Tag Archives: human rights

"We Made Them Suck Their Own Blood off the Floor:" Assad’s Other War Crimes

by bt88jtv Posted on September 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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For the last month, Washington has been tying itself in knots over how to respond to the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons. The Syrian people, meanwhile, are being subjected to ever-graver atrocities, most having nothing to do with poison gas. A new report from the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria illuminates the increasingly brutal tactics that the country’s government—and, to a lesser degree, rebels—are deploying against civilians, from electrocution and rape to enlisting medical professionals to help torture hospitalized detainees. Significantly, while the report focuses on the commission’s findings from mid-May to mid-July and doesn’t cover the August chemical-weapons attack near Damascus, it concludes that both sides are guilty of war crimes and also accuses pro-government forces of crimes against humanity.

Whether the international community will do anything to curb the escalating brutality is an open question, though Thursday’s meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov may provide some answers. If the two sides can come together and craft an agreement to secure Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, perhaps the international community can also find common ground on other measures to protect civilians—and hold Syria’s war criminals to account.

Below is a roundup of atrocities laid out in the UN report.

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"We Made Them Suck Their Own Blood off the Floor:" Assad’s Other War Crimes

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Alyssa Milano Weighs In on Her "Sex Tape" About the Bloodshed in Syria

by Thorzar Posted on September 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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No, you don’t get to see actress Alyssa Milano have sex. Yes, you get to hear some depressing bullet points on the bloodshed in Syria.

Early Wednesday morning, Funny or Die—Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s comedy website—posted a “leaked!” sex tape of the 40-year-old Milano (who’s famous for her roles on the TV shows Who’s the Boss? and Charmed). The video is, of course, a staged comic bit. Milano and a handsome man start getting it on right as their camera “accidentally” swivels to a TV broadcasting an evening news report on the crisis in Syria, and the Obama administration’s push for military intervention. The TV set is mounted next to a mirror, in which the viewers can see limbs flopping and a bed sheet moving.

“I think it was a really fun way to get people to realize that there are important issues our country is dealing with right now,” Milano tells Mother Jones. “If people end up learning something about the crisis in Syria that’s a good thing—even if I had to do a sex tape to lure them in.”

The video ends with Milano saying to her lover, “This is boring, change the channel, put it on the Swamp People,” referring to the History channel’s reality TV series that documents the lives of alligator hunters.

To promote the “Syrian sex tape,” Milano tweeted out the following on Wednesday:

Funny or Die’s Nick Corirossi, one of the writers and directors of the “sex tape,” is keeping up a similar act. “I was the tape’s finder,” Corirossi says. “Funny or Die every once in a while tries to purchase sex tapes…but this time it was more boring than ever. It was all about all this Syrian stuff. It’s the most boring sex tape debacle I’ve ever been involved in.” (Corirossi did say that he does not believe the video takes a political position on intervention, but does serve as “an update” on Syria news.)

Milano has dabbled in political fare before. Since 2003, she has been (along with a bunch of other celebs) a UNICEF ambassador, and has traveled with the UN program to Kosovo, India, and Angola. She’s voiced her support for same-sex marriage. And she starred in a 2010 Funny or Die video (Ron Livingston, Gillian Jacobs, and many more) urging Americans to vote. Funny or Die posts a lot of political satire and content—and has done fake celebrity sex tapes before, as well.

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Alyssa Milano Weighs In on Her "Sex Tape" About the Bloodshed in Syria

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Kanye West Performs for a Dictator’s Family, and Human Rights Activists Are Livid

by Abe Johnson Posted on September 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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Trying to steal Taylor Swift’s thunder is no longer the most cringeworthy thing Kanye West has ever done.

Over the weekend, the hip-hop artist performed for a dictator’s kin. On Saturday, West was in Almaty (Kazakhstan’s largest city) performing at the wedding reception of Aisultan Nazarbayev, the 23-year-old grandson of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Nazarbayev has ruled the central Asian country for 23 years since its independence from the dissolved Soviet Union, and has come under fire by human rights organizations for his authoritarian tactics, including attacks on a free press, torture, torpedoing workers’ rights, and jailing the political opposition. (In 2011, Sting canceled a gig in Kazakhstan after Amnesty International got in touch with him about the human rights abuses.)

For his performance (which included a rendition of “Can’t Tell Me Nothing“), West reportedly received $3 million. Here’s a brief clip from the event:

A news agency in Kazakhstan reported that West was a personal guest of the controversial strongman. As you can imagine, human rights advocates aren’t thrilled about any of this.

“Kazakhstan is a human rights wasteland,” Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), said in a statement sent to Mother Jones. “The regime crushes freedom of speech and association; someone like Kanye, who makes a living expressing his views, would find himself in a prison under Nazarbayev’s rule.”

“The millions of dollars paid to West came from the loot stolen from the Kazakhstan treasury,” said Garry Kasparov, a noted critic of Vladimir Putin and chairman of HRF. “West has supported numerous charities throughout his career, including a few specifically focused on international human rights work. Kanye has entertained a brutal killer and his entourage…It’s up to the public to hold him accountable.”

West is now in the growing club of celebrities caught getting chummy with despots. In 2012, Kim Kardashian, the reality-TV socialite and mother of West’s child, is in it, too. In 2012, she traveled to Bahrain and generated positive press for a regime that was still taking heat for its bloody crackdown on political dissidents. (Following her arrival, Bahrain police were deployed to control “hard-line” Islamic protesters enraged at her presence.)

Earlier this summer, Jennifer Lopez was slammed by human rights groups for her paid performance at the lavish birthday bash of 56-year-old Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, the human-rights-quashing dictator of Turkmenistan. Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Lionel Richie, and Usher had all danced and sung for relatives of the deceased Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi. Godfather of Soul James Brown and blues guitar legend B.B. King performed for Zaire president Mobutu Sese Seko, a vicious anti-communist tyrant. British supermodel Naomi Campbell was caught hanging out with Charles Taylor, a convicted war criminal and ex-president of Liberia. And the list goes on.

The human rights violations and internationally denounced actions of all the above can be found in five seconds on Google. Maybe famous people who don’t need the money—and the people they hire to vet their appearances—should use it more.

West’s publicist did not respond to Mother Jones‘ request for comment.

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Kanye West Performs for a Dictator’s Family, and Human Rights Activists Are Livid

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Dancing in Damascus

by gjrrkjujp Posted on September 3, 2013

Mother Jones

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As I think of Syria today, two neighborhoods of Damascus are on my mind.

One is Yarmouk, a neighborhood of mostly Palestinian refugees and their descendants. When I think of the “the camp,” as it was so often called, I don’t usually think of the fact that it’s population has shrunk to a fraction of the 112,000 people that once lived in that 0.8 square mile space. I don’t think about allegations of a little-reported chemical attack there last July. I don’t think about the shelling and crushing of homes.

When I think of Yarmouk, I think of that hour, at about 4am, when pious old men shuffled to the mosque to begin the day and clutches of young people walked home with a swagger to end their night. I think of the way the sky at the end of Palestine street would turn pink at the end of the afternoon as I carried bags of cucumbers or peas or cherries home from the market. I loved how the streets felt lived in—how they filled every night with scraps of fruit rinds and newspapers and plastic bags yet were clean by the morning. I loved that everyone lived so close together in Yarmouk and that the voices of gossiping women and kids playing soccer in the alley blended with the music of Fairuz and Um Kalthoum and the cooing of pigeons in our windows.

When I think of Yarmouk, I think of Mazen’s house. Mazen had done five years as a political prisoner, but he didn’t really talk about it much. He was the glue to an intellectual and cultural circle in the camp. Most Thursday nights, he’d cook an elaborate feast and sometimes he’d show a film or people would read poetry or someone would present their photography. Later in the night, the music would come on. Some would dance, flicking their wrists above their heads and jutting their hips sideways. Others would spill out onto the little courtyard, where conversations would build: Was Obama better than Bush for the Middle East? What was the best collection of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry? Was it wise to ally with “enlightened sheikhs” to spread political messages through the mosques? What was the future of Assad?

When I left Yarmouk in July 2009 for a short trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, I had no idea it would be the last time I’d see it. One friend, Ayman, saw us out that morning. He was quite a bit younger than me, but he was always worrying about us. “Be careful,” he said as we left. I couldn’t have imagined that in a few days, my girlfriend (now wife) Sarah, my friend Josh, and I would be captured and thrown in Iran’s Evin prison. Or that within a few years government snipers would position themselves on Yarmouk street and pick off men who entered the camp.

Ayman (not his real name) had agreed to take care of our plants while we were away. A handful of days after we left, he saw a report on our capture on the news. He went back to our apartment and sat there alone, silently. Then, he gathered up as many of our things as he could—our trinkets from Yemen and the Old City of Damascus, my Arabic books, the beautiful short stories of the Syrian writer, Zakaria Tamer. (I love his shortest of all: “A sparrow left his cage, and when he grew hungry, he returned to it.”) He took all these things and stored them in his parents’ house. He left Sarah’s dry-erase board just as it was.

Our friends went to the Iranian embassy to plead our case, taking considerable risk in identifying themselves with Americans whom Tehran was accusing of espionage. A few days later, the secret police took over our apartment. Ayman never went back. Neither did we.

Before living in Yarmouk, we lived in the far north of the city. The neighborhood was called Muhajireen, and it clung to the side of Mount Qasioun. Had it been in the United States, Muhajireen would have been prime real estate, perched so high above the city. In Damascus however, the rich didn’t like to climb hills. Most people didn’t, really. It was difficult to get our friends to come there, it felt like such a trek.

It was a hard climb, it’s true. I remember walking down on winter days, sliding on ice as I descended. Cars would skid and slip sloppily down the hill. I’d walk down to the bottom of the hill, past the cemetery where people dusted off their loved ones’ tombstones, past the mosque that held the tomb of ibn Arabi, the 13th century Sufi philosopher. I’d enter suq al jumaa, the most beautiful market I’ve ever seen, where barrels of brightly colored pickles were stacked along the cobbled roads. The air smelled of spice and fresh bread.

Muhajireen was like an incredible little secret—you could see almost the entire city, all 1.7 million people of it, from up there. At dusk, I’d sometimes go up onto our roof. I’d watch pigeons take flight from the coop on our neighbor’s rooftop, spiraling upward in tight circles so high that they almost became invisible. Then, with a piercing whistle and a wave of a bright flag, my neighbor would send them diving back toward earth, swooping straight into their coop. I could see such flocks of pigeons rising across the entire city, tracing little rings in the sky.

We often sat on the roof at night too, smoking apple tobacco from our argilla pipe and reading the roads of the city, laid out in front of us like a giant illuminated map. As I stared at the Old City, a vaguely circular 5,000-year-old patch in the midst of straight lines, I’d often think of the prophet Mohammed. Legend has it that he stood atop Mount Qasioun as he passed through Syria. From its apex, he looked down on the city of Damascus, but declined to enter it. “Man should only enter paradise once,” he said.

Even after we moved across the city to Yarmouk, I would come back sometimes to go up on Mount Qasioun and look out over the city at night. The last time I went up there, Sarah, some friends, and I climbed up just above the line of houses. We wanted to go farther, but we stopped short when we saw what looked to be a military base.

I couldn’t have imagined rockets flying down from that spot and waking people before dawn, making them choke and kick and scream, shrinking their pupils down to needlepoints. I don’t know for certain that chemical weapons were launched from there, as some have reported—the US is now saying some were shot from another base. What I do know now is that the base we came upon when we climbed that night was a station of the Republican Guard and that it is one of several sites that witnesses said they saw rockets raining down on Ghouta the night of the chemical attack.

If the United States does decide to strike in Syria this station will almost certainly be a target. If there are chemical weapons there, will they explode? Which direction will the wind be blowing—away from, or toward the houses beneath the pigeon coops?

Sometimes, when I think of Damascus, I think of a park on the edge of Yarmouk. It was barren—some plastic chairs and tables placed across an expanse of mostly dirt. Neon lights hung off dry, leafless trees. Nearby, a grumpy man was perpetually chasing children out of his artichoke field. I’d often go there in the afternoon. In the distance, Assad’s presidential palace seemed to be looking over us, over everything.

“You see this road?” a friend asked me one day as we sat there, pointing to the street that hugged the edge of the camp. “This didn’t used to be here. When I was a kid, if you came out past these houses, this was all fields. Then Assad built this road all the way around the camp so they could gain access to it quickly, should they need to.”

Not long after the uprising began, Syrian rebels occupied the camp and the military put it under siege. Most of our friends left, but Ayman’s family stayed. Eventually, the Syrian military burned their house down.

Still, they didn’t go. One day, Ayman’s family drove down Yarmouk street, that thoroughfare I remember as a teeming stretch of glitzy shops, internet café’s and juice bars. As they drove, a bullet from a sniper pierced the front window and entered Ayman’s stepdad’s head. He died instantly alongside his wife and step-daughter.

I had met him once, at Ayman’s house. We were eating pizza. I remember the night being warm. He came home to find Ayman dancing in the middle of the living room for no apparent reason. I think the music on the stereo was Algerian, which was the rage at the time. He hugged his wife and gave her a kiss, then he sat down on the couch, laughing and watching as Ayman continued to dance.

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Dancing in Damascus

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Obama Calls for Military Strike Against Syria—But Only if Congress Votes for It

by olikellopas Posted on August 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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In a tough-worded statement delivered in the Rose Garden this afternoon, President Barack Obama made a case for launching a limited military strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in retaliation for the chemical weapons attack mounted presumably by regime forces near Damascus earlier this month. “This menace must be confronted,” Obama declared. This was no surprise. The Obama administration has clearly been heading toward such a decision. But in an unexpected move, Obama said that it was not necessary to rush into such an attack—his military advisers had assured him that such an assault could be effective even if taken weeks from now—and that he would seek authorization from Congress before ordering an attack on the Syrian regime.

With these remarks—the president took no questions—Obama has put Congress on the hot seat. In the years since a Vietnam-shocked Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, members of Congress have often eagerly ducked taking a vote on military actions launched by a president. Routinely, congressional leaders have complained about a lack of consultation from the president without demanding a hard-and-fast chance to accept joint responsibility for a military action. (See Libya.) In recent days, while House and Senate leaders have called for consultation, none have said they must be allowed to vote on strike (while some back-benchers have indeed demanded a vote.)

So Obama is now saying, you want consultation, I’ll see you on that and raise you a full (and apparently binding) vote. Some folks—particularly hawks and neocons yearning for a strike—will, no doubt, blast the president for wimping out on executive privilege. Others will see this as a historic moment, when the president rejiggered the constitutional balance on power. But this quasi-decision certainly will lead to a robust debate on not only what to do in Syria but also the fundamental question of who is responsible for waging acts of war within a democracy.

(UPDATE) Here is the full transcript of Obama’s remarks:

Good afternoon, everybody. Ten days ago, the world watched in horror as men, women and children were massacred in Syria in the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century. Yesterday the United States presented a powerful case that the Syrian government was responsible for this attack on its own people.

Our intelligence shows the Assad regime and its forces preparing to use chemical weapons, launching rockets in the highly populated suburbs of Damascus, and acknowledging that a chemical weapons attack took place. And all of this corroborates what the world can plainly see — hospitals overflowing with victims; terrible images of the dead. All told, well over 1,000 people were murdered. Several hundred of them were children — young girls and boys gassed to death by their own government.

This attack is an assault on human dignity. It also presents a serious danger to our national security. It risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons. It endangers our friends and our partners along Syria’s borders, including Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq. It could lead to escalating use of chemical weapons, or their proliferation to terrorist groups who would do our people harm.

In a world with many dangers, this menace must be confronted.

Now, after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope. But I’m confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out.

Our military has positioned assets in the region. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has informed me that we are prepared to strike whenever we choose. Moreover, the Chairman has indicated to me that our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now. And I’m prepared to give that order.

But having made my decision as Commander-in-Chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I’m also mindful that I’m the President of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. I’ve long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that’s why I’ve made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress.

Over the last several days, we’ve heard from members of Congress who want their voices to be heard. I absolutely agree. So this morning, I spoke with all four congressional leaders, and they’ve agreed to schedule a debate and then a vote as soon as Congress comes back into session.

In the coming days, my administration stands ready to provide every member with the information they need to understand what happened in Syria and why it has such profound implications for America’s national security. And all of us should be accountable as we move forward, and that can only be accomplished with a vote.

I’m confident in the case our government has made without waiting for U.N. inspectors. I’m comfortable going forward without the approval of a United Nations Security Council that, so far, has been completely paralyzed and unwilling to hold Assad accountable. As a consequence, many people have advised against taking this decision to Congress, and undoubtedly, they were impacted by what we saw happen in the United Kingdom this week when the Parliament of our closest ally failed to pass a resolution with a similar goal, even as the Prime Minister supported taking action.

Yet, while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective. We should have this debate, because the issues are too big for business as usual. And this morning, John Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell agreed that this is the right thing to do for our democracy.

A country faces few decisions as grave as using military force, even when that force is limited. I respect the views of those who call for caution, particularly as our country emerges from a time of war that I was elected in part to end. But if we really do want to turn away from taking appropriate action in the face of such an unspeakable outrage, then we just acknowledge the costs of doing nothing.

Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?

Make no mistake — this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorist who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?

We cannot raise our children in a world where we will not follow through on the things we say, the accords we sign, the values that define us.

So just as I will take this case to Congress, I will also deliver this message to the world. While the U.N. investigation has some time to report on its findings, we will insist that an atrocity committed with chemical weapons is not simply investigated, it must be confronted.

I don’t expect every nation to agree with the decision we have made. Privately we’ve heard many expressions of support from our friends. But I will ask those who care about the writ of the international community to stand publicly behind our action.

And finally, let me say this to the American people: I know well that we are weary of war. We’ve ended one war in Iraq. We’re ending another in Afghanistan. And the American people have the good sense to know we cannot resolve the underlying conflict in Syria with our military. In that part of the world, there are ancient sectarian differences, and the hopes of the Arab Spring have unleashed forces of change that are going to take many years to resolve. And that’s why we’re not contemplating putting our troops in the middle of someone else’s war.

Instead, we’ll continue to support the Syrian people through our pressure on the Assad regime, our commitment to the opposition, our care for the displaced, and our pursuit of a political resolution that achieves a government that respects the dignity of its people.

But we are the United States of America, and we cannot and must not turn a blind eye to what happened in Damascus. Out of the ashes of world war, we built an international order and enforced the rules that gave it meaning. And we did so because we believe that the rights of individuals to live in peace and dignity depends on the responsibilities of nations. We aren’t perfect, but this nation more than any other has been willing to meet those responsibilities.

So to all members of Congress of both parties, I ask you to take this vote for our national security. I am looking forward to the debate. And in doing so, I ask you, members of Congress, to consider that some things are more important than partisan differences or the politics of the moment.

Ultimately, this is not about who occupies this office at any given time; it’s about who we are as a country. I believe that the people’s representatives must be invested in what America does abroad, and now is the time to show the world that America keeps our commitments. We do what we say. And we lead with the belief that right makes might — not the other way around.

We all know there are no easy options. But I wasn’t elected to avoid hard decisions. And neither were the members of the House and the Senate. I’ve told you what I believe, that our security and our values demand that we cannot turn away from the massacre of countless civilians with chemical weapons. And our democracy is stronger when the President and the people’s representatives stand together.

I’m ready to act in the face of this outrage. Today I’m asking Congress to send a message to the world that we are ready to move forward together as one nation.

Thanks very much.

For more coverage on the developing situation in Syria, read Mother Jones’ explainer on whether chemical weapons are reason enough to go to war, how the neocons are pushing Obama to go beyond a punative strike, and Obama’s conundrum on Syria.

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Obama Calls for Military Strike Against Syria—But Only if Congress Votes for It

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GOP Congressman Endorses Bogus Theory That Syria Got Its Chemical Weapons From Saddam

by Jane Adams Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the Obama administration released its assessment of last week’s chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians. The US government “assesses with high confidence” that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad carried out the attack, and that the Syrian government has a stockpile of sarin and other chemical agents. (UN chemical weapons experts are still working to confirm details regarding the attack.) This declassification was accompanied by Secretary of State John Kerry’s public statement, in which he called the attack a “crime against conscience” and “crime against humanity.”

Something of this magnitude will always provoke a stream of conspiracy theories, some wilder than others. In a radio interview on Thursday, Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) seemed to endorse one of them.

The Huffington Post reports:

“The theory then and the evidence was that Iraq was an enemy of the United States and had direct plans in either support of Al Qaeda and/or with other weapons that we found out weren’t there—which I still think they were moved to Syria,” said Terry. “And it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the chemical weapons that have been used by Syria actually came from Iraq.”

…

When Becka asked whether Terry’s claim about the transfer of weapons was based on information he had received as a member of Congress, Terry replied, “Gut feeling…”

This theory isn’t new. Senior Bush administration officials publicly flirted with the idea that Iraq transferred weapons to other nations. The claim has been promoted on conservative media and Fox News many times over the years. In 2007, Mitt Romney said that it was “entirely possible” that weapons of mass destruction were moved from Iraq to Syria during the run-up to the Iraq war. The thing is that there is absolutely zero credible evidence that this was ever the case. I called up the State Department to ask about the theory the congressman rehashed. The first spokesperson I talked to simply laughed. The second could only say that the State Department doesn’t “have any information on that.”

For a firmer rebuttal, here’s an AP report from January 2005:

Intelligence and congressional officials say they have not seen any information—never “a piece,” said one—indicating that WMD or significant amounts of components and equipment were transferred from Iraq to neighboring Syria, Jordan or elsewhere…The Bush administration acknowledged…that the search for banned weapons is largely over. The Iraq Survey Group’s chief, Charles Duelfer, is expected to submit the final installments of his report in February. A small number of the organization’s experts will remain on the job in case new intelligence on Iraqi WMD is unearthed.

But the officials familiar with the search say U.S. authorities have found no evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein transferred WMD or related equipment out of Iraq.

A special adviser to the CIA director, Duelfer declined an interview request through an agency spokesman. In his last public statements, he told a Senate panel last October that it remained unclear whether banned weapons could have been moved from Iraq.

“What I can tell you is that I believe we know a lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria. There was certainly a lot of traffic across the border points,” he said. “But whether in fact in any of these trucks there was WMD-related materials, I cannot say.”

Last week, a congressional official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said suggestions that weapons or components were sent from Iraq were based on speculation stemming from uncorroborated information.

After the subsequent report was released, Duelfer gave an interview to PBS NewsHour in which he expressed doubt that Iraq transferred WMDs to Syria prior to the US-led invasion. “Syria, we had some intelligence that perhaps some materials, suspicious materials, had been moved there,” he said. “We looked as closely as we could at that, there were a few leads which we were not able to fully run down, largely because of the security situation, but it’s my judgment that had substantial stocks, important stocks been moved to Syria, someone would have told something to us about that.”

And in the years since, no new evidence has come to light suggesting otherwise. This all seems to conflict with Rep. Terry’s “gut.”

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GOP Congressman Endorses Bogus Theory That Syria Got Its Chemical Weapons From Saddam

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Are Chemical Weapons Reason Enough to Go to War?

by Abraham Lowe Posted on August 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Obama administration has moved a fifth destroyer containing cruise missiles into the Mediterranean Sea and seems prepared to take limited punitive military action against Syria for the Bashar al-Assad regime’s presumed use of chemical weapons. The White House is expected to declassify evidence today that will show that Assad’s forces launched a poisonous gas attack against civilians earlier this month, killing as many as 1,300. A year ago, President Obama set a “red line,” noting that the use of chemical weapons would be unacceptable in the Syrian civil war that has raged for over two years and killed over 100,000 people. But with Britain refusing to lend support for a retaliatory strike, some members of Congress are wondering whether the use of chemical weapons is an automatic rationale for America to go to war. Here’s a backgrounder on these nasty weapons, who has them, what they do to the body, and how the United States has in the past responded to their use.

What is a chemical weapon?

Experts generally categorize chemical weapons based on their biological effects. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, chemical weapons include nerve agents, choking agents, blister agents such as mustard gas, blood agents, chemicals that cause psychotic disorders, and riot-control agents, such as tear gas. Also included are defoliants such as Agent Orange, which was used by the United States in Vietnam.

Under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (more on that below), it’s perfectly fine for countries to deploy tear gas against domestic protesters so long as it’s not used as a weapon of war. But as Slate points out, riot-control agents can still be deadly in enclosed spaces. According to Physicians for Human Rights, the main chemical weapons doctors watch out for these days are VX, sarin, and tabun—all nerve agents—and BZ and mustard gas.

What do these chemicals do to people?
Chemical weapons wreak havoc on the body, but are not always lethal. Nerve and choking agents hit hardest. When you inhale a choking agent—such as chlorine gas, which was used extensively during World War I—it forces fluid into your lungs, and that basically drowns you. Nerve agents can kill within minutes (in the case of VX), and cause twitching and seizures prior to death. Symptoms of mustard gas include skin blistering, burning eyes, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, and swelling of the respiratory tract that can seal the victim’s airway. They take two to 24 hours to appear and are not usually lethal if adequate healthcare is available.

Which chemical agent was used in Syria?
Sarin, allegedly. When absorbed through the skin, sarin attacks the nervous system and can kill a person in 5 to 10 minutes. It was developed in 1938 in Nazi Germany and was allegedly tested on people in concentration camps. Sarin was the gas used a deadly 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway by an extremist cult. (See timeline below.)

How are survivors of the Syrian attack being treated?
Tim Shenk, a spokesman for Doctors Without Borders, which operates six hospitals and four health centers in the north of Syria, says that the main drug used to treat neurotoxic symptoms is atropine. The group sent approximately 1,600 vials of the drug to field hospitals in Damascus about six months ago. Those were used in the recent incident, and Doctors Without Borders is now sending 15,000 additional vials to facilities in that area. If atropine is injected within one hour of exposure, it can be highly effective—but in Syria, there wasn’t enough atropine to treat everyone, and not all patients made it to the hospital in time.

Why are chemical weapons considered worse than, say, bombing women and children?

“Unfortunately, there are no international laws against war itself,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, tells Mother Jones. “But there are rules about how wars can and cannot be conducted…Holding the line against further chemical weapons use is in the interests of the United States and international security, because chemical weapons produce horrible, indiscriminate effects, especially against civilians, and because the erosion of the taboo against chemical weapons can lead to further, more significant use of these or other mass destruction weapons in the future.” Chemical weapons also evoke the horrors of World War I and the Holocaust.

But writer Paul Waldman sees international hypocrisy on the subject. “Getting killed by mustard gas is surely awful,” he writes in The American Prospect. “But so is getting blown up by a bomb. Using one against your enemies gets you branded a war criminal, but using the other doesn’t.” Steve Johnson, a visiting fellow at the UK’s Cranfield University and an expert on chemical warfare, said in an interview, “I can understand why chemical warfare feels emotive to us—it is insidious, there is no shelter, it is particularly effective on the young, elderly, and frail, and can be a violent and excruciating death.” He adds, “When one breaks it down ethically though, it seems impossible to say that it is more acceptable to kill 100 people with explosives than with nerve agent.”

Does the United States usually intervene when chemical weapons are used?
Far from it. “As far as I know,” the Arms Control Association’s Kimball says, “this would be among the first instances when a state’s use of chemical weapons would have prompted military action by the US or by others.” And Foreign Policy reported this week that unearthed CIA documents show that the United States gave the location of Iranian troops to Iraq in 1988, fully aware that Saddam Hussein’s regime was planning to attack Iran with chemical weapons—including sarin.

Here are some of the most notable recent uses of chemical weapons by governments and terrorist groups.

1st Lt. Matthew Chau, commander of Border Team 3, 25th Infantry Division, patrols Halabja, Iraq. Buried in the village cemetery are many victims of the 1988 chemical weapons attack, ordered by Saddam Hussein. Wikimedia

1980s, Iran: During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein’s regime uses nerve gas, including sarin, and mustard gas in Iran, killing up to 20,000 soldiers. The United States was complicit, according to recently released CIA documents.

1988, Halabja, Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s regime unleashed mustard gas on a town overtaken by Kurdish rebels at the end of the Iran-Iraq war, killing about 5,000 civilians.

1989, Tbilisi, Georgia: Russian security agents allegedly use a World War I-era gas against protesters. About 4,000 people seek hospitalization.

1994, Matsumoto, Japan: Aum Shinrikyo, a cult obsessed with the idea of apocalypse, released sarin at several sites, killing seven people and injuring more than 200.

1995, Tokyo, Japan: Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on the subway, killing at least 12 people and injuring more than 5,500.

Are chemical weapons allowed under international law?
Nope. In 1925, following the large-scale use of nerve gas, tear gas and other deadly agents during World War I, countries signed a Geneva protocol prohibiting the use of gas as a method of warfare on the grounds that it has been “justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world.” Using chemical weapons is a war crime under the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). A legally binding arms-control treaty on chemical weapons, the Chemical Weapons Convention, was drafted in 1992. Its signatories agreed to not use or produce chemical weapons, and to destroy their remaining stockpiles. Since 1997, when the treaty went into effect, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has inspected more than 2,600 chemical weapons sites declared under the treaty. Here’s a map showing which countries have not yet signed and/or ratified the treaty, or ratified it only in the last five years:

Who still has chemical weapons?
As of February 2013, Albania, India, Iraq, Libya, the Russian Federation, and the United States still have declared chemical weapons stockpiles. (This doesn’t count the 5 countries that have not signed nor ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, or nations that may have secret stockpiles.) Since 1997, at least 80 percent of the world’s stockpiles have been destroyed—the United States and Russia have been dragging their feet, according to Cranefield University’s Steve Johnson. Thirteen countries, including China, the UK, the United States, Iraq, and France also have declared existing chemical weapons production facilities—but of those 70 total declared facilities, 64 have been destroyed or converted for peaceful purposes. All have been inactivated.

Which nations support US military intervention on the basis of a chemical weapons attack?

British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged his support for a US strike against Syria, but he was rebuffed by Parliament, including members of his own Conservative Party. The UN Security Council meeting on the topic ended in a stalemate, without authorization for military intervention. Russia passionately opposes intervention, as it blames Syrian rebels for the chemical attacks. France could turn out to be the crucial backer for Obama, as President Francois Hollande has expressed his support, and is not bound by parliament’s vote.

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Are Chemical Weapons Reason Enough to Go to War?

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Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq War Architect, Is Skeptical of Intervening in Syria

by cuppyteen Posted on August 29, 2013

Mother Jones

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Donald Rumsfeld weighed in yesterday on the Obama administration’s possible plans to intervene militarily in Syria. He is skeptical and expressed confusion about the whole situation during an interview with Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto:

There really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation.

You remember Donald Rumsfeld. He was the 13th and 21st United States Secretary of Defense, first under President Gerald Ford and then President George W. Bush. His hobbies include playing squash and roping cattle. He has championed wrestling as an Olympic sport. He is one of the greatest unintentional poets of the 21st century. And he tweeted this last March:

There are, in fact, many reasons to be skeptical and cautious about bombing Syria; even if many of Rumsfeld’s neoconservative brothers in arms haven’t gotten that memo, yet. US intervention in the bloodshed in Syria may or may not work out, but Rumsfeld has zero credibility here. As a member of the Bush administration, Rumsfeld gave strong indication that it was in our, and everybody else‘s, national interest to—because of those weapons of mass destruction, of course—send ground troops to Iraq.

Right… That. Staff Sgt. Sean A. Foley/US Army

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Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq War Architect, Is Skeptical of Intervening in Syria

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Everything You Wanted to Know about US Aid to Egypt

by hrzy86j5 Posted on August 27, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story, which first appeared on the ProPublica website, has been updated to reflect new developments. It was first published on Jan. 31, 2011.

Questions about the United States’ aid to Egypt have intensified in the wake of last month’s military coup. More than 1,000 Egyptians have been killed in the last week, most apparently supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi. A few members of Congress have called for cutting off aid to Egypt, which the White House says is under review.

We’ve taken a step back and tried to answer some basic questions about the aid, including how much the US is giving Egypt, what’s changed in the years since the Arab Spring and what all the money buys.

How much does the US spend on Egypt?

Egypt receives more US aid than any country except for Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

The exact amount varies from year to year and there are many different funding streams, but US foreign assistance to Egypt has averaged about $2 billion a year since 1979, when Egypt struck a peace treaty with Israel. Most of that goes toward military aid. President Obama’s 2014 budget tentatively includes $1.55 billion in aid, about the same amount the US has sent in recent years.

Has any of the aid been cut off?

Actually, yes, but only economic aid, and only some of that. State Department has put a hold on some programs financed by the $250 million in annual economic aid to Egypt, including training programs in the US for Egyptian hospital administrators, teachers, and other government workers.

What about the military aid?

The administration delayed a scheduled delivery of four F-16 fighters to Egypt last month, and it is considering a similar delay for a shipment of Apache attack helicopters and repair kits for tanks. But the White House has not actually cut-off military aid, which has held steady at about $1.3 billion since 1987. (Economic aid, meanwhile, has fallen by more than two-thirds since 1998.)

American officials say that military aid doesn’t just promote peace between Egypt and Israel, it also gives the US benefits such as “expedited processing” for US Navy warships when they pass through the Suez Canal. A 2009 US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks makes essentially the same point:

President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3 billion in annual FMF as “untouchable compensation” for making and maintaining peace with Israel. The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the U.S. military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace.

According to the State Department, the military aid has included tanks, armored personnel carriers, antiaircraft missile batteries, and surveillance aircraft in addition to the F-16 fighters and Apache attack helicopters. In the past, the Egyptian government has bought some of the weapons on credit.

How important is the aid to Egypt?

Pretty important. Saudi Arabia, which along with other Persian Gulf countries pledged $12 billion in aid to Egypt after the coup, promised this week to make up the difference in any aid cut by the US or other Western nations. But much of the aid can’t easily be replaced, in particular fancy US weapons and replacements parts for them.

Does the aid require Egypt to meet any specific conditions regarding human rights?

Not really. When an exiled Egyptian dissident called on the US to attach conditions to aid to Egypt in 2008, Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., who had recently stepped down as the US ambassador to Egypt, told the Washington Post the idea was “admirable but not realistic.” And then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in 2009 that military aid “should be without conditions” at a Cairo press conference.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, led Congress in adding language to a spending bill in 2011 to make aid to Egypt conditional on the secretary of state certifying that Egypt is supporting human rights and being a good neighbor. The language requires that Egypt abide by the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, support “the transition to civilian government including holding free and fair elections,” and put in place policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion, and due process of law.” It sounds pretty tough, but it’s not.

Has American aid to Egypt ever been cut off?

No. Congress threatened to block aid last year when Egypt began a crackdown on a number of American pro-democracy groups. A senior Obama administration official said that then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had no way to certify the conditions set out in the spending bill were being met.

But Clinton waived the certification requirement (yes, the secretary of state can do that) and approved the aid, despite concerns about Egypt’s human rights record. The reason? “A delay or cut in $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt risked breaking existing contracts with American arms manufacturers that could have shut down production lines in the middle of President Obama’s re-election campaign,” the New York Times reported. Breaking the contracts could have left the Pentagon on the hook for $2 billion.

Doesn’t the US have to cut off foreign aid after a coup?

The Foreign Assistance Act mandates that the US cut aid to any country “whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.” But last month the White House decided that it was not legally required to decide whether Morsi, who was democratically elected last year, was the victim of a coup — which allowed the aid to keep flowing. “We will not say it was a coup, we will not say it was not a coup, we will just not say,” an anonymous senior official told the New York Times.

As the Washington Post’s Max Fisher points out, Obama and his predecessors have dealt this kind of thing before. The president cut some aid to Honduras after a coup in 2009 and to Mali and the Central African Republic after coups there in 2012, but not all of it. And those countries aren’t nearly as important to US foreign policy as Egypt. President Bill Clinton cut some aid to Pakistan after a coup there in 1999, but President George W. Bush reinstated all of it after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Obama’s refusal to call it a coup infuriated Morsi supporters. “What is a coup?” Wael Haddara, a senior adviser to Morsi, told the New York Times. “We’re going to get into some really Orwellian stuff here.”

What about economic aid and efforts to promote democracy?

The various economic aid efforts have had mixed results. The State Department has described the Commodity Import Program, which gave Egypt millions of dollars between 1986 and 2008 to import American goods, as “one of the largest and most popular USAID programs.” But an audit of the four-year, $57 million effort to create agricultural jobs and boost rural incomes in 2007 found that the program “has not increased the number of jobs as planned.” And an audit of a $151 million program to modernize Egypt’s real estate finance market in 2009 found that, while the market had improved since the program began, the growth was “not clearly measureable or attributable” to the aid efforts.

The US has also funded programs to promote democracy and good government in Egypt—again with few results. It has sent about $24 million a year between 1999 and 2009 to a variety of NGOs in the country. According to a 2009 inspector general’s audit, the efforts didn’t add much due to “a lack of support” from the Egyptian government, which “suspended the activities of many U.S. NGOs because Egyptian officials thought these organizations were too aggressive.”

A recent audit of the European Union’s €1 billion—about $1.35 billion—aid program found that it had been “well-intentioned but ineffective” in promoting good governance and human rights. And a WikiLeaks cable revealed the Egyptian government had asked USAID in 2008 to stop financing NGOs that weren’t properly registered.

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Everything You Wanted to Know about US Aid to Egypt

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Talib Kweli Stands His Ground

by rikkiqlyons Posted on August 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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Earlier this summer, when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, there were marches across the country. But the protests largely faded out, folding in on themselves before they had a chance to create any lasting change. One place that isn’t true is Florida, where a group calling itself the Dream Defenders took over the state capitol building, and called upon GOP Gov. Rick Scott to support the Trayvon Martin Act. The bill was an attempt to address racial profiling, the state’s controversial Stand Your Ground law, and zero-tolerance policies in schools that funnel kids into the criminal-justice system.

The Dream Defenders were able to gather a lot of national and high-profile support. Among the bigger names who turned out to support their cause was the Brooklyn-based rapper Talib Kweli, among the most enduring and successful “conscious” hip-hop artists of his generation. I caught up with Kweli last week for a chat that ranged from his new album (Prisoner of Conscious), to stop-and-frisk, feminism, and homosexuality in the hip-hop community.

Mother Jones: What made you want to go to Florida to support the Dream Defenders?

Talib Kweli: Harry Belafonte hit me to the Dream Defenders and I liked what they were about. When I asked them how I could help their movement, they said, “You can help by coming down here; you can tweet.” But I was like, “That’s easy, what else can I do?” What I like about Dream Defenders is they’re taking all the fly shit from activism—they’re taking the right energy from civil rights, from black power, from Occupy Wall Street, all these movements, the Arab Spring. They’re not protesting, they’re not demonstrating; they’re just coming with a plan for action and they’re not going anywhere until the governor addresses their plan.

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Talib Kweli Stands His Ground

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