Posts Tagged ‘Iraq’

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US to Fund Pro-American Publicity in Iraqi Media

October 4, 2008

The Washington Post,  October 3, 2008

By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writers

The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to “engage and inspire” the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government.

The new contracts — awarded last week to four companies — will expand and consolidate what the U.S. military calls “information/psychological operations” in Iraq far into the future, even as violence appears to be abating and U.S. troops have begun drawing down.

The military’s role in the war of ideas has been fundamentally transformed in recent years, the result of both the Pentagon’s outsized resources and a counterinsurgency doctrine in which information control is considered key to success. Uniformed communications specialists and contractors are now an integral part of U.S. military operations from Eastern Europe to Afghanistan and beyond.

Iraq, where hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on such contracts, has been the proving ground for the transformation. “The tools they’re using, the means, the robustness of this activity has just skyrocketed since 2003. In the past, a lot of this stuff was just some guy’s dreams,” said a senior U.S. military official, one of several who discussed the sensitive defense program on the condition of anonymity.

The Pentagon still sometimes feels it is playing catch-up in a propaganda market dominated by al-Qaeda, whose media operations include sophisticated Web sites and professionally produced videos and audios featuring Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants. “We’re being out-communicated by a guy in a cave,” Secretary Robert M. Gates often remarks.

But Defense Department officials think their own products have become increasingly imaginative and competitive. Military and contractor-produced media campaigns, spotlighting killings by insurgents, “helped in developing attitudes” that led Iraqis to reject al-Qaeda in Iraq over the past two years, an official said. Now that the insurgency is in disarray, he said, the same tools “could potentially be helpful” in diminishing the influence of neighboring Iran.

U.S.-produced public service broadcasts and billboards have touted improvements in government services, promoted political reconciliation, praised the Iraqi military and encouraged Iraqi citizens to report criminal activity. When national euphoria broke out last year after an Iraqi singer won a talent contest in Lebanon, the U.S. military considered producing an Iraqi version of “American Idol” to help build nonsectarian nationalism. The idea was shelved as too expensive, an official said, but “we’re trying to think out of the box on” reconciliation.

One official described how part of the program works: “There’s a video piece produced by a contractor . . . showing a family being attacked by a group of bad guys, and their daughter being taken off. The message is: You’ve got to stand up against the enemy.” The professionally produced vignette, he said, “is offered for airing on various [television] stations in Iraq. . . . They don’t know that the originator of the content is the U.S. government. If they did, they would never run anything.”

“If you asked most Iraqis,” he said, “they would say, ‘It came from the government, our own government.’ ”

The Pentagon’s solicitation for bids on the contracts noted that media items produced “may or may not be non-attributable to coalition forces.” “If they thought we were doing it, it would not be as effective,” another official said of the Iraqis. “In the Middle East, they are so afraid they’re going to be Westernized . . . that you have to be careful when you’re trying to provide information to the population.”

The Army’s counterinsurgency manual, which Gen. David H. Petraeus co-wrote in 2006, describes information operations in detail, citing them among the “critical” military activities “that do not involve killing insurgents.” Petraeus, who became the top U.S. commander in Iraq early last year, led a “surge” in combat troops and information warfare.

Some of the new doctrine emerged from Petraeus’s own early experience in Iraq. As commander of the 101st Airborne Division in northern Nineveh province in 2003, he ensured that war-ravaged radio and television stations were brought rapidly back on line. At his urging, the first TV programs included “Nineveh Talent Search” and a radio call-in show hosted by his Arabic interpreter, Sadi Othman, a Palestinian American.

Othman, a former New York cabdriver employed by Reston-based SOS International, remained at Petraeus’s side during the general’s subsequent Iraq deployments; the company refers to him as a senior adviser to Petraeus.

Continued . . .

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Arms Trade Treaty could fail without human rights

September 23, 2008

Amnesty International, 17 September 2008

Every year,more than 300,000 people are killed with conventional weapons. Millions more are injured, abused, forcibly displaced and bereaved as a result of armed violence. Many of the weapons used to commit these violations are sourced on the poorly regulated international arms market.

Amnesty International’s new report, Blood at the Crossroads: Making the case for a global Arms Trade Treaty, uses nine detailed case studies of the catastrophic human rights consequences of unrestrained arms trading.

Launched as UN member states prepare to meet in October to consider further steps to move towards negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty, the report says that world leaders should adopt a “Golden Rule” to help protect human rights when arms are transferred between countries.

The “Golden Rule” states simply: that governments must prevent arms transfers where there is a substantial risk that they are likely to be used for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

From the ongoing conflict in Darfur, military crackdowns in Myanmar and Guinea to the proliferation of sectarian violence in Iraq, the report shows how and why the current variations and loopholes in national arms legislation allow massive violations of human rights to occur. It also demonstrates that without an effective human rights provision, a global Arms Trade Treaty could fail to protect those most vulnerable.

The report is launched during a global week of action by activists and supporters of the Control Arms Campaign. Campaigners are reminding governments that “The World is Watching”, a theme during the week of events and activities to ild up pressure for an agreement on an effective Arms Trade Treaty as quickly as possible.

Worldwide support for a UN process to develop a global Arms Trade Treaty was reflected when 153 states voted in favour (1 against (US), and 24 abstained) during the General Assembly in December 2006. Then during 2007 almost 100 states submitted their views to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, proposing human rights protection as one of the top considerations.

In the run up to October’s UN discussions at the General Assembly First Committee meeting on Disarmament and Security, a few states – including China, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Russia and the US – have been attempting to block, delay and water down proposals. These attempts could make the treaty fail in its objectives and allow the continued unchecked trade in arms.

“Despite the massive green light from most of the world community, a small minority of sceptics want to keep the status quo shambles so they can turn a blind eye to blatantly irresponsible arms transfers, rendering most national arms controls and UN arms embargoes weak and ineffective,” said Brian Wood, Amnesty International’s arms control manager.

China, Russia, the US and many other nations, are highlighted in the report as trading arms to countries with well documented human rights violations.

China and Russia remain the largest suppliers of conventional arms to Sudan that are used for serious ongoing human rights violations by the Sudanese armed forces in Darfur. Russia supplied military helicopters and bomber aircraft, while China sold Sudan most of its arms and ammunition.

In Iraq, the US Department of Defense has funded most of the supply of over one million rifles, pistols and infantry weapons for 531,000 Iraqi security force personnel in a poorly managed and unaccountable process since 2003. This supply has compounded the massive proliferation of arms and gross human rights abuses that began under the former Saddam government.

The new supplies have sometimes involved dubious players in international supply chains and a lack of accountability by Iraq, US and UK governments, leading to diversions of supplies to armed groups and illicit markets.

In Myanmar, despite the persistent pattern of well documented human rights violations committed by Myanmar government forces, China, Serbia, Russia and the Ukraine have between them supplied armoured personal carriers, trucks, weapons and munitions. India has recently offered to supply more arms.

The report shows graphically how violations of the UN arms embargo continue on Cote d’Ivoire, Somalia and Darfur in Sudan because of weak national laws and lack of commitment and capacity by some governments. The failure of over 80 percent of states to establish laws to control arms brokering and arms transportation makes this problem worse.

A UN Group of Governmental Experts examined the Arms Trade Treaty from February to August 2008 and its report will be considered at the UN First Committee of the General Assembly in October.

Amnesty International and its partners are now calling for states during their discussions at General Assembly to agree in December to start a negotiating process during 2009 so that the international community can benefit from a legally-binding and universal Arms Trade Treaty by the end of 2010.

“Discussions on an Arms Trade Treaty have reached a crossroads,” says Helen Hughes, one of the researchers on the report. “Governments can either carry on ignoring the horrific consequences of irresponsible international arms transfers or they can meet their obligations in an Arms Trade Treaty with a ‘Golden Rule’ on human rights that will actually help save people’s lives and protect their livelihoods.”

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These Are the Consequences of War

September 22, 2008
Antiwar. com, September 22, 2008
by Aaron Glantz

The following is an excerpt from Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations by Iraq Veterans Against the War and Aaron Glantz. From March 13-16, hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans gathered in Silver Spring, Md., to testify about atrocities they had personally committed or witnessed while deployed. Among those who testified was former Marine Corps Pfc. Vincent Emanuele of Chesterton, Ind. He served in Iraq in 2003 and 2005.

An act that took place quite often in Iraq was taking pot shots at cars that drove by. This was quite easy for most Marines to get away with because our rules of engagement stated that the town of al-Qaim had already been forewarned and knew to pull their cars to a complete stop when approaching a United States convoy. Of course, the consequences of such actions pose a huge problem for those of us who patrol the streets every day. This was not the best way to become friendlier with an already hostile local population. This was not an isolated incident, and it took place for most of our eight-month deployment.

We were sent out on a mission to blow up a bridge that was supposedly being used to transport weapons across the Euphrates, and we were ambushed. We were forced to return fire in order to make our way out of the city. This incident took place in the middle of the day, and most of those who were engaging us were not in clear view. Many hid in local houses and businesses and were part of the local population themselves, once again making it very hard to determine who was shooting from where and where exactly to return fire. This led to our squad shooting at everything and anything, i.e., properties, cars, people, in order to push through the town. I fired most of my magazines into the town, but not once did I clearly identify the targets that I was shooting at.

Once we were taking rocket fire from a town, and a member of our squad mistakenly identified a tire shop as being the place where the rocket fire came from. Sure enough, we mortared the shop. This was one of the only times we actually had the chance to investigate what we had done and to talk to the people we had directly affected. Luckily, the family who owned the shop was still alive. However, we were not able to compensate the family, nor were we able to explain how it was he could rebuild his livelihood. This was not an isolated incident, and it took place over the course of our eight-month deployment.

Another task our platoon took on was transporting prisoners from our base back to the desert. The reason I say the desert and not their town is because that is exactly where we would drop them off, in the middle of nowhere. Now, most of these men had obviously been deemed innocent, or else they would have been moved to a more permanent prison and not released back into the population. We took it upon ourselves to punch, kick, butt-stroke, or generally harass these prisoners. Then, we would take them to the middle of the desert, throw them out of the back of our Humvees while continually kicking, punching, and at times throwing softball-sized rocks at their backs as they ran away from our convoy. Once again, this is not an isolated incident, and this took place over the duration of our eight-month deployment.

The last and possibly the most disturbing of what took place in Iraq was the mishandling of the dead. On several occasions, our convoy came across bodies that had been decapitated and were lying on the side of the road. When encountering these bodies, standard procedure was to run over the corpses, sometimes even stopping and taking pictures with these bodies, which was also standard practice whenever we encountered the dead. On one specific occasion, I had shot a man in the back of the head after we saw him planting an IED device; we pulled his body out of the ditch he was laying in and left it to rot in the field. We saw the body again up to two weeks later. There were also pictures taken of this gentleman, and his picture became the screen-saver on the laptop belonging to one of our more motivated Marines.

The larger point that I’d like to touch on is that these are the consequences for sending young men and women into battle. These are the things that happen. And what I’d like to ask anyone who’s viewing this testimony is to imagine your loved ones put in such positions. Your brothers, your sisters, your nieces, your nephews, your aunts, and your uncles, and more importantly, and maybe most importantly, to be able to put ourselves in the Iraqis’ shoes who encountered these events every day and for the last five years.

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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: We Muslims who despair of terrorism

September 22, 2008

The Independent, Monday Sep 22, 2008

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The admired Scots-Pakistani novelist Suhayl Saadi and his wife, Alina Mirza, who runs a Pakistani film festival in Glasgow, are dear friends. They got married at the Marriot in Islamabad, just bombed by Islamicist murderers who sent in a delivery of lethal explosives in a lorry, during Ramadan. Nice work, guys. Allah will surely reward you aplenty for the slaughter of the blameless, sent off with less ceremony than goats and chickens who, at least, are prayed for as their throats are cut. Ah but they only razed a temple of Western decadence, and many Muslims who worked or went there weren’t “real” Muslims, only Shias and disobedient women, reprobates and sinners for sure.

The couple are devastated, rendered hopeless – for the first time that I can remember. For years, in spite of Pakistan’s many failures, they have kept up a fierce optimism, as if heartfelt belief would, one day, drive away the evil forces that circulate and in parts overrun their ancestral homeland.

There are many more like them, Pakistani-Britons who are proud of the culture of Pakistan, its creative movers and shakers, and millions of extraordinary, generous people. But their pride and idealism are fast draining away.

My father came from Karachi. He fled the place in the 1920s and went back only once, a fortnight before he died in 1970. He never recovered from the experience. It was as if his heart gave up. The country was in the grip of the military again and savagery ruled. It still does. I have never felt the desire to go look for cousins, aunts and uncles.

The newly elected President, Asif Zardari, husband of Benazir Bhutto, new best friend of the United States, is one of that nation’s dodgiest characters. He replaced a military dictator, who replaced another allegedly corrupt politician, Nawaz Sharif, now a big player in the latest political configuration.

Armageddon is on its way as Pakistan dissolves at its north-western borders into that lawless territory that is Afghanistan. American interventions, demands and military incontinence in the region bolster Islamic reactionaries and guerrillas.

India meanwhile, with many similar endemic problems and ruthless governance in Kashmir, nevertheless flowers economically and still holds on to democracy and fundamental freedoms. Sadly Pakistan “proves” what the rest of the world believes, and not without reason, that Muslims are incapable of decent leadership or progressive politics and move instinctively to political and personal tyranny.

Look around and the evidence punches you in both eyes. Saudi Arabia, Iran and various nations in the Middle East and most “Islamic” states elsewhere are failing entities where the people are either afraid or oppressing others. I, a Muslim who fights daily against the unjust treatment of Muslims in the West, have to face the blinding truth that although we have serious external enemies, more Muslims are hurt, wounded, killed and denied by other Muslims who feel themselves to be virtuous.

Lest our detractors rub their hands with satisfaction, I tell them loud and clear, this is not exoneration of Guantanamo Bay, the destruction of Iraq, Belmarsh, Israel’s criminal treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, the fascists in Cologne who tried this week to run an anti-Islam rally, the viciously anti-Muslim BNP and the many ways Europe humiliates us Muslims.

But I am saying that Muslims enthusiastically participate in “rendition”, torture co-religionists in prisons, bomb fellow-worshippers from Iraq to Pakistan and beyond, subjugate their women, cut off hands and necks, keep their young cowering or brainwash them to the point when they are unfit to inhabit this century. If we respect and care for our own so little why should the rest of the world give a damn?

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Iraqis Protest US Raid That Kills Displaced Family of Eight

September 20, 2008

Antiwar.com, September 19, 2008

Early this morning US forces surrounded a home in a small village near the Iraqi town of Tikrit and destroyed it with an air strike, killing eight people. According to Iraqi police and neighbors, all those killed were civilians. One of the neighbors reported his home was also raided during the operation and that American forces “ordered people not to leave their homes” during the attack.

Large crowds of angry Iraqis reportedly marched through the streets after morning prayers, condemning the attacks and chanting “America is the enemy of God”. The new civilian deaths are likely to further complicate the already stalled Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq. The Iraqis have insisted on jurisdiction over US contractors and military personnel largely because of the number of civilians being killed by the forces.

The US forces issued a statement after the incident, and as is so often the case their story contradicts the reports from the scene. According to the US the raid targeted a “suspected al-Qaeda operative,” and he and three other militants were killed, along with three women. They also claimed to have rescued a child from the rubble.

The US said the deaths of the women they killed in the air strike were further proof of al-Qaeda’s willingness to “repeatedly risk the lives of innocent women and children to further their evil work”.

compiled by Jason Ditz [email the author]

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Chalabi: U.S. wants secret bases in Iraq

September 20, 2008

Middle East Times,  September 19, 2008

BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 (UPI) — Former Iraqi Deputy Premier Ahmad Chalabi told Iranian state-owned media Friday the United States is seeking to establish secret military bases in Iraq.

In an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, Chalabi, once a Washington favorite, said U.S. officials are trying to inject agreements for secret bases in Iraq as part of the long-term security contract slated to govern U.S.-Iraqi relations when the U.N. mandate there expires at the end of this year.

“Within the framework of the security pact, the United States does not wish to merely have open military bases (in Iraq), rather secret military bases (there),” he said.

He said negotiations on the deal were ongoing following the acceptance of a formal draft agreement in August but noted there were still contentious issues surrounding legal authority over U.S. military forces and the use of Iraq as a staging ground for the broader counter-terrorism effort.

Chalabi, who also served as the oil minister in 2005, said heightened diplomatic tensions between the United States and Russia made securing the deal a top priority for U.S. officials.

“If a security deal is not signed … by Dec. 31, regarding the recent U.S.-Russia row over Georgia and the Iraqi government’s decision not to extend the U.S. forces’ presence in Iraq for another year, the U.S. presence in Iraq will come across with difficulty in terms of the law,” he said.

A suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into a convoy carrying Chalabi in early September, killing six of his bodyguards.

© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

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BOOKS-IRAQ: “We Blew Her to Pieces”

September 17, 2008

By Dahr Jamail | Inter-Press Service News


MARFA, Texas, Sep 16 (IPS) – Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers’ own words.

“Winter Soldier Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupation,” published by Haymarket Books Tuesday, is a gut-wrenching, historic chronicle of what the U.S. military has done to Iraq, as well as its own soldiers.

Authored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and journalist Aaron Glantz, the book is a reader for hearings that took place in Silver Spring, Maryland between Mar. 13-16, 2008 at the National Labour College.

“I remember one woman walking by,” said Jason Washburn, a corporal in the U.S. Marines who served three tours in Iraq. “She was carrying a huge bag, and she looked like she was heading toward us, so we lit her up with the Mark 19, which is an automatic grenade launcher, and when the dust settled, we realised that the bag was full of groceries. She had been trying to bring us food and we blew her to pieces.”

Washburn testified on a panel that discussed the rules of engagement in Iraq, and how lax they were, even to the point of being virtually non-existent.

“During the course of my three tours, the rules of engagement changed a lot,” Washburn’s testimony continues. “The higher the threat the more viciously we were permitted and expected to respond.”

His emotionally charged testimony, like all of those in the book that covered panels addressing dehumanisation, civilian testimony, sexism in the military, veterans’ health care, and the breakdown of the military, raised issues that were repeated again and again by other veterans.

“Something else we were encouraged to do, almost with a wink and nudge, was to carry ‘drop weapons’, or by my third tour, ‘drop shovels’. We would carry these weapons or shovels with us because if we accidentally shot a civilian, we could just toss the weapon on the body, and make them look like an insurgent,” Washburn said.

Four days of searing testimony, witnessed by this writer, is consolidated into the book, which makes for a difficult read. One page after another is filled with devastating stories from the soldiers about what is being done in Iraq.

Everything from the taking of “trophy” photos of the dead, to torture and slaughtering of civilians is included.

Continued . . .

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The New World Geopolitical Order: End of Act I

September 16, 2008

Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 241, Sept. 15, 2008

It would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of the agreement on September 9 between Nicolas Sarkozy of France in his capacity as current president of the European Union (EU) and Dmitri Medvedev, President of Russia. It marks the definitive end of Act I of the new world geopolitical order.

What was decided? The Russians agreed to withdraw all their troops from what are called “central Georgian areas” or “Georgia proper,” that is, those parts of Georgia the Russians recognize as Georgia. These troops are being replaced by 200 monitors from the EU. This is done on guarantees by the EU that there will be no use of force against South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The issue of Russian recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has been left entirely open. Sarkozy and the EU’s Foreign Minister, Javier Solana, “hope” that Russia will agree in the future to allow EU monitors into these two areas. Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, said they had made no such promise and that “all future monitoring arrangements would require ratification by the Abhaz and South Ossetian governments.” Lavrov said that Russian troops would remain in the two areas “for the foreseeable future.” And the secretary of Georgia’s National Security Council, Alexander Lomaia, while applauding the clear deadlines for Russian withdrawal from Georgia proper, did note that “the bad news is that [the agreement] doesn’t refer to [Georgian] territorial integrity.”

This accord was reached between Europe and Russia, and the United States played no diplomatic role whatsoever. Medvedev charged the United States with having given its blessing to the original Georgian action of entering South Ossetia. He said that, by contrast, the Europeans are “our natural partners, our key partners.” Georgia’s president received the strong encouragement of John McCain, and Vice-President Cheney flew there to say that the United States was giving $1 billion in aid for Georgian reconstruction. But Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, explaining why this aid would not include military aid and why there would be no economic sanctions against Russia, said that “if we act too precipitously, we could be the ones who are isolated.”

So, what is the bottom line? Russia has gotten more or less what it wanted in Georgia. Its “irrevocable” recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia could well be something it might trade in the future for a basic turn-around in Georgia’s relations with Russia. If not, not. The fact is that Europe believes it needs to come to terms with Russia, and has ruled out renewing what the Chinese call “the European civil war.”

The United States finds it has no real cards to play. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, it finds itself publicly rebuffed by its closest allies. In Iraq, Prime Minister al-Maliki is being a very tough negotiator about the continued presence of U.S. troops, and it is not impossible, barring further major U.S. concessions, that the current agreements that terminate on December 31 will simply run out.

In Afghanistan, President Karzai is so exasperated with the bombing missions of U.S. special troops that he has demanded “a review of the presence of U.S. and NATO troops in the country,” in what CBS News calls a “harshly worded statement.” The immediate provocation was an air raid in Azizabad that the U.S. army said had few casualties and attacked a Taliban group. The Afghans insisted there were no Taliban there and a large number of civilians were killed. When UN officials and others gave credence to the Afghan version, the senior U.S. general in Afghanistan, David McKiernan, back-tracked on the U.S. position and called for a further high-level U.S. investigation by a general who would come from the United States.

And in Pakistan, President Bush authorized U.S. hot pursuit of Taliban from Afghanistan into Pakistan against the advice of the National Intelligence Council who said it would carry “a high risk of further destabilizing the Pakistani military and government.” The incursion brought what the New York Times called “an unusually strong statement” by the chief of the Pakistani army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who said his forces would defend Pakistan’s sovereignty “at all costs.” Since the U. S. government has been looking on Gen. Kayani as its strong supporter in Pakistan, this is not exactly what the United States has been hoping to hear.

So, ignored in Georgia and under attack by its closest allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the United States is somewhat unhappily entering the realities of the post-Cold War world, in which it has to play by new rules that it seems to find rather unpalatable.

Meanwhile, as an ironic but not unimportant footnote, on September 10, a major development in particle physics was celebrated in Geneva when the European laboratory called CERN achieved a scientific breakthrough after 14 years of work and $8 billion in expense. This was such a major moment in world science that their U.S. counterparts at the Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois opened the champagne bottles at 4:38 in the morning to celebrate. Nonetheless, Pier Oddone, the director of the Fermilab, admitted this was a “bittersweet moment.” Until 1993, the United States ruled particle physics. That year, the U.S. Congress, flush with the self-confidence of having “won” the cold war, believed it was too expensive – and no longer geopolitically necessary – to build the kind of supercollider needed for this new advance in particle physics. The Europeans made a different kind of decision, and the United States now finds itself in second place here too.

I call this the end of Act I because it has sealed the reality of a true multilateral geopolitical arena. Of course, there are still further acts to come. And any faithful playgoer know that Act I merely establishes who are the actors. It is in Act II that we see what really happens. And then there’s Act III, the denouement.

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Protests target Blackwater facilities

September 16, 2008

By Rick Greenblatt | Socialist Worker, September 16, 2008

Protests stopped Blackwater from opening its planned facility in Potrero, Calif., east of San Diego (Rick Greenblatt | SW)Protests stopped Blackwater from opening its planned facility in Potrero, Calif., east of San Diego (Rick Greenblatt | SW)

ACTIVISTS DEMONSTRATED against the Blackwater mercenary company in four U.S. cities on September 13 and 14 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Nisour Square massacre, in which company operatives killed 14 Iraqi civilians and wounded dozens more.

Protests were held in North Carolina, Illinois, Idaho and California, each targeting an existing or planned Blackwater site.

In San Diego, some 125 protesters marched and rallied across the street from Blackwater’s new training facility and base in the Otay Mesa district, just yards from the U.S.-Mexican border.

Pedro Rios of the American Friends Service Committee spoke at the rally to highlight Blackwater’s presence at the border as part of “a process of militarization that has impacted our community.” Rios, who grew up close to the Blackwater site, said:

I know what it is to see Border Patrol chasing after people, detaining them and beating them up. I know what it is to see checkpoints where people are randomly searched and asked questions.

We now have two additional checkpoints that are leading to the Border Fields State Park area. I know what it is to have our civil liberties called into question. And so, when we add the component of a paramilitary mercenary group along our border, then we are really calling into question what’s at stake. And what’s at stake is our basic principles for democracy.

Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), whose congressional district includes Otay Mesa, addressed the San Diego rally by phone from his Washington office. There was also a phone report from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, describing the opposition to Blackwater’s attempt to set up a new training facility in northern Idaho.

To end the San Diego rally, a local imam read the names of the Nisour Square dead. A bell was rung once for each of the victims. Neither Blackwater nor its contractors have been prosecuted for the killings.

In the face of broad public opposition from residents, Blackwater failed in its initial attempt to establish a base in the rural San Diego country town of Potrero. Operating under front companies with different names, however, Blackwater was able to get a permit to open its current facility in an Otay Mesa industrial park.

The San Diego City Attorney has sued in federal court to overturn Blackwater’s permit to use the warehouse facility as a military training base. But the absence of a broad public mobilization against the military contractor will make it difficult to reverse the current foothold that Blackwater has established in San Diego.

In North Carolina, Blackwater’s home state, a demonstration was held outside the Winston-Salem office of the company’s main lobbying firm, Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge and Rice. In Chicago, a rally was held on Michigan Avenue to bring attention to the new Blackwater base in Mount Carroll, Ill., 100 miles south of the city.

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Secret killing program is key in Iraq, Woodward says

September 10, 2008

RINF.COM, Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

The dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward.

The program — which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb — must remain secret for now or it would “get people killed,” Woodward said Monday on CNN’s Larry King Live.

“It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have,” Woodward said.

In “The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008,” Woodward disclosed the existence of secret operational capabilities developed by the military to locate, target and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent leaders.

National security adviser Stephen Hadley, in a written statement reacting to Woodward’s book, acknowledged the new strategy. Yet he disputed Woodward’s conclusion that the “surge” of 30,000 U.S. troops into Iraq was not the primary reason for the decline in violent attacks.

“It was the surge that provided more resources and a security context to support newly developed techniques and operations,” Hadley wrote.

Woodward, associate editor of the Washington Post, wrote that along with the surge and the new covert tactics, two other factors helped reduce the violence.

One was the decision of militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to order a cease-fire by his Mehdi Army. The other was the “Anbar Awakening” movement that saw Sunni tribes aligning with U.S. troops to battle al Qaeda in Iraq.

Woodward told Larry King that while there is a debate over how much credit the new secret operations should get for the drop in violence, he concluded it “accounts for a good portion.”

“I would somewhat compare it to the Manhattan Project in World War II,” he said “It’s a ski slope right down in a matter of months, cutting the violence in half. This isn’t going to happen with the bunch of joint security stations or the surge.”

The top secret operations, he said, will “some day in history … be described to people’s amazement.”

While he would not reveal the details, Woodward said the terrorists who have been targeted were already aware of the capabilities.

“The enemy has a heads up because they’ve been getting wiped out and a lot of them have been killed,” he said. “It’s not news to them.

“If you were a member of al Qaeda or the resistance or some extremist militia, you would be wise to get your rear end out of town,” Woodward said. “It is very dangerous.”

CNN

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