5 US Troops Killed;
90 Iraqis Wounded in Mosul;
District Election for Sadr City Bombed:
Guerrillas deployed a roadside bomb to kill 3 American soldiers and an interpreter in northern Iraq on Tuesday.
McClatchy reports two major bombings in Iraq on Tuesday.
The SF Chronicle has more on Mr. Farley.
Sawt al-Iraq reports in Arabic on the statement about US troop withdrawals of Humam Hamoudi. Hamoudi, a Shiite cleric and member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, heads the Foreign Relations Committee in the Iraqi parliament. He met with a number of American officials on Monday, and expressed his conviction that a studied withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq is the foundation of any security agreement with the USA. He told David Satterfield and Gen. Mark Kimmit of the "necessity to safeguard the sovereignty of Iraq and to arrive at an agreement that would gain the assent of the Iraqi people and the support of the parliamentary blocks. The studied withdrawal of foreign forces would be foundational to such an agreement."
Hamoudi's party, ISCI, has been among the main US allies in Iraq and is the cornerstone of what little power Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has. If he is talking about the need to build a plan for a deliberate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq into any security agreement, imagine how the groups that distrust the US feel.
Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that families in the destitute al-Ansar quarter of Najaf are complaining about the raw sewage that comes into their district, and saying they believe it is implicated in the recent deaths of 25 persons of cancer in the one square kilometer neighborhood.
On how you won't see most of this on t.v.:
Reuters reports other political violence in Iraq on Tuesday:
' TIKRIT - U.S. forces detained the head of a local journalists' union in Tikrit, 150 km (95 miles) north of Baghdad, police and the Iraqi media watchdog the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory said.
MOSUL - Gunmen kidnapped four university students from their halls of residence in western Mosul, north of Baghdad, police said. They later released two of them.
MOSUL - U.S. forces said they killed a senior al Qaeda leader in Mosul, although they gave no details on what his role had been in the city.
BALAD - Two members of a U.S.-backed Iraqi neighbourhood patrol were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle on the outskirts of Balad town, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
YATHRIB - Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops caught a wanted Iraqi al Qaeda militant along with his Saudi Arabian aide in Yathrib village, north of Baghdad, security forces said.
BAGHDAD - U.S. forces killed one gunman and captured 12 others on Monday in various operations in different parts of northern Iraq, the U.S. military said.
KERBALA - Iraqi police arrested three wanted Shi'ite militiamen accused of killing and kidnapping people in central Kerbala, 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Baghdad, police said. '
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/25/2008 01:03:00 AM
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1 Comments:
Condolences to the late Mr. Farley's family and co-workers. Same for the other victims, who were mostly Iraqis. I wonder if Farley was a PRT volunteer, or assigned under Ms Rice's new mandatory Iraq service policy?
We can't say that a diplomat, contract translators and Iraqi politicians killed in this Sadr City attack were soft targets. High-value, and exposed in a predictable time/place, certainly. But the meet was supported by major security, and a number of soldiers were killed and maimed, in what was supposed to be a pacified zone under truce conditions.
As long as we have troops in Iraq, in what the majority of Iraqis (and our troops) perceive as an occupation, US operatives will be subject to attacks, along with reconstruction/stabilization workers who are (seen as) extensions of our efforts. By all polling, the Iraqi center sees attacks on US forces as excusable, even if not something they personally want to rush out and try.
We should recognize that our occupying force does have an obligation to protect the civilian population from the terrors that have been unleashed there. But it's hard to see how we can be any more effective in that role than the post-surge baseline that is emerging; unacceptable and protracted 2005 levels of insurgency, terrorism, civil war. Our occupation combat ops are part of the terrors of Iraqi life.
Whether manned at 100,000 or 170,000 soldiers (+ 200,000 contractors), we're not effective enough to want to continue bleeding and bloodletting. Even if the blood flows at half of last years maximal 60-120 kia, plus whatever multiple of that our enemy and collateral kill rates are.
This weeks GAO call for a new Iraq strategy says that we need some kind of 12 step program for de-militarizing our very real obligations to the Iraqi population. What the Baker commission laid out two years ago. A path that includes the regional powers who are funding the religio-ethnic armed camps is most likely to progress politically, and succeed economically.
Arabia-Jordan-Kuwait, Turkey, and Iran-Syria will have to be cut in on the deal, or they will support agents of destabilization, wherever their factions are losing out. Isreal, a potential sponsor of Kurdish separatism, should also be factored, but represented (as usual) thru US conferees.
Realpolitik sucks, but it is at least trying to be real. Accept that a President Obama will not be able to get all our combat forces out of Iraq in 2009. At least not without taking very serious risks with the lives of the Iraqis (and Americans) left behind. But he can initiate a process, move in a direction that aims to end nearly 30 years of US involvement in Iraq's wars.
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