A Sad Veterans Day; 1/4 of Homeless are Vets Bombings in Baghdad, Mosul, Diyala Showdown at Samarra

On Veterans Day, think about the thousands of US dead and wounded in Iraq (for what purpose, exactly?), and think about Iraqi Veterans against the War as Star Tribune columnist Nick Coleman suggests.

Typically this group and others like it are being denied a voice in public commemorations of the veterans (who apparently should be honored but should not actually be allowed to speak for themselves.)

It is worth reprinting today Michael Munk's recent email:

' US military occupation forces in Iraq suffered at least 178 combat casulties in the six days ending Nov. 6, as total casualties reached at least 61,596. The total includes 31,596 killed or wounded by what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 30,294 (as of Oct. 1) dead and injured from "non-hostile" causes.

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by routinely reporting only the total killed (3,855 as of Nov. 6) and rarely mentioning the 28,451 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they cover for the Pentagon by ignoring the 30,294 (as of Oct. 1) military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical evacuation, although the 3,855 reported deaths include 710 (up one since Oct. 31) who died from those same causes, including 130 suicides. '

2007 is the deadliest year yet for US troops in Iraq.

Some 48,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and have difficult coping with life back in the US.

It is no surprise, then, that 200,000 veterans have been homeless at some point in the past year, and that veterans make up 26% of the homeless, even though they are only 11% of the population. Experts fear that many Iraq and Afghanistan vets will also end up homeless. The homelessness seems to me obviously an outgrowth of PTSD (which can lead to alcoholism and to the break-up of families, and generally to a reduction in emotional and kin support for an individual who seems habitually angry, distant, and acting a bit oddly). The article says,

' Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job. Some advocates say the early presence of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan at shelters does not bode well for the future. It took roughly a decade for the lives of Vietnam veterans to unravel to the point that they started showing up among the homeless. Advocates worry that intense and repeated deployments leave newer veterans particularly vulnerable. "We're going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental-health toll from this war is enormous," said Daniel Tooth, director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pa.'

Ironically, among the best things you can do to support the veterans is to give regularly to your local homeless shelter. (We should all be doing that anyway, since it is not a cause that is easy to raise money for, and government has tended to fall down on the job in this regard. One third of the homeless are families with children. You can easily find out which is the major local homeless shelter in your area.)

Health care for the Iraq veterans that actually is proffered by the US government will cost Americans at least $650 billion, or over $2,000 each. And even then there will be all those tens of thousands of homeless vets whose lives have been wrecked.

Speaking of the homeless, the new visa restrictions on Iraqis entering Syria has reduced the number of asylum seekers per month from 20,000 to 600. Since there is no evidence that there is a decline in the Iraqis being displaced from their homes by threats and violence, the 20,000 are likely just being displaced to other places in Iraq instead of going to Syria.

26 Foreign Service Officers of the State Department may still be dragooned into serving in a war zone and in a very dangerous Green Zone that cannot be protected from almost daily mortar and rocket fire. As long-time readers know, I am calling for Congress to close down the US embassy in Iraq, because it is not right to attempt to maintain a formal embassy in a war zone, where diplomacy cannot be practiced. It would also be an important first step to ending the Iraq War.

Reuters reports civil war violence in Iraq for Saturday, including several bombings that wounded fair numbers of persons in Baghdad, and a major clash between tribal levies and Salafi Jihadis near Samarra that left 18 dead. When the Jihadis used to kill 18 tribesmen, this used to be considered a sign of instability. But the other way around is interpreted as 'good news.' Problem: The so-called tribal sheikhs are not necessarily nicer people than the Salafis. Likewise, there is no reason to think that they are willing to accept the Shiite a-Maliki government.

McClatchy has more on Saturday's violence, including a major bombing in Mosul and several violent incidents around Baqubah in Diyala province.

At the Napoleon's Egypt blog: it turns out that Gen. Bonaparte's new military hospitals in Egypt for his wounded troops did not get off to a very good start. The Iraq War vets are not the first soldiers to be neglected by their commander in chief once they are no longer at the front lines.

Iraqi Kurd Op-Ed: Turkey must Recognize Kurds for there to be Dialogue

The USG Open Source Center translates an article by an Iraqi Kurd writer, "Diyar Gharib," calling on Turkey to recognize the Kurdish people as a first step toward productive political dialogue.

'Iraq Kurd writer says dialogue impossible without Turkey recognizing Kurds
Hawlati
Saturday, November 10, 2007 . . .
Document Type: OSC Translated Text


Iraq Kurd writer says dialogue impossible without Turkey recognizing Kurds

Text of article by Diyar Gharib entitled "What kind of dialogue with Turkey?", carried by independent Iraqi Kurdish newspaper Hawlati on 7 November:

We often hear from Kurdish or foreign officials that the PKK PKK crisis cannot be solved though military means but through dialogue. It is stressed that this age is the age of dialogue. The time of war and the language of war are over. For this purpose they call upon the PKK not to fight and instead try to solve their issue with Turkey through dialogue. To this point, everything is of course normal. It is normal that there are groups, parties and people who wish to have conflicts solved through peaceful political dialogue. This attitude deserves respect and is much appreciated. But what attracts attention about these external interventions that the people (who ask the PKK not to use violence) ignore the current and previous cease-fires observed by the PKK. They also fail to mention that Turkey not only has failed to respond or even acknowledge PKK cease-fires, but it has continued to attack the Kurdish people and the PKK in every possible way.

Furthermore, Turkey does not recognize the identity and existence of the Kurdish people. The odd thing is that the above-mentioned officials keep silent about these issues. This means they ignore the main reasons that cause violence and continuation of conflict and environment of war which are not the Kurds and the PKK but the ideology and political policy of the Turkish state. Turkish ideology is that any citizen who cannot say "I am a happy Turk" has no citizenship rights and are considered aliens to be punished and marginalized.

It is obvious that there are many dignified persons and groups in Turkey who, while consider themselves the citizens of Turkey, refuse to describe themselves as Turks. This is a natural right of these people to feel and express themselves in this way because they belong to different ethnic groups. The denial of differences and diversity and insistence on forcibly imposing one identity on all the national groups and cultures as well as imposing directly and indirectly non-democratic coercive laws and practices is in itself is terror and causes the creation of tension and conflict among different ethnic groups. Thus, it is the nation or power that has the political and state control and uses such non-democratic laws and practices that is responsible for the creation of terror and conflict among its citizens. Those who deny these facts today are the Turkish state and Turks not Kurds. The root cause of the conflict is the policies of the Turkish state.

Acknowledging this first, then it is normal to call upon the PKK to use peaceful means for the resolution of the Kurdish issue in Turkey. It is also normal to call upon Turkey too to respond to the PKK. But it is not right to speak of Turkey as if it were a peaceful innocent side of the conflict. Also when some talk about dialogue they should also explain the principles of dialogue to which democrats and peace-loving people must adhere because without such principles and criteria there would be confusion and ambiguity about those who want peace and those who insist on violence and war.
The following are some principles which I believe should set this straight:

1. The Turkish state must formally recognize the existence and identity of the Kurdish people in Turkey.

2. Turkey should recognize the PKK and accept to enter into dialogue and negotiate with them.

3. Turkey should accept international mediation in drafting a solution to PKK and Kurdish question.
These principles, the first two in particular, are basic and essential. Any call for peace and dialogue that does not pay attention to these principles cannot lead to any result apart from supporting the continuation of racist policies of denial and genocide against the Kurdish people.

Erdogan said recently (on the PKK): let them lay down arms and exercise politics within the framework of (Turkish) parliament. This statement by Erdogan was undeservedly exaggerated by officials and the media. They were quick to ask the PKK to immediately respond to Erdogan. Some were about to transform Erdogan, in our easy, to Ghandi. Thank God, Erdogan himself put an end to this when he said PKK officials must be punished while others could benefit from the repentance law. This is what Erdogan means when he asks PKK to practice politics under the umbrella of Turkish parliament. In other words, Erdogan has not said anything towards pursuing a peaceful solution of the Kurdish question. He was only reaffirming the same racist policies of Turkey in a political language.
If the PKK had accepted these policies of the Turkish state it would not have taken up arms in the first place. On the other hand, the PKK fighters are not bandits and robbers to take advantage of repentance law.

Here I find it necessary that Kurdish officials, the media and writers be careful enough not to make such big political mistakes. Today Turkey is in the middle of a crisis and it tries to use various methods to save itself from this it. Hence, it varies its political language to suit its purpose. Sometimes it talks of dialogue and peace. But whenever we hear these words we must not forget the principles I have mentioned earlier. We must also not forget that it is their parliament that has decreed a war.

Let us not fall in these traps again. Let us not allow others to trample on our rights in the name of peace and dialogue. '

(Description of Source: Al-Sulaymaniyah Hawlati in Sorani Kurdish -- weekly independent newspaper)

Did W. Create Ron Paul?

Gordon Robison argues that his stance on the Iraq War almost single-handedly explains Rep. Ron Paul's amazing fundraising ability (which recently outstripped that of Sen. John McCain, the last unreconstructed hawk on the Iraq War.)

I'm not sure it is just Iraq that drives Ron Paul's popularity, though of course that is part of it. I suspect that it is in some important part the abuse of government by W. and his administration that has made rightwing anarchism so popular. (It has done wonders for leftwing anarchism too: witness the reemergence of Noam Chomsky as a major voice after he had been marginalized for decades).

Government is a set of bargains, a 'moral economy.' We let the government take a certain proportion of our money, and we expect it to organize services for us that would otherwise be difficult to arrange. Anyone who has studied any history and economics knows that the market is going to leave some people destitute, and you need government to correct for that imbalance. It is no accident that government was invented by irrigation-based societies like Egypt and Iraq, where if someone did not organize the peasants to do the irrigation work and keep it up, everybody would starve.

Bush has broken the US government. The US military was there to protect us. Bush has used it to fight a fascist-style aggressive war of choice. FEMA is there for emergency aid. Bush did not deploy it effectively for New Orleans. Social security lifted the elderly out of the poverty that had often been their fate before the 1930s. Bush declined to use Clinton's surplus to fix the system, and has essentially borrowed against the pensions of us all to pay for his wars. Government is there to ensure our security. Bush has used it to spy on us, to prosecute patently innocent persons, to manipulate the media and instill us with lies and propaganda.

If government is to be conducted on Bushist principles, then who would not like to see the damn thing abolished?

I don't think Ron Paul would have run well in 2000, after Bill Clinton had demonstrated the ways in which government could contribute to our prosperity and well-being. Indeed, it was so important for the Right to destroy Clinton precisely because he did make government relatively effective and popular.

Ron Paul's popularity does not derive only from his opposition to the Iraq War. It derives from the sanity of the American people, who love liberty and reject Bushism. The opposite of fascism is not democracy but anarchy.

Given how horribly corporations like Walmart treat their employees, denying them the right to unionize and cleverly avoiding paying anything toward their health insurance, I have never understood why Libertarians think corporations would be nicer to us if we could not organize government protections from them. It is the government of the state of Maryland that protected workers from Walmart's exploitation of them. Libertarian faith in the utopia that comes from the withering of the state strikes me as just as impractical as the similar Marxist theory.

But after 7 years of Bush, I don't find it at all astonishing that large numbers of internet contributors would give Ron Paul money to campaign on getting rid of the Frankenstein's Monster of a government that George W. Bush has been constructing in his macabre basement of a mind.

Pakistan Dictatorship Pledges to End Emergency; Bhutto said released from House Arrest

The military dictatorship in Pakistan says that it has released Benazir Bhutto from house arrest and that it will end the State of Emergency within one month and go to parliamentary elections in mid-February.

Pakistanis have seen military governments make such pledges in the past, only to have them repeatedly broken, with elections postponed for as much as a decade. (In some cases only the death of the leading general has allowed elections finally to be held).

One reason Musharraf's pledges in this regard may be honored, at least in a surface way, is that he is facing far more public opposition to his coup than he had expected. Most lawyers and judges in the country are on strike, which makes it difficult for government and society to function normally. And while Musharraf stopped the planned Pakistan People's Party rally at Rawalpindi on Friday, he cannot be assured of always being so successful in blunting popular protests. The waning years of Gen. Zia ul-Haq's dictatorship in the mid-1980s saw substantial protests.

Then Musharraf is getting heavy pressure from the Europeans and to a lesser extent the Bush administration. The latter doesn't care very much about democracy, of course, but they do care about the potential for massive turmoil in Pakistan and even revolution. Still, Bush is backing Musharraf heavily in public.

Gary Sick says the situation reminds him of 1978 in Iran, when the US government had put all its eggs in the shah's basket, and had no plan B when the shah was overthrown.

But actually I think the evidence is that Condi Rice did develop a plan B, and it is called Benazir Bhutto. The US wanted Musharraf to become a civilian president and to allow Benazir to come back as prime minister. The Pakistani Supreme Court threw a wrench into this plan by trying to bar Musharraf from being president. Musharraf then made his coup, derailing the whole Washington plan.

Can the Rice plan be gotten back on track? Has Musharraf's high-handedness mortally wounded him as a potential civilian president? Will Musharraf really be able to risk giving up any of the power he has seized. Has he put Bhutto in a position where she has to oppose him in order to remain electable? Has her own willingness to compromise with Musharraf made her unelectable already?

Stay tuned.

Awakening Council in Diyala Bombed; Rumors of US Contacts with Sunni Resistance; Iran: Nukes forbidden in Islamic Law

A suicide bomber blew up a meeting of the Diyala Awakening Council of Sunni tribal shaikhs, killing five tribal chiefs who had been cooperating with the Americans against radical Sunni Salafi extremists.

Other violence in Iraq on Friday was concentrated in Baghdad, Diyala Province and Kirkuk, according to Reuters, and included roadside bombs and mortar attacks. McClatchy has more, especially on violence in the troubled Kirkuk province, which is contested among Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen (see the item below).

In a bid to tamp down the Iraq violence further (it is still the worst in the world), the Iraqi, the US and some regional governments have written formal letters to four Sunni Arab resistance movements. According to al-Hayat, they include the Political Council of the Iraqi Resistance, The Front for Holy War and Change, and the groups led by Izzat Ibrahim Duri, which fall into two sorts, some Sufis and the others Baathists. Al-Hayat says that these four have indicated a willingness to parley with the Iraqi government and its American backers, but insist that the talks be held outside Iraq and be guaranteed internationally (i.e. they want to be sure that they won't just be arrested.) Duri in the past has been dead set against negotiations, so I do not know what to make of this report; there is always the danger that such unsourced and shadowy stories are intended as psychological warfare, are intended to harm the morale and break the back of the resistance.

A majority of Iraq members of parliament opposes the extension of the US military mandate in Iraq by the United Nations Security Council, but these lawmakers are being sidelined and marginalized.

The Friday prayers leader in Tehran, a member of the Council of Guardians, reaffirms that Islamic law forbids nuclear weapons. The law of war in Islam forbids the killing of innocent noncombatants. Since nuclear weapons inevitably kill large numbers of innocent women and children, Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei has pronounced these weapons contrary to Islam and insisted that Iran does not want them and would not use them.

Fred Kaplan wonders what, in the wake of the departure of Karen Hughes as US public relations czarina, the US might do to improve its relations with the Muslim world. He points to the successes that US soft power had in the old East Bloc and wonders what today's analogies would be.

The Kirkuk Crisis

The USG Open Source Center summarizes controversies over the prospect of the incorporation of Kirkuk into Iraqi Kurdistan in October and so far in November. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) comprises 3 provinces of the old Iraq, and wishes to incorporate 3 more. One of the provinces it wants to swallow whole is Kirkuk, an oil producing area. Thousands of Kurds have flooded into that province, and Arabs have been 'encouraged' to leave, so that if a referendum were held, the Kurds would certainly win it. The report covers a wide range of reaction and comment, including Iranian opposition to the holding of a referendum on Kirkuk's annexation by the KRG, and opposition by the Sadr Movement. It also considers threats against the Turkmen minority, which generally objects to being forced to join the KRG.




'OSC Summary: Iraq -- Kirkuk Roundup for October, November
Iraq -- OSC Summary
Saturday, November 10, 2007

This summary identifies major statements and activities concerning Kirkuk for October and November 2007. Iran called for a delay in the Iraqi Constitution's Article 140. Kurdish officials reacted quickly, offering terse rejections of the proposal. Meanwhile, the Kurds interpreted a Turkish incursion into Iraq chiefly as a ruse to destabilize Iraqi Kurdistan. The Iraqi Turkoman Front (ITF) reported that Turkoman have been threatened by an unknown Kurdish group. Iran Calls for Delay in Kirkuk Referendum

Iran went on record as opposing implementation of the Iraqi Constitution's Article 140, which calls for "de-Arabizing" the Kirkuk/Ta'mim province and holding a referendum by year's end to decide on its inclusion into the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

On Iran's News Network Television, Iran's Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said: "There are differences of opinion about (constitutional issues) such as . . . the issue of Kirkuk or the internal borders of provinces. We suggested a moratorium on these issues in order that decisions be made about them" (IRINN, 3 November).

Kurdish leaders offered terse rejections of the Iranian minister's proposal.

On 7 November, the Kurdistan Regional president's office (Mas'ud Barzani's outlet for official statements) stated: "These (Iranian) proposals contradict the Iraqi constitution; therefore we reject them. Such proposals are considered as interference . . . and further complicate the situation" ( www. PUKmedia. com, 8 November).

The head of Kirkuk's Provincial Council, Rizgar Ali, called for a strong Iraqi response to Tehran and stated: "This proposal is clear and direct interference by Tehran in Iraqi internal affairs" (The Kurdish Globe, 6 November).

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan media reported that a Sadr Trend adviser expressed his organization's opposition to incorporating Kirkuk province into the KRG.

Sadr adviser Rasim al-Marwani reportedly told Elaph website that they interpreted Kurdish action on the issue as "a kind of local imperialism and we never support linking Kirkuk to the Kurdistan Region" www.PUKmedia. com, 9 November).

Turkish Incursion Meant to Destabilize Kirkuk

A common position among Iraqi Kurdish media and officials was that a potential Turkish incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan aimed, not at destroying Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) insurgents, but rather at destabilizing Kurdish achievements in Iraq and slowing the referendum on Kirkuk.

Barzani's representative in Kirkuk and head of the Kurdistan Toilers Party, Qadir Aziz, stated: "This issue has a very negative impact on Article 140 . . . That is one of the aims of Turkey, and the postponement of the implementation of Article 140 might be one of the Turkish demands during negotiations" (Aso, 25 October).

Reported Threats Against Turkoman

The Iraqi Turkoman Front (ITF) reported that Turkoman have been threatened by an unknown Kurdish group called "The Emirate Group of the Occupied Kirkuk Branch." Turkoman protesting, www.kerkuk.net, 6 November.

An open letter, which called for Kurds to ready themselves to join Kurdish militia cells in case of a Turkish invasion, threatened the ITF leadership, stating that Kurds would "hold Turkoman responsible" in the case of a Turkish invasion, and that this was "the last warning" ( www. kerkuk. net, 6 November).

Suicide Attack in Kirkuk

On 7 November, a suicide bomber in a car attacked one of the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Kirkuk, killing "several people" ( www. PUKmedia. com). '

Shiite on Shiite Conflict in Karbala, South; US Soldier Killed; Kurdish Party Bombed

That's all we need-- Iraqi troops raiding American mercenary units in Iraq. That will really settle things down.

Khalaf al-Ulyan, a Sunni fundamentalist member of parliament, condemned PM Nuri al-Maliki as a "dictator" because he unilaterally fired six Sunni Arab cabinet members. The six had tendered their resignations. According to the Iraqi constitution, the Prime Minister must accept or reject a cabinet member's resignation within one month. Al-Maliki declined to accept the resignations for three months, then suddenly fired the Sunnis for absenteeism, thus depriving them of pensions and other perquisites of office. Al-Ulyan pointed out that in any case they were provided to al-Maliki's cabinet by the Iraqi Accord Front, the Sunni fundamentalist party, and that he should have dealt with that party directly. Al-Maliki has refused to dialogue with the Sunnis in parliament over their discontents and declines to reach out to Sunnis who have kept their distance from the political process. Any reduction of violence in Iraq is clearly not bringing political reconciliation.

Raed Jarrar argues that the Iraqi cabinet, which represents only a small proportion of the electorate, has sidelined the parliament, which is more representative and is ruling by virtual executive decree. (Gee, I wonder where they got that idea). He also argues that the recent approval of two new technocrat ministers proposed to parliament by PM Nuri al-Maliki was done by only 110 members of parliament, which is not a quorum.

Al-Hayat writes in Arabic that a videotape has been shown on Iraqi television of police in the holy Shiite city of Karbala torturing local families and killing two children during the disturbances of 28 August.

The police in Karbala south of Baghdad are accusing the Mahdi Army of Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr of having killed several hundred persons in the past few years in that city. The police said that the Mahdi Army attempted to impose Islamic canon law on the populace, in the manner of a Shiite Taliban, and had run secret prisons where torture and executions were carried out. Spokesmen for the Sadr Movement, of which the Mahdi Army forms the paramilitary, denounced the charges as self-serving lies. The Sadrists said there has been a mass of unjustified arrests of their members by the Karbala police in recent months, and that the detainees have been abused.

Al-Hayat points out that the accusations have to be seen as part of a Shiite on Shiite power struggle. The police and administration of Karbala is dominated by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, which was formed in exile in Iran. ISCI has been in competition with the Sadrists for control of Karbala for years, and may be achieving its goal. The shrine city is a rich source of wealth, since millions of pilgrims visit it annually from all over the Shiite world and give offerings to whoever controls the shrine.

This week, the deputy governor of Karbala, Jawad al-Hasnawi, a follower of Muqtada al-Sadr, was forced to flee to Baghdad, having been charged with corruption. Likewise three elected members of the Karbala provincial council were charged with crimes. Al-Hasnawi met on Thursday with Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi (a Sunni fundamentalist who has poor relations with ISCI and the other main Shiite fundamentalist party, al-Da'wa, headed by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki).

Al-Hasnawi charged, according to al-Hayat, that an official inquiry into the disturbances at Karbala in late August (which left 52 dead and led Muqtada to freeze the activities of the Mahdi Army) had implicated the police and the shrine guards (dominated by members of the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) in killings then. He said that the charges against the Mahdi Army (Jaish al-Mahdi or JAM) were trumped up to take the focus off the police misbehavior.

Whatever the rights and wrongs, it seems clear that some sort of major power struggle broke out between the Sadrists and ISCI in Karbala in the last few months, and it appears to be the case that ISCI has won, and is now driving out the Sadrists from official political positions to which they had been elected. Since some proportion of the Karbala population does support Muqtada al-Sadr, leaving them disenfranchised is likely a recipe for further conflict. In fact, it seems likely that a Sadrist- ISCI struggle for the Shiite south will eventually come.

McClatchy reports that "4 unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad" on Thursday. In Diyala province, "Four civilians were wounded when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest attacked a café in Hibhib town west of Baquba city around 1:00 pm. "

Reuters reports more civil war violence for Thursday. Major incidents included the announcement of another US soldier killed in south Baghdad by a roadside bomb. Also, the bombing of the Kurdistan Democratic Party HQ in Kirkuk, which killed 13, has been followed up by another such incident. In Tal Asquf, north of Mosul, "One woman was killed and five people were wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded near the Kurdistan Democratic Party headquarters . . ."

These bombings appear to be part of a concerted campaign by Arab guerrillas against the Massoud Barzani faction of the Kurds, which have expansionist designs on Arab territory. Other attacks:

' NEAR FALLUJA - A roadside bomb killed three police officers including the chief of the al-Waleed police station and wounded another five policemen when it targeted their patrol north of Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. . .

THAR THAR - Iraqi police found seven decomposed and handcuffed bodies in Thar Thar, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. . .

MAHAWEEL - Two blindfolded, handcuffed bodies were found with gunshot wounds in Mahaweel, 75 km (45 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. . .

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb wounded three Iraqi soldiers on patrol in the New Baghdad district of eastern Baghdad, police said.

BASRA - At least four people were wounded in a roadside bomb targeting the car of Basra Qahtan al Moussawi, the top education official in the southern governorate of Basra, 550 km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said.

KUT - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one civilian and wounded four policemen west of Kut, 170 km (106 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said. '

The bombing in the southern Shiite city of Kut is probably another manifestation of the struggle between the Sadrists and ISCI. The Islamic Supreme Council tends to control the administration and police in the south, but the majority of the population seems increasingly to support Muqtada al-Sadr. The attempted assassination of the education minister of the far southern province of Basra likewise reflected intra-Shiite struggles for control of the provincial government there.

Musharraf Places Benazir Under House Arrest; Moderate Daily Slams US on Iraq

Pakistani dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf has ordered opposition leader Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party placed under house arrest at her residence in Islamabad. Some 5,000 members of the PPP have been rounded up, and 50 close aides of Benazir have been arrested, according to Aljazeera. The moves were aimed at preventing Bhutto from leading a mass rally in nearby Rawalpindi.

The Musharraf government maintains that under the terms of the state of emergency declared by the general last Saturday, mass gatherings are forbidden. Most other major political figures had already been detained.

Musharraf also went on television to demand that the press and media report on the positive aspects of the brutal military crackdown and suspension of the constitution, rather than dwelling on the negative.

The USG Open Source Center translates an editorial in the Jang newspaper, Pakistan's largest Urdu daily, which is usually moderate and politically neutral. This piece, however, attacks the US presence in Iraq as an brutal occupation, aimed at stealing Iraq's resources and 'showering favors on Israel.' It also defends Iran (Pakistanis are mostly Sunni and have a rivalry with Iran). Jang owns the popular GEO satellite television network that broadcasts from Dubai and has been threatened by Gen. Musharraf. I take it that they are turning anti-American, partially out of disappointment because of US backing of Musharraf, and partially because they can attack the US as an indirect way of attacking Musharraf but without suffering the consequences. I repeat that this sort of strident language about the US had not been characteristic of Jang earlier, and it seems to me a sign of the radicalization of the Pakistani middle classes.

' Pakistan Editorial: Terrorism in Iraq 'Natural' Reaction to US Troop Presence
Editorial: "Peace is Not Possible Without the Withdrawal of Foreign Forces From Iraq"
Jang
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Document Type: OSC Translated Text


The United States seized the opportunity to take unjust action against its rivals, in particular Muslims, following the disruption of the balance of power, the establishment of a uni-polar system, and upon America becoming the sole superpower of the world. The phrase "the beginning of the crusade" was uttered by President Bush on the eve of the invasion of Afghanistan. Although an attempt was later made to explain that it was just a slip of the tongue, the fact is that the United States and its Western allies have made Islam their target. Due to this very reason, they invaded Iraq after Afghanistan, claiming that Baghdad had started production of weapons of mass destruction and long-range weapons. In response, former Iraqi President Saddam Husayn invited IAEA experts and UN arms inspectors to visit the country and inspect its military installations.

These military experts combed holy shrines, mosques and religious institutions, desecrating them under the pretext of inspecting Iraq's military installations. They even searched Saddam Husayn's homes. The experts were compelled at long last to acknowledge that there was no evidence of the presence of nuclear, lethal, or other long-range weapons anywhere in Iraq. In spite of all this, the US subjected Iraq to repressive aggression, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fallen victim to the coalition troops during the past five years.

The majority of the Iraqi people are deprived of basic needs and children are dying from a lack of food and medicine. Several coalition troops have raped Iraqi women. The sacred mausoleums of many prophets and God's messengers, besides those of Hazrat Ali, Imam Hussain, and Imam Askari, have suffered damage. The people of a country which is the largest producer of the purest oil has been rendered destitute and dependent on others. The United States has laid a pipeline from Iraq to supply oil to Israel. It is proof that the ulterior motive behind the invasion of Iraq was to seize the mineral resources of Iraq and to shower favors on Israel.

The coalition forces have failed to control the situation, despite using all the military might and force at their disposal, while committing aggressions and atrocities against the Iraqi people. As a result, the country has turned out to be a bed of thorns instead of a bed of roses. The Iraqi people continue to offer up stiff resistance and dozens of people are killed in suicide attacks every day. The suicide assailants are out to target the coalition troops and their installations. The farce staged by the United States to hold elections and set up a representative government in Iraq also failed, because by doing so it wanted to fan differences between Shiites and Sunnis to tighten its grip on the country.

Thus, over 44 political and religious parties boycotted the election, and dissociated themselves from the electoral process to clearly illustrate their distaste of the US designs. The so-called elected government also failed to overcome the situation. Keeping in view the growing resistance of the Iraqi people and the losses suffered by the coalition forces in terms of men and materials, several coalition countries have decided not to send more troops to Iraq. Several other nations, including Spain, have withdrawn their forces. There has been a strong reaction against this policy in the United States and EU countries, while protest demonstrations have become the order of the day.

Five years of the US aggression against Iraq have come and gone, and thousands of people held protest demonstrations in several US cities the other day over the mounting losses of US soldiers in Iraq. A large number of people participated in protest rallies in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Many were relatives of the soldiers who joined the Iraq war and were killed. They demanded the withdrawal of the forces from Iraq and asked US Congress to stop payments for the Iraqi war spending.

Meanwhile, according to the latest reports, 38 people were killed in suicide attacks and acts of violence in different Iraqi cities. Bearing in mind the resistance of the Iraqi people and the rising loss of life suffered by the coalition forces, the US has decided to hand over control of Karbala Province to Iraqi security forces. Signs have also been given by the relevant US circles that the administration is considering handing over control of the entire country to the Iraqi government and security forces, and also considering the withdrawal of coalition forces.

On the one hand, the perception of failure on the part of the coalition forces in Iraq has strengthened after five years of unjust aggression against the country, while on the other, the United States and its disciples are busy preparing plans to attack Iran. Unfounded allegations that Iran is producing nuclear weapons are being leveled against it. The only crime of Iran is that it has succeeded in mastering modern nuclear technology and expertise in the enrichment of uranium. The United States and its lackeys, especially European Union nations, cannot tolerate any Muslim country mastering modern nuclear technology.

Pakistan has also become a target of their criticism, and unfounded fears and reservations in this regard. This hostility continues even today. So far as Iran is concerned, it has given permission to IAEA experts to visit and inspect its nuclear installations. In their reports after the visits, these experts acknowledged they were unable to compile any evidence relating to the production of nuclear weapons in Iran. The IAEA chief Mohammad Al-Baradi'i visited Iran himself and exchanged views with the Iranian leadership on the issue. After visiting Iran's nuclear installations, he also conceded that he gleaned no evidence of Iran manufacturing nuclear weapons, or the presence of such weapons in that country.

In a recent interview on American television, he also admitted that he had no evidence that Iran was preparing nuclear weapons. It would take Iran years to produce nuclear weapons even if it is pursuing a nuclear program. At this stage, we should seek a solution to the problem through negotiations, as there is no other option. The statement and admission of Mohammad Al-Baradi'i has been made at a time when the United States is clamping sanctions on Iran and lashing out at its nuclear program. It is also a fact that while expressing his views on several occasions on regional and international forums, the Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad has been assuring the world that his country has no intention to produce nuclear weapons and that it will not create any hurdle in the way of visits by the IAEA experts. However, it will not forego its right to enrich uranium and effectively respond to sanctions imposed against it.

In such a case, the United States will be responsible for the hikes in oil prices at the international level and its negative impact on the global economy. It is regrettable that the blame game played by the US, Israel and their disciples is intensifying and expanding after targeting Iraq and Iran. Allegations that Syria is preparing nuclear weapons have also come to light, proving that only Muslim countries are the target of the US. Apparently, America fails to see the nuclear activities of Israel, South Africa and India.

The United States and its disciples have found no evidence of the production of nuclear weapons by Iraq and Iran. In such a situation, there appears no justification to impose sanctions on them. The truth is that the US is advancing its policy of providing protection to its favorite son Israel; accomplishing its aggressive designs; seizing the economic resources of Muslim countries; and keeping Muslims shackled by the bonds of slavery. God forbid, the map of the future Israel, as engraved on its parliament, includes the holy Muslim cities of Mecca and Medina. Israel says the bones of its ancestors are buried in these two cities and therefore it will occupy them. Threats of aggression against Syria and allegations involving the production of nuclear weapons are all part of the game.

The same situation has evolved in Afghanistan, which the United States and its disciples are facing in Iraq: the resistance of the Afghan people against allied troops is intensifying with each passing day. The establishment of a Taliban government was intolerable for the United States, because the Taliban had refused to support the United States against Iran and refused to give Washington the opportunity to intervene, by enforcing a system in accordance with their tribal nature and traditions. NATO forces are facing stiff resistance in Afghanistan and the farce of the Karzai regime has failed there as well.

The United States will have to confess to the ground reality that the reaction, resultant from targeting innocent people and massacring them, cannot be dubbed as terrorism. The ensuing provocation and tension from such acts is but inevitable and natural. In a way, the increase in the killings in Iraq and Afghanistan proves the fact that peace cannot be established until the United States and the Western world change their policies towards Muslim countries. Those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are human beings, be they the local population or the coalition troops. It is impossible to imagine such a rise in the indiscriminate killing of human beings in the 21st century. Therefore, the sole superpower, the United States, and its disciples must keep in mind the feelings and sentiments of the international community, their own people, and the entire Muslim community, and withdraw their forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

They should also abandon plans of aggression against any Muslim nation, so that peace and stability at the regional and international levels are ensured. This will help us focus on the problems of others faced by mankind. '

(Description of Source: Rawalpindi Jang in Urdu -- Influential, largest circulation newspaper in Pakistan, circulation of 300,000. The country only moderate Urdu newspaper, pro-free enterprise, politically neutral, supports improvement in Pakistan-India relations.)

Napoleon, Spukt, and Cole in Chicago at Oobleck

Theater Oobleck presents a conversation with Juan Cole of the “Informed Comment” blog and Chuck Mertz of the This is Hell radio program, to follow our 2pm Sunday performance of Spukt.

They will be talking about Juan’s new book, “Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East,” which is indeed the very subject of Oobleck’s new musical extravaganza, Spukt!

Books will be available at a discounted rate.

For more on the play, check out this excellent preview article from the Pioneer Press.

at The Viaduct
3111 N. Western Avenue
Chicago, IL

$12 suggested donation,
more if you got it,
free if you're broke.


Please make reservations

by replying to oobleck a_t_ theateroobleck d o t com, or if it's less than 24 hours before the show,
by phone at 773-347-1041.

More on Oobleck at theateroobleck.com

And one last note: if you got any pals in Portland, Oregon, let them know that the Oobleck hit

Spirits to Enforce

is being revived through November 17 by the

Blue Stockings Theater Company.

The Choice in Pakistan is Democracy or Talibanization: Guest Op-ed by Shahin M. Cole

Shahin M. Cole, Esq., writes:

'I am one of those Pakistan-trained lawyers you have been hearing about. I have spent the last few days watching on television how my colleagues have been dragged, kicked, and beaten by hired hands, just because of their political views. My former law school professors, some of whom are now judges or justices, are under house arrest. There is a real sense in which I left my country of birth precisely because of obstacles to the free expression of political and religious views.

Americans, who enjoy constitutional liberties of long standing, should support the lawyers in their protest against the suspension of the Pakistani constitution. Lawyers are supposed to act as the guardians of the rule of law. They are not supposed to be prisoners and hostages to the powers that be. There is no excuse for Gen. Pervez Musharraf to treat educated, accomplished attorneys and barristers, many of them human rights workers such as the prominent woman activist, Asma Jahangir, this way. Ironically, the general has often posed as a supporter of women’s rights, as when he established quotas to ensure the presence of women in parliament. Yet, he is now moving against women intellectuals and politicians for being outspoken.

How much of the blame for this crackdown can be laid at the feet of the Bush administration’s unconditional support for the Pakistani military? The events of this week put the lie to the idea of a democratizing Pakistan with an independent judiciary and rule of law. If the US wants to play a fair and honest role in helping Pakistan achieve democracy and reducing the threat of religious extremism, here is what it can do.

The US should be earmarking aid to Pakistan not for military use but for funding and building schools for the millions of poor Pakistani children (some of them still from refugee Afghan families displaced by the US struggle with the Soviet Union in the Cold War). Such schools should stress east-west understanding. That would be one way of keeping children out of fundamentalist-funded madrassas and keeping them from being turned into Taliban. Provision of rural adult education through television and of free country-wide wi-fi internet access would also aid development. This educational aid would cost a pittance in comparison with what is being spent on military aid, and would be far less expensive than is fighting wars in the region.

Washington should keep pressure on the present government to hold free and fair elections for parliament on schedule. US aid for election observers and voter education would be well spent. The Bush administration has stressed democratization and the rule of law in the Muslim world. If it does not take practical steps toward those ideals in this crisis, America will altogether lose the confidence of the educated Muslim middle classes. If that happens, the ultimate winners may well be the Taliban and al-Qaeda. '

Shahin M. Cole holds an LL.B. from Punjab University Law School in Lahore, Pakistan.

Suggested Reading

Barnett Rubin warns that knee-jerk support for Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf is not exactly 'realism' of the sort some Washington politicians like to boast of.

Josh Marshall hosts a piece by Spencer Ackerman on how most of the billions Bush has given Pakistani military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been an un-audited free gift in cash.

On the lighter side, Firedoglake speculates as to what George W. Bush really meant when he said, “I just spoke to President Musharraf before I came here, and my message was very plain, very easy to understand. And that is: The United States wants you to have the elections as scheduled and take your uniform off.”

The Center for American Progress has a new report out making recommendations on how to go forward on Afghanistan policy, aptly called "The Forgotten Front." I'll bet you if you walked around the street and asked Americans randomly how many US troops are in Afghanistan, few would know that the number is 20,0000.

A. Richard Norton announces that the annual 'Middle East' issue of Current History is now available.

At the Napoleon's Egypt blog, David Boyle has posted some great letters from French officers in Egypt in the summer of 1798, with the most recent one by Adj.-Gen. Pierre-Francois Boyer being especially meaty and detailed. This paragraph on the French conquest of the Mediterranean port of Alexandria is blood-curdling (and also surely exaggerated). Massacring the women and children in the mosque was not very nice.

' The charge is sounded—our soldiers fly to the ramparts, which they scale, in spite of the obstinate defence of the besieged: many Generals are wounded, amongst the rest Kleber—-we lose near 150 men, but courage, at length, subdues the obstinacy of the Turks! Repulsed on every side, they betake themselves to God and their Prophet, and fill their mosques—men, women, old, young, children at the breast, ALL are massacred. At the end of four hours, the fury of our troops ceases—tranquility revives in the city—several forts capitulate—I myself reduce one into which 700 Turks had fled—confidence springs up—and, by the next day, all is quiet. '

Major Bombing of KDP HQ in Kirkuk 12 Dead; 14% of Iraqis Displaced

14 percent of Iraqis are now displaced from their homes. That would be the equivalent of 42 million Americans forced from their places of residence. I mean, it is a Stephen King-style futuristic apocalypse for Iraq. Only it has just happened, during the past 4 1/2 years. And the American government is responsible for kicking it off. Every time I hear in the US media about how "well" Iraq is going now, I want to spit.

Those Iranians that the US military kidnapped from the compound of our ally Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and from the consulate in Irbil? Turns out that they weren't espionage agents after all, or Qods Force operatives, or anything. The US military is releasing them. The charges against them formed one of the bases for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution in the senate and also for the recent designation by Bush of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a 'terrorist' organization (even though it is a state organ!) So will those two measures now be repealed?

Reuters reports civil war violence in Iraq for Wednesday. Major incidents:

' KIRKUK - At least 12 people were wounded in a suicide car bomb attack on the Kurdistan Democratic Party headquarters in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. . .

NEAR KIRKUK - Three people were wounded in a mortar attack on a village near Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. . .

MOSUL - A parked car bomb wounded two Iraqi soldiers in al Ba'aj village near the Syrian border, the local mayor said.

SUWAYRA - A roadside bomb killed two children and wounded four others, including a woman, in Suwayra, 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad . . . Gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier in an attack on his house in Suwayra . . .'

McClatchy reports further political violence in Iraq on Wednesday. Major incidents:

' Baghdad

- At dawn, mortars hit the Red Crescent headquarter at Mansour neighborhood burning 2 vehicles belong to the organization.

- At noon, mortars hit the green zone (IZ) in Baghdad having smoke coming from the area with no casualties reported.

- Today afternoon, four roadside bombs targeted four convoys of the USA army in Doura ( once near Simoud factory and the second near Doura check point ) ,the third in Toubchi and the fourth was in Meshtal . No casualties reported in all incidents.

- Today afternoon, a sniper killed the son of Mizher Al-Sheikhli (a member of the political bureau of the Islamic party in Doura neighborhood .

- Police found 6 unidentified bodies . . . in Baghdad . . .

Diyala

- Army found a mass graves at Hashimiyat (10 km west of Baquba) having 17 unidentified dead bodies in it.

Basra

- Around 10.45 a.m., a roadside bomb targeted the commander in chief of Basra police and the commander of Basra operation center’s convoy on the road that leads to Zubair and near the Technology institution ( 10 km west Basra ) injuring 4 of their guards ( one of them was seriously injured ).'

I think someone is trying to kill the police chief of Basra.

For more on why US foreign service officers should not be Shanghaied by Bush into service in Baghdad, see Patricia Kushlis at Whirledview, commenting on an article by Ambassador David Passage (pdf).

Remember, everyone should please blog the need for Congress to close down the behemoth of a US embassy in Baghdad, and write and call your representatives in the US Congress urging them to cut off funds for it.

The USG Open Source Center summarizes Iraqi television news on political developments. These include the petty and vindictive way PM Nuri al-Maliki refused to accept the resignations of Sunni Arab cabinet ministers, but rather dismissed them for absenteeism, ensuring that they would be deprived of pensions and other perquisites of office. For a Shiite to treat important Sunni politicians this way sends very bad signals and is not a step toward political reconciliation, to say the least.

'"Al-Sharqiyah, Al-Iraqiyah Report on Latest Developments in Iraq
Iraq -- OSC Report
Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Dubai Al-Sharqiyah Television in Arabic, independent, private news and entertainment channel focusing on Iraq, run by Sa'd al-Bazzaz, publisher of the Arabic-language daily Al-Zaman, carries between 1600 GMT and 2000 GMT on 7 November the following reports on latest developments in Iraq:

-- "Iraq Prime Minister once again said that the nomination of a number of ministers to fill the posts that became vacant in the Iraqi Government almost a year ago, will end soon. During a meeting with the European Union's ambassadors to Iraq, who asked about the confusing situation the government is now in as a result of the absence of 25 ministers, Al-Maliki said that he is in the last stage of nominating new ministers and that he will do whatever necessary to ensure that people are provided with all their needs and requirements, as he put it."

The report adds: "According to a government statement, Al-Maliki said during his meeting with the European Union's ambassadors accredited to Iraq that the progress achieved in Iraq came as a result of the reconciliation process, which moved in the right direction toward strengthening relations among all components of the Iraqi people, as the statement put it. It is worth mentioning that parliamentary blocs and international organizations accused Al-Maliki's policy, as well as the role of his advisers, of ending the reconciliation process in Iraq."

-- "Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki issued an order dismissing Iraqi Al-Tawafuq Front [the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front] ministers for being absent from duty. According to a source close to Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, Al-Maliki rejected the letters of resignation the ministers submitted several months ago. According to a paragraph on absence from duty, the dismissal of the ministers will deprive them of the rights and benefits mentioned in Paragraph 1 of Order 9/2005 on pension, protection, and housing." . . .

-- "Nechirvan Barzani, head of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government, gave the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq a firm warning, asserting that any failure to abide by the ceasefire with turkey will do great harm to it (the PKK). During a news conference held at the headquarters of the Council of Ministers in Arbil, Barzani said that the PKK will be greatly harmed if it continues to adopt the current approach without announcing an unconditional ceasefire. Meanwhile, security sources said that a Turkish soldier was killed late last night when PKK insurgents opened fire on a Turkish police center in the province of Tunceli."

Baghdad Al-Iraqiyah Television in Arabic, government-sponsored television station, run by the Iraqi Media Network, carries within its 1700 GMT newscast the following reports:

-- "Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamil al-Maliki received Reuben Jeffery, US undersecretary of state for economic, energy, and agricultural affai rs, in his office today. During the meeting, Al-Maliki said that the Iraqi Government has plans next year to push forward economic development and reconstruction in the country after achieving good results on the security level."

"The prime minister also received the European Union's ambassadors to Iraq in his office today. He discussed the latest political and security developments in the country and the progress achieved in reconciliation efforts."

-- "Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Security and Services Committee, visited the Al-Taji, Al-Falhat, and Sab al-Bur areas, to get a first-hand look at the living conditions of citizens and the level of services provided for these areas. He also inquired about the security situation and met with a number of chieftains and dignitaries. He discussed with them the return of displaced families and means of providing protection to them through cooperation between citizens and security services."

Chalabi says: "I came to inspect the security situation, which, thanks be to God, is calm, and the services situation as well. There is a very important problem; namely, the problem of displaced people in Baghdad. One of the keys to solving this problem is the Sab al-Bur area, whose population was one hundred thousands, but it is now less than 20 thousands." He adds: "We want to reassure the residents in these areas that the state and the US forces in this area are capable of maintaining security."'

Extremists Expand in Swat Bhutto, Iftikhar Call for Rallies Media Defiant

While the Pakistani military is bothering innocent human rights activists and attorneys who want to defend the country's constitution, it is ignoring Muslim radicals' advances in the north of the country, according to Zee News:

' Pro-Taliban militants have strengthened their hold on the Swat valley in northwestern Pakistan by seizing several key towns after outnumbered security forces laid down their arms and fled their posts.

Militants are now controlling key towns like Matta, Khwazakhela, Madyan and Charbagh, all located near Imamdheri, the stronghold of radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah.

Hundreds of militants have taken over the police stations in these towns, have established their own check posts and are patrolling the streets. In Matta, militants replaced the Pakistani flag with their own at the police station after over 120 security personnel surrendered earlier this week, daily The News reported. . .

Fazlullah, known as "mullah radio" for his calls for jehad broadcast from an illegal FM station, is moving around Swat like "a ruler with full protocol", the paper said.

He has appointed "governors" in Kabal, Matta and Khwazakhela and ordered the setting up of Islamic courts in areas under his control. '

The chief justice of Pakistan's supreme court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, deposed by the military coup and under house arrest, called on lawyers throughout Pakistan to protest: He said, "I request the community of lawyers to go to every corner of Pakistan and give the message that this is the time to sacrifice. Don't be afraid."

The Pakistani military continued on Tuesday to launch assaults on peaceful protesters, many of them lawyers, and to make mass arrests with some brutality. In Multan, an important city of the southern Punjab, the police charged an attorneys' rally.

Pakistan People's Party leader Benzir Bhutto, who returned from a long exile on October 18, has flown to the capital of Islamabad to consult with other opposition politicians. She says that PPP members of parliament will not attend the session called for Wednesday by Gen. Musharraf, and that a meeting on Friday at Rawalpindi near the capital will be transformed into a mass rally. She says she is no longer speaking to Musharraf, since he reneged on a pledge to move toward elections and democracy.

A sense that the Pakistani military is closing down civil society pervades the fearful cities of the country, such as Lahore.

Still defiant broadcasters are having to put their signal out by satellite or over the internet, since cable companies have been ordered only to carry the government channel. Military dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf is crafting a new censorship law aimed at permanent control over the media.

For the big picture, as consult Tom Engelhardt, "Who lost Pakistan?". Tom also runs the invaluable Tomdispatch.com, where William Astore is considering the 'stab in the back' campaign about to be unleashed by the US Right.

The USG Open Source Center reports on a video running on Geo Television calling on Pakistanis to defend their constitutional rights:

'OSC Summary: Geo News TV Posts Video Urging People To Defend Their Rights
Pakistan -- OSC Summary
Tuesday, November 6, 2007

FYI -- Geo News TV Posts Video Urging Pakistani People To Defend Their Rights

OSC observed on 6 November that private television station Geo News TV posted a video to its website urging the Pakistani people to stand up for their rights. The TV station is also running this video as an advertisement on its television broadcasts.

The video begins by showing clips of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, and then lists several basic human rights given to the people through the constitution, including freedom of speech and the right to assemble.

The video then shows an out-of-balance scale, and the narrator states that these rights are being removed under the current state of emergency in Pakistan. It proceeds to illustrate the government restrictions under the state of emergency, addressing the viewers and informing them that the Pakistan Government can: Video snapshot of an unbalanced scale

Place restrictions on your freedom of expression
Place restrictions on where you live
Send you to jail for assembling
Ban unions and associations
Close your business for no reason
Confiscate your property

The video points out that these rights were not given to the Pakistani people as charity, but that their ancestors fought to procure these rights. It concludes with the following statement: "Recognize your rights; protect those rights, Geo...with principles." Video snapshot illustrating the right to assemble. '

[A reminder that my essay, "Combating Muslim Extremism," is now online at The Nation. It is a critique of the approach of most of the Republican presidential candidates and contains advice for the Democrats on how to escape the racism and fuzzy thinking that dominate this debate.]

Massive Bombing in Afghanistan Kills 50, including 6 MPs

In a further sign that the Bush-imposed order in Afghanistan (and the Middle East) is unraveling, a suicide bomber in Baghlan near Kabul unleashed a bomb amid a parliamentary delegation that had come to visit a sugar factory. The blast left at least 50 dead and killed 6 members of the Afghanistan parliament. Around 50 persons were wounded. The action did not occur in the Pushtun south, and the Taliban denied responsibility (the bombing of a civilian crowd also does not fit their MO).

The Guardian notes that this territory is near where Gulbuddin Hikmatyar of the Hizb-i Islami (Islamic Party) has been operating. Hikmatyar is the most radical Muslim extremist in Afghanistan, and had been the leading figure among Ronald Reagan's 'Freedom Fighters'. The US government under Reagan gave one billion dollars to Hekmatyar to fight the Soviet Union, and the Saudis matched it. One possibility (and this is just speculation) is that Hikmatyar's group has decided to begin emulating the bombing attacks on civilian and government targets pioneered by Abu Musab Zarqawi's Monotheism and Holy War organization in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Pushtun guerrillas fired two rockets at a Canadian base near Qandahar barely missing Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay and lightly injuring four Canadian troops.

"Taliban" attacks have killed over 5,000 persons in Afghanistan this year. Kabul, the capital, gets only a few hours of electricity per day. The unemployment rate in the capital is 40 percent. And, the anti-Karzai guerrilla movement of Pushtuns in the south derives 40 percent of its funding from heroin smuggling. Although NATO had planned on training 70,000 soldiers of the new Afghan army by now, it has only trained 30,000 or so.

There are 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan, and 20,000 NATO troops. Their very presence, and search and destroy operations, is probably provoking some of the violence in the Pushtun areas. Pushtuns don't deal well with foreign troops in their region. Ask the Russians.

2007 Deadliest Year Yet for US Troops 30 Bodies found in Tharthar Shiite on Shiite Tensions in South

2007 will be the deadliest year yet for US troops in Iraq. Seven American soldiers were killed on Monday alone, bringing this year's total to 853, more than at any time since 2004 (the year of the Mahdi Army uprising among Shiites and the Salafi Jihadi push on Baghdad).

As Michael Munk writes,

' US military occupation forces in Iraq suffered at least 178 combat casulties in the six days ending Nov. 6, as total casualties reached at least 61,596. The total includes 31,596 killed or wounded by what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and 30,294 (as of Oct. 1) dead and injured from "non-hostile" causes.

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by routinely reporting only the total killed (3,855 as of Nov. 6) and rarely mentioning the 28,451 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they cover for the Pentagon by ignoring the 30,294 (as of Oct. 1) military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical evacuation, although the 3,855 reported deaths include 710 (up one since Oct. 31) who died from those same causes, including 130 suicides. '

Editor and Publisher is also suspicious of those "non-combat deaths," which are 20% of the whole.

The numbers of US troops killed per month has declined in recent months from earlier highs, but it is unclear why. Since troops get killed when they are committed to action against militants, it is possible that they have been less often ordered into battle.

30 bodies were found in a mass grave in Tharthar, north of Baghdad.

Although the Iraqi government's Ministry of Health has issued statistics purporting to show a substantial drop in civilian deaths, that ministry is highly politicized and has been caught hiding things from journalists. If deaths were actually falling, it is hard to explain how the proportion of internally displaced grew by 16 percent in September alone, or how the number of internally displaced Iraqis has gone from 0.5 million to 2.1 million in the past 10 months! In this same period, Baghdad has gone from being 65% Shiite to being 75% Shiite. That would be a displacement of 600,000 Sunnis from the capital alone since January. I can't square such massive internal refugee flows with declining violence very easily, though one possibility is that the US has disarmed so many Sunnis in Baghdad that they fled rather than fight for their neighborhoods.

Many of the displaced are in absolute poverty, having lost everything. Many girls are being forced into prostitution.

David Wearing on Britain's failure in Iraq.

The tension between the Sadrists and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) is growing again in the Shiite south.

Three members of the Provincial Council of Karbala have been arrested and accused of being involved in 300 assassinations as well as in kidnappings for ransom, and it is alleged that such criminal elements have joined the Mahdi Army to benefit from its protection. Reading between the lines, I'd say that ISCI arrested three opposition Sadrist council members and accused them of being mobbed up.

Then the deputy governor of Karbala had to flee the city for Baghdad on Monday. Jawad al-Hasnawi, a Sadrist, says he was threatened by a group that wants to make Karbala an Iranian military camp in preparation for the coming fight against the Americans. He was referring to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and its paramilitary Badr Corps, who are close to Iran but also very close to Bush and the US. I.e. al-Hasnawi's charges make no sense. You wonder if he was about to be arrested for corruption like the three other provincial council members.

Al-Hayat also notes that fighting has started up again between Sadrists and the Badr-dominated police in Diwaniya.

Reuters reports political violence for Tuesday.

The governor of Najaf province, a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, is arguing for loose federalism and provincial rights in Iraq.

Gary Kamiya argues in Salon that Iraq taught the US political elite nothing.

Cole in Salon on Bush and Musharraf's Grand Illusion

My article on the Pakistan crisis, "Bush and Musharraf's Grand Illusion," is now available online. Excerpt:

' In the fall of 1999, as he campaigned for the presidency, George W. Bush was asked by a reporter to name the leader of Pakistan. Bush could not. He famously replied: "The new Pakistani general, he's just been elected -- not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country, and I think that's good news for the subcontinent." Although Bush didn't know Gen. Pervez Musharraf's name and was confused as to how he got into office, the soon-to-be American president was sanguine about the anti-democratic developments in Pakistan. '

Read the whole thing.

See also Barnett Rubin's final posting in his series from Islamabad, in which he explains the puzzlement of the Pakistani populace as to why the Pakistani military is leaving alone, even encouraging radical Muslims striving for a caliphate in the tribal north, while rounding up lawyers, judges and other secular people in the urban areas.

Attorney Protests, Arrests Benazir Pledges Rally Urdu Press on Musharraf's State of Emergency

The Financial Times reports that Pakistan's cabinet has decided to hold elections in January after all, backing off statements made over the weekend that they might be postponed for a year. The FT suggests that the vehemence of the response from demonstrating lawyers and other elements of civil society has been stronger than Gen. Musharraf had expected.

As the Musharraf dictatorship arrested 200 members of the Pakistan People's Party on Monday, their leader, Benazir Bhutto said she would lead a mass demonstration on Friday. Musharraf also imprisoned
400 members of the Muslim League (N) loyal to exiled leader Nawaz Sharif, and 2000 members of the fundamentalist Jama'at-i Islami.
attorneys demonstrated all over Pakistan on Monday and where arrested in the hundreds. They included the country's most distinguished legal minds and pillars of the establishment. The police responded with tear gas, baton charges, and mass arrests. Dozens of attorneys were wounded. It surely is their finest moment, and I cannot for the life of me understand why they aren't getting more support from civil society in the US. The lawyers cast rose petals before the chambers of the judges who refused to take Musharraf's new oath under Emergency laws.

As I predicted yesterday, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of the fundamentalist Jama'at-i Islami, was arrested on Monday after he branded Musharraf a "traitor" for violating the Pakistani constitution. Other JI leaders were also arrested.

It seems pretty obvious that Musharraf is not in control of the situation and is probably hemmed in. If he arrests Benazir, who has many friends on Capitol Hill in Washington, he really could face the cut-off of substantial amounts of US aid. Benazir for her part has to lead a demonstration on Friday if she is not to be upstaged by the fundamentalist leadership of Qazi Hussain Ahmad.

Not only are the attorneys revolting(no smirks, please), but the newspaper editorialists are being pretty defiant, as well. See below.

The USG Open Source Center rounds up editorials in the Urdu press on Gen. Pervez Musharraf's 'Emergency' decree. These editorials seem stronger than what is in English. For instance, one calls the dismissal of the Supreme Court "unconstitutional." (True, but it takes courage to say it.)


'Pakistan: Urdu Press Roundup on Imposition of State of Emergency
The following is a roundup of excerpts from editorials and an article on imposition of state of emergency in the country published in 5 November 2007 editions of six Urdu dailies:
Pakistan -- OSC Summary
Tuesday, November 6, 2007


Khabrain Editorial Urges Government To Restore Fundamental Rights

Maintaining that suspension of fundamental rights and restrictions on media will lead to increased uncertainty which might undermine the government's efforts to achieve the desired results, the editorial says: "If this 11th state of emergency imposed in Pakistan helps to reduce the sufferings of the people, the government's measure can yield positive results as it was in the case of Abraham Lincoln. The second thing is that the government should reduce the period of this emergency to the minimum and restore the fundamental rights of the people at the earliest because President General Pervez Musharraf has himself said that this measure was imperative for taking the country into the third phase of democracy."


Islam Editorial Rejects Reasons Given by Musharraf for Declaring State of Emergency

Rejecting the reasons given by Musharraf for imposition of emergency, the editorial remarks: "According to some analysts, while giving reasons to support imposition of emergency, Gen Musharraf has acknowledged the failure of his eight-year rule. He has clearly stated that the country is facing political, constitutional, and economic crises. This confession in itself is a source of disappointment for the people and they are not ready to believe that steps to be taken by Musharraf will put the country on the path of political stability and economic progress. There is need for all political, religious, and social circles to come together to consider ways to steer the country out of a certain trouble. People will get rid of anxiety and dejection caused by the prevailing situation if they are provided with a clear national strategy."


Jang Editorial Says Restrictions on Media Not Justified

Finding the country on a crossroad due to the imposition of emergency, the editorial says: "We hope that the emergency and promulgation of provisional constitutional order (PCO) will be confined to limited objectives for which these extraordinary measures have been taken and will not lead to politics of vendetta. The government will not undo its performance regarding the freedom of expression. People will like the government to focus on taking measures to tackle terrorism by taking security measures and holding dialogue. The government should set up some institution to eliminate the trend of extremism through mutual consultations. Opposition parties, lawyers' community, trade organizations, and religious scholars should be consulted to run the affairs of the state. Consultations should also be held with media and TV news channels. Imposition of restrictions on these media groups and news channels cannot be justified under any circumstances."


Nawa-e Waqt Editorial Says Musharraf's Attempts To Prolong Rule Not Likely To Succeed

Discussing the reaction being expressed at national and international levels against the imposition of emergency, the editorial says: "It will be better if this course of action and measures taken are revised. Uniform should be doffed to pave the way for holding of general elections in the country as the United States has suggested. This will help steer the country out of crisis and put it on the path of progress and stability. If the president fails to do so, his opponents will continue to reproach that the commando president made an attempt to deprive the country of constitution, democracy, independent judiciary, and free press to prolong his arbitrary rule and safeguard his pro-US policies. This attempt may not succeed."


Pakistan Editorial Opposes Imposition of State of Emergency

Discussing the situation that led to the extra- constitutional measure and possible reaction against this move, the editorial says: "It will persistently be asked that when the situation in the country has been heading in the same direction for the past few years, why was imposition of emergency deemed appropriate all of a sudden? At the international level, the United States, Britain, Sweden, European Union, and other western countries have not supported this measure taken by Musharraf. The approach, however, of these countries will become clear in coming days."


Nawa-e Waqt Article by Irfan Siddiqui Terms Steps Against Judiciary 'Unconstitutional'

Asserting that unconstitutional measures has been taken by the Army Chief against the judiciary, the article comments: "Some naive people are surprised that why the Chief of Army Staff issued the emergency order and the PCO in the presence of a powerful president and competent prime minister. The logic is that the president and the prime minister have to observe constitutional limits. They can do what the constitution says while the Army Chief enjoys impunity from all such limits. The second reason is that the Constitution is silent on taking action against the judiciary." Jasarat Editorial Blames Government for Creating Atmosphere of Confrontation

Criticizing the government for creating such an atmosphere in the country that will intensify internal confrontation, the editorial states: "Some big incidents have taken place in India as well but its democratic and political image serves as smoke screen. We, however, have established such a national image that we feel ashamed while responding to certain questions of the international community regarding our political turmoil. This is a damage to nation in every respect and there are apprehensions that the situation evolving in the country might worsen the damage." '

Erdogan Unswayed by Bush calls for Patience Wave of Bombings, Assassinations in Iraq

Bush attempted to mollify Turkish Prime Minister Rejep Tayyip Erdogan at a White House meeting on Monday, but given Erdogan's belligerent comments afterwards, I'd say he did not succeed. As I've noted before, Washington would never have asked Israel to stand by and wring its hands after Hamas blew up dozens of civilians and soldiers in the space of a month. Nor would any Israeli government probably be able to weather the wrath of its public if it tried any such thing. Likewise, passions are running high among the Turkish public after the Kurdish Workers Party [PKK] killed and kidnapped Turkish troops in eastern Anatolia, and Erdogan does not have forever to demonstrate decisiveness.

McClatchy reports that Erdogan's fears are founded, and that the Peshmerga fighters of Iraqi Kurdistan are highly sympathetic to the PKK guerrillas, and actively help them at the Turkish border.

Reuters reports civil war violence in Iraq for Monday:

' MOSUL - Six people, including a woman, were found shot dead in northeastern Mosul on Monday, police said. Some bore signs of torture. Also, a decapitated body was found in the southwest of the city. [Six bodies had also been found on Sunday.]

BAGHDAD - Three bodies were found across Baghdad on Monday, police said. [Four were found on Sunday.]

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb targeting a joint Iraqi army and police patrol killed two pedestrians and wounded seven others in the Zaafaraniya district of southern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead a senior Baghdad civil servant in the Ghadeer neighbourhood of eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed Hamad Abdul-Latif, a member of the Khadhra neighbourhood council, in western Baghdad's Jamiaa district, a hospital source said. . .

BAGHDAD - One person was killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a car in eastern Baghdad's Baladiyat district, police said.

BAGHDAD - One policeman was killed and six others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in Harthiya in western Baghdad on Sunday, police said. . . '

McClatchy adds more:

' Diyala

- Monday morning , a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at Jalwla of Khanaqeen (north of Baquba) injuring one policeman .

Salahuddin

- Early morning , police found two dead bodies for policemen on the high way between Tikrit and Dour . . .

Basra

- Sunday night, gunmen threw grenade at the head of environment department’s house in northern Basra trying to assassinate but he survived having only some damage to the house . No casualties recorded. '

Fundamentalist Leader Qazi Hussain brands Musharraf a Traitor

Qadi Hussain Ahmad, the leader of the fundamentalist Jamaat-i Islami called Sunday for massive protests against the coup of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He was speaking to a crowd of 20,000 near the major Punjabi city of Lahore. I just saw Qazi Hussain on Aljazeera condemning Musharraf as a traitor, saying in English, "This is clear treason." The Jamaat-i Islami is still largely a cadre organization rather than a mass movement, though it did win a lot of votes in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan. It has in the past organized demonstrations as big as 80,000 in the southern port of Karachi, though for a city of Karachi's size (9 million), that isn't actually all that impressive. That the Jama'at got 20,000 to rally near Lahore strikes me as a bad sign for Musharraf. What is really significant, however, is that Qazi Hussain is the only major party leader openly calling for mass resistance against Musharraf, a stance which will help the popularity of his party even if (as seems likely) he winds up in jail over it.

Newsday says that Pakistani dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf seems likely to make his coup stick. Newsday argues that the major opposition leader in the country, Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party, is protesting orally but not threatening to hold rallies. Hundreds of opposition figures have been arrested, and Pakistan's satellite and local television and radio stations are firmly under military control, as are the newspapers.

The Newsday article unwisely ignores Qazi Hussain and the signs of widespread resistance (marked by "preemptive arrests") of party and human rights leaders. The leader of the Pakistan Muslim League (N), loyal to exiled leader Nawaz Sharif, is under arrest, as is prominent human rights campaigner, Asma Jahangir (a woman).

What middle class people in Pakistan think about all this is apparent in two editorials in the Frontier Post in the Northwest Frontier Province, which condemn Musharraf for not cracking down earlier and harder on Muslim extremists and also condemn him for not using constitutional means to achieve his goals.

Benazir Bhutto is flying to Islamabad on Monday, having condemned the mass arrests, and having called for early elections.

Musharraf may postpone parliamentary elections, scheduled for January, for "a year." (Past military dictators in Pakistan have "postponed" the elections "for a year" many years in a row).

See the important string of live-blogging posts by Barnett Rubin at our Global Affairs site. Rubin is in Islamabad. He points out that Musharraf has been invoking the need to fight Muslim extremism as a pretext for his coup. But in fact, he made the (further) coup because the Pakistani Supreme Court had unanimously decided that he was ineligible to run for president, and he hasn't cracked down on the radio station of Maulana Fazalallah, a radical. He has cracked down on civilian Supreme Court justices, on lawyers, and other distinctly secular, middle class forces in Pakistani society (along with officials of the Jama'at-i Islami, the Pakistani equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has not for the most part been violent).

In fact, the Muslim extremists are in the tribal areas, and in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and the hardscrabble towns and villages of northern Punjab. If you were worried about the extremists, you'd declare martial law in the NWFP and the tribal areas. Instead, Musharraf is said to be planning to give in to the demand in these northern areas that sharia or Islamic canon law be implemented! This is a defender of secularism?

Down in Lahore and Faisalabad, no one could get more than a few hundred people even to protest Musharraf's frontal assault on the Red Mosque last summer. But Musharraf didn't make his coup in the NWFP, he arrested hundreds in Lahore and elsewhere in the deep Punjab, which is mostly traditional, conservative, Sufi, Shiite, or mildly reformist. There are extremists from the eastern and southern Pakistani Punjab, but they are a small fringe. That is why it is significant that Qazi Hussain of the Jama'at-i Islami could rally 20,000 persons near Lahore. When the Punjabis get excited about something in Pakistan, there is sometimes a political earthquake.

If Bush and Cheney are ever tempted into extreme measures in the United States, Musharraf has provided a template for how it would unfold. Maintain you are moving against terrorists and extremists, but actually move against the rule of law. Rubin has accepted the suggested term of "lawfare" to describe this kind of warfare by executive order.

Urdu Press Blames US for Crisis

While Gen. Musharraf maintains that he was forced to make his most recent coup by the threat of Muslim extremism, many of Pakistan's Urdu newspapers have a different interpretation. They suggest in their editorials that the Bush administration's pressure on Musharraf to move in an uncompromising way against Muslim fundamentalists sharpened the contradictions in Pakistani society and provoked the current crisis. That is, they think it is America's fault for denying to the Pakistani government the option of compromise and so pushing the country toward polarization and the coup. Below, the USG Open Source Center translates or paraphrases three such editorials.


'Pakistan: Urdu Press Roundup on Latest Situation in Swat, Tribal Areas 4 Nov
Pakistan -- OSC Summary
Monday, November 5, 2007

The following is a roundup of excerpts from editorials on the situation prevailing in Swat and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, published in the 4 November 2007 editions of three Urdu dailies:

Jang[:] Editorial Criticizes Delayed Action by Government

Maintaining that the government remained a silent spectator when the Taliban leaders were organizing their followers, the editorial states "The situation in the Tribal Areas is at such a point that the holding of a roundtable conference comprising of influential people from the area; elite, social figures; and leaders of political and religious parties, particularly the people linked with Tableeghi Jamaat [Tablighi Jama'at, a quietist Muslim group aiming at bringing fallen-away Muslims back into the fold], can yield positive results. Blood is being spilled in this area, both of the militants and the security personnel -- the blood of Pakistani citizens and Muslims. An attempt should be made to stop this bloodshed. For this, we should not hesitate from using well-established and in-vogue practices."


Jinnah[:] Editorial Sees Islamic World Facing 'Internal Disruption' Due to US Policy on Terrorism:

Asserting that the situation in the Tribal Areas has been brewing up for quite sometime, and the United States has been seeking to create internal disturbances in the country as a result of its war on terrorism, the editorial comments: "All energies need to be harnessed to establish peace in a haven like Swat to shatter the designs of the enemies of the country. The dialogue process should be moved forward on the basis of the four-point proposal of Maulana Fazalullah [an extremist leader whose father, Sufi Muhammad, is in prison for joining the Taliban to fight the Americans in 2001] so that the spilling of the blood of Muslims can come to end. This bloodshed is not in the interests of the country or the nation."

Islam[:] Editorial Calls for Ending Cooperation With US on War on Terrorism

Holding the cooperation of the government with the United States in its war on terrorism responsible for the situation in Tribal Areas, the editorial says "The fire that broke out in Baluchistan has now reached Swat, and the indications are that it will continue to spread. It must be contained at this point. We should tell the United States that we can offer no more sacrifices, and that it should fight its war on its own. The United States has plunged us into a 'quagmire' where the security and integrity of the country are at stake, not to speak of the holding of elections. How can elections be held at a time when explosions are taking place all around? How will the people be able to leave their homes and vote? The war of the United States, due to which the entire nation is in the grip of bomb blasts and suicide attacks, cannot be fought at the cost of the country's integrity." '

State of Emergency in Pakistan

Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf has made a second coup. Over his eight years of military dictatorship, he had dressed his government up in the outward trappings of 'democracy.' He allowed (stage-managed) parliamentary elections in 2002. The same year, he ran for president in a referendum with no opponent, such that he could not lose.

The Supreme Court ruled against him in his attempt to dismiss the uncooperative chief justice, and the same court had been set to rule on whether he could remain as president (he was just reelected to the post by the stage-managed parliament he had helped install).

Musharraf appears to have concluded that the Supreme Court would rule against him, thus his coup-within-a-coup, which at last throws off the tattered facade of democratic institutions and reveals the naked military tyranny underneath. Pitifully, Musharraf explained that he had to make the coup in order to ensure the transition to democracy he says he began 8 years ago. Apparently the "transition" (i.e. Musharraf's dictatorship) will last for the rest of his life.

The Bush administration had been attempting to get Musharraf to take off his uniform and cohabit as president with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who has been allowed back into the country. But all that it accomplished was to set the stage for a major confrontation between the civilian political parties and the military.

Keep your eye on Barnett Rubin's blogging from Pakistan on this issue.

For background see my recent Salon.com piece on the collapse of Bush's foreign policy toward the Middle East. And Sherle R. Schwenninger's excellent essay in the Nation on Bush's failed foreign policy.

Female US Soldier Killed Bush Envoy Resigns over Unfair Policies toward Turks

Barnett Rubin at our Global Affairs site is live-blogging the state of emergency in Pakistan, declared by Gen Pervez Musharraf.

My essay, "Combating Muslim Extremism," is now online at The Nation. It is a critique of the approach of most of the Republican presidential candidates and contains advice for the Democrats on how to escape the racism and fuzzy thinking that dominate this debate.

McClatchy says that the Turks are demanding action, not words with regard to the Kurdish Workers Party holed up in Iraqi Kurdistan, members of which have killed over two dozen Turkish soldiers in recent weeks.

Warren Strobel of McClatchy reveals the real reason for the resignation of Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston as Bush's envoy to the Kurdish Workers Party. He felt that Bush was not taking the problem of PKK terrorism seriously and was neglected to fulfill the promises Washington had made to the Turks.


Patricia Kushlis at Whirledview, whom I had the honor of meeting in Santa Fe recently, says "I’m nudging closer and closer to agreeing with Juan Cole’s recommendation that Congress should mandate closure of the US Embassy in Baghdad even if it refuses to end the funding for the US military occupation of Iraq; Or, that the enormous US Embassy there should be reduced to a skeleton staff so that those who are assigned to it are qualified and can be adequately protected; Or that the diplomatic side of the Mission should be moved outside the country to where many Iraqi politicians spend considerable time anyway." Ms. Kushlis is herself a former State Department employee.

Reuters reports civil war violence in Iraq on Saturday and Friday. Major incidents:

BAGHDAD - One female U.S. soldier was killed on Thursday when a roadside bomb exploded near a patrol south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. . .

BAGHDAD - Gunmen wounded three Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims in the Kadhimiya district of northwestern Baghdad, police said. . .

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed a man and wounded three police commandos when it targeted their patrol in southeastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Three bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad on Friday, police said. . .

BASRA - A roadside bomb targeted a convoy carrying the heads of the Iraqi army and police in southern Iraq. Both men were unhurt, but two guards were wounded, the police chief said.

KUT - Gunmen wounded the head of Wasit University and three of his guards in central Kut, 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - Two bodies were found in different parts of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed an employee of the Sunni Endowment, a body that manages Sunni religious sites in Mosul, police said.

KHALIS - A roadside bomb killed one man and wounded 10 others outside a mosque in Khalis, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, on Friday, police said.

MAHAWEEL - A roadside bomb blew up near a police patrol, killing one policeman and wounding another one in Mahaweel, 75 km (45 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. . .

Statistics on attacks on British and coalition troops in Basra are given here. It turns out, if you don't have troops in a place, attacks on them fall dramatically.

Oaths, the Constitution, and the US Embassy in Iraq

The Bush administration is taking a hard line on dragooning civilian Foreign Service Officers into serving in the war zone of Iraq. The article contains a quote by Ambassador Ryan Crocker which says that the FSO's swear an oath to serve anywhere in the world. This is not true. They swear an oath to uphold the constitution. They sign a contract that allows them to be posted anywhere. There is a difference, and the two documents may actually be in contradiction. For instance, what if the government did something unconstitutional and wanted to send you to support that action . . .?

Another retired US diplomat sent me this:

' I am also a retired Foreign Service Officer, and strongly second the view of the anonymous FSO (retired) whom you cited in your column today. The issue really is not the commitment to world-wide service undertaken by FSOs. The decision by the Bush Administration to not only keep an embassy open in a war zone, but INCREASE its size to make it one of the largest in the world, is simply testimony to the madness of the entire Iraq “adventure,” and the fraudulent nature of the expressed rationale for our being there. Most of the staff in this “embassy” do not speak the language and cannot act effectively as diplomats, even if that were the purpose in sending them there. But that is not the purpose....

The willingness of Secretary Rice, or Dr. Ferragamo as she is known on one satirical website, to continue supporting this war of occupation through this “embassy” and more broadly through her declaration of a new order known as “transformational diplomacy” simply confirms that she is not a “moderate” voice for diplomacy against the likes of Dick Cheney. Diplomats do not “transform” other countries. They represent the interests of the US to the governments and citizens of other, independent, countries. '

Again, please write your congressional representatives and senators, and contact your local Democratic and Republican party organizations, and urge them in the strongest terms to close down the US embassy in Iraq. It has no business being there. It is under constant mortar and rocket attack, cannot actually conduct diplomacy, and is a thinly veiled Viceregal Palace intended to perpetuate Bush's neo-colonialism.

To end the war, begin with what is possible. Close the embassy. Save our diplomats.

By the way, is the sort of news still coming out of Iraq every day, with 3 more US troops killed. That's a "lull"? And, see Phillip Carter on the dark side of the 'good news' about Iraq. The fact is that it is still one of the most violent places on earth and the decline in fighting comes in part in Baghdad because the city has gone from being 50/50 Sunni and Shiite to being 75% Shiite, with much of this change having come in 2007 under the nose of the surge troops from the US.

Diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors can be done outside Iraq better. Diplomacy with Iraqi politicians can still be pursued (most of them live outside the country anyway).

Save the diplomats. Save the world.

Curveball is Alive

It isn't surprising that Iraqi expatriates like Curveball should be trying to peddle a load of horse manure about Iraqi 'weapons programs' in the early zeroes.

It is not remarkable that Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress and its US enablers such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, John Hannah, David Wurmser, Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, Michael Rubin, Abram Schulsky, etc., should have been running a sting on US intelligence (and most of them have never even been investigated for criminal activity).

What is sad is that we pay $43 billion a year for intelligence, and intelligence analysis should have been about avoiding being stung, not about gullibly buying the horse manure and labeling it caviar to be consumed at all Washington's best cocktail parties.

Perle and Wolfowitz were big advocates in the 1970s of a Team B approach to intelligence on the Soviet Union, whereby you constitute a group of people to look again at the CIA estimates and see if you couldn't find evidence for a darker, more pessimistic picture.

It is obvious that would you actually need is a Team B that is skeptical from the Left.

Daily Kos, Talkingpointsmemo, Eschaton, many others listed below on the libads blogroll, and I, volunteer to do it for free. Is Washington listening?

First item: Let's Team B what is being said in the released official US intelligence on Iran.

It would be easy.

More on the Need to Close down the US Embassy in Baghdad

More on the need to pressure Congress to close the US embassy in Baghdad (see below). First, here is some correspondence:

'As a retired foreign service officer . . . at the State Department in Washington, I would like to add to your rationale for closing the US Embassy in Bagdad to save lives. In addition to the extreme danger involved, many of us would not go to Iraq because there is virtually nothing we can accomplish there. We could have no contact with ordinary Iraqis and would put our professional contacts or, for example, potential cultural exchange grantees, in great danger, simply by virtue of being seen with us, working with us, or participating in our programs. Unless some minimum level of security is established, we would be unable to achieve any worthwhile results, while causing great harm to cooperating Iraqis and their families--putting our own lives as risk for activities that would in the end likely prove useless and even shameful . . .'

In response to readers who said, essentially, that the State Department personnel signed a contract and should be sent same as the troops, I beg to differ. While all foreign service officers join knowing there will be risks, none is joining the army and typically embassies in war zones are shut down by the secretary of state and the president for precisely this reason. Foreign Service Officers are civilians. They are not combat personnel and cannot perform combat duties. Indeed, if they had any military aspect it would doom their entire mission and make them useless. They are supposed to be civilians representing the US to a foreign government.

Closing the embassy and ceasing to force foreign service officers to go to Baghdad against their will not prevent the US from brokering political and diplomatic deals. Most deal making is done in Amman as it is, and that has long been the case. The ambassador and a small number of volunteers could still fly out to the Green Zone and hammer out agreements. Indeed, closing the embassy would force the Bush administration to use State Department personnel for diplomatic purposes instead of as cannon fodder in a desperate offensive.

Bush is dragooning these career diplomats into dodging bombs and bullets, which is not their job. He is trying to create them as a shadow colonial administration of Iraq, which is not their job. The US embassy in Beirut was closed during the Lebanese Civil War. There is still no US embassy in Tehran. Tehran is a hell of a lot safer than Baghdad. Keeping the US embassy in Baghdad open is a political and military decision on Bush's part, which flies in the face of precedent and good sense.

Those who want to see the Iraq War ended should join this campaign. The war won't be ended as long as Bush's Baghdad embassy, a behemoth unprecedented in size and scope, bestrides Iraq like a colossal dominatrix.

And here is how closing the embassy works for the anti-war movement and for the Democratic Party (and anti-war Republicans). The public just won't mind. If you cut off money to the troops, they will mind. Only a plurality of Americans wants all troops out now, immediately. And if the Dems embargoed the military budget, the hawks would run on the their having sent our boys off to duel "al-Qaeda" with "spitballs" (a la Zell Miller). But the Republican hawks, having spent decades tearing down the State Department, will be helpless before a measure that closes down the US embassy in Baghdad. It is quite delicious.

It is politically cost free. It is the ethical thing to do. It is administratively the right and proper thing to do. It is a big step toward ending the war. Everyone wins.

Time to Close the US Embassy

I don't try to start an internet campaign very often, because the blogosphere has its own priorities and logic that are democratic and should not be forced. But here is a plea for everyone in the blogging world to help force congress to save our diplomats.

Bush is trying to Shanghai several hundred foreign service officers and force them to go to Iraq. They are protesting.

Now is that time for all Americans to stand up for the diplomats who serve this country ably and courageously throughout the world, for decades on end. Foreign service officers risk disease and death, and many of them see their marriages destroyed when spouses decline to follow them to a series of remote places. They are the ones who represent America abroad, who know languages and cultures and do their best to convince the world that we're basically a good people.

The Jesse Helms Right always hated the State Department, because it is about compromise and finding peaceful solutions, whereas the US Right is about war, violence and imposing its will on people. But is is the State Department that, despite some lapses over the decades, generally embodies the best of what America is abroad.

The guerrillas in Iraq constantly target the Green Zone and US diplomatic personnel there with mortar and rocket fire. State Department personnel sleep in trailers that are completely unprotected from such incoming fire. At several points in the past year, they have been forbidden to go outside without protective gear (as if outside were more dangerous). The Bush administration has consistently lied about the danger they are in and tried to cover up these severe security precautions.

The US embassy in Iraq should be closed. It is not safe for the personnel there. Some sort of rump mission of hardy volunteers could be maintained. But kidnapping our most capable diplomats and putting them in front of a fire squad is morally wrong and is administratively stupid, since many of these intrepid individuals will simply resign. (You cannot easily get good life insurance that covers death from war, and most State spouses cannot have careers because of the two-year rotations to various foreign capitals, and their families are in danger of being reduced to dire poverty if they are killed).

There is, in addition to the daily danger, no good escape route for civilian personnel from Baghdad. The troop escalation will be reversed by next year this time, and as the US draws down, the Green Zone is in danger of being overwhelmed by the Mahdi Army. The State Department employees sent there for two year missions are the ones who may end up in secret JAM prisons, as happened in Tehran in 1979.

Bush should not be allowed by Congress to commit this immoral act against the civilians who serve us so faithfully.

Please write your congressional representatives and senators and demand that the US embassy be closed and the forced deportation of US diplomats to Iraq be halted.

The Democrats have been facing the dilemma that they are blocked from doing much about Iraq. This is something they can do. Cut off funding for the embassy and force most of the diplomats home. This is the way to start ending the war.

Now.

Anti-Gay Church Fined by Court Can Robertson be far Behind?

A jury has found an independent "Baptist" church (which doesn't actually appear to have anything to do with the Baptist Church) in Topeka, KS, guilty of inflicting emotional distress on the bereaved family of a Marine killed in Iraq. The "church" (i.e. cult) members had protested at the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder against the US military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays. There is no reason to think Snyder was gay, but the "Church members said the soldier's death was God's punishment of America for tolerating homosexuality" . . . according to Reuters.

This is the time to remind everyone that after September 11, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who inflicted the inaccurately labeled and proto-fascist 'moral majority' on the rest of us, said that God had 'allowed' 9/11 because the US tolerated gays and feminists. And Pat Robertson, the host of the 700 Club on which the remarks were made, agreed entirely and even issued a subsequent statement to the same effect.

Here is the text:

'FALWELL: What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact--if, in fact--God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way--all of them who have tried to secularize America--I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.

In a subsequent news release, Robertson stated:

We have allowed rampant pornography on the Internet, and rampant secularism and the occult, etc. to be broadcast on television. We have permitted somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-40 million unborn babies to be slaughtered by our society.

We have a court that has essentially stuck its finger in God's eye and said, "We are going to legislate You out of the schools and take Your commandments from the courthouses in various states. We are not going to let little children read the commandments of God. We are not going to allow the Bible or prayer in our schools."

We have insulted God at the highest level of our government. Then, we say, "Why does this happen?" It is happening because God Almighty is lifting His protection from us. Once that protection is gone, we are vulnerable because we are a free society.

Don't ask why did it happen. It happened because people are evil. It also happened because God is lifting His protection from this nation and we must pray and ask Him for revival so that once again we will be His people, the planting of His righteousness, so that He will come to our defense and protect us as a nation." '

Falwell later issued a faux apology of the 'I'm sorry you're fat' variety; Robertson's organization tried to weasel out of responsibility by claiming he hadn't understood Falwell, which is impossible given the texts above).

So, I say that Falwell's and Robertson's organizations owe the rest of us Americans $10 million each for emotional distress.

Letters to the Editor

In my absence, my readers are making what seem to me especially substantial, informed and incisive comments, and several of those posted today seemed to me worthy of being put on the "front page". (Not everyone reads comments). So here they are:

"1. On the Dam

At 11:21 PM, Alex said...

On the dam. There was a report made in 1951 by British engineers proposing various sites for dams on the Tigris and the Euphrates. It is fairly widely available in academic libraries, though not on the internet. When the dams were built under Saddam in the 1980s, other sites were chosen. Although I do not remember what was said about the Mosul dam, the site of the Haditha dam was definitely advised against. So I suppose that is another dam in danger.

However, there is a factor that may not have been taken into account by the US engineers in preparing their assessment of danger, and that is the rate of alluviation. The waters of both the Tigris and the Euphrates carry large amounts of alluvium, washed off the Turkish mountains, and which settles on the bottom when the water is stopped by a dam. At Samarra, the dam was finished in 1954. When I first went to Samarra in 1977, there was an open lake behind the dam. Now there is only dry land and a river channel. The Mosul dam has been in use for half that time. I suspect there is much less water behind the dam than supposed, and thus less danger, but we have not seen the detailed report.

I am only speculating here. There are other factors; the alluvium might be trapped by the Turkish dams upstream, and they will have have the problem in the future. Though it might be a reason the Iraqi engineers are less worried than the US. It depends on how you make the calculations.

Nevertheless, this is a problem typical of an occupation that declares itself not an occupation. The Iraqi government is effectively prevented from acting, and then the occupiers say "not us", fault of the Iraqi government.


2. Basra (Anon.)

Re Basra, oil, and impending intra-shiite war

Without control of the oil exports and ports of entry, Maliki is just Mayor of the Green Zone, with Odierno his sherif.

The Kurdish militias sit astride the N. piplines, waiting the propitious time to take Kirkuk and hoping to straighten their zone of control SW to the Tigris river, absorbing the Northern production area and Kurdish areas from Ninevah to Diyala.

The Sunni tribes and Marines control the upper Euphrates river and road to Amman, all the way back to Baghdad city limits. No Dawa need apply out West. Iraq's southern oil capitol and only port is contested by opposition Shiite parties and miitias. The 'fired' governor of Basra is still holding the governate, months after Maliki threatened to move in with the 'Iraqi' army. The Basra chief of police is unable to command his troops reliably. Tens of millions in oil revenue is flowing to whoever chas teh guns to put deals for $90 bbl crude delivery together.

Baghdad is essentially under lock-down, the war zoned into neighborhoods and barrios, for the time being. Electricity, food and fuel are being rationed, traded and used for collective reward or punishment by this or that faction.

The great Petraeus' counter-offensive has paused for a breath, with the collateral risks of bombardment being substituted for the military casualties associated with surface patrols. Seems sort of opposite of the COIN doctrine of taking risks to protect civilians.

It sure is good to hear that the US finally has a winning strategy to get Pres. Clinton out of Iraq by 2013. Maybe.

"Peace, peace, but there is no peace."



3. Ineptitude of the al-Maliki government

You say:” Now if only the al-Maliki government could assert itself in, and provide services for, Iraq itself.” No chance! In fact things are going to get even worse (now the sword of the September US report is gone.)

In today's Sotaliraq.com there are reports on two statements of interest:

1) A letter from the new . . . head of the anti-corruption office [appointed by Malik in clear violation of the constitution], addressed to the leaders of the US Congress. I very much hope will be published in English, at least for its entertainment value [now in Arabic at:]

http://www.sotaliraq.com/iraqnews.php?id=276

The guy is complaining about being treated like dirt by the US Embassy who do not even give him a security badge to allow him into his office (good for them) and defending the scum he is supposed to be watching over. Maliki's letter prohibiting the investigation of the top thieves in Iraq, including his own cousin as the ex-minister, which is undisputed except by Ms Rice and is in the public domain is ignored. He says allegations against Maliki are for the parliament only! He then holds the contradiction that there is corruption, but the officials are not corrupt. But he justifies it saying it is all America's fault. Then he attacks about the ex-head muttering some hilarious stuff about Pinochet and other South American dictators. Now, Maliki first said that the ex-head “may be tampered with some papers” then upped it by accusing him of assassinations no less.

2) The new Agriculture Minister. He is described as a technocrat, but in fact an ex-minister in Ja'fari's ruinous sectarian government. He proudly declares [in Arabic at:]

http://www.sotaliraq.com/iraqnews.php?id=258

that he aims for full self-sufficiency in all crops! A very stupid idea copied from Iran which is hurting their land; farmers; and economy.

We also have the news that the two new ministers were approved unanimously, yet opposed by the big Sadrists and Sunni blocs! Has anyone heard of a parliamentary vote where the voting result is in dispute? Apart from in Iraq that is.

Maliki seems to have come to the conclusion that he and the sectarian parties in general, have no long -term future in Iraq. So they better concentrate on the looting, for as long as they are allowed to maintain the current term.


4. Lack of State Department competence to grant immunity to Blackwater

At 6:41 PM, exomikey said...

"Sen. Pat Leahy is slamming the Bush administration for bestowing immunity on private US security guards in Iraq."

When did the State Department get the power to grant immunity to anyone? I'm not sure that they can grant immunity. I'll take Artios' position on this until someone who knows chimes in:

Atrios [says]

"Muddle
So I just learned on CNN that the State Department offered immunity to the Blackwater guards. That they don't have the power to do it. That they did it anyway. That senior State people didn't sign off on this thing they didn't have the power to do. This thing they didn't have the power to do will inhibit any efforts to prosecute them.

I hope someone at the State Department offers to give me Martha's Vineyard! They may not have the power to do it, but once they do any efforts to take it away from me will be inhibited!

-Atrios 09:02"

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5. Rules of Engagement:

At 6:43 PM, Anonymous said...

The unanswered question, from the apparently one-sided Blackwater shootout last month that killed and wounded dozens, from the Haditha killing of more than a dozen women and children in their homes, is what are the rules we operate under?

The mutable rules of engagement (ROE) are classified, but the bottom line can be inferred from the comments used to justify a bad shoot. Blackwater says that it's guards felt threatened while driving the wrong way in a traffic circle, and responded to a perceived threat by clearing civilians and cars from the huge square, using automatic weapons fire and explosive rounds.

The Haditha defendants also stated the Marines felt threatened in the aftermath of a fatal IED attack, and so they attacked to eliminate the threat. No fighters or weapons were captured, no expended AK shells were found in the houses where civilians died, but the military court accepted the marines testimony. "I felt threatened' was sufficient defense for the shooting of unarmed prisoners, use of grenades and rifles on civilians trapped in their bedrooms.

This war is in a conquered country where most Sunni Arabs, and half the Shiites say they feel that attacks on the occupier (us) are justified. The perception of fear on the part of our 165,000 soldiers and 30,000 mercenaries makes nearly all killing on the part of our men justifiable.

ROE concerns can usually be resolved with a word about a feeling. Mr. Koch is correct in that.

I would ask our red-state war supporters to consider how the 1860 War of Northern Aggression story would have ended, if the occupation troops had spoken another language, and been armed with rapid-fire weapons?

It's going to be a very long war for some of our returning men and their families. They are our soldiers, in our service. Most have done the best they could for comrades, country, and contract. War changes men. This war will follow some home, and many of us will taste from that same tree of knowledge.

Things will get better for our guys, as Iraqis take over mine-clearing, search, siezure, and interrogation. Our combat role will increasingly shift to air attack and artillery fire against enemy buildings. Our casualties will fall to politically acceptable levels. Rules for indirect fire called in by US advisors will be classified, a matter for Iraqis to witness and justify.

Gen. Sherman pointed out, as his men left Atlanta for Charleston, that war is not nice, however noble the justifications. "

US Gives Turkey Intel on Kurds Militia Rule in Basra

The US is giving Turkey intelligence on the Kurdish Workers Party, according to Reuters. It seems to me that there is a contradiction between US calls for Turkish restraint and this attempt to supply Ankara with "actionable" intelligence. Is it that the US wants Turkey to hit some parts of the PKK in some parts of Iraq? Or is it just an attempt to make the Turks happy while not doing anything that the Kurdistan Regional Authority in Iraq could object to?

Meanwhile, the Turkish military says it killed 15 PKK fighters near the Iraqi border.

Basra's police chief, Maj. Gen Jalil Khalaf, has admitted that Basra and the nearby port of Umm Qasr are basically under militia rule and that his policemen either cannot fight them or have been actively infiltrated by them. Gasoline and kerosene smuggling are worth billions in that area.

Nevertheless, PM Nuri al-Maliki is insisting that his forces are in a position to take over the security command in Basra. Al-Maliki seems to define such readiness as willingness to take on the "terrorists" by which he means the tiny number of Sunni covert operatives in the deep south. He doesn't count the Shiite militias in that category.

The Iraqi government is dismissing warnings of the US Army Corps of Engineers that a major dam north of Mosul is structurally unsound and could collapse, with apocalyptic consequences for Iraq. This pie in the sky attitude about all the problems facing Iraq seems infectious. Maybe the Iraqi government caught it from Karl Rove, the Republican spinmeister who has convinced over a quarter of Americans that Bush is doing 'a good job' in Iraq! I have a sinking feeling that Mosul and Baghdad face their own Katrina (actually much, much worse) down the line, if the Iraqi officials are this unconcerned.

Oil production in Iraq is down from this quarter a year ago, but the capacity of the country's production facilities has risen. The northern fields and pipelines are better guarded now.

An interview with Dahr Jamail on what the US military occupation looks like on the ground to ordinary Iraqis.

Ali Eterazi on Islamic reform and 'post-Islamism'.

Michael Schwartz at Tomdispatch.com on the place of oil among US motivations for its invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Iraq Cabinet Proposes lifting Immunity for Private Security Guards

The Iraqi cabinet has reported out draft legislation that will remove immunity from prosecution for private security guards such as those of Blackwater. The immunity was put into law by US viceroy Paul Bremer in 2003-2004 when the US was running Iraq as a colony. Such 'extra-territoriality' is common in a colonial situation, since it would be unseemly for 'natives' to sit in judgment of citizens of the metropole. Typically the first thing modern nationalist regimes like Egypt did when they moved toward independence of colonial powers such as Britain was to abolish extraterritoriality, i.e. laws shielding foreign residents from prosecution inn local courts. Extraterritoriality for US troops in Iran in the 1960s was one of Khomeini's complaints against the Shah. The Iraqi cabinet move is a step toward renewed independence and self-assertion for the Iraqi government vis-a-vis the United States. Now if only the al-Malik government could assert itself in, and provide services for, Iraq itself.

Sen. Pat Leahy is slamming the Bush administration for bestowing immunity on private US security guards in Iraq. Since Iraq's new law will not affect past infractions, the US courts are the only arena where murders might have been punished. Not likely.

Mark Kukis of Time in Baghdad asks if the recent horrific violence in Baquba (see below) is a signpost for the future. The US troop escalation can't last forever, and by this time next year there will be at most 130,000 US troops in Iraq. As the extra units are drawn down, will the violence start up again? Likely, yes.

Iran is denying that it has any role in killing US troops in Iraq. Since the Iranian regime has not been shy in claiming credit for, e.g., Hizbullah attacks on Israel, it is significant that it is going out of its way to deny the US allegations.

The Turkish military is still squeezing PKK guerrillas and trying to close off their escape routes in eastern Anatolia near the Iraq border.

Iraq's Katrina? 3 US Soldiers Killed in Bombing Diyala Roiled by 28 Police Killed, 20 Headless Bodies

Iraq's Katrina? The Army Corps of Engineers is worried that a dam north of Mosul will collapse. CBS warns, ' A catastrophic failure, engineers believe, could unleash a 60-foot-high wall of water that would be inundate Mosul - and flood Baghdad to a depth of 15 feet. The casualty count would be in the hundreds of thousands. ' If this happened on the Bush administration's watch, it would certainly be blamed on the United States, and even the lack of dam upkeep can be traced in some part to the UN/ US sanctions on Iraq of the 1990s, which debilitated its infrastructure. An article in the Scientific American in 1999 warned that a Katrina could happen to New Orleans. Now we have the ACE warning of this dam/ flood catastrophe. I have a sinking feeling that George W. Bush is incapable of taking such threats to civilian lives seriously. Imagine if the great United States, having occupied a major Muslim Arab country in the world's driest region, managed to drown two of the most revered cities in Islamic history.

Reuters reports that:

' NEAR BAGHDAD - Three U.S. soldiers killed by roadside bomb southeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Four policemen were killed and eight others wounded when a car bomb exploded near their patrol in Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. '

There are concerns among truck drivers and the business community about the possible closing of the Turkish-Kurdish border, according to VOA.

The kidnapped tribal sheikhs of Diyala were rescued by the US military, which is apparently fingering a Special Groups rogue guerrilla who split from the Mahdi Army, Arkan Hasnawi. Some proportion of the JAM commanders rejected Muqtada al-Sadr's cease-fire with the US. A Sadrist spokesman denied Hasnawi had ever been in the Jaysh al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army or JAM).

Diyala was also hit on Monday by a massive bombing of police recruits that killed 28 and wounded 20, and by the discovery of twenty decapitated bodies near the provincial capital of Baquba.

Although over-all deaths are down in Iraq this fall according to the Iraqi ministry of health (which however has not been reliable in its past estimates and which has been caught not releasing bad numbers when the real ones were leaked to journalists), there is still a lot of debilitating violence (including waves of largely unreported assassinations, as in Basra) in the country that interferes with trade, employment and getting the country back on its feet.

Reuters reports civil war violence for Tuesday. Major incidents beyond the US troops killed and the bombing of police in Samarra:

' BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed four suspected militants and detained 17 in operations on Monday and Tuesday . . .

BAGHDAD - A militant killed one street cleaner and wounded six others when he threw a hand grenade at their vehicle in eastern Baghdad's Zayouna neighborhood, police said.

BAGHDAD - A bomb in a minibus killed one person and wounded four others in the central Baghdad Alawi bus terminal, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two policemen were wounded when a mortar round landed in the Mansour district of western Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A bomb inside a minibus wounded two people on a highway in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Four bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad on Monday, police said.

BAQUBA - Police confirmed Iraqi academic Jamal Mustafa was taken from his house on Sunday in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the abduction.

MOSUL - Police said they found four bodies in the northern city of Mosul. . .

KIRKUK - Three nightguards were wounded, some seriously, in a drive-by shooting about 35 km (22 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police said. . .

Breaking News: Turkish Gunships fire into Iraq

Indian NDTV is reporting Tuesday morning that Turkish Cobra helicopter gunships have fired into Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) positions inside northern Iraq. The action comes after following on an engagement in the border region on the Turkish side that began on Monday and went late into the night. AP does not mention the strikes inside Iraq, but NDTV apparently has a reporter in the area. If the Indian account is true, it is a step up in the building Turkish-Kurdish confrontation.

Turkey is also squeezing Iraqi Kurdistan economically, putting embargoes on firms connected to Kurdistan leader Massoud Barzani.

In an interview this weekend, Barzani had threatened that any Turkish incursion would "mean war."

Reconciliation Sheikhs Kidnapped; Kirkuk, Karbala Bombings

LA Times says that 11 members of The Salam (Peace) tribal council of Baquba, were kidnapped at gunpoint as they were driving back from the Green Zone toward Baquba, where they are based. They had been conducting talks with the office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Although the kidnapping occurred in a largely Shiite district of the capital, it cannot be assumed that the Shiites are the problem.

There were also big bombings in the northern oil city of Kirkuk (8 dead, 25 wounded) and in the southern Shiite shrine city of Karbala. About Kirkuk, LAT says:

' A suicide car bomber killed seven people and wounded 25 in the disputed northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday, targeting a crowded bus terminal heavily used by travelers to the provinces that form the semiautonomous Kurdistan region, police and witnesses said. Ten shops and 15 cars were set ablaze by the afternoon explosion. "It was a suicide car; the driver detonated himself in front of a civilian crowd next to the bus terminal," said witness Rebowar Mohammad, 32. "I was close to the explosion. There was thick, dark smoke covering the place."

As for Karbala, the bombing, which left 6 dead, came in the wake of the announcement that US troops are withdrawing from the province, which is a big pilgrimage center. The withdrawal will allow the Shiite factions that have been fighting there to more openly contest control of it, and the bombing is probably an opening salvo. The martyred grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Husain, is interred in a shrine in Karbala.

The NYT says that Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq are thumbing their noses at Turkey. About the US dilemma in northern Iraq, where it is caught between its Kurdish and Turkish allies, Sabrina Tavernisse wickedly quotes a local Kurd: "The United States “is like a man with two wives,” said one Iraqi Kurd in Sulaimaniya. “They quarrel, but he doesn’t want to lose either of them.”

For just how rugged the territory is in which the PKK is hiding out, see Gordon Taylor at Progressive Historians.

The British officer corps says of the remaining UK presence in Basra, "Get us out of here!" and admits that in recent months the foreign troops may have been doing more harm than good.

McClatchy reports of Basra on Sunday:

' Basra

Yesterday night, Gunmen attacked a convoy of the Islamic Party killing one member in the party and injured 3 others. The attackers kidnapped 2 others from the convoy which was coming from Zubeer twon southwest Basra city towards Basra.

Gunmen killed one prominent member of the Supreme Election Committee in Basra (Ausama Al Abadi) downtown Basra yesterday night.

Around 12.00: the FBS of South Oil Co. in Basra open fire against the demonstrators who gathered in front of building of the company to demand of providing them with jobs in this company. 6 of demonstrators were injured in the incident. '

The Telegraph article talks of death squad rule in the city.

Tom Engelhardt reflects on Saturday's anti-war demonstrations in the US.

Francois Furstenberg on Bush as a Jacobin. It is a point I've made, too, in connection with my book on Napoleon's Egypt.

In its 10/28/07 roundup of Iraq news items, the USG Open Source Center gives several items from the hard line Sunni Fundamentalist newspaper al-Basa'ir, which is close to the Association of Muslim Scholars. AMS leaders have denounced the Iraqi Salafis who have begun styling themselves 'al-Qaeda' and who often engage in indiscriminate violence, but AMS is uncompromisingly Sunni fundamentalist itself, and has some sort of connection to the 1920 Revolution Brigades, which the US views as an insurgent group.

'Al-Basa'ir on 24 October publishes on the front page a 600-word report on Statements 485 and 486 the Association of Muslim Scholars issued accusing the Shiite militias of displacing Sunni families in Baghdad and other governorates.

Al-Basa'ir on 24 October publishes on the front page a 300-word report on Statement 488 the Association of Muslim Scholars issued accusing the occupation forces of committing a massacre against the innocent Iraqi people in the Al-Sadr City. The statement also accuses the Iraqi Government of supporting the crimes committed by the occupation forces.

Al-Basa'ir on 24 October publishes on the front page and on page 2 a 1,200-word report on Statement 487 the Association of Muslim Scholars issued accusing the Shiite Militias of blowing up the Al-Barakah Mosque in the Al-Washash District in Baghdad.

Al-Basa'ir on 24 October publishes on the front page a 130-word report on the news statement the Association of Muslim Scholars issued condemning the kidnapping of priests in Mosul on 13 October.

Al-Basa'ir on 24 October publishes on the front page and on page 2 a 600-word report on the meeting of Abd-al-Salam al-Kubaysi, Association of Muslim Scholars undersecretary, with the association's employees and members in the Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad on 21 October. Al-Kubaysi affirmed that the association will not give up on its anti-occupation policies. . .

Al-Basa'ir on 24 October publishes on the front page a 600-word editorial saying that the Iraqi political forces, which are protected and backed by the occupation forces, have failed to implement their project to partition Iraq under the pretext of federalism. The writer says that the only way for the occupation forces to resolve the challenges they are facing in northern, central and southern Iraq is to withdraw and annul the political process. . .

Al-Basa'ir on 24 October publishes on page 5 a 300-word report on the Statements 481, 482, 483 and 484 issued by the Association of Muslim Scholars. The statements condemn the oil contracts signed by the Kurdish Government, Turkish threats to invade Kurdistan, the killing of 15 civilians in the Al-Tharthar District and the arrest of Association Member Yunus al-Akidi, in the Abu-Ghurayb District.'

(I am traveling abroad this week and postings may be irregular. Can't put anything up Tuesday morning, e.g., but maybe later that day. Check back frequently.)

Muqtada al-Sadr Says Freeze on Al-Mahdi Army's Military Action Still in Effect

The USG Open Source Center summarizes and translates a recent statement of Shiite clerical leader Muqtada al-Sadr, issued two weeks ago, insisting that the suspension of military operations by his Mahdi Army is still in effect.

'Muqtada al-Sadr Says Freeze on Al-Mahdi Army's Military Action Still in Effect
Iraq -- OSC Summary
Sunday, October 28, 2007

The Mujahidin Al-Amarah News Network (formerly visible at (http:// al3marh. net/ news/%20 but now gone blank). . . -- which reports on Al-Sadr trend's activities and statements and other events in Iraq, was observed to post the following statement on 23 October:

The following is the full text of the report:

Office of the Martyr Al-Sadr (May God sanctify his secret)

Your Eminence Hojjat ol-Islam val Muslimin Al-Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr (may you live in glory), can you please answer our questions and queries. May God reward you.

1. Is the decision to freeze the Army of Imam al-Mahdi (may God speed up his return) still in effect because some parties are circulating news that the freeze stopped after Id al-Fitr?

In the name of God Almighty: Yes, it is still in effect and it can be extended if we deem this to serve an interest. It is absolutely not true that it has been lifted. In fact, some hostile parties are spreading this news to tarnish the reputation of this heroic ideological army, which proved its obedience to its leaders by implementing the freeze in the best manner possible except by some of those who took it upon themselves to obey the enemies and who ignored the freeze order by their hawzah (religious seminary). We appeal to all to implement this decision on all levels. Otherwise, a disobedient person would be dismissed from this heroic ideological army. The army has no place in it for disobedient persons. Our lord and master, Imam Al-Mahdi (may God speed up his return) wants obedience and faith, and not disobedience and rebellion.

2. If the freeze did not stop, we would like to inquire about some actions, which some units of the Army of Imam Al-Mahdi have continued to carry on, including some financial, tribal, and social affairs and others.

In the name of God Almighty. This question can be answered on two levels:

First, this freeze includes the "military" aspect in particular and some aspects, which I will mention implicitly, God willing. It does not include the ideological and cultural aspects. As we know, jihad is two parts: cultural and military. We are facing a (Jewish-American) attack on our beloved Islam. Therefore, dear brothers, you should make yourselves immune to these attacks so as to make Islam immune as well. This cannot be done by attack, disunity, disintegration, disobedience, rebellion, unilateral action, differences, and other similar negative phenomena that have spread among you. It is done by piety, rectitude, purity, ethics, faith, modesty, fraternity, and worship, and not by seeking mundane pleasures, polytheism, and parties.

Second, concerning what was mentioned in the question about the financial, tribal, and social aspects, if any individual wants to intervene in these things, he cannot do that by using his affiliation to the Army of Imam Al-Mahdi. Otherwise, he will be disobeying higher orders.

3. In the current period, in which the Army of Imam Al-Mahdi has been frozen, what are the responsibilities that they can carry out?

In the name of God Almighty. The dear brothers in the Army of Imam Al-Mahdi have the full powers to go about their social affairs, such as making visits, forming friendships, helping the needy, and attending to the needs of the believers in a manner that does not conflict with the tolerant Islamic shari'ah and that does not break the freeze. They may also seek to educate themselves religiously, ideologically, scientifically, and ethically by conducting lessons, lectures, seminars, and examinations under the supervision of the cultural commission that is affiliated with the Office of the Martyr. They may also carry out any peaceful action that reflects their love of their religion and homeland and their endeavor to achieve its unity, land and people.

I also advise you to refrain from any action that could hurt the reputation of this beloved army. Its reputation is a trust that you bear. Do not fear the blame of anyone while implementing the above. God is able to grant you victory. Be like a solid structure, while each one of you offers advice to the other and loves the other so that the enemy will not be able to infiltrate you. Beware of those who stir up sedition and the infiltrators among your ranks. I advise you and myself to fear God in secret and in public and to carry out religious duties and abandon what is forbidden and to conduct religious rituals, such as congregational prayer, the husayniyah sessions, and many others.

Holy Al-Najaf

Muqtada al-Sadr

5 Shawwal 1428 (corresponding to 16 October 2007)

Major US Anti-War Protests Karbala turned over to Iranian-backed Badr

Tens of thousands of Americans rallied against the war in major cities on Saturday.

The US military is turning over security duties in Karbala to the Iraqi security forces (dominated in that city by the Badr Corps, the paramilitary trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps). This turn-over has now been carried out in 8 of Iraq's 18 provinces. There never was much of a US military presence in the 3 Kurdish provinces of the Kurdistan Regional Authority, so actually it is just 5 that have effectively been turned over-- the Shiite provinces of Muthanna, Dhi Qar, Najaf, and Maysan-- and now Karbala.

A departing US general has accused the Shiite-dominated ministry of the interior of dragging its feet on hiring Sunni Arab policemen. Sectarian concerns, he implied, are interfering with the establishment of security in Iraq.

Undiagnosed brain injuries among soldiers and civilians are a major legacy of the Iraq War.

Turkish, Iranian Presidents Condemn Kurds

AFP reports that Prime Minister Rejep Tayyib Erdogan of Turkey said Saturday, of the Kurdish Workers Party guerrillas holed up in Iraq, "We will launch an operation when it will be necessary, without asking for anybody’s opinion . . .”

The USG Open Source Center translates an article about Turkish President Abdullah Gul calling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about Turkey's plans to end the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) presence in the region. Iran's president expressed sympathy for the terrorism Turkey suffered at Kurdish hands and stressed that Iran had faced similar terrorism. (The implication is that the United States was 'running' Kurdish terrorists and the Mojahedin-e Khalq against Iraq's neighbors).

George W. Bush's special greatness is that his coddling of Kurdish separatism and terrorism has brought together the Sunni Turks and the Shiite Iranians, traditional enemies. Yes, these are the birth pangs of the New Middle East.

'Turkey's Gul Tells Ahmedinejad 'Channels of Diplomacy' on PKK 'Being Exhausted'
"President Gul Held a Phone Conversation With Ahmedinejad" -- AA headline
Anatolia
Saturday, October 27, 2007

Ankara (AA) - 27.10.2007 - It was reported that Iranian President Ahmedinejad called President Gul on the phone and received information on the latest developments on Turkey's fight against terrorism. According to reports, Gul told Ahmedinejad that Turkey attaches great importance to Iraq's territorial integrity and that all the Iraqi people with the Shi'a, Sunni, Arab, and Kurd are the kin of Turks. Gul also stressed that Turkey does not target the Iraq administration and the Kurds.

It was also reported that President Gul emphasized Turkey's determination in ending the PKK presence in the region after pointing out that the terrorist organization is using northern Iraq as a base and that the channels of diplomacy are being exhausted.

Ahmedinejad, in turn, was reported to have said during the conversation that Turkey's concerns are received with understanding, that Iran is also fighting terror, and that Iran is closely watching the developments with concern. Ahmedinejad also extended his condolences to the families of the martyrs.

(Description of Source: Ankara Anatolia in Turkish -- Semi-official news agency; independent in content) '

Iraqi Sunni, Shiite Preachers Denounce al-Qaeda

The USG Open Source Center reports on Iraqi sermons on Friday.

Round-up of Iraqi Friday Sermons 26 Oct
Iraq -- OSC Summary
Saturday, October 27, 2007

Al-Iraqiyah . . . "Shaykh Jalal-al-Din al-Saghir, [Shiite] imam and preacher of the Buratha Mosque, said that the recent statements by terrorist Usama Bin Ladin to the remnants of his followers in Iraq show the defeat of the terrorist organization in Iraq following the strong blows dealt to it by the Iraqi security forces, backed by the tribes."

The report adds: "In a Friday sermon, the Buratha Mosque preacher called for renouncing violence and all armed manifestations and bolstering unity among Iraqis."

Shaykh Al-Saghir says: "Bolstering unity between the Shiites and Sunnis is the only way to eliminate those criminals. This would not have happened had the Shiites and Sunnis not rejected all the terrorists' attempts to drive a wedge between the two honorable sects."

Shaykh Al-Saghir adds: "We consider Usama Bin Ladin's recent statement as an official announcement on the defeat of the Al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Therefore, before this statement and message, we were not astonished to see Harith al-Dari trying to bring some life to the dead body of Al-Qa'ida when he spoke and advised the armed groups to accept Al-Qa'ida by saying they are from us and we are from them."

Al-Saghir says: "The militias of any party are against the existence of the state."

The report adds [that Sunni]: "Shaykh Ahmad Abd-al-Ghafur al-Samarra'i, head of the Sunni Waqf Bureau, has called for renouncing all armed manifestations and differences among the sons of the one country. In a Friday sermon at the Al-Siddiq Mosque in Al-Ghazaliyah, Shaykh Al-Samarra'i urged the Iraqis to close their ranks to foil enemy plans to foment sedition among them."

Al-Samarra'i says: "I express my appreciation for all the good efforts and for all those who achieved security and stability, and brotherhood and amity among the sons of Iraq. Unity, amity, mercy, and love bring us closer to God. The Sunni must live safely in a Shiite area and a Shiite must live safely in the Sunni areas."

Al-Samarra'i says: "They wanted to foment sedition between the Shiites and Sunnis and to play on the tune of sectarianism. However, praise be to God, all the sons of Iraq in general, and the sons of Al-Ghazaliyah in particular, and specifically the sons of this mosque, have exposed the game, realized the conspiracy, and got united with each other. They did not discriminate between a Shiite and Sunni, an Arab or Kurd, or a Muslim and a non-Muslim. People from all ethnic groups were united and stood as one man in the face of anyone who wanted to harm this country or this area."

The report says: "Within the same framework, Shaykh Ala Abd-al-Wahhab, imam and preacher of the Yusuf al-Hassan Mosque in the Basra Governorate, urged the Iraqis to unite and renounce all forms of estrangement and sectarianism and to close the ranks among the sons of the one people. Shaykh Abd-al-Wahhab noted that the crisis the Iraqis are experiencing necessitates more patience."

Al-Furat [Supreme Council, Shiite]: . . . "Friday preachers in Baghdad urged the Council of Representatives to discuss the effective forces' request to prevent any political interference by the Independent Higher Election Committee."

The report adds: "The crisis on the Iraqi-Turkish border and the government's efforts to find solutions to it was present in the Friday sermons. The preachers stressed the need for not turning Iraq into arena to settle scores and a springboard for terrorist organizations to attack the neighboring states."

Shaykh al-Saghir says: "I call on the Council of Representatives, specifically the chairmanship of the Council of Representatives, to examine the request that was submitted by heads of the three major blocs in the parliament and to hold an urgent meeting for the committee, the political blocs, and the United Nations, to put things in order in a way to guarantee the independence, neutrality, and transparency of the committee."

On Bin Ladin's recent audiotape, Al-Saghir says: "We consider Usama Bin Ladin's recent statement as an official announcement on the defeat of the Al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Therefore, before this statement and message, we were not astonished to see Harith al-Dari trying to bring some life to the dead body of Al-Qa'ida when he spoke and advised the armed groups to accept Al-Qa'ida by saying they are from us and we are from them."

Commenting on the crisis on the Iraqi-Turkish border, Na'il al-Musawi, imam and preacher of the Al-Khillani Mosque, says: "Now there is the issue of stopping its (PKK) activity. The problem is that the (Turks) want us to hand over some of the wanted PKK elements. Now, there is the issue of stopping its political and military activities and closing its offices. We are not an arena of struggle. Iraq is not an arena of struggle. Iraqi Kurdistan is a part of Iraq."

The channel carries an episode of its weekly "Friday Sermons" program at 1809 GMT, as follows:

Shaykh Al-Saghir speaks about "mistakes in the Election Committee Law, which should be corrected." He adds: "Very regrettably, I was given promises to correct these mistakes, but these promises are so far not reassuring and are not encouraging. I say that the parties' tampering with the committee will destroy this committee and end any hope for its neutrality. Consequently, I say that October is about to end and we will then have a new budget, but we will not approve one penny for the committee if measures to reassure us that this committee enjoys neutrality and transparency are not taken."

He adds: "Therefore, all the political parties, taking into consideration that the problem lies in the political parties, should be seriously aware of these issues. Any tampering with the issue of the independence of the committee will disrupt the entire situation."

He says: "I call on the Council of Representatives, specifically the chairmanship of the Council of Representatives, to examine the request that was submitted by heads of the three major blocs in the parliament and to hold an urgent meeting for the committee, the political blocs, and the United Nations, to put things in order in a way to guarantee the independence, neutrality, and transparency of the committee. Without this, we will have another stand, which definitely will not be in the interest of the current committee. I know that there are sincere intentions, but I also know that there are political trends within this committee."

Shaykh Na'il al-Musawi, imam and preacher of the Al-Khillani Mosque, says: "Praise be to God, the tension that used to exist among the political blocs in the past has eased a great deal. Some sides used to wager on toppling the government and to think that it was possible to do so and if this government falls they will assume power. Now, the situation is different. The situation is now better and anyone who monitors events will see that the security situation is better than before."

He adds: "We hope that all Iraqis, all sects, all religions, and trends will work against terrorism, taking into consideration that terrorism does not discriminate between a Sunni or a Shiite, Christian or Muslim, or Sabian or Azidi. Terrorism targets all Iraqis."

[Shiite] Shaykh Abd-al-Mahdi al-Karbala'i, imam and preacher of the Karbala Friday sermon, says: "I want to discuss the unstable security situation in some of the cities of the south and the center of our beloved country, Iraq. I say that some citizens in these cities have asked us to convey their complaints and suffering through the Friday pulpit to the brother officials, whether in the executive or legislative agencies. Some members of the Iraqi Council of Representatives have also asked us to convey their views to the brothers in the executive agencies and heads of the political blocs." . . .

Shaykh Bashir al-Najafi, imam and preacher of the Al-Najaf Friday sermon, says: "We call on all the brother officials to do their duties toward these people. They should exert all efforts to do so."

Shaykh Jamal al-Dawsari, imam and preacher at an unidentified mosque in Basra, says: "We were tested in our country, Iraq. We are still being tested and the enemies of God are still wagering on fragmenting the unity of this country. The enemies of humanity are still wagering on destroying Iraq and on turning Iraq into a springboard for their terrorism, a base for their corruption, and a safe haven for evildoers and terrorists. However, Iraq's people now have enough awareness to the point where no one can deceive or fool them. This is because we knew who wants to have mercy on Iraq and who seeks to destroy Iraq, especially since the picture has become clear for those who understand and those who do not understand. There is nothing secret, but every thing is clear and obvious."

Shaykh Mahmud al-Khafaji, imam and preacher at an unidentified mosque in Babil, says: "The spread of cholera was caused by the terrorists. The cause of the spread of the disease is not scientific. From a scientific and medical viewpoint, everyone knows that this disease spreads in hot areas and not in cold areas, taking into consideration that the cold weather is not suitable for it. It spread in the Arbil Governorate and the areas of northern Iraq. This is a dirty act of terrorism. Terrorism is there, however, we cannot blame the terrorists, but we should take the employees to account. The administrative agencies should appoint the honest employee who has a national and a religious sense of responsibility toward the sons of his people to make sure that such a disease will not spread." . . .