Monday, October 09, 2006
WAR NEWS FOR MONDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2006
[The
Police recovered 35 bullet-riddled bodies across the Iraqi capital Sunday. Some of the bodies showed signs of torture. The bodies could not be immediately identified.
Gunmen killed Amer al-Hashemi, the brother of
Police reported the discovery in
Eleven soldiers were kidnapped when gunmen overran a military checkpoint in
In west
Baquba
Gunmen shot dead police Colonel Faleh al-Obeidi in the religiously mixed city of
Monday, gunmen killed police Lt. Col. Salih al-Karkhi in the Diyala capital of Baqouba.
Near Baquba
A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol, killing two policemen and wounding three others in a village near Baquba.
Galli Najim, the head of the Iraqi National Accord in
Diwaniya
Falluja
Gunmen killed a policeman in the Sunni stronghold city of
Khaldiya
Police found a body shot in the head near the town of
Khalis
Police Lt. Col. Ahmed Taha and another policeman were gunned down in Khalis. When a police patrol arrived, a roadside bomb exploded, killing two other police and wounding a third.
Mussayab
Two mortar rounds landed on a residential district, kiling a man and wounding two others in Mussayab, 60 km south of
Numaniya
At least seven policemen died and hundreds of others fell ill after suffering food poisoning on Sunday evening in the town of
Tal Afar
A suicide car bomber killed a policeman and wounded 11 others -- a policeman and 10 civilians -- at a police checkpoint in Tal Afar.
Trebil
A suicide car bomber rammed a police checkpoint, wounding four policemen and two police commandos near the Jordanian border.
In Country
The
Tally: As of Sunday, Oct. 8, 2006, at least 2,744 members of the
The AP count is 15 more than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.
The British military has reported 119 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, six; El Salvador, four; Slovakia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Romania, one death each.
Bodies in the Tigris: A system of iron weirs in the Tigris River 20 miles southeast of Baghdad was designed to prevent lily pads, known here as "Nile flower," from traveling down-river and clogging canals vital to farmers for irrigating Iraq's south.
But now, the weirs also catch corpses that float down from the capital, murder victims in the sectarian violence that blights
Local police in the nearby town of
Operation Sinbad: An operation by British forces in southern
About 1,000 British soldiers are taking part in Operation Sinbad, seen as a crucial test of the ability of the UK-led multinational force (MNF) in southern
But the MNF spokesman, Major Charlie Burbridge, said yesterday that since the start of the operation on 27 September, there had been a spate of "what appear to be co-ordinated attacks" on military convoys. "We are treating these as retaliation by the rogue elements we are targeting." No one had been hurt in the attacks, which numbered about four or five, the major said.
Civil war moves north: Bombings and shootings are increasing in
The bloodshed is not nearly on the scale of
But the creeping violence in the north — a region
Thank you, President Bush, for liberating Iraqi women: Iraqis do not like to talk about it much, but there is an understanding of what is going on these days. If a young woman is abducted and murdered without a ransom demand, she has been kidnapped to be raped. Even those raped and released are not necessarily safe: the response of some families to finding that a woman has been raped has been to kill her.
'Women are being targeted more and more,' said Umm Salam last week. Her husband was a university professor who was executed in 1991 under Saddam Hussein after the Shia uprising. She survived by running her family farm. When the Americans arrived she got involved in civic action, teaching illiterate women how to read and vote, independent from the influence of their husbands. She helped them fill in forms for benefits and set up a sewing workshop.
In doing so she put herself at mortal risk. And since the assassination attempt, like many women in Najaf, she has found it hard to work. Which is what the men in the white Opel wanted. To silence the women like Umm Salam, who is 42.
'It is very difficult for women here. There is a lot of pressure on our personal freedoms. None of us feels that we can have an opinion on anything any more. If she does, she risks being killed.'
Thank you, President Bush, for bringing justice to
"They accused me of having links to the attackers. They put all of us in the garden and beat me in front of my wife and children. They overturned all the furniture and stole my private computer, money and gold," al-Dulaimi said, adding that he was taken to prison and beaten to elicit a confession.
"After five months of insults and bad treatment they said, 'We are sorry, you have nothing to do with the terrorists,'" he said.
Human rights groups say the rights of citizens, especially those who live in restive areas, are often violated by
Thank you, President Bush, for sharing the American principle of due process with the benighted Iraqi people: Mhyar Abdullah is one of the tens of thousands of men living in
Mhyar, or Merky, has an especially interesting case, because he is a Palestinian who has lived his entire life in
He was detained in 2003 and held for approximately 11 months, in what amounted to a Kafka-esque game of “pass the buck.” As he describes, perhaps the main reason he was held for such a long time was simply that no single authority wanted to take responsibility for his detention and processing.
Everyone stayed quiet. The gunmen ordered witnesses to stand aside and remain still Saturday afternoon as they dragged the shopkeeper known as Abu Ammar away. The victim didn't say a word, though he squirmed and tried to break free.
"Stay where you are," one of the gunmen, a cleanshaven man in his 20s wearing a black bulletproof vest and holding an assault rifle, quietly told the frozen passersby. "Don't move."
The eight plainclothes kidnappers didn't even raise their voices when one of them smashed the shopkeeper's bespectacled face with the butt of an assault rifle. They shooed away a shop employee beseeching them to take along a small plastic bag, possibly filled with the 50-ish victim's medicines, stuffed him into one of two white sport utility vehicles without license plates and drove away from the Colors stationery shop.
Drivers watching from their cars turned their heads and continued on their way. Pedestrians took hold of their loved ones and proceeded with their errands.
It was business as usual in
Compare And Contrast
We fully support Maliki: The commander of
As violence in
"Recent news articles cite unnamed senior military officials as being critical of Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government," the media office of the top commander in Iraq, General George Casey, said in a statement.
"These unattributed comments do not reflect the close partnership between the Government of Iraq and Multi-National Force-Iraq. We fully support the courageous and decisive efforts of the prime minister and the (government)."
Unless we decide to kill his ass in a coup: Is the Bush administration considering a coup d’etat in
More and more, it’s beginning to look like the end for
Question is, what are they going to replace him with—and when?
Har Har
This should be a real deterrent: In Baghdad, Iraq's parliament agreed to lift the immunity from prosecution of a Sunni lawmaker accused of pocketing millions of dollars from a project to protect oil pipelines.
The step to remove the lawmaker's legal immunity was unprecedented but largely symbolic as he is no longer in
Breaking The
23 years old and leaving on his third tour: In April 2003, Army Spc. Cedric Shelbon was among the 3rd Infantry Division soldiers based here who led the American assault on
Now, after less than a year at home, Shelbon and about 4,000 of his fellow soldiers from the division's 1st Brigade Combat Team are preparing for a third tour in
The prospect of spending another year in
"It's kind of nerve-racking. You see your friends get killed and you wonder if the next time it's going to be you," Shelbon said earlier this week as his unit went through its final major training exercises at home before deploying overseas in January.
Unseen scars: The war on terrorism is taking a toll on
At last count, more than 20,000 service members had been wounded in
Experts say most soldiers think when they return home from war, everything will be fine, that they'll forget the war, but doctors say that's just a fantasy, and that no one comes back from war unchanged.
The Consigliore Speaks
Looks like he’s going to recommend staying in: An immediate pullout of US troops would unleash an civil war that could engulf the entire Middle East, former senior
"I think that if we picked up and left right now that you would see the biggest civil war you've ever seen," Baker told ABC television on Sunday.
"Every neighboring country would be involved in there, doing its own thing,
He also rejected a plan by a top
"If we do that, that in itself will trigger a huge civil war because the major cities in
A change in course that doesn’t involve withdrawal – good luck with that, Jim: Former Secretary of State James Baker said Sunday the Iraqi government has a limited amount of time to gain control of the country, and he suggested that a panel evaluating
Baker, co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group set up to advise the administration on the war, said he agreed with Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., that Iraqi leaders have two to three months to demonstrate concrete evidence of progress.
The longtime Republican adviser said the 10-member commission is reviewing alternatives for the
"There are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of "stay the course' and "cut and run,' " he said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
Interesting…Daddy’s Mr. Fixit saying on national TV that there are alternatives to ‘staying the course’. I wonder if he knows that makes him objectively pro-terrorist?
The Rumsfeld and Cheney Show
What a thinker: It is impossible to know with any precision whether the wars in
In his first extensive remarks about a recent
In the much-discussed National Intelligence Estimate initially reported last weekend, the government's top analysts concluded that
What a nutcase: "If we follow Congressman Murtha's advice and withdraw from Iraq the same way we withdrew from Beirut in 1983 and Somalia in 1993, all we will do is validate the al-Qaeda strategy and invite even more terrorist attacks," Cheney said in Milwaukee. In
The crux of his pitch is what he calls the continuing "danger to civilization." Cheney, who warned in 2004 that the United States would be hit by terrorists if Democrat John F. Kerry was elected president, has not gone that far this time but does say that it "is not an accident" that the country has not suffered another attack since Sept. 11, 2001, giving Bush credit.
Democrats regularly punch back, suggesting Cheney is out of touch and desperate. "At a time when the Bush Administration finds itself increasingly isolated on
Bush's War On The Constitution
Words of wisdom: Veteran CBS newsman Bob Schieffer, who received the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media at the
"I cannot remember a time when it's been more challenging for journalists," said Schieffer, 69, who has covered
He said Thursday the government will always cover up its mistakes if it operates in secret and that it was up to journalists to expose the truth.
"Why does the government need a list of my phone calls?" he asked. "And what business does a democracy have running secret prisons? ... Do you believe that anyone would have known about these secret prisons or what was going on in Abu Ghraib if it had been left to the government to announce it?
"Some would argue these revelations hurt our cause. I argue just the opposite. Bringing mistakes to the fore is a strength, not a weakness."
Schieffer said
Your tax dollars at work: President Bush has almost doubled the percentage of US foreign-aid dollars going to faith-based groups such as Food for the Hungry, according to a Globe survey of government data. And in seeking to help such groups obtain more contracts, Bush has systematically eliminated or weakened rules designed to enforce the separation of church and state.
For decades,
Since medical programs are aimed at the most serious illnesses -- AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis -- the decision whether to seek treatment can determine life or death.
But many of those restrictions were removed by Bush in a little-noticed series of executive orders -- a policy change that cleared the way for religious groups to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in additional government funding. It also helped change the message American aid workers bring to many corners of the world, from emphasizing religious neutrality to touting the healing powers of the Christian God.
Bush's orders altered the longstanding practice that groups preach religion in one space and run government programs in another. The administration said religious organizations can conduct services in the same space as they hand out government aid, so long as the services don't take place while the aid is being delivered. But the rule allows groups to schedule prayers immediately before or after dispensing taxpayer-funded aid.
King George: President Bush, again defying Congress, insisted he has the power to alter the Homeland Security Department's reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watch lists.
In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on agency activities that affect privacy, including complaints.
But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency's 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority."
Reward: The Navy lawyer who took the Guantánamo case of Osama bin Laden's driver to the U.S. Supreme Court — and won — has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word he had been denied a promotion to full-blown commander this summer, "about two weeks after" the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
Under the military's "up-or-out" promotion system, Swift will retire in March or April, closing a 20-year career of military service.
Commentary
Brent Budowsky: And the honest truth is, because the stakes are so high this truth must be told: when George W. Bush accuses Jack Murtha and others using various phrases, George W Bush is lying through his teeth, because he knows damn well what the commanders really think, and what the overwhelming majority of them think, is what Jack Murtha says, not what George W. Bush falsely claims they think.
Finally, for now, this is the truth:
George W. Bush knows that the policy is failing. He knows that the overwhelming majority of commanders believe the policy is failing.
He knows that the commanders want major changes in the policy.
He knows that Senator Warner speaks for the commanders as Jack Murtha speaks for the commanders, when they both state major changes are needed.
He knows that major changes in the policy are mandatory and inevitable yet the man who brags about being a wartime President is committing two historic sins that are unworthy of the Presidency, which are these:
He is lying about his political opponents such as Jack Murtha when he knows they speak and fight for commanders and troops, and;
George W. Bush is delaying the changes in the policy so he can use the issue for personal and partisan politics, while troops risk and give their lives today for the political benefit of a morally decayed Republican Party and a President who knows the policy must change, maneuvers the decision for political reasons, in a way that no commander in chief has ever done except Nixon and Kissinger in Vietnam.
Interview: AMY GOODMAN: You interviewed hundreds of soldiers?
SGT. MARSHALL THOMPSON: Thousands.
AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of soldiers in
SGT. MARSHALL THOMPSON: Most soldiers want to withdraw. That is proven. There was a Zogby poll. 72% of recently turned Iraqi vets want to be out of
AMY GOODMAN: 2006?
SGT. MARSHALL THOMPSON: By 2006. That means this year. And my experience backs that up absolutely.
There is a lot of pressure for soldiers not to speak out. There’s fear of court-martials. There’s fear of their commanders getting mad at them. There's a lot of reasons why soldiers don't speak out.
But nobody should be fooled. Soldiers know what's going on over there, and they are not happy about it.
Qasem (Correspondent for the blog Alive in
In Jail there was good marines and bad bad Marines also …some of them hate me because I understand their bad words for the prisoners …and I asked the officer in the jail to stop them saying bad words for prisoners some of them liked me ….and one marine soldier asked me for my email address …he like to be in contact with me as friend…he said ” U will be my first Iraqi friend ”
Inside Jail there was many old men, more than 60 years old, and they treated same as others ….some of them have no shoes-their feet were naked-because they were arrested while they were sleeping in their houses .
The main purpose for arresting me was to make sure that I am not writing my blogs to support insurgency …..and marines made sure that I have no relation with any Iraqi carry weapon against US troops.
I was released at 7 Oct 2006 at 7 am ( morning ).
Now I am have to say, not only peaceful Americans reading my blogs but ….US marines reading it more than anybody else …..and the Military intelligence of
Thanks peace friends….now your comments will be read by US marines too …my blog is not for only peaceful people any more…..there marines whom join us to exchange ideas ….and I thing that could give good support for peace when some of people whom carry weapons exchange ideas with peaceful people ..
Carla Seaquist: Taking care of the troops under his command is an officer's sacred duty. That duty applies exponentially to a commander-in-chief.
Yet the present commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, has further jeopardized the troops he sent to
Dereliction No. 1: Bush's policy on torture hurts our soldiers. Last week, Congress surrendered to Bush's "program" of "alternative interrogation methods" (read: torture). While Bush claimed "We do not torture" last month, his ongoing support for harsh tactics that amount to it heightens the risk that our soldiers will be tortured if taken captive - a distinct and dire likelihood as
Moreover, torture is immoral, emphatically not an American value, hurtful of our relations with the world, and illegal, as the Supreme Court effectively ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld this June.
Dereliction No. 2: Audaciously, the White House is also pushing changes to the War Crimes Act, the 1996 US law that prosecutes "grave breaches" of the laws of war, such as the Geneva Conventions. Since the revised bill would apply retroactively to 1997, the White House is evidently trying to insulate itself against liability for crimes of war - its use of torture in the war on terror. Sworn to uphold the law, and redirected there by the Supreme Court, this president, on the defensive, calls for a rewrite.
The fallout of these derelictions for our troops? Should they be captured and tortured, their commander-in-chief would have no grounds at all - legal or moral - to protest or to seek justice. This, from a "moral values" president who exhorts us to "support the troops"?
Sami Moubayed:
Pat M. Holt: In one sense, the Army is plainly losing the war. It is shorter of manpower and equipment now than when it invaded
Besides the equipment shortage, the division's 2nd Brigade has only about half of the roughly 3,500 soldiers it is supposed to have.
The Bush administration wanted to fight the war on the cheap. It did not want to ask the public for sacrifices, such as paying higher taxes. On the contrary, it fought in Congress to keep taxes low, thereby making the richest 1 percent of the population even richer. There was no talk of rationing. And there was certainly no talk of a draft to provide more manpower for the Army.
Mr. Bush has said that if the generals in charge in
Paul Krugman: The current right-wing explanation for what went wrong in
Robyn E. Blummer: Did you hear that click, like the turning of a dial, auguring a new
It happened on Sept. 29 at 2:47 p.m. That was the seismic minute that Congress passed the Military Commissions Act and formally granted President Bush royal powers he had been unilaterally arrogating. The historic action may one day be remembered as the moment the great American experiment in liberty ended. It was a good run.
You see, it is one thing for a renegade executive to crown himself like Charlemagne and declare that his (cough) wisdom is exceptional enough to designate Americans and foreigners as enemies to be detained indefinitely. It is quite another for 315 members of Congress to go along. When the people's representatives collude to collapse the separation of powers into one omnipotent executive, our nation becomes defined by that act. We are a nation of laws, even when it's a really bad one.
Republican leaders in Congress were in a quandary because Bush had proven that he could not be trusted to respect the boundaries of law, and the Supreme Court called him on it. In striking down Bush's kangaroo military tribunals and resurrecting the Geneva Conventions, the court said that the president couldn't ignore
…
The law is a true abomination. It is our fault. We let this happen. We allowed them to draw the false dichotomy between security and freedom. We accepted Bush's Torture Nation and his untouchable island prison.
Judge Learned Hand said "
E Pluribus Unum be damned. Here's
Casualty Reports
The latest identifications reported by the military:
Four soldiers died in Taji Monday of injuries received when an explosive detonated near their vehicle:
• Army Staff Sgt. James D. Ellis, 25, Valdosta, Ga.; assigned to the 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
• Army Spc. Raymond S. Armijo, 22, Phoenix; assigned to the 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
• Army Spc. Justin R. Jarrett, 21, Jonesboro, Ga.; assigned to the 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
• Army Spc. Kristofer C. Walker, 20, Creve Coeur, Ill.; assigned to the 7th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.
A 22-year-old soldier from
An Alabama Marine stationed in
Funeral services are planned for Monday for an Iowa National Guard soldier who died last week in
A
