Little has been accomplished, too much will be left hanging and what was done was often done badly.
By Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein
September 27, 2006
THE FINAL DAYS of any Congress are never pretty, as lawmakers scramble to finish a string of bills while getting out of town as early as possible to hit the campaign trail. After 37 years in Washington — 18 elections — we are pretty well inured to these shenanigans. But even those of us with strong stomachs are getting indigestion from the farcical end of the 109th Congress, slated for early Saturday.
This Congress hit the ground stumbling and has not lifted itself into an upright position. With few accomplishments and an overloaded agenda, it is set to finish its tenure with the fewest number of days in session in our lifetimes, falling well below 100 days this year.
This new modern record is even more staggering when one realizes that more than 25 of those days had no votes scheduled before 6:30 p.m., making them half- or quarter-days at best. The typical workweek in Congress (when there is a week spent in Washington) starts late Tuesday evening and finishes by noon Thursday. No wonder satirist Mark Russell closes many of his shows by telling his audiences what members of Congress tell their colleagues every Wednesday: "Have a nice weekend."
This part-time Congress has other parallels to the famous "Do-Nothing 80th Congress" that Harry Truman ran against successfully in 1948. The output of the 109th is pathetic measured against its predecessors and considering its priorities, which included a comprehensive immigration bill, tax reform and the research and development tax credit, lobbying and ethics reform, healthcare costs and insurance coverage, trade agreements, procedures for the detention and trial of suspected terrorists, and regulations for the oversight of domestic wiretaps, among many others. With just days to go before Congress adjourns and the fiscal year begins, not a single one of the 11 appropriations bills that make up the range of government programs has been enacted into law.
But the big problem with this Congress is not what it didn't do, it is what it did, and did badly. As of Tuesday, there were three must-pass pieces of legislation pending: defense and homeland security appropriations and the annual Department of Defense authorization. Each year, when the few must-pass bills move forward, there is a major temptation to throw on all kinds of extraneous provisions; when lawmakers can identify a train that is both leaving the station and sure to reach its destination, everyone has baggage they try to toss on board. Each year, responsible party leaders resist most of these measures, to preserve the integrity of the process and to keep shoddy bills with no vetting and no broad support from either being railroaded or inserted surreptitiously.
This year, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) has vowed to protect the defense authorization bill — but House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has other ideas. Hastert says he will kill the bill, doing damage to the Department of Defense and conceivably to troops in the field, unless Warner and his fellow senators cave and tack on an entire federal court security bill and another House anti-immigration bill.
The anti-immigration bill would allow indefinite detention of illegal immigrants protected under political asylum provisions, and it would deny court access to many. Hastert and his fellow House Republicans have refused to say exactly what they will include in the 300-page court security bill, but by most insider accounts, it will include not just commendable, bipartisan provisions to protect judges and law enforcement officials from threats but provisions to federalize the death penalty for murders of law enforcement officials, judicial employees or state and local employees, bypassing the law in states that have no death penalty.
It also reportedly would sharply restrict habeas corpus by, for the first time, singling out a special class of victims (judges and police officers); bypass hearings for juveniles charged with gang-related offenses and automatically have them tried as adults; and allow judges and prosecutors to carry concealed weapons, even where banned by state law.
Most of these measures have had no hearings — or cursory ones — much less debate or votes by the full House or Senate. Many are sharply opposed by states, which complain about the federal government trampling their laws and sovereignty.
IF THIS WERE ONE isolated instance of a Congress pushing through sloppy and ill-considered legislation to score political points before an election, we would wince but move on. But this breach of the normal legislative process is all too typical of today's Congress. Over the last five years, Congress has abandoned the web of rules and norms that have long governed how a bill is considered, how votes take place and how outcomes are decided. The infamous three-hour vote to pass the Medicare prescription drug bill two years ago — a vote supposed to last 15 minutes — stretched from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. It was held open until the leaders could squeeze out enough votes to make a majority and resulted in several members, including then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, being rebuked by the Ethics Committee. But the truth is, rigging the rules for partisan advantage has become routine.
To be sure, efforts to close off debate and play hardball when votes are tight is not new; Democrats played these games when they were in the majority in the 1980s and early 1990s. But abuses of the regular order that used to be occasional and average — a six on a scale from one to 10 — are now chronic and sometimes hit 11.
The framers wanted Congress to move slowly and deliberately. But today, it is common to spring on the House and Senate a 1,000-page bill that has not been through any vetting process. With little notice and no time for anyone to read the bill, much less absorb or analyze it, with no amendments allowed, the leadership demands a party-line, up-or-down vote. This is a formula for poor oversight and worse law.
This November, will the public demand more from Congress, the first branch of government and the linchpin of American democracy?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THOMAS MANN, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and NORMAN ORNSTEIN, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, are authors of "The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track."
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Saturday, September 30, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
Politics and Platitudes Mean Most Vulnerable Will Suffer
POLITICS AND PLATITUDES MEAN THE MOST VULNERABLE SUFFER
In the days after Katrina, twelve members of Congress sent a joint letter to the major oil companies asking for help. The rising price of oil, the refining crunch and the onset of winter threatened many of the most vulnerable in America with untenable choices.
CITGO was the only company to step up and offer help. The current CITGO home heating initiative is a result of those commitments.
The righteous anger over Hugo Chavez’s posturing at the United Nations is like ashes in the mouth to over 260 homes in Western Alaska who will now go without a gift of heating oil this year because politicians from Caracas to Anchorage chose to posture over an abstraction.
But first a word about Hugo Chavez calling George W. Bush “The Devil.”
Over the past five years, the White House political operation has assiduously cultivated a halo about the person of George W.Bush. The politics of the pulpit was laid bare in the Jack Abramoff hearings in which pastors were mobilized for a fee to serve the interests of Abramoff’s tribal casino clients. The evangelical political operation exposed in the Abramoff hearings went right to the White House.
http://indian.senate.gov/2005hrgs/110205hrg/110205exhibits.pdf
The President of Venezuela, along with the rest of the world, is quite aware of the political uses of religion by the Bush administration and, using theatrics and literary allusion, President Chavez knocked the halo off George Bush’s head to curry favor among the non-aligned nations among whom President Bush is unpopular. Venezuela is vying with Guatemala for a seat on the U.N. Security Council. In other words, it was an old fashioned political stump-speech.
In response, the right-wing pundits of America have whipped themselves into a foamy lather while the rest of the political establishment, the media, opposition Democrats and think tanks either remain silent or, like Nancy Pelosi, join in the harangue of election-year chest beating.
Through the distorted lens of the last six weeks of a political election cycle, no one is seeing or thinking clearly.
Comes now the political lynch mob looking around for symbols to burn, such as the landmark CITGO sign in Boston that one city councilman wants to replace with an American Flag. CITGO is an American company that is now wholly-owned by Petroleo de Venezuela. CITGO was around long before Hugo Chavez and CITGO will be around long after he goes away. Since CITGO has no outlets in Alaska to attack, we are left with, well…the charitable home heating oil program of CITGO. We in Alaska are saying “…we’ll show Hugo Chavez, by golly…we will refuse a gift of home heating oil to our villages!”
Yeah, that will show Hugo Chavez!
Is CITGO’s goodwill little more than propaganda? It is hard to deny that.
Few acts of charity or kindness managed by a corporate relations office that also results in a tax benefit can be considered anything but propaganda, including a grant from, say, ConocoPhillips.
Interestingly, ConocoPhillips is doing plenty of business with Venezuela. The company is partnering with the democratically-elected government of Hugo Chavez in the development of oil fields and processing units. Also interestingly, the activities of the exploration and production segment of ConocoPhilips are being financed by low interest loans and profits from activities throughout the company including, presumably, Alaska.
While I wish ConocoPhillips well on their venture, I seriously doubt that ConocoPhillips will make a decision affecting their investment and strategic partnership with Petroleo de Venezuela based upon the politics and platitudes currently being played out in America.
So my question is, why should rural leaders let this all this silliness cloud their judgment?
The villages of Alaska and the most vulnerable Alaskans are being asked by their political leadership to make a noble sacrifice for patriotism and the President.
Once again, to paraphrase Mark Twain, when the wealthy and powerful call for sacrifice, it is the poor who do the giving.
In the days after Katrina, twelve members of Congress sent a joint letter to the major oil companies asking for help. The rising price of oil, the refining crunch and the onset of winter threatened many of the most vulnerable in America with untenable choices.
CITGO was the only company to step up and offer help. The current CITGO home heating initiative is a result of those commitments.
The righteous anger over Hugo Chavez’s posturing at the United Nations is like ashes in the mouth to over 260 homes in Western Alaska who will now go without a gift of heating oil this year because politicians from Caracas to Anchorage chose to posture over an abstraction.
But first a word about Hugo Chavez calling George W. Bush “The Devil.”
Over the past five years, the White House political operation has assiduously cultivated a halo about the person of George W.Bush. The politics of the pulpit was laid bare in the Jack Abramoff hearings in which pastors were mobilized for a fee to serve the interests of Abramoff’s tribal casino clients. The evangelical political operation exposed in the Abramoff hearings went right to the White House.
http://indian.senate.gov/2005hrgs/110205hrg/110205exhibits.pdf
The President of Venezuela, along with the rest of the world, is quite aware of the political uses of religion by the Bush administration and, using theatrics and literary allusion, President Chavez knocked the halo off George Bush’s head to curry favor among the non-aligned nations among whom President Bush is unpopular. Venezuela is vying with Guatemala for a seat on the U.N. Security Council. In other words, it was an old fashioned political stump-speech.
In response, the right-wing pundits of America have whipped themselves into a foamy lather while the rest of the political establishment, the media, opposition Democrats and think tanks either remain silent or, like Nancy Pelosi, join in the harangue of election-year chest beating.
Through the distorted lens of the last six weeks of a political election cycle, no one is seeing or thinking clearly.
Comes now the political lynch mob looking around for symbols to burn, such as the landmark CITGO sign in Boston that one city councilman wants to replace with an American Flag. CITGO is an American company that is now wholly-owned by Petroleo de Venezuela. CITGO was around long before Hugo Chavez and CITGO will be around long after he goes away. Since CITGO has no outlets in Alaska to attack, we are left with, well…the charitable home heating oil program of CITGO. We in Alaska are saying “…we’ll show Hugo Chavez, by golly…we will refuse a gift of home heating oil to our villages!”
Yeah, that will show Hugo Chavez!
Is CITGO’s goodwill little more than propaganda? It is hard to deny that.
Few acts of charity or kindness managed by a corporate relations office that also results in a tax benefit can be considered anything but propaganda, including a grant from, say, ConocoPhillips.
Interestingly, ConocoPhillips is doing plenty of business with Venezuela. The company is partnering with the democratically-elected government of Hugo Chavez in the development of oil fields and processing units. Also interestingly, the activities of the exploration and production segment of ConocoPhilips are being financed by low interest loans and profits from activities throughout the company including, presumably, Alaska.
While I wish ConocoPhillips well on their venture, I seriously doubt that ConocoPhillips will make a decision affecting their investment and strategic partnership with Petroleo de Venezuela based upon the politics and platitudes currently being played out in America.
So my question is, why should rural leaders let this all this silliness cloud their judgment?
The villages of Alaska and the most vulnerable Alaskans are being asked by their political leadership to make a noble sacrifice for patriotism and the President.
Once again, to paraphrase Mark Twain, when the wealthy and powerful call for sacrifice, it is the poor who do the giving.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS WHINING ABOUT CHAVEZ; RESPONSE
ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL
Take care of our own
Alaska should not let Venezuela embarrass us again next year
Published: September 26, 2006
Smart people learn from their mistakes. Or, at least they're supposed to.
In this case, it was a mistake for the Legislature not to approve the governor's request for additional state funding to help keep low-income Alaskans warm this winter. Instead of us taking care of our own people, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stepped in to help pay the fuel bill. In doing so, Mr. Chavez gained even more international publicity for his U.S.-trashing political rants.
It's probably too late to undo the embarrassment this year, unless the North Slope oil companies are willing to volunteer the financial aid. But let's hope Alaska doesn't make the same mistake next year. The state, with all its oil wealth, and Alaska's regional Native corporations, with their profits, should provide leadership on the issue -- and not allow Venezuela to rub our noses in oil.
Federal funding for the low-income energy assistance program has been flat for 20 years, and Gov. Frank Murkowski this past session asked lawmakers to put in state cash to supplement the funding.
Legislators said no, and rural Alaskans started to fear another winter of costly heating fuel.
Then up steps President Chavez and Houston-based Citgo Petroleum Corp., which is owned by Venezuela's national oil company. Expanding last year's program of helping low-income Americans stay warm, Citgo this month said it would donate $5 million to buy heating fuel for every household in 151 Alaska villages.
It's hard to blame villagers for accepting the gift. Heating fuel is $6 a gallon in the Koyukuk River village of Hughes and $7 a gallon in the Kobuk River village of Kobuk. The free 100 gallons of oil, courtesy of Citgo, means a $600 to $700 savings for those households.
But it's more than ironic, it's embarrassing that residents in a state with so much oil wealth should be looking to a foreign nation for help. Even worse that the foreign nation is led by a president who supports Iran's nuclear ambitions and is friends with many of America's enemies.
Alaska has enough problems convincing the nation that we're able to manage our own affairs, our resources and our wealth. Taking Venezuela's aid makes it worse. It should not happen again.
BOTTOM LINE: Hugo Chavez is using Alaska.
***************************************************************************
THE RESPONSE....
I attended the signing ceremony in New York for the Citgo heating oil donation program that you find so worrisome. It was a wonderful event. Hugo Chavez was there and showed himself to be humorous, self-effacing, and extremely well-read. He was also quite gracious to all of us in attendance, particularly the young Aleut and Inupiat dancers who performed at this historic event.
I will repeat to you what I told Fox News when asked what I thought about Hugo Chavez calling President Bush "The Devil": It is part of the Kabuki play of international politics. It was a literary and theatrical performance, not unlike the "Axis of Evil" or the "Holy Crusade Against the Enemies of the West" that Bush declared after 9-11. I also said that, in the Bible (Book of James), we are admonished that "...not by faith alone, but by your acts shall you be judged..." Chavez's words are less important than what he does. Bush's actions are more important than what he says. In my opinion, if both died today, Chavez (a devout Catholic) will enjoy the bounties of heaven; George Bush will burn in Hell...
Fox chose to broadcast only my last 17 words or so.
The Bush White House has worked assiduously to develop the Evangelical "mystique" of George Bush. Linking his White House to "God's Plan" helps to innoculate President Bush from critical analysis by his 'base' for his foreign misadventures. Is it so surprising, therefore, that a critic of those misadventures, like President Chavez, might try to knock the halo off President Bush's head?
To see an example of the evangelical political workings of the Bush Machine, go to:
http://www.presidentialprayerteam.org/
Next, you inaccurately characterize President Chavez as "...attacking America". President Chavez takes pains to point out in every one of his theatrical outings that his issues are with George W. Bush and NOT America.
I can understand that duality. My own contempt for George Bush arises in large part out of my love for this country. I believe that a large number of Americans share this sentiment.
Then you punch-up your rhetoric by linking Chavez to Iran. While it is true that Chavez supports the development of peaceful nuclear power and opposes interference by the United States in Iran's internal affairs, there is no record that demonstrates Hugo Chavez supports the development of nuclear weapons by Iran. When you refer darkly to Iran's "nuclear ambitions", you contribute to a misunderstanding of Chavez's position. While the Republican "talking points" focus on Iran's alleged weapons program, the consensus of the intelligence community is that weapons delivery is far off, if it all. The "crisis" over Iran may be much ado about very little.
Then you say that Venezuela "embarassed Alaska"? Really? What you are really pointing out is that Alaska embarrasses itself. I could go on too long about the width and depth of Alaska's self-embarrassment, with regard to this issue and many others, but I will not. The genesis of the Citgo program was a letter sent by 12 congressmen to all the major oil companies after Katrina asking for such a charitable program. Citgo was the ONLY one that responded. I repeat: Citgo was the only oil company that responded to a request by members of the U.S. Congress to provide heating fuel assistance.
...So tell me, in light of this history, Larry, how is the government of Venezuela "rubbing our noses in it"?
Also, it isn't "Alaska" taking the "aid" from Venezuela. It is Tribes and Tribal non-profits acting independently of "Alaska". I personally hope they continue to do so. My hope is that the program continues and that some future sustainable business relationship can be developed with Citgo or any other company that wants to do business with Alaska Tribes.
Finally, you and your colleague Paul Jenkins seem concerned that Tribes and Village representatives would do business with the likes of Venezuela. Well, guess what? So are the likes of Conoco-Phillips. Take a look at their 10-K report filed with the SEC (synopsis attached). C-P enjoys subsidized financing from the Ex-Im Bank, tax breaks for overseas investments and probably uses some of its Alaskan profits to finance their happy partnership with Petroleo de Venezuela.
The irony and the hypocrisy of the self-righteousness of you and Mr. Jenkins is Denali-scale.
Take care of our own
Alaska should not let Venezuela embarrass us again next year
Published: September 26, 2006
Smart people learn from their mistakes. Or, at least they're supposed to.
In this case, it was a mistake for the Legislature not to approve the governor's request for additional state funding to help keep low-income Alaskans warm this winter. Instead of us taking care of our own people, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stepped in to help pay the fuel bill. In doing so, Mr. Chavez gained even more international publicity for his U.S.-trashing political rants.
It's probably too late to undo the embarrassment this year, unless the North Slope oil companies are willing to volunteer the financial aid. But let's hope Alaska doesn't make the same mistake next year. The state, with all its oil wealth, and Alaska's regional Native corporations, with their profits, should provide leadership on the issue -- and not allow Venezuela to rub our noses in oil.
Federal funding for the low-income energy assistance program has been flat for 20 years, and Gov. Frank Murkowski this past session asked lawmakers to put in state cash to supplement the funding.
Legislators said no, and rural Alaskans started to fear another winter of costly heating fuel.
Then up steps President Chavez and Houston-based Citgo Petroleum Corp., which is owned by Venezuela's national oil company. Expanding last year's program of helping low-income Americans stay warm, Citgo this month said it would donate $5 million to buy heating fuel for every household in 151 Alaska villages.
It's hard to blame villagers for accepting the gift. Heating fuel is $6 a gallon in the Koyukuk River village of Hughes and $7 a gallon in the Kobuk River village of Kobuk. The free 100 gallons of oil, courtesy of Citgo, means a $600 to $700 savings for those households.
But it's more than ironic, it's embarrassing that residents in a state with so much oil wealth should be looking to a foreign nation for help. Even worse that the foreign nation is led by a president who supports Iran's nuclear ambitions and is friends with many of America's enemies.
Alaska has enough problems convincing the nation that we're able to manage our own affairs, our resources and our wealth. Taking Venezuela's aid makes it worse. It should not happen again.
BOTTOM LINE: Hugo Chavez is using Alaska.
***************************************************************************
THE RESPONSE....
I attended the signing ceremony in New York for the Citgo heating oil donation program that you find so worrisome. It was a wonderful event. Hugo Chavez was there and showed himself to be humorous, self-effacing, and extremely well-read. He was also quite gracious to all of us in attendance, particularly the young Aleut and Inupiat dancers who performed at this historic event.
I will repeat to you what I told Fox News when asked what I thought about Hugo Chavez calling President Bush "The Devil": It is part of the Kabuki play of international politics. It was a literary and theatrical performance, not unlike the "Axis of Evil" or the "Holy Crusade Against the Enemies of the West" that Bush declared after 9-11. I also said that, in the Bible (Book of James), we are admonished that "...not by faith alone, but by your acts shall you be judged..." Chavez's words are less important than what he does. Bush's actions are more important than what he says. In my opinion, if both died today, Chavez (a devout Catholic) will enjoy the bounties of heaven; George Bush will burn in Hell...
Fox chose to broadcast only my last 17 words or so.
The Bush White House has worked assiduously to develop the Evangelical "mystique" of George Bush. Linking his White House to "God's Plan" helps to innoculate President Bush from critical analysis by his 'base' for his foreign misadventures. Is it so surprising, therefore, that a critic of those misadventures, like President Chavez, might try to knock the halo off President Bush's head?
To see an example of the evangelical political workings of the Bush Machine, go to:
http://www.presidentialprayerteam.org/
Next, you inaccurately characterize President Chavez as "...attacking America". President Chavez takes pains to point out in every one of his theatrical outings that his issues are with George W. Bush and NOT America.
I can understand that duality. My own contempt for George Bush arises in large part out of my love for this country. I believe that a large number of Americans share this sentiment.
Then you punch-up your rhetoric by linking Chavez to Iran. While it is true that Chavez supports the development of peaceful nuclear power and opposes interference by the United States in Iran's internal affairs, there is no record that demonstrates Hugo Chavez supports the development of nuclear weapons by Iran. When you refer darkly to Iran's "nuclear ambitions", you contribute to a misunderstanding of Chavez's position. While the Republican "talking points" focus on Iran's alleged weapons program, the consensus of the intelligence community is that weapons delivery is far off, if it all. The "crisis" over Iran may be much ado about very little.
Then you say that Venezuela "embarassed Alaska"? Really? What you are really pointing out is that Alaska embarrasses itself. I could go on too long about the width and depth of Alaska's self-embarrassment, with regard to this issue and many others, but I will not. The genesis of the Citgo program was a letter sent by 12 congressmen to all the major oil companies after Katrina asking for such a charitable program. Citgo was the ONLY one that responded. I repeat: Citgo was the only oil company that responded to a request by members of the U.S. Congress to provide heating fuel assistance.
...So tell me, in light of this history, Larry, how is the government of Venezuela "rubbing our noses in it"?
Also, it isn't "Alaska" taking the "aid" from Venezuela. It is Tribes and Tribal non-profits acting independently of "Alaska". I personally hope they continue to do so. My hope is that the program continues and that some future sustainable business relationship can be developed with Citgo or any other company that wants to do business with Alaska Tribes.
Finally, you and your colleague Paul Jenkins seem concerned that Tribes and Village representatives would do business with the likes of Venezuela. Well, guess what? So are the likes of Conoco-Phillips. Take a look at their 10-K report filed with the SEC (synopsis attached). C-P enjoys subsidized financing from the Ex-Im Bank, tax breaks for overseas investments and probably uses some of its Alaskan profits to finance their happy partnership with Petroleo de Venezuela.
The irony and the hypocrisy of the self-righteousness of you and Mr. Jenkins is Denali-scale.
Friday, September 15, 2006
hOW tO hACK a dIEBOLD mACHINE
Princeton University has performed a public service.
See the video on the sidebar.
Source: itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting
or click on the title (above)
-m2k
See the video on the sidebar.
Source: itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting
or click on the title (above)
-m2k
Friday, September 08, 2006
Senate: Saddam saw al-Qaida as threat
By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press WriterFri Sep 8, 7:48 PM ET
Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, a Senate report says, contradicting assertions President Bush has used to build support for the war in Iraq.
Released Friday, the report discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that before the war, Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.
Saddam told U.S. officials after his capture that he had not cooperated with Osama bin Laden even though he acknowledged that officials in his government had met with the al-Qaida leader, according to FBI summaries cited in the Senate report. "Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden," Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi leader's top aide, told the FBI.
The report also faults intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.
As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with Zarqawi."
Democrats contended that the administration continues to use faulty intelligence, including assertions of a link between Saddam's government and the recently killed al-Zarqawi, to justify the war in Iraq. They also said, in remarks attached to Friday's Senate Intelligence Committee document, that former CIA Director George Tenet had modified his position on the terrorist link at the request of administration policymakers.
Republicans said the document, which compares prewar intelligence with post-invasion findings on Iraq's weapons and on terrorist groups, broke little new ground. And they said Democrats were distorting it for political purposes.
A previous report in 2004 made clear the intelligence agencies' "massive failures," said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a member of the committee. "Yet to make a giant leap in logic to claim that the Bush administration intentionally misled the nation or manipulated intelligence is simply not warranted."
White House press secretary Tony Snow said the report was "nothing new."
A second part of the report concluded that false information from the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam group led by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi, was used to support key U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq. It said U.S. intelligence agents put out numerous red flags about the reliability of INC sources but the intelligence community made a "serious error" and used one source who concocted a story that Iraq was building mobile biological weapons laboratories.
The report also said that in 2002 the National Security Council directed that funding for the INC should continue "despite warnings from both the CIA, which terminated its relationship with the INC in December 1996, and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), that the INC was penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including the Iranians."
According to the report, postwar findings indicate that Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime." It said al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad from May until late November 2002. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."
In June 2004, Bush defended Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida," the president said.
The report concludes that postwar findings do not support a 2002 intelligence report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or had ever developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents. "The report is a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was linked with al-Qaida," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., a member of the committee.
Levin and Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, said Tenet told the committee last July that in 2002 he had complied with an administration request "to say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said" about the Saddam-terrorist link.
They said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the same day Bush gave a speech speaking of such a link, the CIA had sent a declassified letter to the committee saying it would be an "extreme step" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in attacking the United States.
They said Tenet acknowledged to the committee that subsequently issuing a statement that there was no inconsistency between the president's speech and the CIA viewpoint was "the wrong thing to do."
Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the mistakes of prewar intelligence have long been known and "the additional views of the committee's Democrats are little more than a rehashing of the same unfounded allegations they've used for over three years."
The panel report is Phase II of an analysis of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The first phase, issued in July 2004, focused on the CIA's failings in its estimates of Iraq's weapons program.
The second phase had been delayed as Republicans and Democrats fought over what information should be declassified and how far the committee should delve into the question of whether policymakers may have manipulated intelligence to make the case for war.
Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he planned to ask for an investigation into the amount of information remaining classified. He said, "I am particularly concerned it appears that information may have been classified to shield individuals from accountability."
___
On the Net:
Senate Intelligence Committee: http://intelligence.senate.gov
Saddam Hussein regarded al-Qaida as a threat rather than a possible ally, a Senate report says, contradicting assertions President Bush has used to build support for the war in Iraq.
Released Friday, the report discloses for the first time an October 2005 CIA assessment that before the war, Saddam's government "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward" al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or his associates.
Saddam told U.S. officials after his capture that he had not cooperated with Osama bin Laden even though he acknowledged that officials in his government had met with the al-Qaida leader, according to FBI summaries cited in the Senate report. "Saddam only expressed negative sentiments about bin Laden," Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi leader's top aide, told the FBI.
The report also faults intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion.
As recently as an Aug. 21 news conference, Bush said people should "imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein" with the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and "who had relations with Zarqawi."
Democrats contended that the administration continues to use faulty intelligence, including assertions of a link between Saddam's government and the recently killed al-Zarqawi, to justify the war in Iraq. They also said, in remarks attached to Friday's Senate Intelligence Committee document, that former CIA Director George Tenet had modified his position on the terrorist link at the request of administration policymakers.
Republicans said the document, which compares prewar intelligence with post-invasion findings on Iraq's weapons and on terrorist groups, broke little new ground. And they said Democrats were distorting it for political purposes.
A previous report in 2004 made clear the intelligence agencies' "massive failures," said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a member of the committee. "Yet to make a giant leap in logic to claim that the Bush administration intentionally misled the nation or manipulated intelligence is simply not warranted."
White House press secretary Tony Snow said the report was "nothing new."
A second part of the report concluded that false information from the Iraqi National Congress, an anti-Saddam group led by then-exile Ahmed Chalabi, was used to support key U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq. It said U.S. intelligence agents put out numerous red flags about the reliability of INC sources but the intelligence community made a "serious error" and used one source who concocted a story that Iraq was building mobile biological weapons laboratories.
The report also said that in 2002 the National Security Council directed that funding for the INC should continue "despite warnings from both the CIA, which terminated its relationship with the INC in December 1996, and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), that the INC was penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including the Iranians."
According to the report, postwar findings indicate that Saddam "was distrustful of al-Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime." It said al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad from May until late November 2002. But "postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi."
In June 2004, Bush defended Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Saddam had "long-established ties" with al-Qaida. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaida affiliates and al-Qaida," the president said.
The report concludes that postwar findings do not support a 2002 intelligence report that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, possessed biological weapons or had ever developed mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents. "The report is a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was linked with al-Qaida," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., a member of the committee.
Levin and Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, said Tenet told the committee last July that in 2002 he had complied with an administration request "to say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said" about the Saddam-terrorist link.
They said that on Oct. 7, 2002, the same day Bush gave a speech speaking of such a link, the CIA had sent a declassified letter to the committee saying it would be an "extreme step" for Saddam to assist Islamist terrorists in attacking the United States.
They said Tenet acknowledged to the committee that subsequently issuing a statement that there was no inconsistency between the president's speech and the CIA viewpoint was "the wrong thing to do."
Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the mistakes of prewar intelligence have long been known and "the additional views of the committee's Democrats are little more than a rehashing of the same unfounded allegations they've used for over three years."
The panel report is Phase II of an analysis of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The first phase, issued in July 2004, focused on the CIA's failings in its estimates of Iraq's weapons program.
The second phase had been delayed as Republicans and Democrats fought over what information should be declassified and how far the committee should delve into the question of whether policymakers may have manipulated intelligence to make the case for war.
Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he planned to ask for an investigation into the amount of information remaining classified. He said, "I am particularly concerned it appears that information may have been classified to shield individuals from accountability."
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On the Net:
Senate Intelligence Committee: http://intelligence.senate.gov
Sunday, September 03, 2006
You Will Not Catch Me Dead in Iraq: Military Deserters
The Time of London has published an important story on the Iraq war today.
This is a story that is not being told in the American Press.
It is shocking and certain to be upsetting, especially to those who continue to believe that the War has any meaning or purpose.
There is a silent revolt going on in the military. No one is talking about it for obvious reasons. The military command doesn't want to demoralize their troops; the political establishment doesn't want to admit failure; the deserters themselves don't want to make waves.
There is a revolt going on among the rank-and-file soldiers. Listen up, America. You can no longer ignore what the kids you've sent off to war are saying.
--m2k
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Scores of American troops are deserting — even from the front line in Iraq.
But where have they gone? And why isn’t the US Army after them? Peter Laufer tracked down four of the deserters.
These are the US troops in Iraq to whom the American administration prefers not to draw attention. They are the deserters – those who have gone Awol from their units and not returned, risking imprisonment and opprobrium.
When First Lieutenant Ehren Watada of the US Army, who faced a court martial in August, refused to go to Iraq on moral grounds, the newspapers in his home state of Hawaii were full of letters accusing him of “treason”. He said he had concluded that the war is both morally wrong and a horrible breach of American law. His participation, he stated, would make him party to “war crimes”. Watada is just one conscientious objector to a war that has polarised America, arguably more so than even the Vietnam war.
It is impossible to put a precise figure on the number of American troops who have left the army as a result of the US involvement in Iraq. The Pentagon says that a total of 40,000 troops have deserted their posts (not simply those serving in Iraq) since the year 2000. This includes many who went Awol for family reasons. The Pentagon’s spokesmen say that the overall number of deserters has actually gone down since operations began in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is no doubt that a steady trickle of deserters who object to the Iraq war have made it over the border and are now living in Canada. There they seek asylum, often with the help of Canadian anti-war groups. One Toronto lawyer, Jeffry House, has represented at least 20 deserters from Iraq in the Canadian courts; he is himself a conscientious objector, having refused to fight in the Vietnam war – along with 50,000 others, at the peak of the conflict. He estimates that 200 troops have already gone underground in Canada since the war in Iraq began. These conscientious objectors are a brave group – their decisions will result in long-term life changes. To be labelled a deserter is no small burden. If convicted of desertion, they run the risk of a prison sentence – with hard labour. To choose exile can mean lifelong separation from family and friends, as even the most trivial encounter with the police in America – say, over a traffic offence – could lead to jail.
Many of the deserters are not pacifists, against war per se, but they view the Iraq war as wrong. First Lt Watada, for instance, said he would face prison rather than serve in Iraq, though he was prepared to pack his bags for Afghanistan to fight in a war that he considered just. They don’t want to face the military courts, which is why they have decided to flee to Canada. A generation ago, Canada welcomed Vietnam-war draft dodgers and deserters. Today, the political climate is different and the score or so of US deserters who are now north of the border are applying for refugee status. So far, the Canadian government is saying no, so cases rejected for refugee status are going to appeal in the federal courts. But there is no guarantee that these exiles will ultimately find safe haven in Canada. If the federal courts rule against the soldiers and they then exhaust all further judicial possibilities, they may be deported back to the United States – and that may not be what the Americans want. Their presence in the US will in itself represent yet another public-relations headache for the Bush administration.
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DARRELL ANDERSON First Armored Division, 2-3 Field Artillery, at Giessen, Germany. Age: 24.
Darrell Anderson joined the US Army just before the Iraq war started.“I needed health care, money to go to college, and I needed to take care of my daughter. The military was the only way I could do it,” he tells me. As we chat, basking in the sun on a peaceful Toronto street, he fiddles with his pocket watch, which has a Canadian flag on its face. He’s wearing a peace-symbol necklace. After fighting for seven months in Iraq, he came home bloodied from combat, with a Purple Heart that proved his sacrifice – and seriously opened his eyes. “When I joined, I wanted to fight,” he says. “I wanted to see combat. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to save people. I wanted to protect my country.” But soon after he arrived in Iraq, he tells me, he realised that the Iraqis did not want him there, and he heard harsh tales that surprised and distressed him.“Soldiers were describing to me how they had beaten prisoners to death,” he says. “There were three guys and one said, ‘I kicked him from this side of the head while the other guy kicked him in the head and the other guy punched him, and he just died.’ People I knew. They were boasting about it, about how they had beaten people to death.” He says it again: “Boasting about how they had beaten people to death. They are trained killers now. Their friends had died in Iraq. So they weren’t the people they were before they went there.”
Anderson says that even the small talk was difficult to tolerate. “I hate Iraqis,” he quotes his peers as saying. “I hate these damn Muslims.” At first he was puzzled by such talk. “After a while I started to understand. I started to feel the hatred myself. My friends were dying. What am I here for? We went to fight for our country; now we’re just fighting to stay alive.” In addition to taking shrapnel from a roadside bomb – the injury that earned him the Purple Heart – Anderson says he often found himself in firefights. But it was work at a checkpoint that made him seriously question his role. He was guarding the “backside” of a street checkpoint in Baghdad, he says. If a car passed a certain point without stopping, the guards were supposed to open fire.“A car comes through and it stops in front of my position. Sparks are coming from the car from bad brakes. All the soldiers are yelling. It’s in my vicinity, so it’s my responsibility. I didn’t fire. A superior goes, ‘Why didn’t you fire? You were supposed to fire.’ I said, ‘It was a family!’ At this time it had stopped. You could see the children in the back seat. I said, ‘I did the right thing.’ He’s like, ‘No, you didn’t. It’s procedure to fire. If you don’t do it next time, you’re punished.’”
Anderson shakes his head at the memory. “I’m already not agreeing with this war. I’m not going to kill innocent people. I can’t kill kids. That’s not the way I was raised.” He says he started to look around at the ruined cityscape and the injured Iraqis, and slowly began to understand the Iraqi response. “If someone did this to my street, I would pick up a weapon and fight. I can’t kill these people. They’re not terrorists. They’re 14-year-old boys, they’re old men. We’re occupying the streets. We raid houses. We grab people. We send them off to Abu Ghraib, where they’re tortured. These are innocent people. We stop cars. We hinder everyday life. If I did this in the States, I’d be thrown in prison.”
Birds are singing sweetly as he speaks, a stark contrast to his descriptions of atrocities in Iraq. “I didn’t shoot anybody when I was in Baghdad. We went down to Najaf with howitzers. We shot rounds in Najaf and we killed hundreds of people. I did kill hundreds of people, but not directly, hand-to-hand.”
Anderson went home for Christmas, convinced he would be sent back to the war. He knew he would not be able to live with himself if he returned to Iraq, armed with his first-hand knowledge of what was occurring there day after day. He decided he could no longer participate, and his parents – already opposed to the war –supported his decision. Canada seemed like the best option. After Christmas 2004, he drove from Kentucky to Toronto. But he says he has had second thoughts about his exile. Not that he is worried much about deportation: he has recently married a Canadian woman and that will probably guarantee him permanent residency. But he plans to return to the US this autumn, and expects to be arrested when he presents himself to authorities at the border. “The war’s still going on,” he told me.“If I go back, maybe I can still make a difference. My fight is with the American government.” It’s not only anti-war work that’s motivating him to go home; he’s thinking about his future. “Dealing with all the nightmares and the post-traumatic stress, I need support from my family.”
Anderson expects to be convicted of desertion, and he says he will use his trial and prison time to continue to protest against the war. He imagines that just the sight of him in a dress uniform covered with the medals he was awarded fighting in Iraq will make a powerful statement. “I can’t work every day and act like everything is okay,” he says about his life in Toronto. “This war is beating me down. I haven’t had a dream that wasn’t a nightmare since I came to Canada. It eats away at me to try and act like everything’s okay when it’s not.” Not that he feels his time in Canada was a waste. “There was no way I could have gone to prison at the time: I would have killed myself. I was way too messed up in the head to even think of sitting in a prison cell. I owe a lot to Canada. It has saved my life. When I came back and was talking about the war, Americans called me a traitor. Canadians helped me when I was at my lowest point.”
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JOSHUA KEY 43rd Company of Combat Engineers, at Fort Carson, Colorado. Age: 28
"We was going along the Euphrates river,” says Joshua Key, detailing a recurring nightmare that features a scene he stumbled into shortly after the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. “It’s a road right in the city of Ramadi. We turned a sharp right and all I seen was decapitated bodies. The heads laying over here and the bodies over there and US troops in between them. I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, what in the hell happened here? What’s caused this? Why in the hell did this happen?’ We get out and somebody was screaming, ‘We f***ing lost it here!’ I’m thinking, ‘Oh yes, somebody definitely lost it here.’” Key says he was ordered to look for evidence of a firefight, for something to explain what had happened to the beheaded Iraqis. “I look around just for a few seconds and I don’t see anything.” Then he witnessed the sight that still triggers the nightmares. “I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like soccer balls. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and thought, ‘I can’t be no part of this. This is crazy. I came here to fight and be prepared for war, but this is outrageous.’”He’s convinced that there was no firefight.“A lot of my friends stayed on the ground, looking to see if there was any shells. There was never no shells.”
He still cannot get the scene out of his mind: “You just see heads everywhere. You wake up, you’ll just be sitting there, like you’re in a foxhole. I can still see Iraq just as clearly as it was the day I was there. You’ll just be on the side of a little river running through the city, trash piled up, filled with dead. I don’t sleep that much, you might say.” His wife, Brandi, nods in agreement, and says that he cries in his sleep.We’re sitting on the back porch of the Toronto house where Key and his wife and their four small children have been living in exile since Key deserted to Canada.
They’ve settled in a rent-free basement apartment, courtesy of a landlord sympathetic to their plight. Joshua smokes one cigarette after another and drinks coffee while we talk. There’s a scraggly beard on his still-boyish face; his eyes look weary. Key rejects the American government line that the Iraqis fighting the occupation are terrorists. “I’m thinking, ‘What the hell?’ I mean, that’s not a terrorist. That’s the man’s home. That’s his son, that’s the father, that’s the mother, that’s the sister. Houses are destroyed. Husbands are detained, and wives don’t even know where they’re at. I mean, them are pissed-off people, and they have a reason to be. I would never wish this upon myself or my family, so why would I wish it upon them?”
On security duty in the Iraqi streets, Key found himself talking to the locals. He was surprised by how many spoke English, and he was frustrated by the military regulations that forbade him to accept dinner invitations in their homes. “I’m not your perfect killing machine,” he admits. “That’s where I broke the rules. I broke the rules by having a conscience.” And the more time he spent in Iraq, the more his conscience developed. “I was trained to be a total killer. I was trained in booby traps, explosives, landmines.” He pauses. “Hell, if you want to get technical about it, I was made to be an American terrorist. I was trained in everything that a terrorist is trained to do.” In case I might have missed his point, he says it again. “I mean terrorist.” Deserting seemed the only viable alternative, Key says. He did it, he insists, because he was lied to “by my president”. Iraq – it was obvious to him – was no threat to the US.
Key feels that some of his unit were trigger-happy. He recalls another incident that haunts him. He was in an armoured personnel carrier when an Iraqi man in a truck cut them off, making a wrong turn. One of his squad started firing at the truck. “The first shot, the truck sort of started slowing down,” Key recounts. “And then he shot the next shot, and when he shot that next shot, it, you know, exploded.” Key watched the truck turn to debris. “It was very strange. He was just going along and because he tried to cut in front of us… No kind of combat reasons or anything of such…”
Key seems still in shock at the utter senselessness of it all. “Why did it happen and what was the cause for it? When I asked that question, I was told, basically, ‘You didn’t see anything, you know?’ Nobody asked no questions.” Assigned to raid houses, Key was soon appalled by the job. “I mean, yeah, they’re screaming and hollering out their lungs. It’s traumatic on both parts because you’ve got somebody yelling at you, which might be a woman. You’re yelling back at her, telling her to get on the ground or get out of the house. She don’t know what you’re saying and vice versa. It got to me. We’re the ones sending their husbands or their children off, and when you do that, it gets even more traumatic because then they’re distraught. Of course, you can’t comfort them because you don’t know what to say.”
While the residents are restrained, the search progresses. “Oh, you completely destroy the home – completely destroy it,” he says. “If there’s like cabinets or something that’s locked, you kick them in. The soldiers take what they want. Completely ransack it.” He estimates that he participated in about 100 raids. “I never found anything in a home. You might find one AK-47, but that’s for personal use. But I never once found the big caches of weapons they supposed were there. I never once found members of the Ba’ath party, terrorists, insurgents. We never found any of that.”
A soldier’s life was never Joshua Key’s dream. He was living in Guthrie, Oklahoma, just looking for a decent job. “We had two kids at the time and my third boy was on the way,” he says. “There’s no work there. There wasn’t going to be a future. Of course you can get a job working at McDonald’s, but that wasn’t going to pay the bills.” The local army-recruiting station beckoned. Shortly after he finished basic training, he was en route to the war zone. After eight months of fighting, he received two weeks’ leave back in the US. At the end of that, he was due for another Iraq tour.
He didn’t report for duty. Key and his wife packed up, took their children and ran, with the intention of getting as far from his base in familiar Colorado as possible. The family ran out of money in Philadelphia, and Key found work as a welder. They lived an underground lifestyle for over a year, frequently checking out of one hotel and into another, worried that if they stayed too long at one place they would attract attention. “I was paranoid,” Key says, and he contemplated deserting to Canada.
The research was easy. He went online and searched for “deserter needs help to go Awol”. Up popped details about others who had escaped across the border. He and Brandi decided to opt for a new life as Canadians. George W Bush should be the one to go to prison, says Key.
“On the day he goes to prison, I’ll go sit in prison with him. Let’s go. I’ll face it for that music. But that ain’t never going to happen,” he laughs.
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RYAN JOHNSON 211th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Barstow, California. Age: 22
Twenty-two-year-old Ryan Johnson meets me at his Catholic hostel in Toronto wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans and black running shoes. When Ryan went Awol in January 2005, he simply went home to Visalia, California. “It was very stressful,” he says. “I lived only four hours away from my home base. I figured they could come get me at any time. But they never came by. They never came looking for me. They sent some letters – that’s all they did.” The military doesn’t devote significant manpower to chasing Awol soldiers and deserters, other than issuing a federal arrest warrant. Those who get caught are usually arrested for something unrelated, their Awol status revealed when local police enter their names into the National Crime Information Center database – a routine post-arrest procedure throughout the United States.
Johnson moved to Canada because he was afraid that if he applied for a job, a background check would cause him to be arrested and give him a criminal record that would make it even more difficult for him to find work in the future. Voluntarily turning himself in to the US Army would not have improved his options, either.
“I had two choices: go to Iraq and have my life messed up, or go to jail and have my life messed up. So I came here to try this out.”
Back at his base in the southern California desert, Johnson had listened hard to the stories told by soldiers returning from the war.
“I didn’t want to be a part of that,” he says. I remind him that, unlike in the Vietnam era, there was no draft when he became eligible to join the army. He went down to the Visalia recruiting office and signed up. Did he really not know then that the army was in the business of killing people? “That’s true, yeah, they are,” he acknowledges. “But what I didn’t understand is how traumatising it was to actually kill somebody or watch one of your friends get killed. I’ve never seen anyone die.
“When I joined,” he says, “I joined because I was poor.” He says that jobs were hard to come by in Visalia and he lacked the funds for college. The sign in the strip mall outside the recruiting office beckoned, despite the fact that war was already burning up the Iraqi desert and sending GIs home dead.
“I talked to the recruiters,” says Johnson.
“I said, ‘What are the chances of me going to Iraq?’ They said, ‘Depends on what job you get.’ So I said, ‘What jobs could I get that wouldn’t have me go to Iraq?’ And they named jobs. I picked one of those and they said that I probably wouldn’t go to Iraq.”
Johnson was too unsophisticated to ask probing questions at the army recruiting office, and he didn’t question many of the answers he did receive. “I was 20 years old,” he says defensively. “I thought we were rebuilding in Iraq. I thought we were doing good things. But we’re blowing up mosques. We’re blowing up museums, people’s homes, all the culture. I mean, I didn’t even realise Iraq was Mesopotamia, you know? There’s all this culture and everything in Iraq. I like to think of myself as pretty well educated for someone that didn’t even graduate high school, but I’ve never really known anything about history or other cultures.
“The soldiers that are going to Iraq, most of them aren’t patriotic,” he says. “They aren’t going to Iraq because our flag has red, white and blue on it. They’re not going because they think that Iraq is posing a threat to us. Most of us are going because we’re ordered to and our buddies are going. That’s one of the reasons that I was going to go – because my buddies are over there.”
He is immediately wistful when asked how he feels about being safe in peaceful Toronto while those buddies are fighting and dying in the desert: “I check the casualties list every day. Every day I go on the internet and I check the casualties list to see if my friends are on there. And as of yet,” he pauses, “seven people from my unit have died, and I knew four of them.”
Johnson is unwilling to consider a return to America and time in prison. “It seems absolutely insane,” he says. “They’ll put someone in jail for five years for not wanting to kill somebody. I’m trying to avoid killing people. I know if I went to Iraq I would kill somebody. If I got put on patrol I would probably shoot somebody, because I would know that it’s them or me, you know? And they feel the same way. If I don’t kill these guys, they’re going to kill me.”
Johnson is hoping to feel at home in Canada. His introduction to the new country when he drove across the border was unexpectedly welcoming. He tried to give his ID to the border guard, but she was not interested in checking it. She just said: “‘Welcome to Canada.’ Yeah, that’s what she said. She said, ‘Welcome to Canada.’ And I said, ‘Thank you!’ and then we crossed the border and my wife, Jennifer, screamed.” However, Johnson is now appealing, as his initial request for refugee status in Canada has been rejected by the Canadian authorities.
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IVAN BROBECK 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Age: 21
Aged 21, former Lance Corporal Ivan Brobeck has an inviting smile. We meet in a park near his new home in Toronto. “I knew I couldn’t take it any more,” he says of his decision to desert to Canada. “I just needed to get away, because my unit was scheduled to go back to Iraq for a second time and I couldn’t take any more.”
Brobeck had no problem staying in the military, but he decided that he was not accepting orders to return to Iraq, and desertion seemed his only alternative. He spent much of 2004 on duty in Iraq. He fought in Falluja, and lost friends to roadside bombs “You tend to be very angry over there, because you’re fighting for something you don’t believe in, and your friends are dying,” he tells me.
His war stories feel out of place in the peaceful, upmarket Toronto neighbourhood where we are talking. During battles, he says he operated “on autopilot”, fighting for survival.
“I started thinking about what was wrong while I was over there, but it didn’t really get to me until the end of my stay in Iraq – and definitely once I was back home.”
Back at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, Brobeck says he began to consider “the totally bad stuff that shouldn’t have happened” during his watch. “I have seen the beating of innocent prisoners,” he says. “I remember hearing something get thrown off the back of a seven-ton truck. The bed of a seven-ton is probably something like 7 or 8ft high. They threw a detainee off the back, his hands tied behind his back and a sandbag over his head, so he couldn’t brace for the impact. I remember he started convulsing after he hit the ground and we thought he was snoring. We took the bag off his head and his eyes were swollen shut and his nose was plugged with blood and he could barely even breathe.”
In addition to the abuse of prisoners, the regularity with which civilians were killed at checkpoints confounded the young marine. “My friends have been ones who’ve done that, and after the event it’s always, ‘Oh, so and so is a little down today – he killed a guy in front of his kids.’ Or, ‘He killed a couple of kids.’ These marines that had to do that were my friends, who I talked to every day. It’s hard knowing that your best friend had to kill innocent people.”
Brobeck started to develop sympathy for the enemy. “A lot of people that shoot back at us aren’t bad people. They’re people who had their wives killed or their sons killed and they’re just trying to get retribution, get revenge and kill the person who killed their son. They’re just innocent people who lost a whole lot and don’t have anything else to do.”
Brobeck was a marine for a year before being deployed to Iraq. “I always heard all these great things that the US military have done throughout history, like great battles that they’ve won. Out of all the forces I knew, the marines were the toughest, most hard core. I wanted to do that. I was willing to risk my life for an actual cause,” he muses, “if there was one.”
What would be a cause worth dying for? “A good cause” is his answer. “But this war doesn’t benefit anyone. It doesn’t benefit Americans, it doesn’t even benefit Iraq. This is not something that anyone should fight and die for. I was only 17 when I signed my contract, and my whole childhood, all I did was play video games and sports. I didn’t pay attention to the news. That stuff was boring to me. But I know first-hand now.”
Last July his unit shipped out without him. “The day I decided to actually leave was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I had wanted to for so long, I just couldn’t bring myself to actually do it, because going Awol is definitely a huge decision, and it’s like throwing away a lot of your life. Plus, I didn’t know what I was going to do if I went Awol.”
The night before leaving, Brobeck confided his intentions to another marine. “He said, ‘You’ve been to Iraq; I haven’t. You have your reasons for going Awol and I’m not going to stop you.’” The departure from the North Carolina base was easy.
“I walked to a bus station and stayed at a hotel that night. The only way I could get home was by bus, and the station was closed. When the Greyhound station opened, I got my ticket and left for Virginia. I was nervous because reveille, the time we wake up, was at 5.30, and they would have definitely noticed I was missing. I thought they would have checked the Greyhound station, the only one near the base. They didn’t, which was good. I didn’t go home to my mom, because I was worried about police being there. I stayed with a friend.”
Twenty-eight days after he went Awol, Brobeck headed for Canada. He discovered the website maintained by the War Resisters Support Campaign, a group of Canadians organising aid for American deserters, and learnt that there would be help from them were he to flee north to Toronto.
He called his mother and together they drove across the Niagara Falls crossing point.
“She doesn’t like the fact that I’m away in Canada and can’t come back to see her,” he says, “but it’s better than me going back to Iraq for a second time.”
Exile in Canada feels good for Brobeck. “Life feels for me, even if I wasn’t Awol, freer up here than it would in America. Everyone is so polite in Canada, friendly.” In the year since he crossed the border, he has met and married his wife, Lisa. His application for refugee status has been denied, but he has hopes of winning his appeal.
“The only thing I left behind was my family and my friends,” he says. “So that’s the only thing I’m going to miss about America – the people.
“The US used to be something you could say you were proud of,” he adds. “You go to another country now and say that you’re an American, you probably won’t get a lot of happy faces or open arms, because of the man in charge. It’s amazing what one person can do. The leadership totally screwed up any respect we had.” His rejection of US policy in Iraq is making him question his sense of national identity. “In my heart I’m not American… if it means I have to conform to what they stand for,” he says about the Bush administration. “I’m not American because America has lost touch with what they were. The founding fathers would definitely be pissed off if they found out what America’s become.”
Mission Rejected, by Peter Laufer, is published in the US by Chelsea Green, and will be published in the UK in January 2007 by John Blake
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THE BRITONS WHO ARE SAYING NO
It’s not just Americans: hundreds of our own troops have ‘retreated’ from Iraq. Philip Jacobson reports
Over 2,000 members of Britain’s armed forces have gone long-term Awol since the war in Iraq started, and most are still missing. Before the fighting began, about 375 absconders a year were at large for any length of time, and were dismissed; that figure rose to 720 last year. About 740 men are thought to be on the run still, but have not yet been disciplined.
While the MoD denies that this trend reflects growing opposition to the war, lawyers specialising in court martials report a continuing increase in requests for advice from personnel desperate to avoid being posted to Iraq. Although the overall number of Awol cases has been fairly stable for a few years (about 2,500 annually), there is growing concern in the military about the “Iraq factor”. Before, most absconders were Awol for a relatively short time, typically owing to family or financial problems, or bullying, and either went back to their units voluntarily or were arrested quickly. Most were disciplined by their commanding officers; punishments ranged from demotion to “jankers”, a spell in a military jail.
But it seems that a growing number are ready to risk a charge of desertion — a far more serious offence than going Awol, with penalties to match. According to Gilbert Blades, an expert on military law, the MoD is playing down the true extent of the problem. “It is absolutely clear to me,” he says, “that the crucial factor in driving up Awol levels has been what more and more service people consider to be an illegal conflict.” As Blades sees it, the tightening of the legal definition of desertion in new legislation going through parliament is intended to deter potential absconders. Under the new Armed Forces Bill, people refusing active-service duty in a foreign country could be jailed for life. “It seems obvious this is a direct response to the situation that has developed as the war has intensified,” he says.
Two cases this year have highlighted the issue of morally motivated “refuseniks” in the forces. Ben Griffin, an SAS soldier stationed in Baghdad, told his commanding officer that he was no longer willing to fight alongside “gung-ho and trigger-happy” US troops. Griffin fully expected his eight-year career to end in a court martial and imprisonment, but he was allowed to leave and was given a glowing testimonial to his “strength of character”. Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, an RAF doctor, received eight months in prison for rejecting orders to report for a third tour of duty in Basra on the grounds that the occupation was illegal. He was later freed, but spent the rest of his sentence under house arrest.
An MoD spokeswoman told The Sunday Times Magazine that claims that the level of desertions was rocketing were untrue. “There is a good deal of confusion about this, because people often don’t understand the distinction between deserting and going absent without leave. Only 21 cases of desertion have been recorded over the past five years, and just one person has been convicted of that offence since 1989.” She also said criticism of the new legislation was “misguided and sometimes malicious”. Under the present military legal system, she explained, each arm of the forces administers its own discipline. This no longer reflects an era in which combined operations are becoming common. “It makes sense in the circumstances to have a single law addressing matters of military discipline for all service personnel.” But Blades argues that the clause providing for life sentences in the event of refusal to serve in a foreign combat zone “was driven through solely by the defence establishment to provide a drastic legal remedy to the problem of conscientious objection”. It remains to be seen whether the courts, if pushed, will hand down such a stiff sentence.
This is a story that is not being told in the American Press.
It is shocking and certain to be upsetting, especially to those who continue to believe that the War has any meaning or purpose.
There is a silent revolt going on in the military. No one is talking about it for obvious reasons. The military command doesn't want to demoralize their troops; the political establishment doesn't want to admit failure; the deserters themselves don't want to make waves.
There is a revolt going on among the rank-and-file soldiers. Listen up, America. You can no longer ignore what the kids you've sent off to war are saying.
--m2k
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Scores of American troops are deserting — even from the front line in Iraq.
But where have they gone? And why isn’t the US Army after them? Peter Laufer tracked down four of the deserters.
These are the US troops in Iraq to whom the American administration prefers not to draw attention. They are the deserters – those who have gone Awol from their units and not returned, risking imprisonment and opprobrium.
When First Lieutenant Ehren Watada of the US Army, who faced a court martial in August, refused to go to Iraq on moral grounds, the newspapers in his home state of Hawaii were full of letters accusing him of “treason”. He said he had concluded that the war is both morally wrong and a horrible breach of American law. His participation, he stated, would make him party to “war crimes”. Watada is just one conscientious objector to a war that has polarised America, arguably more so than even the Vietnam war.
It is impossible to put a precise figure on the number of American troops who have left the army as a result of the US involvement in Iraq. The Pentagon says that a total of 40,000 troops have deserted their posts (not simply those serving in Iraq) since the year 2000. This includes many who went Awol for family reasons. The Pentagon’s spokesmen say that the overall number of deserters has actually gone down since operations began in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is no doubt that a steady trickle of deserters who object to the Iraq war have made it over the border and are now living in Canada. There they seek asylum, often with the help of Canadian anti-war groups. One Toronto lawyer, Jeffry House, has represented at least 20 deserters from Iraq in the Canadian courts; he is himself a conscientious objector, having refused to fight in the Vietnam war – along with 50,000 others, at the peak of the conflict. He estimates that 200 troops have already gone underground in Canada since the war in Iraq began. These conscientious objectors are a brave group – their decisions will result in long-term life changes. To be labelled a deserter is no small burden. If convicted of desertion, they run the risk of a prison sentence – with hard labour. To choose exile can mean lifelong separation from family and friends, as even the most trivial encounter with the police in America – say, over a traffic offence – could lead to jail.
Many of the deserters are not pacifists, against war per se, but they view the Iraq war as wrong. First Lt Watada, for instance, said he would face prison rather than serve in Iraq, though he was prepared to pack his bags for Afghanistan to fight in a war that he considered just. They don’t want to face the military courts, which is why they have decided to flee to Canada. A generation ago, Canada welcomed Vietnam-war draft dodgers and deserters. Today, the political climate is different and the score or so of US deserters who are now north of the border are applying for refugee status. So far, the Canadian government is saying no, so cases rejected for refugee status are going to appeal in the federal courts. But there is no guarantee that these exiles will ultimately find safe haven in Canada. If the federal courts rule against the soldiers and they then exhaust all further judicial possibilities, they may be deported back to the United States – and that may not be what the Americans want. Their presence in the US will in itself represent yet another public-relations headache for the Bush administration.
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DARRELL ANDERSON First Armored Division, 2-3 Field Artillery, at Giessen, Germany. Age: 24.
Darrell Anderson joined the US Army just before the Iraq war started.“I needed health care, money to go to college, and I needed to take care of my daughter. The military was the only way I could do it,” he tells me. As we chat, basking in the sun on a peaceful Toronto street, he fiddles with his pocket watch, which has a Canadian flag on its face. He’s wearing a peace-symbol necklace. After fighting for seven months in Iraq, he came home bloodied from combat, with a Purple Heart that proved his sacrifice – and seriously opened his eyes. “When I joined, I wanted to fight,” he says. “I wanted to see combat. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to save people. I wanted to protect my country.” But soon after he arrived in Iraq, he tells me, he realised that the Iraqis did not want him there, and he heard harsh tales that surprised and distressed him.“Soldiers were describing to me how they had beaten prisoners to death,” he says. “There were three guys and one said, ‘I kicked him from this side of the head while the other guy kicked him in the head and the other guy punched him, and he just died.’ People I knew. They were boasting about it, about how they had beaten people to death.” He says it again: “Boasting about how they had beaten people to death. They are trained killers now. Their friends had died in Iraq. So they weren’t the people they were before they went there.”
Anderson says that even the small talk was difficult to tolerate. “I hate Iraqis,” he quotes his peers as saying. “I hate these damn Muslims.” At first he was puzzled by such talk. “After a while I started to understand. I started to feel the hatred myself. My friends were dying. What am I here for? We went to fight for our country; now we’re just fighting to stay alive.” In addition to taking shrapnel from a roadside bomb – the injury that earned him the Purple Heart – Anderson says he often found himself in firefights. But it was work at a checkpoint that made him seriously question his role. He was guarding the “backside” of a street checkpoint in Baghdad, he says. If a car passed a certain point without stopping, the guards were supposed to open fire.“A car comes through and it stops in front of my position. Sparks are coming from the car from bad brakes. All the soldiers are yelling. It’s in my vicinity, so it’s my responsibility. I didn’t fire. A superior goes, ‘Why didn’t you fire? You were supposed to fire.’ I said, ‘It was a family!’ At this time it had stopped. You could see the children in the back seat. I said, ‘I did the right thing.’ He’s like, ‘No, you didn’t. It’s procedure to fire. If you don’t do it next time, you’re punished.’”
Anderson shakes his head at the memory. “I’m already not agreeing with this war. I’m not going to kill innocent people. I can’t kill kids. That’s not the way I was raised.” He says he started to look around at the ruined cityscape and the injured Iraqis, and slowly began to understand the Iraqi response. “If someone did this to my street, I would pick up a weapon and fight. I can’t kill these people. They’re not terrorists. They’re 14-year-old boys, they’re old men. We’re occupying the streets. We raid houses. We grab people. We send them off to Abu Ghraib, where they’re tortured. These are innocent people. We stop cars. We hinder everyday life. If I did this in the States, I’d be thrown in prison.”
Birds are singing sweetly as he speaks, a stark contrast to his descriptions of atrocities in Iraq. “I didn’t shoot anybody when I was in Baghdad. We went down to Najaf with howitzers. We shot rounds in Najaf and we killed hundreds of people. I did kill hundreds of people, but not directly, hand-to-hand.”
Anderson went home for Christmas, convinced he would be sent back to the war. He knew he would not be able to live with himself if he returned to Iraq, armed with his first-hand knowledge of what was occurring there day after day. He decided he could no longer participate, and his parents – already opposed to the war –supported his decision. Canada seemed like the best option. After Christmas 2004, he drove from Kentucky to Toronto. But he says he has had second thoughts about his exile. Not that he is worried much about deportation: he has recently married a Canadian woman and that will probably guarantee him permanent residency. But he plans to return to the US this autumn, and expects to be arrested when he presents himself to authorities at the border. “The war’s still going on,” he told me.“If I go back, maybe I can still make a difference. My fight is with the American government.” It’s not only anti-war work that’s motivating him to go home; he’s thinking about his future. “Dealing with all the nightmares and the post-traumatic stress, I need support from my family.”
Anderson expects to be convicted of desertion, and he says he will use his trial and prison time to continue to protest against the war. He imagines that just the sight of him in a dress uniform covered with the medals he was awarded fighting in Iraq will make a powerful statement. “I can’t work every day and act like everything is okay,” he says about his life in Toronto. “This war is beating me down. I haven’t had a dream that wasn’t a nightmare since I came to Canada. It eats away at me to try and act like everything’s okay when it’s not.” Not that he feels his time in Canada was a waste. “There was no way I could have gone to prison at the time: I would have killed myself. I was way too messed up in the head to even think of sitting in a prison cell. I owe a lot to Canada. It has saved my life. When I came back and was talking about the war, Americans called me a traitor. Canadians helped me when I was at my lowest point.”
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JOSHUA KEY 43rd Company of Combat Engineers, at Fort Carson, Colorado. Age: 28
"We was going along the Euphrates river,” says Joshua Key, detailing a recurring nightmare that features a scene he stumbled into shortly after the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. “It’s a road right in the city of Ramadi. We turned a sharp right and all I seen was decapitated bodies. The heads laying over here and the bodies over there and US troops in between them. I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, what in the hell happened here? What’s caused this? Why in the hell did this happen?’ We get out and somebody was screaming, ‘We f***ing lost it here!’ I’m thinking, ‘Oh yes, somebody definitely lost it here.’” Key says he was ordered to look for evidence of a firefight, for something to explain what had happened to the beheaded Iraqis. “I look around just for a few seconds and I don’t see anything.” Then he witnessed the sight that still triggers the nightmares. “I see two soldiers kicking the heads around like soccer balls. I just shut my mouth, walked back, got inside the tank, shut the door, and thought, ‘I can’t be no part of this. This is crazy. I came here to fight and be prepared for war, but this is outrageous.’”He’s convinced that there was no firefight.“A lot of my friends stayed on the ground, looking to see if there was any shells. There was never no shells.”
He still cannot get the scene out of his mind: “You just see heads everywhere. You wake up, you’ll just be sitting there, like you’re in a foxhole. I can still see Iraq just as clearly as it was the day I was there. You’ll just be on the side of a little river running through the city, trash piled up, filled with dead. I don’t sleep that much, you might say.” His wife, Brandi, nods in agreement, and says that he cries in his sleep.We’re sitting on the back porch of the Toronto house where Key and his wife and their four small children have been living in exile since Key deserted to Canada.
They’ve settled in a rent-free basement apartment, courtesy of a landlord sympathetic to their plight. Joshua smokes one cigarette after another and drinks coffee while we talk. There’s a scraggly beard on his still-boyish face; his eyes look weary. Key rejects the American government line that the Iraqis fighting the occupation are terrorists. “I’m thinking, ‘What the hell?’ I mean, that’s not a terrorist. That’s the man’s home. That’s his son, that’s the father, that’s the mother, that’s the sister. Houses are destroyed. Husbands are detained, and wives don’t even know where they’re at. I mean, them are pissed-off people, and they have a reason to be. I would never wish this upon myself or my family, so why would I wish it upon them?”
On security duty in the Iraqi streets, Key found himself talking to the locals. He was surprised by how many spoke English, and he was frustrated by the military regulations that forbade him to accept dinner invitations in their homes. “I’m not your perfect killing machine,” he admits. “That’s where I broke the rules. I broke the rules by having a conscience.” And the more time he spent in Iraq, the more his conscience developed. “I was trained to be a total killer. I was trained in booby traps, explosives, landmines.” He pauses. “Hell, if you want to get technical about it, I was made to be an American terrorist. I was trained in everything that a terrorist is trained to do.” In case I might have missed his point, he says it again. “I mean terrorist.” Deserting seemed the only viable alternative, Key says. He did it, he insists, because he was lied to “by my president”. Iraq – it was obvious to him – was no threat to the US.
Key feels that some of his unit were trigger-happy. He recalls another incident that haunts him. He was in an armoured personnel carrier when an Iraqi man in a truck cut them off, making a wrong turn. One of his squad started firing at the truck. “The first shot, the truck sort of started slowing down,” Key recounts. “And then he shot the next shot, and when he shot that next shot, it, you know, exploded.” Key watched the truck turn to debris. “It was very strange. He was just going along and because he tried to cut in front of us… No kind of combat reasons or anything of such…”
Key seems still in shock at the utter senselessness of it all. “Why did it happen and what was the cause for it? When I asked that question, I was told, basically, ‘You didn’t see anything, you know?’ Nobody asked no questions.” Assigned to raid houses, Key was soon appalled by the job. “I mean, yeah, they’re screaming and hollering out their lungs. It’s traumatic on both parts because you’ve got somebody yelling at you, which might be a woman. You’re yelling back at her, telling her to get on the ground or get out of the house. She don’t know what you’re saying and vice versa. It got to me. We’re the ones sending their husbands or their children off, and when you do that, it gets even more traumatic because then they’re distraught. Of course, you can’t comfort them because you don’t know what to say.”
While the residents are restrained, the search progresses. “Oh, you completely destroy the home – completely destroy it,” he says. “If there’s like cabinets or something that’s locked, you kick them in. The soldiers take what they want. Completely ransack it.” He estimates that he participated in about 100 raids. “I never found anything in a home. You might find one AK-47, but that’s for personal use. But I never once found the big caches of weapons they supposed were there. I never once found members of the Ba’ath party, terrorists, insurgents. We never found any of that.”
A soldier’s life was never Joshua Key’s dream. He was living in Guthrie, Oklahoma, just looking for a decent job. “We had two kids at the time and my third boy was on the way,” he says. “There’s no work there. There wasn’t going to be a future. Of course you can get a job working at McDonald’s, but that wasn’t going to pay the bills.” The local army-recruiting station beckoned. Shortly after he finished basic training, he was en route to the war zone. After eight months of fighting, he received two weeks’ leave back in the US. At the end of that, he was due for another Iraq tour.
He didn’t report for duty. Key and his wife packed up, took their children and ran, with the intention of getting as far from his base in familiar Colorado as possible. The family ran out of money in Philadelphia, and Key found work as a welder. They lived an underground lifestyle for over a year, frequently checking out of one hotel and into another, worried that if they stayed too long at one place they would attract attention. “I was paranoid,” Key says, and he contemplated deserting to Canada.
The research was easy. He went online and searched for “deserter needs help to go Awol”. Up popped details about others who had escaped across the border. He and Brandi decided to opt for a new life as Canadians. George W Bush should be the one to go to prison, says Key.
“On the day he goes to prison, I’ll go sit in prison with him. Let’s go. I’ll face it for that music. But that ain’t never going to happen,” he laughs.
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RYAN JOHNSON 211th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Barstow, California. Age: 22
Twenty-two-year-old Ryan Johnson meets me at his Catholic hostel in Toronto wearing a black T-shirt, blue jeans and black running shoes. When Ryan went Awol in January 2005, he simply went home to Visalia, California. “It was very stressful,” he says. “I lived only four hours away from my home base. I figured they could come get me at any time. But they never came by. They never came looking for me. They sent some letters – that’s all they did.” The military doesn’t devote significant manpower to chasing Awol soldiers and deserters, other than issuing a federal arrest warrant. Those who get caught are usually arrested for something unrelated, their Awol status revealed when local police enter their names into the National Crime Information Center database – a routine post-arrest procedure throughout the United States.
Johnson moved to Canada because he was afraid that if he applied for a job, a background check would cause him to be arrested and give him a criminal record that would make it even more difficult for him to find work in the future. Voluntarily turning himself in to the US Army would not have improved his options, either.
“I had two choices: go to Iraq and have my life messed up, or go to jail and have my life messed up. So I came here to try this out.”
Back at his base in the southern California desert, Johnson had listened hard to the stories told by soldiers returning from the war.
“I didn’t want to be a part of that,” he says. I remind him that, unlike in the Vietnam era, there was no draft when he became eligible to join the army. He went down to the Visalia recruiting office and signed up. Did he really not know then that the army was in the business of killing people? “That’s true, yeah, they are,” he acknowledges. “But what I didn’t understand is how traumatising it was to actually kill somebody or watch one of your friends get killed. I’ve never seen anyone die.
“When I joined,” he says, “I joined because I was poor.” He says that jobs were hard to come by in Visalia and he lacked the funds for college. The sign in the strip mall outside the recruiting office beckoned, despite the fact that war was already burning up the Iraqi desert and sending GIs home dead.
“I talked to the recruiters,” says Johnson.
“I said, ‘What are the chances of me going to Iraq?’ They said, ‘Depends on what job you get.’ So I said, ‘What jobs could I get that wouldn’t have me go to Iraq?’ And they named jobs. I picked one of those and they said that I probably wouldn’t go to Iraq.”
Johnson was too unsophisticated to ask probing questions at the army recruiting office, and he didn’t question many of the answers he did receive. “I was 20 years old,” he says defensively. “I thought we were rebuilding in Iraq. I thought we were doing good things. But we’re blowing up mosques. We’re blowing up museums, people’s homes, all the culture. I mean, I didn’t even realise Iraq was Mesopotamia, you know? There’s all this culture and everything in Iraq. I like to think of myself as pretty well educated for someone that didn’t even graduate high school, but I’ve never really known anything about history or other cultures.
“The soldiers that are going to Iraq, most of them aren’t patriotic,” he says. “They aren’t going to Iraq because our flag has red, white and blue on it. They’re not going because they think that Iraq is posing a threat to us. Most of us are going because we’re ordered to and our buddies are going. That’s one of the reasons that I was going to go – because my buddies are over there.”
He is immediately wistful when asked how he feels about being safe in peaceful Toronto while those buddies are fighting and dying in the desert: “I check the casualties list every day. Every day I go on the internet and I check the casualties list to see if my friends are on there. And as of yet,” he pauses, “seven people from my unit have died, and I knew four of them.”
Johnson is unwilling to consider a return to America and time in prison. “It seems absolutely insane,” he says. “They’ll put someone in jail for five years for not wanting to kill somebody. I’m trying to avoid killing people. I know if I went to Iraq I would kill somebody. If I got put on patrol I would probably shoot somebody, because I would know that it’s them or me, you know? And they feel the same way. If I don’t kill these guys, they’re going to kill me.”
Johnson is hoping to feel at home in Canada. His introduction to the new country when he drove across the border was unexpectedly welcoming. He tried to give his ID to the border guard, but she was not interested in checking it. She just said: “‘Welcome to Canada.’ Yeah, that’s what she said. She said, ‘Welcome to Canada.’ And I said, ‘Thank you!’ and then we crossed the border and my wife, Jennifer, screamed.” However, Johnson is now appealing, as his initial request for refugee status in Canada has been rejected by the Canadian authorities.
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IVAN BROBECK 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Age: 21
Aged 21, former Lance Corporal Ivan Brobeck has an inviting smile. We meet in a park near his new home in Toronto. “I knew I couldn’t take it any more,” he says of his decision to desert to Canada. “I just needed to get away, because my unit was scheduled to go back to Iraq for a second time and I couldn’t take any more.”
Brobeck had no problem staying in the military, but he decided that he was not accepting orders to return to Iraq, and desertion seemed his only alternative. He spent much of 2004 on duty in Iraq. He fought in Falluja, and lost friends to roadside bombs “You tend to be very angry over there, because you’re fighting for something you don’t believe in, and your friends are dying,” he tells me.
His war stories feel out of place in the peaceful, upmarket Toronto neighbourhood where we are talking. During battles, he says he operated “on autopilot”, fighting for survival.
“I started thinking about what was wrong while I was over there, but it didn’t really get to me until the end of my stay in Iraq – and definitely once I was back home.”
Back at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, Brobeck says he began to consider “the totally bad stuff that shouldn’t have happened” during his watch. “I have seen the beating of innocent prisoners,” he says. “I remember hearing something get thrown off the back of a seven-ton truck. The bed of a seven-ton is probably something like 7 or 8ft high. They threw a detainee off the back, his hands tied behind his back and a sandbag over his head, so he couldn’t brace for the impact. I remember he started convulsing after he hit the ground and we thought he was snoring. We took the bag off his head and his eyes were swollen shut and his nose was plugged with blood and he could barely even breathe.”
In addition to the abuse of prisoners, the regularity with which civilians were killed at checkpoints confounded the young marine. “My friends have been ones who’ve done that, and after the event it’s always, ‘Oh, so and so is a little down today – he killed a guy in front of his kids.’ Or, ‘He killed a couple of kids.’ These marines that had to do that were my friends, who I talked to every day. It’s hard knowing that your best friend had to kill innocent people.”
Brobeck started to develop sympathy for the enemy. “A lot of people that shoot back at us aren’t bad people. They’re people who had their wives killed or their sons killed and they’re just trying to get retribution, get revenge and kill the person who killed their son. They’re just innocent people who lost a whole lot and don’t have anything else to do.”
Brobeck was a marine for a year before being deployed to Iraq. “I always heard all these great things that the US military have done throughout history, like great battles that they’ve won. Out of all the forces I knew, the marines were the toughest, most hard core. I wanted to do that. I was willing to risk my life for an actual cause,” he muses, “if there was one.”
What would be a cause worth dying for? “A good cause” is his answer. “But this war doesn’t benefit anyone. It doesn’t benefit Americans, it doesn’t even benefit Iraq. This is not something that anyone should fight and die for. I was only 17 when I signed my contract, and my whole childhood, all I did was play video games and sports. I didn’t pay attention to the news. That stuff was boring to me. But I know first-hand now.”
Last July his unit shipped out without him. “The day I decided to actually leave was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I had wanted to for so long, I just couldn’t bring myself to actually do it, because going Awol is definitely a huge decision, and it’s like throwing away a lot of your life. Plus, I didn’t know what I was going to do if I went Awol.”
The night before leaving, Brobeck confided his intentions to another marine. “He said, ‘You’ve been to Iraq; I haven’t. You have your reasons for going Awol and I’m not going to stop you.’” The departure from the North Carolina base was easy.
“I walked to a bus station and stayed at a hotel that night. The only way I could get home was by bus, and the station was closed. When the Greyhound station opened, I got my ticket and left for Virginia. I was nervous because reveille, the time we wake up, was at 5.30, and they would have definitely noticed I was missing. I thought they would have checked the Greyhound station, the only one near the base. They didn’t, which was good. I didn’t go home to my mom, because I was worried about police being there. I stayed with a friend.”
Twenty-eight days after he went Awol, Brobeck headed for Canada. He discovered the website maintained by the War Resisters Support Campaign, a group of Canadians organising aid for American deserters, and learnt that there would be help from them were he to flee north to Toronto.
He called his mother and together they drove across the Niagara Falls crossing point.
“She doesn’t like the fact that I’m away in Canada and can’t come back to see her,” he says, “but it’s better than me going back to Iraq for a second time.”
Exile in Canada feels good for Brobeck. “Life feels for me, even if I wasn’t Awol, freer up here than it would in America. Everyone is so polite in Canada, friendly.” In the year since he crossed the border, he has met and married his wife, Lisa. His application for refugee status has been denied, but he has hopes of winning his appeal.
“The only thing I left behind was my family and my friends,” he says. “So that’s the only thing I’m going to miss about America – the people.
“The US used to be something you could say you were proud of,” he adds. “You go to another country now and say that you’re an American, you probably won’t get a lot of happy faces or open arms, because of the man in charge. It’s amazing what one person can do. The leadership totally screwed up any respect we had.” His rejection of US policy in Iraq is making him question his sense of national identity. “In my heart I’m not American… if it means I have to conform to what they stand for,” he says about the Bush administration. “I’m not American because America has lost touch with what they were. The founding fathers would definitely be pissed off if they found out what America’s become.”
Mission Rejected, by Peter Laufer, is published in the US by Chelsea Green, and will be published in the UK in January 2007 by John Blake
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THE BRITONS WHO ARE SAYING NO
It’s not just Americans: hundreds of our own troops have ‘retreated’ from Iraq. Philip Jacobson reports
Over 2,000 members of Britain’s armed forces have gone long-term Awol since the war in Iraq started, and most are still missing. Before the fighting began, about 375 absconders a year were at large for any length of time, and were dismissed; that figure rose to 720 last year. About 740 men are thought to be on the run still, but have not yet been disciplined.
While the MoD denies that this trend reflects growing opposition to the war, lawyers specialising in court martials report a continuing increase in requests for advice from personnel desperate to avoid being posted to Iraq. Although the overall number of Awol cases has been fairly stable for a few years (about 2,500 annually), there is growing concern in the military about the “Iraq factor”. Before, most absconders were Awol for a relatively short time, typically owing to family or financial problems, or bullying, and either went back to their units voluntarily or were arrested quickly. Most were disciplined by their commanding officers; punishments ranged from demotion to “jankers”, a spell in a military jail.
But it seems that a growing number are ready to risk a charge of desertion — a far more serious offence than going Awol, with penalties to match. According to Gilbert Blades, an expert on military law, the MoD is playing down the true extent of the problem. “It is absolutely clear to me,” he says, “that the crucial factor in driving up Awol levels has been what more and more service people consider to be an illegal conflict.” As Blades sees it, the tightening of the legal definition of desertion in new legislation going through parliament is intended to deter potential absconders. Under the new Armed Forces Bill, people refusing active-service duty in a foreign country could be jailed for life. “It seems obvious this is a direct response to the situation that has developed as the war has intensified,” he says.
Two cases this year have highlighted the issue of morally motivated “refuseniks” in the forces. Ben Griffin, an SAS soldier stationed in Baghdad, told his commanding officer that he was no longer willing to fight alongside “gung-ho and trigger-happy” US troops. Griffin fully expected his eight-year career to end in a court martial and imprisonment, but he was allowed to leave and was given a glowing testimonial to his “strength of character”. Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, an RAF doctor, received eight months in prison for rejecting orders to report for a third tour of duty in Basra on the grounds that the occupation was illegal. He was later freed, but spent the rest of his sentence under house arrest.
An MoD spokeswoman told The Sunday Times Magazine that claims that the level of desertions was rocketing were untrue. “There is a good deal of confusion about this, because people often don’t understand the distinction between deserting and going absent without leave. Only 21 cases of desertion have been recorded over the past five years, and just one person has been convicted of that offence since 1989.” She also said criticism of the new legislation was “misguided and sometimes malicious”. Under the present military legal system, she explained, each arm of the forces administers its own discipline. This no longer reflects an era in which combined operations are becoming common. “It makes sense in the circumstances to have a single law addressing matters of military discipline for all service personnel.” But Blades argues that the clause providing for life sentences in the event of refusal to serve in a foreign combat zone “was driven through solely by the defence establishment to provide a drastic legal remedy to the problem of conscientious objection”. It remains to be seen whether the courts, if pushed, will hand down such a stiff sentence.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Democrats return fire over Iraq
WASHINGTON -- Democrats kept up their verbal assault on President Bush and his national security team Friday over Iraq, while a new Pentagon report underscored the escalating violence there.
In a wave of statements, Democratic Party leaders targeted Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for casting the Iraq war as part of a broader war on terrorism.
"The Pentagon's new report today indicates that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld's speeches are increasingly disconnected from the facts on the ground in Iraq," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement.
"Even the Pentagon acknowledges Iraq is tipping into civil war," Reid said. "Failed Republican policies have left America bogged down in Iraq, with our military stretched thin and less able to fight and win the war on terror."
Bush, in a speech to the American Legion on Thursday in Salt Lake City, said, "The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century."
Rumsfeld, in his speech to the Legion on Tuesday, cited the "strange innocence" in the period between World Wars I and II and the failure of Western nations to recognize the rising Nazi threat.
"Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal-clear," Rumsfeld said, explaining, "I recount this history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism."
Some Democrats, though, were sharply critical of Rumsfeld's suggestion that critics of the war in Iraq were engaging in appeasement.
Rumsfeld "wants to lecture everybody else," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "He should be ashamed of himself. His stewardship has been a disaster."
Emanuel said House Democrats are considering staging a no-confidence vote on Rumsfeld.
The Pentagon's report on Iraq was noticeably more pessimistic than previous quarterly accounts that the Defense Department has sent to Congress. It highlighted civilian deaths, the rise in strife between rival Muslim factions and the growing role of death squads in Baghdad.
"Rising sectarian strife defines the emerging nature of violence in mid-2006," the report found, concluding, "Death squads and terrorists are locked in a mutually reinforcing cycle of sectarian strife."
Cheney suggested several weeks ago that the primary defeat of Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat who has supported the war, would "embolden Al Qaeda types."
Lieberman, now running as an independent in the race for his seat, was defeated by Ned Lamont, a critic of the Iraq war.
Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, said Bush has failed to deliver a winning strategy in Iraq.
"You can't trust Republicans to defend America," Dean said. "Today we only heard more of the same propaganda from a desperate Bush administration worried more about its party's political prospects this fall than about how to protect America and fight and win the real war on terror. It's results that matter, and the Bush White House and its rubber-stamp Republicans in Congress have not produced results when it comes to keeping America safe."
The charges and counter-charges over Iraq have more to do with political than military strategy. With the Nov. 7 elections more than two months away and poll numbers suggesting Democrats could overturn the GOP majority in the House, the role of U.S. troops overseas has become a primary focus.
Bush and Rumsfeld included references to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in their American Legion speeches, and framed U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the war against militant Islamic fundamentalism.
Emanuel said Rumsfeld crossed the line into partisan politics during his speech.
"He gave it for political purposes," Emanuel said. "He's playing politics. One casualty that Americans were willing to give up after 9/11 was partisanship."
Rumsfeld spokesman Eric Ruff said there was nothing political in the defense secretary's comments.
"He was not accusing anybody of being soft on terrorism," Ruff said. "What he's saying is that terrorist networks pose a threat to the United States and the free world. The questions he's raising are questions that all Americans ought to be addressing. He linked that to those very clear lessons in history, and history tells us that you just can't ignore a problem."
Late Friday, Rumsfeld wrote top Democrats in Congress saying his recent remarks in Salt Lake City were misrepresented by the media, The Associated Press reported. Rumsfeld said he was "concerned" with the reaction of Democrats.
"I know you agree that with America under attack and U.S. troops in the field, our national debate on this should be constructive," he wrote.
----------
shedges@tribune.com
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
DEMOCRATS FIRE BACK ON IRAQ!
href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0609020168sep02,1,2178739.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed">http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0609020168sep02,1,2178739.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
WASHINGTON -- Democrats kept up their verbal assault on President Bush and his national security team Friday over Iraq, while a new Pentagon report underscored the escalating violence there.
In a wave of statements, Democratic Party leaders targeted Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for casting the Iraq war as part of a broader war on terrorism.
"The Pentagon's new report today indicates that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld's speeches are increasingly disconnected from the facts on the ground in Iraq," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement.
"Even the Pentagon acknowledges Iraq is tipping into civil war," Reid said. "Failed Republican policies have left America bogged down in Iraq, with our military stretched thin and less able to fight and win the war on terror."
Bush, in a speech to the American Legion on Thursday in Salt Lake City, said, "The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century."
Rumsfeld, in his speech to the Legion on Tuesday, cited the "strange innocence" in the period between World Wars I and II and the failure of Western nations to recognize the rising Nazi threat.
"Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal-clear," Rumsfeld said, explaining, "I recount this history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism."
Some Democrats, though, were sharply critical of Rumsfeld's suggestion that critics of the war in Iraq were engaging in appeasement.
Rumsfeld "wants to lecture everybody else," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "He should be ashamed of himself. His stewardship has been a disaster."
Emanuel said House Democrats are considering staging a no-confidence vote on Rumsfeld.
The Pentagon's report on Iraq was noticeably more pessimistic than previous quarterly accounts that the Defense Department has sent to Congress. It highlighted civilian deaths, the rise in strife between rival Muslim factions and the growing role of death squads in Baghdad.
"Rising sectarian strife defines the emerging nature of violence in mid-2006," the report found, concluding, "Death squads and terrorists are locked in a mutually reinforcing cycle of sectarian strife."
Cheney suggested several weeks ago that the primary defeat of Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat who has supported the war, would "embolden Al Qaeda types."
Lieberman, now running as an independent in the race for his seat, was defeated by Ned Lamont, a critic of the Iraq war.
Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, said Bush has failed to deliver a winning strategy in Iraq.
"You can't trust Republicans to defend America," Dean said. "Today we only heard more of the same propaganda from a desperate Bush administration worried more about its party's political prospects this fall than about how to protect America and fight and win the real war on terror. It's results that matter, and the Bush White House and its rubber-stamp Republicans in Congress have not produced results when it comes to keeping America safe."
The charges and counter-charges over Iraq have more to do with political than military strategy. With the Nov. 7 elections more than two months away and poll numbers suggesting Democrats could overturn the GOP majority in the House, the role of U.S. troops overseas has become a primary focus.
Bush and Rumsfeld included references to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in their American Legion speeches, and framed U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the war against militant Islamic fundamentalism.
Emanuel said Rumsfeld crossed the line into partisan politics during his speech.
"He gave it for political purposes," Emanuel said. "He's playing politics. One casualty that Americans were willing to give up after 9/11 was partisanship."
Rumsfeld spokesman Eric Ruff said there was nothing political in the defense secretary's comments.
"He was not accusing anybody of being soft on terrorism," Ruff said. "What he's saying is that terrorist networks pose a threat to the United States and the free world. The questions he's raising are questions that all Americans ought to be addressing. He linked that to those very clear lessons in history, and history tells us that you just can't ignore a problem."
Late Friday, Rumsfeld wrote top Democrats in Congress saying his recent remarks in Salt Lake City were misrepresented by the media, The Associated Press reported. Rumsfeld said he was "concerned" with the reaction of Democrats.
"I know you agree that with America under attack and U.S. troops in the field, our national debate on this should be constructive," he wrote.
----------
shedges@tribune.com
Democrats return fire over Iraq
Officials seize on Pentagon report, respond to administration rhetoric
WASHINGTON -- Democrats kept up their verbal assault on President Bush and his national security team Friday over Iraq, while a new Pentagon report underscored the escalating violence there.
In a wave of statements, Democratic Party leaders targeted Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for casting the Iraq war as part of a broader war on terrorism.
"The Pentagon's new report today indicates that President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld's speeches are increasingly disconnected from the facts on the ground in Iraq," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement.
"Even the Pentagon acknowledges Iraq is tipping into civil war," Reid said. "Failed Republican policies have left America bogged down in Iraq, with our military stretched thin and less able to fight and win the war on terror."
Bush, in a speech to the American Legion on Thursday in Salt Lake City, said, "The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century."
Rumsfeld, in his speech to the Legion on Tuesday, cited the "strange innocence" in the period between World Wars I and II and the failure of Western nations to recognize the rising Nazi threat.
"Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal-clear," Rumsfeld said, explaining, "I recount this history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism."
Some Democrats, though, were sharply critical of Rumsfeld's suggestion that critics of the war in Iraq were engaging in appeasement.
Rumsfeld "wants to lecture everybody else," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "He should be ashamed of himself. His stewardship has been a disaster."
Emanuel said House Democrats are considering staging a no-confidence vote on Rumsfeld.
The Pentagon's report on Iraq was noticeably more pessimistic than previous quarterly accounts that the Defense Department has sent to Congress. It highlighted civilian deaths, the rise in strife between rival Muslim factions and the growing role of death squads in Baghdad.
"Rising sectarian strife defines the emerging nature of violence in mid-2006," the report found, concluding, "Death squads and terrorists are locked in a mutually reinforcing cycle of sectarian strife."
Cheney suggested several weeks ago that the primary defeat of Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat who has supported the war, would "embolden Al Qaeda types."
Lieberman, now running as an independent in the race for his seat, was defeated by Ned Lamont, a critic of the Iraq war.
Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, said Bush has failed to deliver a winning strategy in Iraq.
"You can't trust Republicans to defend America," Dean said. "Today we only heard more of the same propaganda from a desperate Bush administration worried more about its party's political prospects this fall than about how to protect America and fight and win the real war on terror. It's results that matter, and the Bush White House and its rubber-stamp Republicans in Congress have not produced results when it comes to keeping America safe."
The charges and counter-charges over Iraq have more to do with political than military strategy. With the Nov. 7 elections more than two months away and poll numbers suggesting Democrats could overturn the GOP majority in the House, the role of U.S. troops overseas has become a primary focus.
Bush and Rumsfeld included references to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in their American Legion speeches, and framed U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the war against militant Islamic fundamentalism.
Emanuel said Rumsfeld crossed the line into partisan politics during his speech.
"He gave it for political purposes," Emanuel said. "He's playing politics. One casualty that Americans were willing to give up after 9/11 was partisanship."
Rumsfeld spokesman Eric Ruff said there was nothing political in the defense secretary's comments.
"He was not accusing anybody of being soft on terrorism," Ruff said. "What he's saying is that terrorist networks pose a threat to the United States and the free world. The questions he's raising are questions that all Americans ought to be addressing. He linked that to those very clear lessons in history, and history tells us that you just can't ignore a problem."
Late Friday, Rumsfeld wrote top Democrats in Congress saying his recent remarks in Salt Lake City were misrepresented by the media, The Associated Press reported. Rumsfeld said he was "concerned" with the reaction of Democrats.
"I know you agree that with America under attack and U.S. troops in the field, our national debate on this should be constructive," he wrote.
----------
shedges@tribune.com
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
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