BASRA CONTROLLED BY SHIA MILITIAS

"... Major-General Jalil Khalaf, commander of the Basra police department... said: "Most of Basra's ports, especially Um Qasr, are under the control of militia gangs. The police force is incapable of executing its duties because its members report to Basra's militias and (political) parties which own those militias. Their loyalty is not to the Iraqi state but to their (Shi'ite) parties..."
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8E7B6E54-EBE1-4B7B-811D-DB98DE1C4F14.htm

TURKEY SEEKS TO RECLAIM ITS OIL IN IRAQ

"... if Iraq one day splintered, Turkey would be tempted to seize Iraq's major northern oil regions around Mosul and Kirkuk.That day is near. President Geoge W. Bush's invasion devastated Iraq and split into three pieces...Iraq's Mosul oil fields, which formerly belonged to the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, are only 119 kms from Turkey's border.

"After the First World War, the British Empire grabbed the oil-rich region, creating the unnatural state of Iraq to safeguard it. If Iraq slides further into the abyss, Turkey and Iran may partition Iraq. Today, Turkey has no oil... But if Turkey repossessed Iraq's northern oil fields, this nation of 70 million with 515,000 men at arms would become an important power that would reassert traditional Turkish influence in the Mideast, Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asia... If the U.S. can invade Iraq for oil, why not neighbouring, ex-owner Turkey?"

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2007/10/28/4611261-sun.php

U.S. COERCING DIPLOMATS TO WORK IN BAGHDAD EMBASSY

"The US state department has said it may have to force some diplomats to work in Iraq to fill vacancies... for nearly 50 jobs... at the embassy in Baghdad... Iraq postings have previously been filled on a voluntary basis... If too few people volunteer, some will be ordered to go and risk dismissal if they refuse..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7065019.stm

U.S. SOLDIERS SHY FROM BATTLE

"... morale among US soldiers in the country is so poor, many are simply parking their Humvees and pretending to be on patrol, a practice dubbed "search and avoid" missions... "search and avoid" missions continue today across Iraq... "nearly each day they pull into a parking lot, drink soda and shoot at the cans. They pay Iraqi kids to bring them things and spread the word that they are not doing anything and to please just leave them alone."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ26Ak07.html

U.S. KNOWS THAT IRANIANS ARE NOT FURNISHING EFPs

"When the U.S. military command accused the Iranian Quds Force... of providing the armour-piercing EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) that were killing U.S. troops, it knew that Iraqi machine shops had been producing their own EFPs for years... (and) the U.S. command had considerable evidence that the Mahdi army had gotten the technology and the training on how to use it from Hezbollah rather than Iran..."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39810

BIG GAME HUNTING IN IRAQ

"... as part of an instruction course named "Combat Hunter," the Marines have brought in "big-game hunters" to school their snipers in the better use of "optics"... The program included a 15-minute CD titled "Every Marine a Hunter"... U.S. Army snipers... took part in "a classified program of 'baiting' their targets" to lure insurgents within their sniper scopes...

"... treating Iraqis scavenging in a weapon-strewn war zone as the equivalent of elephants, water buffalo, or other prized trophies of great white hunters has gone largely unexamined... a language of dehumanization that includes the idea of hunting humans as if they were animals has crept into our world..."

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174854

RICE CALLED WAR CRIMINAL


"An anti-war protester waved blood-colored hands in U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's face at a congressional hearing... "War criminal. The blood of millions of Iraqis is on your hands!” yelled the protester, Desiree Anita Ali-Fairooz of the Code Pink organization..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN24534480

BUSH INVASION SQUANDERED MID-EAST ASSETS AGAINST AL QAEDA

"... After Sept. 11... the United States enjoyed some clear assets in fighting the al-Qaida terrorist network.
* In the Middle East, the United States had the support of secular Turkey, a NATO member.
* The long relationship of the powerful Pakistani military with that of the United States enabled Bush to turn the military dictator Musharraf against the Taliban, which Pakistan had earlier sponsored.
* Shiite Iran announced that it would provide help to the United States in its war on the hyper-Sunni Taliban regime.
* Baathist Syria and Iraq, secular Arab nationalist regimes, were potential bulwarks against Sunni radicalism in the Levant.

"(But) Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf.
* The secular Baath Party in Iraq was replaced by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni Salafi fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists.
* The pressure the Bush administration put on the Pakistani military government to combat Muslim militants in that country weakened the legitimacy of Musharraf, whom the Pakistani public increasingly viewed as an oppressive American puppet.
* Iraqi Kurdistan's willingness to give safe haven to the PKK alienated Turkey from both the new Iraqi government and its American patrons.
* Search-and-destroy missions in Afghanistan have predictably turned increasing numbers of Pushtun villagers against the United States, NATO and Karzai..."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/10/24/kurds/index1.html

AN IRAQI VIEW OF U.S. TRIBAL STRATEGY

"Americans applied a strategy that has affected some weak brains and hearts," former Iraqi Army colonel Jabbar Saed from Fallujah told IPS. "They starved people, arrested those who opposed their occupation, killed a million Iraqis, supported sectarian militias and death squads, destroyed infrastructure to increase the rate of unemployment, and divided Iraqis into sects and now into tribes, just to make us feel that life would not be possible unless we work for them."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39725

BLACKWATER EVADED $16 MILLION IN EMPLOYEE TAXES

"... Blackwater has avoided paying Social Security, Medicare and unemployment taxes by treating its armed guards as independent contractors and not employees... between May 2006 and March 2007, Blackwater avoided paying $15.5 million in Social Security and Medicare taxes and $500,000 in unemployment taxes... The other two large private security companies in Iraq, DynCorp and Triple Canopy, classify their guards as employees and pay the federal taxes that Blackwater has not..."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/20754.html

$1.2 BILLION TO TRAIN IRAQI POLICE CAN'T BE AUDITED

"The State Department so badly managed a $1.2 billion contract ... to contractor DynCorp International, LLC... for Iraqi police training that it can't tell what it got for the money spent... Because of disarray in invoices and records on the project... auditors have temporarily suspended their effort to review the contract's implementation..."
"DynCorp has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Blackwater USA in the contract to provide armed security for diplomats in Iraq..."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_police

ISLAMO-FASCISM AWARENESS WEEK TO OPPOSE LIES OF LEFT

"... October 22-26, 2007... will be... Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week... to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the war on terror and that Global Warming is a greater danger to Americans than the terrorist threat.... Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is a national effort to oppose these lies..."
http://www.terrorismawareness.org/islamo-fascism-awareness-week/

KURD TERRORISTS AGAINST IRAN ARE NOT CALLED TERRORISTS

"... The guerrillas from the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or P.J.A.K., have been waging a deadly insurgency in Iran and they are an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the P.K.K., the Kurdish guerrillas who fight Turkey....Americans classify the P.K.K. as a terrorist group because it is fighting Turkey, an important American ally, while the P.J.A.K. is not labeled as such because it is fighting Iran.
In fact, the two groups appear to a large extent to be one and the same, and share the same goal: fighting campaigns to win new autonomy and rights for Kurds in Iran and Turkey. They share leadership, logistics and allegiance..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/world/middleeast/23kurds.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

"... The label of the word terrorist is so devoid of meaning now, it's hypocritical... First we find groups around the world we don't like, then we find ways to label them as terrorists"... (refering to) the U.S.'s double-standard with regard to two Kurdish separatist groups that, on either side of Iraq's borders, attack Turkish and Iranian troops. "One [the Kurdish Workers Party] is a terrorist, the other [Party for Free Life in Kurdistan] receives support from us."
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39861

$189 BILLION MORE REQUESTED FOR WARS, TOTAL = $789 BILLION

"... Bush asked Congress... for $189.3 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... (this) covers ongoing military operations for fiscal 2008, which began on October 1... It is in addition to about $600 billion already approved for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN2252200020071022

INVESTIGATION OF U.S. EMBASSY CONSTRUCTION

"A mortar shell smashed into the hulking new U.S. Embassy that's under construction in Baghdad last May, damaging a wall and causing minor injuries to people inside the building... A congressional committee is examining whether the walls of the still-unfinished embassy complex, which are supposed to be blast-resistant, performed as they should have during the mortar attack... Aspects of the embassy's construction are the subject of at least one U.S. government criminal investigation... (including) a ($592 million) sole-source contract... to Kuwait-based First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting Co."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20071018/wl_mcclatchy/20071018bcusiraqembassyexclusive_attn_national_foreign_editors_ytop

U.S. TERROR CHIEF RESIGNS AFTER COMMENT ON IRAQ

"Three days after Americans saw the Bush administration’s counterterrorism chief say the Iraq war has likely not made the United States safer from terrorism, the official announced his resignation... NBC News (had) broadcast an interview with Adm. Scott Redd, head of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in which he said that the U.S. was “probably” not safer from terrorism today than it was before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the longer term, he said, “We’ll wait and see.”
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/18/4663/

3 MAIN REASONS WHY WE INVADED IRAQ

"There were... real reasons for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. There might even be 27 real reasons. But I know of three.

"One reason has to do with enhancing our military-basing posture in the region... to secure the energy lines of communication in the region...

"A major reason (was)... Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq...

"Another reason... relates to our currency, and our debt situation. Saddam Hussein decided in November 2000 to sell his Food for Oil program oil sales in euros... if the sanctions were lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves... would have been setting a standard away from, and competing with, US paper... In any case, the first executive order regarding Iraq that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar...

"(Those) are the big three... American bases, American contracts, and propping up the dollar."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski193.html

WHAT WE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED BY IRAQ WAR

"... what we have accomplished, so far.

"So far, we have spent, according to the National Priorities Project, about $460 billion on fighting in Iraq. That’s just the direct cost. We’ve racked up nearly two trillion in total costs of the war so far, including equipment and training losses, lifetime health care of the disabled soldiers, etc.

"We have sacrificed the lives of nearly 4,000 American troops, and injured, in many cases permanently, over 30,000 troops. So far, well over 100,000 American troops have persistent stress reactions or other mental disturbance as a result of their experience.

"We have weakened American defensive capability with multiple extended tours for both National Guardsmen and the active forces, years of reduced training and maintenance of equipment, and drastically lower standards for entry into the military...

"For Iraqis... In a country that once had 26 million inhabitants, two million have fled, two million more are internally homeless, and nearly a million have lost their lives since we invaded in 2003.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski193.html

BUSH STATEMENTS ON IRAQ FROM 2002 SPEECH
(None turned out to be true)

* It has given shelter and support to terrorism.
* We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq.
* The regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons.
* It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons.
* Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons.
* The regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.
* Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
* It is seeking nuclear weapons.
* Iraq could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.
* Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles.
* Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas... (or) for missions targeting the United States.
* Saddam Hussein... does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?
* Iraq stands alone -- because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place.
* We cannot wait for the final proof... in the form of a mushroom cloud.
* The lives of iraqi citizens would improve dramatically if Saddamm Hussein were no longer in power.

--Remarks by the President on Iraq, Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati, OH, October 7, 2002.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html

IRAQ WAR ENTERS PHASE II of III

"The rebranding of War With Iraq into War With Iran is only Phase I of a multi-phased rebranding strategy that will go on for years... Phase II (began) last week, when all three of the leading presidential candidates from the (Democratic Perty)... professed...(it was) unrealistic... to get troops out of Iraq any earlier than... 2013...."

"Phase III will last 50 years, and you'll never hear the word 'combat,' only 'stabilization', but on the ground, the facts will be the same they've always been; unwelcome Americans kids getting killed and maimed by a debilitated local populace who hate them. Desperate Iraqis--armed and otherwise--with no water, sanitation, electricity, protection or hope will still be slaughtered in the streets or made into internal or external refugees. And of course there'll be the big cherry on top we've wanted all along; control of the oil..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-gilroy/how-pelosi-ended-the-war_b_67681.html

IRAQ AND FRAUDULENT WAR ON TERROR

"... Once we recognize the global war on terror for the fraudulent enterprise that it has become, then we can get serious about designing a strategy to address the threat that we actually face, which is not terrorism but violent Islamic radicalism. The antidote to Islamic radicalism, if there is one, won’t involve invading and occupying places like Iraq..."
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_09_24/article2.html

PETRAEUS'S POLITICAL ROLE (thread)

October 2007
"... David Petraeus is a political general... of the worst kind — one who indulges in the politics of accommodation... namely, bringing our military policies into harmony with our political purposes...
--The American Conservative, October 8, 2007 Issue
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_09_24/article2.html

September 2007
"Petraeus (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

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

TORTURE OF IRAQIS BY U.S. CONTRACTORS

"Abu Ghraib prisoners accuse US companies of torture... Titan and CACI International were hired by the Army to provide interrogators... One former Iraqi prisoner now living in Sweden says that under the companies' watch, he was sodomized, nearly strangled with a belt, tied by his genitals to other detainees, and given repeated electric shocks..."
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/071002/usa/us_iraq_military_justice_1

LIBERATED SOVEREIGN IRAQ CANNOT PROSECUTE MERCENARIES

"... Despite all the nonsense about a “liberated Iraq”... the Iraqis still lack the authority to prosecute American mercenaries occupying their country because of a law pushed through by then-U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer, who was also guarded by Blackwater personnel. Bremer awarded the original no-bid contract to Blackwater, run by a major Republican campaign contributor, Erik Prince, who has donated $225,000 to the GOP. Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos was Michigan’s Republican Party chair and a Bush-Cheney “Pioneer” who came through with at least $100,000 for their 2004 campaign..."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071002_robert_scheer_oct_3_us_outlaws_