Monday, January 11, 2010
President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up
Saturday 11 December 2010
by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.
With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA's most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency's chief apologist.
So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the "smartest man he had ever met."
Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.
Washington insiders remember that it was CIA director Tenet who told President George W. Bush, "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," in response to the president's demand for stronger intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide to the American people. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the "slam-dunk" briefing to the president in January 2003.
McLaughlin was the "villain" behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.
When Kay returned to CIA headquarters from Baghdad, Tenet and McLaughlin made sure that Kay was given a tiny, windowless office at the end of a distant, deserted corridor undergoing construction. It had no secure phone or classified computer. Kay called it Siberia.
McLaughlin was also the villain behind the CIA's preparation of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that used phony intelligence to convince an international audience of the need for war. According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell's chief of staff, Tenet and McLaughlin lied to the secretary of state about the sourcing of serious allegations dealing with Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain strategic weapons.
The most serious allegation came from an Iraqi con man known as "Curveball," who maintained that Iraq had mobile biological laboratories, a key charge in the phony intelligence to justify the Iraq war. German intelligence debriefed Curveball, and German intelligence officials warned the CIA that Curveball was unstable and that there was no validation for his claims. Tyler Drumheller, the chief of CIA's European Division, knew that Curveball was mentally unstable and a liar, and he urged McLaughlin to drop all references to the mobile biological labs from Powell's speech. McLaughlin ignored him, too.
Five weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Powell and McLaughlin shared a table at the White House correspondents' dinner, where McLaughlin, an amateur magician, agreed to perform a few magic tricks during a break in the action. The CIA deputy director conjured coins out of thin air and transformed a single dollar into a $100 bill; everyone at the table laughed except for Powell, who seemed tense and out of sorts.
According to Bob Drogin, who wrote an authoritative book on Curveball, Powell stared at McLaughlin and requested another trick. "Let's see you find the WMD in Iraq," an unsmiling Powell demanded. McLaughlin looked surprised and his broad grin faded. "We will," he replied, "they're there and we'll find them."
In addition to being one of the ideological drivers for the CIA's policies of torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary renditions, McLaughlin demonstrated early in his career that he was a company man willing to do what was necessary to advance his career. In the 1980s, when CIA Director William Casey and his Deputy Robert Gates were "cooking the books" on intelligence dealing with the Soviet Union, Central America and Southwest Asia, McLaughlin offered no dissent.
When the CIA did an internal investigation of one of the worst examples of politicization of intelligence, the case for Soviet complicity in the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981, McLaughlin made sure there were no references to politicization in the final report and made every effort to hide Gates' role in preparing the Papal plot intelligence assessment. When Gates' nomination as CIA director was in trouble during the confirmation process in 1991, it was McLaughlin who stepped forward to defend his former boss from charges of politicization.
President Obama has made many mistakes in his handling of the CIA and the intelligence community that could be attributed to his inexperience and his reliance on intelligence officials, who are themselves part of the culture of cover-up. He has named weak figures to the important posts of director of national intelligence and CIA director, and has named no one to replace the CIA's inspector general, who announced his retirement nearly 11 months ago.
His administration has threatened the British government with the cut off of sensitive intelligence if a British court revealed details of CIA renditions in Europe, and has resorted to a state security defense to prevent revelations of renditions policies in US courts as well.
President Obama has been unwilling to release photographs that document the conduct of torture and abuse by intelligence officers, and he has permitted the day-to-day operations of the CIA to remain in the hands of those operational officers, Steve Kappes and Mike Sulick, responsible for the program of renditions, detentions and interrogations. The president's early mistakes demonstrated that he simply didn't get it; the appointment of McLaughlin indicates that the president doesn't want to get it.
It is essential for President Obama to understand what went wrong in order to reform the CIA and take corrective actions. In relying on those individuals who have circled the wagons to protect themselves and the agency, the president has deprived himself of an opportunity to understand the intelligence failures of 9/11 and the shootdown of the missionary plane over Peru as well as the illegality of renditions, detentions and interrogations.
President Obama does not want to assign blame in these matters, but he will never remedy these problems if he fails to understand what went wrong.
http://www.truthout.org/article/president-obama-cia-and-master-cover-up
by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.
With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA's most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency's chief apologist.
So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the "smartest man he had ever met."
Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.
Washington insiders remember that it was CIA director Tenet who told President George W. Bush, "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," in response to the president's demand for stronger intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide to the American people. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the "slam-dunk" briefing to the president in January 2003.
McLaughlin was the "villain" behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.
When Kay returned to CIA headquarters from Baghdad, Tenet and McLaughlin made sure that Kay was given a tiny, windowless office at the end of a distant, deserted corridor undergoing construction. It had no secure phone or classified computer. Kay called it Siberia.
McLaughlin was also the villain behind the CIA's preparation of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that used phony intelligence to convince an international audience of the need for war. According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell's chief of staff, Tenet and McLaughlin lied to the secretary of state about the sourcing of serious allegations dealing with Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain strategic weapons.
The most serious allegation came from an Iraqi con man known as "Curveball," who maintained that Iraq had mobile biological laboratories, a key charge in the phony intelligence to justify the Iraq war. German intelligence debriefed Curveball, and German intelligence officials warned the CIA that Curveball was unstable and that there was no validation for his claims. Tyler Drumheller, the chief of CIA's European Division, knew that Curveball was mentally unstable and a liar, and he urged McLaughlin to drop all references to the mobile biological labs from Powell's speech. McLaughlin ignored him, too.
Five weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Powell and McLaughlin shared a table at the White House correspondents' dinner, where McLaughlin, an amateur magician, agreed to perform a few magic tricks during a break in the action. The CIA deputy director conjured coins out of thin air and transformed a single dollar into a $100 bill; everyone at the table laughed except for Powell, who seemed tense and out of sorts.
According to Bob Drogin, who wrote an authoritative book on Curveball, Powell stared at McLaughlin and requested another trick. "Let's see you find the WMD in Iraq," an unsmiling Powell demanded. McLaughlin looked surprised and his broad grin faded. "We will," he replied, "they're there and we'll find them."
In addition to being one of the ideological drivers for the CIA's policies of torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary renditions, McLaughlin demonstrated early in his career that he was a company man willing to do what was necessary to advance his career. In the 1980s, when CIA Director William Casey and his Deputy Robert Gates were "cooking the books" on intelligence dealing with the Soviet Union, Central America and Southwest Asia, McLaughlin offered no dissent.
When the CIA did an internal investigation of one of the worst examples of politicization of intelligence, the case for Soviet complicity in the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981, McLaughlin made sure there were no references to politicization in the final report and made every effort to hide Gates' role in preparing the Papal plot intelligence assessment. When Gates' nomination as CIA director was in trouble during the confirmation process in 1991, it was McLaughlin who stepped forward to defend his former boss from charges of politicization.
President Obama has made many mistakes in his handling of the CIA and the intelligence community that could be attributed to his inexperience and his reliance on intelligence officials, who are themselves part of the culture of cover-up. He has named weak figures to the important posts of director of national intelligence and CIA director, and has named no one to replace the CIA's inspector general, who announced his retirement nearly 11 months ago.
His administration has threatened the British government with the cut off of sensitive intelligence if a British court revealed details of CIA renditions in Europe, and has resorted to a state security defense to prevent revelations of renditions policies in US courts as well.
President Obama has been unwilling to release photographs that document the conduct of torture and abuse by intelligence officers, and he has permitted the day-to-day operations of the CIA to remain in the hands of those operational officers, Steve Kappes and Mike Sulick, responsible for the program of renditions, detentions and interrogations. The president's early mistakes demonstrated that he simply didn't get it; the appointment of McLaughlin indicates that the president doesn't want to get it.
It is essential for President Obama to understand what went wrong in order to reform the CIA and take corrective actions. In relying on those individuals who have circled the wagons to protect themselves and the agency, the president has deprived himself of an opportunity to understand the intelligence failures of 9/11 and the shootdown of the missionary plane over Peru as well as the illegality of renditions, detentions and interrogations.
President Obama does not want to assign blame in these matters, but he will never remedy these problems if he fails to understand what went wrong.
http://www.truthout.org/article/president-obama-cia-and-master-cover-up
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Sick With Terror
Posted on Jan 5, 2010
By Amy Goodman
The media have been swamped with reports about the attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, now dubbed the “underwear bomber,” failed in his alleged attack, close to 300 people were spared what would have been, most likely, a horrible, violent end. Since that airborne incident, the debates about terrorism and how best to protect the American people have been reignited.
Meanwhile, a killer that has stalked the U.S. public, claiming, by recent estimates, 45,000 lives annually—one dead American about every 10 minutes—goes unchecked. That’s 3,750 people dead—more than the 9/11 attacks—every month who could be saved with the stroke of a pen.
This killer is the lack of adequate health care in the United States. Researchers from Harvard Medical School found in late 2009 that 45,000 people die unnecessarily every year due to lack of health insurance. Researchers also uncovered another stunning fact: In 2008, four times as many U.S. Army veterans died because they lacked health insurance than the total number of U.S. soldiers who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same period. That’s right: 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died because they were uninsured.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama was fiery when he made his public statement after meeting with his national security team about the airline breach: In seeking to thwart plans to kill Americans “we face a challenge of the utmost urgency,” he said. He talked about reviewing systemic failures and declared we must “save innocent lives, not just most of the time, but all of the time.”
This is all very admirable. Imagine if this same urgency was applied to a broken system that causes 45,000 unnecessary deaths per year. Since stimulus funds will now be directed to supply more scanning equipment at airports, what about spending money to ensure mammograms and prostate exams at community health centers?
And then there’s the investigation of who is responsible for the attempted Christmas Day attack and getting “actionable intelligence” from the alleged bomber to prevent future attacks. All good.
We actually have “actionable intelligence” on why people die due to lack of health care, and how insurance companies actively deny people coverage to increase their profits, but what has been done about it?
The day before the underwear bomb incident, Christmas Eve, the U.S. Senate passed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by a vote of 60 to 39. Obama described the bill as “the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s.” Yet in order to get to that magic number of 60 Senate votes, the already weak Senate bill had to be brought to its knees by the likes of Sen. Joe Lieberman, from the health insurance state of Connecticut, and conservative Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska. The Senate and House versions of health insurance reform now have to be reconciled in conference committee.
The conference committee process is one that is little understood in the U.S. In it major changes to legislation are often imposed, with little or no notice. That’s why C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb sent a letter to congressional leaders Dec. 30 requesting access to televise the process. He wrote, “[W]e respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.” Rather than simply grant access, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserted that “there has never been a more open process.”
Yet Pelosi and the Democrats are now saying that the bills won’t even go through a formal conference committee, but rather through informal, closed-door sessions with key committee chairs. While this would circumvent Republican opportunities to filibuster, it would also grant a very few individuals enormous power to cut deals in much the same way that Sens. Nelson and Lieberman did. Since the health insurance, medical equipment and pharmaceutical industries spent close to $1.4 million per day to influence the health care debate, we have to ask: Who will have access to those few legislators behind those closed doors?
Wendell Potter, the former CIGNA insurance spokesperson turned whistle-blower, says he knows “where the bodies are buried.” Let’s be consistent. If we care about saving American lives, let’s take action now.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/sick_with_terror_20100105/
By Amy Goodman
The media have been swamped with reports about the attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, now dubbed the “underwear bomber,” failed in his alleged attack, close to 300 people were spared what would have been, most likely, a horrible, violent end. Since that airborne incident, the debates about terrorism and how best to protect the American people have been reignited.
Meanwhile, a killer that has stalked the U.S. public, claiming, by recent estimates, 45,000 lives annually—one dead American about every 10 minutes—goes unchecked. That’s 3,750 people dead—more than the 9/11 attacks—every month who could be saved with the stroke of a pen.
This killer is the lack of adequate health care in the United States. Researchers from Harvard Medical School found in late 2009 that 45,000 people die unnecessarily every year due to lack of health insurance. Researchers also uncovered another stunning fact: In 2008, four times as many U.S. Army veterans died because they lacked health insurance than the total number of U.S. soldiers who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same period. That’s right: 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died because they were uninsured.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama was fiery when he made his public statement after meeting with his national security team about the airline breach: In seeking to thwart plans to kill Americans “we face a challenge of the utmost urgency,” he said. He talked about reviewing systemic failures and declared we must “save innocent lives, not just most of the time, but all of the time.”
This is all very admirable. Imagine if this same urgency was applied to a broken system that causes 45,000 unnecessary deaths per year. Since stimulus funds will now be directed to supply more scanning equipment at airports, what about spending money to ensure mammograms and prostate exams at community health centers?
And then there’s the investigation of who is responsible for the attempted Christmas Day attack and getting “actionable intelligence” from the alleged bomber to prevent future attacks. All good.
We actually have “actionable intelligence” on why people die due to lack of health care, and how insurance companies actively deny people coverage to increase their profits, but what has been done about it?
The day before the underwear bomb incident, Christmas Eve, the U.S. Senate passed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by a vote of 60 to 39. Obama described the bill as “the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act passed in the 1930s.” Yet in order to get to that magic number of 60 Senate votes, the already weak Senate bill had to be brought to its knees by the likes of Sen. Joe Lieberman, from the health insurance state of Connecticut, and conservative Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska. The Senate and House versions of health insurance reform now have to be reconciled in conference committee.
The conference committee process is one that is little understood in the U.S. In it major changes to legislation are often imposed, with little or no notice. That’s why C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb sent a letter to congressional leaders Dec. 30 requesting access to televise the process. He wrote, “[W]e respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.” Rather than simply grant access, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserted that “there has never been a more open process.”
Yet Pelosi and the Democrats are now saying that the bills won’t even go through a formal conference committee, but rather through informal, closed-door sessions with key committee chairs. While this would circumvent Republican opportunities to filibuster, it would also grant a very few individuals enormous power to cut deals in much the same way that Sens. Nelson and Lieberman did. Since the health insurance, medical equipment and pharmaceutical industries spent close to $1.4 million per day to influence the health care debate, we have to ask: Who will have access to those few legislators behind those closed doors?
Wendell Potter, the former CIGNA insurance spokesperson turned whistle-blower, says he knows “where the bodies are buried.” Let’s be consistent. If we care about saving American lives, let’s take action now.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/sick_with_terror_20100105/
Monday, January 4, 2010
Court to Cops: Stop Tasing People into Compliance
# By David Hambling Email Author
# January 4, 2010 |
# 9:33 am |
The use of Tasers has become increasingly controversial over the last year, following high-profile cases such as the Tasering of a 10-year-old girl who had refused to take a shower and video of a 72-year-old great-grandmother who was Tasered following a driving offense. Now a federal appeals court in San Francisco has set down new rules for when police officers are allowed to use Tasers. In particular, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Tasers can’t be used simply to force a non-violent person to bend to an officer’s will. The court’s reason was that Taser’s X26 stun gun inflicts more pain than other “non-lethal” options:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/court-dials-back-taser-use-cops-cant-zap-to-force-behavior/
# January 4, 2010 |
# 9:33 am |
The use of Tasers has become increasingly controversial over the last year, following high-profile cases such as the Tasering of a 10-year-old girl who had refused to take a shower and video of a 72-year-old great-grandmother who was Tasered following a driving offense. Now a federal appeals court in San Francisco has set down new rules for when police officers are allowed to use Tasers. In particular, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Tasers can’t be used simply to force a non-violent person to bend to an officer’s will. The court’s reason was that Taser’s X26 stun gun inflicts more pain than other “non-lethal” options:
The physiological effects, the high levels of pain, and foreseeable risk of physical injury lead us to conclude that the X26 and similar devices are a greater intrusion than other non-lethal methods of force we have confronted.
The ruling followed a case in which an officer Tasered a man named Carl Bryan after pulling him over for driving with an unbuckled seat belt. Bryan was verbally abusive, but obviously unarmed and non-violent.
The use of Tasers as compliance tools — means for compelling behavior — has generated a huge amount of protest. For many, the famous “Don’t Tase me, bro” incident, in which student Andrew Meyer was Tasered at a political debate, signaled an alarming new form of oppression. (Others have accused Meyer of setting the whole thing up as a stunt.) Perhaps the distinguishing feature of the Taser, compared with other forms of enforcing compliance, is that it can be used with one finger. Police have always been able enforce their wishes using batons or manual force, but a Taser is a much easier option, and perhaps this makes it more prone to abuse. Whether it’s zapping an unruly student protester, an uncooperative 11-year-old or an abusive driver, the trite observation that power corrupts may have some truth here.
“It sounds like this court is attempting to raise the bar for non-lethal use of force,” retired Los Angeles Police Department Captain Greg Meyer told the Los Angeles Times. The ruling specifies that the Taser X26 and similar devices should only be used where there is “strong government interest [that] compels the employment of such force.” This rules out any situation in which there are alternative means of dealing with the situation. Some may see the new ruling as a great step forward for human rights. But there are reasons to be a little more cautious.
A recent study in the American Journal of Public Health looked at 24,000 cases in which police officers had used force, including Tasers, pepper spray, batons and manual methods. After controlling for factors such as the amount of resistance shown by the suspect, the study found that Taser use reduced the overall risk of injury by 65 percent. In other words, restricting Taser use could triple the number of injuries caused in this sort of incident.
It would be naïve to assume that there will not be any market response to the ruling. We have recently seen a rash of new devices aimed at police forces, including assorted laser dazzlers and pepper ball guns as Taser alternatives. There are also portable pain beams in prospect, both microwave and infrared laser varieties, not to mention various acoustic blasters. The ruling is likely to lead to more experimentation, both technical and in the courts, to find out just what the acceptable level of pain and suffering is and how it can best be delivered.
The ruling is also a potential boost for devices such as the LED Incapacitator, which does not rely on pain but other physiological effects (disorientation, loss of balance and nausea). Funding of more advanced non-lethal devices using assorted electromagnetic effects to paralyze or otherwise disable painlessly may also become more attractive.
Taser International is also likely to respond legally and technically. Having already developed several generations of Taser, the latest versions rely on muscular paralysis to incapacitate a target. The substantial pain is a side effect. A Taser that paralyzes without causing (perceived) pain would be an obvious avenue of research.
The new ruling is likely to have a significant effect on police on the streets. Many commentators will be watching evidence to support claims that it will make things better — or worse.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/court-dials-back-taser-use-cops-cant-zap-to-force-behavior/
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Move Your Money: A New Year's Resolution
Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson
Posted: December 29, 2009 06:02 PM
Too-big-to-fail banks are profiting from bailout dollars and government guarantees, and growing bigger. Tell us which community bank you use, and why.
Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.
The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.
Meanwhile, America's Main Street community banks -- the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of -- are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.
We talked about the outrage of big, bailed-out banks turning around and spending millions of dollars on lobbying to gut or kill financial reform -- including "too big to fail" legislation and regulation of the derivatives that played such a huge part in the meltdown. And as we contrasted that with the efforts of local banks to show that you can both be profitable and have a positive impact on the community, an idea took hold: why don't we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? And what, we asked ourselves, would happen if lots of people around America decided to do the same thing? Our money has been used to make the system worse -- what if we used it to make the system better?
Everyone around the table quickly got excited (granted we are an excitable group), and began tossing out suggestions for how to get this idea circulating.
Eugene, the filmmaker among us, remarked that the contrast between the big banks and the community banks we were talking about was very much like the story in the classic Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, where community banker George Bailey helps the people of Bedford Falls escape the grip of the rapacious and predatory banker Mr. Potter.
It was a lightbulb moment. And, unlike the vast majority of dinner conversations, the excitement over this idea didn't end with dessert. It actually led to something -- thanks in great part to Eugene and his remarkable team, who got to work and, in record time, created a brilliant, powerful, and inspiring video playing off the It's a Wonderful Life concept. Watch it below.
Within a few days, the rest of the pieces fell into place, including an agreement with top financial analysts Chris Whalen and Dennis Santiago, who gave us access to their IRA (Institutional Risk Analytics) database. Using this tool, everyone will be able to plug in their zip code and quickly get a list of the small, solvent Main Street banks operating in their community.
The idea is simple: If enough people who have money in one of the big four banks move it into smaller, more local, more traditional community banks, then collectively we, the people, will have taken a big step toward re-rigging the financial system so it becomes again the productive, stable engine for growth it's meant to be. It's neither Left nor Right -- it's populism at its best. Consider it a withdrawal tax on the big banks for the negative service they provide by consistently ignoring the public interest. It's time for Americans to move their money out of these reckless behemoths. And you don't have to worry, there is zero risk: deposit insurance is just as good at small banks -- and unlike the big banks they don't provide the toxic dividend of derivatives trading in a heads-they-win, tails-we-lose fashion.
Think of the message it will send to Wall Street -- and to the White House. That we have had enough of the high-flying, no-limits-casino banking culture that continues to dominate Wall Street and Capitol Hill. That we won't wait on Washington to act, because we know that Washington has, in fact, been a part of the problem from the start. We simply can't count on Congress to fix things. We have to do it ourselves -- and the big banks are the core of the problem. We need to return to the stable, reliable, people-oriented approach of America's community banks.
So watch Eugene's amazing video, then go to www.moveyourmoney.info to learn more about how easy it is to move your money. And pass the idea on to your friends (help make this video -- and this idea -- go viral!).
JP Morgan/Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America may be "too big to fail" -- but they are not too big to feel the impact of hundreds of thousands of people taking action to change a broken financial and political system. Let them gamble with their own money, not yours. Let's turn big banks into smaller banks. We'll all be better off -- and safer -- as a result.
Make it your New Year's resolution to move your money. We can't think of a better way to start 2010.
WATCH:
Too-big-to-fail banks are profiting from bailout dollars and government guarantees, and growing bigger. Tell us which community bank you use, and why.
UPDATE -- Credit Unions: Some commenters have written us suggesting that we also include credit unions. Like the FDIC for banks and thrifts, the National Credit Union Administration insures the deposits of credit unions and is a good resource for financial data on specific institutions. Credit unions do not disclose financial data in the same way as FDIC-insured banks. As a result, credit unions are not presently included in the IRA ratings database, which covers over 8,000 federally insured banks and thrifts. IRA is developing a method to rate credit unions in a way that is comparable to the IRA bank stress ratings. We'll be updating users of "Move Your Money" on this issue early in 2010.
For more info, go to: www.moveyourmoney.info
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/move-your-money-a-new-yea_b_406022.html?view=print
Posted: December 29, 2009 06:02 PM
Too-big-to-fail banks are profiting from bailout dollars and government guarantees, and growing bigger. Tell us which community bank you use, and why.
Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.
The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.
Meanwhile, America's Main Street community banks -- the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of -- are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.
We talked about the outrage of big, bailed-out banks turning around and spending millions of dollars on lobbying to gut or kill financial reform -- including "too big to fail" legislation and regulation of the derivatives that played such a huge part in the meltdown. And as we contrasted that with the efforts of local banks to show that you can both be profitable and have a positive impact on the community, an idea took hold: why don't we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? And what, we asked ourselves, would happen if lots of people around America decided to do the same thing? Our money has been used to make the system worse -- what if we used it to make the system better?
Everyone around the table quickly got excited (granted we are an excitable group), and began tossing out suggestions for how to get this idea circulating.
Eugene, the filmmaker among us, remarked that the contrast between the big banks and the community banks we were talking about was very much like the story in the classic Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, where community banker George Bailey helps the people of Bedford Falls escape the grip of the rapacious and predatory banker Mr. Potter.
It was a lightbulb moment. And, unlike the vast majority of dinner conversations, the excitement over this idea didn't end with dessert. It actually led to something -- thanks in great part to Eugene and his remarkable team, who got to work and, in record time, created a brilliant, powerful, and inspiring video playing off the It's a Wonderful Life concept. Watch it below.
Within a few days, the rest of the pieces fell into place, including an agreement with top financial analysts Chris Whalen and Dennis Santiago, who gave us access to their IRA (Institutional Risk Analytics) database. Using this tool, everyone will be able to plug in their zip code and quickly get a list of the small, solvent Main Street banks operating in their community.
The idea is simple: If enough people who have money in one of the big four banks move it into smaller, more local, more traditional community banks, then collectively we, the people, will have taken a big step toward re-rigging the financial system so it becomes again the productive, stable engine for growth it's meant to be. It's neither Left nor Right -- it's populism at its best. Consider it a withdrawal tax on the big banks for the negative service they provide by consistently ignoring the public interest. It's time for Americans to move their money out of these reckless behemoths. And you don't have to worry, there is zero risk: deposit insurance is just as good at small banks -- and unlike the big banks they don't provide the toxic dividend of derivatives trading in a heads-they-win, tails-we-lose fashion.
Think of the message it will send to Wall Street -- and to the White House. That we have had enough of the high-flying, no-limits-casino banking culture that continues to dominate Wall Street and Capitol Hill. That we won't wait on Washington to act, because we know that Washington has, in fact, been a part of the problem from the start. We simply can't count on Congress to fix things. We have to do it ourselves -- and the big banks are the core of the problem. We need to return to the stable, reliable, people-oriented approach of America's community banks.
So watch Eugene's amazing video, then go to www.moveyourmoney.info to learn more about how easy it is to move your money. And pass the idea on to your friends (help make this video -- and this idea -- go viral!).
JP Morgan/Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America may be "too big to fail" -- but they are not too big to feel the impact of hundreds of thousands of people taking action to change a broken financial and political system. Let them gamble with their own money, not yours. Let's turn big banks into smaller banks. We'll all be better off -- and safer -- as a result.
Make it your New Year's resolution to move your money. We can't think of a better way to start 2010.
WATCH:
Too-big-to-fail banks are profiting from bailout dollars and government guarantees, and growing bigger. Tell us which community bank you use, and why.
UPDATE -- Credit Unions: Some commenters have written us suggesting that we also include credit unions. Like the FDIC for banks and thrifts, the National Credit Union Administration insures the deposits of credit unions and is a good resource for financial data on specific institutions. Credit unions do not disclose financial data in the same way as FDIC-insured banks. As a result, credit unions are not presently included in the IRA ratings database, which covers over 8,000 federally insured banks and thrifts. IRA is developing a method to rate credit unions in a way that is comparable to the IRA bank stress ratings. We'll be updating users of "Move Your Money" on this issue early in 2010.
For more info, go to: www.moveyourmoney.info
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/move-your-money-a-new-yea_b_406022.html?view=print
Egypt: Rooftops Empower the Poor
Sunday 03 January 2010
by: Cam McGrath | Inter Press Service
Cairo - In one of the poorest and most populous neighborhoods of Cairo, Hussein Soliman and his family live in a small apartment that is a model of clean energy living.
The two solar panels and bio-gas unit on the roof of Soliman's building in Darb El-Ahmar provide hot water and cooking gas to his two-bedroom apartment, reducing his family's carbon footprint and energy costs. The clean energy appliances, made mostly from recycled material, have reduced his household's waste and have meant that "my gas and electricity bills are much less than before," says Soliman. They shaved nearly 50 percent off the utility bills.
Soliman ventured into clean energy in 2008 when he joined Solar CITIES (Connecting Community Catalysts and Integrating Technologies for Industrial Ecology Systems), a development initiative spearheaded by U.S. urban planner Thomas Culhane. The project leverages local experience and innovation to develop cheap and robust clean energy technologies adapted to the rigorous operating environment of Cairo's poorest neighbourhoods.
"There is no 'one size fits all' in development and part of the problem is precisely that so-called 'experts' come in and try to promote products and designs that are inappropriate for the local community," Culhane tells IPS.
Culhane and his German wife, Sybille, have brought on board as innovators the residents of the low-income neighborhoods in which they hope to make the greatest impact. Their designs for solar water heaters and bio-gas digesters have evolved through experimentation, group brainstorming sessions, and "jumping into dumpsters to find materials that might work."
Using recycled materials, Culhane's team was able to put together a solar water heating system for under 500 dollars. The system's solar panels are built from scrap aluminum, glass, old copper pipes and styrofoam insulation. It uses two recycled 200-litre shampoo barrels as tanks, one for storing the water heated by the panels and the other as a backup water supply.
Solar CITIES has built 35 solar water heaters in Egypt since 2007. Most of the systems, including 30 units built with USAID funding, are installed on rooftops in underdeveloped areas where frequent power and water cuts cause commercial systems to break down. Stacked tanks and a float valve, similar to the type used in toilets, allow the water heaters to overcome the water pressure fluctuations that lead to failures.
"It took a lot of experimentation because we had to find placements for cold and hot water input and output that would balance the changing flow rate, opening the float valves at the right time," Culhane says.
After a year of operation, Soliman says the only maintenance his homemade solar water heater has required is a twice-weekly washing of the panels to remove the dust buildup.
"The panels heat the water, which pipes carry down to the kitchen and shower," he explains. "We only need electricity to heat water in the winter, and only if we're using it after midnight."
The bio-gas digester that Soliman assembled on his roof - one of eight built by the Solar CITIES project - converts organic garbage into cooking gas. Moldy bread and table scraps are soaked in water overnight, then poured into a 1,000-litre plastic tank to decompose. A pipe carries the gas to a burner in the kitchen, while a spigot drains the effluent, which Soliman sells as organic fertiliser to upscale garden shops.
"I can use any organic waste from our kitchen to create gas," Soliman explains, while pouring a bucket of organic slurry into the tank's intake pipe. "The digester provides one hour a day of gas in winter, and two hours in summer."
The bio-gas unit's capacity for processing organic waste has taken on added value since the Egyptian government's decision last year to cull the country's pig population. Rotting heaps of kitchen waste, previously fed to hogs, have created a health hazard.
"My garbage man kisses me because I have the cleanest garbage on the block," Soliman boasts.
Moustafa Hussein, a career counselor for a local community development project, joined the Solar CITIES project in 2007 after a chance encounter with Culhane that sold him on the idea. The solar water heater he built on the roof of his apartment in Darb El-Ahmar provided hot water for his family until the dilapidated building collapsed three months ago.
His belief in the project unshaken, Hussein is now building another solar water heater, which he hopes to install on the roof of the temporary government housing where he now lives. He also wants to build a bio-gas unit.
"I'm planning to collect the organic waste from restaurants in the neighborhood to increase my gas output," he says. "I'll give the restaurants plastic bags and they can separate out the organics, and I'll collect the bags at the end of each day."
The biggest obstacle to any project in impoverished neighbourhoods is economics, says Hussein. Most area residents subsist on less than two dollars per day, and credit is difficult to obtain.
"It's hard to convince people here to invest in clean energy," says Hussein. "As a household why should they invest up to 1,000 Egyptian pounds (182 dollars) in bio-gas when it costs just six or seven for a butagas cylinder, which lasts two weeks and is much easier to handle?"
Due to Egypt's heavily subsidised gas and electricity, it may take up to 15 years to recover the costs of a Solar CITIES solar water heater or bio-gas digester. The cost recovery time is expected to fall as the government proceeds with plans to phase out energy subsidies in the coming four to seven years.
Hussein says having people who are part of the community involved gives the Solar CITIES initiative more credibility. But the project's success will ultimately depend on whether it can produce a cheap, durable and efficient model for the community.
"If the people see a good example, they will tell each other about it," he says. "Whether it succeeds of fails, everyone will know the same day."
http://www.truthout.org/topstories/010309jr1?print
by: Cam McGrath | Inter Press Service
Cairo - In one of the poorest and most populous neighborhoods of Cairo, Hussein Soliman and his family live in a small apartment that is a model of clean energy living.
The two solar panels and bio-gas unit on the roof of Soliman's building in Darb El-Ahmar provide hot water and cooking gas to his two-bedroom apartment, reducing his family's carbon footprint and energy costs. The clean energy appliances, made mostly from recycled material, have reduced his household's waste and have meant that "my gas and electricity bills are much less than before," says Soliman. They shaved nearly 50 percent off the utility bills.
Soliman ventured into clean energy in 2008 when he joined Solar CITIES (Connecting Community Catalysts and Integrating Technologies for Industrial Ecology Systems), a development initiative spearheaded by U.S. urban planner Thomas Culhane. The project leverages local experience and innovation to develop cheap and robust clean energy technologies adapted to the rigorous operating environment of Cairo's poorest neighbourhoods.
"There is no 'one size fits all' in development and part of the problem is precisely that so-called 'experts' come in and try to promote products and designs that are inappropriate for the local community," Culhane tells IPS.
Culhane and his German wife, Sybille, have brought on board as innovators the residents of the low-income neighborhoods in which they hope to make the greatest impact. Their designs for solar water heaters and bio-gas digesters have evolved through experimentation, group brainstorming sessions, and "jumping into dumpsters to find materials that might work."
Using recycled materials, Culhane's team was able to put together a solar water heating system for under 500 dollars. The system's solar panels are built from scrap aluminum, glass, old copper pipes and styrofoam insulation. It uses two recycled 200-litre shampoo barrels as tanks, one for storing the water heated by the panels and the other as a backup water supply.
Solar CITIES has built 35 solar water heaters in Egypt since 2007. Most of the systems, including 30 units built with USAID funding, are installed on rooftops in underdeveloped areas where frequent power and water cuts cause commercial systems to break down. Stacked tanks and a float valve, similar to the type used in toilets, allow the water heaters to overcome the water pressure fluctuations that lead to failures.
"It took a lot of experimentation because we had to find placements for cold and hot water input and output that would balance the changing flow rate, opening the float valves at the right time," Culhane says.
After a year of operation, Soliman says the only maintenance his homemade solar water heater has required is a twice-weekly washing of the panels to remove the dust buildup.
"The panels heat the water, which pipes carry down to the kitchen and shower," he explains. "We only need electricity to heat water in the winter, and only if we're using it after midnight."
The bio-gas digester that Soliman assembled on his roof - one of eight built by the Solar CITIES project - converts organic garbage into cooking gas. Moldy bread and table scraps are soaked in water overnight, then poured into a 1,000-litre plastic tank to decompose. A pipe carries the gas to a burner in the kitchen, while a spigot drains the effluent, which Soliman sells as organic fertiliser to upscale garden shops.
"I can use any organic waste from our kitchen to create gas," Soliman explains, while pouring a bucket of organic slurry into the tank's intake pipe. "The digester provides one hour a day of gas in winter, and two hours in summer."
The bio-gas unit's capacity for processing organic waste has taken on added value since the Egyptian government's decision last year to cull the country's pig population. Rotting heaps of kitchen waste, previously fed to hogs, have created a health hazard.
"My garbage man kisses me because I have the cleanest garbage on the block," Soliman boasts.
Moustafa Hussein, a career counselor for a local community development project, joined the Solar CITIES project in 2007 after a chance encounter with Culhane that sold him on the idea. The solar water heater he built on the roof of his apartment in Darb El-Ahmar provided hot water for his family until the dilapidated building collapsed three months ago.
His belief in the project unshaken, Hussein is now building another solar water heater, which he hopes to install on the roof of the temporary government housing where he now lives. He also wants to build a bio-gas unit.
"I'm planning to collect the organic waste from restaurants in the neighborhood to increase my gas output," he says. "I'll give the restaurants plastic bags and they can separate out the organics, and I'll collect the bags at the end of each day."
The biggest obstacle to any project in impoverished neighbourhoods is economics, says Hussein. Most area residents subsist on less than two dollars per day, and credit is difficult to obtain.
"It's hard to convince people here to invest in clean energy," says Hussein. "As a household why should they invest up to 1,000 Egyptian pounds (182 dollars) in bio-gas when it costs just six or seven for a butagas cylinder, which lasts two weeks and is much easier to handle?"
Due to Egypt's heavily subsidised gas and electricity, it may take up to 15 years to recover the costs of a Solar CITIES solar water heater or bio-gas digester. The cost recovery time is expected to fall as the government proceeds with plans to phase out energy subsidies in the coming four to seven years.
Hussein says having people who are part of the community involved gives the Solar CITIES initiative more credibility. But the project's success will ultimately depend on whether it can produce a cheap, durable and efficient model for the community.
"If the people see a good example, they will tell each other about it," he says. "Whether it succeeds of fails, everyone will know the same day."
http://www.truthout.org/topstories/010309jr1?print
Friday, January 1, 2010
Iraqis outraged as Blackwater case thrown out
By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press Writer Rebecca Santana, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD – Iraqis seeking justice for 17 people shot dead at a Baghdad intersection responded with bitterness and outrage Friday at a U.S. judge's decision to throw out a case against a Blackwater security team accused in the killings.
The Iraqi government vowed to pursue the case, which became a source of contention between the U.S. and the Iraqi government. Many Iraqis also held up the judge's decision as proof of what they'd long believed: U.S. security contractors were above the law.
"There is no justice," said Bura Sadoun Ismael, who was wounded by two bullets and shrapnel during the shooting. "I expected the American court would side with the Blackwater security guards who committed a massacre in Nisoor Square."
What happened on Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007, raised Iraqi concerns about their sovereignty because Iraqi officials were powerless to do anything to the Blackwater employees who had immunity from local prosecution. The shootings also highlighted the degree to which the U.S. relied on private contractors during the Iraq conflict.
Blackwater had been hired by the State Department to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said they were ambushed at a busy intersection in western Baghdad, but U.S. prosecutors and many Iraqis said the Blackwater guards let loose an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.
"Investigations conducted by specialized Iraqi authorities confirmed unequivocally that the guards of Blackwater committed the crime of murder and broke the rules by using arms without the existence of any threat obliging them to use force," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement Friday.
He did not elaborate on what steps the government planned to take to pursue the case.
The shootings led the Iraqi government to strip the North Carolina-based company of its license to work in the country, and Blackwater replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services.
Five guards from the company were charged in the case with manslaughter and weapons violations. The charges carried mandatory 30-year prison terms, but a federal judge Friday dismissed all the charges.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina cited repeated government missteps in the investigation, saying that prosecutors built their case on sworn statements that the guards had given with the idea that they would be immune from prosecution.
That explanation held little sway with Iraqis outraged over the case.
Dr. Haitham Ahmed's wife and son were both killed in their car during the shooting.
"The rights of our victims and the rights of the innocent people should not be wasted," he said.
Iraqis have followed the case closely and said the judge's decision demonstrated that the Americans were considered above the law.
"I was not astonished by the verdict because the trial was unreal. They are using double standards and talking about human rights, but they are the first to violate these rights. They are killing innocents deliberately," said Ahmed Jassim, a civil engineer in the southern city of Najaf.
Dozens of Iraqis have filed a separate lawsuit alleging that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings and beatings. That civil case was not affected by Urbina's decision and is still before a Virginia court.
Mohammed al-Kinani, whose son was killed, said he had been invited once to the U.S. by the Justice Department as a witness but said he went two more times after that to follow the case.
"I will not despair," he said.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general in Iraq, said he understood that people would be upset with the decision.
"Of course people are not going to like it, because they believe that these individuals conducted some violence and should be punished for it, but the bottom line is, using the rule of law, the evidence is not there," he said. "I worry about it because clearly there were innocent people killed in this attack."
Of all the private security companies that mushroomed in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion, Blackwater was the most well-known and vilified.
Their employees were at the center of what is considered one of the key moments of the war. A vehicle with four Blackwater employees driving through the western city of Fallujah, a center of the Sunni insurgency, was hit by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in March 2004. Their charred, mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates river.
The bloody incident was one of the key reasons the U.S. military attacked Fallujah in April 2004.
Another Blackwater guard, Andrew Moonen, was accused by the family of a guard for an Iraqi vice president of shooting and killing the guard without provocation on Christmas Eve of 2006 after Moonen got drunk at a party in the Green Zone and then got lost. Moonen's lawyer has described the incident as self-defense.
An October 2007 report by a House of Representatives committee called Blackwater an out-of-control outfit indifferent to Iraqi civilian casualties. Blackwater chairman Erik Prince told the committee that the company acted appropriately at all times.
Were the incident to happen again today, the legal outcome might be much different. The U.S.-Iraqi security pact that took effect Jan. 1, 2009, lifted the immunity that foreign contractors had in Iraq. A British security contractor accused of shooting two colleagues is currently being held in Iraq and could be the first Westerner to face an Iraqi court since the immunity was lifted.
___
Associated Press Writers Katharine Houreld, Saad Abdul-Kadir and Bushra Juhi contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100101/ap_on_bi_ge/ml_iraq_blackwater/print
BAGHDAD – Iraqis seeking justice for 17 people shot dead at a Baghdad intersection responded with bitterness and outrage Friday at a U.S. judge's decision to throw out a case against a Blackwater security team accused in the killings.
The Iraqi government vowed to pursue the case, which became a source of contention between the U.S. and the Iraqi government. Many Iraqis also held up the judge's decision as proof of what they'd long believed: U.S. security contractors were above the law.
"There is no justice," said Bura Sadoun Ismael, who was wounded by two bullets and shrapnel during the shooting. "I expected the American court would side with the Blackwater security guards who committed a massacre in Nisoor Square."
What happened on Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007, raised Iraqi concerns about their sovereignty because Iraqi officials were powerless to do anything to the Blackwater employees who had immunity from local prosecution. The shootings also highlighted the degree to which the U.S. relied on private contractors during the Iraq conflict.
Blackwater had been hired by the State Department to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said they were ambushed at a busy intersection in western Baghdad, but U.S. prosecutors and many Iraqis said the Blackwater guards let loose an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.
"Investigations conducted by specialized Iraqi authorities confirmed unequivocally that the guards of Blackwater committed the crime of murder and broke the rules by using arms without the existence of any threat obliging them to use force," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement Friday.
He did not elaborate on what steps the government planned to take to pursue the case.
The shootings led the Iraqi government to strip the North Carolina-based company of its license to work in the country, and Blackwater replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services.
Five guards from the company were charged in the case with manslaughter and weapons violations. The charges carried mandatory 30-year prison terms, but a federal judge Friday dismissed all the charges.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina cited repeated government missteps in the investigation, saying that prosecutors built their case on sworn statements that the guards had given with the idea that they would be immune from prosecution.
That explanation held little sway with Iraqis outraged over the case.
Dr. Haitham Ahmed's wife and son were both killed in their car during the shooting.
"The rights of our victims and the rights of the innocent people should not be wasted," he said.
Iraqis have followed the case closely and said the judge's decision demonstrated that the Americans were considered above the law.
"I was not astonished by the verdict because the trial was unreal. They are using double standards and talking about human rights, but they are the first to violate these rights. They are killing innocents deliberately," said Ahmed Jassim, a civil engineer in the southern city of Najaf.
Dozens of Iraqis have filed a separate lawsuit alleging that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings and beatings. That civil case was not affected by Urbina's decision and is still before a Virginia court.
Mohammed al-Kinani, whose son was killed, said he had been invited once to the U.S. by the Justice Department as a witness but said he went two more times after that to follow the case.
"I will not despair," he said.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general in Iraq, said he understood that people would be upset with the decision.
"Of course people are not going to like it, because they believe that these individuals conducted some violence and should be punished for it, but the bottom line is, using the rule of law, the evidence is not there," he said. "I worry about it because clearly there were innocent people killed in this attack."
Of all the private security companies that mushroomed in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion, Blackwater was the most well-known and vilified.
Their employees were at the center of what is considered one of the key moments of the war. A vehicle with four Blackwater employees driving through the western city of Fallujah, a center of the Sunni insurgency, was hit by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in March 2004. Their charred, mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates river.
The bloody incident was one of the key reasons the U.S. military attacked Fallujah in April 2004.
Another Blackwater guard, Andrew Moonen, was accused by the family of a guard for an Iraqi vice president of shooting and killing the guard without provocation on Christmas Eve of 2006 after Moonen got drunk at a party in the Green Zone and then got lost. Moonen's lawyer has described the incident as self-defense.
An October 2007 report by a House of Representatives committee called Blackwater an out-of-control outfit indifferent to Iraqi civilian casualties. Blackwater chairman Erik Prince told the committee that the company acted appropriately at all times.
Were the incident to happen again today, the legal outcome might be much different. The U.S.-Iraqi security pact that took effect Jan. 1, 2009, lifted the immunity that foreign contractors had in Iraq. A British security contractor accused of shooting two colleagues is currently being held in Iraq and could be the first Westerner to face an Iraqi court since the immunity was lifted.
___
Associated Press Writers Katharine Houreld, Saad Abdul-Kadir and Bushra Juhi contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100101/ap_on_bi_ge/ml_iraq_blackwater/print
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