THE CALAMITY HOWLER #163 Resent-Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:11:57 -0500 (CDT) THE CALAMITY HOWLER July 19, 2007 Issue #163 Sometimes an intended epithet can be turned to good advantage in the sole surviving issue of the Decatur, Texas Times one finds the way Populists not only accepted the label `calamity howler but insisted that they had ample reason to howl and would continue to howl until their objectives had been attained. --- THE POPULIST MIND, edited by Norman Pollack EDITOR\PUBLISHER: A.V Krebs E-MAIL: avkrebs@comcast.net TO RECEIVE: Send name and address to avkrebs@comcast.net OVERVIEW: * SIX YEARS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, THE SAME THREAT By Scott Shane * THE POLITICS OF FEAR New York Times Editorial * SAUDIS' ROLE IN IRAQ INSURGENCY OUTLINED By Ned Parker * IRAQI YOUTH FACE LASTING SCARS OF WAR By Sudarsan Raghavan * L.A. TIMES REPORTS SHOCKING TESTIMONY IN ATROCITY TRIAL By Editor&Publisher * U.S. FACES MORE DISTRUST FROM WORLD By Meg Bortin * STUDENTS SPEAK UP TO PRESIDENT BUSH By Amy Goodman SIX YEARS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, THE SAME THREAT By Scott Shane New York Times July 17, 2007 Nearly six years after the Septmber 11 attacks, the hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives expended in the name of the war on terror pose a single, insistent question: Are we safer? On Tuesday, in a dark and strikingly candid two pages, the nations intelligence agencies offered an implicit answer, and it was not encouraging. In many respects, the National Intelligence Estimate suggests, the threat of terrorist violence against the United States is growing worse, fueled by the Iraq war and spreading Islamic extremism. The conclusions were not new, echoing the private comments of government officials and independent experts for many months. But the stark declassified summary contrasted sharply with the more positive emphasis of President Bush and his top aides for years: that two-thirds of Al Qaedas leadership had been killed or captured; that the Iraq invasion would reduce the terrorist menace; and that the United States had its enemies on the run, as Mr. Bush has frequently put it. After years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq and targeted killings in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere, the major threat to the United States has the same name and the same basic look as in 2001: Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, plotting attacks from mountain hide-outs near the Afghan-Pakistani border. The headline on the intelligence estimate, said Daniel L. Byman, a former intelligence officer and the director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, might just as well have been the same as on the now famous presidential brief of August 6, 2001: Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. The new estimate does cite some gains; known plots against the United States have been disrupted, it says, thanks to increased vigilance and countermeasures. But the new estimate takes note of sources of worry that have arisen only since 2001. The Iraq war has spawned Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as the most visible and capable affiliate of the original terrorist group, inspiring jihadists around the world and drawing money and recruits to their cause. The explosion of radical Internet sites has created self-generating cells of would-be terrorists in many Western countries. Lebanese Hezbollah, rarely considered likely to attack in the United States, now may be more likely to consider doing just that in response to a perceived threat from American forces to itself or its sponsor, Iran. And if there had been progress after September 11 in isolating and immobilizing Al Qaedas leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan, some of it has come apart in the past year, with Pakistani troops abandoning patrols in North Waziristan and allowing greater freedom of movement to Al Qaedas core. All told, despite the absence of any new attack on American soil since 2001, the conclusion that Al Qaeda will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the United States suggests some miscalculation in the administrations basic formula against terrorism: that attacking the jihadists overseas would protect the homeland. I guess we have to fight them over here even though were fighting them over there, said Steven Simon, a terrorism expert who served in the Clinton administration and is the co-author of The Next Attack. Democrats proclaimed the document a devastating indictment of Bush administration policies, in the words of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a presidential candidate. The documents pessimism was striking; it may reflect a determination of the intelligence agencies, accused of skewing some reports to back the presidents Iraq invasion plans in 2003, to make clear that their findings have not been tailored to suit the White House this time around. But Max Boot, a security analyst who has generally supported the president, said the estimate cuts both ways politically. Even if some administration policies have been ineffective or have backfired, the estimate also concludes that Al Qaeda will probably try to capitalize on the network built up by its affiliate in Iraq, lending some support to the argument that a rapid exit from Iraq might prove dangerous for American security, said Mr. Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of War Made New. It makes clear that the threat from Al Qaeda in Iraq is not just to Iraqis --- its to the U.S. homeland as well, he said. The new assessment in some respects harks back to a National Intelligence Estimate in July 1995, which predicted terrorist attacks in the United States, specifying Wall Street, the White House and the Capitol as potential targets. It described a worldwide network of training facilities and safe havens. An update of that N.I.E. in 1997 was the last such assessment issued before September 11, a gap that the 9/11 commission decried in its review of the attacks. A new estimate earlier in 2001, as the spy agencies alarm about a possible attack increased, might have better focused government efforts to detect a plot, the commission argued in its report. An estimate of the global terrorist threat last September described the emergence of the Iraq war as a cause cilhbre for jihadists around the world. But that document also highlighted American actions it said had seriously damaged the leadership of Al Qaeda and disrupted its operations. The bleak new assessment relegates almost to an aside those achievements, saying that Al Qaedas ability to attack is constrained and that the United States is now seen as a harder target. And it does not emphasize the absence of successful new strikes against the United States, a development that few security experts would have dared predict in late 2001. The dreary judgment reflected in the new estimate emerged in part from Britains discovery in August 2006 of a major plot to take down trans-Atlantic airliners, said Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University, who has studied terrorism for three decades. Mr. Hoffman said that there were indications that Qaeda leaders may have had a role in the plot, adding, It became impossible to ignore Al Qaedas evolution and resilience. But the same plot underscored one of the notable bright spots for the United States: jihadist sentiment has so far turned out to hold little attraction for American Muslims, by contrast with those in Europe generally and the United Kingdom in particular, with its large population of South Asian immigrants. THE POLITICS OF FEAR New York Times Editorial July 18, 2007 It had to happen. President Bushs bungling of the war in Iraq has been the talk of the summer. On Capitol Hill, some of the more reliable Republicans are writing proposals to force Mr. Bush to change course. A showdown vote is looming in the Senate. Enter, stage right, the fear of terrorism. Yesterday, the director of national intelligence released a report with the politically helpful title of The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland, and Fran Townsend, the presidents homeland security adviser, held a news conference to trumpet its findings. The message, as always: Be very afraid. And dont question the president. Certainly, the reports conclusions are disturbing. Nearly six years after September 11, terrorism remains a huge threat. Al Qaeda has replaced leaders killed or captured by the United States, regrouped in its former home base in the tribal lands on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and is trying to use affiliated terrorists in Iraq to raise resources and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives. If the report is given an honest reading, it is a powerful rebuke to Mr. Bushs approach to the war on terror. It vindicates those who say that the Iraq war is a distraction from the real fight against terrorism --- a fight that is not going at all well. The administration, however, seized on the report and, through bald political timing, tried to use it to dampen calls for an end to Mr. Bushs catastrophic war. That required some particularly twisted logic. Ms. Townsend, for example, dismissed a reporter who asked whether the fact that Al Qaeda has regrouped in the area from which it planned the 9/11 attacks suggested that it was a mistake to divert American forces to Iraq. She said Al Qaeda headed by Osama bin Laden and the terrorists in Iraq that use the name Al Qaeda are the same. In fact, weve seen no evidence of that, and none was in the intelligence report, at least the page and a half of conclusions released to the public. Was there a link before the war between Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader in Iraq? Ms. Townsend refused to answer. This is ground long covered, she snapped. Indeed it is. The answer is, No. In fact, Mr. Bushs bungled invasion spawned a new terrorist army and gave it a home base. Now, the report said, those terrorists are the only ones affiliated with Al Qaeda that are known to have expressed a desire to attack the United States. The White House denied that the report was timed to the Senate debate. But the administration controls the timing of such releases and the truth is that fear of terrorism is the only shard remaining of Mr. Bushs justification for invading Iraq. This administration has never hesitated to play on fear for political gain, starting with the first homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, and his Popsicle-coded threat charts. It is a breathtakingly cynical ploy, but in the past it has worked to cow Democrats into silence, if not always submission, and herd Republicans back onto the party line. That must not happen this time. By now, Congress surely can see through the presidents fear-mongering and show Mr. Bush the exit from Iraq that he refuses to find for himself. SAUDIS' ROLE IN IRAQ INSURGENCY OUTLINED By Ned Parker Los Angeles Times July 15, 2007 BAGHDAD, Iraq --- Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers. About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and ten percent are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said. Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, said the senior U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity. It is apparently the first time a U.S. official has given such a breakdown on the role played by Saudi nationals in Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency. He said 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here as suicide bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis. The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key ally that at best has not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. The problem casts a spotlight on the tangled web of alliances and enmities that underlie the political relations between Muslim nations and the U.S. In the 1980s, the Saudi intelligence service sponsored Sunni Muslim fighters for the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahedin battling Soviet troops in Afghanistan. At the time, Saudi intelligence cultivated another man helping the Afghan fighters, Osama bin Laden, the future leader of Al Qaeda who would one day turn against the Saudi royal family and mastermind the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has long been a source of a good portion of the money and manpower for Al Qaeda: 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11 attacks were Saudi. Now, a group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Iraq is the greatest short-term threat to Iraq's security, U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner said Wednesday. The group, one of several Sunni Muslim insurgent groups operating in Baghdad and beyond, relies on foreigners to carry out suicide attacks because Iraqis are less likely to undertake such strikes, which the movement hopes will provoke sectarian violence, Bergner said. Despite its name, the extent of the group's links to Bin Laden's network, based along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier, is unclear. The Saudi government does not dispute that some of its youths are ending up as suicide bombers in Iraq, but says it has done everything it can to stop the bloodshed. "Saudis are actually being misused. Someone is helping them come to Iraq. Someone is helping them inside Iraq. Someone is recruiting them to be suicide bombers. We have no idea who these people are. We aren't getting any formal information from the Iraqi government," said Gen. Mansour Turki, spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry. "If we get good feedback from the Iraqi government about Saudis being arrested in Iraq, probably we can help," he said. Defenders of Saudi Arabia pointed out that it has sought to control its lengthy border with Iraq and has fought a bruising domestic war against Al Qaeda since September 11. "To suggest they've done nothing to stem the flow of people into Iraq is wrong," said a U.S. intelligence official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "People do get across that border. You can always ask, 'Could more be done?' But what are they supposed to do, post a guard every 15 or 20 paces?" Others contend that Saudi Arabia is allowing fighters sympathetic to Al Qaeda to go to Iraq so they won't create havoc at home. Iraqi Shiite lawmaker Sami Askari, an advisor to Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, accused Saudi officials of a deliberate policy to sow chaos in Baghdad. "The fact of the matter is that Saudi Arabia has strong intelligence resources, and it would be hard to think that they are not aware of what is going on," he said. Askari also alleged that imams at Saudi mosques call for jihad, or holy war, against Iraq's Shiites and that the government had funded groups causing unrest in Iraq's largely Shiite south. Sunni extremists regard Shiites as unbelievers. Other Iraqi officials said that though they believed Saudi Arabia, a Sunni fundamentalist regime, had no interest in helping Shiite-ruled Iraq, it was not helping militants either. But some Iraqi Shiite leaders say the Saudi royal family sees the Baghdad government as a proxy for its regional rival, Shiite-ruled Iran, and wants to unseat it. With its own border with Iraq largely closed, Saudi fighters take what is now an established route by bus or plane to Syria, where they meet handlers who help them cross into Iraq's western deserts, the senior U.S. military officer said. He suggested it was here that Saudi Arabia could do more, by implementing rigorous travel screenings for young Saudi males. Iraqi officials agreed. "Are the Saudis using all means possible? Of course not. And we think they need to do more, as does Syria, as does Iran, as does Jordan," the senior officer said. An estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters cross into Iraq each month, according to the U.S. military. "It needs to be addressed by the government of Iraq head on. They have every right to stand up to a country like Saudi Arabia and say, 'Hey, you are killing thousands of people by allowing your young jihadists to come here and associate themselves with an illegal worldwide network called Al Qaeda." Both the White House and State Department declined to comment for this article. Turki, the Saudi spokesman, defended the right of his citizens to travel without restriction. "If you leave Saudi Arabia and go to other places and find somebody who drags them to Iraq, that is a problem we can't do anything about," Turki said. He added that security officials could stop people from leaving the kingdom only if they had information on them. U.S. officials had not shared with Iraqi officials information gleaned from Saudi detainees, but this has started to change, said an Iraqi source, who asked not to be identified. For example, U.S. officials provided information about Saudi fighters and suicide bombers to Iraqi security officials who traveled to Saudi Arabia last week. Iraqi advisor Askari asserted that Vice President Dick Cheney, in a visit to Saudi Arabia in May, pressured officials to crack down on militant traffic to Iraq. But that message has not yet produced results, Askari said. The close relationship between the U.S. and oil-rich Saudi Arabia has become increasingly difficult. Saudi leaders in early February undercut U.S. diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute by brokering, in Mecca, an agreement to form a Fatah-Hamas "unity" government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And King Abdullah took Americans by surprise by declaring at an Arab League gathering that the U.S. presence in Iraq was illegitimate. U.S. officials remain sensitive about the relationship. Asked why U.S. officials in Iraq had not publicly criticized Saudi Arabia the way they had Iran or Syria, the senior military officer said, "Ask the State Department. This is a political juggernaut." Last week when U.S. military spokesman Bergner declared Al Qaeda in Iraq the country's No. 1 threat, he released a profile of a thwarted suicide bomber, but said he had not received clearance to reveal his nationality. The bomber was a Saudi national, the senior military officer said Saturday. The fighter, a young college graduate whose mother was a teacher and father a professor, had been recruited in a mosque to join Al Qaeda in Iraq. He was given money for a bus ticket and a phone number to call in Syria to contact a handler who would smuggle him into Iraq. Once the young Saudi made it in, he was under the care of Iraqis who gave him his final training and indoctrination. At the very last minute, the bomber decided he didn't want to blow himself up. He was supposed to have been one of two truck bombers on a bridge outside Ramadi. When the first truck exploded, he panicked and chose not to trigger his own detonator, and Iraqi police arrested him. Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliate groups number anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 individuals, the senior U.S. military officer said. Iraqis make up the majority of members, facilitating attacks, indoctrinating, fighting, but generally not blowing themselves up. Iraqis account for roughly ten percent of suicide bombers, according to the U.S. military. IRAQI YOUTH FACE LASTING SCARS OF WAR By Sudarsan Raghavan Washington Post Foreign Service June 26, 2007 BAGHDAD, Iraq --- Marwa Hussein watched as gunmen stormed into her home and executed her parents. Afterward, her uncle brought her to the Alwiya Orphanage, a high-walled compound nestled in central Baghdad with a concrete yard for a playground. That was more than two years ago, and for 13-year-old Marwa, shy and thin with walnut-colored eyes and long brown hair, the memory of her parents' last moments is always with her. "They were killed," she said, her voice trailing away as she sat on her narrow bed with pink sheets. Tears started to slide down her face. As social worker Maysoon Tahsin comforted her, other orphans in the room, where 12 girls sleep, watched solemnly. Iraq's conflict is exacting an immense and largely unnoticed psychological toll on children and youth that will have long-term consequences, said social workers, psychiatrists, teachers and aid workers in interviews across Baghdad and in neighboring Jordan "With our limited resources, the societal impact is going to be very bad," said Haider Abdul Muhsin, one of the country's few child psychiatrists. "This generation will become a very violent generation, much worse than during Saddam Hussein's regime." Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, four million Iraqis have fled their homes, half of them children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. Many are being killed inside their sanctuaries --- at playgrounds, on soccer fields and in schools. Criminals are routinely kidnapping children for ransom as lawlessness goes unchecked. Violence has orphaned tens of thousands. Marwa copes by taking care of her sisters Aliyah, 9, and Sura, 7, Tahsin said. Marwa helps them with their homework and bathes them. On the playground, she keeps careful watch. "She's trying to substitute for the role of their mother," said Tahsin, who has been a social worker for 15 years. "But even as she tries to fill this gap, she is in deep need for emotional support as well." Short and lean with a square jaw, Abdul Muhsin started to focus on children only last year. Like many of the estimated 60 psychiatrists who remain in Iraq, he treated only adults before the invasion. Back then, he said, children with psychological problems were a rarity. Inside his bare office at Ibn Rushed Psychiatric Hospital, where armed guards frisk patients at the entrance, he flipped through a thick ledger of patients. In the past six months, he has treated 280 children and teenagers for psychological problems, most ranging in age from 6 to 16. In his private clinic, he has seen more than 650 patients in the past year. In a World Health Organization survey of 600 children ages three to ten in Baghdad last year, 47% said they had been exposed to a major traumatic event over the past two years. Of this group, 14% showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. In a second study of 1,090 adolescents in the northern city of Mosul, 30% showed symptoms of the disorder. Today, toy weapons are among the best-selling items in local markets, and kids play among armored vehicles on streets where pickup trucks filled with masked gunmen are a common sight. On a recent day, a group of children was playing near a camouflage-colored Iraqi Humvee parked in Baghdad's upscale Karrada neighborhood. One boy clutched a thick stick and placed it on his right shoulder, as if he were handling a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. He aimed it at cars passing by, pretending to blow them up. Two soldiers pointed at the children and laughed. Many of the children Abdul Muhsin treats have witnessed killings. They have anxiety problems and suffer from depression. Some have recurring nightmares and wet their beds. Others have problems learning in school. Iraqi children, he said, show symptoms not unlike children in other war zones such as Lebanon, Sudan and the Palestinian territories. On this morning, four-year-old Muhammad Amar had a blank look on his soft, round face framed with curls of black hair. When mortar shells pummeled his street seven months ago, he was too terrified to cry. "He remained still, in shock. He froze," said his father, Amar Jabur, standing in the sunlit courtyard of Ibn Rushed. Muhammad is showing signs of epilepsy and had a mild seizure the night before. Abdul Muhsin said he believes there could be a link between the explosions and the seizure, and recommended a brain scan to rule out other causes. At the very least, he said, the violence worsened the child's condition. After the visit, Jabur cast a glance at his silent son. "It is quite possibly because of the fear," he said. "We adults are afraid of what's happening in Iraq. How do you think it will affect the children?" Three months ago, Abdul Muhsin treated his most horrific case. A 13-year-old girl had been kidnapped in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood and held for a week in a house with 15 other girls. Some were raped in front of her, another was fatally shot. The girl was released after her parents paid a $6,000 ransom. But she is still imprisoned by her experience. "She was in a terrifying condition," recalled Abdul Muhsin. "She was shouting. She abused her parents verbally and physically." He and other child specialists say as many as 80% of traumatized children are never treated because of the stigma attached to such ailments. "Our society refuses to go to psychiatrists," said Abdul Sattar Sahib, a pediatrician at Sadr General Hospital in Sadr City. Many children live in remote or dangerous areas, sliced off from Baghdad by insurgents, bombings, and checkpoints. "Some parents just call me by telephone, and I try to advise them," Abdul Muhsin said. At Sadr General, as many as 250 children arrive for treatment every day, nearly double from last year. "We only treat the first 20 children who arrive and then we run out of drugs," Sahib said. There is no child psychiatrist on staff. At the orphanage, Dina Shadi sleeps a few feet away from Marwa Hussein. Twelve-year-old Dina had recently received two telephone calls from relatives. She learned that her 17-year-old brother had been killed and that her aunt had been kidnapped and executed. "She totally collapsed," Tahsin recalled. "I was not able to control myself that day. I cried," Tahsin said, her voice cracking. "There is a great amount of sadness here. No matter what we do for the children, it will never replace the kindness of their mother and father." "Now Dina expects another call with more bad news. She has a very dark image of the future. More and more, she's afraid of the future." UNICEF officials estimate that tens of thousands children lost one or both parents to the conflict in the past year. If trends continue, they expect the numbers to rise this year, said Claire Hajaj, a UNICEF spokesperson in Amman, Jordan. While many children at the orphanage have lost one or both parents, others have been abandoned or sent here because their parents can no longer afford to care for them. "The tragedy is that there's an upswing in number of children who are losing parents, but you see a decrease in the ability of the government, the community and even the family to care for separated and orphaned children because of violence, insecurity, displacement, stress and economic hardship," Hajaj said. "These kids are definitely the most vulnerable around." Bombs have exploded near Alwiya, and the sound of gunfire is frequent. There is always the possibility of an attack. In January, mortar shells landed in a Baghdad school, killing five girls. Tahsin still had one more task this day. She had to inform two motherless sisters that their father, a Sunni truck driver, would not be coming to see them. He had been kidnapped by Shiite gunmen at a fake checkpoint and executed. At a primary school in the Zayuna neighborhood of Baghdad, three teachers sat in the head office lamenting how Iraq's sectarian strife had affected their classrooms. A quarter of their students had left for safer areas. Some parents were too scared to send their children to school, fearing attacks. "Now, the young students when they enter the school, they ask their classmates whether they are Sunni or Shia," said Nagher Ziad Salih, 37, the school's principal. "Yesterday, I was taking my six-year-old grandson for a walk. He asked me 'Is this a Shia street or a Sunni street?' " said Um Amil, who asked that her full name not be used because she was afraid she could become a target. "I said: We are all Muslims. But he was still determined to know if this was street was Sunni or Shia." "Such a child, when he grows up, what will he become?" she asked. Salih said children quarreling on the playground now invoke the names of armed groups. "The child would say: I'll get the Mahdi Army to take revenge," she said. "The other kid would say back: My uncle is from the [Sunni] resistance and he'll take revenge against you." The third teacher, Um Hanim, spoke up. "Now the kid whose parent is killed by a Sunni or a Shia, what will be his future?" she said, also insisting that her full name not be used. "He will have a grudge inside him." Child psychiatrists are noticing the sectarian divide affecting their young patients. Mohammed Quraeshi, a doctor at Ibn Rushed, recalled the day he treated two boys --- one six, the other nine --- who were suffering from anxiety. "They faced harassment from children at their school. They demanded to know if they were Sunni or Shia." Quraeshi said. "This is too terrible to think that this can happen at this age." Twenty-year-old Yasser Laith, short with a thin goatee and a cold stare, cannot sleep at night. When a rocket crashed into his family's house in the mostly Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya in November, he crawled into the kitchen and curled up in fear. "Whenever I hear an explosion, I start trembling," mumbled Laith, as he waited at Ibn Rushed hospital for a 10-day supply of anti-psychotic drugs. Another day, intense clashes erupted on his street, and U.S. combat helicopters hovered over the area. Laith grabbed an AK-47 assault rifle, rushed to his roof and began firing into the sky. "My father is ashamed of me. I wanted to show that I was a good as the others," Laith said with a half-crazed smile. "After that I felt satisfied." Today, he takes pills to help control his violence and stop him from hitting his two younger sisters or abusing his parents. Several of his friends, he said, had joined the Sunni insurgency. He, too, was tempted, especially after learning that one of his friends had been killed by the Mahdi Army. "I had the desire to seek revenge," Laith said, smiling again. When Laith left the room to go to the bathroom, his 57-year-old mother, Sahira Asadallah, said she was scared that her son would commit a crime or join an insurgent group. She wondered how long Laith would have to take the drugs, then answered herself: "This will only end with the end of the war." L.A. TIMES REPORTS SHOCKING TESTIMONY IN ATROCITY TRIAL By Editor&Publisher July 15, 2007 CAMP PENDLETON, California --- A Marine corporal said Marines in his unit began routinely beating Iraqis after officers ordered them to "crank up the violence level," the Los Angeles Times reported. Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo testified Saturday at the murder trial of Cpl. Trent D. Thomas. "We were told to crank up the violence level," the newspaper quoted Lopezromo as saying in testimony for the defense. When a juror asked for further explanation, Lopezromo said: "We beat people, sir." Weeks after allegedly being criticized by officers for not being tough enough, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night to find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamandiya near the Abu Ghraib prison. The Marines and corpsman were from 2nd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment. Lopezromo said the man was known to his neighbors as the "prince of jihad," and had been arrested several times and later released by the Iraqi legal system. Unable to find him, the Marines and corpsman dragged another man from his house, fatally shot him, and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it appear he had been killed in a shootout, according to court testimony. Four Marines and the corpsman, initially charged with murder in the April 2006 killing, have pleaded guilty to reduced charges and been given jail sentences ranging from 10 months to eight years. Thomas, 25, from St. Louis, pleaded guilty but withdrew his plea and is the first defendant to go to court-martial. Lopezromo, who was not part of the squad on its late-night mission, said he saw nothing wrong with what Thomas did. "I don't see it as an execution, sir," he told the judge, according to the newspaper. "I see it as killing the enemy." He said Marines consider all Iraqi men part of the insurgency. "Because of the way they live, the clans, they're all in it together," he said. Lopezromo and two other Marines were charged in August with assaulting an Iraqi two weeks before the killing that led to charges against Thomas and the others. Charges against all three were later dropped. Thomas' attorneys have said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury from his combat duty in Fallujah in 2004. They have argued that Thomas believed he was following a lawful order to get tougher with suspected insurgents. Prosecution witnesses testified that Thomas shot the 52-year-old man at point-blank range after he had already been shot by other Marines and was lying on the ground. Lopezromo said a procedure called "dead-checking" was routine. If Marines entered a house where a man was wounded, instead of checking to see whether he needed medical aid, they shot him to make sure he was dead, he testified. "If somebody is worth shooting once, they're worth shooting twice," he said. The jury comprises three officers and six enlisted personnel, all of whom have served in Iraq. The trial was set to resume Monday. U.S. FACES MORE DISTRUST FROM WORLD By Meg Bortin New York Times June 27, 2007 PARIS, France --- Distrust of the United States has intensified across the world, but overall views of America remain very or somewhat favorable among majorities in 25 of 46 countries and the Palestinian territories surveyed in an international poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, in results reported Wednesday. Anti-Americanism since 2002 has deepened, but it hasnt really widened, said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project. It has worsened among Americas European allies and is very, very bad in the Muslim world. But there is still a favorable view of the United States in many African countries, as well as in New Europe and the Far East. Nonetheless, majorities in many countries reject the main planks of current United States foreign policy and express distaste for American-style democracy, the survey found. Respondents worldwide not only want the United States to pull its troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, but also seek a rapid end to the American and NATO military intervention in Afghanistan, now in its sixth year. The poll found growing wariness toward other major powers as well. Concerns over Chinas economic and military might have tarnished its image in many nations, the poll found, and confidence in President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has dropped sharply. The survey was conducted in April and May in the Palestinian territories and in 46 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, and includes more than 45,000 respondents. It found that concern about global warming has soared in the last five years. Most respondents agree that the environment is in trouble and most blame the United States and, to a much more limited degree, China, according to the survey. Negative views of Iran have intensified, including in some Muslim countries, the survey found, and respondents in almost all countries surveyed expressed overwhelming opposition to acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran. This was the first release from this survey, focusing on the perception of the United States. Other information will be released later. Confidence in President Bush, which was already sagging, has dropped further in most countries over the past year. Global distrust of American leadership is reflected in increasing disapproval of the cornerstones of United States foreign policy, according to the survey report. Most of those surveyed want a quick withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, including 56 % in the United States. The exceptions are respondents in Ghana, Israel, Kenya and Nigeria. There is also strong support for quickly removing American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops from Afghanistan. Pew surveyed 45,239 people from April 6 to May 29. The surveys were conducted nationwide except in eight countries that were disproportionately or exclusively urban. The margin of sampling error ranges from plus or minus two to four percentage points. Interviews were conducted by telephone or in person by local survey firms. STUDENTS SPEAK UP TO PRESIDENT BUSH By Amy Goodman July 11, 2007 President Bush got a lesson from a group of recent high school graduates. They were Presidential Scholars, a program designed "to recognize and provide leadership development experiences for some of America's most outstanding graduating high school seniors." The 141 Presidential Scholars were being honored at the White House. One of them, Mari Oye, from Wellesley, Massachusetts, describes what happened: "The president walked in and gave us a short speech, saying that as we went on into our careers, it was important to treat others as we would like to be treated. And he told us that we would have to make choices we would be able to live with for the rest of our lives. And so, I said to the president, 'Several of us made a choice, and we would like you to have this,' and handed him the letter." It was a letter Mari Oye had handwritten. It read: "As members of the Presidential Scholars class of 2007, we have been told that we represent the best and brightest of our nation. Therefore, we believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions. We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions and to apply the Geneva Conventions to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants." The letter was signed by close to 50 high school seniors, more than a third of the Presidential Scholars. Mari Oye described Bush's reaction to the letter: "He read down the letter. He got to the part about torture. He looked up, and he said, 'America doesn't torture people.' And I said, 'If you look specifically at what we said, we said, we ask you to cease illegal renditions. Please remove your signing statement to the McCain anti-torture bill.' " At that point, he just said, 'America doesn't torture people' again." In fact, after Bush signed the bill that outlawed the torture of detainees last year, he quietly issued a signing statement reserving the right to bypass the law, as he has more than 1,100 times, issuing more signing statements than all U.S. presidents combined. Mari Oye knows a little bit about detention. Not high school detention, but detention, Guantanamo-style. Mari recounted this to the president: "I said that for me personally, the issue of detainee rights also had a lot of importance, because my grandparents had been interned during World War II for being Japanese American." The government has since apologized for imprisoning more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during WWII. Mari said she was also inspired to act by her mother, Willa Michener. She, too, was a Presidential Scholar --- 40 years ago, in 1968 --- and wanted to confront President Lyndon Johnson with her opposition to the Vietnam War. She deferred to a teacher, who Mari said "stressed it was important to stay quiet when you're in the presence of the president," and has regretted it since. Mari called her mother as soon as she left the White House to tell her what she had done. "She was actually in the Holocaust Museum in the last room when I called her to say that we had given the letter. She didn't know there was a letter beforehand ... And she said that she walked out into the bright sunlight with tears streaming down her face, but since a lot of people walk out of the Holocaust Museum that way, you know, no one noticed anything out of the ordinary." Another Presidential Scholar, Leah Anthony Libresco, from Long Island, New York, helped write the letter. She, like Mari, is remarkably eloquent. "If I'm going to be in the room with the president, I've got to say something, because silence betokens consent, and there's a lot going on I don't want to consent to." Her middle name, Anthony, comes from the famous suffragette Susan B. Anthony. Afraid that Mari's letter would be confiscated before she was able to deliver it to the president, Leah had a second handwritten copy of it --- yes, up her sleeve. She handed it to a reporter, as she described later in a blog, "at The No Child Left Behind photo op for which the Scholars were apparently supposed to be a backdrop." With young leaders like Mari Oye and Leah Anthony Libresco speaking truth to power at so young an age, and demonstrating such eloquence, courage and discipline, the only thing that looks likely to get left behind are politicians such as George Bush and his torture policies. AMY GOODMAN is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour. 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