News & Views 07/26/07

.Photo: From BBC website.

REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ

Video: Inside the Surge. Part 2, The Provinces

An exclusive film from Guardian photographer Sean Smith on his time embedded with the US Marines in Iraq's Anbar Province and the mountain division in the so-called Triangle of Death.

Iraqis Blame US Depleted Uranium for Surge in Cancer

Iraq’s environment minister blamed Monday the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces during the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe for the current surge in cancer cases across the country. As a result of “at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated during bombing” with depleted uranium (DU) weapons, Nermin Othman said, the nation is facing about 140,000 cases of cancer, with 7,000 to 8,000 new ones registered each year. The first major UN research on the consequences of the use of DU on the battlefield was conducted in 2003 in the wake of NATO operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in its report after the research that DU poses little threat if spent munitions are cleared from the ground. “Health risks primarily depend on the awareness of people coming into contact with DU,” UNEP writes in its 2004 brochure “Depleted Uranium Awareness.” No major clean-up or public awareness campaigns have been reported in Iraq.

Baquba Denied the Healing Touch

Diyala General Hospital in the provincial capital Baquba has been hit by severe lack of supplies amid ongoing attacks by militants. Located 50km northeast of Baghdad, the city of Baquba has become known now for both the huge U.S. military operations and the presence of al-Qaeda. The shortages coupled with a lack of basic infrastructure have left the largest hospital in Diyala province short of supplies, and staffed by terrorised doctors often unable to do their job. ……The problems appear to begin and end with lack of security. "One day, a number of Iraqi army casualties caused by a suicide car bomb were brought to the hospital by a military patrol," Mohammed Ali, a 39-year-old orthopaedic surgeon told IPS. "The soldiers began to insult the staff, and hit two physicians after ordering them to leave other patients and treat the wounded soldiers first." Doctors announced a strike, Ali said. "A few days later the head of the physicians syndicate called an end to the strike after intervention by the mayor." But doctors have continued to face abuse, Nasseer Adil, a 42-year-old pathologist told IPS. "It has become very normal that any person can come and insult anyone in the hospital." Over time, the abuse and threats have driven many doctors to leave their job, and when they can, the country. …..By October 2006, 18,000 Iraqi doctors, over half of all doctors in Iraq, had fled the country, according to a report by Radio Free Europe.

…. Complicating matters further has been corruption within Iraq's Ministry of Health in Baghdad. The ministry, which has been run by officials loyal to Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has been accused of favouring Shia areas in Iraq. Baquba, a mixed area, has been considered a Sunni area by the ministry. Doctors at Diyala General Hospital told IPS they believe that the Heath Ministry has hindered the supply of medical equipment and supplies to their hospital for sectarian reasons.

Iraq's Perils Dire For Minority Faiths

Iraq's outnumbered Christians and other religious minority groups are targets of a terror campaign and are facing a dire situation where killings and rapes have become the norm, a panel of witnesses testified yesterday on Capitol Hill. In a hearing convened by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Canon Andrew White, vicar of St. George's Anglican Church in Baghdad, and four other panelists unfolded tales of horrors overtaking Christians, Yezidis (angel worshippers) and Mandaeans, members of a pacifist faith that follows the teachings of John the Baptist. "The situation is more than desperate," said Mr. White, who described how Christians in Baghdad have been told to convert to Islam or be killed. Hundreds of those who could not afford to flee the country are living in churches without adequate food or water, he said. "In the past month, 36 members of my own congregation have been kidnapped," he said. "To date, only one has been returned."

U.S., Iraqi School Teacher Create Peace Bridge

NESREEN: Well, everything is difficult in Baghdad. Me, as a teacher, when I go to school, it is hard to get to my school, simply because the American troops are there in the streets, and they sometimes close all the streets or sometimes they are stuck or stop in the streets to -- you know, it’s a kind of delay there will be for going to school, and looking for landmines or trying to attack some people, some Iraqi people, looking for insurgents. And on my way to school, I saw many, many bad things, such as dead bodies or sometimes the random shooting all of a sudden started. And when I go to a school, sometimes I find students and sometimes very few students and sometimes no students.

JUAN GONZALEZ: In terms of the -- the images that we see here, obviously, in the United States, when they are presented, are of constant bombings that occur on an almost daily basis. On a day-to-day level for your students, what is life like? Does that violence -- is it there constantly or is it once in a while?

NESREEN: Constantly. Yeah, because, you know, the situation is very, very difficult right there in the school. Some of my students stopped coming to school, because their parents were threatened or family is threatened, some of them afraid to come to school because of the bad situation in the streets or afraid of kidnapping, things like that.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you seen US soldiers in the school?

NESREEN: Yes, of course, many times.

AMY GOODMAN: What happens?

NESREEN: We’re visited by them many times, and they talk to the students. And there was -- I remember that a soldier, he behaved very badly, and he did many, many sexual gestures to my students, and they were very angry, because, you know, they have their own ideas about how good people are, the Americans, but when they saw that soldier, they were surprised he was doing very bad gestures.

REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS

Iraqi Government Says Oil Workers' Unions Are "Not Legitimate"

Iraq's oil minister said Iraq's oil unions are not legitimate, UPI reports. "There are no legal unions in Iraq," Hussein al-Shahristani said. The lone remaining law from the Saddam Hussein regime kept by U.S. occupying powers and the successive Iraqi government is the one that bans worker organizing in the public sector.

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ

The United States Finds Few Non-Iraqis Among Insurgents

As President Bush continues to stress al Qaeda as the chief threat to Iraq's stability—a reprised effort to establish a link between al Qaeda in Iraq and the 9/11 attackers—U.S. military forces on the ground in Iraq are fighting a complex war in regions with vast networks of overlapping loyalties—and few foreign fighters. Most members of al Qaeda in Iraq, say commanders on the ground, are local Iraqi outcasts. "I can count them [foreign fighters] as a total I have engaged, dead or alive, in the 10 months I've been here on one hand," says Col. David Sutherland, the U.S. commander of coalition forces in the hotly contested area of Diyala province, an insurgent stronghold region some 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. There, Sutherland says, those involved in al Qaeda are largely dispossessed locals, not jihadists who have come from elsewhere.

British troops in Iraq face 'nightly suicide missions'

British soldiers are going on "nightly suicide missions" in southern Iraq and they are there only at the behest of the US, Labour MPs on the Commons defence committee told the government yesterday. In evidence that reflects deepening concern among army commanders, the MPs said they were told during a recent visit to British troops in Basra that the UK's military role in Iraq was over. They painted a dark picture of the security situation in the city, with Iraqi forces inadequately trained, and infiltrated by Shia militia and criminal gangs. The view appeared to be shared yesterday by Bob Ainsworth, the new armed forces minister also just back from a visit to southern Iraq, and by Brigadier Chris Hughes, the Ministry of Defence's senior officer responsible for military commitments.

US audit finds 'less than 42%' of Bechtel's Iraq projects completed

US construction giant Bechtel National arrived in Iraq in 2003, on the heels of US troops, with a fat contract awarded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to rebuild the country. Then in 2004 the company won a second contract, worth a potential US$1.8 billion. Wearing white construction helmets labeled 'Bechtel', the company's construction supervisors oversaw work on hospitals, schools and bridges, and tried to get the water flowing and the electricity turned on. A new federal audit released on Wednesday, however, found that a big chunk of Bechtel's reconstruction work for USAID, the federal agency that issued the contract, was never achieved on the second contract. Auditors checked the 24 jobs Bechtel was supposed to complete. "Ten did not achieve their original objectives," the auditors found. In another three projects, "we were either unable to determine what the original objectives were or the achievements were unclear." The cost for unfinished efforts was high: the US government approved a total of US$180 million in payments for Bechtel’s ten allegedly unfinished projects. They include a US$24 million water treatment plant in Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City, a US$26 million children's hospital in Basra and a US$4 million Baghdad landfill that was never built.

….Another issue was that a large chunk of the federal funds didn't go to work directly on projects but on "support costs," like fees and security. The audit found that only 59% actually went to construction, with the rest paid to Bechtel for security and fees.

Denmark Pulls Out Iraq Troops Early

Denmark has withdrawn most of the 430 troops it has stationed in Iraq earlier than expected, a report said Wednesday quoting the Danish military.
The battalion, stationed in the southern city of Basra since 2003, under British command, was supposed to begin pulling out its soldiers on August 10.
But, according to a report by the Iraqi correspondent of the Danish TV channel TV2, sustained attacks by insurgents have led to most of them heading home early.
Danish military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jes Rasmussen denied that the early withdrawal was due to security reasons.

China Denies Report That It’s Missiles Have Ended Up In Iraq

China said Thursday that reports saying its missiles had been shipped through Iran to Iraq were misleading and made to discredit China. "For some time now, certain countries have linked China's normal military trade ties with other countries to arms smuggling as well as regional security instability," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in a statement. "This approach is to mislead the public with ulterior motives. The Chinese side expresses its strong dissatisfaction and opposition," said the statement posted on the ministry's Web site. Liu's comments came several days after a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said Chinese-made missiles had been found in Iraq and were probably smuggled into Iraq from Iran.

That September Report On Iraq? It's Not The Only One

The White House may have killed attempts to revive the much-heralded Iraq Study Group, but the Bush administration will still face a tough, independent evaluation of the progress in Iraq - from one of its own agencies. In a little-noticed addition to legislation requiring the July and September assessments on Iraq from the White House, Congress mandated a third report from the agency that has quietly done the most work to track the missteps, miscalculations, misspent funds and shortfalls of both the United States and Iraq since the 2003 invasion: the Government Accountability Office. The GAO's international affairs team has had far more experience in Iraq than the study group led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) or any of the other independent panels that have weighed in on Iraq. Indeed, the study group consulted the GAO team in preparing its report. Over the past four years, the GAO has issued 91 reports on Iraq, on topics including the mismanagement of Iraq's oil industry and problems in its new army.

Bush Line Distorts Iran's Real Interest in Iraq

As U.S. and Iranian diplomats met in Baghdad Tuesday for a second round of talks on Iraq, the domestic U.S. political climate appears decidedly more supportive of an aggressive U.S. posture toward Iran than just a few months ago, reflecting the apparent triumph the George W. Bush administration's narrative on Iran's role in Iraq. That new narrative threatens to obscure the bigger picture of Iranian policy toward Iraq, widely recognised by regional specialists. Iran's strategic interests in Iraq are far more compatible with those of the United States than those of the Sunni regimes in the region with which the United States has aligned itself. Contrary to the official narrative, Iranian support for Shiites is not aimed at destabilising the country but does serve a rational Iranian desire to maximise its alliances with Iraqi Shiite factions, in the view of specialists on Iranian policy and on the security of the Persian Gulf region. But this administration line ignores the fact that Iran's primary ties in Iraq have always been with those groups who have supported the Nouri al Maliki government, including the SCIRI and Dawa parties and their paramilitary arm, the Badr Corps, rather than with anti-government militias. That indicates that Iran's fundamental interest is to see the government stabilise the situation in the country, according to Prof. Mohsen Milani of Florida International University, a specialist on Iran's national security policies.

COMMENTARY

America: The Blood-Soaked Ahistorical Ostrich

In an April 2006, piece published in The Boston Globe I wrote in relevant part that, "Perhaps people will stop repeating the human-made catastrophes of the past when we cease being ahistorical and truly learn from history's lessons." Unfortunately, far too many Americans, particularly white Americans, are content to remain ignorant of history's lessons especially as they pertain to their enjoyment of color and/or class privilege. To be chronically lacking in an awareness and appreciation of history is to be ahistorical. Being ahistorical is an ongoing and dangerous hallmark of US society. No other major nation in the entire industrialized western world can boast of having and maintaining such an ahistorical citizenry as that of the United States of America.

America, from its foundations steeped in genocide, slavery, hypocrisy and the concomitant legalized thievery of an entire continent has developed and continues in the 21st century to perpetuate an ahistorical mentality among its population. Thus, while some white Americans (and their surrogates) in particular, be they so-called conservatives or liberals, might possibly see a few problems with America's internal and external policies that need a little adjusting; the vast majority of people of color within America and around the world correctly view America as fundamentally, systemically, and irreparably flawed. Nevertheless, by consistently promoting a selectively ahistorically warped national and world view of itself white America vis-a-vi its so called "informational / news" and "educational" institutions maintains an active cognitive dissonance regarding its horrible and active internal and external policies and practices. This applies equally to Republicans, Democrats, and so-called Independents alike in the American economic and political system. [Everywhere I look in America, I see dumb people. – dancewater]

IRAQI REFUGEES

National Radio Project: The Growing Iraqi Refugee Crisis

Since 9/11, the U.S. Congress has appropriated $610 billion dollars in war-related money. With inflation figured in, that's roughly the same amount spent over the full 16 years of the Vietnam War. The Iraq War alone has cost the U.S. $450 billion dollars. And what about the cost to the Iraqi people? In addition to civilian casualties, since 2003 hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been forced to flee their war-torn country to nearby neighboring countries - countries that either don't want them or can't take care of them.

UN concerned at reports Turkey deported 135 Iraqis

The United Nations refugee agency voiced concern on Thursday over reports that Turkey had forcibly deported 135 Iraqis to their homeland, including some who had claimed asylum. The Iraqis were among 500 migrants from the Middle East and Asia who were rounded up earlier this month in the western Turkish province of Izmir, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "Given the current situation in Iraq, UNHCR is extremely concerned for the safety of these people. No information is currently available on their whereabouts," it said of the 135. The statement, which a spokesman said was based on information from "reliable sources on the ground", said it appeared that "some of the deported had made an asylum claim". "If this is confirmed, the deportations would be a clear violation of the principle of non-refoulement, under which no refugee or asylum seeker whose case has not yet been properly assessed can be forcibly returned to a country where their life or liberty may be at risk," it said. Refoulement is banned by the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, which Turkey has ratified.

Crisis warning on Iraq refugees

The scale of the exodus of refugees fleeing violence in Iraq has prompted a humanitarian crisis", a conference in Jordan has heard. More than two million Iraqis have left their war-ravaged homeland. The UN says about 50,000 more people leave Iraq each month, mostly to Jordan and Syria which want international help to ease the burden on their services. The UN refugee agency says the mass displacement is threatening the region's stability. It says the wave of displacement sparked by the war in Iraq is the biggest in the Middle East since 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the newly created Israel.

How to Help Iraqi Refugees

RESISTANCE

Iraq Moratorium Day – September 21 and every third Friday thereafter ~ "I hereby make a commitment that on Friday, September 21, 2007, and the third Friday of every subsequent month I will break my daily routine and take some action, by myself or with others, to end the War in Iraq."

Quote of the day: They say the means are after all just means. I would say means are after all everything. As the means, so the end. -- Mahatma Gandhi