U.S. GENERALS "BETRAYING" SOLDIERS WHO BAITED IRAQIS TO INFLATE BODY COUNT

The headline said:
"3 US Soldiers Charged with Premeditated Murder in Iraq “Bait” Case... The three soldiers facing court are also accused of planting weapons on the Iraqis they killed..."
http://www.thehollywoodliberal.com/2007/09/27/3-us-soldiers-charged-with-premeditated-murder-in-iraq-bait-case/

As one soldier put it:
"... In a July hearing at Fort Liberty, Iraq, Sgt. Anthony G. Murphy said he and other snipers felt "an underlying tone" of disappointment from their commanders when they didn't rack up big body counts... (but) When the snipers started setting traps to lure in unsuspecting Iraqis, the kill ratios went up and the commanders were pleased."
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4649

Fox News spun the story as:
"Our generals are betraying our soldiers... again... Our generals in both the Army and Marine Corps have cared more about their precious careers and reputations than their soldiers and Marines under them... In Iraq... The Army rediscovered a trick we used in ‘Nam' called “baiting,” where you leave ammunition and pieces of explosive devices out and shoot whoever takes them... the Army is now putting on trial: Ranger Snipers for doing their jobs..."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,298203,00.html

But wiser people cautioned:
"... such a baiting program should be examined "quite meticulously" because... what happens when civilians pick up the items... In a country that is awash in armaments and magazines and implements of war, if every time somebody picked up something that was potentially useful as a weapon, you might as well ask every Iraqi to walk around with a target on his back..."
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_snipers_bait_Iraqis_report_09242007.html

SENATE VOTES FOR PARTITIONING "SOVEREIGN" IRAQ

September 2007
"The US Senate has approved a Bosnia-style plan to divide Iraq on ethnic and religious lines... the Senate passed the non-binding resolution on dividing Iraq... as the best hope to produce a political solution to murderous sectarian strife... It proposes to separate Iraq into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni entities, with a federal government in Baghdad in charge of border security and oil revenues."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22490525-2703,00.html

June 2004
"... the notion of "Iraqi sovereignty" can't be anything but a fiction... the U.S. will retain sovereignty as long as the U.S. maintains its military, monetary, and administrative domination of the country..."
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0617-14.htm

IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE:
BUSH REFUSED EXILE OFFER BY SADDAM, STARTED UNNECESSARY WAR

"... transcript of the conversation between George W. Bush, Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, and Condoleeza Rice held at Crawford before the Iraq War. "The Egyptians are speaking to Saddam Hussein. It seems he's indicated he would be prepared to go into exile if he's allowed to take $1 billion and all the information he wants about weapons of mass destruction," Bush was quoted as saying at the meeting one month before the U.S.-led invasion.'
(So) Bush could have sent Saddam off to exile in Saudi Arabia and avoided the whole war, but refused to do so because of the family vendetta between the Bushes and the Tikritis. Nearly 4,000 US soldiers have died and thousands have been wounded because Bush would not take the deal Saddam offered him. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, and millions displaced. Going to war unnecessarily is an impeachable offense..."
http://www.juancole.com/2007/09/transcript-reveals-impeachable-offenses.html

Transcript on Spanish news site El Pais:
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Llego/momento/deshacerse/Sadam/elpepuint/20070926elpepinac_1/Tes

Translation of transcript:
http://watchingamerica.com/elpais000012.shtml

FILM: "NO END IN SIGHT"

"... Charles Ferguson's film "No End in Sight"... (shows) the Bush White House made a series of policy decisions that would determine a disastrous course of events -- the descent of Iraq into civil chaos under the dysfunctional stewardship of an occupying force... the main culpability lies... (with) the "gang of four": Vice President Dick Cheney; former deputy secretary of defence Paul Wolfowitz; Bremer; and Rumsfeld. All four declined to be interviewed for the film... President Bush is described as an aloof leader who does not bother to read National Intelligence Estimates... He is noticeably absent from the decision-making process..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39415

$1 BILLION MORE REQUESTED FOR BASES IN IRAQ

"... Defence Secretary Robert Gates is set to ask Congress to approve a request for nearly $190 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.... He will also ask for $1 billion to spend on improving and consolidating US bases in Iraq..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7015087.stm

BUSH THREATENED NATIONS NOT BACKING IRAQ WAR

"... Bush threatened nations with retaliation if they did not vote for a UN resolution backing the Iraq war... Angola stood to lose financial aid while Chile could see a free trade agreement held up in the US Senate if they did not back the resolution..."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070926/pl_afp/spainusiraqwar_070926143404

OIL THE REASON FOR IRAQ INVASION

"... the Bush administration began making plans for Iraq’s oil industry “within weeks” of Bush taking office in January 2001... In public... the Bush administration built its case for an invasion of Iraq without referring to that country’s oil or the fact that it had the third largest reserves of petroleum in the world. But what happened out of sight was another matter... gaining privileged access to Iraqi oil for American companies was a primary objective of the Pentagon’s invasion of Iraq..."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/26/4106/

COST OF IRAQ WAR NOW $720 MILLION PER DAY

"... the American Friends Service Committee... (said) The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group's analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes... The $720 million figure breaks down into $280 million a day from Iraq war supplementary funding bills passed by Congress, plus $440 million daily in incurred, but unpaid, long-term costs..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/21/AR2007092102074_pf.html

BLACKWATER AT WORK IN BAGHDAD

"... The eruption of gunfire was sudden and ferocious, round after round mowing down terrified men women and children, slamming into cars as they collided and overturned with drivers frantically trying to escape. Some vehicles were set alight by exploding petrol tanks. A mother and her infant child died in one of them, trapped in the flames. Hassan Jabar Salman, a lawyer, was shot four times in the back, his car riddled with eight more bullets, as he attempted to get away from their convoy. Yesterday, sitting swathed in bandages at Baghdad's Yarmukh Hospital, he recalled scenes of horror. "I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot," said Mr Salman. "But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus, he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him, she jumped out after him, and she was killed. People were afraid." At the end of the prolonged hail of bullets Nisoor Square was a scene of carnage with bodies strewn around smouldering wreckage. Ambulances trying to pick up the wounded found their path blocked by crowds fleeing the gunfire... the death toll from the incident, according to Iraqi authorities, stood at 28. And it could rise higher... as some of the injured, hit by high-velocity bullets at close quarter, are unlikely to survive..."

"... Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice has... promised a "transparent" inquiry into what happened..."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2984819.ece

KURDS PROTEST U.S. ARREST OF IRANIAN

"U.S. troops arrested an Iranian man... and accused him of helping to smuggle a deadly type of roadside bomb into Iraq... The U.S.... allege that he is an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp's elite Quds force... (and) had trained foreign fighters in Iraq and provided them with roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs..."

"But the Kurdistan Regional Government in a statement called the arrest "illegitimate," said the man was a member of a trade delegation that had been invited to Sulaimaniyah by the local government and demanded that he be released... The Kurdish Regional Government said the man was Aghai Farhadi, a member of an economic and commercial delegation from the Iranian governorate of Karmanshah, which borders Iraq's Sulaimaniyah and Diyala provinces. Hassan Baqi, the head of the Sulaimaniyah chamber of commerce, said Farhadi had been in Sulaimaniyah for a week for discussions on opening a border crossing near Panjween,68 miles east of Sulaimaniyah, and other trade-related issues..."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/19856.html

CHLORINE FOR ANTI-CHOLERA WATER TREATMENT HELD UP

"The World Health Organisation confirmed the first case of cholera in Baghdad... Dr Naeema al-Gasseer, the WHO's representative in Iraq... said some 100,000 tons of chlorine were being held up at Iraq's border with Jordan apparently because of fears the chemical could be used in explosives. She urged authorities to release it for use in decontaminating water supplies."
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hvXJToLe3tpbY096cbBc_HX-xKXw

CHOLERA SPREADS TO BAGHDAD

"The World Health Organization confirmed... the first cholera case in Baghdad... raising fears the disease is spreading from the north of the country where it has struck more than 1,000 people... The disease... had been confined to northern Iraq, affecting the provinces of Sulaimaniyah, Irbil and Tamim... Several suspected cholera cases also have been reported in Diyala province, north of Baghdad..."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070920/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_cholera

THE GENERAL SPEAKS, AGAIN

"The strategy we're following this time is the proper one, and is producing results. Repeated successes."
—Gen. William Westmoreland, before Congress, April 28, 1967

"I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq."
—Gen. David Petraeus, before Congress, Sept. 11, 2007

"... Sen. John Warner... asked him if he thought what we were doing was making America safer. "Sir, I don't know actually. I have not sat down and sorted out in my own mind," he said. As the brilliant Frank Rich noted in The New York Times, that was coded military speech for, "No, of course it isn't making us safer!"

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=11803

WHY IRAQIS DON'T WANT THE U.S.-DRAFTED "OIL LAW"

"... The contracts that the Bush administration has been pushing the Iraqi government to accept are not just about the distribution of oil among the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The contracts call for 30-year exclusive rights for British and American oil companies, rights that cannot be revoked by future Iraqi governments. They are called “production sharing agreements” (or “PSA’s”) - a legalistic code word. The Iraqi government would technically own the oil, but could not control it; only the companies could do that. ExxonMobil and others would invest in developing the infrastructure for the oil (drilling, oil rigs, refining) and would get 75% of the “cost oil” profits, until they got their investment back. After that, they would own the infrastructure (paid for by oil profits), and then get 20% of oil profits after that (twice the usual rate). The profits are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And the Iraqi people would have no democratic control over their own major resource. No other Middle East country has such an arrangement..."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/20/3969/

AFTER THE PETRAEUS REPORT

"... One week after Petraeus flashed his metrics, a whole new set of facts on the ground suddenly emerged: an admission (previously denied) by Petraeus that the United States was arming the Sunnis, who might use those weapons in the next phase of Iraq's civil war; the release of a Pentagon report that there is "an increase in intra-Shi'a violence throughout the South" (a report conveniently withheld as Petraeus was testifying); the Iraqi government's expulsion of Blackwater, a private security firm with close ties to the administration, after a band of its guards gunned down Iraqi civilians; the restriction of all nonmilitary U.S. personnel in Iraq to the Green Zone; a report by the Iraqi Red Crescent that about 1 million people are internal refugees as a result of ethnic cleansing (apart from the more than 2 million refugees who have fled the country); and the announcement by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of an investigation into the State Department's inspector general for quashing scrutiny and embarrassing studies of fraud in the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, among other projects...."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/20/bush_draper/index.html?source=newsletter

U.S. HAS CAUSED MORE IRAQI DEATHS THAN SADDAM

"The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), a grouping of NGOs, intellectuals and writers opposed to the war in Iraq, on Friday accused the United States of causing more deaths in Iraq than ousted president Saddam Hussein... Some 200 non-governmental organsiations... are involved in the WTI."
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?189822

STATE OF THE POLICE IN A POLICE STATE

"The Iraqi national police force is riddled with militia and corruption and should be disbanded, a panel of retired US military officers has told Congress... They said that its parent body, the Interior Ministry, was a ministry “in name only” and rife with sectarianism and corruption. The entire 26,000-member police force should be scrapped and rebuilt anew, they said..."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2401262.ece

AMERICAN MISCALCULATION ABOUT SHI'ITES, IRAQ AND IRAN

"... The scale of the American miscalculation is striking. Before the Iraq war began, its neoconservative architects argued that conferring power on Iraq’s Shiites would serve to undermine Iran because Iraq’s Shiites, controlling the faith’s two holiest cities, would, in the words of then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, be “an independent source of authority for the Shia religion emerging in a country that is democratic and pro-Western.” Further, they argued, Iran could never dominate Iraq, because the Iraqi Shiites are Arabs and the Iranian Shiites Persian. It was a theory that, unfortunately, had no connection to reality..."
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/19/3934/

IRAQ DECAYING

"... By the end of 2006, Washington had provided $37.45 billion to help rebuild Iraq's shattered infrastructure... the total has since swollen to $44.54 billion... But ordinary Iraqis have seen no benefit... Baghdad's electricity ministry recently warned that the national power grid was close to collapse, while water supplies in the Iraqi capital have been cut off for days at a time. Conditions are arguably worse than... in 2003... The US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR)... has singled out widespread corruption and economic mismanagement as the source of the continuing decay..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6977728.stm

1.2 MILLION ESTIMATED DEATHS FROM VIOLENCE

"... a survey of Iraqis... suggested that up to 1.2m people might have died because of the conflict in Iraq. A UK-based polling agency, Opinion Research Business (ORB), said it had extrapolated the figure by asking a random sample of 1,461 Iraqi adults how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes. The results lend weight to a 2006 survey of Iraqi households published by the Lancet, which suggested that about 655,000 Iraqi deaths were "a consequence of the war". However, these estimates are both far higher than the running total of reported civilian deaths maintained by the campaign group Iraq Body Count which puts the figure at between 71,000 and 78,000..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6998788.stm

"... IBC’s figures (are less because they) are not ‘estimates’ but a record of actual, documented... solely violent... solely civilian (strictly, ‘non-combatant’) deaths..."
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/about/

PETRAEUS'S POLITICAL ROLE

February 2007
"General Is Front Man For Bush's Iraq Plan... Petraeus was set up last week in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Senators were approached on the floor and urged to meet with him. And the new Iraq commander then privately outlined his view of the war and what he will do with the 21,500 extra troops....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020601918.html

September 2007
"Petraeus's (agreed) in February to serve as front man for the George W Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing US troop strength in Iraq to Congress. In a highly unusual political role for an officer who had not yet taken command of a war, Petraeus was installed in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in early February just before the Senate debated Bush's troop increase. According to a report in the Washington Post on February 7, senators were then approached on the floor and invited to McConnell's office to hear Petraeus make the case for the "surge" policy..."
"Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (Centcom), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad in March... Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit"... Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus's role as pitchman for the "surge" in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia - the area for which Fallon's Centcom is responsible..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II14Ak02.html

REPORT ON U.S. SUCCESS IN IRAQ AND ANBAR

PRO-U.S. SHEIK KILLED BY INSURGENTS

"... 10 days after he met with President Bush... The most prominent figure in a U.S.-backed revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida in Iraq was killed Thursday by a bomb planted near his home in Anbar province... Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha was leader of the Anbar Salvation Council, also known as the Anbar Awakening — an alliance of clans backing the Iraqi government and U.S. forces. Officials said his assassination would be a huge setback for U.S. efforts in Iraq..."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070913/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6993211.stm

IRAQ STRATEGY MAKING AMERICA SAFER?

"...Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, who is one of the party’s leading voices on foreign policy, asked whether the current strategy in Iraq was “making America safer.” General Petraeus... said: “Sir, I don’t know, actually.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/washington/12policy.html?hp

BIN LADEN 2004 TAPE - HIS REASONS FOR 9/11

"... it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind. The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced. I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy... And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children."

"... security is an indispensable pillar of human life and free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom... we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours... Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind, objectionable terrorism? If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us..."

http://english.aljazeera.net/English/archive/archive?ArchiveId=7403

IRAQI POLL ON SURGE AND RESISTANCE, VS PETRAEUS

"About 70% of Iraqis believe security has deteriorated in the area covered by the US military "surge" of the past six months, an opinion poll... by the BBC, ABC News and NHK of more than 2,000 people across Iraq also suggests that nearly 60% see attacks on US-led forces as justified. This rises to 93% among Sunni Muslims compared to 50% for Shia..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/69838

"The military objectives of the US troop surge in Iraq "are largely being met", the top US military commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus... told a Congressional panel..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6986461.stm

BUSH KNEW SADDAM HAD NO WMD

"On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister (Naji Sabri), a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again..."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/

92% OF IRAQI CHILDREN HAVE LEARNING IMPEDIMENTS FROM FEAR

"... According to an Oxfam report on Iraq released Jul. 30, "92 percent of children had learning impediments that are largely attributable to the current climate of fear. Schools are regularly closed as teachers and pupils are too fearful to attend. Over 800,000 children may now be out of school, according to a recent estimate by Save the Children UK -- up from 600,000 in 2004." The Oxfam report also said that child malnutrition rates in Iraq have risen from 19 percent before the invasion in 2003, to 28 percent. "More than 11 percent of newborn babies were born underweight in 2006, compared with 4 percent in 2003."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39113

SCHOOLS IN BAQUBA

"... Baquba city, capital of Diyala province, has been at the centre of major U.S. military operations... Only two provincial schools and one private kindergarten school are functioning in this city of 280,000, located 50 km north of Baghdad..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39113

IRAQ MEETS ONLY 3 of 18 BENCHMARKS

"... A draft of the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was leaked to the Washington Post by an official "who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down" by the Department of Defence and other government agencies prior to the release of the final report... (The) draft report... states that Iraq has met only three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for progress, in contrast to an earlier White House report which claimed "satisfactory" progress on eight of the benchmarks... Pentagon officials and prominent Iraq hawks were quick to attack the validity of the draft..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39094

FALLUJAH IS BACK TO DARK AGES

"A brave new attempt is under way to project that all is well now with Fallujah. Residents know better -- or worse... "The media in the west are lying about Fallujah by saying everything is well. What is so good about a city that lives with no electricity, no water, no fuel... and most important, with no vehicles? The local police guided and supported by the American Army have prevented car movement for nearly three months now... A tour of the city on foot gives the impression of the dark ages. People are back to riding donkeys..."

"... The city has also been affected by the U.S. and Iraqi authorities' dependence on tribes in Fallujah and throughout Iraq's western al-Anbar province. Sheikhs are the real leaders now. "They are taking us back to the British occupation period when the British gave power to ignorant sheikhs of tribes instead of politicians and academics... This is a terrible conception that will take us back to the dark ages instead of the promised progress and prosperity. These men are highly respected for being what they are, but never to lead a city, a province and a country."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39146

WHO DISBANDED IRAQI ARMY?

"... Paul Bremer has insisted that President George W Bush approved plans to dismantle Iraq's army... (but) Bush says the agreed policy was to keep Iraq's army intact. The disbanding is now widely seen as a mistake that fuelled Iraq's insurgency..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6977642.stm

BRITISH WITHDRAW FROM BASRA INTO AIRBASE

"British soldiers began withdrawing... 550 soldiers stationed in Basra Palace were leaving the downtown site to join 5,000 other personnel at an air base camp on the fringes of the city — ending their permanent presence in Iraq's second largest city.... the palace compound (had been) targeted with daily mortar and rocker attack in recent months.."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070902/ap_on_re_mi_ea/britain_iraq

CHOLERA SPREADS AS HEALTH SERVICES COLLAPSE

"Lack of clean drinking water and poor sanitation has led to 5,000 people in northern Iraq contracting cholera... "The disease is spreading very fast," Dr Juan Abdallah, a senior official in Kurdistan's health ministry, told a UN agency. "It is the first outbreak of its kind here in the past few decades."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2914413.ece