*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

Fallujah under threat yet again

FALLUJAH (IPS) - After enduring two major assaults, Fallujah is under threat from U.S. forces again, residents say. "They destroyed our city twice and they are threatening us a third time," 52-year-old Ahmed Dhahy told IPS in Fallujah, the Sunni-dominated city 50km west of Baghdad.

"They want us to do their job for them and turn in those who target them," he said.

Dhahy, who lost 32 relatives when his father's house was bombed by a U.S. aircraft during the April 2004 attack on the city, said the U.S. military had threatened it would destroy the city if resistance fighters were not handed over to them.

"Last week the Americans used loudspeakers on the backs of their tanks and Humvees to threaten us," Dhahy said. Residents said the U.S. forces warned of a "large military operation" if fighters were not handed over.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said he had no reports of such action.

Fallujah was heavily bombed in April 2004 and again in November that year. The attacks destroyed 75 percent of city infrastructure and left more than 5,000 dead, according to local non-governmental groups.

But following the heavy assaults, resistance fighters have continued to launch attacks against U.S. and official Iraqi forces in the city. Fallujah remains under tight security, with the U.S. military using biometric identification, full body searches and bar-coded ID's for residents to enter and leave their city.

"The Iraqi resistance has not stopped for a single day despite the huge U.S. army activities," a city police captain speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS.

"The wise men of the city explained to U.S. officials that it is impossible to stop the resistance by military operations, but it seems the Americans prefer to do it the hard way."

The police captain said anti-occupation fighters had increased their activities in the face of sectarian violence in which Shia death squads have killed thousands of Sunnis in Baghdad. Many residents of Fallujah have relatives in the capital city.

Lack of reconstruction, and the U.S. military's failure to pay due compensation to victims' families have added to the unrest, the captain said.

"There used to be resistance attacks against the U.S. and Iraqi forces in Fallujah daily," added the captain. "But now they have increased to several per day. Many soldiers have been killed and their vehicles destroyed. So it is clear that the security measures they have taken in Fallujah have failed."

 

[slaar]

Although interestingly, this article suggests tribes independent of Al Qaeda in Iraq are asking the US to give them weapons to fight them with:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2355331,00.html

SUNNI leaders in al-Anbar province, long a bastion of resistance to the American presence in Iraq, are urging the American military to arm tribes against al-Qaeda, which is viewed as the most powerful force in the area.

They believe that this is now the best way to bring peace to the province that includes the violence-plagued cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.

Resentment of al-Qaeda militants among tribes and other insurgent groups has erupted into violence periodically since spring 2005. Over the past year the anger has led to a permanent rift and constant fighting in the western province that borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. “There is a struggle between people of al-Anbar province and some of the [militant] organisations working there, but the Americans are not taking seriously the people’s efforts to make peace,” said Ayad al-Samarrai, the No 2 official in the Islamic Party, the largest Iraqi Sunni party.

It's clearly seriously complicated up there.

 

[ZAMB]

This report claims however, that the majority of attacks are still anti-US, rather than sectarian.

WASHINGTON - Iraq's political process has sharpened the country's sectarian divisions, polarized relations between its ethnic and religious groups, and weakened its sense of national identity, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.

In spite of a sharp increase in Sunni-Shiite violence, however, attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces are still the primary source of bloodshed in Iraq, the report found. It was the latest in a series of recent grim assessments of conditions in Iraq.

But the report was unusual in its sweep, relying on a series of other government studies, some of them previously unpublicized, to touch on issues from violence and politics to electricity production. Published on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the GAO report was downbeat in its conclusions - underscoring how Iraq's deteriorating security situation threatens the Bush administration's goal of a stable and democratic regime in Baghdad.

"Despite coalition efforts and the efforts of the newly formed Iraqi government, insurgents continue to demonstrate the ability to recruit new fighters, supply themselves, and attack coalition security forces," the report says. "The deteriorating conditions threaten continued progress in U.S. and other international efforts to assist Iraq in the political and economic areas."

The report relied on a number of findings made earlier this year by the United Nations, the U.S. State and Defense departments, U.S. intelligence agencies and other sources to reach its conclusions. Unlike the majority of those agencies, the GAO, which reports to Congress, has no responsibility for forming or executing policy in Iraq.

The GAO said Congress must ask several questions as it considers what to do next. Among them:

-What political, economic and security conditions must be achieved before the United States can draw down and withdraw military forces from Iraq?

-Why have security conditions continued to worsen even as Iraq has met political milestones, increased the number of trained and equipped forces, and increasingly assumed the lead for security?

-If existing U.S. political, economic, and security measures are not reducing violence in Iraq, what additional measures, if any, will the administration propose for stemming the violence?

The report, citing the Pentagon, said that enemy attacks against coalition and Iraqi forces increased by 23 percent from 2004 to 2005 and that the number of attacks from January to July 2006 were 57 percent higher than during the same period in 2005.

A graph showed that the number of attacks rose from around 100 in May 2003 to roughly 4,500 in July 2006. More than half of those were against coalition troops; the rest appear to have been split almost evenly between attacks on Iraqi security forces and attacks on civilians.

The report said that electricity production remains inadequate, with Baghdad residents receiving less than six hours of power a day, on average. Residents outside Baghdad received electricity less than 11 hours a day, on average.

Though the Bush administration has hailed each political milestone in Iraq as another step on the march to freedom, the report cited a Defense Intelligence Agency finding that "the December 2005 elections appeared to heighten sectarian tensions and polarize sectarian divides."

That finding was echoed, the GAO said, in a March 2006 report from the government-funded U.S. Institute for Peace. That report said that the political process had sharpened ethnic and sectarian identities "while nationalism and a sense of Iraqi identity have weakened."

Further, a report by the office of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte concluded in February 2006 that Iraqi security forces "are experiencing difficulty in managing ethnic and sectarian divisions," the GAO said. The intelligence director's report said many Iraqi troops remain loyal to sectarian and political interests, the GAO said.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/15494904

 

[Barking_Mad]

Just been on BBC NEws 24 that the Iraqi government are thinking of building an 80km ditch round Baghdad with a limited number of entrances to stop insurgents getting in and out.

Perhaps they could turn it into a moat and throw a few sharks in for good measure?

 

[TopCat]

Thanks barking mad for the continual updates.

That ditch idea is utterly mad.

 

[Barking_Mad]

cheers, been a bit slack of late actually.......

Here's the Baghdad ditch story.........


Trenches plan to secure Baghdad

All remaining ways into Baghdad would be via security checkpoints
Iraq's interior ministry has announced plans to increase security in Baghdad by digging trenches around the city, and surrounding it with checkpoints.

The plan was unveiled amid continuing violence in the capital. At least 49 bodies have been recovered from the city's streets in the past 24 hours.

A spokesman said the security plan was designed to prevent insurgents from getting into and out of Baghdad.

But correspondents say it could take months to dig trenches round the city.

The Iraqi capital has a circumference of around 80km (50 miles).

Brigadier Abdul Karim of the interior ministry told the BBC that hundreds of minor roads would be sealed off under the plan, so that the city could only be accessed via 28 checkpoints.

He said equipment to detect weapons and explosives would be installed at key locations.

The plan, he said, would start coming into effect in less than three weeks.

Incidentally, in that article it says that 25 US soldiers have been killed this month. A quick glance at iCasualties which takes its info from the US DoD lists 36 dead

I sent two e-mail to the BBC today, both before 12pm. One via the BBC website and another directly to Steve Herrmann BBC website editor, informing them of this.

13 hours later, they've not corrected the figure. Additionally the BBC article above quotes the same figure from a previous BBC article seen here

Speed of the interweb eh?

 

[FruitandNut]

Digging ditches ('Battle of Trenches') didn't protect the Jews and Pagans back in the 7th century against the Islamic Army, I wonder if with the help of modern technology it will protect Islam from Islam?

 

[slaar]

Iraq Chiefs Vow to Fight Al Qaeda

Allegiances seem to be springing up between predictably pissed off Iraqis tired of their country being a paradise for jihadis:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5357340.stm

 

[Barking_Mad]

Worth reading........

Inside Baghdad: last battle of a stricken city

Karima Mohammed's men were taken on 5 September. Her husband Saleh Ahmed Mahmoud, 50, and 17-year-old son, Ghazan Saleh Ahmed, were seized by men wearing the uniform of the Iraqi police near the filling station in Zafaraniya in southern Baghdad. The day after they disappeared, her husband's brother received a threatening phone call. He would not tell Karima what the caller said, only that it was 'sectarian' in nature. Since then she has heard nothing. Karima now fears the worst. It would be hard not to - between Wednesday and Friday more than 130 bodies were found, dumped on the dusty streets, the fetid rubbish tips, and floating in the sewers and rivers of the capital. Yesterday morning there were a further 47 corpses. Those killed by sectarian violence now far outnumber Iraqis being killed by suicide car bombs and insurgent attacks - more than 50 have died that way in the city in the past 72 hours.

Karima is a Sunni and her misfortune is to live in a largely Shia area - a stronghold of the Jaish al-Mahdi, the militia of the firebrand preacher Moqtada al-Sadr, a group implicated in the campaign of attacks against Sunni families across Baghdad. In Zafaraniya, bombs have been thrown at Sunni houses. A Sunni mosque has come under attack. People, like Karima's husband and son, have simply disappeared.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Prof Rogers thinks they're about to re-enact the Fallujah and Ramadi operations, in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, internal security assessments (including a leaked report by Colonel Peter Devlin) indicate that the US occupying forces and the Iraqi administration's own forces have effectively lost control of the large Anbar province, which stretches from Baghdad to the Syrian border. Increasingly, the emphasis now is on trying to bring some degree of security to Baghdad itself.

A new security operation due to start in October 2006 has as its core aim to control all transit of insurgents and weapons into and out of Iraq's capital. It will cordon off the entire perimeter of the city (ninety-six kilometres in extent), and establish twenty-eight checkpoints to control all vehicles. A system of trenches will block all other roads and tracks, including cross-country routes passing through the city.

The lack of US forces in sufficient numbers means that the main personnel guarding the new perimeter will be Iraqi security personnel. The issue of their reliability in the project is reason enough to doubt its viability. But in any case, what is being attempted in Baghdad is to repeat on a massive scale what has already proved unsuccessful in Fallujah and Ramadi.

source

 

[Barking_Mad]

Total US wounded over last few weeks

27-Jul-06 thru 02-Aug-06 = 115
03-Aug-06 thru 09-Aug-06 = 115
10-Aug-06 thru 16-Aug-06 = 124
17-Aug-06 thru 24-Aug-06 = 98
25-Aug-06 thru 30-Aug-06 = 164
31-Aug-06 thru 07-Sep-06 = 170
08-Sep-06 thru 14-Sep-06 = 168
15-Sep-06 thru 19-Sep-06 = 209

Total 1162 injured since 27th July

 

[Barking_Mad]

Many die in Baghdad tanker bomb

Woman caught in blast winces in pain whilst being treated
Most victims were women queuing for cooking fuel for Ramadan
At least 31 people have been killed in a car bomb attack on a kerosene tanker in the mainly Shia district of Sadr City in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The BBC's Ian Pannell in Baghdad says most of the victims were women queuing for cooking fuel to use throughout the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.

US officials have predicted an increase in violence throughout Ramadan.

Meanwhile, Iraqi officials say they have captured a leader of violent Sunni militant group, Ansar al-Sunna.

The bomb attack is one of the deadliest in Iraq in recent weeks.

At least another 37 people were injured in the bomb blast, and Iraqi police Colonel Saad Abdul-Sada said that the death toll could rise further.

 

[Barking_Mad]

American killed at Iraq palace base

Authorities say a US contractor working for the American consulate in Iraq's second biggest city, Basra, has been killed by a rocket that struck the city's main British compound overnight...The missile struck the Basra Palace compound

New York City’s Reservists Are Asked to Return Iraq Pay

When they were called up for military service in the wake of 9/11, hundreds of uniformed city workers in the Reserves faced the suspension of their city health and pension benefits. The city offered them an option: it would keep paying their salaries...

More War Veterans Suffering From Stress

More than one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical treatment from the Veterans Health Administration report symptoms of stress or other mental disorders - a tenfold increase in the last 18 months, according to an agency study.

U.S. State Department contractor killed in rocket attack in Iraq

An American contractor working for the State Department was killed in a rocket attack in Basra, the U.S. Embassy said Saturday. The contractor was killed in an attack on the city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad on Friday

Tribal leader killed in Najaf

Gunmen shot dead Fadhil Abu Seybi, the leader of a local tribe, near his home in the holy city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Assailants bomb the house of a policeman

Assailants bombed the house of a policeman who was killed a week ago in southern Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, wounding five of his neighbours, police said.

Roadside bomb kills civilian in Latifiya

One civilian was killed and five people, including two policemen, were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in Latifiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

3,000 more Iraqi forces needed in Baghdad, U.S. general says

The U.S. military needs roughly 3,000 more Iraqi forces to join the battle in Baghdad, but requests for the troops have not been met because Iraqi soldiers are reluctant to leave their home regions, the commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad said Friday.

 

[Barking_Mad]

48 dead bodies found in Suburbs of Iraq capital

A total number of 48 dead bodies were discovered here Friday, said a statement by the Iraqi police. ...28 bodies were discovered earlier this morning while, the others were found late this afternoon.

Gas pipeline attacked between the Beiji and Dora

A gas pipeline between the Beiji and Dora refineries near Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, was attacked Thursday evening. It was not immediately clear whether it was an act of sabotage, or whether people had been trying to steal fuel from the pipeline.

Iraq mosques attacked on Muslim holy day

Gunmen opened fire on Sunni mosques and homes in a religiously mixed Baghdad neighborhood Friday, killing four people in an attack that drew the condemnation of Sunni leaders across the city.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Gunmen set fire to houses in sectarian violence in northern Baghdad

Gunmen set fire to four houses on Friday after they forced dwellers to leave their homes in a flare- up of sectarian conflict in a neighborhood in northern Baghdad, a well-informed police source said.

Two Iraqis killed, one wounded in Kirkuk shootout

Two Iraqi civilians were killed on Friday and another was wounded when unknown militants opened fire at them in Grenada district, central Kirkuk. A Kirkuk police source told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that the deceased were brothers...

Residents clash with gunmen in Baghdad' Hurriya district

Residents of the religiously mixed Hurriya district in northwest Baghdad clashed in mid-morning with gunmen who set two houses on fire, an Interior Ministry source said. Firefighters were fired on when they came to tackle the blazes.

Three gunmen kill former Ba'ath party member in Diwaniya

Three gunmen in a car opened fire and killed Nomass Atout, a former Ba'ath party member, near his house in Diwaniya, a Shi'ite city 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

Woman's body found dumped on the side of the road in Taza

Police found a woman's body dumped on the side of the road in the small town of Taza, 20 km (12 miles) south of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police said.

Two bodies found in Mosul

Police found two bodies, one beheaded, in a western part of the city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, morgue and hospital sources said.

10 bodies found in Baghdad

Police found 10 bodies, including those of two women, in different parts of Baghdad since early on Friday. Most bore signs of torture and had been shot, police said. The two women were found in the western Shi'ite district of Shula.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Video is said to show U.S. troops burned

CAIRO, Egypt - An al-Qaida-linked group posted a Web video Saturday purporting to show the bodies of two American soldiers being dragged behind a truck, then set on fire in apparent retaliation for the alleged rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman by U.S. troops from the same unit.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council - an umbrella organization of insurgent groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq - posted a previous video in June showing the soldiers' mutilated bodies, and claiming it killed them. It was not clear whether Saturday's video was a continuation of that footage, or why it was released.

The new footage came hours after the posting of another al-Qaida video, an apparent re-release of a tape showing the execution of a Turkish hostage - by the man purported to be the new leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq.

The images would be the first of Abu Ayyub al-Masri to be released since the group announced that he had succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Iraq on June 7.

Both videos appeared just as Sunni Arabs in Iraq began Ramadan, the Islamic holy month. U.S. officials have warned that attacks could intensify during Ramadan.

It was impossible to identify the bodies in the second video, but it was believed to show Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Pfc. Thomas Tucker, 25, who went missing after being attacked by insurgents on June 16 at a checkpoint south of Baghdad. Their remains were found three days later, and the U.S. military said they had been mutilated.

The video showed masked men dragging the corpses and later setting them on fire. Below the graphic footage is a subtitle: "The two soldiers belong to the same brigade of the soldier who raped our sister in Mahmoudiya."

The U.S military has charged four soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division - Spc. James P. Barker, Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard - in the March 12 alleged rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe is accused of failing to report the attack but is not alleged to have been a direct participant.

A fifth suspect, Pfc. Steven D. Green, was discharged from the army because of a "personality disorder" before the allegations became known. He has pleaded not guilty to rape and murder charges and is being held in a civilian court in the United States.

Mahmoudiya is an extremely violent region in Iraq in an area known as the "triangle of death" for the numerous attacks by insurgents.

The two slain soldiers also were from the 101st Airborne Division.

 

[slaar]

Terrifying piece in the Independent today on the absolute vacuum in many parts of the country, and what that means for human rights:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1747149.ece

Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside. Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the insurgents are close to establishing a "Taliban republic".

Officials in the strategically important province - composed of a mixture of Sunnis and Shias with a Kurdish minority - have no doubt about what is happening. Lt-Col Ahmed Ahmed Nuri Hassan, a weary-looking commander of the federal police, says: "Now there is an ethnic civil war and it is getting worse every day."

but in addition:

"It is not like Lebanon, because most of the killing is done by local or tribal militias." The problem is not that the insurgents are strong but that the government forces are so weak. A division of 7,000 government soldiers is in Diyala, he said, "but they are all Shias and only arrest Sunnis."

 

[slaar]

Iraq at the Gates of Hell

George Bush's Iraq in 21 questions:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=125142

How many civilians are dying in the Iraqi capital, due to those militias, numerous (often government-linked death squads), the Sunni insurgency, and al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia-style terrorism?

5,106 people in July and August, according to a recently released United Nations report. The previous, still staggering but significantly lower figure of 3,391 offered for those months relied on body counts only from the city morgue. The UN report also includes deaths at the city's overtaxed hospitals. With the Bush administration bringing thousands of extra U.S. and Iraqi soldiers into the capital in August, death tolls went down somewhat for a few weeks, but began rising again towards month's end. August figures on civilian wounded -- 4,309 -- rose 14% over July's figures and, by late September, suicide bombings were at their highest level since the invasion.

How many Iraqis are being tortured in Baghdad at present?

Precise numbers are obviously in short supply on this one, but large numbers of bodies are found in and around the capital every single day, a result of the roiling civil war already underway there. These bodies, as Oppel of the Times describes them, commonly display a variety of signs of torture including: "gouged-out eyeballs… wounds… in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns… acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin… missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails." The UN's chief anti-torture expert, Manfred Nowak, believes that torture in Iraq is now not only "totally out of hand," but "worse" than under Saddam Hussein.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi education system on brink of collapse

Iraq's school and university system is in danger of collapse in large areas of the country as pupils and teachers take flight in the face of threats of violence.

Professors and parents have told the Guardian they no longer feel safe to attend their educational institutions. In some schools and colleges, up to half the staff have fled abroad, resigned or applied to go on prolonged vacation, and class sizes have also dropped by up to half in the areas that are the worst affected.

Professionals in higher education, particularly those teaching the sciences and in health, have been targeted for assassination. Universities from Basra in the south to Kirkuk and Mosul in the north have been infiltrated by militia organisations, while the same militias from Islamic organisations regularly intimidate female students at the school and university gates for failing to wear the hijab. Women teachers too have been ordered by their ministry to adopt Islamic codes of clothing and behaviour. "The militias from all sides are in the universities. Classes are not happening because of the chaos, and colleagues are fleeing if they can," said Professor Saad Jawad, a lecturer in political science at Baghdad University.

"The whole situation is becoming completely unbearable. I decided to stay where many other professors have left. But I think it will reach the point where I will have to decide.

"A large number have simply left the country, while others have applied to go on prolonged sick leave. We are using recently graduated MA and PhD students to fill in the gaps."

"What has been happening with the murders of professors involved in the sciences is that a lot of those involved medicine, biology, maths have fled," says Wadh Nadhmi, who also teaches politics in Baghdad. "The people who have got the money are sending their children abroad to study. A lot - my daughter is one of them - are deciding to finish their higher education in Egypt."

It is not only in Baghdad that the universities are beginning to suffer from the security situation. In Mosul, too, professors complain of a system now approaching utter disarray.

Mohammed U a 60-year-old science professor who asked for his full name not to be disclosed, spoke to the Guardian after returning from the funeral of a colleague, a law professor and head of the law faculty, who died in an explosion.

"Education here is a complete shambles. Professors are leaving, and the situation - the closed roads and bridges - means that both students and teachers find it difficult to get in for classes. In some departments in my institute attendance is down to a third. In others we have instances of no students turning up at all.

"Students are really struggling. To get them through at all, we have had to lower academic levels. We have to go easy on them. The whole system is becoming rapidly degraded."

 

[muser]

http://http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-10-04T210944Z_01_KHA435255_RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAQ.xml

Thousands of police face criminal vetting and lie detectors as part of a "retraining" process designed to weed out militia killers who have used the cover of their uniforms to kidnap, torture and commit mass murder, U.S. officials have said.

Under pressure before congressional elections next month from voters keen for an exit strategy from Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush has made the training of Iraqi security forces the focus of hopes to start withdrawing 140,000 U.S. troops.

The same sectarian divisions driving hundreds of killings a week in the capital are also present among the 300,000 Iraqi soldiers and especially the police, U.S. officials say.

Would like to see whether american skepticism to the war will translate in the mid term election.

 

[snorbury]

Forward Operating Base is on fire, tanks are burning, ammunition is hurtling into the sky it seems like a big hit for the insurgents Falcon--http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6038990.stm

 

[ZAMB]

John Pilger on UK complicity in Iraq deaths

Busy fondling their self-esteem

As the news reveals a study that puts civilian deaths in Iraq at 655,000, John Pilger recalls the words of a song by the great Chilean balladeer, Victor Jara, to describe those who see themselves as rational and liberal are, in fact, complicit in an unrecognised crime.

By John Pilger

10/12/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The great Chilean balladeer Victor Jara, who was tortured to death by the regime of General Pinochet 33 years ago, wrote a song that mocks those who see themselves as rational and liberal, yet so often retreat into the arms of authority, no matter its dishonesty and brutality to others. He sang:

Come on over here
where the sun is nice and warm.
Yes, you, who have the habit
of jumping from one side to the other...
[Over there] you’re nothing at all,
Neither fish nor fowl,
You’re too busy fondling...
Your own self-esteem.

The past few weeks have seen a fiesta of these rational, liberal people who dominate British mainstream politics. For them, the most basic forms of morality and shame, the kind you learn as a child, have no place in public life. On 27 September, the Guardian published a front-page photograph of Tony Blair, a prima facie war criminal, his arms outstretched, his grin fixed. Beside this was a headline, "Charm and eloquence. But a missed chance". Beneath this, Polly Toynbee wrote: "There were some damp eyes dabbed with hankies and men blowing noses. 'Don’t go,' someone said."

Consider such vomit against the facts of Blair’s actual crime – the unprovoked invasion of a defenceless country, justified by lies now voluminously documented, and causing the violent deaths of tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children. The word "crime" is verboten among those about whom Victor Jara sang. To spell out the truth would illuminate the collusion of an entire political class.

Instead, the shameless neither-fish-nor-fowl tribunes speak and write incessantly of a "mistake", a "blunder", even a Shakespearean tragedy (for the war criminal, not his victims). From their studios and editorial offices, they declare the mendacious and dishonest banalities of their unclad emperor "brilliant". Al-Qaeda, said Blair in his speech to the Labour party conference, "killed 3,000 people including over 60 British on the streets of New York before war in Afghanistan or Iraq was even thought of". The breath is swept away by this one statement. Half a million infants lie dead, according to Unicef, as a result of the Anglo-American siege of Iraq during the 1990s. For Blair and his rational, liberal, neither-fish-nor-fowl court, these children never lived and never died. Clearly, the Emperor Tony was a leader for his time and, above all, clubbable, whatever the "mistakes" he had made in Iraq.

A parallel world of truth and lies, morality and immorality dominates how the crime in Iraq is presented to us. In recent months, the invaders have vanished. The US, having murdered and cluster-bombed and napalmed and phosphorus-bombed, is now a wise referee between, even a protector of, "warring tribes". The buzzword is "sectarianism", blurring the truth that most of the attacks by the resistance are against the foreign military occupiers: on average, one every 15 minutes. That the majority of Iraqis, Sunni and Shia, are united in their demand that US and British forces get out of their country now is of no interest. Has journalism ever been so voluntarily appropriated by black propaganda?

The confidence in the Blair regime that this propaganda will see them right (if not re-elected) is expressed in striking ways. The former Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, the epitome of neither-fish-nor-fowl, who supported a piratical attack on a Muslim country, now aims his liberal, rational remarks at the most vulnerable community in Britain, fully aware that the racist subtext of his words will be understood in "Middle England" and hopefully further what is left of his contemptible career. It was Straw who let Pinochet escape justice for fraudulent reasons of ill-health. Victor Jara’s song is an ode to Straw, and to the authoritarian, twice "retired" David Blunkett, now elevated by the Guardian as "one of the most brilliant, natural politicians", on a mission to ensure that a higher form of corruption, mass murder, does not blight "Tony’s legacy".

The Tory leader, David Cameron, the former public relations man for the asset-stripper Michael Green, will follow this legacy, should he become prime minister. Standing on the Bournemouth seafront with his family, including three young children, he emphasised his support for the crime against the Iraqi people, whose children, says Unicef, are now dying faster under Blair and Bush than under Saddam Hussein.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15273.htm

 

[Barking_Mad]

Surge of violence or just the fact that this has been reported means it is seen as such? I know which one i think it probably is.....

Surge of violence leaves nearly 100 dead in Iraqi town

Four days of sectarian slaughter killed at least 91 people by Monday in Balad, a town near a major U.S. air base an hour's drive north of the capital. Elsewhere, 60 Iraqis died in attacks and 16 tortured bodies were found.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Militia leader's arrest sets up test for Iraq PM

The Shiite movement loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has threatened to hold demonstrations in Baghdad, in a new test to the authority of Iraq's beleaguered government.

 

[Barking_Mad]

General - Officer at Abu Ghraib allowed abuse

The highest-ranking officer charged with crimes at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq allowed prisoner abuses and then lied about it, a general who investigated the scandal testified Monday. Maj. Gen. George Fay, who wrote a report on mistreatment...

 

[Barking_Mad]

61 'coalition' troops killed in the first 16 days of October. At the current rate it would be the most deaths since January 05

 

[slaar]

Quite an interesting report here for an embedded reporter:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/16/damon.btsc/index.html

What they find on this day pales compared to what's been uncovered during the last two weeks. The troops are working on clearing an area no larger than 4 square miles (6 kilometers) and already they have found more than 100 weapons caches with enough material to make at least 1,000 roadside bombs.

The soldiers also discovered anti-aircraft machine guns (the 101st Brigade that previously operated here had at least two helicopters shot down); half a dozen sniper rifles, some with night vision capabilities; crude rocket-propelled grenade launchers and mortar launching tubes; and 55-gallon drums filled with liquid explosives.

This is in one 4 square mile patch of land.

 

[slaar]

Coalition death toll hits 3,000

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/16/iraq.main/index.html

 

[Barking_Mad]

US combat injuries from 31st August to 11th October

31-Aug-06 thru 07-Sep-06 = 172
08-Sep-06 thru 14-Sep-06 = 168
15-Sep-06 thru 19-Sep-06 = 209
20-Sep-06 thru 27-Sep-06 = 146
28-Sep-06 thru 04-Oct-06 = 216
05-Oct-06 thru 11-Oct-06 = 208

Average of 26 injured every day.