Photo: Shi'ite worshippers step on U.S. and British flags printed on the ground during a parade commemorating the anniversary of the assassination of Shi'ite cleric Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr in Basra November 14, 2007. [They so love us in Iraq! - dancewater] REUTERS/Atef Hassan (IRAQ)
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
Iraq 'a human tragedy', says Red Cross
The hundreds of thousands of people missing in Iraq are just the tip of the country's looming humanitarian crisis, the International Red Cross warned today. Around 375,000 of the population have vanished due to continued fighting, sectarian, ethnic, and religious violence and forced displacement, said Karl Matley, outgoing head of the Iraqi branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross. A report called 'Humanitarian Tragedy in Iraq' said the missing included tens of thousands who were held in the custody of Iraqi authorities and the multinational forces. Scores of families have also been without news of relatives who went missing, not only since the 2003 invasion but also in past conflicts, dating back to the 1980s. “Each Iraqi family and each mother has the right to know the destiny and whereabouts of her son or husband,” Mr Matley said.
Cholera found in Baghdad care house for handicapped
A case of cholera has been identified at Dar El-Hanan (care house) for the Severely Handicapped, but no deaths have resulted, said the Health Ministry's General Inspector Dr. Adel Mohsen on Wednesday. The general inspector told KUNA that preliminary test results were found positive for cholera in one male patient, adding that a specialized team was dispatched to inspect water tanks and the kitchen at the facility. All patients and those that come in contact with them have also been tested, he added.
Baghdad celebrates national day amid relative security, poor services
On Baghdad's national day, concrete barricades have been removed from the capital's streets and many roads have been reopened for local residents who went out to the streets to celebrate the occasion amidst a remarkable improvement in the security situation and a significant decline in public services. "Now we can go shopping and visit our next of kin and return home at a late hour at night without fear." This was how Ahlam Bakr, a government employee and a resident of Baghdad's northern Adhamiya neighborhood, summarized the implications of security improvements for everyday life in the Iraqi capital. Commenting on the level of public services, the young woman, however, was unable to find a better word than "bad." In al-Washash, one of western Baghdad's old areas, Maryam Aamer, a housewife, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI), "The security situation improved after militia groups' control over the area had been curtailed." "This improvement can only be felt during the morning. Gunmen show up at night to threaten and kill people. It is for this reason that we hide in out homes after dark," Aamer said.
Embattled Baghdad shows signs of hope
Taking advantage of a dramatic drop in car bombings and sectarian murders, Baghdad residents are once again venturing out to local markets and restaurants after dark in many parts of the city. They're celebrating weddings and birthdays in public places and eating grilled carp on the Tigris River late into the night. A local television station has begun a feature called "Baghdad Nights," showing the capital's residents shopping, eating and socializing after the sun has set — a sight that until recently was unheard of in most neighborhoods. In Mansour, in central Baghdad, eight young brides, dripping in new gold given to them by their grooms, visited Tanya's hair salon this week. Just two months ago, the shop was lucky to get one bride a month. "Before there used to be no merrymaking for the bride," said Suad, a young hairdresser who would only give her first name for safety reasons. "Now they are coming again." As Baghdad has changed, even security barriers have had a makeover, incorporated, if that's possible, into the urban landscape. Over the past six months, artists have painted them with depictions of Iraqi life, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and fantasy pictures of peaceful scenes. But Baghdad residents are skeptical that their new freedom will last. "It's in the hands of God now," said Umm Fatma, her roots covered in bleach at the hairdresser's. "We don't know the future."
Are Iraq's Detainees Treated Fairly?
The U.S. military prison system in Iraq is a labyrinth that currently holds about 25,000 people. Each day, a few more are thrown into the judicial maze - a limbo to which most have no access to lawyers, since they are treated as enemy combatants. U.S. officials stress that the detainee population largely represents people who would likely be involved in insurgent violence or militia activity if they were allowed into the streets. "There are [innocent] people who get swept up," said U.S. Col. Mark Martins, a staff judge advocate who works on law and order issues with Iraqi authorities. "There's no doubt that happens." Still, he says, "Thousands of them actually get released within the first 24 hours, as people sort it out."
But what happens if they don't? Whether guilty or innocent, those detainees are then likely to be in for a months-long journey of questioning and petitions. Citing a provision of the Geneva Convention and U.N. Security Council resolutions, U.S. forces in Iraq claim authority to arrest individuals deemed a threat to either the government of Iraq or U.S.-led multinational troops in the country. Initially, anyone arrested by U.S. forces can be held informally for about 14 days before their case gets officially started. After that, the detainee is sent to a U.S. detention compound if military officials decide there is enough evidence of insurgent violence or militia activity. Most captives transferred to tented U.S. detention camps can expect to be there roughly 35 days before their case file is viewed by the Combined Review and Release Board, a panel of U.S. and Iraqi officials. Detainees are allowed to offer a written statement to the panel, but they do not appear in person before it. After a reading of a detainee's file, the panel then recommends whether to continue holding the person or not, though final release authority rests with the U.S. commander of detention operations, Major General Douglas Stone.
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
Anti-al-Qaida Sunni sheik claims US forces killed his followers
The leader of an anti-al-Qaida Sunni group is accusing U.S. troops of mistakenly killing dozens of his fighters during a battle north of Baghdad. The sheik told Al-Jazeera television that he had tried repeatedly to call American commanders and tell them they were fighting "their friends." U.S. military officials confirm troops killed 24 fighters in a battle in the same area. The military says the clash began as soldiers searched for al-Qaida extremists believed hiding there. U.S. officials say initial reports indicate soldiers looking for al-Qaida operatives found armed men in the area, determined they were hostile and began firing. As troops pursued the gunmen, they came under fire from several directions and called in airstrikes.
The Sunni In Iraq's Shiite Leadership
Tariq al-Hashemi says he cringes when he's described as Iraq's Sunni vice president. Hashemi, one of two vice presidents - the other, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, is Shiite - says he is trying to reach out to all Iraqis. In September, he met for the first time with Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, the reclusive Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, at his home in the holy Shiite city of Najaf. He also drafted an Iraqi National Compact - his 25-point plan to lessen sectarian and ethnic strife. At the same time, he remains utterly at odds with the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Indeed, the standoff between the two men underscores the fact that Iraq's political leaders have not capitalized on improved security to advance what US officials here have labeled "top-down reconciliation." Hashemi warns that it will be a serious blow to any hopes for reconciliation if the government carries out the death sentence, handed down by a special tribunal and upheld by an appeals court in September, against Sultan Hashem, the former defense minister during Saddam Hussein's regime, and former Army chief Hussein Rashid Muhammad, as well as Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid. "A dialogue is taking place with former Army officers in Jordan and Syria to return," he continues. "His [Hashem's] execution is a message to them not to come back and that's it - we burn all bridges." On Monday, the US military refused to hand over the three men to the Maliki government for hanging until, it said, authorities resolved their legal and procedural differences.
Hashemi insists the presidency council, of which he is part, has the final say in signing death sentence decrees as spelled out by the Constitution, while Maliki says this does not apply to special tribunals. "We did not write the Constitution; they wrote it - and now they are contravening it," Hashemi says. He accuses the Maliki government of paying people it calls "secret informants" to fabricate evidence and reports used to round up hundreds of Sunni Arabs throughout Iraq this year on the pretense of being linked to Al Qaeda and the insurgency. He charges that the government runs secret detention facilities and refuses to disclose the number of prisoners it holds. In defiance of strong criticism from Maliki, Hashemi has continued his public campaign, calling for the release of all prisoners. TV crews accompany him as he visits Iraqi prisons. He speaks of overcrowding, rampant disease, and cases of children being held with their mothers. He says that many prisoners being held for months have not even undergone preliminary interrogation, let alone been officially charged.
Government panel reinstates Saddam supporters who turned against al-Qaida
A government commission has reinstated 70 former members of Saddam Hussein's party to their jobs after they joined the fight against al-Qaida in Anbar province, a senior official said Sunday. Ali al-Lami, executive director of the commission, told The Associated Press that the former Baath party members included 12 university professors, officers in the disbanded Iraqi army, former policemen and teachers. Al-Lami said they were allowed to return to government jobs "because of their role in fighting al-Qaida in Anbar" province, where the Sunni revolt against the terror movement began last year. Al-Lami heads the "de-Baathification Commission" which was set up during the U.S. occupation to purge the government and civil service of people whose loyalty to the new Iraq was in question. Critics said the process backfired, depriving many people of their livelihood and driving them into the Sunni-led insurgency.
Iraq Troops Seize Powerful Sunni Office
Iraqi troops seized the west Baghdad headquarters of a powerful Sunni Muslim group Wednesday, cordoning off the building and ordering employees out, the group said. Iraqi security forces dispatched by the Sunni Endowment, a government agency that cares for Sunni mosques and shrines, surrounded the mosque complex where the group is based at 9 a.m. and demanded that the building be evacuated before noon, the Association of Muslim Scholars said in a statement posted on its Web site. Employees of the association, a hardline Sunni clerics group with links to insurgents, were told to remove all personal belongings and even haul out furniture, that troops said would be destroyed if left behind, the statement said. The group's headquarters are located in the Um al-Qura mosque in the capital's Sunni-dominated Ghazaliyhah neighborhood.
REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
State Department vows to drop security guards who violate rules
The US State Department vowed Wednesday to stop using any security guards found to have breeched lethal-fire rules in Iraq but withheld comment on a deadly shootout until an FBI probe is complete. It outlined its position after The New York Times reported that the FBI had initially found that at least 14 Iraqis were killed without justification in a September shootout in Baghdad involving guards from the firm Blackwater. [They will find some way to weasel around it. – dancewater]
IRAQI REFUGEES
Thousands of Iraqis apply to live in US
U.S. accused of ignoring crisis for 4.5 million displaced Iraqis
The U.S. government is "unforgivably slow" in resettling Iraqi refugees and has failed to coordinate with its Arab allies to address the suffering of an estimated 4.5 million displaced Iraqis, according to a report released Tuesday by a leading Washington-based refugee advocacy group. Nearly five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has made little effort to speed up relief for a population that's growing more vulnerable by the day, Refugees International concluded after its most recent trip to Iraqi refugee communities in the Middle East. The group's advocates said the White House appeared oblivious to the magnitude of the war's humanitarian disaster. "The first reason for this is the lack of political will," said Kristele Younes, a co-author of the Refugees International report. "Until very recently, the Bush administration never even acknowledged the humanitarian crisis because they were concerned that it would be interpreted as acknowledging failure in Iraq. And President Bush still has yet to acknowledge that there are now almost 5 million Iraqis who've had to leave their homes."
How to Help Iraqi Refugees
ANOTHER Way to help: The Collateral Repair Project
COMMENTARY
US-IRAQ: What Does the 'Good News' Really Mean?
More than seven weeks ago, U.S. media attention on Iraq peaked as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ray Crocker delivered their much anticipated evaluation of the George W. Bush administration's "surge strategy" before Congress. By most official and media accounts, security in Baghdad and in surrounding provinces has improved markedly since then, with U.S. commanders attributing much of the decline in violence to successes in driving al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni extremist groups from Baghdad. Iraqis are said to be experiencing some sense of normalcy after being victimised by the kidnappings, bombings, and wholesale slaughter that marked the last few years. Then, armed bands of Shiite and Sunni gunmen roamed the streets, seizing people at illegal checkpoints and dumping bodies by the dozens. But the picture that is emerging today is one of improved security and slight hints of optimism, unimaginable more than a year ago.
The recent developments out of Iraq give some credibility to the oft-fictional "good news" diet fed by the White House to U.S. citizens. The muscular argot of neoconservative idealism has crumbled under the weight of reality -- Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech, Vice President Dick Cheney's pronouncement that the insurgency was in its "last throes", Rumsfeld's "pocket of dead-enders" -- so it should come as no surprise that the newest "good news" out of Iraq is falling, for the moment, on incredulous ears. While there may be a reduction in violence in Iraq, opposition to the war in the U.S. public is at an all-time high, with 68 percent of those polled in opposition, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released last week.
"Forget the briefings from generals, the intelligence evaluations and the Pentagon status reports. There is a handy indicator for whether the war in Iraq is going well -- its relative absence from the front pages," wrote Richard Lowry, editor of the conservative biweekly National Review.
In Iraq, the silence of the lambs
"I would like to agree with the idea that violence in Iraq has decreased and that everything is fine," retired general Waleed al-Ubaidy told Inter Press Servce (IPS) in Baghdad. "But the truth is far more bitter. All that has happened is a dramatic change in the demographic map of Iraq." And as with Baquba and other violence-hit areas of Iraq, he says a part of the story in Baghdad is that there is nobody left to tell it: ”Most of the honest journalists have left.” Ahmad Ali, chief engineer for one of Baghdad's municipalities, told IPS: ”Baghdad has been torn into two cities and many towns and neighbourhoods. There is now the Shia Baghdad and the Sunni Baghdad to start with. Then, each is divided into little town-like pieces of the hundreds of thousands who had to leave their homes.” Many Baghdad residents say that the claims of reduced violence can be tested only when the refugees go back home. Many areas of Baghdad that were previously mixed are now totally Shia or totally Sunni. This follows the sectarian cleansing in mixed neighborhoods by militias and death squads. On the Russafa side of Tigris River, al-Adhamiya is now fully Sunni; the other areas are all Shia. The al-Karkh side of the river is purely Sunni except for Shula, Hurriya and small strips of Aamil which are dominated by Shia militias.
”If the situation is good, why are 5 million Iraqis living in exile?” asks 55-year-old Abu Mohammad, who was evicted from Shula in west Baghdad to become a refugee in Amiriya, a few miles from his lost home. ”Americans and Iranians have succeeded in realizing their old dream of dividing the Iraqi people into sects. That is the only success they can talk about.” Violence is no longer hitting the headlines, but it clearly continues. Bodies of Iraqis killed after being tortured are still found in garbage dumps, although fewer than a few months ago. ”Iraqi and American officials should be ashamed of talking of 'unidentified bodies',” said Haja Fadhila, from the Ghazaliya area of western Baghdad. ”These are the bodies of Iraqis who had families to support, and names to be proud of. But nobody talks about them, there is no media. It is as if it is all taking place on Mars.”
RESISTANCE
Iraq War Is A Betrayal Of American Democracy
In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with 1st Tank battalion 1st Marine Division. My commander in chief unleashed the world's fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice. Four and a half years after our opening "shock and awe" Bush's lies are known throughout the world, and yet he continues to act with impunity. Four and a half years later the Bush regime has unleashed a hell upon the country of Iraq that only those who have been there can truly understand. As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name. We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of U.S. imperial economic and strategic interests. We did not go to war with the country of Iraq, we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad. Let me say again so that there is no misunderstanding. I stand here today as a former U.S. Marine saying we are killing women and children in Iraq. This is the true nature of war. War lends itself to atrocities. Don't think you can use an organization designed to kill other human beings for anything humanitarian. That has never been our mission. That was crystal clear from the moment I was forced to bury the crate of humanitarian food given to me in Kuwait.
Quote of the day: So what has happened to the “New Iraq”? Is this is the freedom Bush has promised Iraqis with? Isn’t this the same government Bush supports that is supporting these militias in university campuses? In the video that I posted in my previous entry, he said “If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying, God, I love freedom — because that’s what’s happened. And there are killers and radicals and murderers who kill the innocent to stop the advance of freedom. But freedom is happening in Iraq.” I lived under tyranny and lived under his freedom. I don’t see any difference. I think Bush’s freedom and Saddam’s are alike. We were harassed under Saddam as students, and today’s students are harassed under the new “free” rule. ~ Treasure of Baghdad blogger
Photo: Shi'ite worshippers step on 
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