http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2245091.ece
The Independent February 2007 It is no use blaming Iran for the insurgency in Iraq The US media, gullible over WMD, is showing itself equally gullible over this exaggerated Iranian threat. By Patrick Cockburn It is scarcely surprising that the Iranian government believes that the United States is behind the kidnapping of one of its diplomats in Baghdad on Sunday. The Iranians say he was seized by 30 uniformed men from an Iraqi army commando battalion that often works with the US military services in Iraq. The US had already shown its contempt for any diplomatic immunity protecting Iranians in Iraq by arresting five officials in a long-established Iranian office in the Kurdish city of Arbil last month. The White House had earlier authorised US forces to kill or capture Iranians deemed to be a threat. It is striking how swiftly Washington is seeking to escalate its confrontation with Iran. Its rhetoric has returned to the strident tone so often heard when the US was accusing Saddam Hussein in 2002 and 2003 of hiding weapons of mass destruction that threatened the world. No serious observer of Iraq since the US invasion believes for a moment that Iran has sustained the Sunni insurgency or played an essential role in the rise of the Shia militias. It was obvious that when Saddam fell Iran would benefit. He was, after all, the arch enemy of Tehran, and the Iranians were delighted to see him go. A second inevitable consequence of the end of Saddam's predominantly Sunni regime was that the Iraqi Shia, 60 per cent of the population, would take power in Baghdad. Foreseeing and wishing to avoid just such an outcome, President George Bush senior refused to send the US Army to Baghdad after his victory in Kuwait in 1991. What does Mr Bush hope to achieve by confronting and possibly even going to war with Iran? Within Iraq it is a policy of great foolishness, because it will be seen as being anti-Shia as well as anti-Iranian. The Iraqi Shia are suspicious that the US is planning to rob them of power. Since last year, for the first time, a majority of the Shia support armed attacks on US-led forces. There are some benefits for Washington in escalating the conflict with Iran. The Bush administration has specialised in creating demons responsible for all the ills of Iraq. First there was Saddam Hussein and then Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Both were killed last year, but the war has continued to escalate. Iran is now being promoted as the new demon. It is supposedly behind the provision of roadside bombs that have killed so many US and British troops - though the technology involved in these simple but deadly devices could generally be found in a garden shed. Iraq has long been short of everything except weapons. Every Iraqi family possessed arms even under Saddam Hussein. In the early 1990s he introduced a buy-back programme by which he would pay for heavy weapons handed in. One tribe in south-east Iraq turned up with three tanks which they offered to sell to the government if the price was right. Deeming the official offer too low, they returned the tanks to their tribal arsenal. It will be very difficult for the US to pursue an anti-Iranian policy in Iraq and the Middle East while supporting a pro-Iranian Shia government in Baghdad. Strangely, the only powerful party that is as vociferously anti-Iranian as Mr Bush is the Baath party. It has for long justified its opposition to the takeover of government by the Shia majority by pretending they are Iranian pawns. In the Middle East as a whole, the new US anti-Iranian policy has more to recommend it from an American point of view. There is plenty of anti-Iranian and anti-Shia sentiment around. Sunni Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan were embarrassed by the success of the Shia Hizbollah in the war in Lebanon last summer, compared to their own supine incompetence. Little wonder they are happy to join the US in whipping up feeling against the Shia and the Iranians. Mr Bush is acting rather like cynical Tory politicians at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries who played "the Orange Card" over Ulster. Claiming to be safeguarding the empire, they stirred anti-Catholic and anti-Irish bigotry to their own political advantage. Mr Bush may reap similar benefits by playing the anti-Shia and anti-Iranian card. One expert on Iraq asked me in perplexity: "Even if Bush does launch a war against Iran, where does he think it will get him? He will still be stuck in Iraq and the Iranians are not going to surrender. He will just have widened the war." The answer to this question is probably that the anti-Iranian tilt of the Bush administration has more to do with American than Iraqi politics. A fresh demon is being presented to the US voter. Iran is portrayed as the hidden hand behind US failure in both Iraq and in Lebanon. The US media, gullible over WMD, is showing itself equally gullible over this exaggerated Iranian threat. The Bush administration has always shown itself more interested in holding power in Washington than in Baghdad. Whatever its failures on the battlefield, the Republicans were able to retain the presidency and both Houses of Congress in 2004. Confrontation with Iran, diverting attention from the fiasco in Iraq, may be their best chance of holding the White House in 2008. The writer is the author of 'The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq' published by Verso *** Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 19:42:18 -0500 (EST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] IRC Right Web Program - Feb 5, 2007 http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3967 Analysis The Money Behind the "Surge" by Aaron Glantz While an in increasing number of Democratic and Republican legislators oppose the Bush administration's plan to "surge" the number of troops in Iraq, their efforts remain largely symbolic, limited to making public declarations and passing non-binding resolutions. Anti-war activists, on the other hand, are searching for ways to cut off the money needed to sustain the war. "Two years ago, it seemed pretty lonely. Now every politician wants to be seen on television saying something bad about President [George W.] Bush's handling of the war," says Rusti Eisenstadt, an activist and professor of U.S. history at Hofstra University. "The key now is to get [Congress] to do something instead of hiding behind non-binding resolutions." Activists are setting their sights on a request Bush is expected to submit to Congress this week for an estimated $100 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peace groups would like to see Congress vote against that measure, a move they see as more important than any progressive piece of legislation introduced in Congress this year. "We are looking at a lot of things that are happening in the Congress right now, from a Senate resolution that opposes an escalation [sending more troops to Iraq] but will allow a war to continue, to other bills out there that talk about bringing the troops home and defunding the war, but which George Bush can veto," said Nancy Lessing of the group Military Families Speak Out. "The one thing that we see that can end this war is if Congress votes no money on the appropriation that's going to come before them," she added. "Legislation is so that Congress has cover," added Michael McPherson, executive director of Veterans for Peace. "The bottom line is that we want the troops to come home and we need it to be defunded. All the other stuff is just a game." Previous votes have been extremely lopsided, with the vast majority of the House and almost every member of the Senate supporting continued funding. Already, Congress has approved more than $380 billion for the war in Iraq, according to a report from the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a nonprofit think tank specializing in issues of peace, justice, and the environment. The IPS calculates that if that money had not been spent on the war, it could have been used to build 2.9 million units of affordable housing in the United States or paid for 62 million scholarships to university students. Activists take some solace, however, in the fact that the Democrats' good showing at the polls in November 2006 means that Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) now chairs a key House of Representatives committee that must approve the president's request. Murtha, a decorated Marine Corps veteran with close ties to the military establishment, shocked many in Washington last year when he came out for a "redeployment" of U.S. troops from Iraq and said the presence of U.S. soldiers there has increased the level of violence in Iraq rather than calmed it. At a press conference last week, Murtha said he would not approve the latest request for $100 billion in war funding without "extensive hearings" that are slated to begin February 17. "We're going to check every cent that is spent by the United States government," Murtha said. Analysts expect Murtha to eventually vote to approve the war funding but with conditions attached. At a hearing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in January, Murtha said those conditions could include that no money be allocated for an escalation unless the military can meet normal "readiness" levels. "We should not spend money to send people overseas unless they replenish the strategic reserve," Murtha told that hearing. "If he wants to veto the bill," Murtha said of Bush, "he won't have any money." Former Rep. Tom Andrews (D-ME), who is close to Murtha, told the Inter Press Service that other conditions for further funding of the Iraq War could include closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and bulldozing the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Eisenstadt of Hofstra believes any increase in members of Congress voting against funding the war will make an impact. "People forget that Congress did not vote to stop funding the war in Vietnam until after all the American troops had already left," Eisenstadt said. "Instead what happened was that every year more and more members of Congress voted against the war and that pressured President Richard Nixon to pull more and more troops out every year. "When President Nixon took office, there were half a million U.S. troops in Vietnam," she said. "By the end of his first term it was down to 35,000." [Aaron Glantz is a contributor to the Inter Press Service.] *** Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 19:45:06 -0500 (EST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Baltimore Sun via Info Clearing House - Feb 5, 2007 http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/357/58/ Troops return to painful wait for needed help PDF Print E-mail The California Nurses Association reported that in the first quarter of 2006, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs "treated 20,638 Iraq veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder, and they have a backlog of 400,000 cases." A returning soldier has to wait an average of 165 days for a VA decision on initial disability benefits, and an appeal can take up to three years. This is unacceptable and reprehensible. By Andrew Weaver and Ray McGovern The saying "War is hell" doesn't begin to describe how horrible it has been for tens of thousands in our military in Iraq and Afghanistan. War inevitably involves witnessing and sometimes engaging in gruesome acts of violence. It is a shocking confrontation with death and devastation. It is normal for human beings to react to war's psychic trauma with profound fear, anger, grief, repulsion, helplessness and horror - or with emotional numbness and disbelief. Trauma is the Greek word for "wound." Just as a physical wound from combat can cause suffering in the body, psychological trauma can cause acute suffering of mind and spirit. It is not surprising to find that an assessment of more than 220,000 military personnel returning from Iraq published in the April Journal of the American Medical Association found that nearly one in five has significant mental health problems. Repeated tours of duty increase the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder by 50 percent. At the same time, we are hearing disturbing news reports that these traumatized soldiers are not receiving the mental heath care they urgently require. Last month, National Public Radio journalist Daniel Zwerdling did an extensive story on the military's treatment of personnel returning from Iraq who suffer from emotional problems, including PTSD. Veterans coming home stated that their superiors have harassed and punished them for seeking help for psychological problems triggered by their service in Iraq. Several of the soldiers' supervisors acknowledged the callous treatment. A recent national study by the Government Accountability Office found that most of the troops who show signs of PTSD were not referred to mental health professionals, despite Pentagon claims, in NPR's report, "that providing support to soldiers with emotional problems is a top priority" and "that resources are being made available to returning veterans." If the same disastrous pattern unfolds that affected Vietnam-era veterans, and these PTSD sufferers do not obtain appropriate and timely assistance, tens of thousands will become unnecessarily and tragically addicted to drugs or alcohol, and many may commit suicide. Besides the 58,000 lost in combat, we lost tens of thousands of Vietnam-era military personnel to suicide and drugs. The American people must actively advocate and demand appropriate treatment for veterans who have been psychologically wounded by war. [Andrew J. Weaver is a United Methodist minister, research psychologist and author in New York City. His e-mail is [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ray McGovern was an Army officer and a CIA analyst and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. 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