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Posted by Harkavy at 3:18 PM, May 7, 2008
High-tech horror: Widespread cell-phone violence against women in Iraq and the Congo.
The downside of the 21st century's high-tech age is lower than you can imagine: Cell phones and cell-phone technology are prime culprits in a growing epidemic of rape, beatings, and murder of women in the Congo and Iraq.
A war over "coltan," a crucial ingredient in the manufacture of cell phones and other electronic devices, has helped cause the ongoing tragedy of rape and murder by the millions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC horrors far outstrip even Darfur as a tragedy, as I noted in June 2005.
Go to Seeing is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News, the website of Czech-Canadian Katerina Cizek's documentary film series of that name, to read "Cell Phones Fuel Congo Conflict." . The series explains how the fight over coltan, only one of the treasures in the resources-rich Congo, is directly responsible for much of the savage war in which millions have died and hundreds of thousands, at the very least, have been raped and otherwise brutalized.
Eve Ensler, famous for the Vagina Monologues, is one of the few Westerners to latch onto the rampage against women in the Congo and try to publicize it. Incongruously, her monologue on the violence, gleaned from a trip there, can be found in Glamour. Here's the second paragraph of Ensler's in-your-face August 2007 article:
How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and feces?
Meanwhile, in Iraq, cell phones as finished products are prime weapons — in a high-tech fashion — for brutalizing women.
Amanj Khalil, a young journalist for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, described on May 2 one recent incident in Iraq's northern Kurdish area:
Salma trusted her boyfriend enough to speak freely with him about romance, love and even sex.
But she has paid a high price for her candour. Salma, who asked that her real name be concealed because of the sensitivity of her story, is hiding in a women’s shelter in the northeastern city of Sulaimaniyah, her body battered and bruised.
Her boyfriend recorded their intimate conversations on his phone and passed them onto her family through a friend when she refused to marry him. Salma’s body still bears the scars of her family’s response. The 28-year-old’s hand was fractured during one of the beatings from her brothers, father and uncles.
“They started to beat me without even letting me speak,” she said. “They beat me so severely that I fainted several times."
Salma's just one of many Iraqi women being brutalized in a high-tech way by lower-than-low scumbags.
It's worse in the Congo. Natural disasters, like the cyclone that ravaged Burma, are one thing. Manmade disasters are another. And no manmade disaster is as unnatural as what's going on in the DRC, surely the rape capital of the world.
Here's a grim fact: In the Congo, "vaginal destruction" has become an official term of medical art used by beleaguered doctors and nurses to describe war-related injuries.
Western governments and the mainstream press usually, but not always, ignore the DRC. (Certainly, Western corporations don't ignore it the country's rich natural resources.) So you have to go elsewhere to find out about the situation. Thanks to the Web, the upside of high-tech, you can.
One of the best pieces, and I've referred to it previously, is Sarah J. Coleman's June 2005 article on Beliefnet, "Congo's Conflict: Heart of Darkness." Her lede is worth repeating:
How do you measure the horror in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Add up all of the American deaths in every single war we've fought in since 1776, including World War II and the Civil War (1,540,665). Now add to that the estimated deaths from the recent tsunami (169,752 confirmed dead, 127,294 missing). Next, add to that the estimated death toll in the conflict in Darfur (400,000). Then, add to that the victims of genocide in Rwanda, one of the most horrific slaughters of the 20th century (937,000).
Add all of the deaths together — and you still have a smaller number than the 3.5 million people who have died in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 1998.
The toll's up to an estimated 5 million now — that's the scope of the Holocaust. Read Stephen Lewis's April 12 speech at Ensler's V-Day Celebration in New Orleans.
Lewis really got down to it in September 2007, quoting from "The Shame of War: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Conflict," a March 2007 major report from IRIN, the U.N.'s excellent and free global news service:
“As a result of the systematic and exceptionally violent gang rape of thousands of Congolese women and girls, doctors in the DRC are now classifying vaginal destruction as a crime of combat. Many of the victims suffer from traumatic fistula — tissue tears in the vagina, bladder, and rectum.
Additional long-term medical complications for survivors may include uterine prolapse (the descent of the uterus into the vagina or beyond) and other serious injuries to the reproductive system, such as infertility, or complications associated with miscarriages and self-induced abortions. Rape victims are also at high-risk for sexually transmitted infections.”
I won't apologize for the graphic nature of this, because we need to face the unexpurgated facts.
The Congo violence is the biggest war tragedy, but of course it's far from the only manmade disaster. Among the many battlegrounds of violence against women is Kurdish Iraq. That northern region of Iraq has long been thought to be the most civilized area of the war-torn country (aside from the increasing number of skirmishes between Turkey and the Kurd separatists). But Salma's story is far from unique.
Here's the intrepid reporter Khalil again to give the broader view of cell-phone-induced violence in Iraq:
Mobile phones have become a new threat to young women’s safety in Iraq’s northern region, members of parliament and women’s rights campaigners warn.
Men are using them to take photos and record audio and video clips of women and girls who are breaking social codes by having sexually explicit conversations or intimate relations with their boyfriends. In many cases, the conversations and videos have been widely distributed, damaging women’s reputations and, in doing so, putting their lives at risk.
In 2007, nearly 350 women were the victims of violence in mobile-phone related cases, according to statistics compiled by women’s organisations and the Sulaimaniyah police directorate. In 2006, 170 cases were recorded.
However, experts believe that the actual number of incidents is much higher.
Can you hear me now?
Posted by Harkavy at 7:39 AM, May 5, 2008
Hope I'm not jinxing anything, but here it is almost two weeks since Hillary Clinton threatened to nuke Iran, and both countries are still standing.
Hard to believe that Clinton's vow to exterminate Iran hasn't gotten more play. Everybody got exercised when Iran's crackpot leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was quoted as saying that he wanted to make Israel disappear.
Why not the same outrage about Hillary?
Even grammarians haven't taken her to task for saying that if Iran nuked Israel, she would attack Iran, adding, "We would be able to totally obliterate them." (See it here.)
"Obliterate": "to remove or destroy all traces of; do away with; destroy completely."
Clinton would go beyond that to "totally obliterate" Iran? Whew.
At least the Boston Globe has already made the comparison of Hillary to Dr. Strangelove.
The Globe made an important point:
This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.
Barack Obama's campaign got everything mixed up in its response to Hillary's nuke threat. Here's what Obama said:
"It's not the language that we need right now, and I think it's language that's reflective of George Bush."
Wrong. She's more like Dick Cheney.
In fact, she really is a lot like Cheney, except that he had more experience. To deal with energy problems, Cheney called in oil executives early in the Bush administration and met with them secretly and then refused to release info about those meetings.
That was no different from Hillary's decision early in the Clinton administration to call in health-care executives for private meetings. Hillary then refused to release info about those meetings.
In Hillary's case, she's threatening Iran because she clearly wants to nail down as much money from wealthy Jewish donors as she can in her fight with Obama.
Better for her to bomb in her campaign than to bomb anywhere else.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:26 AM, February 7, 2008
Hillary desperately shops for gold — and the right brand — after Super Tuesday gives way to Ashes Wednesday.
Now that Barack Obama has caught her, Hillary Clinton is going on a shopping spree for cash — the safe way, from the now-shaky Democratic establishment. It's hubby Bill Clinton who's expected to bring home the groceries from his buddy Ron Burkle, the supermarket billionaire.
Clean up in all aisles, Bill!
Number today as a crossroads in the presidential campaign — actually a crossing of the paths of the campaign and the still-bloody Iraq War, news of which has been pushed back to the grocery ads in your struggling daily papers. The digits are truly lined up:
3,216: Total number of delegates needed for successful nominations (2,025 for Democrats, 1,191 for Republicans).
3,212: Total number of American soldiers killed in action in Iraq as of February 7, 2008.
Just a day or so away from synchronicity. What's your magic number? Anyway, forget about Iraq and focus on the presidential race. Maybe we'll find out that Obama is also leaving a trail of glittering sleaze behind him on the campaign trail, but for now, Hillary has a commanding lead when it comes to that.
So Americans want change? Hillary, for one, hasn't crossed over to a different aisle, despite what prominent newsmongers are omitting from their stories. Check this out and see if it registers: Blinded by celebrity, the Washington Post's Eli Saslow reports today on Hillary's supposed success in California. Actually, Obama did far better than expected in that Democratic-establishment stronghold. Saslow writes about "Clinton's California dream team," starting out with an anecdote about Rob Reiner, one of the Hollywood meatheads supporting her. Getting to the point in a style typical of the supermarket tabloids, Saslow writes:
Reiner was one of those backers Clinton called on, and there were many others — people such as Amy Rao, a Silicon Valley businesswoman adept at fundraising; Antonio Villaraigosa, the dynamic mayor of Los Angeles; and Dolores Huerta, a labor activist beloved in the dusty San Joaquin Valley.
These four Californians were emblematic of the support Clinton received from the entertainment and technology industries and from the state's Latino leaders. In the week before the Super Tuesday contests, they pushed her message from the opulent ballrooms of San Francisco to the Mexican tiendas of East Los Angeles, working 20-hour days to combat Obama's accelerating popularity. But as Reiner watched the two candidates take the stage to a standing ovation, he couldn't help but wonder: Would their work prove powerful enough to stop Obama?
The Post is so often at the head of the daily-paper pack that it's shocking that this article makes no mention of Ron Burkle, the former bag boy who became Bill Clinton's most dependable bag man. For a quick study of Burkle, read Jason Horowitz's "The Complete Ron Burkle," a quick-and-dirty April 2006 rundown in the New York Observer.
More recent is "What’s Hidden in the Latest Numbers," John Heilemann's excellent piece of numerology in New York magazine. Here are a few of Heilemann's numbers from the February 6 piece:
$32 million, $13 million, $5 million, and $20 million. The first of these is how much the Obama campaign raised in January — a staggering figure. The second is how much the Clinton campaign raised that month — a relative pittance. The third is the amount, we learned today, that Hillary personally loaned her campaign in the past couple of weeks. And the fourth is the amount that her husband, Bill, is reported to be due as a payout after severing his ties with Ron Burkle — and which, presumably, will soon be available to pay for TV ads in Texas and Ohio.
It's Obama against the Democratic establishment, so prepare to be inundated by ad after ad after ad. While Bill Clinton gets cash back at the head of the line, you might want to go back to aisle 14 for the Dramamine.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:37 AM, September 28, 2007
Cuba's not a dead issue in the nutty debate over health care for poor kids.
Americans owe thanks this morning to Wyoming senator Mike Enzi for clarifying how different our health-care system is from Cuba's.
During heated debate in the Senate yesterday, Enzi zoomed in on a crucial point of George W. Bush's threatened veto of funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a federal-state partnership that provides coverage to about 6 million poor children.
The Senate passed a pretty good compromise to help out those kids. Bush, while asking for an increase of more than $40 billion for the Iraq war, has said he won't spend more than $30 billion on this children's health program. The Senate disagreed — even some of its rock-hard conservatives, such as Orrin Hatch and Pat Roberts — and passed a bill. Roberts, a hardline Kansas conservative, pointed out that Bush is misinformed. You think?
But Mike Enzi is tagging right along with Bush, telling his fellow senators:
"We shouldn't create a new federal entitlement and we shouldn't be laying the foundation for Castro-style healthcare, which Americans don't want."
Our kids should be so lucky — rather, our babies should live so long. Enzi and the other senators didn't bring this up, so I will:
Cuba's infant-mortality rate is lower than the U.S.'s, according to widely accepted stats from the UN's World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision.
The number of infant deaths per thousand live births in the period 2000 to 2005 was 6.1 in Cuba. It was 6.8 in the U.S. In deaths under the age of 5, Cuba's rate is 7.7, and the U.S.'s rate is 8.4
When it comes to overall death rates, Americans have it even worse.
The CIA's World Factbook reveals that the estimated overall death rate in the U.S. in 2007, per thousand people, is 8.26. Cuba's death rate is 7.14.
African kids have it worse than anyone else on the planet. But the U.S. is an anomaly among other developed nations. It has a higher overall death rate than the rates of most of those countries, like France, Sweden, and Japan. In addition, the U.S. overall death rate is higher than the rates in the following countries (this is a partial list):
Cambodia, Bangladesh, Kiribati, Yemen, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Uzbekistan, Bolivia, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tuvalu, Mauritius, Maldives, Paulu, Nauru, Grenada, Jamaica, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Columbia, Syria, Egypt, Gaza, the West Bank, Iraq, and Iran.
Yes, according to the CIA, the U.S. death rate is higher than the death rates in Iran, Iraq, the West Bank, and Gaza.
If you really want to understand this current problem of health care for poor kids in the U.S., go to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where you can read a readable analysis of the bill and a breakdown of Bush's wrong analysis of the issue.
As for Enzi, a 63-year-old former Eagle Scout, shoe salesman and accountant, let's just say that his personal financial disclosure for 2006 shows that he ranks only 82nd in the Senate in net worth: His is $190,039 to $853,000. But 94 percent of his investments are in oil and gas, plus he does have at least $50,000 in his Senate credit union account — and the time to spend that cash: His tardiness rate is twice as high as the average senator's.
More to the point, he got no campaign money from Cuba, but the health-care industry poured $259,591 into Enzi's campaign coffers last year, second only to the support he got from big finance. And the health-care industry hates federal health care programs unless the money goes directly to the industry.
Enzi's PAC, Making Business Excel — get it? Michael B. Enzi, Making Business Excel? MBE, MBE? — raked in an additional $646,567 last year.
And no surprise here: Enzi gets more campaign money from D.C.-area operatives than he gets from the home folks in Wyoming.
Who cares about death rates when our political system is running so smoothly?
Posted by Harkavy at 11:41 AM, September 26, 2007
Kids of all religions learning a lot about rocketry.
Civics 101: One of the Qassam rockets that didn't explode is displayed in the town hall of Sderot, along with photos of residents killed by Qassams that did explode. Does it really matter if I tell you whether it's a Jewish or Arab town?
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that the Israeli-Palestinian death dance marathon staged by adults is more than annoying to children on both sides.
In schools themselves, the ones that are open, it's like the science fair from hell: The kids are learning immediate lessons in rocket-building and rocket avoidance. After school, the favorite music is rock — the pop of the ones being thrown by Palestinian kids, the house rock of walls inside Gaza homes being pummeled into rubble by Israeli soldiers.
 It's a little different in Iraq's schools, where recess is going on and on — millions of people have fled their homes, and those who haven't find it too risky to venture outdoors. Want good grades? Forget the apple. Threaten to kill your teacher or kidnap his son.
Take a break from all the stories about nutcase Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia. Protest against him — that's your right — but who the hell cares? That's a circus. But the freaky sideshows are in the Middle East, where the age of rock is going to cause permanent damage to kids for generations to come, creating anger and fear on all sides that will be easily stirred up into religious fear. In effect, chapters of Future Terrorists of Arabia are popping up all over.
Here in Springfield, Mrs. Lovejoy would say, "Ohhh, won't somebody please think of the children!" (Listen to her here.)
She's right, and these are a few of the stories — underreported in the U.S. or not reported at all — that explain why:
• Shell shock: Seven Qassams, crude but effective Palestinian-made rockets, blast the Israeli town of Sderot in early September:
On 3 September, the second day of the school year, a projectile fired from the Gaza Strip landed near a day care centre for toddlers in the Israeli town of Sderot. Parents in the town promptly met and decided to take their children out of all schools in the town from 5 September. …
Several children with mental disorders were in a school bus along with 12 toddlers from the day care centre when the rocket landed nearby. They were taken to hospital suffering from shock, medical officials said.
Altogether, seven rockets, dubbed locally Qassams after the version made famous by the Hamas movement's military wing, landed in Sderot on 3 September.
The Islamic Jihad took responsibility, saying they were a "gift" for the new school year. …
Sima Ohaiyon, a resident of Sderot and mother of three, walked her four-year-old daughter Osher, which means "happiness" in Hebrew, to her new school on 4 September, a day after a rocket fired from Gaza landed outside a day care centre for toddlers.
"It's not an easy time in Sderot. There are too many rockets falling. • Human shields: Israeli soldiers storm a West Bank refugee camp, blasting through the interior walls of homes and reportedly using Palestinians as shields:
Residents of the Ein Beit Alma refugee camp began to pick up the pieces after an intense Israeli military incursion last week left dozens homeless, and many very frightened, especially children. …
[A tactic] known as "through walls" was used. Soldiers go through neighbours' homes, destroying joint walls, to reach targets without being exposed in the narrow streets. …
Several people said the soldiers used three locals as human shields, a practice deemed illegal by Israel's High Court. The Israeli military said it was "not aware of any such incident". …
"The effects of these military operations at such close quarters have an incalculable impact on the well-being of the young," said Christopher Gunness from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
The agency runs psycho-social programmes and has counsellors at its two camp schools.
"The children are not studying now, they are frightened. They go to school and draw, colour and read stories," said Samia Abu Salah, whose children attend UNRWA schools and are taking part in a programme which tries to help the children express their feelings.
• "Fighting Israel is Islamic duty": Palestinian kids are being taught that fighting Israel is a holy task, and Israeli kids are being taught that there is no West Bank, that Israel has dominion over all of ancient Israel. Palestinian maps and schoolbooks are nuts, and those in Israel border on the insane:
A map depicting Israeli and Palestinian territories as "Palestine," is found in a new Palestinian school book, according to Palestinian Media Watch, [which adds,] "Maps of the region likewise teach children to visualise a world without Israel, as Israel does not exist on any map and its area is marked as 'Palestine.'" …
Israeli schoolbooks have also proved controversial. … A map depicting Palestinian and Israeli territories as "Israel" as found in Israeli school book Welcome to Israel. … Last year, Israeli education minister Yuli Tamir revealed that maps in some Israeli textbooks showed land Israel conquered in the 1967 war — the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights — as part of Israel even though they are deemed occupied territory under international law.
Much of the world believes the Green Line — the pre-1967 ceasefire line between Israel and Jordan, which controlled the West Bank — should be the basis for an international border between Israel and the West Bank section of a future Palestinian state.
New Palestinian 12th grade textbooks published last December deny Israel's existence and teach 11-year-olds that the Palestinian struggle is part of an overall war between Muslims and their enemies, according to a Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) report entitled "From nationalist battle to religious conflict". …
"The books don't allow for a Palestinian child to accept Israel as a neighbour. When you define the conflict as a religious war you are no longer fighting for your own national identity or territory but for Islamic destiny. You have to accept either Islam or Israel," said Itamar Marcus, PMW's director.
"I would be happy if the books talked about a national struggle to get as many rights as possible. But to package it as an everlasting war is to generate years of conflict. It's child abuse against their own kids," he said.
Some 926 Palestinian children and 118 Israeli children have been killed in violence since 2000, according to NGO Remember These Children, which monitors the number of minors killed on both sides. • Hostile entities: After years of Arab countries continually refusing to call Israel anything other than "the Zionist entity," Israel is now labeling Gaza a "hostile entity" and is further strangling its residents:
An Israeli cabinet decision on 19 September, which declared the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity" and which would allow the state to cut fuel and electricity supplies to the enclave, has been immediately condemned by aid and human rights organisations. …
Currently, only food and medical supplies are generally allowed in and all exports are banned. Construction materials are blocked, while it took several weeks and international pressure to allow paper for printing school books to arrive.
Movement of civilians is also already severely limited, and Gaza's Rafah Crossing to Egypt, has been closed since June. Further restrictions would likely ban even limited access to Israel.
Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the decision is in line with international law and "it's not going to affect the humanitarian needs of the population in the Gaza Strip."
However, Oxfam International disagreed.
"Reducing the fuel supplies to a bare minimum [will] only increase the suffering of one and a half million people in Gaza, and constitutes collective punishment," said Jeremy Hobbs, the group's executive director, adding it would be "immoral and contrary to the Geneva Conventions".
Cutting power, legal experts said, would not distinguish between civilians and militants.
Israel maintains it has very limited responsibility for the Gaza Strip since its 2005 redeployment of troops and settlers from the territory. Amnesty International, however, believes the Jewish state, is "ultimately responsible for ensuring the welfare of the … Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip", since it "retains effective control" over the area.
The Israeli human rights group Gisha said the decision was "dangerous, because operating rooms, emergency services, sewage pumps and water wells cannot run without electricity". • Recess in Iraq: Iraqi parents are running on empty. School attendance is sharply down because of an outbreak of ditching — that's residents flinging themselves into ditches to avoid be killed by explosions or soldiers:
"We are trying to encourage families to take their children to school as there has been a continuous decrease in attendance in the past four years and this has seriously affected pupils' performance," Leila Abdallah, a senior official at the Ministry of Education, said.
"We have enhanced policing at the school gates of most schools but families are still scared to send their children to school. This might seriously affect their future," she added. "I don't blame them for trying to protect their children but we have to start changing the actual situation of violence by teaching pupils how to build a better Iraq."
Parents have also been irked by poor examinations results in the past academic year.
According to Leila, there has been a 54 percent increase in exam failure rates compared to previous years. She said many students had not sat the last exams as they had been forced by violence to flee their homes for safer areas.
Also, few schools have offered extra preparatory classes to students who have to repeat their exams because teachers are too afraid to leave their homes.
• "Either you give us good marks or you will die": If Iraqi kids do somehow manage to reach college, they're practically assured of high grades because professors are scared to death:
Hassan Khalid Hayderi, 54, is a professor of mathematics at Basra University, 550 km south of the capital, Baghdad. He and his family are leaving Iraq as soon as his brother finds him a job in Jordan because he has received death threats from students demanding easy exams and better marks.
"After 20 years as professor of mathematics in Basra and Baghdad, I have decided to leave my job and the country. Teachers in Iraq have been targeted since the US-led invasion in 2003, but from February last year our situation has worsened because of threats from inside our classrooms.
"Students started demanding easier exams and if they don’t pass the year, it might mean your death. Either you give good marks or you are going to be killed.
"When I leave my home every morning to go to the university, I fear a bullet is going to rip through my head or chest. I constantly find notes with demands of good marks or sometimes shorter lessons from students on my desk.
"Lessons that used to last for one hour are given nowadays in half-an-hour to meet such requests.
"Two of my colleagues have been killed in the past months for refusing to cater to such requests. Sometimes even fathers come after you asking for good marks for their sons. Once I refused to listen to one of them and the result was the kidnapping of my 23-year-old son, Abdel-Kader. He was released after I let a student — who scored very badly in exams — pass the year."
Posted by Harkavy at 11:59 AM, September 19, 2007
$15 billion of your money up in smoke for under-fire mercenary company, other defense contractors.
While Blackwater's mercenaries beg for mercy for killing a baby and 19 other people in Baghdad on Sunday, they're already working on another lucrative government contract on yet another foreign adventure: the "war on drugs."
In a major new outsourcing deal reported by only a few outlets, including the Army Times, Blackwater will divvy up a $15 billion pot of government gold, along with four huge defense contractors: Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Arinc.
Blackwater claims to be building remote-control spy airships. Purty darn good for an army based in a little North Carolina town — no, it's Currituck, not Mayberry.
Arinc, a Maryland-based major supplier of airplane surveillance and passenger-counting equipment, is particularly stoked about the deal, which it announced on the sixth anniversary of 9/11:
ARINC already has a wealth of hands-on experience supporting just this type of program. We now expect to play a key role developing and fielding new solutions at the cutting edge of drug interdiction.
Hang on, Arinc, you're getting ahead of yourselves. Here's how GovExec.com's Katherine McIntire Peters describes this other privatized war, which apparently is necessary because, even with the privatized war in Iraq, we still don't have enough troops to conduct all these wars:
The contract, worth up to $15 billion over the next five years, illustrates the extent to which the Defense Department is relying on contractors to perform critical missions while combat forces are stretched thin by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In response to specific task orders issued under the indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contract, companies will develop and deploy new surveillance technologies, train and equip foreign security forces and provide key administrative, logistical and operational support to Defense and other agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration.
According to the work statement provided to bidders, the vast majority of the drive will be conducted overseas.
Blackwater clearly knows how to deal with foreigners. But how does a little ol' company get to share our wealth with such huge defense contractors? No doubt it's got low friends in high places.
It probably didn't hurt the mercenary army that, according to federal campaign records, its top execs gave $1,000 to Tom DeLay's campaign on December 14, 2004. Or that they contributed mostly to other openly God-fearing lawmakers, like Bono pal Rick Santorum, Kansas's Todd Tiahrt, and Indiana's Mike Pence — whose campaign-finance tool is the Principles Exalt a Nation PAC.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammo. Better make that a blunt.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:26 AM, September 19, 2007
U.S. officials already banned from travel in Baghdad.
Despite Sunday's gun battle in Baghdad in which 20 civilians were killed by Blackwater mercenaries, there are new reports that the Iraqi government may not cancel Blackwater's contract after all.
No surprise there, because Iraq's foundering government seems to have been canceled.
Radio Free Iraq reports that the Iraqi Parliament called off its September 18 session because a majority of its members didn't show up for work. The parent Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty news service says in today's roundup:
Only 115 out of 275 parliamentarians appeared for the session. Meanwhile, a committee formed by the United Iraqi Alliance has failed to lure parliamentarians loyal to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr back to work, Al-Sharqiyah television reported on September 18. The news channel also reported that "some members" of the so-called moderates' front in the parliament asked two members of the Iraqis List to leave the list and join the front in exchange for government posts and other privileges.
U.S. officials have already been forbidden to travel outside the Green Zone. Iraqi officials, targeted by insurgents, don't want to travel either.
Bring in more mercenaries! That seems to be the message. Tel Aviv-based Dominic Moran of Zurich's International Relations and Security Network (ISN) reports today:
The Iraqi government appears to be backing down from an earlier pledge to revoke the operating license of the largest private foreign security contractor in the country, Blackwater USA.
Providing a good roundup of U.S. mercenary work, Moran also notes:
The [Sunday] deaths again turn the spotlight on the extensive use of private security contractors by US government agencies in Iraq. Blackwater is the largest private security firm involved in the conflict, with an estimated 1,000 personnel on the ground, and has benefited from at least US$750 million in US State Department contracts since mid-2004 according to the UK daily The Guardian. Many contracts have allegedly been secured without a tendering process.
The current use of private security contractors in Iraq is unprecedented in scale for a US overseas entanglement, with security companies employing around 48,000 personnel. Most work on limited rotations cycling in and out of the country with the expiry of contracted agreements. The same is true in Afghanistan.
The unprecedented reliance on the services of private security contractors was underlined Tuesday with the US decision to suspend all overland travel by its diplomats and related civilian workers beyond the confines of the Baghdad Green Zone.
Posted by Harkavy at 7:28 AM, September 18, 2007
IBC
Here's a question, raised in 1979 by the mellifluous Mighty Diamonds:
Who's gonna bodyguard ya, Mr. Bodyguard?
I want to know who.
Thirty years later, the answer's clear: The Pentagon, that's who. At best we'll get the "rogue security contractor" excuse from the Bush regime for Sunday's cacophonous killing of 11 Iraqis in Baghdad by the North Carolina mercenary army Blackwater.
That excuse has worked before. As I wrote in July 2004, it was used by the Pentagon after the Abu Ghraib tortures came to light. SecDef Don Rumsfeld blamed "rogue" soldiers.
Our memories are short when it comes to the mercenaries employed by the Bush regime. As I pointed out in August 2004, private "interrogators" from CACI were employed by the Pentagon at Abu Ghraib, where all that "fear up" went down.
After this latest incident of privatized violence, we have Blackwater saying its boys were ambushed. Blackwater has 1,000 "troops" in Iraq and guards Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Yes, they guard Crocker, and the administration guards them. Monday's Washington Post concisely captured the two versions of the latest Blackwater escapade. Here's the first:
The shooting started at noon on Sunday when a car bomb exploded near a State Department motorcade traveling through the western Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad near Nisoor Square, U.S. officials said. Following the explosion, Blackwater employees guarding the diplomats exchanged fire with armed attackers, Blackwater and U.S. officials said.
The subsequent battle killed at least nine people and wounded 14, Iraqi police and hospital workers said. [An Iraqi official] put the death toll at 11.
Followed by the second version:
"We were shocked when we saw these fighters getting out of their SUVs and shooting randomly at people," said Sgt. Mohammed Juwad Hussein, an Iraqi army soldier who said he was manning a checkpoint in Baghdad near the scene of the fighting. "We didn't know who they were targeting or who they wanted to shoot."
They wanted to shoot them some Ay-rabs, pal. The way I see it, the Mighty Diamonds sang about the possibility of dreadlocked Rastafarians someday making bodyguards pay the price:
One of these days it a go dread (dreader than dread)
Ev'ryone looking a place to hide 'em head (well dread)
But don't worry, Blackwater bodyguards, the Bush regime will shelter you. Iraq's citizens are the ones who can't hide. As of this morning, IBC's "documented civilian deaths from violence" totals somewhere between 72,596 and 79,187.
Yes, the Blackwater "incident" was notable. But as the IBC "recent events" list notes, on that same Sunday, many other Iraqis died, and not at the hands of American mercenaries, whom our press continues to euphemistically label "contractors" or "bodyguards."
One of the victims was a 12-year-old boy who was killed in Diwaniya during a raid by U.S. and Iraqi troops, according to news reports assembled by IBC. Wonder what happened there?
In any case, this particular bloody Sunday was predestined. IBC's list of 38 people who were killed just the day before includes this entry:
Baghdad: car bomb kills 11 outside bakery, Amil; 11 bodies.
And this one:
Karma: 3 bodies.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:42 AM, August 30, 2007
Art is alive in Baghdad. And just in case you aren't . . .
Amid the sweltering heat, bomb blasts, curfews, fleeing aid workers, and lack of electricity in Baghdad, artistic expression flourishes. But it's for a practical reason: People are getting tattooed so that if they get killed their families will at least be able to identify their corpses.
The news service IRIN puts it another way: "Grim Tattoo Subculture Emerges Amid Daily Violence":
"My age is the same as the olive tree," reads the blue tattoo on Qaisar Tariq al-Essawi's left shoulder.
Al-Essawi, 36, got the tattoo so his family and close friends could recognise his remains if he ended up in a morgue.
"I selected this wording because only my family and close friends know about our olive tree which was planted by my father when I was born," al-Essawi, a father of two boys, told IRIN in Baghdad.
One response to sudden and violent death which has become commonplace in Iraq's turmoil is the emergence of a new subculture — the etching of tattoo identities on people who fear becoming an unclaimed body in a packed morgue.
 The designs are nice, as you can see from a right shoulder captured by IRIN photographer Abu Malik. But this isn't just your normal hipster fad:
One Baghdad tattoo artist said he had marked nearly 100 men aged 20-50 over the past three months.
"There are about 10 of us in Baghdad and about a dozen in other provinces," said a Fine Arts graduate who refused to be named for security reasons.
"We are working in our houses and people learn about us through word of mouth," he added.
Even mourners are prone to attack. Suicide bombers have targeted the funeral tents traditionally used by families to receive relatives, friends and neighbours.
That same fear keeps relatives from going to cemeteries to bury their dead or, in some cases, even publicising the victim's name.
People may have to get their etchings done while on the run. Tattoos aren't likely to stave off persecution not only during religious pilgrimages but by the fanatics roaming Baghdad's streets. Another IRIN report notes that Baghdad residents are fleeing not only from bombs and U.S. troops but also because gunmen are swooping into their neighborhoods to impose strict Islamic laws:
Residents of Dora District in Baghdad have been fleeing after gunmen imposed a strict interpretation of Islamic Shariah law there.
"We have reports of more than 300 families fleeing the area over the past two weeks and this number is increasing daily," Fatah Ahmed, vice-president of the Iraq Aid Association (IAA), said.
The gunmen are particularly stringent when it comes to Christian families, who are forced to convert to Islam or pay huge taxes.
"We have left the area because we were being forced to live under strict Islamic laws. Men have to wear long beards and women veils, and the latter are not allowed to leave their homes without their husbands. Girls have been told they are forbidden to go to school after the summer vacation," said Haki Salam, 54, a resident of Dora who is now living as a displaced person on the outskirts of the capital.
Tattoos may help you, but only after you're dead. And if Baghdad residents avoid getting blown up, they may just die a slower death. The story about crazed religious gunmen notes:
As no action has been taken against the gunmen, people are fleeing, selling their homes and cars and trying to find safer places in other parts of Baghdad or outside the capital city.
"Some residents have reported shortages of food supplies as most shops are closed, and they are scared to leave their houses. If no action is taken we will see people starving inside their own homes," the IAA’s Ahmed said.
Posted by Harkavy at 6:22 AM, August 27, 2007
Harkavy/White House
While George W. Bush's handlers are busy writing General David Petraeus's September 11 "progress report" on Iraq — check out the facts they'll be trying to spin — they're not ignoring other health issues.
Just last week, Bush proclaimed National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month *. (It starts in just a few days, so check out this American Cancer Society info too.)
For those Iraqi men who haven't been among the millions fleeing the country, that shows that our government cares.
More good news, again connected to Iraqi men's health: Fewer Iraqi children are likely to die in coming years. The reason? There's a sharp increase in sterility among Iraqi men. As the U.N. news service IRIN reports:
According to Dr Muhammad Bashier, manager of the family planning clinic in Karada Hospital, Baghdad, the number of sterile men in Iraq has increased dramatically over the past four years as a result of stress, depression and exposure to radiation and possibly chemicals.
"Before 2002, the number of men seeking our services and advice were fewer than four a day, while we had 20 to 30 women every day. But today we have a minimum of 60 patients a day with men representing half this number," Bashier said.
"In our research, we have discovered that most of the men who are completely sterile are from areas where radiation and chemicals from war have been present in higher proportions — especially in the south of the country and in the outskirts of Baghdad," he added.
But that just means more danger to Iraqi doctors, as Bashier explains:
"It is very hard to tell an Iraqi man that he is sterile. We even had a doctor who was killed less than two years ago by a patient after giving him the news."
Don't think that women are being ignored. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month over here, and it's likely that fewer Iraqi women will be in danger of contracting the disease. IRIN reports that women’s rights activists are increasingly targeted by militants:
Haifaa Nour, 33-year-old president of the Women’s Freedom Organisation (WFO), one of the few women’s rights organisations in Iraq, said the threatening letters she had recently been receiving would not deter her from her job, even if it cost her her life. However, she acknowledged that for a woman activist the risks of doing humanitarian work were increasing daily.
"After the US-led invasion in 2003, women’s rights were well recognised … but unfortunately in the past two years our situation has deteriorated and the targeting of activists and women aid workers has increased, forcing dozens to give up their jobs," Haifaa said.
"I know my life is under threat and I might be killed at any time especially for refusing to wear a veil or other traditional clothes, but if I do so, I will just be abetting the extremists," she said.
Courageous women like Haifaa Nour will now have fewer worries because she and everyone else will be less able to leave their homes: There's already a curfew in Baghdad from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., but now tighter restrictions have been imposed in advance of a huge annual Shi'ite pilgrimage. As the BBC reported Saturday:
The Iraqi government has imposed a partial travel ban in Baghdad and the outskirts of the capital ahead of a major Shia festival next week. Two-wheelers and hand carts, but not cars, will be banned in Baghdad and its outskirts … , an army official said.
The curfew aims to curb insurgent attacks against up to two million Shia pilgrims expected to head to Karbala. Earlier, a car bomb in northern Baghdad killed at least seven in a Shia area.
"An indefinite curfew has been imposed on two-wheelers and hand carts, but not on other vehicles such as cars," Brig Gen Qassim Atta, spokesman for the Iraqi military in Baghdad, told the AFP news agency.
Well, that's good that people will have to stay inside, but the temperatures during the day are still triple-digit, and Baghdad residents have only about three hours of electricity every 24 hours. Whew. No wonder people are on edge.
Posted by Harkavy at 8:12 AM, August 24, 2007
Tête-à-tête offensive: Bush and Maliki circle the burning station wagons, while our soldiers go nuts from the war.
George W. Bush wasn't crazy Wednesday when he compared the Iraq Debacle to the Vietnam War to the cheers of a VFW crowd in Kansas City.
Thousands of shell-shocked U.S. soldiers wound up untreated, drifting the streets of America after the Vietnam War. The same thing is happening now with Iraq veterans — at least with those who haven't already committed suicide. From an August 17 AP story:
Ninety-nine soldiers killed themselves last year, the highest suicide rate in the Army in 26 years of record-keeping, a new report says.
Nearly a third of the soldiers committed suicide while in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to a report released Thursday, which said 27 deaths were in Iraq and 3 in Afghanistan.
The report said that the 99 confirmed suicides by active-duty soldiers compared with 87 in 2005 and that it was the highest raw number since 102 suicides were reported in 1991, the year of the Persian Gulf War.
My colleague Michael Feingold, a theater critic who knows a tragedy when he sees one, tipped me off to that wire story. Unfortunately, we'll never know the exact number of crazed veterans — and they'll probably go untreated — because the military is diagnosing many Iraq vets as suffering from a "personality disorder" instead of post-traumatic stress syndrome caused by the war. That way the government can discharge them, claiming that these soldiers were flawed to begin with, and wash its hands of the problem.
This disgraceful action on the home front will only cause more problems in the long run because the insanity in Iraq in the short term is increasing. Yesterday, gunmen attacked villages in Diyala province where Sunni militiamen who recently joined — supposedly — the U.S. "surge" lived. As Carol J. Williams of the L.A. Times reports this morning:
About 200 gunmen stormed two villages in Diyala province Thursday, killing at least 22 members of a Sunni Arab tribe and taking 15 women and children hostage in an attack thought to be retaliation for their renunciation of Al Qaeda-linked militants.
Sounds like Vietnam, just as the crumbling regime of Nouri al-Maliki sounds like the South Vietnamese government of 40 years ago. The updated National Intelligence Estimate is nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy because it will add even more pressure to Maliki's shaky rule. From Reuters, via SwissInfo:
With just weeks to go before U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker and military commander General David Petraeus are to report to the U.S. Congress on progress in Iraq, intelligence agencies released a grim forecast of violence and stalemate.
Wait, wait, wait. Once again the press fails to note that the White House will actually write the report. That's nuts, too. Anyway, back to the Reuters story:
"Levels of insurgent and sectarian violence will remain high and the Iraqi government will continue to struggle to achieve national-level political reconciliation and improved governance," declassified findings of the National Intelligence Estimate said.
The report said there had been "measurable but uneven improvements" in Iraqi security since January under the troop increase, but that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government would become more precarious over the next 6 to 12 months."
At least the cabinet members' boycott of Maliki's government appears to be ending. Well, maybe that's not such good news:
In a sign of the political deadlock, the secularist bloc of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced that its ministers, who had been boycotting cabinet meetings, would quit the government altogether.
Crazy, huh? Not as crazy as the treatment of our own soldiers returning home shell-shocked. The Christian Science Monitor recently noted:
In relabeling cases of PTSD as 'personality disorder,' the US military avoids paying for treatment.
But this scandal emerged months ago; here's a story published last Christmas Eve that must have driven some soldiers' families crazy:
Soldiers suffering from the stress of combat in Iraq are being misdiagnosed by military doctors as having a personality disorder, lawyers and psychologists say, which allows them to be quickly and honorably discharged but stigmatizes them with a label that is hard to dislodge and can hurt them financially.
Though accurate for some, experts say, the personality disorder label has been used as a catch-all diagnosis to discharge personnel who may no longer meet military standards, are engaging in problematic behavior or suffer from more serious mental disorders. For returning veterans, the diagnosis can make it harder to obtain adequate mental health treatment if they must first show they have another problem, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.
"It's an absolute disgrace to military medicine," said Bridgette Wilson, a former Army medic who is now an attorney in San Diego serving mainly military clients. "I see it over and over again, the dramatic misuse of personality disorder diagnosis. It's a fairly slick and efficient way to move some bodies through."
Military records show that since 2003, 4,092 Army soldiers and another 11,296 men and women in other branches of the armed services have been discharged after being diagnosed with the disorder.
A government worker at Fort Carson in Colorado who has access to personnel records and who spoke on condition on anonymity for fear of losing his job said Army psychologists there have diagnosed some soldiers with a personality disorder after a single evaluation lasting 10 minutes to 20 minutes.
By the way, Steven D. Green, the GI accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and then murdering her and her family (with the help of others in his rape crew), was diagnosed with "anti-social personality disorder" and shipped home shortly after that March 2006 massacre — before the story of the murders fully came out, charges were brought, and he was arrested as a civilian.
That, too, is crazy.
Was Green so screwed-up before he went to Iraq? His tour in that nightmare desert couldn't have helped. As the AP reported last summer:
[Green] was sent to patrol the so-called "Triangle of Death," an area southwest of Baghdad known for its frequent roadside bombings. Military officials say more than 40 percent of the nearly 1,000 soldiers in the region have been treated for mental or emotional anxiety.
Posted by Harkavy at 1:22 PM, August 22, 2007
Harkavy/Pentagon
Baby on board: Baghdad is so dangerous that I'm installing warning signs in the rear windows of cars. Not that these will do any good.
The noose has tightened around Iraq's beleaguered people — at least those who haven't already taken sides in the uncivil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Those who are fleeing are being denied asylum — even those Iraqis who have helped the "coalition." Those who haven't fled can't get aid.
The latest news today from IRIN, the U.N.'s dogged news service:
Aid workers are struggling to find safer ways to deliver aid to displaced and vulnerable families in Baghdad. The city, which is now effectively divided along religious lines, is increasingly under the control of armed gangs and is seen by aid agencies as the most dangerous place in Iraq in which to operate.
Hell, in the triple-digit heat they can't even get electricity. Yesterday, IRIN reported:
The power supply situation has been getting worse and in the past three months millions of people have been getting less than three hours of power a day, according to the Iraq Aid Association.
The only real surge is an ominously increasing polarization of Iraqis, as today's IRIN story points out:
"We don't have freedom to deliver aid to displaced families," Fatah Ahmed, vice-president of the Iraqi Aid Association (IAA), said. "Unfortunately, we have to choose which families to help taking into account the safety of our volunteers."
"Sunni volunteers are being sent to Sunni neighbourhoods and Shia to Shia areas," he added.
Ahmed recently became vice-president of the IAA after Jamal Hussein, the former vice-president, was killed while delivering aid in a Baghdad suburb.
"He was killed because he was a Shia helping Sunni families. For this reason we prefer to send volunteers to areas where at least they can be welcomed," he said.
As if mad bombers weren't enough of a threat, it's Iraqi vs. Iraqi, Muslim vs. Muslim. Here's more:
According to Mayada Marouf, a spokesperson for the locally-based group Keeping Children Alive (KCA), local aid agencies have rated neighbourhoods according to their safety, leaving the most dangerous areas to be covered by the Ministry of Displacement and Migration.
"Dora, Sadr City, Adhamiyah, Alawi, Batawin, Hayfa and Hurryia are the most dangerous places," Mayada said.
"We had to stop using cars with emblems of our aid organisation to prevent us being targeted," she said. "We have to carry the supplies in small cars making many trips, each time taking a different route."
Mayada and Ahmed agreed that Baghdad had never been so violent, and aid had never been so hard to deliver. They said many local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) had stopped their operations after being targeted.
"The easiest way for them [armed groups] to make you stop your work is by kidnapping one of your volunteers. Since December 2006 when Iraqi Red Crescent staff were kidnapped, we have become scared and have had to adopt a low profile in our work, delivering aid according to which areas are safe, rather than which ones have more needs," Mayada said.
"Some aid agencies have moved to northern areas of Iraq to continue their work in relative safety, even if the needs there are less than in Baghdad," Ahmed said.
Even the reviled U.S. presence in Iraq is no longer unifying Iraqis. Unplug your iPod and imagine yourself in Baghdad.
Posted by Harkavy at 2:25 PM, August 16, 2007
Americans breathe sigh of relief.
If one picture is worth a thousand words, then a 1994 video of Dick Cheney that's zooming around the Internet is priceless.
Actually, Cheney makes the point in less than 300 words that an invasion of Iraq wouldn't be worth it. Remember, this is back in 1994, and Cheney is being questioned about the first Gulf War.
Here's the video on YouTube. And here's the transcript, thanks to the people at Associated Content:
Q: Do you think the U.S., or U.N. forces, should have moved into Baghdad?
Cheney: No.
Q: Why not?
Cheney: Because if we'd gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn't have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.
Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
This video is definitely worth 300 words, and though it's deadly funny, it's not worth 3,000 dead Americans.
Toppling Saddam was one thing. But Associated Content also has an intriguing 2006 piece about Cheney topping his wife.
Under the unimaginative headline "Did Dick Cheney Have Sex with His Wife One Night in October of 1965 Simply to Get Out of Vietnam?" Timothy Sexton notes this:
On October 26, 1965, the Selective Service changed its mind about married men being drafted. It would now accept married men without children, though married men with children would remain exempt.
At the time, Cheney was classified 1-A, eligible to be drafted. If he had children, he'd be reclassified 3-A.
Sexton counts backward from the birth of Cheney's daughter Liz on July 28, 1966. Whadda you know: There's almost exactly nine months' difference. Sexton, in his mean-spirited piece, figures that Dick impregnated wife Lynne in late October 1965, right when he learned that married men without children were going to be drafted.
And Sexton points out that Cheney was re-classified from 1-A to 3-A in January 1966. That would be shortly after it was confirmed that Lynne was pregnant.
That spared Dick Cheney from Vietnam. I was a psychiatric 4-F during that war, and I'm still nuts, but that doesn't mean I was crazy enough to have sex with Lynne Cheney in 1965 or invade Iraq in 2003.
Posted by Harkavy at 9:18 AM, August 16, 2007
In what the GOP hopes will be a boost for next year's elections, General David Petraeus has broadly hinted in the wake of the worst massacre of the war that the U.S. will be able to start withdrawing troops from Iraq next summer.
 What spin. Petraeus has always been used for such purposes. Early in the war, he took a spin over Iraq (right) with Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state who ensured George W. Bush's 2000 election. Years later, he can spin by himself. Yes, the guy is trying to bring good news, but is that what he should be doing? No, we need information that may be hard to hear, instead of information that he thinks his bosses want to hear.
Like Colin Powell at the U.N. in early 2003, Petraeus is being a good and loyal soldier. After the war, Petraeus will no doubt tell it like it was. Who can wait that long?
Unfortunately, the story in today's Times (U.K.), a morsel of good news for the White House and the frantic legacy-building of Bush's handlers, hints that master builder Karl Rove hasn't left the building yet.
But hundreds of Iraqis have left this mortal coil, as the Times (U.S.) reports:
The toll in a horrific quadruple bombing in an area of mud and stone houses in the remote northern desert on Tuesday evening reached at least 250 dead and 350 wounded, several local officials said Wednesday, making it the deadliest coordinated attack since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The New York Times story simply included a statement from Petraeus condemning the bombings. The Times (U.K.) story went deeper, putting Petraeus's broad hint in the context of Tuesday evening's horror:
The US general overseeing President Bush's surge strategy in Iraq said last night that he would recommend troop reductions by next summer, but cautioned against a significant withdrawal.
General David Petraeus, in comments that appeared to lay the ground for his pivotal report to the US Congress next month, said that the US footprint in Iraq would have to be "a good bit smaller by next summer". But he also signalled that the surge would continue into next year, and gave warning against a quick or hefty withdrawal that could surrender "the gains we have fought so hard to achieve".
General Petraeus said that the "horrific and indiscriminate attacks" on the Yazidi community in northwestern Iraq on Tuesday night were the work of al-Qaeda fighters. The bombings occurred near the Syrian border, and US officials charge the Damascus regime has not done enough to police the frontier against infiltration by foreign fighters who dominate al-Qaeda. Those bomb attacks would bolster his argument, General Petraeus said, against drawing down the 30,000 additional US troops that have made up the surge too quickly. "We know that the surge has to come to an end, there's no question about that. I think everyone understands that by about a year or so from now we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now".
Petraeus praises the involvement of Sunnis in the battle against terrorists. But for a more objective appraisal — and details beyond Petraeus's pap — read the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's package on "Security in Iraq," which I mentioned in an earlier post. Those stories make clear that this is a Sunni vs. Shia civil war. Throw in the Kurds, assorted holy wars, mix with oil from southern Iraq, and you've got an explosive mixture—and fires that won't go out.
The question is when we're going to get out. Petraeus's latest hint of pullouts is nothing more than al-yada-yada-yada to placate the American public.
Posted by Harkavy at 7:40 AM, August 16, 2007
The most devastating appraisal yet of the war of terror in Iraq passed unnoticed last week in the U.S. press.
The dedicated journalists of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) — some of whom have been killed or imprisoned in psychiatric hospitals for simply doing their jobs in hots spots around the globe — published "Special Report: Security in Iraq," an explosive cluster of stories.
You might want to read it if you can get past the big news here that Tommy Thompson has dropped out of the presidential race. A headline from the introduction to IWPR's August 7 package sums drives home the point that Iraq is in even worse shape than we thought:
A series of reports by IWPR journalists in six key regions show the rule of law ranges from being woefully inadequate to effectively non-existent.
That would be bloody funny if it weren't so bloody true.
London-based IWPR is a serious operation, despite the fact that Sean Penn is apparently flashing an IWPR business card as he traipses through Venezuela with Hugo Chávez.
More relevant is the devastating summary of mad Iraq by IWPR's real reporters Christoph Reuter and Susanne Fischer. Because you haven't seen it, I'll quote it at length:
Despite the recent substantial reinforcement of British and American forces in Basra and central Iraq respectively, security in the country only temporarily improved, and the gruesome daily litany of suicide bombings, mortar attacks, targeted killings and ethnic cleansing continues.
In July, at least 1,759 Iraqis were reported killed, a more than seven per cent increase over the 1,640 who are said to have died in June, according to estimates by the Associated Press.
Among the dead were civilians, government officials and members of the Iraqi security forces. The figures are considered only a minimum, and the actual number is thought to be higher with many killings going unreported.
Coalition forces are barely able to prevent the emergence of autonomous zones openly controlled by militias. The ongoing sectarian violence has created an extremely threatening climate. People feel they may be kidnapped or killed at any moment.
The security disaster is having a devastating effect on civilians, reconstruction efforts and economic activity. One out of three Iraqis is in need of emergency aid, according to a recent report by Oxfam.
A full-scale civil war looms. For the time being, United States forces are too strong to let this happen, yet they are too weak to prevent the daily killings. Or as a former member of the US administration in Baghdad put it, "We can only slow down the escalation. But we cannot prevent it, nor can we bring peace."
The Iraqi security forces, seen by the US government and many external observers as the key to pacifying the country and guaranteeing order, are seen by large parts of the population as part of the problem. A number of army units appear to be controlled by Shia parties and are believed to be deeply involved in the sectarian violence.
The details are even worse. See the stories in the package:
Introduction
Mosul Christian Community Dwindles
Battling for Power in Basra
Kirkuk Tensions Rise as Fateful Ballot Nears
Unholy War in Karbala
Iraqi Kurdistan Faces Trouble on Two Fronts
Checkpoints: Baghdad's Russian Roulette
Did I say this package passed unnoticed in the U.S. press? Actually, a segment of the introduction ran on the website of one American paper: the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, New York.
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