Life just gets worse in Iraq

[silja]

I’ve held back from wading into this debate so far but you know what, I’ve had it. The following is a disjointed rant brought on by having my nerves rattled one too many times.

After September 11 the Bush administration had a stellar opportunity to deal with international terrorism by going after those responsible. Thus the invasion of Afghanistan. I despise war in all its forms but I do agree with Bush that something had to be done about Afghanistan – and then they completely bungled it. Instead of securing a steady government in Afghanistan by cleaning out the worst of the warlords the priority was buying off thugs and criminals. Instead of securing the country the priority was flattening Tora Bora. It makes me wonder how much of the cash distributed by the CIA has been used to buy the AK47s and the rockets that are now used against NATO forces.

And then to make matters worse the powers that be had the brilliant idea of invading Iraq – except it seems that the plan was already hibernating in a filling cabinet at the Pentagon. There was no credible intelligence, no firm exit strategy, and only a wildly inaccurate estimate of the Iraqi public support. Iraq has become a black hole for resources and troops, not to mention goodwill. It has not only virtually destroyed hope of actually countering the treat of terrorism but actually made the world a more dangerous place and the latest news of sectarian violence makes it even clearer that the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq has been the worst military blunder since Hitler said ‘Hey, I wonder if Stalingrad is nice in winter’.

Of course we can’t simple pull out and leave the Iraqis to the fate we’ve created for them. We owe our loyalty to those (and I believe they are the majority) who simply want to live peaceful lives. But I’m afraid that sooner or later that is exactly what will happen and in 10 or 20 years we’ll do this all over again. It’s time we start fighting the root of the problem – and that cannot be done with laser guided bombs but only with money, more money and a great deal of diplomacy.

All this might seem motivated by terrible selfishness for surely I’m not the only one with someone to worry about but every time I see a headline that reads ‘Soldiers killed in Helmand’ my heart skips a few beats – and all that worry turns to anger at the frivolous ways of Messrs Bush and Blair.

Ahemn… I’ll stop hijacking the thread and let you get back to the scheduled discussion.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Shiite Cresent Rising

BAGHDAD, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Shiite militias in Iraq are now brutally killing gays and children forced into same-sex prostitution, a report says Sunday.

The killings are ignored under Iraqi law because homosexuality is seen as a horrific act against Islam, London's Observer newspaper reports, and those doing the killing face no consequences.

Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out legal protections for murder when the targeted people are deemed to be acting against Islam. Homosexuality is viewed by some as so immoral that killing someone who is gay qualifies as an "honor killing," the newspaper says.

Graphic photos the newspaper obtained show ruthless execution scenes of Iraqis believed to have been gay.

The fervency of the militia death squads is growing into brutal "witch hunts" for homosexuals and even as an excuse to torture and kill people wearing Western clothing, the newspaper says.

The killing campaign is responsible for a rise in Iraqis seeking asylum in Britain, the Observer says.

link

 

[deep]

Shiite Cresent Rising link

so are you are agreeing the American adventure in Iraq is a disaster

 

[A_Wanderer]

Not neccessarily and not yet, but the concequences of the Bush administration being soft on religious fascism have been apparent for some time now and they don't seem to have the will to make a defence of the secular state at home or abroad. The options for Iraq in the intermediate future present a choice between hard nosed realism and genuine support for the democratic process, this will be shown in how the militias are dealt with.

 

[deep]

Iraq PM criticizes U.S.-led attack

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 17 minutes ago

Iraq's prime minister sharply criticized a U.S.-Iraqi attack Monday on a Shiite militia stronghold in Baghdad, breaking with his American partners on security tactics as the United States launches a major operation to secure the capital.

More than 30 people were killed or found dead Monday, including 10 paramilitary commandos slain when a suicide driver detonated a truck at the regional headquarters of the Shiite-led Interior Ministry police in a mostly Sunni city north of Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's criticism followed a pre-dawn air and ground attack on an area of Sadr City, stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.

Police said three people, including a woman and a child, were killed in the raid, which the U.S. command said was aimed at "individuals involved in punishment and torture cell activities."

One U.S. soldier was wounded, the U.S. said.

Al-Maliki, a Shiite, said he was "very angered and pained" by the operation, warning that it could undermine his efforts toward national reconciliation.

"Reconciliation cannot go hand in hand with operations that violate the rights of citizens this way," al-Maliki said in a statement on government television. "This operation used weapons that are unreasonable to detain someone — like using planes."

He apologized to the Iraqi people for the operation and said "this won't happen again."

 

[verte76]

Not neccessarily and not yet, but the concequences of the Bush administration being soft on religious fascism have been apparent for some time now and they don't seem to have the will to make a defence of the secular state at home or abroad. The options for Iraq in the intermediate future present a choice between hard nosed realism and genuine support for the democratic process, this will be shown in how the militias are dealt with.

I wish we could bring Ataturk back, this time to set up a secular state in Iraq.

 

[anitram]

No words:

A U.S. military court in Baghdad heard graphic testimony on Monday of how three U.S. soldiers took turns raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl before murdering her and her family....

Special Agent Benjamin Bierce recalled that Barker described to him how they put a couple and their six-year-old daughter into a bedroom of their home, but kept the teenage girl in the living room, where Barker held her hands while Sergeant Paul Cortez raped her or tried to rape her.

Barker then switched positions with Cortez and attempted to rape the girl but said he was not sure if he had done so, Bierce told the hearing.

Barker also told the special agent he heard shots from the bedroom and shortly afterwards Private Steven Green emerged from the room, put down an AK-47 assault rifle and raped the girl while Cortez held her down....

Defense Attorney Captain Jimmie Culp was blowing chewing gum bubbles while Yribe, sitting to his left, began sucking on a red lollipop during the testimony....

After the rape and murders, [Specialist Barker] wrote that he began to grill chicken wings.

From Yahoo News.

 

[deep]

Shia Embrace Partitioning of Iraq

By Borzou Daragahi
Times Staff Writer

7:30 PM PDT, August 8, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- They have a new constitution, a new government and a new military. But faced with incessant sectarian bloodshed, Iraqis for the first time have begun openly discussing whether the only way to stop the violence is to remake the country they have just built.

Leaders of Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim political bloc have begun aggressively promoting a radical plan to partition the country as a way of separating the warring sects. Some Iraqis are even talking about dividing the capital, with the Tigris River as a kind of Berlin Wall.

Shiites have long advocated some sort of autonomy in the south on par with the Kurds' 15-year-old enclave in the north, with its own defense forces and control over oil exploration. And the new constitution does allow provinces to team up into federal regions. But the latest effort, promulgated by Cabinet ministers, clerics and columnists, marks the first time they've advocated regional partition as a way of stemming violence.

"Federalism will cut off all parts of the country that are incubating terrorism from those that are upgrading and improving," said Khudair Khuzaie, the Shiite education minister. "We will do it just like Kurdistan. We will put soldiers along the frontiers."

The growing clamor for partition illustrates how dire Iraq's security, economic and political problems have come to seem to many Iraqis: Until recently, Iraqis shunned the idea of redrawing the 8 1/2-decade-old map of Iraq as seditious.

Some of the advocates of partitioning the country are circumspect, arguing that federalism is only one of the tools under consideration for reducing violence.

But others push a plan by Abdel Aziz Hakim, head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a political party. Hakim advocates the creation of a nine-province district in the largely peaceful south, with 60 percent of the country's proven oil reserves.

Sunni leaders see nothing but greed in the new push -- the Shiites, they say, are taking advantage of the escalating violence to make an oil grab.

Iraq's oil is concentrated in the north and south, with much of the Sunni west and northwest desolate desert tundra, devoid of oil and gas.

"Controlling these areas will create a grand fortune that they can exploit," said Adnan Dulaymi, a leading Sunni Arab politician. "Their motive is that they are thirsty for control and power."

Still, even nationalists who favor a united Iraq acknowledge that sectarian warfare has gotten so out of hand that even the possibility of splitting the capital along the Tigris, which roughly divides the city between a mostly Shiite east and a mostly Sunni west, is being openly discussed.

"Sunnis and Shiites are both starting to feel that dividing Baghdad will be the solution," despaired Ammar Wajuih, a Sunni politician.

Critics scoff at the idea that any geographical partitioning of Sunni and Shiites will make the country any safer than it is now. In fact, some observers warn that cutting up the country's Arab provinces into separate religious cantons would be as cataclysmic as the partition of Pakistan and India in 1947.

Although growing numbers of Iraqis acknowledge that their country is in the throes of an undeclared civil war, a partition would "actually lead to increasing violence and sectarian displacement," said Hussein Athab, a political scientist and former lawmaker in Basra.

Critics of partitioning note that rival Shiite militias with ties to political parties in government not only appear to be responsible for as much of Iraq's violence as Sunni insurgents, but have been known to turn their guns on each other.

"They're always talking about reconciliation and rejecting violence, but in truth they're not serious," Wajuih said. "Whenever there is a security escalation or violence, they bring the issue of federalism up again."

One Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested that the Shiites were using the prospect of a southern mini-state to gain other political concessions from Sunnis, "a threat that they wouldn't want to have to exercise" because tearing the country asunder would be so traumatic.

A U.S. Embassy spokesperson declined to comment publicly on an issue so volatile. But U.S. policymakers have also begun to warm to the idea. Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, one of the Democratic Party's leading voices on foreign policy, began openly advocating such a move this year.

"I think it's the only way out," says Ivan Eland, a former Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee staffer who is now an analyst at the Independent Institute, an Oakland, Calif., think tank. "Iraq is already partitioned. Kurds don't want to be part of it. And any central government controlled by one group, the other groups are going to be afraid of being oppressed by it."

The Kurdish experiment has inspired many Shiite leaders, especially Hakim. Clerics loyal to him have already begun using street demonstrations as well as the Friday prayer pulpit to advance to desperate and war-weary Shiite masses that an autonomous southern region will stem the bloodshed and bring prosperity.

"Those afraid of federalism in the south and middle are afraid that we will get our rights back," Sheik Sadraldin Qabanchi told the faithful gathered for Friday prayers in Najaf last month.

"Why not now?" said a July 30 column in Adala, a Shiite daily newspaper. "We are in a race against time to establish federalism in Iraq."

Hakim's advisers have already begun drawing up plans and proposals for what rights and territory such a region would encompass, said Haithem Hussein, one of his deputies. In one plan, the Shiite militias now considered part of Iraq's cycle of violence could be used as regional security force, just as the Kurdish "peshmerga" militias form the core of Kurdistan's regional security forces.

 

[Zoomerang96]

nothing but librul lies, guys. can we cut out the partisan bickering and stick to the truth?

you can keep your "facts", but the people want to know the "truth". and the truth is, you libruls never have ideas for yourselves, you're too busy putting down ours.

that's not exactly constructive critiscm, gang!

 

[Scarletwine]

Librul Lies?

The truth is Iraq is a hellhole and our troops are walking around with targets on their backs. Read Riverbend's blog for a real Iraqi perspective.

 

[yolland]

Iraq: Highest Number of Civilian Deaths in July

By EDWARD WONG and DAMIEN CAVE
The New York Times, August 16, 2006

BAGHDAD — July appears to have been the deadliest month of the war for Iraqi civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, reinforcing criticism that the Baghdad security plan started in June by the new government has failed. An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures. The total number of civilian deaths that month, 3438, is a 9% increase over the tally in June and nearly double the toll in January...When the tally for civilian deaths in July is added to the Iraqi government numbers for earlier months obtained by the United Nations, the total indicates that at least 17,776 Iraqi civilians died violently in the first seven months of this year, or an average of 2539 per month.

The rising numbers suggested that sectarian violence is spiraling out of control, and seemed to bolster an assertion many senior Iraqi officials and American military analysts have made in recent months: that the country is already embroiled in a civil war, not just slipping toward one, and that the American-led forces are caught between Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite militias.

The numbers also provide the most definitive evidence yet that the Baghdad security plan started by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki on June 14 has not quelled the violence. The plan, promoted by top Iraqi and American officials at the time, relied on setting up more Iraqi-run checkpoints to stymie insurgents. The officials have since acknowledged that the plan has fallen far short of its aims, forcing the American military to add thousands of soldiers to the capital this month and to back away from proposals for a withdrawal of some troops by year’s end.

The American ambassador said in an interview last week that Iraq’s political leaders had failed to use their influence fully to rein in the soaring violence, and that people associated with the government were stoking the flames of sectarian hatred. "I think the time has come for these leaders to take responsibility with regard to sectarian violence, to the security of Baghdad at the present time," said the ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad.

The American command has added nearly 4,000 American soldiers to Baghdad by extending the tour of a combat brigade. Under a new security plan aimed at overhauling Mr. Maliki’s efforts, some of the city’s most violent southern and western areas are now virtually occupied block-to-block by American and Iraqi forces, with entire neighborhoods transformed into miniature police states after being sealed off by blast walls and concertina wire.

United Nations officials and military analysts say the morgue and ministry numbers almost certainly reflect severe undercounting, caused by the haphazard nature of information in a war zone. Many casualties in areas outside Baghdad probably never appear in the official count, said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group in Washington. That helps explain why fatalities in Baghdad appear to account for such a large percentage of the total number, he said in a recent report.

...Iraqi and American officials agree that civilian deaths had been much lower before wide-scale sectarian violence erupted after the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, and has only gotten worse.

Iraqi politicians are furiously lashing out at one another. On Monday, the speaker of Parliament, a conservative Sunni Arab, said he was considering stepping down because of animosity from the Kurdish and Shiite political blocs. The move to oust the speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, appears to have thrown the Sunni Arab bloc he belongs to, the Iraqi Consensus Front, into disarray. On Tuesday, a senior member of the bloc, Khalaf al-Elayan, said the bloc rejected any call for Mr. Mashhadani’s resignation. Another Sunni leader, Adnan al-Dulaimi, said in an interview that Mr. Mashhadani should step down. Mr. Dulaimi is considered a possible replacement.

In Karbala, Shiite gunmen and Iraqi military forces exchanged gunfire for several hours near one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines. Witnesses said the fighting forced the Iraqi Army to block entrances to the city and impose a curfew, prohibiting all cars and warning residents not to carry guns. One of the deadliest attacks in recent weeks took place in southern Baghdad on Sunday night, when bombs, mortars and rockets killed at least 57 people in a Shiite neighborhood, according to Iraqi officials. The American military said Tuesday that the death toll had grown to at least 63 and that the cause had been identified: two car bombs that ignited a gas line. The well-organized attack came despite the fact that American and Iraqi troops have flooded areas of southern Baghdad.

 

[Irvine511]

 

[Teta040]

Oh, just wonderful. Allowing the Shiites to have their nice little enclave with 60% of the oil. In addition to the fact that these guys would very naturally want to share that oil with their Shiite buddies in Iran (thus perhaps enabling some of it, or funds from its sale, or the military ordinance it would buy, to stuff Hezbollah coffers or munitions dumps in Lebanon), I thought the REAL reason we were in Iraq is STILL the oil, and naturally, if the Islamists got control of it, there's no way we would ever be able to see a drop. So much for the sacrifice of our soldiers--not to mention the horrific waste of our (um, China's?) hundreds of billions we've spent so far.

Not to mention what would happen--it is already happening, alas---to Iraq's women. And the article about killing gays shows what kind of a state a Shiite one would be....#($($ Saudi Arabia all over again, only we won't be able to partner up with these folks.

I wonder how construction is going on that nice U.S. Embassy complex in the Green Zone these days. You know, the one that's going to be 4 times the size of Vatican City, and the largest U.S. Embassy in the world, by far. I wonder if anyone is starting to think the whole project is insane....

I think I'm going to hurl my lunch....

 

[Earnie Shavers]

I wonder how construction is going on that nice U.S. Embassy complex in the Green Zone these days. You know, the one that's going to be 4 times the size of Vatican City, and the largest U.S. Embassy in the world, by far. I wonder if anyone is starting to think the whole project is insane......

I read that it was the only US construction job in Iraq that was running on time and on budget. 21 buildings, a mini city within a city with it's own power station and water supply, to house 4000 people.

You could write a more fucked up story.

 

[Teta040]

Earnie, these days you COULD write a more ed up story, but as regards Iraq, I think this one beats the competition....I have no doubt that a hundred years from now, little local kids are going to be playing Crusader Fort in the ruins of this thing. It'll be the last--and most tragic--of all the Crusader castles in the Middle East. The Islamists talk about us being "Crusaders" and in this instance, at least, it may be true....

 

[yolland]

Bits of two related stories from today's Christian Science Monitor.

US intel report: Iraq's Anbar province 'politically lost'

In a report that some have said is the most negative yet filed by a senior military officer in Iraq, the chief of intelligence for the US Marine Corps in Iraq concluded that the possibilities of the US and Iraqi governments securing the troubled western Iraqi province of Anbar are remote. The Washington Post reports that Col. Pete Devlin's assessment, written in mid-August, also says that "there is almost nothing the US military can do to improve the political and social situation there."

One Army officer summarized it as arguing that in Anbar province, "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically--and that's where wars are won and lost." The "very pessimistic" statement, as one Marine officer called it, was dated Aug. 16 and sent to Washington shortly after that, and has been discussed across the Pentagon and elsewhere in national security circles. "I don't know if it is a shock wave, but it's made people uncomfortable," said a Defense Department official who has read the report.

Devlin reports that there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force, said the Army officer, who has read the report...The Post reports that Colonel Devlin offers several reasons for this situation: a lack of US and Iraqi troops in the province, the collapse of local governments, and a weak central government with almost no presence in the region.

As violence escalates, so does talk of a divided Iraq

In Iraq's Kurdish north, the Iraqi flag no longer flies alongside the Kurdish banner on public buildings--the president of the largely autonomous Kurdish region has banned it. And in Baghdad, Shiite politicians last week introduced legislation defining how the sectarian-riven country could eventually be divided into autonomous regions--including a powerful and oil-rich Shiite region in the south.

Following recent fighting between Iraqi government forces and the militia of Shiite powerhouse Moqtada al-Sadr, the steps suggest a further spiraling toward at least a semiautonomous confederacy, if not a complete dissolution of the country. A small but apparently growing number of Iraq experts believe dissolution of the country is inevitable. Others say a united and nominally democratic Iraq may still be possible, but suggest other solutions--including a redrawn Iraq--would eventually make the Middle East more stable. Still others say the US should face reality and help create the new Iraq that is already splintering along sectarian and ethnic lines.

But where many specialists agree is that the Bush administration is not planning ahead sufficiently for the curveballs that continuing sectarian and religious conflict might have in store for the US in terms of Iraq's final architecture. "Of course we should be planning, and not just for Plan B but Plans C, D, E, and F, and maybe G and H, but I see very little sign we're doing that," says Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer and Middle East specialist who consults on regional policy. "They've gone through the motions of war-gaming some alternative scenarios, but they're not serious about it, and that's because they are still convinced this [Iraq project] is going to work."

Even some Iraqis insist the recent suggestions of a gradual slide toward a divided country are being given too much weight...some Shiite politicians say the legislation on regions would merely define a provision that is already contained in the new Iraqi constitution approved by referendum last year. But Mr. Peters says that's the point: that steps being taken now are merely fulfilling the direction the Iraqi people chose with a series of votes over the past year. "The voters did what we didn't have the courage to do, their voting divided Iraq," he says, pointing to voting that was overwhelmingly along ethnic and sectarian lines. "The question now is whether [Iraq] can continue as a loose confederation--or will it officially break up? We need to be prepared for all of that."

"What we're seeing now may be signs of things to come, but that wasn't so much inevitable as it is a result of our actions," says Michael Hudson, a professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University in Washington. An Iraqi confederacy with a weak Sunni enclave sandwiched between oil-rich Kurdish regions to the north and Shiite regions to the south is a "recipe for endless trouble," he says. As far back as 2002, before the Iraq war, he says the late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri warned him in a conversation about the repercussions of such an outcome.

One worst-case scenario for the US--and perhaps the global economy--is that an autonomous Shiite region in the south could embolden the Shiite minority in Saudi Arabia's north, a significant petroleum region, to press for its own autonomy, or even to join with its Iraqi brethren to the north. Worries over this kind of scenario, Peters says, caused the US to dismiss the breakup of Iraq after the war--the very thing that may be happening now, he says, though more haphazardly. "At the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom the best solution was to break up Iraq," he says, "but the Bush administration didn't pursue it because the Saudis, among others, absolutely didn't want it."
............
Another proposal, from Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution in Washington, calls for the US to accept that its project for a "multiethnic democracy" in Iraq may no longer be viable. In its place the US should consider facilitating voluntary sectarian and ethnic relocation, he says, as a means of short-circuiting a long and potentially genocidal civil war.
...........
Short of that, [Hudson] adds, the US might be best off leaving the fight and letting the Iraqis decide what they really want. "Maybe we need to let things play out," he says. "If we're out of there, the Iraqis might be forced to start talking sense to each other--and to find out if they are irretrievably sectarian or not."

I find it hard to swallow Peters' assessment that "the best solution was to break up Iraq" from the beginning, and I can't imagine that the Saudis are alone in disliking the prospect of a Middle East strewn with small, weak and mutually embittered Arab states. On the other hand, as much as I would like to share Hudson's optimism, I'm not sure a power vacuum would be the best environment for encouraging "talking sense" in an armed-to-the-teeth environment. I don't know what to make of O'Hanlon's proposal either; how likely would "voluntary" mass relocation be to happen?

Which proposal do you find yourself leaning towards? Or do we just settle for maintaining the status quo, perhaps with more troops strategically added in certain regions, and hope that the situation improves?

 

[Justin24]

Now they use kidnapp victims as suicide bombers.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/21/iraq.main.ap/index.html

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Wow, really? Shocking. Mission accomplished?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/w...&ex=1159675200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

 

[U2democrat]

 

[Macfistowannabe]

Mission accomplished?

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/28/mission.accomplished/

the sign was put up by the Navy, not the White House.

Let's not be too guillible.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Let's not be too guillible.

That's not the point (and I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me gullible), and who made the sign or who decided to put it there isn't the point either. The point is that if a mission of the war in Iraq is to make the world and the US safer and to decrease terrorism, clearly it's a dismal failure. If you ask me, it's "gullible" not to believe that just by virtue of common sense and by what we see in the news on a daily basis. You don't even need intelligence agencies to tell you that.

 

[Macfistowannabe]

That's not the point and who made the sign or who decided to put it there isn't the point either.

It clears a lot of smoke in regards to the attacks on our president - that's the biggest misunderstanding about the sign - that the president had anything to do with it.

The point is that if a mission of the war in Iraq is to make the world and the US safer and to decrease terrorism, clearly it's a dismal failure.

Since terrorism is inevitable, why wouldn't it make more sense to fight it in the Iraqi deserts than in your backyard?

 

[Rono]

...and if this is true, it realy won`t help for a stabil middle east.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5364982.stm

he BBC has obtained evidence that Israelis have been giving military training to Kurds in northern Iraq.

A report on the BBC TV programme Newsnight showed Israeli experts in northern Iraq, drilling Kurdish militias in shooting techniques.

Kurdish officials have refused to comment on the report and Israel has denied it knows of any involvement.

The revelation is set to cause enormous problems for the Kurds, not only in Iraq but also in the wider region.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Since terrorism is inevitable, why wouldn't it make more sense to fight it in the Iraqi deserts than in your backyard?

By making this case you are almost promising that there won't be a terrorist attack on your soil.

 

[trevster2k]

6599

AP , UNITED NATIONS
Friday, Sep 22, 2006,Page 7

The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit 6,599, a record high number that is far greater than initial estimates had suggested and points to the grave sectarian crisis gripping the country, the UN said on Wednesday.

The report from the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq's Human Rights office offered a grim assessment across a range of indicators, reporting worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, the growth of sectarian militias and death squads and a rise in "honor killings" of women.

That raises new questions about the ability of US and Iraqi forces to bring peace to Baghdad, where the bulk of the violent deaths occurred. Iraq's government is "currently facing a generalized breakdown of law and order which presents a serious challenge to the institutions of Iraq," the report said.

According to the UN, which releases the figures every two months, violent civilian deaths in July reached an unprecedented high of 3,590 people, an average of more than 100 a day. Last month's toll was 3,009 people, the report said.

The lower August number may have been the result of a security crackdown in Baghdad, though it was partly offset by a rise in attacks elsewhere, including in the northern city of Mosul.

For the previous period, the UN had reported just under 6,000 deaths -- 2,669 in May and 3,149 in June. That was up from 1,129 in April, and 710 in January.

Of the total for July and August, the report said that 5,106 of the dead were from Baghdad.

The report attributed many of the deaths to the rising sectarian tensions that have pushed Iraq toward the verge of civil war.

"These figures reflect the fact that indiscriminate killings of civilians have continued throughout the country, while hundreds of bodies appear bearing signs of severe torture and execution style killing," the report said. "Such murders are carried out by death squads or by armed groups, with sectarian or revenge connotations."

At the heart of the UN findings are casualty figures that combine two counts: from the Ministry of Health, which records deaths reported by hospitals; and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad, which tallies the unidentified bodies it receives.

The UN investigators who compiled the report said it was likely that even those numbers were low. In July, for example, the Health Ministry reported no people killed in Anbar, the chaotic province that includes the extremely violent cities of Ramadi and Fallujah.

Also, the Medico-Legal Institute's number of 1,536 was the same as the number of violent deaths in Baghdad reported by the Iraqi Health Ministry earlier this month.

The US military had initially claimed a drastic drop in the death toll for August, but the estimate was revised upward after the US revealed it had not counted people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks.

The report said torture was a major concern in Iraq and the bodies showed significant evidence of it.

"Bodies found at the Medico-legal Institute often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones [back, hands and legs], missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails," the report said.

The report also that said about 300,000 people had been displaced in Iraq since the bombing of a shrine in Samara in February.

The UN has also received several reports of Iraqi journalists facing prosecution for their reporting. In one case, three reporters working for a newspaper faced trial for articles criticizing a regional government.



Scary thing is, the Kurd separatist movement hasn't even been addressed yet. The complications with an autonomous Kurdish state involved with the Kurds, Sunnis, Shias and Turks will just escalate the chaos in that region. Good times, eh!

 

[deep]

file this one under:



Mission Accomplished

Rice's Baghdad arrival delayed by 'indirect fire'

(Baghdad, Iraq-AP) October 5, 2006 - America's secretary of state is getting a first-hand idea of the kind of violence going on in Iraq.

Condoleezza Rice is in Baghdad Thursday, but the State Department says her military transport plane couldn't land for more than half-an-hour because of what a spokesman call "indirect fire" that came from either mortar rounds or rockets.

Once she landed, Rice met with Iraq's prime minister, who says he wanted to talk about a number of issues of importance to both countries. Rice told him it's a "time of challenge" for Iraqis.

She earlier told reporters on her plane that she planned to tell Iraqi leaders that while the US is supportive, there isn't an endless amount of time to settle the political differences causing so much violence.

That violence continues Thursday, with at least two deadly car bombings in Baghdad, and a string of attacks in a northern province. Thursday's death toll is at least eleven.

Rice is also meeting with Iraq's president and Sunni leaders.

 

[Irvine511]

3 and a half years, $500bn, and the airport still isn't secure.

 

[deep]

Oct. 6, 2006, 9:58AM

Kurdish Parliament member shot to death in Iraq

By SAMEER N. YACOUB
Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Shiite militias were responsible for killing a Kurdish lawmaker who was kidnapped and shot to death, the lawmaker's party said today, blaming "a cowardly act of terrorism" for the first slaying of a parliament member in Iraq's sectarian violence.
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The lawmaker, Mohammed Ridha Mohammed, was a member of the Islamic Group, a conservative Sunni party in the Kurdish Alliance that is the second largest bloc in parliament.

He was abducted along with his driver Thursday after they left the Baghdad offices of a government agency that oversees Sunni mosques. Hours later, the two bodies were found with gunshots to the head and chest, said Firyad Rawndouzi, spokesman for the Kurdish bloc.

Mohammed was the first lawmaker slain from the current parliament, formed in February — although at least two members of the previous parliament were killed last year, before the wave of Shiite-Sunni slayings began.

While Kurds are often targeted by Sunni insurgents, Mohammed's religious credentials suggested he may have been the victim of Shiite militias. One official in his party, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, accused the Mahdi Army, one of the most powerful Shiite militias, in the killing.

 

[najeena]

The origin of the 'mission accomplished' sign aside, those very words were removed from Bush's speech that day. Would it have made the hubris of that garish excercise in propaganda any worse had he actually pronounced the words? I doubt many people bought the 'the Navy did it' excuse.

 

[deep]

How many more Americans will die for Presidents Bush's lies?


We are fighting for Democracy????

President Bush has described today’s Iraq as a “young democracy.” He even boasted at one point that the advance of democratic institutions in Iraq is “setting an example” that others in the area would be “wise to follow.” But when it comes to one of the most basic tenets of democracy — freedom of speech and the press — Iraq is not setting an example that even the youngest of democracies would be wise to follow.


New laws in Iraq criminalize speech that ridicules the government or its officials, and any journalist who “publicly insults” the government or public officials can be subject to up to seven years in prison. Some of the language is resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein’s own penal code.
It is hard enough for journalists to operate on the ever-expanding battlefields of Iraq. That is true for foreign journalists, who often have all the gear and protections of powerful outside media. But it is even harder for Iraqi journalists, who now face not only the dangers on the street but the threat of defamation laws as well.

More than 130 journalists or other employees of news outlets have been killed in this war, most of them Iraqis. Some died accidentally, of course. But too many working journalists have clearly been targeted, some even brutally tortured to death, precisely because of what they were publishing. On one day last August, a newspaper editor and a prominent columnist were both shot to death by gunmen in different sections of Baghdad.