9/11: Around The Blogosphere

Remembering the Day

• For Thou Art With Us — Sarah Bunting @ TomatoNation.com was there.
  

  We come up the rise to the corner where a crowd of people has gathered, all looking up, and the towers come into view — the south tower closer to us and to the left. “Ohhh, man,” we both say, and “Jeeeesus Christ,” and “This is not good. This is not good at all. This is fuckin’ bad.” So dumb. So dull. We sound like frat boys when the keg is dry, but there’s nothing else we can say about what we’ve got in front of us. In front of us, high above us, the south tower has a huge hole torn through it, a burning, screaming maw with thick black smoke pouring out. Occasionally, flames lick up one corner of the twisted mouth of the hole and then retreat, only to reappear on the other side. It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t even seem that serious at first, actually, until I remember just how big the building is, how many stories high — and that the hole must therefore cover twelve stories, at least. “This isn’t the kind of history I want to be present at,” I say, lamely, to Bob. “Me neither,” he says.

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  Tags: 9/11, World Trade Center, terrorism, New York, American flag, Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, Conspiracy Theories, George W. Bush, Matt Lauer, Rudy Giuliani, ABC, tragedy, patriotism, Ground Zero, We Will Never Forget, al-Qaeda, CIA, Pakistan, Taliban, Joint Special Operations Command, NSA, National Counterterrorism Center, Tora Bora, al-Zawahiri, Paul Krugman, NATO, Bill Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, Pentagon, healthcare, Iraq

  comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, Featured, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, Conspiracy Theories, The Middle East

Work Your Brain — 09/02/06

First Some Fun

• Thursday Thirteen #3 — Baggage @ Baggage That Goes With Mine wrote thirteen reasons why the internet is better than real life. This is my favorite.
  

  11. On the internet, you can pop into a forum or a blog and tell a person that their beliefs are dumb, they should be breastfeeding, they should never co-sleep, they should divorce their husband, they should shave their legs, and they should stop wearing mom jeans. In real life, people would punch you in the face.

In Memory Of Katrina

• But you can keep them for the birds and bees — Mac @ PeskyApostrophe wonders about all of that Katrina aid money the U.S. asked for and got from other countries last year. She comes to the same conclusion I did.
  

  I’m appalled at a variety of things when it comes to the Katrina rebuilding effort and FEMA’s role in it all, but this is a whole new level of incompetence. As part of my new job, I am now involved in grant-writing. In a good portion of grants, the grantee expects a report as to how the money was used. While I’m sure these gifts did not come with any reporting requirements, if one of our grantees found out their money had been either wasted or didn’t got to the program for which it was intended that would pretty much guarantee they’d never give money to us again. And you have to wonder if, should another emergency situation arise, these countries would think twice about giving aid money to the U.S. if we’re not going to use it and use it wisely.

• First the Flood, Now the Fight — Spencer S. Hsu @ WashingtonPost.com wrote a special report on the butting of heads between FEMA and state and city officials in the rebuilding of the Gulf States and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA swears it’s not trying to be difficult but the process seems to be designed to wear down those requesting help until they just give up and either take what little they’ve been given, which isn’t much if anything.
  

  Through hundreds of such disputes large and small, the most costly disaster in U.S. history is fast becoming its most contentious, with appeals and disputes worth nearly a billion dollars bogging down repairs of critical public systems and delaying the return of residents.

  Current and former officials at all levels blame FEMA workers’ inexperience with eligibility rules, weaknesses in U.S. disaster laws and inconsistent treatment by Congress for much of the wrangling. The huge scale of the storm and honest disagreement over whether federal or local taxpayers should pay the tab add to the conflict.

  “Disasters should be difficult to declare. . . . But once you get them, FEMA should not worry about cutting costs,” said Daniel A. Craig, who stepped down in October as head of FEMA’s recovery division and is now consulting for New Orleans. “Public entities are eligible for everything they have lost due to the disaster. It is not up to FEMA to cut corners or makes sure money is saved.”

  Gil H. Jamieson, FEMA’s deputy director for Gulf Coast recovery, agreed that “we’re in this to rebuild the city” and added: “We are not in it to delay for the sake of delay. Are there folks who sometimes hose it up? Absolutely. But I think we’re doing a good job of helping it recover.”

  The disputes come as the costliest part of the recovery begins: restoring water, power, roads, bridges, schools and other public facilities along the Gulf Coast. Agency veterans said the spending will have more impact on the physical rebuilding of the Gulf area than anything else FEMA does over the next decade, possibly eclipsing its role in aiding individual victims of the storm.

  The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, for instance, sustained $446 million in storm losses, said Executive Director Marcia St. Martin. But FEMA has committed just $113 million so far.

  FEMA notes that New Orleans promised U.S. environmental regulators $640 million in repairs before Katrina, and that the antiquated system is too big for the Crescent City’s reduced population.

  “That’s what makes a city — if you don’t have water, sewer and drainage, you don’t have a city,” lamented Robert Jackson, spokesman for the sewer board. “The money so far only scratches the surface of the devastation.

  Hat Tip: Susie @ Suburban Guerrilla

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Tags: Thursday Thirteen, Internet, Hurricane Katrina, FEMA, aid money, Gil H. Jamieson, Daniel A. Craig, Gulf Coast recovery, New Orleans, Islamofascism, George W. Bush, Muslims, women in the media, Support the Troops, defense appropriation bill, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, Iraq, Afghanistan, Congress, Pentagon, Lower 9th Ward, National Hurricane Canter, 9/11, Max Mayfield, Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah, terrorism, Ann Jones, Taliban, NATO, Christians, American Dream, Martin Niemoller, Germany, Nazis, Rocky Anderson, Utah, Salt Lake Tribune, patriotism, lie, Walter Jones, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Caddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld

Recommended Reading - 07/28/07

• Special Analysis: The Sacrifice of Pawns — Big Brass Blog has a memorial to the 1967 bombing of The USS Liberty. For those of you who don’t know you’re history, it was throroughly laid to waste with 34 dead and 174 wounded on June 18, 1967 off the coast of Egypt. The attackers were our allies Israel and to this day there remain questions surrounding the why and whether it really was an accident.
• Pentagon sells excess military gear to anybody — Homeland Stupidity has a post about how Auditors from the Government Accountability Office have discovered just how easy it is to buy sensitive military equipment such as “ceramic body armor inserts currently used by deployed troops, a time selector unit used to ensure the accuracy of computer-based equipment, such as global positioning systems and system-level clocks, a universal frequency counter used to ensure that the frequency of communication gear is running at the expected rate, two guided missile radar test sets, at least 12 digital microcircuits used in F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft, and numerous other sensitive electronic parts.” And where would you buy such things? From the Department of Defense, of course. Makes you wonder if thd DoD is on Homeland Security’s watchlist.

Tags: USS Liberty, Israel, Conspiracy Theories, Defense Department, Pentagon, Homeland Security, Government Accountability Office

30% Of Gitmo Detainees Are Innocent

And so it continues. If it were innocent Americans being held indefinitely we’d be yelling and screaming and sending in troops. I guess we really are the bullies who don’t care what we do to anyone else.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 30 percent of the Guantanamo detainees have been cleared to leave the prison but remain jailed because the U.S. government has been unable to arrange for their return to their home countries, the Pentagon said on Friday. [“Nearly 30 percent at Guantanamo jail cleared to go” (Yahoo!News)]

Tags: Guantanamo Bay, detainees, innocent, Pentagon

Pentagon “Accidentally” Spying on Protestors…Again?

The Department of Defense admitted in a letter obtained by NBC News on Thursday that it had wrongly added peaceful demonstrators to a database of possible domestic terrorist threats. The letter followed an NBC report focusing on the Defense Department’s Threat and Local Observation Notice, or TALON, report.

Acting Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Roger W. Rogalski’s letter came in reply to a memo from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who had demanded answers about the process of identifying domestic protesters as suspicious and removing their names when they are wrongly listed.

“The recent review of the TALON Reporting System … identified a small number of reports that did not meet the TALON reporting criteria. Those reports dealt with domestic anti-military protests or demonstrations potentially impacting DoD facilities or personnel,” Rogalski wrote on Wednesday.

[…]

Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the Internet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.” [“Pentagon admits errors in spying on protestors” (MSNBC)]

Are we really expected to believe that these are just mistakes with the system? I mean, come on! The U.S. Military has a history of spying on American dissenters. During Vietnam, the military used American soldiers to inflitrate the anti-war movement to spy on Americans exercising their Constitutional freedom of speech. I just find it hard to believe that given the current atmosphere of terror and bullying from the current administration that this wouldn’t be overlooked or even encouraged behavior again. After all, if the President can do it…

Tags: politics, Conspiracy Theories, Pentagon, spying on Americans, protestors, TALON, NBC News, Defense Department

How The Pentagon Supports Our Re-enlisted

The Pentagon has reneged on its offer to pay a $15,000 bonus to members of the National Guard and Army Reserve who agree to extend their enlistments by six years, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Seattle).

The bonuses were offered in January to Active Guard and Reserve and military technician soldiers who were serving overseas. In April, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs ordered the bonuses stopped, Murray said.

“This is outrageous,” the senator said in a telephone interview. “It makes me angry that this administration has broken another promise to our troops.” [“When a bonus isn’t a bonus”]

What I want to know is if those Active Guard, Reserve, and military technician soldiers, who extended their enlistments because of the bonus, now have the opportunity to rethink their end of the deal and change their mind. If not, it sounds a little like bait and switch to me and more than a bit illegal. No wonder recruitment is at a 30-year low.

Hat tip to John in DC at AmericaBlog.

Tags: Pentagon, National Guard, Army Reserves

The Enemy Within Is Us

So, it turns out that many of our soldiers and reservists and National Guards are coming home with Uranium poisoning. One case was so bad that his unborn daughter had a condition common to those with radioactive exposure: atypical syndactyly, resulting in a hand with only two fingers. [“Radioactive Wounds of War” (In These Times)]

Now before you war-supporters start shouting “You see! WMD! We were right!”, it’s important to know that the exposure is courtesy of the U.S. military itself.

U.S. forces first used [Depleted Uranium] in the 1991 Gulf War, when some 300 tons of depleted uranium—the waste product of nuclear power plants and weapons facilities—were used in tank shells and shells fired by A-10 jets. A lesser amount was deployed by U.S. and NATO forces during the Balkans conflict. But in the current wars in Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq, DU has become the weapon of choice, with more than 1,000 tons used in Afghanistan and more than 3,000 tons used in Iraq. And while DU was fired mostly in the desert during the Gulf War, in the current war in Iraq, most of DU munitions are exploding in populated urban areas.

The Pentagon has expanded DU beyond tank and A-10 shells, for use in bunker-busting bombs, which can spew out more than half a ton of DU in one explosion, in anti-personnel bomblets, and even in M-16 and pistol shells. The military loves DU for its unique penetration capability—it cuts through steel or concrete like they’re butter.

The problem is that when DU hits its target, it burns at a high temperature, throwing off clouds of microscopic particles that poison a wide area and remain radioactive for billions of years. If inhaled, these particles can lodge in lungs, other organs or bones, irradiating tissue and causing cancers.

Worse yet, uranium is also a highly toxic heavy metal. Indeed, while there is some debate over the risk posed by the element’s radioactive emissions, there is no debate regarding its chemical toxicity. According to Mt. Sinai pathologist Thomas Fasey, who participated in the New York Guard unit testing, the element has an affinity for bonding with DNA, where even trace amounts can cause cancers and fetal abnormalities.

Dr. Doug Rokke, a health physicist at the University of Illinois who headed up a Pentagon study of depleted uranium weapons in the mid ’90s after concerns were raised during the Gulf War, concluded there was no safe way to use the weapons. Rokke says the Pentagon responded by denouncing him, after earlier commending his work. [“Radioactive Wounds of War” (In These Times)]

So, we are poisoning our own brave soldiers who we asked to go to war to fight the noble fight.

According to Dr. Rokke, a former Army health physicist, individuals suffering from depleted uranium exposure “include reactive airway disease, neurological abnormalities, kidney stones and chronic kidney pain, rashes, vision degradation and night vision losses, lymphoma, various forms of skin and organ cancer, neuropsychological disorders, uranium in semen, sexual dysfunction and birth defects in offspring.” [“Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium” (Seattle PI)]

But wait, there’s more. The Pentagon does not want to acknowledge the danger and the U.S. soldiers who may have been contaminated are getting the run-around when they ask to be tested. Without testing, it’s unlikely they’ll receive proper treatment as well.

“When we asked to be tested at Ft. Dix, they wrongly told us we didn’t have to worry unless we had DU fragments in our body,” says Matthew. His buddy, Sgt. Ramos, who exhibits symptoms resembling radiation sickness and heavy metal poisoning, adds that at Walter Reed Medical Center he was grilled for hours about why he wanted to be tested and was then branded a troublemaker by his own unit. Matthew says Walter Reed “lost” his sample. [“Radioactive Wounds of War” (In These Times)]

This is how our patriotic servicemen are being treated. We are constantly told to support our troops, but apparently that only applies to the general public; the Pentagon is exempt from supporting our troops and doing the right thing by them. Have we become such a throw-away culture that our military considers the troops so disposable? “Thank you for risking your life in a foreign country, sorry we knowingly poisoned you, but don’t expect any medical treatment.” Once again, I feel like I can support my troops without supporting those in charge. Obviously those in charge don’t have our troops best interests at heart.

Fortunately not everyone feels that way…Several states are trying to pass legislation to force the Pentagon to provide the contamination tests as requested and at their own expense.

Connecticut State Representative Pat Dillon (D-New Haven), a Yale-trained epidemiologist, has crafted state-level legislation that Connecticut and Louisiana have unanimously passed, authorizing returned National Guard troops to request and receive specialized DU contamination tests at the Pentagon’s expense. This approach bypasses the Pentagon’s feet-dragging because National Guard troops fall under state, rather than federal, jurisdiction.

“This was not a Democratic or a Republican issue,” Dillon says. “These are our kids and someone needs to protect them.” [“Radioactive Wounds of War” (In These Times)]

Worldwide and national attempts to ban the use of depleted uranium in warfare appear to have been blocked by the U.S. and the Department of the Defense. At lease our government/military is “staying the course”, right?

Also in 1999, a United Nations subcommission considered DU hazardous enough to call for an initiative banning its use worldwide. The initiative has remained in committee, blocked primarily by the United States, according to Karen Parker, a lawyer with the International Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project, which has consultative status at the United Nations.

Parker, who first raised the DU issue in the United Nations in 1996, contends that DU “violates the existing law and customs of war.”

She said there are four rules derived from all of humanitarian law regarding weapons:

• Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle, defined as legal military targets of the enemy in war. Weapons may not have an adverse effect off the legal field of battle.
• Weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A weapon that is used or continues to act after the war is over violates this criterion.
• Weapons may not be unduly inhumane.
• Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment.

“Depleted uranium fails all four of these rules,” Parker said last week.

On Oct. 17, 2001, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., introduced a bill calling for “the suspension of the use, sale, development, production, testing, and export of depleted uranium munitions pending the outcome of certain studies of the health effects of such munitions. . . .”

More than a year later, the bill — co-sponsored by Reps. Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.; Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; Barbara Lee, D-Ca.; and Jim McDermott, D-Wash. — remains in committee awaiting comment from the Defense Department. [“Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium” (Seattle PI)]

One way or another, the Pentagon will pay a price. “DU is a war crime. It’s that simple,” Rokke says. “Once you’ve scattered all this stuff around, and then refuse to clean it up, you’ve committed a war crime.” [“Radioactive Wounds of War” (In These Times)]

Yeah, bet you forgot about the fact that we’re using these weapons in a country we’re supposed to be liberating. We’re leaving them a very special legacy. But at least we got Saddam out of power. In the end that’s all that matters.

“But if you’re going to be fighting wars for the goal of winning hearts and minds and bringing democracy and the altruistic things we associate with the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the last thing you want to be doing is poisoning the people you’re trying to help.” [“Is the Pentagon giving our soldiers cancer?” (Rolling Stone, 2005)]

Although the Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, Iraqi doctors believe that it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in the region. [“Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium” (Seattle PI)]

…in 1989 there were 11 per 100,000 births; in 2001 there were 116 per 100,000 births — that even before they heard about DU, had doctors in southern Iraq making comparisons to the birth defects that followed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII.

There were photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs outside their bodies, without sexual organs, without spines, and the list of deformities went on and on. There also were photos of cancer patients.

Cancer has increased dramatically in southern Iraq. In 1988, 34 people died of cancer; in 1998, 450 died of cancer; in 2001 there were 603 cancer deaths.

On a tour of one ward of the hospital, doctors pointed out boys and girls who were suffering from leukemia. Most of the children die, the doctors said, because there are insufficient drugs available for their treatment. [“Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium” (Seattle PI)]

*sigh*

Tags: depleted uranium poisoning, American soldiers, Iraq, Pentagon, Defense Department

More On The Iraq Death Tolls

Back in February, Susan of Suburban Guerrilla had quite a bit to say on the true number of deaths resulting from the war in Iraq. She has done quite a bit of research on the subject and claims that the pentagon and the Bush Administration are fiddling with the numbers to make them appear lower. She suggests that only American citizens are included in the count, despite a large number of immigrants who were recruited with the promise of a Green Card. She suggests that people who die on missions but not actually in battle are not counted in the tally. She also suggests they’re fiddling with the casualty totals.

Oh, and this quote from an article found on VeteransForPeace.org completely flabberghasts me:

A soldier who served in Iraq apparently hung himself with a bedsheet last week at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, but the Pentagon did not count that death two days later when it announced “a very small increase” in the suicide rate from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

It also did not count an Operation Iraqi Freedom soldier who apparently committed suicide at the same military hospital last July. The Pentagon said it is not counting suicides among troops who killed themselves after they left Iraq.

Tags: Iraq, politics, Pentagon, Conspiracy Theories