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News Release Archive | military | Accuracy.Org

* Escalating Drone Strikes in Pakistan * State of Libya

June 5, 2012

JUNAID AHMAD, junaid.ahmad at lums.edu.pk
Ahmad is assistant professor of law at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan and is currently visiting the U.S. He said today: “The United States launched new drone strikes on Pakistan over the weekend, causing at least a dozen deaths in the tribal area of South Waziristan.

“The attack on Sunday included two drones that fired missiles into a home and a car in the Wana district of the northwestern Pakistan tribal area near Afghanistan. Ten people were killed, and another ten wounded.

“Media reports about the attacks portrayed all of the victims as ‘suspected militants.’ This is in line with the publication last week of a detailed article in the New York Times describing how President Barack Obama determines victims for targeted assassinations and personally authorizes a number of the so-called ‘signature strikes’ — those targeted not at clearly identified ‘suspects,’ but rather at gatherings deemed to be involved in ‘suspicious behavior.’

“The report disclosed that Obama had authorized a CIA policy of classifying any combat-aged male killed in a drone attack as a ‘militant,’ in the absence of clear proof to the contrary. This approach effectively allows for the murder of any adult male in the tribal areas identified as kosher for drone strikes.

“Sunday’s attack was the seventh drone strike since the NATO summit in Chicago last month. They have included a May 24 attack on a mosque that killed 10 people during worship. A May 26 strike murdered 4 persons in a bakery where supposed militants were purchasing bread.

“The intensification of the U.S. drone attacks comes in the context of the NATO summit in Chicago last month, where the U.S. and Pakistani governments failed to come to an agreement concerning the reopening of a supply route for U.S.-NATO occupation forces in Afghanistan. The route, which goes from the Pakistani port city of Karachi to Afghanistan, was closed by Islamabad in protest over U.S. air strikes that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers last November.

“The supply lines through Pakistan were previously carrying over 30 percent of the materiel for the U.S.-NATO soldiers in Afghanistan and are perceived to be critically important for the withdrawal over the next two and half years of U.S.-NATO forces and their equipment.

“Also toward the end of last year, Islamabad shut down the covert Shamsi air base in Baluchistan that the U.S. relied upon to launch its drone strikes.

“Just last month, the Pakistani parliament passed a resolution stating that an end to the drone attacks will be the precondition for reopening the supply lines and calling on the United States to apologize for the killing of the 24 Pakistani soldiers. The Obama administration has rebuked both demands.

“The recent drone assaults are the most blatant expressions of American anger at Pakistan’s unwillingness to completely subordinate itself to U.S. diktat. The period after the Chicago summit has also witnessed repeated threats in Congress to halt all aid to Pakistan as well as a propaganda frenzy over a Pakistani court’s sentencing of a CIA informant who facilitated the Navy Seal raid that assassinated Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

“It should be obvious to the world by now that these ongoing drone attacks are viewed with disgust in Pakistan, and are blamed for killing thousands, mostly civilians.”

Reuters is reporting: “In a fresh challenge to the interim government’s weak authority, members of the al-Awfea Brigade occupied the airport for several hours demanding the release of their leader whom they said was being held by Tripoli’s security forces.”

REESE ERLICH, rerlich at pacbell.net
Recently back from Libya and available for a limited number of interviews, foreign correspondent Erlich, author of “Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence and Empire,” is currently writing a book on the Arab uprisings. He said: “The western-backed National Transition Council operates a weak and ineffective government. Some 60 militias are the real power centers. Unable to suppress the militias, the NTC uses some as auxiliary forces to be called out in time of emergency. Some are now allying with political parties, a very dangerous long-term trend because they will be much harder to dissolve.” Erlich’s article on the Libyan uprising and its political aftermath will appear in an upcoming issue of The Progressive.

Tagged With: Junaid Ahmad, Libya, Middle East, military, Pakistan, Reese Erlich, war,

President Obama’s Priestly Assassinations

May 29, 2012

A New York Times investigative piece “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will” reports today: “Beside the president at every step is his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, who is variously compared by colleagues to a dogged police detective, tracking terrorists from his cavelike office in the White House basement, or a priest whose blessing has become indispensable to Mr. Obama, echoing the president’s attempt to apply the ‘just war’ theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict. …

“In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the ‘single digits’ — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.

“But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The CIA accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it ‘guilt by association’ that has led to ‘deceptive’ estimates of civilian casualties. ‘It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,’ the official said. ‘They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.’ …

“It is the strangest of bureaucratic rituals: Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government’s sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to pore over terrorist suspects’ biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die. … David Axelrod, the president’s closest political adviser, began showing up at the ‘Terror Tuesday’ meetings, his unspeaking presence a visible reminder of what everyone understood: a successful attack would overwhelm the president’s other aspirations and achievements. …

“In fact, in a 2007 campaign speech in which he vowed to pull the United States out of Iraq and refocus on Al Qaeda, Mr. Obama had trumpeted his plan to go after terrorist bases in Pakistan — even if Pakistani leaders objected. His rivals at the time, including Mitt Romney, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mrs. Clinton, had all pounced on what they considered a greenhorn’s campaign bluster. (Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama had become ‘Dr. Strangelove.’) …

“Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive. …

“Some State Department officials have complained to the White House that the criteria used by the CIA for identifying a terrorist ‘signature’ were too lax. The joke was that when the CIA sees ‘three guys doing jumping jacks,’ the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official. Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers — but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued.

“Now, in the wake of the bad first strike in Yemen, Mr. Obama overruled military and intelligence commanders who were pushing to use signature strikes there as well. ‘We are not going to war with Yemen,’ he admonished in one meeting, according to participants. … Mr. Obama had drawn a line. But within two years, he stepped across it. Signature strikes in Pakistan were killing a large number of terrorist suspects, even when CIA analysts were not certain beforehand of their presence. And in Yemen, roiled by the Arab Spring unrest, the Qaeda affiliate was seizing territory. …

“Moreover, Mr. Obama’s record has not drawn anything like the sweeping criticism from allies that his predecessor faced. John B. Bellinger III, a top national security lawyer under the Bush administration, said that was because Mr. Obama’s liberal reputation and ‘softer packaging’ have protected him. ‘After the global outrage over Guantánamo, it’s remarkable that the rest of the world has looked the other way while the Obama administration has conducted hundreds of drone strikes in several different countries, including killing at least some civilians,’ said Mr. Bellinger, who supports the strikes.”

COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net
Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She said today: “These New York Times reporters do a good job explaining how Obama’s political calculations and desire to show toughness in the ‘war on terror’ has led him to his role as judge, jury and executioner. Whereas Bush detained and tortured, Obama impresses the former Bush officials with his taking of no prisoners, thus avoiding all the messy legal questions that tend to arise in court. This, however, is the only little bit of transparency that exists so far showing how this new type of ‘due process’ functions. Hopefully there will be judges asking to see the secret memo inventing the new ‘due process’ (written by the same Office of Legal Counsel that OK’d waterboarding). How have they decided that CIA and Pentagon Power point presentations can fully substitute for the entire body of law governing American judicial process?”

RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com
McGovern, who was a U.S. army officer and CIA analyst for 30 years, now works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He said today: “So THAT’S it. New York Times writers Jo Becker and Scott Shane today provide insight into how President Obama is helped to resolve the ‘moral and legal conundrum’ of ordering ‘kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical.’ Counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, is ‘beside the president at every step.’ Colleagues compare Brennan’s role to that of a ‘priest whose blessing has become indispensable to Mr. Obama, echoing the president’s attempt to apply “just war” theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict.’

“So that’s why Brennan’s alma mater, Fordham University, last week conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, and asked him to deliver the commencement address. Many graduates had greeted the honoring of Brennan with astonishment, and strongly criticized him for his key role in ‘justifying’ things like drone killing and ‘mosque crawling’ (infiltrating mosques with pretend-Muslims from NYPD/CIA). A few of the Fordham’s justice-oriented graduating students faced into the prevailing winds with exceptional courage, and a few days later wrote about it.” McGovern cited the just-published student pieces:

“White House ‘Assassination Czar‘ Confronted at Fordham” by Ayca Bahce

“Counterterrorism Adviser Non-Transparent at Fordham” by Michael Pappas

Tagged With: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, CIA, Coleen Rowley, counter-terrorism, Middle East, military,

U.S. “Escalating Military Presence in Honduras”

May 23, 2012


Associated Press is reporting: “Villagers say the drug bust that left four passengers of a riverboat dead after helicopters mistakenly fired on civilians continued into the predawn hours when commandos, including some they think were Americans, raided their town. … Jose Ruiz, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the U.S. military in Honduras, said there were no American troops there. ‘We can confirm there were no U.S. military personnel or U.S. military assets involved in any way. Our joint task force occasionally supports DEA, but they had no personnel or equipment in that particular mission,” Ruiz said. …

“Several villagers, however, told The Associated Press that some of the masked agents were gringos. ‘They spoke in English among themselves and on the radios,’ said Zavala, whose husband was held at gunpoint. ‘They had brought a computer and they put in the names of everyone and sought identification for everyone.’”

DANA FRANK, danafrank at ucsc.edu
Available for a limited number of interviews with larger media outlets, Frank is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of several books, including “Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America,” which examines the banana workers’ unions of Honduras. She writes in the cover article in The Nation this week: “In the early hours of the morning on May 11, a group of indigenous people traveling by canoe on a river in the northeast Mosquitia region of Honduras came under helicopter fire. When the shooting was over, at least four persons lay dead, including, by some accounts, two pregnant women. In Honduras, such grisly violence is no longer out of the ordinary. But what this incident threw into stark relief was the powerful role the United States is playing in a Honduran war.

“U.S. officials maintain that the Drug Enforcement Administration commandos on board the helicopters did not fire their weapons that morning; Honduran policemen pulled the triggers. But no one disputes that U.S. forces were heavily involved in the raid, and that the helicopters were owned by the U.S. State Department.

“The United States has, in fact, been quietly escalating its military presence in Honduras, pouring police and military funding into the regime of President Porfirio Lobo in the name of fighting drugs. The DEA is using counterinsurgency methods developed in Iraq against drug traffickers in Honduras, deploying squads of commandos with U.S. military Special Forces backgrounds to work closely with the Honduran police and military. The U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Lisa Kubiske, recently said, ‘We have an opportunity now, because the military is no longer at war in Iraq. Using the military funding that won’t be spent, we should be able to have resources to be able to work here.’”

ALEX MAIN, via Dan Beeton, beeton at cepr.net
Senior associate for international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Main said today: “The U.S. involvement in the shooting incident earlier this month on Honduras’ Patuca River, in which pregnant women and others were killed, and the subsequent commando raid on people’s homes, raises a number of troubling questions. Among these are, what are the guidelines under which U.S. DEA and other forces are operating? What kind of violence is permitted in going after drug traffickers? And is it applicable to unarmed, or just armed traffickers? And what constitutes a drug trafficker? What are the parameters for using deadly force in populated areas?

“It is also disturbing that the U.S. State Department does not appear to know whether the Leahy law, which cuts off U.S. police and military assistance to known human rights abusers, is even being applied in Honduras. If there were evidence that it is, we would probably know about it. But the fact is that the U.S. government is ramping up aid to a police force that murders civilians with impunity, and that according to credible high-level officials is tainted by corruption and drug-trafficking itself.”

See Los Angeles Times editorial: “In Honduras, U.S. should tread lightly: Military assistance to Honduras may exacerbate its drug problems rather than helping solve them.”

Filed Under: Tagged With: Alex Main, Dana Frank, Latin America, military,

How Much Does Washington Spend on “Defense”?

May 23, 2012

CHRIS HELLMAN and MATTEA KRAMER, mattea at nationalpriorities.org
Hellman is communications liaison at the National Priorities Project, and Kramer is a research analyst with the group. They just wrote a report “War Pay: The Nearly $1 Trillion Security Budget,” which tallies the military budget, showing it to be much higher than is often stated. Their piece states: “In fact, with projected cuts added in, the national security budget in fiscal 2013 will be nearly $1 trillion – a staggering enough sum that it’s worth taking a walk through the maze of the national security budget to see just where that money’s lodged. …

“The Pentagon’s base budget doesn’t include war funding, which in recent years has been well over $100 billion. With U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq and troop levels falling in Afghanistan, you might think that war funding would be plummeting as well. In fact, it will drop to a mere $88 billion in fiscal 2013. By way of comparison, the federal government will spend around $64 billion on education that same year. …

“You might assume that we’ve already accounted for nukes in the Pentagon’s $530 billion base budget. But you’d be wrong. Funding for nuclear weapons falls under the Department of Energy (DOE), so it’s a number you rarely hear. In fiscal 2013, we’ll be spending $11.5 billion on weapons and related programs at the DOE. And disposal of nuclear waste is expensive, so add another $6.4 billion for weapons cleanup.”

Filed Under: , Tagged With: budget, Christ Hellman, economy, Mattea Kramer, militarism, military, military spending, Military-Industrial Complex,

Is NATO Ending the Afghan War?

May 22, 2012


REBECCA GRIFFIN, rgriffin at peaceactionwest.org
Griffin is the political director of Peace Action West. She said today: “President Obama clearly feels the pressure to end the war. However, the plan endorsed at this week’s NATO summit leaves the door open to a substantial U.S military presence as far out as 2024. This is clearly out of step with the vast majority of Americans who want our troops out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. Despite the administration’s efforts to sell this plan as an end to the war, we’re still talking about thousands of soldiers and billions of dollars for another twelve years.

Opposition to this war is not going away. Last week, House Republicans tried to beat back the inevitable tide by blocking a vote on an amendment supporting withdrawal that many believe would have passed. But the writing is on the wall and the American people will continue to speak up until our government brings us a clear plan to end this war.”

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on Monday released the following statement as world leaders met in Chicago for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit: “The [NATO] talks are being billed as discussions of plans to end the war. The war in Afghanistan is not ending. These talks are simply about financing the next phase of the war.”

“The Strategic Partnership Agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan commits us to the country for at least another decade, despite public support for the war being at an all time low. The United States will pay for half of the estimated $4.1 billion per year cost of supporting 352,000 Afghan army and police officers. Afghanistan’s contribution will be $500,000. The rest will be financed by our ‘NATO partners.’ It is not surprising that support for the war among NATO members is waning, with France threatening to pull out its troops by the end of this year.”

Filed Under: Tagged With: Afghanistan, Dennis Kucinich, Middle East, military, nato, Peace Action West, Rebecca Griffin, war,

NATO and ICC: Power and Accountability

May 18, 2012

AARON HUGHES, aarhughes at ivaw.org; SCOTT KIMBALL, scttkmbll at gmail.com
Hughes and Kimball are veterans and members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. They will be leading a rally and march on Sunday to the NATO meeting “security perimeter.” Kimball said today: “We plan on returning our medals to the leaders of NATO — it’s been destabilizing, not stabilizing, Afghanistan. We are against this militarism.”

Hughes explained his returning of medals: “Because every day in this country, 18 veterans are committing suicide. Seventeen percent of the individuals that are in combat in Afghanistan, my brothers and sisters, are on psychotropic medication. Twenty to 50 percent of the individuals getting deployed to Afghanistan are already diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, military sexual trauma or a traumatic brain injury. Currently one-third of the women in the military are sexually assaulted.”

DAVID N. GIBBS, dgibbs at arizona.edu
Author of First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Gibbs is a professor of history and government at the University of Arizona who has written extensively on NATO. He said today: “NATO is an organization that lost its relevance with the Cold War. It was originally created to protect Europe against a military invasion by the Soviet Union. By any reasonable standard, it should simply have ceased to exist with the end of the Cold War in 1989. Today, it is largely an example of bureaucratic self-preservation, as well as a drain on the economy.”

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at law.uiuc.edu
Boyle is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of Tackling America’s Toughest Questions. Yesterday, AllAfrica.com reported that Charles Taylor — in his first statements after being convicted by the UN Special Court on Sierra Leone: “President George W. Bush not too long ago ordered torture and admitted to doing so. Torture is a crime against humanity. The United States has refused to prosecute him. Is he above the law? Where is the fairness?” The report noted that “In January of 2010, one Professor Francis A. Boyle of the College of Law at the University of Illinois filed a Complaint with the International Criminal Court against President Bush and at least five of his senior officials for allegedly committing international crimes.”

Just this week, Boyle returned to the U.S. from Malaysia and the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, which convicted Bush in absentia. He said today: “The International Criminal Court has become a joke and a fraud. I supported it originally. But no more. It has no credibility whatsoever. It just goes after tin-pot dictators in Africa while the real war criminals such as Bush, Blair and Netanyahu get off scot-free. Hence I went out to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal to convict Bush, Blair, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their consigliore lawyers.”

Filed Under: Tagged With: Aaron Hughes, David N. Gibbs, Francis Boyle, ICC, military, nato, Scott Kimball, war,

U.S. in Yemen: Escalating War, Stifling Speech

May 16, 2012

Human Rights Information and Training Center in Yemen states: "An ongoing heavy and regular attack by the military forces is targeting and destroying Taiz city's peaceful neighborhoods."

AP is reporting: “Government troops and warplanes pounded al-Qaida positions in southern Yemen on Wednesday, killing at least 29 militants as part of a ramped up campaign against the group, military officials said.”

IZZA-DEEN EL ASBAHI, via Ryme Katkhouda, rymepmc at gmail.com or Kinda Mohamadieh, kinda.mohamadieh at annd.org
El Asbahi is founder and director of the Human Rights Information and Training Center in Yemen. He said today: “The U.S. military and the Yemeni government frequently launch these attacks and claim they are killing al-Qaida fighters. But the fact is quite often they are killing regular people, or political opponents of the regime who are not al-Qaida. This ends up having the effect of causing more resentment and gives al-Qaida more recruits. After the start of the uprising a year ago, the U.S. declared they would get rid of al-Qaida in a matter of three weeks. Today al-Qaida controls a region ten times the size of Bahrain with sea port access.”

This week El Asbahi is in Washington, D.C. with a delegation of the Arab NGO Network for Development, which also includes representatives from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia and other Arab countries.

He added: “Military intervention and use of violence has left a negative impact and does not achieve the stated goal of eliminating terrorism. The elimination of terrorism starts with the support of local development. Airplane and drone bombings nurture terrorism as they enroll more people struggling with poverty, anger and fear with al-Qaida which gives them a salary and a Kalashnikov to empty their anger. While in city of Taiz, a stronghold of the left and revolution in Yemen, they still talk fondly of U.S. aid and the ‘Kennedy project’ of drinking water distribution.”

The Arab NGO delegation just released a paper, “Overview and Suggestions for Improving Key Areas in U.S. Foreign Policy Towards the Arab Region.” For a copy and profiles of the delegates, see here.

While most of the members of the delegation can speak English, El Asbahi would require Arabic translation, which can be provided.

The Washington Post is reporting: “President Obama issued an executive order Wednesday giving the Treasury Department authority to freeze the U.S.-based assets of anyone who ‘obstructs’ implementation of the administration-backed political transition in Yemen.

“The unusual order, which administration officials said also targets U.S. citizens who engage in activity deemed to threaten Yemen’s security or political stability, is the first issued for Yemen that does not directly relate to counterterrorism.”

IBRAHAM QATABI, Ibraham.Qatabi at gmail.com
Qatabi is a Yemeni American human rights activist and a legal worker with Center for Constitutional Rights specializing in Yemen. He said today: “The USG isn’t naming groups or people who it’s illegal to work with, so any sensible person would be very cautious about working with anyone they aren’t 100 percent sure the USG approves of. In fact, the USG’s officials have flat out told the press that the sanctions are a ‘deterrent’ to ‘make clear to those who are even thinking of spoiling the transition’ to think again — in other words, think again before you work with any democracy activists who we think are ‘spoiling the transition’ to the U.S. government’s favored candidate for leadership. It reminds me of something the government said in the 9th Circuit in HLP v. Holder — that the aim of these broadly-worded sanctions regimes, capable of criminalizing speech, is to make groups the U.S. government disfavors so ‘radioactive’ that American citizens won’t even want to go near them. That’s not democracy – either here or in Yemen.”

See on the White House website: “Executive Order — Blocking Property of Persons Threatening the Peace, Security, or Stability of Yemen.”

Background: Obama urged the Yemeni dictator Saheh to keep the journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye in prison. This was apparently because Shaye was exposing that U.S. strikes were killing civilians. See “Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?” by Jeremy Scahill.

Marcy Wheeler today notes that the new executive order could be used to target Scahill: “The Jeremy Scahill Yemen Executive Order”

Filed Under: Tagged With: Ibraham Qatabi, Izza-Deen el Asbahi, Middle East, military, terrorism, war, yemen,

Majority Favors Cutting Military Budget

May 15, 2012

Discretionary Spending Areas (Billions of Dollars)

STEVEN KULL, skull at pipa.org
Kull is director of the Program for Public Consultation, a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and lead author of the recently released study “Consulting the American People on National Defense Spending.”

He said today: “Three quarters of respondents favored cutting defense as a way to reduce the deficit, including two thirds of Republicans as well as nine in ten Democrats. …

“Other polls on defense spending have mostly asked simply whether respondents favor or oppose defense cuts, and generally found smaller numbers favoring cuts. This suggests that Americans generally underestimate the size of the defense budget and that when they receive balanced information about its size they are more likely to cut it to reduce the deficit. …

“The area cut by the greatest percentage was nuclear weapons, which respondents reduced an average of 27 percent (Republicans 18 percent, Democrats 35 percent). The area that was cut the most in dollar terms was for existing ground force capabilities which was cut an average of $36.2 billion (Republicans $23.8 billion, Democrats $44.5 billion) or 23 percent.

“What is striking is that it appears that the American people, unlike Congress, are able to thoughtfully recognize the validity of arguments both for and against cutting defense spending and still come to hard and even bold decisions.

“Eight in ten favored cutting the Obama administration’s proposed budget of $88 billion for 2013 war spending in Afghanistan. Overall, on average it was cut 40 percent or $35 billion.”

Note: Respondents were queried about “defense” spending, not “military” spending, which likely would have drawn even less support.

Filed Under: , Tagged With: budget, Defense Spending Cuts, Defense Spending Poll, Discretionary Spending Areas, military, military spending, Military-Industrial Complex, Public Opinion Defense BUdget, Steven Kull,

NATO Above the Law?

May 14, 2012

Human Rights Watch today released a report “Unacknowledged Deaths: Civilian Casualties in NATO’s Air Campaign in Libya”. NATO will be holding its summit in Chicago beginning May 20.

VIJAY PRASHAD, vijay.prashad at trincoll.edu
Author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter and The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, Prashad is chair of South Asian history and director of international studies at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut.

He said today: “A United Nations report released in early March 2012 asked for an investigation of NATO’s potential war crimes, but was snubbed by the military alliance, whose lawyer, Peter Olsen, wrote in February of this year to the UN Commission that, ‘in the event the Commission elects to include a discussion of NATO actions in Libya, its report clearly states that NATO did not deliberately target civilians and did not commit war crimes in Libya.’ In other words, it is impossible for NATO to commit war crimes. NATO, unlike the Libyans, is too civilized to be guilty of any such violations. It is, therefore, above investigation. The scandal here is that NATO, a military alliance, refuses any civilian oversight of its actions. It operated under a UN mandate (Security Council Resolution 1973) and yet refuses to allow a UN evaluation of its actions. NATO, in other words, operates as a rogue military entity, outside the bounds of the prejudices of democratic society. It is precisely because NATO refuses an evaluation that the UN Security Council will not allow another NATO-like military intervention. The new HRW report reinforces what was raised in the UN report from March. It simply underlines the necessity of a formal and independent evaluation of NATO’s actions in Libya.”

On May 18, Prashad will be speaking at the the NATO Counter-Summit

See Prashad’s pieces:

“NATO’S Craven Coverup of Its Libyan Bombing”

“Straining NATO on Short Syrian Leash”

Filed Under: Tagged With: Arab Spring, Human Rights Watch NATO Report, Middle East, military, nato, NATO Air Campaign in Libya, NATO Civilian Casualties, Vijay Prashad, war,

Military Sexual Assault Against Female Soldiers: Class Action Lawsuit Filed

February 16, 2011

AP is reporting today that a group of “17 current and former soldiers filed a federal class action lawsuit accusing the Pentagon” of failing to respond to a pattern of sexual abuse and harassment.

HELEN BENEDICT
Author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, Benedict said today: “I’ve interviewed over 40 women who served in Iraq, many of whom told me stories of sexual harassment and rape at the hands of their so-called brothers-in-arms. These women’s stories inspired lawyer Susan Burke to put together the class action against the Pentagon being reported today, which in turn has encouraged dozens of other women to speak out. The women I talked to came from all areas of the country, were of different ranks and ages, and different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Most were assaulted by their superior officers, men who had control over when they slept, ate, walked, sat, where they worked and what jobs they did. Often, when they tried to report their assaults, the command ignored them or threatened them with punishments to keep them quiet. Even the DoD admits that, for these reasons, 80 to 90 percent of assaults are never reported at all.

“Some stories: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tagged With: military, rape, sexual harassment, women,
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