Why Everyone in the U.S. Who Counts Wants Julian Assange Dead

Before and after images of the van that came to pick up the bodies of eleven men shot to death by circling American helicopters in Iraq in 2007. Both children in the van were wounded. "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids to a battle," said one of the pilots. "That's right," replies another. From the video Collateral Murder.

by Thomas Neuburger

Below is a full video version of Collateral Murder, the 2007 war footage that was leaked in 2010 to Wikileaks by Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning. This version was posted to the Wikileaks YouTube channel with subtitles. It will only take about 15 minutes of your life to view it.

It's brutal to watch, but I challenge you to do it anyway. It shows not just murder, but a special kind of murder — murder from the safety of the air, murder by men with heavy machine guns slowly circling their targets like hunters with shotguns who walk the edges of a trout pond, shooting at will, waiting, walking, then shooting again, till all the fish are dead.

The film also shows war crimes that implicate the entire structure of the U.S. military, as everyone involved was acting under orders, seeking permission to fire, waiting, then getting it before once more blasting away. The publication of this video, plus all the Wikileaks publications that followed, comprise the whole reason everyone in the U.S. who matters, everyone with power, wants Julian Assange dead.

They also want him hated. Generating that hate is the process we're watching today.

"Everyone" in this case includes every major newspaper that published and received awards for publishing Wikileaks material; all major U.S. televised media outlets; and all "respectable" U.S. politicians — including, of course, Hillary Clinton, who was rumored (though unverifiably) to have said, "Can't we just drone this guy?"

Yes, Julian Assange the person can be a giant douche even to his supporters, as this exchange reported by Intercept writer Micah Lee attests. Nevertheless, it's not for being a douche that the Establishment state wants him dead; that state breeds, harbors and honors douches everywhere in the world. They want him dead for publishing videos like these. 

Please watch it. The footage shows not only murder, but bloodlust and conscienceless brutality, so much of it in fact that this became one of the main reasons Chelsea Manning leaked it in the first place. As she said at her court-martial: “The most alarming aspect of the video for me, was the seemingly delight of bloodlust they [the pilots] appeared to have. They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging with, and seemed to not value human life in referring to them as ‘dead bastards,’ and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers.”

The Wikileaks page for the video is here. A transcript is here.

This was done in our name, to "keep us safe." This continues to be done every day that we and our allies are at "war" in the Middle East.

Bodies pile on bodies as this continues. The least we can do, literally the least, is to witness and acknowledge their deaths.
  

Is Genocide Inevitable Under Fascism? Let's Take A Look-See

Herero survivors 

Can you point to Namibia on a map? Señor Trumpanzee couldn't even pronounce it at a meeting with African leaders. But when he was a dumb little Trump, failing all his classes, it was much easier to find Namibia on a map-- because it had a different name, a name with an excellent hint: South West Africa. Presumably even a dumb little Trumpanzee could figure that out on a map. I collected stamps so I was always interested in other countries. Other has ever interested Trump except himself. In 1882 Chancellor Otto von Bismark gave a German merchant "protection" to set up in southwest Africa. Two years later the German flag was flying over the territory. Once diamonds, gold, copper and platinum were discovered, German settlers and military units started moving in in significant numbers. By 1886, Hermann's pappy, Heinrich Ernst Göring, was appointed Commissioner. He created a dual legal system there, one for whites and one for non-whites, leading to clashes and eventually to a series of full scale wars, which became a wars of extermination, also a way for the Germans to grab all the native peoples' land and to use them as slaves (calling them terrorists). The worst of the genocides-- with an actual Vernichtungsbefehl-- an extermination order-- came in 1904 against the Herero people and then the Nama. The Germans developed a string of concentration camps to lock up-- and exterminate-- the natives. The Germans were kicked out of South West Africa in 1915 and fter World War I, it became a protectorate of South Africa, In 1990 an independent country, Namibia, or, as Señor T likes to call it, Nambia.

Yesterday I met a Catholic priest while I was waiting for a prescription to be filled at a Von's. He said he reads DWT but I didn't get the idea that he's progressive. He asked me a really strange question, especially for a man of the cloth. He wanted to know if I thought all of Trump's supporters should be consigned to Hell. I said it wouldn't be fair to punish people who were addicted to drugs or people with really low IQs, pretty typical Trump supporters, but the conscious ones, for sure. I couldn't tell if he agreed with me or not, but he certainly took Hell more literally than I do. I got back to him with a question about the Germans in South West Africa. During the genoicide German researchers back in Berlin wanted dead bodies or just heads to experiment on. Basically they wanted to prove, scientifically, that Africans are inferior beings, Untermenschen. What the Germans did in South West Africa was a precursor to what they did some years later in Europe, particularly to Jews, Roma (gypsies), gays and Russians. But what I asked my new priest friend is if what the German's actually proven was that they themselves are Untermenschen for the way they interacted with other mensche. I couldn't get an answer out of him on that either but he seemed touched when I read him a translation of General Lothar von Trotha's extermination order:

The Herero are no longer German subjects. The Herero people will have to leave the country. If the people refuse I will force them with cannons to do so. Within the German boundaries, every Herero, with or without firearms, with or without cattle, will be shot. I won’t accommodate women and children anymore. I shall drive them back to their people or I shall give the order to shoot at them.

You know how competent the Germans can be. They killed 80% of the Herero, many by shooting them but also many by preventing them from having any access to water, even poisoning wells. Holocaust?

Yesterday, The Times of Israel published a story about the descendants of the murdered Herero are trying to get a formal apology and reparations from Germany.

Germany on Wednesday handed back human remains seized from Namibia a century ago after the slaughter of indigenous people under its colonial rule, but angry descendants slammed Berlin for failing to properly atone for the dark chapter.

Herero chief Vekuii Rukoro, whose ancestors were among the tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people massacred between 1904 and 1908, said the handover ceremony should have taken place not in a Berlin church, but a German government building.

He also accused Berlin of taking too long to formally apologize for what is often called the first genocide of the 20th century.

...Many were murdered by German imperial troops while others, driven into the desert or rounded up in prison camps, died from thirst, hunger and exposure.

Dozens were beheaded after their deaths, their skulls sent to researchers in Germany for discredited “scientific” experiments that purported to prove the racial superiority of white Europeans.

In some instances, captured Herero women were made to boil the decapitated heads and scrape them clean with shards of glass.

Research carried out by German professor Eugen Fischer on the skulls and bones resulted in theories later used by the Nazis to justify the murder of Jews.

Is The U.S. Responsible For Erik Prince's Savage Mercenaries Murdering Civilians In Yemen?

Not many Americans are especially aware of Yemen, an ancient country at the foot of the Arabian peninsula. it isn't on many tourist itineraries and there hasn't been a lot of U.S. business involvement. The country is not oil rich. But there is a horrifying war going on that has brutally devastated the country being carried out by U.S. allies, primarily Saudi Arabia, but also Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain, all authoritarian anti-democratic, feudal countries. Oh and I forgot another participant: Trump's neo-Nazi amigo Erik Prince-- who Bannon is trying to persuade to run for a Wyoming U.S. Senate seat-- has his savage mercenaries committing mayhem in the country as well. The war is being fought with U.S.-supplied weapons and U.S. technological and strategic assistance. A million Yemenis have fled the country and another two and a half million are internal refugees. The situation can only be described as a humanitarian catastrophe. War crimes are being committed with alacrity-- and without accountability. Over 10,000 civilians have been killed and more than 40,000 injured, primarily by indiscriminate bombing.

Three very serious minded Members of Congress, Walter Jones (R-NC), Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) penned a joint editorial for the New York Times that ran yesterday, Stop The Unconstitutional War In Yemen. They start by asking us to "imagine that the entire population of Washington State-- 7.3 million people-- were on the brink of starvation, with the port city of Seattle under a naval and aerial blockade, leaving it unable to receive and distribute countless tons of food and aid that sit waiting offshore. This nightmare scenario is akin to the obscene reality occurring in the Middle East’s poorest country, Yemen, at the hands of the region’s richest, Saudi Arabia, with unyielding United States military support that Congress has not authorized and that therefore violates the Constitution."

Speaking of Seattle, the Member of Congress who represents Seattle in Pramila Jayapal, a stalwart progressive. She told us this morning that "My colleagues hit the nail on the head-- what’s happening in Yemen is horrifying. When a nation with a population the size of Washington state is suffering and the United States is involved, it is on us to ensure we’re doing all we can to promote peace and support human life. If these rates of famine, malnutrition and violence were occurring in our own country, there’s no way we could ignore it."

For nearly three years, the United States has been participating alongside a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in a brutal military campaign in Yemen. The United States is selling the Saudi monarchy missiles and warplanes, assisting in the coalition’s targeting selection for aerial bombings and actively providing midair refueling for Saudi and United Arab Emirates jets that conduct indiscriminate airstrikes-- the leading cause of civilian casualties. Meanwhile, the Saudi coalition is starving millions of Yemenis as a grotesque tactic of war.

This is horrifying. We have therefore introduced a bipartisan congressional resolution to withdraw American armed forces from these unauthorized hostilities in order to help put an end to the suffering of a country approaching “a famine of biblical proportions,” in the words of Jan Egeland, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council. After all, as Foreign Policy has reported, the Saudi coalition’s “daily bombing campaign would not be possible without the constant presence of U.S. Air Force tanker planes refueling coalition jets.”

How did we get to this point?

In March 2015, the United States introduced its armed forces into the Saudi regime’s war against an uprising of Yemen’s Houthis, a rebel group that rapidly took control of Yemen’s capital, Sana, and eventually most of the country’s cities, by allying with forces loyal to an ousted former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. But the Shiite Houthi rebels are in no way connected to the Sunni extremists of Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, which the United States has been going after across the globe under the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001. American participation in the war in Yemen is not covered by that authorization.

Al Qaeda has been referred to by The Associated Press as a “de facto ally” of Saudi Arabia and its coalition in their shared battle against the Houthis. This raises the question: Whom are we actually supporting in Yemen?

American involvement in this unauthorized conflict against the Houthis was pursued by the Obama administration for political purposes-- “a way of repairing strained ties with the Saudis, who strongly opposed the July 2015 nuclear deal with Iran,” as Foreign Policy put it.

There’s a good reason that the Constitution reserves for Congress the right to declare war-- a clause taken in modern times as forbidding the president from pursuing an unauthorized war in the absence of an actual or imminent threat to the nation. Clearly, the founders’ intent was to prevent precisely the kind of dangerous course we’re charting.

The State Department found that the Saudi war against the Houthis has allowed Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State’s Yemen branch “to deepen their inroads across much of the country.” In other words, the power vacuum left by the war has made Al Qaeda’s deadliest branch stronger than ever-- yet there’s never been a public debate over the American role in deepening that threat to our own national security.

Four decades ago, as a bloody United States military campaign across Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos drew to a close, Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto to enact the War Powers Resolution of 1973, reflecting the legislature’s determination to confront executive overreach as a coequal branch of government. Now we congressmen are invoking a provision of that 1973 law, which defines the introduction of armed forces to include coordinating, participating in the movement of, or accompanying foreign military forces.

That law affords our bill “privileged” status, guaranteeing a full floor vote to remove unauthorized United States forces from Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemeni Houthis. In doing so, we aim to reassert Congress’s sole constitutional authority to debate and declare war.

This resolution may create discomfort for some of our colleagues who have been content to cede Congress’s oversight responsibilities to the White House and Pentagon in recent decades. But now more than ever, the House of Representatives must serve as a counterweight to an executive branch that has long run roughshod over the Constitution-- especially at a time when our president has threatened, in front of the United Nations, to “totally destroy” an entire country, North Korea.

Exercising our constitutional duty is the key to alleviating the catastrophe that’s engulfing Yemen.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs declared last April that “Yemen is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world,” and in August the charity Save the Children warned that one million malnourished Yemeni children were at risk of contracting cholera. Nowhere else on earth today is there a catastrophe that is so profound and affects so many lives, yet could be so easy to resolve: halt the bombing, end the blockade, and let food and medicine into Yemen so that millions may live.

We believe that the American people, if presented with the facts of this conflict, will oppose the use of their tax dollars to bomb and starve civilians in order to further the Saudi monarchy’s regional goals. Our House resolution is a first step in expanding democracy into an arena long insulated from public accountability. Too many lives hang in the balance to allow this American war to continue without congressional consent. When our bill comes to the floor for a vote, our colleagues should consider first the solution proposed by the director of Unicef, Anthony Lake, for stopping the unimaginable suffering of millions of Yemenis: “Stop the war.”

When we reached Ro after publication of his OpEd, he told us that "You are seeing both progressives on the left and conservatives in the Freedom Caucus express concern about the neocon/neoliberal vision of foreign policy. There is an appetite for greater restraint and a recognition of the harms of interventionism. The hope is that the Congressional leadership will allow for a vote and recognize the bipartisan coalition that is growing for reasserting Congress' role in matters of war and peace." Congressional leadership... that means Paul Ryan, so, alas, probably very futile hopes.

The resolution already has 30 co-sponsors, including Ted Lieu (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Keith Ellison (D-MN), John Conyers (D-MI) and Tom Massie (R-KY)-- and that's just on day 1.

Is Jeremy Corbyn the only British pol who "gets" the significance of the apparent war crimes of Tony Blair & Co.?

One of these war criminals-in-chief is the Brits' problem; the other's ours.

"[A]s I’m sure you’ve noticed, the people who fear actual left-wingers or people of principle the most aren’t Tories, they are Blairites."

-- Ian Welsh, in "Blair et al. Committed War Crimes"

by Ken

Of course we shouldn't be talking just about British pols. A more urgent question for those of us on this side of the pond is how many American pols "get it"? The Chilcot Report, I gather, deals only with possible British war crimes in the grand Iraq adventure. (See Nick Hopkins's Guardian report, "Chilcot exposes how Blair kept ministers and generals in the dark.") However, is there any question that the ringleaders, the master-"minds," the orchestrators of both the war crimes and the lies formulated to both promote and conceal them, are our fellow Americans?

In some quick online chatter that Howie and Noah I did, Noah underscored the point:

If I had the big badge, I would hold a big package deal Nuremberg-style trial of ALL of the political and media scum who voted and propagandized to go to Iraq. I would do it on a reality TV channel and I would have a sliding scale of various punishments for the perps that would match their degree of blame (which the trial process would determine). My TV show would start with the minor punishments such as removal of finger and toe nails to removal of limbs and blinding such as our soldiers and the civilians had to suffer. Then, for the last week of my reality mini-series, I would have Blair, Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Kindasleaza, and Blair's seconds face real life Gladiators at Wimbledon. Dump their miserable remains at sea in the same place bin Laden was dumped; mass murderers all. That just seems fair and just to me.

I regret that criminals such as Blair, and Bush et al, who created the all too predictble fiasco in Iraq, and thus enabled and gave the world the cancer that is ISIS, which now has the dream of killing whole cites at a time, if not, yet, the means, have but one life to present for punishment up to and including exection for their crimes against all humanity. If we are to be a civilized world, trials are demanded and justice for the dead, justice for the terror and havoc being visited on the living, and justice for the future victims is a moral imperative. Oh, and let's not forget the oil companies.

Before venting, Noah had seconded my deferral to Ian Welsh's post yesterday, "Blair et al. Committed War Crimes." "So, the Chilcot report is out," he began, "and it’s not pretty." Then he cued Anushka Asthana, Rowena Mason, and Jessica Elgot's Guardian report ("Corbyn apologises after Labour's role in Iraq war 'laid bare' by Chilcot report"):

Jeremy Corbyn has apologised on behalf of the Labour party for its role in the 2003 Iraq war, and warned that the people who took the decisions “laid bare in the Chilcot report” must now face up to the consequences.
…

The Labour leader’s apology went further than he had earlier in parliament, when he responded to the Chilcot report after David Cameron. At that point, Corbyn called the war an “act of military aggression”, arguing that it was thought of as illegal “by the overwhelming weight of international legal opinion”. (emphasis added)

Corbyn said in his House of Commons speech that he had apologized to families of military servicemen and women who lost loved ones, Iraqi citizens and war veterans "for the decisions taken by our then government that led this country into a disastrous war," explaining --

It’s a disaster that occurred when my party was in government; 140 of my then colleagues in the parliamentary Labour party opposed it at the time, as did many many party members and trade unionists.

The Guardian team writes:

Corbyn said that many more Britons had said they regretted their votes, which they had cast in loyalty to the Labour government because of the intelligence that today’s report has “confirmed to be false”.

The Labour leader did not name Tony Blair, but said parliament had been misled by a “small number of leading figures in the government" who he said were “none too scrupulous” about how they made their case for war.

“Politicians and political parties can only grow stronger by acknowledging when they get it wrong and by facing up to their mistakes,” he said. “So I now apologise sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq in March 2003.

“That apology is owed first of all to the people of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, and the country is still living with the devastating consequences of the war and the forces it unleashed.” He said it was those people who had paid the greatest price.

Ian plucks out this bit from the Guardian report on Corbyn's apology:

As Corbyn issued his excoriating statement to the House of Commons, he was heckled by his own backbencher Ian Austin, who shouted: “Sit down and shut up, you’re a disgrace.”

Which he introduces thusly: "I very much hope this next man, who has far less worth than the toilet paper I clean myself with, is not a Labour candidate in the next election," explaining: "When you’re screaming at someone for apologizing for a war crime that is identical to that which many Nazi leaders were hung for, you’re officially a waste of human skin." He goes on:

Corbyn hasn’t actually called for “war crimes trial for Blair,” but he’s made the case. The European Criminal Court, being also basically worthless, had already said that they would not try Tony Blair, but might charge ordinary soldiers.

I have never had any respect for the ECC, whose mandate appears to involve prosecuting the politically powerless, especially Africans, and avoiding anyone with any influence. Justice as unevenly applied as the ECC applies it is not a step in the right direction, it is actually injustice. Saying that they would not charge Blair even before the Chilcot report was out simply confirmed the primacy of political over legal considerations for them.

Yet again, Corbyn has proved he is one of very few honorable people in a den of scum. May he become Prime Minister and, once Prime Minister, may he ensure Tony Blair and those who aided and abetted him in selling the Iraq war with lies, have the fair trial they so richly deserve.

Oh, and as usual, doing so is not just the right thing to do ethically, it would be the right thing to do politically, keeping Corbyn’s primary enemies completely occupied. Because, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the people who fear actual left-wingers or people of principle the most aren’t Tories, they are Blairites.

Now, as to our team of war criminals, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the whole miserable crew . . . well, we don't even have a report to chew over, do we?


GLENN GREENWALD MUSES ON THE CHILCOT
REPORT AND THE CAUSES OF TERRORISM

Howie notes: "New Labour, like the New Dems, is confused about which side it's on -- other than whatever works to advance individual careers (their own)-- and has been relentlessly attacking Jeremy Corbyn since his loud and unswerving opposition to Blar's war. He also commends our attention to Glenn Greenwald's Intercept post today, "Chilcot Report and 7/7 London Bombing Anniversary Converge to Highlight Terrorism’s Causes," which begins (lots o' links onsite):

ELEVEN YEARS AGO today, three suicide bombers attacked the London subway and a bus and killed 51 people. Almost immediately, it was obvious that retaliation for Britain’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a major motive for the attackers.

Two of them said exactly that in videotapes they left behind: The attacks “will continue and pick up strengths till you pull your soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq. … Until we feel security, you will be targets.” Then, less than a year later, a secret report from British military and intelligence chiefs concluded that “the war in Iraq contributed to the radicalization of the July 7 London bombers and is likely to continue to provoke extremism among British Muslims.” The secret report, leaked to The Observer, added: “Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalization of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the U.K. as legitimate.”

The release on Tuesday of the massive Chilcot report — which the New York Times called a “devastating critique of Tony Blair” — not only offers more proof of this causal link, but also reveals that Blair was expressly warned before the invasion that his actions would provoke al Qaeda attacks on the U.K. As my colleague Jon Schwarz reported yesterday, the report’s executive summary quotes Blair confirming he was “aware” of a warning by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-U.S./anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.”

None of this is the slightest bit surprising. . . .

#

The 2016 Primary: A Proxy Vote on the Afghan War?

Credit: Finbarr O'Reilly, file photo, Reuters (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

We have yet to write much about Clinton's foreign policy, partly because so much of it is inferencial, and partly because so much has been held in reserve. But recently Clinton came out strongly opposed to the actions of Edward Snowden, taking a position very close to Obama's tough stance on the matter.

And now she has come out in support of continued war in Afghanistan. I'll have more later on a Clinton foreign policy — a discussion the "left" is not yet having — but I want to open the door to that discussion, as Clinton has done, with this news, from a recent interview with Jake Tapper.

Clinton Endorses Continued War in Afghanistan

Lauren McCauley at Common Dreams (note that her framing may not be yours; my emphasis):

Clinton Backs Plan for Endless War in Afghanistan

Democratic frontrunner says she "supports the president's decision" to keep troops there until at least 2017

Presidential contender Hillary Clinton on Friday [October 16] declared her full support for President Obama's plan to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan until at least 2017, saying the move reflects a knowledge of "what's going on in the real world."

In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, the former Secretary of State reiterated Obama's position, saying that while the U.S. government doesn't want troops engaged in on-the ground content, "we want them to help support and train the Afghan army."

"So I can't predict where things will be in January of 2017," Clinton said. "But I support the president's decision."

She added that the move reflects that of "a leader who has strong convictions about what he would like to see happen but also pays attention to what's going on in the real world."

The interview followed the President's announcement Thursday that as many as 5,500 soldiers will remain in the country for at least another year, reversing previous pledges to end the United States' war in Afghanistan.

Two takeaways: One, this puts Ms. Clinton on the warrior side of the ledger. Do progressives want another warrior president? Some might, I realize, and some might not. This at least starts that debate.

Second, when Clinton talks about "support[ing] the Afghan army" — this is the kind of trouble our support gets us into:

The Doctors Without Borders Bombing Is Looking More and More Like a War Crime

On NBC Nightly News on Thursday, Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported that, based on the accounts of Defense Department sources, cockpit recordings from the AC-130 gunship involved in the incident “reveal that the crew actually questioned whether the airstrike was legal.” He also quoted a U.S. defense official suggesting that the attack “may in fact amount to a war crime.” The video and audio cockpit recordings of the incident, which feature conversations between the plane’s crew and U.S. troops on the ground, are at the center of the military’s investigation into the incident, as the Daily Beast’s Nancy Youssef reported last week.* The recordings have not been released publicly or even to the members of Congress who received a classified briefing on the incident. ...

The U.S. explanation for how the incident took place has shifted several times and the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, reportedly believes that U.S. troops did not follow proper procedure. MSF, which has alleged that a war crime took place, is calling on the U.S. and Afghan governments to consent to an independent investigation, a request that has so far been rebuffeds.

One of those shifting U.S. explanations for the air strike was that Afghan forces called it in — the form of support called "air support."

Sanders on Afghanistan

This is Bernie Sanders' statement about the Afghan War, from his Issues page at BernieSanders.com:

Sen. Sanders called on both Presidents Bush and Obama to withdraw U.S. troops as soon as possible and for the people of Afghanistan to take full responsibility for their own security. After visiting Afghanistan, Sen. Sanders spoke-out against the rampant corruption he saw, particularly in regards to elections, security and the banking system.

If he holds by this and draws a clear distinction with Ms. Clinton, it's possible the 2016 Democratic primary will also be a proxy vote on the future of the Afghan War. 

GP

About that "War Crime" — Hospital Was Raided By Afghan Forces Three Months Before U.S. Bombing

by Gaius Publius

There's new reporting on the U.S. bombing of the Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. As you may know, Doctors Without Borders wants the incident, in which 22 people were killed, including patients who burned to death in their beds, investigated as a war crime. (You'll see their reasons lower in this piece.)

Now, thanks to excellent reporting by Ryan Grim at Huffington Post, we have more information. The bombing was apparently done at the request of the Afghan military, who had also attacked the hospital with Special Forces less than three months before the U.S. bombing. 

The implications of the bombing are horrific. The implications of this new story are worse. Let's say it is a war crime. Did we do it because the Afghans said to? Who's taking orders from whom in that war? And do U.S. commanders even care whom they're bombing, if they're blindly bombing targets chosen by others?

If so, in the game of Genius and Bully, we're just the bully. From Ryan Grim's report:

Kunduz Hospital Was Raided By Afghan Special Forces Just Three Months Before U.S. Bombing

The raid hints at a motive for the strike.

Afghan special forces raided the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz less than three months before a U.S. bombing killed 22 staff members and patients.

The raid took place on the afternoon of July 1, according to a statement from the hospital at the time. U.S. authorities have since said that Afghan forces called in Saturday's bombing, which lasted for more than an hour, and that the U.S. was unaware it was striking a hospital.

The previous raid suggests that Afghan authorities were aware the facility was a hospital and had a hostile relationship with its staff prior to calling in the U.S. bombing.

According to a statement posted online in July, "heavily armed men from Afghan Special Forces entered the [Médecins Sans Frontières] hospital compound, cordoned off the facility and began shooting in the air."

"The armed men physically assaulted three MSF staff members and entered the hospital with weapons," the statement continued. "They then proceeded to arrest three patients. Hospital staff tried their best to ensure continued medical care for the three patients, and in the process, one MSF staff member was threatened at gunpoint by two armed men. After approximately one hour, the armed men released the three patients and left the hospital compound."

While the motive of the raid is unclear, Afghan forces have long protested the practice of providing medical treatment to insurgents. But international law says that as soon as a fighter is in need of treatment, he is no longer a combatant. [...]

Note this: "U.S. authorities have since said that Afghan forces called in Saturday's bombing..." Do Afghan forces direct American bombing? Again, the implications of just that sentence are pretty bad.

Is This a War Crime?

We've come a long way since World War II, when Nazi atrocities were prosecuted as war crimes, while incidents like the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, not to mention the destruction of Hiroshima, were not even brought up. Now we have ways to sometimes bring even the powerful to justice. The request of Doctors Without Borders? An independent international investigation.

Here's a DWB statement (one of several) on the incident that plainly says there's prima facie evidence of a war crime (my emphasis):

MSF is disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack on its hospital in Kunduz. These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present.

This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as 'collateral damage.'

There can be no justification for this abhorrent attack on our hospital that resulted in the deaths of MSF staff as they worked and patients as they lay in their beds. MSF reiterates its demand for a full transparent and independent international investigation."

And now from a CREDO petition also calling for an investigation (emphasis and footnotes in the original):

Sign the petition: Justice for Doctors Without Borders

In the middle of the night on Saturday, a U.S. military plane "repeatedly and very precisely" bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital filled with doctors, nurses and wounded patients in Kunduz, Afghanistan.¹

The airstrike killed twelve Doctors Without Borders staff members and ten patients, including three children, and injured scores more. Some patients literally burned alive in their hospital beds.²

So far, the Pentagon has only released incomplete and contradictory accounts of what happened and why.

On Sunday, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) stated that: "Under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body. Relying only on an internal investigation by a party to the conflict would be wholly insufficient."³

The world needs to know how and why this grave violation of International Humanitarian Law was committed.⁴ Those responsible for what we presume to be an atrocious war crime must then face justice. Please join Doctors Without Borders in calling for an immediate and independent international investigation.

Tell President Obama and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter: We join Doctors Without Borders and demand an investigation by an independent international body into the U.S. airstrike on the Kunduz hospital.

The Pentagon initially claimed that the hospital was hit by accident after U.S. troops nearby came under fire and called in the airstrike, then later changed its story and said that no U.S. troops were in the area and that Afghan troops called in the strike.⁵

But the Pentagon's story simply doesn't add up. According to Doctors Without Borders: "Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound prior to the U.S. airstrike on Saturday morning... We reiterate that the main hospital building, where medical personnel were caring for patients, was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched."⁶

Further, "The bombing took place despite the fact that MSF had provided the GPS coordinates of the trauma hospital to Coalition and Afghan military and civilian officials as recently as Tuesday, September 29, [five days before the airstrike] to avoid that the hospital be hit."⁷

Shockingly, the bombing continued for more than half an hour after Doctors Without Borders staff began making frantic calls to U.S. and Afghan military officials.

The Pentagon's claim that the hospital was bombed by accident is also contradicted by statements by Afghan officials, who have tried to justify the attack by claiming that the hospital was used by the Taliban for military purposes. [...]

You can sign that petition here. If our military is innocent, what do they have to fear, right?

And if you consider that, after 15 years of war in Afghanistan, it's time to get out, you might give these folks a little of your time and attention as well.

GP

The Specials (lyrics here)

Four former Blackwater guards in Iraq are sentenced to terms ranging from 30 years to life in shooting of 31 civilians

The four former Blackwater guards sentenced today are (l-to-r): Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten, and Paul Slough. Slatten, the only defendant convicted of murder, was sentenced to life; the others, convicted of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter, were sentenced to 30 years plus a day.

"You can't just shoot first and seek justification later."

-- federal prosecutor T. Patrick Martin

by Ken

Oh, you can't? You know, just shoot first and seek justification later? Any chance this new rule may be applied elsewhere in our criminal-justice system?

I suppose it's wrong to be cynical and snarky on a day that witnesses one small blow for accountability. This afternoon, a mere seven-plus years after the fact, a Reagan-appointed federal judge has given a life sentence to a Blackwater Worldwide contract guard in Iraq who was found guilty of murder, and sentenced three other Blackwater employees convicted of assorted counts of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter to terms of 30 years plus a day.

Four Blackwater guards sentenced in Iraq shootings of 31 unarmed civilians

By Spencer S. Hsu and Victoria St. Martin
Washington Post
April 13 at 4:05 PM

A federal judge in Washington handed down prison terms of 30 years to life behind bars to four Blackwater Worldwide guards convicted in a deadly 2007 shooting that killed 14 unarmed Iraqis and injured others in a Baghdad traffic circle.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth sentenced Nicholas A. Slatten of Sparta, Tenn., to life in prison. Slatten is the only of the four guards convicted of murder in the incident, in which American security contractors fired assault rifles and grenades into halted noonday traffic, a low point of the U.S. war in Iraq that sent relations between the two countries into a crisis.

Three other guards, Paul A. Slough of Keller, Tex.; Evan S. Liberty of Rochester, N.H.; and Dustin L. Heard of Knoxville, Tenn., were convicted of multiple counts of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter in the Sept. 16, 2007, incident at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. All three were sentenced Monday to 30 years plus one day in prison.

“It’s clear that these fine young men panicked,” said Lamberth, an Army veteran and Reagan appointee who served as chief district judge from 2008 to 2013.

While defendants have filed appeals, Monday’s sentencing brought an emphatic end to the U.S. government’s years-long effort to demonstrate accountability for American security contractors’ conduct on the battlefield.

In sentencing documents, federal prosecutors called on a judge in Washington to impose lengthy prison terms. The four defendants sought leniency, saying they have been unfairly singled out for harsh treatment for a wartime tragedy.

Jurors found that the defendants, at the time among 19 Blackwater guards providing security for State Department officials in Iraq, shot recklessly and out of control after one of them falsely claimed that their convoy, called Raven 23, was threatened by a car bomber.

The guards claimed that they acted in self-defense after coming under AK-47 gunfire as they cleared a path back to the nearby Green Zone for another Blackwater team that was evacuating a U.S. official from a nearby car bombing.

Prosecutors said in court Monday that the men were guilty of an atrocity against innocent Iraqis, and cited the appalled testimony of fellow Blackwater guards who told jurors that the defendants fired destructive weapons without provocation.

The other contractors “chose to abide by their training, and not to shoot first and make excuses later,” Assistant U.S. Attorney T. Patrick Martin said. “This was one instance they could not back the actions of their teammates.”

Patrick said a lengthy sentence would deter future unwarranted bloodshed by American contractors, passing along the lesson: “You are entrusted to do a job with deadly weapons, but you must use them only when necessary, and their use must be justified. You can’t just shoot first and seek justification later.”&nbsp.; . .

#

Will Steve Israel-Recruit Jerry Cannon Be Brought To Trial For War Crimes After He Loses In November?

Founded in 1961, MIRS— Michigan Informantion and Research Service— isn’t meant to be for everyone. It’s a subscription only service for political insiders and it purports to provide “comprehensive news and analysis of state government delivered in written reports detailing the activities of the House, Senate, Judicial and Executive branches of Michigan state government.” They describe their own customer base as “Fortune 500 companies, lobbyists, government officials, law firms, local governments, universities, organized labor groups, statewide trade organizations and professionals who have to stay on top of changes in laws impacting any given area.”

This week, after learning about how furious— violently furious— conservative Democrat Jerry Cannon is at DCCC Chairman Steve Israel, a headline from MIRS caught my attention: Cannon Linked To Inhuman Treatment In Gitmo.

One of the appealing factors for a Jerry Cannon congressional campaign was his perceived squeaky clean record as a member of the military and the Kalkaska County Sheriff.

He told Politico last year that "I don't have a record that people can attack," which was a big reason national Democrats took such an interest in him.

However, the Democratic nominee in the 1st Congressional District, who is facing U.S. Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Crystal Falls) in one of the state's most competitive congressional races, may not be exactly devoid of controversy.

Cannon's name was wrapped into at least one civil suit regarding inhuman treatment at Guantánamo Bay's Camp Delta when he was the head of the detention detail from July 2003 to August 2004.

According to a Washington Post article from 2004, FBI agents and officials witnessed the use of growling dogs to intimidate detainees at Guantanamo Bay. In another instance from August 2004 at Camp Delta, a detainee is said to have been wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded with loud music in an attempt to soften his resistance to interrogation.

The New York Times reported in October 2004 that uncooperative prisoners at Camp Delta were told to "strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endorse strobe lights and screamingly loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air conditioning was turned up."

Cannon was named as a defendant in four different detainee lawsuits and named specifically in the closing arguments in the case of Mohammad Jawad by Major David J.R. Frakt.

"It is my recommendation that charges be preferred against MG Cannon under the MCMJ for cruelty, maltreatment and abuse, dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order at the earliest opportunity," Frakt said. "He completely and utterly failed to prevent the flagrant abuse of a detained under his protection. It is high time that someone in a position of authority be held accountable, and not just the guards who were carrying out orders this time."

Jawad ended up staying in Gitmo until 2009 before a district court judge ordered his release back to Afghanistan after being found not guilty of the charges leveled against him.

To show that Cannon was aware of the tactics used at Camp Delta, America Rising referenced a Human Rights First article about how detainees were moved around eight times a day or every three hours with the goal of keeping detainees "off balance."

Apparently, Cannon and military leadership were aware of the "frequent flyer program," designed to deprive inmates of sleep, and no one questioned the program's legality.

During an interview with Roll Call a year ago, Cannon said the Red Cross checked off on its detention operation during their biannual inspections. "It was a great mission," he said. "I don't see that ever being an issue, that someone, if they really understand the entire circumstances, would think that could be a liability."

However, the New York Times reported on Nov. 30, 2004 that the Red Cross found techniques "tantamount to torture" after its June 2004 visit.

The prolonged exposure to the cold and loud music was designed to break the will of the detainees.

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," read the Red Cross report.

Cannon never had formal charges filed against him for anything he did or didn't do at Camp Delta.

Nate Nesbitt of America Rising said Cannon has told voters he doesn't have a record of note, when his background is one "that needs further examination and scrutiny."

"It's very important Michigan voters are aware of his numerous civil rights violations and questionable history," Nesbitt said.

We looked at what exactly America Rising is last week. The fact that they are a shady right-wing, for-profit Republican Party operation that specializes in political smears— they’re the ones who were caught doctoring Democrats’ wikipedia pages— doesn’t automatically mean everything they say is false. All the information about Cannon is independently verifiable. It doesn’t make Benishek any more appropriate to serve in Congress; it just makes it clear that thoughtful votes in Michigan’s first congressional district have no one to vote for at all. Thanks, Steve Israel and thanks Lon Johnson, Cannon’s drinking buddy and the chairman of the state Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, due south of MI-01, in the southwest corner of the state, the one Michigan House campaign in a competitive district that has not been wrecked by the “Steve Israel Effect” is Paul Clements’ effort in MI-06. That’s because Israel, a crony of toxic GOP incumbent Fred Upton, declared that even though MI-06 is the most winnable red seat in the state, he would not engage there. Instead of panicking, progressive Democrat Paul Clements put together Michigan’s best congressional campaign and has been making steady inroads against Upton. Today the two candidates will have their first debate. And today Lawrence Lessig's non-partisan, good government MayDay PAC did what a competent DCCC would have done— they released an independent expenditure in the form of a TV ad against Fred Upton, the first negative ad against Upton ever. They're spending $1.5 million in MI-06. Steve Israel and his corrupt and incompetent DCCC is spending exactly zero. I hope Pelosi spends some time thinking about that-- and extrapolating it to other districts around the country. Enjoy:



Despite Steve Israel and the DCCC, we can help bring this one home and beat one of the most dangerous and poisonous Republican policy-makers in Congress. Please consider giving what you can to Paul Clements' campaign.

Was Accountability For Team Cheney-- A Nest Of War Criminals-- Ever Taken Off The Table?

Darrell Issa's idea of a scandal for his House Oversight Committee to investigate is an entirely partisan witch hunt like "Benghazi!" Though the magnitude around 9-11 was a thousand times greater on any scale, there's never been a peep out of Issa or any of his right-wing colleagues about the dereliction of duty on the part of Cheney and his administration inherent in that catastrophe. In his brilliant book, Angler, Barton Gellman makes it perfectly clear that Cheney aggressively and vehemently dismissed every serious warning that the American security and intelligence agencies flagged regarding al-Qaeda.

When suicide bombers attacked the USS Cole shortly before the 2000 election, killing seventeen sailors and nearly sinking the Navy destroyer, candidate Cheney said, "Any would-be terrorist out there needs to know that if you're going to attack, , you'll be hit very hard and very quick. It's not time for diplomacy and debate. It's time for action. This was an essential point of comparison in the 2000 campaign: the strength and resolve of the Bush-Cheney team in contrast to the ditherings of Clinton and Gore.

At the time, the Cole bombing looked like al Qaeda's doing, but U.S. intelligence lacked proof. Bush and Cheney, on the campaign trail, vowed to retaliate once the perpetrators became clear. Soon after they took office, the facts were in.

Cheney told his authorized biographer, "I don't recall it cropping up." That is surprising. At 4 p.m. on February 9, 2001, less than 3 weeks after arriving in the White House, Cheney received a briefing that featured this slide: "Al Qaeda responsible for Nairobi, Dar el Salaam, Tirana, Kampala, Yemen, WTC, NYC tunnels, Jordan millennium, Boston, LA, Washington State bomb materials, USS Cole." … Six days later, in a memo sent directly to Cheney, a senior director on the National Security Council staff suggested that the CIA should be ready to "definitively conclude that al Qaeda was responsible for the Cole. Richard Clarke and others in his counter-terrorism directorate peppered Chaney, Condi Rice, and Steve Hadley with additional evidence-- and recommendations for a military response-- at least 5 more times in writing during the spring.

The vice president, like his colleagues, had other priorities.

Three months before September 11, 2001, when the armed Predator became available, Osama bin Laden had not yet reached the pinnacle of villainy in the American public mind. But he was well known inside the U.S. government. In an annual review of global threats, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said for three years running-- in 1999, 2000 and 2001-- that al Qaeda topped the list of most dangerous and immediate adversaries, at home and abroad. By the summer of 2001, Tenet and Clarke "had their hair on fire' with warnings that a large scale al Qaeda terrorist attack appeared to be imminent. On August 6, Bush and Cheney received the now-famous Presidential Daily Brief titled "Bin Laden determined to Strike in US," the thirty-sixth time in less than eight months that the CIA drew their attention to bin Laden. John McLaughlin, Tenet's deputy, expressed frustration that "some policy-makers, who had not lived through such threat surges before, questioned the validity of the intelligence or wondered if it was disinformation." An authoritative source said he was referring primarily to Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The CIA responded with a briefing titled "Bin Ladin Threats Are Real." Though far from specific about the time, place, or manner of an attack, the briefing did allude to terrorist discussions of hijacking aircraft and to surveillance of targets in New York City. Cheney later downplayed the summer warnings, describing them as "noise in the system" and saying he was not especially alarmed.

The CIA and Air Force wanted to go after bin Laden with a Predator drone and wanted to take out al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. Cheney showed zero interest and the Predator drone was grounded. Cheney maintained an attitude all summer that all these warnings were on no interest to him, even though Bush had put him in over-all charge of the intelligence and terrorism portfolios at the White House. One participant in the briefings said, "Nobody gave a crap about this. It was theoretical." No resources were assigned to fighting al Qaeda.When the Senate Armed Services Committee recommended putting $600 million more into the military's counter-terrorism priorities Don Rumsfield urged a veto and Bush duly sent out a veto threat-- on September 9.

The ferocity of the response to 9/11 can be directly seen as a reaction by the Bush security team-- particularly Cheney-- to their malfeasance in protecting the country before the fact. We'll deal with Cheney's and his closest aides' enthusiasm for torture and for a dictatorial usurpation of power at another time. I just want to say that at every step of the way, Cheney's team was aware-- and extremely worried-- that they were guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and that they could be tried and punished for their actions. From the first moment, Cheney, well aware of his own guilt in allowing 9/11 to happen, over-reacted. He immediately and without legal authority ordered the Air Force to shoot down civilian aircraft. Hours after the World Tours went down he told Rumsfield "it's my understanding they've already taken a couple of aircraft out." He quickly moved to assert dictatorial powers for the White House and to shred as much of the Constitution as he could. He was especially eager to assert the power of ex ante pardons which his team insisted would make all war criminals in the Administration immune from prosecution. There was a constant fear that one day Bush and Cheney themselves would face trial as war criminals.



Yesterday, in her column, A Mad Tea Party, Maureen Dowd invoked Cheney's name in terms of most Americans now considering "the G.O.P.’s imperialistic unilaterists less loco than the narcissistic anarchists."

But before you start thinking Dick Cheney is temperate by comparison, consider the Commentary roast of the former vice president on Monday night at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

Cheney made a joke about waterboarding an antelope that he borrowed from Jay Leno. Donald Rumsfeld quasi-jested that he knew Dick “back when the president of the United States still led our foreign policy, instead of Putin.”

Ben Smith of BuzzFeed reported that the roast sponsored by Rupert Murdoch and others featured Rumsfeld, Joe Lieberman and Scooter Libby, known as “Cheney’s Cheney” until he was convicted of lying during a federal leak probe.

Lieberman, a guest told BuzzFeed, said it was nicer to be at the Plaza than in cages after a war crimes trial. There were pardon jokes about W., whose relationship with Cheney was shattered over not giving Libby one. Libby said W. sent a note: “Pardon me, I can’t make it.”

The acrid legacy of Cheney and Rummy lives on as they carp from the sidelines about the “so-called commander in chief.” In December, The Unknown Known, an Errol Morris documentary about the man who was the youngest and oldest secretary of defense, hits theaters.



Morris won an Oscar in 2004 for Fog of War, his documentary about another dangerous, delusional defense secretary with wire-rimmed glasses, Robert McNamara; in his acceptance speech, Morris warned that, with Iraq, America might be going down another “rabbit hole.”

But the cocky Rummy talked to him for 33 hours anyway. Unlike McNamara, however, Rumsfeld does not admit his historic blunders, but maintains his “Stuff happens” brio.

“You make a movie with the secretary of defense you have,” Morris told me dryly, “not with the secretary of defense you want to have.”

Still, the filmmaker was smart to bookend the men, opposite ends of the same warmongering problem: McNamara was so droning and unemotive that he lulled listeners into thinking that nothing bad could be happening, while Rumsfeld was so energetic and blithe that it was hard to believe that people were dying and the war was being lost. Morris’s wife and collaborator, Julia Sheehan, said that McNamara was “The Flying Dutchman” wandering the earth looking for redemption, while Rumsfeld is the Cheshire cat.

“All we’re left with at the very end is this infernal grin,” Morris said. “Everybody wants this smoking gun. The entire Bush administration is a smoking gun.

“In his memos and homilies, Rumsfeld will say things that are just contradictory, as though by saying everything, you’ve covered all your bases,” Morris continued. “It’s deeply anti-rational, as if there’s no deep reflection or thought. You have no evidence? Well, ‘the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,’ as Rumsfeld said about W.M.D. in Iraq. Taken to some crazy conclusion, you can justify anything that way.

“At times in his language, he descends into some strange insanity, as though he’s trying to convince himself.”

Asked the lesson of Vietnam-- Rumsfeld was the chief of staff to Gerald Ford when Saigon was evacuated-- Rumsfeld briskly replies: “Some things work out, some things don’t. That didn’t.”

When Morris presses Rumsfeld about the Justice Department’s “torture memos,” the former defense chief said they did not come out of “the Bush administration, per se; they came out of the U.S. Department of Justice.” That parsing would be beyond Bill Clinton.

About the memos that led to what Morris considers “one of the great stains in American history,” Rumsfeld says he never read them. When asked why, he replies, “I’m not a lawyer. What would I know?”

When Morris asks Rumsfeld about the “confusion” that linked Saddam to 9/11, he answers brightly, “I don’t think the American people were confused about that,” adding, “I don’t remember anyone in the Bush administration saying anything like that, nor do I recall anyone believing that.”

Holy mushroom cloud.

Rumsfeld doesn’t even seem to understand his signature phrase. Reading from a 2004 memo, he says, “There are known knowns. There are known unknowns. There are unknown unknowns.” He tells Morris that there are also unknown knowns. Things that you possibly may know that you don’t know you know.

Morris challenges him: “But the memo doesn’t say that. It says that we know less, not more, than we think we do."

Rumsfeld finally admits a boo-boo: “Yeah, I think that memo is backwards.” Then he chastises the filmmaker for “chasing the wrong rabbit.”

Right down the rabbit hole.

Rachel's MSNBC Iraq War Special Tonight-- Don't Miss It

Last week we looked at the idea of redemption in the political context and the post wound up being about my own congressman, Adam Schiff (D-CA). Schiff recently quit the Blue Dogs (while remaining in the not totally different New Dems) and he's been co-sponsoring progressive legislation. Does that expiate his vote for Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq?

Yesterday it was reported that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is planning to mount a run for president (or, more likely, vice president) in 2016. It won't hurt him in the Republican primary, but what will normal voters think when it comes up that when he was in Congress, he rushed back to Washington on Palm Sunday, 2005 to participate in Tom DeLay's disgraceful, necrophilious charade over the vegetative body of Terri Schiavo? Bobby Jindal, who claims to have the powers of exorcism and faith healing, voted against allowing this woman to die with dignity and he did so as part of a political agenda. My guess is that most Americans will hold that against him-- hold him accountable.

Adam Schiff has never been held to account to his vote on October 10, 2002 to authorize the use of force against Iraq. The war cost America over 4,000 dead, 32,000 seriously wounded and over $3 trillion. Over 100,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, were killed. Tragically, the authorization to use force passed 296-133, 81 Democrats joining 215 Republicans to back the Bush regimes plans to deal with Saddam Hussein. Had Schiff and the other 80 Democrats not voted for it, the resolution would have failed and that war wouldn't have gone forward. That resolution, co-sponsored by Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL) and Democratic Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO), pretty much ended Gephardt's aspiration to be president and his political career. He's a successful K Street lobbyist now. But no other Democrats ever really had to answer for this vote. Soon after the vote, war-advocate Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was elected second-ranking Democrat in the House leadership. Nor did his unabashed war advocacy derail the career trajectory of Steve Israel (D-NY), now chairman of the DCCC. This year war monger Eliot Engel (D-NY) was made ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and war monger Joe Crowley (D-NY) was elevated to the House Democratic leadership. Massachusetts ConservaDem Stephen Lynch and Massachusetts progressive Ed Markey both voted for the war resolution and they're running against each other for an open Senate seat now. The Iraq War isn't an issue. And of the dozen or so Democrats who voted for the war and are no longer Members of Congress-- from Harold Ford (D-TN) and Shelley Berkley (D-NV) to Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and Tim Holden (D-PA)-- none were defeated or forced to retire because of it.

Tonight Rachel Maddow is hosting an MSNBC special, Hubris, based on the book by Michael Isikoff and David Korn and it is unlikely to mention Adam Schiff or Eliot Engel or Harold Ford but it will attempt to put the treachery against the American people by our political elites into focus. David Korn explained the project over the weekend for his readers at Mother Jones:

Bush did succeed in removing Saddam Hussein, but it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction and no significant operational ties between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda. That is, the two main assertions used by Bush and his crew to justify the war were not true.

...One chilling moment in the film comes in an interview with retired General Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command. In August 2002, the Bush-Cheney administration opened its propaganda campaign for war with a Cheney speech at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The veep made a stark declaration: "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." No doubt, he proclaimed, Saddam was arming himself with WMD in preparation for attacking the United States.

Zinni was sitting on the stage during the speech, and in the documentary he recalls his reaction:

It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn't believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program. And that's when I began to believe they're getting serious about this. They wanna go into Iraq.

That Zinni quote should almost end the debate on whether the Bush-Cheney administration purposefully guided the nation into war with misinformation and disinformation.

But there's more. So much more. The film highlights a Pentagon document declassified two years ago. This memo notes that in November 2001-- shortly after the 9/11 attacks-- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with General Tommy Franks to review plans for the "decapitation" of the Iraqi government. The two men reviewed how a war against Saddam could be triggered; that list included a "dispute over WMD inspections." It's evidence that the administration was seeking a pretense for war.

The yellowcake uranium supposedly bought by Saddam in Niger, the aluminum tubes supposedly used to process uranium into weapons-grade material, the supposed connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden-- the documentary features intelligence analysts and experts who at the time were saying and warning that the intelligence on these topics was wrong or uncertain. Yet administration officials kept using lousy and inconclusive intelligence to push the case for war.

...A hoax. That's what it was. Yet Bush and Cheney went on to win reelection, and many of their accomplices in this swindle never were fully held accountable. In the years after the WMD scam became apparent, there certainly was a rise in public skepticism and media scrutiny of government claims. Still, could something like this happen again? Maddow remarks, "If what we went through 10 years ago did not change us as a nation--if we do not understand what happened and adapt to resist it-- then history says we are doomed to repeat it."

I would guess that the likelihood of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest being tried as war criminals is about zero. There is still a chance-- if voters wanted to-- to hold congressional enablers accountable in terms of their careers. Check the roll call again and see if your congresscritter voted for the war. Here's a very incomplete synopsis of where some of the perps are now:

• Spencer Bachus (R-AL)- chairman of the House Financial Services Committee
• Roy Blunt (R-MO)- now a U.S. senator
• John Boehner (R-IL)- now Speaker of the House
• John Boozman (R-IL)- now a U.S. senator
• Richard Burr (R-NC)- now a U.S. senator
• Dave Camp (R-MI)- chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee
• Eric Cantor (R-VA)- Majority Leader of the House
• Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)- currently running for the U.S. Senate
• Duke Cunningham (R-CA)- still in prison but on unrelated criminal charges
• Nathan Deal (R-GA)- now Governor of Georgia
• Tom DeLay (R-TX)- sentenced to 3 years in prison on unrelated criminal charges
• Jim DeMint (R-SC)- heading a far right think tank and extremist SuperPAC
• Jeff Flake (R-AZ)- now a U.S. senator
• Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)- chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)- notorious closet queen, conspiracy theorist and Senate obstructionist
• Doc Hastings (R-WA)- chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources
• Johnny Isakson (R-GA)- now a U.S. senator
• Darrell Issa (R-CA)- chairman of the House Oversight Committee
• Ron Kind (D-WI)- chairman of the New Dems
• Mark Kirk (R-IL)- now a U.S. senator
• Buck McKeon (R-CA)- chairman of House Armed Services Committee (and the Drone Caucus)
• Jeff Miller (R-FL)- chairman of House Veterans Affairs Committee
• Jerry Moran (R-KS)- now a U.S. senator
• Mike Pence (R-IN)- now Governor of Indiana
• Rob Portman (R-OH)- now a U.S. senator
• Hal Rogers (R-KY)- chairman of House Appropriations Committee
• Mike Rogers (R-MI)- chairman of House Intelligence Committee
• Ed Royce (R-CA)- chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- chairman, House Budget Committee, TV news star
• Pete Sessions (R-TX)- chairman, House Rules Committee
• John Thune (R-SD)- now a U.S. senator
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)- now a U.S. senator
• Fred Upton (R-MI)- chairman, House Energy and Commerce Committee
• David "Diapers" Vitter (R-LA)- now a U.S. senator
• Greg Walden (R-OR)- chairman of the NRCC
• Tom Wicker (R-MS)- now a U.S. senator