15 US Troops Killed Since Sunday;
McCain more Hawkish than Bush
Guerrillas fired rockets at a US base south of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing 3 US soldiers and wounding 2. An Iraqi civilian was also wounded.
A US soldier was killed and another wounded at Diwaniya on Tuesday by a roadside bomb (that is Shiite territory). So the death toll for Monday through Wednesday was fifteen US troops killed.
If you’re reading these words, you are better informed about US casualties in Iraq than most Americans, for whom it has become a forgotten war. If it is not on television, it does not exist.
Why don’t bloggers do more posting of pieces like this AP video, below, about the 8 US troops killed on Monday. We are after all a tv network if we want to be.
Bloomberg New Service looks at McCain’s foreign policy record and finds him more hawkish than Bush on China, Russia and Iran. More hawkish than Bush? Does that phrase actually exist in the English language?
The Iraqi refugee crisis, affecting over 4 million persons, is getting worse. The number of refugees is not growing, but neither is it shrinking, and moreover the big problem is that the refugees are running out of money and resources.
remember that Pentagon study of 600,000 Iraqi documents that found no operational contact between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda? The one that the US government was going to post to the internet? Well, they aren’t going to put it online after all. (Cheney still has some clout. Was this the real reason Fallon was let go?) They will mail it to journalists who ask for it! Well folks it is government work product and unclassified, so let’s order it, scan it and post it.
Reuters reports political violence on Wednesday:
‘NEAR DIWANIYA - One U.S. soldier was killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb which hit their patrol near Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, on Tuesday, the U.S. military said.
. . . BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed two people and wounded 10 in Ameen district in southeastern Baghdad, police said.
‘BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb wounded five people in Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, police said.
BAGHDAD - Three mortar rounds landed in Baghdad's Green Zone, but details of casualties were not available, police said. . .
BAGHDAD - Mortar rounds wounded three people in Shaab district in northern Baghdad, police said. . .
NEAR KIRKUK - A roadside bomb targeting a local council member near Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, wounded two of his bodyguards, police said.
BASRA - Gunmen shot and killed a former official of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
BASRA - A senior figure in Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Basra office, Saed al-Haidery, was shot dead in northern Basra, police and Sadrist officials said.
NEAR SAMARRA - Three fuel truck drivers were killed when three roadside bombs went off near a convoy of seven fuel trucks on the main road near Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. Three trucks were set ablaze.
MOSUL - Six fuel trucks were set ablaze and three drivers were wounded on Tuesday when a bomb attached to one of the vehicles detonated in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.’
McClatchy adds:
‘Baghdad
. . . - Around 9 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol near Talbia Bridge towards Shaab neighborhood (north Baghdad).No casualties reported.
- Around 9:15 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Taji near Baghdad’s north gate .No casualties reported. . .
- Around 10 am, an American patrol defused a roadside bomb at Saidiyah neighborhood (south Baghdad) near Imam Ali mosque.
- Around 10:10 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol at Shaab neighborhood (north Baghdad) towards the industrial area. No casualties reported.
- Around 10:30 am, a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol near Qanat bridge(east Baghdad) .No casualties reported on the US patrol while two Iraqi people were killed and ten were injured in that incident.
- Police found (4) dead bodies in Baghdad neighborhoods today . . .
Diyala
- Police found one dead body at one of the orchards in Dali Abass village (east of Baquba).
- Around 1:50 pm, mortars hit Kanan village targeting Sheikh Tha’r Ghadhban’s funeral (who was killed two days ago) .Four people were injured (including a woman and a child).
- Police found a dead body at the way between Kanan –Balad Ruz (20 km east of Baquba).
- Baquba morgue delivered today two dead bodies for a husband and wife who was kidnapped last Friday at Imam Habash (20km south of Baquba).
- Around 2:10 pm, a ten year girl was killed due to clashes took place at Bazaiz Buhrz (10 km south of Baquba) between gunmen and Iraqi army. The girl was in a farm with her aunt when a bullet killed her at once.
- Around 5:25 pm, an IED exploded at farm in Abu Saida village (20 km east of Baquba).Two people were injured in that incident while they were in that farm.
Sulaimaniyah
- Tuesday night, a policeman was injured during clashes took place between gunmen and policemen in front of a check point in Iqari neighborhood behind Shaab park (downtown Sulaimaniyah city in northern Kurdistan).
- Around Tuesday midnight, gunmen opened fire on the Kurdistan communist party headquarter .No casualties recorded in that incident, an official of the Kurdistan communist party said.
Salahuddin
- Around 10 am, a policeman was killed by a guard of Baiji mayor based on tribal revenge .A curfew was announced in the city after this incident to control the situation.’
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 3/13/2008 01:30:00 AM
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18 Comments:
McCain needs to be hawkish to raise the enormous amount of funds essential for his campaign.
Pleasing Hagee gets him the AIPAC friends in Wall Street.
Pleasing Bush gets him Big Oil, defence, and the US aristocracy.
Who else would back him? Give him a billion dollars yourself and he'll yours.
All Western nations cap the spending, for obvious reasons, apart from the USA. Enjoy.
The sudden jump in US troop deaths coinciding with Fallons resignation
makes me wonder.
Israel is now on high alert at its Lebanese, Syrian and Gaza borders.
http://www.debka.com/
Cheney has been despatched to the Middle East to Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Turkey to spread his vision for peace (when Cheney and peace are used in the same sentence peace means war).
Israel is floating a rumour that Tehran, Damascus and Hizballah are determined to inflict a terrorist attack on Israel whom they accuse of liquidating their key agent, Imad Mughniyeh.
Might be signs Iran is back on the table, and Spitzer might me a warning for anyone who dare protest too much.
Crooks and Liars has the Iraq report posted already. It can be viewed here in PDF form.
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/JDF-Saddam-Report.pdf
Re: Pentagon study of 660K documents. According to the story, the report is sent out on CD. No one will have to scan it. The trick is to find out how to order it.
The links to the articles on Thursday March 13 are messed up.
Do you have any information on how to contact whoever sends out copies of that Pentagon study?
Well, has President Bush ever sung cheerfully about bombing another country?
In my opinon, the problem with the way the internet functions is that it's really like a gigantic junior high school more than anything. Community sites are generally taken over by cliques. Individual sites are either ignored, or network in such a way that they have the same problems as community sites, or have an authority (like yours) based on some status outside the internet. Thus, it would be nice to think that we could be a giant tv network, but we all seem to be too busy playing with macros and trying to establish some kind of virtual hegemony where some form of intolerance can flourish freely.
And then there are the right wing trolls...
Re Fallon: I believe you are grasping at straws. Maybe a fight over the Saddam/Al Queda report WAS the final straw, but even if it was, the larger point is that the lamest Veep duck ever somehow manages to maintain his authority in the lamest administation duck ever, which also continues to maintain its authority. And it would appear that attacking Iran continues to be pencilled right at the top of Cheney's todo list.
I'm hearing a Paul Simon tune in my head that I think befits Cheney: "Fifty Ways to Betray Your Country..."
"Why don’t bloggers do more posting of pieces like this AP video, below, about the 8 US troops killed on Monday."
I do my fair share of US casualty reporting, with an without the visuals (and have multiple casualty counters on my site) but I couldn't rationalize that type of blogging as a major avocation quite simply because it ISN'T news.
Soldiers are expected to die.
As a matter of fact, the U.S. military eats it's own as a matter of policy... No enemy needed.
My postings usually revolve around civilian casualties... who are NOT normally expected to die for no reason except perhaps being in the 'wrong place, wrong time'.
Yeahhhhhh, GO McCain. Who needs 8 years Democrat bandage after this hemorrhage
Ordering the report is easy.
Go to the Joint Forces Command website and use the Contact form. They responded to my request in literally 30 seconds and I have a CD being mailed out.
Why don’t bloggers do more posting of pieces like this AP video, below, about the 8 US troops killed on Monday.
Just being exposed to the latest GI killings does no good unless there's some goal in mind. The presence of foreign military occupation forces is obviously an irritant to Iraqis, as it would be to us if the US were occupied by, say, the Chinese Army. It's time to give Iraq to the Iraqis; as Rumsfeld said repeatedly "take the training wheels off."
And wacky postings like the following are not helpful because they are counter-productive and un-workable (no other military forces would apply, and if they did they would also be attacked).
from William Polk:
So, should we just as President Bush says, “cut and run.” No, as he would describe such a policy, it would not be either to our interests nor to those of the Iraqis. . .I have laid out . . a detailed, carefully costed out and phased program . . .I believe will work. . .first, it provides for a replacement for our troops by a “multinational stability force”-- William R. Polk
Professor Cole,
We'd love to do more video posting and things like that. There are clips that come from foreign media sources that run rings around anything we'll get from US owned media.
Just as soon as they restore Habeus Corpus in this country, I'll feel safe enough to start doing that kind of thing.
Til then, I have to keep a lid on the amount of dissent I show when I post.
Am I a coward? You're damned right.
An interesting discussion on last night's News Hour by Jim Lehrer ...
Quote:
Measuring success
JIM LEHRER: And now, two very different views of the surge. They come from two frequent visitors to Iraq. Both are experts who have written extensively about the situation on the ground there.
Nir Rosen is a fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security. Frederick Kagan is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a former professor at West Point.
Mr. Kagan, to you first. You agree with the president that the surge has been successful, correct?
FREDERICK KAGAN, American Enterprise Institute: Absolutely.
JIM LEHRER: And why do you say that?
FREDERICK KAGAN: Well, the main purpose of the surge was to get the sectarian violence in and around Baghdad under control so that it would be possible for the Iraqis to start making political progress.
You have to remember that, when the surge went in, the purpose actually was just to get Baghdad under control. It was initially called the Baghdad security plan.
A variety of developments, including the turning of the Sunni Arabs against al-Qaida and the insurgency, have allowed us to be playing for much more than that. And so we've actually managed to stabilize a large swath of central Iraq.
And there has also been remarkable political progress. There's been progress on almost every one of the major pieces of benchmark legislation.
And so -- and the Iraqis are -- there's a new fluidity. When you look at the Iraqi political dynamic in Baghdad now, at the senior levels and throughout, there's a new fluidity in the equation, which comes from the fact that the Iraqis certainly feel that violence has dropped to levels where what they are starting to care about is less security and more moving forward with their country.
JIM LEHRER: Mr. Rosen, do you see the same -- do you look at the scene and see the same thing, less violence, more political possibilities on the Iraqi side?
NIR ROSEN, Fellow, New York University Center on Law and Security: No, I think it's absolutely a failure, the surge. I think that less violence is actually a sign of the failure of the surge.
The violence during a civil war was very logical. It was an attempt to remove Sunnis from Shia areas and Shia from Sunnis areas, and it's been incredibly successful. There are virtually no mixed areas left in Iraq.
You have what Americans call gated communities, effectively a Somalia-alike situation, where you have different neighborhoods surrounded by walls, controlled by a militia or a warlord. And they're sectarianally pure, all Shia, all Sunni. There's no reconciliation between the two communities.
You have, fortunately for the Americans, the Mahdi army decided to impose what they call the freeze, so Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader, could sort of clean his house, get rid of some of the bad elements there, and prepare for the next round.
Likewise, the Sunni resistance realized it had lost the civil war. Sunnis were basically expelled from Baghdad. They had lost their resistance to the occupation.
And beginning in 2006, you saw them being much more introspective in Damascus, in Jordan, and in Iraq, thinking, "How do we proceed? Our main enemy is what we call the Iranians." When they say Iranians, they mean basically all the Shias......
More interesting debate here....http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middl...rge_03-11.html
ref : “it has become a forgotten War...”
MadameGonzo, fwiw ~ speculates that Americans don't want "news", they seek confirmation of views; cheerleaders, rather than leaders or news-readers; and that ‘American Education’ is “entertainment. . . in vain struggle to overcome the ennui of standardized consumption.”
For the troops, the tragedy of ‘Occupation’ is that there is "No ‘Old Glory’ For Young Men" in this Mission : Their 4,000 fallen are all buried in a mass-media blackout ‘Tomb of Unknown Soldiers’. Their 40,000 wounded are not even counted as casualties.
Their Heroism is reduced to invisible survival of relentless attrition for the duration of seemingly endless, heart-breaking extended rotations of their Service.
Their War doesn't exist in reality because it persists as an issue: still unacceptable to the American psyche as self-destructive wrought; thus Their real History, unrealized ~ even when well-written.
imho, ‘IRAQ’ is an old, unkind of war being fought by forgotten Soldiers ~ and forsaken Civilians ~ not a new kind of War, forgotten.
Compared with those Americans surveyed who correctly identified U.S. casualties at around 4,000 (3,975 as of yesterday morning, according to the Pentagon), 84 percent identified Oprah Winfrey as the talk-show host supporting Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) for the Democratic presidential nomination, and 50 percent knew that Hugo Ch¿vez is president of Venezuela.
It's not fair to the push-pollsters to omit all mention of what they are pushing against:
"According to late February polling conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press , 53 percent of Americans — a slim majority — now believe 'the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals' in Iraq. That figure is up from 42 percent in September 2007. The percentage of those who believe the war in Iraq is going 'very well' or 'fairly well' is also up, from 30 percent in February 2007 to 48 percent today."
Happy days.
Whatever your opinion about the past, the decisions now are what count. An actual polity on Iraq is what is needed. Body counts and sad sarcastic comments about the military do nothing other than convince the people serving to stand aside and let someone else defend this country. If you believe that there is no threat then HRD's ad about the 3pm phone call must seem like a lie to you.
The Neocons have never really cared much about the 4 million displaced Iraqis, or the 1 million prematurely dead, or about having inflicted a mini-holocaust on the country.
But talk about an American withdrawal, and suddenly there is great concern about "chaos", and how horrible it would be for the Iraqis.
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