Didn't ya read John 6. . .uh. . .fifteen where he said "make an enemy and smite them" or something along those lines? Anyhoo, the reichwing Christian nutcases certainly loved the fact that a Jesus sign for peace was destroyed:
A new high of sixty-three percent of Americans either have buyers remorse or are objectively pro-Saddam, according to Gallup. Too bad that they are all just part of a focus group.
Abu Ghraib cover girl Lynndie England tells a German magazine that it's the media, not her actions, that inflamed the insurgency:
Lynndie England, the public face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, told a German news magazine that she was sorry for appearing in photographs of detainees in the notorious Iraqi prison, and believes the scenes of torture and humiliation served as a powerful rallying point for anti-American insurgents.In an interview with the weekly magazine Stern conducted in English and posted on its Web site Tuesday, England was both remorseful and unrepentant — and conceded that the published photos surely incensed insurgents in Iraq.
"I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it ... no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn't exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved," she was quoted as saying.
Asked how she could blame the media for the controversy, she said it wasn't her who leaked the photos.
"Yeah, I took the photos but I didn't make it worldwide. Yes, I was in five or six pictures and I took some pictures, and those pictures were shameful and degrading to the Iraqis and to our government," she said, according to the report.
Yep, it's not her fault, she wanted to keep the torture private. What a perfect Republican.
New headline in Shit We Already New In 2002 Weekly:
Exhaustive review finds no link between Saddam and al Qaida By Warren P. StrobelWASHINGTON — An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.
The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.
The new study of the Iraqi regime's archives found no documents indicating a "direct operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.
He and others spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because the study isn't due to be shared with Congress and released before Wednesday.
In this lengthy Rolling Stones article, Nir Rosen, probably the only Western reporter that could freely (as possible) navigate the dangerous streets of Baghdad, details how the relative calm was literally bought with taxpayer money by bribing those who had formerly attacked our soldiers, and how the calm is tenuous at best. Check it out.
The fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth is making the rounds telling anyone who's willing to listen that he didn't do it:
In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country.Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as undersecretary of defense for policy and conspired to undercut President Bush's policies.
Among the disclosures made by Feith in "War and Decision," scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush's declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that "war is inevitable." The statement came weeks before U.N. weapons inspectors reported their initial findings on Iraq and months before Bush delivered an ultimatum to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Feith, who says he took notes at the meeting, registered it as a "momentous comment."
Although he acknowledges "serious errors" in intelligence, policy and operational plans surrounding the invasion, Feith blames them on others outside the Pentagon and notes that "even the best planning" cannot avoid all problems in wartime. While he says the decision to invade was correct, he judges that the task of creating a viable and stable Iraqi government was poorly executed and remains "grimly incomplete."
Powell, Feith argues, allowed himself to be publicly portrayed as a dove, but while Powell "downplayed" the degree and urgency of Iraq's threat, he never expressed opposition to the invasion. Bremer, meanwhile, is said to have done more harm than good in Iraq. Feith also accuses Franks of being uninterested in postwar planning, and writes that Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser during most of Feith's time in office, failed in her primary task of coordinating policy on the war.
So he's basically blaming everybody but the Pentagon. I think Mr. Stovepipe doth protest too much.
Bet the surge protectors didn't see this coming:
Iraq's Shiite-led government declared Saturday that after restive areas are calmed it will disband Sunni groups battling Islamic extremists because it does not want them to become a separate military force.In Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel targets, the military said, in the third confirmed cross-border offensive by Turkish forces in less than a week.
The statement from Defense Minister Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi was the government's most explicit declaration yet of its intent to eventually dismantle the groups backed and funded by the United States as a vital tool for reducing violence.
The militias, more than 70,000 strong and often made up of former insurgents, are known as Awakening Councils, or Concerned Local Citizens.
"We completely, absolutely reject the Awakening becoming a third military organization," al-Obaidi said at a news conference.
He added that the groups would also not be allowed to have any infrastructure, such as a headquarters building, that would give them long-term legitimacy.
"We absolutely reject that," al-Obaidi said.
Congress' approval Wednesday of $70 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mean the twin conflicts are now more costly to American taxpayers than the war in Vietnam.According to a study by the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Congress has now approved nearly $700 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Using inflation-adjusted dollars, the total cost of those wars has now surpassed the total cost of the Vietnam war (which ran to $670 billion)," the group's Travis Sharp told OneWorld. "It's also more than seven times larger than the Persian Gulf War ($94 billion) and more than twice the cost of the Korean war ($295 billion)."
As a result of Wednesday's vote, Sharp said, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will become the second costliest conflict in American history, trailing only World War II.
Bush has to run interference on a previous disinformation campaign in order to catapult the new one:
Q But I’m concerned about the nations like Iraq, who now have nuclear weapons –THE PRESIDENT: Iran.
Q Iran and Iraq both.
THE PRESIDENT: Not Iraq. (Laughter.)
*cue Beavis chuckle* Of course, the new NIE says that he's still full of shit, still I love how the media still makes light of the situation.
Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Turkey bombed units of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq and sent troops across the border in pursuit of the militants, a lawmaker of Turkey's governing party said today.Turkish military jets and artillery pounded rebel positions inside the Kurdish-controlled region intermittently, said the lawmaker, who attended a briefing on the hostilities by government spokesman Cemil Cicek late yesterday in Ankara.
The army sent troops across the border with Iraq to hunt down PKK militants after 12 Turkish soldiers were killed by the group on Oct. 21 in Turkey, the official said. They later returned to the Turkish side of the border, he added.
Turkey's parliament on Oct. 17 passed a resolution authorizing the government to send troops into northern Iraq to attack PKK bases there. The U.S. opposes such action on concern it would destabilize the calmest part of Iraq.
Once again, the Israelis attacked Lebanon with U.S. backing for lesser reasons than this, and the U.S. attacked Eye-Rack for even less.
BAGHDAD - Turkey’s foreign minister rejected any cease-fire by Kurdish rebels Tuesday as he met with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad to press them to crack down on the guerrillas. Turkish forces massed on the border and tensions rose over a threatened military incursion.Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, himself a Kurd, said Iraq’s central government and authorities in its Kurdish autonomous region in the north would work together to deny the rebels freedom of movement, funds and representative offices. He said a high-level political and military delegation would travel soon to Turkey.
Iraqi officials have been saying that guerrillas with the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is known by its Kurdish acronym PKK, were based in inaccessible mountainous areas of northern Iraq.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said there are several ways to fight terrorism and Ankara would use them when appropriate. The buildup of troops along Turkey’s border with Iraq, meanwhile, continued with military helicopters airlifting commando units into the area overnight.
The mix of diplomatic and military activity followed Sunday’s rebel ambush near the Iraqi border that left 12 Turkish soldiers dead, 16 wounded and eight missing.
"We also don’t wish our historical and friendly ties with Iraq to be ruined because of a terrorist organization," Babacan said at a joint news conference after meeting with Zebari. "On the other hand, we are expecting support from international community and our neighbors in struggle against terrorism."
Babacan said rebel attacks this month alone left 42 people dead.
The Turkish government on Tuesday asked television and radio stations to curb broadcasts about Sunday’s ambush, saying they "have a negative impact on public order and people’s morale, spreading a flawed image of security forces," according to an official at the media watchdog. The official asked not to be named because she was not allowed to speak to the media.
Babacan, meanwhile, rejected any offer of a cease-fire by the PKK.
Cease-fires are "possible between states and regular forces," a stern-faced Babacan said. "The problem here is that we’re dealing with a terrorist organization."
The PKK has called on Turkey not to attack Iraq, claiming that a unilateral rebel cease-fire declared in June was still in place although it did not halt fighting.
"The position of the PKK is that we have agreed to a cease-fire but when we are attacked by the Turkish troops we will hit back," rebel spokesman Abdul-Rahman al-Chadarchi told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
He also confirmed that the rebels were holding eight Turkish soldiers captive and promised to treat them with respect, although he said it was "premature" to discuss conditions for their release.
"When they were attacking us, they were our enemies but now they are helpless captives whom we will take care of," al-Chadarchi said. "When the Turkish government asks for them, we can talk about conditions."
Hey, if the Bushies and Israelis can do it, why not Turkey?
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey will defy international pressure on Wednesday and grant its troops permission to enter northern Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels based there, though it has played down expectations of any imminent attack.Washington, Ankara's NATO ally, says it understands Turkey's desire to tackle rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but fears a major incursion would wreck stability in the most peaceful part of Iraq and potentially in the wider region.
Turkey's stance has helped drive global oil prices to $88 a barrel, a new record, and has hit its lira currency as investors weigh the economic risks of any major military operation.
Parliamentary approval would create the legal basis for military action, essentially giving the army a free hand to act as and when it sees fit.
By law, Turkey's parliament must approve the deployment of Turkish troops abroad. Parliament is expected to approve the request from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's cabinet by a large majority following an open debate.
The Washington Post editorial today:
A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that "civilian deaths have risen" during this year's surge of American forces.A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 -- down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.
During the first 12 days of October the death rates of Iraqis and Americans fell still further. So far during the Muslim month of Ramadan, which began Sept. 13 and ends this weekend, 36 U.S. soldiers have been reported as killed in hostile actions. That is remarkable given that the surge has deployed more American troops in more dangerous places and that in the past al-Qaeda has staged major offensives during Ramadan. Last year, at least 97 American troops died in combat during Ramadan. Al-Qaeda tried to step up attacks this year, U.S. commanders say -- so far, with stunningly little success.
. . .This doesn't necessarily mean the war is being won. U.S. military commanders have said that no reduction in violence will be sustainable unless Iraqis reach political solutions -- and there has been little progress on that front. Nevertheless, it's looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus's credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq's bloodshed were -- to put it simply -- wrong.
Iraq bombs and shootings kill at least 32BAGHDAD (AFP) - A wave of violence across Iraq, including the bombing of a minibus filled with Shiite worshippers and a suicide truck bomb attack on a police station, has killed 32 people, officials said Sunday.
Dozens of people were wounded in the attacks, which came as Muslims were celebrating the Eid al-Fitr festival that ends the holy fasting month of Ramadan, the officials said.
Ten people, including three women and two children, were killed on Sunday when a car bomb exploded next to their minibus as they were heading towards a Shiite shrine in northern Baghdad, Iraqi military officials told AFP.
Women and children were also among 18 wounded by the blast in Aden square, which was then sealed off to vehicles by the security forces.
Washington Post Correspondent Dies in Iraq By Joshua Partlow and Amit R. Paley Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, October 14, 2007; 2:54 PMBAGHDAD, Oct. 14 -- A veteran Washington Post special correspondent was shot to death Sunday in southwest Baghdad while on assignment, the first reporter for the newspaper to be killed during the Iraq war.
Salih Saif Aldin, 32, was reporting on the violence that has plagued Baghdad's Sadiyah neighborhood Sunday afternoon when he was shot in the forehead. According to residents of the neighborhood and the Iraqi military officers at the scene, he was taking photographs on a street where several houses had been burned when he was killed. His wounds appeared to indicate he was shot at close range.
God, save us from our librul media.
Another reason why I don't cry for the clowns that burned in Fallujah:
Oct. 15, 2007 issue - The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company. Asked to address this and other allegations in this story, Blackwater spokesperson Anne Tyrrell said, "This type of gossip has led to many soap operas in the press.". . .Responsible for guarding top U.S. officials in Iraq, Blackwater operatives are often accused of playing by their own rules. Unlike nearly everyone else who enters the Green Zone, said an American soldier who guards a gate, Blackwater gunmen refuse to stop and clear their weapons of live ammunition once inside. One military contractor, who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution in his industry, recounted the story of a Blackwater operative who answered a Marine officer's order to put his pistol on safety when entering a base post office by saying, "This is my safety," and wiggling his trigger finger in the air. "Their attitude was, 'We're f---ing security; we don't have to answer to anybody'."
Maybe they can send some Minute Men over there to protect our borders while they're at it:
Iran's role with the violence in Iraq remains a major preoccupation of the Bush administration, with the U.S. military now building a base, practically within shouting distance of Iran — an extraordinary step to curb what it says is the smuggling of advanced weapons into Iraq.It will be called Combat Outpost Shocker, and it will hardly come as a pleasant surprise to Iran that the United States will have a new base just 5 miles from their border. Col. Mark Mueller, of the 3rd Infantry Division, said it is the first time the U.S. military will be that close to Iran.
"Obviously, they probably won't be very happy about it," Mueller told ABC's Terry McCarthy.
. . .The Shocker base will be home to about 200 soldiers, as well as to agents from the U.S. Border Patrol
Can we call Betray-us a liar now?
BAGHDAD - The United States on Tuesday suspended all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials in Iraq outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, amid mounting public outrage over the alleged killing of civilians by the U.S. Embassy's security provider Blackwater USA.The move came even as the Iraqi government appeared to back down from statements Monday that it had permanently revoked Blackwater's license and would order its 1,000 personnel to leave the country — depriving American diplomats of security protection essential to operating in Baghdad.
"We are not intending to stop them and revoke their license indefinitely but we do need them to respect the law and the regulation here in Iraq," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told CNN.
The U.S. order confines most American officials to a 3.5-square-mile area in the center of the city, meaning they cannot visit U.S.-funded construction sites or Iraqi officials elsewhere in the country except by helicopter. The notice did not say when the suspension would expire.
Today it's reported that two of the seven soldiers who wrote the New York Times op-ed piece, "The War As We Saw It", that criticized the rosy depiction of Eye-Rack by the war handlers and the media lapdogs have died in a vehicle accident.
As Greg Sargent has noted very well, the two schmucks Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon, who have virtually nothing to lose in voicing their support for the surge have been given heavy media attention that was both misleading and undeserved for their NYT op-ed while these brave soldiers writing from a backdrop of a life-or-death situation had their NYT op-ed virtually ignored by the kneepad press. I certainly hope that more of what happened to Katie Couric happens to the rest of the whoring Emm Ess Emm morons.
Who are you gonna believe? Bush or those lying Eye-Rackees?
About 70% of Iraqis believe security has deteriorated in the area covered by the US military "surge" of the past six months, an opinion poll suggests.The survey by the BBC, ABC News and NHK of more than 2,000 people across Iraq also suggests that nearly 60% see attacks on US-led forces as justified.
This rises to 93% among Sunni Muslims compared to 50% for Shia.
So not only have we made the emnity towards the U.S. among the Sunnis nearly complete, we have also recruited a whole bunch of Shiites as well.
And, oh, those "positive indicators" that the surge protectors keep going on about? Yeah, those are all a pack of lies too:
According to the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, 984 people were killed across Iraq in February, and 1,011 died in violence in August. No July numbers were released because the ministry said the numbers weren't clear.But an official in the ministry who spoke anonymously because he wasn't authorized to release numbers said those numbers were heavily manipulated.
The official said 1,980 Iraqis had been killed in July and that violent deaths soared in August, to 2,890.
Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis obliterates the rhetoric and bullshit surrounding the chimperor's visit to Eye-Rack today:
It is unbelievable that for four years, the White House has been able to spin secret visits to Iraq as happy happy fun fun "surprise" visits, when in fact, they have secret trips because Iraq is too dangerous for normal visits.Smell the progress.
The only way they get away with this is that we no longer have a free press.
(via Daily Kos)
The real question is, why should anyone be surprised anymore?
BAGHDAD — Iraq's deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they've extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province.The payments, in return for the insurgents' allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin, have taken place since the earliest projects in 2003, Iraqi contractors, politicians and interpreters involved with reconstruction efforts said.
A fresh round of rebuilding spurred by the U.S. military's recent alliance with some Anbar tribes — 200 new projects are scheduled — provides another opportunity for militant groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq to siphon off more U.S. money, contractors and politicians warn.
"Now we're back to the same old story in Anbar. The Americans are handing out contracts and jobs to terrorists, bandits and gangsters," said Sheik Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, the deputy leader of the Dulaim, the largest and most powerful tribe in Anbar. He was involved in several U.S. rebuilding contracts in the early days of the war, but is now a harsh critic of the U.S. presence.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad declined to provide anyone to discuss the allegations. An embassy spokesman, Noah Miller, said in an e-mailed statement that, "in terms of contracting practices, we have checks and balances in our contract awarding system to prevent any irregularities from occurring. Each contracted company is responsible for providing security for the project."
Providing that security is the source of the extortion, Iraqi contractors say. A U.S. company with a reconstruction contract hires an Iraqi sub-contractor to haul supplies along insurgent-ridden roads. The Iraqi contractor sets his price at up to four times the going rate because he'll be forced to give 50 percent or more to gun-toting insurgents who demand cash payments in exchange for the supply convoys' safe passage.
One Iraqi official said the arrangement makes sense for insurgents. By granting safe passage to a truck loaded with $10,000 in goods, they receive a "protection fee" that can buy more weapons and vehicles. Sometimes the insurgents take the goods, too.
"The violence in Iraq has developed a political economy of its own that sustains it and keeps some of these terrorist groups afloat," said Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, who recently asked the U.S.-led coalition to match the Iraqi government's pledge of $230 million for Anbar projects.
Despite several devastating U.S. military offensives to rout insurgents, the militants - or, in some cases, tribes with insurgent connections - still control the supply routes of the province, making reconstruction all but impossible without their protection.
One senior Iraqi politician with personal knowledge of the contracting system said the insurgents also use their cuts to pay border police in Syria "to look the other way" as they smuggle weapons and foot soldiers into Iraq.
"Every contractor in Anbar who works for the U.S. military and survives for more than a month is paying the insurgency," the politician said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "The contracts are inflated, all of them. The insurgents get half."
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he was aware of the "insurgent tax" that U.S.-allied contractors are forced to pay in Anbar, though he said it wasn't clear how much money was going to militant groups and how much to opportunistic tribesmen operating on their own.
"It's part of a taxation they put on trucks through all these territories, but it's very difficult to establish if it's going directly to insurgents," Zebari said.
Yeah Bush is right: our withdrawal from Vietnam and abandoning that country to the communists was so devastating that we now need to normalize trade with them.
Dumbass.
Crooks and Liars has a rare footage of Fox Nooze doing some (quote, unquote) reporting in a Baghdad market where the words of the spokesmodel saying how the Surge is working is completely contradicted the sights and sounds caught on camera. You really must see this to believe it.
(Via the stalinists at Daily Kos)
While certain Democrats seem to be falling over themselves to throw a bone to the neocon warmongers by praising certain parts of the military operations, the number of roadside bombs have reached an all-time high in Eye-Rack:
Although coalition forces have claimed a number of successes in discovering caches of the bombs, the number of attacks in July, stated as 99, shows the insurgency has had no problem in obtaining supplies.In recent weeks, US forces have focused operations on Sunni militants and, in particular, al-Qa'ida.
One of the initial aims of the "surge" was to combat Shia militias which, often in collusion with government forces, have been running death squads. However, the alleged use of the roadside devices shows the threat from the Shias, with many of the groups sponsored by Tehran, has not diminished despite numerous American missions.
Oh and here's this lovely little nugget:
Lieutenant General Raymond Odiarno, the deputy US commander in Iraq, said there had been an "all-time high" in July of attacks using the devices and that Shia militants were responsible for 73 per cent of the attacks that killed or wounded American troops in Baghdad.
So Ray "mock execution" Odierno admitted that his pet surge has sparked a full-blown shiite insurgency? Well hot dawg, we just have no choice but to stay in that sandbox, don't we?
morons.
While the army announced that 26 soldiers have died in the past week, this is apparently what the Maliki government is up to:
The U.S. military says it believes that the Shia-led government in Baghdad is trying to cleanse the city of all Sunnis.Sectarian violence has pushed most Sunnis into west Baghdad, and the Iraqi government is suspected of limiting basic services to the Sunnis in hopes of causing them to leave.
That would leave Sunnis even further unrepresented in the city, and it has cast a whole different light on the delay of provincial elections.
A government official claims, however, that Sunni politicians, fearful of losing to other Sunnis in the elections, are to blame.
The Bushies, cons and contractors could teach Henry James himself a thing or two about irony:
An upstart airline operating weekly flights between Baghdad and Amman, Jordan, is billing itself as the first no-frills airline to operate out of Iraq, but the company is restricting more than just food and booze on its flights.The airline is also banning Iraqis, Indians, Pakistanis and other non-Westerners from traveling.
Expat Airways said it is only accepting U.S. and Western citizens on its flights as it tries to capitalize on the thousands of U.S. contractors traveling in and out of the Iraqi capital each month. The airline, which landed its first 42-seat Russian Antonov turboprop at Baghdad International Airport Monday, is thought to be the first to bar passengers based on nationality.
U.S. and European carriers are restricted from the practice, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Ahmed al Musawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi Transportation Ministry, called Expat's flight restrictions ''immoral'' but said there are no federal laws in Iraq banning such actions.
Icasualties.org puts the July total at 81, which ties it for two previous months this year. But give the MSM credit for catapulting the propoganda.
BAGHDAD: Three U.S. soldiers were killed in fighting west of Baghdad, the military said Monday.The soldiers assigned to Multi-National Force — West died
Thursday while conducting combat operations in Anbar
province, according to a brief statement.
Big Bad Terra-ist Jihadist Leader turned out to have never existed:
Leader of Al Qaeda group in Iraq was fictional, U.S. military says
By Michael R. Gordon Published: July 18, 2007
BAGHDAD: For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi.As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, an organization publicly backed by Al Qaeda, Baghdadi issued a steady stream of incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by Iraqi officials that he had been killed in May, Baghdadi appeared to have persevered unscathed.
On Wednesday, a senior American military spokesman provided a new explanation for Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: He never existed.
Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the chief American military spokesman, said the elusive Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima.
The royalists who brought us into Eye-Rack truly live in a different world than, well, the rest of the world. The sad thing is that the UN itself seems to be complicit in the swindling:
IRAQ'S ambassador to the United Nations, Hamid al Bayati, likes the high life. Bayati, who's been on the job for just over a year, is said to be living in a $22,000-a-month apartment at Trump World Tower on First Avenue. He's renting while the Iraqi U.N. Mission and official ambassador's residence on East 79th Street undergo a $40 million renovation. Where did the Iraqis get the cash? Newsmax.com reports the U.N. Security Council is paying with funds it once used to finance the now-terminated U.N. Iraq arms inspectors. When asked about the lavish use of the cash, Bayati refused comment. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad shrugged off the Iraqis' lush lifestyle by telling reporters, "$40 million is not a lot of money."
Matt Stoller may be right when he said that Hillary Clinton is so popular among Democrats despite her prowar vote and, up until recently, pro-war stance because there were a lot of Democrats who were also hoodwinked by Bush's push into Eye-Rack. Forgiveness of Hillary will in fact be forgiveness of themselves.
If that's true, then it's all the more reason to oppose her in the first place. I remember the debate back then, and it doesn't take a lot of evidence or knowledge of Eye-Rack to know that an invasion was going to be disastrous. I mean the first Bush didn't invade Eye-Rack because he says it will only result in a quagmire which will eliminate any support he had for the original Persian Gulf campaign. Saddam Hussein's army was only a third of what it what it was back before the Persian Gulf war. The UN inspectors weren't finding any weapons, ESPECIALLY after Colin Powell's "convincing" speech before the Security Council. And let us not forget the ethnic and sectarian divide that would rear its head in the event of a power vacuum. If they couldn't get a grasp of those geopolitical realities back then, how can we trust them to govern the world in the future?
(via Atrios)
Bush and his enablers won't stop until our armed forces have been run into the ground:
WASHINGTON -- Nearly 12 percent of Army recruits who entered basic training this year needed a special waiver for those with criminal records, a dramatic increase over last year and 2 1/2 times the percentage four years ago, according to new Army statisticsWith less than three months left in the fiscal year, 11.6 percent of new active-duty and Army Reserve troops in 2007 have received a so-called "moral waiver," up from 7.9 percent in fiscal year 2006, according to figures from the US Army Recruiting Command. In fiscal 2003 and 2004, soldiers granted waivers accounted for 4.6 percent of new recruits; in 2005, it was 6.2 percent.
Army officials acknowledge privately that the increase in moral waivers reflects the difficulty of signing up sufficient numbers of recruits to sustain an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq; the Army fell short of its monthly recruiting goals in May and June.
Since Oct. 1, 2006, when the fiscal year began, more than 8,000 of the roughly 69,000 recruits have been granted waivers for offenses ranging in seriousness from misdemeanors such as vandalism to felonies such as burglary and aggravated assault.
Geez, the people of St. Cloud and the sixth district picked this woman over Patty Wetterling? Is there something in the water up there?
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann continued to stand by President Bush's military surge in Iraq, two days after returning from a congressional trip that put her in the line of fire while visiting Baghdad."It hasn't had a chance to be in place long enough to offer a critique of how it's working," said Bachmann, R-Minn.
. . .The delegation's visit was harrowing at times. While visiting with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker at the U.S. Embassy inside Baghdad's walled, high-security Green Zone on Friday, mortar blasts landed inside the American-controlled territory.
"This recorded message played four times while we were there, asking us to move away from any windows, to get on the ground and move to the center of the building," Bachmann said. "(Crocker) stayed in his seat and kept talking with us the whole time. He never moved."
. . .Security conditions in Iraq prevented Bachmann from meeting any Iraqis, leaving the Green Zone or staying in Iraq overnight. She and other congressional members were required to wear full body armor, including Kevlar helmets, during the entire trip, she said.
But she said she was encouraged by reports of progress from Crocker, Gen. David Petraeus and other personnel in Iraq linked to the surge.
A comprehensive report on military progress and whether the Iraqi government is meeting a series of political benchmarks Bush has set is expected.
"(Gen. Petraeus) said al-Qaida in Iraq is off its plan and we want to keep it that way," she said. "The surge has only been fully in place for a week or so."
Only thirteen more months, only thirteen more months. . .
(via Americablog)
And the chimp is at 29 percent, beating only Carter (by one percent), Nixon and Truman for below-freezing popularity.
Looks like the bushies are forced to move the goalposts again:
The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely involved in the matter. As they prepare an interim report due next week, officials are marshaling alternative evidence of progress to persuade Congress to continue supporting the war.In a preview of the assessment it must deliver to Congress in September, the administration will report that Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province are turning against the group al-Qaeda in Iraq in growing numbers; that sectarian killings were down in June; and that Iraqi political leaders managed last month to agree on a unified response to the bombing of a major religious shrine, officials said.
Those achievements are markedly different from the benchmarks Bush set when he announced his decision to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq. More troops, Bush said, would enable the Iraqis to proceed with provincial elections this year and pass a raft of power-sharing legislation. In addition, he said, the government of President Nouri al-Maliki planned to "take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November."
This is not going to help their case:
BAGHDAD, July 8 -- Suicide attacks and other explosions across Iraq killed at least 170 people and injured scores over the last couple of days, including a massive truck bombing in a northern Shiite village that ripped through a crowded market, burying dozens in the rubble of shops and mud houses, Iraqi officials said.At least 144 were killed Saturday, and at least another 26 people were killed Sunday when two car bombs exploded within five minutes of each other in the city's mostly Shiite Karrada district and a bomb hit a truck of newly recruited Iraqi soldiers traveling to Baghdad to aid in the crackdown on the violence, according to the Associated Press.
Shattering a relative lull in Iraq's violence, the attacks raised questions about whether insurgents who have fled an ongoing military offensive in Baghdad and Diyala province are regrouping and assaulting soft targets elsewhere, in less-secure areas with fewer troops.
The violence came as the U.S. military reported that 10 American soldiers had been killed over the last couple of days, all in combat or by roadside bombs in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar. The fatalities underscored the mounting death toll during the five-month security offensive, reinforced by thousands of U.S. troops, that is meant to help Iraq meet political and security goals set by the Bush administration.
Gee, can't the spinmeisters make up their minds?
Earlier last week we had this:
Iraqi officials today attributed a sharp drop in civilian deaths to a US-led security crackdown that began in February. At least 1,227 Iraqi civilians were killed in June - the lowest total since February - along with 190 policemen and 31 soldiers, an officer from the interior ministry operations room told the Associated Press.The numbers were a 36% drop from the ministry's May figures - 1,949 civilian deaths along with 127 policemen and 47 soldiers.
But the figures could not be verified independently, and many deaths are believed to go unreported. The Iraqi government recently decided to withhold civilian casualty numbers from the UN.
Nearly five months into a security strategy that involves thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad, the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets of the capital was 41 percent higher in June than in January, according to unofficial Health Ministry statistics.During the month of June, 453 unidentified corpses, some bound, blindfolded, and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. In January, 321 corpses were discovered in the capital, a total that fell steadily until April but then rose sharply over the last two months, the statistics show.
Overall, the level of violent civilian deaths in Iraq is declining, according to the U.S. military and Health Ministry statistics, and there has been a steady drop in fatalities from mass-casualty bombings that have torn through outdoor markets, university bus stops and crowds assembled to collect food rations.
But the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets is considered a key indicator of the malignancy of sectarian strife. While the declining number of bombing victims suggests that efforts to control violence are showing some success, the daily slayings of individuals, in aggregate, speak to an enduring level of aggression.
So which is it? Is the surge creating slightly less bodies, or is it a resounding failure?
Those freedom-loving Kurds are acting up again:
IRBIL, Iraq: Security forces in northern Iraq's Kurdistan, the heartland of the Kurdish minority long tormented by Saddam Hussein, routinely torture detainees with beatings and electric shocks and hold hundreds of prisoners for long periods without charge, a human rights group said Tuesday.The Human Rights Watch report — based on interviews conducted from April to October 2006 with more than 150 detainees — demanded a comprehensive overhaul of detention practices in the Kurdish region and urged an independent body to investigate torture claims.
"We are surprised that the Kurds are practicing such violations after they were victims of torture during the Saddam era," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, said, referring to the ousted Iraqi leader's oppression of the Kurds.
"We appreciate the efforts by Kurdistan government to combat terrorism and secure Kurdistan, but we see that such violations against prisoners are not a good thing," she told a press conference in the northern city of Irbil.
MSM dutifully reports, in the words of a commentator, a "horrific massacre of Iraqi civilians" as another victory against Al-Qaeda when prompted by the military. Glenn Greenwald details the atrocity.
Hmm, is this just another token opposition from an administration obsessed with secrecy, or is this the real deal, the shitstorm we've been waiting for?
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The White House is resisting a move by both Republicans and Democrats to fully declassify a Senate report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.Republicans say the public disclosure would help show that the CIA made honest mistakes in its 2002 assessment that Iraq owned stockpiles of WMDs, when in fact it no longer did.
But the White House believes the declassification would trigger another round of negative news media coverage and Democratic-led congressional hearings, said a Senate Republican, who asked to remain anonymous because of ongoing private discussions.
The dispute revolves around an obscure federal panel, the nine-member Public Interest Declassification Board.
Last November, incoming Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and the outgoing chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., signed a letter to the board asking for a review of two committee reports.
This is part of the reason why I don't trust the public NOT to turn against Democrats if and when they pull the plug on the war:
Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in ten Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection. A majority of Americans were similarly unable to pick Saudi Arabia in a multiple-choice question about the country where most of the 9/11 hijackers were born. Just 43 percent got it right — and a full 20 percent thought most came from Iraq.
As Steve Benen says, the number of people who thought Saddam was directly involved in the September 11 attacks has actually gone up in three years. So even though now most of the people think the war is wrong and unwinnable, how long do you think they are going to change their minds and blame the assortments of Democrats, liberals and dirty, fucking hippies for denying this great nation victory over the Arab scum?
BAGHDAD, June 20 -- U.S. and Iraqi troops discovered an orphanage with "24 severely malnourished and abused boys" 10 days ago in the al-Fajr neighborhood of northern Baghdad, the U.S. military said Wednesday. The boys, ages 3 to 15, "were found naked in a darkened room without any windows," the military said in a statement.Photographs obtained by CBS News, which broke the story Monday, showed emaciated children lying naked on concrete floors in their own waste, some tied to their beds. Nearby, soldiers discovered a locked room with food and clothing.
. . .Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered an investigation, state television reported. The children have been taken to an orphanage where they are being better cared for, CBS said.
Video found here, however long it lasts. Transcript here.
Anybody versed in Bushian kremlinology couldn't interpret General David Petraeus's recent pronouncements on FAUX Nooze any other way:
June 17 (Bloomberg) -- The odds of building a stable Iraqi government by September are slim, even with the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to give lawmakers in Baghdad security, said the top U.S. general in the Middle East country.The ``aggregate level'' of violence has not diminished since the troop increase began five months ago, General David Petraeus said in an interview on ``Fox News Sunday.'' Asked whether he thought the strategy could succeed by early September when he's due to report to Congress, Petraeus was negative.
``I do not, no. I think we have a lot of heavy lifting to do,'' he said. ``This is a tough effort.''
So much for the "September deadline" failure at that time is just another excuse to continue the war. To the bushtards, trying something over and over again and expecting different results is not a sign of insanity, it is a practice that exceeds brilliance. Political brilliance, maybe.
Fear not American taxpayers, you're NOT being as hosed as you think you are:
WASHINGTON - Fraud committed by government contractors in Iraq is a problem but isn't as severe as some critics have suggested, federal officials said Tuesday.Some House Judiciary Committee Democrats questioned the assertions, saying they felt the Justice Department is dragging its feet in pursuing some cases of alleged fraud. They also said some federal judges appear too willing to seal records in such cases, making it impossible for the public to assess the merits of whistleblowers' accusations.
Stuart W. Bowen Jr., an inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, told lawmakers that anti-fraud efforts should be better coordinated, but they nonetheless have had an impact.
"Losses to American taxpayers from fraud within reconstruction programs will likely amount to relatively small components of the overall investments in Iraq, totaling in the tens of millions" of dollars and not in the "hundreds of millions or billions as is sometimes imagined," Bowen told the Judiciary subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security.
That wouldn't be this Stuart Bowen who is under investigation himself, is it? Actually, it was launched by the Bushies, so it appears that Bowen has gotten the message: stop sniffing around, stop snitchin', stop lyin'.
The blog "Danger Room" hosted by Wired webstite has a bombshell of a preview from the upcoming Frontline piece "Endgame" in which retired General Jack Keane, nobodys liberal, nobody's pacifist, nobody's defeatist, says this about the Eye-Rack war:
"We never even considered an insurgency as a reasonable option. We took down the regime, and we thought what we had to do then was occupy then country, stabilize it, and in the mater of a few months we could reduce the force," says Keane, the former Army Vice Chief of Staff and intellectual co-author of the current troop "surge."And while the President may have been "us terms like 'win,' 'we're going to defeat the insurgents,' 'victory,'" Keane adds, "we never had that as a mission in Iraq."
Keane later added that he was involved in a briefing with defense analysts who picked up intelligence showing that the Sunni insurgents believe they are winning the war, and the analysts said that the insurgents were "probably right."
That's right, kiddies. We aren't fighting in Eye-Rack to defeat the "terra-ists", oh no. We are fighting to save Bush's ego from being deflated, and to pass on this disaster to the next (Democratic) president.
To be fair to Matthew Yglesias, Kevin Drum pointed out how full of shit "drawing down" the troops in Eye-Rack to around 50,000 way before Atrios did.
Bile O'Reilly placed in his two cents on the fact that FAUX Nooze is the number one network when it comes to NOT reporting the Eye-Rack war. Sure, his commentary is, per usual, over the top and demeaning, but it reflects a larger illness infecting most of the media. It's always mystifying that the news organization feels pressured to only report the good news coming from a war zone and not "embolden the enemy" or "undermine morale". If they think they are helping the republic by underreporting the war or sanitizing the coverage, they are dead wrong. If there are victories, then report the victories. But if there are losses - especially if there are losses - the media has a singular duty to expose those losses and why they occured, warts and all. The public has the right to know how the armed forces that is designed to protect them is performing so that they can pressure their elected officials to change tactics if things do not go well.
Imagine if we are in a real war and we are losing a lot of battles to the enemy, would our nation be served by a media that only spouts propaganda? The Germans who were able to flee the invasion of the Red Army knew they were losing because the "victories" they've heard on the propaganda broadcasts kept coming "closer and closer". The unfortunate Germans who swallowed the propaganda whole were left to fend for themselves while they were raped and pillaged. For now, we don't have to worry about an invasion by a foreign power, but just the same we are not well served by a media that refuses to report and detail the truth. The only time soldiers' lives are in danger is if we broadcast sensitive information like an army's position or battle plan. Nobody' gets killed by reporting the outcome, and in the end we might even learn from any mistakes that may have resulted. So that is why people like Bill Oh'Really are not reporters, just television personalities. They may be good for clownish entertainment, but when it comes to news that really matters, it is best to look for more honest sources.
Violence in Eye-Rack rising, despite Surgeâ„¢:
WASHINGTON, June 13 — Violence increased throughout much of Iraq in recent months, despite a security crackdown in Baghdad that at least temporarily reduced sectarian killings there, according to a quarterly assessment of security conditions issued Wednesday by the Pentagon.The report, which analyzed data from February through early May, said it was too early to say whether the security effort in Baghdad would achieve lasting security gains. And it described in more detail than officials had until now how security conditions in other parts of the country had worsened when American and Iraqi forces shifted in large numbers into the capital.
“The aggregate level of violence in Iraq remained relatively unchanged during this reporting period,� the report said. “Violence has decreased� in Baghdad and in Anbar Province, which have long been the country’s most violent areas, “but has increased in most provinces, particularly in outlying areas around Baghdad and in Nineva and Diyala Provinces.� Attacks have also increased in Basra Province in the south, because of fighting between rival Shiite militants, some of whom fled Baghdad because of the security crackdown, it added.
Although precise data are not included in the report, attacks on civilians and Iraqi and American troops increased by 2 percent from the previous quarter, the report said. The average number of attacks has exceeded 1,000 per week since the beginning of this year through early May, the highest level since the American invasion in 2003, it said.
Blast at revered Shi'ite shrine in Iraq's Samarra
13 Jun 2007 06:54:07 GMTBAGHDAD, June 13 (Reuters) - Militants blew up two minarets of a revered Shi'ite mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Wednesday, targeting a shrine that had already been badly damaged in a 2006 attack, Shi'ite officials said.
One witness said the minarets at Samarra's Golden Mosque had been largely destroyed. The attack on the mosque last year was a turning point in Iraq, sparking a wave of sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed the country to the brink of all-out civil war.
"The explosion targeted the two golden minarets. They have been damaged ... This is a criminal act which aims at creating sectarian strife," Saleh al-Haidari, the head of the Shi'ite endowment in Iraq, a major religious body, told Reuters.
He blamed "extremists" for the attack. It was unclear exactly how the minarets had been blown up, but residents said there had been clashes between gunmen and police in the area before the explosion.
A senior Iraqi government official said the attack was "very bad news for Iraq".
Sunni mosque south of Baghdad blown up -police 13 Jun 2007 15:40:14 GMT Source: ReutersBAGHDAD, June 13 (Reuters) - Gunmen blew up a major Sunni mosque in the Iraqi town of Iskandariya on Wednesday, police said, following an attack on a revered Shi'ite shrine that has stirred fears of a surge in sectarian bloodshed.
Police said Iskandariya's Grand Mosque had been totally destroyed. Witnesses said the town, which lies south of Baghdad, was tense in the wake of the bombing.
Paul Waldman is right. Given the administration track record for fuckups upon fuckups upon spectactular fuckups in Eye-Rack, those who think this plan is NOT going to bite us in our collective asses needs to be locked up in rubber rooms:
BAGHDAD, June 10 — With the four-month-old increase in American troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American commanders are turning to another strategy that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past.American commanders say they have successfully tested the strategy in Anbar Province west of Baghdad and have held talks with Sunni groups in at least four areas of central and north-central Iraq where the insurgency has been strong. In some cases, the American commanders say, the Sunni groups are suspected of involvement in past attacks on American troops or of having links to such groups. Some of these groups, they say, have been provided, usually through Iraqi military units allied with the Americans, with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel and supplies.
American officers who have engaged in what they call outreach to the Sunni groups say many of them have had past links to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia but grew disillusioned with the Islamic militants’ extremist tactics, particularly suicide bombings that have killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. In exchange for American backing, these officials say, the Sunni groups have agreed to fight Al Qaeda and halt attacks on American units. Commanders who have undertaken these negotiations say that in some cases, Sunni groups have agreed to alert American troops to the location of roadside bombs and other lethal booby traps.
But critics of the strategy, including some American officers, say it could amount to the Americans’ arming both sides in a future civil war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq’s army and police force, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With an American troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a risk that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites. There is also the possibility the weapons could be used against the Americans themselves.
This new policy coming in the wake of a splintering in the so-called Anbar coalition, this screams giant fuck-up in the near future.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, under pressure from the United States to expand the U.N.'s role in Iraq, said Monday he would consider it but cited deteriorating security that has forced the U.N. to leave the southern city of Basra and temporarily move out of its living quarters in Baghdad's U.S.-protected Green Zone.In a report to the U.N. Security Council, Ban said the United Nations is a major promoter of electoral, constitutional and political efforts to build a united, democratic Iraq but because of the "precarious" security situation it needs the speedy construction of a new residential compound in Baghdad that can withstand the impact of rockets and other high-caliber weapons.
"The security situation in Iraq remains complex and unpredictable and is a major limiting factor for the United Nations presence and activities in Iraq," Ban said in the report covering the period from early March to early June.
. . .Ban said "the overall security environment presents a major challenge for the United Nations, particularly for its staff in the International Zone in Baghdad," also known as the Green Zone. He said an increase in mortar and rocket attacks in the Green Zone — from 17 in March to 30 in April and 39 by May 22 — was exacerbated by the increase in car bombings at entry checkpoints.
Hmm, he don't say?
It was great for the coupla months that it lasted:
BAGHDAD, June 10 -- A tribal coalition formed to oppose the extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, a development that U.S. officials say has reduced violence in Iraq's troubled Anbar province, is beginning to splinter, according to an Anbar tribal leader and a U.S. military official familiar with tribal politics.In an interview in his Baghdad office, Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, 35, a leader of the Dulaim confederation, the largest tribal organization in Anbar, said that the Anbar Salvation Council would be dissolved because of growing internal dissatisfaction over its cooperation with U.S. soldiers and the behavior of the council's most prominent member, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha. Suleiman called Abu Risha a "traitor" who "sells his beliefs, his religion and his people for money."
Abu Risha, who enjoys the support of U.S. military commanders, denied the allegations and said the council is not at risk of breaking apart. "There is no such thing going on," he said in a telephone interview from Jordan.
Lt. Col. Richard D. Welch, a U.S. military official who works closely with the tribal leaders in Iraq, said that relations inside the group were strained and that he expected a complete overhaul of the coalition in coming days.
U.S. military leaders hailed the creation of the nearly nine-month-old Anbar Salvation Council, first known as the Awakening, as one of the most important developments in the four-year war, signaling that insurgents and the local population in Anbar, which is overwhelmingly Sunni, have begun to see al-Qaeda in Iraq as their worst enemy, rather than the United States and its allies.
Again via First Draft, it seems like Turkey is expanding their Waronterra into our backyard:
ANKARA, Turkey - Several thousand Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who operate from bases there, Turkish security officials told The Associated Press.Two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the raid was limited in scope and that it did not constitute the kind of large incursion that Turkish leaders have been discussing in recent weeks.
“It is not a major offensive and the number of troops is not in the tens of thousands,� one of the officials told the AP by telephone. The official is based in southeast Turkey, where the military has been battling separatist Kurdish rebels since they took up arms in 1984.
Like Holden says, shit meet fan.
The real question is, are they safer yet?
Construction of a controversial, three-mile blast wall in one of Baghdad’s most troubled neighborhoods was completed recently, following three months of grueling labor and heated protests from Iraqi residents and government officials.The barrier, which consists of thousands of 12-foot-high concrete slabs, or T-walls, rings much of Adhamiyah — an island of Sunni families in Baghdad’s predominantly Shiite east side.
Engineers with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team lowered the final 7-ton slab into place in the early morning darkness of May 28, according to a U.S. military statement issued Tuesday.
U.S. commanders say the barrier will make Adhamiyah a safer neighborhood by restricting incoming and outgoing vehicle traffic to several guarded checkpoints. The project is part of an overall attempt by U.S. forces to quell sectarian violence in the embattled capital.
The plan triggered harsh criticism from both Sunnis and Shiites, who saw darker motives in the wall’s construction. While some compared it to Israel’s West Bank security wall, others insisted the project was part of a larger plan to divide the city into a maze of “gated communities.�
(via First Draft)
Because opening up a whole new can of worms is considered a "success":
Car bomb near Iraq's Falluja kills 19: policeTue Jun 5, 6:58 PM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least 19 people were killed and 25 others
were wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his car in a market
just outside Iraq's western city of Falluja on Tuesday, police said.Hospital sources said most of the victims were women and children.
. . .Some Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar have been engaged in a war over
control in Anbar against al-Qaeda militants. The tribes have joined
forces with the police to the militants who are targeting tribes
who cooperate with authorities in Anbar.
The on-the-ground commander, General David Petraeus, wrote in his own counterinsurgency manual that 120,000 troops are required to pacify Baghdad alone. Right now there will be only 30,000 troops during the Surgeâ„¢, with an additional 30,000 Eye-Rackee Army troops and 21,000 police officers.
So if we are, at best, short 40,000 COIN personnel, how does the math add up?
BAGHDAD, June 3 — Three months after the start of the Baghdad security plan that has added thousands of American and Iraqi troops to the capital, they control fewer than one-third of the city’s neighborhoods, far short of the initial goal for the operation, according to some commanders and an internal military assessment.The American assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces were able to “protect the population� and “maintain physical influence over� only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods.
In the remaining 311 neighborhoods, troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face “resistance,� according to the one-page assessment, which was provided to The New York Times and summarized reports from brigade and battalion commanders in Baghdad.
The assessment offers the first comprehensive look at the progress of the effort to stabilize Baghdad with the heavy influx of additional troops. The last remaining American units in the troop increase are just now arriving.
Violence has diminished in many areas, but it is especially chronic in mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods in western Baghdad, several senior officers said. Over all, improvements have not yet been as widespread or lasting across Baghdad, they acknowledged.
That's what happens when the new strategery is only a delaying tactic devised to dump the whole mess on the next, hopefully Democratic president.
If you watched any of the Sunday-morning talk shows, you might get that sort of impression. Let's set the record straight, shall we?
Number of Unidentified Bodies Found in Baghdad Rose Sharply in MayBy RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Published: June 2, 2007BAGHDAD, June 1 — The number of unidentified corpses discovered in Baghdad soared more than 70 percent during May, according to new statistics from the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, an indication that sectarian killings are rising sharply as militias return to the streets after lying low during the first few months of the troop “surge.�
In May, 726 unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad, many bound and shot in the head or showing signs of torture and execution, compared with 411 during April, according to figures provided by a ministry official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
The Bush administration and military have cited a decline in sectarian killings as proof that the troop escalation is working. And despite May’s increase in corpses, the numbers remain far below the peak of sectarian executions last year. In July and August, for example, a total of 5,106 people died violent deaths in Baghdad alone, according to the United Nations, including 3,391 reported by the city’s morgue.
The new figures also show a decline in the number of deaths of identifiable victims in Baghdad to 344 in May from 495 in April. While victims of car bombs, homemade bombs and mortar strikes can usually be identified, those who are kidnapped, tortured and executed are normally stripped of identification before their bodies are dumped.
-------------------------------------------------
Civilian death toll in Iraq spikes in May
By Mussab Al-Khairalla
02 Jun 2007 13:58:30 GMTBAGHDAD, June 2 (Reuters) - The number of civilians killed in Iraq jumped to nearly 2,000 in May, the highest monthly toll since the start of a U.S.-backed security crackdown in February, according to figures released on Saturday.
Militants blew up a strategic bridge that links Baghdad to the northern cities of Kirkuk and Arbil, and a mortar barrage on the Sunni enclave of Fadhil in mainly Shi'ite eastern Baghdad, killed 10 people and wounded 30, police said.
In Arbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and Masoud Barzani, president of Kurdistan, urged Turkey not to send troops into the region to crush Kurdish separatist rebels believed to be hiding there.
An Interior Ministry official, who did not want to be named because he was not authorised to release the figures, said 1,944 civilians were killed in May, a 29 percent hike over April. At least 174 soldiers and policemen were killed in the same period.
The death toll was based on statistics compiled by Iraq's ministries of interior, defence and health on the number of people killed and wounded in attacks in Iraq.
After three months of declines, there has been a sharp rise in the number of sectarian murders in Baghdad. Mortar attacks in the capital are becoming deadlier and car bombs remain common.
At least 20 people were killed and dozens injured in two mortar attacks on Shi'ite and Sunni neighbourhoods in Baghdad in the past 48 hours. In Saturday's attack, 10 people were killed in a barrage on the Sunni Fadhil district
Police, who reported fewer than 10 sectarian murders a day in the first weeks of the security crackdown, are now typically reporting 30 or more.
U.S. military commanders says this is a spike, not a trend, and the full impact of the crackdown will not be known for months.
-------------------------------------------------
U.S. Announces 14 Troop Deaths in IraqBAGHDAD (AP) - Fourteen American soldiers were killed in three deadly days in Iraq, the U.S. military said Sunday, including four in a single roadside bombing and one who was struck by a suicide bomber while on a foot patrol southwest of the capital.
The blast that killed the four soldiers occurred Sunday as the troops were conducting a cordon and search operation northwest of the Iraqi capital, according to a statement. Two other soldiers from Multi-National Division - Baghdad were killed and five were wounded along with an Iraqi interpreter in two separate roadside bombings on Sunday, the military said.
. . .Seven others troops were killed in a series of attacks across Iraq on Saturday.
The deaths raised to at least 3,493 members of the U.S. military who have died since the war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Gee, where are all the "value voters" when you need em to demand that Bush to fix this mess?
For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.�
By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.
Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.
According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.
Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need� turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.�
Aid workers say thousands of Iraqi women work as prostitutes in Syria, and point out that as violence in Iraq has increased, the refugee population has come to include more female-headed households and unaccompanied women.
“So many of the Iraqi women arriving now are living on their own with their children because the men in their families were killed or kidnapped,� said Sister Marie-Claude Naddaf, a Syrian nun at the Good Shepherd convent in Damascus, which helps Iraqi refugees.
Marine makes an order of more than half a billion dollars for supposedly IED proof vehicles that should protect soldiers from insurgent attacks. They've just found out that the insurgency has evolved more powerful explosives rendering the new MRAPs useless. The Marines still buy the million-dollar coffins.
And the clusterfuck continues.
See any difference? Me neither.
Quid Pro Joe is back in Eye-Rack trying to convince people that everything is A-OK. But when it came to actually addressing the concerns of the troops on the ground, LIEberman was virtually AWOL:
The night before, 30 other soldiers crowded around him with questions for the senator. He wrote them all down. At the top of his note card was the question he got from nearly every one of his fellow soldiers: When are we going to get out of here?�The rest was a laundry list. When would they have upgraded Humvees that could withstand the armor-penetrating weapons that U.S. officials claim are from Iran? When could they have body armor that was better in hot weather? . . .
It isn’t clear whether Williams mentioned the last line on his note card, the one that had a star next to it. “We don’t feel like we’re making any progress,� it said.
Continue reading "Lieberman Goes To Eye-Rack To Give Troops Much Needed Stump Speech" »
This is getting to be one lousy Memorial Day weekend:
Minnesota National Guard member killed in a standoff with police in central Minnesota was suicidal in the past, and initial reports indicated he was intoxicated and driving with a loaded shotgun on the morning of his death, authorities said Tuesday.But Spc. Brian William Skold, 28, of Sauk Rapids, was also a caring person, who loved water-skiing, fishing and hunting, and drew people in with his outgoing personality.
"He had just a zest for life," said his sister, Jenny Trager. "People really liked him. I guess he would be what I would call a social butterfly. ... He enjoyed being with friends and family."
Skold served about a year in Iraq. Police weren't saying whether lingering effects from his deployment contributed to Sunday morning's incident along Interstate 94, in which he fled from authorities and fired at least one shot from a 12-gauge shotgun before police returned fire, killing him.
They say that September is the make or break time. If things don't turn around, oh there is going to be some soul-searching and reconsiderations I'll tell ya what!
Except that the bushies will say whatever the fuck they want at any time, probably using their puppet Nouri Al Maliki as their spokesman:
In his first American television interview since the U.S. troop surge began in February, Iraq's prime minister told CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan on Tuesday that the additional forces have prevented an even greater catastrophe in Iraq."If the Baghdad security plan had not been implemented, we would have a true civil war in Iraq,� Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said.
. . .Despite this month's deadly toll on U.S. forces, Maliki said there have been many victories in breaking up al Qaeda and other militant cells. Although he cautioned it was too soon to do a complete evaluation of the surge, he has great hopes for more progress in the next two or three months — just in time for America's top commander here to report to Congress.
MOSUL, Iraq — The letter tossed into Mustafa Abu Bakr Muhammad’s front yard got right to the point.“You will be killed,� it read, for collaborating with the Kurdish militias. Then came the bullet through a window at night.
A cousin had already been gunned down. So Mr. Muhammad and three generations of his family joined tens of thousands of other Kurds who have fled growing ethnic violence by Sunni Arab insurgents here and moved east, to the safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.
“We had our home in Mosul and it was good there, but things are now very bad between Arabs and Kurds,� said Mr. Muhammad, 70, standing outside his new, scorpion-infested cinderblock house in the nearby town of Khabat.
While the American military is trying to tamp down the vicious fighting between rival Arab sects in Baghdad, conflict between Arabs and Kurds is intensifying here, adding another dimension to Iraq’s civil war. Sunni Arab militants, reinforced by insurgents fleeing the new security plan in Baghdad, are trying to rid Mosul of its Kurdish population through violence and intimidation, Kurdish officials said.
Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, with a population of 1.8 million, straddles the Tigris River on a grassy, windswept plain in the country’s north. It was recently estimated to be about a quarter Kurdish, but Sunni Arabs have already driven out at least 70,000 Kurds and virtually erased the Kurdish presence from the city’s western half, said Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of surrounding Nineveh Province and a Kurd.
. . .The violence here against the Kurds and other minorities is vicious and unrelenting, Kurdish and American officials say. More than 1,000 Kurdish civilians have recently been killed in Mosul, and at least two or three are gunned down each day now, Mr. Goran said. One well-known Kurdish singer was murdered because he had the same last name as Mr. Goran.
. . .But the surge in ethnic violence has sharpened the animosity of Kurds toward Arabs, and few Kurds are ready to forgive the atrocities committed by Mr. Hussein’s Sunni Arab government.
“I compare the Sunni Arabs to Bosnian Serbs: their behavior, their way of thinking, their way of acting,� Mr. Goran said in an interview at the fortified government center downtown. “They are for killings, they are for mass graves. Not all of them, but the majority of them.�
So far, Kurdish militias have refrained from engaging in the kind of wide-scale reprisals against Sunni Arabs that Shiite militias have carried out in Baghdad. But the Kurds are capable, Mr. Goran warned.
“We can kill every day 50 Arabs in the streets,� Mr. Goran said with a quick smile. “Every day, everywhere, in Mosul and outside of Mosul. But we don’t do that, because we know they want us to do that.�
It's like the Democrats have achieved learned helplessness. They continue to cave to conservative opposition in a feeble attempt to neutralize a talking point, but Republicans still bash them anyways:
SPARTANBURG — Sen. Jim DeMint on Tuesday blamed Democratic “wimps� in Congress for American casualties in Iraq, and cited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for special censure.During a luncheon speech to 100 constituents in Spartanburg, DeMint also took issue with the now widespread belief that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, saying the executed Iraqi dictator had “stockpiles of chemical weapons� that still exist.
DeMint devoted most of his comments to the current immigration debate in the Senate. But he spoke about the war when a woman in the audience stood and asked him how long U.S. troops will remain in Iraq.
“Al-Qaida knows that we’ve got a lot of wimps in Congress,� DeMint said. “I believe a lot of the casualties can be laid at the feet of all the talk in Congress about how we’ve got to get out, we’ve got to cut and run.�
Yes, we must appease obvious morons like Demint in order to maintain our incumbency protection racket.
Ijits.
After reading this and juxaposing it with this, I have only three words to say:
One day in December 2002, [head of the CIA Weapons Intelligence Non-proliferation and Arms Control Center Alan] Foley called his senior production managers to his office. He had a clear message for the men and women who controlled the output of the center's analysts: "If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so." The directive was not quite an order to cook the books, but it was a strong suggestion that cherry-picking and slanting not only would be tolerated, but might even be rewarded.
BAGHDAD - At least eight U.S. soldiers were killed in restive Diyala province north of Baghdad on Memorial Day, two of the victims in a helicopter that went down, the military reported Tuesday.All the dead were Task Force Lightning soldiers. The military said six soldiers died in explosions near their vehicles, but gave no further information.
It was not immediately known if the helicopter was shot down or suffered mechanical difficulties.
The Turkish ministers must be rolling in the aisles when they heard this. It would be ironic that Turkey must holster their guns in the face of terrorist attacks while the U.S. and Israel are free to wage ruinous wars whenever they want. It would be if irony exists anymore in bushworld:
Iraq urged its northern neighbour Turkey on Sunday to pursue diplomatic means as it attempts stop armed Kurdish separatists operating out of northern Iraq.Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told reporters after meeting with a Turkish delegation in Baghdad that Iraq would not accept a breach of its sovereignty.
"We spoke about what are perceived to be security threats to Turkey coming from Iraqi territory. We emphasised the need of dealing with the perceived threats based on established channels between the governments of Iraq and Turkey," he said.
Turkish envoy Oguz Celikkol said a number of issues had been discussed, including Ankara's growing anger at recent violence it blames on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The Turkish rebel group has thousands of fighters in the mountains of northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.
This is why I didn't shed one drop of tear when those mercernaries were fricassed in Fallujah in 2004:
Employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm under contract to the State Department, opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days last week, and one of the incidents provoked a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.A Blackwater guard shot and killed an Iraqi driver Thursday near the Interior Ministry, according to three U.S. officials and one Iraqi official who were briefed on the incident but spoke on condition of anonymity because of a pending investigation. On Wednesday, a Blackwater-protected convoy was ambushed in downtown Baghdad, triggering a furious battle in which the security contractors, U.S. and Iraqi troops and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters were firing in a congested area.
Blackwater confirmed that its employees were involved in two shootings but could neither confirm nor deny that there had been any casualties, according to a company official who declined to be identified because of the firm's policy of not addressing incidents publicly.
Blackwater's security consulting division holds at least $109 million worth of State Department contracts in Iraq, and its employees operate in a perilous environment that sometimes requires the use of deadly force. But last week's incidents underscored how deeply these hired guns have been drawn into the war, their murky legal status and the grave consequences that can ensue when they take aggressive action.
Matthew Degn, a senior American civilian adviser to the Interior Ministry's intelligence directorate, described the ministry as "a powder keg" after the Iraqi driver was shot Thursday, with anger at Blackwater spilling over to other Americans working in the building.
Bush and the Surgeâ„¢ are both miserable failures:
BAGHDAD (CNN) -- Casualties mounted over the weekend for Iraqis and U.S. forces, despite the much-touted security crackdown in the capital.Forty-five unidentified bodies were found Sunday in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.
Twelve of the bodies were found in southern Baghdad's predominantly Sunni district of Dora.
So far in May, the bodies of 631 victims of sectarian violence have been found in Baghdad, surpassing the total of 585 for the entire country in April, according to data collected by the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
CIA officer Pat Lang recounts how he tried to get a job with former Eye-Rack war architech Douglas Feith:
“He was sitting there munching a sandwich while he was talking to me,� Lang recalled, “which I thought was remarkable in itself, but he also had these briefing papers — they always had briefing papers, you know — about me.“He’s looking at this stuff, and he says, ‘I’ve heard of you. I heard of you.’
“He says, ‘Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true? Is that really true?’
“And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s really true.’
“That’s too bad,� Feith said.
The audience howled.
“That was the end of the interview,� Lang said. “I’m not quite sure what he meant, but you can work it out.�
And people wonder why Eye-Rack is so fucked up.
More on the Worst Friedman Ever:
BAGHDAD, May 23 -- More than three months into a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive designed to curtail sectarian violence in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, Health Ministry statistics show that such killings are rising again.From the beginning of May until Tuesday, 321 unidentified corpses, many dumped and showing signs of torture and execution, have been found across the Iraqi capital, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The data showed that the same number of bodies were found in all of January, the month before the launch of the Baghdad security plan.
Such killings are a signature practice of Shiite militias, although Sunni insurgents are also known to execute victims. The number of found bodies is a key indicator of the level of sectarian violence, but the statistics also include some who died from causes unrelated to the political situation.
If Bin Laden was such a danger to us that we must continue wasting our resources babysitting a civil war in Eye-Rack, how come the chimp-in-chief ordered the CIA's Bin Laden Unit closed down around the time that original piece of intelligence was received?
WASHINGTON, July 3 — The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.
The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."
The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Yep, the exact opposite sentiment of Bin Laden still being a mastermind being peddled by the Bushies. Once again, WorstPresidentEver gets away with his lies because we have no liberal media with a sense of hisory.
Can someone make sense of this latest scare-us-straight propaganda campaign brought to us by WorstPresidentEver?:
WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush, trying to defend his war strategy, declassified intelligence Tuesday that asserts Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terror cell to conduct attacks outside Iraq. The United States was to have been the top target.Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said the intelligence bolsters the Bush administration's contention that al-Qaida wants to use Iraq as a staging area to launch terror attacks around the world, including the United States.
In January 2005, bin Laden tasked al-Qaida operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was in Iraq, to organize the cell, Townsend said. Al-Zarqawi, former leader of al-Qaida's Iraq operations, was killed there in June 2006 by a U.S. airstrike. "We know from the intelligence community that al-Zarqawi welcomed the tasking and claimed he already had some good proposals," Townsend said.
She said that in the spring of 2005, bin Laden instructed Hamza Rabia, a senior operative, to brief al-Zarqawi on al-Qaida planning to attack sites outside Iraq, including in the United States. She did not disclose where in the United States attacks were being plotted. Around the same time, Abu Fajah al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida manager, suggested that bin Laden send Rabia to Iraq to help al-Zarqawi plan the external operations, Townsend said.
It is unclear whether Rabia went to Iraq, she said.
And the next part is almost adorable:
She said the information was declassified because intelligence agencies have tracked all leads from the information.
Nope, it has nothing to do to boost Commander Guy's approval ratings above freezing point.
This latest embarrassment from the shitmire is just a sad metaphor how unprepared we were for the war and how little the drivers care for competence during the war:
Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces.
Facing tough questions before a congressional panel last week, Broadcasting Board of Governors member Joaquin Blaya admitted none of the senior news managers at the network spoke Arabic when the terrorist messages made it onto the air courtesy of U.S. taxpayer funds. Nor did Blaya himself or any of the other officials at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the network.
"How does it happen that the terrorists take over?" asked Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, D-N.Y., at a hearing last Wednesday of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee he chairs. "Is there no adult supervision?"
Blaya conceded that the top officials in the network's chain of command could not understand what was being said on al Hurra broadcasts.
Also, the network's news division also had no assignment desk, he said. That left decisions over al Hurra's content in the hands of its reporters and producers, who are, according to Blaya, hastily-hired Arabic-speaking journalists with insufficient understanding of Western journalistic practices or the network's pro-Western mission.
Folks, meet your new fall guy:
After a frustrating search for a new "war czar" to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ABC News has learned that President Bush has chosen the Pentagon's director of operations, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, for the role.In the newly created position of assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan policy and implementation, Lute would have the power to direct the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies involved in the two conflicts.
Lute would report directly to the president and to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
This was the great military mind guiding our way through the beginnings of the Eye-Rack occupation:
HOLMES: There are some good things happening here. There's - you know, Petraeus is -- General Petraeus is a smart guy. He's a scholar of counterinsurgency. Written books about it. And he's doing some very good things, but I wonder whether they're a couple years too late.(GENERAL RICK) SANCHEZ: I'm just thinking that is there a way to win? And what is the definition of winning? Mine would be -- I'll share mine with you. Mine would be, A, stop killing them, thereby they'll stop hating you and wanting to kill you, or B, kill them all.
And people wondered how Abu Ghraib happened.
The diarist, Gorette, who posted the story on Daily Kos is right. It's a wonder how people can spew these things and wonder why people hate us. Everyone has been getting outraged (OUTRAGED) over the Hamas video shown on television where some guy in a Mickey Mouse costume is indocrinating children to seek violence against Israel and America. But if the Arab world had the equivalent of MEMRI or CAMERA scouring the western media for genocidal messages against Muslims and Arabs, wouldn't their examples be limitless? The very fact that someone responsible for waging war in Eye-Rack and was actually in the business of killing Arabs without restraint harbors those very same deplorable tendencies trumps whatever foolishness comes out of Al-Aqsa TV.
Before the Surge we were finding 40-50 bodies scattered all over Baghdad. Can't you hippies see how great life is in Peoria, Eye-Rack?
The US military surge in Iraq, designed to turn around the course of the war, appears to be failing as senior US officers admit they need yet more troops and new figures show a sharp increase in the victims of death squads in Baghdad.In the first 11 days of this month, there have already been 234 bodies - men murdered by death squads - dumped around the capital, a dramatic rise from the 137 found in the same period of April. Improving security in Baghdad and reducing death-squad activity was described as one of the key aims of the US surge of 25,000 additional troops, the final units of whom are due to arrive next month.
In a further setback, the US military announced yesterday the loss of an entire patrol south of Baghdad, with five soldiers dead and three others missing, after they were ambushed by insurgents in the town of Mahmoudiya.
The new figures emerged as the commander of US forces in northern Iraq, Major General Benjamin Mixon, admitted he did not have enough soldiers to contain the escalating violence in Diyala province, which neighbours Baghdad and has become the focus of the heaviest fighting between largely Sunni insurgent groups and the US army, which has seen casualties increase by 300 per cent. Sixty-one US soldiers have been killed in Diyala this year, compared with 20 in all of last year.
Sorry, soldiers, Bush will abandon you all just like he did Ahmed Qusai Al-Taei:
BAGHDAD (AP) - An attack on a unit of U.S.-led forces patrolling outside the Iraqi capital before dawn left five soldiers dead and three missing, the military said.The attack on the patrol of seven U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter soldier occurred near Mahmoudiya, in a Sunni insurgent stronghold about 20 miles south of Baghdad, the military said.
Troops were searching for the three missing soldiers, the military said.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Truck bombs exploded on three important bridges near Baghdad on Friday, killing 26 people and damaging two of the spans in an apparent attempt by insurgents to paralyse road links to the Iraqi capital.The attacks defy efforts by the U.S. military to smash car bomb cells and are the latest in a series of attacks on infrastructure around Baghdad, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have deployed thousands more troops under a three-month-old security plan.
Your "Plan B" (aka The Final Solution) in case the surge doesn't work, brought to you by the fair and balanced minds at FAUX Nooze.
The majority of the Frei Eye-Rack Parliament just voted in favor of setting timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals, the first time they've ever done so. And apparently it's the half that has their own militias. So now Bush only has his zombie yes-men generals to validate his CYA strategy of leaving office without leaving Eye-Rack.
Can't leave the Kurds out of all the fun:
ARBIL, Iraq, May 9 (Reuters) - A truck bomb in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil on Wednesday killed 12 people and wounded 40, a Kurdish security official said.First Lieutenant Mariwan Kareem, from the local security forces,
said the truck had been packed with explosives. The bomb left
a massive crater in the road, television pictures showed.
BAGHDAD (AP) - A roadside explosion outside the Iraqi capital on Sunday killed six American soldiers and a civilian journalist, the military said, among 12 U.S. troop deaths reported on a day when two car bombs killed at least 44 Iraqis at a Baghdad market and a police headquarters.A car bomb in the capital, where U.S.-led forces are in the midst of a crackdown on sectarian violence, killed at least 30 Iraqis. At the police headquarters in Samarra, a volatile city in the Sunni heartland 60 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb and shooting attack killed 12 police — including the police chief.
American soldiers racing to the headquarters to help also came under attack by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades that left two soldiers wounded, the military said.
BAGHDAD, May 7 (Reuters) - Two suicide car bombers killed 20 people and wounded more than 40 in separate attacks near Iraq's city of Ramadi on Monday, police said.The first car bomb went off in a busy market in a town called Albu-Thiyab, east of Ramadi, said Tareq al-Thiyab, a police colonel and a government security adviser in western Anbar province.
The second car bomb targeted a police checkpoint in a town called al-Jazeera, he said.
Sunni Islamist al Qaeda is engaged in a fierce power struggle with local Sunni Arab tribesmen in Anbar province, who oppose the group's campaign of indiscriminate attacks and its efforts to impose a harsh interpretation of Islam.
Recent big suicide attacks in Anbar, an overwhelmingly Sunni province west of Baghdad, have been blamed on al Qaeda.
Atrios is right. Even when the the benchmark the Republicans kinda, sorta imposed comes around this September, they will still find more pony excuses of why we must remain in Eye-Rack. And besides, the Bushies have already made clear that they will stay in the shitmire come hell or high water.
and with the Army's track record concerning Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch, I'd bet the farm with the father's account (typos in the original ABC News blog post):
army private lavena l. johnson was just 19 years old. she had been in iraq for only a few weeks before she was found dead at balad airbase on july 19, 2005. the army said she died of a "self-inflicted wound" but when her father identified her body he discovered she had a disfigured lip, was missing some teeth and looked like she had been in a fight. and then there was that phone call to her mother just a couple of days before her death. private lavena johnson was talking about coming home for christmas. something about her death just didn't add up. that's when her father, dr. john johnson, started asking questions and that is when the army stopped being helpful.
This is proof positive that to these clowns, military or otherwise, they view "supporting the troops" as supporting Bush's fuck-up in Eye-Rack, or maybe just all wars in general:
WASHINGTON (AP) - Folk singer and anti-war activist Joan Baez says she doesn't know why she was not allowed to perform for recovering soldiers recently at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as she planned.In a letter to The Washington Post published Wednesday, she said rocker John Mellencamp had asked her to perform with him last Friday and that she accepted his invitation.
"I have always been an advocate for nonviolence and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago," she wrote. "I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, four days before the concert, I was not 'approved' by the Army to take part. Strange irony."
Baez, 66, told the Post in a telephone interview Tuesday that she was not told why she was left off the program by the Army. "There might have been one, there might have been 50 (soldiers) that thought I was a traitor," she told the paper.
Let May Day be forever recorded and remembered in history as the day WorstPresidentEver pre-emptively declared the Eye-Rack war to be won. But we must remember that Bush didn't actually use the phrase "mission accomplished" during that speech (although it was on the banner behind him that Bush swore before God that his handlers did not put up). He actually said it 35 days later during a speech to troops stationed in Qatar:
I am happy to see you, an so are the long-suffering people of Iraq. America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.
Putz.
Gary Trudeau, the cartoonist of the daily strip Doonesbury, is kind enough to rerun some period strips this week in order to put to rest that weak CYA excuse being peddled by the warmongers.
Nope, it's not a story from The Onion.
Extended overseas deployments affecting soldiers serving in Afghanistan and other locales overseen by U.S. Central Command should help to alleviate the stress on the Army, a senior U.S. officer in Afghanistan told Pentagon reporters today.“I’m absolutely confident that that’s going to work and that’ll manage the pressure and the stress on the force,� Army Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team, said during a satellite-carried news conference.
. . .The tour extensions will provide more predictability and stability for soldiers and their families, [Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno] said, noting the policy “will ensure 12 months at home station between rotations.�
When Bush says no timetables, he MEANS no timetables or any of its variants: no benchmarks, no goals, no progress reports, no hope:
The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush's top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of President Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.
This is just more evidence that the surge is nothing more than a cynical delaying tactic, a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Worst President Ever. Come September when the check is due, the shrubster will just smirk and say "um, yeah, about that. I know Eye-rack is an ungodly fuck-up, but as you can see there is a presidential campaign going on. It's going to be up to the next president to unshit my bed. Ain't my problem no more, Heh-heh-heh-heh!"
A poster on Kevin Drum's blog said it perfectly: if the term FUBAR hasn't been invented, we'd need to think up another word to describe Eye-Rack and the Bush administration in general. Yet, we have to live in a free world that has a leader that defines success as never having to admit he is wrong.
George Tenet should have stayed in his bunker where he belonged. Now instead of him saying the case for the existence of Saddam's weaponsofmassdestruction was a "slam dunk", he is now saying that "slam dunk" referred to how easy it would be to lie to Americans about Saddam's weaponsofmassdestruction.
Got it? The actual existence of the weapons, as was being proven by the UN inpsectors, was not a slam dunk. But lying about it to warbots would be a piece of cake. And anyone who says otherwise are being mean to him.
Asshat.
Yep, exclude bombings when making war statistics. . .that's fuggin' brilliant:
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.
Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population - one of the surge's main goals.
"Since the administration keeps saying that failure is not an option, they are redefining success in a way that suits them," said James Denselow, an Iraq specialist at London-based Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank.
The blog "Baghdad Burning" written by the anonymous native Iraqi who calls herself "Riverbend" has been a must-see resource for those who were against or have turned against the useless Eye-Rack war. Her insights and her speed to call bullshit on most of the policies implemented by Bush and the neocons were invaluable. But her posts have become very infrequent because of the violence, and now she reports that she is on her way to either Syria or Jordan. That decision is the greatest indictment against the war she had been railing against from the start.
Remember before and during the first part of the war how it's wrong and downright RACIST to deny the Eye-Rackees the pleasures and comfort of a Jeffersonian democracy that is guaranteed to be the result of WorstPresidentEver's invasion of that country? How come freedom is good for us but not good for the Arabs? Huh?
Well, the leading warmongers, having to deal with the chaos on the ground, have retreated back to their regressive, illiberal FAUXholes and have intensified their blamemongering on the "knuckle-dragging" Iraqis:
On the April 23 broadcast of his Fox News Radio show, John Gibson argued that the Iraqi people -- whom he described as "knuckle-dragging savages from the 10th century" -- are at "fault" for the situation in Iraq. While discussing Iraq, Gibson said: "The one thing that drives me up the wall is [people] saying, 'Look at all the deaths you Americans have caused in Iraq.' No! 'Scuse me? We invaded the place, we knocked over Saddam, and then Iraqis began killing each other." Later in the show, Gibson agreed with a caller that the Coalition Provisional Authority's 2003 decision to purge the civil service of all former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and disband the Iraqi army "was a mistake." Gibson then stated: "[B]ut who is doing this killing? Give me a break. These are Iraqis killing each other. So what did we do? If you're saying it's our fault that we unmasked them as knuckle-dragging savages from the 10th century -- fine! I'll take credit."
You know, if the Arab world had the equivalent of CAMERA, MEMRI to track racist and genocidally anti-Arab statements made in the Western media, they will have no shortage of examples like John Gibson's garbage.
What? Do we really want a strong national leader in the guise of Egypt's Nasser? I think, privately, we wanted this because the previous prime minister, Ibrahim Jafaari was not being enough of a team player:
BAGHDAD — A broad range of prominent Iraqi lawmakers say they have lost confidence in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ability to reconcile the country's warring factions. A leading Kurdish lawmaker said al-Maliki should resign.Legislators from several parties told USA TODAY that al-Maliki lacks the support in parliament to push through laws, such as a plan to distribute oil revenues, that could reduce tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. Iraq's parliament has failed to pass major legislation since a U.S.-led security plan began on Feb. 14.
"He is a weak prime minister," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish legislator who supported al-Maliki until recently. "This government hasn't delivered and is not capable of doing the job. They should resign."
The loss of support came as Democrats agreed Monday on legislation that would force U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq by Oct. 1. President Bush, who said he would veto the bill, has argued that Iraq's government needs more time to calm sectarian violence.
Yep, 20 percent of the population should be able to control the other 80 percent. Yeah, that's the ticket:
The Shiite mother and her son opened their door for the soldiers on night patrol. In walked the Americans, each brandishing an M-16 assault rifle. Next came the men wearing tan uniforms and carrying Kalashnikovs and looking not quite Iraqi.They spoke Arabic with accents as thick as crude oil. "Are there problems in the neighborhood?" said their leader, Captain Sardar Hamasala. "We're here for your safety. Let us know if there are sectarian problems or other kinds of problems - Sunnis threatening Shia, Shia threatening Sunnis." The black-robed mother and her son shook their hands. The soldiers stepped back into the cool night air of western Baghdad.
"The reason why people are willing to trust the 1-3-4 is because they're Kurdish," said Captain Benjamin Morales, 28, commander of Company B of the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, the U.S. partner unit of Hamasala's company. "They don't live in the area. They don't care about Sunni or Shia."
This is quite possibly the first time since the days of Saladin, the revered 12th-century Kurdish warrior-king, that Kurdish forces have occupied swaths of Baghdad. They have been ordered to secure the streets for their historic enemies, the Arabs. He added later: "Here, they still talk about what happened 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. That's the way the Arabs think."
This is what happens when you have a purported international organization that is simply the handmaiden of Bush's United States:
BAGHDAD (AP) - The United Nations will not include Iraqi civilian casualty figures in its next human rights report, a spokesman said Friday, omitting what many had viewed as a rare, reliable indicator of suffering in Iraq.The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq had been releasing bimonthly reports assessing the human rights situation and providing death and injury tolls.
The last report was issued in late January, and U.N. officials in Baghdad had been saying for weeks that the new version would be released soon.
Mission spokesman Said Arikat told The Associated Press that the next report would be released on Wednesday, but he said it would cover a three-month period starting in January and would not have a casualty toll.
Arikat said casualty figures could be released "in the near future." He declined to elaborate on that issue before a news conference on Wednesday
Since we are now relying on Saddam-era tactics in waging the war, let's just say we've failed in our mission and move on:
In one of the new joint American-Iraqi security stations in the capital this month, in the volatile Ghazaliya neighborhood, Capt. Darren Fowler was heaping praise on his Iraqi counterparts for helping capture three insurgent suspects who had provided information he believed would save American lives.“The detainee gave us names from the highest to the lowest,� Captain Fowler told the Iraqi soldiers. “He showed us their safe houses, where they store weapons and I.E.D.’s and where they keep kidnap victims, how they get weapons, where weapons come from, how they place I.E.D.’s, attack us and go away. Because you detained this guy this is the first intelligence linking everything together. Good job. Very good job.�
The Iraqi officers beamed. What the Americans did not know and what the Iraqis had not told them was that before handing over the detainees to the Americans, the Iraqi soldiers had beaten one of them in front of the other two, the Iraqis said. The stripes on the detainee’s back, which appeared to be the product of a whipping with electrical cables, were later shown briefly to a photographer, who was not allowed to take a picture.
To the Iraqi soldiers, the treatment was normal and necessary. They were proud of their technique and proud to have helped the Americans.
“I prepared him for the Americans and let them take his confession,� Capt. Bassim Hassan said through an interpreter. “We know how to make them talk. We know their back streets. We beat them. I don’t beat them that much, but enough so he feels the pain and it makes him desperate.�
We have clearly ran out of ideas and lost the war if we actually go through with this:
U.S. to cut off Baghdad neighborhood with barrier
Commanders hope the wall will prevent attacks on the Sunni Arab districts it surrounds.
By Edmund Sanders, Times Staff Writer April 19, 2007BAGHDAD -- A U.S. military brigade is constructing a three-mile-long concrete wall to cut off one of the capital's most restive Sunni Arab districts from the Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that surround it, raising concern about the further Balkanization of Iraq's most populous and violent city.
U.S. commanders in northern Baghdad say the 12-foot-high barrier will make it more difficult for suicide bombers, death squads and militia fighters from sectarian factions to attack one another and slip back to their home turf. Construction began last week and is expected to be completed by the end of the month.
Although Baghdad is replete with blast walls, checkpoints and other temporary barriers, including a massive wall around the Green Zone, the wall being constructed in Adhamiya would be the first to essentially divide a neighborhood by sect....
. . .Sunnis and Shiites living in the shadow of the barrier are united in their contempt for the imposing new structure.
"Are they trying to divide us into different sectarian cantons?" said a Sunni drugstore owner in Adhamiya, who identified himself as Abu Ahmed, 44. "This will deepen the sectarian strife and only serve to abort efforts aimed at reconciliation."
. . .Several residents interviewed likened the project to the massive barriers built around some Palestinians zones in Israel.
"Are we in the West Bank?" asked Abu Qusay, 48, a pharmacist who said that access to his favorite kebab restaurant in Adhamiya has been cut off.
Come on, we can't run an occupation without an occupation wall, can we? The Israelis are never wrong when it comes to that sort of thing [/sarcasm]
Death squads are returning to the streets of Baghdad despite the security plan for the capital launched with great fanfare by the US two months ago.As Iraqis bury the 230 people killed or found dead on Wednesday, ominous signs are appearing that the Shia militias have resumed their tit-for-tat killings. There is a sharp increase in the number of dead bodies found bearing signs of torture, with 67 corpses discovered dumped in Baghdad in the first three days of the week.
People in Baghdad, both Shia and Sunni, do not dare move bodies left lying in the rubbish outside their doors though they sometimes cover them with a blanket. One corpse was left lying for days in the centre of a main commercial street in the Sunni bastion of al-Adhamiyah in east Baghdad. He was believed to be a victim of al-Qa'ida in Iraq, which has been killing Sunni who belong to other guerrilla groups or are associated with the government. Local people say that US and Iraqi forces stationed in a newly renovated police station in al-Adhamiyah as part of the security plan seem unaware of what is happening around them.
. . .The truce by the Mehdi Army militia, though never total, may now be ending because it was met with an escalation in violence by the Sunni insurgents. In a gruesome video posted on the internet a group linked to al-Qa'ida showed a masked gunman shooting 20 kidnap victims, all police or soldiers, in the back of the head. The group had demanded the freeing of all female prisoners by the government.
I guess they weren't standing up fast enough:
WASHINGTON - Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.
No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.
But evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss the policy shift publicly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made no public mention of training Iraqi troops on Thursday during a visit to Iraq.
I remember when a certain Howard Dean said those words, and everybody thought he was cuuuh-raaaaaayzeeeee!
The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday. "I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.
"I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear ... I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically."
Well, well, what have we here?:
One Senator recently claimed that setting a date for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is more accurately described as a date for surrender — do you think it is accurate to compare withdrawal with surrender?Yes: 33 percent
No: 61 percent
Bush can go ahead and veto the Democratic war funding bill. He's not going to win any friends beyond the 30-percent dead-enders he's already got:
In the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, taken April 10-12, 69 percent of Americans say things are going badly for the United States in Iraq. That's the most negative assessment yet recorded, up from 54 percent who thought things were going badly last June and 62 percent in October.The public's view: it's not working. Only 29 percent of Americans believe that sending additional troops to Iraq will make it more likely the U.S. will achieve its goals there. Only 21 percent believe the U.S. and its allies are winning; the prevailing view (62 percent) is that neither side is winning.
. . .Asked which side they take in the standoff between Congress and President Bush, the result is not close: 60 percent of Americans side with the Democrats in Congress and 37 percent with the President.
That 37 percent is a persistent figure.
-- 37 percent say if President Bush vetoes the Iraq funding bill, Congress should pass a bill with no timetable for withdrawal. 48 percent favor another bill with a timetable, and 13 percent want Congress to cut almost all funds for Iraq by next year (making a total of 61 percent who favor restrictions on funding).
-- 37 percent want the U.S. to keep troops in Iraq as long as they are needed. 35 percent want the U.S. to begin withdrawing immediately and 26 percent want to see all U.S. troops withdrawn by next March (making a total of 61 percent for withdrawal within a year).
Boy, Bush really picked a cut-up to replace Jafaari, didn't he?
The apparently coordinated onslaught, the deadliest in Baghdad since George Bush implemented his security surge two months ago, provided sobering punctuation to a declaration by Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, who announced that Iraqi forces would assume control of security in every Iraqi province by the end of the year. Yesterday, British forces transferred control of Maysan province, making it the fourth of 18 to be handed to Iraqi control.
But Baghdad is a different matter. Mr Maliki has been under huge pressure from the anti-American Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a political ally, to commit to a timetable for US-led foreign troops to leave Iraq. But Mr Maliki insists that a withdrawal must be linked to conditions on the ground. And yesterday's mayhem served to underline the scale of the task facing Iraq's fledgling army and police force.
Would more guns prevent this tragedy:
Baghdad (AP) - Four large bombs exploded in mostly Shiite areas of Baghdad today, killing at least 178 people and wounding scores - the deadliest day in the city since the start of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to pacify the capital two months ago.U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called the bombings "horrifying" and accused al-Qaida of being behind them.
In the deadliest of the attacks, a parked car bomb detonated in a crowd of workers at the Sadriyah market in central Baghdad, killing at least 122 people and wounding 148, said Raad Muhsin, an official at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.
A police official confirmed the toll, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Among the dead were several construction workers who had been rebuilding the mostly Shiite marketplace after a bombing destroyed many shops and killed 137 people there in February, the police official said.
. . .About an hour earlier, a suicide car bomber crashed into an Iraqi police checkpoint at an entrance to Sadr City, the capital's biggest Shiite Muslim neighborhood and a stronghold for the militia led by radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The explosion killed at least 41 people, including five Iraqi security officers, and wounded 76, police and hospital officials said.
. . .Earlier, a parked car exploded near a private hospital in the central neighborhood of Karradah, killing 11 people and wounding 13, police said. The blast damaged the Abdul-Majid hospital and other nearby buildings.
The fourth explosion was from a bomb left on a minibus in the central Rusafi area, area, killing four people and wounding six others, police said.
BAGHDAD — Police in Ramadi uncovered 17 decomposing corpses buried in two schoolyards in a district that until recently was under the control of al-Qaida fighters. At least 85 people were killed or found dead across the country Tuesday.. . .In a sign that Shiite death squads are on the move again after more than two months of inactivity, 25 bodies were found dumped in Baghdad on Tuesday. The three-day total, after weeks of smaller tolls, was 67.
US admits Green Zone is no longer safe as suicide bomber strikes at heart of governmentUS officials admitted last night that the bombing of the Iraqi parliament shows that not even the heavily fortified Green Zone is safe any more, despite the security crackdown launched earlier this year in the Iraqi capital.
American and Iraqi security officials were last night investigating how a suicide bomber evaded a ring of security checks and blew himself up in the assembly's cafe, killing three MPs and five other people and wounding more than 20.
About 100,000 US and Iraqi soldiers are on the streets of the capital as part of the troop "surge" begun two months ago; while security inside the Green Zone has been tightened following the recent discovery there of two suicide bomb belts.
But after the deadliest attack ever in the Green Zone, US officials warned that nowhere is safe in Baghdad. "The international zone is not safe, it is just safer than the rest of the city," said Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver. "Enemies of the country are trying to drive a wedge between the people and the government." In Washington the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said: "We know that there is a security problem in Baghdad. This (crackdown) is still early in the process and I don't think anyone expected that there wouldn't be counter-efforts by terrorists to undermine the security presence."
That's it. Eye-Rack is a failure. If you can't protect the Green Zone, you have failed. Deal with it:
Explosion at Iraq parliament cafe An explosion has hit a cafeteria at the Iraqi parliament, killing at least one person and injuring several others, witnesses said. The cafeteria is reserved for MPs and their staff and the explosion happened during lunchtime.The parliament building is located inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
Buried deep within a bullshit article repeating Bushian talking points about how Eye-Ran is somehow training both Sunni and Shiite militias lies this bigger story:
Caldwell also painted a mixed picture of the violence in Iraq eight weeks into a security plan intended to quell turmoil in the capital. From January to March, civilian deaths dropped 26 percent in Baghdad, he said. But violence surged in many areas outside the capital, resulting in a rise in civilian deaths across Iraq over the same period. Most of the victims were killed by car bombs or suicide bombers, he said.From February, when the security plan was launched, to March, the total number of deaths -- civilians, Iraqi security forces and U.S. troops -- rose by 10 percent, he said. "What does this mean? It means that we still have a lot of work to do," Caldwell said.
"The goal of these murderers is to ignite a cycle of violence. They want to murder people of one sect to try to provoke revenge killings, so that this country will be divided and weak," he added.
So, at best, we put a leafblower to the pile of dandelion spores, increasing the chaos. Is this fuggin great or what?
You know how the warbots are saying that the Surgeâ„¢ is working because the numbers of bodies stemming from sectarian cleansing have dropped from massacre levels to just plain carnage? Well the truth is that the reason the numbers of bodies have been falling is because the potential victims are leaving in droves:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Nearly two months into a Baghdad security plan intended to calm the Iraqi capital by protecting residents from sectarian violence, Shiite Muslim militia members are still driving Sunni Muslims from religiously mixed neighborhoods.Iraqi soldiers, usually ethnic Kurds, reportedly have intervened in some instances to stop the militia campaign. But interviews with Sunni residents found that most of the efforts go unchallenged in a city where it's increasingly rare for Shiites or Sunnis to remain in neighborhoods that the other sect dominates.
Residents displaced in the past four months describe a new effort that haunts them after they flee. It begins with intimidating phone calls, then escalates into bombings or the dismantling of Sunni homes.
The residents said the perpetrators were members of the Mahdi Army militia, which is loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Sadr reportedly has told his followers to lie low and not challenge U.S. troops as they fan out across the capital in an effort to restore order.
But that show of cooperation hasn't prevented the militia from trying to cement its grip on some formerly mixed-sect neighborhoods, residents report.
Yes, the report that Bush is seeking a new Eye-Rack War czar to handle his problems with that shitmire is truly pathetic, but as the New York Times analysis of the situation says, it's not the first time WorstPresidentEver has delegated responsibility for the war:
Four years after the fall of Baghdad, the White House is once again struggling to solve an old problem: Who is in charge of carrying out policy in Iraq?Once again President Bush and his top aides are searching for a high-level coordinator capable of cutting through military, political and reconstruction strategies that have never operated in sync, in Washington or in Baghdad.
Once again Mr. Bush is publicly declaring that his administration has settled on a strategy for victory — this time, a troop increase that is supposed to open political space for Sunnis and Shiites to live and govern together — even while his top aides acknowledge that the White House has never gotten the execution right.
. . .It is telling that Mr. Hadley and Mr. Bush are still wrestling with this problem. Four years ago, both had hoped and expected that by 2007, Iraq would essentially be a cleanup operation, involving a comparatively small American force. Instead, the current force of 145,000 is building to 160,000.
For both men, deciding who in Washington should take the reins on Iraq strategy is hardly a new task.
It was in August 2003, five months after the American invasion, that Mr. Bush ordered the formation of an Iraq Stabilization Group to run things from the White House. That action reflected the first recognition by the White House that Donald H. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon was more interested in deposing dictators than nation-building.
When that group was formed, Mr. Rumsfeld snapped that it was about time that the National Security Council performed its traditional job — unifying the actions of a government whose agencies often spent much of their day battling one another. That approach worked, for a while.
But then the insurgency in Iraq grew formidable, reconstruction efforts were slowed, the State and Defense Departments reverted to bureaucratic spats, and the White House never managed to get its arms around the scope of the problem, in Baghdad or in Washington.
That was evident earlier this year when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, openly clashed on the question of who would provide the personnel for new Provincial Reconstruction Teams that were charged with trying, once again, to rebuild Iraq.
But that was only a small part of the problem: When the Iraq Study Group turned out its recommendations in December for revamping strategy, it cited “a lack of coordination by senior management in Washington,� declaring that “focus, priority setting, and skillful implementation are in short supply.�
Yep, after all his fuckups, Bush still thinks he has a leg to stand on to challenge the Democrats who want this war to end. Bully for him.
BAGHDAD - A suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad early Thursday, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars toppling into the Tigris River below, police and witnesses said.At least 10 people were killed and 26 injured, according to hospital officials. That toll was expected to rise.
Police were trying to rescue as many as 20 people whose cars plummeted into the waters below.
Hours after the blast, waves lapped up against twisted girders sinking into the water, as police patrol boats searched for survivors.
The al-Sarafiya bridge connected two northern Baghdad neighborhoods — Azamiyah, a mostly Sunni enclave, and Bab al-Muazam, a mixed area.
More evidence of how we are simply husbanding a civil war:
As part of a nearly eight-week-old plan to temper violence in Baghdad, U.S. forces last month set up a permanent base and resumed security sweeps in the enclave for the first time in three years. Sadr's black-clad fighters -- who battled U.S. forces in the past -- have appeared to stand down, even as Sadr publicly condemns the U.S. presence.But soldiers with a U.S. military police unit that has provided police training and patrols in Sadr City for most of the past 10 months said the Mahdi Army disrupts their efforts every day. Most of the Iraqi police they train are either affiliated with the militia or intimidated by it, the soldiers said. At worst, they said, militia infiltration in the police might be behind attacks on Americans, even though Iraqi officials offered assurances that the Mahdi Army was lying low.
"I don't really think there is an end or a beginning. I think it's all intermingled," Staff Sgt. Toby Hansen, 30, said about the Mahdi Army's relationship to the police trained by his unit. "Eventually, when we leave, they're going to police their own city. They're going to do it their way."
I hope it doesn't involve an invasion of Cambodia:
Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, told "Hardball" fill-in host David Gregory that if the 'surge' has not yielded success in Iraq by August 2008, then "this president, and the Republican majority from the last Congress, we do have a 'Plan B,' but we're not going to give it to the enemy."Gregory did not push him to shed light on the back up plan, but Gingrey conceded that "adjustments" would need to be made if victory had not be achieved in Iraq by August 2008.
Gingrey's comments are reminiscent of an oft-mentioned Republican contention that any timelines regarding troop withdrawal from Iraq should be kept secret.
Iraqi forces began taking a back seat in combat operations in Iraq last autumn, even before President Bush started deploying 21,500 more troops chiefly to spearhead a security crackdown in Baghdad, according to a new Pentagon report.The report shows that Iraqi military units began assuming greater responsibility for operations in the earlier part of last year. But the trend has reversed. In October, U.S. forces were conducting 8% of the combat operations, while 72% were joint missions. By January, U.S. units were conducting 33% of the operations, and the percentage of joint operations had fallen to 59%.
In addition, the number of Iraqi army and other units in the lead has declined to 92 in February from 94 in November, while the number of U.S.-led missions has been increasing.
The quarterly report to Congress, required by law, covers the period immediately before Feb. 13, when the U.S. began building up troop levels and implementing its new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.
After everything that has been exposed, after everybody but the 30-percent nutters know that the war is a complete lie, to think that Darth Cheney would continue with his warmed-over bullshit is just well past maddening:
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.. . .The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.
"This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told Limbaugh's listeners about Zarqawi, who he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."
Not like it was working anyways:
BAGHDAD Apr 8, 2007 (AP)— The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged the Iraqi army and police to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate on pushing American forces out of the country, according to a statement issued Sunday.The statement, stamped with al-Sadr's official seal, was distributed in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Sunday a day before a large demonstration there, called for by al-Sadr, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.
"You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy," the statement said. Its authenticity could not be verified.
. . ."God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them not against the sons of Iraq," the statement said, in an apparent reference to clashes between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters and Iraqi troops in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad. "You have to protect and build Iraq."
While highlighting the uncomfortable fact that the Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFPs) are actually being made in Eye-Rack, and are not an export of Eye-Ran, and therefore a casus belli for an invasion, Atrios stumbles upon an example of the Washington Post doing what we in the media criticism business affectionately know as "Prudenizing." Apparently, an earlier version of a Washington Post story that appeared on its website was the one written by Reuters that included the fact that a raid turned up an EFP factory. The "official" version that will appear in the print edition excludes that pertinent fact. We haven't seen this type of manipulative, hawkish journalism since Hearst era.
The New York Times has a feature article about a soldier wounded in Eye-Rack during the initial invasion, who ended up burning a trailer home because the Bush Republicans couldn't bother with setting up a competent system to deal with all the PTSD cases that were coming home:
DUNBAR, Pa. — Blinded and disabled on the 54th day of the war in Iraq, Sam Ross returned home to a rousing parade that outdid anything this small, depressed Appalachian town had ever seen. “Sam’s parade put Dunbar on the map,� his grandfather said.That was then.
Now Mr. Ross, 24, faces charges of attempted homicide, assault and arson in the burning of a family trailer in February. Nobody in the trailer was hurt, but Mr. Ross fought the assistant fire chief who reported to the scene, and later threatened a state trooper with his prosthetic leg, which was taken away from him, according to the police.
The police locked up Mr. Ross in the Fayette County prison. In his cell, he tried to hang himself with a sheet. After he was cut down, Mr. Ross was committed to a state psychiatric hospital, where, he said in a recent interview there, he is finally getting — and accepting — the help he needs, having spiraled downward in the years since the welcoming fanfare faded.
“I came home a hero, and now I’m a bum,� Mr. Ross, whose full name is Salvatore Ross Jr., said.
Nope, the only bum is the one currently using soldiers like Sam Ross in order to protect their eroding political agenda.
Can't these people understand that Baghdad is safe, that McCain says you can stroll around that particular marketplace without being harmed? Why do they have to mess up the narrative?
A newborn baby was one of at least 14 children and adults killed when a suicide bomber detonated a lorry laden with explosives close to a primary school in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk yesterday.The latest massacre of Iraqi children came as 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.
Following up on the last post that noted Weathervane McCain's campaign junket in the Iraqi marketplace, you know the one where he incredulously said Eye-Rack is safer even though he was under heavy military guard? Well, the locals can't really see what the hell he was getting at:
BAGHDAD, April 2 — A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.“What are they talking about?� Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!�
The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.
“They paralyzed the market when they came,� Mr. Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.�
He added, “This will not change anything.�
Well, that was just one Iraqi, I'm guessing there are plenty more who agree with what the Senator is saying:
Merchants and customers say that a campaign by insurgents to attack Baghdad’s markets has put many shop owners out of business and forced radical changes in the way people shop. Shorja, the city’s oldest and largest market, set in a sprawling labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways, has been bombed at least a half-dozen times since last summer.
. . .In recent weeks, snipers hidden in Shorja’s bazaar have killed several people, merchants and the police say, and gunfights have erupted between militants and the Iraqi security forces in the area.During their visit on Sunday, the Americans were buttonholed by merchants and customers who wanted to talk about how unsafe they felt and the urgent need for more security in the markets and throughout the city, witnesses said.
“They asked about our conditions, and we told them the situation was bad,� said Aboud Sharif Kadhoury, 63, who peddles prayer rugs at a sidewalk stand. He said he sold a small prayer rug worth less than $1 to Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Iraq, who accompanied the Congressional delegation. (General Petraeus paid $20 and told Mr. Kadhoury to keep the change, the vendor said.)
Mr. Kadhoury said he lost more than $2,000 worth of merchandise in the triple bombing in February. “I was hit in the head and back with shrapnel,� he recalled.
Ali Youssef, 39, who sells glassware from a sidewalk stand down the block from Mr. Kadhoury, recalled: “Everybody complained to them. We told them we were harmed.�
He and other merchants used to keep their shops open until dusk, but with the dropoff in customers as a result of the attacks, and a nightly curfew, most shop owners close their businesses in the early afternoon.
“This area here is very dangerous,� continued Mr. Youssef, who lost his shop in the February attack. “They cannot secure it.�
Look, even if that particular marketplace is safe, touting it's lack of violence just misses the elephant in the room.
That is the picture of Saigon during the first day of the Tet Offensive. Except for the dead VC in the foreground, you'd never know that there's a goddamn war going on. Juan Cole (via Americablog) explains how "mundane" civil life during wartime can get:
Look, I lived in the midst of a civil war in the late 1970s in Beirut. I know exactly what it looks and smells like. The inexperienced often assume that when a guerrilla war or a civil war is going on, life grinds to a standstill. Not so. People go shopping for food. They drive where they need to go as long as they don't hear that there is a firefight in that area. They go to work if they still have work. Life goes on.It is just that, unexpectedly, a mortar shell might land near you. Or the person ahead of you in line outside the bakery might fall dead, victim of a sniper's bullet. The bazaars are bustling some days (all the moreso because it is good to stock up on supplies the days when the violence isn't so bad). . . McCain, you see, knows exactly what I know about guerrilla wars and civil wars. Hell, people used to shop freely in Saigon in the early 1970s! And if he is saying what he is saying, it is because he is attempting to convey an overly optimistic picture with which to deceive the American public.
So for John McCain, protected by an extensive military convoy, to tell the Iraqi people that their perceptions of reality is wrong, makes him not only a fool, but a highly paternalistic fool.
While Saint McCain is bloviating and visiting bombed-out marketplaces under heavy security convoys, two suicide vests were found Saturday within what is supposed to be the safest place in Baghdad. Makes you wonder about the ones they didn't find.
This makes the Republican support for the Surgeâ„¢ they didn't believe in even more appalling:
Iraq death toll jumps 15 percent in MarchBAGHDAD (AFP) - At least 2,078 people died in Iraq last month, 15 percent more than in February despite a massive security crackdown in Baghdad, the epicentre of violence, a security official said on Sunday.
On average, 67 people died across the country every day in March, compared to 64 in February.
A significant increase in Iraqi civilian, army and police deaths was evident last month, the official said, based on detailed statistics collected by the defence, interior and health ministries.
Civilian deaths topped the toll with 1,869 Iraqis killed in insurgency and sectarian bloodletting in March, compared to 1,646 in February. Another 2,719 civilians were wounded last month, compared to 2,701 in February.
Let's see how peaceful this mass Sadrist demonstration is gonna be:
BAGHDAD - Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr made a scathing attack on the United States in a statement issued on Friday, blaming it for Iraq’s woes and calling for a mass demonstration April 9 to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad’s fall.The statement was the first by al-Sadr since March 14 when he called on his supporters to resist US forces in Iraq through peaceful means. Al-Sadr has been said by US and Iraqi officials to be in neighboring Iran. His aides insist he is still in Iraq.
The latest statement was read to worshippers during Friday prayers at a mosque in Kufa, a holy Shiite city south of Baghdad where al-Sadr frequently led the ritual.
“I renew my call for the occupier (the United States) to leave our land,� he said in the statement, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. “The departure of the occupier will mean stability for Iraq, victory for Islam and peace and defeat for terrorism and infidels.�
Update: More from the New York Times.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. general on Friday said suicide attacks and car bombings soared 30 percent since the start of a security crackdown in Iraq last month, and that insurgents had used a child in a second suicide attack last week.Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, also characterised the rising use of chlorine bombs in Iraq as "poison gas attacks."
"Chlorine is a poison gas. It is a poison gas being used on the Iraqi people. Before these attacks, the last time poison gas was used on the Iraqi people was by Saddam Hussein," Barbero told reporters at the Pentagon.
. . .Violence throughout Iraq surged over the past week, killing 300 people. The past week was the bloodiest since the start of the U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad in mid-February.
But-but the Shiites like all the carbombs because they aren't retaliating [/bushbot]
Why does the Bush-hating librual media depress us with stories like these:
BAGHDAD, March 29 — The two men showed up on Tuesday afternoon to evict Suaada Saadoun’s family. One was carrying a shiny black pistol.Ms. Saadoun was a Sunni Arab living in a Shiite enclave of western Baghdad. A widowed mother of seven, she and her family had been chased out once before. This time, she called American and Kurdish soldiers at a base less than a mile to the east.
The men tried to drive away, but the soldiers had blocked the street. They pulled the men out of the car.
“If anything happens to us, they’re the ones responsible,� said Ms. Saadoun, 49, a burly, boisterous woman in a black robe and lavender-blue head scarf.
The Americans shoved the men into a Humvee. Neighbors clapped and cheered as if their soccer team had just won a title.
The next morning, Ms. Saadoun was shot dead while walking by a bakery in the local market.
After the police took the body away, all that remained in the alleyway was a pool of blood, a bullet casing and the upper half of Ms. Saadoun’s set of false teeth.
Oh yeah, if you think the Bush surge is working, ask Saadoun's orphans how they think it's working. In any case, the rest of the story gives the impression that the remission in Baghdad is falling apart:
“The forced evictions started up again this month,� said Capt. Benjamin Morales, 28, a Bronx native who commands a company of the 82nd Airborne Division that oversees a swath of western Baghdad taken over by Shiite militias last year. “In my area, that’s the biggest thing that’s going on.�Captain Morales’s unit, Company B of the First Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, was among the first additional American units to enter Baghdad. It moved into the Ali Salah neighborhood at the start of February to work alongside Kurdish soldiers brought in from northern Iraq.
The first month was quiet. A couple of explosions, some shooting here and there.
But a few weeks ago, the eight remaining Sunni Arab families living near the American and Iraqi base had again begun to receive threats, Captain Morales said.
Four families lived to the north of the base. Militant Shiites marked those homes with big X’s, splashed red paint across their front doors and shot at the buildings with Kalashnikovs. Two families moved out. Last week, the other two woke up one morning to find that the militants had chained their doors shut.
. . .Now there were three Sunni Arab households left in the neighborhood.
Hours after truck bombs killed 85 people on Tuesday in a Shi'ite area of Tal Afar, up to 70 Sunni Arab men were shot dead in a town which only a year ago was held up by U.S. President George W. Bush as an example of progress towards peace.Iraq's Sunni vice president urged the government on Thursday to do more to purge security forces of militias after a group of Shi'ite police shot scores of Sunni Arab men after the two truck bombs in Tal Afar, near the Syrian border.
The governor of Nineveh province, which includes the town of Tal Afar, said policemen who took part in the reprisal shootings were arrested but then freed again to prevent unrest.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Bombers launched two deadly strikes Thursday in crowded Shiite marketplaces in Baghdad and a town north of Iraq's capital, killing 119 people and wounding 171. At least 17 others died in other bombings and gunfire around the country.The attacks erupted as Iraqi shoppers filled marketplaces Thursday to buy goods at the start of the weekend and the eve of the Muslim holy day of Friday.
In the deadliest attack, at least one suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest detonated in a crowded open-air marketplace in Baghdad's Shiite district of Shaab. At least 76 people were killed and 85 were wounded.
. . .Earlier, in the Diyala province town of Khalis, north of Baghdad, three car bombs detonated at a marketplace, killing 43 people and wounding 86.
An Iraqi Interior Ministry official said that the first two bombs exploded in quick succession at a market in the central part of town. Minutes later, a third car bomb exploded after Iraqi security forces arrived at the scene.
Khalis, a predominantly Shiite town, is 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Baghdad. Diyala, an ethnically and religiously mixed province, has been the scene of much violence during the Iraq war.
John McCain just said this yesterday:
"The consequences of failure are catastrophic because if we come home, bin Laden and Zarqawi, they are going to follow us."
Jesus, even when we do kill the terra-ists they are still a threat. Not a nice endorsement to either wars, you blockhead.
Perhaps there's some German compound word that adequately describes how ridiculous this situation has become:
Last November, Army Spc. Edgar Hernandez, a communications specialist with a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, had surgery on an ankle he had injured during physical training. After the surgery, doctors put his leg in a cast, and he was supposed to start physical therapy when that cast came off six weeks later.But two days after his cast was removed, Army commanders decided it was more important to send him to a training site in a remote desert rather than let him stay at Fort Benning, Ga., to rehabilitate. In January, Hernandez was shipped to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., where his unit, the 3,900-strong 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, was conducting a month of training in anticipation of leaving for Iraq in March.
Hernandez says he was in no shape to train for war so soon after his injury. "I could not walk," he told Salon in an interview. He said he was amazed when he learned he was being sent to California. "Did they not realize that I'm hurt and I needed this physical therapy?" he remembered thinking. "I was told by my doctor and my physical therapist that this was crazy."
. . .Hernandez is one of a dozen soldiers who stayed for weeks in those tents who were interviewed for this report, some of whose medical records were also reviewed by Salon. All of the soldiers said they had no business being sent to Fort Irwin given their physical condition. In some cases, soldiers were sent there even though their injuries were so severe that doctors had previously recommended they should be considered for medical retirement from the Army.
Military experts say they suspect that the deployment to Fort Irwin of injured soldiers was an effort to pump up manpower statistics used to show the readiness of Army units. With the military increasingly strained after four years of war, Army readiness has become a critical part of the debate over Iraq. Some congressional Democrats have considered plans to limit the White House's ability to deploy more troops unless the Pentagon can certify that units headed into the fray are fully equipped and fully manned.
. . .It is unclear exactly how many soldiers with health issues were sent to the California desert. None of the soldiers interviewed by Salon had done a head count, but all agreed that "dozens" would be a conservative estimate. An Army spokesman and public affairs officials for the 3rd Infantry Division did not return repeated calls and e-mails seeking further detail and an explanation of why injured troops were sent to Fort Irwin and housed in tents there during January.
Army strawng, brother. Army strawng.
Looks like 59 percent of Americans do want a mandate to get out of Eye-Rack by August of 2008. Sixty percent according to the Gallup poll. Of course, since they are not a supermajority, they can be written off as the "anti-troop fringe" while the 33 percent are still considered "serious".
This just fits in the larger narrative. The legacy of the Bush administration and of the 12 years of almost unbroken Republican congressional rule over Capitol Hill has pushed people to favor Democrats over Republicans by 15 percent. Also it has pushed for greater majorities to favor social programs and helping the less fortunate. In fact, except for blips around 1994 and 2002, the public has always favored Democrats over Republicans (which is why Democratic members of congress represent more people) yet for some reason the pundit class and the political news coverage has conspicuously favored Republicans over the past years. For example, when was the last time you've heard people on the teevee talk about helping poor people? Exactly, they were all about poor folks back when Katrina hit, but then they quickly switched to the Blame Ray Nagin game.
The pundit class can continue to try to convince the people to reject liberals and their ideas, but I think people think that since they pay taxes to their governments, they expect to see those taxes work for them, not to enrich the monied class.
BAGHDAD, March 27 — Attackers killed a prominent member of an Iraqi tribe that had taken a stand against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and in other violence today more than 53 people were killed in gunfire and bomb attacks.Among the attacks were two suicide bombs in the northern city of Tal Afar and the murder of two elderly Chaldean nuns in Kirkuk.
Gunmen attacked a car carrying Harith Thahir Khamees al-Dari and fired a rocket-propelled grenade, killing him and wounding his driver, in Abu Ghraib, the authorities said.
“We accuse Al Qaeda,� said a relative of the family, Abu Abdullah. “The sheik has his stands against Al Qaeda, as Al Qaeda started targeting the innocent, civilians and children, police and army.�
In Kirkuk, residents walked in shocked silence in a funeral procession for two nuns, sisters, who had lived and worked in the city for many years.
Sister Margaret Saour, 80, and Sister Fadhila Saour, 71, were known in their neighborhood for their devotion to the church and to charitable works. On Monday, they attended evening prayers at the Chaldean cathedral, said one of the cathedral’s priests, Saoor Shamel.
Their last minutes were filled with terror. After midnight, gunmen entered the sister’s house, which is near the Kirkuk government building. They shot Margaret, who was blind, and then turned to Fadhila. Terrified, she tried to flee, but before she could cross the yard, the attackers stabbed her to death.
. . .In another attack, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt at a bus stop near a restaurant in Ramadi, west of Baghdad in Al Anbar province. At least 10 people were killed and 20 wounded, according to Col. Tariq Yusuf, the security supervisor in the city.
Reuters reported that at least 17 people were killed and 32 wounded in the attack, in an area frequented by the Iraqi police and where local tribes have joined the tribal alliance against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the insurgent group that claims ties to the Qaeda organization and has been associated with some of the most destructive attacks in Iraq.
BAGHDAD, March 28 (Reuters) - Gunmen stormed a Sunni district in the northwestern Iraqi town of Tal Afar overnight, killing dozens in apparent reprisal for truck bombings in a Shi'ite area, Iraqi officials said on Wednesday.Police, military and health officials said as many as 50 men were killed in the attack on the Sunni district of al-Wahda in the volatile town, whose residents are a mixture of Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs and Turkmen, near the Syrian border,
"I wish you can come and see all the bodies. They are lying in the grounds. We don't have enough space in the hospital. All of the victims were shot in the head," a doctor at the main hospital told Reuters by telephone.
Looks like the Shiites have put up with enough of the unilateral disarment:
BAGHDAD, March 25 (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi troops clashed with gunmen in a town south of Baghdad on Sunday shortly after a Sunni mosque was set ablaze in an apparent revenge attack for the destruction of a Shi'ite mosque in the town a day earlier.Gunmen stormed the Sunni mosque in Haswa, a religiously mixed town about 50 km (35 miles) south of the Iraqi capital, on Sunday morning and destroyed its minaret in a blast. The building was set on fire, a police official said.
They said at least four people were wounded. A second Sunni mosque was attacked but damage was reported to be minor.
A suicide truck bomber exploded outside a Shi'ite mosque in Haswa on Saturday, killing 14 and wounding 21, Hilla police said. The provincial health directorate and Baghdad police put the toll at 16. Only the mosque's minaret was left standing.
Apparently, that is what the Republican Representative Tim Walberg from Michigan said just yesterday. Perhaps he won't mind telling the U.N. Secretary General that highly relevant fact:
BAGHDAD, March 22 — Like most of the bombs that insurgents launch into the heavily fortified Green Zone, the mortar shell that exploded in the crook of a tree on the compound’s eastern edge at 3:40 p.m. local time today caused some structural damage and no casualties. But this one carried a particularly resonant message about the continuing violence that plagues the capital.It struck about 250 feet away from the riverside residence of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. At that moment, Mr. Maliki and the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, were holding a news conference inside the residence to mark Mr. Ban’s first visit to Iraq. In another room were gathered many of Iraq’s top political officials.
. . .The deafening explosion startled the secretary general, who momentarily ducked his head as windows shattered outside and flecks of plaster drifted down from the ceiling. Mr. Maliki barely shifted.
Putz.
Welp, the Pentagon is caught in yet another lie as they are forced to admit that more soldiers than previously reported have deserted the army:
A total of 3,196 active-duty soldiers deserted the Army last year, or 853 more than previously reported, according to revised figures from the Army.The new calculations by the Army, which had about 500,000 active-duty troops at the end of 2006, significantly alter the annual desertion totals since the 2000 fiscal year.
In 2005, for example, the Army now says 2,543 soldiers deserted, not the 2,011 it had reported. For some earlier years, the desertion numbers were revised downward.
. . .Some Army officers link the recent uptick in annual desertion rates to the toll of wartime deployments and point to the increasing percentage of troops who are on their second or third tours in Iraq or Afghanistan.
But an Army spokeswoman, Maj. Anne Edgecomb, gave different reasons. Most soldiers desert because of personal, family or financial problems, Major Edgecomb said, adding, “We don’t have any facts to indicate that soldiers who desert now are doing so for reasons different from why soldiers deserted in the past.�
Lt. Col. Brian C. Hilferty, an Army spokesman, said the desertion data errors were caused by confusion among employees who tally them. “They were counting things wrong, and doing it inconsistently,� Colonel Hilferty said in an interview.
He added, “We are looking at the rise in desertions, but the numbers remain below prewar levels, and retention remains high. So the force is healthy."
Well at least we can be confident that remains below the levels reached during the VIetnam war, At least as it is now reported by the military.
Welp, at least they ran em outta Baghdad:
BAGHDAD, March 19 -- Dozens of insurgents wielding machine guns surrounded the police station before dawn Monday in Duluiyah, a majority Sunni town about 45 miles north of Baghdad. The five officers on duty walked out, hands to the dark sky, and waited to be executed.But instead of firing, the insurgents' leader spoke: Repent, he commanded, or die.
"So we swore to quit the police and support the Islamic State of Iraq," recalled Mohammad Hashmawi, one of the police officers, referring to a militant Sunni organization active in many parts of the country.
Apparently content, the insurgents stole the officers' decrepit weapons and the station's communications equipment, blew up the building and released the officers. A similar scene played out simultaneously at another police station in the town, said police Capt. Hussein al-Jaburi. It was the fifth police station in the town to be destroyed by Sunni extremists in two weeks, he said, leaving just three standing.
Later, Hashmawi said he would keep his vow. "I have seen death with my own eyes, and I don't want to see it again. I will return to being a farmer. I tell you that the decisions and control of the city are in the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq."
And whatta cakewalk it was!
The AP and Reuters offer two different views on how effective the surge has been in the past month. The AP gives a pretty glowing version:
BAGHDAD - Bomb deaths have gone down 30 percent in Baghdad since the U.S.-led security crackdown began a month ago. Execution-style slayings are down by nearly half.The once frequent sound of weapons has been reduced to episodic, and downtown shoppers have returned to outdoor markets — favored targets of car bombers.
There are signs of progress in the campaign to restore order in Iraq, starting with its capital city.
But while many Iraqis are encouraged, they remain skeptical how long the relative calm will last. Each bombing renews fears that the horror is returning. Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents are still around, perhaps just lying low or hiding outside the city until the operation is over.
U.S. military officials, burned before by overly optimistic forecasts, have been cautious about declaring the operation a success. Another reason it seems premature: only two of the five U.S. brigades earmarked for the mission are in the streets, and the full complement of American reinforcements is not due until late May.
U.S. officials say that key to the operation’s long-term success is the willingness of Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic political parties to strike a power- and money-sharing deal. That remains elusive — a proposal for governing the country’s main source of income — oil — is bogged down in parliamentary squabbling.
Promising signs
Nevertheless, there are encouraging signs. Gone are the “illegal checkpoints,� where Shiite and Sunni gunmen stopped cars and hauled away members of the rival sect — often to a gruesome torture and death.The rattle of automatic weapons fire or the rumble of distant roadside bombs comes less frequently. Traffic is beginning to return to the city’s once-vacant streets.
“People are very optimistic because they sense a development. The level of sectarian violence in streets and areas has decreased,� said a 50-year-old Shiite, who gave his name only as Abu Abbas, or “father of Abbas.� “The activities of the militias have also decreased. The car bombs and the suicide attacks are the only things left, while other kinds of violence have decreased.�
In the months before the security operation began Feb. 14, police were finding dozens of bodies each day in the capital — victims of Sunni and Shiite death squads. Last December, more than 200 bodies were found each week — with the figure spiking above 300 in some weeks, according to police reports compiled by The Associated Press.
Since the crackdown began, weekly totals have dropped to about 80 — hardly an acceptable figure but clearly a sign that death squads are no longer as active as they were in the final months of last year.
Bombings too have decreased in the city, presumably due to U.S. and Iraqi success in finding weapons caches and to more government checkpoints in the streets that make it tougher to deliver the bombs.
In the 27 days leading up to the operation, 528 people were killed in bombings around the capital, according to AP figures. In the first 27 days of the operation, the bombing death toll stood at 370 — a drop of about 30 percent.
Reuters, however, elected to go with a more tempered and sobering version of events:
Car bombs in Baghdad, at a record high in February, remain a serious concern despite a month-old U.S.-backed crackdown, a U.S. general said in a more sober assessment than one given by Iraqi officials on Wednesday.Major General William Caldwell said murders and executions in the capital since the Baghdad security plan began on February 14 had been halved but that "sensational" car bombs blamed on al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab militants had spiked in February.
"We reached an all-time high there in February," Caldwell told a news conference, without providing a figure. He said U.S. and Iraqi troops were investing a "tremendous amount of effort" in finding car bomb factories in the Baghdad beltway.
While Caldwell said there had been a "positive" reduction of overall murders and executions since the plan got under way, he warned of a slight "uptick" of violence in the last seven days.
"We are concerned about any levels of violence that indicate an increase versus a decrease ... We are watching it very carefully," he said, adding it would take months before the plan makes a big difference in easing violence that has pushed Iraq to the brink of all-out sectarian war.
"The Iraqis have really shown restraint. They are not taking retribution," he said, referring to retaliatory sectarian violence that in the past has followed car bomb attacks.
But an Iraqi Sunni militant group said on Wednesday it had captured an Iraqi brigadier general and posted copies of Ministry of Defense credentials that identified him as a deputy director but did not describe him as an officer.
Ansar al-Sunna has claimed several abductions and killings since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Earlier, Iraqi military officials offered a less cautious report than Caldwell's, saying civilian deaths and car bombs had fallen sharply in the first 30 days of the plan.
Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier Qassim Moussawi said the number of Iraqis killed by violence in Baghdad between February 14 and March 14 had fallen to 265 from 1,440 and that the number of car bombs was down to 36 from 56.
So one article says bombings have decreased, while the other say it is at an all-time high, what gives? In any case, the Reuters article is correct in noting how changes in troop concentration in any part of the country brings a predictable lull in violence while insurgents and death squads adapt and change their tactics. The Shiite death squads have until now decided to cooperate, but as the last post show, their patience has ended.
While the Bushies and some in the wire media has been singing hosannas about the success of the Surgeâ„¢. they keep forgetting that it is only because the Shiites have been willfully cooperating, and have since engaged in a lopsided unilateral disarment against the Sunni militants. Now after suffering a series of spectacular attacks, they are now demanding that they take matters into their own hands:
BAGHDAD — Hundreds of Shiite Muslims, beating their chests in mourning, accompanied 17 coffins through Baghdad's main Shiite district Monday, demanding that militiamen be allowed to protect them after a wave of attacks on pilgrims."Despite the heavy security presence in Baghdad, we are seeing the terror and bombings escalate and more innocents being killed," said a man who identified himself by a traditional nickname, Abu Fatima Sadi. "When the Al Mahdi army was providing protection, there were no violations."
This year, the Al Mahdi militia, led by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr, held back from protecting millions of Shiite pilgrims making their way to the holy city of Karbala for weekend religious rites. The move came after intense pressure by the Shiite-led government to give a U.S.-Iraqi security plan a chance to succeed.
Attacks against Iraq's Shiite majority, however, have persisted despite the month-old crackdown, intended to clear the capital of sectarian fighters and anti-U.S. insurgents.
. . .More than 220 people were killed in the last week as Sunni Arab militants unleashed suicide bombers and gunfire on the Shiite pilgrims who converged in Karbala to mark the death of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad.
Iraqi officials have reported a modest drop in recent weeks in the number of execution-style killings, which are considered to be a signature of the Al Mahdi militia.
Police recovered 11 bodies in Baghdad on Monday. Before the security plan was launched Feb. 13, the number often exceeded 30 a day.
But bomb blasts, mortar fire and other attacks have persisted, and at least 13 Iraqis were reported killed and dozens injured Monday. The U.S. military also announced the deaths of three U.S. personnel the previous day.
Some of the Shiite mourners at Monday's funeral complained that the decision to rein in the militiamen left them exposed to Sunni militants intent on reigniting sectarian fighting.
"This plan is not effective and has no results to show so far," said a man who gave his name as Abu Zahara Ghrayji. "You can see the evidence of the increasing bombings and terror every day."
He demanded that police work with the militiamen to protect Shiites at major gatherings.
Now we'll see how the Surgeâ„¢ will work.
60 Minutes did a segment on Sunday on how the Bushies have turned their backs on Iraqi refugees, refusing to resettle them here even after they left their country to ruins. The reasoning behind it, according to a weasel-faced State Department official, is that they are circumspect of potential security risks, meaning that those Eye-Rackees may be terra-ists.
You know what? We, this country, do not deserve that sort of caution or the comfort that comes along with it. We invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9-11 under completely false pretenses, failed in our attempt at social engineering and has left a power vacuum that has since been filled with chaos. If the world hates us now, wait until they have to absorb the 2 million Iraqi refugees because we are unwilling to clean or atone for our own messes. From then on we shalll surely be the moral laughingstocks among the nations.
I guess with the Eye-Rack war in shambles, the media decided it was time to start naming names:
The Iraqi defector known as Curveball, whose fabricated stories of "mobile biological weapons labs" helped lead the U.S. to war four years ago, is still being protected by the German intelligence service, an ABC News investigation has found.Intelligence sources, who provided ABCNews.com with the first known photo of the man, say he has been resettled in a small town near the Munich headquarters of the German service, which has continued to honor its original commitment made when he fled Iraq in 1999.
. . .Behind the scenes at the CIA, however, a former senior official says he was trying to keep the Curveball information out of the Powell speech.
"People died because of this," said Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of European operations at the CIA, who has written about it a new book, "On the Brink." "All off this one little guy who all he wanted to do was stay in Germany."
. . .The CIA has since issued an official "burn notice" formally retracting more than 100 intelligence reports based on his information.
Apparenlty the monkey president does have a backup plan if his Surgeâ„¢ doesn't get the results:
American military planners have begun plotting a fallback strategy for Iraq that includes a gradual withdrawal of forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters in case the current troop buildup fails or is derailed by Congress.Such a strategy, based in part on the U.S. experience in El Salvador in the 1980s, is still in the early planning stages and would be adjusted to fit the outcome of the current surge in troop levels, according to military officials and Pentagon consultants who spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing future plans.
But a drawdown of forces would be in line with comments to Congress by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates last month that if the "surge" fails, the backup plan would include moving troops "out of harm's way." Such a plan also would be close to recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, of which Gates was a member before his appointment as Defense Department chief.
A strategy following the El Salvador model would be a dramatic break from President Bush's current policy of committing large numbers of U.S. troops to aggressive counterinsurgency tactics, but it has influential backers within the Pentagon.
"This part of the world has an allergy against foreign presence," said a senior Pentagon official, adding that chances of success with a large U.S. force may be diminishing. "You have a window of opportunity that is relatively short. Your ability to influence this with a large U.S. force eventually gets to the point that it is self-defeating."
Ah, but you see, there are still those pesky little drawbacks of repeating the support of government backed death squads:
Years after, the U.S. role in El Salvador remains controversial. Some academics have argued that the U.S. military turned a blind eye to government-backed death squads, or even aided them. But former advisors and military historians argue that the U.S. gradually professionalized the Salvadoran army and curbed the government's abuses.El Salvador veterans and experts have been pushing for the model it provides of a smaller, less visible U.S. advisory presence.
Yeah, those advisors and military historians can tell that tale to Oscar Romero.
As a corollory to Sunday's article about how the military is forcing wounded vets to serve in Eye-Rack, the Army Times has put out a "he said, she said" sounding article in which the facts tell you all we need to know: in 2001 642 soldiers were approved for disability retirement. Now in the midst of wars that has claimed thousands of wounded, only 209 were approved of the same benefits in 2005.
Not to distract from the main point of the story of Iraqis fleeing the chaos caused by our invasion to this country, but the first few paragraphs gave me pause:
Assad’s desperate flight from Iraq began on foot.For days, he trekked from Iraq to Turkey and from Turkey to Greece. He slipped through remote rural villages and crossed a river’s rushing waters to escape the violence that had left his cousin dead and his father in hiding.
Finally, after paying smugglers to get him on flights to Spain, Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico, he joined the crush of Spanish-speaking migrants on a bus ride to America’s doorstep.
Fortunately, Assad immediately went to the border patrols and asked for asylum. But still, how easy could it be for Al Qaeda terrorists to slip through our borders like that?
Bombs killed 29 people in Baghdad on Sunday, one day after Iraq signaled that world powers and neighboring countries had agreed it was vital to all to stop sectarian violence spreading in the region.A car bomb targeting a truck transporting Shi'ite pilgrims killed 19 people in central Baghdad, police said. The blast in the predominantly Shi'ite district of Karrada wounded 20 people.
The pilgrims were returning from the holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, where millions gathered over the weekend for the Arbain ritual despite attacks by suspected Sunni Arab insurgents that have killed scores and raised communal tensions.
In eastern Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a minibus, killing 10 people and wounding eight, police said. The blast ripped the minibus apart in an area of northeastern Baghdad near the Shi'ite militia stronghold of Sadr City.
The Center for American Progress has a new report out that states that seventy-two percent of Army divisions have been deployed to Eye-Rack or Afghanistan more than once. In total, 420,000 out of 1.4 million military personnel have been deployed to Eye-Rack/Afghanistan more than once. People like to pretend they can keep this up, but with the equipment shortages, the lack of training, and the strain being put on military families, they are just dreaming.
So much for the "protecting the sanctity of marriage" bullcrap we keep hearing from these right wing snakes:
We hadn't talked about the possibility of him being deployed for months, not since President Bush had declared, "Mission accomplished." But I knew exactly what he meant; I didn't know then what it would mean for us.We weren't prepared, and neither was the Guard. The Guard sent him into harm's way without providing some of the basic equipment and materials, such as global positioning systems, night vision gear, and insect repellant, that he would rely on during his year-long tour of duty at LSA Anaconda, the most-attacked base in Iraq, as determined by the sheer number of incoming rockets and mortars, which averaged at least five per day.
Unlike active duty military, the National Guard had no functional family support system or services in place. While the Guard was scrambling to get it together, my husband was already gone, and I was alone, just months after we had moved to Seattle.
. . .The escalation contradicts the advice of top U.S. military officials. Although the majority of Americans are opposed to the "surge," most members of Congress are reluctant to block the supplemental appropriations request that will fund it, claiming that they don't want to abandon the troops. Congress has abandoned the troops for nearly four years. It is the soldiers, their families, and the people of Iraq that pay the human costs. The tab so far: more than 3,000 dead U.S. troops, tens of thousands of wounded, over half a million Iraqi casualties, roughly 250,000 American servicemen and women struggling with PTSD, and almost 60,000 military marriages that have been broken by this war. Including mine.
And how do these flaghuggers respond to the fact that this war is tearing military families apart? By telling a good joke about it at their expense:
At a conference on post-deployment care and services for soldiers and their families, a Marine Corps chaplain asked, "How do you know if you're an SOB? Your wife will tell you!"Har-de-har-har-har. The remark got the predictable round of applause from the capacity crowd, which, with one exception, wasn't living with anyone who had recently returned from Iraq. I was that exception, and it infuriated me that this was a joke. The Pentagon's solution for the constant stress endured by those of us who felt bewildered and betrayed was: "Learn how to laugh." With help from the Pentagon's chief laughter instructor, families of National Guard members were learning to walk like a penguin, laugh like a lion, and blurt "ha, ha, hee, hee, and ho, ho."
Hoooo, mercy. There has to be a special place in hell reserved for these assclowns.
Ground commanders in Iraq are calling for 7,000 additional reinforcements for the ongoing buildup of 21,500 U.S. troops in Iraq, but none will be Marines, the Corps said Monday.“The Marine Corps contribution to the surge in Iraq remains the same, two infantry battalions and a Marine expeditionary unit, at approximately 4,000 Marines,� said Corps spokesman Capt. Jay Delarosa.
Defense officials announced late last week the plans to send the 7,000 troops as support for the additional troops President Bush called up in January. The move involves significantly fewer people than the Congressional Budget Office’s recent assessment that 27,000 troops would be needed for support, but goes against earlier promises made by Pentagon officials that additional support troops would not be needed for the buildup.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told a Senate panel last week that commanders on the ground in Iraq have asked for 6,000 to 7,000 additional support troops.
“It is a war going on,� England told the Senate Budget Committee at the March 1 hearing. “Things are going to happen, and people are going to request troops.�
At this point, even half a million won't be enough to contain the clusterfuck.
MOSUL, Iraq, March 6 (Reuters) - Dozens of gunmen stormed an Iraqi jail in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday and freed up to 140 prisoners in one of the biggest prison breaks since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, police said.Militants attacked Mosul's northwestern Badoush prison just after sunset
in the ethnically mixed city and overwhelmed police, who were forced to
call the U.S. military for backup.Most of the prisoners were believed to be insurgents, police said.
It was unclear if there were any clashes between gunmen and police during
the incident.Saddam Hussein's nephew, Ayham Sabawi, escaped the same prison in
December after he was accused of financing the Sunni insurgency against
U.S. forces and the Shi'ite-led government.
Looks like Bruce Springsteen will have to write another song to describe this farce of a travesty:
From Serving in Iraq To Living on the Streets; Homeless Vet Numbers Expected to GrowBy Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 5, 2007; Page B01It was a bad week for Aaron Chesley. He talked back to the staff at a Baltimore homeless shelter, got into an argument with a fellow veteran and missed an appointment for his post-traumatic stress disorder counseling session. "Are you still watching the news?" his counselor, Anthony Holmes, asked.
Maybe that's what had set Chesley off. He had been showing progress since he came to the program last fall. But television footage from the war could cast him back in Iraq in an instant, back to fingering the trigger of his machine gun, scanning the horizon for insurgents. And Holmes knew it wouldn't take much for Chesley to land back on the streets. "No. If the news is on, I turn my back," Chesley said.
In a homeless shelter filled with Vietnam War veterans, Chesley, 26, a former Catonsville High School honors student who joined the West Virginia Army National Guard in 2000 to help pay for college, was the only one in the facility who fought in the country's latest conflict. But across the nation, veterans of recent combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are slowly starting to trickle into shelters, officials say.
The number of homeless veterans from recent wars is hard to gauge. From 2004 to 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs provided shelter to 300 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan tours, out of the tens of thousands who have served.
That figure "is not even close to accurate," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, because it doesn't include the "others sleeping in buses, their cars or on the streets."
In New York City alone, he said his organization has helped 60 homeless veterans since 2004.
Yep, things are going swimmingly over there:
Two suicide bombers blew themselves up Tuesday in a crowd of Shiite pilgrims streaming toward the holy city of Karbala, killing up to 90 people in one of several attacks targeting the faithful ahead of a weekend holiday.. . .The coordinated attack Tuesday happened on a main street in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, said Capt. Muthana Khalid. He said up to 90 people were killed and more than 150 wounded.
An Associated Press cameraman at the scene said the bombers struck a crowd of pilgrims filing into a pedestrian area. Ambulances and Iraqi police were swarming the area and there was no immediate sign of U.S. forces.
A two-parter; this:
A suicide car bomber turned a venerable book market into a deadly inferno and gunmen targeted Shiite pilgrims Monday as suspected Sunni insurgents brought major bloodshed back into the lap of their main Shiite rivals. At least 38 people died in the blast and seven pilgrims were killed.The violence - after a relative three-day lull in Baghdad - was seen as another salvo in the Sunni extremist campaign to provoke a sectarian civil war that could tear apart the Shiite-led government and erase Washington's plans for Iraq.
The American military command in Iraq reported today that nine American servicemen were killed in two blasts north of Baghdad on Monday, making it the deadliest day in weeks for U.S. troops.Six soldiers were killed and three others wounded by a blast that struck near their vehicles during combat in Salahaddin Province, the vast Sunni area that stretches north from the capital through Samarra and Saddam Hussein’s hometown Tikrit to northern Iraq.
Another bomb attack killed three soldiers conducting combat operations in Diyala Province, the restive area northeast of Baghdad where Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias fight daily for control of the large city of Baquba and the fertile region around it.
Also, at least 10 Shiite pilgrims were killed today as they trekked from Baghdad to the holy city of Karbala south of the capital to mark a Shiite holy day.
For three years after the invasion of Iraq, it was difficult to drive more than a few miles through middle America without seeing a car displaying a magnetic yellow ribbon.The magnets, bearing the slogan “Support Our Troops�, became a symbol of patriotism for millions of US motorists.
But as support for the war fades, demand for yellow ribbons has collapsed.
Magnet America, the largest manufacturer of the product, has seen sales fall from a peak of 1.2m in August 2004 to about 4,000 a month and now has an unsold stockpile of about 1m magnets.
“We have enough supplies to meet demand for years to come,� said Micah Pattisall, director of operations. “Every product has a lifespan and this one has run its course.�
. . .At its peak, the North Carolina-based company employed 180 people to handle sales, marketing and distribution. Today, it employs 11 people.
If it was really about supporting our troops and not using them to support Bush's policy, they'd still be selling faster than war bonds.
Or somewhere "in or around that area". Good thing WorstPresidentEver will be kicking back in Crawford by then, am I right?
Getting full-time electric power turned on in Baghdad, a key wartime goal toward which the United States has spent $4.2 billion dollars, won't be accomplished until the year 2013, U.S. officials said yesterday, in what others called a significant setback for the new U.S. initiatives to quell Iraq's bloody insurgency. Power outages in the Iraqi capital are frequent, leaving residents without electricity for an average of 17 or 18 hours a day. For most residents without personal generators, that means not just no lights but dead radios and televisions, heaters, washing machines and water pumps.Army Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, the senior U.S. military officer overseeing reconstruction efforts, told reporters yesterday via video teleconference that the Iraq government plans to increase power generation "to catch up with demand" for electric power by 2013, "somewhere in around that area."
. . .Electricity generation in Iraq today is slightly below prewar levels. According to U.S. State Department data, Iraq was producing 3,958 megawatts per month before March 2003, and as of mid-February, production was running at 3,640 megawatts. Baghdad enjoyed 16 to 24 average hours of power per day, and enjoyed an average of 6.7 hours per day in December, 4.4 hours average per day in January, and 5.9 hours so far in February.
The article also says that the counter-insurgency handbook written by new head General David Petraeus doesn't emphasize enough how important providing electricity is to winning hearts and mind. The handbook also recommends 140,000 120,000 troops for Baghdad alone, a number that even Bush's surge won't even be close to meeting for that mission, so what does that tell you?
Would Bush Junior still play fighter pilot in today's National Guard?
Nearly 90 percent of Army National Guard units in the United States are rated "not ready" -- largely as a result of shortfalls in billions of dollars' worth of equipment -- jeopardizing their capability to respond to crises at home and abroad, according to a congressional commission that released a preliminary report yesterday on the state of U.S. military reserve forces.The report found that heavy deployments of the National Guard and reserves since 2001 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for other anti-terrorism missions have deepened shortages, forced the cobbling together of units and hurt recruiting.
"We can't sustain the [National Guard and reserves] on the course we're on," said Arnold L. Punaro, chairman of the 13-member Commission on the National Guard and Reserves, established by Congress in 2005. The independent commission, made up mainly of former senior military and civilian officials appointed by both parties, is tasked to study the mission, readiness and compensation of the reserve forces.
"The Department of Defense is not adequately equipping the National Guard for its domestic missions," the commission's report found. It faulted the Pentagon for a lack of budgeting for "civil support" in domestic emergencies, criticizing the "flawed assumption" that as long as the military is prepared to fight a major war, it is ready to respond to a disaster or emergency at home.
From Virginia and the District of Columbia to Indiana and New Mexico, National Guard units lack thousands of trucks, Humvees, generators, radios, night-vision goggles and other gear that would be critical for responding to a major disaster, terrorist attack or other domestic emergency, according to state Guard officials.
The equipment shortage extends to Gulf Coast states such as Louisiana and Mississippi -- devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina -- where Guard units have only a fraction of what they would need to respond to another large-scale disaster.
The Louisiana Guard, its gear depleted by Iraq and Katrina, is short of Humvees and trucks such as high-water vehicles critical for a major evacuation. "We are really concerned about vehicles," said Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, a spokesman for the Louisiana Guard. "We would have enough for a small-scale issue . . . maybe a Category 1 tropical storm we could handle -- an event that doesn't involve massive flooding or massive search and rescue," he said. But for bigger disasters, Louisiana would need help from other states.
Update: Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report reminds us of one of Bush's more famous lies during the 2000 campaign:
Of all of Bush’s misstatements from the 2000 presidential election, one of the most obviously-false attacks was on military readiness. Indeed, then-Gov. Bush blamed Clinton and Gore directly for “hollowing out� the military. “If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, ‘Not ready for duty, sir.’� BC00 campaign aides later acknowledged it was a bogus charge, but that didn’t stop Bush from repeating it.
That wasn't a misstatement. It was a promise.
Kevin Drum points us to another mea culpa by a former war supporter, i.e. warblogger. Sure, some of us bleeding heart types might be inclined to forgive him, The Grand Moff Texan has been so embittered by the devastation and carnage caused by such blinding imperialist arrogance to give these pant-pissing mushheads any kind of pass. His cynical takedown of that apology is pretty long, but this comment struck me as the ultimate truth in this so-called Clash of Civilizations:
You were alienated from the people who maintained the same standards of civilization that you pretend to be defending. You were dragged along by the same kind of religious zealots and ideological absolutists you see as a threat, but only when they're Muslims.You think you are confronting a fundamentalist threat from outside your civilization, but I've been confronted with a fundamentalist threat inside my civilization since I was born. That's why I know better than to fear the former and serve the latter.
Our fundamentalists differ from their fundamentalists only in that ours have killed more people.
Indeed.
BAGHDAD – A car bomb exploded today near a park popular with young soccer players, killing at least 18 boys in a city west of Baghdad known as a centre of the Sunni insurgency, police said.The attack occurred just three days after more than 50 people were killed outside a mosque in a nearby village where the imam had spoken out against the group "Al Qaeda in Iraq." pointing to an increasingly bloody attempts to silence its opponents.
But the deaths of the boys, aged 10 to 15, left authorities grasping for a possible motive.
The bomb-rigged car blew apart late this afternoon while the boys were playing in central Ramadi, about 112 kilometres west of Baghdad. Both local police and state television said 18 boys died.
Whack-a-mole anyone?
Nearly two weeks into the newest Baghdad security plan, the daily count of murder victims dumped on the city's streets has declined significantly, a likely sign that Shiite Muslim militia groups aligned with the Iraqi government have reined in their members or sent them out of the capital.But deaths from bombings and mortar attacks, after an initial decline, have returned to the levels of the previous two months, suggesting that the plan's initial measures have had little impact on the Sunni insurgent groups believed to be responsible for most of that violence.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have released only limited information about what steps they've taken to secure the city since the plan's official kickoff on Feb. 15. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told President Bush last week that the plan, dubbed Operation Enforcing the Law, so far had been a "dazzling success." U.S. officials have been more cautious, saying that it may be months before the plan can be labeled a success or a failure.
Statistics compiled from official daily reports of the Interior Ministry and other Iraqi government sources, as well as interviews in 20 Baghdad neighborhoods about the plan's initial measures, however, show that some early judgments are possible about the plan's effectiveness. With most members of Congress expressing skepticism about the plan's prospects for success, such information could prove useful in the debate over Bush's plan to commit a total of 17,500 additional troops to the plan in the coming months.
From Dec. 1, 2006, through Feb. 14, the number of people killed in public places from violent attacks averaged 14.8 a day. From Feb. 15 through Monday, the number declined, but just barely, to 13.8. Car bombs were up slightly, from an average of 1.2 a day to 1.6, while roadside bombs were identical at 1 per day.
Injuries, on average, rose from 40.4 a day to 52.8 since the start of the plan, while bodies dumped by death squads declined from 22.8 a day to 14.6.
The increase in car bombs is particularly troubling. Members of Shiite militias often have cited Sunni car bombings as the driving force for their activities, which include targeting Sunnis for kidnapping and execution. On Sunday, the government announced new measures to stop car bombs, including prohibitions against parking or standing along major streets.
But American officials say such steps could force insurgents to turn to suicide bombers on foot, as they did on Sunday when a woman detonated herself at the predominately Shiite Mustansiriya University, killing nearly 50 people.
The Shiite militias have held back because they've decided to see what the Americans can do with their surge. Now their patience is running short. That is what happens when you have a monkey president appoint a general who doesn't even follow his own advice.
How much longer can this continue?
Rushed by President Bush's decision to reinforce Baghdad with thousands more U.S. troops, two Army combat brigades are skipping their usual session at the Army's special training range in California.They are now making preparations to leave their home bases.
Some in Congress and others outside the Army are beginning to question whether that decision means the Army is cutting corners in preparing soldiers for combat.
The desert training was designed specially to prepare soldiers for the challenges of Iraq.
Army officials say the two brigades will be as ready as any others that deploy to Iraq, even though they will not have the benefit of training in counterinsurgency tactics at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, which has been outfitted to simulate conditions in Iraq for units that are heading there on yearlong tours.
Secretary of State Rice once again disgraces her office by implying that critics of the Bush administration's failed war in Eye-Rack are somehow Nazi appeasers or something, I can't quite make out what she's saying.
But still, she wishes it was WWII, because this war would be over by now.
BAGHDAD, Feb 26 (Reuters) - A blast at an Iraqi ministry during a ceremony attended by Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi killed six people on Monday but the vice president was unhurt, a ministry employee and police said.Police said six people had been killed and 31 wounded. The employee said he had seen four dead bodies.
Two police sources said the blast happened inside a hall at the time Abdul-Mahdi, a Shi'ite leader, was at the Public Works Ministry building.
A suicide bomber killed at least 41 people and wounded another 46 outside a university in northeast Baghdad on Sunday.Iraq's interior ministry said the bomber was wearing a vest packed with explosives.
He detonated the bomb when guards stopped him near the entrance to the business studies school, which is part of Mustansiriyah University, police said.
Glenn Greenwald is showing appropriate consternation at the biased and unflattering media narrative being perpetrated agains the congressional Democrats who want to end the war. As he says, it's just maddening how the majority of the country, including majorities of the Democrats and independents, favor bringing the troops home as soon as possible, but they are still marginalized by the mainstream media as the "anti-war left".
But that is exactly why it will be counterproductive in the long run to put an end to this war on our own terms. According to this nation's dolchstosslegende, it is the dirty fucking hippie liberals in Congress who prevented us from enjoying glorious, glorious victory over the gooks in Vietnam, and if the Democrats attempt to do the "right thing" and nip this disaster in the bud, they will be blamed for denying this country glorious, glorious victory over the sand niggers. Then at some future date, some jumped-up johnny nationalistic politician will convince us, again, that we can dominate completely some third world country for some bullshit reason, and even more of our soldiers and even more innocent civilians will be slaughtered. The political reporters have already put the bullet in the chamber and are ready to squeeze once we submit to our better angels. Since it is obvious that the elite political class prefers the war to continue unabated, we should give them what they want and all the consequences that follows.
Maybe they can just share the firearms:
The Pentagon is planning to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their time between deployments to meet the demands of President Bush’s buildup, Defense Department officials said Wednesday.. . .“We’re behind the power curve, and we can’t piddle around,� Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, said in an interview. He added that one-third of his soldiers lacked the M-4 rifles preferred by active-duty soldiers and that there were also shortfalls in night vision goggles and other equipment. If his unit is going to be sent to Iraq next year, he said, “We expect the Army to resource the Guard at the same level as active-duty units.�
. . .Capt. Christopher Heathscott, a spokesman for the Arkansas National Guard, said the state’s 39th Brigade Combat Team was 600 rifles short for its 3,500 soldiers and also lacked its full arsenal of mortars and howitzers.
Oh yeah, I forgot: ARMY STRAWNG!
If only this type of news was on the air twenty-four/seven:
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - A U.S. soldier was sentenced to 100 years in prison Thursday for the gang rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and the killing of her family last year.Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, of Barstow, Calif., was also given a dishonorable discharge. He will be eligible for parole in 10 years under the terms of the plea agreement.
The military judge hearing the case, Col. Stephen R. Henley, issued a sentence of life in prison without parole, the maximum for the charges. Under military law, the defendant is given the lesser sentence unless he violates terms of the plea agreement.
Earlier Thursday, tears rolled down Cortez's face as he apologized for the rape and murders. He said he could not explain why he took part.
"I still don't have an answer," Cortez told the judge. "I don't know why. I wish I hadn't. The lives of four innocent people were taken. I want to apologize for all of the pain and suffering I have caused the al-Janabi family."
Kinda puts this story in a more troubling perspective, doesn't it?
Mother Jones has a major new issue out where they examine the Eye-Rack war, it's factions and it's effects. If there's one thing anyone should take out of it, it is that the Eye-Rack war did nothing about worldwide terrorism. In fact, if anything, it only made it much, much worse.
Of course, Eye-Rack and Afghanistan are both jihadistans of terrorism, a militant's practice ground for waging war on crusaders, Jews and apostates, so they don't count. The rest of the world, however, still experienced a 35 percent rise in attacks and a 12 percent rise in fatalities from those attacks.
If that weren't enough, it turns out the Bushies are lying about their effectiveness in waging their waronterra (PDF):
Nearly all of the terrorism-related statistics reported by the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI from the September 11 attacks until early 2005 had some inaccuracies, the department's inspector general said on Tuesday.. . .The report found that only two out of 26 statistics were accurate after reviewing the number of terrorism convictions in the 2003 and 2004 financial years, the number of convictions or guilty pleas from September 11, 2001, through February 3, 2005, and the number of terrorist threats tracked by the FBI in 2003 and 2004.
"We found many cases involving offenses such as immigration violations, marriage fraud, or drug trafficking where department officials provided no evidence to link the subject of the case to terrorist activity," the report said.
Keeping us safe from terra-ists? Hell, they can't even tell the goddamn truth about it.
Maliki Hails Lull in Violence; Iraq Security Plan Showing 'Fabulous Success,' Bush Is ToldBAGHDAD, Feb. 16 -- The relative lull in violence is a promising sign that the Baghdad security plan is off to a good start, the Iraqi prime minister said yesterday, while a top U.S. military official cautioned that it might be a temporary letup as militant organizations assess the new measures and gear up to fight back.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki assured President Bush that the three-day-old plan "has achieved fabulous success," according to an account of the conversation released by the prime minister's office. Speaking by secure video link-up, Maliki also told Bush that officials will be "firm in dealing with any side that breaks the law, regardless" of their sect.
Car Bombs Kill 60 at Market in BaghdadBAGHDAD, Monday, Feb. 19 — Two days after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called the opening steps of the security crackdown here a “dazzling success,� two car bombs tore through a crowded market on Sunday and killed at least 60 people.
The attack occurred only minutes after American soldiers passed through the area on patrol, underscoring the difficult nature of trying to quell violence on Baghdad’s streets, where car bombs have been an almost daily occurrence and suicide attacks directed at civilians so common that many of the markets have been closed to vehicle traffic in recent days.
The blasts on Sunday occurred in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, devastating an open-air market, setting dozens of cars ablaze and causing the partial collapse of a two-story building that housed several electronics stores.
The street was littered with charred televisions, satellite dishes and small generators. Shattered blue tiles and glass and blood were trampled as the survivors of the attack tried to rush more than 131 wounded people to the hospital. They wrapped the dead in rugs and blankets and whatever else they could find.
The explosions occurred within seconds of each other, according to witnesses, and were likely detonated in cars already parked in the area, according to Iraqi officials.
BTW, didn't anyone recognize that the acronym for the new Baghdad escalation, Operation Imposing Law, spells "OIL"?
Vietnamese and Somali refugees will have nothing on the number of Iraqis settling here:
Moving to address the flood of refugees fleeing war-torn Iraq, the Bush administration and the United Nations have developed a plan that would bring several thousand of them to the United States over the next 10 months, officials familiar with discussions of the plan say.Under the plan, which is expected to be formally unveiled this week, the United Nations began its first large-scale screening this month of Iraqis who have fled to Syria and Jordan since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It hopes to register 135,000 to 200,000 of them to determine which Iraqis have fled persecution at home and would be eligible for refugee status.
The United Nations expects 13,000 to 20,000 Iraqis to be deemed eligible for resettlement abroad. The United States hopes to resettle at least 5,000 of that group this year, with the first arriving in late spring or summer. United Nations and Bush administration officials emphasize that those figures may change if conditions change in Iraq and neighboring countries.
Advocates for the refugees welcomed the plan but said too few people would be helped.
Like I said before, all you anti-Muslim bigots who wanted this war because you hate A-rabs, swallow your damn pride and learn to live with your mistakes.
But at least it's OUR police state:
The Iraqi government on Tuesday ordered tens of thousands of Baghdad residents to leave homes they are occupying illegally, in a surprising and highly challenging effort to reverse the tide of sectarian cleansing that has left the capital bloodied and Balkanized.In a televised speech, Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, who is leading the new crackdown, also announced the closing of Iraq’s borders with Iran and Syria, an extension of the curfew in Baghdad by an hour, and the setup of new checkpoints run by the Defense and Interior Ministries, both of which General Qanbar said he now controlled.
He said the government would break into homes and cars it deemed dangerous, open mail and eavesdrop on phone calls.
. . .Samantha Power, a public policy professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government who has written widely on genocide, described the plan as either a public relations ploy that would never be enforced, or worse, a prelude to more sectarian cleansing and catastrophe.
“To do this in the middle of a war when tempers have been inflamed and militarization is ubiquitous seems to be putting the cart before the horse,� she said. “You haven’t stopped the willingness to ethnically cleanse, but you’re imposing the moral hazard of ethnic cleansing on the cleansee? Unless you create security first, you are paving the way for a potential massacre of returnees.�
The number of waivers granted to Army recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown about 65 percent in the last three years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003, Department of Defense records show.During that time, the Army has employed a variety of tactics to expand its diminishing pool of recruits. It has offered larger enlistment cash bonuses, allowed more high school dropouts and applicants with low scores on its aptitude test to join, and loosened weight and age restrictions.
It has also increased the number of so-called “moral waivers� to recruits with criminal pasts, even as the total number of recruits dropped slightly. The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the Army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.
The number of waivers for felony convictions also increased, to 11 percent of the 8,129 moral waivers granted in 2006, from 8 percent.
Waivers for less serious crimes like traffic offenses and drug use have dropped or remained stable.
. . .While soldiers with criminal histories made up only 11.7 percent of the Army recruits in 2006, the spike in waivers raises concerns about whether the military is making too many exceptions to try to meet its recruitment demands in a time of war. Most felons, for example, are not permitted to carry firearms, and many criminals have at some point exhibited serious lapses in discipline and judgment, traits that are far from ideal on the battlefield.
In all, over 125,000 people with criminal histories have enlisted in the armed forces during the last three years, and as the article says, the military is often an avenue for an individual bereft of options after being convicted of a crime, and there is evidence that those with moral waivers have higher re-enlistment rates (again probably tied to the fact that their criminal histories is a limiting factor in their futures). Also I do believe that people shouldn't be automatically barred from the military, or any other profession for that matter, after they have served their debt to society. How could they rehabilitate if they are shunned?
That being said, this increase in recruiting those with criminal records does signal the fact that the Eye-Rack war is robbing the military of warm bodies, and nothing else.
The above quote was what fellow fuckup of the Afghan War and Eye-Rack invasion General Tommy Frank said about former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith as reported by the weathervane journalist Bob Woodward in his hagiographic book Plan of Attack.
Today, Walter Pincus, one of the few reporter who didn't have a thumb up his ass during the run-up to the war, reports that the same Douglas Feith, the one who was running a parallel intelligence gathering operation out of the Pentagon, "the stovepipe", for the express purpose of finding ANY kind of information to justify the war, whether it's real or not, is now saying that he never actually believed any of the bullshit that was bubbling up:
Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda," according to portions of the report, released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector general described Feith's activities as "an alternative intelligence assessment process."
. . .In a telephone interview yesterday, Feith emphasized the inspector general's conclusion that his actions, described in the report as "inappropriate," were not unlawful. "This was not 'alternative intelligence assessment,' " he said. "It was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance."
Someone put some handcuffs on these criminals please. It's embarrassing that they are breathing outside air.
Continue reading ""F*@king Stupidest Guy On The Face Of The Earth"" »
As Matthew Yglesias reminds us, today is the two year deadline for Jonah Goldberg to make good on his ill-conceived and scornful bet he made with Juan Cole over the outcome of the Eye-Rack war:
Since he doesn't want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now). This way neither of us can hide behind clever word play or CV reading. If there's another reasonable wager Cole wants to offer which would measure our judgment, I'm all ears. Money where your mouth is, doc.. . .One caveat: Because I don't think it's right to bet on such serious matters for personal gain, if I win, I'll donate the money to the USO. He can give it to the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or whatever his favorite charity is.
Ah, that little oh so unnecessary insinuation that Juan Cole is in league with terrorists would have made the vindication ever so sweet. But apart from the dire ramifications the willful ignorance of Goldberg and his kind will have on this nation and the Middle East, the real winner here is Goldberg. In the two years between his offer and now when he has conceded that he was utterly, utterly wrong, Goldberg has managed to land on his feet with a cushy opinion-writing berth in the Los Angeles Times, pushing out liberal mainstay Robert Scheer in the process. Juan Cole, on the other hand, was a victim of a neocon smear campaign that successfully blocked his move to what was once considered to be a prestigious post at Yale. The lesson here is that because of the powers that be, even if you are right, you still lose.
The soldiers are not babies who aren't able to fight a war and listen to the debate at home. And the enemy, whoever the fuck it is, doesn't give two shits if we support the war or not. They just want us out of their damn country So will two-bit hackjobs like Lieberman just STFU already?
Pace: As long as this Congress continues to do what it has done, which is to provide the resources for the mission, the dialogue will be the dialogue, and the troops will feel supported.Gates: I think they’re [the troops are] sophisticated enough to understand that that’s what the debate’s really about.
Got that? Now crawl back to your caves.
I generally avoided the kabuki theater that was the battle over whether we get to debate the war in Eye-Rack as it stands as so much raw, uncut bullshit that talking about it will only diminish me further. Apparently John Warner sponsored a weak-kneed, non-binding resolution whether or not to agree with Bush's Surgeâ„¢ (but not whether the war was a stupid fucking idea in the first place), and a few other Republican Senators such as Hagel and Bob Smith of Oregon feel some discomfort about the war. But the rest of the rat bastard Republicans want to block discussion of any resolution by holding a filibuster, and every Republican except for Coleman and Susan Collins voted against cloture.
That's right, Chuck Hagel is all talk but no action and Warner voted against his own resolution.
But that's not the best part. Seems that the media reported this act of utter spinelessness and legislative dysfunction in a way that cast a rather bad light on the Republicans, especially the vulnerable ones who are up for re-election. Seven Republican Senators, five of whom voted against cloture, signed a letter whining that they weren't allowed to debate the war EVEN THOUGH THEY VOTED NOT TO DEBATE THE WAR IN THE FIRST PLACE. Perhaps they were swayed by this testimony by Peter Pace.
I admit that I've been dilatory in highlighting the conclusions of the NIE released during the Friday-night dump, but it should put to rest the debate over whether Eye-Rack is in a state of civil war:
Iraq is unraveling at an accelerating rate, and even if U.S. and Iraqi forces can slow the spreading violence, the country's fragile government is unlikely to deliver stability to its people during the next year, according to a much-anticipated assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies.The report, titled "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead," catalogs an array of forces pulling the country apart and concludes that to call the situation a civil war "does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict" because the causes of violence are so varied.
Didja all hear that? Ken Burns couldn't even begin to make a documentary covering all the angles of this shitstorm of a clusterfuck.
But what about The Surgeâ„¢?
Soldiers on the ground agree: no amount of escalation is going to stop the trend:
Soldiers interviewed across east Baghdad, home to more than half the city's 8 million people, said the violence is so out of control that while a surge of 21,500 more American troops may momentarily suppress it, the notion that U.S. forces can bring lasting security to Iraq is misguided.Lt. Hardy and his men of the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 2nd Infantry Division, from Fort Carson, Colo., patrol an area southeast of Sadr City, the stronghold of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
A map in Hardy's company headquarters charts at least 50 roadside bombs since late October, and the lieutenant recently watched in horror as the blast from one killed his Humvee's driver and wounded two other soldiers in a spray of blood and shrapnel.
Soldiers such as Hardy must contend not only with an escalating civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Muslims, but also with insurgents on both sides who target U.S. forces.
"We can go get into a firefight and empty out ammo, but it doesn't accomplish much," said Pvt. 1st Class Zach Clouser, 19, of York, Pa. "This isn't our war - we're just in the middle."
Almost every foot soldier interviewed during a week of patrols on the streets and alleys of east Baghdad said that Bush's plan would halt the bloodshed only temporarily. The soldiers cited a variety of reasons, including incompetence or corruption among Iraqi troops, the complexities of Iraq's sectarian violence and the lack of Iraqi public support, a cornerstone of counterinsurgency warfare.
"They can keep sending more and more troops over here, but until the people here start working with us, it's not going to change," said Sgt. Chance Oswalt, 22, of Tulsa, Okla.
Expect things to go umistakably to hell come this summer.
I've said before that if Democrats and liberals try to be the responsible adults and end this abortion of a war they will get nothing but blame for denying this country its glorious, glorious victory over the mud-slims. Kevin Drum, who inspired my current position, points to this Weekly Standard article as Exhibit A for the coming neocon backlash if the dirty fucking hippies don't shut up and clap harder:
[If] the surge is seen to fail, they will be the ones who made it more difficult, demoralized the armed forces, kneecapped the commander, and telegraphed to the enemy that our will was cracking, and we would shortly be leaving.The Democrats have also given Bush a partial alibi for a possible failure -- he tried, but at a critical moment they threw in the towel. This argument would be plausible enough to attract support from a great many people.
If these clowns want to learn the hard way, then so be it.
Sunni-Shiite Split in U.S. Is Widened by Iraq’s ShadowDEARBORN, Mich. — Twice recently, vandals have shattered windows at three mosques and a dozen businesses popular among Shiite Muslims along Warren Avenue, the spine of the Arab community here.
Although the police have arrested no one, most in Dearborn’s Iraqi Shiite community blame the Sunni Muslims.
“The Shiites were very happy that they killed Saddam, but the Sunnis were in tears,� Aqeel Al-Tamimi, 34, an immigrant Iraqi truck driver and a Shiite, said as he ate roasted chicken and flatbread at Al-Akashi restaurant, one of the establishments damaged over the city line in Detroit. “These people look at us like we sold our country to America.�
Escalating tensions between Sunnis and Shiites across the Middle East are rippling through some American Muslim communities, and have been blamed for events including vandalism and student confrontations. Political splits between those for and against the American invasion of Iraq fuel some of the animosity, but it is also a fight among Muslims about who represents Islam.
Long before the vandalism in Dearborn and Detroit, feuds had been simmering on some college campuses. Some Shiite students said they had faced repeated discrimination, like being formally barred by the Sunni-dominated Muslim Student Association from leading prayers. At numerous universities, Shiite students have broken away from the association, which has dozens of chapters nationwide, to form their own groups.
“A microcosm of what is happening in Iraq happened in New Jersey because people couldn’t put aside their differences,� said Sami Elmansoury, a Sunni Muslim and former vice president of the Islamic Society at Rutgers University, where there has been a sharp dispute.
Though the war in Iraq is one crucial cause, some students and experts on sectarianism also attribute the fissure to the significant growth in the Muslim American population over the past few decades.
Before, most major cities had only one mosque and everyone was forced to get along. Now, some Muslim communities are so large that the majority Sunnis and minority Shiites maintain their own mosques, schools and social clubs. Many Muslim students first meet someone from the other branch of their faith at college. The Shiites constitute some 15 percent of the world’s more than 1.3 billion Muslims, and are believed to be proportionally represented among America’s estimated six million Muslims.
Sectarian tensions mushroomed during the current Muslim month of Muharram. The first 10 days ended on Tuesday with Ashura, the day when Shiites commemorate the death of Hussein, who was the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and who was killed during the bloody seventh-century disputes over who would rule the faithful, a schism that gave birth to the Sunni and Shiite factions.
The Shiites and the Sunnis part company over who has the right to rule and interpret scripture. Shiites hold that only descendants of Mohammad can be infallible and hence should rule. Sunnis allow a broader group, as long as there is consensus among religious scholars.
Many Shiites mark Ashura with mourning processions that include self-flagellation or rhythmic chest beating, echoing the suffering of the seventh-century Hussein. As several thousand Shiites marched up Park Avenue in Manhattan on Jan. 28 to mark Ashura, the march’s organizers handed out a flier describing his killing as “the first major terrorist act.� Sunnis often decry Ashura marches as a barbaric, infidel practice.
Last year, a Sunni student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor sent a screed against Ashura to the Muslim Student Association’s e-mail message list. The document had been taken off SunniPath.com, one of many Web sites of Islamic teachings that Shiite students said regularly spread hate disguised as religious scholarship.
Azmat Khan, a 21-year-old senior and political science major, said that she, like other Shiites on campus, was sometimes asked whether she was a real Muslim.
“To some extent, the minute you identify yourself as a Shiite, it outs you,� Ms. Khan said. “You feel marginalized.�
Yet some Shiite students said they were reluctant to speak up because they felt that Islam was under assault in the United States, so internal tension would only undermine much-needed unity among Muslims. At the same time, the students said, the ideas used by some Sunnis to label Shiites as heretics need to be confronted because they underlie jihadi radicalism.
Fuck you Bush. Fuck you very much.
The Defense Department plans to continue hiring private contractors to provide security at reconstruction projects in Iraq and to train U.S. and Iraqi military officers in counterinsurgency, despite problems with past contracts for such jobs that traditionally have been done by military personnel.The contracting out of these wartime activities comes at a time when the United States is stretching its resources to provide the additional 21,500 troops in Iraq that are needed under President Bush's new strategy, which involves stepped-up counterinsurgency operations in Baghdad and the expansion of economic reconstruction activities.
During an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new top commander in Iraq, said he counts the "thousands of contract security forces" among the assets available to him to supplement the limited number of U.S. and Iraqi troops to be used for dealing with the insurgency.
A former senior Defense Intelligence Agency expert on the Middle East, retired Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, said last week that contracting out intelligence collection and security for Army units and their contractors "results from actual military forces being too small." He added: "I can't remember a subordinate commander considering mercenaries as part of his forces."
Under the new contract now out for bids, the winner is to monitor all convoys, maintain a Web site, provide "Iraq-wide unclassified daily reports," as well as "provide relevant and timely intel/ops reports throughout Iraq" -- referring to intelligence/operations reports.
The U.S. government will provide about 134 vehicles, primarily sport-utility vehicles, but also armored personnel carriers. The government will also furnish weapons and ammunition, but the contractor must identify the people to whom the weapons will be issued. Employees will have access to government dining facilities and post exchanges, "where available," and will be entitled to "acute medical and dental services to include medical evacuation under emergency circumstances . . . at no cost" while they are "in theater."
Another contract up for bids is the operation of the Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence (COIN CFE) for up to three years at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, in a section called the Phoenix Academy, which is devoted to joint U.S.-Iraqi training. Established in 2005 by Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq then, it will now operate under Petraeus, who recently rewrote the Army's counterinsurgency manual.
Last May, a Pentagon news release said COIN CFE, which involves U.S. and Iraqi personnel, was established "to help units adapt to and train for the war against terror in Iraq as it is fought today." At that time, it was a week-long course with 31 trainers and classes with about 40 trainees, including "brigade commanders, battalion commanders, company commanders and senior staff -- including noncommissioned officers," the news release said.
Under the new proposal, contractors will handle a variety of classes, including a special seminar for "general officers and senior field grade leaders at the multi-national corps and division levels." The group for senior leaders will be limited to 25, while the lower-level classes will include up to 70 students and will involve not just Iraqi army forces but also Iraqi National Police.
Baghdad truck bomb kills 121 - policeBAGHDAD (Reuters) - A huge truck bomb killed 121 people and wounded 226 in a busy market in a mainly Shi'ite area of central Baghdad on Saturday, in the deadliest single bombing in the capital since the 2003 U.S.-led war.
The blast in Sadriya shattered food stalls and smashed the facades of shops, setting some on fire. Three car bombs ripped through the same market in December, killing 51.
"It was a terrible scene. Many shops and houses were destroyed," said one resident, Jassem, 42, who had rushed from his home nearby to help pull people from the rubble after hearing the ear-splitting explosion.
The casualties swamped the capital's hospitals. There were chaotic scenes at Ibn al-Nafis hospital in central Karrada, where hallways overflowed with wounded on trolleys and relatives and friends screaming for help.
So far, Iraq and Afghanistan have cost U.S. taxpayers $477 billion, according to the House Budget Committee. Of that, $379 billion went to Iraq.On Monday Bush will announce that he'll seek $100 billion more to pay for the both wars through Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2007. He's also expected to seek another $145 billion for war spending in fiscal 2008 and $50 billion more for fiscal 2009. Total cost: $772 billion.
Most experts think the U.S. military will be involved in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond 2008.
The Vietnam War cost $536 billion, after adjusting for inflation.
Tonight, Local 2 investigates a new danger for U.S. troops in Iraqi war zones. Our hidden cameras uncover how drug users and even addicts are being ushered into military service as tens of thousands of new troops are being sent to Iraq.KPRC Local 2 investigative reporter Stephen Dean's investigation is leading to action in the nation's capital.
Congress and the Pentagon are now reacting to our investigation. We've been sending our hidden cameras in with people who want to be soldiers, and when they get into these recruiting offices, we found they're being told a drug problem may be no problem at all. Recruiters are even helping people to avoid some of the drug testing.Just minutes into our hidden camera visits to military recruiting offices, we found Army recruiters describing a urine test packet for prospective solders. Our Local 2 Investigates producer is told if he fails this drug test, he can still get into the Army.
This is part of the reason they had to end the Vietnam war, because the ranks were rife with undisipline and drug usage. Today's army is deteriorating right before our eyes and all Bush could do is fiddle while the country burns.
I thought the extra 21,000 was going to be the total number of troops being sent to Eye-Rack. Turns out they are just the combat troops, silly me:
President Bush and his new military chiefs have been saying for nearly a month that they would "surge" an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, in a last, grand push to quell the violence in Baghdad and in Anbar Province. But a new study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says the real troop increase could be as high as 48,000 -- more than double the number the President initially said.That's because the combat units that President Bush wants to send into hostile areas need to be backed up by support troops, "including personnel to staff headquarters, serve as military police, and provide communications, contracting, engineering, intelligence, medical, and other services," the CBO notes.
How do we know they are lying? When their lips are quivering, that's how.
Flag-hugging country singer Toby Keith is now telling Newsday that he "never did" support the Eye-Rack war:
"Never did," he says -- and he favors setting a time limit on the occupation. He says he suspects civil war in Iraq is inevitable and predicts the Kurds will be the victors: "I promise you, they'll end up with it all."
That is despite the fact that he voted for Bush twice and has performed in front of Photoshopped images of Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks ( maligned for criticizing Bush over the war) together with Saddam Hussein. It must be very goddamn lucrative to be such a weathervane.
Update: Hmm, looked like Keith was having serious doubts about the war around the time the Bush propoganda about there not being an insurgency was demolished along with the UN building, but in the end decided to put all his eggs in Bush's and Condoleeza's baskets:
"Look, my stance is I pick and choose my wars. This war here [in Iraq], the math hasn't worked out for me on it. But I'm smart enough to know there's people smarter than me. [National security advisor] Condoleezza Rice, [Secretary of State] Colin Powell, George Bush — this is their job, and I have to trust in them. I support the commander in chief and the troops."
Apparently, the story of how five soldiers died in an ambush by Iraqis posing as American soldiers didn't go down as first reported:
Four American soldiers were abducted during a sophisticated sneak attack last week in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and their bodies were found up to 25 miles away, according to new information obtained by The Associated Press.The brazen assault, 50 miles south of Baghdad on Jan. 20, was conducted by nine to 12 militants posing as an American security team. They traveled in black GMC Suburban vehicles _ the type used by U.S. government convoys _ had American weapons, wore new U.S. military combat fatigues, and spoke English.
In a written statement, the U.S. command reported at the time that five soldiers were killed while "repelling the attack." Now, two senior U.S. military officials as well as Iraqi officials say four of the five were captured and taken from the governor's compound alive. Three of them were found dead and one mortally wounded later that evening in locations as far as 25 miles east of the governor's office.
The U.S. officials said they could not be sure where the soldiers were shot after being captured at the compound. Iraqi officials said they believe the men were killed just before the Suburbans were abandoned.
The commando team also took an unclassified U.S. computer with them as its members fled with the four soldiers and left behind an American M-4 automatic rifle, senior U.S. military officials said.
The new information has emerged after nearly a week of inquiries. The U.S. military in Baghdad did not respond to repeated requests for comment on reports that began emerging from Iraqi government and military officials on the abduction and a major breakdown in security at Karbala site.
The two senior American military officials now confirm the reports, gathered by The Associated Press from five senior Iraqi government, military and religious leaders. The U.S. military also has provided additional details from internal military accounts.
As mcjoan from The Daily Kos said, this story was initially covered up in hopes of not furthering the opposition to the troop escalation. Well, since it was reported during the Friday night dump, the Bushelvikis may well get their wish.
I used to have charitable feelings for General Petraeus and his efforts in Eye-Rack after seeing how he is only one the handful of characters in the debacle that actually done things right, at least according to the books written by Michael R. Gordan and Thomas E. Ricks. But now that he is the head ground commander in Eye-Rack, he has taken a dangerously fascist tone, as outlined by Glenn Greenwald:
In a move that is unusual for an active-duty officer, Petraeus also spoke against pending Senate resolutions disapproving of the new Bush administration strategy. Asked by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) whether those resolutions would give encouragement to the enemy by exposing divisions among the American people, he replied: "That's correct."
Glenn Greenwald, in his usual eloquent and biting commentary, details the ramifications of the general's comment, including another crusade by the reich-wing blogosphere and the echoing of that rhetoric by the Vice President himself. Quoting a single piece of that post would do a disservice to the entire message, so as they say go read the whole thing.
Imagine that, a reporter that compares Bush's public statements with actual facts on the ground:
In his State of the Union address last night, President Bush presented an arguably misleading and often flawed description of "the enemy" that the United States faces overseas, lumping together disparate groups with opposing ideologies to suggest that they have a single-minded focus in attacking the United States.Under Bush's rubric, a country such as Iran -- which enjoys diplomatic representation and billions of dollars in trade with major European countries -- is lumped together with al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat," Bush said, referring to the different branches of the Muslim religion.
Similarly, Bush asserted that Shia Hezbollah, which has won seats in the Lebanese government, is a terrorist group "second only to al-Qaeda in the American lives it has taken." Bush is referring to attacks nearly a quarter-century ago on a U.S. embassy and a Marine barracks when the United States intervened in Lebanon's civil war by shelling Hezbollah strongholds. Hezbollah has evolved into primarily an anti-Israeli militant organization -- it fought a war with Israel last summer -- but the European Union does not list it as a terrorist organization.
At one point, Bush catalogued what he described as advances in the quest for freedom in the Middle East during 2005 -- such as the departure of Syrian troops from Lebanon and elections in Iraq. Then, Bush asserted, "a thinking enemy watched all of these scenes, adjusted their tactics and in 2006 they struck back." But his description of the actions of "the enemy" tried to tie together a series of diplomatic and military setbacks that had virtually no connection to one another, from an attack on a Sunni mosque in Iraq to the assassination of Maronite Lebanese political figure.
Read the whole thing, including the debunking of Bush's upbeat claims about job performances and budget deficits. But the real crime is his lumping together Shiite extremists with Al Qaeda, and it is doing nothing but pissing off the people we are supposed to be supporting:
Iraqi Shi'ite officials on Wednesday dismissed as "ridiculous" U.S. President George W. Bush's comment that Shi'ite militants were as big a danger to the United States as Sunni al Qaeda.. . .An official from a top Shi'ite party in Iraq said Washington would lose focus in fighting terrorism if it decided to open up a new front against Shi'ite militias.
"Comparing Shi'ite militias to al Qaeda is ridiculous. They are protecting their own communities after a three-year onslaught by terrorists and only a few outlaws take revenge. How are the militias a threat to the United States?" he said.
"The only solution is to give the government control of its own forces," said the official, who declined to be identified.
That's the Uniter, uniting everybody against us.
Hell, this fucktard administration and their military industrial corruption complex can't even sacrifice the armored Humvees needed for their cool refreshing Surgeâ„¢
WASHINGTON // After nearly four years of war in Iraq, the Pentagon's effort to protect its troops against roadside bombs is in disarray, with soldiers and Marines having to swap access to scarce armored vehicles and the military unsure whether it has the money or industrial capacity to produce the safe vehicles it says the troops need.On Jan. 10, The Sun reported that most of the 21,500 troops President Bush has ordered to Iraq as reinforcements will not have access to specialized blast-resistant armored vehicles because they are in such short supply.
But the problem runs deeper than that. In congressional testimony and interviews last week, senior Army and Marine Corps officers acknowledged that they are struggling just to meet the needs of service members already in Iraq. Even if the Pentagon can find millions of dollars not currently budgeted, and even if it can find factories to produce the armored vehicles, most U.S. troops in Iraq will not have access to the best equipment available, as President Bush has often promised.
The Army acknowledged last week, for example, that it is still 22 percent short of the armored Humvees it needs in Iraq despite heated criticism in 2004 and 2005 over the lack of armored vehicles. Army officials said it will be another eight months before that gap can be filled.
When even supposedly heart-warming feel-good stories such as this one conveys the utter hopelessness of the situation, then the war is surely lost:
That night, they had their first real test. It was nearing midnight, the generator had failed, there was no heat, the radio was malfunctioning — and an Iraqi girl no more than 4 was dying in the bitter cold on an Army cot.At the same time, a loud firefight erupted outside, apparently an attack on an Iraqi Army checkpoint nearby.
Captain Peterson had brought the sick child to the base because her family was afraid to travel after curfew and no Iraqi government ambulance would dare visit the neighborhood after dark, if at all.
One of the company’s medics, Cpl. Peter Callahan, 23, worked by flashlight, trying to soothe the girl, whose body was rejecting the medication her parents had given her.
“She needs to go to the hospital right now,� he told Captain Peterson. With no time to call in support, Captain Peterson quickly arranged a convoy to the nearest hospital — a risky proposition even in daylight and with more soldiers to provide security.
But the girl’s Sunni family resisted, fearing they would be killed at the hospital, which was in Shula, the Shiite district, if the Americans left them there.
Frustrated, Captain Peterson said over the radio, “I think they are pretty much willing to let this kid die instead of all dying together.�
The Americans decided to head to a safer hospital farther away. But time was running out; the girl’s pulse was dropping fast, dipping below 25.
Corporal Callahan gave her a small shot of atropine, which was all he had, to increase her heart rate. She stabilized, and when he emerged with the girl alive and breathing, he and her parents could barely contain their joy. He had saved her life.
A competent and charitable occupation of a country would have a running civilian medical infrastructure in place, and hospitals wouldn't be poles of sectarian violence and partisanship. But since this is not a competent occupation, the soldiers have to resort to this ad-hoc method of helping this girl. Hopefully this will sway the family to support Americans, but it is still a drop in a bucket and we do have a sad cumulative record of increasing anti-occupation sentiment among the Iraqis.
Even when the CIA ran the notorious Phoenix Program during Vietnam, it still was ineffective in getting rid of the Vietcong and was ultimately deemed a failure since it provided poor intelligence, ostracized the population and led to corruption.
Today in Eye-Rack, according to a new CQ article, the CIA could only dream of running such covert operations as extensive as that, given that most of the Iraqi population has already antagonized the Americans, appearing with Americans is now considered a taboo, and operating in the open is very dangerous anyways. As they say, read the whole thing and realize that there is no hope for success in Eye-Rack.
Bush allus sez he'll lissen to the good folks in Eye-Rack an' give 'em what dey want. So when they establish a timetable for withdrawal, will he adhere to it? The eight ball says "yeah, right":
The Sadr bloc returned to the assembly after a parliamentary committee and the speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, agreed to a series of demands, said Falah Hasan Shenshel, a member of the Sadr bloc.The demands included establishing a timetable for the buildup of Iraqi troops and the withdrawal of U.S. troops, and a condition that the presence of foreign troops would not be extended without a vote by the assembly, Shenshel said. U.S. troops should retreat from Iraqi cities and return to their bases by the end of August, he said.
"By doing so, America would confirm that it came to Iraq as a liberator and not as an occupier," Shenshel said.
KARBALA, Iraq - Chilling details emerged Sunday of gunmen posing as American and Iraqi soldiers in an ambush on U.S. troops in Karbala a day earlier that killed five Americans and wounded three.On Saturday, a civil affairs team of American soldiers sat with local leaders in Karbala's provincial headquarters to discuss security for Ashoura, a Shiite commemoration of the massacre of the revered Imam Hussein that began Sunday.
Outside, danger was approaching. A convoy of seven white GMC Suburbans sped toward the building, breezing through checkpoints, with the men wearing American and Iraqi military uniforms and flashing American ID cards, Iraqi officials said. The force stopped at the police directorate in Karbala and took weapons but gave no reason, said police spokesman Capt. Muthana Ahmed in Babel province.
A call was made to the provincial headquarters to inform them an American convoy was on its way, said the governor of Karbala, Akeel al-Khazaali. But the Americans stationed inside the building, which acts as a coordination center for Iraqi officials, Iraqi security forces and U.S. forces, had not been informed, Iraqi officials said.
As the U.S. soldiers and the Iraqis scrambled to figure out if the men were Americans or an illegally armed group, the convoy arrived and the gunmen tried to break in.
The gunmen launched grenades, mortars and small arms fire, according to a U.S. military statement. The U.S. military said Sunday it was still not clear if the gunmen were Sunni or Shiite militia. Abu Abdullah, a commander in Karbala of the Mahdi Army, the militia led by firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, on Sunday denied involvement in the attack.
After 15 minutes of fighting, the gunmen fled towards Hilla, the capital of Babel, a mixed Sunni-Shiite province, Ahmed said.
12 killed. Nineteen total today Saturday. And to think how the media raked Clinton over the coals for the same number of deaths in that other fabled Black Hawk Down incident.
The example of Time Magazine was the worst. Back in 1993 when the Battle of Mogadishu happened, the magazine wastes no time filling its pages with images of dead American soldiers being dragged in the street. This was just a couple years after they refrained from showing grisly photos from the first Gulf War. Now they are engaging in the same form of censorship with this war, except they are acting shocked, SHOCKED, that they would so "recklessly" give the Black Hawk Down incident so much unfiltered coverage at the time. They shouldn't be so shocked. It all depends upon which party the president is from.
Sorry for the digression, but it will be interesting how the librul media will handle this latest Black Hawk down incident.
I don't usually waste my time reading commentary by smug-ass warmongers, but today's op-ed by Jonathan Chait that appeared in today's Strib forced my hand:
Radar magazine recently published an article bemoaning that pro-war liberal pundits have not been drummed out of the profession for their error. In it, lefty foreign policy guru Jonathan Schell sniffs, "There doesn't seem to be a rush to find the people who were right about Iraq and install them in the mainstream media."Being right about something is a fairly novel experience for Schell, and he's obviously enjoying it immensely. But before we genuflect to Schell's wisdom, it's worth recalling that his record of prognostication is not exactly perfect. After the 9/11 attacks, Schell railed against attacking the Taliban, which was sheltering Osama bin Laden and much of the Al-Qaida hierarchy. "A military strike against the Taliban or any other regime is full of perils that ... are far greater than the dangers we already face," he warned. For instance, he wrote, "millions of Afghans could starve to death this winter," Pakistan's government could be overthrown, etc.
Shyeah, and we all know how swimmingly our invasion of Afghanistan is going. We might even outlast the Russians. But wait, wait, you have to read the next part, it's goddamn priceless:
Or go back to the last war we fought with Iraq. Schell insisted that we could force Iraq to leave Kuwait with sanctions alone, rather than by using military force. But the years that followed made it clear just how impotent that tool was. Saddam Hussein endured more than a decade of sanctions rather than give up a weapons of mass destruction program that turned out to be nonexistent. If sanctions weren't enough to make him surrender his imaginary weapons, I think we can safely say they wouldn't have been enough to make him surrender a prized, oil-rich conquest.
Yep, because Saddam didn't hand over the weapons he never had, the sanctions didn't work. Nice fucking trainwreck of logic, Chait.
What I don't understand is why support for the first Gulf War is automatically a good thing. Yes, it was done cheaply, quickly and relatively few casualties, it had a real international coalition and it was popular with those watching the fireworks on CNN back home. But in the end, we defended one autocracy from the invasion of another autocracy just after we supported Iraq's failed invasion of a neighboring theocracy.
And today, you can't go to any Arab country (except Kuwait) and justify the Gulf War as anything other than an oil war. It's easy to say in hindsight that the Gulf War is an easy one to support, since any victory has many fathers, but don't discount the fact that there were legitimate reasons for opposing it as well.
3 Bombs Kill at Least 70 at University in BaghdadBy DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 17, 2007BAGHDAD, Jan. 16 — At least 70 people were killed at a largely Shiite university in northeastern Baghdad on Tuesday when a wave of explosions tore through a crowd of students and employees leaving the main gate minutes after classes ended.
Witnesses said the lethal strike of two car bombs and a suicide bomber at Mustansiriya University left the campus littered with shattered glass, body parts, ashen books and charred metal.
As one of the most deadly attacks on Shiites since the summer, it suggested that Sunni insurgents remain unfazed, even brash, in the face of the American military’s newest plan to secure the capital.
The attacks came only a day after a fresh spark for Sunni outrage: on Monday, the sudden hanging of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein’s half brother, and Awad Hamad al-Bandar, Mr. Hussein’s former chief judge, ended with Mr. Ibrahim’s head being severed from his body by the noose.
. . .In all, at least 108 people were killed in the capital, an Interior Ministry official said, and 25 more were found dead, many showing signs of torture.
And we have to endure 6-9 months of this shit before declaring Bush's escalation a failure.
How cute. They think they are going to pacify Sadr City with this army:
BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi soldiers broke into chants to commemorate the 86th anniversary of the creation of their army."Muhammad, Haider, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn!" shouted a group of dancing soldiers, bellowing the names of the prophet and other long-dead Islamic icons revered by Shiite Muslims.
A second later, the name of a living Shiite figure came out of the din. "Moqtada! Moqtada!" one soldier exclaimed, invoking the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric and leader of the Mahdi Army militia that American officials blame for many of the worst acts of violence in Baghdad.
Standing quietly in the crowd were four U.S. Army officers, there to represent the team of American soldiers advising the Iraqis. "Sounds like the Mahdi militia is in the tent," said their interpreter, Mohammed Noshi.
JAM of course meaning Jaish al-Mahdi, or Mahdi Army.
The only reason Bush is pushing for an escalation virtually everybody opposes is because it's a delaying tactic in order for him to leave office without having to deal with the Eye-Rack problem like a man. The plan is that he announces his addition of more troops in order to project the image that he is trying, diddle around for at least six month telling all your critics that your plan was not given enough time to work.
Six months after that when it's been revealed that your plan is a spectacular failure, this country will already be in the middle of a major presidential campaign with primary races in both parties. Bush will say his hands are tied because he doesn't want to implement a major policy in deference to the next president. Of course, the Eye-Rack disaster will not look good for Republicans and Americans will likely vote a Democrat to inherit the shitmire, and if s/he is unable to solve it or withdraws the troops, then it will be her/his war to lose.
Welp, via ThinkProgress Phase Two of "Operation: Cover His Ass" has already been announced:
The top generals on the ground are trying to keep expectations low. Yesterday, Gen. George Casey, the outgoing top U.S. military commander in Iraq, warned that it is “going to take time� and no one should evaluate the impact of the plan until “summer or Fall.�
More stuck than you think, assholes
Even when the soldiers get a notice telling them about their extention of their tours of duties, the higher ranked messenger doesn't even bother with putting lipstick on a pig:
Dear Families,I have been made aware that the 1/34 BCT will be extended in Iraq for an unspecified period of time. We have not yet determined how this decision will affect the mission of the BCT, but will provide as much information as possible once the unit has been able to analyze any mission change and determine what information is appropriate to disseminate while maintaining operational security.
The President has given his message and the troops currently in Iraq are being extended. This includes 1st BCT!
Is this a raw deal? Of course! We have every right to be angry, but the reality is that the long awaited homecoming will be pushed back.
The message I want to give is that now, probably more than ever, is the time to reach out to each other and through mutual support, weather this set-back. I will be asking the State of Minnesota to step up to help the families of our soldiers. My hope is that this would help ease the burdens.
I am so proud of our soldiers and airment and their families. We owe all of you so much and will do our utmost to help you through this change and disappointment.
Please be sure to send this information to as many family members as possible so that they are receiving the information from our family vice hearing about it through the media.
God Bless!!
Larry W. Shellito
MG, The Adjutant General
Minnesota National Guard
When I heard that the Minnesota National Guard was going to be the only division to have their tours extended for up to two years, I thought "wouldn't it be ironic if it was the very same Minnesota National Guard company that mocked John Kerry for his botched joke during the runup to the midterm elections?"
Well whattaya know, sure enough it is the very same unit of the Minnesota National Guard that is being held back in the shitmire by the Decider they decided to support at the time. Despite the fact that John Kerry has stated emphatically dozens of times that no soldier was the target of his misunderstood dig at Bush, and despite the fact that John Kerry is decorated veteran himself, those Guardsmen decided to take Bush's blinkered interpretation of Kerry's speech and provide a priceless photo-op for the Bush smear machine.
And what do they get as thanks for their efforts to give Bush a boost? More painful separation from their families and loved ones, more time with the inurgent bombs and IEDs and more of the same misery you get in the sandbox.
And do you know what? Fuck em. They chose to lie in bed with the WorstPresidentEver and his wet dreams of "victory", they can stay in the piddle he created. I'm done holding their hands and reaching out to them with my sympathies. Maybe in the future when they are truly contrite (or if there's a draft) will I champion their cause. But for now, let them know that they cannot come home because they have made a deal with the devil.
These people have learned nothing:
'Gated communities' planned for BaghdadNew U.S. strategy calls for creating zones of safety in the Iraqi capital, then working outward.
By Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writer
January 11, 2007WASHINGTON — The military's new strategy for Iraq envisions creating "gated communities" in Baghdad — sealing off discrete areas and forcibly removing insurgents, then stationing American units in the neighborhood to keep the peace and working to create jobs for residents.
The U.S. so far has found it impossible to secure the sprawling city. But by focusing an increased number of troops in selected neighborhoods, the military hopes it can create islands of security segregated from the chaos beyond.
The gated communities plan has been tried — with mixed success — in other wars. In Vietnam, the enclaves were called "strategic hamlets" and were a spectacular failure. But counterinsurgency experts say such zones can work if, after the barriers are established, the military follows up with neighborhood sweeps designed to flush out insurgents and militia fighters.
The strategy, described in broad terms by current and former Defense Department officials, is an attempt to re-create the success military units have had in smaller Iraqi cities, most notably Tall Afar.
This is the "success" they are trying to replicate:
A suicide bomber killed four civilians in a crowd outside a police station Wednesday in the northern Iraqi city Tal Afar, police said.At least 12 people were also injured by the blast when the bomber walked into a crowd of people gathering outside the building about 90 miles east of the Syrian border, an officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Around the same time, another suicide bomber targeted the convoy of Tal Afar's mayor. A child was killed and four other people were wounded in that attack, including the mayor's driver, said Mosul police Brig. Abdel-Karim Khalaf. The mayor survived, he said.
Glenn Greenwald details an NPR oral essay by conservative columnist/activist Rod Dreher in which Dreher recants his support for the Eye-Rack war, for WorstPresidentEver and his band of fellow travellers, and for authoritorianism. Dreher also admits that the dirty fucking hippies (and most of the country at the time) were right to oppose the Vietnam War and to question authority and he was wrong to castigate them for hating America and for assuming Democrats are wimps and Republicans are strong.
Apparently Glenn Greenwald and most of the liberal bloggers that trackbacked to his post are singing hosannas that the tide has finally turned against the Bush Republicans and all they stand for. But one blogger wasn't fooled. Chester N. Scoville at The Vanity Press notes that there are some very telling inconsistencies in Dreher's oral essay, namely that the conduct of the war has taught him to abandon his complete trust in American presidents and their policies, even though in the same breath he chronicled how the "wimpiness" of Jimmy Carter threw him into the arms of Ronald Reagan. And lord knows when Clinton was in office he wasn't quick to defend the Commander in Chief from the attacks of his fellow conservatives.
That rank disingenuousness is proof positives that these scumbuckets will quickly forget their opposition to the Eye-Rack war and learn to love the shitmire again once the dust settles. And they will quickly blame the Democrats for denying them their glorious victory, either because we haven't clapped hard enough or haven't allowed them to kill enough mud-slims.
As I've said before, we've done the same dance with Vietnam. Most people understood that the war couldn't be won, but quickly forgot and were fooled again by the myth of unilateral American hegemony. Know that it will happen again with Eye-Rack if we continue to hold the hands of the warmongers. Until the country realizes the full disaster of the policy they've given sanction to, they will never learn.
Three months before he allegedly killed an Iraqi family after raping a young girl, Private Stephen Green was diagnosed by army mental-health experts as being a "homicidal threat". Did they immediately remove him from duty and prepare a comprehensive treatment program? Nope, they shipped him off to Anbar with some pills and told him to get some sleep:
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. -- An Army private charged with the slaughter of an Iraqi family was diagnosed as a homicidal threat by a military mental health team three months before the attack.Pfc. Steven D. Green was found to have "homicidal ideations" after seeking help from an Army Combat Stress Team in Iraq on Dec. 21, 2005. Green said he was angry about the war, desperate to avenge the death of comrades and driven to kill Iraqi citizens, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.
The treatment was several small doses of Seroquel - a drug to regulate his mood - and a directive to get some sleep, according to medical records obtained by the AP. The next day, he returned to duty in the particularly violent stretch of desert in the southern Baghdad suburbs known as the "Triangle of Death."
No follow-up exams or further treatments were scheduled, records indicate. But Green had a conversation with his battalion commander one month after the examination in which he expressed hatred for all Iraqis.
The rest of the long article deals with the sorry state of how the military treats it's soldiers who suffer from mental problems and a bio of how Green got to where he is. A chilling quote comes at the end, however:
Lt. Col. Richard Anderson, the military judge hearing that case, asked Barker why he agreed to participate."I hated Iraqis, your honor," Barker replied. "They can smile at you then shoot you in your face without even thinking about it."
Now that people are going to be trapped in the shitmire for more than two years at a time, with a population that hates their guts, how many of these feelings will manifest themselves? God only knows.
