Photo: Iraqis examine bags with human remains found in southern Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007. Several decomposed bodies were unearthed Saturday in a mass grave in southern Baghdad's mostly Sunni Dora neighborhood, Iraqi police and witnesses said. (AP Photo/Loay Hameed)
REPORTS – LIFE IN IRAQ
Saturday: 68 Iraqis Killed, 8 Wounded
Remains of 30 decayed bodies found in southern Baghdad
The remains of about 30 decayed bodies were found in different places inside houses under construction, police said on Saturday. "Members from the Hor Rajab Awakening Council in al-Dora, southern Baghdad, found the remains of nearly 30 decayed bodies on Saturday," security sources told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Al-Dora, a suburb in southern Baghdad, is one of the hot spots in the Iraqi capital that came under the control of militant armed groups believed to belong to the al-Qaeda Organization in Iraq. The predominantly Sunni area where the bodies were found has many plantations and overlooks the River Tigris. The U.S. army and Iraqi forces waged several operations in a bid to purge the area of gunmen. A policeman from al-Dora told VOI "the bodies included women and children," adding the police expect to have more corpses in other places." The U.S. army had early this month announced that its soldiers found nearly 29 bodies near Lake al-Tharthar in the western Iraq province of al-Anbar. Before al-Tharthar incident the U.S. army said it had found 17 bodies in the area of al-Hahimiyat, northeast of Baghdad. [Other reports say that these are recent deaths. – dancewater]
Number of children dying higher than when the country was under sanctions
Child mortality in Iraq has spiralled because of the tense security situation, deteriorating health services and lack of medical supplies, say experts. According to a report released in May 2007 by aid agency Save the Children, “Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by a staggering 150 per cent since 1990, more than any other country.” The report, entitled State of the World’s Mothers 2007, said that some 122,000 Iraqi children - the equivalent of one in eight - died in 2005, before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of the deaths were among newborn babies in their first month of life. “Even before the latest war, Iraqi mothers and children were facing a grave humanitarian crisis caused by years of repression, conflict and external sanctions,” said the report. “Since 2003, electricity shortages, insufficient clean water, deteriorating health services and soaring inflation have worsened already difficult living conditions.” The study listed pneumonia and diarrhoea as major killers of children in Iraq, together accounting for over 30 per cent of child deaths. “Conservative estimates place increases in infant mortality following the 2003 invasion of Iraq at 37 per cent,” it said.
For Kurds, Iraq is a distant memory
In Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region the official line is clear: there is no question of declaring independence. But in the regional capital Arbil, Baghdad seems more distant each passing day. Bank notes, except where replaced by the US dollar, are the last refuge of the Iraqi flag. Everywhere else in this region of four million people, spared the violence which has ravaged the rest of Iraq, it is the Kurdish tricolour -- green, white and red -- which flies. Not a single road sign is in Arabic. "It is simple, for my students Iraq does not exist," says Karim Kamar, professor in French at Salaheddin University. "To feel part of a country, its language should be spoken. However Arabic is no longer even taught. Or if it is, then as a foreign language -- a little less even than English," says Kamar. "For them Iraq is far away, and associated with bad memories. For the man in the street, it is a neighbour one must get along with because it could turn malicious. That's all. Their country is here."
REPORTS – IRAQI MILITIAS, POLITICIANS, POWER BROKERS
Sadrist leader dies of wounds
A leader of the Sadrist movement, or Iraqis loyal to Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, died of wounds sustained during his arrest by police forces in Diwaniya last month, a media source from al-Sadr's office in the province said on Saturday. "On Saturday morning, Sadrist leader Abbas al-Gharabawi died in Diwaniya's General Hospital of wounds sustained during his arrest by emergency police forces in Afak city last month," Abu Zeinab al-Karaawi told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). "Al-Gharabawi was receiving treatment in the hospital and was placed under arrest," al-Karaaqi indicated.
U.S. accused of taking sides in Shiite factional fighting
The U.S. is providing “logistic and intelligence assistance” to a rival Shiite faction to weaken the Sadr Movement, a movement’s senior official said. Bahaa al-Araji said the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a leading ally of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, was working to undermine the movement and to provoke its military wing. The Mahdi Army, the movement’s military arm, has vowed to suspend military operations targeting U.S. and Iraqi troops as well as other militia factions. But Araji said the movement, led by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr may not be able to keep its promise with the U.S. siding with one of its major rivals. The Islamic council’s military organization, the Badr Corps militias, is among the best armed and equipped irregular army in Iraq. Maliki’s Dawaa party also has its own militia forces.
Kurdish fury over Oil Minister’s remarks
A war of words is raging between the Kurdish regional government in the north and the oil ministry over whether the Kurds have the right to develop oil fields on their own. The Kurds currently control three provinces – Sulaimaniya, Arbil and Dahouk – and have signed so far seven oil deals for the development of fields in their areas. Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani has denounced the deals, saying they were invalid and illegal. Shahristani warned foreign companies that they will be boycotted by the central government and not allowed to export their output if they went ahead with their deals with the Kurds. Unmoved, the Kurdish regional government countered by saying that Shahristani’s stand was “illegal”. “Shahristani’s statements will not scare foreign firms which have deals with the region,” the official website of the Kurdish government carried a statement as saying. The Kurds say their parliament has passed its own oil and gas law under which they are entitled to develop, export and collect oil revenues.
Ex-officials to face trial for Iraq militia support
Iraq's former deputy health minister and a former senior ministry official will soon face trial, the Iraqi government said on Saturday, after accusations they helped Shi'ite militiamen fuel sectarian bloodshed. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Hakim Zamili, the one-time deputy minister detained in a raid in February, and another former official from the ministry had been presented before the U.S.-backed Central Criminal Court of Iraq last week. The move "shows the government wants to implement the rule of law for these two persons", Dabbagh said. He denied Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had intervened to get the trial off the ground, as some media reports had suggested. He said the judicial process was advancing independently. U.S. and Iraqi forces launched the raid on the Health Ministry in Baghdad to arrest Zamili on suspicion he had infiltrated rogue members of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's feared Mehdi Army into the ministry and had helped funnel millions of dollars to Shi'ite militiamen. U.S. forces accused the rogue Mehdi units of using ministry resources to launch sectarian attacks and kidnapping. [No news about the Badr brigades or cracking down on them. – dancewater]
REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
POLITICS-US: Seizure of Iranians Failed to Validate Bush Line
The George W. Bush administration's campaign to seize and detain Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials in Iraq, presented by Bush himself last January as a move to break up an alleged Iranian arms smuggling operation in Iraq, appears to have run its course without having been able to link a single Iranian to any such operation. Despite administration rhetoric suggesting that the U.S. military had solid intelligence on which to base a campaign to break up Iranian-sponsored networks supplying armour-piercing weapons, what is now known about the kidnapping operations indicates that the actual purpose was to obtain some evidence from interrogations that would support the administration's line that the IRGC's elite Quds Force is involved in assisting Shiite forces militarily. None of the six Iranians now held by the U.S. military, however, has provided any evidence for the administration's case despite many months of very tough interrogation usually employed on "high value" detainees. Wayne White, former deputy director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia, told IPS he believes the administration badly wanted to get information from the Iranian detainees that they could use to make their case, but has been unable to do so. "I'm convinced that they haven't gotten anything out of them," he said in an interview. "They haven't come up with anything they can shop around."
Drop in Iran-related attacks in Iraq a puzzle: officials
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other senior defense officials have said it is too soon to judge the significance of the three-month decline in the use of explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) and other Iranian made weapons. But a deputy corps commander in Iraq, Major General James Simmons, said Thursday that Iran appears to be living up to a commitment to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki to stop the flow of the weapons into the country. [It stops being “puzzling” once you realize it was all a pack of lies. – dancewater]
A Marine captain, in what he described as the “C-Y-A part” of his briefing, ordered dozens of men in his company to get their story straight in case investigators asked questions about a 2006 firefight that might have left Iraqi women and children dead in the crossfire. “Earlier up on the roof, there was like five women and little girls, OK? We f---ed that area up,” Capt. Shane Cote, 35, told his Marines, after a day that included at least nine firefights in 14 hours. “If we did any collateral damage, there will be people here asking. Your answer, for the sake of yourselves — and me — better be you were f---ing shooting at muzzle flashes.” His Marines grunted out their affirmatives, “ooh-rahs” all around. They got it. One of them even got it on tape. A secret recording of the briefing (Warning: Explicit language), obtained by Marine Corps Times, was made by a sergeant who believes the captain was ordering his men to lie about the shooting.
HISTORY
Tony Blair says he wanted Iraq war
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he still believes invading Iraq was the right decision at the right time, a new documentary shows. Blair confirms he did not try to convince U.S. President George Bush to seek a diplomatic rather than a military route to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, The Times of London reported Saturday. In the new BBC documentary "The Blair Years," the former prime minister concedes he ignored anti-war arguments from his aides and ministers because he believed Bush was taking the right course of action. "It was what I believed in, and I still do believe it," he told the BBC.
COMMENTARY
Who's the enemy?
Who is the enemy? Who, exactly, are we fighting in Iraq? Why are we there? And what's our objective? Nearly five years into the war, the answers to basic questions like these ought to be obvious. In the Alice in Wonderland-like wilderness of mirrors that is Iraq, though, they're anything but. We aren't fighting the Sunnis. Not any more, anyway. Virtually the entire Sunni establishment, from the moderate Muslim Brotherhood-linked Iraqi Islamic Party (which has been part of every Iraqi government since 2003) to the Anbar tribal alliance (which has been begging for U.S. support since 2004 and only recently got it) is either actively cooperating with the American military or sullenly tolerating what it hopes will be a receding occupation. Across Sunni-dominated parts of Iraq, the United States is helping to build army and police units as well as neighborhood patrols -- the Pentagon calls them "concerned citizens" -- out of former resistance fighters, with the blessing of tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala, and Salahuddin provinces, parts of Baghdad, and areas to the south of the capital. We have met the enemy, and -- surprise! -- they are friends or, if not that, at least not active enemies. Attacks on U.S. forces in Sunni-dominated areas, including the once-violent hot-bed city of Ramadi, Anbar's capital, have fallen dramatically.
Among the hard-core Sunni resistance, there is also significant movement toward a political accord -- if the United States were willing to accept it. Twenty-two Iraqi insurgent groups announced the creation of a united front, under the leadership of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former top Baath party official of the Saddam era, and they have opened talks with Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia who was Iraq's first post-Saddam prime minister.
We aren't fighting the Shia. The Shia merchant class and elite, organized into the mostly pro-Iranian Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and the Islamic Dawa party, are part of the Iraqi government that the United States created and supports -- and whose army and police are armed and trained by the United States. The far more popular forces of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army aren't the enemy either. In late August, Sadr declared a ceasefire, ordering his militia to stand down; and, since then, attacks on U.S. forces in Shia-dominated areas of Iraq have fallen off very sharply, too. Though recent, provocative attacks by U.S. troops, in conjunction with Iraqi forces, on Sadr strongholds in Baghdad, Diwaniya, and Karbala have caused Sadr to threaten to cancel the ceasefire order, and though intra-Shia fighting is still occurring in many parts of southern Iraq, there is no Shia enemy that justifies a continued American presence in Iraq, either.
And we certainly aren't fighting the Kurds. For decades, the Kurds have been America's (and Israel's) closest allies in Iraq. Since 2003, the three Kurdish-dominated provinces have been relatively peaceful. We're not exactly fighting Al Qaeda any more either. Despite President Bush's near-frantic efforts to portray the war in Iraq as a last-ditch, Alamo-like stand against Osama bin Laden's army, U.S. commanders on the ground in Iraq are having a hard time finding pockets of Al Qaeda to attack these days, though the group still has the power to conduct deadly attacks now and then.
RESISTANCE
His son killed in Iraq, dad takes on recruitment of Hispanics
Over his objections, his son joined the army and died in Iraq in 2003. Now Fernando Suarez is spearheading a crusade to stop the recruitment of young, financially vulnerable Hispanics into the US military. "We have to stop military recruiters from harassing these boys at school, and if any of them want to sign up, they should do so out of their own free will, not because of economic and psychological pressures or even lies," Suarez told AFP. Hailing from Tijuana, Mexico, 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of here, Suarez got together with school teachers, student unions and veterans groups to create the Aztec Warrior Project to raise awareness among young Hispanic and to take on the Pentagon.
Camilo Mejia and Martin Smith on Soldiers Against the War
Camilo Mejia, Iraq veteran and Chair of “Iraq Veterans Against the War” (IVAW), gave a workshop with Martin Smith (Midwest Coordinator of IVAW) on “Soldiers Against the War from Vietnam to Iraq.”
Quote of the day: "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." - Elie Wiesel - (1928- ) Writer, Nobel Peace Prize winner 1986
Photo: Iraqis examine bags with human remains found in southern 
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