3 US Troops Killed
Al-Saghir Blames Sunni Arab Parties, Press for Mosque Bombing
The US military announced the deaths of 3 GIs in Iraq on Friday.
Jalal al-Din al-Saghir is the Shiite politician who may have been targeted by the suicide bombing of the Buratha mosque on Friday that killed over 80 and wounded at least 130. Al-Hayat reports that he has now blamed Sunni Arabs for the bombing. He also accused the al-Basa'ir newspaper of the Association of Muslim Scholars and the al-I`tisam newspaper of Adnan Dulaimi's Sunni fundamentalists for what he called a campaign of distortion and lies against the Buratha Mosque, insofar as they alleged that it was being used as a secret prison and even mass-grave site for captured Sunnis.
In his Friday prayer sermon, Shaikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbala'i (the lieutenant of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani) called in Karbala for a solution to the political gridlock through compromising on some issues. He warned that Sistani's willingness to shepherd the United Iraqi Alliance depends on the party maintaining its unity. He said of Sistani's concern for the party, "This fatherly shadow cannot continue to be cast if separation and division occur." He urged the UIA to feel its responsibility.
In Najaf, Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji preached at the Imam Ali Mosque, saying that all UIA members should resort to Sistani "and accept the choice of the religious institution" as a means of resolving the current crisis.
Al-Qubanji is a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which has failed in a bid to convince Jaafari to allow three candidtates to go before the parliament for a non-confidence vote.
Nir Rosen bravely reports the reality on the ground in Iraq.
Chaim Kaufman says Iraq is descending into civil war and ethnic cleansing, and that US troops have a responsibility to stop the ethnic cleansing from becoming a massive phenomenon before they depart.
An Iraqi blogger argues that the UIA is looking around for a compromise candidate, since Jaafari won't step down and Abdul Mahdi is now seen as an American pawn.
The saga of the incredible shrinking presidency continues to unfold, with Bush's poll numbers sinking again, especially on his handling of Iraq. And, the US public no longer trusts Republicans more on issues of national security. I guess they have concluded that the Republican war in Iraq has endangered our national security. If so, they'd be right.
Austrian-Kurdish journalist Kamal Karim Qadir barely avoided going to jail for 30 years for criticizing Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. He is determined to continue his work, but says he will tone down his language. I guess so; he was threatened with life imprisonment. A thing like that doesn't leave you unscathed. We all think we are autonomous human beings here in the US, but most of us could be broken by torture. Qadir wasn't tortured physically, but the threat of being deprived of liberty for a lifetime is a sort of psychological torture for a writer.
Hundreds of members of the Marxist PKK, a Kurdish party outlawed in Turkey, demonstrated in Iraqi Kurdistan where they have fled.
Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer argues that the Bush administration could destabilize Pakistan by pushing Gen. Musharraf to act too obviously against the national interest.
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/08/2006 12:36:00 AM
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13 Comments:
The threat of lifetime imprisonment is bad but it isn't torture.
I believe it is true that anyone will break under torture, but a trained person may be able to break but still not give useful information to the interrogators. Or maybe not, there is not much good information about torture in the public domain in the US.
you wrote:
"Nir Rosen bravely reports the reality on the ground in Iraq."
i have a small request.
i would prefer that folks stop using the phrase "on the ground" since it is a bushism that adds zero information to whatever statement it is added to. it's a kind of verbal olestra. would any meaning be lost on your readers if you had instead written:
"Nir Rosen bravely reports the reality in Iraq."
i believe the bush administration strategically adopted the use of this phrase to short-circuit criticism of its spin on events in iraq, by implicitly bestowing an unearned authenticity to its personnel in situ that stateside critics cannot claim.
and quite frankly abuse of the phrase is starting to drive me a little batty. consider this quote from scott mcclellan during a recent press conference:
"well, i think that general casey and the vice president talked about that very issue yesterday. they talked about their views of the situation on the ground. general casey is someone who is on the ground and has a firsthand account of what is taking place, as is our ambassador, ambassador khalilzad and they've expressed their views of the situation on the ground."
(white house briefing, march 20 2006)
certainly authenticity is more a function of one's accuracy and transparency than merely of one's location.
Nir Rosen's piece in the Boston Review has helped me enormously in sorting out the Iraqui factions. Is it so difficult for the corporate media to attempt such analysis? Perhaps it is in the interest of the current regime that we remain confused...Mr. Rosen takes as a foregone conclusion that Iraq is in a state of civil war.
Three Marine Commanders Relieved of Duties
The move comes as their battalion is investigated in the November deaths of Iraqi civilians.
By Tony Perry
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 8, 2006
CAMP PENDLETON — A top Marine general fired a battalion commander and two company commanders Friday amid an investigation into whether Marines from the battalion wantonly killed Iraqi civilians in a November firefight.
Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, relieved Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, and two of his company commanders, Capt. James Kimber and Capt. Luke McConnell, of their duties. The three have been reassigned.
Marine Corps spokesman 2nd Lt. Lawton King said Natonski relieved the three of command because he lacked confidence in their leadership, based on their recent deployment to Iraq and a series of actions by the battalion.
It was unclear what the three officers did to lose Natonski's confidence. Under military rules, a commander can be relieved for the actions of his subordinates even if he knew nothing of those actions.
Military officials are investigating allegations by Iraqi civilians that Marines burst into several homes in Haditha, near Baghdad, on Nov. 19 and began firing indiscriminately.
Moments earlier, a Marine had been killed in a roadside bombing. When the incident first became public, the Marine Corps said the Iraqis had been killed in the explosion.
But video footage taken by the Iraqis showing the bloody bodies with gunshot wounds threw that assertion into dispute. Officials later said they had been killed in crossfire.
Fifteen Iraqi civilians were killed, including seven women and three children. Eight insurgents also were killed.
The Marine killed by the bomb was identified as Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas of El Paso, a member of Kilo Company of the 3rd Battalion.
Investigators are attempting to determine whether other Marines, angered at Terrazas' death, went on a rampage, ignoring rules meant to minimize civilian casualties. McConnell was the commanding officer of Kilo Company.
The tape of the bodies has been shown on Iraqi television, and the Baghdad Center for Human Rights has called for an investigation.
Troops could face courts-martial for violation of Geneva Convention protections for noncombatants if the inquiry determines that action is warranted.
Haditha is considered a stronghold of insurgent support. Militant leaders are thought to have fled there after the U.S. assault on Fallouja in November 2004.
About 25,000 Marines from Camp Pendleton and Twentynine Palms recently returned to Iraq to assume responsibility for much of the so-called Sunni Triangle, an area north and west of the capital that includes Fallouja. For many of the Marines, it is their third deployment to Iraq.
Natonski relieved the three officers of command on the same day he attended a memorial service at this sprawling base for nine Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, killed in November along the Syrian border.
New Yorker's Seymour Hersch on possible plans to invade Iran: http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060417fa_fact
Nir Rosen has gone all around Iraq unembedded, speaking Arabic with people, and hanging out in Fallujah and Najaf, etc. His reporting is therefore on the ground in a way few others' are, and I defend the diction.
Steve Clemmons discusses the Rosen article. Steve heads the New America Fndn. Rosen has a desk there.
Nir Rosen, a fellow at the New America Foundation who is also affiliated with the American Strategy Program which I direct, has just published a Robert Kaplan-esque treatment in the Boston Review of what he sees unfolding in Iraq.
This situation is terrible. Those who continue to harp on that we "must stay the course" need to think about this. What does "stay the course" mean when many of our troops are not able to conduct themselves independently of thugs who are terrorizing the very people we are trying to help.
There are no quick fixes in the Middle East -- and every course of action for America, whether it involves staying or leaving, or engaging in so-called "strategic redeployment" has serious costs attached.
More of a cri du coeur than an incisive analysis and that in itself is troubling. I suggested that Steve put Rosen and the young Anatol Lieven to work on the problem! I even put in my own two cents. Let George Soros (NAF patron) put in the rest.
nir rosen is not the issue. the issue is whether your use of the phrase "on the ground" adds anything meaningful to our understanding of his credibility. certainly nir's credibility has less to do with his location and more to do with the fact that he's a responsible journalist, who presumably would be just as credible from wherever "on the planet" he reports. and his crediblity is only enhanced when other responsible journalists like yourself vouch for his work and his character.
but would bill o'reilly's or brit hume's reporting be any more credible were they to choose to report from iraq (admittedly a not very bloody likely scenario) instead from the safety of their comfortable studios in new york? one might hope, but not if they choose to simply shovel more of the usual distortion and proselytizing that we have been getting from the likes of them and their ilk.
There's a very illuminating article from Newsweek, based on an interview with Hussein Shahristani of the UIA, on the jousting over Jaafari and the prime minister's job.
Shahristani seems to be heading up a search for a non-Jaafari (to placate the U.S.), non-SCIRI (to placate Moqtada) candidate... who could be someone else from Dawa, or perhaps Shahristani himself.
On what "ground"?
aarrgghh said... i would prefer that folks stop using the phrase "on the ground" since it is a bushism that adds zero information to whatever statement it is added to.
It is perfectly true that certain terms like "on the ground" can be used in PR operations to obfuscate the actual situation. However, there is no such thing as "PR" button, there is no way to disable certain terms to find out what is really going on. All we can do is to warn that certain term T can be abused by certain ideologues I.
For example, sometimes "honey" means a sweet substance, sometimes - a dear person, sometimes - nothing in particular. So, it is all up to the reader to find out the actual meaning from the context!
Now when I check Rosen's article, it looks like perfectly realistic depiction of guerilla war, no PR involved. I hope this helps.
We all think we are autonomous human beings here in the US, but most of us could be broken by torture
We are a very advanced society, so we reach that point long before torture. A simple threat to reduce "access" has kept an entire media establishment producing propaganda. The Soviets would have howled like banshees to have seen themselves so outclassed.
"On the ground" means he reports firsthand. Most of our "news" comes from secondhand reports delivered within the Green Zone. It's not hard to see the difference and the phrase adds meaning.
Is the real issue here an attempt to hide the fact most reporting ..... isn't?
nir rosen has a good sense of raportage and has an engineer's mind on:"why is it going that way?" But I think he sufferes from the existential heart's despair for the distant long horizon. Perhaps the micro he sees is magic like cosmology where destruction makes the universe what it is. So Iraq may again become Iraq without the dumb brute force of Saddam. Of course, it is hard to imagine even dumber George doing it. But don't despair, Nir, there are stranger things in Allah's universe than in ll your observations...Iraq may STILL be full of Iraqis!
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