Deep Blade Journal

Dahr Jamail has posted a 58-photo gallery showing the aftermath of the US attack

Body in ransacked home

Here are two links on Coleman. My friend David from St. Paul who runs a nifty blog called Some Kinda Possible has posted a StarTribune editorial with some good quotes from locals. Also see Atrios. It’s the comments for this post that are the most fun.

And on Bush & Annan you’ll enjoy this from Tom Burka. I did.

With Bush firmly ensconced in the Whitehouse, warrior liberals attack leftward

In the three-plus years since 911, a powerful strain of thinking that demands genuflection before the altar of American military force has held sway amongst establishment liberals. Now writers including Peter Beinhart of The New Republic have called for “a fighting faith” in a new liberalism after the defeat of John Kerry. He means military flailing against terrorism, not fighting for the working person, health care, or some quaint idea like that.

Suddenly losing sight of the Anybody But Bush (ABB) theory of the 2004 election, these “Tough-Minded Liberals” (TMLs) now are left with their favorite sport — attack Nader, Chomsky, and anyone else holding anti-war views. Roots in this struggle to destroy anti-imperialism, non-violent resistance to war, and radical pacifism reach back to post-WWII Democratic-Party-based anti-communism. Nowadays, the target includes the Deaniacs and Kucinichites who offered in varying measures alternatives to Democratic business-as-usual.

Go here for a link to the Beinhart article.

This all has set off a minor wave, with many bloggers weighing in. I’d love to put up a huge post myself, as I have a lot to say about this. For example, I’d like to explain why I subscribe to the Chomskian heresies that both the Kosovo war and Afghan war were illegal, immoral, wrong, destructive, and did pretty much nothing but harm both to the people that were bombed and to America’s own future. But I can’t take the time now.

Instead I’ll defer to some fine rebuttals to the general outlook of the TMLs.

The first I’ll mention goes back a year, but it’s one of the best. Following a provocation by Michael Tomasky, then freshly minted as American Prospect chief, Mark Hand at Press Action wrote in October 2003,

The anger against the likes of Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal has been building among the liberal missionaries since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Out of this anger emerged the tough-minded liberals who now feel they must loosen their chains in order to confront their enemies on the left….

Another showdown is brewing for 2004. In his American Prospect essay, Tomasky lobs a grenade toward his enemies on the left. “Nader is obviously out to kill the Democrats”, he writes. The collateral damage, to regular citizens whose lives are directly affected by which party is in power, is not his concern. He has long since quit caring about that. It’s time a Democrat killed back….

The whole thing is well worth the read.

Yesterday, Steve Gilliard had a good post on “Vichy Democrats”. Check it out. I dislike Gilliard’s constant axe grinding against Counterpunch and Pacifica (exactly the people who are at once the movement counter and target of the Vichy Democrats, or TMLs), but the value of what he offers outweighs this flaw.

Finally, Neiwert takes on the TMLs on their own terms. He reminds us that we have homegrown terror threats! I don’t like the civil liberties implications of some things he says, but this dispassionate piece is quite interesting nonetheless.

First, widespread use of torture becomes policy. A few weeks ago we heard about deportation flights. Now this:

In a Boston Globe story today, Returning Fallujans will face clampdown, Anne Barnard writes about plans to resettle the residents into their bombed-out city:

…troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times….

One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons.

I am stunned. Identity cards and forced work camps… but oh, we’ll pay them, oopy doopy. How do we avoid having America become one of the most notorious criminal regimes of all time? It may be too late.

See Steve Gilliard’s pithy item on this particular subject, and his long continuing series on colonial wars. The series should carry college course credit for all you can learn from it.

Find the snake in the image below:

Left to right: Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein, Norm Coleman

Here begins a four-part series on the rich history of corruption and secret dealings during the last twenty-five years of US involvement in the Iraq tragedy.

Part I: Norm Coleman

Part II: Oil-for-food in the media

Part III: Year zero in Spring 2003: Pentagon/CPA burns Iraq

Part IV: Iraqgate

A useful idiot

Republican US Senator Norm Coleman from Minnesota is a useful idiot in the Bush Administration’s war of contempt against the United Nations and international law.

Coleman is the perfect handmaiden. He is a smooth operator, but not so bright — perfect qualities with which to serve Bush. His conscience is difficult to trouble as he easily abandoned his Democratic friends, including the late Senator Paul Wellstone and former Minnesota Attorney General Skip Humphrey to become a Republican turncoat. He has a proven track record as a corporate shill, a gambler with large quantities of taxpayer money, and a protector of private interests from the prying eyes of the public. To top it off, he’s pretty on camera.

See the Appendix on Coleman below for some choice references.

Still, being from blue-state Minnesota where “values” at times have been known to include honesty in government, he must prove his mettle and manhood as a Republican servant. Therefore, the junior senator has been tasked as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) in the United States Senate with the UN Oil-for-food investigation. A hearing on Oil-for-food was held on November 15. The author of the last null Iraq weapons report, Charles Duelfer, gave testimony. Audio with lousy video of this hearing, plus text of witness testimony, is available from a page at the site for the full Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs.

Note the participation of my own current senator, the Honorable Republican Puppy Dog Susan Collins. Collins is chairman of the larger committee of which Coleman’s subcommittee is a part. She is better known in current news as the shepherd of the 911-inspired intelligence reform bill. Limits of her own mettle are showing while much more powerful military and anti-immigrant reactionaries have decided to stop her bill dead in its tracks.

Target: Annan

All the posturing on UN Oil-for-Food is a wedge to attack the legitimacy of the UN itself. The lurking issue is the illegality of the invasion of Iraq. The normally cowed-by-US-power-UN-Secretary-General Kofi Annan had been so challenged by the world’s lesser countries –- while the Iraq-invading monster daily showed its true colors with its brutal occupation practices — that he decided, 18 months late, to declare the war illegal.

Some impact was added by the timing of Annan’s remarks because they were given in a BBC interview seven weeks prior to the US election. Annan probably had no chance of influencing any US voters, but the heresy was enough to send at the time a number of US mouthpieces into a vicious snit. Refer to the link for details.

So in Bushworld, punishment for Annan is in order. He therefore has been set upon by the scorpion Coleman. In a December 1 Wall Street Journal oped, Coleman puffed up with an air of indignity over the affair, primed his stinger, and demanded Annan resign. In the piece, Coleman suggests that there is no way that the UN’s own investigation led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker can be credible.

But that’s not all. Coleman basically blames the UN for forcing the US to invade and putting its troops at risk over the corrupt objections of countries in the pocket of Saddam. It’s a clever construct of the Bush principle of “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” — one used repeatedly against the peace movement — which paints anti-invasion/occupation sentiment as endorsement of Saddam and a laundry list of no good we were told he definitely was up to.

Of course it doesn’t matter the list was false — the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq only the most glaring evidence of the lies. The propaganda line has evolved into some sort of bizarre precognitive, “pre-crime” scenario, and Coleman repeats this here — there is certainty Saddam had in his mind a whole scheme for building some future arsenal and attacking all that is good and proper in the world, using the ill-gotten gains built up with the acquiescence of the UN.

Sure, Norm, just like there was in March 2003 “no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised”.

Here is part of Coleman’s piece, with my emphasis added:

While many questions concerning Oil-for-Food remain unanswered, one conclusion has become abundantly clear: Kofi Annan should resign. The decision to call for his resignation does not come easily, but I have arrived at this conclusion because the most extensive fraud in the history of the U.N. occurred on his watch. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, as long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks and under-the-table payments that took place under the U.N.’s collective nose.

Mr. Annan was at the helm of the U.N. for all but a few days of the Oil-for-Food program, and he must, therefore, be held accountable for the U.N.’s utter failure to detect or stop Saddam’s abuses. The consequences of the U.N.’s ineptitude cannot be overstated: Saddam was empowered to withstand the sanctions regime, remain in power, and even rebuild his military. Needless to say, he made the Iraqi people suffer even more by importing substandard food and medicine under the Oil-for-Food program and pawning it off as first-rate humanitarian aid.

Since it was never likely that the U.N. Security Council, some of whose permanent members were awash in Saddam’s favors, would ever call for Saddam’s removal, the U.S. and its coalition partners were forced to put troops in harm’s way to oust him by force. Today, money swindled from Oil-for-Food may be funding the insurgency against coalition troops in Iraq and other terrorist activities against U.S. interests. Simply put, the troops would probably not have been placed in such danger if the U.N. had done its job in administering sanctions and Oil-for-Food.

Another point must be made about the evidence against Annan on which Coleman apparently depends. Coleman admits that nothing implicates Annan directly, it’s simply a “fish rots from the head” argument that he’s making. However, there is a recent story about the involvement of Annan’s son with a Swiss company that had been contracted to render certain services during the Oil-for-food program. This story in today’s Observer has some breaking information. Coleman and company have latched onto “Kojo” as some kind of “gotcha”.

Documents Coleman does cite allegedly show the corruption of other UN employees and international figures in oil voucher deals. These documents may have a highly questionable pedigree. Deep Blade Journal posted on this last April, explaining the involvement of suspected spy and forger Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi handled certain secret Iraqi archives after the invasion. The initial planting of the story followed Chalabi’s work with these documents.

Recently, one of the alleged beneficiaries of Saddam’s largesse has been vindicated by a court in the UK. Anti-war Member of Parliament George Galloway from Glasgow, who engaged in diplomatic missions in Iraq, was savagely libeled by the conservative Telegraph newspaper. He has now won a judgment against the newspaper for framing it’s stories about Galloway with phrases like “In Saddam’s pay” and “Saddam’s little helper’”.

There is not likely to be a reprieve for Annan. Despite the fact that he has the confidence of a broad spectrum of UN supporters (for example from Timothy Wirth, the former senator in a debate with Norm Coleman during an interesting report on Friday’s PBS News Hour), business will grind to a halt until the organization’s dominant member is satisfied.

Personally, I believe the UN should release all information it has about the Iraq sanctions regime – and anyone culpable in corruption or destruction of the country should lose their jobs. What happened during this time was tragic, the product of UN complicity with US perfidy. I also argue that all this focus on Annan and just the Oil-for-food aspect of the sanctions misses the bigger picture.

Foremost, the sanctions destroyed the country with tenacious American insistence, while setting off slow wasting of the population. Death rates — especially for children — rose to levels tantamount to genocide. And post-invasion Iraq obviously is a sea of death.

On top of all that killing, post-invasion abuse of Iraq’s finances by Pentagon authorities (under UN Security Council Resolution 1483) was redolent of corruption and misappropriation. (See links here, here, here, and here)

Likewise were secret US dealings with a friendly Saddam — including missions by Donald Rumsfeld — throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Should we so easily forget the “tilt towards Iraq” and the Iraqgate scandal? If Annan’s head deserves to roll, absolutely, most certainly so should Donald Rumsfeld’s.

Where is Coleman’s bright light when it comes to investigating the rest of the story of the monstrous tragedy that is Iraq?

For additional insights and some excellent references on Oil-for-food, please see Rodger Payne’s posting of November 9. Payne has links to articles by Professor Joy Gordon that are absolutely essential for understanding the workings and destructive force of the sanctions against Iraq during the period from 1990-2003.

Appendix on Coleman

Who is Norm Coleman? As I mentioned, he switched from Democrat to Republican. In late 1996 while mayor of St. Paul, he found backers for private development boosterism in Minnesota’s capital were much more comfortable with a Republican.

The switch meshed perfectly with Coleman’s political ambitions. But his first try for higher office was a bust, losing the governorship to Jesse Ventura in 1998 (he came in second, ahead of Democrat Skip Humphrey).

Fast forward to April 2001. At that time the current Minnesota governor, Republican Tim Pawlenty, was considering a run against Paul Wellstone in 2002. On April 18, 2001, Pawlenty was preparing to make an announcement that he would run for the Republican nomination to challenge Wellstone. He was stopped in his tracks by a phone call from – Dick Cheney. The Bush camp preferred Coleman as their handpicked candidate.

So it was. Then tragedy struck. Less than two weeks before the 2002 election Wellstone, his wife, their daughter, three staffers, and two pilots died in a plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota. Coleman became the beneficiary of the untimely death, as Wellstone was set to win that election by at least a five-point margin.

The best source for stories on what Coleman’s boosterism has meant for St. Paul is the Twin Cities weekly, City Pages. Check out these stories:

October 2003: This Space for Rent

Lots of layoffs. Cheap leases. Empty offices. Welcome to downtown St. Paul.

“…it is generally agreed that the city’s central business district is now experiencing its highest office vacancy rate ever, at about 30 percent–worse than the metro-wide vacancy rates (estimated at 19 percent this summer) or downtown Minneapolis (21 percent)…”

October 2002: Magical Misery Tour

Norm Coleman’s “St. Paul miracle” gets a withering report card

St. Paul’s citizens will be paying for Coleman’s corporate charity well into the future. Between 1993 and 2000 the total indebtedness facing the city rose from $460 million to $619 million–more than this year’s entire budget.

“You can’t run a city like Norm Coleman did and expect that to be sustainable,” says Dan McGrath, executive director of Progressive Minnesota. “Norm Coleman might be a wonderful mayor in great economic times, but look at the economic disaster he’s left in St. Paul.”

Coleman went to bat big-time for Lawson Software, a firm now struggling to keep its head above water after a protracted and continuing period of industry consolidation and layoffs. Coleman gambled $100 million of public money to build facilities for Lawson. The City of St. Paul sold the property to developer and Coleman campaign contributor David Frauenshuh for about 50-cents on the dollar. Frauenshuh made political contributions to Coleman totaling over $40,000 from 1998 to 2004, according to an April 2004 story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. What if these legal contributions had involved relief supplies for Iraq rather than politics? We’d be calling it “corruption”, wouldn’t we?

One more item related to the NHL hockey team Coleman spearheaded into Minnesota with public money:

January 2002: Trouble in Rivercentre

St. Paul built a new hockey arena for the Wild and a new convention center for the city. Guess which one is losing money?

My personal opinion, having lived six years in the same state as Norm Coleman and having watched his unfortunate rise to power, is that he is a snake. He has shown willingness to gamble away the public trust, do the bidding for powerful interests, and consume anything that is in his way, including UN officials and by extension international law that the UN represents. The bad misdirection of emphasis of Coleman’s Oil-for-food investigation could cost the world more than the dubious gains made through the firing of allegedly corrupt officials.

Next: Oil-for-food in the media

Tuesday update: Go see my St. Paul friend David’s post on Coleman. There is a good quote there from the StarTribune and some choice words from Twin Cities locals.

Former Wisconsin governor sends a few parting warning shots on food terrorism while leaving a history of conflicting interests on more common poisonings

Thompson on the road again

For several years we lived within a few miles of the state of Wisconsin where departing Department of Health and Human Services chief Tommy Thompson was then the governor. Ours was Minnesota’s Jesse Ventura. A fine, entertaining pair they were, both often providing reporters with wild, quotable stories.

The wildman lived up to his reputation yesterday at his resignation conference by issuing this disturbing threat assessment (as reported by the Washington Post):

“The big one is pandemic flu,” Thompson said. He said the avian flu known as H5N1 has such “huge lethality” that the World Health Organization has estimated 30 million to 70 million people could die worldwide if a pandemic breaks out. “And we do not have a vaccine,” he said. “We do not have a therapy for H5N1.”

He said an arm of HHS, the National Institutes of Health, “is working on a vaccine,” but that he remains “very concerned about pandemic flu because we’re not prepared for it.” He said such an outbreak “is a really huge bomb out there that could adversely impact on the health care of the world.”

Thompson said he also worries constantly about food poisoning.

“I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not, you know, attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do,” he said. “And we are importing a lot of food from the Middle East, and it would be easy to tamper with that.”

Although inspections of food imports have risen sharply in the past four years, “it still is a very minute amount that we’re doing.”

Bravo, Tommy. Poisoning matters when the issue can be framed with terrorism. But what about the everyday poisoning experience throughout our country, particularly by poor children, who are forced to live in environments polluted by lead and pesticides — at the insistence of the powerful chemical lobby? It’s easy to find lots of good sources on how Thompson and the Bush Administration have been rife with conflicts on these matters. Here is a quote from an October 27 Orbis column:

More recent studies have indicated that even at levels below 10 micrograms/deciliter, learning problems in children can be demonstrated. In this context, about two years ago, Jean Carnahan and a group of other senators began pressuring the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Tommy Thompson (a Bush appointee) to lower the lead standard form 10 to 5 micrograms/deciliter. At the time, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention was in general agreement.

However, before formal action could be taken by the CDC, Thompson nominated three industrialists to the Advisory Committee. Joyce Tsuji of Exponent (whose clients include a lead smelting company), Sergio Piomelli (who opposed lowering the lead standards in 1991) and William Banner (who provided written testimony on behalf of the lead industry in a recent Rhode Island law suit). While the pro-industry anti-public health agenda is now clear, the public remains unaware of this back door method of influencing CDC decisions.

Enjoy your Harley ride into the sunset, Tommy.

I choose radio services other than the presidential/military stenographer

I don’t listen to NPR nearly as much as I have in the past. From about 1978 into the run-up to Iraq, I probably had NPR on at least an hour a day — every day I was near a radio. Not any more. Who are those new people on Morning Edition, anyway? Frankly, I don’t miss it.

These days what I try not to miss are Democracy Now!, FSRN, and Flashpoints. On Friday there is a new Counterspin from FAIR and occasionally I pick up an Alternative Radio. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I sometimes catch the Duke Skorich Show from KUWS in our old stomping ground of Duluth/Superior. It’s a Wisconsin Public Radio affiliate. WPR also has a very worthwhile talk lineup on the Ideas Network. Check out their program notes. Finally, driving across Canada has given me a lot of appreciation of CBC Radio One. Links for all of these services may be found in the left pane.

Today I made the mistake of listening to a couple of NPR’s hourly newscasts (thank goodness Maine Public Radio also carries the BBC) and a few All Things Considered segments. Here are things I heard:

NPR hourly newscast

Bush took a few reporters questions at an event today. Here is part of the transcript:

Yes, Gregory.

Q Mr. President, you’re sending more troops to Iraq now. This comes on the heels of reports that Iraqi security forces appear to be under-performing, appear to be unprepared for elections in January. If that’s the case, what would be so bad about postponing elections if there’s the potential that those elections may be seen as illegitimate?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, first of all, the elections should not be postponed. It’s time for the Iraqi citizens to go the polls. And that’s why we are very firm on the January 30th date. Secondly, I have always said that I will listen to the requests of our commanders on the ground. And our commanders requested some troops delay their departure home and the expedition of other troops to help these elections go forward. And I honored their request.

And, thirdly, we are working hard to train Iraqis. And we have got certain benchmarks in mind. And General Petraeus is in charge of training the Iraqi troops, and the Iraqi ministers in charge of that are meeting the goals. And the idea, of course, and the strategy, of course, is have the Iraqis defend their own freedom. And we want to help them have their presidential elections. And at some point in time, when Iraq is able to defend itself against the terrorists who are trying to destroy democracy — as I have said many times — our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.

It’s time for those people to vote, and I am looking forward to it. It’s one of those moments in history where a lot of people will be amazed that a society has been transformed so quickly from one of tyranny and torture and mass graves, to one in which people are actually allowed to express themselves at the ballot.

Yep, you guessed it. The italic part alone was what was inserted into the broadcast with zero effort to report other views on the Iraqi election. As can be seen from the reporter’s question, there are a lot of issues involved and many reasons to doubt the Iraqi election is what it seems or what Bush says it is. And that blatant hypocrisy about torture again! With new stories flying that US treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba was “tantamount to torture”, and with the bodies piling up, you’d think NPR would not just replay Bush’s known fraud of saying he led the cleanup of torture and mass graves in Iraq!!

All Things Considered (ATC)

Nothing else need be discovered about what ATC does these days after you listen to the interview, “Fallujah Invasion Can Offer Lessons for the Future”. In it, Major-General Robert Scales tells NPR’s Michele Norris all about the precision guided munitions zeroing in on “point targets” containing the insurgents in Fallujah. Clean, precise killing. We’ve heard it all before. We kill only those deserving it with ultra-clean technology. We’ve beaten the strategy of the resistance. Lies.

Some weeks ago, in another ATC segment, Anne Garrels, a courageous reporter who has done multiple embedded tours in Iraq, showed how she clearly is too close to the troops on whom she is reporting. As the Marines were readying the big assault on Fallujah, she speaks, without skepticism, of how her Marines told her they played Marine Corps Hymn to rile insurgents enough so that they could be located and shot.

Semper fi NPR! From the Halls of Montezuma, To the Shores of Tripoli…!!

Case against US president forceful in Ottawa and Halifax

Bush unwelcome Wednesday evening in Nova Scotia

Feelings run deep all over Canada as protests against the November 30/December 1 Bush visit erupted from coast to coast

Coverage of the Bush visit to Canada in the US is hilarious. Most of it goes something like, “leaders mending ties, have shared goals”, or “Bush, Martin patch things up”, or Bush, Visiting Canada, Aims to Smooth Ruffled Relations. Then there is talk of trade in beef and lumber. No doubt, trade issues are critical to the two countries.

But my favorite US coverage of the visit was on the PBS News Hour.

Here is a sample of the arrogant Bush agitprop performance and then how it was called out by Canadian commentators:

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We just had a poll in our country where people decided that the foreign policy of the Bush administration ought to be: “Stay in place for four more years.”

I made some decisions, obviously, that some in Canada didn’t agree with, like, for example, removing Saddam Hussein and enforcing the demands of the United Nations Security Council….

The riposte by Mark Kingwell, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and a contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine, came later in the segment after a question from Gwen Ifill. Kingwell calls Bush a liar in so many words. And he characterizes US action as rogue. Wow! On US TV!

GWEN IFILL: So are you suggesting that the goodwill that we saw on display when the president joked about the beef and when the president said thank you, didn’t necessarily sit that well with Canadians?

MARK KINGWELL: Well, it didn’t sit well with this Canadian. I think it is disingenuous. I also think that his defense of his actions in Iraq as being in accordance with the United Nations Security Council is disingenuous.

The Bush administration has consistently failed to cooperate with the United Nations; something that Canadians have been urging all along as the real basis of any kind of legitimate international action.

He has also refused to cooperate with the international criminal court with various measures which Canadian diplomats and thinkers have been spearheading to try to give a legitimate basis to international law so that we don’t see the kind of rogue action that we have seen in Iraq…

The complete exchange is far more extensive than what I report here and taking the time to listen to the whole thing would be worthwhile.

CBC coverage was quite a bit better, but not devoid some of the same wash found south of the border. See this rather nice page on “The protests for and against”, with lots of additional links on the page.

A lot of people in Canada actually seem to care about the fact that George W. Bush is dragging the world into dangerous territory with his wars and escalating the nuclear arms race by putting his missile system offering phony “protection” right on Canada’s doorstep. Maybe they are just a bit less distracted and less arrogant than their belligerent neighbors to the south.

Peace organizing in Canada

Canadian Peace Alliance

StopWar.ca

Toronto Coalition to Stop the War