McClellan says he believed in Bush

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan defended his bombshell book about the Bush administration on Thursday, saying he didn’t speak up against the overselling of war in Iraq at the time because he, like other Americans, gave the president the benefit of the doubt.

“You’re in a bubble atmosphere,” McClellan said in an interview with AP Television News. “And sometimes because of your affection for the person you’re working for and your belief in that person, you sometimes lose perspective on some of the larger truths out there. It’s hard to step back from that.”

Of course, the press also lived in that bubble atmosphere as I describe in my book, No Questions Asked.

Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007 at the highest rate on record, and the toll is climbing ever higher this year as long war deployments stretch on. (NOTE: This only includes ARMY suicides, not other branches of the military service).
At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said Thursday.Nearly a third of them died at the battlefront — 32 in Iraq and four in Afghanistan. But 26 percent had never deployed to either conflict.

“We see a lot of things that are going on in the war which do contribute — mainly the longtime and multiple deployments away from home, exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, the easy availability of loaded weapons and a force that’s very, very busy right now,” said Col. Elspeth Ritchie psychiatric consultant to the Army surgeon general.

…More U.S. troops also died overall in hostilities in 2007 than in any of the previous years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Violence increased in Afghanistan with a Taliban resurgence, and U.S. deaths increased in Iraq even as violence there declined in the second half of the year.

How has the administration responded to the crisis:

• Robert “Jim” Nicholson, the Secretary of Veterans affairs from 2005-2007 shelved a proposal in the first year of his term that would keep seriously wounded vets from falling through the cracks of the bureaucracy. He reportedly said the less than $1 million needed to run the program was unacceptable.
• Veterans hospitals lack funding, are run down, mold-laden and dangerous.
• Injured soldiers have little access to the professionals who could help. A study in the American Journal of Public Health, estimated that in 2004 nearly 1.8 million veterans were uninsured and unable to get care in veterans’ facilities.
• The White House admitted that veterans affairs was short $1 billion in 2005 and another estimated $2.6 billion in 2006.

In short, it is disgraceful. If we send our men and women to war, we should take care of them when they come home injured physically or emotionally. President Bush and everyone in the administration — and Congress — should be ashamed of themselves. They are responsible for the suicides and increasing number of homeless vets in the US.

WASHINGTON (May 28) - Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that President Bush relied on an aggressive “political propaganda campaign” instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war, and that the decision to invade pushed Bush’s presidency “terribly off course.’

The Bush White House made “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed” — a time when the nation was on the brink of war, McClellan writes in the book entitled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”

The way Bush managed the Iraq issue “almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option.”

“In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage,” McClellan writes.

This coming from a man who WAS an integral part of the “political propaganda campaign.”

 I agree with Bush, but instead of being the “heroes” that saved lives during the WWII “efforts”, we’re the ones creating what could be called genocide in Iraq. Come on Mr. Bush, open your eyes, hundreds of thousands of people, (some say a million) have died as a direct result of our “efforts” in Iraq. That’s not the side of good.

 COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - President Bush, linking the wars of his tenure to the deadliest one in history, is asking the country to commit anew to postwar rebuilding.

In an address for Wednesday to more than 1,000 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Bush frames their futures by drawing back to the World War II generation. He links the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to postwar Germany and Japan six decades ago.

Again, the US is using the repetition of half truths to wage a war against a country that is not a threat to the US. If we do not learn from the past, then we deserve our future. The same tactics were used to wage war against Iraq. We have heard war mongering talk from McCain, Obama and Clinton. We must resist their manipulation and stand for peace.

Iran: U.S. Says IAEA Report Highlights Tehran’s Failure To Disclose Nuclear Activities

The United States has reacted sharply to the latest report on Iran’s nuclear-related activities from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The U.S. envoy to the IAEA said Iran is “stonewalling” about its activities, while Iran has said the report shows how well it is cooperating with the UN agency.

Iran: Alleged studies not a part of remaining issues

Iran’s IAEA envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh said on Tuesday that alleged studies is not among the remaining issues.
“In terms of classification and work plan (Modality), the issue of alleged studies is not among remaining issues,” Soltanieh told IRNA one day after release of the IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei’s report on Iran to the IAEA Board of Governors.

Soltanieh said the point had also been explicitly referred to in latest report of the IAEA director general to the previous session of the Board of Governors. The report had emphasized that the remaining issues have been investigated and solved and that the alleged studies is not among the remaining issues, he added. The point is that documents related to the subject were not put at Iran’s disposal on time,” he added.

As for the US role in the case, Soltanieh said, “The documents on which the Americans spoke were not offered to the IAEA in the right manner and the director general too has for the first time expressed regret over the failure.”

Based on the report, Americans’ failure to release the documents, and that its offering through an electronic form, has created serious problems for Iran and the Secretariat in the course of the technical talks, noted Soltanieh.

US is unwise to deny Iran’s key role in Gulf

Over lunch last week in the United Arab Emirates, a friend from the emirate of Sharjah raised Senator Hillary Clinton’s proposal to extend a US “nuclear shield” over allies in the Gulf. “A shield?” he exclaimed. “To protect us against whom, the Iranians or the Americans?” I heard the same sentiment a few days later in Dubai, at the preview for a bustling auction of Iranian art.

These comments, and many others, highlight the swiftly growing gap between the way the Arab Gulf states view their relationship with Iran, and the way the US believes – or wants to believe – they see their neighbour to the north. The US seeks to defend the Arabs from Iran, but they are increasingly trying to defend themselves from US efforts to defend them against Iran. It is hard to imagine how this might turn out well.

…Talk from the US presidential campaign trail about bombing and “obliteration” worries many in the Gulf states more than the notion of a nuclear-armed Iran. Iran is already a powerful state and a nuclear Iran might be managed, they reason. The prospect of living with a wounded, more radicalised, or heavily crippled Iran is far more daunting. Rather than looking nervously north, many see the US as the greater threat to Gulf stability and are reacting by trying to draw Iran closer into a “Greater Gulf” community.

If the US is to safeguard its own regional interests, it must find a constructive way to acknowledge what is obvious to most in the region: Iran is and will remain the key player in the Gulf for a long time to come. By exerting undue (and unreasonable) pressure on Iran’s neighbours to shun the Islamic Republic, we push these governments towards choosing at the margin between two longstanding relationships: that with the US and that with one of their most important and powerful regional trading partners.

World leaders are failing to tackle human rights abuses around the globe, Amnesty International says.

In an annual report, the group says people are still being tortured or ill-treated in at least 81 countries.

In at least 54 states they face unfair trial and cannot speak freely in at least 77 nations, the group adds.

It says world leaders should apologise for 60 years of human rights failures since the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to things like refugee detention camps, immigration detention camps in the US (where several die unnecessarily each year), Guantanamo Bay prison, etc. extraordinary rendition, etc. Join Amnesty, it is an easy way to fight for human rights and support human dignity.

Peacekeepers ‘abusing children’

UN peacekeepers stand accused of abusing those they are sent to protect

Children as young as six are being sexually abused by peacekeepers and aid workers, says a leading UK charity.

Children in post-conflict areas are being abused by the very people drafted into such zones to help look after them, says Save the Children.

After research in Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity proposed an international watchdog be set up.

Save the Children said it had sacked three workers for breaching its codes, and called on others to do the same.

I HOPE there is a special place in hell reserved for these predators.

Once again the media is failing in its role as watchdog. Certainly there are concerns at home. But the wars abroad are largely responsible for our crumbling economy, rising gas cost, loss of freedoms and overburdened health care system. At least a dozen vets try to commit suicide every day. Many more roam the streets with PTSD. In Iraq and Afghanistan people are starving and dying from random violence. There is no bigger story than war. However, a recent study reveals that media coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has dropped to a mere 3 percent in recent months. Some would say this is inevitable, I say that’s nonsense. Consider the constant coverage past wars received and the numerous ways journalists were able to bring the war stories home (Ernie Pyle and Edward R. Murrow come to mind). By ignoring the chaos and misery we have created we dishonor the men and women who we sent into these wars and the many civilians whose lives we destroyed.

 Even as we celebrate generations of American soldiers past, the women and men who are making that sacrifice today in Iraq and Afghanistan receive less attention every day. There’s plenty of blame to go around: battle fatigue at home, failing media resolve and a government intent on controlling information from the battlefield.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September.

“Ironically, the success of the surge and a reduction in violence has led to a reduction in coverage,” said Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “There is evidence that people have made up their minds about this war, and other stories — like the economy and the election — have come along and sucked up all the oxygen.”

But the tactical success of the surge should not be misconstrued as making Iraq a safer place for American soldiers. Last year was the bloodiest in the five-year history of the conflict, with more than 900 dead, and last month, 52 perished, making it the bloodiest month of the year so far. So far in May, 18 have died.

Do your civic responsibility and pay attention to current events, including making sure journalists report about the wars that were started by our president and members of Congress. Demand that the news media provide coverage of what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and say NO to the new unexamined propaganda that is leading us towards another unjust war in Iran.

 I couldn’t have said it better myself:

“The president is not a king and cannot lock people up forever in the United States based on his say-so. Today it’s Mr. al-Marri. Tomorrow it could be you, a member of your family, someone you know. Once you allow the president to lock people up for years or even life without trial, there’s no going back.”

Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer who represents Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been held in a South Carolina military brig since December 2001. The father of five has not been charged with a crime or given the opportunity to defend himself in court. 

Sometimes I am embarrassed to be an American. For a country that George Bush has proclaimed is the “moral compass” of the world, it has become clear that we are far from enlightened or morally just. Many (if not most) Americans believe torture is OK as long as it is performed on a “terrorist.” In the most important presidential race in decades, many white Americans are not lining up to support a cause or belief, but a person of their color.

Clinton enjoys strong support among white voters, in marked contrast to Democratic front runner Obama.

CAMPAIGN 2008

The White Stuff

A new NEWSWEEK Poll underscores Obama’s racial challenge.

Even as he closes in on the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Sen. Barack Obama is facing lingering problems winning the support of white voters–including some in his own party. In a new NEWSWEEK Poll of registered voters, Obama trails presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain 40 percent to 52 percent among whites. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s challenger for the Democratic nomination, also trails McCain among white voters but by a smaller margin, 44 percent to 48 percent. (For the complete results, click here).