News Release Archive - 2007

CNN is reporting that “[Iraqi] Government ministers Tuesday backed the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s decision to shut down Blackwater USA’s operations in Iraq after the American security firm was involved in a Baghdad firefight that authorities say killed eight civilians.

“The ministers also stressed the need to ensure foreign security firms operate within Iraqi laws, according to a statement from spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.”

JEREMY SCAHILL
Available for a limited number of interviews, Scahill is author of the bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

He said today: “Blackwater is only one of the mercenary firms operating with total impunity in Iraq, effectively doubling the size of the U.S. occupation, but it is by far the most influential. Washington has essentially created a shadow army to circumvent popular opinion and public oversight.

“[Iraqi Prime Minister] Nouri al-Maliki made the mistake of believing that there is a sovereign Iraqi government for about fifteen minutes over the past twenty-four hours [by expelling Blackwater], and it appears now that there’s a real diplomatic shuffle going on. [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice called Maliki, ostensibly to apologize, but it does seem that the U.S. government is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the Iraqi government not to expel Blackwater.”
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ANTHONY ARNOVE
Author of the book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, Arnove said today: “There are 165,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, but there are also 180,000 contractors — 20,000 to 50,000 of whom are armed mercenaries. The impunity with which Blackwater has operated in Iraq raises much deeper issues about the nature of the U.S. occupation. The number of Iraqis killed, injured, and displaced continues to rise. …

“Troop levels in Iraq now are at the highest point they have been since the invasion, and President Bush has said the occupation will continue well into the next administration. Possible troop reductions would still leave a huge occupying force, including mercenaries, in Iraq for years to come.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

JAMES PAUL
Executive director of the Global Policy Forum, Paul has written several pieces about oil including “Oil in Iraq: The Heart of the Crisis” in 2002.

He said today: “Finally, the cat is out of the bag! After years of denial by political leaders and cautious intellectuals, we finally know — from former Fed chief Alan Greenspan no less — that the Iraq war was about oil. After an avalanche of commentary, Greenspan has backpedaled and obfuscated in his comments. He insists he was talking about ‘oil security’ and the global economy. But he is just proving his own comments that mentioning oil is ‘politically inconvenient.’

“Meanwhile, in Iraq, the U.S. oil interest has become clearer than ever in recent weeks. The giant companies like Exxon Mobil and BP are seeking control over Iraq’s gigantic oil reserves, worth more than 10 trillion dollars in profits. This is what the controversial [proposed] oil law is about and why Washington hints that it will stay in Iraq for a very long time, no matter what the bloody consequences.”
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ROBERT AUERBACH
Auerbach is author of the forthcoming book Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B. Gonzalez Battles the Alan Greenspan Bank. He said today: “For 17 years, the Fed kept transcripts of its meetings while telling Congress they didn’t. Under the direction of Rep. Henry Gonzalez, I found those transcripts around the corner from Greenspan’s office after a managed plan for Congressional testimony failed to mislead the Congress about their existence.”

From 1976 to 1981 and from 1992 to 1998, Auerbach was an economist with the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services. Auerbach, who has written several books on finance, is now professor of public affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
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DOUG HENWOOD
Henwood is editor of Left Business Observer and author of the book Wall Street. He said today: “Since Alan Greenspan, like the good Ayn Rand protege that he is, believes we’re all motivated by material self-interest, you have to assume that his recent bout of frankness is part of his marketing strategy to sell books and boost his six-figure speaking fee. Why else would he suddenly decide that there really was a housing bubble, after having denied it when he actually could have done something about it? Why else would he suddenly turn on the Bush administration after years of serving as a loyal GOP hack and giving them political cover for their disastrous tax cuts? And why else would he suddenly declare the Iraq war to have been about oil, violating all the proprieties of mainstream discourse?”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

BEN LANDO
Bush has repeatedly called for the passage of the proposed Iraqi oil law. The lead story in today’s New York Times is “Iraq Compromise on Oil Law Seems to be Collapsing.” Lando is energy editor for UPI and is just back from a major conference on Iraqi oil in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. He has recently launched the web page IraqOilReport.com.

ROBERT SCHEER
Columnist Scheer wrote in his piece “The General Lies” earlier this week: “Back on Sept. 26, 2004, in the weeks before the midterm congressional elections, Petraeus took to the op-ed pages of the Washington Post
to make sure the voters didn’t vote wrong. Despite appearances, he claimed the war in Iraq was going very well: ‘I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up,’ Petraeus wrote. …

“At the current rate, Iraq will be liberated when there are no Iraqis. Perhaps that is why this week’s ABC/BBC poll shows that 70 percent of Iraqis believe security has deteriorated since the surge began and that 60 percent believe attacks on U.S. forces are justified. And 93 percent of Sunnis, whom the general and ambassador claim are joining our side, want to see us dead.”
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JOHN STAUBER
Co-author of the books Weapons of Mass Deception and The Best War Ever, Stauber said today: “The Bush pro-war PR campaign seems to be succeeding and the Democratic-controlled Congress looks like it will continue to fund the U.S. occupation of Iraq. If that happens, groups like MoveOn and Americans Against Escalation in Iraq can blame their own partisan strategy of focusing on Republicans while letting pro-war Democrats off the hook. Bush’s strategy has been to hide behind the Petraeus report, equate defeat in Iraq with defeat in Vietnam, and use front groups including Freedom’s Watch and Vets for Freedom to say that pulling out troops would dishonor our soldiers. The Big Lie of tying Iraq to 9/11 still works wonderfully for the pro-war lobby and is believed by one in three Americas, including 27 percent of Democrats, according to this week’s CBS News / New York Times survey.” Stauber is founder of the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin.
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NORMAN SOLOMON
Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He said today: “The spinning parallels are apt to be striking again tonight. President Richard Nixon said in a televised speech on Nov. 3, 1969: ‘There were some who urged that I end the war at once by ordering the immediate withdrawal of all American forces. From a political standpoint this would have been a popular and easy course to follow.’

“As President Bush is fond of doing, Nixon portrayed himself as opting for sacred principle rather than opportunism: ‘I had a greater obligation than to think only of the years of my administration and of the next election. I had to think of the effect of my decision on the next generation and on the future of peace and freedom in America and in the world.’

“A quick withdrawal might well be popular at home, Nixon said, but it ‘would result in a collapse of confidence in American leadership, not only in Asia but throughout the world.’ He asserted: ‘For the future of peace, precipitate withdrawal would thus be a disaster of immense magnitude. A nation cannot remain great if it betrays its allies and lets down its friends.’

“So, the president said, as the host government’s ‘forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater.’ But there was an emphatic catch: ‘I have not and do not intend to announce the timetable for our program. And there are obvious reasons for this decision which I am sure you will understand.’”

The documentary film “War Made Easy,” based on Solomon’s book of the same name, has begun theatrical release.

His forthcoming book is titled Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State.

SAM HUSSEINI
Communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini said today: “Bush could begin to end the war tonight. All he has to do is tell the truth: Come clean about the lies that began this war, come clean about plans to privatize Iraqi oil, come clean about long-term U.S. policy to dominate the Mideast, come clean about what’s happening in Iraq now and apologize to the victims and their families. But it’s difficult to get there when the Democrats chairing the hearings this week voted for the war.” Husseini wrote a piece titled “Pre-script of Bush’s Oval Office Address Tonight: ‘Please Forgive Me’” just before Bush’s most recent speech from the Oval Office on Dec. 18, 2005.

He also wrote a piece titled “The Exit Strategy.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

RICK ROWLEY
Just back from a month and a half in Iraq, Rowley is a journalist with Big Noise films. He said today: “When Gen. Petraeus says that he’s merely applauding the new Sunni militia allies from the sidelines, he’s lying. While embedded with the U.S. military, I filmed U.S. commanders handing wads of cash to tribal militias. And when he says that the U.S. military is facilitating their integration into Iraq’s security forces, what he means is that the U.S. military is pressuring Iraq’s government to incorporate these militias wholesale into the police forces. In fact, that’s one of the promises that these tribes are given — that after working with the Americans for a few months, they’ll become Iraqi police, be armed by the Iraqi state and be put on regular payroll.”

Rowley co-produced a special report “The Ghost of Anbar” with journalist David Enders which aired on Al-Jazeera English; also on YouTube.
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A.K. GUPTA
Gupta, who just wrote the piece “Meet Gen. David Petraeus: His Militia Strategy Plunged Iraq into a Civil War, and Now He’s Back for More,” said today: “Just as the U.S. government backed both sides in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, it has armed both sides — militant Sunnis and militant Shia — in Iraq today. …

“Gen. Petraeus told Congress that ‘the fundamental source of the conflict in Iraq is competition among ethnic and sectarian communities for power and resources. … Malign actions by Syria and, especially, by Iran fuel that violence.’

“Instead of taking him at face value, Congress needs to examine Petraeus’s record in fomenting the ‘ethno-sectarian’ violence that he decries. For if any one general is responsible for the disaster that is Iraq, it is Gen. Petraeus.

“Not only was his previous tenure organizing training for all Iraqi military and police forces in 2004-05 a complete failure, Petraeus helped organize, arm and train the Special Police Commandos that operate as anti-Sunni death squads to this day, and which plunged the nation into civil war. …

“Petraeus is compounding the sectarian chaos by funding and arming Sunni militias. While these militias’ stated purpose is to go after the Sunni-based Al Qaeda in Iraq, they are also attacking Shiite militias with the encouragement of U.S. commanders. It’s a strategy of arming every side against the other, which is both crippling an already dysfunctional Iraqi government and making ‘reconciliation’ virtually impossible.”

Gupta is editor of The Indypendent newspaper, a bimonthly based in New York. He is currently writing a book on the history of the Iraq war.
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RAY McGOVERN
Available for a limited number of interviews, McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the early sixties and then a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990.

McGovern wrote yesterday: “‘Swear him in.’ That’s all I said in the unusual silence this afternoon as first aid was being administered to Gen. David Petraeus’s microphone at the hearing before the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

“It had dawned on me that when House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Missouri, invited Gen. Petraeus to make his presentation, Skelton forgot to ask him to take the customary oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I had no idea that would be enough to get me thrown out of the hearing.

“I had a flashback to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in early 2006, when Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, reminded chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, that Specter had forgotten to swear in the witness, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; and how Specter insisted that that would not be necessary.”

McGovern also wrote the recent piece “Is Petraeus Today’s Westmoreland?”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

ADAM KOKESH
Co-chair of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Kokesh attended the hearings where Petraeus and Crocker testified today. Kokesh said: “I was escorted out of the hearings after I shouted ‘swear them in, why do you still trust these people?’ … Petraeus is … being forced to draw down the five brigades for which he has no replacement. … He has betrayed us. He’s now a political appointee who has put his career above the truth and above what’s good for the military and for America.”
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ANN WRIGHT
Wright is a former State Department diplomat and retired Army colonel. Among her numerous assignments, she helped re-open the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan in 2001. She resigned from the State Department in protest of the Iraq invasion in March of 2003. She was part of protests on Capitol Hill today during the hearings.
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MAKI AL-NAZZAL
Currently in Amman, Jordan, Al-Nazzal is a freelance Iraqi journalist.
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KATHY KELLY
JEFF LEYS
Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Kelly has just returned from working with Iraqi refugees in Amman, Jordan. She said today: “Petraeus talks of a new approach, but it’s dangerously similar to what the U.S. government has been doing. … Part of what’s ignored is a recent UN humanitarian report regarding hunger, malnutrition and water purification in Iraq. Instead of solving these issues, the U.S. government is continuing to focus on using war to solve problems.”

Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Leys said today: “General Petraeus continued to lay the groundwork for U.S. military action against Iran today, with his frequent allegations of Iranian engagement with Shia militias. As President Bush and the military prepare to request an additional $200 billion for the Iraq-Afghanistan war, we must act to ensure that the war is not extended to Iran. We must also act to ensure that the U.S. does not further accelerate the air war that is being waged in Iraq.”
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ERIK LEAVER
PHYLLIS BENNIS
Leaver is a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He said today: “As predicted, Petraeus presented an overly optimistic view of the situation on the ground in Iraq and, along with Amb. Crocker, offered a rosier picture for the future. His recommendations for reducing the military presence to ‘pre-surge’ levels is based on realism — the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have enough troops to sustain the surge — rather than on a calculation that strategically the best option is to set forth clear guidelines for withdrawal. The presentation was a yet-again clear example of crass politics rather than recommendations for a sound policy in moving forward.”

Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, Bennis said today: “The presentations by Petraeus and Crocker are largely anecdotal. … Among the concrete steps that could be taken are: Announce a timetable for the immediate, rapid and complete withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops and mercenaries, and simultaneously end U.S. offensive operations. … The U.S. should immediately announce the closure of all U.S. military bases in Iraq. … The U.S. should immediately stop its effort to force Iraq’s parliament to pass an oil law that privileges U.S. and other international oil companies. … [And the U.S. should] provide economic and political support for reconstruction and for maintaining national unity in Iraq. … The U.S. should stop trying to train Iraqi military and police forces, and instead turn over remaining training funds to the United Nations for use after the end of the U.S. occupation.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.