Archive for the 'Iraq' Category

Breaking news from yesterday that Faux seems to have missed.  A little something to hook nearly anyone’s sense of the macabre.   It seems like a couple of guys on the inside think there is not much that Prince is not capable of.
The Nation

ABC News

Some of us don’t take much convincing, already pretty convinced that this stuff was going on, but everybody else needs to take a much harder look at this crook and his organization, pretty much fits the definition of violent psychopath.

Iraqis danced in the streets to celebrate what they see as the first step toward a complete withdrawal of American forces:

Iraqi forces assumed formal control of Baghdad and other cities Tuesday after American troops handed over security in urban areas in a defining step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country. A countdown clock broadcast on Iraqi TV ticked to zero as the midnight deadline passed for U.S. combat troops to finish their pullback to bases outside cities.

“The withdrawal of American troops is completed now from all cities after everything they sacrificed for the sake of security,” said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “We are now celebrating the restoration of sovereignty.”

The Pentagon did not offer any comment to mark the passing of the deadline.

Fireworks, not bombings, colored the Baghdad skyline late Monday, and thousands attended a party in a park where singers performed patriotic songs. Loudspeakers at police stations and military checkpoints played recordings of similar tunes throughout the day, as Iraqi military vehicles decorated with flowers and national flags patrolled the capital.

Actually, there were a couple of bombings, and four Americans were killed in combat. The American press has been pretending that the Iraq War is virtually over, but the reality is that the war is still raging. Violence is down 60% from the 2007 peak, but executions and car bombs are still quite common. If any other country on earth suffered as many car bombs, it would be front page news in every major newspaper in the world, and the leading cause of death in Iraq is execution. The fact that present levels of violence are thought of as a cause for celebration shows just how horrific Bush’s war became.

One person who’s not happy about the prospect of an American pullout is Dick Cheney. The former vice president said that he “would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.”

Cheney’s newfound concern for the troops is touching, especially considering the fact that he and his pal Donald Rumsfeld urged President Bush to invade Iraq in early 2003 rather than waiting until weapons inspectors had finished searching for Iraq’s nonexistent chemical weapons facilities, despite the fact that invading in Spring 2003 would require American soldiers to patrol the streets of Baghdad without armored vehicles and without body armor.

At any rate, it appears that the Iraqis believe they’ll be better off after the Americans are gone.

(cross posted at This Old Brit)

Huh.

If you think that’s a large load of the stinky stuff - boy, have we got news for you.

Iraq war inquiry to be in private

An independent inquiry into the Iraq war will be held in private, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told MPs.

Opposition parties - and many Labour MPs - have been calling for the probe since shortly after the 2003 invasion.

It will start next month and take at least a year, Mr Brown said. It will not aim to “apportion blame”, he added.

So, if you can stomach it, read some more re : this disgusting smelly Brown stuff.

(Cross posted from across at How This Old Brit Sees It)

Chickenhawk ‘journalist’ Michael Goldfarb used a murderer’s account in an attempt to smear and discredit Beauchamp

Back in 2007, a the New Republic published a series of articles by their ‘Baghdad diarist’, who wrote under the name Scott Thomas. These articles described some abominable and cruel behavior engaged in by American soldiers, including desecration of corpses and running over dogs for sport.

Predictably, conservative ‘journalists’ pounced, accusing the New Republic of fabricating sources and stories. Leading the pack was Michael Goldfarb, a columnist for the Weekly Standard who later served as deputy communications director for the McCain campaign. Goldfarb relied on questionable sources, including a former porn star and a guy who did some temp work at the New Republic. Later, Goldfarb relied on Beauchamp’s sergeant, John Hatley, who said that Beauchamp fabricated his stories.

Unfortunately for Goldfarb’s credibility, Hatley has since been convicted of executing four blindfolded and handcuffed Iraqis. So maybe he was lying when he said that soldiers in his unit never engaged in atrocities.

Brian Beutler has a pretty good overview of the whole sordid affair over at Talking Points Memo.

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While we readily admit that today we’re taking a sarcastic sort of swipe at the pretty dumb practice of stating the sodding obvious, we ourselves wish to make it perfectly obvious that we are in no way “having a go” at Ireland’s excellent ex President, Mary Robinson.

Since the sad truth is that there are still millions of westerners convinced that bums like George Bush and Tony Blair, to mention just a pair, always told us all the truth.

Just take a look at this.

GENEVA (Reuters)

Washington’s “war on terror” after the September 11 attacks has eroded human rights worldwide, creating lingering cynicism that the United Nations must now combat, international law experts said on Monday.

Mary Robinson, who was the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, said the United States caused harm with some of the ways it responded.

“Seven years after 9/11 it is time to take stock and repeal abusive laws and policies,” the former Irish president said, warning that harsh U.S. detentions and interrogations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba gave a dangerous signal to other countries that could easily follow suit.

While new U.S. President Barack Obama has announced he will close Guantanamo to break from the practices of his predecessor George W. Bush, Robinson said sweeping changes needed to take place to ensure Washington abandons its “war paradigm.”

“There has been severe damage and it needs to be addressed,” she told a news conference in Geneva. “We are not more secure. We are more divided, and people are more cynical about the operation of laws.”

Arthur Chaskalson, former chief justice of South Africa, said that the United States should launch an inquiry into its counter-terrorism practices, including acts of torture by individual security and intelligence agents.

Although counter-terrorism issues have faded from the front pages since the change of government in Washington, Chaskalson said such practices have shifted around the world and could keep restricting liberties if they are not confronted head-on.

“We all have less rights today than we had five or 10 years ago, and if nothing happens, we will have even less,”

So here’s to you, Mrs Robinson, we have to say that we like your style. Like it a lot, in fact. Truth be told, maybe we even love it.

Now read the rest of this Reuters’report.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

This story isn’t nearly as tragic as the headline would lead you to believe

Lately, a lot of the reporting about Iraq has centered on happy human interest stories like this one. From reading the papers here in the US, you’d think that the occupation had already ended. But of course, for many soldiers’ families, there is no happy ending to the story:

And let’s not forget that there are still dozens of killings every week in Iraq, and it’s often parents who mourn the death of a child, not the other way around:

(cross posted at This Old Brit)

(image source)

From the Washington Post:

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor’s house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. “I do this in the name of Allah!” she intoned.

As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan’s genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan’s mother smiled with pride.

“This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember,” said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. “We don’t know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it.”

Kurdistan is the only known part of Iraq –and one of the few places in the world–where female circumcision is widespread. More than 60 percent of women in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been circumcised, according to a study conducted this year. In at least one Kurdish territory, 95 percent of women have undergone the practice, which human rights groups call female genital mutilation.

The practice, and the Kurdish parliament’s refusal to outlaw it, highlight the plight of women in a region with a reputation for having a more progressive society than the rest of Iraq. Advocates for women point to the increasing frequency of honor killings against women and female self-immolations in Kurdistan this year as further evidence that women in the area still face significant obstacles, despite efforts to raise public awareness of circumcision and violence against women.

The fight against female genital mutilation is one of the few feminist causes that conservative Americans embrace. They love to point to Somali communities and claim that the fact that FGM is practiced in these communities proves that Islam is a barbaric religion (link link), but something tells me that they’re just going to ignore the fact that it’s been legal in Kurdish Iraq since Bush’s invasion.

(via digby, who also points out that things have gotten a lot worse for women all over Iraq since the invasion)

Happy Xmas, (very temporary) President Bush.

Sad to say, sir, this Christmas we shan’t be sailing, swimming nor even aviating the Atlantic to the states. So, we’re sorry we won’t be bringing you our extra special Xmas present in person.

More’s the poxy pity.

Still, never mind though. Just keep smiling, sunshine.

We’re sure someone as smart as yourself is already aware that it’s the thought that really counts.

Eh, dunce ‘Duce‘?

Incidentally, we certainly shan’t be the sole senders of such sarcastic, though supremely sincere, compliments of the season - you heel. (See what we’re saying?)

N.B. ** See also, latest trials & tribulations’ stories concerning Iraqi super hero, genuine journalist and shoe slinger supreme, Muntader al-Zaidi.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Arriving unannounced today in Iraq Gordon Brown announced that British soldiers will be out of that (criminally, cold bloodedly, premeditatedly and sickeningly mercilessly), quite callously ‘crucified‘ country — inside 7 months.

UK troops to leave Iraq ‘by July’

While that’s certainly the sort of of cheerful news that will make for many of us being able to have at least a little happier Christmas, all aint exactly as it first appears.

But what’s new?

Remember this though — only British boys & girls still surviving (and still in one piece) at the selected time, will be coming back to Britain under their own steam. Since, sadly, between now and July’s end some are sure to have to be stretchered back to ‘dear old blighty. Sadder still, some others are bound to be borne back by bearers, in bloody boxes.

But what’s new?

Moreover, the British government’s ever eager to spin to please, directly as dictated by Downing Street, partners in propaganda, the once so highly respected BBC, will continue to comply and play down the fact that many more members of our brave British forces are already earmarked for an unbelievably, flat out f*cked up Afghanistan.

So, once again a conspiracy of assorted slimy, snidey, shitty, soulless, cowardly, completely compliant, conniving, conscienceless spinners seeks to sucker us.

Shame?

Scruples?

Such sods as recently have serially professed to sincerely and honestly represent, and to selflessly serve this country’s substantial majority of decent citizens, quite simply, have neither any semblence of shame, nor the slightest sign of scruples.

And that’s for sure.

Furthermore, on said (so sad) score you can (quite categorically) quote us.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

(click to embiggen)

From the New York Times:

An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’

Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.”

Those phony numbers would help Bush win a narrow victory in 2004. Just as the Department of Homeland Security would issue a new terror alert whenever the president’s poll numbers began to sag, so the Department of Defense would issue a rosy new progress report whenever events in Iraq indicated that the situation was spiraling out of control. In fact, it appears that from the beginning of the occupation, the White House saw the appearance of progress in Iraq as a means to an end, the end being the re-election of President Bush:

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