Well folks, these are the fruits of freedom on the march in Iraq:
The Iraqi government declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew Friday after insurgents set up roadblocks in central Baghdad and opened fire on U.S. and Iraqi troops outside the heavily fortified Green Zone.
Now, even the “Green Zone” isn’t all too safe in Iraq. What ever will our elected leaders do when they make their quick “in and out” trips to the safe hotels in Baghdad to declare that all is just peachy?
The amount of violence over the past day is just staggering, with almost 40 people dead and dozens more injured in multiple attacks. Sounds like the “last throes” to me.
Bombings and shootings occurred in and around Baghdad on all sides, as well as in Sadr City, and even in the Green Zone as shit met the fan once again. According to reports:
A car bomb ripped through a market and nearby gas station in the increasingly violent southern city of Basra, killing at least five people and wounding 18, including two policemen, police said.
A bomb also struck a Sunni mosque in Hibhib, northeast of Baghdad, killing 10 worshippers and wounding 15 in the town where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was slain this month, police said.
At least 19 other deaths were reported in Baghdad.
Throughout the morning, Iraqi and U.S. military forces clashed with attackers armed with rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and rifles in busy Haifa Street, which runs into the Green Zone, site of the U.S. and British embassies and the Iraqi government.
Four Iraqi soldiers and three policemen were wounded in the fighting, police Lt. Maitham Abdul Razzaq said.
Two more bombs. A few dozen injured. A few dozen dead. Roadblocks set up by “insurgents” right outside the Green Zone who open fired on US and Iraqi troops. Bombs in mosques. Bombs in marketplaces. Nineteen dead in “other incidents”. Fighting south of Baghdad. Northeast of Baghdad. In Basra. In Sadr City. Two more marines killed in separate incidents over the past two days.
A curfew imposed by the Iraqi prime minister’s office. House to house searches. A ban on carrying weapons. And all this was on the heels of the major “crackdown” of just 10 days ago, where thousands of troops flooded the streets in an attempt to quell the out of control violence.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered everyone off the streets of the capital. U.S. and Iraqi forces also fought gunmen in the volatile Dora neighborhood in south Baghdad.
—snip—
Al-Maliki has been trying to rein in unrelenting insurgent and sectarian violence. He launched a massive security operation in Baghdad 10 days ago, deploying tens of thousands of troops who flooded the city, snarling traffic with hundreds of checkpoints.
Police said they found the bodies of five men who apparently were victims of a mass kidnapping from a factory on Wednesday. The bodies, which showed signs of torture and had their hands and legs bound, were floating in a canal in northern Baghdad, police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said.
Two of our brave soldiers kidnapped and tortured this past week. Five more people kidnapped, tortured and found floating in a canal. All hell breaking loose in the one area that is supposed to be “safe”. Lockdowns in the area that, despite being so heavily fortified, is being attacked with hand and rocket powered grenades and rifles. Cover ups of Iraqi officers killing the US troops who were training them.
But it is just a few “dead-enders”. We have nothing to worry about. It will all work itself out. Just move along – nothing to see here. Freedom is on the march. And we are safer.
Plus, there are more important matters to discuss and focus on – like flag burning, gay marriage and repealing the estate tax. Oh, and I hear that Britney Spears is giving her idiot husband one more chance.
Better go check that out instead……
Always the up-to-the-latest news from you. Thanks!
thx shermanesq – great diary yesterday and it was great meeting you in Vegas!!!
Thx to you! As I said, I really admire your work. Keep at it! And I’m really glad I got to meet you too!!
We really need to have a discussion on what to do about Iraq. I really want our troops to withdraw but I am worried about what will happened if we do. Will it be worse? Will it get better? What I do know is that there are not enough troops to keep each other safe and to keep the Iraqi’s safe. They have served too much time and are overstressed. We have created a vicious cycle in which ordinary Iraqi’s have been killed and/or hurt and their friends and relatives are seeking revenge on those that have killed them. Which in turn, makes it even more dangerous for the troops.
I am frustrated that the Corporate Media plays the republicans talking points such as the Democrats want to “Cut and Run”. The Bush Administration comes out with their talking point that we want to stay until our objectives have been met. We really should go on the offense here and burn down those talking points. What are the objectives? Are these reasonable objectives? Will these objectives bring peace to Iraq? Is it possible that these objectives can be made? If so, how long will it take to meet these objectives?
thx for the compliment–your questions are great ones that I can’t believe haven’t been answered long ago.
“Complete the mission” – what is that mission?
Just so stupid. There is good discussion going on in my diary at DKos but noone can answer your excellent questions.
And noone in the media is even asking them!!!
You do have a big discussion going on over there. I gave you some mojo there (I have a different user name – Jill ___). I’m surprised you had time to come back here. I guess you will be busy today.
I will look into their mission statements and post it here.
not too busy a day at work, although I didn’t think this would get as much play as it did…..
thx for the mojo, and I’ll be checking back in here throughout as well.
After all, I like the pond and the big orange sandbox….
and it was funny in that I had to do a LOT of googling. You would think that I would find it immediately. Katie O’Bierne laid out some specific goals on Hardball the other day but I can’t find it. I did find a little something but it only confirms my suspicions that Bush has no clear cut goals on this mission. Here is the link.
This is an interesting article, it later says that Bush will not make any decisions to withdrawal until he hears it from his commanders. Perhaps that is why people are calling for Rumsfeld resignation and that is exactly why Bush doesn’t want to get rid of Rumsfeld. Bush is using Rumsfeld as his security blanket for staying in Iraq. Perhaps we can turn this argument back to Bush in that he is NOT the decider. If he is our leader, why does he have to get permission from his SoD to make a decision on when to withdrawal. We should also demand specific and clear missions.
not to mention that these goals and missions should have been spelled out at the beginning of the invasion and not 3 years into the occupation.
but that is another issue altogether….
every day that US troops are in iraq, more muslims all over the world are radicalized against the US.
I’ve thought for some time that the only reasonable option is to eat crow, go to the United Nations, say we’re sorry, we won’t do it again, and would they please set up a peacekeeping force to restore order in Iraq?
Personally, I think the only way such a peacekeeping force would have any credibility is if it were made up of troops from Islamic countries so as to remove any possibility that they would be mistaken for “crusaders.” I also am afraid that something like this has zero percent chance of happening as long as The Mustache That Walks Like A Man is our recess-appointed ambassador to the United Nations.
I don’t think the UN would ever make such a commitment. Even if they did, the Iraqi people may have a problem with having people from Syria, Jordan, Iran, etc. in their own country. I wish we had some Iraqi’s here on this blog giving us their opinion.
Unless they were Rubaie clones, or other collaborator types, like some of those lovely folks up in Dearborn that they used to trot out from time to time.
But generally speaking, I would suggest that anyone with a curiosity could just paste some American faces on the Abu Ghraib photos and extrapolate.
There are many more Islamic countries out there than just the ones in the Middle East. You can find a list here. Now whether you could get any troops from places like Albania is an good question, but Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Malaysia, Mozambique and Indonesia are all sufficiently removed from the conflict in Iraq to most likely be neutral in terms of the conflict.
I could be wrong about this, but it seems like troops from countries where they at least have certain elements of shared culture, and are not seen as agents of the former occupiers, would be an essential step in the peace process.
Mission accomplished. Right.
On NPR today there was a 2 hour conference on ‘the lessons learned in Iraq’ Vietnam and The Presidency and this last Tuesday there was the show on PBS The Darkside. So, on PBS, at least, there seems to be a push for greater understanding now… and the Vietnam comparison being made much more openly now.
So, there may be hope, but it’s creaking forward very slowly.
summer, terrifyingly wrote:
All the pseudo-debate in Iraq never once asked what the Iraqi leaders want (‘go! now!’) nor did they ever even question the legitimacy of the US deciding what’s best for Iraq.
that is some scary shit.
and could happen any day now, for all we know.
Obviously on the minds of the US embassy staff, judging from the letter that was just leaked.
Here’s a link to a copy. Fisk was on a roll that day:
Thanks clammy, for another excellent contribution. Gave me an idea for a related diary, but where I am located this week it is 2.20 am at the moment and a slow connection. Will do upon return to NY on Sunday.
It is just so obvious that these folks in charge are tryly LOSERS. How the fuck would they think Zarqawi’s death would make any difference. What a pathetic crew playing administration.
What is the reason for this “state of emergency”?
Some things to remember:
1. The current Iraqi government is a puppet of Bush and Cheney. Any show it makes of independence is just that, a show. When a ventriloquist’s dummy insults the ventriloquist, does anybody mistake the dummy for an independent entity?
Conclusion: It is the Bush/Cheney administration that have declared this state of emergency.
Which leads me to…
2. This is an obvious attempt to “settle things” in Baghdad before the 2006 elections. Rove has decided that the Republican strategy is to run towards the Iraq debacle, not away from it. That is why the Senate recently defeated two resolutions calling for some sort of timetable for an American troop withdrawal. That is why this “state of emergency” has been declared–to try and “suppress” (i.e., massacre people) the resistance to American occupation, at least in Baghdad.
For Election Day 2006, Rove wants a picture of relative calm. “Things are improving” in Baghdad.
In the short run, this massive crackdown and suspension of Iraq’s exists-only-on-paper democracy will work. I could dramatically bring down the crime rate in South Central Los Angeles or Oakland’s worst neighborhoods if I declared martial law, too–at least for awhile.
3. The American troops cannot be forced out of Iraq, so long as their president is willing to accept an ongoing number of troop deaths. The price for occupying Baghdad is 1,000 American lives a year, and 10,000 serious combat injuries. The Iraqi resistance simply does not have the strength, either in weapons or numbers, to force the US military to retreat.
The aim of the Iraqi resistance is to create a politically unacceptable situation that causes the American government to withdraw its troops. However, as we have recently seen, that is NOT going to happen, no matter which party is in power in Congress.
Look at the votes in the Senate on the Kerry-Feingold amendment to set a definite date for troop withdrawal (1 July 2007): the Senate defeated the amendment by a vote of 86-13.
That means a substantial number of Democrats (31) voted down an amendment that would have re-established Congress’ Constitutional authority to act as a counterbalance to the Presidency, and reaffirmed that it is Congress, not the President, that holds the power to make war.
Now, why did the Democrats stab Kerry and Feingold in the back? Some of them wanted to vote for the amendment but were afraid of being accused of being “soft” on the “war on terror” (whatever the hell Iraq has to do with THAT). But most of them genuinely disagreed with the Kerry-Feingold Amendment. At the end of the day, we have one political party on Iraq, the Party of War, the Party of Absolute Presidential Power, the Party of American Empire.
Bush is going to be President until 21 January 2009, when a new president is sworn in. Our soldiers are in Iraq for at least that long, and quite possibly longer. The only thing that can (and will) force an American military withdrawal from Iraq is the fact that the strain of the occupation is breaking the Army and in particular the Marines. Recruitment is down and the Army recently raised its maximum age for new recruits to forty-two years old.
Forty-two years old and in boot camp. Ponder that phrase for a moment and see if it makes sense to you.
The plan all along was for the Iraqi government to eventually take over the job of oppressing and manipulating the Iraqi people, a job Saddam Hussein did very well for previous American presidents (before turning on his masters).
However, that takeover is simply not happening, and it’s simply not going to happen as long as American boots are on Iraqi soil. So Bush/Cheney are caught between Iraq and a hard place. They cannot quiet the resistance unless they withdraw troops, but if they withdraw troops, the resistance might overthrow al-Maliki’s puppet government, and the resistance in any case would declare that they had shoved the American occupation force out of the country.
Taking back Congress in 2006–which the Democrats are unlikely to do–is not the answer. There are too many pro-occupation, pro-war Democrats in the House and the Senate, and virtually none in the Republican Party, making a bipartisan congressional coalition impossible. Even taking back the White House in 2008 doesn’t mean anything, because the longer the occupation lasts, the more difficult it is to manage an orderly withdrawal.
Bush and Cheney and Rove and the Republicans in the Senate are doing what they must: playing out their evil scheme to the very end. But I find it most disheartening to have confirmation that fully two-thirds of the Democrats in the Senate are, on the matter of the Iraq occupation, members of the Republican Party.
from their home a brutal invading horde of torturers, exterminators and sexual predators.
I believe were the United States, or any other nation or entity that considers itself a nation, beset by a similar pestilence, that would also be the aim of the American Resistance, the Finnish Resistance, the Malaysian Resistance.
American soldiers–all of them–are an “invading horde of torturers, exterminators, and sexual predators”?
Nope. Patently ridiculous. The real world is not black and white. Some soldiers have done wrong. Most went were they were sent, and do their job as best they can. To tar them all with the same brush is childish and foolish.
that were Iranian tanks rolling down your street, guns blazing, you would do anything other than explain to any of your hot-headed neighbors who suggested shooting at them that they were just going where they were sent, and as you wiped the blood of your youngest from your shoes, stay the hand of your insurgent brother, reminding him that they were only doing their job, and to suggest otherwise is childish and foolish.
And it is undeniable that the Iraqis, being simple and primitive people, not only fail when measured against the superior American sentiments that would be felt in their place, but are blatantly and flagrantly ungrateful.
You must understand that in their primitive way, they are just not able to understand how profitable US policies are for key US business interests, and yes, there are some of them whose view is so radical that they would even put their own selfish concerns above those of those key US business interests.
In this too, they are quite different from Americans, who would readily accept their own family and friends being subjected to torture, slaughter, and worse, if they knew that key Iranian business interests would enjoy increased revenues as a result.
It’s just a cultural difference, a question of values. 🙂