In early 2003, the stench of imminent US war peaked as the world superpower sought to invade Iraq. Close to all political stakeholders, the mainstream media emphasized its support for US troops as they awaited the battle of Baghdad.

In fact, nationalistic sentiment was so contagious that MSNBC fired its top anchor Phil Donahue for taking a stringent anti-war position. In a leaked internal memo, it was revealed that network executives thought that his prime time show was a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Furthermore, the outlet feared it would be “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Now 11 years later, with over 4,000 US soldiers dead and over a million civilians left injured, Iraq remains one of the most unpopular wars in history, based on a series of mishaps and lies. And while politicians and news personalities were quick to rally behind the troops in their initial deployment, little attention has been paid to them in the aftermath. While the nonchalant advocates of the war continue to thrive personally and professionally, Iraq war veterans are still suffering from various injuries and mental health disorders.

Last month, Republican Senators led by Mitch McConnell blocked a bill which would have released welfare funds to veterans. Shockingly, they cited the lack of an amendment for Iran sanctions as justification to withhold the funding. Currently, the backlog of veteran benefits stands close to a staggering 400,000 cases, and the US Veterans Affairs’ backlog for pending claims is over 125 days.

According to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) organization, “While there has been some progress to decrease the backlog, there is nothing to support which of these initiatives are working and which are not, nor is there evidence of planning beyond FY 2015.”

The IAVA report presents the case of Joseph Ayala, a two time Iraq war veteran who is suffering from various ailments. Jason filed a disability claim in 2011 for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), yet received no compensation until 18 months later.

The Journal of American Medical Association concludes that soldiers are at much higher risk of mental illness than civilians are, asserting that nearly 25% of 5,550 active duty, non-deployed army personnel are suffering from a mental disorder, and 11% of those with more than one disorder.

Mental illness also takes a severe toll on one’s friends and family. Iraq war veteran Jeremy Profitt discusses his struggle adjusting back home in California’s East Bay. He compares his battle with PTSD and traumatic brain injury to the wars he fought abroad; “Some days I feel as if I have the enemy on the run; other days it has me pinned down”, he says.

Former Army Sergeant Kayla Williams describes her tedious relationship with her husband Brian McGough, a war veteran suffering from PTSD. In a no holds barred memoir, Williams describes McGough’s “code black” moments.

“The clue always was when his face would just flatten. It was like the shades being pulled. He would go from having a more expressive face to just complete coldness and he would say, ‘You don’t understand. You’ll never understand’. And that was when I knew some switch had flipped in his head and he had crossed over into a level of rage or something that he couldn’t control anymore.”

For many veterans, the second Iraq war was nothing short of a deceitful endeavor. Former Sergeant Ricky Clousing thought he would be serving his country, but his job as interrogator made him rethink America’s role in Iraq.

On the Iraq Veterans Against the War website, Clousing recounts “I saw an innocent Iraqi killed before me by US troops. I saw the abuse of power that goes without accountability…I finally concluded after much consideration that I could not train or be trained under a false pretense of fighting for freedom.”

Meanwhile, the cheerleaders from the Iraq war remain resolute. Former Vice President Dick Cheney continues to defend his administration’s bloody antics in Iraq with an unabated conscience, while he and his neocon bunch rages on about the next war. While the likes of veterans McGough and Profitt suffer an excruciating battle to remain sane, Cheney’s former company Halliburton has made a fortune from the contracts they received during the US occupation. Cheney has since published his memoir where he once again defends a war for which millions have paid an imaginable price, while he and his gang of unapologetic neocons enjoy their riches.

Celebrity anchors that helped sell the Iraq war now claim it was a mistake. Yet they continue to hold their esteemed positions at their respective networks while maintaining that they were misled along with the rest of the nation. This would be true if prominent journalists such as Phil Donahue, Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges weren’t opposing the war from the beginning while simultaneously being viciously demonized by the mainstream.

In an open letter to President George W. Bush, permanently paralyzed Iraq war veteran Tomas Young probably captures the momentous crime of the Iraq war best when he penned:

“I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad… thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.”

Usaid (Muneeb) Siddiqui is a freelance writer with an interest in South Asian and Middle East Politics. He can reached on Twitter @UsaidMuneeb16 

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Iraq War Soldier Punished For Not Killing Civilian | Interview with Ryan Endicott

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Photo by US Army

The top ten recipients of U.S. foreign assistance this year all practice torture and are responsible for major human rights abuses, according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other leading human rights organisations.

Financial support for these regimes could stand in violation of existing U.S. law, which requires that little or no aid be provided to a country which “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture.”

A report released by the Congressional Research Service lists the following countries as the largest beneficiaries of U.S. government-provided aid planned for 2014:

1. Israel – $3.1bn

2. Afghanistan – $2.2bn

3. Egypt – $1.6bn

4. Pakistan – $1.2bn

5. Nigeria – $693m

6. Jordan – $671m

7. Iraq – $573m

8. Kenya – $564m

9. Tanzania – $553m

10. Uganda -$456m

All ten of these countries have been accused of torturing people in the last year, and at least half of them are reported to be doing so on a massive scale.

According to the UN, torture in Afghanistan’s prisons continues to be widespread, with over half of the 635 detainees who were interviewed claiming to have been abused. According to Amnesty International, torture is also widespread in Uganda and remains common practice in Iraq.

In Kenya, Human Rights Watch claims that “police in Nairobi tortured, raped and otherwise abused and arbitrarily detained at least 1,000 refugees between mid-November 2012 and late January 2013.” Tanzanians “at most risk of HIV” also face “widespread police abuse” – including torture – and are “regularly raped, assaulted and arrested.”

The worst abuses in detention, however, are alleged to be happening Nigeria, where in addition to the widespread use of torture, nearly a thousand people died in military custody in the first six months of 2013. A senior officer in the Nigerian army, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that “about five people, on average, are killed nearly on a daily basis.”

According to the Associated Press, “if the number is accurate, Nigeria’s military has killed more civilians than the (Boko Haram) militants did” in the same six month period.

The abysmal human rights situation in Egypt, whose government still receives half a billion dollars in foreign aid annually from the United States, is also a pressing concern.

According to Tayab Ali of ITN solicitors in London, “the evidence suggests that Egypt’s military regime has carried out crimes against humanity on a horrendous scale, including murder, persecution, torture and enforced disappearances.” At least 1,300 protesters have been massacred and anywhere between 3,500 and 21,317 Muslim Brotherhood supporters arrested since the elected government of Mohammed Morsi was overthrown in a coup d’etat last July.

Although the crackdown shows no signs of letting up, with dozens more killed on the anniversary of the Egyptian uprising in January, the United States is on course to increase its support for the military regime after Congress passed a bill which will allow the US to restore the full $1.5bn in foreign assistance.

Israel, the top recipient of U.S. military aid, has also been accused of committing major human rights abuses over the last year, including the torture of Palestinian children. A recent report by the Public Committee against Torture in Israel described how detained children suspected of minor crimes have been sexually assaulted by Israeli security forces and kept outdoor in cages during the winter.

It found that “74 per cent of Palestinian child detainees experience physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation.”

Likewise, in Jordan and Pakistan, torture is practiced with near-total impunity. Pakistani authorities have carried out particularly egregious human rights abuses in the province of Balochistan, where 160 people have been extra-judicially killed and 510 “disappeared” over the last year. According to reports from the country’s most widely read English-language newspaper, at least 592 mutilated dead bodies have been found since January 2010.

The United States, however, has kept silent on the mounting evidence of atrocities and continues to provide over a billion dollars in foreign assistance annually, making it Pakistan’s largest donor of development and military aid.

A number of other recipients of U.S. foreign assistance are also alleged to systematically practice torture. In Bahrain, Amnesty International reports that “children are being routinely detained, ill-treated and tortured,” while in Mexico and Ethiopia, torture is described as widespread.

Controversially, the Obama administration has also recently restored military aid to Uzbekistan, where the UN claim torture is practiced in its “worst forms.” In one particularly horrifying case, a man was actually boiled to death in an Uzbek prison for allegedly being a member of an Islamist group.

In spite of this, the United States remains a signatory of the United Nations Convention against Torture, which it ratified in 1994. However, the fact that the top ten recipients of U.S. foreign assistance all practice torture raises serious questions about the Obama administration’s stance on human rights.

If the United States wants to be taken seriously on these issues, a serious re-evaluation of its foreign assistance programme is needed. At a minimum, the Obama administration should respect existing U.S. law by placing conditions, such as an end to the practice of torture, on the provision of military aid to foreign governments, which will hopefully then push those governments towards reform and a greater respect for human rights.

Written by Daniel Wickham. Follow him @DanielWickham93.

This article has been republished from Left Foot Forward. 

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

                                          – Dwight Eisenhower, 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation

This speech by Eisenhower demonstrates reflection and honesty that is all too often missing from the Oval Office. The great and wonderful POTUS that we all have come to know nowadays, displaying an image of unreserved authority and grave conviction, is conspicuously missing here in Ike’s speech. Instead, in this brief, bizarre moment of time, we the people were given a glimpse into the little old man behind the curtain; small and stout in stature, yet honest, forthcoming and surprisingly human. Eisenhower’s warning was startling: he dared expose the looming beasts of fascism from within the very den where they dwell and multiply – dogs of war he himself had helped feed and grow over the course of his two terms in office.

How can the military-industrial complex be counterbalanced? It bears repeating: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” This is precisely where journalism ought to come in, educating and alerting the masses so to keep their representatives in check through a sustained, coordinated effort of dissent. The corporatized for-profit Hill, however, has co-opted and annexed the Fourth Estate, providing a nice little addition that’s just down the hall and around the corner from Congress, where representatives can throw it a bone from time to time to keep it happy. Vietnam, The Gulf War, Iraq/Afghanistan – along with multiple covert operations in between, like Operation Cyclone and Iran-Contra, to name a few – clearly indicates war has never been so plentiful and profitable.  Had we an informed citizenry by way of a muckraking press, guarded with an intellectual ability to think critically about the powers that be, then perhaps these wars would have never been.

It would appear Eisenhower’s words of wisdom have fallen on deaf ears.

A disclaimer is in order: my intentions are not to nostalgically wax poetic about Eisenhower because quite frankly he did nothing short of solidifying the idea of not just an unchecked permanent armaments industry but also perpetual military/intelligence operations overseas in order to keep the balance in favor of Western norms and ideology. For instance, under Eisenhower, both Operation Ajax and Operation PBSUCCESS ousted two democratically elected leaders through coups orchestrated by the CIA; that being the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and President of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz. This set the precedent for dozens of more coups later on down the road, all in the name of stopping the red menace.

Eisenhower’s reign is an example of the deceptive “benevolent dictator” our framers of the Constitution had duly warned us about, unchained by the inherent checks and balances made explicit in the role of the Executive. Indeed, American foreign policy has effectively dethroned the rule of law, replacing it with the arbitrary whims of officials. The “law is king,” Paine once said; nowadays the order has been reversed, where elitist officials decide when to apply the law as they see fit. President Eisenhower, like our leaders today, said “trust me” to the rest of our governmental branches, conducting military strikes and operations without congressional oversight and thereby paying little mind to constitutional law. And as of recent, we have seen the same rationale entertained by the likes of Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama in their bid to conduct military strikes in Syria. They too have said “just trust us,” asserting that Assad used Sarin on his people without feeling the need to prove it as such.

Nevertheless Eisenhower had his moment of clarity in the Farewell Speech of 1961. But not only were his words a warning of the commodification of war itself, moreover it warns of the perpetual specter of war according to government narratives alone – with zero factual basis.  And with a disinformed citizenry, one has not the power to act because one is not in the know to begin with.  Just trust us, they say.  Here, embedded in the warning of Ike’s Farewell Address, we have the original prototype of the eventual Wolfowitz doctrine: a maximalist Executive that boxes out congressional oversight, engaging in covert and overt preemptive “operations” in order to prevent large scale wars in the future, operations based on so-called intelligence that never sees the light of day, top-secret and hushed – for elitist eyes only. Give us your uninformed consent; we promise to do the best we can with it.

The American political system has effectively substituted constitutional law for a pinky swear doctrine.

To say the least, our leaders didn’t get Ike’s memo. Or maybe they did – they just made it into a paper airplane, kicking their feet up on the table of discourse and reason, carelessly wielding their duties with a flick of the wrist. Indeed, to make matters worse, the soaring commodification of war has forayed into a sort of fetish for American officials, where they childishly revel in all things related to war on a superficial level that is astounding.

We now have the likes of NSA Chief Gen. Keith Alexander donning himself a modern day Picard by virtue of his spy facility modeled after the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek. And, furthermore, to add axe-murderer to Creep Street, the NSA facility is known as the “Information Domination Center.”

I have two questions for our trekkie NSA Chief:

While conducting unreasonable searches and seizures, when an analyst inquires whether or not to hack somebody’s private information, do you say “make it so!” whilst swiveling in your armchair? Also, when shredding everything the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution stands for with, presumably, photon torpedos, if you miss the target do you reenact the Annoyed Picard meme? Really, I’m seriously interested.

Likewise, we have Obama and his so-called Terror Tuesdays, where he meets with top national security officials and flips through baseball cards of bad guys, greenlighting drone strikes with an arbitrary point of the finger. Clearly the former Constitutional lawyer must be dyslexic, because he thinks that you are presumed guilty until proven innocent, rather than the other way around. Also, seeing that these hits are based primarily on intelligence reports that are not vetted by any congressional oversight, I do hope nobody is throwing Obama a Curveball.

Actually, check that, it would appear the al-Majala massacre was just that, a curveball by way of faulty intelligence – and Obama whiffed. But I’m sure he was just doing the best he could with what he had. Mistakes happen. I mean, maybe he just pointed to the wrong baseball card because he was too busy working on his dance moves for the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

While it’s all fun and games for armchair government officials, for those serving on the front lines of war, it’s dead serious. Yet since our media has been bought like a cheap suit, the citizenry isn’t privy to instances where the likes of Seal Team Six pick bullets out of the skulls of innocent victims in a special ops raid gone bad so as not to be held culpable for murder. Nope, in a world where fluffy disinformation is rife and the fetishist military-industrial complex runs amok in all its glory, the Gardez massacre got zero fucking traction by news outlets.

Preeminent war exercised through a permanent arms and intelligence industry, in theory, is supposed to stymie future wars. But whether it’s special operations in the dark of night or drones used via the disposition matrix, there is no such thing as a surgical and precise war. As the anti-war activist meme goes, bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity.  Make no mistake about it, we invade countries to harvest their resources, build bases and gain a geopolitical foothold against other superpowers like Russia.

Here’s a rule of thumb: whenever politicians promise their efforts are good and just when it comes to military action, you can be damn sure they have something up their sleeve. That is the simple fact.

And that is precisely why we shouldn’t just trust them.

Yet while officials of yesteryear had the decency to button up their hegemony and jingoism in some semblance of reality and reason, like Eisenhower, nowadays officials just flaunt it braggadocio-style and care not about the ramifications of their actions. The likes of Obama and Alexander have zero compunction when it comes to the actual cost of war because both of them have been deluded by their own power and prestige as indispensable do-gooders in the world.

A similar delusion was enjoyed by Roman elites. They too dedicated their glory to games and reenactments of old battles in the Colosseum; meanwhile they crumbled within, due to a morally bankrupt autocrat and defanged Senate. Sound familiar?

Written by Mike Micklow for Media Roots

I’m sure you’ve played the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. In a post-Snowden world, we are playing a game similar to that – only it’s much more dangerous. In these dark times, simply by virtue of being associated with somebody that is thought to be an agitator of the hushed and hallowed grounds of “matters of national security,” you can be detained without due process.

If you are a truth-seeker under the sprawling shadow of the American empire, you are now playing the game One Degree of Dissident.

This isn’t just some innocuous game that’s played to pass the time. As Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, can testify, this is serious. As Barret Brown can testify, who is facing over a century in jail for simply copying-pasting a hyperlink which contained data that had previously been hacked and thus already made public, this is serious.

Apparently you no longer need to be complicit in the crime itself in order to be charged; only a sympathizer of it.

You know, that oh-so tired cultural meme regurgitated by bubbling, aspiring “entrepreneurs” – you just gotta get out there and network. Networking is the buzzword of our gloriously fast, hyper-real times. But aside from thinking up the next million dollar app, which will probably only serve to warp us into something resembling a vegetable as we waste away our precious time with an amazing apparatus of technology that could otherwise be used for purposes of uniting human beings via exponentially raising awareness and consciousness… aside from that.. networking with those whom are not aligned with the official narrative or which *gasp* go against the official narrative may very well get yourself on a list in some random shadowy database, waiting to be analyzed and processed. Or worse, as in Brown’s case.

Dear citizen, if you play One Degree of Dissident, you most likely are or will be on a list, with all your shit being combed through and analyzed by some poindexter dweeb that’s probably wearing the same out-dated, thin metal-frame glasses that he had in the nineties during those oh-so troubled high-school years where anti-conformity was a thorn in his un-hipster side. And in between his usual creepy forays into 3D Hentai porn, you can find him doubled over a state-of-the-art laptop, downing energy drinks and watching your Skype sessions whilst rummaging through Facebook IM threads, looking for that nebulous smoking gun of sedition – a threat to “national security.” You can’t see him seeing you, as he exists inside a building engulfed in one-way glass and which systematically goes unchecked by Congressional oversight (aside from the likes of Mike Rogers, that pinky swears all is well). Nope, there’s no seeing him. But he can sure as shit see you.

Nobody is watching the watchers because peaking into what’s happening behind the one-way glass of intelligence firms – like Barret Brown did – gets you raided and detained, and the Constitutional right to petition your own government per the First Amendment is conveniently put aside and treated like an old, antiquated dog-eared document nostalgically preserved inside museum glass, no longer relevant in a digital age. Indeed, rather than exposing the cyber-industrial complex and its state-corporate fascism, you’re better off being the Pillowcase Rapist, who did a cool thirty and may now actually be released, a free man. Meanwhile Brown is facing life in a blaze orange jumpsuit — and then some.  This game is dangerous – it’s for keeps.

Sound paranoid? Well, it is. But guess what? In a post-Snowden era, paranoia is now a reality. In fact, if you aren’t paranoid, if you aren’t having those random “irrational” mindfucks which entertain off-the-wall conspiracies, then you’re taking the blue pill of bliss. You. Are. Not. Awake.

Despite the specter of state surveillance and despite “your shows” waiting to be watched on your DVR, it is time for change – real change – not that fake rhetoric that telegenic red-n-blue ties hide behind.  I mean the kind of change that is dangerous because it disrupts the rigged system enjoyed by elites. You, dear citizen, must have the audacity to cope, to see the big bad world for what it is and overcome the desire to simply exist comfortably in this world constructed by the elites. You must link up with other dissidents in order to shake off the chill of authoritarianism, one counteracted only through honest, articulate expressions of discourse and debate.

Yes, like Brown, you may be indefinitely detained. Sure, you may lose your Constitutional right of due process. But Barret Brown’s loss ought to be your gain, your inspiration to take up the slack and fill those hard-to-fill shoes of questioning authority no matter their threats in order to regain true accountability from that fascist Hill which incessantly wraps itself in stars and stripes, concealing the corporate logos tattooed across its solicitous, ungoverned body.

Written by Michael D. Micklow 

http://iheartdrones.wordpress.com/