Iraq news for Sunday.
The Associated Press reports that Cyrus Kar ("aspiring Iranian American filmmaker who spent nearly two months in a prison in Iraq without being charged ") has filed suit against US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others and is being represented by the ACLU.
In Baghdad, home of the "crackdown," at least forty people are dead after, Reuters reports, "gumen went on a rampage." In Karbala, the AP reports, "an Iraqi intelligence officer" "was gunned down after his car was intercepted"; a police officer was gunned down in Baghdad; and a police officer was gunned down in Kirkuk. Reuters notes a car bomb in Baghdad ("near two Sunni mosques" that killed at least five people and left nine wounded while "[a] mortar attacked" that resulted in at least three deaths and thirty wounded.
The AFP is reporting that Sunni MP Taiseer al-Mashhadani captors (al-Mashhadani was kidnapped the last Saturday in June) have released two of her seven bodyguards and added to their demands (which include immediate withdrawal of all troops) a list of 25 prisoners held in American prisons that they want released.
This as the Associated Press reports that US authorities want to exhume the body of Abeer Qassim Hamza, the young female (some reports pegged her age at fourteen-years-old) who was allegedly raped and murdered by US military forces. To date only Steven D. Green has been charged in the alleged crimes but the AP notes an unnamed "U.S. official" who states that "several more soldiers will soon be charged."
In related news, Reuters reports that a soon to be released report into allegations that US forces killed 24 innocent civilians and then attempted to cover up the crime will, quoting an unnamed offical, predicting: "The Marines will go through their day of pain."
Dropping back to Saturday, the AP reports that "a former senior Baath Party official and his 5-year-old granddaughter . . . wer gunned down" in Baghdad. Also the AP reports that three US troops were killed on Saturday in Iraq as was an Iraqi translator.
That's from The Third Estate Sunday Review's "Iraq coverage for today through last Monday" which went up a short while ago. (For those who are visiting the site, I'm part of that website. In addition to the six of us, others worked on the above as well but I'm rushing this entry. It's the usual crowd minus the two on vacation.) [Added: Credit is listed as follows: "The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and me, Jim; Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; and Wally of The Daily Jot.]
From this morning's New York Times, we'll note Robert F. Worth's "U.S. Military Braces for Flurry of Criminal Cases in Iraq:"
No American serviceman has been executed since 1961. But in the past month, new cases in Iraq have led to charges against 12 American servicemen who may face the death penalty in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians.
[. . .]
As investigators complete their work, military officials say, the total of American servicemen charged with capital crimes in the new cases could grow substantially, perhaps exceeding the total of at least 16 other marines and soldiers charged with murdering Iraqis throughout the first three years of the war.
Some military officials and experts say the new crop of cases appears to arise from a confluence of two factors: an increasingly chaotic and violent war with no clear end in sight, and a newly vigilant attitude among American commanders about civilian deaths.
At least five separate incidents involving the deaths of Iraqis are under investigation, setting off the greatest outcry against American military actions since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. By far the best known of the cases is the one in Haditha, where marines are being investigated in the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in November. No charges have been filed in that case, but some say news of the incident may have helped bring some later cases to light.
I don't have the time (this is a fifteen minute break and it's almost over) to tell you how stupid Dexy is today in full detail. Here's the short story of this morning's "Among the Ghosts: Heroes and Grand Plans." Dexy finally visits a graveyard in Iraq and it's a British graveyard. (Okay, so now he's having some fish and chips with his Big Macs but he's still unaware he's in Iraq or just not too interested.)
Apparently our sob sister of the war-set has recast himself, check out his strong identification with Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell -- someone break it to Dexy that Bell was an archaeologist, not a stenographer or reporter. Someone with a lot of patience might also want to explain that "Miss Bell" comes off a lot like "Miss Daisy" (as in the Driving . . .) and there's a reason for that. Where he sees "creation" coming to an empty land, others see a densely populated area being cut up and divided to suit foreign powers (and, no, they don't all see it as a good thing -- though it's easy to understand why Dexy does). Striving to be the "Miss Bell" of this century but coming off like the paper's very own Adela Quested, Dexter Filkins continues to be the easiest (and dirtiest) joke at the paper of record.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com. We're still working on the latest edition -- during the next break (unless I grab a shower to wake up), I'll post Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts.
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the third estate sunday review
