Ever since Abu Ghraib broke into the news over two years ago, I've been thinking about the beating of a teenage boy I witnessed in Tafraoute, Morocco in 1984. It's been two decades since I've given this dreadful episode any sustained thought, and I've wondered whether my memory, over time, had exaggerated its horrors. Some months ago, I pulled out my Moroccan journals for the first time in over twenty years and read what I'd written. What I learned was that my memory, far from exaggerating, had so simplified and smoothed the details that my recall of those events had lost all immediacy.

In honor of Armistice Day, I would like to remember the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, veteran of the trenches of World War I and arguably Italy's first Modernist poet. Ungaretti grew up in the pre-war Italian enclave of Alexandria, Egypt. In 1912, he left Egypt for Paris to complete his studies at the Sorbonne. Shortly after the outbreak of war, Ungaretti went to Italy and joined the infantry.

With historical distance, Ungaretti's reasons for joining the army may seem absurd to us today, but they were as earnestly felt as the equally absurd reasons for joining the army now. Ungaretti was a self-professed anarchist who saw the war as Germany's fault and hated that country's arrogance. He identified with the art and liberty of France, despite its hostility to anarchists, and when he went to Italy, he found himself swept up by a rising nationalistic fervor. Ungaretti felt a solidarity with the common people and saw the war as a vehicle for bringing liberty and victory to the people. Above all, he celebrated his newfound fraternity with his fellow common soldiers.

On Thursday, Larisa Alexandrovna of RAW STORY reported that the "Pentagon's top brass has moved into second-stage contingency planning for a potential military strike on Iran," according to an unnamed intelligence official familiar with the plans. (Hat tip to Steven D.) The article goes on to say that the "senior intelligence official . . ., along with several military intelligence sources, confirmed that the nuclear option remains on the table."

RAW STORY also reported that members of the Senate Armed Services Committee will be receiving briefings "this week and into the next" and that they are "attempting to get a grasp on what is and has been going on" with the Pentagon's second-stage planning for a military strike on Iran.

Today, eleven Senate Democrats sent President Bush a letter calling for him to "reaffirm America's long-standing practice of refraining from the first use of nuclear weapons." The Democrats did not explain what new information, if any, they had received that would prompt them to write this letter.

In late June, 2006, Dr. Eva-Maria Hobiger wrote Helping to Hope--Helping to Live, the most comprehensive report I've read on the living conditions and public health crisis in Basra. Dr. Hobiger is the Medical Project Director for an NGO, the Society for Arab-Austrian Relations. Through the auspices of this organization, Dr. Hobiger has made a number of trips to Basra, delivering desperately needed medicines and supplies--something the entire United States government, with the vast resources it has at its disposal, has utterly failed to do. While Bechtel has been wasting tens of millions of dollars on an empty shell of a building that was Laura Bush's pet project--a brand-new high-tech Children's Hospital in Basra--Dr. Hobiger has been trying to save children dying of a host of diseases.

On Friday, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) sent the following letter to President Bush:

Today Senator Cantwell introduced SA 4873, an amendment that would "prohibit the use of funds for the Threat and Local Observation Notice" (TALON) program. Specifically, the amendment would prohibit "the collection, storage, or analysis of information on United States citizens who pose no threat to the military or its facilities, including United States citizens taking part in non-violent activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States related to protests against United States Government policy on Iraq. [my emphasis]

As some of you may know, the TALON program is supposed to be used for documenting and analyzing "information about potential threats to DoD installations and personnel in the U.S." However, "according to media reports, Talon information has also been shared with and used by intelligence and law enforcement agencies." Here in Washington State, the ACLU of Washington obtained documents that indicate that "the FBI and other federal agencies monitored nonviolent peace groups in Washington during the 2003 Seafair Festival."

On June 15th, Sen. Cantwell introduced a depleted uranium (DU) amendment to the Defense Authorization bill currently under consideration in the Senate. The language of Sen. Cantwell's amendment is identical to that of the McDermott-Shays amendment to the House's version of the Defense Authorization bill.

The DU amendment calls for the "Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary for Veterans Affairs and the Secretary of Health and Human Services," to conduct a "comprehensive study of the health effects of exposure to depleted uranium munitions on uranium-exposed soldiers and on children of uranium-exposed soldiers."

The language of the study is broad enough to cover exposure to aerosolized DU, which the Department of Defense's "Capstone Study" states is the largest data gap on possible long-term health effects of DU exposure. Here is the full text of the amendment:

We've known for some time that there are shortages of potable water in Iraq. Our own Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction recently reported that after allocating $2.13 billion in water projects, potable water has gone from being available to 50% of the populace to 32%. Likewise, the Iraqis with access to sewerage has gone from 24% to 20%.

Now Azzaman reports that, not suprisingly, the Iraqis are suffering food shortages:

In a recent letter, an Italian friend recounted an interview he saw of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on television. Berlusconi became impatient with the interviewer because she wasn't asking the questions he wanted asked. Here's my translation of the interviewer's response:

"You respond to the questions that I ask. I do not bow my head to power. I am a free journalist. I ask the questions I consider relevant. Your presence does not change that. This is my house. You are accustomed to having people obey you, but you don't know how to act around journalists . . ."

Berlusconi said she was ignorant (maleducata), jumped up, and walked off the program. All on live television.

The following is crossposted on Washblog:

http://www.washblog.com/story/2006/3/8/155134/3704

Back in January, when I heard that Aaron Dixon planned to run as a Green for the senate, I argued that his candidacy posed a significant risk for Sen. Maria Cantwell. I still think he poses a risk for the senator, but that risk has perhaps diminished in the light of McGavick's lackluster campaign. But it's early yet. McGavick may find a voice as a candidate. The war could worsen, and the voters could become critically intolerant of Sen. Cantwell's intransigence on the issue. And, finally, some events will unravel that no one anticipated--events that could shape the race in unforeseen ways.

When Sen. Joseph Lieberman remarked in a recent Armed Services hearing that he was "troubled by suggestions" that the White House would not seek additional Iraq Relief and Reconstruction (IRR) funds, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld replied that it was up to Iraqis to rebuild their own country to avoid "creating a dependency." We should recognize in Rumsfeld's choice of words the suggestion that funding the reconstruction of Iraq's degraded infrastructure is a form of welfare.

The national debate on Iraq is now largely focused on how and when to withdraw our troops from Iraq. The usual answer is that as Iraqi forces "stand up" our forces can "stand down." Because the outlook of the American people, Congress, the White House, and the media is increasingly martial, the public policy debate--to the extent there is one--is almost entirely focused on the military considerations.

In the meantime, according to the October 2005 Congressional testimony of Stuart W. Bowen, Jr., the US Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction (SIGIR), "In the coming year, the amount of money needed by the Iraqi government to carry out the daily operations of its existing health, water, oil and electrical infrastructure, as well as to complete and sustain planned reconstruction projects, will outstrip the available revenue."

On December 16th, I received the following information from a confidential source in USAID:

"USAID's role in the health sector in Iraq is now limited to completing construction of the Basra hospital/pediatric facility.  The funds appropriated by Congress in the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction (IRRF 2) supplemental (the $18B) are primarily under the control of and have been contracted out by DOD.   Under the first IRRF supplemental, USAID did program some $3.5B in funding, including for the health sector; however those activities have been completed or are now winding up.  The activities described below were carried out with that initial funding . . .