5 posts tagged “iraq”

During the Iranian protest against the allegedly fraudulent Iranian Presidential election, the death of an a beautiful young music student, Neda Agha-Soltan outraged the world as a focal point for the violence the Iranian regime was using to quell free speech and right to assembly in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Neda was a stunningly beautiful young woman.

The protests in Iran were due to an unprecedented turn-around time in calling the results of a presidential election in Iran; the ballots in Iran must be hand-counted, and the process usually takes three day.  The challenged result of the election was the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Since the protests and the death of Neda, Get Real has tried to find a silver lining in the dark cloud.  It is obvious that reform in Iran, including the expansion of human rights, will require reform from within.   Yet there were times, during the Bush administration, when the Neocons, who succeeded in getting the US on the warpath to Iraq, were beating the war drums for a war on Iran.

The advent of social communication via the internet and cells phone brought the protests, and the Iranian government's violent actions, into the intimate digital lives of Americans.  We have seen and heard from people statements such as "Tell the World We Are Not Terrorists!"

This young lady, this beautiful human being, has become an international symbol for the illogic of suppression of the human will.  Any one of the tens of thousands of Iranian protestors, or innocent by-standers, could have been struck down by the government's bullet.    Neda died to put a face on the Iranian people.  Much more of the rest of the world can see Iranian life through a human lens.  She was beautiful  She was engaged.  She had a family.  Near and dear to my own heart, she was a musician.

The Iranian government open fired on a number of occasions on peaceful protestors, with paramilitary Basij and police rooftop snipers shooting at random into the crowds below.

Even the most hardened conservative in the US, or the most outraged Israeli hardliner should be able to see the utter senselessness in the loss of this beautiful human life.

What does Neda represent to the west?  To many, there is just plain sadness.  To others, Neda's death is revolting.  To Get Real, Neda represents a hope for the reform movement in Iran to move forward smartly, carefully, informed, with help from the outside.  But most of all, Neda had forced the people of the world to see the Iranian people in a new light.  Should a Neocon selected president acquire the office in the US anytime soon, a war on Iran will be a hard sell.   Neda's death has touched too many people.  We will not tolerate a war in which Iranian civilian deaths are likely.  Some of us did not tolerate civilian deaths in Iraq, and we still mourn the toll of war.  Every innocent Iraqi civilian death was a Neda.

We realize that the Iranian government is not the same as the Iranian people.  The protests show us that Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader have detractors.  We should be galvanized to support the citizens in Iran with good will and support of many kinds as they try to find ways to join the ranks of freedom-loving people around the world.

We won't tolerate another illegal, unnecessary war.

My condolences to Neda' friends, family & fiance.

Conservatives have told us they don't want accused terrorists to have basic legal rights because they don't deserve it.

They have told us that they don't want accused terrorists to be moved to the US because they will be a physical danger to our society.

They have told us that they need to use torture to protect American lives.

And they have told us they won't apologize for it.

Now that the accused (and perhaps even real) terrorists are able to speak up in their own defense, we now know why Bush and Co. denied them basic legal rights, kept them locked away, out of sight, in legal limbo: they were afraid that they would recant the testimony that the CIA acquired from them using White-house sanctioned torture.

The same testimony used by the Bush administration in their attempts to justify for their war in Iraq.

Now, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed isn't really my kind of guy.  He is an accused top Al-Qaeda operative and self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks.  But it has come to light that Mohammed, like other key "informants", claimed to have lied under torture by the CIA.

"I just make up stories," he said in broken English, telling a 2007 military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay of an interrogation session during which he was

Asked about the location of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, Modhammed said he didn't know, and was then tortured.  He recounted how if he said yes, bin Laden was in a specific location, they wouldn't torture him.  But if he said no, they would torture him.

It doesn't take a genius to see that anyone would say whatever their captors required to stop the torture.

Adding to the veracity of his comments about lying under torture, Mohammed freely confessed in the same haring  to having participated in n 31 different terror plots and responsibilities.

Other captured non-combatants also admitted to lying under torture.  The CIA and the White House would classify detainees as "high value" if they gave them the answers they needed to take action.

One such "high value" detainee, Abu Zubaydah, testified that he almost died under interrogation.

Zubaydah said, "After months of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries that they inflicted to my eye, to my stomach, to my bladder, and my left thigh and my reproductive organs... Doctors told me that I nearly died four times,"

"They say, 'this in your diary.' They say, 'see you want to make operation against America.' I say no, the idea is different. They say no, torturing, torturing. I say 'okay, I do. I was decide to make operation.'"

Zubaydah was the first "high-value" detainee to be subjected to waterboarding, one of the enhanced interrogation approved by the Bush administration.

A third, Majid Khan, who is a US national held at Guantanamo, also said he had been tortured.

The ACLU obtained the partially redacted documents through legal means in US courts.  "In the end, any classified information you have is through... agencies who physically and mentally tortured me," Khan said.

ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner summed it up:

"The documents released today provide further evidence of brutal torture and abuse in the CIA's interrogation program and demonstrate beyond doubt that this information has been suppressed solely to avoid embarrassment and growing demands for accountability," said Wizner.

Get Real has previously commented on how we tortured for justification for war.  The Bush administration wanted intel to justify their war.  They wanted intel to link Saddam Hussein directly to al Qaeda.  They wanted to know where the WMDs.  They badly needed to find bin Laden.

They didn't succeed in any of these efforts, and their dismal failure occurred at the cost of the moral high ground of the US in the court of world opinion.

Get Real recommends that we try these war criminals for their crimes and purge our country's soul of their sins.  Get Real suggest that we create required courses at all Law Schools to review the legal failings of the Bush and his administration.

The fact the Cheney is roaming free, without any legal charges against him for his conduct, is counter to every ideal that we hold dear as a free nation.  His political career must end before we will be able to move on to a more enlightened and more truly America future.

In a recent Wall Street Journal Opinion, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, an obvious Bush II apologist, wrote how, in his opinion, "The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace".   Shapiro laments the poor treatment of Bush in the Gallup polls, and cites how some Americans have seen fit to name a sewage treatment plant after Bush II.

Shapiro writes

"This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties."

Shapiro is a would-be revisionist who has forgotten conveniently who drew first blood.

Bush is in for years of stunning indictments.  Both rhetorical, and perhaps legal.  It was Bush whose first comments to the first were used to describe how much easier it would be for him if he had a dictatorship.  It was Bush who allowed Cheney to, arrogantly, disregard the American's public's right to know and hold a top-secret "energy policy" meeting - an event at which transpired discussion so secretive that their subject matter is still unknown.  It was Bush who decided to ignore the advice of the majority of the world - including his own father's cabinet members - and go into Iraq without a broad coalition..  It was Bush who arrogantly told the world that the world - to a country - either stood with America or against America.  It was Bush who strutted out on the aircraft carrier under the banner "Mission Accomplished".  It was Bush who challenged terrorists to "bring it on", literally inviting more attacks.  It was Bush who failed so miserably to ask Americans to prepare to sacrifice their time and effort - who instead decided to patronize us with a color-coded fear scheme so blatantly used to manipulate the outcome of the 2004 elections.  It was Bush who saw fit to strip American citizens of their rights to legal representation, to a fair and speedy trial, by his mere claim that a citizen is an 'enemy combatant'.  It was Bush who decided to, so arrogantly, expand the powers of the executive branch to the extent that he consider signing statements synonymous with decrees.  Americans have not suffered life under rule by decree since we rejected the last King George.

Bush's attacks on America's sensibilities - and the world's sensibilities - continue.  It is Bush who, even now, is trying to gut the EPA - as if the political carcass wasn't dead enough.

Mr. Shapiro, it is not a measure of arrogance and weakness for a majority of Americans to reject Bush's many broken, stinking rotten putrid doctrines.  It is a measure of the strength of our democracy.  It shows that we still have sufficient character to recognize incompetent arrogance, although, sadly, so late.  It shows the world that we Americans as a whole do not reject their sensibilities and will not place a succession of leaders in place that will keep the world's smaller countries under our boot heel. 

It is, I might add, arrogant for a minority, like yours, to continue to state what is best for the majority, even after the majority has spoken so clearly.  Your time is, I think, better spent soul-searching for a party platform worthy of an American political party.

When Russia invaded Georgia, the world was surprised.  Surprised, but not stunned.  Bush II's unilateral cowboy-posse doctrine has informed the world that, in fact, might makes right.  When Bush II invaded Iraq, he was ignoring - blatantly - the advice of his father's cabinet members, the advice of the UN security council, and the advice of a vast majority of nations and people around the world.

When Putin came forward last week with his theory that the US orchestrated the Russian-Georgian war - and he called it a war - to manipulate the outcome of the US presidential election, he sounded a bit wacky, but something sounded about right.  Putin invaded Georgia because Georgia was cracking down on the breakaway of of the Georgian republic of Ossetia.  Putin sounded wacky because the US supports and recognizes Georgia, so why would the US support a break of the country?

But something about his comments sounded about right.

Today, in thinking of world events, it hit me.  Russia invaded Georgia and ignored the UN with impunity befitting Bush II.  I knew this would be a consequence of Bush's war in Iraq.  He has handed the major powers, indeed each nation, a permission slip to act according to their own national interest, regardless of the consequences to other countries and people.  In this way, Bush has given US foreign policy sociopathic tendancies, and he has isolated and distanced all people from all nations and lessened the moral standard for resolving international conflict.

Questions about the ultimate outcome of the Russian-Georgia war linger, but the question I am asking is: what is the next war?  Which country will be the next country to use their permission slip to invade which country?  Here are some possibile headlines that Bush II has made more likely:

China invades Taiwan
Russia invades Pakistan
US invades Iran

Personally, I believe that US will bomb but not invade Iran.  Why do you think McCain was chosen by the PNAC to succeed Bush?

Wake up, America!  Let's get real.  We prefer to live under so many delusions.  We sop up the lies, fabrications, justification, palliative comments.  We are willingly mislead when the truth is too hard to bear.  We ignore the truth even when it's right in front of our faces.

Without analysis, we consume positions as facts, adopt perspectives from leaders on how they make us feel, without any understanding of the long-term consequences of those perspectives to ourselves, our families, and our local and global neighbors.

Check back here for refreshing, in-depth, informed analysis of events & people.  Get Real will publish on issues that are important to us... even when many fail to realize their importance.