I don't usually write about them. And Coy e-mailed asking me how come I wasn't covering them? Again, I don't cover them. This would be the first one I have, today's, as far as I know.
And I'm not really covering today's hearing.
First off, today the Jewish War Veterans of the United States had a representative testify at the hearing.
Was that a first?
I don't remember one before but I'm sure this wasn't the first appearance.
So I usually go to these things hoping to learn something but generally zone out through the entire thing.
If Senator Richard Burr or House Representative Bob Filner spoke, I usually paid attention because they generally had something to say. But these hearings are generally the worst you can imagine. Members of Congress dart in and out just to have their 'opening' remarks.
The remarks are always thank you and we love you and blah blah blah.
Then the witnesses read their opening remarks. Then the Chairs say thank you again. And that's the hearing.
A difference this time? First, I've been going to these hearings with C.I. since 2006, so I can't speak to before that. But from 2006 until today, last week and this week's hearings with the VSOs (Veterans Service Organizations) are the first where they've actually had something beyond opening statements. They have done strong questioning and covered issues in the questioning.
Today, House Rep. Mike Michaud (Ranking Member on the House Veterans Affairs Committee) had to dart out of the hearing because he was needed in another hearing and because the House had a vote. I have no idea what the vote was about -- today we went to the Senate to hear briefly Senator Rand Paul filibuster Barack's CIA nominee as a result of claims Barack's made about his powers re: The Drone War. We've gone into that chamber before only for Senator Patty Murray's remarks. I could be forgetting something. We used to go into the House chamber all the time to watch Representative Lynn Woolsey speak out against the wars as she repeatedly did, refusing to forget the ongoing wars. She gave her last speech on the House floor about the wars in December because she didn't seek re-election.
So Michaud is shaping up to be a Filner or Burr, someone I would care about what he says. Yesterday, with the VFW, he was talking about the national cemeteries and I was trying to pay attention because that's going to be a hearing later this week (or was until the House cancelled it today). I asked C.I. who was the last one speaking out on this topic and she said the last one making it an issue, not a side issue but holding hearings on it, was Representative Steve Buyer. He didn't seek re-election in the 2008 elections. So he's been gone since the end of 2008. That's a long time.
So I sit in the hearings and try to find something of value. Mostly I doodle or write letters. Or sit there thinking things like, "When did Jimmy from News Radio get elected to Congress?"
I swear, there's a member of the Congress now who looks just like Jimmy on News Radio. Remember Jimmy? He ran the station.
I wrote it on my notepad and slid it over to C.I. yesterday. I thought she was going to burst out laughing. She, Ava and I also thought about covering some veterans issues at Third and doing so by bringing sex in. That would be via another new member of Congress.
Yes, there's a new member of Congress who is sexy.
I know his name (I forget the name of the one who looks like Jimmy) but I'll stay silent because I think we got a picture of him we can use. We're serious about this idea.
And that's another thing I will do. I'll grab a line in the hearing and write it down and sketch out how it could be a feature at Third.
Then Sunday will get here, I'll have these papers with no names on them and I'll be saying, "Come on, doesn't anyone remember who said this?" The one line I wrote down.
I know the members who served before this year. But the new ones? Not so much.
I also don't know who is Ranking Member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. It used to be Senator Richard Burr who became my favorite Republican in the Senate. (And I didn't go in looking for a favorite. I'm a Democrat.) I love him because when the VA would try to excuse away their mistakes and delays, he wouldn't stand for it. He'd call them on it. He was really great as a Ranking Member. And Senator Patty Murray was a great Chair. I really do worry what happens now with Senator Bernie Sanders the Chair.
Today, for example, he was making excuses about the delays in the backlog.
And I thought, "If this is the sort of weak-ass stuff you're going to pull, I'm not going to be supporting you, Bernie."
There is no excuse for the backlog.
Sanders insisted that the VA was processing more applications for claims than ever before.
And that sounds good if you're an idiot.
If you've been going to these hearings for the last 6 years, you know how many times VA's asked for more money for more employees.
Bernie had the nerve to say the problem was more veterans were making claims.
Excuse me, Bernie, but Burr and Murray established that this increase would take place and did so before Barack Obama was sworn in as president.
So the VA had ample warning and should have known all by themselves.
He really got on my nerves today when he started in on that. I drew a little sketch of him (I'll give it to Gina and Kirsta to put in the gina & krista round-robin, okay?) and I put one of Rep. Corrine Brown's bad wigs on him in my drawing. Because Brown's always doing that, rushing in to defend the Va when they need to be held accountable, making excuses for them, etc.
So those are my impressions of the joint-hearings of last week and this week.
Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, an Iraqi
journalist has been kidnapped, Petraeus' actions may finally mean that
counter-insurgency gets discussed, Ayad Allawi meets with other
political leaders, an Iraqiya candidate's bodyguard is shot at while
posting posters, and more.
Senator Bernie Sanders: One of the issues that I'm working hard on is budgetary matters. Chairman Miller raised appropriately enough, our concern to see that the VA remains adequately funded now and into the future. There's an immediate concern that I want to mention to you and that is the so-called Chained CPI. Some of you may be aware of it, some of you may not. It is a theory being postulated, adopted by a number of people here in Congress that says that the benefits that disabled veterans are getting have been too generous historically. And that includes people on Social Security as well. The result, if that so-called Chained CPI were to go into effect would mean that veterans who started receiving VA disability benefits at age 30 would have their benefits reduced by $1425 at age 45, $2300 at age 55, and $3200 at age 65. That's the reality. It doesn't get a lot of discussion. It's kind of an inside the beltway process. I hope that you will join me and many others saying that we do not balance the budget on the backs of disabled veterans.
Sanders was speaking this morning at a joint-House and Senate hearing. We'll cover as much of it later in the snapshot as we can fit in but we'll note this at the beginning.
Turning to the topic of counter-insurgency. The 'tool' that targets native populations is really not called out on the left. Either you get so-called lefties endorsing it or everyone wants to dummy up. (Tom Hayden and David H. Price are two of the few on the left who have addressed it.) War on a native people. Today Mona Mahmood, Maggie O'Kane, Chavala Madlena and Teresa Smith (Guardian) report:
The allegations made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse.
Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus's "eyes and ears out on the ground" in Iraq.
Yes, we're at the topic of counter-insurgency. Will the usual cowards rush off to hide? Probably. Back in February of 2012, Paula Broadwell could be found hailing David Petraeus as "the King of COIN" -- "COIN" being counter-insurgency (link goes to Mark Silva's report for Bloomberg News and is text and video). Paula should know, right? She wrote a book about him and had an affair with him -- the affair that forced him to resign as CIA Director. Before that happened, Petraeus came to fame as the top US commander in Iraq. Though the press praised him hugely in real time, they never cared much about reporting reality. In 2010, Robert Dreyfuss (Huffington Post) observed, "[. . .] Petraeus literally wrote the book -- namely, The U.S. Army/ Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. If the COIN cult has a guru (whom all obey unquestioningly), it's Petraeus." They didn't call out counterinsurgency. That was apparently too much work for their tender hands. Last November, Michael Cohen (Guardian) offered the typical 'criticism' from the left:
More than three years ago, I sat in an overflow room in Washington, DC's Willard Hotel listening to General David Petraeus explain (pdf) how the only solution for the failing war in Afghanistan was a "comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy", modeled after the one that had allegedly achieved so much success in Iraq.
Petraeus's speech came at the annual meeting of the Center for New American Security, a DC-based thinktank that had become a locus of COIN thinking in DC. And Petraeus was at the peak of his power and acclaim – heralded by both Democrats and Republicans as the man responsible for saving the Iraq war.
The four-star general's in-depth powerpoint presentation (pdf), with its discussion of securing and serving the population, "understanding local circumstances" separating irreconcilables from reconcilables and living "among the people" was the apogee of COIN thinking, which dominated national security debates in Washington in 2008 and 2009. But, like Petraeus's career, COIN and its usefulness as a tool for US military planners now lies in tatters.
Please note, those three paragraphs represent the nonsense that has passed for a debate when it comes to counterinsurgency: Is it working? Heaven forbid we should ever question the wisdom or ethics of using it to begin with. COIN cheerleaders like former journalist Thomas E. Ricks would love to get in a back and forth or success or failure, they just don't want to have the larger conversation where counter-insurgency itself -- war on a native people -- is addressed.
NYU Professor Nicholas Mirzoeff is among the few in the current era to question counter-insurgency. He's noted that what counter-insurgency has done is produce a war culture, a culture where war itself is seen as natural and cultural. These and other points can be found in his article [PDF format warning] "War is Culture: Global Counterinsurgency, Visuality, and the Petraeus Doctrine:"
Counterinsurgency has become a digitally mediated version of imperialists techniques to produce legitimacy. Its success in the United States is unquestioned: who in public life is against counterinsurgency, even if they oppose the war in Iraq or invasions elsewhere? War is culture.
When counter-insurgency 'succeeds', Mirzoeff argues, "war will have rendered a culture in its own image, that it preaches the importance of "the preservation of life, determined by foreign policy interests. Counterinsurgency now actively imagines itself as a medical practice: 'With good intelligence, counterinsurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact' (US, Dept. of the Army 1-126).
While some, like Sarah Sewell, insist that counter-insurgency is culturally sensitive, it's not. It's culturally hierarchical with the built-in assumption that the Americans are so much wiser and so much more advanced and, yes, valuable than the native population that US counter-insurgency is being used upon. (That's also known as cultural chauvinism.) The people doing the 'surgery' are doing 'surgery' and 'treatment' based upon what they themselves value. And what Iraqi society values and what the US military values are completely different things. Which gets to Mirzoeff's point about what counter-insurgency leads to -- a culture in its own image. That's one of the reasons Iraq doesn't function today. It was not set up as Iraqis would have set it up themselves. It was forced onto the Iraqi population with US 'advisors' determining what were the needed goals and desires of Iraqi society.
Counter-insurgency comes about because of the success of insurgency -- in Cuba, in Vietnam and elsewhere. It's a bad response to guerrilla actions -- it's overblown and overspent and, at its very core, outright pathetic. But what happened in Cuba and Vietnam, for example, created envy among the US War Hawks who were convinced they could co-opt it with a 'response.' They can't. What they try to do is to demonize local leaders who may hold sway.
Counter-insurgency always turns ugly because the people who support are ugly. Petraeus might have started out a decent person, I have no idea. But he practiced counter-insurgency and that it led to torture and abuse by his underlings is no surprise. At its heart, counter-insurgency is "I know best and I will convince you through any means or I will rid the society of you." That's not a peaceful approach, that's not embracing approach. That approach says, "You will do as I do or I will eradicate you." When that is your operating principle, you have so little respect for humanity that you're well on your way to utilizing torture.
As Howard B. Radest points out, in Bioethics: Catastrophic Events in a Time of Terror, of the 'making' movements of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, they "attempt the grandiose, seeing themselves as world forming and as world reforming. Thus, the effort to convert the world to any single belief system like Islam or Christianity or communism, or to any unequivocal norm like a market economy. The ideological move forecasts failure. The world does not yield to our wishes and to our fears. It is surely not finally controlled by us."
Sarah Sewer Sewell (who hates this piece Ava and I wrote about her, her roll dog Monty McFate, Charlie Rose and counter-insurgency back in 2007) would most likely insist that counter-insurgency is benign, if not benevolent. It is neither. The value judgments required to arrive at a plan are dangerous in and of themselves. Equally true, it is not the warm fuzzy Sewell tries to pretend it is. The Australian David Kilcullen -- who has worked counter-insurgency for Australia and the US -- is much more honest as pro counter-insurgency George Packer noted in his essay "Knowing the Enemy" (The New Yorker, December 18, 2006):
Kilcullen doesn't believe that an entirely "soft" counterinsurgency approach can work against such tactics. In his view, winning hearts and minds is not a matter of making local people think like you -- as some American initiates to counterinsurgency whom I met in Iraq seemed to believe -- but of getting them to accept that supporting your side is in their interest, which requires an element of coercion. Kilcullen met senior European officers with the NATO force in Afghanistan who seemed to be applying " a developmental model to counterinsurgency," hoping that gratitude for good work would bring the Afghans over to their side. He told me, "In a counterinsurgency, the gratitude effect will last until the sun goes down and the insurgents show up and say, 'You're on our side, aren't you? Otherwise, we're going to kill you.' If one side is willing to apply lethal force to bring the population to its side and the other isn't, ultimately you're going to find yourself losing."
Again, they talk like it's all persuasion but when they get down to it, they're supporters of using force as they attempt to colonize.
As with Vietnam, the wars of this era -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- have found the US military using -- among others -- anthropologists. Antonius C.G.M. Robben and Jeffrey A. Sluka address this in Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader and this is from a piece Sluka wrote for The Reader:
Even more controversially, in 2006 the US Army initiated a new $60 million experimental counterinsurgency program called Human Terrain System (HTS) which began to "embed" anthropologists and other social scientists with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan to help them gather ethnographic intelligence (referred to as "conducting research") and understand local cultures better. The goal is to provide soldiers in the field with knowledge of the population and its culture in order to enhance operational effectiveness and reduce conflict between the military and the civilian population. The HTS program has generated great controversy among anthropologists, most of whom view it as fundamentally unethical, inherently harmful to those studied, and an attempt to "weaponize" the discipline (Price 2006). Many have criticized it as "mercenary anthropology" that exploits social science for political gain, warned that it will exacerbate the already considerable danger of anthropologists being viewed as intelligence agents or spies which nearly all anthropologists face in their fieldwork, and drawn a direct comparison with the infamous Phoenix Program and Project Camelot during the Vietnam War.
In October 2007, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) formally opposed the program and denounced it as "an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise" which could lead to serious, ethical problems, disgrace to anthropology as an academic discipline, restriction of future research opportunities, and increased risk of harm to both researchers and research participants. At the same time, "in response to concerns that such developments threaten the integrity of anthropology, " the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA) was formed and launched a "pledge of nonparticipation in counterinsurgency" campaign, which more than 1,000 anthropologists signed in the first few months (NCA 2007). Both the AAA and the NCA assert that counterinsurgency work in general, but in this case especially the HTS program, violates several core elements of the AAA ethics code, and in 2009 the code was revised directly in response to these developments.
In the July 1, 1976 issue of The New Scientist, on page 3, "Repressive technology" appeared. The author is Duncan Campbell (now with the Guardian newspaper).
Last week, about 350 military and diplomatic big-wigs were invited by the British Army to witness a mobility display of army equipment, including a variety of counterinsurgency vehicles suitable for troops equipped with CS gas launchers, batons and rubbert bullet guns. Almost one quarter of the delegation invited represented countries where free elections, in the Western sense, are abnormal. Only one of those, Yugoslavia, was not governed by some form of right wing junta.
"Riot control", as the Soweto incidents have shown, can often mean the brutal suppression of claims for human rights. Yet the Royal Ordnance Factories of the Ministry of Defence, among many others at the Aldershot show, are actively promoting sales of CS gas an other items "to deal with riots expeditiously."
Ethical standards are naturally noticeably absent among arms dealers. But no-one who has developed the modern weapons of mass destruction would happily see them sold to support the aims of assorted tin-pot dictatorships. The weapons of mass repression, though simpler and less dramatic, should not be bartered with less gravity.
In 1976, so well debated had counter-insurgency been that the three paragraphs could move briskly, could make the natural association of counter-insurgency with bullying and despotic regimes. Duncan Campbell didn't have to do a set-up- or much at all. Because the issue had been addressed. It had been so well addressed and this unethical practice so universally loathed that we shared a common language on the topic at that time. The hold-overs waited, knowing that a time would come when they could return and pimp these unethical and illegal practices. 1976, Sluka reminds us, is the year CUNY Professor June Nash explained that this relationship turned anthropologists into "the handmaiden of colonialism and imperialism."
How far backwards we've slid as we're now in an environment where we can only argue whether or not counter-insurgency is 'successful' and not whether it's unethical and criminal. It is so criminal that its use in Iraq had a strong impact on one American:
I felt we were risking so much for people who seemed unwilling to cooperate with us, leading to frustration and hatred on both sides. I began to become depressed at the situation we found ourselves mired in year after year. In attempting counterinsurgency operations, we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists. I wanted the public to know that not everyone living in Iraq were targets to be neutralized.
That's Bradley Manning speaking last Thursday to the military court.
Who? Monday April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. Monday June 7, 2010, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the video. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported in August 2010 that Manning had been charged -- "two charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The first encompasses four counts of violating Army regulations by transferring classified information to his personal computer between November and May and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system. The second comprises eight counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of classified information." In March, 2011, David S. Cloud (Los Angeles Times) reported that the military has added 22 additional counts to the charges including one that could be seen as "aiding the enemy" which could result in the death penalty if convicted. The Article 32 hearing took place in December. At the start of this year, there was an Article 32 hearing and, February 3rd, it was announced that the government would be moving forward with a court-martial. Bradley has yet to enter a plea. The court-martial was supposed to begin before the November 2012 election but it was postponed until after the election so that Barack wouldn't have to run on a record of his actual actions. Independent.ie adds, "A court martial is set to be held in June at Ford Meade in Maryland, with supporters treating him as a hero, but opponents describing him as a traitor." Last Thursday, Bradley admitted he leaked to WikiLeaks. And why.
Alexa O'Briean has transcribed Bradley's statement in full. We'll note the counter-insurgency remarks.
In attempting to conduct counter-terrorism or CT and counter-insurgency COIN operations we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and not being suspicious of and avoiding cooperation with our Host Nation partners, and ignoring the second and third order effects of accomplishing short-term goals and missions. I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as [missed word] as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment everyday.
Chris Fry (Workers World) covers Bradley's remarks from last week. So Bradley's set to go before a military court in June and what he wanted to spark a national debate but somehow, in the United States, people -- including his supporters -- refuse to have that debate that he risked so much to start.
From Mona Mahmood, Maggie O'Kane, Chavala Madlena and Teresa Smith (Guardian) report:
Additional Guardian reporting has confirmed more details of how the interrogation system worked. "Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee," claimed Samari, talking for the first time in detail about the US role in the interrogation units.
"Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts."
There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman tortured prisoners themselves, only that they were sometimes present in the detention centres where torture took place, and were involved in the processing of thousands of detainees.
Brett Wilkins (Digital Journal) notes:
The investigation was launched after American soldier Bradley Manning released classified US military documents detailing hundreds of incidents in which US troops encountered tortured detainees in secret prisons run by police commandos across Iraq to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Manning, who was himself subjected to techniques that the United Nations and International Red Cross have described as torture, faces up to 20 years' imprisonment for leaking the files, some of which detail US war crimes and atrocities. According to the investigation, Bush-era Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hand-picked Col. James Steele, a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran, to travel to Iraq and assist in organizing sectarian paramilitary commando forces tasked with crushing the Sunni insurgents who were violently resisting the US-led occupation. Once the Pentagon allowed Shia militias to join state security forces, the special police commando (SPC) ranks swelled with Shia fighters from groups such as the Badr Brigades. Some of these groups received weapons and cash from Iran, which had a keen interest in thwarting the US-led mission in Iraq and in aiding their fellow Shiites.
Rob Edwards (Guardian) notes today:
Cleaning up more than 300 sites in Iraq still contaminated by depleted uranium (DU) weapons will cost at least $30m, according to a report by a Dutch peace group to be published on Thursday.
The report, which was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, warns that the contamination is being spread by poorly regulated scrap metal dealers, including children. It also documents evidence that DU munitions were fired at light vehicles, buildings and other civilian infrastructure including the Iraqi Ministry of Planning in Baghdad – casting doubt on official assurances that only armoured vehicles were targeted. "The use of DU in populated areas is alarming," it says, adding that many more contaminated sites are likely to be discovered, it says.
The political crisis and the protests continue in Iraq. All Iraq News reports that a segment of Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc (the Ahrar) section is stating that they support protests but they are do not support sectarianism on either side and that the protests "do not concern only one community or political side." Meanwhile NINA notes new security forces have moved into Sinjar leading to demonstrations against them -- demonstrations "under the supervision of the Kurdistan Democratic Party." NINA also notes that Nineveh Province Governor Atheel Nujaifi has "warned the security forces in Nineveh, specifically the Federal Police, which oversees the protection of Ahrar Square not to encroach upon the demonstrators." He is calling out the continued targeting of protesters by Nouri's national force and the warrantless arrests of them.
Kitabat notes that the governor's brother, Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi, is calling out the continued refusal by Nouri's government to implement the demands of the protesters and he's also warning about potential election fraud and pressure on the military to vote for one group (Nouri's State of Law). All Iraq News reports that Iraqiya leader Ayad Allawi met with Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani today to discuss the political crisis. Last Friday, at the Ramadi protest, Minister of Finance Rafie al-Issawi resigned. Mustafa al-Kadhimi (Al-Monitor) observes:
Issawi's timing raises a number of questions regarding its motives. Does it represent an escalation, parallel to protesters' increasing demands, or does it indicate an inclination towards the growing Sunni front demanding an autonomous federal state? Does its timing, which coincides with the local elections, serve as an advertising campaign for these elections?
While multiple answers could be true, the key issue isn't the withdrawal of a specific figure or political movement from the government or parliament. Instead, the crux is the persistent political imbalance in Iraq that continues to be contribute to the country’s dysfunctionality.
Protesters have mostly reacted positively to Issawi’s resignation and have invited him to join the sit-ins, even though they'd previously refused to allow political figures to participate.
But the escalating tone of protesters’ speeches and their growing demands don't just stem from accusations made by Baghdad’s political parties that they received foreign support and are trying to aggravate the situation. In reality, all parties are contributing to the heightened tensions, and the government’s response and actions to end protests have been insufficient relative to the challenges.
Al Mada notes that the League of Righteous is now known as "Righteous" -- it's adding political campaigns to their other tasks of murder and kidnapping -- is denying that they kidnapped journalist Karrar Tamimi in Karbala. Yesterday, Jaafar al-Nasrawi (Arabs Today) reported that Karar Alaa al-Tamimi was kidnapped in Karbala on Monday and that a post went up on Facebook stating "he would be killed if he does not resign from Anbar TV."
Today, All Iraq News reports, Iraqiya member and provincial candidate Sabah al-Khafaji's bodyguard was hanging campaign posters when unknown assailants opened fire forcing the bodyguard to flee.
The National Iraqi News Agency reports a Ramadi armed attack has left 2 police officers and 2 bystanders dead. Also in Ramadi, Alsumaria reports a car bombing has claimed the life of 1 police officer, and a Kirkuk bombing claimed the life of 1 member of the Tigris Operation Command. All Iraq News notes 1 suspect was shot dead in Tikrit,
Moving to the US, the Office of the Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction issued a report today, the most important aspect being this note on the cover. "A FINAL REPORT FROM THE SPECIAL INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION." Click here for the discussion of that. For the report in general, refer to Tony Capaccio (Bloomberg News), Spencer Ackerman (Wired), and Barbara Slavin (Al-Monitor). Isobel Coleman (Council on Foreign Relations) points out:
While the incidence of corruption in the government of Iraq is an ongoing—and staggering—challenge, the SIGIR report also provides depressing examples about the extent of U.S. corruption and mismanagement, particularly in operations involving contractors. The report summarizes SIGIR’s work inspecting U.S. construction projects: 40 percent of the 116 in-progress and 54 finished projects that SIGIR evaluated (worth almost $2.1 billion) had “major deficiencies.” In a portion of the report that contains interviews with top Iraqi leaders, Adnan al-Asadi, the acting minister of the interior, points to the following problems: the practice of paying contractors/subcontractors far more than the project’s value; the Iraqi and U.S. governments’ failures to coordinate with one another; and “tolerance of rampant corruption that occurred on both the Iraq and U.S. sides.” According to al-Asadi, the U.S. wasted some $200 million out of more than $1 billion it spent on a police program that was far larger than the Iraqi government wanted. Other examples are equally eye-popping.
As Mike noted last night and Wally and Cedric noted this morning, Attorney General Eric Holder is claiming that US President Barack Obama has the 'right' to use drones within the United States to target American citizens. Lucy Madison (CBS News) reports Senator Rand Paul filibustered the vote on John Brennan to become CIA Director due to Brennan's work on The Drone War. We briefly saw some of that today, speaking of terrorism, Paul noted, "We need to remember that it's our freedom that's precious and we need to do everything we can to uphold that."
Today's joint-hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee and Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, as I suspected, doesn't have space here today -- and there was House Veterans Subcommittee hearing as well. But we need to note Jewish War Veterans of the United States' Sheldon Ohren, "Blind veterans are of extra concern to JWV. The large number of IED explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a huge number of eye injuries and blinded veterans. In fact, orbital blasts, lobe injuries, optical nerve injuries and retinal injuries have been all to common. JWV strongly urges Congress to ensure adequate funding to care for our thousands of veterans with eye injuries." We speak to veterans all over the country and this is a concern of many -- that focus on TBI and PTS means people don't realize that loss of limb, loss of hearing and loss of sight remain common injuries in today's wars. Senator Patty Murray is the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee and a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (and its prior Chair). Her office issued the following
iraq
mark silva
bloomberg news
robert dreyfuss
michael cohen
duncan campbell
al mada
national iraqi news agency
alsumaria
all iraq news
afp
workers world
chris fry
bloomberg news
tony capaccio
wired
spencer ackerman
al-monitor
barbara slavin
Senator Bernie Sanders: One of the issues that I'm working hard on is budgetary matters. Chairman Miller raised appropriately enough, our concern to see that the VA remains adequately funded now and into the future. There's an immediate concern that I want to mention to you and that is the so-called Chained CPI. Some of you may be aware of it, some of you may not. It is a theory being postulated, adopted by a number of people here in Congress that says that the benefits that disabled veterans are getting have been too generous historically. And that includes people on Social Security as well. The result, if that so-called Chained CPI were to go into effect would mean that veterans who started receiving VA disability benefits at age 30 would have their benefits reduced by $1425 at age 45, $2300 at age 55, and $3200 at age 65. That's the reality. It doesn't get a lot of discussion. It's kind of an inside the beltway process. I hope that you will join me and many others saying that we do not balance the budget on the backs of disabled veterans.
Sanders was speaking this morning at a joint-House and Senate hearing. We'll cover as much of it later in the snapshot as we can fit in but we'll note this at the beginning.
Turning to the topic of counter-insurgency. The 'tool' that targets native populations is really not called out on the left. Either you get so-called lefties endorsing it or everyone wants to dummy up. (Tom Hayden and David H. Price are two of the few on the left who have addressed it.) War on a native people. Today Mona Mahmood, Maggie O'Kane, Chavala Madlena and Teresa Smith (Guardian) report:
The allegations made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse.
Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus's "eyes and ears out on the ground" in Iraq.
Yes, we're at the topic of counter-insurgency. Will the usual cowards rush off to hide? Probably. Back in February of 2012, Paula Broadwell could be found hailing David Petraeus as "the King of COIN" -- "COIN" being counter-insurgency (link goes to Mark Silva's report for Bloomberg News and is text and video). Paula should know, right? She wrote a book about him and had an affair with him -- the affair that forced him to resign as CIA Director. Before that happened, Petraeus came to fame as the top US commander in Iraq. Though the press praised him hugely in real time, they never cared much about reporting reality. In 2010, Robert Dreyfuss (Huffington Post) observed, "[. . .] Petraeus literally wrote the book -- namely, The U.S. Army/ Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. If the COIN cult has a guru (whom all obey unquestioningly), it's Petraeus." They didn't call out counterinsurgency. That was apparently too much work for their tender hands. Last November, Michael Cohen (Guardian) offered the typical 'criticism' from the left:
More than three years ago, I sat in an overflow room in Washington, DC's Willard Hotel listening to General David Petraeus explain (pdf) how the only solution for the failing war in Afghanistan was a "comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy", modeled after the one that had allegedly achieved so much success in Iraq.
Petraeus's speech came at the annual meeting of the Center for New American Security, a DC-based thinktank that had become a locus of COIN thinking in DC. And Petraeus was at the peak of his power and acclaim – heralded by both Democrats and Republicans as the man responsible for saving the Iraq war.
The four-star general's in-depth powerpoint presentation (pdf), with its discussion of securing and serving the population, "understanding local circumstances" separating irreconcilables from reconcilables and living "among the people" was the apogee of COIN thinking, which dominated national security debates in Washington in 2008 and 2009. But, like Petraeus's career, COIN and its usefulness as a tool for US military planners now lies in tatters.
Please note, those three paragraphs represent the nonsense that has passed for a debate when it comes to counterinsurgency: Is it working? Heaven forbid we should ever question the wisdom or ethics of using it to begin with. COIN cheerleaders like former journalist Thomas E. Ricks would love to get in a back and forth or success or failure, they just don't want to have the larger conversation where counter-insurgency itself -- war on a native people -- is addressed.
NYU Professor Nicholas Mirzoeff is among the few in the current era to question counter-insurgency. He's noted that what counter-insurgency has done is produce a war culture, a culture where war itself is seen as natural and cultural. These and other points can be found in his article [PDF format warning] "War is Culture: Global Counterinsurgency, Visuality, and the Petraeus Doctrine:"
Counterinsurgency has become a digitally mediated version of imperialists techniques to produce legitimacy. Its success in the United States is unquestioned: who in public life is against counterinsurgency, even if they oppose the war in Iraq or invasions elsewhere? War is culture.
When counter-insurgency 'succeeds', Mirzoeff argues, "war will have rendered a culture in its own image, that it preaches the importance of "the preservation of life, determined by foreign policy interests. Counterinsurgency now actively imagines itself as a medical practice: 'With good intelligence, counterinsurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact' (US, Dept. of the Army 1-126).
While some, like Sarah Sewell, insist that counter-insurgency is culturally sensitive, it's not. It's culturally hierarchical with the built-in assumption that the Americans are so much wiser and so much more advanced and, yes, valuable than the native population that US counter-insurgency is being used upon. (That's also known as cultural chauvinism.) The people doing the 'surgery' are doing 'surgery' and 'treatment' based upon what they themselves value. And what Iraqi society values and what the US military values are completely different things. Which gets to Mirzoeff's point about what counter-insurgency leads to -- a culture in its own image. That's one of the reasons Iraq doesn't function today. It was not set up as Iraqis would have set it up themselves. It was forced onto the Iraqi population with US 'advisors' determining what were the needed goals and desires of Iraqi society.
Counter-insurgency comes about because of the success of insurgency -- in Cuba, in Vietnam and elsewhere. It's a bad response to guerrilla actions -- it's overblown and overspent and, at its very core, outright pathetic. But what happened in Cuba and Vietnam, for example, created envy among the US War Hawks who were convinced they could co-opt it with a 'response.' They can't. What they try to do is to demonize local leaders who may hold sway.
Counter-insurgency always turns ugly because the people who support are ugly. Petraeus might have started out a decent person, I have no idea. But he practiced counter-insurgency and that it led to torture and abuse by his underlings is no surprise. At its heart, counter-insurgency is "I know best and I will convince you through any means or I will rid the society of you." That's not a peaceful approach, that's not embracing approach. That approach says, "You will do as I do or I will eradicate you." When that is your operating principle, you have so little respect for humanity that you're well on your way to utilizing torture.
As Howard B. Radest points out, in Bioethics: Catastrophic Events in a Time of Terror, of the 'making' movements of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, they "attempt the grandiose, seeing themselves as world forming and as world reforming. Thus, the effort to convert the world to any single belief system like Islam or Christianity or communism, or to any unequivocal norm like a market economy. The ideological move forecasts failure. The world does not yield to our wishes and to our fears. It is surely not finally controlled by us."
Sarah Sewer Sewell (who hates this piece Ava and I wrote about her, her roll dog Monty McFate, Charlie Rose and counter-insurgency back in 2007) would most likely insist that counter-insurgency is benign, if not benevolent. It is neither. The value judgments required to arrive at a plan are dangerous in and of themselves. Equally true, it is not the warm fuzzy Sewell tries to pretend it is. The Australian David Kilcullen -- who has worked counter-insurgency for Australia and the US -- is much more honest as pro counter-insurgency George Packer noted in his essay "Knowing the Enemy" (The New Yorker, December 18, 2006):
Kilcullen doesn't believe that an entirely "soft" counterinsurgency approach can work against such tactics. In his view, winning hearts and minds is not a matter of making local people think like you -- as some American initiates to counterinsurgency whom I met in Iraq seemed to believe -- but of getting them to accept that supporting your side is in their interest, which requires an element of coercion. Kilcullen met senior European officers with the NATO force in Afghanistan who seemed to be applying " a developmental model to counterinsurgency," hoping that gratitude for good work would bring the Afghans over to their side. He told me, "In a counterinsurgency, the gratitude effect will last until the sun goes down and the insurgents show up and say, 'You're on our side, aren't you? Otherwise, we're going to kill you.' If one side is willing to apply lethal force to bring the population to its side and the other isn't, ultimately you're going to find yourself losing."
Again, they talk like it's all persuasion but when they get down to it, they're supporters of using force as they attempt to colonize.
As with Vietnam, the wars of this era -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- have found the US military using -- among others -- anthropologists. Antonius C.G.M. Robben and Jeffrey A. Sluka address this in Ethnographic Fieldwork: An Anthropological Reader and this is from a piece Sluka wrote for The Reader:
Even more controversially, in 2006 the US Army initiated a new $60 million experimental counterinsurgency program called Human Terrain System (HTS) which began to "embed" anthropologists and other social scientists with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan to help them gather ethnographic intelligence (referred to as "conducting research") and understand local cultures better. The goal is to provide soldiers in the field with knowledge of the population and its culture in order to enhance operational effectiveness and reduce conflict between the military and the civilian population. The HTS program has generated great controversy among anthropologists, most of whom view it as fundamentally unethical, inherently harmful to those studied, and an attempt to "weaponize" the discipline (Price 2006). Many have criticized it as "mercenary anthropology" that exploits social science for political gain, warned that it will exacerbate the already considerable danger of anthropologists being viewed as intelligence agents or spies which nearly all anthropologists face in their fieldwork, and drawn a direct comparison with the infamous Phoenix Program and Project Camelot during the Vietnam War.
In October 2007, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) formally opposed the program and denounced it as "an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise" which could lead to serious, ethical problems, disgrace to anthropology as an academic discipline, restriction of future research opportunities, and increased risk of harm to both researchers and research participants. At the same time, "in response to concerns that such developments threaten the integrity of anthropology, " the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA) was formed and launched a "pledge of nonparticipation in counterinsurgency" campaign, which more than 1,000 anthropologists signed in the first few months (NCA 2007). Both the AAA and the NCA assert that counterinsurgency work in general, but in this case especially the HTS program, violates several core elements of the AAA ethics code, and in 2009 the code was revised directly in response to these developments.
In the July 1, 1976 issue of The New Scientist, on page 3, "Repressive technology" appeared. The author is Duncan Campbell (now with the Guardian newspaper).
Last week, about 350 military and diplomatic big-wigs were invited by the British Army to witness a mobility display of army equipment, including a variety of counterinsurgency vehicles suitable for troops equipped with CS gas launchers, batons and rubbert bullet guns. Almost one quarter of the delegation invited represented countries where free elections, in the Western sense, are abnormal. Only one of those, Yugoslavia, was not governed by some form of right wing junta.
"Riot control", as the Soweto incidents have shown, can often mean the brutal suppression of claims for human rights. Yet the Royal Ordnance Factories of the Ministry of Defence, among many others at the Aldershot show, are actively promoting sales of CS gas an other items "to deal with riots expeditiously."
Ethical standards are naturally noticeably absent among arms dealers. But no-one who has developed the modern weapons of mass destruction would happily see them sold to support the aims of assorted tin-pot dictatorships. The weapons of mass repression, though simpler and less dramatic, should not be bartered with less gravity.
In 1976, so well debated had counter-insurgency been that the three paragraphs could move briskly, could make the natural association of counter-insurgency with bullying and despotic regimes. Duncan Campbell didn't have to do a set-up- or much at all. Because the issue had been addressed. It had been so well addressed and this unethical practice so universally loathed that we shared a common language on the topic at that time. The hold-overs waited, knowing that a time would come when they could return and pimp these unethical and illegal practices. 1976, Sluka reminds us, is the year CUNY Professor June Nash explained that this relationship turned anthropologists into "the handmaiden of colonialism and imperialism."
How far backwards we've slid as we're now in an environment where we can only argue whether or not counter-insurgency is 'successful' and not whether it's unethical and criminal. It is so criminal that its use in Iraq had a strong impact on one American:
I felt we were risking so much for people who seemed unwilling to cooperate with us, leading to frustration and hatred on both sides. I began to become depressed at the situation we found ourselves mired in year after year. In attempting counterinsurgency operations, we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists. I wanted the public to know that not everyone living in Iraq were targets to be neutralized.
That's Bradley Manning speaking last Thursday to the military court.
Who? Monday April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks released US military video of a July 12, 2007 assault in Iraq. 12 people were killed in the assault including two Reuters journalists Namie Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. Monday June 7, 2010, the US military announced that they had arrested Bradley Manning and he stood accused of being the leaker of the video. Leila Fadel (Washington Post) reported in August 2010 that Manning had been charged -- "two charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The first encompasses four counts of violating Army regulations by transferring classified information to his personal computer between November and May and adding unauthorized software to a classified computer system. The second comprises eight counts of violating federal laws governing the handling of classified information." In March, 2011, David S. Cloud (Los Angeles Times) reported that the military has added 22 additional counts to the charges including one that could be seen as "aiding the enemy" which could result in the death penalty if convicted. The Article 32 hearing took place in December. At the start of this year, there was an Article 32 hearing and, February 3rd, it was announced that the government would be moving forward with a court-martial. Bradley has yet to enter a plea. The court-martial was supposed to begin before the November 2012 election but it was postponed until after the election so that Barack wouldn't have to run on a record of his actual actions. Independent.ie adds, "A court martial is set to be held in June at Ford Meade in Maryland, with supporters treating him as a hero, but opponents describing him as a traitor." Last Thursday, Bradley admitted he leaked to WikiLeaks. And why.
Alexa O'Briean has transcribed Bradley's statement in full. We'll note the counter-insurgency remarks.
In attempting to conduct counter-terrorism or CT and counter-insurgency COIN operations we became obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and not being suspicious of and avoiding cooperation with our Host Nation partners, and ignoring the second and third order effects of accomplishing short-term goals and missions. I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as [missed word] as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the effected environment everyday.
Chris Fry (Workers World) covers Bradley's remarks from last week. So Bradley's set to go before a military court in June and what he wanted to spark a national debate but somehow, in the United States, people -- including his supporters -- refuse to have that debate that he risked so much to start.
From Mona Mahmood, Maggie O'Kane, Chavala Madlena and Teresa Smith (Guardian) report:
Additional Guardian reporting has confirmed more details of how the interrogation system worked. "Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee," claimed Samari, talking for the first time in detail about the US role in the interrogation units.
"Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts."
There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman tortured prisoners themselves, only that they were sometimes present in the detention centres where torture took place, and were involved in the processing of thousands of detainees.
Brett Wilkins (Digital Journal) notes:
The investigation was launched after American soldier Bradley Manning released classified US military documents detailing hundreds of incidents in which US troops encountered tortured detainees in secret prisons run by police commandos across Iraq to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Manning, who was himself subjected to techniques that the United Nations and International Red Cross have described as torture, faces up to 20 years' imprisonment for leaking the files, some of which detail US war crimes and atrocities. According to the investigation, Bush-era Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hand-picked Col. James Steele, a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran, to travel to Iraq and assist in organizing sectarian paramilitary commando forces tasked with crushing the Sunni insurgents who were violently resisting the US-led occupation. Once the Pentagon allowed Shia militias to join state security forces, the special police commando (SPC) ranks swelled with Shia fighters from groups such as the Badr Brigades. Some of these groups received weapons and cash from Iran, which had a keen interest in thwarting the US-led mission in Iraq and in aiding their fellow Shiites.
Rob Edwards (Guardian) notes today:
Cleaning up more than 300 sites in Iraq still contaminated by depleted uranium (DU) weapons will cost at least $30m, according to a report by a Dutch peace group to be published on Thursday.
The report, which was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, warns that the contamination is being spread by poorly regulated scrap metal dealers, including children. It also documents evidence that DU munitions were fired at light vehicles, buildings and other civilian infrastructure including the Iraqi Ministry of Planning in Baghdad – casting doubt on official assurances that only armoured vehicles were targeted. "The use of DU in populated areas is alarming," it says, adding that many more contaminated sites are likely to be discovered, it says.
The political crisis and the protests continue in Iraq. All Iraq News reports that a segment of Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc (the Ahrar) section is stating that they support protests but they are do not support sectarianism on either side and that the protests "do not concern only one community or political side." Meanwhile NINA notes new security forces have moved into Sinjar leading to demonstrations against them -- demonstrations "under the supervision of the Kurdistan Democratic Party." NINA also notes that Nineveh Province Governor Atheel Nujaifi has "warned the security forces in Nineveh, specifically the Federal Police, which oversees the protection of Ahrar Square not to encroach upon the demonstrators." He is calling out the continued targeting of protesters by Nouri's national force and the warrantless arrests of them.
Kitabat notes that the governor's brother, Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi, is calling out the continued refusal by Nouri's government to implement the demands of the protesters and he's also warning about potential election fraud and pressure on the military to vote for one group (Nouri's State of Law). All Iraq News reports that Iraqiya leader Ayad Allawi met with Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani today to discuss the political crisis. Last Friday, at the Ramadi protest, Minister of Finance Rafie al-Issawi resigned. Mustafa al-Kadhimi (Al-Monitor) observes:
Issawi's timing raises a number of questions regarding its motives. Does it represent an escalation, parallel to protesters' increasing demands, or does it indicate an inclination towards the growing Sunni front demanding an autonomous federal state? Does its timing, which coincides with the local elections, serve as an advertising campaign for these elections?
While multiple answers could be true, the key issue isn't the withdrawal of a specific figure or political movement from the government or parliament. Instead, the crux is the persistent political imbalance in Iraq that continues to be contribute to the country’s dysfunctionality.
Protesters have mostly reacted positively to Issawi’s resignation and have invited him to join the sit-ins, even though they'd previously refused to allow political figures to participate.
But the escalating tone of protesters’ speeches and their growing demands don't just stem from accusations made by Baghdad’s political parties that they received foreign support and are trying to aggravate the situation. In reality, all parties are contributing to the heightened tensions, and the government’s response and actions to end protests have been insufficient relative to the challenges.
Al Mada notes that the League of Righteous is now known as "Righteous" -- it's adding political campaigns to their other tasks of murder and kidnapping -- is denying that they kidnapped journalist Karrar Tamimi in Karbala. Yesterday, Jaafar al-Nasrawi (Arabs Today) reported that Karar Alaa al-Tamimi was kidnapped in Karbala on Monday and that a post went up on Facebook stating "he would be killed if he does not resign from Anbar TV."
Today, All Iraq News reports, Iraqiya member and provincial candidate Sabah al-Khafaji's bodyguard was hanging campaign posters when unknown assailants opened fire forcing the bodyguard to flee.
The National Iraqi News Agency reports a Ramadi armed attack has left 2 police officers and 2 bystanders dead. Also in Ramadi, Alsumaria reports a car bombing has claimed the life of 1 police officer, and a Kirkuk bombing claimed the life of 1 member of the Tigris Operation Command. All Iraq News notes 1 suspect was shot dead in Tikrit,
Moving to the US, the Office of the Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction issued a report today, the most important aspect being this note on the cover. "A FINAL REPORT FROM THE SPECIAL INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION." Click here for the discussion of that. For the report in general, refer to Tony Capaccio (Bloomberg News), Spencer Ackerman (Wired), and Barbara Slavin (Al-Monitor). Isobel Coleman (Council on Foreign Relations) points out:
While the incidence of corruption in the government of Iraq is an ongoing—and staggering—challenge, the SIGIR report also provides depressing examples about the extent of U.S. corruption and mismanagement, particularly in operations involving contractors. The report summarizes SIGIR’s work inspecting U.S. construction projects: 40 percent of the 116 in-progress and 54 finished projects that SIGIR evaluated (worth almost $2.1 billion) had “major deficiencies.” In a portion of the report that contains interviews with top Iraqi leaders, Adnan al-Asadi, the acting minister of the interior, points to the following problems: the practice of paying contractors/subcontractors far more than the project’s value; the Iraqi and U.S. governments’ failures to coordinate with one another; and “tolerance of rampant corruption that occurred on both the Iraq and U.S. sides.” According to al-Asadi, the U.S. wasted some $200 million out of more than $1 billion it spent on a police program that was far larger than the Iraqi government wanted. Other examples are equally eye-popping.
As Mike noted last night and Wally and Cedric noted this morning, Attorney General Eric Holder is claiming that US President Barack Obama has the 'right' to use drones within the United States to target American citizens. Lucy Madison (CBS News) reports Senator Rand Paul filibustered the vote on John Brennan to become CIA Director due to Brennan's work on The Drone War. We briefly saw some of that today, speaking of terrorism, Paul noted, "We need to remember that it's our freedom that's precious and we need to do everything we can to uphold that."
Today's joint-hearing of the House Veterans Affairs Committee and Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, as I suspected, doesn't have space here today -- and there was House Veterans Subcommittee hearing as well. But we need to note Jewish War Veterans of the United States' Sheldon Ohren, "Blind veterans are of extra concern to JWV. The large number of IED explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a huge number of eye injuries and blinded veterans. In fact, orbital blasts, lobe injuries, optical nerve injuries and retinal injuries have been all to common. JWV strongly urges Congress to ensure adequate funding to care for our thousands of veterans with eye injuries." We speak to veterans all over the country and this is a concern of many -- that focus on TBI and PTS means people don't realize that loss of limb, loss of hearing and loss of sight remain common injuries in today's wars. Senator Patty Murray is the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee and a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (and its prior Chair). Her office issued the following
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Contact: Murray Press
Office
202-224-2834
Sen. Murray Applauds Bipartisan House Bill
to Help Catastrophically Wounded Veterans Start a Family
Last Congress Murray’s bill passed
the Senate unanimously only to be stalled in the House of
Representatives
(Washington, D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray commended legislation introduced by Representatives Rick Larsen (D-WA) and
Steve Stivers (R-OH) that ends the ban on in
vitro fertilization (IVF) services at VA and provides access to fertility
treatment, adoption services, and other care in
order to help severely wounded veterans start families. The House
bill, the Women
Veterans and Other Health Care Improvements Act of 2013, is the companion legislation to the first bill Sen. Murray introduced in the
113th Congress.
“Providing
fertility services is a cost of war and part of the commitment we make to care
for our servicemembers and veterans when they return home,” said Senator Murray. “So I applaud the bipartisan effort on this critical
legislation by Congressmen Larsen and Stivers. I hope the House will act quickly to help our most seriously
wounded veterans, and their spouses. We should not make these veterans,
who have sacrificed so much, wait any longer to be able to realize their dreams
of starting or expanding their families. We owe
them nothing less.”
Late last year, during
the 112th Congress, Senator Murray was able to unanimously pass the
bill through the U.S. Senate after delivering an impassioned speech on the Senate floor that
described the challenges veterans and their families face in accessing IVF.
Unfortunately, the bill failed to move in the House of Representatives in time
to make its way to the President’s desk after Republican leaders there expressed
opposition.
###
---
Meghan Roh
Press Secretary | New Media
Director
Office of U.S. Senator Patty
Murray
Mobile: (202) 365-1235
Office: (202) 224-2834
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