Thread: Iraq News

God bless America's armed forces and our efforts to establish a stable democracy in Iraq!

DAMASCUS, 22 October (IRIN) - More than three million Iraqis who have been forced to flee their homes to other areas of Iraq and to neighbouring countries are facing what the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR) describes as a "very bleak future" after the agency's budget for offices across the region was halved for the coming year. Andrew Harper, coordinator for the Iraq unit at UNHCR in Geneva, told IRIN that funds for the agency's Iraq programme have been drastically reduced for 2007 because of donors scaling back their contributions. As Iraq makes up a significant proportion of UNHCR's work in the Middle East, Lolles said this cut in funds for Iraq roughly halves a region-wide budget that is already "totally insufficient to provide tangible results". "Iraq has seen the largest and most recent displacement of any UNHCR project in the world, yet even as more Iraqis are displaced and as their needs increase, the funds to help them are decreasing," said Harper. "This growing humanitarian crisis has simply gone under the radar screen of most donors."Harper added that this reduction of funds had led to the suspension of a number of priority UNHCR projects. These include work to identify and aid the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees, including single mothers, the sick and the elderly. UNHCR estimates that more than 1.5 million Iraqis are internally displaced in Iraq, including some 800,000 who fled their homes prior to 2003 and 750,000 who have fled since. A further 1.6 million Iraqis are refugees in neighbouring countries, the majority in Syria and Jordan.Donations to UNHCR's Iraq programme from the United States, European Union nations, Japan and Australia have been in free fall since the start of the US-led occupation of Iraq, despite the ever-increasing numbers of refugees fleeing the deadly violence there. From a high of US $150 million in 2003, the UNHCR budget for its Iraq programme fell to just $29 million in 2006. One quarter of that budget is allocated to meeting the needs of Iraqi refugees in neighbouring countries Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. Syria hosts the largest Iraqi refugee community in the region. Before the fall of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the number of Iraqis living in Syria was estimated to be 100,000. Local NGOs estimate the current Iraqi community in Syria to be 800,000. A report released in May by UNHCR, the UN's children's agency (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme concluded that an some 450,000 Iraqis in Syria "are facing aggravated difficulties" related to their "ambiguous legal status and unsustainable income". The population of Syria is nearly 19 million. On 20 October, Ron Redmond, UNHCR chief spokesman, said some 40,000 Iraqis are now arriving in Syria each month.Among Iraqi refugees living in the capital, Damascus, there is a sense of desperation that a vital lifeline looks set to be cut. "We do not have jobs because there are thousands of Iraqis in Syria and without this help we are going to have to beg for money in the streets," said Haj Jamal, a 62-year-old Iraqi refugee living in Damascus."I urge in the name of all Iraqi refugees in Syria that the United Nations looks after this situation and remembers that without this support, thousands of newly poor people will be walking the streets of Syria next year," he added.Laurens Jolles, UNHCR acting representative in Damascus, told IRIN that his office had requested a 2006 budget of $1.3 million but received only $700,000. This means its budget for 2006 amounted to less than one dollar a year to spend on each Iraqi refugee in Syria, without taking into account the refugee agency's operating costs and its expenditure on non-Iraqi refugees. The majority of Iraqi refugees in Syria live in the suburbs of Damascus, in deteriorating socio-economic conditions. They have access to public schools and health care but have to travel out of the country every six months to renew their visas and cannot hold work permits, resulting in high unemployment. "When Iraqis first came here they brought resources and many were not in need of assistance. Two years on, that situation has changed and many refugees are no longer able to look after themselves," said Jolles. "The situation in Iraq is getting worse and there is no prospect of return. Without providing sufficient resources to help the host governments contain the refugee population there will be a secondary displacement of refugees to Europe. The time to do something is now."UNHCR is now calling on donor countries to extend their funding of the Iraq programme to a budget of around $25m for 2007.

U.S. official admits "arrogance" in Iraq

By Claudia Parsons

10/22/06 "Reuters" -- -- The United States has shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq, a senior U.S. diplomat said in an interview aired on Sunday, after U.S. President George W. Bush said he was flexible on tactics, if not strategy.

U.S. military deaths in Iraq in October reached 78 this weekend, making it the most deadly month for Americans this year and raising pressure ahead of Congressional elections in November where Bush's Republican party could lose its majority in both houses halfway through his second term as president.

"We tried to do our best (in Iraq) but I think there is much room for criticism because, undoubtedly, there was arrogance and there was stupidity from the United States in Iraq," senior U.S. State Department official Alberto Fernandez told Al Jazeera speaking in Arabic in a broadcast heard on Sunday by Reuters.

The State Department -- which has long been at odds with the Pentagon over Iraq according to several recent books -- had said earlier that a translation of the comments posted on Al Jazeera's English language Web site had misquoted its director of public diplomacy in the bureau of Near Eastern affairs.

"What he (Fernandez) says is that it is not an accurate quote," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. Asked whether he thought the United States would be judged as being arrogant, McCormack said "No".

Al Jazeera's English language Web Site also quoted Fernandez as saying Washington was ready to talk with any Iraqi group except al Qaeda in Iraq to end violence.

The Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has been meeting Shi'ite clerics this week to enlist their support in calming militia infighting in southern Iraq as well as sectarian violence between Shi'ites and Sunnis.

Disarming militias such as the Mehdi Army, loyal to powerful young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, is seen as crucial by the United States but has proved difficult for Maliki who relies on the support of the political groups linked to the militias.

BUSH SAYS FLEXIBLE ON TACTICS, GOAL UNCHANGED

On Saturday Bush held a videoconference involving Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, top White House officials and U.S. military officials in Iraq, who have admitted that a two-month plan to secure Baghdad has failed to rein in violence and that the strategy is under review.

In his radio address on Saturday, Bush said: "We will continue to be flexible, and make every necessary change to prevail in this struggle."

He added, "Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging."

The White House has drawn a distinction between flexibility on tactics and a big overhaul of the strategy in Iraq, and officials have suggested such a broad revamp was not imminent.

Longtime Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James Baker is leading a panel that is preparing recommendations for alternative strategies in Iraq.

But the Iraq Study Group's report will not be issued until after the Nov. 7 elections, at which some polls suggest Republicans could lose control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, where Democrats and some Republicans are already saying it is time to reassess U.S. policy in Iraq three years after the invasion.

Some have suggested the administration might use the bipartisan group's findings as cover for an exit strategy.

Jeffrey White, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, suggested a substantial policy revision was being weighed.

"It looks to me like this supertanker is turning," he said. "It takes a long time but I think the turn is beginning to be made."

Bombs rigged to bicycles followed by a barrage of mortars killed 16 people and wounded 60 on Saturday in a market in Mahmudiya, a town in the Sunni insurgent "Triangle of Death" bastion south of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

Gunmen killed a man there on Sunday who the police said was responsible for the attacks, a Reuters photographer in town said.

That came after several days of Shi'ite infighting and sectarian clashes in towns such as Amara and Balad, both of which were handed over to Iraqi security forces in recent months as part of U.S. efforts to gradually transfer responsibility.

There were reports of several roadside bombs, car bombs and shootings in Baghdad and around the country on Sunday, but it was a relatively calm day ahead of the Eid holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which is expected to start in the coming days.

A roadside bomb under a vehicle killed three people and wounded six, including a police officer, as they were shopping in a market in Al Rashid street in central Baghdad ahead of the holiday, police said.

(Additional reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia, Mariam Karouny, Aseel Kami in Baghdad, Caren Bohan in Washington and Ghaida Ghantous in Dubai)

© 1998-2006 Reuters Limited.

Iraqi youth want U.S. troops to withdraw

By KATHERINE SHRADER
Associated Press Writer

10/22/06 "AP" -- -- WASHINGTON - Majorities of Iraqi youth in Arab regions of the country believe security would improve and violence decrease if the U.S.-led forces left immediately, according to a State Department poll that provides a window into the grim warnings provided to policymakers.

The survey — unclassified, but marked "For Official U.S. Government Use Only" — also finds that Iraqi leaders may face particular difficulty recruiting young Sunni Arabs to join the stumbling security forces. Strong majorities of 15- to 29-year-olds in two Arab Sunni areas — Mosul and Tikrit-Baquba — would oppose joining the Iraqi army or police.

The poll has its shortcomings; regional samples are small and the results do not say how many people refused to respond to questions. The private polling firm hired by the State Department also was not able to interview residents of al-Anbar, a Sunni-dominated province and an insurgent stronghold.

But the findings of the summer survey — circulated to policymakers last month and obtained by The Associated Press last week — nevertheless provide a solemn reminder of the difficulty that the U.S.-backed Iraqi government faces as it tries to add ethnic diversity to its security institutions.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press

The Sunday Times October 22, 2006
Iraq is no Vietnam – it's far worse than that

Andrew Sullivan
V, it turns out, is not for vendetta. It’s for Vietnam. In the long, bitter debate before the Iraq war it was always war opponents who brought the V-word up. Many of us who never lived through that nightmare shrugged it off. It was another baby-boomer neurosis, we thought. America had fought and won wars since then, notably the first Gulf war. America had liberated Afghan Muslims and protected Bosnian Muslims, without the “quagmire” so many warned about. It became a point of pride for war supporters to deny outright any Vietnam comparison as preposterous. So it made news when last week the president himself confirmed that the analogy had some bite. He was asked about a recent analogy from Thomas Friedman, a columnist, who had compared the current moment in Iraq to the 1968 Tet offensive when Vietcong guerrillas in the south and North Vietnamese troops launched a joint attack and prompted a collapse in morale in the American heartland. “He could be right,” George W Bush said. “There’s certainly a stepped-up level of violence and we’re heading into an election.”

NI_MPU('middle');
The president didn’t mean, mind you, that the United States was losing. He was reiterating what has long been a common view among neoconservatives: that the Tet offensive was a military failure for the Vietcong, which was crushed, but a profound PR success for the communist North. The lesson neoconservatives drew was that America will not falter, as it did in Vietnam.
“The full context was that the comparison was about the propaganda waged in the Tet offensive,” the White House explained later. “The president was reiterating something he’s said before — that the enemy is trying to shake our will.”
Consider it shaken. The polls suggest plummeting support for the war and deep discontent with the president and Congress. And the reason, it must be conceded, is similar to the reason in the Vietnam war. The US is now in a classic counter-insurgency war, just as it was in Vietnam. Its superior firepower is of no use in such a situation, just as carpet-bombing Vietnam and Cambodia couldn’t turn the Vietnamese population into allies of a foreign intervention.
Worse, the military has even less knowledge and intimacy with the culture and history of Iraq than it did in Vietnam. It has no South Vietnamese to deploy as spies and informants. Without that knowledge, and without support from a functioning government on the ground, the military risks becoming paralysed by a maze of tribal, sectarian and religious forces that it can neither understand nor master.
On a practical basis this means that American soldiers can clear a town of insurgents but when the Americans leave the insurgents return and, in the absence of a powerful central government, the inhabitants have no option but to co-operate with the enemy. The government’s own forces are either incompetent or infiltrated by the very militias that are fomenting the sectarian conflict in the first place. And so the war grinds on, with little chance of victory.
A political solution, the only secure way to achieve peace in Iraq, has slipped across the horizon, as Sunni Arabs, Shi’ite Arabs and Sunni Kurds recoil into the protection of the clan, the tribe and the ethnic or religious family. After each round of violence a cycle of revenge follows.
And so the Iraqi civilian casualties mount to something like 3,500 a month. We can argue about numbers but it remains indisputable that the number of deaths in Iraq is now surpassing the murderous levels of the previous dictatorship. The Americans look on, fighting hard in some places, resigned to stalemate elsewhere.
If you look up such a situation in a dictionary, you’ll stumble across the V-word eventually. But the analogy still doesn’t hold. In terms of American casualties there is no comparison. The toll in Vietnam was 20 times that of Iraq — and there was a draft (conscription to you Brits), so the cost of warfare was brought home powerfully across America. Today’s volunteer military both minimises such casualties and protects most Americans from the war’s terrible toll.
In other respects the analogy is flawed because the situation in Iraq is worse than Vietnam. When South Vietnam fell, the consequences were largely restricted to the region. They were awful — as the toll of communism culled hundreds of thousands in Cambodia and Vietnam. But they ended at the ocean.
In Iraq the consequences of American withdrawal could be a full-scale civil war, widespread ethnic cleansing, and the involvement of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and even Egypt in a potentially catastrophic Sunni-Shi’ite conflagration. Add to that the possibility of Turkey intervening in Kurdistan and you could have the region with a chokehold on the world’s energy supplies turning into a corpse-ridden, Balkan desert.
Worse, withdrawal could allow for a failed state — or even region, like Anbar province — to become a training camp for jihadists to wage war on the West from a safe haven in the Middle East. Unlike Vietnam, this could bring the war home to America’s own cities. Or to London. Or Paris or Madrid or Tel Aviv.
If victory is impossible and defeat unimaginable, what can America do? One answer is the one given by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary: denial. Last week Cheney said the government of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, was doing “remarkably well”. Sadly for Cheney the number of Americans willing to believe this is now much lower than the number who believe the Earth was made in seven days 6,000 years ago.
And so the smart money in Washington, especially if the Democrats retake part or all of the Congress on November 7, is on some sort of deal with the neighbouring regimes to stabilise and police Iraq.
The Bush family consigliere, James Baker, has been asked to come up with a plan. It may take talking directly to Iran and Syria, something that will represent a real volte-face for the White House. It may mean reaching out to Jordan, the Saudis, and even the Russians for direct or indirect negotiation with the various factions in Iraq — or with Iran and Syria.
Just as a chastened America will have to cede managing the North Korean crisis to China, so it will have to pass on some of the burden for containing Iraq to its neighbours. It’s a high-risk strategy — but so are all the alternatives.
More important: it will be an acknowledgment that the project as it has been understood for the past three years is now over. But we will have to wait until after the elections to know exactly what lies ahead.

Now we know what we know, why is Blair still in office?

As more evidence of his role in the Iraq debacle emerges, it beggars belief that the Prime Minister hasn't been impeached

Henry Porter
Sunday October 22, 2006
The Observer

Over the course of little more than a week, we have learned that civilian casualties so far in the Iraq war may be more than 600,000; that Britain's Chief of the General Staff believes the conflict could break the army apart; that a federal solution to the growing chaos involving the effective dismemberment of the country is being openly discussed in America; that the US Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican grandee James Baker, is recommending that the US military withdraws to bases outside Iraq and seeks Iranian and Syrian help; and that Britain is now the number one al-Qaeda target, partly, it seems clear, as a consequence of events in Iraq.
There should be at least one universal response to this in Britain. Why is Tony Blair still Prime Minister after leading his country into such a disastrous war? Any large company would by now have got rid of a managing director guilty of a mistake on that scale. Any institution you care to name would have done the same. Why is Blair immune from the normal requirements of high office?
Why, instead of being allowed by the cabinet to establish six new policy committees designed to entrench his legacy, has he not been impeached and thrown out of office? Even if his Iraq policy was formed in good faith, the scale of the error surely requires us to ask him and all those concerned with this disaster to leave.
It doesn't matter now whether you were pro-war, strongly opposed to it or somewhere in between, the policy in the Middle East has been an unmitigated failure, an outcome that was built into the earliest planning for the enterprise. People's views four years ago don't count now because Britain is at the heart of a world-changing catastrophe and as far as our interests go, there has not been a single advantage, not even the one of keeping the special relationship alive.
How did we get here? The answer is still not entirely clear. We think we know that Blair manipulated the situation, but we still don't have all the evidence. What is needed is for people to come forward and for the past to be examined more intensively than before.
For instance, it is well worth returning to a memo written by a young diplomat named Matthew Rycroft, which is still significantly undervalued as evidence of the Prime Minister's drive to war and of the innate negligence of American planning for the period after the invasion.
Rycroft is now safely tucked away in Sarajevo as British ambassador to Bosnia. But in the summer of 2002, aged 34, he was Tony Blair's private secretary for foreign affairs. In this capacity, he attended a secret meeting at Downing Street which included Tony Blair, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, John Scarlett, the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, and Blair's military chiefs and the sofa cabinet - Alastair Campbell, Sally Morgan and Jonathan Powell. He then wrote a memo to his boss, Sir David Manning, Blair's chief foreign policy adviser.
It is really a minute of the meeting. The crucial passage reads: 'C [Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC [the US National Security Council] had no patience with the UN route and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.'
The Downing Street Memo, as it became known, was published in the Sunday Times on 1 May 2005, five days before the general election. It certainly made an impact but by the end of that week, it had been washed away with the rest of the pre-election clamour. Blair had won a third term and his mysterious hold over the British electorate managed even to vanquish these revelations about British and American thinking eight months before the war.
It took a while for it to surface in the press in the US although its consequence was immediately grasped in the blogosphere. In Britain, the memo became part of the inconclusive miasma of the Hutton report into David Kelly's death and of the Butler review of intelligence on WMD; and it decomposed in the public's understanding at roughly the same rate. Indeed, one often wonders if Blair has been saved by the amount of material produced by public inquiries (Hutton is 740 pages; Butler 192). The more that is published, the more the issues blur.
But the memo is the goods. It establishes Bush's resolve to find a pretext for war, regardless of the facts on WMD and Saddam's links to terrorism. It further makes plain that there was little or no thinking about the postwar period, an error that now must be regarded as equal to or greater than the invasion. No surprise is expressed in Rycroft's account of the meeting about what was going on in America, which leads one to assume that among a very small group, the idea of invasion was a fully fledged possibility, even though Blair was assuring the public and cabinet colleagues outside the inner circle that nothing had been decided.
There was much more in the original Sunday Times report on the meeting. Jack Straw and Lord Goldsmith had doubts about the legal case for war, while Blair was committed from the outset to supporting US plans for regime change. At the time, no one seems to have remembered what Tony Blair had said in his evidence to Lord Butler's report into the intelligence on WMD, published eight months before the memo came to light. Blair said: 'I remember that during the course of July and August, I was increasingly getting messages saying, "Are you about to go to war?" and I was thinking, "This is ridiculous" and so I remember towards the end of the holiday actually phoning Bush and saying we have got to put this right straight away... we've not decided on military action.'
If not a direct lie, it is hardly the truth.
On the September dossier, Tony Blair said: 'The purpose of the dossier was simply to say, "This is why we think there is intelligence that means that this is not fanciful view on our part."'
It is clear now that he knew the Americans were fixing their intelligence for war and that he had to get his act together. In all the emails that emerged during Lord Hutton's inquiry, the pressure to make this case is clear. Here is one from young Rycroft: 'Part of the answer of "why now?" is that the threat will only get worse if we don't act now - the threat that Saddam will use WMD, but also the threat that Iraq's WMD will somehow get into the hands of terrorists.' Rycroft was helping to build the dishonest case he knew was being forged on the other side of the Atlantic.
There is a lot still to be discovered. I believe we need to know exactly what happened in 2002 in order to decide what we are going to do now. The collapse of allied purpose is clear, Iraq is in free fall, yet we still have not found out exactly how a small group of politicians and officials hijacked policy and took us to war against the clear wishes of the nation.
As the situation deteriorates in Iraq, Britain's need to distance itself from Blair's policy increases by the day. We need more answers. The call on the political establishment outside Number 10 is urgent. The House of Commons must show it is not been entirely debauched by party politics and bring the government to account and that includes Labour members.
In the meantime, my mailbox is open all hours for the slightest information that may cast light on the path to war.
henry.porter@observer.co.uk

CBS) More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq was stolen by people the U.S. had entrusted to run the country's Ministry of Defense before the 2005 elections, according to Iraqi investigators.

Iraq's former minister of finance says coalition members like the U.S. and Britain are doing little to help recover the money or catch suspects, most of whom fled the country. The 60 Minutes investigation also turned up audio recordings of a suspect who seems to be discussing the transfer of $45 million to the account of a top political adviser to the interim defense minister.

Correspondent Steve Kroft reports on this mother of all heists.

"We have not been given any serious, official support from either the United States or the U.K. or any of the surrounding Arab countries,”" says Ali Allawi, who was confronted with the missing funds when he took over as Iraq’s finance minister last year.

He thinks he knows why Iraqi investigators have gotten little help. "The only explanation I can come up with is that too many people in positions of power and authority in the new Iraq have been, in one way or another, found with their hands inside the cookie jar," says Allawi, who left his post when a new Iraqi government was formed earlier this year. "And if they are brought to trial, it will cast a very disparaging light on those people who had supported them and brought them to this position of power and authority," he tells Kroft.

One of the people praised in former U.S. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer's memoirs is a major suspect in the case. Ziad Cattan was in charge of military procurement at a time when the ministry of defense went on a $1.2 billion buying spree. Allawi estimates that $750 to $800 million of that money was stolen. Judge Radhi al-Radhi, head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, which investigates official corruption, tells Kroft that a lot of the money that wasn't stolen was spent on outdated, useless equipment.

"It isn't true," says Cattan, whom 60 Minutes found in Paris and who was recently convicted in absentia in Iraq for squandering public funds. He showed Kroft documents and pictures of equipment that he says is now in Iraq. An official from Jane's, one of the world’s foremost experts in military hardware, says the documents Cattan provided were too vague to prove anything.

Audio recordings obtained by 60 Minutes reveal Cattan talking to an associate in Amman, Jordan, in 2004 about the distribution of Iraqi funds. According to two independent translations, he is discussing payoffs to Iraqi officials.

One possible payoff the recordings allude to is the transfer of $45 million to the account of a top political adviser to the defense minister, a man who is also identified on the recordings as a representative of the president and the prime minister of the interim government. Cattan acknowledged his own voice was on the recordings. Three translators say he specifically mentions "45 million dollars," but he disputes the translation. "I don't say dollars," he tells Kroft. "I don't remember what the matter was."

Cattan maintains that U.S. and coalition advisors at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense approved everything he did and says the recordings have been doctored. Audio experts consulted by 60 Minutes could not find any evidence of that. Judge Radhi also has a copy of the recordings and says a former employee of the ministry of defense confessed after hearing them.

60 Minutes has learned that Cattan is building himself a villa in Poland. Another suspect, Naer Jumaili, principal in a middle-man company that handled much of the $1.2 billion in Iraqi military contracts, is said to be buying real estate in Amman, Jordan, and building himself a large villa, even though he is wanted by Interpol. Judge Rahdi believes the fugitive suspects are bribing their way to freedom and says countries like Jordan and Poland have been "no help at all" in apprehending the suspects or recovering the money.

The case is one of 2,000 Iraqi government corruption cases the judge’s commission is handling that, all told, involve $7.5 billion.

No one in the U.S. government would speak on camera about the case. But U.S. officials say this was Iraqi money spent by a sovereign Iraqi government and therefore is the Iraqis' business.
Produced by Andy Court and Keith Sharman
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

October 18, 2006


MEDIA ALERT: DEMOCRACY AND DEBATE - KILLING IRAQ

The Lancet Reports 655,000 Excess Iraqi Deaths As A Consequence Of The Invasion


How do we judge the health of a free society? How do we distinguish the appearance of democracy from the reality?

There are no hard and fast rules, no scientific methodologies. But as a rule of thumb it is safe to suggest that we can learn much from a society’s willingness to address the humanitarian crimes for which it is responsible.

In a totalitarian society, we would expect such a discussion to be absent in any meaningful sense. But in a genuinely free society, we would expect a thorough, detailed and unrestrained debate. Although this second expectation is itself based on an important assumption: namely, that individual freedom implies moral concern, a sense of responsibility for the suffering of others. We assume that to be a free human being means, also, to be free from the bonds of selfishness and indifference.

October 11 and 12 were significant dates, then, for anyone seeking to establish something of the truth of our own society. On October 11 news organisations began reporting the results of an article published by the Lancet medical journal: ’Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey.’ The study was led by Gilbert Burnham of the prestigious Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. The survey itself was conducted by eight Iraqi doctors led by Riyadh Lafta of Al Mustansiriya University, Baghdad. The doctors collected data from 1,849 households comprising 12,801 individuals in 47 population clusters across Iraq. The survey findings were staggering:

“We estimate that, as a consequence of the coalition invasion of March 18, 2003, about 655 000 Iraqis have died above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation, which is equivalent to about 2·5% of the population in the study area. About 601 000 of these excess deaths were due to violent causes. Our estimate of the post-invasion crude mortality rate represents a doubling of the baseline mortality rate, which... constitutes a humanitarian emergency.” (Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, Les Roberts, ‘Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey,’ http://www.thelancet.com/webfiles/images/journals/lancet/s0140673606694919.pdf)

The scientists estimate that the most probable number of excess deaths is 654,965. They also estimate, with 95 per cent certainty, that the actual number lies between 392,979 and 942,636.

It is important to note that the standard figure for Iraqi deaths offered by the mainstream media is that supplied by Iraq Body Count (IBC). At time of writing, the “maximum” IBC figure stands at 48,783. There has long been great confusion among journalists about exactly what this figure represents. Many believe it describes the maximum possible total of Iraqi dead, or of all Iraqi civilians killed. In fact it is the figure solely for Iraqi civilian victims of violence as reported by at least two (mostly Western) media as selected by IBC for use in their study.

So although the latest Lancet study measures a much broader range of deaths, the difference is nevertheless enormous, particularly for the many journalists who assume the studies measure much the same thing. Likewise, the Lancet figures must strike the public as astonishingly high given that they have been repeatedly reminded of IBC’s 48,000 death toll and George Bush’s 30,000 figure.

As we will see, the Lancet’s latest study has inherent credibility. The reasons were explained in a rare US press editorial on the matter in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri) on October 15:

“Here is one of the world's most respected medical journals publishing a peer-reviewed study by epidemiologists backed by Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health, part of one of the world's most respected medical schools.” (‘Methodology in madness,’ October 15, 2006)

In sum, a free press in a free society would simply +have+ to investigate this study in depth, if only to resolve the confusion of a bemused and concerned public in response to an inherently credible report.


The Front Pages

In the event, the story failed to appear on the front pages of most newspapers on October 12. We collected a pile of dailies that day and noted the following front pages:

Daily Mirror: ‘Terror in the tower’ and ‘Sex swap Jacko? - Showbiz exclusive.’

The Daily Telegraph: ‘The tagged prisoners freed to kill.’

The Daily Mail: ‘Britain’s taxes soaring’ and ‘But landlord Hamza is doing very nicely out of this country.’

The Times: ‘Race quotas “needed to end divide in schools“,’ and ‘10/11 - New York plane hits building.’ (Six news stories were also briefly summarised linking to pages inside the paper: ‘Lib Dem donor was fraudulent,’ ‘Poland’s future,’ ‘Visa splits in two,’ ‘Richest woman,’ ‘Libel victory,’ and ‘Disappearing act.’)

Daily Express: ‘Oh no not again - Plane hits New York tower block.’

The Daily Star: ‘My BB date rape hell.’

The Sun: ‘Apauling.’ [relating to an England football match]

The Financial Times: ‘Visa bows to pressure and unveils IPO move.’

Only the Independent and Guardian made the report their front page lead stories:

The Independent: ‘655,000 the toll of war in Iraq.’

The Guardian: ‘One in 40 Iraqis killed since invasion.'

A LexisNexis database search (October 18) found that the words ‘Jack Straw’ and ‘veil’ have been mentioned in 348 articles over the last week. The words ‘Madonna’ and ‘adoption’ have been mentioned in 219 articles. The words ‘Iraq’ and ‘Lancet’ have been mentioned in 44 articles. The words ‘Lancet’ and ‘655,000’ have been mentioned in eight national newspaper articles.

The Times devoted a third of a page to the Lancet story on page 45. The Daily Mail had three-quarters of a page on page 2. The Daily Express had a two-inch wide column on page 6 dwarfed by the adjacent story: ‘”Ageist” birthday cards banned from the office.’ The Daily Telegraph had 422 words on page 5. The Financial Times had 609 words on page 7. Of these newspapers, only one has since published any follow up reporting or commentary - 35 words in the Financial Times as part of a round-up of the week’s events on October 14.

The Observer devoted 43 words in a single sentence in a comment piece by Mary Riddell (October 15) and a single sentence in a news piece on page 8. The Independent on Sunday referred to the story in one sceptical paragraph in a comment piece by John Rentoul on page 40 and in one sentence of an article by Patrick Cockburn (October 15).

The Daily Mirror and Daily Star have made no mention of the report at all.

The Independent covered the story on October 12 in a news piece, an editorial, and in a brief examination of how Lancet editor Richard Horton “has turned a once-staid academic journal into a publication at the centre of a string of controversies“. (Ben Russell, ‘”Lancet” back at centre of controversy,’ The Independent, October 12, 2006) The Independent has since mentioned the story in two sentences on October 13 and October 18.

The Guardian gave 930 words to the story on October 12 in a news piece and 214 words in a brief explanation of the methodology behind the study. The paper also published a comment piece defending the report by Lancet editor, Richard Horton. Since then, there has been Ben Rooney’s 200-word round-up of web-based debate on the story (October 13) and a single sentence in an article by Simon Tisdall (October 17). The Guardian also mentioned the study in an October 12 leader - in a single sentence. Remarkably this was an aside in a piece focusing on the “chaotic travesty” of Saddam Hussein’s trial:

“Judicial procedure and decorum may seem irrelevant in a country that is reeling under seemingly unstoppable sectarian violence. Even if the human toll since March 2003 is less than the horrific, if contentious, new estimate of 655,000, Iraq seems to be bleeding to death and falling apart. Still, when Saddam was captured in December 2004, trying him was seen...” (Leader, ’Trials and errors,’ The Guardian, October 12, 2006)

With the evidence of our own vast crimes before their eyes, that was all the Guardian editors had to say. Instead, the focus of their concluding paragraph was elsewhere:

“The old tyrant may be getting a far better deal than anything that existed when he was in charge. But that is not saying much. And it is not nearly good enough.”

So much for the progressive credentials of the country’s “leading liberal newspaper”.


Huge Gaps - An Exchange With The BBC

The BBC linked to the story from the front page of its website. The BBC1 13:00 News (October 11) spent 19 seconds on the topic. On the 18:00 News celebrity anchor Natasha Kaplinsky described the figures as ”shocking and controversial”. Baghdad correspondent Andrew North reassured viewers: “It is only an estimate.” On the News at Ten, anchor Huw Edwards explained that the report was "controversial" and that while the report was serious the figures were "controversial though". Reporter David Shukman declared: "We'll never know the figures, it's too dangerous [in Iraq]." The study, he added, had "weaknesses", such as “the margin of error".

Huw Edwards turned to world affairs editor John Simpson for his view. Simpson thought hard and concluded that it was "difficult to be certain" about the death toll. The figures were “possible", he said, but "nobody can tell".

George Bush’s comment on the report, "The methodology is pretty well discredited”, was widely broadcast and printed. A great moment in TV history was missed when journalists failed to seek clarification on the exact nature of the president’s problem with the methodology.

In fact Bush‘s claim that the methodology had been discredited was a lie, as the people who told him what to say are surely well aware. Richard Brennan, head of health programmes at the New York-Based International Rescue Committee, told Associated Press:

"This is the most practical and appropriate methodology for sampling that we have in humanitarian conflict zones."

Brennan’s group has conducted similar projects in Kosovo, Uganda and Congo. He added:

"While the results of this survey may startle people, it's hard to argue with the methodology at this point." (Malcolm Ritter, ‘Bush Dismisses Iraq Death Toll Study,’ Associated Press Online, October 12, 2006)

Professor Mike Toole of the Centre for International Health, Melbourne, said:

“The methodology used is consistent with survey methodology that has long been standard practice in estimating mortality in populations affected by war. For example, the Burnet Institute and International Rescue Committee (IRC) used the same methods to estimate mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The findings of this study received widespread media attention and were accepted without reservation by the US and British governments. The Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health's Centre for International Health endorses this study." (Toole, The Age (Melbourne), letters to the editor, October 14, 2006)

Richard Garfield, a public health professor at Columbia University who works closely with a number of the authors of the report, told the Christian Science Monitor:

"I loved when President Bush said ‘their methodology has been pretty well discredited‘. That's exactly wrong. There is no discrediting of this methodology. I don't think there's anyone who's been involved in mortality research who thinks there's a better way to do it in unsecured areas. I have never heard of any argument in this field that says there's a better way to do it." (Dan Murphy, 'Iraq casualty figures open up new battleground,' Christian Science Monitor, October 13, 2006)

John Zogby, whose New York-based polling agency, Zogby International, has done several surveys in Iraq since the war began, said:

"The sampling is solid. The methodology is as good as it gets. It is what people in the statistics business do." (Anna Badkhen, 'Critics say 600,000 Iraqi dead doesn't tally,' San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, 2006)

Zogby said similar survey methods have been used to estimate casualty figures in other conflicts, such as Darfur and the Congo. Zogby also noted that US critics accept the method for opinion polls, which are based on interviews with around 1,000 Americans in a country of 300 million people.

Frank Harrell Jr., chair of the biostatistics department at Vanderbilt University, called the study design solid and said it included "rigorous, well-justified analysis of the data". (Ritter, op., cit)

Steve Heeringa, director of the statistical design group at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, said:

"Given the conditions (in Iraq), it's actually quite a remarkable effort. I can't imagine them doing much more in a much more rigorous fashion." (Ibid)

BBC Newsnight interviewed Sir Richard Peto, Professor of Medical Statistics at the University of Oxford, who described the study as "statistically reliable". (Newsnight, October 11, 2006)

Professor Sheila Bird of the Biostatistics Unit at the Medical Research Council said:

"They have enhanced the precision this time around and it is the only scientifically based estimate that we have got where proper sampling has been done and where we get a proper measure of certainty about these results." (Channel 4 News, October 11, 2006)

Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, commented:

“It is worth emphasising the quality of this latest report, as judged by four expert peers who provided detailed comments to editors.” (Clive Cookson and Steve Negus, ‘Survey says 600,000 have died in Iraq war,’ Financial Times, October 11 2006)

By contrast, Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, commented that the Lancet "seems to be a medical organization that has politicized itself". (Julie Hirschfeld Davis, ‘Bush disputes estimates of Iraqi deaths,’ Baltimore Sun, October 12, 2006)

General George Casey, the commander of US forces in Iraq, commented:

“I have not seen the study. That 650,000 number seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I’ve not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so, I don’t give that much credibility at all.”

Asked about the source of his 50,000 figure, Casey replied:

“I don't remember, but I’ve seen it over time.” (‘Co-Author of Medical Study Estimating 650,000 Iraqi Deaths Defends Research in the Face of White House Dismissal,’ October 13, 2006; http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/145222)

Any “controversy“ surrounding the study is clear, then - professional epidemiologists and other experts in the field consider the report credible while the politicians and generals responsible for the bloodbath detailed in the study dismiss it out of hand.

No matter, BBC Online chose to focus on the “controversy”, and alleged “huge gaps” in the study (October 12). We wrote to the BBC’s world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds, author of the article:

Hi Paul

I've read your report, 'Huge gaps in Iraq death estimates,' (BBC News Online, October 12, 2006) with interest.

You cite critics of this week's Lancet report and of the earlier 2004 report: Michael O'Hanlon, Frank Kaplan, Margaret Beckett, George Bush and Gen George Casey. You also mention that the "IBC reaction to the Lancet report is awaited."

As BBC world affairs correspondent - a senior BBC journalist - what prevents you from approaching professional epidemiologists and other recognised experts in the field, such as Bradley Woodruff, Michael Toole, David Meddings, Richard Garfield and Patrick Ball? Why do you cite only the criticisms of non-experts in response to what is, after all, an extremely complex and involved field of scientific inquiry?

Best wishes

David Edwards

Reynolds replied:

“I quoted those people because they are players.” (October 13, 2006)

We sent Reynolds some of the expert opinion cited above and asked him:

“Do you honestly believe BBC Online readers would have found these views less important and credible than, say, those of General Casey and Fred Kaplan? If so, why? If not, why did you ignore them?”

Reynolds responded that he had amended the article to include expert commentary “from Prof Burnham of JH [Johns Hopkins] and another from Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia“. (October 13, 2006)

Reynolds added: “If you send me Les Roberts' address I will question him direct.”


Conclusion

The media response to the latest Lancet report consisted of initial, relatively high-profile coverage in the broadcast media and more subdued coverage in some print media. Coverage focused heavily on government dismissals and on the alleged ‘controversy’ surrounding the figures. Expert commentators were few and far between, with journalists exhibiting the usual confusion on the methodology behind, and significance of, the figures. Passing mentions aside, the story was dropped within 24 hours from media coverage, with essentially zero meaningful follow up reporting or analysis since.

Journalists did respond with considerably less scepticism than after the 2004 Lancet report was published. However, the extent of coverage has, if anything, been less than in 2004. To its credit, Newsnight interviewed Les Roberts - a rare chance for one of the report’s co-authors to defend the study. On his BBC blog, Newsnight editor Peter Barron revealed that internet-based activism had been a factor in Newsnight’s coverage of the story:

“When the story broke of the Lancet report into civilian deaths in Iraq it was accompanied by a rash of e-mails from anti-war groups urging us to run the story. Did that influence us?

“Well, yes in the sense that I learned of the story from an anti-war campaigner who e-mails me regularly. But also no. When I took the report into our morning meeting where none of the producers had yet seen it, there was instant and unanimous agreement that - while the claim was in some people's view not credible - it was easily the most significant development of the day.”

Barron added:

“Are these unsolicited interventions helpful or unhelpful? The former, I think, as long as we read them with eyes wide open. You might argue that it would be purer to ignore the pressure from all quarters, but I think lobbying can actually improve our journalism, as long as it's not corrupt, that access to the editors of programmes is equally available to everyone (via e-mail it is) and that we question everything we're told.”
(BBC NEWS | The Editors)

But Newsnight’s coverage was a rare departure from the norm of stunning media indifference. Where are the in-depth media analyses, expert interviews and investigations? Where the leaders, documentaries and news specials comparing the various death tolls reported from Iraq?

Where are the articles and programmes examining US-UK responsibility under international law, as occupying powers, for the catastrophe in Iraq? Where the discussions of the abject failure of modern democracy to offer either the British or American people any semblance of meaningful choice on foreign policy?

We have been monitoring and reporting media performance for five years, since July 2001. The current media response to a credible report that our government is responsible for the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis is the most shocking and outrageous example of media conformity to power we have yet seen.

The implications are clear - no crimes of state are too monstrous or extreme for mainstream journalism. There is no limit to their willingness to obscure the depredations of power. The corporate media, the liberal media very much included, is a grand lie - an apparent source of reason and hope that betrays the people it serves at every turn.


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Ask the editors below why they have given so little coverage to the credible report that the March 2003 British and American invasion of Iraq has resulted in the excess deaths of 655,000 Iraqis.

Write to Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times
Email: lionel.barber@FT.com

Write to Will Lewis, editor of the Daily Telegraph
Email: will.lewis@telegraph.co.uk

Write to Richard Wallace, editor of the Daily Mirror
Email: richard.wallace@mirror.co.uk

Write to Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk

Write to Observer editor, Roger Alton
Email: roger.alton@observer.co.uk

Write to Simon Kelner, editor of The Independent
Email: s.kelner@independent.co.uk

Write to Helen Boaden, director of BBC News
Email: HelenBoaden.Complaints@bbc.co.uk

Write to Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News Online
Email: steve.herrmann@bbc.co.uk

to much to read, sorry...

I just went through titles and few sentences, this just to point out that you only choose western news...

would be good to hear a little about the other region news titles as well...

Some arab news are in english, should we just ignore them ?

More Iraq news.

Here is a very interesting piece concerning the activities of private corporations in Iraq. iraq for sale - Google Video

Did you know that the likes of Haliburton charge the military 50 USD for a coke and 100 USD for a laundry. Now I know what they mean when they say that the war in Iraq is expensive.

Originally Posted by forreachingme

to much to read, sorry...

I just went through titles and few sentences, this just to point out that you only choose western news...

would be good to hear a little about the other region news titles as well...

Some arab news are in english, should we just ignore them ?

good point mate. The articles chosen here are ones i stumble across, that are considered reputable. My knowlege of arabic websites is small. I do watch the news from Gulf states on Link TV, but my knowlege of the print media there is, as I say, small. any links would be gratefully recieved

Iraqi Forced To Drink Urine By British Occupation Forces

By Associated Press.

10/23/06 --- LONDON (AP) — An Iraqi civilian detained by British troops in Iraq told a military court Monday that he was beaten and forced to drink urine by his captors.

Muhanned Thaher Abdullah al-Mansouri said he had been repeatedly beaten and forced to lie face down over an open toilet while detained as a suspected insurgent in Basra in September 2003.

Seven soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment are standing trial for abusing the Iraqis. One of the detainees, Baha Mousa, 26, died.

"I asked for water so he (a soldier) urinated in a bottle and said 'water water water' and placed it on my mouth," Abdullah said through an interpreter.

"He forced me to drink it. When I spat the urine out of my mouth two of them started hitting me for 20 minutes."

Abdullah said he told an army doctor he was suffering from asthma. The doctor said he would bring oxygen but instead sprayed insect repellent in his face and started laughing, Abdullah said.

Six of the soldiers deny the charges against them. One, Cpl. Donald Payne, 35, admitted the war-crimes charge of treating Iraqi detainees inhumanely, making him Britain's first acknowledged war criminal. He denies two other charges of manslaughter and perverting the course of justice.

The court-martial, which is expected to continue for several more weeks, is being held at a military base in Bulford, England, about 85 miles southwest of London.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

Bush tells Maliki government to tackle militias or face penalties

By Julian Borger in Washington

10/24/06 - The White House confirmed yesterday that it had set "benchmarks and milestones" for the Iraqi government to disarm militias and take other concrete steps to stabilise the country.

The White House confirmed yesterday that it had set "benchmarks and milestones" for the Iraqi government to disarm militias and take other concrete steps to stabilise the country.
The administration had initially denied a report that the government of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki would be given an ultimatum to do more to curb sectarian violence, but Dan Bartlett, President Bush's media adviser, yesterday argued that the report had simply been "overwritten" and there was little new in it.

"It is appropriate to have benchmarks and milestones," he told CNN. "This is something that we've been working for months with the Iraqi government on ... And we've been negotiating with them to discuss what exactly those goals and milestones would look like."

There is rising impatience in Washington and among US military commanders over the Maliki government's apparent inability or unwillingness to confront Shia militias. The report in the New York Times said the Bush administration was not threatening the Iraqi government with a full US withdrawal but with "changes in military strategy and other penalties".

Mr Bartlett would not go into details, but told Fox News: "There a lot of different ways in which you can either incentivise - or however you want to put it - to move them along that path. And that's something we're constantly working and adjusting with them."

On a weekend that took the month's death toll among US forces in Iraq to 86 - the highest monthly figure this year - President Bush held a video conference with his top military commanders.

"They are determined to continue to adapt their strategies, as well as our diplomats on the ground, to make sure the Iraqi government themselves understand the sense of urgency to bring all parties together to reconcile their differences," Mr Bartlett said.

A New York Times report from Baghdad described the effort to pacify the city as the US military's last throw of the dice in Iraq, with American commanders seeing no "plausible alternative" strategy. "As Baghdad goes, so goes Iraq," Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, the commander of US troops there, was quoted as saying.

The initiative, codenamed Forward Together II, has shown no signs of curbing the bloodshed. It depends heavily on the involvement of Iraqi forces to maintain security in areas of the city "cleared" of militants by American combat troops. But many Iraqi soldiers have deserted rather than patrol Baghdad. Meanwhile, Iraqi police units have sided with Shia militias.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In Bush's War 2804

Iraq Coalition Casualties

Cost of America's War in Iraq
$337,008,587,795

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In Bush's War 2810

Iraq Coalition Casualties

Cost of America's War in Iraq
$337,580,504,977

Iraq's Prime Minister Blames U.S. For Chaos

Iraq's al-Maliki sharply delineates differences with U.S. leadership

By JAY PRICE
McClatchy Newspapers

10/27/06 "Mercury News" -- -- BAGHDAD, Iraq — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continued his open dispute with American officials Thursday, blaming the United States-led coalition for Iraq's chaos and faulting its military strategy.

His sharp comments, in an interview with Reuters, came as the White House and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sought to play down the idea of a growing rift between the United States and the Iraq government.

Rumsfeld urged critics of administration policy "to just back off" and "relax."

According to a partial transcript of the interview distributed by Reuters, al-Maliki said he thought that Iraqi troops, left to their own devices, could re-establish order in Iraq in six months, not the 12 to 18 months that top U.S. commander Gen. William Casey had predicted Tuesday.

Al-Maliki offered a different set of priorities for fighting violence than U.S. officials, who've said the greatest threat to Iraq comes from death squads aligned with Shiite Muslim militias. In recounting a meeting with the head of one of those militias, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, al-Maliki said he and al-Sadr agreed "that the efforts for all political groups should be focused on the most dangerous challenge, which is al-Qaida and the Saddam Baathists." Both those groups are made up primarily of Sunni Muslims.

Al-Maliki also said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was "not accurate" when he said Tuesday that the Iraqi government had agreed to a timetable for dealing with Iraq's problems.

The interview came as Bush administration officials in Washington continued to try to explain their position on setting "benchmarks" for Iraqi government actions. With just days to go before the midterm congressional election, Democrats and some Republicans have suggested that the U.S. begin withdrawing troops if the Iraqi government doesn't meet goals on time.

Rumsfeld said Thursday that there'd be no set dates for Iraqi leaders to meet nor any penalties imposed if they failed to meet goals.

He also said U.S. officials planned to increase spending on Iraq's army and police, but didn't say how much. The $70 billion in war spending that lawmakers tacked on to the 2007 defense-spending bill includes $1.7 billion to train and equip Iraq's security forces.

In Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces set up roadblocks Thursday and launched round-the-clock aerial surveillance of Baghdad as their search for an American soldier who may have been kidnapped entered its third day.

"We're using all assets in our arsenal to find this American soldier, and the government of Iraq is doing everything that it can also at every level," said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. "Make no mistake: We will not stop looking for our service member."

The search was so intense, Caldwell said, that military officials think it may have contributed to a sudden drop in the level of violence in the city, which had reached record highs in recent weeks. Caldwell said the violence had declined the last two days, though he cautioned that the reduction also might be the result of the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.


He declined to provide details of the search for the soldier, who's been described as an American of Iraqi descent. Family members told U.S. officials that the soldier, who was a translator, came to visit them in central Baghdad. Shortly after he arrived, three carloads of masked gunman stormed the house and took him away in handcuffs, family members said.

Baghdad residents reported that parts of Sadr City, a slum stronghold of Shiite militias and death squads, were blockaded. For much of the day every entrance but one also was blocked into the central district, where the missing soldiers' family lived.

Violence continued elsewhere. The U.S. military announced Thursday that four Marines and a sailor had been killed in combat Wednesday, raising to 96 the number of American deaths in Iraq so far in October. All but four were killed in action, making the month's combat toll the worst for U.S. troops in two years.

McClatchy correspondent Drew Brown contributed to this story from Washington.

<div class="articleDetails"> Michael Howard in Kirkuk, Iraq
October 28, 2006
THE tribal chiefs, in traditional robes and chequered headdresses, emerged from the dust stirred up by their convoy of utility trucks and walked towards the big white tent, gesturing welcomes to each other as they sat.
Accompanied by about 500 clansmen and a gaggle of local journalists, the 35 Sunni sheiks - from Mosul, Tikrit, Samarra and Hawija - converged last week on Hindiya, on the scrappy western edges of Kirkuk, to swear their undying opposition to "conspiracies" to partition Iraq and to pledge allegiance to their president, Saddam Hussein.
Under banners exalting the man now standing trial in Baghdad for war crimes and genocide, the gathering heard speeches from prominent northern Iraqi sheiks, Sunni Arab politicians and self-declared leaders of the Baath party calling for the former dictator's release.
"If the Iraqi government wants national reconciliation to succeed and for the violence to end, they have to quickly release the President and end the occupation," said Sheik Abdul Rahman Munshid, of the Obeidi tribe. "But most important of all," he added, "Kirkuk must never become part of Kurdistan. It is an Iraqi city, and we will take all routes to prevent the divisions of Iraq."
The heated debate about federalism in Iraq is no better exemplified than in Kirkuk. Though it is largely free of the sectarian wars taking place in Baghdad and its surrounding area, observers say the ethnic faultlines running through the city, which lies atop Iraq's second-largest oilfield, make it a time bomb that could pit Kurd against Arab and draw in neighbours such as Iran and Turkey.
"There are few more sensitive issues in Iraq today than what happens to Kirkuk," said a Western diplomat in Iraq who works closely with the issue. "All eyes are on it, and all the ingredients for either consensual agreement or a devastating discord are there. If Kirkuk survives, then there's hope for Iraq."
As if to reinforce that message, within hours of the Sunni gathering a wave of suicide bombs rocked Kirkuk's city centre, including one in a crowded market and another in front of a women's teaching college. At least 15 civilians were killed and scores wounded.
Despite the oil riches that lie beneath, above ground Kirkuk appears a forlorn and neglected city. Street after street consists of humble two-storey dwellings with barely a modern building in sight. Litter is strewn everywhere, and there are huge queues at the petrol pumps. The tumbledown shops and market stalls in the centre of the city sell cheap consumer goods from Iran and Turkey.
The city's ancient citadel lies in ruins. The governor, Abdul Rahman Mustapha, a Kurd, blames the dilapidated state of the city on years of Baathist misrule. Nor does he have a good word for the current government in Baghdad. "They have ignored us and set so many obstacles in the path of our progress and reconstruction," he said.
Relatively peaceful in the first two years after the fall of Saddam - defying observers who said civil war would start here - Kirkuk is witnessing an alarming increase in bloodshed as the political tensions rise. The wave of violence is terrifying residents and testing to the limit the fragile relations among its Kurdish, Arab and Turkoman residents.
The United States military in Kirkuk says the city has been hit by 20 suicide bombs and 63 roadside bombs in the past three months. Local police and community leaders have been assassinated and politicians attacked.
Colonel Patrick Stackpole, who commands 5000 US troops in a province of about 1.5 million people, said the "violence is mainly by outsiders, though undoubtedly they have facilitators inside the city.
"Jihadis from east and west, belonging to groups such as Ansar al-Islam and Ansar al-Sunnah, are targeting the city, trying to stoke civil war," he said. "But there's also a large element of former regime loyalists who don't want the city to succeed."
Nevertheless, he described himself as "guardedly optimistic" and offered rare praise for the province's security forces. "They are taking over more and more functions, leading operations, and performing more effectively without the scale of problems of corruption and disloyalty seen in other forces in Iraq ," he said. "We haven't seen death squads."

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In Bush's War 2811

Iraq Coalition Casualties

Cost of America's War in Iraq
$337,580,504,977

What do the Iraqis think of al-Queda ?

"Overall 94 percent have an unfavorable view of al Qaeda, with 82 percent expressing a very unfavorable view. Of all organizations and individuals assessed in this poll, it received the most negative ratings. The Shias and Kurds show similarly intense levels of opposition, with 95 percent and 93 percent respectively saying they have very unfavorable views. The Sunnis are also quite negative, but with less intensity. Seventy-seven percent express an unfavorable view, but only 38 percent are very unfavorable. Twenty-three percent express a favorable view (5% very)."

History News Network

^ Al-Qaeda is an issue in Iraq. But they are not the main issue.

Al-Maliki's government is the sole thing right now.

Al-Qaeda is mostly in Al-Anbar.

Isn't Iraq where the terrorists come from? Weren't they building an arsenal of nucelar and biological WMDs over there?

Anyway, I thought all Muslims favour Al-Quaida, because the Koran tells them to kill all infidels? They may not volunteer as suicide bombers, but they all are terrorist sympathizers - the poll has been manipulated by liberal traitors, just another lie by the democrats to win the elections.

Stroller terrorist are really your friends and just looking to help put all of us poor confused and disillusioned infidels out of our misery.