Posted on Thu, Dec. 13, 2007

We wonder, we wonder, we wonder. . .

The Telegraph's recent editorial about the tarnished image of some of our national political leaders struck a raw nerve. Maybe we should have a national day or mourning for their violations of some of our most sacred values.

We have signed the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Conventions, both of which we have recently violated. We wonder how many of us realize that foreign treaties which we have signed have the same power as the U.S. Constitution legally. Any violation of an international treaty by us is also a violation of our Constitution.

Yet in the last few years many of our national political leaders have acted as if they have no respect for foreign treaties or the U.S. Constitution.

Neither have they respected the principles established by the Nuremberg war crimes trials held after World War II. By these trials Nazis were imprisoned and put to death for violations of the Geneva Conventions. Yet we now violate these Conventions as though we have forgotten that the United States was instrumental in helping carry out the Nuremberg trials.

Probably the most serious recent violation of the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Charter is the participation in the Iraq war by the United States. Both these documents forbid the invasion of any nation by another nation unless the invaded nation is a military threat to the invading nation. Iraq was not a military threat to the United States.

There are those who argue that President Bush and many of our members of Congress thought Iraq was a military threat to the United States at the time we started the war. Perhaps that is true. However, they know now that Iraq is no military threat to the United States, and all evidence suggests that it never has been.

We wonder if any of our generals knew Iraq had no missiles that would shoot more than 200 miles, and that Iraq had no known way of delivering nuclear missiles to the United States. We also wonder why President Bush continued to claim that Iran threatened to make nuclear weapons for several weeks after the National Intelligence Estimate announced that such activity had stopped in 2003. Needless to say, all such estimates are never a certainty. But we wonder if President Bush thinks he has better intelligence estimates than individuals who spend their lives studying intelligence.

We wonder how long a war will go on which was started for a false reason. We wonder if we are morally bound to support such a war. We wonder whether the future of the United States will involve one false war after another indefinitely.

We wonder if we will be in a war in which weapons of mass destruction are used, and what the Earth will be like after such a war. We wonder whether making false accusations against other nations regarding the intended use of weapons of mass destructions serves the best interest of us or anyone else.

Sam Marshall is a resident of Milledgevlle.
http://www.macon.com/209/story/211240.html

War a lucrative business

Military engagements, aka "war," is the most lucrative business known to humans. A very few people, many of them politicians that accept bribes from companies that operate war profiteering enterprises, make obscene amounts of money. These few that make this money only do so because of the death, displacement or maiming for life of millions of others.

Let us send these "war" profiteers and politicians, who enable these profiteers, to these combat zones after we pull the troops out. This would be the perfect example of supporting the troops, taking them out of harm's way while at the same time giving politicians and profiteers a chance to show their "loyalty" to America and their "support" of the troops.

Also a request, especially to the news media: Stop calling this illegal military invasion of Iraq a "war." Describe this political decision for what it is, an illegal military invasion and occupation decided by corrupt politicians energized by greed. The last war America was involved in ended in 1945.

Support the troops, not greedy politicians and "war" profiteers.

Jon Phillips
Warner Robins

http://www.macon.com/209/story/207057.html
Posted on Mon, Dec. 10, 2007

Posted on Fri, Nov. 23, 2007

SOA protesters neither ignorant nor stupid

Contrary to Sloan Oliver's opinion, the annual protesters of the School of the Americas (that trains Latin American soldiers) at Fort Benning, are far from ignorant or stupid. They are led by dozens of ordained clergy of many denominations, religious sisters, military veterans, and many other educated, patriotic Americans who hold our government and our military to high moral standards.

Oliver naively believes our military would never do wrong; while it is to be honored for its service, military personnel sometimes do bad things, such as at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were they humiliated and tortured foreign prisoners.

At SOA/WHISC, the Army has admitted that the military training manuals did include tactics such as torture. Only within the last 10 years did the Army revise these teaching manuals. Too late for the four American religious women murdered in 1980 in Central America by graduates of SOA. Too late for Archbishop Oscar Romero, shot at the altar in church by SOA graduates. Too late for six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, at the University in San Salvador, attacked at home in the middle of the night and murdered by SOA graduates.

None of these victims was armed or a military threat to the dictators in government. The fact is that a large percentage of the graduates of SOA/WHISC have been identified in murders and human-rights violations when they returned home to Latin America. Unless Latin leaders sent only military thugs to be trained at SOA/WHISC, the percentage of those who returned south to bully and kill anti-government citizens is quite telling.

Why is our government in the business of training Latin American soldiers at Fort Benning? In the interests of our "national security?" If that is the reason, then for many decades our national security has depended on U.S. support of dictators, fascists and military coups of democratically elected leaders. And we preach to the world, so self righteously, how the U.S. is the champion of human rights.

David B. Connor is a resident of Macon.

Posted on Wed, Nov. 21, 2007

Simply untrue

Sloan Oliver's assertion that the U.S. Army School of the Americas did not teach torture is simply untrue. In the past, the SOA has been accused of training members of governments guilty of serious human rights abuses and of advocating techniques that violate accepted international standards, particularly the Geneva Conventions.

In 1996, the Pentagon admitted torture, execution, false imprisonment, extortion and other techniques were included in training manuals used at the SOA and by mobile training units in Latin America until 1991. This admission triggered an investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general.

In his final report, the inspector general said "mistakes" led to the inclusion of "objectionable" information in manuals used to train Latin American soldiers and officers at Fort Benning.

This was one reason the SOA lost it's legal authorization in 2001 and the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation was established. The new curriculum does offer optional human rights training.

It seems to me protesting the use of torture is isn't really a liberal or Democratic issue. Perhaps it's the Christian, and more important, the moral thing to do.

John Planchon
Warner Robins

Posted on Sun, Nov. 18, 2007

How could this be?

The incident in Iraq involving the private security firm Blackwater USA was yanked from public scrutiny faster than a speeding politician going through the construction area around Hartley Bridge here in the good ol' USA. Why was a private security firm providing security for any member of our armed forces? Am I stupid? The logic behind this stinks to the highest level.

Ask your congressman or senator a few questions the next time he or she dares show their face back home. How much of the $50 or so billion currently under consideration by Congress is earmarked for "private security"? This amount is bound to go up faster than a Saturn rocket and the public outcry should make an atomic bomb look like a firecracker.

Private security for our military "heroes."

Balderdash!

Ken Brown
Byron