REDEYE 3/9/16

U.S. imperialism brought Iraq ‘a thousand Saddam Husseins’
NYT, 2/17 — Baghdad — It was…a…memorial of Iraqi civilians…killed by American bombs while they slept….The destruction of the Amiriya bomb shelter…on Feb. 13, 1991, at the outset of the Persian Gulf war, killed some 408 civilians in the worst way possible: Most were burned alive….
…On the anniversary, two men from the neighborhood, now in their 60s…spoke about their memories. Each had lost several family members in the attack, and each had helped to pile the charred bodies on trucks.
One…a retired truck driver, pointed to the neglected gravestones…said: “These are just names. There are no bodies buried here. They were all burnt. You could not recognize the bodies….”
The structure remains just as the American bunker-busting bombs left it….
…Down below…photos of the victims, arranged by family, [are] fastened to poster boards….
Many of those pictured are small children….
For the two neighborhood men, [it]…was an occasion for reflection:…The gulf war began in January 1991, and so by now the United States has been using it military to shape events in Iraq for more than a quarter of a century….The next American president will almost surely be the fifth in succession to order air strikes in Iraq….
Muhammed Jamal, 60, a retired teacher,.…[said] “I am afraid for what comes next….Maybe the future will be even worse. Maybe America will create something new that will be even worse than now….”
“We had been Sunni and Shiite living together, and they divided us….They destroyed the cities….”
Taiseer Mahdi, 31…remembers the event, from when he was a young boy….
“They…[got] rid of Saddam Hussein,” he said, “but they brought us a thousand Saddam Husseins.”
U.S. bosses have the deck stacked
NYT, 2/18 — America’s political system is rigged. The deck is stacked against ordinary people….
…The 20 wealthiest Americans, a group that would fit comfortably inside a luxury private jet bound for a Caribbean island, are worth more than the poorer half of the American population….Forbes’s wealthiest 100 are worth as much as all 42 million African-Americans….
…the influence of money in politics:
The pharmaceutical industry…has used its lobbying heft — it spent $272,000 in campaign donations per member of Congress last year, and it has more lobbyists than there are members of Congress — to bar the government from bargaining for drug prices in Medicare. That amounts to a $50 billion annual gift to pharmaceutical companies.
Frame-ups on the rise in the U.S.
NYT, 2/13 — In 2015, 149 people convicted of crimes…— from capital murder to burglary — were exonerated….the highest yearly total since…record-keeping began in 1989.
In that time, there have been at least 1,733 exonerations across the country, and the pace keeps picking up. On average, about three convicted people are now exonerated of their crimes every week….
…Last year’s group spent an average of more than 14 years behind bars. Five had been sentenced to death….Half…involved cases in which no crime occurred at all — for example, a conviction of murder by arson that…turned out to be based on faulty fire science….
…27…were for convictions based on false confessions….most often in homicide cases in which the defendant was a juvenile, intellectually disabled, mentally ill or some combination of the three. In nearly half of all 2015 exonerations, the defendant pleaded guilty before trial….
…Some defendants, especially the young or mentally impaired, can be pushed to admit guilt when they are innocent. Some…may not be able to afford bail but don’t want to spend months in pretrial detention or risk much longer sentence if they choose to go to trial.
Official misconduct — including perjury, withholding of exculpatory evidence and coercive interrogation practices — occurred in three of every four exonerations involving homicide….
…These…numbers …still understate the scope of the problem, since not all cases involving misconduct come to light.
U.S. cluster bombs killing Yemen’s civilians
NYT, 2/15 — Saudi Arabia has fired American-made cluster munitions, banned by international treaty, in civilian areas of Yemen….
…Photographs from Yemen…show unexploded but potentially lethal remnants of American cluster weapons….The Americans have sold arms and furnished training and expertise to a Saudi-led coalition…for…an indiscriminate bombing campaign…. [and] “are blatantly disregarding the global standard that says cluster munitions should never be used under any circumstances,” [said]…the arms director at Human Rights Watch….
Cluster munitions contain sub-munitions, or bomblets, that disperse widely and kill indiscriminately. Many bomblets can fail to explode, posing a threat to civilians. A 2008 treaty bans the weapons, but major arms suppliers, including the United States and Russia, have not signed it.