News of the Month

January 11, 2003

Our first item of the month concerns a “friendly fire” incident that occurred during our attack on the defenseless nation of Afghanistan to install a puppet government that would approve the oil pipeline from the former Soviet republics to the north. Why is it news this month? Well, preparations this month for their upcoming court-martial are uncovering some very interesting facts. To quote an ABC News story:

“Preliminary court-martial proceedings begin next month against two U.S. fighter pilots involved in a tragic incident over Afghanistan that cost four lives and exposed a little-known fact about the way America fights its long-distance air wars. Majors Harry Schmidt and William Umbach are facing up to 64 years in prison for a friendly fire incident over Kandahar, Afghanistan, on April 17 that killed 4 Canadian soldiers and wounded 8 others.

“When the two were sent on their mission over Afghanistan and Iraq, the Air Force gave them $30 million F-16 fighter jets, laser-guided precision munitions, state-of-the-art technology, and something that came as a complete surprise – amphetamines.

“The Air Force calls the amphetamines it distributes to pilots ‘go pills.’ They were quietly reintroduced after being banned in 1992 by the then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak. ‘In my opinion, if you think you have to take a pill to face something that's tough, you're in the wrong business,’ McPeak said.

“But that's not what Schmidt and Umbach said they found when they arrived at their post in Kuwait. According to their defense lawyers, the two pilots were told by superiors they could be found unfit to fly the mission unless they took the pills.

“Dave Beck, Umbach's civilian attorney, said, ‘They will be marked, they will be known. Their careers will basically be over. What's happened in this case is that blame has been fixed at the lowest level, the pilots.’

“ ‘An hour after he took the pills … he would have been feeling the maximum serum level in his blood,’ (Schmidt’s defense attorney Charles) Gittins said. It was then, under the full influence of the amphetamine pills, that the two pilots spotted weapons fire near the Kandahar air base, as can be heard on the cockpit tapes obtained by 20/20.

It was only after Schmidt dropped the bomb that he was told it was not the enemy. What Schmidt hit was a squad of Canadian soldiers, killing four of them, wounding eight. What the military calls friendly fire. The pilots had not been told the Canadians would be conducting a night live-fire training exercise in the area, even though the Canadians had properly informed the U.S. military.”

This raises not one, but two interesting questions: First, if the US military is deliberately drugging its top pilots like that, what other speed-induced mistakes have been covered up or just gone unnoticed? Second, if speed is good enough for those top pilots, why is it still illegal for those of us who just go about living our lives? Don’t tell me the government (gasp!) has been lying to us all this time? Why, if that were true, they might even be lying about … about why we’re going to war against Iraq. ... Naaaah.

Next, let me read to you an essay about our flag by a 12-year old girl in Presque Isle, Maine:

“The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly, and sheltering him from the rain. School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth. Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag’s real meaning remains.”

That sort of ties in with our next story – did you know that the CIA is torturing people in your name in Afghanistan? This is quoted from a report by the Reuters news agency, summarizing a report in the Washington Post:

“Captives who refused to cooperate were sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, the Post said, citing intelligence specialists said to be familiar with CIA interrogation techniques. At times they were held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights – subject to what are known as ‘stress and duress’ techniques, the report said.

“… the Post said it had gained insights thanks to interviews with several former intelligence officials and 10 current U.S. national security officials – including several people who said they had witnessed the handling of prisoners. ‘The picture that emerges is of a brass-knuckled quest for information, often in concert with allies of dubious human rights reputation, in which the traditional lines between right and wrong, legal and inhumane, are evolving and blurred,’ the Post reported.

“The U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture. But each of the current national security officials interviewed for the article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary, the Post said.”

And another stone in the edifice of our national virtue crumbles. I look out upon that once-proud building and … barely a stone remains upright.

But here in Texas, we do have one thing to be proud of – once again we lead the nation … in state-performed murders. Texas executed 33 people during 2002, which is nearly half the total of 71 such murders nationwide. And it’s only that low because the US Supreme Court has decided to review our murders of the mentally retarded and the ill-represented, effectively pulling those populations from our hit list. Friends, the number of people on death row whose innocence was proved shows that our technology for assessing guilt is so fundamentally flawed as to be useless; how can we even pretend to be a civilized state – or nation – when we continue to murder people, especially using such flawed technology.

Civil liberties continue to take a beating, thanks to the Republican administration and the Republican courts working together. Back when you were studying the Constitution, did you ever see the phrase “except in time of war” in any of the amendments that guarantee our freedoms from government repression? Well, it’s not that way any more. Listen to this from Thursday’s issue of the American-Statesman:

A federal appeals court handed the Bush administration a major legal victory on Wednesday in ruling that a wartime president can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured as an enemy combatant on the battlefield and deny that person access to a lawyer.

The judges of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., said it was improper for the federal courts to inquire too deeply into the detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a 22-year-old American-born Saudi who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and is imprisoned in a military brig in Norfolk, VA.

Even so, in the opinion written by the circuit's chief judge, J. Harvie Wilkinson, the panel said, “… In fact, if deference is not exercised with respect to military judgments in the field, it is difficult to see where deference would ever obtain.”

Well, duhhh! The Constitution doesn’t say that “deference” should ever “obtain” – meaning there’s nowhere in that document where the government is allowed to violate its provisions merely because of a war (or a threat of war). Of course, since when does that stop our ruling class – Democrats or Republicans? The illegal incarceration of thousands of US citizens of Japanese origin was perpetrated by a Democrat. This violation – no, all the violations – of people’s rights around the specious “war on terrorism” is being perpetrated by a Republican. How often do I have to say it? There’s no more difference between the Republicans and the Democrats than there is between the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference.

Let’s talk about global warming for a minute. King Georgie and his corporate sponsors pooh-pooh the concept – primarily because realizing that it’s a fact might require them to actually (gasp!) spend money to do something about it. Reduce their profits, in other words. A lot of King Georgie’s PR flacks have been quoting a man named Bjorn Lomborg, the director of Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute. His book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, published in 2001, said that life for humankind has never been better, pollution levels are falling, and there are enough resources for current levels of prosperity to continue. It also concluded that “the colossal sums it is planned to deploy on reducing global warming will be money ill-spent.”

Well, after a year-long investigation by the Danish Committee on Scientific Honesty, Mr. Lomborg has been found guilty of scientific dishonesty. The committee, made up of eminent Danish scientists, concluded, “Based on customary scientific standards, and in light of his systematic one-sidedness in the choice of data and line of argument, [he] has clearly acted at variance with good scientific practice.” Lomborg had been accused of “fabricating data, selectively and surreptitiously discarding unwanted results, the deliberately misleading use of statistical methods, consciously distorted interpretation of the conclusions, plagiarisation of others’ results or publications, and deliberate misrepresentation of others’ results.” The Committee said, rather, that he just didn’t understand the science.

I guess that sorta fits – a “President” who doesn’t understand the science of governance – or anything else that I can see – parroting a “scientist” who doesn’t understand the science he is bandying around. Global warming is upon us, folks, and the only people still squealing that it’s not are the ones with a vested – money – stake in not having to do anything about it.

And then there’s the war. Oil War II. The war to save Daddy’s name. When is W going to kick it off? One of the late-night talk shows last month nailed it – Father’s Day. Little King Georgie was faced with a decision of what to give his daddy – a man who has everything if there ever was one – a tie rack or attack Iraq. The war to distract our attention from the fact that the economy is cratering in the worst recession since … oops: sorry; in the words of Carol Keeton whatever-her-last-name-is-these-days, “We’re not in a recession; we’re in a period of anemic growth.” The war to disguise the fact that the (supposedly) best intelligence agencies in the world can’t find one man, so we’ll declare another man – one we can find – to be the enemy, and go after him.

In other words, an illegal, immoral, and stupid war. A war that’s going to cost billions of dollars, cost hundreds to thousands of lives, and cost this nation the last of what little respect we still hold in the eyes of the rest of the world. Georgie’s having fun playing Leader of the Free … uh, Leader of the Western …, uh, leader of the … the … oh, whatever! Out in front of a café in Crawford last week, he actually said, “You say we’re headed for war in Iraq. I don’t know why you say that – I’m the person who gets to decide, not you!” So there! The nation is being run by a petulant child – a petulant child!

Oh, and speaking of the war, last night Nightline had a panel discussion – really, a seat-of-the-pants war game – about what would happen if we were to attack North Korea instead of Iraq. It made it really clear why we’re going to attack Iraq, not North Korea, despite the fact that both countries are equally guilty of possessing and threatening to use weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. The answer? North Korea is strong enough it could do some serious damage, to South Korea, to Japan, and maybe even to Hawaii, whereas Iraq has been pummeled into defenselessness by 10 years of US genocide.

Here’s another of those bipartisan facts – the US hasn’t attacked any nation capable of defending itself with any real force in … well, since Vietnam. Republican and Democratic administrations alike – only attack countries we can defeat easily, with minimum US bloodshed. Grenada (remember that debacle?), Panama, Kuwait 10 years ago, and now Iraq itself. We’ve softened it up with 10 years of bipartisan destruction of its water supply system and its sewage treatment system, and 10 years of aggressively preventing the delivery of critical medical supplies to the beleaguered country, and 10 years of genocidal policies causing the deaths of thousands – maybe millions – of Iraqi civilians – mainly children. Now we think we can move in for the kill with only a few US casualties. Maybe so, but I’ll bet most of those will probably be from so-called “friendly fire.”

A week from Monday, on January 20, there will be large-scale participation in the Martin Luther King, Jr., day march by those of us who oppose this murderous, insane war and who would remind us all that Dr. King abhorred war. If you want to join us, come to where the march as a whole is assembling, at Huston-Tillotson College at 8:45, and look for the people carrying the signs calling for peace.