Monday, August 05, 2013

The violence in Iraq and the tehcniques brought back to the US

In Iraq, since the start of the illegal war, the violence never ends.  National Iraqi News Agency reports a Mosul roadside bombing killed 4 Iraqi soldiers, 1 contractor was shot dead in Mosul, 1 "power genartor's owner and his son were killed by gunmen with silenceer in the early morning today [. . .] in Al-Jaarh area south of Baghdad" and the same assailants then shot dead another person, and late last night a 13-year-old boy was kidnapped outside his Kirkuk home. All Iraq News notes a Mosul bombing claimed the life of 1 police officer.


Ariel Ben Solomon (Jerusalem Post) offers a take on the increased violence in Iraq:

 Two of Iraq’s most prominent Shi’ite leaders, Moqtada al-Sadr and Ammar al- Hakim, called on Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki to resign because of his lack of action in the midst of non-stop bombings and security lapses, according to a report on Wednesday in the London based daily Asharq Al-Awsat.
A week ago, 500 al-Qaida-affiliated prisoners escaped from Abu Ghraib and Taji prisons. Iraq is in the headlines almost every day as another bombing or attack takes a heavy death toll in the sectarian war between the ruling – and majority – Shi’ites and the Sunnis. The security situation has continued to deteriorate, especially since US forces completed its withdrawal from Iraq at the end of 2011. The US eventually was able to keep a lid on the violence by drastically increasing its military presence and by paying off various tribes.

Nazem Dabbagh is the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's envoy in Iran.  PUK is one of the two dominant political parties in the KRG.  Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is the head of the PUK.  Panorama AM speaks with Dabbagh who offers this on the violence:



There are numerous reasons for the recent insecurities in Iraq. One of them is related to the political problems of this country. You see, political competitions in Iraq are not yet correctly solved and different groups have not learnt that they should not sacrifice national interests for their personal and party interests. The existing differences and rifts between the Iraqi groups and officials have led to problems in maintaining security. Therefore, in my opinion, lack of unity between the security forces in Iraq is one of the important issues in this regard. Unfortunately, the political factions and competitions have impacted the security forces and partisanship has had negative effects on the situation of Iraq’s intelligence organizations. Furthermore, the crisis in Syria has also impacted the security in this country. Therefore, the recent bombings are nothing new and it is only the volume that has increased.

On the violence, last night, we noted:

 In Baghdad, Ayad al-Tamimi (Al Mada) reports trenches are being dug in the Green Zone around Saddam Hussein's former palace and other buildings to protect them and their inhabitants, that security measures are so huge that those living in the Green Zone are assuming it's just not safe to leave the Green Zone.  In addition, Iraqis are complaining as more money goes to secure the Green Zone while everyone else lives it at huge risk. Another thing that is taking place is mass arrests.  NINA notes 183 people arrested in Baghdad alone today.  For those not paying attention, mass arrests are among the reasons for the ongoing protests.

NINA reports today that over 300 people have been arrested in Baghdad in the last 24 hours.  These arbitrary arrests -- usually targeting Sunnis -- do little to ease tensions and most likely will only increase the tension. 

Meanwhile All Iraq News reports, "The US embassy in Baghdad and its Consulates in the IRaqi prvoinces resumed its activities on Monday after it was suspended on last Sunday for security concerns."  The US State Dept issued the following late yesterday:


 Press Statement

Jen Psaki
Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
August 4, 2013
Given that a number of our embassies and consulates were going to be closed in accordance with local custom and practice for the bulk of the week for the Eid celebration at the end of Ramadan, and out of an abundance of caution, we've decided to extend the closure of several embassies and consulates including a small number of additional posts.
This is not an indication of a new threat stream, merely an indication of our commitment to exercise caution and take appropriate steps to protect our employees including local employees and visitors to our facilities.
Posts in Abu Dhabi, Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Dhahran, Jeddah, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait, Manama, Muscat, Sanaa, Tripoli, Antananarivo, Bujumbura, Djibouti, Khartoum, Kigali, and Port Louis are instructed to close for normal operations Monday, August 5 through Saturday, August 10.
The following posts that are normally open on Sunday, but were closed on Sunday, August 4, are authorized to reopen for normal operations on August 5: Dhaka, Algiers, Nouakchott, Kabul, Herat, Mazar el Sharif, Baghdad, Basrah, and Erbil.

Alsumaria reports a protest today in Kirkuk which brought "dozens" of people into the streets of Taza and coordinator Abbas Mardan stated the high unemployment  was among the reasons they were protesting.

Iraq has seen ongoing protests since December 21st.  Maybe the US should be seeing those as well?  Peter Van Buren (Middle East Online) notes that techniques the US used in Iraq and Afghanistan are now being used within the US:

Even before the [Bradley] Manning trial began, the emerging look of that new America was coming into view. In recent years, weapons, tactics, and techniques developed in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the war on terror have begun arriving in “the homeland.”
Consider, for instance, the rise of the warrior cop, of increasingly up-armored police departments across the country often filled with former military personnel encouraged to use the sort of rough tactics they once wielded in combat zones. Supporting them are the kinds of weaponry that once would have been inconceivable in police departments, including armored vehicles, typically bought with Department of Homeland Security grants. Recently, the director of the FBI informed a Senate committee that the Bureau was deploying its first drones over the United States. Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security and already flying an expanding fleet of Predator drones, the very ones used in America’s war zones, is eager to arm them with “non-lethal” weaponry to “immobilize targets of interest.”
Above all, surveillance technology has been coming home from our distant war zones. The National Security Agency (NSA), for instance, pioneered the use of cell phones to track potential enemy movements in Iraq and Afghanistan. The NSA did this in one of several ways. With the aim of remotely turning on cell phones as audio monitoring or GPS devices, rogue signals could be sent out through an existing network, or NSA software could be implanted on phones disguised as downloads of porn or games.
Using fake cell phone towers that actually intercept phone signals en route to real towers, the U.S. could harvest hardware information in Iraq and Afghanistan that would forever label a phone and allow the NSA to always uniquely identify it, even if the SIM card was changed. The fake cell towers also allowed the NSA to gather precise location data for the phone, vacuum up metadata, and monitor what was being said.
At one point, more than 100 NSA teams had been scouring Iraq for snippets of electronic data that might be useful to military planners. The agency’s director, General Keith Alexander, changed that: he devised a strategy called Real Time Regional Gateway to grab every Iraqi text, phone call, email, and social media interaction. “Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ ” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official. “Collect it all, tag it, store it, and whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”
Sound familiar, Mr. [Ed] Snowden [NSA whistle-blower]?

These tactics 'come home' because they aren't called out when they're used elsewhere.  So, for example, the cowardice of The Nation magazine on the issue of counter-insurgency led to silence.  They should have been calling out its use in Iraq.  The magazine certainly called out counter-insurgency in the past.  But it was silent as Iraqis were subjected to this terrorism -- as they still are.  And what's the result, what's the end product?

Counter-insurgency rushes throughout the US.  From Lesley Stahl's 60 Minutes report:

In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our soldiers have been waging what's known as counterinsurgency. They're supposed to be both warriors and community builders, going village to village driving out insurgents while winning the hearts and minds of the population. But counterinsurgency has had mixed results - at best. We met a Green Beret who is finding out -- in his job as a police officer -- that the strategy might actually have a better chance of working, right here at home, in the USA.
Call him and his fellow officers counterinsurgency cops! As we first reported in May, they're not fighting al Qaeda or the Taliban, but street gangs and drug dealers in one of the most crime ridden cities in New England.



On this week's Law and Disorder Radio,  an hour long program that airs Monday mornings at 9:00 a.m. EST on WBAI and around the country throughout the week, hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) topics addressed include Michael Ratner weighing in on the court-martial verdict on Bradley Manning, Jules Lobel joins the hosts to discuss the ongoing hunger strike at Pelican Bay Prison and a broadcast of economics professor Michael Zweig addressing the topic of the working class at the Left Forum.  Co-host Michael Smith posted "The Roots of Academic Freedom" over the weekend and co-host Heidi Boghosian's new book Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power and Public Resistance is in bookstores Tuesday.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.



ariel ben solomon
  wbai
law and disorder radio
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michael ratner




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