Republican Senators Block Debate on Iraq
al-Hakim in Tehran seeks Regional Cooperation
The Republican Party blocked a debate in the Senate over Iraq War policy. The Republicans not so long ago were trying to get rid of the consensus rules, filibuster and other techniques the minority has at its disposal. They are singing a different tune now that they are the minority. Anyway, I'm sure everyone will remember in the next elections that almost all Republican senators joined to stop any constructive steps from being taken on Iraq.
Bush's new budget is bad for the sick, the elderly, the weak. It expands the Pentagon budget though, just so you can tell what is really important.
This NYT story about the killing of Ali Khazim al-Hamadani by US and Iraqi troops reports the official US story of a rogue leader that makes no sense in the light of the other details gathered by the intrepid Mr. Oppel. NYT shows that Khazim is said to have worked as an informer for the US last summer, and had striven to reduce the violence of the Mahdi Army. So did he in the meantime turn on the US and is this payback? Or did he start to know things he wasn't supposed to? The accounts of his death are also contradictory, with the US saying Iraqi troops raided his house and shot him when he picked up a gun to resist them. The Sadr Movement spokesman said he was bayoneted to death (suggesting he was unarmed when killed).
Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that 1,000 Arab notables and clan leaders gathered in Kirkuk, where they rejected the idea of joining Kirkuk to the Kurdistan Regional Government. A December referendum in the province will decide the issue, probably in favor of the Kurds, since they are now a majority in the province after 3 years of pouring people (many of them originally from there but expelled by Saddam) into it. The Arab and Turkmen populations in Kirkuk generally oppose annexation.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim met Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei in Tehran on Monday. The Arabic press is saying his agenda is to start talks between the US and Iran.
Syria's al-Asad says that his country can play a key role in calming things in Iraq.
The office of Sadrist splinter leader, Mahmud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi maintains that numerous arrests have recently been made of his followers in the Najaf region, according to the Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat. Al-Sarkhi's followers have repeatedly clashed with British and Iraqi government troops, and are thought responsible for burning the Iranian consulate in Basra.
Police found 25 bodies in the streets of Baghdad on Monday. A series of five car bombs killed at least another 24 and wounded over 100 persons. One bomb went off near a children's hospital. McClatchy has more details.
There was guerrilla fighting in the Sunni district of Adhamiya. In the Janabiyin neighborhood of Amil, Shiite militiamen dressed as police pulled Sunnis out of their apartments and murdered at least 8, then set 5 apartment buildings afire.
There was also fighting in the mixed Sunni-Shiite province of Diyala east of Baghdad. In the southern city of Basra, two British soldiers have been killed in recent days and bases have taken heavy mortar fire. A mosque was bombed, but there were no casualties in that incident.
Police found 6 bodies in Haditha, a Sunni Arab town in al-Anbar province west of Baghdad. This was Sunni on Sunni violence, whatever it was.
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/06/2007 12:30:00 AM
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Mr. Bush is working hard to ensure that the USA will go down the way the Soviet Union did. Soon enough the USA goes bankrupt with current military spending. Too bad that at that point the US infrastructure will be way behind that of Europe and most likely even China.
If only Mr. Bush would use some 40% of the military budget on energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and rail transit. That would save many more American lives than defeating every single terrorist even will.
But most likely nothing will change before 2009, if even then.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2006738,00.html
Children of war: the generation traumatised by violence in Iraq
Growing up in a war zone takes its toll as young play games of murder and mayhem
Michael Howard in Baghdad
Tuesday February 6, 2007
Guardian
The car stopped at the makeshift checkpoint that cut across the muddy backstreet in western Baghdad. A sentry appeared. "Are you Sunni or Shia?" he barked, waving his Kalashnikov at the driver. "Are you with Zarqawi or the Mahdi army?"
"The Mahdi army," the driver said. "Wrong answer," shouted the sentry, almost gleefully. "Get him!"
The high metal gate of a nearby house was flung open and four gun-toting males rushed out. They dragged the driver from his vehicle and held a knife to his neck. Quickly and efficiently, the blade was run from ear to ear. "Now you're dead," said a triumphant voice, and their captive crumpled to the ground.
Then a moment of stillness before the sound of a woman's voice. "Come inside boys! Your dinner is ready!" The gunmen groaned; the hapless driver picked himself up and trundled his yellow plastic car into the front yard; the toy guns and knives were tossed by the back door. Their murderous game of make-believe would have to resume in the morning.
Abdul-Muhammad and his five younger brothers, aged between six and 12, should have been at school. But their mother, Sayeeda, like thousands of parents in Iraq's perilous capital city, now keeps her boys at home. Three weeks ago, armed men had intercepted their teacher's car at the school gates, then hauled him out and slit his throat. Just like in their game.
"That day they came home and they were changed because of the things they'd seen," said Sayeeda as she ladled rice into the boys' bowls. "The youngest two have been wetting their beds and having nightmares, while Abdul-Muhammad has started bullying and ordering everyone to play his fighting games. I know things are not normal with them. My fear is one day they will get hold of real guns. But in these times, where is the help?"
The boys live with their widowed mother and uncle in a modest family house in al-Amil, a once peaceful, religiously mixed suburb in western Baghdad that is yielding to the gunmen, street by street. Similar tales of growing up in the war zone are heard across the country.
Parents, teachers and doctors contacted by the Guardian over the past three months cite a litany of distress signals sent out by young people in their care - from nightmares and bedwetting to withdrawal, muteness, panic attacks and violence towards other children, sometimes even to their own parents.
Amid the statistical haze that enshrouds civilian casualties, no one is sure how many children have been killed or maimed in Iraq. But psychologists and aid organisations warn that while the physical scars of the conflict are all too visible - in hospitals and mortuaries and on television screens - the mental and emotional turmoil experienced by Iraq's young is going largely unmonitored and untreated.
In a rare study published last week, the Association of Iraqi Psychologists (API) said the violence had affected millions of children, raising serious concerns for future generations. It urged the international community to help establish child psychology units and mental health programmes. "Children in Iraq are seriously suffering psychologically with all the insecurity, especially with the fear of kidnapping and explosions," the API's Marwan Abdullah told IRIN, the UN-funded news agency. "In some cases, they're found to be suffering extreme stress," he said.
Sherif Karachatani, a psychology professor at the University of Sulaymaniya, said: "Every day another innocent child is orphaned or sees terrible things children should never see. Who is taking care of the potentially enormous damage being done to a generation of children?"
There are well-founded fears, he said, that the "relentless bloodshed and the lack of professional help will see Iraq's children growing up either deeply scarred or so habituated to violence that they keep the pattern going as they enter adulthood".
Because of the dire security, organisations such as Unicef (the United Nations Children's Fund), have only a skeleton presence in Iraq. Save the Children is closing its operations next month after 15 years in the country. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society has been forced to suspend a programme for children suffering from war trauma owing to lack of funding.
The country's overstretched hospitals cannot cope with psychological trauma and many of the best doctors have either fled the country or been killed. The problems are compounded by the stigma that psychological and psychiatric care carries. "They don't bring their children in for treatment, fearing they will be labelled as mad," Dr Karachatani said.
The field is left to small local and foreign NGOs and to hard-pressed Iraqi psychologists, who are not immune to bloodshed. In December, Harith Hassan, one of Iraq's most prominent child psychologists, was shot dead as he drove to work. A regular commentator in the Iraqi media known for his ruthlessly honest comments about the Iraqi mindset, Dr Hassan had worked with victims of trauma. And he had been determined to wean Iraqi youth from their obsession with the gun.
"It's all some of them think about and know," he had told the Guardian. "The dangers are they will internalise the violence and then reproduce it later."
As with Abdul-Muhammad and his brothers, stories and images of beheadings and sectarian atrocities were working their way into play, he said, "bringing nightmares to life". But that need not be harmful. "Getting it out in their play is probably quite healthy," said Anne Jefferies, humanitarian advocacy adviser with Save the Children. The key thing was to provide a safe environment in which children could play, supervised by adults.
Yet in Baghdad's al-Amil neighbourhood that is not easy. Haunted by the spectre of violence, parents have stopped taking their children to local play areas. The neighbourhood's two amusement arcades are shuttered and there are few safe places to play sports. School attendance is down by as much as 60%.
Lynne Jones, a child psychiatrist with the International Medical Corps who studied children under war in Bosnia, said: "Children are often incredibly resilient. In a number of studies, trauma in children in war zones has tailed off quite rapidly once the violence dies down."
Their continued wellbeing depends on the kind of environment in which they live after that, and the values of their families or parents, she said.
Shortly before his murder, Dr Hassan told the Guardian of his fears for Iraq's current young generation. "Do not make the mistake of blaming the occupation and the recent war for all of this," he said. "For more than three decades, young Iraqis have been forced to learn how to kill. We must now learn instead about dialogue and compromise. Otherwise, we will continue to produce psychopathic personalities for whom violence is simply a means of negotiating daily life."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
NPR reports that Iran is complaining one of their diplomats has been kidnapped by American forces. It appears he was kidnapped by armed men in regular Iraqi military fatigues driving American military vehicles. Iran is adamant that he be returned unharmed.
This is really a mess; after last week's kidnapping of four American troops in Karbala, my first instinct was to wonder if there were a connection. Then I remembered GWB's comments about interdicting Iranian agents by any means necessary and the growing unrest of this Administration's policy of extreme rendition and I am unwilling to place the blame anywhere.
What I am left to wonder, and Professor Cole may offer some insights, as to the exact nature of the involvement of private security firms such as Blackwater, since they do do a great deal of private and military security and some of their guys do come from the covert ops side of the aisle.
In the Wild Wild West atmosphere of Iraq today, how much of what we are witnessing is due to freelancers or just plain old fashioned criminals?
Direct negotiations between the US; Iran; and Syria may be good news for all three, but is bad news for us, Iraqis. The outcome will almost certainly regulate how they would use the people of Iraq and their land and other resources.
The Iraqi government, with the support of Turkey and Saudi Arabia is trying to get a deal which excludes the USA, and is between equals -- based on mutual economic and other iterests,
The US, for all the peoples of the area, are like a paedophile in the district. The sooner he leaves the entire area the better.
Sunnin on Sunni? Shia on Shia? Turkoman on Kurd. SCIRI on Moqtada? Army of Heaven on Karbala? A Yankee shoots a Brit? People dressed as Americans shooting Amerians? Can it really be so complicated? Half of Americans will tune out the static and see what they want, based on some WWII screenplay.
There are two ways to be confused about Iraq. One way is to find the conflict mind-boggling and devoid of any clear forces or issues amenable to military or political solution. Any proposal is more or less a wager based on a vague, probably flawed, sense of probabilities. The outcome is up for grabs. No proposal will get any help, but probably lots of resistance, from everywhere.
The other way to be confused is to allow zero, or at most token, recognition of the eye-glazing complexities or irrationalities of the conflict. Instead, let meta-beliefs and pre-conceptions guide action, and let shared fears deter your opponents. Let God guide the good (that's us, of course) and the Devil take the rest, etc. If there is a setback, maybe time to appoint a new preacher, but the objective is still the same: redeem the martyrs of 9/11 and smite the terrorist devils. Just show guts and victory will come. Just incinerate that Mt. Suribachi, whereever it is in Iraq (or Iran) and then raise the stars and sripes.
I fear that a plurality of Americans share the 2nd type of confusion. Nominally, they figure in the people opposed to the war, but really they are mainly dispondent about the failure to match expectations. They are far closer to a Lieberman or a McCain than they are to a Murtha. They cannot digest anything that would be proposed by a Biden or a Galbraith. Meanwhile, they can be perfectly lucid in recognizing that an H. Clinton, by being pro-war but anti-war, says nothing at all.
When facts get fuzzy, people revert to root beliefs and shy from major changes. All this favors Bush, who still espouses the most common beliefs, even if results do not match expectations. His biggest help comes from the Democrats who, for the most part, are just as scared as he is of letting the chickens come home to roost too soon. The taint of defeat and a plate of crow is far worse than to spend 10 lives / day or spend $100 billion per year.
The only "lesson" of Vietnam was that, by and large, the US learned nothing. The domino theory has its spooky successor, which politicians are terrified to challenge.
Talking of Republicans, I hope to God that John McCain never steps anywhere near that big chair in the Oval Office. While researching his background for a Daily Kos diary I found this bit from the 2000 Shadow Convention:
"I thought I might do a little evangelizing while I'm here for the cause that motivated my late, lamented -- lamented by me at least -- campaign for the Republican nomination for president. That cause, my friends, is sustaining our nation's greatness. I believe in American exceptionalism. I believe we were meant to transform history. I believe that the progress of all humanity will depend, as it has for many years now, on the global progress of American interests and values. I believe we are still the last, best hope of Earth."
Speaking of Republicans...
Soldiers died while Kyle "Dusty" Foggo prospered.
Water deal illuminates secret contracts
By KATHERINE SHRADER and ALLISON HOFFMAN, Associated Press Writers
2 hours, 22 minutes ago
AP - CIA officers operating in northern Iraq bought drinking water from a bottling plant there for years prior to the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
That changed soon afterward. A CIA officer handling logistics for the Middle East and other regions recommended that an American company provide water and other supplies, according to former government officials.
The U.S. contractor that benefited from the multimillion-dollar deal wasn't just anyone. The company had personal ties to the officer, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who would soon leave his logistics post in Frankfurt, Germany, and move to Washington to become the CIA's third-ranking official.
[More:]
A couple of weeks ago, I listened to a radio report about alleged tensions in Syria due to Shiites building "more and more shrines" in the country. Shiites backed by the Alawi elite distrusted by the ordinary people, the report claimed. I thought the elite was primarily baathist, which is reflected in Iraqi officials' statements who estimate that "half the Sunni militants behind the bombings in Iraq had arrived through neighbouring Syria." Apparently, Kuwait and the Emirates share a common border with Syria... Joking aside, the The National Intelligence Estimate states that "outside actors" are not a "major driver of violence" inside Iraq.
Another turn of the ME screw
Recent abduction of the Iranian diplomat in Baghdad is yet another step in the escalation of US-Iranian tensions. Since this unfortunate event immediately follows the arrest of Iranian officials in the Iraqi Kurdish area and Administration's anti-Iranian posturing, it is perfectly natural that Iranians use it as an opportunity for fierce anti-US rhetoric.
The problem is, US/UK media use to represent Ahmadinejad as some sort of unpredictable maniac who does not really represent the Iranian public opinion and even the official line. However, the reality behind this self-defeating delusion is that the Khomeinists succeeded in adapting the Israeli model of essentially religious revolutionary movement for the needs of radical Shiite Islam.
What happens is that, like in Israel, endless clashes between different Khomeinist factions have nothing to do with to weakness on the enemies. Quite on the contrary, this way they develop the best strategy to achieve their goals.
Apparently, the Iranians have no need to respond by force to each and every neoconservative provocation. This time, it suffices to accuse the occupation forces of violating the international law and orchestrating the diplomat's abduction. Sadly, but quite predictably, the brand neoconservative contempt for international law strikes back.
I find the Jamal Jafaar Mohammed story rather suspicious too.
Check out this on CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/05/iraq.lawmaker/
What is it with the picture? Don't they have the current picture of the Iraqi parliament member?
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