yes_justice | Dec. 2nd, 2004

Dec. 2nd, 2004

An Open Letter From Sibel Edmonds
Dear Fellow Citizens:

For the past three years, the United States Department of Justice has been relentlessly engaged in actions geared toward covering up my reports and investigations into my allegations. These actions include gagging the United States Congress, blocking court proceedings in my case by invoking state secret privilege, quashing a subpoena for my deposition on information regarding 9/11, withholding documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act, and preventing the release of the Inspector General's report of its investigations into my reports and allegations. My reports, many of which have been confirmed by the United States Senate and leaked memos by the Department of Justice, involve criminal conduct against our national interests, serious security breaches threatening our intelligence, intentional mistranslation of intelligence with severe consequences, and intentional blocking of certain terrorism and criminal cases from being investigated by our government officials.

This is not just about our government's relentless fight against me, and my information. This fight is also directed against what is known as "the public's right to know" in our essential oversight responsibility over our government as responsible citizens. These actions by our government are not geared toward protecting the "national security" of the United States. On the contrary, they are endangering our national security by covering up facts and information related to criminal activities against this country and it's citizens. The Department of Justice and this administration are fully aware that making this information public will bring about the question of accountability. And they do not want to be held accountable. It is for these reasons that I have been striving to get the Congress to release the long overdue report by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, and to hold its own public hearings regarding these issues. In a letter written July 9, 2004 to the Attorney General, regarding the classification of the entire report on my case by the Inspector General's office, Senator Grassley and Senator Leahy stated:

"We fear that the designation of information as classified in these cases serves to protect the executive branch against embarrassing revelations and full accountability. Releasing declassified versions of these reports, or at least portions or summaries, would serve the public's interest, increase transparency, promote effectiveness and efficiency at the FBI, and facilitate Congressional oversight. To do otherwise could damage the public's confidence not only in the government's ability to protect the nation, but also in the government's ability to police itself."

I know that it is very easy to get discouraged with the system and give up the fight. I know sometimes it makes sense to consider attempts to bring about transparency and accountability futile. I know many of us believe that by voting once every few years, paying our taxes in a timely manner, and abiding by the law, we more than fulfill our obligations as citizens of this great democratic nation. I myself used to sincerely believe that. There have been times when I came so very close to giving up, knowing that all those available channels I had pursued, from the Congress to the Courts, from the IG's office to the 9/11 Commission, became rock-solid walls and ears deafened to the voice of public concern. Giving up would have been the easiest way to stop the time, energy, and financial resources being consumed in my fruitless battle to bring about truth, transparency, and accountability. For me, there were times it would have been very easy to stop, to get disgusted and give up; if it weren't for those words of wisdom from our founding Fathers who said: "The price of liberty, is eternal vigilance." If it weren't for the fact that I have lived in countries where the words freedom, liberty, transparency, and accountability represented fantasy, surrealism, and impossibility; which gave me more reasons to treasure what this great country and its Constitution offered me as its citizen.

I was told so many times by so many people that "these issues are so troubling, but this is the government and we can't do anything about it. We can't rock the boat." But stop for a second and think about it: We elect the captains of this boat, we maintain and sustain this boat through our taxes, and we, the people, suffer the consequences when this boat malfunctions, as we did on September 11. If we don't have the right to rock this boat, when this boat or part of it is badly in need of being rocked and repaired, then who does?

Our Congress must fulfill the "checks and balances" responsibilities of the Constitution in the exercise of its fundamental duties, including probing deeper to produce more information about government activities as part of its appropriations, authorization, and oversight functions. We the people have put these representatives in the Congress. We the people have given them the authority to ensure oversight, integrity, transparency, and accountability of our government and our rights. Thus, we the people have the right and the power to demand that our representatives fulfill these obligations.

Government transparency is fundamental to democracy. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Information is the currency of democracy." Our democracy cannot endure without a committed citizenry and an open government that answers to the people. Our democracy has survived because of the participation of its citizenry, which completely depends on the government's transparency and accountability.

I am asking for your support to do just that – demand government transparency and accountability. Please read the following petition demanding the immediate release of the long-completed IG Report, followed by public Congressional hearings, by clicking on the link below. If you agree, if you want answers and accountability, please sign this petition.

Sincerely,
Sibel D. Edmonds

Came across this sign of the times from Under the Same Sun, while reading the insightful Picket Line:

"Support our Marine who Shot the Wounded Insurgent"

(click for larger image)

CAPTION READS:"The Gods of War Hate those who Hesitate"

Now, try to turn your prism a bit and imagine this shirt another way: An unarmed and severely wounded U.S. Marine is lying face down on the floor of a room in a battle zone for days, insurgents burst into the room and the marine is shot in the back with an automatic weapon under videotape. Later, a tee-shirt is made glorifying the slaying and its sold in the arab world. The NY Post dutifully reports the tee shirt, declaring the enemy "savages".

We are bragging about our Psy-Ops missions:

"On the evening of Oct. 14, a young Marine spokesman near Fallouja appeared on CNN and made a dramatic announcement. "Troops crossed the line of departure," 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert declared, using a common military expression signaling the start of a major campaign. "It's going to be a long night." CNN, which had been alerted to expect a major news development, reported that the long-awaited offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Fallouja had begun. In fact, the Fallouja offensive would not kick off for another three weeks. Gilbert's carefully worded announcement was an elaborate psychological operation — or "psy-op" — intended to dupe insurgents in Fallouja and allow U.S. commanders to see how guerrillas would react if they believed U.S. troops were entering the city, according to several Pentagon officials."

To be blunt, everything the Pentagon, White House, Centcom, and any embedded reporter claims could be a lie (aka "psy-op"). I already knew this, the build up to the war was a psy-op, but its surprising how brazenly we now fully admit that our word means nothing:

"Information is part of the battlefield in a way that it's never been before," one senior Bush administration official said. "We'd be foolish not to try to use it to our advantage."

The government is using our tax dollars to produce military propoganda.

The DOD released some more casualty figures bringing the total of US soldiers slain in November to 141 making it the bloodiest month in our occupation of Iraq.

Battles in southern Baghdad rage on with yet another car bomb....and another...Its clear the insurgency is not broken. The question is will another 12,000 more troops help anything?

The British embassy says the road to the Baghdad airport is too dangerous to travel. Also, Writer describes dangerous Iraq highway:

"Three vehicles from the Iraqi National Guard had been struck by rocket-propelled grenades and the contractors stopped to help. Not so the rest of the cars. Fearing the gunmen may still be around, the driver and dozens of civilian cars and trucks crowded onto an exit road for a quick escape. It is a scene repeated with alarming frequency along the white-knuckle 10-mile stretch of highway - known to U.S. troops as "RPG Alley" - which links the center of Baghdad with the airport on the western outskirts of the city. The U.S. State Department has described the airport road as one of the most dangerous routes in Iraq, and the British Embassy has banned its diplomats from using it because of the high risk of attack."

Despite the Falluja assault which cost 71 US soldiers lives and thousands of Iraqi lives, the road to Falluja is hell:

"Baghdad, Iraq — A resurgence in armed actions broke out Tuesday in areas west of Fallujah along a key highway leading to Jordan, just weeks after a massive U.S.-led military offensive in the city. ... Heavily armed anti-American insurgents on Tuesday took over and briefly held nine police stations and highway checkpoints, blowing up two buildings, police said. Drivers reported that insurgents also took control of large sections of the highway leading west out of Iraq, stopping traffic and shaking down passengers."

After Fallujah, Son Is Gone but Fervor Remains: Father Who Left Reluctantly Waits to Fight Another Day

"A hint of anger flashed across his usually calm demeanor. "Fifteen thousand Americans against 2,000 mujaheddin, with their technology and their firepower? They say they were victorious, but what kind of victory was that? We have a principle: defending our country," he said. "Why are they coming here? For what?" "

Falluja: ( play lo-fi | play hi-fi | Download MP3)

We now say we don't have Margaret Hassan's body after all, dental records did not match, but it was somebodies body. Or maybe its a psy-op.

Another soldier speaks out:

"Jim Talib is an antiwar vet who served in Iraq earlier this year for nearly seven months. He has recently begun speaking out against the war and occupation. Derek Seidman (co-editor of www.lefthook.org), was able to catch up with Jim Talib and ask him some questions about the war and occupation, his personal experiences in Iraq, and issues concerning the relationship between antiwar soldiers and the broader antiwar movement.

...

On one of my trips to drop off a detainee at the jail, the Senior Interrogator told us not to bring them in any more. 'Just shoot them' he said, I was stunned, I couldn't believe he actually said it. He was not joking around, he was giving us a directive. A few days later a group of Humvees from another unit passed by one of our machine gun positions, and they had the bodies of two dead Iraqi's strapped to their hoods like a couple of deer. One of the bodies had exposed brain matter that had begun to cook onto the hood of the vehicle, it was a gruesome, medieval display. So much of what I experienced seemed out of control, I saw so little respect for the living and almost none for the dead, and there was almost no accountability. "

I expect more will be Breaking the Code of Silence as time goes by.

(hat tip

vyoma)

This was a good read today. Here is one sample:

Iraq's civilian dead get no hearing in the United States By Jeffrey D. Sachs

Evidence is mounting that America's war in Iraq has killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and perhaps well over 100,000. Yet this carnage is systematically ignored in the United States, where the media and government portray a war in which there are no civilian deaths, because there are no Iraqi civilians, only insurgents.
American behavior and self-perceptions reveal the ease with which a civilized country can engage in large-scale killing of civilians without public discussion. In late October, the British medical journal Lancet published a study of civilian deaths in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion began. The sample survey documented an extra 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths compared to the death rate in the preceding year, when Saddam Hussein was still in power - and this estimate did not even count excess deaths in Fallujah, which was deemed too dangerous to include.
The study also noted that the majority of deaths resulted from violence, and that a high proportion of the violent deaths were due to U.S. aerial bombing. The epidemiologists acknowledged the uncertainties of these estimates, but presented enough data to warrant an urgent follow-up investigation and reconsideration by the Bush administration and the U.S. military of aerial bombing of Iraq's urban areas.
America's public reaction has been as remarkable as the Lancet study, for the reaction has been no reaction. On Oct. 29 the vaunted New York Times ran a single story of 770 words on page 8 of the paper. The Times reporter apparently did not interview a single Bush administration or U.S. military official. No follow-up stories or editorials appeared, and no Times reporters assessed the story on the ground. Coverage in other U.S. papers was similarly meager. The Washington Post, also on Oct. 29, carried a single 758-word story on page 16.
Recent reporting on the bombing of Fallujah has also been an exercise in self-denial. On Nov. 6, The New York Times wrote that "warplanes pounded rebel positions" in Fallujah, without noting that "rebel positions" were actually in civilian neighborhoods. Another story in The Times on Nov. 12, citing "military officials," dutifully reported: "Since the assault began on Monday, about 600 rebels have been killed, along with 18 American and 5 Iraqi soldiers." The issue of civilian deaths was not even raised.
Violence is only one reason for the increase in civilian deaths in Iraq. Children in urban war zones die in vast numbers from diarrhea, respiratory infections and other causes, owing to unsafe drinking water, lack of refrigerated foods, and acute shortages of blood and basic medicines in clinics and hospitals (that is, if civilians even dare to leave their houses for medical care). The Red Crescent and other relief agencies were unable to relieve Fallujah's civilian population.
On Nov. 14, the front page of The New York Times led with the following description: "Army tanks and fighting vehicles blasted their way into the last main rebel stronghold in Fallujah at sundown on Saturday after American warplanes and artillery prepared the way with a savage barrage on the district. Earlier in the afternoon, 10 separate plumes of smoke rose from Southern Fallujah, as it etched against the desert sky, and probably exclaimed catastrophe for the insurgents."
There is, once again, virtually no mention of the catastrophe for civilians etched against that desert sky. There is a hint, though, in a brief mention in the middle of the story of a father looking over his wounded sons in a hospital and declaring: "Now Americans are shooting randomly at anything that moves."
A few days later, a U.S. television film crew was in a bombed-out mosque with American marines. While the cameras were rolling, a marine turned to an unarmed and wounded Iraqi lying on the ground and shot the man in the head. (Reportedly, there were a few other such cases of outright murder.) But the American media more or less brushed aside this shocking incident, too. The Wall Street Journal actually wrote an editorial on Nov. 18 that criticized the critics, noting that whatever the U.S. did, its enemies in Iraq did worse, as if this excused American abuses.
It does not. The U.S. is killing massive numbers of Iraqi civilians, embittering the population and many in the Islamic world, and laying the ground for escalating violence and death. No number of slaughtered Iraqis will bring peace. The American fantasy of a final battle, in Fallujah or elsewhere, or the capture of some terrorist mastermind, perpetuates a cycle of bloodletting that puts the world in peril.
Worse still, American public opinion, media, and the recent election victory of the Bush administration have left the world's most powerful military without practical restraint.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. This commentary is published in collaboration with Project Syndicate