Why donate to publish this statement (it has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Humanist, and Rolling Stone online)?

Miller Francis, former writer for Rolling Stone, sent this quote from Bertolt Brecht to explain why he donated:

"Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the cunning to spread the truth among such persons."

Also see: An Open Letter of Reconciliation and Responsibility to the Iraqi People: From Current and Former Members of the US Military, a letter written by Josh Steiber and Ethan McCord

Crimes Are Crimes - No Matter Who Does Them

In the past few weeks, it has become common knowledge that Barack Obama has openly ordered the assassination of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, because he is suspected of participating in plots by Al Qaeda. Al-Awlaki denies these charges. No matter. Without trial or other judicial proceeding, the administration has simply put him on the to-be-killed list.

During this same period, a video leaked by whistleblowers in the military showing U.S. troops firing on an unarmed party of Iraqis in 2007, including two journalists, and then firing on those who attempted to rescue them – including two children – became public. As ugly as this video of the killing of 12 Iraqis was, the chatter recorded from the helicopter cockpit was even more chilling and monstrous. Yet the Pentagon said that there would be no charges against these soldiers; and the media focused on absolving them of blame – “they were under stress,” the story went, “and after all our brave men and women must be supported.” Meanwhile, those who leaked and publicized the video came under government surveillance and are targeted as “national security” threats.

Also during this period, the Pentagon acknowledged, after denials, a massacre near the city of Gardez, Afghanistan, on February 12, 2010, in which 5 people were killed, including two pregnant women, leaving 16 children motherless.  The U.S. military first said the two men killed were insurgents, and the women, victims of a family “honor killing.”  The Afghan government has accepted the eyewitness reports that U.S. Special Forces killed the men, (a police officer and lawyer) and the women, and then dug their own bullets out of the women’s bodies to destroy evidence. Top U.S. military officials have now admitted that U.S. soldiers killed the family in their house.

Just weeks earlier, a story broken in Harper’s by Scott Horton carried news that three supposed suicides of detainees in Guantánamo in 2006 were not actual suicides, but homicides carried out by American personnel. This passed almost without comment.

In some respects, this is worse than Bush. First, because Obama has claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he suspects of “terrorism,” merely on the grounds of his own suspicion or that of the CIA, something Bush never claimed publicly. Second, Obama says that the government can detain you indefinitely, even if you have been exonerated in a trial, and he has publicly floated the idea of “preventive detention." Third, the Obama administration, in expanding the use of unmanned drone attacks, argues that the U.S. has the authority under international law to use such lethal force and extrajudicial killing in sovereign countries with which it is not at war.

Such measures by Bush were widely considered by liberals and progressives to be outrages and were roundly, and correctly, protested.  But those acts which may have been construed (wishfully or not) as anomalies under the Bush regime, have now been consecrated into “standard operating procedure” by Obama, who claims, as did Bush, executive privilege and state secrecy in defending the crime of aggressive war.

Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration has refused to prosecute any members of the Bush regime who are responsible for war crimes, including some who admitted to waterboarding and other forms of torture, thereby making their actions acceptable for him or any future president, Democrat or Republican.

We must end the complicity of silence and say loud and clear:

The things that were crimes under Bush are crimes under Obama.
Outrages under Bush are outrages under Obama.
All this MUST STOP.
And all this MUST BE RESISTED by anyone who claims a shred of conscience or integrity.

By Asim Qureshi
guardian.co.uk

George Bush left a big problem in the shape of Guantánamo. The solution? Don't capture bad guys, assassinate by drone

In 2001, Charles Krauthammer first coined the phrase "Bush Doctrine", which would later become associated most significantly with the legal anomaly known as pre-emptive strike. Understanding the doctrine with hindsight could lead to a further understanding of the legacy that the former administration left – the choice to place concerns of national security over even the most entrenched norms of due process and the rule of law. It is, indeed, this doctrine that united people across the world in their condemnation of Guantánamo Bay.

By Laura King

In nearly nine years of warfare in Afghanistan, U.S. Special Forces have done their fighting in the shadows, governed by rules largely of their own making. Now, these elite and secretive troops, their actions long shielded from public scrutiny, are the focus of a high-profile investigation that could shed unprecedented light on their methods and tactics.

Democracy Now!, April 12, 2010

“This is How These Soldiers Were Trained to Act”–Veteran of Military Unit Involved in 2007 Baghdad Helicopter Shooting Says Incident Is Part of Much Larger Problem

We speak with a former member of Bravo Company 2-16, the military unit involved in the 2007 helicopter shooting of Iraqi civilians that killed twelve people, including two Reuters employees, as seen on the military video released by WikiLeaks. “The natural thing to do would be to instantly judge or criticize the soldiers in this video,” says Josh Stieber. “Not to justify what they did, but militarily speaking, they did exactly what they were trained to do…If we’re shocked by this video, we need to be asking questions of the larger system, because this is how these soldiers were trained to act.”

12 Iraq Civilians Murdered by U.S. Troops Firing From Helicopter

Statement By Carl Dix
 
The video recently released by Wikileaks cries out for a response of outrage and condemnation (you can view this video at Wikileaks.org).  This video shows US forces in Iraq launching an unprovoked assault from an Apache Helicopter on a group of Arab men in July of 2007.  After the attack one of the men he tries to crawl to safety, and the helicopter fires at him again! 

Then a van pulls up and tries to pick up the dead and wounded, and the helicopter fires a missile at it, killing and wounding more people, including 2 children!  US ground troops arrive and pick up the children to take them to a hospital.  The helicopter relays orders to leave the children to be picked up by Iraqi police, if they survive till the Iraqi police arrive.  In all, 12 people were killed in this murderous assault.

By Jason Ditz
antiwar.com

With the Obama Administration scrambling to dismiss last week’s WikiLeaks.org video of the July 12, 2007 US killings of two Reuters reporters and several other Iraqi civilians, the increasingly controversial site is poised to drop another video bombshell, this time on a much more high profile attack.

On May 5, 2009, US aircrafts bombed a number of homes in the Afghan village of Abdul Basir Khan, in Farah Province. The death toll according to Afghan officials was upwards of 140 civilians.

By Gareth Porter, IPS

WASHINGTON, Apr 7, 2010 (IPS) - The head of the Afghan Ministry of Interior investigation said publicly for the first time his investigators had accepted the testimony of family members of the victims of the Feb. 12 raid by U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) that the U.S. troops had dug bullets out of the bodies of their victims in an apparent effort to cover up the killings and that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal had agreed with the team's conclusions.

Mirza Mohammad Yarmand, head of the criminal investigation department in the ministry, told IPS in an interview Wednesday that the ministry's investigation had found "evidence of tampering at the scene by the patrol members", which had "confused" NATO investigators about the incident.

"We accepted the claim of the family members [of victims] that NATO soldiers had dug the bullets out of the bodies," said Yarmand, "but we could not confirm it, because we were not able to do an autopsy on the bodies." The family members, like most Afghans, had not allowed the autopsies on the victims, he explained.

Anwar al-Aulaqi Added To CIA Target List: US Citizen Is First American On List
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has authorized the killing of a radical Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen believed to be hiding in Yemen and thought to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the U.S. to participating in them, according to published reports.

Al-Awlaki has emerged as a prominent al-Qaida recruiter and has been tied by U.S. intelligence to the 9/11 hijackers, along with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, as well as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in November at Fort Hood, Texas.

Afghan Investigators Say U.S. Troops Tried to Cover Up Evidence in Botched Raid

By Richard A. Oppel, Jr. and Abdul Waheed Wafa
NY Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan officials investigating the deaths of five Afghan civilians gunned down in February during a bungled raid by American Special Operations forces believe that troops tampered with evidence at the scene, the lead investigator said Monday. NATO officials disclosed that they were looking into the allegations.

Evidence tampering helps explain why NATO officials were so “confused” initially and offered inaccurate accounts of the killings, said the Afghan official, Merza Mohammed Yarmand, of the Ministry of Interior’s criminal investigation division.

Footage of July 2007 attack made public as Pentagon identifies website as threat to national security

by Chris McGreal
guardian.co.uk

A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an air strike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed by Wikileaks today.

The footage of the July 2007 attack was made public in a move that will further anger the Pentagon, which has drawn up a report identifying the whistleblower website as a threat to national security. The US defence department was embarrassed when that confidential report appeared on the Wikileaks site last month alongside a slew of military documents.