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Month in Review April 2008: Iraq Debacle & Iran

Bush’s Iraq “Surge”: “Mission Accomplished” This Time?
La escalada de Bush en Irak: ¿“Misión cumplida” esta vez?

WAR WATCH

by Bob Wing and Elizabeth Martínez

MOST U.S. SOLDIERS OPPOSE WAR

The most recent poll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, conducted by Le Moyne College/Zogby International, concluded that 72 percent think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year.

On June 22, 2006, U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada became the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to Iraq.

Watada, an Asian American from Hawaii, explained, “It is my conclusion as an officer of the Armed Forces that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong but a horrible breach of American law. As the order to take part in an illegal act is ultimately unlawful as well, I must, as an officer of honor and integrity refuse that order.”

Lt. Watada needs our help now. Visit www.thankyoult.org.

KATRINA DISASTER CONTINUES

Bush’s neglect of the now one-year old Katrina disaster mirrors his bungled “reconstruction” effort in Iraq. A pitiful $110 billion was approved for Katrina recovery, but only $4 billion has actually been spent. The government estimates that $1.4 billion of these payments went to improper or fraudulent claimants.

Minor Sinclair of the aid group Oxfam America says, “The people who need it the most are not getting the assistance they deserve.” Homeowners from outside the flood zone who had homeowners insurance have received earmarked HUD money, while owners inside the flood zone, renters and the poor are neglected.

Juvenile, a New Orleans rapper, sings, “We starvin’, we livin’ like Haiti without no government.”

WHITE HOUSE PRIVATIZES THE BORDER

The historic immigrant rights marches that swept the U.S. this Spring succeeded in stalling the anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner bill now before Congress. However, in the name of the “war on terrorism,” President Bush has deployed 6,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and green lighted a 700-mile prison-like wall on the border.

The government has solicited bids from private military contractors for a multibillion-dollar contract to build a “virtual fence” of unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment along the border.

Halliburton, formerly led by Vice President Cheney, has been contracted to oversee the expansion of the federal government’s prisons to detain immigrants. And Blackwater Inc., a private security firm that employs mercenaries in Iraq and New Orleans, is negotiating a contract to train U.S. Border Patrol officers.

Throughout September, immigrant rights community groups and coalitions will mobilize throughout the country to pressure Congress to stop the pending anti-immigrant legislation (H.R. 4437 and S 2611). They are calling for legalization for undocumented workers that restores and protects civil and labor rights, ends detention and deportations, demilitarizes the border and keeps families together.

The newly formed National Alliance for Immigrant Rights is calling for a massive national day of action on September 30.

NEO-NAZIS IN THE U.S. MILITARY? YES SIR!

“Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don’t remove them even after we positively identify them,” reports Scott Barfield, a Defense Dept. investigator stationed at Fort Lewis, Wash.

At Fort Lewis alone, he says, 320 soldiers are involved in extremist activity, but just two have been discharged.

Chilling evidence compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Ala., which monitors racist and rightwing militia groups, estimates that the numbers could run into the thousands. See www. splc.org/rumsfeld.

The reason? Intense pressure, the report affirmed, to meet recruitment quotas despite the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war. Barfield says, “We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad. That’s a problem.”

Neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance urge supporters to join the Army. “Hone your warrior skills,” they say, for “the coming race war.” They tell followers to insist on a light infantry assignment “where the training is in house-to-house, neighborhood-by-neighborhood searches until . . . the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down.”

BUSH v. CIVIL LIBERTIES

The White House has been exposed for committing numerous illegal acts that undermine human rights and civil liberties.

On Aug. 17 District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program “blatantly disregards the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights.”
The European Parliament condemned the C.I.A. for kidnapping and illegally detaining alleged terrorists in Europe, as well for extraordinary renditions to third countries.
Amnesty International issued a report earlier this year accusing the United States and its allies in Iraq of committing widespread torture and continuing to detain thousands of prisoners without charge or trial.
United Nations human rights investigators issued a report saying that many of the interrogation and detention practices at Guantánamo Bay constituted abuses amounting to torture. It concluded that, “The United States government should close the Guantánamo Bay detention facilities without further delay.”