PENTAGON UNIT TO COUNTER "INACCURATE" NEWS STORIES

"... the Bush administration does not believe the true picture of events in Iraq has been made public... (and) has set up a new unit to better promote its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet... The Pentagon said the move would boost its ability to counter "inaccurate" news stories and exploit new media...

"The newly-established unit will use "new media" channels to push its message and "set the record straight"..."develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and aim to "correct the record"... The unit would reportedly monitor media such as web logs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.... the move to set up the unit had not been prompted either by the eroding public support in the US for the Iraq war or the US mid-term elections..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6101178.stm

MISSING WEAPONS FOUND IN IRAQ

"(An audit found that) Nearly one of every 25 weapons the military bought for Iraqi security forces is missing... almost 4 percent of the semiautomatic pistols, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons it began supplying to Iraq since the end of 2003... The Pentagon spent $133 million on the weapons... (and) By December, the U.S. military had planned to put those weapons in the hands of 325,500 personnel."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061029/ap_on_go_ot/iraq_reconstruction_audits

"... The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis... making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/30/world/middleeast/30reconstruct.html?hp&ex=1162270800&en=bfe1488484d2e635&ei=5094&partner=homepage

FUTURE OF IRAQ TO BE DETERMINED BY IMF OIL LAW

"... US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman landed in Baghdad this past summer, insisting that Iraqis must "pass a hydrocarbon law under which foreign companies can invest". Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani was convinced, and said the law would be passed by the end of 2006... a debt-for-oil program concocted and imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is the point of the US invasion - a return on investment on the hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayers' money spent.

"The draft hydrocarbon law was reviewed by the IMF, reviewed by Bodman and reviewed by Big Oil executives... it will not be reviewed by Iraqi civil society... The real... future of Iraq will be decided in December... (by this) new oil law..."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ27Ak03.html

"... The Bush administration won't pull out of Iraq because it doesn't want to abandon... the oil.The Iraqi government is under pressure to pass a new law to open up Iraq's vast oil reserves to foreign investment and ownership. None of this is mentioned in the media's endless commentary on the war. What would wildly lucrative profits for Big Oil have to do with the U.S. involvement in Iraq?"
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1162034469856

THE BEST AND ONLY OPTION FOR IRAQ - MUSLIM FORCES UNDER A U.N. MANDATE

"... The best - and only - option for the US might be to maintain the integrity of Iraq as a single entity and look to Muslim and Arab forces to take charge of security, but with a new United Nations mandate. In other words, the future of Iraq has to be brought under the legitimacy of the UN umbrella, and with the presence of Muslim forces..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ27Ak02.html

MISTREATMENT OF LABORERS ON NEW U.S. EMBASSY

"... the new US$592 million US Embassy in Baghdad... near the Tigris River will equal Vatican City in size... As of now, only a handful of authorized State Department managers and contractors, along with First Kuwaiti workers and contractors, are officially allowed inside the project's walls. No journalist has ever been allowed access to the sprawling 42-hectare site with towering construction cranes raising their necks along the skyline... (There have been) complaints about management of the project and poor treatment of the laborers that, at times, numbered as many as 2,500... (earning) as little as $10-$30 a day.. Most are from the Philippines, India and Pakistan. Others are from Egypt and Turkey... (There is) poor sanitation, squalid living conditions and medical malpractice in the labor camps where several thousand low-paid migrant workers lived. The number of workers with injuries and ailments stunned (one US contractor). Once when 17 workers climbed the wall of the construction site to escape, a State Department official helped round them up and put them in "virtual lockdown"..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ27Ak01.html

PLAN TO DIVIDE IRAQ LOSES APPEAL

"A plan to divide Iraq into three autonomous regions... is losing support among a key constituency - residents of Iraq's largely Shiite Muslim southern provinces... the group expected to benefit most from its imposition.... The idea has always been opposed by Sunni Muslims... the Kurds continue to favor it... (but) Shiites in southern Iraq say they no longer believe a region made up largely of members of their sect will solve the problems that plague their communities... they feel abandoned by their largely Shiite central government... (which) has allowed local parties and their militias - which have proved to be stronger than the government's security forces - to control their cities."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/iraq/15856281.htm

BUSH VIEWS STAKES IN IRAQ

"... the US president began the press conference at the White House by outlining recent setbacks in Iraq.... He warned that if Iraq became a failed state, extremists could gain access to oil wealth and launch fresh attacks. If the US was not successful in Iraq, he said, extremists could use it as a base from which to try to establish a "radical empire from Spain to Indonesia".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6084902.stm

IRAQ CONNECTION TO AL-QAEDA BASED ON CONFESSION OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

"... Iban al Shakh al Libby... an Al-Qaeda terror suspect captured by the United States, who gave evidence of links between Iraq and the terror network, confessed after being tortured... (He) claimed... a connection between ... Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. This intelligence report made it all the way to the top, and was used by... Colin Powell as a key piece of justification ... for invading Iraq..."

"Powell claimed in a UN Security Council meeting in February 2003, weeks before a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, that the country under Saddam Hussein had provided weapons training to Al-Qaeda, saying he could "trace the story of a senior terrorist operative"... (who is now alleged to be) Libby."

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/061027/afp/061027002757int.html

CIVIL WAR TOO EASY A TERM

"... Baghdad now is convulsed by hatred, paralyzed by suspicion; fear has forced many to leave. Carnage its rhythm and despair its mantra, the capital, it seems, no longer embraces life... There was civil war-style sectarian killing... Alongside it were gangland turf battles over money, power and survival; a raft of political parties and their militias fighting a zero-sum game; a raging insurgency; the collapse of authority; social services a chimera; and no way forward for an Iraqi government ordered to act by Americans who themselves are still seen as the final arbiter and, as a result, still depriving that government of legitimacy. Civil war was perhaps too easy a term..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701487.html?nav=rss_print/outlook

IRAQI PM NOT "AMERICA'S MAN"

"I am elected by a people and a parliament... I am a friend of the United States, but I am not America's man in Iraq."
--Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, October 27, 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6094454.stm

"... White House spokesman Tony Snow insisted "there are no strains in the relationship" between Iraq and the United States..."
http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=148802

BUSH IRAQ WAR DELAYING 2ND COMING OF CHRIST

"... U.S. foreign policy is delaying the second coming of Jesus Christ, according to evangelical preacher K.A. Paul (who) railed against the war in Iraq on Sunday... (saying) the Bush administration has delayed the second coming because U.S. foreign policy has blocked Christian missionaries from working in Iraq, Iran and Syria..."
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/116038288540580.xml&coll=2

IRAQ POLICY ENTERING RETREAT PHASE

"US and UK policy in Iraq is now entering its retreat phrase. Where there is no hope of victory, the necessity for victory must be asserted ever more strongly... For retreat to be tolerable it must be called victory... the spin doctors are already at work... telling the world that the occupation will have failed only through the ingratitude and uselessness of the Iraqis themselves. The rubbishing of the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has begun..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1930684,00.html

BUSH AND BIN LADEN NEED EACH OTHER

"Bush presidency and bin Laden: Each needs other for legitimacy... al-Qaida is not much more than an assembly of rag-tag, fringe ideologies that barely have credit in the Islamic world... Al-Qaida's theology is... crude and overwhelmingly rejected by mainstream Islam's clerics -- beginning with al-Qaida's cult of violence and death. But the administration bought the delusion whole, giving Osama the disproportionate fight he wants... and elevating him to an enemy status he could never manage on his own.... Osama has only one rival accomplice: George W. Bush."
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Columnists/Essays/colESSAY102406.htm

3.1 MILLION IRAQIS DISPLACED BY TOTAL BREAKDOWN

"... Out of the population of 26 million, 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country and a further 1.5 million are displaced within Iraq, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees... In Jordan alone there are 500,000 Iraqi refugees and a further 450,000 in Syria. In Syria alone they are arriving at the rate of 40,000 a month... Baghdad is breaking up into a dozen different cities, each under the control of its own militia... There is the total breakdown of law and order. Kidnappings are rife. Businessmen pay for the assassination of their rivals. Sunni militants kill women wearing trousers and men wearing shorts.Rival Shia militias fight pitched battles for control of oilfields. American soldiers often shoot at anything..."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1919327.ece

BUSH CONSIDERING 8 OPTIONS

1. British out now.
2. US and Coalition troops out now.
3. Phased withdrawal.
4. Talk to Iran and Syria.
5. Remove Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in favor of a strongman.
6. Break-up of Iraq
7. A US retreat to super-bases.
8. One last push.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1928058,00.html

SOMEHOW IRAQ

"... Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is...

"Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them...

"Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet..."

--Kevin Tillman, fellow soldier and brother of Pat Tillman who was killed in Afghanistan
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/

A NEW IRAQ EMERGING

"... There is a new Iraq emerging before our eyes. It is an Iraq that torments Christians, that indulges in unrelenting sectarian bloodbaths, that cheers for Hezbollah, that is no more a friend to Israel than is Iran... The new Iraq is not what George W. Bush talks about. But... that's the Iraq we are in."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001363_2.html

IRAQI GOVT STOPS GIVING CIVILIAN CASUALTY FIGURES TO U.N.

"The United Nations office in Baghdad says that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the country’s medical authorities to stop providing the organization with monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the conflict there.."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/world/middleeast/21statistics.html?_r=1&oref=login

PROPOSED COUP IS NOT THE ANSWER

"... a coup in Baghdad... might just add to the bloody unraveling of the country. The problem is... (that) "In order to mount a coup, you have to have a state. And there is no state in Iraq." Iraq is utterly anarchic, a Mad Max world of clashing paramilitaries, gangs, warlords, sectarian fighters, death squads, criminal enterprises, government-backed mafias, and several hundred thousand army men, police, Interior Ministry commandos and special units like the Facilities Protection Service that are only loosely under the control of the central government. So how would a prospective coup-maker, even with Washington's fervent backing, impose his will on all that?..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ21Ak03.html

SADDAM VERDICT DELAYED UNTIL TWO DAYS BEFORE MIDTERM ELECTIONS

"A court trying Saddam Hussein... could deliver its verdict on November 5... The U.S.-backed court was due to announce on Monday (October 16) a final date for verdicts on the ousted Iraqi leader... However, the court said it needed more time to review testimony. Court spokesman Raed Juhi said the Iraqi High Tribunal would reconvene on November 5..."
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-10-16T111814Z_01_COL554913_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-SADDAM.xml&rpc=92

"The US-backed special tribunal in Baghdad signalled Monday that it will likely delay a verdict in the first trial of Saddam Hussein to November 5... That verdict, which could send the ousted leader to the gallows, would then come, curiously enough, just two days before the midterm elections..."
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=130487

GENERAL SAYS NEW APPROACH NEEDED, 25,000 IRAQI FORCE CASUALTIES

"... Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell... said that the... crackdown in Baghdad has not succeeded in quelling violence across the capital and a new approach is needed... And General Caldwell gave a new sense of the toll the continuing violence has taken on Iraq’s young security forces. He said that roughly 25,000 soldiers and police officers had been lost to service after being killed or wounded too badly to return to duty..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/world/middleeast/20iraqcnd.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=27dea122a92227ce&hp&ex=1161316800&partner=homepage

BUSH AND CASEY DIFFER ON THE ENEMY IN IRAQ

"The violence is being caused by a combination of terrorists, elements of former regime criminals and sectarian militias."
--President George W Bush, news conference October 11, 2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-10-11-baghdad-violence_x.htm

"... groups that are working to affect [the situation in Iraq] negatively... The first, the Sunni extremists, al-Qaeda, and the Iraqis that are supporting them. Second, the Shi'ite extremists, the death squads and the more militant militias... The third group is the resistance, the Sunni insurgency that sees themselves as an honorable resistance against foreign occupation in Iraq."
--General George Casey, commander of US troops in Iraq, press briefing October 12, 2006
http://www.arcent.army.mil/media_releases/2006/october/oct12_04.asp

CHRISTIANS FLEEING IRAQ

"... Christianity took root here near the dawn of the faith 2,000 years ago, making Iraq home to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities... But since Mr. Hussein’s ouster, their status here has become increasingly uncertain... Estimates of the resulting Christian exodus vary from the tens of thousands to more than 100,000... The last Iraqi census, in 1987, counted 1.4 million Christians... the lone Christian member of the Iraqi Parliament, estimated the current Christian population at roughly 800,000... A Chaldean Catholic auxiliary bishop... told a British charity over the summer that there were just 600,000 Christians left..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/world/middleeast/17christians.html?hp&ex=1161144000&en=c060e902ed05fbb4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

BUSH SHIFTS RATIONALE FOR WAR

Initially, the rationale was specific: to stop Saddam Hussein from using... weapons of mass destruction... When no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Bush shifted his war justification to one of liberating Iraqis... After Saddam's capture in December 2003, the rationale became helping to spread democracy... Then it was confronting terrorists in Iraq "so we do not have to face them here at home"... (Now) the justification has become far broader and includes the expansive "struggle between good and evil"..."
http://www.tbo.com/news/nationworld/MGBPR3FYATE.html

BRITISH FORCES SCALING DOWN, TO BE HALVED IN 2007.

"... British forces have detailed plans to scale down forces in southern Iraq in the next few months. Building work has already started at the British base at Basra airport, where forces will be consolidated. The main military hospital is due to move there from the Shaibah logistics base out in the desert, and Shaibah, the largest base in the British sector, would be closed next year. Smaller bases within Basra city, which attract the bulk of attacks on British forces, would be closed as control passes to the Iraqis. Commanders hope the British deployment of 7,200 would be almost halved by the end of 2007..."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1873831.ece

SECURITY DETERIORATION IN BASRA

"... The extent of the deterioration of the security situation in the south of Iraq... is unmistakable. Eighteen months ago... the British army still patrolled in berets and without flak jackets. Today they will only emerge in heavily armoured Warrior vehicles, wearing heavy-duty helmets with protective screens across their faces, and body armour to cover their shoulders and upper arms..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1922331,00.html

U.S. WAS UNAWARE OF CONNECTION BETWEEN LEBANON AND BAGHDAD

"... The US secretaries of state and of defense were simply and unaccountably unaware that the Sadrs of Baghdad bore any relationship to the Sadrs of Lebanon. That Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki would not castigate Hezbollah and side with Israel during the conflict - and in the midst of an official visit to Washington - was viewed as shocking by Washington's political establishment, even though "Hezbollah in Iraq" is one of the parties in the current Iraqi coalition government..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HJ14Ak01.html

DISPLACEMENT AND DEATH NUMBERS

"... at least 2,660 Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad in September, 400 more than last month’s death toll."
--Iraqi Health Ministry

"Sectarian violence and military operations have now resulted in the displacement of 315,000 people in the past eight months. One thousand people now would be displaced per day at least, and perhaps even worse is the fact that 100 people are killed every day... Between 1.2 and 1.5 million Iraqis are now taking refuge in neighboring countries, with more than 2,000 people crossing into Syria each day... and another 1.5 million Iraqis have been displaced within their own country."
--Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary general for humanitarian affairs

"... almost 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq..."
--Study by John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHBSPH)

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=11882

OLD AND NEW PREDICTIONS FOR IRAQ

Here’s the old list:
Richard Engel’s Top 10 Predictions for Post-War Iraq (2003)
1. U.S. troops will pullout of most cities to bases, maintaining close contacts with Iraqi police and civil defense forces which will carryout missions for them, which the U.S. military will support with its heavy weapons, airpower and expertise.
2. Emerging militia groups will go underground, but continue to pressure political parties, politicians and businesses.
3. A de-facto Kurdish state will emerge. It will be formally connected to Iraq, but will have its own militias, business and foreign relations.
4. Arab neighbors (especially Saudi Arabia) will support (mainly covertly) Sunni Muslim groups in Iraq to battle rising Shiite power and Shiite militia groups.
5. Al-Qaida will make the Iraqi Sunni cause — the restoration of an ancient Sunni Muslim capital — a new raison d’etre.
6. Shiite religious groups will create a mini-state stretching from Baghdad's al-Kazimiya neighborhood in the north to Basra in the south.
7. Najaf will emerge as the second power center in Iraq: the Shiite spiritual/political/administrative capital.
8. Shiite Muslim groups will turn on the Americans once they are no longer "needed" to get Iraq back on its feet, or if the U.S. is seen as blocking the Shiites' rise to power.
9. Iran will support Iraqi Shiites and form brotherly relations with them, but will also resist and try to undermine their development, fearing it could rival Qum and present an alternative model to Shiite power.
10. Iraqi police/security services will resume abusing human rights and accepting bribes much the same way they did under Saddam.

Here’s the new list:
Richard Engel’s Top 10 Predictions for Post-War Iraq (October 2006)
1. Iraqis will suffer through 10 years of civil war. 250,000-500,000 people will die in the fighting.
2. There will be a succession of failed governments, few (if any) lasting their full term.
3. A strongman will emerge from the Iraqi army. He will roll back some of Iraq’s democracy in favor of "security and national unity." He will have American support, despite U.S. efforts to promote democracy in Iraq.
4. There will be severe shortages of intellectuals and professionals (doctors, professors and engineers in particular) as Iraqis continue to leave the country.
5. Kurdistan will establish border controls to maintain its independence, despite increasing Turkish misgivings.
6. The oil rich city of Kirkuk will emerge as a major flashpoint until a referendum is held to determine it will become part of Kurdistan. It will eventually become part of Kurdistan.
7. Sectarian violence/ sectarian cleansing will displace more than a million people in Iraq. Cities, neighborhoods and even streets with mixed Sunni and Shiite populations will be segregated by threats and sectarian murders.
8. Iraq will remain a united country, but under a weak federal government that is beholden to the demands of powerful, semi-autonomous regional blocks (Kurdish in the north, Sunni in the central/western Iraq, and Shiite in central/southern Iraq).
9. Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement, the Jaish al-Mahdi, will become Iraq’s Hezbollah. This Iraqi Hezbollah group will unseat the "quietest" leadership in Najaf after the death of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in favor of a more "activist" political approach of the Shiite clergy/politicians in Lebanon and Iran.
10. Iran and the southern Iraqi bloc will form an open economic alliance to dominate the oil industry and access to the Persian Gulf. The agreement will form a Persian-Arab Shiite oil bloc.

--Richard Engel, NBC News Correspondent, Blogging Baghdad, 10/9/06
http://onthescene.msnbc.com/baghdad/2006/10/predictions_for.html#posts

CURRENT LEVEL OF TROOPS TO BE IN IRAQ THROUGH 2010

"The U.S. Army has plans to keep the current level of soldiers in Iraq through 2010, Army chief of staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said Wednesday, a later date than Bush administration or Pentagon officials have mentioned thus far... Schoomaker said he believes the Army will need $138.8 billion in 2008, nearly $40 billion more than its planned expenditures for the 2007 budget year..."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061011/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq

600,000 IRAQI DEATHS SINCE INVASION

"More than 600,000 Iraqis have died by violence since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to a study released today by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The figure is based on surveys of households throughout most of the country. It vastly exceeds estimates cited by the Iraqi government, the United Nations, aid and anti-war groups, and President Bush..."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2006-10-10-iraq-dead_x.htm

20-30% OF IRAQI OIL PIRATED BY SHIITE MILITIAS

"... The Shiite militias have developed a roaring trade in oil pirated from Iraqi oilfields and its transport up to Iraq’s borders with Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran. There, it is flogged to waiting gangs of oil smugglers. The plunder is large-scale – between 20% and 30% of Iraq’s entire output..."
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1169

BAQUBA LOSES 1,400 YEARS OF PEACE

"... Each day I wake up I don't know who is in control of my city," said a religious sheikh in Baquba... "One day it is the Americans, the next day a militia, the next day a resistance group." The new violence has ripped apart old traditions, he said. "The people of the (Diyala) province do not understand how these powers could turn it into a sectarian city from a wonderful 1,400 years of community peace and intermarriages..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35037

U.S. CASUALTIES UP

"... Figures released by the Pentagon show that 776 soldiers were wounded in action in Iraq last month... the largest since November 2004 when US forces were involved in a major offensive to clear the city of Fallujah... other figures show that the number of attacks against US forces is continuing to rise. In July a total of 2,625 explosive devices were encountered by US forces... compared with 1,454 in January..."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1009-05.htm

THE REALITY IN IRAQ

"... The reality in Iraq is summed up by the same American Marine officer's description of the building of the Ramadi glass factory, a story that shows just how vacuous all the stories of our "success" there are.

"The Division has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a glass factory. It does not work. It will take millions of dollars to rehabilitate and modernise. There are supposed to be 2,500 Iraqis employed there but they have nothing to do and no more than 100 arrive on any given day to sit in their offices as new computers and furniture are delivered with our compliments... It is like walking through a fictional business that physically exists. It may be Kafka's revenge. Most rooms are empty but are still preserved as they had been under a layer of dust. Some areas hold a man at a desk in a stark room too large for him. It is like Pompeii being slowly reoccupied, as if nothing had happened. I stood on a tall mound of broken glass outside. Shards of window panes shattered in the process of manufacturing them. The windows of the city were poured and cut here once... This glass was made from sand, desert made invisible until exposed by reflection. The bright sunlight makes little impression on the pile due to a dull coating of dust but the fragments fracture further and slide beneath my feet with the sound of ruin. Walking on windows and unable to see the ground."

Could there be a more Conradian description of the failure of the American empire in Iraq?..."

--Robert Fist in The Independent (UK)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1814843.ece

THE FOUR WARS IN IRAQ - ENDING THEM REQUIRES INSURGENT AGREEMENT

"... There are at least four wars going on Iraq - the war by jihadists against US troops, the war by nationalists against US troops, the war by Sunni jihadists against Shias and the war by Shia militias against Sunnis.... if there is no political solution, then the violence will continue... can the violence be stoped without insurgent agreement? Insurgent defeat looks impossible..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5415638.stm

"... The fighting in Iraq is not a single conflict, but an overlapping set of conflicts, fought on multiple battlegrounds, with different combatants...
- In western Iraq's deserts, Sunni Arab insurgent groups... attack Iraqi government forces and the U.S. troops who back them up.
- In Baghdad and surrounding provinces, Sunni and Shiite fighters attack each other and their rivals' civilians in a burgeoning civil war that U.S. troops have tried to quell.
- In southern Iraq, the Shiites dominate. But they are divided, with rival militias fighting over oil and commerce.
- And in the north of the country, Arabs and Kurds battle for control..."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-map7oct07,0,3782980.story?coll=la-home-headlines

TRENCH DEFENSE

October 7
"... the important oil city of Kirkuk has been placed under total curfew as thousands of members of the Iraqi security forces backed by US-led coalition troops comb it for insurgents. Iraqi police sources say a trench 15km (8 miles) long and two metres deep has been dug around part of the city in a bid to control access...."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5415448.stm

September 17
"Iraqi officials plan to dig a series of trenches around Baghdad in the coming weeks to seal it off and control movement into and out of the city, the New York Times reported yesterday.... "We're going to build a trench around Baghdad" -- a distance measuring about 97km (60 miles) -- "so we can control the exits and entrances so people will be searched properly," Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf told the Times on Friday in an interview... US officials have approved of the plan, which has been in the works for weeks, the Times said."
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2006/09/17/2003327968

ARMY LOSING THE WAR

"... the Army is plainly losing the war. It is shorter of manpower and equipment now than when it invaded Iraq in 2003. The 3rd Infantry Division, which led the invasion of Baghdad and which has already served two tours in Iraq, has been alerted to prepare for a third tour. (It has also been told to prepare to go to the Korean peninsula if another conflict breaks out there.) But there is no equipment with which to train. What was not destroyed or worn out in Iraq was left there for the replacements. Besides the equipment shortage, the division's 2nd Brigade has only about half of the roughly 3,500 soldiers it is supposed to have.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1005/p09s02-coop.htm

AL-QAEDA SEES AMERICAN PRESENCE IN IRAQ AS A BOON

"... a letter that has been translated and released by the US military indicates that Al Qaeda itself sees the continued American presence in Iraq as a boon for the terror network, which has recently shown signs of expanding into the Palestinian territories and North Africa..."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1006/p01s04-woiq.html

SADDAM VERDICT AND SENTENCING TO INCREASE VIOLENCE

"... any death sentence against the former Iraqi president would increase violence in the strife-torn country. "It seems clear that a guilty verdict will set off catastrophic violence" and that a death sentence would be even worse... It's hard to know how many Iraqis, dozens, hundreds, thousands, will die because of the sentence..."
--Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney general who is one of Saddam Hussein's lawyers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061005/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqsaddamclark

IRAQ WAR HAS ADDED THIRD TIER TO TERROR THREAT

"... we now have three tiers of threat.... (first) al-Qaeda central, the organization that answers to Osama bin Laden... The second level of threat... (are) allies of bin Laden... Kashmiri groups, some of the Afghan groups - there are various groups around the world.

"But now we have a third tier. The war in Iraq has had a transforming impact on what bin Laden has been aiming at all along, which is to find a way to transform one Muslim in a vanguard (himself) to a philosophy and a movement. And that's what we're seeing now. So the third tier is the inspiration that is flowing out from bin Laden and al-Qaeda - their words and actions. And that's what we're seeing in these cells that have been taken down in Miami, Toronto, a couple in Australia, two in London... They are not directly tied to al-Qaeda. Their activities are not directed or supported by al-Qaeda. But invariably, the men who were arrested in these cells either said they had been inspired by bin Laden and al-Qaeda..."

--Michael Scheuer, the former head of the Osama bin Laden desk at the US Central Intelligence Agency
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HJ03Aa05.html

U.S. BACKS SHIA AND SUNNI MILITIA GROUPS

October 3
"Some Sunni leaders from the troubled al-Anbar province west of Baghdad recently met away from their tribes to set up new militias... the setting up of U.S.-backed Sunni militias have brought new uncertainty to deepening chaos within Iraq...These new armed groups have received early praise from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al- Maliki and U.S. officials. The United States had earlier called for the disarming of all militias for the sake of social peace and reconciliation, but that policy has clearly changed. The occupation forces now back both Shia and Sunni militias in different areas of the country..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34970

September 27
"We have to fix this militia issue. We can't have armed militias competing with Iraq's security forces. But I have to trust the prime minister to decide when it is that we do that," said Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the second-highest-ranking American military official in Baghdad..."
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/iraq/15623156.htm