Saturday, July 18, 2009

Do you like a good yarn?

IRAQ

The press hopes you do. They hope you love a good yarn so much that you're not going to ask any questions, utilize common sense or, heaven forbid, think for yourselves.

Which explains the latest wave of Operation Happy Talk. Iraqi forces, all by themselves, secured Iraq and Iraqis today. Mike Tharp (McClatchy Newspapers) is blabbering away faster than Rona Barrett declaring a psychic is running ABC. It's "their first big test," Tharp gushes, and they "passed" -- not only did they pass, they did so "with flying colors"! And he's not done yet. Please. He quotes Maj Gen Qaasim Atta -- don't you love it when even the publicity hacks are given military titles? -- declaring, "This is the first 100 percent Iraqi security plan to protect the pilgrims. The forces are all Iraqis, even the helicopters above."

Oh, Tharp, if you want to play idiot, do so, but don't insult the rest of us. At his own outlet, Mohammed al Dulaimy already reported that US helicopters -- two of them -- were hovering over Baghdad. Well, ignore the two in Baghdad -- and pretend other US helicopters haven't been flying all over Iraq -- and you can swallow the spin, you can splash in the latest wave of Operation Happy Talk. Why, it's practically purple fingers! It's 2005 all over again!

Reality is that Baghdad's rarely the point of attack. Reality is that the US forces, stepping away from Iraq cities, have been doing more work along the route of the pilgrims. Baghdad's the destination. But the pilgrims don't fly in to Baghad International, step onto the tarmac and rush to the shrine. That's not how it works. But if you're stupid enough, if you're as stupid as the press hopes you are, you will be grinning and swearing, "Mission accomplished!"

Yes, with a little help from the press, you too can be as stupid as George W. Bush.

And they hope you're as intellectually non-curious as George. That would allow you to stop long before paragraph thirteen of Tharp's eighteen paragraph article where he sneaks in "two US choppers also provided surveillance on Thursday." Blink and you know you missed it, lose your love when you say the word "mine."

The crackdown isn't explored. The crackdown includes curfews and a ban on traffic and that's mentioned (at the end, of course) and we get someone presented as something of a smart ass complaining but apparently actually interviewing pilgrims wasn't on the agenda. Apparently, taking dictation from the Iraqi spokesmodels was so much more important.

We're focusing on Tharp but Timothy Williams has a piece of garbage that'll run in tomorrow's New York Times and you can pick off any liar at basically any outlet.

In fairness to the press, it should be noted that this spin passed as reports should be part of a process wherein the coming days would explore what really happened. That still wouldn't justify relying solely on government spokesmodels, nor would it justify presenting unchecked spin as fact. But it doesn't matter because this won't be reported on. This won't be followed up on. And the point was always to get that splash of Operation Happy Talk headlines into the news cycle and never explore it. They never went back and addressed the problems in the January 31st elections, let alone in the 2005. It's all hype and hot air.

And they can't even get their hype right. Tharp insists no pilgrims died from Thursday to today. Really? That would be a first in Iraq or anywhere. If people injured by bombings, if every single one of them. Tharps insists 48 people were wounded since Thursday) was injured in a bombing and not one later died on the way to the hospital or in the hospital. If that happened to three days worth of bombing victims, it would certainly be a first. AP reports, "The event was a relative success, despite bombings that killed several people and injured dozens."

It's really something to watch as over 130,000 US forces are stripped of any credit because the press wants to paint Iraq as 'ready.' The press seems a little bit like a female singer who's sleeping with her guitarist and, therefore, eager to inflate his credit and build him up. So she goes around insisting he's really, really talented and really the brains behind every recording and no one would listen if he wasn't there. Reality, he's just the guitarist.

In the real world, the assualt on the Sahwa ("Awakenings," "Sons Of Iraq") continues. BBC reports that Naeem Saleh al-Halbusi was injured in a bombing near Falluja attack targeting the Sahwa leader and wounding him and killing his son and two bodyguards. AP covers that bombing and notes one outside Falluja which claimed the lives of 2 children and left eight more injured.
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) notes a Baghdad roadside bombing which injured two police officers and a Mosul roadside bombing which injured two Iraqi soldiers. Reuters notes a Ramadi roadside bombing which injured one Iraqi soldier and a Mosul roadside bombing which injured one Iraqi police officer. Dropping back to yesterday, the US military reports 1 "Iraq local national was killed and another was injured during an accident involving a US military vehicle" in Basra.

The US military announced today:

DIYALA, Iraq – Iraqi Security Forces delivered rice, flour, sugar and oil to citizens in Baqubah with the help of U.S. Forces. Video scenes include workers unloading five trucks of goods, and citizens lining up and receiving the products.DVIDSHUB.net has a one-minute package about the event as well as edited B-Roll and Interviews.
Direct link to the package:
http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=video/video_show.php&id=64265Direct link to interviews: http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=video/video_show.php&id=64267Direct link to B-Roll: http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=video/video_show.php&id=64266
For access to the video, contact the Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System by calling 1-877-DVIDS-247 or visit the Web site at www.DVIDSHUB.net

Yeah, that's right. Iraqi security forces couldn't even go into Baquba on their own. They came bearing gifts but still needed to be accompanied by US forces. But keep believeing the latest waves of Operation Happy Talk, the beautiful lie where Iraqi forces, all by themselves, ensured no pilgrim died.

The thing about waves of Operation Happy Talk? They always crash into reality. Alsumaria reports of today's pilgrimage: "One citizen was killed and tens pilgrims were wounded as they were heading to Imam Moussa Al Kazem shrine (AS) due to roadside bomb explosions in Zaafaraniya, New Baghdad, Al Saydiya and Al Dora region." So even the fact-free hype falls apart upon examination. And Mike Tharp, Timothy Williams and assorted others? As Gladys once sang, "Now your head's little lower and you walk a little slower and you don't seem so proud." (Ashford & Simpson's "Didn't You Know You'd Have To Cry Sometime?")

Photo credit is: "Staff Sgt. Alan Cable, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, (left), and 1st Lt. Adnan Ganim, 55th Iraqi Army Brigade, shake hands before returning to work at Joint Security Station Zubaida, south of Baghdad, July 15. Photo by Sgt. Mary Phillips, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team."


In exactly seven days, the KRG holds elections. You don't hear a lot about that, do you? Compare it to the January 31st provincial elections which the KRG sat out (this is their provincial and presidential elections comined). Nada Bakri (Washington Post) reports from Sulaymaniyah on one candidate, Hallo Rasch:

Rasch is running as an independent against the incumbent, Massoud Barzani, who was elected president of Iraqi Kurdistan in 2005. The pragmatic and cautious Barzani has been at the center of Kurdish politics -- in the region, in the rest of Iraq and in the broader Kurdish homeland -- since succeeding his father, a legendary guerrilla leader, as head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party more than 30 years ago.
Rasch's uphill candidacy is playing out in a region simultaneously considered the most democratic in Iraq and not all that democratic. Two main parties -- Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, headed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani -- have for years exercised a stranglehold on the region, dividing between them politics, patronage, investments and business deals.


As noted last night, a helicopter crashed in Iraq. CNN reports it was an "Xe" (Blackwater) helicopter and that two employees died and another two were wounded.

In other news, NPR's gone to the dogs.

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



mcclatchy newspapers
mohammed al dulaimy
the washington post

The empty bread basket

First up, community business. Ann's started her own site, Ann's Mega Dub. She came up with the title to nod to her husband's site (and he helped some on the title). I did add it to the links last night but I'd already finished filling in for Elaine when Ann called and said she was going to start it. Ann filled in for Ruth for the month of June and just finished filling in for Mike last night.

Yesterday the US military announced 3 deaths. Today the Dept of Defense released the following:

The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died July16 in Basra of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit using indirect fire.

Killed were:

Spc. Daniel P. Drevnick, 22, of Woodbury, Minn.;

Spc. James D. Wertish, 20, of Olivia, Minn.; and

Spc. Carlos E. Wilcox IV, 27, of Cottage Grove, Minn.

All three soldiers were assigned to the 34th Military Police Company, 34th Infantry Division, Minnesota Army National Guard, Stillwater, Minn.

For more information on these soldiers, media may contact the Minnesota Army National Guard Public Affairs Office at 651-282-4410.


Hank Long (Woodbury Bulletin) quotes Minnesota National Guard Adjudant General Larry Shellito declaring, "We mourn the loss of these three soldiers; they were truly part of our National Guard family. We will never forget the dedication, loyalty and bravery shown by these soldiers for the United States of America and the state of Minnesota. I ask that you keep these soldiers, their families and loved ones in your thoughts and prayers now and forever."
City Basra police chief Maj Gen Adil Daham, AP states that a supect has been arrested in the attack.

Meanwhile Mike Tharp explores the dwindling farming in Iraq in "Once World's bread basket, Iraq now a farming basket case" (McClatchy Newspapers) and we'll note this section:

Just ask Naji Habeeb, 85. His family has been growing rice in this village 135 miles southeast of Baghdad for generations. Thin green shoots stick out of the flat paddies, shin-deep in brown water.
The Iraqi government, he claims, still owes him half of what he's due from last year's crop. He turned it in months ago and still hasn't been paid. "Shall I suck my fingers and eat like a baby?" he shouted. "The Ministry (of Agriculture) will never know my family is hungry!"
Habeeb's family members have farmed the 538-square-foot plot next to a branch of the Euphrates River the same way for centuries. Except today they till with tractors, run water pumps with gasoline and spread artificial fertilizer. They plant seedlings by hand in June and July, irrigate and keep bugs and disease away in the summer heat, harvest by hand in October.


Some may not remember this, maybe they didn't screeching e-mails from the spokespeople a paper quoted, but the US military, years ago, was pimping the "We are teaching Iraqis how to farm! They will have date farms! They will have . . ." They have nothing and the point back then made here was that your problems were irrigation and pollution, that the irrigation and the rivers needed to be addressed. We didn't touch on the issue of damns, my mistake. But the military talking point was that Iraq would be a breadbasket again and it would be thanks to the US military and blah, blah, blah. To the one who wrote repeatedly (because apparently that's what you do when you serve in the spin wing of the military), I'm still not eating my words. How 'bout you?

What's going on currently was all completely predictable and we noted what was happening and what would happen. This isn't the worst of it, this isn't the bottom. And it's amazing that approximately three years ago the US military lied big time and the New York Times was happy to run with it. They didn't do journalism, journalism would have been questioning those laughable assertions. And all this time later, they still avoid returning to that article, they still avoid going after that spin that they swallowed and repeated -- repeated and presented as fact when it never was.

We'll note this from Sherwood Ross' "BUSH, CHENEY, TOLD LAWYERS TO GIVE THEM CRIMINAL ADVICE" (Veterans Today):

Torture instigators George Bush and Dick Cheney should not be allowed to evade prosecution on grounds they acted in good faith on their lawyers’ advice because they told their lawyers what advice to give. "Could Al Capone or ‘Lucky’ Luciana receive immunity for acting in accordance with the advice of counsel when they told counsel what to advise?" asks Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.
"(Vice-President) Cheney and (President) Bush knew that they were ordering violations of law," Velvel points out. "The fact that they were doing so, and were well aware they were doing so, was one of the reasons why they, like a significant number of CIA officials who knew the same, demanded that lawyers produce legal cover for them in the form of Office of Legal Counsel memos authored by the likes of (John) Yoo and (Steven) Bradbury."
Lower level CIA and military personnel that did not read the supposedly exculpatory memos, Velvel said, also cannot claim reliance on legal counsel because "they had to know that torture was forbidden no matter what some lawyers said. You could not grow up in America and not know this" any more than a person could claim murder was lawful because some lawyer told him so, Velvel writes.
"People who grew up in America cannot realistically claim that they thought it was lawful to beat people mercilessly, to smash their heads against walls, to kill about one hundred of them apparently, to hang them from ceiling hooks, to make them freeze, to deny them sleep for weeks on end, and so forth," Velvel writes in an essay in his new book "America 2008" from Doukathsan Press.


The following community sites have updated since yesterday morning:



Cedric's Big Mix
MICHELLE HAS PLANS FOR HEALTH CARE
1 hour ago

The Daily Jot
THIS JUST IN! MICHELLE TO RESCUE HEALTH CARE!
1 hour ago

Mikey Likes It!
Mike's back Monday
20 hours ago

Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills)
Ann starts a site, Cronkite passes away, and . . .
21 hours ago

Ann's Mega Dub
Iraq
21 hours ago

Thomas Friedman is a Great Man
Analyzing the circus
22 hours ago

Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude
gordo's got more problems
22 hours ago

SICKOFITRADLZ
Lie Face Melissa Harris Lacewell
22 hours ago

Trina's Kitchen
Fries in the Kitchen
22 hours ago

Ruth's Report
What do you mean 'us,' Missy Comley Beattie?
22 hours ago

Oh Boy It Never Ends
Melissa Harris Lacewell is an idiot
22 hours ago

Like Maria Said Paz
'Poor' Sharon Smith
22 hours ago

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










thomas friedman is a great man






oh boy it never ends

Friday, July 17, 2009

Iraq snapshot

Friday, July 17, 2009.  Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces multiple deaths, at least 40 pilgrims are wounded in Baghdad bombings, US war resister Robin Long speaks, increasing tensions between the north and the central government, and more.
 
This morning the US military announced: "BAGHDAD -- Three Multi-National Division-South Soldiers were killed when Contingency Operating Base Basra was attacked by indirect fire at approximately 9:15 p.m. on July 16. The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of next of kin. The incident is under investigation." The announcement brings the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 4326. Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times) reports, "Shortly after the attack, the Iraqi army gave the U.S. military permission to carry out aerial searches northwest of the airport, the area from where the rockets are thought to have been launched, U.S officials said. Troops chased a car to a house, which they searched. A joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol raided another home. Three Iraqi men were briefly detained, the military said."
 
Violence rocked Iraq as usual today but a lot of it targeted pilgrims.  Mohammed al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) explains the pilgrimage "is expected to fill the streets of Baghdad on Saturday in the first major security challenge for Iraqi military forces" with "a limited curfew" being imposed and "thousands of additional Iraqi soldiers and police officers . . . on the streets".  Alsumaria reports, "While thousands of pilgrims have poured in to Al Kazimiya to mark Imam Kazem Anniversary (AS), citizens are complaining about closing main roads which is usually caused by religious occasion."  Muhanad Mohammed (Reuters) observes, "Despite intensive security, some bombers made it through." Turning to the reported violence today . . .
 
Bombings?
 
Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing which wounded thirteen pilgrims, a Baghdad roadside bombing which wounded eight pilgrims, a Baghdad roadside bombing which wounded five pilgrims, another Baghdad roadside bombing which injured five pilgirms, a Baghdad roadside bombing which injured three pilgrims, a Baghdad roadside bombing which claimed the life of 1 pilgrim and wounded six more, a Baghdad roadside bombing which injured two men, a Falluja roadside bombing which injured nine males who were playing football and a roadside bombing attack on the home of police chief Abdulsalam Khawarm in Anbar Province resulting in the deaths of two of his children and leaving eight more people injured. Reuters notes 1 dead in the Falluja bombing on the football players, a Mosul roadside bombing left two Iraqi soldiers injured and a Shirqat sticky bombing injured one police officer.
 
Shootings?
 
Reuters notes 1 person wounded in a Kirkuk shooting today and, dropping back to yesterday, one wounded in a Kirkuk shooting as well.
 
Today on the second hour of NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, Diane and the Wall St. Journal's Youchi Dreazen, the Washington Post's David Ignatius and Foreign Policy's Moises Naim discussed Iraq.
 
Diane Rehm: Alright and let's turn now to Iraq and the latest on violence there, David?  You had three American soldiers killed Thursday after insurgents fired mortar rounds into a US base in southern Iraq.  You've also got problems with the Kurds.  You've got lots of issues still going on even as the US is planning its pull-out.
 
David Ignatius: This was a week, Diane, that reminded us of the underlying fragility of Iraq.  We've gotten in the habit of not paying much attention to it.  Our troops are pulling back from the cities under the timetable we agreed to with the Iraqis.  And-and, these last weeks we saw in these-these bombings and the political conflicts just how easily Iraq could spin back into a very chaotic situation.  Take the bombings that happened on Wednesday.  By my count, there were about eleven people killed, something like fifty or sixty wounded.  But what was striking was that one of the bombs was in Ramadi -- in the Sunni heartland, the area we thought had been stabilized by our counter-insurgency work. Another bomb was in Sadr City.  Another was right in the heart of Baghdad, in Sadhun Street.  Those latter two were really going after Shi'ites, the first, in Ramadi, was going after Sunnis. More of these bombings are going to again make Iraqis frightened that they can't be secure without militias and then you're back in the sectarian killing game and you're going to start finding fifty bodies -- dead bodies -- every morning in the morgue.
 
Diane Rehm: At twenty-seven [after] the hour you're listening to The Diane Rehm Show.  And what's going on with the Kurds, Youchi?
 
Youchi Dreazen: In many ways, this is the most dangerous aspect of Iraq right now.  You've had recently [June 28th]  a standoff between Kurdish fighters and Iraqi national army fighters.  Last year there was an incident that did not get much attention here in which US drones that were monitoring a similar standoff saw columns of armed Iraqi army soldiers and columns of Kurdish peshmerga racing towards each other.  By the account of everyone who was watching it, bruising for a fight, and they stood down only amidst much mediation by US embassy and military -- as was the case here where there was US mediation.  And what you have is this very thorny issue about what will be the boundaries between Kurdistan, what will be the boundaries between Arab-Iraq?  How will they divide oil? How will they divide Kirkuk?  These issues have been kicked down the road again and again and again.  And now they're at the end of the road.  They have to at some point be resolved.  I think what you've seen is,  when the US invaded, there was a status quo that existed under Saddam that was toppled, there was a Sunni-led status quo.  Then there was a new status quo that was not sustainable where you had fighting between Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds were kind of left off to their own devices in the north.  Now you have a new status quo where the Shia-Sunni tensions are much reduced -- the Arab tensions -- and now their focusing much more again on the Arab-Kurdish tensions that were there under Saddam decades ago.
 
Moises Naim: And the Kurdish prime minister yesterday said that the Kurdish autonomous region was closer to going to war with the central government than ever before, since 2003, since the US invasion.  And that points, as Youchi said, to the tensions about the divisions -- federalism, they're trying to find out what is the divisions of authority, power between a centralized government and a regional government.  And this is a region that is quite different in its governance, in its function, in its economy, in its politics, than the rest of the country.
 
Diane Rehm: And the United States population is certainly concerned as is the Iraqi that what if the violence continues to uptick, gets worse? Do troops reinvigorate, US  troops?  What do you do?
 
David Ignatius: Well for the administration, I think there's a recognition that, as we reduce our military presence there, it is inevitable that violence will increase.  That's accepted.  And it's just a price of our getting out.  The Iraqis want us out, we want to get out.  So some increase in violence, it's understood, will happen.  And the question is: Will the Iraqi forces be strong enough to contain it within acceptable levels? And what's-what's-what's your choke point?  If you're President Obama and you're seeing ten people die a day, well, what do you say?  Suppose it gets up to fifty, what do you - what do you do then?  And that's -- it's-it's grisly.  But that's the kind of decision I fear that the-the Obama administration going to have to make about Iraq over the coming year.
 
Moises Naim: It's very hard to imagine that there's a political environment in the United States that will support a massive increase of troops -- of US troops -- in Iraq.  The-the line their will be crossed if Iran becomes very influential country in Iraq.  If Iranian influence there which it hasn't seemed to be the case but that will be then the-the political base for it. 
 
[. . .]
 
Diane Rehm: To Charlie in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Good morning, you're on the air. 
 
Charlie: Good morning. I'd like to go back to the MidEast a little bit in terms of I think that Iraq is a lost cause.  I think Sadr, Ayatollah Sadr's militia has only stood down under orders from Iran and under realization that the US military would destroy Sadr City.  They will res -- they will resurge and they will take over the south and if -- have this very informal reunion with Iran.  The Sunnis were bought off with US money and viagra pills for their ancient sheiks -- and that's the truth, not a joke. And the Kurds, our most loyal allies, are the largest tribe, as far as I know, on earth without a homeland. And I'm afraid that they -- especially with the oil money -- do not intend to be left behind this time. I think also I'd like one more comment, on the Gaza situation again. [. . .]
 
What about Gaza?  This isn't the Gaza snapshot.  And by bringing that up, Gaza, it's what everyone quickly glommed on after David's initial remarks on Iraq.
 
David Ignatius: Well, I think the -- it's too early for me at least to say that Iraq is a lost cause.  One interesting fact about Iraq is that our greatest potential problem -- which is Iranian influence, Iranian support for extremist militias, like Moqtada Sadr who the caller was referring to, Iran politically is imploding.  That threat, the ability of Iran to destabilize Iraq, is, I think, somewhat reduced, I want to say signifianctly reduced -- becuase of the chaose following the election.  And I think you can generalize that to potential Iranian clients all ove.  Political parties in Iraq that are supported by Iran must be worrying, "Holy smokes our paymaster are in trouble."
 
As noted in Diane's discussion, things are very tense between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government.  Anthony Shadid (Washington Post) reports, "In separate interviews, Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and the region's president, Massoud Barzani, described a stalemate in attempts to resolve long-standing disputes with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's emboldened government.  Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. military in northern Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani said, fighting might have started in the most volatile regions."  Quil Lawrence (NPR's All Things Considered) reported this afternoon on the tensions quoting Barzani, "Whoever wants to get ahead in Iraqi politics does so by criticizing the Kurds."  On territorial disputes and what may have been an attempt by al-Maliki's government to enroach on Kurdish territories June 28th, Lawrence quotes Barzani stating, "Our problem is that we do not believe there is any political will in Baghdad to solve this problem." Gordon Duff (Salem-News) addresses the June 28th confrontation and offers his opinions:
 
News stories reporting on this conflict conveniently omit Kurdish history. Our NATO partner, Turkey, that refused to allow US troops access to Northern Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, has long been an enemy of our Kurdish allies. If Turkey had joined with the US, the military disaster that led to years of conflict might have been averted. Instead, the US depended on Kurdish armies to defeat Saddam in Northern Iraq.         
Reports of Kurdish incursions in and around Kirkuk fail to mention that the Arabs in the region are remnants of Saddam's occupation forces, not residents. The efforts by the Baghdad government to continue control of this Kurdish region is driven by need to control the regions oil revenues and continue to fuel Iraq's massive corruption.
 
January 31st, 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces held provincial elections. The Kurdish region did not take place in those elections. Their elections take place next week on Saturday.  The Economist editorializes on the elections hereUPI notes of the elections, "A quota established by the KRG sets aside 30 percent of the seats for female candidates." In reporting last week, the New York Times offered a very bad dispatch featuring all the US talking points and nothing resembling journalism --  just a concept of "bad Kurds!" which might make a few people feel better but doesn't really inform anyone. And that was their 'big' piece. Jay Garner called it out in a letter to the paper.  Garner is interviewed by The Kurdish Globe today and he notes of the KRG that "
 
Elizabeth Dickinson: With [US Vice President Joe] Biden as the U.S. envoy for reconciliation in Iraq, what priorities should he be pushing for?  

Jay Garner:  No. 1, a referendum on disputed lands, because I don't think you can ever have a stable Iraq as long as you have an unstable Arab-Kurdish border. No. 2, a resolution on the oil law because it's a thorn in everybody's side. No. 3, continue to exert whatever leverage we have on the Iraqi government to get these things done.
Anything that happens here, whether it is Kurds versus Arabs or Shiite versus Sunni -- and those are huge flash points -- is not an Iraqi problem; it's a regional problem. It's huge. It's much greater than Iraq, because if it's Shiite-Sunni you are going to have Iranians on the side of the Shiites and you are going to have the Gulf region on the side of the Sunnis. If it's Arab-Kurdish, you are going to have an ethnic war, and lives will be gone and other countries will get involved because they are going to want to shape how it comes out.
I don't think the [U.S.] administration wants to pull out in 2011, run for the presidency in 2012, and have this whole damned thing blow up on them, you know? So it is good that [U.S. President Barack Obama has] appointed Biden; it's good that he's made a special envoy; and it's good that Biden is drilling in on this. Biden is a guy that has studied a long time. He is more thoughtful about this than the other people, and I think that's a good first step. But you've got to have some leverage to execute that. So whatever leverage we have left, we need to make sure that those flash points are solved before we leave.
 
Garner mentioned the oil law (aka the theft of Iraqi law) and Nouri's sending messages on that today.  Missy Ryan (Reuters) reports that the Oil Ministry's spokesperson Asim Jihad declared today of talk that unions might stop the British Petroleum and China National Petroleum Corporation oil deal (jointly, they were awarded a contract from the puppet government in the oil auction -- that was the only awarded contract from that auction), "The government will protect the companies."  'At all costs' was left implied.
 
Yesterday's snapshot noted the House Veterans Affairs Disability and Memorial Affairs Subcommittee's joint-hearing with the Subcomittee on Health.  Kat covered the hearing last night and noted the discussion on rape victims.  That was the first panel,  Service Women's Action Network's Anuradha Bhagwati, Wounded Warrior Project's Dawn Halfaker and National Association of State Women Veterans Coordinators, Inc and the Texas Veterans Commission's Delilah Washburn.   Grace After Fire's Kayla Williams raised an issue during questioning about suicide rates.  Asked of the number of females, she explained she didn't know that number and then explained that the military is only tracking the suicides for those on active duty and not the number of suicides among veterans.  (Or, at least only releasing the data for those on active duty.)  Something to keep in mind as the Los Angeles Times reports: "About 37% of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have mental health problems, a nearly 50% increase from the last time the prevalence was calculated, according to a new study published today analyzing national Department of Veterans Affairs data. The study, which examined the records of about 289,000 veterans who sought care at the VA between 2002 and 2008, also found higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression."
 
 
Turning to war resistance, last week Robin Long was released from the brig.  Today he spoke on KPFA's The Morning Show "Not for a second do I regret or wish I'd done something different."
 
Philip Malderi: You're listening to The Morning Show on KPFA, I'm Philip Malderi.  I'm joined in the studio by Robin Long. Robin was in the US army.  He enlisted shortly after the Iraq War got under way in June of '03.  He was guaranteed by his recruiter that he wouldn't be sent to Iraq but of course those promises were not exactly fulfilled. In 2005, realizing he had made a mistake, he went to Canada and decided to resist serving in Iraq. Canada ultimately sent him back and he went to a navy brig down in San Diego to serve a year in prison.  And now he's out.  He joins me in the studio.  Robin Long, welcome to KPFA. 
 
Robin Long: Good morning.
 
Philip Malderi: Uh, again why did you decide to join in the first place? Why don't we start there.
 
Robin Long: You said initially I'd joined in June.  I'd actually signed up for the delayed entry program in about February.  You know, I'd always grown up thinking I want to join the army and, you know, a lot of people in my family are in the military and I just thought it was something I would do my whole life and so I signed up for the delayed entry program.  And shortly after we went and invaded Iraq. And at the time I actually thought, you know, this is the right thing to be doing, you know there's connections with al Q-al Qaeda and there's weapons of mass destruction there but by the time June came when I was actually, I was getting ready to go to basic training in October, but around June, I was talking to my recruiter and said, "Hey, I have-have some moral qualms with what's going on over there." And he, uh, at that time, he assured me that I wouldn't go to Iraq, I'd be sent to a nondeployable post and --
 
Philip Malderi: And you believed it.
 
Robin Long: Oh, yeah, I believed it.  They-they kept true to their word.  I was stationed at Fort Knox for two years but speaking out while I was there, saying stuff, that's when they decided to give me orders to go to Iraq -- the only person in my unit.  I don't know if it was punishment or what it was but they, uh, they ended up sending me to a unit that was already in Iraq .  
 
Philip Malderi: They pulled you out of your unit in Kentucky and only you and sent you to a unit that was already in Iraq?
 
Robin Long: I was --
 
Philip Malderi: But was going to send you actually?
 
Robin Long: Yeah, they were - they were going to send me. They were sending me to Fort Carson, Colorado to join up with Second Brigade, Second Infantry and they were already in Iraq at the time so I was just supposed to report there and meet up with them in Iraq.  They'd already been there for like four months.
 
Philip Malderi: So what did you decide to do?
 
Robin Long: Well I told them when they told me where I was going that, "No, I'm not going to go there. You know, if you're going to give me these orders, I'm going to - I'm going to refuse them. I'm not going to show up at Fort Carson."  They said, "Yeah, you are. You're going to show up."  Eventually, you know when the time came to hop on the plane, I-I didn't, I didn't get on the plane to go to Fort Carson and it took me about two months to actually decide to go up to Canada.  I lived underground in a friend's basement for-for a good two months.
 
Philip Malderi: So what happened in Canada?  Was there a system of support for war resisters?
 
Robin Long: I initially went up there by myself.  I didn't now anyone.  I was up there for six months before I even found a group called the War Resisters Support Campaign. There based out of Toronto but they have chapters in cities all across Canada and they help with financial needs, finding you a place to stay.  They raise money to-to pay for lawyers and stuff up there so there's like a legal avenue people are trying to do up there by applying for political refugee status and they just kind of help out with everything with that. So.
 
Philip Malderi: So where did you settle down?
 
Robin Long: Initially, I settled down in a little town called Marathon, Ontario on the most northern tip of Lake Superior.  You don't know cold until you've lived there, negative forty for months at a time.  
 
Philip Malderi: (Laughing) This was -- this was your punishment.
 
Robin Long: Yeah, you know, nice in summer time but the winter?  It's definitely cold.
 
Philip Malderi: Uh, now, during the Vietnam war, those that can remember it, people who resisted going to Vietnam and went to Canada, the Canadian government of that time protected them and did not send them back to the States to be prosecuted.  What changed?  What happened this time?
 
Robin Long: Well, the -- the Canadian people and the majority even of Parliament still want the war resisters, actually all conscientious objectors from any war to be able to stay in Canada. Parliament voted -- has voted twice in the last two years to allow war resisters and their families to stay.  But the Conservative government that is in charge -- you know, that Parliament votes on laws and everything, but the government that's in charge has to actually implement the laws.  They're just ignoring the votes.  And they're ignoring their constituents and what most people want. [C.I. note: No law has been passed.  We'll go over that point at the end of the transcript.]  So they're just acting like this vote never even happened.  So it's really just the Conservatives, a Bush-supporting Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that's changed.
 
Philip Malderi: And how did they capture you?
 
Robin Long: The RNC, the Mounties, came to where I was staying and said I had a nation-wide immigration warrant, picked me up and I didn't get hand cuffed or anything, they just put me in the cop car, brought me to the Nelson city cell.  I was staying in Nelson, British Columbia at the time.  And took about seven days and I was handed over to the US authorities in Blaine, Washington.
 
Philip Malderi: And then the Army prosecuted you?
 
Robin Long: Yeah, they, about forty days later, they prosecuted me for desertion with intent to remain away permanently which, uh, has a maximum sentence of three years but, uh, I -- there was no refuting it.  I-I had deserted.  It's all paper work so to get a lesser sentence, I pled guilty to it and only received fifteen months.  The judge -- because there's a pretrial agreement -- the judge what she actually does is she gives you a sentence and whichever's less, what your pretrial or what she gives you, is what you get.  So she gave me thirty months and a dishonorable discharge but the pretrial gave me fifteen.
 
Philip Malderi: So where did you serve this time?
 
Robin Long: I served it down in San Diego.
 
To be clear,  Parliament didn't pass a law.  Both votes were non-binding.  That's why Stephen Harper can ignore them.  Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, would be forced -- as would any future Prime Minister -- to follow the two motions passed already if either had been legislation and not a non-binding motion.  Why the political parties haven't pushed for a real vote on real legislation may be due to the Senate or higher up.  The only one passing anything -- another reason it couldn't be a law -- is the House.  Both times that the non-binding motion was brought before a body, it was brought before the House. 
 
Canada has a bi-cameral Parliament with an upper and lower house.  The Senate is the upper house and it has never voted on it.  In practice, usually the Senate goes along with what the House does becuase the House is directly elected by the Canadian people. The Senate is staffed, not elected.  They are rubber stamped by the Governor General of Canada . . . on the say so of . . . the Prime Minister.  Meaning, Stephen Harper's recommended people since he was in power.  Once recommended, they serve until they retire (with a mandatory retirement age) or die while in office.  The bulk of the Senate shouldn't be Harper supporters or even Conservative Party supporters because the last decades -- as far back as the sixties have seen the Liberal Party the primary party in power.  So where's the problem in the Senate? 
 
Noel Kinsella.  Who is he?  He's the Speaker of the Senate.  How does someone become the Speaker?  In the House, they're elected.  In the Senate, they're appointed.  In his position, he could refuse to allow a vote or do any number of things.  But it's also true that you've got barriers above him.  Say the Senate went along with the House (either out of tradition or conviction), you don't have a law yet.  It has to be signed off on. 
 
The first who could sign it into law would be Michaelle Jean.  She's Queen Elizabeth II's representative.  Her posts is Governor General of Canada and the queen appoints her.  If a bill passed both houses, Michaelle Jean could allow it to become a law, nix it or leave the issue up to the Queen.  Nixing it -- no reason needs to be given -- means no law.  Passing it onto the Queen who can say yea or nay.  (The Queen also has two years after the Governor General to decide, no, it's not a law.  It would be a law throughout that time but the Queen can reverse it.)  So if we follow all of that, the ultimate reason why the House does non-binding measures may be due to the fact that they grasp the pressure from the Bush administration and now the Obama administration (which makes their opinions known through an acting ambassador, Terry Breese, because they've not filled the post of Ambassador to Canada) on Canadian officials would also be conveyed to the Queen of England who, having refused to stop the illegal war in 2003 (she could have), wouldn't allow this to become law.  While the British are largely out of Iraq (approximately 400 British troops remain), they are still in Afghanistan and have had war resisters.  Queen Elizabeth II is not about to go along with that (or give Canadian troops an argument for not serving in Afghansitan). Repeating because England has kept their monarchy (Canada didn't "keep it" -- they remain endentured to England because they never had a revolution which is why Queen Elizabeth is their head of state), Queen Elizabeth could have prevented England from entering the Iraq War.  She didn't.  It's another reason why you have rumbles of doing away with the monarchy in England. 
 
But Canada has no real independence.  If England declares war, Canada has as well, whether they delcare it themselves or not.  Which means that while Canada chose not to send soldiers to Iraq, as part of England, they officially are in support of that war.  (That illegal war.)  And that's the difference that Philip Malderi was asking about: England didn't take part in a war on Vietnam.  Not the Indochina War or the later American conflict.  That's one reason why Canada could take the stand they did during Vietnam.  Also true, a strong prime minister, like Pierre Trudeau, could take that stand right now.  The Queen is head of state but Harper is head of government and, in a face off on a popular issue, the Queen might go along. Harper being Harper, such a face off isnt likely to take place.
 
The above is a very complicated process and one that's very different from the US -- which fought a war to have their independence from England and fought the 1812 war when Canada was being a proxy for England.  What's not complicated is that the Iraq War is not ending.  There are over 130,000 US troops in Iraq presently.  So it was amazing, on allegedly left radio, Philip Malderi tried to declare that the Iraq War was winding down.  Well, as a colleague of his on campus said during 2008, "Phil's no longer just drinking the Kool-Aid, he's drinking the urine." We wished that Phil could have been in Harlem Tuesday night so Carl Dix could have set him straight on the Iraq War  (Dix was in a dialogue with Cornel West at Aaron Davis Hall).  But Robin Long was present and tried to walk Philip through, "What's going on in Iraq, they say all combat troops are leaving but, if you look at it, they're just changing the name.  They're being called the same thing they were being called in Vietnam. They're being called 'advisers' now.  And we have 30 permanent bases in Iraq.  Just because they're not being called combat troops, there's still a lot of people there."  
  
Turning to TV notes. Tony Blair's appearance at The Hague may be delayed for a bit; however, the War Criminal can be found this week on your TV screen via NOW on PBS:

Once one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the West Bank, Jenin was the scene of frequent battles between the Israeli military and Palestinian fighters, and the hometown of more than two dozen suicide bombers.
Today, however, there's been a huge turnaround. Jenin is now the center of an international effort to build a safe and economically prosperous Palestinian state from the ground up. On Jenin's streets today, there's a brand new professional security force loyal to the Palestinian Authority and funded in part by the United States. But can the modest success in Jenin be replicated throughout the West Bank, or will the effort collapse under the intense political pressure from all sides?
This week, NOW talks directly with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the international community's envoy to the region and an architect of the plan. We also speak with a former commander of the infamous Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin about his decision to stop using violent tactics, and to residents of Jenin about their daily struggles and their hopes for the future.
To Blair, the Jenin experiment can be pivotal in finally bringing peace to the Middle East. He tells NOW, "This is the single most important issue for creating a more stable and secure world."

A war criminal, an architect of the illegal war on Iraq, wants to tell the world what our "single most important issue" is and expects to be trusted? Tony Blair belongs behind bars, not on your TV screen. On PBS' Washington Week, Gwen sits around the table with USA Today's Joan Biskupic, the New York Times' Mark Mazzetti (aka The Little Asset Who Could), and Time magazine's Karen Tumulty and Hedda Hopper Lives!' Jeanne Cummings who will continue her efforts to be seen as the tabloids' new Jeane Dixon. Bonnie Erbe sits down with Bay Buchanan, Avis Jones-DeWeever, Tara Setmayer and Amy Siskind on PBS' To The Contrary. Check local listings, all three PBS shows begin airing tonight on many PBS stations. And turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers:

Gun Rush
Americans are snapping up guns and ammunition at an increasingly higher rate despite the economic downturn. But as Lesley Stahl reports, the economic downturn, as well as the election of Barack Obama, may be the reason for the run on guns. | Watch Video


Poisoned
The African lion, already down as much as 85 percent in numbers from just 20 years ago, is now in danger of becoming extinct because people are poisoning them with a cheap American pesticide to protect their cattle herds. Bob Simon reports. | Watch Video


Steve Wynn
The casino mogul most responsible for taking Las Vegas to new heights of gaming and glitter talks to Charlie Rose about his spectacular success and the eye disease that's slowly robbing him of his ability to see the fruits of his labor. | Watch Video


60 Minutes, Sunday, July 19, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

 
 

3 US soldiers killed in Iraq

This morning the US military announced: "BAGHDAD -- Three Multi-National Division-South Soldiers were killed when Contingency Operating Base Basra was attacked by indirect fire at approximately 9:15 p.m. on July 16. The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of next of kin. The incident is under investigation." The announcement brings the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 4326.

In other reported violence today, AFP notes a Falluja bombing which has claimed the lives of 2 children and left six people injured. The bombing took place at the home of Lt Col Abdel Salam Khawam in the latest of the continued attacks on Iraqi police. Reuters notes a Baghdad roadside bombing which injured four pilgrims, a second Baghdad roadside bombing which claimed the lives of 2 people and left twelve more injured (apparently pilgrims), a Shirqat sticky bombing targeting police which left one police officer injured, 1 person shot wounded in a Kirkuk shooting and, dropping back to yesterday, one person wounded in a Kirkuk shooting.

The pilgrims are the topic of Mohammed al Dulaimy's "Shiite pilgrimage poses major challenge for Iraqi military" (McClatchy Newspapers):

Authorities have imposed a limited curfew in Baghdad, and thousands of additional Iraqi soldiers and police officers are on the streets for the annual commemoration of a revered Shiite holy man who died in the eighth century.
A brigade from the Iraqi Federal Police -- previously known as the Iraqi National Police -- set up checkpoints at which men, women and children were searched Thursday, and Iraqi army helicopters flew low over the crowds.
Two American helicopters also hovered overhead; in the past, Iraqis had asked that only U.S. helicopters protect their missions.


Meanwhile Alsumaria reports, "While thousands of pilgrims have poured in to Al Kazimiya to mark Imam Kazem Anniversary (AS), citizens are complaining about closing main roads which is usually caused by religious occasion." On religion, Anthony Shadid's "A Shiite Schism On Clerical Rule: Iraqis See Their Concept Gain on Iran's" (Washington Post) explores the changes made by the US backed and installed 'leadership' in Iraq:

But three decades after the Iranian revolution brought to power one notion of clerical rule -- and six years after the fall of Saddam Hussein helped enshrine another version of religious authority here -- the relationship between religion and the state in Iraq, clerics here say, seems more enduring than the alternative in neighboring Iran.
"It's true," said Ghaith Shubar, a cleric who runs a foundation in Najaf aligned with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most powerful cleric. "The spiritual guidance of the people in Iraq has become stronger than the guidance offered under the system in Iran. The marjaiya" -- the term used to describe the authority of the most senior ayatollahs -- "has more influence in Iraq, spiritual and otherwise, than it does in Iran."

While al-Maliki's clique self-congratulates, Rachelle Marshall (Media Monitors Network) reminds:

Al-Maliki has steadfastly refused to honor America’s commitment to the thousands of Sunni fighters whose willingness to join the American side two years ago was responsible for a dramatic decline in violence. The Sunni Awakening Councils provided soldiers who fought with the Americans against al-Qaeda and in return were paid by the American army. They also were promised they would be given government jobs and allowed to join regular Iraqi security forces.
Instead of meeting these commitments, the Iraqi government began arresting senior Awakening Council leaders, claiming they are still insurgents, and demanding that members of the Councils be disarmed. Awakening Council members are also being attacked by Islamic militants whom they turned against when they joined the Americans. The security situation in general has deteriorated, with many Iraqis claiming the Iraqi forces are too inept to provide security.

Turning to TV notes. Tony Blair's appearance at The Hague may be delayed for a bit; however, the War Criminal can be found this week on your TV screen via NOW on PBS:

Once one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the West Bank, Jenin was the scene of frequent battles between the Israeli military and Palestinian fighters, and the hometown of more than two dozen suicide bombers.
Today, however, there's been a huge turnaround. Jenin is now the center of an international effort to build a safe and economically prosperous Palestinian state from the ground up. On Jenin's streets today, there's a brand new professional security force loyal to the Palestinian Authority and funded in part by the United States. But can the modest success in Jenin be replicated throughout the West Bank, or will the effort collapse under the intense political pressure from all sides?
This week, NOW talks directly with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the international community's envoy to the region and an architect of the plan. We also speak with a former commander of the infamous Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin about his decision to stop using violent tactics, and to residents of Jenin about their daily struggles and their hopes for the future.
To Blair, the Jenin experiment can be pivotal in finally bringing peace to the Middle East. He tells NOW, "This is the single most important issue for creating a more stable and secure world."

A war criminal, an architect of the illegal war on Iraq, wants to tell the world what our "single most important issue" is and expects to be trusted? Tony Blair belongs behind bars, not on your TV screen. On PBS' Washington Week, Gwen sits around the table with USA Today's Joan Biskupic, the New York Times' Mark Mazzetti (aka The Little Asset Who Could), and Time magazine's Karen Tumulty and Hedda Hopper Lives!' Jeanne Cummings who will continue her efforts to be seen as the tabloids' new Jeane Dixon. Bonnie Erbe sits down with Bay Buchanan, Avis Jones-DeWeever, Tara Setmayer and Amy Siskind on PBS' To The Contrary. Check local listings, all three PBS shows begin airing tonight on many PBS stations. And turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers:

Gun Rush
Americans are snapping up guns and ammunition at an increasingly higher rate despite the economic downturn. But as Lesley Stahl reports, the economic downturn, as well as the election of Barack Obama, may be the reason for the run on guns. | Watch Video


Poisoned
The African lion, already down as much as 85 percent in numbers from just 20 years ago, is now in danger of becoming extinct because people are poisoning them with a cheap American pesticide to protect their cattle herds. Bob Simon reports. | Watch Video


Steve Wynn
The casino mogul most responsible for taking Las Vegas to new heights of gaming and glitter talks to Charlie Rose about his spectacular success and the eye disease that's slowly robbing him of his ability to see the fruits of his labor. | Watch Video


60 Minutes, Sunday, July 19, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.




Turning to public radio. On NPR's The Diane Rehm Show this morning (begins airing on most NPR stations and streaming online at 10:00 am EST), Diane's panel for the first hour (focusing on domestic issues) is composed of The New Republic's Michael Crowley, the ever present Jeanne Cummings and CBS and Slate's John Dickerson. For the second hour, the international hour, the panel is composed of the Wall St. Journal's Youchi Dreazen, the Washington Post's David Ignatius and Foreign Policy's Moises Naim.

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








60 minutes
cbs news

The fault lines between the KRG and the central government

Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region and the Iraqi government are closer to war than at any time since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Kurdish prime minister said Thursday, in a bleak measure of the tension that has risen along what U.S. officials consider the country's most combustible fault line.
In separate interviews, Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and the region's president, Massoud Barzani, described a stalemate in attempts to resolve long-standing disputes with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's emboldened government. Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. military in northern Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani said, fighting might have started in the most volatile regions.

The above is from Anthony Shadid's "Kurdish Leaders Warn Of Strains With Maliki: Military Conflict a Possibility, One Says" (Washington Post). It's the must-read article on Iraq this morning and you have to wonder where the New York Times is?

You have to wonder or you have to stop caring and we're probably moving away from the paper for three reasons. First, in reporting last week, they offered a very bad dispatch featuring all the US talking points and nothing resembling journalism. And that was their 'big' piece. Jay Garner called it out in a letter to the paper. That didn't lead them to refile and go in depth. They just ignored it. The way they're ignoring the KRG's upcoming elections.

I'm getting sick of the paper and all the money they waste on Iraq. Forget that they can't find the 'energy' to file an Iraq article every day (which their budget should demand), they can't even keep a blog up and running. That's ridiculous. They are ridiculous.

Three, I'm looking at e-mails (two from visitors, four from community members) and wondering, "What the hell is going on with the paper now?" They flipped their outsourcing for subscription services back near the end of 2006, I believe. And they've had non-stop problems. Their latest problem? They're not getting paid for the paper. Their contractor's computer system had some sort of a glitch and they're sending out dun letters to tell people they owe for the paper. They owe? These are people who have their credit cards on file and they're supposed to be automatically billed each month on their cards. As a vistor explains, "I don't have over $170 in one lump sum to pay this month. They were supposed to be billing me each month. I've subscribed since 2004 and never had this problem. I come home and there's a letter telling me that I haven't been paying and I now owe over $170. I called that non-customer service number and, oopsie, yeah my credit card is on file. I'm told it's a problem that they've had with a number of accounts." If you're a subscriber to the paper, you may need to check and see if you've been billed each month or not. And apparently, if you haven't been billed each month, that's your fault and not the paper's. I'm not in the mood for this garbage. Since they switched contractors, they have had nothing but problems and there is no quality care at the paper, no concern over how many subscribers they are losing due to their contractors. I'm not in the mood for the paper right now. If there's an article I feel warrants attention, we'll note it. Otherwise, I'm ticked off because I don't have a lot of sympathy or admiration for incompetents who destroy newspapers and that's what the New York Times is doing right now.

(And this doesn't effect me. My 'subscription' costs several times more than the average subscription because I pay the local distributor that excessive amount to ensure that I have the paper at my home by X each morning. I could stop doing that since I'm never home anymore but I won't. However, on the road each week now, I may be less and less inclined to track down a copy of their paper each day. For those who it does effect, you should be arguing loudly. That was their mistake and they should be able to half the amount owed -- at the least -- and you should also press for a six month pricing plan that they offer new subscribers. That's the very least that should be done.)

If you read the Times, you have no idea of the tensions emerging but you do have a concept of "bad Kurds!" which might make a few people feel better but doesn't really inform anyone. In addition to bad reporting, we get bad columns like Thomas Friedman's "Goodbye Iraq, and Good Luck" -- a real load of garbage from the smug trash collector Friedman. John Boonstra calls out the column in "Friedman: Occupation only makes Iraqis 'want' and 'need' U.S. help" (UN Dispatch):


I just got around to reading Tom Friedman's column from the other day about Kirkuk Iraq. It's odd in a number of ways, from his love of using jokes to make a point, to his blithe assumption that the U.S. military has "left a million acts of kindness" in the country, and his bizarre contention that Iraq is "100 times more important" than Bosnia (what is the point of a powder keg competition between the Middle East and the Balkans, anyway?). But this is what struck me most from Friedman's outlook:

Senior Iraqi officials are too proud to ask for our help and would probably publicly resist it, but privately Iraqis will tell you that they want it and need it. We are the only trusted player here — even by those who hate us. They need a U.S. mediator so they can each go back to their respective communities and say: "I never would have made these concessions, but those terrible Americans made me do it."

First, I have a hard time believing that Thomas Friedman can reliably attest to the private desires of most Iraqis (especially when he is writing from Kirkuk, but makes no mention that Kurds, who form a substantial part of Kirkuk's population, have a notably different outlook toward Americans). Second, I have an even harder time believing that six-plus years of military occupation has made Iraqis "want" and "need" more American help (something tells me that simply observing the diversity of American military personnel has not, as Friedman weakly argues, made an impression on Iraq's own ethnic politics).


January 31st, 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces held provincial elections. The Kurdish region did not take place in those elections. Their elections take place next week. The Economist offers "Change in the air?" (unsigned, but not billed as an editorial):

AS IRAQ'S Kurds prepare to vote on July 25th for a regional assembly and a president, the buzzword is Goran, meaning change. It is also the name of a new movement that is trying to defeat -- or at least to dent -- the two parties that came into their own when the Kurds won self-rule in 1991, after the Americans and their allies chased Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in the south and then prevented him from beating up the Kurds in the north. The elections promise to be the most hotly contested during the Kurds’ current golden era of autonomy. As Change’s campaign gathers pace, its name and logo, an orange candle on a dark-blue background, is emblazoned on buses, taxis, T-shirts, baseball caps and balloons. The movement is on a roll. Whether this translates into votes in a society where patronage and clan loyalties still largely hold sway is not yet clear.
Change says it wants to improve the lives of Kurds across the region. It castigates the corruption and cronyism of the two main parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), long a fief of the Barzani clan in the north and western parts of the region around Dohuk and Erbil; and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), run by the Talabani clan in Sulaymaniyah province to the east and in the disputed lands to the south around Kirkuk.

Having wasted millions, the New York Times is now trying to make a profit via destruction of the Boston Globe. As they attack those workers and attempt a tag sale on the assets, the Boston Globe actually does more real work in journalism than the Times could ever dream of. That includes this morning's editorial "An obligation to refugees:"

AS AMERICAN TROOPS withdraw from Iraq, they leave behind a population of refugees who are only part of a humanitarian crisis encompassing war zones all around the world. The United States is the largest donor of refugee relief, yet despite this effort and the United Nations refugee program, temporary shelter and aid give little comfort to refugees who are highly vulnerable to contagious disease and violence. As people grow up and die in camps, the idea that only temporary shelter is needed has become an idyllic fairy tale. The United States should provide a haven for more refugees.
Each year the US government sets a number of refugees to resettle in the United States for protection, and this year the ceiling was raised from 70,000 to 80,000. This increase acknowledges the scale of the crisis but ignores the thousands of available spots that go unfilled each year. Existing programs to select refugees cannot meet the cap, and few refugees, who lack homes or clean water, could be expected to apply without help. Meaningful offers of resettlement require expanding support for programs that encourage eligible refugees to apply.

On the subject of refugees, Miriam Jordan (Wall St. Journal) reports that the US has agreed to take in 1,350 Palestinian refugees from Iraq -- these are apparently among the over 3,000 refugees stuck in the 'camps' between Iraq and Syria. From Jordan's article:

"These particular Palestinians are a fallout from the Iraq War," said George Bisharat, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law, who specializes in Middle Eastern law. "The Obama administration had to take some responsibility for the consequences of the invasion."

The news comes one week after International Middle East Media Center reported on the death of Suad Abdul-Qader Al Hallaq who died in one of the 'camps,' Al Waleed -- one week before her death, Shihada Mohammad Abu Hamad had died at the camp. Meanwhile International Organization for Migration announces money received from the US government in "US$ 10 Million to Help Returning Iraqi Families Reintegrate:"

Posted on Friday, 17-07-2009
Iraq - IOM has received US$10 million from the US Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) to meet the most urgent needs of Iraqi returnees.

Working with the Ministry of Displacement and Migration (MoDM) and host communities, IOM is assisting returnees and local residents without jobs or underemployed by providing information and counseling; grants for the purchase of tools, equipment or basic materials; and vocational and/or business training, to create or expand small businesses or to find employment.

IOM is working with returnees in Baghdad, Ninewa, Diyala, Babyl, Wassit and Missan governorates. With the new funding from PRM, IOM will assist at least 3,500 individuals in Baghdad, Babylon, Diyala and Ninewa, and will expand the geographical coverage to other governorates, namely Anbar, Basrah, Erbil and Sulaymania.

IOM monitors have identified some 52,000 post-2006 returnee families in approximately 800 locations; with the majority returning to Baghdad, and significant groups to Diyala and Anbar.

Seventy-one per cent of returnees interviewed by IOM said they had decided to return to their places of origin because of improved security or a combination of improved security and difficult conditions in their place of displacement.

Nationwide, returnees have told IOM monitors that their immediate needs are food, fuel, and non-food items (such as mattresses or cooking utensils), along with healthcare and legal assistance. In the long term, employment, shelter and property restitution are the major concerns for returnee families.

"Individual returnee families have widely differing needs. Many have come home to destroyed, damaged, or looted property," explains Mike Pillinger, Chief of the IOM Mission in Iraq.

Thirty-nine per cent of returnees interviewed by IOM reported finding their home in poor or uninhabitable condition. Others have no job or a way to support their families. In Baghdad, 64 per cent of heads of household interviewed by IOM are unemployed; 61% in Diyala and 31% in Anbar. In other cases health care services or obtaining missing documents are priority issues.

MoDM and the Kurdish Regional Government's Directorate of Displacement and Migration estimate that there are approximately 1.7 million post-2006 internally displaced Iraqis.

There are an estimated number 2.8 million internally displaced persons in Iraq. Some 1.6 million of them were displaced after the bombing of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra in February 2006. More than 1.5 million other Iraqis are living in neighbouring countries.

IOM has also received funding for this programme from the governments of Japan, Germany and Australia's International Assistance Programme (AusAID).

Returnee reports, along with IOM's regular reporting on displacement, including governorate profiles, bi-weekly updates, tent camp updates, and yearly and mid-year reviews, are available at http://www.iom-iraq.net/library.html#IDP.

For more information please contact:

Rex Alamban
IOM Amman
Tel: + 962-79-906-1779
E-mail: ralamban@iom.int

Hugh McMillan reports on one group of Iraqi refugees who have been admitted to the US in "Iraqi family safe in Gig Harbor" (Peninsula Gateway):

Hanaa al Janabi knows what it's like to be forced to leave her homeland in fear for her life while still grieving for a murdered husband and father. She knows what it’s like to arrive in a different country, with only the clothes on her back. There was a language barrier, and she didn’t know how to provide for her children.
With help of a Gig Harbor church, al Janabi and her family also know what it's like to be safe.
Watching the fall of Baghdad, Americans saw exploding bombs and Iraqis cheer as the statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down. Few understand the impact the violent period has had on a single Iraqi family, what it was like for al Janabi as she fled with her children along a tortuously difficult path through fear and frustration.
Al Janabi's Army officer husband, Khaled al Janabi, fell out of favor with Saddam but escaped with his family to Jordan to obtain political refugee status. As the United States prepared to invade Iraq, he volunteered as a translator and cultural adviser to the U.S. Army. During the invasion, he returned to Baghdad, embedded with the American forces.
There, while his wife was visiting him, he was recognized and killed on the street in front of her.

The following community sites updated last night:



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













thomas friedman is a great man






oh boy it never ends