No Questions Asked

Cindy Sheehan has resigned from the peace movement because she is tired of the infighting, the lack of support from the left and the right and American citizens, and the sad realization that America is not what she believed it was. Here is her sad letter — sad because it is so true.

“Good Riddance Attention Whore”

By Cindy Sheehan

I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called “Face” of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground. Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance” are some of the more milder rebukes.
I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”
I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?
I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I got from the money a “grateful” country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.
The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.
I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.
Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children’s children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system.

George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.
I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.
Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford , Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too…which makes the property even more valuable.
This is my resignation letter as the “face” of the American anti-war movement. This is not my “Checkers” moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.
Good-bye America …you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.
Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is a co-founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace and the author of two books: Not One More Mother’s Child and Dear President Bush. She is currently on Day 12 of the Troops Home Fast.

After Victory on Hill, President Shifts Tone on Iraq

President Bush faced reporters for his first full-scale, solo news conference in three months savoring what may be a last victory in his battle with Congress over the course of the war in Iraq. Hours later, the House and Senate would deliver to the White House $100 billion in war funding, shorn of the timelines intended to end the U.S. mission by early next year. By refusing to budge on demanding a no-strings-attached bill, Bush forced congressional Democrats to back off, at least temporarily, from their efforts to end the war by including conditions on a war funding bill. It was a sign that while Bush’s popularity may be scraping historic lows, he still has some stick in Washington.

I don’t think this needs much comment. We need a 3rd party and a strong public will to change the direction of the country. If we do not succeed then we must all take responsibility for the actions of our government and we deserve to be held accountable for the pain and suffering we impose on the world. The world cannot afford another unjust, irrational war.

Once again, Jon Stewart does a brilliant job pointing out the obvious truth. Click on image below.

[youtube]HPKvCorboic[/youtube]

Source : PBS
[youtube]qpp9Cx71h2Q[/youtube]

The Cost of War
By Bill Moyers
Bill Moyers Journal

    Friday 11 May 2007

    TRANSCRIPT:

    Finally, at the beginning of its fifth year, let’s take a look at the cost of this war.

    Bob Woodruff (ABC): “It was an impressive sight from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, this war time president soaring overhead.”

    Cynthia Bowers (CBS): “The White House has sent a clear signal. It is pulling out all the stops, choreographing this finale to the War.”

    Bill Moyers: Yes, the war was over, the winner was George W. Bush, hailed by the press as a conquering hero.

    Chris Matthews (Hardball): “He won the war, he was an effective commander, everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.”

    Lou Dobbs (CNN): “He looked like alternately Commander in Chief, rock star, movie star and one of the guys.”

    Tom Brokaw (NBC): “Here, now, is the President of the United States as he walks across the deck with 2000 sailors and officers on board for his address to the nation on the recently completed war in Iraq.”

    President George W. Bush: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

    Bill Moyers: By this point - 140 U.S. troops had died during the mission.

    But back in Iraq, reality was writing the script.

    Every day since that choreographed victory lap, violent act has followed violent act.

    This April was the cruelest month of the year. The deadliest so far.

    Even the supposedly protected heart of American power in Baghdad, The Green Zone, was shattered by an al Qaeda attack. Al Qaeda was not a presence in Iraq before the mission but it has a firm foothold there now.

    Entering its fifth year, the war’s costs are soaring so fast the Web site costofwar.com uses a non-stop digital counter to keep up with the spending. In today’s dollars, it’s projected to become the most expensive war in recent history - reaching nearly one-trillion dollars.

    According to the National Priorities Project, the money spent on the war so far could have provided America:

• 1.8 million new teachers.
• Over 20 million college scholarships.
• Health insurance for over 60 million children.
• Or nearly 4 million new housing units.

    But no price tag can be put on the lost human lives.

    Our government hasn’t wanted us to see the human cost of the war.

    It took grieving families and friends and veterans to create their own memorials like this one - crosses all in a row - on a California beach.

    The grieving continues online:

    Mother (Sitting Near Headstone): He was my only child. This is something he gave me when he was 12 years old for Valentine’s Day.

    Sister: He wasn’t just my brother. He was our father’s best friend, he was our mother’s baby boy.

    Sister: My brother was a loving guy. A great brother, a great son, a great dad.

    Mother: My angel was given to me on October 7, 1980. And he remains my angel to this day.

    Bill Moyers: The number of soldiers killed has reached 3,372 this week.

    Medic: We’ll just got some oxygen on you, okay?

    Bill Moyers: The number wounded - over 25,000 - And the number of limbs blown off and amputated - 1500 so far. And over five thousand head and brain injuries.

    And we can never reckon the unseen scars that last a lifetime.

    Sgt. Ty Ziegel suffered the loss of an eye, a fractured skull and burns over much of his body from the attack of a suicide bomber. Over 30 operations later he returned to civilian life and married his high school sweetheart, Renee.

    As he gets on with his life, his unit is going back for a third tour of duty - including his 21-year-old brother Zach.

    As for Iraqis, it’s been difficult to get an accurate count of the dead and wounded.

    Estimates range up to three-quarters of a million killed.

    Caught in the cross-fire between Sunnis and Shiites, hunted down by death squads or cut down on their way to school work or the market, many just disappear into the debris.

    Some two million have fled the country running for their lives.

    Try to imagine what it’s like to live with this.

    Try to imagine what it’s like to live in this.

    Even when we catch a glimpse of their blackened bodies.

    Even when their stricken eyes stare back.

    They remain nameless to us - collateral damage - gone in a flash.

    Forty years ago, we escalated the war in Vietnam again and again despite the absence of a winning strategy.

    We’re doing it again.

    President George W. Bush: America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence - and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I have committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq.

    Bill Moyers: The President is also calling up an additional 13,000 National Guardsmen next year despite the hardships on their families, communities and jobs. Nor will they be available during that time for emergency duty here at home. And the army has extended the tour of troops in Iraq to 15 months.

    As Democrats and Republicans in Washington wrangle over a strategy, there is speculation that no matter what agreement they reach … American troops will be in Iraq at least a decade to come.

    We are not finished with the costs of this war.

    We’ll be back next week. I’m Bill Moyers.

100,000 to 300,000 barrels of oil a day unaccounted for in Iraq

Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft U.S. government report.

Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily.

The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country’s oil industry.

The report also covered alternative explanations for the billions of dollars’ worth of discrepancies, including the possibility that Iraq has been consistently overstating its oil production.

Iraq and the State Department, which reports the numbers, have been under relentless pressure to show tangible progress in Iraq by raising production levels, which have languished well below the U.S. goal of three million barrels a day. Virtually the entire economy of Iraq is dependent on oil revenues.

The draft report, expected to be released within the next week, was prepared by the U.S. Government Accountability Office with the help of government energy analysts, and was provided to The New York Times by a separate government office that received a review copy. The accountability office declined to provide a copy or to discuss the draft.

The media has completely lost its grip on reality. The fact that several U.S. attorneys were forced to resign by someone in the administration is not a major issue, our mainstream media tells us, it is simply another political jousting match between Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats: Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) was incredulous that Gonzales “won’t tell us who made the recommendation” to fire the prosecutors.

“Are you the attorney general? Do you run the Department of Justice?” asked Wexler, raising his voice in irritation.

Gonzales responded that “out of respect for the integrity of this investigation,” he had not spoken to the people who might know the answer.

Republicans: “We’re acting around this place like U.S. attorneys are the product of the Immaculate Conception,” said Rep. Dan Lungren, a California Republican.

Some Republican committee members echoed Gonzales’ call to move on.

“The list of accusations has mushroomed, but the evidence of wrongdoing has not,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican. “If there are no fish in this lake, we should reel in our lines of questions, dock our empty boat and turn to more pressing issues.”

Unfortunately, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales can’t explain the controversial firing of prosecutors last year, or who pressured the U.S. attorneys to leave this year, or who decided that these attorneys had to go. He is, however, certain that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not involved in creating the list of administration unfriendly attorneys. You see, our law-abiding, constitution-loving president and his second “would not do that.” Gonzales also believes it is an irrelevant topic because the American public isn’t interested.

“What the American people are focused on, I think — they want to know that the Department of Justice is doing its part to make sure that our country is safe from terrorism,” violent crime and pedophiles, he said.

Gonzales may not be as smooth as John Aschcroft, but he seems to have taken notes — Aschcroft often told Americans what what they wanted. I wish someone would ask Gonzales how the Justice Department is making the country safe from pedophiles — I am still troubled that Mark Foley, an admitted pedophile former member of Congress, was protected by his own and is out there among our children.

The mainstream media also tells us that the real story about Iraq is not the many daily killings of civilians, the hardship of US troops, the growing sectarian violence or terrorists at all — it’s about a Washington power play between the President and his foes, the Democrats in Congress.

Democrats on the war funding bill: “The president has long said he supports benchmarks,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California. “Benchmarks without consequences and enforcement are meaningless, a blank check.”

Bush: “Time’s running out, because the longer we wait the more strain we’re going to put on the military,” the president said.

Bush and the Democrats are losing, according to reports.

People think the Democratic-led Congress is doing just as dreary a job as President Bush, following four months of bitter political standoffs that have seen little progress on Iraq and a host of domestic issues.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dick Cheney, who has never served in the military – although he did come close to killing a man while hunting last year – spent the night at Camp Speicher near Saddam Hussein’s hometown Tikrit. He told U.S. troops there that the hardships from extended deployments are “vital to the mission.” Cheney then flew to the United Arab Emirates, and will also visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. On Friday, Cheney is to visit the Bremerton-based aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf. (Note: Missing from this story: He declined to define the mission. What was he doing in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan?)

Compounding it all, as members of Congress (Republicans and Democrats) and the President lob rhetoric around, the fact remains that there is no way to “win” this war and never was. Since we started “hunting down and killing terrorists where they live” terrorism and terrorists have significantly increased. And no matter what funding bill is finally approved, US military troops are likely to remain in Iraq indefinitely and the country will probably be divided.

The Iraqi government wants US troops to leave. Iraqi civilians (known as “neutrals” or “collateral damage” by troops when they are “unavoidably” killed), want troops to leave. The American public wants to bring the troops back.

We have been told that America has enhanced its intelligence base and security with “terror-fighting tools” like the USA PATRIOT Act, yet we are also still being told that we have to fight terrorists abroad or they will attack us at home. How do you reconcile this contradiction? How will the US repair the damage it has done in Iraq, Afghanistan (which has increased its drug crops significantly) and how will we repair our country’s damaged reputation?

Those are some of the angles I’d like to see discussed by the mainstream press.

It has taken 4 years, but some journalists are beginning to act like real reporters. It is better late than never, but just think about how many lives could have been saved if they had asked these types of questions in 2001, 2002 or 2003.

Of the Sunday interviewers, it was George Stephanopoulos who went for the jugular by returning to that nonexistent uranium from Africa. He forced Ms. Rice to watch a clip of her appearance on his show in June 2003, when she claimed she did not know of any serious questions about the uranium evidence before the war. Then he came as close as any Sunday host ever has to calling a guest a liar. “But that statement wasn’t true,” Mr. Stephanopoulos said. Ms. Rice pleaded memory loss, but the facts remain. She received a memo raising serious questions about the uranium in October 2002, three months before the president included the infamous 16 words on the subject in his State of the Union address. Her deputy, Stephen Hadley, received two memos as well as a phone call of warning from Mr. Tenet.

Where is the outrage about journalists for major news outlets being jailed in Guantanamo since 2001?

Journalists’ jailings in Gitmo, Iraq rapped

Representatives of two journalists detained by the U.S. military said Tuesday the government should charge them or set them free.

U.S. forces have been holding Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein in Iraq for a year. Sami al Hajj, a cameraman for the Middle East television station Al-Jazeera, has been detained since late 2001 and is currently at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

While U.S. officials allege that Hussein took photographs synchronized with explosions, indicating he was at a location ahead of time, Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the AP, said he was “simply the unlucky fellow who happened to be the photographer for the world’s largest newsgathering organization in a difficult province.”

Carroll said the AP had examined 900 of Hussein’s photographs and found no indication that he had been on the scene before attacks occurred.

Paul Gardephe, the lawyer handling the case for the AP, said the military recently acknowledged to him that it has no evidence to support earlier allegations that Hussein was involved in a plot to kidnap two other journalists.

Carroll said, “The sort of rolling set of allegations that arise and then disappear without the benefit of a trial . . . or any kind of an official court proceeding is what is distressing to all of us here.”

…Al Hajj’s attorney, Zachary Katznelson, said U.S. officials have offered varying allegations against his client but have never filed charges or presented evidence against him. Al Hajj was stopped at the Afghanistan border by Pakistani authorities in December 2001 and turned over to U.S. authorities six months later.

”If there is any evidence, then let’s see it,” Katznelson said.

I remember the first time I saw a 10-year-old chain smoker. I was working in Thailand at the time and will never forget the obscene image of a small boy lighting a butt and puffing away. The tobacco companies are still at it. This time they’re targeting children around the world through movies.

US movies expose youth to billions of smoking images

Two new studies by Dartmouth Medical School pediatrician researchers underscore the significant impact that movies have in influencing teens to smoke. The studies show that movies deliver billions of smoking impressions to American teens; and that even teens outside the U.S. are affected by smoking images in films distributed internationally by American studios.

In a report published in today’s Pediatrics, “Exposure to Movie Smoking Among US Adolescents Aged 10 to 14 Years: A Population Estimate,” Dr. James Sargent and his co-authors, researchers at Norris Cotton Cancer Center, used a nationally representative sample of 6,522 U.S. adolescents aged 10-14 years, and assessed their exposure to 534 popular contemporary box-office hits. Three out of four movies (74%) studied contained smoking, for a total of 3,830 smoking images.

Based on the number of U.S. adolescents seeing each movie and the smoking contained in each, the researchers estimated that these movies delivered 13.9 billion gross smoking impressions. Sixty one percent of these impressions were delivered by youth-rated movies. Of the group of movies surveyed, some 30 of the movies delivered more than 100 million smoking impressions each. Many of these high-impact movies were rated PG-13.

“The apparently free delivery of star smoking to a young teen population is a tobacco marketer’s dream,” said Dr. Sargent. More than 3,000 actors appeared in these movies, and 500 of them smoked on screen. Yet 30 of the top stars, mostly male, delivered more than 25% of the total smoking images. At the same time, many other top actors starred in five or more of these movies without smoking in any. “If just one of these popular stars decided to quit smoking in movies it would make a major difference on adolescent exposure,” said Dr. Susanne Tanski, one of the authors.

Just as with their American peers, German adolescents are highly influenced by the on-screen smoking behavior of U.S. movie stars, according to the second study co-authored by Dr. Sargent and published today in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The study, “Exposure to Smoking in Popular Contemporary Movies and Youth Smoking in Germany,” tested whether teens in a society where tobacco advertising is still prevalent, and where smoking is still socially acceptable, are influenced by smoking in movies.

After controlling for demographic, media, and psychosocial factors, investigators found that teens who had seen the most smoking in films (mostly U.S. blockbusters) were nearly twice as likely to have tried smoking than those who saw the least amount—results that mirror previous U.S. findings. “Viewing smoking in globally distributed movies is a risk factor for smoking in European adolescents,” says Reiner Hanewinkel, PhD, Institute for Therapy and Health Research, principal investigator in the German study. “Limiting exposure to movie smoking could have important worldwide public health implications.”

Internationally distributed movies, the majority of which are produced and distributed by Hollywood studios, comprise over 80% of the German film market, and 80 to 90% of these movies contain smoking. The school-based, cross sectional study of 5586 German adolescents assessed exposure to 398 internationally distributed popular movies, 98% of which were produced and distributed by U.S. studios. Exposure to smoking in these movies was associated with trying smoking and current smoking among the adolescents, with high exposure adolescents being 1.8 times more likely to have tried smoking and 1.7 times more likely to be a current smoker.

—