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![]() Just Above Sunset
June 6, 2004: They Are the Good Guys
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We’ve all seen the
news. The Army announced Wednesday that it would require all soldiers bound for Iraq and Afghanistan to extend their active duty at least until their units have returned home from duty there, a move that could keep thousands of troops in the service for months longer than they expected over the next several years. From the Associated Press
– The announcement Wednesday, an expansion of a program called "stop-loss," affects units that are 90 days or less from deploying.... The Army is struggling to find fresh units to continue the occupation of Iraq. Almost every combat unit has faced or will face duty there or in Afghanistan, and increased violence has forced the deployment of an additional 20,000 troops to the Iraq region, straining units even further. A quick analysis from Matthew Yglesias in The American Prospect here - This is probably the correct response to the manpower situation the military's currently facing, but it's obviously not viable -- or, really, acceptable -- as a long-term solution. What's worse, the more the military burdens the volunteers it's got, the harder it's going to be to recruit people in the future. Members of the National Guard have come to learn that they've committed themselves to something much more arduous than they might have initially believed, and now the active-duty military is learning that the stated lengths of their enlistments can be deceptive. The country needs a real answer to this manpower problem -- a higher end-strength and a restructuring to produce more of the kind of troops we need, and fewer who are better-suited for outdated tasks. Maybe so. The Army has undertaken a series of recent measures to satisfy the personnel demands being imposed
by the extended overseas conflicts. The Times also reports this is a bit controversial in the military. "I've led troops for the past two years on the small unit level, and these are not guys who are
unpatriotic in any way. They volunteered and in many cases have served multiple
tours," said Andrew Exum, 25, a former Army captain who served in a special operations unit in Iraq and Afghanistan and has
written a book based on his experiences. Well, yes. That is true. I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening to every one of you--some more extreme than others--are
changes I know very well. So I'm going to say some things to you straight up
in the language to which you are accustomed. Well, you get the idea. Click on the link for the whole thing. … In our process of fighting to stay alive, and in their process of trying to expel an invader
that violated their dignity, destroyed their property, and killed their innocents, we were faced off against each other by
people who made these decisions in $5,000 suits, who laughed and slapped each other on the back in Washington DC with their
fat fucking asses stuffed full of cordon blue and caviar. This is pretty straightforward
advice, if somewhat subversive. When I returned from Vietnam, I went to Chicago to visit my brother. We went to visit his 5-year-old daughter who was in a local hospital.
She was doing well, but there was a very thin child in the same pediatrics ward sitting in a wheel chair looking very
sad, not participating in play with the other children, looking as though he had no inspirations. My brother tried to cheer him up with kind conversation. He
got ice cream for this child, and spent several hours attending, very passionately, to him.
I heard him ask the nurse if the child had family or other visitors. John recovered. I know him. He worked for me for several years. He's a good
man. I don’t know how hard it was for him to return. I found that read stirring too, and was hit most of all by the impending loss of humanity from
being in combat. When survival is a matter of fact and keen priority, something's
gotta go. Things that are most near get shut down. I'm glad to hear that an antidote to the damage exists, and wouldn't you know it would come form the people
who care about you? That is not the guys in $5000 suits that Goff refers to,
spouting off bravery from safe and cushy Washington. I believe as the writer
said, they don't give a shit about you soldier, not in any depth. Yep. The United States is scrambling to soften allegedly harsh and inflammatory criticism of the US-led
coalition in Iraq that is expected to be contained in a UN human rights report to be released this week, US officials said. Got it? See the first footnote at the end for what the UN report actually said. It wasn’t good. The US may be accused war crimes. In the past week, details have emerged of not only more prisoner abuse in Iraq, but also a concerted
effort by the president's chief lawyer to try to insulate such abuse from domestic criminal investigation. A 2002 memorandum from White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales tells the president to refuse to apply the
protection of the Geneva Conventions to detainees because Americans could be charged in domestic courts with war crimes. Now that photos and Army reports suggest that just such crimes have been committed,
a criminal investigation is necessary. And because the administration's own memoranda
reveal that it tried to adopt policies to frustrate precisely such prosecutions, the attorney general must now appoint an
outside prosecutor to investigate whether war crimes actually occurred. Really. The whole thing is long and detailed, a legal argument. ___ First Footnote - The UN’s view: REPORT FROM GENEVAU.N.
Rights Chief Says Prison Abuse May Be War Crime Warren
Hoge, New York Times, Published: June 5, 2004 UNITED NATIONS, June 4 - The top human rights official for the United Nations said Friday that the mistreatment of
Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers could constitute a war crime, and he called for the immediate naming of an international
figure to oversee the situation. The official, Bertrand Ramcharan, the acting high commissioner for human rights, acknowledged that the removal of
Saddam Hussein represented "a major contribution to human rights in Iraq" and noted that the United States had condemned abusive
conduct by its troops and pledged to bring violators to justice. "Everyone accepts the good intentions of the coalition governments as regards the behavior of their forces in Iraq,"
he said in a 45-page report issued at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. But Mr. Ramcharan said that after the occupation of Iraq, "there have sadly been some violations of human rights committed
by some coalition soldiers." Apparently in a reference to the incidents of abuse
at Abu Ghraib prison and to cases where Iraqi prisoners have died in detention, he said "willful killing, torture and inhuman
treatment" represented a "grave breach" of international law and "might be designated as war crimes by a competent tribunal." Yep
– he said it was a "stark reality" that there was no international oversight or accountability for the thousands of
detainees, the conditions in which they were held and the manner in which they were treated.
To correct this situation, he said, the occupation authorities should immediately appoint "an international ombudsman
or commissioner." That person would be charged with monitoring human rights in
Iraq and producing periodic reports on "compliance by coalition forces with international norms of human rights and humanitarian
law." The
article goes on to say a spokesman for our State Department, Adam Ereli, points out we HAD cooperated with the high commissioner
and “shared his concern” with protecting human rights. So of
course any war crimes charge “was unlikely to arise” as we’re already taking care of everything. Don’t worry. Trust us. The
folks at Human Rights Watch are upset that the report wasn’t stronger. They
wanted a criticism of "the systematic nature of the policy." What
else? It
seems the report mentions that Mr. Vieira de Mello, the UN head fellow who was killed in the bombing of United Nations Baghdad
headquarters last August, had raised concern about the Americans' treatment of detainees in a meeting with the head of the
Coalition Provisional Authority with Bremer on July 15, 2003. Geez. Well,
as mentioned elsewhere, the White House's top lawyer two years ago wrote a memo on how American officials
could face prosecution for war crimes because of our tactic with prisoners, and particularly at Guantánamo. That’s the Alberto Gonzales memo dated Jan. 25, 2002, that was reveal last month by Newsweek. Gonzales, the White House counsel, argued we really did have to declare lot of captives
exempt from the Geneva Conventions. Otherwise, according to the memo, Americans
might be subject to "unwarranted charges" of committing or fostering war crimes. How
else can you get away with torture, or torture-lite, or whatever it is we tend to be doing? ___ Second Footnote: Even
some senior military type guys are more than a bit fed up. Below
is the list of retired senior military flag officers advising the man running against George Bush. Adm. William Crowe (USN, Ret.) Former
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Pointed out by Zoe Kentucky here.
Soldiers know better. |
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This issue updated and published on...
Paris readers add nine hours....
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