War on Iraq

With Friends Like These…

Bloody Lawyers, Civil liberties, UK politics, Video, War on Iraq
Published on 1 Comment on With Friends Like These…

Friendly fire

It’s come to something when a Murdoch paper does a public service , but for once The Sun’s has, by publiishing the sickening cockpit video of US forces casually opening fire on UK ground troops in Iraq resulting in the unnecessary death of 25-year-old Lance-Corporal Matty Hull. The US Defence department is refusing to disclose the recordings to the British coroner overseeing the enquiry into Hull’s death.

See the video for yourself:

Video
Transcript

Rumours abound that the US forces who did this were high on drugs, or over-fatigued and overstretched, or all three together. You can make ytour own mind up – US pilots certainly admitted they were off their heads on amphetamines when they killed Canadian troops in Afghanistan:

The pills, which are illegal in the US, are given to combat pilots who are involved in long eight or nine-hour sorties in small controlled doses, say the military.

The Air Force stopped prescribing the ‘Go’ pills, as they are known by the pilots, in 1993 after reports that crews using them during the Gulf War became addicted.

But the drug has been quietly reintroduced in recent years.

But no one knows for sure, because the evidence has been withheld by the Pentagon. For an inquest to get the full picture and reach a true verdict requires all the evidence and the inquest has heard all but the crucial recordings of the pilots responsible.

The US Defence department has dissembled, obfuscated and outright lied about the recordings: first there was no tape, then there was, then they couldn’t find it, then it suddenly it existed but had been classified… and Blair’s government, being the spineless poodles that they are, have done nothing to bring pressure on the Bush administration to disclose the evidence that’s so crucial to the determination of how this soldier died. The coroner is, understandably, outraged that the government refuses to uphold British law.

So well done the Sun for once. Normally I consider it a rag I wouldn’t wipe catsick up with, but today? A bang-up job. Nevertheless, this video is of absolutely no evidentiary use except in the court of public opinion. We can see it, but the inquest can’t: despite the video now being in the public domain, it’s provenance can’t be verified because the US refuses to release an official copy. That means that although it’s plain as day to the world that the American pilots were acting like cowboys, the Coroner and the inquest jury are forced to be absurdly, officially blind.

This whole shabby episode is emblematic of the hollowness of the ‘special relationship’. Our troops must blindly follow orders to impose US foreign policy abroad and die needlessly at their supposed allies’ hands for the privilege, but no reciprocal sacrifice is required, not even the common courtesy of disclosing to this soldier’s devastated parents just how their son died.

We’ve come to expect the US government to cover up, sweep under the rug and lie, it’s the modus operandi of most government departments under Bush. The Pentagon just takes it to extremes.

But you’d think a British government would protest, however weakly, when it’s partner-in-crime kills British soldiers and covers it up.

Too many of our soldiers die in Iraq and Afghanistan not by the hand of the amorphous ‘enemy’ but by the ineptitude and bull-headed aggression of the US military, and this government is too supine and too obsessed with its own internal political troubles to protest, even in the weakest, most milquetoast terms.

I’ve never thought British troops should be in Iraq to begin with: this is and always has been an illegal war. But conversely I don’t think that that circumstance merits their casual annihilation by a bunch of gung-ho pilots, off their heads on jingoism and who knows what else.

Downing St and the Pentagon’s casual treatment of friendly fire incidents shows their contempt for servicemembers and their families and demonstrates that just as the average worker is to the multinational corporation, to the warmongers servicemen and women aren’t real people but just so much fodder for the free-market meat-grinder.

UPDATE:

Just to clarify: the MOD has had possession of the recordings for 3 years. What they didn’t have was Pentagon permission to release it. But now the government and MOD have said that as it’s now in the public domain, it can be admitted.

Good.

Tick, Tick Tick……. Boom?

Bloody Lawyers, Madness of King George, Manufacturing consent, US politics, War on Iraq
Published on 1 Comment on Tick, Tick Tick……. Boom?

Can it be true? Is  Bush’s ‘accountability moment’ closer than we thought?

All of a sudden and without very much warning the Bush administration has been neatly checkmated by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the Scooter Libby perjury trial. All week the prosecutor has been demolishing Scooter Libby’s memory lapse defence, forcing Libby into his fallback position , that  ‘Rove did it and ran away and I’m being blamed, waaah’.

This defence means that both Rove and Cheney have now been subpoenaed to appear as witnesses, the first time they will be publicly grilled on events surrounding Plame and Bush’s war lies.

Both Karl Rove and Dick Cheney will be compelled to testify under oath about their deliberate outing of one of their own country’s secret agents, Valerie Plame. It’s alleged by the prosecution that they leaked the information just to get political revenge on her ex-husband, who had exposed the administration’s blatant lie that Saddam Hussein had attempted to obtain uranium to build  nuclear weapons. This untruth was a central component of their dishonest and illegal attempts to concoct a casus belli to justify the preemptive invasion of Iraq.

Their problem now – and it seems the White House hadn’t anticipated it, which tells you all you need to know about Harriet Miers’ tenure as WH Chief counsel – is that,  because Libby’s defence consists of the argument that Rove did it and Libby’s the scapegoat, this implies a conspiracy between the Oval office and Dick Cheney, which in turn implicates Bush. Cheney must’ve colluded with both Bush and Rove in blaming his own closest aide , and though it’s Cheney and Rove who’ll actually be on the stand being publicly interrogated, it’s a whole can of worms Bush himeslf would really rather not have opened.

And they’re just two of the witnesses likely to be called to testify. Still to come are many other WH officials and mebers of the Republican nomenklatura, all of whom have their own hides to protect. Former WH press spokesman Ari Fleischer for instance was so concerned about his own skin he refused to testify without a guarantee of immunity.

Bush must be worrying himself sick as nemesis closes in on him. No wonder he looks so dreadful, thin and old. I doubt he’s getting his 12 hour nightly sleep unassisted. Now the trial is about to reach the point where he must do something desperate, like issuing a pardon, to save himself and his closest cronies from public exposure as the criminals they are.

This coming week will see some real nail-biting stuff. Will Cheney & Rove lie under oath to save Bush’s skin, damning Libby? Will their fervid loyalty carry them through perjuring themselves? If they do, will Libby drop the whole cabal into the shit? How far will prosecutor Fitzgerald question Rove & Cheney about the rationale for the war and Bush’s role in that?

So what are Bush’s options at this dangerous stage? Of course Bush, wielding his doubtfully-acquired Presidential powers, could end all this by fiat and pardon Libby tomorrow. Murray Waas thinks this course of action is what Libby’s lawyers are signalling to the WH with their tactics so far.

But why would they do that? Although a pardon would solve a number of his problems, for Libby this would mean he’d admitted guilt. This has the potential to ruin him financially, as a presidential pardon doesn’t preclude the bringing of any civil suit that results from the crime pardoned. That really would be a desperate move.

But Bush’s dilemma is that, although a pardon may halt the prosecution and the inconvenient revelations about his lies, it will cause a political furore. But why should Bush give  a fig for that, as long as his little local difficulty is over and Cheney & Rove kept off the stand? 

It’s always been his way – get a job by nepotism or other dubious means, royally screw it up with incompetence and dishonesty, then run away leaving things in a shambles. Rely on the resulting chaos to mask culpabilty and save his ass and if that doesn’t work, crank up the Republican noise machine.

Will the same strategy work for him this time, or will the WH let the trial go ahead and Rove and Cheney lie under oath? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to see what happens.

But one other eventuality than a pardon occurs to me – over this past couple of weeks, the administration has been quietly firing politically independent US federal prosecutors (8 so far), and replacing them with loyal Republican apparatchiks.

These handpicked and underqualified party loyalists don’t require confirmation by Congress, thanks to a nifty clause slipped into a totally unrelated piece of legislation by a loyal Republican senator. How very cunning of him in the light of those attorneys being in the midst of prosecuting any number of Republican misdeeds. I doubt he thought of that on his own.

Bush may not have to pardon Libby at all, just fire Patrick Fitzgerald instead.

Personally I really, really want to see Cheney on the stand, as do lots of people. It’ll be standing room only for  Fitz v Cheney, the OK corral de nos jours, and if his recent combative appearances on television are any guide, it ‘ll be nothing if not entertaining. Personally I hope Cheney gets so apopletic that a mere lawyer dares to call him to account that he has a stroke and keels over right there in his chair. 

But will the trial even get that far? Has Bush got the gall to step in and stop it?  We’ll just have to wait and see.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall says he knows why Ari Fleischer soght immunity:

It turns out Ari Fleischer will be the next witness, once court resumes Monday. (Damn, just missed him!) The defense team wants to note—for the jury’s benefit—that Fleischer demanded immunity before he would agree to testify, because this might cast Fleischer’s testimony in a different light.

And here Fitzgerald makes a nice little chess move: Fine, he says, we can acknowledge that Fleischer sought immunity. As long as we explain why. Turns out Fleischer saw a story in the Washington Post suggesting that anyone who revealed Valerie Plame’s identity might be subject to the death penalty. And he freaked.

Heh.

Scooter Libby’s Defence: “Evil Dick Made Me Do It, Waaah!”

Bloody Lawyers, Cartoons, Madness of King George, US politics, War on Iraq, War on Terror, Wingnuts
Published on

Libby&Cheney

We’ve had our differences in the past, but that doesn’t detract from my appreciation of Firedoglake’s superb coverage of former Cheney assistant Scooter Libby’s trial for perjury over the outing of CIA undecover agent Valerie Plame during the Niger Uranium scandal..

Here’s a sample:

The first opening statement was given today by the prosecution, with Patrick Fitzgerald leading off for the government. His opening was concise, very tightly constructed, and left no doubt that he was very clear about the reasons for which he sought an indictment for I. Lewis Libby from the federal grand jury for the five count indictment returned last October. Fitzgerald’s style presents as someone who puts together the pieces of the puzzle until they fit together as a tight whole — and he certainly tried to do that with his opening this morning.

The stage was set from the start of the opening with regard to pushback against Amb. Joseph Wilson, whose op-ed in the New York Times (and his earlier unattributed quotes to other journalists) went to the heart of the credibility of the Bush Administration’s foundation — or lack thereof — for starting the war in Iraq. Fitzgerald walked the jury back to the “sixteen words” in the President’s State of the Union address on January 28, 2003 — and the fact that Amb. Joseph Wilson’s allegations brought the possiblity that the President lied to the American public in that speech right into the living rooms of average Americans.

Because that credibility was being challenged so close to the 2004 election cycle, because the credibility the Dick Cheney in particulr was being directly questioned, there was substantial pushback from the White House, and especially from the office of the Vice President, and Scooter Libby was tasked with getting that message out to the media.

Fitzgerald walked the jurors through the five felony charges — obstruction of justice, two counts of false statements, and two counts of perjury — and the elements of each of these charges that the government is required to prove. Fitzgerald then went through the expected evidence and testimony from various government witnesses by placing each into context on a timeline that very methodically, and effectively, laid out the government case against Libby.
More…

Libby’s defence counsel came up with something unexpected: rather than just using the ‘I’m an Important Politician, I can’t be expected to remember everything’ defence to the charge of perjury, he’s going for the ‘It wasn’t me and anyway I was only following orders’ argument as the WaPo reports:

The mission of Mr. Wells, in contrast, was to present the case as hopelessly complicated, thus leaving the jurors in doubt about the validity of the charges. Mr. Wells spoke for nearly two and a half hours, ranging over issues of the reliability of memory; Mr. Libby’s duties, which during the relevant period included crises in Liberia and Turkey; and threats from Al Qaeda on the days that Mr. Libby spoke to reporters.

But his most startling comment was his assertion that Mr. Libby had become enmeshed in legal difficulty because of White House efforts to protect Mr. Rove.

If Mr. Libby and his lawyers press their strategy of blaming the White House, it could prove risky, possibly even jeopardizing chances of a presidential pardon for Mr. Libby if he is convicted.

Mr. Libby, Mr. Wells said, complained to Vice President Dick Cheney that he was being set up as a fall guy. Mr. Cheney supported that view, Mr. Wells said, and handwrote a note saying, “Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy who was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.”

Oooh, the White House isn’t going to like that….

[Rubs hands together in glee]

Looks like the slime are turning on each other on both sides of the Atlantic.

[cartoon from the Illustrated Daily Scribble]

The US Army Trains More Than One Kind Of Killer

Blinded by Science, War on Iraq
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Acinetobacter baumannii

It’s not just gang culture the US army is exporting.

Wired News is reporting on the superbug that has evolved (but which was first blamed on the ‘dirty’ Iraqi soil) in Iraq military field hospitals and which has since been exported to hospitals all over Europe:

[…]

Since OPERATION Iraqi Freedom began in 2003, more than 700 US soldiers have been infected or colonized with Acinetobacter baumannii. A significant number of additional cases have been found in the Canadian and British armed forces, and among wounded Iraqi civilians. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology has recorded seven deaths caused by the bacteria in US hospitals along the evacuation chain. Four were unlucky civilians who picked up the bug at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, while undergoing treatment for other life-threatening conditions. Another was a 63-year-old woman, also chronically ill, who shared a ward at Landstuhl with infected coalition troops.

Behind the scenes, the spread of a pathogen that targets wounded GIs has triggered broad reforms in both combat medical care and the Pentagon’s networks for tracking bacterial threats within the ranks. Interviews with current and former military physicians, recent articles in medical journals, and internal reports reveal that the Department of Defense has been waging a secret war within the larger mission in Iraq and Afghanistan – a war against antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

Acinetobacter is only one of many bacterial nemeses prowling around in ICUs and neonatal units in hospitals all over the world. A particularly fierce organism known as MRSA – methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – infects healthy people, spreads easily, and accounts for many of the 90,000 fatal infections picked up in US hospitals each year. Another drug-resistant germ on the rise in health care facilities, Clostridium difficile, moves in for the kill when long courses of antibiotics have wiped out normal intestinal flora.

Forerunners of the bug causing the military infections have been making deadly incursions into civilian hospitals for more than a decade. In the early 1990s, 1,400 people were infected or colonized at a single facility in Spain. A few years later, particularly virulent strains of the bacteria spread through three Israeli hospitals, killing half of the infected patients. Death by acinetobacter can take many forms: catastrophic fevers, pneumonia, meningitis, infections of the spine, and sepsis of the blood. Patients who survive face longer hospital stays, more surgery, and severe complications.

[…]

Until a few years ago, most strains could be dispatched with a wide variety of drugs. For the most tenacious infections, doctors could rely on a family of ultrabroad spectrum antibiotics called carbapenems. But strains of acinetobacter are emerging now that are immune to every known remedy. Multidrug – resistant pathogens are an epidemiologist’s nightmare – reminders of the dark ages when millions of people died every year of runaway infections.

[…]

And they’re spreading fast. A major outbreak in Chicago two years ago infected 81 patients, killing at least 14. Arizona health officials tracked more than 200 infections in state hospitals early last year. Doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee used to see an infection or two every year; now it’s one or more a month. “These bacteria are developing very, very quickly,” says CDC epidemiologist Arjun Srinivasan, who has been consulting with the DOD about the military outbreak. “The bad news is that we’re many years away from having new drugs to treat them. It should be a call to arms.”

Read on…