Today in Iraq

War News for Monday, January 9, 2006 Bring 'em on: Unknown militants launched missiles early on Sunday on a British military post in Basra. Bring 'em on: At least fourteen killed and twenty wounded in a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Investigative Judge murdered in Kirkuk. Bring 'em on: Member of de-Baathification commission gunned down in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Intelligence officer gunned down in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Doctor gunned down in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Five bodies, bound and blindfolded, found in Baghdad. Bring 'em on: Centcom tells us that a detainee dies of natural causes at Abu Ghraib. Another Statistic: A U.S. soldier in Iraq died of non-combat injuries, the U.S. military said on Sunday. The death on Saturday was under investigation. Talibani Confirmed: The country’s second biggest political bloc, said it had nominated President Jalal Talabani for a second term in office, and political sources said he would almost certainly get it. The country’s main alliance, which dominated last month’s election, has made it clear it is more interested in the prime ministership. No other party or coalition is likely to have enough influence within the new government to thwart Talabani. Conclusion: The conclusion of a probe into Iraq’s landmark election will be announced today, the electoral commission said yesterday, in a sign that the final results of the contested poll could be out soon. A separate team of international monitors also said its inspection of the December 15 election was going well and a report would be released “as soon as we can". Update: Results of Iraq's Dec. 15 parliamentary elections will be released after the four-day Islamic feast of Eid al-Adha, which begins Tuesday, said Hussein Hindawi, a member of Iraq's electoral commission. Elections officials Monday canceled a news conference where they had hoped to announce more preliminary results, saying officials were still auditing the results from about 50 ballot boxes and wanted to announce all results at the same time. General: "Impeach Blair": General Sir Michael Rose, a former UN commander in Bosnia, was quoted by the right-of-centre Mail on Sunday as saying: "I think the politicians should be held to account ... my view is that Blair should be impeached. "That would prevent the politicians treating quite so carelessly the subject of taking a country into war." A high-profile resignation of a senior armed forces officer before the start of the March 2003 conflict may also have made the British Government think twice before sending troops to the Gulf, he added. "I would not have gone to war on such flimsy grounds," he said. Secret Prisons and Renditions: A fax sent by the Egyptian foreign ministry to its embassy in London stated that more than 20 Iraqis and Afghans had been questioned at a US-run base in Romania, a Swiss newspaper has reported. SonntagsBlick said the Swiss secret services obtained a copy of the fax which said that the Egyptian embassy in London "learned from its own sources that 23 Iraqi and Afghan citizens had been questioned at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu base in the town of Constanza on the Black Sea coast". The newspaper quoted a report written by the Swiss defence ministry which said Egypt believed there were "similar centres in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bulgaria". Quote of the Day

"The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right -- we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq." Dick Cheney, August 1992

Opinion and Commentary Reality via Dahr Jamail:

It appears as though the Cheney administration will soon “redeploy” thousands of US troops out of Iraq. While several permanent US military bases are under construction there as I type this, the Capital Hill Cabal, desperate to paint the Iraq disaster in a glorious hue, are working their pundits and spokespeople overtime to convince the ill-informed they have not failed dismally in every aspect of their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr. Bush did not mention Iraq once. Instead, he spoke of the bright and shining US economy and the need to maintain current tax cuts. “Unfortunately, just as we’re seeing new evidence of how our tax cuts have created jobs and opportunity, some people in Washington are saying we need to raise your taxes,” he said, “They want the tax cuts to expire in a few years, or even repeal the tax cuts now.” What better time to maintain tax cuts in the US, particularly when a new study by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes estimates the cost of the Iraq war to be between $1-2 trillion, and the national debt already over $8 trillion? Meanwhile, the reality in Iraq is the opposite of that generated by the Cheney administration as the carnage and chaos in Iraq worsens each day. A quick look at foreign media outlets yields the following developments that were either not reported or under-reported in the US: January 4: -Unidentified gunmen assassinated Rahim Ali al-Sudani, director-general of the Iraqi Oil Ministry, and his son early on the morning of 4 January in Al-Amiriyah area in northern Baghdad. -Clashes broke out between civilians protesting against unemployment and Iraqi police in Al-Nasiriyah city in Dhi Qar Governorate, wounding scores of civilians and police officers. The TV added within the same news summary that two civilians were “martyred” and two others were injured when an explosive charge missed a US patrol unit in Kirkuk. -Al Sharqiyah television reported that a US plane had crashed in Mosul. Quoting its correspondent in the city, the TV said that US forces had rushed to the area and sealed off the scene where the crash occurred. January 5: -At least 130 Iraqis and 11 US soldiers die (highest number of US soldiers killed in one day since August) in one of the bloodiest days in Iraq since the invasion. January 6: -A medical source at Al-Ramadi State Hospital [speaking on condition of anonymity] reports that 14 civilians, including three children, “were martyred at the hands of US snipers today.” The source added that “the snipers stationed on roof tops of high buildings in Al-Ramadi, killed those victims in the Al-Ma’arid district in the city center this morning”. Al Sharqiyah correspondent adds that “Al-Ramadi has witnessed massive protests against the presence of US snipers who have been deployed throughout the city, spreading fear among residents.” Al-Sharqiyah says that the US armed forces have yet to comment on this incident. -For security purposes, Iraq has suspended its daily pumping of 200,000 barrels of crude oil to major oil refineries in Bayji, north of Baghdad. -A US convoy came under attack in Samarra when an explosive device planted near a petrol station was detonated. Four children were injured in the attack and were rushed to Samarra State Hospital. -A doctor at Nasiriyah Hospital reported that two Iraqis were killed and 23 were injured today as clashes between demonstrators, who were protesting against unemployment, and Iraqi police continued in Nasiriyah in southern Iraq. January 7: -Fierce clashes broke out between resistance fighters and US forces in Fallujah when armed men battled with the US troops in al-Tharthar Street in the eastern part of the city as the latter tightened security measures, blocking all main entrances to the city. Local residents also reported fierce clashes between US soldiers and resistance fighters on Arba’ien Street in central Fallujah. -Earlier in the day, a roadside bomb went off at about 7:30 a.m. (0430 GMT) in eastern Fallujah as a US military patrol was passing by, destroying a US Humvee, killing or wounding the soldiers aboard, the source said. An Iraqi doctor from Fallujah General Hospital was killed by a US sniper, according to residents. A recent email from a good friend in Baghdad sums up life for Iraqis in their new “democracy”: “We are living in a very critical situation now, for the ING [Iraqi National Guard] are covering every corner around us wherever you go inside Baghdad. The killings are ongoing everywhere inside and outside the city.” “Everybody in my family is safe for now only because no one is interested in putting themselves in danger. Demonstrations are going on all over Iraq for different reasons; price of fuel, lack of security, jobless people are having demonstrations as well as those who do not accept the presence of the Badr Brigades or the American forces. [Meanwhile others are demonstrating in support of the Badr Brigades but against the Americans.]” “This is some kind of situation around us. The last four nights without electricity…only half an hour every six hours. Fuel prices prevent people from running their generators at home. Fuel on the black market is fifty times the price what it used to be, and nobody can stand waiting at the pumps for days anymore. The minister of oil resigned for this, and Ahmed Chalabi is now the minister…everybody is frustrated yet life is still going on as if the people are hypnotized.” “Nothing has changed except that we see US Humvees and pick-up trucks full of Iraqi National Guard everywhere [in Baghdad,]” he concluded.