Free Iraq

In a typical bazaar bargaining mentality in solving problems, the Iranian government is osmosing into Iraq; as explained by Juan Cole:

"Hamstrung by the Iraq debacle, all Bush can do is gnash his teeth as the hated mullahs in Iran cozy up to their co-religionists in Iraq.

... The two governments went into a tizzy of wheeling and dealing of a sort not seen since Texas oil millionaires found out about Saudi Arabia. Oil pipelines, port access, pilgrimage, trade, security, military assistance, were all on the table in Tehran. All the sorts of contracts and deals that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney had imagined for Halliburton, and that the Pentagon neoconservatives had hoped for Israel, were heading instead due east.

... For his polite forbearance as his Iranian hosts boasted of the superiority of their Islamic government and grumbled about all those trouble-making American troops in the Iraqi countryside, Jaafari was richly rewarded. Iran offered to pay for three pipelines that would stretch across the southern border of the two countries. Iraq will ship 150,000 barrels a day of light crude to Iran to be refined, and Iran will ship back processed petroleum, kerosene and gasoline. The plan could be operational within a year, according to Petroleum Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, whose father is a prominent Shiite cleric.
In addition, Iran will supply electricity. Iran will sell Iraq 200,000 tons of wheat. Iran is offering Iraq use of its ports to transship goods to Iraq. Iran is offering a billion dollars in foreign aid. Iran will step up cooperation in policing the borders of the two countries. Supreme Jurisprudent Khamenei has called for the preservation of the territorial integrity of Iraq. In fact, Iran is offering so much for so little that it looks an awful lot like influence peddling.

.... More than two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, it is difficult to see what real benefits have accrued to the United States from the Iraq war, though a handful of corporations have benefited marginally. In contrast, Iran is the big winner.
The Shiites of Iraq increasingly realize they need Iranian backing to defeat the Sunni guerrillas and put the Iraqi economy right, a task the Americans have proved unable to accomplish. And Iran will still be Iraq's neighbor long after the fickle American political class has switched its focus to some other global hot spot."
The Iraq War is Over, and the Winner Is... Iran July 21, 2005

The Iranian religious mantle will be the harder for the Iraqis to discard than the neocons' threadbare rags.

(PS: I will be away for about two weeks).

"Up to 27 people, including at least 13 children, have been killed and up to 18 wounded by a car bomb in Baghdad. ... One witness, Muhammad Ali Hamza, 25, said US forces turned up in al-Jedidah district to warn residents to stay indoors because of reports of a car bomb in the area.
"Children gathered round the Americans who were handing out sweets. Suddenly a suicide car bomber drove round from a side street and blew himself up," he added. "
Children killed in Baghdad car blast July 13, 2005

"Who is more to blame? The Iraqi resistance targeting occupation military soldiers or the coward US army hiding behind Iraqi kids?
The attacks that target Iraqi civilians should be condemned whether they're carried out by the US army (like the daily attacks) or by others (like some ethnic attacks against mosques and individuals).
Yet, the attacks targeting military convoys that kills Iraqi civilians gathering around them is another story, or at least a more controversial one.
.... A US soldier's blog some months ago [posted] : "I'm going to probably buy a lot of candy when I go to the PX in the camp. That way, I can hand it out to the kids. They'll be more likely to help us avoid things we wouldn't otherwise be able to avoid if not for them".
... Maybe some of these quotes were the reason why [this military blogger shut down his site due to] a 3 star General who approved an "order" that all milbloggers [military bloggers] have to tell their chain of command about their blog. "
US Army Uses Iraqi Children As Human Shields Again (from 'Raed in the Middle' Blog) July 13, 2005

"Convoys of American soldiers regularly patrol Baghdad's neighborhoods, sometimes as displays of force though also to conduct focused house searches and arrests. They frequently pause to give sweets and gifts to children as a good will gesture.
A spokesman for the Third Infantry Division, Master Sgt. Greg Kaufman, said there was no official policy regarding large crowds of people around patrol vehicles.
Asked why the military would allow such gatherings, particularly given the lack of security in Baghdad and the repeated suicide attacks, Sergeant Kaufman said, "I really do not have an answer to that one."
Higher ranking military spokesmen in Baghdad were not available for comment late Wednesday. ... Residents said American soldiers had passed through the neighborhood earlier in the day issuing warnings through a loudspeaker that the area might be a target of a car bomb. "
U.S. Says It Captured 2 Key Members of Al Qaeda in Iraq July 14, 2005

After two and a half years of a 'blissful occupation' with showers of flowers, they are still incapable of formulating a 'policy' or provide an 'answer' on why they allow large crowds and entice children with candy around their tanks and humvees?

This is especially callous when a previous similar attack occured nearly a year ago, on September 30, 2004, which involved a triple car bombing against US troops inaugurating a water treatment plant in western Baghdad and 43 people were killed, including 37 children who again had gathered to take candy offered by the American soldiers. "The Americans called us. They told us: 'Come here, come here,' asking us if we wanted sweets. We went beside them, then a car exploded," said 12-year-old Abdel Rahman Dawoud, lying naked in a hospital bed with shrapnel embedded all over his body."

Neither is the 'military chain of command' reading its milblogs and noting the cowardly 'charity' of its scared to death soldiers; and dismally fail to advice against.

Perhaps this ought to be another one of Rumsfeld's metrics.

Perhaps the policy should state: "Offer candy only when dismounted and walking among the natives, if you dare".

A lesson for next time

"Radicals within Iraq's Shiite majority community launched a petition for the withdrawal of US-led troops, which they said was drawing support from across the sectarian divide.
Supporters of firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr, who led a bloody six-month uprising against the coalition last year, said they were aiming to secure one million signatures inside four days.
"We started this morning and so far we have had a good response, not only from Shiites -- Sunnis and Christians have also been coming to our office to show their support," said Ibrahim al-Jaberi, an official in Sadr's movement.
"We have also received more than 100 calls from Iraqis living abroad in support of our initiative," he said, adding that more than 400,000 people had signed the petition by midday (0800 GMT).
The petition, which Jaberi said would be submitted to the Iraqi government and United Nations, reads: "I hereby declare my rejection of the forces of occupation and demand their withdrawal".
In the radicals' Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, Zayer Lafta refused a pen, insisting on applying his bloodied thumb to the petition sheet. "I will sign with my blood, because the country is awash with blood," the 44-year-old said. "The departure of the occupiers will only benefit the country. Every day they are here the closer Iraq gets to its demise."
Khaled Zuwayed, 23, came with five friends to sign. "Foreigners have not come to solve this country's problems but to make them worse. We only see car bombs and terrorist attacks," he said.
The Iraqi government asked the United Nations late last month to extend the mandate of foreign troops under Security Council Resolution 1546, despite complaints from MPs that they had not been consulted."
Iraq Shiites in Campaign for Foreign Troop Pullout July 11, 2005

Out of the 270+ MPs of the 'National Assembly', only about 150 are attending the regular 'Assembly' sessions for fear on their lives.
Initially, out of these 150, 83 had signed a petition (and the number of MPs who joined in the petition has risen, by July 6, 2005, to 103) strongly deploring the unilateral decision taken by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Affairs minister to seek the extension of the occupiers' stay at the U.N. without reverting the matter to the 'National Assembly' for a position, while clearly backtracking on an important election platform promise of most of the political parties in last February's elections; namely, to demand a scheduled troop withdrawal of the occupiers' forces.

"The US military has launched an operation ["Operation Scimitar"] against insurgents around Fallujah only six months after its officials proclaimed the city "the safest place in Iraq".
The initiative, launched on Thursday but publicised only at the weekend, involved hundreds of marines supported by 100 Iraqi soldiers sweeping through the fertile farmland and villages south of the city."
Americans begin new offensive in Fallujah July 11, 2005

Two 'samples' of what is NOT reported in "Operation Scimitar":

- "Two suicide car bombers attacked on Monday [July 11, 2005] an American military convoy close to Khan Dhari [halfway to Fallujah from Baghdad] near Zaidan village where "Operation Scimitar" is taking place.
The first car blasted the leading American military vehicle while the second car demolished the last military vehicle at the end of that convoy, which trapped the convoy.
And while the joint American-'Iraqi' platoon stopped to pick the American dead, the Iraqi Resistance fighters attacked with 'RPG' and 'BKC' hand-held rocket launchers, and managed to destroy yet another Humvee and an 'Iraqi' military pick-up.
Eye witnesses report that they have counted 11 American dead with 8 others injured and five 'Iraqi' soldiers dead with two others injured."
A joint suicide attacked fell 26 dead and wounded US and 'Iraqi' soldiers near Abu-Ghraib (my translation from Mufakkirat al-Islam - in Arabic) July 11, 2005

- "In a dispatch posted at 10:55am Mecca time Sunday [July 10, 2005] morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by US patrol in the al-Jubayl neighborhood in the south of al-Fallujah.A source in the Iraqi puppet army, who asked not to be identified, told Mafkarat al-Islam that a high-explosive bomb that had been prepared and placed in an oxygen tank used by hospitals and then planted by the side of a road in al-Jubayl blew up by a US military column.The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported that the blast killed four American soldiers and severely wounded a fifth who was taken by emergency helicopter airlift to the US base in the agricultural area east of al-Fallujah.
Four US troops reported killed in Resistance bombing Sunday morning. July 10, 2005

And yet another American atrocity SCANTLY reported:

"Mark Kraft writes: "Awhile back, a U.S. citizen working in Iraq sent me several photographs he obtained from a soldier in Iraq. Apparently, they had been passed along between several sources before reaching me. I felt that the pictures were particularly controversial and newsworthy, in that they appear to show U.S. soldiers planting weapons on Iraqi teenagers. As a result, I passed them on to Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, who mentioned them in an interview on May 11, 2005:
"After I did Abu Ghraib, I got a bunch of digital pictures emailed me, and -- was a lot of work on it, and I decided, well, we can talk about it later. You never know why you do things. You have some general rules, but in this case, a bunch of kids were going along in three vehicles. One of them got blown up. The other two units -- soldiers ran out, saw some people running, opened up fire. It was a bunch of boys playing soccer. And in the digital videos you see everybody standing around, they pull the bodies together. This is last summer. They pull the bodies together. You see the body parts, the legs and boots of the Americans pulling bodies together. Young kids, I don't know how old, 13, 15, I guess. And then you see soldiers dropping R.P.G.'s, which are rocket-launched grenades around them. And then they're called in as an insurgent kill."
Unfortunately, Mr. Hersh has no plans to go forward with the story at this time, citing the inconclusive nature of what happened, and the risk it could have to his sources. I, however, have no such ethical problem with releasing the pictures as is, as I think there is an overwhelming public interest that they be released. It should be up to the media and the general public to determine for themselves what occurred that day.
They indicate that a group of U.S. soldiers planted weapons -- the same weapon, in fact -- in front of killed, wounded, and captured Iraqi kids. I cannot authenticate whether Mr. Hersh is correct and that the teens in question were innocent or not, but clearly, something significant is amiss. At the very least, it indicates how uncertain the situation is over there. Our soldiers literally do not know who the enemy is, and apparently are willing to manipulate the evidence in order to justify their actions. (emphasis added)
The pictures were taken with a digital camera in Buhriz, Iraq on Oct. 22nd, 2004."
Eyeballing the Buhriz body count July 6, 2005 (large file-size pictures)
(in Arabic: ماذا حدث حقا لهؤلاء الصبية ؟ June 30, 2005)

Buhriz teenage boys who were playing soccer ........ Buhriz Resistance fighters

A Letter to the British People.

From Iman as-Saadun.

I’m sending this letter to the British people and in particular to the residents of London. For a period of hours, you have lived through moments of desperate anxiety and horror. In those hours you lost a member of your family or a friend, and we wish to tell you in total honesty that we too grieve when human lives pass away. I cannot tell you how much we hurt when we see desperation and pain on the face of another person. For we have lived through this situation – and continue to live through it every day – since your country and the United States formed an alliance and laid plans to attack Iraq.

The Prime Minister of your country, Tony Blair, said that those who carried out the explosions did so in the name of Islam. The Secretary of State of the United States, Condaleezza Rice, described the bombings as an act of barbarism. The United Nations Security Council met and unanimously condemned the event.

I would like to ask you, the free British people, to allow me to inquire: in whose name was our country blockaded for 12 years? In whose name were our cities bombed using internationally prohibited weapons? In whose name did the British army kill Iraqis and torture them? Was that in your name? Or in the name of religion? Or humanity? Or freedom? Or democracy?

What do you call the killing of more than two million children? What do you call the pollution of the soil and the water with depleted uranium and other lethal substances?

What do you call what happened in the prisons in Iraq – in Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca and the many other prison camps? What do you call the torture of men, women, and children? What do you call tying bombs to the bodies of prisoners and blowing them apart? What do you call the refinement of methods of torture for use on Iraqi prisoners – such as pulling off limbs, gouging out eyes, putting out cigarettes on their skin, and using cigarette lighters to set fire to the hair on their heads? Does the word “barbaric” adequately describe the behavior of your troops in Iraq?

May we ask why the Security Council did not condemn the massacre in al-Amiriyah and what happened in al-Fallujah, Tal‘afar, Sadr City, and an-Najaf? Why does the world watch as our people are killed and tortured and not condemn the crimes being committed against us? Are you human beings and we something less? Do you think that only you can feel pain and we can’t? In fact it is we who are most aware of how intense is the pain of the mother who has lost her child, or the father who has lost his family. We know very well how painful it is to lose those you love.

You don’t know our martyrs, but we know them. You don’t remember them, but we remember them. You don’t cry over them, but we cry over them.

Have you heard the name of the little girl Hannan Salih Matrud? Or of the boy Ahmad Jabir Karim? Or Sa‘id Shabram?

Yes, our dead have names too. They have faces and stories and memories. There was a time when they were among us, laughing and playing. They had dreams, just as you have. They had a tomorrow awaiting them. But today they sleep among us with no tomorrow on which to wake.

We don’t hate the British people or the peoples of the world. This war was imposed upon us, but we are now fighting it in defense of our selves. Because we want to live in our homeland – the free land of Iraq – and to live as we want to live, not as your government or the American government wish.

Let the families of those killed know that responsibility for the Thursday morning London bombings lies with Tony Blair and his policies.

Stop your war against our people! Stop the daily killing that your troops commit! End your occupation of our homeland!

A Letter to the British People, (in Arabic and English) AlBasrah.net, July 9, 2005

This is a complete reprint of Robert Fisk's article on the London bombing:

"If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us think insurgency won't come to us?

"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.

And it's no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.

It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterday's bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us believe insurgency won't come to us? One thing is certain: if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid.

To time these bombs with the G8 summit, when the world was concentrating on Britain, was not a stroke of genius. You don't need a PhD to choose another Bush-Blair handshake to close down a capital city with explosives and massacre more than 30 of its citizens. The G8 summit was announced so far in advance as to give the bombers all the time they needed to prepare.

A co-ordinated system of attacks of the kind we saw yesterday would have taken months to plan - to choose safe houses, prepare explosives, identify targets, ensure security, choose the bombers, the hour, the minute, to plan the communications (mobile phones are giveaways). Co-ordination and sophisticated planning - and the usual utter ruthlessness with regard to the lives of the innocent- are characteristic of al-Qa'ida. And let us not use - as our television colleagues did yesterday - "hallmarks", a word identified with quality silver rather than base metal.

And now let us reflect on the fact that yesterday, the opening of the G8, so critical a day, so bloody a day, represented a total failure of our security services - the same intelligence "experts"who claim there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there were none, but who utterly failed to uncover a months-long plot to kill Londoners.

Trains, planes, buses, cars, metros. Transportation appears to be the science of al-Qa'ida's dark arts. No one can search three million London commuters every day. No one can stop every tourist. Some thought the Eurostar might have been an al-Qa'ida target - be sure they have studied it - but why go for prestige when your common or garden bus and Tube train are there for the taking.

And then come the Muslims of Britain, who have long been awaiting this nightmare. Now every one of our Muslims becomes the "usual suspect", the man or woman with brown eyes, the man with the beard, the woman in the scarf, the boy with the worry beads, the girl who says she's been racially abused.

I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 11 September 2001 - my plane turned round off Ireland when the US closed its airspace - how the aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me with "hostility". And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.

And this is part of the point of yesterday's bombings: to divide British Muslims from British non-Muslims (let us not mention the name Christians), to encourage the very kind of racism that Tony Blair claims to resent.

But here's the problem. To go on pretending that Britain's enemies want to destroy "what we hold dear" encourages racism; what we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a "war on terror" which Lord Blair of Kutal-Amara has locked us into. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden asked: "Why do we not attack Sweden?"

Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair.

The reality of this barbaric bombing by Robert Fisk, July 8, 2005

"Over the past two weeks, the contrast between two related "global" events has been salutary. The first was the World Tribunal on Iraq held in Istanbul; the second the G8 meeting in Scotland and the Make Poverty History campaign. Reading the papers and watching television in Britain, you would know nothing about the Istanbul meetings, which produced the most searing evidence to date of the greatest political scandal of modern times: the attack on a defenceless Iraq by America and Britain. (emphasis added)
From Iraq to the G8: The Polite Crushing of Dissent and Truth July 7, 2005
also (same article but with background links) Paymasters Of Carnage July 9, 2005

"One of the arguments deployed by Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, when he appealed to Tony Blair not to support the war in Iraq was prescient: "An assault on Iraq will inflame world opinion and jeopardise security and peace everywhere. London, as one of the major world cities, has a great deal to lose from war and a lot to gain from peace, international cooperation and global stability."
... At the beginning of the G8, Blair suggested that "poverty was the cause of terrorism". It is not so. (emphasis added) The principal cause of this violence is the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. And unless this is recognised, the horrors will continue.
The price of occupation July 8, 2005

An Update:
"We know what took place. A group of people, with no regard for law, order or our way of life, came to our city and trashed it. With scant regard for human life or political consequences, employing violence as their sole instrument of persuasion, they slaughtered innocent people indiscriminately. They left us feeling unified in our pain and resolute in our convictions, effectively creating a community where one previously did not exist. With the killers probably still at large there is no civil liberty so vital that some would not surrender it in pursuit of them and no punishment too harsh that some might not sanction if we found them.
The trouble is there is nothing in the last paragraph that could not just as easily be said from Falluja as it could from London. The two should not be equated - with over 1,000 people killed or injured, half its housing wrecked and almost every school and mosque damaged or flattened, what Falluja went through at the hands of the US military, with British support, was more deadly. But they can and should be compared. We do not have a monopoly on pain, suffering, rage or resilience. Our blood is no redder, our backbones are no stiffer, nor our tear ducts more productive than the people in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those whose imagination could not stretch to empathise with the misery we have caused in the Gulf now have something closer to home to identify with. "Collateral damage" always has a human face: its relatives grieve; its communities have memory and demand action.
These basic humanistic precepts are the principle casualties of fundamentalism, whether it is wedded to Muhammad or the market. They were clearly absent from the minds of those who bombed London last week. They are no less absent from the minds of those who have pursued the war on terror for the past four years.
Blair's blowback July 11, 2005

....................................................... I was chasing a terrorist and somehow he led me here

It is interesting that Blair said the above statement, when one does consider what a leading neoconservative, Michael Ledeen, espoused for Iraq:

"A fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Michael Ledeen has become the driving philosophical force behind the neoconservative movement and the military actions it has spawned. His 1996 book, "Freedom Betrayed; How the United States Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War and Walked Away," reveals the basic neoconservative obsession: the United States never "won" the Cold War; the Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight without a shot being fired. Had the United States truly won, democratic institutions would have been sprouting wherever the threat of communism had been rife.

Iraq, Iran and Syria are the first and foremost nations where this should be happening, according to Ledeen. The process by which this should be achieved is a violent one, termed "total-war”.

"Total-war not only destroys the enemy's military forces, but also brings the enemy society to an extremely personal point of decision, so that they are willing to accept a reversal of the cultural trends," Ledeen writes.

"The sparing of civilian lives cannot be the total war's first priority. . . . The purpose of total-war is to permanently force your will onto another people."

The journalist Thomas Friedman, on a tour of Iraq wrote in the New York Times in May 25, 2003, "The best thing about this poverty: Iraqis are so beaten down that a vast majority clearly seem ready to give the Americans a chance to make this a better place." Ledeen depravedly expects to be vindicated. The Iraqi people will prove him otherwise. (emphasis added)

Ledeen's ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. His views define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that existed before the tragedy of September 11, 2001. He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America's manifest destiny. Ledeen has become the philosophical legitimizer of the American occupation of Iraq and the wanton destruction of its society. "

Quoted from my book, "Iraq's Nuclear Mirage", page 21, written June 2003.

And our heartfelt condolences to the families of the tens of civilians who fell in London on the day of July 7, 2005.

Note the depth of the pain in this Iraqi tear drop

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear."
Cicero Marcus Tullius - Born on January 3, 106 BC and was murdered on December 7, 43 BC.

"If the imperial state itself was divided and some sectors were not convinced of the need to go to war, which group was able to overcome that resistance, by-pass established intelligence channels (and create its own circuit), fabricate its own “intelligence and successfully lead the US to war? If war was not promoted by and in the interests of the US oil companies, and contrary to military doctrine of fighting two wars simultaneously, in whose geo-political interests was the war?

The War and the Israel-Zionist Hypothesis

The hypothesis which most fits the data is the Israel hypothesis – specifically that the principal architects and theoreticians of US world supremacy and the principal promoters of sequential wars, particularly in the Middle East, were influential Zionists in the top echelons of the Pentagon, National Security Council and in well-connected research centers “advising” the government while acting on behalf of the expansionist interests of the State of Israel.
The key author of the strategic doctrine of undisputed US world power was Wolfowitz, back in the first Bush Administration (1991). He joined with other influential Zionists like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and a host of pro-Israel extremists to prepare a strategy paper for the Israeli state (1996) in which the Palestinians were to be physically driven from all of Palestine and Israel would become the regional power in the Middle East. Both Feith and Wolfowitz, early in their public careers were accused and chastised for turning US government documents over to the Israeli government. For at least twenty years they have been actively collaborating over Israeli policy and, in and out of government, they have worked intimately with Israeli officials in the United States and Israel."
The meaning of war: A heterodox perspective by James Petras, March 13, 2005
(An abridged version of this long treatise)

While most of Baghdadis do not have drinking water, the American troops are swimming in a fresh water swimming pool in Baghdad's Camp Victory.

An Update: From a Comment by Evelyn:

Good news for Iraqis. They won't need water :

"Coca-Cola has returned to Iraq after an absence of nearly four decades, triggering a cola war in a lucrative but potentially hostile market. Coke ended its 37-year exile last week by setting up a joint-venture bottling company to compete with Pepsi for 26 million consumers."
Cola wars as Coke moves on Baghdad July 5, 2005 (even their Cola reeks of WAR).

.................................................................................'Brands' and Stripes

"Iraq is ready to accept U.S. help in investigating the killing and kidnapping of government officials, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday after a surprise visit amid tight security.
The informal agreement covering the criminal investigations came after Gonzales met with Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, as well as police and judicial officials during a six-hour visit (emphasis added) to the Iraqi capital.
... Gonzales' visit took place under extraordinary security precautions, including a news blackout until Gonzales was safely inside the heavily fortified green zone where Iraqi and U.S. officials work. Yet the visit almost was scrapped because bad weather temporarily grounded helicopters that were to take Gonzales and his entourage from the airport to the city. Driving the eight miles from the airport — a stretch that risks bombings and other attacks — was considered too dangerous. (emphasis added)
.... "There are still some high-level crimes, murders and kidnappings that are not being prosecuted. One reason is that the evidence is not available," Gonzales said in an interview on his return trip to Washington. ... "If that follow-up work is not done, you can't promote the rule of law in that environment," he said. "
Gonzales: FBI among agencies to help Iraqi probes July 3, 2005

While, in the meantime:

- Do feel free to promote nepotism and official robbery:

"The 'transitional Iraqi government' has issued a decree granting each member of the 270+ member of the four months-old elected 'National Assembly' $50,000 to buy a car plus $5,000 monthly salary, plus $10,000 travel expenses when they travel abroad. Furthermore, these salaries are to be extended in perpetuity as 'retirement' pensions when the Assembly is finally dissolved in December 2005 after the ratification of the 'Iraqi Constitution'. Furthermore, if any memeber of the 'Assembly' is holding any other government position, they are still entitled to these 'benefits' in addition to their other salary."
Official Robbery (in Arabic) July 3, 2005

That is about $14,000,000 just for the Assembly members' cars, notwithstanding that Iraqi laws allow retirement from civil service only after 15-25 years, and not 8 months; and bearing in mind that the average civil servant salary is about $300 a month and the unemployment rate is about 60% in Iraq.

- And do feel free to promote selective 'due process of law' to the shoeshiners:

A recent blog posting by Baghdad Dweller was entitled "The invader’s shoeshiner"

The article is in reference to the media campaign unleashed by Iraq's U.N. ambassador Samir Sumaidaie after the cold-blooded killing of his nephew by U.S. soldiers in his home in Haditha.

He ventured to state this about that single incident: "It is a betrayal of the American people who are making huge sacrifices to bring this about, and a betrayal of Iraq and all Iraqi patriots who have put their trust in the United States."

This prompted the U.S. military to issue a statement: "We take these allegations seriously and will thoroughly investigate this incident to determine what happened."

Iraqis recall Sumaidaie as the minister of the Interior under Allawi's 'transitional government' who, upon being skipped over for yet another ministerial post, high-tailed it from Iraq with the famous saying:"It is much better that one looks after the businesses that he left behind" (in Arabic), as he is a U.S. citizen with several businesses. Hence, he accepted the well-paid U.N. post, to represent Iraq, where his silence against the daily atrocities by U.S. soldiers in Iraq has been stupefying, yet hollers with indignation when it is a relative of his, and the occupier obliges.

Our celebrated Iraqi poet Badir Shakir Al-Sayyab (who died nearly 50 years ago) best described the likes of Sumaidaie in one of his well known poems (in Arabic) : “The Invaders Shoeshiners"

I am what you want me to be,
I am the despicable invaders' shoeshiner,
Seller of blood and conscience.

For the invaders,
I am the crow that feeds on pigeon corpses,
I am the ruin, I am the destruction
The lips of the whore are more virtuous than my heart
The wings of the fly are purer and warmer than my hands
As you wish me to be ..... I am the scoundrel.
......

An Update (in Arabic):

Also, this Comment from a SpecialFriend:

"Bassam Al-Beer doesn't have an Ambassador in the U.N. as a cousin.

Who is going to investigate his death? Or, perhaps more likely, his death is going to be swept under the carpet by people like Samir Al-Sumaida'ie and his associates!"

Happy 4th of July

Speaker: Patricia Wald, chair, Open Society Institute Criminal Justice Initiative; commissioner, Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction

Speaker: Charles Duelfer [Canadian], former deputy executive chairman, U.N. Special Commission on Iraq [UNSCOM]; former special adviser to the director of central intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; former head, Iraq Survey Group

Presider: Craig R. Whitney, assistant managing editor, the New York Times; editor: The WMD Mirage: Iraq's Decade of Deception and America's False Premise for War
===

"QUESTIONER: Gary Sick, Columbia University. I, as somebody who was watching this very much from the outside, have been struck by two different data points that I have not heard discussed very much in any of the reports, and I have not read both of your reports in great detail. One is Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law who defected [in 1995], was debriefed at great length and who said, "Here is where the stuff was hidden," and so forth, but then at the end of his discussion said, "But of course that's all over. We did away with that years ago and that's not--that's not going on in Iraq." The first part of this report got a lot of attention; the second one was largely ignored.
The second one was a fellow who was a close adviser on the nuclear side, who went on to Canada--actually escaped from Saddam, went off to Canada and while--and he was very quiet for a long time because he was scared, but then as he saw war coming he actually went public and said, you know, "I was very close to the nuclear side and nothing was going on there. This was over for years." Now, that we paid a lot of attention not only to the Curve Balls, but we also to--the Saddam's bomb-maker and people like that, who got a tremendous amount of attention. Both of these reports, which were available at great length, I am wondering what the--how they were perceived inside the community and if they got any attention at all. I'm told that the fellow in Canada didn't--I'm sorry, his name escapes me--was never even interviewed by the CIA.

WHITNEY: Charles, do you want to take a whack at that?

DUELFER: Well, they're two different cases. The Hussein Kamel one--his presentation was a bit more mixed than you are suggesting. I mean, he described things which we did not know about at the time and so there is clearly, based on that conversation, things which Iraq was still hiding at least factually from the UN inspectors and obviously from the U.S. So, you know, it's--again, it is this mutual mistrust and if they're hiding--why would they hide that if they were trying preserve the capability or retain something? You know, that was one of the fascinating experiences to me, because I sat down--I mean, these are people I have known for over a decade and, you know, you kind of can have some conversations while they are in custody. You know, what were you doing when we were doing this? But there really was this element of mutual misunderstanding.

And the second fellow, whose name is Imad Khadduri, (emphasis added) he was involved in the nuclear program but more as a--he collected documentation. And yes, he went to Canada. I mean, there were a lot of Iraqis who left Iraq who had more or less something to say. The fact that he said that the nuclear program had ended--you know, I don't how you would agree to that, but it does point to one of, I think, the systemic problems in the intelligence committee, which they are now thinking about: How do you account for negative information? The system--you know, if you have a 100 people in the day who say, you know, "I was driving in Baghdad and I didn't see anything," it doesn't make it to the president's desk. It's just a--it's unnatural. I mean that, you know, nothing is happening, so you are going to report that to the president? (emphasis added)
But you if you do get a guy, you know, who says something is going on, then that attracts attention. I don't know, is it--part of it is human nature and part of it's a systemic problem."
Weapons of Mass Destruction and Iraq (The extract above is near the end of the session)

With such dead-ended logic, I would venture to assume that Duelfer has dual citizenship, American-Canadian, and not Canadian-American.

Now then, naturally, something is happening!

One would assume that the consequences are now being reported to the president.

Not that the "Bring 'em On" president does give a damn, then or now.

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A 1975 picture

Kurt Nimmo's translation of the concluding points in : "Iraqi Resistance Issues Terms of Surrender (for Bush) " June 30, 2005 is noteworthy.

The original full statement from Rafidan - The Political Committee, The Mujahideen Central Command (MCC), Baghdad - The Republic of Iraq, Release (Communiqué) No. 14 is titled : 'Bush ... what is the hurry?' in Arabic, with not as good an English translation as Nimmo's is.

Rafidan's first ten Communiqués concerned ten documentary videos on Dale Stoffel, in Arabic with English translation.

"Perhaps the most underreported story in Iraq today is the theft of its oil revenues. Thanks to the high price of crude, Iraq should make well over $20 billion from oil sales this year, yet almost none of this money seems to be going to actual reconstruction projects (added emphasis). One senior Iraqi official told me recently that the theft of oil revenues today is making Saddam Hussein's regime look frugal by comparison. "
Five Ways to Win Back Iraq New York Times op-ed, July 1, 2005

One might sense that the New York Times' title is implying that the U.S. has already lost Iraq; but that's another story. Back to Iraqi oil:

"Iraq would need investment of $25 billion over the next five or six years to renovate its oil and gas infrastructure, former Oil Minister Thamer al-Ghadban told an Istanbul conference. The lion’s share of $20 billion would be for the oil sector, mainly upstream, with the rest going to the gas industry. The investment “can only be made with the help of foreign investors,” (added emphasis) added al- Ghadban".
Iraq Needs Massive Investment to Repair Oil Sector: Ex-Minister International Oil Daily (paid subscription) July 1, 2005

One might surely expect that the now inviting ex-minister would have an idea of where the Iraqi oil money has been pouring, under his watch, during the past two years, no? (see my earlier posting Oil !! .... What oil ??)

Iraq's Occupation Explained .... Got Oil?

"Unbelievable...

“Not only can they not find WMD in Iraq,” I commented to E. as we listened to the Bush speech, “But they have disappeared from his speeches too!” I was listening to the voiceover on Arabiya, translating his speech to Arabic. He was recycling bits and pieces of various speeches he used over two years.

E., a younger cousin, and I were sitting around in the living room, sprawled on the relatively cool tiled floor. The electricity had been out for 3 hours and we couldn’t turn on the air conditioner with the generator electricity we were getting. E. and I had made a bet earlier about what the theme of tonight’s speech would be. E. guessed Bush would dig up the tired, old WMD theme from somewhere under the debris of idiocy and lies coming out of the White House. I told him he’d dredge up 9/11 yet again… tens of thousands of lives later, we would have to bear the burden of 9/11… again.

I won the bet. The theme was, naturally, terrorism- the only mention of ‘weapon’ or ‘weapons’ was in reference to Libya. He actually used the word ‘terrorist’ in the speech 23 times.

He was trying, throughout the speech, to paint a rosy picture of the situation. According to him, Iraq was flourishing under the occupation. In Bush’s Iraq, there is reconstruction, there is freedom (in spite of an occupation) and there is democracy.

“He’s describing a different country…” I commented to E. and the cousin.

“Yes,” E. replied. “He’s talking about the *other* Iraq… the one with the WMD.”

“So what’s the occasion? Why’s the idiot giving a speech anyway?” The cousin asked, staring at the ceiling fan clicking away above. I reminded him it was the year anniversary marking the mythical handover of power to Allawi’s Vichy government.

“Oh- Allawi… Is he still alive?” Came the indolent reply from the cousin. “I’ve lost track… was he before Al Yawir or after Al Yawir? Was he Prime Minister or did they make him president at some point?”

9/11 and the dubious connection with Iraq came up within less than a minute of the beginning of the speech. The cousin wondered whether anyone in America still believed Iraq had anything to do with September 11.

Bush said:
“The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror. The war reached our shores on September 11, 2001.”

Do people really still believe this? In spite of that fact that no WMD were found in Iraq, in spite of the fact that prior to the war, no American was ever killed in Iraq and now almost 2000 are dead on Iraqi soil? It’s difficult to comprehend that rational people, after all of this, still actually accept the claims of a link between 9/11 and Iraq. Or that they could actually believe Iraq is less of a threat today than it was in 2003.

We did not have Al-Qaeda in Iraq prior to the war. We didn’t know that sort of extremism. We didn’t have beheadings or the abduction of foreigners or religious intolerance. We actually pitied America and Americans when the Twin Towers went down and when news began leaking out about it being Muslim fundamentalists- possibly Arabs- we were outraged.

Now 9/11 is getting old. Now, 100,000+ Iraqi lives and 1700+ American lives later, it’s becoming difficult to summon up the same sort of sympathy as before. How does the death of 3,000 Americans and the fall of two towers somehow justify the horrors in Iraq when not one of the people involved with the attack was Iraqi?

Bush said:
“Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. … The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq, who is also senior commander at this base, General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said, "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."

He speaks of ‘abroad’ as if it is a vague desert-land filled with heavily-bearded men and possibly camels. ‘Abroad’ in his speech seems to indicate a land of inferior people- less deserving of peace, prosperity and even life.

Don’t Americans know that this vast wasteland of terror and terrorists otherwise known as ‘Abroad’ was home to the first civilizations and is home now to some of the most sophisticated, educated people in the region?

Don’t Americans realize that ‘abroad’ is a country full of people- men, women and children who are dying hourly? ‘Abroad’ is home for millions of us. It’s the place we were raised and the place we hope to raise our children- your field of war and terror.

The war was brought to us here, and now we have to watch the country disintegrate before our very eyes. We watch as towns are bombed and gunned down and evacuated of their people. We watch as friends and loved ones are detained, or killed or pressured out of the country with fear and intimidation.

Bush said:
“We see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who exploded car bombs along a busy shopping street in Baghdad, including one outside a mosque. We see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who sent a suicide bomber to a teaching hospital in Mosul…”

Yes. And Bush is extremely concerned with the mosques. He might ask the occupation forces in Iraq to quit attacking mosques and detaining the worshipers inside- to stop raiding them and bombing them and using them as shelters for American snipers in places like Falluja and Samarra. And the terrorists who sent a suicide bomber to a teaching hospital in Mosul? Maybe they got their cue from the American troops who attacked the only functioning hospital in Falluja.

“We continued our efforts to help them rebuild their country. Rebuilding a country after three decades of tyranny is hard and rebuilding while a country is at war is even harder."

Three decades of tyranny isn’t what bombed and burned buildings to the ground. It isn’t three decades of tyranny that destroyed the infrastructure with such things as “Shock and Awe” and various other tactics. Though he fails to mention it, prior to the war, we didn’t have sewage overflowing in the streets like we do now, and water cut off for days and days at a time. We certainly had more than the 8 hours of electricity daily. In several areas they aren’t even getting that much.

“They are doing that by building the institutions of a free society, a society based on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and equal justice under law.”

We’re so free, we often find ourselves prisoners of our homes, with roads cut off indefinitely and complete areas made inaccessible. We are so free to assemble that people now fear having gatherings because a large number of friends or family members may attract too much attention and provoke a raid by American or Iraqi forces.

As to Iraqi forces…There was too much to quote on the new Iraqi forces. He failed to mention that many of their members were formerly part of militias, and that many of them contributed to the looting and burning that swept over Iraq after the war and continued for weeks.

“The new Iraqi security forces are proving their courage every day.”

Indeed they are. The forte of the new Iraqi National Guard? Raids and mass detentions. They have been learning well from the coalition. They sweep into areas, kick down doors, steal money, valuables, harass the females in the household and detain the men. The Iraqi security forces are so effective that a few weeks ago, they managed to kill a high-ranking police major in Falluja when he ran a red light, shooting him in the head as his car drove away.

He kept babbling about a “free Iraq” but he mentioned nothing about when the American forces might actually depart and the occupation would end, leaving a “free Iraq”.

Why aren’t the Americans setting a timetable for withdrawal? Iraqis are constantly wondering why nothing is being done to accelerate the end of the occupation.

Do the Americans continue to believe such speeches? I couldn’t help but wonder.

“They’ll believe anything.” E. sighed. “No matter what sort of absurdity they are fed, they’ll believe it. Think up the most outrageous lie… They have people who’ll believe it.”

The cousin sat up at this, his interest piqued. “The most outrageous lie? How about that Iraq was amassing aliens from Mareekh [Mars] and training them in the battle art of kung-fu to attack America in 2010!”

“They’d believe it.” E. nodded in the affirmative. “Or that Iraq was developing a mutant breed of rabid, man-eating bunnies to unleash upon the Western world. They’d believe that too.”

Mykeru has a fantastic post about the speech, as do Juan Cole (as usual), and TomDispatch. "

July 1, 2005

Blathering ................. even as they assure us