good evening so I'm Hamilton fish and on behalf of the nation Institute and our wonderful co-sponsors I would like to welcome you to historic Town Hall in New York City for a special program on the war in Iraq first I'd like to recognize a few of our distinguished guests tonight with us is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Toni Morrison from the from the Nation magazine Katrina vanden Heuvel and formerly from the Nation magazine Victor Navasky and the co-host of Democracy Now Juan Gonzalez our thanks to our many co-sponsors for this evenings event including the nation Democracy Now Democrats calm the Center for Constitutional Rights alternate the Center for economic research and social change veterans for common sense Iraq Veterans Against the War Armenian National Committee and the public concern foundation the publishers of the Washington Spectator all right a couple of housekeeping matters please take a minute to turn off your cell phones thank you for those wishing to address questions to our panel staff will circulate with index cards later in the program please write your question clearly and we'll try to get to as many as we can immediately following the event tonight there will be a book signing in the lobby we gather tonight at yet another contradictory juncture in the perpetual war both major political parties have declined to address the reality of the occupation in Iraq two authoritative studies recently put the number of Iraqi deaths as a result of our presence in Iraq at above 1.2 million Tom Englehart editor of the indispensable online commentary Tom dispatch comm reminds us that in his memoir lieutenant general Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez the former commander of US forces in Iraq records the President of the United States in a videoconference with Powell and Rumsfeld in 2004 on the eve of the attack on Fallujah kick-ass Bush said if somebody tries to stop the march to democracy we will seek them out and kill them we must be tougher than hell this Vietnam Steff stuff this is not even close it's a mindset we can't send that message it's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal there's a series of moments and this is one of them our will is being tested but we are resolute we have a better way stay strong stay the course kill them be confident prevail we are going to wipe them out we are not blinking to help us comprehend the human catastrophe of our occupation of Iraq past and future we have asked for leading independent investigative journalists to join us Jeremy Scahill the author of the best-selling Blackwater the rise of the world's most powerful mercenary army scahill is a puffin foundation fellow at the nation Institute contributor to the Nation magazine in the winner of a 2008 Polk award Chris Hedges chris is a senior fellow at the nation Institute a longtime war correspondent the former Pulitzer Prize winning reporter at the New York Times the author of war is a force that gives us meaning and the co-author of the new title from nation books collateral damage America's war against Iraqi civilians Leila el-erian Leila is the co-author the co-author of collateral damage is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism the nation journalism internship program and is now a producer for Al Jazeera English and to steer tonight's discussion the investigative reporter for The New Yorker win of the Pulitzer Prize and the Polk award and for the last seven years a one-man Truth Squad in American journalism Seymour Hersh please welcome our panel I can't help but say that the Chris and Chris Hedges and I have something in common we were both together at the New York Times in what I call bwk days which is before William Kristol I there's two extraordinary books we're going to be talking about but before we do that and get to that I thought maybe just to to move it along a little bit in just in terms of where we're going to go next on the egypt eve of an election I would ask we'd all maybe the four of us could talk a little bit about it how do we get out of here what's the way out of Iraq is just as simply as saying we're going to withdrawal troops what about the word morality which doesn't get mentioned very much do we have a moral obligation to the people who we've been bombing and strafing and brutalizing and whatever etc as you'll hear in some detail today along with our own soldiers who are equally as victims as much victims as those those they they do damage to so what is the way out what is the right thing to do Colin Powell once said you know what if we own it we we own it we if we break the shop or whatever the cliche was we have to fix it and I can tell you there was a meeting recently of some senior Obama advisors in which one of them a very serious guy this is a foreign policy team that he's assembled and this particular person has experience in in the Pentagon in the special operations area it's sort of great that he's on the team but he said let's just get the hell out of there it's their problem and but so the question is Chris what is what what's the way out what do we what's the right thing to do first of all the argument that's often made for retaining some kind of a presence one that all of the candidates from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton and of course John McCain have made is that the occupation forces are a force for stability and I think if you look closely at the interviews that we did with 50 combat veterans all on the record or you look at Jeremy's book on the mercenaries that have turned you know huge swaths of Iraq into the Wild West it's clear that not only are we not does not our presence does not contribute in any way to stability but it is another form of violence in that cauldron of warlords and and renegade militias and mercenary forces it's just one more contributor towards daily atrocities that are visited on Iraqi civilians that's the first part the second part is that under post Nuremberg Laws the invasion occupation of Iraq is defined as a criminal war of aggression we have no right to be there and we have no legal or moral right to debate the terms of the occupation you know one of the things this administration has done from Kyoto to the anti-ballistic missile treaty to the shredding of the Jiva convention is essentially destroy that delicate and important fabric of international law that was largely put in place by the United States since World War two and we must begin a recovery of that otherwise we will live in a world without rules without laws where any state can invoke its domestic needs to carry out pre-emptive war and finally I think the moral issue is real and you know we have become essentially a rogue state one that runs offshore penal colonies where we torture a one that abrogates for itself the right to invade countries that do not pose a threat to its security so that you know and and and I think finally as somebody who's covered a lot of insurgencies the only two options now are fairly quickly quickly ordered or phased withdrawal or the eventual collapse of the mission in Iraq all we need is for muqtada al-sadr to cut the lines to end the ceasefire cut the supply routes all we need is for the Bush administration to make a strike on Iran the Quran does not have the capacity to hit the United States it does have the capacity to inflict tremendous damage on a mare and installations with heavy loss of American life in Iraq and it would so the mission is extremely fragile and so I think finally that the solution is either and ordered and and and a planned withdrawal or a collapse of the mission itself but but let me ask you a question this to be practical how do you do it when you're talking about a plan here's what bothers me about it this is a country that's left with no social fabric at all we just walk out and it because it doesn't exist as a country anymore Iraq as you know the experiment that was Iraq following the Treaty of Lausanne doesn't exist it is and it will never come back and so when we talk about Iraq as a nation it's a fiction we leave it to the Warlord's the control we've already we've already divided the country I mean that's what pain the Sunni awakening groups has done well that's what allowing the Kurds to establish an independent Enclave in the north has done we have already carved up Iraq even Baghdad is now carved up into these labyrinths of ethnically cleansed pockets run by militias criminals kidnapping gangs warlords whatever you want to call them but we have let me just interrupt we have no obligation to the the innocent civilians there beyond leaving is that it well the that presupposes that our presence is somehow beneficial for Iraqi civilians and I don't think that it is no but of course not but the whole lot wait because let's take it to the next step there's no question that withdrawal is essential but what is our further obligation is it just withdrawal do we encourage some sort of do we encourage the neighboring states not that we have I'm not talking about this administration it has no sway whatsoever but the next administration presumably will have some ability to organize something regionally that we encourage that we raise money well we're not the we're not the only player in Iraq so I mean the problem is the the Saudis at the forefront but most of the Sunni Arab states do not want to see a shiite-dominated Iraq and neither does Israel and so what you are already seen in the power vacuum is a bolstering of the Sunni awakening groups now the Sunnis who constitute a minority in Iraq ran the intelligence service they constituted the officer corps and all of the Special Forces units and by cutting a deal we pay now about 80,000 Sunni awakening members salaries of $300 a month by cutting a deal with the Sunni awakening fighters we have allowed them to constitute a conventional force which has not only no loyalty the deep animosity to the central government we have unleashed centrifugal forces which often happens in war that we do no longer have the ability to control but think a year ahead we've started to pull out and we've absolutely correct every fact you said is I think pretty much in the knowledge that what we've done with the Sunnis etc etc what is our obligation for the innocence to the innocence of to the to the young people the kids that were born and lived the last seven years imagine what it's like to becoming a teenager now in in in Iraq what's our obligation beyond that beyond the notion that you know we're just another militia as far as I'm concerned inside Iraq III I think it's a really tough question I don't think anybody's really dealing with it I don't know what you think I can absolutely I mean first of all we have to we have to recognize something right now on the ground in Iraq and that is that the US military is actually the junior partner in the coalition that's occupying Iraq there's a much larger army of private contractors a shadow army made up of huge war corporations like KBR Bechtel DynCorp Blackwater the list goes on and on six hundred thirty corporations on the US government payroll drawing personnel from 100 countries around the world this wasn't just about taking Iraq Seoul or just about a conqueror a conquistador agenda in the middle east of the neo cons this also has been about a looting of the US Treasury but but even with those facts on the ground the reality is there's not a single serious candidate for president right now described as viable by the corporate media who actually has a plan to end the occupation Barack Obama does not sorry if I'm disappointing some folks have a plan to end the occupation of Iraq Barack Obama's plan will continue the occupation and this goes cuts to your questions I he has a plan to continue out the occupation in a sort of bush like fashion be packaged in a different way the main areas of the occupation the green zone the US Embassy controlled the Baghdad Airport Obama is going to preserve all of those and keep a force of 20 to 80 thousand troops in Iraq and so if if you if we fast forward as you're asking a year until let's say an Obama administration and Obama's plan is being implemented he's pulling out contract he's pulling out combat brigades he still has in place some of the hugest outposts of the u.s. occupation with no endgame to remove them that I've heard from any of his people up until now and will not commit to not using Blackwater and these other forces so what should be done the United States should pay reparations to the Iraqi people engage well there that's that's what I'm guys gonna we're gonna waste time if you applauded but but I'm not just throwing that out there as a bit of rhetoric that that if if we have a president which we haven't had for quite some time in this country who's serious about international diplomacy of course you have to be serious what's a national crushing is that we defy it yeah but you have to you have to have a you would have to have leadership that brings to the table all of the neighboring countries that have a stake not just in the internal politics of Iraq but in regional stability and and so right now the Bush administration has created flypaper for the Iranians to come in and have influence in Iraq I mean you know this as well as anyone Iran and Iraq fought a bloody war over a million people killed many of the Iraqi soldiers who are fighting against Iran were Iraqi Shiites so so let's be clear here this is not like you know an old love affair that's being reunited the Bush administration has given Ackman and echad a tremendous platform on which to operate right now the Saudis have enormous influence in certain pockets of Iraq there has to be a disengagement of these countries that now have been given this prominent role in Iraq a payment of reparations and as long as there are five hundred US troops in Iraq and that Monstress US Embassy there is going to be a legitimate resistance against the United States occupation and also the idea that you can draw down troops - I've heard the figure of 50,000 50 to 60 thousand which Barack has put out is untenable they're hanging on by their fingertips right now and the only way they're doing it is that they have bought off the Sunni militias that were at you know inflicting such heavy cow Salty's on US troops as well as Shiites throughout the country and that's a pact with the devil we tried the same thing in Afghanistan we gave weapons and money to tribal groups as soon as the weapons and money stopped these people went right back into the arms of the Taliban so the deal that we've cut with the Sunnis we don't own these people we only rent them and and it and in fact what we are doing is laying the groundwork for a far more virile in a deadly insurgency than one we faced before so in other words what we're saying here is that of course all of us are celebrating perhaps many of us are a new president perhaps but we're all in a dreamland I think that there's a real danger here with the presidency of someone like Barack Obama when it comes to the war because I think a lot of his supporters believe what he says believe it when he says I was against the war in 2004 and I'm going to end it in 2009 please I mean he that is not his position so and so so but I think that the danger here is that if Obama becomes president and his Iraq policy is as it is right now and and things start to really flare up there and the Iraqis realize Oh Obama actually is not going to end the occupation we could have a situation that that dramatically escalates very quickly the other part of this which we haven't talked about is that the Democrats have this plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan immediately send 9,000 more troops into Afghanistan and and I've just been in Europe traveling around European nations are extremely nervous about this scenario this escalation of the of the war in Afghanistan drawing in NATO forces further and seeing a lot more European body-bags coming on that that to me could be the real dirty war that that emerges in the next administration while Iraq burns so we're going to turn from this cheerful subject to the cheerful subject of let's see war crimes and contractors the bottom line is I think what you're hearing I don't know Leyla you might have a thought on this please I'm just jump in if we're talking about morality I think we should frame the argument for once about what the Iraqi people themselves want I think that's an aspect of the conversation that that tends to be missing from this discussion and we do know that more than 90% I mean a vast majority of Iraqis are against the occupation and that they've demonstrated that in many different ways and we do have an example in the city of Basra when the British troops initially withdrew last year you did see a market decrease in the violence there so that's one example of what what can happen if we do withdrawal do you think it's possible the one only optimistic scenario I can think of three years ago I thought maybe if we got out right away that the all the opposition would somehow come to terms with each other there was a lot of oil there's a lot of money to be had to be shared do you think it's possible even now that our withdrawal could maybe inspire the various Sunni Shia various warlords and factions to somehow come together in some sort of a of this series of agreements even if those though loose federalism or what well I spent a lot of you know I spent seven years in the Middle East and a lot of time in Iraq and I don't see at this point I mean the Sunnis have so much blood on their hands you know starting with the overthrow of the monarchy leading up to essentially the invasion of Iraq and and they have very potent backing not only from Israel but from the Saudis and others who are willing to give them arms and training that I you know unfortunately we took a policy in Iraq that was working was we just talked about George Kennan it was a policy of containment you know Iraq was a shadow of what it was before the first Gulf War it's Saddam Hussein was sitting in palaces writing romance novels his heir apparent O'Day was nearly killed and badly crippled an assassination attempt if we had been patient the regime would have toppled on it under its own weight and we took a successful policy and we replaced it with you know probably the worst foreign policy debacle in American history and and to somehow think that we can go in and unleash the Hydra headed monster of war and not only that but ethnic war and and then somehow make it I think is naive we can we've destroyed the country but I think us pollens I'm sorry so I just I just have to say something that the policy of the Clinton administration toward Iraq during the 1990s was economic terrorism the Clinton administration was waging an economic war against the Iraqi people yes Saddam Hussein was contained in the traditional sense of the term but the Iraqi people paid the price for it Saddam didn't pay the price for it at all and having spent years myself traveling in and out of Iraq through the hospitals that were like death rows for infants I mean u.s. policy has been consistent going back to the 50s as you know Chris when the CIA supported the bath party when Rumsfeld was shaking hands with Saddam in the 80s when George HW Bush bombed Iraq and the civilian infrastructure and then Clinton presides over the most brutal regime of economic sanctions in history killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis through systematically starving them into prior notice and then Bush invades the country and occupies if the Iraqis have always been the victim but you're very right about the economic sanctions but but what came in conjunction with the economic sanction sanctions were UN inspectors who after the Gulf War went in and you know I went into Kuwait with 1st battalion 1st Marines you know there were huge stockpiles of biological and chemical artillery shells that were ready to be fired actually on the Marines as soon as they engaged in the front line reservists troops and they had targeted those shells on the trenches unfortunately for us command and control had broken down and the order was never given and it was the inspection teams that were able to go in and essentially destroy the Iraqi military in a way that the coalition forces never did during the war itself that that that worked and that was vitally important in essentially defanging Iraq I don't argue with you on the economic sanctions but I think when we look at the ability of those inspection teams to go in and essentially clean the country up and we now know in retrospect that they cleaned it up completely and they were highly successful and that was a successful policy let's let's just we can deal with the past and it's it's it it just may be as bad as the past was what worries what makes me very nervous is I think the future may be equally as bad or perhaps even worse because I don't think we're facing up to what the reality is and there's been a lot of glib political talk and I think the problems are so intractable and as Leila said we don't really listen to the Iraqis we never have it's just in a funny way it makes both your books more important because they're going to be more relevant not only this year but next year in the year after because it's not going away folks this is this is going to be a problem a George Bush it just may delight him I don't know I probably will I think one of his I actually I honestly sometimes think the the chaos model was a serious model for for this one doesn't know what Bush is doing at any time but know what you just don't know what he's thinking but there were people the pearls and the others who really constructed a model of chaos and maybe they in the long run they're going to be the winners in this whole thing there's no serious political discussion right now of the future except for the glib stuff that even the most progressive Democratic candidates are saying so we're really in a bind and it's not ending but we should talk about other things because we have to cheer people up like mass crimes war crimes and horrific abuses are very constitutional we should Jeremy why don't you just tell people what it's about you're look you know what one of the just to put this in the in the immediate context one of Blackwater's senior executives recently said that he could see a scenario where the u.s. begins a military withdrawal and that it would actually increase the the need for private contractors for more contractors to actually enter iraq and he was saying that deadly seriously he meant that they see this these guys from Blackwater and DynCorp and Triple Canopy they know their future is secure if it's not Iraq it's going to be Latin America and and in a way what what I see happening right now is that a lot of these companies have gotten what they they needed out of Iraq they've gotten billions of dollars in no-bid contracts or non competitively bid contracts have built up the infrastructure of these private companies they're being run by former senior CIA people dia people FBI people you know they're just flush with with former government officials and the privatization agenda is on and it's radical and next stop for black water could be the war on drugs I mean right now in Colombia for instance the u.s. spends 630 million dollars a year on the so-called war on drugs program they're about half of it right now is going to private war contractors from the United States to fight this sort of shadow counterinsurgency war under the guise of a counter narcotics or Blackwater is bidding on a fifteen billion dollar contract to fight the war on drugs is that the language of it says to fight terrorists with drug trade ties and so so while while they're engaged in in in in those kinds of adventures looking toward Latin America we also are in the midst of the most radical privatization scheme in the history of the US intelligence apparatus seventy percent of the combined budget of all sixteen US intelligence agencies is now in the hands of private companies whose primary concern is not necessarily us national security but their corporate bottom line and their the needs of their clients and in some cases a corporate client or a foreign government client does not have the same interests as the United States government and so what I see this as part of this incredible radical privatization agenda and if we don't wake up very soon to the fact that we are creeping toward a corporatist state and that it's not just about well the Pentagon and the soldiers are the bad guys in this equation and realize that these are for-profit companies whose entire livelihood depends on things getting worse and so their future is secure regardless of who's at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in your book you write quite a bit about Eric Prince the leader of the the senior executive of Blackwater and his sort of the the the cowing and the the tittering the press the the the love affair they have with them we all know how the mainstream press you know our our crowd Chris has sort of failed us in terms of its obligations under the First Amendment what the hell happened here I mentioned I heard you with Amy and one yesterday talk about your sort of astonishment that despite all the press about the incident last fall and over your book it still hasn't been the the issue of these companies in their roles still aren't very much on the agenda of most Americans well I mean first of all this is this is the result of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's leadership in the Congress they're their crowning achievement has been to get an approval rating lower than President Bush and and it's an extraordinary achievement but the fact is you've got you've got Henry Waxman and about a half a dozen other people in the house and then you've got a handful of people in the Senate who have made this even remotely a priority on their agenda and to me you if you look at it if you're a Democrat power player it's a no-brain issue you've got a company that is an ideological foot soldier for the Bush administration pouring money into Republican campaign coffers that's alleged to have committed the greatest massacre of civilians in Iraq committed by a private company and and you don't defund these guys you agree with the Bush Justice Department that when Eric Prince comes before Congress he doesn't have to answer any questions about the nice or square massacre and I'm not sure people realize this Eric Prince two weeks after his forces were alleged to have gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians Maliki the the fake prime minister of Iraq screaming about they need to leave terrible diplomatic crisis he'll everybody exactly what happened there make a miniature they were all brought us to speed a little bit after noon on the day of September 16 2007 a white opal sedan being driven by a 20 year old Iraqi medical student and his mother pulls into this square in the Monsour district of Baghdad at the same time they pull in four heavily armored vehicles are driving down the wrong side of the street the men inside the armored vehicles see these two in the car decide that they're a potential suicide bomber decided to shoot the 20 year-old medical student in the head they then begin firing on the car and end up blowing it up and that began a 15 minute killing spree by operatives from Blackwater among the the victims were a nine-year-old boy named Ali is head exploded in his father's lap an Iraqi lawyer who survived it was shot four times in the back as he fled and after after this these killings happen nothing happened to the individuals who were alleged to have carried out the killings in fact they were given limited use immunity by the State Department which which is how Oliver North ultimately got after around contro when the prosecution was attempted against him his lawyers argued that he had this immunity and and and that the investigators would not have been able to bring a criminal case against him without information that they got from his immunized testimony so the Bush administration engaged in an incredible cover-up of this of these killings and Easter Square killings and and what happened is that Henry Waxman who's been investigating Blackwater for years said I'm going to get to the bottom of this and they force Eric Prince to come out of out of his Batcave and appear he I think he thinks of himself as Batman he comes out of the cave to you know in the middle of the night to save all the you know good people from the evil terrorists and and and so when Eric Prince goes to Washington to testify he went fully prepared I had his prepared statement to be talking about nice or square and he was going to spin a version of events that Blackwater was the was the victim of an armed ambush by enemies of the Americans when we get to the hearing room that day it turns out that the Bush Justice Department decided the night before we're gonna actually investigate this EF guys can investigate it so congressman Waxman please don't ask any questions about nice or square because you could contaminate the investigation and Waxman who I have a tremendous amount of respect for agreed to it and so Eric prints did not have to answer any questions that morning about the nice or Square massacre and instead went on and on with his rhetoric about his men bleed red white and blue and the statistic that matters when talking about Blackwater is zero the number of Americans killed under our protection and on and on and then he had a love fest with Charlie Rose in 60 minutes and all these corporate media outlets and and then he went he was going to write a book called we are Blackwater and I was supposed to come out this week and then mysteriously it disappeared it's not coming out anymore and prints went back into the Batcave for a while and then then we have a little blip on the radar April 2008 Blackwater's contract extended for another year in Iraq and and the US Congress continues to fund Blackwater's operations to the tune of over a billion dollars just for its work for the State Department so I just wanted to ask injera my question can i yeah I spend do anything you want what's that you can absolutely do it's not a coup d'etat I spent two years right going traveling around the country writing a book called on the Christian Right called American fascist the Christian Right in the war in America and but but I'm wondering you know and and you know I think you can put the pieces I mean Eric Prince is a charter member of the radical Christian Right and to what extent is the rise of these mercenary forces who now have is it three large bases in the United States you know are building their own armored vehicles which they want licensed for us roads appeared in Katrina to what extent is this essentially the last piece of the puzzle in in essentially what is a corporate fascist state and that is creating a private army you know it's I watched I watched it in the Balkans I watched the old yuca Slav army get hollowed out and replaced with Serbian militias Archon and these groups you know it's something that fascist movements did it's something that communist what you do is essentially you destroy the legitimate Armed Forces and create a politicized armed force and and once that's complete we have nowhere to go and I just you know I don't know how far you're willing to go with that I mean there's there's no question that this administration is destroying the United States military in a very significant way we were talking beforehand about the Ricochet impact that this so-called war on terror is going to have on this country in the United States when these guys come home and they start beating their wives they they're committing suicide they're dealing with severe psychological issues that are not being adequately addressed by the the health care system that is available sometimes to veterans in this country and and and then there's another layer to it which is remember there are actually more contractors than soldiers what happens when they come home also well some of these guys take up employment with other contractors and they continue working and maybe they end up deployed at Hurricane Katrina maybe they become Border Patrol agents but but to the bigger question that Chris is raising Eric prints the owner of Blackwater comes out of a family that was at the epicenter of funding the rise of the radical religious right and the Republican revolution of nuke which in 1994 and that the people inside you know some of these names of people that peppered this young guys landscape when he was growing up Chuck Colson you know Nixon's hatchet man during Watergate the author of Nixon's enemies list who now is an evangelical minister and a faith-based adviser to to Bush you know the his heroes were James Dobson Focus on the Family Gary Bower of the Family Research Council he interned in George HW Bush's White House but said wasn't conservative enough for him Erik Prince the owner of Blackwater so he's with all these people who were where they believed in the 90s of what they were doing was waging a war against Bill Clinton secular dictatorship and and in the midst of all of these discussions Eric Prince decides to start Blackwater and and began building it in 97 and 98 and at the beginning it was envisioned as a very different company that it is today it was it was 9/11 and and the the attack against Afghanistan that pulled Blackwater in to the mercenary business and and getting it started with providing soldiers for hire the katrina operations were incredibly disturbing to see Blackwater operatives deployed on the streets of a u.s. city talking about confronting criminals and stopping looters and I know from talking to Blackwater executives that Blackwater sent its forces into New Orleans with no government contract initially 184 men in a puma helicopter and after a week of they beat most agencies of the federal government there in fact I don't even know FEMA has arrived yet in New Orleans but but they beat most agencies of the federal government there and began winning all of this business and then the Homeland Security Department hires them because the Louisiana National Guard was over occupying in Iraq and Afghanistan and Blackwater made over 70 million dollars off those operations so let me ask you this this okay all right go ahead Leila thank you why don't you mention Colorado well I think that obviously the issue of private contractors is disturbing and I think it is a subject that's received more attention in recent years and probably not enough attention especially in the mainstream media but I think an issue that hasn't really received attention is the day-to-day life for Iraqi civilians and the daily atrocities that occur in the country and that's what obviously something that we cover in our book through the interviews with 50 soldiers and Marines active duty and veterans and I think it was a tremendously courageous of them to come forward and tell these stories because like the Nisar square massacre that jeremy spoke about there are events that we've never heard of and they're very similar and it's tragic because it's so common place and so indiscriminate so an Iraqi family can be driving down the street on the way to school or work and pass a checkpoint and the soldier marina the checkpoint can fire because the rules of engagement tell them they can and what governs the rules of engagement is one simple rule if you feel that your safety is at threat you can fire and we were told this time and time and time again by dozens of people we interviewed people who served in Iraq and know the situation extremely well and these voices are not being heard and that's why we felt such a need to tell the sheriff told us is is that when politicians want us you know to parade us out to support the war we get phone calls but when we tell these stories that no one wants to hear no one returns our calls and one soldier specifically who's like Jeremy mentioned there is this ricochet effect of people coming back and they're deeply scarred and deeply traumatized but what they've been through and this one soldier told me that he's had suicidal thoughts and we've heard this so many times from so many different people he said that one time he saw it he was home from RNR on a break in between his deployment and he saw a sticker as someone actually had a yellow ribbon that said support the troops I'm sure you see these everywhere and he actually went up and wanted to speak with this person and said you know I'm a soldier serving in Iraq and thanks for your support and the guy turned around and walked away and this story I think is very symbolic because that's what people are doing they're walking away they're not listening to these stories and I think the most powerful testimony is the fact that these atrocities are current that these stories are being told by the people who either witnessed or participated in these incidents and Chris can obviously add more to what we've discovered in the book well we tried to do we tried to focus on the patterns of the war I mean that's we wanted a critical mass that's why we spent seven months interviewing 50 combat vets all on the record all of the interviews were taped we typed up all the transcripts and I think we we went after that number because we wanted to counter this idea that the death of innocence at a checkpoint or in convoys that are racing 50 60 miles an hour down the middle of the street not only running over Iraqi civilians but slamming into Iraqi vehicles and often opening fire in the same way that Blackwater did in the incident Jeremy just related on anything that they see as a threat is part of the daily reality of the war in Iraq and and I think part of the problem comes from the fact that both these mercenaries and the American occupation forces are allowed to use such heaven heavy weaponry belt-fed saws 50 caliber machine guns automatic grenade launchers in densely populated areas so that anytime and this was just something we heard over and over and over again any time an IAD went off they would lay down withering suppressing fire and you know we have that some of the veterans would talk about actually the the numbers of rounds that they expended into neighborhoods and they very rarely stopped to investigate the casualties and the debt and and I think you know we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed by American soldiers Marines in Iraq and we never hear their voices it's too dangerous I'm not faulting the press at this point for not going out you can't do it and so we went through the back door we found soldiers and Marines who exhibited physical courage in Iraq and a lot of moral courage when they came home to get up and speak the truth about atrocities that they either witnessed or in many in some cases participated in against Iraqi civilians you have somebody in the audience do you not well yeah camilo me he is here and can we bring him up we should he was nothing you know come on up fellows and his book is for sale Camilo I'll let Camilo tell his story but he's a great guy and finally to protest the war as an active duty soldier refused to carry a weapon stripped of his rank as a sergeant Rizzy and tossed into prison so it's precisely the kind of moral courage that hello thank you thank you thank you all for being here I actually only have two minutes so well take more take more I will take three well thank you all for being here this is a very important event and I also want to thank the organizers for you know organizing this and for inviting Iraq Veterans Against the War to take the stage and just to share the voices of the the veterans and the people who have served in this conflict the challenge here is to say everything I want to say in two minutes or three but so I'll just concentrate on the two main points that bring me up here but before that I want to just point out that we have members of the ROC Veterans Against the War New York City chapter here with us today and they're sitting out there somewhere as I can stand thank you I think the main thing that brings us here is the the reality of Iraqis under the US occupation and I'll just tell you a little bit of that reality from my own personal experience one of the memories that I carry with me is one of this traffic control point that we had in the city of Ramadi and basically this man in a vehicle could not stop basically because his brakes were broken so we opened fire on it and by the time we were done firing at this vehicle I was standing about two meters away from it I just could not see any traces of humanity left and what was in that car it was just a bundle of flesh and blood and just seconds ago this had been a you know living breathing human being which has had bad brakes and I remember that when we left that sign which was next to our immitis biggest mosque we did not remove the vehicle we left that site there so this was the first thing that Iraqis saw when they woke up in the morning on their way to their mosque in their schools and things like that another thing another memory that I have with me is when right after a firefight my squad was ordered to go on a Search and Destroy mission because they thought that there were some remaining enemy in the in the low ground next to the Euphrates River and on our way to this Search and Destroy mission other words we walk by the the body of this man who had been decapitated by our machine-gun fire and the reason he was decapitated by our machine gun fire was that he was approaching the the battle site and he would not stop so they opened fire on him with the m60 the M 50 caliber the 50 caliber machine gun and I remember that next to the body of this man was a small person and they later told me that this was the son the young son of the man who had sat next to him in the vehicle when he was beheaded by our machine and I one of the things that that struck me the most when I was writing this because this is all in my memoir was that I could not remember the face of this person I could not remember that it was a child I could not remember that it was if this person was sad crying or anything my memory had basically just erased all of these details because perhaps perhaps because was too painful to bring with me and to just to have on the surface and this is the reality of Iraqis this is the daily reality of people living under our occupation in Iraq and this is a reality that is being kept from the public we're not being allowed to experience the war and I think that's one of the main problems with the with the anti-war movement is that for a lot of people who are engaged in ending the war it's an abstract thing because we don't see the images because we don't really get the first-hand account of what's happening there and that's why it's really important that we support these two books here today because in order for us to take ownership of the war we have to experience it and this is a great step towards that direction so I encourage you all to to buy those books and to read them and to become outraged and to take action and along those lines I'll say that we erect grants against the work we held our hearings about our own personal experiences in both Iraq and Afghanistan and there's a forthcoming book called the winter soldier coming in the fall so I asked you to get behind that book as well and to get behind the voices of veterans and military active duty and Reserve and these are the realities that we are dealing with upon returning home these are the memories that we have to live with and this is not something that we're in a position to leave behind this is something that we carry with us you live the war but you leave the war zone but you bring the war with you and this memories and and this pain that we bring we have two choices and one of the choices is to to become victims and to commit suicide and there are many ways to commit suicide and not necessarily just by taking your life in the physical sense but by committing spiritual suicide or by taking that pain and turning it into something powerful and turning it into a driving force which is the driving force behind the wreck violence against the wars effort to end the occupation of Iraq and I wanted to just basically make a comment on what Jeremy was saying that there's a real danger when people feel that a particular presidential candidate is going to end the war that you know that's that's just a wild fantasy the only way that we're going to end the war is by taking people outside of our comfort zone and going into the streets and protesting and we're doing our part in the military we have over 16,000 people who have decided for one reason or another not to return to the war in Iraq and we are organizing that resistance and I make you the promise that Iraq Veterans Against the war is not going to stop we're not going to stop our efforts until we make it impossible for the US government to continue relying on the military to fight it's illegal words of aggression against people like the people in Iraq and Afghanistan as well and other places we are no longer going to continue obeying unlawful immoral orders we are going to stand for justice and we're going to reclaim the language and we're going to end this war but we need your help for that on a side note because I think I've gone over my three minutes just you know talking about cheerful news I just wanted to share with you that the Canadian Parliament just passed a motion today to allow war resisters from the u.s. to stay in Canada so this motion this motion is being challenged by conservative sectors in Canada so I also would like to request your help and to ask you to put pressure on the Canadian Conservatives and to just continue supporting gie resistance and to continue standing behind independent journalism particularly those who dare to speak truth to power so thank you all for being here support DI resistance I think we ought to go to audience questions unless somebody else in the audience has a suggestion I think they're bringing ok can I just say one thing about Ivy aw Camilo this organization first of all Camilo Mejia is a true hero and we thank you for your service in this movement the Iraq Veterans Against the War at a time when we hear the Democratic candidates talking about residual forces a counter force counterterrorism strike force we may have to keep the u.s. embassy alive that was built on slave labor IV ALW has a very simple set of demands these are combat vets many of them who served in Iraq and Afghanistan the first is immediate unconditional withdrawal of US troops from Iraq along with with their army of contractors the second is payment of reparations to the Iraqi people and the third is adequate support and health care mental and physical for veterans who come home from the war that's much clearer than any candidate for president let me let me just say that the Veterans Administration has been systematically and this I know firsthand systematically under estimating publicly this number of the percentage of veterans who come home with serious psychological and physiological symptoms from the war that the percentage is staggering thirty forty percent are coming in with very little money available the bottom line is the bottom line of all of this is really a downer which is that we're not even beginning to deal with the reality in either in the in the mainstream press or in the presidential election of what's coming and that's that but that's what makes this pretty remarkable evening as far as far as I'm concerned so let's go on cyber and other people who want you to stop being the moderator and and start being a participant where have they been on that one question comes up a few times there are so many echoes of Vietnam and what we've heard tonight can you comment look in a nutshell let me just say this 58,000 Americans dead let's forget let's not even count we often say in America one or two million Vietnamese as if there's not much differentiation in a number but but that war was a tactical a tactical mistake in the sense that we lose that many number of Americans we have this violence we commit against the Vietnamese and three or four years later they want to play Monopoly with us and we travel there now and there's fun hotels there and it's a great place to go Southeast Asia is wonderful and they're very courteous and the warm two Americans we have what I shouldn't say only because it's never only when you're talking about this but it's about 8% of the deaths in this war 4100 American deaths so much so far and but this is a strategic war we're in a war that is going to have consequences for generations this is a war against the Muslim world this is a war in which we have really defied a common sense and we haven't we as a nation we're not even beginning to realize the enormous consequences of what we've done and they're going to be long standing and as I say strategic we're going to have to be repairing our reputation and repairing the world for 10 or 20 years I don't know if we're up to it because we're not even able yet to seriously discuss the consequences of being yet another militia in Iraq and behaving like another militia so the comparison is if you thought that was bad you know I've got another war for you coming it's pretty bad I'm not selling uppers on the corner I promise I'm not there are a number of questions relating to impeachment for all members of the panel who would care to respond but the gist of them are what factors prevented the impeachment of Bush for the relies related to the war and the other crimes that have been committed the Democratic Party move on I don't think there's another one there are a number of questions about Kurdistan if we pull out of Iraq now what would be the future of Kurdistan is there one question one question asks if the if we pulled out of Iraq would the questioner asks with the terrorists run up and destroy what America fixed in Kurdistan well there's no way the Syrians Iranians and Turks are going to allow independent Kurdistan as long as it has a kind of federalist system where it's nominally associated with a country called Iraq they can live with it they don't like it you'll see cross border incursions as you did a couple months ago when they went after the PKK stronghold up in northern Kurdistan but if Iraq unravels I think the most likely scenario is that there may very well be a thrust by neighboring states to seize whole chunks of Iraq backing whatever ethnic group that they're supporting but I think in the end the people who are going to get the short end of the stick on this or the Kurds who don't have any friends in the region at all excellent asks Leila quick questions I know Leila you recently were working you were reporting from Syria and elsewhere and you you were doing something that almost never is done and that is listening to the voices of Iraqis who are refugees have been forced out of their country or have fled their country and this is a story that is highly untouched by by many media outlets and I think that's another missing voice from this discourse maybe you could talk about what you experienced when you were in Syria recently looking at that well talking going back to the issue of Shia and Sunni and them getting along one of the stories I did want to look into when I went to Syria and as I'm sure we all know there's a pretty big refugee population in Syria upwards to 1.5 million Iraqi refugees there and it's definitely changed the dynamics of the country including hiring the prices of the rent and food and everything else and I did notice that the Shia and the Sunni communities there did get along fairly well I'm not going to lie and say that it's ideal or it's how it used to be but there is that peaceful coexistence now part of it might be on the part of the Syrian government to ensure that there's no internal tension there among the Iraqi community but I did notice that families were visiting each other and there was and that was encouraging is definitely one of the more encouraging parts of the trip but the situation for Syrians for Iraqi refugees in Syria is bleak they many of them have nowhere to go the US has only accepted a few thousand compared to even Sweden which is accepted about thirty thousand Iraqi refugees so you can see kind of a difference this small Scandinavian country versus our own country that actually went to war with the people who we've turned into refugees so definitely that issue needs much more attention their health their living situation even I mean there were Rockies wearing coats and doors because they couldn't afford to pay for heat I mean it's a lot of them are living in complete poverty they're children they can't afford to send them to schools so you have a whole generation of Iraqis not only in Iraq but in the Diaspora that will be uneducated so this is just the tip of iceberg as far as not just what our own country will have to deal with as far as the long-term effects of what the veterans have to deal with but also of the Iraqi people both internally and outside of their own country either to SCI or another historian on the panel when France decided to stop occupying Algeria they withdrew very suddenly is France in Algeria a useful comparison or is the USA in Iraq dissimilar that's a frightening comparison for me because some of the McCain people will argue that the goal as you know was a colonial and he ran as a colonialist in the French elections and then somebody does have a cellphone and then turned around after a couple years and and stood up against ordered the withdrawal of French troops from Algeria as similarly McCain people at the instant they're suggesting that don't listen to what he says he may end up being different they also suggest some of them became people they they cite the Eisenhower model in 52 when he ran in favor of the war with Korea but turned around once he got in that those analogies scare the hell out of me because they suggest the rationality to McCain I'm not sure that exists but with some of his people have said that to me they've used that model in conversations with me recently used that model about about how you really can't predict what the the French the it's important to think about what the Gaulle did he came in the office and he changed 180 degrees and I'd like to think in my fantasy that Obama knows better I'm more I'm just I have to be more optimistic than Jeremy I think there's enough people around but know how bad the situation is that maybe what he's doing is trimming and he'll move much more dramatically after he's elected I like to think that because it's the point the point is it's going to take some really serious work next year people in the intelligence community and the government I'll just add this thing what this White House has done is they just haven't overrun the Congress they just have about witted it they just haven't manipulated it they have deliberately and systematically sabotaged oversight that's the reason we have the black waters they have destroyed oversight they have roomed that they've made they've made the Democrats as Chris suggested with his previous answer Cour but but oversight as we know it as the Constitution provides it has been destroyed deliberately and purposely by these people and it's an amazing story that will be told one of these days but not until left of office there's been a there's been a noticeable absence of discussion of any kind with respect to the United Nations would anybody in the panel like to address the question of a possible UN force possibly made up of Muslim troops from around the world only I only looked at crispy I mean I could answer it also but I look to you only because of your experience in reporting extensively on UN run well you know I've watched I covered the war in the former Yugoslavia and the reason that you know the peacekeeping mission that came in until 95 was untenable it didn't work it collapsed in the summer of 1995 when I was there I'm sorry AVO with the over running of Schreber needs in Jabba Dick Holbrooke went to the White House told Clinton that Clinton was freaking out that the hey they had committed 25,000 US troops to extracting the peacekeeping mission Clinton didn't want another Somalia that's the only reason the Serbs were bombed which was what they should have done when they attacked Dubrovnik two or three and a half years before and and so in essence what what made Dayton work well what made Dayton work is that dick Holbrooke got all three of the warring factions to ascend agree to bring the peacekeepers in if you don't get the warring factions to agree to bring the peacekeepers in it doesn't work and you know I I'm not sure how that would be done I'm not even sure who you would talk to to do it but in order to make a viable UN peacekeeping force all of the warring parties have to agree to its presence because because because otherwise you end up with what happened in in Bosnia the peacekeeping force as we saw in Trevor Nitze just gets overrun and and comes in this weird kind of thing where it surrounds the city of Sarajevo never lifts the Serb blockade and and never allows weapon never weapons were never allowed into the primarily the Muslim primarily Muslim led government inside sorry it was so they couldn't counter the Serb weaponry they couldn't get I mean it was just it was a it was they were ineffectual and of course a lot of the peacekeepers mostly French were killed in the war and also if you don't get the assent of all the parties any UN group would be seen as occupying right like we are and therefore they would be targeted immediately so that idea really is short short-lived Jeremy I like to just actually take a moment to welcome Amy Goodman who is also with us tonight Jeremie one day after you covered on democracy now Obama's plans to continue the occupation via private contractor forces the Clinton campaign announced her intention to ban these contractors do you think this was a serious and comprehensive offer how has the American public missed an or has the American public missed an opportunity of significance in the corporate media's refusal to cover the subject first of all hi Amy I have to correct one thing about it that that that was that was not exactly what I reported I did a story for the Nation magazine called Obama's mercenary position I did not intend to do a story only about Barack Obama I wanted to look at both Obama and Clinton's positions on the future use of private security companies like Blackwater Triple Canopy and DynCorp Obama's people were somewhat reluctant to talk about it but ultimately did make some of the senior foreign policy people available for on-the-record comment Clinton's people played hide and seek with me for 10 days and when I eventually got on the phone with one of her top foreign policy people he told me when I started asking questions oh I'm actually not the right person to talk about this we have to get someone else for you and they wouldn't so much as issue me a statement they stopped returning my phone calls and with the short of it is that we we went to press with the story and focused it in on obama and said in the piece that hillary clinton would not make anyone available from her Senate staff for her campaign staff and Obama's people took a bit of a hit on the piece because they were forced to admit that Obama can't rule out using these companies because his Iraq plan calls for actually a surge in the presence of diplomats on the ground in Iraq who at who guards the diplomats well its Blackwater Triple Canopy and DynCorp and that Obama would not sign on to legislation sponsored by Bernie Sanders in the Senate and jan Schakowsky in the house called the stop outsourcing Security Act which would effectively stop the use of these companies in Iraq and Afghanistan the day after I did that story Hillary Clinton releases a statement on her Senate website saying that Hillary Clinton is going to co-sponsor legislation to ban Blackwater and other private security in Iraq five days before the Texas and Ohio primaries let me say this Hillary Clinton has been five years on the Senate Armed Services Committee she has been missing in action and words on this issue well while I welcome the fact that Hillary Clinton has become the single most important political figure in the US to call for their banding I look forward to her making this her top legislative priority when she's back in the Senate just in response is something that's I said though about about my my view of Barack Obama listen most of my best friends are in love with Barack Obama I'm not trying to break up anyone's affair with Barack Obama I just want you to cheat on him a little bit with conscience on the war and and but and part and and make him be the candidate he says he is hold him to those terms no residual forces in Iraq no keeping that US Embassy no green zone and a faster timetable for getting the troops out all right but I'm on this issue Obama actually is one of the only people in the Senate who understands this issue he's the sponsor of legislation I've been very critical of but it is the leading legislation that has a chance to pass dealing with these companies his staff and his advisers I totally concur with with with sionis they understand the game here they know what's at stake the problem is that we have from now until November to hold Obama to a much higher standard than he seems to be holding himself when it comes to the war because after November if Obama wins he doesn't need any of you anymore for political support on that level so that's why I think it's important to be very critical even if you're within the Obama camp and you're one of those people go into those rallies to call up that office and say no residual forces faster timetable for withdrawal no use of Blackwater all right Leila lalla could you discuss the ramifications of the millions of refugees living or surviving abroad and also the plight of women and specifically widows I've heard muffled reports about widespread prostitution as a means to survive and feed children how widespread is this in the Iraqi diaspora well as far as the general situation of Iraqi refugees as I mentioned it's bleak many of them aren't are no longer getting accepted to the countries that we're accepting them there's only a handful of countries including the US and Canada and Australia that are actually accepting refugees and like I've said we've only accepted a few thousand and we definitely have a lot more work to do as far as getting these refugees accepted and even after they're accepted we have to actually resettle them and that takes a whole process to resettle these refugees and make them feel comfortable in their new home now when I was in Damascus I actually did a story for an Australian newspaper because there were a handful of Iraqi sabian family sabian Mandaeans our minority faith in Iraq there were thriving community before the war and like many minority communities in Iraq after the invasion we our invasion basically almost made them extinct because they were targeted by different groups a lot of the father's and primary at the head of households and those families were killed some of them beaten to death by angry mobs and many of them were forced to leave the their communities that they've known for thousands of years again it's a pre-christian religion so it's thousands of years old and and they've had to some of them go to Syria and resettle and they really want to move to Australia the specific specific families that I interviewed because that's where their church and their community is located but Australia has put a cap on a number of Iraqis they're accepting so some of these families and this was very surprising to me actually rejected resettlement to the US because they blamed us for their plight and would rather stay in Syria even in poverty for the rest of their lives and to even come here so obviously you meet a lot of different people and in your travels and your reporting but that's just one other perspective to keep in mind as far as the the plight of widows again my colleague and I in Syria interviewed a lot of widows such as the Sabian's I mentioned as one example as well as widows whose husbands were either killed by US forces killed by the militias I even interviewed a man who was kidnapped and being for several days because he was sunny and there are reports of prostitution primarily in Syria I'm not sure what the situation is in in other countries Jordan in Syria the two main countries that have taken in the refugees but this is just a normal consequence of war I'm sure Chris was covered Wars for the past few decades can twenty years at least can describe that prostitution when people are desperate that's what they turn to and that's just another tragedy in this whole situation Leila do you have a sense of what the approximate population was in Iraq before the occupation and and what it is now before the occupation is about 24 million and I know that there's estimates of 1 million killed 5 million I believe eternally displaced and 1.5 at least in Syrian and again 5 million refugees all over the world in five million internally displaced which is a whole other as Chris mentioned there are neighborhoods now in the whole country that are ethnic enclaves so Sunnis and Shias in the country don't even live where they used to and they're forced to settle even in other cities you have a yuca Slavia type situation where you know literally you know a few million people have lost their homes and they're now occupied those homes are occupied by people from other ethnic groups and just sorting out that mess alone will be extremely difficult I want to add something to this refugee discussion cofre black who is one of the top executives of Blackwater is heading up black waters private CIA called total intelligence solutions which is marketing CIA type services to Fortune 1000 corporations he actually was was interviewed and this is going to come out in a piece I'm doing for the Nation magazine very soon but he was interviewed on CNBC the the Business Channel and was identified as a you know ambassador black one of the top US counterterrorism officials and he was brought on to discuss investment in Jordan and he it was not made clear at all during the course the interview that he actually works for the Jordanian government for King Abdullah which has hired Blackwater but I want to redo this quote because it underscores everything that Lela was was just saying about how these US corporations view the refugee situation in Jordan and black was talking about the fact that you have six to seven hundred thousand Iraqi refugees that have come into Jordan and actually was talking on the CNBC business channel about how this was ultimately a good investment opportunity for US corporations and it will pardon me for a second I'm just scrolling down because the quote really is worth it so so black is on the show they don't identify him as being a paid consultant for the Jordanian government and there he is sitting there with the the host of this business show and he's talking about the six to seven hundred thousand refugees that are in Jordan and cofre black says ah he's it it it is our year for a second this guy's been getting emails on that no no that's not what I was I was looking for this and watching okay he says you have leadership King Abdallah mind you he works for him and they haven't identified it you have leadership King Abdullah His Majesty King Abdullah who's certainly kind toward investors very protective black said Jordan is in our view a very good investment there are some exceptional values there Jordan is in a region where there are numerous commodities that are being produced in doing well and then I well this is from my article with no hint of the brutality behind the Exodus he argued that the flood of Iraqi refugees fleeing the violence of the US occupation was good for potential investors in Jordan we get something six seven hundred thousand Iraqis that have moved from Iraq into Jordan that requires cement furniture housing and the like so it is a it's an island of growth and potential certainly in that immediate area so it looks good there are opportunities for investment it's not all bad sometimes Americans need to watch a little less TV but there is there is opportunity in everything Jeremy the the only thing that's harder to swallow then a journalist who won't accept a United States senators endorsement of his position is a journalist who quotes himself on a panel I was a quack I was quoting Co for black this is hot off the presses this is going to come out tomorrow there's there's a series of questions that are a kind of offshoot of the impeachment question maybe a little more a little more textured alphabetical the the what is the Quaker meeting what's going on is everybody are going to stand up and what is what is the chance of Bush ever being held by a foreign government and tried for war crimes and then and this is there is actually an important technical implication here and then also in England recently an activist attempted to effect a symbolic citizen's arrest of John Bolton for war crimes is there any realistic possibility that any of the architects of the Iraq war would be brought to account in an international war crimes tribunal tribunal in the foreseeable future the Bush administration doesn't recognize international law and Clinton I mean Clinton supported this system of ad hoc tribunals where you know war crimes are committed by people like the Serbs in Yugoslavia and in Rwanda war crimes are not are not the bit you know and committed by the United States government and there actually have been suggestions and legislation aimed at extracting US officials or soldiers who would be brought up on charges in the Hague to send the US military in to get them out of the country and extract them so but I mean this isn't over consular rights that incredible work in trying to hold Rumsfeld Cheney Bush accountable for torture and my understanding is they intend to try to do exactly what the questioner is asking and that is hold these guys responsible if they travel abroad after they leave power so I any thoughts I mean Spain of course played an important role in the Pinochet arrest I just want to get them out of office let's go to the top deck up there who clearly must have sacrificed their tickets to watch Pedro today anything about anything about Iran the questions on the from the audience what is the likelihood of a US attack what are the real consequences in the region of such an attack can such an attack be stopped could such an attack be contemplated by a administration that succeeds the present one I hate to do this but I think I'm inside you've done an incredible amount of reporting on this actually maybe let's I think that way we rarely thoughts on it um I'm actually writing something now about this so I really I have to play coy which I'm sorry that question was brought up I just it's not it's not professional for me to talk about it except to say that this has always been an agenda and this is a president and and and I guess I can say I know this as well as I know I'm sitting here who firmly believes that if the Democrats win they will not do what he thinks is necessary and he he is somebody who views himself as who's not appreciated now but he always talks privately about how Churchill was if you remember in 46 when he came back he was defeated as Prime Minister he lost the election he went again in 52 but he talks about that it'll be what I'm doing now they'll appreciate me for in two decades or so they won't realize now there'll be a lot of this end so it's still very very much on the table and everybody thinks that mr. gates and the chairman Mullen won't do it the president authorizes don't understand America I mean the problem was losing Fallon Fallon was the firewall Admiral Fallon the head of CENTCOM against an attack on Iran and it's more well I mean sighs God knows it better than I do but Fallon was an important impediment because when Cheney wanted to send the three aircraft carrier groups Fallon blocked him Fallon was very clear and correct me if I'm wrong that he would that was not going to happen I think the words were on his watch when this there's no four-star general that can counter man anything Cheney wants to do what I wonder also is I mean a lot of the discussion that I hear from people on Iran across the country is is not so much if Bush is going to attack Iran I think a lot of people believe that he will attack Iran that that seems to be the sense certainly among the anti-war crowd that that an attack is likely on on Iran but a lot of the discussion is would it be a scenario where they would do a Kosovo style operation where it's an air war or like the Israelis did against Iraq in the early 80s where they go in and take out a facility they allege as a nuclear facility or would Bush actually be insane enough a or B have the forces to even try to go in I forget which congressman said it real men invade Iran I mean the u.s. is being militarily defeated in Iraq right now by our resistance that's also killing itself while at the same time defeating the mighty US military you know to me that that really boils down to it for a lot of people is the question of would they attack from the air or attack from the ground I think they'd attack from the air the I don't think they have the troops to go in on the ground there was an article during during Bush's visit to Jerusalem there was an article that briefly appeared on the website of the Jerusalem Post we're saying that bush advisers had assured Israeli officials that they would hit Iran before he left office that was that went as it got out to those of us who follow the Middle East was ripped off the website very quickly but there are certain indications that this is still very viable and again unfortunately I can't talk and he knows more than all three of us put together on this issue but I do know that you know can talk a little bit about the consequences of a hit on Iran which would truly be catastrophic you know not only would oil often become impassable in the Strait of Hormuz and of course double overnight but it would be I think interpreted throughout the read as an attack on Shiism you have a Shiite majority in Iraq a Shiite majority in Bahrain 2 million Shiites living in Saudi Arabia many of whom work in the oil sector huge Shiite minority in Pakistan this would the the proxy Shiite groups like Hezbollah would certainly come to life I mean the constant the possibility you know Iran which doesn't have the capability to hit the United States with any conventional weapons can certainly hit Israel Israel would certainly retaliate it does have the capacity through its I think its longest rain missile is 1,100 miles these could be targeted on American installations in Iraq including the Green Zone with tremendous loss of life I mean the whole show could unravel and and I you know unfortunately although it's pure insanity I think it's it remains we all have to hold our breath it remains a possibility sorry I take it that Jeremy may be willing to quote himself but you're not willing to scoop yourself it's it's it's just a question of a of a professional thing that's all and I I would say that watch watch watch um watch this Israeli approach to Syria because yahood barach is very interesting and very consistent and in 2000 when there were serious talks going on at Camp David and in West Virginia if some of you might remember the big issue for Barack when he was prime minister was he wasn't going to make a settlement with the palate with air faultless he wanted to make a settlement if we remember with Syria first and and for Barak the idea of separating Syria from the pack before you do anything is very very important so there's a way of interpreting the Turkish gambit with the Turks playing the the interlocutory role between Israel and Syria as very interesting in the sense that in the sense that if you can somehow move largely Sunni Syria the yellow whites who are mildly a sec that's probably closer related to the Xie than then the Sunni but the country is overwhelmingly Sunni if you could somehow remove Syria from the Iran Nexus you would then really have a constellation of Sunni versus Shia that would would still play to this administration's fanaticism about about doing something about the Shia world before they leave office so you can see the approach of the Israelis to Syria and something that could possibly tell you what what could be coming down the pike and I could also tell you that you also have to watch the election because if McCain's in trouble that also might have some implications for what might happen all of these things are on the table and and I would just say this I do know these guys I've been much more inside than I can probably even say until it's over but they're going to be lethal until 11:59 a.m. on January 20th 2009 there it's not going to end what the election no matter who wins so it's really it's there's never been never in the history of her country a government like this one never nothing goes in connection with the description of a unaccountable government to Jeremy and to Chris with the rise of a privatized army with an ideological and rigid religious agenda that is seemingly outside the realm of legal accountability is a Praetorian Guard coup scenario a real possibility what would a cool how would a cool looking different than than what we have right now I mean look look these these guys butter both sides of the bread and and the reality is that that Bill Clinton was a major supporter of the privatization agenda specifically the agenda of armed private security companies he he really was a he was a major backer of him but for the first time in 14 years the Democrats are getting more money from the war industry than the Republicans are on the campaign trail and it's it's a it's sound business investment is the way that these guys view it yes Blackwater Blackwater is a different kind of company in the sense that it is it is an ideologically it's not just driven by profits it has an ideological commitment to not just the the Republican Party but to the exact interpretation of of the Republican Party that Bush has and his vision for the future but but Blackwater is not the biggest of these firms it's not even the most profitable it just has the closest proximity to the throne I sort of look at it as a high-end boutique on a strip full of Walmart's and and so I mean you know I understand why people say that why that question would be raised I think they already are a threat to US democracy but when we start to talk about a coup would that we had the political movement in this country that would necessitate a coup or leadership in Washington that would make these guys think they had to enact a coup well what we're undergoing is a coup d'etat on slow motion and they are hollowing out the military if you look at the salaries that these Blackwater operatives are paid you know they have drained the intelligence community the Special Forces community and what they're doing is leaving essentially the military infrastructure as a shell 800,000 jobs now in the US military are handled by private contractors and it is the destruction of a military which ostensibly at least has an oath to the Constitution replaced by private mercenaries who don't come without a political agenda they come with a right wing Christian radical agenda and I think what terrifies me is that you know we're probably 1 to 2 terrorists attack from a police state Leila do the troops serving in Iraq welcome the actions of anti-war protesters or does it hurt their morale as the right would have it well I wouldn't really refer to the troops serving in Iraq as a monolith obviously there is a minority that still supports the warn supports the mission I think psychologically that is an easier position to take because then you don't have to live with your actions if the case may be but I think polls have shown and even anecdotal evidence from this book and from the interviews we've done that the majority of the military is against the war including active duty and as far as if they support the actions of anti-war protesters absolutely I would say at least from the the anti-war soldiers I've interviewed and in fact I think they wish that the anti-war movement were more vocal and more effective and I think that's why they're taking matters into their own hands as Camilo mentioned when he spoke in IV a BB has really done tremendous work as far as contributing to the anti-war movement also spearheading efforts to take it in different directions for example during the Winter Soldier hearings in March which I've covered for the Nation magazine they incorporated technology they had they were able to spread their message and share their stories that they told through the Internet and they had live streaming there and there I think they're really trying to use unique ways to get as many people involved and educated as possible even staging I know here in New York City last summer they they took a blocked off part of the street and created their own checkpoint and had people walk through the checkpoint and you know did Street Theater and those types of actions I think they're really effective in their own ways lalla another question the questioner indicates that in many mass Horrors when men are either dead or injured women take up a key role in the process of survival while so many have died in Iraq including is there an untold tale about the lives of Iraqi women absolutely I mean we talked about that earlier the play of widows both within Iraq and outside of it trying to support their own families and let's not forget that this this war isn't the first time the Iraqis as a people have witnessed war and trauma and losing the head of the household I mean this is a people that have gone through sanctions years and years of devastating economic sanctions that decimated the entire population including infants who Jeremy mentioned were practically on death row in hospitals because they didn't have the medicine to save them these are people who've had to go through a devastating eight-year war with Iran in which millions died so this isn't the first time that Iraqis are finding themselves that women are heading households and as we mentioned earlier the education levels are also being affected by that so I think what's curious to me is that a lot of times here in the US we jump to the defense of so-called oppressed Muslim women who are forced to cover and and that's a good cause if they indeed are forced to cover but we don't talk about Muslim women in terms of what they suffer when for example we occupy their lands such as we did with Iraq so for those who are like me activists on women's rights and vocal about that I think that's another way of looking at the whole situation Chris you've covered the middle-east extensively to what extent are the traditional roles upended and is the United States waging a proxy war on behalf of the interests of the state of Israel and if that's too sharply drawn to what extent are the interests of the State of Israel reflected in the American occupation of Iraq i Israel is beset with a messianic right-wing government just as we are that most Israelis do not support of the seven years I was in the Middle East two of those years I lived in Jerusalem and there is a far healthier debate not only about Israel's policies towards its Arab neighbors but the horrendous occupation of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and the terrible suffering that's now visited on the Palestinians in Gaza with this collective punishment unfortunately we in the United States confront a very powerful Israeli Lobby which I don't believe represents the interests of Israel and I think most Israelis would agree with me it represents the interests of Kadima and laocoön you know I covered the campaign that Yitzhak Rabin mounted for prime minister and AIPAC and other groups were supporting look his wicked rival with money and not only that but flying over pollsters and other campaign officials to work on the campaign so that when Rabine was inaugurated AIPAC wasn't invited he by that by that time AIPAC had become a partisan force not only within Israeli politics but certainly within American politics and what they've essentially done is shut out national debate I think this is suicidal for Israel just as it is suicidal for us and this nexus or this fusion of neo-cons with Christian radicals with messianic figures like Omer tor sharone has been devastating and of course many of the people like Fife and and pearl and Wolfowitz and others were all part of this community and I think for those of us who care about not only the United States but Israel are horrified that they are able to drive through and effectively silence any kind of dissent any kind of outspokenness on behalf of the Palestinians they you know they you see it in the campaign debate and Barack Obama when he gets up and speaks about the Palestinian issue has to read from the script that AIPAC gives him and in the end it's tragic it's tragic for the Palestinians it's tragic for us and ultimately it's tragic for Israel I covered the Oslo agreement I did pre Oslo and Oslo and post Oslo and unfortunately we have never recovered from these horrible assassination of Roe bean who understood that there he had to find another route you know that that repression and and sort of grinding the Palestinians into the ground with the heel of your boot was just counterproductive and wasn't going to work and what happened after Oslo I I would hear I would hear Hebrew on the streets of Amman I ran into a group of Israeli tourists speaking Hebrew in Rabat in Morocco they opened a trade office in Dubai and after Rabine was killed LaHood came in and then its successor Kadima and destroyed all of that and that was deeply tragic because the architects of Oslo understood that the way to break the back of the Israeli and the Palestinian conflict was to give Palestinians hope to integrate them into the Israeli economy and give them a state in the future of Israel - in very basic and simple terms allow Achmed to buy a refrigerator and send his child to school and you know I watched the whole growth of Hamas I watched Israeli created the Israeli policy create Hamas just like they created Hezbollah when I was first in Gaza in 1988 Hamas was a nonentity and you know after the Oslo peace accords everybody thought they could breathe again they thought Hamas was finished and 80 or 90% of the women who were covered took off their head scarves they opened beauty parlors where they were getting their nails done it was this wind a quite moving window into people who thought it's finished we can just have a normal existence and then everything got rolled backwards so unfortunately you know I think the quote-unquote our so-called Israeli Lobby in this country is doing a deep to service to our own country into the state the Jewish state they purport to defend we've reached the end of the our evening I want to thank our panel especially sy Hersh who has to catch a 10:30 flight back to Washington he's working on deadlines please please give our panelists a big hand you
