime against humanity” — “but it seems to me this does not constitute a vindication of the sanctions, but rather a failure of international law.” She comes to a rather encouraging libertarian conclusion: “It may be that, in the end, there is a particular risk posed to humanity by international governance,” whose institutions “entail the risk of a new form of global violence.”

But there is so much to learn from this tragic and disgusting episode. Conservatives need to recognize that totalitarianism and socialistic central planning are indeed not just an abstract threat under the banner of the Democratic Party, but are a reality of U.S. policy, especially as it concerns foreign affairs. They must come to grips with the evil and systematic destruction and terror that are unleashed in the name of U.S. national security upon innocent people in other countries. Liberals should learn that central economic control and restrictions of free trade contain the seeds for near-genocidal levels of cruelty and oppression; that allowing international bodies to govern trade is far from a panacea but is rather a tool of imperialism; that no political party and no state — American, international, or Iraqi — can be trusted not to put political interests above the human right to engage in economic exchange. The Iraqis have been brutalized by the U.S. government for 20 years now, and neither their own government, for all its monopolization of public services, nor the United Nations, for all its high rhetoric, has done much other than worsen their misery. The rest of us can learn about the extent of death and destruction meted out by our own government, in our own name, and come to see why so many in the world would hate us and be willing to kill us — not for our freedom, but for Washington, D.C.’s, war on the freedom of others. Invisible War is a very important book about a very important topic, a topic at risk of being neglected and forgotten, as have so many other atrocities committed by the U.S. empire.

Source: http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1009f.a

UN Says Sanctions Have Killed Some 500,000 Iraqi Children

Anupama Rao Singh, country director for the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), made the estimate in an interview with Reuters. "In absolute terms we estimate that perhaps about half a million children under 5 years of age have died, who ordinarily would not have died had the decline in mortality that was prevalent over the 70s and the 80s continued through the 90s,'' she said. A senior U.N. official said Friday about half a million children under the age of 5 have died in Iraq since the imposition of U.N. sanctions 10 years ago.

A UNICEF survey published in August showed the mortality rate among Iraqi children under 5 had more than doubled in the government-controlled south and center of Iraq during the sanctions. Baghdad said the UNICEF survey proved that the sanctions were killing thousands of children every month and called for an immediate end to the embargo. Rao Sigh blamed malnutrition for the high mortality rate among children.

"Nutrition was not a public health problem in Iraq in the 80s. It emerged as a major problem in the 90s and it increased steadily till about 1996,'' Singh said. She said since the start of the U.N. oil-for-food program, malnutrition rates among children had stabilized, but death rates remained extremely high.

"One in four children below 5 suffers from some form of malnutrition or other and most of them are chronically malnourished,'' Rao Singh said. Sanctions were imposed on Iraq as punishment for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, although the United Nations has allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies. Rao Singh said the sanctions also have affected the quality of education, with many children forced to leave schools to hustle a living on the streets.

"There has been a drop in enrollment, an increase in drop- outs ... children working, children in the street -- all of which, we believe, is going to affect the quality of human resources that Iraq will have in the future,'' she said. According to Rao Singh, the sanctions have caused massive impoverishment except for a small proportion of the elite. ``The majority of middle class people in Iraq, for instance, now find themselves having to do all sorts of mean and insecure jobs to survive,'' she said.

Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072100-03.htm

Horror Of US Depleted Uranium In Iraq Threatens World

"I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis, the media and the troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to destroy the lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car."

The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr. Chris Busby, the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk, talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but the whole world.

For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up by sandstorms and carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate-including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney failure, and extreme birth defects - killing millions of every age for centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in the eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the globe they cannot penetrate - including Britain. Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in which depleted uranium was used.

A Dirty Tyson

'Depleted' uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For 'depleted' sounds weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production. However, uranium is one of earth's heaviest elements and DU packs a Tyson's punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive. 'Crispy critters' is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater distance he wrote: "The children's skin had folded back, like parchment, revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact, stared straight ahead. I vomited." (Daily Mirror)

The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when it burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even be so tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against them impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible killers indiscriminately attack men, women, children and even babies in the womb-and do the gravest harm of all to children and unborn babies.

A Terrible Legacy

Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased by 2-6 times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed cancer and leukaemia since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in 1998 said that as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels to war and sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993. Overall, cases of lymphoblastic leukemia more than quadrupled with other cancers also increasing 'at an alarming rate'. In men, lung, bladder, bronchus, skin, and stomach cancers showed the highest increase. In women, the highest increases were in breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.1

On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defense a special report on the potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it could cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. In that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU-although the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons. Many times that may have been spread across Iraq by this year's war. The devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and fertility of the people of Iraq now, and for generations to come, is beyond imagining.

The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years killing millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against humanity which may rank with the worst atrocities of all time.

We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated their world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU for the brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their semen 8 years later and some had 100 times the so-called 'safe limit' of uranium in their urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of veterans of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on the impact of DU but informal research has found a high incidence of birth defects in their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq have three times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who did not go there.

Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which would break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be, or with a single eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific.

Doctors report that many women no longer say 'Is it a girl or a boy?' but simply, 'Is it normal, doctor?' Moreover this terrible legacy will not end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged for ever, and the damaging DU dust is ever-present.

Blue on Blue

What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people of Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in both wars. And they have done it knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick with DU and soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing. Moreover, their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU but also by a vaccination regime which violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines, nerve agent pills, and organophosphate pesticides in their tents. Yet, though the hazards of DU were known, British and American troops were not warned of its dangers. Nor were they given thorough medical checks on their return-even though identifying it quickly might have made it possible to remove some of it from their body. Then, when a growing number became seriously ill, and should have been sent to top experts in radiation damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist.

Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now invalided out with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq-that's 1 in 3. In contrast, the British government's failure to fully assess the health of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows how many have died or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf veterans' associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and women who saw active service, at least 572 have died prematurely since coming home and 5000 may be ill. An alarming number are thought to have taken their own lives, unable to bear the torment of the innumerable ailments which have combined to take away their career, their sexuality, their ability to have normal children, and even their ability to breathe or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are 'on DU death row, waiting to die'.

Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example, soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust.

They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They too seem prone to cancer and leukemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukemia rate has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the use of DU.

The Vital Evidence

Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits only 'low level' radiation DU is harmless. Award-winning scientist, Dr. Rosalie Bertell who has led UN medical commissions, has studied 'low-level' radiation for 30 years. 2 She has found that uranium oxide particles have more than enough power to harm cells, and describes their pulses of radiation as hitting surrounding cells 'like flashes of lightning' again and again in a single second.2 Like many scientists worldwide who have studied this type of radiation, she has found that such 'lightning strikes' can damage DNA and cause cell mutations which lead to cancer.

Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and travel through the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound all that, Dr. Bertell has found that this particular type of radiation can cause the body's communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in many vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking fact, since many veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable, seemingly unrelated, ailments.

In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have shown two ways in which such radiation can do far more damage than has been thought. The first is that a cell which seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with diverse mutations several cell generations later. (And mutations are at the root of cancer and birth defects.) This 'radiation-induced genomic instability' is compounded by 'the bystander effect' by which cells mutate in unison with others which have been damaged by radiation-rather as birds swoop and turn in unison. Put together, these two mechanisms can greatly increase the damage done by a single source of radiation, such as a DU particle. Moreover, it is now clear that there are marked genetic differences in the way individuals respond to radiation-with some being far more likely to develop cancer than others. So the fact that some veterans of the first Gulf war seem relatively unharmed by their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did not damage others.

The Price of Truth

That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the research findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident. A US report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, 'The potential for health effects from DU exposure is real; however it must be viewed in perspective... the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive.'3

Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at least a quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge disability claims might be made not only against the governments of Britain and America if the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There might also be huge claims against companies making DU weapons and some of their directors are said to be extremely close to the White House. How close they are to Downing Street is a matter for speculation, but arms sales makes a considerable contribution to British trade. So the massive whitewashing of DU over the past 12 years, and the way that governments have failed to test returning troops, seemed to disbelieve them, and washed their hands of them, may be purely to save money.

The possibility that financial considerations have led the governments of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking responsibility for the harm they have done not only to the people of Iraq but to their own troops may seem outlandish. Yet DU weapons weren't used by the other side and no other explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain and America first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.4 One American study in 1990 said DU was 'linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and to] chemical toxicity-causing kidney damage'. While another openly warned that exposure to these particles under battlefield conditions could lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung disease, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.5

A Culture of Denial

In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons for illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as 'weapons of mass destruction' 'incompatible with international humanitarian and human rights law'. Since then, following leukemia in European peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has twice called for DU weapons to be banned.

Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their denials of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more troops from the first Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in the Balkans and Afghanistan have become seriously ill. This is no coincidence. In 1997, while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in Washington was quoted as saying, 'The [US government's] Veterans Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted uranium in the human body.' He concluded, 'uranium does cause cancer, uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to God and to all generations who follow.' Not what the authorities wanted to hear and his research was suddenly blocked.

During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities have abolished military hospitals, where there could have been specialized research on the effects of DU and where expertise in treating DU victims could have built up. And, not content with the insult of suggesting the gravely disabling symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have refused full pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the current House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says 'it is judged that any radiation effects from possible exposures are extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently being experienced by some Gulf war veterans.' Note how over a quarter of a million sick and dying US and UK vets are called 'some'.

The Way Ahead

Britain and America not only used DU in this year's Iraq war, they dramatically increased its use-from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous war to at minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time the use of DU wasn't limited to anti-tank weapons-as it had largely been in the previous Gulf war-but was extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and big 2000-pound bombs used in Iraq's cities. This means that Iraq's cities have been blanketed in lethal particles-any one of which can cause cancer or deform a child. In addition, the use of DU in huge bombs which throw the deadly particles higher and wider in huge plumes of smoke means that billions of deadly particles have been carried high into the air-again and again and again as the bombs rained down-ready to be swept worldwide by the winds.

The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive decontamination in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination is hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the worst areas, it cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and water. How do you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of Baghdad? How can they decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic particles, which cannot be detected with a normal geiger counter, are spread from border to border? And how can they clean up all the countries downwind of Iraq-and, indeed, the world?

So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime against humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical care for the people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who served in the last Gulf war and, through that, minimize their suffering. The second is to relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons, to the scrap heap of history-along with slavery and genocide. Then, and only then, will this crime against humanity be expunged, and the tragic deaths from this war truly bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of the world.

Source: http://www.rense.com/general64/du.htm

UK Soldiers Arrested on Charges of Sexually Abusing Afghan Children

Karzai expressed 'disgust' at 'the rise in recent incidents of immoral nature among foreign soldiers'

Two British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan were arrested on charges of sexually abusing two Afghan children as young as ten years old and filming the abuse. The films, which were showed off to comrades, reportedly depict the two soldiers as they encouraged a young Afghan boy and girl to touch them through their clothing. The British army would not release information on the names of the soldiers or their unit, but the Ministry of Defense said it took such claims “seriously” and the Royal Military Police said they were investigating.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said: “The government of Afghanistan is immensely disgusted by the rise in recent incidents of immoral nature among foreign soldiers that clearly undermine public confidence and the Afghan people’s cooperation with foreign troops.” The arrests have been made less than a week after an internet video surfaced of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Afghan bodies, an incident which the U.S. authorities also claimed it to be investigating. Local Afghans were quoted as saying “such things happen all the time, and people talk about it but media hardly report them.”

The public outrage in the West is of course negligible compared to what it would be if Taliban fighters were recorded pissing on the corpses of U.S. Marines or sexually assaulting American or British children. Nevertheless, the current counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan is supposedly about “winning hearts and minds.”

Source: http://news.antiwar.com/2012/01/18/uk-soldiers-arrested-on-charges-of-sexually-abusing-afghan-children/

Marine To Serve No Time in Iraqi Killings Case

In the mother of all plea bargains, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who was charged with leading the US Marines’ massacre of 24 civilians in the Iraqi city of Haditha, plead guilty to a single count of “dereliction of duty.” His “sentence,” such as it is, will amount to a demotion to the rank of private and a pay cut related to his loss of rank. He will serve no jail time. The announcement has angered a number of Iraqis, particularly the relatives of the slain, who say the verdict is an insult. Khalid Salman, a lawyer for the relatives of the victims, and a cousin of one of the slain, condemned the decision. “This is not a traffic felony,” he said. Even skeptical Iraqis weren’t prepared for this total dismissal. Saleem al-Jubouri, the head of the Iraqi parliament’s human rights committee, had already issued a condemnation on the assumption that Wuterich would face a three-month jail sentence, the maximum for the soldier’s plea bargain.

Source: http://news.antiwar.com/2012/01/24/haditha-massacre-sentence-riles-iraqis-seen-as-insult/

Afghan Soldier 'Killed French Troops Over US Abuse Video'

An Afghan soldier who shot dead four French troops has said he did it because of a recent video showing US Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban insurgents, security sources told AFP. The attack on the soldiers, who were unarmed, came on Friday at a base in eastern Afghanistan and left 15 other French troops wounded, eight of them seriously.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy reacted angrily, threatening to pull his forces out of Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 deadline for all US-led coalition combat troops, and dispatched Defence Minister Gerard Longuet to Kabul. That started a round of claim and counter claim over who was responsible for the attack, with Longuet saying he was told the killer was a Taliban infiltrator in the ranks of the Afghan army.

The Taliban, usually quick to claim coalition deaths, said they were still investigating and suggested some of the many attacks by Afghan soldiers on their foreign counterparts were prompted by anger towards the "invading enemy". Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a statement after a meeting with Longuet, failed to echo his accusation against the Taliban and also played down the idea of Afghan resentment of foreign troops.

"The attack against French forces by an Afghan army soldier does not represent the anger of Afghan people but it is just an isolated and individual action," he said. The story emerging from the interrogation of the soldier arrested for the killings -- named as 21-year-old Abdul Mansour -- would support Karzai's interpretation. "During the initial interrogations by French soldiers, he told them he did it because of the video in which American soldiers were urinating on bodies," an Afghan army officer told AFP.

That report was backed by an intelligence source and another with access to information from the Afghan ministry of defence, both of whom requested anonymity. The intelligence source said the soldier told interrogators he had no direct contacts with the Taliban. The Afghan soldier had also referred to a video showing British soldiers allegedly abusing Afghan children, the ministry of defence source said.

Less than a week after news of the US Marines video broke, British military police arrested two servicemen over allegations that they abused an Afghan boy and a girl, both aged about 10, and filmed the incidents. The US video, posted online this month, showed four US soldiers urinating on three bloodied corpses, and one of the men, apparently aware he was being filmed, saying: "Have a great day, buddy," referring to one of the dead.

The images conjured up previous abuses committed by US troops during the decade-long war against Taliban insurgents and top US officials scrambled to condemn the soldiers. Told that AFP was about to run reports of the Afghan soldier's alleged confession, a spokesman for the US embassy in Kabul, Gavin Sundwall, said: "Our deepest condolences go out to France and the families of the soldiers who lost their lives in this tragic incident."

The actions in the video "violate the core values of both our societies", he added. The bodies of the four French soldiers were flown back to Paris late Sunday, accompanied by French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet. Sarkozy sent his defence minister to Afghanistan after the attack to evaluate ways to improve the security of the French troops who are training up the Afghan army. A spokesperson for the British embassy in Kabul said an investigation into the allegations against the British troops was under way and therefore the embassy could not comment on the Afghan soldier's claim.

The US, Britain and France are the main contributors to the coalition forces of some 130,000 troops who have been fighting a 10-year insurgency by hardline Islamist Taliban forces ousted from power after the 9/11 attacks in the US.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jGCkN0tD3sFPkeYOsgc8b3RNMiGw?docId=CNG.f4b3121d53c9061ef3bd59387255abe5.7a1

Rape, murder, corruption, suicide epidemic and dumping human remains in landfills - January, 2012

2012-01-09T15:47:00.000-08:00

Cremated remains of soldiers knowingly dumped into landfills, high crime rates amongst service members, war veterans sleeping in garbage dumpsters, large numbers of female soldiers raped during service, one of the highest military suicide rates in the world... not to mention the business-as-usual war crimes and gross embezzlement of public funds. No, I'm not talking about Russia nor am I talking about China. I am in fact talking about the proud military of the wealthiest, most powerful and the most developed nation on earth, that of the United States of America.

You are not aware of the corrupt state of the US armed forces today simply because of the larger than life power/influence of Washington's 24/7 propaganda machine and the total control it has over the nation's news press. Despite serious infractions right under their noses, senior officials in Washington prefer instead to tell us when a Russian or an Armenian citizen gets unfairly stopped by a traffic cop in Moscow or Yerevan. Washington will arrogantly call on authorities in targeted nation (e.g. China, Russia, Syria, Iran, Armenia to name a few) to respect the rights of their protesters (despite the fact that many of them are violent) but God forbid protesters in America look at policemen in the wrong way. The hypocrisy of it all is breathtaking! Yet another flagellant example of Washington's hypocrisy is how it has been treating the recent parliamentary elections in Russia.

Nevertheless, a powerful military that spends more on keeping its troops air-conditioned in Iraq and Afghanistan than most nations on earth spend on their armed forces has amongst the highest suicide rates in the world. But for some strange reason American mothers are not protesting the matter in the destructive way, for instance, Armenian mothers do when similar tragedies occur in the Armenian military. There are also reports concerning high numbers of rape within the US armed forces but we don't get to hear about it from American women's rights groups, we get to hear about it from foreign news agencies. While the Pentagon spends trillions of dollars for the acquisition of modern arms (and sometimes "misappropriates" trillions of dollars), American war veterans are increasingly finding themselves without proper housing, medical attention or employment opportunities.

Let's briefly juxtapose this to what occurs in Armenia's military, a military who's entire yearly budget is probably much less than the cost of maintaining a single combat ready squadron of warplanes in the US Air Force.

Couple of years ago an Armenian army recruit got slapped around by one of his commanding officer during some drunken outing. The video clip of the "major incident" went absolutely viral throughout the Armenian world. We had Armenians from all walks of life, from PhDs to taxi drivers, from akhpars to rabiz, expressing severe outrage and utter indignation at the "barbaric act" in question. Western funded propaganda outlets disguised as independent news sites (such as Radio Liberty, Hetq and ArmeniaNow) of course picked up on the incident and featured numerous articles about it on their websites. These "independent" news domains have long become distribution centers of poisonous rhetoric and Washington-inspired propaganda against Armenia, yet many Armenians continue believing them.

Naturally, Western funded propaganda outlets take bad stories in Armenia and present them with inflammatory remarks and inciting language. These centers of psychological warfare operations disguised as news agencies create a perception that which they later cleverly use towards political ends. It's not only Western funded news/propaganda outlets that operate in this manner. Armenia also has a not-so-little army of Washington funded NGOs sounding the alarm about everything and anything under the sun in Armenia. It's constant doom and gloom with these Washington funded entities. The resultant: what we have today is a deeply demoralized population that is systematically losing hope in the fledgling republic going through growing pains.

Armenia today is a tiny, poor, embattled, landlocked and a remote nation going through natural growing pains. Instead of approaching matters pertaining to Armenia sensibly, objectivity or rationally, as most civilized people do when it comes to their homelands, Armenians enthusiastically and recklessly revel in attacking their state - as Azeris and Turks watch with pleasure. I can't blame Washington for doing what is in its geopolitical interests. I can, however, blame our self-hating and self-destructive peasantry in the Armenian homeland and in the diaspora for mindlessly and sometimes intentionally helping and abetting Washington's destructive policies in the Caucasus.

One of the Western meddling agendas in Armenia, for instance, has been to encourage feminist groups there to take-up the plight of women in the republic. Being a father of daughters, I would love to see a lot changed in Armenia with regards to the way women are generally treated. However, according to what I have personally observed in the country and according to various statistical data I have read, violence against women in Armenia is not a widespread problem. Yes, there are a lot of Asiatic/backward mentalities prevailing in the country when it comes to women - but no widespread abuse and/or violence. In fact, abuse rates in Armenia seem to be more-or-less on the same level as many developed nations. However, with such matters there should always be more room for improvement.

Therefore, yes, let's talk about this serious problem, let's raise our voices, let us try to improve this situation by going out to the streets in protest - but let us also not get all hysterical over the matter and let's not start demanding a bloody revolution in the country!

Armenians need to wake up and realize that chaos and a bloody revolution in Armenia is something the Western alliance is working diligently towards through whores like Raffi Hovanissian, Richard Giragosian, Onnik Krikorian and Ara Manoogian and through subversive organizations like Policy Forum Armenia and propaganda agencies like Radio Liberty, ArmeniaNow, Lragir and Hetq.

If it makes the reader feel any better about Armenia (because we Armenians today are desperately in need of a more positive, healthier approach to Armenia's growing pains), allow me to just say that abuse of women is actually much worst in most other nations on earth today. Millions of women are in fact abused, exploited and forced into prostitution, alcoholism and drug abuse in the United States alone! Please see troubling article about the abuse of women in the United States at the bottom of this page. Again I ask you all to try to put things in a proper perspective and look at Armenia's problems - rationally and objectively!

Regarding violence in the Armenian military: one doesn't need to be a genius to realize that any time you put together thousands of hotblooded young men from poor families and mediocre education - in the Caucasus of all places - not to mention overflowing "Armenian" hormones, you will have violence even under the best of circumstances!

In my humble opinion, Armenian mothers today are one of the main obstacles actually hindering Armenia's entry into the modern world. Armenian mothers need to stop worshiping/pampering their beloved sons and realize that their worthless brats need to grow the hell up, get self-reliant, get some discipline and learn how to protect their homeland. In the process, some of them will get hurt or die; but that is the nature of the beast. For their part, Armenian men need to learn that being a man has nothing to do with wearing fancy black clothing, chasing whores, smoking cigarets all day, driving a Benz and growing a "chalaghaj" belly. Armenian men need to realize that being a man means working hard, understanding the world, respecting women, loving one's homeland, obeying laws, acknowledging authority, developing a healthy body and mind, having discipline... and when the time comes, protecting the homeland from enemies both foreign and domestic.

Due to its very nature, all armies on earth have problems; depending on sociopolitical and socioeconomic circumstances, some nations will just have more problems than others. For instance, violence in the Turkish military is much greater than that of Armenia's. Rapes, severe beating and murder of young men serving in the Turkish military are fairly common, yet we never see or hear Turks say anything derogatory about their military. This is not because of the controlled news press in Turkey, this is because of the worship Turks have towards their military and their state. In this regard, compared to Turks, Armenians are a bunch of troublesome peasants. Turks are a nation of soldiers who unconditionally serve their "vatan". Armenians on the other hand are a nation of wannabe-generals and their allegiance to Armenia is strictly conditional upon how well they are living in the country.

I would like to say that I am in no way attempting to excuse or condone violence in the military. Periodic violence that occurs in the Armenian military, although normal by international standards, will gradually diminish with better order enforcement; which is beginning to happen today. And with more exposure to the developed world, Armenian men will gradually forget their Asiatic ways when it comes to women...

We must also realize that the thousand year old spiritual, cultural and genetic damage that Armenia was forced to endure will not be fixed in a single life time. Therefore, learn to be patient.

Having said that, as far as general crime is concerned, Armenia is actually a safe-haven compared to many "developed" nations today. It is well established fact that there is a direct correlation between poverty and crime. Although a large percentage of its population lives in utter poverty, Armenia is amongst a handful of nations on earth today where people do not fear walking the streets late at night and children continue to play unsupervised in their neighborhoods. With healthy activism and some time, I believe Armenia's various sociological problems will be taken care of. In the meanwhile, however, all self-respecting Armenians simply need to allow Armenia to develop and evolve naturally and free of Western interference.

What Armenia needs is social and political evolution, not a Western funded revolution. Moreover, we Armenians need to work with the Armenia we have today... instead of destroying the only Armenia we have pursuing the Armenia of our fantasies.

Arevordi
January, 2011

***

Military Sexual Assault and Rape 'Epidemic'

"My experience reporting military sexual assault was worse than the actual assault," says Jessica (a pseudonym for her protection), a former marine officer and Iraq veteran who left the military because of her command's poor handling of her assault charges. "The command has so much power over a victim of sexual assault. They are your judge, jury, executioner and mayor: they own the law. As I saw in my case, they are able to crush you for reporting an assault." Jessica is joining a civil lawsuit bringing claims against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, charging that under their watch the military failed to adequately and effectively investigate rapes and sexual assaults within the ranks.

The litigation, which was filed in Virginia district court in February of this year by the law office of Susan Burke, is set to go to trial in the coming months. The initial suit named 16 plaintiffs, all former or current military service members - but in recent months that number has swelled to more than 30, as more and more veterans come forward as survivors of sexual assault. These plaintiffs join the growing crescendo of veterans, military service members, spouses and their advocates speaking out against the problem of widespread sexual assault and rape in the US military.

As the war in Afghanistan passes its ten-year mark, sexual assault runs rampant within the ranks, with an estimated one in three female service members raped during their service, according to at least one peer-reviewed study. This is in a military where women comprise more 11 per cent of active duty service members deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and more than 15 per cent of the total military, with at least 200,000 active duty women currently serving. This epidemic also affects men: 60 per cent of women serving in the National Guard and Reserve, along with 27 per cent of men, are estimated to have experienced Military Sexual Trauma (MST). Perpetrators rely on a chain of command that appears to offer virtual impunity for sexual assaults committed against lower-ranking service members.

'Re-traumatising' redress

Military reports and Congress-appointed task forces acknowledge that sexual assault within the military is widespread. While the Department of Defense (DoD) has repeatedly said it is attempting to curb the problem, the most recent evidence shows that it has failed to adequately address the spread of this outbreak.

The most significant change made by the military in the past decade was the creation of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) in 2005. This office, which encompasses the entire DoD, is responsible for oversight of sexual assault policies and the implementation of prevention and response programs. However, SAPRO is rife with problems. The primary role of the office is to track rapes and sexual assaults and release annual reports. According to the US Government Accountability Office's (GAO) own evaluation, SAPRO has failed to work with the disciplinary arm of the DoD, giving its reports and findings little muscle. Furthermore, the Report of the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military December 2009, which was ordered by congress, found that funding of SAPRO had been "sporadic and inconsistent".

SAPRO introduced a system of restricted reporting, allowing survivors of sexual assault to make confidential reports, to avoid outing themselves in a hostile environment. While this step has increased the number of reports and created avenues for survivors to seek personal care, it does not launch an investigation into the assault. "Restricted reporting allows the military to ignore criminal aspects of sexual assault and to just take care of it," says Greg Jacob, a former Marine and the current policy director for the Service Women's Action Network (SWAN), an organisation dedicated to advocacy and providing a healing community for military service women.

Military officials claim that improvements have been made since the Defense Task Force's 2009 report. "DoD has a zero tolerance policy on sexual assault," says Cynthia Smith, SAPRO press spokesperson. "Over the past two years, DoD has affirmed its commitment to preventing and effectively responding to sexual assault. The department's focus has been on reducing the stigma associated with reporting, providing sufficient training for commanders, and ensuring adequate training and resources for prosecutors and investigators."

Yet, the prosecution rates of sexual assault in the military remains at eight per cent, a dismal percentage in light of the staggering number of assaults that are believed to go unreported. This compares to a 40 per cent prosecution rate for sexual assault charges in civilian courts, which itself is considered low. For cases that do make it to trial, sexual assault conviction rates are astoundingly low. According to SAPRO's most recent annual report, in 2010, of 3,158 reports of military sexual assaults, only 529 alleged perpetrators were convicted, while 41 per cent were acquitted or had charges dismissed. Some six per cent were discharged or resigned in lieu of courts-martial, which means that they were allowed to leave their jobs in order to avoid sexual assault charges.

Some survivors of sexual assault claim that SAPRO's "zero tolerance" policy has only succeeded in creating an environment where the command has incentive to deny and cover up sexual assault. "They have all of these generic catch phrases that sound great," says Jessica. "But in reality, 'zero tolerance policy' means that when you make a complaint, it is hidden. Assault reflects badly on the command. What results is cover ups."

Furthermore, critics charge that SAPRO's educational materials are ineffective and often serve to reinforce the mentality that victims are to blame for their own assault. According to the Defense Task Force's 2009 report, "the Task Force's interactions with Service Members suggest training is only marginally effective". A sexual assault prevention poster released by SAPRO reportedly urges soldiers to "wait until she's sober" before propositioning a woman for sex. "The military believes falsely that if you eliminate alcohol you can eliminate sexual assault," says Jacob. "There is perception that it is the result of bad decision making on the part of the victim."

Critics charge that SAPRO fails to address the rape culture that permeates all aspects of military life. "Rape culture separates service members from a group of people that they can consider others, victims, weaker beings," insists Maggie Martin, Army veteran and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), an anti-war group comprising active duty service members and veterans who have served since September 11, 2001. "The rape culture in the military is another way that some service members reduce real life trauma to a joke that they can pretend is not real. It is a way for some to try to prove they are 'hardcore' to the point of inhumanity."

Many insist that the military, which is largely allowed to investigate itself, is still not telling the full story. A 2010 lawsuit filed by SWAN and the ACLU against the DoD and Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) was filed after the military refused requests for government records concerning rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the military. "When I heard about women who had accused someone of rape or sexual assault it was always framed as some personal vendetta the women were taking out on those they accused," says Martin.

Selena Coppa, a former Army Sergeant of eight years and a current member of IVAW tells of an Army Specialist who was molested by another Army Specialist while drunk and passed out. "The woman who was assaulted found out the next morning what had happened. She wanted to do something or say something. Everyone was like, what are you talking about? That is not sexual assault, only sex counts as sexual assault." According to Army policy, sexual assault includes sexual contact when the victim "does not or cannot consent." Yet, rules in the books are seemingly meaningless in an environment where sexual assault appears to go unreported and unacknowledged.

Impunity of high-ranking males

For those who do seek redress for sexual assault and rape through the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the legal code governing military service members, many face an uphill battle in which they are pressured to drop their charges at every step along the way.

When Jessica was raped by a senior officer and his friend, she reported the assault to her command. However, she says that the ensuing investigation was nothing more than a retaliatory measure inflicted by a command that was more interested in covering up assaults and protecting their own reputations. "My command, and the [military lawyer] ordered to do it, produced not a thorough, but a voluminous - as cover ups often are - investigation that proved that I was routinely called disgusting denunciatory names by junior and senior Marines alike, but that because I wore make up and running shorts in the summer, that I therefore welcomed the harassment and subsequent assault and did not deserve protection," she says.

Jessica says she requested a deployment to Afghanistan to get away from the harassment and isolation she faced after filing her report, but when this was denied, she decided to leave the Marines, which she was able to do because of her status as an officer. Jessica joined the lawsuit against Rumsfeld and Gates because, she says: "No one right now is holding commanders accountable." Meanwhile, Jessica says that she is still pursuing charges against her alleged perpetrator through the UCMJ.

Lower enlisted service members who are raped or sexually assaulted, however, often do not have the option of leaving, with many forced to continue serving alongside their perpetrators, including in war zones. "They are putting people in a situation where they are totally dependent on their peers, and when their battle buddies rape them, their superiors are not doing anything about it, explains Johanna (Hans) Buwalda, a mental health provider who has worked with survivors of war for more than twenty years. "There is no safe place for them to go. They can't even leave the military. They have to fulfill their contract." Some researchers say that military sexual trauma compounds deployment-related traumas by excluding women from military camaraderie and fraternity.

These military sexual assaults are in addition to the countless rapes and sexual assaults that have been carried out against civilians at the 800 US military bases around the world, including within occupied populations in Iraq and Afghanistan. While there have been several high-profile scandals exposing US military rapes and slayings of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, as well as sexual assault and humiliation as a tool of torture, there is little information about overall rates of military sexual assault of civilian populations overseas. If sexual assault rates within the military are any indicator, sexual violence would seem to be endemic to the US' global military presence.

Last April, Jennifer (a pseudonym for protection), who is a civilian, reported sexual assault by her then-boyfriend after he returned from a tour in Afghanistan with the Marine Corps. Her alleged assaulter's sergeant major told her that she sounded like a "crazy ex-girlfriend" and that her sexual assault charges were not viable. Jennifer spent the next year and a half contacting everyone she could think of in hope that the military would take her charges seriously. She watched as her assault charges were ignored and dismissed by SAPRO, the NCIS, and even the Pentagon. After navigating countless meetings and phone calls with caseworkers, sexual assault survivor advocates, and even several congressional representatives, Jennifer feels that she has made little progress in her effort to get a fair process through military channels, and, to date, there is no indication that her charges will bear any consequences for her alleged assaulter. Within two months of her report, her alleged assaulter was promoted, and she says that he may be deployed any day, if he is not already.

Jennifer says that the process of attempting to press charges has been deeply traumatising. "When you have been assaulted, talking about it is hard enough," she says. "And having to wait to hear back from someone for help makes you want to give up." "I do not trust the US military at all. Their rules and regulations are nothing more than words on paper," she says. "I am a woman and a civilian, and I have been treated like nothing more than a dog."

The 1996 Federal Lautenberg Amendment, which makes it illegal for people convicted of domestic violence to carry a weapon, extends to the armed forces. With many forms of sexual assault falling under the rubric of domestic violence, assault convictions could preclude a service member from carrying a weapon. Yet, if these assaults go unreported and untried, little stands in the way of perpetrators serving in combat, sometimes alongside those they have assaulted.

Furthermore, the military often blatantly ignores this federal law and sends convicted sex offenders and domestic abusers into war in a climate where the military is overextended, from fighting two ongoing wars. Since September 11, 2001, the DoD has been granting an increasing amount of "moral waivers" which permit soldiers convicted of domestic violence and sexual assault to serve in combat.

High rates of sexual assault take a profound toll on the mental health of service members. Sexual assault is the number one predictor for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for women serving in the military, according to a study in the Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development. Yet the difficulty and stigma against reporting sexual assaults creates significant obstacles for survivors seeking care and disability benefits through the VA. A study by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America shows that approximately 40 per cent of homeless female veterans report having been sexually assaulted in the military.

Members of IVAW are drawing attention to the problem of sexual assault and rape that plagues the military. "IVAW's campaign Operation Recovery is focused on raising awareness about sexual assault and gender-based violence," explains Martin. "We are building a healing community where veterans and service members can challenge military leadership and stand up for the right to heal and the right to access the care survivors of trauma need."

"As an organiser I believe that the best way for us to combat military sexual trauma is to tell the truth about it," insists Martin. "We need to tell the truth that all types of people are sexually assaulted and that no one deserves it. We need to start looking to the perpetrators of sexual assault and the military environment for answers, not look to victims to see how they can be blamed for their own assault."

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/09/2011916112412992221.html

US Military Suicide Rate at Record High

American troops are taking their own lives in the largest numbers since records began to be kept in 1980. In 2008, there were 128 confirmed suicides by serving army personnel and 41 by serving marines. Another 15 army deaths are still being investigated. The toll is another of the terrible consequences that have flowed from Washington's neo-colonial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The army suicide rate is now higher than that among the general American population. The rate has been calculated as 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, compared with 19.5 per 100,000 civilians. This is a shocking statistic, as soldiers theoretically are screened for mental illnesses before enlistment and have access to counselling and health services that millions of ordinary people cannot afford.

As there is an average of 10 failed suicide attempts for each actual loss of life, the figures suggest that more than 1,600 serving army and marine personnel tried to kill themselves last year. Army Secretary Pete Geren told the Associated Press that "we cannot tell you" why the number of military suicides was rising. It is indisputable, however, that it is linked to the stresses on soldiers caused by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, the army suicide rate was just 9.8 per 100,000. The last time it exceeded the civilian rate was in the late 1960s, at the highpoint of the US war in Vietnam. An estimated 30 percent of soldiers who took their own lives in 2008 did so while on deployment. Another 35 percent committed suicide after returning from a tour of duty. In one reported case, a highly regarded marine pilot hanged himself just one month before he was scheduled to return to Iraq.

Dozens of men and women who have left the armed forces since serving in Afghanistan or Iraq also committed suicide in 2008. The Department of Veterans Affairs recorded 144 such cases. The suicide rate among veterans aged 20 to 24 was 22.9 per 100,000 in 2007—four times higher than non-veterans in the same age bracket. A hotline for veterans has received over 85,000 calls since mid-2007 and arranged some 2,100 suicide prevention interventions.

The rise in army suicides was registered despite an information campaign in the US military intended to end stigmas over seeking medical health for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression—psychological conditions that afflict tens of thousands of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans and in severe cases can trigger suicidal tendencies.

Veterans Affairs (VA) reported in January that 178,483 veterans of the two wars had been diagnosed with one or more mental illnesses between 2002 and September 2008. The conditions diagnosed included 92,998 cases of possible PTSD; 63,009 possible depressive disorders; 50,569 neurotic disorders; 35,937 cases of affective psychoses; 27,246 cases of drug abuse and 16,217 cases of alcohol dependency.

VA deputy director for mental health services, Antonette Zeiss, told the Air Force Times: "Most of these conditions would not have been present prior to being in the military. In VA, we assume that these are veterans coming to us who have had significant stresses as a result of their involvement with the military and the war." The "significant stresses" would include killing; repeated exposure to scenes of death and injury; the constant threat of death or injury; and the dehumanising policing operations that American soldiers have been ordered to conduct against civilian populations. No-one who has taken part in the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq could have returned completely unscathed by the experience.

The true extent of mental illness among war veterans is believed to be far worse than VA's figures. It has only treated around 400,000 of the 1.7 million men and women who have served. "We know there are guys who desperately need help who aren't coming to us," a spokesman told the Air Force Times. A Rand Corporation study last year estimated that 20 percent of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans—some 350,000 people—were suffering from PTSD.

As many as 18 veterans of American wars take their own lives in the United States every day—more than 6,500 per year. Vietnam veteran advocates have estimated that suicide ultimately killed more of the soldiers who fought in that conflict than the actual war itself. The same trend is now surfacing among the veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq. A recent case was the suicide of Specialist Larry Applegate on January 16. After an argument with his wife, during which shots were fired, Applegate barricaded himself inside his Colorado Springs home. Shortly after, he killed himself with a bullet to the head.

The Army Times reported that the 27-year-old soldier, who served in Iraq during 2006, had been under the supervision of a Warrior Transition Unit (WTU) since February 2008 for an undisclosed condition. WTUs were established in June 2007 after the exposure of substandard treatment of wounded troops at the Walter Reed Medical Centre. There are currently some 9,000 soldiers assigned to 36 WTUs across the US. A total of 68 soldiers had died under WTU care by October 2008. More than half the deaths were ruled to have resulted from natural causes, but nine were determined to be suicides. Six others were classified as accidental deaths caused by "combined lethal drug toxicity".

Source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/suic-f04.shtml

Slain Troops Dumped in Landfill, Air Force Admits

One day after the Office of Special Counsel’s report on the “gross mismanagement” of human remains by the Dover Air Force Base mortuary, the Air Force, which heretofore insisted there was no evidence any rule had been broken, is suddenly coming out with all sorts of new information. The verdict is even more grim than we thought. Lt. Gen. Darrell Jones, the deputy chief of personnel, confirmed that the Air Force had been cremating remains and dumping them in a nearby landfill. Lt. Gen. Jones insists its not that big of a deal though.

“That was the common practice at the time and since then our practices have improved,” Jones said, adding that they only did this in cases when bodies (or parts) were “unidentified” or when the families of the slain told the military to dispose of them. The previous report confirmed that the Air Force had lost and mixed body parts sometimes, and that in one case they sawed off a slain Marine’s arm so he’d fit in the casket better. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta praised the Air Force for its “thoroughness” in the investigation.

Source: http://news.antiwar.com/2011/11/09/slain-troops-dumped-in-landfill-air-force-admits/

Why Wounded Warriors Sleep in Dumpsters

A group of desperate homeless veterans became plaintiffs yesterday in a suit, Valentini v. Shinseki, filed in U.S. district court against the federal officials responsible for their plight. There are roughly 107,000 homeless veterans in America. Many of them are chronically condemned to wander our streets because the trauma they suffered serving our country has left them profoundly brain-damaged or disabled with terrible psychiatric conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. These wounds of war are physically invisible, but they are no less life-threatening.

When military service renders our returning soldiers unable to resume their civilian lives—by holding down jobs, continuing their education, or sustaining family relationships—our duty is to come to their aid. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires us to provide those veterans with therapeutic, supportive housing. Study after study shows that without secure housing, these vets simply cannot benefit from the psychiatric and other medical services to which our laws entitle them. Instead, they live and die in dumpsters or under freeway overpasses.

Facilities for housing these profoundly wounded vets are often readily available. For example, in Los Angeles—a place some call the nation's "capital of veteran homelessness"—there is a 387-acre parcel of land, the West Los Angeles VA Campus. That property is not just theoretically suited to therapeutic housing: It was donated to the government in 1888 by a U.S. senator and a private benefactor for the specific purpose of permanently maintaining a soldiers' home. For 80 years, it operated as such. But during the Vietnam War, when some Americans turned their backs on our soldiers, the government put buildings and land formerly dedicated to veterans' therapeutic housing to other, more lucrative uses.

Today, where the disabled homeless vets of Los Angeles should find a home, they'll instead find a car-rental business, a private swimming pool, a dog run, an oil well, an 18-hole golf course, and a unit that launders linen for nearby luxury hotels. Valentini v. Shinseki, which we helped these disabled veterans file, asks only that the government keep the solemn promise it made when it accepted the land as a charitable gift: provide the housing. Among the plaintiffs in this lawsuit is Greg Valentini. A private in the 101st Airborne, he took part in the initial invasion of Afghanistan. There, he participated in the assault on Tora Bora that sought Osama bin Laden. He was redeployed to Iraq, where he again experienced heavy combat. He received six decorations for his service.

After his honorable discharge, Mr. Valentini attended college, planning to become a police officer. But his combat experience made it difficult for him to control his emotions. He grew paranoid about his surroundings, experienced harrowing nightmares, and repeatedly considered suicide. He left college and soon found himself sleeping on the streets.

Mr. Valentini is one of some 8,200 homeless veterans in Los Angeles. Another, who wishes to be identified only as Jane Doe, had been raped repeatedly by her fellow soldiers during her service as an Army military radio operator. A third, Adrian Moraru, is a Marine who took part in the initial ground invasion of Iraq and ended up with violent seizures, spending his days and nights pacing Wilshire Boulevard. A fourth, Chris Romine, served twice in Iraq where his unit was responsible for "cleaning up" the body parts that remained after roadside bomb attacks on American forces.

These veterans, like many others, all suffer from severe cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. It is difficult to help a veteran cope with severe mental illness incurred on the battlefield even under the best of conditions; it is impossible to do so while the veteran is sleeping on the streets. By failing to provide safe and stable living conditions that are within its power to provide, the government denies veterans with mental disabilities meaningful access to its medical programs.

Unfortunately, efforts to rectify this outrageous treatment outside of court have been unsuccessful. We have therefore joined forces with the Southern California ACLU, and with several law firms acting pro bono. On behalf of this group of wounded veterans, we are asking the government to reveal its deals with the commercial users of the campus land; to use the profits of those deals to assist homeless veterans in obtaining the housing they need; and, above all, to fulfill the original purpose of the West Los Angeles Campus by dedicating it to the disabled veterans who could be helped by finding supportive housing there.

President Obama said in March 2009 that our veterans "have a home. It's the country they served, the United States of America, and until we reach a day when not a single veteran sleeps on our nation's streets, our work remains unfinished." Many soldiers who have returned from war have since died. If the Department of Veterans Affairs simply keeps the pledge made in 1888 when it accepted the gift of land, it will have taken a modest first step in turning the president's dream of securing every veteran a home into reality.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304432304576371591562510516.html

360,000 Veterans May Have Brain Injuries

Pentagon officials estimated for the first time Wednesday that up to 360,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans may have suffered brain injuries. Among them are 45,000 to 90,000 veterans whose symptoms persist and warrant specialized care. Army Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton provided the estimate during a news conference about March as Brain Injury Awareness Month. She heads the Pentagon's Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury.

Pentagon officials have been reluctant to estimate the number of potential brain-injury casualties among the 1.8 million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sutton based her estimate upon military health-screening programs showing that 10% to 20% of returning troops have suffered at least a mild concussion. Among them are 3% to 5% with persistent symptoms that require specialists such as an ophthalmologist to deal with vision problems. Sutton's estimate is similar to a RAND Corp. study last year that said 320,000 may have suffered a brain injury.

Following direction from Congress, the U.S. military began to screen all troops returning from the war zones for brain injury last year. Persistent symptoms can range from headaches and sleep disorders to memory, balance and vision difficulties, said Lt. Col. Lynne Lowe, the Army's program manager for traumatic brain injury. Research suggests the vast majority of these troops recover, said James Kelly, director of the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, a Pentagon treatment center for traumatic brain injury and psychological health. Kelly said scientists are trying to understand the severity and extent of brain injury caused by exposure to a blast. Many of the wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were hurt by roadside bombs.

The science is so new that it remains unclear whether symptoms attributed to brain injury are actually the result of post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the same combat incident — a roadside bomb blast, for example — that caused the brain injury, Lowe said. The Pentagon's official figure for U.S. military war casualties of all kinds in Iraq and Afghanistan is about 33,000. Sutton said at least 9,100 troops have been diagnosed with brain injuries since the war began.

The Department of Veterans Affairs reports that it has treated about 8,000 former service members for brain injury after their return from Iraq and Afghanistan. The rest of those who may require care have problems that can be treated by a family physician — issues such as headaches and sleep disorders, Kelly said. "It's not unusually complicated care." Hotline phone numbers available for troops concerned about symptoms that might be related to a brain injury are, at the Centers of Excellence, 866-966-1020; and at the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, 800-870-9244.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-03-04-braininjuries_N.htm

US Loses $6 Billion of Iraq's Money

For years, the US Dept of Defense has claimed it could find Iraq’s missing 6.6 billion dollars if given enough time. Now, it appears Federal auditors are giving up the search. While no official announcement has been made yet, key figures are quickly making public remarks and claiming the legal high ground. In numerous instances of profiteering and fraud involving US efforts in Iraq, a number of American officials are already serving time in prison. Those crimes were nothing compared to the 6.6 billion dollar heist. And it’s got some powerful people nervous.

The missing $6.6 billion dollars is above and beyond the $61 billion America has already spent rebuilding Iraq. But it represents a whopping ten percent of the overall 8-year Iraqi reconstruction cost. And unlike the $61 billion that came from the US taxpayers, the $6.6 billion was Iraq’s money to begin with. The money was located in a special account created by the Federal Reserve and called the Development Fund for Iraq. While Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was under devastating economic sanctions and its international funds were seized by the US, the money was held in a trust for the Iraqi people.

Money was added to the account after the sale of Saddam Hussein’s personal assets, as well as the money left over in the scandal-plagued UN Oil for Food Program. Basically a trust fund for Iraq’s state revenues, even the proceeds from the sale of Iraq’s oil were added. Arguing that the Iraqi national government couldn’t handle the responsibility of managing itself, the Coalition Provisional Authority was created to do it for them. Led by L. Paul Bremer, the US imposed national government was immediately hampered by internal conflict and mismanagement. Replaced after only one month, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner had publically stated his intention was to give the Iraqi’s full control and responsibility of their own assets, security and infrastructure as soon as possible.

Within a year, Iraq seemed to be a free-for-all. The Coalition Provisional Authority was disbanded and the US went from spending $4.6 billion on Iraqi reconstruction in 2003 to $19.5 billion in 2004. That amount is double 2007 and four-times every other year before or since. With President Bush pouring every cent he could find into Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took possession of the Iraqi trust fund and had delivered in cash. Carried by tractor trailer from the Federal Reserve in New York to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, it was then flown directly to Baghdad.

Once in Baghdad, the $6.6 billion was divided up between a handful of Defense Department officials and stored at numerous secret sites, including military bases and former Presidential Palaces. Surprisingly, the funds were well organized and kept track of at this point. For along with them, the White House was sending truck loads of cash, literally.

Pentagon officials have since described the days in May 2004 when $12 billion dollars in cash was air-lifted from the US Treasury directly to Iraq. C-130 Hercules cargo planes were used on the 20-plus missions. In what became the largest international cash air-lift in history, the giant aircraft were stuffed full bags and crates full of cold hard cash. Uniformly bundled in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 dollar bills, the money was packed into anything and everything the military could find to carry it.

Fortunately for the Iraqi’s, their $6.6 billion arrived just fine and appears to be accounted for. It was the next step in the process where the nation’s funds suddenly vanish. Insisting on maintaining control over key infrastructure and the new Iraqi interim government, Defense Department officials on the ground in Iraq were charged with funding the countries various Ministries.

Defense and US military officials appear to be on file withdrawing the money, but no records can be found of them actually handing it over to the Iraqis in charge of paying the country’s municipal employees, police, sanitation, food and other necessary services. American officials insist the money was indeed handed over to the Iraqi Ministers. The Iraqis however, charge they were never given the money and the facts show that the US has absolutely no documentation to show it was ever handed over to them.

US officials in Baghdad argue that the Iraqi Ministries were so corrupt, the money had to be lost in the vacuum of kick-backs and bribes. One example cited by the CPA was the Iraqi government’s hiring and payroll practices. In only one of the Ministries, the US was sending paychecks to 8,206 Iraqi security guards. When audited however, only 603 people were actually employed.

Certainly, the vision of thousands of Americans and Iraqis running around Baghdad and the outer reaches of Iraq with satchels full of millions of dollars in US greenbacks would explain the confusion. But the fact remains, Iraq wants their money and according to US officials, the American taxpayer is going to have to come up with it, again.

The Chicago Tribune quotes Stuart Bowen, Congress’ Inspector General for the Iraq reconstruction effort as saying the $6.6 billion may mark “the largest theft of funds in national history”. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) was quoted by the Tribune being a little less understanding, “Congress is not looking forward to having to spend billions of our money to make up for billions of their money that we can’t account for and can’t seem to find”.

Only months after the money was lost, a host of US Senators sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concerning the outrageous details describing the method of transfer. The letter read, “The CPA apparently transferred this staggering sum of money with no written rules or guidelines for ensuring adequate managerial, financial or contractual controls over the funds. Such enormous discrepancies raise very serious questions about potential fraud, waste and abuse".

On a day when US Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was refused entry into Iraq for publicly suggesting the people of Iraq should repay the American taxpayers for their financial loss, Iraq’s Chief Auditor announced that his government was prepared to go to court to recoup the missing $6.6 billion. “Clearly, Iraq has an interest in looking after its assets and protecting them” said Abdul Basit Turki Saeed.

Associated Press reports Iraqi lawmakers weren’t as tactful regarding Rep. Rohrabacher’s suggestion of Iraqi reparations. “We as a government reject such statements and we have informed the American embassy that these congressmen are not welcome in Iraq" said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh yesterday. Another lawmaker, Etab al-Douri, called the suggestion a “humiliation”. "We are the ones who should ask for compensation and not them, and we demand the occupiers to withdraw now" she finished.

Source: http://blog.transparency.org/2011/06/23/the-true-cost-of-defence-corruption/

Rumsfeld Buries Admission of Missing 2+ Trillion Dollars in 9/10/01 Press Conference

On September 10, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held a press conference to disclose that over $2,000,000,000,000 in Pentagon funds could not be accounted for. Rumsfeld stated: "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." According to a report by the Inspector General, the Pentagon cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends. ¹ ²

Such a disclosure normally might have sparked a huge scandal. However, the commencement of the attack on New York City and Washington in the morning would assure that the story remained buried. To the trillions already missing from the coffers, an obedient Congress terrorized by anthrax attacks would add billions more in appropriations to fight the "War on Terror."

The Comptroller of the Pentagon at the time of the attack was Dov Zakheim, who was appointed in May of 2001. Before becoming the Pentagon's money-manager, he was an executive at System Planning Corporation, a defense contractor specializing in electronic warfare technologies including remote-controlled aircraft systems. ³ ⁴ Zakheim is a member of the Project for a New American Century and participated in the creation of its 2000 position paper Rebuilding America's Defenses which called for "a New Pearl Harbor." ⁵

Estimates of the sums of money missing vary wildly. A 2003 report put the amount missing at "more than a trillion dollars." ⁶

Source: http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/trillions.html

Military Towns Are Among the Country's Most Dangerous

Military bases and the neighborhoods surrounding them often seem like the ultimate refuge of middle-American values. Run with military efficiency and discipline, the well-trimmed yards, cleanly-paved roads and orderly layouts convey an ideal image of life as it should be: safe, peaceful and friendly.

However, as the horrific shootings in Fort Hood demonstrate, this perception of structure and normalcy may be deceptive. According to a study by NeighborhoodScout, which offers neighborhood-by-neighborhood crime analyses, some of America's military towns have crime levels that place them among the country's most dangerous neighborhoods. While the danger in these areas is much more heavily skewed toward property crimes like vandalism and theft than violent crimes like murder or rape, the statistics are startling.

Topping the list of America's ten worst military neighborhoods is Hawaii's Schofield Barracks. The area has an estimated 759 property crimes per 1,000 people -- more than 20 times the national average of 34 per 1,000 residents and fifteen times Hawaii's average. As a result, NeighborhoodScout ranks it as one of the worst neighborhoods in the country. Yet, Schofield Barracks's crime wave is largely comprised of property crimes, not violent crimes. While its property crime rate is more than twenty times the national average, its violent crime rate is (a comparatively minor) 49% higher than the median. This suggests that the large crime jumps in the area are more likely to involve robbery, theft, and motor vehicle theft.

Similarly, the second-ranked neighborhood, the Patton Road area near Alabama's Redstone Arsenal, has an estimated property crime rate of 691 per 1,000 residents. The remaining eight military neighborhoods -- Indiana's Grissom Joint Air Reserve Base, an area near Texas' Lackland AFB, Mississippi's Meridian Naval Air Station, California's Presidio of Monterey, Washington's Ault Field, and Hawaii's Kaneohe Station -- range between 410 and 155 property crimes per 1,000 residents.

So why do these ten neighborhoods have such high crime rates? According to Andrew Schiller, founder and president of NeighborhoodScout, the answer may lie in the demographics of the American military. Military bases tend to have high concentrations of young, single men living together in very close quarters. Schiller has also found similar property crime spikes in other areas -- like college student neighborhoods -- that have large concentrations of single males living together. One possible explanation for these surges in crime rates could be that young men, separated from their parents, wives, families and communities, may feel more temptation to commit certain types of crimes.

Ironically, NeighborhoodScout reports that military neighborhoods as a whole tend to be considerably safer than most of the country. America has 300 neighborhoods in which at least 20% of the population is in the military. In these areas, the median property crime rate is 32 per 1,000 residents, which is 7% below the national average. The violent crime rate is even more striking: at 1.55 crimes per 1,000 residents, it is an impressive 67% lower than the average.

Source: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/11/16/most-dangerous-military-towns/

Maltreated and hazed, one soldier is driven to take his own life

For Army Spc. Brushaun Anderson, there was no escaping his torment. The senior noncommissioned officers who ruled his life at a remote patrol base in Iraq ordered him to wear a plastic trash bag because they said he was “dirty.” They forced him to perform excessive physical exercises in his body armor over and over again. They made him build a sandbag wall that served no military purpose.

Anderson seemed to take it all in stride. Until New Year’s Day 2010, when the once-eager 20-year-old soldier locked himself inside a portable toilet, picked up his M4 rifle, aimed the barrel at his forehead and pulled the trigger. Anderson left behind a note lamenting his failures in the military, and some soldiers in his unit immediately said that Anderson had been driven to kill himself by leaders bent on humiliating him.

“No matter what Spc. Anderson did, no matter how big or small the incident was, his punishment was always extremely harsh, [and] a lot of the time demeaning,” one corporal later told Army investigators. “Spc. Anderson’s punishments were not like anyone else’s in the platoon,” another corporal said. “Spc. Anderson was singled out.”

The U.S. Army is confronting an unprecedented suicide crisis. Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 1,100 soldiers have taken their own lives, with the numbers escalating each year for the last six years. Last year alone, 301 soldiers committed suicide — a new record. Army officials often profess bafflement over the causes of the suicide epidemic, and they have spent more than $75 million on studies to try to understand the problem and reverse the devastating trend.

In Anderson’s case, at least, there was little mystery. An Army investigation into Anderson’s unit following his suicide concluded that he had been hazed on multiple occasions and subjected to “cruel, abusive and oppressive treatment.” Anderson’s battery commander, first sergeant, platoon sergeant and squad leader were found responsible for his maltreatment, according to documents obtained by Stars and Stripes.

But the Army didn’t hold them criminally culpable, and they weren’t made to leave the service. Instead, all four superiors are moving ahead with their careers in leadership positions, entrusted with molding the Army’s next generation. This is the story of one soldier’s humiliation — and the Army’s decision to avert its gaze. It is based on interviews with Anderson’s family and soldiers who witnessed his mistreatment and more than 500 pages of Army documents, including sworn statements from members of his unit and the conclusions of two Army investigators.

Rocky deployment

Brushaun Anderson had been raised by his great aunt in a modest community in Columbus, Ga., and had joined the military for the same reason many low-income recruits do: He saw it as his chance to get ahead.

He was an inexperienced soldier, with only two years in the Army, and on his first deployment. He dreamed of joining Special Forces, perhaps becoming a sniper. He could rattle off details of the Army’s weapons systems and obsessively cleaned his rifle. He also wanted to recruit, because he liked to teach and talk and “he loved what he was doing in the Army,” said his great aunt,Phyllis Eason.

In the beginning, Anderson saw success. Capt. William Fisher, Battery A’s commander, praised him in Army documents, calling him “an impressive soldier with the highly sought after ‘self-starter’ quality,” and the battalion made him Soldier of the Quarter the month before they deployed. Anderson was then given the honor of carrying the battalion’s colors at the pre-deployment ceremony at Fort Drum, N.Y., and promoted to specialist not long after.

Yet, in Iraq, Anderson found himself something of an outsider. He was an infantryman, not a field artillery soldier. He and a few other young infantrymen had been added to 2nd Battalion, 15th Field Artillery Regiment for the deployment. He was also one of the few black soldiers in the battery. Anderson received only mediocre performance reviews. He wasn’t meeting expectations in many regards, including his attitude.

He had lapses in judgment and a hygiene problem that hurt his reputation among some of Battery A’s leadership, even though one lieutenant said much of his behavior was typical of young soldiers. He thought Anderson simply needed more guidance from his direct leadership to help him develop as a soldier. That wouldn’t happen at Patrol Base Babil.

The base in eastern Baghdad was remote and austere. There was no running water, no amenities like Internet access and, for a while, no portable toilets. Battery A’s 2nd Platoon and an attached squad lived sparsely in a tight square of tents next to Iraqi Security Forces. Their battalion was based at the larger Joint Security Station Zafaraniyah about 20 minutes away, so the 40 or so soldiers at Babil were largely isolated from the rest of the unit.

The platoon’s top enlisted man, Sgt. 1st Class Phillip Devos, was granted wide leeway to run the show, and he reveled in the power, declaring himself “Supreme Allied Commander¬–Babil,” noncomissioned officers told Stars and Stripes. He had the backing of Fisher, the battery’s commander, and then-Sgt. 1st Class Stephen Amaral, the battery’s first sergeant, both of whom encouraged a domineering spirit among the NCOs and emphasized punishment as a primary means of leadership, the NCOs said.

With this shared philosophy, the three leaders were close knit, the soldiers said. The leaders were eager for the deployment to turn into something big, itching for combat at a time when the mission in Iraq had shrunk to conducting courtesy patrols with the Iraqi Security Forces. In December 2009, Devos got a new soldier to command when Anderson was moved from 1st Platoon to Babil. Devos and the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Charles Bruckner, immediately pounced on Anderson’s minor mistakes.

Soldiers said once Bruckner and Devos identified Anderson as a soldier they could pick on, they never let up. They called him names and told him he wasn’t good enough for their platoon, that he was a “shit-bag soldier.” They encouraged the other NCOs to find it funny and “release the dogs” on Anderson, a sergeant later wrote in his sworn statement. Bruckner and Devos lacked even a “hint of moral capacity or professionalism,” another soldier wrote.

According to one sergeant, Devos was known for his “belittlement, cruelty and his verbal abuse.” Another soldier stated that Devos called Anderson stupid and sneered that the specialist must have cheated on his recruitment test because the Army doesn’t accept “retards.” Anderson was also punished for “unreasonably long periods,” a soldier wrote, often for violations of rules that no one else had to abide by. “Spc. Anderson was not a perfect soldier and he knew he made mistakes,” the soldier continued, “but no one deserved to get smoked like he did.”

Harsh punishment

For Christmas, the entire battery squeezed in at Babil to celebrate together. Anderson was pulling guard duty in the predawn hours while most of the battery slept. As the sun began to rise, he lit a cigarette while sitting in the truck. That was technically against the rules, but it was common practice at Babil. Fisher asked him if he was smoking. “Yeah, roger,” Anderson replied.

Fisher and Amaral weren’t pleased with the response. Both men demanded not just respect but total deference, soldiers said. They had Bruckner and Anderson’s team leader counsel the specialist for disrespecting a senior officer and violating a lawful order for smoking in the truck. Both NCOs then recommended that Anderson get a company-grade Article 15, a nonjudicial punishment through the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.

Fisher and Amaral decided against that. Instead, Anderson was ordered to perform hours of corrective training. Fisher, in fact, never approved an Article 15 during the entire deployment, setting him apart from the other battery commanders in the battalion. He and the rest of the battery and platoon leadership portrayed this as if they were doing the soldiers a favor. It was better to keep these things in-house with corrective training than to go through the UCMJ, the rationale went. Some of the soldiers in the battery agreed.

Fisher told Stars and Stripes there was a simple explanation for it: Nothing rose to the level of an Article 15 while his battery was deployed. The Army specifically states that corrective training isn’t supposed to be punitive. It’s intended to teach a soldier how to improve and to instill discipline, and it should directly relate to a soldier’s weakness. But in Battery A, corrective training was a euphemism for whatever punishment the leadership chose that day.

For Anderson on Christmas, that meant he would get little rest. After his night shift on guard, he had to pull two more hours of the duty. Then he was ordered to don full body armor for an hour of strenuous physical exercise with his rifle: sprints, push-ups, lunges while holding his rifle over his head and mountain climbers. A lieutenant with the battery was on his way to start his shift serving the enlisted men their holiday meal when he saw Anderson sweating through the exercise.

He went to find Fisher to see whether the captain was aware of what was going on. “I’m a firm believer in disciplining soldiers,” Fisher replied, according to the lieutenant’s sworn statement. The lieutenant “questioned the weight of the punishment” and “made it known” that he “did not agree [Anderson] should have to suffer that long for such an easy correction, especially on Christmas morning.”

Fisher, who was old for a captain as a prior enlisted soldier, replied that Anderson’s punishment was his decision and it needed to be done. The lieutenant was unimpressed. “Personally, I believe there are more important things to focus on rather than demanding respect from subordinates,” the lieutenant wrote in his statement. He walked away from his talk with Fisher concerned that Anderson was the only one being held accountable for smoking on guard duty while more concerning infractions by other soldiers, such as urinating near the sleeping tents, went ignored.

As part of the corrective training, Anderson’s squad was also roused out of bed and told that because Anderson had messed up, they all had to start filling sandbags for what was called the “Wall of Shame” or the “Wall of Discipline.”

The construction of the random wall, which had no legitimate military purpose, had become routine punishment for Anderson and the junior soldiers in his squad. There was even a wooden sign reading “Wall of Discipline.” One private first class, though, said it was just a joke and no one took it too seriously.

Anderson was instructed to join his squad once he was done with his hour of physical training. While the young soldiers labored on the wall with “a clearly broken spirit,” one sergeant said, Fisher and Amaral stood by laughing. Devos joked that the soldiers looked like refugees.

Deriding mental help

Anderson started spending more time by himself. At Babil, he often paced around the small patrol base or stood alone by the campfire. A private first class asked him whether he was OK one night, and Anderson said he just wanted to be alone to think. Friends said Anderson, the happy guy who made jokes and was always willing to help out, seemed to shrug off his treatment at the hands of Bruckner and Devos.

“If he was humiliated he never really showed it,” a specialist in the platoon said in a sworn statement, “and if it bothered him he never said it did.”

Some of the soldiers in the battery said Anderson brought things on himself by being lazy and repeatedly making stupid mistakes. The trouble wasn’t the platoon or battery leadership, a few said in their sworn statements, it was his lack of discipline. One soldier wrote: “He wasn’t singled out. He did dumb [stuff] and got in trouble for it.” Two days after Christmas, when most of the battery had been up for at least 36 hours, Anderson failed a room inspection at Zafaraniyah. The platoon rotated through that base to get showers and a break from Babil.

Bruckner told him his room was a “disgrace” with “trash on the floor, leftover meals in trays, flies, empty soda cans, dirty laundry and military equipment strewn all over the floor,” according to a formal counseling statement that Bruckner prepared. “Once again this shows the unit you have no discipline.” Amaral was livid. He started throwing Anderson’s stuff around in his room, saying, “I’ll show you NCOs how to toss a room,” according to one sergeant.

The NCOs had Anderson put on his body armor and remove everything from his room, wipe down the walls and floor and then move everything back in. Then Bruckner, who soldiers said tried hard to impress Devos, told Anderson to pack up his stuff because he was being exiled back to the spartan Babil permanently. That was a threat Devos often held over the heads of soldiers, one sergeant said.

One of Anderson’s friends, another specialist, saw him afterward and asked whether he planned on doing anything stupid. “No, I’m fine,” Anderson told him. “I just need to settle down and slow down.” Back at Babil, the platoon’s leaders didn’t relent. They yelled at Anderson for not keeping up with proper hygiene. They told him he smelled bad and called him dirty, and then they forced him to wear a garbage bag at all times, according to sworn statements.

That type of demeaning treatment of soldiers wasn’t new for Devos, and it wasn’t unknown to the Army. The spring before the unit deployed, Devos was admonished by a military judge. During a court-martial of one of Devos’ soldiers, it came to light that Devos had called out the accused in formation, made threatening remarks and generally acted in a “manner designed to humiliate, punish and degrade” the soldier, the judge said.

He was so “gravely concerned” about Devos’ “inappropriate and unprofessional” behavior that his actions ended up being a “significant mitigating factor” in sentencing the soldier. Less than a year later, Devos — or “Big Time” as soldiers said he liked to call himself — was back at it in Iraq.

He had the encouragement of Amaral, a close friend. To Amaral, everything was a game, a sergeant who served with Anderson told Stars and Stripes. He molded the battery’s NCOs into the kind of leaders who hound junior enlisted soldiers, lecturing them that “soldiers have no rights” and if “you aren’t yelling at soldiers, you aren’t doing your job,” several soldiers said.

The first sergeant often boasted of how he took his personal frustrations out on soldiers by yelling at them or making fun of them. Amaral called the practice “Joe Time,” referencing the common nickname for soldiers. Neither he nor Devos had much tolerance for the Army’s new spotlight on soldier care and they mocked the emphasis of mental health. In fact, Devos subjected his soldiers to exactly the kind of stigma the Army claims it’s trying to eliminate from the ranks.

If a soldier went to the “wizard,” as Devos derisively termed mental health counselors, that soldier was considered weak, the sergeant told Stars and Stripes. “He said it so frequently that everyone knew,” the sergeant continued, asserting that promotions were also withheld for anyone who sought mental health care. Devos often turned suicide into a punch line. Before working his soldiers hard, for example, he’d tell them they’d better get their ACE cards ready, referring to the laminated pocket guide for suicide intervention that soldiers carry.

When Babil got three portable toilets, the sergeant told Stars and Stripes, Devos joked that no soldier should use one as place to kill himself because he didn’t want to have to clean up the mess.

Tired and defeated

On Jan. 1, 2010, soldiers at Babil didn’t get out of bed until around 1 p.m. They had spent the night before out on patrol and arrived back early in the morning. Anderson had fallen asleep in the turret during the mission — a serious violation — and so would spend the first day of the new year working on the “Wall of Discipline.” Before he could get started, Anderson was caught for another infraction, this time for uniform standards. He was wearing an unauthorized pair of eyewear with headphones.

Those type of standards were mostly nonexistent at Babil, and it was the kind of infraction that was commonly ignored, several soldiers said. But Anderson was nabbed for the violation and promptly made to do mountain climbers in full body armor with his rifle. Amaral put an end to the exercise around 10 minutes later. Soon after, wearing a trash bag, Anderson started filling sandbags for the “Wall of Discipline.” Soldiers described him as looking tired and defeated.

Anderson headed to the bathroom and, on his way, he ran into a friend, a private first class who asked him what he was doing. “Taking a break,” he said, before going into the middle of three portable toilets. About 15 minutes later, a gunshot brought the soldiers running to the latrines. The first soldier there knocked and called out “Hello?” before yanking the door open. He saw an M4 rifle in a pool of blood and Anderson slumped over on the seat.

In his journal by his bunk, Anderson had written what appeared to be a suicide note. “I really don’t know what to say in a note like this. I just don’t feel good about what I’ve accomplished in my life. I feel like a faliuer (sic). I feel like I’ve failed. And theirs (sic) no hope of improving. I’ve been a couple of places in the Army and it’s all been pretty much the same.”

Source: http://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/suicide-in-the-military/maltreated-and-hazed-one-soldier-is-driven-to-take-his-own-life-1.145941

8 Soldiers Charged in Death of Fellow Serviceman

Eight U.S. soldiers have been charged in connection with the October death of a fellow soldier in Afghanistan, the Army said Wednesday. Pvt. Danny Chen, 19, was found dead in a guard tower, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Chen's family says that until they see the autopsy results themselves, they cannot confirm or deny it was suicide.

The eight officers and enlisted servicemen face various charges, including dereliction of duty, making false statements, maltreatment and involuntary manslaughter, the Army said in a statement. The Army did not specify what alleged acts by the soldiers resulted in the charges, which were filed Wednesday. But in correspondence with his family before his death, Chen complained of harassment by his fellow soldiers.

At a candlelight vigil for Chen held in Manhattan last week, his brother, Banny Chen, read from a letter the soldier had sent to his family. "They ask if I'm from China a few times a day. They also called out my name, 'Chen,' in a goat-like voice sometimes for no reason. No idea how it started, but it's just best to ignore it."

The Chen family told The New York Times in October that officials said that Chen had suffered physical abuse and ethnic slurs by superiors, including an incident in which he was dragged out of bed and across the floor for failing to turn off a water heater after showering. In its announcement, the Army makes no mention of the harassment allegations, but states, "As the legal process continues, further information will be published as it becomes available."

The charges stem from "conduct that occurred in the time leading up to (Chen's) death," an Army official familiar with details of the investigation told CNN. He declined to be identified because the military criminal investigation remains ongoing. The Army official said the soldiers are essentially charged with hazing and abusing Chen in the weeks and days before he apparently killed himself. But the case remains open and other charges could be filed, the official said.

The soldiers facing charges were identified as 1st Lt. Daniel J. Schwartz, Staff Sgt. Blaine G. Dugas, Staff Sgt. Andrew J. Van Bockel, Sgt. Adam M. Holcomb, Sgt. Jeffrey T. Hurst, Spc. Thomas P. Curtis, Spc. Ryan J. Offutt and Sgt. Travis F. Carden. All the soldiers belonged to C Company, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Styker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, the Army said.

Schwartz, the only officer charged, faces eight counts of dereliction of duty. The enlisted soldiers face more serious charges, including dereliction of duty but also maltreatment, assault, involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide. The eight men charged have been moved to a different base in southern Afghanistan and remain under restriction. They are not permitted to leave the base, the Army official said.

"We feel some comfort and relief to know the Army is taking it seriously," Chen's mother, Su Zhan Chen, said through a translator at a news conference Wednesday. "We are cautiously optimistic because of today's news," said Elizabeth Ou Yang, president of the Asian-American group OCA-NY, who spoke as a representative of the family.

But, she added, the family hopes that those responsible will be not just charged, but convicted. "They must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Yang added. Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-New York, who was also present with the family at the conference, said that she has requested the autopsy results and asked the inspector general of the Army to conduct a separate investigation. "We are here today to demand answers... and that begins with a full accounting of all the facts," she said.

In a similar case earlier this year, three Marines were charged with beating and hazing a fellow Marine, Harry Lew, after Lew fell asleep on watch duty. The Marine was beaten and forced to do exercises and to dig a hole until the early morning. When the punishment was over, he climbed into the hole he had just dug and shot himself, said Rep. Judy Chu of California, Lew's aunt.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/21/justice/soldiers-charged/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

US Army Apologizes for Horrific Photos from Afghanistan

Major Public Backlash

Political Conflict with the US

'They Mowed Him Down'

The 12 men are also facing further charges of desecration of corpses, illegal possession of photos of corpses, drug abuse and acts of bodily injury against comrades.

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,752310,00.html

Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre in Iraq

Under Pressure

A Tragedy Ensues

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/world/middleeast/united-states-marines-haditha-interviews-found-in-iraq-junkyard.html

U.S. Soldiers Confined to Base Over Missing Equipment

About 100 U.S. soldiers have been confined to their barracks at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, as Army officials investigate the apparent theft of sensitive military equipment, base spokesmen said on Sunday. The infantry unit was placed on "lockdown" on Wednesday after the weapons accessories were reported missing from a supply area, said Major Chris Ophardt, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's I Corps at the base.

The missing equipment included laser-targeting gun sights, night-vision goggles, and weapons scopes with a "high-dollar value" in the "six-figure range," said Lieutenant Colonel Gary Dangerfield, another base spokesman. He said the items in question were deemed "sensitive" but were not considered dangerous by themselves. The Army did not say how many individual pieces of equipment were missing, but Ophardt said missing gear was "definitely stolen." He added that no actual weapons were missing, and there was no danger to the public.

Lewis-McChord, located about 9 miles south of Tacoma, also is the home base of a group of soldiers convicted of assaulting and murdering unarmed Afghan civilians while on patrol as part of a combat unit formerly known as the 5th Stryker Brigade. A staff sergeant from that unit was found guilty by court-martial on most of the charges against him in November, becoming the 11th soldier convicted in connection with the widest-ranging prosecution of U.S. military atrocities and other misconduct during 10 years of war in Afghanistan.

A 12th soldier, one of five originally charged with murder, still faces a court-martial. A lockdown means the soldiers are confined to barracks and office areas of the unit, so the troops are not permitted to go home if they have families residing outside the barracks, the Army said. On Saturday, the restrictions were loosened to allow soldiers' families to visit them in confinement, Ophardt said. A criminal investigation has been launched, and a $10,000 reward offered. Members of the unit under investigation have been home from Iraq since September 2010.

(Additional reporting by Mary Wisniewski; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Bohan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-soldiers-confined-over-missing-equipment-031617284.html

How the West prepares operatives - January, 2012

2012-01-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

Although the Anglo-American educational system is ranked almost dead last in the developed world, the hype created by the Anglo-American propaganda machine is so powerful that a majority of the sheeple in the world actually look forward to sending their impressionable sheeplets to the Anglo-American world for an education. What this situation essentially does is it gives senior policymakers in the Anglo-American world a large pool of "human resources" they can tap into and exploit towards political purposes. This is in fact how they prepare their operatives.

In recent years we have seen many examples of how Western officials use western educated young men and women from places such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, Serbia, Russia and Armenia against their homelands. Having a large pool of energetic and ideologically pliant army of Western educated young activists is one of their most powerful weapons - after Hollywood and American pop culture, of course.

For instance: A twenty-something year old from one of Armenia's many slums or backward villages suddenly opens his or her eyes in hustle-and-bustle of London, Paris, New York or Washington... just imagine their awe, their excitement, their heightened state-of-mind. Imagine what it would be like for a young man or woman from a poor family in Armenia when they are given the opportunity to live and/or study in the western world. Try to put yourselves into their shoes and try to think of what their impressions would be as they walk the beautifully manicured Ivy League university campuses of the most powerful empire the world has known.

Would it be farfetched to think that these young people would be more than willing to emotionally attach themselves to the political system of the land they are so awe struck by, the system that gave them an opportunity to leave their dilapidated towns for the opulence they find themselves in?

After living through Communism and Crony Capitalism, after experiencing firsthand Armenia's severe growing pains, after suffering impoverishment or unemployment, after growing up listening to the ubiquitous anti-Armenia hate-speech of all the grownups around them... of course these impressionable, naive and psychologically vulnerable individuals will be in total awe of the seemingly magnificent political system of the Western world. A common thought in their minds would be - "why didn't we have this kind of life back in our backward and/or Asiatic and/or primitive homeland?"

Therefore, by willingly and enthusiastically latching themselves onto the Western system of things, they consciously tell themselves that they are trying to bring western "values" to their underdeveloped homeland. Subconsciously, however, they are simply happy to have the opportunity to have a good job, a good education and some self-worth, all of which they lacked back in their homeland.

This type of superficial, shallow and shortsighted (yet utterly human) thinking lies at the very root of a natural psychological process that takes young men and women down the path to assimilation (a best case scenario) or treason (a worst case scenario). These young adults wittingly and unwittingly become the "human resources" that Western powers exploit towards self-serving political purposes.

The aforementioned natural process of turning simple, poor folk from Armenia into enthusiastic activists for the political West can of course be applied to all nations on earth today; perhaps with the notable exception being the fortress state of North Korea. Even the world's second largest economy, China, is not immune. A recent survey conducted in China suggested that a majority of China's wealthy prefer sending their children to the United States for an education.

Simply put, millions of young men and women are given the opportunity to study (i.e. get brainwashed) in Western institutions; and a select few amongst them get recruited to become active operatives for Western governments. Therefore, keep this in mind next time you watch a western educated Arab, Russian, Iranian or Armenian publicly criticizing and/or attacking their homelands.

The quality of education in the Anglo-American world's "Ivy league" universities is in no way superior to their counterparts around the world. It can be argued, for instance, that students in Germany, France, Japan, China or Russia receive better college educations. What sets Western universities apart from their counterparts is the priceless value of - networking - that students get to do in "elite" ivy league educational institutions such as Oxford, Cambridge, Yale or Harvard.

These are the magnificent campuses where sons and daughters of kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, tyrants and dictators, oligarchs and business tycoons meet and mingle, and often times make friendships that last lifetimes. These are also the ideal environments where Western intelligence operatives freely roam looking for prospects.

Arevordi
January, 2012

***

Opportunity of one-year free education in Great Britain for Armenian students

The British Embassy Yerevan is offering Chevening Scholarships, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and administered by the British Council. Press service of the British Council told Armenpress that these cover the costs of study (including living expenses and international flights) in the United Kingdom for 12 months. They are awarded on a competitive basis for Master's degree programme in the fields of: conflict prevention and resolution; development of the public sector to meet EU and other international standards; strengthening free/unbiased media.

Applicants must have the potential to rise to positions of leadership and influence. They will need to demonstrate that they possess the personal, intellectual and interpersonal attributes reflecting this potential. Although the scholars must meet the academic requirements for their courses of study, academic excellence is not the determining selection criterion for the scholarship. The criteria for suitability are: applicants should ideally be aged 25-35 but applications from all ages are welcome, should already hold a higher education diploma, hold a higher education diploma, should have at least two years work experience in their selected field of study, have an adequate standard of English, and should be committed to return to Armenia and contribute to the development of the country. All applications must be made on-line. Deadline for submitting applications is 23 January 2

Source: http://armenpress.am/eng/news/669866/Opportunity_of_one-year_free_education_in_Great_Britain_for_Armenian_students.html

Britain's Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Who should apply?

Applicants should be:

Motivated to make a career that will take them to positions of leadership in their own country within ten years of their scholarship
Able to use their studies and experience in the UK to benefit themselves, their countries and the UK
Natural influencers and talented communicators, with energy and ambition
People who value networking and who can demonstrate the value of networks to their studies, and to bringing about change on a global level
Intelligent, with demonstrable academic potential
Strong characters with integrity, drive, and the ability to self manage and work independently

Source: http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/about-us/wh...-should-apply/

U.K. Has Record Influx of Immigrants

Migration into Britain last year hit its highest rate since record-keeping began in 1964, a blow to Prime Minister David Cameron's promise to curb an unprecedented immigration wave. Migration—defined as the difference between the total number of people who enter and exit the country to live—hit 252,000 in 2010, an increase of almost 15% over 2009, according to the Office for National Statistics. Government statisticians said they believe this is most likely the highest level of migration ever into Britain. The number was driven by a 591,000 increase in immigration and declining emigration, which fell to 339,000, its lowest level since 2001.

Since coming to power in May 2010 in a coalition government, Mr. Cameron's Conservative Party has promoted an annual cap of 20,700 visas for non-European Union workers; promised a clampdown on immigrants bringing families into the country; and cut the amount of colleges allowed to recruit foreign students.

Thursday's figures show, though, that education was the most common reason stated for immigration to the U.K, with 238,000 people having arrived to study in Britain in 2010, compared with 211,000 in 2009.

Mr. Cameron faces a tricky balancing act between satisfying concerns among the wider population and British businesses who say stricter controls are stopping them from hiring foreign workers with key skills, which they say exacerbates the economy's troubles. Foreign students are also a big earner for British educational institutions and had for many years been targeted as an area of economic growth by British ministers.

Immigration Minister Damian Green said immigration has been coming down since it hit a peak in September 2010, but said a lot more work needed to be done. He promised to bring net migration down from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands over the course of this Parliament, which will end by 2015. While the U.K. doesn't have the same history of far-right political agitation over immigration that many European countries have, the subject has played an increasing role in voting behavior. Labour lawmakers say immigration was a big factor in their loss in last year's elections.

The issue has climbed national agendas across Europe after a decade-long burst of immigration led to fears of home-grown terrorism and the erosion of local culture. Also, the recession has increased unemployment, stirring resentment over extra competition for work. The U.K.'s unemployment rate is currently 8.3%, lower than most other major economies, which means fewer people are moving out of Britain for work reasons, according to the ONS.

The numbers underscore how a globalized economy like Britain faces a struggle to control immigration. The U.K. has no control over immigration from the European Union given open-border agreements with its members. Still, despite Mr. Cameron's promise to cut down on immigration from outside the EU, more than three-quarters of immigrants into Britain came from the rest of the world. Almost half of new entrants came from the Indian subcontinent, which includes India and Pakistan.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204630904577057811238887328.html

Armenia First in Region in Winning US Green Cards

A total of 1,200 entrants from Armenia have won US Green Card Lottery 2011. And in the 2012 Lottery, the number of winners from Armenia is close to one thousand, US Consul to Armenia Robert Farquhar stated, during a press conference on Thursday, adding that with this indicator Armenia is the clear leader in the region. Farquhar also informed that in 2011 the number of Green Card Lottery winners was around 700 in Georgia, and 350 in Azerbaijan. Also, 2,400 people became Green Card winners in Russia. Green Card Lottery 2013 started on October 4 and it continues until November 5. Every year around 55 thousand Green Cards are played in this lottery, RFE/RL reported.

Source: http://news.am/eng/news/77821.html