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By William Rivers Pitt Iraq's "Hidden" Conflict
=-O 3/18/08 Raed Jarrar
Life In Hell: Covering The Iraq War
3/17/08 By Bassam Sebti
 WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Why? By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Columnist Wednesday 19 March 2008 Politics is the art of controlling your environment. ~Hunter S. Thompson Five years in
Iraq.
That's 1,825 days since "Shock and Awe" lit up the skies above Baghdad, all of which was captured live and in living color by unblinking CNN cameras with unobstructed views of the carnage. 3,991 United States soldiers have died in Iraq since then. That's a little more than two United States soldiers killed per day. Every day. For five years. More than 40,000 United States soldiers have been wounded in Iraq since then. That's more than twenty-one United States soldiers wounded per day. Every day. For five years. The last Congressional Budget Office report on the monetary cost for Iraq dates back to October of last year, and tabulates that cost at $421 billion. The CBO cannot be censured should that number prove lower than what has actually been spent, as it is understood that all the other millions pilfered by profiteers and passed on in bribes were not duly recorded in the books, and thus cannot be accounted for. The CBO's number must be considered inaccurately low on spec, thanks in part to a nifty little cash-and-carry hootenanny from three years ago in July of 2005. A report from the UK Guardian tells the tale: "The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it has gone. A further $3.4 billion appropriated by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance 'security'." But wait, there's more: "Pilfering was rife," continues the Guardian report. "Millions of dollars in cash went missing from the Iraqi Central Bank. Between $11 million and $26 million worth of Iraqi property sequestered by the Coalition Provisional Authority was unaccounted for. The payroll was padded with hundreds of ghost employees. Millions of dollars were paid to contractors for phantom work. Some $3,379,505 was billed, for example, for 'personnel not in the field performing work' and 'other improper charges' on just one oil pipeline repair contract." This one example, just one among the multitudes, makes the existence of significant gaps in the accuracy of the information supporting the CBO's conclusions a safe assumption. As for the money not present on the official balance sheets, well ... to paraphrase John Kenneth Galbraith, that cash went to the same place your lap goes when you stand up. Even the guys who stole it probably don't know what happened to it all, not completely, not for certain. If the Federal Reserve had stuffed those bills into the belly of a ballistic missile and launched the thing into deep space, they'd know exactly as much about where it is as they now know about what happened to the cash literally dumped into Iraq. It's somewhere, and nowhere, and all the way gone. $421 billion spent over 1,825 days in Iraq comes to $230,684,931 plus change per day. Every day. For five years. And that number is low. Fast-forward the tape ten years to 2017, via the calculations recently published in a new book by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes, and the cost of attacking Iraq will be somewhere in the vicinity of $3 trillion. This is based on the assumption that United States soldiers will still be dying in Iraq ten years hence. Six to four and pick 'em on that one. Sucker bet. George W. Bush's banner-bolstered "Mission Accomplished" photo-op happened four years and ten months ago. This event is noteworthy for myriad reasons, Bush's gruesome and unspeakably inaccurate grandstanding being foremost among them. Also, as an aside, Bush's use of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as a backdrop for his 1,825-days-wrong-and-counting festival of balderdash set a new world record for Largest Prop Ever Used For Political Gain, by any world leader, ever. That event was followed the very next day by a comment from General Tommy Franks, leader of the US attack and invasion of Iraq. A reporter apparently had the unrivaled gall to query Franks on the matter of Iraqi civilian casualties. "We," replied Franks, "don't do body counts." The man was not lying; in the five years since the United States invaded Iraq, not one attempt has been made by any United States government agency or office to accurately count the civilian dead and wounded. A number of non-official efforts have been made to find some kind of answer for that cheeky reporter's question. In October of 2004, a team of experts sponsored by Human Rights Watch put forth their best attempt to provide a number. "One of the first attempts to independently estimate the loss of civilian life from the Iraq war has concluded that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died because of the US invasion," reported The Washington Post. "The analysis, an extrapolation based on a relatively small number of documented deaths, indicated that many of the excess deaths have occurred due to aerial attacks by coalition forces, with women and children being frequent victims." That was four years ago, and might not be accurate. Two years later, the British medical journal the Lancet put the number of Iraqi civilian deaths at 655,000. A hue and cry was raised about the methodology of that study, so we really don't know how many have died. Is it a million dead Iraqi civilians, is it two million, or only a half-million? Two hundred thousand, or one hundred thousand? Fifty thousand, or ten thousand? Nobody knows, because we don't do body counts. One thing is sure. Iraqi civilians have been dying. Every day. For five years. Why? Mainly, because the motivations behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq came down to power, payback and greed, which makes this entire calamity just another ghastly page within the oldest book in humanity's bloody history. Vice President Dick Cheney is, by far and away, the most powerful man in the present administration. He is still bitter from watching the slow annihilation of Richard Nixon, his first boss in Washington, at the hands of a Democrat-dominated US Congress fueled by broad and vocal support from an outraged public. Nixon was Cheney's archetype, the Unitary Executive version 1.0, who tried to raze the separation of powers doctrine to the ground by brazenly declaring the Presidency to be beyond any legal limitations, beyond any meddling intruders sniffing for secrets in the name of oversight, and thus vested with the same absolute authority once claimed by the Stuart kings of old. Yet that Nixonian leviathan collapsed and came to grief before the Legislature, the Judiciary, and the rule of constitutional law. Cheney was a man thwarted, and so he would brood on that defeat for many long years, and would bide his time. Few people, not even his closest Republican colleagues, were aware of the stone-fisted authoritarian lurking behind that bland conservative facade. One passage from a Washington Post analysis of Cheney's long career in government and business stands out: "Cheney's muscular views on presidential power, then and now, offer one answer to the question raised often by former colleagues in recent years: What happened to the careful, mainstream conservative they once thought they understood?" What happened? Opportunity happened, at long last, George W. Bush and 9/11 and a manufactured state of permanent war happened. Over these last five years, virtually every invocation of the ever-expanding powers laid claim by Executive privilege, every ignored Congressional subpoena, every assertion of confidentiality or national security to block even meager attempts to scrutinize White House activities, every summary termination of a US attorney who refused administration orders to cripple offending Democrats with baseless abuses of prosecutorial discretion, every refusal to obey black-letter laws requiring the release of administration documents even to the harmless librarians at the National Archives, every signing statement that eviscerates another duly-passed bill from Congress, every attempt to stack the Justice Department and the federal court system with devoted yes-men whose only qualification is their total loyalty to and complete Judicial protection of the administration, with neither heed nor concern paid to whatever laws or freedoms or principles are rubbished by the process, every one of these lethal attacks upon America's constitutional infrastructure have been committed under the ill-defined and therefore limitless legal prerogatives afforded to American presidents "during a time of war." Why? Because war in Iraq presented Dick Cheney with the means to fulfill his decades-old ambition: to invest the Executive branch with unprecedented and unlimited power, to settle a few festering scores with that nettlesome Legislature, and to cash in on the spoils of supremacy by rerouting every available dollar out of the Treasury and into tax-sheltered coffers of like-minded comrades in the oil and warfare industries, comrades who eagerly joined in the plunder and have happily fattened their fortunes with money that now might as well be in the same place as your lap once you stand up. Somewhere, nowhere, and all the way gone. Author and former presidential adviser Sidney Blumenthal, writing in November of 2005, noted where Dick Cheney's plans had led him, and the nation, to that point. "The making of the Iraq war, torture policy and an industry-friendly energy plan," he observed, "has required secrecy, deception and subordination of government as it previously existed. But these, too, are means to an end. Even projecting a 'war on terror' as total war, trying to envelop the whole American society within its fog, is a device to invest absolute power in the executive. Dick Cheney sees in George W. Bush his last chance. Nixon self-destructed, Ford was fatally compromised by his moderation, Reagan was not what was hoped for, the elder Bush ended up a disappointment. In every case, the Republican presidents had been checked or gone soft. Finally, President Bush provided the instrument, September 11 the opportunity. This time the failures of the past provided the guideposts for getting it right. The administration's heedlessness was simply the wisdom of Cheney's experience." It is certainly possible that those Bush administration officials who advocated legalizing the torture of prisoners, and who celebrated Bush's recent veto of legislation to prohibit same, are simply a bunch of clandestine bondage freaks with a taste for the whip and the waterboard. It doesn't matter. The one and only reason this White House chose to legitimize the infliction of ruthless agony with the stamp of presidential approval is because somebody somewhere forbade them from doing it. They may all genuinely despise the very idea of torture, but not as much as they despise being told "No" under any circumstances. "No" is the red flag to Cheney's bull. "No" is unacceptable to the Unitary Executive. "No" will not stand, period, and whatever the matter at hand may be is almost completely irrelevant to the argument as they see it. Forcing "No" into becoming "Yes," or forcing the defeated retreat of whatever adversary dared to defy them with a "No," is the complete sum and substance of Bush administration ideology. Why? Outrageous as it may seem, that is the answer. This is a wretched anniversary. Let us not do it again next year.
William Rivers Pitt is a
New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books:
"War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know"
and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest
book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and
America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from
PoliPointPress.
0WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW0to Fifth War Anniversary
Informed Comment
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The USG Open Source Center
translates
Iraqi television reactions to the fifth anniversary of the US invasion
of Iraq.
Al-Rafidayn [Sunni fundamentalist, affiliated with
the
Association of
Muslim Scholars
Within its 0700 GMT newscast, the [Rafidayn] channel carries the following announcer-read report: "Harith al-Dari, secretary general of the Association of Muslim Scholars, said that Iraq has become an arena for conflicts among foreign forces. He added that Iraq's people and civilization are facing a war of elimination that seeks to wipe out their identity. Addressing the conference of the Higher Council for Islamic Affairs, Al-Dari said that the Iraqi issue is not being handled in a satisfactory manner by the Arab countries and the international community. He went on to say: After five years of the invasion, the country is facing a grievous security crisis. In fact, there is no security at the political, health, and economic levels." At 0807 GMT, the channel carries an episode of its "Political Dialogue," moderated by Imad al-Dulaymi. The program, which discusses the fifth anniversary of the war on Iraq, hosts Ayatollah Husayn al-Mu'ayyad, head of the Iraqi National Trend. Al-Mu'ayyad says: "There is no doubt that the occupation committed the most appalling form of humiliation against the Iraqis. Eliminating Iraqi sovereignty and bringing the country under heinous military occupation is, by all means, a humiliation of the Iraqi national pride. The launch of a political process away from the will of the Iraqi people and the suppression of the Iraqi national scheme are nothing but a stab in the heart of each Iraqi citizen. The outrageous violation by the occupation of human rights at Abu-Ghurayb is another attempt to humiliate the Iraqi people." He adds: "The United States wants to control oil sources, rather than exports. The United States views oil as a treasure upon which it has to lay its hand. Therefore, it is not enough for them to ensure that oil will be exported to them. They want to control oil and use it as a means to control international politics and to exert pressures even on Europe. This is what the new world order is all about." Asked to assess the current security situation, he says: "Since the start of the security plan, I have repeatedly said that this plan is a failure. Security cannot be restored through the imposition of martial law. No one can say there are security successes if the streets are full of policemen and soldiers. This is not a professional way to keep security in any country. Security should be maintained while the army is in its barracks and the police are in their stations. There has to be a security umbrella that covers the whole country. A citizen has to feel that security is based on objective justifications and principles, rather than on dividing the same city into cantons; turning shops into jails; and filling streets with tanks, armored vehicles, and armed men. This is not the way to keep security. On the contrary, this indicates lack of security and lack of security guarantees." Baghdad Channel [affiliated with the Sunni fundamentalist
Iraqi Islamic
Party of Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi] :
Within its 1800 GMT newscast, the channel carries the following announcer-read report over video: "A large-scale political frustration now dominates the US stances at the logistic, field, local, and international levels. In addition, it has become evident that many of the circumstances preceding and engulfing the invasion of Iraq in 2003 are groundless. It has also become clear that most of the justifications to launch that war -- particularly the alleged wish to eliminate weapons of mass destruction that Iraq was claimed to have possessed then, were unrealistic and invalid." The channel then carries field interviews with some Iraqi citizens. An unidentified citizen says: "We were hoping that the new situation will be different. We thought a dramatic change would happen. But things are becoming worse. Every side is after its own interests. A certain side wants to defend itself, while another one wants to defend its party. The simple citizens are left alone to face the horrible smell of the sewage system. Sewage water overflows almost every day. Our children's health is deteriorating because of various disea ses. Potable water is another story to tell." Another citizen says: "It is five years of destruction and deterioration. Things are becoming worse and worse. Nothing has improved. What improvement is there? Some appear on TV and claim that security is there. But these are just empty words. Security is limited to one small spot in Iraq; namely, the Green Zone." The channel then carries the following announcer-read report over video: "Dozens of Iraqis gathered in Al-Firdaus Square in central Baghdad, demanding the occupation troops to leave their country. Today's scene is totally different from the scene which this very square saw five years ago. The Iraqis still vividly remember the sounds of powerful blasts, the smell of gunpowder, and the shrieking of planes. They cannot forget those scenes, which enroot in one's memory the images of death, damage, chaos, unemployment, and a series of disasters represented in storming houses, arrests, and indiscriminate killings. Such acts soon dominated the scene and eclipsed the alleged democracy, security, prosperity, and peace. The occupation has, indeed, left a dark era that unveiled the falsehood of the allegations and lies that were fabricated at the Pentagon's decision-making circles." Within the same cast, the channel carries a live interview over telephone with Sa'd al-Hudaythi, a political analyst, to comment on US President George Bush's speech on the fifth anniversary of the war on Iraq. Al-Hudaythi says: "The US rhetoric has been the same since the first day of the invasion. In my view, it is not to the interest of the US Administration to abandon this rhetoric at this phase, particularly given the fact that the US elections are approaching." "Five years have passed since the start of the US occupation. We have had a mixture of hopes and pains. An assessment of the first two years of the occupation shows that hopes were greater than pains. But in the third and fourth years, pains overruled hopes. However, there has been a relative change over the past few months. We hope that this change will be for the better and will be sustained. Of course, this depends on many requirements which the Iraqi political forces have to fulfill. In addition, let us not forget that there is a negative regional influence over the stability of Iraq," he adds. On Al-Furat-- within the 1700 GMT newscast the channel carries field
interviews with Iraqi
citizens.
An unidentified representative of the Iraq Communist Party says: "Our vision called for the fall of the regime. But we did not want it to be this way. We and some other forces were hoping to gather the forces of our people. We pinned hopes on the army, the national forces, and decent officers, as well as on the unity of Iraqi opposition and decent political, international, and media support. This was our vision. We wanted to gather all those forces to get rid of the regime. We had already realized that foreign interferences would lead to certain consequences." In another interview, an unidentified citizen says: "When the military operations to depose the regime in Iraq started, we felt optimistic. Our dreams were different from what is happening now. We expected things would be better. We thought that the freedom of the Iraqis would improve, especially after the injustice and suppression we had put up with." . . . This summary highlights select Iraqi TV reporting on the fifth anniversary of the war on Iraq. It covers reports carried on 19 March by: -- Cairo Al-Rafidayn Satellite Channel in Arabic -- Pro-Sunni, anti-US Iraqi channel believed to be affiliated with the Association of Muslim Scholars -- -- Baghdad Baghdad Satellite Television in Arabic -- television channel believed to be sponsored by the Iraqi Islamic Party -- -- Baghdad Al-Furat Television Channel in Arabic -- Television channel affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) led by Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim -- -- Al-Sulaymaniyah Al-Fayha Television in Arabic -- A private, independent satellite channel that addresses Iraq-related issues, supervised by Muhammad al-Ta'i, an Iraqi media figure . . . ***********************************
5
years after Iraq's 'liberation,'
|
| WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Iraq
War Protesters Take
to the Streets By
Michael Ruane, Sue Anne Pressley
Montes Wednesday
19
March 2008 Hundreds of antiwar demonstrators this
morning tried
to stop workers from entering federal government buildings, sat down in
busy streets to block traffic, and staged a "March of the Dead" parade
from Arlington National Cemetery into the District to protest five
years of fighting in Iraq.
Small roving bands of protesters moved from intersection to intersection in the downtown D.C. area, slowing traffic before police officers hurried them along. There was some street theater - eight women in white death masks and black robes sat for nearly an hour in the intersection of 17th and L streets NW until police dragged them away. But even participants said they were disappointed at the low turnout. The activities, which began at 8 a.m. and were to continue throughout the evening, targeted an array of institutions that organizers blame for prolonging the Iraqi conflict, including the Internal Revenue Service and news outlets such as The Washington Post. It was the second day of a two-day protest marking the fifth anniversary of the start of the war. "The war continues. People continue to die. We don't want our tax dollars spent on funding the war in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Ed Hedemann, 63, from Brooklyn, N.Y., who hoped to shut down the IRS for the day. "I refuse to pay my taxes for it." The IRS, however, remained open. Police said the protesters had caused no major disruptions, but Federal Protective Service officers, who have jurisdiction in and around federal buildings, had arrested about 35 people for crossing police lines. D.C. police had made one arrest, as of late morning, for crossing a police line. "We anticipate more arrests because the protesters are expected to try to block rush hour traffic later this afternoon. . . . We anticipate rolling street closures," said D.C. police spokeswoman Traci Hughes, who added that the process will be streamlined "They will pay a fine and be on their merry way." Today's activities began early as several hundred demonstrators gathered at McPherson Square and Franklin Square, then moved on to their targets at the IRS, the American Petroleum Institute and other locations. A ragtag band of about 20 people, dressed in old bright-green band uniforms, led a parade of about 150 marchers down 12th Street NW to the IRS headquarters at 1111 Constitution AvenueNW. Members of the antiwar group Code Pink, dressed in their signature hot pink, held high a banner that said: "Not one more death. Not one more dollar. No Funds for War Crimes." Federal officers in black shades stood guard on the steps of the building. Organizers handed out fliers that labeled the IRS building as "part of a crime against humanity" for funneling money to the Pentagon to finance the war. Donna Gould, a retired psychotherapist from New York, was wearing a white poncho that said in black letters: "Shut Down the IRS." "I object to the fact that our tax money is used for war, killing, atrocities, and torture when it should be used for things that are life-affirming like health care, schools, housing, arts, bicycles, and converting to renewable energy," Gould said. Officers began making arrests when the demonstrators, one by one, stepped over the metal barriers and police lines at the IRS entrance, making for the front steps. They did not fight their arrests and sat down quietly on the sidewalk, their hands handcuffed behind them. They were later loaded into a van. But police did not seem eager to arrest anyone. At 11:30 a.m., about 30 demonstrators were sitting in a circle, blocking one lane of L Street NW at 13th St. A ring of D.C. police officers on bicycles surrounded them. This had been going on for an hour, but a police captain on the scene said he did not plan to arrest anyone. At about the same time, a group of about 100 veterans called Veterans for Peace was walking up Constitution Avenue, after a rally at the National Museum of the American Indian. Some of the older members were longtime protesters, their clothing covered with badges from the peace marches they've attended. But others were new to this. At the front of the line were about a dozen young veterans from the Iraq conflict, Dan Murphy, 23, among them. "After the first time I got back,
all I heard were lies-how we were going to spread democracy, the
weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11," said Murphy,
now a college student, who served in the Army for 4 1/2 years. "All of
those were lies, and we all knew it." Iraq
Surge Has Failed in Its
Main Purpose
Here we are in the final throes of the Bush administration and someone has foolishly let Darth Cheney off his leash again. He immediately set off on a celebratory visit to Baghdad to praise the "huge accomplishment" of increased security wrought by the now-ending surge in the number of American troops. A large "BOOM" or two marked his pronouncements and another 40 Iraqi civilians died at the hands of a suicide bomber. The vice president swiftly got down to repeating one of the old lies he loves so well, telling us how Iraq and the late dictator Saddam Hussein were connected to the events of 9/11. Next door in Jordan the putative Republican nominee for president, Sen. John McCain, on his way home from his own personal tour of Baghdad, repeated for the second day in a row a charge that Iran was training al Qaida terrorists and then sending them back to Iraq. At the urging of fellow senator Joe Lieberman he quickly corrected that to say that Iran was training Iraqi insurgents. But for the traveling politicians and this week's fifth anniversary of our invasion and occupation of Iraq the war would have continued to be missing in action from network and cable television and the front pages of our newspapers, as well as from the attention of most Americans. After all, who has time to think about our wars when we have the ongoing road show as the last two Democrats still standing in their party's nomination process do personal battle, the state of New York struggles to find a governor who can keep his zipper closed and the nation's economy is melting down quicker than Chernobyl's reactors. Everyone seems content to think about anything but Iraq until Gen. David Petraeus journeys back to Washington in April to give a report on the surge's successes and how they must be guarded by keeping 130,000 U.S. troops on the ground indefinitely - an idea embraced by President George W. Bush, Cheney and McCain. None of those worthies took note, in their praise of the surge, about the failure of its main purpose. The surge was intended as a short-term escalation of troop strength to buy a bubble of better security so the Iraqi government and parliament could make progress toward reconciliation among its own warring, revenge-minded communities. They got their improvements in the Baghdad security environment thanks in part to the surge, but also thanks to the completion of ethnic cleansing in some of the worst neighborhoods in the capital and tactical decisions taken by Sunni tribal insurgents and Shiite cleric Moktada al Sadr and his murderous Mahdi militia. The weak central government of Prime Minister Nour al Maliki has achieved little or nothing in reassuring the Sunni minority - newly and temporarily aligned with the American forces they once attacked and killed - that they will have a future and a fair shake in the new Iraq. For the Shiite majority and their various factions running the government it's been business as usual, siphoning off billions of dollars of domestic oil earnings and American aid intended to pay for rebuilding basic services like clean water and electricity for more than a few hours each day. In the Shiite south of the country, with its vital oilfields and oil shipment facilities, an internecine struggle for control quietly rages and agents of the Iranian ayatollahs expand their influence and capacity for making real trouble. In the north, where the country's other oilfields and refinery are located, Kurds maneuver for control of the city of Mosul and those oil facilities while keeping a nervous eye on neighboring Turkey which recently mounted large cross-border raids against Kurdish guerrillas. Meantime, some in our military worry that the Iraqi insurgents may use Gen. Petraeus' high profile visit to Washington next month to launch coordinated attacks timed for maximum damage, maximum embarrassment and maximum impact on the American election campaign. Some may find cause for celebration in the partial successes achieved in Iraq but I have a nervous feeling that those celebrating are the same people who are comforted by the knowledge that President Bush and his appointees are working overtime to contain the damage done by that little setback in our economy.
Cheney Again Links Iraq Invasion to 9/11 Attacks as Bombing
Victims Are Buried
Baghdad - Amid tears and wails, mourners in the southern city of Najaf on Tuesday began burying victims from a suicide bombing that killed nearly 50 worshipers and injured dozens of others just before evening prayers Monday in nearby Karbala. In Baghdad, a long-anticipated Iraqi national reconciliation conference began with great fanfare, then quickly dissolved into the usual sectarian and political stalemates that have marred several similar gatherings in recent years. But Vice President Dick Cheney gave an upbeat view of conditions in Iraq as he concluded his unannounced trip to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. Cheney also defended the toppling of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as part of the struggle against terrorism following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This month, an exhaustive Pentagon-sponsored review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents captured during the 2003 U.S. invasion found no evidence that Saddam's regime had any operational links with the al Qaida terrorist network. But Cheney, who spent the night at a sprawling U.S. base in the northern town of Balad, told soldiers they were defending future generations of Americans from a global terror threat. "This long-term struggle became urgent on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. That day we clearly saw that dangers can gather far from our own shores and find us right there at home," said Cheney, who was accompanied by his wife, Lynne, and their daughter, Elizabeth. "So the United States made a decision: to hunt down the evil of terrorism and kill it where it grows, to hold the supporters of terror to account and to confront regimes that harbor terrorists and threaten the peace," Cheney said. "Understanding all the dangers of this new era, we have no intention of abandoning our friends or allowing this country of 170,000 square miles to become a staging area for further attacks against Americans." Cheney later traveled to Irbil, the capital of the mostly autonomous Kurdish region, for a meeting with Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, before flying to Oman. Meanwhile, at the graveyard in Najaf, police restricted funerals to eight family members, out of fears that the funerals would become a target for further attacks. Emotions ran high among mourners of the bombing victims. One man draped himself over a coffin and sobbed, "My father, my father." "Security forces have been negligent in securing the city and the pilgrims," said Mohamed Hassan Ali , who buried his cousin, a policeman who was killed in the blast. "This area should have had camera monitoring, searches and equipment to detect explosives." The devastating security breach at one of Iraq's most sacred places added to the pressure on Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to make recent security gains stick and to keep the country on track for October elections. The Baghdad reconciliation conference was intended to bring the country's warring factions to the negotiating table. But only half of the 700 invited guests showed up, and any real chance for negotiations dissolved when both the leading Sunni Muslim bloc and the powerful faction loyal to the rebel Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr announced boycotts. "We entered the conference to reaffirm our support for national reconciliation, and we left to show our rejection of all these fake conferences," Nassar al Rubaiye , a Sadr-allied lawmaker, said of his group's walkout. Most Sunnis and Sadrists didn't participate, and Shiite lawmakers in attendance hinted that the groups weren't missed. Sunni lawmakers boycotted because they believe Maliki hasn't made good on pledges to disband Shiite militias, release detainees not charged with crimes and include Sunni legislators in security decisions. Members of Sadr's militant Shiite movement said they walked out of the conference because of the lack of dialogue in preparations, a crackdown on Sadr's forces in the south and to protest thousands of Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody. Across the board, there were complaints of late invitations, snubs and general disarray. Even Wathab Shaker, head of the parliament's national reconciliation committee, said he was left out of all planning for the conference. He is a Sunni. "No contact had been made between the preparation committee for the conference and the parliament's reconciliation committee. Absolutely no contact," Shaker said. "I wish them good luck." Tuesday's roster of attacks included two roadside bombs in Baghdad - one targeting civilians at a market in Shaab, the other at a busy intersection in al Bunook- that killed four Iraqis and wounded at least 13, authorities said. A car bomb outside an electronics store in Mosul killed three and wounded 40, the U.S. military said. --------- (Laith Hammoudi is a special correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers. Mohammed al Dulaimy contributed from Baghdad; Qassim Zein reported from Najaf. Both are special correspondents.) Iraq's "Hidden" Conflict Raed Jarrar |
March 18, 2008
While the majority of Iraqis know that the current Sunni-Shiites tension did not exist before 2003, no one can deny that after five years of U.S. occupation, sectarian tension is now a reality. Sectarianism is another disaster that was brought to Iraq by the war and occupation of Iraq. The U.S.-led invasion did not only destroy the Baath political regime, it also annihilated the entire public sector including education, health care, food rations, social security, and the armed forces. The Iraqi public sector was a great example of how millions of Iraqis: Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, Muslims and Christians, religious and secular, all worked together in running the country. The myth that the former Iraqi government was a "Sunni-led dictatorship" was created by the U.S. government. Even the Iraqi political regime was not "Sunni-led," let alone the rest of the public sector. A good way to debunk this fairy tale is through a close look at the famous deck of cards of the 55 most wanted Iraqi leaders. The cards had the pictures of Saddam, his two sons, and the rest of the political leadership which most Iraqis would recognize as the heads of the political regime. What is noteworthy is that 36 of the 55 were Shiites. In fact, the two vice presidents were a Christian and a Shiites Kurd. Sometimes I feel like Iraqis and Americans are analyzing two different wars happening in two different countries. In one narrative, there is a civil war based on ancient sectarian hatred where a U.S. withdrawal will cause the sky to fall. In the other, there is a country struggling under occupation to get its independence back where the occupation is not welcomed and it is causing political, not sectarian, splits and violence. According to the Iraqi mainstream narrative, the foreign occupation is the major reason and cause for violence and destruction. Foreign intervention is not only destroying Iraq's infrastructure, but it is also splitting Iraq's formerly integrated society. In addition, Iraqis are fighting among each other over fundamental questions about the future of their country, but the central conflict is not between Sunnis and Shiites, it is between Iraqi separatists and nationalists. Unlike other countries in the region such as Lebanon, the Iraqi sectarian tension is still reversible, because it just started five years ago. More importantly, it isn't main driver fueling the Iraqi-Iraqi conflict. This "hidden" conflict is between separatists and nationalists. The "Hidden" Conflict: Separatists vs. Nationalists Loosely speaking, separatists favor a "soft partition" of Iraq into at least three zones with strong regional governments, similar to the semiautonomous Kurdish "state" in Northern Iraq; they are thriving on foreign intervention (Iranian, U.S. or other powers' influence); they favor privatizing Iraq's massive energy reserves and ceding substantial control of the country's oil sector to regional authorities. Nationalists reject any foreign interference in Iraq's affairs and they favor a strong technocratic central government in Baghdad that is not based on sectarian voting blocs. They favor centralized control over the development of Iraq's oil and gas reserves while keeping them nationalized. This Iraqi-Iraqi conflict is in many ways similar to the U.S. civil war: Iraqis who are for keeping a central government are fighting against other Iraqis who want to secede. But the major difference is that the United States was not under a foreign occupation that was destroying nationalists and funding and training separatists. Numerous polls that were conducted over the past few years in Iraq show that a majority of Iraqis from all different backgrounds tend to be more nationalist than separatist. A majority of the population are for a complete U.S. withdrawal, for keeping a strong central government in Baghdad, and against privatizing and decentralizing Iraq's natural resources. More surprisingly to U.S. audiences, this nationalist-separatist conflict is apparent inside the Iraqi government itself. The Iraqi executive branch (the cabinet and the presidency) are completely controlled by separatists (including Shiitess, Sunnis, Kurds, seculars and others). But the legislative branch (the parliament) is controlled by nationalists (including Sunnis, Shiitess, seculars, Christians, Yazidis, etc.) who enjoy a small but crucially important majority. The last couple of years witnessed numerous examples of how the Bush administration systematically took the side of separatists in the Iraqi executive branch against nationalists in the elected legislative branch, repeatedly bypassing the Iraqi parliament. In each of these cases, there was the potential for reaching compromises that would have satisfied both nationalists and separatists. However, the aggressive support of the U.S. government for the separatist executive branch against the parliament has made it impossible for Iraqis to settle their differences. Understanding these nuances of the Iraqi-Iraqi conflict reveals how the war is a political struggle that will end as soon as the U.S. withdraws, not a religious war that will intensify after Iraqis take their country back. The United States is not playing the role of a peace-keeping force, or a convener of reconciliation. It is seen by a majority of Iraqis as one side of the conflict and will never be a part of the solution. How to Help On this side of the ocean, the U.S. government has managed to convince large portions of the "right" that the war and occupation of Iraq is "good for our safety" because it's better to "fight the terrorists overseas so we do not have to face them here at home." Simultaneously, the government managed to manipulate many people on the "left" into believing that a U.S. withdrawal would cause unprecedented bloodshed. "The invasion was not a good idea" some would say, "but now that we are there, let's fix it before we leave." From an Iraqi perspective, both groups promote interventionist foreign policies that have no respect for sovereignty, independence, or international law. On the one hand, the best way to guarantee that no al-Qaeda or other extremist organizations will exist in Iraq is to let Iraqis rule the country by themselves. They have been living in Iraq and ruling it for the last thousands of years, and unlike the occupation authorities, they have been successful in protecting Iraq from the intervention of foreign countries and organizations. While many
Iraqis appreciate the sense of responsibility to fix what the U.S.
invasion has broken in Iraq, and it has broken a lot, prolonging the
occupation is only making the situation worse. There are other
appropriate venues to support Iraqis after the last U.S. soldier and
the last mercenary leave Iraq. This might include paying compensation,
the same way Iraq has been compensating Kuwait and its people for the
last 17 years through the United Nations Compensation Committee. The 21st Invader Unfortunately, the two ruling parties in D.C. are not planning to leave Iraq any time soon. The Republicans are openly speaking about leaving troops indefinitely, while the Democrats want to start withdrawing "combat" troops soon but they have three exceptions that could maintain up to 75,000 troops indefinitely in Iraq. These three exceptions are: training the Iraqi military forces, counter-terrorism operations, and protecting the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Turning the current occupation into half or one-quarter of an occupation will not change anything on the ground in Iraq. Pulling out some of the troops and leaving some exceptions indefinitely is not a new strategy, it is a continuation of decades old military interventionism that will likely reduce some of the violence but it will keep the Iraqi people from starting the political, social, and economic reconciliation that is sorely needed. Last November marked the 1245th anniversary of the construction of modern Baghdad by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur. During the last 13 centuries, Baghdad had been attacked and occupied 20 times before the U.S. army became its 21st foreign invader. Robert Fisk noted in one of his articles that in 1920 David Lloyd George, the prime minister of Britain, was facing similar calls for a military withdrawal. "Is it not for the benefit of the people of that country that it should be governed so as to enable them to develop this land which has been withered and shriveled up by oppression? What would happen if we withdrew?" Lloyd George would not abandon Iraq to "anarchy and confusion". The time is different now, but the politics of the invaders still sound the same. Raed Jarrar is a
consultant for the American
Friends Service Committee. He
is an Iraqi blogger
a
political analyst. Would you consider adding a little spiel with a link to Kucinich's HR 1234 at the end of the article? This FULL EXIT plan recognizes, addresses and satisfies these actualities and needs in synchrony with the live-portrait that projects from your words like "holographically" custom fitted. Your article provides solid grounding and foundation that should readily enable perception of HR 1234 as the functionally viable course that it IS, rather than the off handed 'pie in the sky' fringe-fantasy brush-off with which it seems for the most part, to have been marginalized and ignored. Thanks again! (-:G ____________________________________ Blackwater
Seeps Into the Campaign
By Jeremy Scahill
The Nation March 18,
2008
Hillary Clinton has just become the most significant US political figure to come out in favor of banning Blackwater and other armed private security contractors from operating in Iraq. "When I am President I will ask the Joint Chiefs for their help in reducing reliance on armed private military contractors with the goal of ultimately implementing a ban on such contractors," she declared in a major policy speech on Monday. Her position is a welcome development for those in the Congress, such as Illinois Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who have long sought to rein in private security contractors. In her speech, Clinton slammed Obama on this issue, saying, "Senator Obama and I have a substantive disagreement here. He won't rule out continuing to use armed private military contractors in Iraq to do jobs that historically have been done by the US military or government personnel." The Clinton campaign wants voters to believe it is that simple. It is not. First, Clinton's timing is suspect. She has served for five years on the Senate Armed Services Committee and has done nothing to end the use of Blackwater and other private security forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. In the aftermath of the September 2007 Nisour Square massacre, during which Blackwater operatives gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians, Clinton condemned the company's conduct but declined to sign on as a co-sponsor to legislation introduced by Sanders and Schakowsky in November 2007 seeking to ban Blackwater and other mercenary companies. Instead, she chose to do it in late February, after The Nation published the comments of a senior foreign policy advisor to Obama who said, "I can't rule out, I won't rule out, private security contractors" in Iraq if Obama becomes president and that Obama does not intend to sign onto the Sanders-Schakowsky legislation. The next day, after refusing for over a week to provide a comment to The Nation on the issue, Clinton's staff released a statement saying she would endorse the Stop Outsourcing Security Act to "ban the use of Blackwater and other private mercenary firms in Iraq." Clinton declared, "The time to show these contractors the door is long past due." The statement was released five days before the make-or-break primaries in Texas and Ohio, when the New York Senator was on the ropes. On Monday, Clinton said, "I believe what matters in this campaign is not just the promises we've made to end the war; what matters is what we've actually done when it came time to match words with action. Because more than anything else, what we've done is an indication of what we'll do." On the issue of Blackwater, Clinton has been MIA for years. Clinton's campaign is well aware that Obama has been ahead of the curve on the issue of armed private contractors in Iraq-and certainly ahead of her. In October 2007, Clinton claimed she was unaware that Bush had granted Blackwater and other contractors immunity in 2004. "Maybe I should have known about it; I did not know about it," she said. On Monday, Obama struck back. "Now, let me be clear: I actually introduced legislation in the Senate before Senator Clinton even mentioned this that said we had to crack down on private contractors like Blackwater because I don't believe that they should be able to run amok and put our own troops in danger, get paid three or four times or ten times what our soldiers are getting paid. I am the one who has been opposed to those operators. Senator Clinton is a late comer to that. But you know this is what happens during political season and I understand it." In February 2007, Obama introduced contractor reform and oversight legislation that has become the Democrats' major plan in the Congress. Obama's bill seeks to make all contractors subject to prosecution in US civilian courts for crimes committed on a foreign battlefield. The bill is not without its problems. In theory, FBI investigators would deploy to the crime scene, gather evidence and interview witnesses, leading to indictments and prosecutions. Apart from the fact that it would be impossible to effectively police such an enormous deployment of private contractors (at present basically equal to the number of active duty US troops in Iraq), the legislation would give the private military industry a tremendous PR victory. The companies could finally claim that a legally accountable structure governed their operations, yet they would be well aware that such legislation would be nearly impossible to enforce. Perhaps that is why the industry has passionately backed this approach. But despite the measure's significant flaws, Obama did introduce it eight months before Nisour Square, at a time when Clinton was largely inactive on the issue, despite her significant Congressional influence. In response to Clinton's speech Monday, Obama spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said, "Hillary Clinton is attacking Barack Obama on an issue where he has led and she did nothing until her campaign fell behind." Beyond the rhetoric, how serious is Hillary Clinton about stopping Blackwater and other armed private security forces in Iraq? Obama's campaign made a difficult admission, likely at odds with many of his supporters, by saying he wouldn't rule out using these forces because they will be needed, at least at first, to implement his Iraq plan. The State Department does not have the official security agents available to protect the massive army of diplomats in Iraq, which Obama intends to maintain and, perhaps, increase. The campaign says Obama wants to change that and to make all security personnel official US Diplomatic Security agents, but that could take years, according to the State Department. Like Obama, Clinton has an Iraq plan that will keep thousands of officials and others who require diplomatic security in Iraq. If she thinks the military wants to do that job, she hasn't been reading the papers. If she thinks there are enough official State Department agents to do it right away, she hasn't been looking at the numbers: Blackwater has almost as many security operatives working in Iraq (nearly 1,000) as the State Department has available in the rest of the world combined (1,450). At the end of the day, both Obama and Clinton have Iraq plans that for the foreseeable future will necessitate using private armed security forces. While Obama's campaign has acknowledged that fact, Clinton has seized it as an opportunity to attack Obama. Short of dramatically shrinking the size of the US civilian and diplomatic presence in Iraq, the next president may have no choice but to continue the current contracting arrangements. If, as President, Obama or Clinton did order the military to take over the protection of diplomats, that would result in an increase of US military convoys on the streets of Iraq, regularly placing US soldiers in direct-and likely lethal-contact with Iraqi civilians and vehicles. In the bigger picture, the most disturbing aspect of this is that neither Clinton nor Obama have real plans to end the occupation. Their "withdrawal" plans will keep thousands of US military forces in Iraq, along with the Green Zone, the massive US embassy and the Baghdad airport. This could add up to as many as 80,000 troops, not including the armed security for diplomatic convoys currently provided by Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp. If Hillary Clinton expects any credibility on this issue, especially after her recent condemnation of Blackwater and the pledge to ban private security forces in Iraq, it would mean radically revising her Iraq plan to one of complete withdrawal. That means no residual forces, "strike forces," or the army of "diplomats" necessitating security, which regularly proves fatal for Iraqi civilians. At the same time, if either Obama or Clinton really wants to end the occupation, it means a pledge to swiftly withdraw all US troops and contractors. At this point, neither seems willing to do that. Jeremy
Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is
the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most
Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an
award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the
national radio and TV program Democracy Now!.
************************************** WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWHundreds Arrested in War Protests By Chris Kuttruff t r u t h o u t | Report Friday 21 March 2008 On Monday, more than 200 protesters across the nation were arrested in response to their demonstrations against the war. The protests, rallying thousands across the nation, were organized by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), an organization comprised of a broad coalition of individuals who, according to their web site, oppose the Iraq War and the US "government's policy of permanent warfare and empire-building." (1) The March 19 protests differed significantly from past, larger mass-mobilizations and tended to focus more on creative acts of civil disobedience. Judith LeBlanc, lead organizer for UFPJ, spoke with Truthout about the impact of Wednesday's demonstrations. "Yesterday was a very important day for the movement ... It brought together young people, faith-based groups, military families, and people of all races and backgrounds. We had over 700 local actions and a large number of people taking the day off work." LeBlanc emphasized the unique purpose of the UFPJ-led demonstrations: "This broad group of people is a reflection of the majority ... and [Wednesday] was about giving people an opportunity to express their opposition in creative, non-violent ways ... Women carrying lifeless babies ... Men with bloody hands. What was amazing was how people came out of stores and observed; it was an incredible atmosphere ... people asking, 'What is it that is really going on in our world?'" LeBlanc noted what impacted her most was witnessing a mother say to her nine-year-old girl, "honey, look, it's about the war ... it's people speaking out against the war." LeBlanc said the demonstrations were "true opposition ... the way it should be ... people pausing in their daily lives to think: this war needs to end ... and this is the cutting edge of what's going to drive people to the polls in |
