Veteran reporter says 3,000-4,000 Iraqis killed every month

Between 3,000 and 4,000 Iraqis are killed every month, rendering "ridiculous" US President George W. Bush's estimate of about 30,000 civilian casualties since the start of the war, veteran British journalist Robert Fisk said Wednesday.





The figures were compiled during several recent trips to the country occupied since March 2003 by US-led forces, The Independent newspaper's Beirut-based correspondent told a news conference in Madrid where he was promoting his book "The Great War for Civilisation".

The casualty rate meant up to 48,000 Iraqis a year were dying in the conflict, "the figure of 30,000 plus is ridiculous", Fisk said, adding that the West did not care about Iraqi deaths.

Bush quoted the figure in the lead-up to Iraq's general election in December. The White House later made clear it was not an official government estimate but was based on media reports.

The Americans were trapped and the only way out was to talk directly to the insurgents, mostly former Iraqi soldiers who had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, said the Arabic-speaking journalist, who has specialised in Middle Eastern affairs for more than two decades.

One of the few reporters to interview Osama bin Laden, Fisk said Al-Qaeda's creator was initially supported by Washington in the same way that Saddam Hussein was once backed by the Americans.

"Most of the people we hate we actually created," he said.

Source : here

Deep Thoughts...

What happens when people loose the capacity for rational thought? They "cling to the familiar, arrive at premature conclusions, and impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes" according to Jack Glaser, Arie Kruglanski, John Jost and Frank Sulloway in their paper Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.

Kfir Alfia, co-founder and leader of the right-wing youth movement Protest Warriors found this out first hand in 2005 at a pro-war rally. Check out this video of what happened when Kfir and one of his loyal members tried to support like minded folks at an anti-Cindy Sheehan rally. If you can't quite catch what the gentleman at the end says, here it is:

These people came to confuse! These people came to confuse! They're leftists and they're acting as if they are conservatives, or people supporting peace and they're leftists! Or you can see it's in the literature! [Whatever the hell that last sentence means. - DJEB]

Rock n Rev has a report of the event at his website as well.

It's hard being a raving lunatic apparently. Even your fellow lunatics don't understand you.

Welcome to Greater Georgelandia

Power to the peephole! Another animation from Mark Fiore.

A Tribute to Iraqi Ingenuity...

Riverbend continues to inspire us all by not just living through the nightmare that his happening to her beloved country Iraq , but keeping the world informed of her thoughts and observations throughout what must be a living hell for almost all Iraqis.


Her latest article looks at the reconstruction effort taking place in Iraq today and compares it to the damage done to the country during the 1991 gulf war or as she says using ' American terminology, after Iraq ‘liberated’ Kuwait in 1990'.

what damage was done ?

Well her article states 'For 42 days, Baghdad and other cities and towns were bombarded with nearly 140,000 tons of explosives, by international estimates. The bombing was relentless- schools, housing complexes, factories, bridges, electric power stations, ministries, sewage facilities, oil refineries, operators, and even bomb shelters (including the only baby formula factory in Iraq and the infamous Amirya Shelter bombing where almost 400 civilians were killed). '

Here are the numbers and types of buildings damaged or destroyed as listed on her site

Schools and scholastic facilities – 3960
Universities, labs, dormitories – 40
Health facilities (including hospitals, clinics, medical warehouses) – 421
Telephone operators, communication towers, etc. – 475
Bridges, buildings, housing complexes – 260
Warehouses, shopping centers, grain silos – 251
Churches and mosques – 159
Dams, water pumping stations, agricultural facilities – 200
Petroleum facilities (including refineries) – 145
General services (shelters, sewage treatment plants, municipalities) - 830
Factories, mines, industrial facilities - 120

So how long did it take to rebuild all of this ? (whilst sanctions were in place against Iraq)

Well Riverbend informs us that 'Two years and approximately 8 billion Iraqi dinars later, nearly 90% of the damage had been repaired. It took an estimated 6,000 engineers (all Iraqi), 42,000 technicians, and 12,000 administrators, but bridges were soon up again, telephones were more or less functioning in most areas, refineries were working, water was running and electricity wasn’t back 100%, but it was certainly better than it is today. Within the first two years over 100 small and large bridges had been reconstructed, 16 refineries, over 50 factories and industrial compounds, etc.'

Are things going just as well this time ? , surely we can reconstruct the country better than the 'butcher of Baghdad' could manage.

Well no 'Nearly three years after this war, the buildings are still piles of debris. Electricity is terrible. Water is cut off for days at a time. Telephone lines come and go. Oil production isn’t even at pre-war levels… and Iraqis hear about the billions upon billions that come and go. A billion here for security… Five hundred million there for the infrastructure… Millions for voting… Iraq falling into deeper debt… Engineers without jobs simply because they are not a part of this political party or that religious group… And the country still in shambles'

Please check out the full article on the link above and don't miss the photographic evidence that she provides to back up her view. There is no better place to go if you want to know what Iraqis are really feeling about what is happening each and every day in their country.

If you still want more after taking in her thoughts then I would advise this excellent review of the article at Daily Kos ( HT to Hype)

Official US agency paints dire picture of 'out-of-control' Iraq

An official assessment drawn up by the US foreign aid agency depicts the security situation in Iraq as dire, amounting to a "social breakdown" in which criminals have "almost free rein".






The "conflict assessment" is an attachment to an invitation to contractors to bid on a project rehabilitating Iraqi cities published earlier this month by the US Agency for International Development (USAid).

The picture it paints is not only darker than the optimistic accounts from the White House and the Pentagon, it also gives a more complex profile of the insurgency than the straightforward "rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists" described by George Bush.

The USAid analysis talks of an "internecine conflict" involving religious, ethnic, criminal and tribal groups. "It is increasingly common for tribesmen to 'turn in' to the authorities enemies as insurgents - this as a form of tribal revenge," the paper says, casting doubt on the efficacy of counter-insurgent sweeps by coalition and Iraqi forces.

Meanwhile, foreign jihadist groups are growing in strength, the report said.

"External fighters and organisations such as al-Qaida and the Iraqi offshoot led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are gaining in number and notoriety as significant actors," USAid's assessment said. "Recruitment into the ranks of these organisations takes place throughout the Sunni Muslim world, with most suicide bombers coming from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region."

The assessment conflicted sharply with recent Pentagon claims that Zarqawi's group was in "disarray".

Read the full article here.

Agip: Never let it be said they aren't immoral

Perhaps it is because they are an oil company...

According to Agip's companies website, "[t]he company has also adopted a code of practice in its relations with its stakeholders and is committed to the development of guidelines and policies pertinent to corporate responsibility, to investing in people and their valorisation and to the pursuit of sustainable development through the integration of environmental and social considerations in its growth processes. "

But which part of "corporate responsibility" or which "social considerations" did they use when they bought oil rights from the Ecuadorean Huaorani Indians for, among other trinkets and small items, rice, butter, a whistle, two soccar balls and a stopwatch? From AlterNet:

Scanning bookshelves in his tiny law office in Quito, Ecuador, Bolivar Beltran's disdain for Big Oil is as legible as the contracts that map their nefarious ways.

"These were all negotiated in secret," says the soft-spoken attorney and Ecuadorian congressional aide, explaining how he used a lawsuit last year to obtain pages of once-classified contracts between the Ecuadorian military and 16 multinational oil companies.

...

Too often, the tribes' introduction to modernity comes from oil company negotiators. By finessing them into signing away oil access in morally deplorable contracts, these deals channel the legendary purchase of Manhattan island for $24 worth of trinkets. But they are learning fast. Increasingly savvy to the oilman's ways, tribes here are putting on war paint, grabbing spears and shotguns, and saying no, sometimes violently, to the world's most powerful interests.

...

In 2001, Agip Oil Ecuador BV, a subsidiary of the multibillion dollar Italian petrochemical company Eni, convinced an association of Huarani Indians to sign over oil access to tribal lands and give up their future right to sue for environmental damage. In return Agip gave, among other things, modest allotments of medicine and food, a $3,500 school house, plates and cups, an Ecuadorian flag, two soccer balls and a referee's whistle.

Other contracts, some marked classified, are signed by multinational oil companies and the Ecuadorian military. Activists and attorneys interviewed for this story say the documents prove the Ecuadorian army has become a private security force for oil companies, one obligated to patrol vast swaths of jungle lands while engaging, and spying on, Ecuadorian citizens opposed to oil operations.

The contracts I reviewed typically required companies to provide money and nonlethal logistical support such as food and fuel in exchange for military protection of staff and facilities in remote jungle areas.

...

In July 2001, a "master agreement" was signed between the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense and 16 oil companies, including Petroecuador, the state oil company, and U.S.-based companies Kerr-McGee, Burlington Resources and Occidental Oil. Covering a duration of five years, the document is stamped "Reservado" -- classified. Its purpose: "To establish, between the parties, the terms of collaboration and coordination of actions to guarantee the security of the oil installations and of the personnel that work in them." It obligates the military to undertake "the control of arms, explosives and undocumented persons" in areas of oil operations and to give periodic updates to oil executives in monthly meetings. For their part, oil companies are obligated, among other things, to provide food, fuel and medical attention while maintaining permanent communication links with military units in the sector.

...

Another contract between the ministry of defense and California-based Occidental Oil, dated April 2000 and also marked classified, required soldiers to "carry out armed patrol and checks of undocumented individuals in the area of Block 15; provide security guards for ground travel of personnel, materials, and equipment within the area of operations and its area of influence; [and] plan, execute and supervise counterintelligence operations to prevent acts of sabotage and vandalism that interfere with the normal development of hydrocarbon activities."

"This basically gives the company the ability to spy on citizens," Beltran told me, a sentiment echoed by Steve Donziger, a U.S. attorney involved in an Ecuadorian environmental lawsuit against Chevron Corp.

Read more>

Memo stokes up terror flights row

The US may have used UK airports to transport terror suspects more than the twice so far admitted, a leaked Foreign Office memo suggests. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says only two cases, in 1998, have been found where such transfers were approved.





But the memo published in the New Statesman magazine shows uncertainty. "The papers we have uncovered so far suggest that there could be more than the two cases referred to in the House by the foreign secretary" it says.

The memo, written in early December, is apparently designed to prepare Tony Blair for questions about the flights - part of a process known as "extraordinary rendition".

It says officials are urgently examining the files.

"We now cannot say that we have received no such requests for the use of UK territory or air space for 'extraordinary rendition'," , "We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail" and "try to move the debate on... underlining all the time the strong counter-terrorist rationale for close co-operation with the US" the memo states .

The Foreign Office and Downing Street both refused to comment on a leaked document.

Source : BBC

What a surprise , It seems Jack Straw may not have been telling the truth when he tried to say this only happened during the time of President Clinton .

It has often been said that ' A lie can work its way around the world before the truth has even put its boots on' . I just never considered that the boots in question would be on the feet of a suspect who was on his way to be illegally tortured .

For all the latest on the constantly evolving issue of 'extraordinary renditions' why not check out Reykjavik Transit. A great source on this subject .

Exclusive interview with Howard Zinn

A few days ago Stefan from Cultureblog posted an exclusive interview with Howard Zinn . You so rarely see bloggers (including myself) making the effort to get out there and actually do the ground work creating the original articles that has made the blogosphere as important as it has become. So I think this kind of work should be commended

Check it out for yourself at Cultureblog ( a new site with original content )

Nearly 50 Killed in another day of tragedy for Iraq

Gunmen and car bombings killed nearly 50 Iraqis in several attacks around the country Wednesday, police officials said, in a new wave of violence that has ended a week-long lull in fighting.




Gunmen ambushed a heavily defended convoy of telecommunications workers traveling the streets of the capital Wednesday morning, killing 10 security guards and kidnapping two African engineers, an Iraqi government spokesman said.

It was unclear who seized the engineers, who worked for the Iraqna cell phone company, said Col. Mohammed Ahmed Nuaimi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. Nuaimi said the ambush had taken place in Baghdad's western Nafaq al-Shurta district, which neighbors a Sunni Arab-dominated area of the city. A report by the Associated Press, citing a statement by Iraqna, said that the kidnapped engineers had come from Malawi and Madagascar.

Baghdad police also discovered the bodies of seven people, believed to be Shiites, who had been left in a deserted area of the Wahdah neighborhood, Nuaimi said. He believed that the victims had been kidnapped from the same area a few days before.

Nuaimi also said that two car-bomb explosions in the capital wounded several people, including five police officers, but that no one was killed.

In the town of Nibaei in northern Iraq, police found the bodies of 25 people who had been shot in the back of their heads, a police spokesman there said in an interview. A witness told police that armed men had set up checkpoints and scanned the identity cards of passersby with the goal of killing police officers and other government employees, Lt. Raed Mahdi Khazraji of the Salah al-Din provincial police force said. Khazraji said that the witness had been spared because he was a retired teacher.

Another group of gunmen attacked a police station in Iskandariyah, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, a spokesman for the Babil province police force said. Two officers were killed and four were wounded in the ensuing firefight, police Capt. Muthanna Ahmed said. The police captured three of the gunmen, Ahmed said, and discovered that one of them was a foreign fighter.

In another attack reported Wednesday, a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol in the town of Saadiya to the east of Baghdad, killing three officers and one civilian, according to a spokesman for the Diyala province police.

Source Washington Post

'War on Terror' Continues to Create Terrorists

The CIA’s recent botched attempt to kill al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman Zawahiri, in Pakistan illustrates why the Bush administration’s overly aggressive “war on terror” actually motivates terrorists to attack the United States. Certainly, capturing or killing the brains behind al Qaeda is an important goal. Unfortunately, in the U.S. method of warfare—which unduly emphasizes attrition, heavy firepower and sophisticated weaponry, even against guerrillas and terrorists—the technology of killing has outstripped the quality of human intelligence needed to hit the correct targets. The CIA’s unmanned Predator drone fired missiles that killed many Pakistani civilians, including women and children, but apparently not Zawahiri.

Making things even worse, the killing of women and children continues to spark public outrage all across Pakistan, leading to mass protests in all of Pakistan’s major cities and the trashing and burning of a U.S.-supported aid organization. Such public ire will make it even less likely that the United States will receive accurate future intelligence about where Zawahiri and his boss, Osama bin Laden, are hiding, even though the prices on their heads are substantial.

And to shore up the popularity of his war on terror at home, which has been dragged down by an incongruous, unnecessary, now unpopular war in Iraq, President Bush has combined these reckless military actions with cowboy rhetoric, which only further stoke the flames of anti-U.S. hatred among radical Islamists. Bringing back the “clash of civilizations” rhetoric used during the Cold War against the “godless Communists,” the administration is now implying that those with “too much god of an alien kind” are trying to build a worldwide empire that could again threaten the United States. The president has cast the war on Islamic terrorism as a contest between the men in white hats who advocate freedom and those with black headgear who want to create “a totalitarian Islamic empire reaching from Spain to Indonesia.”

Read More at the source

F.B.I spied on thousands during 'pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy'

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.




But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

Read more here

That is the question that keeps being asked "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," Well Al Gore seems to think that it is not legal , in fact even Republican Senators such as Arlen Specter are walking through a political minefield finding themselves making comments such as ...

"Impeachment is a remedy. After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy ... under our society is to pay a political price."

Bombing allies makes them angry...

From the Guardian via Common Dreams:

Thousands of angry protesters took to the streets across Pakistan yesterday to condemn an American air strike aimed at al-Qaida's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, that left at least 18 people dead.

Up to 10,000 people reportedly protested at rallies in the largest city, Karachi. Many chanted: "Death to America!" Demonstrators demanded the resignation of Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf. Smaller protests were staged in other towns and cities, including Islamabad, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar.

The protests across Pakistan put further pressure on General Musharraf, whose close relationship with the United States has made him unpopular at home.

...

The rallies followed violent protests by thousands of tribesmen on Saturday in the Bajaur region on the Afghan border where the attack took place. The White House has remained tight-lipped over the missile strike, said to have been carried out by the CIA on Friday, using unmanned drone aircraft.

...

Officially, the Pakistani government does not allow the 20,000 US troops in Afghanistan to cross the border in pursuit of Taliban or al-Qaida fighters, although a large number of combatants are thought to have sought refuge in the rugged and remote border region.

In recent weeks, though, there has been a string of attacks on the Pakistani side of the border that many suspect were carried out by the US. Eight people were killed in a cross-border raid last weekend.

Bush under pressure

A video on wimp.com originally from hategun.com that's worth a look.

New Evidence that Bin Laden is dead ?

A terrorism expert says he has seen evidence showing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is either seriously ill or dead.

Dr Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University, says documents provided by an Indian colleague suggested bin Laden died of massive organ failure in April last year.



"It does seem reasonably convincing based on the evidence that I've been provided with that he's certainly either severely incapacitated or dead at this stage," Dr Williams said.

Dr Williams said Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy who was the target of a US air strike in Pakistan last week, has been making all statements on behalf of the terror network for the past year.

Dr Williams said proving whether the terrorist leader was still alive might be impossible.

"It's hard to prove or disprove these things because there hasn't really been anything that allows you to make a judgment one way or the other," Dr Williams said.

"But it does seem strange that Dr Zawahiri has been making all of the statements since then, and nothing's been heard from bin Laden since, I think, the December of the year before." ( Note : There is plenty of evidence to suggest the December tape in question is a fake)

Dr Williams said even if bin Laden was dead, those who upheld the same philosophies would continue to fight for their cause.

Source : here

Of course we have been here many times before . We have posted on the 'claim' of his death more than once ( the last such post is here ) . It is worth bearing in mind , with his constant need for dialysis it is extremely unlikely that he survived long after the attack on Tora Bora in 2001 and the odds on him still being alive today are next to zero .

Anyway the death of Bin laden must come as quite a shock to those who went to his Funeral in December 2001 . Still just like the movies I am sure he will make a few more comebacks yet. Just like our other constantly reincarnating nemesis Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Saddam judge 'resigns from trial'

The chief judge in the trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has tendered his resignation, reports say.




Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin has been accused by Iraqi and US politicians of being too lenient on Saddam Hussein during hearings at his murder trial.

The source said his resignation has not yet been accepted and colleagues are trying to persuade him to reconsider.

Judge Rizgar is overseeing the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven former members of his regime over the killing of 148 people in Dujail in 1982.

Sources within the tribunal have told the that Judge Rizgar is not resigning over pressure from the Iraqi government, but because of his disappointment at the public's reaction. The source said that the judge had simply been trying to ensure that the trial is fair and that everyone involved gets their say.

resignation will be a terrible blow to the whole project of bringing Saddam Hussein to justice.

His resignation must be approved by both the prime minister's counsel and the president and vice-presidents. The trial is due to resume on 24 January.

Source : here