Democracy Now! Daily Digest: A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Thursday, March 26, 2015
Stories:
As the United States begins bombing the Iraqi city of Tikrit and again delays a withdrawal from Afghanistan, a new report has found that the Iraq War has killed about one million people. The Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other groups examined the toll from the so-called war on terror in three countries — Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The investigators found "the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around one million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan. Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware. ... And this is only a conservative estimate." The true tally, they add, could be more than two million. We are joined by two guests who worked on the report: Hans von Sponeck, former U.N. assistant secretary-general and U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sanctions regime; and Dr. Robert Gould, president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: U.S.-led coalition warplanes have begun bombing the Iraqi city of Tikrit in an attempt to seize control of the city from the self-described Islamic State. The assault on Tikrit began three weeks ago when Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militia launched a ground offensive. The U.S. airstrikes now squarely put Washington and Tehran on the same side in the fight, though the Obama administration insists it’s not coordinating military operations with Iran. The Pentagon stressed that the airstrikes are aimed to help Iraqi forces defeat the Islamic State, but by all accounts it has been Iranian-backed militias leading the ground attack in Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, had been on the ground advising the militias in Tikrit as recently as Sunday.
Meanwhile, in other Iraq news, a new report has found the Iraq War has killed about one million people. The Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other groups examined the toll from the so-called war on terror in three countries—Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The investigators found the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around one million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, a total of about 1.3 million.
We’re joined now by two guests who worked on the report. Hans von Sponeck is with us, former U.N. assistant secretary-general and U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sanctions regime. He’s the author of A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq. Von Sponeck is currently teaching at the University of Marburg in Germany, joining us by Democracy Now! video stream. And Dr. Robert Gould is with us from San Francisco, the president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He wrote the foreword for the new international edition of the report, called "Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror.'"
Dr. Robert Gould, the figures laid out in this report say 1.3 million people have died in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in [Pakistan]. And it says that this could possibly be not an overestimate; it says it’s the minimum numbers. It could possibly be as high as two million. Can you talk about the significance of what these figures mean?
DR. ROBERT GOULD: Well, these are, as you relate, incredible figures in terms of the total counts, and they compare markedly with those estimates that have come out of organizations such as Iraq Body Count in the past, which use very—what are known as passive methods of detecting casualties in war, because they rely on official reports and morgues and things like that to arrive at their estimates. But obviously those type of methods really lack the ability to determine the full cost of war, given that, particularly in the type of warfare we witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, many of these deaths are really silent, in the sense that people are killed by death squads, they’re killed by bombing raids, that are really off the records, and we don’t get to really understand the full impact of the war. That’s why a number of the people who are incorporated within the new issue of "Body Count," in terms of looking at the totality of the reports, there’s a very important examination of what we—of more active methods of sampling. And these are methods that have been used in diverse places such as Sudan, the Congo, for their various horrible war situations, as well. So, what this report really does is bring to us, in its North American release, a really fuller accounting of what the human costs of that war have been, which, you know, just listening to the headlines on the news this morning that you’ve related, we could still see the impacts of the destabilization that we, our government and allies, have created in Iraq and elsewhere.
AMY GOODMAN: And why the people particularly in the United States do not see anything like these numbers? The significance of what it would mean?
DR. ROBERT GOULD: Well, I think there has been, in a similar way to what our collective experience has been with the reporting in the Vietnam War, a real distancing of the impacts on the people over there. We have certainly accounted for the dead and wounded within—in terms of the numbers of U.S. troops and NATO forces in the various conflicts, but these deaths, this destruction, is, for variety of reasons, very deliberately or through self-censorship, kept from the American people so we don’t see these real costs. And I would also say we don’t see the connecting points about how these policies and that degree of death and destruction leads through the destabilization of these regions and the persistent killing that’s conducted by drone warfare, etc. We’re insulated from these effects and don’t understand the anger that arises from people who have been through, now 12 years in Iraq, the act of war, even longer in Afghanistan, what those effects are. And I would think that as a result, people are insulated from what—the milieu within which groups like ISIS arise. And at a time when we’re contemplating at this point cutting off our removal of troops from Afghanistan and contemplating new military authorization for increasing our operations in Syria and Iraq, this insulation from the real impacts serves our government in being able to continue to conduct these wars in the name of the war on terror, with not only horrendous cost to the people in the region, but we in the United States suffer from what the budgetary costs of unending war are.
AMY GOODMAN: Again, this report, "Body Count," that 1.3 million figure includes Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani dead; it does not include areas like Yemen.
DR. ROBERT GOULD: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined by Hans von Sponeck, former U.N. assistant secretary-general and former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sections regime. Dr. von Sponeck, I thank you for joining us. Can you respond, as a person who’s been deeply involved in Iraq—as we speak today, the U.S. is leading the bombing of Tikrit, what, 12 years after the U.S. first invaded Iraq—to this report that you have written an introduction for, called "Body Count"?
HANS VON SPONECK: Well, first of all, good morning, Amy. Good to hear you. I’m sorry we can’t see each other.
But let me just say that it is, in my experience, not surprising that, ultimately, we see courage coming out of the United States in terms of facing the truth, the facts. Dianne Feinstein has done that in December with the release of the CIA torture report. The Physicians for Social Responsibility, together with IPPNW in other parts of the world, have now released the "Body Count" report, which is, both documents, I think, an incredibly powerful and valuable basis for which to discuss—at long last discuss—the possibility of redress and learning—learning, for example, that all these interactions, whether it was in Iraq or in Afghanistan or in Syria or in Libya, the regime change approach to solving problems of international relations have no future, should not have a future. It’s so clear now. The "Body Count" report makes it very clear that not only that young men and women in uniform, but also innocent civilians, once again, become victim.
What I very much hope is that the "Body Count" publication will not—will not lead to a futile debate on the accuracy of data. It reminds me of the 2000 release by UNICEF of the child mortality study on Iraq, where the debate that should have taken place about the causes of all that was detoured by a debate on whether Lancet or "Body Count" or any other documentation had the correct figures. I think that’s totally, in my view, irrelevant. We have enough credible data from different sources, and the "Body Count" publication is an attempt to show the most recent efforts to at least get credible indicators, not the hardcore, empirical facts—not possible. And I think that is the importance of all of this, that we use that as a basis for a long-overdue debate in Washington, in London, and certainly at the United Nations in New York, as to why this all happened and how one can try and prevent this from recurring in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response to the U.S. bombing Tikrit now?
HANS VON SPONECK: Well, it sounds maybe too simple to just say, "Look, what we are seeing now is what we—what the seeds have grown." Many people will probably disagree strongly in the United States when I say that ISIS is a relative of a Western intervention. ISIS, as it developed, developed after the 19th of March, 2003. Not to acknowledge that, I think, is pursuing an ostrich policy. It was the way an occupation force behaves that created the first seeds of an ISIS. The Sunni belt in central Iraq, that suddenly was faced with an understanding that they had no future, that it was a Shia future, the disbanding of—we know all these things—of the army, of the bureaucracy, all against the Hague Convention, that doesn’t allow for structural changes by an occupation army—all that led to a reaction. And a lot of reasons why ISIS is today in Tikrit has to do with the fact that very normal Sunnis and other Iraqi citizens felt that they were betrayed, and they started to rise, and they started to support the extreme elements that we now see face to face with militias of Shia origin, with Iranian forces and the Iraqi military, of course, also. So, ISIS in Tikrit goes back to March 2003. That’s the point I’m trying to make.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, I participated in a conference at Hofstra University on Long Island, which was assessing the George W. Bush presidency. I want to turn to a clip of my exchange with John Negroponte, a man that you know well. He was the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the former director of national intelligence.
AMY GOODMAN: Just a quick question. Mr. Goss said, "If we knew then what we know today, we might have done things differently," which I think is a very reasonable thing to say.
PORTER GOSS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that, Mr. Negroponte, that knowing what we know today, the Iraq War was wrong? And do you think torture is wrong?
JOHN NEGROPONTE: Look, well, torture is never right. And—
AMY GOODMAN: Do think the Bush administration was wrong to engage in it?
JOHN NEGROPONTE: I say torture is never right. That’s my first point.
But my second point was, I’ll just stick with the way I felt during the time I lived through those events. And you can find quotes of what I said when I was ambassador to the U.N. I was asked if I thought we should use force in Iraq. And I said, well, in questions like this, I think we ought to approach the issue with a great deal of caution. I also said that we ought to—and I felt that we ought to—allow the inspection process more time to do its work. I was disappointed that it wasn’t allowed. But, you know, you have one president at a time. He’s the commander-in-chief. He’s got the constitutional authority, and that’s what he decided to do.
The last point I would make, to your issue about Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, Blix and I had a chance to reminisce about this a little bit later on. And I said to him, "It’s amazing, you know? We set up this inspection thing, and we never found anything. And, you know, what the heck happened?" And Blix said, "You know, it’s—that’s right." But he said, "I can’t—I still don’t understand why Saddam behaved so guilty." And maybe that’s why he had some doubt, because he was—Saddam sort of emitted, emanated, this sort of sensation that he had—that he was hiding something. Now, some people have speculated—and I think it was an FBI agent who had interviewed him extensively—that, actually, he wanted some people to think that he had WMD in his neighborhood in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, and so that maybe this was part of his strategy. But it kind of—if indeed it was his strategy, it boomeranged.
AMY GOODMAN: Hans von Sponeck, if you could respond to what the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the former head of national intelligence, John Negroponte, said at this session? You are the former U.N. assistant secretary-general and former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq.
HANS VON SPONECK: Well, you know, Ambassador Negroponte was a well-known figure in my days in Baghdad, and I know where he’s coming from. What he has to say about the perception or the question why Saddam Hussein didn’t disclose that he had no weapons of mass destruction, I think that speculation surprises me. I think any political analyst should have really understood very quickly, if he or she knew the constellation in the Middle East, the war of eight years between Iraq and Iran. Saddam Hussein, as a self-appointed leader of the region, didn’t want to show that he was weak, that he had an army that would have no chance against any neighbor because of the poor equipment and whatever. So he didn’t want. It was a question of cultural response and shame, shame. He was ashamed to admit that he was really nobody’s—nobody’s foe. Nobody could take him seriously. So that is one reason why I think Saddam Hussein acted the way he did.
This business, the statement, torture is never right—every single page of the 200 pages that I have read as of today of the CIA torture report released by the U.S. Senate, every page is an admission of confusion, a lack of cooperation among the CIA, the FBI, the Department of State, other—the legal authorities. And that made it possible, that horrific violation of U.S. national as well as international law—Geneva Convention, Hague Convention—all these documents that say the right things were violated by the most unbelievable cruelty of these—yeah, these adopted extended interrogation techniques, performed, and the suffering that resulted from that.
And there is only one thing, Amy, that I feel is missing. It took a lot of courage for the release of that report. That has to be acknowledged. And I hope that people, countries around the world do so. But there’s a word missing. In these 500 pages that are released, there should somewhere a reference to accountability. Impunity cannot possibly be an answer in dealing with what we are reading in that document. So, I’d hope that Mr. Negroponte would go a little bit beyond just saying torture is never right. Well, that was known at the time when he was the head of the intelligence community, and what was done about it?
AMY GOODMAN: And Ambassador Negroponte saying he felt that the U.S. moved into war too quickly in Iraq, that he wanted the inspections to continue, did that ring true for you from your experience of him in Iraq, though he came a bit later, after the war began?
HANS VON SPONECK: If I understood you correctly here, I think it is very clear, from what my colleague Hans Blix pleaded for—and that is, "Give me three more months, and I will then conclusively be able to tell you that Iraq is quantitatively disarmed"—qualitatively, Iraq was, anyway—that was known in the intelligence community—no longer a threat to anybody. But he wanted to go that last step, that would have shown that disarmament, as arms inspectors have said ever since 1995, had really progressed to the point where one could declare Iraq, from the perspective of weapons of mass destruction, as disarmed. But that opportunity wasn’t given to him.
AMY GOODMAN: Hans von Sponeck, I know you to leave for a funeral, but I wanted to ask you one last question. You, together with another former U.N. assistant secretary-general, Denis Halliday, have been working on this issue of accountability. Can you explain what you’ve been doing?
HANS VON SPONECK: Well, if I have a moment, then let me just say that Denis Halliday and I, first of all, we are in weekly contact with each other to compare notes and synchronize our approaches. We both are three—or, two out of three commissioners of a war crimes tribunal that was established by the former prime minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir, in 2005. We have been trying hard to prepare very seriously collected evidence of torture performed at different levels in Iraq during the years of occupation. We interviewed—the famous picture of the man in the hood that went around the world, we interviewed this man in the hood in Kuala Lumpur. We talked to many of the torture victims from Abu Ghraib, from Bagram, from Guantánamo. So, this overwhelming body of evidence was published in two volumes that were sent in 2012 to the International Criminal Court. And the sobering response from there was, "Sorry, we are not responsible for a case like that." Well, parties have changed. There is a new chief prosecutor in The Hague. And we are now—in mid-April, on the 18th of April, in fact, the War Crimes Commission will meet yet again in Kuala Lumpur to prepare for the second, and hopefully last, draft submission of this documentation to the International Criminal Court.
I should also like to add that last June I personally handed, in the House of Commons and the House of Lords in the U.K., these volumes of evidence, in the hope that this would generate the discussion about these issues in the British political circles. That hasn’t happened. But we are not going to give up. We are not blind or hateful even—that would be terrible—extremists in our demands, but we insist that impunity cannot be the answer. And we are very much, Amy, encouraged by these moments of light, like the publication of the CIA torture report, by the fact that the professional medical community in the United States, the Physicians for Social Responsibility, had the courage to go along in publishing this document now. So, more and more parties are coming together, and I hope that it will lead to that which, if nothing else, we owe to also the Iraqi people, to gain their dignity back, to recognize—for them to recognize that the world doesn’t accept what has happened, and the courts, hopefully, in the United States and in the U.K. will start the proceedings.
AMY GOODMAN: Hans von Sponeck, I want to thank you very much for being with us, former U.N. assistant secretary-general, former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, who in 2000 resigned his post in protest of the U.S.-led sanctions regime, author of A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq. And I want to thank Dr. Robert Gould, president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He wrote the foreword for the new international edition of the group’s report, "Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror.'" Hans von Sponeck was joining us from near Freiburg, Germany, where he lives. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’ll be back in a minute.
The nation’s top museums are facing calls to cut ties with billionaire funders who profit from global warming. In an open letter, a coalition of climate scientists, museum experts and environmental groups says science and natural history museums should stop accepting money from fossil fuel corporations and individual donors like the Koch brothers. Koch Industries has extensive energy industry holdings and has funded climate denial. David Koch is a board member of both the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. One of the most controversial exhibits is a Koch-backed installation at the Smithsonian that promotes the theory that humankind evolved in response to climate change. The letter is the creation of a different kind of museum — the new, mobile Natural History Museum, which seeks to "highlight the socio-political forces that shape nature." We are joined by Beka Economopoulos, co-founder and director of the new Natural History Museum, who coordinated the letter to 330 science and natural history museums, and by James Powell, one of the scientists who signed the open letter. Powell is a geochemist, former president of the Franklin Institute and former president and director of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show with a look at how the nation’s top museums are facing calls to cut ties with billionaire funders who profit from global warming. In an open letter, a coalition of climate scientists, museum experts and environmental groups say science and natural history museums should stop accepting money from fossil fuel corporations and individual donors like the Koch brothers. Koch Industries has extensive energy industry holdings and has funded climate denial. David Koch is a board member of both the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. One of the most controversial exhibits is a Koch-backed installation at the Smithsonian which promotes the theory that humankind evolved in response to climate change.
The letter sent Tuesday is the creation of a different kind of museum, the new mobile Natural History Museum, which seeks to, quote, "highlight the socio-political forces that shape nature" and "affirm the truth of science." The letter reads, quote, "When some of the biggest contributors to climate change and funders of misinformation on climate science sponsor exhibitions in museums of science and natural history, they undermine public confidence in the validity of the institutions responsible for transmitting scientific knowledge. This corporate philanthropy comes at too high a cost," the letter says.
Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests. Beka Economopoulos is a co-founder and director of the new mobile Natural History Museum and coordinated the letter sent from Nobel laureates and other scientists to 330 science and natural history museums. And in Santa Barbara, California, James Powell is with us, one of the scientists who signed the open letter. He is a geochemist, former president of the Franklin Institute and a former president and director of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. His new book is called Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth. We invited the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to join us, but they have not responded.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! James Powell, let’s begin with you. Why did you sign this letter?
JAMES POWELL: Well, thank you very much, Amy. It’s good to be with you. I signed the letter because I feel very strongly that the most fundamental obligation of science museums is to get the science right. And when you have on your board someone who has gotten the science wrong and who is a billionaire and is sitting at the table when trustee decisions are made, you at least give the appearance that your exhibit might be tainted and might not be giving the best science. And, in fact, with the Smithsonian exhibit that you talked about, I think that’s not just an appearance, but it’s actually the reality—the notion that we can evolve our way out of global warming. I like to say my grandchildren are already here; they’re present on the planet. They’re not going to evolve by the time they’re my age. What is going to happen is that the world is going to be a much more dangerous place.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you were at the—you served at the—what was it? The Los Angeles County Natural History—the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. You were director of it.
JAMES POWELL: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Museums need money. What do you tell fellow directors around the country?
JAMES POWELL: Well, that’s right. We are in a real bind. Museums do not have much money of their own. If we want to build a major exhibit, it’s going to cost millions of dollars. We have to secure that money from gifts, from someone. However, I think you have to build a firewall between the donor and the construction and ideas that go into the exhibit. And I take the Smithsonian’s word that they did that. However, if you have a major science denier, not just someone who denies it personally, but who is funding denialism with tens of millions of dollars, you don’t have to have that person sitting at the table with the exhibit designers. It is known what that person thinks. It is known what their beliefs are. So I think if you back it all the way back, you would say you shouldn’t have such a person. You shouldn’t have a science denier on the board of a science museum. It’s a contradiction in terms, and you’re just going to get in trouble, so find the money somewhere else.
AMY GOODMAN: Beka Economopoulos, talk about the group of people who have signed this letter and why you got involved.
BEKA ECONOMOPOULOS: It’s a tremendous list of dozens of the world’s most prominent scientists, including several Nobel laureates who have signed this letter. We initiated it as the Natural History Museum, our own Natural History Museum that just launched this fall, because we were very concerned that energy companies and the Koch brothers gain social license and cultural capital from an association with these scientific institutions, while they bankroll climate science disinformation and efforts to block action on climate change.
AMY GOODMAN: So what are you doing now?
BEKA ECONOMOPOULOS: So we’re calling on the museum sector—in particular, museums of science and natural history—to cut ties to the fossil fuel industry. That means, one, dismiss climate deniers and oil billionaires from your boards; two, cancel fossil fuel industry sponsorships; and, three, divest from your financial holdings in the fossil fuel industry.
AMY GOODMAN: And what has been the response of museums?
BEKA ECONOMOPOULOS: So far, no comment from the largest museums that we’ve called out for having David Koch on their board. However, we’ll say that there’s been a lot of traction within the overall museum sector. The American Alliance of Museums, which is a consortium of all the country’s—or most of the country’s museums, has blogged about this. We’re going to be joining their convention in a few weeks’ time. It’s the world’s largest museum convention. We’ll be exhibiting as the Natural History Museum. And we invite museum professionals who are sympathetic to this effort to get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you, especially if you work at the New York and D.C. natural history museums.
AMY GOODMAN: Why target museums?
BEKA ECONOMOPOULOS: You know, there are more museums in the United States than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. The museum sector represents vital societal infrastructure. They are so relevant for conveying information, for educating the youth and the public. And people have a tremendous amount of faith in the validity of these institutions. And when museums accept these contributions, it undermines the trust that the public place in them. And that, in turn, undermines a trust and faith in science, in general. And so, you know, museums hedge to this notion of authoritative neutrality, as if neutrality were even a thing. Howard Zinn said you can’t be neutral on a moving train. So, fossil fuel companies are driving this train off the end of the Earth. And we don’t have the luxury of time here, so we’re asking museums to, yes, to take a stand, absolutely, to re-evaluate their roles in a time of profound environmental disruption and climate crisis.
AMY GOODMAN: James Powell, it’s not only talking about not having fossil fuel industry fund exhibits, but also calling for these large institutions to divest. There’s a student divestment movement across the country getting institutions to—their educational institutions to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Can you comment on it in the museum world?
JAMES POWELL: Yes, I can. And I was also a college president during the debates over divestment from South African-related stock. If you own stock in a company, you do that because you believe that company is going to succeed, and you’re going to make a profit. You are then a partner with that company. And the way the fossil fuel companies make profits is if they sell more fossil fuels, which produces more carbon dioxide, which makes the train move a little faster, to use Beka’s analogy. So, I’m a very strong believer that colleges, universities and museums should not be invested in fossil fuel companies. It’s not even a good investment, if you look at the future, because the reserves of these companies, which are a major part of their valuation, at some point we’re going to decide these can’t come out of the ground, they have to stay there. And if those companies have not adapted by going to some other form of renewable energy, then—
AMY GOODMAN: James Powell, I want to thank you for being with us.
JAMES POWELL: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to end it there—former president of Reed College and Franklin & Marshall and former president of the Franklin Institute and former director of the Los Angeles County Museum—Natural History Museum. And thank you so much to Beka Economopoulos.
BEKA ECONOMOPOULOS: And please, folks, go to TheNaturalHistoryMuseum.org.
JAMES POWELL: Thank you. Thank you.
The U.S. military has charged Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl with one count of desertion and one count of misbehavior before the enemy. Bergdahl was held in Taliban captivity for five years after leaving his Army base in Afghanistan in 2009. An earlier military report found Bergdahl likely walked away of his own free will, but stopped short of finding that he planned to permanently desert American forces. In Taliban captivity, Bergdahl has said he was beaten, tortured and locked in a cage after trying to escape some 12 times. He was freed last year in exchange for five Taliban militants. He now faces life in prison if convicted. We are joined by Brock McIntosh, who served in Afghanistan from November 2008 to August 2009. McIntosh applied for conscientious objector status and was discharged in May 2014.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we’ll be talking about the charging of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. But first we look at the war in Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. history. Earlier this week, President Obama reversed course and announced he’ll keep nearly 10,000 troops in Afghanistan at least through the end of this year.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: In support of today’s narrow missions, we have just under 10,000 troops there. Last year I announced a timeline for drawing down our forces further, and I’ve made it clear that we’re determined to preserve the gains our troops have won. President Ghani has requested some flexibility on our drawdown timelines. I’ve consulted with General Campbell in Afghanistan and my national security team, and I’ve decided that we will maintain our current posture of 9,800 troops through the end of this year.
AMY GOODMAN: This marks just the latest example of President Obama pushing back plans to end the war in Afghanistan. In 2011, he vowed U.S. operations would be done in 2014.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Our mission will change from combat to support. By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.
AMY GOODMAN: That was 2011. Then, in 2013, President Obama vowed again to end the war by 2014.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Tonight I can announce that over the next year another 34,000 American troops will come home from Afghanistan. This drawdown will continue. And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, to talk more about the ongoing Afghan War, we’re joined by Brock McIntosh. He served in Afghanistan from November 2008 to August 2009. He applied for conscientious objector status, was discharged in May 2014. He’s a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Your response to this week’s developments, as President Obama stood with the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, announcing the U.S. would remain in Afghanistan?
BROCK McINTOSH: Well, it seems like every year and every few months it’s changing. He’s changing his mind about how many—how many soldiers we’re going to keep there. So, it’s not much of a surprise. I’m not sure exactly what he thinks is going to be different this time around than from the last year or two, during which the security situation in Afghanistan has been deteriorating.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to happen in Afghanistan?
BROCK McINTOSH: Well, I think what needs to happen is the different parties that are in conflict within Afghanistan need to figure out a resolution to their conflicts, because until that happens, the war in Afghanistan is going to continue to go. And the Afghanistan government also needs to figure out their corruption problem. It’s really hard to get the Afghan people to buy into the government when they are so deeply corrupt.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. military—at the same time that we’re hearing the U.S. war in Afghanistan will continue, the U.S. military has announced it has charged Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl with one count of desertion and one count of misbehavior before the enemy. Bergdahl was held in Taliban captivity for five years after leaving his Army base in Afghanistan in 2009. An earlier military report found Bergdahl likely walked away from his Army outpost in Afghanistan of his own free will, but stopped short of finding he planned to permanently desert. Bergdahl has said he was beaten, tortured and locked in a cage after trying to escape. He was freed last year in exchange for five Taliban militants who had been imprisoned for many years ago at Guantánamo Bay. On Wednesday, U.S. Army spokesperson Colonel Daniel King read the charges against Bergdahl during a press conference on [Wednesday].
COL. DANIEL KING: The U.S. Army Forces Command has thoroughly reviewed the Army’s investigation surrounding Sergeant Robert Bowdrie Bergdahl’s 2009 disappearance in Afghanistan, and formally charged Sergeant Bergdahl under the Armed Forces Uniform Code of Military Justice on March 25th, 2015, with desertion, with intent to shirk important or hazardous duty, and misbehavior before the enemy by endangering the safety of a command, unit or place.
AMY GOODMAN: Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl faces life in prison if convicted. On Wednesday, Bowe Bergdahl’s legal team released a statement from him describing his time held as a prisoner for five years by the Taliban. He wrote, quote, "After my first two escape attempts, for about three months I was chained to a bed spread-eagle and blindfolded. The blindfold was only taken off a few times a day to allow me to eat and use the latrine." He went on to describe being held in a cage. In all, Bergdahl said, he attempted to escape 12 times from the Taliban.
The front page of The New York Times today also quotes a description of him. It starts off by saying, "In the five years he was held captive by the Haqqani insurgent network, [Sgt.] Bowe Bergdahl ... tried to escape 12 times. The first ... just a few hours after he was captured in Afghanistan in 2009. He was quickly recaptured and beaten. But another attempt, a year later, lasted close to nine days."
And here, they quote another part of this letter he released. They say, without—Bowe Bergdahl wrote, "'Without food and only putrid water to drink, my body failed on top of a short mountain close to evening,' Sergeant Bergdahl wrote in a page-and-a-half, single-spaced narrative." He went on to say, "'Some moments after I came to in the dying gray light of the evening, I was found by a large Taliban searching group,' he wrote. They hit him, tried to tear out his beard and hair, and returned him to his captors." Just a bit of the description.
Brock McIntosh, again, with us, served in Afghanistan from November 2008 to August 2009. He applied for conscientious objector status and was discharged in May 2014. Your response to the charge yesterday that was announced against Bowe Bergdahl?
BROCK McINTOSH: The desertion charge doesn’t surprise me. I don’t imagine that the military really had a choice whether or not to charge him. The consequences, if he is found guilty, that’s a different matter. The misbehavior before the enemy—
AMY GOODMAN: And that charge, I think he could face a few years or up to five years. He already was held—
BROCK McINTOSH: Could be a maximum of five years. It could be as small as just a dishonorable discharge.
AMY GOODMAN: Or saying time served?
BROCK McINTOSH: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Meaning in Taliban captivity.
BROCK McINTOSH: Yeah. The misbehavior before the enemy is—can be interpreted pretty broadly. It could be something as small as running away before the enemy. But I think that the reason that they brought that charge was because of the accusations that six soldiers had died searching for him, which I think is totally unfair—unfair claim that’s made by some of the folks who were in his unit.
AMY GOODMAN: And why do you think that’s unfair?
BROCK McINTOSH: Well, no soldiers in his unit died in the few months immediately after he went missing, which is when they were going on missions specifically to look for him. The six soldiers who died died in August and September, almost three months after he had gone missing. And the claims are things like—they would go on a routine security patrol, and during that patrol they would also happen to ask people about Bergdahl every once in a while. But then someone might—someone would step on an IED. But it wasn’t a mission specifically to look for Bergdahl. And the thing is, is if they had not been looking for Bowe Bergdahl, they would have been going on missions anyways. They would have been going on security patrols. They would have been pursuing alleged insurgents anyways. And if you look at the rate of U.S. fatalities, the rate of U.S. fatalities in 2009, when Bowe Bergdahl went missing, doubled from the year prior, and then they increased again to 500 in 2010, which is positively correlated with the counterinsurgency and surge in Afghanistan.
AMY GOODMAN: This is a clip of Bergdahl’s father, Bob Bergdahl, speaking in a video produced last year by The Guardian.
BOB BERGDAHL: I’m sorry, how can we teach two generations, at least, of children in this country that we have zero tolerance for violence, but we can occupy two countries in Asia for almost a decade? It’s schizophrenic. And no wonder this younger generation is struggling psychologically with the duplicity of this, the use of violence. The purpose of war is to destroy things. You can’t use it to govern.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Bob Bergdahl. Your response to that, as you dealt in Afghanistan, as you confronted what was happening there? This new report has come out, "Body Count," from the Nobel Prize-winning group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, saying upwards of 1.3 million people have died in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan during the 10 years of the war on terror. The late journalist, Rolling Stone journalist, Michael Hastings quoted emails that Bowe had sent to his parents. One of the quotes from those emails: "I am sorry for everything here." What recourse did Bowe Bergdahl have if he came to be deeply opposed to the war in Afghanistan?
BROCK McINTOSH: None. There would have been—there would have been no other option for him. And I think that that speaks to one of the larger issues. I think there’s two larger issues. The first is the fact that there was no recourse for him. If you’re a soldier, you’re in a combat zone, and you’re dealing with any type of war trauma, whether it’s PTSD or a moral injury, there’s very little recourse. And the second issue is, Bowe Bergdahl was discharged from the Coast Guard in 2006. The Army accepted him in 2008, knowing that he had that discharge. Twenty percent of recruits in 2008 were given waivers to join the military, and that is—and that is because the military recognized that they needed more troops because of the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they were two unpopular wars. Despite the fact that they were two unpopular wars, they continued to deepen our commitment in those wars, and they gave waivers to soldiers who probably should not have gotten waivers.
AMY GOODMAN: You applied for conscientious objector status from Afghanistan.
BROCK McINTOSH: I applied for conscientious objector status the summer after I got back from Afghanistan. And it was a process that was—it was difficult to do, and the—most people are completely unfamiliar with it. When I went to my company commander, he had no idea what to do. He had never heard of it. He didn’t think that I was able to do that. So I had to give him Army regulations to show him what to do. And then the battalion ended up losing my paperwork after a year. It was a very complicated process. So even if he had to decide to leave when he came home, through conscientious objector status, that’s still also a difficult process.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Brock McIntosh, I want to thank you for being with us. Brock McIntosh served in Afghanistan from November 2008 to August 2009, applied for conscientious objector status and was discharged in May 2014, now a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. We’ll be back in a minute.
Houthis Warn of "Wide War" as Saudi-Led Coalition Bombs Yemen
Saudi Arabia and other regional allies have launched a military campaign in Yemen targeting Houthi rebels. The Saudi-led airstrikes are intended to thwart the Houthis’ advance after seizing control of the capital Sana’a last year and deposing President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi last month. Hadi called for international intervention on his behalf earlier this week. There are conflicting reports over his whereabouts as Houthis advance on his outpost of Aden. Unconfirmed statements say Hadi has fled Yemen by boat. The Houthi-run Health Ministry says the strikes have killed at least 18 civilians in Sana’a and wounded 24 others. The Saudi government says it has consulted "very closely" with the White House on its military campaign. Hours before it began, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the Houthis are stoking unrest.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest: "The United States continues to strongly condemn the recent offensive military actions undertaken in Yemen that have targeted President Hadi. The actions of the Houthis and former President Saleh have caused widespread instability and chaos that threatens the well-being of all Yemenis."
Other countries involved in the military intervention are the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. The Houthis have warned the Saudi-led operation will set off a "wide war." Iran, which backs the Houthis, has demanded an immediate end to what it calls "U.S.-led aggression."
U.S. Begins Strikes on Tikrit, Aiding Iran-Backed Offensive
U.S.-led coalition warplanes have begun bombing the Iraqi city of Tikrit in an attempt to seize control of the city from the Islamic State. The assault on Tikrit began three weeks ago when Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Shiite militia launched a ground offensive. The U.S. airstrikes now squarely put Washington and Tehran on the same side in the fight, though the Obama administration insists it is not coordinating military operations with Iran. The Pentagon stressed that the airstrikes are aimed to help Iraqi forces defeat the Islamic State, but by all accounts it has been Iranian-backed militias leading the ground attack. We will have more on Iraq after headlines.
Obama Admin Confident on Iran Nuclear Deal Before Deadline
The Obama administration has indicated it expects to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran before next week’s deadline. Differences remain over the pace for ending U.N. sanctions, caps on centrifuges, and how long the deal would last. But according to The New York Times, a senior State Department official gave the administration’s most hopeful prognosis to date, saying: "we very much believe we can get this done," in time. Ahead of a new round of talks in Switzerland, Secretary of State John Kerry said critics have offered no viable alternative.
Secretary of State John Kerry: "Anybody standing up in opposition to this has an obligation to stand up and put a viable, realistic alternative on the table, and I have yet to see anybody do that. So, we’ll see where we go."
Ex-POW Bowe Bergdahl Charged with Desertion
The U.S. military has charged Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl with one count of desertion and one count of misbehavior before the enemy. Bergdahl was held in Taliban captivity for five years after leaving his Army base in Afghanistan in 2009. An earlier military report found Bergdahl likely walked away from his Army outpost in Afghanistan of his own free will, but stopped short of finding that he planned to permanently desert. Bergdahl has said he was beaten, tortured and locked in a cage by the Taliban after trying to escape. He was freed last year in exchange for five Taliban militants. On Wednesday, an Army spokesperson announced the charges.
Col. Daniel King: "The U.S. Army Forces Command has thoroughly reviewed the Army’s investigation surrounding Sergeant Robert Bowdrie Bergdahl’s 2009 disappearance in Afghanistan, and formally charged Sergeant Bergdahl under the Armed Forces Uniform Code of Military Justice on March 25th, 2015, with desertion, with intent to shirk important or hazardous duty, and misbehavior before the enemy by endangering the safety of a command, unit or place, and has referred the case to an Article 32 preliminary hearing."
Berghdal faces life in prison if convicted. He is currently serving in an administrative role on a Texas military base. A pretrial hearing will be held next month.
House Votes to Arm Ukraine; U.S. Delivers Armored Vehicles
The Republican-controlled House has voted overwhelmingly to urge President Obama to arm the Ukrainian military. Obama has resisted calls to send military aid to Kiev, saying he doesn’t want to provoke further conflict. On Wednesday, Ukraine received a new shipment of armored military vehicles from the United States.
U.S. Army Apologizes for Neglecting Chemical Exposure of Iraq War Veterans
The U.S. Army has apologized to veterans wounded by exposure to chemical weapons in Iraq. A report last year found the Pentagon failed to act on claims by more than 600 U.S. servicemembers who reported being exposed to chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003. A New York Times investigation found the Bush administration concealed the discovery of chemical weapons in Iraq that had been developed with U.S. support in the 1980s — and then denied medical care to the wounded U.S. soldiers involved. U.S. Army Under Secretary Brad Carson has admitted the military failed to follow its own policy for treating wounded soldiers and has pledged more medical screening and support.
WikiLeaks Reveals TPP Proposal Allowing Corporations to Sue Nations
WikiLeaks has published a leaked chapter of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership — a global trade deal currently being negotiated between the United States and 11 Latin American and Asian countries. The TPP would cover 40 percent of the global economy, but details have been concealed from the public. Now, WikiLeaks has released the "Investment Chapter," which highlights the intent of U.S.-led negotiators to create a tribunal where corporations can sue governments if their laws interfere with a company’s claimed future profits. WikiLeaks warns the plan could "chill the adoption of sane" health and environmental policies.
Prosecutor: Co-Pilot Deliberately Crashed Plane in French Alps
In breaking news, a French prosecutor says the co-pilot of a Germanwings plane which crashed in the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board, appears to have crashed the plane deliberately. Audio recovered from the plane appears to show co-pilot Andreas Lubitz crashed the aircraft after locking himself inside the cockpit when the captain stepped out. The audio shows the captain banging desperately on the door, trying to get back in.
Thousands Mark Culmination of Historic Selma to Montgomery Marches
Thousands of people gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary of the culmination of the historic march for voting rights. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a third and final march from Selma to Montgomery on March 24, 1965. On Wednesday, King’s daughter, Bernice King, spoke where her father had once stood.
Bernice King: "Fifty years ago, it was malice that would not allow Daddy to speak from the steps of this Capitol. Instead, he spoke his powerful, timeless words from a flatbed truck in the midst of a boisterous and buoyant crowd. Today, I stand where he could not stand, to synthesize our past with our present and to speak those same profound words that he spoke."
Follow
COLUMN
"The Costs of War, the Price of Peace" by Amy Goodman
What price would you pay not to kill another human being? At what point would you commit the offenses allegedly perpetrated by Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was charged Wednesday with desertion and “misbehavior before an enemy?”
Bowe Bergdahl was a private when he left his post in Afghanistan, under circumstances that are still unknown to the public, and was captured by the Taliban. They imprisoned him for five years, until he was released in a controversial prisoner swap negotiated by the Obama administration. Five Taliban members who were held for years at Guantanamo Bay were released to house arrest in Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl. He now faces a court-martial and potentially life in prison. Meanwhile, the architects of the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan remain untried, while a new report asserts that up to 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the first 10 years of the so-called war on terror.
The report is called “Body Count” and is published in the U.S. by Physicians for Social Responsibility. “It has been politically important to downplay Allied forces’ responsibility for the massive carnage and destruction in the region,” writes San Francisco doctor Robert M. Gould in the report’s foreword. He told me: “We need to take full responsibility for the true cost of war as we are preparing to continue our involvement in Afghanistan and deepen our involvement in Syria and Iraq. There’s great anger throughout the region about our involvement and the underplaying here of what the true costs are in terms of death and destruction.”
This report was released just as Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, was welcomed at the White House by President Barack Obama. Obama announced that he is slowing the planned departure of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, leaving 9,800 soldiers at least through the end of 2015. “It is my judgment, it’s the judgment of General [John] Campbell and others who are on the ground, that providing this additional time frame during this fighting season for us to be able to help the Afghan security forces succeed is well worth it,” Obama said. America’s longest war continues, with no end in sight. Ghani visited the Pentagon during his time in Washington, as well as Arlington National Cemetery, where he laid a wreath of flowers to honor the fallen U.S. soldiers.
“Body Count” provides a startling update to the previously widely accepted estimate of casualties from the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that which the public, experts and decision makers are aware. ... And this is only a conservative estimate,” the report stated. “The total number of deaths in the three countries ... could also be in excess of two million, whereas a figure below one million is extremely unlikely.” The report, writes former U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Hans von Sponeck in its introduction, “must be seen as a significant contribution to narrowing the gap between reliable estimates of victims of war, especially civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and tendentious, manipulated or even fraudulent accounts. These have in the past blurred the picture of the magnitude of death and destitution in these three countries.” Von Sponeck—who, in 1957, was one of West Germany’s first conscientious objectors—also served as the U.N.‘s Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq at the time when crushing sanctions were killing thousands of people in that country. He resigned in protest of the sanctions.
We have not heard former POW Bowe Bergdahl explain, in his own words, how or why he left his post that June night in 2009. If he is subjected to the same military “justice” that Chelsea Manning received, we may be denied access to Bergdahl’s voice completely through the trial. In Manning’s court-martial, his voice was only heard because of a leaked, clandestinely made recording. The late Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings reported on Bergdahl, quoting emails from Bowe to his parents, before he was captured, that were harshly critical of the U.S. occupation. Bowe wrote, “I am sorry for everything here.”
Afghan President Ghani honored thousands of U.S. military dead at Arlington National Cemetery. Will his gesture inspire President Obama, or his successor, to travel to the many cemeteries swollen with war dead in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan?
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 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
(c) 2015 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
© 2015 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
SPEAKING EVENT
207 W 25th Street, 11th Floor
New York, New York 10001 United States
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment