obama and war

"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." -Presidential candidate Barack Obama.

When President Bush failed to pull out of Iraq, Senator Obama in 2007 said that Congress should overrule the president and end the war in order to represent the American people.

Later, candidate Obama explained he would begin a withdrawal in his first month in office, pull out one to two brigades per month and be done in 16 months. That would have been back in May 2010. Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by Sep. 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011.

Secretary of Defence Robert Gates in an appearance on Meet the Press Mar. 1, 2009, said the "transition force" remaining after Aug. 31, 2010 would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units remaining in Iraq "will be characterised differently...They will be called advisory and assistance brigades," said Gates. "They won't be called combat brigades." But "advisory and assistance brigades" were configured with the same combat capabilities as the "combat brigade teams"
Gen. Odierno was asked by Washington Post correspondent Tom Ricks "what the U.S. military presence would look like around 2014 or 2015". Odierno said he "would like to see a …force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000, which would still be carrying out combat operations..."

The Obama administration and the Pentagon are trying to trick a war-weary American public into believing that the 50,000 US troops that will be more or less permanently garrisoned in the rather permanent-looking bases that the US has constructed around Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq will be just like the US troops lodged more or less permanently in Germany, Japan and Korea and in other countries around the world. But those troops aren't doing any fighting. That will not be the case for the soldiers based in Iraq, however, which is a country still torn by internecine conflicts created or unleashed by the US invasion, and which also has many armed fighters who are committed to ousting the US entirely from their occupied country. And indeed, that 50,000-troop army is actually an army of occupation. Its role in training an Iraqi army and police force, as in Afghanistan, is to create a puppet military that will do its bidding. This is fundamentally different from the role of garrisons in South Korea, Japan,or Germany.

Ah , politicians and real politik

now he tells us as if we didn't already know

The Iraq war was just the first of this century's "resource wars", in which powerful countries use force to secure valuable commodities, according to the UK government's former chief scientific adviser , David King

Implicitly rejecting the US and British governments' claim they went to war to remove Saddam Hussein and search for weapons of mass destruction, he said the US had in reality been very concerned about energy security and supply, because of its reliance on foreign oil from unstable states. "Casting its eye around the world - there was Iraq," he said.

"It was certainly the view that I held at the time, and I think it is fair to say a view that quite a few people in government held," said King, who is now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.

This strategy could also be used to find and keep supplies of other essentials, such as minerals, water and fertile land, he added

Grannies against the war

Grannies holding a knit-in to protest the war in Iraq clashed in a shouting match with pro-war activists in Times Square on Wednesday.
About 30 member of the Granny Peace Brigade, some sitting in rocking chairs and wheelchairs, were knitting stump socks for veteran amputees and baby clothes for Iraqi families at the Times Square military recruiting station .

Granny groups in 20 cities were holding similar protests at recruitment centers and veteran hospitals.

"It is the beginning of the sixth year of the war. We are trying to draw attention to the uselessness, the horror of the war, and the fact that we wise old babes know that it is a terrible thing," said Joan Wile, one of the founders of the group."We want other people to realize it and take action as we have done," the 76-year-old explained. Wile said the grannies, who ranged in age from 60 to 93 years old, are concerned about polls that show the economy is upper most in the minds of Americans, not the conflict in Iraq. "That upsets us very much because for us the war is number one and has been and you cant solve the problems of the economy as long as billions of dollars are being poured down the Iraq drain," Wile said.

Starve 'em

Saddam Hussein Provided More Food Than the U.S. does to Iraqis

The Iraqi government announcement that monthly food rations will be cut by half has left many Iraqis asking how they can survive.The government also wants to reduce the number of people depending on the rationing system by five million by June 2008.

The imminent move will affect nearly 10 million people who depend on the rationing system. According to an Oxfam International report released in July this year 43 percent of Iraqis suffer from absolute poverty . Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19 percent before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to 28 percent now . 60 percent of Iraqis currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System .

The trade ministry is now preparing to slash the list of subsidised items by half to five basic food items, flour, sugar, rice, oil, and infant milk . The previous food ration consisted of two kilos of rice, sugar, soap, tea, detergent, wheat flour, lentils, chick-peas, and other items for every individual

Anti-women violence in Basra

Anti-women violence in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, about 600 km south of the capital, Baghdad, has increased markedly in recent months and has forced women to stay indoors, police and local NGOs have said.

"Basra is facing a new type of terror which leaves at least 10 women killed monthly, some of them are later found in garbage dumps with bullet holes while others are found decapitated or mutilated," the city's police chief Maj. Gen. Abdel Jalil Khalaf told IRIN in a telephone interview. "...They are trying to impose a life style like banning women from wearing western clothes or forcing them to wear head scarf,"

Speaking only on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, a woman activist with a local NGO in Basra said "Sunni and Shia extremists are imposing an extremist culture on the community of Basra, a new culture in our society which leads to bloody violence against women," she said. "And this culture, which surfaced after the US-led invasion in 2003, added more to the already existing tribal culture which condones family violence against women," she added.

Like other parts of Iraq, Basra before the US-led invasion in 2003 was known for its mixed population and active night life with social and night clubs. Basra women had the right to choose their own life-style although it was considered a tribal society. But now vigilantes patrol the streets of Basra on motorbikes or in cars with dark-tinted windows and no license plates. They accost women who are not wearing the traditional dress and head scarf known as hijab. They also attack men for clothes or haircuts deemed too Western.

And they called it liberation !!

As if we didn't know

"Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction,' American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy," Greenspan wrote. "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil,"

Greenspan , 18 years as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank , the nation's central bank, in his new book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,"

The Voice of Iraq Labour

Well worth the read

the mentality and criminality of war

The brutalisation of American soldiers and the inhumanity of the Iraq war has been reported by The Independent

"It's not individual atrocity," Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. "It's the fact that the entire war is an atrocity."

The military will attempt to frame innocent bystanders as insurgents, often after panicked American troops have fired into groups of unarmed Iraqis. The veterans said the troops involved would round up any survivors and accuse them of being in the resistance while planting Kalashnikov AK47 rifles beside corpses to make it appear that they had died in combat.
"It would always be an AK because they have so many of these lying around," said Joe Hatcher, 26, a scout with the 4th Calvary Regiment. He revealed the army also planted 9mm handguns and shovels to make it look like the civilians were shot while digging a hole for a roadside bomb .

"A lot of guys really supported that whole concept that if they don't speak English and they have darker skin, they're not as human as us, so we can do what we want."
Specialist Josh Middleton, 23, of New York City, 2nd Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division.

"Cover your own butt was the first rule of engagement. Someone could look at me the wrong way and I could claim my safety was in threat."
Lieutenant Brady Van Engelen, 26, of Washington DC, 1st Armoured Division.

"I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with, and everybody else be damned."
Sergeant Ben Flanders, 28, National Guardsman from Concord, New Hampshire, 172nd Mountain Infantry

"I just remember thinking, 'I just brought terror to someone under the American flag'."
Sergeant Timothy John Westphal, 31, of Denver, 18th Infantry Brigade, 1st Infantry Division

"...the general attitude was, 'A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?'

Specialist Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry.

It is the oil - Australia

Australia has admitted that securing oil is a key factor behind its continued troop deployment in Iraq. It is the first time such an admission has been made. Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said that maintaining "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority for the government in Canberra.

"The defence update we're releasing today sets out many priorities for Australia's defence and security, and resource security is one of them," he said. "Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire region, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world...it's extremely important that Australia take the view that it's in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security."

Contractors = Mercenaries

US private security companies are reportedly getting increasingly involved in military action in
Iraq fighting insurgents, suffering attacks and taking hundreds of casualties that have been sometimes concealed. The security companies are funded by billions of dollars in US military and State Department contracts . House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman estimates that $4 billion in taxpayer money has so far been spent in Iraq on these armed "security" companies like Blackwater--with tens of billions more going to other war companies like KBR and Fluor for "logistical" support. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of the House Intelligence Committee believes that up to forty cents of every dollar spent on the occupation has gone to war contractors.

The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law . Blackwater USA, a North Carolina firm that protects US Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and several other companies have not applied for Iraqi licenses . There is absolutely no effective system of oversight or accountability governing contractors and their operations, nor is there any effective law--military or civilian--being applied to their activities. They have not been subjected to military courts martial (despite a recent Congressional attempt to place them under the Uniform Code of Military Justice), nor have they been prosecuted in US civilian courts--and, no matter what their acts in Iraq, they cannot be prosecuted in Iraqi courts. Before Paul Bremer, Bush's viceroy in Baghdad, left Iraq in 2004 he issued an edict, known as Order 17 . It immunized contractors from prosecution in Iraq . Only two individuals have been ever indicted for crimes there. One with stabbing a fellow contractor, another for the possession of child-pornography . While dozens of American soldiers have been court-martialed--sixty-four on murder-related charges--not a single armed contractor has been prosecuted for a crime against an Iraqi. In some cases, where contractors were alleged to have been involved in crimes or deadly incidents, their companies whisked them out of Iraq to safety.

The US military uses 20,000 to 30,000 contractors [ read mercenaries ] . According to the Government Accountability Office, there are now some 48,000 employees [ read mercenaries ] of private military companies in Iraq. Armed contractors [ read mercenaries ] protect all convoys transporting reconstruction materiel, including vehicles, weapons and ammunition for the Iraqi army and police. They guard key US military installations and provide personal security for at least three commanding generals .

One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year.

One security company reported nearly 300 "hostile actions" in the first four months .

The logistics directorate reported that 132 security contractors and truck drivers had been killed and 416 wounded since fall 2004. Four security contractors and a truck driver remained missing, and 208 vehicles were destroyed. Only convoys registered with the logistics directorate are counted in the statistics, and the total number of casualties is believed to be higher. Other estimates are at least 770 contractors [ read mercenaries ] have been killed in Iraq and at least another 7,700 injured.

Blackwater protects the US ambassador and other senior officials in Iraq as well as visiting Congressional delegations; it trains Afghan security forces and was deployed in the oil-rich Caspian Sea region, setting up a "command and control" center just miles from the Iranian border. The company was also hired to protect FEMA operations and facilities in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina . At present, it has forces deployed in nine countries and boasts a database of 21,000 additional troops at the ready, a fleet of more than twenty aircraft, including helicopter gun-ships, and the world's largest private military facility--a 7,000 acre compound near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. It recently opened a new facility in Illinois ("Blackwater North") and is fighting local opposition to a third planned domestic facility near San Diego ("Blackwater West") by the Mexican border.

The man behind this empire is Erik Prince, a secretive, conservative Christian, ex-Navy SEAL multimillionaire . Among Blackwater's senior executives are Cofer Black, former head of counterterrorism at the CIA; Robert Richer, former Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA; Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon Inspector General; and an impressive array of other retired military and intelligence officials. Company executives recently announced the creation of a new private intelligence company, "Total Intelligence," to be headed by Black and Richer.

Even if the "official" U.S. military presence shrinks and if there is an American-UK withdrawal" from the war , Bush's use of military security contractors [ read mercenaries ] would , as Erik Leaver of the Institute for Policy Studies points out "...allow the President to continue the war using a mercenary army."

It Was Always Blood for Oil

Harman - Without a Heart or Humanity

What a nasty , evil man the Socialist Workers Party's Chris Harman is .

I have just been reading his latest column in Socialist Review and what rot and bilge there still exists in the minds of some in the Left .

In a eulogy to the Iraqi Resistance , Harman harps on about the past and the consequences of the Vietnam War . No doubt to escape from any guilt of his own support for a murderous , ruthless Stalinist regime he has the audacity to say it was all worth it . At a cost of 3 million dead !! And all for what ? He says it himself :-

"...those who rose to power out of the liberation struggle now welcome not just the mass murderer Bush, but also the multinational exploiters of which he is the political representative...."

And no weasel words that the Left of the 60s and 70s fell into a trap of viewing the leaders of the resistance in Vietnam through rose-tinted glasses. There were those who were stripping Ho Chi Minh of his socialist credentials and exposing the Emperor as naked . But the "Theory of National Liberation" , which was in many ways simply a proxy war between super-powers on the dividing-up of the world , had its supporters and the International Socialists ( SWP) were one such vociferous organisation .

It is astounding that Harman endeavours to justify support for the future ruling elite of Vietnam by claiming that it contributed to the advancement of the cause of the black and women's and the workers' movements . Opposition to the war certainly may have been an important part of the politicalisation of those people , but the support offered to the state-capitalist dictatorship by the likes of Harman and his ilk hampered understanding and hindered those movements .

Harman states there could not be any progress in Vietnam until US imperialism was defeated . Can I counter this assumption of his by asking if there has been no progress in the working class of South Korea where US imperialism prevailed ? Does not the working class in that country possess a trade union movement that actively resists the onslaughts of multi-national capitalist exploitation as effectively as any other .

Advocating the political independence of the working class is very different from promoting national independence. And Harman now repeats this tragedy .
His references to the Vietnam War was not out of historic curiousity but to call upon the workers of Iraq to lay their lives down yet again , not for their own interests , but for the "national resistance".
Again it is claimed , through Harman , that a defeat for American imperialism and the victory of the "Iraqi Resistance" will somehow have an effect on stopping the exploitation of the victims of the US capitalism "in the barrios of Caracas and the sweatshops of the Philippines, those suffering under the dictates of the IMF and those toiling for poverty wages to pay off the debts to Barclays and Citibank, those rotting in the prisons of Saudi Arabia or going hungry in sub-Saharan Africa."
As if all the other imperialist nations , from Paris to Peking , will not leap in and replace American Big Business .

By tying the USA down in an Iraqi war , the Iraqi Resistance " indirectly aids all those who would be next in line if the US were not bogged down in Iraq. This includes forces such as Hizbollah in Lebanon, and also those in Venezuela and Bolivia " - Well , Harman , lets take that to its logical conclusion ...A call for no victory to either side and instead the demand for a never-ending continuous war would be your most desired policy , would it not ?

And just how mealy - mouthed for an apologist is Harman with his pretence of regrets :-

"[ Support should be offered to the Iraqi resistance ] ...despite the attitude to women of some of the resistance groups and those whose religious bigotry leads them to direct their fire against other Iraqis as much as against the occupying troops."

I'll rephrase that in words that we all can clearly comprehend :-

" I'll drive away the thieves from your home but the price you will pay is that I rape your wife and daughters and murder your neighbours and friends and then for the rest of your remaining life you do as exactly as I tell you "

How sick can Chris Harman be .

P.S. To understand the cynicism of Chris Harman , it is helpful to understand the opportunism of the SWP and a brief history of them can be found here