Iraq Casualty Numbers Doctored
Attacks Near Mosul, Khalis
Sadr Condemns Wall
Since the Bush administration doesn't actually have any good news on Iraq, they are just making it up. It confirms your worst suspicions. They haven't been counting victims of car bombings when they say that violence is down in Iraq! Bush administration spokesmen and officials are just saying that fewer bodies are found in the streets, victims of death squads. But the number of victims of car bombing has actually increased in this period.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is withholding statistics on Iraqi casualties from the United Nations.
It is official: The real parts of the Iraq War are being treated as imaginary, and the imaginary parts are being treated as though they are real.
Early Thursday morning in Iraq, guerrillas in Khalis attacked Iraqi troops, killing 9 and wounding 15, 10 of them soldiers.
In Zumar, west of Mosul, guerrillas attacked the local HQ of Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic National Party.
Police found 18 bodies in the streets of Baghdad on Wednesday.
Nationalist young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Wednesday condemned the US plans to build a wall around the Adhamiya district of Baghdad, calling it "evil" and warning it would reinforce sectarianism. Al-Sadr has a pan-Islamic rhetoric, but at night his Mahdi Army goons murder Sunni Arabs in the street. It remains to be seen if he is capable of reining in his goons and actually put together an anti-Coalition alliance of both Shiites and Sunnis.
The House of Representative passed a budget supplemental containing a timetable for withdrawal of US troops, in defiance of Bush, who says he will veto it. The LAT points out that far from being unpopular with constituents back home, the Dems have gotten a lot of support from voters for trying to rescue our trapped troops from the quagmire.
The House of Representatives' Oversight and Government Reform Committee has subpoened Condi Rice with regard to the alledged nuclear weapons program and purchase of yellowcake from Niger.
Speaking of accountability, Dennis Kucinich has introduced articles of impeachement against VP Richard Bruce Cheney.
Labels: Iraq War
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/26/2007 12:29:00 AM
|
Facebook
8 Comments:
The Ministry of Defence Denmark has told that Minster of Defence Søren Gade was attacked twice this week when in the Danish Camp in Iraq. The Danish Minister was on a secret visit to Iraq to meet the Danish troops, the Iraqi minister of Defence and the American ambassador.
Denmark will withdraw most of its troops this year as a result of the im-proved security in southern Iraq. :-)
Dr. Cole, concerning Rice's subpoena that you mention, what is your opinio on Andrew Cockburn's article in FirstPost today (http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=1&subID=1332) arguing that the Iraq conflict is, essentially, Clinton's fault? This sounds like huge news.
Impeach, impeach! or at a minimum institutionalize without consent.
More Cookery from Georgie's Easy Bake Oven, Gen Petraeus, pastry chef...
I noted back when he was appointed that the only qualification that Bush was interested in was Gen. Petraeus's solid track record for media flim flam
Even as he's in Washington giving a command performance of Friday Follies redux, this morning's Los Angeles times article on the UN civilian casualty report tells the sorry tale.
U.N. report and Times data paint grim Iraq picture
And now I learn that River is leaving Iraq.
"I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere," she writes. "We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward. Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.
"On a personal note, we've finally decided to leave. I guess I've known we would be leaving for a while now. We discussed it as a family dozens of times. At first, someone would suggest it tentatively because, it was just a preposterous idea- leaving ones home and extended family- leaving ones country- and to what? To where?"
I am incredibly saddened to learn she is leaving Iraq, and I can't really explain why. Partly it's because I discovered her blog so recently, discovered it way too late. But mostly, I think, it's because I harbored the hope that the resistance in Iraq would turn out to be a nationalist movement. And now I see one eloquent voice of Iraqi nationalism silenced by sectarian violence, and I am much less hopeful.
Last night PBS aired Bill Moyer's Journal, "Buying the War" on how the Bush administration manipulated a compliant media in the run up to the Iraq War. It was an excellent show featuring two excellent journalists familiar to IC readers - Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay of Knight-Ridder (McClatchy's) Washington Bureau.
I imagine that PBS will be showing re-runs and the site has a video available. In addition, there is a post-show chat transcript worth a read.
SPIEGEL ONLINE - April 26, 2007, 02:14 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,479607,00.html
IRAQ OPINION
Yankee, Don't Go Home!
By Yassin Musharbash
The Democrats want to bring the US military home from Iraq. But a hurried withdrawal would surely make the situation in the country even more volitile than it already is. The Yankees should stay.
[Remainder @ site]
Though the video of "what we're doing in IRAQ" is certainly sanitized for cable/network TV, and rarely correlates to whatever the news of the day happens to be ~ if you turn off the audio, there is one image that repeats over and over, day after day: an American soldier, kicking down a door.
in my opinion, this is the signature image of The Occupation, moreso than any other; save, perhaps ~ endless, gray plains of rubble, punctuated by huge craters in roadways, and reflecting pools of black-red blood.
it passes so quickly, this image of our boys, kicking down a door ~ and so frequently do we witness it, that we now see it without asking, "What is he doing? Why is he always kicking down the door? What happens next: what will he do next?"
But we never see that. It's like a Love Scene on the screen ~ they embrace, the music swells, we know they're going to do it ~ but we never see the act of Love...
...we never see the act of War, either. But we see enough, don't we, to know what happens next?
Whatever we're doing, whenever we do something, over there ~ we begin by kicking down the door.
Post a Comment
<< Home