Revolution

Twelve Days of Christmas-
good one

http://www.michaelmoore.com/


About Face: Soldiers Call for Iraq Withdrawal
Marc Cooper/ The Nation

For the first time since Vietnam, an organized, robust movement of active-duty US military personnel has publicly surfaced to oppose a war in which they are serving. Those involved plan to petition Congress to withdraw American troops from Iraq.

After appearing only seven weeks ago on the Internet, the Appeal for Redress, brainchild of 29-year-old Navy seaman Jonathan Hutto, has already been signed by nearly 1,000 US soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, including dozens of officers--most of whom are on active duty. Not since 1969, when some 1,300 active-duty military personnel signed an open letter in the New York Times opposing the war in Vietnam, has there been such a dramatic barometer of rising military dissent.


http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=8677

http://www.appealforredress.org/

*****************************************************
U.S. Soldier Killed Herself -- After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques

The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. Now we learn, thanks to a reporter's FOIA request, that one of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh "interrogation techniques."

By Greg Mitchell

(abridged)

She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq, so her death drew wide press attention. A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian." (Her parents now say they were never told about her objections to interrogation techniques.)

But in this case, a longtime radio and newspaper reporter named Kevin Elston, not satisfied with the public story, decided to probe deeper in 2005, "just on a hunch," he told E&P today. He made "hundreds of phone calls" to the military and couldn't get anywhere, so he filed a Freedom of Information Act request. When the documents of the official investigation of her death arrived, they contained bombshell revelations. Here's what the Flagstaff public radio station, KNAU, where Elston now works, reported (it has not yet drawn any national attention) yesterday:

"Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been destroyed."

She was then assigned to the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards, and sent to suicide prevention training. "But on the night of September 15th, 2003, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle," the documents disclose.

The Army talked to some of Peterson's colleagues. Asked to summarize their comments, Elston told E&P: "The reactions to the suicide were that she was having a difficult time separating her personal feelings from her professional duties. That was the consistent point in the testimonies, that she objected to the interrogation techniques, without describing what those techniques were."

Elston said that the documents also refer to a suicide note found on her body, which suggested that she found it ironic that suicide prevention training had taught her how to commit suicide. He has now filed another FOIA request for a copy of the actual note.

Peterson's father, Rich Peterson, has said: "Alyssa volunteered to change assignments with someone who did not want to go to Iraq."

Peterson, a devout Mormon, had graduated from Flagstaff High School and earned a psychology degree from Northern Arizona University on a military scholarship. She was trained in interrogation techniques at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, and was sent to the Middle East in 2003.

The Arizona Republic article had opened: "Friends say Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson of Flagstaff always had an amazing ability to learn foreign languages. Peterson became fluent in Dutch even before she went on an 18-month Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mission to the Netherlands in the late 1990s. Then, she cruised through her Arabic courses at the military's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., shortly after enlisting in July 2001.

***********************************

Stress Disorders, Drug Abuse, Little Help for Troops

http://www.veteransforamerica.org/ArticleID/8820

************************************


People Still Have A Voice
by Kevin Tillman

It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.

Kevin Tillman joined the Army in 2002 with his brother, Pat Tillman, who left a multi-million dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals football team, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004.

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September 6, 2006

My name is Ricky Clousing. I am a Sergeant in the United States Army and one of the many soldiers who are beginning to speak out about the appalling conditions of occupation in Iraq.

I joined the Army soon after the September 11th attacks and in November of 2004 I deployed to Iraq. In Iraq I operated as an interrogator and was attached to tactical infantry units during daily patrol operations. As an interrogator I spoke to Iraqis each day. This gave me an idea of what local civilians thought of coalition forces. Throughout my training very appropriate guidelines for the treatment of prisoners were set. However, I witnessed our baseless incarceration of civilians. I saw civilians physically harassed. I saw an innocent Iraqi killed before me by US troops. I saw the abuse of power that goes without accountability.

After I returned from Iraq, I struggled with my objections concerning what I had seen and experienced in Iraq. Wearing the uniform demands subordination to your superiors and the orders passed down. But what if orders given violate morality, ethics and even legality? If those orders go unquestioned down my Chain of Command, am I exempt from reevaluating them? My convictions, spiritually and politically, began to second guess my ability to perform day to day functions as a soldier. I could not train or be trained under a false pretense of fighting for freedom.

Ultimately, I decided that staying in the military was a contradiction to my personal, moral and spiritual beliefs. I left the military without official authorization in June of 2005. In the following months I deeply considered my moral obligation to speak publicly about what I saw while in Iraq. After holding a public press conference backed by 40 other members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, I returned to military custody on Friday, August 11th, 2006. On August 31 st I was charged with desertion and am facing a maximum sentence of two years in jail.

Although my story is personal, I am part of a larger movement of soldiers who are speaking out and resisting this war by refusing to participate in the military under the false pretense of fighting for freedom. Collectively, we are beginning to have an effect. For instance, because of the coverage during my surrender, the United States Army has opened two parallel investigations into my allegation of abuse of power.

Today, I do not know what to expect, nor the course of my future. Since I left the Army I have known that being Court Martialed was a serious possibility I could face. I still feel at peace with my decision. I followed my conscience and if need be I will feel honored to join the ranks of others who have been prosecuted for doing the same. Today, we have found ourselves in a pivotal era where we have traded humanity for patriotism; where we have traded our civil liberties for a sense of security. I write to you sharing the same idea as Henry David Thoreau: as a Soldier, as an American, and as a human being, we mustn't lend ourselves to that same evil which we condemn.

Thank you for supporting me and my stand against this war. For more information about the case and what you can do to back me up, please go to my website:

www.sdmcc.org/rickyclousing


**************************************

Suicide Before Dishonor in Occupied Iraq

By GARY LEUPP

" I cannot support a mission that leads to corruption, human rights abuse, and liars. I am sullied. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored. Death before being dishonored any more."

Having written a last note, and placed it by his bed in his trailer on a U.S. military base near Baghdad, on the afternoon of June 5, 2005 Colonel Ted S. Westhusing put his 9-mm. service pistol to his head and blew his brains out. He was 44, survived by a wife and three young children.

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp12072005.html

************************************************


The Pieces
*********


Pick up the pieces
Seal up the bags
Write it all down
And fasten the tags
Don't let it get to you, man
They said
So he locked it away in his head

The filthy truth
The un-seen death
'Till his hands shook
Through pages
Of names un-read
Perilous statements
Facts un-said
The story of each
Husband and son
Stripped of life
At the point of a gun

He sewed up his heart
Kept his mouth shut
Reversed the dagger
And made the cuts
He took their pills
To help him forget
So many dead
And his own regret
As he tried to live
A normal life
He wanted kids
He wanted a wife
But when he saw
The continuation of illegal war
When he saw
No one standing up for the law
When he saw
The lies weren't even challenged anymore
He drank the drink instead
And put a bullet through his head





Endymion 2006

Endy - On a related note, I read this article that was in last Sunday's Times (which I just got around to finally reading yesterday).
It's called Jose, vicitim of a sinister new America
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2496005,00.html

I watched a movie that I had gotten out of the library called the Great Raid last week. It was pretty interesting - told the story about the American soldiers who were held as prisoners of war of the Japanese in the Phillipines during WWII, and forced to go on the Bataan Death March.

Anyway, I was thinking about how these movies always depict the extreme and inhumane cruelty of the Japanese, and the fact that they depict relationships and behaviors of the Americans so differently- always humane, even to their enemies, no undue cruelty, etc.

I guess the truth is that in war, humanity and kindness go by the wayside, but the truths that are coming out about what's going on in this war are shocking.

Thanks for being a conduit of education and information about it.

Thanks Aidan - the infomation about Jose Padilla is welcome - I'll be posting up some stuff later that relates - for now I don't seem to have much energy for this - it's like, after a while, you just feel that you're hitting your head against a brick wall!

With Christmas upon us I don't want to continue pointing out the horrors of the world to everyone - so I'll shut up for a while -

Just one thing.

Congradulations to the British soldier who had the balls to point out to Tony Blair (while he was in the Middle East) - that a basic Marine stationed in Helmand earns £12,000 a year - that's half of what a fire-fighter makes back home.

Wishing for peace

Endy

Palestinian Family, including 4 children and pregnant mother, held in U.S. immigration prison


Greg Moses, counterpunch.org - Friday, 29 December 2006, 20:13

The brother of a jailed Palestinian man whose children and pregnant wife are being held in a Texas jail says he will stage a small protest with his 3-year-old niece Friday morning outside the San Antonio offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at 8940 Fourwinds Dr.

"I am an American citizen, and I know what America is made of," said Ahmad Ibrahim, speaking by telephone Wednesday afternoon. "America is made of good people."

Ibrahim will take the family's case to the streets, asking for release of his niece's three sisters, teenage brother, and pregnant mother--all of whom have been held in jail since their midnight arrests on Nov. 3, apparently for visa violations.

Marc Jeffrey Moore, San Antonio field office director of the Detention and Removal Office for ICE, referred all questions from the Texas Civil Rights Review to the ICE public affairs office, which has not yet returned our call.

Ibrahim said he had just heard from Moore's office Wednesday afternoon that applications to renew the family's passports from Jordan had been denied, and they would have to wait another month in jail while ICE contacted the Israeli embassy.

Ibrahim was skeptical that Israel would be forthcoming with the needed travel approvals, and anyway, he said, it would be dangerous for his brother's family to present Israeli travel papers as their documents for re-entry to Palestine.

"Either deport them, or fix their status," said Ibrahim. Either way, he says, they should not be in jail.

"We are not poor. We have family, a home, and money." Ibrahim said that he and his family in Palestine would do whatever is needed to take care of the jailed family as soon as they are released.

"We will meet them at the airport terminal with tickets, if that's what it takes," he said.

Ibrahim says he was with his brother some 18 months ago when an immigration lawyer called to apologize for missing a filing deadline regarding the family's asylum. And he says a ruling on the case is still pending.

The brother, Salaheddin Ibrahim, was separated from his family, and is being held at another jail.

Ahmad Ibrahim says his 5-year-old niece shares her cell with her pregnant mother, Hanan Ahmad, while the 7- and 12-year-old girls share a cell with each other. The 15-year-old boy is in a third cell. All of them are incarcerated at the T. Don Hutto jail in Taylor, Texas.

Ibrahim says the 5-year-old gets into trouble with guards during population counts that are taken four times daily. She is supposed to sit still for the counts, but she doesn't.

"She is a very active child," explains Ibrahim. He says reprimands from the guards sometimes bring the little girl to tears.

One chilly morning, says Ibrahim, the girl wrapped a blanket around her as she walked out of her cell, but a guard told her that the blanket didn't belong to her.

"It's my blanket!" answered the little girl.

The 7-year-old has also been upset to the point of tears, because she cannot sleep in the same cell with her mother. At 10:00 p.m. the 7-year-old is ordered to the cell she shares with her 12-year-old sister.

Showers for the women are provided every morning at 5:30, but at least on one occasion, says Ibrahim, the pregnant mother was feeling sick and tired, so she asked not to go. A guard reportedly threatened the mother with disciplinary action that would include separating her from the 5-year-old, so the mother took the shower as ordered.

With four girls and one boy already in the family, Ibrahim said that his brother paid a fertility expert $7,000 to ensure that a boy would be born this time, so they are "99 percent" sure that the next child will be a boy.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim holds a letter of suspension for the 15-year-old boy, who has missed too many days of school. Except for the 3-year-old, all the other children were attending schools before they were jailed by ICE.

"He's holding the whole thing together," says Ibrahim of the 15-year-old. "He calls me every day."

Ibrahim says he is composing a letter to First Lady Laura Bush.

"This is a small immigration violation, and an attorney could fix this easily," he says. "They are not a threat to society."

Plus, he says, it would be cheaper for the government if the family were allowed to live outside the jail. A report in the Sunday Sun of Williamson County said ICE is paying $95 per day per inmate for imprisonment services provided by Corrections Corporation of America at the Hutto jail--a cost of $14,000 per month for the five family members held there.

"I have never myself heard of anywhere in the world where this kind of thing happens," said Ibrahim. "Jailing a mother with her children is very demeaning.

Ibrahim's protest will be the fourth in two weeks related to the Hutto jail. On December 14, South Texas businessman Jay Johnson-Castro began a 35-mile walk to the jail from the Texas Capitol. On December 16, Johnson-Castro joined a vigil at the jail sponsored by Texans United for Families. On Christmas Eve, Flamenco artists Teye and Belen performed for a dedicated group of protesters in inclement weather.

All three actions have received some coverage from corporate media, but the story of Palestinian families has yet to be mentioned in that coverage. Stories and editorials usually assume that the jail is filled with detainees who entered the country "illegally." At least two Palestinian families being held at Hutto jail entered the USA legally with visas, say their attorney, but they have run into legal difficulties securing asylum. In both cases, the men have been separated into different jails from the women and children at Hutto.

"Don't forget that being a Palestinian in this period of history is truly being the weakest of the weak," adds Ibrahim. "Since you don't even have a country, like 99.9 percent of the whole earth, to ask about you, or to defend you, or help you with your basic needs.

"And people such as Marc Jeffery Moore--instead of going after the terrorists and the criminals--he is going after some children and mothers, not caring about the image of our great America."


Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in Dime's Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: [email protected]. This article was first published in Counterpunch

Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war revealed in secret memo
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,1700881,00.html






Fooled Me
*********


You said it was to free the poor Iraqi
You spoke of freedom
Every single day
Operation Iraqi Freedom
Isn't that something you used to say?
Well, as far as I can see
Saddam's the only one that you've set free

You said there were hidden secret weapons
You circled their locations
On the map
Weapons of Mass Destruction!
Or a nuclear programme perhaps?
Well, as far as I can see
You chose your lies over democracy

You said your countrymen were in danger
That terrorists had planned
To kill you all
Well, five years and three months later
The truth in blood is written on the wall
You've killed three quarters of a million people
And you don't really seem to care at all

The truth - as far as I can see?
You fooled them all
And they as sure as hell
Fooled me




Endymion 2007

What's Going On?



What going on?
Innocents are dying
While these crooks defile our nation
Laughing, lying
Yet in their bloody occupation
Heroes are snubbed
Fed lies
And told to "Lick it up"
And screams filter
From behind closed doors
And our hearts can't take it anymore

What's going on?"
A wise man said
And people understood his reason
Finally the time had come
To stand up for the vision
Standing up for justice
People standing up again
New Orleans, or old Iraq
Victims of the same
Evil
And it's wrong
So tell me
What going on?

What's going on?





Endymion 2007

Marvin Gaye - What's going on? /What's happening, brother?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KC7uhMY9s

Poll: Iraq Going Badly And Getting Worse

Five years of Camp X-Ray: Why are two British residents still in Guantanamo Bay?
Because the UK will not let them home to join their families despite accepting they have spent four years in jail for no reason...
An extraordinary legal wrangle has left two men with British families languishing for four years in Camp X-Ray, where they are at breaking point
By Marie Woolf, Political Editor
Published: 07 January 2007

Two British residents left languishing for years in Guantanamo Bay despite being charged with no offence are suffering such serious health problems their lawyers warn they may never recover.

Bisher al-Rawi, who is locked in solitary confinement in a 6ft by 8ft cell, is gradually "losing his mind" and is in danger of irreparable damage to his mental state after five years of incarceration and torture.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2132551.ece

They have made a killing

The US has spent a million dollars for every dead Iraqi - is that what they mean by value for money?

By Terry Jones

01/06/07 "The Guardian"

Early this year the Bush administration is to ask Congress to approve an additional $100bn for the onerous task of making life intolerable for the Iraqis. This will bring the total spent on the White House's current obsession with war to almost $500bn - enough to have given every US citizen $1,600 each. I wonder which the voters would have gone for if given the choice: shall we (a) give every American $1,600 or (b) spend the money on bombing a country in the Middle East that doesn't use lavatory paper?

Of course, there's another thing that George Bush could have done with the money: he could have given every Iraqi $18,700. I imagine that would have reduced the threat of international terrorism somewhat. Call me old-fashioned, but I can't help thinking that giving someone $18,700 brings them round to your side more quickly than bombing the hell out of them. They could certainly buy a lot of lavatory paper with it.

In 2002 the house budget committee and the congressional budget office both guesstimated the cost of invading Iraq at approximately $50bn; $500bn seems a bit wide of the mark. What's more, with over half a million dead, it means that the world's greatest military superpower has spent a million dollars for every Iraqi killed. That can't be value for money!

So how on earth could such a vast overspend occur? After all, the US is the flagship of monetary common sense. Well, for starters, in 2003 the White House refused to allow competitive bidding for contracts in Iraq, which is odd for the champions of free enterprise. Then the White House ensured there would be no overseeing of what was spent. In the original Iraq spending bill, which earmarked the first $87bn to go down the drain, there was a provision for the general accounting office to keep a check on things, but that provision was stripped from the bill - even though the Senate had originally voted for it 97 to 0.

But what I want to know is: how do they actually spend all that money? Well the answer is: they don't. According to the website Halliburtonwatch, the Halliburton subsidiary KBR bills the US taxpayer for $50-$80 per day for labourers working for it in Iraq, but pays them only $5-$16 per day. It's the same with Halliburton. In December 2003 the US army discovered that the company had overcharged by $61m for fuel transportation and $67m for food services in Iraq.

Then there is good old-fashioned incompetence. Take the al-Fatah pipeline: KBR went through $75.7m of taxpayers' money, supposedly trying to replace a pipeline across the river Tigris that US forces had blown up. They never finished the job, but still got paid.

With all this double-dealing and incompetence, you'd expect that those responsible would have been penalised by now. But that's where the mystery deepens. Companies such as Halliburton and its subsidiaries have never had it so good. In January 2006 the Bush administration intervened in a dispute between the Pentagon and Halliburton, and agreed to pay the company $199m in disputed charges. On January 26 2006 Halliburton announced that its 2005 profits were the "best in our 86-year history". And to date KBR has received around $16bn from its contracts in Iraq.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, formerly CEO of Halliburton, has not had a bad war either. His tax returns for 2005 show that he earned $194,862 from his Halliburton stock options alone. Mind you, it's small change compared to his $36m payoff when he left the firm. Was that for his past role, or was Halliburton anticipating further services from the future vice-president of the US? Perhaps it's just as well that in 2003 the White House removed from the Iraq spending bill any provision to penalise war profiteers who defrauded US taxpayers.

· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python www.terry-jones.net

The horror, the horror of Iraq, in poetry

San Francisco Chronicle
Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, January 5, 2007


Before he was deployed to Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Sgt. Brian Turner had seen movies and read novels about men at war. The stories were mostly hero narratives: a group of soldiers captures a bridge, a platoon frees a buddy captured by enemy forces.

"But when I went to Iraq," Turner says, "I didn't find anything like that. All I found was boredom as a backdrop to everything, punctuated by very intense moments. I couldn't thread all that together."

Keeping a journal was one way he coped. That, and writing a series of poems that describe the dust and the heat, the bombings and the shrapnel, the pointlessness of the conflict and the suicide of Bruce Miller, a 23-year-old private who stuck the barrel of a machine gun down his throat. Those poems are now collected in "Here, Bullet" (Alice James Books, $14.95), a tough and eloquent volume that won the Northern California Book Award for poetry and a PEN Center USA "Best in the West" Literary Award in Poetry.

"Turner has sent back a dispatch from a place arguably more incomprehensible than the moon -- the war in Iraq," wrote a New York Times Book Review critic, "and deserves our thanks."

The book is full of powerful images of death and dying, but Turner, 39, says he doesn't see it as an angry screed against President Bush or U.S. military policy. "I wanted to add to what people back home already knew" -- death counts, roadside bombings, prison torture -- "but at the same time I think we also need to know the humanity and the love, the loss, things on a deeper, emotional level. That to me is the domain of poetry."

A quiet person with soft blue eyes and a manner so gentle that it's difficult to imagine him as an infantryman, Turner is drinking a mocha in an upscale Fresno coffee bar. He grew up in this city, with a father who served during the Vietnam era and a grandfather who landed on the beach in Guam during World War II. All the Turners were military men, but all of them, Turner says, were against the U.S. invasion of Iraq from the beginning

"None of them believed in this war. And they were behind me if I wanted to go to another country or if I wanted to go to jail." The night before he shipped out from Fort Lewis in Washington state, "my mother called me and she said she was willing to buy a plane ticket and send me to Perth, Australia, because we have family there."

Turner also thought the war was a disastrous mistake. He had enlisted in the Army in 1998, at 30, largely to get out of debt and create financial stability for himself and Elena, the Russian woman he married during the year he taught English in Pusan, Korea. He signed a four-year contract, served in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 and signed a second four-year contract in 2001 -- months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

When Turner talks about Iraq and his decision to join a military effort he knew to be wrong, he seems unusually calm. He's not insensitive to the horrors of Iraq -- his poems demonstrate as much -- but he seems relatively untroubled by the ideological gulf between his beliefs and his participation.

In his poems, he releases the passion and anger he won't express in conversation. In "Caravan," the most overtly political entry in his book -- and one that he strategically placed toward the end of the volume to not turn off conservative readers -- his conviction is unmistakable:

"Today, in Baghdad, a bomb

kills forty-seven and wounds over one hundred,

leaving a crater ten feet deep. The stunned

gather body parts from the roadway

to collect in cardboard boxes

which will not be taped and shipped

to the White House lawn, not buried

under the green sod thrown over, box by box

emptied into the rich soil in silence

while a Marine sentry stands guard

at the National Monument, Tomb of the Unknown . . . "

At the time of his deployment to Iraq, Turner says, "I think I had emotional reactions, but I think I tried to push them down and bury them very deeply." He struggled with the option of fleeing to Australia, "(but) I didn't feel like I could leave America forever. I love this country and my family's here and everybody's here." Prison was a more viable route, "but I didn't want to go to prison."

Turner ultimately chose to stick by the guys in his unit -- men he had trained with and lived with for the better part of two years. Serving in Iraq "wasn't about democracy or nation-building or helping these people get back on their feet or anything like that," he says, " 'cause I didn't believe in the mission. For me, it was about not letting down Tony Fiorillo, David Jackowski and Tom Bosch."

From December 2003 to Halloween 2004, Turner was stationed primarily in Mosul, the country's second-largest city. He remembers running through the rubble of a Mosul police station after 16 Iraqi police officers were killed, and says he'll never forget the face of the 12-year-old boy who shouted, "Let free my father, my father no bad man!" as he took the boy's father prisoner and drove away with him.

"That kid will always remember my face," says Turner, who is working on a poem about the incident. "Even if we never meet again in our life, he has my face as the image of who took his father from him."

Writing the poems in "Here, Bullet" gave Turner a means of coping. Surprisingly, he says he kept them to himself and never mentioned the poems to the men in his squad. He mailed them back to his parents, along with his journals, as "a way to tell them what was going on." Three of the poems were published in the Georgia Review while he was still in Iraq.

But the poems, he says, didn't offer the release that one might expect. "I mean, if I write a book about Iraq, say, seven years from now or even next year, it might be a cathartic experience. This sounds maybe overly dramatic, but when I was in Iraq (I was thinking) 'This is what, Thursday? I might be dead by Monday, so what poem do I have to write today -- if this is the last thing I'm going to write about?' "

Turner, who is divorced, lives in a recently built home in Fresno with his girlfriend, Michelle Swanger, a health care worker he met after returning to Fresno in February 2005.

Since coming back from Iraq, he says, he's been surprised that more people haven't criticized his participation in the Iraq occupation. "I expected many more people to challenge me and ask why I wasn't stronger in my beliefs, and why would I follow through with something like that. But it hasn't been all that much."

The poems, he says, have been equally embraced by people on the left and the right. "That's what I was really hoping for with this book, that it would be part of a larger dialogue about the war.

"I've been asked before, 'Do you regret going to Iraq?' but I don't want to look on my life like that. Maybe there's some good in sharing these poems. Maybe that's the whole reason I was in the military."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


A SOLDIER'S STORY, IN POETRY

Eulogy

It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 a.m.,

as tower guards eat sandwiches

and seagulls drift by on the Tigris River.

Prisoners tilt their heads to the west

though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.

The sound reverberates down concertina coils

the way piano wire thrums when given slack.

And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,

when Private Miller pulls the trigger

to take brass and fire into his mouth:

the sound lifts the birds up off the water,

a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,

and nothing can stop it now, no matter what

blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices

crackle over the radio in static confusion,

because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,

and Private Miller has found what low hush there is

down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.

PFC B. Miller

(1980-March 22, 2004)

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,

then here is bone and gristle and flesh.

Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,

the aorta's opened valves, the leap

thought makes at the synaptic gap.

Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,

that inexorable flight, that insane puncture

into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish

what you've started. Because here, Bullet,

here is where I complete the word you bring

hissing through the air, here is where I moan

the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering

my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have

inside of me, each twist of the round

spun deeper, because here, Bullet,

here is where the world ends, every time.

Curfew

The wrong is not in the religion;

The wrong is in us.

-- Saier T.

At dusk, bats fly out by the hundreds.

Water snakes glide in the ponding basins

behind the rubbled palaces. The mosques

call their faithful in, welcoming

the moonlight as prayer.

Today, policemen sunbathed on traffic islands

and children helped their mothers

string clothes to the line, a slight breeze

filling them with heat.

There were no bombs, no panic in the streets.

Sgt. Gutierrez didn't comfort an injured man

who cupped pieces of his friend's brain

in his hands; instead, today,

white birds rose from the Tigris.

The Al Harishma Weapons Market

At midnight, steel shutters

slide down tight. Feral cats slink

in the periphery of the streetlamp's

dim cone of light. Inside, like a musician

swaddling a silver-plated trumpet,

Akbar wraps an AK-47 in cloth.

Grease guns, pistols, RPGs --

he slides them all under the countertop.

Black marketeer or insurgent --

an American death puts food on the table,

more cash than most men earn in an entire year.

He won't let himself think of his childhood friends --

those who wear the blue uniforms

which bring death, dying from barrels

he may have oiled in his own hands.

Akbar stirs the chai,

then carries his sleeping four-year-old,

Habib, to bed under glow-in-the-dark

stars arranged on the ceiling. Late at night

when gunfire frightens them both,

Habib cries for his father, who tells him

It's just the drums, a new music,

and the tracery of lights in the sky

he retraces on the ceiling, showing the boy

how each bright star travels

from this dark place, to the other.

© 2005 by Brian Turner (Alice James Books, Farmington, Maine)

Life Is Great


Life is great, isn't it?
You bet
Long as
You don't live around no war zone
Or in the desert
When the well is dry as bone
Long as
You don't work in no sweat shop
Or sell sex on the corner
To the fat slobs
Life is great, isn't it?
You bet
Long as
Your children ain't starving for bread
Or your lover's been shot in the head
Long as
You don't suffer every day
As long as you're okay



Endymion 2007

A drop into the abyss


Saddam jailed me but his hanging was a crime. Iraq's misery is now far worse than under his rule

Haifa Zangana
Thursday January 4, 2007
The Guardian

At 3.30am last Saturday, I was abruptly woken by the phone ringing. My heart sank. By the time I reached the phone, I was already imagining bodies of relatives and friends, killed and mutilated.

It was 6.30am in Baghdad and I thought of the last time I spoke to my sister. She was on the roof of her house trying to get a better signal on her mobile phone, but had to end the call as an American helicopter started hovering above. Iraqis know it is within the US "rules of engagement" to shoot at them when using mobiles, and that US troops enjoy impunity whatever they do. But the call was from a Turkish TV station asking for comments on Saddam's execution. I drew a deep sigh of relief, not for the execution, but because I did not know personally anyone killed that day.

Death is now so commonplace in Iraq that we end up ranking it in these personal terms. Last month, I attended the a'azas (remembrance events) of three people whose work I highly respected. One was for Dr Essam al-Rawi, head of the university professors' union who documented the assassination of academics. A week before his killing his office at Baghdad University had been ransacked and documents confiscated by US troops. The others were for Dr Ali Hussain Mukhif, an academic and literary critic, and Saad Shlash, professor of journalism in Baghdad University and editor of the weekly journal Rayet Al Arab, who insisted on resisting occupation peacefully - offering writers, including myself, a space to criticise the occupation and its crimes, despite all the risks involved.

About 500 academics and 92 journalists have been murdered since the invasion of Iraq. Hundreds more have been kidnapped, and many others have fled the country after receiving threats against their lives. The human costs are so high that many Iraqis believe that had there been a competition between Saddam's regime and the Bush-Blair occupation over the killing of Iraqi minds and culture, the latter would win by far. Sadly, I am becoming one of them.

I am speaking as one who has been, from the start, a politically active opponent of the Ba'ath regime's ideology and Saddam Hussain's dictatorship. At times that was at the high personal cost of prison and torture. In 1984, during the Iran-Iraq war, my family had to pay for the bullets used to execute my cousin Fouad Al Azzawi before being allowed to collect his body. But I find myself agreeing with many Iraqis, that life now is not just the continuity of misery and death under new guises. It is much, much worse - even without the extra dimensions of pillage, corruption and the total ruin of the infrastructure.

Every day brings with it, due to the presence of occupation troops to protect US citizens' safety and security, less safety and security for Iraqis.

The timing and method of the execution of Saddam Hussein proves that the US administration is still criminally high on the cocktail of power, arrogance, and ignorance. But above all racism: what is good for us is not good for you. We are patriots but you are terrorists.

The US and their Iraqi puppets in the green zone chose to execute Saddam on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice. This is the most joyous day in the Muslim calendar when more than 2 million pilgrims in Mecca start their ancient rituals, with hundreds of millions of others around the world focused on the events. They then further humiliated Muslims by releasing the official video of the execution, with the 69-year-old having a noose placed around his neck and being led to the drop. The unofficial recording shows Saddam looking calm and composed, and even managing a sarcastic smile, asking the thugs who taunted him "hiya hiy al marjala?" ("is this your manliness?"), a powerful phrase in Arabic popular culture connecting manliness to acts of courage, pride and chivalry. He also managed to repeatedly say the Muslim creed as he was dying, thus attaching himself in the last few seconds of his life to one billion Muslims. Saddam had literally the final say. From now on, no Eid will pass without people remembering his execution.

This was the climax of a colonial farce with the court proceedings' blatant sectarian overtones welcomed by Bush and the British government as a "fair trial". The occupation also welcomed the grotesque public execution as "justice being done". Contrast this with the end of our hopes, as Iraqis in opposition, of persuading our people of the humanity of democracy and how it would, unlike Saddam's brutality, put an end to all abuses of human rights, to execution in public, and to the death penalty.

It is no good the deputy prime minister John Prescott now condemning the manner of Saddam's execution as "deplorable" when, as a representative of one of the two main occupying powers, his government is both legally and morally responsible for what took place.

It is hell in Iraq by all standards, and there is no end in sight to the plight of Iraqi people. The resistance to occupation is a basic human right as well as a moral responsibility. That was the case during the Algerian war of independence, the Vietnamese war of independence, and it is the case in Iraq now.

· Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi-born novelist and former prisoner of Saddam's regime [email protected]


*******************
Reply From:

bigwardy

January 4, 2007 10:48 AM

A very moving piece, thank you. I can only hope that I could be so dignified in your position; I've nothing but admiration for what you have said here.

I would point out one small but significant thing though:

"It is no good the deputy prime minister John Prescott now condemning the manner of Saddam's execution as "deplorable" when, as a representative of one of the two main occupying powers, his government is both legally and morally responsible for what took place."

You are being too kind on the fat fool Prescott. He did not have the basic decency to condemn even the manner of the execution. What he lamented was the fact that uncensored video footage of the execution had been allowed to circulate. In my view he's not at all concerned about the manner of Saddam's demise; he's just angry that the world should see so graphically the utter lawlessness that he and his political allies and masters are responsible for. He knows he's got blood on his hands and he certainly doesn't want the world to see any of it. That's what he deplored.

Thank you again for this article.

Iraq braced for unhappy New Year

By Andrew North
Baghdad correspondent, BBC News

"There were six heads in our street this morning."

So said one of my Iraqi colleagues as he arrived in the office recently.
Almost anywhere else, it would have been shocking news - a story in its own right.
But here the shock was short-lived. Each atrocity in Baghdad is now quickly superseded by another.

Nearly four years on from the US and British invasion and its mishandled aftermath, Iraq is a place where such violence has become mundane.
The elected government - held up by George W Bush and Tony Blair as evidence the invasion was worth it - is seen by many Iraqis as part of the problem, with some of its own forces actively involved in the sectarian bloodshed now tearing the country apart.
Reporting from here over the past year, the sensation has been of a nightmare closing in - especially in Baghdad and the surrounding region.

Fractured city

It is not just the constant explosions and gunfire. There is evidence the violence is now infecting every aspect of life.
Shopkeepers are limiting their opening hours, for fear they will be kidnapped or bombed.
People stay at home for days at a time, too frightened to leave. Parents stop their children going to school. If they go, they find playgrounds divided by Shia and Sunni gangs.

Each time they go to work, my brave Iraqi colleagues take their life in their hands.
They must pick their way through an ever more fractured city, making complex detours to avoid certain areas, or be ready to deal with checkpoints where the true loyalty of the gunmen running them may not be clear until it is too late. Prospects of things improving in 2007 look bleak.

There are no obvious answers anymore, in a situation where each new atrocity provokes the next and trust has broken down.
The execution of Saddam Hussein this weekend has done nothing to change that.
For most Iraqis, from government ministers to ordinary people caught in this maelstrom, survival is the priority now.

Iraqi control

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has long insisted on the Americans and British giving him more control over security.

The Iraqis are now in charge in three provinces and such handovers are likely to speed up in the new year. But to a certain extent, this is window dressing.

The Americans are still reluctant to hand over the reins of Iraqi units under their control, fearful they may end up being used for sectarian aims, for instance to clear more neighbourhoods of Sunnis.

There is little sign of Mr Maliki fulfilling his commitments to crack down on militias such as Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi army which are blamed for much of the sectarian bloodshed.

Just as important, something has to done about the police - which has been widely infiltrated by the Mehdi army and other militias.

They would rather forget it now, but US commanders promised a big push to sort out the police in 2006, calling it The Year of the Police.

It was, but for all the wrong reasons.

Lethal mistakes

From Baghdad to Basra, many police units have become known not for solving crimes but committing them - including carrying out a wave of sectarian abductions.
Much has been made of the US decision to disband the Iraqi Army in 2003, a move that ended up turning thousands of soldiers and officers into insurgents.

The way Iraq's US and British occupiers set up the new police force is proving almost as lethal a mistake.

Desperate to get things going, thousands of recruits were rushed through training. Little attention was paid to who was getting in and how they were being chosen.

The Christmas Day assault by British forces to "cull" a Basra police unit which they had themselves set up was just the latest demonstration of this disaster.

All eyes will be on President Bush later this month when he announces yet another "new" Iraq strategy

Waning power

The message of the past year has been that US power here is waning.

Two big operations to reduce violence in Baghdad failed dismally.
Mr Bush says he may send in a "surge" force of at least 20,000 more troops, specifically to secure the capital.

But numbers like that give a distorted impression. In practice, it will probably mean only 3,000 to 4,000 extra soldiers on the streets.

For every frontline soldier, there are six to seven in the rear, organising food, ammunition and other support.

Senior commanders also are sceptical of what more troops can achieve.

The outgoing number two officer in Iraq recently said he doubted the military could do any more.

The answer, Lt Gen Peter Chiarelli argued, was to create more jobs: "To put angry young and middle-aged men to work."
With more Iraqis and Americans killed this year than in any other since 2003, George W Bush and Tony Blair's decision to invade is more controversial than ever.

But so too, many believe, is the one thing both men say still justifies the whole venture - democracy. Or at least the way in which it has been brought to Iraq. Similar doubts apply to Afghanistan.

New governments have been elected, new constitutions drawn up - under US and British eyes - but they have proved increasingly irrelevant.

"I used to think democracy came first," one Iraqi told me. "I've learnt that's not true - it's security."

More and more Iraqis are not staying around to find out if this US and British experiment is going to work.

As a friend told me recently, "Every conversation I have now starts with talk about the best way to get out."


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6215005.stm


Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, is the most deadly place in the country

UN makes $60m Iraq refugee appeal
The United Nations' refugee body has appealed for $60m (£30.8m, 45m euros) in emergency aid for those fleeing violence in Iraq.

One in eight of Iraqis have now left their homes, with up to 50,000 people leaving each month, the UNHCR said.

It said the exodus was the largest long-term movement since the
displacement of the Palestinians after the creation of Israel in 1948.

Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon are hosting most of the country's refugees.

"The longer this conflict goes on, the more difficult it becomes for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced," UNHCR head Antonio Guterres said.

The agency said that about 12% of Iraqis had fled their homes due to the violence that has spread through the country since the 2003 US-led invasion.

But it also said that many had left long before the current conflict began.

Acute poverty

The UNHCR estimates that the number of Iraqis living beyond the country's borders as refugees stands at two million and a further 1.7 million live within the borders as displaced people.

But it warns the number of internally displaced - those forced to leave their homes but not the country - could reach 2.7 million by the end of the year.

Of those who have fled Iraq, the UNHCR estimates that up to one million Iraqis are living in Syria; up to 700,000 in neighbouring Jordan; between 20,000 and 80,000 in Egypt and up to 40,000 in Lebanon.

Many of these refugees live in conditions of acute poverty and the agency says that there is growing evidence of women turning to prostitution.

In Syria, for example, almost a third of Iraqi refugee children do not go to school.

The agency has also urged neighbouring countries who are hosting refugees to keep their borders open because Iraq's continuing violence will fuel further floods of refugees.

"Unremitting violence in Iraq will likely mean continued mass internal and external displacement affecting much of the surrounding region," Mr Guterres said.

White House Antics
****************


If Iraq
had never happened
I can guarantee
I wouldn't be
here talking to you now
I wouldn't be living
this bizarre half-existence
already fed a pension
to oversee
my disability
No way
would I be
broken by the trauma
that smothered me
I'm sure of it
I was good at what I did
and I was tough
Tough enough
A medical career
ahead of me
I'd made a new life
and it was enough
to replace the family
I missed out on
in my infancy
But it's all over now
for me

And when I see George Bush making a joke about
not finding Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq
When I see him standing up there in front of his loyal followers
showing them a picture of himself on a giant screen
The President of the United States of America
bending over
looking under a table……

And when grinning he says,
"Nope, no weapons of mass destruction under there…"(1)
And I see those bejewelled swine
laughing their heads off at his antics
Some applauding
Some clutching a glass of champagne
in their white hands
and I think about the three quarters of a million
men women and children dead in Iraq
And I think about the lack
of basic support given to soldiers fighting for that clown
I'm afraid
of what I might start saying.



Endymion 2007

(1) George Bush jokes about Weapons of Mass Destruction not having been found, at the 2004 White House Correspondents Dinner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9EbssUgHj4&mode=related&search=

Warning: You will find this sickening, from one point of view or another. But it is real - and that is a terrible travesty when we've been told that Bush and Blair knowingly lied about the weapons of mass destruction.

George Bush is making a speech from the White House tonight at 9pm (his time).

It is expected that he will announce he's sending around 20,000 more troops out to Iraq

If he uses the word 'sacrifice' - expect the draft to arrive in about 2008

Protests on Guantanamo anniversary

A legal-aid group that represents hundreds of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay has condemned it as an "abomination" and called on Washington to close the facility five years after it received its first prisoners.

A demonstration will take place outside the US naval base in Cuba on Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary.

Protests are also planned in New York, London, Sydney, Australia, and many other cities across the world.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6AF5E2AC-6D2D-4940-9B3C-38319E0EED43.htm

*********************************************************




http://www.save-omar.org.uk/

I found this protest site for Omar Deghales a few years ago now and have followed the news posted there about both Omar's condition in Guantanamo Bay prison and the activities of Brighton residents who have been demanding an investigation ito his 'un-charged' incarceration since September 2002.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About Omar

Omar is one of eight British residents still imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. The British government have thus far used the excuse that he holds only refugee status to deny all responsibility for him.

History of persecution

Omar and his family left Libya for the UK in 1986, six years after his father, a democrat and trade unionist, was assassinated by Colonel Gaddafi's regime. They settled just outside Brighton, Omar with refugee status in the UK, and the remainder of his family as British citizens.
Travelling
In 2001, after studying law at UK universities, Omar travelled with a friend to Malaysia, Pakistan and eventually to Afghanistan. There he met and married his Afghani wife, and had a son, Suleiman, who is now four years old.

Imprisoned

When war broke out, Omar moved his family to Pakistan, fearing for their safety, and en route back to the UK. There he was arrested by bounty-hunters along with his wife and young son (both later released) and taken to Bagram, which he describes as reminiscent of a Nazi prison camp. He was later sent on to Guantánamo, where he has suffered further human rights abuses.

Mistaken identity

The only "evidence" for Omar's arrest is a video, allegedly showing Omar, from the Spanish authorities. However experts have confirmed what is seemingly apparent; that the person in the video isn't Omar.
Tortured and blinded
On one occasion, guards attacked Omar with pepper spray, rubbing the chemical in his eyes, so that he is now completely blinded in one eye.

Libyan death threats

The US authorities have allowed Gaddafi's Libyan interrogators to interview him. They threatened him, saying, "In here I cannot do anything, but if I meet you [later] I will kill you, if you don't kill me."



3 Brighton activists marched the 55 miles for 3 days from Brighton to Whitehall to deliver letters to Downing Street and postcards to the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, demanding the release of Brighton resident Omar Deghayes from Guantanamo Bay. The march ended outside Downing Street where the police on the gates refused to take the letters from the walkers despite their long march. The twenty or so people who had joined the marchers for the last leg of their journey carrying banners and wearing orange boiler suits then started a spontaneous and very angry demonstration The giant postcard they delivered is a copy of one that has been sent by a thousand Brighton people without any acknowledgement from her office.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Letter to Guantánamo
******************


Dear Omar
When I saw the graffiti I knew
One thousand letters from Brighton
Made me wonder
But when I saw the graffiti
I was moved
It said "Brighton is with you, Omar"
And man, it's true
You should see these English
From your English town
Fight for you
But I hear you are going blind
And the torture is affecting your mind
And your son
Who doesn't know you at all
Aches for your embrace
To touch and kiss your smiling face
Every day he prays you'll stay alive
That you'll come to him someday
But what do you pray for, Omar
There in Guantánamo Bay?




Endymion 2007








Prime Minister Tony Blair
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA

Dear Prime Minister ­­­­

I am writing to request that the British government agrees to the immediate release by the United States government of Omar Deghayes from Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay allowing him to return to his family and friends in the UK.

Omar Deghayes is a UK resident who has been living near Brighton for twenty years. His family fled Libya in 1987 following the assassination of his father who was a political opponent of Gaddafi's regime. Omar's family are British citizens and they, including him, were given refugee status. In March 2006 a judicial review was heard in the High Court, London and it was noted that "there is respectable academic support of the proposition that refugees should be accorded diplomatic protection by the State which has accepted that status".

Omar Deghayes has been held in Guantanamo Bay since September 2002. There have been reports of torture in Guantanamo from the most respected international bodies, including the United Nations. I have concerns about the treatment of Omar Deghayes. There has been no legal proceeding in a case against him and there has been no evidence presented that has been made available to legal, public or independent scrutiny.

The arrest, transportation, internment and torture of the detainees held in Guantanamo may be breach of Articles 5, 9 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which state that:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal in determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

These principles are embodied in the European Convention of Human Rights and Britain's 1998 Human Rights Act.

I will look forward to receiving your response to my concerns about the torture of Omar Deghayes and what steps you are taking to enable his return home to the UK.

Yours sincerely

January 10th, 2007 11:15 pm
Bush Rhetoric Hard to Square With Facts

By Calvin Woodward / AP

WASHINGTON - President Bush promised a diplomatic offensive to win support for Iraq from Middle Eastern countries that, if anything, have become more hostile to U.S. policy in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's execution.

In doses of rhetoric hard to square with facts in the region, Bush portrayed the ordinary people of the Middle East as being behind U.S. goals in Iraq, in his speech to the nation Wednesday night.

And he declared the need to address Iran's and Syria's support for insurgents, without acknowledging his refusal to engage either country diplomatically, as many U.S. allies and the Iraq Study Group proposed.

The war that toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni-run regime has rekindled the centuries-old divide between Sunni and Shiite Muslims through Middle East, suspicions that have grown stronger since Saddam's Dec. 30 execution.

Bush, who often invoked the Iraqi leader and his "evil mind" in the past, ignored him in the speech.

In Saudi Arabia, the religious establishment - rooted in the hard-line Wahhabi stream of Sunni Islam - has stepped up its anti-Shiite rhetoric. Last month, about 30 clerics called on Sunnis around the Middle East to support their brethren in Iraq against Shiites and praised the insurgency.

Despite such vitriol, Bush said that from "Afghanistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian Territories, millions of ordinary people" are asking: "Will America withdraw and yield the future of that country to the extremists or will we stand with the Iraqis who have made the choice for freedom?"

Also in his speech:

_Bush declared "al-Qaida is still active in Iraq" and a failed U.S. mission would give such terrorists a safe haven from which to plot attacks against Americans.

Although few quarrel with that appraisal now, it is also the case that Iraq - contrary to assertions at the time - was not a magnet for al-Qaida before the U.S. invasion.

_Bush proposed $414 million to double the number of U.S. civilian workers who help coordinate local reconstruction projects. These State Department-led units, dubbed Provincial Reconstruction Teams, are to focus on projects both inside and outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. Some will be merged into combat brigades.

He also proposed $400 million in quick-response funds for the teams to do local reconstruction and rebuilding projects.

However, the special inspector general for Iraq said in an October report that continued violence and the lack of security seriously impeded reconstruction. Workers have been prevented from traveling to project sites and the lives of contractors at rebuilding sites are in danger.

The report quoted Iraq's minister of electricity as saying: "Every day I send repair teams, but they can't get to the area; there are too many insurgents ... no one can help."

_The speech also reflected Bush's evolving qualifications about the U.S. commitment to Iraq, not as ironclad now as when he said just over a year ago, "We will stay until the job is done."

The president said in his speech that he made it clear to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders "that America's commitment is not open-ended."

"If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people - and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people."

Overall, Bush presented a sobering account of the situation in Iraq, in marked contrast to past statements by the president and his commanders that the U.S. was "on the brink of success," insurgents had been "brought to their knees," and "we have broken the back of the insurgency."

His once-confident challenge to the insurgents - "Bring 'em on" - was replaced by grimmer realism.

Even so, Bush rested much of his case on unknowables - among them whether Iraqi leaders can live up to their pledge to free their forces of the sectarian pressures that have severely limited their effectiveness and made some matters worse.

He declared unequivocally that when U.S. and Iraqi forces sweep insurgents out of Baghdad neighborhoods this time, they won't just rush back in. "This time, we have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared," he said.

Yep, there it was. That word they threw around in 1914 - SACRIFICE.


*****************************************************





Survivors (Siegfried Sassoon)Diary Extract

June 19 1917

'I wish I could believe that Ancient War History justifies the indefinite prolongation of this war. The Jingos define it as 'an enormous quarrel between incompatible spirits and destinies, in which one or the other must succumb'. But the men who write these manifestos do not truly know what useless suffering the war inflicts...And the Army is dumb. The Army goes on with its bitter tasks. The ruling classes do all the talking. And their words convince no one but the crowds who are their dupes. The soldiers who return home seem stunned by the things they have endured...If only they would speak out and throw their medals in the faces of their masters; and ask their women why it thrills them to know that they, the dauntless warriors, have shed the blood of Germans.'



********************************************

They Go On Lying
****************


They go on lying
And we go on denying
But can you hear a million people crying?
Bones in pits dug for the dead
Whispers of the terrifying truth unsaid
Do we really want to know?
Will it help our children grow?
Or shall we close our ears instead?
Take a good book to bed
What kind of species can we be
To ignore death so complacently
So self-assured and driven
That even in our greatest vision
We cannot see



Endymion 2007