Today in Iraq

War News for Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Nine people killed and two wounded when a group of 10 masked men opened fire on a minibus near the town of Baquba, the latest in a series of brazen gun attacks on travelers in the area.

Bring ‘em on: Two security guards were wounded when snipers fired at the office of Salama al-Khafaji, a member of the National Assembly, in western Baghdad. She was not in the office at the time of the attack. An Iraqi army officer and two soldiers were seriously wounded when a makeshift bomb went off near their patrol in Manzilah village southwest of Kirkuk.

Bring ‘em on: Gunmen in the Sunni city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, shot and killed Sheikh Hamza Abbas Issawi, the imam of a local mosque. Police said he was sprayed with bullets by gunmen in a speeding car as he stepped out of the mosque after evening prayer Tuesday.

Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis, two of them schoolboys, were killed when a mortar shell fell near the gate of a primary school in the city centre in Mussayab. In Kerbala a car bomb detonated by remote control exploded as a US military convoy was passing there. Police said a number of vehicles were damaged, but declined to say whether there were US casualties.

The occasional spot of good news: Two Iranian women, kidnapped north of Baghdad along with four Iranian men, were released Tuesday in the same region, a joint US-Iraqi military coordination centre said, according to AFP. The three (sic) women were released in the middle of the day on a road near the town of Balad. They were reported to be in good health.

Operation Iron Hammer: In western Iraq, about 2,000 U.S. troops and 500 Iraqi soldiers launched an operation Wednesday to flush out suspected insurgents and stabilize the region before the December 15 elections, the U.S. military said.

Operation Iron Hammer is targeting the area near the Euphrates River town of Hit, about 106 miles (170 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad.

Check out the juxtapositions in these first four paragraphs of this story. Think the reporter is getting a bit sick of Bush’s bullshit?: U.S. troops will be able to withdraw from Iraq as local forces gain competence, U.S. President George W. Bush said on Wednesday, but near Baghdad the killing of nine people underscored a dire security situation two weeks before Iraq's milestone election.

In a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in which he outlined his Iraq strategy, Bush said the U.S. goal is for Iraqis to take the lead in the fight against insurgents and to take responsibility without major foreign assistance.

"As Iraqi security forces stand up, coalition forces can stand down, and when our mission of defeating the terrorists in Iraq is complete, our troops will return home to a proud nation," Bush said.

On the ground in Iraq, a group of 10 masked men opened fire on a minibus near Baquba, north of Baghdad, killing nine Iraqis and wounding two, police said. It was the latest in a series of brazen gun attacks on travellers in the area.

Kidnappings: After a monthslong hiatus in the kidnapping of foreigners, television footage on Tuesday once again showed westerners held captive: A German archaeologist - bound and blindfolded - knelt among masked gunmen in one video and four frightened peace activists, including two Canadians, were shown in another blurry tape.

The latest attacks are part of a new wave of kidnappings police fear is aimed at disrupting next month's national elections.

The brief, blurry tape was shown the same day a television station displayed a photo of the German hostage. The kidnappers threatened to kill Susanne Osthoff and her Iraqi driver unless Germany halts all contacts with the Iraqi government.

Osthoff and her Iraqi driver were kidnapped Friday, and German's ARD public television said it obtained a video in which the kidnappers made their threats.

Iraqi Politics

Debating withdrawal: Outside Ramadi's city auditorium, the mortar rounds fell, two, then three, each rattling the concrete walls slightly. Inside, locked in an intense debate about what it would take for American troops in Iraq to withdraw, none of the camouflaged Marines or robed Sunni Arab tribal leaders even flinched.

"We all want the withdrawal," Nasir Abdul Karim, leader of Anbar province's Albu Rahad tribe, told scores of the armed Marines and Sunni sheiks, clerical leaders and other elders at the gathering Monday in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. "We all believe it is an illegitimate occupation, and it is a legitimate resistance."

The comments by the tribal leaders, and similar remarks to reporters Tuesday in Fallujah, 30 miles away, offered fresh evidence of how the debate in the United States about pulling out troops is also echoing through Iraq.

Talking past each other: A meeting between U.S. military officials and some 200 Sunni Muslims in the Iraqi city of Ramadi was hobbled by bad interpreters, The Washington Post reports.

The clerics in the audience said they came for one reason, and that was to hear the plans for a U.S. military pullout.

"We want them to withdraw from the province," Muhammed Dulaimy, an Arabic professor at Ramadi's Anbar University, said. "We didn't come to talk about the election. If it's about the election, we'll leave."

The U.S. military meanwhile, said they were there to encourage tribal members to join the military, so that Iraq's national forces can build to a strength that would allow U.S. forces to withdraw, and to discourage attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces.

What a surprise: Iraqi government officials failed Wednesday to deliver the promised results of an investigation into alleged torture at an Interior Ministry jail in Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi forces discovered 173 malnourished Iraqi detainees when they went into the facility on Nov. 13. Some inmates showed signs of torture, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. A U.S. general was so concerned with what he found that he took immediate control of the jail but the military has released few details about it since.

Bush’s War – Reaping The Whirlwind

Lebanon: On a quiet autumn night, a mosque loudspeaker shatters the silence in this poor Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

"With all pride and grace, we announce to you the martyrdom of our mujahideen brothers Mohamed Ahmed al-Kurdi and Nidal Hussein Mustafa in the battlefields of jihad in Iraq," the speaker blares across the narrow streets of Ain el-Hilweh.

The deaths brought to three the number of residents from the camp killed in Iraq in November alone, making a total of five in the past four months.

One man in Ain el-Hilweh -- a crowded maze of narrow alleyways where gunmen from rival Palestinian factions roam freely and clash sporadically -- is eager to follow Zarqawi.

The 36-year-old, who used the alias Abu Dujana, said he was counting the days to return to Iraq to join the "martyrs in the name of Islam." He made no effort to hide his loyalty to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Belgium: A Belgian woman who converted to Islam after marrying a radical Muslim carried out a suicide attack in Baghdad earlier this month, say Belgian prosecutors.

Other European extremists are known to have travelled to Iraq to fight the US-led forces, but she is believed to be the first female European bomber.

On Wednesday, police detained 14 people in raids on the homes of people thought to have links with the unnamed woman.

Authorities said they wanted to break a network sending volunteers to Iraq. Nine of the suspects are Belgian, three are Moroccan and two are Tunisian.

Earlier this year, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said at least seven people from France have been killed in Iraq and elsewhere fighting for al-Qaeda.

Cynicism Or Delusion? Who Can Tell?

Cynicism: President Bush, facing growing doubts about his war strategy, said Wednesday that Iraqi troops are increasingly taking the lead in battle but that "this will take time and patience." He refused to set a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces.

Bush said the U.S. military presence in Iraq is set to change, by making fewer patrols and convoys, moving out of Iraqi cities and focusing more on specialized operations aimed at high-value terrorist targets.

"As Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop level in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists," Bush told a supportive audience at the U.S. Naval Academy. "These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington."

Bush's emphasis on the readiness of Iraqi security forces came at a time when continued violence in Iraq and the death of more than 2,000 U.S. troops have contributed to a sharp drop in the president's popularity.

Fred Kaplan: Brace yourself for a mind-bog of sheer cynicism. The discombobulation begins Wednesday, when President George W. Bush is expected to proclaim, in a major speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, that the Iraqi security forces—which only a few months ago were said to have just one battalion capable of fighting on its own—have suddenly made uncanny progress in combat readiness. Expect soon after (if not during the speech itself) the thing that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have, just this month, denounced as near-treason—a timetable for withdrawal of American troops.

And so it appears (assuming the forecasts about the speech are true) that the White House is as cynical about this war as its cynical critics have charged it with being. For several months now, many of these critics have predicted that, once the Iraqis passed their constitution and elected a new government, President Bush would declare his mission complete and begin to pull out—this, despite his public pledge to "stay the course" until the insurgents were defeated.

This theory explains Bush's insistence that the Iraqis draft and ratify the constitution on schedule—even though the rush resulted in a seriously flawed document that's more likely to fracture the country than to unite it. For if the pullout can get under way in the opening weeks of 2006, then the war might be nullified as an issue by the time of our own elections.

Delusion: Bush said many Iraqi forces have made real gains over the past year.

"As the Iraqi forces grow more capable, they are increasingly taking the lead in the fight against the terrorists," Bush said. "Our goal is to train enough Iraqi forces so they can carry the fight against the terrorists."

He said that more than 120 army and police combat battalions are already in the fight against insurgents, and that 80 of those battalions are fighting side by side with coalition forces and 40 are taking the lead in the fight.

"They're helping to turn the tide in the struggle in freedom's favor," the president said.

PM Carpenter: The progress being made in training Iraqi troops to defend their own nation is about to achieve warp-drive. It’ll be nothing short of miraculous how suddenly these troops are declared by the Bush administration ready for counterinsurgency combat, even though there has been virtually no progress made along these lines in the last two and a half years.

What will account for this remarkable turnaround?

The seedy, dishonest politics of George W. Bush, who’s about to slither out of Iraq the same way he slithered in: without a dram of honesty.

As the New York Times reported Monday: “In public, President Bush has firmly dismissed the mounting calls to set a deadline to begin a withdrawal from Iraq…. ‘When our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi forces can defend their freedom, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.’

“But in private conversations, American officials are beginning to acknowledge that a judgment about when withdrawals can begin is driven by two political calendars – one in Iraq and one here…. Mr. Bush is under new pressure to begin showing that troop reductions are under way before the midterm Congressional elections next year.”

In brief, Americans will soon be waving bye-bye to ill-trained, ill-equipped Iraqi troops, but only after the former have lost tens of thousands of their own to death and mutilation in the most dishonest and destined-to-fail foreign venture this nation has ever engaged. It all will have been for naught, although “Mission Accomplished II” – otherwise known as “Cut and run” – will be sold as smarmily as “Stay the course.”

Cynicism: "Some critics continue to assert that we have no plan in Iraq except to `stay the course,'" Bush said. "If by `stay the course' they mean we will not allow the terrorists to break our will, they're right. If by `stay the course' they mean we will not permit al Qaida to turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban, a safe haven for terrorists and a launching pad for attacks on America, they're right as well. If by `stay the course' they mean that we're not learning from our experience or adjusting our tactics to meet the challenges on the ground, then they're flat wrong."

He did not say that the terrorists now in Iraq had anything to do with the 2001 terror attacks in the United States, but he powerfully linked the two, saying they "share the same ideology."

Delusion: President Bush will hear no evil on the Iraq war - even when the bad news comes from military brass and top government officials, a new report says.

Bush "remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq," according to The New Yorker magazine.

The article, echoing a Daily News story yesterday, says Bush and his inner circle are so determined to follow their own plan that generals fear saying what's wrong in Iraq - and senior advisers are snubbed if they have bad news.

"I tried to tell" the President about problems in Iraq, one former senior official told the magazine. "And he couldn't hear it."

Random News

The death of multilateralism, part six jillion: The Bush administration, responding to European alarm over allegations of secret detention camps and the transport of terror suspects on European soil, insisted Tuesday that American actions complied with international law but promised to respond to formal inquiries from European nations.

The administration's comments came after the new German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, raised concerns on Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about reported American practices in the handling and interrogation of captives, according to American and German officials.

In addition, European officials said the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, sent a letter to Ms. Rice on Tuesday on behalf of the European Union asking for clarifications. Britain currently holds the union's presidency.

Another “gross error”: The Air Force, under pressure from the Pentagon, committed a "gross error" last year when it rushed to sign a no-bid contract for advisers to help plan and implement Iraq's national elections and draft its constitution, the Government Accountability Office has ruled.

New York-based REEP Inc., a private translation company also known as Operational Support Services, was awarded two contracts worth more than $45 million. The firm was tasked with finding bilingual speakers "committed to a democratic Iraq" as part of a program a Pentagon official hoped would create "a nudge toward democracy," the report said.

The dispute offers insight into the Pentagon's continued use of Iraqi exiles and its strategy for bringing democracy to Iraq.

"Our Defense Department has continued to pay, through pliant contractors, for a flock of Iraqi political exiles as our paid political agents in Iraq," said Charles Tiefer, a government contracting professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

Freudian slip: Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, flubbed Monday and referred to Iraq as Vietnam while commenting on Fox News against an immediate troop withdrawal. "The Democratic Party seems to be taken over by the Michael Moore contingent in their attitude toward Vietnam, and they continually call for a withdrawal of troops at a time when we haven't finished the job," Hatch said on the network's morning show. Hatch's spokesman acknowledged the error, which was first reported on the American Prospect Web log.

The Bush Regime And The Fourth Estate

Armstrong Williams goes to Iraq: As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq. The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Can’t coopt ‘em? Blow 'em up!: The Falluja offensive was one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupation of Iraq. On April 5, 2004, US forces laid siege to the city after the killing of four Blackwater mercenaries days earlier. When the US forces, led by the First Marine Expeditionary Force, attempted to take Falluja on April 7, they faced fierce guerrilla resistance. A US helicopter attacked a mosque, hitting the minaret and killing at least a dozen people. Within a week, some 600 Iraqis were dead, many of them women and children. By April 9, some thirty Marines had been killed and Falluja had become a symbol of resistance against the occupation.

What was more devastating than the direct resistance US forces encountered in Falluja was the effect the story of the local defense of the city and the US killing of civilians was having on the broader Iraqi population. A handful of unembedded journalists, most prominently from Al Jazeera, were providing the world with independent, eyewitness accounts. Al Jazeera's camera crew was also uploading video of the devastation for all the world, including Iraqis, to see. Inspired by the defense of Falluja and outraged by the US onslaught, smaller uprisings broke out across Iraq, as members of the Iraqi police and army abandoned their posts, some joining the resistance.

Faced with a public relations disaster, US officials did what they do best--they attacked the messenger. On April 11, with the unembedded reporters exposing the reality of the siege of Falluja, senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, "The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies." A few days later, on April 15, Rumsfeld echoed those remarks calling Al Jazeera "vicious."

It was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his plan. "He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere," a source told the Mirror. "Blair replied that would cause a big problem. There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do--and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

Commentary

NY Times: Let us pause and count the ways the conduct of the war in Iraq has damaged America's image and needlessly endangered the lives of those in the military. First, multilateralism was tossed aside. Then the post-invasion fiasco muddied the reputation of military planners and caused unnecessary casualties. The W.M.D. myth undermined the credibility of United States intelligence and President Bush himself, and the abuse of prisoners stole America's moral high ground.

Now the use of a ghastly weapon called white phosphorus has raised questions about how careful the military has been in avoiding civilian casualties. It has also further tarnished America's credibility on international treaties and the rules of warfare.

White phosphorus, which dates to World War II, should have been banned generations ago. Packed into an artillery shell, it explodes over a battlefield in a white glare that can illuminate an enemy's positions. It also rains balls of flaming chemicals, which cling to anything they touch and burn until their oxygen supply is cut off. They can burn for hours inside a human body.

The United States restricted the use of incendiaries like white phosphorus after Vietnam, and in 1983, an international convention banned its use against civilians. In fact, one of the many crimes ascribed to Saddam Hussein was dropping white phosphorus on Kurdish rebels and civilians in 1991.

But white phosphorus has made an ugly comeback. Italian television reported that American forces used it in Falluja last year against insurgents. At first, the Pentagon said the chemical had been used only to illuminate the battlefield, but had to backpedal when it turned out that one of the Army's own publications talked about using white phosphorus against insurgent positions, a practice well known enough to have one of those unsettling military nicknames: "shake and bake."

Eric Mink: The dream is over, whether or not the Bush White House realizes or admits it. U.S. troops are going to leave, and Iraq will continue to be a mess. The only questions are how bad a mess it will be, how many more will be killed and injured and whether the president is capable of putting the welfare of the troops and the country before the unhealthy messianic fixation cited, most recently, in this week's New Yorker by several former and current U.S. military and intelligence officials. In 1984's "The March of Folly," the celebrated historian Barbara W. Tuchman reviewed centuries of calamitous statecraft, looking for examples that met three specific criteria: "To qualify as folly," she wrote, "it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight. . . . A feasible alternative course of action must have been available. . . . (and) the policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime. . . ." Tuchman focused on the refusal of Renaissance popes to correct rampant abuses in the Roman Catholic Church, thus producing the Protestant Reformation; Great Britain's war with its American colonies, resulting in an independent United States of America and contributing to the end of the British Empire; and the Vietnam War, in which Democratic and Republican administrations betrayed American principles with enormous long-term costs. The continuing war in Iraq is poised to join Tuchman's tragic roster of dishonor.

The Nation: Everything that needs to be known is now known: The reasons the Bush Administration gave for the American war in Iraq were all falsehoods or deceptions, and every day the US occupation continues deepens the very problems it was supposed to solve. Therefore there can no longer be any doubt: The war--an unprovoked, unnecessary and unlawful invasion that has turned into a colonial-style occupation--is a moral and political catastrophe. As such it is a growing stain on the honor of every American who acquiesces, actively or passively, in its conduct and continuation.

The war has also become the single greatest threat to our national security. Its human and economic costs are spiraling out of control, with no end in sight. It has driven America's reputation in the world to a historic low point. In the meantime, real threats suffer terrible neglect. These include more terrorist attacks, jeopardized oil supplies, rising tension with China, the spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and even natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. All are pushed aside as this Administration pours the country's blood, treasure and political energy into a futile war. In short, ending the Iraq War is the most pressing issue facing America today. Until it is ended, a constructive national security policy cannot be forged.

Americans are well on their way to a full appreciation of the dimensions of this debacle. In an October CBS news poll, 59 percent of citizens surveyed and 73 percent of Democrats now want an end to US military involvement in Iraq. But this growing majority has made its judgment with virtually no help from our nation's leaders. Most shameful has been the Democratic Party's failure to oppose the war. Indeed, support for it has been bipartisan: A Republican President and Congress made the policy, and almost all of the leading Democrats--most of the honorable exceptions are members of the House of Representatives--supported it from the outset and continue to do so.

LA Times: Padilla challenged the government's right to hold him, a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil, without ever proving charges in a court of law (as opposed to asserting them in a news conference). Facing an impending deadline to answer his petition before the Supreme Court — and no doubt mindful of an earlier decision requiring it to allow such enemy combatants captured on the battlefield to challenge their imprisonment — the Bush administration last week filed a criminal indictment against Padilla in federal district court. It is the first time the administration has charged Padilla with a crime. In a telling omission, that sensational "dirty bomb" plot is not mentioned. The Justice Department's 31-page indictment charges Padilla with conspiracy to murder, kidnap and harm people overseas and with supporting terrorists. Yet it is a far cry from the government's original accusations. The administration says that because it has now charged Padilla as a criminal and moved him from a military brig to a federal penitentiary, his pending case before the Supreme Court is now moot. Up against Monday's deadline to ask the court not to hear his case, it instead asked for an extension to file its petition, which the court granted. The Supreme Court should still hear the case, not only for Padilla's sake but for the sake of every American. The most recent lower-court decision on the case, from the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, gives the administration the authority to detain enemy combatants such as Padilla indefinitely. That precedent cannot be allowed to stand. The question presented in the Padilla case, to paraphrase his brief before the court, is this: Can the president of the United States arrest any U.S. citizen in America and hold him indefinitely without charge in the name of the war against terrorism? As long as this war continues, it is a question that will remain relevant. And it is a question begging for a resounding "no" from the nation's highest court.

Casualty Reports

Ongoing: 2107 US soldiers, 201 Coalition soldiers, and approximately 27,115 to 30,559 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq from the beginning of the war and occupation to November 26.

Local story: Funeral services are set for two mid-Michigan soldiers, Anthony "Andy" R.C. Yost of Millington and John W. Dearing of Oscoda, killed in Iraq this month.

Yost, a 1984 Millington High School graduate, was two months from retiring with 20 years in the military when a suicide bomber killed him Nov. 18. The bomber detonated a vehicle near Yost's position during combat operations.

Yost, an Army Special Forces master sergeant, was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, N.C. He and his wife, Joann, had lived in North Carolina, where he was stationed. They have a 2-year-old son, Anthony James.

Yost, 39, also had a daughter, Cheyenne, 13, by his first wife, Penny. Cheyenne attends Meachum Junior High School in Millington.

Dearing, 21, graduated from Oscoda High School in 2003 and moved to Hazel Park a year ago. The Army National Guard assigned Dearing to the Guard's 1st Battalion, 125th Infantry Regiment in Saginaw.

He died Nov. 21 in Habbaniyah, Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his military vehicle during combat operations.

He is survived by his wife, Amanda, 19, a 2004 Hazel Park High School graduate whom he married in June.

Local story: A Harrow man was among three British Muslims killed by gunmen while on a five-day pilgrimage to religious sites in Iraq.

They came under fire while on their way to Baghdad airport to fly home on Monday.

Another Harrow man and a woman from Wembley were injured.

Husain Mohammedali, 50, of Waverley Road, was married with three daughters and a son.

His eldest daughter, Zainab, 16, said: "We are completely gobsmacked and my Mum is finding it hard to cope.

"Our grandparents are trying to help us pull through this difficult time."

Local story: Nearly 300 friends and relatives paid their respects Tuesday at funeral and burial services for Marine Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, who was killed Nov. 18 during his second tour of duty in Iraq.

Military officials told the family that Terrazas died after the Humvee he was driving was hit by an improvised explosive device and crashed. Terrazas, who would have turned 21 on Dec. 10, was baptized as an infant at the South El Paso church.

Letter from Camp Taqaddum, Iraq Via Stars & Stripes

War based on a lie Weapons of mass destruction? I’m still looking for them, and if you find any give me a call so we can justify our presence in Iraq. We started the war based on a lie, and we’ll finish it based on a lie. I say this because I am currently serving with a logistics headquarters in the Anbar province, between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. I am not fooled by the constant fabrication of “democracy” and “freedom” touted by our leadership at home and overseas. This deception is furthered by our armed forces’ belief that we can just enter ancient Mesopotamia and tell the locals about the benefits of a legislative assembly. While our European ancestors were hanging from trees, these ancient people were writing algebra and solving quadratic equations. Now we feel compelled to strong-arm them into accepting the spoils of capitalism and “laissez-faire” society. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching Britney Spears on MTV and driving to McDonald’s, but do you honestly believe that Sunnis, Shias and Kurds want our Western ideas of entertainment and freedom imposed on them? Think again. I’m not being negative, I’m being realistic. The reality in Iraq is that the United States created a nightmare situation where one didn’t exist. Yes, Saddam Hussein was an evil man who lied, cheated and pillaged his own nation. But how was he different from dictators in Africa who commit massive crimes again humanity with little repercussion and sometimes support from the West? The bottom line up front (BLUF to use a military acronym) is that Saddam was different because we used him as an excuse to go to war to make Americans “feel good” about the “War on Terrorism.” The BLUF is that our ultimate goal in 2003 was the security of Israel and the lucrative oil fields in northern and southern Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction? Call me when you find them. In the meantime, “bring ’em on” so we can get our “mission accomplished” and get out of this mess.

Capt. Jeff Pirozzi Camp Taqaddum, Iraq November 28, 2005

Quote of the day: Al Qaida leaders Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi haven't been found "primarily because they don't want us to find them and they're going to great lengths to make sure we don't find them."

– Porter Goss, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and obvious MENSA candidate.

Bring ‘em on: Gunmen fatally shot two Iraqi journalists with state-owned al-Iraqiya TV station as they left a restaurant in western Baghdad after lunchtime, and in separate incidents, officials of two Sunni Arab political groups were killed Monday.

Bring ‘em on: A video of a kidnapped German citizen was delivered to public television broadcaster ARD in Baghdad overnight to Tuesday, reported the station. In the video the kidnappers requested the German government to stop cooperating with the Iraqi government otherwise the hostages will be killed.

Bring ‘em on: Four civilians wounded in a car bombing in western Baghdad. The attack took place as a convoy of American Humvees passed.

Bring ‘em on: A U.S. Marine assigned to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing was killed Saturday when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb near Camp Taqaddum, 45 miles west of Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: A total of 238 foreign nationals were kidnapped in Iraq between May 2003 and November 20th, 2005, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index. About one in five were killed. By some estimates as many as 5,000 Iraqis were kidnapped over a shorter period of only 17 months.

Bring ‘em on: Two soldiers were killed Tuesday when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Four members of the Assyrian Democratic Movement were fired upon as they hung election posters. The shots came from gunmen in two cars. Joseph Nabil Ishmael (19) and George Brikha Youkhana (25) were pronounced dead at the scene. Simon Edmon Youkhana (22) and Milad Zakkar Mansour (18) were critically injured; According to Dr. Bahaldin al-Bakri of the Jumhouri hospital, Mr. Mansour suffered a gunshot to the head and is in the intensive care unit.

Bring ‘em on: A suicide car bomber killed eight Iraqi soldiers and wounding five more when he drove into an army patrol today in Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Attackers ambushed a vehicle Monday, killing three people including a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Ayad al-Izzi. Mr. al-Izzi was to compete in parliamentary elections set for next month.

Bring ‘em on: A Sunni Kurd cleric from this northern city was kidnapped, tortured and killed during a recent visit to the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. Sheik Bashir Hadi Fakhreddine, the imam of Bilal al-Habashi mosque in Kirkuk, was kidnapped 10 days ago in eastern Baghdad along with his friend Seif Abdullah. The bodies of the cleric and Abdullah, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, were found dead in Baghdad Monday with marks of tortures on their bodies as well as bullet wounds in the head.

Bring ‘em on: Six Iranians, including two women, and an Iraqi woman were kidnapped after gunmen opened fire on their bus on Monday, seriously wounding the Iraqi driver. The group were on their way to a Shi'ite holy shrine in Balad. Police said the three women were released later on Monday. Thafer Migwil Hazza, a relative of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and a former Iraqi army officer, was kidnapped from his house by gunmen on Monday in Tikrit. Bashar Shnawa Gaber, a senior member of the Shi'ite Dawa party, was shot dead in Baghdad on Monday. Saad Albana, a senior official in the Housing and Reconstruction Ministry, was kidnapped from his home in Baghdad on Tuesday.

Bring ‘em on: Four U.S. soldiers were wounded in a suicide car bomb attack on a military convoy in Baquba. At least one vehicle was destroyed in the attack.

The quiet civil war: Shiite Muslim militia members have infiltrated Iraq's police force and are carrying out sectarian killings under the color of law, according to documents and scores of interviews. The abuses raise the specter of organized retaliation to attacks by Sunni-led insurgents that have killed thousands of Shiites, who endured decades of subjugation under Saddam Hussein.

And they undermine the U.S. effort to stabilize the nation, and train and equip Iraq's security forces -- the Bush administration's key prerequisites for the eventual withdrawal of American troops. In recent months, hundreds of bodies have been discovered in rivers, garbage dumps, sewage treatment facilities and alongside roads and in desert ravines. Many of them are thought to be victims of Sunni insurgents, who are known to target Shiite civilians and Iraqi security forces, and even Sunni Arabs believed to be collaborating with U.S. forces or the Iraqi government. But increasingly, the Shiite militias operating within the national police force are also suspected of committing atrocities. The Baghdad morgue reports that dozens of bodies arrive at the same time on a weekly basis, including scores of corpses with wrists bound by police handcuffs.

Time to get tough?: The leader of Iraq’s most powerful political party has called on the United States to let Iraqi fighters take a more aggressive role against insurgents, saying his country will only be able to defeat the insurgency when the United States lets Iraqis get tough.

“The more freedom given to Iraqis, the more chance for further progress there would be, particularly in fighting terror,” said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite Muslim religious party that leads the transitional government and whose armed wing is the most feared of Iraq’s many factional forces.

Instead, al-Hakim asserted in a rare interview late last week, the United States is tying Iraq’s hands in the fight against insurgents. One of Iraq’s “biggest problems is the mistaken or wrong policies practiced by the Americans,” he said.

In more than an hour of conversation at his Baghdad home and office, al-Hakim gave few details of what getting tough Iraq’s way would entail, other than making clear it would require more weapons, with more firepower, than the United States is currently supplying.

Looks like they already started: Iraqi authorities have been torturing and abusing prisoners in jails across the country, current and former Iraqi officials charged.

Deputy Human Rights Minister Aida Ussayran and Gen. Muntadhar Muhi al-Samaraee, a former head of special forces at the Ministry of the Interior, made the allegations two weeks after 169 men who apparently had been tortured were discovered in a south-central Baghdad building run by the Interior Ministry. The men reportedly had been beaten with leather belts and steel rods, crammed into tiny rooms with tens of others and forced to sit in their own excrement.

A senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said he suspected that the abuse wasn't isolated to the jail the U.S. military discovered.

Liberated Iraq: On Saturday, when former Iraqi leader Ayad Allawi charged that human rights abuses in the country were as bad, or worse, today compared with Saddam Hussein's reign, current officials denied the charge. Now troubling new stories have emerged in Tuesday's New York Times and Los Angeles Times. In Tuesday's New York Times, Dexter Filkins, the longtime Baghdad correspondent, reports that "evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods. "Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation." Filkins reports Sunnis found dead in ditches with obvious signs of torture; others discovered in prison with similar signs. Bayan Jabr, the interior minister, denounced this evidence as "only rumors" and "nonsense."

The Negroponte option: As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods.

Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.

Some Sunni men have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished.

Some of the young men have turned up alive in prison. In a secret bunker discovered earlier this month in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials acknowledged that some of the mostly Sunni inmates appeared to have been tortured.

Progress, of a sort: The U.S. is seeing significantly fewer foreign fighters on the battlefields of Iraq, because the coalition has killed or captured scores of terrorists in recent months and is doing a better job of securing the long border with Syria.

But the U.S. military has noticed in recent weeks a willingness of young Iraqis to become suicide bombers, once the monopoly of ideologically driven foreign jihadists.

Mookie: Men loyal to Moktada al-Sadr piled out of their cars at a plantation near Baghdad on a recent morning, bristling with Kalashnikov rifles and eager to exact vengeance on the Sunni Arab fighters who had butchered one of their Shiite militia brothers. When the smoke cleared after the fight, at least 21 bodies lay scattered among the weeds, making it the deadliest militia battle in months. The black-clad Shiites swaggered away, boasting about the carnage. Even as that battle raged on Oct. 27, Mr. Sadr's aides in Baghdad were quietly closing a deal that would signal his official debut as a kingmaker in Iraqi politics, placing his handpicked candidates on the same slate - and on equal footing - with the Shiite governing parties in the December parliamentary elections. The country's rulers had come courting him, and he had forced them to meet his terms. Wielding violence and political popularity as tools of his authority, Mr. Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has defied the American authorities here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is cementing his role as one of Iraq's most powerful figures.

Negotiating with the victors: In a new indication that the balance of power within the administration of President George W. Bush has tilted strongly in favour of the realists, Washington's influential ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has disclosed that Bush has authorised him to open direct talks with Iran about stabilising Iraq. The announcement, which came in an interview with Newsweek magazine, marks a major change in policy. The two countries have not held direct talks since mid-May 2003, shortly after the U.S. ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, when the influence of neo-conservatives was at its zenith.

The new balance of power: So, what about the "next permanent Iraqi government"? That was what Talabani's visit to Tehran was about. Talabani, who has kept close contacts with the Iranian regime for the past few decades, was naturally given a red-carpet welcome. Talabani's discussions brought out the following. Iran will not easily countenance an accommodation of Ba'athist elements in Iraq's power structure - something that suits Talabani, too. Second, the US attitude toward Iran (over its nuclear program) will impact on Iran's willingness to cooperate over orderly US troop withdrawal from Iraq. Third, instead of a pan-Arab identity for Iraq, Tehran visualized that Iraq "will glitter in the world of Islam in the near future" (to quote Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei). Fourth, Iran is determined to play an assertive role in shaping Iraq's political future. Thus, on balance, Washington has sought Moscow's help in stabilizing Iraq and thereby facilitating an early American troop withdrawal. Moscow on its part is willing to move in tandem with (pro-American) Arab regimes in the region in persuading alienated Sunni groups to reconcile. And Iran has reminded all concerned about the influence it wields in the region. As things stand, never before have the two strands - the Iraq problem and the Iran nuclear issue - become so closely intertwined.

Rise of the warlords: The Iraqi private security details are supposed to travel in vehicles marked with a number and with trained forces carrying credentials from the interior minister. But no single agency is responsible for enforcing the rules. The details routinely disregard Iraqi government forces, including soldiers and police, who patrol the streets.

"While some perform in a very professional manner, others cause fear in other motorists and pedestrians with their heavy-handed approach, including the use of warning shots," said Col. Edward Cardon, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad. "Each ministry has its own PSD that is often loyal to a person rather than an official office. Hence there is no centralized training and no real accountability to anyone other than the person they protect. Their freedom and protection is directly related to the power of the person the PSD is protecting."

Hussein trial: Less than 24 hours before Saddam Hussein's scheduled return to court on charges of crimes against humanity, the police in northern Iraq said Sunday that they had arrested 10 Sunni Arab men carrying orders from a fugitive associate of Mr. Hussein's to assassinate the court's best-known judge.

Prosecutors have said they plan to bring their first witnesses against Mr. Hussein and other defendants when the court resumes in Baghdad on Monday after a six-week recess.

Defense lawyers say they will demand a new 45-day adjournment while the court considers motions to annul the proceedings on the ground that the American role in creating the court, formally known as the Iraqi High Tribunal, has voided its authority under Iraqi and international law.

Kidnapping victims: Consular officials in Ottawa and Jordan are working to help secure the release of two Canadians who were among four aid workers kidnapped this weekend in Iraq, a government official said Monday.

So far, the Canadian government has said little about the case in an effort to protect the safety of those kidnapped. They have not identified the Canadians involved or the humanitarian organization they were working with.

Rumors Of Withdrawal

Ostensible withdrawal: The Iraqi Air Force is not now a fighting air force. If the Bush administration has any plans for such a force, it is a very well kept secret. It is hard not to conclude that withdrawal would leave Iraq with a ground-only military completely dependent on US air power for its survival. Indeed, there are signs that the Pentagon is prepared for this contingency. New military communication systems are now being deployed that point to a permanent US presence in Iraq - after an ostensible phased withdrawal. The semi-permanent communications systems deployed prior to the battle for Fallujah are now being augmented with a permanent enduring communications infrastructure. This new permanent communication infrastructure will provide commanders with secure video, voice and data communications via satellite, microwave and fiber throughout the Iraq-Kuwait theater of operations. The system, which will crisscross Iraq and connect more than 100 bases, is projected to cost $4 billion - although the Pentagon has been leaking the story that just four stay-behind US bases will remain in Iraq after withdrawal. From the foregoing, it is hard not to conclude that phased withdrawal is being utilized as a slogan under which military operations will continue - and that thousands of American combat troops may still be in Iraq for many years to come.

Airstrike your rivals: The Bush administration is considering a plan to put America's awesome airpower at the disposal of Iraqi commanders, as a way of reducing the number of US troops on the ground. The plan is causing consternation among commanders in US air force, who say it could lead to increased civilian casualties and lead to airstrikes being used as means of settling old scores.

According to an article in the New Yorker magazine by Seymour Hersh, the possibility of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused unease in the military, with air force commanders objecting to the possibility that Iraqis will eventually be responsible for target selection.

"Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame it on someone else?" a senior military planner told the magazine. "Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of al-Qaida, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?

Pat Buchanan: By Thursday, the Pentagon confirmed that troops would be coming home after the December elections and, if conditions improve, U.S. forces could be drawn down by 60,000 before the end of 2006. Said Fred Barnes of the hawkish Weekly Standard, "These events are ominous … they suggest that troop removal has superseded victory as the primary American concern." Indeed, they do.

Moreover, our principal coalition partners after the Brits are coming out. Silvio Berlusconi has said Italy's 3,000 troops may be home by the end of 2006. South Korea is pulling out a third of its contingent. Polish forces, cut from 2,400 to 1,400 in 2005, may soon fall below 1,000.

If no more troops are going in, and the only question is, how many U.S. and coalition troops are coming out, starting after the December elections, the conclusion seems inescapable: The United States is disengaging from the Iraq war before victory is at hand, or even in sight. Hence, a defeat, not of American arms, but of the U.S. policy in Iraq, is now a distinct possibility.

Someone – too lazy to check who – made an excellent point in Comments about this last statement, to the effect that it is preparatory to the future argument that Iraq was ‘lost’ not because our military wasn’t up to it but because of the public’s loss of will – the same old bullshit as we hear about Vietnam, in other words. The fact that neither conflict proved amenable to a military solution short of genocide is conveniently ignored.

Joe Conason: Too often omitted from American discussions of this dismal situation is the widely shared and forcefully expressed desire of the Iraqis themselves — namely that our troops should go home as soon as possible, and that a schedule must be established for their departure.

Last August, the British defense ministry conducted a secret opinion survey in Iraq, whose results have since leaked out. The pollsters found that over three-quarters of the Iraqi public want a timetable for the end of the occupation. Even the Iraqi political parties least hostile to the United States, including those that won the elections last January, want to know precisely when our troops will go.

That broad judgment was ratified again in Cairo last weekend, when Iraqi political leaders met at a “reconciliation conference” under the auspices of the Arab League. Only those who know nothing about public opinion in Iraq were surprised when the Cairo conferees, representing a very broad spectrum of ethnic and religious factions, issued a joint statement that demanded “the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with a timetable.” (The communiqué went so far as to acknowledge the legitimacy of “resistance” to foreign occupation, while condemning acts of terror against civilians.)

According to the Egyptian newspaper Al Hayat , sources at the conference suggested that the Iraqi leaders want U.S. and British troops to vacate the country’s major cities by next May.

Richard Clarke: In the past few weeks, the war in Iraq has finally emerged to center stage in Washington.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly that Iraqi forces should assume the lead in the war in 2006 so that the United States could begin a phased withdrawal.

In Cairo, the Iraqi factions meeting under Arab League auspices actually agreed on something: They urged the United States to announce a timetable for withdrawal.

Now, our nation needs to agree on a withdrawal strategy. Four elements define a departure plan:

• How we characterize the end of our combat-force presence.

• When the departure starts.

• When it ends.

• What our residual involvement will be.

Stan Crock: I find it both amusing and dismaying that the Administration is keelhauling Democrats for wanting an exit strategy when Arab and Iraqi leaders are calling for a withdrawal timetable and the Pentagon reportedly has drafted a plan for starting a drawdown next year. Representative John Murtha (news, bio, voting record) (D-Pa.) has argued for a rapid withdrawal on the ground that we're not going to win and we shouldn't sentence more troops to die senselessly.

I would make a different argument: We should get out of Iraq because we've won. We already have achieved our two chief goals: ridding Iraq of Saddam's rule and ending any weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.

Iraq has become so politically radioactive that hardly anyone can look at it rationally. But that can be said for many things in Washington these days. As lawmakers, especially Republicans, start looking toward the 2006 election cycle, I bet we'll start hearing more about pulling back troops in large numbers. And it will be because we won, not because we lost.

War History

Roundheels Tom: Tom Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, remembers the exchange vividly. The time was September 2002. The place was the White House, at a meeting in which President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed congressional leaders for a quick vote on a resolution authorizing military action against Iraq.

But Daschle, who as Senate majority leader controlled the chamber's schedule, recalled recently that he asked Bush to delay the vote until after the impending midterm election. "I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: 'Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?' He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: 'We just have to do this now.' " Daschle's account, which White House officials said they could not confirm or deny, highlights a crucial factor that has drawn little attention amid rising controversy over the congressional vote that authorized the war in Iraq. The recent partisan dispute has focused almost entirely on the intelligence information legislators had as they cast their votes. But the debate may have been shaped as much by when Congress voted as by what it knew.

No duh: It was obvious in 2002, and it is crystal clear now, that the Bush team - led by their political director, Karl Rove - carefully scheduled the war so that the timetable would work with the schedule of the next two election cycles.

The vote in Congress to give the president war authority had to occur before the mid-term elections in November 2002 in order to put the Democrats in disarray and to get all the Democratic senators who were planning to run for president in 2004 on the record. That part worked beautifully. Sen. John Kerry, the eventual Democratic nominee, never fully recovered from the GOP ads in which he stated conflicting views on the war.

The war itself was supposed to be a cakewalk. I believe Bush, Cheney and Rove were looking at intelligence that backed up weapons inspectors, including Scott Ritter, who said that Iraq was virtually free of weapons. Saddam was complicit in this because his personal safety from his enemies inside Iraq depended on the myth that he had the weapons.

The Bush political team’s plan was to have the war successfully ended and a new democratically elected government installed by mid-2004 so that Bush could skate to re-election in November - not just as a “war president,” as he referred to himself, but also as a war hero.

Emblematic of this plan was the massive and costly publicity stunt in which Bush landed on the U.S.S. Lincoln off the coast of California and gave a speech with the “Mission Accomplished” banner in the background. The “Mission Accomplished” footage of Bush on the Lincoln was intended to be used in ads for the 2004 elections. That never happened, of course. The war quickly got out of their control and the violence has steadily escalated ever since.

Blinders coming off: A former senior U.S. State Department official says he has come to doubt whether President Bush's administration presented an honest intelligence case for the war in Iraq.

"You begin to speculate, you begin to wonder _ Was this intelligence spun? Was it politicized? Was it cherry-picked? Did in fact the American people get fooled? I'm beginning to have my concerns," Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said in an interview broadcast Tuesday.

Jesus, Larry, you’re just now wondering? Well, hey, better three years and 40,000 lives late than never, I guess.

More Larry: Wilkerson told the BBC:

“The post-invasion planning for Iraq was handled, in my opinion, in this alternative decision-making process which, in this case, constituted the vice-president and the secretary of defence and certain people in the defence department who did the "post invasion planning", which was as inept and incompetent as perhaps any planning anyone has ever done.”

“It consisted of largely sending Jay Garner and his organisation to sit in Kuwait until the military forces had moved into Baghdad, and then going to Baghdad and other places in Iraq with no other purpose than to deliver a little humanitarian assistance, perhaps deal with some oil-field fires, put Ahmed Chalabi or some other similar Iraqi in charge and leave.”

“This was not only inept and incompetent, it was day-dreaming of the most unfortunate type and ever since that failed we've been in a pick-up game - a pick-up game that's cost us over 2,000 American KIAs [killed in action] and almost a division's worth of casualties.”

Random News

More guts in his little finger than Dick Cheney has in his whole flabby pink body: Gary Olson is a 52-year-old grandfather, a retired U.S. Army veteran - and soon to be a soldier again, thanks to the need for troops in Iraq.

Olson was ordered to report for duty Dec. 4 in Fort Jackson, S.C.

"They're just looking for bodies to fill in. I have been out cold turkey for 13 years," Olson said. "My philosophy is this: I'm going to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. If I have to go, I have to go."

Yes, a new PR campaign should turn things around. Good to see congress exerting some leadership: Amid declining public support for the war in Iraq, two prominent Republican senators urged President Bush yesterday to be more forthcoming about the increasingly costly and uncertain effort to defeat the insurgency and establish a self-sufficient democracy.

"We want to hear from the administration," said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. "We want more co-option of the Congress by the administration so that we're on the same wavelength."

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Bush should provide a detailed status report to the American public.

"It would bring him closer to the people, dispel some of this concern that understandably our people have about the loss of life and limb, the enormous cost of this war to the American public" and press the case that "we've got to stay firm for the next six months," Mr. Warner said.

Torturepalooza

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. . . . [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and . . . degeneracy of manners and of morals. . . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. . . .

-- James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

The all-powerful presidency: On the question of detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other fronts in the war on terror, Wilkerson said Bush heard two sides of an impassioned argument within his administration. Abuse of prisoners, and even the deaths of some who had been interrogated in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have bruised the U.S. image abroad and undermined support for the Iraq war.

Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued "that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases," Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson said Bush tried to work out a compromise in 2001 and 2002 that recognized that the war on terrorism was different from past wars and required greater flexibility in handling prisoners who don't belong to an enemy state or follow the rules themselves.

Bush's stated policy, which was heatedly criticized by civil liberties and legal groups at the time, was defensible, Wilkerson said. But it was undermined almost immediately in practice, he said.

In the field, the United States followed the policies of hard-liners who wanted essentially unchecked ability to detain and harshly interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, Wilkerson said.

War criminal: A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell has launched a stinging attack on US Vice-President Dick Cheney over abuse of prisoners by US troops.

Col Lawrence Wilkerson accused Mr Cheney of ignoring a decision by President Bush on the treatment of prisoners in the war on terror.

Asked by the BBC's Today if Mr Cheney could be accused of war crimes, he said: "It's an interesting question."

"Certainly it is a domestic crime to advocate terror," he added.

"And I would suspect, for whatever it's worth, it's an international crime as well."

Gotta say this for Larry – he’s saying some stuff that is long past due to be said by leaders of national stature. Hope someone’s paying attention.

Any ‘conservative’ who sat quietly while an American citizen was held for three years without charges – and that would be pretty much all of them – is a despicable whore with no moral standing in civilized society: Since 9/11 the Bush Administration has sharply criticized others for daring to suggest that citizens accused of terrorism should be dealt with through the criminal justice system. It has insisted that 9/11 changed everything and that terrorism must be dealt with through novel methods that dispense with the ordinary protections that the Constitution affords the accused. Now it has backtracked in one of the most prominent cases and done precisely what it said it could not do-- treat Padilla as a criminal defendant.

The reason is not difficult to discover. The Administration counted votes and figured that even with a replacement for Justice O'Connor, it would likely lose in the Supreme Court. (The four dissenters in Rumsfeld v. Padilla thought Padilla was unconstitutionally confined, while Justice Scalia, who joined the majority, made clear that the September 18, 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force did not justify detaining a U.S. citizen, because the AUMF was not a legitimate suspension of the writ of habeas corpus).

By indicting Padilla now, The Bush Administration moots Padilla's appeal to the Supreme Court. It also leaves standing the Fourth Circuit's decision in the Padilla case, which broadly upheld the President's power to detain U.S. citizens like Padilla as unlawful combatants. (See Marty Lederman's post here for an analysis).

That result is particularly worthy of note, for the Fourth Circuit opinion may yet come in handy if the Administration needs to hold another U.S. citizen within the geographical boundaries of that circuit. The Administration now knows that the Fourth Circuit is a Constitution-free zone. It can, if it needs to, declare someone an enemy combantant, thrown them into a military prison, and interrogate them at its leisure. It will take years for a citizen to exhaust his appeals and reach the Supreme Court; and when the citizen finally gets to the Supreme Court, the Administration has the option to indict and moot the case (as it did with Padilla) or, if the Court's personnel have changed sufficiently in the interim, risk an appeal to the Supremes.

You may recall that, following the Hamdi decision last year, the Administration decided not to give Yaser Hamdi a hearing, but instead released Hamdi to Saudi Arabia, extracting in return a surrender of Hamdi's U.S. Citizenship and a promise that he would not sue. Now it has indicted Padilla to avoid facing a simliar rebuff by the U.S. Supreme Court. In both cases, the Administration argued that that it was of the utmost necessity to detain them indefinitely and that it could not give these men the constitutional protections ordinarily afforded criminal defendants without severely damaging national security. These assertions now ring hollow-- Hamdi is free, and Padilla is in the criminal justice system.

The Padilla case is a sobering lesson in how much leeway the President has to imprison and detain people for long periods of time in violation of the Constitution. The fact that the government's story about why Padilla was a threat has changed so frequently should give us pause the next time the government asserts that we should trust it when it rounds up U.S. citizens and claims the right to hold them indefinitely for our protection. Padilla may well be a very bad fellow, but we have a method of dealing with such bad fellows. It is called the rule of law, and we should not surrender it so readily merely because the President desires it.

The Bush administration’s torture policy is a clear violation of United States law: The starting point is the U.N. Convention Against Torture, a treaty that the United States ratified in 1994. Under the convention, we agreed to criminalize overseas torture -- official torture was already a crime within the United States -- and to "undertake to prevent . . . other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" (CID, for short) that "do not amount to torture." Many of the controversial U.S. methods are CID, sometimes called "torture lite." CID includes techniques used in Guantanamo: 18- to 20-hour-a-day questioning for 48 out of 54 days, blasting prisoners with strobe lights and ear-splitting rock music, menacing them with snarling dogs, threatening to hurt their mothers, and humiliations such as leading them around on leashes Pfc. Lynndie England-style, stripping them naked in front of women, or holding them down while a female interrogator straddles them and whispers that we've killed their comrades.

All of these methods were used on Qatani, and documented in the Army's Schmidt report (PDF), which was commissioned in response to FBI allegations of abuses at Guantanamo. (Most of the report, co-authored by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, remains classified, so we do not know whether the classified portions contain worse.)

Methods like these were banned in U.S. criminal investigations years ago, because, in the Supreme Court's language, they "shock the conscience." Assaults on human dignity are not who we are or what we stand for. Given the U.S. commitment under the torture convention to "undertake to prevent" CID, why are we using it abroad in cases that have nothing to do with ticking time bombs? Why does the president still insist that we're following our legal obligations, and that we treat detainees humanely?

It depends what you mean by "legal obligations" and "humanely."

Shredding habeas corpus, due process, and civilized morality: This New York Times article confirms something I suspected as soon as Padilla's indictment was announced. The Bush administration is desperate to avoid accountability on its detention and interrogation policies not because of what it may need to do in the future but rather because of the illegality of what it has already done. As a result, Administration officials dropped any mention of the previously touted "dirty bomb" plot against Jose Padilla, because prosecuting that theory would lead to inquiries about what exactly it had done to get the information that formed the basis of the accusation.

“The decision not to charge [Padilla] criminally in connection with the more far-ranging bomb plots was prompted by the conclusion that Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Zubaydah could almost certainly not be used as witnesses, because that could expose classified information and could open up charges from defense lawyers that their earlier statements were a result of torture, officials said.”

”In an interview on Wednesday, a British lawyer for another man accused by the United States of working as Mr. Padilla's accomplice in the bomb plot also accused American officials of working to extract a confession. The lawyer said the United States had transferred the man to Morocco from Pakistan, where he was captured in 2002, in an effort to have him to sign a confession implicating himself and Mr. Padilla.”

“"They took him to Morocco to be tortured," said Clive A. Stafford Smith, the lawyer for the suspect, Binyan Mohammed. "He signed a confession saying whatever they wanted to hear, which is that he worked with Jose Padilla to do the dirty bomb plot. He says that's absolute nonsense, and he doesn't know Jose Padilla."”

Not to belabor the obvious, but information obtained by torture has two significant defects. First, it won't stand up in court because it's unreliable. Second it violates basic human rights, and that's an important reason why our constitutional system doesn't allow such practices in the first place.

It seems that the Administration's decision to flout the Constitution and the rule of law has come home to roost. The Administration assumed all along that it was entitled to do whatever it wanted, and that no one should object, because, after all, it was fighting evil. But the best way to fight evil is not to do evil yourself.

Lie after lie: In a rare television interview, Goss defended the CIA's track record, which has been tarnished by allegations ranging from erroneous or hyped intelligence leading to the war in Iraq to reports the agency runs secret prisons abroad for terrorism suspects and uses harsh interrogation techniques amounting to torture.

"What we do does not come close to torture," Goss said, though he declined to elaborate on the agency's interrogation techniques.

Let’s shackle Porter Goss and force him to stand for 40 hours and then ask him if it came close to torture: The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

Comment on above story: This story is notable for several reasons: 1. Confrmation that use of these techniques is formally approved at the highest level of the CIA: "According to the sources, when an interrogator wishes to use a particular technique on a prisoner, the policy at the CIA is that each step of the interrogation process must be signed off at the highest level -- by the deputy director for operations for the CIA." 2. The fact that several former and current CIA officers and supervisors are leaking CIA "methods" is newsworthy in and of itself. There's a very strong taboo against revelation of sources and methods within the CIA; such conduct could subject the leakers to severe discipline and even criminal exposure. Therefore it's virtually unheard of. These leaks -- together with recent leaks concerning the CIA's "black sites" where these interrogations occur, and about a CIA Inspector General report questioning the legality of these techniques -- indicate that there must be profound dissent within the agency on this issue, including on the question of the efficacy of such techniques: "[T]he debate among intelligence officers as to whether they are effective should not be underestimated." According to ABC News, the leakers "say they are revealing specific details of the techniques, and their impact on confessions, because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen." 3. The techniques were first approved in March 2002, at least four months before the infamous OLC "Torture Memo." This suggests that the CIA was willing to engage in such conduct before OLC signed off on it (in writing, anyway), and that OLC's advice was offered with respect to ongoing conduct. The general practice within OLC is not to opine on the legality of past or ongoing conduct within the Executive branch, because in such a case there could be an understandable inclination to skew advice so as not to conclude that Executive officials had been acting unlawfully. On the other hand, the Executive branch obviously needs to know if it has been acting unlawfully so that it can conform its practice to the law. Therefore it's often a tough call within OLC whether to give advice in situations such as this. 4. These techniques -- especially Nos. 4 through 6 -- would very likely be deemed conduct that "shocks the conscience," and that therefore would be forbidden by the McCain Amendment. (The CIA's own Inspector General apparently concluded that some of the techniques do shock the conscience.) I should caution, however, that there is no judicial precedent for applying the "shocks the conscience" standard in the context of interrogations of high-level international terrorism suspects, and therefore there is no way to know for certain whether the McCain Amendment would prohibit even such harsh techniques. * * * * I'm not going to discuss here whether these techniques are moral, or "effective," or worth the costs, or whether it was inevitable that they would "migrate" to less carefully monitored settings (e.g., Iraq), or whether they contributed to the confusion throughout the military about legal standards governing detainee treatment. Those important discussions are ongoing elsewhere (such as at Crooked Timber, on Andrew Sullivan's site, and in the comments to this Orin Kerr post), and I don't have any particular expertise to offer on such topics. No one is discussing this question, however: Are such techniques currently legal?

The Nuremburg legacy: For the last twenty years, it’s been common practice among law professors to view modern human rights law, and in a sense the entire international law system, as something that started with the gavel that convened the first of the Nuremberg criminal tribunals. That gavel fell sixty years ago today. These tribunals gave force to the concept that international law was not just about relations between nations. International law also created obligations for individuals, who could be subject to trial and severe sanction. America was the most aggressive proponent of this course, and the American prosecutor, Justice Robert Jackson, was extremely conscious of what this meant for his country. “We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well.” Today it seems that Jackson’s poisoned chalice truly is pressed to the lips of the United States, or more particularly, those of George W. Bush. The Bush Administration has retreated from the country’s traditional embrace of international law, and continues to view even its most basic commitments – such as the Geneva Conventions – with contempt. While John McCain has mustered a vote of 90 – 9 in the US Senate in support of a return to the traditional view, Bush remains defiant and threatens a veto. Why the adamant opposition? Can it be that the Nuremberg legacy provides the answer? If any single consideration stands in the way of the Administration’s embrace of the McCain Amendment, it might well be what Andrew Sullivan calls “concern for immunity from prosecution for past actions and decisions.” Nuremberg set some clear principles, and many of them had to do with the mistreatment of those held in prisons in wartime. A concept of ministerial liability for pervasive abuse was established, and this was based on notions of command responsibility. Another case established that those who write legal memoranda which counsel government officials and the military to ignore the Geneva and Hague Conventions can be prosecuted and imprisoned – as in fact a number of German Justice Ministry officials were in the case of United States v. Altstoetter. Many in the Bush Administration seem to have a very curious understanding of Nuremberg. Rather than leading a new movement to overturn the international legal system that started at Nuremberg, a number of key Bush officials are more likely to be the Pinochets of the next generation – blocked from international travel and forever fending off extradition warrants and prosecutor’s questions. Notwithstanding a sovereigntist assault, sixty years later the principles of Nuremberg seem as robust as ever – and likely to create lasting troubles for those who would deny them.

Thoroughly repulsed and deeply ashamed: Americans accustomed to taking their leaders' words at face value perhaps can be forgiven, at least until now, for believing the unbelievable. But enough details have recently come to light about the Bush administration's handling of terror suspects to make anyone aware of them thoroughly repulsed and deeply ashamed.

There is no escaping that this administration has undermined the nation's highest ideals, thereby jeopardizing its moral leadership in the world. It is now clear that it also has jeopardized its ability to bring terror suspects to justice.

Discussions of torture invariably deal both with questions of morality and effectiveness. In truth, torture fails both tests. But while our leaders state flatly that it doesn't work and that the United States does not torture, thereby seeming to agree that torture is immoral, they have acted otherwise. They have redefined what torture is, they have allowed U.S. personnel to engage in abusive "enhanced techniques" of interrogation and they have "renditioned" detainees to nations known to torture under any definition.

Unreliable method: Torture is not a theoretical discussion at the Center for Victims of Torture. We know what torture is and we know its impact.

Torture does not work. We know from working with victims that torture is an ineffective way to gather information. Nearly all our clients, when subjected to torture, confessed to a crime they did not commit, gave up extraneous information, or supplied names of innocent friends or colleagues. This is a great source of shame for our clients, who tell us they would have said anything to get the pain to stop.

But don't take just our word for it. Experienced and well-trained interrogators within the military, the FBI and the police say that torture does not yield reliable information. Such extraneous information distracts, rather than supports, valid investigations. F. Andy Messing, a retired major in U.S. Special Forces and director of the National Defense Council, told Insight magazine, "Anybody with real combat experience understands that torture is counterproductive."

Not only is torture ineffective, but it is never used in isolated cases, as some would have us believe. The Israeli Security Service claimed to use "moderate physical pressure," sometimes called stress and duress techniques, only where they had the most reliable information about the detainee's guilt. Yet a study found they were used on over 8,000 detainees. It is simply not credible that they had such precise information about so many. The Israeli Supreme Court determined such techniques were illegitimate and outlawed them in 1999.

At the time the photos were taken at Abu Ghraib, the Red Cross estimated that at least 80 percent of those imprisoned should never have been arrested, but were there because it was easier to arrest persons than to let them go. They were all vulnerable to abuse not because of their guilt but because they were there.

Guantanamo north: As the number of questions asked across Europe grows on the existence of a chain of secret prisons run by the CIA, the E.U. Commissioner for Human Rights, Alvaro Gil Robles, has described for the first time what he saw in September 2002, at a site that until now had not been mentioned in the controversy of extrajudicial detentions and the war on al-Qaeda: The U.S. military base at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.

Within this imposing base, which is home to 6,000 U.S. Army troops and spread out across 300 hectares near Ferizaj, south of Pristina, the "capital" of the U.N.-administered province of Kosovo, Gil Robles saw a replica of Guantanamo. A prison has been built inside Camp Bondsteel. Run by the U.S. Army, it is the principal detention center for KFOR, the multinational NATO force deployed in Kosovo since June 1999.

Isn’t this what we fought the Cold War against?: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday defended the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects as part of an unprecedented war to prevent massive attacks on civilians.

In an interview with USA TODAY, Rice neither confirmed nor disavowed the existence of secret CIA prisons abroad that The Washington Post reported this month. She said the Bush administration's policy of making arrests before crimes are committed benefits other nations as well as the United States.

"We have never fought a war like this before where ... you can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them," she said. "Because if they commit the crime, thousands of innocent people die."

Yeah, Condi, in a big fucking mushroom cloud, right? Or in a hideous biowarfare attack launched by UAVs controlled by a fucking third world country 11,000 miles away, right? You revolting little fascist puke.

Editorial – Houston Chronicle: The charges finally leveled against Padilla are far from the alarming claims the Justice Department originally made to support Padilla's indefinite detention. At the time of his May 2002 arrest, prosecutors said Padilla had conspired with al-Qaida to detonate a radioactive bomb within the United States. Bush administration officials also asserted that Padilla was an al-Qaida recruit.

Those claims do not appear as part of the indictment, demonstrating the ease with which broad powers of detention can be abused.

Government officials maintain they have the right to indefinitely hold without charges any U.S. citizen they label an "enemy combatant." That's a frightening grasp of power that ignores a number of well-established constitutional rights, including the right to be advised by lawyers who know what they are up against and the right not to be held unless prosecutors are prepared to level specific accusations. The specifics of Padilla's case, including the fact that the government's original allegations now seem wildly inflated, are a further demonstration of the danger of allowing prosecutors sweeping arrest powers without accountability.

U.S. Attorney Alberto Gonzales said that with his indictment, Padilla is no longer considered to be an enemy combatant. As part of the process, he was transferred into civilian custody from a military lockup in Charleston, S.C.

The United States cannot have a system in which government officials are able to arrest Americans on wild, unprovable allegations, hold them for years without official charges, then declare "King's X," upon which they transfer the prisoner back into the purview of the Constitution.

Sean Gonsalves: Appropriately, the National Council of Teachers of English 2004 Doublespeak Award went to the Bush administration, in part because “Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel, advised that, in order to be considered torture, the pain inflicted on a prisoner ‘must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.’”

“Leaving aside the problem of how to quantitatively measure human pain in this way, the memo advised that international laws against torture 'may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogation' of (suspected terrorists).”

Don't be surprised if the plain-talking Bush administration doesn't start calling torture “aversion therapy” or “behavior modification.”

It's not terrorist-sympathizing, feel-goodism to recognize that this tortured logic is self-defeating in the all-important war for “hearts and minds.” Words shape our thoughts. So as long as we buy into these linguistic sleights-of-hand where prisoners of war are called “detainees,” dangling in a legal limbo, “staying the course” is the path to “winning the war and losing the peace.”

John Adams: "There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."

Casualty Reports

Local story: A Texas soldier was killed in Iraq when his unit came under direct fire during combat operations, the Defense Department announced Monday.

Sgt. William B. Meeuwsen, 21, of Kingwood, died Wednesday in Baghdad along with 25-year-old Staff Sgt. Aram J. Bass of Niagara Falls, New York. Their deaths were being reviewed as a possible friendly-fire incidents, the military said.

Local story: Army Sgt. 1st Class Eric P. Pearrow, a 40-year-old veteran tank commander who was killed recently in a roll-over accident in Iraq, developed a lifelong fondness for all-terrain vehicles in the fields that surround Peoria. Pearrow died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Nov. 24th, Pentagon officials said Monday. He was a tank commander assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is based at Fort Carson, Colo., Army spokeswoman Martha Rudd said. He was an experienced soldier who was qualified to lead an entire tank platoon, she said. Pearrow was riding in an M1A2 Abrams tank when it accidentally rolled over into a canal, Rudd said.

Local story: The Army's criminal unit is investigating the killing of a Beaver County soldier, military officials said Monday.

Army Pvt. Dylan Paytas, 20, of Freedom, died of multiple gunshot wounds "sustained during a noncombat-related incident" Nov. 16 at the Warhorse forward base near Baqubah about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, said U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Stacy Simon of the Coalition Press Information Center in Iraq.

Local story: A U.S. Army soldier with local ties was wounded this month in Iraq in an attack that killed at least four of his comrades.

Spc. Adam D. Millett, 22, of Durham, is now in Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. recovering from injuries, according to his cousin, Sharon Dove of South Hampton.

He was injured Nov. 19 in Bayji when a bomb exploded near the Humvee he was in, according to The Associated Press.

Local story: Christine Lebron usually celebrates Thanksgiving with a big family gathering. But this year, with work and other obligations nagging at everyone's time, she and her relatives decided to forgo the annual feast and celebrate separately.

But that plan didn't last long. About 6:45 Thanksgiving morning, two uniformed soldiers showed up at Lebron's house in Bellmead, and instantly she knew: The day that had been set aside to give everyone some space was about to turn into one where family was the only thing holding them together.

Lebron's oldest son, Army Spc. Javier Antonio Villanueva, was dead. The 25-year-old had been injured the day before in the Iraqi town of Hit when an improvised explosive device detonated near his patrol. By the time the news of his injuries could be relayed to his family, he had already died.

Local story: Master Sgt. Brett E. Angus was perhaps called to be a Marine. With his father and his uncle both in the military, he grew up surrounded by family members who wanted to serve their country.

He loved to travel and was able to see the world with the Marines. He even met his wife while working in Japan. Angus had been in Iraq for less than a year before he was killed Saturday by an improvised explosive device.

Local story: When Gregory L. Tull was a junior in high school, he told a guidance counselor that he was determined to enlist in the military. ‘‘He was just driven by that goal, and he was very confident in his decision,’’ said Kate Schiek, a counselor at Pocahontas Area High School. Tull achieved his goal by enlisting in the Iowa Army National Guard in 2002. He was assigned to Detachment 1, Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 1st Battalion, 194th Field Artillery. He earned the rank of specialist. Schiek described him as ‘‘very passionate about serving his country.’’ His passion for serving his country led to him making the supreme sacrifice. He was killed in action in Iraq Friday when an improvised explosive device blew up next to the armored Humvee he was in.

Local story: Bill Mitchell of Atascadero is still grieving the death of his only son, Sgt. Mike Mitchell who was killed in Iraq in April of last year.

The army says Sgt. Mitchell died along with seven other soldiers in an ambush.

Mitchell says he has made repeated attempts to meet with Congressman Bill Thomas, even in Washington D.C., but each time was unsuccessful. Mitchell says on three occasions, Thomas sent staff members instead.

Atascadero is in Thomas’ district.

“You know I want to sit down with him. I want to tell him about my son … what a fine young man that was killed in this war, and I want to talk to him about the war and I’d like to know why he continues to support it,” said Mitchell.

“I think it's the height of disrespect that he will not meet with the father of a soldier who was killed in this war, one of his constituents,” adds Mitchell.

Local story: A Harrow Muslim was among three to have been killed by gunmen while returning to Baghdad after a five-day tour of religious sites.

Husain Mohammedali, 50, who was from Waverely Road, leaves his wife, three daughters and one son.

Five close friends were travelling together, they were mainly Shiite Muslims from Husaini Masjid Mosque in Northolt.

Saifuddib Nakai from Streatham was also killed on Monday and Yahya Gulamali, 60, from Greenford died from his injuries on Tuesday, Ali Asqar Qaiyoom, 42, an engineer from Harrow and Zehra Jafferjee, 60, from Wembley were injured and are being treated in hospital.

Local story: Two West Michigan soldiers remained in critical but stable condition in a Texas hospital after suffering extensive burns in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq last week.

Army Sgt. Spencer Akers, 35, of Traverse City, and Stanwood resident Sgt. Matthew Webber, 23, were injured in the Nov. 21 incident, when a roadside bomb exploded under a Humvee.

Pfc. John Dearing, 21, of Hazel Park, a gunner on the Humvee, was killed instantly.

Sgt. Duane Dreasky, 31, of Novi, and Spc. Joshua Youman, 25, of Flushing, also were injured in the explosion.

Local story: A public memorial service will be held this week for an Indiana soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq earlier this month.

The memorial for 20-year-old Lance Corporal Scott Zubowski will be Thursday at a church in Newcastle.

He and another Marine were killed November 12th by a roadside bomb near Fallujah.

Thoughtfood for Tuesday, November 29, 2005 Where Are The Christians? And who are these proud, angry men who have usurped their name? Where are the meek who shall inherit the earth? And who are these greedy and violent men who think that they have already inherited the earth? Where are the peacemakers who will be called the children of God? And who are these warlords who pretend to pray "in Jesus' name"? Where are those who mourn and shall be comforted? And who are these blind men who do not want us to even see those who mourn? Where are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness and shall be filled? And who are these who have made sure that they are so filled that they do not recognize hunger and thirst? Who are these who promote the accumulation of wealth to such obscene degrees that they can not understand a poor man's desire for bread or a fair wage? Where are the Christians? And who are these pretenders, who like the money lenders and the Pharisees, quote only the oldest parts of the Old Testament? Who are these who do not understand that by the time Jesus was born, Rabbi Hillel had already instructed the Jews to look beyond the justifications of violence and vengeance contained in the earliest scriptures, to look ahead to the Golden Rule? Who are these who judge the world around them as enemy, who could not recognize a Good Samaritan if he kissed them on the cheek? Or the other cheek? Where are the believers who have been delivered from their fear of death? And who are these doubters who do not think that God would take care of Terry Schiavo after fifteen years of being locked away in Limbo? What possesses a "Christian" to want to deny anyone the blessing of returning to God? Who are these who did not hear Jesus say "Be not afraid," but instead preach constantly "Be afraid. Be very afraid"? When did death become separated from life? And when did life become a possession of the State, as opposed to a gift from God? Forget turning the other cheek. Where are the faithful who would not dare steal vengeance from the Lord? Where are the merciful who shall receive mercy? And who are these people throwing stones? Are they really without error or sin? What are these laws they propose that would remove a persons right to choose? That would remove the choices that allow us to have morality? Do they not see that if they can not choose they can not be moral? Who are these people who have forgotten that Christians were outlawed by the Roman Empire? That Protestants were outlawed by the Catholic Church? That the founders of this country could not freely choose their own faith in the lands they came from? Where are the Christians for whom "all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself?" And who are these so called Christians who quote "an eye for an eye" and do not remember that Jesus said no to this and encouraged us to not judge; to love our enemies; to not act righteous in public; to give and give and give; to demand nothing of others? And as they proclaim their need to post the Ten Commandments do they not remember that in the Old Testament rape, prostitution, slavery and the slaughter of women and children are all condoned? Do they not remember that, as Paul pointed out in Galatians, if they use one law from the Old Testament; they must cease to eat pork and shellfish; they must not work on Saturday; they must follow a myriad of laws; they must always provide their first wife with the same level of support they give to their new wives; they must stone to death all their daughters who have had sex before marriage? Where are the Christians who know that to love one another is the greatest and most important requirement, and the only path to the future of our planet? And who are these judges who want to pass laws that determine who is allowed to love one another; how they are allowed to love one another; when they are allowed love one another? Why have they forgotten that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." Who are these who have forgotten their own need and desire for love; who have forgotten how that need confused them and led them into errors; led them into situations for which forgiveness and mercy was their only way out? Who are these people who have forgotten how, upon encountering love, they were delivered? Where are the lovers? And who are these Christians who have forgotten how as children we were shown a man who would kneel in the dust to lift the weakest of us up, embrace us, understand us and love us? Where are the Christians? (Link via blah3 Edited by YD for emphasis.) Thanks, Monkeyfister. A proud Army field salute to a proud Navy sea puke. YD

Iraq's role in US politics evolving rapidly The month of November has seen Iraq's role in US politics changing very rapidly indeed. In this recent post over on Just World News, I summed up some of the main changes under these headings:

• Iraq moves front and center of US politics
• Bush administration forced to give some appearance of troop withdrawals
• Rush toward ethnic cleansing (inside Iraq)
• Clean US exit? 2006? 2008?

That latter part of the post referred, obviously, to the fact that Iraq, and all the business about its alleged "march toward democracy" is actually being subordinated to the demands of the US electoral calendar. In this post that I put up yesterday, I was looking at some of the ways that imperial powers have historically tried to "package" their retreats so that they can appear to look like victories. I noted, though-- regarding the withdrawal the French made from Algeria in 1962, under De Gaulle-- that that decision "may have made De Gaulle look masterful, statesmanlike, and 'modern'. But the loss of Algeria was nonetheless part of a worldwide retraction of French imperial power." I also argued:

beyond all this, I think it's time for people in the peace movement here in the US-- while we continue working on the need for a rapid and total US withdfrawal from Iraq-- to start also thinking more broadly about the kind of relationship we want our country to have with the rest of the world, say ten or 20 years from now.

What we most certainly don't want to see at that point is a country that-- having "recovered" from its little setback back there in Iraq in 2006 or so-- is willing and able to launch some similar kind of a catastrophe on another country someplace else.

Anyway, you can go and see the rest of that argument, there. And another thing: I've been noticing another little phenomenon in US politics, recently, that I haven't seen anyone else yet remarking on, and that I haven't written about on JWN yet, either... That is this: Whereas up until now, it has been mainly the civilian pols (of both parties) who've been gung-ho for the war, urging increased troop levels etc., and the uniformed military that has expressed a lot more caution in well-positioned "leaks" to favored journalists-- suddenly, in recent weeks this situation seems to have been upended. Now it's the pols who're suddenly trying to concoct scenarios that involve a speedy--in time for the 2006 elections!-- troop drawdown, while several high-ranking officers have recently been quoted as saying, "Hey, hang on a moment, we're just turning the corner here.... Don't pull the rug out from under us now!" What's happening here? My best explanation is that the generals-- most of whom are fairly smart people-- clearly see which way the winds are blowing... They can see that the pols are shifting massively towards at least a significant drawdown of forces over the next 12 months (if not, yet, a complete withdrawal), and see probably realistically that the resulting situation in Iraq ain't going to be pretty. (Nor is the present situation there, of course.) Anyway, these generals may well be sensing that a large move to "blame the military" for the resulting disaster in Iraq is just around the corner; so they may right now be preparing to play that fine old military game of CYA... Not a seemly or an honest game to play, at all. But everyone else from the Prez on down will be playing it big-time over the year ahead-- so why not them? Meantime, whatever the policymakers in DC try to do, things in Iraq continue to get worse.

Question for our readers: What do the following people have in common?

Time Magazine again ask: Who Should Be Person of the Year for 2005? Person of the Year is the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year. Who do you think fits the bill this year?

38% J.K. Rowling 15% Bono 13% Steve Jobs 12% Mother Nature 6% Lance Armstrong 5% The Google Guys 3% Condoleezza Rice 2% Pope Benedict XVI 2% George W. Bush 1% Bill and Melinda Gates 1% Rick Warren 1% Valerie Plame

I'll put up an opinion poll with the posters favourites.

War News for Monday, November 28, 2005 Bring 'em on: Three British pilgrims killed and three injured in an attack on their bus in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Mortar attack on the Green Zone in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Three US soldiers injured after an attack on their convoy in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Two Canadians, one Briton and an American reported kidnapped in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Mayor's guard shot dead in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Tribal leader shot dead by US forces in Baiji. Depleted Uranium:

Travelling around southern Iraq in the late 1990s to investigate the effects of U.N. economic sanctions on ordinary Iraqis, Jesuit Father Simon Harak stopped at a hospital in Basra. Meeting with him and his colleagues from the anti-sanction group Voices in the Wilderness, Dr. Jenan Hassan briefed them about the medical horrors she and other doctors were confronting as a result of the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons by the U.S. Army in southern Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war. There was a fivefold increase in cancer, especially leukemia, she said, and a five- to eightfold increase in children born with genetic defects. Dr. Hassan showed the Voices group some of the newborns. “We saw a baby with a head growing out of his head,” recalled Harak. “We saw babies with intestines growing outside their bodies.” Sitting in his spartan cubicle in Lower Manhattan, where he works as the anti-militarism coordinator for the War Resisters League, Harak, a 57-year-old Arab-American whose parents are from Lebanon, emphasized that, in comparison to the 300 tons of DU weaponry used against Iraq in the first Gulf war, U.S. forces deployed more than 1,000 tons during the 2003 invasion. “Given the fact that there is an incubation period involved here,” he pointed out, “we shall soon be seeing the second wave of cancer and birth defects as a result of that war.” From his computer, a crucial weapon of 21st century dissent, the Jesuit dispatches the results of his DU research to hundreds of people throughout the country. He maintains close contact with the Manhattan Project, the only group that devotes itself exclusively to DU. Their collaboration is still mainly on the level of information gathering. Harak’s goal is for information to translate into social action. “Depleted uranium,” he explained in his methodical, professorial way (having once taught ethics at Fairfield College), “is 60 percent radioactive. It is also heavy metal toxic. It is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process of nuclear weapons production from which uranium’s most radioactive isotope, U235, is recovered for re-use in new fuel rods.” The DU weapons used in Iraq were far more deadly, he explained, far more enduring—Japanese scientist Katsuma Yagasaki estimates that DU’s radiation has a half-life of 4.5 billion years—and far less publicized than car bombs and roadside bombs. The DU was present in missiles, tank shells, and rocket-propelled grenades. Formidable at armor piercing, these weapons were known to aerosolize on impact into tiny particles that could be inhaled or ingested.

Former US AG: Clark and others say a fair trial is impossible in Iraq because of the insurgency and because, they argue, the country is effectively under foreign military occupation. U.S. and Iraqi officials insist the trial will conform to international standards. British War Enquiry: Leading opposition figures from the Conservative, Liberal-Democratic, Scottish National and Plaid Cymru (Welsh) parties have banded together to back the cross-party motion titled "Conduct of Government policy in relation to the war against Iraq" to demand that the case for an inquiry be debated in the House of Commons. They seem assured of the 200 signatures required to get such a debate -- and then the loyalty of Blair's dismayed and disillusioned Labor members of Parliament will be sorely tested. Shooting Iraqis for Sport!: Bernhard at Moon of Alabama has a thread worth reading. Another Gitmo: The US has been accused of running a secret military detention center in the UN-administrated province of Kosovo that the Council of Europe’s human right envoy has likened to the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Council of Europe (CoE) human rights envoy Alvaro Gil-Robles told the French Daily Le Monde on Friday that he had visited the US’s Bondsteel military camp in Kosovo and described it as a “smaller version of Guantanamo”. Official Secrets: So why invoke the Official Secrets Act to ban such material? Here the plot thickens. Blair is desperate not to have any split with Washington on public view. He senses that a dam may be about to burst, revealing Anglo-American splits over Iraq just when Bush’s policy there is facing domestic opposition. So far discipline has held on this front. Britain’s military and diplomatic elite may excoriate Pentagon policy in Iraq and excoriate Blair for failing to use leverage over it. But the public line has held that there is “not a rice paper” between the two leaders. Opinion and Commentary Shoot the Messenger:

What Al Jazeera was doing in Falluja is exactly what it was doing when the United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001 and when U.S. forces killed Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent, Tareq Ayoub, during the April 2003 occupation of Baghdad. Al Jazeera was witnessing and reporting on events Washington did not want the world to see. The Falluja offensive was one of the bloodiest assaults of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. On April 5, 2004, U.S. forces laid siege to the city after the killing of four Blackwater mercenaries days earlier. When the U.S. forces, led by the First Marine Expeditionary Force, attempted to take Falluja on April 7, they faced fierce guerrilla resistance. A U.S. helicopter attacked a mosque, hitting the minaret and killing at least a dozen people. Within a week, some 600 Iraqis were dead, many of them women and children. By April 9, some thirty Marines had been killed and Falluja had become a symbol of resistance against the occupation. What was more devastating than the direct resistance U.S. forces encountered in Falluja was the effect the story of the local defense of the city and the U.S. killing of civilians was having on the broader Iraqi population. A handful of unembedded journalists, most prominently from Al Jazeera, were providing the world with independent, eyewitness accounts. Al Jazeera's camera crew was also uploading video of the devastation for all the world, including Iraqis, to see. Inspired by the defense of Falluja and outraged by the U.S. onslaught, smaller uprisings broke out across Iraq, as members of the Iraqi police and army abandoned their posts, some joining the resistance. Faced with a public relations disaster, U.S. officials did what they do best -- they attacked the messenger. On April 11, with the unembedded reporters exposing the reality of the siege of Falluja, senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, "The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies." A few days later, on April 15, Rumsfeld echoed those remarks calling Al Jazeera "vicious." It was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his plan. "He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere," a source told the Mirror. "Blair replied that would cause a big problem. There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do -- and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." To date, there has been no credible rejection of the Mirror's report from the White House or 10 Downing Street. Instead, the British government has activated its Official Secrets Act, threatening news organizations that publish any portion of the five-page memo. Already, one British official has been accused of violating the act for allegedly passing it on to a member of Parliament. Former British Defense Minister Peter Kilfoyle has called on Blair's government to release the memo. "It's frightening to think that such a powerful man as Bush can propose such cavalier actions," he said. "I hope the Prime Minister insists this memo be published. It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were the architects of war." The Bush Administration clearly blamed Al Jazeera for undermining the first siege on Falluja and fueling Iraqi public opinion and resistance against the U.S. occupation. Given Washington's record of attacking Al Jazeera both militarily and verbally, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the Bush Administration could have simply decided that it was time to take the network out. What is needed now is for a British newspaper or magazine to publish the memo for all the world to see -- and if they face legal action, they should be backed up by every major media organization in the world. If true, Bush's threat is a bold confirmation of what many journalists already believe: that the Bush Administration views us all as enemy combatants.

Feel the Draft:

As public support for the war withers (63 percent of Americans now disapprove of the situation in Iraq, according to the latest CNN/ Gallup/ USA Today poll) the Pentagon is upping the ante with boosted sign-up bonuses, video games, and slick ads to woo parents. Recruiters are also aggressively going after poor rural and minority youth. Counter-recruiters say the government is closing off choices for underprivileged kids. "People see the money that would be going to education and CUNY schools for funding and scholarships so they could go to college is just going to the war," says Gloria Quinones, a mom who helped organize the demo in East Harlem. "It's like they're being backed up against the wall so they have no other options." The House of Representatives just voted to slash student loans by more than $14 billion; if the language stays in the final budget bill, that would be the biggest cut in the history of the federal loan program. Yet the Pentagon is spending $7 billion a month to maintain the Iraq occupation. And still recruiters are scrambling to meet their quotas. The increased pressure on young people is only provoking more resistance, anti-war activists say. "These days it's pretty hard to find anyone who supports what the military is doing," says David Tykulsker of Brooklyn Parents for Peace, which has been hosting tables outside Brooklyn high schools to inform students of their right to opt out of the Pentagon's recruitment lists. Under the Leave No Child Behind Act, schools are required to turn over the names, phone numbers, and addresses of all students -- though students can remove their names if they request that. Tykulsker claims that a member of the city's Panel for Educational Policy recently told him as many as half of New York City students have chosen to remove their names from the lists -- a number that if true would top the 19 percent opt-out rate recently reported in Boston. A spokesperson with New York's Department of Education said no overall figures exist because the city is not required to keep such data. Yet even as some students opt out of the lists that schools are mandated to provide, the Pentagon has hired a direct marketing firm to amass data on young people aged 16 to 25 -- including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, ethnicity, religious affiliation, grade-point averages, school interests, and other info pulled from motor vehicle records, commercial data vendors, Armed Services aptitude tests, and scholarship survey forms -- possibly even medical lists. Unlike the student lists compiled by schools, there is no opt-out form for the Pentagon's Joint Advertising and Market Research Studies (JAMRS) Recruiting Database. Last month a coalition of parents, anti-war, and privacy groups wrote to the Department of Defense demanding that the $343 million program be dismantled. "Initially I think people were shocked at the privacy issues involved with turning over student records. Now I think people are more shocked at what the military is actually doing," Tykulsker says. "This is a military that's engaged in serious illegal acts, ranging from torture and illegal detentions to the use of chemical warfare," he adds, referring to reports that the Army used white phosphorus in the siege of Falluja. "The idea that we would be subjecting our children to this is ludicrous." The recruiters whose job is to enlist new troops hear the dissent -- and argue they're part of protecting it. "We're so quick to voice our opinions, but why do you have the right to do that? Because of the men and women in uniform who protect our freedom," says the African American Army sergeant working the desk in Flatbush. "You might not support the reason for the war, but all of us are Americans. I've been in the Army for 18 years -- for me, this is a livelihood. This is my career."

Dems to blame also:

Kerry supporters claim he was not being dishonest in making these false claims but that he had been fooled by "bad intelligence" passed on by the Bush administration. However, well before Kerry's vote to authorize the invasion, former UN inspector Scott Ritter personally told the senator and his senior staff that claims about Iraq still having WMDs or WMD programs were not based on valid intelligence. According to Ritter, "Kerry knew that there was a verifiable case to be made to debunk the president's statements regarding the threat posed by Iraq's WMDs, but he chose not to act on it." Joining Kerry in voting to authorize the invasion was North Carolina Senator John Edwards, who-in the face of growing public skepticism of the Bush administration's WMD claims-rushed to the president's defense in an op-ed article published in the Washington Post. In his commentary, Edwards claimed that Iraq was "a grave and growing threat" and that Congress should therefore "endorse the use of all necessary means to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." The Bush administration was so impressed with Edwards' arguments that they posted the article on the State Department website. Again, despite the fact that Edwards' claims were completely groundless, the Democratic Party rewarded him less than two years later with its nomination for vice president. By 2004, it was recognized that the administration's WMD claims were bogus and the war was not going well. The incumbent president and vice president, who had misled the nation into a disastrous war through phony claims of an Iraqi military threat, were therefore quite vulnerable to losing the November election. But instead of nominating candidates who opposed the war and challenged these false WMD claims, the Democrats chose two men who had also misled the nation into war by frightening the American public into believing that a war-ravaged Third World country on the far side of the planet threatened our nation's security and advocated continued prosecution of the bloody counter-insurgency campaign resulting from the U.S. invasion and occupation. Though enormous sums of money and volunteer hours which could have gone into anti-war organizing instead went into the campaigns of these pro-invasion senators, many anti-war activists refused on principle to support them. Not surprisingly, the Democrats lost. Kerry's failure to tell the truth continues to hurt the anti-war movement, as President Bush to this day quotes Kerry's false statements about Iraq's pre-invasion military capability as a means of covering up for the lies of his administration. For example, in his recent Veteran's Day speech in Pennsylvania in which he attacked the anti-war movement, President Bush was able to say, "Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security'."

Seymour Hersh

In recent weeks, there has been widespread speculation that President George W. Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent within his own party, will begin pulling American troops out of Iraq next year. The Administration’s best-case scenario is that the parliamentary election scheduled for December 15th will produce a coalition government that will join the Administration in calling for a withdrawal to begin in the spring. By then, the White House hopes, the new government will be capable of handling the insurgency. In a speech on November 19th, Bush repeated the latest Administration catchphrase: “As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” He added, “When our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi forces can defend their freedom, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.” One sign of the political pressure on the Administration to prepare for a withdrawal came last week, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News that the current level of American troops would not have to be maintained “for very much longer,” because the Iraqis were getting better at fighting the insurgency. A high-level Pentagon war planner told me, however, that he has seen scant indication that the President would authorize a significant pullout of American troops if he believed that it would impede the war against the insurgency. There are several proposals currently under review by the White House and the Pentagon; the most ambitious calls for American combat forces to be reduced from a hundred and fifty-five thousand troops to fewer than eighty thousand by next fall, with all American forces officially designated “combat” to be pulled out of the area by the summer of 2008. In terms of implementation, the planner said, “the drawdown plans that I’m familiar with are condition-based, event-driven, and not in a specific time frame”—that is, they depend on the ability of a new Iraqi government to defeat the insurgency. (A Pentagon spokesman said that the Administration had not made any decisions and had “no plan to leave, only a plan to complete the mission.”) A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what. “We’re not planning to diminish the war,” Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. Clawson’s views often mirror the thinking of the men and women around Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting—Iraqi infantry with American support and greater use of airpower. The rule now is to commit Iraqi forces into combat only in places where they are sure to win. The pace of commitment, and withdrawal, depends on their success in the battlefield.” He continued, “We want to draw down our forces, but the President is prepared to tough this one out. There is a very deep feeling on his part that the issue of Iraq was settled by the American people at the polling places in 2004.” The war against the insurgency “may end up being a nasty and murderous civil war in Iraq, but we and our allies would still win,” he said. “As long as the Kurds and the Shiites stay on our side, we’re set to go. There’s no sense that the world is caving in. We’re in the middle of a seven-year slog in Iraq, and eighty per cent of the Iraqis are receptive to our message.” One Pentagon adviser told me, “There are always contingency plans, but why withdraw and take a chance? I don’t think the President will go for it”—until the insurgency is broken. “He’s not going to back off. This is bigger than domestic politics.” Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding. Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose. The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet.’ ” The President, he said, “appeared displeased” with that answer. “I tried to tell him,” the former senior official said. “And he couldn’t hear it.” There are grave concerns within the military about the capability of the U.S. Army to sustain two or three more years of combat in Iraq. Michael O’Hanlon, a specialist on military issues at the Brookings Institution, told me, “The people in the institutional Army feel they don’t have the luxury of deciding troop levels, or even participating in the debate. They’re planning on staying the course until 2009. I can’t believe the Army thinks that it will happen, because there’s no sustained drive to increase the size of the regular Army.” O’Hanlon noted that “if the President decides to stay the present course in Iraq some troops would be compelled to serve fourth and fifth tours of combat by 2007 and 2008, which could have serious consequences for morale and competency levels.” Many of the military’s most senior generals are deeply frustrated, but they say nothing in public, because they don’t want to jeopardize their careers. The Administration has “so terrified the generals that they know they won’t go public,” a former defense official said. A retired senior C.I.A. officer with knowledge of Iraq told me that one of his colleagues recently participated in a congressional tour there. The legislators were repeatedly told, in meetings with enlisted men, junior officers, and generals that “things were fucked up.” But in a subsequent teleconference with Rumsfeld, he said, the generals kept those criticisms to themselves. One person with whom the Pentagon’s top commanders have shared their private views for decades is Representative John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, the senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The President and his key aides were enraged when, on November 17th, Murtha gave a speech in the House calling for a withdrawal of troops within six months. The speech was filled with devastating information. For example, Murtha reported that the number of attacks in Iraq has increased from a hundred and fifty a week to more than seven hundred a week in the past year. He said that an estimated fifty thousand American soldiers will suffer “from what I call battle fatigue” in the war, and he said that the Americans were seen as “the common enemy” in Iraq. He also took issue with one of the White House’s claims—that foreign fighters were playing the major role in the insurgency. Murtha said that American soldiers “haven’t captured any in this latest activity”—the continuing battle in western Anbar province, near the border with Syria. “So this idea that they’re coming in from outside, we still think there’s only seven per cent.”

WAR NEWS FOR SUNDAY NOVEMBER 27, 2005 Friendly Fire listed several articles/opinions in posts below. These are important articles, so please read them. This is aN update on what else happened in Iraq today. Bring ‘em on: Four foreign humanitarian workers kidnapped in Iraq. Bring ‘em on: Civilian attacks make Iraqi town ghostly after dark. This is Baquba. Bring ‘em on: Pro-Saddam insurgent embrace holy war, says Iraq’s national security adviser. Bring ‘em on: US Marine killed by IED in Fallujah. Bring ‘em on: Car bomb in Baghdad near Iraqi police patrol kills two civilians and wounds two more. One Iraqi policeman killed by roadside bomb in Mosul. Beheaded body of former Iraqi Army cook found in Hawija. Iraqi Army officer escaped an assassination attempt in Riyadh. One civilian killed and another wounded by roadside bomb in Baquba. A major crimes unit official killed by gunmen in Kerbala. Bring ‘em on: Iraq police foil plot to assassinate Saddam trial judge. Bring ‘em on: Iraqi translator working with US forces found shot in Baiji, a day after he was kidnapped in Tikrit. Bring ‘em on: Seven Iraqi soldiers killed in roadside bombings in Fallujah. This followed a fierce gun battle on Saturday in the Shuhada’s district in southern Fallujah. There are reports of casualties on the US side after the exchange of gunfire following the roadside bombings. Four civilians were killed in Hit by sniper fire. The hospital in Hit reports they receive people killed or injured by snipers almost every day. Hit has been sealed off by US and Iraqi forces for several weeks. Bring ‘em on: Six Iraqis killed, 16 wounded by car bomb in northern Baghdad. Three Iraqi soldiers killed, two wounded, when their patrol came under fire in Balad. A member of Bader Organization killed by gunman while posting flyers for the election in Baghdad. Bring ‘em on: Iraqi smuggler killed in clash on Iran border. Bring ‘em on: Three civilians killed by suicide car bomb at gas station between Duluiya and Samarra. US Marine killed by roadside bomb in Hit. Bring ‘em on: Sixteen suspected terrorists, including one female, captured in a series of unrelated events. Iraqi police in Samarra arrested four suspected terrorists from an explosion on Saturday. In Balad, US soldiers detained a suspect at a checkpoint. US soldiers detained two suspects in Baqubah after discovering them with explosives and AK-47 rounds. Again in Baqubah, US soldiers detained nine suspected terrorists found with fuses and anti-aircraft artillery rounds. Somebody else wants to Bring ‘em on: Iraq needs a more aggressive approach to win the fight against insurgents, the head of a powerful Shiite political party said in an interview that criticized the U.S. approach as mistaken, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. "The more freedom given to Iraqis, the more chance for further progress there would be, particularly in fighting terror," said Abdul Aziz Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which holds the largest bloc of seats in Iraq's transitional government. In its Sunday editions, the newspaper said Hakim indicated during an interview last week that more weaponry with larger firepower than now provided by the United States was needed. He provided few details on the form that a more aggressive role against insurgents would take. The United States should take a tougher stand against countries that harbor insurgents and called for faster trials for people suspected of being insurgents, he said. Hakim criticized U.S. forces for "major interference, and preventing the forces of the Interior or Defense ministries from carrying out tasks they are capable of doing and also in the way they are dealing with terrorists." A prime problem, he said, "is the mistaken or wrong policies practiced by Americans." The Badr Organization, formerly known as the Badr Brigade, is the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The organization denied having any ties to a secret bunker holding 173 prisoners discovered near the Interior Ministry this month. Many Iraqis accuse Badr and other militias of infiltrating police and security services. Bring ‘em on: 8 Nabbed in Alleged Plot Vs. Saddam Judge. REPORTS NEWS: A Journey That Ended in Anguish: One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing's death continue. (This guy was investigating private security companies in Iraq.) NEWS: Iraqi Leader Hit Back at Allawi Abuse Claims. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani on Sunday hit back at former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi for saying human rights abuses in Iraq were as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein. "I cannot imagine that such nonsense has been said by Dr Allawi because he is very well aware that now in Iraq we are enjoying all kinds of democratic rights," Talabani told BBC World television after Allawi's comments appeared in British newspaper The Observer. "If we go back to Saddam's Iraq, we see that it was turned by Saddam into concentration camps on the ground and mass graves underground. How can one compare this new situation with that situation which was unique?" Talabani added. NEWS: Shiite Cleric Increases His Power in Iraq NEWS: Can Fallujah be rebuilt? But not all are impressed, with either the Marine efforts or lack of support from the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, which has been tardy with promised compensation. "It is [going] so, so slowly, it's a big problem here because no one takes rebuilding seriously," says Obaied Ameen Ahmad, head of the Fallujah office of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. During the mid-October constitutional referendum, Fallujans turned out to vote "no" in large numbers. They plan to come out again on Dec. 15, to maximize their voice in the new government. But they don't buy the US reasons for invading Fallujah. "We as Sunnis have a different view. We have to resist occupiers wherever they are," says Sheikh Ahmed Sarhan Abd, deputy head of the Fallujah Sheikhs Council. "Fallujah is destroyed, and we had to protect our city from occupation. This is a reality." So how are Fallujans coping with the destruction of their city? "The Arab mentality of inshallah [if God wills it] allows them to accept more calamity," says Lt. Col. Carroll, from Shrewsbury, Mass. "They can deal with things that you or I would say: 'For the rest of our lives, we're going to hunt that guy to the ends of the earth.' [For them] what is done is done." (Oh, I bet! – Susan) COMMENTARY OPINION: Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt. Much more: each day brings slam-dunk evidence that the doomsday threats marshaled by the administration to sell the war weren't, in Cheney-speak, just dishonest and reprehensible but also corrupt and shameless. The more the president and vice president tell us that their mistakes were merely innocent byproducts of the same bad intelligence seen by everyone else in the world, the more we learn that this was not so. The web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House. The real point of the Bush-Cheney verbal fisticuffs this month, like the earlier campaign to take down Joseph Wilson, is less to smite Democrats than to cover up wrongdoing in the executive branch between 9/11 and shock and awe. What these revelations also tell us is that Mr. Bush was wrong when he said in his Veterans Day speech that more than 100 Congressional Democrats who voted for the Iraqi war resolution "had access to the same intelligence" he did. They didn't have access to the President's Daily Brief that Mr. Waas uncovered. They didn't have access to the information that German intelligence officials spoke about to The Los Angeles Times. Nor did they have access to material from a Defense Intelligence Agency report, released by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan this month, which as early as February 2002 demolished the reliability of another major source that the administration had persistently used for its false claims about Iraqi-Al Qaeda collaboration. The more we learn about the road to Iraq, the more we realize that it's a losing game to ask what lies the White House told along the way. A simpler question might be: What was not a lie? No debate about the past, of course, can undo the mess that the administration made in Iraq. But the past remains important because it is a road map to both the present and the future. Leaders who dissembled then are still doing so. Indeed, they do so even in the same speeches in which they vehemently deny having misled us then - witness Mr. Bush's false claims about what prewar intelligence was seen by Congress and Mr. Cheney's effort last Monday to again conflate the terrorists of 9/11 with those "making a stand in Iraq." (Maj. Gen. Douglas Lute, director of operations for Centcom, says the Iraqi insurgency is 90 percent homegrown.) These days Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney routinely exaggerate the readiness of Iraqi troops, much as they once inflated Saddam's W.M.D.'s. "We're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history," the vice president said of his critics. "We're going to continue throwing their own words back at them." But according to a Harris poll released by The Wall Street Journal last Wednesday, 64 percent of Americans now believe that the Bush administration "generally misleads the American public on current issues to achieve its own ends." That's why it's Mr. Cheney's and the president's own words that are being thrown back now - not to rewrite history but to reveal it for the first time to an angry country that has learned the hard way that it can no longer afford to be without the truth. OPINION: So what have they to hide? Official Secrets, Lies, and the Truth About the Assault on Fallujah. The trial of two Whitehall wokers this week could reveal Britain’s role in one of the Iraq war’s darkest episodes. OPINION: Iraq, Lies and Foolish, Deadly Pride But of course, those options — invade ASAP or face devastating attack — were far from the only ones available. U.N. weapons inspectors were steadily confirming that Saddam's Iraq not only posed no threat to America, but was so emasculated after the first Gulf War and years of sanctions that it couldn't have attacked a Kuwaiti pajama party. Option No. 3: Let the inspections proceed, confirm that Saddam — bastard that he is — posed no threat, and go to work figuring out how to change Iraq's government without destroying a nation, killing tens of thousands of innocents and sacrificing the lives of thousands of duty-bound American soldiers. Don't believe me? Have a look at what Bush administration officials were saying before 9/11: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, on Feb. 24, 2001: "And frankly, (sanctions) have worked. (Saddam) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in July 2001: "Saddam does not control the northern part of the country. We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." So we're to believe that in two years, Saddam went from being "in a box" and unable to "build his military back up or to develop weapons of mass destruction" (Powell, May 15, 2001) to posing an imminent threat to the United States? And that this preening secular dictator had established ties to the rigidly Islamist al-Qaida, a spurious tale the CIA knew to be false? Remember, the war was not sold to us on some idealistic notion of bringing democracy to the Arab world. OPINION: Willful Ignorance? Nice to see Joe Biden call for a timetable for getting out of Iraq. Unfortunately, he adopts the logically inconsistent proposition that our exit should be drawn out over the next two years. But given that Biden has called for sending more troops in the past, it's definitely a sign of progress. But at the same time, Joe shows how consistently ignorant our foreign policy elites are of the situation in which we find ourselves with this: First, we need to build political consensus, starting with the constitution. Sunnis must accept that they no longer rule Iraq. But unless Shiites and Kurds give them a stake in the new deal, they will continue to resist. We must help produce a constitution that will unite Iraq, not divide it. Iraq's neighbors and the international community have a huge stake in the country's future. The president should initiate a regional strategy -- as he did in Afghanistan -- to leverage the influence of neighboring countries. And he should establish a Contact Group of the world's major powers -- as we did in the Balkans -- to become the Iraqi government's primary international interlocutor. "We, we, we." No, Joe, if we initiate a regional strategy, it will lack legitimacy. The more we are seen to have produced the Iraqi constitution, the less legitimate it will be and the less likely it will be to unite anybody. OPINION: The Iraq Story: How Troops See It. (That would be US troops. -Susan) Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity - if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences. Yet as perceptions about Iraq have neared a tipping point in Congress, some soldiers and marines worry that their own stories are being lost in the cacophony of terror and fear. They acknowledge that their experience is just that - one person's experience in one corner of a war-torn country. Yet amid the terrible scenes of reckless hate and lives lost, many members of one of the hardest-hit units insist that they saw at least the spark of progress. PEACE ACTION: A table listing all the bills concerning building peace in Iraq or reducing the war society in the US House of Representatives. Lists date, title, author, and sponsors. QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members": Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1844.

News Update, 27 November, 2005 I was going to do a news update, but I will not. I just want to focus on a news item Zig linked in the comments earlier: Iraq Hunting Season

The video, which first appeared on a website that has been linked unofficially to Aegis Defence Services, contained four separate clips, in which security guards open fire with automatic rifles at civilian cars. All of the shooting incidents apparently took place on "route Irish", a road that links the airport to Baghdad. The road has acquired the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous in the world because of the number of suicide attacks and ambushes carried out by insurgents against coalition troops. In one four-month period earlier this year it was the scene of 150 attacks. In one of the videoed attacks, a Mercedes is fired on at a distance of several hundred yards before it crashes in to a civilian taxi. In the last clip, a white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as it approaches an unidentified security company vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the vehicle before it comes to a slow stop.

Opinion and Commentary Just found this via The Cat's Blog, which is an open letter to Juan Cole about a post he made during the week regarding the illegality of the invasion and the legality of the war crimes in Fallujah.

Dear Mr. Cole, On your website I read:

Monbiot accepts journalist and film maker Gabriele Zamparini's characterization of a US Defense Department document he discovered recording a conversation between Kurdish fighters that spoke of Saddam's own use of white phosphorus as "a chemical weapon." (1)

I would like to inform you and your readers that I didn’t make any ‘characterization’. The US DoD’s declassified document is titled “POSSIBLE USE OF PHOSPHOROUS CHEMICAL”. The summary of the document reads: SUMMARY: IRAQ HAS POSSIBLY EMPLOYED PHOSPHOROUS CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST THE KURDISH POPULATION IN AREAS ALONG THE IRAQI-TURKISH-IRANIAN BORDERS. KURDISH RESISTANCE IS LOSING ITS STRUGGLE AGAINST SADDAM HUSSEIN'S FORCES. KURDISH REBELS AND REFUGEES' PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS AND PERCEPTIONS ARE PROVIDED. (2)

You write: [Cole: As many web commentators have pointed out, this document is not a Pentagon-generated report, but simply a Pentagon record of a third-party conversation. No known Pentagon-generated document issuing from the US military characterizes white phosphorus as a chemical weapon.]

A little weak as a rejection of a declassified document, isn’t it? (By the way, I would like to know who the “many web commentators” are.) The point is not how the Pentagon calls the WP in its own official documents. The point is – as I believe even children have understood by now – that the Pentagon’s officials know perfectly well that the WP can be used as a chemical weapon, since not only did they accept that document, not only did they classify it but, more important, the Pentagon had always refused to admit that WP was used as a weapon in Fallujah or in other parts of Iraq by the US forces.

As I wrote on November 9, 2005 in “BBC and Fallujah: War Crimes, Lies and Omertà” (3), the US government has always denied the use of WP as a weapon. The US Department of State was forced to admit the truth on November 10, after I had published my article on a number of on-line publications around the world and sent the information to many mainstream media’s journalists.

The denial was so paramount for the US government that on Tuesday, November 15, 2005 – five days after the admission by the US State Department – Mr. Robert H. Tuttle, US Ambassador to the UK, was still writing on The Independent: “US forces participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom continue to use appropriate lawful, conventional weapons against legitimate targets. US forces do not use napalm or white phosphorus as weapons.”

On your website I keep reading:

[Cole: I agree that the invasion in 2003 was illegal. However, the assault on the guerrillas in Fallujah was not illegal. It had a UN Security Council resolution behind it authorizing Coalition troops to carry out such operations, and recognizing the transitional government of Iyad Allawi, which also backed the operation. (…) ] Well, dear Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, here your informed comment is quite bizarre, to say the least. You write: “I agree that the invasion in 2003 was illegal.”

Since we agree on this, let’s see what the implications of this “illegal invasion” are.

I am not a Professor of History, or of any other specialties, for that matter. But here it’s what I would think in my ignorance. Which kind of illegality are we talking? “The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.” (4)

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." - Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals - Nuremberg, Germany 1946

In my ignorance, I would think that to reestablish legality after “the supreme international crime” it would be necessary – at least! – some kind of justice, for example to end the invasion (the occupation is simply its consequence); to trial those responsible for the “supreme international crime” and to force them to some kind of reparation (not aid, reparation!). Since the United States’ government and its allies “contravened the UN charter”, I don’t see how a simple “UN Security Council resolution” could reestablish legality after “the supreme international crime” have been committed.

You keep writing:

[Cole: (…) What was done to Fallujah was so horrible that it is now often forgotten that there was every reason to think that the city was a base for the worst kinds of terrorism against innocent civilians in Baghdad and Karbala; there were very bad characters there. Black and white depictions of the Marines as villains and the guerrillas as good guys are silly and morally poisonous. (…)]

There is no doubt that “what was done to Fallujah was so horrible”. We agree again here. What I assume you don’t agree it’s the right of peoples to resist internationally illegal military invasions and occupations. About “the worst kinds of terrorism against innocent civilians”, I would invite you to read carefully the report published on November 2004 by The Lancet (5) where – in the Interpretation of the study – is written:

Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. Also, in the Findings, is written: Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children. What had already been done to Fallujah “was so horrible” as you write, that the Lancet study didn’t include it.

You keep writing:

[Cole: (…) If I had known the full extent of the damage that would be done to the city, I would have been against the Fallujah campaign; it is just terrible counter-insurgency tactics for one thing, and was a humanitarian disaster. But to say that the US military wilfully contravened its own regulations and knowingly broke US and international law on chemical weapons by deploying white phosphorus there would have to be proven from better evidence than has been presented.]

“If you had known”? Isn’t your website titled “Informed Comment” ?

Finally, in your website, I read: This is a public relations issue, not an issue of war crimes Now, everything is perfectly clear!

Regards, Gabriele Zamparini

War News for Sunday, November 27, 2005 Saddam Trial: One of Saddam Hussein's lawyers says he will ask for another postponement when the Iraqi dictator's trial resumes Monday. Khames Hameed al-Ubaidi told CNN the defense team has had trouble getting up to speed on the case because of security concerns. Lawyers for two other defendants have been assassinated in recent weeks. Next Wednesday: President Bush plans what is being billed as a major speech on Iraq for Wednesday amid signs that the administration is changing course. Victory Parades in 2006:

The White House has announced its plans to withdraw from Iraq, saying that a blueprint advocated last week by a Democratic senator was "remarkably similar" to its own. It also signalled its acceptance of a recent US Senate amendment designed to pave the way for a phased US military withdrawal from the country. The statement by Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, came in response to a commentary published in The Washington Post by Joseph Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he said US forces will begin leaving Iraq next year "in large numbers".

Centcom Watch Operation Tiger: Approximately 550 Iraqi Army soldiers and U.S. Soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team attached to the 2nd Marine Division, kicked off Operation Tigers (Nimur) this morning in the Ma’Laab District of eastern Ramadi. Kicked off? Sounds like a football match with insurgents eh? Gatekeeper, Confidant, Courier: A close family member as well as Coalition sources claimed earlier this week that a gatekeeper and confidant of Abu Mu’sab al-Zarqawi, Bilal Mahmud Awad Shebah, aka Abu Ubaydah, who reportedly met weekly with the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, is dead. Zarqawi Lt no longer being used? Internets: The people of al Anbar Province were reconnected to their country’s capital and the rest of the world today as telecommunication services were restored to the region.Well, wait for the bloggers in Ramadi to tell about the football match. Roads: Before the project, the area was a dirt road which turned to mud after every rain. The project, prepared by Salvadorian soldiers, lasted 30 days and consisted of hardening the ground and laying 1250 meters of asphalt.Wow!, 1.25km of road, now that is progress! Opinion and Commentary War of Terror:

The November 13 exposure of a secret prison in Baghdad, where American troops found interior ministry police commandos torturing alleged members of the guerilla resistance, has been followed this week by the blatant assassination of a Sunni Arab leader. At 4 a.m. on November 23, dozens of men wearing Iraqi army uniforms sealed off the streets and forced their way into the Baghdad home of 70-year-old Sheik Kadhim Sarhid Hemaiyem, a leader of one of the largest Sunni tribes, the Dulaimi. Many members of the tribe reportedly support or participate in the armed resistance to the US occupation. In a matter of minutes, the elderly sheik, three of his sons and a son-in-law were gunned down. Over recent weeks, the sheik had been giving political and practical support to an election campaign by his brother. Whereas the overwhelming majority of Sunni Arabs boycotted the elections in January, millions may cast a ballot on December 15. This follows calls by religious and tribal leaders such as Hemaiyem for opponents of the occupation to vote. Sunni-based parties could win 15 to 20 percent of the seats in the next parliament. A police spokesman claimed the killers were “terrorists” seeking to intimidate Sunnis into not voting. However, the sheik’s brother, Abdel Moniem Sarhid Hemaiyem, rejected the allegation, telling the Los Angeles Times: “They attacked us at 4 a.m., during the curfew, so they had to be from the authorities. I want to ask the ministers of defence and interior ... why are they killing us?” A spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the umbrella organisation for thousands of Sunni clerics, also blamed the interior ministry, stating: “We warn the government against continuing this tyranny.” The major Shiite parties in the government are the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Da’awa organisation of the current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. SCIRI leader Bayan Jabr is the interior minister. Many interior ministry officials and police are allegedly members of SCIRI’s Badr Organisation militia, which was formed in Iran in the 1980s to fight against the Iraqi military in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. Both Da’awa and SCIRI backed the US invasion in 2003, seeing it as the means of gaining power and privilege for the Shiite religious elite, which had been sidelined by the previous predominantly Sunni Baathist regime. In the elections in January this year, the Sunni boycott and a large Shiite turnout enabled the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) to win close to 48 percent of the vote and more than half the seats in the parliament. After the Jaafari government was formed in April and SCIRI took control of the interior ministry, reports of extra-judicial killings steadily increased. The British Independent’s Iraq correspondent Kim Sengupta commented on November 20: “Behind the daily reports of suicide bombings and attacks on coalition forces is a far more shadowy struggle, one that involves tortured prisoners huddled in dungeons, death-squad victims with their hands tied behind their backs, often mutilated with knives and electric drills, and distraught families searching for relations who have been ‘disappeared’.” The Observer reported the same day that human rights groups claimed to have “hundreds of cases on their books” of Iraqis who had “disappeared” into the hands of government security forces. The violence has fueled the sectarian tensions between Shiites and Sunnis. Sunni extremist groups such as Al Qaeda are carrying out increasingly frequent suicide and car bombings on Shiite civilian targets, killing and maiming hundreds every month. The New York Times reported on November 20 that as many as 20 cities and towns around Baghdad are “segregating,” with Sunni and Shiite families having to abandon their homes in areas where their sect was the minority. The dirty war of death squads and torture could not be taking place without the full knowledge of the White House, the US military or the US intelligence agencies. The activities of the Iraqi government are scrutinised by the largest American embassy in the world with over 3,000 officials. US advisors have been slotted into every ministry. For decades, the use of death squads has been a hallmark of US operations from South East Asia to Latin America.

VP of Torture:

Cheney declined an interview, and his aides declined to comment on the vice president's negotiations with Congress and critics within the administration. But a senior administration official says Cheney will continue to confront critics and press his case for the war. "He's not the kind of person who is distracted by something like this," said Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming who served while Cheney was the state's lone House member. "He has strong beliefs. He will keep doing what he has been doing." Cheney's highly public insertion into the war debate came shortly before Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a 73-year-old decorated Marine veteran and Pentagon supporter who has served in Congress for 31 years, called for an immediate pullout of troops. Murtha ridiculed Cheney for attacking war critics such as himself, noting that the vice president is a "guy who got five (military) deferments." Cheney seemed to soften his criticism in response, praising Murtha as "a good man, a Marine, a patriot." But the vice president also repeated his incendiary charge that some war opponents, those who say the administration manipulated intelligence, are "dishonest and reprehensible." While such hard-line language fires up the conservative base that remains fond of Cheney, it does not appear to resonate with much of the country. Polls show Cheney is less popular than Bush, who himself is suffering from the lowest ratings of his presidency. Further, Cheney's image has not been helped by such moves as his decision to attend an upcoming fundraiser for Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the indicted former House majority leader. A cartoon in The Washington Post recently showed a glowering Cheney, angry that Bush pardoned the Thanksgiving turkey. Among Republicans, 80 percent in a Nov. 11-13 Gallup survey said they approved of Bush's job performance, while 68 percent approved of Cheney's. And a majority of all 1,006 voters surveyed rated Cheney's advice to the president as "bad."

Meet the New Saddam:

Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record, according to the country's first Prime Minister after the fall of Saddam's regime. 'People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse,' Ayad Allawi told The Observer. 'It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.'

This article is a crock of shit, and the staff at the Observer should see what Allawi is doing here; see this article also, where Allawi bemoans the conduct of Paul Bremer and he says to Garner “If you think that an Iraqi politician like me will take orders from an American officer, forget it.” Well that's because he gets his orders from Downing Street.

No accountability:

The UN believes that more than 30,000 civilians have been killed since the war, about eight times the number of deaths caused by 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland. Only one or two Iraqi army battalions are capable of independent operations, while subversive sectarian militias have infiltrated Iraqi police and security forces. There are massive deficiencies in the delivery of essential public services, such as water and electricity. Yet in Britain, the bloody fallout from Iraq is second-order news. There is no sense of outrage, no call for accountability and no demand for a new strategy. The atmosphere is one of sullen acceptance. The last time the government allotted parliamentary time for a full debate on Iraq was 20 July 2004, which was only the second occasion since the fateful vote of 18 March 2003. Last week, in testimony to the Liaison Committee of the House of Commons, the Prime Minister was clear about who was to blame for the carnage in Iraq: the terrorists. This simplification will no longer do. In the face of Britain's most egregious foreign policy misjudgment since Suez, ministers can no longer remain in denial and can no longer refuse an objective examination of the causes of the bloodbath of Iraq. This is why MPs from all major parties, including two former cabinet ministers, have tabled a motion in the House of Commons calling for a committee of privy counsellors to examine the political decision-making prior to and in the aftermath of the invasion. This would not be an abstract exercise in aetiology. It is imperative for an understanding of where we go from here. It is impossible to discern the problems in Iraq today without proper regard to the misjudgment and incompetence of the invasion and occupation. The future of Iraq depends as much on the battle for hearts and minds of the Iraqi people as it does on the fight against the insurgents. As Sir Robert Thompson, the military historian, has observed, ignoring the non-military aspect of an insurgency is like 'trying to play chess while the enemy is playing poker'. Acknowledged counter-insurgency theory is unambiguous; the strategic centre of gravity is the will of the people, whose support is indispensable. We must attempt to understand the minds of the insurgents and of those who give active or passive support to them. Insurgents do not need to win, only not to lose. We must seek to deny them a permissive operating environment and to do that, we need to understand how and why it has come about. At the heart of the problem is the enduring perception of occupation, a phenomenon which has been perpetuated by a catalogue of coalition mistakes. There was a catastrophic failure to plan for postwar Iraq; prolonged delays in the transfer of sovereign power and restoration of public services; the total disbandment of Iraqi security forces, creating a power vacuum which invited upheaval; and the excessive use of military force, as in Falluja, provoking anger and retaliation. Recent disclosures, once denied by the Pentagon, over the use of white phosphorus and of thermobaric fuel-air explosives, which cause devastating and indiscriminate harm, and allegations that civilian targets, such as the broadcaster al-Jazeera, were considered for military strikes only compound the perception of a malign occupation.

WAR NEWS FOR SATURDAY NOVEMBER 26, 2005 Bring ‘em on: Car bomb exploded near a passing US patrol and killed four civilians in Baghdad. Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi soldiers shot north of Baghdad. On Thursday, Interior Minister Bayan Baker Solagh told reporters that security forces were preparing to launch a comprehensive sweep involving 10,000 men throughout the country against rebels before the December 15 elections. "We are going to strike forcefully at the hotbeds of terrorism in different regions," he said. Bring ‘em on: US-Iraqi troops wage new offensive against Ramadi insurgents. Bring ‘em on: Suicide car bomb kills 12 Iraqis in Samarra. Bring ‘em on: One civilian killed and three wounded by roadside bomb in Samarra. This was targeting a former interior minister and current candidate in the upcoming election. Three Iraqi soldiers killed in Balad. Sunni prayer leader kidnapped from a mosque then killed in Basra. Two civilians and two Iraqi troops killed in Kirkuk. Bring ‘em on: Suicide car bomber attacked a petrol station in Baghdad, killing three people and wounding nine. Bring ‘em on: Iraqi prisoner released by accident. In January, American military and law enforcement personnel discovered evidence connecting a 25-year-old Iraqi detainee, Abass Hussein Alwan al-Amry, to a roadside bomb that had detonated in Baghdad, wounding several Iraqis. It was the first forensic match of a bomb and an insurgent bomb making suspect in Iraq, three Army officials said. Further investigation tied Mr. Amry to other bomb attacks, one of which is believed to have caused American casualties, another American official said. He was mistakenly released in June after a sergeant failed to notice a small notation in his case file calling for him to be held indefinitely, the Army officials said. Bring ‘em on: Iraqi authorities say that they have arrested the leaders of three terror networks in Baghdad. Two of these groups were headed by an Interior Ministry official, who provided weapons, equipment and official documents to facilitate the terrorists as they carried out robberies, murders and bombings. REPORTS NEWS: At Last, Iraq Finds a Web Designation: Domain Name .iq Is Set For Internet. It was a tiny electronic victory after years of frustration and defeat. Yesterday, Iraqi officials announced the launch of .iq, Iraq's identity on the World Wide Web. NEWS: Interview With Kurdistan Islamic Group Head Ali Babir. It is very difficult to explain in a matter of lines or pages the suffering and hardship I encountered over the 22 months, which I spent in the prison of the Americans at Baghdad International Airport. I intend to relay my story of my imprisonment or rather, the unjust barbaric abduction, in a book to be published in the Kurdish language in several months time. God willing, the book will also be translated into Arabic. However, I briefly say that I had seen, and suffered a great deal of moral humiliation, psychological and bodily harm since the first moment of my abduction by the US forces to the very end, a total of 659 days. This convinced me fully that all the sugarcoated claims made by America are sheer lies. I told the Americans this much and more during the repeated, lengthy interrogations and investigations held that lasted for more than six months from the beginning of my imprisonment. ……………….On the other hand, as far as I know, the draft constitution of Kurdistan has not yet been completed. We have several reservations about this draft constitution, especially concerning the position on Islam, as an official religion of the region and as a law, which should be observed. NEWS: Italy to Give Iraq Pullout Calendar in Few Weeks. Italy will spell out the dates of a planned phased withdrawal of its 2,900 troops in Iraq in the next few weeks, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said yesterday. NEWS: Lithuania to Withdraw 50 Troops from Iraq NEWS: Book: Inside the Resistance: The Iraqi Insurgency and the Future of the Middle East. When members of the Iraqi resistance first told their story to the world, they told it to Zaki Chehab, a tenacious and celebrated Middle East journalist. In Inside the Resistance, Chehab is able to show how the resistance fighters really view the elections, the Iranians, Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, and their new American occupiers. Alternating between the perspectives of a local insider and an international observer, he takes us through the critical moments in post-occupation Iraq, such as the bombing of the UN headquarters, the Najaf uprising, and the battle for Fallujah. Chehab maps out the regional networks of arms, soldiers, and ideology feeding into Iraq. He offers a startling portrait of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, based on interviews with his closest comrades, and provides astonishing behind-the-scenes snapshots of many of the key players in post-Saddam Iraq, including Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, and the mercurial and always controversial Ahmed Chalabi, a political chameleon who, Chehab says, would give "Machiavelli a run for his pasta." This book makes clear that no one is better placed than Chehab to explain the intricacies of the battle for Iraq and convey the reality of life on the front line. NEWS: Book: UNEMBEDDED Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq. Truth, it has been said, is the first casualty of war. In the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, official truth died months before the bombing of Baghdad began. Unembedded bears witness to the enduring power of independent journalism. In their unflinching look at war-ravaged Iraq, four freelance photojournalists show that life there is brutal yet poignant; that compassion co-exists with anger, hatred and fear. By gaining the confidence of Iraqi civilians and insurgents, these photojournalists have brought back images of life in wartime, from beauty parlors and joyful wedding scenes to the carnage of civilian casualties, the heartbroken faces of grieving parents, and the glassy-eyed shock of parentless children. This is not the view from a Marine base. These photographers were on the streets of Baghdad when it fell, amid a crowd of civilians under aerial attack, and in the holy Imam Ali shrine with the Mahdi Army during the siege of Najaf. Their images document issues often underrepresented: the insurgency as seen from inside the separate resistance movements, civilians affected by the battles between U.S. and insurgent forces, growing conservatism and fundamentalism and their effects on women, and the devastating effects of ongoing civilian casualties. Working outside the U.S. military’s official “embedding” program, the authors bring us face-to-face with the people of Iraq. They combine photographs and essays with excerpts from two years of personal letters, journal entries, and feature stories to take us across front lines and cultural barriers into the lives of a nation in crisis. Theirs is a path to understanding the cost of war. To see some of the photos, click HERE. NEWS: The US knows it will have to talk to the Iraqi resistance. Life in the Iraqi capital is worse than anyone could have imagined when the US and Britain invaded in 2003, and has become unbearable when it comes to security. I was brought up in a refugee camp in Lebanon and lived in the country during the civil war. Since then, I have travelled through war zones from Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan to Kosovo and Bosnia, but nowhere matches the random menace of Iraq today. An end to violence in Iraq will not happen while the occupation continues. But against all expectations, it is not impossible for the situation to be brought under greater control if Sunnis are given a role similar to that of the Shia and Kurds. When they feel that their areas are beginning to benefit from reconstruction and their men are allowed to go back to their jobs in state institutions and the army, from which they were expelled as a result of de-Ba'athification, there is little doubt that the situation could improve. NEWS: High Hopes, Disillusionment Among Iraqi Women. Safia Taleb Al-Souhail has ambitions to be Iraq’s first woman president one day. A month before a poll in which she hopes to win a parliamentary seat, the former exile is upbeat about women’s rights and democracy. She says the only reason a new Iraqi constitution approved in a referendum last month did not do as much for women as she hoped was a lack of time to negotiate the details, and she is sure changes can be made in the new parliament. “I believe our situation as women is going to be much better in the near future,” says Souhail, a leading anti-Saddam Hussein activist who was invited to US President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech in February where she made headlines by hugging the mother of a US marine killed in Iraq. Bidour Al Yassri, who runs a women’s organisation in the southern Shi’ite city of Samawa, has a very different outlook. A centre to train women as seamstresses that she helped set up with United Nations backing has been attacked with mortars, and her efforts to bring women into the police force under a British training programme have angered some local men. “The men were threatening me, they gathered in front of our office shouting that there are no jobs for men, let alone women,” Yassri said. Under a quota system introduced before last January’s election for a transitional assembly, at least a quarter of the seats in Iraq’s parliament are reserved for women. But Yassri said politicians in Samawa paid only lip service to women’s interests at election time. “We tried to encourage women to run for parliament but they refused because they know how the tribes see women - they consider women inferior,” Yassri said. In the provinces, women like Souhail, who lived abroad for most of her life until Saddam was toppled, may face another kind of resistance. Nisreen Youssif, a 41-year-old lawyer, is running for parliament in the southern city of Kerbala, another Shi’ite stronghold. “Many of the women in parliament have come from abroad,” she said. “They haven’t suffered and they don’t know the nature of women in Iraq.” NEWS: Price of Iran Electricity Exported to Iraq Will Rise. Iran is currently exporting 150 megawatts of electricity from some of its border points to Iraq, Iran’s Energy Minister Parviz Fattah said adding that, however, in his recent visit to Iran, the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani called for increasing the export of Iranian electricity to 1,000 megawatts. NEWS: Iraq Says Pullout of Forces Will Lead to Violence. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari urged Japan on Friday to keep its troops in southern Iraq, saying an early pullout of coalition forces would lead to more violence by insurgents. "The difficult part has gone in my view. We're very close to reaching a more stable form of government and of security," Zebari told a news conference following a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. "Now, any premature withdrawal will send the wrong message to the terrorists, to the opposition ... that this coalition is fracturing and running, that their policies and strategies of undermining this process is winning." THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Iraqis Miss Oil Fortune: Report. Up to $US194 billion ($263 billion) in Iraqi oil revenues are going to multinational oil companies under long-term contracts, and not to the Iraqi people, a social and environmental group said. In a report, the group known as Platform said that oil multinationals would be paid between $US74 billion and $US194 billion with rates of return of between 42 per cent and 162 per cent under proposed production-sharing agreements, or PSAs. "The form of contracts being promoted is the most expensive and undemocratic option available," Platform researcher Greg Muttitt said. "Iraq's oil should be for the benefit of the Iraqi people not foreign oil companies." Muttitt added: "Iraq's institutions are new and weak. Experience in other countries shows that oil companies generally get the upper hand in PSA negotiations with governments. "Iraq's oil profits, far from being used to alleviate some of the suffering the Iraqi people now face, are well within the sights of the oil multinationals." THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth. While the Iraqi people struggle to define their future amid political chaos and violence, the fate of their most valuable economic asset, oil, is being decided behind closed doors. This report reveals how an oil policy with origins in the US State Department is on course to be adopted in Iraq, soon after the December elections, with no public debate and at enormous potential cost. The policy allocates the majority of Iraq’s oilfields – accounting for at least 64% of the country’s oil reserves – for development by multinational oil companies. Iraqi public opinion is strongly opposed to handing control over oil development to foreign companies. But with the active involvement of the US and British governments a group of powerful Iraqi politicians and technocrats is pushing for a system of long term contracts with foreign oil companies which will be beyond the reach of Iraqi courts, public scrutiny or democratic control. THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Sunni Sheik Calls for Unity After Bombing. The bombing appeared part of the pattern of violence, including reprisal attacks between Sunnis and Shiites, which has given this once quiet farming area just south of Baghdad the nickname "Triangle of Death." "This thing about Shiites and Sunnis is new to us in Iraq," the sheik told the worshippers, most of them bearded, robed men in their 20s and 30s. "We are all Iraqis and we must stop blaming each other." His message suggests that many Sunni Arabs, the disaffected minority that forms the backbone of the insurgency, may be growing weary of the increasingly sectarian character of the violence. Aref Taha, a father of four who said his wife was shot dead a year ago by U.S. soldiers in unexplained circumstances, mused about the forthcoming elections, the loss of his Shiite farm hands through intimidation by Sunni militants and how he and his children cope with a life of shortages, danger and personal loss. "These Shiite political parties, they are all Iranians," he said, echoing an often repeated charge by Sunni Arabs that Shiite parties are too close to the Iranians. "The constitution they gave us will break up Iraq." His eldest son Zaid, 15, bears scars from the shooting in which his mother died and bitterness for the soldiers he blames for her death. "I hated the Americans from the day they arrived in Iraq," he said. "Now my hatred for them is intense." THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Riverbend’s Post: Assassinations... We woke up yesterday morning to this news: Sunni tribal leader and his sons shot dead. Except when you read it on the internet, it’s nothing like seeing scenes of it on television. They showed the corpses and the family members- an elderly woman wailing and clawing at her face and hair and screaming that soldiers from the Ministry of Interior had killed her sons. They shot them in front of their mother, wives and children… Even when they slaughter sheep, they take them away from the fold so that the other sheep aren’t terrorized by the scene. I hate suicide bombers. I hate the way my heart beats chaotically every time I pass by a suspicious-looking car- and every car looks suspicious these days. I hate the way Sunni mosques and Shia mosques are being targeted right and left. I hate seeing the bodies pile up in hospitals, teeth clenched in pain, wailing men and women…But I completely understand how people get there. Who needs Al-Qaeda to recruit 'terrorists' when you have Da’awa, SCIRI and an American occupation? THE WAR AT HOME: Iran Newspaper writes story on Cindy Sheehan at Bush’s ranch. Scores of protesters led by the mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq urged US President George W. Bush Friday to bring US troops home and unveiled an anti-war monument in his adoptive Texas hometown. THE WAR AT HOME: Defense Hawk Rep. Dicks Says He Now Sees War As A Mistake. It was after 11 p.m. on Friday when Rep. Norm Dicks finally left the Capitol, fresh from the heated House debate on the Iraq war. He was demoralized and angry. Sometime during the rancorous, seven-hour floor fight over whether to immediately withdraw U.S. troops, one Texas Republican compared those who question America's military strategy in Iraq to the hippies and "peaceniks" who protested the Vietnam War and "did terrible things to troop morale." Dicks now says it was all a mistake — his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war. THE WAR AT HOME: General Sees Chaos In Quick US Pullout. "The security situation would degenerate badly," he said Thursday during a whistle-stop tour of Iraq. "You'd see [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] consolidate his position on the ground, you'd see a terrorist safe haven develop in Anbar, you'd see him fomenting sectarian strife, and it would be hugely unstable." (Isn’t that what is happening now? – Susan) THE WAR AT HOME: From Wounds, Inner Strength. Some Veterans Feel Lives Enlarged by Wartime Suffering. As Hilbert Caesar told his harrowing war story one night recently in the living room of his apartment, he patted the artificial limb sticking from a leg of his business suit. "This, right here," he said, "this is a minor setback." Eighteen months after Caesar's right leg was mangled by a roadside bomb near Baghdad, and after weeks of coming to terms with what he thought was the end of his life, the former Army staff sergeant believes he has emerged a richer person -- wiser, more compassionate and more appreciative of life. Although the shattering psychological impact of war is well known, experts have become increasingly interested in those who emerge from combat feeling enhanced. Some psychiatrists and psychologists believe that those soldiers have experienced a phenomenon known as "post-traumatic growth," or "adversarial" growth . THE WAR AT HOME: The Struggle to Gauge a War’s Psychological Cost. On an October night in 2003, mortar shells fell on a base camp near Baquba, Iraq, where Specialist Abbie Pickett, then 21, was serving as a combat lifesaver, caring for the wounded. Specialist Pickett continued working all night by the dim blue light of a flashlight, "plugging and chugging" bleeding troops to a makeshift medical tent, she said. At first, she did not notice that one of the medics who was working with her was bleeding heavily and near death; then, frantically, she treated his wounds and moved him to a medical station not knowing if he would survive. He did survive, Specialist Pickett later learned. But the horror of that night is still vivid, and the memory stalks her even now, more than a year after she returned home. "I would say that on a weekly basis I wish I would have died during that attack," said Specialist Pickett, who served with the Wisconsin Army National Guard and whose condition has been diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. "You never want family to hear that, and it's a selfish thing to say. But I'm not a typical 23-year-old, and it's hard being a combat vet and a woman and figuring out where you fit in." (I wish they would cover Iraqi wounds and deaths as well as they have covered American wounds and deaths. It would be quite revealing. –Susan) THE WAR AT HOME: War’s Strain Wearing on Army Troops, Tools. A series of Pentagon and congressional reports show the bill for worn-out equipment is climbing, recruiting is suffering and stress has become a serious occupational hazard for U.S. troops. POSSIBLE UPCOMING WARS: Kurdish Rebels Lauch Missile Attack on Turkish Police Building. Members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) attacked a police department building in southeastern Turkey on Friday, causing no casualties, the semi- official Anatolia news agency reported. More than 37,000 people have been killed since the rebel group took up arms for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984 COMMENTARY ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT: The tactical question today is this: What can critics do to persuade the voters that (1) this war is a colossal mistake, (2) our troops' continued presence in the Middle East is an equally colossal mistake, and (3) we must get out and stay out? First, critics can act just as termites act. They can keep chewing on the structure. This undermines its legitimacy, and legitimacy means everything. Without it, voluntary cooperation ceases. Public support is withdrawn, voter by voter. This is now happening to the Bush Administration. Second, critics with an anti-empire vision of the Middle East can capitalize on the failed war in Iraq as an example of the cost of empire in that region. They can use Iraq as an ideological domino. "You want more Iraqs? Just stay the Establishment's course." Putting this in one slogan: "Bring the troops home by Christmas." This will reinforce that other slogan: "Get the troops out by Ramadan." Third, non-interventionists must produce comprehensive historical works that show that Iraq is merely a representative example of the American Empire in general. They must make it clear that it really is an empire, and that empires are not only doomed throughout history, they are doomed for a reason: they rest on coercion. Step three will be very expensive. Were it not for the falling costs of communication, this program would not be plausible. It will not be easy. There is no non-interventionist equivalent of Ideals and Self-Interest in American Foreign Relations. That book must be written. It must show that George Washington's recommendation in his Farewell Address is the only viable solution, both ideally and pragmatically, to Dwight Eisenhower's warning in his Farewell Address. OPINION: Letter: It’s time for the truth. When congressional Democrats call for an investigation of intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war and criticize the war itself, President Bush's latest defense is to say that they voted for the war. Really. What kind of logic is this? Congress was misled by the faulty intelligence and because of it voted for the war. We might not have gotten into this disaster if the intelligence had been accurate. People who were duped into voting for the war either by incompetence or intention deserve to find out why. The war has claimed over 2,000 Americans and well over 10,000 Iraqis. Our government refuses to even count the wounded on either side or consider the Iraqi dead legitimate casualties. We have lost the support of the world we had shortly after 9/11 and opened the country of Iraq to al-Qaida. Our leaders are even arguing torture is justified! The world now is a far more dangerous place than it was before Bush and his cronies began the so-called "war on terror." Since the Republican-controlled Congress refuses to start impeachment proceedings, I would like to see the whole gang -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, etc. -- face an international court and be tried as war criminals. CYNTHIA S. WESTERMAN VESTAL , NY OPINION: Sign at anti-war protest in Russia: GOD, BLESS U.S. POLITICIANS WITH A BIT OF BRAINS! OPINION: The Phony War Against the Critics. One might also argue," Vice President Cheney said in a speech on Monday, "that untruthful charges against the commander in chief have an insidious effect on the war effort." That would certainly be an ugly and demagogic argument, were one to make it. After all, if untruthful charges against the president hurt the war effort (by undermining public support and soldiers' morale), then those charges will hurt the war effort even more if they happen to be true. So one would be saying in effect that any criticism of the president is essentially treason. Lest one fear that he might be saying that, Cheney immediately added, "I'm unwilling to say that" -- "that" being what he had just said. He generously granted critics the right to criticize (as did the president this week). Then he resumed hurling adjectives like an ape hurling coconuts at unwanted visitors. "Dishonest." "Reprehensible." "Corrupt." "Shameless." We are now very close to that point of general agreement in the Iraq war. Do you believe that if Bush, Cheney and company could turn back the clock, they would do this again? (Yes, I do think they would. –Susan) And now, thanks to Rep. John Murtha, it is permissible to say, or at least to ask, "Why not just get out now? Or at least soon, on a fixed schedule?" There are arguments against this -- some good, some bad -- but the worst is the one delivered by Cheney and others with their most withering scorn. It is the argument that it is wrong to tell American soldiers risking their lives in a foreign desert that they are fighting for a mistake. One strength of this argument is that it doesn't require defending the war itself. The logic applies equally whether the war is justified or not. Another strength is that the argument is true, in a way: It is a terrible thing to tell someone he or she is risking death in a mistaken cause. But it is more terrible actually to die in that mistaken cause. The longer the war goes on, the more Americans, "allies" and Iraqis will die. That is not a slam-dunk argument for ending this foreign entanglement. But it is worth keeping in mind while you try to decide whether American credibility or Iraqi prosperity or Middle East stability can justify the cost in blood and treasure. And don't forget to factor in the likelihood that the war will actually produce these fine things. OPINION: Failed Policy in Iraq? Prove It! There has been an overwhelming amount of unsubstantiated rhetoric coming from the left about the alleged “failed Bush policy” in Iraq. I say “unsubstantiated rhetoric” because whether the liberal left wants to admit it or not the policy being employed in Iraq is U.S. policy, not just Bush policy-- And I say “alleged” because by all first hand accounts the “failed Bush policy” seems to be working. The liberal leftists in this country and around the world just can’t get enough of their war of words. They argue semantics and innuendo, cherry-picking the facts when pontificating for the media and like-minded crowds. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and just about every other voice from the “government-over-politics” contingent in Washington, D.C. have literally held press conferences completely devoted to saying that voicing dissent is good for the country and that they welcome it. What they are calling the bloviators of the liberal left on is their use of non-truths, innuendo, and depictions of “reality” that are incomplete. One of this author’s “facts”: Of the 18 Iraqi provinces, unrest exists in only three, all of them inhabited by the previously empowered minority Sunni Arab population. OPINION: An Iraq Pullout, from Two Veterans Views – A NPR Audio. Paul Rieckhott, director of Operation Truth and Frank Adams, commander of a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in California give their opinions on a possible pullout from Iraq. OPINION: Time for An Iraq Timetable. The question most Americans want answered about Iraq is this: When will our troops come home? We already know the likely answer. In 2006, they will begin to leave in large numbers. By the end of the year, we will have redeployed about 50,000. In 2007, a significant number of the remaining 100,000 will follow. A small force will stay behind -- in Iraq or across the border -- to strike at any concentration of terrorists. That is because we cannot sustain 150,000 Americans in Iraq without extending deployment times, sending soldiers on fourth and fifth tours, or mobilizing the National Guard. Even if we could, our large military presence -- while still the only guarantor against a total breakdown -- is increasingly counterproductive. A liberation has become an occupation. There is another critical question: As our soldiers redeploy, will our security interests in Iraq remain intact or will we have traded a dictator for chaos? OPINION: No one has a corner on the truth; nor do we harbor illusions that our analysis is irrefutable or undeniable. But after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond violations of Resolution 1441, and beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic. - Richard Beske, Patrick Eddington, Kathleen McGrath Christison, Raymond McGovern, William Christison ---Steering Group: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Sent to President Bush and published for the world to read on February 7, 2003. These Intelligence Professionals have a combined total of over 100 years experience. Their letter to Mr. Bush was published and available for any American to read the day they sent it. OPINION: Letter to the Editor: The Bush administration is still telling us that many of the Democrats voted to give the president the authority to go to war with Iraq. True, but implicit in such a vote one expects the administration to take all the necessary steps to minimize casualties, to do this multilaterally, and to develop a number of well-thought-out exit strategies to cover all possible situations. The question to the administration should be: "What was your big hurry?" The answer you hear is, "Well, we were being told Saddam had WMDs, was building nuclear bombs, etc."I repeat: What was the hurry? We had fighter planes flying over Iraq every day, Hans Blix and El Baradei had approximately 1,600 inspectors on the ground, and we had an Army on the Iraqi border, an army that had easily defeated Saddam's best once before. Saddam was a sadistic tyrant, but he wasn't stupid. Would he really have tried to use any weapon of mass destruction under these conditions?If we had spent more time working with other nations in Europe and the Middle East, put more inspectors on the ground and spent more time developing clear exist strategies, wouldn't we be better off today? Wouldn't we have had fewer Americans killed? Wouldn't we have created fewer terrorists to deal with? Maybe we wouldn't have had to "liberate" Iraq, after all. Is the world better off without Saddam? Of course, but what was the price in lives and limbs for rushing in? Did we learn anything from Vietnam?The administration says, "Well, we had bad intelligence." So why would you give the man in charge of acquiring that bad intelligence one of this country's most prestigious medals? And what about the now famous, "It's a slam dunk!" John McLaughlin, No. 2 man in the CIA, says, yes, those words were used, but not in that context! What was the big hurry? Edward W. Bell - Harpswell, Maine Opinion: Poli-Sci 101. You know what's really starting to frost my pumpkin? All the chatter I'm picking up from signals intelligence (yup, we monitor radio and TV broadcasts here at Stayin' Alive, to learn what we can about the worldwide idiocy conspiracy), about how the minor difficulties the U.S. has encountered in Iraq force us to assess whether the "idealistic" foreign policy goals of the neo-conservatives, to bring freedom™ and democracy™ to the world, must surrender to Kissingerian realpolitik. Puh-leeze. The PNAC used the language of "democracy" to refer to the regimes it proposed to install in the Middle East, and they continued to put words about democracy and freedom into the mouth of President Mortimer Snerd after they seized power, but it is obvious what they really meant by the term. The new "democratic" government of Iraq was to be led by a person of their choosing -- specifically, a convicted embezzler who hadn't set foot in Iraq for decades -- and it was proposed that this "democratic" government would be friendly to Israel, would allow the United States to establish permanent military bases on its territory, and would allow U.S. corporations to extract, process and sell its petroleum. Since any government in Iraq that had popular support would do none of those things, it follows that "democracy" to the neo-cons means "regimes friendly to U.S. corporate interests."We know that the preznit took Economics 101 because he talks about it all the time. Okay, that doesn't prove anything, but he did attend Harvard Business School so he must have at least sat in the back of the class. But it appears he did not take Political Science 101. In that course, you learn that political institutions depend on political culture -- that the expectations, aspirations, and norms people have about political participation, the role of government, loyalty to the state and the nature of the national interest are powerful limiting factors for the form of government.You can't have a western-style secular democracy if you do not have the requisite political culture. You can't ride in on tanks and say, "Okay folks, now your country is a democracy, and you'd better act democratically or we'll blow you up," and expect results. The neo-cons may be blinded by ideology, but they aren't total idiots. They have always known that perfectly well. Their rhetoric about democracy™ and freedom™ is utterly cynical. The Iraq project was about installing a client regime, nothing else, and it was as Kissingerian as it could possibly be.The alternative to imperialism, which is the correct label for neo-con policy, is working through international institutions to solve global problems. The U.S. has the world's most powerful economy, at least for now -- although we are squandering our wealth -- and is admired for its cultural achievements and for the ideals that it has lately failed to honor. Those are essential assets that we can use in exercising leadership. Military power, however, does not make for leadership, but for bullying -- which isn't working. –Cervantes OPINION: Children as Human Shields. This is truly appalling. A suicide bomber blew up his car outside a hospital in Mahmudiya (part of the "Triangle of Death" south of Baghdad), killing 30. It was targeted because a U.S. civil affairs team was there (supposedly assessing ways to upgrade the hospital) and because U.S. troops were there handing out toys and candy to children. It goes without saying that this was a depraved act by the suicide bomber. The first time something like this happened, I condemned it in no uncertain terms.But it must also be said that the actions of U.S. troops here were also depraved and cynical. This is the type of operation that suicide b">linked to a U.S. soldier's blog in which he said (on a different occasion), "I'm going to probably buy alot of candy when I goto the PX in the camp. That way, I can hand it out to the kids. They'll be more likely to help us avoid things we wouldn't otherwise be able to avoid if not for them." These candy episodes are, at the least, unbelievably irresponsible and show a depraved indifference to the possibility of children's being killed. Beyond that, however, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that some U.S. soldiers are very explicitly seeing and using children on these sorts of operations as human shields. Even if that was a successful strategy, it would be absolutely execrable; how much worse when the use of children as human shields doesn't even deter suicide bomb attacks. OPINION: Al Jazeera starts up a blog to speak to the claims that Bush wants to bomb them. “My mother( 78 years old) used to tell me before going to work "my son take care", but yesterday she asked me "is it true that they want to bomb your TV station? Don’t go to work." My little Haneen asked "why?" Who is going to kill dad, uncle Krechan, aunt Mayson, and aunt Hala? Please dad we don’t want to lose you and our friends, I don’t want to be like Khadeja, her father Tayser is not with her, or like Mohamed who doesn’t know his father Sami. My wife came trying to hide tears in her face by a smile, and said "Yousef is a wise man, he can manage, we are not afraid. If you are going to save others life go ahead we are with you." That was this mornings conversation. I thought for a while is it right? Is there a human being who can think of bombing a TV station? Then I remembered my colleague Tayseer's voice while I was in Qandhar, south Afghanistan, and he was in Kabul when he told me by phone of what happened and advised me to hide. Also I remembered him once again when he phoned me after bombing our office in Baghdad I was in my way from Amman to Baghdad, also I remembered Rashed Wali who was killed by a bullet in Karbala, Iraq, while we were reporting the fighting there between the US army & Al-Sader fighters, then I said that might occur again - someone may die. However I decided not to go back home but to participate in a campaign against the killers and those who think of bombing the truth seekers. Please tell me if I am right? If yes, my colleagues and I need your support. So do Tayseer, Sami, Tareq, and Rashid's kids - we want to know the truth. Simply because we are men and women who bring you the news. Yousef Al-Shouly----Yousef is a Senior Producer and Senior Reporter at the Al Jazeera Channel. He has covered the wars in Afganistan and Iraq for the channel. OPINION: Condemning Torture. Iraqis are right to investigate the treatment of 170 emaciated prisoners found in Baghdad recently. But the quick response to the mistreatment of Iraqis held by Iraqis contrasts with the foot dragging in the United States over prisoners it has held in Iraq and at undisclosed locations around the world. U.S. officials are right to quickly condemn the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by Iraqi captors, but their words would carry more weight if they were not also arguing so forcefully that this country must be allowed to torture some people some of the time. OPINION: 1,000 Days: Time to Unravel the Gordian Knot of Iraq. Why are we still debating the wisdom of a timetable to withdraw from Iraq, when a meeting of Iraqi leaders in Cairo a few days ago - attended by Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi’ites, including president Jalal Talabani himself - called for precisely that?Maybe they recognize, better than President Bush and Vice President Cheney do, that what their people need now is to be weaned from dependency on foreigners. Iraqis have become security queens, a concept welfare-bashing Republicans should be able to grasp. Maybe they realize, as Democratic representative and Vietnam vet John Murtha realizes, that Americans have become the catalysts of violence, not safeguardians against it. Then again, maybe this war is no longer about liberating Iraq, nor about giving its long-tormented citizens democracy, freedom, or even sovereignty. The thing that is “deeply irresponsible” - to borrow Bush’s description of his critics - is the “dishonest and reprehensible” - to borrow Cheney’s - manipulation of the evidence to assert the existence of pre-war WMD and an al Qaeda connection to Iraq that led to this mess in the first place. HUMOR: This site has video clips for an upcoming horror film called HOMECOMING that will be on Showtime in December. The deceased Iraq War Vets come back as zombies with a “particular – pardon the pun – ax to grind” against certain rightwing nuts and politicians who started this war. This is fiction, so you will see it on your American TV, thewiz. PEACE ACTION: Count the Casualties. Our Open Letter to the Prime Minister. As you know, your government is obliged under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population during military operations in Iraq, and you have consistently promised to do so. However, without counting the dead and injured, no one can know whether Britain and its Coalition partners are meeting these obligations. We therefore urge you immediately to commission a comprehensive, independent inquiry to determine with the greatest possible accuracy how many Iraqis have died or been injured since March 2003 - and the cause of those casualties. CASUALTY REPORTS Local Story: Former Peorian (Illinois) Dies in Iraq. A member of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment Thunder Squadron, Mad Dog Company, from Colorado, Pearrow was due to come home Wednesday for a month-long leave. He also was about three months shy of retiring. He died in a single vehicle accident involving an M1 Abrams tank. Local Story: Pittsburgh soldier killed in Iraq. Local Story: Puerto Rico Soldier dies in Iraq. Local Story: Ohio Soldier died in Iraq from non-combat injuries. QUOTE OF THE DAY: 'If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters ... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." - Frederick Douglass

THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: An Iraqi man carries a child, a victim of a car bomb blast, to a hospital in Baghdad November 24, 2005. A car bomb blew up outside a hospital where Iraqi police were gathered in Mahmoudiya, a town south of Baghdad, on Thursday, killing 31 people and wounding more than 20 others, doctors, police and witnesses said. Apparently, US soldiers were handing out toys to children when this incident happened. (I am of the opinion that US troops should stay away from children when they are in a war zone, and all of Iraq is a war zone. – Susan) WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY NOVEMBER 25, 2005 Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis shot dead, three of them soldiers, near Hawijah. 10 Iraqis shot dead in a series of attacks in Baghdad, including two children, six policemen, one army officer and an advisor to former prime minister Allawi. Bring ‘em on: Three Iraqi police officers assassinated in southern Baghdad. Major Muwafaq Hussein Abbas was assassinated in western Baghdad. Gunmen killed a member of the Iraqi National Accord in southern Baghdad. Two guards killed in attack that targeted Iraqi Minister of Industry. Bring ‘em on: British forces have killed and wounded more than 400 insurgents in Iraq since June 2003. These figures are based on the “subjective impression” of troops involved in incidents. Also, 21 British nationals have been killed in Iraq working as private military or security contractors. Bring ‘em on: Three insurgents killed and one arrested in Safwan. An Iraqi soldier died in this incident. Bring ‘em on: 62 Dead in Iraq Suicide Bombing, Attacks (Thursday’s total for Iraqis.) Bring ‘em on: Update: Car bomber killed 34 outside hospital south of Baghdad and wounded 39 more. Nearly 200 people have been killed in a series of suicide bombings and car bombings since last Friday. The attack in Hilla resulted in four deaths, (Later updates say 14.) and a little known group called “The Supporters for the Sunni Community” claimed the attack on the internet. Iraqi Defense Ministry said that Iraqi soldiers found a car west of Baghdad filled with children’s toys that were booby-trapped with hand grenades and explosives. Sunni tribal leader and his three sons plus son-in-law were shot dead in their beds by gunmen dressed in Iraqi Army uniforms and driving 10 army-type vehicles (This from Turkish Press). The Defense Ministry says they were terrorists, not soldiers, but leaders of the Sunni Arabs claim the Shi’ite run Interior Ministry of running death squads. Bring ‘em on: Two US soldiers killed by IED in Baghdad. Bring ‘em on: Explosive laded toys similar to those passed out by US soldiers were found in Iraq this week. Separately, US military spokesman Johnson said the Iraqis had found Beanie Babies with explosive devices in them. "The insurgents will stop at nothing to draw children into the violence," Johnson said. "It's reprehensible. (And it is unconscionable that US troops would interact with children in a war zone. – Susan) Bring ‘em on: Update: 31 people killed outside a hospital in central Iraq on Thursday, four US soldiers wounded, by suicide car bomb. Almost all the victims are women and children. This happened while US soldiers were giving away toys to children. Bring ‘em on: Suicide bombs kill 48 in Iraq as US troops celebrate Thanksgiving. This report says 34 died at the hospital and 14 died at the market bombing. “Some members of bereaved families and local people blamed the Americans for attracting the lethal attention of insurgents with their visit.” Bring ‘em on: Over 180 Killed in Past Week in Iraq Amid Warnings of More Unrest. Since mid-September, US-led forces have killed over 700 rebels and captured 1,500 in western Iraq. Bring ‘em on: Iraqi Police Find Car Bomb Cache On Iranian Border. This was at an abandoned base that was reported taken over by insurgents. Bring ‘em on: US Soldier killed in tank accident south of Baghdad. Bring ‘em on: Eight killed in Iraq as terrorist networks uncovered. One is reported to be a US soldier (included in above totals, I believe). This happened in the western areas of Baghdad. Two of the three terrorists networks were led by an Interior Ministry officer and the third was headed by an assistant manager of a private investment company. The detainees confessed to kidnapping, killing and planting explosives. The task of the Interior Ministry officer was to provide arms, equipment and official documents to facilitate the operations. In another incident, six Iraqis were killed by unidentified gunmen near Howaija, west of Kirkuk. In Fallujah, gunmen shot dead an Iraqi truck driver, who was believed to be working for the US. Bring ‘em on: Large Military Operation In Iraq Expected: Interior Minister. In a statement, the Iraqi minister of interior Bayan Jaber Soulagh announced during a military parade for the security keeping forces the coming of a "nearby large military operation." Soulagh said "there is a mission before us. We will move strongly to attack the shelters of terrorism in different areas," noting that this force will include 10,000 fighters and some 1000 military vehicle. He explained that this operation will be either before the next legislative elections due in mid December or after it. On Wednesday, the American army announced that 250 of its soldiers and 200 Iraqi soldiers have started a new operation in Ta'mim area, southwest of Ramadi." This operation comes less than 24 hours after the announcement made by the American forces on ending operation "iron curtain." REPORTS NEWS: Sunnis Protest Slaying of Tribal Leader. They also take responsibility for the bombing in Hilla yesterday and say it is in retaliation for the murder of the important trial leader. These were members of the Batta tribe. This article also states that a key witness in the Saddam Hussein trial has died of cancer. NEWS: In Baghdad, Capital Vista Gradually Shrink with Insecurity. For the first time, we pulled out after dark. As we flew from the Green Zone, the Black Hawk gunners wore night vision scopes, which look like little binoculars on eyeglasses, so they could spot suspicious activity through the night. The pilot of the C-17 military transport that flew us out of Iraq did not turn on the interior lights until we had reached a safe altitude -- and were well out of Baghdad airspace. (This story covers the author’s several trips to Baghdad and how they became more and more restricted. – Susan) NEWS: Life Goes on in Fallujah’s Rubble. A year after the U.S.-led "Operation Phantom Fury" damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction and high rates of illness. The Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Fallujah (SCHRD) estimates the number of people killed in the city during the U.S.-led operation in October and November 2004 at 4,000 to 6,000, most of them civilians. Mass graves were dug on the outskirts of the city for thousands of the bodies. Last week, the Pentagon confirmed that it had used white phosphorus, a chemical that bursts into flame upon contact with air, inside Fallujah as an "incendiary weapon" against insurgents. Washington denies that it is a chemical weapon, as charged by some critics, and that it was used against civilians. (The DoD did claim it was a chemical weapon when they accused Saddam of using it in 1991 against rebelling Kurds. But now it is not, apparently. See below. – Susan) NEWS: Some Iraq Insurgent Groups Want to Talk. Several insurgents groups have contacted President Jalal Talabani's office in the past few days, with some saying they are ready to lay down their arms and join the political process, the presidential security adviser said Thursday. Lt. Gen. Wafiq al-Samaraei told The Associated Press that "the calls we received were different. The calls were also from different groups." In the western province of Anbar, members of some militant groups told the AP that they had been in talks with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi for about two weeks but would not say how they were going. On Monday, al-Samaraei told Al-Jazeera television that he received a call from a person who claimed to be a senior official of the resistance who was interested in talks. He would not elaborate. During remarks last Sunday in Cairo, Talabani said his offer to talk with insurgents did not extend to members of Saddam's Baath Party unless they agreed to lay down their weapons. NEWS: Iraq Conflict Still in Early Stages, Report Says. The war in Iraq is still in its early stages and US and British troops are likely to be bogged down in the conflict for decades, a report by the Oxford Research Group said on Wednesday. The independent think tank’s report will make unwelcome reading for the British and US governments, both of which have indicated that they hope to begin reducing the number of troops in Iraq after the next Iraqi parliamentary elections in December. NEWS: Khalilzid Promises to Refurbish Babylon; Allocates $20 Billion to New Projects. American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, who many see as the country’s most powerful man, has promised to renovate Babylon. (Why is a US Ambassador one of the “country’s most powerful men”? – Susan) NEWS: Resistance Not Terrorism, Says Iraqi Sunni Leader. “Resistance to the occupier is a natural and legitimate right” in Iraq, per leading Arab Sheikh. “The terrorism which was let loose in our country came with occupation” by US led troops. He distinguished between three sorts of terrorism. "The terrorism of the occupation forces, state terrorism and anonymous terrorism. All three kill and force people from their homes," he said. All Iraqi factions, at a meeting in Cairo last weekend, accepted the principle of "resistance" while condemning "terrorism directed at civilians, civil, humanitarian and religious institutions". NEWS: Sunni Clerics to Boycott Elections. The powerful Sunni Muslim Clerics Association will not take part in the December elections, its leader said. Harith al-Dhari, Iraqi Sunnis most senior cleric, said his association will boycott the elections. He did not say whether the clerics under the association’s umbrella will urge Iraqi Sunnis not to cast their votes. But he made it clear participation in these elections would be tantamount to “legitimizing (foreign) occupation.” NEWS: In Jordan, New Questions About War In Iraq. Mohammed Hikmet and Talal Badran grew up together among the ancient olive groves and hardy fig trees of their village in northern Jordan. They were like brothers, down to their fuzzy beards and stocky builds. In 2003, the best of friends, at age 25, set off side by side to fight American troops in Iraq. Only one of them returned, however, and now both of their families are wracked by doubts about the war they once believed in so fervently. Today's insurgency in neighboring Iraq is unfamiliar to Jordanian villagers who said they simply wanted to defend fellow Muslims from foreign invaders. Now they're trying to figure out how blowing up innocent Arabs at a hotel wedding reception — as suspected Iraqi bombers did in Amman, the Jordanian capital, earlier this month — became an accepted means of resistance. The pride they took in sending two of their own to Iraq is mixed with confusion over whether their holy warriors may have become terrorists. "I don't believe in al-Qaida anymore. Boom. It's finished," said Adnan Badran, 37, the older brother of the Irbid man who fought in Iraq and hasn't returned. He traced the rim of a cup of Turkish coffee with his finger and gazed at the floor. NEWS: Fiji sending 65 more soldiers to Iraq. NEWS: Poland to withdraw 2,500 troops from Iraq in 2006. NEWS: Japanese Troops (600) asked to stay in Iraq. NEWS: US Reaction to Iraq Reconciliation Conference on Resistance, Troop Withdrawal. Getting to this point about resistance: "Although resistance is a legitimate right for all people, terrorism does not represent legitimate resistance. Accordingly, we condemn terrorism and acts of violence, killing and kidnapping that target Iraqi citizens, civilian, humanitarian, governmental institutions, national wealth, places of worship and we call for confronting terrorism immediately." Again, I think that, you know, inasmuch as this statement talks about the right -- the legitimate right to peaceful protest, peaceful expression of differences -- absolutely, the United States has no quarrel with that idea. And here, they talk about condemnation of terrorism. You talk about condemnation of violence. They call -- and they also call upon -- call all to confront terrorism immediately. Again, something that we are all working for in Iraq. So Iraqis and the multinational forces, the United States, again, on the same page with respect to confronting violence and confronting terrorism. (They have a unique interpretation of what was said in Egypt by Iraqi leaders recently. I guess it all depends on what the definition of “is” is. The US State Department is all for peaceful protest, but they forgot to say they just ignore it if they can. – Susan) NEWS: Iran Pledges $1Billion Loan, Security Help to Iraq. Iran has pledged to give Iraq a $1 billion loan and help with tackling insecurity, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said at the end of a ground-breaking visit to the Islamic state. Talabani stressed the improving political and commercial ties between two countries which fought a bitter 1980-1988 war in which hundreds of thousands died. "All the officials I met said there are no limits to Iran's support for the Iraqi nation," he told reporters. "Iranian officials openly said they want the establishment of security in Iraq ... They said: 'your security is our security'," he said. Talabani added that Iran had pledged to give Iraq a $1 billion loan and $10 million in aid to help with reconstruction efforts. He gave no details and Iranian officials could not immediately be reached to elaborate. THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: 15,000 Hepatitis Cases Reported in Baghdad Neighborhood. The investigation shows dramatic increases not only in hepatitis, a serious disease of the liver, but also in cases of major communicable diseases. The sewage system in the city does not function properly and heavy water from open sewers inundates streets. The study says a laboratory examination has found the tap water heavily polluted. “Untreated water seeps into pure water pipes. The average of untreated water in the pure water pipes is no less than 40%,” the study says. The al-Sadr Town is Iraq’s most densely populated area. It is a warren of two-story houses separated by narrow streets with open sewers. THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: The Peace Ended With a Threat: Leave Town or You Die. Living in Abu Ghraib, in the shadow of Saddam Hussein’s vast prison, Kareem Khalbous had always got along with his neighbours in the Sunni-dominated town. That was before the letter appeared one night two months ago, thrown over the fence of his farmhouse. “Leave your houses now, you filthy Shia, or we will kill every one of you,” it read, signed in the name of a Sunni insurgent group. “You have two days.” A day after receiving the same message, a Shia neighbour was shot dead. The Khalbous family did not wait for the deadline. The eight of them stayed up all night packing and by morning they were gone to a relative’s home in Sadr City, a poor suburb of Baghdad inhabited exclusively by Shias. THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: For Many Iraqis, Homecoming is Short-Lived. "Although our life in Iran was miserable, it was a lot better than what we are facing here," he said. "I say it without any hesitation: I regret … my return to Iraq." There are few jobs and no help from the government in Baghdad, Mousawi said. "I'm thinking of going back to Iran." THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Lost Amid the Rising Tide of Detainees in Iraq. The stranger told her he had shared a cell with her husband in an underground bunker. It was the first that Ms. Abbas had heard of her husband, Ibrahim Fayadh Abdul Hamid al-Timimi, since police commandos came into their home and arrested him on May 26, just hours after a bombing in their neighborhood. One week after she got the phone call, American forces raided a bunker that fit the description the man gave, uncovering 169 inmates, many of them starving and abused, and tools of torture hidden in the ceiling. Iraqi officials say that all of the men in the bunker had links to the insurgency. (Detainee sounds so nice, doesn’t it? Much better than prisoner detained without charges or enemy combatant or kidnap victim. – Susan) POEM: Letters from Iraq The hot Sunni sun passes Moaning Mosque Spire.B-company’s pinned down and under heavy fire. Underneath the palms there’s improvised bombs. Because, Jihad Johnnyknows Yankee is a liar. On Euphrates east bank where the desert winds blow, M 1 Abekeeps his head down low. Smoking up Joe,With a front back go, Is General Hash,And his puppet show. This came from the blog written by the US soldiers who appeared in the Italian TV news film on Fallujah. That film that will not be shown on American TV, thewiz. VERY DISTURBING: A nine minute film of US troops shooting at a civilian bus, and then when they realize that they are unarmed, they proceed to provide medical attention. One comment in the film is “the one by the guard shack might not be dead” but it turns out he was. Also will not be shown on American TV, thewiz. THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Violence a Daily Scene for Iraqi Children. Khaldoon Waleed, a Baghdad child psychologist, said a generation of children is growing up with post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD, a result of witnessing life-threatening events, is commonly associated with soldiers. In children, Waleed said, it could cause everything from nightmares to an inability to connect with people. "The children of Iraq have lost all sense of humanity," he said. "Killing and being killed has become daily routine to them." He said their young lives are overloaded with the violent issues of Iraq. Parents find it impossible to hide the harsh realities from them, so children are forced into adult life. And it's a harsh adult life. Haifa Mahmoud, the headmistress of Ibn al-Khateep Primary School, has to explain to children every day what's going on in Karrada, their dangerous neighborhood. The children who come to her sidestep gunbattles, watch for low-riding cars — a sign of a car bomb — and endure sleepless nights because of the thumps of explosions and the vibrations of American Black Hawk helicopters above their roofs. Their friends frequently disappear in kidnappings, and they grow accustomed to dead bodies and body parts in the streets. THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Story to go with picture above from Gulf Daily News: TOYS THEN HELL!!! THE SHAME OF AMERICA: Director for Torture. Are these techniques "not torture," as Mr. Goss claims? In fact, several of them have been practiced by repressive regimes around the world, and they once were routinely condemned by the State Department in its annual human rights reports. By insisting that they are not torture, Mr. Goss sets a new standard -- both for the treatment of detainees by other governments and for the handling of captive Americans. If an American pilot is captured in the Middle East, then beaten, held naked in a cold cell and subjected to simulated drowning, will Mr. Goss say that he has not been tortured? TENETS OF A “JUST WAR” THEORY (From Christian Science Monitor): Cause must be just, often limited to self-defense or to redress injury. Scholars dispute whether preemptive or preventive war can be a just cause. 1. Public declaration by a lawful authority. 2. No ulterior motives. War must be pursued with right intention - justice - not self-aggrandizement or vengeance. 3. Reasonable probability of success. 4. Use of force only as last resort 5. Avoid harming noncombatants 6. Proportionality - use of the least destructive force possible 7. Intention to restore a just peace. THE SHAME OF AMERICA: Press Freedom or Freedom to Bomb the Press? The Bush Plan to Bomb al Jazeera. Given the extent to which the American corporate press has often echoed obviously false US claims long after their absurdity became apparent, the international press like Al-Jazeera plays a critical role in limiting US brutality. By suppressing the press in Iraq, the US has increased its ability to kill with impunity. Evidence that many tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died at US hands suggests that the US has actively seized the opportunity. THE SHAME OF AMERICA: Allies Warn US Over CIA’s Secret Jails. The Netherlands has warned Washington that if it continued to "hide" over reports of secret prisons in eastern Europe, Dutch contributions to US-led military missions could be affected, the ANP news agency has reported. "The US should stop hiding. It will all come out sooner or later," Foreign Minister Ben Bot told the Dutch parliament, according to ANP. THE SHAME OF AMERICA: Report Drops Fallujah Bombshell. The controversy over the American use of white phosphorus as a weapon of war in Fallujah deepened yesterday when it was revealed that a US intelligence assessment had characterised WP as a "chemical weapon". The Italian journalist who sparked the controversy, Sigfrido Ranucci, told a press conference in Rome that while a colleague was browsing American Defence Department websites he had stumbled on a declassified intelligence report from the first Gulf War. (American hypocrisy is alive and well. – Susan) THE WAR AT HOME: I’ll Go To Jail To Print the Truth About Bush and al Jazeera. It must be said that subsequent events have not made life easy for those of us who were so optimistic as to support the war in Iraq. There were those who believed the Government's rubbish about Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Then the WMD made their historic no-show. Some of us were so innocent as to suppose that the Pentagon had a well-thought-out plan for the removal of the dictator and the introduction of peace. Then we had the insurgency, in which tens of thousands have died. The Attorney General's ban is ridiculous, untenable, and redolent of guilt. I do not like people to break the Official Secrets Act, and, as it happens, I would not object to the continued prosecution of those who are alleged to have broken it. But we now have allegations of such severity, against the US President and his motives, that we need to clear them up. If someone passes me the document within the next few days I will be very happy to publish it in The Spectator, and risk a jail sentence. The public need to judge for themselves. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for, and in an important respect we become as sick and as bad as our enemies. THE WAR AT HOME: Bush Set to Pull Out 60,000 Troops Next Year. THE WAR AT HOME: 200,000 Iraqi Troops Not Enough to Quell Iraqi Insurgency? If the Iraqi government is legitimate, and if it meets the will of the majority of the Iraqi people, the Iraqi government can and will be protected by Iraqi soldiers after the American military departs. The sooner the better. If American troops are required to support any Iraqi government, it should be apparent to all that that Iraqi government is illegitimate and should be replaced by one supported by the Iraqi people." THE WAR AT HOME: Moral Stakes of Exiting Iraq. Yet despite all the heated rhetoric and animosity among the different camps, there exists a common thread: a sense of responsibility over what conditions the US-led coalition leaves behind when its troops inevitably depart. "What all of us can agree on here in the US is that we have an ethical obligation regarding the notion of doing more good than harm and not to leave before the society is restored to at least some kind of peace and order," says John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. The manner and pacing of a withdrawal can take many forms, he adds, "but it certainly does not mean simply leaving and allowing the low-grade civil war to erupt into a full-blown one.” (Heaven help the Iraqi people – Susan) COMMENTARY OPINION: Welcome to the Chambers of Death. The U.S.-led occupation, that was forecast to end dictatorship and introduce democracy, seems to have been a harbinger of more violence, more oppression and more killings. Terrorist attacks are surging and suicide bombers mushrooming. And there seems to be no end to abuses and atrocities whether by U.S. troops, government security forces or the secretive and fearful militias. In the aftermath of U.S. occupation, there is no Iraqi family or home without a tragic story to tell or a calamity to moan. Acts of violence and terror taking place in Iraq are unprecedented in their horror and barbarism. These are perhaps the ugliest crimes and most appalling human rights violations in the history of mankind. Not every thing reaches the outside world. Even international media representatives based in Iraq are not aware of them as they, for security reasons, spend their reporting stints in fortified hideouts in Baghdad. OPINION: Why the Mainstream Media Fails Us On Iraq. The mainstream press will not report what credible sources say is happening in Iraq. It used to be in times of conflict that sources such as human rights organisations were regarded cautiously — if your own government was involved in perpetrating violence. But now it seems that you simply ignore these sources. This is not because the Blair government is uniquely evil. It’s because it is a neo-liberal government which is interested in imposing the interests of the corporations. So in order to minimise dissent and opposition they lie. To quote the South African activist, Patrick Bond, they have to “talk left and walk right”. (Yeah, but Brits aren’t nearly as stupid as your cousins across the puddle – see below. – Susan) OPINION: USS Neverdock: This weblog posts the article saying that some insurgent groups are willing to talk to Talabani (see above) and they conclude with: “With elections in about three weeks this is good news indeed and more proof we are winning in Iraq.” (Unbelievable. I’d say this comment is more proof that Americans are stupid. – Susan) OPINION: LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Chalabi’s Fictions. I am troubled by the meeting that was held recently between Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the Iraqi official Ahmed Chalabi. Yes, Mr. Chalabi's stories are full of engaging fiction, but not of a sort that is suitable for children. Readers will recall that Mr. Chalabi was a chief source of misinformation to the Bush administration in the months leading up to the invasion of his country. Now his fictions have been re-legitimized by his appointment as deputy prime minister in the new Iraqi government. I hesitate to think what sort of nonsense he is peddling this time. The fact that Secretary Rice seeks his counsel places her firmly in the faith-based (as distinct from the reality-based) community. And a powerful faith it must be, to be so impervious to learning from experience. Dana Carroll , Salt Lake City OPINION: Iraq Fiasco Bounces Back to Cheney. ''Dishonest and reprehensible'' and ''corrupt and shameless.'' Vice President Dick Cheney was throwing those kind words around in what passes for polite civil discourse in Washington these days. He aimed them at anyone - especially senators of the Democratic persuasion - who dared suggest that President Bush or anyone else in the administration had exaggerated or twisted pre-war intelligence to build the case for invading Iraq. In fact the pre-war attempts to both cherry-pick raw and unvetted intelligence reports and to mount a public relations offensive to lend credence to the tales of so-called Iraqi defectors - some successful and some not - were largely managed by Cheney and his chief underlings, I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby and John Hannah. What has never been proved is whether Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff under indictment for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury, was one of the unidentified sources, along with officials at the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress, for much of New York Times reporter Judith Miller's pre-war hyping of Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons programs. We know that Cheney himself declared on Aug. 26, 2002: ''Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.'' (Well, people who claimed to believe this last one are either TOOLS or FOOLS, the later being the case if they really weren’t out and out lying. However, we will always have the lovely comment “GO CHENEY YOURSELF” from the gentile Mr. Cheney – as a reminder of this illegal and immoral war. Not a total loss, I guess. – Susan) OPINION: Bush Needs to Grow Up, Rise to Challenge. Yes, we need to stay the course for now in Iraq, but we cannot stay the course alone or divided. That is the point. We are about to produce the most legitimate government ever in the Arab world, and the Bush-Cheney team — instead of acknowledging its errors on weapons of mass destruction, seeking forgiveness and urging the country to unite behind the important effort to defeat the jihadist madness in Iraq — does what? It starts slinging mud at Democrats on Iraq. Sure, some Democrats goaded them with reckless remarks — but they are not in power. Where are the adults? We can't afford this nonsense, while also ignoring our energy crisis, the deficit, health care, climate change and Social Security. (Fried Man is still getting it mostly all wrong. He states that Bush is in the running for worst president ever. Little does he know that Bush already ran that race and won, with the help of old Fried Man himself. –Susan) OPINION: Do the opinions of 95 percent of Black America have no standing? Only three Democrats voted on the issue of the Iraq war, last Friday. The rest followed Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s directives, a continuation of her "strategy" of insulating the pro-war wing of the party, centered in the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), from the wrath of the party’s base, which is now overwhelmingly anti-war. For the DLC’s sake, Pelosi smothers the party’s progressive wing - of which she was once a proud member. There was no room for peace in this strange arrangement. OPINION: Behind the Phosphorus Clouds are War Crimes Within War Crimes. But there is hard evidence that white phosphorus was deployed as a weapon against combatants in Falluja. As this column revealed last Tuesday, US infantry officers confessed that they had used it to flush out insurgents. A Pentagon spokesman told the BBC that white phosphorus "was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants". He claimed "it is not a chemical weapon. They are not outlawed or illegal." This denial has been accepted by most of the mainstream media. UN conventions, the Times said, "ban its use on civilian but not military targets". But the word "civilian" does not occur in the chemical weapons convention. The use of the toxic properties of a chemical as a weapon is illegal, whoever the target is. (This story claims that the civilians who were found dead in Fallujah with blacken bodies could have gotten that way via decomposing. I saw the pictures last November and December 2004, before decomposing would have happened. – Susan) OPINION: Torture Camps. What is spurring demands that the allegations be investigated properly is the uneasy feeling that away from the eyes of courts and public, in detention centers which few knew existed, terrible crimes may have been committed by those questioning the suspects. The Europeans are currently trying to track suspicious US aircraft movements and looking for satellite images of Romania and Poland which may show where the camps are or, as seems more likely since the hue and cry over them, where they used to be. Just as important as the allegations is the way in which they are being handled, both by Washington and the Europeans. The EU yesterday formally demanded a full explanation of what may have happened, partly on EU territory. The irony was that the demand was lodged by UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw because Britain currently holds the EU presidency. Straw has been second only to Prime Minister Tony Blair in his dedicated support for the Bush White House’s war on terror. Yet as the foreign policy representative of the skeptical EU, Straw has had to insist that Washington come clean over what has been going on. If the Americans continue to be uncooperative, he will be obliged to ask the question again, probably less diplomatically. OPINION: Getting Out of Iraq. There has been no outbreak of conscience in editorial offices or on Capitol Hill. Deadly forms of opportunism are still perennial in the journalistic and political climates that dominate official Washington. The centre of opportunistic gravity may have shifted in a matter of days, but the most powerful voices in US media and politics still heavily weigh towards the view reiterated by President George Bush on Sunday: “An immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq will only strengthen the terrorists' hand in Iraq and in the broader war on terror.” In the United States, while the lies behind the Iraq war become ever more obvious and victory seems increasingly unreachable, much of the opposition to the war has focused on the death and suffering among US soldiers. That emphasis has a sharp political edge at home, but it can also cut another way — defining the war as primarily deplorable because of what it is doing to Americans. One danger is that a process of withdrawing some US troops could be accompanied by even more use of US air power that terrorizes and kills with escalating bombardment (as happened in Vietnam for several years after President Richard Nixon announced his “Guam Doctrine” of Vietnamization in mid-1969). An effective anti-war movement must challenge the jingo-narcissism that defines the war as a problem mainly to the extent that it harms Americans. Countless pundits and politicians continue to decry the Bush administration's failure to come up with an effective strategy in Iraq. But the war has not gone wrong. It was always wrong. And the basic problem with the current US war effort is that it exists. OPINION FROM OUR COMMENTS: To add to the ponts Malooga has made, seeing the "bigger picture" with some grounding in a historical process will, hopefully, make the export of democracy and freedom harder. (Vietnam was, for example, the recipient of the same under the pretext of stopping communism, now terrorism.) Many of the current claims to be oh so blue eyed, a few of them repeated in today's crop of posts, are silly shell games played by people who do know better. Did the Dems vote for war because they were duped? Of course not. That whole debate, especially at this point, is utterly ridiculous. Now even hawkish Dem Murtha is an anti-war hero after talking about redeployment to the periphery to strike from the edges, should the "need" arise. That's just the same greedy desire being played out in a different wording, at lesser cost, to make it more palatable when those that actually pay the price at home are getting grumpy and jumpy. Same damn game, different strategy to sell it. – 2 cents OPINION: What’s next is the Iraq Justifications? Letter to the editor. Now let me get the logic straight: First we went to war because they said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Then they said we went to war because the people of Iraq needed their freedom. Now they say we must continue the war in order not to dishonor the dead. I see a corollary now: If a fireman dies in a fire, thank an arsonist. - Jason Gansauer, Fountain Hills, AZ OPINION: Jihadist Iraq Just Won’t Happen. From the people who brought you Saddam Hussein's mushroom cloud and the secret Iraqi-Al Qaeda alliance comes a new specter to trouble our sleep: jihadist Iraq. There is a rich irony to the administration's argument about a jihadist Iraq. In the run-up to the war, the Bush team repeatedly underestimated the danger radical Islamists posed to U.S. plans for Iraq. By blundering in Iraq, the Bush administration has played right into two jihadist claims: First, that we are determined to occupy Muslim countries, steal their wealth and destroy their faith; and second, that we are a paper tiger that cannot accept casualties. By staying in Iraq, we confirm the former for many Muslims around the world and stoke recruitment and radicalization. By leaving, we confirm the latter, thereby encouraging jihadists. PEACE ACTION: AFSC has an on-line petition to show support for Rep. Murtha's position on getting out of Iraq. Here's the link. Also, Rep Murtha's phone number is 202-225-2065. This is a holiday weekend in the USA. I am asking all Americans to call your Senators and Representatives this weekend and let them know what you think. They often have voice mail options, so you can leave a message. They need to know what you think because you are much smarter than them. Really. CASUALTY REPORTS On the evening of November 24, 2005 I could find no local stories of American fatalities or funerals in Iraq. Now, being Thanksgiving Day, it stands to reason that no funerals were scheduled. But I found it odd that there were no reports of any local people suffering fatalities from their Iraq service. There were dozens of stories about troops visiting families for the holiday. It’s like they all get a memo or something that tells them what to report, what to leave out. Local Story: Soldier from Niagara Falls killed in Iraq. QUOTE OF THE DAY: The lies the government and the media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself. – James Wolcott

The Great War "The Silent Slain" We too, we too, descending once again The hills of our own land, we too have heard Far off -- Ah, que ce cor a longue haleine -- The horn of Roland in the passages of Spain, the first, the second blast, the failing third, And with the third turned back and climbed once more The steep road southward, and heard faint the sound Of swords, of horses, the disastrous war, And crossed the dark defile at last, and found At Roncevaux upon the darkening plain The dead against the dead and on the silent ground The silent slain --

War News for Thursday, November 24, 2005 Bring 'em on: gunmen blocked the road leading to the Iraqi Communist Party's branch office in the mostly Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in Baghdad just after the party began its election campaign, the party said in a statement. The unidentified men broke into the party building and killed two activists in the reception area, it added Bring 'em on: Three women were wounded when a mortar round fell on their house in al-Salihiya district in central Baghdad, police said. Bring 'em on: Police said two civilians were hurt by a roadside bomb targeted at an Iraqi army convoy in al-Tayaraan in central Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Two policemen and a teenage boy were wounded when a roadside bomb hit a police patrol in southwestern Baghdad, a police source said. Bring 'em on: Three Polish soldiers and an Iraqi child have been lightly injured after a bomb went off near the Echo base in Iraq. Bring 'em on: A suicide car bomber targeting U.S. troops handing out toys to children at a hospital in central Iraq killed 30 people Thursday, including four police guards, three women and two children, officials said. Bring 'em on: Tree American soldiers from Task Force Baghdad died of gunshot wounds Wednesday in Baghdad, and a fourth died of wounds sustained Wednesday from a roadside bomb in Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad, an0other statement said. Bring 'em on: A former senior traffic police officer who was killed by gunmen on Wednesday in the Yarmouk district of southwestern Baghdad was also an adviser for the Interior Ministry, a ministry source said. Bring 'em on: One Iraqi soldier was killed and two were wounded on Wednesday when a bomb placed on the side of the road went off near their patrol in Khalidiya near Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. In the aftermath of the attack, the Iraqi army conducted a raid and seized six suspects. Bring 'em on: One policeman was killed and two others were wounded when gunmen attacked them in western Baghdad, medical sources said. Bring 'em on: Gunmen shot dead an official in the city council in Tikrit, police said. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqi soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. Bring 'em on: Four bodies were found strangled and shot in the town of Yusifiya, 20 km (12 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. Bring 'em on: The motorcade of the minister of industry was attacked by gunmen. Three of his bodyguards were killed and one civilian wounded, police said. The minister was not in the motorcade during the attack. Bring 'em on: A suicide car bomber attacked a crowded market in Hilla, south of Baghdad, on Thursday, police said. Conflicting police reports put the death toll initially at up to 14, but later at up to four. Commentary: Report drops Fallujah bombshell: "Given that the US and UK went into Iraq on the ground that Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people, we need to make sure that we are not violating the laws that we have subscribed to." Although WP is classified as a conventional not a chemical weapon, its effects are chemical as well as merely thermal. The choking white smoke it produces is highly toxic, and causes severe burns internally and externally to anyone caught in its path. Uzbekistan: No More Help on Afghanistan: Uzbekistan has told NATO allies they can no longer use its territory or airspace to support peacekeeping missions in neighboring Afghanistan, an official of the alliance said Wednesday. Merkel says Germany won't join NATO training in Iraq: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday that her new government would not join NATO's training of Iraqi military officers inside Iraq. Opposition suspects CIA planes landed in Portugal: Portugal's left-wing opposition asked the government on Wednesday to explain a news report suggesting that CIA airplanes had used airports in Portugal to transport Islamic militant suspects. Portuguese weekly magazine Focus published pictures on Wednesday of several airplanes at Portuguese airports this year. It said they were planes used by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and could have been carrying militant suspects. CIA Planes in Canada: There is plenty of evidence in the news of illegal (under international and non-US laws) CIA operations. The European Commission JUST ANNOUNCED (Nov. 21) it will draft a letter to the CIA asking for clarification of the CIA's use of EU airports. The CIA denies it has engaged in the practice of rendition, kidnapping people in foreign countries and transporting to countries like Egypt where they can be questioned with torture. There are also reports the CIA maintains prisons and jails on European soil, especially in Eastern European countries that are seeking to join the EU. The EU strongly warned against such jails. The Netherlands has warned Washington that if it continued to "hide" over reports of secret prisons in eastern Europe, Dutch contributions to US-led military missions could be affected, the ANP news agency has reported. Casuality Reports: Army Staff Sgt. Mike Barrera suffered five gunshot wounds Nov. 19 in Mosul Spc. Levi DiFranza of Melrose remembers falling - slowly and endlessly falling - as a bullet from an Iraqi sniper pierced his helmet and then his skull during a firefight in a suburb of Ramadi. John Wilson Dearing, 21, of Hazel Park died in Iraq when his Humvee drove over a land mine, military officials told family members.

War News for Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Seventeen people killed in a car bomb attack against a police convoy in Kirkuk. Three Iraqi soldiers wounded in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint in Kirkuk. Two US soldiers killed by small arms fire in Mosul.

Bring ‘em on: A former senior traffic police officer was killed by gunmen in his home in the Yarmouk district of southwestern Baghdad. A director at a Baghdad battery factory was killed by gunmen while driving near his home in the western Jami'aa district of Baghdad. Three women were wounded when a mortar round fell on their house in al-Salihiya district in central Baghdad. Two civilians were hurt by a roadside bomb targeted at an Iraqi army convoy in al-Tayaraan in central Baghdad. Two policemen and a teenage boy were wounded when a roadside bomb hit a police patrol in southwestern Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms broke into the home of a senior Sunni leader Wednesday and killed him, his three sons and son-in-law. A Sunni cleric and his brother were killed in Khan Bani Saad. Iraqi soldiers had arrested the two men two hours before they were found dead. Two Communist Party activists were killed by gunmen who broke into the party building in Sadr City. A US military operation in Ramadi, the third in the city since Nov. 16., resulted in the deaths of 32 suspected militants.

Steel Curtain: U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed more than 700 suspected insurgents in less than two months during operations in western Iraq, the U.S. military said on Wednesday, calling the result "very successful."

Major General Rick Lynch, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, said that as well as those killed, 1,500 suspects had been detained, including an undisclosed number of foreign fighters, and more than 200 weapons caches discovered.

Over the same period, the U.S. military has lost more than 170 troops in Iraq, including 80 in Anbar.

Iraqi doctors and residents say civilians, including women and children, have been among those killed.

Steel Curtain: When people saw a ferocious assault was under way, they began to leave town. Women and children came out carrying white flags. It was eerie seeing columns of people appearing through the smoke and explosions, with no one knowing which direction the shooting was coming from. I am sure we will hear of more casualties.

All men of military age were detained. they had material sprayed on their hands to reveal whether they had handled explosives or gunpowder. Families were split up and loudspeakers were barking commands. Some of the detainees came back and some did not.

Liberated Iraq: The recent revelations of torture at a secret Baghdad jail did not surprise many of the capital's Sunni Arab residents and leaders, who said civil rights violations have become a regular occurrence. Sunni Arabs here said that months before reports of torture at the ministry of interior facility emerged, the ministry and the Iraqi National Guard were randomly arresting, torturing and killings members of their community. They also accused security forces of allowing armed militias to roam freely in the city.

Iraqi politics: Our Iraqi Party Organization in Al-Thawra City in Baghdad held its first open mass event today as part of preparations for the elections, with a convoy of cars starting off from the party office in the district at 4.00 pm (22 Nov. 2005). One hour later, an armed group blocked the road leading to the party office, stormed the place and killed two comrades. The attackers then covered their withdrawal with a barrage of indiscriminate shooting. As a result of this cowardly terrorist and brutal attack, two of our comrades, Abdul Aziz Jassim Hassan and Yass Khudhayer Haider, were martyred. The two comrades who were victims of this treacherous attack have joined the martyrs of the Communist Party; the martyrs of Iraq.

Iraqi politics: Mahmoud Kaduri, 29, recalled bitterly how he was forced to work with the insurgency currently fighting US and Iraqi government troops. “They told me to work with them or my son would be killed,” he recalled. “I had no option, I had to save my child,” he added. After sending his son to neigbouring Jordan for safety, he told his tormentors that he would no longer work with them. “They wanted me to attack a police car with a mortar,” he recounted. “But when I saw there were children nearby, I refused.” They responded by shooting him in the stomach.

Iraqi politics: Such is the state of Iraqi politics just three weeks before the Dec. 15 elections for a full, four-year government. With officials like Muhammadi unable to travel anywhere unless accompanied by enough firepower to level a village, and with even the politicians expressing distrust of the electoral system, this vote is fraught with as much peril as the last one, in January. For one thing, politics here have scarcely left the bare-knuckles era. The continuing guerrilla war, coupled with leftover tensions from the Saddam Hussein era, have starkly polarized the country's ethnic and religious factions, and their political leaders.

The Ghost Devil of Iraq: US forces are closing in on top Al-Qaeda in Iraq insurgent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and expects to capture or kill him "in the not too distant future", a US general said Wednesday. "We come close to Zarqawi continuously and at one point in time, in the not too distant future, we are going to get Zarqawi," Major General Rick Lynch, spokesman for the US-led multinational force in Iraq told reporters.

Torture in Iraq: It was recently revealed, in a US-backed raid, that torture is going on under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior. Despite the apparent media blackout on the topic, torture has been an ongoing tactic of the counter-insurgency work in Iraq. At first it was employed at Abu Ghraib and possibly other US military establishments in Iraq, and it quickly became a prime tactic of the newly formed Iraqi Police and Iraqi National Guard.

The tactic became a regular tool in the Iraqi counter-insurgency toolbox and has since been used widely throughout Iraq. Ali Shalal Abbas and a number of former prisoners from Abu Ghraib formed the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons, or AVAOP to combat the issue of torture in Iraq. Ali’s organization alleges that there are at least 200 secret prisons similar to the one uncovered last week. They have many photos of Iraqis who have been tortured and are working on a full report about torture in Iraq.

The winner: Iran has pledged to give Iraq a $1 billion loan and help with tackling insecurity, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said at the end of a ground-breaking visit to the Islamic state. Talabani's three-day visit, the first by an Iraqi leader to Iran for nearly four decades, followed heightened accusations by Western and some Iraqi officials that Shi'ite Muslim Iran was linked to insurgent attacks in Iraq. Iran denies the charges.

Withdrawal plans: Despite mounting public pressure, the U.S. general in charge of helping Iraq create an army says training troops to replace coalition forces can't be rushed. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command, told CNN progress was mixed in re-creating a stable military and security force. "It's uneven across the country, it's uneven across units, it's uneven between the army and the police," he said.

War for decades: The war in Iraq could last for decades with British troops unlikely to withdraw without a "highly unlikely" split with Washington, a report says today. The Oxford Research Group non-governmental organisation, which assesses constructive approaches to dealing with international terrorism and the "war on terror", says the war in Iraq is only in its early stages. "Given that the al-Qaeda movement and its affiliates are seeking to achieve their aims over a period of decades rather than years, the probability is that, short of major political changes in the USA, the Iraq war might well be measured over a similar time span," the report concludes.

War history: The U.S. President George W. Bush was informed ten days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that there was no proof of ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda network, The National Journal reported. The magazine cited government papers as well as former and present Bush administration officials as saying that the president was briefed on Sept. 21, 2001 that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks or al-Qaeda network.

War history: Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

This is an essential article. Anyone who does not understand the complete lack of morality underlying Bush’s War should read it. A person who Comments here regularly might take note.

Oil: Iraq will likely begin to seek out deals with private companies to rebuild its destroyed oil and gas fields, officials said at the International Petroleum Technology Conference taking place in Doha, Qatar. Although security remains a problem, Iraq is set for another election and is looking at ways to rebuild, said Ibrahim Baher Al Olom, the Minister of Oil for Iraq. Any deals will have to preserve the interests of the people in the country.

Oil: Big oil firms may rob Iraq of billions and grab control of its oilfields unless ordinary Iraqis can have a greater say in how their country's riches are tapped, U.S. and British campaigners said on Tuesday. Big oil is being lured by the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA), promoted by Washington and London, which gives them huge returns on investment, but deprives Iraq of up to $194 billion (113 billion pounds), according to "Crude Designs: The rip-off of Iraq's oil wealth".

War on terror: Four years after the terrorist attacks in 2001, the U.S. government has yet to settle on a consistent strategy for holding and punishing people it says are terrorists. Its efforts remain a patched-together work in progress, notable for false starts and a reluctance to have the executive branch's broadest claims tested in the courts.

The American majority: A majority of Americans do not think Iraq will be successful in establishing a stable democratic government and would like US troops to come home next year, according to a poll.

Of the 1,011 adults surveyed by telephone November 8-13, 61 percent answered "no" when asked if they were confident democracy and stability could come to Iraq, up four percent from August, the Harris Poll said.

Only a third, or 32 percent, thought Iraq would be successful in its quest for peace and fair government, up eight percent from August, the survey found.

Sixty three percent of those surveyed were in favor of bringing US troops home from Iraq in the next year, up two percent from August, while 35 percent thought they should be kept in large numbers until a democracy is established, down one point from August.

US politics - the pathetic opposition: Biden's speech, delivered to the Council of Foreign Relations, sketched out a strategy that included (1) forging better alliances between Iraqi factions (the senator said he thought the current constitution had the power to divide the country) (2) strengthen the Iraqi government and its reconstruction efforts and (3) accelerate the transfer of the country's security to Iraqis. Each of Biden's goals have already been embraced and trumpeted by the Bush Administration. Whether his specific vision -- which is illustrated in great detail -- provides a clearer articulation of the Democrats' Iraq position remains to be seen.

US politics – the loyal opposition: U.S. Rep. John Murtha, a key Democrat on military issues, on Monday defended his call to pull U.S. troops from Iraq, saying he was reflecting Americans' sentiment. "The public turned against this war before I said it," Murtha said. "The public is emotionally tied into finding a solution to this thing, and that's what I hope this administration is going to find out."

US politics: Representative John Murtha, the hawkish Democrat who spent his political career as a staunch Pentagon supporter, went home this week as something entirely different: an antiwar symbol. His call last week in the U.S. House of Representatives for an American troop withdrawal from Iraq within the next six months took aback many of his constituents and made the plainspoken former marine colonel's homecoming Monday a moment for re-evaluation: of the congressman as well as of the Bush administration's strategy for Iraq.

The few who sacrifice: Students at the East Union High School cafeteria Tuesday pierced a map of Iraq with colored pins — red for Marines, blue for the Navy and different colors for the other branches of the U.S. military. Each pin represented a family member serving in Iraq. They map was part of a JROTC gathering to honor and bring together East Union students with family in Iraq. From brothers of soldiers to cousins of Marines, about 180 students at the high school have relatives fighting in Iraq, East Union JROTC instructor Karl Knutsen said.

Commentary

Comment: Among the shameful presses most vocal Bush-Cheney shills today, are those that played the largest part in helping the administration lie the nation to war in the first place. Perhaps the biggest shill of them all was the Washington Post. One of the nation's most respected papers actually -- after it became obvious there were no WMD in Iraq and never had been -- had to apologize to the public, for refusing either to print pre-war intelligence that contradicted the administration's official spin of a thousand lies; or burying deep within the paper, anything not in agreement with the Bush-Cheney intelligence falsities. Today, nothing has changed. Not satisfied with running a piece totally absent of reporting facts to Cheney's lies, Cheney Accuses Iraq Critics of Shameless Revisionism, the paper also included, unchallenged of course, the full text of Cheney's Rovian scripted speech to the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute. It isn't as though it is difficult to find facts, which directly refute the lies told by the Bush administration. Yet, the U.S. press seems incapable of making the effort. One would think the Washington Post, considering their pre-war assist given to the administration's willful deception and the current Woodward issue relating to Team Bush's CIA agent's identity leak, might be more willing to at least attempt to restore some of their reputation. That however, seems lost upon the paper's leadership. No, they'll continue being a card carrying member of the Coalition of the Willing Shillers.

Editorial: George W. Bush is the most powerful man in the world. He could also be the most dangerous.

Fanatical leaders like Osama bin Laden provoke terrible acts of terrorism. But President Bush has weapons of mass destruction as well as an unhinged attitude to using them.

Today the Daily Mirror reveals that he planned to bomb a TV station in a friendly Arab nation. An act that would have led to countless retaliatory attacks on Western states.

Fortunately Tony Blair was told of the insane plot and persuaded Mr Bush not to go ahead.

The president wanted to take out the main studios of the Arabic station al-Jazeera because of its coverage of insurgents and terrorism - though any good media outlet would have covered those stories if they had the access.

Mr Bush's plan was crazy enough against a high-profile civilian target. But to make it worse, the TV station is based in Qatar, a friendly nation where the US-UK invasion of Iraq was planned.

The secret memo revealed by the Mirror casts fresh doubt on claims that other attacks on al-Jazeera were accidents. It looks like these were planned assaults on civilian targets.

We must be thankful that Tony Blair stopped Mr Bush from the attack on Qatar.

But until the White House regime changes, the world should tremble with fear at what this president might do next.

Editorial: When reports of prisoner abuse at the hands of U.S. captors in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba first arose administration officials dismissed them as overblown. Then they said strong tactics were necessary to deal with such dangerous people. A United Nations Human Rights Commission team just last week canceled a trip to the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because the United States refused to let U.N. inspectors meet with prisoners in private. The head of the team, Manfred Nowak, told the BBC he didn't need "a guided tour," but wanted to talk freely with prisoners to determine if they are being mistreated. The U.S. refusal of an unconditional visit showed the country had something to hide, he added. When the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed a measure banning the use of cruel and inhuman treatment against people in U.S. custody, President Bush threatened to veto the defense spending bill. Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied lawmakers to make an exception for the CIA. Then there was the memo saying detainees in the war on terror are not subject to the Geneva Conventions and that torturing someone up to but not past the point of "organ failure and death" is OK in order to make them talk. U.S. officials are right to quickly condemn the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by Iraqi captors, but their words would carry more weight if they were not also arguing so forcefully that this country must be allowed to torture some people some of the time.

Anthony D. Romero: As our president well knows, the sad fact for all Americans is that many of the interrogations we have conducted are not within the law. As many current and former government and military officials recently told PBS' "Frontline," we have tortured - and even killed - prisoners in our custody. Like all Americans, I would like to believe otherwise. I take no pleasure in the fact that we have betrayed the best of American values by torturing and abusing prisoners. But the more than 77,000 pages secured by the ACLU and its allies in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit paint a dismal picture of the torture and abuse that have occurred in our name. Government documents obtained through our FOIA lawsuit describe hundreds of incidents of torture and abuse in excruciating detail. It is clear that these are not the actions of a few rogue soldiers. The mere existence of thousands of government documents on torture underscores the systemic nature of the problem. There are also videos and photos showing torture and abuse that government lawyers are fighting like mad to suppress. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, argued that the release of the photos and videos would jeopardize national security and put American soldiers at risk. But the judge in that ACLU lawsuit thought otherwise. He wrote, "Our nation does not surrender to blackmail, and fear is not a legally sufficient argument to prevent us from performing a statutory command. Indeed, the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed."

Ray McGovern: The colonels made their splash in a private, uncensored hearing with concerned senators John Warner, R-Va., chair of the Armed Services Committee, and Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Mark Dayton, D-Minn. Congressional staff members took part, but apparently absent were the civilian minders from Rumsfeld’s office who normally tag along.

The Army and Marine commanders reportedly were chosen for their experience on the battlefield rather than in the political arena. Battalion commanders represent the crucial link between operations and strategy and, as a group, are ideally positioned to deliver a reality check to Congress. They are at once close to their troops, responsible for implementing the strategy in Iraq, and, at the same time, somewhat insulated from the civilians in the Pentagon.

So their credentials are impeccable. They told the senators not only that they needed more troops, but that their repeated requests had been “turned down flat.” The battalion commanders indicated that, as a result, their units had to “leapfrog” around Iraq to keep insurgents from going back into towns that had been cleared by U.S. forces. They added that there are never enough explosive experts to deal with the roadside bombs responsible for the majority of U.S. casualties.

When confronted by ABC about the Time report, Rumsfeld roundly denied he had ever turned down a request for troop reinforcements in Iraq and claimed there are enough U.S. troops in Iraq to fight the insurgency. Said Rumsfeld, “Is it correct to suggest that General Vines or General Casey or General Abizaid have ever asked for more troops and got turned down? That is flat not true.” Indeed, Rumsfeld may be technically correct, since the colonels themselves complained to the senators that no general officer had been willing to go on record complaining about the need for more troops.

It all seems so surreal. It is abundantly clear that there are hardly enough U.S. troops in Iraq to defend themselves and the Green Zone, much less cope with the armed resistance forces. But where would reinforcements come from? The Army and Marines—active duty, reserve and National Guard—are stretched exceedingly thin, and all the money the Pentagon has plowed into national missile defense and the Navy are of little or no help.

David Sirota: I'm confused. We're now being told that the War in Iraq is being waged to promote freedom and democracy. Beyond the fact that such a rationale is an opportunistic departure from the rationale we were originally given (aka. Iraq's supposed possession of WMD), this freedom/democracy rationale is being undermined here at home by the same folks making the argument in the first place.

The latest example of this comes from the Washington Times, the Republican Party's paper of record. This rag today reports that unnamed Bush "Pentagon officials" (read: political appointees) are essentially claiming that critics of the war who have raised questions about the Iraq conflict are supposedly undermining the troops. But how is that possible? Aren't the troops fighting to spread freedom and democracy? And aren't the major tenets of freedom and democracy the right of citizens to challenge their government and raise questions about the decisions made by people in power? How can the troops be undermined by people at home who are exercising the very rights and privileges the troops are supposedly fighting for?

The questions are, of course, rhetorical. The troops aren't being undermined by war critics - they are being helped by war critics who are doing everything they can to end the ridiculous situation whereby American soldiers are being forced to carry out a misguided policy that has needlessly endangered their lives, and left them as sitting ducks in an Iraqi shooting gallery. The story's assertion that troops don't "understand" this is both a lie, and an insult to the intelligence of our soldiers.

Robert Scheer: You've got to hand it to Dick Cheney; no other modern politician has come so close to perfecting the theater of the absurd. Even as he protests his innocence of lying about matters of state, he lies about matters of state.

In two major speeches Friday and Monday, the vice president who has long insisted Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were allies, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, we would be greeted as liberators in Baghdad, and that the Iraqi insurgency is in its "last throes," again evidenced his trademark inability to speak the truth.

Continuing the administration's recent shrill defensive barrage over whose fault the Iraq mess is and with the truth chasing the lies in full public view, Cheney had the gall to smear the war's critics as "corrupt and shameless." Then, within a few sentences, he showed again why 52 percent of those recently polled by Newsweek believe Cheney deliberately "misused or manipulated" prewar intelligence.

First, he shamelessly repeated the absurd notion that a bum-rushed Congress, most of which does not have high security clearance, was privy to the same intelligence as he and his war-salesmen allies. In fact, not only was Cheney and his staff poring over the classified testimonials of an array of known liars, forgers, drunks, opportunists and desperate exiles we now know supplied White House speechwriters with their best lines, he also had access to the intelligence community's combined disclaimers, rebuttals and outright denunciations of these sources and their conveniently tawdry tales.

"Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize him to take the nation to war," wrote former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., in a devastating statement in the Washington Post on Sunday. "Most of them, though, like their Republican colleagues, did so in the legitimate belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace -- that if Hussein was not disarmed, the smoking gun would become a mushroom cloud."

Paul Krugman: Mr. Bush never asked the nation for the sacrifices - higher taxes, a bigger military and, possibly, a revived draft - that might have made a long-term commitment to Iraq possible. Instead, the war has been fought on borrowed money and borrowed time. And time is running out. With some military units on their third tour of duty in Iraq, the superb volunteer army that Mr. Bush inherited is in increasing danger of facing a collapse in quality and morale similar to the collapse of the officer corps in the early 1970's.

So the question isn't whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have.

Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever we leave. If so, we're better off leaving sooner rather than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, "We can lose in Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose."

And there's a good case to be made that our departure will actually improve matters. As Mr. Murtha pointed out in his speech, the insurgency derives much of its support from the perception that it's resisting a foreign occupier. Once we're gone, the odds are that Iraqis, who don't have a tradition of religious extremism, will turn on fanatical foreigners like Zarqawi.

The only way to justify staying in Iraq is to make the case that stretching the U.S. army to its breaking point will buy time for something good to happen. I don't think you can make that case convincingly. So Mr. Murtha is right: it's time to leave.

Cenk Uygur: Up until today, I have never claimed the government was lying about why they were detaining Padilla in the first place. I thought he should have his constitutional rights as a US citizen whether he was rightfully detained or not. But now that the government has changed their story for the third time on why Padilla is so dangerous, there is no other conclusion left to draw -- they're making it up.

You see, that's what happens if you allow for secret detentions and no court review. This is precisely why we have the American justice system. It turns out, if you strip Americans of their rights, the government winds up committing heinous offenses. Three years they held this guy without presenting a shred of evidence against him. Jose Padilla is a United States citizen!

That used to mean something. What drives me crazy is how little attention people have paid to the Padilla case. The government took away the constitutional rights of its citizenry, and what did the media have to say about it? What did our elected representatives have to say about it? What did even the so-called liberals, some of whom still walk around with "Free Mumia" signs, have to say about it? Not much.

To be fair, a small minority of liberals were the only people who did fight on his behalf. And a small number of journalists did cover the case. The people who fought for Padilla will one day be seen as America's true protectors because they tried to protect what this country stands for. They weren't fighting for Padilla, they were fighting for all of us.

But most were afraid to speak out in favor of protecting Padilla's rights, especially the politicians, because he might have turned out to be a terrorist. They didn't want to be seen as fighting for terrorists.

But this isn't about whether we like Jose Padilla or not. I don't know a thing about Padilla (mostly because the government has never even tried to prove anything about Padilla). We're supposed to figure out if we should condemn him through an open and public trial. That's what the court system is for. If we abandon that idea now and castigate people based on rumors and innuendo, then we have lost the country.

Don't you get it? If they can take away Padilla's rights, they can take away our rights. Jose Padilla is a United States citizen. That used to mean something.

This administration has contempt for our constitution and the American justice system. We used to say our justice system was the best in the world. This government thinks it is inefficient and ineffective. Constitutional rights -- what a hassle!

The US constitution is under attack, not by al-Qaeda, but by our own leaders. And we slumber and our rights our stolen in the middle of the night. Jose Padilla is a United States citizen. That used to mean something.

Casualty Reports

Pfc. John Dearing, 21

USMC Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20

Cpl. Jonathan F. Blair, 21

1st Lt. Dennis Zilinski, 23

Staff Sgt. Edward Karolasz, 25

Spc. Dominic Hinton, 24

Spc. Michael J. Idanan, 21

Pvt. Christopher Alcozer, 21

Child killed by US forces near Baquba on November 21, 2005. God Bless the Children who are living, and dying, in this insanity. May her family find peace.

War News for Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqi civilians killed and 14 injured in Kan'aan when a roadside bomb detonated near a passing U.S Humvee. Bodies of two women who were sisters and who worked for the Iraqi army found in Baiji. The women were abducted and killed by gunmen, police said. Body identified as Lebanese contractor Nidhal Adnan found in Dujail. One US Marine died on Sunday from gunshot wounds received on Saturday in the town of al-Karmah.

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed in a bomb explosion near Habbiniyah.

Operation Bruins: U.S. and Iraqi forces have launched “disruption operations” in northern Ramadi, seeking to dislodge insurgents in one of the most heavily entrenched cities in Anbar province.

Some 150 Iraqi soldiers and 300 Marines and soldiers assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Marine Division launched Operation Bruins late Saturday, officials said. The operation is “part of a series of disruption operations in Ramadi and is designed to set the conditions for successful elections in December.”

Iraqi politics: Reaching out to the Sunni Arab community, Iraqi leaders called for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces and said Iraq's opposition had a "legitimate right" of resistance. The communique -- finalized by Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders Monday -- condemned terrorism but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens.

Iraqi politics: The participants in Cairo agreed on "calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces ... control the borders and the security situation" and end terror attacks. On Monday, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr suggested U.S.-led forces should be able to leave Iraq by the end of next year.

Iraqi politics: A mortar exploded Tuesday near officials attending a ceremony in Tikrit in which Americans were handing over a base to Iraqis, a senior U.S. military spokesman said. No one was injured, the spokesman said. Attending the ceremony were Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander there.

Baghdad torture dens: The Iraqi government has ordered an investigation into the alleged abuse and torture of 173 prisoners, most of them Sunni Arabs, in an Interior Ministry cell in Baghdad. The Guardian reports that the men were discovered during a raid by a US patrol as it was looking for a missing teenage boy. The Associated Press reports, however, that the US raid may not have been accidental, and may have been aimed at "scoring points" with Sunni Arabs, whose participation in next month's general election is necessary if the US wants to be able to exit Iraq sometime in the next two years.

Baghdad torture dens: It has not been a good week for Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim leaders. After opposing Saddam Hussein's regime for decades from abroad and holding the moral high ground for the past 2-1/2 years as Sunni Arab insurgents routinely attacked their community, they now find themselves at the centre of a scandal. The discovery of a bunker at the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry where 170 men, many of them Sunnis, were held prisoner, beaten, half-starved and in some cases tortured, has left some leaders facing charges that they are no better than Saddam.

Basra torture dens: British-trained police operating in Basra have tortured at least two civilians to death with electric drills, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

Baghdad hospital: Inside the compound of Yarmouk hospital, the mud-coloured buildings are filthy and falling apart. Smashed windows provide the only lighting along the corridors. Children touting sweets or cigarettes thread their way through piles of rubbish. Hundreds of people, some pushing wheelchairs, others supporting crouched figures - all clutching files of papers and x-rays - squeeze through narrow metal gates between the different sections of the compound. There are the usual sort of hospital patients here: those with intestinal pains or broken limbs. But there are also Baghdad specialities: patients with car-bomb damage or mortar-shrapnel injuries or gunshot wounds.

The Devil Ghost of Iraq: DNA tests are being carried out to determine whether the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a recent US-led raid.

The Devil Ghost of Iraq: A top U.S. commander in Iraq said Tuesday he has "absolutely no reason" to believe the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, died in a weekend raid in Mosul.

Exporting terror: Pro-Western Jordan, spared major al Qaeda violence before this month's suicide bombings, risks copycat attacks by homegrown Islamist militants inspired by the insurgency in Iraq, security sources and analysts say.

Beneficiaries: Once a bitter enemy, Iran is emerging as a trade lifeline for Iraq as Baghdad seeks to rebuild an economy shattered by years of sanctions, neglect and corruption under Saddam Hussein and since his overthrow.

War history: The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the war in Iraq.

War history: Tony Blair had to persuade US President George Bush not to launch a military strike on the studios of TV station Al-Jazeera. According to sources it records Mr Bush suggesting that he might order the bombing of Al-Jazeera's studios in Qatar. And the transcript allegedly details how Mr Blair argued against an attack on the station's buildings in the business district of Doha, the capital city of Qatar, which is a key ally of the West in the Persian Gulf.

Shades of CPA: Standing next to the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon, the U.S. ambassador inaugurated a provincial reconstruction team in central Iraq on Monday -- launching a civilian-led approach to rebuilding the country that could take the burden off the U.S. military. The teams, made up of U.S. government workers led by a State Department official, are modeled on a program that has been considered a success in Afghanistan, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's last post.

GOP scumbags: Last week, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) lashed out at Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) on the House floor, and relayed remarks she claimed to have received from Marine Colonel Danny Bubp: "[He] asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do." As Avedon noted yesterday, Col. Bubp's background suggests he's a fairly predictable right-wing activist, a point which seemed to have been lost in the shuffle. But the story gets even more entertaining today -- Bubp is hanging Schmidt out to dry.

Support the troops: The Army and Marine Corps yesterday issued a recall for more than 18,000 body armor vests that did not pass ballistic requirements when they were manufactured in 2000 and 2001. The recall is in addition to the more than 5,000 Marine vests recalled in May after a Marine Corps Times investigation showed the vests had failed tests, yet were still approved and fielded to troops in the war zone

Our creeping Stalinism: UN human rights investigators yesterday condemned the US for denying them free access on fact-finding visits to the Guantánamo Bay base, where hundreds of detainees are being held without trial. Announcing their refusal to accept restrictions, the UN officials warned Washington that "the rule of international law could not be applied selectively".

Capital follies: After largely avoiding the subject since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lawmakers are suddenly confronting the issue of President Bush's handling of the war. Iraq is now a cloud over everything," said Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst specializing in Congress. "It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room."

Capital follies: The Pennsylvania congressman who has sparked a firestorm of controversy by calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq says Vice President Cheney will eventually agree with his position. Cheney, meanwhile, has unleashed another salvo against critics, calling them "corrupt and shameless" for accusing the administration of twisting pre-war intelligence.

Torture, American style: Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current intelligence officers and supervisors.

Torture, American style: The tiny Johnson County Airport is home to Aero Contractors Corp., a firm described by the New York Times as "a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service," that shuttles prisoners abroad for interrogation and suspected torture. The Times reports Aero was founded in 1979 by the chief pilot for Air America, a CIA "front" in Vietnam.

Chemical warfare: On Nov. 8, Italian public television showed a documentary renewing persistent charges that the United States had used white phosphorus rounds, incendiary munitions that the film incorrectly called chemical weapons, against Iraqis in Falluja last year. Many civilians died of burns, the report said. The half-hour film was riddled with errors and exaggerations, according to United States officials and independent military experts. But the State Department and Pentagon have so bungled their response - making and then withdrawing incorrect statements about what American troops really did when they fought a pitched battle against insurgents in the rebellious city - that the charges have produced dozens of stories in the foreign news media and on Web sites suggesting that the Americans used banned weapons and tried to cover it up.

Who says WP is a chemical weapon?: The US army knows that its use as a weapon is illegal. In the Battle Book published by US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, my correspondent David Traynier found the following sentence. "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."(5) Last night the blogger Gabriele Zamparini found a declassified document from the US Department of Defense, dated April 1991, and titled "Possible use of phosphorous chemical". "During the brutal crackdown that followed the Kurdish uprising," it alleges, "Iraqi forces loyal to President Saddam (Hussein) may have possibly used white phosphorous (WP) chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels and the populace in Erbil … and Dohuk provinces, Iraq. The WP chemical was delivered by artillery rounds and helicopter gunships. ... These reports of possible WP chemical weapon attacks spread quickly … hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled from these two areas"(6). The Pentagon is in no doubt, in other words, that white phosphorus is a chemical weapon.

Technowar: Over Iraq, the Predator UAV has been doing an increasing amount of the convoy escort. The Predator is much better at this role. It cruises at 166 kilometers per hour, and has an endurance of up to 40 hours. Unlike the military Cessnas, it has infra-red and low-light sensors as well as a synthetic aperture radar, making it a very capable all-weather platform. The Predator has also been equipped with the Hellfire missile, which has a range of nine kilometers and a speed of 430 meters per second. The Hellfire, designed as an anti-tank missile with an 18-pound shaped charge or a twenty-pound blast-fragmentation warhead, has become a lethal anti-terrorist weapon in numerous strikes over the past four years. For instance, the Israeli Defense Forces have used Hellfires from Apache helicopters to kill dozens of terrorists, usually key leaders or technicians.

Unequal sacrifice: He wasn't being patriotic. More than anything, he was bored.

Besides, two friends were signing up with him. "The buddy system," the recruiter had called it, promising the trio they'd be together for a year at least.

If they committed to four years, the army would throw in a bigger-than-usual cash bonus, too. They could show off their athleticism, travel around the world, be outdoor adventurers.

The classes at Virginia Western seemed so dull by comparison.

Zane Edwards of Roanoke County was 18 years old when he signed over the next four years of his life to the U.S. Army.

He did not foresee three tours of duty in Iraq.

Breaking the army: In conversations with troops in the brittle cities of Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit during the last four weeks, morale seems a fragile thing, especially among those in the line of fire, shot through with a sense of dread. Many expressed pride in their mission, and the hope that the budding political process would eventually destroy the insurgency. But others described a seemingly never-ending fight against an invisible enemy, and the toll of seeing friends die. "Morale is a roller coaster," said Lt. Rusten Currie, who has spent 10 months in Iraq. "We were all idealistic to begin with, wanting to find Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi, and bring them to justice - whatever that means. Now we just want to go home."

No strong stands: While many newspapers have fully backed the war since its start, many others have been critical of how it has been conducted and expressed concerns for future success. Yet few of those papers expressing doubts have advocated even a phased pullout. As recently as Thursday, just hours before Murtha's announcement, The New York Times, while extremely critical of President Bush, once again came out against withdrawal or any kind timetable for exiting.

Commentary

Jim Kunstler: America is leading the current crusade because we are the society most desperately addicted to oil, and the Middle East is where two-thirds of the world's remaining oil lies. The one thing that we apparently cannot bring ourselves to talk about is our addiction itself. The commuters whizzing around the edge cities and metroplexes of this land probably got a big charge out of Congressman Murtha's anti-war blast taking over drive-time radio on Friday. I wonder if they thought about how it might affect their commuting. This whole spectacle -- both the inept war itself and our debate about it here at home -- is particularly shameful for the official opposition, my party, the Democrats, because we could be talking about the so-called elephant-in-the-room, namely how we live in America and the tragic choices we've made, and the things we might do to change that -- but the party leadership is too brain-dead or craven to do that. As long as we don't, we're going to be wrassling a tarbaby in the Middle East.

Unless an anti-war opposition has a plan to withdraw from the project of suburban sprawl, we're going to have to keep soldiers in Iraq, if not in the cities, then out in desert bases guarding the oil works and keeping planes ready to fly in case some al-Zarqawi-type maniac mounts a coup in Saudi Arabia. It would certainly be legitimate for the Democratic party to oppose the idea that we can continue to be crippled by car-dependency, or that we ought to keep subsidizing that way of life -- which Vice-president Cheney called "non-negotiable." We'd better negotiate that or somebody else is going to negotiate it for us, and that is exactly what they are doing with IED's in Iraq and elsewhere.

Jeremy Scahill: None of the horrors playing out in Iraq today would be possible without the Democratic Party. And no matter how hard some party leaders try to deny it, this is their war too and will remain so until every troop is withdrawn. There is no question that the Bush administration is one of the most corrupt, violent and brutal in the history of this country but that doesn't erase the serious responsibility the Democrats bears for the bloodletting in Iraq.

As disingenuous as the Administration's claims that Iraq had WMDs is the flimsy claim by Democratic lawmakers that they were somehow duped into voting for the war. The fact is that Iraq posed no threat to the United States in 2003 any more than it did in 1998 when President Clinton bombed Baghdad. John Kerry and his colleagues knew that. The Democrats didn't need false intelligence to push them into overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime. It was their policy; a policy made the law of the land not under George W. Bush, but under President Bill Clinton when he signed the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, formally initiating the process of regime change in Iraq.

Manipulated intelligence is but a small part of a bigger, bipartisan 15-year assault on Iraq's people. If the Democrats really want to look at how America was led into this war, they need to go back further than the current president's inauguration.

Editorial: Mr. Murtha, who is considered a military expert in the House, also says the U.S. military is being severely weakened with nothing to show for it.

The president has been unable to demonstrate otherwise. He makes speech after speech on the need for the war but offers no substantive solutions other than "staying the course." It is clear the Iraqis are woefully unable to defend themselves and won't be for quite some time.

If we do not pull the troops out immediately, how long will we tolerate a situation that shows no improvement?

That is the debate that should be taking place. If nothing in Iraq is going the way the administration said it would, if Mr. Bush cannot make a convincing case for remaining there - and he hasn't so far - then we have no alternative but to get out.

Mr. Murtha's call should force the administration to provide evidence to back up its insistence that the war should continue. And it should embolden critics of the war in Congress to insist on a substantive debate.

Mr. Bush himself says people "should feel comfortable about expressing their opinions about Iraq," that it's a "worthy debate."

OK, then let's have it.

Eugene Robinson: The administration is losing the public debate because of its many missteps and failures, but also because of its insistence on conflating the war in Iraq with the larger "war on terror." Does anyone understand what "war on terror" means? The country was attacked by a murderous association of Islamic fundamentalists led by Osama bin Laden. Last we heard, he was still alive and well, probably in some cave in northwestern Pakistan. That's a long way from Iraq.

The president says that Iraq is a test of our nation's resolve, that anything less than victory will confirm the enemy's view that America lacks the stomach for a fight. But "stay the course" doesn't play as a strategy when the course seems to lead nowhere. What is victory in Iraq? When will we know we've won? When the simmering, low-level civil war we've ignited sparks into full flame and somebody takes over the country? When a new government in Baghdad declares its eternal brotherhood and friendship with Tehran?

Digby: To some extent civilization is nothing more than leashing the beast within. When you go to the dark side, no matter what the motives, you run a terrible risk of destroying yourself in the process. I worry about the men and women who are engaging in this torture regime. This is dangerous to their psyches. But this is true on a larger sociological scale as well. For many, many moons, torture has been a simple taboo --- you didn't question its immorality any more than you would question the immorality of pedophilia. You know that it's wrong on a visceral, gut level. Now we are debating it as if there really is a question as to whether it's immoral --- and, more shockingly, whether it's a positive good. Our country is now openly discussing the efficacy of torture as a method for extracting information. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase "defining deviancy down" he couldn't ever have dreamed that we would in a few short decades be at a place where torture is no longer considered a taboo. It certainly makes all of his concerns about changes to the nuclear family (and oral sex) seem trivial by comparison. We are now a society that on some official levels has decided that torture is no longer a deviant, unspeakable behavior, but rather a useful tool. It's not hidden. People publicly discuss whether torture is really torture if it features less than "pain equavalent to organ failure." People no longer instinctively recoil at the word --- it has become a launching pad for vigorous debate about whether people are deserving of certain universal human rights. It spirals down from there. When the smoke finally clears, and we can see past that dramatic day on 9/11 and put the threat of islamic fundamentalism into its proper perspective, I wonder if we'll be able to go back to our old ethical framework? I'm not so sure we will even want to. It's not that it changed us so much as it revealed us, I think. A society that can so easily discard it's legal and ethical taboos against cruelty and barbarism, is an unstable society to begin with.

Commendation

Award: A U.S. soldier from the tiny Pacific island of Pohnapei was awarded a Bronze Star with Valor here Monday for bravery during combat in Fallujah, Iraq, last year.

Command Sgt. Maj. James A. Benedict pinned the medal on Spc. Rodney Roby, 22, on the Camp Red Cloud parade ground before several hundred soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division’s Special Troops Battalion.

Casualty Reports

As of Monday, Nov. 21, 2005, at least 2,097 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 1,638 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. The figures include five military civilians.

Local story: Dennis W. Zilinski II, 23, died in the line of duty while serving as an officer in the Army in Iraq, township officials said Monday. The Department of Defense has not publicly confirmed details about Zilinski's death, such as when and where it occurred. Howell Police Chief Ronald Carter confirmed that members of his department accompanied Army officials when they notified the family Saturday night of their son's death. About a dozen cars were parked Monday at the home on Katie Court, where a State Police trooper said the family was accepting visits only from friends and relatives.

Local story: A single church bell tolled for three minutes Monday, with each mournful bong followed by a prolonged pause.

The rapid firing of military rifles by an Army honor guard ensued, followed by the playing of taps and the careful folding of the American flag by military pallbearers.

Two church bells then began ringing just before the honor guard presented the flags to Army Staff Sgt. Stephen Sutherland's widow and mother.

Local story: Sgt. Luis Reyes of Aurora called his young wife from Kuwait to tell her he was headed to Iraq, but he never completed the journey.

The 26-year-old was killed last week when the bus he was riding in rolled.

Reyes and nine other members of the 947th Engineer Company of the Colorado National Guard were injured.

Reyes died from the injuries, according to the Department of Defense, which is investigating the cause of the accident.

Local story: Anthony R.C. Yost was two months away from retiring with 20 years in the military when he was killed, family members say.

"He was coming home (to Millington) in January; he wanted to get out so that he could be there for his 2-year-old son, A.J. (Anthony James)," said Yost's grandmother, Fern M. Yost, 79, of Clio.

A suicide bomber on Friday killed Yost, an Army Special Forces master sergeant, in Iraq, a federal Department of Defense Web site shows.

Local story: A young Camp Lejeune Marine and a 49-year-old soldier called to service in the National Guard were buried this weekend in Western North Carolina.

Friends, family and a Marine honor guard dressed in white dress caps and dark jackets gathered Sunday to bury Lance Cpl. Daniel Freeman Swaim in Yadkin County with military honors.

Swaim, 19, was killed Nov. 10 while searching for insurgents outside an Iraqi town near the Syrian border. Family members said he was killed by an explosive device.

Swaim joined the Marine Corps last summer after graduating from Forbush High School with high honors. He began his first tour of duty in Iraq in August.

Canton native Staff Sgt. Mike Parrott also was killed Nov. 10, when he was shot by a sniper as he patrolled an Iraqi highway.

Local story: A 101st Airborne Division soldier who was born and raised in Gurnee and attended Woodland Elementary School in Gages Lake was killed in an attack during combat operations in Iraq.

The Army confirmed that two soldiers with the 101st Airborne, including Pfc. Anthony Alex Gaunky, 19, of Sparta, Wis., formerly of Gurnee, were killed in an attack in Iraq.

Gaunky and Spec. Vernon Widner, 34, of Redlands, Calif., died from injuries suffered Thursday near Bayji, Iraq, said Fort Campbell, Ky., spokesman John Minton.

Local story: 2nd Lt. Justin Smith: A natural athlete and incredibly fit, Smith was a financial whiz and managed a good word about everyone.

“He had a bright disposition and had calm, soothing smile, which is pretty powerful for a leader,” noted Lt. Col. Fran Reese, executive officer of Campbell’s ROTC program. He became a platoon leader and his battalion was deployed to Kuwait in February and soon went to Iraq. From the beginning Smith fearlessly faced danger as he participated in over 100 combat patrols. During some of these patrols he encountered Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), bombs that are put into everyday items including soda cans or road kill. The enemy uses these innocent items to trick soldiers into detonating one. On Nov. 7 around 5 p.m. a vehicle carrying explosives went through the checkpoint, one of the enemy’s most effective ways of attacking. This explosion killed four Americans, including Smith, and one Iraqi interpreter.

Local story: Family and friends are mourning the loss of Dominic Sacco, an Albany High graduate who gave his life fighting in Iraq.

Sacco was commanding a tank in Taji, near Baghdad, when he was shot in the side. He died instantly.

The 32 year-old soldier was also a new father. He was home in the Albany area just two months ago to visit his son Anthony for the first time.

Local story: A northeastern Indiana Marine killed in Iraq transformed himself from the "worst swimmer" on the team to a fine athlete over four years, his coach said.

Scott A. Zubowski, 20, and another Marine died when a roadside bomb exploded during combat operations near Fallujah in Iraq's Al Anbar province on Nov. 12, the military said.

Zubowski was on his second tour of duty in Iraq. His first tour was from February to October 2004. He returned to Iraq in July and was set to come home before his 21st birthday in March, his father, Rick Zubowski, had said.

Local story: Tributes have been paid to the British soldier killed in a bomb attack in Iraq at the weekend. Sergeant John ‘Jonah’ Jones, 31, from the 1st Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, died from injuries sustained in a roadside bomb attack in the southern Iraq city of Basra on Sunday. He had been on a routine patrol as the commander when the incident occurred, the Ministry of Defence confirmed. Four other soldiers were also injured during the attack. Sgt Jones, who was from Birmingham, was married with one son, five-year-old Jack.

Local story: The remains of the two Filipino workers killed in a bomb explosion in Iraq arrived in Manila on Tuesday afternoon.

Grief-stricken relatives of Ponciano Men-men Loque and Benjie Bongolan Carreon received the caskets at the cargo area of Qatar Airways at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

Loque and Carreon were among the more than 60 people killed when a mosque was bombed in Baghdad last November 11.

Local story: Army Staff Sgt. James Estep had such a strong sense of foreboding that he would die in Iraq that he went over detailed funeral plans and made special family visits before his Oct. 2 deployment.

The last time I saw him, he said, 'Dad, I love you and probably won't never see you again,"' Estep's stepfather, Richard Hayton, told the Orlando Sentinel. "Like he'd had a premonition."

Estep, 26 and a father of three, was one of four soldiers killed by a roadside bomb in Taji, Iraq, on Nov. 15.

Terror Update: November 21, 2005 Zarqawi DEAD: Checking:

IRAQ has no confirmation but is checking reports Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have been killed during fighting in northern Iraq, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said today. Mr Zebari said senior militants were present in a house in the city of Mosul when US and Iraqi forces stormed it on Saturday, causing some of those inside to blow themselves up, but it could not yet be determined if Zarqawi was among those killed.

Bin Laden ALIVE: Simple Questions:

Those who advocate a sudden withdraw from Iraq should answer a couple simple questions. Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with Zarqawi, Bin Laden and Zawahiri in control Iraq? Would we be safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent upon the destruction of our country.

War News for Monday, 21 November 2005 Bring 'em on: U.S. troops have killed five members of the same family, including two children, and wounded four others north of Baghdad. Bring 'em on: US forces start new offensive in Ramadi. VP of Torture: A former top State Department official said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney provided the "philosophical guidance" and "flexibility" that led to the torture of detainees in U.S. facilities. ERM... Palestine?: The Israeli daily Haaretz has disclosed that the US has approved of changing its approach regarding the greater Middle East project, expressing its readiness to list the Jewish state in its attempts towards creating democracy and human rights in the region. Bogey Man Dead?: US authorities are looking into whether Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was killed in a gunfight in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a US official said on Sunday, but a White House spokesman said that was “highly unlikely.” War on Error: Once trumpeted as one of the Justice Department's significant triumphs against terrorism, the case targeting the so-called "Detroit sleeper cell" began less than a week after the attack on the World Trade Center. It was only after a jury convicted two men of supporting terrorism that the flimsiness of the government's case became clear. Shake 'n Bake: As became evident last week, it is undeniable that WP was used against Iraqis in the battle for Fallujah which involved US forces in the fiercest urban fighting since the battle for Hue City in Vietnam in 1968. Innocents were killed, and the use of these weapons has been denied or covered up. Past experience suggests that it will be difficult to find out the reasons for using WP or if civilians were among the victims. WP - British Troops: Col Tim Collins, the controversial Iraq war commander, trained his soldiers to use white phosphorus, which burns through flesh to the bone, in combat against enemy troops. The admission by the former Special Air Service officer, revealed in his autobiography Rules of Engagement, contradicts claims by the Ministry of Defence that the chemical was only ever used to create a smokescreen. Policing Basra: British troops smashed into a police station to rescue the two soldiers and later arrested more than a dozen others. But now they more or less stay out of Basra, leaving Iraq's second city at the mercy of a police force that even its commanders say they barely control. There have been dozens of assassinations, including that of at least one foreign journalist. Testing New Weapons: Following the chemical reaction, it is produced a shockwave whose destructive power is immense; the new projectile is especially useful against buildings. The US marines used this invention in the battle of Fallujah, a report published in specialized magazine informing that one such projectile disintegrated an entire one level masonry building from 100 meters. According to Human Rights Watch, thermobaric weapons "kill and injure in a particularly brutal manner over a wide area. In urban settings it is very difficult to limit the effect of this weapon to combatants”. For these reasons, the tests and battles in which these weapons were used have been kept quiet, the US marines risking a scandal of large proportions. Reduction in Troop levels: American commanders of the war in Iraq have drawn up a bold plan to start pulling troops out of the country after elections next month. The plan, which has been submitted to Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, calls for more than 60,000 troops — over a third of the total — to leave by the end of next year. OZ go home: The spokesman for the Prime Minister of Iraq says Australian troops stationed in the south of the country are not required in the area. Dr Leith Kubba, the spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al Jaafari, says he has been to Samawah, the capital of al Muthanna province where the Australians are based. Korea Reduction: Officials in Seoul say the South Korean government has approved a proposal to withdraw one-third of the country's troops from Iraq, while extending the remaining soldiers' deployment by a year. Neighbours: No world country, including the US, would dare stop Baghdad from approaching Tehran since Iraq is an independent state, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was quoted as saying Sunday evening. Opinion and Commentary Chambers of Death:

The U.S.-led occupation, that was forecast to end dictatorship and introduce democracy, seems to have been a harbinger of more violence, more oppression and more killings. Terrorist attacks are surging and suicide bombers mushrooming. And there seems to be no end to abuses and atrocities whether by U.S. troops, government security forces or the secretive and fearful militias. In the aftermath of U.S. occupation, there is no Iraqi family or home without a tragic story to tell or a calamity to moan. Acts of violence and terror taking place in Iraq are unprecedented in their horror and barbarism. These are perhaps the ugliest crimes and most appalling human rights violations in the history of mankind. Not every thing reaches the outside world. Even international media representatives based in Iraq are not aware of them as they, for security reasons, spend their reporting stints in fortified hideouts in Baghdad. Horrendous crimes are being committed in Iraq in addition to major bombings the terrorist launch to attract international media attention. Mass killings and liquidations have become the norm with kidnapping a way of life and identity card murder a daily practice. Mutilated bodies thrown on roadsides and garbage dumps have become a common sight. Amid the gloom and uncertainty about the future, reports surface of prisoner abuses and squandering of millions of dollars by government ministries. Death counts have lost their significance in Iraq with fatal incidents, bombings and trigger-happy militia gangs killing hundreds and even thousands very week. In the midst of this horror, assassinations of Iraqi professionals, former army officers, Baathists, clerics and Iraqis of note continue with impunity. Some Iraqis may understand that it is beyond the power of the government and the mighty U.S. army to put an end to the insurgency. But they cannot understand why atrocities like those of Abu Ghraib and most recently those of the secret jail run by the Interior Ministry could happen. They cannot understand why Iraqi and U.S. forces cannot put an end to the abduction of innocent people and the assassination of university professors, medical doctors and other professionals. Every now and then the government sets up an investigation committee to look into incidents like these but to no avail. We know that these committees are formed but we are never told about their outcome. So the killers, the torturers, the kidnappers, the corrupt officials, the liars and the cheats are free. We the innocent people have become their prisoners. This is exactly the reality of the current situation in our country, the ominous harbinger of even much worse to come.

Genocide:

Regardless of whether US policy toward Iraq is to be classified as genocide or not, it is important that we as Americans begin to understand the magnitude of the crimes committed by our country’s government; that the number of deaths is even large enough to merit comparisons to the Cambodian Genocide ought to be enough to galvanize many Americans into opposition to the war and the occupation of Iraq. The criminal war against the people of Iraq is still going on, and it must be our utmost priority to end the campaign of colonization and extermination. We must do absolutely everything that we can to ensure that not another Iraqi dies at the hands of the US government. We must demand that American troops leave Iraq immediately. Every day that US troops remain in Iraq, the slaughter continues, and the suffering endured by the people of Iraq and the people of the United States increases.

Lose Now or Lose Later and destroy the Army:

Not long ago wise heads offered some advice to those of us who had argued since 2003 that the Iraq war was sold on false pretenses: give it up. The 2004 election, they said, showed that we would never convince the American people. They suggested that we stop talking about how we got into Iraq and focus instead on what to do next. It turns out that the wise heads were wrong. A solid majority of Americans now believe that we were misled into war. And it is only now, when the public has realized the truth about the past, that serious discussions about where we are and where we're going are able to get a hearing... ..defenders of our current policy have had to make a substantive argument: we can't leave Iraq now, because a civil war will break out after we're gone. One is tempted to say that they should have thought about that possibility back when they were cheerleading us into this war. But the real question is this: When, exactly, would be a good time to leave Iraq? The fact is that we're not going to stay in Iraq until we achieve victory, whatever that means in this context. At most, we'll stay until the American military can take no more. ...the war has been fought on borrowed money and borrowed time. And time is running out. With some military units on their third tour of duty in Iraq, the superb volunteer army that Mr. Bush inherited is in increasing danger of facing a collapse in quality and morale similar to the collapse of the officer corps in the early 1970's. So the question isn't whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have... Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever we leave. If so, we're better off leaving sooner rather than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, "We can lose in Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose."

US Political Reality:

Herein lies the real political crisis in this country: the Democrats are not an opposition party, nor are they an antiwar party"never were. At best, they are a loyal opposition. The Democrats ran a pro-war campaign in 2004 with Kerry struggling to convince people that Dems do occupation and war better. The current head of the DNC, Howard Dean, never met a war he didn't adore until he realized he could exploit the energy and sincere hopes of millions of peace-loving Americans. Dean wasn't ever antiwar. In fact, during the 2004 campaign he attacked Kerry for opposing the Gulf War while laying out his own pro-war record. "In 1991, I supported Gulf War. I supported the first President Bush," declared Dean. "Senator Kerry who criticizes my foreign policy, he voted against that war. I supported the Afghanistan war, because I felt it was about our national defense -- 3,000 of our people were killed. I supported President Clinton going into Bosnia and Kosovo." How can Howard Dean look people in the eye today and pretend to speak with any credibility as an antiwar voice? When the hawkish Democrat Rep. John Murtha bravely stepped forward to call for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq this week, he was quickly blasted by the White House and simultaneously disowned by powerful Democrats like John Kerry. Occupation lovers together again. The bloody scandal of the Iraq occupation has opened a rare and clear window into the truth about this country: there is one party represented in Washington -- one that supports preemptive war and regime change. The reality is that the Democrats could stop this war if the will was there. They could shut down the Senate every day, not just for a few hours one afternoon. They could disrupt business as usual and act as though the truth were true: this war should never have happened and it must end now. The country would be behind them if they did it. But they won't. They will hem and haw and call for more troops and throw out epic lies about the US becoming a stabilizing force in Iraq and blame the Republicans for their own complicity and enthusiasm in the 15 years of bipartisan crimes against Iraq. Why? Because they support war against Iraq. All of this begs for a multiparty system in this country and the emergence of a true opposition. The epic scale of the disaster in Iraq calls for epic lessons to be learned at home. Like the Bush White House, the Democrats have lost their credibility. They are undeserving of the blank check of "Anybody But Bush" and should never be allowed to cash it again. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who heads up the House Democrats election campaign, criticized Murtha's call for immediate withdrawal, saying, "At the right time, we will have a position." It is statements like that that should result in Emanuel and his colleagues losing theirs.

Photoblog, November 20, 2005. No exit in China:

War News for Sunday, November 20, 2005 Bring 'em on: One British soldier killed and four injured by road bomb in Basra. Bring 'em on: At least twenty four killed, including a US marine, in an ambush north of Baghdad. Bring 'em on: British trained policemen have tortured at least two civilians to death with electric drills in Basra. Bring 'em on: Centcom announce Zarqawi Lt number #,### + 2 captured in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Former Baath party member and his son assassinated in Kerbala. Bring 'em on: Two Iraqi women working for the Iraqi army kidnapped in Tikrit. Bring 'em on: Two members of Iraqi Islamic Party shot dead in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: US soldier killed by small arms fire in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Death toll now at fifty after suicide bomb attack on funeral in Baquba. Bring 'em on: One US marine and fifteen civilians killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. Bring 'em on: One man seriously wounded after mortar attack on US position in Hilla. Bring 'em on: Three Iraqi soldiers killed and five wound in an attack on their patrol in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Three children killed and a man wounded in a mortar attack on a US position in Mahaweel. War on Silly: Two Iraqi men were taken into custody Monday in Tikrit after a routine stop by a Task Force Band of Brothers patrol near Ad Dujayl. Both men tested positive for explosives residue and a printed receipt for a land mine was found in the vehicle along with anti-coalition propaganda. Better Jaw-Jaw than War-War: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has suggested during a three-day conference on Iraqi reconciliation that he is willing to talk to violent opponents of his government if they contact him. Talabani said during the Cairo meeting, which brings together many of the disparate groups striving for political power in Iraq, that if the Iraqi resistance desires to contact him, he would welcome the move. Bit Late: The Pentagon's leadership, recognizing it was caught off-guard by difficulties in pacifying Iraq after the invasion, is poised to approve a sweeping directive that will elevate what it calls "stability operations" to a core military mission comparable to full-scale combat. It's the Occupation: A leading Iraqi Sunni academic called Saturday for a timetable outlining the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, calling the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq the country's greatest problem. Speaking at a preparatory meeting at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo ahead of a wide-ranging national reconciliation conference, Harith al-Dari, head of the influential Association of Moslem Scholars said: 'The claim that ending the occupation would lead to chaos is merely a pretext for lengthening an illegitimate situation.' Opinion and Commentary History Lesson:

As we puzzle over how to end our nightmare in Iraq, the central question is the one raised by The Times on Aug. 7:

"How much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavor to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for?"

Not this Times, though. It was The Times of London on Aug. 7, 1920, as a ferocious insurgency threatened the British occupation of Iraq. The British had also started out thinking that they were liberators, only to find that they had catastrophically underestimated Iraqi nationalism. They ended up being sucked into what Lawrence of Arabia described as "a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor." Yet, ultimately, the British did manage to extricate themselves, providing lessons for us. In my last column, I looked at two options for Iraq and found both wanting. Immediate withdrawal would risk abandoning the country to civil war and chaos. But President Bush’s approach — grim ly staying the course indefinitely — inflames nationalistic resentment and feeds the insurgency. So what should we do? My vote is to set target dates for withdrawing our troops. I suggest that we announce that we intend to pull out at least half our troops by the end of 2006 — and the very last soldier by the end of 2007. We would also pledge that we will not keep any military bases in Iraq.

Insurgency Growing:

On Oct. 16, for example, a group of adults and children gathered around a burned Humvee on the edge of Ramadi. There was a crater in the road, left by a bomb that had killed five US soldiers and two Iraqi soldiers the previous day. Some of the children were playing hide and seek, and others laughing while pelting the vehicle with stones, when a US F-15 fighter jet fired on the crowd. The US military said subsequently it had killed 70 insurgents in air strikes, and knew of no civilian deaths. Among the “insurgents” killed were six-year-old Muhammad Salih Ali, who was buried in a plastic bag after relatives collected what they believed to be parts of his body; four-year-old Saad Ahmed Fuad; and his eight-year-old sister, Haifa, who had to be buried without one of her legs as her family were unable to find it. US forces increasingly use airstrikes to reduce their own casualties. They also work with Iraqi forces on search-and-destroy missions to retaliate after a successful attack on their troops, or to intimidate the population ahead of a US-choreographed political process. Most Iraqis are indifferent to the political timetable imposed by the occupiers — from the nominal handover of sovereignty to the bizarre three months of sectarian and ethnic wrangling about the interim government and the declaration of a “yes” vote on the draft constitution by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice within hours of the ballot boxes closing. They think the whole process is intended to divert their attention from the main issues — the occupation, corruption, pillaging of Iraq’s resources, and the interim government’s failure on human rights. A recent Human Rights Watch report gave fresh details of torture of detainees by US forces in Iraq. At a military base near Fallujah, Mercury, abuse was not only overlooked but sometimes ordered. The report describes routine, severe beatings of prisoners, and the application of burning chemicals to detainees’ eyes and skin, to make them glow in the dark. Thousands have been kept for more than a year without charge or trial, including the writer Muhsin Al-Khafaji, who was arrested in May 2003. Women are taken as hostages by US soldiers to persuade fugitive male relatives to surrender or confess to terrorist acts. Sarah Taha Al-Jumaily, 20, from Fallujah, was arrested twice: On Oct. 8 she was accused of being the daughter of Musab Al-Zarqawi, despite her father, a member of a pan-Arab party, having been detained by US troops for more than two months; and on Oct. 19 she was arrested and accused of being a terrorist. Hundreds of people demonstrated, and workers went on strike to demand her release. The Interior Ministry states that 122 women remain detained, charged with the novel crime of being “potential suicide bombers”. As large-scale US-led military operations continue, the health situation on the ground is at breaking point. The Iraqi health infrastructure, doctors and hospital staff are unable to cope with the deepening humanitarian crisis. No wonder more Iraqis are supporting the resistance. Armed resistance is in accordance with the 1978 UN General Assembly resolution that reaffirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence ... from ... foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle”. The Iraqi National Foundation Congress (INFC), an umbrella group of parties and civil society organizations, is leading political resistance. There is also civil and community resistance, involving mosques, women’s organizations, human-rights groups and unions, which are linking up with international anti-war groups and anti-globalization movements. Most Iraqis believe that they have a right to more than a semblance of independence. The lesson history taught us in Vietnam, that stubborn national resistance can wear down the most powerful armies, is now being learned in Iraq.

This article was written by a former prisoner of Saddam's regime.

Billmon:

Indeed. Not that the "bad boys" of SCIRI and the Badr Organization particularly needed any encouragement from Uncle Sam. But now that the Salvadoran Option is up and running -- very smoothly, by all accounts -- one can wonder why the Americans suddenly changed their mind, and busted down the doors of one of SCIRI's secret prisons the other day. Did things get out of hand, ala Abu Ghraib? (Ala the entire war, for that matter.) Or was the Death Squad Program-Related Activities Bureau ordered to switch gears, once the Finding a Political Solution to the Insurgency Department finally realized that sending Shi'a death squads out to torture and kill Sunni politicians, their bodyguards and their supporters was a bit counterproductive? These kind of bureacratic snafus happen. Personally, I think it probably just dawned on the architects of the Salvadoran Option that while they thought they were riding with the bad boys, the real bad boys were out riding with the Iranian secret police, who don't need any Spanish lessons on how to run a dirty war. And so now we have Iranian-backed Shi'a death squads hunting their political enemies through the slums of Baghdad under the pretext of fighting the insurgency, while Sunni Baathists (and/or their jihadist allies) blow up Shi'a mosques at prayer time under the pretext of fighting the American occupation. Meanwhile, back here in the good old U.S. of A (the A is for assholes) the ruling party is reliving Joe McCarthy's glory years, while the leaders of the so-called opposition party try to hide their worthless carcasses behind an ex-Marine congressman who finally saw one too many broken bodies warehoused at Walter Reed and suffered a temporary fit of sanity, causing him to blurt out the ugly truth that the war is hopelessly lost. For which crime he will now be the subject of an ethics investigation by the same people who made Jack Abramoff an honorary member of the House Republican Caucus.

WAR NEWS FOR SATURDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2005 Bring ‘em on: A suicide attacker killed at least 36 in a Shi’ite funeral procession north of Baghdad. The US military also said five soldiers were killed on Saturday and five wounded in a pair of roadside bombings in northern Iraq, near Beiji. (This report is not on Iraq Coalition Casualties site yet. – and not confirmed by Cent Com, but AP is reporting it.) US and Iraqi forces get into a fight up in Mosul, with five insurgents and four police officers killed. Bring ‘em on: Bomb kills two US soldiers and two Iraqi policemen in Baquba. (Not confirmed by Cent Com, may be part of total cited above.) Bring ‘em on: Marines are still living – and dying –in Iraq’s most unforgiving province. You don't know who you're fighting," Spier says. "You do a patrol down the street, a man says hello, then jumps behind a berm and starts firing an AK-47 at you." Bring ‘em on: Thirteen killed in Baghdad market car bombing. Two policemen and civilian killed at checkpoint in Baquba. Iraqi forces thwarted an attack on the Italian embassy. Bring ‘em on: Car bomb in central Baghdad injures five Iraqis (different from above, I believe.) Bring ‘em on: Tortured men look like “Holocaust victims” Some had suffered beatings so severe that their skin had peeled off, and three men had been kept locked in a cupboard where they could not move. All the others were packed, blindfolded, into three rooms nine feet long and 11 feet wide. Instruments of torture and beating were found hidden in a false ceiling. Witnesses also said that the guards in charge of the detainees, all but three of whom were Sunnis, at an interior ministry bunker in central Baghdad, wore combat fatigues of the Shia Badr Brigades militia.(see story below in opinions) "Because of the appalling overcrowding, some of the most badly treated were squashed on to floors and their skins got stuck to the floor," said a witness. Bring ‘em on: A Look at Major Insurgent Attacks in Iraq. The number of dead Iraqi civilians from these attacks listed, from this year alone, is 630. The victims are mainly Shi’ias. Bring ‘em on: Scores killed in Iraq suicide attacks. Suicide bombers killed at least 74 worshippers at two Shia mosques near the Iranian border on Friday. Bring ‘em on: Double suicide attack claims six lives in Baghdad on Friday. Forty people wounded by these suicide car bombs directed towards a Baghdad hotel and Interior Ministry complex. (Later reports say eight Iraqis killed.) Bring ‘em on: UPDATE to above: A young boy stood in front of his family's shack, which now was a pile of twisted sheet metal and cinder blocks. His parents and brother had been sent to the hospital. Eight Iraqis died in this double suicide bombing. Bring ‘em on: A doctor and head of a Baghdad hospital was shot dead on Thursday inside his clinic in Baghdad. Another US soldier died in a vehicle accident on Thursday in Iraq. Three civilians injured when a car bomb targeting a US-led coalition forces detonated in Kan’an. More than 200 alleged insurgents have been killed in Operation Steel Curtain, including 89 in Ubaydi. Bring ‘em on: Iraqi, US forces killed 32 gunmen in Ramadi. Rebels were firing from a mosque. Bring ‘em on: A Sheikh in a Shi’ite mosque was assassinated in Baghdad. His driver was also killed. Three civilians killed and five wounded by clashes between US forces and insurgents in Ramadi. Three civilians wounded by suicide car bomb directed at US patrol near Baquba. Shi’ite policeman kidnapped from his home in Baghdad. He was also a candidate for the upcoming elections. US soldier killed in vehicle accident in Tal Afar. Two Iraqi policemen killed and seven wounded by roadside bomb directed towards a US-Iraqi patrol in Buhruz. Bring ‘em on: Eight insurgents, including a woman, were killed in clashes in Mosul by US-Iraqi forces. Four more insurgents were arrested. Morter rounds fired at the home of the governor of Diyalah, two injured. Eleven civilians and three policemen wounded by suicide car bomber in Baghdad. Three policemen injured when gunmen attack them in eastern Baghdad. Former member of Baath party killed in Karbala. Bring ‘em on: Car bombs kill 48 in Iraq on Saturday, which followed more than 80 Iraqis dying from suicide bomb blasts on Friday, while Bush pledges never to relent in his war on terror. One of Saturday’s bombings happened near a condolence tent for a funeral for a Shi’ite tribal sheikh in a small town north of Baghdad. Bush said: "Iraq is making amazing progress from the days of being under the thumb of a brutal dictator.” (I don’t know how much more progress they can stand.) U.S. and Iraqi forces have been conducting operations against Sunni Arab insurgents throughout western Iraq in recent weeks in an effort to stem the insurgency ahead of the election and increase the ability of Sunnis to make it to the polls. (And the end results are exactly the opposite – the insurgency grows and the locals cannot vote. When is the Bush administration going to notice this?) At the last election in January, most Sunni Arabs either boycotted or were too scared by insurgent threats to vote, so the minority community, once influential under Saddam, ended up with next to no representation in parliament. (Or they were too busy trying to find food, water and shelter to vote – did they even have voting places open across Fallujah in January?) Bring ‘em on: UPDATE: Sixty killed and 70 injured in Shi’ia funeral. Twenty killed in Baghdad bombing at marketplace. Four more Iraqis killed in different areas of Baghdad on Saturday. (Total: 84. That follows over 80 killed on Friday. To imagine how many this would be in the US, population-wise, multiply by 10 or 12.) Bring ‘em on: Iraqi rally hears of Sunni torture allegations. The rally, organised by the Sunni Muslim Iraqi Islamic Party and the Voice of Freedom human rights group, heard accounts of how men were taken from their homes to the now-notorious Baghdad bunker and to other clandestine Interior Ministry prisons. One victim, Omar Ahmed Al-Bayati, said 50 armed men raided his home in the Binuk district of Baghdad in June and took away him and his father, a general in deposed president Saddam Hussein's army, as well as his brother, a policeman. He said they were blindfolded, had their hands tied behind their backs and were tortured before he was released after three days and told to return with $120,000 to secure the release of his father and brother. Bayati said he could only raise $70,000 and was told where to deliver the money. "They took the money and fetched my father and brother in two police cars without registration plates," Bayati said. "They got them out and shot them in the head before my eyes," he said. Bring ‘em on: Gunman wearing Iraqi army uniforms attack a house and kill four people in Iskandaria. US troops kill three civilians who were in a vehicle carrying a coffin to the cemetery in Najaf. In a statement, the military said Iraqi troops carred out some 1,250 anti-terror patrols in Baghdad. Bring ‘em on: US Soldier dies of wounds at Landstuhl, from an attack near the city of Bayji on November 17, 2005. REPORTS The next two articles are well worth reading in their entirety. THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq. The phenomenon of death squads operating in Iraq has become generally accepted over recent months. However, in its treatment of the issue, the mainstream media has zealously followed a line of attributing extrajudicial killings to unaccountable Shia militias who have risen to prominence with the electoral victory of Ibramhim Jafaari’s Shia-led government in January. The following article examines both the way in which the information has been widely presented and whether that presentation has any actual basis in fact. Concluding that the attribution to Shia militias is unsustainable, the article considers who the intellectual authors of these crimes against humanity are and what purpose they serve in the context of the ongoing occupation of the country. THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: The Man Who Sold the War. Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson. The INC's choice for the worldwide print exclusive was equally easy: Chalabi contacted Judith Miller of The New York Times. Miller, who was close to I. Lewis Libby and other neoconservatives in the Bush administration, had been a trusted outlet for the INC's anti-Saddam propaganda for years. Not long after the CIA polygraph expert slipped the straps and electrodes off al-Haideri and declared him a liar, Miller flew to Bangkok to interview him under the watchful supervision of his INC handlers. Miller later made perfunctory calls to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, but despite her vaunted intelligence sources, she claimed not to know about the results of al-Haideri's lie-detector test. Instead, she reported that unnamed "government experts" called his information "reliable and significant" -- thus adding a veneer of truth to the lies. Her front-page story, which hit the stands on December 20th, 2001, was exactly the kind of exposure Rendon had been hired to provide. AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES, declared the headline. "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer," Miller wrote, "said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." If verified, she noted, "his allegations would provide ammunition to officials within the Bush administration who have been arguing that Mr. Hussein should be driven from power partly because of his unwillingness to stop making weapons of mass destruction, despite his pledges to do so." …By law, the Bush administration is expressly prohibited from disseminating government propaganda at home. But in an age of global communications, there is nothing to stop it from planting a phony pro-war story overseas -- knowing with certainty that it will reach American citizens almost instantly. …….."For us, it's a question of patriotism," he says. "It's not a question of politics, and that's an important distinction. I feel very strongly about that personally. If brave men and women are going to be put in harm's way, they deserve support." But in Iraq, American troops and Iraqi civilians were put in harm's way, in large part, by the false information spread by Rendon and the men he trained in information warfare. THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Poor Iraqis Face Struggle for Survival. “We are lost people. Nobody cares about us," said Moussa Jabr, as flies swarmed around his young children's faces near rotting food, slimy plastic bags and empty tin cans piled high. A violent uprising and security crackdowns have generated headlines but overshadowed many of the social and economic problems plaguing Iraq since US-led troops toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 with the promise of democracy and prosperity. Unemployment runs high and bloodshed is keeping investors away from the battered economy, forcing some Iraqis to eke out an existence by sifting through garbage for scraps of food. Families like the Jabrs fear there is no way out. When Saddam's agents destroyed their homes in the Shia-populated marshlands of southern Iraq, the Jabrs and others moved to Baghdad looking for work. Money was scarce and life only got worse after the Iraqi leader was ousted. Every day they comb Baghdad neighbourhoods for rubbish, hoping to find valuables to sell or leftover food. They fill plastic bags with rubbish and bring them to their dump. Birds and cows also pick through the waste as US helicopters fly overhead. INSIDE IRAQ: War, Neglect and Disease Devastate Date Palm Industry. The tree that has been the symbol of Iraq, the land of Twin Rivers, is dying and this year could not give enough yields to meet the country’s needs. A little more than two decades ago Iraq had more date palm trees than any other country in the world. INSIDE IRAQ: Ministry to Launch Five New Universities. “Demand for higher education is rising and the places we have are fewer than the number of applicants,” the ministry said in a statement. “The ministry endeavors to establish one university at least in each of Iraq’s 18 provinces,” the statement added. INSIDE IRAQ: $50 Million to Rehabilitate War-Devastated Tal Afar. At least $3 million will be used to compensate residents and the rest of the money will go to repairing damage inflicted on public utilities, said Abdulaziz al-Najafi, minister of industry and minerals. Najafi said his ministry has “accumulated experience” from rehabilitating the towns and cities U.S. troops have stormed in the past two years to flush out insurgents. “We look at the task (rehabilitating war-torn areas) as a national duty which must positively reflect on the people’s political, economic and psychological conditions,” the minister said. INSIDE IRAQ: Attacks on Oil Costing Iraq at Least $28 Million a Day. Insurgent attacks are costing Iraq about 500,000 barrels of oil a day, almost a third of its daily output. At today's oil prices, that's costing the country at least $28 million in export earnings every day. INSIDE IRAQ: UN Calls for International Probe into Iraq Jails INSIDE IRAQ: Iraqi Kurds will proclaim independence in case of civil war. "May God save us from civil war, but if others start fighting among themselves and there is an outbreak, we will have no other alternative," he said. He said that while independence was a "natural and legitimate right" for Iraqi Kurds, they would "at this stage" implement the country's new constitution in support of a "democratic federal and pluralist" Iraq. Turkey fears a declaration of independence by Iraq's Kurds would inflame a rebellion by separatists within its own large Kurdish minority. INSIDE IRAQ: In Saddam’s Hometown of Tikrit, Election Fever Abounds. On the streets of Saddam Hussein’s hometown, young men were hanging campaign posters, some even reaching out to members of the jailed dictator’s banned political party. Dozens of political groups in this city of 200,000 are competing in next month’s national election, and turnout throughout the heavily Sunni Arab province is expected to be high. INSIDE IRAQ: Report on Dahr Jamail’s website. On September 29, 2005, shortly after 8 p.m., Amal Kadhum Swadi, and her youngest son Safa were arrested by U.S. forces in the Ghazaliya district of Baghdad on suspicion of planting an improvised explosive device. They were just leaving their Baghdad home with other family members, and had opened their garage door to take out the family car, when the Swadi family were swarmed by multiple Humvees and numerous heavily armed U.S. Soldiers with weapons drawn. Haloed by headlights and surrounded by agitated soldiers, mother and son were separated from each other and hidden from view of other family members behind a wall of troops and humvees. They were blindfolded and handcuffed tightly with the plastic zap straps and hoods that have become potent symbols of the dehumanization of Iraqis under occupation. Ms. Swadi and Safa were made to squat on the highway’s dirt embankment while Zaid, her eldest son, was issued a handwritten receipt for his mother and brother. As Zaid yelled into the crowd of soldiers, trying to get response from his mother, Ms. Swadi and Safa were being packed into humvees for the trip to the airport detention facility for further processing, leaving Zaid in a cloud of dust, clutching his receipt and trying to console his sobbing sister. INSIDE IRAQ: Iran and Iraq Sign Security Co-op Agreement. The agreement was inked by Iranian Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani and visiting Iraqi National Security Advisor Mowaffaq al-Rubaie on Thursday night. Under the agreement, the two sides will work together for handling security-related issues and holding training courses in the field, said IRNA. “If the security pact is put into practice, it will help Iraq restore stability," Larijani was quoted as saying. INSIDE IRAQ: US Warns Iraqi Authorities to Keep Shiite Militias Out of Security Services. In a statement Thursday, the US Embassy said Iraqi authorities had given assurances that they will investigate the conditions of detainees found Sunday night and that the abuse of prisoners “will not be tolerated by either the Iraqi government” or U.S.-led forces anywhere in the country. “We have made clear to the Iraqi government that there must not be militia or sectarian control or direction of Iraqi security forces, facilities or ministries,” the US statement added. REPORT: Shi’ites, Kurds Walk Out of Iraqi Talks in Cairo, Egypt. Shiite and Kurdish delegates stormed out of an Iraqi reconciliation conference Saturday, halting the effort to patch over ethnic and religious fault lines threatening to drag the country into a full civil war. Sunni leaders were expected to press ahead with demands that the Shiite-dominated government agree to a timetable for the withdrawal of the foreign troops and drastic amendments to the constitution ratified Oct. 15. They also want to "recognize" the resistance and "rebuild" Saddam Hussein's army in order to bring back his former officers. Shiites and Kurds instead insist that Sunni leaders denounce violence and distance themselves from the insurgency. REPORT: Iraqi Conference Resumes After Walk-out. Hours after the conference began, an Iraqi Christian delegate, Ibrahim Menas al-Youssefi, took the podium and accused fellow delegates of being American stooges. He said the entire Iraqi political process was illegitimate and orchestrated by Washington. Within the hour, Sunni delegate Mohammed Shehab al-Dulaimi told reporters the conference had resumed after the delegate apologized and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa ruled that al-Youssefi's comments would be struck from the record. OUTSIDE IRAQ: Former Halliburton Employee Gets 15 Months in Prison for Iraq Kickback Scheme. Glenn Allen Powell was convicted of accepting more than 100-thousand-dollars from an Iraqi company that was awarded a construction contract in Iraq. THE SHAME OF AMERICA: White House Blamed for Iraq Abuses. The former US commander of Abu Ghraib prison says that she was held up unfairly as a scapegoat by "male warriors", but the real blame for the abuse scandal rests with military leaders and the White House. THE SHAME OF AMERICA: News report details CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques. By "Long Time Standing," the technique described as among the most effective, prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions. In "Cold Cell," the prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 10 degrees Celsius, and throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water. By "Water Boarding," the prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. The prisoner begins to gag and fearing he is to be drowned, pleas to confess, according to the report. The other techniques are "Belly Slap" -- a hard open-handed slap to the stomach; "Attention Grab" -- the interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him; and "Attention Slap" - an open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear. In one case, a prisoner was left to stand naked throughout the harsh Afghanistan night after being doused with cold water, and died of hypothermia, the report said. THE SHAME OF BRITAIN: New Iraqi abuse photos discovered in Scotland. British solders had machine guns pointed at handcuffed detainee’s heads. THE SHAME OF AMERICA: Phosphorus “may have killed” in Iraq. The US military on Wednesday acknowledged it might have killed civilians in the Iraqi city of Falluja with white phosphorus munitions during the battle against insurgents a year ago. THE WAR AT HOME: Two Charged Over Iraq War Leak. A former Labour MP's researcher and a civil servant were released on police bail last night after being charged under the Official Secrets Act with a "damaging disclosure" of a foreign policy document from the Cabinet Office. Though officials were saying little last night about an investigation that has been under way for more than a year, initial indications suggested it related to documents on the Iraq war that found their way into a national newspaper. THE WAR AT HOME: Arms Controversy in Iraq. Civilian fatalities in Fallujah raise concerns about US military’s use of phosphorous munitions. (I would bet that there is no controversy about this in Iraq, only in the USA.) THE WAR AT HOME: House Erupts Over Iraq. Republicans and Democrats shouted, howled and slung vicious insults on the House floor on Friday as a debate over whether to withdraw American troops from Iraq descended into a vitriolic fury over President Bush's handling of the war and a leading Democrat's call to bring the troops home. THE WAR AT HOME: Pentagon Opens Review of Controversial Unit’s Use of Iraq Intelligence. The Pentagon's inspector general initiated the probe of the Office of Special Plans at the request of Senators Pat Roberts, a Republican, and Carl Levin, a Democrat. Critics of the war have charged that the Office of Special Plans was used to "cherry-pick" intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda to buttress the administration's case for invading Iraq in 2003. In the runup to the war the controversial office was under Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy who left the government earlier this year. "The overall objective will be to determine whether personnel assigned to the Office of Special Plans from September 2002 through June 2003 conducted unauthorized, unlawful or inappropriate intelligence activities," the memo by Defense Deaprtment acting deputy inspector general Stephen Young said. THE WAR AT HOME: Right-wing Smear Campaign Against Antiwar Vet Jimmy Massey. The interest of the right wing in this reporter’s work is clear. They see it as a means of denying the obvious—that the US war has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 civilians—and of further intimidating the media from reporting the ongoing war crimes in Iraq. They also want to silence an opponent of the war whose sharp critique of American militarism is based on more than a dozen years in the US Marine Corps. Curiously, Harris’s smear against Massey has received more coverage from some sections of the mass media than Massey’s original story. For example, CNN—which never interviewed Massey in the two years since he returned from Iraq—invited Harris onto the network’s “American Morning” program last week to call the antiwar vet a liar. No attempt was made to get Massey’s response or allow him to rebut what amounted to character assassination. THE WAR AT HOME: Iraq Vets Help Other Iraq Vets Heal THE WAR AT HOME: THE BIG LIE TECHNIQUE. The Defense Intelligence Agency finally declassified its investigative report, DITSUM No. 044-02, within recent days. This smoking-gun document proves the Bush Administration's key evidence for the apocryphal Osama bin Laden-Saddam Hussein alliance — said by Bush to involve training in the use of weapons of mass destruction — was built upon the testimony of a prisoner who, according to the DIA, was probably "intentionally misleading the debriefers." Yet, despite the government having been informed of this by the Pentagon's intelligence agency in February 2002, Bush told the nation eight months later, on the eve of the Senate's vote to authorize the war, that "we've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases." The false al Qaeda-Hussein link was the linchpin to Bush's argument that he could not delay the invasion until after the United Nations weapons inspectors completed their investigation in a matter of months. Perhaps, he feared not that those weapons would fall into the wrong hands but that they would not be found at all. Boxed in by international sanctions, weapons inspectors, U.S. fighter jets patrolling two huge no-fly zones and powerful rivals on all his borders, Hussein in 2003 was decidedly not a threat to America. The White House believed the ends (occupying Iraq) justified the means (exaggerating the threat). We know now those ends have proved disastrous. POSSIBLE UPCOMING WARS: Friendly Fire and the US in Iran. In recent months, the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) and its attempts to prove that the Islamic Republic of Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons garnered widespread media coverage and speculation. While bringing forth a modicum of new information, the attention fails to illuminate just how dangerous the MEK could be to the United States. …..By lobbying to remove the MEK from the US's list of foreign terrorist organizations and considering the group as leverage to destabilize, overthrow, and/or replace Tehran's clerical government, supporters ignore the unsavory history of the MEK. (They never learn, do they?) POSSIBLE UPCOMING WARS: The New York Times, Nuclear Weapons and Iran: Stupidity, Laziness or Déjà vu All Over Again? “William J. Broad and David E. Sanger repeatedly characterize the contents of computer files as containing information about a nuclear warhead design when the information actually describes a reentry vehicle for a missile. This distinction is not minor, and Broad should understand the difference between the two objects, particularly when the information does not contain any words such as nuclear or nuclear warhead.” (They never learn either, I guess.) POSSIBLE UPCOMING WARS: American Christian Fundamentalist Leader Calls for Global War. If Christian fundamentalists are to be believed, America's invasion of Iraq and the consequent brutal slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in that country are all part of a grand divine plan that will finally culminate in the 'second coming' of Jesus Christ. POSSIBLE UPCOMING WARS: Evidence Mounts That Bush Wants New Wars. To repeat, despite Bush's arguments to the contrary, the "clash of civilizations" would consist of wars started by us. The killing of innocent people in these wars is likely to be massive, and the wars could at any time turn nuclear. If the people and the politicians of America allow these wars to take place, the stain on the morality of Americans will last for generations. POSSIBLE UPCOMING WARS: Zarqawi threatens more bombings of hotels and tourist sites HUMOR OUTSIDE IRAQ: Arab-American Comics Combat Ignorance with Caustic Humor. For Zayid, humour is a key tool in promoting understanding by deconstructing ignorance. "It's a way of saying to people: 'See, we think it's crazy too,'" she said. COMMENTARY OPINION: Iraqi Diplomacy, Right Steps. Iraq is witnessing extensive political activity: The president made a successful visit to Italy; and Iraq has been visited by the US and British foreign ministers; the Italian defence minister; the Russian security affairs council; and the United Nations' secretary-general. These visits, coinciding with the Arab League's sponsorship of the reconciliation conference in Cairo, prove the Iraqi determination to move on with the political process after the elections and overcome Iraq's critical situation. Investing in these efforts is the best way to help rid Iraq of the current violence. Patriotic Iraqis are keen on rebuilding their country after many tragic decades of accumulated oppression. All Iraqis are required to stand side by side to build a better and brighter future for themselves and future generations.(Al-Ittihad is published daily by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.) OPINION: It’s Not Just Judy. The Wicked Witch of the Eastern Media Establishment is gone! Long live The New York Times! Well, hooray, I suppose. Though if that refrain is the final word on the Judith Miller saga, we’re in deeper trouble than I thought. To be sure, I’ve been as outspoken as anyone about the "Miller problem"—her credulous, duplicitous hyping of non-existent WMDs; her enthusiastic prejudging and exaggeration of complicated "oil-for-food" allegations involving Kofi Annan and the United Nations. But now that she has finally "resigned," let it be said that getting rid of Judy Miller is only the beginning of the reforms necessary at The New York Times and in journalism generally. OPINION: Our Monsters in Iraq. It is time to start waving the bloody shirt. There is no longer any doubt that the men that the United States has installed in power in Iraq are monsters. Not only that, but they are monsters armed, trained and supported by George W. Bush's administration. The very same Bush administration that defends torture of captives in the so-called War on Terrorism is using 150,000 U.S. troops to support a regime in Baghdad for which torture, assassination and other war crimes are routine. So far, it appears that the facts are these: that Iraq's interior ministry, whose top officials, strike forces and police commando units (including the so-called Wolf Brigade) are controlled by paramilitary units from Shiite militias, maintained a medieval torture chamber; that inside that facility, hundreds of mostly Sunni Arab men were bestialized, with electric drills skewering their bones, with their skins flayed off, and more; that roving units of death-squad commandos are killing countless other Sunni Arab men in order to terrorize the Iraqi opposition. This is not a surprise. Nearly two years ago, writing in the American Prospect, I wrote the following: "The Prospect has learned that part of a secret $3 billion in new funds—tucked away in the $87 billion Iraq appropriation that Congress approved in early November—will go toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups...The bulk of the covert money will support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revenge-minded, Iraqi security force." Except for a parallel story by Sy Hersh in the New Yorker, the story was ignored. (I have to point out – it is very common for our government to arm, fund and support our future enemies. There is a long history of doing exactly that. -Susan) Last week I had a chilling encounter with one of the monsters responsible for the Murder Inc. units run by Badr and by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). At a Washington think tank, I met Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq's so-called deputy president and a SCIRI official. When I asked Mahdi about reports that Iraqi police and interior ministry squads were carrying out assassinations and other illegal acts, he didn't deny it—but, he said, such acts were merely a reaction to the terrorism of the resistance. "There is terrorism on only one side," he said. "Inappropriate acts by the other side, by the police—this is something else. This is a reaction." As far as civilian casualties in Sunni towns, he had this to say: "You can't fight terrorism without attacking some popular areas." (Sounds almost exactly like the Pentagon’s explanations for killing civilians, doesn’t it? Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and after all, “the ends justify the means” don’t ya know?–Susan) I also asked him about the Badr Brigade, (see above story about them) the Iranian-backed paramilitary force that is the main domestic army propping up Abdul Mahdi's Shiite coalition, he said "they are disarmed," which is patently absurd. He added: "They participate fully in the political process." OPINION: The Immorality Deception- A talk by Congregation Minister Robin Meyers at Oklahoma Peace Rally on November 14, 2004. Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian. ….Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean what are we talking about. Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does. Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side: When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral. -- When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral. OPINION: Brave New Bobcat World. Good religion teaches men that politics is the most important enterprise in the eyes of God. Like Moses, Machiavelli wants the law of his state to be seen, and therefore obeyed, as divinely ordered," Ledeen wrote. "The combination of fear of God and fear of punishment - duly carried out with good arms - provides the necessary discipline for good government." OPINION: A Breeding Ground in Iraq. The confirmation that the terrorists who bombed three US-owned hotels in Amman were Iraqi reveals a new dimension of the jihadist threat. Not only is it now clear that Iraq can be the launching point for attacks outside its borders, but equally important a new, possibly large cadre of terrorists must be reckoned with. To see this radicalization in action, one need only look at the case of Sajida Mubarak al-Rishawi, the fourth bomber in Amman, whose device did not detonate. Al-Rishawi has said that she was motivated by the deaths of her three brothers who fought US forces. With estimates of 25,000 to more than 100,000 Iraqis dead because of the strife, we can expect more individuals to decide that a foreign, non-Muslim power is to blame for the mess and that they must take action. The emergence of an Iraqi jihadist movement is especially worrisome because the radicals have also acquired a sanctuary in the overwhelmingly Sunni-dominated al Anbar province, large parts of which have been a no-go zone for coalition forces. PEACE ACTION: The White House said it was “baffled” by Rep. Murtha’s call for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq within six months. Let Congress know that there is nothing baffling about Rep. Murtha’s stand. Follow the link to let Congress know that you are heartened by Representative Murtha’s call for a change in direction in Iraq. CASUALTY REPORTS Local Story: Sparta soldier dies in Iraq where three brothers also served. The family asked that doctors take any of his viable organs for transplants. Local Story: Brandon Soldier killed in Iraq joined military for a better job. Local Story: Four soldiers from 101st killed by bomb in Iraq, one dies in vehicle crash Local Story: Second Freedom Area grad to die in Iraq (Penn.) QUOTE OF THE DAY: Invade Iraq and you open the gates of hell. –Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League

Saturday Dog Blogging

WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY NOVEMBER 18, 2005

Bring ‘em on: Major explosion shakes central Baghdad from two suicide car bombers. At least six dead, over 40 injured. (Casualty figures expected to rise, per BBC.)

Bring ‘em on: Air Force Fighters Strike Insurgents - Air Force F-15 Eagles, F-16 Fighting Falcons and MQ-1 Predators flew air strikes against anti-Iraqi forces near the Iraq-Syria border in support of Operation Steel Curtain.

Bring ‘em on: Three Danish soldiers injured by bomb inside their camp in Basra.

Bring ‘em on: Iraqi security forces arrest 24 militants and free three children hostages in separate missions in Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: Former Iraqi MP kidnapped in Baghdad

Bring ‘em on: Two Filipino workers killed in bombing in Baghdad last Friday.

Bring ‘em on: Doctor gunned down by unknown gunmen in Mosul. A police officer and two policemen were killed in al Hadbaa neighborhood of Mosul. Two more policemen gunned down in southern suburb of Mosul. Two police killed in another area of Mosul, and a gunfight between MNF and insurgents happened in Al Wahda district. Child died in bomb blast that targeted police. Three children killed by two bombs targeting MNF. Body of man abducted earlier in the day was found, and another unknown person was found dead in his car in Mosul. In Baghdad, eight Iraqis wounded by bomb blast.

Bring ‘em on: BAGHDAD - A motorist was badly injured when his car was hit by a roadside bomb intended for a passing U.S. tank. KERBALA - A former member of the outlawed Baath Party was assassinated by gunmen in Kerbala. His son was wounded in the incident. RAMADI - Iraqi police found the bodies of police Lieutenant Colonel Sulaiman al-Dulaimi and his son on Thursday after they were abducted a day earlier. Both had gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

Bring ‘em on: Soldier Killed in Vehicle Accident

Bring ‘em on: US Marine Killed by IED in Hadithah

Bring ‘em on: US Soldier dies of wounds from IED attack in northwest Baghdad.

Bring ‘em on: US Soldier killed by multiple gunshot wounds in Baqubah, Iraq.

Bring ‘em on: 3,000 Foreign Fighters in Iraq: Intelligence Study (This study does not count American, British, or other coalition forces as foreign fighters.)

Bring ‘em on: Former Serb Red Berets in Iraq – (Also not included in “foreign fighters” totals.) Former Serbian "Red Berets" elites forces are now being employed as private security personnel in Baghdad. Vecernje Novosti daily said the men were recruited through a security agency in Sarajevo in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Serbians join an increasing number of foreign former military personnel supplementing coalition forces in Iraq. Some media estimates put the number of private security personnel as high as 40,000.

REPORTS

INSIDE IRAQ: Iraq Minister Says Torture Claims “Exaggerated” Iraq's Interior Minister Bayan Baqer Solagh, under fire over allegations prisoners were beaten, tortured and starved at a Baghdad bunker, has described the claims as "exaggerated". The lock-up, raided on Sunday by US forces who found some 170 detainees in need of water, food and medical attention, was an official detention centre which held some of the "most dangerous terrorists," he told a news conference on Thursday.

INSIDE IRAQ: Investigation of Iraqi-run Detention Sites Grows – US and civilians to investigate claim of starvation and torture at camps across the country. There are at least 1,100 sites across the country.

INSIDE IRAQ: Sunnis Demand UN Inquiry into Iraq Ministry’s Torture Chamber - Leading Sunni politicians in Iraq have demanded an international inquiry following the discovery that 173 people had been tortured and held captive in an interior ministry bunker. They claim such abuse was regularly carried out by paramilitaries connected to the government and accuse US forces of giving it "the green light". The call for an independent inquiry was backed by the United Nations' special investigator on torture. But the Badr Organisation, a Shia militia suspected of responsibility for the mistreatment of the mainly Sunni prisoners, has denied any involvement. The organisation also said that a raid by American forces on the underground complex in central Baghdad which led to the prisoners being found was a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and an attempt to gain favour with Sunnis ahead of the national elections. Hundreds of bodies, often with signs of torture, have been discovered in Iraq, thought to be the victims of "death squads" of paramilitaries associated with the government. Earlier this year, a Human Rights Watch report accused the Iraqi security forces of widespread abuse.

INSIDE IRAQ: Discovery of Prisoners Heartens Iraq’s Sunni Minority - Mohammed sat in a coffee shop Wednesday in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhemiya in northeast Baghdad, where men played cards and dominoes and smoked water pipes. And he smiled. Now people know the truth, he said. Like Mohammed, much of the Sunni Arab minority has taken heart in the recent discovery, which was announced Tuesday. The idea that the U.S. military may be trying to help the Sunnis has given them an instant boost in confidence that the parliamentary elections in December could make them players in the next government.

INSIDE IRAQ: Kurds See Democracy As Means to Gain Independent State: In Iraq, Freedom to Secede? "We want to thank President Bush for making this possible," said Miriam Mirza, an 80-year-old Kurdish woman who carried the Kurdish flag into the voting booth Oct. 15 when she supported a draft constitution granting broad powers of self-government to the Kurds. She said the vote takes the Kurds "one step closer" to independence. "My vote is for my nation – my Kurdish nation," said Magid Karim Ahmed, a peasant farmer, after he cast his ballot. In January, when Iraqis held their first democratic election in six decades to elect a constitutional assembly, Mr. Hamagharib's group set up separate, unofficial voting booths outside polling stations throughout northern Iraq. On the ballot was one question: Do you choose to remain with Iraq or not? Out of 1.85 million people who voted, more than 95 percent said they did not want to remain, Mr. Hamagharib said.

INSIDE IRAQ: US To Iraq: Curb Use of Shiite Militias - Prominent Sunni Arabs have complained for months about abuse by Interior Ministry forces, whom they say have been infiltrated by Shiite militias. The Sunnis called for an international inquiry after the detainees were found at the lockup in Jadriyah. The government denies the militia allegations. In a nationally televised press conference, Jabr, the interior minister, delivered a spirited defense of his agency and said the detainees included Shiites and Sunnis some among the most "dangerous terrorists" in the country.

THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Incendiary Weapons: The Big White Lie - The Iraqi government is to investigate the United States military's use of white phosphorus shells during the battle of Fallujah - an inquiry that could reveal whether American forces breached a fundamental international weapons treaty. Iraq's acting Human Rights minister, Narmin Othman, said last night that a team would be dispatched to Fallujah to try to ascertain conclusively whether civilians had been killed or injured by the incendiary weapon. The use of white phosphorus (WP) and other incendiary weapons such as napalm against civilians is prohibited.

THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Civilians Continue to Suffer From Violence, Displacement - Hundreds of Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October, while large parts of Iraq continue to experience a general breakdown of law and order, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) noted in its latest report on the state of human rights in the war-ravaged nation. "Random killings and terrorism have claimed hundreds of lives and injured many others, including children, in several parts of the country," the report stated. According to UNAMI, over 30,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the US-led war in March 2003. The report, which focused primarily on the period between 1 September and 31 October of this year, noted that more than 10,000 civilians had been displaced in September alone. On Monday, US-led forces and the Iraqi army launched an operation in the city of Dowr, some 150 km north of the capital, Baghdad. According to local witnesses, Iraqi soldiers used torture in some cases to obtain information from residents. The UNAMI report noted that, "Massive security operations by the Iraqi police and US Special Forces continue to disregard instructions announced in August 2005 by the Interior Ministry aimed at safeguarding individuals during search-and-detention operations."

THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Photos Of the US Offensive in North-western Iraq - The Guardian's photographer Sean Smith is in north-western Iraq, travelling with a company of US marines as they try to combat insurgents in the region. So far, operation steel curtain has taken him to Karabilah, Husaybah and Ubaydi. One photo: Iraqis from Husaybah, near the Syrian border, protest outside Camp Gannon, the marines' base. They want food, water and electricity. The Iraqis wrote the signs in English.

THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Displaced (Iraqis) in The West Need More - The number of refugees fleeing the western Iraqi town of al-Qaim and surrounding villages in the wake of US-led military offensives launched earlier this month has reached some 100,000 persons, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS). "The situation is critical," said IRCS Spokesperson Ferdous al-Abadi. According to witnesses on the ground, nearly 40 percent of the residents of al-Qaim, located some 420 km west of the capital Baghdad, are living in the nearby city of Rawa, in improvised camps organised by the IRCS. Many are also reportedly living in schools and public offices. According to IRCS officials, some displaced families have as many as 13 members sharing single tents. (insert link to video on Fallujah) "Food, kerosene stoves, blankets, antibiotics and first-aid kits are only some of the items desperately needed by more than 2,000 displaced families in the area," he said.

THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: Iraqi Children Losing Their Innocence in the Violence of the War. - Khaldoon Waleed, a Baghdad child psychologist, said that a generation of children is growing up with post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD, a result of witnessing life-threatening events, is commonly associated with soldiers, and Waleed said it could cause everything from nightmares to an inability to connect with people. "The children of Iraq have lost all sense of humanity," he said. "Killing and being killed has become daily routine to them." He said their young lives are overloaded with the violent issues of Iraq. Parents find it impossible to hide the harsh realities from them, so children are forced into adult life. And it's a harsh adult life.

THE TRAGEDY OF IRAQ: They Said, You Are a Terrorist Who Kills Shia. Then They Broke My Teeth. A force from the interior ministry commandos raided my house. My four children woke up screaming. They said, 'You are wanted for terrorism,' and they beat me with the end of an AK47 and also with their hands and they started insulting me ... They dragged me outside and put me in a truck with 20-25 others. [They] put us into a sweltering, cramped concrete room ... I heard screams, and I heard what sounded like beatings. After a few days the cell began to smell of sweat and shit. I think it was my fifth day when I was taken for interrogation. Still blindfolded, I went into a room and was hit in the mouth, I could taste the blood. A man's voice said, 'We know you are a terrorist who kills Shia.' Then they hit me in the mouth again and broke some of my teeth. The next day I was dumped by the side of the road. (More stories at link.)

INSIDE IRAQ: The Harsh Education of an Iraqi Feminist - On the other hand, she also thinks that it is critical to use Saddam Hussein's trial to "go through a process of telling our truth, documenting our past in Iraq". She fears that "he is being indicted only for a handful of crimes" and insisted on the opportunity to include his crimes against women. "This is a very important point in terms of setting up precedents for other future governments of Iraq, and for the society at large, that violence against women is not to be tolerated," she said. "This trial is an historical opportunity."

INSIDE IRAQ: Toy Guns, A Burned Taxi, and Daily Life in Baghdad - To Mahmoud, it was a child's game with a new toy gun. But to US soldiers driving past in their Humvee, the 11-year-old's squad of friends pointing their realistic assault rifles looked like a threat. "I was holding the gun this way," enthuses Mahmoud, striking a heroic pose. “Then they targeted me with their laser [gun sights]," he says, dragging a finger down his chest where the red beam lit him up. "I threw down my gun and ran away," he adds, tossing the plastic look-alike to the carpet and spilling a glass of soda. "They came back, and their bodies were shaking," says Mahmoud's sister Hibba.

OUTSIDE IRAQ: Egypt Says Wary of Iranian Influence In Iraq - Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Thursday that Iranian influence is introducing alien religious ideas to Iraq, setting the stage for a sectarian civil war if U.S. troops withdraw too soon. U.S. forces should stay in Iraq "helping to stabilise" the country, even if their presence attracts attacks, he told Reuters in an interview two days before a conference in Cairo seeking to reconcile Iraqi political factions. "The Iranians are spreading a notion of behaviour in relation to life, to religion, the role of religion in the state, the philosophy of the marja'iya (Shi'ite Muslim religious authority). These are issues that Iraq didn't have over 100 years of building a nation," the minister said.

"The issue is the cultural, philosophical approach to the role of the mosque, the role of the state, the role of education, the role of women, the role of family. Is it the Iranian model or is the model of a centrist Islam?" he said. Aboul Gheit was expressing fears shared by many Sunni Arab countries about rising Shi'ite influence in Iraq and the links of some Iraqi factions with neighbouring Shi'ite Iran.

OUTSIDE IRAQ: US Files Charges Against US Contractor in Iraq - The U.S. Justice Department filed the first criminal charges against an American contractor involved in Iraq's reconstruction. Philip H. Bloom, 65, funneled at least $693,000 in bribes and kickbacks through bank accounts in Iraq, Switzerland, Romania and the Netherlands over the year through January 2005, according to court documents filed yesterday. The money then went to at least two unnamed U.S. government officials and their spouses in exchange for reconstruction work valued at over $3.5 million, the documents show.

THE SHAME OF AMERICA: US Hired Ex-Con as Iraq Project Controller. - A North Carolina man who was charged Thursday with accepting kickbacks and bribes was hired as a controller and financial officer for the American occupation authority in Iraq despite having served prison time for felony fraud in the 1990s. The job gave the man, Robert J. Stein, control over $82 million in cash earmarked for Iraqi rebuilding projects.

THE SHAME OF BRITAIN: Britain to Send Iraqis Home Sunday - More than 20,000 Iraqis have applied for asylum in Britain during the past three years. The vast majority have had their applications rejected but have been allowed to stay because of the precarious situation in their homeland. However Channel 4 said a leaked interior ministry document showed the government had detained up to 15 failed asylum seekers and would now press ahead with forced repatriations.

THE SHAME OF AMERICA: President Bush is betraying the founding values of his nation - The bitter taste is left of an administration whose response is to deny first and concede later - only when found out. Outlawed weapons and lies about them. Hidden prisons and torture chambers. Human beings in cages. Captives who "disappear". This was Saddam Hussein's Iraq, was it not, and the justification for war? Two and a half years after the invasion, to the eternal shame of the occupiers, it is increasingly the new Iraq as well. We are observing what must be the worst week for the reputation of the joint United States and British adventure since the revelations of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. Any hopes in Washington or London that the battle for Iraqi hearts and minds might yet be won have been thoroughly demolished. (The rest of this article is for paid viewers only.)

THE SHAME OF AMERICA: A Few Bad Apples - a report by the CBC - Young, inexperienced reserve soldiers like Israel Rivera were ordered to help break the detainees. Rivera told the fifth estate's Gillian Findlay: "I mean, prior to being an [intelligence] analyst I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken, so it was quite a big jump from being a 19-year-old wage worker to, you know, people coming toward you and saying well, what do you think." (Caption said: Israel Rivera witnessed the abuse against Iraqi prisoners that night and walked away. The next day he reported the incident to his commander.)

In Washington DC, Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan, plans were drawn up that would change the nature of interrogation policy at Abu Ghraib, allowing for new methods that were previously considered off-limits. John Yoo is a legal scholar who helped re-define the term "torture" for the Bush White House. He explained the rational for doing so to Gillian Findlay: "I don't see why we ought to follow a policy that was created for wars between nation states that follow the laws of war when we're fighting an opponent that violates all the laws of war."

THE SHAME OF AMERICA: How the Pentagon Justifies Phosphorous Bombs on Fallujah: In Post Saddam Iraq: There are No Civilians

THE SHAME OF AMERICA: US Sweep of Arrests After Iraq Invasion Leads to Few Convictions - More than 35,000 Iraqis have been detained by American troops since the invasion of the country but only a tiny fraction have been convicted of wrongdoing, the Guardian has learned. About 21,000 have been released without ever being charged or tried. Of the 1,300 who have been charged, only half have been found guilty. Some 13,500 Iraqis are still being detained, more than double last year's total, according to official American figures. The Lib Dems argued yesterday that there was reason to believe that a significant proportion of those who had been detained were joining, or rejoining, the insurgency after their release. The US system of detentions may actually be fuelling the insurgency, they argue. "It is difficult to think of anything better calculated to create antagonism among the Iraqi population than detention against which there is no right to challenge or to appeal," the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell, said yesterday. He added: "Acting wholly contrary to accepted principle and without regard to legal obligations will inevitably make the struggle much more difficult. For the Iraqi government to have such a subordinate role until the point of conviction simply underlines the fact that they are a long way from having sovereignty over their own count