Monday, June 06, 2005
Thank you Yankeedoodle
At some stage today the number of visits to Today in Iraq will pass the 1 million mark. A milestone and a millstone. It all started here.
Thanks to all the contributors.
FF
War News for Monday, June 6, 2005
Bring 'em on: Five Iraqi civilians killed in mortar strike in Tal Afar.
Bring 'em on: One Iraqi civilian killed and two injured in mortar strike on police station in Mosul.
Bring 'em on: Six Iraqi police and two civilians injured in a car bomb attack in Al Daira.
Bring 'em on: US soldier killed in IED attack in Kirkuk.
Bring 'em on: The Shiite-led Iraqi government acknowledged Sunday that its forces may have targeted innocent Sunni Muslims in a drive to crush the insurgency in southwestern Baghdad.
Bring 'em on: Two US soldiers injured Friday in roadside bomb attack in Kirkuk.
Bring 'em on: Three Iraqi policemen and one civilian wounded in car bomb attack in Baghdad.
Bring 'em on: Three Iraqi police commandos wounded when thwarting a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad.
Bring 'em on: Four Iraqis wounded in suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk.
Bring 'em on: Insurgent killed by US sniper team in Baghdad.
Spinning the Recruitment Numbers: The Army and Marine Corps, as they struggle with recruiting shortfalls, will no longer announce their monthly recruiting numbers at the beginning of each month. Instead, the Defense Department will approve the release of recruiting statistics for all four services.
More shitless spin: It seems the British involvement in the illegal invasion was for the starving in Africa because Saint Bob Geldof says that Blair must tell George Bush to repay British support over the war on terror by backing moves to end African poverty.
It's not just Gitmo: The chief of Amnesty International USA alleged Sunday that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is part of a worldwide network of U.S. jails, some of them secret, where prisoners are mistreated and even killed.
Al Sadr moving mainstream: Once dismissed as an upstart, the portly al-Sadr has been transformed into a respectable political figure, commanding the loyalty of key lawmakers and several Cabinet ministers. "We are growing stronger, and our appeal is becoming wider," Ibrahim al-Jaberi, a senior official at al-Sadr's office in Sadr City said Saturday. Sadr City is a sprawling Baghdad neighborhood that's home to some 2.5 million Shiites and the largest bastion of support for al-Sadr. It was named for Muqtada's father, the late Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was killed in 1999.
Opinion and Commentary
Media Cowards:
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"I think that the media is afraid to follow up on the very grave implications of this story because they have grown accustomed to being bullied by the Bush administration, and because the story implicates the media for giving the Bush administration a free ride in deliberately misleading the American people into an unnecessary and increasingly disastrous war," Lee said. "Sadly, the type of courageous, independent journalism that uncovered the Watergate scandal is nowhere to be found today."No Shit Sherlock!:
A surge in suicide attacks in Iraq and elsewhere around the world is a response to territorial occupation and has no direct link with Islamic fundamentalism, according to the author of a new book who has created a database of such bombings over the past 25 years. Robert Pape, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, collected demographic information on 462 suicide attackers who completed their missions and said he found that the common wisdom was wrong. He said most suicide terrorists were well-integrated and productive members of their communities from working- or middle-class backgrounds. In "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," Pape cited suicide terrorism campaigns from Lebanon to Israel, Chechnya and Sri Lanka, where he said major democracies had been the principal targets. A broad misunderstanding of the issue, he said, is taking the U.S.-led war on terrorism in the wrong direction and could in fact be fueling an increase in suicide terrorism.
