Like ships in the early, dewy dawn, Ductapefatwa and I passed. And ran each other over. Catch D’s excellent diary, “Dahr Jamail stuck in Amman as US gets advice from Big Poodle,” that adds a lot more to Jamail’s report.

“Abu Talat [Jamail’s close friend and translator] phoned his family today in Baghdad. They’ve had no electricity for four days. They told him (unconfirmed) that all of Iraq has had no electricity for several days. As Abu Talat says, ‘Baghdad is running on the generator.'” – From Jamail’s May 14 entry in “Iraq Dispatches” written from Amman, Jordan.

About Operation Matador in Qaim (near the Syrian border): It “appears to be a micro-version of Fallujah,” with the military claiming they’re fighting foreigners.

Even the marines in Fallujah admitted they had killed a grand total of 35 foreign fighters there. That kind of debunks the myth of a foreign terrorist group taking over the city and terrorizing the citizens.

Then there’s the humanitarian crisis in the area of Qaim:

Another similarity between Qaim and Fallujah is that now there is a humanitarian crisis in Qaim from the fighting. There are 1,300 displaced families (approximately 80,000 people) from Qaim and the hospital there was destroyed amidst fighting on 8 May between resistance fighters and locals. On the 9th there was no electricity or water in Qaim and the surrounding areas and schools were closed. On the 11th US warplanes continued to bomb Obeidy and other nearby locations.


All of the aforementioned statistics were provided to me by a friend who is here working with the Italian Consortium of Solidarity, an Italian NGO based in Amman which provides humanitarian aid and has set up an emergency working group for al-Qaim and has contacts on the ground there. She also reports that people there need shelter, food, water and medical care.


The loss of life continues unabated….in the last week at least 37 US soldiers have been killed, while at least 450 Iraqis have died amidst a huge surge of ongoing attacks since 28 April, when the Iraqi government was officially announced. …


Visit Dahr’s website.

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