"Family Wiped out By US;
Mosul: Rapid Downward Security Spiral
Headlines you never want to see: "Family wiped out by US." A US air strike on suspected insurgents at Tikrit went terribly wrong Wednesday, when an American missile instead killed a family of 6, including four children aged 4 to 11. Iraqis allege that the man had come out of his house and fired a gun in the air because he was afraid that thieves were in the area. The US military apparently thought he was firing at them and called in a strike on his house.
This sort of thing is why the Iraq public wants any Status of Forces Agreement between the Iraqi government and the US to ensure that US forces can only deploy force with the agreement of the Iraqi government.
Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the security situation has taken a dramatic turn for the worse in Mosul. Yesterday a bombing killed 2 and wounded 90 persons, and a municipal leader was assassinated; in addition, a roadside bombing killed 3 US troops and their interpreter. An informed source told the Baghdad daily that the security campaign in the northern city of 1.7 mn. led by PM Nuri al-Maliki was deeply flawed. He said that there had been no coordination between the government forces sent into Mosul with the police in their 80 local HQs, nor with the 48 offices of parties that maintain powerful militias.
Peshmerga troops of the Kurdistan Alliance in Mosul began being replaced on Wednesday by units of the Iraqi Army after severe pressure was exerted by the people of the city, tribal elders, and notables. (Mosul is about 80 percent Arab, but there is a Kurdish minority; residents fear that Kurdistan is trying to annex the city). An Iraqi Army source said that in the Waterfall District in the east of the city, a Peshmerga unit had already been switched out with an Iraqi Army one.
Al-Zaman also alleges that the Badr Corps paramilitary of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq refused to surrender their HQs in Maysan Province to the government, and that the Interior Ministry apologized for them!
Some 22 Iraqis died and over a hundred were wounded in political violence on Wednesday.
McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:
' Baghdad
Three civilians were killed and ten others wounded in parked car bomb near Saj al Reef restaurant in Karrada neighborhood in downtown Baghdad around 1:00 p.m.
Police found five unidentified bodies in Baghdad . . .
Diyala
An Iraqi soldier was killed and three others were wounded in a booby-trapped house in al Naqeeb village 15 miles south of Baquba city around 6:00 a.m.
A member of Sahwa council was killed in clashes between Sahwa members and insurgents in Khan Bani Saad town 15 miles southwest of Baquba city around 7:00 a.m.
Nineveh
Gunmen killed Mosul municipality director Khalid Mahmoud and his driver in al Baladiyat area in downtown Mosul city on Wednesday morning.
Thi Qar
Seven people were wounded in a tribal fight between two sub-tribes south of Nasiriyah city on Wednesday morning. Iraqi army got involved supported by US helicopters to control. The security forces arrested 16 people including seven wounded.
Karbala
two people were killed and 15 others were wounded when a bomb exploded inside a car near Imam Abbas holy shrine in downtown Karbala city south of Baghdad around 7:00 p.m.'
Reuters has more.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are donating $1 mn. for Iraqi refugee children. Now if only the US Congress would step up.
Nick Turse on the Pentagon's stealth corporations.
At Napoleon's Egypt blog, an anecdote about Bonaparte facing down an officers' mutiny in Egypt.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/26/2008 12:36:00 AM
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11 Comments:
I am still confused; Juan Cole keeps highlighting these unnerving stories, yet here in the U.S. Republicans and pundits keep repeating "The Surge Is Working" and insist the main question is "Why won't you accept that The Surge Is Working?"
How to tell who's right? It's a mystery.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/world/middleeast/26baghdad.html?hp&pagewanted=print
The military also reported on Wednesday that four American soldiers had died in unrelated events. They brought the death toll of American service members this month to 26....
[The surge is always working, just pay attention to the folks at Brookings.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/opinion/25friedman.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
June 25, 2008
Taking Ownership of Iraq?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
When someone else has to liberate you in your own home, that is humiliating — and humiliation, I believe, is the single-most underestimated force in international relations, especially in the Middle East....
[Notice the insanity of such analysis.]
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2008/06/blog-post_25.html
June 25, 2008
" When someone else has to liberate you in your own home, that is humiliating — and humiliation, I believe, is the single-most underestimated force in international relations, especially in the Middle East." * OK, while you are at it, tell me. How was that pie in your face? I would rather hear about that than about your silly and vapid "theories" about world affairs.
* http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/opinion/25friedman.html
-- As'ad AbuKhalil
What is happening now is al-Maliki and American forces doing all they can to make sure that the elections are properly controlled. I imagine they will be successful, and the elections will be controlled but to no avail in terms of a real peace. Real peace will not come from insuring a dictatorship, and this will be understood enough to make a full withdrawal of American forces from Iraq most unlikely no matter the coming President.
We have a bank director and 2 women bank employees, at the intensely guarded Baghdad airport supposedly shooting up a convoy of American soldiers. "Criminals," reporters are told, criminal bank employees out to shoot up a convoy of American soldiers as though for sport.
Then, we have a frightened man hearing the sounds of soldiers in the night and foolishly firing warning shots thinking them thieves. The man is of course Al-Qaeda, so an airstrike is called for to destroy home and all who might be about the home.
Since "the improved security situation in Iraq is good news for all Iraqis and Americans," * I would really like to hear a mention politically of Somalia, any mention, since conditions in Somalia since the American supported Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia in December 2006 has led to dire problems. United Nations reports are just grim, but who would know?
* New York Times Editorial Board
http://theboard.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/a-new-report-card-on-iraq/
June 25, 2008
A New Report Card on Iraq
By Editorial Board
The improved security situation in Iraq is good news for all Iraqis and Americans. Violence is way down. More Iraqi security forces have been trained to help protect the country. The central government is beginning to assert its authority. Parliament has adopted some vital new laws....
[I am all, like, "hooray."]
How to tell if the surge is working?
Its not really a hard question.
The fact is that 4 to 5 million Iraqis are still refugees. David Brooks and all the other surge acolytes NEVER mention them, so you can be sure that this single fact refutes all the optimist's wild claims.
Surge mania is a classic example of goalpost - shifting; imagine if Bush in 2003 had said "five years from now, Iraqi refugees will number in their millions, and we will be raining hellfire missiles into slums to stop unending mortar attacks upon our personnel".
No one would have called that a desirable goal, yet that is currently the situation, so how can any honest observer call the surge a success?
A US air strike on suspected insurgents at Tikrit went terribly wrong Wednesday, when an American missile instead killed a family of 6, including four children aged 4 to 11.
As the air-stikes move into Iraqi cities it is foreordained that they will kill civilians.
Accepting certain civilian deaths in the prosecution of your war is a war crime.
The people in the Pentagon are smart people. They know exactly what's involved with the war they're waging in Iraq They know as well as the Israelis do that they are waging war against civilians. They tell the media, and the media blares back at them and the rest of us that their intentions are good (!), these are "collateral damage".
That phrase is as false as PTSD.
In fact their killing enemy combatants with their raids on civilians is more nearly collateral than the sure civilians death toll.
The US/Israeli Wehrmacht are embarked on a criminal campaign against civilians.
You, for some unknown reason Juan Cole, will not publish that observation.
Do you question the logic, the banal progression of evil?
I'm sure someone inside the pentagon could produce their actuarial tables on the numbers of civilians they'll kill in a given situation.
I'll bet with your connections you could even get the reports.
"This sort of thing is why the Iraq public wants any Status of Forces Agreement between the Iraqi government and the US to ensure that US forces can only deploy force with the agreement of the Iraqi government."
NO, it it why Iraqis want USA occupators OUT of Iraq, and NOW (or tomorrow).
"Iraqi government" is a puppet of the same USA occupators, and if USA public does not know it, Iraqis do!
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