*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[stevendurrant]

I hope the possibility of a civil war won't occur.

I thought that if a government was at war with an opposing guerilla force, that was a civil war.

I get your point on ethnic / "religious" civil war.

But the only reason it isnt described as CW already is coporate / establishment denial.

 

[Barking_Mad]

updates.

Insurgents Ambush 50-Strong Iraqi Police Convoy
Police said insurgents attacked a police convoy Thursday between Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, and the capital. Police initially feared 36 were missing but reduced the number as some began returning to Diwaniya.

Army investigates non-combat death of Oregon Guard soldier
Warren was found dead Monday in Kirkuk, Iraq, said Mike Cummings, a representative of the family. Cummings said he couldn't disclose further details.

CIA Ordered to Turn Over Prisoner Records
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the CIA to comply with the Freedom of Information Act and turn over to watchdog groups records concerning the treatment of prisoners in Iraq.

Two Iraqi policemen in Baquba
Two Iraqi policemen and a soldier were ambushed and killed in two attacks in the city of Baquba, local police said on Wednesday.

Five Iraqis shot dead
Four civilians were killed Wednesday in a drive-by shooting in Iskandariyah south of Baghdad, police said. The motive was unclear.

Electricity was top concern for Iraqi voters
When millions of Iraqis braved violence Sunday to elect a National Assembly charged with crafting a new constitution, they also elected local assemblies in hopes of getting something far simpler: electricity.

Marines come up short on recruits
For the first time in nearly a decade, the Marine Corps missed its monthly recruiting goal in January in what military officials said was the latest troubling indicator of the Iraq war's impact on the armed services.

Mosul Police Chief aids in release of 84 detainees
Maj. Gen. Ahmad Kalif Mohammed Al Jaburi, the Chief of Police in Mosul, was able to negotiate the release of 84 individuals from the custody of Multi-National Forces in northern Iraq yesterday.

Booby Trapped car blast wounds civilian in Basra
A civilian wounded in a booby trapped car blast in the heart of Basra Thursday, said a spokesman for the Basra Police.

Officer killed, policeman injured in Samawah
A police officer was killed Thursday in Samawah south of the Iraq and a policeman was wounded during an attack by unkown gunmen, eyewitnesses said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Kurdish party says self-rule inevitable

Kurdish self-rule is inevitable if not imminent, according to Kurdistan Democratic Party chief Masud Barzani. Commenting on an almost unanimous vote for independence in an unofficial referendum held on 30 January, Masud Barzani said on Wednesday that "when the right time comes it will become a reality". "Self-determination is the natural right of our people, and they have the right to express their desires," he added.

Barzani heads one of the two main Kurdish groups which control Iraq's northern Kurdish zone. The KDP leader was speaking three days after more than 1.9 million Iraqi Kurds - some 95% of those asked - voted for independence in an informal survey conducted by volunteers. Iraqi Kurds have long pushed for independence, but Turkey, Iran and Syria - all with substantial Kurdish minorities - oppose the establishment of Kurdish state on their borders.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Rumsfeld offered to quit over abuse

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said he twice offered his resignation to President George Bush over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, but both times was asked to stay in the job.

Photographs of US personnel sexually humiliating and physically abusing prisoners at the jail on the outskirts of Baghdad surfaced in April, triggering global condemnation and calls for Rumsfeld to quit.

"I submitted my resignation to President Bush twice during that period and told him that ... I felt that he ought to make the decision as to whether or not I stayed on. And he made that decision and said he did want me to stay on," Rumsfeld said

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.S. National Guard Misses Recruiting Goal 2nd Straight Quarter

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Army National Guard, which supplies about 40 percent of the troops in Iraq, missed its first- quarter recruiting goal by about 20 percent, its second straight shortfall, National Guard commanders told lawmakers today.

Lieutenant General Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said the guard still can meet its recruitment goal of 350,000 by the end of the government's fiscal year in September. In the quarter ended Dec. 31, 70,000 new recruits signed up. The guard has increased its corps of recruiters to 2,700, he said.

The U.S. Army National Guard is ``facing daunting but not insurmountable challenges,'' Blum said at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee for military personnel.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Allawi's government decried as corrupt

A top Shia leader tipped to become Iraq's next prime minister has branded Iyad Allawi's interim government as the most corrupt in the country's history. A close confidant of Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, Husain Shahristani lashed out at the Allawi government and singled out defence minister Hazim Shaalan as the main offender....

"The fact that the minister of defence, on the day there were four suicide bombings in the capital, spends all his day at the airport trying to take a few hundred million dollars in cash out of the country before the elections doesn’t speak very well for the government's performance." Shahristani, formerly a nuclear scientist who spent 10 years in the Abu Ghraib prison, vowed the next government would review all suspect contracts made under the Allawi cabinet.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Very interesting piece about the fairness of the Iraqi elections by Julian Manyon, one of the very few journalists who actually bother to say anything worthwhile.

Ligitimate Elections?

....There is also another wide range of factors which are actually preventing journalists from covering this election properly, and one of those factors, for example, is the way in which the American handlers who are actually running the Ministry of Information's affairs here in real terms, have designed the whole thing. I would say that along with the violence, it is just as serious an impediment for journalists.

Why, for example, we've been limited to filming at only five polling stations, and we discovered when the list of the five polling stations was published that four of those five polling stations are actually in Shia areas, and therefore by definition will shed very little light on whether Sunnis vote or not.

SWEENEY: All right.

MANYON: The pictures of people voting will be there, but perhaps the truth of what is going on won't.

SWEENEY: OK. I'd like to expand on that in a moment, but just another question, Julian. Do you expect this election to be any kind of a watershed for journalists in terms of their ability to cover this story, in terms of the security situation, in terms of what we can expect from the new Iraqi government?

MANYON: Well, I mean, yes, it's a watershed. I don't think there's ever been an election like this. One can say in a way it's exhilarating, because Iraqis are being given the chance to vote. On the other hand, it's deeply disturbing for a whole raft of reasons, including the ones I have mentioned.

And going beyond that, it's disturbing quite frankly because it's very difficult to see how these elections can live up to international standards in terms of dispassionate supervision and policing of the polls. There are no international observers out there for the same reason that there are very few journalists out there. And the journalists that are, I suppose, one has to say either courageous or mad enough to get in their cars and try to do something are only going to see a small fraction of what is going on.

I mean, we've got a situation in Mosul, for example, where American troops, we now discover because the Iraqi employees of the election organization have deserted en masse, it's American soldiers who will be transporting the ballot boxes around when they are full of votes. This is really very far from ideal, and if it were happening in any other country - - I mean, one could mention Ukraine, for example -- there would be a wild chorus of international protest.

These are the sorts of things really that make this a watershed, and it's going to be very interesting to see how it pans out in the next few days, both in terms of what happens and in terms of whether journalists are actually satisfactorily able to give the world a dispassionate view of whether these elections are credible or not.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq officials admit irregularities in poll

Tens of thousands of Iraqis - mainly Sunni Arabs - may have been denied their right to vote on Sunday because of insufficient ballots and polling centres, Iraqi officials have said. Officials began compiling election results from around the country on Tuesday, but they said many citizens arrived late on Sunday to find ballot sheets had run out, possibly skewing results.

If true, the allegation that many voters were turned away could further alienate Sunnis who already say that they have been left out of the political process. Iraq's interim President Ghazi al-Yawir said extra ballots had to be supplied to Iraq's third city of Mosul, which is mainly Sunni Arab, after twice running out on election day.

"Also, tens of thousands were unable to cast their votes because of the lack of ballots in Basra, Baghdad, and Najaf," said al-Yawir.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqis Voting for "Freedom From Foreign Occupation" - Robert Fisk

They were coming to vote because al-Sistani told them to. “We're coming to vote because we weren't allowed to do so before. We're coming to vote because we want the Americans to leave.”

Now it is all very well for the American media that they came to vote for democracy. They probably did. But they also came because they think and believe and are convinced of the fact that by voting that they'll have a free country without an occupation force. If they are denied this, if they feel they are betrayed that their vote is worth nothing, of course a different question arises. What will they think of democracy and will they join the insurgency? The Kurds, of course, voted for their own autonomy and they are the most pro-American of all Iraqis and in a sense, you see, although they voted in the Iraqi election, they were in a sense trying to continue to vote themselves out of Iraq. The more autonomy they had, and the flags you saw in the streets were Kurdistan not Iraqi, the nearer they are to the independents which Kurdish people have been demanding for so many decades. Indeed at least 200 years.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Worth reading.

What They’re Not Telling You About the “Election”

....But this isn’t the most important misrepresentation the mainstream media committed. What they also didn’t tell you was that of those who voted, whether they be 35% or even 60% of registered voters, were not voting in support of an ongoing US occupation of their country.

In fact, they were voting for precisely the opposite reason. Every Iraqi I have spoken with who voted explained that they believe the National Assembly which will be formed soon will signal an end to the occupation. And they expect the call for a withdrawing of foreign forces in their country to come sooner rather than later. This causes one to view the footage of cheering, jubilant Iraqis in a different light now, doesn’t it?

But then, most folks in the US watching CNN, FOX, or any of the major networks won’t see it that way. Instead, they will hear what Mr. Bush said, “The world is hearing the voice of freedom from the center of the Middle East,” and take it as fact because most of the major media outlets aren’t scratching beneath film clips of joyous Iraqi voters over here in the land of daily chaos and violence, no jobs, no electricity, little running water and no gasoline (for the Iraqis anyhow).

And Bush is portrayed by the media as the bringer of democracy to Iraq by the simple fact that this so-called election took place, botched as it may have been. Appearances suggest that the majority Shia in Iraq now finally get their proportional representation in a “government.” Looks good on paper. But as you continue reading, the seemingly altruistic reasons for this election as portrayed by the Bush Administration and trumpeted by most mainstream media are anything but.

.....Now the question remains, what happens when the National Assembly is formed and over 100,000 US soldiers remain on the ground in Iraq with the Bush Administration continuing in its refusal to provide a timetable for their removal?

What happens when Iraqis see that while there are already four permanent US military bases in their country, rather than beginning to disassemble them, more bases are being constructed, as they are, by Cheney’s old company Halliburton, right now?

 

[Barking_Mad]

The Tsunami of Iraq

The morgues at the hospitals of Baghdad are filling to capacity. At Yarmouk Hospital in central Baghdad, the three freezers reek of decaying bodies, despite the temperature. The smell rushes out at us as the doors are opened. I’ve smelled the burning bodies on the funeral pires in Nepal…but this is different. This smell…how do I describe it? But it never leaves me, long after we leave the hospital later.

Many of the bodies are from Fallujah, obviously picked off the streets-parts of which are eaten by dogs. The bodies from Fallujah have the typical oddly discolored skin, along with other abnormalities. I walk out of the first freezer straight into a metal pole. Two of the people with me, including Abu Talat, make sure I’m ok as I stand there stunned…I didn’t even feel the pole, just that it stopped me from proceeding to the next freezer.

Bodies are piled into the freezers and most are uncovered, but not all. The hardest visuals to get out of my head are those of the eyes. The doctor with us says that most of the bodies have been shot…and are not from Fallujah. The violence against Iraqis continues unabated…worsening by the day.

I do my job…taking photo after photo of the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Many of the bodies are so old they are shrinking into themselves. After the last cooler, we start to walk away. I am spitting, trying to get the smell to leave me…Abu Talat is staring off into distance. After I gag, the hospital worker who accompanied us to the coolers walks towards me with a small vial of scent, and begins rolling it across my upper lip.

“Shukran jazeelan (thank you very much),” I tell him, then he proceeds to do the same for Abu Talat, then we walk on. We talk with the doctor more as we shuffle along. “The morgues in all the hospitals are filling with bodies everyday, most of them shot by soldiers,” she says, “But also from crime and accidents. So many dead civilians.”

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq oil pipeline suffers new sabotage

Two bombs hit pipeline linking Baiji refinery north of Baghdad to Dura refinery in capital. An oil pipeline linking two of Iraq's major refineries was attacked Wednesday near the restive Sunni city of Samarra north of Baghdad, police and oil sources said.

The pipeline linking the Baiji refinery north of Baghdad to the Dura refinery in the capital was hit by two bombs which exploded and caused a fire, police lieutenant colonel Mahmud Mohammed said. An official at the Baiji refinery said the pipeline was one of eight conveying oil to Baghdad.

"The sabotaged pipeline has a capacity of 7,000 barrels per day," Majid Mamnul said, without specifying the extent of damage or how long repairs would take.

The cluster of pipelines, a crucial source of power for the capital, has been targeted by relentless attacks, which are an important part of the insurgency's activities and have slowed the country's recovery. According to Finance Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, attacks on the country's oil infrastructure have cost Iraq seven to eight billion dollars in exports since the March 2003 US-led invasion.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Crash witnesses offer little sympathy

IRAQI witnesses described yesterday how the British Hercules brought down over farmland northwest of Baghdad exploded in the air, sending burning debris flying across fields. They also told how local people plundered the crash scene, with some men taking guns from the wreckage. None of the witnesses had seen or heard any missiles before seeing parts of the aircraft falling from the sky — but they said they were so used to hearing explosions in the volatile area that they would probably not have given them a second thought.

The Ministry of Defence has yet to say what caused the C130 to crash, killing all ten servicemen on board, on as it approached the US air base at Balad, about 25 miles from Baghdad. Yesterday investigators were still at the scene, which has been sealed by Iraqi and American troops. Abu Qusay, a local car mechanic, said that his apprentice had alerted him to a low-flying plane exploding in mid-air. “He said, ‘Look, boss’, and I saw burning parts scattered across the sky, flying in different directions and covering a wide area,” he told The Times. The flaming wreckage appeared to be raining down near a farming village called Sabi el-Bour, and many of the locals rushed to the scene to make sure relatives living there were safe.

Amjad, a neighbour of Abu Qusay’s, ran to the crash scene and saw groups of people wandering among the twisted metal and burning cargo. “Two men found two pistols and took them away. They were very happy,” he said. “We left the area after people started saying there would be other explosions as the munitions caught fire, and they could go off at any time. I saw two burnt bodies mixed with the debris and burnt cargo.” Amjad was also afraid that American troops would come and round them up, so he fled. Less than an hour later, US troops arrived and sealed off the area. The area is a known hotbed of Sunni guerrillas, many of them former noncommissioned officers who were granted parcels of farmland there by Saddam Hussein in return for their service.

Locals said there had been no raids since the crash, just lots of American helicopters patrolling the skies and many US troops searching the area using mechanical diggers. One local policeman, Sergeant Mahmoud Abed, said he heard the explosion but had been ordered by his superiors not to investigate. My boss told me to carry on as usual. We leave all that to the Americans,” he said. There was little sympathy for the British servicemen among a hostile local populace, many of whom handed out orange juice to passers-by in celebration of the crash.

“They deserve it, they used to provoke us by flying very low,” said one man changing oil at the garage. He pointed to an electricity pylon to show the height at which coalition aircraft often fly. “We can’t sleep at night for the noise,” he said. Coalition helicopters do fly extremely low to prevent guerrillas from targeting them from a distance. Much of the transport is made at night because insurgents have brought down a number of aircraft flying in daylight.

 

[nino_savatte]

Kurdish party says self-rule inevitable

The KDP has always been the 'Barzani' Party.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Talabani demands top job in Iraqi government

Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani on Thursday complicated efforts to negotiate a share-out of top posts in Iraq by insisting he wanted to be president or prime minister. Talabani also said that the future of the northern city of Kirkuk, which is not part of the Kurdish autonomous region, would play a key role in any alliance talks with other Iraqi parties.

"I am the candidate for the Kurdish democratic list for one of the two posts of responsibility," Talabani told reporters after a meeting with the other main Kurdish leader, Massud Barzani. The count from Sunday's historic election has not been completed but talks are already underway between rival parties. Leaders from the majority Shiite Muslim community have said they expect to provide the prime minister, who will lead the government, with a Sunni Muslim president.

The Sunni community has fueled Iraq's insurgency and concerns abound about how to win the minority religious group's full backing of the next government. Sunni political figures greeted the news with a wait- and- see attitude. Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), formed an alliance for the national vote held on Sunday. They are expected to easily win the vote in the autonomous Kurdish region where the population also chose three provincial councils and an assembly for the autonomous region.

Barzani will be the sole candidate for head of the regional Kurdish government, which takes in the provinces of Sulaimaniyah, controlled by the PUK, and Arbil and Dohuk, which are under his party's control.

"The question of joining the city of Kirkuk to Kurdistan will be primordial in negotiations for any alliance with another Iraqi political force," said Talabani. Kurdish leaders cherish the dream of making the key oil city, which lies just south of the autonomous region, part of northern Kurdistan.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Militants kill policeman, bomb mosque in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Feb 4 (KUNA) -- An Iraqi policeman was killed Friday morning when an explosive canister blew up a police patrol in Ghazalia, western Baghdad, while at dawn unknown militants bombed a mosque in Hurriya, also in western Baghdad. An Iraqi police source told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that one policeman was killed in patrol bombing, adding that the patrol was on its regular round of the area.

On the mosque bombing, witnesses told KUNA that unknown militants attacked the Shiite Tawheed Mosque in Dibash, Hurriya, and planted three bombs. Police forces were able to defuse one bomb but the other two went off, they added, noting that no injuries were sustained by those in the area.

 

[Barking_Mad]

What a lovely chap

US 'war is fun' general rebuked

The US Marine Corps has publicly upbraided one of its generals for his comments describing shooting people in Iraq as "fun". Discussing fighting in Iraq, the General said he liked brawling and enjoyed shooting people.

The Marine Corps said Lt Gen James Mattis had been "counselled" concerning his remarks, made during a panel discussion in California. The general had agreed he should have chosen his words more carefully. Gen Mattis is a hardened veteran of combat and appears to have developed a taste for it. During the discussion, he spoke of his experience fighting in Iraq as commander of the 1st Marine Division.

Caught on tape, he said: "Actually, it's quite a lot of fun to fight; you know, it's a hell of a hoot. I like brawling; it's fun to shoot some people."

In the context of Afghanistan, he said men who slapped around women for not wearing a veil had no manhood and it was fun to shoot them. The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen Mike Hagee, later issued a statement saying he had counselled Gen Mattis on his remarks. The statement praised Gen Mattis as a brave and brilliant military leader and it seems there will be no disciplinary action.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Baghdad, the city that dreams of death

Dreams may not dominate the lives of every Iraqi, but death does. So I finished my day yesterday by making my now familiar pilgrimage to the place of death, the evil smelling city morgue. This, of course, is a place of bodies and statistics, if only the Americans and their appointed government cared enough about Iraqis to calculate what these numbers are. Yesterday I came across a distraught family whose son had just been shot dead. "He was the driver of the deputy minister of health," his uncle said. "He just turned up as usual to drive him to work and there were gunmen waiting and they shot him dead."

There was no news of this and again, one must use the phra*se "of course" on Iraqi radio or any television channel. On Tuesday, a husb and and wife and their daughter were brought to the morgue, all killed by gun shots. No one amid the morticians knew who killed them. But it was the sheer extent of death by violence which was so shocking.

Yesterday, 23 bodies were brought to the morgue. There were 22 brought in on Tuesday. A week and a half ago, on just one day, almost 80 cadavers arrived; on another day 50. Even at the rate of 20 a day, a very conservative figure, this means that in Baghdad alone, 140 civilians are being killed every week, 560 a month. Again, there has been no news of this.

During the three election days, when driving in the city was prohibited, the figures dipped. But now they are back to normal. So what is one to make of the tears and grief and shouting in the funeral yard where the corpses, boxed in cheap wooden coffins from the mosques, are taken away by families on the backs of battered, white pickup trucks.

In the morgue, you could hear more explosions thundering over Baghdad. Mortars? Bombs? Some families were so angry they could not express their thoughts, let alone the details of the dead, through their anger and weeping. It was enough, you might say, to make a man dream dreams and think he was already dead.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Sadr demands date for US pullout

Shiite rebel cleric belittles Iraq’s vote, calls on religious leaders to insist on timetable for US-led troop withdrawal. Shiite rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr called Friday on his community's senior religious leaders to insist on a timeline for a US troop withdrawal and belittled last week's historic vote.

"This is a message from Sayed Moqtada. I call on all religious and political powers that pushed towards the elections and took part in them to issue an official statement calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq," Sayed Hashim Abu Ragheef told faithful gathered for Friday prayers in the Shiite city of Kufa. The firebrand cleric gave notice that he would no longer hold his tongue about political developments in Iraq after keeping quiet for months, according to a statement Ragheef read from Sadr to thousands of worshippers.

"I stood aside for the elections and did not stand against them as I did not want to show disobedience toward the Marjaiyah (senior clerics). I did not join these elections so that I wouldn't be one of the West's pawns.

"The West is so proud that they have held the elections but I would ask: who is responsible for the blood that day?" he asked.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Supporters of radical cleric 'win province'

Followers of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are poised to win control of a province in Iraq, according to predicted election results. Candidates supporting the cleric - whose militia fought against British troops - appear set to win Maysan province in Shia-dominated south-east Iraq. They are also expected to do well in nearby provinces, including Basra. A senior British officer in Basra said: "We have to live with it."

Last year coalition forces fought Moqtada's Mahdi Army when it staged a revolt and tried to take over the Imam Ali shrine in the holy city of Najaf. In August British troops seized the head offices of his movement in Basra. He did not stand in the election, but he ran a list of individual supporters. First results of provincial council elections are expected today. The national assembly result is expected to be declared next Thursday, the Muslim New Year.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Allawi faces defeat as Iraqi cleric's team leads the polls

The coalition of Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi interim Prime Minister appointed by the Americans, is heading for election defeat at the hands of a list backed by the country's senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, partial results released yesterday indicate.

The results from Baghdad - where Mr Allawi was expected to do well - show the one-time CIA protégé with only 140,364 votes compared to 350,069 for the alliance, which is headed by a Shia cleric who lived in Iran for many years.

Among the mostly five Shia provinces tallied so far, the alliance's lead is even wider. It has 1.1 million of the 1.6 million votes counted at 10 per cent of polling centres in the capital and the Shia south. Mr Allawi's list was second with 360,500.

"Large numbers of Shia voted along sectarian lines," said Sharif Ali bin Hussein, head of the Constitutional Monarchy Party. "Americans are in for a shock. A lot of people in the country are going to wake up in shock."

Safwat Rashid, a member of Iraq's Independent Election Commission, and international poll officials warned observers not to read too much into the numbers, which did not include Sunni or Kurdish provinces. The list of Ayatollah Sistani, who did not run for election, had been expected to do extremely well. It remains to be seen, however, whether it will obtain more than 50 per cent of the seats in the 275-member parliament.

Mr Rashid said the vote total would not be known for another 10 days, although numbers from polling the Iraqi diaspora abroad had been ratified. About 170,000 ballots were cast, with 44 per cent voting for the Sistani list, 18 per cent for the Kurdish list, 12 per cent for Mr Allawi's list and 8 per cent for the main Christian Iraqi list.

Mr Rashid said the Baghdad numbers came from "mixed" neighbourhoods. Many analysts have concluded that Mr Allawi performed so poorly there and other parts of the Shia south, where he hoped to make a stronger second-place showing, that he has little chance of working his way back as prime minister. Given the extent to which the US and Britain built up Mr Allawi, his removal would be seen as a serious blow.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi villagers kill 5 insurgents

The residents of a small Iraqi village have killed five insurgents who had attacked them for voting in last weekend's national elections. Several other insurgents were also wounded. The insurgents raided the village of al-Mudhiryah south of Baghdad after warning its inhabitants not to vote in the election.

The villagers fought back, killing five of the insurgents and wounding eight others. The insurgents' cars were then set alight. Al-Mudhiryah's tribal sheikh says his people are sick of being threatened by Islamic extremists.

 

[Barking_Mad]

College shuts down student GOP fund-raiser

MILWAUKEE -- Marquette University has shut down a fund-raiser by Republican students for "Adopt a Sniper," a group of police and military sharpshooters raising money for their U.S. counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Jesuit school said the wording on some of the signs and merchandise for sale at the student booth was bothersome, particularly the slogan, "1 Shot, 1 Kill, No Remorse, I Decide."

"In the context of the university's Jesuit, Catholic mission, we could not allow fund raising in the student union for a group whose rhetoric regarding 'snipers' could be widely misinterpreted as having a cavalier attitude toward the taking of a human life," the university said in a statement Wednesday.

The College Republicans had received approval from the Jesuit school to set up a table at the Alumni Memorial Union where they could sell bracelets and other trinkets to raise funds for the troops abroad.

The students then chose to promote the Pulaski-based sniper group.

"We thought that it was the most direct possible way to help the troops," said Brandon Henak, the student group's chairman. "What really touched us and was one of the big deciding factors on choosing them was the fact that they give (the snipers) the very body armor that enables them to stay safe."

Posted on the "Adopt a Sniper" Web site are thank-you letters from U.S. sharpshooters abroad and a list of items - everything from rifle accessories to knives to Black Hawk strike gear. Supporters can make cash donations or buy a memento such as an Adopt a Sniper Challenge Coin for $15 or an Adopt a Sniper bracelet for $20.

 

[Barking_Mad]

History repeating.....

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here. Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the White House would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military candidates, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president, and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, the candidate for vice president.

A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

Few members of that junta are still around, most having been ousted or exiled in subsequent shifts of power.

Significance Not Diminished

The fact that the backing of the electorate has gone to the generals who have been ruling South Vietnam for the last two years does not, in the Administration's view, diminish the significance of the constitutional step that has been taken.

The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a confidence and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That hope could have been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating widespread scorn or a lack of interest in constitutional development, or by the Vietcong's disruption of the balloting.

American officials had hoped for an 80 per cent turnout. That was the figure in the election in September for the Constituent Assembly. Seventy-eight per cent of the registered voters went to the polls in elections for local officials last spring.

Before the results of the presidential election started to come in, the American officials warned that the turnout might be less than 80 per cent because the polling place would be open for two or three hours less than in the election a year ago. The turnout of 83 per cent was a welcome surprise. The turnout in the 1964 United States Presidential election was 62 per cent.

Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious concern among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to render the election meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging from the reports from Saigon.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Eight Iraqi Soldiers Killed as Violence Simmers

Attacks by insurgents against foreign and Iraqi security forces may have slowed slightly since the election but a steady drumbeat of violence has continued. Police said four Iraqi Army soldiers were killed by a bomb in the southern city of Basra, which has been relatively peaceful compared with the rest of Iraq.

Four other Iraqi servicemen died in three separate incidents in Samarra in the restive Sunni triangle region north of Baghdad, hospital sources and the Iraqi military said. More than 20 Iraqi police and soldiers have been killed since the election. Civilian casualties also continued to climb. Two children playing outside their home were killed when a land mine exploded, and a local government official was assassinated in a drive-by shooting in the Adel area in western Baghdad.

The U.S. army said two U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb while patrolling in armored Humvees near Baiji, north of Tikrit, on Friday. Four other soldiers were wounded.

Roadside bomb kills 4 Iraqi soldiers in Basra

BASRA, Iraq, Feb 5 (Reuters) - A roadside bomb blast killed four Iraqi soldiers and wounded three in the southern city of Basra on Saturday, Iraqi officers said. British forces sealed off the site after the blast. Insurgents fighting Iraq's U.S.-backed government have frequently targeted Iraqi security forces as well as foreign troops.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Shia candidates lead Iraqi poll

Officials say about 60% of Iraqis voted in Sunday's election. Latest partial results show Iraq's main Shia Muslim coalition has maintained a strong lead in the country's landmark elections, officials say. The results are based on 35% of the ballots cast last weekend. The United Alliance list, backed by Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has polled 2.2 million votes out of the 3.3 million counted so far.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Sunni clerics want troops withdrawal timetable for drafting constitution

BAGHDAD - Iraq’s leading Sunni religious authority on Saturday made its participation in the upcoming constitution-drafting process conditional on the announcement of a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The Committee of Muslim Scholars’ spokesman, Omar Ragheb, was speaking to the press after its chairman Hareth al-Dari met US Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special envoy in Iraq, Ashraf Qazi.

“Qazi asked the Committee to take part in drafting the constitution. We told him that we had conditions and that we would discuss them with the parties that boycotted the polls and would put forward a common stance,” he said.

“These demands focus on reaching a consensus with all political parties on a withdrawal of foreign forces,” Ragheb said.

The spokesman of the organisation, which is also known as the Ulema Committee and was one of the leading forces that opposed last Sunday’s general elections, hinted that the influential grouping of clerics could then weigh on the insurgency to end the bloodshed which has marred Iraq’s reconstruction.

“Then, the country’s elders will tell the resistance: “No need to spill more blood,” Ragheb said.

According to many observers, much of the success of the post-election period, during which parliament will have to draft a permanent constitution for the country, will depend on the level of involvement of the Sunni community. Turnout in the landmark January 30 elections was the lowest in Iraq’s Sunni areas, either out of fear of reprisals from extremist Sunni Arab groups or because of calls by the Muslim Scholars and other Sunni organisations for a boycott of the polls.

 

[bigfish]

Vietnam 1967 & Iraq 2005: using elections to justify criminal wars

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/viet-f05.shtml

By Bill Van Auken
5 February 2005

Voters turned out in unexpectedly high numbers, defying terrorists in an act of collective bravery that marked a historic triumph in the struggle for democracy and a turning point in the long and bloody US military operation thousands of miles from American shores.

Iraq, January 2005? No, this was the story pitched by the government and the US media to the American public more than 37 years ago after the people of South Vietnam went to the polls in an election engineered by Washington to legitimize its imperialist intervention in that country.

While the differences between Vietnam and Iraq are many, the similarities between the way in which Washington organized, manipulated and exploited elections in both countries to further its own strategic aims are all too evident.

“US encouraged by Vietnam Vote,” was the headline of the New York Times September 4, 1967, the day after the ballots were cast.

“United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of the turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.”

Washington and its puppet regime claimed an 83 percent turnout among the 5.85 million South Vietnamese registered voters.

“The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the national election,” the Times added.

The day after the vote, the administration of US President Lyndon Johnson hailed the election as a “major step forward,” declaring that the South Vietnamese people had expressed their democratic will and “deserve our support.”

Substituting the word “Iraq” for “Vietnam,” the same news stories, editorials and speeches could have been dusted off this past week and reused virtually unchanged.

In her incisive 1972 book on the US intervention in Vietnam, Fire in the Lake, Frances Fitzgerald commented on the way in which the Johnson administration and the media presented the Vietnamese election to the American people:

“The message, as received by the American public, was that the United States was generously bringing all the virtues of its own political system to this underdeveloped country, that it was creating a democracy to win the Vietnamese people away from Communist totalitarianism. So clear was the message that none of the distinguished Americans arriving to view the elections remembered that the embassy and the Ky government agreed to elections in the first place only under the threat of defection of the entire northern half of the country and total anarchy in Saigon.”

 

[Barking_Mad]

More than 20 bodies of convoy drivers found near Baghdad

BAGHDAD - The bodies of more than 20 Iraqi drivers and security forces from a convoy of government trucks carrying sugar were found on Thursday south of Baghdad, police said. The drivers had all been burned in their vehicles. Police said they believed the convoy was attacked at least two days ago but the bodies left to rot. “This morning a police patrol was in the Suwairah region and found about 20 vehicles that were taking sugar to Baghdad. They were all burned,” said a police official. Suwairah is about 60 kilometers (38 miles) south of Baghdad. As well as the drivers, two policemen and two soldiers who were protecting the convoy were also killed, the official told AFP. “The bodies were rotting in the vehicles which indicates the attack was at least two days ago,” he added.

At least 12, including two US troops, die in Iraq attacks

Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi journalist for a US-funded Arabic television station and his young son in one of a number of attacks across the country that left at least nine people dead. The US military also reported the death of two more US soldiers. Abdel Hussein Khazaal, a correspondent for the Al-Hurra pan-Arab television station was shot dead as he left his home in the southern city of Basra, a provincial government official said, accordingto AFP. Khazaal's four year-old son was also killed and his driver injured. Four gunmen were waiting in a car outside the home of Khazaal, who also worked for the governor's press service and was a member of the Shiite political party Dawa, the official said. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb hit a police convoy near the northern town of Samarra, killing four and injuring two others, police said.

Two Iraqi soldiers and an armed man were killed overnight during a raid on the town of Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad. A civilian was killed in a mortar attack on a police station at Baiji, 200 kilometres north of Baghdad, police said. The US army said its troops killed an "insurgent" near Balad, north of the capital, as he planted a roadside bomb late Tuesday. The US military on Wednesday also declared that one soldier was shot dead Tuesday and that another soldier was killed by small arms fire in the northern city of Mosul on Sunday. Meanwhile, the oil ministry's representative to the interior ministry, Colonel Riad Allawi, was kidnapped in southern Baghdad, officials said.

Marines revoking 11 Purple Hearts that officials say were given out by mistake

Marine Cpl. Travis Eichelberger received a Purple Heart after he was crushed under a 67-ton Abrams tank in Iraq. Now, nearly two years later, the honor is being revoked because his injuries weren't caused by hostile or combat action, as required under military rules. Eichelberger is among 11 Marines who were notified recently that their Purple Hearts were awarded by mistake and were being taken away. Charles Mugno, head of the Marine Corps Awards Branch, said Eichelberger and the other Marines were among the first wave of casualties to return from Iraq. There was a rush to honor them, but there was also confusion about whether the Marines were wounded in a combat zone or by hostile action, he said.

Eichelberger, 22, was sleeping in a shallow foxhole in the sand on the second day of the Iraq war when a tank driven by another American accidentally rolled onto him.``If I really don't deserve it, I don't want it. But the problem is that they decided to give them to us,'' he said in Wednesday's edition of The Kansas City Star. Eichelberger suffered a crushed pelvis, shredded internal organs and legs that swelled to twice their normal size. The medal was pinned to Eichelberger's hospital gown at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. After he was released, he came home to a hero's welcome.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Gunmen kidnap 20 policemen south of Baghdad

The Minister of State for National Security Affairs Qasem Dawood told journalists that 20 insurgents were killed and 21 others arrested. Meanwhile 20 bodies of insurgents who were killed during clashes with the Iraqi police yesterday were buried today, said the source adding that the funeral was surrounded by scores of gunmen who carried machineguns escorting the bodies to their resting places.

Violence kills more than 50 in Iraq

The biggest attack occurred in Salman Pak, 12 miles southeast of Baghdad, when insurgents attacked Iraqi policemen who came to look for weapons, showering them with machine-gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds, police said. Iraq’s Interior Ministry said 14 policemen were killed, 65 were wounded and six were missing after the two-hour gunbattle. Four insurgents also died in the fighting, the ministry said. American troops evacuated some of the wounded, the U.S. command said, and residents said American helicopters were prowling the skies. ‘‘We were on patrol to search for weapons,’’ wounded policeman Waad Jassim said from his hospital bed. ‘‘When we arrived, they opened heavy fire at us. There were many of them, and some were charging out of houses.’’

Car bombs kill at least 3 in Iraq

Iraqi police and the U.S. military were apparently the targets of two car bombs that exploded in separate incidents in and near Baghdad on Thursday morning.