The Countdown Clock

Man, those seconds just can't run out fast enough for me. Or any other of my fine fellow bloggers. The remaining denizens of La Casa de Los Gatos don't seem to care as long as they get their 18 hours of shuteye per day, interspersed with fine kibble, treats, toys, pets, catnip, and the daily constitutional exploration of the hillside, but.


Me, I can't bear waking up to a headline such as this:

Bush 'very pleased' with Iraq war outcome: Report

Is there anything that bothers this pathetic, revolting little man? Does he think for even one minute of the nearly 5,000 coffins in which the remains of his fellow-citizens lie moldering? The tears of their parents? Their spouses and children? The suffering their families and friends endure, having lost a loved one? The estimated 50,000 or so lying in their own piss in military hospitals or suffering quietly at home? Missing a limb or an organ, struggling to get along on disability payments, homeless? Doomed to a lifetime of fighting the mental and emotional impact of what has been seen and lived through?


And what of the Iraqis who have died by the hundreds of thousands? Does he ever think about, see, respond to, the sight of a pool of blood blackening in the desert sun? Filled with the limbs, separated from their erstwhile owners, of children, housewives, cab-drivers, innocent bystanders, stallholders in the marketplace where the latest atrocity occurred? A little more than two years ago, a Lancet study estimated the number of Iraqi dead at 655,000. UNHCR estimates 4.7 million refugees, both inside and outside Iraq, most in dire need of food, shelter, medical aid.

Does the monster-in-chief ever contemplate the children who have seen their parents blown up before their eyes, the fathers who have no jobs but still must feed their children, the mother whose child burned and stuck to her body when our troops opened fire on her car?


Because, in addition to that first heart-wracking headline, in fact, almost immediately below it, I notice this:

Baghdad blasts kill 19

The Green Zone blast splashed blood and seared flesh across the grey concrete barriers at the entrance, according to an AFP correspondent.

Meanwhile, the rotten thing that wears the mantle of this country's leader announced today that he

believes the Iraq war was a success and is "very pleased" with what is happening there.

[He added] ..."remarkable" progress had been made in Iraq since the late dictator [Saddam Hussein] was toppled in 2003.

"People have been able to take their troops out of Iraq because Iraq is becoming successful. I'm very pleased with what is taking place there now," he said, adding there still is "a lot of work" to be done.

"We are bringing troops home because of the success in Iraq. But Iraq is not yet completely safe.

"So there will be a US presence for a while there at the request of the Iraqi government," he said.

"The United States is willing to continue to help. Most countries there within a very broad coalition have come home but we want to help this government," he said without further elaborating.

Of course, without further elaborating. Either he's lying through his teeth or he, as usual, doesn't have the first fucking clue what he's talking about. He doesn't elaborate on his statements because someone, some very malevolent wretch in the bowels of this misadministration, writes these deliberately disingenuous things for him to say, and he parrots them as his "handlers" tell him to. He has nothing to say about the armless, the legless, the blind and insane, those proud wounded heroes of his money-burning war that is crashing and burning our economy around our ears. Jesus, what a fucking blind, limited, self-satisfied pig he is. A thousand, no, a million curses on his empty head.

Crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat

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"a whole nation called Iraq, now it's wiped out."

Cross-posted from Docudharma

One of my worst sins in the Blogosphere is not reading Greenwald everyday. Today I went over to his place to atone...and found this. What can and cannot be spoken on television.

Turkana mentioned the other day that we don't hear from people inside Iraq. In fact we hear very little from inside Iraq. Which is pretty amazing when you stop to think about it. It's not like we don't have the technology...and now that the surge is working (hahahahahahaha-sob) reporters should be able to travel freely and report on conditions there and the mood of the people...and maybe even the people who are sort of miffed that their country has been destroyed for no reason, right?

Here is the clip on his page, please watch and read...and Greenwald has posted more of the transcript here.



ROSE: And obviously, what we want to accomplish on this fifth anniversary of the American invasion, or the coalition invasion of Iraq, is how they see it as Iraqis, five years later.

Give me an assessment.

ALI FADHIL: That's a big question, assessment. Well, basically, probably, I`ll kind of sum it in a few words.

It's -- we have a country where the government is not functioning after five years. We have too many internal problems. And we have the violence increasing day after day.

We have a huge crisis of refugees inside and outside Iraq. We have a total failure of the -- of the civilian -- the civilian structure and what's happening inside. We have the sectarian divisions increasing. We didn't have that before. Now we have it.

So, basically, my assessment is we have a whole nation called Iraq, now it's wiped out.

CHARLIE ROSE: And Iraq is worse off because the United States came?

ALI FADHIL: It's worse off because the United States came to Iraq, definitely, and because the United States did all these mistakes in Iraq.

And:

CHARLIE ROSE: So where do we go from here? Five years after the invasion of Iraq, what is a wise American policy?

ALI FADHIL: Let me start with telling you what is happening right now, what is the American policy right now in Iraq.

It's so shame to say that America is in Iraq right now, and particularly the State Department and also the Pentagon as well, the U.S. Army in Iraq. They're going back to Saddam's policies in everything. . . . If you, you know, name it, name the most successful project of the surge -- outcome of the surge, the (INAUDIBLE) councils. You know, these insurgents, the Sunnis, even Shiites.

CHARLIE ROSE: The so-called awakening.

ALI FADHIL: Awakening council, exactly. They're giving them money to protect their own neighborhoods. Isn't that the same what happened under Saddam? . . .

Anything [Americans] do -- probably even in good intentions -- is bad for us, everything they do, everything. There's nothing they're doing is right.

And that's what is going to happen. It's just prolonging the diaspora of the Iraqis. We're suffering more and more every day. We need, you know, to start the salvation (ph). . .

SINAN ANTOON: The president today said something really obscene to my mind. He said Iraq is witnessing the first Arab uprising against al Qaeda.

We did not have al Qaeda in Iraq before.We had a ruthless dictatorship.

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Bush & the Mathematics of War: 4000, 1 million, 2 million

So passes what the U.S. media brazenly call a milestone: the 4000th dead U.S. soldier in the war against, and occupation of, Iraq. I cannot grieve more than the family and loved ones of each of those 4000. Nor certainly approach the agony and world-hurling destruction of a society where hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, are dead by airborne bomb, munitions shell, bullet, plague, beheading, chemical attack, human suicide bomb, and all the ways a human being can ponder in rending the body and soul of another human being to his or her final destiny.

The U.S. president, George W. Bush, has "vowed":

...so long as I'm president to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain, that in fact there is an outcome that will merit the sacrifice"...

He, of course, means that the superprofits from exploitation of oil will be assured to the ruling class he serves. That the influence of the American bankers, industrialists, and its military machine, will not be subjected to the imprecations and influence of some smaller, merely nationalist entity, nor to the competitive combines of larger, more powerful nation states, such as France or Germany or China. As the largest child stands on the top of the hill, surveying the carnage of his peers who lie in the dust about him, Bush swears the sacrifice worth it. Except the analogy is flawed, as he is not the bloodied king of the hill, but the thoroughly corrupt leader of a government that lost its way in the labryinth of imperial lust a long time ago.

In American history, one would have to go back to the days of Tom Paine, to find a pen that could write with sufficient disgust, and with honor for the inherent dignity of humankind, of the kind of empire-building and blood-curdling talk of sacrifice of these new monarchs, self-satisfied rulers of America, who send young men and women to fight their greedy and arrogant wars.

Can we possibly suppose that if governments had originated in a right principle, and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, the world could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen it? What inducement has the farmer, while following the plough, to lay aside his peaceful pursuit, and go to war with the farmer of another country? or what inducement has the manufacturer? What is dominion to them, or to any class of men in a nation? Does it add an acre to any man's estate, or raise its value? Are not conquest and defeat each of the same price, and taxes the never-failing consequence? — Though this reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a government. War is the Faro-table of governments, and nations the dupes of the game.

And the pawns of war are its refugees. In Iraq, the "success" of Bush's martial "surge" is belied by the attitude of the millions of refugees that previously fled the carnage imposed by the U.S. invasion and the resultant ethnic cleansing, as the U.S. maneuvered between the warring factions of a shattered society.

DAMASCUS, Syria: The much-heralded stream of Iraqi refugees back home to Iraq from Syria has slowed to a trickle, with many fearing that life in their homeland is still too dangerous despite improvements in security....

"To think of returning to Iraq is as bad as thinking of suicide," said Faten al-Samerrai, 42, who has been living in Damascus since 2006 with her husband and five children. "There is no future and no life in Iraq. There is only ruin."

She said life is not perfect in Damascus — but at least it's safe....

"I lost my son and my husband because of America," said Ikhlas al-Duleimi, a 36-year-old Sunni Muslim Iraqi in Syria. She added: "I wish Saddam's awful regime would return."

And so the great sacrifice of Bush comes full circle to the idealization of a tyrant that his own country put into power, deposed, and now restores to martyrdom. And this "noble" cause, this Iraq War of the Republicans and their Democratic Party enablers, claims its 4000th American corpse. The Iraqi bodies are not even counted by Bush and his government. That sacrifice might overwhelm the flimsy temple Bush is building for his unholy war.

Also posted at Invictus

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Well, There Goes The Neighbourhood

Watch.

Photo from NorthernLights blog

The WaPoo tells us this morning that the Sunni forces that we created with large amounts of taxpayer money, are "losing patience" with us.

So we go to this country, right? And we bomb it and kill a bunch of people and all that. Then we decide that the Sunni, because they belong to the same faction, sect, whatever, of Islam as the leader of that country (Saddam Hussein) are the enemy, right? So we get most of them kicked out of their jobs, and we arrest lots of them, and we throw them into our jails, where we torture them. And this goes on for, oh, FOUR FUCKING YEARS.

Then we figure we've made a mistake, but it's kinda late in the game for that because, guess what, we've been pouring money into the pockets of the Shi'a leaders for FOUR FUCKING YEARS by now, and they're all busy fighting among themselves and with each other and really happy that the Sunni are gone, because that means more of the higher pie for them, right?

But some bright spark figures out that even though we kicked them out of their jobs and their homes and neighbourhoods, and forced them to flee across the country leaving everything behind and live like refugees in their own country, or even become honest-to-God refugees in some other country except ours, because we don't want them over here, and even though we raped some of their teenage daughters and killed them and stuff, they'll still be our friends if we GIVE! THEM! MONEY! Right?

And now they're "losing patience." Why for? Why for you so impatient, you stupid sandn*****s? So we fucked up your economy and killed your relatives, and the big pool of sewage we created in your capital city can be viewed via GoogleEarth. So what? So you lost your job and your cousin lost his leg and your sister lost her life and your uncle lost his house. So fucking what? We're giving you money, ain't we? So what if we're giving you cholera too?

Yesterday, we put up a post on this site complete with a map of Iraq, as we questioned whether our "leaders" had any kind of fucking plan for our friends, relatives, and neighbours that they've thrown into the meatgrinder of Iraq. Today, we ask you to examine that map closely &mdash reproducing it here for your convenience &mdash as we list the areas where Sunni fighters, now armed by us, are leaving whatever bogus organization we set up incorporating them in order to look good to American politicians and the people who believe their lies.



According to the article, since February 8th &mdash less than three weeks ago &mdash thousands of fighters in Diyala province have left their posts; their leaders have since warned that the fighters would disband completely unless their demands were met. Here's a snippet outlining some of their demands:

in Diyala, one of the major battlegrounds in the U.S. fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Awakening groups, also known here as Popular Committees, are demanding the resignation of the Shiite provincial police chief, Maj. Gen. Ghanem al-Qureishi. They accuse him of running death squads and torturing Sunnis, allegations that Qureishi denied in an interview.

It's practically a given that some Sunni during Saddam Hussein's time ran death squads and tortured Shi'a Iraqis. It's also a given, knowing human hearts, that some Shi'a, having taken power, are now revenging themselves on hapless Sunni. The U.S. military is not capable of dealing with this. A military is a tool designed to kill and break people. It is not designed to resolve conflict, only to make it not worthwhile for that conflict to be turned against itself or whatever it's protecting. So there is no plan and no group that is tasked with resolving these very serious issues. Therefore, things can only get worse.

Meanwhile, fighters in Babil province refuse to work for the U.S. after U.S. military fired on them, killing some 19 fighters and injuring approximately 12 others.

Because you have eyes and know how to use them, we don't even have to tell you that Diyala province and Babil province almost completely surround the city of Baghdad and effectually bar our escape route to the south, not to mention the supply lines that come up from the south.

The circumstances of the clash are in dispute. The article states, in part:

The predominantly Sunni Awakening forces, referred to by the U.S. military as the Sons of Iraq or Concerned Local Citizens, are made up mostly of former insurgents who have turned against extremists because of their harsh tactics and interpretation of Islam. The U.S. military pays many fighters roughly $10 a day to guard and patrol their areas. Thousands more unpaid volunteers have joined out of tribal and regional fealties.

This article is written in part by Sudarshan Raghavan, the same journalist who wrote a piece we quoted in a previous blog post. At that time, we were, to put it mildly, concerned that Mr. Raghavan, who has reported extensively on Iraq, did not seem to notice that we were arming people who had every reason in the world to hate us and want revenge on us.

Now we have to ask what the phrase "former insurgents who have turned against extremists because of their harsh tactics and interpretation of Islam" means. We know that the Sunni, for good reason, formed a large part of the insurgency (you would too if people were kicking you out of your house and job and occupying your country and raping your sister).

Given that these Sunni Sons of Whatever to whom we have now handed guns, ammo, and money are now using our ordinance against the supposed "al Qaeda in Iraq," we venture to opine that they're probably indulging in some pretty harsh tactics themselves. If they were part of the insurgency before, they were no stranger to harsh tactics. We really don't believe that they're inviting their erstwhile enemies over for tea, bikkies, and a civilized discourse on the benefits of laying down their arms. And what about this "interpretation of Islam" business? Are we talking about different sects here, or what?

And what about the al-Janabi, one of the largest and most powerful tribes of the Sunni? What about the fact that the Sunni formed most of Hussein's military and police?

The article goes on to say:

Some U.S. military officials say they are growing concerned that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq has infiltrated Awakening forces in some areas.

"Now, there is no cooperation with the Americans," said Haider Mustafa al-Kaisy, an Awakening commander in Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, an insurgent stronghold that U.S. and Iraqi forces are still struggling to control. "We have stopped fighting al-Qaeda."

Yah. I'd be worrying too.

Another Son in the oil-rich city of Baiji adds:

His men also have not received their salaries in two months, he said. "We'll all be patient for another two months. If nothing changes, then we'll suspend and quit," Kassim said. "Then we'll go back to fighting the Americans."

Is anybody in charge of this Keystone Kops operation? Does their right hand know in whose pants the left hand is currently residing? And look at the Father of our Sons in the south:

Sabah al-Janabi, who heads the Awakening in the area, publicly criticized the U.S. military, alleging it had killed 19 of his men in the past 45 days, which U.S. commanders deny.

We're not accusing Sabah al-Janabi of anything. He may well be the most loyal (to the U.S. or to our puppet regime) of Sunni fighters. We're just pointing out that this conflict is an impossible one. The people who like us and the people who hate us look alike, belong to the same tribe, possibly even the same religious faction. This was what drove men mad in Vietnam. They were sent there to fight an enemy, but unlike, say, Star Trek episodes, the bad guys didn't wear black hats. Sometimes little kids threw grenades at you. Sometimes sweet old grannies tried to kill you. And they looked just exactly like the little kids who were just sweet little kids caught up in a horrible war, or the sweet old grannies who might laugh and joke with you and do your laundry or fix your food.

So in the end you started killing people indiscriminately because you really didn't know if or when some of them were going to try to kill you.

Meanwhile, the Soldiers of Heaven have apparently not been inactive. They resurfaced recently in Dhi Qar and Basra provinces.

In the town of Iskandiriyah, in Babil province, a suicide bomber has killed some 63 members of Al-Sayyid Moqtada al-Sadr's followers who were on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala to commemorate the Iraqi holy day of Arbaeen.

In northern Iraq, the Turkish military is continuing to bomb suspected PKK hideouts, destroying bridges and killing Kurdish civilians with impunity thanks to intelligence provided by the Pentagon. The Kurds, who consider themselves pro-American and U.S. allies, have been begging the U.S. for help.

The prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Nechirvan Barzani, expressed concern that the Turkish operation had gone beyond targeting the PKK and was harming civilians and the economy of northern Iraq. He said he was particularly concerned that Turkey had destroyed at least three bridges near the border.

This is the son of President Massoud Barzani speaking. Hitherto the Northern Kurdish region has been the only stable one in Iraq.

Meanwhile, in our other clusterfuck over in Afghanistan, the AP tells us things are looking fairly grim.

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of the country and Karzai's government controls 30 percent to 31 percent. But more than six years after the U.S. invasion to oust the Taliban and establish a stable central government, the majority of Afghanistan's population remains under local tribal control, he said.

Let's translate this, shall we? The government of U.S. puppet Hamid Karzai, shored up with the military might of NATO and the U.S. armed forces, after six long years, controls only the cities. In the countryside, the Taliban roam freely, and the various tribal elders throw their allegiance to whichever side is not actively killing them this week.

Well, at least the British might be moving towards throwing that other toadying lickspittle and assistant junior bottlewashing war criminal, Tony Blair, into a well-deserved cell in some prison. Pity it can't be Abu Ghraib.

crossposted over at ThePoliticalCat.

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Iraq: All FUBAR and Refugees Have Nowhere to Go

[Crossposted from Docudharma]

Today brought the news that Syria Shuts Main Exit From War for Iraqis:

DAMASCUS, Syria, Oct. 20 - Long the only welcoming country in the region for Iraqi refugees, Syria has closed its borders to all but a small group of Iraqis and imposed new visa rules that will legally require the 1.5 million Iraqis currently in Syria to return to Iraq.

1.5 million refugees are going to have to go back. Go back to what exactly?

A lack of potable water.

A lack of electricity.
Massive unemployment.
Lack of adequate medical services.
Hundreds being forced to scavenge for food.
A broken country, where hope has sometimes been in short supply.

All that said, there does seem to be good news coming out of Iraq. This today from IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, IRAQ: Violence-related deaths drop 'remarkably', say authorities and UN:

According to the ministry's statistics, between January and the end of September 2007, the number of violent deaths involving civilian, police and military in all of Iraq was about 7,100, against 27,000 in the same period of 2006.
According to Muhsin, the average number of dead bodies sent to Baghdad's main morgue just over a year ago was between 100 and 150 a day. Now, it is no more than 10 bodies a day, and about 50 percent of them are dying in normal circumstances.

That is still an astonishing amount of violence, but it is good news nonetheless, although neither the Dems nor the Rs nor the trad med seem to know what to make of it as LithiumCola so astutely noted yesterday in How We Should Understand the Relative Calm in Iraq (a must-read!).
Despite this drop in violence, however, the refugee crisis in Iraq has only worsened this year and is now at a critical level, according to the UNCHR.

Incessant violence throughout Iraq is forcing an estimated 60,000 people to leave their homes every month, presenting the international community with a humanitarian crisis even larger than the upheaval aid agencies had planned for during the 2003 war.

UNHCR estimates that more than 4.4 million Iraqis have left their homes. Of these, some 2.2 million Iraqis are displaced internally, while more than 2.2 million have fled to neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. Many were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now. In 2006, Iraqis had become the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe.

With Syria's new restrictions in place, including sending back 1.5 million refugess, the refugee crisis is only going to become more urgent.
And the violence may grow significantly. Today brought bellicose news from Turkey: Turkish PM: 'We Will Attack Kurdish Rebels in Iraq'. And this is the region that had been enjoying the most peace and stability.

Turkey will launch military action against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq despite frantic appeals for restraint from America and Nato, its Prime Minister has told The Times.
Speaking hours before the PKK, the Kurdish Workers' Party, killed at least 17 more Turkish soldiers yesterday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey had urged the US and Iraqi governments repeatedly to expel the separatists but they had done nothing. Turkey's patience was running out and the country had every right to defend itself, he said. "Whatever is necessary will be done," he declared in an interview. "We don't have to get permission from anybody."

Today also brought news of multiple civilian deaths caused, by U.S. forces, although the military disputes this claim.

BAGHDAD, Oct. 21 - American forces on Sunday came under heavy fire in three locations in Sadr City, the Shiite enclave in Baghdad, and returned fire, killing 49 militants, according to an American military official and a military statement about the episode.

Iraqi witnesses said that 17 people had been killed, one of whom was an elderly woman who died of her wounds, and that of 40 people who had been wounded, a number were children. At least four of the wounded children were at Imam Ali Hospital in Sadr City, where family members helped the overtaxed hospital staff and anxiously hovered over the children.

This in Sadr City, despite Al-Sadr's cessation of operations against U.S. forces and his ceasefire with Al-Hakim.

What can we do to help the people of Iraq?

• Here are some ideas on charitable organizations from the American Institute of Philanthropy: The Best Ways to Help Iraqi Refugees


• Learn all about the refugee crisis from UNHCR, Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Human Rights Watch, and support their work.
  
  RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty has excellent articles and information.
  Educate others about the refugee crisis.
  
  
• Call your congresscritters and demand that the US admit more Iraqi refugees and call for an end to the occupation.

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