*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

A quick addition of news reports for this month shows about 514 Iraqi dead so far this month.

 

[Barking_Mad]

UK war crimes are 'tip of iceberg'

War crime charges against British soldiers in Iraq are only the tip of the iceberg, the lawyer for the alleged victims said on Wednesday.

Three British soldiers have been charged with war crimes for the alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees in the first case of its kind in Britain, the government said on Tuesday. The Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said eight other British soldiers, including a former colonel, will also face military tribunals in connection with the alleged abuse.

None of those charged will go before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Lawyer Phil Shiner, acting for nine alleged victims in the case, said: "The announcement of the charges for war crimes is only the tip of the iceberg."

He said the families "welcome the first steps towards justice of those responsible. However, this is only a start."

The British military has insisted that the vast majority of its soldiers uphold the highest standards and only a few are guilty of any crimes. None of the defendants have publicy commented on the allegations, the Ministry of Defence said. Shiner alleged that many British servicemen were involved in the cases and said the nine Iraqi men were tortured over a period of days by several shifts of soldiers.

 

[Barking_Mad]

5 Iraqis detained by US for aiding insurgents

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military in Iraq has detained five Americans for suspected insurgent activity, Pentagon officials said Wednesday. The five have not been charged or had access to a lawyer, and face an uncertain legal future.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to identify any of them, citing the military's policy of not providing the names of detainees. They are in custody at one of the three U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.

Poll shows more doubts about Bush

Americans have growing doubts about President Bush's honesty and his effectiveness, according to a poll taken at a time people are uneasy with the war in Iraq, uncertain about the economy and nervous about the terrorist threat.

Half of those in the poll taken by the Pew Research Center, 49 percent, said they believe the president is trustworthy, while almost as many, 46 percent said he is not. Bush was at 62 percent on this measure in a September 2003 Pew poll and at 56 percent in a Gallup poll in April. One of Bush's strong suits throughout his presidency has been the perception by a majority of people that he is honest.

The slide in trust in Bush comes at a time the White House is answering questions about top aide Karl Rove's involvement in the public leak of the identity of a CIA operative.

"If the economy were doing better, the Iraq war wasn't as tenuous and people weren't as uneasy about terrorism, then they might be willing to cut Bush some slack on the Rove issue," said Robert Shapiro, who specializes in public opinion at Columbia University. "And it's all tied back to how the war was justified, so it raises all those issues as well."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Terrorists blow up newly built police station

Terrorists blew up a newly built police station in the Lutafiyah district of south Baghdad just after midnight July 20. No one was injured in the explosion because the police had not yet moved into the station, but the building was destroyed.

Sunni Arabs withdraw from Iraq constitution team

Sunni Arabs in Iraq's constitution committee suspended their membership Wednesday following the gunning down of three colleagues, reports Xinhua.

Announcing this to reporters, Adnan al-Janabi, a Sunni Arab and deputy head of the committee, blamed the Iraqi government, the National Assembly and the UN responsible for the deaths of the three Sunni committee members.

"Despite these parties announcing that they would back the process of writing the constitution, they did not provide security for the Sunni members," Janabi
said, adding "that's why we decided to withdraw from the committee."

On Tuesday, a spokesman of the Sunni National Dialogue Council Salih al-Mutlak had threatened that the 17 Sunni Arab members in the constitutional committee would withdraw after three of the Sunni constitution writers were assassinated.

"Mejbil al-Sheikh Issa, Aziz Ibrahim and Dhamin Hassan al-Ubaidi, who represent the Sunni Arabs among others, were killed Tuesday afternoon," Mutlak said.

The three were gunned down in broad daylight in central Baghdad when gunmen sprayed their car with bullets near the al-Azaeim restaurant, Mutlak said adding they all died in the car and their clothes were soaked with blood.

 

[Barking_Mad]

It's been noticable how many more people are being shot and killed in Basra. Not in high numbers but there seems to be an effort by insurgents to kill people in governmental positions than there has previously been.

Vice president of Basra municipality was shot dead by gunmen in the city 550 km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad. Basra's province council said Hussein Hameed al-Darraji was killed early this morning while leaving his home.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20681462.htm

 

[Barking_Mad]

US dead currently stands at 1770
UK dead at 93
Total of non UK & US military dead 101

 

[Barking_Mad]

New Blood

Two of the soldiers squat on either side of the door while the others climb on their shoulders and jump into the small courtyard where a family of four are sleeping. Within seconds, a small, frail man is dragged from his bed into the centre of the courtyard. The major holds a pistol to his head. The man stands sheepishly, half asleep; his wife is still fiddling with the blankets over her head.

"Where is Salman?" whispers the major, reading the first name on the list.

"Who is Salman?" replies the man, with a look of horror.

The major slaps him in the face. "Listen, we know that you have been firing RPGs and financing the resistance. We will take you with us and you won't see your wife, ever, if you don't cooperate with us." He keeps the gun pointed at the man's head. "If you tell us where those people live, you can go back to bed and we will leave."

....

After few more slaps, the man recognises one of the names, and leads the force to one house where a "suspect" is found. The suspect's face is lit by a torch and two soldiers grab him, one by his neck, the other by his hands, and drag him into the street. As the suspect begs for mercy, his mother starts to wail, begging the soldiers to let her son go. "You are Iraqis like us. Why do you become like the Americans? He is our only son! In God's name, let him go!" she cries.

 

[Barking_Mad]

This sounds like suicide.

Neighbourhood militias proposed in Iraq

In the wake of last week's multiple suicide attacks in Iraq, as many as 50 lawmakers in the Iraqi National Assembly have called for neighborhood militias to take over local security duties from the Iraqi police and army.

In the past week, two of the bloodiest attacks blamed on Sunni militants targeted Shi'ite civilians.

Last Wednesday, a suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. military vehicle in a Shi'ite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, killing dozens of children and teenagers. Three days later, a suicide bomber, driving a tanker laden with fuel, detonated in front of a Shi'ite mosque in the town of Musayyib, south of Baghdad. That attack killed at least 100 people, many of them worshippers arriving for sunset prayers.

Angry Shi'ite lawmakers in the 275-member Iraqi National Assembly have blamed Iraqi police and the army for security lapses. In a fiery speech to the assembly on Sunday, a senior Shi'ite politician, Khudai al-Khuzai, called on the government to allow neighborhood militias to guard vulnerable Shi'ite communities. Mr. Khuzai claimed that 50 fellow lawmakers supported his proposal.

 

[Barking_Mad]

So free are the Iraqi people that the US military have built a 64km dirt berm around the city of Tal Afar to try and stop insurgents. Note that the US isn't actually in Tal Afar, just as they aren't in control of large parts of cities to the north and west of Baghdad. As Channel 4 news pointed out last night, large parts of some places north of Baghdad are completely out of the control of the US military.

Residents fleeing Tal Afar

As U.S. soldiers construct a wall around the troubled city of Tal Afar to keep out fighters and weapons, residents are fleeing in fear of an imminent military attack by American and Iraqi forces against insurgents still in the city, according to a senior military commander.

"It's not a mass exodus right now, but people have moved out of the city along kinship lines," Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry, which is responsible for security in Tal Afar, told CNN.

He said several thousand civilians have left in the past few months and more are continuing to leave, with most going to the countryside to stay with relatives. McMaster said the military was assessing civilian movements to be able to provide food, water and medical attention if it became needed. Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez of the U.S. Army's Task Force Freedom said he was discussing with Iraqi leaders how best to handle the continuing violence in Tal Afar, where parts of the city are still controlled by insurgents.

"We're still working through that," he told CNN. He said a U.S. military offensive there in June appears to have had only "a temporary disruptive effect" on the insurgency. Rodriguez said tension in the city has risen over the past few weeks. Police in the city, crippled by defections and allegations of torture and corruption, number fewer than 200. More are being trained. McMaster said the regional government is setting up a commission to examine claims of abuse by the police.

Soldiers have been moving earth to construct a trench and a berm around Tal Afar, forcing traffic to go through rather than around security checkpoints. U.S. Army engineers in Mosul have recently completed a 64-kilometer dirt berm around that city to stem the flow of insurgents and weapons.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Italy set to keep troops in Iraq

Italian troops are set to stay in Iraq until the end of the year, after the lower house of parliament backed a bill to provide funding.

The bill will go to the upper house for final approval next week.

Italy sent 3,000 troops to Iraq after the war in 2003, but the policy has not proved popular with the Italian public.

Twenty members of the contingent have died since they deployed, including 19 killed in a single suicide bomb attack in Nasiriya in November 2003.

A small opposition party voted with the government coalition in favour of extending the Italian military presence in southern Iraq for another six months, giving the government a comfortable majority of more than 70 votes.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Sunnis quit Iraq constitution body

The Sunni Muslim representatives on Iraq's constitution committee have temporarily withdrawn from the body.

A spokesman for the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni group, said they were calling for an investigation into the killing of three Sunni politicians.

On Tuesday, the men were shot dead as they left a restaurant in Baghdad.

One was a full member of the committee, another was an expert being consulted by the committee and the third was a prominent Sunni Muslim politician.

On Wednesday, four members of the drafting committee quit in protest at the murders, expressing security concerns.

The committee for drafting the constitution was enlarged in July to include more people from the Sunni Muslim minority, as a means of bringing Sunni Muslims into the political process.

"We also call on the committee chairman to withdraw his remarks to the effect that the drafting of the constitution was nearly complete, because Sunnis disagree on a number of points," said Salah al-Mutlaq, spokesman for the National Dialogue Council, on Thursday.

Reports say that Sunni leaders have said they will return to the committee if their demands are met.

 

[oi2002]

Juan reckons the Iraq war is over, and the winner is... Iran

 

[Barking_Mad]

The nightmare of civil war is looming over Iraq

The first signs that top U.S. officials in Iraq were revising their thinking about what they might accomplish in Iraq came a year ago. As Iraq resumed its sovereignty, the new American team that arrived then, headed by John Negroponte as ambassador, had a withering term for the optimistic approach of their predecessors, led by L. Paul Bremer 3rd. The new team called the departing Americans "the illusionists," for their conviction that the United States could create a Jeffersonian democracy on the ruins of Saddam Hussein's medieval brutalism.

One U.S. military commander began his first encounter with American reporters by asking, "Well, gentlemen, tell me: Do you think that events here afford us the luxury of hope?"

 

[Barking_Mad]

Conflicts' costs may exceed $700 billion http://www.detnews.com/2005/nation/0507/25/A05-257768.htm

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost taxpayers $314 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office projects additional expenses of perhaps $450 billion over the next 10 years. That could make the combined campaigns, especially the war in Iraq, the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years, causing even some conservative experts to criticize the open-ended commitment to an elusive goal. The concern is that the soaring costs, given little weight before now, could play a growing role in U.S. strategic decisions because of the fiscal impact.

"Osama (bin Laden) doesn't have to win; he will just bleed us to death," said Michael Scheuer, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA who led the pursuit of bin Laden and recently retired after writing two books critical of the Clinton and Bush administrations. "He's well on his way to doing it."

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, has estimated that the Korean War cost about $430 billion and the Vietnam War cost about $600 billion, in current dollars. According to the latest estimates, the cost of the war in Iraq could exceed $700 billion. Put simply, critics say, the war is not making the United States safer and is harming U.S. taxpayers by saddling them with an enormous debt burden, since the war is being financed with deficit spending. One of the most vocal Republican critics has been Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who said the costs of the war -- many multiples greater than what the White House had estimated in 2003 -- are throwing U.S. fiscal priorities out of balance.

"It's dangerously irresponsible," Hagel said in February of the war spending.

Democrats have also raised concerns about the apparent lack of an exit strategy and the fast-rising costs, particularly since President Bush has chosen to pay for the war with special supplemental appropriations outside the normal budget process.

Munition exposure linked to brain cancer in US vets http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/new..._B378270_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-BRAIN-CANCER-DC.XML

Gulf War veterans exposed to chemical munitions at Khamisiyah, Iraq are nearly twice as likely as their unexposed peers from the same war to die from brain cancer, according to a report in the American Journal of Public Health.

"We found an approximately twofold excess of brain cancer deaths, 12 to 13 excess deaths in a population of 100,000 veterans, associated with possible exposure to chemical warfare agents," Tim A. Bullman, from the Department of Veteran Affairs in Washington, DC, and colleagues report.

In the new study, rates of death from specific causes for 100,487 exposed US army veterans were compared with those for 224,980 unexposed veterans. For most diseases, no difference in mortality was seen between the two groups, the investigators point out. The exception was brain cancer for which the exposed group had an elevated risk of death. Further analysis showed evidence of an effect based exposure levels. For instance, compared with their unexposed peers, veterans exposed to chemical munitions for one day were 72 percent more likely to die from brain cancer, while those exposed for two or more days were 226 percent more likely to die from brain cancer. However, the investigators caution that additional research is needed to confirm these findings.

Stressed US troops in Iraq 'turning to drugs' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...3.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/07/23/ixportal.html

Two years into the occupation of Iraq the menace of drug abuse appears to be afflicting American troops. Aware of the debilitating effect drugs had on the morale and effectiveness of GIs in the Vietnam War, the authorities are attempting to stifle a repeat in Iraq. Aside from random urine tests and barrack room searches, commanders have asked their troops to inform on colleagues. In the past month a soldier has been arrested for selling cocaine and two per cent of the troops from one brigade have been charged with drug and alcohol abuse.

According to US army figures, out of the 4,000 men of the 256th Brigade Combat Team, 53 faced alcohol-related charges and 48 were charged with drug offences. Since the overthrow of Saddam's regime the borders that have been so porous for insurgents have been equally open for heroin and hash smugglers from Afghanistan and Iran providing a cheap market for troops. With colleagues being killed or wounded on a daily basis, some US soldiers have turned to drugs to escape the horrors of fighting insurgents.

In one case, according to Stars and Stripes, the in-house US forces newspaper, Sgt Michael Boudreaux was found with drugs, four bottles of whiskey and 22 videos of Iraqi pornography. He received a seven month confinement, was demoted to private and given a bad conduct discharge. In another case, Pte Emily Hamilton told a court martial that she used a hashish pipe belonging to a colleague because "it helped me go right to sleep". She was given a year's confinement and a bad conduct discharge.

"Some of these young soldiers just can't handle the stress," said Capt Christopher Krafchek, a military defence lawyer. The majority of drug-users are in their teens or early 20s, and sometimes get their drugs from local Iraqis while on patrol in Baghdad. Troops caught in possession of illegal substances are either jailed, demoted or discharged from the forces.

Metal barrier on Iraq border inside Kuwaiti territory: spokesmanhttp://www.khaleejtimes.com/Display...iddleeast_July718.xml&section=middleeast&col=

KUWAIT CITY - A Kuwaiti government spokesman said in remarks published Tuesday that a metal barrier on the borders with Iraq is being installed inside Kuwaiti territory in accordance with UN resolutions.

“By installing the metal pipe on the borders with Iraq, Kuwait is practising its sovereign rights on its territory. The pipe is being installed on the Kuwaiti side,” of the border, acting information minister Faisal Al Hajji told the official KUNA agency.

Hajji reiterated Kuwait’s full compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 833, adopted in 1993, which demarcated the borders between the two Arab neighbours. Several hundred Iraqi demonstrators on Monday tore down parts of the metal barrier near Umm Qasr town, just across the border, claiming that it passed through Iraqi territory. Kuwaiti border guards trained their weapons on the demonstrators, but there were no clashes.

A government official in Kuwait City told AFP Monday that the metal pipe near Umm Qasr is part of a barrier being built along the 200-kilometre (125-mile) border between the two countries. Kuwait began construction of the barrier several months ago to replace a three-metre (10-foot) high sand berm that has been in place for a decade. It is due to be completed by the end of the year, the official said.

Hajji said the barrier would serve to prevent “infiltrators from crossing into Iraq and also to eliminate terrorist attacks targeting Iraq.”

Its construction was “in response to resolutions and recommendations by subsequent meetings of interior ministers of countries neighbouring Iraq,” Hajji said. The minister said that Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah had called his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim Al Jaafari late Monday to discuss the border riots. Sheikh Sabah thanked Jaafari for “the constructive role of the Iraqi authorities in putting an end to the riots and restoring calm to the border area,” Hajji said.

 

[oi2002]

Alexander The Average takes a stab at quantifying things in Iraq. Reckons there's light at the end of the tunnel but it's looking like a really long tunnel.

Suspect it's 'trending red' myself as the Pentagon controls all the stats and they don't have a history of honesty.

 

[oi2002]

From Back To Iraq the plot

...And yet, tell an Iraqi that many of the problems of their country—lack of security, meddling by Iran, Shi'a-Sunni violence, Zarqawi—is a result of a cascading series of American blunders and incompetence, and they will refuse to believe it. “America put a man on the moon,” said a friend of A. as we puffed on a nargilah last night. “That America has f**ked up so much is very hard for us to accept.”

“Iraq is harder than the moon,” I said, to much amusement. But like my earlier joke about the Kurds, it was black humor, and The Plot always hovered nearby.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Interesting interview with a former top Iraqi Baath party member. Well worth the read as to the goals and agenda of the Iraqi resistence.

The Iraqi Resistance Is Prepared For Ten Year War

"Is the resistance in Iraq, which we are witnessing, was prepared by former governement or it grew up during the occupation ?

--"The current resistance in Iraq, to be accurate, has not made or prepared by Iraqi government, but by Baath party leadership. At the beginning in the year 2002, the Baath party has completed the training of about 6 million Iraqi citizens to fight urban warfare by the so called Al Quds Army. President Saddam Hussein has managed all preparation, including storing about 50 million of guns, big, medium and small sizes with their necessary ammunition to fight against the occupation for ten years.

The groups prepared for a guerrilla warfare has included, beside the Iraqi armed forces, organization called Fedayeen of Saddam, Baath party fighters, as well as kaders of Baath party. In the light of what I have said, you can reach the conclusion that the resistance was prepared mainly by the political leadership of Iraq. Of course, it has used the government apparatus to facilitate the preparation for a guerrilla warfare.

After the occupation of Iraq thousands of people have joined the armed resistance: some of them joined Baath party organizations, some others formulated their own organizations. For the time being, we have many different groups fighting against American colonial occupation, and these organizations have different ideological characters, including progressive forces, religious groups, nationalists, but the main organization is the Baathist one. As for the connection among these organizations, I can say that there is a strong coordination and cooperation".

 

[Barking_Mad]

Overflowing morgue testament to Iraq's mayhem

BAGHDAD, July 27 (Reuters) - If anyone had any lingering doubts about the full extent of violence in Iraq, they need only visit Baghdad's morgue.

The fridges and autopsy rooms of the beige stone block are crammed full of corpses, some of them so badly mutilated or decomposed that identification is nearly impossible.

Every day, around 30 new bodies arrive, the latest victims of a two-year wave of war, crime and insurgency that has left coroners struggling to keep up with the chaos.

All are classified as "suspicious deaths" and the vast majority have been shot, says Faik Amin Baker, the director of the Medical Legal Institute, which oversees the morgue.

More alarming still is that these are only the bodies that require an autopsy; they do not include those that die of natural causes or in attacks where the cause of death is clear.

"Before the war we used to get maybe 250 bodies a month. Now it is 800 or 900 a month from the Baghdad area alone," says Baker, who trained at Guy's Hospital in London and has overseen operations at the morgue for the past 15 years.

"The situation has worsened dramatically. We cannot cope."

While it is difficult to make comparisons with other violent cities around the world because Iraq is also a war zone, the number would give Baghdad a rate of somewhere around 230 "suspicious deaths" each year for every 100,000 residents.

In Bogota, Colombia, often considered one of the most violent cities in the world, the murder rate seldom exceeded 90 per 100,000 even at the peak of the 1990s drug wars.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Kuwait increases border security after Iraqis pull down fences

KUWAIT CITY - Kuwait has boosted security measures along its borders after a mob of Iraqi men tore down a steel barrier meant to demarcate the boundary with Iraq, security sources said on Wednesday.

The incident that took place at the Iraqi border town of Umm Qasr, a security source told DPA.

Kuwait’s Minister of Interior Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmed Al Sabah was also quoted by al-Watan newspaper Wednesday saying that Kuwait’s security status was lifted to “level three”.

He did not say from what level of alert it had been raised, but said the step-up was related to border security.

Kuwait has raised security levels several times over the past year because of terrorist threats.

The latest response stemmed from the border incident Monday when a mob of around 700 Iraqi men tore down the steel barrier, Nawaf said.

Although the situation on the border was quiet Wednesday, some 50 people gathered on Tuesday to demonstrate, but were dispersed without incident, security sources said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

30 out of the 40 US soldiers killed so far this month died by IED attacks.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi PM calls for speedy withdrawl of US troops

Iraq's transitional prime minister today called for the speedy withdrawal of US troops from his country.

The senior US commander in Iraq said he believed a "fairly substantial" pullout could begin next spring and summer.

The Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, said at a joint news conference with the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the time had arrived to plan a co-ordinated transition from American to Iraqi military control.

Iraq's transitional prime minister today called for the speedy withdrawal of US troops from his country.

The senior US commander in Iraq said he believed a "fairly substantial" pullout could begin next spring and summer.

The Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, said at a joint news conference with the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the time had arrived to plan a co-ordinated transition from American to Iraqi military control.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Just to point out that Ive seen reports of US military figures for the deaths where they claim 44 people died.

Suicide bomber kills 22 in Baghdad

A suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives outside a Baghdad police station, killing at least 22 people in the country's deadliest attack in a week. Separate attacks killed a US soldier and a Marine.

The attack yesterday on the Rashad police station in the eastern neighborhood of Mashtal came during a blinding sandstorm. Security barricades prevented the bomber from reaching the station, but the huge blast destroyed two dozen cars and damaged nearby shops.

Police and hospital officials said 22 people - most of them civilians - were killed and about 30 were injured. It was the deadliest attack in Iraq since a suicide bomber blew himself up on the 16 July near a Shiite mosque in the central city of Musayyib, igniting a fuel tanker and killing nearly 100 people.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed the leader of the city council in the insurgent-riddled city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, police said. Council chairman Taha al-Hinderah and a companion were gunned down as they walked in the Albu Rahman neighborhood Sunday evening, police Capt. Laith Mohammed said.

In Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, insurgents emptied fuel from two tanker trucks on the Muthanna Bridge across the Tigris River and set it on fire, police said. Two people were wounded in clashes that followed.

Six policemen also were killed in scattered attacks in Baghdad and Kirkuk, officials reported. Gunmen in Kirkuk also killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded six people, police said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqis demonstrate and burn Japanese flag in Samawah

SAMAWAH, Iraq -- Hundreds of Iraqis burned a Japanese flag Tuesday and called for Tokyo to remove its troops from the country in a protest that seemed motivated by the poor state of water and electricity supplies here more than two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The peaceful protest in this city 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of Baghdad appeared to have been organized by followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

After the rally ended, al-Sadr aides met with Iraqi provincial officials to repeat the demands.

"We don't have electricity nor potable water," said protester Ali Salman. "When will they solve this problem? A piece of ice cost us 8,000 Iraqi dinars ($5). It is sweltering, no electricity, no drinking water. What shall we do?"

 

[Barking_Mad]

A rare moment of honesty and real reporting from the BBC via Info clearing house

Death on the road to Basra

I still do not know why it caught my eye, why I looked ahead when I did - but I glimpsed a dark shape lying in the middle of the road.

The driver swerved to avoid it, braking sharply. As we passed I looked through window and caught sight of a body. Not the body of an animal, but the body of a child.

I asked the driver to stop, and we drove back. It was indeed the body of a young boy, his blood-soaked clothes scattered across the road. A few metres away, a girl is crying, screaming. She is inconsolable.

We see an American soldier and ask him to call for help. Ten minutes later, officers from the US Military Police turn up. In the blazing sun, a crowd is now gathering.

The girl is still crying - her name is Sabrina, she is 13 years old. She is barefoot and wears a ragged dress. She has dark eyes and long, brown hair.

She tells me how she saw her 11-year-old brother, Muhannad, had run up to an American military convoy trying to sell something to the soldiers, but was run over as he crossed the road.

The Americans did not stop.


The news of this terrible accident spreads quickly. In the distance, a group of women dressed in black are running across the desert towards the road.

The women are crying, wailing for their lost child. The men hold them back. A child beats his head on the ground until it starts bleeding. The unmistakable smell of death lingers in the air.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The article linked below is, unfortunately, a must read even though it dates back two years.

The men have been traumatised by their experiences. Cpl Richardson-said: "At night time you think about all the people you killed. It just never gets off your head, none of this stuff does. There's no chance to forget it, we're still here, we've been here so long. Most people leave after combat but we haven't."

Sgt Meadows said men under his command had been seeking help for severe depression: "They've already seen psychiatrists and the chain of command has got letters back saying 'these men need to be taken out of this situation'. But nothing's happened." Cpl Richardson added: "Some soldiers don't even f****** sleep at night. They sit up all f****** night long doing s*** to keep themselves busy - to keep their minds off this f****** stuff. It's the only way they can handle it. It's not so far from being crazy but it's their way of coping. There's one guy trying to build a little pool out the back, pointless stuff but it keeps him busy."

Sgt Meadows said: "For me, it's like snap-shot photos. Like pictures of maggots on tongues, babies with their heads on the ground, men with their heads halfway off and their eyes wide open and mouths wide open. I see it every day, every single day. The smells and the torsos burning, the entire route up to Baghdad, from 20 March to 7 April, nothing but burned bodies."

....

Specialist Castillo said: "We're more angry at the generals who are making these decisions and who never hit the ground, and who don't get shot at or have to look at the bloody bodies and the burnt-out bodies, and the dead babies and all that kinda stuff." Sgt Quinones added: "Most of these soldiers are in their early twenties and late teens. They've seen, in less than a month, more than any man should see in a whole lifetime. It's time for us to go home."

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/5402104?source=Evening Standard

 

[Barking_Mad]

Burned Iraqi children refused care by US doctors

BALAD, Iraq - On a scorching afternoon, while on duty at an Army airfield, Sgt. David J. Borell was approached by an Iraqi who pleaded for help for his three children, burned when they set fire to a bag containing explosive powder left over from war in Iraq.

Borell immediately called for assistance. But the two Army doctors who arrived about an hour later refused to help the children because their injuries were not life-threatening and had not been inflicted by U.S. troops.

Now the two girls and a boy are covered with scabs and the boy cannot use his right leg. And Borell is shattered.

"I have never seen in almost 14 years of Army experience anything that callous," said Borell, who recounted the June 13 incident to The Associated Press.

....

For Borell, who has been in Iraq since April 17, what happened with the injured children has made him question what it means to be an American soldier.

"What would it have cost us to treat these children? A few dollars perhaps. Some investment of time and resources," said Borell, 30, of Toledo, Ohio.

"I cannot imagine the heartlessness required to look into the eyes of a child in horrid pain and suffering and, with medical resources only a brief trip up the road, ignore their plight as though they are insignificant," he added.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi's electricity sector needs $20bn

In a press conference, he added that Iraq needs 18 thousand megawatts and that plans and necessary programs were set to reach this load by 2010.

He said that an agreement has been signed with regard to electricity connection with Syria, Turkey and Iran, which is originally connected with Iraq, in addition to Kuwait, to make up for the current shortage in the field of electricity.

He pointed out that the last exerted efforts, in an attempt for the reconstruction of the electricity sector after the conferences of Brussels and the donor countries by the Red Sea, have included talks with Iran and Germany. In addition, Germany, for the first time after the war, would work on supporting the construction of electricity projects to reinforce the electricity power during the next two years.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Hmmm not heard much about this........

Half of Basra council resigns amid assassinations

Basra – 22 members of Al Basra province council, 41 members in total, have suspended their membership in the council in protest against a threat submitted by the mayor to the central government in Baghdad, the increase of the number of victims of assassinations, and stopping the works in service projects.

In a statement that they issued, the members, who represent a number of Islamic and democratic parties that won in the local elections that were held by the beginning of this year, stressed that the province council is the competent juristic authority in charge of claiming for the legal rights of the province residents.

It is worth mentioning that the governor has given Baghdad government three months term to grant Al Basra province a quota of the oil produced from the oil fields existing in the province.

The members pointed out that despite the fact that they agree that the mayor's statement carries a diagnosis for the actual conditions in the province; they disagree with him with regard to the means of submitting the demands and his threat to the central government to resort to negative procedures against it. They pointed out that the mayor is a part of the government.

In their statement, the members have expressed their resentment with regard to the deterioration of the level of services offered to the province residents, the instability of security conditions and the aggravation of the phenomenon of assassinations, without reaching the doers, in reference to the increase of the assassination cases, which academic and military identities were victims of.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Completion of Abu Gharib Water Project

In the coming few days, the ministry of municipalities and public works would launch the central project of Abu Gharib water at a capacity of 1 million gallons a day.

Engineer Adel Hussein, general manager of Abu Gharib water, said that the project, which costs 450 thousand dollars from the budget of the American grant, includes a unified accumulator and a pipes network, 11 km long, which feeds various villages of the region, including Al Jiddi, Abu Shebin, Mahmoud Al Hafez and the region of Nail and Kraghoul. The works have continued for three months.

He confirmed that this project would supply with drinkable water for 40 thousand people, who were suffering from a severe shortage of water. Their residence homes would be supplied with water through Baghdad municipality, which means that the operation of this project would release the heavy load on Al Karkh water project, which belongs to the municipality, and reduces the shortage in Abu Gharib water of 55%.

He also pointed out that another water accumulator is being executed and is now in its final stages in Al Sheikh Al Qal'a region, at a capacity of half a million gallons a day and is hoped to be finished soon.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Baghdad without Electricity 20 Hours a Day, amidst the Flaming Heat

Baghdad: The hours of the programmed cuts of electricity power in Baghdad, of more than 6 million residents, have reached 20 hours a day, in various districts of the capital, where the temperature exceeds 45ْ C; i.e. at the rate of one hour of electricity against 6 hours of cuts, which is the lowest rate of power in many years.

A source in the Iraqi electricity ministry, who requested anonymity, said, "A sabotage act has targeted two transmitting lines is behind the obligatory modification of the programmed cuts schedule." He pointed out, "The new modification has been in force for three days. It prescribes cutting the electrical current for 10 hours, against 2 hours of operation, instead of 4 hours of cuts against 2 hours of operation."

The source confirmed, "Baghdad is currently working according to an emergency plan after a second line has been exposed to an act of sabotage, which led to decreasing the power coming to Baghdad and increasing the hours of cuts." Iraqis are forced to use small electricity generator that, in turn, need fuel, which is at high prices, if found.

A liter of gasoline is sold at 20 dinars at gas stations, but Iraqis are obliged to buy it at 500 dinars (33 US cents) from the black market, to avoid standing in lines in front of gas stations, for many hours,