Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Iraqis rejoice as US troops leave Baghdad

The Raw Story, June 29, 2009

By Agence France-Presse

Iraq’s security forces were Monday on high alert in Baghdad as US troops finalised their withdrawal from the conflict-hit nation’s urban areas, an event to be marked by a massive party in the capital.

The US pullout, under a bilateral security accord signed last year, will be completed on Tuesday, which has been declared a national holiday.

In the wake of several massive bombings that have killed more than 200 people this month, soldiers and police were out in force in Baghdad.

All leave for security forces personnel has been cancelled in a reflection of the threat of attacks, and motorcycles, the favoured transport of several recent bombers, have been banned from the streets.

“Our expectation is that maybe some criminals will try to continue their attacks,” said Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf, the interior ministry’s operations director and spokesman.

“That is why orders came from the highest level of the prime minister that our forces should be 100 percent on the ground until further notice.”

On Monday, the former defence ministry building in the capital, taken over in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion, was handed back to the Iraqi government.

“This marks the end of the rule of the multinational force,” said General Abboud Qambar, commander of Baghdad Operation Command, the central headquarters for the Iraqi security forces.

Festivities to mark “a day of national sovereignty” were to start at 6 pm (1500 GMT) in Zawra Park, the biggest in the capital, with singers and poets kicking off proceedings before music groups take to the stage.

From July 1, Iraq’s security forces will take sole charge of security in the country’s cities, towns and villages.

In the first reaction from Iraq’s dominant Shiite Muslim community, Sheikh Ali Bashir al-Najafi, one of the country’s four supreme religious leaders, said the US withdrawal was a significant sign of progress.

“It is a step we hope to follow up by other steps to achieve independence and stability of the country, and it is a real test of the efficiency of the security forces to shoulder their responsibilities,” he told AFP.

“Iraq will after this day be just like many other Arab countries where there is the presence of foreign troops organised according to agreements signed between the country and the government of those forces.”

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned earlier this month that insurgent groups and militias were likely to step up attacks in the run-up to the June 30 deadline in a bid to undermine confidence in Iraq’s own security forces.

There have been several large bombings since, the deadliest of which came in the northern city of Kirkuk on June 20, when a truck loaded with explosives was detonated, leaving 72 people dead and more than 200 wounded.

The toll from a bomb in a market five days ago in the Shiite district of Sadr City in northeast Baghdad was also bloody, killing at least 62 and wounding 150.

But Maliki and senior government officials have since insisted that Iraq’s 750,000 soldiers and police can defend the nation against attacks attributed to Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents and forces loyal to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

Only a small number of US forces in training and advisory roles will remain in urban areas, with the bulk of American troops in Iraq, 131,000 according to Pentagon figures, quartered elsewhere.

The June 30 withdrawal is the prelude to a complete American pullout by the end of 2011.

Although the Iraqi police and army remain fledgling forces, they have in recent months steadily taken control of military bases, checkpoints and patrols that used to be manned by Americans.

Iraq has also set up a joint operations centre — the Joint Military Operations Coordination Committee, based at Baghdad airport — which must give its approval before a US unit can intervene.

The Status of Forces Agreement, which set the pullback deadline, says US commanders must seek permission from Iraqi authorities to conduct operations, but American troops retain a unilateral right to “legitimate self-defence”.

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Amnesty asks India to end torture in Kashmir

Daily Times, June 29, 2009

ISLAMABAD: International human rights watchdog Amnesty International (AI) has said the Indian government must take immediate steps to end torture and other human rights violations in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK).

In a letter to Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram, AI Asia Pacific Programme Director Sam Zarifi said AI continued to receive reports of torture and ill-treatment of individuals in custody in IHK. “I am writing to express AI’s concerns that torture and other cruel inhuman treatment or punishment are still inflicted widely throughout India,” Zarifi said, asking India to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment. app

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The Elephant in the Room: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons

by David Morrison | The Electronic Intifada, June 30, 2009

At a White House press conference on 18 May 2009, US President Barack Obama expressed “deepening concern” about “the potential pursuit of a nuclear weapon by Iran.” He continued:

“Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon would not only be a threat to Israel and a threat to the United States, but would be profoundly destabilizing in the international community as a whole and could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”

By his side was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the room with them, there was an elephant, a large and formidably destructive elephant, which they and the assembled press pretended not to see.

Continued >>

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Israel permits new settlement homes

Al Jazeera, June 30, 2009

Israel has approved 50 new settlement units in the West Bank and plans to build 1,400 more [AFP]

Israel has approved the construction of 50 new homes in a West Bank settlement and announced plans to expropriate more Palestinian land.

The move comes just hours before Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, visits the US in a bid to defuse tensions over Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

The land grab and new permits come despite a demand from Barack Obama, the US president, for a complete freeze to all Israeli settlement activity, and could exacerbate a rare public spat between the allies.

Continued >>

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Monday, June 29, 2009

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to blame over Iraq war, says Army report

By Rupert Hamer | The Mirror/UK, June 28, 2009

Tony Blair visits gaza (pic: Getty)

A secret report by Army bosses to be presented to the Iraq war inquiry blames Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for the botched occupation of the country.

The dossier – prepared for ex-military chief General Sir Mike Jackson – criticises then Chancellor Mr Brown for withholding funds to rebuild Basra for FIVE months after our troops went in. And the 100-page document attacks Mr Blair for “uncritically” accepting flawed US plans for the March 2003 invasion, which led to tens of thousands of deaths, including those of 179 British troops.

The report – Stability Operations in Iraq – will not be officially made public because the inquiry’s head, Sir John Chilcot, ruled all documents will remain secret.

But the contents have been leaked to the Sunday Mirror.

We can reveal that a lack of cash for the operation meant British troops sent to fight in Iraq:

Used mobile phones to communicate in combat because radios did not work.

Were forced to leave wounded soldiers on the battlefield for an average of two-and-half hours before getting them to a field hospital.

Needed more “spy in the sky” aircraft to track rebel fighters.

Lacked machine guns, night- vision equipment and grenade launchers when protecting supply convoys.

Were in danger of breaching the Geneva Convention by having so few resources. The convention says occupiers must provide vital services such as humanitarian aid and water.

In a broadside at the then PM Mr Blair, the report says the battle for the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis was lost because of a lack of planning and the five-month delay in starting to rebuild their country.

It says: “The failures to plan… seriously hindered Coalition chances of stabilising post-Saddam Iraq. The lack of improvements to essential services and the standard of living together with disorder meant many locals who were ’sitting on the fence’ were not persuaded to support the Coalition.”

It was only after riots in Basra in August 2003 that Mr Brown agreed to release £500million for reconstruction work, the report says.

And it contradicts six years of Government spin which claimed ordinary Iraqis backed the “liberation”, saying troops “found themselves fighting insurgents without clear support (from local people)”.

MOST DAMNING CONCLUSIONS:

Flawed US plans were rubberstamped by Blair

Brown blocked vital funding for five months

It took mass rioting in Basra to make him pay up

Chaos lost us the battle for Iraqi hearts & minds

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Victims of Israel’s Gaza invasion give evidence to UN mission

By Donald Macintyre in Gaza City | The Independent/UK, June 29, 2009

Harrowing testimony by bereaved victims of Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza was heard yesterday in the first public session in Gaza City of a UN factfinding mission led by a prominent South African judge.

Israel has refused to co-operate with the enquiry, and Judge Richard Goldstone’s team was obliged to enter Gaza through the Egyptian border post in Rafah. It had also hoped to travel to southern Israel to hear testimony from Israeli victims of rocket attacks from Gaza but says it will now do so in Geneva next month. Israeli witnesses may be flown to Geneva to give evidence at UN expense as the team is barred from Israel.

Judge Goldstone, a Jew and an eminent lawyer on the board of Human Rights Watch, is also a former governor of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He said: “The purpose of the public hearings in Gaza and Geneva is to show the faces and broadcast the voices of victims – all of the victims.”

He told witnesses at the start of the hearing that the judges knew “it is not easy, and how painful it is” to tell their stories.

Moteeh Silawi, an imam from Jablaya, graphically described leading his blind father, aged 91, across scattered body parts after 17 worshippers were killed by flying shrapnel from an explosion just outside its door during evening prayers on 3 January. Mr Silawi, who lost three brothers and two nephews, including a four year old, said: “I saw bloodshed in the mosque. Can you imagine such a shock? I never thought it would be possible [for] a house of God, a house of worship, to be targeted by missiles.”

The team heard evidence from the Deeb family which lost 11 of its members, including five children, in the same series of mortar rounds that killed up to 40 people on 6 January near al-Fakhoura UN School in Jabalya, which was being used as a shelter. They also heard from Wael Samouni who survived an attack that killed 29 of his extended family on 5 January after they had taken shelter in his warehouse in Zeitoun.

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Palestinians in Gaza struggle to survive: ICRC

Khaleej Times Online, June 29, 2009

(AFP)




GENEVA – Six months after the Israeli offensive and two years of a blockade the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are struggling to survive and sliding into despair, the Red Cross said Monday.

“The people living there find themselves unable to rebuild their lives and are sliding ever deeper into despair,” a new report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

The report said that seriously ill patients were not getting the treatment they needed and thousands of Gazans whose homes were destroyed during Israel’s 22-day military operation at the turn of the new year were still without shelter.

“The poorest residents in particular have exhausted their coping mechanisms and often have to sell off their belongings to be able to buy enough to eat,” said Antoine Grand, head of the ICRC’s sub-delegation in Gaza.

“Worst affected are the children, who make up more than half of Gaza’s population,” he added.

Israel imposed a blockade of Gaza in June 2007 when the Islamist movement Hamas, which is pledged to the Jewish state’s destruction, took control of the Palestinian territory.

In late December last year, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza to stop Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel, which claimed 12 Israeli lives. Israeli air raids and tanks destroyed swathes of the coastal enclave and 1,400 Palestinians were killed, according to Palestinian emergency services.

The ICRC report said in the wake of the Israeli offensive essential water and sanitation infrastructure remain largely insufficient and that the equivalent of 28 Olympic-size swimming pools of basically untreated sewage is daily pumped into the Mediterranean Sea.

Some 4.5 billion dollars pledged by donor countries to rebuild Gaza is of little use if building supplies cannot get past the Israeli blockade, the ICRC said, calling for the lifting of restrictions on the movement of people and goods.

“Israel has the right to protect its population against attacks,” said Grand. “But does that mean that 1.5 million people in Gaza do not have the right to live a normal life?”

The Geneva-based humanitarian organisation said Gaza urgently needed to import medical equipment and building supplies including cement and steel, and its farmers needed access to their land in the buffer zone and its fishermen should be allowed back into deeper waters.

The ICRC also called for political authorities and the armed groups in Gaza to take the necessary steps to help the civilians.

“Humanitarian action can be no substitute for the credible political steps that are needed to bring about the changes the population of Gaza needs,” the ICRC said.

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Obama: the next FDR or the next Hoover?

It would be hard to imagine Barack Obama acting like FDR did at the height of the New Deal. But then again, Obama doesn’t face a mobilized and militant working class.

Socialist Worker, June 29, 2009

AS THE Obama administration has settled into Washington, some of its most ardent supporters have become unsettled with its failure to seize the opportunity to push through a bold agenda for reform.

Columnist: Lance Selfa

Lance Selfa Lance Selfa is the author of The Democrats: A Critical History, a socialist analysis of the Democratic Party, and editor of The Struggle for Palestine, a collection of essays by leading solidarity activists. He is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review.

Perhaps the most cutting commentary so far was Kevin Baker’s article, titled “Barack Hoover Obama: The Best and Brightest Blow It Again,” which appeared in the July issue of the liberal magazine Harper’s. Noting that many writers have compared Obama’s arrival in the White House at a time of economic crisis with Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933, Baker turns the historical analogy on its head.

Continued >>

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Sunday, June 28, 2009

Obama must call off this folly before Afghanistan becomes his Vietnam

Senseless slaughter and anti-western hysteria are all America and Britain’s billions have paid for in a counterproductive war

Simon Jenkins | guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 June 2009 22.00 BST

If good intentions ever paved a road to hell, they are doing so in Afghanistan. History rarely declares when folly turns to ­disaster, but it does so now. Barack Obama and his amanuensis, Gordon Brown, are uncannily repeating the route taken by American leaders in Vietnam from 1963 to 1975. Galbraith once said that the best thing about the Great Depression was that it warned against another. Does the same apply to Vietnam?

Vietnam began with Kennedy’s noble 1963 intervention, to keep the communist menace at bay and thus make the world safe for democracy. That is what George Bush and Tony Blair said of ­terrorism and Afghanistan. Vietnam escalated as the Diem regime in Saigon failed to contain Vietcong aggression and was deposed with American ­collusion. By 1965, despite Congress scepticism, American advisers, then planes, then ground forces were deployed. Allies were begged to join but few agreed – and not Britain.

The presence of Americans on Asian soil turned a local insurgency into a regional crusade. Foreign aid rallied to the Vietcong cause to resist what was seen as a neo-imperialist invasion. The hard-pressed Americans resorted to ever more extensive bombing, deep inside neighbouring countries, despite ­evidence that it was ineffective and politically counterproductive.

No amount of superior firepower could quell a peasant army that came and went by night and could terrorise or merge into the local population. Tales of American atrocities rolled in each month. The army counted success not in territory held but in enemy dead. A desperate attempt to “train and equip” a new Vietnamese army made it as corrupt as it was unreliable. Billions of dollars were wasted. A treaty with the Vietcong in 1973 did little to hide the humiliation of eventual defeat.

Every one of these steps is being re-enacted in Afghanistan. Every sane observer, even serving generals and diplomats, admit that “we are not winning” and show no sign of doing so. The head of the British army, Sir Richard Dannatt, remarked recently on the “mistakes” of Iraq as metaphor for Afghanistan. He has been supported by warnings from his officers on the ground.

Last year’s denial of reinforcements to Helmand is an open secret. Ever since the then defence secretary, John Reid, issued his 2006 “London diktats”, described in a recent British Army Review as “casual, naive and a comprehensive failure”, intelligence warnings of Taliban strength have been ignored. The army proceeded with a policy of disrupting the opium trade, neglecting hearts and minds and using US air power against “blind” targets. All have proved potent weapons in the Taliban armoury.

Generals are entitled to plead for more resources and yet claim that ­victory is just round the corner, even when they know it is not. They must lead men into battle. A heavier guilt lies with liberal apologists for this war on both sides of the Atlantic who continue to invent excuses for its failure and offer glib preconditions for victory.

A classic is a long editorial in ­Monday’s New York Times, congratulating Barack Obama on “sending more troops to the fight” but claiming that there were still not enough. In addition there were too many corrupt politicians, too many drugs, too many weapons in the wrong hands, too small a local army, too few police and not enough “trainers”. The place was damnably unlike Connecticut.

Strategy, declared the sages of Manhattan, should be “to confront the Taliban head on”, as if this had not been tried before. Afghanistan needed “a functioning army and national police that can hold back the insurgents”. The way to achieve victory was for the Pentagon, already spending a stupefying $60bn in Afghanistan, to spend a further $20bn – increasing the size of the Afghan army from 90,000 to 250,000. This was because ordinary Afghans “must begin to trust their own government”.

These lines might have been written in 1972 by General Westmoreland in his Saigon bunker. The New York Times has clearly never seen the Afghan army, or police, in action. Eight years of training costing $15bn have been near useless, when men simply decline to fight except to defend their homes. Any Afghan pundit will attest that training a Pashtun to fight a Pashtun is a waste of money, while training a Tajik to the same end is a waste of time. Since the Pentagon ­originally armed and trained the Taliban to fight the Soviets, this must be the first war where it has trained both sides.

Neither the Pentagon nor the British Ministry of Defence will win Afghanistan through firepower. The strategy of “hearts and minds plus” cannot be realistic, turning Afghanistan into a vast and indefinite barracks with hundreds of thousands of western soldiers sitting atop a colonial Babel of administrators and professionals. It will never be secure. It offers Afghanistan a promise only of relentless war, one that Afghans outside Kabul know that warlords, drug cartels and Taliban sympathisers are winning.

The 2001 policy of invading, ­capturing Osama bin Laden and ­ridding the region of terrorist bases has been tested to destruction and failed. ­Strategy is reduced to the senseless slaughter of hundreds of young western soldiers and thousands of Afghans. Troops are being sent out because Labour ministers lack the guts to admit that Blair’s bid to quell the Islamist menace by force of arms was crazy. They parrot the line that they are making “the streets of London safe”, but they know they are doing the opposite.

Vietnam destroyed two presidents, Johnson and Nixon, and ­destroyed the global confidence of a ­generation of young Americans. ­Afghanistan – ­obscenely dubbed the “good war” – could do the same. There will soon be 68,000 American troops in that country, making a mockery of Donald Rumsfeld’s 2001 tactic of hit and run, which at least had the virtue of coherence.

This is set fair to be a war of awful proportions, cockpit for the feared clash of civilisations. Each new foreign ­battalion taps more cash for the Taliban from the Gulf. Each new massacre from the air recruits more youths from the madrasas. The sheer counterproductivity of the war has been devastatingly analysed by David Kilcullen, adviser to Obama’s key general – David Petraeus – no less.

Obama is trapped by past policy ­mistakes as were Kennedy and Johnson, cheered by an offstage chorus crying, “if only” and “not enough” and “just one more surge”. He and Petraeus have to find a means and a language to ­disengage from Afghanistan, to allow the anti-western hysteria of the Muslim world – which the west has done so much to foster – now to cool. It is hard to imagine a greater tragedy than for the most exciting American president in a generation to be led by a senseless intervention into a repeat of America’s greatest postwar debacle.

As for British politicians, they seek a proxy for their negligence in Afghanistan by staging a show trial of their ­negligence in Iraq. Why do they fiddle while Helmand burns? Might they at least ask how they can spend £40bn a year on defence yet watch a mere 8,000 troops on their one active front having to be rescued by Americans?

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The necessity of cultural boycott

By Ilan Pappe | ZNet, June 25, 2009

Source: Pulse Media

If there is anything new in the never-ending sad story of Palestine it is the clear shift in public opinion in the UK. I remember coming to these isles in 1980 when supporting the Palestinian cause was confined to the left and in it to a very particular section and ideological stream. The post-Holocaust trauma and guilt complex, military and economic interests and the charade of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East all played a role in providing immunity for the State of Israel. Very few were moved, so it seems, by a state that had dispossessed half of Palestine’s native population, demolished half of their villages and towns, discriminated against the minority among them who lived within its borders through an apartheid system and divided into enclaves two million and a half of them in a harsh and oppressive military occupation.

Full article>>

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Saturday, June 27, 2009

Bagram Detainees Treated ‘Worse Than Animals’

by William Fisher, Antiwar.com, June 27, 2009

An investigation by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has revealed that former detainees at the U.S. Bagram airbase in Afghanistan were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs.

The BBC’s conclusions are based on interviews with 27 former detainees who were held at Bagram between 2002 and 2006. None of these men were ever charged with a crime. Hundreds of detainees are still being held in U.S. custody at the Afghan prison without charge or trial.

Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, told IPS, “The BBC investigation provides further confirmation of the United States’ mistreatment of prisoners at Bagram.”

“These abuses are the direct consequence of decisions made at the highest levels of the U.S. government to avoid the Geneva Convention and forsake the rule of law. For too long, the unlawful detention and mistreatment of prisoners at Bagram has gone on outside the public eye,” he said. “Hopefully, this investigation will help change that.”

“When prisoners are in American custody and under American control, no matter the location, our values and commitment to the rule of law are at stake,” Hafetz said.

In April, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records pertaining to the detention and treatment of prisoners held at Bagram, including the number of people currently detained, their names, citizenship, place of capture and length of detention.

The ACLU is also seeking records pertaining to the process afforded those prisoners to challenge their detention and designation as “enemy combatants.”

“The U.S. government’s detention of hundreds of prisoners at Bagram has been shrouded in complete secrecy,” said Melissa Goodman, an ACLU staff attorney. “The American people have a right to know what’s happening at Bagram and whether prisoners have been tortured there.”

Amnesty International said it was “shocked” by the Bagram claims. It noted that a new detention center is currently under construction at the camp.

Another prominent human rights organization, the British-based Reprieve, called on the British government to take action concerning two Pakistanis who it says the U.K. helped render there from Iraq.

“The legal black hole in Bagram underlines the British government’s moral black hole when it comes to rendering two Pakistani prisoners there in 2004,” said Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve. “These men were in British custody in Iraq, were turned over to the U.S., and have now been held for five years without any respect for their legal rights.”

In February 2009, British Defense Secretary John Hutton announced to the House of Commons that Britain had handed two anonymous Pakistani men over to the U.S., and they had subsequently been rendered to Afghanistan, where they were still being held.

“We have been assured that are held in a humane, safe and secure environment, meeting international standards consistent with cultural and religious norms,” Hutton said at the time.

“As we have said all along, beating people and holding them incommunicado is not humane, safe and secure,” Stafford Smith told IPS. “Britain has a moral duty to identify these men, so that we can reunite them with their legal rights, yet Mr. Hutton refuses to do this.”

No prisoner in Bagram has been allowed to see a lawyer, or challenge his detention. According to the BBC, the U.S. justice department argues that because Afghanistan is an active combat zone it is not possible to conduct rigorous inquiries into individual cases and that it would divert precious military resources at a crucial time.

“These men were never in Afghanistan until the UK and the U.S. took them there,” said Stafford Smith. “It is the height of hypocrisy to take someone to Bagram and then claim that it is too dangerous to let them see a lawyer. Even Guantánamo Bay is better than this.”

The Pentagon has denied the BBC’s charges of harsh treatment and insisted that all inmates in the facility are treated humanely.

The Bagram Airbase built by the Soviet military in the 1980s. The approximately 600 people held there are classified as “unlawful enemy combatants.” None was charged with any offence or put on trial — some even received apologies when they were released.

Many allegations of ill-treatment appear repeatedly in the BBC interviews: physical abuse, the use of stress positions, excessive heat or cold, unbearably loud noise, being forced to remove clothes in front of female soldiers.

In four cases detainees were threatened with death at gunpoint.

“They did things that you would not do against animals let alone to humans,” said one inmate.

“They poured cold water on you in winter and hot water in summer. They used dogs against us. They put a pistol or a gun to your head and threatened you with death,” he said.

“They put some kind of medicine in the juice or water to make you sleepless and then they would interrogate you.”

The BBC said its findings were shown to the Pentagon. Lt. Col. Mark Wright, a spokesman for the U.S. secretary of defense, insisted that conditions at Bagram “meet international standards for care and custody.” He said the U.S. Defense Department has a policy of treating detainees humanely.

But he acknowledged that, “There have been well-documented instances where that policy was not followed, and service members have been held accountable for their actions in those cases.”

Since coming to office, U.S. President Barack Obama has banned the use of torture and ordered a review of policy on detainees, which is expected to report next month. But unlike its detainees at the U.S. naval facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the prisoners at Bagram have no access to lawyers and they cannot challenge their detention.

(Inter Press Service)

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America’s “Bases of Empire”

By Stephen Lendman | Global Research, June 27th, 2009

Besides waging perpetual wars, nothing better reveals America’s imperial agenda than its hundreds of global bases – for offense, not defense at a time the US hasn’t had an enemy since the Japanese surrendered in August 1945.

So when they don’t exist, they’re invented as former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles W. Freeman, Jr., suggested in a May 24, 2007 speech to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs:

“When our descendants look back on the end of the 20th century and the beginning of this one, they will be puzzled. The end of the Cold War relieved Americans of almost all international anxieties.” As the world’s sole remaining superpower, “We did not rise to the occasion.”

“We are engaged in a war, a global war on terror, a long war, we are told….How can a war with no defined ends beyond the avoidance of retreat ever reach a convenient stopping point? How can we win (any war let alone the hearts and minds of millions) with an enemy so ill-understood that we must invent a nonexistent ideology” for justification.

Continued >>

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Quartet urges settlement freeze

Al Jazeera, June 27, 2009

Ban called on Israel to stop expanding settlements, including those increasing from ’natural growth’ [AFP]

The international Quartet on Middle East peace has called on Israel to halt Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories and open border crossings as a first step to advance peace.

The Quartet, comprised of the European Union, Russia, the United States and the United Nations, made the appeal on Friday in the northeastern Italian city of Trieste.

Continued >>

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U.N. Asked to Probe CIA Rendition

By William Fisher | Inter Press Service


NEW YORK, Jun 26 (IPS) – Human rights groups are asking United Nations officials to investigate the case of an Italian citizen and victim of the “extraordinary rendition” programme of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency who is currently being held in a Moroccan prison based on a confession coerced from him through torture.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Geneva-based Alkarama for Human Rights have requested that two U.N. Special Rapporteurs investigate the circumstances of Abou Elkassim Britel’s forced disappearance, rendition, detention and torture, and raise his case with the governments of the United States, Morocco, Pakistan and Italy.

The requests were made to the U.N. Special Rapporteurs on Torture and the on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism.

Continued >>

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Israel must end indiscriminate blockade

Morning Star Online, Friday 26 June 2009

Anti-poverty agency ActionAid has called on Tel Aviv to lift its two-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, hours before a tunnel used to smuggle goods from Egypt collapsed, killing a Palestinian.

Even school books and children’s plastic toys are banned from entering Gaza by Israel, as well as essential supplies needed for relief and rehabilitation such as fuel and building materials.

As a result, Palestinians are forced to literally go underground to ferry in supplies.

Gaza emergency services official Mouawiya Hassanein said that five other people had been injured in the collapse.

On the eve of the six-month anniversary of the Israeli bombardment, ActionAid Gaza programme manager Richard Sandison said: “Israel’s blockade is indiscriminate and is affecting the entire 1.5 million-strong population of Gaza. Ordinary women, children and the elderly are the main victims.

Mr Sandison went on to observe that: “schools are lying damaged or destroyed and cannot be rebuilt because we do not have the materials needed for construction.”

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Friday, June 26, 2009

Nancy Pelosi: A Hawk in Donkey’s Clothing

Pelosi has been a major force for keeping the Dems in a pro-war stance, even though the Chronicle endlessly promotes her and her SF constituents remain in denial.

by Stephen Zunes | Tikkun Mazagine, June 26, 2009

Congressional approval to continue funding of the ongoing war in Iraq, a major segment of the $90 billion supplemental appropriate package, passed on Tuesday thanks to heavy-handed pressure by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., against anti-war Democrats.

This has led to great consternation here in her home district in San Francisco, where anti-war sentiment remains stronger than ever. The timing of the measure is particularly upsetting given that California’s record budget deficit has resulting in the layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers, the incipient closure of almost all of our state parks and draconian cuts in health care, housing, public transportation,the environment, social services and other critical programs. While unwilling or unable to get Congress to provide some financial support for the crisis here at home, our most powerful member of Congress was quite willing to work hard to insure continued financial support for war.

What few people outside of San Francisco realize is that despite representing one of the most liberal congressional districts in the country, Pelosi has been a strong supporter of the Iraq war for most of past seven years.

In 2002, public opinion polls showed that the only reason most Americans would support a U.S. invasion of Iraq was if they were convinced that Iraq was somehow a threat to the United States, such as possessing “weapons of mass destruction.” Unfortunately for those supporting a U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country, independent strategic analysts were arguing that the evidence strongly suggested that Iraq had rid itself of its chemical and biological weapons some years earlier.

In an apparent effort to discredit those of us who — correctly, as it turned out — were insisting that Iraq had in all likelihood already disarmed, Pelosi categorically declared on NBC’s Meet the Press in December 2002 that “Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There’s no question about that.”

By giving bipartisan credence to the Bush administration’s unprincipled use of such scare tactics to gain support for the U.S. takeover of that oil-rich country, she negated a potential advantage the Democrats would have otherwise had in the 2004 campaign. After it became apparent that administration claims about Iraq’s alleged military threat were false, the Democrats were unable to attack the Republicans for misleading the American public since their congressional leadership had also falsely claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

During the first twelve weeks of 2003, there were a series of large demonstrations against the war here in Pelosi’s district, including one on Feb. 16 that brought out a half-million people. While Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee — congresswomen from a neighboring districts — spoke at the rally, Pelosi was notably absent.

On the day the war began the following month, San Francisco’s downtown business district was shut down by thousands of anti-war protesters in a spontaneous act of massive civil disobedience. In response, Pelosi denounced the protesters and rushed to the defense of President George W. Bush, voting in favor of a resolution declaring the House of Representatives’ “unequivocal support and appreciation to the president … for his firm leadership and decisive action.” She personally pressed a number of skeptical Democratic lawmakers to support the resolution as well.

Pelosi also sought to discredit those who argued that Iraq was not a threat to the United States and that United Nations inspectors — which had returned to Iraq a couple of months earlier and were engaged in unfettered inspections — should have been allowed to complete their mission to confirm that Iraq had disarmed as required. She joined her Republican colleagues going on record claiming that “reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone” could not “adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.”

As a counter to those who argued that the war was a diversion of critical personnel, money, intelligence and other resources from the important battle against al-Qaida terrorists, Pelosi tried to link the secular regime of Saddam Hussein with that Islamist terrorist network by declaring that the Iraq invasion was “part of the ongoing global war on terrorism.”

Furthermore, despite a CIA report that al-Qaida terrorist Abu Musab al-Zaqarwi had not received sanctuary or any other support from the former Iraqi regime, Pelosi went on record claiming that, under Saddam “the al-Zarqawi terror network used Baghdad as a base of operations to coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies.”

In the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, Pelosi helped lead an effort to undermine the anti-war candidacy of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, insisting that Americans must “raise our voices against all forms of terrorism” and that “this is not the time to be sending mixed messages.”

Instead, she endorsed the hawkish Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., who co-sponsored the House resolution authorizing Bush to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his choosing. When Gephardt dropped out of the race, Pelosi threw her support to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who was also among the minority of Democrats on Capitol Hill who had voted to authorize Bush’s war.

Pelosi’s assertions that the Iraq war was part of the “war on terror” proved costly to the Democrats in the 2004 election, which the Democrats had been expected to win, as exit polls showed that 80 percent of those who did believe that the war in Iraq was part of the war on terrorism voted to re-elect Bush and a Republican majority in both houses of Congress.

In response to the consensus of disarmament experts that the U.S. invasion of Iraq hurt the cause of nuclear nonproliferation, Pelosi voted in favor of a Republican-sponsored amendment that claimed that the elimination of Libya’s nuclear program in late 2003 “would not have been possible if not for … the liberation of Iraq by United States and coalition forces.” Her support for this Republican-sponsored measure came despite testimony by U.S. negotiators who took part in British-initiated talks with the Muammar Qaddafi regime that the outline of the deal had come prior to the invasion and that the war played no role whatsoever in the agreement.

As the armed resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq grew in the wake of the invasion, Pelosi dismissed the growing consensus that it was part of a popular nationalist reaction to foreign occupation and instead went on record insisting that it is simply the work of “former regime elements, foreign and Iraqi terrorists and other criminals.”

As far back as 2004, the voters of San Francisco, in a citywide referendum, voted by a nearly 2-to-1 margin calling on the United States government to withdraw all troops from Iraq. Pelosi, however, insisted on ignoring her constituents and continued to support Bush’s policies.

By 2005, as Bay Area Reps. Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, Pete Stark and Sam Farr joined Democratic colleagues from across the country in signing a letter to Bush calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, Pelosi was notably absent from the list of signatories.

By this point, even prominent Republicans like James Baker and Gen. Brent Scowcroft were calling for the withdrawal of American forces, yet Pelosi held firm in her support of the war. Back in 1990, Pelosi had been an outspoken liberal critic of the George H.W. Bush administration’s militaristic policy toward Iraq. Fifteen years later, however, she was taking a position to the right of his secretary of state and national security adviser.

Defenders of Pelosi pointed out that, as assistant minority leader in October 2002, she was the only member of the Democratic leadership in either house of Congress to vote against authorizing the invasion. Furthermore, they noted how she subsequently raised some concerns regarding how the Bush administration had handled the occupation, such as not adequately preparing for the aftermath of the invasion, failing to utilize enough troops, not providing adequate training or body armor for U.S. forces and for backing such dubious exile figures as Ahmad Chalabi.

However, Pelosi refused to acknowledge that the United States should have never invaded Iraq in the first place, which had been acknowledged by religious leaders from around the globe. Nor did she ever acknowledge that the invasion was a direct violation of the United Nations Charter, which the United States — as a party to such binding international treaties — is legally required to uphold.

Historically, opposition leaders in Congress have helped expose the lies and counterproductive policies of the incumbent administration. Pelosi, however, to her party’s detriment, decided instead to defend them.

By the end of 2005, as protesters met her at virtually every public event in her district and even conservative colleagues in the House Democratic leadership, such as Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, began calling for a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, Pelosi finally spoke out in favor of an end to the war.

She continued to support unconditional funding for the war effort, however, for the next two fiscal years. It was only on the vote for last year’s fiscal budget, as anti-war sentiment in her district was reaching a fever pitch and fears of a serious challenge to her seat in the Democratic primary and/or from the Green Party nominee in November, did she finally vote against war funding.

Now, however, as public attention on the Iraq war has faded, she has reverted to her previous pro-war position. Along with her support for Israel’s wars on the Gaza Strip and on Lebanon, her backing of the Iraq war is demonstrative of her willingness to ally herself with the former Bush administration in pushing policies based on the premise that instability and extremism can be best addressed through brute military force regardless of international legal norms or high civilian casualties.

Despite all this, much of the mainstream media and leading political pundits identify Pelosi as a prominent liberal. It is but one example of how far to the right political discourse in American has gone.

© 2009 Tikkun Magazine

Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)

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Memo confirms Bush and Blair knew claims Iraq had WMDs were lies

Memo confirms Bush and Blair knew claims Iraq had WMDs were lies

By sudhan

By Paul Bond | wsws.org, 26 June 2009

A confidential memo obtained by the Observer, detailing a meeting between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, confirms their determination to press ahead with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 without any evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and without United Nations approval.

The five-page memo, written by Blair’s foreign policy adviser Sir David Manning, is dated January 31, 2003, some two months before the invasion began. It records the thinking of Bush and Blair as it became increasingly obvious that United Nations weapons inspectors would not find the advanced weaponry, including a nuclear capability, that both leaders were using to justify military action.

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Afghanistan: The Farah Bombing: Airstrike Report Belies “Blame Taliban” Line

By Gareth Porter | Counterpunch, June 26 – 28, 2009

The version of the official military investigation into the disastrous May 4 airstrike in Farah province made public last week by the Central Command was carefully edited to save the U.S. command in Afghanistan the embarrassment of having to admit that earlier claims blaming the massive civilian deaths on the “Taliban” were fraudulent.

By covering up the most damaging facts surrounding the incident, the rewritten public version of the report succeeded in avoiding media stories on the contradiction between the report and the previous arguments made by the U.S. command.

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Obama Presses Israel on Settlements, but Their End Isn’t in Sight

by William Pfaff, Antiwar.com, June 26, 2009

PARIS — The Obama administration’s confrontation with Israel over its colonies inside the Palestine territories began as a test of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s willingness to enter serious negotiations on a Middle Eastern settlement. It actually possesses potential dimensions that few today imagine.

Netanyahu first counted on the Likud and settlement lobbies in Washington to produce, as always in the past, a disingenuous formula that would allow the colonies to continue to expropriate Palestinian land and expand the settlements, while the American government oversaw essentially meaningless negotiations with the Palestinians.

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Author Naomi Klein Calls for Boycott of Israel

Published on Friday, June 26, 2009 by Agence France Presse

BILIN , West Bank – Bestselling author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters.

[Bestselling Canadian author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters. 'Boycott is a tactic . . . we're trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa,' she said. (Photograph by: John Kenney, National Post)]Bestselling Canadian [Jewish] author Naomi Klein on Friday took her call for a boycott of Israel to the occupied West Bank village of Bilin, where she witnessed Israeli forces clashing with protesters. ‘Boycott is a tactic . . . we’re trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa,’ she said. (Photograph by: John Kenney, National Post)

“It’s a boycott of Israeli institutions, it’s a boycott of the Israeli economy,” the Canadian writer told journalists as she joined a weekly demonstration against Israel’s controversial separation wall.”Boycott is a tactic . . . we’re trying to create a dynamic which was the dynamic that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa,” said Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”

“It’s an extraordinarily important part of Israel’s identity to be able to have the illusion of Western normalcy,” the Canadian writer and activist said.

“When that is threatened, when the rock concerts don’t come, when the symphonies don’t come, when a film you really want to see doesn’t play at the Jerusalem film festival . . . then it starts to threaten the very idea of what the Israeli state is.”

She briefly joined about 200 villagers and foreign activists protesting the barrier which Israel says it needs to prevent attacks, but which Palestinians say aims at grabbing their land and undermining the viability of their promised state.

She then watched from a safe distance as the protesters reached the fence, where Israeli forces fired teargas and some youths responded by throwing stones at the army.

“This apartheid, this is absolutely a system of segregation,” Klein said adding that Israeli troops would never crack down as violently against Jewish protesters.

She pointed out that her visit coincided with court hearings in Quebec in a case where the villagers of Bilin are suing two Canadian companies, accusing them of illegally building and selling homes to Israelis on land that belongs to the village.

The plaintiffs claim that by building in the Jewish settlement of Modiin Illit, near Bilin, Green Park International and Green Mount International are in violation of international laws that prohibit an occupying power from transferring some of its population to the lands it occupies.

“I’m hoping and praying that Canadian courts will bring some justice to the people of Bilin,” Klein said.

Her visit was also part of a promotional tour in Israel and the West Bank for “The Shock Doctrine” which has recently been translated into Hebrew and Arabic. Klein said she would get no royalties from sales of the Hebrew version and that the proceeds would go instead to an activist group.

© Copyright (c) AFP

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Bagram is Now Obama’s Guantanamo

By William Fisher | The Public Record, June 25, 2009

While millions know that the administration of George W. Bush has left Barack Obama with the job of closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, relatively few are aware that the new president will also face a similar but far larger dilemma 7,000 miles away.

That dilemma is what to do with the what has become known as “the other GITMO” – the U.S.-controlled military prison at Bagram Air Base near Kabul in Afghanistan – and the estimated 600-700 detainees now held there.

The “other GITMO” was set up by the U.S. military as a temporary screening site after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban. It currently houses more than three times as many prisoners as are still held at Guantanamo.

In 2005, following well-documented accounts of detainee deaths, torture and “disappeared” prisoners, the U.S. undertook efforts to turn the facility over to the Afghan government. But due to a series of legal, bureaucratic and administrative missteps, the prison is still under American military control. And a recent confidential report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reportedly complained about the continued mistreatment of prisoners.

The ICRC report is said to cite massive overcrowding, “harsh” conditions, lack of clarity about the legal basis for detention, prisoners held “incommunicado” in “a previously undisclosed warren of isolation cells” and “sometimes subjected to cruel treatment in violation of the Geneva Conventions”. Some prisoners have been held without charges or lawyers for more than five years. The Red Cross said that dozens of prisoners have been held incommunicado for weeks or even months, hidden from prison inspectors.

“When prisoners are in American custody and under American control, no matter the location, our values and commitment to the rule of law are at stake,” said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project in response to a new report published by the BBC documenting the torture of more than two-dozen former detainees. “Torture and abuse at Bagram is further evidence that prisoner abuse in U.S. custody was systemic, not aberrational, and originated at the highest levels of government. We must learn the truth about what went wrong, hold the proper people accountable and make sure these failed policies are not continued or repeated.”

In April, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records pertaining to the detention and treatment of prisoners held at Bagram, including the number of people currently detained, their names, citizenship, place of capture and length of detention. The ACLU is also seeking records pertaining to the process afforded those prisoners to challenge their detention and designation as “enemy combatants.”

“The U.S. government’s detention of hundreds of prisoners at Bagram has been shrouded in complete secrecy,” said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “The American people have a right to know what’s happening at Bagram and whether prisoners have been tortured there.”

In a related case, the ACLU is representing former Bagram prisoner Mohammed Jawad in a habeas corpus challenge to his indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay. The Afghan government recently sent a letter to the U.S. government suggesting Jawad was as young as 12 when he was captured in Afghanistan and taken to Bagram, where he was tortured. Despite the fact that the primary evidence against Jawad was thrown out in his military commission case at Guantánamo because it was derived through torture, the U.S. government continues to rely on such evidence – including evidence obtained during interrogations at Bagram – in Jawad’s current habeas case to justify holding him indefinitely.

According to Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “Bagram appears to be just as bad as, if not worse than, Guantanamo. When a prisoner is in American custody and under American control, our values are at stake and our commitment to the rule of law is tested”.

She told us, “The abuses cited by the Red Cross give us cause for concern that we may be failing the test. The Bush administration is not content to limit its regime of illegal detention to Guantanamo, and has tried to foist it on Afghanistan.”

She added: “Both Congress and the executive branch need to investigate what’s happening at Bagram if we are to avoid a tragic repetition of history.”

But most observers believe the solution is more likely to come in the courts and to be inextricably linked to recent judicial decisions affecting prisoners at Guantanamo.

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that foreign nationals held as terrorism suspects by the U.S. military at Guantanamo have a constitutional right to challenge their captivity in U.S. courts in Washington. Last week, a federal judge began exploring whether this landmark decision also applies to Bagram.

Like Guantanamo, Bagram was set up as a facility where battlefield captives could be held for the duration of the “war on terrorism” under full military control in an overseas site beyond the reach of U.S. courts.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly thwarted the campaign to insulate Guantanamo from the courts’ review. But the Justice argument is that none of those rulings has any application to Bagram, and that the federal judge should dismiss the legal challenges by Bagram detainees by finding that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over them.

But lawyers for four Bagram prisoners who have been held in detention since at least 2003 contend that recent Supreme Court Guantanamo decisions also apply to Afghanistan. They are also arguing that another Supreme Court decision — Munaf v. Geren — extended habeas rights to a U.S. military facility in Baghdad.

Barbara Olshansky of the Stanford Law School represents three of the four men who brought the court action. She said “there is no more complete analogy or mirror to Guantanamo than this (case).”

While U.S. District Judge John D. Bates has not ruled on the government’s motion to dismiss the four Bagram cases, he said during the court hearing, “These individuals are no different than those detained at Guantanamo except where they’re housed.”

In its motion to dismiss the cases, the Justice Department argued that Bagram is so much a part of ongoing military operations that there simply is no role for U.S. courts to play. “To provide alien enemy combatants detained in a theater of war the privilege of access to our civil courts is unthinkable both legally and practically,” the government’s brief claimed.

The government claims the U.S. does not have nearly the control over the Bagram Airfield as it does over Guantanamo Bay, and thus the reasoning of the Supreme Court in extending habeas rights to Guantanamo should not apply to Bagram.

It also noted that Bagram is in the midst of a war zone; Guantanamo is not. It asserted that civilian court review of Bagram detentions would actually compromise the military mission in Afghanistan.

The Munaf decision also has no application to Bagram, the government’s motion contended, because that involved U.S. citizens, not foreign nationals.

Lawyers for the Bagram detainees noted that some of them have been held for more than six years, so any argument the Justice Department might have made against habeas rights abroad has now lost its force “after so much time has passed.”

They say the issue “is whether the Executive can create a modern-day Star Chamber, where it can label an individual an ‘enemy combatant’ or ‘unlawful enemy combatant,’ deny him any meaningful ability to challenge that label, and on that basis, detain him indefinitely, virtually incommunicado, subject to interrogation and torture, without any right of redress.”

The lawyers note that the Supreme Court has rejected such efforts at Guantanamo on three occasions. But it added that the government is now seeking “to revive their effort to create a prison beyond judicial scrutiny by arguing that habeas does not extend to Bagram because they have deliberately located their Star Chamber in an airfield they contend is outside their ‘realm,’ for the express purpose of avoiding compliance with domestic civil, criminal, military, and international law.”

Bagram, their brief contended, “is not a temporary holding camp, intended to house enemy soldiers apprehended on the battlefield, for the duration of a declared war, finite in time and space.” It said the “war on terror” as conceived by the government is “unlimited in duration and global in scope.”

It also noted that, unlike Guantanamo, Bagram is a permanent prison. Thousands of individuals from all over the world have been taken to the airfield prison, and nearly 700 remain there now, and it is being expanded with a new prison to hold more than 11,000. Moreover, they argued, Bagram detainees do not even have the minimal procedural guarantees to have their captivity reviewed that Guantanamo prisoners have in the so-called “Combatant Status Review Tribunals.” The military does not operate CSRTs as Bagram.

Lawyers for the four men — two Yemeni, one Tunisian and one Afghan – said none was captured while in battle or otherwise directly aiding terrorist groups.

The Justice Department argued that releasing alleged enemy combatants into the Afghan war zone, or even diverting U.S. personnel there to consider their legal cases, could threaten security.

“What evidence is there to believe they would return to the battlefield?” Judge Bates asked Deputy Assistant Attorney General John O’Quinn. “They were not on the battlefield to begin with.”

William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and elsewhere for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development. He served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy Administration and now writes on a wide-range of issues, from human rights to foreign affairs, for numerous newspapers and online journals. He blogs at The World According to Bill Fisher.

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Obama and the Torturers

Celebrate Torture Day by Punishing the Torturers

By James Bovard | Counterpunch, June 25, 2009

Since 1997, every June 26 has been formally recognized as the International Day of Support for Victims of Torture. Political leaders around the globe take the occasion to proclaim their opposition to barbarism.

On June 26, 2003, President George W. Bush proudly declared“The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment.”

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U.S.–Iraq: A Withdrawal in Name Only

Erik Leaver and Daniel Atzmon | Foreign Policy In Focus, June 24, 2009

On November 17, 2008, when Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker signed an agreement for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, citizens from both countries applauded. While many were disappointed about the lengthy timeline for the withdrawal of the troops, it appeared that a roadmap was set to end the war and occupation. However, the first step — withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 — is full of loopholes, and tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers will remain in the cities after the “deadline” passes.

The failure to fully comply with the withdrawal agreement indicates the United States is looking to withdraw from Iraq in name only, as it appears that up to 50,000 military personnel will remain after the deadline.

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