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BAGHDAD (Reuters) Jan. 4, 2008 – An Iraqi soldier is believed to have deliberately shot dead two US troops in Iraq – the first time this has happened there.
A couple of days after the December 26 attack, the US military said Captain Rowdy Inman and Sergeant Benajmin Portell were fatally injured by hostile small arms fire.
But the commander of the Iraqi army’s 2nd Division, Brigadier-General Mutaa al-Khazraji, has now said the men were killed during a joint patrol in Hermat, western Mosul. “They (the patrol) were attacked by gunmen and the soldier abused the situation and killed the two soldiers.”
“He was immediately arrested by the Iraqi Army and we are conducting interrogations.”
Also, Brigadier General Noor al-Din Hussein, commander of the Iraqi Army’s 4th Brigade, 2nd Division, said: “The shooting was deliberate, it was not an accident.”
US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel James Hutton said the incident was under investigation but gave no details.
Captain Inman, 38, came from Panorama Village, Texas, while Sergeant Portell, 37, lived in Bakersfield, California.
  ● The Top Eleven Myths about Iraq, 2007
(BBC News) – The number of civilians killed in Iraq has fallen in each of the past three months after hitting a six-month high in May, according to the latest estimates from Iraq Body Count.
The UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (Unami) says 34,452 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded in 2006. Other surveys – notably by the Lancet in 2006 – suggest these figures may be huge underestimates.
Many of the killings involve torture and kidnapping, and are typically sectarian in nature. Most of the victims are men, but women and children are also dying in large numbers.
Another 22,586-24,159 civilian deaths have been recorded in 2007 through Iraq Body Count‘s extensive monitoring of media and official reports. These figures, though undoubtedly incomplete, are the most comprehensive and well-established currently available, and show beyond any doubt that civil security in Iraq remains in a parlous state. Figures for the most recent months indicate that violence in Iraq has returned to the monthly levels IBC was recording in 2005, a year which was itself (until 2006) the worst since the invasion.
BAGHDAD (US News & World Report) Jan. 2, 2008 – Most of those returning appear to be motivated more by economic hardship or visa problems than by any belief that the worst violence is behind them. Syria has tightened its visa rules, forcing many Iraqis to leave. Few jobs are available in Damascus, and a United Nations survey of Iraqi refugees in Syria last month found that a third say their financial resources will last for three months or less.
Saif Sadek, a former prison guard and taxi driver, sold his Baghdad house at a steep loss in 2005 to escape threats from Shiite militias. After two years in Syria, he spent all his money and had to return to Baghdad, where he is staying with a cousin. “As a man with a family, not having a house and without money, it is a challenge that no man can take,” says the 42-year-old father of four. “The only thing that God had mercy on me is that I finished my money when security conditions in my neighborhood had improved and the death squads were gone.”
Sadek and the others who are coming back are rediscovering a capital city that has changed dramatically. Many neighborhoods that were once mixed are now either almost entirely Sunni or Shiite. New cement walls close off many streets and alleys. Some of the changes are encouraging—neighborhood groups working to clean the yards of abandoned homes and streets, local barbershops and bakeries reopening, and new militias, called “awakening councils,” made up of residents paid to patrol the streets and man checkpoints. “There was a dramatic change in my Al Amel neighborhood, where Sunnis and Shiites are brothers again,” says Sadek. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Iraqis carry their luggage through Baghdad after returning from Syria this month. Many refugees come back to find their houses occupied or ransacked, and their neighborhoods transformed into sectarian strongholds. (By Wathiq Khuzaie -- Getty Images)
But work is scarce, basic goods remain prohibitively expensive, and security remains tenuous. “Things are always on the edge here, where one day can be good but the next might not be,” says Sadek, who is applying for a job with the local awakening council. “I really don’t think that it’s a good time to be in Baghdad.” Many others are returning to find their homes destroyed, occupied by squatters, or surrounded by new, more hostile neighbors. When U.N. officials surveyed refugees returning on a government-sponsored bus convoy, they learned that only a third were able to return to their original homes.
U.S. officials pressured the Iraqi government into suspending the bus convoys because they are concerned that Baghdad has not made sufficient preparations should a larger number of refugees decide to return.
Lloyd Evans, The Spectator’s theatre critic, reviews last night’s Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate on the future of Iraq which featured Tony Benn, William Shawcross, Sir Christopher Meyer, Ali Allawi, Rory Stewart and Lt Peter Hegseth.
Proposition 1
Go. ‘Allied forces should leave Iraq as soon as is practical’
Rt Hon Tony Benn and Rory Stewart
Proposition 2
Quid pro Quo. ‘A withdrawal of troops as part of a negotiated settlement on the future of Iraq’
Sir Christopher Meyer and Dr Ali Allawi
Proposition 3
Stay. ‘The Surge is working. Let’s win before we leave.’
William Shawcross and Lt Peter Hegseth
The final Intelligence Squared debate of the year was staged in Westminster Methodist Hall where more than three thousand punters thrust their way in to hear an all-star panel. The presentation was a bit glam-rock too. A huge Iraqi flag was draped melodramatically across the podium and the motion was as expansive and flared as the issue. Three pairs of speakers proposed a trio of propositions. To quit Iraq now, to mount a negotiated withdrawal or to leave only after we’ve won.
Full audio of the debate is available here.
Man I have a bad feeling with one word from Sadr or Sistani it will be 2000 american troops gunned down by Iraqi forces. The Trojan Horse is now in place. The US needs to get out before that horse opens up.
We will take the Iraqi Health Ministry’s estimates and say that between 100,000 and 150,000 Iraqis have died because of this war. Reinforcing the fact that we have no friends in Iraq. We are the cause of this nightmare! The United States is the cause and they hate us. We are child killers there is no love in any culture for child killers. Let us not delude ourselves.
Where is the outcry over the death and suffering we have caused? Where is the MSM? Let us now leave. Declare victory, tell Bush and Cheney the shortsighted dimwits that the surge was so successful the Iraqis so appreciative that we can leave…now!
Time is running short. The economy is beginning to falter from the screwball policies of the last eight years. Pull these guys out before the Green Zone is the freaking Alamo.
We are child killers there is no love in any culture for child killers.
A good point that I think Americans neglect.
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BASRA, Iraq (CSM) Dec. 2007 – The billboard in Umm al-Broom Square was meant to advertise a cellphone service. Instead, it has become a message to those who dare to resist the rising tide of fundamentalist Islam in Iraq’s second largest city.
The female model’s face is now covered with black paint. Graffiti scrawled below reads, “No! No to unveiled women.”
That message joins the chorus of ultraconservative voices and radical militias that are transforming this once liberal port city that boasted some of Iraq’s most lively nightclubs into a bastion for hard-line Shiite Islamists since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Now, as the British prepare to exit Basra Province altogether after pulling out from this provincial capital last week, they leave behind what has been described by many here as an emerging “Shiite Taliban state,” a reference to Sunni extremists in Afghanistan.
And with the British gone, many say, they leave open the possibility that Iran could extend its influence within the mosques, religious schools, and militant party headquarters. Over the past four years, Basra has undergone its own Islamic revolution of sorts.
Posters of the leader of Iran’s 1979 social and religious revolt, Ayatollah Khomeini, who at the time imposed similar limits on his society, are plastered everywhere in Basra.
“There is pressure from parties backed by Iran to sideline liberal, secular, and leftist forces,” says a labor union leader and a former communist, who, like most people interviewed for this story, did not want to be named for fear of retaliation. “Personal freedoms are being squashed … the fabric of Iraqi society has been ruined.”
● Iraqis: Root Cause of Violence is American Presence
● British Leave Basra; Violence Drops by 90 Percent ◊ @ Big Orange
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."