Today's terrorism has its roots in US foreign policy. 2007 Article

 I was looking for some statistics in an old file and found this article I wrote in 2007. I am quite happy with what I wrote and the concerns included in it. It’s so important to understand the past if we want to solve the crises of the present and the impending catastrophe in the future if the working class does not take up the task history has set for us. That task is to end the present capitalist system in which production is set in motion for profit and the accumulation of capital for a tiny minority, and the building of a global federation of democratic socialist states that can work in cooperation with each other producing for social needs in harmony with the natural world, rather than at war with it. RM

 

Today's terrorism has its roots in US foreign policy

 

Richard Mellor

AFSCME Locl 444, retired

Oakland CA

02-2007

 

I rarely watch the news on the major cable or TV channels.  But as I flipped through the 80 or so channels I have trying to find something worthwhile watching, a commentator on CNN grabbed my attention.  I can’t recall the show but it appeared to be CNN’s attempt to challenge Fox’s mantle as the right wing propaganda machine’s front-runner.

 

I thought it was Fox news for a minute as the commentator was bashing the French.  It wasn’t a news show really; it was sort of childish.  I caught a few sentences where the commentator basically accused the French of being cowards because they won’t stand up to Iran.  

 

The Europeans are somewhat concerned. There is a feeling across the pond that either the US or Israel will bomb Iran; that the recent changes in congress won’t amount to anything and they’re probably right. In fact, if you listen to the opposition like Joseph Biden or Barak Obama, they never say that the invasion was an aggressive act against a country that had not threatened the US in any way; they generally attack the way it was handled, the tactics etc.

 

No serious minded person can deny that the greatest force of terror in the world for some considerable time has been the US government.  It is US foreign policy that has given great strength to the numerous forces that fall under the category of what we might call terrorism.  Terrorism is a tactic, a means to an end; it’s an absurdity to declare war on a tactic.  Marxists traditionally have opposed what we call individual terrorism because it substitutes for the conscious collective movement of the masses, the individual with the bomb or the assassin with the high-powered rifle.  It does not empower the working class but weakens it.

 

I read today that the US is planning to increase spending on funding Fatah in its struggle with Hamas.  Fatah has been an enemy of the US for years as it threatens the expansionary policies of the Zionists.  But the uncritical support politically and the billions spent annually in support of Israel has given Hamas life.  Rather than consider US/Israeli relations or the horrific existence of the Palestinian masses under the Israeli regime, US capitalism is increasing support for Fatah in the hope that at least it will equalize the balance of power between the two Palestinian groups and they can continue killing each other for a while.  After all, he American taxpayer will foot the bill.  The Palestinians elected their representatives but they weren’t the ones the US wanted.

 

In the Arab and former colonial world in general, increased association with the US government will increase support for Hamas and other more independent minded groupings even if they have fundamentalist roots and terrorist tactics.  The US government has no credibility among the masses of the former colonial world and any resistance movement that allies with it will weaken its base.

 

The US played a similar role in Iraq, helping Hussein slaughter leftists, trade unionists and other oppositionists.  The CIA generously handed Saddam the names and whereabouts of the leaders of the Iraqi Communist Party.  With the elimination of the leaders of what was once one of the most powerful political parties in Iraq, along with the pacification of the fundamentalists, Saddam’s reign was secure.

 

US foreign policy’s best success to date has been Al Queda and the Taliban.  As Michel Chossudovsky points out, “”As recently as 1999, US taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official.” (1)

 

The success of the Taliban, supported by the US and Pakistan (a dictatorship) was determined a “positive development” by Martin Miller, vice president of Unocal, the company that was hoping for a pipeline through the country to the Arabian Sea.  (2) The US was pleased with the Taliban’s victory. US State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that the US found “nothing objectionable” in the Taliban’s imposition of Islamic law.

 

Billions of US tax dollars were spent supporting the Taliban and Bin Laden in their attempt to control Afghanistan and defeat a more progressive secular regime.  The problem for US oil moguls was the regime was pro-soviet and its leader Dr. Mohammad_Najibullahin, in the Afghani communist movement.  The US labor leaders having no independent policies of their own, followed on the heals of US capitalism and refused to support the workers of Afghanistan offering Najibullahin critical support against the seventh century clerics.

 

In the quest for profits nothing is sacred.  Laura Bush’s phony concern for Afghan women didn’t apply when the Taliban visited the state of Texas for discussions with Unocal.  Laila Helms, Jesse Helms’ daughter was hired as a public relations agent for the Taliban government. (3) So much for women’s rights when dollars are to be made.

 

The European capitalist class, although in competition with its American allies, is concerned about the unilateralism that dominates its decision-making.  Europe is much more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than the US and the Europeans have suffered the effects of urban destruction on a scale not experienced in the US. outside of 911 and natural disasters like Katrina.

 

The commentator on CNN last night was undoubtedly reacting to French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy who called on Americans to broaden our horizons.   Americans need to “get interested in the world” said Sarkozy.   He went on: “Beyond the Pacific and beyond the Atlantic, there are men and women like you.  Get interested in the world and the world will learn to love you.” “The world is not just the American Empire.  There’s more to it than that.” (4)

 

Sarkozy lost most of his empire some time ago and his European partners, and by that I mean his class allies, have been forced to take a different approach with regard to imperialist plunder.  Coming from a representative of French capitalism that has a bit of an immigration problem of their own,  also weakens his credibility but his advice should be taken, not necessarily by his friends in Washington but by US workers.  We have allies in Afghanistan.  There were some four hundred factories there before the victory of the Taliban and the former regime would have undoubtedly, despite its pro-Soviet bent, strengthened the working class there as opposed to the Mullahs and their seventh century ideology. Women’s rights would also have improved significantly

 

Mohammad_Najibullah, the leader of the government the Taliban overthrew with US backing and funds, was eventually tortured and killed by them.  The Taliban cut off his testicles and hung him from a lamppost in Kabul for a couple of days to deter any other impure elements from corrupting religious ideology with secular ideas and worker’s and women’s rights.

 

This was a regime whose policies the US state department determined were “not objectionable.”

 

The policies of the US government are determined not by its workers but by its bankers and oilmen. This applies to domestic as well as foreign policy. Any thinking worker sides with strikers against the forces of the state when we are confronted with these choices during strikes.  Even when we do not act on it, the understanding of which side we are actually part of is there.  The same must apply when struggles take place outside of our borders and especially when the US government is involved which is invariably the case.  We must make decisions about global affairs based on class unity with the workers involved not with the governments involved including our own.

 

 

(1) Michel Chossudovsky: War and Globalization

(2) ibid

(3) Karen Talbot “US Energy Giant Unocal Appoints Interim Government in Kabul, Global Outlook #1 Spring 2002 P 70 (Chossudovsky War and Globalization)

(4) Financial Times 2-1-07

 

 

Why Trump REALLY Attacked Iran. A little History.

On to Baghdad and Kuwait. 1970, Before the US Began Liberating People

Sultan Ahmed, The Blue Mosque Istanbul

A change of pace here. A young man’s reflection on the wonderful world we live in and the beauty of travel that he wrote 20 years ago. Since the US wars on middle eastern and North African nations, this sort of travel is almost impossible.  RM 

Kuwait Bound

“Time to get up”, Tim said to himself.  He hadn’t had enough sleep but the muezzin’s call to prayer from the minaret---an Imam leads prayer inside the mosque--- was loud enough to wake the whole of Istanbul.  He reached down to the dark depths of his sleeping bag and grabbed his passport which he’d flung down there the night before. This was the safest place to put it; British passports were a popular item in this town.

He sat up in his sleeping bag as if were a kayak.  The mosque grounds were as good a place to sleep as any and, as soon as he cleared his head, he would wander over to the footbaths and clean his teeth.  The footbaths jutted out from the walls, conveniently placed so worshipers could wash their feet before entering the mosque.  Sultan Ahmed was also called the Blue Mosque due to the color of the tiles on the walls inside, or so he’d been told.  He hadn’t bothered to go in and didn’t know if he could, not being Muslim.  Passing through Milan he tried unsuccessfully to go in to Milan Cathedral. He was a Catholic after all and he’d heard it was the third largest cathedral in the world; it could hold 40,000 people, half the population of his hometown.  For some reason, a rather unfriendly priest wouldn’t let him in.

On his walk over to the footbath he tried to comb his hair but it needed washing and was matted.  Maybe he’d spend an hour or so at the Hamam, the Turkish bath. He hated his hair, it seemed to grow outward rather than long down his back as was popular with all the hippie types who were hitchhiking or traveling around Europe in 1970.  He had become a little thinner since leaving England as his food intake had been cut back out of economic necessity and his weight had fallen below 170 pounds.  Still, at five feet nine, that wasn’t too bad a weight for him. He just needed to eat a little more each day than bread rolls.

The money he left England with had run out long ago and begging wasn’t so hot in Venice as it had been in 1968.  He sold some blood in Salonica which helped a bit.  This was always an option as his blood type was the rare O negative, the universal donor.  But he was more reluctant the further east he headed, as he’d heard that kids from Western Europe who sold blood had been found in garbage dumps drained dry.  He had only fifteen dollars left and he was heading to the Persian Gulf.

There seemed fewer young people hitchhiking around than in 1967 and 1968, his two previous adventures.  The first time he made it as far as Venice and the second to Istanbul before he ran out of money.  He was determined to get to Kuwait this time as he had heard he could get a job on an oil rig and earn lots of money.  Anyway, he was no hippie. He wasn’t a Mod or a Rocker, just an individual. The English kids used to laugh at Yanks, the hippie ones anyway. Most of them were middle class hippies with jeans on and lots of patches, but there were no holes under the patches; it was just a fashion statement; they were not poor and either rode mobilettes or got around on the trains or rental vehicles of some sort. There was a bit of jealousy too, the Americans after all were a friendly lot but didn’t seem to know much about other countries and had too much money.

After cleaning his teeth Tim headed down to Yener’s for a cup of coffee. He preferred the tea the Turks sold in the street in little glasses.  Vendors would walk around with an urn strapped to their backs and a tray with glasses on it and sell the stuff much like the Arabs do.  But Yener’s was a small hole in the wall with a counter, some chairs and a fridge.  It was cheaper than the Pudding Shop, a more modern sort of café where foreigners would congregate, some of the better-off kids.  But there was the rumor that Yeners was a sinister place where lots of drugs could be found.  There was no shortage of whacked out American and English hippies returning from Nepal where Tim had heard heroin was legal. And that fridge—what was in it?  Yener, assuming that was the owner’s name, never opened the fridge door wide, so Tim had never gotten a good look inside.

After getting his coffee he sat and thought about the rest of the day.  He had met an Uzbek who had this small sweatshop making coats, the type of coats that he imagined Tatars wore in the Siberian steppes.  He had seen Yul Brynner in Taras Bulba and those Cossacks wore coats like that. The Uzbek told him that if he could bring “rich Americans” to the factory and if they bought a coat he’d get a commission.  Maybe he should spend a few hours trying to get some tourists to buy coats.

He wasn’t too enthusiastic about this and decided against it. He hadn’t had much success in this venture and, along with two other English guys and two Frenchmen, they had decided to try to head south to Baghdad and from there to Basra.  Jimmy and Mike were two of Tim’s buddies, Jimmy especially.   He was a brawny guy with a big bushy beard and haughty laugh.  He wore the beard because he had a scar on his chin that prevented him from shaving properly and his body was decorated with various tattoos that appeared there after a heavy bout of the beer.  For some reason, whenever he got drunk, he had the urge to have someone write on him. “I always wake up in the morning after a night on the piss and have a new tattoo” he would say. Jim’s background was Scottish and his middle name was Bruce after the famous Scottish traveler and explorer, so he was always called JB.

Mike was a big fella too, bigger than JB at about six feet three inches but slender.  His blond hair was much like Tim’s, not growing long but outward and curly.  He was a friend but not like JB, who was like a brother to Tim.  He was a good guitar player though and had brought his guitar with him.

“I’d better go see if those guys are awake,” Tim said to himself.  JB and Mike were sleeping in a van owned by a Canadian they had gotten a ride with.  It was too crowded for Tim and he preferred sleeping outside anyway.

He was about to leave when a tall Scotsman walked in.  Tim had seen him around before and they had exchanged a few words.  He was a university student and definitely more the hippie type.  He was a decent guy, though, and he walked over to where Tim was sitting and joined him.

“What you up to today?” the Scotsman asked him.

“Probably heading off south” Tim replied.  “Problem is I don’t have a lot of money and I don’t know what the train to Baghdad costs”.

“I have no idea either but I can make you a fake student ID that will get you 50% off” said the Scot. “Just pay for my coffee.”

That sounded like a great deal to Tim.  Within a half hour he was in possession of a student card that gave him all sorts of discounts at hostels and for travel.  He thanked the Scotsman whose name he never knew and headed off to see if JB and Mike were up for a trip to Baghdad.  

The route in German trains

It was mid morning by the time the three of them got to Istanbul station.  They had split a cab between them.  Most of the cabs in Istanbul—they were called Dolmus by the Turks, at least those in the old part of the city---were old American cars, those huge monstrosities with big fins on them that most British people thought were obnoxious and gaudy looking. The type of travelers that Tim and his friends were meant that they spent little time in Taksim, a more modern area frequented by more affluent travelers.  It was too expensive.

The next train to Baghdad was scheduled to leave in an hour so the three grabbed a donor kebab and relaxed for a while before their journey.  It would be a three -or four-day ride to Baghdad, down through southern Turkey then eastward along the Syrian border, through the northern tip of Iraq to Mosul and beyond. Tim couldn’t figure out why it would take so long.  The three of them talked about maybe coming back on a camel train with nomadic traders that travel the desert.

Tim was excited. He was never happier than when he was among lots of different people who spoke different languages and had different customs; it meant a whole new world to explore and new friends to meet.  So far he’d made great friends in France, Italy, and Yugoslavia, and now he was  headed to the exotic world of Iraq, the birthplace of western civilization, of Babylon and Mesopotamia.  He was not quite sure where these places were exactly but he knew that they were where he was going; they were names familiar to all people that went to school in Christian countries.

When the US Army can't face a painful truth about itself, it kills the messenger

From Seymour Hersh at Substack

When the US Army can't face a painful truth about itself, it kills the messenger

Seymour Hersh

25 Aug 2023

General Antonio M. Taguba last week in Washington.

NOTE: Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary leader who died this week in a plane crash outside Moscow, was the subject of previous dispatches here and here.

It could have been a feel-good story—something badly needed in America today—about a bright Army general who did the right thing at a tough time and was duly rewarded. The general is Tony Taguba, a two-star officer who was born in the Philippines and made his way to college in America on a ROTC scholarship and, after graduation, began a 34-year career that brought him, after rapid promotions and high accolades, to the American war in Iraq in 2003.

Taguba was serving in the US military’s headquarters in Kuwait in 2004 when word of an impending scandal—one that was immediately understood to have implications as severe as the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam—stunned the top command. It concerned the Abu Ghraib prison, located twenty miles west of Baghdad. The notorious jail had long been shuttered prior to the US invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It was renovated by the US and now held as many as 50,000 detained men and women. Most of them were believed to be linked to or have knowledge of the Al Qaeda opposition. The prisoners were confined in 12’-by-12’ cells that were, as I reported two decades ago, little more than holes in the ground.

I first learned of the tortures and other abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib late in 2003 while interviewing an ousted senior officer of the Iraqi air force. He took a dangerous seven-hour taxi ride from Baghdad to Damascus, where we met in an out-of-the-way hotel for three days. He wanted a way out of Iraq for his wife and two children, and I passed his name and contact information to various officials in Washington. One evening he brought up Abu Ghraib, about which I knew nothing, and told me that the US military, desperate to learn about the opposition in Iraq, had taken to seizing mothers and their children and jailing them there. The women were sending messages asking family members in Baghdad to come and kill them because they had been sexually abused by their American guards and interrogators.

Sometime around the New Year’s holiday, an unhappy and friendless American military police prison guard came forward to alert his superiors of the abuses taking place at the Abu Ghraib prison. He was a member of a National Guard unit that was trained in traffic control but was reassigned with little or no instruction to serve as prison guards. The guards were teamed with members of an experienced and more senior American military intelligence unit at the prison. Its mission was to break down young male Iraqi prisoners and get them to tell what they were assumed to know about Al Qaeda activities. The young men and women prison guards, perhaps flattered by the attention or perhaps eager to show that they could “get tough” with the prisoners, began abusing and tormenting the prisoners, photographing the abuse, and sharing the photos. 

The first story I would later write about the abuse for The New Yorker put it this way: 

The photographs tell it all. In one, Private [Lynndie] England, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist [Charles] Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs. Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded.

The stunning photographs, thousands of them, were circulated via email among the National Guard unit. Over the holidays in late 2003, the disgruntled prison guard turned the photos over to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, known as the C.I.D. A major inquiry was immediately ordered and the job had to go, under Army regulations, to a general who outranked the highest official in charge of the safety and security of the Abu Ghraib prisoners, who was a one-star officer. 

The assignment went to General Taguba, who was told he had only one month to research the issues and a week or so to write his report. The general spared no one in the chain of command, and his devastating portrayal of the abuse—which often involved attack dogs and was clearly known and tolerated or ignored by senior officials at the prison, at Army headquarters in Baghdad, and elsewhere—made him few fans.

Tony and I did not meet for more than two years after his report, which I obtained and published in my reporting. He understood that his efforts could possibly end his career and make him—rather than what he had found in his report—the problem. But he was unprepared for the message he got shortly after turning in his classified report. Taguba was asked to take a limousine ride with John Abizaid, then the four-star head of the Pentagon’s vital Central Command, which had responsibility for the conduct of the Iraq war. The two men shared the back seat of Abizaid’s Mercedes. Abizaid told him that if he didn’t make drastic revisions to his report, whose fault finding went to the top of the chain of command, “You and your report will be investigated.”

Taguba later told me: “I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me. I had been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time I thought I was in the Mafia.” He did not change a word and filed his report, which included the photographs that few at the top of the Pentagon wanted to ever see or made public.

There was more to come. 60 Minutes obtained a clutch of the more egregious Abu Ghraib photographs but was barred by senior executives at CBS from going on the air with them. Meanwhile, I obtained a copy of the Taguba report and was prepared to publish a detailed article on Taguba’s remarkable work in The New Yorker with a link directing readers—and all in the media—to the full report. I had been tipped off that 60 Minutes, the most popular and influential television news show at the time, had obtained stunning photos of Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse by a friend who worked for the program. I also was told that Dan Rather, the senior correspondent for the show, had been waging a losing battle with network executives to get the photos on the air. After a consultation with David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, it was agreed that I would let a senior producer at 60 Minutes know I had the Taguba report, but would delay its publication if Rather, et al., could assure me that they would go on the air with the photos as soon as possible. I got the assurances the magazine and I needed.

It was in no way a political decision: it was simply an acknowledgment that the disturbing photographs CBS had would increase the impact, and the audience, for my later revelations of what Taguba had uncovered. CBS broadcast the photographs, and the world was reeling from the horrors on display. My story based on the Taguba report added to the worldwide outrage at the actions being carried out by America.

There was fury at the top of the Pentagon, most of it aimed not at the failure of all leaders responsible for the Abu Ghraib prison but at the one guy in the system who did the right thing and told the truth. 

As I wrote of Taguba in 2007:

On the afternoon of May 6, 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in The New Yorker. In response, Administration officials had insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved and that America did not torture prisoners. They emphasized that the Army itself had uncovered the scandal.

If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March. In it he found:

“Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse.”

Taguba was met at the door of the conference room by an old friend, Lieutenant General Bantz J. Craddock, who was Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant. Craddock’s daughter had been a babysitter for Taguba’s two children when the officers served together years earlier at Fort Stewart, Georgia. But that afternoon, Taguba recalled, “Craddock just said, very coldly, ‘Wait here.’ ” In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials. Taguba, describing the moment nearly three years later, said, sadly, “I thought they wanted to know. I assumed they wanted to know. I was ignorant of the setting.”

In the meeting, the officials professed ignorance about Abu Ghraib. “Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”

Rumsfeld was particularly concerned about how the classified report had become public. “General,” he asked, “who do you think leaked the report?” Taguba responded that perhaps a senior military leader who knew about the investigation had done so. “It was just my speculation,” he recalled. “Rumsfeld didn’t say anything.” (I did not meet Taguba until mid-2006 and obtained his report elsewhere.) Rumsfeld also complained about not being given the information he needed. “Here I am,” Taguba recalled Rumsfeld saying, “just a Secretary of Defense, and we have not seen a copy of your report. I have not seen the photographs, and I have to testify to Congress tomorrow and talk about this.” As Rumsfeld spoke, Taguba said, “He’s looking at me. It was a statement.”

At best, Taguba said, “Rumsfeld was in denial.” Taguba had submitted more than a dozen copies of his report through several channels at the Pentagon and to the Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, which ran the war in Iraq. By the time he walked into Rumsfeld’s conference room, he had spent weeks briefing senior military leaders on the report, but he received no indication that any of them, with the exception of General Schoomaker, had actually read it. (Schoomaker later sent Taguba a note praising his honesty and leadership.) When Taguba urged one lieutenant general to look at the photographs, he rebuffed him, saying, “I don’t want to get involved by looking, because what do you do with that information, once you know what they show?”

Taguba also knew that senior officials in Rumsfeld’s office and elsewhere in the Pentagon had been given a graphic account of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and told of their potential strategic significance, within days of the first complaint. On January 13, 2004, a military policeman named Joseph Darby gave the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (C.I.D.) a CD full of images of abuse. Two days later, General Craddock and Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, the director of the Joint Staff of the J.C.S., were e-mailed a summary of the abuses depicted on the CD. It said that approximately ten soldiers were shown, involved in acts that included:

“Having male detainees pose nude while female guards pointed at their genitals; having female detainees exposing themselves to the guards; having detainees perform indecent acts with each other; and guards physically assaulting detainees by beating and dragging them with choker chains.”

Taguba said, “You didn’t need to ‘see’ anything—just take the secure e-mail traffic at face value.”

I stayed friendly with Tony after writing the profile. It was impossible not to have admiration for someone who chose honesty over, perhaps, a third star. 

And so we had one of our regular casual lunches the other day in a restaurant near the Pentagon. Tony had chosen not to follow the path of most of his peers after retirement by going to work for a major defense corporation. He watched his two children grow up and did consulting for some private groups on management and veterans’ issues and a longer stint with the AARP, the nation’s largest nonprofit focused on improving the life of those 50 years and older.

I told him I was returning to Abu Ghraib and his fall from grace. He gave his usual smile and said: “I was not a whistleblower. I knew I was in trouble when I was given the assignment, but when you see those photos what can you do? I was a dead man walking.

“The kids were trained as traffic cops and then were told to transport [Iraqi] detainees. That’s how they got to Abu Ghraib. They weren’t trained for that but they had vehicles and rifles, just undisciplined kids with incompetent leadership and they were on the list to go home. They had all their equipment packed in Kuwait and ready to be shipped. And then they were told to stay behind.”

I asked: Would he do it again? “Sure,” Tony said, “I was hamstrung by the thirty days I had to investigate. I do not think I fulfilled my mission. Rumsfeld was blaming the soldiers, but underneath they had no operational plan” for dealing with the prisoners.

“In hindsight, there was nothing I did to compromise my integrity, But integrity in the military and elsewhere is a bumper sticker. There is no reward for telling the truth.”

A grimly iconic photograph of prison abuse at Abu Ghraib from General Taguba’s 2004 report on the prison.

At one point I flashed the horrid Abu Ghraib photo that got worldwide distribution of an American soldier holding back a Belgian Malinois in a predatory crouch a few feet from a terrified Iraqi prisoner.

“The dog did bite him in the crotch,” Tony replied. He instantly recognized the photo and knew its history. “Some said: ‘Don’t take a pix,’ but the scene was not recorded, as were others. “The prisoner was severely bit.” He stopped to think for a moment. “I don’t think he died.”

Eleven members of the unit at Abu Ghraib were eventually convicted in military court. The only higher-up to suffer was Tony Taguba.

 

The Destruction of Iraq. The Killers Are on Our Doorstep Doing Quite Well Thank You.

Richard Mellor

Listen to Paul Bremer in this report. Wat scumbag. The journalist at the end who was there, talks about historians writing about this years from now trying to figure it out. It's not complicated. Hussein, the former US pal in the region was getting a little too advenutureous, threatening Kuwait, governed by a despotic family that the US and Britain supported. Remember, the US sold arms to both sides in the Iraq Iran war. The US wanted a weakened Iran just as it has admitted it wants a weakened Russia which is why it’s pouring weapons in to Ukraine. But that didn't mean it would tolerate an Iraq that would threaten US dominance in the region; oil is a valuable and vital commodity, especially for waging war. The US with their British poodles lapping at the heels overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 as silly Iranians wanted to control their own oil industry.

The NATO/US proxy war being fought in Ukraine wants also, a weak, loyal, dependent Ukraine, dependent on the US and western capitalism. For Russia, that is a threat to it’s ambitions as a world power.

 

Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump, pretty much every US president in the post war era is a war criminal. Where is Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz? They are mass murderers. And of course, the mass killer par excellence, Henry Kissinger is till breathing unfortunately. I traveled the length of Iraq by train then bus to Basra. The Iraqi's were kind to me. I don't know who was Shia, Christian or Muslim or Jew but they were kind people. Think of what a despicable character Michelle Obama must be to proudly announce, without shame, that the killer George W Bush is her friend and partner in crime; but that's class solidarity for you. We need to learn a lesson from them about that. Well, they should both suffer for those crimes but, as we know, the ruling classes, those in power, don't do that.

 

They write the history books and the rules of engagement.

Reprinted from The Shift at MondoWeiss.com

Madeleine Albright's Legacy Madeleine Albright (1937-2022) Madeleine Albright has died at the age of 84. She was Bill Clinton's Secretary of State from 1997-2001, the first woman to ever hold that position. From 1993-1997 she was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. For some the enduring legacy of Albright won't involve anything she did during her historic political career. She will be most remembered for something she said. Something very rare happened on May 12, 1996. That evening viewers of CBS' 60 Minutes witnessed a thorough and critical segment about U.S. foreign policy that was based around actual reporting. The program, which would go on to win correspondent Lesley Stahl an Emmy and a duPont-Columbia journalism award, was called "Punishing Saddam" and it detailed the U.S. government's Iraq sanctions policy. Let's begin by stepping back. When it comes to Iraq, some Americans might view the Clinton years as an uneventful gap between Bush 1's Gulf War and Bush 2's Iraq War. "Eight Years of Peace, Progress, and Prosperity" went the Democratic mantra. However, the Iraqi people certainly experienced no peace during that era. After less than six months in office (in full violation of international law of course) Clinton lobbed 23 cruise missiles into the country. Three hit residential areas, killing nine people and wounding 12. The acclaimed Iraqi painter Layla Al Attar was one of the victims. Her husband and their housekeeper were also killed. Her daughter was blinded. The bombings continued from there. Operation Desert Strike occurred later that year, then there was Operation Desert Fox in 1998. In 1998 Clinton also signed the Iraq Liberation Act, instituting an official U.S. policy of "regime change" and planting the seeds for Bush's war crimes. Then there were the sanctions, which a UN-commissioned study found responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. Those numbers have been challenged in subsequent years, but it's important to remember a couple things. The "Oil-for-Food" program's first coordinator Denis Halliday quit his position in protest of the policy in 1998, calling it "genocidal." The respected diplomat had worked at the U.N. for 34 years. "When I got to Iraq in 1998, the hospitals in Baghdad, and also of course in Basra and other cities, were full of children suffering from leukemia," Halliday told The Progressive last year. "Those children, we reckon perhaps 200,000 children, died of leukemia. At the same time, Washington and London withheld some of the medicines and treatment components that leukemia requires, again, it seemed, in a genocidal manner, denying Iraqi children the right to remain alive." Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, quit a couple years later for the same reasons. "For how long should the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?" he asked. So 26 years ago, Albright was interviewed by 60 Minutes as the Clinton administration's spokesperson on the matter. Here was the most infamous portion of the exchange: Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it. The striking thing about this exchange is Albright's honesty. You almost never see a story like this in the mainstream media, but when you do the protocol is pretty consistent. We're currently seeing it play out with pro-Israel groups and Amnesty International's apartheid report. You smear and deflect, but you never actually acknowledge the crimes. As I mentioned, the legacy of Albright's comments is the compelling part. The deaths of Iraqi children were consistently cited by Osama bin Laden in interviews and recruitment videos. "A million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt," he declared about a month after the 9/11 attacks. At the time The Guardian looked into the claim and concluded that he was overstating things. However, the paper also quoted Dr Peter Pellett, a professor of nutrition at UMass, who served on multiple UN food and agriculture missions to Iraq: "All recent food and nutrition surveys have reported essentially the same story: malnourished children... increased mortality, and a general breakdown in the whole fabric of society." When it came to Iraqi kids "Bin Laden's propaganda may be exaggerated and one-sided. But he does perhaps have a point" the article admitted. Even if you happened to watch and remember that 60 Minutes episode from 1996, the mainstream press certainly wasn't acknowledging the Albright quote within the context of 9/11 after the towers fell. It's doubtful that many Americans were reminded of it. Here's Rahul Mahajan in FAIR from November 2001: Albright’s quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It’s also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks. But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote–in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register. This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine. A couple years after Albright made those comments she was questioned by students at Ohio State during an event that was televised by CNN. Albright (by then Secretary of State) had come to the campus with Defense Secretary William Cohen national security adviser, Samuel Berger to make the case for attacking Iraq. Again, a concept with roots far deeper than 2003. Albright fielded a question from Jon Strange, who was a 22-year-old substitute teacher at the time. Here's that exchange: Strange: What do you have to say about dictators in countries like Indonesia, who we sell weapons to yet the are slaughtering people in East Timor. What do you have to say about Israel, who is slaughtering Palestinians, who imposed martial law. What do you have to say about that? Those are our allies. Why do we sell weapons to these countries? Why do we support them? Why do we bomb Iraq when it commits similar problems? (WILD APPLAUSE) Albright: There are various examples of things that are not right in this world and the United States is trying..I am really surprised that people feel it is necessary to defend the rights of Saddam Hussein, when we what ought to be thinking about is how to make sure that he does not use weapons of mass destruction. Strange: I'm not defending him in the least. What I am saying is that there needs to be consistent application of U.S. foreign policy. We cannot support people who are committing the same violations because they are political allies. That is not acceptable. We cannot violate U.N. resolutions when it is not convenient to us. You're not answering my question Madam Albright. "Madeleine was always a force for goodness, grace, and decency -- and for freedom," said President Biden in a statement after her death. Last week Biden sent Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia after the country urgently requested them. On the campaign trail Biden declared that he would end U.S. support for and make Saudi Arabia a pariah, but Putin's invasion of Ukraine has changed the calculus. Yemen is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with 17 million people food insecure. 2.2 million of them are children. Biden presumably views it as a very hard choice, but ultimately thinks the price is worth it. You can watch the entire 60 Minutes segment from 1996 online. It's just as compelling all these years later.

War in Ukraine. The European Working Class Must Act

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
GED/HEO

2-28-22

 

The Russian Invasion

The starting point with regard to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the poorest country in Europe,  must be a call to end the war and the occupation. "Troops Out" as the Irish used to say with regards to the British Army in the north. Here in the US there is a significant outpouring of sympathy for the Ukrainian people in response to the invasion.  This is a natural response to brutality, unless of course, the invading force is the US which is the world’s leader when it comes to invading sovereign nations seeking regime change. In that case, the rallying cry is “support Our Troops”, a purposely vague term if there ever was one. The anti-Russian sentiment is significant and in the US mass media, Putin is a monster.

 

If we are to believe the mass media, Putin and Russia won the US election imposing the degenerate Trump on the American people and the world. The power of the significantly weaker world power that Russia is compared to the US, to direct the trajectory of US society for the past period, makes one wonder how they lost the Cold War.

 

I have to say, it is somewhat nauseating here to listen to people who are praying for the people of Ukraine as US bombs rain down on Yemen dropped by its proxies in the region. The wearing of colored armbands of the Ukrainian state and no doubt bumper stickers and flags will appear on cars; this is from many people who couldn’t point to Ukraine on the map.  

 

This expression, in some cases mere self-aggrandizement, is insulting to all the innocents of imperialist slaughter, including the million or more Iraqi’s that died at the hands of the US war machine and those US workers whose limited opportunities make the military the best option. I don’t recall much sympathy for the residents of Fallujah the Iraqi city that was devastateed after its residents killed four US mercenaries. The people of Fallujah have children to this day that are born deformed due to the use of chemical weapons by the US forces. Depleted uranium weapons were also used by the US in Iraq.

 

So while it is crucial that US workers oppose Russia’s brutal invasion, it is equally important that we reject nationalism and break from the usual practice of parroting the US mass media’s US state department propaganda and lies about defending democracy. Instead we should emphasize that in this confrontation between two competing imperialist forces we oppose both sides, Russia, the Ukrainian regime and the U.S. in the form of NATO. It will be, as is always the case, working class people that die. It will be working class communities that are destroyed. *

 

NATO is not a defensive force it is an offensive one and its policies are dominated by the US. In sum, NATO, with the US at its head, is a force for defending and expanding the interests of western capital. Putin is many things, and he is undoubtedly interested, along with China, in increasing the influence of these two capitalist powers. Whether state capitalist, or gangster capitalist and numerous other titles attributed to these regimes, they certainly have abandoned any claim to being socialist. I am not here to argue that point. But both countries are not wrong about what NATO really is and we live in the belly of this beast, a beast that has intensified its assault on US workers and the middle class. Let’s not lose sight of that.

 

The present crisis in Europe is a product of the changing balance of forces between the world’s major powers, China and the US in particular. Condemning NATO’s expansionary policies is not supporting Putin or Tse. But appealing to the politicians, theoreticians and mass media of the present capitalist regimes or their proxies, is akin to the sheep appealing to the wolves for leadership. It is a dead end. Capitalist powers competing for a larger share of the world’s resources is not our business.

 

The only force in society that can counter this deepening crisis of global capitalism is the working class, the vast majority of humanity that live through the sale of our ability to work (labor power) and not the profit of capital. The video above is heartwarming as Russians come out in support of the Ukrainian people and against Putin’s war; a risky business in Russia.

There have been protests throughout the world, this a very positive development and needs to grow. It is not enough however. I was at the anti-war demonstration in London against the bombing of Iraq, there were by some accounts two million people there, regular folks. There were millions around the world doing the same thing but still the US thumbed its nose at us all including the UN and destroyed a country, continuing policies that have destabilized the entire region and caused a massive migration crisis as people fled US bombs.

 

The European workers are organized and have a revolutionary history. There should be protests and strikes throughout Europe; this should have happened when the Greek working class directed Syriza and its leader Alexis Tsipras to reject the austerity measures European capital advocated through the Troika and instead fight back. Many opportunities are lost as workers are generally ahead of our leaders.

 

In Europe, many of the workers’ organizations are led by self-proclaimed socialists, communists and others who describe themselves as anti-capitalists. These leaders will not act because in reality they are anti-capitalist in name only, it is a concession to the pressure from below and the revolutionary potential of the workers they claim to represent. But they do not see an alternative to capitalism and bow to its imperialist relation, they plead for a friendlier, less aggressive version and so-called liberal wings of the ruling classes, but there is no such thing. The drive to war is built in to the system.

In the last analysis they do not see, as Marx stressed, that the working class is the most revolutionary class in this era and that the emancipation of the working class must be an act of the working class itself, internationally, not simply in one country. Capital is international, it does not respect borders, and neither must we. It is no wonder such a simple slogan as “Workers of All Countries Unite” along with those who penned it, are so demonized. 

 

Given the players in the present situation, there is a genuine danger that things could get out of hand, even by accident. Despite the industrial working class shifting from Europe and the US to Asia and the southern hemisphere, the necessity of transforming society will not be possible without US workers settling accounts with the US capitalist class, the most powerful of them globally.

 

It’s fine to share concern and feelings for the sufferings of the Ukrainian people at the moment, but it’s hypocritical if we are silent in face of the crimes of our own violent regime and its role in creating the situation.

 

Outside of all the debates about who is worse US imperialism, China, Russia etc. the main point is that as far as workers are concerned they are all our enemies and their workers all our allies. As we protest our own government’s role in all of this we must add our voices to the call for the end of the occupation and the young workers of Russia who are being killed and the Ukrainian workers who are fighting to defend their national borders to fraternize, have their own truces and build a stronger unity that can link with all European workers in a struggle against war and capitalism. We must recognize that NATO is not a force for peace and demand it be dismantled.

 

The movie Joyeux Noel details the events in WW1 in 1914 when British and German troops came out of their trenches and fraternized on Christmas day. They played football and sang carols together. This occurred on a number of occasions and the officers that permitted it were punished. This is what we need to see, a united working class show of resistance and strength.

 

Here in the US workers have no political voice, no independent political party of our own. Both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are warmongering parties of US capitalism and cannot serve the interests of working people. The refusal of the leaders of organized labor to build one or break from their support of US foreign policy which has committed crimes against humanity by any standard, undoubtedly holds back the development of a genuine working-class movement and political party that would transform the balance of class forces in the US and show a way out.

 

It will take some shocks to breach that dam. But capital will not halt its slide in to the abyss taking us with it. It will force workers to take a stand as our backs are pushed further against the wall. We are experiencing in the US increased rumblings within and without organized labor, strikes, protests and actions in the workplace. The climate crisis is beyond denial except for a few in the lunatic fringe. Our infrastructure is crumbling as the thugs in Congress call for more billions for Ukraine and other regions of the world where competition for global plunder is contested.

 

For myself, I am convinced the US working class and our class globally will struggle to resolve the crises of capitalism but whether it will be timely or successful nothing is guaranteed; leadership is crucial in moments like these. Without success and the global working class rising to the task history has set for us, our grandchildren have no future.

 

Society needs new managers.

 

 

* The US Department of Defense, through project 100,000 lowered the entry requirements for the US army to allow more black men in to the historically racist US military. Arming black men was not popular at all, but more fodder was needed for the Vietnam intervention. See Tauré Read, Toward Freedom The Case against Race Reductionism p113. Verso