Biggest Blast in Baghdad in Three Months Kills 51.

The blast struck a crowded bus terminal near a market in Huriya, a northwest Baghdad district that once had a large population of Sunnis but after the American-led invasion saw horrific ethnic cleansing by Shiite militias and death squads, who killed or drove thousands of Sunnis out.

Survivors and relatives of the victims in the Tuesday blast were enraged and on edge. One man lost 11 relatives, including five female cousins. At a courtyard in front of the Kadhimiya Hospital morgue, people screamed, wept and shrieked. Some cursed the government for allowing the blast to happen while others called on God for revenge.

People fleeing the blast site who were interviewed by a New York Times reporter at a cordon set up around the scene of the attack said there had been two bombs, not the single explosion that Iraqi officials described. Iraqi forces sealed off the area and allowed in only ambulances and police vehicles. One worker at the morgue of nearby Kadhimiya Hospital said that 35 to 40 bodies had been brought to the hospital within the first two hours.

In the meantime, massive construction of bases is going on:

In fact, in the past five-plus years, untold billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction and upgrading of those bases. When asked in the autumn of 2003, only months after Baghdad fell to US troops, Lieutenant Colonel David Holt, the army engineer then "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, proudly indicated that "several billion dollars" had already been invested in those fast-rising bases. Even then, he was suitably amazed, commenting that "the numbers are staggering". Imagine what he might have said, barely two and a half years later, when the US reportedly had 106 bases, mega to micro, all across the country.

By now, billions have evidently gone into single massive mega-bases like the US air base at Balad, about 85 kilometers north of Baghdad. It's a "16-square-mile fortress" (41 square kilometers) housing perhaps 40,000 US troops, contractors, special-ops types and Defense Department employees. As the Washington Post's Tom Ricks, who visited Balad in 2006, pointed out - in a rare piece on one of the US's mega-bases - it's essentially "a small American town smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq". Then, air traffic at the base was already being compared to Chicago's O'Hare International or London's Heathrow - and keep in mind that Balad has been steadily upgraded ever since to support an "air surge" that, unlike the President George W Bush's 2007 "surge" of 30,000 ground troops, has yet to end.

Building ziggurats
While American reporters seldom think these bases - the most essential US facts on the ground in Iraq - are important to report on, the military press regularly writes about them with pride. Such pieces offer a tiny window into just how busily the Pentagon is working to upgrade and improve what are already state-of-the-art garrisons. Here's just a taste of what's been going on recently at Balad, one of the largest bases on foreign soil on the planet, and but one of perhaps five mega-bases in that country:

While our government continues to retaliate against whistleblowers who question billions of dollars meant for Halliburton.

The Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.
The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations.

Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. "They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify," he said in an interview. "Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that."

But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors — after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside contractor to consider KBR’s claims — approved most of the payments he had tried to block.

Two Iraqi MP's call McCain on his lack of comprehension of Iraq's complexities:

A Senate investigation helps confirm that the torture techniques practices were developed at the highest levels and not the work of out of control lower-ranking soldiers.

A senior Pentagon official in July 2002 sought the advice of military psychologists to help design aggressive detainee interrogation techniques that would later be linked with prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq, a Senate investigation has found.

The revelation, part of a probe by the Senate Armed Services Committee that is to be unveiled during hearings Tuesday, provides dramatic new evidence that the use of the aggressive techniques was planned at the top levels of the Bush administration and were not the work of out-of-control, lower-ranking troops.

A person familiar with the contents of the probe said that William Haynes, then the Defense Department's general counsel, asked a special agency within the Pentagon for help devising the techniques. The agency, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, normally designs programs to help captured U.S. military personnel resist interrogation and plot to escape.

Militants found recruits among Guantanamo's wrongly detained:

A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam — thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them — and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.

The radicals were quick to exploit the flaws in the U.S. detention system.

Soldiers, guards or interrogators at the U.S. bases at Bagram or Kandahar in Afghanistan had abused many of the detainees, and they arrived at Guantanamo enraged at America.

The Taliban and al Qaida leaders in the cells around them were ready to preach their firebrand interpretation of Islam and the need to wage jihad, Islamic holy war, against the West. Guantanamo became a school for jihad, complete with a council of elders who issued fatwas, binding religious instructions, to the other detainees.

In a grotesque experiment that even the Washington Times thought was wrong, mentally ill Iraq war veterans are being recruited to take experimental drugs with dangerous side effects:

Elliott, 38, of suburban Washington, D.C., was recruited, at $30 a month, for the Chantix anti-smoking study three years after being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He served a 15-month tour of duty in Iraq from 2003-2004.

Months after he began taking the drug, Elliott suffered a mental breakdown, experiencing a relapse of Iraq combat nightmares he blames on Chantix.

"They never told me that I was going to be suicidal, that I would cease sleeping. They never told me anything except this will help me quit smoking," Elliott told ABC News and The Washington Times.

On the night of February 5th, after consuming a few beers, Elliott says he "snapped" and left his home with a loaded gun.

His fiancee, Tammy, called police and warned, "He's extremely unstable. He has PTSD."

"Do you think that he is going to shoot or attack the police?" the 911 dispatcher asked.

"I can't be certain. I don't know," she said.

Phillipe Sands on how the Bush administration covered up the torture at Guantanamo:

A few weeks ago I published an article in Vanity Fair, The Green Light, and my new book Torture Team: the Rumsfeld Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. These tell an unhappy story: the circumstances in which the US military was allowed to abandon President Lincoln's famous disposition of 1863, that "military necessity does not admit of cruelty". This committee will be familiar with those events: it was a focus of the judicial confirmation hearings for William J Haynes II in July 2006. You will recall that on December 2, 2002, on the recommendation of Mr Haynes, Secretary Rumsfeld authorised the use of new, aggressive techniques of interrogation on Guantanamo Detainee 063. It is now a famous memo, the one in which he wrote: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

My book tells the story of that memo. The circumstances in which it came to be written, relied on and rescinded, and how the techniques migrated. It is a snapshot of the subject of this hearing. To write the book I journeyed around America, meeting with many of the people who were directly involved. I met a great number, and was treated with a respect and hospitality for which I remain very grateful. Over hundreds of hours I conversed or debated with, amongst others, the combatant commander and his lawyer at Guantanamo. From these and many other exchanges I pieced together what I believe to be a truer account than that which has been presented by the administration. In particular, I learned that in the case on which I focused – a snapshot – the aggressive techniques of interrogation selected for use on Detainee 063 came from the top down, not from the bottom up; that they did not produce reliable information, or indeed any meaningful intelligence; and that they were opposed by the FBI.

My account is that of the report recently published by the Inspector General at the Department of Justice (DOJ), although I go further on some points of detail. I learnt that the concerns of FBI personnel at Guantanamo were communicated directly to Mr Haynes' office, in telephone conversations in November and December 2002 between Mr Bowman and, first, Mr Bob Dietz; second, Mr Dan Dell'Orto (who was then Mr Haynes' deputy and is now his acting successor); and third, Mr Haynes himself. Mr Bowman told me it was "a very short conversation , he did not want to talk about it all, he just stiff-armed me". My conclusion, taking into account my conversations with Mr Haynes, is that he was able to adopt that approach because by then – contrary to the impression he sought to create when he appeared before this committee – he had knowledge of the contents of the DOJ legal memos written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo on 1 August 2002.

Australia dithers on withdrawl, contemplates trying Howard:

The withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Iraq is coinciding with a push to have the man responsible for the country’s participation in the "coalition of the willing", former prime minister John Howard, indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes.

"Our soldiers have worked tirelessly to ensure that local people in southern Iraq have the best possible chance to move on from their suffering under Saddam’s regime and as a government we are extremely proud of their service," said Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon in a statement on Jun. 2, the same day that he announced the end of Australia’s combat mission.

Roughly 550 troops are currently in the process of being "extracted" from Iraq, where they had undertaken security operations and the training of Iraqi army personnel in the provinces of Al Muthanna and Dhi Qar since 2005.

The withdrawal -- which is not expected to have major implications for Australia-U.S. ties -- fulfils "a key election promise" of the governing Labour Party, according to Fitzgibbon. Labour opposed the Mar. 2003 invasion while in opposition.

With some 800 Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel to remain in and around Iraq -- at sea, at coalition headquarters, and as the security detachment to Australia’s embassy in Baghdad -- questions have been raised regarding what actually constitutes a withdrawal.

Lou Dobbs falsely claims that Obama reversed stance on visiting Iraq:

On the June 16 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, host Lou Dobbs asserted that "in what appears to be a complete reversal tonight, Senator [Barack] Obama says he's considering a trip now to Iraq." In fact, Obama discussed visiting Iraq as a presidential candidate last November and has reportedly said on several occasions since then that he is considering a trip to Iraq. Moreover, Dobbs did not provide any evidence of a "complete reversal" on Obama's part, which would mean that Obama had previously said he wasn't considering a trip to Iraq.

KBR provided contaminated water to the troops:

When Major Gen. Jerome Johnson appeared under oath before a congressional committee last year, he told enough untruths about KBR's work for the military that the US Army took the unusual step of retracting a portion of his testimony. Now it appears that Johnson also misled members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on another KBR-related matter: its provisioning of potentially contaminated water to US troops in Iraq.

Nearly three months ago Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), chair of the Democratic Policy Committee, sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the subject of Johnson's testimony, but he has yet to received a reply. "This was either an attempt by General Johnson to deliberately deceive the Congress, or a display of negligent disregard for facts," Dorgan wrote in the March 12 letter. "I hope you will review this matter and take appropriate action."

In April 2007, Johnson, then the commanding general of the US Army Sustainment Command, which is responsible for providing food, lodging, and a range of logistical support to the troops, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to answer questions about the Pentagon's primary logistics contract in Iraq. During the hearing, the committee's chairman, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), alleged that the Army had reimbursed KBR, then a Halliburton subsidiary, for the cost of overpriced trailers the company had purchased through a subcontractor.

Why Obama should contrast himself with McCain on Iraq:

Two important recent events should stiffen Obama's spine on Iraq. The first is the stunning (albeit long-delayed) report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, a detailed study of speeches and statements from President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other Administration officials during the run-up to the war, in 2002-03. The report compared their statements with the underlying intelligence on a wide range of issues, from Iraq's nonexistent ties to Al Qaeda, to Saddam Hussein's nonexistent intention to give nonexistent weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, to various details about Iraq's nonexistent chemical and nuclear weapons. It's a damning indictment of the White House's flagrant fabrications to fuel the war.

It doesn't take a brilliant strategist to see that all Obama has to do is detail how McCain, too, greedily inflated the danger. Obama can compare McCain's hyperventilating over the Iraq threat before the war to the record Rockefeller's committee has laid out, then distinguish that from his own record--like his speech at a 2002 antiwar rally, in which he warned that war on Iraq would "fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab world and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda."

The second event is the visit to Washington by a delegation from the Iraqi Parliament--the same Parliament whose election McCain points to as a triumph of purple-fingered democracy. The Iraqi officials gave Congress a letter rejecting the proposed US-Iraq treaty authorizing an extended US occupation of Iraq. The Administration is not only pressuring the Iraqi government to agree to humiliating terms that infringe on its sovereignty; it says it will then push the agreement through without Senate approval. The letter, signed by a majority of Iraq's 275-member Assembly, says: "The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq."

That's a document that Obama ought to be reading from this summer. It would express his clear opposition to the US-Iraq pact Bush wants and challenge McCain over his support for it. Even the Iraqis want us to leave, Obama should say. Then he should ask: So why are we still there, Senator McCain?

Alberto Mora speaks truth to power:

How the militarization of energy policy has failed.

These views, widely shared, then and now, by senior
figures in both major parties, dominate -- or, more
accurately, blanket -- American strategic thinking. And
yet the actual utility of military force as a means for
ensuring energy security has yet to be demonstrated.

Keep in mind that, despite the deployment of up to
160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and the expenditure of
hundreds of billions of dollars, Iraq is a country in
chaos and the Department of Defense (DoD) has been
notoriously unable to prevent the recurring sabotage of
oil pipelines and refineries by various insurgent
groups and militias, not to mention the systematic
looting of government supplies by senior oil officials
supposedly loyal to the U.S.-backed central government
and often guarded (at great personal risk) by American
soldiers. Five years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is
only producing about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day
-- about the same amount as in the worst days of Saddam
Hussein back in 2001. Moreover, the New York Times
reports, "at least one-third, and possibly much more,
of the fuel from Iraq's largest refinery... is [being]
diverted to the black market, according to American
military officials." Is this really conducive to
American energy security?

The same disappointing results have been noted in other
countries where U.S.-backed militaries have attempted
to protect vulnerable oil facilities. In Nigeria, for
example, increased efforts by American-equipped
government forces to crush rebels in the oil-rich Niger
Delta region have merely inflamed the insurgency, while
actually lowering national oil output. Meanwhile, the
Nigerian military, like the Iraqi government (and
assorted militias), has been accused of pilfering
billions of dollars' worth of crude oil and selling it
on the black market.

It is time for a change.

The change cannot come soon enough.

America cannot afford a third term for Bush.