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On Thursday, Rep. Michele Bachmann condemned the Goldstone report, a United Nations-commissioned report on possible war crimes during the Israel-Palestine conflict in the Gaza strip in 2008 and 2009. But it is clear from her press release that she either didn’t read the report or is willfully misleading the public.

The U.S. House voted voted 344 to 36 last week to condemn the Goldstone report because it criticizes Israel’s actions in retaliation to Palestinian attacks. Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum were the only two members of the Minnesota delegation to vote against condemning the report. The rest of the delegation supported the condemnation, except for Bachmann who was not present for the vote.

Bachmann praised the vote to condemn the report and in a press release on Thursday, wrote, “Indeed, while this report condemns Israel’s actions, it ignores the precipitating causes of Israel’s self-defensive behavior, concluding that Israel’s military operations were ‘deliberate and systematic,’ and directed at the people of Gaza as a whole, failing to acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism, namely the thousands of rockets launched daily at its citizens.”

In fact, the report (pdf) doesn’t ignore “the thousands of rockets launched daily at its citizens.” It clearly calls those rockets attacks “a war crime,” and speculated further that they “may amount to crimes against humanity.”

The report’s section on the rocket attacks on Israel spans 20 pages which provide detail on lives lost, property damage, the groups responsible and the violation of Israeli rights.

On page 347, the report states, “Since April 2001, Palestinian armed groups have launched more than 8,000 rockets and mortars from Gaza into southern Israel.” It notes the “psychological trauma and the feeling of insecurity that living under rocket fire has caused” and the resulting “erosion of the economic, social and cultural life of these communities” in southern Israel.

The report describes the groups responsible, including “the ‘al Qassam Brigades’” which are the “the armed wing of the Hamas political movement.”

It notes that the rocket attacks by Palestinians are a violation of the rights of Israeli children. “The strikes had an adverse impact on the right to education of children and young adults in the affected communities in southern Israel.”

The report also identifies instances where Palestinian armed forces launched rockets from civilian areas thereby using civilians as shields against Israeli retaliation.

And the Goldstone report concludes,

From the facts available, the Mission finds that the rocket and mortars attacks, launched by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, have caused terror in the affected communities of southern Israel and in Israel as a whole. Furthermore, it is the Mission’s view that the mortars and rockets are uncontrolled and uncontrollable, respectively. This indicates the commission of an indiscriminate attack on the civilian population of southern Israel, a war crime, and may amount to crimes against humanity. These attacks have caused loss of life and physical and mental injury to civilians and damage to private houses, religious buildings and property and have eroded the economic and cultural life of the affected communities.

“As strong supporters of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, we are writing to express our deep concern for the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and to request immediate action by the United States to address this crisis,” reads the letter. “With the ceasefire now in effect, it is critical that the United States play a leading role in alleviating the suffering of civilians in Gaza and we respectfully urge your assistance in this task.”

Earlier this month, Ellison was among 22 representatives who refrained from voting on a resolution supporting Israel’s military incursion into Gaza; he noted that resolution’s failure to adequately address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Full text of the letter, which was originally signed by Ellison as well as Reps. John Olver, D-Mass.; Lois Capps, D-Calif.; David Price, D-N.C.; Barbara Lee, D-Calif.; Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.; and Sam Farr, D-Calif., and has 30 representatives as of Wednesday:

First, we would like to congratulate you on being sworn in as our nation’s 67th Secretary of State. We are very hopeful that this new era in American foreign policy upon which we embark can advance the cause of peace in the Middle East and beyond.

As strong supporters of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, we are writing to express our deep concern for the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and to request immediate action by the United States to address this crisis. With the ceasefire now in effect, it is critical that the United States play a leading role in alleviating the suffering of civilians in Gaza and we respectfully urge your assistance in this task.

As you know, the situation on the ground is dire. The flow of humanitarian goods into the Gaza Strip is limited to food and medicine. Yet there exists a real need to allow for the importation of construction materials and fuel, which require the opening of crossings into Gaza. For example, only the Karni Crossing has the capacity for transporting large cargo, such as cement, but it remains closed.

In addition, in order to rebuild civilian infrastructure in Gaza the international community is going to have to make significant monetary contributions. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) estimates financial needs of nearly $350 million just to rebuild their own infrastructure and continue providing essential services to the Palestinians in Gaza.
We also remain especially concerned about the desperate condition of medical services in Gaza. Although Israel has begun to allow limited medical supplies into Gaza, the need far outweighs the availability while hospitals remain understaffed and ill-supplied. One of the most crucial steps that needs to be taken is for Israel to allow critically ill patients to be transported out of Gaza and into Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, where they may receive necessary medical care. We therefore urge you to express this concern directly to Israeli government officials.

In addition to the several thousand individuals who were physically injured during the recent military operations, we can expect to see a dramatic increase in the number of individuals suffering from psychological trauma. In order to help the population to begin rebuilding, we will need to further ensure that funds are used to provide adequate mental health services in Gaza.”

Failure to address this humanitarian emergency has the potential to produce a crisis of even more unspeakable proportions. We therefore respectfully request that the State Department release emergency funds to UNRWA for reconstruction and humanitarian assistance. We believe the State Department can make funds available through accounts such as Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance (ERMA) and urge you to facilitate the transfer of funds as soon as possible.

We look forward to maintaining a productive and ongoing dialogue with the State Department and the Obama Administration regarding the United States response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Toward that end we respectfully request that you or your staff share with us the actions taken to date and the strategy you will pursue to address the humanitarian crisis within 14 days.

Finally, we know that addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole is a top priority of the Obama Administration and we applaud President Obama and you for your early and public commitment to meet this challenge. We also believe that the naming of former Senator George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East is commendable. We believe the security interests of both Israel and the United States will be greatly enhanced by the establishment of a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and that United States involvement is indispensable in achieving that goal. We stand ready to work with you as the Administration furthers these efforts.

McCollum sits on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State Department and Foreign Operations and the Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs.

In a statement, McCollum said:

The war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is the final blow to any Middle East peace process. Palestinians are being killed in alarming numbers while Hamas continues to fire rockets at Israel. The time has come for both sides to end the rockets, end the bombings, and end the restrictions on food, medicine and fuel — all of which inflict intolerable harm on innocent civilians on both sides. The new U.S. president in partnership with European and Arab allies must work to leverage all available diplomatic and political pressure on all parties to end the violence and start a legitimate dialogue about a future path to real peace.

Members of a committee of Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) brought a striking yet silent protest to the plaza outside St. Paul’s Ecolab on Wednesday.

Group members stood vigilantly on the steps, wearing bright orange bodysuits with black bags draped solemnly over their heads. Some of the demonstrators held banners and displayed posters that identified torture victims. Each of their heads was bowed. A blood red sign read, “Torture destroys us all.”

For those who paused at the scene, Sonja Johnson of WAMM, (pictured below) provided a little more information: “We’ve done a lot of research on torture,” she said as she handed out fliers that presented facts about crimes against humanity, while also touching on a few arresting cases. “We want people to be treated humanely … we want to stop torture at the top and we want to educate people about it.”

Yesterday Perino said that “we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year.” She added that the key thing is “how the president would describe the fight today. It’s been a very tough month in Iraq, but we are taking the fight to the enemy.” Tough indeed: the bloodiest month for U.S. troops since September. Since Bush’s proclamation on May 1, 2003, 3,924 U.S. troops have died in Iraq.

As a look back, Editor & Publisher recalls how the media covered Bush’s theatrics five years ago today, from MSNBC’s Chris Matthews (who called Bush a “hero”) to PBS’s Gwen Ifil (who described him as “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan”).

The complete number of nonfatal casualties in Iraq is 60,645. Most assume the wounded number includes all, but it does not. It leaves out another 8,273 injured and 23,052 who became ill and required medical air transport from the war zone. The Department of Defense releases two reports: one with the weekly numbers of those wounded and killed, and then another monthly report with the complete numbers. After five years, it is time for respected news organizations to use the complete number.

The public needs this information so that we can better prepare for the care of all of our veterans from this war and others. The struggle for them and their families your article addressed is happening all across this country. Nearly 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have already sought care from the V.A.

An author, Boston University international relations professor and self-described “Catholic conservative,” Bacevich (pictured) writes that the “Republican Party does not represent conservative principles” and states that “certain faux conservatives — especially those in the service of Big Business and Big Empire — have prospered,” while “conservatism as such has not.” He cites a Bush-era national debt that’s ballooned from $5.7 to $9.4 trillion and post-9/11 foreign policy leadership that “validated conspicuous consumption as the core function of 21st-century citizenship” and foreign policy decisions in which “ideology supplanted statecraft.”

But his main argument for an Obama presidency? Obama would end the United States’ combat role in Iraq.

Continued: Click “Read more”Bacevich, it should be noted, lost a son, a 27-year-old also named Andrew, in Iraq, but his opposition to the war preceded that May 2007 event by several years. Also, he’s long been critical of the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies on several counts, a trend he continues in this piece:

Above all, conservatives who think that a McCain presidency would restore a sense of realism and prudence to U.S. foreign policy are setting themselves up for disappointment. On this score, we should take the senator at his word: his commitment to continuing the most disastrous of President Bush’s misadventures is irrevocable. McCain is determined to remain in Iraq as long as it takes. He is the candidate of the War Party. The election of John McCain would provide a new lease on life to American militarism, while perpetuating the U.S. penchant for global interventionism marketed under the guise of liberation.

In Obama, Bacevich sees “a sliver of hope” for a conservative revival, brought on not by any deep conservative values the Illinois senator carries, but in the meaning behind a nationwide embrace of a candidate pledged to end U.S. involvement in Iraq.

“Acknowledging failure [in Iraq] just might open the door to self-reflection,” he writes, and such soul-searching, while officially presided over by a Democrat, just might end up benefiting conservatives whose values are not, as Bacevich writes, in growing empire, using expansive military budgets to shape the world to our wishes and undermining the Constitution.

Related: “Federalist Society members for Obama: a club of one?“

Here, then, is a short round-up of some of the most recent flubs, misunderstandings and bitter realities:

• Yesterday, during a news conference in Jordan, John McCain announced that Iran was training al-Qaida terrorists and sending them back to Iraq. McCain, who obviously doesn’t know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis, then said “the media” reported it.
• A recent CNN poll reveals that 71 percent of Americans believe the Iraq War is bad for the economy. Meanwhile, the war has cost taxpayers $406.2 billion through December 2007. And economists predict it will end up costing $3 trillion.

Continued: Click “Read more.”

• As we reported last week, 67,717 patients from both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been diagnosed with PTSD. But the VA has only approved around half of the claims for treatment.
• Juan Cole at Salon.com has an article detailing the five years of lies told by the Bush administration. There are lies for each year, from justifying the invasion to justifying the occupation.
• And finally, for videos, numbers and more Bush missteps and lies, Buzzfeed.com has created an excellent round-up of all of them in a post called “Five Stupid Years.”

• 58: Minnesotans who have died
• 492: Minnesotans wounded in action
• 3,395: Troop deaths
• 60,645: Troops wounded, injured, or ill
• 299,585: Patients (from Iraq and Afghanistan wars) treated by the Veterans Health Administration
• 120,049: Patients diagnosed with mental-health condition
• 67,717: Patients diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder
• 34,138: Approved by VA for PTSD claim (only about 50 percent of claims)
• $350-700 billion: Financial cost over 40 years to taxpayers as veterans file claims

(Sources: Department of Defense, Veterans for Common Sense)

The administration has often seemed willing to bend, fold and mutilate the truth. But this is a tad different. Maybe two tads. I’m talking about the kind of “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” parsing that was supposedly the essence of  Bill Clinton’s honesty problem. This was the opposite of what “restore honesty and integrity to the White House” Bush was supposed to stand for.

Specifically, what I’m noticing is that Bush and Cheney — while arguing that Iran’s nuclear ambitions could cause World War III — have recently (since August) sort of stopped saying that they believed Iran was developing a nuclear weapon. They have said instead that Iran had “hopes” or “ambitions” or acquiring nuclear weapons or was pursuing “knowledge”  or “technology” that “could be used to develop nuclear weapons.”I noticed these interesting word choices during Bush’s press conference Tuesday morning. But previous Bush and Cheney statements suggest that they knew what they were doing months ago. Here are three examples, with key words in bold face and my asides in italics and parentheses. These come right off the latest Joe Biden press release to reach my inbox (Biden was citing them for a different purpose).

October 21: Cheney speech to Washington Institute for Near Easy Policy: “And now, of course, we have the inescapable reality of Iran’s nuclear program (well sure they have a nuclear program, they’re enriching uranium aren’t they?); a program they claim is strictly for energy purposes, but which they have worked hard to conceal; a program carried out in complete defiance of the international community and resolutions of the U.N. Security Council. Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.” (Well sure, the technology that enables a country to enrich uranium could be used to develop nuclear weapons, right?)

October 17: Bush Press conference:  Bush was asked, do you “definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon? (notice how clear the question is: buildnuclear weapons?)”  Bush said, “I think so long — until they suspend and/or make it clear that they — that their statements aren’t real, yes, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. (I didn’t say they wanted to make one, I said they wanted to have the knowledge.) And I know it’s in the world’s interest to prevent them from doing so… So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

August 28: Bush at American Legion convention: (just after he had been told by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell of new indications that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program): President Bush Warns of “Nuclear Holocaust.” “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.”

So I’m wondering whether this inclusion, after August, of language about developing the “knowledge” and the “capacity” to make a weapon was the Bush-Cheney way of continuing to give the impression that they thought Iran had a nuclear weapons program while saying nothing that specifically directly contradicted what they had just been told about the latest intelligence finding. It’s kind of like one of those technically correct but fundamentally false scripts for a political ad, designed to lead the viewer to a false understanding without committing a technical inaccuracy.

Maybe I’m imagining things. You’d have to review a lot of statements and see whether the “knowledge” and “capacity”  stuff started earlier. I’ve just spent a couple of hours testing my theory on the White House site that archives Bush’s speeches and news conferences and — while definitely not perfect — my theory is looking pretty good. Before August, Bush often states much more flatly that Iran is “pursuing nuclear weapons,” has a “nuclear weapons program,” is “trying to develop (or ‘get’) a nuclear weapon.”

There are a couple of exceptions (and maybe more that I haven’t found) before August, where Bush uses versions of the more recent language about acquiring know-how or capabilities. But before August, they are the exceptions.

After August, all of the instances in which Bush discussed Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions, he used language that is consistent with my theory. Post-August, Iran has bad intentions and is acquiring dangerous knowledge, but not running an ongoing program to build a bomb. The change is subtle enough that you might miss it if you aren’t looking for it, and as far as I can tell, we all did miss it.

Specific cases: Post-August language

In addition to the ones above, in Bush’s press conference of Sept. 20

“I believe it’s imperative that we continue to work in a multilateral fashion to send that message.  And one place to do so is at the United Nations.  We’re also talking to different finance ministers about how we can send a message to the Iranian government that the free world is not going to tolerate the development of know-how in how to build a weapon, or at least gain the ability to make a weapon.“

Specific cases: Pre-August language

Bush’s July 12 press conference:

“The fight in Iraq is part of a broader struggle that’s unfolding across the region.  The same region in Iran — the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons” (not the knowledge that might enable Iran to someday build weapons; pre-August Iran was pursuing the weapons).

May 24 press conference:

“Iran is constantly on the agenda at a press avail like this — or a press conference like this, and the reason why is because they continue to be defiant as to the demands of the free world. The world has spoken, and said no nuclear weapons programs.  And yet they’re constantly ignoring the demands.” (They have a nuclear weapons program, exactly what we now understand they probably don’t have!)

Same press conference:

“It would have been a really dangerous world if we had the Iranians trying to develop a nuclear weapon, (not the know-how, the weapon) and Saddam Hussein competing for a nuclear weapon.  You can imagine what the mentality of the Middle East would have been like.”

May 10 press availability at the Pentagon:

“Do we understand the consequences of Iran having a nuclear weapon, which it looks like they want to try achieve — to get.  And the answer is, absolutely.”