Tag: Iraq

Nothing new here, just more of the same, reinforced.

Coming Soon: Congress Revisits the Authorization to Use Military Force

By: Spencer Ackerman Monday November 15, 2010

As I tweeted and wrote for Danger Room today, the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Buck McKeon, briefly argued in a speech today that Congress should “reaffirm – in statute – the Authorization to Use Military Force of 2011.” To expand on that: McKeon mentioned the AUMF in the context of detainee policy – that is, to keep terrorism detainees out of federal courts. But it clearly goes beyond that. Here’s what a McKeon aide told me:

The objective wouldn’t the “drop a new Authorization to Use Military Force, but to reaffirm and strengthen the existing one,” says an aide to McKeon who requested anonymity, “recognizing that the enemy has changed geographically and evolved since 2001.” Sounds like the shadow wars may get some sunshine.

For the Obama administration, AUMF has operated like an Emergency Law, providing blanket authorities for things like drone strikes beyond Afghanistan that are never mentioned in the brief 2001 language. A new AUMF would at least be more specific about what powers Congress actually intends the president to have to conduct a war against al-Qaeda – as well as, perhaps, what the boundaries of those authorities might be. It’s still not a declaration of war – my understanding is there’s not an appetite for that in Congress – but it also would represent the first congressional reconsideration of the scope of a war that, in practice, is endless. That could go in any number of directions, but at least it’ll be debated.

This is a means to justify the drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen or any other country the US deems a threat, as well as, to “justify” the illegal, indefinite detention of persons that the US decides is too dangerous to release.

We Will Always Be at War against Everyone

By: emptywheel Tuesday November 16, 2010

But there are two other aspects to a “reaffirmed and strengthened” AUMF. As McKeon’s aide notes, the enemy has changed geographically, moving to Yemen and Somalia. A new AUMF will make it easier to build the new bases in Yemen they’re planning.

The U.S. is preparing for an expanded campaign against al Qaeda in Yemen, mobilizing military and intelligence resources to enable Yemeni and American strikes and drawing up a longer-term proposal to establish Yemeni bases in remote areas where militants operate.

And I would bet that the AUMF is drafted broadly enough to allow drone strikes anywhere the government decides it sees a terrorist.

Which brings us to the most insidious part of a call for a new AUMF: the “homeland.” The AUMF serves or has served as the basis for the government’s expanded powers in the US, to do things like wiretap Americans. Now that the Republicans know all the powers the government might want to use against US persons domestically, do you really think they will resist the opportunity to write those powers into an AUMF (whether through vagueness or specificity), so as to avoid the quadrennial review and debate over the PATRIOT Act (not to mention the oversight currently exercised by DOJ’s Inspector General)? The only matter of suspense, for me, is what role they specify for drones operating domestically…

Paul Rieckoff, an Iraq War veteran, Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), was a guest on The Rachel Maddow Show. He spoke with Ms. Maddow about the false message the White House is sending about the end of the combat mission in Iraq and the needs of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.  

Hat tip to David Swanson at WarIsACrime.org.

“New markets for our goods stretch from Asia to the Americas”

“…we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits. For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform. As a result, too many middle class families find themselves working harder for less, while our nation’s long-term competitiveness is put at risk.”

— Barack Obama, Oval Office Address on Iraq, August 31, 2010

The last combat troops are leaving Iraq, crossing the border into Kuwait. It is being carried live on MSNBC. Keith Olbermann broke in to the Ed Show with the announcement

NEAR THE IRAQ-KUWAIT BORDER – The last U.S. combat troops were crossing the border into Kuwait on Thursday morning, bringing to a close the active combat phase of a 7½-year war that overthrew the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, forever defined the presidency of George W. Bush and left more than 4,400 American service members and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead.

The final convoy of the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., was about to enter Kuwait shortly after 1:30 a.m. (6:30 p.m. Wednesday ET), carrying the last of the 14,000 U.S. combat forces in Iraq, said NBC’s Richard Engel, who has been traveling with the brigade as it moved out this week.

Peter Daou:

   

The Iraq war is officially over: http://bit.ly/bVM4JO …question is, how many more lives will be lost there?

Now when do the others come home, out of harms way?

When so we start scaling down Afghanistan?

These are wars we can no longer afford either in expenditures of money or precious lives.

In a perhaps unintentional and obtuse twist of sardonic wit and possibly complete unawareness of the irony of his own words, Commander of United States Forces – Iraq (USF-I) General Ray Odierno said on Sunday in an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour that the 50,000 US troops that will remain in Iraq along with “a significant civilian presence” after the US ‘withdraws’, will help Iraq thwart “interference from outside countries”.

Really. You can’t make this stuff up. If fiction it wouldn’t qualify as humor.

United States forces under President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in an unprovoked attack in 2003 and have occupied the country since. By some counts more than a million Iraqis have died as a direct result of the US invasion and occupation.

Odierno was former primary military advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from November 2004 to May 2006, and has long argued against withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq. He assumed command of USF-I’s predecessor, Multi-National Force – Iraq on September 16, 2008 and took the reins as Commander of U.S. Forces Iraq on January 1, 2010, under President Barack Obama.

Odierno’s ironic comments in the interview followed only a few days after President Obama publicly backtracked on his 2009 pledge to withdraw all US combat troops from Iraq by September 1, 2010:

A recent Army report released showed the rate of suicides has been on a steady increase with this past June being the worst with 32 active and reserve soldiers taking their own lives either while still deployed or after their return home. This past Sunday on This Week , Christiane Amanpour interviewed Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the general in charge of the U.S. Army’s efforts to reduce the epidemic of suicide among U.S. soldiers.

Of course the true solution to suicide prevention for the troops is to bring them home, all of them.

Listen to her interview with Gen. Chiaelli about the report, its causes and the solutions for prevention. Transcript link is here

Gareth Porter is an historian and investigative journalist and US foreign and military policy analyst. He writes regularly for Inter Press Service on US policy towards Iraq and Iran. Porter is author of four books, the latest of which is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.

Porter talks with Real News Network’s Paul Jay with a dissection of Obama’s Iraq ‘withdrawal’ smoke and mirrors kabuki.