TORTURE IN IRAQ IS OUT OF CONTROL, WORSE NOW THAN UNDER SADDAM

"... as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand... The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein... Detainees' bodies often show signs of beating using electrical cables, wounds in heads and genitals, broken legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns. Bodies found at the Baghdad mortuary often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances. Many bodies have missing skin, broken bones, back, hands and legs, missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails... Victims come from prisons run by US-led multinational forces as well as by the ministries of interior and defence and private militias..."
--Report by Manfred Nowak, UN chief anti-torture expert
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5368360.stm

IRAQI POLICE ACADEMY A DISASTER

"A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished... was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

"This is the most essential civil security project in the country -- and it's a failure," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. "The Baghdad police academy is a disaster."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134.html

IRAQ WAR IS TERRORISM "RECRUITING SERGEANT"

"The war in Iraq ... has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world ... Iraq has served to radicalise an already disillusioned youth and al-Qaida has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act."
--Study by British Ministry of Defense
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,1882708,00.html

IRAQI AL-QAEDA CALLS FOR KIDNAPPING WESTERNERS

"The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, has called for kidnapping of Westerners... "I call on every holy fighter in Iraq to strive to capture some dogs of the Christians so that we can liberate our imprisoned sheikh" ... a reference to Egyptian cleric Omar Abdul Rahman, held in the US over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5389794.stm

MAJORITY OF IRAQIS BACK ATTACKS ON U.S. TROOPS AND WANT WITHDRAWAL

"About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, and slightly more than that want their government to ask U.S. troops to leave within a year... Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents... About 61 percent approved of the attacks — up from 47 percent in January. A solid majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs approved of the attacks..."
--Poll by University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes

"... two-thirds of Iraqis in Baghdad favor an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces..."
--Poll by U.S. Department of State (Baghdad embassy) using Iraqi public opinion research firm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060927/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraqi_opinion;_ylt=AlfkmTOtfkK91wA5yPnR0r2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OTB1amhuBHNlYwNtdHM-

"Iraqis -- especially the majority Shiites -- are increasingly angry and frustrated about their situation and impatient for U.S. troops to leave... Nearly two of every three Shiites said they approved of attacks on U.S.-led forces... "
--Poll by University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34905

BUSH DID WHAT JIHADISTS WANTED

"... Military pressure has had an effect on Al Qaeda, changing it from a centralized organization to more of a diffuse movement, according to the NIE. But the invasion of Iraq has allowed jihadists a "cause célèbre," the document notes. They can pose as liberators of the oppressed, increasing their appeal in the Muslim world. "The intelligence community has concluded that we did what they wanted us to do, for the reasons they wanted us to do it, and that the result they wanted has happened..."
--National Intelligence Estimate, Senate Commitee on Intelligence, released August 2006
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0928/p01s02-usfp.html

NEW U.S. PRISON AT CAMP CROPPER REPLACES ABU GHRAIB

"... First we had those huge military bases that officials were careful never to label "permanent".... billions of dollars were poured into them and they morphed into the size of US towns with their own bus routes, sports facilities, Pizza Huts, Subways, Burger Kings, and mini-golf courses. Huge as they now are, elaborate as they now are, they are still continually being upgraded. Now... on one of them we have $60 million worth of the first "permanent US prison" in Iraq... Camp Cropper, which started out as a bunch of tents, has now become a $60 million "state-of-the-art" prison. The upgrade, on the drawing boards since 2004, was just completed and hardly a word has been written about it..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI28Ak01.html

CHENEY WRONG ON CONNECTION BETWEEN SADDAM AND AL-QAEDA

"... there was "a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s... al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained... the Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organisation." It was "clearly official policy" on the part of Iraq..."
--Vice President Dick Cheney, TV interview, September 2003

"... debriefings conducted since the invasion of Iraq "indicate that Saddam issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with al-Qaeda. No post-war information suggests that the Iraqi regime attempted to facilitate a relationship with [Osama] Bin Laden. "Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda... refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support."
--Senate Intelligence Committee, National Intelligence Estimate, August 2006

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5329350.stm

BUSH DISTORTS TERROR REPORT -- AL-QAEDA IS NOT ACTIVELY DIRECTING TERROR

"In announcing yesterday that he would release the key judgments of a controversial National Intelligence Estimate, President Bush said he agreed with the document's conclusion "that because of our successes against the leadership of al-Qaeda, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent."

"But the estimate itself posits no such cause and effect. Instead... it describes the spreading "global jihadist movement" as fueled largely by forces that al-Qaeda exploits but is not actively directing..."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/26/AR2006092600530.html

BUSH'S CHURCH IS FOR ENDING IRAQ WAR

"... Bush’s own church has called for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and is urging direct action to end the war... United Methodist Church leaders helped launch a week of protest and civil disobedience against the war in Iraq by signing a Declaration of Peace in the capital, urging President Bush to pull US troops out.."
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_060924bush.shtml

U.S. MILITARY RECRUITING STANDARDS LOWERED

"... The military has... relaxed its age and education requirements for enlistment, and ... increased enlistments by individuals with "'serious criminal misconduct" in their records," and eased requirements of non-citizens -- of which there are currently about 40,000 in the armed services -- and made them eligible to citizenship after only one day of active-duty military service..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34875

U.S. WARRIOR CREED NOT SUITED TO MIDDLE EAST CONFLICTS

"... The Warrior Ethos was introduced in November 2003 (as) a martial creed that urges soldiers to demonstrate their fighting spirit by destroying the enemies of the United States at close quarter rather than winning the trust of local populations... It begins with the stirring vow, “I am an American soldier”, and goes on to affirm that “I will never accept defeat. I will never quit... I stand ready to deploy, engage and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat”... the Warrior Ethos’s emphasis on annihilating the enemy is inimical to the type of patient, confidence-building counter-insurgency warfare in which America is engaged in the Middle East..."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2372122,00.html

U.S. INTELLIGENCE REPORT SAYS IRAQ WAR INCREASED TERRORISM

"... the findings of a classified US intelligence paper on the effects of the Iraq war.... blames the three-year-old conflict for increasing the threat of terrorism and helping fuel Islamic radicalism worldwide... this latest finding, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, is the most comprehensive report yet, based on the considered analysis of all 16 of the US intelligence agencies..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5375064.stm

"... Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist expressed confidence US voters would not be swayed by the intelligence report. "I think the American people, when they read an article like that ... say, 'Listen, just keep me safe... that's what they want."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0924-01.htm

U.S. HAS LOST A GENERATION OF GOODWILL IN MUSLIM WORLD

"... the Bush administration's tactics has "lost a generation of goodwill in the Muslim world" and its Middle East democratisation programme "has all but disappeared, except for official rhetoric".
--Emile Nakhleh, who retired at the end of June as director the CIA Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0922-03.htm

IRAQ IN ANARCHY

"... Baghdad is now a Hobbesian world where everybody is at war with everybody else and the only protection is self-protection.
Iraq is in a state of primal anarchy... The Iraqi state and much of society have been criminalised.... Beyond the Green Zone, Iraq has descended into murderous anarchy... masked from the outside world because the country is too dangerous for journalists to report what is happening...."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1696153.ece

U.S. OCCUPATION AT MERCY OF MUQTADA AL-SADR AND IRAN

"... The underlying reality in Iraq, which the Bush administration does not appear to grasp fully, is that the United States is now dependent on the sufferance of Iran and its Iraqi Shi'ite political-military allies to continue the occupation... the US military is no longer the real power in Iraq... the main threat to the occupation comes not from the Sunni insurgents but from the militant Iraqi Shi'ite forces aligned with Iran, led by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army. The armed Shi'ite militias are now powerful enough to make it impossible for the US occupation to continue... Muqtada has both the intention and the capability to bring down the US occupation...."

"... It would be surprising if Iran were not urging Muqtada to hold off on attacking the occupation forces until after the Bush administration had either reached a broad political agreement with Tehran or had been replaced in two years by an administration that would do so..."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI22Ak01.html

ONLY 18,000 U.S. TROOPS ARE FIGHTING

"... 147,000 American soldiers are deployed in Iraq, the majority of them in the area around Baghdad... But the overwhelming majority of them are not out on the streets, stopping the bombings and kidnappings and murders. The total number of fighting soldiers in the American force is probably about 18,000 - quite a small number, given the area they have to cover and the size of the problem..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5371394.stm

FALLUJAH INCREASED HOSTILITY AGAINST U.S. TROOPS

"... among the five million Sunni Muslims there, about 75% now support the armed insurgency against the coalition. This compares with 14% in the first opinion poll the Defense Department carried out back in 2003. It is a catastrophic loss of support, and there is no sign whatever that it can be effectively reversed...
"The rise in hostility to the US forces is clearly linked to the onslaught against the town of Falluja in 2004....The ferocity of the attack by the US marines persuaded large numbers of Iraqi Sunnis that the Americans were their enemies. The situation in the country as a whole has never seriously improved since then, and Falluja itself has still not been entirely subdued..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5371394.stm

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT OF CIVILIANS INCREASES RESISTANCE

"US forces are taking to collective punishment of civilians in several cities... Ramadi... is still living with the daily terror of its people getting killed by snipers and its infrastructure being destroyed... has been facing the worst of the American terror and destruction for more than two years... the US military was bulldozing entire blocks of buildings near the governorate to dampen resistance attacks... There are so many killings by American snipers. So many families have lost loved ones trying to visit relatives or even just stepping outside of their house... a government official... (said) "But of course most cities in al-Anbar are being constantly punished by the Americans"... Ramadi... Hit... Haditha... Fallujah... Khaldiyah... Samarra... a local tribal leader... said. "But if they think they will make us kneel by these criminal acts, they are wrong. If they increase the pressure, the resistance will increase the reaction. We see this pattern repeated so often now."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI20Ak02.html

NO U.S. TROOP REDUCTION

"The U.S. is unlikely to cut the number of its troops in Iraq until at least the middle of next year because the sectarian violence is greater than expected... the U.S. has over 140,000 troops in Iraq, up from about 131,600 in February... The precise number of U.S. troops is murky. Abizaid... (said) over 140,000. His staff later said... 142,000... (a) spokesman for Casey... said) 147,000... greater than the 143,000 troops who were in Iraq in April 2003 when Baghdad fell... of the roughly 500,000 active-duty U.S. Army troops, 390,000 are either in Iraq or Afghanistan, on their way home from there or getting ready to go back..."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=us&sid=awczI_xLyrc0

BAGHDAD SEWER PLANT CLOGGED

"...So many corpses were clogging the capital's main sewer plant last spring that authorities launched an inquiry, with U.S. technical assistance. Investigators discovered a macabre pattern: Manholes from as far as several miles away had been used as disposal sites, allowing the remains to course underground through broad concrete pipes along with the city's subterranean effluvia. "It's possible some bodies were minced by the pumping system, and we never knew about them," said Ahmed Abdil Elah, assistant general manager of the city sewage system. "There is no trace of them."
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fuj/latimes90.htm

IRAQ THE CENTRAL RECRUITING AND TRAINING FRONT FOR TERRORISTS

"... In 2005, a CIA study reported that Iraq provided 'a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills' of Islamic terrorists. The war, which began on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, has now resulted in the worldwide growth of terrorism, according to Western intelligence agencies. Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the world's centre of lawlessness and now draws terrorists who want to train for future attacks in other countries..."
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/article_1199901.php/Lawlessness_and_terrorism_rule_Iraq_five_years_after_9_11

SHIITE VISION OF A U.S.-FREE IRAQ

"... Mustafa Yaqoubi... a top deputy of Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr... sketched out his vision of the Iraq to come, after the Americans withdraw. First, "there will be a civil war"... No matter when the Americans withdraw, "the first year of transition, it will be worse; after that, it will gradually improve"... (then the) Shiite majority will finally be able to... usher in a Shiite religious government... (that) would be moderate and perhaps comparable in some ways to Iran's...."

".. (he said) Iraq's Shiites owe no gratitude to the Americans. "The Americans are not saving us from Saddam for the sake of the Iraqi people. They gave Saddam clearance in the 1990s to strike at the Shia people. It was in their own interest to get rid of Saddam."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091101337_pf.html

IRAQI VOTE DISSOLVED THE COUNTRY

"... In Iraq's Kurdish north, the Iraqi flag no longer flies... on public buildings... recent fighting between Iraqi government forces and the militia of Shiite powerhouse Moqtada al-Sadr... suggest a further spiraling toward at least a semiautonomous confederacy, if not a complete dissolution of the country... Iraq experts believe dissolution of the country is inevitable... "

"The voters did what we didn't have the courage to do, their voting divided Iraq... pointing to voting that was overwhelmingly along ethnic and sectarian lines. "The question now is whether [Iraq] can continue as a loose confederation - or will it officially break up?..."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0911/p02s01-usfp.html

U.S. HAS LOST CONTROL OVER 1/3 OF IRAQ

"Iraq's Anbar province (is) 'politically lost'... "We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically – and that's where wars are won and lost." ... there are no functioning Iraqi government institutions in Anbar, leaving a vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has become the province's most significant political force... (a) person familiar with the report said it describes Anbar as beyond repair; a third said it concludes that the United States has lost in Anbar...."
--Comments on report by Col. Pete Devlin, chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001204.html

"The U.S. military has lost control over the volatile al-Anbar province, Iraqi police and residents say... (this) includes Fallujah, Ramadi and other towns that have seen the worst of military occupation... "We are talking about nearly a third of the area of Iraq," Ahmed Salman, a historian from Fallujah told IPS. "Al-Anbar borders Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, and the resistance there will never stop as long as there are American soldiers on the ground."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34587

"... The resistance appears to be in control of the province now. "No government official can do anything without contacting the resistance first," said a government official in Ramadi. "Even the governor used to [get] their approval for everything. When he stopped doing so, they issued a death sentence against him, and now he cannot move without American protection... the US military is working against itself.. Their actions ruin their goal because they use these huge, violent military operations which kill so many civilians, and make it impossible to calm down the people of al-Anbar."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI07Ak01.html

THE "LONG WAR" IS SELF-DEFEATING

"... a new narrative for the conflict was unveiled: "The Long War". War narrative does three essential things. First, it is the organizing framework for policy... Second, this "story" works as a framework... Third... the narrative then serves practically as the anointed rhetorical handbook for how the war is to be argued and described.

"The Long War is a failed narrative because it does not describe actual reality. Reality tells a story of a United States delivering change to the Muslim world, a force of creative destruction... this US-created reality only fires up the long-standing Muslim grand narrative of deliverance and restoration... telling Muslims that the US is the dark force that must be resisted.

"The Long War is thus more than a failed narrative. It is a self-defeating narrative. It has prospered only because it speaks to a highly motivated domestic audience, the conservative Republican base that remains the passionate heart of the Bush administration's war policy..."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HI09Aa01.html

ARABS AND MUSLIMS ENRAGED OVER PLIGHT OF IRAQIS

"As the slaughter [in Iraq] continues, the Arab and Muslim world are increasingly enraged over the plight of the Iraqi people, with hatred toward the United States reaching new heights."
--Alon Ben-Meir, Israeli international relations professor at New York University

"... Adding to that fury... was last month's war between Israel and Hezbollah,... It succeeded not only in inflaming anti-U.S. opinion throughout the Islamic world, including, significantly, the Shia majority in Iraq..."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34667

U.S. SENATE REPORT SAYS NO SADDAM LINK TO AL-QAEDA

"There is no evidence of formal links between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq prior to the 2003 war, a US Senate report says... The finding is contained in a 2005 CIA report released by the Senate's Intelligence Committee... (the report said) that the (Iraqi) government "did not have a relationship, harbour, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5328592.stm

OCCUPATIONS FUELING ISLAMIC MILITANCY

"... during the first months of the occupation... In 2003 I drove down to Basra in southern Iraq and up to Mosul in the far north without incident. If I tried to repeat any of these journeys in Iraq... today I would certainly be killed. The rest of the Middle East is becoming more dangerous by the day..."

"The real reason of the increasing violence in the Middle East is the return to imperial control and foreign occupation half a century after the European colonial empires were broken up. This is the fuel for Islamic militancy... The attempts by America and Britain to crush Islamic militancy across the Middle East are making sure it will become stronger."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0905-07.htm

WHERE SHOULD BUSH LOOK FOR FASCISM?

"...In classic terms, fascism is defined by five characteristics of governance:
- nationalist aggression;
- fusing of the state with corporate interests;
- single party rule;
- the suppression of civil liberties;
- and pervasive propaganda.
All of these inhered in the Italian, German, and Japanese governments of the 1930s and '40s. All of them would have to be present before the label "fascism" could legitimately be applied to a modern regime..."

"... By these criteria, it is doubtful that Muslims resisting military occupation of their lands, the massacre of their people, and the theft of their resources by western invaders can be considered "fascist"... If Bush, in fact, wants to protect the U.S. against the very real dangers of fascism he so lustily decries, he will need to look for it elsewhere."

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0905-22.htm

SUICIDE TERRORISM MOTIVATED BY NATIONALISM, NOT ISLAM

"Nationalism, not Islam, motivates most suicide terrorists... data from all 315 suicide terrorist campaigns from 1980 to 2003, involving 462 individuals... (found that) The major objective of 95 percent of suicide attacks is to expel foreign military forces from territory that the terrorists perceive as their homeland. There is little connection with Islamic fundamentalism or any of the world religions. The taproot of suicide terrorism is nationalism and it's ''mainly a response to foreign occupation.''
http://www.mcall.com/news/opinion/anotherview/all-olson9-5sep05,0,5283521.story

PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS SHOULD DETERMINE TROOP LEVELS, NOT GENERALS

"... Bush likes to tell reporters that U.S. troop levels in Iraq hinge on the assessments from top military commanders... take a hard look at that rhetorical scam... Civilian control of the military means that the president is accountable to citizens, not generals... it's not up to military officers to decide whether this is going to be a long war... The president's claim that key deployment decisions rest in the hands of military chiefs is not only a dodge. It's also manipulative -- shoving public discourse toward the mindset of assessing military tactics instead of ethical choices. And the claim dangerously encourages the idea that military leaders should have a major say in U.S. foreign-policy decisions. Under the Constitution, in theory, the president and Congress share that power -- derived from the consent of the governed. We must hold the president and Congress accountable."
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0905-20.htm

PENTAGON SPENDING $20 MILLION TO MONITOR TONE OF IRAQ NEW STORIES

"The U.S. command in Baghdad is seeking bidders for a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for monitoring the tone of Iraq news stories filed by U.S. and foreign media..."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0901-06.htm

WAR NOT A SOLUTION FOR TERRORISM

"... massive military attacks, inevitably indiscriminate, are not only morally reprehensible, but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out... The United States, in three years of war, which began with shock-and-awe bombardment and goes on with day-to-day violence and chaos, has been an utter failure in its claimed objective of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq..."
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/09/02/war_is_not_a_solution_for_terrorism/

REALITY CHECK

"... Reality will force this White House to acknowledge that the misadventure in Iraq has gone horribly awry. On that day will come the admission that U.S. troops will either be forced to stay for years, perhaps decades, in order to police another country's civil war or that they will be withdrawn from harm's way.If U.S. troops remain, they will be, first and foremost, targets. And their deaths will almost certainly be in vain, as the root causes of the violence in Iraq will not be eliminated by time or by a massive U.S. troop presence..."
--Editorial, Capital Times, Madison, WI
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0902-22.htm

GRIM REPORT ON IRAQ

"Pentagon Releases Grim Report on Iraq... Iraqi casualties soared by more than 50 percent during the roughly three-month period ending in early August, the product of spiraling sectarian clashes and a Sunni-based insurgency that remains “potent and viable”... President Bush and members of his cabinet have been trying to present a strong case in support of the war... The Pentagon distributed the report on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend, a common time for government officials to put out bad news..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/world/middleeast/01cnd-military.html?hp&ex=1157169600&en=1fe8dd0fc7c09a05&ei=5094&partner=homepage