War On Iraq-Open Forum - Articles - Zimbio

Iraq: The American Tarpit

Sat, 13 May 2007 03:08:00 GMT

posted by Pasquino

In an ambush about 12 miles west of Mahmoudiya this morning, five were left dead and three missing among a patrol of U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter. Despite the military's best efforts, the three missing soldiers' whereabouts are still unknown. This is yet another tragedy in the ongoing larger-scale tragedy that is the war in Iraq.In other news today, Vice President Dick Cheney visited the Saudi Arabian King Abdullah in an effort to gain support for the war. The king, who gave Bush much support in the beginning of the war has now declared the U.S. troops in Iraq as being an "illegal foreign occupation". Also, Abdullah has criticized Prime Minister al-Maliki of Iraq and refused to see him on his tour for support around the Middle East. Prime Minister al-Maliki is a Shiite leader while King Abdullah is Sunni. There has been much tension over these differences throughout the Middle East and it has turned one of Bush's strongest allies against the war.King Abdullah is the leader of the most oil-rich nation in the world and also head of a primarily Sunni culture. Iraq is led by a Shiite leader and holds possibly the second largest natural reserves of oil in the world. It is no wonder that Abdullah's support has dwindled to criticism when it looks like an economic competitor is run by a Shiite leader. And the thought of Iraq siding with Iran is too much to bear. Despite the highly unlikely possibility that Iraq will somehow form a vigilante alliance against the west in oil exportation, one thing remains certain; that oil is a primary factor in the Iraq equation as well as the sectarian differences between Sunnis and Shiites. The Sunnis, who control most of the Middle East (Saddam was Sunni), would like to see Iraq stay ethnically allied with them against neighboring Shiite Iran. The Shiites in Iraq believe that now is their time to represent themselves from the ashes of oppression but face overwhelming challenges ahead. The real question here is whether or not the Middle East is willing to compromise and allow both sects to rule democratically in the new nation of Iraq? More importantly--are the Iraqis? In such a sensitive geopolitical and religious environment, that Utopian democracy Bush envisioned might be a little too far out of reach. The best strategy for Iraq at this point is to pull the U.S. troops out of the country, assist diplomatically and allow Iraq to be run by Iraqis. Foreign policy should not become domestic policy. But do our leaders have what it takes to bring our troops home and let Iraq go or are we trapped in the oil?

Where Nobody Is Accountable Inter Press Service, ...

Thu, 25 May 2007 01:02:00 GMT

posted by greengonk

Where Nobody Is Accountable
Inter Press Service, Ali al-Fadhily*
Dahr Jamail, MidEast Dispatches
BAGHDAD, May 21 (IPS) - Killings, crime, lack of medical care, collapse of education, the list goes on. But with the occupation by U.S.-led forces now into a fifth year, and a supposedly democratic government in place, no one knows who to hold accountable for all that is going wrong.
It is the occupation forces, particularly the United States and Britain, that must be held accountable, many Iraqis say.
"It is good of these people to discuss accountability for theft, but the most important thing to account for is Iraqi blood," Numan Ahmed, a human rights activist from the Adhamiya neighbourhood in Baghdad told IPS.
The British medical journal Lancet has reported that by July 2006, 655,000 people had died as "a consequence of the war." It has reported that the risk of death among civilians is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
"By now a million Iraqis have been killed for no reason, and many millions disabled or badly injured just because of some thieves in Baghdad and Washington," Ahmed said. "We are prepared to reveal the documents to condemn them even if takes us a lifetime."
But Iraqis have no means to take action against occupiers.
The United States has not accepted jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which has the power to investigate complaints of genocide. The United States took the view that the court could conduct "politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of U.S. military and political officials and personnel."
U.S. opposition to the ICC is in stark contrast to the strong support for the Court by most of its closest allies. But Iraqis have found no way to proceed against these either.
With no doors of justice open to them, many Iraqis are now taking to unlawful ways to hit back at occupation forces and government targets.
"The only way to do it is at gunpoint," 32-year-old Ali Aziz from Ramadi, 100 km west of Baghdad, told IPS. "They invaded us at gunpoint and we find it ridiculous to talk about any other way of getting back what belongs to us."
Aziz said he had lost several friends in attacks by U.S. soldiers. "The whole world is dealing with this in a hypocritical way, and there is only us to claim our rights the way we find proper."
The human rights group al-Raya filed a case in a local court in Fallujah against U.S. forces in 2004, following a massive military crackdown. About three-quarters of all buildings in the city were destroyed or heavily damaged during the U.S. assault in November 2004.
But U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces have hit out at the human rights group. "The secretary-general for the organisation has now been arrested by Fallujah police for reasons that we are not aware of, and the organisation is not functioning any more," a member of the board, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS in Baghdad.
"It is not the right time to talk about accountability when daily killings by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are still ongoing. God knows if it will ever be possible."
A case for accountability could well be made. A judge from the United States wrote at the time of the trial of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg in Germany in 1946: "To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was judged by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Sep. 16, 2004 as "an illegal act that contravened the UN charter."
The lack of accountability appears now to be leading to greater support for armed resistance against occupation forces.
"What accountability are you talking about, sir," said Abu Jassim from Fallujah, who lost four members of his family when a U.S. bomb destroyed his home during the first U.S. offensive in the city in April 2004. "Americans are criminals, and the whole world is covering up for their crimes." They will be held accountable, he said, by "Allah" and by "the heroes of the Iraqi resistance."
Iraqis are also angry over destruction of their civilian infrastructure, for which no one has been held responsible.
"The U.S. crime of deliberately crushing Iraqi infrastructure must be looked at as a crime against humanity," chief engineer Jalal Abdulla at Baghdad's Ministry of Electricity told IPS. "They did not have to do this to support their military effort, but they did it just to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths for no reason but cruelty."
Others vent their frustration against what they see as an impotent United Nations. "The UN should be the place for asking those Americans why they committed so many crimes in Iraq," said Baghdad resident Malik Hammad.
(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)
(c)2007 Dahr Jamail. Meanwhile, U.S. House approves $100 Billion In Iraq War Funds With No Troop Withdrawal Plan

"Baghdad is a smashed City" The western media sh...

Mon, 29 May 2007 00:16:00 GMT

posted by greengonk

"Baghdad is a smashed City"

The western media shows a very limited scenario of the devastation caused as a result of the USUK's illegal invasion of Iraq and nothing of the war crimes they have committed there. As usual, news is kept as sanitized as possible. They cannot and will not show or tell us the truth.

It's only thanks to websites like Uruknet and Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches can concerned folk in the West and elsewhere begin to grasp the true state of affairs. Here's the most recent Dispatches:

May 27, 2007

"Baghdad is a smashed city..."

Below is an email I have just received from my close friend and translator Abu Talat. While he has fled Baghdad with his family and is now a refugee in Syria, he recently had to return to Baghdad in order to try to salvage what is left of his former life (his car, belongings from his house, etc.) before returning back to Syria. His note is instructive as to the current living conditions in the capital city of Iraq. Here is the full text of his message:
Habibi…

Baghdad is a SMASHED city … no roads to drive on … most of them are closed off by concrete obstacles with concertina wire. In addition, the presence of the Iraqi military, who cover their faces with black masks and hold their guns in such a way that when you see them you will definitely be afraid that they will shoot you.

The shops in most of the area I went to see are closed. I asked one of the shop owners I know, 55-year-old Abu Fadhil, since I heard that his shop was robbed. I found his door closed and locked and he was nowhere to be found.

Later, on my way to Sadr City, I found that two of the three roads which lead all the way from south to north Baghdad are either partially or totally closed in some places. You still remember the highways in Baghdad … well now most of them are closed, or at least fenced off with obstacles, yet they say there is some progress in the security situation inside the city! Everyday two or three cars explode across Baghdad, killing big numbers of civilians.

When I returned to my neighborhood of al-Adhamiya, I couldn’t get in unless the soldiers checked my ID and my car, even though the guards are from the same neighborhood and they know me personally. But they had to check it to ensure that no car bombs might happen.

Nevertheless, daily mortars shell my neighborhood and those are out of control, despite this concrete wall placed by the Americans which now surrounds our neighborhood. Despite all that they do, they cannot bring security to our small neighborhood.

Needless to say, Baghdad has been changed into THE CITY OF GARBAGE. You can find it everywhere. You can smell the stench of dead bodies wherever you go.

Talking of electricity, there is now only one hour daily. That’s it. From where we’re staying in the city center, in Bab al-Muadham, I can see from the balcony that people sleep nearly naked on their rooftops because it is so hot and there is no electricity to run fans or air conditioners. Thank God that there are two large generators that maintain electricity in our building.

Everyday by 2-3 pm the buildings where we are staying are closed so that no one can leave or enter. That way it is kept secure, and this is how it remains until the next morning.

As far as my family life in this condition, we are as though we are in jail from 2-3 pm until the second morning where the doors are opened at 7 am.

My son goes to the hospital to work, but for the last two days he finds it without any running water. [His son works in Baghdad Medical City, the largest hospital in Iraq] For the last 2 weeks, as he told me, the hospital has been without any air conditioning and almost without patients, although it’s the biggest hospital in Iraq.

My son's wife, who is also a doctor, has to go to another hospital just to try to assist since there is a drastic lack of Gynecologists. She stays in her hospital for three days continuously before my son picks her up with his car on the fourth day to bring her home, in order to insure her safety so she doesn’t have to take a bus or taxi.

As for my daughter, she has not passed out the doorway of this apartment where we are staying for the last week except for one time for some work she had to accomplish.

My wife left here only once, when she went to her job (which she has been on leave from since we left to Syria) in order to apply for a full year vacation. Thank God she got it. As for me, I found my car ruined, so I had to repair it. For that I called the mechanic to come to my home and repair it, since I couldn’t take the car to him since all the mechanics shops are closed and there is no place to have a car repaired. All of those shops are totally closed.

When I saw the mechanic he said, “We cannot live anymore, and there is no job we can find.”

Dahr, this short letter gives you just a glance of the current situation in Baghdad. With the next letter I will tell you some more.

(c) 2007 Dahr Jamail

BREAKING NEWS: Deputy Claims US, British Forces Killed 15 Civilians

Websites Relevant to the Destruction and Occupation of Iraq

MidEast Dispatches
Uruknet
Baghdad Burning Blog
Depleted Uranium: An Investigation
SOS Irak
The Military Project: GI Special
Iraq Today
Jihad Unspun
Irak War Crimes

Iraq war ends? New York Times spoof says so

Wed, 13 Nov 2008 15:14:47 GMT

posted by Joycebabu

Washington, Nov 13

The war in Iraq is over, and President George W. Bush has been indicted for treason - so it must have been a particularly busy news day at The New York Times.

Real news, self-fulfilling prophecy or just a very elaborate hoax?

At least 1.2 million copies of a fake edition of the Times was handed out Wednesday morning to New York commuters, replete with alarming headlines - for some, almost too good to be true.

Accompanying the replica of the print edition was a website, which again looked like the Times: http://www.nytimes-se.com/

Free copies of the 14-page newspaper, which looked exactly like the real Times, were distributed at busy subway stations across the city. Many commuters might not have noticed the fine print - the paper was dated July 4, 2009, US independence day.

Among the other gems that made front-page news: USA Patriot Act repealed; torture, rendition: "not such good ideas after all"; ex-secretary apologizes for WMD scare; and maximum wage law for CEOs succeeds.

It emerged later in the day that the newspaper was the work of a liberal group called the Yes Men, who issued a statement: "In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass

them out."

The spoof paper included the usual sections - international, national, New York, business sections, editorials and corrections.

There were several advertisements, including a recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline.

"It's all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever," said Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper's writers.

"We've got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe 28, years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven," she wrote in a press release published on the website of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.

A New York Times blog - the real one - quoted Catherine J Mathis, a Times spokeswoman, as saying: "This is obviously a fake issue of the Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it."

The pranksters interviewed several gullible commuters and posted the video on the internet. One said, "I can't believe it - the war is over. Wow!"

Another said: "I knew change was coming to America - I just didn't expect it so fast."

Last updated on Nov 13^th, 2008 at 20:04 pm IST--DPA

Print Email Comment Share

What's Turd Blossom Cooking Up Now?

Sun, 3 Mar 2008 16:09:00 GMT

posted by FedUpAmerican

Karl Rove played a leading role in the demise of the Republican party, and now as a FOXNews pundit he has been desperately trying to rewrite history and on yesterday's Fox News Sunday, he was laying down some of his patented fact-free spin on Iraq, Al Qaeda and the 2008 presidential campaigns.

Wallace pointed out that the American people are solidly against this war by every poll known to man, but Rove acting as a propagandist frames it this way.

Rove: "If we were to give up Iraq with the third largest oil reserves in the world to the control of an Al Qaida regime or to the control of Iran, don’t you think $200 a barrel oil would have a cost to the American economy?"

Rove calls Senator Barack Obama a “Neo-Isolationist” for daring to say that we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq in the first place (repeatedly misrepresenting Obama’s withdrawal plans) then goes on to say that we must stay in Iraq because we can’t let the third largest oil reserves in the world to fall into the hands of an Al Qaeda-led Iraq — which is a giant red herring considering Iraq’s government is dominated by Shiites who would never allow a few thousand Sunnis who call themselves Al Qaeda to take over their country under any circumstances. There’s absolutely no data to suggest this could ever happen and in fact, our presence there is merely perpetuating the problem.

Rove also floats the notion that oil prices will soar to $200 per barrel if we redeploy, but the reality is that our invasion of Iraq is the reason oil prices have now breached the $100 mark in the first place and our continued destabilizing presence in the Middle East will continue to drive prices higher.

From the Democratic standpoint, we can only hope that Senator McCain is stupid enough to continue to support Bush’s failed policies in Iraq all the way to November.