[centraal] Irak na de oorlog deel 28

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Op donderdag 11 augustus 2005 02:58 schreef HarigeKerel het volgende:

[..]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/10/wpotter10.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/10/ixworld.html

Gekte

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Leger VS doodt Irakezen na explosie
Amerikaanse militairen hebben in Irak een aanslag op hun konvooi beantwoord met geweervuur. Daardoor kwamen 15 Irakezen om, onder wie acht kinderen. Dat melden ooggetuigen.

Moskee
17 anderen raakten gewond. Een bom explodeerde in Nasaf toen de kolonne passeerde in de buurt van een moskee in de stad.

Ontkennen
Daarop zouden de militairen het vuur hebben geopend op mensen die uit de moskee kwamen, waar het vrijdaggebed was beëindigd. Het Amerikaanse leger in Irak ontkent dat willekeurig het vuur is geopend.

Bron

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Leger ontdekt chemische fabriek Irak

Amerikaanse militairen hebben in het noorden van Irak een grote chemische fabriek ontdekt. De fabriek werd vermoedelijk gebouwd door opstandelingen. Dat meldt het leger.

Chemicaliën
Militairen trokken de fabriek bij Mosul binnen, 370 kilometer ten noorden van de hoofdstad Bagdad. Volgens de Amerikaanse nieuwszender CNN is bijna 57.000 liter chemicaliën aangetroffen

Onbekend
Het is nog onbekend wat opstandelingen er produceerden of welke rebellengroep de fabriek heeft opgezet.

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Op zaterdag 13 augustus 2005 19:35 schreef HarigeKerel het volgende:
Gek dat ze in Mosul zaten met die fabriek, die peshmerga en Turkmenen laten het wel afweten zeg

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Op zondag 14 augustus 2005 21:00 schreef HarigeKerel het volgende:
Dat weet ik, maar toch had ik verwacht dat de Koerden daar wat beter mee om zouden kunnen gaan.
Die zullen hier dan ook wel flink mee in hun maag zitten, alhoewel ze dit ook juist als argument zouden kunnen gebruiken voor meer autonomie... wellicht hebben ze het daarom juist laten gebeuren?
Oei... ging ik zowaar even op de TRU tour

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U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the escalating insurgency. "Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed," President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.

Iraqi officials yesterday struggled to agree on a draft constitution by a deadline of tomorrow so the document can be submitted to a vote in October. The political transition would be completed in December by elections for a permanent government.

But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.

Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.

U.S. officials say no turning point forced a reassessment. "It happened rather gradually," said the senior official, triggered by everything from the insurgency to shifting budgets to U.S. personnel changes in Baghdad.

The ferocious debate over a new constitution has particularly driven home the gap between the original U.S. goals and the realities after almost 28 months. The U.S. decision to invade Iraq was justified in part by the goal of establishing a secular and modern Iraq that honors human rights and unites disparate ethnic and religious communities.

But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq's future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto long-term political privileges. And women's rights will not be as firmly entrenched as Washington has tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraq analysts say.

"We set out to establish a democracy, but we're slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic," said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. "That process is being repeated all over."

U.S. officials now acknowledge that they misread the strength of the sentiment among Kurds and Shiites to create a special status. The Shiites' request this month for autonomy to be guaranteed in the constitution stunned the Bush administration, even after more than two years of intense intervention in Iraq's political process, they said.

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Iran backing Iraqi insurgent bombers - Time report

Sun Aug 14,12:33 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Iranian-backed network of insurgents in Iraq is responsible for a new type of lethal roadside bomb, part of plans by Tehran to influence its neighbor that began even before the U.S. invasion, Time magazine reported on Sunday.

Citing a U.S. military intelligence document, the magazine said that over the past eight months, a network of insurgents led by a man named Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani had introduced bombs based on a design from the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hizbollah that can easily pierce battle tank armor.

The document estimated that al-Sheibani's team comprised 280 members divided into 17 bomb-making teams and death squads, Time said.

This appeared to be part of an Iranian plan for gaining influence in Iraq that began before the United States invaded in March 2003, Time said. Its investigation was based on documents smuggled from Iran and interviews with U.S., British and Iraqi intelligence officials, as well as an Iranian agent, armed dissidents and Iraqi militia and political allies.

Time cited an unnamed senior U.S. military official in Baghdad as saying one of the new bombs killed three British soldiers in Amarah last month.

"One suspects this would have to have a higher degree of approval (in Tehran)," it quoted the official as saying.

The United States believes Iran has arranged a pact between Iraqi Shi'ite militants and Hizbollah, and helped import sophisticated weapons that kill and wound U.S. and British troops, it quoted the official as saying.

Time also said it had documents that pointed to a role by forces attached to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in controlling the cities of Kut and Amarah shortly after the invasion.

It also said coalition military officials believe Iranian-funded militias helped organize a mob attack in the southern township of Majarr al-Kabir in June 2003 that resulted in the execution of six British military police.

Time said it had Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps files that include substantial pay records from August 2004 that seem to show Iran was paying the salaries of at least 11,740 members of Iraq's Badr Corps militia group. However, it said, Badr Corps leader Hadi al-Amri has denied this was currently the case.

Time said Abu Hassan, a former Iraqi official and member of the armored corps of former leader Saddam Hussein, told it last summer that he was recruited by an Iranian agent in 2004 to provide the names and addresses of Interior Ministry officials in close contact with American military officers and liaisons.

It said Abu Hassan's Iranian handler wanted to know "who the Americans trusted and where they were" and asked him to find out if Abu Hassan could get someone into the office of then Prime Minister Iyad Allawi without being searched.

Allawi has told Time he believes Iranian agents plotted to assassinate him, the magazine said.

Western diplomats believe information they give to the new Iraqi government is probably shared with Tehran, Time said. "We have to think anything we tell or share with the Iraqi government ends up in Tehran," it quoted one envoy as saying.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad replied to a question on Sunday by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News about Iranian influence by saying: "Well, I am concerned. I do not oppose good relations between Iraq and Iran. They are neighbors.

"But at the same time, there are Iranian activities that undermine the current system. There are weapons that come across the Iranian border. There are people that come across from the Iranian border into Iraq."

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U.S. Lowers Sights On What Can Be Achieved in Iraq
Administration Is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

Administration officials still emphasize how much they have achieved despite the chaos that followed the invasion and the escalating insurgency. "Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed," President Bush said yesterday in his radio address.

Iraqi officials yesterday struggled to agree on a draft constitution by a deadline of tomorrow so the document can be submitted to a vote in October. The political transition would be completed in December by elections for a permanent government.

But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.

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Someone Tell the President the War Is Over
By FRANK RICH
LIKE the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?

A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.

But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr. Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.

The president's cable cadre is in disarray as well. At Fox News Bill O'Reilly is trashing Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence, and Ann Coulter is chiding Mr. O'Reilly for being a defeatist. In an emblematic gesture akin to waving a white flag, Robert Novak walked off a CNN set and possibly out of a job rather than answer questions about his role in smearing the man who helped expose the administration's prewar inflation of Saddam W.M.D.'s. (On this sinking ship, it's hard to know which rat to root for.)

As if the right-wing pundit crackup isn't unsettling enough, Mr. Bush's top war strategists, starting with Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, have of late tried to rebrand the war in Iraq as what the defense secretary calls "a global struggle against violent extremism." A struggle is what you have with your landlord. When the war's über-managers start using euphemisms for a conflict this lethal, it's a clear sign that the battle to keep the Iraq war afloat with the American public is lost.

That battle crashed past the tipping point this month in Ohio. There's historical symmetry in that. It was in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, that Mr. Bush gave the fateful address that sped Congressional ratification of the war just days later. The speech was a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype. The president said that "we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade," an exaggeration based on evidence that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later find far from conclusive. He said that Saddam "could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year" were he able to secure "an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball." Our own National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1 quoted State Department findings that claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa were "highly dubious."

It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight. Among them were the 19 marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month. As they perished, another Ohio marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a Congressional election in southern Ohio. Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a "chicken hawk," received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Mr. Bush.

These are the tea leaves that all Republicans, not just Chuck Hagel, are reading now. Newt Gingrich called the Hackett near-victory "a wake-up call." The resolutely pro-war New York Post editorial page begged Mr. Bush (to no avail) to "show some leadership" by showing up in Ohio to salute the fallen and their families. A Bush loyalist, Senator George Allen of Virginia, instructed the president to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother camping out in Crawford, as "a matter of courtesy and decency." Or, to translate his Washingtonese, as a matter of politics. Only someone as adrift from reality as Mr. Bush would need to be told that a vacationing president can't win a standoff with a grief-stricken parent commandeering TV cameras and the blogosphere 24/7.

Such political imperatives are rapidly bringing about the war's end. That's inevitable for a war of choice, not necessity, that was conceived in politics from the start. Iraq was a Bush administration idée fixe before there was a 9/11. Within hours of that horrible trauma, according to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Mr. Rumsfeld was proposing Iraq as a battlefield, not because the enemy that attacked America was there, but because it offered "better targets" than the shadowy terrorist redoubts of Afghanistan. It was easier to take out Saddam - and burnish Mr. Bush's credentials as a slam-dunk "war president," suitable for a "Top Gun" victory jig - than to shut down Al Qaeda and smoke out its leader "dead or alive."

But just as politics are a bad motive for choosing a war, so they can be a doomed engine for running a war. In an interview with Tim Russert early last year, Mr. Bush said, "The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war," adding that the "essential" lesson he learned from Vietnam was to not have "politicians making military decisions." But by then Mr. Bush had disastrously ignored that very lesson; he had let Mr. Rumsfeld publicly rebuke the Army's chief of staff, Eric Shinseki, after the general dared tell the truth: that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq. To this day it's our failure to provide that security that has turned the country into the terrorist haven it hadn't been before 9/11 - "the central front in the war on terror," as Mr. Bush keeps reminding us, as if that might make us forget he's the one who recklessly created it.

The endgame for American involvement in Iraq will be of a piece with the rest of this sorry history. "It makes no sense for the commander in chief to put out a timetable" for withdrawal, Mr. Bush declared on the same day that 14 of those Ohio troops were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha. But even as he spoke, the war's actual commander, Gen. George Casey, had already publicly set a timetable for "some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring. Officially this calendar is tied to the next round of Iraqi elections, but it's quite another election this administration has in mind. The priority now is less to save Jessica Lynch (or Iraqi democracy) than to save Rick Santorum and every other endangered Republican facing voters in November 2006.

Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week). A citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war's inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now. There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional American troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.

WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr. Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves. Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.

Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes." The country has already made the decision for Mr. Bush. We're outta there. Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next mont.

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Op maandag 15 augustus 2005 12:37 schreef Mikrosoft het volgende:
Tjonge. Werkelijk alles wat Bush aanraakt verandert in stront.

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Hirsi Ali hekelt vrouwenrechten Iraakse grondwet

Uitgegeven: 16 augustus 2005 17:35
RIJSWIJK - Ayaan Hirsi Ali uit scherpe kritiek op het negeren van de vrouwenrechten in de ontwerpgrondwet van Irak. Het vrije westen dat zegt op te komen voor de vrijheid en democratie van alle Irakezen, laat dat ook nog eens zonder verzet gebeuren, schreef de VVD-politica dinsdag in een opiniestuk in The Wall Street Journal Europe.

Hamam Hamoudi, het hoofd van de commissie die deze grondwet samenstelt, weigert volgens Hirsi Ali een artikel op te nemen waarin staat dat mannen en vrouwen gelijke rechten hebben. Het westen offert de vrouwenrechten in Irak op om de nieuwe grondwet snel te kunnen invoeren, concludeert zij.

Droom

"Ik dacht dat president Bush en alle bondgenoten die de oorlog tegen Irak steunden democratie en vrijheid voor alle Irakezen wilden bereiken. Zijn Iraakse meisjes en vrouwen niet mens genoeg om deze droom te delen? Nu is er een bizarre situatie gecreëerd waarbij de vrouwen meer rechten onder het regime van Saddam Hussein hadden dan in het Irak na Saddam Hussein", stelt Hirsi Ali vast.

Rechten

Hamoudi benadrukt wel dat vrouwen volledige economische en politieke rechten in de nieuwe grondwet krijgen. Maar die kunnen in de visie van het VVD-Kamerlid teniet worden gedaan als de Shariah geldt. De Shariah is de islamitische wet, die over alle aspecten van het leven van een moslim handelt. De Shariah geeft de moslimman complete controle over zijn vrouw en in dat geval hebben vrouwen dus weinig kans om hun politieke rechten te gebruiken, weet Hirsi Ali.

Huwelijk

Voorbeeld van een situatie waarin vrouwen volgens Hirsi Ali ernstig benadeeld kunnen worden, is bijvoorbeeld het huwelijk. Onder de Shariah is een meisje huwbaar vanaf het moment dat ze begint te menstrueren. In landen waar de islamitische wet geldt, komen kindbruiden dan ook veel voor, schrijft Hirsi Ali. Ze vraagt zich af of degenen die de Iraakse grondwet opstellen begrijpen wat dit betekent voor het risico op miskramen, sterfte onder kraamvrouwen en kinderen.

De Shariah maakt het mannen verder mogelijk met maximaal vier vrouwen te trouwen en van een vrouw te scheiden zonder tussenkomst van een rechter. Hij hoeft allen maar te zeggen "ik scheid van je" in het bijzijn van twee mannelijke getuigen. Vrouwen wordt het daarentegen vrijwel onmogelijk gemaakt van hun man te scheiden.

Tot slot stelt Hirsi Ali dat het erfrecht op basis van de Shariah oneerlijk is: vrouwen erven maar de helft van wat hun broers erven, een echtgenote krijgt slechts een klein deel van de nalatenschap wanneer haar man sterft.

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Op dinsdag 16 augustus 2005 18:32 schreef schatje het volgende:

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bron

Hirsi Ali heeft gelijk. Het lijkt mij ook vrijwel zo goed als zeker dat in de toekomst de Islamitische wet zal gelden in Irak. Sterker nog, in sommige steden in het zuiden van Irak is dat al het geval.

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Op maandag 15 augustus 2005 12:37 schreef Mikrosoft het volgende:
Tjonge. Werkelijk alles wat Bush aanraakt verandert in stront.

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In Irak zal binnen enkele dagen weer worden begonnen met het uitvoeren van doodvonnissen. Dit is voor het eerst sinds de val van het bewind van dictator Saddam Hussein. "De president heeft drie doodvonnissen ondertekend en de eerste worden binnen enkele dagen uitgevoerd in Kut", aldus premier Ibrahim Jaafari.

Drie leden van de aan de terreurbeweging al-Qaeda verbonden groepering Ansar al-Sunna zullen worden geëxecuteerd. Zij werden in mei tot de doodstraf veroordeeld. Dit omdat ze schuldig zijn bevonden door de rechter aan ontvoering van en moord op een politieagent en de verkrachting van Iraakse vrouwen.

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Op dinsdag 16 augustus 2005 18:48 schreef kLowJow het volgende:

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Leuk dat ze er een mening over heeft, maar wat had ze dan verwacht/gewild? Dat het westen een grondwet naar eigen model opstelt en Irak dwingt deze te accepteren?

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Triple Baghdad blasts kill dozens

At least 42 people died and 80 were injured in three car bombings in the centre of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Two of the blasts went off within 10 minutes of each other at 0800 (0400 GMT) at the busy Nahda bus station. The third blast happened on the road to a nearby hospital some 15 minutes later, just as victims of the first two attacks were being brought in.

Four men were arrested at the bus station on suspicion of being involved in the bombings, officials said. No details have been given about the suspects, who are now being questioned. All three attacks were less than 30 minutes apart, and police say their apparent co-ordination and planning means casualty figures are almost certain to rise.

The blasts were the largest attacks by insurgents in recent weeks. Attacks have dropped off amid negotiations on a new Iraqi constitution, which reached a deadlock this week. Police and officials investigating the attacks were trying to determine whether the blasts were work of suicide bombers.

Blazing buses

The bus station serves various parts of the country and would normally have been crowded with travellers at the time of the attacks, says the BBC's Mike Wooldridge in Baghdad. One eyewitness told Reuters news agency they saw a coach blow up. "We heard an explosion in the garage, we went there and ran towards the buses for Kut, Basra and Amara," said Ahmed Jabur.

"A coach blew up. When we were leaving, another one blew up in the middle of police cars." Most of the victims appeared to be civilians, many of whom were trapped on buses. Shortly afterwards, the third car bomb echoed around the city. Medics and police helping the wounded to hospital were among the injured, reports say.

In other violence:

Two US soldiers died in separate attacks in southern Baghdad, and northern Iraq, the US military says

Six Iraqi soldiers in northern Iraq were killed when insurgents open fire as they guard oil installations near Kirkuk.

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Myers: Release of Abu Ghraib prison photos could cause riots

NEW YORK The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff warns that releasing photos and videotapes of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison could have serious consequences.

General Richard Myers contends in recently unsealed court documents that the release of such information would aid al-Qaida recruitment, weaken governments in Iraq and Afghanistan and incite riots against U-S troops.

The American Civil Liberties Union wants 87 photographs and four videotapes taken at the prison released as part of a lawsuit it filed in 2003.

The group is seeking information on the treatment of detainees in U-S custody and about the transfer of prisoners to countries known to use torture.