Peace and Justice Post

The Nation, October 3, 2007

By Robert Scheer

How did it come to be that the ostensibly best-educated and most refined representatives of the United States in Iraq are guarded by gun-toting mercenaries who kill innocent civilians? More urgently, why did State Department employees and their bosses in Washington tolerate–and pay to conceal–the wanton murder conducted on their watch?

That’s the real scandal of the more than $832 million the US State Department paid Blackwater, investigated this week by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, headed by Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). The issue is not simply that of the Blackwater forces’ horrid behavior but, more important, why the mayhem they unleashed upon innocent Iraqis was approved and covered up by the Bush Administration. For example, why did a top State Department official initially suggest a payment of $250,000 of American taxpayers’ money to conceal the uncontested fact that, as the House committee report states, “a drunken Blackwater contractor killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi”?

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CNN, October 2, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The State Department’s initial report of last month’s incident in which Blackwater guards were accused of killing Iraqi civilians was written by a Blackwater contractor working in the embassy security detail, according to government and industry sources.

In this September 24 photo, an Iraqi looks at a car that was destroyed during the September 16 incident.

A source involved in diplomatic security at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said a Blackwater contractor, Darren Hanner, drafted the two-page “spot report” on the letterhead of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security for the embassy’s Tactical Operations Center.

That office — which tracks and monitors all incidents and movements involving diplomatic security missions — has outsourced positions to Blackwater and another private firm, the embassy source said.

A highly placed industry source said that Hanner, who was listed on the report as the TOC watch officer, was working for Blackwater at the time the report was written, just after the September 16 incident occurred. He was to rotate out of Iraq this past week, the source said.

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LewRockwell.com

By James Bovard

Is a president entitled to frighten voters into submission to perpetuate his power over them? While many people are catching on to Bush’s deceits on Iraq, most Americans have forgotten the scams of his reelection campaign.

George W. Bush was reelected in large part because he boosted the number of Americans frightened of terrorism during 2004. In October 2001, 73 percent of Americans feared another imminent terrorist attack. By early 2004, only 55 percent had such fears. But by August 2004, the figure had rebounded to 64 percent. This 9 percent proved vital for Bush. People who saw terrorism as the biggest issue in the 2004 election voted for him by an almost 7-to-1 margin.

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CommonDreams.org, October 1, 2007

by Michael N. Nagler

As of this writing a nonviolent movement is still in crisis in Burma, despite what the regime there would have us believe. In 1988 over 3,000 students were killed – massacred would not be too strong a word – when they protested the military takeover of their country. Their courageous, charismatic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, though she had faced down rifle squads in at least one critical confrontation (superbly dramatized in Beyond Rangoon, with Patricia Arquette), and won an overwhelming electoral victory, was not able to prevail over the regime, which has kept her under house arrest and basically pillaged the country for these nineteen years.

Commentators are noting, correctly, several features of the uprising today: it is a massive, disciplined outpouring. It relies on the immense prestige of religious orders in Burma (renamed Myanmar by the regime), and – among other differences between now and 1988 – the world is watching.

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rinf.com, October 2, 2007

Official Account of 9/11 a “Joke” and a “Cover-up”

September 23, 2007 – Seven CIA veterans have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and have called for a new investigation. “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke,” said Raymond McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates during the seventies. “There are a whole bunch of unanswered questions. And the reason they’re unanswered is because this administration will not answer the questions,” he said. McGovern, who is also the founder of VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), is one of many signers of a petition to reinvestigate 9/11.[1]

During his 27-year CIA career, McGovern personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials. Upon retirement in 1990, McGovern was awarded the CIA’s Intelligence Commendation Medallion and received a letter of appreciation from then President George H. W. Bush. However, McGovern returned the award[2] in 2006 in protest of the current George W. Bush Administration’s advocacy and use of torture.

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Dissident Voice, October 1st, 2007

By Rohini Hensman

Gandhi’s birth anniversary on October 2 provides a fitting occasion to launch a global satyagraha — defined by him as ‘truth-force’, a non-violent struggle using the power of the truth — against imperialism. Such a struggle is urgently needed today, given the carnage being inflicted by imperialism in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the threat of even greater carnage in Iran. Support for the people of these countries needs to be stepped up to a higher level globally if the continuing holocaust is to be halted.

Continued . . .

AFP, 2 October 2007

WASHINGTON – Embattled private security firm Blackwater USA has been involved in nearly 200 shootings in Iraq since 2005, according to a US congressional report released ahead of hearings on the company Tuesday.

Citing company information, the report by the House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also said that although Blackwater’s security contract with the US State Department in Iraq says it can only use force defensively, Blackwater had fired first in more than 80 percent of the incidents.

The report issued Monday said that according to the company’s incident reports, “Blackwater has been involved in at least 195 ’escalation of force’ incidents since 2005 that involved the firing of shots by Blackwater forces.”

It noted that because Blackwater guards are usually shooting from moving vehicles and do not stop to count casualties, the company itself has reported 16 casualties in all the incidents since 2005, and 162 cases of property damage.

Blackwater has been under close scrutiny due to a shooting on September 16 involving company guards in a crowded Baghdad square that killed at least 10 Iraqis.

Nearly two weeks after the bloody shootout, the circumstances remain unclear, with Iraqis angry and indignant and the country’s leader having demanded Blackwater’s expulsion.

The House committee plans to hold a hearing on Tuesday into Blackwater’s role as a private military contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Information Clearing House

By Paul Craig Roberts

10/01/07 “ICH” — — Shame has vanished from Western “civilization.” Hypocrisy has taken its place.

On September 28, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown could be heard on National Public Radio decrying the use of violence against democratic protesters by the government in Burma. Brown declared the British people’s revulsion over the violence inflicted by the Burmese government on its people. But Brown said nothing about the violence the British government was inflicting on Iraqis and Afghans.

George W. Bush also struck the blameless pose when he declared: “The world is watching the people of Burma take to the streets to demand their freedom, and the American people stand in solidarity with these brave individuals.”

Bush and Brown do not have the same sympathy for the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither Bush nor Brown stand in solidarity with those who are demanding their freedom from foreign occupation by American and British troops. Indeed, Bush and Brown, as commanders in chief, are on a killing spree that makes the government in Burma look extremely restrained by comparison.

Why were British soldiers sent to kill Iraqis and Afghans? September 11 had nothing whatsoever to do with the UK. No doubt but that the corrupt Tony Blair was paid off to drag the British people into Bush’s Middle East war for American/Israeli hegemony, but Brown has done nothing to terminate Bush’s use of the British military as mercenaries.

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