military base

Yesterday Twitter erupted with news that Jane Hamsher and David House had been “detained” at Quantico Marine Base when trying to visit Bradley Manning. Of course the Twitters and Internets quickly erupted with conspiracy theories of why they were being detained. According to Quantico, they were actually never detained, but they did have their car towed:

Quantico spokesman Col. Thomas V. Johnson says the car was towed after the pair could not provide proof of insurance and guards found the vehicle's license plates had expired. He says both weren't detained.

Anyone who has ever visited a military base before, as these two reportedly have, knows that things like vehicle registration and insurance are checked. Driving on expired plates and/or without insurance is illegal in all 50 states, including military bases. If Jane and Dave would have been pulled over by civilian police, then they would have been towed, detained and given a court date. It sounds like they got off easy on this one.

This is just absolutely amazes me:

The Arizona House on Monday voted for a provision that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate if he hopes to be on the state’s ballot when he runs for reelection. The House voted 31-22 to add the provision to a separate bill. The measure still faces a formal vote.

It would require U.S. presidential candidates who want to appear on the ballot in Arizona to submit documents proving they meet the constitutional requirements to be president. Phoenix Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema said the bill is one of several measures that are making Arizona “the laughing stock of the nation.” Mesa Republican Rep. Cecil Ash said he has no reason to doubt Obama’s citizenship but supports the measure because it could help end doubt.

The courts have pretty much said that President Obama’s birth certificate is a none issue, so Arizona will horrible lose this fight. But I think there could be a more interesting approach. Maybe legislation should be introduced in Congress stating that since Arizona doesn’t want to recognize our legally elected President then they will not receive any more federal money. I’m sure the Republicans will block the bill, but it would be a nice message to send to the state.

Then there’s the whole issue of Arizona requiring anyone they “think” might be an illegal immigrant to show papers. I was just looking at the Arizona state flag:

A soldier shoots a bunch of people on a military base where the people are allowed to carry guns. It took a civilian police officer to finally take him down. Does that mean the argument of allowing teachers and anyone else to carry guns would reduce the number of school shootings or casualties?

Brought to you by KBR:

U.S. soldiers at a military base in Iraq were provided with treated but untested wastewater for nearly two years by KBR, the giant government contractor, and may have suffered health problems as a result, according to a report released yesterday by the Pentagon's inspector general.

The inspector general said that from March 2004 to February 2006, KBR inappropriately distributed chlorinated wastewater to 5,000 U.S. troops at Camp Q-West, located at the Qayyarah West airfield about 180 miles north of Baghdad. The wastewater had been processed by a reverse-osmosis purification system and treated with chlorine before being distributed to showers and latrines on the base.

The report said that from October 2005 to June 2006, sick-call records showed 38 reported illnesses that "an attending medical official said could be attributed to water, such as skin abscesses, cellulites, skin infections and diarrhea." The report said it was impossible to definitively link the treated water to all the illnesses.

And what will be done about this? Nothing. It's just another chapter in the Republican book for "screwing life for profit". KBR is allowed to poison our soldiers, rape American citizens and do whatever they want. In other words they can be just like a tyrant dictator (you know like Saddam) and we continue to support them by giving them more contacts. All this so Dick Cheney can keep getting richer. God bless the GOP!

The right-wing meme about Iraq and Bush has always been "we haven't been attacked since 9/11". When you try to use the same for Clinton, saying before 9/11, we weren't attacked since the first WTC bombing, they quickly point to bombings of our embassies and of the Cole.

A few months ago, we saw our our embassy in Syria attacked, an attack that was a lot less worse because of that horrible nation of Syria fighting off the attack. We have also heard of our troops getting attacked in Iraq by terrorists, and had a military base attacked in Baghdad, producing a night full of explosions. Of course the right doesn't consider these attacks against the U.S. since Bush is President (if Clinton was President, it would be a different story though).

Now these same wingnuts will quickly try to spin this latest attack and say we still haven't been attacked since 9/11:

Suspected leftist guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. embassy in Athens on Friday in the boldest attack staged by leftwing militants in years.

The blast shattered windows and woke up nearby residents in the central Athens area at 5:58 AM (0358 GMT) but no one was hurt, police said.

The grenade was launched just across the street from the heavily guarded embassy building, which is surrounded by a 3-metre-high (9-feet-high) steel fence, and authorities were dealing with the attack as a serious act of violence.

The sure sounds like a terrorist attack to me. I know it isn't al Qaeda, but still - it was a terrorist attack. It is also the product of our failed national policy. Our country is becoming more isolated in the world and this is they by-product of that. Bush has set us on a dangerous course with, well everyone.

This shows how bad things really are:

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government.

The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."

Afghanistan is suffering its heaviest insurgent attacks since a U.S.-led military force toppled the Taliban in late 2001 for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

And it would not be this bad if we kept our eye on Afghanistan and not go into Iraq. Bush's little game called Iraq has not only destroyed the Middle East, but also allowed the Taliban to regain strength to this point. Remember - it is Frist saying this. That means things are worse than anyone can imagine over there.

First we come to this story from Reuters:

The U.S. military said on Thursday Iraq was moving away from the risk of civil war and insurgent and sectarian bloodshed would fall dramatically when a new government of national unity is formed.

Attacks on civilians had jumped 90 percent across Iraq since a Shi'ite shrine was bombed in February, but "ethno-sectarian" bloodshed had more than halved in Baghdad in the past week, U.S. spokesman Major General Rick Lynch told a news conference.

"We are not seeing widespread militia operations across Iraq. We are not seeing widespread movement of displaced personnel," he said. "So we do not see us moving toward a civil war in Iraq. In fact we see us moving away from it."

Then we get this one from the AP:

A sister of Iraq's new Sunni Arab vice president was killed Thursday in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad, a day after the politician called for the Sunni-dominated insurgency to be crushed by force.

In southern Iraq, a bomb hit an Italian military convoy, killing four soldiers — three Italians and a Romanian — and seriously injuring another passenger, officials in Rome said. The bomb struck the convoy near an Italian military base in Nasiriyah, a heavily Shiite city 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, said local Iraqi government spokesman Haidr Radhi.

Elsewhere, a U.S. jet fired two missiles at insurgent positions in Ramadi, U.S. officers said. Fighting also broke out northeast of Baghdad between Iraqi forces and insurgents, killing several Iraqi policemen and civilians.

The following is an article that appeared today in
Al Jazeera
magazine which was original written by the Guardian. It seems to give a very
accurate portrayal of what is going on in Iraq and the reasoning for our being
there.

Not “liberation”- An occupation

The U.S. needs to put an immediate end to this quagmire in Iraq. It has
become clear that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country.

America freed Iraq of what it callsthe “dictator rule” of Saddam Hussein,
but not from its illegal occupation. This is exactly what happened in 1898;
the U.S. liberated Cuba from Spain, but not from the U.S. occupying forces-
the Spanish rule was overthrown, but the U.S. established a military base in
the country- same scenario we now see in Iraq.

Let’s compare what happened in Cuba to what the U.S. is now doing in Iraq.
The U.S. corporations moved into Cuba, just as Bechtel and Halliburton and
other oil corporations are moving into Iraq. The U.S. imposed, with the
support from local accomplices, the constitution that would govern Cuba, just
as it has drawn up a constitution for Iraq, and persuaded all parties to
accept it.

Not liberation. An occupation. And it is an ugly occupation.

The New York Times reported on August 7 2003 that General Sanchez in
Baghdad was worried about the Iraqi reaction to occupation. The Iraqi leaders
were giving him a message, as he put it: