Today in Iraq

DAILY WAR NEWS FOR MONDAY, May 15, 2006 Photo: Some day, Trisha Fish says, she will have to tell Chance, now 7, that his father committed suicide in Iraq. She says she finds herself rehearsing what she will say. "Your Daddy went to war and he saw a lot of things and they broke his heart. They broke his spirit. They changed who he was." (Mark Mirko) Mar. 17, 2006 (See Below "'Troop shortage' behind sending mentally disabled back into combat") Bring 'em on: "Insurgents” shot down a U.S. helicopter south of Baghdad and killed two soldiers, bringing the weekend death toll of American service members to seven, the U.S. military said Monday. (…) U.S. forces and American planes and helicopters attacked an insurgent haven in Youssifiyah, killing 25 insurgents, detaining four and destroying three safe houses and a vehicle loaded with weapons and ammunition, the U.S. command said. One woman and two girls were wounded in the raid. When U.S helicopters, including one carrying two of the wounded, were leaving the scene, insurgents shot down one of the aircraft, killing two American soldiers aboard, the U.S. command said. Bring 'em on: Two Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7 died due to enemy action while operating in al Anbar Province May 14. (CENTCOM) Bring ‘em on: Militants fired more than 30 mortar rounds at a British military camp in southern Iraq, wounding four soldiers. The mortar barrage came at about 4:30 a.m. Monday at Camp Abu Naji in Amarah, 290 kilometres southeast of Baghdad. One of the British soldiers was badly hurt, but the others' injuries were not serious. Bring ‘em [children] on: British soldiers in the Iraqi city of Amara were on Monday attacked by a stone- and bottle-throwing mob of local children as they visited a local police station, eyewitnesses reported. OTHER SECURITY INCIDENTS Baghdad: In central Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol missed the officers but killed one civilian, wounded four and set fire to an oil tanker parked nearby. One man died in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad. Iraqi police said they found five bodies from one family near their home in the northern outskirts of the capital. All had been shot dead. (S. of) Roadside bombs exploded in two cities north and south of Baghdad, killing one Iraqi civilian and a police officer, and wounding five Iraqis. Yusifiyah: U.S. forces killed more than 25 insurgents, detained four others and destroyed three houses during coordinated ground and air attacks in Yusufiya, 15 km (9 miles) south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. Karbala: The body of a policeman who was abducted by gunmen two days ago, was found with gunshot wounds, bearing sings of torture, on the outskirts of Kerbala. Balad Ruz: A drive-by shooting killed four teachers en route to their school in a village near Balad Ruz, a town 80 kilometres northeast of Baghdad. The attackers and the victims were both riding in minibuses, the private vehicles that charge small fees to transport the general public. Iskandariya: A body was found on Sunday with gunshot wounds to the head in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad. Mussayab: A body with gunshot wounds to the head was found on Sunday in the town of Mussayab, about 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad. Wajihiya: A seven-year-old girl was killed and seven members of her family were wounded when a mortar round landed on their house in the small town of Wajihiya, about 30 km (20 miles) east of Baghdad. Latifiya: Abu Mustafa, wanted for his role in the downing of U.S. helicopter in Yusifiyah on April 1, and 15 other suspected al Qaeda-linked militants were killed during a series of raids near Latifiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. Mahaweel: One civilian was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb went off near the police headquarters in Mahaweel, 75 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad. A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in the town of Mahaweel, 75 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, killing one civilian and wounding three policemen. Basra: Tribesmen killed eight Iraqi police officers and injured another 10 in clashes just outside Basra. The clashes broke out when the tribesmen took over a police station just outside the city after a group of men wearing police uniforms allegedly gunned down a local leader from the Garmasha tribe, said police Cap. Mushtaq Khazim. (near) A tribal leader, was killed by gunmen in a drive-by shooting about 15 km (9 miles) north of Basra. Mosul: One policeman was killed and two were wounded when a bomb exploded near a house in Mosul where gunmen earlier killed six members of the same family. >> NEWS Baghdad doctor calling on international community to help rebuild Iraq's health system which he says is unable to cope and is far worse than under Saddam Hussein: Doctor Salam Ismael, who helped found the organisation Doctors for Iraq, says doctors are routinely forced by militia members to perform operations at gunpoint. But he says the authorities in Iraq are equally responsible for the flight of doctors from the country and for the desperate state of the health system. Iraqi authorities have freed more than 400 people initially suspected of aiding or participating in the insurgency: An official who didn't want to be identified by name says the prisoners were held in Iraqi detention centers around the country and have been cleared of all charges. Iraqi gays are claiming success following the decision of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to remove from his website a fatwa calling for the killing of homosexuals in the "worst, most severe way possible". A Shropshire [UK] journalist was today flying home after coming under fire 10 times while embedded with troops serving in Iraq. James Holt, a Shropshire Newspapers reporter, was unhurt in the attacks. The 24-year-old, who was entrenched with troops in Basra as part of a press visit to the area, today revealed that the base was attacked by mortars about 10 times during his six-day visit. Saddam charged with crimes against humanity, including torture of women and children, murder and the illegal arrest of 399 people in a crackdown against Shiites in the 1980s. A defiant Saddam refused to enter a plea. >> REPORTS Malnutrition among Iraqi children has reached alarming levels, according to a UN-backed government survey showing people are struggling to cope three years after US-forces overthrew Saddam Hussein. The report on food security and vulnerability in Iraq said almost one child in every 10 aged between six months and five years, suffered acute malnourishment. "Children are... major victims of food insecurity," it said, describing the situation as "alarming". A total of four million Iraqis, roughly 15 per cent of the population, were in dire need of humanitarian aid including food, up from 11 per cent in a 2003 report, the survey of more than 20,000 Iraqi households found. >> COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS "TROOP SHORTAGE" BEHIND SENDING MENTALLY DISABLED BACK INTO COMBAT At least 11 U.S. service members who committed suicide in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 were reportedly kept on duty despite exhibiting signs of psychological problems, according to a recent newspaper report. In at least seven of the cases, superiors were aware of the problems, military investigative records and interviews with families indicate. U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported for Sunday editions. The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq. read in full... HOW ACCURATE ARE CASUALTIES LISTS RELEASED BY US MILITARY?

FOREIGN MERCENARIES IN IRAQ GET US CITIZENSHIP Remember when former Iraqi Information Minister Saeed Al Sahaf said the "Murtazaqa" (mercenaries) hired by the US military were invading Iraq back in March 2003? The man sounded ridiculous, especially in his choice for Arabic phrases to describe the situation in Iraq, but, it turns out, he was right about the mercenaries situation. According to the Pentagon, "US service members, representing 52 countries, were sworn in as U.S. citizens during a ceremony at the Sustainer Theater May 12 near Balad, Iraq. The commander of the 40th Corps Support Group, Col. Jannett Jackson presided over the swearing-in ceremony." I wonder who else will be giving them ceremonies soon. Iran peut-etre? It seems the US military can't find homegrown gringos to do the job. I wonder now if the mass graves rumored to have been found filled with men and women donned in US military fatigues is true. At the time, reports in Western Iraq by fighters there said the US military dumped their bodies or flushed them down the rivers because ... well they weren't US citizens. Which makes me also wonder if the casualties list released by the US military is accurate. Does it include these non-US citizen fighters? And why are they becoming citizens in Iraq? It's not a US territory, or is it? Speaking of mercenaries and hired security contractors (murderers), please read up on the bombing of the Imam Ali Al Hadi mosque yesterday. Then check out the name of the resistance group which targeted the foreign murderous contractors. read in full… MISLEADING STATISTICS As of 13th May 2006, the U.S. military states its casualties as 2,436 deaths of US soldiers and 17,648 injured. These very precise figures are updated daily. The problem with these statistics is that they are misleading and wrong and deliberately so. To arrive at these figures, the following deaths and casualties are excluded: • Soldiers killed or injured in any other way other than a direct bullet or bomb. In other words, if a pilot or driver crashes because he had to evade a missile or bomb, it would not be counted as a death. • The dying and critically wounded are listed as en route to military hospitals outside of the country and not reported on the daily postings. This means a soldier who was shot and/or wounded but died on a flight to a U.S. military hospital would not be counted. • Anyone who dies in hospital or a U.S. military base. • Anyone who suffers from severe mental illnesses as a direct result of the war. This category includes those who are medically diagnosed as depressed and/or suicidal. • Anyone who is seemingly not seriously hurt at the time of a bombing or battle but who has long term physical or mental problems as a result. The most common example of this are soldiers who survive a road side bomb but who suffer long term brain damage. • Soldiers in the U.S. Army who are not U.S. citizens. These are commonly citizens of poor South and Central American countries who are persuaded to fight in the hope of U.S. citizenship after years of risking their lives. read in full...

US PROGRESS IN IRAQ… 2006 Although this is published on western media, but Al-Hayat newspaper added more details: 3525 Iraqis killed from January until yesterday evening 6, 00 o'clock. 500 killed in car-bombs. 1091 killed in the month April. These data from morgues, the number can be much higher, because not every dead body found will be brought to the morgue. read in full… BACK IN THE USSA Was it so long ago that the USSR disintegrated? A mere 15 years, yet it seems Americans have forgotten their enthusiasm for criticizing the Soviet state for its close scrutiny of people's lives. It was revealed after the collapse of the USSR that Soviet secret police, and the not-so-secret KGB (I actually got to visit their headquarters in 1982, on Moscow's Lubyanka Street), had kept detailed records of the telephone and correspondence activities of Soviet citizens. Americans were among the most vocal of the smug Westerners to condemn that kind of infringement on personal liberty. And it gave a further boost to their already inflamed view that they were the bestest people in the whole world. Now that it has been revealed that they are manipulated and managed and scrutinized at least as much as the former Soviet republics, with elections that are just about as fair, many simply shrug. Many more actually seem to think it's a good idea. read in full… "OUT NOW" On the day that the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq reached two thousand, President Bush boasted to an audience at Bolling Air Force Base, "We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory." John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon made similar claims about the U.S. war against Vietnam. In the end, the U.S. ruling class discovered that its boasts about assured victory against "Communist insurgency" in Vietnam were empty. The United States and its allies will be forced from Iraq in defeat or will at some point find a way, through overwhelming brutality, to impose the appearance of a "victory," perhaps under a new president who can remove the stain of illegitimacy that has marked the Bush administration's management of the war. The real question, then, is: how many more will have to senselessly die before the conclusion of this bloody occupation? read in full… AN EFFECTIVE ATTACK, BY YET ANOTHER GROUP OF THE IRAQI RESISTANCE "The Imam Ali Alhadi group, a Shi'ite Iraqi insurgency group, released a video of a daisy chain style Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack against Security Contractors in Iraq. The daisy chain style of attack allows for a much larger blast area of the attack allowing for much more damage. The Shi'ite group is not the first of its kind in the Medhi Army. It is another Shi'ite group in Iraq fighting against the occupying forces in Iraq". Daisy Chain type IED strike on Security contractors (Click on Video below the pictures) May 11, 2006 link AL-SADR’S ALLEGIANCE: PRO-IRAN OR PRO-IRAQ? [only one thing seems certain — it's not pro-US… -- zig] On the one hand he is anti-occupation, pro-Resistance and shi'ite, whilst on the other hand he is anti-Ba'athist. Do you have any thoughts or insights on the man and his possible future importance in the direction of Iraq? Unfortunately Moqtada Al-Sadr is an inexperienced young man. He is a tangle of self-interested causes that he cannot harmonize because he has trapped himself within the occupational political process. The other sectarian parties will not let him compete with other leaders like Al- Sistani, who is Iranian citizen and serving the interest of Iran and the Anglo-American Zionist occupation. Mr. Sadr claims to be against the occupation and pro-Resistance. If this is so, then why is he against the Baath that forms most of the Resistance and leads it? And why is he part of the political process which was created by the occupation and controlled by Washington? If Moqtada Al-Sadr is really sincere, then he should reject everything that the occupation offers and join the Iraqi National Resistance by faith and deed. Action speaks louder than words. Just recently he said: if Iran was attacked by the United States, then he will order his Mahdi Army to attack American forces in Iraq. Doesn't he realize that Iraq is occupied by the United States? Then why he doesn't fight the Anglo-American occupying forces in Iraq? Is his allegiance pro-Iran and or pro-Iraq? The other day the US and the sectarian militia that forms the "Iraqi" gangster army killed several members of his army in a mosque in Baghdad, in his neighborhood. I hope that Mr. Al-Sadr will wake up one day soon and join the Resistance that he claims to support. read in full... THE NEOCON DREAM THAT GOT AWAY It's called a conspiracy theory when anyone on the left three-fourths of the political spectrum brings up the Bushites' original plans for a post-Saddam government in Iraq, but Barbara Lerner admits it openly over at the National Review: Rumsfeld and his allies in Vice President Cheney's office didn't think we needed elaborate, bureaucratic American plans; they thought we needed to empower strong Iraqi leaders right away, and they were right. Our first big mistake was to bypass Rumsfeld and our Iraqi National Congress allies, and turn the occupation over to Paul Bremer . . . Rumsfeld and his supporters wanted to put the leaders of the INC in full charge of a forceful Iraqi transition government with all the powers necessary to create the pre-conditions for democracy: order and hope. To that end, they needed to de-Baathify the country aggressively, tame or eliminate violent Shiite militias, repair critical infrastructure, get oil revenue flowing again, and see to it that every peaceful Iraqi citizen got a check for his share of it. That's what secular Shiites like Ahmed Chalabi, secular Sunnis like Mithal al-Alusi, and their Kurdish INC partners wanted to do, and we should have backed them, without ambivalence or apology, with our full military might. Afterwards, we should have given them whatever additional time they needed to gradually work out and apply a new set of rules for their own Iraqi brand of democracy. With "order" as a "precondition to democracy," it's painfully obvious that the "Iraqi brand of democracy" Chalabi and his friends would have sought to construct would bear little resemblance to anything Americans are familiar with (save perhaps for particular counties in Florida and Ohio). read in full FROM JAILBIRD TO JIHADI Summary: Where do the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan get their jihadi cannon fodder? Maybe from the swollen prisons of Arab governments supposedly friendly to the US. For these cynical governments, releasing prisoners is a double bonus: the former inmates kill a few infidels, and then they are often killed themselves. read in full... THE INSURRECTION IN MESOPOTAMIA 1920 When the insurgency of 1920 broke out, the British Army of Mesopotamia was commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Aylmer Haldane, a veteran of campaigning on four continents, including command of a corps on the Western Front in 1918. His memoir, The Insurrection in Mesopotamia, 1920, published only two years after the event, is remarkable - not least that today it is quite obviously more remarked upon by commentators than actually read. It was reported that Rumsfeld's aides scoured second-hand bookshops for a copy (then going for up to $250 apiece by all accounts) to draw what lessons they could as the Coalition began facing up to the new version of insurrection in the summer of 2003. Evidently they did not have much luck. read in full… >> BEYOND IRAQ EUROPE UNDERWRITES PALESTINIAN STARVATION POLICY "The EU and the US have backed Israel in its overt blackmail of the Palestinians. They demand that in order to avoid starving to death, the Palestinians must renounce their democratic choice of Hamas." Currently, among CNN's leading news items is one, which deals with the tragic effect of Israel's genocidal policies against Palestinians. A moving and deeply touching visual of a beautiful ten-month old infant lying defenseless in a Gaza hospital, encapsulates the tragedy of people, who almost six decades after the Nakba, remain hostage to a racist, colonial project known as Zionism and an indifferent world. The story of the little baby destined to die because of lack of medication, does not end there. She is merely one of thousands more, spread across all ages and throughout the Occupied Territories, who, due to the collective strangulation of her people by Israel, are experiencing the effects of the Nakba every moment of their lives. What is their crime? Why are their resources [belonging to them], held back from reaching them? Why must they be condemned to death? read in full… QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I can't keep going through this mentally. All they do is fill me up on medicine and send me back. What's this going to do to me in the future? I'm going to be 60 years old, hiding under my kitchen table? I'm real scared." -- Jason Sedotal, a 21-year-old military policeman who returned home in March 2005 after seven months in Iraq.