Peace Activists Arrested After Protesting US Drones in Nevada

US drone bombings have reportedly killed 687 Pakistani civilians since 2006. During that time, US Predator drones carried out sixty strikes inside Pakistan, but hit just ten of their actual targets. Last week, a group of peace activists last week staged the first major act of civil disobedience against the drone attacks in the United States. Fourteen people were arrested outside the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where Air Force personnel pilot the unmanned drones used in Pakistan. We speak with longtime California peace activist Father Louis Vitale, who was among those arrested, and with Jeff Paterson of Courage to Resist.

CLOSER LOOK AT THE KILLER DRONES

CLOSER LOOK AT THE KILLER DRONES By Kathy Kelly and Brian Terrall It’s one thing to study online articles describing the MQ-9 Reapers and MQ-1 Predators. It’s quite another to identify these drones as they take off from runways at Nevada’s Creech Air Force base, where our “Ground the Drones…Lest We Reap the Whirlwind” campaign [...]

Can Obama End Veteran Homelessness?

If you think homelessness among veterans is unacceptable, you’re not alone. Obama has pledged to establish a national “zero tolerance policy” for homelessness among veterans. In his proposed budget, he took a bold step towards that goal by proposing a 10 percent increase for Veterans Affairs. But will increasing government spending to match our “support our troops” rhetoric ultimately end veteran homelessness?

It’s no mystery that veterans are disproportionately represented among the homeless population. During good economic times, one in four people without a roof wore the uniform (thanks to the recession, that number is probably a bit lower today). While many of these homeless vets served in Vietnam, a growing number of vets from Iraq and Afghanistan are winding up in shelters and on the streets.

Why, you ask? The answer, of course, is where our government chooses to direct funding (or not direct funding, as is the case here). During the Bush years, Veterans Affairs (VA) was wholly undersupported by the Bush administration. Suffering through astronomical budget shortfalls and lowball estimates that failed to take into account the costs of treating vets returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Major Push Is Needed to Save Afghanistan, General Says

WASHINGTON — The top American commander responsible for Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said Thursday that the country would require a “sustained, substantial” commitment from the United States and other nations to stop a downward spiral of violence and a resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
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Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

Gen. David H. Petraeus in Washington on Thursday. “There has been nothing easy about Afghanistan,” he said.

General Petraeus, who declined to suggest a time frame for that commitment, also said that Iran, which has been the target of United Nations sanctions because of its nuclear program, had common interests with the United States and other nations in a secure Afghanistan.

Although he hinted that such interests might make talks with Iran feasible, he said he would leave the topic to diplomats and policy makers.

Bush-Cheney Deserve Censure for Declaring War Against The Constitution

Before Inauguration Day, the 111th Congress should pass a forward-looking resolution censuring President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for executive aggrandizements or abuses that have reduced Congress to vassalage and shredded the rule of law. The resolution should express a congressional intent to prevent repetitions by the President-elect Barack Obama or his successors. The objective is not Bush-Cheney bashing, but to restore a republican form of government in which “We the People” are sovereign, and the president is checked and publicly scrutinized by Congress and the courts. The Bush-Cheney duumvirate won an undeclared war against the Constitution. Most troublesome, they captured the power to initiate war from a spineless Congress. The Founding Fathers were unanimous in denying the president that constitutional authority. They knew that presidents would chronically deceive Congress and concoct excuses for war to control public information, benefit political friends through government contracts, quell dissent, assert emergency powers and enjoy the intoxicating thrill of, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

By wielding the threat of international terrorism, the Bush-Cheney team put the nation on a permanent war footing – the first time in history that war has been undertaken against a tactic. They maintained that the entire post-9/11 world is an active battlefield where United States military force may be used to kill suspected members of al Qaeda irrespective of international boundaries.

They claimed executive privilege and state secrets to conduct secret government – thereby circumventing political and legal accountability. This included directives to former White House officials Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to flout congressional subpoenas for testimony. They detained hundreds of people (including American citizens) as enemy combatants without accusation or trial. They authorized torture (waterboarding and extraordinary rendition), abductions, secret prisons and illegal surveillance of American citizens.

US Military Defiant on Key Terms of Iraqi Pact

WASHINGTON – U.S. military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops.

The scheme to engage in chicanery in labeling U.S. troops represents both open defiance of an agreement which the U.S. military has never accepted and a way of blocking President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed plan for withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office.

By redesignating tens of thousands of combat troops as support troops, those officials apparently hope to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Obama to insist on getting all combat troops of the country by mid-2010.

Cheney Throws Down Gauntlet, Defies Prosecution for War Crimes

Dick Cheney has publicly confessed to ordering war crimes. Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared.” He also said he still believes waterboarding was an appropriate method to use on terrorism suspects. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the agency waterboarded three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003.

U.S. courts have long held that waterboarding, where water is poured into someone’s nose and mouth until he nearly drowns, constitutes torture. Our federal War Crimes Act defines torture as a war crime punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

Under the doctrine of command responsibility, enshrined in U.S. law, commanders all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief can be held liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them and they did nothing to stop or prevent it.

A time for eagles: Code Pink, Muntadar and Ackerman

Today is Code Pink, Muntadar al-Zaidi and Judy Ackerman Day at Censored News

A call for whistleblowers: Cyclops in the Closet
By Brenda Norrell
Photo AP/Washington Post
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

In Washington outside the White House, the Code Pink ladies were throwing shoes at a Bush effigy on Wednesday, while a lone woman, Judy Ackerman, 55, was getting arrested in El Paso for defending the Rio Bosque Wetlands from the destruction of the US Border Wall construction.
It was a day for eagles.
We can only hope that more eagles in the form of whistleblowers will step forward before another dirty coal mine, Desert Rock, becomes a reality on the Navajo Nation, and Peabody Coal is allowed to expand its genocidal tentacles into the heartland of Black Mesa.
Like a morbid octopus, Peabody wants to usurp everything that does not belong to the coal-chewing monster. Like a thirsty cyclops, Peabody wants to drain the pristine waters of the Navajo and Hopi aquifer, with its one eye focused on more dirty millions.
If the highly-paid spin doctors have their way, there will be more Navajo relocation to make way for the Peabody Coal dragon. There will be more lies in the media and more Navajo elderly will die from broken hearts.
Through the years there have been many whistleblowers on the Navajo Nation, exposing the dirty backdoor deals of Navajo politicians and corrupt corporate spiders.
Today, the Censored News blog calls on all those whistleblowers who are home biting their nails to come out and tell the world about the sleazy deals behind the Desert Rock scheme and Peabody Coal’s latest parasitic coal mining plan.
Already, the sex and cocaine of the US Mineral Management Service in Denver with the Big Oil daddies has been exposed.
We would like to hear from the whistleblowers of the Office of Surface Mining in Denver. We would like to hear about the cash that is flowing to keep people silent in corporate offices and what is going on in the US Interior closets.
We would like to hear about the lush meals and lavish hotels aimed at keeping American Indian politicians voting for dirty power plants in tribal council sessions. We would like to hear about the advocates who receive scholarship dollars to speak out in favor of digging into the Earth Mother.
We would also like to hear from whistleblowers at the BLM and elsewhere within the Bush Family. We would like to hear more about how President Bush Sr., before leaving office, cleared the way for Barrick Gold mining to lease lands in Nevada. Once he was out of office, Bush Sr. then went to work as a senior consultant for Barrick. Barrick tore out the trees and bulldozed the area of the Western Shoshone’s sacred Mount Tenabo in the past two weeks, as it prepares to core out the mountain for gold mining and poison the water with cyanide leaching.
We would also like to hear from the whistleblowers in the Cheney ring of private prison thieves, who profiteered from imprisoning migrants and all people of color. Surely there are whistleblowers in the US military torture schools and the private mercenaries for profit empire.
Meanwhile, there are the shoes to consider.
With more than 8,300 online articles now in Google Breaking News, Muntadar al-Zaidi — the shoe-throwing journalist who called Bush a “dog” and remembered the dead, orphans and widows — has become one of the most famous people in the world.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said of al-Zaidi, “What courage.”
Today’s AP article on the Code Pink shoe throwers outside the White House says, “The U.S. Secret Service stood by during the protests; however there were no conflicts with authorities and no arrests were made.”
How could anyone have a conflict with what the reporter Muntadar al-Zaidi did in Iraq. There is no way to bring back the dead women, children and elderly of Iraq. The mass murders in Iraq can only be considered an act of US genocide. The US kidnappings and tortures were violations of the Geneva Conventions.

New Evidence Contradicts White House Assertions on Uranium Claim

Dec. 18, 2008 – New evidence obtained by the Oversight Committee indicates that the CIA rejected White House efforts to insert the claim that Iraq sought uranium from Africa into two speeches by President Bush prior to the 2003 State of the Union address, contradicting assertions made to Congress by then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales on behalf of then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

MEMORANDUM

December 18, 2008

To: Members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

Fr: Chairman Henry A. Waxman

Re: The President’s Claim that Iraq Sought Uranium from Niger

Next month, I will be leaving the Oversight Committee to chair the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Before I depart, I want to report to you on the most significant information I have learned from the Committee’s investigation into the basis for President Bush’s claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

On January 6, 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales sent a letter on behalf of Condoleezza Rice, who was then the National Security Advisor, to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, writing that “Dr. Rice has asked me to respond” to questions raised by the Committee about the uranium claim. Mr. Gonzales informed the Committee that the CIA “orally cleared” the uranium claim “for use by the President” in both a September 12, 2002, speech to the United Nations and a September 26, 2002, speech in the White House Rose Garden.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence relied on these representations and adopted the White House’s statements almost verbatim in its 2004 Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. As a result, the Senate report created the impression that the President’s use of the uranium claim in the State of the Union address could be blamed in large part on the CIA and its clearance of the claim in the earlier speeches.

The information the Oversight Committee has received casts serious doubt on the veracity of the representations that Mr. Gonzales made on behalf of Dr. Rice. Contrary to Mr. Gonzales’s assertions, the Committee has received evidence that the CIA objected to the uranium claim in both speeches, resulting in its deletion from the President’s remarks. In the case of the September 26, 2002, speech, the former Deputy Director of Intelligence at the CIA told the Committee that she personally warned Dr. Rice not to use the uranium claim.

The President’s September 12, 2002, speech to the United Nations contended that Iraq was in breach of United Nations sanctions. During an interview with the Committee, John Gibson, who served as Director of Speechwriting for Foreign Policy at the National Security Council (NSC), stated that he tried to insert the uranium claim into this speech at the request of Michael Gerson, chief White House speechwriter, and Robert Joseph, the Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense at the NSC. According to Mr. Gibson, the CIA rejected the uranium claim because it was “not sufficiently reliable to include it in the speech.” Mr. Gibson stated that the CIA “didn’t give that blessing,” the “CIA was not willing to clear that language,” and “[a]t the end of the day, they did not clear it.”

On September 26, 2002, President Bush delivered remarks in the White House Rose Garden urging Congress to authorize the use of force in Iraq. During an interview with the Committee, Jami Miscik, the Deputy Director of Intelligence at the CIA, stated that NSC officials “wouldn’t take [the uranium claim] out of the speech.” As a result, she was asked to explain directly to Dr. Rice “the reasons why we didn’t think this was credible.” Ms. Miscik stated that “[i]t was clear that we had problems or we at the most fundamental level wouldn’t have been having the phone call at all.” According to Ms. Miscik, the CIA’s reasons for rejecting the uranium claim “had been conveyed to the NSC counterparts” before the call, and Dr. Rice was “getting on the phone call with that information.” Ms. Miscik told Dr. Rice personally that the CIA was “recommending that it be taken out.” She also said “[i]t turned out to be a relatively short phone call” because “we both knew what the issues were and therefore were able to get to a very easy resolution of it.”

During his interview with the Committee, Mr. Gibson was asked about the White House assertions that the CIA had cleared the inclusion of the uranium claim. He stated that the White House assertions were “incorrect.” He told the Committee that “the CIA had never cleared” the use of the uranium claim. During her interview with the Committee, Ms. Miscik made the same point, stating that the White House assertions were “not accurate” and “misleading.” She explained further: “We had not cleared on this speech until the discussion that Dr. Rice and I had.”

Unfortunately, Dr. Rice resisted efforts by the Committee to obtain her testimony about these matters. Thus, I am not able to report to you how she would explain the seeming contradictions between her statements and those of Mr. Gonzales on her behalf and the statements made to the Committee by senior CIA and NSC officials.

‘Shoe-icide Attack’ at the White House, 12.17.08

Code Pink and others honor the courage of Iraqi journalist and shoe-tosser Muntader Al-Zaidi at the White House.