AMY GOODMAN: You describe one guy from, I think it was, Triple Canopy, talking about wanting to kill someone.


STEVE FAINARU: Yeah, it’s a chilling story, and I think it points up a lot of different issues. You know, he announced in an almost off-handed way—


AMY GOODMAN: Where were you?


STEVE FAINARU: What’s that?


AMY GOODMAN: Where were you?


STEVE FAINARU: When this occurred?


AMY GOODMAN: Yes.


STEVE FAINARU: Well, I wasn’t with the individual. I heard about the story later and then interviewed the people who were—all the people who were in the truck. But he announced to his three colleagues that he wanted to kill someone, and then he went out on Iraq’s—on Baghdad’s airport road and fired into the windshield of a taxi. And I think what the case pointed up—


AMY GOODMAN: Killing the people inside, killing the driver?


STEVE FAINARU: Well, it was not clear, because they simply drove off. The car, according to the witnesses, you know, sputtered to a stop on the side of the road. The witnesses saw bullet holes in the windshield. When they got back to the base, you know, there was a lot of confusion about what to do. Ironically, there was a Fijian guy who was on this team who was paid a tenth of what the American contractors who were in the same vehicle were being paid. He went to a Fijian supervisor and told him about what had happened, because he was disgusted. But the Fijian supervisor basically was afraid to go to his American supervisors and tell them what had happened. And so, the other two guys were also not sure what to do. They were afraid to come forward. Finally, after two days, they came forward, and they told the company what had happened. And the company’s response was to fire not only them, but the man who was accused of firing into this truck—or into this taxi.


One of the things I think that case points up is that there was no legal mechanism to pursue it any further. Nor was there any incentive for the company, really, to pursue it any further. The company, Triple Canopy, went to the director of security for the Green Zone and basically told him in a very vague way, you know, what had happened: there was a questionable shooting incident that took place on Baghdad’s airport road. And that’s really basically all they told him. And when I interviewed him, he told me basically that he said to the company, you know, “Look, this is not my job. You know, this is not something that I deal with.” He brought in a JAG officer, and, you know, the case was simply not pursued.


The two guys who were fired ultimately sued in Fairfax County Circuit Court, arguing that had been fired for essentially reporting a criminal act. Triple Canopy argued that the reason they were fired was because they had not reported this incident immediately. A jury upheld the company’s contention that, on technical grounds, they were within every right to fire the two guys who reported the incident, but at the same time the jury condemned the company for what it said was its business practices and the way it conducted its investigation.


AMY GOODMAN: What surprised you most in your reporting on mercenaries in Iraq—we just have about, oh, thirty seconds, a minute—for you, as you wrote this book, Big Boy Rules?


STEVE FAINARU: Well, two things. One was the enormity of it. When I—I had been covering the military for fourteen months, and I’d see these guys around. And when I finally—when I started reporting it, you realize that there were hundreds of companies like Blackwater that were running around Iraq. I think the other thing that was really striking was that the Bush administration, because of its failure to provide enough troops, had essentially farmed out the responsibility for deciding who can kill and die for our country to private companies that were there and who had been created simply to make money off the war.


AMY GOODMAN: Well, Steve Fainaru, thanks so much for being with us. Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq is his book. And congratulations on winning the 2008 Pulitzer Prize.


STEVE FAINARU: Thank you very much.

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As Obama Vows to Close Guantanamo, His Advisers Are Reportedly Crafting a Plan to Create a New System of Preventive Detention and National Security Courts
During an interview on 60 Minutes last night President-elect Barack Obama said he plans to close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay and rebuild the nation’s moral stature. Last week, the Associated Press reported Obama advisers are crafting a plan that would put some Guantanamo Bay prisoners in front of a new court system designed to handle so-called “national security” cases


Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of “The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book.”

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Ratner, I wanted to play for you, once again, what Barack Obama said last night on 60 Minutes in his interview with Steve Kroft.


STEVE KROFT: There are a number of different things that you could do early on pertaining to executive orders.


PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: Right.


STEVE KROFT: One of them is to shut down Guantanamo Bay.


PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: Mm-hmm.


STEVE KROFT: Another is to change interrogation methods that are used by US troops. Are those things that you plan to take early action on?


PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: Yes. I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.



AMY GOODMAN: There you have President-elect Barack Obama saying he’s going to close Guantanamo and make sure the US doesn’t torture.


MICHAEL RATNER: Well, obviously, I mean, we at the Center represent scores of Guantanamo people, scores of people who have been tortured. And, of course, this is a very, very important statement. I mean, this is a shift. This is someone who I now believe will close Guantanamo and I hope will apply the anti-torture rules to not just the military, but to the CIA and everybody else. So that’s actually very positive.


The negative part is really what we’ve seen come out, floated by ostensibly members of the transition team and others, which are two issues. I called it re-wrapping Guantanamo to make it more palatable, not at Gauntanamo, but maybe here. One is preventive detention, and the other is national security courts. And they work together. If you really look at what Guantanamo was, it’s essentially a preventive detention facility where the United States really tried to give people no legal rights to challenge that preventive detention. Finally, we got into federal court, etc. That’s what it represents: preventive detention and bad, bad court review. So what you see in these new proposals, which are really from—they’re being floated slowly, maybe they’re from academics, they’re from transition people, saying we may need a preventive detention scheme, which is incredible to me. I mean, we’ve have 200 years of a country and never had to have a preventive detention scheme.


AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean by “preventive detention.”


MICHAEL RATNER: Preventive detention is really what we see at Guantanamo. It’s when you are put into a prison without being charged with a crime and without having a trial on that charge. It means you’re put into a prison for national security reasons, because you’re, quote, “dangerous.” And in this case, the proposals that seem to be working together, preventive detention and national security courts, are—yes, we may need to jail people because they are dangerous or national security threats, and even for that, their testing of that preventive detention can’t occur in a regular court, we don’t think they’re sufficient enough, we’re going to set up national security courts to do that.


So what you’re really seeing is a re-wrapping of Guantanamo in a legal—in a legal new paper to make it more palatable. I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope there’s huge objections. The idea that this country would go into a preventive detention at this point and special courts, after we’ve been litigating for years to say these people have a right to get into a federal court and we shouldn’t have a preventive detention scheme, is remarkable to me. And I would just—I would really think that while it’s great that he wants to close Guantanamo and end torture, I mean, to set up an alternate scheme is really un-American.


AMY GOODMAN: The Associated Press is reporting that Obama advisers are crafting a plan that would put the prisoners in US courts. Under the proposal, some prisoners would be freed, while others would be sent to trial in criminal courts in the United States. A third group would go in front of a new court system designed to handle so-called national security cases.


MICHAEL RATNER: You know, at Guantanamo, there’s 255 people. The majority of those just should be released. I mean, that’s clear, if not almost everybody. The rest of them should be tried in federal courts. What this floated piece by the AP report is saying, yeah, we’ll try some of them, we’ll free most of them, but some of them are going to be put in these national security courts and held in preventive detention.


The question is, why? What are we doing here? The reasons they give are, we can’t disclose classified information, and maybe we can’t prove that they actually committed crimes. Well, classified information is dealt with all the time in our federal courts. There’s hundreds of trials in which they have methods of dealing with classified information. The other issue is more serious. Yes, they may only have evidence from torture against some people. Well, that shouldn’t be allowed to hold people in national security courts or in regular courts. In fact, if anything, national security courts and preventive detention, in my view, will encourage torture, because you’ll have special ways of holding people without being able to suppress the evidence. I mean, it’s amazing. What they’re taking is essentially a made-up problem, much like the ticking time bomb, and trying to build an entire superstructure of preventive detention and national security courts on top of it, when we don’t even ever have one of those so-called ticking time bombs.


AMY GOODMAN: Michael Ratner, I want to thank you for being with us, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.



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Texas judge has set an arraignment date for Friday for Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. They were indicted this week by a Texas grand jury on state charges accusing them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a privately run federal jail. We speak with Willacy County District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra ..

JUAN GONZALEZ: A Texas judge has set an arraignment date for Friday for Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. They were indicted this week by a Texas grand jury on state charges accusing them of responsibility for prisoner abuse in a privately run federal jail. Cheney, Gonzales and the others named in the indictments will not be arrested and do not need to appear in person at the arraignment, the judge said.


One indictment charges Cheney and Gonzales with engaging in organized criminal activity. It alleges they neglected federal prisoners and are responsible for abuses in the privately run prisons in Willacy County in South Texas.


The grand jury accused Cheney of a conflict of interest because of his alleged influence over the county’s federal immigrant prison and his investments in the Vanguard Group, which invests in private prison companies. The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his influence to stop an investigation into corruption during the building of another federal jail.


AMY GOODMAN: The indictments were bought by Willacy District Attorney Juan Guerra. Guerra has been in office more than a dozen years but was defeated in the March Democratic primary. He leaves office December 31st.


An attorney for one of the private prison operators filed motions accusing Guerra of prosecutorial vindictiveness. Four of the eight indictments Guerra brought target judges and special prosecutors who played a role in an earlier investigation of him. On Wednesday, the judge, Manuel Banales, said he would not listen to motions to quash the indictments, because District Attorney Guerra was not in court.


Willacy County District Attorney Juan Guerra joins us now from a studio in Houston. Welcome to Democracy Now! Lay out your indictments against the Vice President and former Attorney General, Juan Guerra.


JUAN ANGEL GUERRA: Well, I mean, it’s—trying to lay it out in a very, very compact—first of all, this investigation has been going on for quite a bit. I personally started back in ’01, when the death of De La Rosa occurred, and so that quickly escalated. I prosecuted the individuals that killed De La Rosa, the other two inmates, and at that point I realized that the security and the welfare of the inmates was very lax. And at the same time, we also learned—I investigated the auditor, who was in the—also involved in the corruption. So the two things were coming in at the same time. So when the issue came up about the corruption, we brought the federals to get involved.


The federals picked up the investigation and dragged it all through 2006. In November 2006, they convicted the commissioners and Cortez, who worked for a private prison. But then, a week later, Cortez and commissioners were given only a three-month sentence, and at that point, they basically shut down the investigation. The US attorney for the southern district who was under investigation was—informed me that the investigation was over, even though just a week prior had told me that these individuals were given very light sentences, because they were bringing down higher-ups. So that stopped the federal investigation.


That was in ’06, when—the same time the other eight US attorneys were also told to stop other investigations. So I felt that at that point I needed to continue with the investigation. I knew basically, you know—since I was the one that started it, I continued it. That’s where my problem started at that point. You know, I ended up getting arrested, getting indicted in frivolous charges. And so, I knew that I was stepping on people’s toes. The person that indicted me was Marvin Mosbacker, who was there when we started the investigation, working under the Cheney and Bush administration. He was an attorney working under them, so they brought him in, Marvin Mosbacker, an ex-US attorney for the southern district, to go ahead and indict me.


So we continued tracking the money all these years, and finally my charges were dismissed about two weeks ago, after eighteen months of being indicted. And, of course, that hurt my being elected. The question was, do I just look the other way? The foot soldiers at the FBI and the Texas Rangers were telling me that I was on my own, because, you know, that the private investigation was off-limits. So I continued on my own in gathering information. Four months ago, we started Operation Goliath, when they thought that I had already lost the election and that the investigation—I mean, it was pretty much over. And so, that kind of left me open, because nobody knew that I had started the investigation again. And so, not even my staff, nobody knew in my little county. I was working out of my office, and I only trusted very few people. So we started bringing experts from throughout the country with regard to the private prisons, and then we started following the money. And there’s no—


JUAN GONZALEZ: Juan Guerra, just to get clear now, the relationship of Cheney and Gonzales to this, to what you say is corruption and mistreatment of prisoners in private prisons? What was their connection to this?


JUAN ANGEL GUERRA: Well, the connection, it’s organizing criminal activity. It has all the elements. Vice President Cheney is at the very top, and he has a lot of influence on ICE and Homeland Security. They determine how much money they’re going to pay the private prisons per day and per person. So, right now, the contracts go through the GEO Group, which is one of the highest, the biggest private prisons, CCA and Cornell. Now, these three are the biggest companies. When you round up the inmates, this is where they end up. Their money is—they’re getting paid at—right now it’s at $80 per person per day. It used to be $54, now it’s $80. And that’s controlled by the administration as to how much money they’re going to pay per person. They’re fixing to going up to $120. So this—


AMY GOODMAN: Juan Guerra, the Vice President’s attorney says this is bizarre, that you had Cheney invested in Vanguard Group, which is a mutual fund that, yes, does invest in the private prison industry, but can you indict him for being responsible for abusive behavior in the prison?


JUAN ANGEL GUERRA: Well, yes, because, again, you have the activities, the criminal activities, that his involvement is that he is aware with the Vanguard Group. The Vanguard Group has invested—is invested. It’s a top ten companies that are investing in the three top private prisons companies, the private prisons. So if you follow Vanguard, then he ended up investing $85 million. The problem here is that the Vanguard Group is not part of his blind trust. This is money that he has, quote, “on the side.” It is reported in his income tax with his signature there. So he knows exactly where his money is invested. If this was part of his blind trust, then he would have no control. So because he has control, so now they’re trying to increase the number, the price. Instead of $80, they’re trying to go to $120, which means that these private companies are going to end up making more money, which means that Vanguard would make more money, which means that obviously the Vice President would make more money.


AMY GOODMAN: And Alberto Gonzales’s connection?


JUAN ANGEL GUERRA: That’s one. You have the top boss, which is the Vice President, and then you have Alberto Gonzales, the enforcer to making sure that that criminal activity which is going on in the private prisons—we had numerous deaths that are occurring throughout our country. We brought in experts and witnesses that were telling us that the numbers of prison inmates dying in the private prisons is staggering. It’s about five times as high as the public prisons, so that all this criminal activity that is going on is contributed to now allowing investigations into what is going. Alberto Gonzales’s part was to make sure that private prisons would not get investigated, so that when we started the investigation, the FBI took over the investigation. The assistant US attorney that was handling the investigation, Marvin Mosbacker—


AMY GOODMAN: Juan Angel Guerra, we want to thank you for being with us.



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In Iraq, the head of the Accordance Front, Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab bloc, said on Monday that the Sunni bloc still has reservations about a security pact that would let US troops stay in Iraq for another three years. Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the Sunni bloc, told reporters that the Sunnis wanted a referendum on the pact which has yet to be approved by parliament.

Adnan al-Dulaimi: “We need guarantees for the future, since we are afraid of the future because our role will be marginalized. We will be exposed to daily arrest operations, and this should be stopped. The government and US forces should work together to assure Iraqis that they will not be arrested, searched or killed. The best solution that we see is the referendum, as the Islamic party asked before.”

This comes as followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr make a bid to block the Status of Forces Agreement in parliament.

US Officials: 2011 Withdrawal Date from Iraq Not Firm
Supporters of the security pact say it will force all US troops to leave Iraq by 2011, but in Washington top US officials are suggesting this may not be the case. Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said, “Three years is a long time. Conditions could change in that period of time.” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino claimed on Monday the security agreement included only “aspirational” dates for withdrawal.

Taliban Rejects Afghan Peace Talks Offer
In Afghanistan, the Taliban has rejected an offer of peace talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The Taliban says it will not negotiate until foreign troops leave Afghanistan. On Sunday, Karzai offered to provide security for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, if he agreed to negotiations.

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In news from Africa, a group of Somali pirates have hijacked a Saudi supertanker 450 nautical miles off the coast of Kenya. The supertanker is three times the size of an aircraft carrier. The tanker holds up to two million barrels of oil, more than one-quarter of Saudi Arabia’s daily exports. It is the largest vessel ever seized by a Somali gang. According to Al Jazeera, there have been sixty-three reported incidents of piracy this year off the coast of Somalia. Thirteen vessels are still being held with a total of 275 crew members.

Pentagon Admits 12 Juveniles Held at Guantanamo
The Pentagon has acknowledged that the United States held twelve juveniles at Guantanamo Bay, four more than previously acknowledged. The Pentagon made the announcement a week after the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas issued a study concluding the US has held at least a dozen juveniles at Guantanamo, including a Saudi who committed suicide in 2006. Eight of the twelve juvenile detainees identified by the human rights center have been released. The Saudi who hanged himself, Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, was seventeen when he arrived at Guantanamo.

Vatican Threatens to Excommunicate Priest Who Supports Ordination of Women
The Vatican has threatened to excommunicate a well-known Catholic priest this month unless he recants his belief and public statements that support the ordination of women in the Church. Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest, took part in a ceremony this summer to ordain a member of the group called Roman Catholic Womenpriests. Bourgeois has been a priest for thirty-six years. For the past two decades, he has organized the annual protest against the US Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. The 2008 protest is scheduled for this weekend.

Miriam Makeba Memorial Held in South Africa
And in South Africa, over 2,000 people gathered on Saturday to hold a public memorial for Miriam Makeba, one of Africa’s best-known singers and a champion of the fight against apartheid during three decades in exile. Makeba died at the age of seventy-six on November 9th. Makeba, who was known as Mama Africa, was the first black South African musician to gain international fame and was a longtime critic of the apartheid system.

South African Deputy President Baleka Mbete: “We have come together to pay tribute to a soul that loomed larger than life. We are here to commiserate with the family, relatives and friends of Mama Africa and to share in the loss of this beloved African heroine, about whom we can say she was an outstanding patriot and a Pan-Africanist. We take this moment to say to the Makeba family, your pain is our pain, your loss is the loss of the entire world. I am sure we can agree that we are here to pay homage and celebrate a life lived to the fullest. It is for this reason that the tears we shed are not tears of pain but are tears of joy, for Mama Makeba left us a legacy that will be in our historical memory for generations to come.”


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A federal jury in Dallas Texas has convicted the leaders of a Muslim charity on 108 criminal counts including support of terrorism, money laundering and tax fraud. The five men all worked for the Holy Land Foundation which was the largest Muslim charity in the United States until the Bush administration shut it down in 2001. The government accused the charity of funneling money to the Palestinian group Hamas. The defendants argued that the Holy Land Foundation was engaged in legitimate humanitarian aid for community welfare programs and Palestinian orphans. Holy Land’s former accountant Mohammed Wafa Yaish said: “It’s a sad day. It looks like helping the needy Palestinians is a crime these days.”

Bin Laden’s Driver Released From Guantanamo
The U.S. military has decided to release Osama bin Laden’s former driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan from custody at Guantanamo and send him back to his home country of Yemen. Hamdan was held at the military prison for five years. In August a military tribunal convicted him on two charges of material support for terrorism but acquitted him of the most serious charges. Military prosecutors had sought a thirty-year sentence but he was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison, including the five he had already spent at Guantanamo Bay.

French FM Questions Obama’s Plans To Escalate War in Afghanistan
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner says he has doubts about U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Kouchner says plans to increase troop numbers would only work “in precise areas with a precise task.” He says military power alone won’t stabilize the situation in Afghanistan.

10 Taliban Arrested For Spraying Acid At Girls Walking to School
Afghan police have arrested 10 members of the Taliban for spraying acid at 15 girls and teachers as they walked to school. Several girls suffered burns to the face and were hospitalized. One teenager couldn’t open her eyes days after the attack. The attacks were carried out by hard-line members of the Taliban who believe women shoud not attend school. One of the victims, 16-year-old Susan has been left scarred on her face and hands. She was part of a group attacked in front of the school.

Susan: “It was 8:00 o’clock in the morning, I was going to school with my mother. Two men pulled up their motorbike towards us and threw acid on my face and my mother’s face.”

Members of the Taliban have attacked and destroyed hundreds of schools across Afghanitan since 2001.

Candidate to Head RNC Connected To Whites-Only Country Club
The website Talking Points Memo reports a candidate to become chair of the Republican National Committee was a longtime member of a white-only country club in South Carolina. Katon Dawson announced his candidacy for the RNC chair on Sunday. He is currently the South Carolina Republican chair. For 12 years Dawson was a member of the Forest Lake Club. He resigned from the club in September after local media reports revealed that the country club’s deed had a whites-only restriction. The news come as the Republican party struggles to attract African-American supporters. At this year’s Republican National Convention only 36 of the nearly 2,400 delegates were black, the lowest number in 40 years.

Zimbabwe Blocks Carter, Annan Fact-Finding Trip
Zimbabwe has blocked former President Jimmy Carter, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and South African human rights campaigner Graca Machel from entering the country to assess the humanitarian crisis there. The United Nations estimates about 6,000 people have contracted cholera in recent weeks in Zimbabwe and almost 300 have died. Hundreds of people have crossed into South Africa seeking treatment. Jimmy Carter said the entire structure of the country has broken down.

Jimmy Carter: “We all have a feeling that the leaders of SADC do not know what’s going on inside Zimbabwe, I think they need to send in a team, to make an assessment of what is going on with cholera, with starvation, with crops, with the education system, with the monetary system, and report back to the leaders, what is going on, and I see no reason why the African Union, without interfering in the political negotiations, shouldn’t do the same thing, and I don’t see any reason why the United Nations shouldn’t also send a team in to Zimbabwe, so the whole world would know what we have learned the last three days, and what we have shared with you.”



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By Amy Goodman

As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

You may not have heard much lately about the disaster in the Gaza Strip. That silence is intentional: The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering the occupied territory.

Last week, executives from the Associated Press, New York Times, Reuters, CNN, BBC and other news organizations sent a letter of protest to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert criticizing his government’s decision to bar journalists from entering Gaza. Israel has virtually sealed off the Gaza Strip and cut off aid and fuel shipments. A spokesman for Israel’s Defense Ministry said Israel was displeased with international media coverage, which he said inflated Palestinian suffering and did not make clear that Israel’s measures were in response to Palestinian violence.

As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

You may not have heard much lately about the disaster in the Gaza Strip. That silence is intentional: The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering the occupied territory.

Last week, executives from the Associated Press, New York Times, Reuters, CNN, BBC and other news organizations sent a letter of protest to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert criticizing his government’s decision to bar journalists from entering Gaza. Israel has virtually sealed off the Gaza Strip and cut off aid and fuel shipments. A spokesman for Israel’s Defense Ministry said Israel was displeased with international media coverage, which he said inflated Palestinian suffering and did not make clear that Israel’s measures were in response to Palestinian violence.

A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the group that won Palestinian elections nearly three years ago and controls Gaza, broke down after an Israeli raid killed six Hamas militants two weeks ago. More Israeli raids have followed, killing approximately 17 Hamas members, and Palestinian militants have fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel, injuring several people.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has criticized Israel over its blockade of the overcrowded Gaza, home to close to 1.5 million Palestinians. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is warning that Gaza faces a humanitarian “catastrophe” if Israel continues to blockade aid from reaching the territory.

The sharply divided landscape of Israel and the occupied territories is familiar ground for South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Tutu was in New York last week to receive the Global Citizens Circle Award. I sat down with him at the residence of the South African vice consul. Tutu reflected on the Israeli occupation: “Coming from South Africa ... and looking at the checkpoints ... when you humiliate a people to the extent that they are being—and, yes, one remembers the kind of experience we had when we were being humiliated—when you do that, you’re not contributing to your own security.”

Tutu said the embargo must be lifted. “The suffering is unacceptable. It doesn’t promote the security of Israel or any other part of that very volatile region,” he said. “There are very, very many in Israel who are opposed to what is happening.”

Tutu points to the outgoing Israeli prime minister. In September, Olmert made a stunning declaration to Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest Israeli newspaper. He said that Israel should withdraw from nearly all territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war in return for peace with the Palestinians and Syria: “I am saying what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: We should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights.”

Olmert said that traditional Israeli defense strategists had learned nothing from past experiences and that they seemed stuck in the considerations of the 1948 War of Independence. He said: “With them, it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories and this hilltop and that hilltop. All these things are worthless.”

Olmert appears to have come closer to his daughter’s point of view. In 2006, Dana Olmert was among 200 people who gathered outside the home of the Israeli army chief of staff and chanted “murderer” as they protested Israeli killings of Palestinians (Archbishop Tutu was blocked from entering Gaza in his U.N.-backed attempts to investigate those killings). Ehud Olmert recently resigned over corruption allegations, but remains prime minister until a new government is approved by parliament.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki criticized Olmert for waiting until now to call for an end to the settlements: “We wish we heard this personal opinion when Olmert was prime minister, not after he resigned. I think it is a very important commitment, but it came too late. We hope this commitment will be fulfilled by the new Israeli government.”

Israel is a top recipient of U.S. military aid. Archbishop Tutu says of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “When that is resolved, what we will find [is] that the tensions between the West and ... a large part of the Muslim world ... evaporates.” He said of Obama, “I pray that this new president will have the capacity to see we’ve got to do something here ... for the sake of our children.”

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She has been awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and will receive the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.


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War veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan came to Capitol Hill earlier this year to testify before Congress and give an eyewitness account about the horrors of war. Like the Winter Soldier hearings in March, when more than 200 service members gathered for four days in Silver Spring, Maryland to give their eyewitness accounts of the injustices occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, “Winter Soldier on the Hill” was designed to drive home the human cost of the war and occupation—this time, to the very people in charge of doing something about it.

AMY GOODMAN: War veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan came to Capitol Hill this month to testify before Congress and give an eyewitness account about the horrors of war. Like the Winter Soldier hearings in March, when more than 200 service members gathered for four days in Silver Spring, Maryland to give their eyewitness accounts of the injustices occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, Winter Soldier on the Hill was designed to drive home the human cost of war and occupation, this time to the very people in charge of doing something about it.


Then name “Winter Soldier” comes from a similar event in 1971, when hundreds of Vietnam vets gathered in Detroit. The term is derived from the opening line of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The Crisis, published in 1776. "These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman,” Paine wrote.


Well, in a packed public hearing this month, the soldiers testified before a panel of lawmakers from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Today, we spend the hour with their testimony. We begin with former Marine sniper, Sergio Kochergin, giving a firsthand, behind-the-scenes account of the initial days of the US invasion of Iraq.


SERGIO KOCHERGIN: As we cleared all the buildings and moved into the city, and we finally had a time to take a little break, we found a lot of left-behind vehicles, from pickup trucks all the way to luxury Toyota Avalons with leather and sunroofs, which we used for perimeter patrolling. The pickup trucks and the other vehicles were used for the car derby. We would either ram into each other or just ram into the walls, while Iraqi people watched us and were asking for vehicles. We knew they were going to loot the cars, so we just destroyed them, so that the people would not have a chance to take them, except for the scraps.


We also were exposed to a lot of dead Iraqi citizens, either enemy combatants or innocent civilians who were killed by initial air strikes or invasion. At one point, after approaching dead bodies of about four people, we began to take pictures and tried to move and flip them over to try and identify them as civilians or enemy combatants. A few days later, a family of the killed came by and asked if we found anyone who was killed nearby. Me and another Marine led the family to the dead corpses, and they were identified as their sons and uncles and nephews of the family. It was very hard to see the pain in the people’s eyes from their loss. They began to cry and point at us and at the sky and telling us that the planes killed them, and it was our fault also. But we tried to explain to them that it wasn’t us.


Imam Ali Mosque in al-Najaf, Iraq, an influential Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, was killed with another 122 innocent people on August 30th of 2003. A few of our Marines went to the hospital to provide security for all the relatives that were trying to contact their families. When they came back, they said they have never seen so much blood before. They said that they couldn’t even see the ground, so much blood and body parts were everywhere. The suicide bombing was placed by al-Hakim’s political and religious opponent, al-Sadr. Unknown number of attacks have been organized by al-Sadr’s militia against innocent people of Iraq and against the occupying forces.


One other responsibility we had in al-Najaf was to guard an ammunition supply point about thirty miles northeast from our base. Our job consisted of patrolling ASB, and when we came into contact with Iraqis stealing stuff, we would take a physical action and to make sure they would never come back. We would shoot their tires out or shoot their windows, putting them on their knees like we’re about to execute them and just shoot in the air and laugh and yell at them and tell them that the next time will be worse. Our orders directly from command was to roughen up all the guys up. They would always tell us that everybody is an enemy and that we can’t trust them and the only way to keep them in place is to put as much fear as possible and to let them know that we’re not playing around. During the deployment in al-Najaf, nothing was fixed or intended on being fixed at all, except keeping the city in the occupied hands and instill the fear into the people at every chance we got.


My second deployment was in the city of Husaybah in Al Anbar province in Al Qaim region on the Syrian border. First thing I want to talk about is the drop weapons. Drop weapons are the weapons that are given to us by our chain of command in case we kill somebody without any weapons, and so that we would not get into trouble. We would carry an AK-47, and if the person that was shot did not have the weapon, an AK-47 would be placed at his corpse, and when the unit would come back to the base, they would turn it in to identify the shot man as the enemy combatant. The weapons could not come from anywhere else but the higher chain of command, because after the raid, all weapons were turned in into the armory and should have been recorded.


Two months into deployment, our rules of engagement changed to a personnel with having a bag and a shovel at the intersection or on the roads, that they were suspicious. This gave us a bigger window on who we can engage. Looking at the situation, this point of view, a lot of enemy combatants that we shot were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were tired, mad, angry, and we just wanted to go home and stop this killing of our brothers. One of our intelligence officers told us that they received a call from one of the sources in the city telling them that there are fliers posted all over the town that says that there are unknown snipers in the city, they kill the insurgents and the civilians. We did not take into consideration that the innocent people are being killed by us, because every time we sent the pictures to the command post through the interlink system, we would receive an approval to kill people with shovels and the bags.


Now, I know that it wasn’t right to do that, but when you trust those who act like they care for you, you listen to them and follow their orders, because you don’t want to let your friends down. “What if?” was used as a propaganda and a way to relieve our minds from the actions we have partaken in and make it easier on us.

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Another thing I want to touch on is, problems with equipment are another big problem. Where is all the money going that is given to the military? During my first deployment, I had a Vietnam-era flak jacket without a plate. My M-16 was made back in the late ’70s. We did not have enough night-vision goggles for everyone. While Marines are patrolling in the Hummers every day and get blown up, because the only protection they have are the flak blankets hanging from the doors, while generals and colonels and other high-ranking officers that leave a base once in awhile have brand new, fully armored Hummers that are always spotless clean sitting on the base, while other Hummers are bleeding with our brothers’, sons’, daughters’, sisters’ blood every day.


When we all come back from Iraq and we seek help from our command, they call us “weak” and “cowards.” The lines for a psychologist is almost a year long, and the only thing that can help us is the alcohol and the prescription pills they’re giving out to us like candy to keep us down, because it seems like doctors don’t want to do their job and they just don’t care. Use of drugs amongst the military units is critical. We lost numerous numbers of people from failing drug tests. They either want to get out, or they’re just so messed up, and the only one thing that can help them to escape is the drugs.


The last thing I want to tell you is about a roommate who we shared a bathroom with, a Marine who was on the suicide watch for about few months on and off. The last three weeks before we were deployed, he was constantly on watch. A week before family day, when the family comes in and says goodbye to their Marines before we deploy, he was released from the watch, so that he would not say anything to his parents, and he did not say anything to them. About a month into deployment, he blew his brains out in the shower stall. Actions like that show the poor judgment of our command just to have numbers for the troops and just to keep their own skins safe. The Marine should have never gone to Iraq in the first place, and nobody was held responsible for his death. If there is no care for your own Marines, what care do they have for the people of Iraq when they give the orders?


I want to thank you for your time, and I believe that you will make a right decision and will help us to stop this inhumane treatment of Iraqi people and the troops and stop occupation of Iraq and help us to bring troops home. Thank you.



AMY GOODMAN: Former Marine sniper, Sergio Kochergin. Next up is former Army Captain Luis Montalvan. He worked extensively for General David Petraeus.


LUIS MONTALVAN: I wrote countless memoranda to my superiors requesting more resources and personnel, but they went unanswered. In Iraq, I witnessed many disturbing things. I witnessed waterboarding. I was given unlawful orders by superiors to not offer humanitarian assistance to refugees caught between Syrian and Iraqi borders. I disobeyed those orders. I witnessed and participated in countless massive operations led by American commanders whose metrics for success were numbers of detainees apprehended without regard to the real effects: tribal, ethnic, sectarian strife conducted by American taxpayer-uniformed and–equipped militias the US military calls Iraqi Security Forces.


Most reprehensible was that we have never had close to the amount of troops we needed in Iraq. Yet from 2003 until today, General Sanchez, Casey and Petraeus, among others, did not heed the requests of their subordinate officers for more resources and more troops. Instead, they perpetually painted a rosy picture of the situation to the country, while the country fell into civil war. These generals consistently overstated the strength and number of Iraqi Security Forces to Congress and still do. The misrepresentation of the facts should be grounds for courts-martial and criminal indictments.


I lost many friends in Iraq, American and Iraqi. Many Iraqi friends continue to suffer as refugees inside and outside of Iraq. As a matter of fact, an Iraqi friend, whom I consider a brother, named Ali, is meeting with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Jordan today to process his application for asylum under the United States Refugee Admissions Program. Recently, Ali contacted me through my website asking for help. As a result, a few of my comrades in the US Army sent him letters of support, since he frequently risked his life to help us in 2003 and 2004. I pray that Ali and many others are quickly helped.


I wish to focus this letter, Ted, on things we struggled—we both struggled with enormously: negligence, dereliction of duty and corruption. You believe Generals Joseph Fil and David Petraeus were negligent and committed dereliction of duty. So do I. In the note you addressed to Generals Petraeus and Fil found by your body that the Army says is your, quote, “suicide note,” you stated, quote, “You are only interested in your careers and provide no support to your staff, no mission support, and you don’t care. I cannot support a mission that leads to corruption, human rights abuses and liars. I am sullied no more. I didn’t volunteer to support corrupt, money-grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves.” The members of your family believe this note is a part of a journal entry that was removed and placed near your body. Moreover, they told me that they have not received your journal, among other personal effects.

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While at the port of entry at Al Waleed in 2003, among the many memoranda I submitted to my superiors was a report expressing the need for an automated tracking system for immigration and emigration. General Ricardo Sanchez and Paul Bremer sent a delegation to Al Waleed to assess the port of entry for installation of the Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System, known as the PISCES, to provide tracking of transnational movement of immigration and emigration. When the team departed, they informed me that the facilities would support installation of the PISCES. By the time my unit, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, left in March 2004, PISCES had not been emplaced.


In 2005, I returned to Iraq for a second tour. Assigned as the regimental Iraqi Security Forces coordinator working for Colonel H.R. McMaster, who has today been slotted for general, among my duties was to oversee the development and security of the northern half of the secured—of the Syrian-Iraqi border at the port of entry at Rabia. On June 2005, Commander Guy Vilardi, working for Multi-National Corps-Iraq, informed me that CPATT, a sub-entity, had possessed a dozen PISCES in containers located in Baghdad. He also informed me that they would install the systems in the near future.


Upon return to western Nineveh province, I informed my superiors, including Colonel McMaster. In August 2005, General Joseph Fil, commander of CPATT, visited Rabiya and briefed us—so that we could brief him on the status of the Syrian-Iraqi Border. We briefed General Fil, who scoffed at the notion of the installation of the PISCES system and stated that the system was no good, and we don’t have them anyhow. I informed General Fil of my conversation with Commander Vilardi, to which General Fil replied, “That’s not true, and the PISCES is no good anyhow.” In January of 2006, shortly before departure from my second tour, Colonel Carl Lammers of the United States Marine Corps Reserve, sent an email on a secure network indicating that, in fact, the PISCES systems were in containers in Baghdad. I was outraged. As of March 2006, when the 3rd ACR departed western Nineveh province, no PISCES or equivalent tracking system had been installed in the Rabiya POE.


From 2007—from 2003 to 2007, no computer systems for tracking immigration or emigration installed—were installed along the Syrian-Iraqi border. This surely contributed to the instability of Iraq. Foreign fighters and criminals were free to move transnationally with little fear of apprehension. It is probable that significant numbers of Americans and Iraqis were wounded and killed as a result of this.


My—I see that I have one minute left, so I’ll skip down to one more important point. I witnessed contractual corruption on the point of Lee Dynamics International. I have written testimony, notes from Brigadier General—then-Brigadier General Bergner, on page four, elucidating the fact that General Petraeus and General Fil had no systems of accountability for thousands of weapons and no standard operating procedures for the procurement, stowage and dissemination of that equipment.


And lastly, I would end that, you know, for the past year and a half, myself and a number of fellow veterans of Iraq have co-authored pieces in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, among a number of other media outlets. And we have beaten our drum to try to raise the issue of the dereliction of duty committed by a number of generals who have been promoted and promoted again and continue to perpetuate the lies and paint a rosy picture of the situation of Iraq.


VINCENT EMANUELE: My name is Vincent J.R. Emanuele. I am a resident of Indiana, and I served with the United States Marine Corps from September 2002 through January of 2006 with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon as a rifleman and a squad automatic machine gunner. I was deployed to Iraq in August of 2004, where I spent my time in Iraq as a rifleman in 3rd Squad, 1st Team, 3rd Platoon. Our area of operation was a small border town a mile south of the Euphrates and fifteen miles east of Syria called Al Qaim, Iraq.


The issues I will be discussing today include rules of the engagement, or the breakdown thereof, the death of innocents, the destruction of civilian property, the abuse of prisoners, and the mishandling of the dead, all of which took place during the duration of our tour in Iraq. These stories are not mine alone. These are our stories, the stories of 3rd Platoon. I had the chance—I had the chance to speak with several members from my platoon, and these are the events they and I felt were pertinent to discuss with you today.


An act that took place quite often in Iraq was that of taking pop shots at cars that drove by. This was quite easy for most Marines to get away with, because our rules of engagement stated that the town of Al Qaim had already been forewarned and knew to pull their cars to a complete stop when approaching a United States convoy. Our rules of engagement stated that we should first fire warning shots into the ground in front of the car, then the engine block, and then the driver and passengers. Most of the time, however, the shots made their way straight to those very individuals in the car. That is if the car was even moving in the first place. Many times, cars that had actually pulled off to the side of the road were also shot at. Of course, the consequences of such actions posed a huge problem for those of us who patrolled the streets every day. This was not the best way to become friendlier with an already very hostile local population. This was not an isolated incident and took place for most of my eight-month deployment.


In one particular instance, we were sent on a mission to blow up a bridge that was being used to transport weapons across the Euphrates. During this mission, we were ambushed and were forced to return fire in order to make our way out of the city. There are several problems with instances such as these. First, it was very difficult, if not impossible, to clearly identify hostile targets. This resulted in our unit firing into the town with little or no identification of these hostile targets. Because of inadequate intelligence and lack of personnel or competent leadership, our platoon lost a good Marine that day, and I lost my best friend.

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