http://lnk.nu/sfbayview.com/6vu.shtml

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Heads roll at Veterans Administration

Mushrooming depleted uranium (DU) scandal blamed

by Bob Nichols

Project Censored Award Winner

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Considering the tons of depleted uranium used by the U.S.,
the Iraq war can truly be called a nuclear war.

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Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged Monday that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War.

Writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter No. 169, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, stated, “The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military.”

Bernklau continued, “This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed.”

He added, “Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of ‘Disabled Vets’ means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!” The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.

“The VA Secretary (Principi) was aware of this fact as far back as 2000,” wrote Bernklau. “He, and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret’s report, (it) ... is far too big to hide or to cover up!”

“Terry Jamison, Public Affairs Specialist, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, at the VA Central Office, recently reported that ‘Gulf Era Veterans’ now on medical disability, since 1991, number 518,739 Veterans,” said Berklau.

“The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium oxide) is a virtual death sentence,” stated Berklau. “Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers (from the 2003 Iraq War) as ‘spectacular … and a matter of concern!’”

When asked if the main purpose of using DU was for “destroying things and killing people,” Fulk was more specific: “I would say it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people!”

Principi could not be reached for comment prior to deadline.

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References

1. Depleted uranium: “Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets: A death sentence here and abroad” by Leuren Moret, http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml.

2. Veterans for Constitutional Law, 112 Jefferson Ave., Port Jefferson NY 11777, Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director, (516) 474-4261, fax 516-474-1968.

3. Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter. Email Gary Kohls, gkohls@cpinternet.com, with “Subscribe” in the subject line.

http://www.slate.com/id/2131768/nav/tap1/



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Beyond Spin

The propaganda presidency of George W. Bush.

By Jacob Weisberg

Posted Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2005, at 7:13 PM ET

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A frequent complaint about the Clinton administration was that it tried too hard to "spin" everything in its own favor. Clinton's spin doctors had a variety of individual styles but shared a grating habit of relentlessly coloring the news to support their side in any argument. George Stephanopoulos, with whom the technique was closely identified, once defined spin as "a hope dressed up as an observation." In practice, Clinton-era spinning meant that officials seldom conceded the obvious or acknowledged losing, failing, or being wrong about anything.

George W. Bush arrived in Washington avowing an end to all that. He promised he would never parse, shade, or play nice with the truth the way that Clinton had. But if Bush has shunned spinning, it has been in favor of something far more insidious. If the Clintonites were inveterate spinners, the Bushies have proved themselves to be thoroughgoing propagandists.

Though propaganda and spin exist on a continuum, they are different in essence. To spin is to offer a contention, usually specious, in response to a critical argument or a negative news story. It does not necessarily involve lying or misleading anyone about factual matters. Habitual spin is irksome, especially to the journalists upon whom it is practiced, but it does not threaten democracy. Propaganda is far more malignant. A calculated and systematic effort to manage public opinion, it transcends mere lying and routine political dishonesty. When the Bush administration manufactures fake "news," suppresses real news, disguises the former as the latter, and challenges the legitimacy of the independent press, it corrodes trust in leaders, institutions, and, to the rest of the world, the United States as a whole.

Propaganda is the only word for the Pentagon's recently exposed secret efforts to plant positive stories in the Iraqi press. There is, to be sure, precedent for the U.S. funding democratically-minded foreign journalists, both clandestinely through the CIA and openly through agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID. Covert funding is both ethically indefensible and, in most cases, practically counterproductive. In the Cold War context, however, such efforts were often aboveboard and directed toward supporting courageous independent media and opposition voices in repressive countries.

In the Iraq cash-for-flacks scheme, on the other hand, the Pentagon did something simply stupid and wrong by hiring a propaganda-making firm called the Lincoln Group to cultivate an impression of grass-roots support for the American occupation. In this greenhouse, the gardeners did not just water and fertilize the seedlings; they handed out plastic flowers and hoped no one would notice they weren't real. American operatives paid Iraqi journalistic mercenaries to publish a farrago of puffery and outright misrepresentation. Here's my favorite quote from the Nov. 30 Los Angeles Times piece that exposed this operation: "Zaki [an Iraqi newspaper editor] said that if his cash-strapped paper had known that these stories were from the U.S. government, he would have 'charged much, much more' to publish them."

As with the torture and rendition scandals, Bush administration officials are sorry about this only because they got caught doing it. Look at Donald Rumsfeld's Dec. 5 response: The only blame he assigns is to the international news media, which has "pounded" the revelations. With one wave of the hand, Rummy excuses the government's ham-fisted propaganda effort and expresses his dripping contempt for genuine journalists, who in his mind are eternally spreading negativity, undermining support for the war on terror, and compromising military security. Like his colleagues in Bush's war council, Rummy indicates with every gesture that he simply does not accept the legitimate role of a free press.

According to a recent report in the British press, Bush last year proposed bombing Al Jazeera's headquarters to Tony Blair. This may or may not have been a joke, but given our military's record of accidental assaults on journalists in Iraq, it's not impossible to imagine that the president thinks smart-bombing would be a good way to respond to hostile coverage. At home, it's more a matter of freezing out and anathematizing organs, such as the New York Times, that are deemed unfriendly, while promulgating his own, dubious version of reality. The familiar litany of the administration's domestic disinformation efforts includes the Department of Education paying Armstrong Williams to defend the No Child Left Behind Act, HHS hiring Maggie Gallagher to promote its "marriage initiative," and both agencies sending local TV stations prepackaged pseudo-news videos advocating administration policies. Any of these incidents might be excused as an episode of poor judgment by an underling. In combination and accompanied by various presidential comments about not reading the newspaper, preferring to get his news from aides, and so on, they suggest a propaganda ethic.

For the Bush team, rolling-your-own news has the further advantage of supporting the revolving-door conservative welfare state that has flourished in five years of expanding, undivided government. The administration's need to outsource its propaganda work—for reasons of deniability, not efficiency—has promoted the emergence of a new kind of PR-industrial complex in the nation's capital. Outfits like the Ketchum's Washington Group, the shadowy Lincoln Group, and the even more flourishing, even more shadowy Rendon Group are the parasitic fruit not just of unchecked self-puffery but of a lucrative new patronage network.

In a way, what's most troubling about the Bush's administration's information war is not its cynicism but its naiveté. At phony town hall meetings, Bush's audiences are hand-picked to prevent any possibility of spontaneous challenge. At fake forums, invited guests ask the president to pursue his previously announced policies. New initiatives are unveiled on platforms festooned with meaningless slogans, mindlessly repeated ("Plan for Victory"). Anyone on the inside who doubts the party line is shown the door. In this environment, where the truth is not spoken privately or publicly, the suspicion grows that Bush, in his righteous cocoon, has committed the final, fatal sin of the propagandist. He is not just spreading BS but has come to believe it himself.

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Jacob Weisberg is editor of Slate and co-author, with Robert E. Rubin, of In an Uncertain World.

Photograph by Sabah Arar/Agence France-Presse.

http://lnk.nu/seattlepi.nwsource.com/6vs.html

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Iraq war debate enters new phase

Friday, December 9, 2005

ANTHONY B. ROBINSON

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You might not expect a West Point graduate, Vietnam vet and career soldier to come out with a book titled "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Addicted to War." But that's what Andrew Bacevich, who now directs the program in International Relations at Boston University, has done.

A self-described conservative, Bacevich argues that Americans have fallen prey to a "military metaphysic." By that he means all international problems are seen as military problems and the likelihood for finding a solution except through military means is discounted. The result is war as a permanent condition with the only acceptable plan for peace a loaded pistol. One has only to consider the relative weight given to the Pentagon and the State Department to get the point.

During the military buildup of the '80s, the claim of proponents was "peace through strength." Having a big enough military meant you wouldn't have to use it. But having such a large and sophisticated military has proved a tough temptation for politicians and people alike to resist. It's an old story: When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

As a pastor what most interested me is Bacevich's careful tracing of the role of leading religious conservatives in promoting a "crusade theory of warfare," to replace the more long-standing and cautious doctrine of just war. A crusade theory of warfare provides the mindset and justification for offensive military action, for so-called preventive wars like the current war in Iraq. The just war ethical tradition mandates the use of force for defensive, not offensive, purposes.

How did this change, a crucial element of American's seduction by war, happen? Beginning in the '70s a growing number of politically active religious conservatives told Americans, and their conservative Christian followers, that communism was everywhere on the march and America's subjugation was imminent. There was, however, not only this frightening side to their message but an urging to action. Christian America's true destiny is to wield military power in the death struggle with godless communion.

Beneath this rhetoric lies a theology declared heretical in the early centuries of Christianity: Manichaeism from a third century teacher, Mani. Manichaens of every age divide the world simply and starkly between the forces of good and the forces of evil, and urge the former to stamp out the latter. Appealing in its simplicity, Manichaeism is disastrous in reality. Early Christians regarded Manichaeism as heretical precisely because it blinded people to their own capacity for evil and encouraged gross self-deception.

After the Soviet Union imploded (in part due to its own military excesses), and 9/11 stunned Americans, these same politically active religious conservatives were quick to substitute Islam for communism. Falwell and Robertson recycled old lines with a new infidel. Franklin Graham, son of Billy, denounced Islam as "a very evil and wicked religion." Southern Baptist President Jack Graham declared, "Satan is the ultimate terrorist" and "this is a war between Christians and the forces of evil, by whatever name they choose to use." A crusade theory of warfare marched on, giving sanction to a new stratagem, "preventive war."

Eclipsed in the storm of fear and rhetoric was the older tradition of mainstream Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. The ethical tradition of just war lays down rigorous tests if a war, always understood as a tragic option and always to be a last resort, can be considered just and justifiable. Such conditions include, but are not limited to, "just cause" (usually self-defense); public declaration of war by a lawful authority; no ulterior motives (self-aggrandizement or vengeance); reasonable probability of success, and avoidance of harm to non-combatants.

As the debate on the Iraq war enters a new phase, those who foisted a crusade theory of warfare on Americans, and those who bought it, have much to answer for. Such a mentality encourages an overreliance on the nation's military, a rush to war, the failure of careful analysis and the erosion of proscriptions against torture and abuse. In moving from a just war ethic to a crusade theory of warfare Americans have lost their way, and some Christian leaders have betrayed their faith. Christian faith ought always to be a check on war's excesses and a challenge to an overreliance on the military, not a cheerleader in war's camp. As a Christian and a soldier, Andrew Bacevich is arguing exactly that.

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Anthony B. Robinson, a pastor of the United Church of Christ, is a speaker and teacher.

© 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

http://lnk.nu/nydailynews.com/6vq.html

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Un-American & Inefficient

by Errol Louis

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As shocking evidence surfaces that the Central Intelligence Agency may be using torture to gather anti-terrorism information, the Bush administration has responded with a wave of ducking, dodging and double-talk. Every evasion makes it more clear that Team Bush is hell-bent on preserving torture as an option if they think we, the public, will let them get away with it.

Just this week, as Secretary of State Rice toured European capitals, she fended off a storm of criticism from European politicians by insisting that Bush "doesn't condone torture" and that "we'll do everything that we can within the law to deal with terrorists." But Rice also waffled, pointedly refusing to confirm or deny the explosive allegation, reported on the front page of The Washington Post, that the CIA is running a network of secret prisons in Eastern Europe where suspected terrorists are being held incommunicado - and, perhaps, are being subjected to torture.

Even worse, the White House continues to oppose a bill, championed by Sen. John McCain of Arizona and passed by the Senate and the House, that would ban all U.S. forces from ever using cruel and inhumane treatment on any prisoner. Vice President Cheney is leading the Bush administration's opposition to the McCain bill, pushing for an exception for the CIA.

The shameful refusal of high officials to simply outlaw the use of torture, everywhere and in all cases, seems to enjoy a significant measure of support from the American public. An Associated Press poll released this week found 38% of Americans think torture against suspected terrorists can "often" or "sometimes" be justified to obtain information about terrorism, compared with 36% who believe such torture can "never" be justified.

It's easy to guess where the pro-torture sentiment comes from. Many Americans, shaken by the horrific attacks of 9/11, no doubt imagine the famous, hypothetical "ticking time bomb" emergency, in which authorities resort to torture to extract information about an impending attack from a suspected terrorist.

The problem with such dramatic scenarios, repeatedly played out in various Hollywood movies and television shows, is that they have no basis in reality. When it comes to turning up vital information, there's compelling evidence that torture doesn't work.

Just ask McCain, who was a prisoner of war and tortured by the Vietnamese. When his captors demanded names of the men in his unit, McCain gave them names - every member of the starting offensive line of the Green Bay Packers.

Another tortured POW named Larry Chesley, who was held by the Vietnamese for four years, told the Arizona Republic he gave the names of high school classmates. And Jack Bomar, who was held for six years, invented names. He had joined his unit right before being captured, and didn't know anybody.

You get the picture. People under torture can be forced to "reveal" almost anything, true or not, making them a dubious source of information.

In Israel, where real ticking bombs go off with depressing regularity, the country's Supreme Court unanimously voted to outlaw torture in 1999, noting it "does not constitute a reasonable investigation practice."

The administration will - and should - continue to get international condemnation until it comes clean on the question of the secret prison camps and publicly makes clear that torture, an unreliable and immoral practice, will not be practiced by American military or intelligence forces. Not ever.

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Originally published on December 8, 2005

http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick12092005.html

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December 9, 2005

The Big Heist by "Iraq's Best Hope"

Blair Tries to Cover Up $1.3 Billion Iraqi Theft

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Baghdad.

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The British government is trying to stall an investigation into the theft of more than $1.3bn (£740m) from the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, senior Iraqi officials say.

The government wants to postpone the investigation to help its favored candidate Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, in the election on December 15. The money disappeared during his administration.

The UK's enthusiasm for Mr Allawi may have led it into promoting a cover-up of how the money was siphoned off and sent abroad. One Iraqi minister believes the investigation will be dropped when the next government is formed.

The scandal is expected to explode with renewed force in the next few weeks. The Independent has learnt of secret tape recordings of a wide-ranging conversation between a Ministry of Defense official and a businessman, naming politicians and officials involved.

"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, said. "Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal." Most of the military purchases were made in Poland and Pakistan. They included obsolete helicopters, armoured vehicles unable to stop a bullet and grossly over-priced machine guns and bullets. Payments were made in advance. Often the Ministry of Defense did not even have a copy of contracts under which it was paying hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ahmed Chalabi, the Deputy Prime Minister, says William Patey, the British ambassador in Baghdad, asked him not to give prominence to the scandal before the election because this might "politicise the investigation". Mr Patey denies he had asked for the investigation to be delayed.

A former senior British adviser was quoted as saying that Tony Blair was convinced Mr Allawi "is the best hope" for Iraq. He added that Mr Blair had sent a small team of operatives to give political help to Mr Allawi. In background briefings, British officials have heavily supported the former prime minister despite evidence that government corruption was rife under his administration.

Mr Allawi is a former member of the Baath party who fell out with Saddam Hussein in the 1970s. Resident in Britain for many years, he became the leader of an opposition group, the Iraqi National Accord. He has never denied a close association with British intelligence and the CIA said he was justified in taking support from any foreign intelligence service willing to help him fight Saddam.

Supporters of Mr Allawi have denounced allegations about widespread fraud while he was prime minister in 2004-05 as an attempt to damage him before a close-fought election next week. But documents seen by The Independent show Mr Allawi's office authorising astonishingly large sums of money to be spent by the Defense Ministry. The cabinet was excluded at the request of Hazem al-Shaalan, the Defense Minister.

He asked for and received permission from the prime minister's office to spend money without oversight in September 2004, citing the gravity of the crisis facing the Iraq. In November, Mr Shaalan received a letter from the cabinet secretariat saying the prime minister had agreed to spend $1.7bn "for the purpose of creating two rapid intervention divisions". By the winter of 2004, large sums were being sent out of Iraq in sacks filled with $100 bills loaded on to planes. One shipment of $300m was noticed and intercepted.

The Iraqi army and police have paid heavily in lives because of the misappropriation of the almost all the defense procurement budget. Insurgents are often better armed than government forces. Soldiers travel through Baghdad in ageing white pick-ups normally used to carry cabbages to the market.

The men chosen, primarily by the US, to run the Iraqi Defense Ministry were extraordinarily inexperienced. They included Mr Shalaan, the Defense Minister, who had worked in real estate in a small way in London during the 1990s. He may have appealed to American and British advisers because he was vociferously anti-Iranian.

Ziyad Cattan was the head of military procurement at the Defense Ministry who signed cheques for hundreds of millions of dollars. He openly admits to knowing nothing about weapons. He returned to Iraq just before the war in 2003 after 27 years in Poland. His previous jobs included selling flowers, shoes and used cars. At one time he ran a pizza parlour.

Mr Cattan is allegedly one of the voices secretly recorded when he was talking in a car with Naer Mohammed Ahmed Jumaili. Mr Jumaili acted as middle man for the arms deals, Mr Chalabi said at a press conference in Baghdad this week. He said 35 cheques from the Ministry of Defense worth $1.1bn were paid into Mr Jumaili's account at the Al Warkah Bank in Baghdad.

A mystery surrounding the alleged misappropriation of military procurement budget is that it passed unnoticed by American and British officials in Baghdad. This was despite the fact that they were supposedly supervising the build up of a new Iraqi army and police force. Mr Shaalan and Mr Cattan both protest that nothing was done in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense at this time that was not known to the US.

A problem facing the investigation into the missing money is that so many politicians and officials from the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish communities in Iraq were either implicated or failed to notice what was happening. The National Assembly has not lifted Mr Shaalan's parliamentary immunity.

Supporters of Mr Allawi, the Kurdish parties and some members of Shia religious parties have sought to delay the investigation.

Britain has backed Mr Allawi strongly in the hope that as a secular Shia with nationalist credentials he can unite people from the three main communities.

Despite British support, Iraqi political observers do not believe Mr Allawi will be the next prime minister. Last weekend he was chased from the shrine in the holy Shia city of Najaf by worshippers hurling shoes whom he says were trying to kill him.

With most Iraqis voting on sectarian or ethnic lines Mr Allawi will be doing well if he can win more than 25 seats in the 275-member Assembly.