The Bottom Line on the

Halliburton Rape Cases

By Hank Edson

The Facts

The facts are despicable, criminal, worse than animal, just absolutely ugly. In 2005, 20-year-old Jamie Leigh Jones of Houston, Texas had just signed on to work in Iraq for a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), one of the private military contractors most used by the United States military. Just two days after arriving in Iraq to begin her job, a group of several of her American co-workers drugged her, gang raped her, and left her naked to wake up bleeding and in pain, still groggy from the drugs she had been slipped. Jones writes that she would eventually need surgery because “my attackers tore my pectoral muscles due to the brutality of the attack.”

When she got back from the Army doctors who told her she had been repeatedly raped “both vaginally and anally,” however, Halliburton/KBR’s immediate response was to place Jones under guard inside a shipping container where she was held for over 24 hours without food or water. KBR officials warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, “There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston.” Jones had to be rescued from the container by a State Department official from the Iraq U.S. Embassy, which only happened because one of Jones’ guards had pity on her and lent her a cell phone to call her father, who then contacted his congressman, who then contacted the State Department.

After two years of seeking justice for the crimes committed against her, Jones has been forced to file a civil suit because the justice department claims it can’t prosecute private military contractors in Iraq. The civil suit, however, may end up in arbitration where no public record of the proceedings is allowed under the terms of Jones’ employment contract. Jones’ case is not the only civil rape case filed against Halliburton/KBR, nor is rape of American co-workers the only instance of grossly lawless conduct by private military contractors in Iraq. Earlier this year, the private military contracting firm Blackwater was the center of a scandal when its employees were accused of murdering innocent Iraqi civilians.

The Bottom Line

There is a lot to say about this terrible state of affairs, but we have a responsibility to get to the heart of the matter. Here it is:...READ MORE!

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The Neo-Con Foreign Policy

   
of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Yet Again: Why We Must Impeach
   
President Bush and Vice President Cheney

By Hank Edson

A Time for Humble Pie

On Tuesday, President Bush reported to the nation and the world that a recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluded that four years ago Iran had stopped its covert program aimed at developing nuclear weapons. To many sober minds, this news would be cause not only for a little celebration, but also a little humble pie.

After all, over the past several months, the President and other senior members of his administration have depicted Iran over the last several months as bent upon acquiring nuclear weapons. As recently as October, President Bush said in a press conference, “ I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them from doing so.” [i] Two years ago, U.S. intelligence reported that Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons” and the President’s statements have projected this image ever since. Now that new information has come to light, instead of adjusting his tone to reflect his errors, the President is pushing ahead as recklessly as ever before.

International relations are not that different from normal human relations, after all. If you accuse someone of serious misconduct and turn out to be wrong, the accused generally has reason to expect an apology. It doesn’t matter if the accused is guilty of a great deal of other misconduct either. When justice is the goal, facts are facts. We don’t dismiss our mistaken presentation of them on the grounds that the accused is so bad “he must be guilty of something.” Furthermore, when diplomacy is the goal, every opportunity to acknowledge one’s own mistakes and innocent conduct of others is vital to achieving peace. It is hard to make peace when the other party feels unfairly accused—even if he is indeed culpable of other misconduct.

Accordingly, Monday, when the most recent NIE was released, it was a good time for Bush to eat a little humble pie.

Fat chance.

Bush’s response was: “Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous. If they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon, what’s to say they couldn’t start another covert nuclear weapons program?” [ii]

This is the same foreign policy of self-fulfilling prophecy the Bush administration has pursued since before it even knew it would assume office. Given Bush’s claim that Iran is dangerous simply because it might be dangerous, it is extremely important for the press to confront the Bush administration with the way this logic led us into the disaster that is Iraq. This logic of self-fulfilling prophecy can be traced in the papers developed by the neo-conservative think tank, the Project for the New American Century, advocating the overthrow of...READ MORE!

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Oprah Good; Pundits Bad

By Hank Edson

With the writer’s strike in play, the nation has been badly missing its nightly dose of John Stewart, especially when it comes to those clips showing a series of one pundit after another banally repeating the same talking points with overwrought intensity. What has particularly been driving me crazy these past few days is hearing over and over again one pundit after another saying they don’t think Oprah Winfrey will have that much impact on the presidential campaign and that she might be getting in over her head.

What the pundits don’t get about Oprah is that she is like MoveOn.org and Ross Perot: She is an available high capacity vehicle for the people’s political energy in a time when the political process is completely clogged up by corruption and our government is utterly dysfunctional. It’s not about Oprah’s impact. And she doesn’t have to pass any “gotcha” question test. All Oprah has to do is offer the people a compellingly powerful platform they recognize as also having more integrity than they find in the charade that has become our election process.

When a rushing river runs up against a dam, it tests the banks to find the path of least resistance. This is the situation in which we, the American people, find ourselves as we approach the 2008 election. We desperately need a means of securing political leadership that represents our interests, and yet,...READ MORE!