Mowaffak al-Rubaie - Articles - Zimbio

IT WASN'T LIKE THIS WHEN SADDAM HUSSEIN WAS IN CHARGE OF IRAQ

Sun, 5 May 2008 07:42:00 GMT

posted by CORKSPHERE

The rot gnawing away at Baghdad's innards

Before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Al-Batawin's main thoroughfare Al-Sadun Street bustled with restaurants, hotels, upmarket stores and -- most famously -- medical centres.

Today just a scattering of businesses still bother to open their doors, residential blocks stand empty, and those buildings that are occupied have few tenants willing to risk living above the first floor.

by Bryan Pearson Sun May 4, 7:11 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080504/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestbaghdadbuildings

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Its traditional wooden-balconied Shanasheel houses in ruins, other buildings crumbling and muddied streets reeking of rubbish, Al-Batawin neighbourhood in the centre of Baghdad is an abject picture of just how far the rot has set in to the once-proud Iraqi capital.

Electricity is supplied only sporadically and water in a trickle, and there are no other services to speak of, so it makes no sense to live too far from the ground in what is now a rapidly eroding urban wasteland.

Most Iraqis know Al-Sadun Street for its medical centres and pharmacies. Many travelled from afar and waited in long queues to see a doctor. And after the consultation there were some 200 pharmacies within a few blocks ready to fill the prescriptions.

Not any more. The 2003 invasion and the sectarian violence it subsequently spawned changed all that. Today most of the doctors have left and just 20 pharmacies remain.

"Before 2003 you could hardly move here, there were so many people coming to see the doctors," said 65-year-old Hussein Abdel Hussein, a wizened bony man with bulging eyes and calloused hands who is caretaker in Al-Janabi Building, once the most famous medical centre but now the most derelict.

"Patients came from all over Iraq. There were so many people we often had to warn people to look after their property because there were thieves about," said Hussein, his voice heavy with nostalgia and too many cigarettes.

Today the thieves no longer bother, and Hussein saves his wheezing breath.

"There are now only seven doctors left and each of them sees only two or three patients a day," said the caretaker who lives in the building with his son -- Al-Janabi's only full-time tenants.

Doctors these days open their doors for only a few hours in the afternoon. With no electricity and few patients, there is little point in hanging about after dark.

Click on link to read full story.

CNN REPORTS: IRAQ SECURITY ADVISER TELLS AMERICANS: BE PATIENT

Sat, 23 Mar 2008 22:53:00 GMT

posted by CORKSPHERE

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- As the Iraq war entered its sixth year, the country's national security adviser urged Americans to be patient, contending that the war is "well worth fighting" because it has implications about "global terror."
"This is global terrorism hitting everywhere, and they have chosen Iraq to be a battlefield. And we have to take them on," Mowaffak al-Rubaie said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

Iraq security adviser to Americans: Be patientStory Highlights Mowaffak al-Rubaie said Sunday that Iraq war is "well worth fighting"Iraq war entered its sixth year on March 19; nearly 4,000 Americans have died30 Iraqis died in Iraq on Sunday; 80,000 to 150,000 or more died since war's startDemocratic senator: Pause in withdrawal sends "wrong message to the Iraqis"

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/23/iraq.main/index.html

"If we don't prevail, if we don't succeed in this war, then we are doomed forever," he said. "I understand and sympathize with the mothers, with the widows, with the children who have lost their beloved ones in this country.

"But honestly, it is well worth fighting and well worth investing the money and the treasure and the sweat and the tears in Iraq."

Since the March 19, 2003, U.S.-led invasion, nearly 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq, including three on Saturday.

Estimates of the Iraqi death toll range from about 80,000 to 150,000 or more. At least 30 Iraqis were killed Sunday, officials said.

Nearly 160,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, and the war has cost U.S. taxpayers about $600 billion, according to the House Budget Committee.

The conflict is now widely unpopular among Americans: A CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll out Wednesday found only 32 percent of Americans support the conflict. And 61 percent said they want the next president to remove most U.S. troops within a few months of taking office.

In the weekly Democratic radio address Saturday, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey said President Bush "took us to war on the wings of a lie."

Menendez said that the war has depleted the resources and morale of the U.S. military; diverted national attention away from the war in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda is regrouping; and hurt the hunt for Osama bin Laden. The Iraq war has not made Americans safer, Menendez said, but has instead hurt the U.S. economy.

The senator called for a "responsible new direction" regarding Iraq.

CNN learned last week, from several U.S. military officials familiar with the recommendations but not authorized to speak on the record, that senior U.S. military officials are preparing to recommend to Bush a four- to six-week "pause" in additional troop withdrawals from Iraq after the last of the "surge" brigades leaves in July.

"If the conditions on the ground dictate that we have to have a pause, then we will have to have a pause," al-Rubaie said.

The return of all five brigades added to the Iraq contingent last year could reduce troops levels by up to 30,000, but still leave approximately 130,000 or more troops in Iraq.
Al-Rubaie emphasized Sunday that any drawdown of U.S. troops "has to be based on the conditions on the ground."

WAS KILLING IRAQI CHILDREN WORTH IT?

Fri, 5 Apr 2008 23:46:00 GMT

posted by CORKSPHERE

A snapshot of the opening scene in the U.S. invasion of Iraq provides an excellent insight into the immorality and horror of the entire operation, from start to whenever it finally finishes.

According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, at the outset of the invasion the U.S. military dropped bombs on a palatial compound in which Saddam Hussein was hiding. The article states:

"But instead of killing the Iraqi dictator, they had killed Mr. Kharbit's older brother, Malik al-Kharbit - the very man who had led the family's negotiations with the C.I.A. to topple Mr. Hussein. The bombings also killed 21 other people, including children, and the fury it aroused has been widely believed to have helped kick-start the insurgency in western Iraq."

By Jacob G. Hornberger
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19676.htm

Now, that episode has at least two important lessons.

First, prior to the invasion the popular mantra among U.S. officials and many private Americans was the need to "get Saddam." But as we often pointed out here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, it was never going to be just a question of "getting Saddam." Instead, it was going to be a question of how many Iraqi people, including children, U.S. forces would have to kill before they "got Saddam."

The article doesn't state whether the U.S. military had actual knowledge that there were innocent people, including children, in the compound that it bombed. But it is a virtual certainty that they did have such knowledge. After all, if their intelligence was sufficiently good to know that Saddam was hiding in the compound, it had to be sufficiently good to know that there were other people living in the compound, including children.

Thus, when the U.S. military dropped those bombs, it had to be with the full knowledge that they would be killing innocent people in the process, including the children. And even if they didn't "know" that there were innocent people in the compound at the time they dropped the bombs, they knew that there were dropping the bombs in reckless disregard of whether there were innocent people there or not.

The fact is that U.S. officials didn't care whether there were innocents, including children, in that compound. Those children and their parents were obviously considered a small price to pay if Saddam Hussein had been killed at the outset of the war.

Of course, this attitude would match the attitude taken by U.S. officials throughout the period of the brutal sanctions that were enforced from 1991 to 2003. As tens of thousands of Iraqi children were dying year after year from the sanctions, the U.S. attitude was that those deaths were a small price to pay for ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein. That's why UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright, upon being asked whether the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi from the sanctions were worth it, she replied that yes - they were "worth it." She was expressing the sentiment of the U.S. government, a sentiment that manifested itself again in the bombing of the compound in which those Iraqi children and their families were killed.

Second, the killing of those children and their families is just one example of how U.S. foreign policy has engendered anger and hatred for the United States, which produces the threat of terrorist retaliation, which brings about the "war on terrorism," which results in more interventions, more massive military spending, and ever-increasing loss of liberty at home.
Let me repeat what the Times article said: "The bombings also killed 21 other people, including children, and the fury it aroused has been widely believed to have helped kick-start the insurgency in western Iraq."

Now, ask yourself: Why has the U.S. government been occupying Iraq for the past 5 years? Didn't they already "get" Saddam? Hasn't he already been executed?

The answer is that U.S. officials, having "gotten" Saddam must now "get" the "bad guys" in Iraq. And who are the "bad guys?" They're the Iraqis who are angry over the killing of Iraqis, including women and children, who had to be killed in the process of "getting Saddam."
As they continue to bomb all these "bad guys," they continue to kill more innocents, including more Iraqi children and their families, which then incites more fury, which then causes more "bad guys" to join the insurgency. Those additional "bad guys" are then used as the excuse to continue the occupation of Iraq, an occupation that for obvious reasons will go on indefinitely.

To state what I consider self-evident moral truths, it was morally wrong and a grave violation of God's laws to:
(1) attack a country whose government and citizenry had never attacked the United States;
(2) kill Iraqis, including children and their families, in order to achieve regime change in Iraq; and
(3) kill Iraqis, including children and their families, in order to spread "democracy" to Iraq.
One can only wonder whether the American people, in crises of conscience, will ever confront such issues.

Welcome to our blog about Mowaffak al-Rubaie

Tue, 3 Jan 2007 17:10:26 GMT

posted by The_Zimbio_Team

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Looney Toons

Mon, 4 Sep 2007 03:00:34 GMT

posted by itribe

Markos referred to this WaPo article from a few days ago in a different context than what I'd like to highlight - namely, that Democratic Reps. Ellen Tauscher and Jim Moran, on a visit to Iraq, found themselves smeared by skewed bio sheets handed out to the troops, whose authors the military claims not to know.

As unsettling as that incident is, what struck me even more was this vignette:

But even such tight control could not always filter out the bizarre world inside the barricades. At one point, the three were trying to discuss the state of Iraqi security forces with Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, but the large, flat-panel television set facing the official proved to be a distraction. Rubaie was watching children's cartoons.

When Moran asked him to turn it off, Rubaie protested with a laugh and said, "But this is my favorite television show," Moran recalled.

Porter confirmed the incident, although he tried to paint the scene in the best light, noting that at least they had electricity.

"I don't disagree it was an odd moment, but I did take a deep breath and say, 'Wait a minute, at least they are using the latest technology, and they are monitoring the world,'" Porter said. "But, yes, it was pretty annoying."

So a key figure in Iraq's national security apparatus couldn't be bothered to... tune away from SpongeBob SquarePants for ten minutes to meet with American officials on the most pressing issue in his official portfolio, if not his life, period. Reading stories like this, you don't have to wonder very hard why waiting for political progress in Iraq is a fool's errand.

But almost as pathetic is GOP Rep. Jon Porter's excuse-making on behalf of this schlub. (Rubaie, you should know, is buddies with none other than Ahmed Chalabi.) At least a politically connected bigwig in the Green Zone has the juice flowing! And "monitoring the world" indeed, by watching Voltron! Hey, with any luck, soon Rubaie might make the important peace-promoting discovery that Germans love David Hasselhoff.

In any event, I'm not sure if it's sad or scary that even a so-called "moderate" Republican like Porter - who sits in a swing district and very nearly lost his seat last year - still feels it necessary to scale Brobdingnagian heights of absurdity in order to find a silver lining for this nightmare we're in. What I do know, though, is that if, at this extremely late date, Porter is still willing to act as a bullshit artist for his party, the Republicans won't unclench their fingers from around their Iraqi anvil any time soon.