Today in Iraq

DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY NOVEMBER 24, 2006

PHOTO: Shop owners in Baghdad’s Sadr City district dug through the rubble after car bombings tore through crowded streets and markets Thursday. (Ahmad al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

Security Incidents

Baghdad:

the death toll from a string of Baghdad bombings in the past 24 hours rose to 202. In addition to the 202 fatalities, the six car bombs and a missile wounded more than 250 residents in the deadliest coordinated attack since the onset of the war in March 2003, the BBC reported.

Shiite mortar teams quickly retaliated to the Sadr City onslaught on Thursday, firing 10 shells that badly damaged the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Azamiya neighborhood and killed one person.

As funeral processions were held in Sadr City on Friday, several mortar rounds hit the Um al-Qura mosque, headquarters of Association of Muslim Scholars in west Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood, wounding four of the guards, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein.

In Baghdad's mostly Shiite neighborhood of Hurriyah, clashes between Shiite militiamen and Sunni insurgents armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades broke out near a Sunni mosque, residents said. No casualties were immediately reported in the fighting.

Residents also reported heavy mortar fire and gunbattles in Hurriyah, a now-largely Shiite neighborhood in northwest Baghdad. There were pitched battles between gunmen and the army on Haifa Street, a dangerous thoroughfare running north from the Green Zone, site of the American and British embassies as well as the Iraqi government and parliament. Iraqis also reported heavy fighting around the Jadriyah Bridge near Baghdad University and AP personnel saw 12 pickup trucks loaded with men armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and heavy machine guns driving through the center of the city.

Three mortar rounds also exploded near the Abu Hanifa mosque, Sunni Islam's most important shrine in another area of Baghdad at 9:45 a.m. Friday, wounding one guard, said its sheik, Samir al-Obaidi. A mortar round crashed through the dome of the structure Thursday night, within hours of the Sadr City attack.

(thursday) Two other mortar barrages on Sunni neighborhoods in west Baghdad killed nine and wounded 21, police said late Thursday.

Baqubah:

Gunmen blew up an office of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, after U.S. troops raided the building to arrest Sadr supporters inside, police said. They also reported sporadic clashes and said the situation was tense in the religiously mixed town which has been a frequent scene of sectarian violence.

Basra:

It is with deep regret that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the death of a British soldier in Iraq, following a planned search and detention operation in Basra City earlier today, Friday 24 November 2006. The soldier sustained gunshot wounds during the operation and was evacuated to a nearby military hospital. Despite the best possible medical care, the soldier later died from his injuries. The soldier was a member of the Parachute Regiment, on secondment to Headquarters Multinational Division South East, Iraq.

Iskandariya:

A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded another in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, on Thursday, police said. In a separate incident gunmen attacked a police checkpoint, killing one civilian and wounding a policeman.

Mosul:

Three bodies with gunshot wounds were found in different parts of the northern city of Mosul on Thursday, the local hospital said.

Fallujah:

In the Sunni bastion of Falluja, west of the capital, cleric Khaled Mohammed told worshippers: "I call on the people of Falluja to send money, food and clothes to our brothers in Sadr City and Adhamiya -- we have a common enemy who attacked them to spark sectarian strife between us."

Tal Afar:

The bomb attack in Tal Afar, 420 kilometers (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad, involved explosives hidden in a parked car and in a suicide belt worn by a pedestrian that detonated simultaneously outside a car dealership at 11 a.m., said police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri. He said the casualties _ 22 dead, 26 wounded _ were expected to rise.

Gunmen pulled a man off a bus in central Tal Afar on Thursday and shot him dead, police said.

THANKS TO WHISKER FOR THE LINKS ABOVE FOR TODAY. Here’s some he caught from yesterday that I missed:

In Country:

A former soldier from the Midlands who was working as a security guard in Iraq has been killed. It is thought Gavin Emmett, 29, from Hereford, was killed in a roadside ambush in the war-torn region. He was working for Blue Hackle, a UK-based firm that specialises in operating in global trouble spots.

Baghdad:

Wednesday's death count included 76 bodies found dumped in four cities, 59 of them in Baghdad alone

The Iraqi police patrols found 30 bodies in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said on Thursday. "Our patrols found up to 30 bodies in different neighborhoods of Baghdad during the past 24 hours," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Baqubah:

while in the restive city of Baquba 12 people were reported killed.

Dinwaniyah:

Police also recovered eight bodies near the central city of Diwaniyah

Mosul:

In Mosul, unidentified militants opened fire and killed a Christian political leader Wednesday evening, according to police sources Thursday. Sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that Yashua Mageed Hedaya, the head of the independent Assyrian movement, was killed on his way out of his political party in the mostly Christian town of Qarqash, north-east of Mosul.

A police source told Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that unknown gunmen shot and killed Colonel Yasin Abd-Ali near his house, northeast of the northern city of Mosul.

In separate incidents, anonymous gunmen killed an Iraqi policeman in Somar and another in the industrial area of Mosul, added the source.

REPORTS – LIFE INSIDE IRAQ

Bombings Kill 144 in Baghdad Slum

In the deadliest sectarian attack in Baghdad since the American-led invasion, explosions from five powerful car bombs and a mortar shell tore through crowded intersections and marketplaces in the teeming Shiite district of Sadr City on Thursday afternoon, killing at least 144 people and wounding 206, the police said. The coordinated bombings followed a two-hour siege by dozens of Sunni Arab insurgents against the headquarters of the Shiite-run Health Ministry in northeastern Baghdad, about three miles west of Sadr City, according to ministry officials. The gunmen, shooting from nearby buildings and surrounding streets, pelted the ministry with mortar shells and gunfire, though they fled when Iraqi troops and American military helicopters arrived, the officials and witnesses said. The government imposed an indefinite curfew on the capital, banning all vehicles and pedestrians from the streets, and closed Baghdad International Airport as well as the airport and seaport in the southern city of Basra. The Iraqi military command put the army on high alert, beefed up checkpoints throughout the city and established a cordon around Sadr City, according to an Iraqi military spokesman.

Bloody Thursday: 262 Iraqis Killed, 291 Wounded

Baghdad Curfew After Bombing Wave

An indefinite curfew has been placed on Baghdad after what has been described as the worst attack on Iraq's capital since the US-led invasion of 2003. A wave of car bombs and mortars in the mostly-Shia Sadr City district killed 144 people and injured 260, many of them seriously, Iraqi police said. The bombings in Sadr City were followed by mortar attacks on Sunni areas. Baghdad's airport has been closed, and Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki went on TV to appeal for restraint amid the violence. "We denounce sectarian practices that aim to destroy the unity of the nation," Mr Maliki said. The Iraqi authorities put Baghdad's seven million residents under curfew on Thursday evening, saying all people and vehicles must stay off the streets until further notice. The Iraqi authorities have also closed Basra's air and sea ports in the south. …… Shortly after the blasts, mortar fire hit several Sunni areas, killing 10 people, the Associated Press news agency said.

Anger And Sorrow At Iraq Funerals

The people of Sadr City bore away their dead on Friday, marching behind coffins through the Baghdad dawn and chanting in anger and sorrow for the 160 victims of the bloodiest attack in Iraq since the US invasion. Barring security forces, it was all but the only movement in the streets of a capital under curfew. The Shi'ite Muslims of the sprawling and politically radical slum streamed out of Baghdad, coffins mounted on cars moving at a crawl and surrounded by mourners on foot, heading south toward their holy city of Najaf. The government appealed for calm after the 160 were killed by car bombs on Thursday, as the prospect loomed ever larger of an all-out sectarian civil war between Iraq's majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs. "It's an extravagant attack specifically designed to trigger retaliation," said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary, University of London, likening it to the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February that sparked a surge in bloodshed.

Basra Airport, Sea Port to Close on Friday

Basra's airport and port will close on Friday in protest after car bombs in a Shi'ite stronghold of Baghdad killed 160 people, an official in the southern Iraqi city said. It was not clear how long the closure would last. Authorities imposed a curfew in Baghdad after the bombings, the largest single attack of the war, fearing sectarian reprisals. Iraq's transport ministry is controlled by the political faction of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Baghdad stronghold was hit by the car bombs on Thursday. Iraq depends almost entirely on its southern oil export terminals since sabotage attacks have made a northern oil pipeline unusable for most of the last three and a half years.

Sadr City Blasts Shock Even War-Weary Iraqis

A wedding car decorated with ribbons and flowers was ablaze, the bloodstained street around it littered with body parts and the smell of burnt flesh hung heavy in the air. Minutes earlier a car bomb packed with an estimated 100 kg (200 lb) of explosives had sent jagged metal ripping through afternoon shoppers in the crowded market in the Baghdad Shi'ite slum of Sadr City that is home to more than 2 million people. It was one of a string of bombings in the district, a stronghold of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, that killed 160 people and wounded 257 in the space of a few minutes and brought a country ravaged by violence ever closer to civil war. "There were pools of blood on the street and I saw children lying dead," said Karim al-Rubaie, a news photographer, who had been in the market to buy a sink when the car exploded. "I went towards the site of the explosion and a second car exploded behind me, just outside Sadr's office. Everyone was running and shouting and most of the bodies were charred. Others were torn apart," he said. In one devastated street, flames and thick, black smoke poured from the twisted wrecks of cars and minibuses as people pulled out bodies and fought to put out the fires. Even for Iraqis, long used to the daily bomb and shooting attacks that terrorise neighbourhoods and have forced tens of thousands to flee their homes, it was a hellish scene. [The corporate media is determined to pin these bombings on Sunni militants, even though they have no proof and no claims of responsibility. They also are determined not to mention that the US forces have been in this particular neighborhood A LOT lately, to search for a kidnapped US soldier. – dancewater]

Medical System Becomes Sickening

The health situation in Iraq has been in constant decline since the beginning of the U.S.-backed UN-imposed sanctions in 1990. Iraqi doctors were reputed to be the best in the Middle East during the 1980's, but now they are short of medicines, medical equipment and funding to maintain the hospitals. "We were angry with Saddam's government for the poor health situation in the country, but now we wish we could get that back," 55-year-old teacher Ahmed Zaydan from Sadr City in Baghdad told IPS. "There was not enough medical care, but there was something that one could live with and the private sector market was cheap. We were hoping for the change of regime to improve our lives, but the result is that we practically have no government healthcare." Saddam Hussein's regime managed to keep basic medical services free of charge for most Iraqis until the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. There was a hospital in almost every town. Surgeries were carried out free of charge. Medicines were imported by the government and sold at affordable prices to those going to private clinics and hospitals. The Ministry of Health is now controlled by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's movement under a political agreement between the ruling parties. The sectarian influence on the ministry has greatly impeded healthcare. "The ministry office in Baghdad is under the control of ignorant people who know nothing about medical science," a doctor told IPS. "The whole ministry is controlled by clerics who brought their militiamen along to divert the ministry into a death squad headquarters. Many of my colleagues resigned, were expelled or abducted by those who should have provided protection for them. Others quit and left the country." …… The campaign group Medact has reported that in Iraq "easily treatable conditions such as diarrhoea and respiratory illness caused 70 percent of all child deaths," and "of the 180 health clinics the U.S. hoped to build by the end of 2005, only four have been completed -- and none opened."

Some Fighters in Iraq Adopt New Tactics

Sunni Arab militant groups suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have established training camps east of Baghdad that are turning out well-disciplined units willing to fight American forces in set-piece battles, American military commanders said Thursday. American soldiers fought such units in a pitched battle last week in Turki, a village 25 miles south of this Iraqi Army base in volatile Diyala Province, bordering Iran. At least 72 insurgents and two American officers were killed in more than 40 hours of fighting. American commanders said they called in 12 hours of airstrikes while soldiers shot their way through a reed-strewn network of canals in extremely close combat. Officers said that in that battle, unlike the vast majority of engagements in Diyala, insurgents stood and fought, even deploying a platoon-size unit that showed remarkable discipline. One captain said the unit was in “perfect military formation.” Insurgents throughout Iraq usually avoid direct confrontation with American troops, preferring to use hit-and-run tactics and melting away at the sight of American armored vehicles. Lt. Col. Andrew Poppas, commander of the Fifth Squadron, 73rd Cavalry, a unit of the 82nd Airborne Division, said in an interview that the fighters at Turki “were disciplined and well trained, with well-aimed shots. We hadn’t seen anything like this in years,” he said. The insurgents had built a labyrinthine network of trenches in the farmland, with sleeping areas and weapons caches. Two antiaircraft guns had been hidden away. Insurgents were apparently able to establish a training camp after American forces moved out of the area in the fall of 2005, Colonel Poppas said. Sunni Arab militants there belong to the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam and are believed to be led, at least in part, by a man known as Abu Abdul Rahman, an Iraqi-Canadian who moved from Canada to Iraq in 1995 after marrying a woman from Turki, he said.

From Missing Links Blog: End-Game in the Green Zone

Bashir Nafie writes in Al-Quds al-Arabi: The recent attack on the reputation of Harith al-Dhari, head of the Muslim Scholars Association of Iraq, was triggered by his political activities in the region, and not by anything he said. He had been saying the same things about the illegitimacy of the occupation since 2003. What was new, and what so alarmed the Green Zone people, was his visit to Saudi Arabia and the fact he had a discussion with the Saudi King. This was shocking, because since 2003 the Arab regimes in the region have left Iraqi affairs up to their friends the Americans, prefering not to get involved themselves. Their confidence in this hands-off approach had been weakening with the reports of escalating Iranian influence in Iraq ("real or imagined" Nafie adds); then with the hit they took from their early criticism of Hizbullah in the Lebanon war; and most of all the gradual collapse of any semblance of Iraqi internal security. That isn't to say there are going to be any concrete short-term results from the King Abdullah-Dhari conversation, but it hit a nerve in the Green Zone nonetheless.

REPORTS ON THE US/UK IN IRAQ

US Troops “Idle” During Iraq Bombings

Iran "strongly condemns the wave of bombings in the Shiite Sadr City and considers it a terrorist and savage action which was carried out while the American troops were standing idle," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini was quoted as saying by the state news agency. "The occupation and the insecurity which emanates from it has caused continual damage to the Iraqi people, and they have no other choice but to pay its inhuman price," he added. In the worst attack on Baghdad since the war to oust Saddam Hussein, insurgents killed 202 people on Thursday and wounded 256 in a series of car bombings in the Shiite district of Sadr City. The attacks, which included at least four car bombs, prompted the interior ministry to announce an indefinite curfew in the capital. The killing comes before Mr Talabani travels to Iran today for talks the following day with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a bid to secure the eastern neighbour's help in stabilising war-torn Iraq.

The New US Embassy In Iraq

The U.S. State Dept. may designate a one-million-dollar landscaping "allowance" for the New Embassy Compound (NEC) under construction in the heart of war-torn Baghdad, Iraq -- and that's just for the first year, according to a draft planning document located by The Peacock Report. The compound is within a 64-acre tract envisioned along the Tigris River, where the Iraqi government already has allocated a total of 104 acres for official U.S. business. The construction of 27 buildings, a power plant, water treatment facility and eight guard towers is slated for completion by June 2007. Landscape maintenance services for this project will be performed during that time "by trained personnel using current, acceptable horticultural practices," the Nov. 6 document says: “Landscaping maintenance shall include all turf, trees, beds, shrubs and ground cover within the NEC walls. All flower, ivy and juniper beds on and around the site shall be edged, weeded, mulched and fertilized to maintain a well cultivated appearance. Landscape maintenance shall reflect the highest degree of professional performance. All walkways shall be seeded and overhanging limbs cut back. Sucker growth shall be removed from trees. Grass and weeds growing against the perimeter wall and buildings shall be trimmed. Fallen limbs and branches shall be removed in conjunction with each mowing.” Despite this need for an untold number of groundskeepers and construction professionals, many of whom will be housed in a still-to-be-constructed $12 million Operations & Maintenance "Man Camp," Iraqis need not apply.

AWB ‘Knew Iraq Plans A Year Before”

A YEAR before the invasion of Iraq, the then Australian ambassador to the United Nations, John Dauth, confidentially told AWB's former chairman Trevor Flugge the Howard Government would participate in miliary action with the US to overthrow Saddam Hussein, new AWB documents reveal. AWB Board minutes show Mr Flugge told the AWB board on February 27, 2002, that Mr Dauth confided in him that he believed US military action to depose Saddam Hussein was inevitable and that the Australian Government would support and participate in such action, Fairfax newspapers report. The documents, released at the Cole inquiry yesterday, undercut previous statements by Prime Minister John Howard that Australia did not agree to join the war before the UN debate in late 2002 and early 2003.

COMMENTARY

OPINION: Whitewashing Iraq on the WaPo Op-Ed Page

The invasion of Iraq constituted a radical departure from decades-long American foreign policy doctrine governing what constitutes a justifiable war against another country. To justify the war which Kaplan wanted so eagerly, the Bush administration issued a National Security Strategy in 2002 which "shifted U.S. foreign policy away from decades of deterrence and containment toward a more aggressive stance of attacking enemies before they attack the United States." That militaristic hubris is the doctrine which drove our invasion (and it is still in place, as the Bush administration re-affirmed it earlier this year). What makes Kaplan's revisionism all the more reprehensible is that it distorts not only the administration's justification for the Iraq invasion but also Kaplan's own rationale in favor of it. In a lengthy Atlantic Monthly article in November, 2002, devoted to all the great benefits we would reap from invading Iraq, Kaplan does not at all rely upon the magnanimous idealism that he now dishonestly claims animated support for the war. Again, the opposite is true. In that war-advocating article, Kaplan argued that we have to move our military bases out of Saudi Arabia and an invasion of Iraq would allow "the relocation of our bases to Iraq." And Kaplan expressly wanted to replace Saddam with a pro-U.S. dictatorship which may -- or may not -- some day in the distant future foster democracy: "Our goal in Iraq should be a transitional secular dictatorship that unites the merchant classes across sectarian lines and may in time, after the rebuilding of institutions and the economy, lead to a democratic alternative."

Most of all, Kaplan -- like all neocons who are pathologically obsessed with matters of dominance and submission -- justified the war based on the "need" to show those Muslims that we are the mighty and powerful ones, just like we did when we shot down an Iranian civilian passenger jet in the 1980s and showed Iran who the boss is: “Keep in mind that the Middle East is a laboratory of pure power politics. For example, nothing impressed the Iranians so much as our accidental shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner in 1988, which they believed was not an accident. Iran's subsequent cease-fire with Iraq was partly the result of that belief. Our dismantling the Iraqi regime would concentrate the minds of Iran's leaders as little else could.” That was Kaplan and the neocons' vision for Iraq -- permanent military bases, the installation of a pro-U.S. secular dictator (gee, who might he have had in mind?), and a display of raw power to keep the Arabs and Persians in line ("concentrate their minds"), just like that awesome occasion when we shot down their passenger plane (the invasion would also give us "a position of newfound strength" and thus President Bush, in his second term, could -- and, Kaplan assured us, would --"pressure the Israelis into a staged withdrawal from the occupied territories"). And all of that was justified by a militaristic new theory that the U.S. could invade whatever countries it wanted to invade based upon the suspicion that the country might some day pose a threat to the U.S. The invasion of Iraq and those who advocated it, such as Kaplan, were anything but "idealistic." They were and are nothing other than malicious warmongers who invented new "theories" to "justify" waging war on countries that didn't attack us and posed no real threat to us.

What the failure of Iraq demonstrates is not -- as Kaplan so earnestly suggests today -- that the rosy-eyed, slightly naive but well-intentioned neonconservative idealists just need to be a little more restrained in their desire to do Good in the world. It demonstrates that they are deceitful, radical and untrustworthy warmongers who led this country into the worst strategic disaster in its history and should never be trusted with anything ever again. And it equally demonstrates that starting wars with no justification and with no notion of self-defense is an idea that is as destructive as it is unjust. There is really no limit to the willingness of neonconservatives and the pro-war foreign policy geniuses who enabled them to spew untruths in an attempt to rehabilitate themselves and their militarism. Here Kaplan is making claims that are the exact opposite -- literally -- of what actually happened that led to the war and what those, like him, argued to justify that war. That they are still given space to do this by The Washington Post, and treated as "serious" foreign policy scholars, remains one of the most perplexing and dangerous outcomes of this war.

Iraqi Guerilla

While critics of the Iraq war are quick to point out that US occupation is failing, they hesitate to draw the obvious conclusion; that the Iraqi resistance is winning. Observations like that are tantamount to treason and thus banned in the establishment-media. The idea of American invincibility is such a carefully-nurtured myth that is defended in all quarters and at all times. Even if U.S. troops were caught red-handed pushing their helicopters into the Euphrates while hastily fleeing Baghdad, the “embedded” media would twist it around so it looked like a “strategic redeployment”. There’s nothing new about media bias, but its effect on the ongoing war has been negligible. The media’s “spin” cannot alter the reality on the ground, and the fact is the US is getting beaten quite badly. They’ve locked-horns with a crafty enemy that has neutralized their advantages in terms of firepower and technology and limited their range of movement. It’s shocking to think that after 4 years of bloody conflict, occupation forces still control “no ground” beyond the looming parapets of the Green Zone. This is a stunning admission of defeat. [Yankeedoodle, the original blogger at this site, called this war lost in June 2003. I called it lost in August, 2003. That fact, of course, will not stop the killing or the fighting. Nor will it stop the idiots who still claim this illegal and immoral war, based on lies, is still “winnable”. Not that they can explain what “winnable” would look like. – dancewater] ……….. There is a tendency in the West to minimize the accomplishments of the Iraqi resistance, but no one can dispute the results. With limited arms and resources, they have out-flanked, out-maneuvered and thoroughly-confounded the best-trained, best-equipped, high-tech military war-machine the world has ever seen. That’s no mean achievement. I expect that many high-ranking American officers secretly admire their enemy’s effectiveness. They’ve waged an impressive battle under very thorny circumstances and they've persevered despite clear disadvantages in communications, logistics, firepower, propaganda, mobility and supplies. With the most primitive of weaponry and bomb-making equipment, they’ve gone nose-to-nose with the world’s only superpower and forced a stalemate. In truth, the Iraqi resistance has succeeded where the Congress, the United Nations, and the millions of peace-loving antiwar citizens across the globe failed; they stopped the Bush juggernaut dead in its tracks.

OPINION: Americans Running Out of Appealing Options on Iraq

What next for Iraq? The cover of the latest New Republic, a liberal-leaning magazine that went totally neo-conservative in the run-up to the Iraq war, makes one's head spin with its menu of contradictory opinions by leading experts: David Rieff: "Bring the troops home" Robert Kagan: "Send more troops" Peter W. Galbraith: "Divide Iraq" Reza Aslan: "Keep it whole" Larry Diamond: "Deal with the Sunnis" James Kurth: "Crush the Sunnis" Josef Joffe: "Ally with the Sunnis" Peter Beinart: "Threaten to leave" George Packer: "Save whomever we can" Niall Ferguson: "Bribe the insurgents" Michael Walzer: "Talk, talk, talk" Leon Wieseltier: "Try anything" What a mess this war is.

………. "In the end, this struggle will be over the difference between a largely intolerable outcome and a completely intolerable one," the magazine declares in a contrite editorial. In other words, how can America turn Iraq over to the Iraqis with the least amount of carnage and chaos as we make our way out? [And that will be true no matter when we leave. – dancewater] True-blue neo-cons like Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, Michael Rubin, William Kristol and the above-mentioned Kagan ("Send more troops") blame the White House for botching (too few troops, etc., etc.) their grand plans for a Mideast makeover.

[True nonsense alert! – dancewater] Contrary to a widespread belief, our war efforts are not being wasted. Reports on the ground indicate America's forces are the main reason that law, order and rebuilding in Iraq are functioning at all. [FACT: there is no law, order or rebuilding going on in vast areas of the country. – dancewater]

[Flat out lie alert! – dancewater] Americans appreciate the neo-conservative dream of spreading democracy through the Middle East, but the Iraq disaster offers us a painful lesson on the limits of our grasp. [FACT: Americans would NEVER have supported an invasion and occupation of Iraq for the purpose of ‘spreading democracy’! The ones who supported this war did so because they stupidly believed the lies about WMDs and Saddam’s ties to al Qaeda, and therefore ties to the events of 9/11. A good portion of our fellow American citizens are quite, quite stupid……. But they are not interested in getting killed in order to remake the world into various democracies. – dancewater]

PEACE ACTION: Take the voters’ peace pledge. "I will not vote for or support any candidate for Congress or President who does not make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression, a public position in his or her campaign."

ANOTHER PEACE ACTION: Progressive Democrats of America has been working and organizing support for HR 4232 since Rep. McGovern introduced this important bill in November of 2005. Rep. McGovern spoke at the PDA "Get out of Iraq" Town Hall meeting the day after he introduced HR 4232. We continue to work for its passage as a top legislative priority. We urge you to continue organizing support for HR 4232 and to ask your Congressional member to co-sponsor the bill. PDA is committed to cutting off all funding for deployment of US troops in Iraq and for the removal of all funding for the occupation of Iraq. Please sign the online petition at www.pdamerica.org and send it to your friends.

QUOTE of the day: “Victory” is not possible when no one has a clear idea of what victory means. – Mike Whitney