*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

116 dead in Iraq bombings

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A car bomb obliterated a tent packed with mourners at the funeral of a Kurdish official in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing 25 people and wounding more than 50 in the single deadliest attack since insurgents started bearing down on Iraq's newly named government late last week.
The blast capped four exceedingly violent days in which at least 116 people, including 11 Americans, were killed in a storm of bombings and ambushes blamed on Iraqi insurgents, believed largely populated by members of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority.

The Sunnis were dominant for decades under Saddam Hussein but were mainly shut out of the new government announced Thursday. The skyrocketing violence since then is viewed by some as a response to political developments that the United States and the Shiite-dominated power structure had hoped would tamp down the bloodshed.

Despite the unrelenting violence, Iraq's national security adviser said Sunday the fledgling government was making progress against the insurgents.

‘‘There is no shadow of doubt in my mind that by the end of the year, we would have achieved a lot,'' Mouwafak al-Rubaie said in an interview with CNN's ‘‘Late Edition.'' ‘‘Probably the back of the insurgency has already been broken.''

 

[Barking_Mad]

Gunmen Kill Five Iraqi Police in Baghdad Attack

Gunmen killed five Iraqi policemen at a checkpoint in Baghdad on Sunday and the attack was followed by a bomb blast in the area, police said. The checkpoint attack occurred near a military college that now serves as a camp for U.S. troops.

Insurgent Attacks Kill Nine in Baghdad

Insurgents shot dead five Iraqi policemen at a checkpoint and a car bomb killed four people in Baghdad on Sunday, underscoring the dire security situation on the third day of violence since a new government was formed.

Recruitment crisis looms in UK following Iraq war

As the Iraq war becomes increasingly unpopular in Britain, defense chiefs have seen its toll in a recruitment crisis. Some 90 percent of the fighting units of the British army are under-strength, the Sunday Telegraph revealed.

Five Iraqi civilians Killed By Car Bomb

Five Iraqi civilians -- including a young girl -- were killed Sunday and 12 wounded in southeast Baghdad when a car bomb exploded as a US military convoy drove by, an interior ministry official said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Army misses April recruiting goal by 42 percent

The U.S. Army missed its April recruiting goal by a whopping 42 percent and the Army Reserve fell short by 37 percent, officials said on Tuesday, showing the depth of the military's wartime recruiting woes.

Scores die in Iraqi Kurd attack

At least 50 people have been killed in a suicide bombing at a political party office in the Kurdish city of Irbil in northern Iraq, authorities say. Reports say the attacker targeted a group of police recruits gathered at a Kurdistan Democratic Party office, which serves as a recruiting centre. The bombing follows a sharp rise in attacks by insurgents across Iraq. It comes a day after the new Iraqi government was sworn in, although some key ministries are yet to be filled.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Hmmm you cant help thinking that this is going to become a more common occurance as time goes on.......

Iraqi press under attack from authorities in Iraq

Iraq - A photographer for a Baghdad newspaper says Iraqi police beat and detained him for snapping pictures of long lines at gas stations. A reporter for another local paper received an invitation from Iraqi police to cover their graduation ceremony and ended up receiving death threats from the recruits. A local TV reporter says she's lost count of how many times Iraqi authorities have confiscated her cameras and smashed her tapes.

All these cases are under investigation by the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists, a union that formed amid a chilling new trend of alleged arrests, beatings and intimidation of Iraqi reporters at the hands of Iraqi security forces. Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group for press freedom, tracked the arrests of five Iraqi journalists within a two-week period and issued a statement on April 26 asking authorities "to be more discerning and restrained and not carry out hasty and arbitrary arrests."

While Iraq's newly elected government says it will look into complaints of press intimidation, local reporters said they've seen little progress since reporting the incidents. Some have quit their jobs after receiving threats - not from insurgents, but from police. Most Iraqi reporters are reluctant to even identify themselves as press when stopped at police checkpoints. Others say they won't report on events that involve Iraqi security forces, which creates a big gap in their local news coverage.

"Tell me to cover anything except the police," said Muth'hir al Zuhairy, the reporter from Sabah newspaper who was threatened at a police academy.

The fall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship resulted in unprecedented freedom for Iraqi journalists, who'd suffered torture and prison terms for criticizing the former regime. More than 150 new newspapers and several local TV and radio stations sprang up immediately after the war began - one of the biggest success stories of the U.S.-led invasion. In recent months, however, Iraqi police have begun cracking down on local journalists, creating a wave of fear reminiscent of Saddam's era.

"If things carry on like this, we will have to carry weapons along with our cameras and recorders," said Israa Shakir, editor of Iraq Today, an independent Baghdad newspaper. "Under such circumstances, we should be worried about the future of democracy."

Although Baghdad is the main hub for Iraqi journalists, complaints have poured in from other provinces, said Ibrahim al Sarraj, director of the Iraqi Association to Defend Journalists. In southeastern Iraq, he said, a weekly newspaper was shut down in October for criticizing the governor of the Wasit province. A judge related to the governor sentenced two editors to several months in prison, Sarraj said. The court papers accused the men of "cursing and insulting" the politician.

In the northern town of Baqouba, a cameraman for a local TV station was filming a mosque when Iraqi troops detained him on April 9 for trespassing "in a prohibited place" and for shooting videos that could be used to help insurgents. He's still in custody, said Salah al Shakerchi, one of the man's colleagues at Al Diyar TV.

"There was no warrant. It was totally illegal, and he's being kept in poor conditions," Shakerchi said. "That's all we know. We have had no further contact with him."

Several Interior Ministry officials didn't return phone messages seeking comment on the journalists' complaints.

 

[Barking_Mad]

At least 143 Iraqis have died in the first 4 days of May, bringing the total for this year to a bare minimum of 2,769

 

[Barking_Mad]

Focus on increasing displacement in Kirkuk

The Iraqi city of Kirkuk has been the scene of ethnic tension since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. The recent return of Kurds who were forcibly removed by Saddam has added to the local problems and led to the displacement of Arab Iraqis sent there as part of the former government's "Arabisation" of the key oil city. Increasing numbers of the existing local population are now leaving according to officials and NGOs working in Kirkuk, which is 255 km north of the capital, Baghdad. A local government official who did not want to be named, said that nearly 16,830 Kurdish families have moved to the city since March 2004.

They are living in old government buildings or are camped in the outskirts of the city, waiting to return to homes they say they were forcibly removed from. The official confirmed that an additional 830 families had joined the group three weeks ago, putting further pressure on Arab residents of the city to leave. This rise, he said, could be due to the fact that the new Iraqi president is of Kurdish origin, leading Kurds to believe that they now have the right to return through unofficial means.

The Kurds have 77 parliamentary seats in the new national assembly as well as the position of president occupied by Jalal Talabani. A spokesman at Talabani's office in Baghdad said that the new president had not yet decided on the sensitive issue of Kirkuk but affirmed to IRIN that Kurds would be welcome to return to the city.

International organisations are concerned that the situation could get out of control.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Corruption instead of development in Iraqi Kurdistan

One might expect the Kurdistan region to be leading the way in the development of Iraq's civil society and infrastructure after more than a dozen years of self-rule. While Kurdistan has flourished on many levels, it lags behind in many areas that are essential for democratic development. In addition, corruption and government control are pervasive, leaving many Kurds feeling helpless, apathetic, and in disbelief that they are living in a "new" Iraq.

At the root of the problem in the Kurdistan region is the absence of the rule of law. Generally speaking, rule of law means that governments act according to written laws and regulations. Rules are applied consistently, whether to citizens or elected officials. Rights are upheld and protected through a functioning judicial system. Government authority is limited, and private property is protected. In the absence of the rule of law, arbitrary practices by the government discourage personal initiative, breed apathy, cynicism, and distrust.

It is easy to lose focus on the need to develop the rule of law when the rest of the country is wrapped up in an insurgency and is struggling with more critical infrastructure issues such as electricity and clean water. In the absence of international aid agencies, civil society development in Kurdistan is stagnant, leaving the regional governments to fund projects they deem worthy. Party membership is a requirement for anyone wanting to advance his or her cause.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) must be free of party and governmental control if they are to flourish. Unfortunately, the climate in Kurdistan is not conducive to such development. Kurds say the desire is there, but many outside the parties lack the wherewithal to navigate the halls of bureaucracy in order to establish an NGO. Many say the impression is that no organization can get off the ground without the support of the Kurdistan administrations. Kurds not affiliated with either of the two dominant parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) or the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), see little hope of achieving such goals.

Another marker of a developing civil society is independent, functioning trade unions. A 22 April article on ft.com highlights the struggling trade union movement in Kurdistan. "Kurdish [union] leaders are clearly also officials of, or closely linked to, the two main parties," the reporter observed. "In a session with Imad Ahmed, the PUK leader in the region, he gives the game away by saying, 'the unions are weak: they are dominated by the parties. They need to become stronger and more independent.'" A visiting British trade union delegation wondered "why a union movement that is poor and needs funds as well as training is able to drive [the guests around] in big Toyota Land Cruisers and BMWs," the article noted.

 

[nino_savatte]

US cannot account for $100m spent in Iraq

Well someone has it, now who has the dosh?

Examples of possible misspending in Iraq revealed in recent months include:

- "Less than adequate controls" over $8.8 billion given to the interim Iraqi government between the March 2003 invasion and the hand over of power to Iraqis on June 28, 2004.

- Projected totals of nearly $20 million in missing or unaccounted-for equipment in Baghdad and Kuwait.

"The U.S. risks fostering a culture of corruption in Iraq," said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_MONEY?SITE=ININS&SECTION=HOME

 

[Barking_Mad]

More history repeating........

Iraqi commando battalion pulled out of Samarra

A battalion of Iraq's elite commando troops was pulled out of the rebel bastion of Samarra last month after repeated incidents of looting, culminating in the torching of a home, several US officers said Thursday. The battalion, headed by a colonel named Jalil, was widely perceived as running amok, officers said. US soldiers regularly referred to the commandos as "thieves" and said there were several incidents where Jalil's men looted homes.

In an incident in the second week of March that sealed the unit's fate, the commandos searched a home near Samarra, found no incriminating evidence and then set it on fire, officers said on condition of anonymity. US officers and soldiers preferred their names not be disclosed due to their working relationship with the interior ministry and the awkward position of criticising the commandos, considered the vanguard of Iraq's security forces. The battalion has since been replaced by what US officers describe as a far more disciplined batch of soldiers who are on model behaviour. There are now two commando battalions in Samarra.

One US soldier who witnessed the March incident gave the following account.

"The ministry of interior (MOI) decided they wanted to hit a few more target houses and the special forces (SF) said 'OK' and we followed along. We were pulling outer security a house or two down and couldn't see the MOI or SF," he said.

"All of a sudden we started seeing smoke billowing up and then SF came over the radio saying that the MOI colonel with us had given his 'commandos' the order to loot the house and then set it on fire," the soldier added.

"The SF tried to stop them once they realized what was going on but short of opening fire on them, which I would have preferred to see, we could do nothing to truly stop them. We finally drove off back to Samarra, with the life of some farming family who wasn't home going up in flames.


"The SF and all of us were royally pissed and they immediately severed ties with them cancelling some upcoming missions. We did the same," he explained.

In another jab at the interior ministry, several US soldiers and officers also questioned its account of a March 22 raid on an insurgent training camp on Lake TharThar that the ministry said left more than 80 dead. The soldiers and officers who visited the training camp said they saw no trace of any bodies at the site, which some of them entered alongside and others shortly after the commandos. The commandos are a controversial 12,000-strong unit of fighters, many of them from Saddam Hussein's special forces, security directorate and republican guard.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Hmmm.....

Five Sadr supporters wounded in Iraq demo

KUFA, Iraq - Five supporters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr were wounded Friday in a demonstration following the reading of a fiery sermon written by their leader, hospital sources said.

"If you leave us in peace, we will leave you in peace. You should be aware of the fact that the Mehdi Army is still alive and has its finger on the trigger," Sheikh Aws al-Khafaji said, reading a sermon by Sadr in the Kufa mosque in central Iraq.

He was referrring to the Sadr movement's militia, which pledged to give up its armed rebellion following a deadly standoff with US troops in the shrine city of Najaf last summer.

"The government we have been expecting for so long should take concrete action in favour of the prisoners from the Mehdi Army and the followers of the Sadr movement. If you don't free our prisoners, I am ready to die as a martyr," he added.

Stirred up by the young cleric's virulent sermon, hundreds of worshippers gathered after prayers and demonstrated to demand the release of the prisoners.Clashes broke out with the police, who opened fire, an AFP correspondent reported.

"The protest was not authorised. The policemen first fired shots in the air, then there was an incident in which two people were injured," the province's deputy governor Hassan Attam told AFP. Doctor Samir al-Zabhawi, from Kufa hospital, said he had received a total of five wounded. Hundreds of Sadr fighters and supporters were detained by Iraqi and US forces during the protracted fighting in Najaf last summer. Scores of others were also nabbed last year during fighting in the cleric's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, a two-million-strong slum named after his revered father.

 

[jeff_leigh]

To the Dismay of Local Sunnis, Shiites Arrive to Police Ramadi

RAMADI, Iraq -- At a checkpoint on a bridge into this volatile Sunni Muslim city, an Iraqi platoon frisked a row of men and rummaged through their cars and trucks for explosives. The men scowled silently, making the soldiers uneasy.

"Of course they don't like us," said one of the soldiers, Anwar Abas, whose unit is overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim. "They don't like people from the south, so when we search them, they make faces at us." Abas and his fellow soldiers were recruited from tribes in the cities of Najaf and Diwaniyah, both more than 100 miles to the south

more here

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.S. troops launch attacks against villages along Euphrates

UBAYDI, Iraq - (KRT) - More than 1,000 U.S. troops supported by fighter jets and helicopter gunships attacked villages Sunday along the Euphrates River, seeking to uproot a persistent insurgency in an area that American intelligence indicated has become a haven for foreign fighters flowing in from Syria. Marine officials said the operation near the Syrian border, one of the largest involving U.S. ground troops since the battle for Fallujah last fall, is expected to last for several days. Plans to press the attack north of the Euphrates were temporarily derailed when insurgents on the south side of the river launched counterattacks, sparking heavy fighting in the small river town of Ubaydi.

While some American units were able to conduct limited raids north of the Euphrates on Sunday, most of the rest were trapped south of the river while Army engineers struggled to build a pontoon bridge across it. U.S. military officials in Baghdad said forces that crossed the Euphrates had killed six insurgents and captured 54 more, using information gleaned from a captured aide to terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Marine officials in the region could not confirm those figures but said Predator drones were conducting air surveillance north of the river while other aircraft launched attacks on suspected insurgents. U.S. military officials contend that this region of Anbar province west of Baghdad has become a rallying spot for insurgents, who then sneak into cities as far east as Baghdad. Some of them, officials say, also float back and forth across Iraq's porous border with Syria.

Military officials also contend that many of the insurgents who take refuge in the region's canyons and river towns are to blame the increased violence that has plagued Iraq since a Shiite-dominated elected government was formed late last month. More than 300 people have died in the past 10 days.

 

[Barking_Mad]

14 US troops dead in the last 3 days and 20 dead so far this month.

24 Iraqi dead (bare minimum) in the last 3 days and 321 (bare minimum) dead so far this month

 

[Barking_Mad]

Interesting read from Juan Cole

Civil Protest in Ramadi

The NYT reports that guerrillas killed 8 US servicemen in separate incidents over the weekend. On Sunday, bombings in Samarra and Khalidiya killed 3 US servicemen. In Haditha on Saturday, guerrillas attacked and captured a hospital, killing 3 US Marines and a sailor when the US attempted to take it back.

What is going on in Sunni Iraqi cities, which might account for this violence (which is typically reported curtly and in a shadowy fashion by the US military and American press)? Al-Zaman has a report today (it gives joint credit to Reuters and AFP) that might shed some light on it. Al-Zaman says Ramadi and some of the towns around it were gripped by a civil rebellion on the part of virtually all the townspeople on Saturday and Sunday. It comes in response to the Friday prayers sermons in the city's mosques and appeals by the city's clergy, who called for a strike to protest against the US encirclement of the city and against what they called random arrests, which have resulted in the imprisonment of many young men of Ramadi. Everyday life has ground to a standstill. The streets are empty of passers-by, shops are shuttered, and bazaars are closed. Schools, universities and government offices are likewise closed. The US military has addressed the population with loudspeakers mounted on cars, calling on them to end the civil strike and to refuse to obey the armed militias in their midst.

The council of Sunni clergy in the city spread around a pamphlet that complained that ever since the US occupied the city, virtue and honor no longer had any value. The practices of the illegal Occupation were aimed at achieving its illegitimate aims, from daily killings to attacks and round-ups to the imprisonment of free persons in a forest of jails. The latest outrage was the encirclement of the city, cutting it off and isolating it from its environment through barricades, such that all have been grievously harmed. It called on townspeople to protest these practices with a two-day strike over the weekend

If the Al-Zaman report is at all accurate, it suggests that the counter-insurgency campaign in Ramadi to date is a political failure, whatever its tactical successes.

 

[Barking_Mad]

And this - http://www.juancole.com (scroll down)

Few commentators, when they mention such news, point out the obvious. The United States military does not control Baghdad. It doesn't control the major roads leading out of the capital. It does not control the downtown area except possibly the heavily barricaded "green zone." It does not control the capital. The guerrillas strike at will, even at Iraqi notables who can afford American security guards (many of them e.g. ex-Navy Seals). If the US military does not control the capital of a country it conquered, then it controls nothing of importance. Ipso facto, Iraq is a failed state.

 

[Barking_Mad]

An interesting piece from Rolling Stone Magazine.

As the Iraq war drags on, it's beginning to look a lot like Vietnam

If it comes to civil war, the disintegration of Iraq will be extremely bloody. "The breakup of Iraq would be nearly as bad as the breakup of India in 1947," says David Mack, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state with wide experience in the Arab world. "The Kurds can't count on us to come in and save their bacon. Do they think we are going to mount an air bridge on their behalf?" Israel might support the Kurds, but Iran would intervene heavily in support of the Shiites with men, arms and money, while Arab countries would back their fellow Sunnis. "You'd see Jordan, Saudi Arabia, even Egypt intervening with everything they've got -- tanks, heavy weapons, lots of money, even troops," says White, the former State Department official.

"If they see the Sunnis getting beaten up by the Shiites, there will be extensive Arab support," agrees a U.S. Army officer. "There will be no holds barred."

.........

In the face of a full-scale civil war in Iraq, says a source close to the U.S. military, Bush intends to go it alone.

"Our policy is to make Iraq a colony," he says. "We won't let go."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Following on from the above article....

14 Sunni Arabs shot dead

FOURTEEN Iraqis shot dead and left at a Baghdad garbage dump were Sunni Arabs, relatives say, raising the spectre of deeper sectarian strife in Iraq following mass killings of Shi'ites.

Relatives of the victims, witnesses and a police official said the dead were farmers from the town of Madaen just south of Baghdad, where tit-for-tat kidnappings and killings between Shi'ites and Sunnis have sparked tension across Iraq.
A resident who saw a man digging a grave in an industrial area of Baghdad alerted police to the corpses early yesterday. Some were blindfolded and shot through the head execution-style. Officials say it is unclear who killed the Iraqis, but they say insurgents are trying to spark civil war.

Sunni Arab leaders denounced the killings.

"We want the Shi'ite religious establishment to condemn this horrific act just like the Sunni religious establishment condemns the killing of innocent civilians," said Dhia al-Hadithi, spokesman for the Sunni Endowment group. While there have been repeated mass killings in Iraq of Shi'ites and Kurds – their bodies often dumped in public to intimidate others – there have been few reports of massacres of Sunni Arabs. The discovery of the Sunni Arab corpses in northern Baghdad suggests sectarian violence may be spiralling.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Saboteurs hit oil facility in north Iraq-spokesman

Saboteurs attacked a crude oil pipeline complex near the Kirkuk fields in northern Iraq on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Iraqi Oil Ministry said.

Suicide car bomb kills at least 7 in Baghdad

A suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle near a U.S. military convoy in central Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least seven Iraqis and wounding 16, police said. The U.S. military had no immediate information on any American casualties.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi police vent anger at US after car bombings

Iraqi police hurled insults at US soldiers after two suicide car bomb blasts in Baghdad killed at least seven people and left 19 wounded, including policemen.

"It's all because you're here," a policeman shouted in Arabic at a group of US soldiers after the latest in a bloody wave of attacks that have rocked Baghdad this month.

"Get out of our country and there will be no more explosions," he told the uncomprehending Americans staring at the smouldering wreck of a car bomb.

The explosion wounded three policemen as they stood guard at the entrance to the River Police compound on Abu Nawas street in the centre of the capital.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Suicide bombs cause Iraq carnage - At least 50 dead

At least 50 people have been killed in Iraq as six separate bombings rocked Tikrit, Hawija and Baghdad. A suicide attack at a crowded market near a police station in Tikrit killed at least 27 people and injured scores. Further north in Hawija, about 20 people died in a suicide bombing in a queue of people applying for army jobs. Three were killed in Baghdad amid a continuing escalation in violence that has already claimed more than 300 lives across the country this month. The attacks followed the announcement of a new Iraqi government at the end of April.

US forces have been mounting a major counter-insurgency operation in the western province of Anbar, where they say they have killed about 100 rebels in the past several days. The insurgents deny suffering such heavy losses.

The governor of Anbar was kidnapped on Tuesday and rebels have demanded that the US stop its operations.

 

[Barking_Mad]

updates........



Trail of carnage in Iraq

64 killed in wave of Iraq bombings

At least 64 people were killed in a bloody wave of bomb blasts in Iraq Wednesday as US troops battled insurgents in the lawless western hinterland in a massive assault against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network. At least four explosions in just an hour left trails of carnage in the northern towns of Tikrit and Hawijah and in the capital Baghdad, the deadliest attacks in a mounting wave of violence accompanying the formation of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's government earlier this month.

A first car bomb struck a busy market area in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, killing 31, mostly civilians, and wounding 66, police said. Mangled metal scraps, sandals and destroyed market stalls littered the blood-stained ground, an AFP reporter said. Strips of flesh splattered shop fronts near the site of the explosion.

"This is not jihad (holy war). There was no US patrol, no Iraqi police at the time of the blast. This car bomb tore civilians to shreds," said Zeid Hamad whose mobile telephone shop lies a few metres (yards) away from the blast site.

"Most of these people were waiting here to be hired as day labourers. They are looking for jobs, just trying to feed their families," he said.

A curfew was briefly slapped on Tikrit following the blast, and mosques blared out messages calling on residents of the small Sunni town 180 kilometres (110 miles) north of Baghdad to donate blood for the wounded. In another attack, a suicide bomber wearing a belt of explosives blew himself up outside an army recruitment centre in the town of Hawijah, northeast of Tikrit, killing 30 people and wounding 31, police and hospital sources said.

Many of the dead could not immediately be identified, but were believed to be young men from outlying villages who had come to join the new Iraqi army, local hospital doctor Abdallah Yussef said. Forty-six people, mostly police recruits were killed in a similar attack in the northern Kurdish city of Arbil on May 4.

Insurgents also detonated three car bombs in Baghdad. One targetting a police station in the restive southern district of Dura killed three people, an interior ministry official said. Nine were wounded when a car bomb later exploded at a busy road intersection in the capital's upmarket Mansur district, the official said. Another car bomb went off in a western neighbourhood of the capital but there no immediate casualty figures. Car bombs have been the weapon of choice for insurgents who have stepped up their attacks in recent weeks, killing nearly 400 people since the start of the month. The past few days have also been among the deadliest in months for US troops, with 15 dead between Saturday and Monday.

........

"There is no anarchy in Iraq," Talabani said. "We have 18 provinces and only four are experiencing problems. We will put an end to this situation very quickly."

 

[Barking_Mad]

The Occupation Get More Saddam-like Everyday

Zeese: If there were a national vote on whether the United States should continue to have a military and corporate presence in Iraq how do you think Iraqi's would vote?

Ghazwan: So, all those factors will indicate that the people are discontented, the people are resentful of the presence of the American forces, that the people are dissatisfied with the occupation, because they have not seen any improvement in their life. Unemployment is very high; it's at about 60%. People are starving. This is the basis for the resistance. It's not the Mussabu Al Zarqawi and Abu, I don't know who, or the terrorists coming from the outside of Iraq. It is the indigenous Iraqi resistance. While we were told that Saddam Hussein was torturing us, we are finding after 22 months that the Americans are torturing us, the British are torturing us, the Danish are torturing us and now we discover that the Iraqi forces, the ING is torturing us. So, instead of one having one torturer, now we have four torturers. And you want us to be happy with the election.

Plenty of Oil But No Petrol

Insurgents blowing up pipelines add to technical hitches that prevent Iraq refining its oil and keep petrol queues long. Although Iraq is thought to have the world’s second-largest oil reserves, it is still having to import petrol because insurgent attacks and creaking technology are hampering production at fuel refineries.

Two big refineries, al-Dora in Baghdad and al-Beiji near the northern city of Kirkuk, should between them be producing at least 475,000 barrels per day of refined products such as petrol and kerosene, but in reality they are pumping out one-third that amount.

The shortfall is typical at facilities across the country, such the Basra plant which as one of the three biggest refineries, with al-Dora and al-Beiji. Because not enough fuel is coming out of the domestic refineries, Iraq is forced to spend 200 million US dollars a month on imports from its neighbours.

Outsourcing death in Iraq

Day rates peaking at $1 000 - about R6 000 - quickly turned post-Saddam Hussein Iraq into a modern day Klondike for private security firms, but a growing number of hired guns are paying the price in blood.........

...........According to the interior ministry, there are up to 50 000 private security contractors in the war-torn country. Estimates vary on the proportion of foreigners, but with anything between 12 000 and 20 000 men, they are the US-led coalition's second largest armed contingent, easily outnumbering British troops............

But several sources in the private security industry admit many deadly attacks probably remained unreported. "We get internal reports and there are often deaths that don't make it in the media. It's an industry that doesn't communicate and secrecy is one of the reasons we're here," said one on condition of anonymity. Unprecedented outsourcing has allowed the US military to ease the pressure on troops already stretched by several wars and is seen as a way of keeping body bags away from the public eye.

"If you don't get shot on the airport road or a busy area but instead die in an ambush on an open supply route in a remote corner of northern or western Iraq, there's a good chance the news won't come out," the industry source added.

Iraq Insurgency United by Opposition to US

.....Ahmed Hashim, a member of the U.S. Naval War College's Strategic Research Department, has done extensive study on the Iraq insurgency. He says the jihadists provide cannon fodder for the insurgency in the form of suicide bombers. But, he adds, the more pragmatic elements of the insurgency are beginning to get concerned about the backlash of the rising civilian death tolls in those attacks.

"The Baathists are beginning to worry, or the neo-Baathists, beginning to worry about the horrific impact that these jihadists have had," he said. "So I think there is even an attempt on the part of some of the local groups to try to channel some of the suicide bombers, most of whom are foreign, into more precision-guided attacks on the Iraqi forces or coalition forces."

Colonel Hammes says he believes there is not a great deal of trust between the various groups.

"We saw the same thing in Afghanistan. The Afghan parties barely tolerated each other as long as the Russians were there," he said. "As soon as the Soviets pulled out, they started fighting each other. And I think it is the same thing here. They do not trust each other in depth. But they will work together with an eye to the fact that if the Americans are driven out and the coalition collapses, the government, then in fact they are going to have to fight each other over who runs the place."

Mr. Hashim says coalition and Iraqi government raids have chipped away at the insurgency, winnowing out the less-organized groups.

"The pressure that has been put on them has increased dramatically," he said. "So you are seeing a sort of 'combat Darwinism' occurring where the less adaptable, the less sophisticated ones are picked up or killed, and there is less attacks, but [there are] more horrific and more sophisticated attacks."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Fierce fighting in Mosul

BAGHDAD, May 11 (KUNA) -- Iraqi government troops backed by American forces engaged in fierce fighting on Wednesday in the northern city of Mosul, witnesses said. They told KUNA the firefight lasted for two hours in the residential district of Al-Qadisiah, and that the government forces blocked roads leading to the theatre of fighting. Meanwhile, unknown attackers lobbed a single mortar shell into the building of the Iraqi oil ministry in the center of the Iraqi capital, police said. No losses were repored.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Apparently unemployment stands at 18.4% in Iraq - but underemployment (whatever the feck that is!) stands at 50% - so that might make 68.4% unemployment rate........?!?

Report: Living conditions in Iraq 'tragic'

2004 Survey reveals 85% of Iraqi households lack stable electricity, 54% have access to clean water. The Iraqi people are suffering from a desperate lack of jobs, housing, health care and electricity, according to a survey by Iraqi authorities and the United Nations released on Thursday. Planning Minister Barham Saleh, during a ceremony in Baghdad, blamed the dire living conditions in most of the country on decades of war but also on the shortcomings of the international community.

"The survey, in a nutshell, depicts a rather tragic situation of the quality of life in Iraq," Saleh said in English at the event, attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's deputy representative in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura. The 370-page report entitled "Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004" was conducted over the past year on a representative sample of 22,000 families in all of Iraq's 18 provinces. Eighty-five percent of Iraqi households lacked stable electricity when the survey was carried out. Only 54 percent had access to clean water and 37 percent to sewage.

"If you compare this to the situation in the 1980s, you will see a major deterioration of the situation," said the newly-appointed minister, pointing out that 75 percent of households had clean water two decades ago. The report "shows a contrast between the potential of Iraq, with all the human and natural resources that we have, and the unfortunate lack of development and lack of quality of life we are suffering from," Saleh said. The survey put the unemployment figure at 18.4 percent, but Saleh explained that "under-employment" topped the 50-percent mark.

Large Explosions near Japanese Headquarters in Iraq

A series of large explosions have been reported near the Japanese headquarters in the Iraqi city of Samava. Six hundred Japanese soldiers are stationed there. According to the Japanese Kyodo news agency, blasts were heard last night near the base, but no official announcement has been made. Japanese military units are not involved in combat in Iraq; they only act for humanitarian aid and reconstruction of the country.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Seven bodies found in Iraq

Seven decomposed bodies were fished out of Lake Tharthar north of the Iraqi capital on Thursday. The bodies of seven people have been brought in. They are all men killed by gunfire about a week ago."

 

[Barking_Mad]

21 US dead in the last 6 days.

At least 459 Iraqis dead this month.

 

[nino_savatte]

Military judge convicts sailor who refused to deploy

This is from the San Diego Times. It looks like it's not only British troops who object to this war, but US ones also.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20050511-1425-ca-sailorsprotest.html

While his shipmates bid farewell to loved ones, Paredes sat pierside and told reporters he did not want to be part of a war he considers illegal and immoral. He said his military training taught him to avoid what he views as a war crime.

"The war is the real crime here, and that's what I want to get across," Paredes said. Navy prosecutors, however, blocked Paredes' plans to put the war on trial during the court-martial.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Entire US marine unit 'wiped out' in Iraq

Among the four Marines killed and 10 wounded when an explosive device erupted under their Amtrac on Wednesday were the last battle-ready members of a squad that four days earlier had battled foreign fighters holed up in a house in the town of Ubaydi. In that fight, two squad members were killed and five were wounded.

In 96 hours of fighting and ambushes in far western Iraq, the squad had ceased to be.

 

[Barking_Mad]

US war planes bomb western desert

During the fifth day of Operation Matador, hundreds of American troops in tanks and light armored vehicles continued to roll through desert outposts to root out militants. Residents in the villages of Karabilah and Saadah reported heavy bombardments by U.S. artillery or warplanes Thursday following what they believed was fighting in the area.

 

[Barking_Mad]

In addition to the above post I found this - again, all but completely unreported.

Syria Establishes Military Build up on Iraq Border

Syria launched a military build up on its Iraq border after the American Army began a wide-ranging military operation in a region in Iraq near the Syrian border.

Eyewitnesses in this area reported that they heard canon, warplane and bombing sounds coming from Al Kaim Township and its surroundings.

Local inhabitants reported that Syrian armored vehicles went to the border region with soldiers in them. Eyewitnesses noted that the tension in the region is quite high, and they added that they are anxious due to heavy American bombardment in the Ak Kaim region and Husayba Town.

Syrian villagers in the region said that they cannot sleep at night due to the noise of exploding bombs and warplanes.

The American Army launched a large-scale operation on May 7 near the long Syrian border with Iraq in order to prevent the infiltration of men coming to support Jordanian Abu Musab Al Zarqawi's activities in Iraq.