THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Posted on Tue, Jan. 11, 2005

McCaffrey applauds Purple Heart recipients

Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO - Retired U.S. Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey says casualty rates in Iraq are comparable to those of Vietnam.

McCaffrey said Monday that Americans will lose faith in the Mideast military effort if U.S. leaders fail to develop a clear plan to stabilize Iraq.

More than 12,000 U.S. troops, including about 11,600 in Iraq, have been killed or wounded in the war on terrorism, he said.

"From a national perspective, you could say that isn't too bad of a price to pay," he told about 300 people at Brooke Army Medical Center. "But let me put it in context. All of the casualty rates in Iraq right now are essentially at the level of Vietnam."

McCaffrey, who was drug czar under President Clinton, was at BAMC to honor four Purple Heart recipients.

He warned that "we are in strategic peril in our current situation," with an armed forces pool being spread thin and that citizens are in danger of becoming disillusioned about the military campaign as they did during the Vietnam era.

The West Point professor said the war to contain 37 foreign terrorist organizations is justified.

"Don't you ever forget that this country understands what's at stake," McCaffrey told the medal recipients and their relatives.

Spc. Shaquib Khandakar of Queens, N.Y., who is recovering from severe burns and shrapnel wounds, said Monday was the proudest day of his life.

"I was thinking, `God, I'm going to die today,'" said Khandakar, 22, recalling when a car bomb blasted his Army vehicle in Iraq on Oct. 20.

A frequent critic of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, McCaffrey told the San Antonio Express-News in an interview after the ceremony that the chief architect of the war "is in denial of the harsh realities of the current battlefield."

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Information from: San Antonio Express-News, http://www.mysanantonio.com

The United Nations refugee agency says only about 8,500 of 85,000 residents who have returned to the city of Falluja since a US assault last year, have chosen to stay in their homes

About 300 lorry drivers - mostly Syrians - are being detained by US forces in Iraq near the border with Syria. The US has made no comment, but has said in the past that Syria is not doing enough to provide security on its border with Iraq.

COMMENTARY ?
OPINION

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Investigate alleged violations of law in Fallujah attack

By JIM MCDERMOTT AND RICHARD RAPPORT
GUEST COLUMNISTS

At the beginning of their recent attack on Fallujah, U.S. Marines and Iraqi National Guard troops stormed Fallujah General Hospital, closing it to the city's wounded and confiscating cell phones from the doctors. A senior officer told The New York Times the hospital was "a center of propaganda."

Interviews with hospital personnel (which had revealed the extent of civilian casualties in an aborted April invasion) would not be a problem this time.

As the invasion proceeded, air strikes reduced a smaller hospital to rubble and smashed a clinic, trapping patients and staff under the collapsed structure. With the main hospital empty and other facilities destroyed, only one small Iraqi military clinic remained to serve the city.

U.S. forces cut off Fallujah's water and electricity. About 200,000 residents were forced to flee, creating a refugee population the size of Tacoma. Those who remained faced a grim existence; they were afraid to leave their homes for fear of snipers and they had little to eat and only contaminated water to drink.

Public buildings, mosques and residences were subjected to assault by air and ground forces. The city now lies in ruins, largely depopulated, but still occupied by U.S. forces. Convoys sent by the Iraqi Red Crescent to aid the remaining population have been turned back. Diseases brought on by bad water are spreading in Fallujah and the surrounding refugee camps.

The means of attack employed against Fallujah are illegal and cannot be justified by any conceivable ends. In particular, the targeting of medical facilities and denial of clean water are serious breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Continuation of these practices will soon confirm what many already suspect: that the United States of America believes it is above the law.

Imagine a world where such ferocious attacks become common. Imagine the Puget Sound region's hospitals and clinics as targets, our water supply fouled. Imagine our outrage. Let's not walk any farther down that path.

Instead, we can reaffirm our commitment to a community of nations and to the laws that govern their relations. We can demonstrate respect for the diverse peoples of the world, while holding no life of lesser value than our own. Unfortunately, as a result of illegal U.S. actions, the former residents of Fallujah have lost respect for us. Without that respect, there is little our military can contribute.

To prevent more harm, we should support: 1) a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Fallujah, allowing unrestricted access for independent relief agencies such as the Red Crescent; 2) an independent investigation into violations of international law in Fallujah, as called for by Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Nov. 16; and 3) a campaign to deny any further supplemental budget requests that may, in fact, fund war crimes.

Join us in working to make respect for individual and collective rights, as expressed in international law and the U.S. Constitution, a central theme of our community's relations with the rest of the world.
Jim McDermott, M.D., represents the 7th District in Congress. Richard Rapport, M.D., is in the neurological surgery department at Group Health. Other authors are 17 area doctors and medical professionals.

The US, with one of the greatest democracies in the history of the world has regular low voter turnout. Does that mean our government isn't freely elected?

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

1. Allawi: "Pockets" Will not be Able to Vote M...
Allawi: "Pockets" Will not be Able to Vote

Michael Georgy of the Scotsman reports from Baghdad that interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi admitted on Tuesday that "pockets" of Iraq won't be able to vote on January 30 because of poor security. I suspect the pockets amount to about 3 million persons.

Georgy also says that Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari is trying to hold a meeting with the Sunni Arab political leaders who are calling for a boycott of the elections, on January 16, in hopes of opening the sort of national dialogue that might allow more Sunni Arabs to participate.

Jordan's ambassador to the US, Karim Kawar, is among the few officials in the region or in Washington to admit the truth: The January 30 elections in Iraq have no real validity. He estiamtes that 40% of the country won't be able to vote.

An election in which the names of the candidates in the various lists are still not known 18 days before the polls open is a sick joke, not an election. What could it possibly mean, to vote for anonymous politicians? And note that they are anonymous because otherwise the guerrillas would kill them. Again, I think the election has to go forward, but I just don't expect much from it. The resulting government will be of questionable legitimacy, and the guerrilla war will if anything intensify. The elections are like all the other Wizard of Oz spectacles put on by the Bush administration in Iraq since April 9, 2003 -- the appointment of Garner, the appointment of Bremer, the appointment of an Interim Governing Council, the capture of Saddam, the "transition to sovereignty," etc., etc. Each of these was supposed to be some magical turning point and the beginning of sunshine and rainbows, and instead the situation has deteriorated every single month for the past nearly two years.

(For the slates running in the elections, identified only by their heads, see below.)

An unreleased State Department study of last month summarized by AFP last Thursday found that:

Only 32 percent of Sunni Muslims are "very likely" to vote.

Among Shiites, 87 percent said they are "very likely" to vote.

Only 12 percent of Sunni Arabs consider the elections "legitimate."

Only 12 percent of Sunni Arabs think the elections will be completely fair.

52 percent of Shiites think the elections will be completely fair.

61% of Sunni Arabs are very concerned about their family's safety.

24% of Shiites are very concerned about their family's safety.

Among Shiites, 76% would boycott if a figure such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani told them to.

Only 32 percent of Sunni Arabs said they would boycott simply because a religious figure asked them to.

88% of Sunnis would stay home if they felt voting would put them in danger.

38% of Shiites say they would stay home if their are threats of violence against polling stations.


AFP notes:

' The poll was conducted in the mixed ethnic cities of Baghdad and Kirkuk; the mainly Sunni cities of Baquba and Tikrit; the Kurdish cities of Arbil and Sulaimaniyah; the mid-Euphrates Shiite cities of Hilla, Najaf, Diwaniyah, Kut and Karbala; and the southern Shiite cities of Basra, Nassiriyah, Ammara and Samawa. '



The Intelligence and Research division of the State Department conducted the poll, and they are highly professional.

This poll should be given much more weight than the findings of a local poll published in the pro-Iraqi government al-Sabah newspaper that indicated:


' Will the security problems cause you to?
Not come out and vote the day of elections = 18.3%
Come out and vote the day of elections = 78.3%
No opinion = 3.4% '



Rightwing pundits like David Brooks have taken up this al-Sabah poll as a cause for optimism. But they ignore the I & R findings. The Baghdad poll is flawed for several reasons. First of all, it was limited to Baghdad. Baghdad is about half Shiite and has a million Kurds, and both Shiites and Kurds are very enthusiastic about the elections. So a poll in Baghdad doesn't reflect the resentments in Baqubah, Tikrit, and other Sunni Arab cities. Second, West Baghdad is more secure and more politically oriented that other Sunni Arab areas. Third, we don't know if scientific weighting was done for the poll published in al-Sabah. Fourth, al-Sabah was set up for propaganda purposes by the Bush administration and its staff at one time resigned in protest over all the propaganda.

Steve Komarow of USA Today compares Shiite Sadr City and Sunni (or at least when it was populated) Fallujah on the eve of Iraq's elections. He finds Sadr City enthusiastic about the elections and Fallujah not.

One difference that he could have made more of is the attitude of the chief religious authorities. Although many Shiites in Sadr City support the radical Sadr tendency, few of them would deny the authority of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who insisted on the elections being held and under whose auspices a Shiite coalition has been put together. And, some proportion of Sadr City follows Sistani implicitly. Sadr himself has given such mixed signals that it would be hard for them to follow him if they wanted to. First he said he was neutral about the elections, then more recently that he opposes them. Some of his chief lieutenants have called for a boycott (Shaikh Bahadili in Basra), while others are actually standing for election. In the face of this confused message, it is easy for Shiites to pay attention instead to the overall spiritual leadership (al-Hawzah) in Najaf, and the message from Najaf is unambiguous. Vote!

Wednesday, January 12, 2005
IN MEMORIAM

Today In Iraq Regrets to Announce

The Final Demise
Of

The Rationale for the War in Iraq

January 20, 2000 - Shortly Before Christmas, 2004


May It
1517 Coalition Soldiers
And Over 100,000 Iraqis

Rest In Peace

Quote:

Wednesday, January 12, 2005
IN MEMORIAM

Today In Iraq Regrets to Announce

The Final Demise
Of

The Rationale for the War in Iraq

January 20, 2000 - Shortly Before Christmas, 2004


May It
1517 Coalition Soldiers
And Over 100,000 Iraqis

Rest In Peace

Too lengthy to post...

but well worth the read

They're gonna greet our troop by strewing flowers in their paths!

Trumped-up numbers like that mean nothing, Ican!

You have no idea how many people actually will vote, how much violence there will be, who they will vote for (there are no names on the rolls yet, how the hell is that a real election?), whether or not there will be too many problems to legitimze the election, who will be voting (fake ID's are a dime a dozen in Iraq, apparently), anything.

You really should face the fact that there are a lot more opportunities for this thing to blow up in our face than there are for it to go without a hitch.

Cycloptichorn

Campaign for Iraq's elections begins

Associated Press
Dec. 15, 2004 03:25 PM

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A bomb targeting a prominent Shiite cleric killed seven people outside one of southern Iraq's holiest shrines Wednesday as campaigning began for Iraq's first post-Saddam elections - a vote that is going ahead despite suicide attacks and assassinations by Sunni insurgents.

The attack in the heartland of Iraqi's majority Shiite population wounded the cleric, Sheik Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalayee, and was a stark reminder of the risks for the six-week campaign leading to a Jan. 30 vote for a 275-member National Assembly.

Unlike most Western countries where election campaigns kick off with media blitzes and rallies, there was little fanfare in Iraq, particularly in the capital, where many fear large gatherings in public places could be invitations for militant attacks.
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The campaigning began as a government official said Saddam Hussein's notorious right-hand man, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," will be the first among 12 former regime members to appear at an initial investigative court hearing next week to face charges for crimes allegedly committed during Saddam's 35-year dictatorship.

Formal indictments could be issued next month - just ahead of the elections.

On the final day of candidate registration, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite and Washington favorite, announced his 240-member list of candidates, pitting him against the slate embraced by Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. About 90 parties and political movements have applied to be represented on ballots.

Heading the al-Sistani-backed United Iraqi Alliance list is Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution and chief of its armed wing, the Iran-based Badr Brigade, during Saddam's rule.

With the threatened Sunni boycott, the lists submitted make Allawi and al-Hakim the leading contenders to take top jobs in Iraq's next government.

In the election, each faction will win a number of seats in the assembly proportional to the percentage of votes it gets nationwide - meaning the highest-listed candidates on each roster are most likely to be elected. The groups ending up strongest in the assembly will be in a powerful position as the body will elect a president and two deputies, who will nominate the prime minister. The assembly will also draw up a new constitution.

Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million population and are expected to dominate the polls. Such an outcome worries some secular Shiites here, along with neighboring Sunni-dominated countries and the United States, who are wary of a Shiite-run Iraq growing closer to its eastern neighbor, Iran.

"Iran will not be indifferent to Iraq's future and it cannot ignore the country because any developments there would have an impact on the internal affairs of Iran," Hasan Kazemi Qomi, Iran's top diplomat in Baghdad, told his country's official Islamic Republic News Agency.

In a move likely to inflame election tensions, Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan accused Iran and Syria of cooperating with former Saddam security operatives and Iraq's top terror figure, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Iran, Shaalan said, is the "No. 1 enemy."

"They are fighting us because we want to build freedom and democracy and they want to build an Islamic dictatorship and have turbaned clerics to rule in Iraq," the defense minister said.

Iran and Syria reject such claims.

Shaalan also sharply criticized the United Iraqi Alliance for links to Iran and described a key coalition member, nuclear physicist Hussain al-Shahristani, as the "leader of an Iranian list."

His remarks appeared timed to coincide with election announcements by Allawi and interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, who also filed a list of about 80 elections candidates. Allawi, a secular Shiite, and al-Yawer, a Sunni leader supported by Shaalan, are obvious political opponents of conservative Shiites like al-Hakim with close affiliations to Iran.

Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni elder statesman, heads a list of 70 candidates. His group, like the Iraqi Islamic Party, decided to contest the polls and ensure Sunni participation despite boycott calls by some leading clerics.

Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command, said in a briefing that there were indications many Sunnis want to take part in the vote.

"We just don't know how large that is or how much that will grow as we move toward January; nor do we know how effective the intimidation campaign will be as it continues," he said.

Smith said security problems were limited to only a few of Iraq's 18 provinces. "In 14 of those provinces we could probably have elections tomorrow," he said.

An al-Sistani spokesman said the Karbala attack was an assassination attempt on the cleric's representative in that city, al-Karbalayee, who was wounded in the blast at the western gate of the gold-domed Imam Hussein Shrine.

Seven people died and 31 were wounded, a hospital official said.

"Targeting him is part of a series of attempts to create sectarian strife in Iraq by targeting the Shiite symbols," said United Iraqi Alliance candidate Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer. Militants want to provoke Shiites into reacting "so that the political process would collapse," he said.

In Fallujah, U.S. warplanes dropped nine bombs on insurgent positions on that Anbar provincial city, which American military commanders believed had been conquered following the bloody weeklong battle against insurgents based there.

Sunni leaders have cited the violence in Fallujah as the reason to boycott the elections, but U.S. and Iraqi authorities are determined to proceed, believing any delay would be a victory for the insurgents.

"This is the first time in Iraq that free and democratic elections will be held and that competition takes place without any pressure from the government," said Farid Ayar, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq.

Allawi, who has survived several assassination attempts, made his elections announcement on national TV behind the fortified walls of Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses the interim government and foreign missions like the U.S. Embassy.

Standing alongside running mates including women in veils and men in traditional Arab robes or dapper suits, Allawi said his party would push for the eventual withdrawal of multinational forces "according to a set timetable."

"By depending on God, and with a firm determination and based on strong confidence in the abilities of our people, we are capable of confronting the difficulties and challenges and of making a bright future for our honorable people," he said.

An election in which the names of the candidates in the various lists are still not known 18 days before the polls open is a sick joke, not an election. What could it possibly mean, to vote for anonymous politicians? And note that they are anonymous because otherwise the guerrillas would kill them. Again, I think the election has to go forward, but I just don't expect much from it. The resulting government will be of questionable legitimacy, and the guerrilla war will if anything intensify. The elections are like all the other Wizard of Oz spectacles put on by the Bush administration in Iraq since April 9, 2003 -- the appointment of Garner, the appointment of Bremer, the appointment of an Interim Governing Council, the capture of Saddam, the "transition to sovereignty," etc., etc. Each of these was supposed to be some magical turning point and the beginning of sunshine and rainbows, and instead the situation has deteriorated every single month for the past nearly two years.

Just Wonders - so you don't have an answer to the question "How do we define "victory" in Iraq" either. I wish you would admit it, not reiterate unrelated points you previously made.