As Blair visits Baghdad acompanied by mortar shells and an unprecedented attack (Real Player) on his legacy from former US President Jimmy Carter, the latest damning and bleak report on Iraq is released by Chatham House.

From McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. Embassy employees in Iraq are growing increasingly angry over what they say are inadequate security precautions in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where recent mortar and rocket attacks have claimed the lives of six people, including two U.S. citizens.

In spite of the attacks, embassy employees complain, most staff members still sleep in trailers that one described as “tin cans” that offer virtually no protection from rocket and mortar fire. The government has refused to harden the roofs because of the cost, one employee said.

A second official called it “criminally negligent” not to reduce the size of the embassy staff, which a year ago was estimated at 1,000, in the face of the increasing attacks and blamed the administration’s failure to respond on concerns that doing so might undermine support for President Bush’s Iraq policy.

“What responsible person and responsible government would ask you to put yourself at risk like that? We don’t belong here,” the employee said, adding, “They’re not going to send us home because it’s going to be another admission of failure.”

Embassy employees have been ordered not to talk about security concerns or precautions with reporters, but three State Department employees in Baghdad discussed the issue with McClatchy Newspapers. All three asked not to be identified for fear that they’d lose their jobs.

(more…)

From Richard Norton Taylor in the Guardian:

An Old Bailey judge has imposed unprecedented gagging orders preventing the British media from reporting information which is published today in newspapers and websites around the world.

The orders were imposed by Mr Justice Aikens during discussions in the court which Lewis Carroll would have delighted in hearing. At times, we were truly living in Wonderland. The discussions took place after David Keogh, a Whitehall communications officer, and Leo O’Connor, researcher to a former Labour MP, were found guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act and jailed.

Their crime was to disclose the contents of an official minute of a meeting between Tony Blair and George Bush in the White House on April 16 2004. Keogh disclosed the document to O’Connor who passed it on to Tony Clarke, his boss who was MP for Northampton South at the time.

We cannot report allegations about what the document contains even though they have been reported time and time again – “recycled” was the word the judges preferred – by the media, including British newspapers.

That’s not strictly true. The judge said we can repeat those allegations but only if they appear on a different page of a newspaper than any reference to the trial or the document which was at the centre of it. We can also report, since it was said in open court, that the Guardian’s counsel, Anthony Hudson, argued that it would be inappropriate to restrain publication of the allegation already in the public domain claiming that President Bush suggested that the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera should be bombed.

Whenever the document and its contents were discussed, the media and the public were barred from the court. The trial then continued behind closed doors.

The judge imposed his contempt of court – gagging – orders after the prosecution stressed the importance the attorney general (AG), Lord Goldsmith, was personally attaching to the case. Official Secrets Act prosecutions always require the consent of the AG.

He, and the government as a whole, seemed particularly concerned about the need to protect Bush from embarrassment, (the prosecution conceded that no “actual damage” had been caused by the leak) and to show the White House that Whitehall is determined to try and keep secrets even though Washington cannot.

But the judge did more. Not only did he prevent the media from repeating allegations already well and truly in the public domain; he imposed a gagging order on a remark made by Keogh during his evidence in open court when he was asked why the contents of the document preyed on his mind so much.

This is an unprecedented attempt to use the contempt of court act to impose secrecy on something said in the open.

The Guardian, Time, BBC, and Index on Censorship, will appeal against these orders next week.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_nortontaylor/2007/05/an_old_bailey_judge_has.html

This savage sentencing of good men to prison – for being good men – underlines just how illiberal the Blair/Brown Britain is. The farcical attempts by the court to continue to hush up the fact that Bush suggested bombing Al Jazeera, simply underline this.

The judge, Mr Justice Aikens, is clearly a complete wanker. Let me say that again just in case anybody misses this opportunity to jail me. Mr Justice Aikens is a complete wanker. In sentencing, he said that by leaking the document, Keogh had put British lives at risk. The argument apparently being that, if Iraqis knew just how violent and unprincipled George Bush is, they might fight still harder.

One worrying aspect of this case is that the jury convicted. There has been a historic reluctance of juries to convict in OSA cases, because they tend to sympathise with the defendants and not with the draconian legislation. This conviction might encourage the government to make more OSA prosecutions. It did not dare prosecute me, even though I very openly released many classified documents related to our policy of using intelligence from torture. There remains, of course, the stinking fact that “Top Secret” intelligence is regularly leaked by the ministers and special advisers in the Home Office to the media whenever they wish to start a new terror scare.

Finally, what a terrible shame that the would-be leakers decided to try to use the newspapers rather than the Net. Our pusillanimous newspapers are still controllable by the courts. Despite Norton Taylor’s huffing and puffing, the Guardian will obey Justice Aikens (did I mention he is a wanker) ? The Net, however, is unstoppable. The documents we leaked are on hundreds of sites all over the World.

Fallujah, a play about the American siege and assault of the Iraqi city in 2004, is currently running at the Old Truman Brewery, on Brick Lane, London. Fallujah represents an unforgettable part of Blair’s legacy, an action in which British forces played a key role. According to the producers:

“The siege of Fallujah constitutes one of the most extensive human rights violations of recent times. Breaching over 70 articles of the Geneva conventions, US forces bombed schools and hospitals, sniped at civilians (including children) holding white flags, cut off water and medical supplies, and instigated a chemical weapons assault, deploying napalm and white phosphorus, both of which are banned by the UN.”

“This play presents testimony from those at the heart of the siege: Iraqi civilians, clerics, US military and politicians, journalists, medics, aid workers, and the British Army. None of this testimony has been heard before. Every word of this play is verbatim.”

Reviewed by Philip Fisher in The British Theatre Guide

For those that were lucky enough to see it, Fallujah will almost inevitably bring to mind the sensation of last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Gregory Burke’s Black Watch.

To varying degrees, the style, subject matter and sentiments are similar but this play is a Verbatim drama, entirely created from the words of those at the sharp end of the conflict that still rages in Iraq, three years on from the start of these proceedings.

Academic and theatre practitioner Dr Jonathan Holmes has got together a team of influential friends to put on this indictment of the American conduct in that benighted country.

The ICA have become involved in a project that takes place in a large, decommissioned brewery in Brick Lane, now almost like a Bangladeshi enclave in the City of London, just around the corner from Petticoat Lane Market.

There, designers Lucy and Jorge Orta have created an installation that fills the large space and eerily features empty anti-gas suits, old shoes and boots, as well as screens large and small on which much of the drama is presented or repeated. This is as well, since if there is ever a capacity audience of around 650, few will see the actors in the flesh for any great length of time. Even a promenading crowd of 100 or so only got good views for perhaps half of the time.

However, the text – and the testimony that it provides – is almost all on this occasion. That is not to detract from some great acting and real fireworks as the creative team attempts to recreate the experience of being in the midst of a war zone. These explosive scenes run to a rhythmic beat that might seem distasteful in a depiction of what some might call genocide.

The 90 minute play has been set to music by Nitin Sawnhey. This can sometimes add depth to the drama but at other times seems gratuitous when the subject of the evening is mass slaughter.

The dramatis personae represent a wide cross-section of those involved, led by Chipo Chung’s vacuous Condoleezza Rice, a woman who has made an art form out of saying nothing, at length. She sets the scene, without irony, by saying that “The President of the United States understands Islam to be a faith of peace, a faith that protects innocents, and the policy of the United States is to do the same”.

The play then becomes a collage of interviews and re-enactments that builds a picture of life (and death) in a city the size of Edinburgh, around 500,000 inhabitants, that was practically razed to the ground, judging by the filmed sequences shown at the end of the performance.

The characters come from all areas of the conflict, with a couple of useful peripheral insertions to offer perspective. There are soldiers of all colours and priests, journalists and ordinary citizens. They come from many nations, America, Britain and Iraq to the fore.

The lynchpins are two White women portrayed by major names, who are obviously committed to this anti-war cause.

Harriet Walter plays Sasha, an American investigative journalist (actually a combination of several interviewees) who has a knack of embarrassing those whom she interviews. This results from a combination of bravery, determination and the knack of asking the right question.

Even braver is Jo (Wilding), a clown at home in the UK, but risking her life to act as an auxiliary nurse on the front line. The scene in which she and a local woman are picked up by militia men and seem destined to die, shows actress Imogen Stubbs at her very best, as fear literally makes her shake.

There is also a Frenchwoman, played by movie star Irene Jacob, seen on film telling the story of her kidnap and eventual release after a terrifying time in captivity.

The remainder of the ensemble are almost equally good, playing numerous parts with unquestioning commitment.

It could be argued that this story of the destruction of a city is partial with a bias against the United States. Whether that is so or not, the slaughter of innocents must always be regarded as a crime against humanity and it is to be hoped that Jonathan Holmes’ play, that is also available in book form with texts of interviews, might just accelerate the end of a not-war that continues to claim lives on a daily basis.

Via Blairwatch

Al Jazeera continues to seek clarification on the Daily Mirror report of a leaked memo that alleged “President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station Al Jazeera” and reiterates its call to see a copy of the relevant section of the memo.

Civil servant, David Keogh and MP researcher Leo O’Connor were jailed today for leaking the secret four-page memo. Press and public were banned from the trial which has been heavily criticized by MPs and civil rights groups.

The memo is purported to have recorded discussions regarding the events in Falluja between Tony Blair and George Bush in the Oval office in 2004. Former defence minister, Peter Kilfoyle, stated that ‘There remain unanswered questions about the discussions about the attack on Falluja and subsequent deaths of many hundreds of civilians’.

Another approach to get at the truth is described in todays Independent

What did Tony Blair tell George Bush when they discussed Iraq?

Robert Verkaik, Law Editor, considers how the Freedom of Information Act might provide the answer

A civil servant and an MP’s researcher were yesterday sentenced by an Old Bailey judge for being involved in the disclosure of the contents of a top-secret Iraq memo which recorded conversations between Tony Blair and George Bush during a 2004 meeting in Washington. The same memo has been the subject of an 18-month inquiry under the Freedom of Information Act.

A request made to the Government for the memo’s formal disclosure under the right-to-know legislation is now with the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, who has the power to order release of the four-page document. Such a move would be extremely embarrassing for the Government and undermine the decision to prosecute the two men under the Official Secrets Act of 1989.

The trial judge has already imposed a court order preventing any further reference to the contents of the memo on the grounds that such publication would be a threat to national security. In such circumstances it seems very unlikely that Mr Thomas would be able to find an argument in favour of disclosure.

But a careful reading of the Downing Street response letter to the Liverpool academic who first made the request in December 2005 shows that national security is not one of the exemptions that its FOI team relied on to deny access to the document. Instead the Government said that the information would damage international relations between Britain and America. It reads: “The effective conduct of international relations depends on maintaining trust and confidence between governments.”

This is not the same as national security, which government lawyers in the Old Bailey trial had argued would be damaged if the memo was published. They even said that disclosure could threaten the lives of British troops serving in Iraq.

The precise detail of the information being sought is now covered by the terms of the Old Bailey gagging order. But it is clear from the correspondence between the Cabinet Office and the FOI requestor that both sides knew what was at stake.

Part of the argument raised by the academic in favour of disclosure is that the possible content of the memo has already been alluded to in the media and therefore the information is already in the public domain. The content of the memo has been confirmed by a respected source, a Member of Parliament, Peter Kilfolye.

The requestor also reminds the Cabinet Office of guidance from the Department for Constitutional Affairs (now the Ministry of Justice) on the application of the exemption for possible harm to international relations:

Individual requests for information must be considered on their merits but you should take account of what is already in the public domain when assessing prejudice to international relations. The fact that similar or related information is already in the public domain may reduce or negate any potential prejudice.

The Liverpool academic made the same request for disclosure of the memo to the US State Department under the American Freedom of Information Act. It was seven months before he got an answer. And when he did, it was even more disappointing than the one he received from the British government. It read simply: “No records responsive to your request were located.”

A quite astonishing result given that a civil servant was jailed for six months yesterday because a jury found that he had leaked this memo to a researcher working for an anti-war MP. If the memo didn’t exist, then he must be innocent.

Juan Cole’s Informed Comment is probably my favourite blog. I had the privilege to meet Juan over dinner last year. I have a healthy regard for my own powers of reasoning, but I came away from meeting Juan with the thought: “Wow! I wish I was as smart as him”.

So it is perhaps strange that (I think) this is the first time I have linked to his blog, and it’s to a piece not by him but that somebody has sent him. It seems to me such a good prognosis of the military situation in Iraq I thought it was worth calling your attention to it.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Guest Comment: Iraq Prognosis

A canny Vietnam veteran wrote me the below but requested that it be posted without attribution. I thought it well worth sharing.

As I see it, these are some of the things we can expect in the next seven months in Iraq:

1. The last of the “surge” forces (American), will arrive by mid June;

2. About 1400 British soldiers, well trained and adept at urban conflict, will leave the South of Iraq. As one can see by reviewing icasualties.org’s latest listings, 13 (at least), British and/or Polish troops stationed in the South have been killed, almost all by hostile fire. Ths is a increase in British hostile fire losses, and comes when the prospect of Iraqi or American troops entering the fray in the south would pose a dilution of the surge forces. No Americans have really ever been stationed in the south of Iraq, among predominantly Shia populations. The methodology the UK forces have used has been learned in Northern Ireland, and is much more sophisticated than any approach Americans have used. As a result, units which may have been in Iraq previously, but are now peopled by a fair number of new grunts, will cut their teeth in the southern Iraq. Because of much more heavy handed approaches, lack of sophisticated skills in urban war, and an increase in various Shia militia more radical than Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, the Americans will cause one incident of cause cel’bre in the South;

Continue reading here: http://www.juancole.com:80/2007/05/guest-comment-iraq-prognosis-canny.html

Thanks to Information Clearing House for this article, which does much to explain the escalating spiral of violence in Iraq. Anyone who still believes that the presence of US and British forces in Iraq is making life better for Iraqi civilians should read this intently, and think through the obvious consequences.

U.S. Examines Iraq Battlefield Ethics

By PAULINE JELINEK

Associated Press Writer

05/04/07 – — WASHINGTON (AP) — A new Pentagon survey of troops in Iraq found that only 40 percent of Marines and 55 percent of Army soldiers would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.

In the first internal military study of battlefield ethics in Iraq, officials said Friday they also found that only a third of Marines and roughly half of soldiers said they believed that noncombatants should be treated with dignity.

The study also found that long and repeated deployments were increasing troop mental health problems. And it showed that more than 40 percent of Marines and soldiers said torture should be allowed to save the lives of troops.

The study was the fourth since 2003. Previous studies were more generally aimed at assessing the mental health and well-being of forces deployed in the war.

In the latest study, a mental health team visited Iraq last fall and surveyed troops, health care providers and chaplains.

“The Marine Corps takes this issue of battlefield ethics very seriously,” said Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, a Corps spokesman. “We are examining the study and its recommendations and we’ll find ways to improve our approach.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17648.htm