Today in Iraq

DAILY WAR NEWS FOR TUESDAY, October 17, 2006 Photo: A boy throws a rock at a burning British consulate vehicle after it was attacked by gunmen with a rocket propelled grenade launcher in Basra, October 16, 2006. (Atef Hassan/Reuters) U.S. troops joined Iraqi forces and police Tuesday in patrolling the city of Balad, where a surge in sectarian fighting has killed at least 91 people. American and Iraqi officials said the violence in the city 50 miles north of Baghdad has eased but not stopped. Unidentified gunmen in police uniforms hijacked 13 civilian cars and abducted their occupants at a checkpoint outside Balad on Monday night after the post had shut down for the night, an officer at the Salahuddin provincial police headquarters said. He said those abducted were taken to another neighborhood nearby, but there was no further word on their fate. The officer spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media. By Tuesday morning, the U.S. military said American forces had responded to Iraqi requests to back up security forces in the town, which lies near a major U.S. air base an hour's drive north of the capital. As the violence had raged over the weekend, the American military initially said it had not been asked for help.

Passengers of 13 different cars were kidnapped today in an operation near Balad town, north of Baghdad. An Iraqi security source said that an armed group disguised in police uniforms set up a phony check point after policemen moved from Sayed Ghareeb check point, south of Balad. They abducted tens of individuals and drove them, in the vehicles they were in, to unknown destinations. Al Sharqiya TV channel said bombs were dropped on Shutaita, in Balad. This killed one person and injured five others.

OTHER SECURITY INCIDENTS Baghdad: Two people were killed and four wounded in a mortar attack on a downtown neighborhood of Baghdad. Two people, including a policeman, were killed and four wounded in a mortar attack on the downtown Ilwiyah neighborhood of Baghdad. Authorities report finding the blindfolded and bound bodies of two unidentified men. 65 bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad since Sunday night, an Interior Ministry source said. Four people traveling in a car were injured by a roadside bomb that targeted but missed a police patrol in east Baghdad's Zayouna neighborhood. Twenty people were injured when two Katyusha rockets landed on Baghdad's Dora neighborhood. A mortar round landed on a residential district and killed a man and wounded 10 others in Baghdad's southern Dora district. A suicide car bomber targeting police commandos killed two police and wounded nine, including four civilians, in Baghdad's southern Saidiya district. Basra: Ten people were killed a spate of shootings in the southern city of Basra. Unidentified gunmen in police and civilian cars opened fire on the victims, who included four students shot on campus and a well-known doctor killed on her way to work. Hilla: Unidentified gunmen attacked a facility belonging to the central Euphrates electricity distribution authority in the town of Hillah, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad, killing a technician and wounding five guards. Gunmen raided a house of a merchant in Hillah and kidnapped one of his sons. Balad Ruz: Gunmen stormed into the house of a family in Balad Ruz, 70 kilometers (45 miles) northeast of Baghdad, at 3:00 a.m. (0000 GMT), killing the mother and four adult sons and injuring the father. Shirqat: A suicide car bomber targeted an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing a soldier and wounding two others in the town of Shirqat, 300 km (180 miles) north of Baghdad. Samarra: Gunmen wounded the two nephews of an official at the Sunni Endowment group in Samarra, 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad. Mosul: Ggunmen killed a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Kurdish political parties, in Mosul. Gunmen approached by car and fired at Fatah Hurki as he stood in front of his home. Gunmen killed a man and wounded a policeman when they attacked the house of the brother of Mosul's governor. Kirkuk: Two suicide car bombers blew themselves up in a botched attack near the police academy in Kirkuk. There were no reports of other casualties in the attack. Karmah: A roadside bomb killed five Iraqi soldiers as their convoy passed through the town of Karmah, west of Baghdad. Fallujah: Two policemen in a patrol car were killed by gunmen in a passing car in the western city of Falluja. Ramadi: The Coalition Forces successfully defeated a complex insurgent small arms fire attack in Ramadi Oct. 16, killing three insurgents. Insurgents attacked three different Coalition locations from several buildings at the same time with small-arms fire. In response to the attack, the Coalition Force established the origin of the gunfire and returned fire with small-arms and machine-gun fire. When the enemy's fire did not cease, the Coalition Force used increasing levels of force, to include tank main gun rounds followed by an air-delivered missile. There are no reports of civilian casualties. Three insurgents were confirmed killed as a result of the attack. No Coalition Force Soldiers were injured during the attack. Haditha: Police found the bodies of four people, with gunshot wounds and signs of torture in Haditha, 250 km (150 miles) west of Baghdad. >> NEWS Saddam Hussein has told his countrymen that Iraq's "liberation is at hand" and called on insurgents to be merciful with their enemy, according to an open letter obtained Monday. In the three-page letter, dictated to his lawyers, Saddam also urges Iraqis to set aside sectarian and ethnic differences and focus instead on driving the U.S. forces out of Iraq. Iraq's National Police is being completely reorganized and over 3,000 officers have been dismissed, the Iraqi interior ministry spokesman has said. >> COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS IRAQ THROUGH A REBEL'S EYES Thomas Jefferson was a rebel, as so many of his comments demonstrated. He also was a gun enthusiast, and not the bird-shooting kind. His gang of insurgents fought the British with the eighteenth century equivalents of assault rifles, RPGs, and roadside bombs - and that is why they are worth recalling when our conversation turns to Iraq. (...) (...) Jefferson and his friends might spot a ray of hope in Iraq. Their radical eyes would pick up on something about the guerilla war that we - after two hundred years of relative comfort and ease - have missed. The US government's arm is tired. Even with one hundred and fifty thousand troops, a fortune in fuel and supplies, and the best weapons ever invented, all that power is having a rough ride. Humvees loaded with high-tech regulars are sitting targets for bits of plumbing packed with C-4, left at the side of the road. There are plenty of surprises from the front, but such news would only elicit a sad smile from Jefferson, and the same from his fellow insurgent, Madison, who wrote this: The highest number to which a standing army can be carried in any country does not exceed one hundredth part of the souls, or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This portion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. (…) American insurgents from 1776 would see Iraq through the filter of their own occupation: the struggle against the Crown and its Hamiltonian successors. They would see the setbacks of the 75th Rangers in Baghdad and the 8th Cavalry in Fallujah, and would mourn the casualties among the professional soldiers, as we do, but another part of them would be saying I told you so - and might even be glad. They couldn't feel anything else, because they were rebels to the core: The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would surely shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did. The man who wrote that would not have rooted for Iraq's fanatics and murderers, out to become tyrants themselves, but neither would he have cheered the federal juggernaut fighting them now. The Iraqi insurgents are the bad guys, for sure, but they are sovereign men, too, armed with nothing but light assault weapons, trip wires, and explosives. Just as Madison predicted, they are holding their own against the attack helicopters of the King. Our government is against them today, but that doesn't change their tactical likeness to the snipers of 1776. (...) Here is one last quotation, this from the insurgent commander himself:

... the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference, they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.

That's not Moqtada al-Sadr talking, but George Washington. You get the idea. Staring into Iraq's quagmire, we should see a second chance for freedom everywhere, including the United States. read in full... Juan Cole: THE END OF PRESS FREEDOM IN IRAQ? Al-Zaman, the Times of Baghdad, reports [Ar.] that press freedom may soon be a thing of the past in Iraq. The Iraqi parliament on Monday passed a resolution calling on the president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, to intervene to close down the offices of the al-Sharqiyah television channel in Iraq, and to close down a newspaper, al-Zaman itself! Both are owned by a media group headed by Saad al-Bazzaz, and they have a mild secular, Arab nationalist tone. It is not a point of view welcome to the Shiite fundamentalists who dominate the Iraqi parliament. (...) Ammar al-Hakim, the son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim (the leader of the United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament), also complained the some Iraqi media and question the patriotism of certain parties in the dispute. The reference appears to have been to al-Zaman and al-Iraqiyah. I see this resolution as an extension of a virtual doctrine of the tyranny of the Shiite majority, and aimed at silencing a major Sunni Arab newspaper. (...) I already see less controversial news in al-Zaman than I used to. I think the window of relative press freedom may be closing. Al-Zaman has a London edition and can be kept alive abroad, but would lose something important if its editorial offices ceased being in Iraq. Al-Zaman also reports that some MPs did insist that parliament does not have the authority to close newspapers and television stations, warning that such a move would represent a return of the dictatorial methods of the former regime. You hope they are in the majority. read in full...

AZZAMAN STANDS TALL In its Tuesday piece, Azzaman stressed the independent nature of its coverage, and in particular its independence from any political parties or groupings. The newspaper and the TV station both were deluged with messages of solidarity from Iraqis who recognized (as the paper put it) that these are independent media outlets that represent, not party views, but the point of view of Iraq and Iraqis generally. This may sound like a cliche, but in this case it isn't. In fact, the whole point of this struggle over the bill (according to Azzaman, and I agree), is that there is such a thing as legitimate Iraqi nationalism, with the aim of holding the country together and preserving the millenium-long tradition of different sects living side-by-side under the same political umbrella. Iraqi nationalism has disappeared from the political vocabulary of the Western experts and the Western media, and I regret to say the latest example of this is Juan Cole's description of Azzaman and Al-Sharqeya as having a "mild secular, Arab nationalist tone". See what I mean? The newspaper spills its guts to keep alive a point of view that represents Iraq and all Iraqis, including Kurds who are not Arab, and any racially Persian Shiites who are also not Arab, with the idea of holding the country together, and our friendly expert tells us this newspaper is of an"Arab nationalist" tone. It was only a slip, but it illustrates how far our experts are from helping us understand what is happening. link

MILITIAS SHOULD RECONSIDER THEIR EXISTENCE Bush phoned Iraqi PM Maliki to assure him that there will be no "timetables," that no matter how big a failure Maliki is, and however long he's a big failure, the US will continue to back him. To prove this continuing support, the White House released this picture of Bush talking to Maliki on the telephone._ Maliki, so inspired by the idea that timetables for US troop withdrawals are a Bad Thing, has decided not to set any timetables for the disbanding of death squads and militias: "Regarding setting a time, I don't think we could determine it specifically. The problem of militias, in countries throughout the world, requires time. The most important thing is that we have started and started strong. We have given a clear message: Militias should reconsider their existence." So maybe the end of this year, he tells USA Today, maybe early next year, you know, whatever. "The problem that we face in disbanding militias - and the militias have to be disbanded - is that there are procedures, steps that need to taken, which take time." Procedures. So people will continue to be blown up, beheaded, tortured with electric drills, etc, because of red tape. That darned paper work, it'll get ya every time. But Maliki said those procedures are just humming along. A week ago, for example, he "formed a committee to work on disbanding militias". It's also a question of PR: "During the period of time required for this approach, our security forces become stronger and the crimes committed by militias become clearer and clearer to everyone. Then, when we confront the militias, there will be no negative reaction to confronting them, especially from the people."__So anyway, that's the guy Bush called today to tell we still support him. link THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMMM... This just in from the AP (via MSNBC): the verdict in Saddam Hussein's trial will be issued on November 5th, when his sentence will also be rendered. Wow, what a coincidence that this date is so close to American elections, eh? Who could have predicted something like that. But wait, here's the part that made me go, "hmmmmmm:"

That trial adjourned July 27 to allow its five-judge panel to consider a verdict. The court was to have reconvened Monday to hear a verdict. "The Dujail trial will resume Nov. 5 when the presiding judge will announce the verdict and the sentencing," Juhi said.

Gee, I wonder why the delay? Security concerns due to the increasing violence in Iraq? (Despite Nedra Pickler's steno articles to the contrary, things are not going swimmingly at the moment.) Or that the UK wants out of Iraq, and soon? Any other possible reasons they would push off the sentencing hearing until just before the date of the US elections? Hmmmm... link MORE DEADLY THAN SADDAM Two-thirds of a million Iraqis have died since the invasion who would almost all be alive if it had not happened. Human Rights Watch has estimated that between 250,000 and 290,000 Iraqis were killed during Saddam Hussein's 20-year rule, so perhaps 40,000 people might have died between the invasion and now if he had stayed in power. (Though probably not anything like that many, really, because the great majority of Saddam's killings happened during crises like the Kurdish rebellion of the late 1980s and the Shiite revolt after the 1990-91 Gulf War.) Of the 655,000 excess deaths since March 2003, only about 50,000 can be attributed to stress, malnutrition, the collapse of medical services as doctors flee abroad, and other side effects of the occupation. All the rest are violent deaths, and 31 percent are directly due to the actions of foreign "coalition" forces. The most disturbing thing is the breakdown of the causes of death. Over half the deaths -- 56 percent -- are due to gunshot wounds, but 13 percent are due to airstrikes. Terrorists don't do airstrikes. No Iraqi government forces do airstrikes, either, because they don't have combat aircraft. Airstrikes are done by "coalition forces" (i.e. Americans and British), and airstrikes in Iraq have killed over 75,000 people since the invasion. Oscar Wilde once observed that "to lose one parent . . . may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." To lose 75,000 Iraqis to airstrikes looks like carelessness, too. read in full... THE WORST IN IRAQ IS STILL TO COME In its external aspects, Iraq remains a live, occasionally explosive issue in the US and Britain, as last week's row over General Sir Richard Dannatt's thoughts on a British withdrawal showed. But the deepening chaos inside the country attracts less and less attention. Like sailors long missing at sea, the fate of ordinary Iraqis three years after the country was driven on to the rocks grows increasingly remote from those who precipitated the disaster. In the US, Iraq is now primarily an electoral rather than a nation-building, humanitarian or counter-terrorism issue. With the Republicans fighting to retain control of Congress in next month's midterm polls, George Bush's Middle East freedom mission has become a hard-nosed numbers game. The Lancet's politically damaging report that more than 650,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 was swiftly dismissed by the White House. But the fact that October is proving the cruellest month for American soldiers, with an average 3.5 deaths a day so far, is deadlier domestic ammunition for the Democrats. On related fronts, both American conservatives and Arab reformers worry that, burned by its Iraq experience, the Bush administration is reverting to old thinking - containment, deterrence, and maintenance of the Middle East status quo. And in Britain as in the US, Iraq is now a handy tool in the nuclear proliferation debate. Tony Blair is derided for seeing weapons in Baghdad when, actually, they were in North Korea all along. So who, his opponents ask, can trust him on Iran? Such political and strategic games reflect a changed state of mind. Although the troops are still there, much of European and US opinion now seems to feel it has entered the "post-Iraq" period. The world has moved on to other issues, it is argued. Relatively soon, both Mr Bush and Mr Blair will be gone. And media interest has diminished, partly because of the evident dangers to reporters but also because the "story" has grown repetitive. But inside Iraq, the picture appears very different to those who still care to look. As daily sectarian bloodshed, militia anarchy and political incompetence reach unprecedented levels, it seems likely that the worst is yet to come. read in full... IT'S TIME TO FACE HARSH REALITY IN IRAQ It's over. American troops are still fighting and dying in Iraq and will be for months to come as we try to extricate ourselves from this mess, but it's over. The U.S. Army may be planning ways to keep 140,000 troops in Iraq until at least 2010, but it's over. It's just over. What we're doing in Iraq cannot be sustained, not militarily and not politically, and after the election a lot of people are going to start saying so. They'll say so if the Democrats take control of one or both chambers of Congress, and they'll say so if Republicans remain in control. Because it's over, and everyone knows it. In Baghdad, 65 percent of Iraqis now support an immediate pullout of U.S. forces from their country, according to a U.S. government poll. A second poll, conducted by the University of Maryland, found that 71 percent of Iraqis want us gone within a year, and more than 60 percent of Iraqis support attacks on the U.S. troops who are fighting and dying to try to protect them. That number says it's over. It is impossible to win a counterinsurgency in which 60 percent of the people you're supposed to be helping want to see your soldiers dead. read in full... Time Magazine: WOULD DEFEAT IN IRAQ BE SO BAD? To me, the relentless mud slide of insurgency and civil war in Iraq is leading to unacceptable strategic disaster for the U.S. There appear to be no viable paths to follow in order to avoid it. Neither "staying the course"--whatever that Bush strategy now means--nor the Democrats' idea of exiting by timetables offers a semblance of success. Both approaches produce only nightmares: general chaos; Iraq's center taken over by terrorists emboldened by victory over America, their pockets bulging with Iraqi oil money; southern Iraq controlled by pro-Iranians or Iran itself; and Iraq's neighbors picking at the nation's carcass until regional war erupts and prompts oil prices to hit $150 a barrel. But while those fears have a real hold on me, I can't help transporting myself back more than 30 years to that day in Vietnam when I felt certain the dominoes would fall throughout Asia and destroy America's strategic position there and elsewhere. I was wrong about those dominoes, as were almost all foreign-policy experts. (...) Although the last thing Americans want is a defeat in Iraq, events may be sliding in that direction and we need to shrink the fallout. The nightmare scenario could begin now, or in the next two years as troops are withdrawn, or thereafter, abruptly or slowly. To speak of defeat is not to advocate it but to prepare to minimize it. read in full... TIME TO LEAVE Iraqis aren't often asked what they think about the American occupation. On Wednesday, President Bush explained why. "There are extreme elements that use religion to achieve objectives. And they want us to leave," he said in a news conference. "They want to control oil resources and they want to plot and plan and attack us again. That's their objectives. And so -- and our strategic objective is to prevent them from doing that." Iraqis hear the message: Their safety isn't the occupation's principal objective. They're treated like pawns of American policy and night watchmen to their oil reserves, rather than like its rightful owners. So when the University of Maryland's Program on Policy Attitudes conducted an opinion survey in September, the results couldn't be surprising. More than 60 percent of Iraqis support attacks against American forces and their allies. That's up from 47 percent in January. Sunnis and Shiites, who form the majority of the Iraqi citizenry, have little more than enmity for each other. But they overwhelmingly agree on how they regard Americans: 78 percent believe the American presence is causing more violence than it is preventing, and 71 percent want American forces gone within a year. Don't for a moment think that they'd cheer Osama instead: 94 percent of Iraqis have an unfavorable view of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. So it's not an either-or situation that the United States is safeguarding. Iraqis want neither Osama nor Uncle Sam. The poll's figures discredit the notion that Iraqis see the American presence as a bulwark against terrorism -- or that Iraqis make a distinction between the kinds of violence they are experiencing. To them, the war's ravages are a direct result of the American intervention. They knew repression before 2003. But so do many countries around the world (including such esteemed American allies as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan). In Iraq, the United States opened the door to terrorism. Americans may not see it that way. Iraqis do. Americans may have a hard time understanding why a people "liberated" by the American military, afforded its continued protection and granted the makings of a democracy would still feel so resentful as to support violent attacks on Americans. But one answer is in how Iraqis see the permanence of the American presence -- its massive military bases, its massive embassy -- as proof that the occupation is not about democracy or even stability, but oil and regional strategy. read in full… Chris Floyd: WHY BUSH SMILES: VICTORY IS AT HAND IN IRAQ Despite George W. Bush's ostentatious bucking up of the Iraqi government yesterday, it is very likely that there will indeed be an American-engineered coup ousting Maliki and installing some sort of strongman-led "national unity government" in Baghdad soon, probably before the end of the year. (Indeed, the very showiness of Bush's pledge of support - in a phone call supposedly initiated by Bush, then announced to the media - is a good indication of the decapitation to come. As JFK once told Gore Vidal: "When a politician says to you, 'Jack, if there's anything I can do for you, just let me know,' that means you're dead." And Maliki - installed in a Bush-backed internal party coup that toppled the previous prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who was himself once a recipient of similar pledges of staunch White House support - is a dead man walking.) The chief reason why Maliki and his government will be ousted is not the hell-storm of death and violence that is now devouring the country. The fact that every new day sees a hundred or more mutilated bodies dumped on the nation's streets, and pitched battles between sectarian militias, and multiple deaths of American troops, and mass flights of anguished Iraqi civilians running in fear for their lives is not a matter of any urgent concern to Bush and his warmakers. Indeed, there is much evidence that one of the prime instigators of the wanton killing is a group created and long nurtured by the Bush Administration itself: the Facilities Protection Service, an army of uniformed freebooters nearly 150,000 strong. (I'll be writing more on this later.) Of course, the violence is a political headache for the Bushists, because it generates bad press; but they don't care about it - it has no intrinsic meaning or emotional impact on those who are already responsible for the deaths of more than half a million Iraqis and more than 2,700 Americans. No, what will likely bring on the coup is the December deadline for crafting a new oil law, which was imposed on Iraq by the International Monetary Fund, as part of the deal to write off some - but by no means all - of the nation's crushing debt. Given the current level of intense anti-American feeling in Iraq, and the overwhelming majority support among every sector of society for ending the occupation, and the overwhelming belief among Iraqis that the chief reason behind the invasion was to steal their oil, it is almost inconceivable that Maliki will be able to sign the new law, which essentially opens up Iraq's oil wealth to decades of despoliation by U.S. and European energy conglomerates. The Maliki government - already weak, incompetent and despised, as are all puppet regimes - could not possibly survive the political backlash that such a move would provoke. (...) Yes, victory. You wonder why Bush and his minions maintain the seemingly irrational belief that "things are going well" in Iraq, that "we're making progress," etc.? That's because things are going well in the war they are fighting: the war for money and power. What happens to the human beings caught up in this war - Iraqi civilians, or American citizens at ever-greater risk from the terrorism spawned by the war - is, again, no concern of the Bush gang. In fact, the worse things are from that standpoint, the better it is for the Bushists. The war profits (and stolen swag) they and their corporate cronies have accrued from the Iraq War (and the "War on Terror" as well) have given them unimaginable wealth with which to continue their overall dominance of American society - no matter who wins the elections in 2006 or 2008, or for decades beyond. As I've stated often before, no matter what happens, Bush and his cronies have already won the war. They've won even if Iraq collapses into perpetual anarchy, or becomes an extremist religious state; they've won even if the whole region goes up in flames, and terrorism flares to unprecedented heights - because this will just mean more war-profiteering, more fear-profiteering. And yes, they've won even if they lose their majority next month or the presidency in 2008, because war and fear will still fill their coffers, buying them continuing influence and power as they bide their time through another interregnum of a Democratic "centrist" - who will, at best, only nibble at the edges of the militarist state - until they are back in the saddle again. The only way they can lose the Iraq War is if they are actually arrested and imprisoned for their war crimes. And you know and I know that's not going to happen. read in full... WE DIE I really need to be depressed to write something. Fortunately, this happens frequently. I feel sad and depressed. I lost my loved ones. Sorry to tell you that, but I did. I lost my father, my mother, my brother, and my sister, and finally I died. I died 660,000 times. Americans ask "why do you hate us?" well.... I have 660,000 reasons to hate you. But I'm not like you, I'm better, I am not going to go on a killing frenzy, and kill every American I see, I won't come to America and destroy it, I won't butcher your children, or rape your girls. I just won't. 660,000 people died in Iraq, and do you care? Nooooooooooooooooooo, you don't. You would have cared more if they were cattle or sheep; you would have cared more if they were chicken infected with bird flu. For god's sake, you care more about your dogs than about humane beings. But wait a minute, this is wrong, I'm terribly sorry, who said you even consider them to be humane beings anyway? They served their purpose, they died. Every person in this world has a purpose serve. People are born, they grow up, they go to school, they get married, they have kids, they work, they produce, you know the drill. But us, on the other hand, our only purpose is to die. We get married, we have kids, but we might just as well send to their graves immediately, because they are going to die anyway. You get married and reproduce children, we reproduce corpses. Corpses which only purpose is die and be buried. That's what we do, WE DIE. 660,000 died. But he doesn't believe in that number, they grave digger doesn't believe that he killed and buried 660,000 people. And does he give a number? No, he doesn't. he just says its not 660,000. OK, I'll go with that, lets say its half, 330,000. is that enough? No? OK, let's say its 100,000. OK now? No? Let's just say its 50,000. Is this fair? Who gives a rat's ass what the number is you dumb maniac? Whatever the number is, its people. It describes how many people who had been killed. Concentrate, people not cattle. People not dogs. People for god's sake. But again, I'm sorry, you should forgive me, sometimes I get emotional and forget what you think. They are not people, never have been. They served their purpose on earth, they died. That's what we do, WE DIE. link QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Previous death tolls under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein literally pale in comparison when placed alongside these [the Lancet report's] figures [that more than 650,000 Iraqis have died since 2003]." -- from Democracy at a price, any price! by Tariq A. Al-Ma'eena