Iraq analysis

[Jannah]

They did themselves no justice with this, where is the press? With the vietnam war, the fact that the press were everywhere meant it was very difficult to hide anything and there were enough honest reporters that revealed the truth, even they were american themselves, to show America just what was going on so far from home. Are they controlling the media so much? Where is democracy?

[Al-khiyal]

Nearly half of Iraqis support attacks on U.S. troops, poll finds:

WASHINGTON - A new poll found that nearly half of Iraqis approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, and most favor setting a timetable for American troops to leave....

....According to the poll's findings, 47 percent of Iraqis approve of attacks on American forces, but there were large differences among ethnic and religious groups. Among Sunni Muslims, 88 percent said they approved of the attacks. That approval was found among 41 percent of Shiite Muslims and 16 percent of Kurds.....


(41% of Shi'ites, that's rather a lot, isn't it? And almost 1 in 6 Kurds too.......)


Poll finds Iraqis want U.S. out:

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.ph...1-023602-8587r

Bush paints rosy picture of Iraq, say Americans:


Many adults in the United States remain worried about the coalition effort in Iraq, according to two recent public opinion polls. In a New York Times and CBS News survey, 50 per cent of respondents believe the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq. In a study by TNS released by the Washington Post and ABC News, 55 per cent of respondents think the war was not worth fighting....

...On Jan. 23, U.S. president George W. Bush discussed the situation in Iraq, saying, "Our strategy is twofold: We’re on the hunt for the terrorists, and we’re training Iraqis. And we’re making decent progress. There are more and more Iraqi units in the fight. There’s more and more country being turned over to the Iraqis." In the New York Times/CBS poll, 58 per cent of respondents think Bush is making things in Iraq sound better than they really are, up three points in a year.....

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/inde...m/itemID/10731


Blair and Bush's UN 'collusion':

A WHITE House leak claims Tony Blair and George Bush plotted to go to war against Iraq without United Nations backing at a secret meeting.

A new edition of a book insists the two leaders went through the motions of getting UN support for military action - but were united on invasion even if the UN failed to back them.

The book, by London University law professor Phillipe Sands, said Mr Blair gave his total support to Mr Bush at the secret White House meeting in January 2003. After the meeting, the two leaders gave a press conference where Mr Bush appeared to support going for a second UN resolution to give specific approval for a war.

But Prof Sands' book, entitled Lawless World, claims that president Bush had earlier displayed open contempt for the UN during the summit, made wild threats against Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein and displayed astounding ignorance of the likely post-war problems.

http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=147192006

U.S. military hides cause of women soldiers' deaths:

In a startling revelation, the former commander of Abu Ghraib prison testified that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, former senior US military commander in Iraq, gave orders to cover up the cause of death for some female American soldiers serving in Iraq.....

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/013006J.shtml

January 30th 2006: British MOD accused of hiding real cost of Iraq war:

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?...8&id=147612006


January 31st 2006: British casualty figures are 'wrong', admits Reid:

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?...8&id=153572006

Iraqi women seek survival not science:

The speech made by Dr. Enise Avci, an Iraqi Turkmen, at the "Women in the Alliance of Civilizations" International Women's Congress held by the Prime Ministry of the Women's Status General Directorship at Istanbul’s Conrad Hotel Sunday, and confronted conference participants with the realities taking place in Iraq today.

Dr. Avci’s speech entitled, "Woman's place in science- the Iraq example" in the panel themed "Women in Science and Technology" and expressed the situation in her country as "What is sought in Bagdat (Baghdad) today is survival not science."

She said Iraq, before the US occupation, was in a good condition regarding women's scientific works when compared to other Arab and Far Eastern countries, but today Baghdad, for centuries one of the world's largest science centers, has turned into the capital of a ghost country....

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=national&alt=&hn=29215

Iraq faces void from an exodus of the educated:

BAGHDAD, IRAQ - The office of Iraq's most eminent cardiologist is padlocked. A handwritten sign is taped on his wooden door in the private clinic in Baghdad: Patients of Dr. Omar Kubasi should call him in Amman, Jordan.

There, Kubasi, 63, spends his days sitting at a cafe with other physicians and professionals from Iraq. Frustrated, he watches from afar as the medical education system he helped set up during his 36-year career slowly disintegrates. His teaching doctors are fleeing the country in fear.

Younger physicians are looking for other countries to train in. Even patients are leaving, no longer confident in the care they can get in Iraq.

"I think it's part of the plan for the country's destruction," Kubasi said by telephone. "The situation in the last six months has gotten so bad, we couldn't continue."

Kubasi left Baghdad in May after he and nine other doctors received letters, written in a childlike hand, telling them they would be killed if they did not stop working in their native Iraq. He and his colleagues had been the objects of threats before, but the last carried a foreboding urgency, he said.

Iraq's top professionals — doctors, lawyers, professors — and businessmen have been targeted by shadowy political groups for kidnapping and ransom, as well as killing, some of them say. So many have fled the country that Iraq is in danger of losing the core of skilled people it needs most as it is trying to build a newly independent society.

"It's creating a brain drain," said Amer Hassan Fayed, assistant dean of political science at Baghdad University. "We could end up with a society without knowledge. How can such a society make progress?"

Professionals and businessmen with the means to escape are going to Jordan, Syria, Egypt or, if they have visas, to Western countries. Those left behind say they feel abandoned.....

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/3618997.html

[Al-khiyal]

Iraqi transport ministry freezes deals with Denmark:

BAGHDAD - Iraq’s transport ministry said on Sunday it had frozen contracts with Denmark and Norway in protest against blasphemous cartoons published in the countries’ newspapers.

“This decision was taken to protest the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and we will not accept any reconstruction money from Denmark or Norway,” said a spokesman on behalf of Transport Minister Salam Al Malaki.....

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayA...on=focusoniraq


US media ignore UN study on Iraq 'peace-building' methods backfiring:

"The United States is avoiding widely recognised peace-building processes that involve external military powers quickly creating a basic security environment and then allowing domestic peace- and nation-building efforts to succeed," says the Inter Press Service News Agency, reporting on a new book, Security Sector Reform and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, published by the United Nations University Press.

"Instead of stabilizing places like Iraq, international efforts to centralize power are creating a more fragile security environment than ever before," the press release quotes co-editor Albrecht Schnabel, senior research fellow at swisspeace Swiss Peace Foundation, and a lecturer at the Institute of Political Science, University of Bern. "[A]lmost three years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is characterized by chaos, violence and disintegration. The methods used to rebuild Iraq's security sector are simply making matters worse." The IPS story goes further......

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/200...uffpost/015112


An official in the Coalition Provisional Authority, Robert Stein, has admitted to stealing more than $2 million, and to taking bribes for giving out contracts. Some $8.8 billion is unaccounted for from the CPA period, so now only a mere $8.798 billion stolen by Americans is left to track down:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4675902.stm


CNN's Christiane Amanpour: Iraq war 'a disaster' - Personal opinion from chief international reporter: 'It just gets worse and worse'

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/articl...TICLE_ID=48588

Daily attacks are up from 55 per day (December 2004) to 77 per day (December 2005), Baghdad (home to 25% of the population) is being starved of fuel and electricity, and Sunni Arabs (who almost en masse rejected the constitution) are threatening to launch a civil disobedience campaign on top of the guerrilla war -

The truth about Iraq:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/02/ivins.iraq/

[Al-khiyal]

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 — Virtually every measure of the performance of Iraq's oil, electricity, water and sewerage sectors has fallen below preinvasion values even though $16 billion of American taxpayer money has already been disbursed in the Iraq reconstruction program, several government witnesses said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Of seven measures of public services performance presented at the committee hearing by the inspector general's office, only one was above preinvasion values.

Those that had slumped below those values were electrical generation capacity, hours of power available in a day in Baghdad, oil and heating oil production and the numbers of Iraqis with drinkable water and sewage service.

Only the hours of power available to Iraqis outside Baghdad had increased over prewar values.

In addition, two of the witnesses said they believed that an earlier estimate by the World Bank that $56 billion would be needed for rebuilding over the next several years was too low.

At the same time, as Iraq's oil exports plummet and the country remains saddled with tens of billions of dollars of debt, it is unclear where that money will come from, said one of the witnesses, Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the Government Accountability Office.

And those may not be the most serious problems facing Iraq's pipelines, storage tanks, power lines, electrical switching stations and other structures, said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office.

In one sense, focusing on the plummeting performance numbers "misses the point," Mr. Bowen said. The real question, he said, is whether the Iraqi security forces will ever be able to protect the infrastructure from insurgent attack.

"What's happened is that an incessant, an insidious insurgency has repeatedly attacked the key infrastructure targets, reducing outputs," Mr. Bowen said. He added that some of the performance numbers had fluctuated above prewar values in the past, only to fall again under the pressure of insurgent attacks and other factors.....

Iraq utilities are falling short of pre-war performance


(If you meet an intercept with that url use ID mediajunkie16 and password mediajunkie to get by it)


The only comfort to come from such tardy recognition of the misery facing the people of Iraq is the amusement to be obtained from the mental gymnastics of the terminally uninformed war groupies who cling desperately to notions that 'things aren't so bad there' and try to spin accordingly.

People are sick, hungry, thirsty, cold, the hospital services are declining, medicines are in short supply, there is disease from tainted water, infant mortality has risen sharply, literacy levels are falling, U.S. airstrikes are a daily occurrence, thousands are held without charge in prisons and camps throughout Iraq, in the north the Kurds are systematically killing, oppressing and intimidating the Christians, Shi3a and Sunni Arabs and Turkmen, in the south hardline fundamentalist militias hold sway, women's lives and freedoms have become curtailed and oppressed, death squads, Iraqi and American, stalk the land, food rations, upon which millions depend, are being cut, the price of fuel has quadrupled in the Iraqi winter, unemployment is over 70% in many areas, Christians are fleeing, intellectuals are fleeing, kidnappings and crime are rampant, torture is commonplace in the prisons and holding centres, child prostitution is on the rise, children are dying of cold on the streets of Baghdad.......


Spin me a happy song about that.

[Edited by Al-khiyal on 10th February 2006 at 04:34]

[Al-khiyal]

But of course, it isn't all gloom, some productivity levels are going up:


Report says number of attacks by insurgents in Iraq increases

"WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 — Sweeping statistics on insurgent violence in Iraq that were declassified for a Senate hearing on Wednesday appear to portray a rebellion whose ability to mount attacks has steadily grown in the nearly three years since the invasion."

[Al-khiyal]

All signs point to a major drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq in 2006 — perhaps to fewer than 100,000 by year's end. But it is far from certain when there will be further reductions, or a total pullout, after that.

In fact, it now looks as if the United States may have a long-term and substantial military presence in Iraq, military experts say....

Even with a troop reduction, U.S. military appears headed for a long stay in Iraq


The Iraqi people will have something to say and do about that.

[Al-khiyal]

If one watches corporate media or listens to Cheney Administration propaganda, one is either not getting information about Iraq at all, or hearing that things are looking up as the U.S. approaches another “phase” in the occupation.

Just taking a brief look at the “security incidents” reported by Reuters for today, 12 February, gives a little clue as to how the occupation of Iraq, aside from being immoral and unjust, is a dismal failure.

*RAMADI - Six insurgents were killed and another wounded on Saturday when U.S forces conducted an air strike in the city of Ramadi, 110 km
(68 miles) west of Baghdad, the U.S military said on Sunday.
*MUQDADIYA - Clashes between insurgents and Iraqi army soldiers conducting a raid killed one rebel in Muqdadiya, 90 km (50 miles) north east of Baghdad. The army arrested 40 suspected insurgents in the same operation.
*BAGHDAD - A 53-year-old male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison died on Saturday as a result of complications from an assault by an unknown number of detainees, the U.S military said in a statement.
*MAHAWEEL - The bodies of three people, bound and shot in the head and chest, were found in Mahaweel, 75 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. The bodies showed signs of torture.
*ISKANDARIYA - The bodies of two people, bound and shot in the head and chest, were found in Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. The bodies showed signs of torture.
*BAGHDAD - Three police commandos and a civilian were killed and four commandos wounded when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt blew himself up near a check point in southern Baghdad, police said.
*KIRKUK - Gunmen killed four policemen while they were driving in a civilian car in the main road between Kirkuk and Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
*KIFL - Gunmen wearing police uniforms killed a civilian on Saturday in Kifl, a town about 150 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
*NEAR LATIFIYA - Police retrieved the body of a dead person from the river on Saturday near Latifiya, south of Baghdad.
*BAQUBA - A director of sport education of Diyala province was killed by gunmen in the city of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
*YATHRIB - Gunmen kidnapped three truck drivers who were carrying equipment to a U.S military base on Saturday in Yathrib, a region near Balad, 90 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
*BAIJI - Gunmen blew up a gas station on Saturday near the oil refinery city of Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad. BAGHDAD - Twelve civilians were wounded when two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession near an Iraqi police patrol in central Baghdad, police said. SAMARRA - The Iraqi army found three Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims who were among a group of 12, including an Iraqi driver, kidnapped by gunmen in Samarra on Friday, Iraqi army officials said. HAWIJA - Gunmen shot dead a doctor and wounded an employee working in the main hospital in Hawija, 70 km south west of the northern city of Kirkuk, on Saturday, police said. KIRKUK - Four policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. KIRKUK - The corpse of a Kurdish contractor working with the U.S army was found on Saturday in Kirkuk, police said. KIRKUK - Two civilians were wounded by a roadside bomb near their patrol in Kirkuk, police said. BAGHDAD - Two civilians were killed, including a child, and three were wounded, when a roadside bomb targeting police commandos exploded in a northern district of the capital, police said.

A brief glance at recent events in Iraq shows that violence only continues to escalate and the infrastructure which U.S. taxpayers supposedly paid billions of dollars to repair is in shambles.

While the Cheney Administration blame Iraqi resistance attacks and sabotage for the lack of reconstruction, I would like to remind people that at least $8.8 Billion of the money meant for reconstruction efforts remains unaccounted for. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said this is because “oversight” on the part of the Coalition Provisional Authority “was relatively nonexistent.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is over a quarter of the way towards having the 3,000th soldier killed in Iraq, as 2,267 have now been killed. 25 of those deaths have occurred this month.

But as usual, it is the Iraqis who are paying the highest price.

Looking at Arab media outlets, evidence of this abounds.

According to Al-Sharqiyah television:

“The head of the Al-Fallujah Municipal Council was killed by gunshots on February 7, Iraqi Al Sharqiyah TV reported that day. In its 1100 gmt newscast, the TV said: "Unidentified armed men this morning assassinated Shaykh Kamal Shakir Nizal, head of the Municipal Council of Al-Fallujah, western Iraq.”

The U.S. backed puppet Iraqi government continues its state-sponsored civil war. Aside from the numerous bodies found in the aforementioned Reuters report, this past week Sharqiyah also reported:

“Iraqi and US security forces raided the Iraqi Islamic Party’s headquarters in the Al-Amiriyah area in western Baghdad. The Islamic Party, which is one of the Iraqi entities operating under the banner of the Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front, issued a press statement today saying that last night, Iraqi forces, backed by US troops, assaulted the headquarters’ guards and the party members who were there at the time, destroyed the headquarters’ furniture and contents, seized the licensed weapons carried by the guards, and confiscated sums of money belonging to the party.”

Of course atrocities continue at the hands of occupation forces. Video has been released which shows a group of British soldiers brutally beating and kicking defenseless Iraqi teenagers inside a military compound, and Iraqis recently released from prisons like Abu Ghraib are reporting ongoing torture at the hands of U.S. forces. This, however, should come as no surprise since Secretary of “Defense” Donald Rumsfeld issued a memo over two years ago specifying which types of “harsh interrogation techniques” he wanted used in Iraq.

This is just a brief overview of recent events in Iraq.

When Israeli/U.S. warplanes begin dropping bombs on Iran, will Iraq fade to the back pages of the news as has Afghanistan? With the corporate media coverage of Iraq at this sorry state already, it’s difficult to imagine that not occurring.


Out of sight, out of mind