*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

“Somebody has to do it.”

While billions of US taxpayer dollars have been awarded in lucrative contracts to companies such as Bechtel and Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, there are few signs that any reconstruction has actually taken place in war torn Iraq.

The infrastructure is in a state of collapse, with 70% unemployment.

One reason for this incredibly high rate is that out of $1.5 Billion in contracts paid out of Iraq’s funds, 85% has gone to US and British companies who rarely hire Iraqis. Iraqi firms, by contrast, have received 2% of the contracts paid for with the same Iraqi funds.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Ermm where's this been on the news?!

Iraq : Shiites plan autonomous region

About 600 leaders from central Iraq's Shiite Muslim provinces announced plans to begin setting up their own autonomous region, following a meeting today in the holy city of Najaf. Representatives agreed to set up a security committee for their five provinces and a regional council to stimulate the economy of their neglected region. Iraq's provisional constitution recognises the federal nature of Iraq, most of whose Kurdish population lives in three northern provinces with a large degree of autonomy. Participants of the Najaf meeting underlined the importance of holding elections on January 30, and backed Shiite leaders'' rejection of largely Sunni calls to delay the vote. Shiites make up about 60 per cent of the Iraqi population but were oppressed under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, which favoured the minority Sunnis.

The meeting opened with an appeal from the governor of Najaf province, Adnan al-Zorfi, for a regional gathering of presidents of provincial capitals with an executive council made up of governors and provincial administration leaders. He also called for a consultative council with greater powers than the existing provincial councils that would draw up unified political, economic and security policies. "We must turn ourselves into a regional unit in the context of a federal Iraq," said Ukail al-Khozai, deputy governor of Karbala, another Shiite holy city.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Liberating Iraqis

And other articles worth a look

http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/

 

[Barking_Mad]

One of the articles in the link directly above this is.....

At least 200,000 fled Fallujah

Most areas of the city remain without power, water, sewage and other basic services and it is expected to take much longer than previously thought to start reconstruction as hundreds of buildings are completely destroyed. "The return to Fallujah may take a matter of months rather than days, as was previously suggested by multi-national forces," the document entitled Emergency Working Group - Fallujah Crisis and distributed by the UN said. The report, compiled by various aid agencies and released this week, says access to the camps for internally-displaced people is sporadic due to insecurity and military operations.

"Some sites have received assistance, whereas others ... are reportedly difficult to access even by the Iraqi Health Ministry," it said. It described shortages of fresh food and cooking oil and said there was serious concern about the cold. Since October, when families first began fleeing Fallujah, temperatures in central Iraq have fallen from around 30 degrees Celsius to 2 degrees and sometimes colder overnight.

Many families fled with the clothes they were wearing and a few personal items, unprepared for the change in weather. "The temperature has dropped, underscoring an urgent need for winterisation items and appropriate shelter," the report said, detailing more than 15,000 families in need of dry food, detergent, winter clothes, blankets, mattresses and heaters.

Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals reportedly delivered around 8000 blankets to refugee camps on November 24, but no further details of the distribution were provided.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Oil right to the Iraqi doorsteps.

Ultra-Modern Public Services

For those who say that the occupation of Iraq didn't come up with brand-new infrastructure facilities to the liberated Iraqi people, for those who whine all the day and night about the lack of public services of Iraq after 20 months of occupation, for those who believe in avant-garde solutions for new trends in supplying Iraqi houses with Oil, ehhmmm, directly...... I have good news for you! When I visited Az-Zubair town (near Basrah) last year, people didn't even have water or electricity. Now, they have crude oil all over the streets!

Some of the news are claiming the real story is that the oil leaked into the town from a nearby pipeline that was damaged by attackers today, creating an Iraqi-Style flood. But this is just some anti-Semitic propaganda, no no I mean, saddamist baathist evil crap. It is important to mention that the frequent attacks on the oil pipes are reducing the size of the Iraqi exports, the thing affecting DICK Cheney's companies' income, in addition to the "Iraqi people".

 

[Barking_Mad]

Anyone wanting to make a donation to help the Iraqi people can do so here

http://civilians.info/iraq/jarrar_family/index.php

 

[Barking_Mad]

Falluja and Mosul bombed amid more violence

US forces have bombed Falluja as well as the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where eight US soldiers have been wounded in clashes with Iraqi fighters. The bombing of Falluja on Sunday took place following skirmishes between US forces and fighters in the eastern parts of the town.

An Iraqi journalist, Fadil al-Badrani, described the clashes as the fiercest in two weeks. Columns of smoke have been seen rising from the areas of al-Askari, al-Shuhada, al-Sinai and al-Jubail, the journalist told Aljazeera. Al-Badrani said explosions have also been heard in several areas of the city.

The Iraqi Red Crescent has been unable to enter the neighbourhoods to distribute medical and food supplies. Al-Badrani said some dead bodies were still lying in the city's streets. Meanwhile, a car bombing has rocked Arbil on Sunday, a city in Iraq's relatively peaceful northern Kurdish region, wounding two people, eyewitnesses said.

Sunday's attack was the first such in the city since 105 people were killed in two attacks in February this year.

 

[Barking_Mad]

BBC web logs

"I've been working with various Danish news agencies this week. I told you in my last log entry about the Iraqi prisoners I interviewed that were tortured and beaten by Iraqi forces. Well, this happened in the areas controlled by Danish and British troops, and there are indications that the international forces knew about these sorts of activities. The reports we've been running in our newspaper caused quite a stir in Denmark, and the minister of defence has been making comments.

So the Danish news organisations have been sending people here and I've been working with them. It has been great, and I'm very pleased the treatment of Iraqis at the hands of Iraqi forces trained by and working closely with the international coalition is becoming a political issue abroad. Human rights are still a massive issue, maybe the main issue here. The regime has changed, but we have some of the same problems. This fills me with dread and regret.

Your readers have been urging me to vote in the January elections after some comments I made in a previous log entry. I would vote, I love the idea of voting and my vote meaning something. But there are no candidates standing in my area that I consider true Iraqis, with Iraq's interests truly at heart. All the main candidates represent groups and organisations that were outside Iraq until very recently. They are funded from abroad and have the interests of the countries they were in during Saddam's rule at heart. How can I vote for them?

I think I have a bleak view of the immediate future here for the people of Basra. There are the usual difficulties with electricity and petrol prices and security, but my main worry is who will come to power and will they do the right thing for Iraqis.

 

[Barking_Mad]

WTF?

6 Court-Martialed for Scrounging Equipment

COLUMBUS, Ohio - At a time when some U.S. troops in Iraq are complaining they have to scrounge for equipment, six Ohio-based reservists were court-martialed for taking Army vehicles abandoned in Kuwait by other units so they could carry out their own unit's mission to Iraq.

The soldiers say they needed the vehicles, and parts stripped from one, to deliver fuel to Iraq, but their former battalion commander said Sunday the troops should at least have returned the vehicles to their original units.

Members of the 656th Transportation Company based in Springfield, west of Columbus, said they needed the equipment to deliver fuel that was needed by U.S. forces in Iraq for everything from helicopters to tanks.

The reservists took two tractor-trailers and stripped parts from a five-ton truck that had been abandoned in Kuwait by other units that had already moved into Iraq, one of the reservists, Darrell Birt of Columbus, told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Birt, a former chief warrant officer, and the others were charged with theft, destruction of Army property and conspiracy to cover up their crimes. Birt said he and two others pleaded guilty and the other three were convicted. All received six-month sentences.

"Nobody ever reported these trucks stolen. The deal was, when you are moving, if it was going to take more than 30 minutes to fix it, you left it," said Birt, who was released in November. "I'm a Christian man and I can't ignore what we did, but it was justified to get us in the fight and to sustain the fight."

Last week, the military said it would not court-martial any of 23 other Army reservists who refused a mission transporting fuel along a dangerous road in Iraq, complaining that their vehicles in poor condition and did not have armor. And on Wednesday, U.S. soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in Kuwait that they have to scrounge in landfills for scrap metal and discarded bullet-resistant glass to provide armor for their vehicles.

The reservists in the 656th Transportation Company had to move their equipment along with the fuel and likely did not have enough vehicles to do so in one trip, their former battalion commander, Lt. Col. Christopher Wicker, said in a telephone interview Sunday.

"That would have required multiple trips back. They do not have many cargo trucks. They are fuel haulers," he told The Associated Press.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq's Northern Oil Exports Resume

Exports from Iraq's northern oil fields resumed Saturday after insurgents last month blew up part of the main pipeline carrying Iraqi crude to Turkey, an official from the state-run Northern Oil Co. said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Seven killed in Baghdad car bomb - 8 US troops die in Al Anbar Province

At least seven people have been killed and 15 injured in a suicide bomb attack on a US military checkpoint in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. This comes on the first anniversary of the capture of Saddam Hussein. A day earlier, eight US marines died in Anbar province, west of Baghdad - the highest US military death toll in a day since last month's Falluja offensive. Iraq's interim president has blamed the dismantling of the army for some of the current problems facing Iraq. Ghazi al-Yawar told the BBC the US and British move after toppling Saddam Hussein had created a security vacuum, but he insisted next month's elections will happen on time.

A bomber blew up his car as he waited to be searched at a checkpoint used by contractors and Iraqis into the government and diplomatic compound known as the Green Zone on Monday, an Iraqi National Guard told AFP news agency. US army Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton said four civilian vehicles were destroyed by the blast. "There were no multinational forces personnel wounded or killed. There were Iraqi casualties," said Lt Col Hutton. Earlier, the US announced at least eight marines were killed in three separate incidents in Anbar, west of Baghdad, on Sunday.

Anbar includes the city of Falluja where US forces launched a major offensive last month. There have been American air strikes and renewed clashes between US troops and insurgents in Falluja over the past 48 hours. The US military said the marines died during "security and stabilisation operations" but it was not immediately clear if the soldiers' deaths were connected to the fighting in Falluja.

Mr Yawar called the current security situation in Iraq terrible in an interview with the BBC's Today programme a year after the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The interim president blamed some of the present difficulties on the American decision to break up Saddam Hussein's entire security apparatus as soon as they had toppled the dictator last year. By a scratch of the pen, he said, many men with a clean record were forced out of the security forces along with the villains.

It left a vacuum which is proving hard to fill as new forces are slowly assembled. It has cost Iraq much needed time, he said. But the president did acknowledge that Iraqis on their own could never have toppled Saddam. Iraq's interim president is confident that the country's own security forces will gain a sufficient grip to allow British and American troops to start pulling out within a year. But he also accuses two of the country's neighbours, Iran and Syria, of condoning or actively supporting insurgents crossing their borders into Iraq. He says their actions are posing another threat to the elections scheduled for 30 January.

 

[Barking_Mad]

...........

Twenty-one die as 'petrol bus' explodes after collision
Twenty-one Iraqis were killed when a bus carrying petrol exploded in a fireball after colliding with a car north-east of Baghdad, a hospital official said today. There were no survivors. The accident happened late yesterday near Jalula, about 80 miles north-east of the capital, according to Dr Ahmed Fouad from the nearby Baqouba hospital where the dead were taken. Fouad said petrol cans carried on the bus exploded when the collision occurred, killing the bus driver and 13 passengers plus seven people in the car.

The suicide bombing in Baghdad is now said to have killed 13 Iraqis.

Mortar fired at British Consulate in Basra

Insurgents fired a mortar round that landed inside the British Consulate compound in the southern city of Basra, causing no injuries or damage, a British Embassy spokeswoman said today. The attack happened at 8.20pm (1720 Irish Time) yesterday in Basra, 340 miles south-east of Baghdad, said spokeswoman Victoria Whitford.

 

[X-77]

refugees returning to fallujah would be at risk of rabies

...due to stray animals feeding on the corpses. Another disturbing article about the fallujah situation.

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.

'Warehouse of bodies'

"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.

Rabies danger

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.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4085109.stm

 

[Barking_Mad]

Still bombing Fallujah........

]Meanwhile, US warplanes pounded, a new, the eastern suburbs of the western Baghdad city of Fallujah, the resistance hub in Al-Anbar, sending columns of black smoke into the sky, reported an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent embedded with the marines. The strikes early Monday followed fierce fighting that killed the eight marines and at least 17 “suspected rebels” [US term for Iraqi fighters] in Al-Anbar since Friday, the US military said, without specifying whether the marines' deaths occurred in Fallujah itself. “Air strikes were called in during escalation of force for troops in contact,” a marine spokesman told AFP Monday.

 

[Barking_Mad]

More fantastic work by private contractors........

Contract Meals Disaster" for Iraqi Prisoners

Rotten food crawling with bugs, traces of rats and dirt. Rancid meats and spoilt food resulting in diarrhea and food poisoning. This is what detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were regularly given to eat by a private contractor in late 2003 and early 2004, causing anger to swell to a furious boil between the U.S. military guards and the prisoners. Foul as the food was, there never was enough. The private contractor, run by an American civilian who was subsequently killed, routinely fell short by hundreds of meals for Abu Ghraib's surging prison population.

When the food did arrive, there were often late and frequently contaminated. Unable to run the prison themselves, the U.S. military hired private translators from Titan, a California-based company, interrogators from CACI, a Virginia-based company, two large and well known military contractors. In addition, they hired a small, virtually unknown contractor from Qatar, to provide food to the inmates.

A shocked Army Major, David Dinenna of the 320 Military Police Battalion, was one of the first to recognize the food problem. In a string of frantic e-mails to commanders during October and November of 2003, he called for assistance from his chain of command while working at the prison.
"Contract meals Disaster," he called it in an October 27 e-mail last year. "That is the best way to describe this issue … As each day goes by, the tension within the prisoner populations increases," he continued. "For the past two days prisoners have been vomiting after they eat."

The food was largely to blame for a November 24, 2003 prison riots in which Army guards shot four detainees after the prisoners failed to comply with commands to stop and disburse. A subsequent Pentagon investigation found that prisoners were not attempting a "mass" escape as first thought.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Dead and Buried

In a small, one-room house in Sadr City lives Sua’ad, a widow with eight young children. “I can do nothing but look at my children and cry,” she says, weeping throughout our conversation. “What are children to do without their father? No matter what I do, things will never be the same again.”

Three months ago Sua’ad’s 30-year-old husband, Abdullah Rahman, was killed after being caught in crossfire between US forces and the Mahdi Army of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. In Sadr City – renamed from Saddam City – the economy is in ruins. Electricity supplies are erratic and the water is so dirty that there are constant outbreaks of cholera, Hepatitis-E and diarrhoea. Like many neighbourhoods across Iraq, Sadr has seen more than its fair share of suffering. This the sort of place where civilian casualty figures, while difficult to monitor, are undoubtedly high.

“His last day he worked his job selling used clothing,” Sua’ad said quietly. Abdullah had come home for his break to eat with his family. He played with his seven-year-old son, then went outside to see what was happening when fighting broke out.He returned shortly thereafter to tell Sua’ad he needed to go to close his small shop. Fighter jets thundered overhead dropping bombs, and small arms fire was audible across the streets.

“His shop is all we have,” explained Sua’ad, “I asked him not to go, but he said he would be right back.” But her husband never came back. Sua’ad’s oldest child, Ahmed, is 14. Their small house is nearly empty. Aside from infrequent hand-outs from neighbours, they have no income.

“He was our father, and we are needing him so much,” she explains holding her arms out while a small child sits in her lap, “He was everything in my life.”

She pauses to catch her breath, but never stops weeping.

“We are living alone now. I have four children with asthma. Sometimes they can’t breathe and I can do nothing for them. All I do is stand with them and cry. He was helping me by taking them to the hospital and bringing the medicines, but now I am knocking on the doors of the neighbours.”

She looks outside as tears run down her cheeks.

“God will revenge the Americans for me. Now I have eight orphans, and I am the ninth. As they make us orphans, God is going to kick them out of our country. My husband did nothing.”

 

[Barking_Mad]

Worth the read.

Muqtada: Elections will Divide Iraqis

Shaikh Abd al-Mahdi al-Karbala'i, representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Karbala, said in his Friday sermon, "We affirm the necessity of holding elections on time, since they are a guarantee of unconstrained sovereignty, and so as to elect a leadership that represents the will of the people, and so as to end the Occupation. At the same time, we insist on the need to hold the elections in a fair and just manner, otherwise they will be fruitless. Indeed, they may backfire on the Iraqi people if there is any cheating or fraud." He added, "We warn against such a consequence, since it will drag the country into a cycle of public disorder and disturbance worse than the present situation, and the people will even lose their confidence in the present leadership." He emphasized that "all must participate, to make the elections a success."

..........

Muqtada also offered to protect Iraq's churches, some of which have been attacked in Baghdad and Mosul. "I am entirely prepared to provide protection to the churches if our Christian brethren want it." He assured them he would not interfere in their affairs: "Rather, the guards would be solely in their service."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Registration only this piece (Washington Post), main points from it......

Iraqi Fighters Keep Up Attacks - Sunni Cleric Says Fallujah Attracted Hundreds of Recruits

BAGHDAD, Dec. 11 -- A series of car bombings, ambushes and assassinations across the country's most restive regions Saturday killed several civilians, police and clerics. An insurgent leader said a day earlier that fighting in the western Iraqi city of Fallujah had drawn hundreds of fighters to rebel ranks. The leader, Abdullah Janabi, 53, a Sunni Muslim cleric from Fallujah who has eluded a dragnet by the U.S. military, vowed Friday in an interview that the fighting in the devastated city on the Euphrates River would continue for months....

.......Fighting has persisted in the corridor of towns from Fallujah west along the Euphrates in Anbar province. The military said a U.S. Marine was killed in fighting there Saturday but provided no details. The clashes have been particularly fierce in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. On Saturday, the Marines said insurgents ambushed them a day earlier, firing rocket-propelled grenades and small arms from the city's hospital and medical college. The Marines returned fire and suffered no casualties, a statement said.

Muthana Assafi, the hospital director, denied there was firing from the hospital building but said insurgents could have operated from the facility's sprawling grounds. "If there are some fighters who use this place to launch mortars or attack the U.S. forces, we wouldn't know about them," he said.

News agencies reported clashes in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, which has become one of the country's most restive locales. A car bomb wounded eight U.S. soldiers, and a U.S. warplane dropped a 500-pound bomb on an insurgent position. In the western town of Hit, along the Euphrates River, gunmen ambushed a minibus carrying members of the Iraqi National Guard, killing seven of them.

Near Kirkuk, a combustible and ethnically divided city with Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen populations, a car bomb wounded two U.S. soldiers and an interpreter. A suspected suicide car bomber wounded two U.S. soldiers in Baiji, and two more were wounded by a roadside bomb outside Hawija, near Kirkuk, the Associated Press reported.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Manipulation of the Blogging World on Iraq?

Joseph Mailander of the Martini Republic weblog has an extremely important posting on Sunday about the dangers of "blog trolling." To "troll" in the world of the internet is to lurk on a discussion board and make deliberately false and inflammatory comments, to which all the other posters feel they must reply, so that it roils the list. There is also a connotation of dishonesty about the troll's real identity. A related practice has been called by Josh Marshall "astroturfing," where a "grass roots" campaign turns out actually to be sponsored by a think tank or corporation. Astroturf is fake grass used in US football arenas. What Mailander is talking about is not really astroturfing, but rather the granting of some individuals a big megaphone.

The MR posting brings up questions about the Iraqi brothers who run the IraqTheModel site. It points out that the views of the brothers are celebrated in the right-leaning weblogging world of the US, even though opinion polling shows that their views are far out of the mainstream of Iraqi opinion. It notes that their choice of internet service provider, in Abilene, Texas, is rather suspicious, and wonders whether they are getting some extra support from certain quarters.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Halliburton hires Colombian mercenaries

A US company has recruited 25 retired Colombian police and army officers to provide security for oil infrastructure in Iraq, according to the newspaper El Tiempo. The officers met in northern Bogota on 2 December with a Colombian colonel, who, on behalf of "Halliburton Latin America," offered them monthly salaries of $7000 to provide security for oil workers and infrastructure in several Iraqi cities, according to one of the men, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"On Friday, 16 Colombians will leave for Iraq with one-year contracts, renewable for six months," the source said. "In addition to the salary of $7000, vacations in Europe every three months and life insurance were offered," he said. The information was confirmed by a Colombian government source, according to El Tiempo, but denied by a Halliburton spokesman in Bogota.

 

[Barking_Mad]

US report says 1 in 6 soldiers in Iraq are suffering from and showing direct signs of stress - Channel 4 news.

Speaking to one former soldier now out of Iraq, he said that he cant stand to be stuck in an everyday traffic jams or hear car horns due to the attacks he suffered in Iraq whilst working on convoys. He was refused discharge from the US army and when he checked himself into a civilian hospital the US army court marshalled him.

Another US soldier took his sister to a stream back where he lived and told her he was going to hang himself, showing her the tree. He said, "Dont you understand, your brother is a murderer." He had told his sister was ordered to shoot 2 unarmed Iraqi soldiers. He shot one in the eye, one in the throat. The US military found 'no evidence' of his claims.

Later, true to his word he hung himself, he was just 23.



Poor bastard.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Baghdad: Iraqi insurgents attack US supply convoy

Iraqi insurgents attacked a nine-truck convoy supplying US forces in the town of Garma, near the capital Baghdad, on Monday. The drivers of the trucks are missing. Burning trucks, thick smoke rising over the trucks, shots from the scene, statements by an Iraqi insurgent.

Burning trucks, thick smoke rising over the trucks, shots from the scene, statements by an Iraqi insurgent. A nine-truck convoy supplying the US military in Iraq was attacked on Monday in the town of Garma, near the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, by a group of insurgents who called themselves the "Al-Rahman Army". As the drivers of the trucks are missing, it is believed they have been kidnapped or killed.

Some masked insurgents made several statements at the scene shortly after the attack. Insurgents said that everybody helping the US forces will face such an end, a clear threat to truck drivers.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Pentagon Official Admits Using Terror in Iraq

In a New York Times article, "Terror Command in Falluja Is Half Destroyed, U.S. Says" (Oct. 12), a Pentagon official admitted, in effect, that the American military is using terrorism against the civilian population of Iraq. Regarding the intense bombardment in early October, the official stated coldly: "If there are civilians dying in connection with these attacks, and with the destruction, the locals at some point have to make a decision," he said. "Do they want to harbor the insurgents and suffer the consequences..., or do they want to get rid of the insurgents and have the benefits of not having them there?"

 

[Barking_Mad]

Saddam's Lawyer Says He's on Hunger Strike, Despite US Denial

One of Saddam Hussein's lawyers says the former Iraqi leader is refusing food, despite reports to the contrary. French lawyer Emmanuel Ludot says he wants the International Red Cross to check on Saddam's condition.

Lawyer Emmanuel Ludot says he heard from a colleague in Iraq that Saddam Hussein is on a hunger strike. According to his sources in Iraq, Mr. Ludot says, Saddam stopped eating three days ago, to protest the conditions of his detention, and the fact he cannot meet his family or his lawyers. Mr. Ludot says he will meet with Red Cross officials in Geneva on Wednesday to discuss the situation. He wants the international agency to visit Saddam and several other imprisoned members of his regime in Iraq, and publish a report on their detention.

The Red Cross officials visit Saddam and the other detainees regularly. Its last visit was in November, when, according to Mr. Ludot the officials reported Saddam was in good health. The U.S. military denies Saddam is on a hunger strike. It says eight colleagues who did stop eating have now ended their protests.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq Pipeline Watch

December 10 - late night attack on a twin pipeline in the Riyad area southwest of Kirkuk.

December 7 - attack on pipeline supplying oil from northern Iraq to Baghdad.

December 6 - attack on a pipeline that runs inside an underground oil storage tank 50 miles (80 km) southwest of Kirkuk.

December 6 - attack 10 miles (16 km) south of Samarra on oil pipeline that runs from Bayji to Daura refinery.

 

[ska invita]

keep up the good work BM.... appreciated.

 

[bigfish]

Video: A call to the World in English from the peoples resistance in Iraq

"We are simple people who chose principles over fear."


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7468.htm


Note: the video seems a bit clitchy, but the source file works okay.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Reservists to boost Iraq forces

A total of 900 more Armed Forces reservists are to be drafted in to serve in Iraq, Defence Minister Ivor Caplin has announced. The deployment will boost the number of part-time servicemen and women serving there from 750 to 1,000 by next May. They will be deployed from April 2005 onwards, Mr Caplin said in a written answer in the House of Commons.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi police buses ambushed

INSURGENTS attacked buses carrying Iraqi police from the southern city of Basra to Baghdad today and several police officers were killed, a senior police source said. The source said the police were ambushed near the town of Salman Pak, about 30km south-east of Baghdad, and said a number were dead. "The street is littered with bodies," he said. "Fighting is still going on." Iraq's Interior Ministry had no immediate information on any attack.

Poland to cut its military contingent in Iraq by about one-third

Poland will cut its military contingent in Iraq to 1,700 from 2,500 now from February, Defence Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said on Tuesday.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Shattered gear from Iraq piles up as Army strains to re-equip troops

In muddy gravel lots, along weedy railroad tracks and in grassy fields, the flotsam of war is washing up at a sprawling Army-run repair post: five- and 10-ton trucks, road graders, riverboats, forklifts, coils of tank track, piles of road wheels and Humvees by the score, doors pocked with shrapnel scars, windows riddled with bullet holes or frosted white by explosive heat, their fenders gashed by rocket-propelled grenades, their crews' names still etched on the windshields.

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was confronted by a soldier in Kuwait recently about why soldiers in Iraq had to scrounge for parts, he might have pointed to the Red River Army Depot in Texarkana for the answer. Here, bustling workers struggle through budget limits and a burgeoning repair load to keep the troops equipped.

Twenty-one months after U.S. forces entered Iraq, the Defense Department is only now coming to terms with the equipment shortages caused by the prolonged fighting there. The Pentagon has prepared an unprecedented emergency spending plan totaling nearly $100 billion - as much as $30 billion more than expected as recently as October - senior defense officials and congressional budget aides say. About $14 billion of that would go to repairing, replacing and upgrading an increasingly frayed arsenal.

........The war's length and intensity has clearly left the Army winded. M1 Abrams tanks, which normally accumulate 809 miles a year, are averaging 3,600 in Iraq, said Modell Plummer, director of sustainment for the Army's logistical staff. Bradley fighting vehicles, designed to run 872 miles a year, are also traveling 3,600, as they escort water and food convoys across the country. Humvees, accustomed to doing 2,640 miles a year, are seeing 7,400.