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The Myth of AQI Fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is the last big argument for keeping U.S. troops in the country. But the military´s estimation of the threat is alarmingly wrong. --By Andrew Tilghman
. SUPERMOM REPORTS FOR DUTY WITH THE LITTLE SOLDIERS, TOO
ARMY STOP-LOSS KEEPS COMBAT VET & FAMILY ON CALL FOR ANOTHER FOUR YEARS
It's Not Just A Job. It's More Like Slavery. With Kids.
I guess this "Army of One" thing is literally true. Apparently, there is no one else in the whole country who can be depended upon to defend us from the imminent danger posed by destroying somebody else's country for no reason, six thousand miles away. Unh-hunh. So they just had to drag Mrs. Soldier back to Fort Benning, despite all her appeals for clemency. Convicted murderers get more consideration from the system.
See, the thing is, none of those conservative Republican blow-hards wants to go fight the wars they start. Like Dubya and Dick, Gingrich and Armey, they're much too busy and far too valuable serving their country at the Chicago Board of Trade or the New York Stock Exchange or in the Awl Bidness or Warshenden DEE-cee to waste their time or their blood defending their country. Besides, that's what poor people are for. And now the Middle Class, too.
(continued) .
.
Seven years in, Obama says, "Oops, my bad, we're not leaving after all." In fact, we're staying in Iraq, doubling our forces in the black hole of Afghanistan, and bullying our way into Pakistan on the sly, too. So we're going to be needing every last Mommy to stand in for those loud but cowardly Republican males hiding in the business districts.
Of course, with the Republicans putting the whole world economy in the sh*tter, and doing their goddamnedest to keep it there, there should be lots more economic draftees pretty soon. Millions of people have lost their jobs, and millions more will lose theirs before the Bush Depression is over. That's your ideal cannon-fodder, right there. Recruiters say business is picking up for them, after a few slow years when everybody realized the war was bullsh*t, nothing to do with Osama, 9/11 or WMDs. I mean, even a right-tard doesn't want to die for oil, right? But he might have to take a chance on dying to keep his family fed. Or to satisfy a stop-loss order.
Well, apparently, the economy isn't getting bad enough fast enough for the Generals. They're still using the "unlimited commitment" in the fine print of everybody's enlistment contracts to keep dragging our citizen-soldiers back into the worst Hell-holes on Earth. In the past, this meant Daddy was going to be away for a while, and he might not come home. Now it means Mommy might not come home, either. Does anyone care?
' A North Carolina mother who reported for Army duty with her two young children in tow is waiting to see what happens next. Lisa Pagan, who was recalled to the Army four years after being honorably discharged, drove nearly 400 miles and braved a Southeastern winter storm to report for duty Sunday at Fort Benning, Ga. She says she has no one to take care of son Eric and daughter Elizabeth, so she brought them with her. She has reserved a motel room for a week and doesn't plan to stay in the barracks. "Them being away from me is not an option," she said. Master Sgt. Keith O'Donnell, an Army spokesman in St. Louis, said earlier that the commander at Fort Benning will decide how to handle the situation. "The Army tries to look at the whole picture and they definitely don't want to do anything that jeopardizes the family or jeopardizes the children," O'Donnell said. "At the same time, these are individuals who made obligations and commitments to the country." '
Before You Knew It, We Were Ass-Deep In The Big Muddy. And The Big Fool Said To Push On.
Certain terms will stick in the mind, intended though they are to avoid our attention altogether, or confuse it. "Terminate with extreme prejudice" turned out to mean "kill," in plain English. "Extraordinary rendition," is kidnapping on an international scale. "Advisors" are combat troops we don't want to acknowledge sending into situations where they don't belong.
The United States had "advisors" in Vietnam in the 1950's. Evidently, their advice wasn't very good. In 1965, we sent the whole First Marine Division in to "advise" the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army out of existance. Nine years later, we got our asses kicked out of there, with 58,000 dead, 300,000 wounded, and untold thousands of mentally disabled and drug-addicted Americans, some of whom are still homeless today, to show for our "advice." The war put us into a decade-long recession, and sidetracked progressive programs for forty years. Vietnam was left a bloody mess, from which they are only just starting to recover. They lost millions of souls, men and women, children and old people, civilian and military. Their country was destroyed. We dropped more bombs on them than on Germany & Japan combined in WWII. That was Nixon's "secret plan for peace": Bomb them back to the Stone Age, as the Air Force gleefully put it. It didn't work.
(continued) . .
No one knows what the secret plan is now. It's a secret. One wonders if our new President has been fully informed. Once they get rolling, our military seems to just keep rollin' along, no matter who is the putative CIC, or what new policies are put in place. Obama did promise to move the "War on Terror" to Afghanistan, and to pursue Al Qaida into Pakistan "if necessary." So, maybe he did order these "advisors" in. Maybe he is the one planning a major long-term commitment in South-West Asia, or maybe he's just going along with his generals, like LBJ did in Vietnam. But we don't know, do we? It's a secret. From us, the taxpaying voters of the United States.
Maybe we should ask. Yeah, we'd like to crush Al Qaida and capture Bin Laden. Yeah, we have to straighten out the messes we made in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we voted to end the war, not to extend or expand it. We don't want to start another mess in Pakistan. After all, they have nukes, and missiles to deliver them. And they're chronically corrupt and unstable, with the constant threat of war with India, and terrorism from within. They make their other neighbors, like Iran and China, very nervous too. It might not be such a good idea to start another Vietnam in Pakistan, from which we might have to run away with our tail between our legs because it just ain't do-able, no way, no how, any more than Vietnam ever was. Except we'd be leaving behind a nuclear-missile-armed potential Islamic fundamentalist State that would have very good reason, as Iran does, to be hostile to the West. Especially toward us, the tax-paying voters of the United States.
So, hey, advisors. Let's think about this. Before we get ourselves ass-deep in another Big Muddy. A radioactive one.
ABC NEWS WWSB TV7 SARASOTA, FL "US advisers training Pakistani troops" They're admitting to 30, multiply by a Military Bull Sh*t Factor of ten, so that's at least 300. And now it's escalating.
' A U.S. effort to train Pakistani troops in their fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban is larger than previously acknowledged. The New York Times reports the task force of about 70 advisers is helping the Pakistanis with intelligence and advises them on combat tactics. But it isn't taking part in any fighting. The Times report cites U.S. military officials. Most of the advisers are Army Special Forces soldiers. They include combat medics and communications specialists. Last year, Pakistani army officers said about 30 American advisers were training troops in northwest Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border. '
NY TIMES "Secret U.S. Unit Trains Commandos in Pakistan " Not so secret any more. Let's see, official Army body count of 60, divided by an MBS Factor of ten, so we got six guys. Oh, and we're running Pakistani Air Force operations out of the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. Spooky.
' They make up a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command. It started last summer, with the support of Pakistan’s government and military, in an effort to root out Qaeda and Taliban operations that threaten American troops in Afghanistan and are increasingly destabilizing Pakistan. It is a much larger and more ambitious effort than either country has acknowledged. Pakistani officials have vigorously protested American missile strikes in the tribal areas as a violation of sovereignty and have resisted efforts by Washington to put more troops on Pakistani soil. President Asif Ali Zardari, who leads a weak civilian government, is trying to cope with soaring anti-Americanism among Pakistanis and a belief that he is too close to Washington. Despite the political hazards for Islamabad, the American effort is beginning to pay dividends. A new Pakistani commando unit within the Frontier Corps paramilitary force has used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, including at least five high-ranking commanders, a senior Pakistani military official said. In addition, a small team of Pakistani air defense controllers working in the United States Embassy in Islamabad ensures that Pakistani F-16 fighter-bombers conducting missions against militants in the tribal areas do not mistakenly hit remotely piloted American aircraft flying in the same area or a small number of C.I.A. operatives on the ground, a second senior Pakistani officer said. '
' The U.S. military advisory effort in Vietnam had a modest beginning in September 1950, when the United States Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), Vietnam, was established in Saigon. Its mission was to supervise the issuance and employment of $10 million of military equipment to support French legionnaires in their effort to combat Viet Minh forces. By 1953 the amount of U.S. military aid had jumped to over $350 million and was used to replace the badly worn World War II vintage equipment that France, still suffering economically from the devastation of that war, was still using. . . . By 1961 the steady progress of the insurgency was near crisis levels. The new Kennedy administration increased American support for the Diem regime to prevent a collapse. By December of 1961, 3,200 U.S. military personnel were in Vietnam as advisors, supported by $65 million in military equipment and $136 million in economic aid. Military assistance was reorganized as the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), formed under the command of General Paul D. Harkins in February 1962. MACV was there to support the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) to defend the country. MACV included Army Special Forces (Green Beret) instructors and CIA personnel organizing the Montagnards in the mountains. . . . South Vietnam was going to fall to the Communists unless the U.S. intervened, but Pres. Johnson hesitated to increase the commitment of troops, trying to balance his interest in big domestic programs against the mounting crisis in Southeast Asia. Then came an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, 2 August 1964. '
DIGITAL HISTORY "Learn About the Vietnam War" A majority of the Vietnamese people just didn't want us there. But their corrupt, incompetent, hated US puppet government couldn't live without us.
' To support the South’s government, the United States sent in 2,000 military advisers, a number that grew to 16,300 in 1963. The military condition deteriorated, and by 1963 South Vietnam had lost the fertile Mekong Delta to the Vietcong. In 1965, Johnson escalated the war, commencing air strikes on North Vietnam and committing ground forces, which numbered 536,000 in 1968. '
' An entire Army combat division has been given the mission of training U.S. military advisors for duty within Iraqi army and police units, a senior U.S. military officer in Baghdad said yesterday. The U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., is now responsible for training U.S. advisors for service in Iraq, Army Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard, commander of the Iraq Advisory Group, told reporters at a news conference in the Iraqi capital city. The change represents “a huge investment,” Pittard said, noting two brigade combat teams based at Riley also are committed to training advisors. Pittard said he works in tandem with Army Brig. Gen. Terry Wolff, commander of the Coalition Military Assistance and Training Team. Pittard and Wolff, who also attended the press briefing, have oversight over military advisors that support the Iraqi army, the national police, as well as the Department of Border Enforcement. “We really cover two different areas, but have very, very similar goals, and that is to support the Iraqi security forces,” Pittard said. '
' The offensive comes more than a year after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki promised a "decisive" battle in Mosul against al-Qaida in Iraq. But Iraq's third-largest city has continued to face violence, particularly against Iraqi security forces. Al-Jubouri said American troops were only providing support, if needed. '
' A Sunni Arab lawmaker is wanted in connection for a string of retaliation attacks and mortar strikes on the fortress-like Green Zone compound after a pair of his senior bodyguards stepped forward with incriminating confessions, a military official said Sunday. The two ex-bodyguards said Sunni parliament member Mohammed al Dayni ordered them to carry out a 2007 attack on a Green Zone cafeteria in which a suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest. One lawmakers died and 22 others were wounded. '
On Thursday January 22, 2009 President Barack Obama issued one of the first Executive Orders of his presidency, ordering the establishment of a Special Interagency Task Force to be composed of the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense as co-chairs, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other federal employees as determined by the co-chairs.
The Task Force will...
...develop policies for the detention, trial, transfer, release, or other disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations that are consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice, I hereby order as follows:
Section 1. Special Interagency Task Force on Detainee Disposition.
(a) Establishment of Special Interagency Task Force. There shall be established a Special Task Force on Detainee Disposition (Special Task Force) to identify lawful options for the disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.
[snip]
(e) Mission. The mission of the Special Task Force shall be to conduct a comprehensive review of the lawful options available to the Federal Government with respect to the apprehension, detention, trial, transfer, release, or other disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations, and to identify such options as are consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.
Both Attorney General Eric Holder, and Obama in another Executive Order on January 22, 2009, have indicated that the Army Field Manual, which as Valtin explains and Patriot Daily has also written so well about, codifies coercive psychological torture under the name of "Restricted Interrogation Technique – Separation" in Appendix M. will be the Obama administrations baseline guide for detainee interrogation policies, taking us back to pre-Bush days on the question of torture but in no way ending the practice.
This morning Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, talks with The Real News, comments on Obama's executive orders, loopholes, and says Obama must still take up the prosecution of Bush/Cheney for war crimes, specifically torture of detainees...
We need a Special Prosecutor to conduct a formal investigation without political considerations and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes.
Torture is torture. No matter who orders it or how it is "justified".
Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher. She is the author of four books of poems, The Venus Hottentot, Body of Life, Antebellum Dream Book, and American Sublime, which was one of three finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. She is also a scholar of African-American literature and culture and recently published a collection of essays, The Black Interior. She has read her work across the U.S. and in Europe, the Caribbean, and South America, and her poetry, short stories, and critical prose have been published in dozens of periodicals and anthologies. She has received many grants and honors, most recently the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that “contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954,” and the 2007 Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets and Writers. She is a professor at Yale University, and for the academic year 2007-2008 she is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
...when I think of the soldiers packing gear,
Their guns silent, tanks still, standing at the ready,
Eyes moist with liberation and grief, hands wrung their last,
I think of them gleaming, striding away from the savagery,
The dying, the defeated, the triumphant... colorless stench.
When I see them marching out, freed of the difficult sand,
I imagine that black soldiers are most anxious for home,
Calling for the stretch of time to witness their history,
Onlooker to human hope instead of war’s gangling limbs
Stacked like firewood on streets smothered in suffering.
When I think of all of the soldiers coming home
Shipped in those god-awful frowning boxes,
I try to imagine their loved and beautiful faces,
But their smiles float away from who they were.
What a sad and ghastly testament of their use.
Dear Poet,
May your use, your words paint upon this,
Grant us reprieve from an unfavorable history.
Free our hearts and our minds of horrid combat
For war is the chain that has enslaved us all.
NOW BARACK IS SELLING SEATS WHICH BELONG TO THE PEOPLE
Live From His $9 Million Mansion On A Public-Excluded Beach In Hawaii, Obama Betrays Us Again
We voted for "change." We're getting the Same Old Sh*t from Obama and his Republican & Democrat-In-Name-Only Cabinet. First, he excludes anyone left of Center-Right from his staff and Cabinet. Next, a protracted war in Afghanistan suddenly seems "inevitable," and talk of a total pull-out from Iraq has all but ceased. Then he picks a professional racist-sexist-nativist-homophobic televangelist to bless his inauguration, in defiance of the Separation of Church & State upon which this country is based. Now Obama is acting just like a Republican, or a "Blue-Dawg" Southron DINO.
His election campaign manager, David Plouffe, is emailing Obama supporters in Obama's name to offer them a chance in a paid raffle of seats at the inauguration, seats which belong to us in the first place and are supposed to be free. Don't they have enough of our money, what little we have left after the Wall Street and Detroit and who-knows-where-all-else taxpayer-bailout ripoffs?
[continued] . . Why is Obama still soliciting campaign contributions, and using public property to do it? What is he still campaigning for? More DINO's in Congress? More hypocritical holier-than-thou hate-filled Jesus-freaks in the Democratic Party? A purge of all progressives, and an end to Progressive ideals? The next Republican Administration? Enough, already.
Obamabots & Hillbots will descend upon you if you question their morals, their ethics, their politics, their philosophies, their ideologies or their values. But actions speak louder than "memes" and "paradigms." And so far, Obama is nothing new, nothing but a darker DINO, nothing but a major disappointment, and a traitor to the Progressive cause. Give him more time? Why? So he can finish shutting us out of our own victory? Oh, HELL no! Time is up.
If you haven't gotten the message yet, get it now, folks. The Permanent Government, the Powers That Be, the Establishment, the entrenched Special Interests, the Culture of Washington, whatever you want to call it, are trying to deny that the sixty per cent of the population who never vote for DINOs & RINOs stood up and chose Obama because he sold himself as a progressive, which is what we all are and always have been. We fired the Clintonistas in the Primaries, and the Republicans in the General Election. We took back our government from corrupt, incompetent and inhumane corporatista's. We cannot let them sleaze right back in through the back door.
Fight this. Let Obama know how you feel. Stop the slimy slide right-wards, before it's too late. And don't give him another dime, ever.
The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
It is generally interpreted and generally agreed that the Establishment Clausein the first amendment establishes freedom of religion and also establishes that there shall be no state religion. This interpretation has stood the test of time and in fact, been upheld by the United States Supreme Court.
It seems, though, that certain segments of the American public, and certain officials (both government and military) are either not aware of this component of the Bill of Rights, or deliberately choose to ignore it. We have seen examples of this in civil life as government officials, who are first and foremost politicians always pandering to what ever special interests get them elected, enact various rules, policies and laws to intermix matters of religion in to state governance. This country was founded by people escaping religious persecution and domination, so that its citizens could each, by his own free choice, determine what, if any religious practice he or she would subscribe to.
A great segment of our society seems to have either never learned this lesson of our history, or simply choose to ignore it in their misguided belief that their religion commands them and all other men and women to conform to their one way of life and religion. They do not understand that no religion that forces its will, or what it believes is its God’s will on the entire human race is not something that is sacred, justified or a moral imperative, but rather an unjustified, morally repugnant imposition of their personal will on another human being. No human being has the right to do that, whether in their God’s name or any other name.
Something that the last eight years should have taught us, and something we may be falling prey to as we move forward in to a new era, is that the active prostelyzing by any religious group delivered via the offices or channels of government is a recipe for disaster. Ironically the “War on Terror” is a religious war, started and fomented by religious fundamentalists who would impose their beliefs, their will, upon the rest of the world, believing only in utter conformance to their particular religious and social values. This is what we have been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003. Yet our government officials, motivated by their personal desires to retain political power and office and subsequently our military officials, who take their lead or their orders from the politicians, have destroyed our credibility as the world paragon of religious and political freedom.
As told by Jason Leopold at The Public Record in his recent story titled “Military Entangled In ‘Extreme Missionary’ Christian Reality Television Show” our elected, and appointed government and military officials have permitted, in fact seemingly encourage, fundamentalist religious groups to prostelyze their particular religious values to citizens of another country that we occupy. Does it not occur to any of our government officials that by our forcing our own religious and moral values upon Afghanis we are doing the same thing as the Taliban. We are making the imposition off our will on other people, whether invited by those people or not, just as Al Qaeda tries to impose their values on the rest of human kind. How incredibly stupid and short sighted it that?
In his article, Leopold relates how fundamentalist religious groups have succeeded in “embedding” themselves in to military units on station in the war zone:
The popular reality series, “Travel the Road,” aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and featured Will Decker and Tim Scott, two so-called “extreme” missionaries who travel the globe to “preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and encourage the church to be active in the Great Commission.”
The other cable program green-lit by the Pentagon is “God’s Soldier,” which aired in September on the Military Channel, and was filmed at Forward Operating Base McHenry in Hawijah, Iraq. It features an Army chaplain openly promoting fundamentalist Christianity to active-duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq in violation of the U.S. Constitution…
Part of the second season of “Travel the Road” was filmed on location in Afghanistan and aired in April 2006, where Decker and Scott were embedded with the Army, and shows numerous scenes of the men accompanying U.S. Army soldiers on patrol. The missionaries are also filmed evangelizing the local Afghans by distributing New Testaments to them in their native Darri language.
In one scene, an Army Chaplain named Capt. Brad Hanna of the Oklahoma National Guard, talks about the possibility of a “revival” in Afghanistan and says he frequently speaks to Afghans about converting to Christianity. Hanna was made a full-time support chaplain for the Oklahoma National Guard after he returned from Afghanistan.
Additionally, Decker and Scott prominently cite SSgt. Sheldon Hoyt, who was stationed in Afghanistan with the Oklahoma National Guard’s 45th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Battalion, 179th Infantry Regiment, as playing a hands-on role in helping the missionaries facilitate their proselytizing as opposed to simply being a tour guide of sorts…
Earlier this year, U.S. military personnel launched a major initiative to convert thousands of Iraqi citizens to Christianity also by distributing Bibles and other fundamentalist Christian literature translated into Arabic to Iraqi Muslims…
The distribution of the Bibles and Christian literature came at the same time that U.S. Marines guarding the entrance to the city of Fallujah handed out “witnessing coins” to Sunni Muslims entering the city that read in Arabic on one side: “Where will you spend eternity?” and “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16″ on the other…
“God’s Soldier” was co-produced by Jerusalem Productions, a British production company whose “primary aim is to increase understanding and knowledge of the Christian religion and to promote Christian values, via the broadcast media, to as wide an audience as possible.”
Before “God’s Soldier” aired on Sept. 10, the Discovery Channel, which owns the Military Channel, advertised the program by stating that it would feature several Army Chaplains from a wide variety of denominations discussing their work in the military.
“Follow a group of U.S. Army Chaplains from different faiths on a tour of duty in Iraq as they comfort wounded and dying soldiers, reassure panicked and depressed soldiers, as well debriefing those soldiers that return from their tours of duty,” the marketing literature for “God’s Soldier” said.
Instead, “God’s Soldier,” zeroed in on one chaplain, Capt.. Charles Popov, who appears in the first scene of the program in a godlike pose looking down upon the military base and urging soldier to attend Christian Bible study. [Astute readers will note that the Popov family name is a familiar one in terms of religious fundamentalists and tent meetings. -B.F.]
“Hey this is God,” Chaplain Popov says. “Come to Bible study tonight at 1900. Purpose Driven Life. You only have 25,000 days in your life, and probably half of it’s gone.”
The author of the book, “Purpose Driven Life,” that Popov referenced is Rick Warren, the leader of a fundamentalist mega-church in Southern California. In a recent interview with Fox News pundit Sean Hannity, Warren said, “the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped…. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers.”
For the full context of all of this, Leopold’s full article is a must read. But don’t stop there, in a follow-up story, Leopold reports that this de facto policy of encouraging prostelyzation may continue in the new administration being sworn in on January 21. In his story titled “Prostelyzing In the Military Likely To Continue Under Obama”, Leopold relates:
But, now that Obama has decided to keep Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense—and he’s embraced Warren—it is virtually guaranteed that fundamentalist Christianity will continue to permeate throughout the military just as it has during George W. Bush’s eight years in office.
Despite being named in several lawsuits filed against the Pentagon for allowing military chaplains to proselytize to soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the numerous letters he has received from civil rights organizations and government watchdog groups since he was tapped as Defense Secretary two years ago, letters demanding that he launch investigations into widespread proselytizing, Gates has failed to issue a response of any kind to these groups and has refused to take steps to address the matter. Meanwhile, soldiers continue to have fundamentalist Christianity shoved down their throats.
Of the nearly 11,000 soldiers that have lodged complaints about proselytizing with just one of the various government watchdog groups, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, reports that about 96 percent have identified themselves as Christian, however, there are numerous cases in which atheist and Jewish soldiers have said they were subjected to Christian prayer sessions and proselytizing by chaplains despite their objections.
This is all terrifying to freedom loving, individual Americans, who rightly fear the establishment of any religion as “the state religion”. Religion has a place in each individual’s life at a time and a place of each individual’s choosing, but it has no place being forced upon anyone. The recent brouhaha on these pages about Rick Warren performing an invocation at the presidential inaugural maybe be viewed as a bit over reactive by some, and when it comes down to it, I can ignore that small interlude, as I have done so in similar situations for my entire life, but why should it be foisted on me in the first place during an act of state ceremony, and it does make me fear what else religious extremists might want to force upon me, will I, one day be forced to wear a religious insignia on my clothing, have all of my worldly possessions seized, have my friends and family torn away from me, and find myself marching to a gas chamber, all in service to some one’s skewed belief that their God is God and is the only God?
In Baghdad as I write this it is early Thursday evening, about 7:00 pm Thursday November 27, 2008. Add 8 hours to current US eastern standard time to calculate Baghdad time.
It is also about five and half years since George Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, claiming falsely to want to "liberate" Iraq, while beginning the occupation that has resulted in the deaths of more than a million Iraqis and more than four thousand Americans.
Since the invasion Iraqis belonging to all social factions and walks of life have been trying to throw their occupiers out of the country. They may finally, after all these years, be on the verge of doing exactly that.
Yesterday, in US-Iraq: The Big Picture, "Professor Michael Schwartz compare[d] the terms of the US-Iraq security pact - assuming the US will abide by them - with the initial, grandiose neocon plan which would have Iraq as an American colony peppered with US military bases projecting power all over the Middle East. He stresse[d] it's unlikely the Pentagon and US Big Oil will abandon their dreams of Iraq domination."
Operation Iraq Liberation (OIL) would have been an apt codename for Bush's invasion, but under any codename and whatever the lies and justification used, Iraqis have had enough, and the whole criminal adventure has also resulted in the repudiation and collapse of all the grand plans of Bush, the neocons, and PNAC, although it has yet to result in the arrest and trial of George Bush for war crimes. But grand plans or no, the oil men will not quit, and are still determined to control whatever oil resources in Iraq they can.
Neither will Iraqis quit, however, and the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama would do well to remember the power and persistence of popular resistance movements, both in Iraq, and at home, and not make a similar mistake in Afghanistan, and remember that it was not the oil companies who won him election, but popular movement.
The Real News and Michael Schwartz examine Iraq popular movement resistance to the US-Iraq security pact and how instrumental it has been for years in blocking the Bush administration agenda:
Real News: November 27, 2008 Iraq: from SOFA to resistance Michael Schwartz examines the Sadrists' reaction to the US-Iraq security pact
In the final part of this series, professor Michael Schwartz stresses how Iraqi popular resistance was crucial from the beginning in blocking the Bush administration agenda, and how the Sadrist movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr may decide to fight the occupation beyond the signing of the security pact.
Michael Schwartz is a professor of Sociology and the founding director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University (SUNY). He has written extensively on the war in Iraq for publications including Mother Jones, Asia Times, ZNet and TomDispatch and is the author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context (Haymarket, 2008).
Posted by
Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero)
at
10:53 PM
The following piece is My MoveOn.org Barack Obama Video Contest entry.
If you like it please follow this link and vote. While you're at it, and while you're on the vote page, you will see the videohtml emed code and the link code, please place the link code on your site for your visitors and if they are inclined to vote for it they can do so via the page that follows and it will count extra toward my video's chances of winning.
There are 1,100 videos entered in the contest! Yikes!
By the way... the incredible artwork you see in the video was rendered by none other than my dear friend and associate, Ben Heine.
In Baghdad as I write this it is early Thursday evening, about 7:00 pm Thursday November 27, 2008. Add 8 hours to current US eastern standard time to calculate Baghdad time. 
