Iraq War Latest

GaryGo · Mon Dec 14, 2009 6:00 am

Rumpl4skn · Wed Dec 23, 2009 6:23 pm

US war veteran:

We were told we were fighting terrorists, but the real terrorist was me and the real terrorism is this occupation.

Sun Feb 28, 2010 11:00 pm

Ok, first there was this a few days ago, from the pen
of CFR establishment mouthpiece, Thomas E. Ricks:

Extending Our Stay in Iraq

By THOMAS E. RICKS - February 23, 2010

IRAQ’S March 7 national election, and the formation of a new government that will follow, carry huge implications for both Iraqis and American policy. It appears now that the results are unlikely to resolve key political struggles that could return the country to sectarianism and violence.

If so, President Obama may find himself later this year considering whether once again to break his campaign promises about ending the war, and to offer to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for several more years. Surprisingly, that probably is the best course for him, and for Iraqi leaders, to pursue.

Whether or not the elections bring the long-awaited political breakthrough that genuinely ends the fighting there, 2010 is likely to be a turning-point year in the war, akin to the summer of 2003 (when the United States realized that it faced an insurgency) and 2006 (when that insurgency morphed into a small but vicious civil war and American policy came to a dead end). For good or ill, this is likely the year we will begin to see the broad outlines of post-occupation Iraq. The early signs are not good, with the latest being the decision over the weekend of the leading Sunni party, the National Dialogue Front, to withdraw from the elections.

The political situation is far less certain, and I think less stable, than most Americans believe......

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/opinion/24ricks.html

After that article (softening up opinion), it's no
surprise a few days later comes news that:

Odierno requests more combat forces in Iraq
-- beyond the Obama deadline

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Thursday, February 25, 2010

In a move that could force President Obama to break his vow to get all combat troops out of Iraq by August of this year, his top commander in Iraq recently officially requested keeping a combat brigade in the northern part of the country beyond that deadline, three people close to the situation said Wednesday.

Gen. Raymond Odierno asked for a brigade to try to keep the peace in the disputed city of Kirkuk, but only got a polite nod from the president when the issue was raised during his recent meetings in Washington, according to two of the people familiar with the discussions. If the brigade in northern Iraq is indeed kept in Iraq past the deadline, there will be a fan dance under which it no longer will be called a combat unit, but like the six other combat brigades being kept past the deadline, will be called an advisory unit. I can imagine the press releases that will follow-"Three U.S. Army soldiers were killed last night in an advisory operation . . . ."

The feeling in the corridors of the White House is that the general is asking the right questions, but a bit clumsily, and certainly too early for political comfort, especially in Iraq, which is about to hold a national election. So I suspect the administration's bottom line for Odierno was, Hey, Shreko, put a sock in it until after the Iraqi elections, because what we need is a new Iraqi government to be formed so it can quietly begin talking to us about re-visiting some of those 2008 SOFA agreements about future troop levels.

This debate is just beginning. I expect that Obama actually is going to have to break his promises on Iraq and keep a fairly large force in Iraq, but of course that won't be the first time he's had to depart from his campaign rhetoric on this war......

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/25/odierno

Ricks is pushing the line that civil war is imminent,
and only a US troop presence can prevent that.

For a less alarmist take on the situation in Iraq, try this:

Stop the Iraq madness!

By Nir Rosen- Best Defense guest Iraq political commentator

It's been frustrating to read the latest hysteria about sectarianism returning to Iraq, the threat of a new civil war looming, or even the notion that Iraq is "unraveling."

I left Iraq today after an intense mission on behalf of Refugees International. My colleague Elizabeth Campbell and I traveled comfortably and easily throughout Baghdad, Salahedin, Diyala and Babil. We were out among Iraqis until well into the night every day, often in remote villages, traveling in a normal Toyota Corolla. Our main hassle was traffic and having to go through a thousand security checkpoints a day. Stay tuned for our report next month about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq (which deserves more attention than political squabbles) and the situation of Iraqis displaced since 2003. Stay tuned for my own article about what I found politically as well. And finally stay tuned later this year for my book on the Iraqi civil war, the surge, counterinsurgency and the impact of the war in Iraq on the region.

From the beginning of the occupation the US government and media focused too much on elite level politics and on events in the Green Zone, neglecting the Iraqi people, the "street," neighborhoods, villages, mosques. They were too slow to recognize the growing resistance to the occupation, too slow to recognize that there was a civil war and now perhaps for the same reason many are worried that there is a "new" sectarianism or a new threat of civil war. The US military is not on the streets and cannot accurately perceive Iraq, and journalists are busy covering the elections and the debaathification controversy, but not reporting enough from outside Baghdad, or even inside Baghdad.

Iraqis on the street are no longer scared of rival militias so much, or of being exterminated and they no longer have as much support for the religious parties. Maliki is still perceived by many to be not very sectarian and not very religious, and more of a "nationalist." Another thing people would notice if they focused on "the street" is that the militias are finished, the Awakening Groups/SOIs are finished, so violence is limited to assassinations with silencers and sticky bombs and the occasional spectacular terrorist attack -- all manageable and not strategically important, even if tragic. Politicians might be talking the sectarian talk but Iraqis have grown very cynical.

When you talk to people they tell you that the sectarian phase is over. Of course with enough fear it could come back, but Shiites do not feel threatened by any other group, and Sunnis aren't being rounded up, the security forces provide decent enough security, and they are pervasive, there is no reason for people to cling to militias in self defense and besides militiamen are still being rounded up, I just don't see enough fuel here for a conflagration -- leaving aside the Arab/Kurdish fault line, of course. (Though if Maliki went to war with the Kurds that would only further unite Sunni and Shiite Arabs.) The Iraqi Security Forces like Maliki enough, even if they prefer Alawi. The Iraqi army will not fall apart on sectarian lines, it would attack Sunni and Shiite militias, if there were any, but these militias are emasculated. They can assassinate and dispatch car bombs but they can't hold ground, they can't engage in firefights with checkpoints. The Iraqi Security Forces might arrest a lot of innocent people, but they're also rounding up "bad guys" and getting a lot of tips from civilians. The Iraqi Security Forces might be brutal, sometimes corrupt, but they no longer act as death squads, they take their role very seriously, perhaps too seriously, but these days anything is better than the recent anarchy and sectarian massacres.

Of course Maliki is in the end still a Shiite sectarian actor and has a core constituency, as Chalabi cleverly forced him to reveal, but Maliki is not pro-Iranian (though Iran is too often demonized as well as if the dichotomy is pro-American and good or pro-Iranian and bad). It's not a dichotomy of pro-Iranian or nationalist either.

It's not about whether Iraqis are sectarian or not. They are, though the vitriol and hatred have decreased. It's that they are not afraid of the other sect anymore. Fear is what led to the militias taking power and to the political and military mobilization along sectarian lines. There are attempts by some Shiite and Sunni parties to scare people again but in my conversations I feel it is failing. The fear is gone and the Iraqi Security Forces fill the security void, even if it's not pretty.

There is concern about Sunnis being disenfranchised or getting the shaft. But they have been disenfranchised since 2003. In part they disenfranchised themselves but anyway none of them expect to get unshafted. It's already done. The government is in Shiite hands and now it's a question of whether it will remain in the relatively good Shiite hands of Maliki, who provides security and doesn't bring down an iron fist on you unless you provoke him (sort of like Saddam), or the dirty corrupt and dangerous Shiite hands of Maliki's rivals -- Jaafari, Hakim, etc. I think these elections mean a lot more to Americans (as usual) and maybe to Iraqi elites than they do to Iraqis.

Besides, what can Sunnis do? Nothing, they're screwed and they have to accept it, and they have. The alternative is far worse for them. Sunnis in the region will not go to war alongside the Sunnis of Iraq. That moment came and went in 2006. Iraqi Sunnis don't even have a single leader who is charismatic and has real appeal, they're divided among themselves and these days your average Iraqi just isn't that into politics. I've heard it hundreds of times by now, they blame the religious parties, they say they got fooled and now they understand. Now that's not completely true, but the militias were able to mobilize people because of a security vacuum. These days it doesn't matter how remote and shitty the village I visit is, there are Iraqi Security Forces, and people have good things to say about them. Compared to the first three years of the occupation, Sunnis seem downright docile, maybe bitter or wistful, maybe angry, but their leadership is emasculated, in jail, abroad, just trying to survive, or just trying to make money.

Maliki will probably emerge the victor in the elections. His more sectarian and corrupt Shiite rivals are discredited and unpopular, but more importantly, he is an authoritarian ruler in the Middle East, he would have to be really incompetent if he couldn't stay in power. If Karzai could do it, then Maliki should be able to as well. Of course there is nothing uniquely Middle Eastern about this. In fact maybe looking at post-Soviet states is useful -- that is, the new ruler will not readily relinquish control, even if he has to bend the rules a bit, or operate outside the constitution. This has happened in Asia, Africa, and other places in transition. I hate to admit that I hope Maliki wins. He's the best of all the realistic alternatives. It's not like a more secular candidate is likely to win, so if it's not Maliki it will be Jaafari or Chalabi. Frankly this is a rare case where I hope Maliki violates the constitution, acts in some kind of authoritarian way to make sure he wins the elections, because the alternative is fragmentation, or a criminal, sectarian kleptocratic Shiite elite taking over, and then Iraq might unravel. For now it's still "raveling."

Tue Apr 06, 2010 1:41 pm

If only it was as simple
as "Al-Qaeda Did It".

Who benefits?
Who benefits?
Who benefits?

Iraq Bombings Raise Fears of Resurgent Violence

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and YASMINE MOUSA - Published: April 6, 2010

BAGHDAD Deadly blasts shook Baghdad for the second time in three days on Tuesday, deepening fears that Iraq was teetering on the edge of a new outbreak of insurgent and sectarian violence, security officials said.

At least seven bombings of both Shiite and Sunni residential areas of the capital killed 35 people and injured more than 140, and came against a backdrop of continuing political instability after March 7 parliamentary elections rendered a fractured result that has left no single group with the ability to form a government.

A similar political void after the 2005 parliamentary vote sparked months of violence and preceded Iraqs bloody sectarian warfare of 2006 and 2007, from which the country had only begun to emerge. The explosions Tuesday came after at least 30 people were killed and more than 240 people were injured during attacks Sunday on diplomatic buildings in Baghdad, including the Iranian Embassy.

On Tuesday, Qassim Atta, spokesman for Baghdads security apparatus, said the violence represented a war in which insurgents are seeking to destabilize Iraq amid its post-election confusion.

We are in a state of war with what remains of al-Qaeda, he said.

The bombings hit Baghdad from its southern tier to its northwestern outskirts, beginning at about 9 a.m. and continuing until about 11:30 a.m., Mr. Atta said.

At least five of the bombs were homemade devices placed inside the entrances of apartment buildings, an unusual tactic by insurgents, who in recent months have targeted Iraqi and American security force members, Iraqi government officials and Westerners.

A parked car packed with explosives was also detonated in the Sunni neighborhood of Dora, in south Baghdad. The location of the other bombs was not clear Tuesday afternoon.

Mr. Atta said at least two other explosives had been successfully defused by Iraqi security forces.

At an apartment building in Shuala, a neighborhood in the city's northwest, a chaotic scene followed an explosion at an apartment building as dozens of people came to the scene to help. Men got on their knees and dug out collapsed bricks and chunks of cement to free anyone who may have been trapped.

As American helicopters circled overhead, women shouted out the names of loved ones. Violence during the past several days has also claimed the lives of an extended family of 25 Sunni Arab men and women who had their hands bound before they were shot or had their throats slit in a village south of Baghdad on Friday. Their killers wore uniforms that resembled those of American and Iraqi military and security forces.

On Monday, a family of six Shiite Arabs, including four children one was a 4-year-old boy were shot and killed execution-style in Wasit Province east of Baghdad.

American and Iraqi government officials have blamed the violence on Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni insurgent group that Iraqi and American officials have said in the past had been all but routed.

American officials in Iraq said Tuesday afternoon that they had not been asked by the Iraqi government for assistance.

Gary Grappo, the United States Embassys advisor for political affairs, agreed that the attacks bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda.

They probably felt quite frustrated by their failure to disrupt the election and felt a compulsion to show that they are still here, said Mr. Grappo.They appear unable to go after the heavily secured targets theyve attacked in the past so now theyre going after targets that have relatively little security, and sadly, that means defenseless civilians.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has made no public statements about the spate of attacks, though he held a meeting with his top security officials on Sunday about the violence.

Mr. Malikis political organization, the State of Law alliance, won 89 seats in last months Parliamentary election, while Ayad Allawis secular Iraqiya coalition won 91 seats.

The groups have held competing talks with smaller parties during the past two weeks in an effort to form a larger coalition to win 163 of the 325 seats in Parliament needed to form a new government.

Although Mr. Maliki remains prime minister, his circle like much of the rest of the country appeared to be in disarray on Tuesday.

When asked about the bombings, Ali al-Dabbagh, Mr. Malikis chief spokesman, sought to distance the government from the attacks even though the military officials responsible for securing the capital were appointed by Mr. Maliki and answer to him directly.

Ask the military and whoever is responsible for the security situation, said Mr. Dabbagh. I have nothing else to say.

Mr. Allawi, who made remarks while donating blood for the injured, made some of his harshest remarks yet about Mr. Malikis government.

We want a government of partners that is functional, not like the one now that can not make decisions, he said. They say they are a national government, but they are not.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world ... 7iraq.html

MichaelC · Tue Apr 06, 2010 2:36 pm

I know who does NOT benefit: the US tax-slaver!

Tue Jul 20, 2010 3:16 am

Iraq's Summer Of Uncertainty

Joost R. Hiltermann

A scorching summer heat is settling on Baghdad. The streets are calm and traffic flows, slowed only by the multiple checkpoints, especially near bridges and government buildings.

Given that the policemen on duty cast only a cursory glance at vehicles and their passengers, it is perhaps surprising there haven’t been more frequent bombings in recent weeks. (The last series of bomb attacks across Iraq, on May 10, left at least a hundred dead.)

To security officials, the relative quiet suggests that many former insurgents and their supporters—including some Sunnis who in the past rejected the political process—have been biding their time. Having decided to participate in the March 7 parliamentary elections, they have been inclined to let the political uncertainty that has followed run its course in the hope that it might produce the change they desired.

According to the original count, the candidate that the Sunnis overwhelmingly supported, the secular former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, narrowly won the most seats; but his opponents, led by incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, have worked hard to deprive him of that victory ever since. They have challenged the results in the courts and led a campaign to disqualify several winning candidates on the grounds that they have ties to the banned Baath Party. Neither effort has yielded a change in the overall result, however, which remains in favour of Allawi, whose Iraqiya Alliance still holds 91 seats, two more than Maliki’s State of Law list.

Iraqis have watched this spectacle for three weary months, noting by contrast how swiftly Britain’s politicians forged a new government and how gracefully Gordon Brown left the scene. Many of them have no trust in their own leaders, who, they feel, in the endless bargaining and bickering have lost sight of the national interest and Iraqi voters’ concerns. Allawi’s followers have been waiting to see whether they will gain power or be excluded from it; but it’s unclear how much longer they will continue to do so. Baghdad’s surface calm may therefore be deceptive.

To the surprise of many Iraqis, the Supreme Court decided on June 1 to certify the election results. It is an important milepost; but it is likely only one of many to come in what promises to be an especially prolonged slog toward a new government (in 2005, it took almost six months). Indeed, the real trouble—concerning who will get the chance to take the first stab at forming a government—starts only now.

Allawi, having won a simple majority of seats, has claimed it should fall to him, citing language in the 2005 Iraqi Constitution that accords that right to “the largest parliamentary bloc.” But Maliki and his supporters, together with a rival Shiite list, the Iraqi National Alliance, which includes the followers of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, jointly argue that this phrase refers not to the list that wins the most votes in the election, but to the post-election bloc that is largest at the moment the new parliament is seated. In this way they want to ensure that the prime minister will always be a Shiite, since Shiites form the majority in the country and could create a sectarian alliance to outnumber the Sunnis in parliament. (Although Allawi is a secular Shiite, most members of his Iraqiya Alliance are Sunni). A month ago, the State of Law list and Iraqi National Alliance hastily made such an alliance to form a single bloc that will control 159 seats.

Maliki gained the Supreme Court’s backing for his interpretation in a ruling it issued in March, two weeks after the elections. In response, Allawi’s supporters have angrily questioned the court’s standing in constitutional matters (it was appointed well before the constitution came into force). They furthermore claim that the court’s ruling was a mere opinion and as such would have no force of law, and maintain that the taped record of the 2005 constitutional discussions shows that the drafters were, in fact, referring to the winning list when they coined the phrase “largest parliamentary bloc.”

If they don’t get their way, Allawi supporters have spoken darkly of the possibility they might leave national politics and set up a government in exile, while Allawi himself has made intimations of civil war. “Its going to be very dangerous, it’s going to be counterproductive, and the backlash will be severe,” Allawi said in April. “The whole foundation of whatever infant democracy we’ve built will be ruined.”

Pressure from the US and its allies could possibly persuade him to back off and recognize the court’s ruling. If so, Allawi would lose his chance to become prime minister. If we reach that stage, a new crisis will arise, this time around Maliki himself. The new coalition formed by Maliki’s State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance is tenuous: alongside Maliki’s supporters, it includes The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a party founded in and by Iran in the 1980s, as well as the followers of al-Sadr, a populist cleric currently burnishing his religious credentials in the Shiite holy city of Qum in Iran.

More importantly, the leaders of the new bloc left unanswered the most divisive question: whom they would designate as their candidate for prime minister. Already a number of names have been mentioned as possible compromise candidates, but Maliki is holding fast, taking advantage of time, his incumbency, and his control of institutions. His grip on power is by no means assured, because all his potential allies are his current rivals, most of whom seek his downfall after seeing him rise from quasi-obscurity in 2005 to become a dominant prime minister today, with few effective checks and balances to constrain him. In their quest to sideline Maliki, they, too, will use every trick in the book.

With so much in play, any prediction that these multiple crises will be resolved before Ramadan (which starts in mid-August)—or, symbolically more importantly perhaps, before August 31, the date by which the US intends to have completed its troop drawdown from Iraq—should be regarded with extreme scepticism.

The outlook is ominous. As the politicians dither, governmental institutions—never particularly effective—could become paralyzed, as senior officials fear for their careers if they make decisions that would anger Iraq’s future rulers. Uncertainty over the country’s prospects could spread through society and the economy. In a political vacuum, outside regional powers would almost certainly gain greater influence and be tempted to meddle more than they already do. The United States, which has been so eager to depart that it failed to craft an exit strategy, would then have trouble being heard over the din. Lacking strong support in Baghdad, parties and politicians would have little choice but to seek succour in neighbouring capitals, insinuating these states’ countervailing interests into what is already a combustible mix. And Iraq’s insurgencies could get a second wind, again making violence the primary mode of politics.

This, of course, is a doomsday scenario. No one in Baghdad is now predicting such an outcome, but in private conversations many express fears that the country may face a new descent into chaos. And all rue the bitter truth that the current battle is not about governing programs or other issues of national import—such as national reconciliation, a hydrocarbons law, or a solution to disputed territories—but about one seemingly simple post-election matter: who gets to lead the new government. As Iraqis adjust themselves to the early-summer heat, they brace themselves for hotter times yet to come.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/20 ... certainty/

Southpark Fan · Sun Sep 02, 2012 2:17 pm

Tutu: Bush, Blair should face trial at the Hague
David Stringer | September 2, 2012 | AP

'LONDON — Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu called Sunday for Tony Blair and George Bush to face prosecution at the International Criminal Court for their role in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Tutu, the retired Anglican Church's archbishop of South Africa, wrote in an op-ed piece for The Observer newspaper that the ex-leaders of Britain and the United States should be made to "answer for their actions." The Iraq war "has destabilized and polarized the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history," wrote Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel prize in 1984. "Those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague," he added.

The Hague, Netherlands, based court is the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal and has been in operation for 10 years. So far it has launched prosecutions only in Africa, including in Sudan, Congo, Libya and Ivory Coast.

Tutu has long been a staunch critic of the Iraq war, while others opposed to the conflict — including playwright Harold Pinter — have previously called for Bush and Blair to face prosecution at the Hague. "The then-leaders of the U.S. and U.K. fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart. They have driven us to the edge of a precipice where we now stand — with the specter of Syria and Iran before us," said Tutu, who last week withdrew from a conference in South Africa due to Blair's presence at the event.

While the International Criminal Court can handle cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, it does not currently have the jurisdiction to prosecute crimes of aggression. Any potential prosecution over the Iraq war would likely come under the aggression category.

The U.S. is among nations which do not recognize the International Criminal Court.'

***
Death Toll: Let's assume 60-100 times the number of civilians than 'fighters' killed. The estimate in the link is 650, 000 (I think this is from The Lancet's estimates), but is low balled.
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01442.html

I think there is a pretty good case for Crimes Against humanity here - no need for Aggression charges. Simply using depleted uranium anywhere should be a crime, and the numerous occasions white phosphorus was used were definitely most gruesome violations.

***
America’s Continuing War Crimes Quagmire
Michael Haas | April 5th, 2012

'During the administration of George W. Bush, the subject of “war crimes” was taboo in the media, and that silence has continued under the administration of Barack Obama. Whereas the Bush administration openly flouted their war crimes, Obama’s approach toward the subject has been cosmetic and subtle.

But American war crimes remain. They are well recognized in other countries.

And some accountability for the crimes is inevitable.'

Review of the Haas book:

The Case for Revisiting Nuremburg - George W. Bush, War Criminal?
Atlantic Free Press | September 22, 2012

'...The first crime taken up in the book is Crimes of Aggression. Haas explains the concept of "just wars"; and he traces the history of international law of warfare. "International law allows a right of reprisal and a right of self-defence," writes Haas.

However, Bush was guilty of committing the basic war crime of aggression. That included the waging, threatening, planning and preparing for wars of aggression in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It's also illegal to aid rebels in a civil war and to produce propaganda for a war.

All of these are designated war crimes because they violate international conventions, precedents set by the Nuremburg trials following WWII, civil rights covenants, international agreements or the UN Charter. The book is thorough in citing the laws and agreements that apply to each type of war crime.

Haas devotes a chapter to "Crimes Committed in the Conduct of War". He makes one of many interesting historical references in the opening, noting that the Chinese president gave Bush a book by Sun-Tzu on the 'Art of War, written in 1600.

If Bush had read the book, he would have learned that the pernicious "shock and awe" attacks violated the principle that violence used in war should be no more than necessary to win. Instead, he committed 36 war crimes related to the conduct of war.

Haas even refers to how "in the seventh century, the prophet Mohammed counselled warriors not to harm innocent women and children and not to destroy the homes and livelihoods of those conquered.

As the book points out, "The basic principle of humane warfare, avoidance of unnecessary destruction to persons and property has been repeatedly violated." Prohibited targets and weapons, misconduct by soldiers and commanders, as well as the use of mercenaries, have all violated the laws of war...'

See: War and International Humanitarian Law

Southpark Fan · Sun Oct 14, 2012 8:42 am

No lingering effects (to view this use this URL, http://dx.doi.org/ ,then enter this DOI doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69320-3) are to be left after an illegal invasion for the civilian populations. From 1991 nor the latest invasion and slaughter. This is the beginning of an evidence pool that justifiably and morally should see Bush Sr and Jr, Blair and all the other responsible parties dangling from the Hangman's noose; after being found guilty of numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Hague.
Link: *Press Release Immediate*
*1st September 2012* *Birth Defects study in Fallujah **Iraq** shows effects of Uranium weapons*

***
See: A Primer In The Art of Deception
"Both the great Truths and the great Falsehoods of the twentieth century lie hidden in the arcane, widely inaccessible, and seemingly mundane domain of the radiation sciences."

***
Birth defects in Iraq and the plausibility of environmental exposure: A review
Conflict and Health 2012, 6:3 doi:10.1186/1752-1505-6-3
Tariq S Al-Hadithi (talhadithi@yahoo.com})
Jawad K Al-Diwan (diwanbasrah@hotmail.com})
Abubakir M Saleh (abubakirms@yahoo.com})
Nazar P Shabila (nazarshabila@gmail.com})

ISSN 1752-1505
Article type Review
Submission date 27 September 2011
Acceptance date 17 July 2012
Publication date 28 July 2012
Article URL http://www.conflictandhealth.com/content/6/1/3

This peer-reviewed article was published immediately upon acceptance. It can be downloaded,
printed and distributed freely for any purposes (see copyright notice below).
Articles in Conflict and Health are listed in PubMed and archived at PubMed Central.
For information about publishing your research in Conflict and Health or any BioMed Central journal,
go to http://www.conflictandhealth.com/authors/instructions/

For information about other BioMed Central publications go to http://www.biomedcentral.com/

***
Video: Deadly Dust,Frieder Wagner 2004
<iframe id="ytplayer" type="text/html" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HjvNvSGbJxY" frameborder="0"></iframe>

More: http://umrc.net/wp-content/uploads/2012 ... y-2004.pdf

More: http://umrc.net/umrc-in-the-media/video/

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 17 July 1998
Part 2. Jurisdiction, Admissibility and Applicable Law
Article 8

WAR CRIMES

Southpark Fan · Tue Mar 12, 2013 7:16 am

Guardian/BBC report lays out US policy of torture, murder in Iraq
Naomi Spencer | 12 March 2013 | WSW

'An investigative report by the British Guardian and the BBC’s Arabic language service links top US officials to atrocities carried out by Iraqi police forces after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. General David Petraeus and Bush-era Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, worked directly with US officials overseeing death squads, secret prisons, and torture practices in US-occupied Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died and millions were displaced as a result of the chaos that the atrocities produced.

The memos and reports featured in the Guardian /BBC documentary come from the 2010 leak attributed to Army Private Bradley Manning and published by WikiLeaks. The Obama administration has protected the officials linked to the abuse, many of whom remain on the government payroll; David Petraeus was Obama’s CIA director until last November.'

Watch Video: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2 ... iraq-video
*Note: While the 50 minute documentary is proof enough that Rumsfeld, Cheney, General Petraeus, and all the other NeoCon warhawks and CIA monsters consciously employed the services of former US Army Colonel James Steele in the organisation of death squads against the Iraqi grass-roots resistance. The video panders to the official narrative that 'sectarianism' in Iraq was the root cause of the carnage that unfolded. In Iraq, these US-controlled 'Shia' death squads have been operating in much the same way, and while the media is content to portray them as ordinary Shias motivated by religious bias, they are in fact hired thugs who value only the money they are paid by their US masters and the promise of positions of power in a future Iraqi government. Like the rank and file of the 'Libyan rebels' and the 'Free Syrian Army', these people form the dregs of Arab and Middle Eastern societies. Led by spellbinders who veil their barbaric actions with religious prose, secular leaders in the region, like Ghaddafi and Assad, and Nasser and Arafat before them, struggled in vain to keep them at bay. The reason for this is because the US, Britain, France and Israel have consistently supported - in the form of weapons, money, training and blatant lies - the extremists against the rational voices. The so-called 'Shia militia' used by the American government (with the help and advice of British and Israeli counter-insurgency 'experts') were recruited directly by the CIA and people like James Steele to carry out extra-judicial murders of anyone they could loosely identify as 'resistance'. In order to cloak this strategy, indiscriminate attacks on Iraqi civilians, Shia and Sunni alike, were carried out on a massive scale. Some of these individuals, in another setting, would be called 'al-Qaeda'. Their usefulness in the employ of US warhawks in the Pentagon was doubly valuable because they both justified continued US occupation and provided 'proof' for the American War on Terror mythology, ex post facto, that the US was at war with the perpetrators of 9/11. The US forces of occupation, along with their British counterparts, had long experience in what actually happens when you militarily invade and occupy a sovereign nation: the people resist, and not just one ethnic or religious group, but more or less the whole population. There is nothing quite like a foreign occupation for uniting a country. Read more...

This debacle is screaming war crimes!

'The Guardian /BBC report, published as a documentary, focuses on the role of retired Colonel James Steele, who worked with Petraeus and Rumsfeld. A Special Forces veteran of Vietnam, Steele was sent in 1984 to El Salvador, where he trained and directed counterinsurgency operations. As many as 70,000 left-wing opponents of the Salvadoran regime were murdered by government death squads.

In 2004, amid rising armed resistance in Iraq and rising antiwar sentiment in the US, the Bush administration turned to the “Salvador option.” The methods Washington used in the 1980s in Latin America were quickly recycled into assembling Shi’a-majority death squads targeting Sunni Iraqis—who were at the time the heart of the anti-occupation insurgency.

John Negroponte, the head of the US embassy in Honduras in the 1980s, was appointed ambassador. David Petraeus was given command to oversee the creation of a new Iraqi military police force.

Petraeus hired Steele and Colonel James Coffman as advisors. Steele arrived in Baghdad as an “energy consultant” and began working with Coffman to train the paramilitary units under the authority of the interior ministry. These forces, including one called the Wolf Brigade, were composed largely of former Shi’a members of Saddam Hussein’s security forces. Steele acted as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s personal envoy to the group.

The 2,000-man brigade roved the streets of Baghdad, Samarra, and Mosul in American pickup trucks, rounding up Sunnis for interrogation. Captives would be thrown into secret prisons established in libraries, airports, and ministries. Anti-occupation politicians, human rights activists, and journalists were murdered. Bodies, at times tortured beyond recognition, were deposited in garbage dumps or on the streets. Thousands of corpses piled up in morgues each month, many of them still wearing police handcuffs.
...'

Related: IDP’s finding little refuge in Iraq

Related: Over $8B of the Money You Spent Rebuilding Iraq Was Wasted Outright

More: Category Archives: Iraq

Southpark Fan · Tue Mar 12, 2013 4:31 pm

I do believe the testimony in the above video is clear evidence of war crimes. Stacked upon the obvious of course. Do you agree?

W Bush and his cabal should be arrested and tried without haste. There would be months of eyewitness testimony (certainly no shortage of witnesses) to have to get through, but worth it. To see the proper thing done in this case of the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Southpark Fan · Tue Mar 19, 2013 7:31 am

The Iraq War ten years on: A turning point for US imperialism
Bill Van Auken and David North | 19 March 2013 | WSW

This war, staggering in the criminality of both its planning and execution, marked a critical turning point in the history of American imperialism. Though it ended in chaos, with the lies used to justify it thoroughly exposed and, in operational terms, the war widely considered a total disaster, it nonetheless laid the basis for the intensification of the war in Afghanistan and the ever-expanding eruption of American militarism across the planet.

'Today marks the tenth anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Ten years ago, the world watched the “shock and awe” bombing campaign light up the nighttime sky of Baghdad with billowing clouds of flame and smoke.

This campaign and the bloody ten years of occupation that followed had a devastating impact on what was once among the most advanced societies in the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed and millions were made homeless.

The American military’s conduct of the war produced crimes of staggering dimensions. This included the turning of Fallujah (about the size of Cincinatti), a city of 350,000 people, into a free-fire zone, the bombarding of its occupants with white phosphorus shells, banned by international law, and the summary execution of wounded prisoners. Ten years later, the rates of child cancer and birth defects in Fallujah are similar to those in Hiroshima following the US atomic bombing.

The leaking of stomach-turning photographs from Abu Ghraib lifted the veil on the barbaric character of the war, which included the systematic use of torture, death squads and sectarian massacres to terrorize the Iraqi population into submission.

People in Iraq continue to die from the sectarian violence unleashed by the war as well as from the destruction of infrastructure that has deprived them of clean water, health care and other essentials of life. One million children under the age of 18 have lost one or both parents, and hundreds of thousands suffer from grievous wounds.

In the US itself, in addition to the deaths of nearly 4,500 troops, 34,000 soldiers came home wounded and hundreds of thousands suffer from psychological trauma.

All of this killing and violence was carried out on the basis of lies, summed up in the claim that the Iraqi government was concealing “weapons of mass destruction.” These false pretexts for war were no less criminal than those used by Germany’s Third Reich to justify the invasion of Poland and other countries targeted at the outset of World War II.

If the Nuremberg precedents established in the trial of the surviving Nazi leaders at the end of that war had been followed, all of those responsible for the invasion of Iraq—in the first instance George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice—would have been placed on trial and, at the very least, sent to prison for the rest of their lives.

In the United Kingdom, the same fate would have befallen former Prime Minister Tony Blair and others in his government.

While the Nazis were guilty of a war of aggression in Europe that produced genocide, Washington’s war of aggression against Iraq resulted in sociocide—the systematic decimation of an entire society. Following more than a decade of punishing economic sanctions, the full power of the American military was employed to tear what was left of the country’s economy, infrastructure and social fabric to shreds.
...'

Southpark Fan · Wed Mar 20, 2013 8:10 am

Fintan has this link on the left side (BFN News column) of the BFN home page.

I am adding it here because it is well written, powerful, the truth and needs to be said!

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/dyin ... to_be_read