U.S. COUNTS 26,000 CIVILIANS KILLED BY INSURGENTS

"The Pentagon... report says that nearly 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded in attacks by insurgents, with an estimated 26 casualties a day between January and March of last year, rising to 64 a day in the run up to the referendum on the new constitution. This contradicts the Pentagon's assertion that the security situation in Iraq is improving..."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article323498.ece

HIGH COST TO U.S. OF CREATING AN ISLAMIC STATE

"... Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was once questioned about an Islamic government in Iraq. His response: "If you're suggesting, how would we feel about an Iranian-type government with a few clerics running everything in the country, the answer is: That isn't going to happen." But that is going to happen. The Shiites, who comprise 60 percent of the population, will win any fair election in a landslide. They are the group that pressed for an Islamic republic during the negotiations on a new constitution. Their historical ties to Iran's Shiite government are well known...."

"... The costs to the U.S. of this misguided occupation are enormous. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the war in Iraq has already cost the U.S. more money in real terms than it spent in World War I. Besides the $260 billion in military costs, total spending for Iraq has to include $315 billion in future veterans' benefits, $220 billion in added interest, and $119 billion for every $5 increase in the price of oil through July 2010, plus $24 billion for reconstruction and security. The human costs are 2,000 dead, 20,000 wounded and counting. The political costs in loss of prestige and international support cannot be calculated..."

"... In the end, we will spend $1 trillion or more for an outcome that is inimical to our interests: an Islamic state aligned with Iran, an independent Kurdistan and a rump Sunni state around Baghdad that might well become a haven for terrorists..."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1030-28.htm

QUESTIONS AFTER LIBBY INDICTMENT

"At the heart of Friday's indictment of a top White House aide remain two unsolved mysteries. Who forged the documents that claimed Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons in the African country of Niger? How did a version of the tale get into President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, even though U.S. intelligence agencies never confirmed it and some intelligence analysts doubted it?..."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13024382.htm

OIL PRODUCTION LOWEST IN TEN YEARS

"... The U.S. has spent $420 million fixing the oil network and allocated $1.7 billion to the sector.... (but) Iraq's oil production has fallen below prewar levels to its lowest point in a decade... They're producing less this year than last year. And the outlook for next year doesn't look so great... "
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2005-10-10-iraq-oil-usat_x.htm

"... a report in July by the Government Accountability Office found that Iraqi production had declined since late 2004 to 2.1 million barrels a day from 2.5 million barrels, despite White House legislative requests for almost $3 billion to restore the oil industry there to its prewar abilities..."
http://nytimes.com/2005/10/27/business/worldbusiness/27oil.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5094&en=a82c01e805b01c80&hp&ex=1130472000&partner=homepage

IRAQI OIL EXPORTS HALTED

"Oil exports from Iraq have been completely halted by a combination of attacks and bad weather... and officials warned the (northern) damage may take a month to repair..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4372434.stm

LEGACY OF IRAQ - BADLY WOUNDED TROOPS

"... Without the advances since Vietnam, the U.S. death toll in Iraq would be nearly double the current total... But military doctors said some troops who may have died in previous wars are surviving, but with grievous injuries such as multiple limb amputations. "Someone who loses one limb is a challenge to get back to a meaningful, functional lifestyle. But somebody who loses three limbs, on top of other types of soft tissue wounds, fractures, head injury, spinal-cord injury, paralysis...?"

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID=28746+24-Oct-2005+RTRS&srch=Will+Dunham

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1023-07.htm

CONTRACTORS KILLED

"Four U.S. contractors for the U.S. military were killed in Iraq last month, the military said... No reason was given why the military had not released information on the attack earlier..."

"... the victims were American employees of Halliburton unit Kellog, Brown & Root... two of the men were dragged alive from their vehicle, which had been badly shot up, and forced to kneel in the road before being killed.. "Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they doused the other with petrol and set him alight..."

"Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames... U.S. soldiers escorting the convoy were unable to respond quickly because the hatches on their Humvees were closed..."

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-22T182631Z_01_MOL265092_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-CONTRACTORS.xml&archived=False

HUGHES SAYS SADDAM GASSED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS

"... (Karen) Hughes... defended the invasion of Iraq as necessary to protect the United States... because... "After all he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people like he murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people using poison gas against them," she said."

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticleSearch.aspx?storyID=83858+21-Oct-2005+RTRS&srch=Tomi+Soetjipto

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Indonesia-Hughes.html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1021-05.htm

"... State Department officials later acknowledged that Hughes... had misreported history..."
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051022/NEWS01/510220501/1012/NEWS06

WHAT IF U.S. WITHDRAWS?

"... let's say the US is not around much anymore, what's going to happen if you have a whole brigade of Sunni fighters come down from Mahmudiyah and attack Hila? That sort of thing happened in Lebanon during the civil war. These neighborhood militias can become armies and leave their areas to wage war against other neighborhood militias that become armies. Now, if that started happening, and if the Sunni Arabs started to win, it's inevitable that the Revolutionary Guards will come across the border from Iran to help the Shi'ites. Iran's not going to sit by and allow Iraq's Shi'ites to be massacred. If that happened, the Saudis, the Jordanians and the Syrian Sunnis are not going to stand by either and let Iranian Revolutionary Guards massacre Sunni Arabs in reprisal. They're going to come in. You could simultaneously be having Kurdish massacres of Turkmen, which would bring Turkey in. So you could end up with a regional low-intensity war..."
-- Juan Cole in interview by TomDispatch
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ20Ak02.html

WHY IS SADDAM NOT CHARGED WITH GASSING KURDS?

"Who was the first... to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq?... Winston Churchill. As colonial secretary and secretary for war and air, he authorized the RAF in the 1920s to routinely use mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq..."

"... (concerning) the 1988 gassing of Kurds at Halabja... The CIA's former Iraq desk chief claims Kurds who died at Halabja were killed by cyanide gas, not nerve gas... At the time, Iraq and Iran were locked in... their eight-year war. Halabja was caught between the two armies that were exchanging salvos of regular and chemical munitions. Only Iran had cyanide gas (and Iraq had mustard and nerve gas). If the CIA official is correct, the Kurds were accidentally killed by Iran, not Iraq..."

"... Who supplied (the Iraqis) with (their) mustard and nerve gas?... Four British technicians in Baghdad who (were) "seconded" to Iraq by Britain's ministry of defence and MI6 intelligence to make chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax, Q-fever and plague, at a secret laboratory at Salman Pak."

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2004/12/19/790077.html


"... immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas... The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent -- that is, a cyanide-based gas -- which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time."
http://mosulfamily.blogspot.com/2005/10/saddam-never-gassed-his-own-people.html

"... excerpt from US Army War College report that no evidence exists to support US claims that Iraq used gas on the Kurds..."
http://mosulfamily.blogspot.com/2005/10/no-proof-saddam-gassed-kurds.html

SADDAM ONLY CHARGED WITH KILLING 143 IRAQI SHI'ITES

"... the defense will argue that the 143 people who were executed had been found guilty under Iraq's laws and Saddam's only role was to sign their death warrants - just as George W Bush, as governor of Texas, sent 152 people to death..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ20Ak03.html

"Saddam Hussein's... most flagrant crime of committing mass atrocities against the Iranian people has not been included in the criminal complaint... principally as a result of the twin factors tantamount to opening a Pandora's box: (a) Saddam's forced annexation of Kuwait in 1990 was connected to the post World War I "divide and conquer" neo-colonialism of Western governments, thereby denying Iraq a fair share of the Persian Gulf coastline, and (b) the Iran-Iraq war raises the taboo of US and European governments' complicity with the Ba'athist regime..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ22Ak02.html

SADDAM'S TRIAL COSTING U.S. $75 MILLION

"... The court, the training and the whole proceedings cost $75 million - courtesy of US taxpayers (the budget was allocated in May 2004). About 300 people - paid by the Americans - work on the trial machinery..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ20Ak03.html

IRAQIS BACK ATTACKS ON U.S. TROOPS, HUGE MAJORITY WANT U.S. OUT

"Forty-five percent of Iraqis believe attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified... Eighty-two percent of those polled said they were "strongly opposed" to the presence of the troops..."
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-10-22T214904Z_01_SCH278249_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BRITAIN.xml

"... nearly half of all Iraqis sympathised with violent attacks against British and US coalition troops... No fewer than 82 per cent... declared themselves 'strongly opposed' to the presence of coalition troops..."
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1598908,00.html

RAMADI OUT OF U.S. CONTROL

"... in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, Sunni Arab insurgents are waging their fiercest war against American troops, attacking with relative impunity just blocks from Marine-controlled territory... more than two years after the American invasion, this city of 400,000 people is just barely within American control. The deputy governor of Anbar was shot to death on Tuesday; the day before, the governor's car was fired on. There is no police force. A Baghdad cellphone company has refused to put up towers here. American bases are regularly pelted with rockets and mortar shells, and when troops here get out of their vehicles to patrol, they are almost always running..."
http://nytimes.com/2005/10/23/international/23ramadi.html?ei=5094&en=042fd41fd39161a9&hp=&ex=1130040000&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1130018542-YXkOgWwyPnpiea8yTl8qDA

IRAN LEADER LIKES IRAQI CONTITUTION

"Iran's supreme leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) is praising the U-S-backed constitutional referendum in Iraq as "blessed".
http://www.kxan.com/Global/story.asp?S=4013453&nav=0s3d

IRAQIS JUST NEED TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR

"Maybe they just need to have their civil war," a senior military official in Baghdad said recently. "In this part of the world it's almost a way of life."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12965296.htm

"... So the US invades Iraq, overthrows the government, dissolves the army, appoints an ethnically determined government, backs fundamentalist Shiite parties and Kurdish parties against the interests of the Sunni Arabs. (So) now (someone says) it is the Iraqis' fault that there is communal violence, because they are just like that "over here (?)"
http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/four-gis-killed-khamenei-praises-iraq.html

28% OF RETURNING VETS HAVE HEALTH PROBLEMS

"... since the war began, about 28% of Iraq veterans — about 50,000 servicemembers this year alone — returned with problems... that require medical or mental health treatment... These survey results, which have not been publicly released, were provided to USA TODAY by the Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine... The figure dwarfs the Pentagon's official Iraq casualty count (of) 15,220 wounded..."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-10-18-troops-side_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA

NIXON'S SECRETARY OF DEFENSE CALLS FOR EXIT PLAN

"... defense secretary (Melvin Laird) who served under President Richard M. Nixon during the Vietnam War is warning that the United States is repeating in Iraq some of the mistakes that led to public disillusionment and ultimate defeat in Vietnam, including the impression that there is no clear goal for victory or a detailed, well-described plan to bring US troops home.... He (said) ''Our presence is what feeds the insurgency."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/10/19/nixons_vietnam_era_defense_chief_calls_for_iraq_exit_plan/

SPAIN ORDERS ARREST OF U.S. SOLDIERS

"A Spanish judge has issued an international arrest order for three US soldiers over the shelling of a Baghdad hotel..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4357684.stm

ONLY 7% OF RECONSTRUCTION FUNDS TO BE USED FOR PROJECTS

"A dramatic increase in security spending in Iraq and a shift in reconstruction priorities have created a "reconstruction gap" that will leave many projects planned by the US "on the drawing board"... The emergence of the reconstruction gap was linked, in part, to the onslaught of the Iraqi insurgency in 2004, which was not taken into account when the World Bank estimated in 2003 that it would cost $56bn to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure. Of the $29bn the US has appropriated to be used in Iraq, only 7 per cent remains to be committed for programmes and projects."
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/177027c6-403c-11da-8394-00000e2511c8.html

OUTCOME OF REFERENDUM IS CERTAIN

"... whatever the outcome of the referendum, one result is certain: the birth of a sort of "Shi'iteistan" in central and southern Iraq, virtually autonomous, sitting on the bulk of Iraq's fabulous oil wealth, and with privileged cultural/diplomatic ties with Tehran. This certainly was not what (the) masters in Washington had dreamed of..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ15Ak02.html

TOTAL VICTORY NEEDED IN IRAQ

''We're never going to back down, we're never going to give in, we'll never accept anything less than total victory,'' was President Bush’s message to U.S. troops in Iraq from the White House in a video conference... After... mission accomplished and total victory... (next may be) unconditional surrender to remind us of Roosevelt’s WWII imagery..."
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1015-29.htm

U.S. STARVES IRAQI CIVILIANS

"... (UN) Human rights investigator Jean Ziegler... accused US-led coalition troops of depriving Iraqi civilians of food and water in breach of humanitarian law... the coalition's occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population... using "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare."

"... A US military spokesman in Baghdad denied the allegations... though some supplies had been delayed during fighting, he argued that... "It does not do relief supplies any good if you have them going into a firefight..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4344136.stm

AL-QAEDA LETTER A FAKE?

"A purported al-Qaida web posting has charged the United States with fabricating a letter from the group's second in command allegedly to its leader in Iraq asking for money and laying out the group's plans for the Middle East."
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F73A57D8-D113-4FF9-8A61-D384B80A2DFF.htm

"A statement claiming to be by al-Qaeda in Iraq has rejected as a fake a letter allegedly written by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4339912.stm

"... Most likely it is a black psy-ops operation of the US. But it could also come from Iran, since the mistakes are those a Shiite might make when pretending to be a Sunni. Or it could come from an Iraqi Shiite group attempting to manipulate the United States."
http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/zawahiri-letter-to-zarqawi-shiite.html

BUSH STAGED TROOP TELECONFERENCE

"It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution.... "
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1014-03.htm

VIOLENCE TO INCREASE AFTER CONSTITUTION

"The constitution to be voted on tomorrow will hasten the country's descent into partition... From the beginning of the occupation, the US has consistently portrayed each new milestone towards Iraqi "sovereignty" - such as the creation of the interim government under Ayad Allawi, the January elections, the formation of the transitional government in April, the adoption of a new constitution, and the coming elections - as being vital to undercut the insurgency. In practice, each attempt to legitimise the institutions of occupation enrages more Iraqis, and the level of violence increases..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1592165,00.html

EXIT STRATEGY IN TROUBLE DUE TO SHI'ITE ARMY

"... The Bush administration's exit strategy for Iraq... is in serious trouble. Instead of rising above the ethnic tension that's tearing their nation apart, the mostly Shiite troops are preparing for, if not already fighting, a civil war against the minority Sunni population... seeking revenge against the Sunnis..."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12885151.htm

THE RESISTANCE CONTROLS MUCH OF BAGHDAD

"... Two-and-a-half years into the occupation, Baghdad - which during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s was one of the world's cleanest cities - remains an archipelago of rubble, garbage and fetid lakes... The law of the jungle rules - coupled with the collapse of social life. Baghdad is inundated with messages telling people not to congregate anywhere, otherwise they become targets for suicide bombing. Any foreign visitor is a target for kidnapping. Every government official is a prisoner in his or her own office... Buildings, bridges, sewage system, telephone network, it's all gone... Jaafari's government controls little else than the Green Zone. Five Baghdad neighborhoods - Ghaziliya, Amiraya, Yarmouk, Doura and Shurta - are controlled by the resistance..."

"So this is the visible legacy of the occupation on the eve of a popular vote on a constitution few have even seen: the former capital of the caliphate and Oriental legend, the former proud metropolis of the Arab world, turned into an uninhabitable, lawless pit..."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ12Ak02.html

ANARCHY IN IRAQ - INSURGENTS CONTROL BAGHDAD CLOSE TO GREEN ZONE

"Most of Iraq is in a state of anarchy, with insurgents controlling parts of Baghdad just half a mile from the so-called Green Zone... "
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article319160.ece

YOUNG REPUBLICANS SUPPORT OF TROOPS

"... Conservative campus groups like YAF and College Republicans are growing in strength and numbers. And since the start of the Iraq War, these outfits have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Bush to support the war, but they have not stood alongside the soldiers doing the actual fighting and dying... (their leaders') bios do not refer to any past, present or future military service... of these young right-wingers. They want someone else to do the hard work."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051031/the_young_chickenhawks

IRAQ ISSUES WARRANTS FOR 27 CORRUPT OFFICIALS IN US-BACKED GOVERNMENT

"Iraq has issued arrest warrants for 27 senior officials from the US-backed interim government over suspected embezzlement of more than $1 billion... The money was... siphoned abroad in cash... in a money laundering scam."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4329686.stm

RUMSFELD TO RESIGN OVER IRAQ FAILURE?

"... The generals who run the war in Iraq -- Central Command boss Gen. John Abizaid and ground commander Gen. George Casey -- ... let slip the awful truth about our efforts to stand up an Iraqi army and security force... only one battalion of perhaps 700 troops actually is capable of operating against the home-grown insurgents and the foreign jihad terrorists... The word in Washington and in the halls of the Pentagon is that Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is seriously considering handing in his resignation sometime this month."
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/12862435.htm

TROOPS MAKE MORE WORKING FOR CONTRACTORS

"... Private contractors are doing many jobs once done only by military personnel, such as delivering mail, washing clothes, slinging chow and serving as translators, bodyguards and interrogators... But it has led contractors to hire away experienced troops to do their old jobs for up to 10 times their military salaries... Experienced military explosives specialists can earn $250,000 a year or more working for the private companies. In the military, an enlisted man with 10 years' experience can make more than $46,000. The better pay from private companies has led troops to sign on with contractors when their service ends..."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-07-31-contractors-private_x.htm

AMERICAN DEADLINE MAKES IRAQI CONSTITUTION LIKE FAST FOOD

"If we'd had more time, it would have been possible to get Sunni participation. When Oct. 15 comes, many won't even have seen the constitution.... We're short of time — it's the fault of the Americans. They are always insisting on short deadlines. It's as if they're [making] hamburgers and fast food."
--Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-disconnect9oct09,1,6219434.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

U.S. NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY: DISAGREEMENT = TERRORISM

"... the National Defense Strategy of the United States - which explicitly endorses unilateral pre-emptive strikes - remains very much in place. The Bush administration self-declares that it retains a unique "right" to engage in a "pre-emptive/preventive" war against anyone, anywhere, any time, even at a mere suspicion of being subjectively threatened by the theoretical possibility that it might be "attacked" at some undefined place in an indefinite future.

"But even more crucial: any diplomatic or legal disagreement with the US under international law is regarded as such an "attack", or as a form of "asymmetric warfare". So to diplomatically attack the US may also be regarded as an act of terrorism..."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ07Ak01.html

DEMOCRACY TO STRENGTHEN INSURGENCY

"... U.S. officials have begun to question... American strategy in Iraq: that establishing democracy there can... eradicate the insurgency... some within the Bush administration have concluded that the quest for democracy... could actually strengthen the guerrillas..."
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-disconnect9oct09,0,2475208.story?coll=la-home-headlines

IRAQ INVASION THE GREATEST STRATEGIC DISASTER IN U.S. HISTORY

"... the invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history”.
--Lieutenant General William Odom, Director of the National Security Agency under President Reagan, Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, now Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington.
http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_3075570
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10519.htm

GREATEST THREAT TO U.S. IS CIVIL WAR, NOT TERRORISTS

"Civil war, not terrorists, greatest danger in Iraq... US generals and Iraqi journalists say civil strife is Iraq's greatest threat... While Mr. Bush stated that terrorism was the greatest danger faced by Iraqis, US military generals and many Iraqis say the threat of civil war (some Iraqi officials believe a civil war has already started, but is just not being talked about) poses a much greater risk..."
http://search.csmonitor.com/2005/1007/dailyUpdate.html

DECADES OF WAR IN IRAQ

"Cheney warns of 'decades of war'... "Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4314234.stm

BUSH SAYS GOD TOLD HIM TO INVADE IRAQ

"President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.... "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did."
--Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush.shtml

ABU GHRAIB GUARDS TORTURED PRISONERS FOR STRESS RELIEF

"... American soldiers who personally tortured Iraqi prisoners have come forward to give testimony to human rights organisations about crimes they committed... a captain and two sergeants – from the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mercury near Fallujah in Iraq have told Human Rights Watch how prisoners were tortured... as a form of stress relief..."
http://www.sundayherald.com/52035

IRAQI CONSTITUTION A SICK U.S. JOKE

"... given that it is two weeks before the referendum and no ordinary Iraqis have seen the text of the new constitution, and given that the Sunni Arabs reject it to a person even just from the little they know of it, this constitution is another sick joke played by the Bush administration, which keeps forcing Iraq to jump through hoops made in Washington as "milestones" and "tipping points" to which the Republican Party can point as progress..."
http://www.juancole.com/2005/10/iraqi-government-totters-us-goes-it.html

CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ

"... Sunni insurgents hit two Shiite towns in two days with brutal bombings that killed more than 110 people... The Sunni-led al-Qaida in Iraq... has declared "all-out war" on Shiites, and since a Shiite-majority government took power April 28, suicide bombers have killed at least 1,345 people, according to an Associated Press count... attacks seemed staged to kill or maim as many civilians as possible, tearing through busy markets and commercial streets..."
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1174790