By Rolling Stone Magazine
Issue 1034
08/27/07 " Rolling Stone" --- Aug 23, 2007 -- - How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins -- he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.
You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress -- until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.
Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you've been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good -- four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.
A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that's supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterfucks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in shit and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.
You've done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: "We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate," they write, adding that "the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles" and that "during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member's shirt." The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.
When Congress gets wind of the fias co, a few members on the House Oversight Committee demand a hearing. To placate them, your company decides to send you to the Hill -- after all, you're a former Air Force major general who used to oversee this kind of contracting operation for the government. So you take your twenty-minute ride in from the suburbs, sit down before the learned gentlemen of the committee and promptly get asked by an irritatingly eager Maryland congressman named Chris Van Hollen how you managed to spend $72 million on a pile of shit.
You blink. Fuck if you know. "I have some conjecture, but that's all it would be" is your deadpan answer.
The room twitters in amazement. It's hard not to applaud the balls of a man who walks into Congress short $72 million in taxpayer money and offers to guess where it all might have gone.
Next thing you know, the congressman is asking you about your company's compensation. Touchy subject -- you've got a "cost-plus" contract, which means you're guaranteed a base-line profit of three percent of your total costs on the deal. The more you spend, the more you make -- and you certainly spent a hell of a lot. But before this milk-faced congressman can even think about suggesting that you give these millions back, you've got to cut him off. "So you won't voluntarily look at this," Van Hollen is mumbling, "and say, given what has happened in this project . . . "
"No, sir, I will not," you snap.
". . . 'We will return the profits.' . . ."
"No, sir, I will not," you repeat.
Your testimony over, you wait out the rest of the hearing, go home, take a bath in one of your four bathrooms, jump into bed with the little woman. . . . A year later, Iraq is still in flames, and your president's administration is safely focused on reclaiming $485 million in aid money from a bunch of toothless black survivors of Hurricane Katrina. But the house you bought for $775K is now assessed at $929,974, and you're sure as hell not giving it back to anyone.
"Yeah, I don't know what I expected him to say," Van Hollen says now about the way Robbins responded to being asked to give the money back. "It just shows the contempt they have for us, for the taxpayer, for everything."
Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.
And just maybe, reviewing this appalling history of invoicing orgies and million-dollar boondoggles, it's not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over -- not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too, with the state police working for Corrections Corporation of America, and DHL with the contract to deliver every Christmas card. And why not? What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc racy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure -- American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.
It was an awful idea, perhaps the worst America has ever tried on foreign soil. But if you were in on it, it was great work while it lasted. Since time immemorial, the distribution of government largesse had followed a staid, paper-laden procedure in which the federal government would post the details of a contract in periodicals like Commerce Business Daily or, more recently, on the FedBizOpps Web site. Competitive bids were solicited and contracts were awarded in accordance with the labyrinthine print of the U.S. Code, a straightforward system that worked well enough before the Bush years that, as one lawyer puts it, you could "count the number of cases of criminal fraud on the fingers of one hand."
There were exceptions to the rule, of course -- emergencies that required immediate awards, contracts where there was only one available source of materials or labor, classified deals that involved national security. What no one knew at the beginning of the war was that the Bush administration had essentially decided to treat the entire Iraqi theater as an exception to the rules. All you had to do was get to Iraq and the game was on.
But getting there wasn't easy. To travel to Iraq, would-be contractors needed permission from the Bush administration, which was far from blind in its appraisal of applicants. In a much-ballyhooed example of favoritism, the White House originally installed a clown named Jim O'Beirne at the relevant evaluation desk in the Department of Defense. O'Beirne proved to be a classic Bush villain, a moron's moron who judged applicants not on their Arabic skills or their relevant expertise but on their Republican bona fides; he sent a twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance to manage the reopening of the Iraqi stock exchange, and appointed a recent graduate of an evangelical university for home-schooled kids who had no accounting experience to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget. James K. Haveman, who had served as Michigan's community-health director under a GOP governor, was put in charge of rehabilitating Iraq's health-care system and decided that what this war-ravaged, malnourished, sanitation-deficient country most urgently needed was . . . an anti-smoking campaign.
Town-selectmen types like Haveman weren't the only people who got passes to enter Iraq in the first few years. The administration also greenlighted brash, modern-day forty-niners like Scott Custer and Mike Battles, a pair of ex-Army officers and bottom-rank Republican pols (Battles had run for Congress in Rhode Island and had been a Fox News commentator) who had decided to form a security company called Custer Battles and make it big in Iraq. "Battles knew some people from his congres sional run, and that's how they got there," says Alan Grayson, an attorney who led a whistle-blower lawsuit against the pair for defrauding the government.
Before coming to Iraq, Custer Battles hadn't done even a million dollars in business. The company's own Web site brags that Battles had to borrow cab fare from Jordan to Iraq and arrived in Baghdad with less than $500 in his pocket. But he had good timing, arriving just as a security contract for Baghdad International Airport was being "put up" for bid. The company site raves that Custer spent "three sleepless nights" penning an offer that impressed the CPA enough to hand the partners $2 million in cash, which Battles promptly stuffed into a duffel bag and drove to deposit in a Lebanese bank.
Custer Battles had lucked into a sort of Willy Wonka's paradise for contractors, where a small pool of Republican-friendly businessmen would basically hang around the Green Zone waiting for a contracting agency to come up with a work order. In the early days of the war, the idea of "competition" was a farce, with deals handed out so quickly that there was no possibility of making rational or fairly priced estimates. According to those familiar with the process, contracting agencies would request phony "bids" from several contractors, even though the winner had been picked in advance. "The losers would play ball because they knew that eventually it would be their turn to be the winner," says Grayson.
To make such deals legal, someone in the military would simply sign a piece of paper invoking an exception. "I know one guy whose business was buying weapons on the black market for contractors," says Pratap Chatterjee, a writer who has spent months in the Mideast researching a forthcoming book on Iraq contracts. "It's illegal -- but he got military people to sign papers allowing him to do it."
The system not only had the advantage of eliminating red tape in a war zone, it also encouraged the "entrepreneurship" of patriots like Custer and Battles, who went from bumming cab fare to doing $100 million in government contracts practically overnight. And what business they did! The bid that Custer claimed to have spent "three sleepless nights" putting together was later described by Col. Richard Ballard, then the inspector general of the Army, as looking "like something that you and I would write over a bottle of vodka, complete with all the spelling and syntax errors and annexes to be filled in later." The two simply "presented it the next day and then got awarded about a $15 million contract."
The deal charged Custer Battles with the responsibility to perform airport security for civilian flights. But there were never any civilian flights into Baghdad's airport during the life of their contract, so the CPA gave them a job managing an airport checkpoint, which they failed miserably. They were also given scads of money to buy expensive X-ray equipment and set up an advanced canine bomb-sniffing system, but they never bought the equipment. As for the dog, Ballard reported, "I eventually saw one dog. The dog did not appear to be a certified, trained dog." When the dog was brought to the checkpoint, he added, it would lie down and "refuse to sniff the vehicles" -- as outstanding a metaphor for U.S. contractor performance in Iraq as has yet been produced.
Like most contractors, Custer Battles was on a cost-plus arrangement, which means its profits were guaranteed to rise with its spending. But according to testimony by officials and former employees, the partners also charged the government millions by making out phony invoices to shell companies they controlled. In another stroke of genius, they found a bunch of abandoned Iraqi Airways forklifts on airport property, repainted them to disguise the company markings and billed them to U.S. tax payers as new equipment. Every time they scratched their asses, they earned; there was so much money around for contractors, officials literally used $100,000 wads of cash as toys. "Yes -- $100 bills in plastic wrap," Frank Willis, a former CPA official, acknowledged in Senate testimony about Custer Battles. "We played football with the plastic-wrapped bricks for a little while."
The Custer Battles show only ended when the pair left a spreadsheet behind after a meeting with CPA officials -- a spreadsheet that scrupulously detailed the pair's phony invoicing. "It was the worst case of fraud I've ever seen, hands down," says Grayson. "But it's also got to be the first instance in history of a defendant leaving behind a spreadsheet full of evidence of the crime."
But even being the clumsiest war profit eers of all time was not enough to bring swift justice upon the heads of Mr. Custer and Mr. Battles -- and this is where the story of America's reconstruction effort gets really interesting. The Bush administration not only refused to prosecute the pair -- it actually tried to stop a lawsuit filed against the contractors by whistle-blowers hoping to recover the stolen money. The administration argued that Custer Battles could not be found guilty of defrauding the U.S. government because the CPA was not part of the U.S. government. When the lawsuit went forward despite the administration's objections, Custer and Battles mounted a defense that recalled Nuremberg and Lt. Calley, arguing that they could not be guilty of theft since it was done with the government's approval.
The jury disagreed, finding Custer Battles guilty of ripping off taxpayers. But the verdict was set aside by T.S. Ellis III, a federal judge who cited the administration's "the CPA is not us" argument. The very fact that private contractors, aided by the government itself, could evade conviction for what even Ellis, a Reagan-appointed judge, called "significant" evidence of fraud, says everything you need to know about the true nature of the war we are fighting in Iraq. Is it really possible to bilk American taxpayers for repainted forklifts stolen from Iraqi Airways and claim that you were just following orders? It is, when your commander in chief is George W. Bush. font size="3">There isn't a brazen, two -bit, purse-snatching money caper you can think of that didn't happen at least 10,000 times with your tax dollars in Iraq. At the very outset of the occupation, when L. Paul Bremer was installed as head of the CPA, one of his first brilliant ideas for managing the country was to have $12 billion in cash flown into Baghdad on huge wooden pallets and stored in palaces and government buildings. To pay contractors, he'd have agents go to the various stashes -- a pile of $200 million in one of Saddam's former palaces was watched by a single soldier, who left the key to the vault in a backpack on his desk when he went out to lunch -- withdraw the money, then crisscross the country to pay the bills. When desperate auditors later tried to trace the paths of the money, one agent could account for only $6,306,836 of some $23 million he'd withdrawn. Bremer's office "acknowledged not having any supporting documentation" for $25 million given to a different agent. A ministry that claimed to have paid 8,206 guards was able to document payouts to only 602. An agent who was told by auditors that he still owed $1,878,870 magically produced exactly that amount, which, as the auditors dryly noted, "suggests that the agent had a reserve of cash."
In short, some $8.8 billion of the $12 billion proved impossible to find. "Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?" asked Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee. "But that's exactly what our government did."
Because contractors were paid on cost-plus arrangements, they had a powerful incentive to spend to the hilt. The undisputed master of milking the system is KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary so ubiquitous in Iraq that soldiers even encounter its customer-survey sheets in outhouses. The company has been exposed by whistle-blowers in numerous Senate hearings for everything from double-charging taxpayers for $617,000 worth of sodas to overcharging the government 600 percent for fuel shipments. When things went wrong, KBR simply scrapped expensive gear: The company dumped 50,000 pounds of nails in the desert because they were too short, and left the Army no choice but to set fire to a supply truck that had a flat tire. "They did not have the proper wrench to change the tire," an Iraq vet named Richard Murphy told investigators, "so the decision was made to torch the truck."
In perhaps the ultimate example of military capitalism, KBR reportedly ran convoys of empty trucks back and forth across the insurgent-laden desert, pointlessly risking the lives of soldiers and drivers so the company could charge the taxpayer for its phantom deliveries. Truckers for KBR, knowing full well that the trips were bullshit, derisively referred to their cargo as "sailboat fuel."
In Fallujah, where the company was paid based on how many soldiers used the base rec center, KBR supervisors ordered employees to juke the head count by taking an hourly tally of every soldier in the facility. "They were counting the same soldier five, six, seven times," says Linda Warren, a former postal worker who was employed by KBR in Fallujah. "I was even directed to count every empty bottle of water left behind in the facility as though they were troops who had been there."
Yet for all the money KBR charged taxpayers for the rec center, it didn't provide much in the way of services to the soldiers engaged in the heaviest fighting of the war. When Warren ordered a karaoke machine, the company gave her a cardboard box stuffed with jumbled-up electronic components. "We had to borrow laptops from the troops to set up a music night," says Warren, who had a son serving in Fallujah at the time. "These boys needed R&R more than anything, but the company wouldn't spend a dime." (KBR refused requests for an interview, but has denied that it inflated troop counts or committed other wrongdoing in Iraq.)
One of the most dependable methods for burning taxpayer funds was simply to do nothing. After securing a contract in Iraq, companies would mobilize their teams, rush them into the war zone and then wait, citing the security situation or delayed paperwork -- all the while charging the government for housing, meals and other expenses. Last year, a government audit of twelve major contracts awarded to KBR, Parsons and other companies found that idle time often accounted for more than half of a contract's total costs. In one deal awarded to KBR, the company's "indirect" administrative costs were $52.7 million, and its direct costs -- the costs associated with the actual job -- were only $13.4 million.
Companies jacked up the costs even higher by hiring out layers of subcontractors to do their work for them. In some cases, each subcontractor had its own cost-plus arrangement. "We called those 'cascading contracts,' " says Rep. Van Hollen. "Each subcontractor piles on a lot of costs, and eventually they would snowball into a huge payout. It was a green light for waste."
In March 2004, Parsons -- the firm represented by Earnest O. Robbins -- was given nearly $1 million to build a fire station in Ainkawa, a small Christian community in one of the safest parts of Iraq. Parsons subcontracted the design to a British company called TPS Consult and the construction to a California firm called Innovative Technical Solutions Inc. ITSI, in turn, hired an Iraqi outfit called Zozik to do the actual labor.
A year and a half later, government auditors visited the site and found that the fire station was less than half finished. What little had been built was marred by serious design flaws, including concrete columns so shoddily constructed that they were riddled with holes that looked like "honeycombing." But getting the fuck-ups fixed proved problematic. The auditors "made a request that was sent to the Army Corps, which delivered it to Parsons, who then asked ITSI, which asked TPS Consult to check on the work done by Zozik," writes Chatterjee, who describes the mess in his forthcoming book, Baghdad Bonanza. The multiple layers of subcontractors made it almost impossible to resolve the issue -- and every day the delays dragged on meant more money for the companies.
Sometimes the government simply handed out money to companies it made up out of thin air. In 2006, the Army Corps of Engineers found itself unable to award contracts by the September deadline imposed by Congress, meaning it would have to "de-obligate" the money and return it to the government. Rather than suffer that awful fate, the corps obligated $362 million -- spread out over ninety-six different contracts -- to "Dummy Vendor." In their report on the mess, auditors noted that money to nobody "does not constitute proper obligations."
But even obligating money to no one was better than what sometimes happened in Iraq: handing out U.S. funds to the enemy. Since the beginning of the war, rumors have abounded about contractors paying protection money to insurgents to avoid attacks. No less an authority than Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, claimed that such payoffs are a "significant source" of income for Al Qaeda. Moreover, when things go missing in Iraq -- like bricks of $100 bills, or weapons, or trucks -- it is a fair assumption that some of the wayward booty ends up in the wrong hands. In July, a federal audit found that 190,000 weapons are missing in Iraq -- nearly one out of every three arms supplied by the United States. "These weapons almost certainly ended up on the black market, where they are repurchased by insurgents," says Chatterjee. font size="3">For all the creative ways that contractors came up with to waste, mismanage and steal public money in Iraq, the standard remained good old-fashioned fucking up. Take the case of the Basra Children's Hospital, a much-ballyhooed "do-gooder" project championed by Laura Bush and Condi Rice. This was exactly the sort of grandstanding, self-serving, indulgent and ultimately useless project that tended to get the go-ahead under reconstruction. Like the expensive telephone-based disease-notification database approved for use in hospitals without telephones, or the natural-gas-powered electricity turbines green lighted for installation in a country without ready sources of natural gas, the Basra Children's Hospital was a state-of-the-art medical facility set to be built in a town without safe drinking water. "Why build a hospital for kids, when the kids have no clean water?" said Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Republican from Arizona.
Bechtel was given $50 million to build the hospital -- but a year later, with the price tag soaring to $169 million, the company was pulled off the project without a single bed being ready for use. The government was unfazed: Bechtel, explained USAID spokesman David Snider, was "under a 'term contract,' which means their job is over when their money ends."
Their job is over when their money ends. When I call Snider to clarify this amazing statement, he declines to discuss the matter further. But if you look over the history of the Iraqi reconstruction effort, you will find versions of this excuse every where. When Custer Battles was caught delivering broken trucks to the Army, a military official says the company told him, "We were only told we had to deliver the trucks. The contract doesn't say they had to work."
Such excuses speak to a monstrous vacuum of patriotism; it would be hard to imagine contractors being so blithely disinterested in results during World War II, where every wasted dollar might mean another American boy dead from gangrene in the Ardennes. But the rampant waste of money and resources also suggests a widespread contempt for the ostensible "purpose" of our presence in Iraq. Asked to cast a vote for the war effort, contractors responded by swiping everything they could get their hands on -- and the administration's acquiescence in their thievery suggests that it, too, saw making a buck as the true mission of the war. Two witnesses scheduled to testify before Congress against Custer Battles ultimately declined not only because they had received death threats but because they, too, were contractors and feared that they would be shut out of future government deals. To repeat: Witnesses were afraid to testify in an effort to recover government funds because they feared reprisal from the government.
The Bush administration's lack of interest in recovering stolen funds is one of the great scandals of the war. The White House has failed to litigate a single case against a contractor under the False Claims Act and has not sued anybody for breach of contract. It even declined to join in a lawsuit filed by whistle-blowers who are accusing KBR of improper invoicing in Fallujah. "For all the Bush administration claims to do in the war against terrorism," Grayson said in congressional testimony, "it is a no-show in the war against war profiteers." In nearly five years of some of the worst graft and looting in American history, the administration has recovered less than $6 million.
What's more, when anyone in the government tried to question what contractors were up to with taxpayer money, they were immediately blackballed and treated like an enemy. Take the case of Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, an outspoken and energetic woman of sixty-three who served as the chief procurement executive for the Army Corps of Engineers. In her position, Greenhouse was responsible for signing off on sole-source contracts -- those awarded without competitive bids and thus most prone to corruption. Long before Iraq, she had begun to notice favoritism in the awarding of contracts to KBR, which was careful to recruit executives who had served in the military. "That was why I joined the corps: to stop this kind of clubby contracting," she says.
A few weeks before the Iraq War started, Greenhouse was asked to sign off on the contract to restore Iraqi oil. The deal, she noticed, was suspicious on a number of fronts. For one thing, the company that had designed the project, KBR, was the same company that was being awarded the contract -- a highly unusual and improper situation. For another, the corps wanted to award a massive "emergency" contract to KBR with no competition for up to five years, which Greenhouse thought was crazy. Who ever heard of a five-year emergency? After auditing the deal, the Pentagon found that KBR had overcharged the government $61 million for fuel. "The abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR," Greenhouse testified before the Senate, "represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."
And how did her superiors in the Pentagon respond to the wrongdoing highlighted by their own chief procurement officer? First they gave KBR a waiver for the overbilling, blaming the problem on an Iraqi subcontractor. Then they dealt with Greenhouse by demoting her and cutting her salary, citing a negative performance review. The retaliation sent a clear message to any would-be whistle-blowers. "It puts a chill on you," Greenhouse says. "People are scared stiff."
They were scared stiff in Iraq, too, and for good reason. When civilian employees complained about looting or other improprieties, contractors sometimes threatened to throw them outside the gates of their bases -- a life-threatening situation for any American. Robert Isakson, a former FBI agent who worked for Custer Battles, says that when he refused to go along with one scam involving a dummy company in Lebanon, he was detained by company security guards, who seized his ID badge and barred him from the base in Baghdad. He eventually had to make a hazardous, Papillon-esque journey across hostile Iraq to Jordan just to survive. (Custer Battles denies the charge.)
James Garrison, who worked at a KBR ice plant in Al Asad, recalls an incident when Indian employees threatened to go on strike: "They pulled a bus up, got them in there and said, 'We'll ship you outside the front gate if you want to go on strike.' " Not surprisingly, the workers changed their mind about a work stoppage.
You know the old adage: You don't pay a hooker to spend the night, you pay her to leave in the morning. That maxim also applies to civilian workers in Iraq. A soldier is a citizen with rights, a man to be treated with honor and respect as a protector of us all; if one loses a limb, you've got to take care of him, in theory for his whole life. But a mercenary is just another piece of equipment you can bill to the taxpayer: If one is hurt on the job, you can just throw it away and buy another one. Today there are more civilians working for private contractors in Iraq than there are troops on the ground. The totality of the thievery in Iraq is such that even the honor of patriotic service has been stolen -- we've replaced soldiers and heroes with disposable commodities, men we expected to give us a big bang for a buck and to never call us again.
Russell Skoug, who worked as a refrigeration technician for a contractor called Wolfpack, found that out the hard way. These days Skoug is back home in Diboll, Texas, and he doesn't move around much; he considers it a big accomplishment if he can make it to his mailbox and back once a day. "I'm doing a lot if I can do that much," he says, laughing a little.
A year ago, on September 11th, Skoug was working for Wolfpack at a base in Heet, Iraq. It was a convoy day -- trucks braved the trip in and out of the base every third day -- and Skoug had a generator he needed to fix. So he agreed to make a run to Al Asad. "If I would've realized that it was September 11th, I never would've went out," he says. It would turn out to be the last run he would ever make in Iraq.
An Air Force vet, Skoug had come to Iraq as a civilian to repair refrigeration units and air conditioners for a KBR subcontractor called LSI. But when he arrived, he discovered that LSI had hired him to fix Humvees. "I didn't know jack-squat about Humvees," he says. "I could maybe change the oil, that was it." (Asked about Skoug's additional assignment, KBR boasted: "Part of the reason for our success is our ability to employ individuals with multiple capabilities.")
Working with him on his crew were two other refrigeration technicians, neither of whom knew anything about fixing Humvees. Since Skoug and most of his co-workers had worked for KBR in Afghanistan, they were familiar with cost-plus contracting. The buzz around the base was that cost-plus was the reason LSI was hiring air-conditioning guys to work on unfamiliar military equipment at a cost to the taxpayer of $80,000 a year. "They was doing the same thing as KBR: just filling the body count," says Skoug.
Thanks to low troop levels, all the military repair guys had been pressed into service to fight the war, so Skoug was forced to sit in the military storeroom on the base and study vehicle manuals that, as a civilian, he wasn't allowed to check out of the building. That was how America fought terrorism in Iraq: It hired civilian air-conditioning techs to fix Humvees using the instruction manual while the real Humvee repairmen, earning a third of what the helpless civilians were paid, drove around in circles outside the wire waiting to get blown up by insurgents.
After much pleading and cajoling, Skoug managed to convince LSI to let him repair some refrigeration units. But it turned out that the company didn't have any tools for the job. "They gave me a screwdriver and a Leatherman, and that's it," he recalls. "We didn't even have freon gauges." When Skoug managed to scrounge and cannibalize parts to get the job done, he impressed the executives at Wolfpack enough to hire him away from LSI for $10,000 a month. The job required Skoug, who had been given no formal security training, to travel regularly on dangerous convoys between bases. Wolfpack issued him an armored vehicle, a Yugoslav-made AK-47 and a handgun, and wished him luck.
For nearly a year, Skoug did the job, trying at each stop to overcome the hostility that many troops felt for civilian contractors who surfed the Internet and played pool and watched movies all day for big dollars while soldiers carrying seventy-pound packs of gear labored in huts with broken air conditioning the civilian techs couldn't be bothered to repair. "They'd have the easiest thing to fix, and they wouldn't do it," Skoug says. "They'd write that they'd fixed it or that they just needed a part and then just leave it." At Haditha Dam, Skoug witnessed a near-brawl after some Marines, trying to get some sleep after returning from patrol, couldn't get a group of "KBR dudes" to turn down the television in a common area late at night.
Toward the end of Skoug's stay, insurgent activity in his area increased to the point where the soldiers leading his convoys would often drive only at night and without lights. Skoug and his co-workers asked Wolfpack to provide them with night-vision goggles that cost as little as $1,000 a pair, but the company refused. "Their attitude was, we don't need 'em and we're not buying 'em," says Thomas Lane, a Wolfpack employee who served as Skoug's security man on the night of September 11th.
On that evening, the soldiers leading the convoy refused to let Skoug drive his own vehicle back to Heet without night-vision goggles. So a soldier took Skoug's car, and Skoug was forced to be a passenger in a military vehicle. "We start out the front gate, and I find out that the truck that I was in was the frickin' lead truck," he recalls. "And I'm going, 'Oh, great.' "
The bomb went off about a half-hour later, ripping through the truck floor and destroying four inches of Skoug's left femur. "The windshield looked like there was a film on it," he says. "I find out later it was a film -- it was blood and meat and stuff all over the windshield on the inside." Skoug was loaded into the back of a Humvee, his legs hanging out, and evacuated to an Army hospital in Germany before being airlifted back to the States.
When Skoug arrived, it was his wife, Linda, who had to handle all his affairs. She was the one who arranged for an air ambulance to take him to Houston, where she had persuaded an orthopedic hospital to admit him as a patient. She had to do this because almost right from the start, Wolfpack washed its hands of Russell Skoug. The insurance policy he had been given turned out to be useless -- the company denied all coverage, beginning with a $72,597 bill for his stay in the German hospital. Despite assurances from Wolfpack chief Mark Atwood that he would cover all Skoug's expenses, neither he nor the insurance company would pay for the $16,000 trip in the air ambulance. Nobody paid for the operations Skoug had in Houston -- as many as three a day, every day for a month. And nobody paid for his subsequent rehab stint in another Houston hospital -- despite the fact that military law requires every company contracting with the government to fully insure all of its employees in the war zone.
Now that he's out, sitting at home on his couch with only partial use of his left hand and left leg, Skoug has a stack of unpaid medical bills almost three inches tall. As he speaks, he keeps fidgeting. He apologizes, explaining that he can't sit still for very long. Why? Because Skoug can no longer afford pain medication. "I take ibuprofen sometimes," he says, "but basically I just grin and bear it."
And here's where this story turns into something perfectly symbolic of everything that the war in Iraq stands for, a window into the soul of for-profit contractors who not only left behind a breathtaking legacy of fraud, waste and corruption but, through their calculating, greed-fueled hijacking of this generation's broadest and most far-reaching foreign-policy initiative, pushed America into previously unknown realms of moral insanity. When I contact Mark Atwood and ask him to explain how he could watch one of his best employees get blown up and crippled for life, and then cut him loose with debts totaling well over half a million dollars, Atwood, safe in his office in Kuwait City and contentedly suckling at the taxpayer teat, decides that answering this one question is just too much to ask of poor old him.
"Right now," Atwood says, "I just want some peace."
When Linda Skoug petitioned Atwood for help, he refused, pointing out that he had kept his now-useless employee on the payroll for four whole months before firing him. "After I have put forth to help you all out," he wrote in an e-mail, "you are going to get on me for your husband not having insurance." He even implied that Skoug had brought the accident upon himself by allowing the Army to place him at the head of the convoy: "He was not even suppose [sic] to be in the lead vehicle to begin with."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of the Iraq War in a nutshell. In the history of balls, the world has never seen anything like the private contractors George W. Bush summoned to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Collectively, they are the final, polished result of 231 years of natural selection in the crucible of American capitalism: a bureaucrat class capable of stealing the same dollar twice -- once from the taxpayer and once from a veteran in a wheelchair.
The explanations that contractors offer for all the missing dollars, all the myriad ways they looted the treasury and screwed guys like Russell Skoug, rank among the most diabolical, shameless, tongue-twisting bullshit in history. Going back over the various congres sional hearings and trying to decipher the corporate responses to the mountains of thefts and fuck-ups is a thrilling intellectual journey, not unlike tackling the Pharaonic hieroglyphs or the mating chatter of colobus monkeys. Standing before Congress, contractors and the officials who are supposed to monitor them say things like "As long as we have the undefinitized contract issue that we have . . . we will continue to see the same kinds of sustension rates" (translation: We can't get back any of the fucking money) and "The need for to-fitnessization was viewed as voluntary, and that was inaccurate as the general counsel to the Army observed in a June opinion" (translation: The contractor wasn't aware that he was required to keep costs down) and "If we don't know where we're trying to go and don't have measures, then we won't know how much longer it's going to take us to get there" (translation: There never was a plan in place, other than to let contractors rip off every dollar they could).
According to the most reliable estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America's contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches. For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success? There's no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don't pay the bills.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Former Reagan aide: 'Brownshirt' Bush among top 'mass murderers of all time'
President Bush's apparent plans for a preemptive nuclear strike on Iran will only add to the civilian death toll as a result of US intervention that has placed the president "high on the list of mass murders of all time," a former aide in President Ronald Reagan's administration known for strident anti-Bush rhetoric said Friday.
"Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening 'the security of nations everywhere' and of the Iraqi resistance for 'a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power,'" writes Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury. "Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration."
Roberts, who has emerged as a fierce critic of Bush's war policies, accused the president of ignoring habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justifying torture and demonizing critics as anti-American.
"Bush ... is responsible, according to Information Clearing House, for over one million deaths of Iraqi civilians, which puts Bush high on the list of mass murderers of all time," Roberts writes in a column published Friday on antiwar.com. "The vast majority of 'kills' by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians."
A report last month found that US and NATO troops killed more Afghan civilians in the first half of this year than the Taliban.
Roberts said the media is too concerned with stories like Sen. Larry Craig's (R-ID) arrest for allegedly soliciting sex, and Miss Teen South Carolina's inability to answer a question.
"The war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of the fact," Roberts writes. "Lacking US troops with which to invade Iran, the Bush administration has decided to bomb Iran 'back into the stone age.'"
Roberts cites a recent RAW STORY report that the US is preparing a "massive" military strike against Iran to support his assertions.
"Encouraged by the indifference of both the American media and Christian churches to the massive casualties inflicted on Iraqi civilians, the Bush administration will not be deterred by the prospect of its air attacks inflicting massive casualties on Iranian civilians. ... Clearly, turning the Muslim Middle East into a wasteland is the Bush policy," Roberts writes. "For Bush, civilian casualties are a non-issue. Hegemony uber alles."
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
"Bush is too self-righteous to see the dark humor in his denunciations of Iran for threatening 'the security of nations everywhere' and of the Iraqi resistance for 'a vision that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women, and children in the pursuit of political power,'" writes Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury. "Those are precisely the words that most of the world applies to Bush and his Brownshirt administration."
Roberts, who has emerged as a fierce critic of Bush's war policies, accused the president of ignoring habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions, justifying torture and demonizing critics as anti-American.
"Bush ... is responsible, according to Information Clearing House, for over one million deaths of Iraqi civilians, which puts Bush high on the list of mass murderers of all time," Roberts writes in a column published Friday on antiwar.com. "The vast majority of 'kills' by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan are civilians."
A report last month found that US and NATO troops killed more Afghan civilians in the first half of this year than the Taliban.
Roberts said the media is too concerned with stories like Sen. Larry Craig's (R-ID) arrest for allegedly soliciting sex, and Miss Teen South Carolina's inability to answer a question.
"The war criminal is in the living room, and no official notice is taken of the fact," Roberts writes. "Lacking US troops with which to invade Iran, the Bush administration has decided to bomb Iran 'back into the stone age.'"
Roberts cites a recent RAW STORY report that the US is preparing a "massive" military strike against Iran to support his assertions.
"Encouraged by the indifference of both the American media and Christian churches to the massive casualties inflicted on Iraqi civilians, the Bush administration will not be deterred by the prospect of its air attacks inflicting massive casualties on Iranian civilians. ... Clearly, turning the Muslim Middle East into a wasteland is the Bush policy," Roberts writes. "For Bush, civilian casualties are a non-issue. Hegemony uber alles."
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
Saturday, September 01, 2007
El enredo de los dólares por Eva Golinger
Viernes, 31 de agosto de 2007
El enredo de los dólares
¡Qué escándalo ha causado la revelación sobre la subversión e injerencia del gobierno estadounidense en los medios de comunicación en Venezuela! Algunos dicen: “¡qué bueno desenmascarar a los infiltrados y los agentes del imperio! Otros gritan: “¡macartismo! ¡Persecución! ¡Qué denuncias más irresponsables! Algunos me acusan de ser sapa, inquisidora, investigadora superficial, doble-agente, mal-preparada y gringa sin derecho de participar en la política nacional (soy venezolana también), y otros catalogan mi trabajo de valiente, despertador, contribuyente a la defensa de la nación e importante para el futuro de la revolución.
Yo diría, ¡por fin se ha abierto el debate sobre la subversión imperial en el país! Y el tema duele, duele bastante porque muchos y muchas se dan cuenta del nivel de profundidad de esa injerencia, que a lo mejor, de manera inconsciente, subliminal y sutil, hasta ha entrado en sus propias vidas, o las de sus amigos, amigas y familiares.
Hay que aclarar (una vez más) varios puntos. Primero, la investigación que conduzco desde el año 2003 está fundamentada en el uso de la Ley de Acceso a la Información (Freedom of Information Act, FOIA) en Estados Unidos, que permite a los ciudadanos y ciudadanas de ese país solicitar cierta información y documentación de las diferentes agencias del estado y sus dependencias. Basada en cientas de solicitudes hechas por mí, el Departamento de Estado, el Departamento de Defensa, la NED, la USAID, la CIA, la DIA, el Departamento de Energía y otras entidades vinculadas con el gobierno estadounidense, me han entregado más de 5000 documentos relacionados con Venezuela durante los últimos años. Estos documentos no son públicos, ni fáciles de obtener. Es a través de un proceso legal con apelaciones y hasta demandas en las cortes federales de Washington, con mucho tacto, cuidado y tiempo dedicado, que se logra obtener esta información. Luego, el proceso de analizarla, leerla, contextualizarla e interpretarla se hace de manera meticulosa y profunda, para no llegar a conclusiones caprichosas o fáciles de desacreditar.
Es muy importante comprender la fuente de información que utilizo para hacer denuncias sobre la injerencia de Estados Unidos en Venezuela. No es información, como dicen muchos, “pública”, o “disponible en Internet”, y tampoco mi trabajo se trata de “traducir” documentos del inglés al español para aquellos que no dominan el idioma imperial. Claro, algunas veces utilizo fuentes públicas para contextualizar los documentos que desclasifican las diferentes entidades del gobierno estadounidense bajo mis solicitudes. Estas fuentes públicas incluyen presupuestos del gobierno estadounidense, declaraciones de funcionarios y voceros estadounidenses, artículos de prensa y acciones de ciertos personajes vinculados a Washington.
Por ejemplo, estas últimas denuncias sobre la injerencia de Estados Unidos en los medios de comunicación y el periodismo venezolano, realizadas inicialmente en mayo, junto con el camarada Mario Silva en el programa La Hojilla, y luego durante una rueda de prensa que hice desde la sede de teleSUR el 25 de mayo pasado, están fundamentadas no en información pública, sino en documentos recientemente desclasificados por el Departamento de Estado y la NED bajo mis solicitudes y repetidas apelaciones contra la censura y negación de esa información. Se tratan de presupuestos internos para las becas y viajes de los periodistas que participaron en el programa de propaganda del Departamento de Estado durante los años 2000-2005, disfrazado bajo el nombre Visitantes Internacionales – Intercambio Educacional y Cultural; listas de participantes; perfiles de los periodistas seleccionados por la Embajada de Estados Unidos en Venezuela y enviados por un sistema de cable cifrado de la Embajada en Caracas a Washington; memoranda interna del Departamento de Estado y hasta correos electrónicos entre funcionarios del Departamento de Estado sobre las visitas de los periodistas a Estados Unidos. Pregunto, ¿esa información está a la disposición de todo el mundo sin solicitar bajo ley?
Cuando ya se comprende bien la fuente de la información, se puede entonces dejar de hablar de “superficialidad”, “macartismo” y “sapismo”. No elaboré ninguna lista ni fungí como “traductora” irresponsable para hacer unas denuncias infundadas. Esta información forma parte de una investigación que tiene cuatro años en camino y que ha traídos como resultado dos publicaciones principales: El Código Chávez: Descifrando la Intervención de Estados Unidos en Venezuela y Bush vs. Chávez: La Guerra de Washington Contra Venezuela, ambos publicados en varios idiomas y países y aquí en Venezuela editados por Monte Ávila Editores. No fue en mayo pasado que comencé a hablar sobre este tema, y jamás denuncié sin antes asegurar la veracidad de la información.
Ahora, desde que lo hablamos en el programa La Hojilla, hasta la rueda de prensa que hice en teleSUR, y luego durante las declaraciones que realizamos por Mario Silva y yo como invitados de la Comisión de Ciencia, Tecnología y Comunicación Social de la Asamblea Nacional, siempre he mantenido que estas denuncias no se tratan de acusar o perseguir a ninguna persona, sino de alertar sobre una situación de subversión e infiltración que amenaza la estabilidad de la Revolución Bolivariana y ponen en peligro la soberanía de la Nación.
Sin embargo, se han ido de fiesta con las denuncias, hasta montando una campaña a favor de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA) –uno de los órganos más nefastos, asesinos, genocidas y bestiales de la historia del mundo– y atacándome a mí, al Presidente de la República y al pueblo venezolano, con comentarios racistas, xenófobos y clasistas. Y lo peor de todo ha sido la reacción de algunos individuos dentro del proceso revolucionario que se han defendido estas “relaciones” con el gobierno estadounidense (a pesar de la clara intención y objetivo detrás de los programas de influir sobre las acciones de los participantes y promover la agenda de Washington) y no se han pronunciado en contra de la campaña difamatoria, racista y altamente peligrosa promovida por los medios de comunicación corporativos en el país.
El último punto que hay que aclarar (una vez más) es sobre la importancia de tomar en serio lo que significan las denuncias y los documentos relacionados con mi investigación sobre la injerencia estadounidense en Venezuela. Desacreditar la investigación y dejar de un lado el tema simplemente porque algunos compatriotas se encuentran lamentablemente involucrados –incluso en contra de su voluntad o sin conocimiento– sería un grave error.
Hay que dejar de hablar sobre los “33” periodistas de la lista del Departamento de Estado, y comenzar de hablar sobre los más de 300 grupos, partidos políticos y organizaciones aquí en Venezuela que hoy en día reciben financiamiento y asesoría del gobierno de Estados Unidos a través de la USAID, la NED, el Departamento de Estado y el Congreso de Estados Unidos. De esos 300 no están incluidos los que se relacionan de manera financiera o política con la CIA y el Pentágono. Esa información lo sabremos dentro de unos 20 años, al menos si los cuerpos de seguridad venezolanos los descubran antes.
Agradezco profundamente todos los mensajes y expresiones de apoyo a mi trabajo y al de Mario Silva, espero que podamos abrir un diálogo y un debate real sobre el tema de la subversión e injerencia de Estados Unidos en Venezuela, y sus redes sofisticadas y sutiles de penetración e infiltración en casi todos los sectores de la sociedad. Ese debate es crítico para el bienestar y el futuro de esta revolución, y servirá como base de defensa para los pueblos hermanos de la región, y del mundo, que sufren de las mismas amenazas y peligros.
Foto: Archivo MinCI
Artículo de opinión de Eva Golinger / Radio Nacional de Venezuela (RNV)
El enredo de los dólares
¡Qué escándalo ha causado la revelación sobre la subversión e injerencia del gobierno estadounidense en los medios de comunicación en Venezuela! Algunos dicen: “¡qué bueno desenmascarar a los infiltrados y los agentes del imperio! Otros gritan: “¡macartismo! ¡Persecución! ¡Qué denuncias más irresponsables! Algunos me acusan de ser sapa, inquisidora, investigadora superficial, doble-agente, mal-preparada y gringa sin derecho de participar en la política nacional (soy venezolana también), y otros catalogan mi trabajo de valiente, despertador, contribuyente a la defensa de la nación e importante para el futuro de la revolución.
Yo diría, ¡por fin se ha abierto el debate sobre la subversión imperial en el país! Y el tema duele, duele bastante porque muchos y muchas se dan cuenta del nivel de profundidad de esa injerencia, que a lo mejor, de manera inconsciente, subliminal y sutil, hasta ha entrado en sus propias vidas, o las de sus amigos, amigas y familiares.
Hay que aclarar (una vez más) varios puntos. Primero, la investigación que conduzco desde el año 2003 está fundamentada en el uso de la Ley de Acceso a la Información (Freedom of Information Act, FOIA) en Estados Unidos, que permite a los ciudadanos y ciudadanas de ese país solicitar cierta información y documentación de las diferentes agencias del estado y sus dependencias. Basada en cientas de solicitudes hechas por mí, el Departamento de Estado, el Departamento de Defensa, la NED, la USAID, la CIA, la DIA, el Departamento de Energía y otras entidades vinculadas con el gobierno estadounidense, me han entregado más de 5000 documentos relacionados con Venezuela durante los últimos años. Estos documentos no son públicos, ni fáciles de obtener. Es a través de un proceso legal con apelaciones y hasta demandas en las cortes federales de Washington, con mucho tacto, cuidado y tiempo dedicado, que se logra obtener esta información. Luego, el proceso de analizarla, leerla, contextualizarla e interpretarla se hace de manera meticulosa y profunda, para no llegar a conclusiones caprichosas o fáciles de desacreditar.
Es muy importante comprender la fuente de información que utilizo para hacer denuncias sobre la injerencia de Estados Unidos en Venezuela. No es información, como dicen muchos, “pública”, o “disponible en Internet”, y tampoco mi trabajo se trata de “traducir” documentos del inglés al español para aquellos que no dominan el idioma imperial. Claro, algunas veces utilizo fuentes públicas para contextualizar los documentos que desclasifican las diferentes entidades del gobierno estadounidense bajo mis solicitudes. Estas fuentes públicas incluyen presupuestos del gobierno estadounidense, declaraciones de funcionarios y voceros estadounidenses, artículos de prensa y acciones de ciertos personajes vinculados a Washington.
Por ejemplo, estas últimas denuncias sobre la injerencia de Estados Unidos en los medios de comunicación y el periodismo venezolano, realizadas inicialmente en mayo, junto con el camarada Mario Silva en el programa La Hojilla, y luego durante una rueda de prensa que hice desde la sede de teleSUR el 25 de mayo pasado, están fundamentadas no en información pública, sino en documentos recientemente desclasificados por el Departamento de Estado y la NED bajo mis solicitudes y repetidas apelaciones contra la censura y negación de esa información. Se tratan de presupuestos internos para las becas y viajes de los periodistas que participaron en el programa de propaganda del Departamento de Estado durante los años 2000-2005, disfrazado bajo el nombre Visitantes Internacionales – Intercambio Educacional y Cultural; listas de participantes; perfiles de los periodistas seleccionados por la Embajada de Estados Unidos en Venezuela y enviados por un sistema de cable cifrado de la Embajada en Caracas a Washington; memoranda interna del Departamento de Estado y hasta correos electrónicos entre funcionarios del Departamento de Estado sobre las visitas de los periodistas a Estados Unidos. Pregunto, ¿esa información está a la disposición de todo el mundo sin solicitar bajo ley?
Cuando ya se comprende bien la fuente de la información, se puede entonces dejar de hablar de “superficialidad”, “macartismo” y “sapismo”. No elaboré ninguna lista ni fungí como “traductora” irresponsable para hacer unas denuncias infundadas. Esta información forma parte de una investigación que tiene cuatro años en camino y que ha traídos como resultado dos publicaciones principales: El Código Chávez: Descifrando la Intervención de Estados Unidos en Venezuela y Bush vs. Chávez: La Guerra de Washington Contra Venezuela, ambos publicados en varios idiomas y países y aquí en Venezuela editados por Monte Ávila Editores. No fue en mayo pasado que comencé a hablar sobre este tema, y jamás denuncié sin antes asegurar la veracidad de la información.
Ahora, desde que lo hablamos en el programa La Hojilla, hasta la rueda de prensa que hice en teleSUR, y luego durante las declaraciones que realizamos por Mario Silva y yo como invitados de la Comisión de Ciencia, Tecnología y Comunicación Social de la Asamblea Nacional, siempre he mantenido que estas denuncias no se tratan de acusar o perseguir a ninguna persona, sino de alertar sobre una situación de subversión e infiltración que amenaza la estabilidad de la Revolución Bolivariana y ponen en peligro la soberanía de la Nación.
Sin embargo, se han ido de fiesta con las denuncias, hasta montando una campaña a favor de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA) –uno de los órganos más nefastos, asesinos, genocidas y bestiales de la historia del mundo– y atacándome a mí, al Presidente de la República y al pueblo venezolano, con comentarios racistas, xenófobos y clasistas. Y lo peor de todo ha sido la reacción de algunos individuos dentro del proceso revolucionario que se han defendido estas “relaciones” con el gobierno estadounidense (a pesar de la clara intención y objetivo detrás de los programas de influir sobre las acciones de los participantes y promover la agenda de Washington) y no se han pronunciado en contra de la campaña difamatoria, racista y altamente peligrosa promovida por los medios de comunicación corporativos en el país.
El último punto que hay que aclarar (una vez más) es sobre la importancia de tomar en serio lo que significan las denuncias y los documentos relacionados con mi investigación sobre la injerencia estadounidense en Venezuela. Desacreditar la investigación y dejar de un lado el tema simplemente porque algunos compatriotas se encuentran lamentablemente involucrados –incluso en contra de su voluntad o sin conocimiento– sería un grave error.
Hay que dejar de hablar sobre los “33” periodistas de la lista del Departamento de Estado, y comenzar de hablar sobre los más de 300 grupos, partidos políticos y organizaciones aquí en Venezuela que hoy en día reciben financiamiento y asesoría del gobierno de Estados Unidos a través de la USAID, la NED, el Departamento de Estado y el Congreso de Estados Unidos. De esos 300 no están incluidos los que se relacionan de manera financiera o política con la CIA y el Pentágono. Esa información lo sabremos dentro de unos 20 años, al menos si los cuerpos de seguridad venezolanos los descubran antes.
Agradezco profundamente todos los mensajes y expresiones de apoyo a mi trabajo y al de Mario Silva, espero que podamos abrir un diálogo y un debate real sobre el tema de la subversión e injerencia de Estados Unidos en Venezuela, y sus redes sofisticadas y sutiles de penetración e infiltración en casi todos los sectores de la sociedad. Ese debate es crítico para el bienestar y el futuro de esta revolución, y servirá como base de defensa para los pueblos hermanos de la región, y del mundo, que sufren de las mismas amenazas y peligros.
Foto: Archivo MinCI
Artículo de opinión de Eva Golinger / Radio Nacional de Venezuela (RNV)
Friday, August 31, 2007
Operation Condor Part 2: George Bush Is Restarting Latin America's 'Dirty Wars'.
By Benjamin Dangl, AlterNet
Two soldiers in Paraguay stand in front of a camera. One of them holds an automatic weapon. John Lennon's "Imagine" plays in the background. This Orwellian juxtaposition of war and peace is from a new video posted online by U.S. soldiers stationed in Paraguay. The video footage and other military activity in this heart of the continent represent a new wave of U.S.-backed militarism in Latin America.
It's a reprise of a familiar tune. In the 1970s and 1980s, Paraguay's longtime dictator, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner http://www.coha.org/2006/09/25/paraguay-–-us-post-stroessner-relations, collaborated with the region's other dictators through Operation Condor, which used kidnapping, torture and murder to squash dissent and political opponents. Stroessner's human rights record was so bad that even Ronald Reagan distanced himself from the leader. Carrying on this infamous legacy, Paraguay now illustrates four new characteristics of Latin America's right-wing militarism: joint exercises with the U.S. military in counterinsurgency training, monitoring potential dissidents and social organizations, the use of private mercenaries for security and the criminalization of social protest through "anti-terrorism" tactics and legislation.
In May of 2005, the Paraguayan Senate voted to allow U.S. troops to operate in Paraguay with total immunity. Washington had threatened to cut off millions in aid to the country if Paraguay did not grant the U.S. troops entry. In July of 2005 hundreds of U.S. soldiers arrived in the country http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060717/dangl, and Washington's funding for counterterrorism efforts in Paraguay doubled. The U.S. troops conducted various operations and joint training exercises with Paraguayan forces, including so-called Medical Readiness Training Exercises (MEDRETEs). Orlando Castillo, a military policy expert at the human rights rights organization Servicio, Paz y Justicia in Asunción, Paraguay, says the MEDRETEs were "observation" operations aimed at developing "a type of map that identifies not just the natural resources in the area, but also the social organizations and leaders of different communities."
Castillo, in his cool Asunción office, with the standard Paraguayan herbal tea, tereré in his hand, said these operations marked a shift in U.S. military strategy. "The kind of training that used to just happen at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, is now decentralized," he explained. "The U.S. military is now establishing new mechanisms of cooperation and training with armed forces." Combined efforts, such as MEDRETEs, are part of this agenda. "It is a way to remain present, while maintaining a broad reach throughout the Americas." Castillo said this new wave of militarism is aimed at considering internal populations as potential enemies and preventing insurgent leftists from coming to power.
But Bruce Kleiner of the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay said that the MEDRETEs "provide humanitarian service to some of Paraguay's most disadvantaged citizens." But this video ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2508334792080014639&q=U.S.+military+paraguay&total=5&start=0&num=10&so=0&type ) by Captain William Johnson shows that there's more to the MEDRETE operations, with local Paraguayans being questioned as they receive treatment, as well as events and ceremonies aimed at strengthening ties between the military personnel of both countries. Often, heavily armed men are seen walking past lines of local families while they wait for medicine and questions. The lighthearted depiction of these joint military operations seen in the video is in sharp contrast with reports from local citizens.
A group of representatives from human rights organizations and universities from all over the world, including the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and a group from the University of Toulouse, France, traveled to Paraguay last July as part of the Campaign for the Demilitarization of the Americas (CADA) to observe and report on ( http://alainet.org/active/12453&lang=es ) the repression going on in the country linked to the presence of U.S. troops. The local citizens they interviewed said they were not told what medications they were given during the U.S. MEDRETEs. Patients said they were often given the same treatments regardless of their illness. In some cases, the medicine produced hemorrhages and abortions. When the medical treatment took place, patients reported that they were asked if they belonged to any kind of labor or social organization. Among the leaders of such organizations, dozens have been disappeared and tortured in recent years, just as they were during Latin America's "dirty wars" in the Reagan era.
While Orlando Castillo is adamant that the historic military links between Paraguay and the United States remain strong, the U.S. troops that arrived in 2005 have reportedly left the country. In December 2006, the Paraguayan Senate and executive branch, responding to pressure from neighboring countries, voted to end the troops' immunity. Paraguay would have been excluded from the lucrative regional trade bloc of Mercosur if it continued to grant immunity to U.S. forces.
Privatizing repression
Castillo sees private mercenaries, or paramilitaries, as another key piece of the new militarism puzzle. In Paraguay, the strongest paramilitary group is the Citizens Guard. "These paramilitary groups are made of people from the community. They establish curfews and rules of conduct, and monitor the activity of the community. They also intervene in family disputes and can kick people out of the community or off land ... this all very similar to the paramilitary activities in Colombia." Castillo said that while this activity is illegal, the police and judges simply look the other way. Many of the paramilitaries are connected to large agribusinesses and landowners and have been linked to increased repression of small farming families that have resisted the expansion of the soy ( http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3093/the_multinational_beanfield_war/ ) industry, a cash-crop mostly for export. The shadow army of the Citizens Guard is as big as the state security forces: These paramilitary groups ( http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3441 ) have nearly 22,000 members, while the Paraguayan police force is only 9,000 strong and the military has 13,000 members.
The use of private security is on the rise throughout the Americas. Journalist Cyril Mychalejko reported that the Bush administration was recently incriminated ( http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/848/1/ ) in a scandal involving Chiquita Brands International Inc. and their funding of paramilitaries to repress a discontented labor force in Colombia. The paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Force of Colombia (AUC) is designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization. In 2003, a former executive at Chiquita told Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff that they were paying the paramilitary group. Chertoff looked the other way, allowing the company to pay an additional $134,000 to the AUC throughout that year.
Castillo's comments about the new U.S. military strategy for the region apply to all of Latin America. Carrying on the legacy of the School of the Americas, the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) ( http://www.cispes.org/documents/Ilea%20flyer_march07_bilingual.pdf ) was recently opened in El Salvador, where similar training is going on to broaden the military's reach in the area.
Exporting the "War on Terror"
Anti-terrorism rhetoric and legislation is being mixed into this deadly cocktail in Paraguay, as it is across Latin America. The Paraguayan Senate is scheduled to pass an anti-terrorism law that will criminalize social protest and establish penalties of up to 40 years in prison for participating in such activities. A large march against the passage of the law took place in the country's capital on July 26.
The U.S.-based corporate media plays a part in what has become a war against labor movements and leftist politicians. Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, has regularly been portrayed ( http://www.jeffreygoldberg.net/articles/tny/a_reporter_at_large_in_the_par_1.php ) in the American media as a haven and training ground for Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. Regional analysts ( http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060717/dangl ) believe this terrifying narrative has aided the Pentagon in its military plans for the country. Terrorism talk is similarly being used for political purposes elsewhere in Latin America. The U.S.A Patriot Act was used to revoke ( http://www.alternet.org/story/33005/ ) the U.S. travel visa for Bolivian human rights leader and labor organizer Leonilda Zurita shortly after leftist president Evo Morales came to power.
In Venezuela's national divide between pro- and anti-Chavez citizens, everything is political. CNN recently entered the fray when it aired footage that Venezuelan governmental officials said falsely linked Chavez to Al-Qaeda. The Venezuelan government has filed charges against CNN ( http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Rowdy_protests_continue_after_Chavez_TV_0529.html ) for the act. Information Minister William Lara said CNN showed photos of Chavez alongside those of an Al-Qaeda leader. He explained that "CNN broadcast a lie which linked President Chavez to violence and murder." CNN denied having "any intention of associating President Chavez with al Qaeda …"
In Nicaragua, the media has recently been used as a tool by Washington to promote its foreign policy agenda. A long time lab rat for U.S. imperialism, Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America and the site of a socialist revolution in the 1980s when the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. The specter of a Sandinista-led government still haunts the White House. In a 2001 presidential election in Nicaragua when Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was running for re-election, (right after 9/11) similar tactics were employed, and the media was a key tool. In an ad in the Nicaraguan paper La Prensa, Jeb Bush was quoted as saying ( http://www.therationalradical.com/dsep/jeb-bush.htm ) : "Daniel Ortega is an enemy of everything the United States represents. Further, he is a friend of our enemies. Ortega has a relationship of more than 30 years with states and individuals who shelter and condone international terrorism." The tactic worked, and the pro-free market, right-wing Washington ally Enrique Bolaños beat Ortega. In the lead up to the presidential election on Nov. 5, 2006, former U.S. Lt. Col. Oliver North visited Nicaragua to warn voters not to elect Daniel Ortega. In the 1980s North was convicted of violating U.S. law to organize the Contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government. North reminded voters that the same terror could return to Nicaragua under a new Ortega administration. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., threatened another trade embargo and to prevent money sent from Nicaraguans in the United States from reaching their families at home. U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli said ( http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=460&Itemid=45 ) that if Ortega won the elections, the United States would "re-evaluate relations" with the country. The media was used against Ortega as well, with TV commercials showing corpses from the Contra war in the 1980s, warning citizens against voting for the left's choice. This time, however, the media campaign backfired, and Ortega won the election.
Paraguayan journalist Marco Castillo shook as head while contemplating this new landscape of repression. Dozens of social organization leaders and dissidents have been disappeared and tortured in recent years. "Impunity reigns," he said. "This is as bad as it was during the worst years of the Stroessner dictatorship."
Benjamin Dangl won a 2007 Project Censored Award for his coverage of U.S. military operations in Paraguay. He is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia ( http://www.boliviabook.com/ ) (AK Press, 2007).
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/58605/
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
Two soldiers in Paraguay stand in front of a camera. One of them holds an automatic weapon. John Lennon's "Imagine" plays in the background. This Orwellian juxtaposition of war and peace is from a new video posted online by U.S. soldiers stationed in Paraguay. The video footage and other military activity in this heart of the continent represent a new wave of U.S.-backed militarism in Latin America.
It's a reprise of a familiar tune. In the 1970s and 1980s, Paraguay's longtime dictator, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner http://www.coha.org/2006/09/25/paraguay-–-us-post-stroessner-relations, collaborated with the region's other dictators through Operation Condor, which used kidnapping, torture and murder to squash dissent and political opponents. Stroessner's human rights record was so bad that even Ronald Reagan distanced himself from the leader. Carrying on this infamous legacy, Paraguay now illustrates four new characteristics of Latin America's right-wing militarism: joint exercises with the U.S. military in counterinsurgency training, monitoring potential dissidents and social organizations, the use of private mercenaries for security and the criminalization of social protest through "anti-terrorism" tactics and legislation.
In May of 2005, the Paraguayan Senate voted to allow U.S. troops to operate in Paraguay with total immunity. Washington had threatened to cut off millions in aid to the country if Paraguay did not grant the U.S. troops entry. In July of 2005 hundreds of U.S. soldiers arrived in the country http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060717/dangl, and Washington's funding for counterterrorism efforts in Paraguay doubled. The U.S. troops conducted various operations and joint training exercises with Paraguayan forces, including so-called Medical Readiness Training Exercises (MEDRETEs). Orlando Castillo, a military policy expert at the human rights rights organization Servicio, Paz y Justicia in Asunción, Paraguay, says the MEDRETEs were "observation" operations aimed at developing "a type of map that identifies not just the natural resources in the area, but also the social organizations and leaders of different communities."
Castillo, in his cool Asunción office, with the standard Paraguayan herbal tea, tereré in his hand, said these operations marked a shift in U.S. military strategy. "The kind of training that used to just happen at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, is now decentralized," he explained. "The U.S. military is now establishing new mechanisms of cooperation and training with armed forces." Combined efforts, such as MEDRETEs, are part of this agenda. "It is a way to remain present, while maintaining a broad reach throughout the Americas." Castillo said this new wave of militarism is aimed at considering internal populations as potential enemies and preventing insurgent leftists from coming to power.
But Bruce Kleiner of the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay said that the MEDRETEs "provide humanitarian service to some of Paraguay's most disadvantaged citizens." But this video ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2508334792080014639&q=U.S.+military+paraguay&total=5&start=0&num=10&so=0&type ) by Captain William Johnson shows that there's more to the MEDRETE operations, with local Paraguayans being questioned as they receive treatment, as well as events and ceremonies aimed at strengthening ties between the military personnel of both countries. Often, heavily armed men are seen walking past lines of local families while they wait for medicine and questions. The lighthearted depiction of these joint military operations seen in the video is in sharp contrast with reports from local citizens.
A group of representatives from human rights organizations and universities from all over the world, including the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and a group from the University of Toulouse, France, traveled to Paraguay last July as part of the Campaign for the Demilitarization of the Americas (CADA) to observe and report on ( http://alainet.org/active/12453&lang=es ) the repression going on in the country linked to the presence of U.S. troops. The local citizens they interviewed said they were not told what medications they were given during the U.S. MEDRETEs. Patients said they were often given the same treatments regardless of their illness. In some cases, the medicine produced hemorrhages and abortions. When the medical treatment took place, patients reported that they were asked if they belonged to any kind of labor or social organization. Among the leaders of such organizations, dozens have been disappeared and tortured in recent years, just as they were during Latin America's "dirty wars" in the Reagan era.
While Orlando Castillo is adamant that the historic military links between Paraguay and the United States remain strong, the U.S. troops that arrived in 2005 have reportedly left the country. In December 2006, the Paraguayan Senate and executive branch, responding to pressure from neighboring countries, voted to end the troops' immunity. Paraguay would have been excluded from the lucrative regional trade bloc of Mercosur if it continued to grant immunity to U.S. forces.
Privatizing repression
Castillo sees private mercenaries, or paramilitaries, as another key piece of the new militarism puzzle. In Paraguay, the strongest paramilitary group is the Citizens Guard. "These paramilitary groups are made of people from the community. They establish curfews and rules of conduct, and monitor the activity of the community. They also intervene in family disputes and can kick people out of the community or off land ... this all very similar to the paramilitary activities in Colombia." Castillo said that while this activity is illegal, the police and judges simply look the other way. Many of the paramilitaries are connected to large agribusinesses and landowners and have been linked to increased repression of small farming families that have resisted the expansion of the soy ( http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3093/the_multinational_beanfield_war/ ) industry, a cash-crop mostly for export. The shadow army of the Citizens Guard is as big as the state security forces: These paramilitary groups ( http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3441 ) have nearly 22,000 members, while the Paraguayan police force is only 9,000 strong and the military has 13,000 members.
The use of private security is on the rise throughout the Americas. Journalist Cyril Mychalejko reported that the Bush administration was recently incriminated ( http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/848/1/ ) in a scandal involving Chiquita Brands International Inc. and their funding of paramilitaries to repress a discontented labor force in Colombia. The paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Force of Colombia (AUC) is designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization. In 2003, a former executive at Chiquita told Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff that they were paying the paramilitary group. Chertoff looked the other way, allowing the company to pay an additional $134,000 to the AUC throughout that year.
Castillo's comments about the new U.S. military strategy for the region apply to all of Latin America. Carrying on the legacy of the School of the Americas, the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) ( http://www.cispes.org/documents/Ilea%20flyer_march07_bilingual.pdf ) was recently opened in El Salvador, where similar training is going on to broaden the military's reach in the area.
Exporting the "War on Terror"
Anti-terrorism rhetoric and legislation is being mixed into this deadly cocktail in Paraguay, as it is across Latin America. The Paraguayan Senate is scheduled to pass an anti-terrorism law that will criminalize social protest and establish penalties of up to 40 years in prison for participating in such activities. A large march against the passage of the law took place in the country's capital on July 26.
The U.S.-based corporate media plays a part in what has become a war against labor movements and leftist politicians. Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, has regularly been portrayed ( http://www.jeffreygoldberg.net/articles/tny/a_reporter_at_large_in_the_par_1.php ) in the American media as a haven and training ground for Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. Regional analysts ( http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060717/dangl ) believe this terrifying narrative has aided the Pentagon in its military plans for the country. Terrorism talk is similarly being used for political purposes elsewhere in Latin America. The U.S.A Patriot Act was used to revoke ( http://www.alternet.org/story/33005/ ) the U.S. travel visa for Bolivian human rights leader and labor organizer Leonilda Zurita shortly after leftist president Evo Morales came to power.
In Venezuela's national divide between pro- and anti-Chavez citizens, everything is political. CNN recently entered the fray when it aired footage that Venezuelan governmental officials said falsely linked Chavez to Al-Qaeda. The Venezuelan government has filed charges against CNN ( http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Rowdy_protests_continue_after_Chavez_TV_0529.html ) for the act. Information Minister William Lara said CNN showed photos of Chavez alongside those of an Al-Qaeda leader. He explained that "CNN broadcast a lie which linked President Chavez to violence and murder." CNN denied having "any intention of associating President Chavez with al Qaeda …"
In Nicaragua, the media has recently been used as a tool by Washington to promote its foreign policy agenda. A long time lab rat for U.S. imperialism, Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America and the site of a socialist revolution in the 1980s when the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. The specter of a Sandinista-led government still haunts the White House. In a 2001 presidential election in Nicaragua when Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was running for re-election, (right after 9/11) similar tactics were employed, and the media was a key tool. In an ad in the Nicaraguan paper La Prensa, Jeb Bush was quoted as saying ( http://www.therationalradical.com/dsep/jeb-bush.htm ) : "Daniel Ortega is an enemy of everything the United States represents. Further, he is a friend of our enemies. Ortega has a relationship of more than 30 years with states and individuals who shelter and condone international terrorism." The tactic worked, and the pro-free market, right-wing Washington ally Enrique Bolaños beat Ortega. In the lead up to the presidential election on Nov. 5, 2006, former U.S. Lt. Col. Oliver North visited Nicaragua to warn voters not to elect Daniel Ortega. In the 1980s North was convicted of violating U.S. law to organize the Contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government. North reminded voters that the same terror could return to Nicaragua under a new Ortega administration. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., threatened another trade embargo and to prevent money sent from Nicaraguans in the United States from reaching their families at home. U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli said ( http://www.cepr.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=460&Itemid=45 ) that if Ortega won the elections, the United States would "re-evaluate relations" with the country. The media was used against Ortega as well, with TV commercials showing corpses from the Contra war in the 1980s, warning citizens against voting for the left's choice. This time, however, the media campaign backfired, and Ortega won the election.
Paraguayan journalist Marco Castillo shook as head while contemplating this new landscape of repression. Dozens of social organization leaders and dissidents have been disappeared and tortured in recent years. "Impunity reigns," he said. "This is as bad as it was during the worst years of the Stroessner dictatorship."
Benjamin Dangl won a 2007 Project Censored Award for his coverage of U.S. military operations in Paraguay. He is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia ( http://www.boliviabook.com/ ) (AK Press, 2007).
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/58605/
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
Saturday, August 25, 2007
The Empire and the Independent Island - Reflection by Cuban President Fidel Castro
The history of Cuba during the last 140 years is one of struggle to preserve national identity and independence, and the history of the evolution of the American empire, its constant craving to appropriate Cuba and of the horrendous methods that it uses today to hold on to world domination.
Cuban News Agency
Prominent Cuban historians have dealt in depth with these subjects in different periods and in various excellent books which deserve to be readily available to our compatriots. These reflections are addressed especially to the new generations with the aim of helping them learn about very important and decisive events in the destiny of our homeland.
Part I: The Imposition of the Platt Amendment as an appendix to the Neocolonial Cuban Constitution of 1901.
The "ripe fruit doctrine" was formulated in 1823 by Secretary of State and later President John Quincy Adams. The United States would inevitably achieve taking over our country, by the law of political influence, once colonial subordination to Spain had ended.
Under the pretext of blowing up the "Maine" -a still unraveled event of which it took advantage to wage war against Spain, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an event which was demonstrably prefabricated in order to attack North Vietnam -President William McKinley signed the Joint Resolution of April 20, 1898, stating "...that the people on the island of Cuba are and by right ought to be free and independent", "... that the United States herewith declare that they have no desire or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island, except for pacification thereof, and they affirm their determination, after this has been accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people." The Joint Resolution entitled the President to use force to remove the Spanish government from Cuba.
Colonel Leonard Wood, chief commander of the Rough Riders, and Theodore Roosevelt, second in command of the expansionist volunteers who landed in our country on the beaches close to Santiago de Cuba, after the brave but poorly utilized Spanish squadron and their Marine infantry on board had been destroyed by the American battleships, requested the support of Cuban insurrectionists who had weakened and defeated the Spanish Colonial Army after enormous sacrifices. The Rough Riders had landed without horses.
Following the defeat of Spain, representatives of the Queen Regent of Spain and of the President of the United States signed the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898 and, without consulting of the Cuban people, agreed that Spain should relinquish all claim of sovereignty over and title to the island and would evacuate it. Cuba would then be occupied by the United States on a temporary basis.
Already appointed U.S. military governor, Army Major General Leonard Wood, issued Military Order 301 of July 25, 1900, which called for a general election to choose delegates to a Constitutional Assembly that would be held in the city of Havana at twelve noon on the first Monday of November in 1900, with the purpose of drafting and adopting a Constitution for the people of Cuba.
On September 15, 1900, elections took place and 31 delegates from the National, Republican and Democratic Union parties were elected. On November 5, 1900, the Constitutional Convention held its opening session at the Irijoa Theatre of Havana which on that occasion received the name of Martí Theatre.
General Wood, representing the President of the United States, declared the Assembly officially installed. Wood advanced the intention of the United States government: "After you have drawn up the relations which, in your opinion, ought to exist between Cuba and the United States, the government of the United States will undoubtedly adopt the measures conducive to a final and authorized treaty between the peoples of both nations, aimed at promoting the growth of their common interests."
The 1901 Constitution provided in its Article 2 that "the territory of the Republic is composed of the Island of Cuba, as well as the islands and neighboring keys which together were under Spanish sovereignty until the ratification of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898".
Once the Constitution was drafted, the time had come to define political relations between Cuba and the United States. To that end, on February 12, 1901, a committee of five members was appointed and charged with studying and proposing a procedure that would lead to the stated goal.
On February 15, Governor Wood invited the members of the committee to go fishing and hosted a banquet in Batabanó, the main access route to the Isle of Pines, as it was known then, also occupied at that time by the U.S. troops which had intervened in the Cuban War of Independence. It was there in Batabanó that he revealed to them a letter from the Secretary of War, Elihu Root, containing the basic aspects of the future Platt Amendment. According to instructions from Washington, relations between Cuba and the United States were to abide by several aspects. The fifth of these was that, in order to make it easier for the United States to fulfill such tasks as were placed under its responsibility by the above mentioned provisions, and for its own defense, the United States could acquire title, and preserve it, for lands to be used for naval bases and maintain these in certain specific points.
Upon learning of the conditions demanded by the U.S. government, the Cuban Constitutional Assembly, on February 27, 1901, passed a position that was opposed to that of the U.S. Executive, eliminating therein the establishment of naval bases.
The U.S. government made an agreement with Orville H. Platt, Republican Senator from Connecticut, to present an amendment to the proposed Army Appropriations Bill which would make the establishment of American naval bases on Cuban soil a fait accompli.
In the Amendment, passed by the U.S. Senate on February 27, 1901 and by the House of Representatives on March 1, and sanctioned by President McKinley the following day, as a rider attached to the "Bill granting credit to the Army for the fiscal year ending on June 30, 1902," the article mentioning the naval bases was drafted as follows:
"Art. VII.- That to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specified points to be agreed upon with the President of the United States."
Article VIII adds: "...the government of Cuba will embody the foregoing provisions in a permanent treaty with the United States."
The speedy passage of the Amendment by the U.S. Congress was due to the circumstance of it coming close to the conclusion of the legislative term and to the fact that President McKinley had a clear majority in both Houses so that the Amendment could be passed without any problem. It became a United States Law when, on March 4, McKinley was sworn in for his second presidential term in office.
Some members of the Constitutional Convention maintained the view that they were not empowered to adopt the Amendment requested by the United States since this implied limitations on the independence and sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba. Thus, the military governor Leonard Wood hastened to issue a new Military Order on March 12, 1901 where it was declared that the Convention was empowered to adopt the measures whose constitutionality was in question.
Other Convention members, such as Manuel Sanguily, held the opinion that the Assembly should be dissolved rather than adopt measures that so drastically offended the dignity and sovereignty of the people of Cuba. But during the session of March 7, 1901, a committee was appointed yet again in order to draft an answer to Governor Wood; the presentation of this was entrusted to Juan Gualberto Gómez who recommended, among other things, rejecting the clause concerning the leasing of coaling or naval stations.
Juan Gualberto Gómez maintained the most severe criticism of the Platt Amendment. On April 1, he tabled a debate of the presentation where he challenged the document on the grounds that it contravened the principles of the Treaty of Paris and of the Joint Resolution. But the Convention suspended the debate on Juan Gualberto Gómez's presentation and decided to send another committee "to ascertain the motives and intentions of the government of the United States about any and all details referring to the establishment of a definitive order to relations, both political and economic, between Cuba and the United States, and to negotiate with the government itself, the bases for agreement on those extremes that would be proposed to the Convention for a final solution."
Subsequently, a committee was elected that would travel to Washington, made up of Domingo Méndez Capote, Diego Tamayo, Pedro González Llorente, Rafael Portuondo Tamayo and Pedro Betancourt; they arrived in the United States on April 24, 1901. The next day, they met with Root and Wood who had earlier traveled back to his country for this purpose.
The American government hastened to publicly declare that the committee would be visiting Washington on their own initiative, with no invitation or official status.
Root, Secretary of War, met with the committee on April 25 and 26, 1901 and categorically informed them that "the United States' right to impose the much debated clauses had been proclaimed for three-quarters of a century in the face of the American and European world and they were not willing to give it up to the point of putting their own safety in jeopardy."
United States officials reiterated that none of the Platt Amendment clauses undermined the sovereignty and independence of Cuba; on the contrary, they would preserve them, and it was clarified that intervention would only occur in the case of severe disturbances, and only with the objective of maintaining order and internal peace.
The committee presented its report in a secret session on May 7, 1901. Within the committee there were severe discrepancies about the Platt Amendment.
On May 28, a paper drafted by Villuendas, Tamayo and Quesada was tabled for debate; it accepted the Amendment with some clarifications and recommended the signing of a treaty on trade reciprocity.
This paper was approved by a vote of 15 to 14, but the United States government didn't accept that solution. It informed through Governor Wood that it would only accept the Amendment without qualifiers, and warned the Convention with an ultimatum that, since the Platt Amendment was "a statute passed by the Legislature of the United States, the President is obliged to carry it out as it is. He cannot change or alter it, add or take anything out. The executive action demanded by the statute is the withdrawal of the American Army from Cuba, and the statute authorizes this action when, and only when, a Constitutional government has been established which contains, either in its body or in appendices, certain categorical provisions, specified in the statute (...) Then if these provisions are found in the Constitution, the President will be authorized to withdraw the Army; if he does not find them there, then he will not be authorized to withdraw the Army..."
The United States Secretary of War sent a letter to the Cuban Constitutional Assembly where he stated that the Platt Amendment should be passed in its entirety with no clarifications, because in that way it would appear as a rider to the Army Appropriations Bill; he indicated that, otherwise, his country's military forces would not be pulled out of Cuba.
On June 12, 1901, during another secret session of the Constitutional Assembly, the incorporation of the Platt Amendment as an appendix to the Constitution of the Republic passed on February 21 was put to the vote: 16 delegates voted aye and 11 voted nay. Bravo Correoso, Robau, Gener and Rius Rivera were absent from the session, abstaining from voting in favor of such a monstrosity.
The worst thing about the Amendment was the hypocrisy, the deceit, the Machiavellianism and the cynicism with which they concocted the plan to take over Cuba, to the lengths of publicly proclaiming the same arguments made by John Quincy Adams in 1823, about the apple which would fall because of gravity. This apple finally did fall, but it was rotten, just as many Cuban intellectuals had foreseen for almost half a century, from José Martí in the 1880's right up to Julio Antonio Mella, assassinated in January of 1929.
Nobody better than Leonard Wood himself to describe what the Platt Amendment would mean for Cuba in two sections of a confidential letter to his fellow in the adventure, Theodore Roosevelt, dated on October 28, 1901:
"There is, of course, little or no independence left Cuba under the Platt Amendment. (...) the only consistent thing to do now is to seek annexation. This, however, will take some time, and during the period which Cuba maintains her own government, it is most desirable that she should be able to maintain such a one as will tend to her advancement and betterment. She cannot make certain treaties without our consent (...) and must maintain certain sanitary conditions (...), from all of which it is quite apparent that she is absolutely in our hands, and I believe that no European government for a moment considers that she is otherwise than a practical dependency of the United States, and as such is certainly entitled to our consideration. (...) With the control which we have over Cuba, a control which will soon undoubtedly become possession, (...) we shall soon practically control the sugar trade of the world. (...) the island will (...) gradually become Americanized and we shall have in time one of the richest and most desirable possessions in the world."
Part II: The Application of the Platt Amendment and the Establishing of the Guantanamo Naval Base as a Framework for Relations between Cuba and the United States.
By the end of 1901, the electoral process which resulted in the triumph of Tomás Estrada Palma, without opposition and with the support of 47 percent of the electorate, had begun. On April 17, 1902, the President-elect in absentia left the United States for Cuba where he arrived three days later. The inauguration of the new President took place on May 20, 1902 at 12 noon. The Congress of the Republic had already been constituted. Leonard Wood set sail for his country in the battleship "Brooklyn".
In 1902, shortly before the proclamation of the Republic, the United States government informed the newly elected President of the Island about the four sites selected for the establishing of naval bases -Cienfuegos, Bahía Honda, Guantanamo and Nipe - as provided by the Platt Amendment. Not even the Port of Havana escaped consideration since it was contemplated as "the most favorable for the fourth naval base".
From the beginning, despite its spurious origins, the Government of Cuba, in which many of those who fought for independence participated, was opposed to the concession of four naval bases since it considered two to be more than enough. The situation grew tenser when the Cuban government toughened its stand and demanded the final drafting of the Permanent Agreement on Relations, with the goal of "determining at the same time and not in parts, all the details that were the object of the Platt Amendment and setting the range of their precepts".
President McKinley had died in September 14, 1901 as a result of gunshot wounds he had sustained on the 6th of that month. Theodore Roosevelt had advanced to such a degree in his political career that he was already Vice President of the United States and so he had assumed the presidency after the shooting of his predecessor. Roosevelt, at that time did not deem it to be convenient to specify the scope of the Platt Amendment, so as not to delay the military installation of the Guantanamo Base, given what that would mean for the defense of the Canal whose construction France had begun and later abandoned in the Central American Isthmus, and which the voracious government of the empire intended to complete at all costs. Nor was he interested in defining the legal status of the Isle of Pines. Therefore, he abruptly reduced the number of naval bases under discussion, removed the Port of Havana suggestion and finally agreed to the concession of two bases: Guantanamo and Bahía Honda.
Subsequently, in compliance with Article VII of the constitutional appendix imposed on the Constitutional Convention, the Agreement was signed by the Presidents of Cuba and the United States on February 16 and 23, 1903, respectively:
"Article I. - The Republic of Cuba hereby leases to the United States, for the time required for the purposes of coaling and naval stations, the following described areas of land and water situated in the Island of Cuba:
"1st. In Guantanamo"...(A complete description of the bay and neighboring territory is made.)
"2nd. In Bahia Honda..." (Another similar description is made.)
This Agreement establishes:
"Article III. -While on the one hand the United States recognizes the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba over the above described areas of land and water, on the other hand the Republic of Cuba consents that during the period of the occupation by the United States of said areas under the terms of this agreement the United States shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas with the right to acquire for the public purposes of the United States any land or other property therein by purchase or by exercise of eminent domain with full compensation to the owners thereof."
On May 28, 1903, surveying began to establish the boundaries of the Guantanamo Naval Station.
In the Agreement of July 2, 1903, dealing with the same subject, the "Regulations for the Lease of Naval and Coaling Stations" was passed:
"Article I.- The United States of America agrees and covenants to pay the Republic of Cuba the annual sum of two thousand dollars, in gold coin of the United States, as long as the former shall occupy and use said areas of land by virtue of said agreement."
"All private lands and other real property within said areas shall be acquired forthwith by the Republic of Cuba."
"The United States of America agrees to furnish to the Republic of Cuba the sums necessary for the purchase of said private lands and properties and such sums shall be accepted by the Republic of Cuba as advance payment on account of rental due by virtue of said Agreement."
The Agreement which governed this lease, signed in Havana by representatives of the Presidents of Cuba and the United States respectively, was passed by the Cuban Senate on July 16, 1903, ratified by the President of Cuba a month later on August 16, and by the President of the United States on October 2, and after exchanging ratifications in Washington on October 6, it was published in the Gazette of Cuba on the 12th of the same month and year.
Dated on December 14, 1903, it was informed that four days earlier on the 10th of the same month, the United States had been given possession of the areas of water and land for the establishing of a naval station in Guantanamo.
For the United States Government and Navy, the transfer of part of the territory of the largest island in the Antilles was a source of great rejoicing and they intended to celebrate the event. Vessels belonging to the Caribbean Squadron and some battleships from the North Atlantic Fleet converged on Guantanamo.
The Cuban government appointed the Head of Public Works of Santiago de Cuba to deliver that part of the territory over which it technically exercised sovereignty on December 10, 1903, the date chosen by the United States. He would be the only Cuban present at the ceremony and just for a brief time since, once his mission was accomplished, without any toasts or handshakes, he left for the neighboring town of Caimanera.
The Head of Public Works had boarded the battleship "Kearsage", which was the U.S. flagship, where he met Rear Admiral Barker. At 12:00 hours a 21-gun-salute was given and along with the notes of the Cuban National Anthem, the Cuban flag which had been flying on board that vessel was lowered, and immediately the United States flag was hoisted on land, at the point called Playa del Este, with an equal number of salvos, thus concluding the ceremony.
According to the articles of the Agreement, the United States was to dedicate the leased lands exclusively for public use, not being able to establish any type of business or industry.
The U.S. authorities in said territories and the Cuban authorities mutually agreed to surrender fugitives from justice charged with crimes or misdemeanors subject to the laws of each party, as long as it was required by the authorities who would be judging them.
Materials imported into the areas belonging to said naval stations for their own use and consumption would be exempt from customs duties, or any other kind of fees, to the Republic of Cuba.
The lease of these naval stations included the right to use and occupy the waters adjacent to said areas of land and water, to improve and deepen the entrances to them and their anchorages and for anything else that would be necessary for the exclusive use to which they were dedicated.
Even though the United States acknowledged the continuation of Cuba's definitive sovereignty over those areas of water and land, it would exercise, with Cuba's consent, "complete jurisdiction and domain" over said areas while they occupied them according to the other already quoted stipulations.
In the so-called Permanent Treaty of May 22, 1903, signed by the governments of the Republic of Cuba and the United States, future relations between both nations were detailed: in other words, what Manuel Márquez Sterling would call "the intolerable yoke of the Platt Amendment" was thus put firmly in place.
The Permanent Treaty, signed by both countries, was approved by the United States Senate on March 22, 1904 and by the Cuban Senate on June 8 of that year, and the ratifications were exchanged in Washington on June 1st, 1904. Therefore, the Platt Amendment is an amendment to an American law, an appendix to the Cuban Constitution of 1901 and a permanent treaty between both countries.
The experiences acquired with the Guantanamo Naval Base were useful to apply measures in Panama that were equal or worse, in the case of the Canal.
In the United States Congress, it is customary to introduce amendments, whenever a law which is of urgent necessity for its content and importance is being debated. This frequently obliges legislators to put aside or sacrifice any conflicting criteria. Such amendments have more than once affected the sovereignty for which our people tirelessly struggle.
In 1912, the Cuban Secretary of State, Manuel Sanguily, negotiated a new treaty with the U.S. State Department whereby the United States would relinquish its rights over Bahia Honda in exchange for enlarging the boundaries of the Guantanamo station.
That same year, when the uprising of the Partido de los Independientes de Color (Independent Colored Party) took place, which the Liberal Party government of President José Miguel Gómez brutally repressed, American troops came out of the Guantanamo Naval Base and occupied several towns in the former Oriente Province, near the cities of Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba, with the pretext of "protecting the lives and properties of U.S. citizens".
In 1917, because of the uprising known as "La Chambelona" carried out by the elements of the Liberal Party in Oriente who were opposed to the electoral fraud that had re-elected President Mario García Menocal of the Conservative Party, Yankee regiments from the Base headed for various points in that province of Cuba, under the pretext of "protecting the Base water supply".
Part III: The Formal Repeal of the Platt Amendment and Continued Presence of the Guantanamo Naval Base.
The advent of the Democratic administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the United States in 1933 opened the way to a necessary accommodation of the relationship of domination that the U.S. exercised over Cuba. The fall of the Gerardo Machado's tyranny under the pressure of a powerful popular movement, and the subsequent installation of a provisional government headed by the university professor of physiology, Ramón Grau San Martin, were a serious obstacle to the achievement of the program demanded by the people.
On November 24, 1933, U.S. President Roosevelt issued an official statement encouraging the intrigues of Batista and Sumner Welles, the Ambassador to Havana, against Grau's government. These included the offer to sign a new commercial treaty and repeal the Platt Amendment. Roosevelt explained that "...any Provisional Government in Cuba in which the Cuban people show their confidence would be welcome". The impatience of the U.S, administration to get rid of Grau was growing, as from mid-November the influence of a young anti-imperialist, Antonio Guiteras, was increasing in the government, which would take many of its more radical steps in the weeks to come. It was necessary to swiftly overthrow that government.
On December 13, 1933, Ambassador Sumner Welles returned definitively to Washington and was substituted five days later by Jefferson Caffery.
On January 13-14, 1934, Batista convened and presided over a military meeting at Columbia, where he proposed to oust Grau and appoint Colonel Carlos Mendieta y Montefur, which was agreed to by the so-called Columbia Military Junta. Grau San Martin presented his resignation at dawn on January 15, 1934 and left for exile in Mexico on the 20th of the same month. Thus, on January 18, 1934, Mendieta was installed as President after the coup d'état. Although the Mendieta administration had been recognized by the United States on January 23rd of that year, actually the fate of the country was in the hands of Ambassador Caffery and Batista.
The overthrow of the Grau San Martin provisional government in January 1934, as a result of internal contradictions and a whole series of pressures, maneuvers and aggressions wielded against it by imperialism and its local allies, meant a first and indispensable step towards the imposition of an oligarchic-imperialistic alternative to solve the Cuban national crisis.
The government headed by Mendieta would take on the task of adjusting the bonds of the country's neo-colonial dependency.
Neither the oligarchy reinstated in power, nor the Washington government, were in position to ignore the feelings of the Cuban people towards neocolonialism and its instruments. Nor was the United States unaware of the importance of the support of Latin American governments -Cuba among them- in the already foreseeable confrontation with other emerging imperialist powers such as Germany and Japan.
The new process would include formulae to ensure the renewed functioning of the neocolonial system. The "Good Neighbor" policy was very mindful of Latin American opposition to Washington's open interventionism in the hemisphere. The aim of Roosevelt's policy was to portray a new image in its hemispheric relations through the "good neighbor" diplomatic formula.
As one of the adjustment measures, on May 29, 1934 a new U.S.-Cuba Relations Treaty, modifying the one of May 22, 1903, was signed by the other Roosevelt, perhaps a distant relative of he who had landed in Cuba with the Rough Riders.
Two days earlier, on May 27, at 10:30 a.m., when United States Ambassador Jefferson Caffery was getting ready, as was his custom, to leave his residence in the Alturas de Almendares, he was the target of an assassination attempt; three shots were fired by several unidentified individuals from a car. The next day, May 28th, at noon, as it was driving along Quinta Avenida in the Miramar district, the car assigned to the First Secretary of the United States Embassy, H. Freeman Matthews, after having dropped off the diplomat at the Embassy, was attacked by several individuals traveling in a car and armed with machine guns. One of them approached the chauffeur and told him that he should let Matthews know that he was giving him one week to get out of Cuba: then he smashed the windshield of the car and sped off.
These acts that revealed a general climate of anti-United States hostility could have precipitated the signing of the new Relations Treaty that proposed the alleged end of the unpopular Platt Amendment.
The new Relations Treaty provided for the suppression of the right of the United States to intervene in Cuba and that:
"The United States of America and the Republic of Cuba, being animated by the desire to fortify the relations of friendship between the two countries and to modify, with this purpose, the relations established between them by the Treaty of Relations signed in Havana, May 22, 1903, (...) have agreed upon the following articles:
(...)
"Article 3.- Until the two contracting parties agree to the modifications or abrogation of the stipulations of the agreement in regard to the lease to the United States of America of lands in Cuba for coaling and naval stations signed by the President of the Republic of Cuba on February 16, 1903, and by the President of the United States of America on the 23rd day of the same month and year, the stipulations of that agreement with regard to the naval stations of Guantanamo shall continue in effect in the same form and conditions with respect to the naval station at Guantanamo. So long as the United States of America shall not abandon the said naval station of Guantanamo or the two Governments shall not agree to a modification of its present limits, the station shall continue to have territorial area that it now has, with the limits that it has on the date of the signature of the present Treaty."
The United States Senate ratified the new Relations Treaty on June 1, 1934, and Cuba on June 4. Five days later, on June 9, ratifications of the Relations Treaty of May 29th of the same year were exchanged, and with that the Platt Amendment was formally repealed, but the Guantanamo Naval Base remained.
The new Treaty legalized the de facto situation of the Guantanamo naval station, thus rescinding the part of the agreements of February 16 and 23 and July 2 of 1903 between the two countries relating to the lands and waters in Bahia Honda, and the part that referred to the waters and lands of the Guantanamo station was amended, in the sense that they were enlarged.
The United States maintained its naval station in Guantanamo as a strategic surveillance and control site, in order to ensure its political and economic predominance in the Caribbean and Central America and to defend the Panama Canal.
Part IV: The Guantanamo Naval Base from the formal end of the Platt Amendment until the Triumph of the Revolution.
After the signing of the Treaty of Relations of 1934, the territory of the "naval station" underwent a gradual fortifying and equipping process until, in the spring of 1941, the Base became established as an operational naval station with the following structure: naval station, air naval station and Marines Corps Base and warehouse facilities.
On June 6, 1934 the United States Senate had passed a bill which would authorize the Secretary of the Navy to sign a long-term contract with a company that would undertake to supply adequate water to the Naval Base in Guantanamo; however, prior to this, American plans already existed for the construction of an aqueduct which would bring in water from the Yateras River.
Expansion continued, and by 1943 other facilities were constructed by contracting the Frederick Snare Company. This hired 9,000 civilian workers, many of them Cubans.
Another year of tremendous expansion of the military and civilian facilities on the Base was 1951. In 1952, the United States Secretary of the Navy decided to change the name of the U.S. Naval Operating Base to "U.S. Naval Base"; by that time its structure already included a Training Center.
The Constitution of 1940, the Revolutionary Struggle and Guantanamo Naval Base until December 1958.
The period between the end of 1937 and 1940 was characterized, from a political point of view, by the adoption of measures that allowed for elections for the Constitutional Assembly to be called and for them to take place. The reason why Batista agreed to these democratizing measures was that it was in his interest to move towards the establishment of formulae that would allow him to remain at the center of political decisions, and thus ensure the continuity of his power within the new order arising under the formulae that he had implemented. At the beginning of 1938 the agreement between Batista and Grau to install a Constitutional Assembly was made public. The Constitutional Convention, inaugurated on February 9, 1940, concluded its sessions on June 8 of that same year.
The Constitution was signed on July 1st, 1940 and promulgated on July 5 that same year. The new Law of Laws established that "the territory of the Republic consists of the Island of Cuba, the Isle of Pines and other adjacent islands and keys, which were under the sovereignty of Spain until the ratification of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898. The Republic of Cuba shall not conclude or ratify pacts or treaties that in any form limit or undermine national sovereignty or the integrity of the territory".
The oligarchy would strive to prevent the materialization of the more advanced principles in this Constitution or at least to restrict their application to a maximum.
Part V: The Guantanamo Naval Base since the Triumph of the Revolution.
Since the triumph of the Revolution, the Revolutionary Government has denounced the illegal occupation of that portion of our territory.
On the other hand, since January 1st, 1959, the United States turned the usurped territory of the Guantanamo Naval Base into a permanent source of threats, provocation and violation of Cuba's sovereignty, with the aim of creating trouble for the victorious revolutionary process. Said Base has always been present in the plans and operations conceived by Washington to overthrow the Revolutionary Government.
All kinds of aggressions have come from the Naval Base:
Dropping of inflammable materials over free territory from planes flying out of the Base. Provocations by American soldiers, including insults, the throwing of stones and cans filled with inflammable materials and the firing of pistols and automatic weapons. Violations of Cuban jurisdictional waters and Cuban territory by American military vessels and aircraft from the Base. Plans for self-aggression on the Base that would provoke a large-scale armed struggle between Cuba and the United States. Registering the radio frequencies used at the Base in the International Frequency Registry in the space corresponding to Cuba.
On January 12, 1961, the worker Manuel Prieto Gómez who had been employed at the Base for more than 3 years was savagely tortured by Yankee soldiers on the Guantanamo Naval Base, for the "crime" of being a revolutionary.
On October 15 of that same year, the Cuban worker Rubén López Sabariego was tortured and subsequently murdered.
On June 24, 1962, Rodolfo Rosell Salas, a fisherman from Caimanera, was murdered by soldiers at the Base.
Likewise, the devious intent of fabricating a self-provocation and deploying American troops in a "justified" punitive invasion of Cuba has always been a volatile element at Guantanamo Base. We can find an example of this in one of the actions included in the so-called "Operation Mongoose", when on September 3, 1962 American soldiers stationed in Guantanamo would shoot at Cuban sentries.
During the Missile Crisis, the Base was reinforced in terms of military technology and troops; manpower grew to more than 16,000 Marines. Given the decision of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev to withdraw the nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba without previously either consulting or informing the Revolutionary Government, Cuba defined the unshakeable position of the Revolution in what came to be known as the "Five Points". The fifth point demanded withdrawal from the Guantanamo Naval Base. We were on the brink of a thermonuclear war, where we would be the prime target as a consequence of the imperial policy of taking over Cuba.
On February 11, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson reduced the number of Cuban personnel working at the Base by approximately 700 workers. They also confiscated the accumulated retirement funds of hundreds of Cuban workers who had been employed on the Base and illegally suspended payments of pensions to retired Cuban workers.
On July 19, 1964, in a blatant provocation made by American border guards against the Cuban border patrol sentries, Ramón López Peña, a young 17-year-old soldier, was murdered at close range while he was on guard in the sentry-box.
On May 21, 1966, and in similar circumstances, soldier Luis Ramírez was murdered by shots from the Base.
In hardly three weeks of the month of May in 1980, more than 80,000 men, 24 vessels and some 350 combat aircraft took part in Solid Shield-80 exercises; as part of its dynamic, this included the landing of 2,000 Marines at the Naval Base and the reinforcement of the facility with an additional 1200 troops.
In October 1991, during the 4th Communist Party Congress in Santiago de Cuba, planes and helicopters from the Base violated Cuban air space over the city.
In 1994, the Base served as a support station for the invasion of Haiti: American air force planes used Base airports for this. More than 45,000 Haitian emigrants were kept on the Base until mid-1995.
Also in 1994, the well-known migration crisis was produced as a result of the tightening up of the blockade and the tough years of the Special Period, the non-compliance with the Migratory Agreement of 1984 signed with the Reagan Administration, the considerable reduction in the number of visas granted and the encouragement of illegal emigration, including the Cuban Adjustment Act signed by President Johnson more than four decades ago.
As a result of the crisis created, a declaration made by President Clinton on August 19, 1994 transformed the Base into a migratory concentration camp for the Cuban rafters, in numbers close to 30,000.
Finally, on September 9, 1994 a Joint Communiqué was signed by the Clinton administration and the Cuban government. This saw the United States committing to prevent the entry into its territory of intercepted illegal emigrants and to issue a minimum of 20,000 annual visas for safety travel to the United States.
On May 2, 1995, as part of the migratory negotiations, the governments of Cuba and the United States also agreed what on this occasion was called a Joint Declaration establishing the procedure for returning to Cuba all those who continued trying to illegally migrate to the United States and were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Notice the specific reference to the illegal emigrants intercepted by the Coast Guards. Thus the basis had been laid of a sinister business: the traffic of persons. The Murderous Act was maintained, thus turning Cuba into the only country in the world subjected to such harassment. While approximately 250 thousand people have safely traveled to that country, an incalculable number of women, children and people of all ages have lost their lives as a result of the prosperous traffic of emigrants.
Following an agreement by the two governments, as from the migratory crisis of 1994, regular meetings between the military commands of each side were initiated. A strip of mined territory would sometimes be flooded by tropical rainstorms and overflowing rivers. On many occasions our sappers had put their lives in danger to save persons who were crossing the restricted military zone in that area, even with children.
The Guantanamo Naval Base since the enactment of the Helms-Burton Act.
This Act, signed by President William Clinton on March 12, 1996, in its Title II about "Assistance to a Free and Independent Cuba", Section 201 related to the "policy toward a transition government and a democratically elected government in Cuba", establishes in its Point 12 that the United States must "be prepared to enter into negotiations with a democratically elected government in Cuba either to return the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo to Cuba or to renegotiate the present agreement under mutually agreeable terms". Something worse than what was planned by military governor Leonard Wood, who had landed on foot along with Theodore Roosevelt in the proximity of Santiago de Cuba: the idea of having an annexationist of Cuban descent administrating our country.
The War in Kosovo in 1999 resulted in a great number of Kosovar refugees. The Clinton government, embroiled in that NATO war against Serbia, made the decision to use the Base to accommodate a number of them, and on this occasion, for the first time, with no previous consultation whatsoever as usual, it informed Cuba of the decision made. Our answer was constructive. Even though we were opposed to the unjust and illegal conflict, we had no grounds on which to oppose the humanitarian aid needed by the Kosovar refugees. We even offered our country's cooperation, if it should be needed, in terms of medical care or any other service they might need. Finally, the Kosovar refugees were never sent to the Guantanamo Naval Base.
The manifesto called "The Oath of Baraguá" of February 19, 2000 expressed that "in due time, since it no longer constitutes a prioritized objective at this moment even though the right of our people is very just and cannot be waived; the illegally occupied territory of Guantanamo must be returned to Cuba." At that time, we were involved in the struggle for the return of the kidnapped boy and the economic consequences of the brutal blockade.
The Guantanamo Naval Base since September 11.
On September 18, 2001, President Bush signed United States Congress legislation authorizing the use of force as a response to the September 11 attacks. Bush used this legislation as a basis to sign a Military Order on November 13 of that same year which would establish the legal bases for arrests and trials by military tribunals of individuals who didn't hold U.S. citizenship, as part of the "war on terrorism".
On January 8, 2002 the United States officially informed Cuba that they would be using the Guantanamo Naval Base as a detention center for Afghan war prisoners.
Three days later, on January 11, 2002, the first 20 detainees arrived, and the figure reached the number of 776 prisoners coming from 48 countries. Of course none of these data were mentioned. We assumed they were Afghan war prisoners. The first planes were landing full of prisoners, and many more guards than prisoners. On the same day, the government of Cuba issued a public declaration indicating its willingness to cooperate with medical assistance services as required, clean-up programs and a fight against mosquitoes and pests in the area surrounding the base which is under our control, or any other useful, constructive and humane measure that might come up. I remember the data because I was personally involved in details concerning the Note presented by the MINREX in response to the United States Note. We were very far from imagining at that moment that the U.S. government was getting ready to create a horrendous torture center at that base.
The Socialist Constitution proclaimed on February 24, 1976 had set forth in its Article 11, section c) that "the Republic of Cuba repudiates and considers as null and illegal those treaties, pacts or concessions concerted under conditions of inequality or which disregard or diminish her sovereignty and territorial integrity."
On June 10, 2002, the people of Cuba, in an unprecedented process of popular referendum, ratified the socialist content of that Constitution of 1976 as a response to the meddling and offensive expressions of the President of the United States. Likewise, it mandated the National People's Power Assembly to amend it so that it would expressly state, inter alia, the irrevocable principle which must govern the economic, diplomatic and political relations of our country with other states, by adding to the same Article 11, section c): "Economic, diplomatic and political relations with any other State may never be negotiated under aggression, threat or coercion by a foreign power."
After the Proclamation to the People of Cuba was made public on July 31, 2006, the U.S. authorities have declared that they do not hope for a migration crisis but that they are pre-emptively preparing to face one, with the use of the Guantanamo Naval Base as a concentration camp for illegal migrants intercepted in the high seas being a consideration. In public declarations, information reveals that the United States is expanding its civilian buildings on the Base with the aim of increasing their capacity to receive the illegal emigrants.
Cuba, for her part, has taken all possible measures to avoid incidents between the armed forces of both countries, and has declared that she is abiding by the commitments contained in the Joint Declaration on migratory issues signed with the Clinton administration. Why is there so much talking, threats and brouhaha?
The symbolic annual payment of $3,386.25 for the lease of the territory occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base was maintained until 1972 when the Americans adjusted it themselves to $3,676. In 1973, a new adjustment was made for the value of the old U.S. Gold dollar, and for that reason the cheque issued by the Treasury Department was since then increased to $4,085.00 each year. That cheque is charged to the United States Navy, the party responsible for operations at the Naval Base.
The cheques issued by the government of the United States, as payment for the lease, are in the name of the "Treasurer General of the Republic of Cuba", an institution and official who, many years ago, have ceased to function within the structure of the Government of Cuba. This cheque is sent on a yearly basis, through diplomatic channels. The one for 1959, due to a mere confusion, was entered into the national budget. Since 1960 until today these cheques have not been cashed and they are proof of the lease that has been imposed for more than 107 years. I would imagine, conservatively, that this is ten times less than what the United States government spends on the salary of a schoolteacher each year.
Both the Platt Amendment and the Guantanamo Naval Base were unnecessary. History has shown that in a great number of countries in this hemisphere where there has not been a revolution, their entire territory, governed by the multinationals and the oligarchies, needs neither one nor the other. Advertising took care of their mostly ill-trained and poverty-stricken populations by creating reflexes.
From the military point of view, a nuclear aircraft carrier, with so many fast fighter-bombers and escort ships supported by technology and satellites, is several times more powerful and can move to any point on the globe, wherever the empire needs it the most.
The Base is needed to humiliate and to carry out the filthy deeds that take place there. If we must await the downfall of the system, we shall wait. The suffering and danger for all humanity shall be great, like today's stock market crisis, and a growing number of people forecast it. Cuba shall always be waiting in a state of combat readiness.
Fidel Castro Ruz
August 14, 2007.
6:00 p.m.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
Peace Movement Overthrows Government, Cheney Dies
(PU) Former Vice President Richard B. Cheney was found dead today at the Daniel Ellsberg Reeducation Center for War Criminals and the Psychopathically Challenged. Using twine he had pilfered from a macramé class, Mr. Cheney apparently hanged himself after a particularly grueling group therapy session in which participants were asked to go deep within themselves and explore their feelings about the phrase, "Give Peace a Chance."
Mr. Cheney's suicide is one more in a distressingly long line of self-inflicted deaths of Republican politicians, military contractors, army officers, and rightwing pundits following the recent nationwide, nonviolent Revolution. For some as yet unknown reason, many free market neoconservatives seem unwilling to go on living, now that all forms of racial and ethnic discrimination have ceased, gay marriage is legal, U.S. troops are coming home to full employment and psychological counseling, and the end of global warming appears possible within 1-2 weeks.
"Dick's with Jesus, now," wept James Dobson, chairman of the rightwing evangelical group, Focus on the Family. Mr. Dobson was recently sentenced to 2,500 years of community service at an HIV/AIDS clinic for his part in cutting off government funding to sex education programs that did not promote abstinence-only. "If you ask me, Dick Cheney didn't kill himself," Dobson continued. "He was murdered -- murdered by those tree-hugging, all-you-need-is-love, daisy-sniffing goons who took over our government. Death to the fascist hippies that prey on the life of Christian conservatives!"
From his cell at the Reeducation Center, ex-President George W. Bush reflected on his years with Mr. Cheney. "Me and Dick had some good times. But after those peace-mongering terrorists stormed the White House and took away our ability to torture Arabs and dismantle the Constitution, life lost its meaning for Dick. He got depressed, seeing the children of illegal immigrants get adequate health care. He was also upset that the Che Guevara t-shirt they forced him to wear made him look paunchy. Oh, Dick, Dick!" wailed Mr. Bush, smashing a lava-lamp against the wall and throwing himself on his government-issued waterbed with the floral-printed, contoured sheets. "Why did it have to be YOU? Why couldn't it have been 500,000 more Iraqis?"
Newly elected President and Maximum Leader, Cindy Sheehan, also expressed regret at hearing of Mr. Cheney's demise. "That is a real bummer," she lamented. "Hey, does anybody know if I have to dial '011' to call South Korea? I'd like to get our troops out of there, too."
It is foreign policy like this that has probably motivated right-wingers such as Rupert Murdoch, Ann Coulter, and Alberto Gonzalez to take their own lives. Mr. Murdoch, who drank nine quarts of toner from a color printer, and Mr. Gonzalez, who water-boarded himself to death, selected quiet, almost humble, ways to shuffle off their mortal coils.
Ms. Coulter, in contrast, chose to dress in the traditional garb of a devout Muslim woman and blow herself up at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, in order to demonstrate, her suicide note read, "the terrorist faggotry embedded in Enlightenment values." These deaths, say remaining conservative pundits, might have been avoided, had the Bush Administration taken firmer control of the Internet.
"If millions of people hadn't been allowed to click on all those goddamned Web petitions to stop the war," remarked Rush Limbaugh, "Cindy Sheehan would be salted away in some FEMA detention camp by now. Every day, it gets worse. Just a minute ago, I heard that that death-row guy, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was appointed Attorney General. You'll pardon me, now, while I take an overdose of OxyContin."
President Sheehan's Cabinet appointments have, at times, stirred controversy, as when she tapped singer Harry Belafonte for Secretary of State, and anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein for Chair of the Federal Reserve Board. Public outcry, however, was quickly assuaged by the new Secretary of Defense the Dalai Lama, and by White House Press Secretary Amy Goodman who gave out free Democracy Now! tote bags at a Washington press conference.
Politically, President Sheehan has had few rivals, except, for a brief time, Representative John Conyers (D-MI), who held a sit-in outside the Oval Office to "pay her back" for Ms. Sheehan's own pre-Revolutionary protest outside Conyers' office in support of Bush's impeachment. All ended happily in laughter, tears, and warm hugs, however, when Ms. Sheehan admitted that she had been "an idiot."
Surprisingly, the most serious criticism of the current Revolutionary administration has come from the sectarian Left. "I guess I miss the hatred," observed Cyrus Prolehammer, founder of the Laborers Work Party, whose motto, "We Never Met a Leftwing Dictator We Didn't Like," has garnered the organization at least two-dozen members. "A hundred years ago," Mr. Prolehammer sighed, "Cheney wouldn't have had the white, upper-class privilege of suicide. We would have taken him down to the cellar and shot him, just like with the Czar. Sadly, those days are gone. I never realized the draconian repression that can come from a truly egalitarian, anti-capitalist, peace-loving Revolution -- they just won't let you do anything mean."
Mr. Cheney's body is presently on view in the Capitol Rotunda, where nobody is lined up to see it. His family would like to give him a decent burial. However, in light of the government's radical emphasis on preserving the environment, newly appointed Secretary of the Interior Daniel McGowan has suggested that Mr. Cheney's body be thrown to an endangered species of wolves.
Whatever the outcome of this thorny issue, it is sure to be decided harmoniously and fairly, with an eye to the Greater Good of All.
Susie Day lives in New York City where she writes a humor column for feminist and gay publications. She has also written on U.S. political prisoners and labor issues and thinks her girlfriend, Laura Whitehorn, is hot stuff.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
Mr. Cheney's suicide is one more in a distressingly long line of self-inflicted deaths of Republican politicians, military contractors, army officers, and rightwing pundits following the recent nationwide, nonviolent Revolution. For some as yet unknown reason, many free market neoconservatives seem unwilling to go on living, now that all forms of racial and ethnic discrimination have ceased, gay marriage is legal, U.S. troops are coming home to full employment and psychological counseling, and the end of global warming appears possible within 1-2 weeks.
"Dick's with Jesus, now," wept James Dobson, chairman of the rightwing evangelical group, Focus on the Family. Mr. Dobson was recently sentenced to 2,500 years of community service at an HIV/AIDS clinic for his part in cutting off government funding to sex education programs that did not promote abstinence-only. "If you ask me, Dick Cheney didn't kill himself," Dobson continued. "He was murdered -- murdered by those tree-hugging, all-you-need-is-love, daisy-sniffing goons who took over our government. Death to the fascist hippies that prey on the life of Christian conservatives!"
From his cell at the Reeducation Center, ex-President George W. Bush reflected on his years with Mr. Cheney. "Me and Dick had some good times. But after those peace-mongering terrorists stormed the White House and took away our ability to torture Arabs and dismantle the Constitution, life lost its meaning for Dick. He got depressed, seeing the children of illegal immigrants get adequate health care. He was also upset that the Che Guevara t-shirt they forced him to wear made him look paunchy. Oh, Dick, Dick!" wailed Mr. Bush, smashing a lava-lamp against the wall and throwing himself on his government-issued waterbed with the floral-printed, contoured sheets. "Why did it have to be YOU? Why couldn't it have been 500,000 more Iraqis?"
Newly elected President and Maximum Leader, Cindy Sheehan, also expressed regret at hearing of Mr. Cheney's demise. "That is a real bummer," she lamented. "Hey, does anybody know if I have to dial '011' to call South Korea? I'd like to get our troops out of there, too."
It is foreign policy like this that has probably motivated right-wingers such as Rupert Murdoch, Ann Coulter, and Alberto Gonzalez to take their own lives. Mr. Murdoch, who drank nine quarts of toner from a color printer, and Mr. Gonzalez, who water-boarded himself to death, selected quiet, almost humble, ways to shuffle off their mortal coils.
Ms. Coulter, in contrast, chose to dress in the traditional garb of a devout Muslim woman and blow herself up at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, in order to demonstrate, her suicide note read, "the terrorist faggotry embedded in Enlightenment values." These deaths, say remaining conservative pundits, might have been avoided, had the Bush Administration taken firmer control of the Internet.
"If millions of people hadn't been allowed to click on all those goddamned Web petitions to stop the war," remarked Rush Limbaugh, "Cindy Sheehan would be salted away in some FEMA detention camp by now. Every day, it gets worse. Just a minute ago, I heard that that death-row guy, Mumia Abu-Jamal, was appointed Attorney General. You'll pardon me, now, while I take an overdose of OxyContin."
President Sheehan's Cabinet appointments have, at times, stirred controversy, as when she tapped singer Harry Belafonte for Secretary of State, and anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein for Chair of the Federal Reserve Board. Public outcry, however, was quickly assuaged by the new Secretary of Defense the Dalai Lama, and by White House Press Secretary Amy Goodman who gave out free Democracy Now! tote bags at a Washington press conference.
Politically, President Sheehan has had few rivals, except, for a brief time, Representative John Conyers (D-MI), who held a sit-in outside the Oval Office to "pay her back" for Ms. Sheehan's own pre-Revolutionary protest outside Conyers' office in support of Bush's impeachment. All ended happily in laughter, tears, and warm hugs, however, when Ms. Sheehan admitted that she had been "an idiot."
Surprisingly, the most serious criticism of the current Revolutionary administration has come from the sectarian Left. "I guess I miss the hatred," observed Cyrus Prolehammer, founder of the Laborers Work Party, whose motto, "We Never Met a Leftwing Dictator We Didn't Like," has garnered the organization at least two-dozen members. "A hundred years ago," Mr. Prolehammer sighed, "Cheney wouldn't have had the white, upper-class privilege of suicide. We would have taken him down to the cellar and shot him, just like with the Czar. Sadly, those days are gone. I never realized the draconian repression that can come from a truly egalitarian, anti-capitalist, peace-loving Revolution -- they just won't let you do anything mean."
Mr. Cheney's body is presently on view in the Capitol Rotunda, where nobody is lined up to see it. His family would like to give him a decent burial. However, in light of the government's radical emphasis on preserving the environment, newly appointed Secretary of the Interior Daniel McGowan has suggested that Mr. Cheney's body be thrown to an endangered species of wolves.
Whatever the outcome of this thorny issue, it is sure to be decided harmoniously and fairly, with an eye to the Greater Good of All.
Susie Day lives in New York City where she writes a humor column for feminist and gay publications. She has also written on U.S. political prisoners and labor issues and thinks her girlfriend, Laura Whitehorn, is hot stuff.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
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