How's It going in Iraq Aug 2003

this is a good database of world media sources

it is interesting to be able to see what the average guy in the middle east is reading

World Press Review

 

I'm sorry, but how can this type of venomous filth be construed as anything *but* extremism? How many people can you offend with one post? I think this just broke the record. And to cap it off with a condemnation of Christianity? Unbelievable. Batman, there is a reason people like you are labeled part of the 'lunatic fringe'. -- Your animosity renders you completely socially incompatible and you can't even recognize it.

 

glynch,
Why don't you move to Lancaster,Pa,join the Amish+drive a hose+buggy? Than you'd get away from those cursed "gigantic gas guzzling SUV's" ?

 

What is most embarassing is that we are not all outraged all the time. It shouldn't take a fresh article on American atrocities to get me mad. I should wake up and go to sleep mad until these lying murderers are out of office. We all should. What really amazes me is how the supporters of these evil men get offended by people being pissed off at them. Oh, I'm sorry... Does it hurt your feelings when I call your murderous president a murderer? I should really be more sensitive.

Generally I'm no longer responding to Jorge. It's a damn waste of time. He's a lazy debater and entirely disingenuous. He ignores any argument he can't handle (which is most of them), spouts off some parroted, simplistic slogan and declares victory -- having never even joined the argument in the first place. But I will respond to his allegations of Christian bashing, because I didn't do that and it is generally well known by Christians on this board that I am respectful of personal faith.

George W. Bush is not a Christian. And when he lies about being one, it is bull****. And, I repeat, he'd better hope the stuff about Hell isn't true. None of that is a criticism of Christianity, which I have respect for and have never criticized on this board. I HAVE criticized the church, but that's another thing entirely. I know this won't be convenient for Troller_Jorge, who claims to disdain emotion but likes nothing more than being outraged by misunderstandings or misrepresentations of petty slights to his favorite causes (or at least those ones he's told SHOULD be his favorites -- I've recently become convinced he doesn't hold even one single opinion of his own), all while waving off people dying unnecessarily for cynical reasons.

 

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=716&e=3&u=/ap/20030813/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Our boys need to work on their aim. Shooting into a crowd of thousands and only five reported casualties.

U.S. Soldiers Fire Into Baghdad Crowd
14 minutes ago

By TAREK AL-ISSAWI, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. soldiers shot into a crowd of thousands of demonstrators in a Baghdad slum on Wednesday, killing one civilian and wounding four after a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at them, the military said. North of Baghdad, guerrillas killed two American troops.


In Sadr City, a Shiite Muslim slum, about 3,000 demonstrators gathered around a telecommunications tower where they said American forces in a helicopter tried to tear down an Islamic banner. U.S. military spokesman Sgt. Danny Martin said it was apparently blown down by rotor wash from a helicopter.


However, amateur video footage obtained by Associated Press Television News showed a Black Hawk helicopter hovering a few feet from the top of the tower and apparently trying to tear down the banner. Later, U.S. Humvees drove by and the crowd threw stones at them. Heavy gunfire could be heard and demonstrators were seen diving to the ground.


Martin said U.S. forces opened fire after stones, gunfire and one rocket-propelled grenade were directed at soldiers of the 1st Armored Division. One civilian was killed and four were wounded, he said. He said no soldiers were hit.


Sadr City, formerly known as Saddam City, is a Shiite stronghold in the otherwise Sunni Muslim-dominated capital.


"We're peaceful people, but one edict (from the imams) and the entire American Army will become our prisoner," said Hassan Azab, a member of the local district council.


Also Wednesday, an attack 15 miles south of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s hometown, killed one U.S. soldier and wounded a second when their four-vehicle convoy hit a roadside bomb, according to Maj. Josslyn Aberle, spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division.


The military also reported a soldier killed and two wounded in a bomb attack Tuesday near Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad. The attack was in the same region where an oil pipeline fire sent flames 200 feet into the air on Tuesday.


It was unclear whether the pipeline fire was the work of saboteurs. Many pipelines across Iraq (news - web sites) have been hit by guerrillas seeking to destabilize U.S. reconstruction efforts.


The military also reported killing two Iraqis in separate incidents in the Baqouba region, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad. Aberle said the two were killed after firing on U.S. troops.


Officials at the 4th Infantry Division said they had released 10 men detained Tuesday in a sweep through the outskirts of Tikrit, but four remained in custody.


The military has not made public the names of those held, but said they include a Republican Guard corps-level chief of staff, a Republican Guard division commander and a paymaster for the Fedayeen militia.


All those detained were members of a family described as a pillar of support for the ousted regime, said U.S. Lt. Col. Steve Russell.


"They were trying to support the remnants of the former regime by organizing attacks, through funding and by trying to hide former regime members," he said.


Also Wednesday, the U.S.-led coalition said it had sent in 6.6 million gallons of gasoline, much of it to southern Iraq. Fuel and power shortages had been particularly acute in the southern city of Basra, where weekend protests left at least three people dead.


"There is no shortage of petrol and we are able to fully meet the demand," coalition spokesman Charles Heatly said.


The American administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, met Wednesday with the U.S.-picked Governing Council about local efforts on restarting the shattered economy and creating jobs, Heatly said.





Bremer also urged the 25-member council to submit names for the so-called "de-Baathification council," which is charged with purging government offices of Saddam's Baath Party.

Heatly said the coalition has fulfilled a number of goals, including establishment of the Governing Council, which on Monday appointed a committee to study ways of writing a democratic constitution.

The spokesman said the benchmark for the departure of U.S.-led forces "remains having Iraqi people write a new constitution for this country and having it approved in a referendum, holding democratic elections and then hand over power to a sovereign, elected Iraqi government."

 

where's MOAB?

time for a barbeque

 

So we want the Iraqis to have freedom, but not freedom of religion. An Islamic banner certainly isn't something showing support of Saddam, and is in fact peaceful. Yet this type of freedom of Religion isn't allowed there? Wow! They must feel so liberated.

 

Operation Freedom Iraq!




They are free to have any kind of government they want, so long as we don't object.


They are free to have and express any kind of religion they want, so long as we don't object.


They are free to rebuild their country any way they want, so long as we don't object...and they buy American.


There once was a Housemartins song that went " So this is Freedom? You must be joking!"




All that said, and I don't think we should be there in the first place, and I know that soldiers are not supposed to fire on a crowd just because some individuals in that crowd are attacking you...but on a purely human response level, if a crowd were firing grenades at me, I'd probably shoot back too. Not saying it's right, but it is probably understandable.


But again, if we aren't wanted there, maybe that's a hint. I think that even tree once said that if the Shi'ites are against us, things look pretty bad.

 

Pride is still more important than our armed forces' readiness. I think the Bushies are so stuck to clinging to their words before the war they're willing to see plenty more US soldiers dying and committing almost the entire active duty force (and killing the reserves' and regulars' incentives to reenlist at the same time with these long tours) to Iraq.



http://www.statesman.com/nationworld/content/news/081303/0813iraq.html

.S. abandons plan for greater U.N. role in Iraq
Rather, Bush administration will seek help from other countries to assist occupation forces
By Steven R. Weisman with Felicity Barringer

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has abandoned the idea of giving the United Nations more of a role in the occupation of Iraq as sought by France, India and other countries as a condition for their participation in peacekeeping there, administration officials said on Wednesday.

Instead, the officials said, the United States would widen its effort to enlist other countries to assist the occupation forces in Iraq, which are dominated by the 139,000 U.S. troops there.

In addition to American forces in Iraq, there are 21,000 troops representing 18 countries. At present, 11,000 of that number are from Britain. The United States plans to seek larger numbers to help, especially with relief supplies that are coming from another dozen countries.

Administration officials said that in spite of the difficult security situation in Iraq, there was a consensus in the administration that it would be better to work with these countries than to involve the United Nations or countries that opposed the war and are now eager to exercise influence in a postwar Iraq.

"The administration is not willing to confront going to the Security Council and saying, 'We really need to make Iraq an international operation,"' said an administration official. "You can make a case that it would be better to do that, but, right now, the situation in Iraq is not that dire."

The administration's position could complicate its hopes of bringing a large number of American troops home in short order. The length of the American occupation depends on how quickly the country can be stabilized and attacks and uprisings brought under control.

The thinking on broadening international forces was disclosed on Wednesday as the United States moved on a separate front at the Security Council to get a resolution passed this week that would welcome the establishment of the 25-member Governing Council set up by the United States and Britain in Iraq.

Security Council diplomats said on Wednesday that they expected the resolution to pass, but not without some qualms among some members.

In a measure of these misgivings, the diplomats said that the wording of the resolution was changed at the last minute on Wednesday morning from saying that the Security Council "endorses" the Iraqi group to saying that the council "welcomes" it.

The resolution would also establish an "assistance mission" of the United Nations in Baghdad to support various U.N. activities there. Both steps were sought by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan who had been under some pressure from Washington to make a gesture to recognize the legitimacy of the occupation.


(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)


The American-led occupation picked the Governing Council members in July, appointing people who represented a mix of ethnic and sectarian interests to oversee Iraqi ministries and begin the process of drafting an Iraqi constitution.

Several Governing Council members have visited the United Nations, and, earlier this month, Annan said he favored "some form of recognition" for the Governing Council through a Security Council resolution.

The resolution drafted by the United States and submitted on Wednesday was perfunctory compared to previous council resolutions on Iraq.

Administration officials said that they expected to win the approval of the council, although it was possible that Syria would abstain or vote against the resolution. Only a negative vote from the so-called Permanent Five members of the council — Russia, China, France, Britain and the United States — would constitute a veto.

Though the administration has decided against seeking a separate resolution to give the United Nations any authority over security, some officials say that consideration might be given to getting wider U.N. authority over the multi-billion dollar reconstruction of Iraq.

A meeting of potential donor countries has been scheduled for Oct. 24 in Madrid, and some of the big European countries that wanted a more significant U.N. role if they sent peacekeepers are also hinting that they wanted the U.N. to have more of a say over reconstruction if they have to put up huge sums of money for that effort.

In Iraq this week, J. Paul Bremer, the top American administrator in the occupation, said that over the next four years, the amount of money needed from outside for Iraq would be "staggering." Many experts say it could amount to tens of billions of dollars.

The Bush administration has been reluctant to give the United Nations more than minimal authority in the reconstruction of Iraq. Many administration members say that France, Germany, Russia and other countries demanding such a role are actually doing so to try to get more contracts and economic benefits for themselves.

The desire for more U.N. involvement by many countries echoes the debate that preceded the war. Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others were openly disdainful of getting U.N. authorization for the war, even after Bush had sided with Secretary of State Colin Powell to pursue that route.

Rumsfeld, according to administration officials, vehemently opposes any dilution of military authority over Iraq by involving the United Nations, either through U.N. peacekeepers or indirectly in any U.N. authorization of forces from other countries.

American military officials say they fear that involving the U.N., even indirectly, will hamper the latitude the United States must have in overseeing Iraqi security and pursuing anti-American guerrilla forces or terrorist actions.

A setback in the drive to line up countries occurred in July, when India, in a reversal, said it would not participate without further U.N. authority over peacekeeping. France, Germany and some other countries agreed.

Some administration officials said they would now rethink their strategy of spurning the United Nations and see if there could be some language worked out in a Security Council resolution as sought by India and the other countries.

In effect, administration officials now say, such a resolution would be more trouble than it is worth. Soundings among members of the Security Council indicated that Russia, France and other countries might try for concessions favorable to them in the running of Iraq, and such demands would only deepen divisions between them and the United States.

"The last thing we need is a loss of momentum over the efforts to get things under control in Iraq," said a Western diplomat involved in these discussions. "Besides, the violence in Iraq is not as bad as everyone thinks it is."

Some experts say, however, that sooner or later, the United States may have to change its mind again, particularly if conditions in Iraq deteriorate drastically. U.N. officials involved in peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan and the Balkans say that the total number of troops in Iraq may have to double before the security situation gets under control.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56261-2003Aug13.html

Parents of Troops in Iraq Fight to Get Them Home

By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page B02


Thomas McMahon is rankled by suggestions that his opposition to the U.S. military presence in Iraq shows a lack of support for American troops.



"I don't know how much more support you can give the troops than your one and only son," said McMahon, a Herndon lawyer who fought in Vietnam with an Army infantry unit. His son, Collin, 26, a member of the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, served in Iraq in the spring and may be sent again, he said.

McMahon, 58, was one of a dozen military family members and veterans who appeared yesterday at a news conference in Washington launching "Bring Them Home Now," a national campaign to return to their home bases the 150,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq.

The war has claimed the lives of 267 U.S. service members in hostile and non-hostile operations, including 58 killed since President Bush declared major combat operations over May 1. The latest casualty was a U.S. soldier killed yesterday by a roadside bomb south of Tikrit.

A Washington Post poll published yesterday showed that 56 percent of Americans surveyed approve of the way Bush is handling Iraq, a decline from earlier this summer but roughly equal to figures a month ago.

However, organizers of the "Bring Them Home Now" campaign said that they have received thousands of e-mails of support, that military families are becoming less reticent to criticize the war, and that their support is growing every day. "Many of the e-mails that we have been receiving over the last several days start with, "I'm a Republican, I voted for Bush, I supported this war when it started," said Charley Richardson, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, which initiated the campaign along with the group Veterans for Peace.

Campaign coordinators are scheduled to hold another news conference today at Fort Bragg, N.C., home to the 82nd Airborne Division and other units deployed to Iraq.

They were galvanized into action, according to the campaign's mission statement, by President Bush's "inane and reckless" response at a July news conference to Iraqi attacks on U.S. forces: "Bring 'em on."

"We want to talk about the three words of false bravado uttered by President Bush from a safe and secure location, surrounded by armed guards," said Nancy Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out. "George Bush said, 'Bring 'em on.' We say, 'Bring them home now.' "

Now is too late for another father at yesterday's event, Fernando Suarez del Solar, of Escondido, Calif. His son, Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez, was killed March 27 in Iraq.

"My question to Mr. Bush is, how many more of our sons do you need to bring our children home?" Suarez asked, standing near a placard bearing a photograph of his son in his dress uniform.

Like other speakers, Suarez accused Bush of lying to the American public about the threat Iraq posed, citing the U.S. failure to find weapons of mass destruction. "My son will not return, but I want those other children to return to our homes," Suarez said. "You're destroying the American people. I hope God will forgive you."

As he spoke, Marie Fritz of Oakton, whose son is serving in Iraq, broke into sobs.

In Crawford, Tex., yesterday, Bush expressed support for the troops and said he would meet with military families when he visits Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in California today. "You'll see me speak to Marines and their families, thanking them for their service to our country, reminding them that what's taking place in Iraq is essential to U.S. security," Bush told reporters.

Larry Syverson, 54, an environmental engineer from Richmond and one of the parents at yesterday's event at the National Press Club, has his own barometer showing declining support for the war. One of his sons, Branden, 31, is a tank commander with 4th Infantry Division, and a second son, Bryce, 25, is a gunner on a Bradley fighting vehicle with the 1st Armored Division.

Many times over the last few months, Syverson has spent his lunch hour in front of the federal courthouse in Richmond, holding a sign asking drivers to honk for peace.

"During the war, I got very few honks," Syverson said. Some drivers called him a communist, others yelled that he was unpatriotic. That has changed now, he said. "The higher the [death] toll goes, the more honks."


© 2003 The Washington Post Company

 

Sounds like they want a flag amendment just like the fascists here...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55761-2003Aug13.html
Flag Is Flash Point in a Baghdad Slum
Perceived Insult Ignites Anti-U.S. Unrest
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 14, 2003; Page A11


BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 -- The U.S. military helicopter flew low over Baghdad's largest slum today, about an hour before noon prayers. For a while, it hovered near a transmission tower. Then, Sheik Ahmed Zarjawi said, a U.S. soldier tried to kick the black flag that fluttered atop the tower, inscribed in white letters with the name of one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures.




"How can we sleep at night when we see this?" he recalled asking.

There followed a day of anger and fervor in a Shiite neighborhood already on edge. Protesters incensed at what they saw as a religious insult poured out of houses and shops. In some of the worst unrest since Baghdad fell to U.S.-led forces on April 9, clashes erupted with an American patrol, killing one Iraqi and wounding at least three others.

Into a sweltering evening, hundreds of demonstrators waving religious banners and rallied by neighborhood clergy moved across streets awash in sewage, calling for a day of reckoning with U.S. troops, who they said they no longer wanted to enter their neighborhood.

"When the Americans came, we welcomed them and received them," said Jabbar Qassem, 20. "But this is our faith. This flag, it represents our faith. Why would they do this? Now we will allow no American to wander through here."

The U.S. military said the flag was inadvertently knocked over by gusts from the low-flying helicopter. Suggestions of any intent are "totally bogus, totally untrue," said Staff Sgt. J.J. Johnson, a military spokesman.

But by nightfall, in a city where truth and falsehood often fall by the wayside of rumor, the damage was already done, underscoring the perilous divide of religion and culture that separates occupier and occupied.

The regions of Iraq populated by Shiite Muslims, who form the country's majority and were relentlessly repressed by Saddam Hussein's government, have remained largely quiet since the war's end. Even the most militant clerics, such as Moqtada Sadr, a young firebrand whose faction enjoys broad popular support in poorer parts of Baghdad and the southern city of Basra, have stopped short of a call to arms.

But discontent over the pace of restoring basic services has echoed through much of Iraq, and shortages of gasoline and electricity unleashed two days of protests and violence over the weekend in and around Basra. In the Baghdad neighborhood renamed after Sadr's revered father, an ayatollah believed killed by Hussein's government in 1999, it took no more than a possible miscalculation by a helicopter.

When it ended, clergy had issued a manifesto demanding an apology and giving U.S. forces a day to withdraw from Sadr City.

"We are not responsible for the reaction of people if they enter the city again," said Sheik Hadi Darraji, a leading cleric.

Witnesses offered a series of accounts of the helicopter's path near the red-and-white, six-story transmission tower. Some said it approached once, and a female soldier leaned out and tried to tear down the flag with a knife. Other accounts said it approached twice, with a soldier pointing a gun at a youth who climbed the tower and tried to fend off the helicopter with a metal bar.

Johnson dismissed the idea of a soldier leaning out of the helicopter. "There's no way anybody could do that," he said.

Footage of the incident aired by the satellite news channel Al-Arabiya clearly showed a helicopter hovering for several seconds near the flag, which bore an inscription of a 9th Century descendant of the prophet Muhammad known as the Mahdi.

Soon after, Johnson said, a crowd that began at 100 swelled to 3,000. When U.S. military vehicles later came down a main street, he said, some in the crowd attacked them with small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade. Residents dismissed that, saying that the crowd, many of them teenagers, were only throwing rocks and that U.S. soldiers opened fire randomly.

Residents said that the fatality was a boy between 10 and 11 years old. Johnson said four people were wounded. But doctors at the nearby Thawra Hospital put the figure at three. One of them was a 12-year-old boy shot in the face, said Wisam Jassim, a physician there.

Within hours, youths had climbed the transmission tower, bedecking it in red, green, white and black flags, colors symbolic of suffering and martyrdom and resonant in Shiite Islam. Most bore the inscription of the Mahdi, and youths waved the flags past sunset.

On a fire station below, others had scrawled "Down USA" in English, and "Down with America, Down with Israel" in Arabic. Some carried Iraqi flags or portraits of the elder Sadr, whose following was especially loyal in the neighborhood that now bears his name. Banners read, "No, no to arrogance, yes, yes to the Hawza," a centuries-old Shiite seminary.

At one point, gunshots fired into the air echoed across streets filled with hundreds of protesters.

The helicopter incident was carried out "to provoke the Shiites," said Ali Karim, 30, standing amid a group of mostly young protesters. "Until now we haven't done anything to the Americans. We are warning them not to come inside here again."

Thumbing worry beads, Ali Naif interrupted. The warning, he said, wasn't strong enough. "If we catch the Americans, we will slaughter them, okay? Why did they commit this aggression against us?"

Some U.S. officials have become increasingly worried about the influence of Sadr, a junior cleric who has little religious standing but heads an organization that enjoys support among the poorest and most disenfranchised in some Shiite cities.

Over the past month, he has railed against the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, calling it a tool of the occupation that should be dissolved. He has repeatedly urged the creation of a militia known as "The Army of the Mahdi," albeit unarmed.

After the clash, his clerical followers staged a rally atop a fire station near the transmission tower, with a crowd of hundreds waving banners below. The boy said to have fended off the helicopter was introduced.

Darraji, one of Sadr's followers, then delivered their demands: The Americans must stage a "complete and comprehensive withdrawal" within a day, issue an apology, provide compensation to the families of the dead and wounded and deliver their written agreement in English and Arabic.

"We give them one night to implement these demands without any maneuvers or delays," Darraji said.

At times in the speech, the crowd broke into chants. "Today, today is peaceful, tomorrow, tomorrow is war," one went, as the sun set over the neighborhood. "We are preparing your army, Mahdi," another intoned.

"The Americans want to provoke the people. They have a plan," said Qassem Khusaf, 33, as he watched the protest, which dispersed by nightfall. "They are provoking us to see whether we will fight or not."


© 2003 The Washington Post Company

 

I knew when we went into this that the occupation would be the ball buster. Rummy's plan guaranteed our limited troop numbers would be spread out and therefore more vulnerable. The method of balls out to Baghdad left behind all those folks with weapons and antipathy towards the US occupation.

Now every day some poor GI gets greased up close and personal, while he's in a market, while he's running a roadblock.