News of the Day for Monday, April 5, 2010

Since Whisker appears to be disconnected from the AllThing, I figured I'd step in with as much of an update as I can do today. Sorry about yesterday, I didn't get back to civilization myself until late in the day. -- C

Reported Security Incidents

Baghdad

Death toll in yesterday's car bomb attacks near diplomatic missions stands at 42. The precise motive for attacks that appear to have been directed against the Iranian, German and Syrian diplomatic missions is unclear; it may largely have been an attempt to discredit the Maliki government. In any event, analysts are concerned about more violence as bargaining continues over formation of a new government.

Mosul

Police find the body of a man dead of gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

A man is killed in a drive-by shooting on Sunday night.

Basra

IED attack on a joint patrol of Iraqi police and U.S. forces kills 2 Iraqi policemen. VoI says U.S. forces routinely join Iraqis in patrolling near the Iranian border. And I'll bet you thought they had withdrawn to bases. Nope.

Ramadi

Body of a police man, dead of gunshot wounds, is found in a farm field. His brother commits suicide on hearing the news.

Other News of the Day

VP Adel Abdul-Mahdi is in Turkey for talks. It is unclear what role Abdul-Mahdi, a leader of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, will have if and when a new government is formed, or what the role and influence will be of Kurdistan. Hence it seems to me unclear what, if anything, Abdul-Mahdi can achieve at this time. -- C

And indeed, Tom Hundley wonders whether any of the deals already made by the government government, notably oil contracts, can survive the transition. Excerpt:

After a spectacularly successful auction of drilling rights last December, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government spent the first few months of this year putting the finishing touches on 10 separate deals that, if implemented successfully, could see Iraq challenging Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading producer within the decade.

By any measure, these deals were the singular accomplishment of Maliki’s tenure. Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani earned the respect of the international oil community for driving a very hard bargain and delivering a deal that should quickly put his nation on the path to prosperity.

But in Iraq’s fevered political climate, no deal makes everyone happy, and the oil contracts could easily become a casualty as Iyad Allawi, the declared winner in last month’s election, begins the messy process of stitching together a governing coalition.

Afghanistan Update

British soldier killed Sunday near FOB Zeebrugge, Helmand Province, while on foot patrol.

Times of London makes a very disturbing report. This is going to be a real test of the commitment of the U.S. military to integrity and accountability, which has been sadly lacking regarding the treatment of civilians in both wars. NATO's response so far is not at all encouraging. -- C. Excerpt:

US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times. Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.

The claims were made as NATO admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night. It had initially claimed that the women had been dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies. “Despite earlier reports we have determined that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale, a NATO spokesman. The coalition continued to deny that there had been a cover-up and said that its legal investigation, which is ongoing, had found no evidence of inappropriate conduct.


The Kabul headquarters of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces, claimed originally that the women had been “tied up, gagged and killed”. A senior Afghan official involved in a government investigation told The Times: “I think the special forces lied to McChrystal.”

I recommend Glenn Greenwald's rant about corporate media coverage of this atrocity. Money quote:

Starkey describes some of the understandable reasons so many reporters do nothing more than regurgitate officials claims: resource constraints, organizations limits, dangers of traveling around, and the "embed culture." But he also recounts how NATO tries to intimidate, censor and punish any reporters like him who report adversely on official claims. Illustratively, in response to Starkey's March 13 article detailing what really happened at Paktia and the cover-up that ensued, NATO issued a formal statement singling him out and accusing him of publishing an article that was "categorically false." As recently as that mid-March statement, NATO was still claiming -- falsely -- that the women in Paktia were killed prior to the arrival of American troops, and they were impugning the integrity of the reporter (Starkey) who was proving otherwise.

I expect the perpetrators will get promotions rather than courts martial. We shall see. -- C

Anand Gopal reports for The Nation: "In its attempt to stamp out the growing Taliban insurgency and Al Qaeda, the US military has been arresting suspects and sending them to one of a number of secret detention areas on military bases, often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families. These night raids have become even more feared and hated in Afghanistan than coalition airstrikes. The raids and detentions, little known or understood outside the Pashtun villages, have been turning Afghans against the very forces many of them greeted as liberators just a few years ago." (What the hell are we doing there again? What is the purpose of this enterprise? -- C)

Update: We have at least one regular commenter who might want to read this:

Yesterday, the libertarian Cato Institute hosted a panel discussion on conservatism and the war in Afghanistan with Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-TN). . . .

ROHRABACHER: Well, now that we know that it cost a trillion dollars and all of these years and all of these lives and all of this blood, uh, I don’t know many…

NORQUIST: Looking for a number. Two-thirds? One-third?

ROHRABACHER: I, I can’t. All I can say is the people, everybody I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now.

NORQUIST: That’s 100 percent.

Norquist then turned to McClintock, asking “what percentage”:

NORQUIST: Of Republicans in Congress, who would agree with the general analysis here that it was a mistake and/or we should go in.

MCCLINTOCK: I think everyone would agree Iraq was a mistake.

NORQUIST: Two hundred percents. Ok, we’re going to average these.

MCCLINTOCK: And, you know, again, I think virtually everyone would agree going into Afghanistan the way we did was a mistake. How many share my, my cynicism over this idea of a resolution of force, which I can’t find anywhere in the Constitution. And how many believe that in those rare cases where we go in, we put all of our resources behind our soldiers, I would say certainly more than half of the Republican caucus probably believe that.