http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022807L.shtml
Walter Reed Patients Told to Keep Quiet
By Kelly Kennedy
Army Times
Tuesday 27 February 2007
Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center's Medical Hold Unit say they
have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their
rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the
media.
"Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble
soldiers caused by talking to the media," one Medical Hold Unit soldier
said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Soldiers say their sergeant major gathered troops at 6 p.m. Monday to
tell them they must follow their chain of command when asking for help with
their medical evaluation paperwork, or when they spot mold, mice or other
problems in their quarters.
They were also told they would be moving out of Building 18 to Building
14 within the next couple of weeks. Building 14 is a barracks that houses
the administrative offices for the Medical Hold Unit and was renovated in
2006. It's also located on the Walter Reed Campus, where reporters must be
escorted by public affairs personnel. Building 18 is located just off campus
and is easy to access.
The soldiers said they were also told their first sergeant has been
relieved of duty, and that all of their platoon sergeants have been moved to
other positions at Walter Reed. And 120 permanent-duty soldiers are expected
to arrive by mid-March to take control of the Medical Hold Unit, the
soldiers said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Army public affairs did not respond to a
request sent Sunday evening to verify the personnel changes.
The Pentagon also clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense
Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN
and the Discovery Channel, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople: "It will be
in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes
place," referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed.
***
http://www.counterpunch.org/tariq02272007.html
Tariq Ali : The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan -- The Khyber Impasse
CounterPunch February 27, 2007
Tariq Ali's new book, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, is published
by Verso.
It is Year 6 of the UN-backed NATO occupation of Afghanistan, a joint US/EU
mission. On 26 February there was an attempted assassination of Dick Cheney
by Taliban suicide bombers while he was visiting the 'secure' US air base at
Bagram (once an equally secure Soviet air base during an earlier conflict).
Two US soldiers and a mercenary ('contractor') died in the attack, as did
twenty other people working at the base. This episode alone should have
concentrated the US Vice-President's mind on the scale of the Afghan
debacle. In 2006 the casualty rates rose substantially and NATO troops lost
forty-six soldiers in clashes with the Islamic resistance or shot-down
helicopters.
The insurgents now control at least twenty districts in the Kandahar,
Helmand, Uruzgan provinces where NATO troops have replaced US soldiers. And
it is hardly a secret that many officials in these zones are closet
supporters of the guerrilla fighters. The situation is out of control. At
the beginning of this war Mrs Bush and Mrs Blair appeared on numerous TV and
radio shows claiming that the aim of the war was to liberate Afghan women.
Try repeating that today and the women will spit in your face.
Who is responsible for this disaster? Why is the country still subjugated?
What are Washington's strategic goals in the region? What is the function of
NATO? And how long can any country remain occupied against the will of a
majority of its people?
Few tears were shed in Afghanistan and elsewhere when the Taliban fell, the
hopes aroused by Western demagogy did not last too long. It soon became
clear that the new transplanted elite would cream off a bulk of the foreign
aid and create its own criminal networks of graft and patronage. The people
suffered. A mud cottage with a thatched roof to house a family of homeless
refugees costs fewer than five thousand dollars. How many have been built?
Hardly any. There are reports each year of hundreds of shelter-less Afghans
freezing to death each winter.
Instead a quick-fix election was organised at high cost by Western PR firms
and essentially for the benefit of Western public opinion. The results
failed to bolster support for NATO inside the country. Hamid Karzai the
puppet President, symbolised his own isolation and instinct for
self-preservation by refusing to be guarded by a security detail from his
own ethnic Pashtun base. He wanted tough, Terminator look-alike US marines
and was granted them.
Might Afghanistan been made more secure by a limited Marshall-Plan style
intervention? It is, of course, possible that the construction of free
schools and hospitals, subsidised homes for the poor and the rebuilding of
the social infrastructure that was destroyed after the withdrawal of Soviet
troops in 1989 could have stabilised the country. It would also have needed
state help to agriculture and cottage industries to reduce the dependence on
poppy farming. 90 percent of the world's opium production is based in
Afghanistan. UN estimates suggest that heroin accounts for 52 percent of the
impoverished country's gross domestic product and the opium sector of
agriculture continues to grow apace. All this would have required a strong
state and a different world order. Only a slightly crazed utopian could have
expected NATO countries, busy privatising and deregulating their own
countries, to embark on enlightened social experiments abroad.
And so elite corruption grew like an untreated tumour. Western funds
designed to aid some reconstruction were siphoned off to build fancy homes
for their native enforcers.. In Year 2 of the Occupation there was a
gigantic housing scandal. Cabinet ministers awarded themselves and favoured
cronies prime real estate in Kabul where land prices reached a high point
after the Occupation since the occupiers and their camp followers had to
live in the style to which they had become accustomed. Karzai's colleagues
built their large villas, protected by NATO troops and in full view of the
poor.
Add to this that Karzai's younger brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, has become one
of the largest drug barons in the country. At a recent meeting with
Pakistan's President, when Karzai was bleating on about Pakistan's inability
to stop cross-border smuggling, General Musharraf suggested that perhaps
Karzai should set an example by bringing his sibling under control.
While economic conditions failed to improve, NATO military strikes often
targeted innocent civilians leading to violent anti-American protests in the
Afghan capital last year. What was initially viewed by some locals as a
necessary police action against al-Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks is now
perceived by a growing majority in the entire region as a fully-fledged
imperial occupation. The Taliban is growing and creating new alliances not
because its sectarian religious practices have become popular, but because
it is the only available umbrella for national liberation. As the British
and Russians discovered to their cost in the preceding two centuries,
Afghans never liked being occupied.
There is no way NATO can win this war now. Sending more troops will lead to
more deaths. And full-scale battles will destabilise neighbouring Pakistan.
Musharraf has already taken the rap for an air raid on a Muslim school in
Pakistan. Dozens of children were killed and the Islamists in Pakistan
organised mass street protests. Insiders suggest that the 'pre-emptive' raid
was, in fact, carried out by US war planes who were supposedly targeting a
terrorist base, but the Pakistan government thought it better they took the
responsibility to avoid an explosion of anti-American anger.
NATO's failure cannot be blamed on the Pakistani government. If anything,
the war in Afghanistan has created a critical situation in two Pakistani
provinces. The Pashtun majority in Afghanistan has always had close links to
its fellow Pashtuns in Pakistan. The border was an imposition by the British
Empire and it has always been porous. Attired in Pashtun clothes I crossed
it myself in 1973 without any restrictions. It is virtually impossible to
build a Texan fence or an Israeli wall across the mountainous and largely
unmarked 2500 kilometre border that separates the two countries. The
solution is political, not military.
Washington's strategic aims in Afghanistan appear to be non-existent unless
they need the conflict to discipline European allies who betrayed them on
Iraq. True, the al-Qaeda leaders are still at large, but their capture will
be the result of effective police work, not war and occupation. What will be
the result of a NATO withdrawal? Here Iran, Pakistan and the Central Asian
states will be vital in guaranteeing a confederal constitution that respects
ethnic and religious diversity. The NATO occupation has not made this task
easy. Its failure has revived the Taliban and increasingly the Pashtuns are
uniting behind it.
The lesson here, as in Iraq, is a basic one. It is much better for
regime-change to come from below even if this means a long wait as in South
Africa, Indonesia or Chile. Occupations disrupt the possibilities of organic
change and create a much bigger mess than existed before. Afghanistan is but
one example.
Tariq Ali can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
***
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2019547,00.html
The Guardian Friday February 23, 2007
Occupied Gaza like apartheid South Africa, says UN report
By Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
A UN human rights investigator has likened Israel's occupation of the
Palestinian territories to apartheid South Africa and says there should be
"serious consideration" over bringing the occupation to the international
court of justice.
The report by John Dugard, a South African law professor who is the UN's
special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories,
represents some of the most forceful criticism yet of Israel's 40-year
occupation.
Prof Dugard said although Israel and apartheid South Africa were different
regimes, "Israel's laws and practices in the OPT [occupied Palestinian
territories] certainly resemble aspects of apartheid." His comments are in
an advance version of a report on the UN Human Rights Council's website
ahead of its session next month.
After describing the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, with
closed zones, demolitions and preference given to settlers on roads, with
building rights and by the army, he said: "Can it seriously be denied that
the purpose of such action is to establish and maintain domination by one
racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and
systematically oppressing them? Israel denies that this is its intention or
purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions
described in this report."
He dismissed Israel's argument that the sole purpose of the vast concrete
and steel West Bank barrier is for security. "It has become abundantly clear
that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety,
convenience and comfort of settlers," he said.
Gaza remained under occupation despite the withdrawal of settlers in 2005.
"In effect, following Israel's withdrawal, Gaza became a sealed-off,
imprisoned and occupied territory," he said.
Prof Dugard said his mandate was solely to report on human rights in the
occupied Palestinian territories and he described as a violation of
international humanitarian law the firing of rockets by Palestinians from
Gaza into Israel. "Such actions cannot be condoned and clearly constitute a
war crime," he said. "Nevertheless, Israel's response has been grossly
disproportionate and indiscriminate and resulted in the commission of
multiple war crimes."
Read the UN report (pdf):
http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/4session/A.HRC.4.17.pdf
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