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Victory in Defeat? Anti-Bush Iraq War Vet Nearly Wins Republican
District
Bush's Exit Plan: Fomenting War in Iraq
War and Peace Corps: Are Pentagon Ties Endangering Volunteers?
CIA Supports "Secret" CIA Scholarships
Victory in Defeat? Anti-Bush Iraq War Vet Nearly
Wins Republican District
An Iraq war veteran, Paul Hackett, may have lost a special
Congressional election in a heavily Republican district in
Ohio. But his narrow defeat may be counted as a victory for
Democrats. Paul Hackett joins us from Cincinatti.
And in election news in this country, Republican Jean Schmidt
has won a special Congressional election in southern Ohio
beating out Democrat Paul Hackett by a 52 to 48 percent margin.
Hackett was attempting to become the first Iraq war veteran
elected to Congress. He had run on a platform highly critical
of President Bush's handling of Iraq. Analysts had originally
predicted the Republican Schmidt would easily win since no
Democrat had come close to winning the House seat in decades.
But Hackett nearly pulled off a major upset by losing by only
about thirty-five hundred votes. The Cincinnati Enquirer described
Hackett's run as "nothing short of astounding."
While he did lose in Ohio, extremely close race of 52-48,
many are saying it was a huge victory for him and the Democratic
Party in a fiercely Conservative district. No Democrat has
won there for thirty years, with Republican victors often
taking more than seventy percent. George W. Bush took more
than two-thirds of the vote last November. The victor Jane
Schmidt is head of Cincinnati Right to life.
- Paul Hackett, defeated Democratic candidate for Congress
in Ohio, narrowly lost the race to fill Robert Portman's
seat.
Bush's Exit Plan: Fomenting War in Iraq
Bush administration officials have announced exit strategies
for Iraq with a target of next Spring for an initial pullout.
But the death toll continues to rise. We speak with an independent
journalist about how the U.S. exit plan may be provoking a
civil war in Iraq.
We turn now to the constantly worsening situation in Iraq.
Reports out of Baghdad say that fourteen marines and a civilian
interpreter were killed when their vehicle struck an explosive
just outside of Haditha, in Western Iraq.
Meanwhile, the seven marines killed yesterday west of Baghdad
pushed the official US military death count past 1,800. At
least 39 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the past
10 days alone — all but two of them in combat. Meanwhile,
the Iraqi Defense Ministry said that since the beginning of
April, more than 2,700 Iraqis have been killed. This comes
as two very different pictures are being painted about Iraq,
depending on who you talk to or what media you turn to. In
recent days, the top commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey,
said that the US could begin withdrawing some troops by Spring
of next year.
- General George Casey,
"I do believe that if the political process continues
to go positively, and if the development of the security
forces continues to go as it is going, I believe we'll be
able to take substantial reductions after the elections
in the spring and summer next year."
General Casey made his comments standing next to Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. This was the latest and perhaps
most significant statement to come after weeks of buzz about
a possible US exit plan. But the way it is being spun by the
Pentagon is that the withdrawal will come as the Iraqi army,
police and other so-called security forces assume more control
of the security of the country. That's far from happening.
In fact, these are among the most dangerous jobs in Iraq with
resistance fighters killing soldiers and police every day.
And the security forces in the new Iraq are responsible for
widespread human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings.
Take the recent examples of groups of Sunni men arrested
by Iraqi forces only to turn up dead. Many Sunnis now assume
that being arrested is the equivalent of being killed. Far
from moving toward greater stability and calm, Iraq is continuing
to get more and more bloody and chaotic. Some analysts believe
that the recent US talk of pullout is happening because the
US is losing militarily in Iraq to multiple enemies, loosely
called the insurgents or the resistance.
Our guest today writes that civil war has already begun in
Iraq. He has the center spread in the current issue of the
paper called, "Bush’s Exit Plan: Civil War."
He says, "With the war stalemated, repeated deployments
wearing down morale of U.S. troops and too few new recruits
to maintain force levels, the Bush administration may be deliberately
provoking civil war as its “exit strategy.” The
goal is not so much to exit Iraq, but leave behind a skeletal
military force that would maintain the network of permanent
bases under construction throughout Iraq while maintaining
access to massive oil deposits in the North and South. Breaking
Iraq into a series of mini-states, a strategy being pushed
by some White House allies in the media, is seen as one way
to ensure these goals."
- Arun Gupta, Editor with the New York Independent newspaper
of the New York Independent Media Center.
War and Peace Corps: Are Pentagon Ties Endangering
Volunteers?
Peace Corps volunteers are raising alarm bells about legislation
that allows the U.S. military to recruit young people by holding
out the option of a two-year stint in the Peace Corps to fulfill
service obligations. We speak with the National Peace Corps
Association, a Washington Post reporter, the U.S. Army Recruiting
Command, and a Peace Corps parent. [includes rush
transcript - partial]
As the U.S. military scrambles to meet recruiting goals,
controversy is emerging over a new initiative that allows
members of the armed forces to join the Peace Corps to fulfill
part of their eight year service obligation. On Tuesday, the
Washington Post published an article on the Peace Corps option
for military recruits. The partnership was established through
legislation backed by Senators John McCain and Evan Bayh and
passed two years ago by Congress. It's only now, though, that
the miliatry is heavily promoting the Peace Corps option to
recruits through its National Call to Service program. And
2007 will see the first batch of recruits who will be eligible
to participate in the Peace Corps after fulfilling a 15-month
stint in the military. The program is part of the Individual
Ready Reserve, which consists of active duty troops and trained
military personnel who can be called up to active duty to
fill vacancies.
Founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, the Peace Corps
aims to promote "world peace and friendship." Currently,
more than 7,700 volunteers and trainees are enrolled in the
program and serve in 72 countries around the world. Now, current
and former participants are raising concerns that a direct
tie to the Army will compromise the independence of the agency
and potentially endanger participants by identifying them
with U.S. military policies around the world. Peace Corps
director Gaddi Vasquez told the Washington Post that the agency
was unaware of the National Call to Service program until
it was already passed into law.
We invited the Peace Corps on the show today, but they were
unavailable to join us. The Peace Corps provided us with a
statement from Vasquez that reads, "Ultimately, the impact
to Peace Corps in terms of how we recruit, who we accept into
service, remains very much intact and consistent with what
we've done for 40-plus years. I am an individual who embraces
a very important facet of Peace Corps, and that is the Peace
Corps' independence as an agency within the executive branch."
After the Washington Post article came out, we were contacted
by the parents of a Peace Corps volunteer who is just about
to leave for Africa. They did not want to reveal the identity
of their son, but said the Peace Corps had originally assigned
him to a Muslim country just after stories of Koran abuse
at Guantanamo hit the news. He was concerned for his safety
as an American and asked to be transferred to another country.
Eventually he was assigned to a country in Africa.
- Stan Andrews, parent of a current Peace Corps volunteer
about to leave for Africa. He is a former international
research administrator, and used to be director of the Division
of Sponsored Research at Florida Atlantic University. Speaking
from his home in Maine.
- Alan Cooperman, author of the Washington Post article
published on Tuesday.
- Kevin Quigley, director of the National Peace Corps Association,
which represents former Peace Corps staff and volunteers.
- Douglas Smith, with the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in
Fort Knox, Kentucky.
CIA Supports "Secret" CIA Scholarships
College students are also being integrated into the U.S.
foreign policy agenda. Last year the Senate created a scholarship
to train intelligence operatives and analysts in American
universities for careers in the CIA and other agencies. We
speak with the anthropologist who designed the scholarship
and a leading anthropologist who has spoken out opposing the
program.
We continue to look at the issue of the militarization of
civil institutions – this time in academia. The Intelligence
Authorization Act is an annual bill that allocates funds for
intelligence agencies. When congress passed the 2004 legislation
and President Bush signed it into law, the bill drew fire
from many corners because it expanded the Patriot Act and
was passed with little debate.
But there was another provision in the legislation that received
almost no attention. Section 318 of the bill appropriated
4 million dollars to fund a pilot program called the Pat Roberts
Intelligence Scholars Program, known as PRISP. The program
is named after Kansas Republican Pat Roberts, who is chairman
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The scholarship
was created in order to train intelligence operatives and
analysts in American universities for careers in the CIA and
other agencies. The students receive up to $50,000 dollars
over a two-year period and are required to complete at least
one summer internship at the CIA or other approved agencies.
The program is veiled in secrecy - there are no public lists
of the participants and there is no requirement that they
disclose their affiliation to their professors. David Price
in his article in CounterPunch titled, “The CIA's Campus
Spies,” writes that he tried to obtain more details
about the program but the CIA spokesperson was reluctant to
discuss them. Price states that the agency did confirm that
“PRISP now funds about 100 students who are studying
at an undisclosed number of universities…. but they
refused to identify which campuses are hosting these covert
scholars.”
- David Price, professor of anthropology who teaches at
St. Martin's university. He is also author of the book,
Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance
of Activist Anthropologists.
- Felix Moos, professor of anthropology who teaches at
Kansas University. PRISP is largely the brain-child of professor
Moos who brought the idea for the program to Senator Roberts.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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