The Chilcot Inquiry, Aggression and the International Criminal Court

29 July 2010 The 2003 U.S. led invasion of Iraq was a crime--a profound and catastrophic violation of international law.

The crime was aggression: the waging of unprovoked war on a sovereign state.

A growing international consensus says that not only was the invasion illegal, but in the future such crimes will result in direct and severe personal consequences for leaders who organize the killing and give the orders to start.

Why aren't conservatives blasting military industry welfare?

July 29, 2010 A most peculiar thing happened last week: The Washington Post ripped a federal welfare boondoggle to shreds, exposing tens of billions of dollars of waste, duplication and bureaucratic excess . . . and conservatives didn't erupt in astonishment and praise. In fact, they didn't raise a peep.

That's because the welfare queens ripping off taxpayer dollars in this case aren't poverty pimps waving the bloody flag of race and class, but military-industrial hustlers exploiting the war on terrorism to build themselves opulent and powerful fiefdoms.

Apparently what started out as some thinking this might be a better way to help and handle the Death Benefits of Soldiers, and possibly others, didn't stay that way as Corporate Greed stepped in and like everything else rules were developed, over the past decade, and not explained properly or just left unexplained to those who were receiving the Death Insurance Policies Payouts!

Veterans Affairs to Investigate Fallen Soldiers' Death Benefits

And remember, these Extremist War Profiteers, making their comfortable livings on Blood Money of War, not only garner huge wealth, legal or illegally, but they don't even pay a fair share of that wealth for taxes, huge tax cuts, which would help cover the monies needed for the Veterans of our Wars and Occupations of Choice in fulfilling the contracts with the Country for their service in these Wars generating that Wealth, but hey neither does much of the Country want to pony up, they don't even pay attention to the Wars nor the Veterans of!

Body armour boss looted $185m to pay for prostitutes and parties, court hears

David H. Brooks and co-defendant Sandra Hatfield

Hexavalent chromium case: Iraq contractor cut deal for lawsuit immunity

July 13, 2010 American taxpayers -- and not KBR-- will likely pay if the war contractor is found to have harmed Oregon Army National Guard veterans who say they were exposed to cancer-causing chemicals in Iraq. The startling details emerged in documents related to a U.S. District Court hearing Monday that illuminate the secretive world of defense contracting.

Documents show that within days of the 2003 Iraq invasion, Kellogg, Brown and Root delivered an ultimatum to the Pentagon:

Either the Army cover the potential cost of any soldier or civilian killed or harmed on a KBR project – or the defense contractor would not carry out its no-bid contract restoring Iraqi oil.

US was 'high on military' ahead of Iraq war, says Hans Blix

Allies used 'poor' intelligence ahead of Iraq invasion

Hans Blix, the former head of the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission in Iraq. Photograph: Seppo Sirkka/EPA

27 July 2010 Former head of UN weapons inspectors tells Chilcot inquiry 'alarm bells' should have rung when his staff failed to find evidence of WMD

Britain and the US relied on dubious intelligence sources ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the former head of the United Nations weapons inspectors said today.

Giving evidence to the Iraq inquiry, Hans Blix said it should have set alarm bells ringing in London and Washington when the inspectors repeatedly failed to turn up any evidence that Saddam Hussein still had active weapons of mass destruction programmes.

The Forgotten American
By ROGER COHEN
TROY, New York — The Dogans were a quiet family little noticed by their neighbors here in upstate New York. Ahmet Dogan had come to the area from Turkey to study accounting at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
READ THE REST at New York Times.

There's a question and scenario I hope they ask Blix about. During the Heavy Drum Beating towards invasion and when already extremely loud, while inspectors were still in country, at the time rumsfeld started becoming the darling of the press briefings, he made a statement as to WMDs: "We know where the WMDs are.". If my memory is right the inspectors were demanding the administration or pentagon to give that information to them, they refused sighting it would damage intelligence gathering. I've never heard anyone address that scenario that took place. The same phrase, or similar, was used a number of times by rumsfeld and later bush and others right after the invasion, No Weapons of Mass Destruction were ever found and if existed the insurgency would have used them against the invading forces, especially any chemical or biological!

Former UN weapons inspector Blix to face Iraq questions

By Andrew Kreig
Executive Director, Justice Integrity Project

Four days before Nora Dannehy was appointed to investigate the Bush administration’s U.S. attorney firing scandal, a team of lawyers she led was found to have illegally suppressed evidence in a major political corruption case.

My group today exposed this previously unreported fact, and believes it calls her entire investigation into question. For the same reasons, it undermines also the similar DOJ investigation by her colleague John Durham of DOJ and CIA decision-making involving torture.

What follows is an abbreviated version of a report my group broke today on the Nieman Watchdog news site run by Harvard for journalists. A full-length version is there, with much more information on the site of the bipartisan group I lead to investigate prosecutorial and judicial misconduct: www.justice-integrity.org. Here's the story:

By now most have heard about the Afghanistan Docs, some 92,000, that were released by Wikileaks and with coordinated release at roughly the same time by three News Media outlets:

The Guardian: Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

New York Times: An archive of classified military documents offers an unvarnished view of the war in Afghanistan

Der Spiegel: The Afghanistan Protocol; Explosive Leaks Provide Image of War from Those Fighting It

Whoever hasn't will as it's become the main News Story today hitting every level and the links above give you the main outlets of the reports on the documents released and more.

By Linn Washington

Yet another Republican attack charging “reverse racism” is in play, this one datelined Philadelphia.
The usual suspects – right-wing operatives, conservative media commentators and GOP Congressmen – are portraying two members of the New Black Panther Party, including of one carrying a baton, as having intimidated white voters during the November 4, 2008 presidential election where Obama defeated GOP candidate McCain.

A closer examination by ThisCantBeHappening! however reveals that, just like the doctored video that falsely implied that USDA official Shirley Sherrod was a racist who had denied farm aid to poor whites, this Philly claim of alleged black intimidation of white voters is just more trumped-up nonsense.

Ask Pennsylvania State Rep. W. Curtis Thomas, a lawyer who knows a few things about the laws governing elections.

massive inquiry launched into source of leaks

July 26 2010 A massive leak inquiry has been launched to find the source of tens of thousands of classified American documents on the war in Afghanistan that were leaked to the media.

The documents - detailing military operations between 2004 and 2009 - disclosing how Nato forces have killed scores of civilians in unreported incidents in Afghanistan.

More than 90,000 documents were leaked to the Wikileaks website and shown to several newspapers around the world.

The release of the huge file of classified papers is described as one of the biggest leaks in US military history.

The White House condemned the leak which it said threatened the safety of coalition forces.

Watchdogs labor to expose liars about military exploits

July 25, 2010 Army Capt. Joshua Howard, a physician's assistant at Fort Riley, Kan., ran across the newspaper story online about a Korean War veteran who was to be inducted into the Kansas National Guard Hall of Fame.

In the accompanying photo, the veteran wore a khaki shirt covered with ribbons and medals, black bars and stripes.

The story told how this veteran had received the military's No. 2 and 3 awards for valor _ the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star _ along with two Purple Hearts, one pinned on by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. And how he'd been a prisoner of war in Korea for 5½ months.

UN rights council names Gaza flotilla raid investigators

Khmer Rouge jailer faces 19 years for 16,000 dead

26 July 2010 Cambodia – A war crimes tribunal convicted and sentenced the Khmer Rouge's chief jailer Monday for overseeing the deaths of up to 16,000 people, in the first verdict involving a senior member of the "killing fields" regime that devastated a generation of Cambodians.

Victims and their relatives burst into tears after hearing that a 35-year sentence given to Kaing Guek Eav — also known as Duch — had been whittled down to just 19 after taking into account time already served and other factors. That effectively means the 67-year-old could one day walk free.

This was just coming in on the MSNBC site, only minutes ago:

90,000 Afghan war documents being leaked

Previously unreported civilian deaths among the disclosures by Wikileaks

25 July 2010 Some 90,000 leaked U.S. military records amount to an blow-by-blow account of six years of the Afghanistan war, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures, two newspapers and a magazine with access to the documents reported Sunday.

The online whistle-blower organization Wikileaks was planning to post the documents on its website Sunday. The New York Times, London's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel were given early access to the documents.

Returning vets suffering stresses of war are getting help, but needs are still enormous.

July 24, 2010 A poignant story in last Sunday's Chronicle drew attention to the plight of Houston-area veterans — in this case, an Iraq veteran coping with finding himself homeless, alienated, confused and angry to the point that he found himself attacking his own mother and spending four days in jail - all within six months of his Army discharge.

As reported by Lindsay Wise, the soldier, Jacobí Montgomery, from Beaumont, eventually found help at the Veterans Administration in Houston, where he was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, apnea and insomnia.

The story is all too familiar with returning vets - the invisible wounds of PTSD, traumatic brain injuries and depression.

Chilcot inquiry: Iraq expert Carne Ross claims civil servants are withholding vital documents

25 July 2010 Britain's 'deep state' of secretive bureaucrats is denying witnesses to the Chilcot inquiry crucial files.

Carne Ross, the UK’s Iraq expert at the UN from 1997-2002, says all the invasion documents should now be made public. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

I testified last week to the Chilcot inquiry. My experience demonstrates an emerging and dangerous problem with the process. This is not so much a problem with Sir John Chilcot and his panel, but rather with the government bureaucracy – Britain's own "deep state" – that is covering up its mistakes and denying access to critical documents.

Verdict due in Comrade Duch Khmer Rouge trial

25 July 2010 After a wait of more than three decades, some kind of justice is at last in sight for the victims of the Khmer Rouge.

As many as two million Cambodians died because of the policies of Pol Pot's government. They included the evacuation of cities, forced labour in the rice fields and the summary execution of those considered "enemies of the revolution". Continued

Long haul for Cambodia's genocide court

25 July 2010 Cambodia's UN-backed genocide court has taken four years to conclude its first case

Marooned in the dusty outskirts of Phnom Penh, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia are hardly in the most auspicious of locations.

Government Contractors, Defense Employee's, the Past Decade, While Under The cheney/bush Regime and Republican Congresses, charged with Oversite and Investigation, while invading two countries and conducting an extremely failed policy of the so called 'war on terror'!

Pentagon, Spy Child Porn Viewers Called Idiots

July 24, 2010 Major Federal Probe Finds Dozens of Gov't. Employees, Contractors Accused or Suspected of Downloading Child Pornography

A major federal investigation has found that dozens of military officials and defense contractors, including some with top-level security clearances, allegedly bought and downloaded child pornography on private or government computers.

By Dave Lindorff

Prof. Bob Bea, of UC Berkeley, a civil engineer with years of expertise in marine oil drilling, says he is concerned that during the current crisis of BP’s blown-out well deep under the Gulf of Mexico, government scientists may not be getting all the information they need from the secretive oil company in order to make intelligent decisions about shutting down the gusher.

“Certainly we independent investigators are not getting information about the condition of the well or about the leaks in the surrounding sea floor,” says Prof. Bea, who is a member of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group at UC Berkeley’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, where he is co-director, “And I don’t think the expert investigators at the Department of Energy are getting it either.”

Mike Papantonio, host of Ring of Fire Radio, joined us once again on GRITtv to tell us about the BP Damage Fund -- will it really compensate victims of the oil spill?

Bush testifies to Chilcot

24 July 2010 As partners in the coalition of the willing, are we not equally accountable to one another?

"Weapons of Mass Destruction {WMD}" has become the new mainstream term of this new century in condemning others, as well as and connected to criminal terrorist acts, to give reason for invasions and occupations, not to mention to make sure it scares the bejeebish out of the masses {same as the Cold War Nuclear threat}. As those using the term to justify an invasion, reigning terror on mostly innocent people, War of Choice, while using the many different WMD's of War that have always existed and been perfected as well as adding new developed WMD's to the stockpiles of destructive weapons and trauma's of War. At the same time worrying about criminal terror element, foreign or domestic, stealing the makings of the same WMDs the advanced nations are developing.

The ‘Superjuez’ under fire

July 22, 2010 Crusading judge Baltasar Garzón faces charges for opening the wounds of the Fascist past

He’s inspired tens of thousands of Spaniards to protest on his behalf—and support his efforts to uncover the crimes of Spain’s Fascist past. In 2008, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón opened the historical floodgates, announcing an official investigation into 114,000 disappearances during Spain’s bloody 1936-1939 civil war, and the subsequent years of Gen. Francisco Franco’s rule. And he did more than strike against the unofficial pacto del olvido, or pact of silence, that has existed since the dictatorship ended in 1975. He charged Franco and his associates with crimes against humanity, for the first time, and vowed to exhume Franco-era mass graves.

There have been a number of important testimonies coming out of the Brit Iraq War Inquiry in these months they've been in session as well as archiving the important information and documents. Many of the Brit media outlets have also done same especially their breakdowns on the testimony, with backlinks to, given by many of the participants testifying even as to what was happening here in the United States as to working with the different counterparts, especially the civilian government officials. Some stretches, when in session, have been sort of bland but still important but at many times testimony of explosive nature would be thus placed into the public record and archived, raising even more questions but also answering many.

Here's a good blog and a link to the video of this arrogant thug fitting right in at the National Press Club. At least he didn't punch anybody. He's making progress. His worst mistake turns out to parallel John Yoo's.

READ Dan Froomkin here.

Wasteland: the politics of war

22 July 2010 Britain's Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war might have been specifically established to find no-one guilty and to hold no-one to account but such is the stink from that misbegotten venture that the hearings are still managing to send gusts of political putrescence wafting into the media.

Most recently, we heard from former MI5 head Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller (yes, British intelligence was, it seems, headed by the Thunderbirds!) that her agency had thought Saddam Hussein posed little in the way of a threat; that, in fact, MI5 believed the Iraq invasion would significantly increase the prospect of domestic terrorism.

Snip