Good Question, Vietnam (from Harper's Magazine)

Posted on Wednesday, November 15, 2006. From questions submitted by Vietnamese people to the U.S.-Indochina Educational Foundation for its “FAQ About America” project. Originally from Harper's Magazine, January 2005.

Sources

When did your culture form?

What does a typical American look like? Do actors and actresses in Hollywood movies possess characteristics of a typical American?

What is Hollywood?

There are many sexy scenes in American movies. Does that reflect the daily lives of Americans?

How many people in the U.S.A. like to drink Coke?

Why are American presidents so bellicose?

Does the U.S. really wish for peace and happiness for other countries, as they always announce in public?

What do Americans think about Communists?

People say that Americans look down on people of color and people from Third World countries. Is that true?

Are Americans extravagant?

Americans are very combative, aren’t they?

Why do many Americans like to be single nowadays?

Americans seem to be superficial and not sincere. What do you think about this?

Do you think using an excessive amount of slang will gradually destroy the beauty of the English language?

What will happen if the American president doesn’t carry out the promises that he made in the campaign?

What percentage of the U.S. population wants to be a good friend of Vietnam in all fields?

How can the post-traumatic stress disorder be solved? What are the U.S. responsibilities in solving it?

Why does America appear to be the major factor of almost every war?

Which aspects of life are American people most interested in?

I have learned America is a free country; what is the real freedom in this country?

Link to original: http://www.harpers.org/GoodQuestionVietnam.html

Bush in Trouble

Embittered Insiders Turn Against Bush

By Peter Baker

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 19, 2006; Page A01

The weekend after the statue of Saddam Hussein fell, Kenneth Adelman and a couple of other promoters of the Iraq war gathered at Vice President Cheney's residence to celebrate. The invasion had been the "cakewalk" Adelman predicted. Cheney and his guests raised their glasses, toasting President Bush and victory. "It was a euphoric moment," Adelman recalled.

Forty-three months later, the cakewalk looks more like a death march, and Adelman has broken with the Bush team. He had an angry falling-out with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this fall. He and Cheney are no longer on speaking terms. And he believes that "the president is ultimately responsible" for what Adelman now calls "the debacle that was Iraq."

More...

"I'm Republican."

A scary thought:

The Battle Has Just Begun

[revised Nov 17 2006 10:10 pm]

The recent Democratic midterm election victory is a signal of America's dissatisfaction with the political and social climate. But an electoral victory over the regime of Bush does not ensure any substantial change in the course of events in the USA. The new congress will make possible a true (small d) democratic revival in America. Such a revival will require the focused attention of many people. The grass roots will have to keep striving. The election victory signals the culmination of a long arduous uphill climb, but there is not much time to relax. There is momentum that can be utilized, it would be a shame to see it gone to waste after this recent election (really a superficial victory). And after all, there will be more hills, many more hills. Many of them will be more arduous climbs than this past one.

If the goals of world (and local!) peace, and the goals of environmental and social justice are to be realized, now is as good of a time as any to dig in and begin the types of work, which will enable such achievements to come to fruition.

These are common sense changes that will truly benefit every human being. A better world awaits.

Carlyle Profits Soar Since 2001

This is an interesting coincidence, because I was just remarking in a seminar the other day at school about James Baker's role in the Carlyle group, and how one time (this was a year or two ago) I was toodling around on the Internet and looked into the Carlyle group. When I pointed my browswer toward the Carlyle website, it behaved very strangely. My whole system locked up for 30 seconds or so, I was unable to "force quit" my browser application. So this article piqued my interest:

The Carlyle White House
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Tuesday 14 November 2006

It was bad enough when the Carlyle Group bought Dunkin' Donuts last year, forcing millions of conscientious caffeine addicts to look elsewhere for their daily fix. Now, it appears that Carlyle has added 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to its formidable portfolio of acquisitions.

The Carlyle Group achieved national attention in the early days of the Iraq occupation, especially after Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" exposed the firm's umbilical ties to the Bush family and the House of Saud. For the uninitiated, Carlyle is a privately-owned equity firm organized and run by former members of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations.

Currently, Carlyle manages more than $44 billion in 42 different investment funds, which is an interesting fact in and of itself: Carlyle could lay claim to only a meager $12 billion in funds in December of 2001. Thanks to their ownership of United Defense Industries, a major military contractor that sells a whole galaxy of weapons systems to the Pentagon, Carlyle's profits skyrocketed after the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Some notable present and former employees of Carlyle include former president George H.W. Bush, who resigned in 2003; James Baker III, Bush Sr.'s secretary of state and king fixer; and George W. Bush, who served on Carlyle's board of directors until his run for the Texas governorship. One notable former client of Carlyle was the Saudi BinLaden Group, which sold its investment back to the firm a month after the September 11 attacks. Until the October 2001 sellout, Osama bin Laden himself had a financial interest in the same firm that employed the two presidents Bush.
...

link: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111406R.shtml

Guantanamo Human Rights Grievances

Given the recent news that Donald Rumsfeld will be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity (in Germany), this information, about the conduct of Donald Rumsfeld (Dick Cheney et al.) in the "war on terror," from harpers.org - is particulary intriguing. It shows that there is something fundamentally wrong on the systemic level with the operations of DOD under former Secretary of "Defense" Rumsfeld. What does a possible Gates confirmation portend? More of the same?

I'm Still Here

Posted on Monday, November 13, 2006. From combatant-status review tribunals held over the past two years for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. More than 5,000 pages of transcripts were released in March by the Defense Department in response to a lawsuit brought by the Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act. Originally from Harper's Magazine, May 2006.
***
Let's look at the allegations and then you will have the opportunity to respond to each.

Okay.

The detainee was born in Pishin, Pakistan.

This is true.

The detainee joined the Taliban shortly after it took control of Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1992.

I never joined the Taliban. I did not know any people in that group. I was just a poor person living my life in my village.

The detainee held a high-ranking position in the Taliban as military judge.

This is not true. Since my incarceration, I have been accused of holding three different positions with the Taliban. Initially, I was accused of being a deputy foreign minister. One month later I was accused of being a Taliban security guard. Now I'm being accused of being a military judge for the Taliban. I have no idea why someone would make these accusations. I can only speculate that it was someone from a rival village. However, I have no proof, because I am here in Guantánamo.

In his position with the Taliban, the detainee tortured, maimed, and murdered Afghan nationals who were being held in Taliban jails.

I never even hit my own child at home.

Pakistani authorities arrested the detainee in the fall of 2001.

I was in my home. Pakistani police told me they wanted to search my home for ancient artifacts that were looted. I had nothing to hide. However, they told me I had to go with them to the police station. I was kept in a Pakistani jail for thirty-six days. One night they tied my hands behind my back, put a hood over my face, and put me into a car. When the car stopped, I could hear airplanes. They took me from the car and put me into an aircraft. There were Americans in this aircraft.

When we landed, they asked me for my name and I told them Abdur Sayed Rahman. I was then told that I was Abdur Zahid Rahman. That was not correct. My name is Abdur Sayed Rahman. Abdur Zahid Rahman was the deputy foreign minister of the Taliban. I was taken to this camp and they began to interrogate me. An American told me I was wrongfully taken and in a couple of days I would be free. I never saw this American again. I'm still here.
***
...

There's more: http://www.harpers.org/ImStillHere.html

Bush Administration to be Probed by New Congress

Waxman Set to Probe Areas of Bush Administration
By Erica Werner
The Associated Press

Friday 10 November 2006

The Democratic congressman who will investigate the Bush administration's running of the government says there are so many areas of possible wrongdoing, his biggest problem will be deciding which ones to pursue.

There's the response to Hurricane Katrina, government contracting in Iraq and on homeland security, political interference in regulatory decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, and allegations of war profiteering, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., told the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

"I'm going to have an interesting time because the Government Reform Committee has jurisdiction over everything," Waxman said Friday, three days after his party's capture of Congress put him in line to chair the panel. "The most difficult thing will be to pick and choose."
...

Let the reckoning begin!
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111106Y.shtml

"Robert Fisk: This was a guilty verdict on America as well"

I want to re-publish this whole article here, but I will select excerpts from it instead, and allow you to navigate to the original, if you wish. It's a great article (though it fades toward the latter sections.)
Robert Fisk

America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003.
...
Only so ghastly is the hell-disaster that we have inflicted upon Iraq that we cannot even say that. Life is now worse. Or rather, death is now visited upon even more Iraqis than Saddam was able to inflict on his Shias and Kurds and - yes, in Fallujah of all places - his Sunnis, too. So we cannot even claim moral superiority. For if Saddam's immorality and wickedness are to be the yardstick against which all our iniquities are judged, what does that say about us? We only sexually abused prisoners and killed a few of them and murdered some suspects and carried out a few rapes and illegally invaded a country which cost Iraq a mere 600,000 lives ("more or less", as George Bush Jnr said when he claimed the figure to be only 30,000). Saddam was much worse. We can't be put on trial. We can't be hanged.
...
[Hussein] was formally forbidden from describing his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary of Defence. Remember that handshake? Nor, of course, was he permitted to talk about the support he received from George Bush Snr, the current US President's father. Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before the mid-term US elections.
...
But on 25 May 1994, the US Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs produced a report entitled "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences (sic) of the Persian Gulf War".

This was the 1991 war which prompted our liberation of Kuwait, and the report informed Congress about US government-approved shipments of biological agents sent by American companies to Iraq from 1985 or earlier. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax; Clostridium botulinum; Histoplasma capsulatum; Brucella melitensis; Clostridium perfringens and Escherichia coli. The same report stated that the US provided Saddam with "dual use" licensed materials which assisted in the development of chemical, biological and missile-system programmes, including chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings (provided as pesticide production facility plans).

Yes, well I can well see why Saddam wasn't permitted to talk about this. John Reid, the British Home Secretary, said that Saddam's hanging "was a sovereign decision by a sovereign nation". Thank heavens he didn't mention the £200,000 worth of thiodiglycol, one of two components of mustard gas we exported to Baghdad in 1988, and another £50,000 worth of the same vile substances the following year.
...
The odd thing is that Iraq is now swamped with mass murderers, guilty of rape and massacre and throat-slitting and torture in the years since our "liberation" of Iraq. Many of them work for the Iraqi government we are currently supporting, democratically elected, of course. And these war criminals, in some cases, are paid by us, through the ministries we set up under this democratic government. And they will not be tried. Or hanged. That is the extent of our cynicism. And our shame. Have ever justice and hypocrisy been so obscenely joined?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1959051.ece

Letter to Condoleeza Rice

I just wrote a letter to Ms. Rice, US Secretary of State, that her (old?) bosses at Chevron wouldn't like at all. In order to rid the world of terrorism, the US must halt its exploitative imperialist practices... i.e. relinquish interest in Iraqi oil. There are better alternatives to ensure our energy security that invading and occupying foreign states. Here's the text of the letter I sent Ms. Rice:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,

You recently said that the Democratic take over of Congress won't deter the Bush Administration from continuing its Iraq mission until "the goal that took us to Iraq" is achieved.

What exactly is the goal that took us to Iraq? I thought the Bush Administration went into Iraq because of WMD. Then, when no WMD was found, I though we were there to get Saddam Hussein out of power.

What's the new mission? To reconstruct Iraq? The Iraqi reconstruction could have and should have been completed years ago. That is, if the contractors that the Bush Administration had hired weren't incompetent.

Is the new mission to get rid of terrorism in Iraq? Well, if you want to do that, I suggest pulling US interests out of Iraq as soon as possible, because the US presence in Iraq is the main reason for the terrorism.

I have to break it to you, Ms. Rice, you and your mission in Iraq have failed. The USA, in order to maintain its standing amongst civilized nations, must relinquish its stranglehold on the nation of Iraq, and ensure that Western energy companies do not stand to profit from Iraqi oil reserves.

I repeat, the oil wealth of Iraq must be kept in Iraq, for your mission in the war against terror to succeed.

Sincerely,
Robert Whitlock
Olympia, Washington

Here's a link in case you care to write a letter to Ms. Rice at the State Department.

Democrats Take Charge

Now that the Democrats have the congressional majority, will they use their new found power to effect change for the good, or will they simply fulfill their traditional role as the lesser of two evils? There are many problems in the USA and the world. George Bush's first six years in office have exacerbated these problems, but these problems were made worse by Clinton as well.

Let's take this opportunity to wipe the slate clean and make a sincere and concerted effort to improve the lot of humanity on Earth. A New Deal perhaps? Think of the economic engine that environmental remediations and social improvements could potentiate.

I think the first order of business needs to be the purging of corruption and monied interests from the government. We are not going to succeed in improving life on Earth if multinational corporations hold the keys to federal government. Those politicians who prove unwilling to cooperate with the decontamination of the political process must be exposed and removed from office.

Once government is set in order, the goals of 1) establishing a stable and lasting world peace (through disarmament and adherence to non-aggression agreements, etc.); 2) addressing and setting right the problems of climate change and other environmental concerns; and 3) tackling social issues of poverty, access to education and gainful employment, healthcare, etc. can all be pursued.

There is a lot of work to do, but it will be worth it. I'm sure of it.