cicerone imposter wrote:Some things we rarely hear about:
Iraqi Troops Suicide Rate Highest Ever
AlterNet has the best article I've seen in the media about PTSD and the Iraqi veterans. Unfortunately, the news is not good. The proportion of vets with PTSD is higher in this conflict than in any other previously monitored war. Suicide accounted for over 25 percent of all noncombat Army deaths in Iraq in 2006, that's double what it was in peace time and much higher than rates from Iraq War I and Vietnam.
...
What were the total army deaths in Iraq in 2006?
How many combat army deaths occurred in Iraq in 2006?
How many noncombat Army deaths occurred in Iraq in 2006?
How many of these noncombat army deaths in Iraq were due to suicide?
How many of the combat army deaths in Iraq were due to suicide?
"I'm a uniter, not a divider."
cicerone imposter wrote:"I'm a uniter, not a divider."
MALARKEY!
You post malarkey and then avoid analyzing your malarkey to reveal to yourself that it is malarkey.
That is not the behavior of a uniter. That is the behavior of a self-deceiver who disunites by his/her promotion of malarkey.
June 13, 2007
Iraqis Are Failing to Meet U.S. Benchmarks
By DAMIEN CAVE
BAGHDAD, June 12 ?- Iraq's political leaders have failed to reach agreements on nearly every law that the Americans have demanded as benchmarks, despite heavy pressure from Congress, the White House and top military commanders. With only three months until progress reports are due in Washington, the deadlock has reached a point where many Iraqi and American officials now question whether any substantive laws will pass before the end of the year.
Kurds have blocked a vote in Parliament on a new oil law. Shiite clerics have stymied an American-backed plan for reintegrating former Baathists into government. Sunnis are demanding that a constitutional review include more power for the next president.
And even if one or two of the proposals are approved ?- the oil law appears the most likely, officials said ?- doubts are spreading about whether the current benchmarks can ever halt the cycle of violence gripping Iraq's communities.
For the handful of party leaders with the power to make deals, the promise of compromise now carries less allure than the possibility for domination. Long-suppressed Shiites and Kurds now see total victory within their grasp. Previous American benchmarks like elections have failed to bring peace and, after four years of unfulfilled promises, bloodshed and sprawling chaos, once wary glances have become cold, unblinking stares.
The same forces of entropy and obstinacy have also severed links between the party leaders and their constituencies. In Shiite areas of southern Iraq, Sunni areas of the west and for Kurds in the north, Iraq's central government has become increasingly irrelevant as competing groups within each faction maneuver at the local level for control of public money and jobs. In many cases, especially through mosques, Iran and other foreign powers often provide more institutional support than Baghdad.
As Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki told an American military commander on Monday, "There are two mentalities in this region, conspiracy and mistrust."
Benchmarks established by the US will never work.
http://www.beta.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/13/iraq.main/index.html
Quote:U.S. official: Samarra attack may have been inside job
* Story Highlights
* NEW: Iran criticizes "negligence of occupiers to guarantee security"
* U.S. official says 15 members of Iraqi security forces arrested in attack
* Two minarets destroyed at revered Shiite shrine in Samarra
* A 2006 bombing at the same site touched off a wave of sectarian attacks
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Authorities have evidence that Wednesday's bombing of the Al-Askariya Mosque in Samarra was an inside job, and 15 members of the Iraqi security forces have been arrested, a U.S. military official said.
The attack Wednesday destroyed two towers, referred to as minarets, at the revered Shiite shrine, police said. It was a repeat of the 2006 bombing that sparked Iraq's current wave of deadly sectarian violence.
There was no immediate word on casualties in the city north of Baghdad.
The U.S. military official, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, told CNN's Karl Penhaul that he believes members of the Iraqi security forces who were guarding the site either assisted or directly took part in helping al Qaeda insurgents place and detonate explosives at the mosque's minarets.
"He told me there was no evidence at all that this was an attack using mortars or anything of the like and said, in his words, that this was an inside job," Penhaul told CNN's "American Morning."
Mixon said an additional Iraqi army brigade will be sent to Samarra. So far, there have been no reports of sectarian clashes in the city.
Within hours of the attacks, Iraqi state television announced that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had imposed a curfew for Baghdad until further notice.
A U.S. military official in northern Iraq told The Associated Press that Samarra appeared calm by Wednesday afternoon.
The explosions rocked the town and blew billowing dust clouds into the air, store owner Imad Nagi told the AP.
"After the dust settled, I couldn't see the minarets anymore," Nagi told the AP. "So I closed the shop quickly and went home."
The blast followed clashes between gunmen and Iraqi National Police, who were guarding the holy site. During the firefight, the insurgents entered the mosque, also known as the Golden Dome, planted explosives around the minarets and detonated them.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini called the bombing a "criminal and anti-Islamic action," characterizing it as the "continuation of spiteful attacks of enemies of Iraqi national unity," according to Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency.
Hosseini also referred to the "negligence of occupiers to guarantee security in holy sites." Iran, which borders Iraq, is predominantly Shiite. Around 60 percent of Iraqis are Shiite as well.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for three days of mourning to mark the destruction of the minarets, according to a statement.
"Let the next three days be mourning days, where we spread the black banners and a call to prayer and shouting God is great in our mosques, whether they are Sunnis or Shiites, and to organize peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins in order for everyone to witness that the only enemy of Iraq is the occupation and therefore everyone must demand its departure or a timetable of its occupation."
The anti-American cleric also said no rival Sunni Arab could have been responsible for the bombing, calling the development a "cursed American-Israeli scenario that aims to spread the turmoil and plant the hatred among the Muslim brethren."
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the top U.S. military commander in the country issued a joint condemnation saying that this "brutal action on one of Iraq's holiest shrines is a deliberate attempt by al Qaeda to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife among the people of Iraq."
"It is an act of desperation by an increasingly beleaguered enemy seeking to obstruct the peaceful, political and economic development of a democratic Iraq," said Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus in a statement.
"We share in the outrage of the Iraqi people against this crime, and we call on all Iraqis to reject this call to violence. We cannot allow these terrorists to work against the interests of the Iraqi people who are seeking peace and prosperity for all."
During the February 2006 strike on the mosque, attackers dressed as Iraqi police commandos bombed and heavily damaged the shrine, collapsing the top half of the dome.
Although Samarra is a predominantly Sunni city, Askariya is one of the four major Shiite shrines in Iraq. Iraq's other major Shiite sites are in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. The fourth is in the Baghdad district of Kadhimiya.
Askariya is sacred to Shiites, who believe Imam al-Mehdi will one day reappear at the mosque, bringing them salvation. Al-Mehdi is the 12th and final awaited imam in Shiite Islam. He is the son of Imam Hasan al Askari, the 11th imam, buried in the shrine. His grandfather, the 10th Imam, also is buried there.
Al-Mehdi is said to have disappeared in the eighth century during the funeral of his father and is believed by Shiites to have been withdrawn by God from the eyes of the people. They are waiting for him to reappear as their leader.
CNN's Cal Perry and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sort of a microcosm for what has happened to Iraq over the last few years -
Cycloptichorn
Bush and his generals must learn that sectarian violence will not cease any time soon. They're all morons to think they can change the history of over a thousand years in a few battles today.
c.i. wrote :
Quote:Bush and his generals must learn that sectarian violence will not cease any time soon. They're all morons to think they can change the history of over a thousand years in a few battles today.
i doubt very much that president bush and his advisers ever read much about the religious european wars that raged for centuries - and still spring up on occasion .
but who wants to learn from history - bOOOOring !
sending others to fight is so much more exciting .
hbg
Pentagon: Iraqi violence still rising
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
35 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Violence in Iraq, as measured by casualties among troops and civilians, has edged higher despite the U.S.-led security push in Baghdad, the Pentagon told Congress on Wednesday.
In its required quarterly report on security, political and economic developments in Iraq, covering the February-May period, the Pentagon also raised questions about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's ability to fulfill a pledge made in January to prohibit political interference in security operations and to allow no safe havens for sectarian militias.
Overall, however, the report said it was too soon to judge whether the security crackdown was working.
The security operation was launched Feb. 14 and is still unfolding as the last of an additional 28,000 or so U.S. forces are getting into position in and around the Iraqi capital. The Pentagon is required by Congress to provide its initial assessment of the operation in July, and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has said he will report in September.
Wednesday's broader report, the eighth in a series, said that while violence fell in the capital and in Anbar province west of Baghdad during the February-May period, it increased in other areas, particularly in the outlying areas of Baghdad province and in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad and in the northern province of Nineva.
It will continue to rise until our troops leave Iraq.
Iraq bombers topple Samarra minarets
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
34 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - Suspected al-Qaida bombers toppled the towering minarets of Samarra's revered Shiite shrine on Wednesday, dealing a bold blow to Iraqi hopes for peace and reopening old wounds a year after the mosque's Golden Dome was destroyed.
The attack stoked fears of a surge in violence between Muslim sects. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government rushed to contain Shiite wrath against Sunnis: It clamped a curfew on Baghdad and asked for U.S. troop reinforcements in Samarra, 60 miles north of here, and for a heightened American military alert in the capital.
But sketchy reports of sectarian strife began to come in. Police told of at least four Sunni mosques in Baghdad and south of the capital attacked by arsonists and bombers, and of a smaller Shiite shrine bombed north of here.
Why the 'L.A. Times' Called for Iraq Pullout
Why the 'L.A. Times' Called for Iraq Pullout
By Greg Mitchell
E & P
June 13, 2007
Few American papers of any size have called for a reversal of course in Iraq, so it was a shock to see one of the largest, the Los Angeles Times, take this step recently. How does the editorial page editor explain this sudden change in heart -- and will others finally follow?
"I see no moral reason to wait until fall," Jim Newton, editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Times told me earlier today. "We need to evaluate in real time. That's part of the motivation for the editorial this week. Besides Gen. Petraeus, others have a right to assess the facts as well."
Newton was referring to an editorial in his paper on Monday calling for peace talks and a ceasefire in Iraq. It's the kind of talk we heard often in relation to Vietnam and later conflicts but oddly missing in regard to Iraq. But the Times is taking all sorts of bold stands on the war these days. Six weeks ago the paper advocated - hold on to your hats - that the U.S. actually start to disengage in Iraq.
That editorial was titled simply, if eloquently, "Bring Them Home."
Rather than chide the vast majority of newspaper editorial pages, yet again, for continuing to endorse, or at least accept, the continuing (now expanding) U.S. mission in Iraq, I am happy to tip my hat to the only ultra-large paper that has come out for the start of an American pullout. That position, until now, has been left to papers such as the Seattle Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Orange County Register and Roanoke Times.
What's happening at the L.A. paper, which as recently as January backed the "surge"? It's as if a little-noted earthquake struck Spring Street this spring and really shook things up.
That May editorial reflected, "This newspaper reluctantly endorsed the U.S. troop surge as the last, best hope for stabilizing conditions so that the elected Iraqi government could assume full responsibility for its affairs. But we also warned that the troops should not be used to referee a civil war. That, regrettably, is what has happened."
It concluded that "the longer we delay planning for the inevitable, the worse the outcome is likely to be. The time has come to leave."
This week's editorial urged: "The United States might have liked to wait until September for Army Gen. David H. Petraeus' report on the results of the troop surge in Iraq, but that wishful timetable has been overtaken by events. President Bush must begin planning a strategic and orderly disengagement that addresses the increasingly unstable geopolitical terrain."
How did this come about? I wondered. The change took place shortly after Newton, who had been the city-county bureau chief at the paper, took charge of the editorial page, following the abrupt departure of Andres Martinez. But he said he was not really responsible for the change, except in a roundabout way.
When he took over he had called a meeting of the editorial board, "partly to educate myself where we were" on Iraq. "Members of the board suggested that we sit back and take stock of our position: Are we comfortable where we are or should we change?"
Like other papers, the Times had been very critical of the conduct of the war but had refused to advocate a real change in course, and had supported the surge "as a last ditch attempt" to turn things around, as Newton puts it. But by the time he came to the editorial page, "the caveat we had put on our support for the surge, that our presence there was not to oversee a civil war," seemed to be proving prophetic.
So at the board meeting, he recalls, when "we went around table and talked about where we were, there was a strong sense that surge was not producing and had no realistic hope for producing what we wished for when the paper reluctantly supported it. From there we moved to a discussion of a sensible course change and what would be necessary to produce change there and, frankly, safeguard American lives."
Before going to press, he showed the editorial to his publisher, who made a few suggestions that were incorporated in it.
"That first editorial was our attempt to really say in a forthright way how we should move forward," Newton says. The most recent one this week calling for peace talks and a ceasefire was "more of an attempt to apply principles we laid out in the previous one to changing facts on the ground."
Newton says the response from readers has been about 75% positive "from what has come to me," many calling it "an important message for an important newspaper to send."
As for his own response: "I feel very strongly what we wrote in that first editorial?-an honest appraisal of where we are." He said again that this appraisal could not be postponed: "There's lot of talk that we will have this national debate in the fall, but the problem is, every day that goes by the conflict shifts and in some ways worsens."
In fact, today White House spokesman Tony Snow joined generals who had previously stated that all this talk about a "September re-assessment" was no longer operative, because who could judge success of the surge by then? My feeling has always been that there is no chance that Petraeous would ever state in September that the mission he is now so tightly connected with is failing.
Following the Times' example, perhaps other papers will urgently feel a "moral" need to re-assess the facts -- and "take stock" of their positions on the war.
Robert Fisk: Assassination brings Lebanon closer to brink
Robert Fisk: Assassination brings Lebanon closer to brink
Published: 14 June 2007
by Robert Fisk
Independent UK
A sign of the times. I arrive home in Beirut from Paris, am just 20 minutes into my apartment when the windows of my office blow open with a single "crack". A tremendous explosion rolls across the Lebanese capital. Out of the house, 500 metres running down the Corniche and smoke is billowing from the Staff Sporting Club. Soldiers shouting, cops trying to keep the first reporters away, but I skulk through the ruins next to the sea with an old Lebanese photographer friend and we find ourselves in the wreckage of a tourist ghost train, all mangled tracks and carriages. "Enter at Your Risk," it says over the tunnel and on the other side is a burning car containing the corpse of Lebanon's latest assassination victim.
And not just "any" victim. The man in the smouldering vehicle is Walid Eido, a Beirut member of parliament, a former judge, much revered - anti-Syrian, of course, otherwise he would not be dead, would he? - and a supporter of Saad Hariri, son of the murdered former prime minister Rafik who was killed in an even bigger explosion on 14 February 2005, a thousand metres on the other side of my apartment. What is it about Beirut that turns this beautiful, sun-blessed city into a crematorium so quickly?
Eido was killed with his son Khaled and I saw their corpses, roasted, covered in cheap plastic bags so that Lebanon's greedy photographers could not use their last mortal remains on page one. Walid Eido's two bodyguards died with them. The "Sporting" was a hangout for Hariri's men but, as usual, this assassination must have been well planned, well co-ordinated, paid for way up front.
And what a knife into the body politic of the Hariri camp. Hariri's majority party is the reason why the government of Fouad Siniora survives, supported - heaven help them - by the Americans, abandoned by the Hizbollah who persuaded six Shia ministers to resign from the cabinet last year. Could there have been a more devastating target for the government's enemies last night?
Walid Eido represented a constituency in Beirut's tough Sunni Muslim Basta area, a populist politician who had constantly condemned Syria's "interference" and had more recently turned on Hizbollah's political action against the government. When the pro-Syrian militia group, who withstood Israel's devastating bombardment of Lebanon last summer, pitched their tents across the centre of Beirut in an attempt to bring down Siniora's government, it was Eido who referred to this as "occupation".
And what will be the reaction to this latest and most outrageous of murders? In the aftermath of the bombing, amid the ghost-train wreckage and the overturned dodgems and the ash-covered swimming pools, there was only shock. But each crisis is worse than the previous. Each assassination - of a communist politician, of a journalist, of a Christian MP - each outbreak of guerrilla violence - 61 soldiers have now been killed fighting Fatah al-Islam in the north - quick-marches Lebanon faster towards the abyss. Over the past few months, the bombs have gone off close to midnight, an industrial estate here, a Christian or Muslim shopping mall there, always too late to cause mass casualties. And that is the point, of course, to threaten rather than kill. But what if the next bomb goes off at midday rather than midnight? How many casualties then? This is the nightmare with which Lebanese live. If, in working-class Basta tonight, the crowds can be contained (by a largely Shia Muslim army), what of tomorrow?
It is to the enormous esteem of the Lebanese that they have refused to embark on another civil war despite every provocation. But the provocations have not run out. It can get much, much worse. Next to the dodgems last night lay a burned registration: 101437. Lebanese detectives duly made note of the number. But - and I tire of repeating this in my reports - not a single Lebanese assassination has been solved since 1976.
Cyclo, No surprises there; it's been common knowledge that money being spent in Iraq does not have any controls or accountability. Most Bush supporters are ignorant of many facts concerning our war in Iraq, and that will not change.
When we have a lower rating for congress than president Bush, we know we are in big trouble. Incompetence and mismanagement is the general status of our government at a time when skill and efficiency is needed the most.
Throw all the bums out! They're worthless and dangerous to America.
This was evident a couple of years ago. I guess better late than never.
Army plans to hire more psychiatrists
PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
20 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Overwhelmed by the number of soldiers returning from war with mental problems, the Army is planning to hire at least 25 percent more psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.
A contract finalized this week but not yet announced calls for spending $33 million to add about 200 mental health professionals to help soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health needs, officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.
"As the war has gone on, PTSD and other psychological effects of war have increased," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general.
Bunch of bonehead generals running this war. This was evident several years ago, and they're finally acknowledging what's been evident for so long.
"The number of (mental health workers) that was adequate for a peacetime military is not adequate for a nation that's been at war," she said in an interview.
No shite!
The new hiring, which she said could begin immediately, is part of a wider plan of action the Army has laid out to improve health care to wounded or ill veterans and their families. It also comes as the Defense Department completes a wider mental health study ?- the latest in a series over recent months that has found services for troops have been inadequate.
Evidence that dummies are running our war.
On the way home tonight I was listening to NPR and they were discussing Negroponte's trip to Iraq.
He was in Ramadi and they we teling how attacks a month ago were around 30 a day. Now they are around one attack per day and it is because the local sheiks have decided to actually work WITH US forces and relieve their area of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The region is in a relative calm now.
Now where I can find the news of this? Practically no where. The only place I found it tonight was on the Federal News Service.
http://www.fnsg.com/transcript.htm?id=20070614t6810
I wonder if it had been bad news, would it have been plastered all over?
McG, It's probably because it's similar to when McCain came home from Iraq, and told the American People it was "safe."
McGentrix,
Put these three facts together and your rhetorical question is answered:
GEORGE SOROS in the 2003 edition of his book, page 15, [i]The Alchemy of Finance[/i], wrote:My greatest fear is that the Bush Doctrine will succeed--that Bush will crush the terrorists, tame the rogue states of the axis of evil, and usher in a golden age of American supremacy. American supremacy is flawed and bound to fail in the long run.
What I am afraid of is that the pursuit of American supremacy may be successful for a while because the United States in fact employs a dominant position in the world today.
Sam Hananel in his associated Press article, December 10, 2004, wrote: On December 9, 2004, Eli Pariser, who headed Soros's group Moveon PAC, boasted to his members, "Now the Democratic Party is our party. We bought it, we own it."
If the Soros $influenced$ news media succeeds in persuading more than 50% of Americans to oppose Bush's plan, it will boost our enemy's effort and it will defeat America in Iraq regardless of whether Bush's "surge strategy" can work or not.
Military Fatalities: By Month
Period... US.... UK.... Other*... Total... Avg.. Days
6-2007 . 38.... 1........... 0........ 39 .....2.79... 14
5-2007 126... 3........... 2....... 131..... 4.23... 31
4-2007 104.. 12.......... 1........ 117..... 3.9.... 30
3-2007 .. 81... 1........... 0......... 82..... 2.65... 31
2-2007.. 80... 3........... 1......... 84........ 3..... 28
1-2007.. 83... 3........... 0......... 86..... 2.77.... 31
If you can interpret that as anything positive based on "less attacks," you need to have brain surgery.
Wounded by month:
Jul-06 ....524
Aug-06 ..591
Sep-06 ..790
Oct-06 ...780
Nov-06.. 546
Dec-06 ..700
Jan-07 ...634
Feb-07... 508
Mar-07... 604
Apr-07... 636
May-07.. 652
Jun-07.... 47
Total 25830
Casualties so far are nothing compared to what's coming if Lieberman manages to convince Bush to attack Iran:
Quote:WASHINGTON ?- Connecticut for Lieberman Party Chairman John Orman called Tuesday for Sen. Joe Lieberman to resign, saying his advocacy of a military strike against Iran could explode into a global conflict.
"He has crossed the line," said Orman, a professor of politics at Fairfield University. "His unilateral warmongering could lead to a new World War III."
During an appearance on "Face the Nation" on CBS Sunday, Lieberman said the United States should consider a military strike against Iran because of Tehran's involvement in Iraq.
"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians ...
http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_6126214
