War Casualties

I will no longer post to this site.

2003-05-25T17:14:00.000-07:00

I suppose it is evident by now that I will no longer be posting on this site. It was very difficult to make this decision, as the war continues and people continue to die in Iraq because of very ill-thought decisions on our part. I will continue to post on the war, on occasion, on my http://redonion.blogspot.com site, and will continue to post on, I hope, many subjects on the red onion site. I will also shut down my We miss you abbie hoffman blog. I found it too much of an undertaking right now, but I will leave it up, as it provides links to other cools sites that are monitoring our civil liberties, and striving to protect them. I will continue to write about civil liberties on my red onion site. Much love to all who visited and will continue to visit this site.

MILITIAS FORMING IN BAGHDAD

2003-05-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

It is much worse in Baghdad than I thought. Under the watchful gaze of American military, political and religious factions are buying up weapons on the open market there, and staking out terrority. No one feels safe, and Baghdad is being compared to Beirut when it had its civil war. Link to this New Republic report for the story.

"Post date 05.15.03 | Issue date 05.26.03 E-mail this article

Every night for the past month, Mazen Al Bakir and his sister Layla have prepared themselves for the worst. Around 9 o'clock in the evening, the nightly security detail begins at their home in the southern Baghdad district of Saydiya. Bakir pulls a loaded pistol out of the closet, secures his front gate and doors with massive locks, and hides the keys. For the rest of the evening, the Bakirs stand guard at their home as sporadic gunfire from across their neighborhood ushers in another sleepless night in Iraq's capital.

The Bakirs' situation is hardly unique. Since the American takeover, Baghdad has turned into an Arab version of the Watts riots. Burning buildings dot the city skyline. Armed looters terrorize the population, tearing into homes and emptying them of their possessions. Petty crime has become rampant on the streets, virtually no one feels secure, and homes are never left unguarded at night.

The really scary part, however, may be yet to come. Thus far violence in Baghdad has been limited to unorganized gangs of looters carrying Kalashnikovs. But Iraqi security experts and other sources in the capital say that, under the nose of the American forces, Iraq's nascent political groups are forming armed militias and storing weapons as they prepare for a potential civil war for control of the country. In fact, The New Republic has learned, several Iraqis say even Hezbollah has formed a branch in Baghdad. Ultimately, if Baghdad's power vacuum is not filled soon, the rise of organized armed factions could turn Iraq's capital into a twenty-first-century version of 1980s Beirut.

General insecurity and looting has been the norm in Baghdad almost since the first Saddam Hussein statue fell. With small arms easily available from former members of Saddam's military and security services, many Iraqis have armed themselves and begun cleaning out the homes of Baghdad's wealthy and middle class. Street crime was infrequent under Saddam, but today random rapes, carjackings, and murders have become commonplace in many parts of the city, and as a result women have virtually disappeared from the streets. At Baghdad's Al Nouman Hospital, sources say 35 women who were raped and left for dead have been brought into the ward in recent weeks. Iraqis have become paranoid, reaching for their guns any time a suspicious-looking pedestrian passes in front of their homes. "This is not a normal life--you just can't continue like this," says Fadi, a young Kurdish man who lives in the Karrada section of Baghdad. Days earlier, Fadi had watched thieves hijack a car and then fight each other over it.

But, in recent days, Iraqi security experts, ranking members of several Iraqi political groups, and average Iraqis have told TNR that a greater danger than carjacking may be in the cards: inter-factional warfare. Since the fall of Saddam, more than 30 different political parties have established themselves in Baghdad, ranging from the Kurdish People's Front to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a theocratic group under the authority of newly returned Shia leader Mohammed Bakr Al Hakim. This should be a healthy sign. Except that, according to security sources, many of these parties have formed organized armed militias ranging in size from 500 men for Hizb Al Dawa, a leading theocratic Shia group, to more than 2,000 fighters for SCIRI, whose armed wing is called the Badr Brigade. SCIRI, like several of these organizations, allegedly received training for their militias from Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Even the long-repressed Iraqi Communist Party, led by aging Marxists, has supposedly set up a 600-man force.

Meanwhile, according to several security sources, even more dangerous groups may be setting up in Iraq. A group made up of former Baathists is attempting to constitute a militia of Saddam loyalists. And security sources in Baghdad say that Hezbollah, one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world, is forming an Iraqi branch. "If nothing is done, these guys may export their movement outside of here and Iraq could become a base of operations," says one security source in the capital.

The militias have already begun to roam unchecked throughout Baghdad--except within a security perimeter surrounding the area where the American troops and most foreign journalists stay--and many other parts of the country. Some Iraqis even accuse Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmed Chalabi of turning his Pentagon-backed Free Iraqi Forces, who currently number more than 500 armed men, into a militia and claim that Chalabi's organization has in recent days attempted to recruit more fighters at Baghdad's Al Mustansiriya University. (Chalabi's security chief insists that the INC has actually been downsizing the armed group as he begins recruiting locals to form an established political party.) In total, security experts say, thousands of men from these armed factions are now wandering the streets of Baghdad and other cities, where they are claiming certain neighborhoods as turf, an ominous flashback to Lebanon's civil war, in which various factions staked out areas of Beirut and killed members of other groups who strayed onto their ground. Indeed, in just a few days in Baghdad, I have heard rampant rumors about the territoriality of these militias."

BRITISH SET TO LEAVE UMM QASR

2003-05-16T07:37:00.000-07:00

Umm Qasr was handed over to local control by the British, according to this Reuter's report:

"UMM QASR, Iraq (Reuters) - British troops formally handed over control on Thursday of the first Iraqi town to a civilian authority since a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's government.

Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Jones, commander of 23 Pioneer Regiment and former military governor of Umm Qasr was at the formal ceremony to hand over rule to a council of 12 Iraqis, who will govern the town next to Iraq's only deep water port.

"The people of Umm Qasr are now in charge of their own destiny, for the first time in 35 years or longer," Jones said.

The current members of the council which will run this dusty town of 45,000 people close to the Kuwait border in southern Iraq are volunteers, including local professionals and clerics. But elections will be held in a week to appoint a new council.

Around 200 British troops are in Umm Qasr but most will leave within days, Jones said. About 30 will remain in the town to help maintain security and liaise with the Iraqi council.

Town councils have been set up in several places in Iraq, but Umm Qasr is the first town where a council has taken over overall charge from U.S. or British troops. It is also significant because the port is southern and central Iraq's main entrance for food, aid and trade and an exit point for oil.

Many Iraqis in Umm Qasr are still full of complaints, saying drinking water is scarce and security is inadequate.

"Nothing is available," said 35-year-old Hussein Moharab, a farmer. "The market is full of unemployed people. We need security, water and food."

Some Iraqis in the town's market said the local council had been ineffectual so far. Others accused council members of using their position for personal profit.

Protests caused the interim council to resign earlier this month but most members later returned.

The difficulties faced by the British in setting up a local government in Umm Qasr, a small and relatively homogenous town, illustrate the problems that lie ahead as U.S. and British forces try to return power to Iraqis.

"We are doing what we can but I do not have a magic wand," said Najim Abed Mahdi, 53, a supervisor of English teaching who was appointed chairman of the interim town council which will run Umm Qasr until the elections next week.

"This is the first attempt for us to run our town by ourselves," he said. "We are ready to rebuild our town, and we are ready to rebuild our country."

Jones said British forces had restored power, water and basic services in Umm Qasr and the time was right to hand over to a civilian local government.

He said that while the local economy had yet to recover, the port would provide employment and income and help Umm Qasr recover from the war and the chaos that followed it.

"This is a town that is working," he said.

MORE MILITARY TRAFFIC FATALITIES IN IRAQ

2003-05-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

An obviously over-stretched military in Iraq continues to suffer fatalities from traffic accidents; from Centcom:

"SOLDIER KILLED IN VEHICLE ACCIDENT

CAMP DOHA, Kuwait -- One soldier was killed and two were injured at 12:04 p.m. May 14 when a five-ton vehicle in a unit attached to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) was involved in a traffic accident on Highway 2 near Irbil, Iraq. A preliminary investigation indicates that the driver of the vehicle swerved to avoid a civilian vehicle, and this action caused them to head toward a child. The soldier then swerved to avoid the child, and the truck rolled over.

A more thorough investigation is being conducted.

The name and unit of the deceased soldier will not be released until next-of-kin notification is complete.

The injured soldiers sustained minor injuries."

HIGHLIGHTS OF US DRAFTED UN RESOLUTION

2003-05-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

Reuters gives us highlights of a proposed and revised U.S.-drafted Security Council resolution for the governing of Iraq. This resolution does include granting the US and Britain "occupying power" authority:

"UNITED NATIONS, May 15 (Reuters) - Following are highlights of a revised U.S.-drafted Security Council resolution, co-sponsored by Britain and Spain. It would end U.N. sanctions on Iraq but makes no mention of weapons of mass destruction or the return of U.N. arms inspectors.

-- The resolution would lift all trade and financial sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Iraq. Only an arms embargo would remain.

-- The United States and Britain submitted letters to the Security Council recognizing their their obligations as occupying powers. The draft refers to them as the "Authority."

-- The resolution would establish a "Development Fund for Iraq" for reconstruction and humanitarian purposes to be held by the Central Bank of Iraq and to be audited by independent accountants approved by an international advisory board.

-- The board includes envoys from the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development and the World Bank.

-- All proceeds from oil sales would go into the Development Fund until an "internationally recognized" Iraqi government is established. The monies would be "disbursed at the direction" of the Authority (United States and Britain), in consultation with the Iraqi interim authority.

-- Five percent of the oil revenues are to be deposited into a compensation fund (compared to the current 25 percent) for claims resulting from Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

-- The resolution phases out the U.N. oil-for-food program over a period of four months. Some $13 billion from Iraq's past oil revenues are now in the program, administered by the United Nations. Whatever is not spent would be deposited into the new Development Fund. Still under discussion are which contracts in the pipeline would be honored.

-- All monies from Iraq's oil sales or those in the Development Fund are immune from claims and law suits until an internationally recognized Iraqi government is established.

-- The document asks for "multilateral" consideration of Iraq's massive debt "through appropriate international mechanisms" such as the Paris Club. This informal group of 19 wealthy nations restructures debt for emerging countries.

-- Secretary-General Kofi Annan is asked to name a special U.N. coordinator, who would report to the Security Council, and coordinate work of U.N. humanitarian agencies, "work intensively" with the United States and Britain to restore national and local institutions, promote economic reconstruction, human rights, legal and judicial reform and participate in the international advisory board.

-- The resolution would allow the United States and Britain to run the country for a year with automatic extensions unless the Security Council voted otherwise.

-- The resolution asks the United Nations envoy, at present Russian Yuli Vorontsov, to continue working on the return of Kuwaiti property and prisoners.

-- The document asks all nations to watch out for, return, and prohibit trade of Iraq cultural properties looted from Iraq's National Museum and other institutions.

-- It asks Annan to report to the council at regular intervals on implementation of the resolution."

THE AMERICANIZATION OF BAGHDAD

2003-05-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

The Christian Science Monitor reports the sky-rocketing cases of gunshot deaths and woundings in Baghdad:

"BAGHDAD – Hamid Turki winced as the emergency-room doctor inspected a wound in his hip. Under the glare of neon lights, his face was pale.
Mr. Turki was the eighth gunshot victim Mohammed Nouri had seen by midnight Wednesday at the Al Kindi Hospital in central Baghdad. The doctor stepped back from his patient and sighed. "We don't have even 1 percent security now," he said.

Five weeks after US troops entered Iraq's capital, reconstruction has taken a backseat to security. "There are a number of problems, in particular the problem of law and order in Baghdad," L. Paul Bremer, the new chief civilian administrator for Iraq, said yesterday. He appeared to be introducing a get-tough policy, pledging the US would beef up infantry and military police forces.

Mr. Bremer's comments acknowledged a reality Faik Amin Bakr understands all too well. On Wednesday night, the director of the Baghdad morgue counted through his register of violent deaths. There have been 124 over the past 10 days, he says, almost all gunshot homicides. That marks a 60 percent rise over the previous 10-day period, despite claims by US officials here that the security situation is improving.

"We are aggressively targeting looters" as they turn their attention from public buildings to their fellow citizens, said Maj. Gen. Buford "Buff" Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division that has occupied the capital. "We have refocused our soldiers." (see related story)

But in a city where armed carjackings and armed robberies are increasingly common, where many parents do not send their children to school for fear they will be abducted, and where gunfire is heard constantly, violence is claiming growing numbers of victims.

"The trend is going up because there is no control," Dr. Bakr complains. "Everybody can carry a gun in his pocket."

NINE IRAQI CHILDREN KILLED IN MUNITIONS EXPLOSION

2003-05-15T06:44:00.000-07:00

This article covers several issues: the death of nine children when munitions exploded, the exhuming of the mass grave near Hillah, recent American war casualties, from Al Bawaba News:

"Nine Iraqi children killed in explosion as one of Saddam regime horrors uncovered near Hillah
14-05-2003, 15:25

Nine Iraqi children were killed and seven wounded in the south of the country when unexploded ordnance they were playing with detonated. "Nine children were killed and seven were injured in Missan governorate on Monday when they were playing with unexploded ordnance," UN spokesman David Wimhurst told a press conference in Basra.

"This tragedy highlights the terrible danger that unexploded ordnance represents all around Iraq," Wimhurst said Wednesday. Kathryn Irwin, a spokeswoman for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), said the ordnance that exploded was an Iraqi rocket. "There are thousands of stockpiles of weapons in Iraq," she told AFP.

Elsewhere, a U.S. Marine was killed when a munitions bunker caught fire and exploded, and a soldier with the Army's 101st Airborne Division died in a road accident in northern Iraq, military officials and witnesses said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, villagers pulled body after body from a mass grave in central Iraq on Wednesday, exhuming the remains of up to 3,000 people they suspect were killed during the 1991 Shiite revolt against Saddam Hussein's regime.

Uncounted bodies remained unearthed at the site, they said.
The mass grave in a village outside Hillah, 100 kilometers south of Baghdad, is the largest found in Iraq since U.S. forces overthrew Saddam and his Baath Party government last month.

Many of the onlookers were weeping, and some chanted: "There is no God but God, and the Baath (Party) is the enemy of God." Several women were holding pictures of their missing men.

Rafed Husseini, a doctor leading the group of local men doing the digging, said a total of 3,000 bodies had either been retrieved or located in the past nine days. About half remain unidentified while the rest have been identified mainly through documents found on the bodies, Husseini said, according to AP.

He said local farmers who had witnessed some of the killings by Saddam's forces had alerted them of the mass graves. "They saw the crimes taking place but did not dare talk about them at the time," Husseini said. (Albawaba.com)"

MUCH OF BAGHDAD LIBRARY THOUGHT LOST IS SAVED

2003-05-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

This is good news, in a land that doesn't have much right now. From the Boston Globe, this article chronicles the saving of much of the library in Baghdad that was thought to be lost from looting:

"BAGHDAD -- On a rundown street of auto repair shops in old Saddam City, a Shi'ite mosque run by men in tattered clothing has become a secret safe house for Iraqi treasures.

Now that coalition forces are arresting looters in the streets, the mosque's leaders say their story can be told: Contrary to widespread belief, the antique books of Iraq's National Library were not stolen by thieves last month but were removed for safe keeping by self-appointed guardians of Iraq's cultural heritage.

Inside a cavernous room at the Al Hak Mosque in the newly named Revolution City, roughly 400,000 manuscripts, biographies, religious works, and graduate-school theses are stacked to the 12-foot ceiling and gathering dust in the dry, 95-degree heat.

In the Judaica-Hebrew section -- a small pile against the southern wall -- one history book about Jews in Iraq dates to 1872, and a Talmudic text to 1880. There are newspapers recording the revolutionary days of July 1958, when the British-installed monarchy was overthrown and replaced by the republic. One book of folklore was largely indecipherable to the men at the mosque, but they said it was almost 500 years old.

''We had to protect the Islamic and Arabic heritage, so we acted before Baghdad fell to chaos,'' said Mohammad al-Jawad al-Tamimi, the mosque's imam. ''These books, it concerns the whole country.''

On April 15 the National Library was looted and set ablaze, compounding the agony of many who cherish Iraq's role as an early, important civilization, and those mourning the loss of precious antiquities from the National Museum. At the time, the media reported that the library was forsaken.

International scholars, as well as James H. Billington, librarian of the US Congress, have been preparing to come to Baghdad to sift through the remains, create an inventory of lost and found works, and help rebuild the library.

But Tamimi -- who disclosed the mosque's holdings to a Boston Globe reporter yesterday and allowed a Globe translator to inspect the holdings -- smiled as he lifted a book with his parchment-colored fingers and insisted that all was not lost.

The books cannot be authenticated until US and Iraqi officials inspect them; the mosque's leaders plan to extend an invitation soon, once looting has entirely subsided.

The library was believed to contain about 2 million works, including some from the Abbasid Empire of 750 to 1250 AD that stretched from Portugal to Pakistan. Copies of most of the books published in Iraq were said to be in the library.

What is certain is that many tens of thousands of books are located here, in a variety of languages, ranging from the myths of Mesopotamia and Iraqi war chronologies to scientific papers by university students written decades ago.

Columns of sealed boxes of computer printers and photocopiers are in another corner, belonging to the library's staff, Tamimi said. He insisted that none of the books or equipment had once been stolen; some Iraqi looters have been turning over goods to mosques in recent weeks.

''We have about 30 percent of the library holdings, and another 60 percent are hidden [at the library] and elsewhere,'' said the sheik's brother, Mahmoud al-Tamimi. ''We brought them all here to protect our past from thieves.''

What happened last month, the brothers and library workers said yesterday, was essentially a preemptive rescue operation.

Librarians say that as American troops pressed into Baghdad April 9, they pleaded with soldiers to protect the site from looters and Kuwaiti arsonists. They said the Kuwaitis were bent on revenge for the 1990-91 invasion and war. But the troops were involved with the business of the day, toppling Saddam Hussein's regime.

The library staff then turned to mosques, Mahmoud Tamimi said, and came to him. Tamimi and his family began working with Hawza -- Shi'ite leaders who loosely coordinate city and regional religious affairs -- to recruit volunteers to protect the library.

On April 10, teams of men began moving library shelves at random into trucks belonging to neighbors of Tamimi's mosque 8 miles away. ''No one tried to stop us,'' Tamimi said.

The work continued for four days, until the arsonists appeared. Other books and artifacts were hidden elsewhere on site, and library workers believe that at least some of those items survived the fire and looting.

Grim-faced Hawza members are now posted around the clock at the library, where the headless body of a statue of Hussein lies in the front courtyard. (The head is rumored to be in an office inside.) Yesterday, a reporter's press pass was not acceptable for passage by three men at the gate, which had been wrapped in wires and padlocked.

''Come back at 2 o'clock Wednesday when the man with the key arrives,'' said one guard.

Another, Hamid Kharban, said he was proud to watch over the library because ''Iraqis have a very close relationship with books.''

''I know the value of books, that's why I'm protecting them,'' Kharban said. ''They are beyond value. Priceless.''

SHOOT LOOTERS ON SIGHT?

2003-05-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Shoot looters on sight? And this is how they hope to win the trust of the Iraqi people? The new American administrator, Paul Bremer, is off to audacious start, from the New York Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 13 — United States military forces in Iraq will have the authority to shoot looters on sight under a tough new security setup that will include hiring more police officers and banning ranking members of the Baath Party from public service, American officials said today.

The far more muscular approach to bringing order to postwar Iraq was described by the new American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, at a meeting of senior staff members today, the officials said. On Wednesday, Mr. Bremer is expected to meet with the leaders of Iraqi political groups that are seeking to form an interim government by the end of the month. "He made it very clear that he is now in charge," said an official who attended the meeting today. "I think you are going to see a change in the rules of engagement within a few days to get the situation under control."

Asked what this meant, the official replied, "They are going to start shooting a few looters so that the word gets around" that assaults on property, the hijacking of automobiles and violent crimes will be dealt with using deadly force.

How Iraqis will be informed of the new rules is not clear. American officials in Iraq have access to United States-financed radio stations, which could broadcast the changes.

A tougher approach over all appears to be at the core of Mr. Bremer's mandate from President Bush to save the victory in Iraq from a descent into anarchy, a possibility feared by some Iraqi political leaders if steps are not taken quickly to check violence and lawlessness.

But imposing measures that call for the possible killing of young, unemployed or desperate Iraqis for looting appears to carry a certain level of risk because of the volatile sentiments in the streets here. Gas lines snake through neighborhoods, garbage piles up, and the increasing heat frequently provides combustion for short tempers, which are not uncommonly directed at the American presence here.

Mr. Bremer did not spell out to senior members of the American and British reconstruction team whether his authority would supersede that of Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the land forces commander in the country.

But in tackling the security problem, Mr. Bremer will confront the need for a police force, and the difficulty of building a credible one on the wreckage of Saddam Hussein's hated security establishment.

The officials said Mr. Bremer told his staff that his urgent priority was to rebuild a police force, especially in Baghdad, so it could become visible and available "on the streets."

Another tough measure that the officials said Mr. Bremer was eager to make public is a decree on de-Baathification, the process of weeding out senior members of Mr. Hussein's political establishment to ensure that the totalitarian principles on which the Baath Party ruled are not perpetuated.

American officials said the decree on the Baath Party will prohibit its officials above certain ranks from serving in future governments. Rehabilitation procedures will be created for some high-ranking officials, but they will still be excluded from government service, the officials said.

Mr. Bremer appeared before the senior staff of the reconstruction administration with Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who has been in charge of the rebuilding mission under military command. Administration officials say General Garner will leave his post after a few weeks.

Today, according to people who attended the closed meeting, Mr. Bremer praised General Garner's performance with words that were greeted with sustained applause.

Nonetheless, questions linger about the Bush administration's decision to replace General Garner and abruptly call home one of his top assistants, Barbara K. Bodine.

General Garner and Ms. Bodine, one of the most experienced Iraq specialists on his staff, were unable to decide on how to create any new authority in Baghdad, and clashed as personalities, officials said. "It was not a good fit," one commented today.

Mr. Bremer made no public appearance today, but he is scheduled to meet with Iraqi leaders on Wednesday, some of whom have misgivings about whether he will change the course that General Garner had set toward quickly forming an interim government of Iraqis and turning over substantial power to it.

The wisdom of a speedy turnover was questioned today by some officials, who noted the acute crisis over crime and security in the capital.

Other countries, meanwhile, declared themselves willing to join in the effort to remake Iraq.

Romanian officials said they would send about 500 soldiers to help police Iraq. The foreign minister, Mircea Geoana, told reporters today that Romania would prefer to act under a United Nations resolution.

"The idea is for Romania to send a contingent of a few hundred, most likely under British command," Mr. Geoana said in Bucharest.

Meanwhile in Geneva today, the World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, said the bank would send a team to assess reconstruction needs in Iraq as soon as security permitted, another sign that the lack of security is delaying the first important steps toward recovery.

In central Iraq today, a prominent Shiite cleric said that redressing the Shiites' long exclusion from political power was necessary.

But the cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, also said there was no single demand for a new political system from Shiites, who are a majority in Iraq.

"They have divergent views and that's what democracy is all about," Ayatollah Hakim said.

The ayatollah returned to his hometown of Najaf on Monday after years in exile in Iran as the leader of the opposition Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. He has already met resistance from one group of clerics, led by Sheik Moktada al-Sadr, who have promoted themselves as the representative of long-suppressed Shiites.

Ayatollah Hakim, at a news conference, shrugged off questions about Sheik Sadr, saying he would not comment on the rivalry. "I don't talk about these people," he said.

He was also elusive on the subject of the Badr Brigade, his armed militia that was financed by Iran, saying only that it would switch to providing security in Iraq. Asked if the group would be disarmed, as an anti-Iran militia in Iraq will be, Ayatollah Hakim said, "Security means they should carry weapons."

Security in Najaf, as in other Iraqi cities, has become a major worry for residents, who have to ward off looters and other criminals with neighborhood committees in the absence of working police forces.

But Ayatollah Hakim refused to say whether American forces had granted the Badr Brigade the job of policing Najaf, which his now administered by a self-appointed mayor who is a retired Iraqi military officer.

He also said he did not sanction the use of force to resist the American occupation of Iraq, but would resist it politically.

The ayatollah and his movement have, however, been part of the Iraqi National Congress, which has been cooperating with the United States for several years as an outside opposition to Saddam Hussein.

WAR CASUALTIES FOR THE LAST 10 DAYS AS REPORTED BY CENTCOM

2003-05-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

I scrolled through news releases for the last 10 days at the Centcom site, and found these casualties; also, a report from ABC news:

Soldier dies in vehicular accident in Iraq, from ABC news; soldier dies in bunker explosion, from Centcom; two marines dies from their injuries in an accidental explosion, from Centcom;
soldiers exposed to unknown chemical, from Centcom; soldier shot and killed in Baghdad, from Centcom; Iraqi boy killed by army vehicle, from Centcom:

Soldier dies in vehicular accident, from ABC news:

A U.S. soldier with the 101st Airborne Division died and another was injured Wednesday after their vehicle overturned in northern Iraq, officers and witnesses at the scene said.

The soldier, who was not immediately identified, was part of a convoy driving on the road from the northern city of Mosul to Irbil, a city 50 miles to the east.

A recovery vehicle that was towing an army truck rolled over and crushed the cabin, killing the driver and injuring another soldier inside, an officer said. No other vehicles were involved in the accident.

The officer would not give his name.

There have been repeated reports in the weeks since the war of U.S. soldiers dying in traffic accidents in Iraq.

From Centcom:

MARINE KILLED IN BUNKER EXPLOSION

AL HILLAH, Iraq – A First Marine Expeditionary Force Marine died yesterday afternoon when he was trapped in a munitions bunker that caught fire and exploded.

The Marine was loading ammunition from an Iraqi bunker near Al Hillah onto a vehicle when the incident occurred.

The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.

The Marine’s name is being withheld pending next-of-kin notification.

Unused enemy ammunition and unexploded ordnance is being collected and destroyed by Marine Expeditionary Force units to make the country safer for the people of Iraq.

From Centcom:

TWO MARINES KILLED IN ACCIDENTAL EXPLOSION

CAMP CHESTY, IRAQ – Two First Marine Expeditionary Force Marines died May 12 of wounds inflicted when unexploded ordnance they were handling detonated.

The Marines received immediate medical attention, but died from their injuries. Their names are being withheld pending notification of their next of kin.

The incident is under investigation.

From Centcom:

SOLDIERS EXPOSED TO UNKNOWN CHEMICAL

TAJI, Iraq -- Fourth Infantry Division soldiers moving barrels in order to get to ammunition in a warehouse in the vicinity of Taji this afternoon were exposed to an unknown industrial chemical that leaked out of a 55-gallon drum.

All soldiers involved were decontaminated at the scene. Twenty-two soldiers were medically evacuated to the 21st Combat Support Hospital for evaluation and treatment, and four are being held for observation at the battalion aid station.

A FOX chemical detection vehicle dispatched to the site indicated the chemical was not a nerve, blister or blood chemical agent and confirmed it as an industrial toxin.

Further tests on the chemical are being conducted.

The names of the injured are being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin.

Soldier shot and killed in Baghdad, from Centcom:

CAMP VICTORY, IRAQ (MAY 8, 2003) - One V Corps soldier was killed in a shooting incident in Baghdad today.The soldier was killed when he was approached and shot by an unknown attacker with a pistol in east Baghdad at approximately 1:00 pm. The soldier was directing traffic at the time of the incident. The assailant escaped after the attack and a search is underway. The unit has enlisted the support of the local populace in the search for the suspect.The identity of the deceased soldier is being witheld pending notification of next of kin.An investigation is underway into the shooting.

An Iraqi boy is killed by army vehicle, from Centcom:

Iraqi Boy Accidentally Struck and Killed by Coalition Vehicle

TIKRIT, Iraq – An eight-year-old Iraqi boy was accidentally struck and killed here by a High-Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) traveling as part of a military convoy at approximately 3:30 p.m. yesterday.

Coalition Forces express their condolences to the family of the victim in this unfortunate and tragic incident.

At the time of the accident, the child was with a group of Iraqi children lining the shoulder of a road to watch the convoy when he unexpectedly jumped in front of the vehicle to pick something up from the road. The driver of the HMMWV was unable to take evasive action due to oncoming traffic from a convoy headed in the opposite direction.

The soldiers stopped immediately and attempted to render first aid to the victim. The driver then commandeered another US military vehicle that had stopped to transport the injured child and his brother to the nearby U.S. field hospital, where the child subsequently died of his injuries.

Army Civil Affairs personnel met with the father of the deceased child at the site, who also witnessed the event, and observed the soldiers rendering first aid.

An investigation is underway into the incident.

Coalition Civil Affairs and Information Operations personnel continue to mount an aggressive education campaign to warn civilians about the dangers of crowding busy roadways.

WAR COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GEN. TOMMY FRANKS

2003-05-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

A war complaint was filed against Gen. Tommy Franks, http:from ABC news:

A left-wing candidate in Belgium's parliamentary elections lodged a war crimes complaint Wednesday against U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of American forces in Iraq.

Lawyer Jan Fermon presented the complaint against Franks and a Marine officer he identified as Col. Brian P. McCoy to Belgium's federal prosecutors' office despite recent changes in the country's war crimes law to prevent such charges against Americans.

Fermon said he was representing 16 Iraqi civilians injured or bereaved by U.S. attacks, though he gave few details.

"This is not a symbolic action; my clients want an independent inquiry into what happened," Fermon told reporters as he arrived at the prosecutors' office. Fermon is running in Sunday's elections for the small, far-left Resist group.

Fermon said the accusations against Franks focused on the bombing of civilian areas, indiscriminate shooting by U.S. troops when they entered Baghdad and the failure to stop looting. He charged McCoy with ordering troops to fire on ambulances.

The case has provoked anger from Washington. America's most senior military officer suggested the complaint and earlier charges against other U.S. officials could jeopardize Belgium's role as a host for NATO and European Union meetings.

"It's looked upon by the U.S. government as a very, very serious situation," Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday on a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels. "It ... clearly could have a huge impact on where we gather."

To head off such complaints, the government last month rushed through changes to the laws, which were introduced in the early 1990s to authorize Belgian courts to try genocide and other war crimes wherever they occurred.

Legal experts said the case against Franks and McCoy would be a first test for the revised law, and predicted it would be thrown out by the prosecutors' office.

"This could be just a spectacular way of catching attention in the media," said Prof. Jan Wouters, director of the Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven.

The war crimes laws were first used to target suspects in Rwanda's 1994 genocide who fled to Belgium, the former colonial ruler of the central African nation.

Since then, complaints have been brought against a string of world leaders including Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein, although none has gone to trial.

The Belgian parliament revised the law last month after complaints were filed against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, former President Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Under the new amendments, Belgian courts should refer foreigners facing war crimes charges to their own countries if they are democracies with a record of fairness in justice.

After studying the complaint, prosecutors will decide whether to order an investigation into the charges.

HUNT FOR WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION SCALED BACK

2003-05-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

The Cabal have to be getting nervous about not finding any wmd's, and one wonders if this inner Pentagon sanctum will survive, as the US scales back its hunt for wmd's, from the Guardian Unlimited:

The US military task force hunting for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq is to leave within a month, having found no trace of any illegal weapons, according to a report yesterday.
Troops with the 75th Exploitation Task Force, which has led the search for Saddam Hussein's banned weapons programme over the past seven weeks, say they are increasingly frustrated with their failure to find any banned weapons, the Washington Post said.

The news came as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, told reporters at Camp as-Sayliyah in Qatar that banned weapons may still be in the hands of Iraqi republican guard units.

The US authorities "are asking ourselves" whether that danger still existed, Gen Myers said. "We try to interrogate [prisoners] with that in mind."

Colonel Richard McPhee, who will conclude the 75th Task Force's operations in June, told the Washington Post that intelligence reports before the war showed Saddam had given "release authority" for chemical weapons to be used.

"There had to have been something to use - and we haven't found it," he said. "Books will be written on that in the intelligence community for a long time. My unit has not found chemical weapons. That's a fact."

Another, larger US force - the Iraq Survey Group - will be sent out to continue the search for weapons, but it will include fewer specialists, the paper said. Coalition officials, including George Bush himself, have said recently that the work of inspecting sites had only just begun.

Of a US central command list of 19 top weapons sites, all but two have been searched already. Another 45 sites searched so far from a list of 68 thought to contain some evidence of banned weapons have also yielded nothing.

"We came to bear country, we came loaded for bear, and we found out the bear wasn't here," an officer with the US defence intelligence agency was quoted as saying.

BG, BRITISH ENERGY COMPANY, WON'T INVEST IN IRAQ

2003-05-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

BG, a leading British energy company, says it will refuse to invest in Iraq until control of oil there is handed over to the Iraqi people, from the Guardian Unlimited:

BG, one of Britain's leading energy companies, yesterday called on the British government to hand over control of Iraq's oil to its own people as soon as possible and indicated it would not invest there until this happened.
Frank Chapman, chief executive of the former British Gas company, said Iraq had "very able people", adding: "They need to control their own destiny."

Mr Chapman previously worked in Iraq as an executive with Shell and was in no doubt that the most knowledgeable people about hydrocarbons - which he described as the lifeblood of the economy - are locals.

He would consider Iraq for future operations but said he would not invest there until the situation had "normalised".

Asked whether that could come about only when the American and British forces handed over power to the United Nations, Mr Chapman said: "I am hopeful ... [the Iraqis will become] masters of their own destiny and [I] would be pleased to work with them on any opportunities they have there."

Iraqis should decide on issues such as how contracts were let and exploration rights handed over, argued BG, which has just signed a new gas agreement with neighbouring Iran.

A number of oil executives have made clear they remain fearful of investing in a post-Saddam Iraq until the legal status of those controlling the industry is ascertained.

But Mr Chapman has gone further - seemingly criticising the decision by Washington and London to retain their grip on the country and its oil sector, which holds the second biggest reserves in the world, behind Saudi Arabia.

BG has become an increasingly important player in the region with schemes in Egypt and drilling rights offshore from the Palestinian territory.

LOOTING ON NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAQ WORRIES UN

2003-05-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

Unfucking believable that this looting would be occuring unchecked, and has resulted in the chances of someone aquiring a dirty bomb, when our "mission" in Iraq was to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. Read for yourself and be outraged, from the Guardian Unlimited:

"United Nations nuclear inspectors, barred from Iraq by Washington, are increasingly worried that the widespread looting and ransacking of Iraq's nuclear facilities may result in terrorists building a radioactive "dirty bomb".
The inspectors' concerns are shared internationally and the British government has report edly offered to raise the matter with Washington to try to get agreement on a return of the UN nuclear inspectors to Iraq.

The main worry revolves around the fate of at least 200 radioactive isotopes which were stored at the sprawling al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex, 15 miles south of Baghdad. It has seen widespread looting, and reports from Baghdad speak of locals making off with barrels of raw uranium and the isotopes which are meant for medical or industrial use.

"If this happened anywhere else there would be national outrage and it would be the highest priority," said a senior source at the UN nuclear watchdog, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.

"The radioactive sources, some very potent ones, could get on to the black market and into the hands of terrorists planning dirty-bomb attacks," said Melissa Fleming, an IAEA spokeswoman.

The IAEA chief, Mohammed El Baradei, has appealed twice to the US in the past month to be allowed to resume inspections of the Iraqi nuclear sites. The requests have gone unanswered, although the IAEA has forwarded details of suspect nuclear sites to the US.

On Monday, Dr El Baradei raised the problem in London with the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who is said to have been "supportive and sympathetic".

"The Brits are saying they agree with us, that something needs to be done and that they will speak to the Americans," said the IAEA source.

In recent sessions in Geneva on preparations for a review of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in 2005, several delegates also attacked US security failures at al-Tuwaitha.

Experts are muttering that the US, as the occupying power in Iraq, is now technically in breach of the non-proliferation treaty. There is a fear that the occupation, ostensibly to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, could result in more such weapons being created.

Before the war there were 1,000 or more such devices in Iraq, at least 200 of them stored at a site known as Location C in al-Tuwaitha. It is not clear how many are missing, but IAEA officials have seen footage showing looters with casings containing isotopes.

Mark Gvozdecky, the chief IAEA spokesman, said: "If this was happening anywhere else in the world _ we would insist on an immediate inspection. It has been more than a month since the initial reports of looting, more than a month since US forces took control."

But UN inspectors are pessimistic about being allowed back, and note that the Anglo-American UN resolution on Iraq being negotiated in New York has no provision for a resumption of UN inspections."

PROTESTS REMOVE BAATHISTS; LOOTING IN BAGHDAD CONTINUES

2003-05-14T06:43:00.000-07:00

Baathists are being removed from power through protest, and the looting continues, all subjects dealt with in this Guardian Unlimited article:

Frustrated Iraqis are beginning to force US officers to remove senior Ba'ath party figures who have tried to return to power.
The American army has sacked the police chief it was working with, because he was accused of being a senior Ba'athist and running his own mafia in the force.

Major-General Hamid Uthman, who headed the police under Saddam Hussein, is the second to have tried to lead the force since the war ended.

Major-General Zuhair al-Noami, who had been a deputy chief of police, resigned last week amid similar criticism.

On Sunday, protests by dozens of doctors forced the resignation of Ali Shnan al-Janabi, the newly appointed health minister, who had also been a senior party member.

Their removal offers the Iraqis their first taste of the power of public protest. The Pentagon-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC) has tried to capitalise on it by insisting on a "de-Ba'athification", and the exclusion of 30,000 senior party members.

Entifadh Qaribar, a deputy of the INC leader, Ahmad Chalabi, said: "I am worried to see some Ba'athists coming back to power. We are encouraging Iraqis to refuse."

The dismissals are a serious setback to the coalition's office for reconstruction and humanitarian assistance (Orha), which took the decision to work with senior members of Saddam Hussein's regime. But it says it was impossible to weed out unwanted Ba'ath party officials before asking Iraqi civil servants to return to work.

"Now we are slowly going through them and it is basically the Iraqis who are telling us which of them are good and which of them are bad," a spokesman said.

Orha and the US forces are still struggling to complete even the most basic restoration of order in the capital.

Ministries are still ablaze, looters freely steal from buildings under the gaze of US soldiers and there is shooting in the streets every night.

The police academy is a shambles. Once a day, just before dark, a handful of Iraqi police officers armed only with pistols go on joint patrol with US military police.

They admit that it has little effect. "The trouble starts after dark, what's the point of going out at 6pm?" an Iraqi police colonel said. "I've told the Americans that if they want to regulate everything here they could do it in just 24 hours.

"Maybe they are doing their best, but they don't know the area and they don't know we must have more checkpoints and collect all the weapons."

Many of the 50,000 members of the pre-war force have not returned to work and some speak openly of their fear of being attacked by people who associate them with Saddam's regime.

In addition, more and more Iraqis are buying guns.

Orha said: "We have got to retrain the Iraqi police force from scratch to police this place in a civil manner. This is an enormous job."

THE LOOTING OF A PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

2003-05-12T17:45:00.000-07:00

The New York Times article tells the story of the looting of the psychiatric hospital, and the abuse and killing of its patients, in Baghdad:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 11 — The only mental patient left behind at the high security ward of Al Rashad state hospital is a killer named Ali Sabah, a former math and science teacher with jet black hair and dark, searching eyes.

He is off his medications, the door to the ward is wide open and shards of glass lie everywhere as potential weapons. Yet on a recent day he was calm until this reporter made a few notes. "Why is he writing my name down?" he asked.

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He stalks the looted corridors inside the 15-foot-high wall that once provided maximum security to restrain 120 patients who were committed for murder and rape while in the throes of mental disorder.

"I hate the world and the world hates me," he replied when asked why he stayed while the others ran. Then he added, "I don't want the monkey to see me and I don't want to see the monkey."

In another part of the hospital, the six women among the patients who were raped by looters are receiving special attention from the nursing staff. Some spend their days curled under blankets, others have ventured out to squat in the light where there are no chairs, but where cigarettes can be smoked. The nurses whisper that one rape victim is pregnant.

For the staff, there is also the sad loss of Hanna Fatah, who had been a patient here for 30 of her 70 years.

"When the marines opened the gates, Hanna wanted to leave," said Sultan A. Sultan, her psychiatrist. She had no ability to judge the danger and while wandering somewhere near the gate, she was killed by a bullet that struck her forehead.

One of the tragedies of the war — a preventable tragedy in the view of many doctors and nurses — occurred here. Iraq's only hospital providing long-term care for chronic schizophrenia and other serious disorders, Al Rashad was all but destroyed.

When American marines clashed with Saddam Hussein's irregulars trying to block their advance into Baghdad, the marines came through the gates here and knocked down the walls with their tanks. They set up a command post in the nursing school.

Waves of looters came in with them, staff members said.

One of the oldest health institutions in Iraq, Al Rashad has long been designated a civilian hospital. The director, Amir Abou Heelo, told the Marine commander on April 8 that he was entering a psychiatric facility, staff doctors said in interviews. But the protest did little good.

"I am disappointed," said Dr. Raghad Sursan, a psychiatrist. "I am mad, and if there is a word that is bigger than mad, I am that, because the marines were there and could have done something to stop it."

The looters stripped everything once, then waited a week for repairs to be made to doors and windows and came back and stripped the place again, they said.

Of the more than 1,400 Iraqis institutionalized here at the beginning of the year, 300 remain. The staff has been able to cope only because the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, having adopted this facility three years ago, raced emergency food and medical supplies here as Baghdad was falling.

The complaint of the Iraqi psychiatric staff is that the marines stood by as looters carried away every bed, basin, cooker, air-conditioner, piece of furniture or thing of value.

The marines broke the door down on the maximum security wing, and in no time the patients were gone, untethered from the antipsychotic drugs that stabilized many of them.

One doctor said he was told by a Marine officer that the officer was there to "liberate and then leave."

"This is the Iraqi version of de-institutionalization," said Dr. Sursan, alluding to the mass de-institutionalization of mental patients in the United States during the 1970's.

The Red Cross spent $1.5 million over the last three years bringing the facility up almost to Western standards for compassionate care to the mentally ill, said Olaf Rosset, the Norwegian physician who has overseen the project from the beginning. Ghastly and putrid wards were modernized, open sewers were closed, kitchens were rebuilt and, Dr. Rosset said, the warehousing of patients gave way to a much more humane approach of outdoor activities, picnics, poetry and art contests.

Every day for three weeks after the marines pulled out, Dr. Rosset asked United States military commanders to send troops to provide security. Looters still were roaming the grounds, and a Shiite religious organization based at nearby mosques moved in to provide some security. But looting continued and the Shiite security men began selling the gasoline from the bulk storage tanks at the hospital.

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The Red Cross sent a team out to replace windows and doors, and by April 19, most buildings were sealed once again.

"Then on April 19, it was looted again," Dr. Rosset said, by people who broke in. So he pressed his requests to the Americans to send some kind of protective force.

Last week, help finally arrived. Capt. Stacey Corn of Fort Polk, La., rolled in with a detachment from Troop E, Second Squadron, Second Armored Cavalry Regiment. In what Dr. Rosset described as well-stated diplomatic language, Captain Corn told the Shiite militia, "We are here to release you from your duties and you are now free to assist others."

The American soldiers now guarding the facility are generally aware that disaster struck here. They have heard the complaints.

Lt. Nick Griffiths, a New Yorker who was in charge of the security detail this weekend, said, "We started 24-hour guarding of this facility a few days ago because we had identified it as a trouble spot."

"We know they have had problems with looting, vandalism, threats from people and stealing," Lieutenant Griffiths added, indicating that whatever happened here when the marines came through was not as important to him as the here and now.

"This is a hospital, and so it has a high priority for us," he said.

For some, however, the damage is done. Dr. Rosset said it would take three years to replace what was destroyed here.

Meanwhile, a grim scene unfolds daily in the front office. There, three psychiatrists meet with desperate Iraqis who walk in to plead for help in handling disturbed family members who have returned home after they escaped from here.

Ahmed Shehab stood in front of them on Saturday to say that Samir Hamid, 40, had escaped from the maximum security ward and was threatening to kill his sister, who is Mr. Shehab's wife.

"He is a paranoid schizophrenic and is so dangerous, especially to his sister," Dr. Sultan said. "He thinks that she destroyed him and so he went home to kill her. He has a knife."

The doctors told Mr. Shehab they were powerless to act. There is no government, no law to commit dangerous mental patients, no police force to call for help, and no hospital in which to treat the mentally ill.

Dr. Sultan is worried. He thinks there are quite a few human time bombs out in the community. One is a 60-year-old man who more than 30 years ago killed two of his own small children. One son survived and today is in his 30's, living in Baghdad with his family. For 30 years, the father told his doctor that all he wanted was to escape so he could kill the remaining son.

Now the man is out there somewhere, the doctors say. They have notified the son. It was all they could do."

CHAOS IN BAGHDAD

2003-05-12T17:19:00.000-07:00

This article from the New York Times describes in detail the chaos in Baghdad right now, and why the changing of the guard:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 11 — Bush administration officials confirmed today that Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who is the top civil administrator in Iraq, would leave here within a week or two and that other senior officials here will also be replaced.

American officials said Barbara K. Bodine, who has been in charge of reconstruction for the Baghdad region, was abruptly given notice and will be leaving within the next day or two. Ms. Bodine, a former ambassador to Yemen, will take a senior post at the State Department, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times reported today in articles describing the changes.

Others expected to leave soon include Margaret Tutwiler, who had been in charge of overall communications under General Garner; Tim Carney, a former ambassador who had been overseeing Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals; David Dunford, a senior Foreign Service specialist on the Middle East, and John Limbert, the ambassador to Mauritania.

The dramatic overhaul is part of a move ordered by President Bush that began with the appointment last week of L. Paul Bremer III, a counterterrorism veteran at the State Department, as the new top administrator in charge of rebuilding Iraq.

[Mr. Bremer arrived in Basra on Monday with Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Associated Press reported.

"It's a wonderful challenge to help the Iraqi people basically reclaim their country from a despotic regime," Mr. Bremer said in a tarmac interview minutes after his plane landed.]

Officials said the impetus for the overhaul stems in part from urgent warnings that the escalating violence and a breakdown of civil order are already paralyzing the effort to rebuild Iraq.

"Unless we do something in the near future, it is likely to blow up in our face," one official said.

Today, black smoke billowed over Baghdad's skyline as looters set fire to the city's former telephone communications center, apparently as a distraction for others who tried to steal cars nearby.

On the other side of the city, hundreds of looters, who now range through the city every day, poured into a former palace of Saddam Hussein after American military units decided to vacate it.

Baghdad is once again becoming a city of almost hourly eruptions of gunfire. Criminals are shooting at other criminals, officials said. Families are settling scores, and some Iraqis are just taking potshots at American forces.

From the outset, the task of quickly re-establishing order and civil administration in Iraq was far more daunting that American officials had planned for, they now acknowledge. A month into reconstruction, there is still no functioning police force in Baghdad.

But colleagues of Ms. Bodine said she recognized many of the problems early on and clashed repeatedly with military commanders over drastic steps she thought were needed to restore order.

"They recognized that public order had broken down in a far more serious way than they had expected," one official said of General Garner's team. As for Ms. Bodine, "Of course it was not her fault," one colleague said. "If you keep on pointing out to people the obvious, that doesn't make you very popular."

One example given was Ms. Bodine's early insistence on hiring at least 50 top-flight interpreters for General Garner's staff so they could interact and communicate effortlessly with Iraqis. But even now language support remains a sore point, an official said.

Since the onset of the war in March, security has been the chief obstacle to General Garner's mission, officials said. His teams of administrators have had to live in isolation behind razor wire and machine-gun positions at Mr. Hussein's Republican Palace.

Ms. Tutwiler, a veteran of public relations consulting since her days with former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, refused to meet with the news media here.

Iraqis could not easily enter the palace compound to meet with the Americans. The upshot was that security concerns, which prevented General Garner from arriving in Iraq as quickly as he wanted, also kept him on the sidelines as the looting and shooting in Baghdad continued.

"The question was who was in charge." one official said. Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the commander of land troops for the allies, issued an edict in late April saying that his military force was the ultimate authority in the country."

In Washington, an administration official said General Garner will leave in the next week or two after a transition with Mr. Bremer. "Garner has always said he'd stick around for the transition, then go," the official said.

Ms. Bodine's departure caught many officials by surprise, but it appeared to reflect new influence for Mr. Bremer, who is a counterterrorism expert and a protégé of Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state. One official said Mr. Bremer had long had misgivings about Ms. Bodine's appointment, although he added that it was not clear whether those misgivings stemmed from her tenure as ambassador to Yemen or from other issues.

"This was not the original plan," the official said, noting that the State Department had pressed hard for her appointment. "It was not something that was supposed to be a two-to-three-week gig."

In Washington as in Iraq, General Garner came under heavy criticism for being almost invisible to ordinary Iraqis. Administration officials said they hoped Mr. Bremer would project a more visible and accessible image, but still act within the bounds of "prudent security."

One possibility is that the Office of Humanitarian and Reconstruction Assistance would move outside the heavily walled Republican Palace and into a place that is less regal, one official said.

One American official said American leaders badly needed to apply a more aggressive and systematic approach to rooting out violent street crime.

"Iraqis aren't seeing any action," the official said. "You need a 24-hour operations center that is taking in intelligence from Iraqis — the Iraqi police, of course, but also the Iraqi political parties and the Shia clerics, who have played an important role in law and order. Once you figure out who's doing what, you should hit those places hard, knock the doors down and arrest people."

Also today, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of United States forces in Iraq, delivered a radio message declaring that the Baath party of Mr. Hussein had been dissolved, and military officials said the self-appointed mayor of Baghdad had been released from two weeks in American custody.

Following the fall of Mr. Hussein's government, Muhammad Mohsen Zobeidi proclaimed himself mayor and set up committees to run the city under his direction.

He was arrested by American troops on April 27. At his release he issued a statement saying he was not in fact mayor and would cooperate with the American-led administration."

HALLIBURTON PAID $90 MILLION SO FAR

2003-05-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

The LA Times reports Halliburton has already been paid $90 million, with little of that money actually going into the Iraqi economy:

"BAGHDAD -- The Pentagon has paid nearly $90 million to a subsidiary of the well-connected Halliburton Co. to cater to the Americans who are working to rebuild Iraq, U.S. officials said — while the reconstruction effort has yet to show significant results for ordinary Iraqis.

The Defense Department gave Halliburton's KBR exclusive rights to the job — which has included fixing up an extravagant presidential palace being used by the Americans — under a broad U.S. Army logistics contract that pays the company a fee based on a percentage of everything it spends, according to Pentagon documents and Halliburton's corporate filings.

KBR, whose parent firm has had strong ties to Vice President Dick Cheney, has drawn scrutiny for an emergency oil contract in Iraq that is becoming increasingly lucrative.

Under a "task order" from the lesser-known logistics contract, the Defense Department has rung up KBR's multimillion-dollar bill — which is expected to nearly double — as the number of U.S. officials and Iraqi exiles working for the Pentagon-created reconstruction agency balloons. In blocks-long convoys from Kuwait, the firm is hauling in everything from prefabricated offices, showers, generators and latrines the size of trailer homes to food and bottled water.

As supplies for the Americans continue to arrive by the ton, little of the millions KBR is spending have gone into the Iraqi economy that Washington has pledged to restore. KBR's logistics job gives it no direct role in the rebuilding of this shattered country; that falls to the Bush administration's ambitious $2.4-billion reconstruction program, which is being overseen by the State Department.

The company's most lucrative subcontracts are with trucking, catering and security companies based in neighboring Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, oil-rich nations with the best land routes into Iraq."

14th JOURNALIST DIES IN IRAQ

2003-05-11T16:49:00.000-07:00

More info on the crash of the Black Hawk helicoptor, a 14th death of a journalist in Iraq, and info on the Iranian terrorist organization in Iraq, from the Guardian Unlimited:

"A Black Hawk helicopter crashed into the Tigris river in northern Iraq yesterday, killing three US soldiers on board, the Pentagon confirmed. A fourth was injured.
The helicopter, from the army's 4th Infantry Division, apparently crashed after hitting a power line near Samarra, a town between Baghdad and Tikrit.

It was one of two sent to rescue an Iraqi child wounded in an explosion after ordnance went off outside Samarra, US military officials said. The helicopter carrying the child took off safely, but the other apparently snagged a wire.

The three deaths bring the number of US troops killed in the Iraq war to 145.

Not far from the site of the helicopter crash, a Boston Globe journalist, Elizabeth Neuffer, was killed in a car accident when the vehicle in which she was travelling hit a railing. Her translator, Waleed Khalifa Hassan Al-Dulami, also died.

Neuffer, who had reported extensively from Rwanda and Bosnia, was the author of The Key to My Neighbour's House, a book on war crimes in the two countries. She was the 14th journalist to die since the Iraq conflict began."

THE CABAL AND THE SEARCH FOR WMD

2003-05-11T16:43:00.000-07:00

This article from the Guardian Unlimited highlights false information spread concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the Cabal, an intelligence group formed within the Pentagon by Rumsfeld to push for war with Iraq, and their failing search for wmds in Iraq:

"The search is especially vital for The Cabal. In the brave new world of post-11 September America, this tight group of analysts deep in the heart of the Pentagon has been the driving force behind the war in Iraq. Numbering no more than a dozen, The Cabal is part of the Office of Special Plans, a new intelligence agency which has taken on the CIA and won. Where the CIA dithered over Iraq, the OSP pressed on. Where the CIA doubted, the OSP was firm. It fought a battle royal over Iraq and George Bush came down on its side.

The OSP is the brainchild of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who set it up after the 2001 terrorist attacks. It was tasked with going over old ground on Iraq and showing that the CIA had overlooked the threat posed. But its rise has caused massive ructions in the normally secretive world of intelligence gathering.

The OSP reports directly to Paul Wolfowitz, a leading hawk in the administration. They bypassed the CIA and the Pentagon's own Defence Intelligence Agency when it came to whispering in the President's ear. They argued a forceful case for war against Saddam before his weapons programmes came to fruition. More moderate voices in the CIA and DIA were drowned out. The result has been a flurry of leaks to the US press. One CIA official described The Cabal's members as 'crazed', on a 'mission from God'.

But for the moment The Cabal and Rumsfeld's Pentagon have won and Powell's doveish State Department has lost. Tensions between the two are now in the open.

'Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence agency because he didn't like the intelligence he was getting,' said Larry Korb, director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'He doesn't like Powell's approach, a typical diplomat, too cautious.'

Former CIA officials are caustic about the OSP. Unreliable and politically motivated, they say it has undermined decades of work by the CIA's trained spies and ignored the truth when it has contradicted its world view.

'Their methods are vicious,' said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counter-terrorism. 'The politicisation of intelligence is pandemic, and deliberate disinformation is being promoted. They choose the worst-case scenario on everything and so much of the information is fallacious.' But Cannistraro is retired. His attacks will not bother The Cabal, firmly 'in the loop' of Washington's movers and shakers. Yet, even among them, continued failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a growing fear. The fallout from the war could bring them down."

A DANE BLASTS THE BLUEPRINT FOR A POSTWAR IRAQ

2003-05-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

A Dane blasts the blueprint for postwar Iraq as a grab for oil, Rumsfeld says a year may not be long enough, and Iraqis speak out for home control of oil, in this Guardian Unlimited report on the U.S. proposal to be the occupying power:

"America and Britain yesterday laid out their blueprint for postwar Iraq in a draft resolution to the United Nations security council, naming themselves as "occupying powers" and giving them control of the country's oil revenues.
The proposal, which would relegate the UN to an advisory role, alongside the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, while lifting economic sanctions, was expected to pass despite serious concerns from some permanent members.

The resolution will probably face amendments from France and Russia, who have favoured suspending the sanctions but advocate some control being vested in the UN until an Iraqi government is established.

The French president, Jacques Chirac, yesterday intimated that there was room for negotiation: "I can confirm to you that France's will [is] to undertake discussions on the future of this country in an open and constructive spirit."

Russia, which has considerable economic interests at stake, was less emollient. Before yesterday's meeting, Russian ambassador Sergei Lavrov warned that he would pose "lots of questions" to US ambassador John Negroponte.

In a further sign of the confusion over the US role in Iraq, the defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that a one-year timeline attached to the presence of US and British forces in Iraq was probably "just a review period" in the overall postwar plan. "Anyone who thinks they know how long it's going to take is fooling themselves," Mr Rumsfeld said. "It's not knowable."

Outside the UN, the proposals provoked a vociferous response from the European Union's commissioner for aid and development, Poul Nielsen, who accused America of seeking to seize control of Iraq's vast oil wealth.

Mr Nielson, a Dane who has just returned from a three-day fact-finding mission to Iraq said the US was "on its way to becoming a member of Opec", the Middle Eastern oil cartel.

"They will appropriate the oil," he told the Danish public service DR radio station. "It is very difficult to see how this would make sense in any other way.

"The unwillingness to give the UN a genuine, legal well-defined role, also in the broader context of rebuilding Iraq after Saddam ... speaks a language that is quite clear."

Eager to avoid another bitter transatlantic diplomatic row, the commission headquarters issued a swift rebuttal, saying Mr Nielson's views did not "reflect the opinion of the commission as a whole".

Iraqis also responded frostily to the plans, praising the lifting of sanctions but calling for the UN or an Iraqi interim government to take charge of the nation's oil wealth.

"It is a good initiative that should have taken place a long time ago," said Ragheb Naaman, 43, who works for Iraq's military industrialisation commission in charge of developing weapons. "But we don't accept that the revenues be controlled by the United States and Britain."

The text, which two senior council diplomats called "hard" and "in your face", defines the US and Britain as "occupying powers" - a legal designation apparently aimed at reassuring council members that America will adhere to its obligations under international law. A former state and defence department official told the Wall Street Journal that occupying power status meant the US cannot give all reconstruction contracts to American companies and "it can't choose the political leadership of the country".

LEADERSHIP SHAKE-UP IN IRAQ

2003-05-11T16:27:00.000-07:00

Is it any wonder that things haven't moved more quickly to helping the people of Iraq when you have Barbara Bodine, now "ex-mayor" of Iraq, saying idiotic things like "a lot of what was dysfunctional about Baghdad predates the war." Has she visited the hospitals in Baghdad lately and seen the dying and wounded without adequate medical treatment? Anyway, this idiot is out, and others are in, as per this BBC article:

"Ms Bodine, 54, who had served in the US embassy in Baghdad in the 1980s, told the Washington Post that "a lot of what was dysfunctional about Baghdad predates the war".

She also said that her reassignment, which came in a late-night call on a telephone that had been installed in her office only hours before, was a "natural break".

"We've kind of cobbled the machinery together," she told the newspaper. "Now it's time to hand off to somebody who can take it from here to the political transformation."

The BBC's Steve Kingstone in Washington says her removal may heighten the perception that the Bush administration did not fully think through its plans for post-war Iraq.

The US Government, he says, has become acutely sensitive in recent days to suggestions that its efforts have been slugging and of limited impact."

POPULAR SHIA LEADER RETURNS TO BASRA

2003-05-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, leader of a popular Shia opposition group, returned from exile in Iran, and spoke to a huge crowd in Basra, according to this BBC report:

"The leader of Iraq's best-known Shia opposition group has told thousands of supporters that Iraqis would not accept a government imposed by foreigners.

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim was addressing a crowd in the southern city of Basra, after returning from exile in Iran on Saturday.

The 63-year-old cleric was a fierce opponent of Saddam Hussein throughout his 23 years of exile - and many Shias consider him their most important leader.

His movements in Iraq are likely to be closely watched by United States and British officials, who are concerned that he might push for an Islamic state in Iraq.

We want an independent government... We refuse imposed government

The ayatollah - who heads the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) - has opposed the war against Saddam Hussein and condemned the presence of foreign troops in the country.

"We now have to know our own way to rebuild Iraq, and forget the past," he told a jubilant followers who had gathered in a stadium in Basra on Saturday.

"We Muslims have to live together... We have to help each other stand together against imperialism.

"We want an independent government. We refuse imposed government," Ayatollah Hakim went on.

MORE AMERICAN DEATHS IN IRAQ AND KUWAIT

2003-05-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

U.S. Central Command reports three marines were killed, and one injured in a UH060 helicoptor crash near Samarrah, Iraq. Also a report that one marine was killed in a vehicle accident in Kuwait:

"CAMP VICTORY, IRAQ -- Three 4th Infantry Division soldiers died and one was injured May 9 when a UH-60 helicopter crashed into the Tigris River the vicinity of Samarrah, Iraq.

The crash occurred at approximately 8 p.m (12 p.m. EST), and was not a result of hostile action.

The wounded soldier was transported to a field hospital for treatment of his injuries.

The soldiers' names are being withheld pending next-of-kin notification.

The incident is under investigation."

"CAMP DOHA, Kuwait – A Marine assigned to the I Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in a vehicle accident in Kuwait May 9 at approximately 8 p.m.

The Marine was traveling in a pick-up truck when it collided with a Marine Corps heavy transport truck near Tactical Assembly Area Coyote in Kuwait.

The name is being withheld pending next-of-kin notification.

The accident is under investigation."

THE DYING HOSPITALS OF IRAQ

2003-05-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

The criminal negligence of Iraq's hospitals by the U.S. and the rest of the international community, continues. From the BBC:

"Like most things in Iraq the health service is getting worse.

I met Dr Ahmed trying to work out what to do with his latest gunshot victim.

"This is where the bullet went in," he pointed at the forehead. "And it came out here, through his jaw."

Doctors say senior managers stole drugs to sell on the black market... They intimidated staff, forcing them to administer out-of-date medicine

The man's right eye, what was left of it, was a bloodied congealed mess. He'd travelled for three hours in the family car to get here. There was no other hospital that could help him.

In a single hour, Dr Ahmed told me, he had seen 15 people come in with bullet injuries. Like the little boy, six-years-old, shot in the stomach. By a five-year-old who'd found a gun.

Guns have become a part of life since the fall of Saddam. There's no government to enforce the law, so people are arming themselves.

Every night at about 2330 I listen to the shots ringing out across the city. Anyone who says peace has come to Iraq has clearly not been here lately."

BBC CHARITABLE GROUP HELPING LOCAL MEDIA IN BASRA

2003-05-11T15:55:00.000-07:00

The World Service Trust, which is the charitable international development arm of the BBC, is in Basra to help develop local media there, according to this BBC report:

"The 112 staff of Basra TV and Radio have turned up every day to their temporary place of work - a football stadium where the salvaged remains of their TV station are stored. They have just received a $20 emergency payment as public servants.

"We are waiting for someone to tell us what to do," said their new chief Suleiman Hadi who was curiously elected as head by the remainder of the staff in a spontaneous outburst of democracy.

Their technical skills are good - many claimed to have trained in Japan and Europe and are eager to start work again - this time producing their own news and reports - not those controlled by Baghdad.

Prior to 1979 the station produced local programmes but a complex divide and rule management structure imposed from Baghdad meant that even though they all worked in the same building, journalists, technicians and management staff all reported to different heads in the capital.

Despite being public servants they have been at the receiving end of the bitter inequality of the regime. Abdul Kharim Khilallah was the head of production at TV Basra and earned $US3 a month.

A group of 30 local sheikhs, tribal leaders and businessmen met us at the house of Sheikh Mohammed Sobollah Al Saedi, head of the Sa'wad tribe - one of the largest in southern Iraq.

We discussed at length the potential for a local free media - "city stories produced by city people," said one.

"It must reflect our concerns - our culture and traditions," said another.

A sparkle of entrepreneurial activity emerged - "It could carry commercials," said a local businessman.

We discussed the problems of introducing balanced stories - and those which might express opinions contrary to their own.

These are huge steps in a country which has been deprived of the opportunity to express their opinions.

There is clearly no shortage of people wishing to make their voices heard - introducing confidence in the media to tell the truth and ensuring all views get an airing is the major challenge ahead.

The Trust is now developing a set of proposals to help Iraqis in Basra and Al-Amara re-establish local radio and TV programming.

It is seeking funding to provide small amounts of equipment to resume broadcasting on both TV and radio as soon as possible and to provide training in journalism, in management and in editorial independence over the next two years."

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH REPORT ON FOREIGN REFUGEES FLEEING IRAQ

2003-05-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a Human Rights Watch Report on the issue of harrassment and voilence directed towards foreigners living in Iraq, who are fleeing to Jordan. The report also covers their treatment in Jordan:

"Since the fall of the government of Saddam Hussein, refugees and other non-nationals living in Iraq have been subjected to harassment, violent attacks, and forced evictions from their homes. Small groups of Iraqi men typically perpetrated the attacks, usually warning those targeted to leave Iraq. Hundreds of foreigners, particularly Palestinians, Iranian Kurds, Sudanese, Somalis, among other nationalities, chose to flee as a result, feeling that their lives were at risk and that Iraq was no longer a safe place for them."

PREDICTIONS OF STARVATION THIS SUMMER

2003-05-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

Conflict over the appointment of a Saddam crony as the Health Minister, and his release of false information, the return of a Shia leader, and fear of the possible collapse of Iraq's agriculture industry, and warnings of possible starvation this summer, from the Guardian Unlimited:

Iraqi agriculture is on the brink of collapse, with fears that many of its 24.5 million people will go hungry this summer, according to a confidential report being studied by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.
A special assessment prepared by the UN agency's staff in Rome, which has been seen by The Observer, reveals a catastrophe in the making, with crops and poultry being especially hard hit.

Government warehouses that would have served as the main suppliers of seeds, fertilisers and pesticide sprays have been looted, particularly in the centre and south of the country.

Iraqi farmers should now be planting tomatoes and onions, potatoes, cucumbers, water melon, peppers, beans and squash. But without seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, that will be hard - a situation exacerbated by the collapse of the pumping stations that powered the irrigation schemes on which the vegetable crop depends...

"The warning came as America's efforts to get Iraq's Health Ministry up and running twisted into farce yesterday, when it emerged that the new Minister concerned was a Saddam crony.

Dr Ali Shnan Janabi, former number three in Saddam's infamously corrupt Ministry, was presented to an all-day conference of doctors. His appointment was greeted with disbelief and charges of corruption from many doctors.

Dr Hussein Harith, a senior registrar at the al-Mansour teaching hospital, said Dr Shnan was one of a 'group of senior Ministers who asked the directors of hospitals to report that they did not need drugs and medicines [supplied to Iraq under the oil-for-food programme], even though they were desperate for them.

There were happier scenes in Basra, where the 63-year-old leader of Iraq's biggest Shia group returned from exile yesterday. Supporters waved flags and chanted slogans when the convoy of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim crossed into Iraq from Iran, where he has led the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq since 1980.

Thousands lined the 12-mile road from the border to Basra, where up to 100,000 people packed a stadium to listen to him address them for the first time in 23 years.'

JAMES WOOLSEY, EX-CIA DIRECTOR, NOW PROFITING FROM SECURITY INVESTMENTS

2003-05-11T11:17:00.000-07:00

James Woolsey, ex-CIA Director and ranking member of the Defense Policy Board, is raking it in as director of Paladin Capital, which invests in companies involved in security from terrorist attacks since 9/11, according to the Guardian Unlimited:

Woolsey, one of the most high-profile hawks in the war against Iraq and a key member of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is a director of the Washington-based private equity firm Paladin Capital. The company was set up three months after the terrorist attacks on New York and sees the events and aftermath of September 11 as a business opportunity which 'offer[s] substantial promise for homeland security investment'.

The first priority of Paladin was 'to invest in companies with immediate solutions designed to prevent harmful attacks, defend against attacks, cope with the aftermath of attack or disaster and recover from terrorist attacks and other threats to homeland security'.

Paladin, which is expected to have raised $300 million from investors by the end of this year, calculates that in the next few years the US government will spend $60 billion on anti-terrorism that woul not have been spent before September 11, and that corporations will spend twice that amount to ensure their security and continuity in case of attack...

The hawks and their money

DICK CHENEY, Vice President

Cheney once ran oil industry giant Halliburton whose subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, has won lucrative contracts in post-Saddam Iraq. The Defence Department gave KBR exclusive rights to a $90m contract to cater for the Americans who are working on rebuilding Iraq. KBR also won a lucrative contract to repair Iraq's oilfields.

DONALD RUMSFELD, Defence Secretary

Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of European engineering giant ABB when it won a £125m contract for two light water reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the 'axis of evil'. Rumsfeld earnt $190,000 (£118,000) a year before he joined the Bush administration.

RICHARD PERLE

An influential member of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, Perle is managing partner of venture capital company Trireme, which invests in companies dealing in products of value to homeland security. It sent a letter to Saudi arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi arguing that fear of terrorism would boost demand in Europe, Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

GEORGE SHULTZ, ex-Secretary of State

Shultz is on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group, the largest contractor in the US and one of the favourites to land lucrative contracts in the rebuilding of Iraq. Shultz is chairman of the the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a fiercely pro-war group with close ties to the White House.

SHIA MULLAHS FILL VOID

2003-05-11T11:07:00.000-07:00

To fill a vacume from non-existent aid for the ailing Iraqi hospitals, Shia mullahs are filling the void, according to this Guardian Unlimited Article. There is also discussion that American private insurance companies, such asBlue Cross Blue Shield, are "waiting in the wings" to begin what some Iraqis characterize would be a disaster for the people of Iraq, private health insurance:

"Off the entrance courtyard is the office of Mullah Khadel Nadji, who is 'in charge of security and all supplies, so that Dr Gorea can concentrate on medicine'. Mullah Nadji, who wears the black turban to illustrate his direct descent from the Shia Caliph Ali, remains here 24 hours a day.

'We don't care about your government, or what the Americans want or do not want,' he says, with a smile. 'We have only the Koran and will rule according to its word. After all this time, there is still no order, there is no humanitarian aid and no government. If this continues, we shall become the government. It will be for us to get the people fed, cleaned and back to work.'

When looters converged on his hospital on 10 April, Gorea was one of only two doctors who remained - in a post he has held for 25 years. Along with his colleague, he went out to the gate and stood there, facing down the mob until help arrived from the mosque: 'armed,' he said, 'only with our white coats.'

Gorea's next visitors were two US tanks which blasted their way through the gates. 'I told them four things,' he said.

'One, this is not a military target and there are no terrorists here, although I would treat them if they were, just as I would treat American soldiers or anyone else. Two, please mend my gates. Three, you must pay for the damage, and four, next time you come, please knock before you enter.'

The Iraqi health system 'was a good one' recalls Gorea, until decay set in under the pincer effect of sanctions and the corrupt excesses of Saddam's last horrific decade in power. Doctors were well-trained and care at the point of delivery had been 'well above standard for this part of the world,' he said.

Now a privatised Americanisation of the system would punish the poor, and he points out - correctly, according to international medical organisations - how US insurance companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield are waiting in the wings, alongside construction companies, to forge a new Iraq.

'If the Americans introduce such a system,' said Nadji, 'our people will have no health system; and so we will become it. Our Sayeeds (senior Mullahs) will order the rich Shia to provide for the poor.'

Such a vacuum in Iraq would entrench the role of militant Islam, said Gorea, just as the Palestinian Hamas has made itself an indispensable force of social cohesion, by default of an alternative."

THE IMPORTANCE OF COUNTING CIVILIAN DEATHS IN THIS WAR

2003-05-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

Mark Engler, writing for TomPaine.commonsense, tells us the importance of civilian body counts in war:

"Since the invasion of Iraq has ended, a tone of vindication and bravado has seeped into the national mood. Television newscasters and the Department of Defense agree: America is delighted. Soldiers are giving high-fives. Those of us who opposed the president and his generals should be ashamed in the face of a brilliantly successful war.

There is one question, above others, that this prevailing self-satisfaction works to silence. Amidst the atmosphere of recrimination, few will risk asking, "What was the cost?"

On televisions overseas, the Marine blitz and Air Force bombs extracted a human price. While Donald Rumsfeld's talking head became the singular icon of war in the United States, the rest of the world held up photos of Ali Ismaeel Abbas, the 12-year-old boy who lost his parents and eight other relatives, along with both of his arms, in the bombing of Baghdad.

No doubt some have exploited such images for propagandistic purposes. No doubt the pursuit of carnage at times became tasteless sensationalism. But what was the impact for Americans of seeing so few, if any, of those who died?

There are estimates available of the number of civilians killed in the war. A group of 19 volunteers in England, the creators of a Web site called "IraqBodyCount.net," estimate that there were a "minimum" of 2,050 deaths. This total reflects the lowest numbers provided in news reports of deadly incidents. A more complete tally would have to add the hundreds, maybe thousands, whose deaths were never reported by any source -- those buried quietly in the rubble, or those who were wounded and later died in one of Iraq's overflowing, and ultimately looted, hospitals.

No country, "coalition" or otherwise, has undertaken this reckoning. "A Swiss government initiative launched in the middle of the war," says John Sloboda of IraqBodyCount, "was abandoned under political pressure."

The dilemma this presents is an old one, and a dangerous one, too: What is the weight of a life? How many before it matters? Few can offer good answers. Those who look only at the bloodiest moments of war discount other lives. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens died as a result of the decade-long sanctions, for which Saddam Hussein bears much culpability, but which the United States had the power to lift all along. Many more would have died if sanctions were prolonged. And we have no way to know how many will be killed in future invasions inspired by Iraq's conquest, or in resultant acts of retribution.

Washington, of course, kept careful track of the 166 U.S. and British troops killed in action. It shunned, however, the idea of a civilian body count. Many journalists, particularly on television, took this official position as their marching orders.

Even in the most responsible of our newspapers, one idea became a mantra: "a precise number [of civilians who were killed] is not and probably never will be available," said The New York Times. "The final toll may never be determined," said The Washington Post. Again and again, reporters noted the difficulty of making an exact tally.

It was, on face, a statement of humility, an honest acknowledgement of the chaos inherent in military conflict. Yet, at some point, this tendency -- this refusal to count, or to even try -- grew into something else.

It became a form of political denial.

The rare dispatches that scratched through the surface of the government's stance on civilian deaths revealed a human side of war -- in which young soldiers feared for their lives and relied on quick, difficult decisions -- but also, at the same time, a startling desensitization to human life. In one oft-cited report by The New York Times, a Sergeant Schrumpf recalled an incident in which Marines fired on an Iraqi soldier standing among several civilians. One woman was killed. "I'm sorry," the sergeant said, "but the chick was in the way."

"Another Times reporter wrote of a situation in which Marines attacked a caravan of vehicles approaching them from the distance, not knowing if these might be filled with enemies or, as it actually turned out, with innocents:

One by one, civilians were killed. Several hundred yards from the forward Marine positions, a blue minivan was fired on; three people were killed. An old man, walking with a cane on the side of the road, was shot and killed. It is unclear what he was doing there; perhaps he was confused and scared and just trying to get away from the city. Several other vehicles were fired on.... When the firing stopped, there were nearly a dozen corpses, all but two of which had no apparent military clothing or weapons.

Two journalists who were ahead of me, farther up the road, said that a company commander told his men to hold their fire until the snipers had taken a few shots, to try to disable the vehicles without killing the passengers. "Let the snipers deal with civilian vehicles," the commander had said. But as soon as the nearest sniper fired his first warning shots, other Marines apparently opened fire with M-16s or machine guns....

[A] squad leader, after the shooting stopped, shouted: "My men showed no mercy. Outstanding."
The number of civilians killed in the actual fighting does matter, if only to remind us that invasion is not a video game. It matters, because it shows that however sophisticated its tools, war will always claim its "collateral damage," its innocent bystanders.

A callous indifference toward such lives is not limited to the sergeants and squad leaders on the front lines. It is the position fostered by a government that does not count its victims, even as it lines up more conquests: next Syria, then on to Iran.

It is an attitude that survives outside of wartime, guiding our prejudices against those living in countries whose names we never learned to pronounce, countries that our shock-jocks call "turd world" nations.

In order to break the cycle of war and deprivation, hatred and terrorism, the United States some day must start counting not only the dead from this conflict, but all those whom we perpetually disregard. And it must start holding itself accountable to them. For as it does, we will learn that this is not a matter of two thousand, or even two hundred thousand. The majority of this world will rise to be counted."

SEVEN NUCLEAR FACILITIES LOOTED IN IRAQ SINCE EARLY APRIL

2003-05-10T17:03:00.000-07:00

From the Agonist, this referral to a Washington Post article reporting that seven nuclear facilities were looted beginning in the first days of April. Again, where was the military, and as the Agonist says, didn't we fight this war under the guise of stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction?:

"BAGHDAD -- Seven nuclear facilities in Iraq have been damaged or effectively destroyed by the looting that began in the first days of April, when U.S. ground forces thrust into Baghdad, according to U.S. investigators and others with detailed knowledge of their work. The Bush administration fears that technical documents, sensitive equipment and possibly radiation sources have been scattered.

If so, there are potentially significant consequences for public health and the spread of materials to build a nuclear or radiological bomb. President Bush had said the war was fought to prevent the spread of "the world's most dangerous weapons."

It is still not clear what has been lost in the sacking of Iraq's nuclear establishment. But it is well documented that looters roamed unrestrained among stores of chemical elements and scientific files that would speed development, in the wrong hands, of a nuclear or radiological bomb. Many of the files, and some of the containers that held radioactive sources, are missing.

Previous reports have described damage at two of the facilities, the Tuwaitha Yellowcake Storage Facility and the adjacent Baghdad Nuclear Research Center. Now, the identity of three more damaged sites has been learned: the Ash Shaykhili Nuclear Facility, the Baghdad New Nuclear Design Center and the Tahadi Nuclear Establishment. All of them have attracted close scrutiny from the International Atomic Energy Agency and from U.S. analysts who suspected that Iraq, despite IAEA inspections, was working to develop a bomb.

The identities of two other sites, also said to have been looted, could not be learned.

Army Lt. Col. Charles Allison, who led the U.S. survey team at Ash Shaykhili, said in an interview that its "warehouses were completely destroyed" by ransacking and fire. A Special Forces soldier, part of another team that reached Ash Shaykhili before Allison, said "they were supposed to store all their enrichment processing machinery there, but it was all gone or badly burned."

Alarmed by similar reports about the two Tuwaitha-area sites, IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, sent a letter Monday pressing earlier demands that the United States grant the agency access to Iraq's nuclear sites. He has previously asserted that the IAEA has sole legal authority over the sites under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and U.N. resolutions. But an adviser to ElBaradei said late Thursday that "we have got no official reply" from the United States.

MAN IN IRAQ SHOT DEAD BY U.S. MILITARY

2003-05-09T18:16:00.000-07:00

From Reuters, witnesses interviewed all ask, why was this man shot?:

"Fri May 9, 2003 07:03 AM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A 56-year-old Iraqi man was shot dead on Friday by U.S. troops after a U.S. army patrol shoved his car onto the pavement, Iraqi witnesses said.
It was unclear why the soldiers opened fire. A U.S. soldier at the scene declined comment.

A Reuters photographer, who arrived on the scene shortly after the incident, saw the body of a man slumped in the driving seat with a fatal wound to the head.

Khaled Taleb Mehdi, a mechanic who said he witnessed the shooting, said the victim was Khaled Lahoumi Ahmed. He identified the man from his identification card.

U.S. military vehicles pushed the car onto the pavement before troops approached the car and opened fire, Mehdi said.

'They shot him without any reason. Why did they shoot him? He didn't do anything. What did he do? We don't know,' Mehdi said.

THE PRIVITIZATION, AND COMING U.S. OWNERSHIP OF IRAQ

2003-05-09T18:06:00.000-07:00

And if the US becomes the "occupying power", the partial privitization of Iraq oil is what will be pushed upon the world next. Shell and Exxon gas stations in Iraq? You betcha, from the Nation:

"On April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: There will be no role for the United Nations in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably...longer than that."

And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the key economic decisions about their country's future will have been made by their occupiers. "There has got to be an effective administration from day one," Wolfowitz said. "People need water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to work, the electricity has to work. And that's a coalition responsibility."

The process of getting all this infrastructure to work is usually called "reconstruction." But American plans for Iraq's future economy go well beyond that. Rather, the country is being treated as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neoliberals can design their dream economy: fully privatized, foreign-owned and open for business.

Some highlights: The $4.8 million management contract for the port in Umm Qasr has already gone to a US company, Stevedoring Services of America, and the airports are on the auction block. The US Agency for International Development has invited US multinationals to bid on everything from rebuilding roads and bridges to printing textbooks. Most of these contracts are for about a year, but some have options that extend up to four. How long before they meld into long-term contracts for privatized water services, transit systems, roads, schools and phones? When does reconstruction turn into privatization in disguise?

California Republican Congressman Darrel Issa has introduced a bill that would require the Defense Department to build a CDMA cell-phone system in postwar Iraq in order to benefit "US patent holders." As Farhad Manjoo noted in Salon, CDMA is the system used in the United States, not Europe, and was developed by Qualcomm, one of Issa's most generous donors.

And then there's oil. The Bush Administration knows it can't talk openly about selling off Iraq's oil resources to ExxonMobil and Shell. It leaves that to Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraq petroleum ministry official. "We need to have a huge amount of money coming into the country," Chalabi says. "The only way is to partially privatize the industry."

PENTAGON CLAIMS ONLY ONE KILLED BY CLUSTER BOMBS IN IRAQ

2003-05-09T17:41:00.000-07:00

Iraq Body Count takes aim at the Pentagon report that one person died as a result of the use of cluster bombs in Iraq, from the Guardian Unlimited:

"Iraq Body Count, a group that monitors the numbers of civilian deaths in the recent war and its aftermath, is challenging the Pentagon's claim that only one civilian was killed by a cluster bomb.
The group, which keeps track of reports of fatalities on its website, said this week that at least 200 civilians had been killed by this type of weapon and castigated last month's Pentagon statement as prompting "widespread incredulity".

Cluster bombs - which scatter "bomblets" the size of a Coke can over a wide area - are a constant danger to civilians because the unexploded munitions can create de facto minefields.

The US military's chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, said on April 25 that of almost 1,500 cluster bombs that were dropped from the air, only 26 came within 1,500 feet of a civilian area. He added that "there's only been one recorded case of collateral damage from cluster munitions noted so far".

Last night a Pentagon spokesman said that Gen Myers had been referring only to the reports of fatalities that he knew of and that the media often knew of "collateral damage" reports ahead of the military.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch group, said that to claim cluster bombs did "virtually no harm to Iraqi civilians is highly disingenuous".

Missing from Gen Myers's statement was any reference to ground-launched or artillery cluster bombs, which were more numerous and killed more civilians, say IBC and Humans Rights Watch.

Culling data from international media reports, IBC has compiled a list of 372 possible Iraqi civilian deaths from cluster munitions, and says that of these, 147 were caused by unexploded or "dud" bombs.

In a statement, IBC researchers John Sloboda and Hamit Dardagan said: "Public concern about the possible misuse of these savagely indiscriminate weapons is rapidly mounting."

THE US "NEEDS" THE UN

2003-05-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

Simon Tisdall, writing for the Guardian Unlimited, says the U.S. needs the U.N. for the lnternational legitimacy of what will be the new Iraqi government. The U.N. has its hands tied, because they want to help Iraq with humanitarian aid. The machiavellian policies of the US continue:

"Having abused and abandoned the United Nations and gone to war in Iraq without UN backing in defiance of international law, the Bush administration has returned to the Security Council this week - hoping to win UN legitimacy and legal authority for its postwar plans.
Does the administration feel any sense of contradiction, or mild irony, or even slight shame in pursuing this course of action? Apparently not. Secretary of state Colin Powell and other officials are already rehearsing their arguments. No country can now reasonably argue that UN sanctions on Iraq should continue, they say. Nobody should stand in the way of a better future for Iraq. Nobody should bear grudges. Everybody should now rally round the US-directed post-conflict agenda. "Whatever happened in the past is in the past," says Powell.

The White House is not now proposing a new, umbrella UN resolution on Iraq because it regrets the manner in which, before the war, it spurned the UN's collective view and undermined the UN's authority. It has not thought better of its contempt for multilateral decision-making on security issues or revoked its newly-tested doctrine of pre-emptive or preventive war-making. The White House is going back to the UN because it has to.

The administration needs the UN if any new US-sponsored and US-conceived government of Iraq, interim or otherwise, is to receive international recognition. This is a practical as well as symbolic matter.

It does not matter, for example, whether the US decides Ahmad Chalabi, to pluck one name from many, is Iraq's next leader if neighbouring Arab countries and the international community as a whole do not formally accept him as such. Without such recognition, Chalabi might find himself in a position not unlike that of Rauf Denktash, the "president" of northern Cyprus whose government is ignored by all but the Turks. The UN has a primary role to play in facilitating Iraq's political process."

US WANTS TO BE THE "OCCUPYING POWER"

2003-05-09T17:28:00.000-07:00

"Here it is, Washington's grab at total power over Iraq. I guess we all saw this coming. I want to know how the UN, or anyone, will be able to garuntee the US will spend Iraq's money on the humanitarian goals as listed by the US: humanitarian goods, reconstruction, civil administration and continued disarmament. The U.S. and Britain will have complete control over how Iraq's oil profits are spent; the U.S. cleverly waited until after the war to stress and use the phrase "occupying power", which is a tremendous change in responsibility assumed under the Geneva Conventions , from the previous phrase used, "liberating force", I ask you, what is conventional about this war and the way it was carried out? From the Guardian Unlimited:

"Money from oil sales would be used for humanitarian goods, reconstruction, civil administration and the continued disarmament of Iraq. An arms embargo would be maintained.

Lifting sanctions immediately and phasing out oil-for-food over four months will take Iraq's oil wealth out of the hands of the UN and put it under the control of Washington and London.

The Bush administration is counting on approval from Russia, France, China and Germany, who had the strongest anti-war position in the 15-member council, with officials saying there was little enthusiasm for another bruising fight between the powers.

Russia, as well as France, has called for a central role for the UN and the return of UN arms inspectors, which the US opposes. But whether either country would threaten a veto is uncertain, as they may not be able to count on support among temporary council members who backed them in opposing the war.

The resolution would also endorse the authority of the US and Britain to govern Iraq, and it appears to foresee a lengthy stay. It notes that Washington and London sent a letter to the council president yesterday recognising their responsibilities and obligations under international law "as occupying powers".

The letter marks the first time that the US has referred to its role in Iraq as an "occupying power," a status governed by the Geneva Conventions that would entail wide-ranging responsibilities to look after the Iraqi people. Until now, the US has avoided the term, calling itself a "liberating force".

Under the proposal, the 12-month initial authorisation for the US and British "authority" in Iraq would be renewed automatically, unless the security council decided otherwise"

HOMELESS POPULATION SUDDENLY INCREASES IN IRAQ

2003-05-09T17:12:00.000-07:00

Are these evictions from homes in Iraq, which is suddenly drastically increasing the homeless population in Iraq, political payback for certain groups? Why is this happening? Iraq is suddenly, beginning to look more like America. From UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency :

"Iraq: UNHCR concerned about Palestinians

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at the press briefing, on 9 May 2003, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
We are increasingly concerned about a growing number of Palestinian refugees who have been evicted from their homes in Baghdad. This morning, a UNHCR convoy carrying basic supplies for the homeless Palestinians left Jordan and is expected in Baghdad this afternoon. Reports from the city suggest that around 1,000 Palestinian refugees have already been forced to leave their homes since the end of the war and are camping in disused buildings and various open areas around the Iraqi capital.

In another, similar development, a UNHCR team in southern Iraq has discovered dozens of Iranian refugees who have also been ejected from their homes by local communities.

Today's convoy of aid will help cover the immediate needs of the homeless Palestinians. The three-truck convoy is transporting materials for up to 2,000 people, including 400 tents, 1,200 mattresses and 2,000 blankets as well as stoves, jerry cans and soap. The aid materials will be handed over to the Palestinian Red Crescent who will distribute them to the Palestinians.

UNHCR fears that more of the 60-90,000 Palestinian refugees believed to be living in Iraq may lose their homes, as other landlords reclaim property they were forced to rent out for minuscule sums to the Ba'ath government on behalf of the refugees. Since the fall of the regime, even this money – sometimes as little as US$1 per month – has not been paid to the owners of the property.

On Wednesday, a UNHCR team operating out of Basra, in southern Iraq, discovered several families of Iranian refugees living in a disused transit centre on the edge of the city. The refugees reported that they had been expelled from their homes in Dujaila – a refugee settlement near Al Kut, about half way between Basra and Baghdad. They said their property and crops had been confiscated. While the UNHCR team was still in the centre two more families arrived from Dujaila citing similar reasons. The team subsequently proceeded to the Iranian border where they discovered three more Iranian refugee families displaced from Dujaila, who were trying to get permission to repatriate to Iran. You can find more details in the press release we have issued this morning. Copies are at the back.

MORE WAR CASUALTIES

2003-05-08T18:48:00.000-07:00

This article from ABCnews.com reports two U.S. soldiers were killed today in Baghdad in seperate incidents. The article also cites a number on incidents that involved casualties on both sides:

Two American soldiers were killed Thursday in separate attacks in Baghdad one a bold daylight shooting at close range and the other a sniper attack, military officials said.

In addition, at least one soldier was injured when a U.S. vehicle hit an explosive in part of the capital believed to have been cleared of land mines.

The incidents demonstrate Iraq is still fraught with danger for U.S. forces a month after Saddam Hussein's government fell.

"I have an expectation that we will see rough behavior in this country for the foreseeable future. We will be up to it and our people will continue to do their jobs," Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, said in Washington of the attacks.

In the most brazen attack, an Iraqi walked up to a soldier on a bridge and opened fire with a pistol at close range, according to senior U.S. Army officers in Baghdad who had heard reports of the shooting.

The officers said the slain soldier, whom they did not identify, belonged to the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Fort Polk, La. Calls to that regiment's public affairs officer here went unanswered Thursday night.

No further information was immediately available, and it was unclear what happened to the unidentified assailant. U.S. Central Command in Qatar said it was unaware of the incident.

U.S. forces say they trade fire with armed Iraqis almost daily across the country. Still, an incident like the one on the bridge is highly unusual even in postwar Iraq.

In the second attack, a U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division soldier was killed when a sniper shot him in the head in east Baghdad, said Capt. Tom Bryant, spokesman for the Army's V Corps, which is based at Baghdad's airport. He had no further details.

Also Thursday, an American Humvee hit a "probable land mine" while crossing a median in a road near Baghdad's airport, Bryant said. Details were sketchy, but at least one U.S. soldier was injured in that incident.

Earlier, Bryant said, a group of children motioned to a military convoy traveling down another road about a quarter-mile away to avoid a plastic bag in the street. The convoy followed their advice, but an Iraqi truck coming up behind the convoy ran over the bag and it exploded.

The driver of the truck escaped injury, but an Iraqi man standing nearby suffered burn and shrapnel wounds. He was taken to a U.S. field hospital and was reported in shock.

Other incidents have bedeviled U.S. forces in recent days, though none cause casualties.

On Wednesday, the military said, two Iraqis shot at reconnaissance elements of the 3rd Infantry Division with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades as they traveled north of Baghdad. The unit returned fire, the military said, killing one assailant.

Also Wednesday, near the northern town of Baiji, a convoy from the 4th Infantry Division came under rifle and machine-gun fire. The unit attacked the assailants' positions and captured five suspects and their weapons, Central Command said. No Americans were injured.

WAR CRIMES CHARGE

2003-05-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

General Tommy Franks may face a Belgian war crimes trial, as American troops are accused of encouraging the looters, according to this BBC article:

"I went to an American checkpoint at the college of science and said we needed help, people wanted to steal from our institute. They said they couldn't help because their job was only to serve the checkpoint.

"So I walked to the bridge and asked the Americans there for help. But they couldn't help."

Meanwhile, says Dr Majeed, a colleague had roused some Americans based near the local fire station.

They arrived in five vehicles, but refused to ward off the looters. Instead, the soldiers fired several dozen rounds at the college's south wall, says Dr Majeed.

'Green light' to looters

"It was a green light to the looters. It told them 'We are not going to do anything to stop you.'"

Within five minutes the Americans had gone, and the looters had moved in...

Rasool Abdul-Husayn , an unemployed school teacher, says he saw one American signalling the crowd to move in, with a repeated wave of the arm. Another eyewitness, Kareem Khattar, who works in a bread shop across the road from the college, saw the same thing.

"I saw with my own eyes the Americans signal the people to move in and the looters started clapping," says Mr Khattar.

"The Americans waved bye-bye and the looters were clapping. They started looting quickly and when one man came out with an air conditioner an American said to him 'Good, very good'."

THE GULF IS WIDE IN PERCEPTION

2003-05-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

This Reuter's article deals with Iraqi misperceptions of Americans. It is amazing to me how little prepared our soldiers appear to be to deal with these people. There is an ethnocentric, jingoistic attitude, laced with contempt for the very people they want to "liberate", within our leadership to allow this debacle to happen:

"And the gulf deepens when seen from the other end of the gun barrel.

In Baghdad -- where bullets and guns sell alongside tomatoes and onions, thieves brazenly carry looted satellite dishes through the streets and barrages of gunfire wake residents nightly -- the U.S. military says it has made the streets safe.

'The coalition forces have provided as safe and secure an environment as you would expect in any major city -- London, New York or wherever,' Colonel Alan King, who acted as the U.S. army's first city manager in Baghdad, told reporters this week.

But Suad Zeki says the capital is so dangerous she has not ventured outdoors for a month and refuses to send her two children back to school, where the teachers have asked fathers to stand guard with guns during classes.

'They may lose the school year, but at least I know I won't lose my children,' said Zeki. She studied for a year in England and cannot believe the Americans -- who patrol the city in bullet-proof vests and helmets -- can compare Baghdad to London.

Some Americans said mutual misperceptions were inevitable because soldiers had not been trained to get along with Iraqis.

'My problem is that one day I'm ordered to kill them, the next day I have to be their friend,' said Specialist Bryan Spears, manning a checkpoint on Thursday outside one of Saddam's palaces.

'As far as I'm concerned, let them think we've got X-ray glasses; that way they won't try to hide guns in their clothes.'

Aida Soreen waited to pass by the barbed wire with her two children, unconcerned about Spears's X-ray vision.

'I don't care,' she said, 'he can only see my bones.'

IRAQ MEDICAL SYSTEM NEAR COLLAPSE

2003-05-08T18:08:00.000-07:00

Iraq medical system near collapse, reports this Reuter's article.The fact that the system has not yet been shored up by the U.S. is a form of criminal neglect:

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq's health system is near collapse and even without any major outbreaks of communicable diseases, some medicines are scarce and poor security is hampering access to the sick, U.S. experts said on Thursday.

Officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. health department told a consultative conference on Iraq's health system that the Health Ministry in Baghdad needed to be up and running as soon as possible.

USAID health adviser Andrew Clements said health services had been disrupted by the war and equipment, medicines and supplies looted but there had not been a major outbreak of communicable diseases yet.

'But no one is taking consolation in this at the moment because the potential does exist since the public health system and the immunization program has been disrupted,' he told the meeting, which was attended mainly by companies interested in finding out where their services could be used.

Doctors in the southern Iraqi city of Basra have reported 17 cases of cholera and say there could be dozens more due to contaminated water supplies and poor sanitation.

Medicines for some chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease were also in short supply, said Clements, and water supplies were still disrupted in some areas.

One of most pressing issues, said Clements, was the lack of security which has left sick Iraqis with limited access to health care and medicines and equipment vulnerable to looters.

An employee from General Electric Medical Systems said about a third of the equipment they sold to Iraq via the U.N.'s oil-for-food program had been damaged or looted.

Ruth Walkup, who works in the Office of Global Health Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the World Health Organization had said they were concerned Iraq's health system would soon fall apart.

'What they are concerned about is that the very fragile system that worked (before the war) is getting ready to fall apart if it's not bolstered very quickly,' said Walkup.

In San Francisco, the advocacy director for the humanitarian group CARE said it remained very difficult to deliver needed health supplies into Iraq.

'Things are still quite chaotic and we have only been able to very slowly move additional supplies and people in,' said Kevin Henry. 'That's in large measure due to the breakdown in law and order, and that has ripple effects on everything else.'

'We have now moved in two or three convoys of supplies for hospitals in but we have encountered some security problems,' he said. 'Our warehouse that was in Baghdad was first hit by a missile and then looted, so those are the realities.' (Additional reporting by Adam Tanner in San Francisco)"

THE SHIAS IN IRAQ AND THEIR HISTORY

2003-05-08T07:21:00.000-07:00

An excellent article by Karen Armstrong for the Guardian Unlimited regarding the role of the Shias in Iraq:

"It would be a mistake to imagine that Shias are reflexively opposed to modern, western ideals. In 1906, leading mullahs in Iran campaigned alongside secularist intellectuals for a modern constitution on European lines, and parliamentary rule. Because representative government would limit the tyranny of the shahs, it was a project worthy of the Shia. Today, 25 years after the revolution, Iran has moved beyond Khomeini. It has a freer press than any of its Arab neighbours. The conservative clerics whose ideas were forged in the 1950s seem increasingly irrelevant to the young, who want Iran to remain a religious country, and are proud to be Shia, but support President Khatami in his demand for greater democracy. Abdolkarim Sorush, the chief intellectual of Iran, argues that every Iranian has three identities: Shia, Persian and western."

HOSPITALS IN BAD SHAPE IN IRAQ

2003-05-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

Hospitals in Iraq are in worse condition than during the war, according to international medical groups in this New York Times article, in its entirety:

"WASHINGTON, May 2 — Saying that the hospitals and clinics of Baghdad are in worse shape now than they were during the war, international medical groups are warning the Bush administration that emergency measures are needed to save civilian lives.

During the war, the hospitals in the capital managed to perform surgeries, bandage wounds and treat the chronically ill. But once the fighting ended, the medical system broke down. Hospitals were looted, some closed down and others are limping along with little direction or coordination and with no salaries for doctors and nurses, according to foreign medical workers in Baghdad.

Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders said they had pleaded with the Pentagon, the allied forces and the State Department to take charge of the hospitals, pay the staff and get essential services like the ambulance system running again.

Several of the officials said that the Iraqi doctors and nurses were well trained and that supplies were adequate. But without structure and support, the medical system is falling apart and civilians are dying for lack of care.

"Some lives have been lost because the coalition has failed to organize the hospitals, but it is very difficult to give figures," said Morton Rostrup, the international president of Doctors Without Borders, who worked as a surgeon during the war and in the immediate aftermath.

"It was interesting to see during and before the war that the hospitals were working and today they are not," Dr. Rostrup said. "To me that is unacceptable."

After failing to convince coalition officials in Baghdad of the urgency of what he called this "silent health crisis," Dr. Rostrup came to Washington to meet with Joseph Collins, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for humanitarian and peacekeeping operations, who is in charge of postwar Iraq at the Pentagon.

A Defense Department spokesman said Mr. Collins had agreed to forward the doctor's concerns to the military's Central Command and the Pentagon's office of reconstruction and humanitarian affairs. And while not agreeing entirely with the assessment of Dr. Rostrup's group, a department spokesman said the coalition forces would solve the hospital problems soon.

"I expect this is a temporary situation," said the spokesman, Cmdr. Chris Isleib. "I don't know the scope of the problem but we are making every effort to restore normalcy to Iraq and Baghdad on all levels, and medical care is no exception."

Christophe Girod, the Washington delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said he had made similar pleas and given the same description of the health care situation in Iraq to officials at the Pentagon and State Department.

They echo conversations in Iraq, where Red Cross officials, whose representatives have worked in the nation's hospitals for more than a decade, have acted as go-betweens for Iraqi medical professionals and coalition authorities.

"What we are trying to do is to make the coalition aware of the extent of the disarray and to brief them on what the medical system used to be and the first steps they could take to put it on its feet again," Mr. Girod said.

Earlier this week the United States Agency for International Development awarded a one-year contract to repair health services throughout Iraq that could be worth $43.8 million to Abt Associates of Cambridge, Mass.

The first priority is to provide emergency health care, and the first teams could arrive in Iraq within two weeks. "Our goal is to get to Iraq as soon as possible and get essential health services to those in need," said Dr. Mary Patterson, who is the international health practice manager for Abt.

In some instances, doctors and nurses in Baghdad have organized their own hospitals, electing directors and trying to figure out how to find the money to keep operations going and their own families alive.

Some of the largest hospitals are shut down because doctors and nurses refused to work in the chaos and fear after the fall of Baghdad, with no electricity and only rudimentary supplies.

"This used to be a top-down system," Mr. Girod said. "Now, after the looting, there is a state of disorganization in many hospitals with no leader emerging."

The broader aim of Dr. Patterson and her group is to ensure that the nation's old health system is repaired and improved within the year. To that end they will work with a broad array of foreign charities and medical groups and Iraqi medical professionals.

"It will be up to the Iraqi people and the new Iraqi government to decide what kind of health strategy they want," Dr. Patterson said. "We can get essential services in place; eventually it will all be Iraqi."

IRAQI HEALTH CARE WORKER PROTEST BAATH APPOINTMENT

2003-05-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reports Iraqi health workers demonstrated today against a decision by the American authorities against an appointment of a senior Baath Party member as minister of health. Here is the article in its entirety:

"BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 7 — Hundreds of Iraqi doctors, nurses and health workers demonstrated today against a decision by the American authorities here to appoint Ali al-Janabi, a senior Baath Party member, to be minister of health.

The demonstration by doctors in starched white coats was the latest indication of rising concern over the enduring influence of some members of the party that was long the vehicle for Saddam Hussein to impose his terror on Iraq.

The medical staff piled onto the bus that the American Third Infantry Division had provided to get them to their hospital jobs and told the driver to take them to the Baghdad hotel housing most foreign journalists. Unfurling neatly printed white banners, they marched silently, and a bit self-consciously, for the cameras.

"With this change in the country, we have the chance to give our ideas in a new democratic way," said Dr. Adel Eswet, a cardiac surgeon who helped organize the demonstration against the selection of Mr. Janabi, a senior official in Mr. Hussein's government. "So we're starting in a nice quiet democratic way."

Most of the health workers have not been paid in two months; many live without electricity and work in deplorable conditions. But that was not the reason for their anger. They came out in in a phalanx that was so neat and tidy that it looked more like a class photo than a protest. Indignation against the return of Baath Party officials powered their march.

The issue of how far to purge officials of an overthrown authoritarian state is one common to all transitions such as that under way in Iraq. Hatred of the Baath Party is widespread, but in many cases its members are those who know how to get things done.

Last week, Robin Rafael, an American diplomat working under Jay Garner, the retired American lieutenant general who has been in charge of reconstruction here, decided to reinstate the Baath Party leadership of Baghdad University, the largest in the country. Mr. Hussein's personal physician, Muhammad al-Rawi, who is president of the university, was granted permission to preside over the graduation of 17,000 seniors who will return to classes on May 17.

Ms. Rafael, like most American officials here, is working behind heavy security that prevents contact with a broad cross-section of Iraqis or anyone else. She was not available for comment. But one of her colleagues suggested that her decision was a pragmatic one to get the university open under current management and then try to sort out the Baathists later.

One man with strong feelings about this decision is Professor Hilal al-Bayyati, a computer scientist who studied in the United States during the 1960's and built the National Computer Center in Iraq. During the months after his arrest in late 2000, he found himself talking to insects.

By the thousands they shared his 6-foot-by-4-foot cell at the intelligence headquarters in Baghdad.

"The cell was painted red, a very bad red, and there were about 10,000 insects in there and you really did talk to them because you were in isolation. You made friends with them. When you were fed, they came to dinner," he said, sitting at home yesterday, surrounded by friends and reunited with his wife and children.

The experience of prison under Mr. Hussein's rule, living naked and sick in small cells next to men who wept when the torturers came, the experience of being ripped away from life, job, family, of having all his possessions and savings confiscated in the name of the Baath Party, of being terrorized so profoundly for no reason that was ever stated, all this has given him a mission: to destroy the party and ban its senior members from government positions now that Mr. Hussein has been overthrown.

So Mr. Bayyati and some of his colleagues have sprung into action to seek reversal of Ms. Rafael's decision. First they organized a committee of faculty members that met to demand new elections for deans, department heads and administrators as a means to throw out Dr. Rawi and the other senior Baathists at the university.

Dr. Rawi locked them out of the meeting hall, but more than 250 of them they managed to convene anyway and quickly agreed to resist the administration and seek American support. They demanded that the university groundskeepers tear down a statue of Mr. Hussein. But the maintenance staff refused, saying Dr. Rawi had given no such order.

When American officials would not meet with them, Mr. Bayyati and his colleagues went to the headquarters of Ahmad Chalabi, one of the political figures who has returned to Iraq and is working with both American forces and other political groups to form an interim government. Like all of the political headquarters in Baghdad, Mr. Chalabi's is accessible to Iraqis in every way the American headquarters is not.

"There are walk-ins here," said one American official. "We can't have walk-ins over there," he added, referring to General Garner's headquarters at Mr. Hussein's Republican Palace.

Mr. Chalabi and his security staff organized a raid on the university. The Hussein statue was leveled by an armored vehicle and its head cut off and returned like a trophy to the lawn of Mr. Chalabi's headquarters.

On Monday, Mr. Bayyati went to Ms. Rafael's fortified headquarters and handed a note to an American soldier to deliver to her.

"I stood in the sun for one-and-a-half-hours," he said. "I didn't get any answer and I couldn't enter."

But as he turned to leave, Mr. Bayyati caught sight of a face he would never forget, that of Ali al-Jabouri, the warden of Abu Ghraib prison, where the professor spent 18 months in a sea of Iraqis headed for secret execution.

The warden, a senior Baath Party official, approached and kissed him on both cheeks and told him that the best thing about his job had been meeting people like the professor. Then he went past the American guards and inside the building. He did not say who he was going to see, the professor said.

As this account suggests, it is not proving easy to get rid of Baath Party officials. Despite Bush administration statements that it would dismantle Mr. Hussein's police state, senior Baath Party officials are working openly in many Iraqi cities, especially here in the capital where power is still up for grabs. Mr. Hussein's whereabouts remain unknown.

"It is impossible for them to return," Mr. Bayyati said. "After two years in prison, I am now ready to die to prevent them."

Though the presence of tens of thousands of American soldiers tells ordinary Iraqis that Mr. Hussein could never return to power, many members of the Baath Party are insinuating themselves into leading positions under the American administration.

Mr. Bayyati and many others object strongly.

"The Baath Party should be eradicated," said Mr. Chalabi, whose supporters have assembled a roster of 30,000 Baathists whom they say should be barred from serving in government. American officials have requested the list, but Mr. Chalabi is resisting, fearing he will be criticized for settling scores or wielding personal influence in the blacklisting of Iraqi officials.

One of his aides said nonetheless that the list was "in the process" of being turned over. Mr. Chalabi said a better solution would be to ask prospective government workers whether they had ever served in the senior ranks of the party.

"Everyone knows them, there is no mistake about who they are," said Adel Abdel-Mahdi, an official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, which takes the same position on what is known as de-Baathification.

Like many Iraqis, he hears of the debate within the American government over whether it might be better to preserve the at least part of the power of the Baath Party because it represents the old formula of Sunni Muslim domination in a country where Shiite Muslims are 60 percent of the population.

"If the Americans think they have to keep the Baath so they can keep a certain equilibrium in the country, then that is very bad," Mr. Abdel-Mahdi said.

Baath Party officials with blood on their hands know who they informed on, jailed, tortured and executed, Mr. Bayyati said, his living room full of colleagues and former students nodding in assent.

The Baathists know there will be some kind of reckoning, with claims, lawsuits and prosecutions and many people who suffered under Mr. Hussein fear is that party members will strike during the chaos of political transition to silence the potential witnesses against them.

Mr. Bayyati's prison ordeal started after a 15-minute secret hearing in early 2001, when he was sentenced to 10 years for espionage.

If he had to guess why he was arrested, his trouble with the party dated to his opposition to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait a decade earlier, his opposition to a plan to steal 13 mainframe computers from Kuwaiti banks during the occupation, and his open derision for senior university officials who took kickbacks on computer and other equipment purchases. He called the purchasing group the "thieves' committee," he said.

"I left the Baath Party in 1992," he said. But it never lost sight of him.

So he is fighting back. Today, an aide to Mr. Chalabi told Mr. Bayyati that American officials would call a faculty meeting at Baghdad University on Friday to allow the school's staff to say who should lead the institution."

TIME MAGAZINE EXPLORES WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REPUBLICAN GUARD

2003-05-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

An excellent article by Time Magazine regarding the question of what happened to the Republican Guard during the war:

"What happened to the people, the thousands of Republican Guard soldiers arrayed outside Baghdad who were subjected to the full wrath of the most powerful military on earth?

TIME set out to answer that question by traversing the two rough arcs along which the Republican Guard were deployed south of Iraq's capital. Our reporters focused on seven battlefields: Hindiyah, Hillah, Kut, Yusufiyah, Mahmudiyah, Suwayrah and Dawrah. They surveyed the aftermath of the fighting, inspected graveyards, visited hospitals and interviewed eyewitnesses. They also spoke to Republican Guard survivors about their escape and the fates of their comrades. The evidence that TIME's team collected indicates that relatively few members of the Republican Guard were actually killed in the fighting. According to the accounts, the Iraqi forces for the most part survived aerial bombardments by keeping their distance from their armor, which U.S. pilots targeted with great precision. Then as U.S. ground troops approached, the Republican Guard generally fled. Many of them appear to have acted on their own, motivated by fear and self-preservation. In Baghdad, according to a high-ranking Republican Guard officer interviewed by TIME, troops were actually instructed to desert. This may help explain why the members of the Special Republican Guard, deployed within Baghdad as the Iraqi regime's ultimate defenders, put up virtually no resistance to the American takeover of the city, as they felt the entire elite-forces structure collapsing around them."

U.S. PUSHES TO HAVE IRAQ'S DEBT FORGIVEN

2003-05-08T06:28:00.000-07:00

Bloomberg.com has an excellent article concerning the push by the U.S. to have Iraq's debt forgiven:

"United Nations, May 8 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration's plan to rebuild Iraq, including a request that more than a dozen creditor countries forgive $127 billion of Iraqi debt, is getting little support from France, Germany and Russia, who opposed the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime last month.

Negotiations -- covering sovereign debt owed to such nations as Russia, Poland, Egypt and Germany as well as claims from Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait -- may hinder Iraq's reconstruction, according to Robert Hormats, a managing director of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration.

``This will be the biggest renegotiation of financial obligations in history and probably the most rancorous,'' said Hormats, who also was an economic adviser in the administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. ``The countries that are in control have very little of the debt, so they will pressure others to give, and those nations will demand concessions.''

U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow asked for debt reduction in meetings of the Group of Seven industrialized nations last month in Washington. While some creditors are willing to discuss debt in global forums such as the Paris Club, they haven't publicly made specific counterproposals.

Agreement to cut Iraq's debt is critical because a resumption of Iraq's oil sales at prewar levels of 2.4 million barrels a day won't be enough to finance a reconstruction that may cost as much as $100 billion, according to Hormats.

``Not even close,'' Hormats said in an interview."

GUN BATTLES BETWEEN KURDS AND ARABS NORTH OF BAGHDAD

2003-05-08T06:21:00.000-07:00

According to this Herald Sun article, gun battles have broken out between Kurds and Arabs north of Baghdad:

"AT least three people have died in gun battles between Kurds and Arabs north of the Iraqi capital over the past three days, according to doctors and local officials.

Doctors from the hospital at Khalis, near Baqubah about 40km north of the Iraqi capital, said the fighting erupted after Arabs began shooting Kurds travelling on the road toward Baghdad from Kirkuk.
"People are taking revenge on each other. Many armed people are in the street and they are taking revenge on each other," Ahmed Mohammed, a doctor at the local hospital, told AFP last night.

"I can confirm three dead but I believe there are many more."

US troops entered the town overnight to help provide security after local police, who have not been paid in weeks, fled their posts.

The soldiers left after patrolling the town and promising to send more troops in the coming days.

Kurdish forces, who have controlled an autonomous area in northern Iraq since the 1991 war, helped US troops in the latest conflict to topple the mainly Sunni Arab regime of Saddam Hussein.

Doctors said resentment between Arabs and Kurds in the area was strong. They believe the fighting began when Arab Iraqis started shooting and robbing Kurds as they travelled south.

At one point gunmen were in the hospital threatening to shoot Kurdish patients, they said.

"Any car with a number plate from the north (Kurdish) - the people are being shot randomly. There is no control in the town, no law," Mohammed said.

"There are many people dead but I have only seen three at the hospital."

A man identified as the mayor of Khalis, Ghassan Kadaran, said he had told US Army civil affairs officers about the trouble two days earlier but no help had arrived.

The situation became so desperate yesterday, when fighting erupted inside the hospital, that Kadaran and several doctors went to a US base at Baqubah to beg for help.

Two mechanised infantry platoons were dispatched but the fighting had subsided by the time they arrived. The doctors said armed men who fled as the US troops moved into town were providing "security" for the hospital.

"The police can't do anything because there is no government to pay them. They have left their posts," said Kadaran.

"They will return as soon as there is a real government in place."

CHOLERA OUTBREAK IN BASRA REPORTED

2003-05-07T15:54:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press is reporting a cholera outbreak in Basra:

"BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Two hospitals in southern Iraq have reported 17 confirmed cases of cholera, and the World Health Organization said Wednesday it fears far more have gone unreported.
A WHO team dispatched to the southern city of Basra this week said the number of confirmed cases does not reflect the extent of the disease.

"An outbreak of cholera, affecting probably several hundreds of people, is occurring," said WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib.

Additional samples have been sent to a laboratory in Kuwait for confirmation, and results are expected by Thursday.

The first confirmed cases in Basra turned up in children age 4 and under. Tests were conducted by the Al-Tahir Teaching Hospital and Basra Maternal and Child Hospital.

Health officials said they feared the disease is already epidemic.

With 17 confirmed cases, "you can expect 10 times more within the larger population," said Dr. Denis Coulombier, a WHO epidemiologist.

Health experts have been warning of the potential for a large outbreak of cholera, given the shortage of clean water and lack of sanitation in southern Iraq.

During the war, Basra's water treatment system was shut down after coalition airstrikes damaged the electric grid.

Residents in the city of 2 million went for several weeks without running water. Many people collected water from the Shatt al-Arab waterway.

Hospitals have reported increasing numbers of patients admitted with diarrhea and other gastrointestinal complaints.

Cholera, a waterborne disease, can be treated if detected early. However, it can prove deadly, especially to malnourished children.

British forces and aid agencies have sent water tankers through the city and surrounding towns, and British engineers have restored about 80 percent of the water system."

HALLIBURTON TO HAVE EXPANDED ROLE IN IRAQ

2003-05-07T15:45:00.000-07:00

Halliburton's role in Iraq has expanded, via the New York Times (I've printed the entire article, link too cumbersome; article dated May 7):

"Papers Show Expanded Halliburton Iraq Role
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, May 6 (AP) — An emergency contract the Bush administration gave to Halliburton to extinguish Iraqi oil fires also gave the company a more lucrative role in helping repair the country's oil system, documents showed today.

Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, a critic of Halliburton, which was once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, said the administration was hiding the expanded role.

A spokeswoman for Halliburton, which is based in Houston, said the company's initial announcement of the contract on March 24 disclosed the larger role for its KBR subsidiary.

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The Army Corps of Engineers, in a letter to Mr. Waxman last Friday, disclosed that the no-bid contract covered not only the extinguishing of fires, but "operation of facilities and distribution of products."

Mr. Waxman, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, wrote Lt. Gen. Robert B.Flowers of the corps today, saying the contract "is considerably broader in scope than previously known."

He also said the corps' proposal to replace the Halliburton contract with another long-term deal was at odds with administration statements that Iraq's oil belongs to the Iraqi people.

KBR was given the right to extinguish the oil fires under an existing contingency contract. Mr. Cheney's office has said repeatedly the vice president had no role in the contract award.

A Halliburton spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, pointed to the company's announcement of the contract in March, which she said revealed the extent of the work.

The release said: "KBR's initial task involves hazard and operational assessment, extinguishing oil well fires, capping oil well blowouts, as well as responding to any oil spills. Following this task, KBR will perform emergency repair, as directed, to provide for the continuity of operations of the Iraqi oil infrastructure."

Ms. Hall said KBR was assisting Iraq's oil ministry to get the oil system operating.

But Mr. Waxman countered, "Only now, over five weeks after the contract was first disclosed, are members of Congress and the public learning that Halliburton may be asked to pump and distribute Iraqi oil under the contract."

He has also repeated the corps' statement that the contract could be worth up to $7 billion for two years, but the corps said that figure was a cap based on a worst-case event of oil well fires. In fact, few wells were burning during the war and the corps said that by early April the company had been paid $50.3 million."

SOME ECONOMIC SANCTIONS LIFTED BY U.S.

2003-05-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

Article via BBC, U.S. lifts some economic sanctions against Iraq:

"Primary among them are rules which will allow the thousands of Iraqis resident in the US to send up to $500 a month to family and friends in Iraq.

With the economy in ruins after a decade of sanctions, and the aftermath of the war causing yet further hardship, access to hard currency is necessary to acquire many basic commodities, exiled Iraqis told BBC News Online.

US Treasury Secretary John Snow said the move was an "essential step" to allow reconstruction to begin.

"The regime that was once the target of our economic sanctions has been extinguished, and our mission now is to rebuild Iraq," he said.

Other restrictions being eased include:

allowing humanitarian aid supplies to be sent to Iraq

authorizing any activity paid for by the US government, including reconstruction moves by contractors
perrmitting privately funded humanitarian activities by US-based organizations.

However, restrictions on the export of goods which are controlled for national security purposes will remain, with a special government license being required for such trade."

MORE LOOTING IN IRAQ NUCLEAR WASTE SITE

2003-05-07T15:27:00.000-07:00

Un-fucking believable that this site has yet to be secured by the U.S. military. This is criminal negligence, plain and simple. Article via SMH.com.au:

"Al-Tuwaitha, Iraq: Looters rifling through one of Iraq's main nuclear sites at Al-Tuwaitha and carting off whatever they can carry are making local residents terrified of the danger.

"Why did the Americans let people inside?" said Bilal Abdallah, a 31-year-old who used to work at Al-Tuwaitha, a site which received regular visits by UN arms inspectors trying to find Saddam Hussein's banned weapons.

The complex, believed to have held natural or low-grade uranium, was extensively pillaged several days ago but the looting is still going on.

Groups of young boys wandered the site, digging out hoses, iron plates and generators. An ageing shepherd grazed his flock next to a giant freshly dug mound, apparently not knowing what could be buried underneath.

An AFP reporter saw a US soldier in a passing armoured vehicle who started to drive by but stopped to coax the shepherd away. The soldier refused to comment on whether the site contained radioactive material.

Ali Ghanem, a driver, said three people died last week in the town, just southeast of Baghdad, after being contaminated by something stolen from the Al-Tuwaitha site.

"They were buried with the material in the village of Wardieh," he said.

It was not immediately possible to verify his claim but the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has expressed concern over the potential hazards."

"...MAY HAVE ACCIDENTALLY SHOT SOME CIVILIANS..."

2003-05-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

Don't know how long this link will last, but the Herald Sun has an audio interview, very short, with U.S. Colonel Arnald Bray of the 82nd Airborne Division, in which he "says American soldiers may have accidentally shot some civilians during a protest in Fallujah, Iraq", according to the Sun. About as close to assuming some measure of responsibility as I have heard yet.

HEALTH WORKERS TAKE AIM AT IRAQ'S INFANT MORTALITY RATE

2003-05-07T13:37:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm looking for needles in a haystack, or picking a fight where there is none, but couldn't the Agonist in posting about this article, highlighted the effect of sanctions for the past twelve years on Iraqi infant mortality rates? Is there no shame at all regarding our U.N. sanctioned policies towards this country for the past decade?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reducing Iraq's chronic child mortality rate to where it was in the 1980s could be a key indicator of the success of U.S.-led reconstruction efforts, experts say.

During more than 12 years of international sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the death rate for Iraqi children under the age of five more than doubled.

An August 1999 United Nations Children Emergency Fund survey found that from 1994 to 1999, there were 131 deaths of children under five per 1,000 live births in Iraq. From 1984 to 1989, the rate had been 56.

UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy said at the time that if reductions in child mortality in Iraq in the 1980s had continued into the 1990s, a half million fewer children would have died from 1991 to 1998.

The main reasons for the increase were malnutrition, the lack of clean water and a shortage of medicine.

"Child mortality is probably the single best yardstick of the physical well-being of a people," said Steve Orvis, a political scientist who specializes in development issues at Hamilton College in New York.

IRAQI PRISONERS OF WAR TO BE FREED

2003-05-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

From Reuters, Iraqi prisoners of war soon to be freed:

"CAMP BUCCA, Iraq (Reuters) - Fewer than 2,000 Iraqi prisoners of war remain in a camp in southern Iraq where 7,000 were detained during the war to oust Saddam Hussein, and the rest will be freed soon, U.S. officers said on Tuesday.

Around 150 prisoners were freed on Tuesday morning and given a packed meal and a few cigarettes before boarding buses to take them home. A further 50 were due to be freed later on Tuesday, and the camp was expected to be virtually empty in a week.

"Military (prisoners) will be gone within the next few days and civilians in four of five days," said Major Stacy Garrity of the 800th Military Police Brigade in Camp Bucca, near the southeastern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr."

SKIRMISHES CONTINUE IN IRAQ

2003-05-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

CENTCOM reports continuing small skirmishes, sometimes with unseen forces, in Iraq:

"CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar – Coalition forces continue to focus military operations on conducting security patrols, humanitarian assistance missions, facility assessments and securing sensitive sites in key Iraqi cities.

An individual with a rifle fired numerous times early this morning at an observation post manned by U.S. 3rd Infantry Division soldiers near the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance headquarters in Baghdad. The sentry fired back but was unable to determine if the assailant was hit. No soldiers were injured.

A convoy from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was fired at with small arms early this morning as they approached an overturned vehicle. They returned fire and took an alternate route back to base. No soldiers were injured.

Three Iraqis armed with AK-47s and grenades fired on 3rd Infantry Division soldiers who were investigating a reported fire in downtown Baghdad May 5th. The soldiers returned fire and the Iraqis fled the scene. One soldier was wounded in the right knee from an enemy round.

United States Army military policemen were fired upon by individuals traveling in two civilian vehicles near An Nasariyah May 5th. The soldiers returned fire at the subjects who fled. They were pursued but not caught. The soldiers sustained no casualties.

An unidentified individual fired a rocket propelled grenade at a 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment OH-58D armored reconnaissance helicopter near Fallujah on the evening of May 4. The aircraft was not hit and there were no injuries.

Despite the danger, Coalition forces remain dedicated to providing a secure and stable environment throughout Iraq so that the delivery of humanitarian aid and infrastructure repair can continue."

GROTESQUE EFFORTS

2003-05-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Steele of the Guardian.co.uk says U.S. efforts to force hand-picked leaders on the Iraqi people are becoming increasingly grotesque:

"American efforts to foist new rulers on the people of Iraq are becoming increasingly grotesque. In some cities US troops have sparked demonstrations by imposing officials from the old Saddam Hussein regime. In others they have evicted new anti-Saddam administrators who have local backing.
They have mishandled religious leaders as well as politicians. In the Shia suburbs of Baghdad, they arrested a powerful cleric, Mohammed Fartousi al-Sadr, who had criticised the US presence. In Falluja, an overwhelmingly Sunni town, they detained two popular imams. All three men were released within days, but local people saw the detentions as a warning that Iraqis should submit to the US will.

The Pentagon's General Jay Garner has taken an equally biased line in his plans for Iraq's government. He held a conference of 300 Iraqis in Baghdad last week and excluded almost every group which has an organised following.

In a Freudian slip at a recent press conference, Donald Rumsfeld smugly explained democracy as a competition in which rival politicians try to "garner support". His message in Iraq looks like the opposite - Operation Support Garner. Otherwise, you are cut out.

Washington's failure to hold broad-based consultations at central and local levels is provoking resistance, sometimes armed. In response, US troops have used excessive force, further raising tensions. Ten people died in Mosul when soldiers fired at crowds of protesters on successive days in mid-April. In Falluja the death toll from American shootings over two days last week was at least 16."

2003-05-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

Chalabi goes on the offensive, charging Al Jazeera journalists with spying, according to this New York Times story, dated May 6:

"Armed with this incendiary material in a region where under-the-table payoffs to buy protection, loyalty or silence are the seamy side of political life, Mr. Chalabi and his aides have been sending out pointed warnings — that he can give as good as he has been getting — to Arab leaders who have dismissed him as a lackey financed by the Central Intelligence Agency, or as an accused embezzler from the bank he ran in Jordan during the 1980's.

When Abu Dhabi television asked Mr. Chalabi last week to respond to reports that he was under arrest by the United States Central Command for embezzlement, Mr. Chalabi went on the air to respond. He brought files he said were taken from the Iraqi secret police. He asserted that they showed that a number of reporters for Al Jazeera television, the satellite channel that broadcast the accusation that he was under arrest, were working for Iraqi intelligence.

"We will not allow this channel to continue its destructive work, which might lead to civil war in Iraq, through their lies and the spreading of rumors, because rumors are worse than killing," Mr. Chalabi said. On the air, he held up documents and read from them, saying they were Iraqi intelligence reports on the successful recruitment of Al Jazeera journalists as informants.

Al Jazeera has yet to respond to the charges."

JAY GARNER TO BE REPLACED

2003-05-06T07:07:00.000-07:00

Jay Garner to be replaced as head of reconstruction by a former State Department diplomat, according to the Independent.co.uk:

"Jay Garner, the former general who was appointed Iraq's chief civil administrator, was on his way out last night as it became clear that Washington was dropping him in favour of a former diplomat equally close to the Bush government.

General Garner is likely to leave Iraq within weeks after a decision that he was not up to the delicate political task of coaxing the country towards democracy.

Paul Bremer, the State Department's former head of counter-terrorism, is expected to take charge of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs.

General Garner's somewhat erratic style on political issues was evident yesterday after he said the "beginning of a nucleus of an Iraqi government" would be in place by mid-May.

In fact about half a dozen former leaders of opposition to Saddam Hussein are expected to be in charge of convening a conference in four weeks' time, which will be designed to agree a transitional government.

Although the change replaces a Pentagon appointee with a State Department person, Mr Bremer is thought to be close to neo-conservatives around the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

This is significant because it suggests continuing support by US administrators here for the Iraqi National Congress headed by Dr Ahmad Chalabi.

The transitional government envisaged in talks by Iraqi politicians could have an interim prime minister and a cabinet of about.25

Opinions differ sharply over whether Mr Chalabi and the INC, has an established base in the country. But it has strong Pentagon support and has become highly pro-active since Dr Chalabi's return to Baghdad last month."

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS SLAMS U.S.A.

2003-05-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

From the U.S. News wire, Doctors Without Borders speaks out:

WASHINGTON, May 2 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The United States-led coalition has failed to meet its responsibility under international humanitarian law to ensure that the health and well being of the Iraqi people is being provided for, stated the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) today. Urgent medical needs are not being addressed and disorganization in hospitals is posing a threat to the health of people in the country. MSF again demands that the US-led coalition, as the occupying power, immediately fulfill its obligation to provide for the medical needs of the Iraqi people which it has thus far not done.

"Despite three weeks of the US occupation and many months of planning for this war, Baghdad, a city the size of Houston and
Chicago combined, still does not have any fully functioning hospitals," said Morten Rostrup, MD, MSF International Council
president, who has just returned from 6 weeks in Baghdad. "Disorder and political struggles in Baghdad and elsewhere have left the health system in disarray at a time when the recent bombings, that included the use of cluster bombs, and ongoing hostilities, including injuries to civilians, make access to health care all the more critical."

The U.S. gave priority to efforts and concerns in building administration, forgetting to organize immediate assistance to the
wounded. It also failed to provide timely security for hospitals and medical staff. In Baghdad, hospitals are filthy, many were
looted, and no proper emergency transport system is in place. People wounded in the war who fled or were discharged from
hospitals during the anarchy of the first days of US occupation had little idea where to go to receive follow-up treatments for their often serious injuries, including amputations. And since hospitals are still not fully functioning patients continue to be discharged early. Sufferers of chronic conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease, and epilepsy have nowhere to refill their medications.

Iraqi doctors and nurses have still not been paid. In the hospitals that MSF has visited in Baghdad and other parts of the country, including Amarah, Basrah, Karbala, Nasariya, and elsewhere, there are life-threatening illnesses, such as tuberculosis and kala azar, that are going untreated due to lack of medicines."

OPEN MOUTH, INSERT FOOT

2003-05-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

Was the New York Times slyly telling Jay Garner, American head of reconstruction in Iraq, that he is possibly full of shit, in his blaming the U.N. for gasoline shortages in Iraq now :

"Oil exports, which need United Nations approval, stopped on the eve of the war when United Nations monitors were withdrawn for safety reasons. Since the end of the war, no entity has emerged with the internationally recognized authority to sell Iraqi oil. But nothing in the sanctions prohibits the distribution of Iraq's oil and petroleum products inside Iraq.

Iraq, with the world's third largest known reserves of oil, is producing just tens of thousands of barrels a day, a fraction of its prewar level, and local oil industry officials said breakdowns in the pipelines and damage inflicted during the war had created bottlenecks in the flow of oil.

United Nations officials in Baghdad said Iraq could soon be placed in the unaccustomed position of having to import oil to supply propane and kerosene for cooking and gasoline for cars.

U.S. SOLDIERS INJURED IN CLUSTER BOMB EXPLOSION

2003-05-06T05:26:00.000-07:00

News Interactive reports three U.S. soldiers injured in a cluster bomb explosion in Iraq:

"THREE US soldiers were injured when a suspected US cluster bomb exploded inside a major US base in northern Iraq, officers said.

The soldiers, from the 3-16 artillery battalion of the 4th Infantry Division, were walking across a dirt field inside the base when the device exploded, witnesses said.

Surgeon Robert Tyler, who was the first doctor at the scene, said one soldier was in critical condition with shrapnel in his eye and head, another was seriously injured in the elbow, and the third suffered light wounds to the torso.

All three were immediately evacuated to a combat field hospital about 40km north of Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province.

"It looked like a cluster bomb because it looked like a little yellow soup can," Tyler said."

JAY GARNER PROFITED FROM THE WAR

2003-05-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

And, if you weren't already suffering from cynicism, this article from Frida Berrigan for Common Dreams News Center, details how Jay Garner, the man in charge of rebuilding Iraq, is on "leave" from a defense company that profited from the war:

"Jay Garner wants us to be proud. The man in charge of rebuilding Iraq was quoted in the New York Times on Thursday saying, "We ought to look in the mirror and get proud, and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say, 'Damn, we're Americans.'"

Well Jay, I am sorry to say that I am not feeling it. American soldiers shooting unarmed Iraqi demonstrators and killing at least 17 in two separate incidents. American police officers firing rubber and wooden bullets at unarmed American demonstrators outside of Oakland. Thousands of Iraqi civilians killed in a so-called precision war for their liberation. A multibillion dollar empire building effort underway in Iraq that is masked as a humanitarian reconstruction effort, while children are hungry, seniors are without medication, and education is less and less accessible right here in USA.

There are people profiting from war- and Jay Garner the proud American is one of them. And there are those who are not.

General Jay Garner the head of the Pentagon's new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. In that capacity he is overseeing and coordinating the relief and rebuilding efforts in Iraq. He is also a personal friend of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

He is also the president of SY Coleman, a subsidiary of L-3 Communications, a high tech defense contractor that specializes in missile-defense systems and makes the targeting systems for conventional weapons. He is not retired from that position, he is on "leave" or on "loan." And he is profiting from war.

In February Garner's company announced that its revenue in the most recent quarter had soared to $1.3 billion-up from $705 million a year ago. They attribute the windfall to a doubling of military communications and electronics sales. Overall, the company expects a 20% increase in sales and earnings this year.

This is good news for the company and its stockholders, but how can the people of Iraq trust a man who has garnered millions making the targeting systems for missiles that destroyed their country?

If the Bush administration were to consciously set out to pick a person most likely to raise questions about the legitimacy of the post-war rebuilding process, they could not have selected a better man for the job than Jay Garner. As one observer noted, "If it's not a conflict of interest, it's certainly being tone deaf."

AMERICAN CASUALTIES IN THE WAR

2003-05-04T17:37:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has photos and info on all American military personnel killed in the war.

TEAM APPOINTED TO RUN IRAQ OIL MINISTRY

2003-05-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

This article via the Washington Post details the team appointed to run the oil ministry in Iraq:

"BAGHDAD - The U.S.-led body charged with Iraq's reconstruction has appointed Iraqi oil technocrat Thamir Ghadhban to run the oil ministry, U.S. officials said on Sunday.

John Kincannon, a spokesman for the American civilian administration, also said Phillip Carroll, former head of Royal Dutch/Shell in the United States, was heading an advisory board to the ministry.

Carroll's assistant was Fadhil Othman, an Iraqi exile who has had 20 years' experience in Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO), he said.

"They were earmarked for the posts and now it has been made official," Kincannon said of the appointments.

Reviving Iraq's oil industry, which boasts the second largest proven reserves after Saudi Arabia, is crucial to rebuilding a ravaged economy dependent on crude exports."

SEVERAL ARTICLES CONCERNING IRAQ

2003-05-04T17:19:00.000-07:00

There are a number of excellent articles concerning Iraq on the F2 Network site. One article details the lucrative grain deal for the U.S. and Australia to provide grain for Iraq. Another article is an analysis of how America has been weakened by this "victory" in Iraq.

DESPERATION IN UMM QASR

2003-05-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

The situation is getting desperate in Umm Qasr, where food and medicine is running short, according to this report by Mark Baker, from F2 Network:

"The mood is changing for the worse in Umm Qasr where food and medicine is desperately needed, writes Mark Baker from southern Iraq.

This is the way the war ends: not with the jubilation of the liberated but with the whimpering of ragged children. "Water! Water!" they cry, running from the roadside towards passing cars, thrusting their fingers towards their mouths in the salute of the thirsty.

At the local school, a crowd of mothers swathed in black queues in vain for Red Cross handouts of enriched biscuits for their infants. At the hospital, hundreds of sick and injured besiege a handful of exhausted and despairing doctors.

In the hot, dust-blown streets and around the empty market, groups of unemployed youths stare at foreigners with sullen resentment.

It was meant to be different. The port town of Umm Qasr was where the American flag was first raised at the end of March by excited US marines scenting the coalition victory that would soon spread across Iraq.

In the early days, after the first battle of the war was won and the sporadic resistance subdued, many of Umm Qasr's residents came out of their mud-brick houses to welcome the invaders. Now they throw stones at the military.

The Americans have moved on, their presence marked only by the endless convoys of trucks rolling north out of Kuwait towards Baghdad to service the occupying army and the US-led interim administration."

IRAQI CIVILIAN WAR CASUALTIES

2003-05-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

This article by the Associated Press, via F2 Network, details casualties during the war:

The battle for Baghdad cost the lives of at least 1,101 Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children, according to records at the city's 19 largest hospitals.

The civilian death toll was almost certainly higher.

The hospital records say that another 1,255 dead were "probably" civilians, including many women and children.

Uncounted others who died never made it to hospitals and now are buried in shallow graves that have been dug throughout the city - in cemeteries, back yards, hospital gardens, city parks and mosque grounds.

More than 6,800 civilians were wounded, the hospital records show...

"Drive the streets of Baghdad today and it becomes clear that the city is not London or Berlin after World War II, where bombing destroyed large stretches. The bombing damage is spotty, occasional.

Still, in many neighbourhoods, residents are quick to point out exactly where American bombs ended the lives of neighbours and friends.

Doctors at several hospitals alleged that some civilians died because American soldiers were not allowing civilian ambulances into neighbourhoods near the battles.

Two pregnant women were killed when an American tank shelled their ambulance on the way to Yarmuk Hospital on April 7, doctors there say. The driver and a doctor along to provide care were both injured. They add that soon afterward, shells hit the hospital's diabetes centre, destroying an entire floor, which volunteer workers have been working to repair since.

Perhaps the most graphic image of the death toll is the 150 graves dug into the garden around the Al Askan Hospital.

- AP"

KURDISH IDENTITY

2003-05-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

This article discusses the difficulties inherent in uniting Iraq, and Kurdish nationalism (from the AP via Yahoo):

"We have lived in almost total isolation from the center," said Shafiq Qazzaz, the Kurdish official in charge of humanitarian aid in the region.

Kurdish leaders have said they want to be part of a unified Iraq, but their vision of one country includes a strong locally ruled Kurdish enclave.

Iraq's neighbors — Turkey, Syria and Iran — have Kurdish minorities and are wary of Kurdish self-rule in neighboring Iraq, fearing it could inspire Kurdish nationalists on their territory. Many Kurds fear those countries could destabilize the Iraqi Kurdish-run enclave should it grow too powerful.

Forming a new national government "is not going to be easy," said Fadhil Mirani, a top leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The KDP and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan control separate parts of the enclave.

Many Kurds have said that they want an independent state but have agreed to limit their demands to self-rule to keep from antagonizing Iraq's neighbors.

"We are surrounded by hard geopolitics," Mirani said. "We don't want to commit national suicide."

Still, Kurdish demands are likely to be very high."

EXCUSE MY SARCASM, BUT...

2003-05-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

I suppose Mobbs and others did such a good job in helping to get Russia back on its feet economically, they appointed Mobbs to see what kind of job he can do on Iraq (from the Washington Post):

"The ORHA official with principal responsibility for getting the Iraqi government up and running is Mobbs, a 54-year-old international lawyer. Although he was a senior arms control official in the Reagan administration, Mobbs is little known outside a small, but influential circle of conservative defense intellectuals and policy experts.

Acquaintances describe him as intelligent, quiet and "unflappable." Phillip L. Robinson, an attorney at the Washington law firm where Mobbs worked before joining the Pentagon in 2001, said Mobbs "did not push an ideological agenda." Mobbs did, however, become associated with the administration's hard line toward terrorist suspects last year, when he signed a two-page statement of facts supporting the unlimited detention of a U.S. citizen captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan."

The paper, which became known as the "Mobbs memorandum," asserted that the subject was an "enemy combatant" and not entitled to the rights of an ordinary criminal defendant.

During the 1990s, Mobbs managed the Moscow offices of several large U.S. law firms that were representing businesses attempting to gain a foothold in Russia during a period of anarchy and economic collapse.

"Most informed people believe the experience most relevant to Iraq is Eastern and Central Europe and, to a lesser extent, Russia, in terms of moving from a nondemocratic state to one that is more democratic and free-market," said James J. Maiwurm, managing partner in the Washington office of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, for which Mobbs worked in Moscow. "He has done a lot of things internationally."

RADIOACTIVE WASTE REPOSITORY LOOTED IN IRAQ

2003-05-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

Radioactive waste repository looted in Iraq, according to this report by Barton Gellman of the Washington Post:

"NEAR KUT, Iraq, May 3 -- A specially trained Defense Department team, dispatched after a month of official indecision to survey a major Iraqi radioactive waste repository, today found the site heavily looted and said it was impossible to tell whether nuclear materials were missing.

The discovery at the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility was the second since the end of the war in which a known nuclear cache was plundered extensively enough that authorities could not rule out the possibility that deadly materials had been stolen. The survey, conducted by a U.S. Special Forces detachment and eight nuclear experts from a Pentagon office called the Direct Support Team, appeared to offer fresh evidence that the war has dispersed the country's most dangerous technologies beyond anyone's knowledge or control.

In all, seven sites associated with Iraq's nuclear program have been visited by the Pentagon's "special nuclear programs" teams since the war ended last month. None was found to be intact, though it remains unclear what materials -- if any -- had been removed.

Enclosed by a sand berm four miles around and 160 feet high, the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility entombs what remains of reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991. It has stored industrial and medical wastes, along with spent reactor fuel. Though not suitable to produce a fission bomb, the highest-energy isotopes here, including cesium and cobalt, have been sought by terrorists interested in using conventional explosives to scatter radioactive dust."

WAR CRIMES

2003-05-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

From John Pilger of ZNet.org, a call to try our leaders from America and Britain who perpetrated this war as war criminals:

"To initiate a war of aggression," said the judges in the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi leadership, "is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." In stating this guiding principle of international law, the judges specifically rejected German arguments of the "necessity" for pre-emptive attacks against other countries...

Nothing Bush and Blair, their cluster-bombing boys and their media court do now will change the truth of their great crime in Iraq. It is a matter of record, understood by the majority of humanity, if not by those who claim to speak for "us". As Denis Halliday said of the Anglo-American embargo against Iraq, it will "slaughter them in the history books". It was Halliday who, as assistant secretary general of the United Nations, set up the "oil for food" programme in Iraq in 1996 and quickly realised that the UN had become an instrument of "a genocidal attack on a whole society". He resigned in protest, as did his successor, Hans von Sponeck, who described "the wanton and shaming punishment of a nation...

There is something especially disgusting about the lurid propaganda coming from these PR-trained British officers, who have not a clue about Iraq and its people. They describe the liberation they are bringing from "the world's worst tyranny", as if anything, including death by cluster bomb or dysentery, is better than "life under Saddam". The inconvenient truth is that, according to Unicef, the Ba'athists built the most modern health service in the Middle East...

Why are the British yet to explain why their troops have to put on protective suits to recover dead and wounded in vehicles hit by American "friendly fire"? The reason is that the Americans are using solid uranium coated on missiles and tank shells. When I was in southern Iraq, doctors estimated a sevenfold increase in cancers in areas where depleted uranium was used by the Americans and British in the 1991 war. Under the subsequent embargo, Iraq, unlike Kuwait, has been denied equipment with which to clean up its contaminated battlefields. The hospitals in Basra have wards overflowing with children with cancers of a variety not seen before 1991. They have no painkillers; they are fortunate if they have aspirin.

Why are the British yet to explain why their troops have to put on protective suits to recover dead and wounded in vehicles hit by American "friendly fire"? The reason is that the Americans are using solid uranium coated on missiles and tank shells. When I was in southern Iraq, doctors estimated a sevenfold increase in cancers in areas where depleted uranium was used by the Americans and British in the 1991 war. Under the subsequent embargo, Iraq, unlike Kuwait, has been denied equipment with which to clean up its contaminated battlefields. The hospitals in Basra have wards overflowing with children with cancers of a variety not seen before 1991. They have no painkillers; they are fortunate if they have aspirin.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

2003-05-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

First, there is President Bush declaring major combat is over in Iraq, and that he wants to turn the attention of the American people to his domestic agenda and tax cuts. Then, on the same day, we have Rumsfeld declaring major combat is over in Afghanistan.

However, competing for the above declaration in headlines by Bush is the injury of seven U.S. marines in Falluja by a tossed grenade, then the return fire on the Iraqi people with no casualty reports. In Afghanistan, on April 25, one U.S. serviceman was killed and several wounded in an attack near the Pakistani border. A second U.S. serviceman died from the same attack the next day.

The Taliban is regrouping in certain areas of Afghanistan, and reconstruction efforts have not kept pace with the needs of that country.

With the hatred of Americans growing in Falluja and elsewhere in Iraq, and armed resistance returning in Afghanistan, a Vietnam-like quagmire in both countries is all the more apparent. No wonder Rumsfeld and Bush would like us to turn our attention to the domestic agenda. Even a sour economy is better news than this mess.

TWO MORE KILLED BY AMERICAN TROOPS IN FALLUJA PROTEST

2003-04-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

Two more shot and killed by American troops in Falluja during an anti-American protest today, according to Reuters:

"Rumsfeld pledged during an unannounced visit to Iraq on Wednesday that his troops would leave as soon as possible, but fresh bloodshed erupted at an anti-American protest.

Even as Rumsfeld savored victory in the campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, a leading Arabic newspaper published what it said was a letter from the ousted Iraqi leader in which he urged Iraqis to throw out U.S. and British forces.

In Washington, the White House said General Tommy Franks, who headed the U.S. war effort, had told President Bush that major combat operations were over. This did not signal a formal end to hostilities, spokesman Ari Fleischer said. Residents of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) outside the capital where 13 people were killed in a rally late on Monday night, said U.S. troops shot dead two more people and wounded 18 during a demonstration on Wednesday.

U.S. Major Michael Marti told Reuters that members of a convoy returned fire after shots were fired at them from a crowd outside a U.S. command post. He said soldiers counted "potentially" two injured Iraqis.

The bloodshed in Falluja provided a grim backdrop for the visit by Rumsfeld, who recorded a radio and television message saying U.S. troops had no intention of taking over Iraq.

"Let me be clear: Iraq belongs to you," said Rumsfeld, speaking three weeks after U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad.

"We do not want to run it ... Our goal is to restore stability and security so that you can form...a government of your choosing," he said.

Rumsfeld returned to Kuwait later in the day.

Also on Wednesday, leaders of Iraq's once-exiled political parties met in Baghdad for the first time.

A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), Zaab Sethna, said the meeting would discuss a call for a national conference by late May to appoint an interim Iraqi authority."

What is Morality?

2003-04-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

A conversation with my father:

"We don't really know the truth as to what happened there (in Fallujah) today", my father said. "People who want us dead hide among innocent people and from there, shoot at us."

"That may be true," I said, "but this still doesn't provide us with impunity for our actions. In the purest sense of the term, our presence there, our reasons for being there, are immoral, self-serving and selfish, therefore, we are having to fire on unarmed civilians to protect our immoral goals."

Dictionary from Encarta: The meaning of moral: 2. derived from personal conscience: based on what somebody’s conscience suggests is right or wrong, rather than on what the law says should be done.

THE MURDER OF JOURNALISTS IN IRAQ?

2003-04-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

Robert Fisk, from CounterPunch, asks this question: "Did the U.S. murder journalists?

"At the time, General Buford Blount of the 3rd Infantry Division, told a lie: he said that sniper fire had been directed at the tank--on the Joumhouriyah Bridge over the Tigris river--and that the fire had ended "after the tank had fired" at the Palestine Hotel. I was between the tank and the hotel when the shell was fired. There was no sniper fire--nor any rocket-propelled grenade fire, as the American officer claimed--at the time. French television footage of the tank, running for minutes before the attack, shows the same thing. The soundtrack--until the blinding, repulsive golden flash from the tank barrel--is silent."

A ROCK OR A GRENADE

2003-04-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

Is this the policy of the military, to fire on civilians without question, before it is known wether a rock or grenade has been tossed? From ABCnews.com:

"There were a lot of people who were armed and who were throwing rocks. How is a U.S. soldier to tell the difference between a rock and a grenade?"

PROTEST TURNS VIOLENT: 13 IRAQIS DEAD, 75 WOUNDED

2003-04-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

I've reprinted part of the article on today's killing of ten Iraqi citizens by the U.S. military in the town of Fallujah, during what began as a peaceful protest (from ABCnews.com):

"U.S. officials said U.S. soldiers in the town of Fallujah, about 30 miles west of Baghdad, fired into the crowd after people shot at them with automatic rifles. U.S. estimates of the dead varied from seven to 10.
But demonstrators and witnesses insisted the crowd was unarmed and that most of the protesters were students between the ages of 5 and 20. Falluja hospital director Ahmed Ghanim al Ali said 13 people had been killed and at least 75 wounded in the late night incident.

Col. Arnold Bray of the 82nd Airborne Division, however, disputed reports that all the demonstrators were unarmed. "Ask them which kind of schoolboys carry AK-47s," he told The Associated Press.

Bray said at least seven Iraqis were hit by gunfire, but he could not confirm the reported deaths.

The 82nd Airborne has one battalion spread out around Fallujah, and a company of 150 was inside a school that serves as its headquarters when the incident took place, soldiers said.

In an interview with Reuters, Lt. Christopher Hart said between 100 and 200 chanting people approached his men, who opened fire after two gunmen with combat rifles appeared from behind the crowd on a motorcycle and started shooting.

Some people in the crowd then also fired at the troops, he said. He put the death toll at between seven and 10.

Residents said the late night demonstrations on Monday were conducted by students of a local school attempting to get U.S. troops to vacate the premises so classes could resume early this morning.

It was the third reported fatal shooting involving U.S. troops and Iraqi protesters in the past two weeks, underscoring the problems facing soldiers whose training focuses more on combat operation than crowd control.

The incidents, widely reported by Arab news media groups, have served to fuel growing resentment of the U.S. military presence in Iraq only weeks after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite channel, interviewed a Fallujah resident who argued that suicide attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq were now unavoidable.

WAR CRIMES

2003-04-28T16:18:00.000-07:00

Not sure what chance in hell they have, but I'm glad a few have summoned their courage to call attention to the war crimes committed by this country, against the citizens of Iraq (from ABC News online) What is infuriating to me about this article, is that the U.S. would try to deny to these Iraqi citizens, one of our most cherished rights, a day in court:

"Ten Iraqi civilians are planning to file a complaint in a Belgian court accusing US General Tommy Franks and other US military officers of committing war crimes in Iraq, newspaper The Washington Times reports.

"The complaint will be filed stating that unknown American personnel are directly responsible for committing war crimes in Iraq," Jan Fermon, a Brussels-based lawyer representing the Iraqis, told the newspaper.

The complaint, to be filed in about two weeks, accuses US soldiers of firing on an ambulance, attacking a civilian bus, killing scores of civilians by bombing a Baghdad market place, and failing to prevent looting of hospitals.

"On some of these questions there is an issue of command responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground, and that responsibility ends with General Franks and those who are under him in the US lines of command," Mr Fermon said.

The complaint will ask a judge to decide whether indictments should be issued under Belgium's controversial 1993 law.

The law allows Belgian courts to judge suspects accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, regardless of where the alleged acts were committed or the nationality of the accused or the victims.

The newspaper report US administration officials reacted angrily.

"There will be diplomatic consequences" if the complaint is taken up in a Belgian court, an administration official was quoted as saying.

The report says Belgian doctors working in Iraq during the war met Iraqi citizens who said they were victims of war crimes committed by coalition forces.

The doctors urged them to submit their complaints to the Belgian court.

The Belgian Parliament in early April restricted the scope of the law.

Under the passed amendments, the Belgian Government can refer certain cases brought under the law to the courts in the defendant's country of origin.

Some 30 current or former political leaders are facing legal action under the law, including Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and former US president George Bush."

IRANIAN SHIITE CLERIC SPREADS HIS INFLUENCE IN IRAQ

2003-04-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

The Iranian influence on Iraqi Shiites is becoming more obvious, in this New York Times story (again, I have printed the article in its entirety, without including the cumbersome link):

"BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 — A religious edict issued in Iran and distributed to Shiite mullahs in Iraq calls on them "to seize the first possible opportunity to fill the power vacuum in the administration of Iraqi cities."

The edict, or fatwa, issued on April 8 by Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri, an Iraqi-born cleric based in the Iranian holy city of Qum, suggests that Shiite clerics in Iraq are receiving significant direction from Iran as they try to assert the power of Iraq's long-oppressed religious majority. It is not yet clear how much popular support Mr. Haeri and other clerics emerging as a political force have among Iraqis.

The United States has warned Iran not to meddle in Iraqi affairs, suggesting this week that Iranian agents have crossed into Iraq to destabilize the Shiite population. The possibility of a virulent burst of Shiite religious militancy appears to be a chief threat to American plans for a democratic system in Iraq.

The edict says that Shiite leaders have to "seize as many positions as possible to impose a fait accompli for any coming government." Using the familiar language of Iranian clerics often apply to the United States, the fatwa urges the Shiite clergy to work against American influence among Shiites.

"People have to be taught not to collapse morally before the means used by the Great Satan if it stays in Iraq," the fatwa reads. "It will try to spread moral decay, incite lust by allowing easy access to stimulating satellite channels and spread debauchery to weaken people's faith."

The fatwa also instructs the cleric's followers to "raise people's awareness of the Great Satan's plans and of the means to abort them."

Following that order, Shiite mullahs in the holy city of Najaf have been dispensing money and appointing clerics to administer several key Iraqi cities, Shiite leaders said. Those clerics, in turn, are appointing officials to run everything from civil defense militias to post offices.

"We are in control of all of Iraq, especially central and southern Iraq, not only Baghdad," said Sadeq Abu Jafaar, an aide to Sheik Muhammad al-Fartusi, the cleric charged by Mr. Haeri with the administration of eastern Baghdad.

Mr. Haeri is the power behind one side of an apparent split in Iraq's Shiite clergy, which was neutralized by executions and imprisonment during Saddam Hussein's rule and is now struggling to capitalize on its new freedom. His followers have quickly installed a skeletal organization in several cities to try to take over management of basic services and establish their authority over the Shiite population.

It is unclear how much control the mullahs really have outside Baghdad and the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Even in Baghdad, their presence is thin and scattered, restricted predominantly to Shiite neighborhoods. Many of Iraq's Shiites say they are wary of the Islamic strictures the clerics would like to impose.

But the mullahs faithful to Mr. Haeri clearly have a broader administrative network on the ground than any other group in the country outside of the Kurdish held-areas in the country's north.

The Shiites are not the only ones vying for power in the wake of the American invasion, hoping to secure positions from which they will not be easily dislodged when the United States sets up a provisional government in Iraq.

In Washington today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the United States would not allow a pro-Iranian Islamic regime to take control in postwar Iraq.

"A vocal minority clamoring to transform Iraq in Iran's image will not be permitted to do so," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "We will not allow the Iraqi people's democratic transition to be hijacked for — by those who might wish to install another form of dictatorship."

The Shiites are by far the most significant group grabbing for power in central and southern Iraq both because of their dominant demographic position — more than 60 percent of Iraq's people are Shiite Muslims — and because their religion gives them an authoritative system to build upon.

Their activism presents a prickly challenge for the United States, which hopes to install an America-friendly government in Iraq but wants to minimize Islamic influence in that government's affairs.

(Page 2 of 2)

Mr. Haeri's involvement makes that issue even more diplomatically fragile because it raises the possibility of direct Iranian influence over the quickly coalescing control of Iraq's Shiite population. Iran is also a predominantly Shiite country and has been ruled by its religious clergy since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led an Islamic revolution there in 1979.

"Of course we are closer to Iran since they have the same religion as us," said Mr. Fartusi, Mr. Haeri's representative in eastern Baghdad, sitting in a cramped office of the city's al Hekmah mosque, where he now has his headquarters in Baghdad's biggest Shiite district, dubbed Al Sadr city by the activist clerics.

Mr. Haeri, who was born in Iraq's holy city of Karbala, moved to Qum in 1973 as a protégé of Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr, a founder of the Iraqi Islamist Dawa Party who was executed in 1980. Mr. Haeri has long promoted the founding of an Iranian-style Islamic state in Iraq in which Shiite clerics would rule.

On April 7, the day American troops effectively toppled Mr. Hussein's government by seizing its main seats of power in Baghdad, Mr. Haeri sent a handwritten letter to the holy Iraqi city of Najaf, appointing Moktada al-Sadr as his deputy in Iraq.

In the signed letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Haeri wrote that, "We hereby inform you that Mr. Moktada al-Sadr is our deputy and representative in all fatwa affairs."

It added: "His position is my position."

In the fatwa, Mr. Haeri urged his followers in Iraq to "kill all Saddamists who try to take charge" and "to cut short any chance of the return to power of second-line Baathists."

That clause in the fatwa may explain the killing two days later of a prominent pro-Western Shiite cleric brought to Najaf by American Special Forces in hopes of winning support from the Shiite clergy there.

The cleric, Sheik Abdel Majid al-Khoei, was stabbed and shot by a mob said by locals to include supporters of Mr. Sadr after Mr. Khoei brought a Baath Party member into the city's holiest mosque in an attempt to restore the man's position as the mosque's caretaker.

In Karbala this week, a rally staged by Mr. Sadr's supporters at the close of a religious festival there carried two distinct messages: that the religious clergy of Najaf, in whose name Mr. Sadr is operating, are Iraqi Shiites' only legitimate authority and that American and British forces are not welcome in Iraq.

"Death for America, Death for Zionists," chanted some people in the crowd.

Since Mr. Haeri's fatwa was issued, Mr. Sadr has been busy sending signed letters and bundles of cash by courier to clerics in several Iraqi cities, deputizing clerics and authorizing the seizure of various public institutions. His signature has become known to Shiites all across the country from the photocopies of his announcements and edicts posted on mosque walls.

It has only been this week that Mr. Sadr's deputies have begun displaying Mr. Haeri's photo and talking openly about his role, evidently to deflect criticism of Mr. Sadr, who is not senior enough to issue fatwas on his own. "We wanted to keep it hidden," said Sheik Kadhem al-Ebadi al-Nasseri, one of Mr. Sadr's deputies in Kerbala.

At Qadessia Hospital in Baghdad's largest Shiite district, Kalashnikov-toting men defer to a group of mullahs who say they are reluctant to talk without permission from Mr. Sadr's representative, Mr. Fartusi.

At Kendi Hospital across town, another mullah, Abbas al-Zubaidi, proudly displays a notice signed by Mr. Sadr, giving him control of the hospital. It is not clear what has become of the administrators who were in charge of these institutions but Mr. Zubaidi ticks off a list of other hospitals in the city now controlled by Mr. Sadr's men.

At Al Karekh Public Food Trading and Sales Center in yet another part of the city, a guard at a food warehouse open to reporters on two previous visits apologizes for not allowing them access a third time.

"The Howza came and took control of the warehouse today," he said, referring to the seminary in Najaf, the traditional seat of Iraq's Shiite clerical power and in whose name Mr. Sadr is operating on the strength of his late father's position.

One question that cannot yet be answered is whether the Shiites under Mr. Haeri's control will give up their gains if an American-run civil administration — or a provisional Iraqi government — tells them to.

In a possible sign of trouble ahead, Mr. Fartusi, was detained for two days by the American military this week after having been found with a handgun in his car.

"We are not concerned with what the Americans think of us," he said. "We do not deal with the Americans whatsoever."

NEW BLOG: WE MISS YOU ABBIE HOFFMAN

2003-04-25T18:06:00.000-07:00

I started a new blog, dedicated to the repeal of the Patriot Act, with notes on civil liberties: We Miss You Abbie Hoffman.

TURKEY "MAD"

2003-04-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

Turkey is pissed at Jay Garner for his comments that Kirkuk is a Kurdish City, (and the center of Iraqi oil output), further proof that little thought actually went into the possible outcomes of this war. And Turkey is learning how little forethought does go into the formulation of American foreign policy. Newt Gingrich recently tried to discredit the State Department, and then James Baker ripped him a new asshole. Have we ever listened to the more cautious and pragmatic State Department?

The problem in reasoning with Bush and his entourage has to do with living in a house of mirrors. The triumphant five (Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Rove) actually believed Iraq was a version of this American Disney World that we live in: Every movie always ends happily in Disney world. UPI has this article: (the link is humongous, so here is the article in its entirety:

ANKARA, Turkey, Apr 25, 2003 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Turkey expressed its displeasure to the United States Friday over reports that the U.S. administrator in Iraq, Ray Garner, said that the Iraqi oil center of Kirkuk was a Kurdish city. Foreign Ministry officials said a note was handed to U.S. Ambassador Robert Pearson Friday asking what the scope was of Garner's alleged remarks during a visit earlier this week to Iraqi Kurdistan. The foreign ministry officials said that what Garner reportedly said violated a declaration signed by the United States, Turkey, Iraqi Kurdish groups and Iraqi Turkomen in Ankara last March. The declaration said all Iraqi cities were a common part of Iraq. Leaving the Foreign Ministry, Pearson said he did not know whether or not Garner had made the statement attributed to him, but repeated that all Iraqi cities belong to all the Iraqi people. This U.S. policy of United States will not be changed, he said. Garner is a retired lieutenant general who directed a military mission to protect Iraqi Kurds from destruction by the forces of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein following their uprising at the end of the 1991 war. Washington has placed him in charge of restoring vital services throughout Iraq and facilitating the creation of an interim Iraqi administration. In a related development, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul denied Friday's press reports that Turkish officers were detained by U.S. forces in Iraqi Kurdistan and expelled back to Turkey. He described the situation as hazy. The reports said the U.S. military charged the Turks were seeking to provide arms to Turkomen. Thursday Time magazine's Web site reported a dozen Turkish special forces troops were returned to Turkey. According to the Time report, they were in civilian dress when detained and their vehicles were found to contain a variety of weapons. "They did not come here with a pure heart," Time quoted a U.S. officer as saying. "Their objective is to create an environment that can be used by Turkey to send a large peacekeeping force into Kirkuk." According to Turkish estimates, Ankara already has around 10,000 troops already stationed inside Iraq. Ankara is worried the Iraqi Kurds could takeover Kirkuk and possibly Mosul, another major oil center in northern Iraq. The Turkish authorities have repeatedly warned that there would be serious consequences if this were to happen. During the fighting that brought down Saddam, hundreds of Kurdish militiamen poured into the two cities to the consternation of Ankara. The militiamen, known as peshmerga, later withdrew. Iraqi Kurds of all factions claim Kirkuk as properly their capital. While it is possible that Kurds may make up the largest element in its population, analysts said Kirkuk is also a home to Arabs and Turkomen. The Turkomen, who have historical claims on Kirkuk, are distant kinsmen of the Anatolian Turks. Ankara sees itself as their protector. Clashes have been reported between neighboring Iraqi Kurds and Turkomen. The Turks fear that Kurdish control of Kirkuk's oil would provide the economic underpinning for further increasing the prosperity of the Kurdish region that benefited from autonomy following the 1991 Persian Gulf War. It lay beyond Saddam's control thanks to the U.S. creation of a safe haven for the Kurds, patrolled by the U.S. and British air forces. A prosperous Iraqi Kurdistan, let alone an independent one that the Turks suspect the Iraqi Kurds will seek, would, in Ankara's view, encourage separatist trends among its own large Kurdish population.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International.

STILL IN KINDERGARTEN

2003-04-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

While most of the rest of the world works at playing the game of Life, the triumphant 5 (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Powell), are playing monopoly. After destroying Iraq's infrastructure with their bombs, now they are going to profit from its re-building. If this is not obscene, then I don't know the meaning of the word. Meanwhile, Cheney continues to receive money from Halliburton, despite the obvious conflict of interest. These triumphant five were clueless as to the competing political interests that would emerge in a post-war Iraq. They are losing control of Chalabi, and Jay Garner appears to have little political weight except with the Kurds. Garner keeps mouthing empty reassurances that all's well that ends well. Here is the latest from the New York Times regarding the chaos in Iraq (again, the link is too cumbersome; I've printed the article in its entirety, dated April 24):

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 23 — The American military moved today to strip Baghdad's self-appointed administrator of his authority and warned Iraqi factions not to take advantage of the confusion and the political void in the country by trying to grab power.

Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of ground forces in Iraq, issued a proclamation putting Iraq's politicians on notice, saying, "The coalition alone retains absolute authority within Iraq." He warned that anyone challenging the American-led authority would be subject to arrest.

However, the American military presence is sparse in several areas of the city. With nobody to stop them, long-banned groups ranging from Shiite radicals to communists have been seizing villas in Baghdad and adorning them with their respective emblems.

Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who will lead reconstruction efforts, just arrived in Baghdad on Monday and has been traveling in the north these past two days. General McKiernan and his force are supposed to provide the security to enable rebuilding.

General Garner, traveling in the Kurdish-held northern region of Iraq, said today that anti-American sentiment would soon subside.

"The majority of people realize we are only going to stay here long enough to start a democratic government for them," he said. "We're only going to stay here long enough to get their economy going." Once that was grasped, General Garner added, "In a very short order you'll see a change in the attitudes and the will of the people themselves."

The toppling of Saddam Hussein two weeks ago has left a power vacuum. American military forces in Iraq continue to round up members of the old government. Today they captured four former Iraqi officials, including two senior members of Iraqi intelligence.

But American troops are still being killed and wounded as they try to make Iraq safer and as political factions and clerics rush to fill the void of authority.

Three American marines died today in an accident involving a rocket-propelled grenade near the city of Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. Earlier this week, an Army soldier was killed south of Baghdad when he fell from a truck. "That's the big problem we're going to face now, accidents," a Marine captain said.

But outside the military sphere, large political problems loomed. Among those engaged in the rush for power were two longtime Iraqi exiles. American concern over the activities of these two men — Muhammad Mohsen Zobeidi and Ahmad Chalabi — has begun to grow, military officials said.

Mr. Zobeidi, who recently returned to Iraq, asserts that he was chosen to lead an executive council charged with administering Baghdad. He has reportedly sought to appoint a police chief, ignoring the police official installed by the Army's Third Infantry Division, and his supporters have appropriated government vehicles.

Mr. Zobeidi, who says his qualifications for running Baghdad include participation in a disaster control management course arranged by the State Department, has also proposed sending a delegation to represent Iraq's interest at an OPEC meeting.

American officials said today that it was Mr. Zobeidi's efforts to expand his powers that prompted the Americans to crack down.

Mr. Zobeidi was given a copy of General McKiernan's proclamation, American official said, and he was informed by the American military today that he had no authority to appoint anybody.

He was asked to vacate his office at the Palestine Hotel and told to return any property seized by his men. American troops have been stationed near the hotel to provide a measure of security for the reporters who are staying there. The concern was that Mr. Zobeidi would portray the deployments as indications that the American military was actually there to protect him and to support his political aspirations.

Mr. Zobeidi has been meeting with traditional sheiks, with tribal chieftains in gold-embroidered robes and headdresses and with men in business suits. His entourage now includes police and army officers in their old uniforms, the shoulder boards spattered with stars and eagles.

Today, he held a meeting to hear neighborhood grievances, which, as gatherings here do, quickly turned into a cacophony of shouting about relatives lost under Mr. Hussein, seized property since his fall, a lack of security and the loss of electricity. "I don't have a magic wand," Mr. Zobeidi said at several points.

Then he was surrounded by aides and flanked by a Sunni tribal sheik and a Shiite clergyman whose black turban marked him as a descendent of the Prophet Muhammad.

The entourage jumped in and out of a caravan of cars and pickup trucks, stopping at a fire station, a water purification plant and a hospital. It also visited the newly seized headquarters of the Kurdish Democratic Party, headed by the Barzani clan, as well as the Assyrian Democratic Movement, equipped with a purple flag and militiamen in camouflage.

Such is Iraq today: a mesmerizing labyrinth of conflicting interests operating in something close to a void as American generals strive to maintain a minimum of order and a retired American general speaks of building a stable, democratic future.

The American military is also keeping a close eye on the activities of Mr. Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who has ensconced himself in a club in Baghdad and is seeking to play an important role in Iraq's effort to restore civil authority.

Mr. Chalabi has enjoyed strong support from Defense Department officials, who say he is committed to democracy in Iraq, a pro-Western foreign policy and the Middle East peace process.

Mr. Chalabi's role could be important as Iraqi political figures meet over the next several weeks to discuss arrangements for a temporary administration as a stepping stone to a democratic government. Some Bush administration officials, however, have been skeptical that Mr. Chalabi, who spent the past few decades in exile, would attract much of a following in iraq. And allied military officials have been concerned that Mr. Chalabi's men are throwing their weight around to build a political base for their leader.

Mr. Chalabi has about 700 fighters in his entourage who were flown to the Iraqi air base at Tallil several weeks ago by the American military at the request of Pentagon officials. American forces then scoured the country for arms and ammunition to equip the fighters so that they could participate in the campaign to oust Mr. Hussein.

American military lawyers ruled that the weapons could be provided to Mr. Chalabi's men without Congressional approval because they were not intended for a foreign government but for a fighting force attached to the American military. Special Forces were assigned to supervise the fighters, who were officially called the Free Iraqi Freedom Fighters.

But the fighting drew to a close before the fighters could join the fray. After American forces took Baghdad, some of Mr. Chalibi's fighters helped capture an aide to Mr. Hussein who was on the allies' most wanted list. But American officials are also worried that some are being reorganized as a private security force for Mr. Chalabi, and they suspect them of setting up their own checkpoints and even detaining Iraqis.

Just a few weeks after helping establish Mr. Chalabi's force, allied commanders are now considering a plan either to demobilize the force or put them formally under allied command, officials said.

Maj. Gen. Albert Whitley, the senior British officer in General McKiernan's command, put General McKiernan's edict into effort at a meeting today with railway representatives.

The allies are trying to restore Iraq's basic services, and its railroad is one of them. The allies are trying to fix the track and ensure that workers' salaries are paid. The aim is to use the railroad to move fuel to power plants and to move food north from the port of Umm Qasr.

As General Whitley opened the meeting at the central train station in Baghdad, he was told by his Iraqi counterparts that Mr. Chalabi's representatives had been in touch with them and had been taking credit for restoring the railroad.

Such claims follow a pattern, allied officials say, in which supporters of Mr. Zobeidi and Mr. Chalibi have sought to claim credit for allied efforts to rebuild the country in order to build political support.

"Nobody has authority unless General McKiernan says so," General Whitley advised. "Mr. Zobeidi and Mr. Chalabi have no authority. If we say you run the railroad, you run the railroad. If anybody comes and tells you differently, tell us. We will ask them to stop interfering. If we have to, we will arrest them."

But after General Whitley left, a vehicle appeared and aides to Mr. Chalabi got out, one witness said. They urged the railroad representatives to work with Mr. Chalabi, according to Thaibit M. Gharib, the director of the railroad."

I WILL NO LONGER RE-HASH DAILY

2003-04-23T05:53:00.000-07:00

Folks, I won't be, on a daily basis, charting the course of this war any longer. I have spent hours each day on this sorrowful labor of love, but honestly now I am somewhat exhausted from the effort and eager to move on to other projects. I will continue to write commentary and provide links concerning Iraq on this web log, but it will not be a daily re-hashing of media stories. I believe that I have provided enough links to news outlets so that if you want to find information, you know where to go. I don't believe the war is necessarily over. I do believe that this new-found blossoming of democracy in Iraq is in danger of being squelched by the U.S. Already, the official policy, as reflected in the words of Jay Garner, seems to be to downplay the anti-American protests as being staged and set-up by Iran extremists. This current U.S. administration will never take responsibility for its own destructive actions. I will be involved more and more in fighting (non-violently, of course) for our civil liberties here in our own country, as they are increasingly under attack from the Patriot Acts and Total Information Awareness. . The Agonist is an excellent site for daily coverage of Iraq news, and world news in general, despite his right-wing slant. Thank you for your support, and please continue to visit, as I will continue to have commentary. I will also continue to do commentary on my other web log, Red Onion.

BODIES OF TWO BRITISH SOLDIERS FOUND

2003-04-21T17:09:00.000-07:00

The Independent.co.uk reports bodies of two British soldiers found in Iraq:

The bodies of two British soldiers said by the Prime Minister to have been executed were found in a shallow grave in Iraq, the Ministry of Defence said today.

The remains of Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth, aged 36, and Sapper Luke Allsopp, 23, were found near Al Zubayr, outside Basra in southern Iraq.

It is feared their Land Rover was ambushed and the men shot in cold blood after they went missing on 23 March. Their lifeless bodies were then broadcast on al-Jazeera TV causing outrage in Britain.

An MoD spokeswoman said cause of deaths had not been confirmed but that execution was a possibility, and an investigation was ongoing.

Sapper Allsopp, from north London and Sgt Cullingworth, from Essex, were both members of the 33 (EOD) Engineer Regiment a specialist bomb disposal unit of the Royal Engineers.

Last month a row broke out over the deaths when Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the men had been "executed".

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?

2003-04-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

John Pilger of the Independent.co.uk asks, where is the outrage for this war?

Last Sunday, seated in the audience at the Bafta television awards ceremony, I was struck by the silence. Here were many of the most influential members of the liberal elite, the writers, producers, dramatists, journalists and managers of our main source of information, television; and not one broke the silence. It was as though we were disconnected from the world outside: a world of rampant, rapacious power and great crimes committed in our name by our government and its foreign master. Iraq is the "test case", says the Bush regime, which every day sails closer to Mussolini's definition of fascism: the merger of a militarist state with corporate power. Iraq is a test case for western liberals, too. As the suffering mounts in that stricken country, with Red Cross doctors describing "incredible'' levels of civilian casualties, the choice of the next conquest, Syria or Iran, is "debated'' on the BBC, as if it were a World Cup venue.

The unthinkable is being normalised. The American essayist Edward Herman wrote: "There is usually a division of labour in doing and rationalising the unthinkable, with the direct brutalising and killing done by one set of individuals ... others working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalise the unthinkable for the general public.''

Herman wrote that following the 1991 Gulf War, whose nocturnal images of American bulldozers burying thousands of teenage Iraqi conscripts, many of them alive and trying to surrender, were never shown. Thus, the slaughter was normalised. A study released just before Christmas 1991 by the Medical Educational Trust revealed that more 200,000 Iraqi men, women and children were killed or died as a direct result of the American-led attack. This was barely reported, and the homicidal nature of the "war'' never entered public consciousness in this country, let alone America.

The Pentagon's deliberate destruction of Iraq's civilian infrastructure, such as power sources and water and sewage plants, together with the imposition of an embargo as barbaric as a medieval siege, produced a degree of suffering never fully comprehended in the West. Documented evidence was available, volumes of it; by the late 1990s, more than 6,000 infants were dying every month, and the two senior United Nations officials responsible for humanitarian relief in Iraq, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, resigned, protesting the embargo's hidden agenda. Halliday called it "genocide".

As of last July, the United States, backed by the Blair government, was wilfully blocking humanitarian supplies worth $5.4bn, everything from vaccines and plasma bags to simple painkillers, all of which Iraq had paid for and the Security Council had approved.

Last month's attack by the two greatest military powers on a demoralised, sick and largely defenceless population was the logical extension of this barbarism. This is now called a "victory", and the flags are coming out. Last week, the submarine HMS Turbulent returned to Plymouth, flying the Jolly Roger, the pirates' emblem. How appropriate. This nuclear-powered machine fired some 30 American Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraq. Each missile cost £700,000: a total of £21m. That alone would provide desperate Basra with food, water and medicines.

Imagine: what did Commander Andrew McKendrick's 30 missiles hit? How many people did they kill or maim in a population nearly half of which are children? Maybe, Commander, you targeted a palace with gold taps in the bathroom, or a "command and control facility", as the Americans and Geoffrey Hoon like to lie. Or perhaps each of your missiles had a sensory device that could distinguish George Bush's "evil-doers'' from toddlers. What is certain is that your targets did not include the Ministry of Oil.

When the invasion began, the British public was called upon to "support'' troops sent illegally and undemocratically to kill people with whom we had no quarrel. "The ultimate test of our professionalism'' is how Commander McKendrick describes an unprovoked attack on a nation with no submarines, no navy and no air force, and now with no clean water and no electricity and, in many hospitals, no anaesthetic with which to amputate small limbs shredded by shrapnel. I have seen elsewhere how this is done, with a gag in the patient's mouth.

One child, Ali Ismaeel Abbas, the boy who lost his parents and his arms in a missile attack, has been flown to a modern hospital in Kuwait. Publicity has saved him. Tony Blair says he will "do everything he can'' to help him. This must be the ultimate insult to the memory of all the children of Iraq who have died violently in Blair's war, and as a result of the embargo that Blair enthusiastically endorsed. The saving of Ali substitutes a media spectacle of charity for our right to knowledge of the extent of the crime committed against the young in our name. Let us now see the pictures of the "truckload of dozens of dismembered women and children'' that the Red Cross doctors saw.

As Ali was flown to Kuwait, the Americans were preventing Save The Children from sending a plane with medical supplies into northern Iraq, where 40,000 are desperate. According to the UN, half the population of Iraq has only enough food to last a few weeks. The head of the World Food Programme says that 40 million people around the world are now seriously at risk because of the distraction of the humanitarian disaster in Iraq.

And this is "liberation"? No, it is bloody conquest, witnessed by America's mass theft of Iraq's resources and natural wealth. Ask the crowds in the streets, for whom the fear and hatred of Saddam Hussein have been transferred, virtually overnight, to Bush and Blair and perhaps to "us''.

Such is the magnitude of Blair's folly and crime that the contrivance of his vindication is urgent. As if speaking for the vindicators, Andrew Marr, the BBC's political editor, reported: "[Blair] said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right.''

What constitutes a bloodbath to the BBC's man in Downing Street? Did the murder of the 3,000 people in New York's Twin Towers qualify? If his answer is yes, then the thousands killed in Iraq during the past month is a bloodbath. One report says that more than 3,000 Iraqis were killed within 24 hours or less. Or are the vindicators saying that the lives of one set of human beings have less value than those recognisable to us? Devaluation of human life has always been essential to the pursuit of imperial power, from the Congo to Vietnam, from Chechnya to Iraq.

If, as Milan Kundera wrote, "the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting", then we must not forget. We must not forget Blair's lies about weapons of mass destruction which, as Hans Blix now says, were based on "fabricated evidence". We must not forget his callous attempts to deny that an American missile killed 62 people in a Baghdad market. And we must not forget the reason for the bloodbath. Last September, in announcing its National Security Strategy, Bush served notice that America intended to dominate the world by force. Iraq was indeed the "test case". The rest was a charade.

We must not forget that a British defence secretary has announced, for the first time, that his government is prepared to launch an attack with nuclear weapons. He echoes Bush, of course. An ascendant mafia now rules the United States, and the Prime Minister is in thrall to it. Together, they empty noble words – liberation, freedom and democracy – of their true meaning. The unspoken truth is that behind the bloody conquest of Iraq is the conquest of us all: of our minds, our humanity and our self-respect at the very least. If we say and do nothing, victory over us is assured.
21 April 2003 18:52

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THOUSANDS PROTEST IN BAGHDAD

2003-04-18T17:28:00.000-07:00

10's of thousands demonstrate, calling for American withdrawal from Iraq, via Al-Jazeera:

"Thousands in Baghdad call for US withdrawal

Tens of thousands of demonstrators in Baghdad protested against the United States presence in Iraq on Friday, following Friday prayers.

Waving banners in English and Arabic reading “Leave our country, we want peace,” protestors outside of the Abu Hanifa Al-Numan Mosque chanted “No to America, no to Saddam” and “This homeland is for the Shia and Sunni,” in a sign of unity among the two groups.

The majority of Iraq’s 25-million strong population is 60 percent Shia, which had been ruled ruthlessly under Saddam Hussein’s mostly Sunni elitist regime. In recent days there has been mounting discontent from among the Shia to Washington’s presence in Iraq.

Protestors called for unity among Iraqis and urged all to put aside past conflicts and differences.

Al-Jazeera TV correspondent Youseff Al-Shouly reported it was the first non-state organized protest in the Iraqi capital in decades, describing it as a significant development.

In the first Friday prayers since US tanks rolled into the heart of Baghdad last week, Imam Ahmad Al-Kubaisi said in his sermon the United States invaded Iraq to defend Israel and denied that Iraqi possessed weapons of mass destruction. --Al Jazeera"

SAVE THE CHILDREN DENIED ACCESS INTO NORTHERN IRAQ BY U.S.

2003-04-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

Save the Children wants to help, U.S. says its too dangerous, via Reuters:

"LONDON (Reuters) - The United States is ignoring the plight of children in northern Iraq by refusing to allow a plane full of medical supplies to land in the city of Arbil, a British aid agency said on Friday.

Save the Children disputed the U.S. line that it was unsafe to land at Arbil, saying the city, between Mosul and Kirkuk, was "as safe as many parts of London".

"I can only guess that is because they have other priorities because the suggestion that it is not safe is very difficult to accept," Save the Children representative Brendan Paddy told BBC Radio from Arbil.

"Medical supplies have to come in from the outside and at the moment that doesn't seem to be happening."

He said American flights were entering the area every day.

A U.S. military spokesman told the BBC from the Gulf that while the area around Arbil was safe for military planes, which could defend themselves, civilian planes might be in danger.

He said he hoped the Save the Children plane could land "within days".

The plane is ready to leave an airfield in Britain with enough medical supplies to help 40,000 people for three months.

Iraqi hospitals -- especially those in Mosul, which have been seriously affected by fighting and widespread looting following the collapse of the Iraqi regime -- lack essential medical and food supplies.

Save the Children accused the United States on Thursday of breaching the Geneva Convention by failing to open up access for aid. Under the convention, occupying forces are obliged to protect civilians, restore law and order and facilitate humanitarian relief.

"What is more difficult to understand is not the ignoring of the Geneva Convention but ignoring the plight of the kids that we're seeing every day in Mosul," Paddy said. "

DESTRUCTION OF IRAQ GOOD FOR BUSINESS

2003-04-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

Kurt Nimmo of Counterpunch says the destruction of Iraq is "good for business":

"It's now obvious what the Bushites have in mind for Iraq.

Iraq is in the process of self-destruction, pushed over the edge by Bush and the neocons. They believe chaos is a form of freedom, a reaction to decades of Saddam's dictatorial rule. But this explanation is mostly for public consumption.

Bush and his architects will endeavor to build a new Iraq -- a McDonaldized Iraq ruled by westernized overlords and serviced by US corporations. This can only happen if the methodical process of destruction is allowed to unravel centuries of Iraqi culture and decades of Saddam's iron-fisted rule.

The International Committee of the Red Cross complains about the violence and unchecked looting. It cannot distribute humanitarian aid. It says US inaction to bring the chaos under control is a breach of the Geneva Convention.

Naturally, the US does not care about the Geneva Convention.

This should be obvious -- from the use of cluster bombs to the illegal detention of political prisoners at Gitmo Bay in Cuba -- Bush and the Pentagon are violating the Geneva Convention right and left and at every turn. It is absurd, almost comical, for the International Committee of the Red Cross to make these claims -- they should know by now that the US has no intention of respecting international law. Not only is the Red Cross irrelevant, but so is most of humanity. Iraq -- as Mesopotamia and the cradle of civilization -- is the poster child or irrelevancy. Soon it will serve as a role model for all Arabs.

Another incidental international organization, the United Nations, is now carping about the engineered chaos in Iraq. "The coalition forces seem to be completely unable to restrain looters or impose any sort of control on the mobs that now govern the streets," Veronique Taveau, a UN spokesman, complained to the Guardian.

Mr. Taveau, unfortunately, insists on playing by old, time-tarnished rules. He seems entirely clueless about the nature and intentions of the Bushites. It's not an inability that constrains the US forces in Iraq. No, it is something else altogether.

The Bush global engineers have issued top-down orders -- allow the Iraqis to self-destruct, do not intervene. "We saw a similar mixture in Kosovo and Sierra Leone but initial disorder does give way to stability," explained a Tony Blair sidekick. Rumsfeld was a bit more succinct. "Stuff happens," he mused. "And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."

LOOTING IN AMERICA, LOOTING IN IRAQ

2003-04-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

Alexander Cockburn of CounterPunch compares the looting of Iraq to the looting of the American lower and middle classes and their culture:

"They put US troops round the Oil Ministry and the headquarters of the Secret Police, but stood aside as the mobs looted Baghdad's Archaeological Museum and torched the National Library. It sounds like something right out of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, only here the troops protecting the American Petroleum Institute are lobbyists and politicians, lobbing tax breaks over the wall.

As regards culture, Newt & Co, you'll recall, reached for their guns whenever the word came up. What libraries here that have survived in any useful condition here have FBI snoops asking to see what the brown furriners have been reading. No need to worry about the locals. By the time the attack here on public education is over, the sort of people who once used public libraries to make their way up in the world won't be able to read.

US troops also sat back and allowed mobs to wreck and then burn the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information. Meanwhile these same troops lost no time in protecting such important assets as the North Oil Company, the state-owned firm running Iraq's northern oil fields. Colonel William Mayville, told the embedded press that he wanted to send the message, "Hey, don't screw with the oil."

There's nothing out of place about the complacency with which Rumsfeld and the others have regarded the looting of Baghdad, extolling it as somehow the forgivable portent of freedom. "It's untidy," the endlessly loquacious Rumsfeld confided. "And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes."

Freedom to loot, the conversion of public assets into private property, is a core "free-enterprise" tenet, raised to the level of religious belief in recent years, in contrast to the more preferable posture of the Robber Barons of yesteryear who viewed themselves more realistically as fellows smart enough to figure out the combo to the safe.

We've just come through a decade of spectacular looting of the sort that made Bush and Cheney millionaires. In the late Nineties the executive suites of America's largest companies became a vast hog wallow. CEOs and finance officers would borrow millions from some cooperative bank, using the money to drive up company stock prices, thereby inflating the value of their options. $1.22 trillion was the total of borrowing by non-financial corporations between 1994 and 1999, inclusive. Of that sum, corporations used just 15.3 per cent for capital expenditures. They used 57 per cent of it, $697.4 billion, to buy back stock and thus enrich themselves, which was surely the wildest smash and grab in the history of corporate thievery.

Any of this relevant to what's going on in Iraq? Most certainly, and we don't mean merely that Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress will be unable, if he installed in Iraq as the US's local puppet, to visit nearby Jordan where the fragrance of financial impropriety lingers , concerning a $200m (£127m) banking scandal in Jordan recently detailed in The London Guardian by David Leigh and Brian Whitaker. In 1992, Chalabi was tried in his absence and sentenced by a Jordanian court to 22 years' jail on 31 charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds and currency speculation.

Capitalism, as Joseph Schumpeter hopefully pointed out, is premised on destruction. Lay waste the old, roll out the new. The missionaries of the free market and of Christianity hastening into Baghdad are intent on reinventing the place along capitalist lines under the overall spiritual guidance of the Judeo-Christian tradition. That means tolerating, nay, encouraging mobs to wipe out the past, whether in the form of ancient Islamic manuscripts or public institutions.

Sweden's largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, published an interview April 11 with a Swedish researcher of Middle Eastern ancestry who had gone to Iraq to serve as a human shield. Khaled Bayoumi told the newspaper, "I happened to be right there just as the American troops encouraged people to begin the plundering." He described how US soldiers shot security guards at a local government building on Haifa Avenue on the west bank of the Tigris, and then "blasted apart the doors to the building." Next, according to Bayoumi, "from the tanks came eager calls in Arabic encouraging people to come close to them."

EYE WITNESS ACCOUNT: U.S. MARINES SHOT CIVILIANS IN COLD BLOOD

2003-04-17T08:58:00.000-07:00

Just when you thought there was enough horror, this French reporter recounts seeing U.S. marines shoot civilians:

"With my own eyes I saw about fifteen civilians killed in two days. I've gone through enough wars to know that it's always dirty, that civilians are always the first victims. But the way it was happening here, it was insane.

At the roughest moment, the most humane of the troops was called Doug. He gave real warning shots. From 800 yards he could hit a tire and, if that wasn't enough, then the motor. He saved ten lives in two hours by driving back civilians who were coming towards us.

Distraught soldiers were saying: 'I ain't prepared for this, I didn't come here to shoot civilians.' The colonel countered that the Iraqis were using inhabitants to kill marines, that 'soldiers were being disguised as civilians, and that ambulances were perpetrating terrorist attacks.'

I drove away a girl who had had her humerus pierced by a bullet. Enrico was holding her in his arms. In the rear, the girl's father was protecting his young son, wounded in the torso and losing consciousness. The man spoke in gestures to the doctor at the back of the lines, pleading: "I don't understand, I was walking and holding my children's hands. Why didn't you shoot in the air? Or at least shoot me?"

In Baghdad, McCoy sped up the march. He stopped taking the time to search houses one-by-one. He wanted to get to Paradise Place as soon as possible. The Marines were not firing on the thickening population. The course ended with Saddam's statue being toppled. There were more journalists at the scene than Baghdadis. Its five million inhabitants stayed at home."

OXFAM READY TO HELP IRAQ

2003-04-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

The Guardian Unlimited reports the UK based aid organization Oxfam is gearing up to help Iraq:

The UK-based aid agency Oxfam is flying out vital water supplies and sanitation to Iraq today, and Sir Richard Branson announced that his airline Virgin Atlantic will soon begin flying humanitarian relief to Baghdad.

The UN has provided an aircraft that will fly 17 tonnes of Oxfam equipment and four-wheel-drive vehicles from Manston airport, in Kent, to Kuwait.

From there Oxfam engineers hope to help begin restoring water supplies to southern Iraq, where thousands are still without water.

The aid was being flown out as Sir Richard announced that he also plans to fly out health workers and supplies to Iraq ahead of reintroducing scheduled flights to Baghdad.

"The first few flights would be humanitarian delivering doctors, nurses and much-needed aid and supplies to the Iraqi population. We're working with aid agencies and hope to operate flights as soon as we can."

AID FOR IRAQ TIMELINE

2003-04-17T07:25:00.000-07:00

The Guardian Unlimited charts the timeline for aid for Iraq:

"Friday April 4, 2003
The first emergency convoy of 23 trucks from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) crosses from Turkey into northern Iraq. Meanwhile, the International Red Cross delivers medical supplies in the city of Basra for the first time. The ICRC also delivers water to the three main hospitals in Basra and to residents in the nearby town of Zubayr.

Saturday April 5
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports that Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad is treating 100 war wounded patients an hour.

Sunday April 6
The Syrian Red Crescent evacuates a refugee camp near the border with Iraq amid continuing heavy exchanges of fire between coalition warplanes and Iraqi anti-aircraft defences. The WFP delivers its first consignment of wheat flour to northern Iraq.

Monday April 7
The ICRC warns that heavy bombing in Baghdad is preventing its workers from delivering urgently needed medical supplies and water to the capital's hospitals. The aid agency says hospitals are struggling to cope with the rising number of war wounded and at least one is "no longer capable of dealing with the influx of injured patients".

Tuesday April 8
The ICRC warns that hospitals in Baghdad are running out of anaesthetics, drugs and medical equipment as intensive fighting in the capital is preventing the delivery of fresh supplies and water. The World Health Organisation also reports a "shortage of equipment to deal with burns, shrapnel wounds and spinal injuries", describing the situation in the hospitals as "critical".

Wednesday April 9
Refugees International criticises the United Nations' response to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The aid agency accuses the UN of "keeping its distance" placing it "in danger of being irrelevant to the decision-making and coordination of aid to Iraq". This has allowed coalition forces to take over the role of the UN Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. The chancellor, Gordon Brown, pledges £64m towards the reconstruction of Iraq in his Budget.

Thursday April 10
The ICRC reveals that one of its aid workers has been shot dead in crossfire in Baghdad. ICRC and Médecins sans Frontières warn that they are currently unable to provide humanitarian relief because of growing lawlessness and violent looting across the city. An ICRC spokeswoman says that the al-Kindi hospital near the centre of the capital was attacked by armed looters who stripped it of everything, including beds, electrical fittings and medical equipment."

NO WATER IN BASRA; RESITANCE CONTINUES THERE

2003-04-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

Basra still not safe, and water has not been restored, according to Guardian Unlimited:

"Doctors in Iraq's second city, Basra, warned yesterday of an epidemic as a majority of the 1.3 million residents were still without safe drinking water three weeks after the war began.
Attempts to restore the supply have failed, despite hopes expressed in the first week that it would take a matter of days. Help from aid agencies is only trickling in.

Tamara al-Rifai, the representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross based in Kuwait, said looting was partly to blame. Lack of security was making it difficult for aid agencies to enter the town, and looters had taken pipes before they could be installed to help distribution.

"The fact that we have gone a few steps back makes it even more serious," she said.

Uday Abdul Bakri, general surgeon at the 600-bed Basra general hospital, said the hospital was dealing with many diarrhoea cases and the risk of water-acquired diseases, such as cholera and dysentery, was high.

"I think there will be an epidemic," he said.

The shortage of drinking water is a problem across southern Iraq.

There is huge resentment in Basra against the British forces because of the lack of water and electricity. Residents also blame them for failing to control the looters.

One resident in the centre of Basra said: "Bush bad. Blair bad. They destroyed our water and electricity."

Another, Axad Toblanid, 50, an engineer, said: "We are unhappy with this freedom. We have no water. We have complained to the British army about this but they are not doing anything.

"It is not safe. The British army say, 'we are not policemen.' It is the rule of international law that any town where the army is in control must protect us, but they don't."

The army is to draft in two British police officers to Basra to give advice.

There are reports that a few hundred Fedayeen, the fighters that were reputed to be most loyal to Saddam Hussein, are still holed up in the city,"

LIMBLESS ASSOCIATION, AND MORE ON ALI ISMAEEL ABBAS

2003-04-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

The www.limbless-association.org is asking for help to provide limbs for the children and adults of Iraq who suffered the loss limbs in this war. Here is more on Ali Ismaeel Abbas:

"Ali Ismaeel Abbas, the 12-year-old boy who lost both arms and 10 members of his family in a bombing raid on Baghdad, is likely to be flown to Britain for hospital treatment and new limbs.

The Limbless Association hopes to bring him to London for treatment at the Roehampton hospital. The Ministry of Defence has been asked to help to bring him out safely, but prosthetics experts are preparing to fly there should he prove too ill to travel.

The plans were revealed yesterday as Caroline Spelman, shadow international development secretary, opened Ali's Fund in aid of children injured in the conflict. It has already raised £50,000. The fund wasset up in the light of Monday's publication of haunting pictures of Ali.

The boy, who lost his pregnant mother, his father, his brother and seven other relatives when a missile struck his home, and suffered 60% burns, was quoted as saying that he had hoped to be a doctor, but adding: "How can I? If I don't have hands I will commit suicide."

It would cost £20,000 to give Ali prosthetic arms.

"Our priorities are Ali first, then other children who become limbless through the Iraq war, and then adults," said Diana Morgan, chief executive of the Limbless Association.

The association's chairman, Zafar Khan, said they hoped to treat him at Roehampton. "But a team from Chelsea and Westminster have offered to manage his burns [from a distance]. If needs be, experts could go to him. Long-term, we would like to see a clinic set up in Iraq."

Money can be donated via www.limbless-association.org, or 0208 355 2341 ."

FRUSTRATION AND HOPE IN BASRA

2003-04-17T06:58:00.000-07:00

In this article by the Guardian Unlimited, Iraqis express frustration and mistrust, and fragile hope:

There was an issue troubling him. "The world does not understand," he said. "I am like most Iraqis. We are not anti-American. I would like to see American restaurants in Baghdad and Basra. America is the most powerful country in the world, and we should have a good relationship with such a nation. We can help their economy; and they can help us."

But his expression grew sullen as he watched an American soldier talking to British army personnel. "I have problems with this American government," he said. "This George Bush, his father lied to us. And now his son is lying to us as well. I love my country. I could have left and enjoyed a good life elsewhere, but I wanted to show the light of a bright future to my people. We have a chance to do this now, but time is against us. And we cannot trust this America."

DEBATE OVER AID FOR IRAQ

2003-04-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

The Guardian Unlimited reports there is a fierce debate as to how aid should be handled for Iraq:

The fighting in Iraq threatens to trigger a huge humanitarian crisis, and aid charities are expected to play a key role in the relief operation.

The scale of the problem is potentially daunting. The UN estimates that more than 3.5 million people will have left their homes by the end of the conflict, with 600,000 of them fleeing Iraq altogether.

There are fears that the fighting will damage the UN's food distribution operation, which supplied 16m Iraqis before the fighting started, and damage Iraq's infrastructure.

The combination of food shortages, disrupted water and electricity supplies, and homelessness has led to concerns over serious public health problems, such as malnutrition, diarrhoea and dehydration.

Scores of aid agencies such as Oxfam, Unicef and Save the Children are preparing to play a key role in responding to the crisis and its aftermath. Many are already handing out supplies as well as offering food and shelter to refugees.

There is fierce debate over who should lead the humanitarian response. Aid agencies have called for a relief effort led by the UN; the US has indicated that it expects humanitarian and reconstruction work to be directed by the military.

The British armed forces say they want to gradually hand over responsibility for relief work to the aid agencies. Some of the organisations involved are reluctant to work side by side with the the military, arguing that it will compromise their independence.

Oxfam's spokesman Alex Renton, in Oman, said: "We certainly intend to operate independently from the military - mixing those roles is dangerous for all sides.

"Sixty years of experience has shown us the whole picture of the soldier with a gun in one hand and a loaf of bread in another is not a happy one. It puts civilians' lives at risk, aid workers' lives at risk and it can make aid workers targets."

MORE DEAD IN MOSUL

2003-04-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

The Guardian Unlimited reports three more killed in firefight with U.S. marines in Mosul, though details are sketchy as to what actually happened:

"Community leaders in Mosul appealed for calm yesterday after US forces became involved in a lethal firefight in the city centre for the second day running.
Doctors at Mosul's emergency hospital said at least three people were killed and 12 injured, including two children, after US troops responded to what a military spokesmen described as "aimed fire".

On Tuesday 10 people were killed and at least 16 wounded in a similar incident.

Residents angered by two days of shootings accused US soldiers involved in yesterday's event of firing deliberately at a crowd of civilians gathered near the governor's building in the city's central administrative district.

But Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman for US central command in Qatar, vehemently denied the claim. "It absolutely didn't happen," he said. Marines who were securing the governor's building had opened fire, he said, but they were aiming above the crowd at gunmen who were sniping from a rooftop. "The marines were fired upon... away from the crowd," Capt Thorp said. "They fired back, but they never fired at the crowd."

He added that the shooting ended as soon as the marines returned fire: "It had nothing to do with the crowd."

Another version came from Mahmoud Ahmed, a retired Iraqi military general, who witnessed the incident. He said that at the time of the shooting, Mosul police were trying to prevent looters from stealing money from the city's nearby central bank.

He said police had fired a number of times into the air to scatter the looters and that US soldiers opened fire, believing they were under attack.

"I heard three shots from the bank," he said. "Then the Americans opened fire. They sprayed the area. They must have fired 1,000 rounds. But they didn't seem to fire at the bank, they fired in the direction of the crowd by the governor's office."

Amar Ghanem Abdullah, 25, who was wounded in both legs, was among police ordered to stop the looting. He said the police shot in the air to disperse the crowd, and then the Americans fired from the roof of the governor's building.

The Americans "thought we were shooting at them... I don't think they were shooting at us deliberately."

The shooting follows Tuesday's violence in which protesters hurled rocks and fired at US soldiers protecting Mashaan al-Juburi, an Iraqi opposition figure and would-be Mosul governor, who gave an address at the governor's building.

SYRIA AND THE ISRAELI CONNECTION

2003-04-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

Robert Fisk warns: Syria may be next:

"So now Syria is in America's gunsights. First it's Iraq, Israel's most powerful enemy, possessor of weapons of mass destruction – none of which has been found. Now it's Syria, Israel's second most powerful enemy, possessor of weapons of mass destruction, or so President George Bush Junior tells us. No word of that possessor of real weapons of mass destruction, Israel – the number of its nuclear warheads in the Negev are now accurately listed – whose Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has long been complaining that Damascus is the "centre of world terror".

But Syria is a target all right. First came the US claim that Damascus was sending gas masks to the Iraqi army. The Syrians denied it – but what if it's true? Why shouldn't an Arab neighbour offer Iraqi soldiers protective clothing during an American invasion which has no international legitimacy? Then Syria was accused of sending, or allowing, Arab "volunteers" to cross into Iraq to fight the Americans. This is much harder for the Syrians to deny. I've met a few of them here in Baghdad, most anxious to return to their homes in Homs and Damascus, others – from Algeria and Morocco – telling me that they will be safe if they can reach the Syrian border because "there will be no trouble from there". But here, too, there's a whiff of hypocrisy.

Whenever Israel goes to war, there are hundreds of "volunteers" from the United States rushing to Tel Aviv to join the Israel Defence Force, and America never complains."

"THIS IS NOT LIBERATION"

2003-04-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

Robert Fisk, writing for the Independent.co.uk, documents the rage felt by many Iraqis, and threats of guerrilla resistance:

It's going wrong, faster than anyone could have imagined. The army of "liberation" has already turned into the army of occupation. The Shias are threatening to fight the Americans, to create their own war of "liberation".

At night on every one of the Shia Muslim barricades in Sadr City, there are 14 men with automatic rifles. Even the US Marines in Baghdad are talking of the insults being flung at them. "Go away! Get out of my face!" an American soldier screamed at an Iraqi trying to push towards the wire surrounding an infantry unit in the capital yesterday. I watched the man's face suffuse with rage. "God is Great! God is Great!" the Iraqi retorted.

"Fuck you!"

The Americans have now issued a "Message to the Citizens of Baghdad", a document as colonial in spirit as it is insensitive in tone. "Please avoid leaving your homes during the night hours after evening prayers and before the call to morning prayers," it tells the people of the city. "During this time, terrorist forces associated with the former regime of Saddam Hussein, as well as various criminal elements, are known to move through the area ... please do not leave your homes during this time. During all hours, please approach Coalition military positions with extreme caution ..."

So now – with neither electricity nor running water – the millions of Iraqis here are ordered to stay in their homes from dusk to dawn. Lockdown. It's a form of imprisonment. In their own country. Written by the command of the 1st US Marine Division, it's a curfew in all but name.

"If I was an Iraqi and I read that," an Arab woman shouted at me, "I would become a suicide bomber." And all across Baghdad you hear the same thing, from Shia Muslim clerics to Sunni businessmen, that the Americans have come only for oil, and that soon – very soon – a guerrilla resistance must start. No doubt the Americans will claim that these attacks are "remnants" of Saddam's regime or "criminal elements". But that will not be the case.