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Damage From Katrina Stuns Troops in Iraq
SLOBODAN LEKIC Associated Press August 31, 2005
Ever since Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, National Guard troops from Gulf coast states serving in Iraq have followed the disaster unfolding on television sets, worried about families and friends back home. "It's a significant emotional event. Their families are on the forefront of the disaster," said Lt. Col. Jordan Jones of the 141st Field Artillery of the Louisiana National Guard. "They're all watching TV and some have seen their neighborhoods completely submerged in water."
Strained US National Guard has hurricane relief role
Will Dunham Reuters August 31, 2005
National Guard troops played a leading role responding to Hurricane Katrina's destruction along the U.S. Gulf Coast on Tuesday, but thousands more who might have been part of the effort are deployed in Iraq.
Storm Turns Focus to Global Warming
Miguel Bustillo LA Times August 31, 2005
Is the rash of powerful Atlantic storms in recent years a symptom of global warming? Although most mainstream hurricane scientists are skeptical of any connection between global warming and heightened storm activity, the growing intensity of hurricanes and the frequency of large storms are leading some to rethink long-held views. Most hurricane scientists maintain that linking global warming to more-frequent severe storms, such as Hurricane Katrina, is premature, at best. Though warmer sea-surface temperatures caused by climate change theoretically could boost the frequency and potency of hurricanes, scientists say the 150-year record of Atlantic storms shows ample precedent for recent events. But a paper published last month in the journal Nature by meteorologist Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is part of an emerging body of research challenging the prevailing view.
A Tale of Two Constitutional Conventions: Iraq's and Ours
Paul Douglas Newman History News Network August 31, 2005
Mr. Newman is Associate Professor of Early American History at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, and author of Fries’s Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle for the American Revolution (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Next week I will begin teaching a college seminar entitled, “The Early American Republic,” and the first subject we will tackle over the month of September is the framing of the constitution of the United States and the struggle for ratification. By October we will study the challenges to the power of the newly created nation by a political opposition party and by the people themselves. At about the same time, Iraqi citizens will be going to the polls to vote on a proposed federal constitution for their nation. We will be studying that constitutional movement as well for a couple of reasons.
How to Stop Civil War
George Monbiot Guardian August 31, 2005
Nicaragua and South Africa, not the US, should be the inspiration for the people framing Iraq's constitution
Home Front Casualties
Seattle Weekly August 31, 2005
Army Spc. Leslie Frederick Jr., 23, stationed at Fort Lewis, shot and killed himself at his South Tacoma apartment. Wounded while serving 15 months in Iraq, Frederick had recently been among the first soldiers to receive the Army's new Combat Action Badge
Our Arrogance Will be the End of Us
Christine Rose CommonDreams.org August 30, 2005
“At first, I thought ‘How dare you say that about my America,’ she said looking at me through squinted eyes, “but then I saw it, our arrogance will be the end of us.” She explained to me how she and her husband voted for Bush. She said they were conservative and watched Fox News regularly; however, something touched her in seeing and hearing everyday people from around the world talk about her beloved country as a bully; a hypocrite. Something touched her when faced with the sobering charge of War Crimes and the images of torture at the hands of Americans under orders from the US Government. Something touched her that day that made her think about what she thought she knew. This woman said these things to me after watching a test screening of a new documentary called Internationally Speaking. I’ve been doing this, political activism, a short time, relatively; but it never ceases to amaze me how much people care. How one instant, one piece of information can open a person’s mind to something they didn’t see before.
United States needs to cease being the global warlord
Andy Schoenberg The Salt Lake Tribune August 30, 2005
President Bush assured the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Salt Lake City last Monday that we must continue the war on terrorism and our troops must stay to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. A steadily shrinking minority now support the president's view and methods. More than 1,000 demonstrators in Salt Lake City's Pioneer Park disagreed with the current U.S. policy and demanded that our troops be brought home soon to end the destructive wars in the Middle East. Various speakers, veterans, parents of dead and injured veterans, Mayor Rocky Anderson, respected constitutional law professor Ed Firmage all strongly disagree with the idea of fighting terrorism and spreading democracy and freedom using aggressive war. Using the horrendous violence and destruction of war to fight and defeat terrorism is obviously hypocritical and counterproductive. The gross injustice of aggressive or "preventive" warfare that kills and injures many more noncombatants - women and children - than combatants only fuels the hatred and the resulting increase in those willing to die fighting the United States and its allies.
Oil, Blood and the Future
Paul J. Nyden Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) August 30, 2005
Oil may be achieving a new impact on daily news, people’s pocketbooks and world history — perhaps even the end of history and the world. Cover stories in magazines this month include: “After Oil: Powering the Future” in National Geographic; “Crossroads for Planet Earth,” a special issue of Scientific American; and “The Beginning of the End of Oil?” in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. The articles warn about dire consequences for humanity and life on earth if current energy policies are not changed in the immediate future. Some people are paying far more dearly for oil than most of us are forced to pay at the gas pumps. They are the soldiers wounded and killed every day fighting in Iraq in an increasingly irresponsible, and ultimately futile, effort to protect “our” supplies of oil in the Middle East.
Asleep at the Energy Switch
Neal Peirce Seattle Times August 30, 2005
A fervid wave of criticism has followed Congress' new omnibus energy bill — and who's to say it's not deserved?
U.S. Envoy Expects Changes to Iraqi Charter
Zalmay Khalilzad The New York Times August 30, 2005
The U.S. ambassador suggested Tuesday there may be further changes to the draft constitution in order to win Sunni Arab approval, saying he believed a ''final, final draft'' had not yet been presented
Unprepared for the Worst
Michael Young Slate August 30, 2005
Michael Young of the Beriut Daily Star Writes:On Monday, Iraq agreed on a draft constitution dividing the country's regions along sectarian and ethnic lines. While there is a chance it will be amended, it seems almost certain that federalism will be enshrined in the final document. If this is confirmed, many Middle Eastern states with similarly multicommunal or multiethnic social structures will recoil in horror. Having long suffocated their own parochial tendencies through authoritarianism, they must now consider what the new reality in Iraq means for them.
Does Oil Have a Future?
Clive Crook The Atlantic August 30, 2005
The energy bill that emerged from Congress this past summer could be the last of its kind. Certainly it ought to be. Missing the point at such an inordinate expense of effort, words, and dollars is plain bad government.
Imperial Grunts
Robert Kagan The Atlantic August 30, 2005
America is waging a counterinsurgency campaign not just in Iraq but against Islamic terror groups throughout the world. Counterinsurgency falls into two categories: unconventional war (UW in Special Operations lingo) and direct action (DA). Unconventional war, though it sounds sinister, actually represents the soft, humanitarian side of counterinsurgency: how to win without firing a shot. For example, it may include relief activities that generate good will among indigenous populations, which in turn produces actionable intelligence. Direct action represents more-traditional military operations. In 2003 I spent a summer in the southern Philippines and an autumn in eastern and southern Afghanistan, observing how the U.S. military was conducting these two types of counterinsurgency
Mr Bush fires a missile
The Guardian Unlimited August 30, 2005
The Editors of the Guardian Say: Less than three weeks before world leaders are due to meet in New York for an unprecedented summit aimed at reforming the United Nations and preparing it to face the challenges of the 21st century more effectively, Washington has suddenly proposed hundreds of amendments to the working document. In effect they are telling officials to tear it up and start again. The amendments begin ominously on page one of the 40-page document where, among a list of core values such as freedom, equality and the rule of law, the US - in a none-too-subtle snipe at the Kyoto protocols - wants to delete "respect for nature". The amendments continue in a similar vein over the remaining pages, weakening references to the millennium development goals (agreed by 191 members of the UN five years ago as a strategy tocombat poverty), deleting a statement that force should be a "last resort" when dealing with security threats, and so on.
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