Road to Ruin

http://americannewsproject.com/

TOON

Bloated Empire and the Financial Crash

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Ivan Eland
May 12, 2009 - Consortium News

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A few - and only a few - prescient commentators have questioned whether the U.S. can sustain its informal global empire in the wake of the most severe economic crisis since World War II. And the simultaneous quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan are leading more and more opinion leaders and taxpayers to this question.

But the U.S. Empire helped cause the meltdown in the first place.

War has a history of causing financial and economic calamities. It does so directly by almost always causing inflation - that is, too much money chasing too few goods.

During wartime, governments usually commandeer resources from the private sector into the government realm to fund the fighting. This action leaves shortages of resources to make consumer goods and their components, therefore pushing prices up.

Making things worse, governments often times print money to fund the war, thus adding to the amount of money chasing the smaller number of consumer goods. Such "make-believe" wealth has funded many U.S. wars.

For example, the War of 1812 had two negative effects on the U.S. financial system. First, in 1814, the federal government allowed state-chartered banks to suspend payment in gold and silver to their depositors.

In other words, according Tom J. DiLorenzo in Hamilton's Curse, the banks did not have to hold sufficient gold and silver reserves to cover their loans. This policy allowed the banks to loan the federal government more money to fight the war. The result was an annual inflation rate of 55 percent in some U.S. cities.

The government took this route of expanding credit during wartime because no U.S. central bank existed at the time. Congress, correctly questioning The Bank of the United States' constitutionality, had not renewed its charter upon expiration in 1811.

But the financial turmoil caused by the war led to a second pernicious effect on the financial system - the resurrection of the bank in 1817 in the form of the Second Bank of the United States. Like the first bank and all other government central banks in the future, the second bank flooded the market with new credit.

In 1818, this led to excessive real estate speculation and a consequent bubble. The bubble burst during the Panic of 1819, which was the first recession in the nation's history. Sound familiar?

Although President Andrew Jackson got rid of the second bank in the 1830s and the U.S. economy generally flourished with a freer banking system until 1913, at that time yet another central bank - this time the Federal Reserve System - rose from the ashes.

We have seen that war ultimately causes the creation of both economic problems and nefarious government financial institutions that cause those difficulties. And of course, the modern-day U.S. Empire also creates such economic maladies and wars that allow those institutions to wreak havoc on the economy.

The Fed caused the current collapse in the real estate credit market, which has led to a more general global financial and economic meltdown, by earlier flooding the market with excess credit. That money went into real estate, thus creating an artificial bubble that eventually came crashing down in 2008. But what caused the Fed to vastly expand credit?

To prevent a potential economic calamity after 9/11 and soothe jitters surrounding the risky and unneeded U.S. invasion of Iraq, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan began a series of interest rate cuts that vastly increased the money supply.

According to Thomas E. Woods, Jr. in Meltdown, the interest rate cuts culminated in the extraordinary policy of lowering the federal funds rate (the rate at which banks lend to one another overnight, which usually determines other interest rates) to only one percent for an entire year (from June 2003 to June 2004).

Woods notes that more money was created between 2000 and 2007 than in the rest of U.S. history.

Much of this excess money ended up creating the real estate bubble that eventually caused the meltdown. Ben Bernanke, then a Fed governor, was an ardent advocate of this easy money policy, which as Fed Chairman he has continued as his solution to an economic crisis he helped create using the same measures.

Of course, according to Osama bin Laden, the primary reasons for the 9/11 attacks were U.S. occupation of Muslim lands and U.S. propping up of corrupt dictators there.

And the invasion of Iraq was totally unnecessary because there was never any connection between al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein, and even if Saddam had had biological, chemical, or even nuclear weapons, the massive U.S. nuclear arsenal would have likely deterred him from using them on the United States.

So the causal arrow goes from these imperial behaviors - and blowback there from - to increases in the money supply to prevent related economic slowdown, which in turn caused even worse eventual financial and economic calamities.

These may be indirect effects of empire, but they cannot be ignored. Get rid of the overseas empire because we can no longer afford it, especially when it is partly responsible for the economic distress that is making us poorer.

EPA Bans Deadly Pesticide Responsible for Millions of Bird Deaths

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Steve Holmer
May 11, 2009 - American Bird Conservancy

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced its final decision to revoke all food tolerances for the highly toxic pesticide carbofuran, which is sold under the name "Furadan" by FMC Corporation. The agency's announcement confirms a proposed action first announced in July 2008. FMC Corp. will have the opportunity to challenge the decision within 90 days with a petition to stay the rule. When the rule becomes final, EPA will proceed with the cancellation of registration for all uses of the pesticide.

"Carbofuran causes neurological damage in humans, and one of the most deadly pesticides to birds left on the market. It is responsible for the deaths of millions of wild birds since its introduction in 1967, including Bald and Golden Eagles, Red-tailed Hawks, and migratory songbirds," said Dr. George Fenwick, President of American Bird Conservancy. "This EPA decision marks a huge victory for wildlife and the environment."

This rule becomes effective December 31, 2009 to allow for commodities in storage to be used. Most uses of carbofuran on food crops were voluntarily cancelled in March 2009, effective immediately, so that most uses of the pesticide have been cancelled for the 2009 growing season.

In its 2005 ecological risk assessment on carbofuran, EPA stated that all legal uses of the pesticide were likely to kill wild birds. If a flock of mallards were to feed in a carbofuran treated alfalfa field, EPA predicted that 92% of the birds in the flock would quickly die. EPA analysis has also confirmed that carbofuran is a threat to human health through contaminated food, drinking water, and occupational exposure.

Following objections to the proposed ban by FMC Corporation, a government Scientific Advisory Panel reviewed the decision and agreed with EPA in 2008 that the pesticide poses an unreasonable risk to the environment, particularly birds, and that there was no evidence to recommend reversing EPA's decision to cancel carbofuran.

"Despite overwhelming scientific evidence of carbofuran's extreme toxicity and the availability of safer alternatives, FMC Corporation continued to do everything it could to keep this chemical on the market," said Dr. Michael Fry, ABC's Director of Conservation Advocacy. "We congratulate EPA for standing up for science and the public interest in the face of an industry pressure campaign."

Carbofuran first came under fire in the 1980s after an EPA Special Review estimated that over a million birds were killed each year by the granular formulation. Many of these die-off incidents followed applications of carbofuran that were made with extraordinary care. The granular formation was cancelled in 1994, but the liquid form has remained on the market.

"The revocation of all food tolerances has international implications, as imports of rice, coffee, bananas and sugarcane were previously allowed to contain residues of carbofuran," said Dr. Fry. "After this revocation, countries wishing to export these foods to the US must stop using carbofuran on these four major crops."

Rice and coffee are particularly important, as many US birds over wintering in Latin America use coffee and rice fields as winter habitats. American Bird Conservancy and the Natural Resources Defense Council petitioned EPA to cancel all import tolerances for pesticide residues on food, and this decision complies with the ABC/NRDC petition.

Incidents of bird poisonings by carbofuran are documented in the Avian Incident Monitoring System (www.abcbirds.org/aims) operated by American Bird Conservancy in cooperation with the EPA and state and federal wildlife agencies. In addition to killing birds when used legally, carbofuran is often illegally used in poison baits intended to kill wildlife in agricultural areas and grazing lands. This abuse has resulted in the deaths of raptors including Bald and Golden Eagles in violation of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

Cheney To Travel Around Country In Sound Truck

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Andy Borowitz
May 11, 2009 - Huffington Post

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In a sign that he has no intention of going away quietly, former Vice President Dick Cheney embarked today on a nationwide road trip in a sound truck equipped with a state-of-the-art bullhorn.

The formerly reclusive Mr. Cheney has been a ubiquitous fixture on Sunday talk shows and right-wing radio programs in recent weeks, but his decision to tour the nation in a 2000-watt sound truck shows a heightened determination to spread his pro-torture message from coast to coast.

According to aides to the former vice president, Mr. Cheney had briefly considered starring in an IMAX film called "The Dick Cheney 3-D Experience" before settling on the less costly sound truck idea.

But Mr. Cheney's "Pro-torture Tour '09" has not managed to skirt controversy thus far, as the former Vice President has already had to contend with grievances about the noise levels produced by his high-wattage truck.

Residents of the town of Keene, New Hampshire were awakened at 5 AM this morning by a familiar voice blaring, "We're less safe than we were under the last administration. Run for your lives!"

As townsfolk rubbed their eyes, Mr. Cheney's voice could be heard extolling waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques.

For his part, a buoyant Mr. Cheney brushed off complaints from the New Hampshire citizens that he had disturbed the peace with his early-morning rant: "All this proves is that sleep deprivation works."

iPhones in Iraq – The US Army's New Weapon

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Applications prove invaluable for soldiers on the battlefield

Kim Sengupta in Basra
May 11, 2009 - The Independent/UK

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In Basra's Hayaniyah district, a notorious stronghold of Shia militias, a US army sergeant leading a patrol faced two suspects in the street. Amid rising tension he produced a gadget from his pocket and after a few minutes of its use the matter was amicably resolved. The Iraqis and the Americans went their separate ways.

The equipment being used - described by the US Army as ideal for 21st-century warfare - was an Apple iPod Touch. In a matter of minutes the soldier had established through words and images that the two men were not considered to be serious threats and detaining them was unnecessary.

Apple's iPods and iPhones, symbols of a modern urban lifestyle, are now in use in a very different setting - the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan. They are, say the US forces, ideal for the age of "network centric warfare", relatively easy to use, safe with secure software, and far cheaper than manufacturing a military version.

The sheer versatility of the kit - with the capability of over 30,000 programmes - allows a huge variety of functions needed for operations ranging from providing language translations to the transmitting of sensitive information and working out trajectories for snipers. Projects are on the way to use them as guidance systems for bomb disposal robots and receivers of aerial footage from unmanned drone aircraft.

The US Marine Corps is funding an application that would allow soldiers to upload photographs of detained suspects, along with written reports, into a biometric database. The software would match faces, in theory making it easier to track suspects after they're released.

Members of the British military who have seen the Apple instruments in action drool about the opportunities on offer. The Ministry of Defence, however, remains wary of security implications and has "no plans" at present to go down the American path.

But Lieutenant Colonel Jim Ross, the director of the US Army's intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors operation, believes the iPod "may be all that the personnel need".

"What gives it added advantage is that a lot of them have their own personal ones so they are familiar with them," he said.

Another plus is the cost. The iPod touch (which soldiers can use over a secure WiFi network) retails for around $230 (£150) and the iPhone for $600. Bulk orders placed by the Pentagon bring further savings. The manufacture of a specific military model would be much more expensive.

Robert Emerson, a security analyst who has advised foreign governments on computerised warfare, said: "The US military has had a reputation for being somewhat heavy handed, with justice. But what they are doing with iPods and iPhones show they can also be nimble on their feet. Other militaries should learn to be equally open minded."

TOON

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Deregulation is a dirty word today. But who and what allowed it to happen? William K. Black, former senior regulator during the savings and loan crisis tells us what he thinks happened and why the bailout is flawed. Black has argued recently that Wall Street's crisis could not have happened if not for illegal fraud and that triple A ratings given to bad loans amount to a criminal cover up. Black is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry. - Grit TV

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William K. Black: How Deregulation Happened

U.S. risks "lost decade" due to half-steps: Krugman

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Alan Wheatley, China Economics Editor
May 11, 2009 - Reuters

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BEIJING – The United States risks a Japan-style lost decade of growth if it does not take aggressive action to stimulate its economy and clean up its banking system, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said on Monday.

"We're doing half-measures that help the economy limp along without fully recovering, and we're having measures that help the banks survive without really thriving," Krugman said.

"We're doing what the Japanese did in the nineties," he told a small group of reporters during a visit to Beijing.

He said it was not clear that China would suffer sub-par growth as a consequence of the fallout of the present crisis.

"I'm mostly worried that the U.S. and the euro zone will have Japanese-type lost decades," he said.

Krugman said he expected little or no employment growth this year or next in the United States, where the jobless rate in April hit a 25-year high of 8.9 percent.

"A second stimulus is becoming clearly urgent. They need a very, very strong stimulus," said Krugman, a Princeton University professor and a New York Times columnist.

He said stress tests carried out on 19 leading U.S. banks had bought time for the administration of Barack Obama, but they had not answered the key question of whether the banks have enough capital to fulfill their key role in the economy.

"It's clear the administration won't take radical action to strengthen the banks any time soon," he said. To have done so would have meant temporarily nationalizing Citigroup and, perhaps, Bank of America, he said.

Krugman gave credit to China for vigorously implementing its own economic stimulus plan but said he had detected no commitment by Beijing to switch to a domestic demand-driven growth model that would reduce its excess savings.

"It's very hard to see how the world has a full recovery if China continues to run current account surpluses of 10 percent of GDP," he said.

If China's big external surpluses persist alongside high U.S. unemployment and low European growth, political friction will ensue. "Something will have to give, and it won't be pretty."

Krugman said China should not be in a rush to make the yuan, or renminbi (RMB), fully convertible or to liberalize its capital account; countries at a similar stage of development that have scrapped capital controls have run into trouble, he noted.

"I'm not sure we're talking about a full-floating RMB," Krugman said. "But an appreciation of the RMB, though it's not what China wants to hear right now, is going to be necessary."

The Spring of the Zombies

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Joseph E. Stiglitz
07 May 2009 - The Guatemala Times

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As spring comes to America, optimists are seeing "green sprouts" of recovery from the financial crisis and recession. The world is far different from what it was last spring, when the Bush administration was once again claiming to see "light at the end of the tunnel." The metaphors and the administrations have changed, but not, it seems, the optimism.
The good news is that we may be at the end of a free fall. The rate of economic decline has slowed. The bottom may be near - perhaps by the end of the year. But that does not mean that the global economy is set for a robust recovery any time soon. Hitting bottom is no reason to abandon the strong measures that have been taken to revive the global economy.

This downturn is complex: an economic crisis combined with a financial crisis. Before its onset, America's debt-ridden consumers were the engine of global growth. That model has broken down, and will not be replaced soon. For, even if America's banks were healthy, household wealth has been devastated, and Americans were borrowing and consuming on the assumption that house prices would rise forever.

The collapse of credit made matters worse; and firms, facing high borrowing costs and declining markets, responded quickly, cutting back inventories. Orders dropped abruptly - well out of proportion to the decline in GDP - and those countries that depended on investment goods and durables (expenditures that could be postponed) were particularly hard hit.

We are likely to see a recovery in some of these areas from the bottoms reached at the end of 2008 and the beginning of this year. But examine the fundamentals: in America, real estate prices continue to fall, millions of homes are underwater, with the value of mortgages exceeding the market price, and unemployment is increasing, with hundreds of thousands reaching the end of their 39 weeks of unemployment insurance. States are being forced to lay off workers as tax revenues plummet.

The banking system has just been tested to see if it is adequately capitalized - a "stress" test that involved no stress - and some couldn't pass muster. But, rather than welcoming the opportunity to recapitalize, perhaps with government help, the banks seem to prefer a Japanese-style response: we will muddle through.

"Zombie" banks - dead but still walking among the living - are, in Ed Kane's immortal words, "gambling on resurrection." Repeating the Savings & Loan debacle of the 1980's. the banks are using bad accounting (they were allowed, for example, to keep impaired assets on their books without writing them down, on the fiction that they might be held to maturity and somehow turn healthy). Worse still, they are being allowed to borrow cheaply from the United States Federal Reserve, on the basis of poor collateral, and simultaneously to take risky positions.

Some of the banks did report earnings in the first quarter of this year, mostly based on accounting legerdemain and trading profits (read: speculation). But thiswon't get the economy going again quickly. And, if the bets don't pay off, the cost to the American taxpayer will be even larger.

The American government, too, is betting on muddling through: the Fed's measures and government guarantees mean that banks have access to low-cost funds, and lending rates are high. If nothing nasty happens - losses on mortgages, commercial real estate, business loans, and credit cards - the banks might just be able to make it through without another crisis. In a few years time, the banks will be recapitalized, and the economy will return to normal. This is the rosy scenario.

But experiences around the world suggest that this is a risky outlook. Even were banks healthy, the deleveraging process and the associated loss of wealth means that, more likely than not, the economy will be weak. And a weak economy means, more likely than not, more bank losses.

The problems are not limited to the US. Other countries (like Spain) have their own real estate crises. Eastern Europe has its problems, which are likely to impact Western Europe's highly leveraged banks. In a globalized world, problems in one part of the system quickly reverberate elsewhere.

In earlier crises, as in East Asia a decade ago, recovery was quick, because the affected countries could export their way to renewed prosperity. But this is a synchronous global downturn. America and Europe can't export their way out of their doldrums.

Fixing the financial system is necessary, but not sufficient, for recovery. America's strategy for fixing its financial system is costly and unfair, for it is rewarding the people who caused the economic mess. But there is an alternative that essentially means playing by the rules of a normal market economy: a debt-for-equity swap.

With such a swap, confidence could be restored to the banking system, and lending could be reignited with little or no cost to the taxpayer. It's neither particularly complicated nor novel. Bondholders obviously don't like it - they would rather get a gift from the government. But there are far better uses of the public's money, including another round of stimulus.

Every downturn comes to an end. The question is how long and deep this downturn will be. In spite of some spring sprouts, we should prepare for another dark winter: it's time for Plan B in bank restructuring and another dose of Keynesian medicine.

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Joseph E. Stiglitz, Professor of Economics at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, chairs a Commission of Experts, appointed by the President of the UN General Assembly, on reforms of the international monetary and financial system. He is co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.

Senate Hearing on Healthcare Reform a Complete Sham

Let's face it, Senator Max Baucus is a bold faced liar and tool of the Insurance Lobby. Healthcare reform my ass, more like insurance industry protectionism. While stating that everything would be on the table, it was clearly visible that no one representing the "Single Payer" system was invited much less welcome.

No wonder things are so absolutely fucked in regard to this issue. Check out the lobbyist proclaiming that American corporations can't compete because their overseas competitors have "socialized medicine" and then leaving out the fact that of the 150 CEO's he represents, 35 are from pharma and healthcare companies. Companies that stand to make a great deal more money by protecting the status-quo. Would someone with H1N1 please cough up a loogie and spit it in this motherfucker's face?

While we're at it, would some HIV Positive person cough and sneeze all over Max Baucus and his family? Then when when he learns first hand, how little their insurance actually covers (and perhaps more importantly, how much it denies) while Insurance and Healthcare CEOs enjoy record windfalls, we might actually see some sort of real discussion on healthcare reform.

Here's a great video posted on YouTube with more details:

I didn't know he was still a Republican

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May 10, 2009 - Politico

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney took an extraordinary public swipe at Colin Powell Sunday, questioning in a TV interview whether the former Bush administration secretary of state was even a Republican anymore.

Cheney, appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, said he was taking the side of Rush Limbaugh over Powell in the ongoing dispute in the GOP between the conservative talk show host and moderate retired general.

"Well if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh," Cheney told moderator Bob Schieffer. "My take on it was Colin had already left the party -- I didn't know he was still a Republican."

A somewhat taken-aback Schieffer asked: "You think he's not a Republican?"

Cheney responded by pointing out that Powell had endorsed President Barack Obama last fall.

"I assume that that's some indication of his loyalty and his interest," Cheney said.

Cheney, a longstanding friend and ally of former Defense Secretary and Powell rival Donald Rumsfeld, butted heads with Powell during the Bush years but usually kept his criticism private.

The comments reflect not just the the former vice president's lingering dislike for Powell, but his strong preference for keeping the GOP moored to conservatism.

"I think we win elections when we have good, solid conservative principles to run upon and based our policies on those principles," Cheney said.

Life as a female Tamil Tiger guerilla relived by one of first female soldiers

Photo: REUTERS

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In 1987, aged 17, Niromi de Soyza shocked her middle-class Sri Lankan family by joining the Tamil Tigers. One of the rebels' first female soldiers, equipped with rifle and cyanide capsule, she was engaged in fierce combat.

May 08, 2009 - Telegraph.co.UK
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December 23 1987 was a warm, clear day, and I was hiding under a lantana bush with eight of my comrades in a village north of Jaffna. With our rifles cocked and our cyanide capsules clenched between our teeth, we awaited the soldiers who had been scouring the area for us for several hours. Our orders were to empty our magazines into them before biting into the glass capsules we called 'kuppies' that hung on a thread around our necks. As a Tamil Tiger guerrilla, there was no honour in being caught alive.

There had been 22 of us that morning – nine boys and 13 girls, aged between 15 and 26 (I was 17). Now, four of my comrades were missing, two were wounded. Ten were dead.

At dawn that day, Indian soldiers had surrounded our hideout, an abandoned house in Urumpiraay, a village in Sri Lanka's far north. As the war had intensified, our units were being squeezed out of Jaffna peninsula. We slept in different places each night: in open fields or houses taken by force.

Our sentry had spotted the enemy soldiers beyond a distant line of trees to the south, and Muralie, our unit's second in command, decided that we should flee north across an arterial road. The morning chill was still in the air and the dew dripped from banana leaves as we ran though fields and approached the road. As we attempted to cross it, we were ambushed from both sides in a barrage of automatic gunfire, grenades and mortars.

'Get on the ground!' Muralie commanded. 'Fire and break through!'

Everyone was screaming. We crashed to the earth as the gunfire grew heavier, now coming from behind as well. A helicopter gunship hovered above, strafing. We were surrounded. There was no cover other than a few palmyra and banana trees that dotted the landscape.

Lying on my stomach, I shuffled forward, following another girl, Ajanthi. My heart was pounding and thick smoke stung my eyes. In a state of panic, a few of my comrades attempted to cross the road. One by one, they fell. One was on her back, screaming, 'My leg, someone help me!'

A grenade flew over from my left. As I scrambled to my hands and knees, I realised Gandhi, our area leader, was in its path. 'Gandhi anna, duck!' I screamed. The grenade hit his head and exploded, ripping his skull apart and covering me with blood and tissue.

Ajanthi got to her knees, ready to dash across the road, then abruptly fell backwards, her arms and legs splayed awkwardly. Blood spurted from the centre of her forehead, soaking her auburn hair. In shock, the air left my lungs and I could not inhale it back. Ajanthi had been my friend since primary school and we had joined the Tigers together. She had been hit by a sniper.

I crawled forward holding my AK-47 with both hands, desperate to reach Ajanthi and drag her to safety. To my right, two comrades were trying to drag Muralie, who had also been hit, through the wet grass. His blood-soaked body kept slipping through their hands. As I reached Ajanthi our unit commander, Sudharshan, yanked me by the collar, dragging me with him.

'But Sudharshan anna,' I said, stumbling to my feet. 'We have to get Ajanthi, Muralie and the others.' 'They will follow us,' he said.

We ran through the fields and scrambled over a concrete parapet as rifle rounds flew from behind us, gouging holes in the wall. On the other side, we kept running and found five comrades. Seeing no means of escape, we took shelter under a large lantana bush.

At sunset, confident that the soldiers had moved on, we set out through fields, supporting the injured, eventually reaching a gathering of huts on a narrow lane. News of our arrival spread quickly, and a curious crowd assembled along the sides of the lane. Most had never seen female Tigers before. An old woman flung her bony arms around me: 'Ayyo, my poor child! Wouldn't your mother's heart break if she saw you like this?' I didn't realise then how I must have looked – a starved teenage girl with torn clothes, caked in blood, barefoot and carrying an automatic rifle. Most villagers wanted us gone. If the enemy soldiers knew we were still around, they were sure to attack the village.

On Christmas Day we arrived at a hideout occupied by another Tigers unit. I sat outside on the mud veranda, thinking about the ambush. Since joining the Tigers, Ajanthi and I – and another girl, Akila – had been inseparable. The last time I had seen Akila she had been firing her M16 rifle from behind a water tank during the ambush. Sengamalam, one of the boys, told me that more than 2,000 soldiers had been involved in the round-up of our 22-strong unit, and had dumped the bodies of those who died in the open air. My mind swum with images of Ajanthi and Muralie, their bodies being scavenged by dogs.

I heard footsteps and looked up to see the silhouette of three figures approaching our hut. I recognised the tall Akila, her hair in plaits, and ran towards her. As we embraced she told me that, after the ambush, she had survived by hiding in the water tank for two days. 'I wish I was dead, like Ajanthi,' I spluttered. 'How will I face her family again?'

'We have to keep their dream of Tamil Eelam alive,' Akila said. For me, the dream felt far from reach.

I was born in 1969 in Kandy, a Sinhala-majority town in Sri Lanka's hill country, where I spent the first seven years of my childhood. Although I had Tamil ancestry – Tamils make up 18 per cent of Sri Lanka's population – my extended family included Sinhalese, Sri Lanka's main ethnic group. In 1978 I was packed off to the northern Tamil city of Jaffna to live with my grandmother, whom I hardly knew. 'So that you can become a doctor like your aunts and uncles,' my father reasoned. 'Education in Jaffna is far superior.' I was a confident, independent girl, and my parents believed that I would cope well in a new environment without them.

Though I was unsure about becoming a doctor, life in Jaffna was idyllic. Not knowing when I would see my family again, I began to distance myself from them and focused on shaping my own life, making new friends and working hard at school. My weekends were busy with music, art and drama lessons.

Soon after, my father, an engineer, went to work in Dubai (it was becoming difficult for Tamils to get good jobs at home). My mother, a teacher, and sister, who was three years my junior, joined me in Jaffna. I had been oblivious to the deep-rooted tensions that were simmering between the Tamils and Sinhalese, and knew nothing of the anti-Tamil riots that had killed more than 250 Tamils in the country the year before. But before long the growing unrest outside my sheltered world was hard to ignore.

Tamil pressure groups were becoming more vocal in their calls for equal rights between Tamils and Sinhalese, and an end to what many Tamils felt were the government's discriminatory policies. Meanwhile, Sinhala extremism in the south was growing. There were boycotts, strikes and skirmishes. There were reports of Tamil politicians being shot dead, Tamil students being kidnapped.

The quest for equality had spawned a number of militant groups, including the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), known as Tamil Tigers outside Sri Lanka. In the late 1970s they had taken up an armed struggle for an autonomous Tamil homeland – Tamil Eelam – in the north and north-east of the country. To begin with, they carried out minor attacks on government targets, but on July 23 1983, when I was 14, they ambushed an army patrol in Jaffna, which brought them into the national spotlight.

Thirteen soldiers died that day, but about 1,000 Tamils were said to have lost their lives in an anti-Tamil pogrom in the south that followed. Large numbers of Tamil men, mostly teenagers, reacted to what they saw as the Sri Lankan government's indiscriminate persecution of innocent Tamils and joined the insurgency, which was rapidly gathering support.

By 1985 the situation had escalated into full-scale war in the north and east, with the government launching a military offensive on Jaffna to wipe out the rebellion. From a normal happy upbringing, I now found myself living in constant fear. Jaffna's library, where I spent much of my free time, was burnt down by government forces.

We lived under indiscriminate aerial bombing and artillery shelling, day and night; our movements were restricted by long curfews. We spent many days in our home-built bunker where I studied, listening to gunshots and explosions, still hopeful that my exams would go ahead as scheduled. The Tigers' television station broadcast images of war: militant training camps, dead bodies, Tamil funerals. The images began to haunt me, and I felt outraged that no one was being held to account, and that the outside world was doing nothing.

The government launched further offensives and air raids became commonplace. Bodies were sometimes strewn by the roadside on my way to school, or hanging from lampposts. I was dismayed by the attitude of family and friends who believed that they had no power to change the situation, but didn't support the militant groups either. 'These movements are run mostly by uneducated, low-caste youth,' they said. 'They are not capable of solving the Tamil problem.' But at least they were trying, I thought.

The more I listened to the militants, the more I sympathised with the idea of an armed struggle, the more it seemed like the only response. There had never been any military connections in my family but I felt that if we were going to be killed or driven from our homes, then shouldn't we at least put up a fight? With friends, I talked about joining the insurgency, though few felt the same, believing that such actions would bring disgrace to our families. Middle-class girls didn't do such things.

In May 1987, when I was 17, the Sinhala government launched Operation Liberation, declaring all-out war against the Tamil militants on the Jaffna peninsula. By now, the Tigers had gained administrative control of the region, restricting government forces to their barracks. My mother decided that we would return to Kandy until the war was over. As we prepared to leave, I made up my mind to run away to join the Tigers. I told my mother that I was going to Ajanthi's to say goodbye.

After I told Ajanthi my plans, she said, 'I'll come with you for moral support', and we set off together for the office of the Student Organisation of Liberation Tigers, a large house near Jaffna University. We were interviewed. They were hesitant about recruiting middle-class girls, but finally relented. Ajanthi said she would miss me too much if I left without her, and was enlisted, too.

'The life of a freedom fighter is harder than you think,' Thileepan, the leader of the Tigers' political wing, warned us, adjusting his spectacles. 'We gamble with our own lives and bury our friends. There'll be none of the comforts you are used to. I'm not convinced that you are suited to this lifestyle, but no one here is held against their will.'

Knowing my mother and sister were out, I went home and wrote them a note explaining that I had joined the Tigers. The following morning, naturally, my mother and sister and Ajanthi's family came to the Tigers' camp to plead with us to return home. 'You are about to ruin your life. This is not for you,' my mother said, grasping my hands, her eyes filled with tears. Ajanthi's father said we had been brainwashed.

Thileepan sent us to work with members of the Tigers' female political wing, the Freedom Birds, contributing articles to their magazine. At the Freedom Birds' headquarters, we met Akila, who at 17 was already an active member. We immediately became friends.

A few weeks later, Ajanthi and I were selected by Thileepan for military training, and sent to an all-girls' camp in an outer suburb of Jaffna. As we were the first group of female fighters to receive military training in Sri Lanka (at this point, there were fewer than 80 female Tigers), the organisation's enigmatic leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, wanted to talk to us personally. Prabhakaran was seated behind a table in his office as I entered. The flame from a hurricane lamp cast shadows across his round face, and his large brown eyes glistened.

Although he did not ask many questions, it felt like he knew everything about me. 'There's hardly anyone in our movement from your suburb,' he said. 'Most girls here come from rural areas. They are used to hard work, pounding rice and chopping firewood. Be in no doubt: training is going to be harder for you.'

Training, in a village south of Jaffna, was indeed gruelling. The days began with a two-hour exercise regime, followed by commando training. In the afternoons we had firing practice and lessons in explosives and camouflage. Prabhakaran would visit often, and one afternoon expressed his desire to recruit us into the newly formed Black Tigers, the organisation's suicide bomber wing. Only a week earlier the first of the Tigers' suicide bombers, known as Captain Miller, had driven a lorry packed with explosives into an army barracks. Prabhakaran wanted to give women the same 'opportunity', he said. I knew I could never do such a thing because I didn't have the courage.

As the war escalated, civilians were being drawn into the conflict, and a humanitarian crisis was developing in Jaffna. Eventually, the Indian government intervened. It was no secret that India had been fostering Tamil militants and providing them with training and ammunition, and the relationship between the Indian and Sri Lankan governments was strained.

Then the peacekeeping forces arrived, a ceasefire came into effect, and a peace accord was implemented on July 29 1987. The war-weary Tamils welcomed the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) with open arms, and our training came to an abrupt halt. But Prabhakaran informed us that our services would be required in a month or two – he was sure that hostilities would resume by then. Like the Sri Lankan government, he did not appreciate the foreign intrusion.

So it came to pass. In September 1987, while other Tamil militant organisations engaged in the political process, Thileepan went on hunger-strike at the Nallur Hindu Temple near Jaffna in protest against certain aspects of the peace deal. Mass rallies were organised by pro-Tiger Tamils in Jaffna and also by Sinhala extremists in the south, both parties believing the IPKF's intervention served only to assert India's supremacy in the region. Fourteen days later, Thileepan died. The Tigers blamed the Indian government for his death, and for standing aside while Sinhalese forces violated the peace deal by arresting some prominent Tigers despite the amnesty provisions, and organising Sinhala settlement programmes in Tamil areas.

The war resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted, though now we were fighting not only the government troops but the peacekeepers, too. A few thousand youths suited only for guerrilla warfare, we were no match for the world's second largest army. Fighting the Indians made no sense to me.

I had joined the Tigers to make a stand against my country's oppressive government, but now found myself at war with those who had come to maintain peace. It seemed that we might be destroying our only chance of resolving the situation peacefully.
I expressed my doubts to Akila. Fiercely loyal and single-minded, she argued that, as foot soldiers, we were unaware of the complex politics of the situation, and that our leaders knew exactly what they were doing. 'Believe that Anna Prabhakaran is always right,' she told me. I decided to ignore the growing disquiet inside me and joined the war.

In October 1987 I was sent to the battle front north of Jaffna where, by coincidence, Akila and Ajanthi joined me in a unit of 30 cadres. The first female Tiger had died only a few days earlier, confirming that women were now firmly engaged in frontline fighting. During battles we had been trained to fire in the general direction of the enemy, not at individual targets, and I am not sure whether any of my bullets hit anyone. I'm glad I don't know. I once asked the more experienced Muralie how he had coped with the knowledge that he had shot people. 'After your second victim,' he said, 'you learn to live with it.'

The Tigers had no chance of overpowering the Indian army. Jaffna and many surrounding areas were now under their total control. We were being ambushed on an almost daily basis, becoming accustomed to life on the run. Support among Tamil civilians was waning, too. Whenever we encountered them, they pleaded with us to stop this futile war.

By early 1988 self-preservation was now our main strategy. Forced out of the Jaffna peninsula by the IPKF and following an overnight boat trip, we found ourselves in the jungles of the Vanni in the Northeastern Province, where it was easier to lie low. I was now part of a large unit of nearly 45 girls, with Sengamalam, one of only two boys, in charge. We moved around the jungle constantly, enduring primitive living conditions, while 130,000 Indian troops searched for some 2,000 Tigers on foot and by air.

After five months in the jungle, I contracted malaria; many others were ill with dysentery and typhoid. Akila stayed by my side, taking care of me, bringing medication and rice water in a rusty tin. I felt broken, physically and emotionally, constantly questioning the purpose of a war that could clearly never be won.

I had believed the militant propaganda, convinced that Tamil Eelam could be achieved within a year or two, but it was now clear that an armed conflict would resolve nothing. 'You are free to go home any time,' Thileepan had told me. It was time to walk away while I still could. One morning in June 1988, at a house near the forest where we had taken shelter following an attack on our hideout, I approached Sengamalam as he washed at a well.

'I want to resign.'

He stopped drying his face with a sarong and looked at me with alarm. 'Is someone giving you grief?'

'I just can't cope any more,' I said. 'I am tired of this war. I'm weak.'

Calmly, he said that he was sorry, that he was surprised I had lasted so long. 'I must warn you,' he said, 'your life will be in grave danger – from the Sri Lankan army, Indian forces, even rival organisations. Your name is on their wanted lists.' I didn't care. Surrendering my rifle and kuppie, I severed all ties with the Tigers, unsure of what the future held or whether my family would take me back.

Before I left, I went to say goodbye to Akila. When she saw me wearing a dress, her jaw dropped. 'What's going on? You're leaving?' Consumed with shame, I could hardly speak. 'I can't believe you're leaving me,' she sobbed. 'We have so much to achieve.'

Before I could answer, Sengamalam hurried Akila into the forest and I watched her fade into the bright sun. I never saw her again.

Sengamalam organised for a local boy to take me to an old woman's hut in the nearby town of Kilinochchi. For the next seven days, the old woman and I did not exchange a word or a smile.

One afternoon, while I helped herd her cattle into the shed, I saw my mother running towards me down the dirt lane. The mayor of Kilinochchi, a distant relative of ours, had bumped into the Tamil boy who had taken me to the old woman's hut. The mayor was carrying a photograph of me that my mother had sent him and asked the boy if he had seen me. Once I had been identified, the mayor fetched my mother. The only emotion I felt was relief, as if I was no longer capable of experiencing happiness or sadness. My mother embraced me and sobbed while I stood numb.

'I thought you might have disowned me,' I said, finally.

'You're my daughter,' she replied. 'I'd never give up on you.'

Within two months of being re­united with my family, during which time we never discussed my experiences with the Tigers, I was sent to a boarding school in India, where I completed my studies.

Although now in the country whose army I had fought only months before, I was determined to move on, and make the best of the second chance I had been given. On the surface, normality had returned. My fellow students were girls from affluent families who liked talking about boys, movie stars and make-up. When the lights in our dormitory were turned off at night,
I cried myself to sleep.

In 1990, with help from a relative, I moved to Sydney (my family later moved here, too) and went to university. After my departure from the Tigers, and with a new life opening up to me, I blocked out any news of Sri Lanka as best I could. These days, of course, that is impossible.

The two-year war between the Tigers and the Indian forces came to an end in July 1989, with changes of government in both countries. But the fighting between the Tigers and Sri Lankan government forces continued. The primitive but effective guerrilla organisation that I left behind grew into a sophisticated and formidable fighting force. As its methods became more extreme, the LTTE's notoriety increased – not just within Sri Lanka but all over the world. (In late 2001 it was classified as a terrorist organisation by many countries, including Britain.)

The Tigers have carried out hundreds of suicide attacks over the past two decades – more than all other radical organisations in the world combined – notably the assassination of the former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and the Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. The guiding principle of the Tigers, which is so difficult for outsiders to understand, is that the greater the sacrifice, the higher the honour. There are no bravery medals or pompous ceremonies for living Tigers. They are recognised for their efforts, and awarded a rank, only posthumously.

The past decade has seen several attempts to form a lasting peace agreement between the Tigers and the government, all unsuccessful, with the most recent deal being torn up in early 2008. Since 2006 the LTTE's numbers have fallen sharply, funding from the Tamil diaspora has dwindled while government forces stepped up their campaign.

At the beginning of this year, a number of crucial Tiger strongholds were recaptured, and the government was confident it would annihilate the remaining 1,000 or so Tigers within months. After three decades, the civil war – which has claimed more than 70,000 lives, including at least 23,000 Tigers – appears to have reached its endgame, the Tigers on the verge of a final, crushing defeat. The Tamils are, it seems, back at square one.

In fact, the situation may be worse than ever, with the UN estimating last month that 150,000 civilians were trapped in the eight-square-mile battle zone, under constant threat of bombing from government forces and being used as human shields by the increasingly desperate Tigers. Some human rights groups have condemned the Sri Lankan government for practising ethnic cleansing against them under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Although the Tigers have staged many comebacks in history, the latest government offensive may prove fatal. But the scars of this war will remain and until a political solution that recognises and respects the rights of the Tamil people is reached, I am certain that the Tamil fight will continue in one form or another.

More and more these days, my thoughts turn to the friends I have lost. Recently, for the first time, I typed Akila's name into Google and found several archived reports and court documents. Akila died on November 1 1995, in a battle against the Sri Lankan army in Neervaeli, a town for which we had fought side by side. With defeat imminent, she ordered the members of her unit to bite into their cyanide capsules, and then did the same herself. She was 24. After her death, she was awarded the highest rank achievable in the Tigers at that time: lieutenant colonel.

The most shocking detail was that she had been wanted for masterminding, along with Prabhakaran, the killing of Rajiv Gandhi. The suicide bomber and her collaborators had been members of Akila's unit, as I might have been if I had not walked away from the Tigers.

On the surface, my life goes on as a happily married mother in an affluent Sydney suburb who enjoys reading, travelling and gardening. But often, in my dreams, I am being chased by soldiers or hanging off the side of a cliff, unable to save myself. It has taken me a long time not to panic when I hear a helicopter overhead.

I rarely discuss my past. Some people cannot believe that someone with my grounded life could have done such things. Others probe deeper, asking if I regret picking up a gun with the intention of killing others. Of course, some will never understand; others may consider me a former terrorist.

The world has changed since I left the Tigers, just as the Tigers themselves have changed. In this age of terrorism it is easy to dismiss all rebel groups as evil extremists, without considering the desperate circumstances that drive people to align themselves to such organisations.

I tell people that the only reason I joined the war was to defend my people, because I felt there was no other choice. I was not coerced to join the insurgency. As an idealistic 17-year-old, I believed in the power of the individual to make a difference.

Looking back, I recognise the elements of reckless, selfish teenage rebellion in my behaviour. Naively, I had not anticipated how much my family would suffer as a consequence of my actions, and for that, above all else, I am deeply sorry. To this day, my parents have never asked me about my time as a guerrilla. As a mother myself, I understand why: that they must somehow have felt that they had failed in their duty as parents.

I hope that my own children will grow up with firm, positive views, but without the blind idealism I had all those years ago. I will try to teach them tolerance and empathy, that the end doesn't always justify the means, and that violence always breeds more violence. I learnt that lesson the hard way. Sadly, I don't think Sri Lanka has learnt it at all.

The Iraq War's Other Contractors

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Carol Burke
May 4, 2009 - Consortiumnews

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Consortiumnews Editor's Note: Over the past two years, a favorite piece of Washington's conventional wisdom was the myth of the "successful surge," President George W. Bush's supposedly "courageous" decision to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq and thus to bring down levels of violence.

But a far more important factor was the pre-surge strategy of paying Iraq's Sunni insurgents not to shoot at U.S. troops and to maintain some order in formerly turbulent areas, as Carol Burke writes in this guest essay from afterdowningstreet.org:

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The most impressive contracting effort of the Iraq War to date is not the shoveling of treasure to Halliburton, but rather the low-profile hiring of over 100,000 Sons of Iraq over the last two years to guard the towns, neighborhoods and highways of Iraq.

The future of Iraq rests on what happens to these insurgents we turned into peacekeepers.

The Pentagon and most in the U.S. media give full credit to "the surge," the addition of 30,000 American forces (including support staff), for the dramatic decrease in violence in Iraq since 2007. Consider the relative effects. The majority of the 30,000 American troops who came as a result of the surge spend their time on base. On many bases in Iraq no more than 5 percent of the U.S. personnel goes "outside the wire" on a given day.

This protracted war of counterinsurgency has even given rise to a new slang term in military speech. The soldier who rarely gets off the FOB (Forward Operating Base) is called a "Fobbit." He eats five meals a day, grows round in the middle and even, as legend has it, starts growing hair between his toes.

In contrast, the Sons of Iraq make their armed presence known 24 hours a day. Although the Americans refer to the "Sons of Iraq" or "SOI," the Iraqis call them "Sahwa," a word that translates as "Awakening."

In a rural area in northwestern Iraq known as "the Arab West," a region west of Kirkuk and south of Mosul, these young armed men work for 24 hours at a stretch checking every car and truck that passes their way. They are not new to weapons.

Like their predecessors, members of the League of Islamic Awakening, who formed in 1919 to oppose the British-installed interim Iraqi government and to eliminate British rule all together, many Sons of Iraq are former insurgents who fought against the occupying forces.

Many said they had become fed up with the violence that killed and wounded the innocent of their villages. A neighbor driving to the next village might inadvertently set off an IED intended for the Americans. American retaliation might take out bystanders as well as insurgents.

These Sunni men were desperate to protect their families and to feed them. The Americans made an offer they couldn't refuse: a modest but steady monthly salary to secure their villages.

"We out-hired the enemy," said Lt Col David Snodgrass, 3-25 infantry commander previously stationed at Forward Operating Base Warrior in Kirkuk, now stationed in Mosul.

* Major Employer

In many parts of Iraq the paramilitary SOI organization now serves as the major employer. In Kirkuk Province alone, the United States military has funded 9,000 Sons of Iraq. The local contractors, the tribal leaders, who until recently doled out the monthly cash, sweetened their own salaries as well.

One Army captain, who requested that his name not be used, alleged widespread corruption in the system, "You ask any SOI what they are paid a month, and he'll tell you $190. They're supposed to be paid $240, so where does the other $50 go — to the contractor."

The American forces, in cooperation with the Iraqi Army, recently eliminated these middlemen. As of April 1, the government in Baghdad formally assumed responsibility for the program, administering the payments and absorbing its cost.

In preparation for that turnover, the Americans, in collaboration with the Iraqis, waged an extensive effort to collect fingerprints and iris scans from all SOI members. It was a condition of their continued employment, and it gave to the Government of Iraq vital information that could, in the future, be used to track these Sunni men should they return to armed resistance.

The Shia-dominated government's recent detentions of SOI in Baghdad and Baqubah suggest that it may view these former insurgents less as a security force and more as a threat. The failure to pay some Sons of Iraq in the south of the country suggests either an inefficient bureaucracy or the Government of Iraq's reluctance to take over what the Americans started.

Many American commanders trust that the Government of Iraq (GOI) will deliver on its promise to absorb 20 percent of these predominantly Sunni men into the Iraqi Security Forces, but recent incidents of Iraqi police turning their weapons on American soldiers can only raise questions about this plan.

Some American commanders doubt that the Government of Iraq will support the remaining 80 percent for more than a short period. Responding to questions about the faltering transition and the reemergence of insurgency, Lt Col Snodgrass said, "In the event that anything does goes wrong, the U.S. is prepared to pay for a period during the transition while things get worked out."

If the Shia dominated government does fulfill its promise to find positions in the army and police force for 20 percent of the Sons of Iraq, 1,800 SOI in Kirkuk Province will receive jobs.

If the government fails to support the remaining 80 percent of these former insurgents, roughly 7,000 SOI in Kirkuk Province alone will find themselves unemployed at a time when the civilian unemployment rate among males in their age group is already a whopping 28 percent.

The revived oil fields might offer a glimmer of hope for the jobless. The dramatic increase in oil production in the fields near Kirkuk (from 48.6 million barrels in 2007 to 133.6 million barrels in 2008) may open a few hundred more security jobs, but in volatile times, who wants former insurgents guarding Iraqi oil fields?

The Government of Iraq has promised training programs, but after the decline in oil prices in the last year, the country's available reserves had plummeted by the end of 2008 from an estimated $80 billion to $39 billion. And a training program is not the same thing as a steady job.

In this sparsely populated northern region, the war closed down what employment opportunities there were. A once thriving poultry slaughtering house, one of the chief employers in the area, stands vacant today. Much of the seed stock for this farming region is so depleted and old that the crops it produces are of poor quality, the wheat mostly chaff.

A long drought, clogged irrigation ditches, and shallow wells produce water with high salinity. Children suffer from dehydration and dysentery.

* Near Danger

It wasn't very long ago when every soldier on FOB McHenry, a base 35 miles southwest of Kirkuk, knew that even the area immediately adjacent to the base promised certain danger.

Maj. Joe West, who was until recently stationed at McHenry, explains, "As soon as you drove out of the FOB you would get IED'd."

But now security has dramatically improved. A withdrawal of support for the Sons of Iraq, however, could rapidly destabilize the region turning insurgents-turned-peacekeepers back into insurgents.

Any commander in this rural area of Iraq knows that the pullout of American forces must be accompanied by the careful transition of the Sons of Iraq from military contractors to civilian jobs. The programs designed to train SOI in carpentry, concrete, plumbing and the building of water towers have attracted disappointing numbers.

According to the recent commander at McHenry, Lt. Col. Kenneth Casey, the programs run by locals offer the notable exceptions.

To find out what might work, Maj. West, the head officer in charge of operations at McHenry, recruited the help of a human terrain team. The Army began embedding civilian contractors called "human terrain teams" with combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006.

These five to nine person teams, comprised of at least one social scientist and at least one person fluent in the local language, conduct what one former team member called "combat ethnography."

Before deploying, they enrolled in a four-month training program at Fort Leavenworth that trained them to collect perceptions of the local population through interview and observation, to analyze those perceptions in relation to research available from both open source and classified material, and to present their findings to a military commander.

West instructed the McHenry human terrain team to gather data to answer the question: "Where should we be investing money?"

* Outside the Wire

Clipboards in hand, the five-person human terrain team and a platoon from a tank company that calls itself "The Assassins," leave their base 30 miles southwest of Kirkuk in search of the Sons of Iraq.

Why the Assassins, the brigade's alpha company? Because anyone on base will tell you that Capt Larry Brown, the commander of the Assassins and the guy with "Bossman" written on the stock of his rifle, "owns" the territory whose security he maintains.

In a war zone, the army divvies up the Area of Operation (AO) to captains or "the landowners" as they are called. The human terrain team came to stake out their claims on the AO by mapping its culture. In the intricate division of duties in the brigade of 4,000, the human terrain team owns culture.

The Assassins belong to 1-67th armor group which, until recently, was stationed at Forward Operating Base McHenry. The soldiers of the regiment refer to themselves as "Death Dealers" and proudly display their slogan on black baseball caps worn on base.

Even their chaplain sports a Death Dealer cap. Each cold January morning the Assassins rev up their MRAPS, the $800,000 "Mine Resistant Ambush Protected" vehicles whose designers sacrificed the maneuverability of the $140,000 up-armored Humvees for strength and a v-shaped hull resistant to IED's, and ferry the members of the human terrain team outside the wire to track down the Sons of Iraq.

Throughout January, the human terrain team members survey the SOI. Although the team collects no names, they solicit information about age, marital status, level of education, and tribal affiliation. They ask the SOI what kinds of work they consider honorable and solicit responses to three questions designed to elicit remarks about the importance of weapons.

They are trying to find out why the SOI have not taken advantage of the training programs designed to transition them from militia members dependent on U.S. funding into tradesmen employed in the private sector.

For most in the brigade, the answer to that question is simple: these poorly educated lazy guys simply want to look cool standing beside the road toting a weapon. This is a region of Iraq, after all, known as "The Arab West."

Even Lt. Col. Casey shares the popular view of this "cowboy culture": "People would rather stand on the street corner with guns," he said, than opt for "the nobility of work."

The responses that the team collects challenge the received opinions in the brigade. The Sons of Iraq, they find, have a more mature perception of what they do than the Americans give them credit for. It is easy for the Americans soldiers, who speed by in their convoys, to regard these ragtag locals as childlike, as if they were playing at war.

It's one of the oldest prejudices of an occupying force. Without uniforms, without body armor, without heat other than a wood fire to take the chill off winter nights that can get down into the 20's, the SOI sometimes look like bystanders in the war.

As the team has learned, however, the SOI don't just stand around looking like poster boys for a revolution gone bad; they perform community service for their local area.

Since the highways are dangerous places, ill villagers have come to rely on the SOI to drive them to the hospital in the nearby city.

An Iraqi woman who lives outside of Zaab and earns her living selling used clothing from a small shop that looks more like an open one-car garage says, "You don't know how much we have been suffering. We have to risk our lives to get medical care by driving on dangerous roads to the next city."

Making the journey from Zaab to Sharqat, a 15-mile trip, with SOI protection mitigates that risk. The new women's clinic, built with American funds would ease the burden even more, but it is difficult to lure doctors and nurses to the area.

* Safety for Communities

In its survey of the Sons of Iraq, the human terrain team discovers that these men prefer their work as Sons of Iraq not because of how they look but because of what they do: providing a measure of safety for their communities.

Should it be any surprise that protecting one's community in a time of war would be considered the most highly valued form of work?

Refuting the assumption that the men thought farming menial, these farmers and sons of farmers resoundingly affirmed that they had no aversion to manual labor. In fact, many of them work as subsistence farmers in addition to their SOI jobs to help feed their families.

Farming may not be respectable work in the eyes of American soldiers, but it is respected work to the Sons of Iraq, labor that their tribe has done for generations.

The Human Terrain Team only arrived in the fall. Had their survey been conducted a year earlier, American dollars spent on rehabilitation might have been deployed to address the real needs of the former insurgents so that they could transition from militia forces back to farmers.

These men need education. Fifty-nine percent, according to the human terrain team's report, lack more than a sixth-grade education, a fact not hard to understand when one considers how war dismantles education.

In the last couple of years, Americans have begun building schools in this part of Iraq. Fifteen schools were either built or refurbished. Although the schools were ready for students, there were few teachers to teach them.

This region alone faced a shortage of 700 teachers, according to Hawija City Manager Sabhan Ali Aljabora, To address the problem, teacher training in Kirkuk began in earnest, but when the newly trained teachers were told that they would be assigned to schools in this recently turbulent part of the country, many refused to relocate.

With the increase in security that the SOI have brought to the area, schools are starting to reopen again, but still some nicely refurbished schools remain empty of pupils because no teachers have yet arrived.

The future of these Sons of Iraq, America's other military contractors, will determine Iraq's future. If the members of this Sunni militia can reenter civilian life and support their families without threat from a Shia-dominated central government, peace may have a chance.

If, however, the Government of Iraq leaves them without hope, these Sons of Iraq may resort again to armed resistance. If that happens, the Arab West could turn wild again.

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Carol Burke is the author of Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight. She was embedded with the Human Terrain Team attached to the 3-25 Infantry Division in Northern Iraq.

The Missing Exit Strategy for Afghanistan

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Tom Andrews
May 7, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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President Obama said it best when he talked about U.S. policy in Afghanistan on the CBS news program 60 Minutes last month: "There's got to be an exit strategy".

Well, there isn't one. There is an escalation of 21,000 US forces and there is a wartime spending bill requesting $94.2 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as of today, there isn't even a hint of what the President believes we need-an exit strategy. The Appropriations Committee is expected to dutifully vote out their bill Thursday and send it to the floor of the House for a vote next week.

I realize how hard it would be for Congressional Democrats to require the Obama administration to develop an exit strategy as a condition for continued war funding. After all, this is our guy, right? The last thing our guy needs is a Democratic Congress second guessing, making demands, and putting conditions on the war funding.

But this is exactly what we and the administration need precisely because he is our guy.

Unlike Mr. Limbaugh, we want and need President Obama to succeed. The very real prospect of the United States embedded in an endless war in Afghanistan would undermine everything this administration is trying to do while imperiling the very Congressional Democrats President Obama needs to move his agenda. This is exactly the right time to engage the administration in a respectful but critical discussion about where this military escalation is leading us.

Sending tens of thousands of more U.S. troops into Afghanistan-without a plan to get them out-is a bad idea for many reasons.

First off, the ink on the President's plan to send an additional 21,000 troops into Afghanistan wasn't even dry before the Pentagon acknowledged that it already has a request in to the administration for an additional 10,000 troops. What's worse, there are indications the Pentagon has even more requests waiting in the wings.

The fact is, there are simply not enough U.S. soldiers to secure Afghanistan. Estimates as to what would be required range for 200,000 to 600,000 troops. And, don't look to our NATO allies to be of any help. The leader of Canada's Liberal Party told me last week that the only way Canada citizens would support sending any troops was if there was a clear exit strategy with a date certain for their withdrawal. As a result, all Canadian soldiers will be on their way home by 2011.

Those of us who live on this side of the border should be demanding the same from our political leaders.

The lack of an exit strategy is already making things worse in Afghanistan. Failing to say when and how we will remove our forces is playing into the hands of Taliban leaders who are using the presence of our troops on Afghanistan soil-and the announced escalation-as their most powerful recruitment tool. The New York Times reports that the escalation has mended fences between the otherwise fractious leadership of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban who announced that they are joining forces to fight the new troops as they arrive.

A BBC/ABC public opinion poll of Afghans reveals that fully 80% of the population is opposed to an escalation of American troops. Many of those who are shooting at our soldiers are not jihadists; they are proud Afghans who are famously sensitive to the presence of foreign forces on their soil.

The lack of an exit strategy also works against President Obama's regional strategy-outreach to the neighboring nations who have zero interest in a Taliban dominated Afghanistan because it would threaten their national security as much, if not more, than our own. How likely will China, Russia and particularly Iran be to join the U.S. if the outcome might be tens of thousands of U.S. troops on their border?

We need Congress to step up now and help prevent what has now become "Obama's War" from turning into a quagmire that undermines, if not destroys, the critically important agenda the President is fighting to pass here at home.

We need to step up too. We can start by contacting Members of Congress and urging them not to succumb to a vote-now, ask questions later approach to war funding even if it is our guy who is asking for it. We need a critical check-and-balance before it is too late to stop an endless war in Afghanistan.

The war spending bill is on the floor of the House of Representatives next week.

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Tom Andrews, a former Member of Congress from the first Congressional District of Maine, is the National Director of Win Without War, a coalition of forty-two national membership organizations including the National Council of Churches, the NAACP, the National Organization of Women, the Sierra Club, and MoveOn.

Stressing the Positive

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Paul Krugman
May 7, 2009 - The New York Times

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Hooray! The banking crisis is over! Let's party! O.K., maybe not.

In the end, the actual release of the much-hyped bank stress tests on Thursday came as an anticlimax. Everyone knew more or less what the results would say: some big players need to raise more capital, but over all, the kids, I mean the banks, are all right. Even before the results were announced, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, told us they would be "reassuring."

But whether you actually should feel reassured depends on who you are: a banker, or someone trying to make a living in another profession.

I won't weigh in on the debate over the quality of the stress tests themselves, except to repeat what many observers have noted: the regulators didn't have the resources to make a really careful assessment of the banks' assets, and in any case they allowed the banks to bargain over what the results would say. A rigorous audit it wasn't.

But focusing on the process can distract from the larger picture. What we're really seeing here is a decision on the part of President Obama and his officials to muddle through the financial crisis, hoping that the banks can earn their way back to health.

It's a strategy that might work. After all, right now the banks are lending at high interest rates, while paying virtually no interest on their (government-insured) deposits. Given enough time, the banks could be flush again.

But it's important to see the strategy for what it is and to understand the risks.

Remember, it was the markets, not the government, that in effect declared the banks undercapitalized. And while market indicators of distrust in banks, like the interest rates on bank bonds and the prices of bank credit-default swaps, have fallen somewhat in recent weeks, they're still at levels that would have been considered inconceivable before the crisis.

As a result, the odds are that the financial system won't function normally until the crucial players get much stronger financially than they are now. Yet the Obama administration has decided not to do anything dramatic to recapitalize the banks.

Can the economy recover even with weak banks? Maybe. Banks won't be expanding credit any time soon, but government-backed lenders have stepped in to fill the gap. The Federal Reserve has expanded its credit by $1.2 trillion over the past year; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become the principal sources of mortgage finance. So maybe we can let the economy fix the banks instead of the other way around.

But there are many things that could go wrong.

It's not at all clear that credit from the Fed, Fannie and Freddie can fully substitute for a healthy banking system. If it can't, the muddle-through strategy will turn out to be a recipe for a prolonged, Japanese-style era of high unemployment and weak growth.

Actually, a multiyear period of economic weakness looks likely in any case. The economy may no longer be plunging, but it's very hard to see where a real recovery will come from. And if the economy does stay depressed for a long time, banks will be in much bigger trouble than the stress tests — which looked only two years ahead — are able to capture.

Finally, given the possibility of bigger losses in the future, the government's evident unwillingness either to own banks or let them fail creates a heads-they-win-tails-we-lose situation. If all goes well, the bankers will win big. If the current strategy fails, taxpayers will be forced to pay for another bailout.

But what worries me most about the way policy is going isn't any of these things. It's my sense that the prospects for fundamental financial reform are fading.

Does anyone remember the case of H. Rodgin Cohen, a prominent New York lawyer whom The Times has described as a "Wall Street éminence grise"? He briefly made the news in March when he reportedly withdrew his name after being considered a top pick for deputy Treasury secretary.

Well, earlier this week, Mr. Cohen told an audience that the future of Wall Street won't be very different from its recent past, declaring, "I am far from convinced there was something inherently wrong with the system." Hey, that little thing about causing the worst global slump since the Great Depression? Never mind.

Those are frightening words. They suggest that while the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration continue to insist that they're committed to tighter financial regulation and greater oversight, Wall Street insiders are taking the mildness of bank policy so far as a sign that they'll soon be able to go back to playing the same games as before.

So as I said, while bankers may find the results of the stress tests "reassuring," the rest of us should be very, very afraid.