Wikileaks

There’s a great website that all people interested in government illegalities and inconsistencies should know about. It’s called “Wikileaks” and so explosive does it seem to U.S. Government authorities that a judge recently tried to close it down by issuing an injunction order to the service provider which issued the domain name. That means that you can no longer access Wikileaks by going to Wikileaks.org. BUT, you can go to www.wikileaks.de and find the same information. Hurray for unfettered access to the internet and all those who provide it.
            To give its flavor, here’s a little item that appeared in one of the documents at Wikileaks, the one containing U.S. Rules of Engagmenet (ROE) for Iraq. The document mentioned that U.S. forces can chase suspect enemies from Iraq into both Syria and Iran. Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammed-Ali Hosseini, immediately objected: "Any entrance to the Iranian soil by any U.S. military force to trail suspects would be against international laws and could be legally pursuable," the official IRNA news agency quoted Hosseini as saying.
            Of course, the United States does not bother to be restrained much by international law. But it is deeply concerned about its lawlessness being publicly bruited about. It immediately called the leak of its classified document on Wikileaks “irresponsible.”
“While we will not comment on whether this is, in fact, an official document, we do consider the deliberate release of what Wikileaks believes to be a classified document is irresponsible and, if valid, could put U.S. military personnel at risk," said Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, spokesman for the command. (all quotes from article by Bi Mingxin, Feb. 12 Xinhua, as seen on Wikileaks.)
So there you have it. War crimes or invading other countries in contravention of international law are perfectly ok to U.S. officials. But leaking the classified rules (or even documents which someone believes to be classified) which allow such crimes—that is somehow unfair and irresponsible. Brave New World anyone?
 
Lawrence DiStasi

On Patriotism

The conservative assault on Barack Obama has already begun. Recently, Michelle Obama, the candidate’s wife, spoke about this being “the first time she has been proud of America.” The Right jumped on this like a rabid dog. “She doesn’t love America!” “She’s another liberal who wants to only knock our country.” And John McCain’s blonde, botoxed wife passionately observed that she, unlike Michelle, has loved America all her life. We were to get the message: John McCain loves America too, in a white way, a respectful way that no black man ever could because like Michelle Obama, we are meant to infer, black Americans have a grudge against America. And every American knows they have a right to that grudge, given the disgusting way they’ve been treated since being enslaved here; which is why they can’t be allowed to say it.
            Nor is his wife’s comment the only patriotic deficiency being totted up against Obama. CNN reported on Feb. 24 that “the Ilinois senator does not wear an American flag lapel pin,” and has been observed “failing to put his hand over his heart while singing the national anthem.” Omygod! Not only is this upstart crow an African, he doesn’t conform to the standard of loudly proclaiming his patriotism with flag pins and the childish hand-over-the-heart gesture that has become de rigeur among politicians and other blowhards trying to prove their super-patriotism. And Americans gasp in disbelief. Doesn’t wear a lapel flag! Doesn’t put his hand over his heart! An apostate! A savage! No doubt an atheist who drinks latte as well!
            And we have to ask (especially after the latest, a photograph, possibly altered, showing Obama in Africa in white headdress looking like an Arab terrorist) is this country ever going to get over this orgy of jingoistic bullshit? Are Americans ever going to look beneath the puerile gestures and proclamations of undying love for USA! USA! to see that those who indulge in such pathetic gestures are the ones who should be investigated to see what it is, exactly, they are trying to disguise? Could it be, for example, that George W. Bush’s super-patriotic stance is designed to cover the war crimes he’s been committing in our names since he first took office? Could it be that he’s trying to cover the fact that he was AWOL from his reserve air force unit half the time; invaded another country without cause or provocation in violation of international law; approved torture techniques in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions; approved spying on his own countrymen in violation of the Constitution? Could it be that all the fools who wear lapel pins in Congress are covering up their crimes: taking bribes from lobbyists, adding pork to legislation to pay off their bribers; going along with the corporatocracy in funding the most bloated war machine in history not to protect “the American homeland” but to protect the foreign business interests of the oligarchs who control them?
            For my money, I applaud Obama for not wearing that stupid lapel pin, for not indulging in that schoolboy hand-over-heart gesture. Perhaps we finally have an adult running for president, a man who would prefer to focus on finally seeing to it that America, in Martin Luther King’s words, finally lives up to its creed: that all men, even those who don’t salute the flag of empire, are created equal. That all women, even those who are un-blonde, deserve a time when they can, at long last, proclaim their pride in an America that has, in recent years, more often made them ashamed. Perhaps that would initiate a patriotism worth the name.
 
Lawrence DiStasi

It’s Gun Control, Stupid!

Another week. Another senseless shooting at a college campus. Another
young man with a history of mental illness--the kid with the
unpronounceable name spent time in a mental institution after high
school because he'd become unmanageable--who is able to simply go
into a gun shop and buy the most lethal weapons available. No real
background check; they only check to see if the person has a criminal
record. Steven Kazmierczak didn't. So he was able to buy a glock
pistol and a shotgun to add to his previous handgun arsenal.

Then he showed up on campus and started to kill geology students at
random.

Now clearly the guy was mentally ill. But I am stunned by the most
common comment: we can't stop this type of thing. We're all
vulnerable. Some crazy wants to do this, it's impossible to stop.

Well yes. Always assuming that the crazy lives in the United States
of America, where morons in the National Rifle Association are able
to gut any meaningful gun control laws by appealing to the
Constitution's Second Amendment. We have a right to bear arms, they
shout. And Charleston Heston takes his stand menacing anyone who
tries to take his gun away--from his "cold, dead hand." They'll have
to kill me first.

No one wants to kill Moses. No legislator is brave enough to
challenge the gun control lobby. So Steven Kazmierczak is able to buy
his guns and blast away. After all, it's his second amendment right.
Is that so? Does the Constitution give Americans, even crazy ones,
the right to shoot randomly, lethally, with the best weaponry
available, at perfect strangers? Apparently so. After all, it's in
the Constitution (though in fact, the Constitution gives the right to
bear arms only to militias).

And Americans say, What can we do? Only a moronic nation would allow
this to go on. Only a nation controlled by idiots would defend the
right of such people to kill. Only a nation steeped in killing itself
would allow its crazies to slaughter innocents and call it freedom.
Will such a nation ever wake up? Learn to read its own founding
document? The signs are not good.

Lawrence DiStasi

=

Why Does W Hate our Freedom?

In the Good Book it’s stated
That evil’s to be hated
But for those with no conscience
This is all nonsense
For Greed is Good
In their neighborhood
And the birth of Nations
Is through the Corporations
For the uninitiated, the last six years seem to be an aberration where we are being told that we need to give up our rights of habeas corpus, and our 4th Amendment rights. In other words, we must to give up our freedoms to stay free. There are several points to be made and surely I will miss a few, but let me try.
When corporations broke the law by spying on each of us that uses electronics like telephones, but including TV, cell phones, Internet, pagers and blackberries, the President insisted on providing retroactive immunity for the telephone companies, including Big Brother Bell. Now this is from a president that in April 2004 (at Buffalo) stated:
“…Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, Constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution….”
According to Mark Klein, the whistle-blower who reported this NSA operation, the facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco (Room 641A) was built in 2003, well before Bush spoke in Buffalo. Qwest refused to participate in this illegal spying on Americans and was soon prosecuted by the Federal Government for unrelated charges. Now is that ironic or what? Big Brother Bell can spy on us illegally and without the record of a FISA court order and be paid for it, but it is an offer you had better not refuse. Qwest refused. Collaborators can use the information and will be protected retroactively from prosecution and lawsuits. Clearly, the President was disingenuous at best in suggesting that he got court orders. Direct lie?…”Not exactly” as the Hertz ad goes. What is most revealing about this set of transactions is that the telephone companies unanimously agreed to obey the law and stop spying when the government fell behind in making payments. As long as they were being paid, they were OK with breaking the law. Not incidentally, this high-speed fiber-optic arrangement went far beyond spying on foreign nationals. It was/is called the Total Information Awareness Program headed up by Vice Admiral Poindexter (of Iran Contra fame). Poindexter is an experienced, recycled and ethics challenged operative. Are you shocked? If we pay, they spy on us.
This is one example of how Bush has embraced corporatism. Others abound, including outsourcing the Hurricane Katrina disaster aftermath (we cannot call it a recovery effort. Want to buy a toxic trailer?). He outsourced intelligence gathering at Abu Ghraib and myriad additional activities in Iraq to the tune of 180,000 non-military, including Blackwater, on our government corporate payroll for the Iraq adventure alone. He has outsourced much of our military health care to corporate contract labor and eliminated military positions. Our State Department mercenaries are also above the law. As I have reminded you before, Cheney is still on the corporate payroll for Halliburton, but this does not suggest a conflict of interest. Instead, it demonstrates a primary corporate interest. Similarly when creating an energy policy, Cheney met with energy companies who proceeded to run up the energy charges in California and laugh about it. If it were not for audiotapes showing their disdain for the law as well as Californians, we might have to guess that Cheney had a hand in the process. Bush enacted a drug policy that eliminated competition in pricing for government drug programs and established blocks and penalties for prescriptions coming in from Canada. This alone costs Americans billions of tax dollars each year, but it protects corporations from competition by a government that talks constantly about free trade and open markets. Bush has surrounded himself with cronies and incompetents who are protected from scrutiny and as long as the circle of contributions to Bush and favors to corporations remains unbroken, the curtain shall not rise. Daylight and transparency tend to discourage the growth of these viruses, but they flourish in darkness.
Even in the days following Katrina, Bush sought to eliminate union wage scales for the cleanup work and cheap imported labor was quick to the scene. Unions seem to be feared by the Bush administration. Who knows, they might limit the profit potential of corporations or shrink the circle of contributions to the Administration?
Another area of concern is the merging of Church and State. Not only have we endured the scandals at the Air Force Academy pushing evangelical Christianity, but we have had Major General Boykin caught preaching to congregations while in uniform and then “punished” by promotion to Lieutenant General. Blend these signs with the “Faith Based Initiative,” and you have the makings of a cozy relationship not seen with western governments since the twenties and thirties in Italy.
In fact, that brings us to other chilling parallels with the ultimate corporatist, Benito Mussolini. Military adventurism for Il Duce culminated in the botched invasion of sovereign Ethiopia. Does that parallel the invasion of sovereign Iraq? Too often, amateurs have equated Fascism with Totalitarianism. They are independent variables. Mussolini himself defined Fascism as corporatism. He also kissed up to the Pope and called Italy, “Catholic.” Benito Mussolini also hated freedom because he saw that as a threat to Italy and he claimed to give the people only enough “elbow room” for them not to revolt against the state. Dissent is discouraged. And is it not poetic, that we have the freedom to shop, but not to get involved in state policies? Another distraction is the use of a scapegoat or a boogeyman so that all the people have a common enemy. Elitism and corporatism go together for he ultimate good of the state. The corporate leaders become the elite and therefore the ordinary citizen does not have to concern himself with civic affairs except that we must all be very afraid of the boogeyman. Be very afraid of “Islamofascists” that represent an absurdity in terms since they are, by nature, the antithesis of corporatism. That gives us a boogeyman just as effective as the Socialists and Communists of Mussolini’s Italy.
Remember that dissent was the enemy of the Fascist state and that efforts were made to root out dissent. Benito was a uniter and not a divider. There are other characteristics of the fascist state that may not yet have materialized. Rigged elections, for example, were common in Mussolini’s Italy. Thank goodness that they have not happened here. Why does W hate our freedom? Freedom simply cramps his style. That is where dissent comes from, too. So if you lose your right to habeas corpus and privacy and security of your person and property, maybe the boogeyman won’t come…but then, maybe he is already here. Look up the definition of Fascism. It is fascinating.
“Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” Think “Ma Bell” becoming Big Brother Bell. We can still vote in frequently fair elections. Work to make elections fair and Vote, damn it, Vote.
Peace,
George Giacoppe

Whatever Happened to the War?

Last week, according to the Pew Research Center, national news media provided 2% of their coverage on the wars. They spent twice as much coverage on Heath Ledger, five times as much on the stimulus plan, and 20 times as much on the 2008 campaign.
When asked what they had heard about in the news lately, readers responded with Obama – 24%, Clinton – 23%, Ledger – 11%, Britney Spears – 6% and on down to Mitt Romney 3%. They did NOT MENTION THE IRAQ OR AFGHANISTAN WARS!
Even when asked what they might be interested in reading or hearing about, only 6% mentioned the war.
No one anywhere mentioned the corollaries of war – the effect on veterans and their families, the provision of benefits and services, the reconstitution of the vastly depleted forces, both federal and state.
I spend hours daily reviewing news stories from all over the nation. It is getting harder and harder to find substantive news stories on the war or veterans. There are more stories on naming parks and post offices for dead veterans than there are on failing hospitals and programs for live veterans.
In Congress there are more unfunded provisions for veterans than there are funded ones, and there is much more opened-and-died-in-committee legislation than there is legislation with any substantial benefit for today’s veterans commensurate with their sacrifice.
So whatever happened to the war?
Let’s start with the first war – Afghanistan.
THEY’RE BAAAACK!! The Taliban is back in force. They control many areas in the south and along the Pakistan border. They are increasingly infiltrating the cities with suicide bombers and paramilitary fighters. A suicide bomber killed the deputy governor of Helmand province last week.
They have engaged in set-piece battles with NATO forces, particularly in the south. NATO casualties are rising, as are Afghani casualties, military and civilian. The condition of women is returning rapidly to the situation under the old Taliban, and female school teachers and women running businesses are increasingly being targeted for terrorist assaults and assassinations.
The only progress seems to be that opium is once again a bumper crop, and Mullah Mohammed, bowing to international pressure, has told his forces to stop beheading the people they terrorize and shoot them or hang them instead. - That’s it after almost six years?
Then of course there is Iraq.
The surge has worked – in Baghdad at least. The killings are down – not done, but down. They may be coming back up.
We are arming the Iraqi forces with modern American weapons, although we know that those forces are infiltrated by the militias.
We are bribing the Sunni leadership to do what they already know they must do and would probably have done without our money, and that is get rid of the Al Qaida-in-Iraq thugs.
In the Shia area the state of women has reverted not just to pre-Saddam conditions, but to pre-20th century conditions.
The Maliki government is effectively forming our foreign policy in the region in that they refuse to do anything that we want them to do that might upset either the Shia mullahs or their Iranian neighbors. While we are paying the Sunni tribal leaders to supports us, and they are so far, Maliki is denying them even proportional parity in government.
There are disturbing reports that violence is increasing in the unattended countryside. The southern area around Basra is falling apart after the pull-back of the British forces. American casualties almost doubled in January over December.
Then there is the war as it is waged right here in the US of A
Given that half of America doesn’t even seem to care to participate, even to give the war a thought from day to day, the remaining half are waging a war here at home over what it means to be patriotic, what the Constitution says about war and the powers of government, what the United States’ obligations are under international treaties, how we should conduct ourselves in the world, and what we owe those who stand up and sign up.
“Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.“
Adlai Stevenson
The divide seems to be between those who believe that the Constitution requires that in order to protect our freedoms we must not give them away willy-nilly, and those who believe that the Constitution is unclear, and who are afraid and are willing to sacrifice freedoms for a sense of security – real or not.
These are troublesome differences, because they speak to two completely different nations. One proudly free and democratic, and one willing to define something less than the historical concept of freedom and democracy as a new “freedom”.
"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear."
—General Douglas MacArthur
The cliché, “Freedom is not Free” is batted about with obviously varying meaning. To some that means “Freedom is not Free so please send your kid to fight wherever the CINC says to go.”
We seem to forget that the original meaning was, “Freedom is not Free so all of you step up – all of you do your share – all of you sacrifice – all of you accept that you will always live under some insecurity.” Why? Because it is truly worth it.
And don’t forget that also means that “Freedom is not Free because we owe those who defend us daily everything that a grateful nation can offer.” This does not mean collecting an additional $1.2B from Tricare recipients, while giving away $150B, mostly to banks who gambled and lost, and to people who can’t control their spending.
We must pay a price for freedom, but we must not pay the price of real freedom to gain false freedom. Breaking down the protections and the checks and balances provisions of our Constitution are not worth it.
A unitary executive, not beholden to the peoples’ representatives, is what our fathers fought against two centuries ago. Representatives who represent themselves rather than us are likewise not the legislative construct for which our fathers risked their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor.” A judiciary that can set aside not only the clear precepts of the Constitution, but also can ignore two centuries of precedent would be anathema to those who gave us the precious gift called America.
We will prevail
We will come through this trying time, because we have proven again and again that we are strong enough to do so – that the structure of our nation as given us by our fathers is tough and resilient. To do that we will have to stop fighting each other and start writing the next chapter of our blessedly free world.
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
Thomas Jefferson


Sandy Cook
10 Feb 2008

935 Lies and Still Counting

Where was the outrage
For absorbing the lies
From the top of the page
On American lives
And where was the press
In this time of distress?
Nine-thirty five
Is more than just jive.

It is difficult to decide the greater crime between the 935 documented major lies of the Bush Administration and the absolute failure of the press to challenge or counter them with research and clear expression of outrage. Without defending the Bushies, did not every newspaper and every major media outlet have the opportunity and responsibility to speak out?
Recall that we are not merely discussing weak intelligence, but documented information that the administration had full knowledge of what was correct and deliberately chose to promulgate lies…and then repeat the lies. The recent study published by the Center for Public Integrity listed the contributions of major administration players and, not surprisingly, GW Bush was the Liar in Chief with 232 documented whoppers. “Documented” is an important distinction. For example, the false charge that the Iraqis had trucks designed and built for biological operations and proven to be false was used by the Bushies for a full six months after the truth was known. Thanks to Colin Powell and the AWOL press.
Perhaps there is a conflict of interest that we must finally recognize and deal with. A war may be far more interesting than peace. A war may sell more newspapers than peace. Newspapers and other media seemed to relish sending dramatic images across the globe. Some media such as FOX News chose to be cheerleaders for war and no major media representative energized examination of the facts or became spokesperson for caution or truth. Back on 28 September 1913, the New York Times reported on a speech “Art and Conscience in Newspaper Making” by Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican He spoke of the evil that would fall on society if the newspaper distorted or misrepresented the news. Unfortunately, even the formerly venerable NY Times was overcome by the clear conflict of interest. War sells papers. Papers sell advertising. Headlines and bylines provide great compensation for unscrupulous reporters or writers. Judith Miller of the NY Times actually went to jail after distributing false information and refusing to name her sources. This is just how misguided we have become, that the truth or falsity of a story has become less important than protection of a criminal source.
The scope of the lies and the huge apparatus used to maintain the mythology of supporting the troops while exploiting the hell out of them is mind numbing. Even if these reporters and media outlets wanted war for selfish interests, did they have no conscience to help our brave men and women sent to fight the war? Add to that the rewriting of history and we have not only lost our way and our collective conscience, but we are losing the ability to sort this out for our children and grandchildren. Incidentally, of all the Presidential candidates, including Democrats, only Ron Paul has had the courage to call the war a “horrible mistake.” Others have succumbed to the revision of history and “the best intelligence at the time.” Neither Ignorance nor Stupidity is absolution nor is blaming the Bushies. If the Bushies led the parade, then why did politicians and media march behind them? What did we do as individuals to point out the lies and join with our neighbors to challenge them and have a counter march?
I do not subscribe to the moral certainty that, for our omissions, we are all damned to hell and, more important; there is still work to be done. There is a real enemy, Osama bin Ladin, to bring to justice. There are lives to be saved. There is truth to be told. There is our progeny’s treasure to be protected. (We spend $720 million per day of their money for the war in Iraq.) There is a new generation to be led into honesty. And yes, there are impeachments to be held for future as well as current accountability. This may not be absolution, but it is recognition of the sins by politicians, our media and us. When we are done, there is a real history waiting to be written. Guilt is an ineffective motivator. Hope is a far better motivator. We need to change our future rather than our history.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
27 January 2008

Gaza, the Clintons and Bush Lies

So many outrageous events, so little time to comment on them all.
            Begin with the most outrageous, the move by Israel to cut off power supplies to the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza, virtually all of them refugees living in squalid camps in the most densely populated piece of real estate in the world. This has meant suffering on an almost unimaginable scale, suffering of a kind that prompted the United Nations Security Council to attempt to pass a resolution condemning Israel for its “collective punishment.” And once again, predictably, the United States has blocked this condemnation in order to protect its client state, Israel, from universal condemnation. This has in turn led the Gaza government, Hamas, or some of its more militant factions, to blow up the wall erected to keep the people of Gaza in a virtual prison, allowing thousands to rush into Egypt to buy desperately needed supplies.
            No doubt the prison will soon be closed again, however. And the people of Gaza will be caged like dogs once again, dependent on their Israelis occupiers for scraps of food and fuel which can be squeezed or opened at will, just to see if the torture can get them to finally, and forever repudiate the duly-elected Hamas leaders who have had the temerity to stand up against their oppressors.
            And when the imprisonment is complete once again, who among the candidates vying to be the next President will protest this slow strangulation of an entire people? One thing we can be sure of: it won’t be Hillary Clinton. And it is not only that the Senator from New York is so beholden to the powerful pro-Israel forces in her “home” state. No, there is a disquieting pattern beginning to emerge in the Clintonesque behavior of this election season. And that pattern is this: the Clintons—both of them it seems are cut from the same cloth—are willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. If it means sacrificing the Gazans to the local political winds, so be it. If it means playing up the attacks on Barack Obama to force him to “act black”, so be it. What this brings to mind is not just the sense of a Macbethian pair determined to seek and hold power, but the feeling that this couple shares one other trait: both are tone-deaf when it comes to limits, to noblesse, to a sense of rightness or proportion. It is as if despite the Yale Law School polish, both still act as if they are wearing manure-covered shoes. Or perhaps that is being unfair to farmers. It’s more as if neither has ever learned how to hold a fork, or smile naturally, or make a graceful exit. Indeed, the entire notion of grace seems absent from their repertoire. In the arena in which they choose to fight, anything goes: from taking advantage of insider financial knowledge to shtupping the White House intern in the coat room to playing the race card with a fellow Democratic aspirant to the presidency.
            I have begun to think this is at the root of the “high negatives” that Hillary has always garnered. People do not like her, we are told, always with the notion that somehow she’s too “mannish,” i.e. aggressive. But it’s not only that. It’s that we sense something both callow and callous about her. One gets the sense that she would stoop to any depth to get the nomination—vote for the Iraq war, kiss the next baby, weep in public, stifle her natural laughter, minimize the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr—all without any sense of having misstepped.
            This is not simply a question of breeding, either. George W. Bush has the same aura. Despite the distinguished dynasty from which he derives, the President is a farting, lying, bullying, Uriah Heep of a man, brooking no apparent restraint on his vengeful instincts and lust for power. This was brought out more forcefully than ever with a recent report, “Key False Statements,” from the Center for Public Integrity.  That report noted in chapter and verse the astonishing number of outright lies and distortions the Bush Administration advanced in preparing the American public for war with Iraq. No less than 935 false statements about Iraq’s WMDs and its ties to Al Quaeda were listed in the report, starting as early as August 26, 2002 when Vice President Cheney asserted “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” And George W. Bush led the pack as the Liar-in-Chief with no less than 232 false public statements between 2001 and 2003, and an additional 28 false statements about Iraq’s supposed links to Al-Quaeda. And yet, all along there have been pundits like David Brooks of the NY Times extolling our 43rd President for his candor, his straight talk. He might not be a great intellect, these pooh-bahs of public opinion maintained, but he talks from his gut; he tells it to you straight. Straight indeed. The most accomplished liar ever to sit in the White House, a draft-dodger, torturer, election thief, compiler of the greatest deficits in the nation’s history, enabler of genocide, destroyer of republics, our own King George.
            What can one conclude? I don’t know. Perhaps only this: Don’t follow leaders. And watch those parking meters.
 
Lawrence DiStasi
=

The Necessity of Obama

            The squabble that broke out between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton last week over Obama’s appeal to the memory of Martin Luther King, and Hillary’s veiled belittling of King by invoking the greater importance of President Lyndon Johnson, reminded me of the key fact of American life: racism and the many disguises it takes, its long and agonizing history, its continuing ability to corrupt our lives. Though the Clintons have twisted and contorted themselves in defending their camp’s attacks, the basic truth remains: Obama needed to be attacked because of his Iowa victory, and the simplest and most effective way to attack someone in America is to bring up the specter of racial difference.
            What this means is that, for all the gains recorded by the civil rights movement and the legal and social constraints imposed on racial discrimination in the United States, racism is alive and well and still capable of sinking anyone or any initiative that threatens the safe distance from “other races” maintained by the majority of Americans. I am not talking only about the South here. Even in a city as diligently integrated as Berkeley California, every resident knows exactly where the racial line stands. East Berkeley, in the hills, is the domain of wealthy whites. West Berkeley, in the flatlands, is the domain of blacks. Everyone knows what the “good” neighborhoods are, where they end, where the “questionable” areas begin. And though whites may live in such questionable areas for reasons of economics or philosophy, most automatically steer clear. It is thus in every city in the United States. Being an American means, literally, knowing where the “good” sections of any city or suburb lie. Though the lines may shift, every American always knows precisely where the current ones are drawn. And if one is not sure, one can always find out from friends, relatives, or real estate agents.
            This is what is meant by “white privilege.” White people in America take it for granted that they have the right to live in a “good” neighborhood; indeed, have the obligation not to live in a “bad” neighborhood.
            Politics in the last forty or so years has been predicated on this knowledge, on the underlying fears that the system of separation might be breached, and on the appeals to those fears. The entire Republican Party strategy—especially its “southern strategy” whereby it took from the Democratic Party its traditional dominance in the South—has been predicated on coded appeals to racial prejudice and fear. States’ rights, school voucher programs, diatribes against “welfare queens,” jeremiads about urban crime, implementation of “three-strike laws,” all are symbolic appeals to the racist roots of this nation which hold that blackness signals genetic defect, that urban blackness equals crime, that the mixing of races leads to moral decay. All the talk about “strict construction” of the Constitution notwithstanding, the real bedrock behind the conservative movement is its conviction and sly innuendo that “liberal” equals miscegenation.
            It is for this reason that Barack Obama, even with his flaws, is necessary as the Democratic nominee for President. It is time for this nation, and particularly its Republican establishment, to be called on its coded racism. It is time for the nation to see just how and why racism persists, and whether the United States of America now has the moral courage to stand up for the equality it proclaims as its central creed. The candidacy of Barack Obama—regardless of his attempt to avoid any appeals to racial argument or sympathy—can and will bring these conflicts and contradictions into the open. It will soon—as soon as the Republicans have a nominee, that is—become apparent how deep and abiding is the fear of a black man in the White house. How deep and abiding is the racial sentiment underlying even “liberal” thought. Indeed, we have already seen this in the Clinton campaign. Imagine what “swift-boating” lies ahead when Republicans get their war machine untracked.
            But far from being discouraged by this, by the potential of losing the White House because of its nomination of a black candidate, the Democratic Party should exult in it. If the Democratic Party means anything at all, if America means anything at all, it should, it must take this rare opportunity to directly challenge its own reigning orthodoxy. For at this moment in our history, when the moral face of America has been so bloodied by the Bush Administration’s depradations in the Middle East, by its destruction of constitutional guarantees at home, nothing else will do. Absent some sign of moral courage, America will become what it already has for much of the world: just another empire driven to extremes of cruelty and plunder, corruption and hypocrisy in its waning days. 
 
Lawrence DiStasi

How Can We Win the Iraqi Civil War?

How do you win as a referee
In a game among three
Rabid teams amid screams of “foul”
And combat of tooth and jowl
With Shiia, Sunni and Kurd
Without becoming absurd?

As I look at the war in Iraq and listen to the spin that we are winning, I am stunned by the absurdity of speaking of a fourth party “winning” a civil war, but maybe it is our addiction to sports analogies. Sports analogies make war friendlier and they enable the average white male to grasp the basics of Waging War 101.
Football is the current AOC (Analogy of Choice) as we build up to the Super Bowl and recover from the BCS Bowl. It conjures up the image of two gallant teams, well coached and identified by crisp uniforms, rules and cheering sections encouraged by cheerleaders. Unfortunately, the civil war in Iraq is among three major factions divided on religious and ethnic lines as well as myriad splinter groups with long held tribal and economic or other grudges. More interesting, we have assigned ourselves the role of referee sometimes granting decisions one way and then another depending on how we see the play. It is inconceivable to explain to the average white male that we have a contest where it is likely that nobody wins and especially, that the referee cannot win.
As I write this, I am fully aware that our losses in Iraq have taken a sharp downturn in the last year. That is a good thing. But to invert the words of General Douglas MacArthur, are we “sowing the seeds of defeat that we will reap on other fields on other days?” What have we done to assist or encourage reconciliation in land renown for revenge?
During the reign of the venerable lord and plenipotentiary Paul Bremer, the United States disbanded the entire Iraqi Army to enforce restriction of Baathists in the government. Recall that the Baathists were the ruling class that had virtually all the Iraqi administrative experience as well as the clout of Sadam Hussein behind them. In their place we put…nothing, initially. Later when we realized that the Sunni Baathists did not like our referee’s call on de-Baathification and they recruited and fielded a large team of insurgents, we looked to the many Shiia militias to counter that move.
What is happening now to reduce the bloodletting in Iraq? Surely, you acknowledge the use of “special teams” as the way to stem the violence. We need to force some turnovers! One special team is the “surge” of an additional 30,000 troops. Let’s hear it for the surge! Another special team is the Sunni night watchmen that we have stood up as the Sunni insurgency stood down. Incidentally, that pre-dates the surge by a few months. We pay these Sunnis $10 per day to watch out for their own villages and right now that is working. We are also arming these Sunnis so that they can defend their villages from Shiia militia. Let me pose a question or two. What if another referee, say Saudi Arabia or Syria, etc. found a way to finance these same Sunni groups at $12.50 per day. Would they stay “loyal” to us or would they jump for a 25% raise. Recall that Saudis financed the attacks on 9/11/2001 and that Saudi Arabia adjoins Iraq. Are we arming Sunnis to reduce long term casualties or Saudi investment?
Don’t let the spin make you dizzy. This land has a history of betrayal and we have done nothing to change that. Let us enjoy the respite in casualties, but be wary of the analogy that we are ”winning.” The only way to win this civil war is to be on one of the three major sides, but recall again that we are only the referee. And, maybe we should dump this sports analogy entirely because it simply makes no sense. In fact the only analogy that makes sense is probably that of General W.T. Sherman as he burned his way through Georgia. “War is Hell.”
Peace,
George Giacoppe
8 January 2008

“We Can’t Leave Until We Win” ~ Part II

Do you remember the old songs we used to sing in “The Nam”? Lately I particularly remember the Boy Scout song “We’re here, because we’re here, because … etc.”, and , “We’ve gotta get out of this place” by The Animals.
We can’t just tell our soldiers in Iraq that they are “There because they’re there”; that is not fair and makes no sense. Also, I’ve got to think that they want to “get out of [that] place, if it’s the last thing [they] ever do.”
For their sakes, we need a definition of victory that they can live with; it would be nice if we as a nation could live with too.
We have to separate military victory from national victory if we are going to make any sense of this at all. Clearly, military victory is sufficient for the military to come home, while other agencies and associations work to complete “national victory.”
There is a story, probably apocryphal, that President Ford asked for an independent analysis of US involvement in Vietnam post-WWII, that is, from 1945-75. When he was given the report the title was, “US Wins Vietnam War”, but the subtitle was, “War was won in 1964, but subsequently lost in 1965-75”.
Using that logic, President Bush may have been very nearly right, if a bit premature, when he gave his “Mission Accomplished” address on the USS Lincoln. If the objective was to rid the world from the menace of a Hussein with WMD, then the absence of that risk was proven. If the objective, as later stated, was to dethrone Hussein – regime change – then the objective had been reached. All we needed to do militarily was to consolidate, clean up, and come home. If the objective was to establish a democratic Iraq, then with the State Department and the United Nations left to help Iraq get back on its feet after many years of economic sanctions that was perhaps possible, but not a military objective.
It is the subtitle of the Iraq War that is the problem: it might very well be, “War was won in 2003, but subsequently lost in 2004-2007 and beyond.” But that is not the military’s fault – that does not constitute a military defeat, although it may ad up to a national defeat.
The forces’ first mission in 2003 was: “Find and neutralize WMD in Iraq, and neutralize any WMD production and research facilities.” Result: 9 April 2003; MISSION ACCOMPLISHED (or if you’d rather) VICTORY.
The second mission was: “Depose Saddam Hussein and his government, allowing for a new regime in Iraq; find him, arrest him, and turn him over to the sovereign Iraqi government for prosecution.” Result: 14 December 2003; MISSION ACCOMPLISHED ~ VICTORY.
Unfortunately, since then the mission seems to have been: “Keep on keepin’ on.” Result: 2005-2007; STAGNATION, but not DEFEAT. There has been no appropriate military mission, therefore there has been no defeat.
So now we are faced with the task of redefining the objective to fit the situation. Let’s start with the four original goals for the future of this piece:
1. Stop the loss of US lives as soon as reasonably possible.
2. Stop the loss of Iraqi lives at the hands of US forces.
3. End the occupation by US forces of another sovereign nation.
4. Leave Iraq a chance to stabilize itself through its own efforts, with outside economic and political help.
Add to that a reasonable description of the situation at hand. By the common account, “The U.S. troop buildup has brought down violence, but that has failed to spark cooperation among politicians. If anything, the country appears more balkanized into ethnic and sectarian enclaves.” LA Times The decrease in violence to Iraqis is reported to be a combination of the Balkanization of all of Iraq into many ethnically “clean” zones (read sectarian turf), and a lack of legitimate reporting on violence occurring daily throughout the country as the Iraq war fades from the news. The general atmosphere in the countryside and in most of the cities seems to be small-to-large turf wars among the various factions, much like the Italian Mafia families with the Sicilians or Cosa Nostra (Shia), the Calibrians or ‘Ndrangheta (Sunni), the Camorra (Kurds), and the Sacra Corona Unita (Uzbeks and others). US Forces do not belong in the middle of such a fight, and have no acceptable mission there.
The military and governmental situation is that the Maliki government, strongly influenced by Iran and strongly pro-Shia, is making the occupying forces’ policy decisions; this is unacceptable to any American. We ought to remember this situation from the Vietnam War when local ARVN military commanders and province chiefs forced us to withhold missions and fires because their friends and relatives in the Cong and the PAVN were in the area. The Sunni militias are running their turf and we are paying [bribing] them to support us, a situation that will last only as long as the bribes last.
What should we do?
After almost five years of war we ought to say officially, “We’ve gotta get out of this place.” We need to say that our military goals have been met and then some. We cannot provide security by pretending that dealing with a central government without influence is the solution. We cannot continue to fight where the our tactical security decisions are being made by local tribal leaders and private militia bosses. Most of all, we can no longer be involved in a religious war where the multiple combatants care only for their own power and the supremacy of their ideology. In short, we cannot make a nation when the local leaders don’t really want one.
Thus we propose a new military objective which includes the premise that there will be no permanent stationing of forces in Iraq.
First objective – Disengage and move into secure enclaves. There is no need to continue losing allied lives, and there is no positive result by continuing to provide neighborhood security through search and destroy missions which at the least enrage, and sometimes destroy the neighborhoods we are trying to secure. After five years this job has to be turned over to the Iraqi police and military, regardless of their willingness, and regardless of their views on democracy, justice, due process, or religion.
Second objective – Provide national not neighborhood security by establishing the enclaves toward the borders of Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and committing to 6-12 months of providing border security.
Third objective – Withdraw after one year at the most, and regardless of the internal situation at the time. We cannot build a nation by beating the Iraqis into submission, and we don’t have the forces to do it if we could. We cannot continue to operate in an environment where critical policy decisions are made by any chief or bandit who wishes, when those decisions profoundly affect our forces. Withdrawal should be accomplished in the best military manner, with troop security the paramount consideration.
At the end of this editorial is their new “five-paragraph field order”
What then of Iraq? Don’t we have an obligation to them after all this time? Well yes we do, but it is not a military obligation. We ought to be firing up to aid reconstruction, to the extent that the Iraqis themselves can provide security to their reconstruction efforts. Those efforts should be international, involving our world partnerships, and not just the US alone. The bulk of the funding will have to come from us, and rightly since we have done most of the damage, but it should be in the form of grants, and should not involve US contractors unless the Iraqis request them.
But won’t the money be misused? Well yes, by our definition, but our definitions don’t always work. If you have ever worked in the Middle East, as I have, you know that an American’s “bribe” is a Middle Easterners “commission” or “fee for services”. That’s the way they do things, whether we approve or not. Guess what? They don’t understand or approve of our view either.
So by giving grants, we don’t have to worry about the “Foreign Corrupt Practices Act” except when US contractors are involved. We can continue to fund them at the rate we have been pouring money into the war for another two years or so, and then pull the plug. After that, it’s all their show.
Finally, when the troops come home, honor them for MISSION ACCOMPLISHED ~ VICTORY!
As for the future, try reading "Restoring American Military Power: Toward a New Progressive Defense Strategy for America”, by Lawrence Korb and Max Bergmann. [Ed.]

Sandy Cook

Putin as Man of the Year

Russian President Vladimir Putin has just been chosen Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. Now aside from any quarrel with the idea that he has been the most influential man in the world for 2007 (what about Al Gore?), the selection and the report on Putin on the Lehrer News Hour leaves me seriously concerned for the Russian people. The main concern is this: once again, Russians seem to be placing their faith in a leader who not only rose to power from the secret police, but one who makes no secret of his aspiration to be leader for life. He has selected his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, and seems a cinch to become Prime Minister under this hand-picked president. When asked to explain how the Russians feel about the possible recurrence of yet another supreme ruler, one of the pundits on the News Hour explained that most Russians seem to have been willing to give up a “little” freedom in exchange for stability.

All this seems, especially after having read Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope Against Hope, a terrible case of ‘déjà vu all over again.’ Hope Against Hope is Mandelstam’s account of her years with the poet, Osip Mandelstam, as they struggled to survive the series of purges instituted by Josef Stalin after the Russian Revolution, purges which resulted in the deaths of millions. Though she survived to write her memoir, Osip Mandelstam did not: he was arrested for the second time in 1937 (presumably for a poem he wrote criticizing Stalin, but no one really knows), and perished shortly thereafter (no one really knows when). As Nadezhda Mandelstam writes, in the days of the Stalinist terror, with arrests occurring without notice or reason at any time, arrest meant not simply incarceration for a time, but a literal death sentence. Almost no one returned from the labor camps.

What is most chilling with regard to Putin are Mandelstam’s thoughts on why the Russian people put up with all this. Why did they tolerate a dictator who turned on his own people, his allies, his friends, anyone and everyone? Why did they act like such helpless sheep? Mandelstam attributes their behavior, in the first place, to fear of chaos. Here is what she writes:

There had been a time when, terrified of chaos, we had all prayed for a strong system, for a powerful hand that would stem the angry human river overflowing its banks. This fear of chaos is perhaps the most permanent of our feelings—we have still not recovered from it, and it is passed on from one generation to another….I remember Herzen’s words about the intelligentsia which so much fears its own people that it prefers to go in chains itself, provided the people, too, remain fettered. (p. 96)

When we think of the economic and social collapse Russia suffered beginning in 1990, we see history repeating itself. Once again, with the memory of the chaos and deprivation of those years of meltdown still fresh, it appears the Russian people have opted for “a powerful hand,” the hand of ex-KGB man Vladimir Putin. For an idea of the type of massive indifference to human suffering this can lead to, consider the story Mandelstam tells of the woman she encountered in a Prosecutor’s Office. The woman was desperate to find out about her son, who had been arrested by mistake: he had the same name as the person supposed to be arrested from the same building, and was therefore hauled off to camp. Still, “though it meant moving mountains,” the woman had actually managed to convince an official of the mistake, and obtained an order for her son’s release. Unfortunately, it was too late, and the woman now heard that her son had been killed in an “accident.” She began to scream and sob, but not only was she yelled at by the Prosecutor, she was also set upon by her fellow supplicants in the office, all trying to get their own cases heard:

“‘What’s the use of crying?’ asked one long suffering woman who was trying to find out about her own son. ‘That won’t bring him back to life, and she’s only holding us up.’ The disturber of the peace was removed, and order was restored.” (p. 285)

Thus does terror involve everyone, make victims of everyone. As Mandelstam puts it, “Anybody who breathes the air of terror is doomed, even if nominally he manages to saves his life.” This is because the reign of terror, the logical consequence of absolute rule, takes its victims beyond fear to what Mandelstam describes as “a paralyzing sense of one’s own helplessness to which we were all prey, not only those who were killed, but the killers themselves as well.”

Now we have Vladimir Putin, the man whose “soul” our insightful President once claimed to have seen as benign, placing himself in position to become yet another leader for life, with all the consequences in power and terror that position implies.

There was a time when we in the United States could contemplate such developments from afar. No longer. Especially since 9/11, what Americans no less than Russians have to fear is the self-same willingness of many of us to put ourselves in the hands of a power-hungry leader, to exchange just a “little” loss of freedom for the promise of security. Given the underlying shakiness of the economy and the U.S. dollar, the fallout from global warming, and much else besides, one can only imagine what further losses we might all be willing to tolerate in exchange for stability. In that regard, we should heed what Nadezhda Mandelstam has written, especially about the need to rage against such losses, to resist.

“If nothing else is left,” she says, “one must scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.”



Lawrence DiStasi

How Could they Do It?

            Increasingly, we humans are faced with acts that seem unexplainable. How, we ask, could the Nazi Holocaust, the genocides in Armenia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and elsewhere, and most recently, the torture committed by United States troops at Abu Ghraib, have happened? With this in mind, I recently read Iris Chang’s disturbing account of yet another genocidal killing spree, that of Japanese troops against the residents of the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937, all of it detailed in Chang’s The Rape of Nanking (Basic Books, 1997). And the question that Chang poses in at least two places in her book is the one haunting us all these days: How could they do it? How could otherwise rational human beings lose all sense of respect and restraint in order to torture, humiliate, dismember, and violate in every way fellow human beings, and on such a grand scale? Chang offers not one but several answers to explain the events in Nanking—where as many as 300,000 Chinese were slaughtered in a matter of weeks. Among them are the absolute deadliness of absolute power; the specific training which the Japanese military imposed on its soldiers, training them with exercises meant to instill killing instincts; the suppressed rage of those soldiers, themselves treated like dirt by their officers; the “frightening ease” with which all of us can witness and accept genocide as long as the danger is perceived to be far away. All these, and others, especially the training which portrays the enemy as “sub-human,” no doubt operate. But I think there is one more, a usually unspoken one, which relates to some recent thoughts of mine on betrayal (see the blogs, Traitors I and II).
            I am referring to a sense one can get when reading about truly unspeakable acts—the vindictive manner with which Japanese soldiers cut off the heads of all Chinese, including women they had just savagely raped; the torture and brutality imposed on little children, pregnant mothers, helpless old people, none of whom could have possibly represented a threat—that more than the numbing of civilized behavior or empathy is at work, that some unspoken animus is at play here. It is as if the soldier, the perpetrator, is blaming his victims, blaming them for being what they are. There is the distinct sense in this, in all sadism perhaps, that the perpetrator is blaming the victim for being something disgusting, something humiliating. The soldier/torturer, that is, first puts the victim in a situation of complete powerlessness, and then blames him or her for being powerless. For groveling. For not standing up to defend himself, but rather begging for his life, demonstrating his willingness to submit to any humiliation in order to be spared.
            And what we hear is the interior monologue of the torturer: you disgust me. You are beneath contempt, and therefore do not deserve to live. But why? we want to ask. What is so disgusting? And I think the answer is that you, as a victim, my victim, remind me of what I am, of what I am trying desperately not to be: completely vulnerable, a being who is a hair’s breadth away, always, from dying, from groveling in shit and humiliation myself. This, I think, is the deep fear that is raised by the sight of a completely helpless victim. And, at the same time, what is also raised is an exhilaration that I can, at least for the moment, rise above that horribly rejected condition by treating you as dirt. By destroying you, sending you back to that nothingness from which you came. That is to say, we, our conscious selves, always yearn to be invulnerable, always strive to position ourselves above the mess and perilous brevity of our existence, to see ourselves as somehow not the barely cobbled-together, watery beings we know we are. And the yearning runs on fear.
            In a real way, I think, this fear is connected to the fear of reversion I’ve referred to in my ‘Traitor’ series. We all know we are mud and dirt and slime, disgusting from the point of view of so-called “civilization” where we do everything to mute and disguise that origin. We also all know that our determination to pretend to be substantial, permanent, solid, to make our civilized works permanent and solid, stems from our evanescence, from the paltry nature of what we are and how pitifully brief and shaky is our appearance here. Iris Chang refers to this several times in her book, when she comments again and again on the “thin veneer of civilization” that can vanish so easily and quickly in a genocide. And that is true. And we all know it. And it terrifies us, the knowledge that any of us, all of us, can so easily revert to a state of anarchy, powerlessness, shapelessness. And again, it is precisely that terror which is turned on the victim, turned into rage against the victim who reminds us of our terror. Of the imminence of our reversion to mud and slime and liquefaction.
            This, then, is what I think lies at the heart of all this horror and brutality, this exultation in rape and dismemberment and torture and murder in the cruel fashion of which only humans are capable. ‘Don’t remind me of what I am. I hate you for reminding me of what I am. And therefore I will reduce you to the most abject piece of shit and trash imaginable.’ The Nazis did this constantly, routinely to the Jews in concentration camps. And, as Iris Chang demonstrates with chapter and verse, the Japanese in Nanking did this just as routinely. It wasn’t just killing soldiers or civilians who might be dangerous. It was humiliating them even after death. Most were dumped into the Yangtze River, which ran blood for weeks. But the most vivid depiction of what I am referring to occurred in the revolting story of the Japanese dumping the bodies of dead Chinese into pits—the pits which the Chinese had earlier dug in most roads in the vain hope that they could hinder the advance of Japanese tanks. The conquering Japanese responded with the genocidal cruelty which Nanking symbolizes: they filled the pits with Chinese bodies, some still alive, and took pleasure in running over these pits of piled-up bodies now functioning as dirt, with their tanks and trucks. Horror. But more than horror, this cruel inversion of decent burial turned the Chinese bodies into the deepest form of humiliation: ‘You are nothing but roadfill. Roadkill. Inanimate shapeless matter of the most worthless kind.’
            Something more than the numbing of civilized behavior in war is needed to explain such horror. Something, I would submit, like what I have referred to above. Something that all of us, however well trained, ignore at our peril.
 
Lawrence DiStasi
=

The Meaning of IS

It all depends on the meaning of “is”
Clinton said with measured reason
And annoyed us with a fizz
Just short of national treason
But now we face more lies
Than truth can possibly uncover
In Dana Perrino’s blinking eyes
Or a news helicopter’s hover

There is an irony in the news recently that Barry Bonds is being charged with perjury for denying that he used performance-enhancing drugs because it is competing with the news that Bush lied about the nuclear danger posed by Iran. Sports are important and I do not mean to diminish the impact of a role model for our youth. One could argue that President Bush has long ago given up the role of being a person to emulate and perhaps nobody expects the truth from him any longer. If Barry Bonds lied, then the sport of baseball is diminished. He is going to trial. If Bush lied, then Democracy is diminished. He is not going to trial. Today, the LA Times and several news organizations are carrying the story of the CIA destruction of video demonstrating their use of methods that the world calls “torture.” Bush has repeated the mantra that the “United States does not torture.” I guess that it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is.

As a simple example, we have charged and convicted perpetrators of waterboarding as torturers at least since the Spanish American War. We convicted Japanese for that offense during war crimes trials for WW II. Not incidentally, we held leaders responsible for the actions of their followers. Does it really depend on what the meaning of “torture” is when we have longstanding precedent and we have isolated ourselves from the civilized world in defining it? Does the CIA destroying evidence constitute vindication in our neocon world? Does it matter that the evidence was requested by a Federal Court? An earlier presidential spokesman, Scott McClellan has recently written a book decrying the fact that he was lied to and made to lie, in turn, to the American people.

The specific reference by McClellan is the treasonous act of outing an undercover agent and the following perjury. McClellan repeated the lie that Bush, Cheney nor anybody else in the White House participated in the process. Recall that Bush said that he would dismiss anybody in his administration involved, including White House members? Bush hardly waited for the jury to reach a verdict before he commuted Scooter Libby's jail sentence. Does it really matter that Bush communicated that he would fire anybody involved? Maybe he crossed his fingers and we failed to notice. Does it matter that Bush’s Brain “turd blossom” Rove is writing a book to revise the history of the rush to war in Iraq? Rove now claims that it was Congress and not the President that rushed to war despite dozens of video clips that demonstrate that both he and the President urged and chided the Congress for not acting fast enough. Does it matter?

We have long criticized the Russians and Chinese who brazenly used propaganda during the Cold War. We laughed at their attempts to cover up failures and blunders in politics and science. We winced at their human rights abuses when they minimized their crimes as essential to maintaining justice. Their lies were transparent to us. It seemed to matter then. We have now outsourced some of our propaganda and are spending millions annually for the Lincoln Group to propagandize Iraq through the press. Does it matter? Don’t the ends justify the means, after all?

If the end was to attack Iran by building up the tempo and drum beat, then it did matter that the intelligence community collectively decided not to cave in to pressure from the White House. Distorted intelligence from an alcoholic “Curve Ball” was used to get us into Iraq and it appears that intelligence providers did not want a repeat that scandal. It does matter. It matters to the thousands who may have been killed or injured and it matters to each of us that at least one of our checks and balances worked for reason instead of rashness. It matters to our Army and to the Marine Corps that have been depleted by repeated deployments. It matters to our friends who may have lost faith in the United States. It matters to our enemies who have seen us as a justifiable target for retaliation. Reports indicate that the Vice President delayed the report for a year, but it matters that the report was made. That is progress from an administration that has been singular in promoting secrecy and hiding truth.

Baseball will survive the Barry Bonds trial. The sport will not be severed from our culture. We need to follow that example and see that justice is served and not severed from our culture.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
7 December 2007

NIE Report on Iran

 Is it not astonishing to watch the smarm coming out of the White House in response to the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which reported that Iran is NOT working on a nuclear weapon, and in fact ended its nuclear weapons efforts in 2003?  Is it not mind-boggling to see the President at a news conference assuring us that far from contradicting the saber-rattling blather that he has been hyping for months-recently raising the specter of WW III if Iran were to get the "knowledge" to build a bomb--the NIE report just confirms and reinforces his suspicions of Iran?  And further to see, in response to a question about the timing of his WW III comment, the President smirking (as he always does when he's lying) and insisting that he didn't know about this report when he made his remarks because he only found out last week?

I mean, have they no shame?  No discomfort to be caught lying through their teeth, to the point where their whole Iran policy is revealed as yet another fraud?  Apparently not.  Because in the first place, Commondreams.org has just rerun a story dated Nov. 9, 2007 by Inter Press Service that literally doubles the fraud:

"A National Intelligence Estimate on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy towards Iran...."

In other words, the report that the public just read about yesterday was not only ready to be published a year ago, but the President knew it and tried to quash it entirely.  Failing that, he had sent it back three times to modify it as to conform with the administration's attempt to create enough fear about Iran to justify a military strike on its "secret" nuclear-building operations.

And now that the intelligence experts have refused to bow to administration pressure, and have directly (though a year late) contradicted the administration's propaganda about those "secret" operations, the President and his minions in Congress,  without batting an eye, contend that the report actually substantiates their view that Iran was working on nukes before, and will be working on them again.

So, where any rational human being would interpret the NIE report as exposing Cheney and his neocon henchmen as the fools they are, the report is tortured to resemble new evidence against the alleged nuclear devils in Tehran.

In short, evidence means nothing to the adolescent fascists in the White House.  Determined to paint Iran as a rogue nation deserving of a pre-emptive strike, they will reinterpret, undermine and make up their own intelligence to do it.  And, of course, one of the ways they do this is to keep repeating the other durable lie--that President Ahmadinejad of Iran "intends to wipe Israel of the face of the earth."  In regard to which Marjorie Cohnpointed out recently,

"According to University of Michigan professor Juan Cole and farsi language analysts, Ahmadinejad was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini, who said the "regime occupying jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."  cole said this "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all."

Rather, it means that the Iranians predict (and devoutly hope) that the Zionist regime will sooner or later disappear.  Anyone familiar with the history of Israel and the Middle East would be hard pressed to disagree.  But language, like truth, means nothing to these people.  Or rather, it represents just another tool to be tortured and twisted to create the impression of constant crisis, to instill fear in the populace, and to use that fear to justify the loss of liberty  at home and "pre-emptive" aggression abroad.

So beware.  Even though its own intelligence has confirmed that the so-called nuclear danger from Iran was and is pure bullshit (as was the similar hype over Iraq's WMD), the sociopaths in this White House have proven that they not only have no shame, they lack even the minimal conscience needed to be embarrassed,  much less dissuaded from their criminal designs.

Lawrence DiStasi

6 December 2007

Defend the Constitution or Bush: Your Choice

Recall that swearing in
And reach beyond the grin
Of satisfaction
For attraction
To a vow to defend
Without an end
Our Constitution’s words
From all herds
Without and within
Including next of kin

I have a brief but true story that needs to be told, but first I want to comment on the recent words by General Ricardo Sanchez. When I first read them, I was flooded with mixed emotions. While I firmly believe that he had every right to criticize his civilian leaders and I agree with many of his conclusions, I was annoyed if not angry that he said nothing when he had the power to influence events in Iraq and I could not help but wonder why. Could it be that his job was so important that he said “Yessir, yessir, three bags full" during his tenure as Commander in Iraq, but felt that he could not speak truth to power without punishment of some kind? I have lost my anger and I feel that I understand that he may actually be doing some good by enabling discussion of leader performance in Iraq.
My story begins when I was a major leading several instructors at an Army school. One instructor, CPT S. came to me and reported that the class commander had asked a question and that he had answered truthfully. The class had been on break when the guidon bearer got careless and placed the class guidon in a spot where it was picked up by one of the cadre. After the break, the cadre leader asked the class commander where the guidon was. When he stated that he did not know but that the class had it at the break, he was told that the entire class should produce 5 cases of beer for the cadre in order to get it back. The question the student commander asked my instructor was simply: “Is that my only choice?” CPT S. correctly stated that if the guidon was misappropriated to extort beer from the students that, indeed, there were other choices.
I supported CPT S. without reservation and called JAG to be sure that it was a matter of record and that I would not tolerate retaliation against the class or its student commander. My boss, LTC R. supported me and the lines were quickly drawn with his boss, COL H. in strong opposition. Soon, this tempest in a beer glass escalated to the point where CPT S. was threatened. I asked for a summit conference with COL H. with my boss being present to defuse the situation. There was no mollifying the colonel and soon there were threats against the student commander and I again called JAG to investigate the threats of dismissal for him. JAG interceded and the student graduated from the basic course despite the anger of the colonel and the cadre. My boss later protected me in his rating but could not shield me from my endorser (the colonel), nor could he protect himself from the same colonel.
Colonel H. invoked “tradition” as his written reason for a lowered endorsement for me and also for my boss’ lowered rating. I do not regret my actions nor would I choose to change my decision. I have lost no sleep over it because extortion is illegal and if that is a tradition, it is not a tradition worth maintaining. I refused an order from the colonel to support the cadre and simultaneously violate my oath as an officer and he refused to put the order in writing as I requested at the summit conference, so I took the hit along with my boss. Stuff happens.
Return to the Iraq war and General Sanchez. General Sanchez had Abu Ghraib happen right under his nose as well as on his watch and it appears that he chose to minimize it as documented in the Taguba Report. He accepted the troop number limitations, deployments, and other high level decisions without public comment. Would Sanchez have lost his job if he had commented publicly or even privately? Absolutely! Did he lose his job anyway? Yup…he never lost the smell of Abu Ghraib and he was retired without getting that fourth star. The satisfaction of making the right moral and ethical decision is not in the reward that you might get, but in being at peace with yourself for living up to your oath. You may take a hit…even a big hit, but if General Sanchez felt the nation was ill served by the national policy and the decisions, was it his choice or was it his duty to say so clearly and maybe even in a summit conference with the boss’ boss? I vote for duty. General Sanchez was a little late, but he finally made roll call. Don’t expect kudos, General Sanchez. Expect punishment from those who disagree and you will never be disappointed. By the way, the cadre never extorted for beer again, so maybe my own little decision had some positive effect in that small way.
Regards,
George Giacoppe
LTC, USA, Retired

The Great Disobedience

I have been thinking a lot lately about why people obey. More
particularly about why people obey bad leaders. Think of them all: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, the Shah of Iran, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet. The list is endless. And in each case it's one insane fool somehow getting masses of people to do his insane bidding. Nor is it just politicians who manage to amass enough power‹usually the power of armies
they control‹to enforce their decisions. It's the CEOs of predatory corporations as well: the Waltons of Wal-Mart, the nameless CEOs of Chevron and Halliburton and General Electric and Disney and Microsoft and Boeing and Monsanto. I mean, what is it with people? The information surely gets out
there‹that the dear leader, as Korea's Kim Jong Il styles himself, is a paranoid schizophrenic delusional asshole whose policies are killing millions, poisoning millions, amassing offshore fortunes for this psychopath to pass on to his equally psychopathic offspring and cronies after he's gone. And yet. People obey. They shoulder their rifles, they salute their
officers, they go off to war and likely death or maiming without a whimper. Standing tall. Proud to serve the cause. Or less grandly, we obey the traffic signals, pay our taxes that go to enrich scoundrels, support with our dollars the useless products that are destroying people and planet alike, and never stop to think why? Why do we do this? Why do we contribute to our own destruction?

I mean, no ruler rules out of absolute strength. Each one relies on the cooperation and collusion, the support and forebearance, tacit or otherwise, of millions. In China, to take the most extreme example, a few bureaucrats control the movements and lives of more than a billion people. Does it not ever occur to that billion that they could rise up and sweep away those heartless, pompous bureaucrats with one breath? Does it not ever occur to all of us in the United States that it is within our power, written in our founding document that if those in power become too deceptive, too intoxicated with their own grandiosity, too royal or tyrannical, it is our
right, our duty, to overthrow them? Or at least to disobey? To refuse to shoulder that rifle, refuse to kill that innocent family in Iraq, refuse to credit any more slick propaganda about the latest incarnation of evil allegedly threatening our homeland?

Apparently not. Partly, it must be, because disobedience, revolt can be messy. Can cost lives. As we see in Burma right now. And the mess can get even messier when disobedience triumphs, as it did in the French Revolution, when thousands of nobles lost their heads. Terror. The terror is never
pretty. Never without loss. Though these days, with the monsters in power, with CEOs raking it all in without concern for starvation or murder or the destruction of the planet, the idea of such a terror begins to seem more and more appealing, for what else can be done with monsters?

But it's not just the fear of consequences that keeps the masses obeying. It must also be training. Training beginning in childhood that inculcates obedience to those in charge. Those who are in charge must be right, the training seems to say, or they wouldn't be in charge. And where disobedience can mean loss or injury or even death, it's prudent to train the children in obedience to the wise and powerful Father.

Still. When the evidence becomes so overwhelming that the Father is a psychopath, that he countenances not only mass murder via Shock and Awe, and mass torture via Guantanamo, and mass exploitation and profit for his oilmen cronies, but is leading the nation to the brink of environmental and
economic disaster‹-is there any way to understand continuing obedience? I mean only recently we have been treated to the spectacle of mothers of soldiers slain in Iraq screaming their support for their leader, screaming their rage at those who question that support, screaming that their sons have died for a noble cause. And all we can say is that surely there is
nothing quite so sad as a mother who has lost her son in battle. Unless it be a mother who remains ignorant of the real truth about that loss: that her son's death, far from being a sacrifice for the freedom we all allegedly enjoy, was really a sacrifice for megalomaniacs who never served, who are capable only of mouthing platitudes and staging photo ops while they enrich
themselves and their friends‹-all those CEOs who are quite willing to sacrifice obedient slobs in uniform in order to protect their precious corporate investments.

And all we can hope is that the great disobedience that is the people's right and duty is building and will arrive soon‹-or soon enough, at least, to cripple the current fool playing at leader long enough to prevent the next disaster he is surely, even now, drooling over.

Lawrence Di Stasi

New Orleans: Deja Vu All Over Again

The more we hear about the attempt to "cleanse" New Orleans of its poor black population (while reconstruction and recovery from Hurricane Katrina
proceeds rapidly for the white, heavily-touristed areas), the more we realize that history runs in repetitive cycles. For the truth is, Americans
have always been suspicious of the exotic denizens of that most fascinating of all American cities. Were it not for its position as indispensable port
city at the mouth of the Mississippi River, it probably would have been abandoned to floods and tides long ago. But it is important. And so Hurricane Katrina has been turned, in the rah rah atmosphere post-Katrina,
into an "opportunity." And the opportunity, again, is not to rebuild New Orleans better, but to rebuild it cleaner, more like what Americans seem to prefer these days‹a theme park without the problem of messy, unsightly poor
folks.

Sadly, this is not new. From the time when New Orleans was transformed from an outpost of the French and Spanish empires to an American possession,
many Americans have cast a disgusted eye on this outpost of foreignness. I am referring to the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The port of New
Orleans, not all of Louisiana, was really the issue for President Thomas Jefferson. New Orleans was what he sent his envoys, James Monroe and Robert
Livingston, to France to procure. Stunningly, Napoleon Bonaparte offered the Americans not just the port city, but the whole of the Louisiana Territory. And in history classes, we learn that Jefferson took the deal, paid $15 million, and doubled the size of the nation in one stroke. At 4 cents an acre, the Louisiana Purchase has gone down as one of the greatest real
estate bargains in history.

What we are not told, however, is that there was great American resistance to the deal. Northerners worried that their influence in the new nation would be diminished by the addition of so large a western and
southern territory. They also worried that slavery might be extended into the new territories. But the worry went beyond that. That was because in
Article III of the treaty Napoleon insisted that the inhabitants of New Orleans‹-the French, the Spanish, the free Blacks and part-Blacks and part Indians‹-must all become citizens of the United States. To many Americans,this was like giving the keys of the city to the half-civilized, to "savages and adventurers." New Orleans, to them, was "a place inhabited by a Mixture
of Americans, English, Spanish and French, and crowded every yearŠ.with two or three thousand boatmen from the back country" Others found the denizensof New Orleans and the whole West beneath even that. Josiah Quncy, who would become president of Harvard College, predicted that "thick skinned beasts will crowd Congress Hall, Buffaloes from the head of the Missouri and Alligators from the Red River."

In the end, Jefferson prevailed, and the Louisiana Purchase Treaty was ratified. And with it, came New Orleans and all its people. Clearly, however, what has been happening there since, and especially since Katrina, demonstrates that many Americans, in particular our conservative brethren of the heartland, have never quite accepted New Orleans as a place fit to be included in the lily-white, squeaky-clean America of their dreams. It¹s too colorful, in every sense of that word, by far.

And so the bleach job goes on.

And most Americans watch it happen, maintaining all the while their dominant cover story: that America is indeed the land of the free and the home of the equally color-blind‹-except, of course, where property values are concerned.

Lawrence DiStasi

Privatized Murder and No-Bid Contracts

What means to what ends
As the country defends
Her borders
On orders
Using soldiers for rent
With sovereign consent
From a puppet on strings
And a cowboy on wings
Raising hell and disorder
In the name of Blackwater
Forgive me for repeating my wails on the outsourcing of the military effort to contractors. To review the facts, KBR, Cheney’s Halliburton subsidiary, provided logistics services to our troops on a cost plus basis much as other services by other contractors. In the case of KBR, they provided contaminated water from 63 of 65 water purification stations. One might feel that KBR should not be paid and you would be correct. They were paid, despite protests of the GAO. The count goes on for Parsons that was paid for constructing Iraqi police barracks that were not only unusable, but were a health hazard and had to be destroyed. Both those jobs were well suited to combat engineers or Seabees who do not work on a cost plus basis.
I highlight KBR because that company became the model for privatizing logistics in a war, declared or not. As an old military logistician, I am awestruck by the KBR rules for where they would or would not provide services. They did not provide hot meals for outposts with fewer than 1800 soldiers. In worst case thinking, they got the big bucks no-bid contracts without real risk and were not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Our troops got MREs when they were lucky and, if we are to believe the media, supplements from families back home. If we had a matter of non-performance, we had contract discussions (probably not in theater). Contractors like KBR do not take orders. To date, despite several findings of overcharging, dangerously contaminated water and general under-performing, their car on the gravy train remains firmly on track
But KBR is not the only contractor in Iraq. In fact, a recent estimate places the contractor share of “military” expenses in Iraq at 40%. They outnumber the military by about 50,000 in aggregate although many are low scale workers from the Philippines, Bangladesh, etc. With cost plus contracts in their pockets and no requirement to perform to a standard, no oversight and immunity from both Iraqi and U.S. law, what’s not to like about this deal? The immunity is a legacy of the Proconsul Bremer who unilaterally eliminated the entire Iraqi Army by fiat thus creating opportunity for outsourcing jobs to American firms and simultaneously creating a motivated, armed and trained insurgency. Records show that Triple Canopy, DynCorp, Blackwater, Aegis (UK) and Armor (UK) all hold huge contracts as security companies directly competing for military roles against our uniformed services that have a less capable lobby. Of course, it did not hurt that Erik Prince (Blackwater CEO) contributed $160,000 (reported) to the GW Bush election campaign.
The nature of cost plus contracts is to minimize financial risk for contractors, and physical risk is a kissing cousin. In the TV documentary “Iraq for Sale,” contract employees stated that they were instructed to destroy trucks with flat tires on logistics runs rather than replace the tires. This meant that the cost plus was applied to an $80,000 truck instead of a $400 tire. Why conserve or take a risk if you are going to be paid more for destroying the truck? In life, some things are mysteries. A cost plus no-bid contract isn’t one of them. The KBR rationale was risk reduction. Not incidentally, the military was called upon to destroy the abandoned trucks.
My verse invoked Blackwater hired by the State Department to provide security for U.S. officials. Unfortunately for hundreds of innocent bystanders, records show that Blackwater fired first 84% of the time when violence erupted. While other companies hovered around the 50% mark, no company came close to Blackwater. Some of the encounters are difficult to explain such as when a Blackwater employee was drunk from a Christmas party and he shot and killed an Iraqi presidential security guard. That employee was flown out of Iraq the next day on State Dept. instructions and fired by Blackwater. The State Department also suggested that Blackwater pay $15,000 to the family of the guard in order to make the situation go away.
I have a simple set of questions that cry out for answers. In addition to paying Blackwater $1 B for the contract, are we reimbursing them for hush money? Do they get a percentage for that unexpected cost? If it is a cost plus 10% contract, did we as taxpayers pay $1500 in bonus money for a drunk to kill an Iraqi security guard?
Well we may never know. Similar records have been classified SECRET because corruption in Iraq is now a security threat if we disclose or discuss it. Shh. I hope that includes the Texan, Ray Hunt that was just with Kurds for an oil contract without the Iraqi Central Government. Hunt is not only a Bush friend and major contributor, but he sits on the National Petroleum Council and the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Please don’t see this as a conflict of interest by either Hunt or Bush. Primary interest? If you feel that this is counter to the president’s purpose of supporting a strong Central government, you are paranoid. Shh. They will take you away.

Peace,
George Giacoppe
03 October 2007

Words Are Important and worth Defending

Words keep losing their meaning.
One of my grandmother’s favorite descriptors was “gay”. By that she meant someone, male or female, who was happy and carefree, light-hearted and friendly. I do not begrudge the GLBT community the use of the word, but I do miss, just a little, my grandmother’s felicitous use of the word also.

“Hero” was a word, used universally, and somewhat in awe, to describe valorous action, so remarkably beyond normal human character as to be elevated and admired. I do begrudge the loose application of such a wonderful word to just anyone in uniform.
“Freedom” meant not license, but individual sovereignty in all thought and in all actions except where societal sovereignty superseded, and that only when agreed to in common understanding. I hate the use of “freedom “ to mean subordination of others to my country’s world view.

“Intelligence” used to mean the unbiased product of the processing of the best information available, coupled with the best understanding of the total environment and the specific problem. It did not mean finding information that proves someone’s point.

“Truth” meant simply both “not false” and “complete”, as in “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”. Truth did not mean “my extremely heartfelt and/or faith-inspired opinion”.
Faced with these and other important words that have slipped away from us, along with their attendant concepts, I want to defend one word in particular, that holds such importance for serving military and veterans. That word is “trust”.
Trust is what holds military service together, and it is not a simple concept.
Civilians often cite “camaraderie” as a defining characteristic of those groups of usually underpaid public servants who band together and swear an oath of public duty such as soldiers, firemen, and police. But that is a weak concept for the glue that binds them together. Football teams have camaraderie as do social clubs and others. Camaraderie isn’t deep enough a concept to fully embody trust.

“Friendship” is a wonderful concept but it is insufficient to describe soldiers’ feeling of trust for each other. They can trust each other without even truly being friends.
Trust is both broad and deep. Trust involves an extraordinary level of confidence that those above you, next to you, and below you will keep foremost in their minds the safety and well-being of the group, which means your safety too.
Trust is an expectation that your superiors will do everything possible to train you well, to equip you with the best that is available, and will never send you into an impossible situation; not because they might fail, but because you might be harmed without reason.

Trust is a belief that when the going gets tough, everyone around you will strive with you to get through it. Trust is a conviction that if the going gets impossible, your leaders will reinforce you to a level where the mission is achievable, or will honestly, and without fear for their personal reputation, declare the situation untenable and will pull you out, perhaps to fight another day.
Trust is a reliance, not on some “system”, but on the real people around you every day. In battle that focuses mostly on the people in your fire team, your platoon, your company. It this trust that lets soldiers obey orders that they might not always understand completely.

Most of all, soldiers have to trust that they will be sent into danger only if it is absolutely necessary. They trust that their leaders will make every effort short of war to avoid war, and that when war comes, they trust that it is truly the only choice. If they come to think otherwise, trust starts to crumble.
Both before and after the battle that reliance expands broadly to include not just your boss’s bosses, but everyone responsible including the nation as a whole. After the battle, soldiers who have depended only on the guys close around them transfer that dependence to you and me.
Soldiers trust that the nation and its leaders will prepare them, will share completely in their sacrifice, and will provide whatever it takes to make them whole upon their return to society.

We don’t send them enough help, or equip them with the best equipment, then let contracts to commercial firms to put others next to them who are paid a great deal more, get better treatment, get the best of weapons, and who never have to make a moral decision. If soldiers fail we court martial them, fine them, imprison them, and disgrace them for life. If the mercenaries we send in place of real reinforcements commit the same or worse crimes, we spirit them out of the battle zone – no fault, no foul – and give them a bonus to boot. The inequity causes trust to tremble.

They know that their buddies will never leave them on the battlefield, but they have to trust that we will not leave them on the post-conflict, everyday battlefield.

Unfortunately, that is what is happening, and trust is getting very shaky.
If they are hurt in body we patch them up and try to get them back into the battle. If they can’t get back in we try to cover up their wounds, hiding them in substandard conditions in out of the way places. We don’t even count them as wounded if we can find a way around it. Trust fragments.
If they are killed, we hide them from their nation, and dishonor their families by refusing them the public honors they deserve. Trust disintegrates further.
If they are hurt in mind we try to ignore it; if we can’t ignore it we try to deny it; and if we can’t do that, we blame them for it. We cut them off without benefits, claiming their deep wounds are the product of a “preexisting condition”, blaming their genetics or their upbringing. Trust shatters.
If they try to re-start their lives, we quibble with them over what they are owed in education and other benefits. We use technicalities to deny them what we have promised them, and excuse ourselves for what we characterize as their failure to prove their case.

When they seek help we tell them “get in line”, and we make the line impossibly long. If we have managed to get them to agree with our diagnosis of a “preexisting condition” there is no place in line for them at all. Trust is gone forever.
We have not yet completely lost the meaning of the word “trust”.
If you want to know, ask a soldier – but ask him or her very soon.
True trust may not last much longer.
[Sandy Cook.]
“For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe.”
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

All the Protection that the Law Allows

In 1994 the Congress passed the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA); it was updated in 1996 and 1998. The purpose of the act is:
Ҥ 4301. Purposes; sense of Congress
(a) The purposes of this chapter are--
(1) to encourage noncareer service in the uniformed services by eliminating or minimizing the disadvantages to civilian careers and employment which can result from such service;
(2) to minimize the disruption to the lives of persons performing service in the uniformed services as well as to their employers, their fellow employees, and their communities, by providing for the prompt reemployment of such persons upon their completion of such service; and
(3) to prohibit discrimination against persons because of their service in the uniformed services.“
In 2003 Congress passed the “Servicemembers Civil Relief Act” (SSCRA), a restatement and updating of the old Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act”. The intent of Congress is stated in Section 2:
‘‘(1) to provide for, strengthen, and expedite the national defense through protection extended by this Act to servicemembers of the United States to enable such persons to devote their entire energy to the defense needs of the Nation; and
‘‘(2) to provide for the temporary suspension of judicial and administrative proceedings and transactions that may adversely affect the civil rights of servicemembers during their military service.”
Good, brief explanations of the details are available for USERRA and SSCRA. In the broadest sense:
· USERRA protects your employment and protects you from discrimination because you are in the service – any component
· SSCRA makes it possible for you to serve without ;losing leases, eases the burden of installment contacts, and can even, in some cases, give relief from judicial proceedings.
So why aren’t these laws working for many veterans (see related stories later in this issue)?

A law does not work if it cannot work on a human scale. Years of waiting for resolution doesn’t help if you need a paycheck this Friday.
Statistics are not people. The government touting reduced response time (whether true or false) by 10% doesn’t help the veteran who is at the wrong end of the distribution. People are not “means and medians”.
No matter how much a free-marketer you are, business concerns must not trump human concerns, and the law should apply equally to all.

Finally – the veteran does deserve special treatment. By virtue of his or her honorable service, his or her needs are more important than the needs of those who stayed home and sacrificed nothing.
Unfortunately, neither the Department of Labor nor the Department of Justice see it that way. They give more credence to an employer’s unsupported claim of irreparable harm to his business than they do to the veteran’s legitimate claim under the law.
Back from Iraq? Want your job back? The USERRA protects you, doesn’t it?

Wait just one minute, buster! That law apparently only applies to you if your former employer says that it does.

Don’t worry. We have set up appropriate alternatives. You lost your job as a $25/hour tradesman because your former employer didn’t want to give it back? We have a job for you providing in-home care of the elderly at $9/hour. Or another as a management trainee at McDonalds.

Don’t like that? Then appeal to the Department of Labor. Oh, wait a minute. Sorry. Your former employer sent in a fax saying that rehiring you would destroy his business (Did he prove it? He isn’t required to.) Since he sent us the fax we have to turn this over to the Department of Justice. They’ll get back to you in 30 months.

And don’t forget, that relief of your mortgage and your credit debt under the SSCRA while you were activated has expired, so pay that mortgage you qualified for under your previous employment or we’ll take your house; you don’t expect us to let a mortgage company lose money do you? What kind of an American are you?
So, thanks for your service, and have a nice day.