Today in Iraq

DAILY WAR NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY, July 5, 2006 Photo: Mother and daughter earning their living by combing through garbage Baghdad July 4th 2006. Desperate poverty, fear, bereavement, imprisonment, mutilation, torture, hunger, rape, disease, this is what the American occupation has brought to Iraqi women and children. Bring ‘em on: An Indiana National Guard soldier was killed in Iraq on Monday, according to a Wednesday release from the Indiana National Guard. Staff Sgt. Paul S. Pabla, 23, of Fort Wayne, was deployed with the 150th Field Artillery, based in Bloomington. Officials said Pabla was hit by sniper fire while on patrol in Mosul. He had been training Iraqi policemen. Bring ‘em on: Sgt. Muldoon was taken in battle Thursday. His wife, Ashlee Muldoon of Sherman, said the preliminary information is, Sgt. Muldoon's unit was on a raid. "He was the first one in and charged the stairs," Ashlee Muldoon said. "He was shot in the side and leg and it hit an artery. He bled to death." OTHER SECURITY INCIDENTS In country: The Iraqi official who was kidnapped Tuesday in eastern Baghdad has now been released. Gunmen in camouflage uniforms kidnapped the country's deputy electricity minister and eleven of his bodyguards, after stopping their convoy in a Shiite neighborhood. Hours later, the Electricity Ministry said he'd been released. There are no other details available. Three employees of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society were freed in Mosul’s city centre while in Amiriya district a hostage fell out of the kidnappers' car after soldiers opened fire on the vehicle. The central morgue said Tuesday that it received 1,595 bodies last month, 16 percent more than in May, in a tally that showed the pace of killing here has increased since the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The toll for last month was roughly double the 879 bodies the morgue received in June 2005. Baghdad: A bomb struck the busy Tayaran Square in central Baghdad, reducing a restaurant near a bus stop to a pile of rubble. Two people were killed and 10 wounded in that explosion. A civilian was killed and six wounded when a roadside bomb went off in a central Baghdad square. Iraqi police in eastern Baghdad found the body of a man who was shot in the head. Gunmen killed an employee of the Dora refinery in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad. An intelligence captain in the Interior Ministry was seriously wounded when gunmen opened fire on his car in the Dora neighbourhood. Gunmen in a speeding car also opened fire on a family as they were walking to the market in a southwestern neighbourhood in the capital, killing a 12-year-old boy and wounding his brother and two other relatives. A roadside bomb missed a police patrol in eastern Baghdad but killed one civilian and wounded four others. A bomb hidden in a bag exploded in a market in central Baghdad, wounding seven people. Three civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police commando patrol in southern Doura district. A car bomb in western Baghdad killed six people and wounded 17. The car bomb exploded outside a mosque in a public square in Washash neighborhood, an area in the Mansour district. A bomb left in a shopping center selling clothes and shoes exploded in central Baghdad, wounding ten people. Karbala: Police reported the shooting death of a former Baathist In Karbala, south of Baghdad. Gunmen killed six civilians on Tuesday in different areas of Kerbala. The bodies of two people with gunshot wounds were found near Kerbala, 100 km (68 miles) southwest of Baghdad. Iraqi police arrested two members of the security forces who had kidnapped a bride in Karbala. The two men, who are members of a unit providing security at public installations, abducted the woman as she left a beauty salon accompanied by her mother and sister. Suwaira: Four civilians were killed in a bomb attack on an Iraqi army convoy in a suburb of Suwaira, 45 kilometres south of Baghdad. No soldiers were injured in the attack. Baqubah: One civilian was killed by a car bomb in Baquba. One civilian was gunned down in the east of Baquba. Khalis: Two civilians were shot dead in Khalis, to the north. Beni Saad: Two corpses were found in the village of Khan Beni Saad, south of Baquba. Tikrit: A shopowner was killed when gunmen opened fire on his store in Tikrit, in central Iraq. (Near) One Iraqi civilian was killed by a roadside bomb which detonated as he was passing on the road from Balad to Ishaqi, close to Tikrit. Awja: In the village of Awja near Tikrit, birthplace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, a women was shot dead. Baiji: A car bomb targeting a US army patrol was detonated in Bayji, 200 kilometres north of the Iraqi capital. The car bombing failed to hit the targeted patrol, and no casualties were reported. One US soldier was however injured after the patrol came under sniper fire. Muqdadiyah: About 1,500 Iraqi soldiers fanned out near Muqdadiyah about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, to clear the area of insurgents, Brig. Gen. Ahmed al-Awad said. The commander said four cars and a motorcycle packed with explosives had been seized and 14 suspected insurgents detained since the operation began Tuesday. Al-Awad also said two kidnapped civilians had been released. Mosul: A bomb that struck a police patrol in Mosul killed a police officer and a civilian and wounded a policeman and three civilians. Kirkuk: A roadside bomb struck a car carrying members of a private security company in Kirkuk killing one person and wounding three others. Firefighters arriving at the site to help also were hit by a roadside bomb, which wounded two of them. On the main road 40 kilometers south of the Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb went off as a car full of Kurdish peshmergas fighters passed, killing one and wounding two. When members of the civil defense showed up at the site, a second bomb detonated injuring three of them. (S. of) The headless corpse of a man in a black tracksuit lying in the river Zab was found in a village 90 kilometers south of Kirkuk. Gunmen killed a civilian on Tuesday on the Kirkuk- Baghdad highway. Two civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a U.S. patrol in Kirkuk. Three civilians were wounded when a car bomb targeting a civil defence official exploded near a hospital in Kirkuk. A civilian died near Kirkuk when gunmen opened fire on his car while he was driving on the main road leading to Baghdad. Ramadi: U.S. and Iraqi forces raided a hospital that was suspected of being used as an insurgent base in the western city of Ramadi. The Saddam Hospital has been used as a launching pad for mortar attacks and sniper fire against coalition forces, as well as violence against Iraqi civilians, the military said. The coalition security forces began searching the hospital in the northern half of the city early Wednesday, the military said, adding that the operation had national and local government approval and was being led by the Iraqi army. Fallujah: A police officer died from wounds he sustained after being attacked by gunmen on Tuesday in Falluja. >> NEWS Iraqi PM Maliki wants an independent Iraqi investigation, or at least a joint investigation with coalition forces, into the alleged rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by U.S. troops.: He said crimes against Iraqis were not acceptable and that coalition troops' immunity from Iraqi prosecution should be reviewed. "We believe that the immunity given to members of coalition forces encouraged them to commit such crimes in cold blood — the thing that makes it necessary to review it," he said. Kidnappers of a Sunni legislator have demanded the release of all detainees, a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops and an end to attacks on Shiite mosques in exchange for her freedom, an Iraqi vice president said Wednesday. The seventh convoy of humanitarian aid to people of Iraq form the Syrian people headed to Iraq Wednesday noon to meet needs of hospitals and health centers from medicine and medical requests to treat brothers damaged due to the occupation. Minister of State for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Organization Affaires Dr. Bashar al-Shaar said in a statement "this humanitarian aid which is sent in cooperation with the Dutch Red Cross include 621 boxes of medical materials weighting 14,726 KG that will be delivered to the Iraqi Red Crescent which in turn will distribute them over nine hospitals." >> REPORTS SLAIN IRAQI GIRL FEARED SOLDIERS Fifteen-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza was afraid, her mother confided to a neighbor. The pretty girl had attracted the unwelcome attention of U.S. soldiers working at a checkpoint that she had to pass through almost daily in their village in the south-central city of Al-Mahmudiyah, her mother told the neighbor. Abeer told her mother again and again in her last days that the soldiers had made advances toward her, a neighbor, Omar Janabi, said over the weekend, recounting a conversation he said he had with the girl's mother, Fakhriyah, on March 10. Fakhriyah feared the Americans might come for her daughter at night, at their home. She asked her neighbor if Abeer might sleep at his house, with the women there. Janabi said he agreed. Then, ``I tried to reassure her, remove some of her fear,'' Janabi said. ``I told her, the Americans would not do such a thing.'' Abeer did not live to take up shelter at Janabi's home. read in full... NEW PLAN FOR RAMADI: 'GET RID OF IT' American commanders have a new plan for Ramadi, the "epicenter of the Iraqi insurgency and the focus of a grinding struggle between American forces and the guerrillas," according to an article slated for the front page of Wednesday's New York Times: "Get rid of it." "In three years, the Marines and the army have tried nearly everything to bring this provincial capital of 400,000 under control," writes Dexter Filkins. "Nothing has worked." "Now, American commanders are trying something totally new," the article continues. "They are going to get rid of it, planning to bulldoze about three blocks in the middle of the city and convert them into a "Green Zone," a version of the fortified and largely stable area that houses the Iraqi and American leadership in Baghdad." read in full... TO LEAVE, SOMEHOW More than three years after the invasion, Iraqis seem increasingly to want to leave the country. Reports come pouring in about Iraqi refugees overwhelming Syria, Jordan and other nations in the region. Last month the United Nations released a report that more than 150,000 Iraqis have been displaced since February. Iraqis who do not have a passport head for the Mansur Passport Office in Baghdad. Most spend the night there to be in with a chance. "I had to spend the night in here just to make sure I'll be listed as one of the first 50 who arrived here," Um Ali, a 40-year-old mother of four told IPS. "If they don't list my name in the first 50, I will lose my chance to get a passport, and I'll be forced to wait until I have a second chance." link >> COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS THE FAKE INSURGENCY Concerning the sectarian killings in Iraq that the US government and media try hard to attribute to "al-Qaeda": It has already been exposed that the killings and bombings are the work of "death squads" working out of the Iraqi interior ministry, which itself is entirely controlled by the CIA. Let me reiterate that in every war waged by the US government against a foreign nation, a counter-insurgency operation has immediately been implemented. Counter-insurgency operations are required in such circumstances because when a country is invaded, an insurgency of some form invariable arises to defend the country. Such insurgents are very difficult for an invading army to defeat given the extensive support and collaboration they enjoy from the general population. Essentially, an invading army finds itself at war with the population of the country they are invading rather than a separate and independent insurgency. Strategies developed over the years to deal with such situations has come to be known as "counter-insurgency", and include attempts to identify divisions within the society, usually religious, political or ethnic, however insignificant, and to then attempt to provoke these divisions. Of course, in the scenario where a country has been invaded by a foreign military force, such internal divisions become almost nonexistent as the population unites to oppose the invaders, as is the case in Iraq. For this reason, counter-insurgency tactics designed to sow discord must be fabricated and generally involve the creation of a fake insurgency by the military intelligence apparatus of the invading force. This fake insurgency is made up of groups of armed militia who are paid by the invading force to target and murder distinct groups among the population, again, along religious, ethnic or political lines. In the case of Iraq, we see militia 'death squad' attacks on both Sunni and Shia members of the Iraq population which are blamed on the real insurgency or al-qaeda in Iraq. The hoped-for benefits of such brutal tactics are to demoralise and confuse the real insurgency and the population that supports them, to embroil the real insurgency in an internecine conflict, and, in the specific case of Iraq, to promote the US government's claim that al-Qaeda is still active and poses a deadly threat to civlised societies everywhere. read in full... HOME FREE: AMERICAN POWER IN MAHMUDIYAH Did you see her and want her so bad, that young, forbidden fruit? Did she once smile nervously at the checkpoint, and you thought it was just for you? Did you come on strong the next time around, flash a little money maybe, or lay a syrupy line on her that you got from a phrasebook? What did she do - recoil? Look away? Look disgusted? Look blank? What did she do to bring on the big hurt from a big, tough man like you? So you planned it all out. You cased the house, you reconnoitred. You got your buddies in on it - or were they in from the start, did they make a play too, were they too turned away by this haughty Arab bitch, this piece of trash from a shitheap town in a shitheap country filled with nothing but lazy, lying, murdering towelheads? Somebody like that thinks they're too good to give it up to you? You liberated her goddamned country, for Christ's sake, and now she won't even put out? That dog won't hunt. Hell no. You and your pals had to teach her a lesson. You had the power, you had the guns, you were Americans; who was going to stop you? So you set up the mission. You knew how to do it. How many houses had you raided before? Dozens, hundreds - who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? You went in and got her, you did what you wanted to her. You shoved the other hajjis into the next room, put a gun on them, then got down to business. Did your buds take a turn? Everybody get a taste? Or maybe you'd already ruined her before they got a chance - beat her, tore her, pounded her into goo? Who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? At some point, she just wasn't worth it anymore. No fight left in her. Laid there like a limp rag. Passed out maybe. So you took out your gun, you took out your power, you took out the thing that makes you an American - a real person, a human being --- instead of a walking piece of shit like everyone else in that godforsaken hellhole of a country, you took it out and you shot her in the head. One shot, clean kill. Did you say anything? Crack a joke? "Not tonight, honey, I've got a headache." Or did you just stand there and curse her, puking your self-righteous rage all over her dead body? Who took charge after that? Was it you, or one of the others? It all started moving so fast, like a dream had been broken - or maybe this was the dream? Maybe it was all a dream, the whole fucking thing, from day one, all of it nothing, happening to nobody, going on nowhere, never. But the smell was real, you couldn't get away from it, that wet smell, meat and guts in a slime of blood. It filled your nose, filled up your whole head behind your face, it lined your throat, coated your skin. And if the smell was real, then the whole thing.... Move, fast, now! The hajjis in the other room: no witnesses, goddamn it! Who's this, the mother? Head shot, head shot, down. Who's this old bastard? Father, brother? Who cares? Head shot, head shot, in the face, down. And what's this? Oh for Christ's sake, how old is she? Six? Seven? Eight? What are you going to do, wait till she grows up and comes looking for your ass? Catch her, goddamn it, just shoot, shoot! Down. Now burn the other one. Yeah, the bitch in the other room. Set her on fire and get the hell out. Report terrorist activity. The Sunni bastards in the area. Secure the perimeter. Get your fucking story straight and keep your fucking mouth shut. We're home free. Home free.... read in full... >> BEYOND IRAQ Afghanistan: Bring ‘em on: A British soldier was killed in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the Ministry of Defence said, becoming the sixth to die in the dangerous new mission in the area in the past four weeks. Bring ‘em on: A Hoosier soldier was killed in action in Afghanistan on Sunday. Chief Warrant Officer William Timothy Flanigan, 37, died in an Apache helicopter crash in Kandahar. Taliban militants have attacked the convoy of a private US security firm in western Afghanistan and killed two local security guards. British forces in Afghanistan are facing a supply crisis because nearly half of their helicopter transport fleet is unable to fly in daylight hours due to the searing Helmand heat. Captain Drew Gibson, the British military spokesman with the Helmand force, declined to comment on the Lynx problems, citing "operational reasons". A Chinook resupply flight - able to carry 54 troops or 11 tons of equipment - was cancelled last month when a US soldier based with British troops in Musa Qala needed air evacuation with appendicitis. A Lynx would normally be used. British forces pinned down by Taliban guerrillas near the town of Gereshk last week waited for more than four hours for air support because no Lynx could fly. A Canadian reconnaissance platoon from Alpha Company engaged about a dozen Taliban fighters in a skirmish in northern Kandahar province, killing one and wounding another who was brought to the Kandahar Airfield for treatment. A platoon of Bravo Company was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire in Panjwai District, to the west of Kandahar, as it rushed to the aid of an Afghan National Police outpost that was under attack. 9000 TO 1 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lost no time in exploiting Hamas' capture of an Israeli soldier to justify Israel's long-planned re-occupation of the Gaza Strip and mass arrest of the Hamas leadership. In his haste, he has inadvertently achieved a rare thing. He has managed to reduce the absurdity of Israel's position to a known ratio: 9000 to 1. Nine thousand captured Palestinians languish in Israel's notorious "security prisons", including 380 children and 115 women. Every day Israeli troops and Border Police kidnap, interrogate, torture and imprison Palestinians, often by the dozen. The arrest raids never stop, regardless of summits, truces, or cease-fires. It is estimated that 650,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel since the current occupation began in 1967. Arrest and incarceration is such a common experience that it has become a virtual rite of passage for Palestinian boys; men go to prison. In the past year we've read several reports of pre-teen boys, some as young as 8, approaching Israeli soldiers and asking, even begging, to be arrested. But God forbid that even one of Israel's tender teen warriors should be captured in battle, as young Gilat Shalit was. That would be going too far. That would justify blowing up key bridges and destroying the electricity source of two-thirds of the Gaza Strip. Columns of invading tanks and scores of US-supplied jet fighters and combat helicopters would be required to hunt for the missing soldier, and attack the Palestinian Interior Ministry. From top to bottom, little Gaza would be subjected to yet another round of fierce shelling from land, air, and sea. All in a day's hunt. After years of bargaining with Hizbullah "terrorists" over prisoners captured during Israel's occupation of Lebanon, Israelis know that this hysteria over a single soldier is only a ruse. But that doesn't stop them from falling for it all over again, and Olmert appears to have public support for his new version of total war on the Gaza Strip, cynically code named 'Operation Summer Rain'. The score is 9000 to 1 and the Israelis are outraged. It should be 9000 to 0. read in full... A CHICKENHAWK NO LONGER As I hinted on Saturday, there was a big ruckus in the blogiverse over the weekend about a plot by the New York Times travel section to betray the safety of VP Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by writing a puff piece on the ultra-wealthy Maryland community where they have vacation homes. Today, apparent co-conspirator Glenn Greenwald revealed that the photos of Rumsfeld's house which accompanied the article "were taken with Secretary Rumsfeld's permission." Greenwald and other terrorist-sympathizing liberal bloggers promptly howled with their usual unhinged outrage about the lack of credibility of those who uncovered the dastardly scheme, since Rummy's approval shows the photos couldn't possibly constitute a threat. Unfortunately, I suspect that all sides have gotten it completely wrong. What's going on here is that, in an act of unanticipated courage, Rumsfeld has put his own life on the line and taken the concept of flypaper to a whole new level... link CAN AMERICA EXPORT '4TH OF JULY VALUES'? This was the theme question by the BBC, watch the video: Can America export '4th of July values'? [pity no interview with regular Iraqi people] Their private telephones tapped, their bank accounts are spied on, the question is how can a police state celebrates it's "freedom"? I think the answer is in this opinion, it show us who is really celebrating "independence day" and "freedom" in America: George W. Bush has two kinds of supporters - the very wealthy, and the very ignorant. The wealthy are enjoying the tax cuts that favor them. The ignorant are too blind to see how badly they have been swindled by this sorry excuse of a president. read in full... WHAT THE FLAG MEANS TO ME When I see the flag and think of the Declaration of Independence, instead of the United States of America, I see the United Corporations of America; I see the blood and bones of people all over the globe who have been dehumanized, then exterminated by its imperialism; and I see a symbol that represents a monstrous lie maintained by excessive, deadly force. It makes me feel sick, and ashamed. And I know that my opinions being expressed here will not be popular, even among some of my closest friends. But I cannot ignore the reality as I now understand it. I believe we are living one of the most incredible lies in history, covered over by one of the most successful campaigns of public rhetoric, ignoring empirical reality. It is truly amazing! I hope that one day we will end our willful ignorance and be able to see our transgressions, and beg, on our knees, for forgiveness, and then wail as we begin to feel the incredible pain and anguish we have caused the world as well as our own bodies, minds, souls, and culture. -- S. Brian Wilson, July 4, 2000 read in full... QUOTE OF THE DAY: "As the clever predicted, Iraq isn't just a quagmire, it's quicksand." -- Captain May, a former Army intelligence and public affairs officer who is on a self-declared "mission of conscience" to oppose the Bush War Cabal.