From:
Common Dreams Published on Friday, October 21, 2005 by the
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
by Michael Gawenda
After his meeting with the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, President George Bush told the press conference he would answer two questions.
A score of hands shot up, but every question was the same: how was Bush managing to do his job with scandals and problems plaguing his Administration?
How could he not be distracted, with the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, indicted on corruption and conspiracy charges; the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, being investigated over insider share trading; Harriet Miers, his nominee for the Supreme Court, under attack by conservatives of all stripes; and above all, the CIA leak investigation by the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald extended to the most senior White House officials, including the Vice-President, Dick Cheney?
With a bemused Abbas looking on, Bush could barely control his anger as he insisted that he was not distracted by "background noise".
It could lead to the indictment of Karl Rove and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, as well as other White House and Cheney staff. It might even destroy Cheney.
It began as an attempt by Administration officials to discredit the former diplomat Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband. Wilson had accused Bush and Cheney of basing their case for war in Iraq on intelligence they knew was false. The crisis now threatens to engulf Bush and will at the least seriously weaken his presidency.
"Of course the President is concentrating on the big issues, but the Fitzgerald investigation and the possible indictment of Rove and others is the big elephant in the room," one unnamed White House official told CNN.
Washington is abuzz with infighting, leaking by White House aides against each other and talk of indictments. They wonder if Fitzgerald has got a White House official to "roll" and implicate "co-conspirators".
This week, in an attempt to protect the President, White House aides leaked a story that Bush was furious with Rove back in 2003 for the clumsy and inept way Rove had tried to discredit Wilson. Several days later another leak claimed Rove and Libby had exchanged information about their contact with reporters about Plame in the days before Novak blew her cover.
Despite the rumors and leaks, no one knows what Fitzgerald - who runs a tight ship - will do. There have been hardly any leaks from his office.
Online bookmakers, as good a source as any, say the odds of Rove having to leave the White House have moved from from 6-1 to odds-on in recent weeks.
Wilson and Plame are in some ways an odd pair. Last year, they appeared in a picture spread in Vanity Fair, driving a flash convertible, her blonde hair peeking out from a fashionable headscarf, his raffishly long hair blowing in the breeze, looking more like a Hollywood power couple rather than an ex-diplomat and a CIA agent.
Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA, on the recommendation of his wife, in early 2002 to check claims that Niger was getting ready to send yellow cake uranium to Iraq.
More than a year later, after Bush in his state of the union speech in January 2003, said British intelligence had confirmed that Saddam Hussein was buying uranium for a nuclear weapons program from Africa, Wilson wrote an op-ed article for The New York Times accusing the Administration of knowingly using false intelligence about Saddam's alleged attempt to buy African uranium.
A few days later, Novak outed Plame and four months later, Fitzgerald was brought in to investigate who had leaked her name to Novak, which is a criminal offence. At the time, White House officials insisted that there had been no leaks from the Administration. And Bush said if there had been leaks from the White House, the people responsible would be fired.
Almost two years later, it is clear that a number of administration officials, including Rove and Libby, had indeed, at the very least, talked to reporters about Wilson being married to a CIA agent who had recommended him for the Niger mission.
The big question now, apart from who will be indicted by Fitzgerald on charges that could include perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy - all based on alleged lying to Fitzgerald's grand jury - is whether Cheney knew what Libby was doing and how much Bush knew about Rove's attempts to discredit Wilson.
At the least, it seems Rove's career might be over and Libby - an architect of the Bush Administration's "pre-emptive war" policy after September 11, 2001 - could end up in jail.
What would it mean if Rove was forced out of the White House? For more than 31 years, since Rove met Bush in Texas and starting planning his political career, the two have been virtually inseparable.
David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, who has argued that the President would never have nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court had Rove not been distracted by the Fitzgerald inquiry, says losing Rove would be a "devastating blow" to the White House.
"He is truly the indispensable man," he says. "The distraction over the past weeks with Hurricane Katrina and Harriet Miers offers a glimpse of White House decision-making without him."
As for Libby, once a hero of the neo-conservatives at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the Herald was unable to get any of the institute's leading lights to defend him on the record.
Off the record, one said that Libby was a brilliant man who, together with his mentor, the former deputy defence secretary and current World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, had provided the intellectual muscle for the war in Iraq and for Bush's unilateralist "pre-emptive war" policy.
If both Rove and Libby are forced out of the White House, the Administration, beset by so many problems and challenges, would be seriously weakened. And if Cheney was implicated it would be in uncharted waters.
Copyright © 2005.
The Sydney Morning Herald.
###
Common Dreams
A Web of Truth; Money for Katrina Aid from Cutting Welfare
From:
Truthout.orgA Web of Truthhttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101905D.shtmlBunny Greenhouse was once the perfect bureaucrat, an insider, the top procurement official at the US Army Corps of Engineers. In late August, she was demoted, her pay cut and her authority stripped. She and her lawyer say it's payback for her revelations about a politically connected company. Now Bunnatine Hayes Greenhouse is becoming one of the most unusual things known in the upper echelons of government and industry - a top-shelf bureaucrat who is telling all she knows.
Harold Meyerson | $ for Katrina Aid from Cutting Welfarehttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101905E.shtmlHarold Meyerson: A revolt of House conservatives has persuaded that body's Republican leadership to offset the Hurricane Katrina-related federal spending by reducing Medicaid, food stamps and other programs for the indigent. If things go according to plan, this week the House will begin to cut $50 billion from those efforts. What we have here is an ideologically-driven dereliction of duty.
**More news, commentary, and photos here:
Truthout.org
My Technocrati Profile
Technorati Profile
Information Clearing HouseCharge Him or Release Him "Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." : Henry David Thoreau
Jose Padilla : U.S. Citizen Imprisoned Without Trial or Charges for 3 Years and 163 Days
===
Are we going to war with Iran? By Dan Plesch
The US army and marines are heavily committed in Iraq, but soldiers could be found if the Bush administration were intent on invasion. Donald Rumsfeld has been reorganising the army to increase front-line forces by a third. More importantly, naval and air force firepower has barely been used in Iraq. Just 120 B52 and stealth bombers could target 5,000 points in Iran with satellite-guided bombs in just one mission. It is for this reason that John Pike of globalsecurity.org thinks that a US attack could come with no warning at all.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10651.htm ===
Money for Nothing Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets.
By Philip Giraldi
When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10659.htm ===
The Mindless American: A Tragedy In The Making by Doug Soderstrom
In Hitler’s Germany there was a determined effort to brainwash the people so they might support Mein Fuhrer’s efforts to conquer the world. However, what if one were to suggest that much the same is occurring in the United States of America, that there has been a determined effort through the socializing influence of our schools, the government, the mass media, the churches we attend, even that of our own parents, to pressure us into believing (just as Hitler) that our country has received the blessing of God.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10653.htm ===
Iraqis Say 25 Civilians Killed in U.S. Raids: Including 18 children: In all, residents and hospital workers said, 39 civilians and at least 13 armed insurgents were killed in a day of U.S. airstrikes in Ramadi.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10662.htm ===
U.S. Air Strikes Kill 20 Iraqi Civilians: Airstrikes by American jets and helicopters killed at least 20 Iraqi civilians and injured another 15 people during a weekend anti-insurgent military operation in the western city of Ramadi, according to interviews today with local police officers and a doctor who treated the injured.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10650.htm ===
Killing With Impunity: Nine-Second Coverage For Dozens of Dead Iraqi Women and Children
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/ ===
2 U.S. Marines Among 13 Killed In Continuing Violence: Police said they found the bodies of six members of the Mehdi army, a militia loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in a river bed at Balad
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PAR824030.htm ===
Voting Tallies Provoke Investigation : In six Shiite-majority provinces in the South, 95 percent or more of voters are reported as having cast votes favoring the constitution.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10652.htm ===
Iraq vote result announcement delayed, fraud alleged : "The fraud was so well-executed it exceeded their wildest expectations," said Mishaan Jabouri.
http://tinyurl.com/7tbsm ===
Dahr Jamail : “Elections” and other Deceptions in Iraq: The vote had many similarities to the farce which took place on January 30-aside from a repeat of the draconian measures to provide security and quite a large dose of propaganda; we once again have what already appears to be rampant election fraud.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10655.htm ===
The carve-up of Iraq will spawn a redivision of the Middle East : The adoption of a weak Iraqi federal constitution is likely to unleash an ethnic and sectarian crisis across the region
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1594437,00.html ===
Pro-War Votes May Haunt Democrats : Potential Democratic presidential candidates who voted to give President Bush the authority to use force in Iraq could face a political problem - they supported a war that their party's rank-and-file now strongly view as a mistake.
http://snipurl.com/iob3 ===
Iran says arrested British agent for twin bombings : An individual arrested in connection with Saturday’s twin bombings in the south-western city of Ahwaz has confessed to have received British training in Iraq to carry out the attacks, the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) deputy for the oil-rich city announced on Monday.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10656.htm ===
In case you missed it:
Video: Noam Chomsky Edinburgh Lecture: "Illegal but Legitimate: a dubious doctrine for the times."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8377.htm ===
Scott McClellan Says Helen Thomas Opposes 'War on Terrorism' : Questions today from longtime White House reporter Helen Thomas caused White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to declare that she opposes the war on terrorism. His response caused one of Thomas's colleagues, Terry Moran, to leap to her defense. Here is the exchange from the official transcript:
http://snipurl.com/iob5 ===
'Bad omens' for the White House : On top of all President George W Bush's other political worries and woes is the looming prospect that two of his most trusted and powerful advisers might be forced to resign and face criminal charges.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4353070.stm ===
Senior White House Officials Face Prospect of Life in Prison for Outing of CIA Agent Plame : By going after Wilson and his wife, those officials apparently committed serious crimes which they then compounded by obstructing justice and committing and suborning perjury.
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=55142 ===
CIA leak probe 'widening to include use of intelligence': Evidence is building that the probe conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald, special prosecutor, has extended beyond the leaking of a covert CIA agent's name to include questioning about the administration's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ff92e968-3f4b-11da-932f-00000e2511c8.html ===
Senior Democrats call for explanation of reporter's 'WMD clearance': Two senior Democrats have called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to explain an apparent "top secret" clearance given to New York Times reporter Judith Miller while she was on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
http://snipurl.com/inx9** Read more unfiltered, spin-free news and commentary at:
Information Clearing House
From:
Information Clearing House=
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.": Joseph Goebbels was born in 1897 and died in 1945. Goebbels was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda
=
"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.": Abraham Lincoln
Leading Historian Says U.S. ‘Empire’ To Fail
By LEV MENAND10/20/05 "Harvard Crimson" -- -- The American empire may actually cause disorder, barbarism, and chaos rather than promote peace and order, one of the world’s leading historians, Eric J. Hobsbawm, explained last night to a packed crowd at Lowell Lecture Hall.
While he didn’t take a final stance on that issue, Hobsbawm’s lecture on the differences between the American empire and the British empire was notable for his assertion that America is an empire destined for failure.
While many other historians do not consider America to be an empire, Hobsbawm argued yesterday that it is.
Concepts of imperialism and empire are “in flat contradiction to the traditional political self-definition of the U.S.A.,” Hobsbawm said, however, “there is no precedent for the global supremacy that the U.S. government is trying to establish.”
The American empire “will almost certainly fail,” Hobsbawm said. “Will the U.S. learn the lesson [of the British Empire] or will it try to maintain an eroding global position by relying on a failing political force and a military force which is insufficient for the present purposes which the current American government claims it is designed?”
Hobsbawm addressed America’s past and present foreign policy in his speech, the second of three William E. Massey lectures this week sponsored by Harvard’s Program in the History of American Civilization.
This year’s theme, crafted by Professor of History Sven Beckert, is the “American Empire in Global Perspective,” and features speeches from the perspective of three foreigners, Hobsbawm, who is from England, Jayati Ghosh, from India, and Carlos Monsivais, from Mexico.
Past Massey lecturers have included, Richard Rorty, Toni Morrison, Gore Vidal, and Alfred Kazin.
Mentioning the work of Tisch Professor of History Niall C. Ferguson and Weatherhead University Professor Samuel P. Huntington, Hobsbawm drew clear distinctions between his owns views and their theories.
“Unlike people like me, he regrets it,” Hobsbawm said, referring to Ferguson’s opinion of the end of the American empire.
He spoke at length on the crucial differences between the American hegemony and the British empire, focusing on their different foundations. Britain had an economy-based empire and never tried to dominate the world, he said, realizing that “they were a middle-weight country” that could only hold on to the “heavy-weight title” for so long.
The U.S. empire, on the other hand, was not created through economic dominance but crafted through political means, according to Hobsbawm. He pointed to this as the U.S.’s “biggest strength and weakness,” since the political forces that hold the empire together may not necessarily last.
He said that from its roots in the Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. has never viewed itself as a part of an international system of rival political powers. It lacks a foundation myth, Hobsbawm said, which is the basis for most other current nation states.
“Since the U.S.A. was founded by revolution against Britain, the only continuity between them that was not shaken was culture,” he explained, “so the national identity couldn’t very well be historical...[rather] it had to be constructed out of its revolutionary ideology.”
After graduating from the University of Cambridge in 1939, Hobsbawm went on to hold teaching positions at the University of London, the New School, Stanford, MIT, and Cornell. His most acclaimed book, “The Age of Extremes”—a history of the 20th century—has been translated into 36 languages.
Faced with the question of the future of the American empire, Hobsbawm concluded: “I’m an historian, I’m not a prophet. Don’t ask me that question.”
Copyright © 2005,
The Harvard Crimson, Inc**PLEASE READ AND SUPPORT
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From:
http://www.buzzflash.comWell, Patrick Fitzgerald, as we have observed, runs a tight leak-proof investigation, unlike the Ken Starr Torquemada Special Counsel's office, which illegally leaked like a sieve to advance the right wing political coup against Clinton. So when you read about "leaks," they aren't coming from the U.S. Attorney, they are coming from primarily lawyers for the different potential "targets" in the TreasonGate investigation.
Today's big leak, which appears to be from Rove's lawyer, is particularly significant and telling, because it publically positions Rove as blaming Libby for identifying Valerie Plame to him. It indicates that the thieves are falling out and starting to look out for themselves by pointing fingers elsewhere. This is a stunning story, because it reveals that the "targets" are expecting to be indicted -- and that their lawyers are starting to "spin" a post indictment strategy.
But perhaps even more significant is our lead story this morning, in which Colin Powell's top aide at the State Department blasted Cheney and Rumsfeld as leaders of a secret "cabal," bent on running a shadow government accountable to no one. The aide launched a lacerating critique of Bush's foreign policy, saying it undermined our national security. He also tossed in tidbit observations, such as Condi Rice is nothing more than a kiss ass whose objective was to flatter Bush and go along with whatever he said in order to advance her career and power. Sounds like the Harriet Miers technique to us. Read it. It is the biggest inside blast revealing how the Bush Administration has made us less secure as a nation yet.
Also, although the aide says he is speaking for himself, we take this as Powell's way of distancing himself and his staff from what he perceives as upcoming revelations from Fitzgerald's investigation.
This sort of rushed, last-minute pointing of fingers is the strongest indication yet that the Busheviks are taking the likelihood of indictments -- and their implications for the reputations of everyone associated with the Bush Administration foreign policy -- very, very seriously.
MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH STORY: Colin Powell's Former Top State Department Aide Says that Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world Ray McGovern:Chickens Come Home to Roost on CheneyPeople Under Threat of Indictment and Their Lawyers are Starting to Leak to Reporters Their Clients' Spin to Position Themselves Vis a Vis Other Possible Busheviks Facing Indictment. In this Case, If You Read it Closely, It Looks Likes Rove's Lawyer (AKA, Anonymous Source) is Trying to Blame It on Libby. The Thieves Fall Out. 10/20Did Bush lie to the special prosecutor in the PlameGate investigation? 10/20Margaret Cho BuzzFlash Premium: "I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight." (Book)**
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Tomgram: Facing a Nameless War
Name That WarBy Tom Engelhardt
In September 2001, the President announced that we were at war with terrorism. It was to be a conflict far longer than World War II, a titanic generational struggle more in line with the Cold War in its prospective length. It was a war that naturally deserved a name. Administration officials promptly gave it the somewhat less than sonorous, slightly tongue-twisting label of the Global War on Terrorism, which translated quickly into the inelegant acronym GWOT. That name would be used endlessly in official pronouncements, news conferences, and interviews, but never quite manage to catch on with the public. So somewhere along the line, administration officials and various neocon allies began
testing out other monikers -- among them, World War IV, the Long War, and the Millennium War -- none of which ever got the slightest bit of traction.
In the meantime, the President launched his war of choice in Iraq, an invasion given the soaring name Operation Iraqi Freedom. What followed -- from the days of unrestrained looting after Baghdad fell to the present violent and chaotic moment -- has gone strangely nameless. Perhaps this was because the administration had been so certain that the invasion would shock-and-awe sufficiently to be the end of it, or perhaps because Operation Iraqi Occupation (to pick a name) ran so against the idea that we were liberating the Iraqi people. Instead, well into our third year of combat in Iraq, we find ourselves in an unnamed war -- rarely even called the Iraq War -- spiraling into nowhere. Just in the last week,
23 American soldiers died in combat; the American Air Force was
let loose to bomb parts of the city of Ramadi and environs, bombings in which children died;
mortars fell in Baghdad's Green Zone; and numerous Iraqis including
6 Shiite factory workers, 3 election commission officials, and 2 bodyguards of the governor of Anbar Province died in drive-by shootings or attacks of various sorts.
And yet none of this has a name. Perhaps the namelessness acted as a distancing mechanism, one of a number that, for long periods, have allowed the war to fall out of the headlines as well as American consciousness, while the dead and wounded (unless killed in staggering numbers on any given day) head for the deep middle of the newspaper. As the British in imperial days once dealt at arm's length with endless border wars in distant lands while life continued at home, so perhaps Americans responded to this nameless war once it turned sour. What makes this so strange, however, is that the particular "borderland," the global periphery, the Bush administration picked for its war lay, of course, right smack in the middle of the oil heartlands of an increasingly energy-thirsty planet. Under the circumstances, it may be worth taking a moment to consider what names might be applied to our war in Iraq and what they might reveal about our situation.
The Precipice War? "Publicly, administration officials hailed the result but privately some officials acknowledged that the road ahead is still very difficult, especially because Sunni Arab voters appeared to have rejected the constitution by wide margins. As one official put it, every time the administration appears on the edge of a precipice, it manages to cobble together a result that allows it to move on to the next precipice."
The edge of a precipice -- an image offered to the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler by one of those anonymous officials who always seem so omnipresent in Washington, and included in a post-Iraqi-election piece headlined,
For U.S., a Hard Road Is Still Ahead in Iraq. (Is that the hard road to or from the precipice?)
Click here to read more of this dispatch.**Read more articles by Tom Engelhardt here:
TomDispatch.com
** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** Visit the Dahr Jamail Iraq website
http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
** Website by
http://jeffpflueger.com **
CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE
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civilians as they endured the violent clashes and consequences of
Operation Phantom Fury and became refugees outside the eyes and
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ON SALE NOW $24.95 Purchase the DVD Here:http://www.conceptionmedia.net/ Proceeds from the sale of this film go directly to aid the innocent
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You may also find a link to view trailer and purchase this film:
Here
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/multi_media _______________________________________________
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
All images, photos, photography and text are protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to the
http://DahrJamailIraq.com website. Website by photographer Jeff Pflueger's Photography Media
http://jeffpflueger.com . Any other use of images, photography, photos and text including, but not limited to, reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free to forward Dahr's dispatches via email.
More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images at
http://dahrjamail.iraq.com
From:
Truthout.org By Suzanne Gamboa
The Associated Press
Wednesday 19 October 2005 A Texas court on Wednesday issued a warrant for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's arrest, and set an initial $10,000 bail as a routine step before his first court appearance on conspiracy and state money laundering charges.
Travis County court officials said DeLay was ordered to appear at the Fort Bend County, Texas, jail for booking, where he'd likely be fingerprinted and photographed. DeLay's lawyers had hoped to avoid such a spectacle.
The warrant, known as a capias, is "a matter of routine and bond will be posted," DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin said.
The lawyer declined to say when DeLay would surrender to authorities but said the lawmaker would make his first court appearance Friday morning.
The charges against the Texas Republican stem from allegations that a DeLay-founded Texas political committee funneled corporate money into state GOP legislative races through the National Republican Party.
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Read article with a picture of the ad at:
Truthout.orgWarwick - If creating a buzz is rule No. 1 in advertising, then an anonymous Warwick Valley High School sophomore has a bright future. Set on a backdrop of neat rows of tombstones, a full-page ad in October's The Survey, Warwick Valley High School's monthly student-run newspaper, reads:
You can't be all that you can be if you're dead. There are other ways to serve your country. There are other ways to get money for college. There are other ways to be all you can be.
"Think about it. Before you sign your life away."
The ad was created and paid for by a Warwick student who is a member of the Bruderhof community, a Christian-based communal order in Sugar Loaf that preaches pacifism. And since appearing last week, the ad has sparked controversy in the school district and the community and provoked lively First Amendment debates among students and teachers in the classroom.
The ad was approved by the school's journalism teacher and faculty adviser for The Survey, Denise Markt, and Randy Barbarash, the school's principal.
"I knew the ad would be controversial, but we felt it had a place in our publication as a matter of free speech," Barbarash said. "It has definitely been the source of some lively discussion in the classrooms."
Chris Zimmerman, a member of the Bruderhof community, said the order, while it supports the student's effort and the ad's message, played no role in the ad's creation or placement.
Calling it a political ad with religious ties, some parents, faculty members and students say the ad undercuts those serving in the military and shouldn't have appeared in a tax-funded public school newspaper.
Many opposed to the ad noted the school's "Wall of Honor," which displays photos and names of about 20 recent Warwick graduates currently serving in the military, many of whom are in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Maggie Adams, the Warwick High nurse, who has two sons who graduated from Warwick and are serving in the Marines, said she was outraged when she first saw the ad and has written a letter to the editor of The Survey.
"I understand the right to free speech and I support that. But I don't think it's appropriate for a school newspaper," Adams said. "I refuse to believe what the ad says. I refuse to believe those people who choose to join the military, like my two sons, are wasting their lives."
Army Capt. William Bliss, in charge of recruiting at Warwick High, said the ad was misleading and the Army is exploring placing some of its own ads in The Survey.
"It's disappointing when you see something that blatantly attacks what you do and what you believe in a school newspaper," Bliss said. "But it's free speech, ideas and thoughts like that, whether you agree or not, the military is fighting to protect."
The ad cost $50 and was part of a year-long buy totaling $450. The student was planning to create a string of different ads on various subjects for the year.
While Barbarash said administrators have yet to determine if the controversial ad would run again, Zimmerman said the student has been told by school officials the district was pulling the ad for future issues.
Zimmerman said the Bruderhof community supports veterans, the military and the government, but also democratic dissent.
"The ad wasn't meant to create hate or anger," Zimmerman said. "It was to get people to think and discuss and it seems to be doing just that."
Truthout.org
Tomdispatch Interview: Juan Cole on Withdrawal from Iraq
[Note to Tomdispatch readers: Part 1 of the Juan Cole interview, "The Treasure, the Strongbox, and the Crowbar," can be read by clicking here. Tom] Throwing Grenades in the Global Economic Cockpit
A Tomdispatch Interview with Juan Cole (Part 2)On September 22nd, Tomdispatch posted a piece by Michael Schwartz,
Why Immediate Withdrawal Makes Sense, which ended:
"American withdrawal would undoubtedly leave a riven, impoverished Iraq, awash in a sea of weaponry, with problems galore, and numerous possibilities for future violence. The either/or of this situation may not be pretty, but on a grim landscape, a single reality stands out clearly: Not only is the American presence the main source of civilian casualties, it is also the primary contributor to the threat of civil war in Iraq. The longer we wait to withdraw, the worse the situation is likely to get -- for the U.S. and for the Iraqis."
The next day, at his
Informed Comment website, Juan Cole posted
a response in which he wrote, "I just cannot understand this sort of argument," and then laid out the nature of his disagreement with it in some detail. This started several days of debate among various experts, scholars, and bloggers at his site (and elsewhere) which resulted in Cole rethinking his position somewhat and issuing
an eloquent call for American ground troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. (If you haven't read it, you should!)
This debate and discussion provides the basis for the second half of Tomdispatch's interview with Cole. My own thoughts on withdrawal can be found at
Withdrawal on the Agenda, a June 2005 updating of a piece,
Time of Withdrawal, I wrote six months after the fall of Baghdad. You should also know that I consider the "nightmare scenario" Cole lays out below but one (frightening) possibility in Iraq's future. Based on memories of the Vietnam era, I'm wary of all predictions about the horrors that are bound to occur if the United States were to withdraw, or withdraw too quickly, as well as fears of a "bloodbath-to-come." This is a complex issue I hope to take up in a dispatch later in the week. Meanwhile, onward.
Tomdispatch: Now I want to turn to the issue of withdrawal. I've been particularly impressed that, at your site, you post your own intellectual development, so to speak -- and that includes putting up letters and essays by people who take you on. This is unbelievably rare. The reader can actually see a brain at work, regularly reassessing a changing situation. It's been especially true on the question of the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq. Having gone back recently to read your site's earliest months, it's obvious that you've become fiercer and angrier as time has gone on in relation to the Bush administration. You recently wrote
a piece saying that U.S. ground troops must come out now, "for the good of Iraq, for the good of America." Would you discuss the development of your thoughts on this? Where are you now on the issue of withdrawal and how it might happen?
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
** Read more of Tom Engelhardt's intelligent, informative, profound Dispatches and Tomgrams at
Tomdispatch.com
International Tribunal on Haiti's Commission of Inquiry
Report from International Tribunal on Haiti's Commission of Inquiry
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalitionwww.answercoalition.org Subscribe: http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=ZcRPgjeOrV5Rq0iB4PsgIg.. ******************************
INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL ON HAITI'S COMMISSION OF INQUIRY
END THE OCCUPATION! In its call for the September 24 mass antiwar demonstration, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition raised the slogan "End Colonial Occupation from Iraq, to Palestine, to Haiti, and Everywhere" in addition to the demand, "Bring the Troops Home Now, Stop the War in Iraq." A significant delegation from the Haitian community participated in the September 24 demonstration in Washington, D.C. The International Tribunal on Haiti's Commission of Inquiry held its first meeting in Washington, DC on Friday, September 23, on the eve of the antiwar protests.
The Bush administration overthrew the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and imposed an occupation force and puppet government in Port-Au-Prince. The people in Haiti, like the people in Iraq, have been targeted by Bush's war for empire. They are heroically resisting the U.S., French, and U.N.-sponsored occupation. From the point of view of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, standing in solidarity with the Haitian people is a fundamental task of the U.S. antiwar movement.
Kim Ives, a journalist with Haïti Progrès and member of the Haiti Support Network (HSN), which sits on the A.N.S.W.E.R. Steering Committee, traveled to Haiti from October 6 to 11 as part of the International Tribunal on Haiti's Commission of Inquiry. The Commission was dispatched to gather evidence of and testimony about new massacres and other crimes against humanity committed in Haiti since Feb. 29, 2004, when U.S. soldiers kidnapped elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and flew him into exile.
Led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the Commission of Inquiry was announced at the opening session of the International Tribunal on Haiti held in Washington, DC on Sept. 23. The next session of the Tribunal will be held at Suffolk University in Boston on November 19, 2005. The Commission met with over 50 witnesses who told of massacres, summary executions, torture, arbitrary arrests and many other human rights abuses being carried out by Haitian police and foreign occupation troops. The Commission also interviewed Haitian National Police
(PNH) director Mario Andresol as well as a high-ranking officer in the U.N. Mission to Stabilize Haiti
(MINUSTAH).
The new testimony gathered is expected to lead to new indictments. The Tribunal has already indicted 21 individuals of the PNH, MINUSTAH, former "rebels," and U.S., French and Canadian armed forces. Those convicted will be sent to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, for international criminal prosecution.
During its stay, the Commission met primarily with eye-witnesses and the relatives of victims of massacres in Cité Soleil, Belair, Nazon, Solino, Carrefour, Canapé Vert, Pernal, and Belladère. Hours of testimony and evidence were videotaped, photographed and recorded.
At a Port-au-Prince press conference just before leaving Haiti, Commission members explained the origin and mission of the International Tribunal on Haiti, read from the prosecution's indictment, and gave some idea of whom they had been meeting with and what they were investigating.
Delegation leader Ramsey Clark condemned the "terrible police and military violence against the people of Haiti" in the framework of the Feb. 29, 2004 coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "It is absolutely imperative for the future of Haiti and to peace on earth that there be accountability for these crimes," he said. "If international forces under the auspices of the United Nations can come to Haiti and engage in systematic summary executions of its people, what place on earth will be safe from that power?"
"The truth about the actions of U.N. military forces and Haitian police acting in cooperation with their own gangs, which commit Murder, is essential to the future of this country," Clark said.
To read a report from the Commission of Inquiry, click here:http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=hJYUmMXy950KgUf15ynoTg.. To read Ramsey Clark's entire statement, click here:http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=ukIH0yZfyRn1J1m49orLeg.. **************************
HELP SUSTAIN THE WORK OF THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT BY MAKING A DONATION By making a much needed donation, you can help the antiwar movement to continue to grow in the crucial weeks and months ahead. With the great success of September 24, it is clear that we have the ear of the U.S. public. Now is the time to deepen our educational work, and truly spread the word. The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition is distributing 100,000 copies of a new four-page broadsheet that makes the connection between the Iraq war and the Bush administration's criminal negligence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The literature also informs people about a host of other issues, including Palestine and Haiti. We are circulating petitions in cities and towns around the country with the demand, "Bring the Troops Home Now." Please take a moment to make a generous to the antiwar movement as we move forward with this essential work, by clicking here:
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=A5k8HeazomCyA4tJSSN36g.. ******************
A.N.S.W.E.R. CoalitionAct Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.pephost.org/site/R?i=m8qtTScvVmNpW3SPe-zq4winfo@internationalanswer.orgNational Office in Washington DC: 202-544-3389
New York City: 212-533-0417
Los Angeles: 323-464-1636
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** Visit the Dahr Jamail Iraq website
http://dahrjamailiraq.com **
** Website by
http://jeffpflueger.com **
October 18, 2005 “Elections” and other Deceptions in Iraq
Just before Saturday’s so-called constitutional referendum vote in
occupied Iraq, one of my close friends in Baghdad wrote me, “I would
like to point out that we are three days away from the referendum, yet
very large sectors of Iraqi people couldn’t receive part of the five
million copies [of the constitution] from the UN, ie- they will not know
what the constitution contains. Subsequently, they will vote according
to their backgrounds or religious or political preferences. Many people
who will vote yes do not know why they will vote yes...what kind of vote
is this?”
The vote had many similarities to the farce which took place on January
30-aside from a repeat of the draconian measures to provide security and
quite a large dose of propaganda; we once again have what already
appears to be rampant election fraud.
Figures provided by several governorates have required Iraq’s
independent electoral commission (IEC) to order (under heavy Sunni
political pressure) “re-examination, comparison and verification because
they [voter turnout figures] are relatively high compared with
international averages for elections” of this kind; according to a
statement made by the IEC on Monday.
This occurred rather inconveniently after US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice’s nearly instantaneous belief that the constitution
“has probably been passed.”
I have little doubt that the constitution will still be passed, despite
what the IEC referred to in findings showing “that figures from most
provinces were too high,” referencing voter turnout. Not surprisingly, a
source close to the commission stated, “The problems are not in Sunni
Arab zones,” as reported by Al-Jazeera.
Huge discrepancies are already reported in the Nineveh governorate,
which includes Mosul, showing that while sources close to the IEC were
quoted saying that 55% of the voters there voted against the
constitution, Abd al-Razaq al-Jiburi, the secretary general of the Iraqi
Independent Front said, “I have been informed by an employee of the
electoral high commission in Mosul that the voting for the constitution
has been ‘no.’”
He went on to add that his sources within the IEC said the “no” vote in
Nineveh ranged between 75-80%. This is a critical governorate vote, with
Diyala and Salahedin governorates already appearing to have decisively
rejected the constitution, despite US military repression with ongoing
operations there, as well as in other predominantly Sunni governorates.
Keep in mind that the draft constitution can be rejected by a 2/3 “no”
vote occurring in three governorates.
How many people in the US will actually understand what is happening in
Iraq regarding this referendum vote? Most likely not many when we
consider the ongoing machinations occurring in US mainstream media
outlets. One of my friends in Baghdad who is working by gathering
information for one of these sources wrote me recently, “By the way, I
asked them to omit my name as a contributor to their articles because
the journalists they have writing them are not accurately reporting the
views of Iraqis on the ground.”
He concluded his email with, “Everybody from the family is good. Life
goes on as usual between the explosions. It is God who saves us.”
As usual, it isn’t only the Iraqis who are suffering from the illegal
occupation of their country. A National Guard soldier who has been in
Iraq for nearly a year writes me, “I needn’t tell you…how messed up
everything over here is. Regardless of the intentions of most soldiers
to do a good job and do what’s right, the organizational structure of
our presence here makes it very difficult. The nature of the
conflict--in terms of the insurgency, the attitude of our leadership,
and the demands placed on soldiers because of numbers and
resources—requires aggression where compassion and understanding are
necessary. And this is against a background of profiteering by KBR and
other contractors who are quite honestly raiding the American Treasury
in the name of “providing services.” I was opposed to this war from the
start; what I’ve seen has deepened that opposition into anger, anger
over the exploitation of both American soldiers and third-country
nationals for vain and venal reasons.”
A perfect example of the aggression he refers to occurred in Ramadi
yesterday. Residents claimed that several people, including children,
were congregating around the site where a US military vehicle was
destroyed and five soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on election day.
US warplanes conducted a strike on the crowd of two dozen people which
had gathered to look at the wreckage and strip it for scrap metal. The
military claimed that they were setting another roadside bomb in the
same location.
Dr. Bassem al-Dulaimi at the main hospital reported that he received 25
dead bodies which were the result of US aerial bombings. Other doctors
and Iraqi police officers reported that the dead were all civilians,
including children.
At least 14 other Iraqis were killed in US air strikes on a nearby village.
The US army stated that the air strikes conducted by US warplanes and
helicopters killed 70 “terrorists” during the air strikes in Ramadi and
surrounding locales, and also said that not one civilian was killed due
to their use of precision weapons.
Another doctor at Ramadi General Hospital who was tending to the dead
and wounded told reporters, “They are not terrorists. They were ordinary
people who were bombed by airplanes.”
Meanwhile, a delusional Mr. Bush told reporters during a recent meeting
with the Bulgarian President, “The way forward [in Iraq] is clear. The
political process will continue, with a constitution, if finally
ratified. And then an election, coupled with a security plan that
continues to train Iraqis so they do the fight.”
Bush is “staying the course” with his propaganda line of getting the
Iraqi army trained before the US can withdraw, despite his top US
commander in Iraq, US Army General George Casey, disclosing to the
Senate Armed Services Committee on September 29th that only one Iraqi
battalion was capable of operating independently.
But facts don’t sway our “resolute” Mr. Bush, who then on October 6th
during a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy said, “Today
there are more than 80 Iraqi army battalions fighting the insurgency
alongside our forces.”
So rather than listening to the delusions of Mr. Bush or the prophesies
of Condoleeza Rice, let us keep our eyes on the facts. Within the last
week we’ve had clashes on the border of Syria between the Syrian Army
and US military; the toll of dead US soldiers is now at least 1,976…with
at least 23 dead in just the last nine days and ten times that number
wounded, with over 110 dead Iraqi civilians in the same time period.
And, lest we forget, there is no timetable for withdrawal.
_______________________________________________
(c)2004, 2005 Dahr Jamail.
All images, photos, photography and text are protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to the
http://DahrJamailIraq.com website. Website by photographer Jeff Pflueger's Photography Media
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Annamarie
Tomdispatch Interview: Juan Cole on George Bush's Iraq
[Note to Tomdispatch readers: This is the fourth in an ongoing series of interviews at the site. The first three were with Howard Zinn, James Carroll, and Cindy Sheehan. Tom] The Treasure, the Strongbox, and the Crowbar
A Tomdispatch Interview with Juan Cole (Part 1)The man who starts my every on-line day is standing at the door. He's small-framed with short, wavy hair and fragile-looking specs. Nattily dressed in a dark suit and tie, he apologizes, as he enters, for being so formally togged out on a Sunday morning. As it happens, I'm but a pit stop on the way to an afternoon TV interview at the PBS program Great Decisions on one of his specialties, Iran.
This is, of course, Juan Cole. His website,
Informed Comment, first came on line in April 2002, almost a year before the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. As he recalls his life back then, "I was just a Midwestern college professor. I taught my courses and wrote my articles about the Middle East. My interests were in religious institutions, religious movements, especially Shiite Islam and Sunni modernism. I knew where these movements came from. I knew the history of the Shiite clergy in Najaf back to the eighteenth century. And I had lived in the Middle East off and on for a significant period of time. When my blog began, it was little more than gardening for me, a small hobby on the side to put up a few thoughts every once in a while, initially read by fifty to a hundred people a day." Now, it is counted among the top hundred blogs at Technorati.com, a site which follows such things, and may be one of the more linked to blogs on Earth. American reporters trapped in hotels in Baghdad read it regularly for the latest news from Iraq. The secret of his success? "I type fast," he says with a sly smile. "Seventy words a minute."
An "Army brat," with Arabic, Persian, and Urdu under his belt, a scholar who "can make something out of an Ottoman text," he teaches modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. He is exceedingly mild looking, mild-mannered, and quiet-spoken. Even his humor is hushed. He's ironic. The very name of his blog, he tells me, was meant as a quiet commentary on the "grandiose" blog titles people were then choosing back in 2002. And yet, as anyone who reads his blog knows, his mind is anything but mild. As a reasonable man increasingly appalled by the Bush administration and American policy in the Middle East, he can be, and often is, an impressively fierce essayist.
As he settles into an easy chair in my living room to await breakfast on a day when nature has once again dealt a horrific blow to humanity -- the Pakistani earthquake had just occurred -- he proceeds to tell me much I didn't know about the history and plate tectonics of the region. When asked a question, he pauses to formulate his response. It's rare in our world, but you can actually see him think. If you were a student with a penny of sense in your head, this is the man you would want for your professor. In fact, an hour and a half after our interview begins, as I click off my tape recorders, I feel I've only scratched the surface. There are reams of questions still to be asked -- perhaps on another day -- and the first Tomdispatch two-part interview to type up.
Tomdispatch: Do you sleep? This is a question your readers wonder about. Take October fourth. You put up four posts, time-stamped between six and six-thirty AM. By the time I'm up at seven you're always there.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
* Note: All of Tom Engelhardt's dispatches (Tomgram, Tomdispatch) are published on this site with the kind permission of the author. For more of Tom's exceptional dispatches, please go to
TomDispatch.com**Tom Engelhardt wrote a wonderful new book about how things work today in the "sleek factories of conglomerate book producers...",
"The Last Days of Publishing". To read author interview, reviews and blurbs, first pages of the novel, or to buy the book, go to
TomDispatch.com.
From Publishers Weekly: "A former editor at Pantheon Books, Englehardt (The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation) has penned an opinionated, nostalgic novel about the trials of a seasoned book editor in the information age. Rick Koppes, a literary purist, former commune resident..."
Read more
From:
The Nationby
RYAN GRIM[posted online on October 12, 2005]
As a campus police officer put Tariq Khan in a chokehold, a lunchtime crowd at George Mason University began egging the officer on. Chants of "Kick his ass! Kick his ass!" were intermingled with cries of "Punch him!" "Kick him!" and "Take him down!" Two students--one had earlier ripped a sign off Khan's chest, the other had repeatedly called him a "pussy"--and a computer-lab staff member assisted the officer in "apprehending" Khan, as university spokesperson Dan Walsch put it, by piling on top of him and twisting his body until he cried out in pain.
Khan, 27, a four-year Air Force veteran and a junior at GMU, had been walking through the Johnson Center on September 29 when he saw a Marine recruiter. He made up a sign, "Recruiters lie. Don't be deceived," and silently stood next to the recruiter's table. Less than thirty minutes later he found himself in the chokehold. Backup police dragged Khan from the building, and one of them pulled out pepper spray. "I'm being nonviolent, and this officer is going to pepper-spray me! If you have a cell phone, please take a picture," Khan says he shouted. Aimee Wells, a junior and a library staffer, says she pulled out her camera-phone and the officer put away the canister, saying, "Don't worry. Nobody's getting pepper-sprayed today."
Khan, a sociology major, was taken to the Fairfax County jail and charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing. While there, he says, one officer told him, "You people are the most dangerous people in the world." Another officer, he says, warned him that if he didn't behave, "They'll hang you up by your feet." Police photographs show a bruised and bloodied Khan. A campus investigation is under way into the actions of the police, the staff member and the students, but no charges have yet been brought. "Buz" Grover, the balding, gray-ponytailed computer lab staffer who jumped on Khan and pulled his arm back, looks about six-foot-six and weighs maybe 280 pounds. "I assisted the officer," he said, "but beyond saying anything else I think I should consult with the university first.... Basically, someone doesn't want to take responsibility for his actions, and I'm not inclined to help them do that."
Last semester, the counterrecruiting protest movement was just getting warmed up. New York's City College; William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey; San Francisco State University; and the University of California-Santa Cruz all saw confrontations that resulted in varying degrees of police and/or administrative action against counterrecruitment protesters. Though it's still early in the 2005-06 school year, the counterrecruiting movement has picked up serious steam nationwide, and is being met with angry--sometimes violent--reactions. "It's getting really ugly," says Liz Rivera Goldstein, chair of the
National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth and a mother of two draft-age sons.
The same week that Khan was arrested, student protesters in Wisconsin and western Massachusetts were met with similar displays of force. Ultimately, though, it may be Holyoke Community College (HCC), located in one of Massachusetts's poorest towns, the predominantly Puerto Rican Holyoke, that has recruiters the most worried. Protests against military recruitment may not be welcomed by recruiters on campuses in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Madison or Manhattan, but they're not unexpected. These campuses, based in deeply liberal areas, have a strong sense of community and a proud history of protest. Besides, well-educated liberals don't necessarily make the most fertile soil for recruitment. Says Holyoke sophomore Charles Peterson, "It's OK for Amherst or Hampshire College to have politics, but once working-class students start protesting, then state cops in riot gear get called in."
Community college students tend to be less affluent than their four-year peers, making them easier targets for the low-wage military. "That's why [recruiters] prey on HCC," says Peterson, 24, a student senate vice president, citing the school's large Hispanic and African-American populations. "They're everywhere on campus." Compounding their vulnerability, community colleges are less organized, for the simple reasons that the tenure of students rarely runs past two years and students commute to class instead of living on campus. Mobilizing a fleeting class of impoverished commuters would try a professional organizer's mettle--for 20-year-olds the challenge is daunting. So Army National Guard recruiters may have been a bit disturbed to see fifteen to twenty protesters from the Antiwar Coalition--a chapter of the
Campus Antiwar Network--surround their table on September 29 at HCC, the same day Tariq Khan was being dragged out of the George Mason University student center.
The protest had been preannounced; state police in riot gear were waiting for them, say demonstrators. Boxes marked "gas masks" sat on the ground nearby. It was a show of force stronger than the four-year schools have seen. Accounts vary as to what exactly happened, but the chaos ensued when campus police chief Peter Mascaro grabbed a sign from a student. The college claims the sign had a wooden stick taped to it, making it inappropriate for the demonstration. The students say video footage clearly shows there was no stick. Mascaro's reaction, they say, was to the sign's admittedly provocative content: "Cops Are Hypocrites."
Peterson won't comment on what happened because of possible criminal charges, but HCC spokesperson Erica Broman claims he told the college he was trying to help the student whose sign was grabbed from falling. According to Broman, he grabbed and bruised an officer's arm. "The officer gave him pepper spray, which, of course, subdued him," Broman says. Peterson was banned from campus. A student who witnessed the pepper-spraying rejects the university's claim, as do accounts of the incident online. The student asked not to be identified. "They recognized that I was in a leadership position and attacked me when they got the opportunity," says Peterson, who is an outspoken critic of the war on campus. A week later, nearby University of Massachusetts-Amherst students jointly organized a march with their Holyoke counterparts in support of Peterson, who has since been allowed back on campus.
Peterson says he has been told that criminal charges have been filed, but he has not received official notice of them. Khan, who is married, faces a November 14 court date and is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. It was during his last year in the military, he says, when he was stationed at Osan Air Base in Korea, that he first became politically aware. "There were a lot of protests outside the base," he says, "and they were always chanting, 'Yankees go home!' " I wondered, Why are we here, if they don't even want us here?" He says he began reading Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and began questioning the military system. "I had always known there were a lot of jerks around, but I didn't recognize the whole system behind it, why all these people are jerks." He has since written a pamphlet based on his Air Force experiences--"3 Good Reasons Not to Join the Military."
On September 26, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about twenty-five student protesters were threatened with arrest as they peaceably assembled at a CIA/Marine/Air Force recruiting table during a job fair. They were told by police they were violating campus policy, says Ben Ratliffe, a senior and member of the campus Stop the War Coalition, but they wouldn't say which policy. "I'm not going to debate you on this. You have three minutes before you're all arrested," Ratliffe, a cultural anthropology major, says the officer told the group. When he and his partners reached for their handcuffs, the group ran out of the building. The students returned to similarly greet Navy recruiters on October 10, and were met by fifteen to twenty cops. "They were ready," says Ratliffe. He says they were given the same vague threat and left again. Dennis Chaptman, a school spokesperson, says the students violated section 18.06(30) of the code, which covers pretty much anything: "No person may engage in violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, unreasonably loud or otherwise disorderly conduct under circumstances in which the conduct tends to cause or provoke a disturbance, in university buildings or on university lands."
At UC-Santa Cruz last spring, student protests against the war caused recruiters to leave a job fair. With the momentum from that victory, students set up a tent city at the university's gates; one of its goals was to permanently bar recruiters from campus. Police arrested nineteen people the first night. And at San Francisco State University, two antiwar groups were sanctioned for what members described as petty, trumped-up charges that stemmed from demonstrations they held against Air Force and Army Corps of Engineers recruiters. The groups are still on probation, and had university funding pulled. According to student organizer Kristin Anderson, a junior with Students Against War, three campus leaders--Michael Hoffman, Katrina Yeaw and Pardis Esmali--are currently facing disciplinary action on similarly trumped-up, bureaucratic charges. "When it comes down to it, the university doesn't want us protesting on campus," she says. Plans are already under way to protest Marine recruiters set to hit campus on October 27.
Peterson, Khan and others say their movement won't relent until recruiters are completely banned from the nation's educational campuses. They've got a long way to go. Erica Broman says HCC is unwilling to jeopardize the $7 million it gets annually in federal dollars, which it would lose if it banned recruiters. Spokespersons from GMU, UC-Santa Cruz and Madison--all of them public, perhaps not coincidentally--expressed the same concern.
"It's not just Madison or Mason or Holyoke. It's a national trend," says Madison senior Ben Ratliffe. "They're missing their recruiting numbers. It's a massively unpopular war. They certainly don't want a movement like this to take hold."
The Nation
