*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

Demands grow for Iraq death count

Forty-six eminent figures including military men, ex-diplomats and bishops have written to Tony Blair urging an inquiry into civilian deaths in Iraq. A study in a medical journal said nearly 100,000 died after the invasion. Other groups put the figure at 15,000. Mr Blair told MPs the most accurate estimate - of between 3,853 and 15,517 for April to October this year - was from the Iraqi Ministry of Health.

And he argued terrorists, not US-led troops were to blame for the deaths.

At prime minister's questions, Mr Blair said he did not accept the casualties' inquiry was needed for the UK to fulfil its international obligations. He urged people to back efforts to hold elections in Iraq in January. "Those people that are killing innocent people in Iraq today, who are responsible for innocent people dying, are the terrorists and insurgents who want to stop the elections happening in Iraq," he said.

"Any action that the multi-national force or the Iraqi people are taking in Iraq is in order to defeat those people who are ... killing anyone who wants to make the country better." The publication of the letter to Mr Blair marks the launch of a new campaign by health charity Medact and the Iraq Body Count project.

Names on the letter include retired General Sir Hugh Beech, the bishop of Coventry and an ex-ambassador to Iraq. It also includes the former assistant chief of the defence staff Lord Garden, now a Liberal Democrat peer, and playwright Harold Pinter. The letter urges Mr Blair to set up an independent inquiry to establish just how many people have been killed or injured in Iraq, along with reasons for the casualties. Lord Garden told BBC News: "We have taken it [Iraq] over and we are going to try and make it a democratic country.

 

[Barking_Mad]

US soldiers would kill civilians, says Marine

A former US Marine has claimed that he saw American troops in Iraq routinely kill unarmed civilians, including women and children. He said he had also witnessed troops killing injured Iraqi insurgents.

Jimmy Massey, 33, a staff sergeant who served in Iraq before being honourably discharged after 12 years' service, said he had seen troops shooting civilians at road blocks and in the street. A code of silence, similar to that found in organised crime gangs, prevented troops from speaking about it.

"We were shooting up people as they got out of their cars trying to put their hands up," said Mr Massey. "I don't know if the Iraqis thought we were celebrating their new democracy. I do know that we killed innocent civilians." Mr Massey said US troops in Iraq were trained to believe that all Iraqis were potential terrorists. As a result, he had watched his colleagues open fire indiscriminately. In one 48-hour period, he estimated his unit killed more than 30 civilians in the Rashid district of southern Baghdad.

"I was never clear on who the enemy was," he explained. "If you have no enemy or you do not know who the enemy is, what are you doing there?" His claims were made during an immigration hearing in Toronto, Canada, to assess a claim for refugee status made by a former US soldier, Jeremy Hinzman. Mr Hinzman, 26, fled to Canada after refusing to go to Iraq with his colleagues in the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg.

Mr Hinzman is seeking permission to remain in Canada with his wife and child and believes he will face a court martial if he returns to the US. "We were told that we would be going to Iraq to jack up some terrorists," he told the hearing.

"We were told it was a new kind of war, that these were evil people and they had to be dealt with." Mr Hinzman is among several American soldiers seeking refugee status in Canada, hoping the country's opposition to the war will help.

Some 30,000 to 50,000 Americans fled to Canada during the Vietnam War and settled there.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Fighting Rages in Iraq's Rebel-Held Ramadi

Wed Dec 8, 2004 08:21 AM ET
RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Fighting raged between rebels controlling the western Iraq town of Ramadi and U.S. Marines Wednesday after two Iraqis were killed in clashes following a suicide car bomb attack, witnesses said. As insurgents battled Marines in Ramadi, the death toll from clashes in the northern city of Samarra climbed to six, with four civilians and two police killed, a hospital official said. Warplanes were heard over Ramadi, where witnesses said a U.S. armored vehicle was in flames and smoke rose from an American base that was hit by a mortar. Fighting spread from the center of the city to the industrial zone in the east after a suicide bomber attacked a U.S. military checkpoint and clashes killed two Iraqi civilians.

There were no immediate reports of U.S. casualties. Ramadi, 110 km (65 miles) west of Baghdad and the capital of the restive Anbar province, has been occupied by insurgents for the past six months or more. Like Falluja previously, it has become a stronghold of anti-American resistance. A U.S.-led invasion crushed Muslim militants and insurgents in Falluja in November in a bid to break the back of the insurgency ahead of nationwide elections scheduled for Jan. 30. The U.S. military has said it will try to drive insurgents out of all strongholds by the end of the year, meaning Ramadi could be subjected to an offensive similar to that in Falluja. Despite the threat of a showdown with U.S. forces, insurgents remain defiant and have mounted attacks across Iraq.

A suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. convoy in the northern city of Samarra Wednesday, a local police official said. In a separate incident, an Iraqi policeman was killed when insurgents opened fire on U.S. soldiers in the town that the Iraqi interim government said it had seized from guerrillas after a major offensive in early October.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Bomb Injures 2 U.S. Soldiers in Baghdad

The bomb wounded two U.S. soldiers, who later returned to duty, said U.S. military spokesman Maj. Jay Antonelli. Another six civilians were wounded, Iraqi hospital officials said.

Suicide bomber kills three

In a separate incident, an Iraqi policeman was killed when insurgents opened fire on US soldiers in the town that the Iraqi interim government said it had seized from guerrillas after a major offensive in early October.

National Guard and Reserve Mobilized as of December 8, 2004 National Guard and Reserve Mobilized as of December 8, 2004

This week, the Army announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty, while the Air Force, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard had a decrease. The net collective result is 1,588 more reservists mobilized than last week.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Acute petrol shortage adds to chaos of Baghdad

Baghdad has been hit by what many residents of the capital say are the worst fuel shortages since the immediate aftermath of the invasion, the result of both insurgent attacks on pipelines and corruption in the distribution of fuel. For the past week, queues for petrol have stretched for kilometres along the capital's main streets, while black market fuel sells at 10 times its pre-crisis price - if it can be found at all. The crisis shows the interim government's difficulties in maintaining basic services.

Much of the city remains dark at night, with the diesel fuel needed for private generators running short at the same time as municipal electricity distribution has fallen to as little as nine hours a day, down from around 15 hours during the summer. Guards at one service station in the southern Baghdad district of Siadiya said at least three people had been killed in the past few days. Petrol has been rationed using licence plates numbers, with odd and even numbers able to buy on alternate days. On Sunday, a policeman was shot in the neck when he tried to stop a driver with an odd-numbered licence plate joining a queue.

The following day, two motorists were prevented from getting petrol because the police recognised them as black market fuel vendors. The two pulled off their T-shirts, threatening to set them alight and hurl them into the station as makeshift firebombs if they were not allowed to queue. They were promptly shot dead. The same day, the station director said, national guardsmen showed up to drive away the police, who have been accused of taking bribes to let motorists jump the queues. The police fled, and the guards took control.

Baghdad's petrol supply has always been fragile, due to guerrilla attacks as well as heavy government subsidies by which the fuel is sold at just over $0.01 a litre, encouraging a domestic black market as well as smuggling abroad. However, officials have been offered different explanations of the factors leading to this particular shortfall. In a speech to Iraq's interim parliament on Tuesday, Barham Salih, deputy prime minister, blamed "sabotage" on the country's main pipelines and "administrative corruption". An energy source in the capital said insurgents had managed to hit pipelines bringing fuel to Baghdad's main refinery as well as the distribution grid for refined products. However, an inspector for the capital's oil distribution company said the crisis was "manufactured" rather than real - storage depots were full, but oil ministry officials and station owners were collaborating in selling wholesale to smugglers.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Fallujah insurgent chief vows to continue resistance

A wanted Iraqi insurgent leader who battled US forces in Fallujah, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, has vowed to continue his resistance until Americans leave Iraq, in a statement obtained by AFP on Thursday. The authenticity of the two-page document, which was addressed to Muslims across the world and dated December 5, could not be independently verified.

"Your brothers on the Fallujah Council of the Mujahedeen and those from other factions stand committed before God and before you to continue the Jihad (holy war) against the occupiers and their agents until they leave Iraq."

They "would continue whatever the sacrifices," Janabi said. "We defy (US President George W.) Bush, to reveal to his people, his failures in Fallujah, which has become the symbol and the voice of all oppression in the world and a solid platform of the resistance in Iraq." The Sunni Muslim cleric, an insurgent figurehead in Fallujah whose mosque in the city was found packed with weapons, outlined his version of November's intense US-led assault on the insurgent bastion, west of Baghdad.

The campaign was the start of a "Zionist supported crusade spearheaded by the crusader, the cursed Bush, and (Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad) Allawi to wound our civilisation, doctor our religion and falsify our Koran". A US claim to have arrested 27 Arab fighters was "testament to the fact that the defenders of the town were Iraqis... and nullifies the argument that the Fallujah operation was supposed to wipe out Arab fighters," he alleged. On November 21, the US military said 1,450 people had been detained during the Fallujah operation. In another statement, Janabi - who is believed to have fled the city - congratulated Fallujah residents for their "resistance". Their sufferings were "divine ordeal", he said, calling the offensive "a war between crusaders and Zionists" against a "symbol of Islam and Muslims".

 

[jwexford]

A study in a medical journal said nearly 100,000 died after the invasion.

Didn't it actually say it was "possible" upto 100,000, ie they are guessing.

 

[nino_savatte]

Pentagon claims 5,500 desertions since beginning of war

I guess 5,500 servicemen can't be wrong. Very interesting article; I expect the flak machine to be pulling out all the stops though: CBS seems to be one of their favourite targets.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/06/60II/main659336.shtml

 

[Barking_Mad]

updates....

U.S. Forces Release Iraqis From Prisons
U.S. forces released 114 Iraqis who had been detained in the country's two major military prisons Thursday. About 4,600 Iraqis are being detained in Camp Bucca, while some 2,400 are being held in Abu Ghraib.

Six Iraqi national guards, 10 civilians wounded in Mosul attacks
Six Iraqi national guardsmen and 10 civilians were wounded in two bomb attacks in the northern city of Mosul on Thursday, police said.

Explosions near Italian embassy in Iraq
Several mortar shells fell about 50 metres from the embassy but there were no Italian victims. Following the attack several members of the Italian opposition again called for Italian troops to be pulled out of Iraq.

Officer crisis hits Army Reserve
The Army Reserve is facing an extreme shortage of company officers, a situation aggravated by a surge in resignation requests. The shortage — primarily of captains — has seriously reduced the capabilities of the Reserve

Mortar attack wounds Iraqi guards
Eight Iraqi National Guard members have been wounded in a mortar attack on their base in Baghdad, police said. Police said five mortars landed on the base in the al-Waziriya neighborhood of the capital on Thursday.

 

[Barking_Mad]

10 billion dollars - nice work if you can get it.

Halliburton awarded more than 10 (b) billion dollars of work in Iraq

WASHINGTON Despite investigations of alleged financial misdeeds, Halliburton Company has passed the ten (b) billion dollar mark in Iraq work orders from the Army. The Army has ordered more than eight (b) billion dollars worth of work from Halliburton under a contract to support soldiers with meals, housing, laundry and other services. Halliburton got two-point-five (b) billion more in work from the Army Corps of Engineers to put out oil well fires and shore up Iraq's dilapidated oil infrastructure.

Allegations of misdeeds including corruption and overcharging have led to criminal, congressional and Pentagon investigations of Halliburton's work in Iraq. Halliburton says it's doing a good job in Iraq and says the allegations are old and unfounded.

US soldier found guilty of murdering Iraqi

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A US soldier who shot dead an unarmed and wounded Iraqi civilian to "put him out of his misery" was found guilty of murder, as Iraq's political parties won more time to register candidates for next month's elections. The move came a day after the long-oppressed majority Shiites unveiled a major alliance likely to leave them with the lion's share of the vote in the January 30 polls for a transitional government.

At a court martial, Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne was found guilty of the unpremeditated murder of a severely wounded Iraqi civilian in Baghdad's Sadr City district in August. He is due to be sentenced later although a pre-trial agreement limits his penalty to 10 years in jail. The murder of Kassim Hassan took place when US soldiers spotted a garbage truck apparently dropping homemade bombs in Sadr City, the capital's most populous Shiite Muslim neighbourhood, the court heard.

The soldiers started shooting at the truck, which caught fire, and a severely wounded Hassan pulled himself out of the truck and fell to the ground. "When I found him, I came to the conclusion that he needed to be put out of his misery," Horne said. "I fired a shot into his head and his attempts to breathe ceased." Horne was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder with two other soldiers, Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban and Second Lieutenant Erick Anderson, who have yet to stand trial.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Disease risk stops Falluja return

Sewage and rabid animals pose a significant health threat in Falluja, US military officials have warned. An army spokesman said the estimated 250,000 people that fled the assault cannot return until the risk posed by stray animals and sewage is eliminated. US forces retook the insurgent bastion amid heavy fighting last month.

The Red Cross is waiting for US forces to give it the go-ahead to restore the city's water supply and help identify the hundreds of gathered corpses. "Many streets are flooded with sewage water," Red Cross spokesman Ahmad Rawi, who has just returned from Falluja, told the BBC News website. He said the city's water treatment plant has to itself be drained before an assessment can be made of how badly it has been damaged.

Another priority for the agency, Mr Rawi said, is the identification of "hundreds of bodies" collected and stored by US-led forces in a former potato warehouse. Photographs of the corpses have to be taken and circulated among refugees from the city so that they could be identified and buried as soon as possible. The Red Cross could not confirm whether the warehouse had refrigeration facilities to prevent the bodies from decaying.

As well as water-borne diseases, US forces say dogs that have fed on corpses pose a risk to returning refugees. US soldiers have been killing the stray animals to prevent the spread of rabies, the BBC's Caroline Hawley reports. Marines interviewed by AFP news agency said orders had been given to "thin out" the city's animal population. Rabies is spread by the saliva of infected animals, who often behave aggressively because of the disease. Once transmitted to humans, it is usually fatal. The US military has not said when it will allow refugees back into Falluja. Officers are planning to use iris scans and fingerprints to screen males of a fighting age who try to re-enter the city, our correspondent reports.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Funding for U.S. Military Operations in Iraq Could Surge

The Bush administration, facing mounting violence in Iraq and demands for upgraded equipment, is assembling a funding package for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that could surge beyond earlier estimates to as much as $75 billion to $100 billion, congressional sources and experts said on Thursday. Administration and congressional officials estimated in October that the funding package would total between $60 billion and $75 billion. The Army's request alone could top $51 billion, far more than the $35 billion to $40 billion cited by the Army chief of staff in October, congressional sources said. The Marines are also expected to push for billions of dollars more as the Pentagon increases troop strength for Iraqi elections scheduled for January.

Two congressional sources said the size of the emergency spending bill, which President Bush will send to Congress early next year, could swell to between $75 billion and possibly $100 billion, depending on the level of violence in the coming months. That would include billions of dollars to upgrade equipment and purchase more armored vehicles. John Pike, a defense analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, said the rate of spending in Iraq, already at more than $1 billion a week, could grow to $1.5 billion or more. "It's going to be a pretty big number," he said.

Administration officials said it was premature to estimate the size of the funding package. One official cautioned that initial estimates by the military services "tend to be high" and are often trimmed back in final negotiations between the Pentagon and the White House. He suggested that the figures were little more than trial balloons. Officials said the size of the package will also depend on how much of the Pentagon's $25 billion contingency fund is spent. The administration has said that any unused funding would be applied toward next year's needs.

Bush has promised to provide U.S. troops with whatever they need, and said on Thursday that concerns about inadequate equipment for Iraq combat were being addressed. Meeting with troops in Kuwait on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld heard several complaints, including one from Spc. Thomas Wilson that U.S. forces were forced to dig up scrap metal to protect their vehicles in Iraq because of a shortage of armored ones. "The process of determining the amount of the (funding) request is still very far from final, but it will be completed in time for Congress to consider and act on it so there is no disruption in support," said Chad Kolton, spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget.

 

[Barking_Mad]

US stance on armor disputed

Despite Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's assertion that the military is outfitting Humvees with armor as quickly as possible, the company providing the vehicles said it has been waiting since September for approval from the Pentagon to increase monthly production by as many as 100 of the all-terrain vehicles, intended to protect against roadside bombs in Iraq. Army officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged yesterday that they have not approved new purchase orders for armored trucks, despite the company's readiness to produce more. They said the Pentagon has been debating how many more armored Humvees are needed.

Rumsfeld, questioned by soldiers in Kuwait on Wednesday who said they have had to pick through landfills for scrap metal to boost vehicle protection, said the Army was working as quickly at it could to get armored Humvees to the front. It is "a matter of physics, not a matter of money," Rumsfeld said, adding that the Army was "breaking its neck." President Bush yesterday reiterated that "the concerns expressed are being addressed."

But executives at Armor Holdings in Jacksonville, Fla., as well as Army officials and members of Congress, said Rumsfeld's assertion that the protective equipment is being provided as quickly as possible is not true and added the company has been waiting for more purchase orders.

"We're prepared to build 50 to 100 vehicles more per month," Robert Mecredy, head of Armor Holdings' aerospace and defense unit, said in a statement. The company is producing about 450 armored Humvees per month, up from 50 in late 2003, when a sudden surge of attacks in Iraq exposed a lack of protective armor.

The company says that by February it could be producing as many as 550 fully armored Humvees per month -- with armor plates on the sides, front, rear, top, and bottom -- if given the go-ahead. The company estimated it would cost the military about $150 million a year to pay for the additional 100 vehicles per month. The company said it also told the Army it could add new production lines and turn out even more vehicles.

More than half of the roughly 1,200 US soldiers who have died in Iraq have been killed by roadside bombs or in ambushes from rocket-propelled grenades. A lack of armor on thousands of older vehicles has been blamed for many of the deaths. In an unusual public airing of grievances, Specialist Thomas Wilson, a member of the 278th Regimental Combat Team of the Tennessee National Guard, took Rumsfeld to task Wednesday at a meeting at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, where his unit is preparing to deploy to Iraq.

"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," he told the Pentagon chief.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Photos of US soldiers funerals and Iraq.

Photo's of dead Iraqis taken to help identify their bodies.

 

[Barking_Mad]

This guy always has some interesting things to say about the Iraq situation. He was a highly decorated Vietnam vet.

Uncle Sam will be wanting your kids real soon for Iraq

We'll soon have 150,000 U.S. troops stuck in the ever-expanding Iraqi quagmire, a number that will probably grow even larger before Iraq holds elections presently scheduled for the end of January 2005.

Maintaining such a force is a logistical and personnel nightmare for every grunt in Iraq. And according to several Pentagon number crunchers, it's also driving the top brass bonkers. Meanwhile the insurgents continue cutting our supply lines and whacking our fighting platoons and supporters, who attrit daily as soldiers and Marines fall to enemy shots, sickness or accidents. Empty platoons lose fights, so these casualties have to be replaced ASAP.

Since this tragic war kicked off in March 2003, the United States has evacuated an estimated 50,000 KIA, WIA and nonbattle casualties from Iraq back to the States -- leaving 50,000 slots that have had to be filled. The job of finding fresh bodies to keep our units topped off falls mainly to the Army Recruiting Command. But the ''making-quota'' jazz put out by the Recruiting Command and the Pentagon to hype their billion-dollar recruiting effort, with its huge TV expenditure and big expansion of recruiters during the past year, is pure unadulterated spin. Not that this is anything new. The Command has a sorry reputation for using smoke and mirrors to cover up poor performance.

.........

By the end of this recruiting year, the Regular Army, Reserves and Guard could fall short more than 50 percent of its projected requirement, or about 60,000 new soldiers. And according to many recruiters, quality recruits are giving way to mental midgets who have a hard time telling their left foot from their right.

Shades of our last years in Vietnam. "The bottom line is that Recruiting Command is in trouble," says another recruiter with almost 30 years of service. "The Army has re-instituted 'stop loss,' which is basically a backdoor draft. They're stopping people from retiring or completing their enlistment and leaving the Army. They do this fairly often, mostly in August and September, depending upon how far behind they believe they'll be at the end of September.

Moms and dads are outraged about desperate Army recruiters on a relentless campaign to sign up their teenagers. High-school kids are actually running away from recruiters like they were George Romero's living dead.

''Recruiters have called my son a minimum of 20 times in the two years since he finished high school,'' a dad reports. ''The phone calls usually come in clusters. I answered five calls in a two- or three-week span. Each time a recruiter calls, he receives the same polite, respectful response from me or my son ... no interest, and please take the name off the list. When asked why the name hasn't been removed, excuses are made. While recruiters are brief with me, when my son is on the phone, the sales tactics are clever, prolonged and very high-pressure.

''I took the latest recruiting call. This time I also called the supervisor at the local Army recruiting office, who's promised to take his name off the list. She made excuses for the repeated calls despite the fact that five calls were on her watch."

Unless a miracle happens and the new Iraqi security force decides to stop running and start fighting, we'll be in Iraq for a long time. Most likely with a draftee force.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Homeless Iraq vets showing up at shelters

U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era. "When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

"I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while," Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by U.S.VETS, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans. Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months after returning from Iraq in September 2003. "One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets," he said.

 

[bigfish]

US Army plagued by desertion and plunging morale

WHILE insurgents draw on deep wells of fury to expand their ranks in Iraq, the US military is fighting desertion, recruitment shortfalls and legal challenges from its own troops.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1397131,00.html

 

[bigfish]

Picture of a dead Fallujan boy clutching a white surrender flag

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album28&page=1​

 

[Solitarian]

Where's the napalm thread?

Yes folks, it's back.

Go USA!!!!!!

 

[Barking_Mad]

More attacks on US-led forces in Iraq

Fighters have killed a police captain at a checkpoint and an Iraqi guardsman in a billiard hall in separate attacks against US-backed forces in northern Iraq. Police Captain Basam Ali Ahmad died of wounds a day after being shot on Thursday as he manned a checkpoint in Samarra, police said. Despite US-led forces mounting a major offensive against fighters in the city two months ago, frequent attacks continue.

Further to the north, in the oil-refining town of Baiji, Ziyad Tariq, an off-duty member of the Iraqi National Guard, was shot dead on Friday by men who burst into a billiard hall armed with automatic rifles, police and hospital staff said. In Tikrit, six Iraqi national guardsmen were wounded after an explosive device was detonated next to their patrol. In other incidents on Friday a man and a woman, both civilians, were injured near Baquba when a roadside bomb detonated as a convoy of Iraqi National Guard vehicles passed by. No one was injured, witnesses said.

A similar bomb also struck a US military convoy north of the city but caused little damage. An explosion caused a large fire near Baquba at an oil pipeline that runs from Khanaqin, on the Iranian border, to Baghdad's Dora refinery. At Baiji, an official of Iraq's North Oil Company said the Salahidin refinery had shut down because it had reached its storage capacity and pipeline sabotage was stopping it from transporting its products further afield.

Baghdad and other cities are in the grip of grave shortages of petrol and heating oil as well as gas for cooking. It is partly a result of attack on pipelines and due to attacks on convoys that import much of Iraq's energy.

 

[Barking_Mad]

A few photos from Iraq

 

[Barking_Mad]

It seems the shortage of fuel is looking like a real problem, especially with winter coming on in Iraq.

Fuel crisis threatens Iraqi interim rule

Fuel and electricity shortages in the Baghdad area are getting worse and could threaten confidence in Iraq's interim administration, US documents show.

"The supply of fuel products in the Baghdad area has dropped to critical levels," the document, seen by Reuters, said. "If the current situation does not improve quickly, public confidence in the government may deteriorate significantly."

It added that fuel distribution problems were leading to long queues at petrol stations, while there was still low access to electrical power. But the document blamed Iraqi fighters for the lack of basic services that have plagued Baghdad since the US-led war in March 2003. "The problems are the result of both insurgent and criminal activity," it said.

The document contrasts with public US statements that Iraqi electricity output is rising and that the country's oil facilities are steadily being restored 19 months after the US declared an end to major combat. Traders say the winter season, damaged or destroyed pipelines, a lack of security on the country's roads and failure to contract imports to reliable suppliers has deepened fuel shortages that Iraq started suffering after last year's US-led invasion.

Another article here on this by Patrick Cockburn in the Indy.

'I started queueing yesterday and I expect petrol tomorrow'

A crippling shortage of petrol is overshadowing next month's election in Iraq, with drivers in Baghdad forced to queue for up to 36 hours for fuel. Iraqis seldom talk about the election because of the fuel crisis. In the past three weeks the supply of petrol, diesel and electricity in the Iraqi capital has nosedived. Kerosene for heating is expensive and difficult to find.

"I started queuing at 3.15pm yesterday and I expect I will not get any petrol until tomorrow," said Salah Hassan, a civil servant, as he waited in a three-mile queue of vehicles outside Karada petrol station. Mr Hassan said he had taken a three-day holiday from his job and kept his children home from school solely so he could buy 30 litres of petrol. Parents drive their children to school because of lack of buses and the fear of kidnappers.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Sunnis vs. Shiites and Kurds

Iraq is no Lebanon yet. But evidence is building that it is at least in the early stages of ethnic and sectarian warfare.

.......The Americans have added to the alienation of the Sunnis by relying heavily on Shiite and Kurdish military recruits to put down the Sunni insurgency in some of the most volatile areas. The guerrillas, in turn, reinforce sectarian animosities when they attack police recruits or interim government officials as collaborators. Many of these recruits are Shiites or Kurds, and the loss of life reverberates through their families and communities. In recent weeks, at least one new Shiite militia has formed - not in opposition to the Americans, but to exact revenge against the Sunnis.
......Assaults by Iraqis on other Iraqis have taken grisly and audacious turns lately. In October, insurgents dressed as policemen waylaid three minibuses carrying 49 freshly trained Iraqi Army soldiers - most or all of them Shiites traveling south on leave - and executed them. Pilgrims going south to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala have also been gunned down.

In response, Shiite leaders in the southern city of Basra began telling young men last month that it was time for revenge. They organized hundreds of Shiites into the Anger Brigades, the latest of many armed groups that have announced their formation in the anarchy of the new Iraq. The stated goal of the brigades is to kill extremist Sunni Arabs in the north Babil area, widely known as the "Triangle of Death," where many Shiite security officers and pilgrims have been killed.

"The Wahhabis and Salafis have come together to harm fellow Muslims and have begun killing anyone affiliated with the Shiite sect," Dhia al-Mahdi, the leader of the Anger Brigades, said in a written statement. "The Anger Brigades will be dispatched to those areas where these germs are, and there will be battles."

 

[Barking_Mad]

...........

Billiard hall death in Iraq
INSURGENTS killed a police captain at a checkpoint and gunned down an Iraqi National Guard officer in a billiard hall in scattered violence against US forces and their allies in northern Iraq today.

Iraqi election workers killed in drive-by shooting
An Iraqi election group announced Friday that three of its workers had died in a drive-by shooting earlier this week.

He lost an arm in Iraq; the Army wants money
He lost his arm serving his country in Iraq. Now this soldier is being discharged ... without enough gas money to get home. In fact, the Army says 27-year-old Spc. Robert Loria owes it close to $2,000, and confiscated his last paycheck.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq insurgents kill top police

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Gunmen have ambushed a group of senior police officers in northern Iraq, killing two of them and wounding three, one of the survivors said near the town of Ash Sharqat. Two other high-ranking officers, a brigadier and a colonel, were gunned down in southern Baghdad, a police source said on Saturday. Four employees of the Ministry of Education were wounded when the bus taking them to work in Baghdad was raked by gunfire.

In the northern city of Mosul a car bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy wounding at least two passersby, witnesses and the U.S. army said. Security officials and civil servants have become prime targets for insurgents opposed to the U.S. military occupation and to Iraqis working for the U.S.-backed authorities. Colonel Mohammed Abed said from his hospital bed that a fellow police colonel and another officer were killed in the ambush which left Abed and two others wounded. "They blocked our way, shot us and took our cars," he said of the attack in Ash Sharqat, 110 km (70 miles) north of Tikrit.

Shiite candidates hint at Iraq's political future

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's future political landscape began to take shape Friday as a coalition led by powerful Shiite Muslim groups revealed a few of its candidates in next month's parliamentary election. They include former exiles, a prominent cleric and members of the interim government.
Backed by Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the coalition -- called the United Iraqi Alliance -- hopes to draw the bulk of the vote from Iraq's Shiite majority.

In a sign of the alliance's priorities, the No. 1 name on the list is Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim -- the head of Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution. In such an influential position, he becomes a likely candidate for a major government post, which the national assembly will dole out once it begins work.....

...In a worrisome sign, one of the candidates on the 228-member United Iraqi Alliance list was killed after ignoring warnings to remove his name. Sattar Jabar, a leader of Iraq's Hezbollah Shiite movement, was gunned down with two other people Thursday night, aide Essa Sayid Jaafer said.

Fears of participation, however, didn't stop United Iraqi Alliance organizers from amassing a broad range of candidates. The roster includes some independent Sunnis, members of the Yazidi minority religious sect and a Turkomen movement, among others.

Nevertheless, Shiites, particularly the established parties, dominate the list.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Major power outage across Iraq

Iraq Power Outage

Electricity is out across a wide region of Iraq after a fire broke out in a power plant north of Baghdad. The capital went dark in the late afternoon, and power was still out three hours later. The only lights are in the Green Zone and the few other place with their own generators. Witnesses in several other parts of the country -- including Basra to the south and Najaf to the southwest -- also are reporting blackouts.

Iraq's prime minister says the fire was apparently an accident. But he also tells a T-V call-in show that militants have been attacking Iraq's infrastructure and other targets that only hurt civilians. He reports the fire has been put out, and power is gradually being restored.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Humvees falling prey to war

This is a graveyard for Humvees, the final resting place for the hulking vehicles felled by insurgents' roadside bombs. In a parking lot, the U.S. military's most common personnel carriers lie flattened with noses down in the mud. Their metal carcasses are barely recognizable. Tires have been splayed to the sides or blown away entirely. Shrapnel has burst holes in some unprotected parts of the vehicles, as if they were tinfoil.

The nine mangled Humvees here have been destroyed by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, as the military calls them. "Now this one here, you can see the IED tore the whole back end off the vehicle. It's just gone," said Sgt. Patrick Parchment of 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which operates south of Baghdad. "The front is sitting cockeyed. And that's steel," he said, showing another severed vehicle.

The blasted remains do not offer much optimism about the fate of the Marines who had been riding in them. Sixteen Marines of the 24th MEU have died since arriving here in July; 259 more have been wounded. The majority of the casualties resulted from IEDs, as Marines must run a daily gantlet of the roadside bombs on highways and dirt roads that cut through farms.

The Marines and Army have almost 20,000 Humvees in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. But a quarter of them lack proper shields.

 

[Barking_Mad]

You know, I could have sworn they said this was over........

War planes fire on Fallujah

US war planes fired several missiles at targets in the Iraqi city of Fallujah today, as marines pressed on with their search for rebels remaining in the Sunni Muslim city. The operations followed renewed fighting yesterday in northern and southern Fallujah, which was devastated last month when US and Iraqi forces stormed the city in a bid to wrest it from rebels.

"We're clearing up the last ones (insurgents). They're holed up in places," Sergeant Ted Herald of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, said. Coalition troops killed hundreds of fighters during last month's assault, but have continued to face pockets of rebels as they clear the city. At least 18 suspected rebels were killed on Friday, Herald said, adding that he did not think insurgents had returned to Fallujah since the assault.

He said fighters remaining in the city "were biding their time. They are waiting for us to leave". The top US marine commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General John Sattler, said on Thursday about 97 per cent of Fallujah had been cleared of rebels and bombs as coalition forces tried to restore security so tens of thousands of residents could return.

US soldier killed in Fallujah

One US soldier was killed in an action in the restive city of Fallujah on Saturday, the US military said in a statement. "Fighting erupted in Fallujah earlier Saturday after days of relative calm following last month's blistering assault on the former rebel stronghold," the statement said, without elaborating. Last month, US and Iraqi forces launched a major offensive against Fallujah, 50 km west of Baghdad.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The food can't be that bad, surely?!

Saddam aides refusing food

Some of Saddam Hussein's jailed lieutenants have been refusing food, the U.S. military says, but the officer in charge of detainees in Baghdad has denied that Saddam himself is on any form of hunger strike. Saddam was captured by U.S. troops a year ago, on December 13.

"It appears that some of the other 11 high-value detainees have been rejecting food, although they continue to snack and to take on liquids," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson told Reuters on Sunday. "We're trying to ascertain who is turning their food back and why," he said.

Johnson said those who had rejected food began doing so on Saturday, but some had also eaten on Sunday morning. "There are a lot of conflicting reports about what they have eaten and when," he said, flatly denying Saddam was among those not eating. "These reports are absolutely untrue. Saddam has eaten today," he said after media reports quoted a lawyer for one of the other detainees saying Saddam was on hunger strike.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Always worth the read........

Baghdad Burning - Fuel Shortage

The situation seems to be deteriorating daily. To brief you on a few things: Electricity is lousy. Many areas are on the damned 2 hours by 4 hours schedule and there are other areas that are completely in the dark- like A'adhamiya. The problem is that we're not getting much generator electricity because fuel has become such a big problem. People have to wait in line overnight now to fill up the car. It's a mystery. It really is. There was never such a gasoline crisis as the one we're facing now. We're an oil country and yet there isn't enough gasoline to go around...

Oh don't get me wrong- the governmental people have gasoline (they have special gas stations where there aren't all these annoying people, rubbing their hands with cold and cursing the Americans to the skies)... The Americans have gasoline. The militias get gasoline. It's the people who don't have it. We can sometimes get black-market gasoline but the liter costs around 1250 Iraqi Dinars which is almost $1- compare this to the old price of around 5 cents. It costs almost 50,000 Iraqi Dinars to fill up the generator so that it works for a few hours and then the cost isn't so much the problem as just getting decent gasoline is. So we have to do without electricity most of the day.........

...........All in all, it took E. and the cousin 13 hours to fill the car. I say E. and the cousin because I demanded to be taken home in a taxi after the first six hours and E. agreed to escort me with the condition that I would make sandwiches for him to take back to the cousin. In the end, half of the tank of gasoline was kept inside of the car (for emergencies) and the other half was sucked out for the neighborhood generator.

People are wondering how America and gang (i.e. Iyad Allawi, etc.) are going to implement democracy in all of this chaos when they can't seem to get the gasoline flowing in a country that virtually swims in oil. There's a rumor that this gasoline crisis has been concocted on purpose in order to keep a minimum of cars on the streets. Others claim that this whole situation is a form of collective punishment because things are really out of control in so many areas in Baghdad- especially the suburbs. The third theory is that this being done purposely so that the Iraq government can amazingly bring the electricity, gasoline, kerosene and cooking gas back in January before the elections and make themselves look like heroes.

We're also watching the election lists closely. Most people I've talked to aren't going to go to elections. It's simply too dangerous and there's a sense that nothing is going to be achieved anyway. The lists are more or less composed of people affiliated with the very same political parties whose leaders rode in on American tanks. Then you have a handful of tribal sheikhs. Yes- tribal sheikhs. Our country is going to be led by members of religious parties and tribal sheikhs- can anyone say Afghanistan? What's even more irritating is that election lists have to be checked and confirmed by none other than Sistani!! Sistani- the Iranian religious cleric. So basically, this war helped us make a transition from a secular country being run by a dictator to a chaotic country being run by a group of religious clerics. Now, can anyone say 'theocracy in sheeps clothing'?

The borders are in an interesting state. Now this is something even Saddam didn't do: Iraqi men under the age of 50 aren't being let into the country. A friend of ours who was coming to visit was turned back at the Iraqi border. It was useless for him to try to explain that he had been outside of the country for 10 years and was coming back to visit his family. He was 47 and that meant he, in his expensive business suit, shining leather shoes, and impressive Samsonite baggage, might be a 'Jihadist'. Silly Iraqis- Iraqi men under 50 are a sure threat to the security of their country. American men with guns and tanks are, on the other hand, necessary to the welfare of the country. Lebanese, Kuwaitis and men of other nationalities being hired as mercenaries are vital to the security of said country. Iranian men coming to visit the shrines in the south are all welcome... but Iraqi men? Maybe they should head for Afghanistan.

The assault on Falloojeh and other areas is continuing. There are rumors of awful weapons being used in Falloojeh. The city has literally been burnt and bombed to the ground. Many of the people displaced from the city are asking to be let back in, in spite of everything. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it must be for the refugees. It's like we've turned into another Palestine- occupation, bombings, refugees, death. Sometimes I'll be watching the news and the volume will be really low. The scene will be of a man, woman or child, wailing in front of the camera; crying at the fate of a body lying bloodily, stiffly on the ground- a demolished building in the background and it will take me a few moments to decide the location of this tragedy- Falloojeh? Gaza? Baghdad?