Battle at Haifa Street kills 30
Senate Foreign Relations Committee rejects Escalation
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 12 to 9 for a non-binding resolution condemning the Bush administration's escalation of the war. All but one of the 10 Republicans on the committee voted against it. The dissenter was Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.
US forces with some Iraqi army accompaniment fought a pitched battle with Sunni Arab guerrillas at Haifa street just north of the Green Zone that houses government offices and the US embassy. They killed thirty persons whom they identified as "insurgents".
That Iraqi guerrillas killed 3 more US troops was announced on Wednesday.
Reuters reports on political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:
* Police found 33 bodies in Baghdad. Several showed signs of having been tortured.
*Guerrillas clashed with Iraqi army troops in Suwayra 25 miles south of the capital. 3 soldiers are said to be missing.
Iraqi Shiites rejected Bush's comparison of Iraqi Shiite militias to al-Qaeda. They said that the militias are mainly neighborhood protection committees, not a global terrorist organization aimed at the US.
Patrick Cockburn of the Independent continues his indispensable and clear-eyed reporting from Iraq with this piece on the paralysis of Baghdad. Major points:
*The crew of the Blackwater helicopter may have survived being shot down, but then they appear to have been executed on the ground.
*The toney al-Mansur district of Baghdad is now too dangerous to visit and its posh restaurants have long been closed.
*Baghdad residents are being shanghaied into militia service.
*Baquba is very dangerous but is not addressed in the Bush Baghdad/al-Anbar escalation plan.
The Palestinians, kicked out of their own country by groups like the Stern Gang, are now being kicked out of Iraq. The Palestinians are a homeless nation.
The average percentage by which esteem for the US fell in a BBC poll of publics in 25 country was 7%, i.e. from 36% to 29% in just a couple of years. In the late Clinton period, 75 percent of Indonesians reported that they held the US in high regard. It is now less than 30%.
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/25/2007 06:32:00 AM
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6 Comments:
I hope you don't think it's presumptuous of me, Prof. Cole, but if I were "subbing" that second sentence in the first entry I'd change the words "identified as" to "said were".
So it would read: "They killed thirty persons whom they said were 'insurgents'."
Because that's really where it's at now, isn't it. Where it's been for a very long time now. Perhaps from the very first. How do they know who's an "insurgent" and who isn't? And in any case what possible inducement would there be for them tell it like it is - something along the lines, perhaps, of "we killed 30 people, 18 of them were definitely shooting back at us, another four might have been 'bad guys', and, sorry to have to say, but it looks as though the other eight were innocent people. You know, collateral damage."
Well, pigs will be able to fly when "the finest fighting force in the world" can muster that sort of courage and honesty and integrity and responsibility. But why should it? Its disgraceful excuse for a Commander in Chief - you want a sure measure of our degeneracy as a polity it's that poltroon's ending up in that position - is famously incapable of taking responsibility, of being able to admit to having made a mistake.
So on it goes. "We've"already killed thousands and thousands of Iraqis. And to that mountain of corpses we'll no doubt add thousands more. And every last one of them will of course be "an insurgent". None of them - not a single one - is ever "not an 'insurgent'". It's sort of like betting on the number 13 to come up every single spin of the roulette wheel - and what do you know it does come up as 13 every single time!
I used to dream of Bush, Cheney, Blair, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Feith, Perle, Frum, Wurmser, Kristol, etc. having a date in the Hague. Now my dreams are bigger: I'd like to see every last "supporter" of this abomination - pundits, politicians, war profiteers, time servers, rank-and-file types, you name it - rounded up and given a one way ticket to Baghdad.
They'd go economy class. The principals - Bush, Cheney, Blair, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Feith, Perle, Frum, Wurmser, Kristol, etc. - would be up front.
Were not for few Americans like you Mr. Cole not around voicing it outloud that percentage will be big fat ZERO.
If Prof Cole were an Iraqi, he'd be dead long ago.
Keep telling the truth please.
Professor Cole,
Marc Santora draws a gloomy picture for the prospects of the new Baghdad security plan in the NYT
Iraq Leader and Sunni Officials in Sectarian Clash on Security
Those bawdy exchanges between Iraqi parlamentarians might warrant a closer look at the offensive expressions used.
Mr. Mashhadani called a Shiite politician reportedly a “psychopath” The Arabic word most likely used would be "majnoon" that is IMHO better translated as "out of your mind" and does according to my limited knowledge not carry the offensive meaning in Arabic as the NYT translation. The tendency to use the most divisive translation is typical for MEMRI translations if I remember your observation correctly.
Daryoush's comment on Tuesday's blog:
"The new strategy in Iraq seems to be to use mis-information to mobilize Sunnis from Arab world against Shiites. Divide and Conquer." might offer an explanation.
Times like these make me, as an American, question the value of patriotism. Is it to my country I am should strive to be loyal, or to certain values, such as justice, kindness, and generosity? A dropping US approval rating across the world reveals that we have betrayed those values we set out to embody- it is hard to be a "beacon" when everyone hates what you are shining in their face.
As Oscar Wilde controversially stated: Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Reports remain very confused about the Blackwater contractors who were executed this week but it appears that they were in a Vietnam era helicopter, which would be much more vulnerable to small arms fire than the standard military chopper of today.
Thinking about the number of "contractors" in Iraq, it seems that while they may be relatively heavily armed in terms of personal weapons, they lack armor and the fire power a military unit would have. There are estimates of as many as 100K contractors on the ground there and we rarely hear about their casualties, unless its something spectacular like having your burned corpse hung from a bridge in Fallujah.
While these contractors are very well paid (not as well as their stay-at-home supervisors), I have to wonder how well Blackwater equips and trains its troops or are they just so much more cannon fodder for the meat grinder?
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