http://tinyurl.com/yektuz
Revealed: U.S. Soldier Killed
Herself After Objecting to
Interrogation Techniques
[The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. Now we learn, thanks to a reporter's FOIA request, that one of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh "interrogation techniques." What follows is both parts of a two-part story by E&P, a highly respected source in the world of journalism.]
By Greg Mitchell
(November 01, 2006) -- The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn’t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation methods used on prisoners.
She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."
She was only the third American woman killed in Iraq, so her death drew wide press attention. A "non-hostile weapons discharge" leading to death is not unusual in Iraq, often quite accidental, so this one apparently raised few eyebrows. The Arizona Republic, three days after her death, reported that Army officials "said that a number of possible scenarios are being considered, including Peterson's own weapon discharging, the weapon of another soldier discharging, or the accidental shooting of Peterson by an Iraqi civilian." (Her parents now say they were never told about her objections to interrogation techniques.)
(more...)
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To Change Dramatically
BY OVERWHELMING MAJORITIES
IN CHICAGO, COOK COUNTY SUBURBS
AND SEVERAL ILLINOIS CITIES
By Chicagoans Against War & Injustice
CHICAGO (Nov 8, 2006) - Huge numbers of voters across the state of Illinois, wherever antiwar referendums appeared on the ballot, voted to stop the war and 'immediately begin an orderly and rapid withdrawal.'
At 3am, in the City of Chicago, with 95 percent of precincts reporting, the margin was 80 percent to 20 percent--389,000 'Yes' and 93,000 'No'. The tallies were similar throughout suburban Cook County, where towns like Evanston and Oak Park had the measure on the ballot as well 
Dollars & Sense collective member Mary Jirmanus recounts her stay in Beirut during the war in July.
[While Parry's 'phased withdrawal' formulation in this article is problematic at best, his overall account offers considerable insight into the depth of the crisis Bush and the NeoCons have created. the Editors, SolidarityEconomy.net]
A revolt is brewing among our retired Army and Marine generals. This rebellion--quiet and nonconfrontational, but remarkable nonetheless--comes not because their beloved forces are bearing the brunt of ground combat in Iraq but because the retirees see the US adventure in Mesopotamia as another Vietnam-like, strategically failed war, and they blame the errant, arrogant civilian leadership at the Pentagon. The dissenters include two generals who led combat troops in Iraq: Maj. Gen. Charles Swannack Jr., who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, and Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the First Infantry Division (the "Big Red One"). These men recently sacrificed their careers by retiring and joining the public protest.
In late September Batiste, along with two other retired senior officers, spoke out about these failures at a Washington Democratic policy hearing, with Batiste saying Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was "not a competent wartime leader" who made "dismal strategic decisions" that "resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies and the good people of Iraq." Rumsfeld, he said, "dismissed honest dissent" and "did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war."
This kind of protest among senior military retirees during wartime is unprecedented in American history--and it is also deeply worrisome. The retired officers opposing the war and demanding Rumsfeld's ouster represent a new political force, 
First published on 
Americans, that the decision to invade Iraq has increased the threat of terrorism. Five years after the twin towers crumbled in a horrifying spectacle, our government's foreign policy has done more to recruit terrorists and sympathizers than anything that Osama Bin Laden could have imagined.
The United States today faces no real security threat from any country. Russia and China have nuclear missiles that could reach the United States, and theoretically they could use them. But so, too, could Britain or France. For now, at least, none of these countries have any significant probability of attacking the United States.
Countries deemed as hostile by our government, such as Iran, Syria, or North Korea, do not even have the capability to threaten the United States. The trick that our political leaders have played on us is to confuse the real threat from certain individuals – e.g. Al Qaeda and its sympathizers or ideological allies - with an imaginary threat from selected countries. This gives them a 
AN ACTIVIST GUIDE TO ENDING THE WAR IN IRAQ: THE PRESSURE OF PEOPLE POWER AGAINST THE PILLARS OF POLICY.
This is a strategy for sustaining the anti-war movement through the ups and downs of the long war in Iraq. I do not believe the war can be ended just by a moral escalation of protest. Nor is resistance likely to "drive" the Bush Administration out of office. For those who want to end the Iraq War, not just witness against it or resist it, I offer this strategy:
It will be ended by enough people power pressure against the pillars of the policy.
The Iraq War rests on certain "pillars":
1. the pillar of public opinion, above all;
Amy Davidson talks to Seymour M. Hersh, Jon Lee Anderson, and George Packer about Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terror, and whether America is stronger now.
Amy Davidson: Sy, in your first article after 9/11 - just a few weeks after - you quoted a senior C.I.A. official who, you wrote, "confirmed that the intelligence community had not yet developed a significant amount of solid information about the terrorists' organization, financing, and planning." He said, "One day, we'll know, but at the moment we don't know." Has that day arrived?
Seymour M. Hersh: No, not in my view. He also said at the time that there was a debate about whether the attacks were a long-planned, deep-cell operation, and we were going to be looking at cell operations like this throughout the country - major embedded groups of Al Qaeda, what you will. The other possibility was that the nineteen hijackers were the equivalent of a pickup basketball team that made it to the Final Four. His guess was the latter. I think that's true. I think the nineteen guys, however skilled, were more lucky than anything else, because of our lack of preparation. But we really know very little about how that operation worked, even now.
Davidson: Why is that?
This article, which first appeared in 2001 following the September 11th attacks, is reproduced here in its entirety for the 5th anniversary of the attacks. Its strategic perspective for the left is even more important today.
As we enter the fourth year of the war on Iraq, our grassroots antiwar movement faces a critical political conjuncture, here and abroad. How we respond to it means a great deal, most importantly to the people of Iraq, but also to all Americans touched by this unjust war.
There are four main factors of this turning point.
First, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is floundering, stalemated, and drifting toward defeat - but in a horrible way unleashing all the fury of sectarian violence and slaughter, and, beyond Iraq, a 'Clash of Civilizations' throughout the region that serves no one but reactionary zealots on all sides.
