Bush urges patience as Iraq war enters 5th year By Kim Landers
US President George W Bush says there will be both "good days and bad days" ahead as the Iraq war enters its fifth year.
Mr Bush has marked the fourth anniversary of the war with a brief speech from the White House.
"It can be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude our best option is to pack up and go home," he said.
"That may be satisfying in the short run, but I believe the consequences for American security would be devastating."
The President says the new Baghdad security plan is still in its early stages and success will take months, not days or weeks.
The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 members of the US military, stretching longer and with higher costs than the White House ever predicted.
I was a passionate detractor of the Iraq invasion. I believed, and still do, that Mark Latham was right when he said that George Bush jnr is a dangerous US President. There’s more to it than just George, I know, like: Wolfowitz, Chaney, Rumsfeld, among others. These neo-cons have led America down the path of destruction, and history will treat these people as history has treated Judas.
Terrorism exists now where none existed before. The net result of the Invasion of Iraq was MORE TERRORISM.
But the invasion has happened, thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands innocent woman and children have been killed, and for what? Walking away now without some form of secure community in place will usher in a rush of mass killings and possibly even genocide as rival groups struggle for control.
The only hope for some form of peace for Iraq would be geographical and cultural apartheid. Rather than trying to control the streets, our objective would be to secure the borders only.
Whatever, but we can’t walk away, the possible consequences are too horrible to contemplate.
Whatever, but we can’t walk away, the possible consequences are too horrible to contemplate.
I agree. The U.S. can't just drop everything and walk away immediately whereas we probably could. They must set a very near timeline to withdraw troops and handover control to Iraqi and allied Arab forces.
As for restoring stability, this is going to involve a very complex solution, I hate to say it but you may be on to something with your proposition of geographical and cultural apartheid. (This is a conservative solution that no extremist lefty would be in favour of, but you can't expect some people to understand what central really means).
I don't think Iraq has enough "advanced thinkers" (Mandela's) to broker peace between the different ethnic groups, not many countries in the world do. Unfortunately Iraq's neighbours can't really be trusted either because they are very backward. Plus Iraq being an oil rich nation, the temptation of riches will be too much for most people to withstand.
I saw in a doco recently that Iraqi-Kurdistan is thriving. Made up of majority ethnic Kurds, they've closed it off to the rest of Iraq and don't allow Iraqis to enter, only high profile Iraqis are allowed in to seek refuge. It is safe and children play on the streets without fear of being bombed or gunned down, a stark contrast to Iraq.
The US has caused a massive humanitarian disaster not only inside Iraq but outside it as millions of Iraqis flee the country, some 20,000 per week at the moment are leaving. They are all plonking down in neighbouring countries mostly Jordan, and that country is pleading for the US to give them aid as they can't cope with the flood of people. The surge is just making more people abandon Iraq and Baghdad, with a huge population of internally displaced people also being a massive humanitarian problem.
It just doesn't get better does it?
Quoted Text
MIDDLE EAST
Billboarding the Iraq disaster By Anthony Arnove
As you read this, we're four years from the moment the administration of US President George W Bush launched its shock-and-awe assault on Iraq, beginning 48 months of remarkable, non-stop destruction of that country - and still counting. It's an important moment for taking stock of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Here is a short rundown of some of what Bush's war and occupation has wrought.
Nowhere on Earth is there a worse refugee crisis than in Iraq
today. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, some 2 million Iraqis have fled their country and are now scattered across everywhere from Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran to London and Paris. (Almost none have made it to the United States, which has done nothing to address the refugee crisis it created.)
Another 1.9 million are estimated to be internally displaced persons, driven from their homes and neighborhoods by the US occupation and the vicious civil war it has sparked. Add those figures up - and they're getting worse by the day - and you have close to 16% of the Iraqi population uprooted. Add the dead to the displaced, and that figure rises to nearly one in five Iraqis. Let that sink in for a moment.
Basic foods and necessities, which even Saddam Hussein's brutal regime managed to provide, are now increasingly beyond the reach of ordinary Iraqis, thanks to soaring inflation unleashed by the occupation's destruction of the already shaky Iraqi economy, cuts to state subsidies encouraged by the International Monetary Fund and the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the disruption of the oil industry.
Prices of vegetables, eggs, tea, cooking and heating oil, gasoline and electricity have skyrocketed. Unemployment is regularly estimated at somewhere between 50% and 70%. One measure of the impact of all this has been a significant rise in child malnutrition, registered by the United Nations and other organizations. Not surprisingly, access to safe water and regular electricity remain well below pre-invasion levels, which were already disastrous after more than a decade of comprehensive sanctions against, and periodic bombing of, a country staggered by a catastrophic war with Iran in the 1980s and the first Gulf War. In an ongoing crisis, in which hundred of thousands of Iraqis have already died, the past few months have proved some of the bloodiest on record. In October alone, more than 6,000 civilians were killed in Iraq, most in Baghdad, where thousands of additional US troops had been sent in August (in the first official "surge") with the claim that they would restore order and stability in the city.
In the end, they only fueled more violence. These figures - and they are generally considered undercounts - are more than double the 2005 rate. Other things have more or less doubled in the past years, including, to name just two, the number of daily attacks on US troops and the overall number of US soldiers killed and wounded. United Nations special investigator Manfred Nowak also notes that torture "is totally out of hand" in Iraq: "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein."
Given the disaster that Iraq is today, you could keep listing terrible numbers until your mind was numb. But here's another way of putting the past four years in context. In that same period, there have in fact been a large number of deaths in a distant land on the minds of many people in the United States: Darfur. Since 2003, according to UN estimates, some 200,000 have been killed in the Darfur region of Sudan in a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign, and another 2 million have been turned into refugees.
How would you know this? Well, if you lived in New York City, at least, you could hardly take a subway ride without seeing an ad that reads: "400,000 dead. Millions uniting to save Darfur." The New York Times has also regularly featured full-page ads describing the "genocide" in Darfur and calling for intervention there under "a chain of command allowing necessary and timely military action without approval from distant political or civilian personnel".
In those same years, according to the best estimate available, the British medical journal The Lancet's door-to-door study of Iraqi deaths, about 655,000 Iraqis had died in war, occupation, and civil strife between March 2003 and June 2006. (The study offers a low-end possible figure on deaths of 392,000 and a high-end figure of 943,000.) But you could travel coast to coast in the United States without seeing billboards, subway placards, full-page newspaper ads, or the like for the Iraqi dead. And you certainly won't see, as in the case of Darfur, celebrities on the American Broadcasting Co's weekday television program Good Morning America talking about their commitment to stopping "genocide" in Iraq.
Why is it that we are counting and thinking about the Sudanese dead as part of a high-profile, celebrity-driven campaign to "Save Darfur", yet Iraqi deaths still in effect go uncounted, and rarely
seem to provoke moral outrage, let alone public campaigns to end the killing? And why are the numbers of killed in Darfur cited without any question, while the numbers of Iraqi dead, unless pitifully low-ball figures, are instantly challenged - or dismissed?
In our world, it seems, there are the worthy victims and the unworthy ones. To get at the difference, consider the posture of the United States toward Sudan and Iraq. According to the Bush administration, Sudan is a "rogue state"; it is on the State Department's list of "state sponsors of terrorism". It stands accused of attacking the US through its role in the suicide-boat bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in 2000.
And then, of course - as Mahmood Mamdani pointed out in the London Review of Books recently - Darfur fits neatly into a narrative of "Muslim-on-Muslim violence", of a "genocide perpetrated by Arabs", a line of argument that appeals heavily to those who would like to change the subject from what the US has done - and is doing - in Iraq. Talking about US accountability for the deaths of the Iraqis the US supposedly liberated is a far less comfortable matter.
It's okay to discuss US "complicity" in human-rights abuses, but only as long as you remain focused on sins of omission, not commission. The US is failing the people of Darfur by not militarily intervening. If only the US had used its military more aggressively. When, however, the US does intervene, and wreak havoc in the process, it's another matter.
If anything, the focus on Darfur serves to legitimize the idea of US intervention, of being more of an empire, not less of one, at the very moment when the carnage that such intervention causes is all too visible and is being widely repudiated around the globe. This has also contributed to a situation in which the violence for which the United States is the most responsible, Iraq, is that for which it is held the least accountable at home.
If anyone erred in Iraq, we now hear establishment critics of the invasion and occupation suggest, the real problem was administration incompetence or President Bush's overly optimistic belief that he could bring democracy to Arab or Muslim people, who, we are told, "have no tradition of democracy", who are from a "sick" and "broken society" - and, in brutalizing one another in a civil war, are now showing their true nature.
There is a general agreement across much of the political spectrum that we can blame Iraqis for the problems they face. In a much-lauded speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, US Senator Barack Obama couched his criticism of Bush administration policy in a call for "no more coddling" of the Iraqi government: The United States, he insisted, "is not going to hold together this country indefinitely".
Richard Perle, one of the neo-conservative architects of the invasion of Iraq, now says he "underestimated the depravity" of the Iraqis. Senator Hillary Clinton, Democratic challenger in the 2008 presidential election, recently asked, "How much are we willing to sacrifice" for the Iraqis? As if the Iraqis asked the US to invade their country and make their world a living hell and are now letting Americans down.
This is what happens when the imperial burden gets too heavy. The natives come in for a lashing.
The disaster the United States has wrought in Iraq is worsening by the day, and its effects will be long-lasting. How long they last, and how far they spread beyond Iraq, will depend on how quickly the US government can be forced to end its occupation.
It will also depend on how all of us Americans react the next time we hear that we must attack another country to make the world safe from weapons of mass destruction, "spread democracy", or undertake a "humanitarian intervention". In the meantime, it's worth thinking about what all those horrific figures will look like next March, on the fifth anniversary of the invasion, and the March after, on the sixth, and the March after that ...
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.
Why is it that we are counting and thinking about the Sudanese dead as part of a high-profile, celebrity-driven campaign to "Save Darfur", yet Iraqi deaths still in effect go uncounted, and rarely seem to provoke moral outrage, let alone public campaigns to end the killing? And why are the numbers of killed in Darfur cited without any question, while the numbers of Iraqi dead, unless pitifully low-ball figures, are instantly challenged - or dismissed?
Political interference with the media, it doesn't suit the Government's propaganda campaign to create the illusion they are succeeding. It's happening more and more here and there's this very undemocratic, anti freedom of speech trend which has spread from the U.S. to here where you are chastised for criticising your Government. I've even copped it here on these very forums.
If we allow our elected leaders go on their merry way unquestioned then we're just that one step closer to the very thing we all collectively despise, Communism.
At least 10 people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Iraqi army recruiting centre west of Baghdad, according to security officials.
The attacker reportedly detonated his explosives among a crowd of recruits on Saturday morning in Abu Ghraib, a town on the western outskirts of the Iraqi capital.
A security official said ten people were killed and 13 wounded at the scene, while local police said five soldiers and 10 recruits died in the attack.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the bombing. The recruits were from the rural tribal area close to Abu Ghraib.
The men volunteering to join the army were mainly members of Sunni tribes which have so far played a key role in supporting al-Qaeda and other movements opposed to the Iraqi government, a police officer in Fallujah said.
In recent months the Iraqi government has stepped up its effort to get Sunni tribesmen into the security forces in order to combat Iraq's insurgency.
The attack came as a recording of a voice believed to be that of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the alleged leader of al-Qaeda's Iraq branch, appeared on a website popular with Sunni fighters.
"The US has to withdraw completely from Iraq" Munzir Baig, Muscat, Oman The speaker denied reports of internal clashes among Sunni fighters in which al-Masri is thought to have been killed. "What you hear in the news on satellite channels about fighting between us and jihadist groups, or with our blessed [Sunni] tribes is just lies and fabrication," he said. "It is a desperate attempt to divide the jihadist ranks." Iraqi authorities said on Tuesday that they were investigating reports that Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, had died in internecine fighting. The US military has not confirmed al-Masri's death and Iraqi officials say they have not yet received his corpse.
Also on Saturday, the bodies of seven murdered plainclothes policemen were found by local authorities in the town of Baiji, northwest of Baghdad. The policemen had all been shot, after which their bodies were dumped at the roadside.
In Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle at a police station in the western Yarmuk neighbourhood, killing an officer and wounding 10 people, medical and security sources said.
A mortar round killed a woman and wounded two men in Bayaa, a largely Shia neighbourhood in Baghdad.
One bystander was also killed in the northern city of Kirkuk in a roadside bomb blast which targeted a police patrol.
The following story of the stoning death of a seventeen year old girl is graphic. Be warned that it may offend your senses.
Teen pays ultimate price for love Comment by Paul Kent May 24, 2007 07:00am
17-year-old stoned to death for loving wrong man Images captured on phone, posted on internet Autopsy reports read: Killed to wash away disgrace
A YOUNG love, two ancient religions ... a woman dying in a pool of her own blood after a very public stoning. This is the modern Iraq, for which we sent our troops to fight.
This is the freedom that exists ... and the reminder of how much more work there is still to be done.
For some, such as Du'a Khalil Aswad, this was the price of the so-called new freedom.
Of course, whether Du'a believed in the new freedom promised by the coalition forces will never be known.
All that we do know is that Du'a, young and in love, tested its limits only to see her new world come up terrifyingly, tragically, short. Her crime was to fall in love with a Sunni boy when her family practised the Yezidi religion, which does not allow marriage outside her faith.
The difference between her murder and the many other "honour" killings that also take place was that Du'a's death was captured by camera phone and sent around the world via the internet.
Never has the old world and new world come together more savagely.
A simple Google search will find the vision on any number of websites but it must come with a warning.
This is no Hollywood production. A woman dies before your eyes.
The blurred vision shows a crazed mob, jostling and crowing and jockeying for position, the cameraman struggling past the thousand-odd men who waited for Du'a to be dragged from the house of a tribal leader in a headlock so they could begin the killing.
More than anything the men are excited, which is as sickening to write as it is to accept.
In the mad scramble the cameraman finally gets close to Du'a, by which time she is already on the ground, her body sagging and struggling to stay strong.
Stones rain down on her. Her screams can be heard.
One stone, the size of a good Bessa brick, is catapulted with full force into her body.
As she tries to protect herself Du'a's hair is matted and strewn across her face. Again she screams.
To complete the shame somebody has ripped off her skirt, another man kicks her in the crotch.
For 30 minutes this goes on, until finally a stone knocks her unconscious and a deep, dark blood stream begins to run across the earth.
Du'a is dead.
This young woman, just 17 years old and whose crime was to fall in love, is now lost from this world forever.
If this is upsetting, then apologies. But this is the reality of our world, far from political spin, far from the lies of this "peaceful religion" we are force fed whenever racial tensions rise up.
It is abhorrent at every level. It must be stopped.
Du'a and her boyfriend, whose identity is still not known, had a plan to run away together.
Clearly aware that theirs was a forbidden love, it is uncertain whether their plan to elope was a result of having asked permission to marry and been denied or whether they planned it anyway, knowing how the answer would fall.
Regardless, they fled to Bashika but were betrayed by Du'a's family, whose "honour" had been besmirched.
They needed to cleanse the family and could do so only with Du'a's death.
Her parents did not want her to be stoned but, according to Diana Nammi, a leading Kurdish rights campaigner who fled to England, it is not certain whether they agreed to another form of death.
What is certain is that rather than a one-off, or a fading remnant of an old world that is thankfully disappearing, "honour" killings are on the rise in Iraq.
Nobody knows exact figures because exact figures are at best uncertain, at most shady, when it comes to happenings in Iraq.
But campaigners such as Ms Nammi say there is an "epidemic". The evidence is in the growing number of autopsy reports in Baghdad signed off with a simple verdict: "Killed to wash away her disgrace."
After Du'a's murder two men were arrested by Iraqi police but, according to Ms Nammi, were later quietly released.
Then last Saturday, 42 days after Du'a's murder, Iraqi authorities arrested four men in relation to the killing.
On the surface, at least, the arrests have been applauded.
"They (the crowd) brutally killed a young Yezidi girl in pursuit of out-of-date tribal rites," Tahsin Saeed Ali, the Yezidi religious leader known as the emir of the Yezidis in Iraq, said.
Is this a hope? Is this a sign of change, that maybe the coalition is making some headway, or merely a false dawn?
It is difficult to get too excited. The death came to light only after the image was released on the internet, after all, when the rest of the world had begun to vent its outrage. It forced the authorities to act.
Elsewhere the rise in "honour" killings suggests a descent into localised law, indicating it is getting worse rather than better. Maybe it has to before things are finally righted, which gives no comfort.
Parts of Iraq are steeped in archaic tradition and nothing is EVER going to change. The CoW is not going to stop this, get the troops out now and let the damned fools kill each other before another drop of western blood is shed.
That is America's, Britain's and Australia's job. We are the occupying power and by law it is our job to protect the citizens and uphold human rights. It is a sad indictment that this would never have happened under the brutal evil dictator but is under occupying democratic forces who espouse human rights as tenet.
You can say whatever you like about Saddam, and he like around 60 other dictators around the world should be deposed, but his regime was secular and would have punished the men who did this by the death penalty (and most likely the girls family as well).
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.
Al-Qaeda torture manual found From Fox News in Washington, D.C. May 25, 2007 03:12pm
Al-Qaeda torture manual "found in safe house" Cartoons show how to use drills, irons, blow torches Photos of tortured people also discovered
AL-QAEDA terrorists use blow torches, electric drills and meat cleavers to torture and force information out of their victims, according to a "how-to" book reportedly discovered in a safe house in Iraq.
The Pentagon has released bizarre cartoons showing how to torture a captive, found by American forces during a raid on an al-Qaeda house a few weeks ago.
They also found photos of tortured Iraqi victims.
The book guides followers of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden on how to interrogate and torture captives, Fox News in the US has reported.
The drawings and cartoons depict ways to use electric drills and irons, meat cleavers and other devices to force victims to talk or harm them.
Some of the drawings show how to drill hands, sever limbs, drag victims behind cars, remove eyes, put a blowtorch or iron to someone's skin, suspend a person from a ceiling and electrocute them, break limbs and restrict breath and put someones head in a vice.
Items found at the safe house include electric drills, hammers, blow torches, meat cleavers, pliers and wire cutters, chains, screw drivers, whips and handcuffs, Fox said.
Earlier this week US troops found the information near Baghdad, along with five Iraqis being held, the Pentagon has said.
Meanwhile General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday Thursday that al-Qaeda poses a dangerous threat to the United States for years to come.
"Clearly, whatever military advice we give, both in Iraq and regionally, must take into account that this group of al-Qaeda has targeted free nations, to include the United States, and how our long-term plan and our long-term recommendations must deal with that very real threat to the United States," Gen Pace said at a Pentagon briefing.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the United States continues to direct most efforts to defeating al-Qaeda, but he predicted insurgents in Iraq will ramp up attacks this summer.
"I think the worry that we have is clearly what we have seen over the past year: that whatever progress is made and particularly in the last few months often is overshadowed when al-Qaeda will launch a major attack that kills a lot of innocent civilian Iraqis," Mr Gates said.
I just wish they would stop this bullshit of all the trouble in Iraq being caused by Al Queda, it is utter propaganda and has been long proven as bull.
Fact is that as little a 3% of actions in Iraq are by Al Queda and at most 5%, the rest is all insurgency and power battles amongst disparate and same groups, with even power struggles happening within groups like Sunnis, Kurds, Shiites and other minor players.
But if you were to listen to any information the US produces it is Al Queda, Al Queda and nothing but Al Queda. I wish for just once the US would be honest about something in Iraq.
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.
More reasons why we should never have bent over for the Americans ...
The news this morning said Australian soldiers were being taunted by the American soldiers for their "lack of committment" to the Iraq war. I couldn't find any articles online as yet.
Quoted Text
US sailor accused of grooming Aussie girl for sex By Sarah Elks June 25, 2007
US and Australian authorities are expected to clash today over the prosecution of an American sailor who was arrested for allegedly grooming an Australian child for sex over the internet.
Seventh Fleet seaman David Wayne Budd, 28, was met by police at Sydney airport on Saturday morning after flying from Rockhampton in Queensland where he had been participating in the military training exercise Talisman Sabre.
He was arrested and charged with using a carriage service to groom a person under 16 years of age for sex.
Mr Budd allegedly had an online conversation while in Rockhampton on Thursday night with a detective from the Child Exploitation Internet Unit posing as a 14-year-old girl.
He refused to appear in the dock at Parramatta Bail Court in western Sydney yesterday, remaining in a cell under the court. Mr Budd's Legal Aid solicitor did not apply for bail.
Mr Budd will remain in custody and appear in Parramatta Local Court today. It is expected US military lawyers will seek to take control of the case.
"The US military is asking for jurisdiction in this case, but they will investigate the matter and take appropriate action," US military spokesman Lieutenant Chris Maddison from the US embassy said.
Lieutenant Maddison said such a move was allowed under a bilateral "status of forces agreement".
However, local sources have said the US military's submission will be vigorously opposed.
Harsher US penalties and court-martial proceedings overseas do not outweigh any potential deterrence value gained from the publicity of a successful Australian prosecution, the sources say.
Talisman Sabre is a joint military training exercise between Australia and the US.
It is the largest training exercise undertaken by the Australian Defence Force and involves 7500 Australian personnel, 20 ships and 25 aircraft as well as 20,000 American troops, 10 ships and 100 aircraft.
The bi-annual war games began a week ago at the Shoalwater Bay training facility near Rockhampton and will continue there and in the Northern Territory until July 2.
US Seventh Fleet Commander Doug Crowder said last week that the joint military exercise was essential for Asia-Pacific security.
"We have to practise, shoulder to shoulder, to improve combat readiness," he said.
Additional reporting: AAP
If we allow the Americans to take over this case the sailor will probably only get a slap on the wrist.
As I posted in the Liberal's thread, Howard is now allowing Australians to be extradited to America for crimes against their laws committed in Australia (whilst the reverse is not true). So if Howard allows the Americans to take jurisdiction over this US sailor then there should be a massive uproar for it means he is perfectly willing to hand over our law to a foreign country we as citizens never voted to write or enact our laws, but worse it means even though we are not citizens of that country or living there we must adhere to their laws as Howard has decreed it so.
As I posted in the Liberal's thread, Howard is now allowing Australians to be extradited to America for crimes against their laws committed in Australia (whilst the reverse is not true). So if Howard allows the Americans to take jurisdiction over this US sailor then there should be a massive uproar for it means he is perfectly willing to hand over our law to a foreign country we as citizens never voted to write or enact our laws, but worse it means even though we are not citizens of that country or living there we must adhere to their laws as Howard has decreed it so.
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