Justice Delayed

It was a bittersweet weekend.  On Saturday, at a ceremony at Fort Lawton, the Army formally apologized to 28 black soldiers wrongly convicted at a court-martial nearly 64 years ago (or rather, apologized to their families who could make it).  Then early Sunday morning, Samuel Snow, one of the two remaining veterans, died in a Seattle hospital hours after happily receiving his honorable discharge after all these years.

Evidence was destroyed, at the order of the commanding officer, Colonel Harry Branson, at the scene the next morning following the August 14, 1944 riot at Fort Lawton involving (mostly) black soldiers against Italian Prisoners of War, which included the lynching of one Italian soldier, Guglielmo Olivotto. Prosecuting attorney, Leon Jaworski, withheld that fact and evidence of the involvement of white soldiers in stirring up the riot, and that a white MP (military policeman) was the probable murderer of Olivotto.

Journalist Jack Hamann and his wife were finally able to track down those details through recently declassified documents in 2002.  He published those details in his book, On American Soil, which inspired Representative Jim McDermott and (with, it turns out, a little help from Hamann’s mother) Rep. Jim Hunter to have the Army Board for Correction of Military Records review the convictions (and, indeed, they overturned the convictions).

So, after 64 years, with only two of the soldiers, at the time, remaining by last Saturday’s ceremony, finally justice.  One of the soldiers being finally able to hold his honorable discharge just hours before he died.

In a column last November, Robert Jamieson reported Samuel Snow was not bitter, and never bad mouthed the Army.

“Yes, I felt I had been served an injustice,” Sam Snow said when we caught up this week. “But I decided I wasn’t going to hold a grievance against nobody.”

Finally, this Saturday, Samuel Snow had justice restored. 

As reported in the Seattle PI:

When the moment Samuel Snow waited most of his life for finally came, he didn’t speak. He just took the plaque affirming his honorable discharge – an honor that had been stolen from him more than six decades ago – held it against his chest in a Seattle hospital bed, and smiled.

That moment Saturday, family said, made his life complete.

A few hours later, Snow died at age 83.

“My father went home,” son Ray Snow said, “to present his God his discharge papers from this life.”

 

Tags: Samuel+Snow, civil+rights, racism, justice, Fort+Lawton+Riots, Jack+Hamann

Privatization Endangering Our Troops in Iraq

Our troops are in danger and several have already died from shoddy electrical work by privatized contractors in Iraq according to an article in yesterday’s New York Times.

Over 283 electrical fires that destroyed or damaged American military facilities were reported in just a 6 month period from August 2006 – January 2007, including the military’s largest dining hall in the country, according to Times research. The article said the Pentagon has reported that 13 Americans have been electrocuted and many more injured.

Electrical problems were the most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq, according to an Army survey issued in February 2007. It noted “a safety threat theaterwide created by the poor-quality electrical fixtures procured and installed, sometimes incorrectly, thus resulting in a significant number of fires.”

 A Green Beret Staff Sergeant, Ryan D. Maseth, was electrocuted in January while showering due to poor electrical grounding.  Two soldiers in a nearby building had narrowly escaped an electrical fire caused by faulty wiring just two weeks before Sgt. Maseth’s death.

KBR, the Houston-based company responsible for providing electrical and other basic services for American troops in Iraq, claim they have found no link between their work and the electrocutions, even though their own study found a “systematic problem” with their electrical work. Pentagon officials who have been pressured into looking into Sgt. Maseth’s electrocution are also trying to deny the widespread danger from faulty wiring on Iraq bases have anything to do with his death.

Yet:

In another internal document written after Sergeant Maseth’s death, a senior Army officer in Baghdad warned that soldiers had to be moved immediately from several buildings because of electrical risks. In a memo asking for emergency repairs at three buildings, the official warned of a “clear and present danger,” adding, “Exposed wiring, ungrounded distribution panels and inappropriate lighting fixtures render these facilities uninhabitable and unsafe.”

The memo added that “over the course of several months, electrical fires and shorts have compounded these unsafe conditions.”

According to the New York Times article, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 KBR and other contractors have been paid millions to repair and upgrade the Iraqi buildings our troops are housed in.

Millions of dollars, yet lame excuses as to why the work could not be done correctly:

Officials say the administration contracted out so much work in Iraq that companies like KBR were simply overwhelmed by the scale of the operations. Some of the electrical work, for example, was turned over to subcontractors, some of which hired unskilled Iraqis who were paid only a few dollars a day.

Government officials responsible for contract oversight, meanwhile, were also unable to keep up, so that unsafe electrical work was not challenged by government auditors.

Oops, our subcontractors hired unskilled labors for a few bucks a day!  Oops, the government inspectors couldn’t keep up with checking the work! 

Now, I’m just trying to imagine if we had similar problems with widespread faulty wiring with a number of new condos going up here in Seattle.  Residents getting routinely shocked, and occasionally electrocuted in their showers, or forced to flee while their unit is destroyed in a fire.  Then the condo builders claimed, “Oops, our subcontractors hired unskilled laborers for dollars a day, not our fault!”  I also try to imagine our city officials saying, “Oops, there are just too many condos going up and our inspectors just don’t have time to inspect all of them!”  Of course, the next thing I imagine is the lawsuits against both the contractors and the city.  I’m not sure if our military members can sue (I seem to recall hearing about restrictions), though if not, why not?

Meanwhile, our troops are still  in danger:

The Army documents cite a number of recent safety threats. One report showed that during a four-day period in late February, soldiers at a Baghdad compound reported being shocked while taking showers in different buildings. The circumstances appear similar to those that led to Sergeant Maseth’s death.

Another entry from early March stated that an entire house used by American troops was electrically charged, making it unlivable.

Of course, I’m opposed to the war, and already cynical about the Bush administration and their cronies.  Still, this is shocking (oops, pun not intended, but maybe appropriate) even by their standards. 

Even if you support the war and Bush, write him and your members of congress and demand both that they remedy the situation so our troops are not in danger from our own contractors shoddy wiring, and that KBR and the other contractors be held responsible.

 Update:  I’ve found a video, of the Senate Hearings on July 11, 2008 after posting this earlier today.  Testifying at the hearing are Sgt. Maseth’s mother and the mother of another electroctuted soldier, and two electricians from KBR.

Evidently I can’t post Brightcove videos to my free Word Press account like I can YouTube videos, so follow the link below:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1417423198?bctid=1662507268

Tags: Iraq+War, privatization, KBR, Bush+administration

Barack’s FISA Vote

I’m disappointed and disturbed by Obama’s vote for the FISA bill expanding the Bush administration’s wire tapping powers. That being said, I still believe Barack Obama is our best hope, and I think it’s important to fight both for his election and against FISA.

I think his decision probably had a lot to do with Democrat’s fears of appearing weak on defense, as suggested in the New York Times article.  While I know that’s the nature of politics, and am not surprised to find Barack has changed his position on this and other issues since winning the nomination.  This one is particularly disturbing though, especially given that he’s a constitutional scholar and knows better than most of us what these attacks on the Fourth Amendment mean.

Most of the articles focus on the immunity given to telephone companies who participated in Bush’s warrentless wire taps, which Barack actually did try to get our of there in a failed amendment.  I look at the ACLU’s fact sheet on the FISA Amendment, though, and there is considerably more at stake.  The government can monitor the phone and internet communications of anyone they want, without explanation, with little judicial oversight, as “the FISA court is regulated to reviewing only the government’s ‘targeting’ and ‘minimization procedures’.  It has no role in overseeing how the government is actually using its surveillance power.”

Ironically, I attended an Obama Salon last month on restoring the constitution.  We discussed habeas corpus, which the Supreme Court had just restored, and I was impressed when shortly after Barack did take a stand supporting the Supreme Court’s decision and took flak from McCain for doing so.  So why cave in on this one?

I think Norman Soloman’s article, “Obama and the Progressive Base”, puts the situation in perspective. 

These days, an appreciable number of Obama supporters are starting to use words like “disillusionment.” But that’s a consequence of projecting their political outlooks onto the candidate in the first place.

    The best way to avoid becoming disillusioned is to not have illusions in the first place.

Sad, but true (and not just for Barack, but politicians in general).  Soloman then makes an important point that it is our responsibility to keep on Obama (and other politicians) to hold him to those better ideals he’s claiming.

Barack Obama is an extremely smart guy. And I can’t remember a major contender for president less inclined to insult the intelligence of the public. Let’s return the favor by directly challenging him when appropriate. We’d do him – and the Obama campaign, ourselves and the country as a whole – no favors by opting for silence instead.

    We can help the Obama for President effort when we hold him to his good positions – and move to buck him up when he wavers.

And it is important to get Barack elected, despite our disillusionment or lack of illusions:

Some progressives, now disaffected, might consider the prospect of Obama falling short on Election Day to be his problem, not ours. But this isn’t about Obama. It’s about whether the levers of power in the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court along with it, are going to be redelivered into the hands of the right wing for yet another four years.

I think he will be a substantial improvement, while not perfect, and it’s still going to be up to us to keep him on track on the issues that matter.

Under a McCain presidency, we’d be back to square one, where we’ve found ourselves since January 2001. Putting Obama in the White House would not by any means ensure progressive change, but under his presidency, the grassroots would have an opportunity to create it.

Along the way, let’s strive to eliminate disillusionment by dispensing with illusions. No one who is a presidential candidate can proceed to overcome corporate power or the warfare state. The pervasive and huge problems that have proved to be so destructive are deep, structural and embedded in the political economy. The changes most worth believing in are the ones social movements can make possible.

Meanwhile, there’s still work to be done fighting FISA.  The ACLU has filed a lawsuit, your can read more on the ACLU website, and sign onto their petition. 

Sadly, one thing that got neglected by many of us (myself included), due to the uproar about Obama’s position, was contacting our won Senators.  Check the Roll Call vote and see how your Senators voted.  I was happy to see both Senators Murray and Cantwell voted against it. Still, I can’t help but wonder if all of the 23,247 members of the Obama group to get tell him to do the right thing on FISA had also all been mobilized to contact their own Senators if maybe the vote would have been any different.  It certainly didn’t ride on one Senator’s vote alone, even a Presidential candidate’s.

Tags: FISA, Barack+Obama, Democratic+Party, civil+liberties, ACLU, wire+tapping, Bush+administration, Norman+Soloman