[Centraal] Irak na de oorlog - deel 35

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 13:28 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:

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Jaja, voor jouw niet. Voor de families van de gedode en verminte Amerikanen wel.

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 13:31 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Niet? Oh sorry ik dacht dat dit over de Irak al rafidayn oorlog ging, maar sorry. Oh natuurlijk Amerikanen en Sjiieten willen niet geconfronteerd worden met jullie lichamen die door de leeuwen van Tawheed door de straten van Bagdad gesleept worden, terwijl jullie niks kunnen uitrichten!

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 13:31 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Niet? Oh sorry ik dacht dat dit over de Irak al rafidayn oorlog ging, maar sorry. Oh natuurlijk Amerikanen en Sjiieten willen niet geconfronteerd worden met jullie lichamen die door de leeuwen van Tawheed door de straten van Bagdad gesleept worden, terwijl jullie niks kunnen uitrichten!

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 13:37 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Dat dachten jullie wel eh dat de Amerikanen joden daar zo maar even de boel komen overnemen en de soennieten uitroeien, de sunni worden sterken dan ooit, al Qaeda is sterker dan ooit, er zijn meer aanvallen op amerikanen en sjiieten o wacht zijn de zelfde dan ooit, tjah logisch dat jullie dat niet willen horen waarheid doet pijn natuurlijk .

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 13:37 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Dat dachten jullie wel eh dat de Amerikanen joden daar zo maar even de boel komen overnemen en de soennieten uitroeien, de sunni worden sterken dan ooit, al Qaeda is sterker dan ooit, er zijn meer aanvallen op amerikanen en sjiieten o wacht zijn de zelfde dan ooit, tjah logisch dat jullie dat niet willen horen waarheid doet pijn natuurlijk .

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 13:37 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Dat dachten jullie wel eh dat de Amerikanen joden daar zo maar even de boel komen overnemen en de soennieten uitroeien, de sunni worden sterken dan ooit, al Qaeda is sterker dan ooit, er zijn meer aanvallen op amerikanen en sjiieten o wacht zijn de zelfde dan ooit, tjah logisch dat jullie dat niet willen horen waarheid doet pijn natuurlijk .

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Saddam: The death of a dictator

Through the bumbling of the U.S.-backed regime, justice becomes revenge, and a despot becomes a martyr.

By Juan Cole

Dec. 30, 2006 | The body of Saddam, as it swung from the gallows at 6 a.m. Saturday Baghdad time, cast an ominous shadow over Iraq. The execution provoked intense questions about whether his trial was fair and about what the fallout will be. One thing is certain: The trial and execution of Saddam were about revenge, not justice. Instead of promoting national reconciliation, this act of revenge helped Saddam portray himself one last time as a symbol of Sunni Arab resistance, and became one more incitement to sectarian warfare.

Saddam Hussein was tried under the shadow of a foreign military occupation, by a government full of his personal enemies. The first judge, an ethnic Kurd, resigned because of government interference in the trial; the judge who took his place was also Kurdish and had grievances against the accused. Three of Saddam's defense lawyers were shot down in cold blood. The surviving members of his defense team went on strike to protest the lack of protection afforded them. The court then appointed new lawyers who had no expertise in international law. Most of the witnesses against Saddam gave hearsay evidence. The trial ground slowly but certainly toward the inevitable death verdict.

Like everything else in Iraq since 2003, Saddam's trial became entangled in sectarian politics. Iraq is roughly 60 percent Shiite, 18 percent Sunni Arab and 18 percent Kurdish. Elements of the Sunni minority were favored under fellow Sunni Saddam, and during his long, brutal reign this community tended to have high rates of membership in the Baath Party. Although many members of Saddam's own ethnic group deeply disliked him, since the U.S. invasion he has gradually emerged as a symbol of the humiliation that the once-dominant Sunni minority has suffered under a new government dominated by Shiites and Kurds.

Saddam was a symbol of Sunni-Shiite rivalry long before the U.S. occupation. In 1991, while he was in power, he had ferociously suppressed the post-Gulf War Shiite uprising in the south, using helicopter gunships and tanks to kill an estimated 60,000. After the invasion, many Shiites wanted him to be captured, while many Sunnis helped him elude capture. When Saddam was finally caught by U.S. forces in late 2003, Shiites in the Baghdad district of Kadhimiya crossed the bridge over the Tigris to dance and gloat in the neighboring Sunni Arab district of Adhamiya, provoking some clashes. After his capture, students at Mosul University, in Iraq's second-largest and mostly Sunni Arab city, chanted, "Bush, Bush, hear our refrain: We all love Saddam Hussein!" and "We'll die, we'll die, but the nation will live! And America will fall!"

As the U.S. consolidated control over Iraq, meanwhile, Sunni alienation increased. The American occupiers adopted punitive measures against members of the Baath Party, who were disproportionately though by no means universally Sunni Arab. The army was dissolved, sidelining 400,000 troops and the predominantly Sunni officer corps. Thousands of Sunni Arab civil servants and even schoolteachers were fired.

A "de-Baathification" committee, dominated by hard-line Shiites like Nouri al-Maliki (now prime minister) and Ahmed Chalabi, denied large numbers of Sunni Arabs the right to participate in political society or hold government positions on grounds of links to the Baath Party. Sometimes politicians were blackballed simply because a relative had been high in the party.

As Iraq spiraled down into a brutal civil war with massive killing and ethnic cleansing, many Iraqis began to yearn for the oppressive security of the Saddam period. After the destruction of the golden dome of the Shiite Askariya mosque in Samarra last February, Iraqis fell into an orgy of sectarian reprisal killings.

By the time of Saddam's trial, sectarian strife was widespread, and the trial simply made it worse. It was not just the inherent bias of a judicial system dominated by his political enemies. Even the crimes for which he was tried were a source of ethnic friction. Saddam Hussein had had many Sunni Arabs killed, and a trial on such a charge could have been politically savvy. Instead, he was accused of the execution of scores of Shiites in Dujail in 1982. This Shiite town had been a hotbed of activism by the Shiite fundamentalist Dawa (Islamic Call) Party, which was founded in the late 1950s and modeled on the Communist Party. In the wake of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini's 1979 Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran, Saddam conceived a profound fear of Dawa and similar parties, banning them and making membership a capital crime. Young Dawa leaders such as al-Maliki fled to Tehran, Iran, or Damascus, Syria.

When Saddam visited Dujail, Dawa agents attempted to assassinate him. In turn, he wrought a terrible revenge on the town's young men. Current Prime Minister al-Maliki is the leader of the Dawa Party and served for years in exile in its Damascus bureau. For a Dawa-led government to try Saddam, especially for this crackdown on a Dawa stronghold, makes it look to Sunni Arabs more like a sectarian reprisal than a dispassionate trial for crimes against humanity.

Passions did not subside with time. When the death verdict was announced against Saddam in November, Sunni Arabs in Baquba, to the northeast of the capital, staged a big pro-Saddam demonstration. They were attacked by the Shiite police that dominate that mixed city, who killed 20 demonstrators and wounded a similar number. There were also pro-Saddam demonstrations in Fallujah and Mosul. Baghdad had to be put under curfew.

The tribunal also had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam's hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday –- and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar.

The timing also allowed Saddam, in his farewell address to Iraq, to pose as a “sacrifice” for his nation, an explicit reference to Eid al-Adha. The tribunal had given the old secular nationalist the chance to use religious language to play on the sympathies of the whole Iraqi public.

The political ineptitude of the tribunal, from start to finish, was astonishing. The United States and its Iraqi allies basically gave Saddam a platform on which to make himself a martyr to Iraqi unity and independence -- even if by unity and independence Saddam was really appealing to Sunnis' nostalgia for their days of hegemony.

In his farewell address, however, Saddam could not help departing from his national-unity script to take a few last shots at his ethnic rivals. Despite some smarmy language urging Iraqis not to hate the Americans, Saddam denounced the "invaders" and "Persians" who had come into Iraq. The invaders are the American army, and the Persians are code not just for Iranian agents but for Iraqi Shiites, whom many Sunni Arabs view as having Iranian antecedents and as not really Iraqi or Arab. It was such attitudes that led to slaughters like that at Dujail.

In his death, as in his life, Saddam Hussein is managing to divide Iraqis and condemn them to further violence and brutality. But the Americans and the Shiite- and Kurd-dominated government bear some blame for the way they botched his trial and gave him this last opportunity to play the spoiler.

Iraq is on high alert, in expectation of protests and guerrilla reprisals. Leaves have been canceled for Iraqi soldiers, though in the past they have seldom paid much attention to such orders. But perhaps the death of Saddam, who once haunted the nightmares of a nation, will soon come to seem insignificant. In Iraq, guerrilla and criminal violence executes as many as 500 persons a day. Saddam's hanging is just one more occasion for a blood feud in a country that now has thousands of them.

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 13:31 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Niet? Oh sorry ik dacht dat dit over de Irak al rafidayn oorlog ging, maar sorry. Oh natuurlijk Amerikanen en Sjiieten willen niet geconfronteerd worden met jullie lichamen die door de leeuwen van Tawheed door de straten van Bagdad gesleept worden, terwijl jullie niks kunnen uitrichten!

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 17:44 schreef Zero2Nine het volgende:

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Als je ooit nog eens echt wat uit wil richten tegen de "verderfelijke" Joden en Amerikanen kun je je sjiietische broeders maar beter koesteren. Ik nog wel een sjiiet die over een tijdje over hele mooie wapens gaat beschikken.

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A bitter family saga is at an end
By Matt Frei
BBC Washington correspondent

The US said Saddam Hussein was hanged after a "fair trial"
When Saddam Hussein looked in disbelief at the over-sized noose that was fitted by masked volunteers around his neck, the man who helped to put it there by invading Iraq and toppling the dictator was soundly asleep at his ranch in Texas.

It was only nine o'clock in the evening in Crawford but George Bush was already embedded in the land of nod, with orders not to be woken until the morning.

The blithe indifference of deep slumber was the final snub to the dead man who once described himself as "Salahadin II", "the Redeemer of all the Arabs" and "the Lion of Baghdad".

Some might think that George Bush can't afford to sleep soundly these days with his approval ratings in the cellar and his policy towards Iraq in inertia.

But while the world stirred to comment, cyberspace buzzed with applause or condemnation and Cable television hyperventilated, George Bush soldiered on in sleep. He arose only at 4.40am, we are told, which is his usual time of rising.
One hour later he had a 10-minute conversation with his National Security adviser Stephen Hadley about the events in Baghdad

Shortly thereafter the White House issued a pre-prepared written statement: "Today Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial - the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime."
The statement, which will not be complemented by a presidential turn for the cameras, betrayed no hint of gloating or crowing. It went on to say that "bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq".

On one level, the hanging of Saddam Hussein is the end of a dramatic family saga that has pitted the Bushes of Texas against the Husseins of Tikrit.

Failed alliance

It is a saga that started with a tacit alliance.

When George HW Bush was vice president, Saddam Hussein was still seen as a potential partner thanks to his status as the enemy of America's enemy, Iran.

It was in 1983 that Donald Rumsfeld was dispatched to Baghdad as a friend of the Reagan administration to shake the hand of Saddam Hussein and offer America's help against the ayatollahs during the Iran Iraq War.

Alliance finally turned into animosity when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and President Bush cobbled together an international alliance of Western and Arab states to remove him from Kuwait but not from power.


"The butcher of Baghdad" began to call President Bush "the viper" and George junior, "the son of the viper".

It was at that time that the famous Al Rashid hotel in Baghdad received an elaborate mosaic of President Bush "the criminal", which patrons were forced to stomp across on entering the lobby.

Two years later Saddam Hussein tried to get President Bush assassinated.

The White House has always maintained that personal grudges had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq.

And yet in September 2002, as preparations for war were well under way, George Bush the younger told a Houston fundraiser: "This is after all the man who tried to kill my dad."

Mafia rule

The personal side of this bitter family saga is over.

But even from his unmarked grave, Saddam Hussein will continue to haunt the Bush administration and define the legacy of the 43rd president of the United States.

Saddam had always promised to lure, fight and defeat the Americans in the cities of Iraq.

No-one thought at the time that this would happen after he had already been deposed.

But his prophetic threat is becoming reality, triggering a multi-headed insurgence that no longer fights on his behalf, and a vortex of sectarian violence that makes a conventional civil war look organised and coherent.


The former Iraqi leader is likely to haunt the Bush administration

The brutal bloodletting, ethnic cleansing and viscous fragmentation, in which American troops now find themselves embroiled, is also a legacy of Saddam's regime.

A quarter of a century of his mafia rule, in which tribal loyalties were lavishly rewarded and anything less was severely punished helped to rot the cohesion of a young and artificial country.

The extent to which Iraq is disintegrating has taken many Iraqis by surprise. It was grossly under-estimated by the officials who planned the occupation.

President Bush and his advisers have always liked to compare the birth pangs of Iraqi democracy to the emergence of a free Germany after the World War II.

Bloodletting

But what they were dealing with was not Germany 1945 but Germany in 1648 emerging from the feudal bloodbath of the 30 years war.

Another example would have been Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

So not even the few beleaguered optimists in the Bush camp, including the president himself, believe that the execution of Saddam Hussein will stem the bloodletting and allow America to plan for a graceful exit.

The sectarian violence in Iraq has reached its own alarming momentum, in which Saddam Hussein had been reduced to a walk-on part.


Nearly 3,000 US servicemen and women have already been killed

The White House may boast about the new rule of law but for many ordinary Iraqis justice comes in the form of death squads, torture gangs and rogue police road blocks.

These days the wrong identity card can get you executed. This is not the kind of justice that George Bush had in mind.

So now the noose has done its deed the Pentagon is, if anything, expecting a spike in the sectarian violence.

The US State Department has put its embassies on a security alert "to prepare for demonstrations and possible attacks".

And the American public, which had long expected the execution of Saddam Hussein is waiting with growing impatience to see how exactly the president will execute his heralded "new Iraq strategy".

More troops? More money? More hope? For American soldiers December 2006 proved to be the bloodiest month of a bloody year.

Sometime in the next 10 days 3,000 US servicemen and women will have been killed by a war that was declared "accomplished" in May 2003.

Saddam Hussein is dead. His legacy lives on.

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 21:10 schreef klez het volgende:

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De BBC over de dood van Saddam. In ieder geval ben ik niet de enige die Saddam grotendeels verantwoordelijk houdt voor de hedendaagse puinhoop in Irak.

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 21:19 schreef Godslasteraar het volgende:

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waarom maak je je toch zo druk om Saddam en Irak? Persoonlijk betreur ik het dat Saddam destijds uit Koeweit is getrapt. Ze hadden hem Koeweit moeten laten houden, had hij zijn leger met Koeweits olie-inkomsten verder kunnen uitbreiden, om vervolgens bijvoorbeeld Saoedie Arabië binnen te marcheren, of een 2e offensief tegen Iran.
Maar goed, die totale oorlog in de regio komt er met een beetje mazzel alsnog, maar dan langs sektarische scheidslijnen. En met nóg een beetje extra mazzel krijgen die gore Saoediërs eindelijk na eeuwen gestook en gekanker, hun fundamentalistische waanzin terug in eigen land in de vorm van een geweldig bloedbad. Ik gun het ze van harte.

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Op zaterdag 30 december 2006 13:37 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Dat dachten jullie wel eh dat de Amerikanen joden daar zo maar even de boel komen overnemen en de soennieten uitroeien, de sunni worden sterken dan ooit, al Qaeda is sterker dan ooit, er zijn meer aanvallen op amerikanen en sjiieten o wacht zijn de zelfde dan ooit, tjah logisch dat jullie dat niet willen horen waarheid doet pijn natuurlijk .

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Five Iranians detained by US forces in Baghdad last month were senior intelligence officers engaged in a covert political mission to influence the Iraqi government, the BBC said.

"There were five senior officers in various intelligence organisations... It was a very significant meeting... These people have been collared, relatively speaking, up to no good," one unnamed British official told the broadcaster.

(...)

"There was discussion of whether the Maliki government would succeed, who should be in which ministerial jobs... It was a very significant meeting," one official said.

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Op zondag 31 december 2006 14:45 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Dapper Iraaks verzet vernedert amerikaans terreurleger

Vandaag officeel meer dan 3000 Amerikaanse doden, en meer dan 8.000 voor het leven verminkt.

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Op vrijdag 5 januari 2007 14:49 schreef popolon het volgende:

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Er bestaat geen 'Iraaks' verzet (meer).

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Op vrijdag 5 januari 2007 15:38 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:

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Jawel hoor. Het word sterker dan ooit. Vooral nu de grote fracties in Majlis shura Mujahideen fi al-Irak (incl. al-Qaida) & Jaish al-Islami fi al-Iraq (wat compleet uit alleen maar Irakezen bestaat) in regios als Anbar hun krachten hebben gebundeld in de Islamitische staat.

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Iraq Vets Come Home Physically, Mentally Butchered
by Aaron Glantz

On New Year's Eve, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq passed 3,000. By Tuesday, the death toll had reached 3,004 – 31 more than died in the Sep. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But the number of injured has far outstripped the dead, with the Veterans Administration reporting that more than 150,000 veterans of the Iraq war are receiving disability benefits.

Advances in military technology are keeping the death rate much lower than during the Vietnam War and World War Two, Dr. Col. Vito Imbascini, an urologist and state surgeon with the California Army National Guard, told IPS, but soldiers who survive attacks are often severely disabled for life.

"If you lost an arm or a leg in Vietnam, you were also tremendously injured in your chest and abdomen, which were not protected by the armor plates back then," he said. "Now, your heart and chest and lungs and heart are protected by armor, leaving only your extremities exposed."

Dr. Imbascini just returned from a four-month deployment to Germany, where he treated the worst of the U.S. war wounded. He said that an extremely high number of wounded soldiers are coming home with their arms or legs amputated. Imbascini said he amputated the genitals of one or two men every day.

"I walk into the operating room and the general surgeons are doing their work and there is the body of this Navy SEAL, which is a physical specimen to behold," he told IPS. "And his abdomen is open, they're exploring both intestines. He's missing both legs below the knee, one arm is blown off, he's got incisions on his thighs to relieve the pressure on the parts of the legs that are hopefully gonna survive and there's genital injuries, and you just want to cry."

According to documents obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, 25 percent of veterans of the "global war on terror" have filed disability compensation and pension benefit claims with the Veterans Benefits Administration.

One is a Jul. 20, 2006, document titled "Compensation and Pension Benefit Activity Among Veterans of the Global War on Terrorism," which shows that 152,669 veterans filed disability claims after fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. Of the more than 100,000 claims granted, Veterans Administration records show at least 1,502 veterans have been compensated as 100 percent disabled.

Pentagon studies show that 12 percent of soldiers who have served in Iraq suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. The group Veterans for America, formerly the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, estimates 70,000 Iraq war veterans have gone to the VA for mental health care.

New guidelines released by the Pentagon released last month allow commanders to redeploy soldiers suffering from traumatic stress disorders.

According to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, servicemembers with "a psychiatric disorder in remission, or whose residual symptoms do not impair duty performance" may be considered for duty downrange. It lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a "treatable" problem.

"As a layman and a former soldier I think that's ridiculous," Steve Robinson, the director of Veterans Affairs for Veterans for America, told IPS.

"If I've got a soldier who's on Ambien to go to sleep and Seroquel and Qanapin and all kinds of other psychotropic meds, I don't want them to have a weapon in their hand and to be part of my team because they're a risk to themselves and to others," he said. "But apparently, the military has its own view of how well a soldier can function under those conditions and is gambling that they can be successful."

Robinson said problems with the policy are already starting to arise.

On Christmas, for example, Army Reservist James Dean barricaded himself in his father's home with several weapons and threatened to kill himself. After a 14-hour standoff with authorities, Dean was killed by a police officer after he aimed a gun at another officer, authorities told the Washington Post.

Veterans for America's Robinson told IPS that Dean, who had already served 18 months in Afghanistan, had been diagnosed with PTSD. He had just been informed that his unit would be sent to Iraq on Jan. 14.

"We call that suicide by cop," Robinson said.

After his death, Dean's friends told the Washington Post that the reservist enjoyed hunting and fishing but had lost much of his enthusiasm for life when he found out that he was being deployed to Iraq.

"When Congress comes back in session we're looking forward to accountability hearings," Robinson said. "We want to see veterans helped in the first 100 hours of the new session. We want to see the word 'veteran' somewhere in that first hundred hours."

Robinson says his organization has also documented the existence of at least 1,000 homeless veterans of the Iraq war.

"We need to get on top of the problem of homelessness," he said. "It's too soon to be seeing homelessness. I want to be seeing a commitment from the Democratic Congress to dealing with the war and the needs of the soldiers in the first hundred hours of them coming to power."

(Inter Press Service)

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Imbascini said he amputated the genitals of one or two men every day.

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Bush’ denktank voorziet bloedig jaar
Washington verwacht dat president Bush volgende week de oorlog in Irak zal opvoeren: meer troepen. Gisteren gaven de geestelijke vaders van het plan hun ideeën prijs. ‘Het wordt zeer bloedig.’

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Amerika staat voor een periode van zware opofferingen, zei Kagan. „Ik adviseer de president om volgende week zo onverbloemd mogelijk te zijn. We moeten er ons op voorbereiden dat 2007 een zeer bloedig jaar wordt.”

Ook als de plannen van Kagan en Keane volledig worden overgenomen (25.000 extra troepen bovenop de 140.000 die al in Irak zijn; zie inzet) zal het leed niet zomaar geleden zijn. „Dit probleem gaat door tot in 2008 en daarna. We zullen extra reserves moeten oproepen. De plannen zijn héél duur. Ze vergen groot geduld. Amerika zal moeten wennen aan een opoffering die we lange tijd niet hebben hoeven doorstaan.”

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Op zondag 31 december 2006 14:45 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
Dapper Iraaks verzet vernedert amerikaans terreurleger

Vandaag officeel meer dan 3000 Amerikaanse doden, en meer dan 8.000 voor het leven verminkt.

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The Real Cost of the Iraq War: 50,000 U.S. Casualties

Death is not the only measure of loss in Iraq. What about all of the lost limbs, bloodshed and other casualties that aren't being reported?

To bring the human cost to Americans of the invasion and occupation of Iraq home, antiwar groups across the country are marking mark the 3,000th death of a member of its military components (at this writing the total is 3,004).

But by focusing only on the number of dead Americans we are being manipulated along with the media and public by the administration's determination to minimize the cost in blood of establishing permanent military bases in the heart of the Middle East oil patch.

That public relations strategy consists of prohibiting images of the dead and wounded returning home and those of U.S. casualties in Iraq in the U.S. media as well as aggressive efforts to prevent such coverage by foreign media --including deadly attacks on Al-Jazeera reporters and offices. It also plants stories and interviews, leaks to FOX and other Pentagon-friendly reporters and provides generous payola to foreign (especially Iraqi) news sources.

Still, the most consistent propaganda effort since the invasion aims to keep public attention away from the actual amount of blood being shed by American military victims of the war and their families. That cost now exceeds 50,000 casualties -- a far cry from the 3,000 to which most of the public is restricted to know.

"Casualties" in the military sense is the total number made unavailable for duty from all causes, including deaths and wounds suffered in combat as well as injuries, accidents and illness in a war "theater" such as "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (the official Pentagon name for the invasion and occupation). So whether caused by "hostile" (24,965 as of Dec.27) or "non-hostile" (25,406 as of Dec. 2) causes, the Pentagon's own web sites record a toll of more than 50,000 so far in "OIF."

However, for most Americans who depend on mass media for information, the approaching number of only 3,000 is the only measure of the loss of life and limb the media allow them to know. For the rest of us, here are the facts: The Pentagon reports deaths on a daily basis at although its own total always lags behind the wire services number because it insists survivors must be informed before a dead solider, marine, sailor or airman can be added to the casualty lists. But the Pentagon only reports the wounded on the weekly basis (usually on Tuesdays) at the same site and it reports the non fatal casualties from non hostile causes only monthly and on another website (http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/OIF-Total.pdf).

From those sources, we can count U.S. military occupation forces casualties as more than 50,371 as of Dec. 27. The total (as above) includes 2,400 killed and 22,565 wounded (which includes both severely and less severely wounded) by what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes. By that date, another 583 military personnel had died from "non hostile" causes such as accidents, suicides (there were 99 "self inflicted fatalities") and illness and, as of Dec. 2, another 24,823 had been injured or become ill seriously enough to require medical evacuation. According the excellent site Iraq Coalition Casualty Count,(http://www.icasualties.org/oif/). another 147 U.S. "contractors" have also been killed since they invaded Iraq.

I urge opponents of the war to make the public aware that the actual human cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq exceeds 50,000 troops and their families who have suffered death and often life-long disability -- of whom the 3,000 are just one tragic part.

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Future of Iraq: The spoils of war
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches
By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb
Published: 07 January 2007

Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.

The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.

The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. "So where is the oil going to come from?... The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies," he said.

Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise. But it will operate through "production-sharing agreements" (or PSAs) which are highly unusual in the Middle East, where the oil industry in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world's two largest producers, is state controlled.

Opponents say Iraq, where oil accounts for 95 per cent of the economy, is being forced to surrender an unacceptable degree of sovereignty.

Proposing the parliamentary motion for war in 2003, Tony Blair denied the "false claim" that "we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues. He said the money should be put into a trust fund, run by the UN, for the Iraqis, but the idea came to nothing. The same year Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, said: "It cost a great deal of money to prosecute this war. But the oil of the Iraqi people belongs to the Iraqi people; it is their wealth, it will be used for their benefit. So we did not do it for oil."

Supporters say the provision allowing oil companies to take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs. After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits, according to industry sources in Iraq. But that is twice the industry average for such deals.

Greg Muttitt, a researcher for Platform, a human rights and environmental group which monitors the oil industry, said Iraq was being asked to pay an enormous price over the next 30 years for its present instability. "They would lose out massively," he said, "because they don't have the capacity at the moment to strike a good deal."

Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, who chairs the country's oil committee, is expected to unveil the legislation as early as today. "It is a redrawing of the whole Iraqi oil industry [to] a modern standard," said Khaled Salih, spokesman for the Kurdish Regional Government, a party to the negotiations. The Iraqi government hopes to have the law on the books by March.

Several major oil companies are said to have sent teams into the country in recent months to lobby for deals ahead of the law, though the big names are considered unlikely to invest until the violence in Iraq abates.

James Paul, executive director at the Global Policy Forum, the international government watchdog, said: "It is not an exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of the population would be opposed to this. To do it anyway, with minimal discussion within the [Iraqi] parliament is really just pouring more oil on the fire."

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman and a former chief economist at Shell, said it was crucial that any deal would guarantee funds for rebuilding Iraq. "It is absolutely vital that the revenue from the oil industry goes into Iraqi development and is seen to do so," he said. "Although it does make sense to collaborate with foreign investors, it is very important the terms are seen to be fair."

quote:

Pelosi:geen blanco cheque voor Irak

***************************************
` President Bush krijgt van het Congres
geen blanco cheque meer om oorlog te
voeren in Irak.Dat heeft de nieuwe
Democratische leider van het Huis van
Afgevaardigden,Pelosi,gezegd.

De Democraten hebben de meerderheid in
het Congres en zijn erg kritisch over
de plannen van Bush om meer troepen
naar Irak te sturen.Het Congres zal
Bush flink aan de tand voelen als hij
meer geld nodig heeft om de strijd op
te voeren,zei Pelosi.

Bush komt deze week met een nieuwe
strategie voor Irak.Daarin stelt hij
nieuwe legerbevelhebbers aan.Mogelijk
stuurt hij tot 20.000 extra militairen.

quote:

Op zondag 7 januari 2007 01:02 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:
All over the world? Je ziet spoken jongen, de enige extremisten zijn de gene die daar soennieten proberen uit te roeien, Amerika, Iran en hun volgers. En daar zijn de gewone moslims in Irak mee begonnen, om hun uit te roeien en dat zal ook gebeuren.

quote:

Op zondag 7 januari 2007 21:20 schreef klez het volgende:

[..]

Dus de soennieten, Iran en Amerika moeten uitgeroeid worden. Soso

quote:

Op zondag 7 januari 2007 21:40 schreef Slayage het volgende:

[..]

je bedoelt sjiieten

quote:

Op maandag 8 januari 2007 20:11 schreef klez het volgende:

[..]

Het blijkt eigenlijk allemaal lood om oud ijzer te zijn. 650.000 Irakezen vermoord afgezet tegen drieduizend Amerikanen. Wat een sneu volk blijkt het uiteindelijk toch te zijn, of je het nu met een OE of IE schrijft...
Godsdienstwaanzin schijnt de norm te zijn in die regio.

quote:

Op zondag 7 januari 2007 12:41 schreef Slayage het volgende:

[..]

http://news.independent.c(...)t/article2132569.ece

komt de aap uiteindelijk uit de mauw

binnen luttele dagen saddam vernederend opgehangen en zal dus binnenkort de olieindustrie in westerse handen komen, papa bush zal trots zijn op kleintje

quote:

Op maandag 8 januari 2007 20:31 schreef Godslasteraar het volgende:

[..]

Ja joh, wat verwacht je nou? Je moet er toch niet aan denken dat al die olie-inkomsten in handen van de Al Sadrs van Irak komen! Het is al erg genoeg dat we van Saoedie Arabië geen zelfbedieningstankstation gemaakt hebben, laten we die fout in Irak niet herhalen. En laten we wel wezen, het ís onze olie, de enige reden dat dat spul enige waarde heeft is te danken aan het Westen. Zonder het Westen zou die olie er nu nog onaangetast in de grond zitten, en de Arabieren nog steeds op kamelen rondrijden, volstrekt onwetend van de schatten die sinds miljoenen jaren in de bodem schuilen. Dus, dat die barbaren toevallig bovenop onze olie zijn gaan wonen is niet ons probleem.

quote:

Op maandag 8 januari 2007 20:30 schreef Slayage het volgende:

[..]

godsdienst waanzin? zie jij echt wat nu in irak gaande is als iets godsdienstigs itt iets puur politiek?

quote:

Op maandag 8 januari 2007 20:54 schreef klez het volgende:

[..]

Welke politici? Elke politicus behalve een misdadiger staat machteloos tegen deze gewelddadige godsdienstwaanzinnigen.

quote:

Op dinsdag 9 januari 2007 15:00 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
Fox Breaking News: Zojuist een vliegtuig neergestort vlakbij Bagdad, met 32 mensen aan boord, eerste berichten spreken over 30 doden, 2 overlevenden.

Geen idee wat voor toestel

quote:

Tientallen doden bij vliegtuigcrash Bagdad

Uitgegeven: 9 januari 2007 14:32
Laatst gewijzigd: 9 januari 2007 15:19

ANKARA - Een Moldavisch vliegtuig met dertig Turkse arbeiders aan boord is dinsdag neergestort terwijl het probeerde te landen op het vliegveld van de Iraakse hoofdstad Bagdad. Zeker dertig mensen hebben de crash niet overleefd.

Dat heeft het Turkse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken gemeld. Het toestel zou circa drie kilometer van Bagdad van de radarschermen zijn verdwenen.

Het vliegtuig van Sovjetmakelij was 's ochtends opgestegen in Adana in het zuiden van Turkije. Behalve de Turkse passagiers waren er ook vijf bemanningsleden aan boord.

quote:

Op zondag 7 januari 2007 21:20 schreef klez het volgende:

[..]

Dus de soennieten, Iran en Amerika moeten uitgeroeid worden. Soso
Helemaal niet extremistisch ook.
Waarom heb je Saddam niet zonder Amerikaanse hulp weggejaagd dan, als je zo'n stoere jongen bent?
Overigens: het stikt van de landen waar men problemen heeft met extremistische moslims hoor. Veel meer dan waar Amerikanen overlast veroorzaken.

quote:

Iraqi and US forces battle gunmen in central Baghdad

Iraqi soldiers backed by US troops battled gunmen in central Baghdad today and explosions were heard in the area, police, witnesses and the US military said.

American warplanes screeched through low-hanging clouds above the Iraqi capital, and could be seen flying low over the Haifa Street area. US helicopters were circling above the area and witnesses said they had seen the aircraft firing into the combat zone.

Police said the clashes erupted when gunmen attacked Iraqi army checkpoints, and that Iraqi soldiers appealed to the US military for help. American forces sealed off roads and joined Iraqi troops in raiding houses in pursuit of the gunmen, police said.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraqi forces had decided to wipe out "terrorist hide-outs" in the Haifa Street area once and for all.

"God willing, Haifa Street will never threaten the Iraqi people again," he said.

The Iraqi defense ministry issued a statement saying eleven people were arrested, including seven Syrians. But the US military said only three people had been arrested.

A US military spokesman said American and Iraqi forces on Tuesday launched "targeted raids to capture multiple targets, disrupt insurgent activity and restore Iraqi Security Forces control of North Haifa Street."

"This area has been subject to insurgent activity which has repeatedly disrupted Iraqi Security Force operations in central Baghdad," Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl said in a statement.

Troops were receiving small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenade and indirect fire attacks during the operation, the statement said.

Haifa Street is a Sunni insurgent stronghold in the center of the Iraqi capital, just to the north of the heavily fortified Green Zone which houses the US and British Embassies, as well as many Iraqi government offices.

Fighting broke out there late Saturday, and the Iraqi army reported killing 30 militants that night — hours after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced a new open-ended security plan to oust sectarian killers from Baghdad.

Iraqi state television said eight militants, including five Sudanese fighters, were captured Saturday near Haifa Street. Police reported finding the bodies of 27 torture victims dumped there earlier in the day.

In other violence Tuesday, a policeman was wounded when a roadside bomb hit his patrol car in downtown Baghdad, police said.

Another roadside bomb missed an Iraqi army patrol in Mosul but wounded an eight-year-old girl nearby, Iraqi Col. Eidan al-Jubouri said. Mosul is 360 kilometers north-west of Baghdad

quote:

Op dinsdag 9 januari 2007 16:07 schreef Hurricane1 het volgende:

[..]

Nee de soennieten moeten niet uitgeroeit worden maar Amerika en Iran ja Inderdaad ja Amerika bezet Irak en Iran bezet Irak ook met hun moordlustige Sjiietische milities die de Soennieten uit proberen te roeien, maar de Soennieten zullen alle twee die strijden winnen, en Saddam hoefte niet weg omdat hij de enige goede leider voor Irak was.

En het stikt niet van de landen met problemen hoor, die problemen maaken jullie er zelf van.

quote:

Shia hostages hanged in streets in revenge for Saddam's execution

By Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad and Damien McElroy
Last Updated: 1:47am GMT 10/01/2007

Saddam Hussein's execution has inspired a gruesome cycle of revenge, with scores of Shia Muslims found hanged from lampposts in Baghdad.

The residents of the city's Haifa Street will long remember the events of Sunday morning. As shop owners raised their shutters and stall holders set out their stock, three minibuses roared to a halt.

Gunmen jumped out and pulled blindfolded prisoners on to the street. Ropes were tied to lampposts and electricity poles. Those hostages who resisted were shot. Others who were still alive had nooses tied around their necks and were then suspended in mid air to choke to death.
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All were left hanging, and the victims received little sympathy from those who witnessed the events.

"We watched as all these blindfolded men were hung up and some were shot in the head," Imad Atwan, a supermarket worker said.

"Altogether there were 23 bodies. We are all Sunni people here so we supported the gunmen. Some of them are the guards of our neighbourhood.

"Somebody called the police and the guards waited to shoot at them when they arrived.

"Half an hour after the police fled, they came back with the army and took the bodies away."

Capt Mohammad Salim, of the interior ministry, said: "We have gathered 102 Shia bodies and believe that 90 per cent of them were taken hostage for Saddam Hussein's execution and then found hanging from poles by ropes."

The discoveries were not limited to Haifa Street. People murdered in the same way had been found in Al Doura district and Amriya, in western Baghdad.

The interior ministry estimates that 200 Iraqis were taken hostage after Saddam was sentenced to death for ordering the murder of 148 Shia villagers in the city of Dujail after an assassination attempt in the 1980s.

"We counted the people from families that reported a phone call claiming their relatives would be killed if Saddam Hussein was hung."

With the Iraqi government poised to execute the former dictator's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, and the ex-head of Baghdad's Revolutionary Court, Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, officials expect the rest of the hostages to be executed in similar fashion.

At a second trial in Baghdad yesterday, the first order of business saw Judge Mohammed al-Ureybi strike off charges against Saddam for ordering the "Anfal" extermination campaign against Kurdish villagers.

When Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed – better known as "Chemical Ali" – attempted to read from the Koran in Saddam's memory, the court microphones were turned off.

The court heard a tape recording in which the prosecutor claimed "Chemical Ali" vowed to use weapons of mass destruction against civilians. "I will strike them with chemical weapons and kill them all," he said.

•Seven children are reported to have died worldwide after seeing video footage of the execution of Saddam, many in "play" hangings.

In the latest incident a boy of 12 hanged himself in north-east Saudi Arabia on Sunday, the Al-Hayat newspaper reported. His death followed similar hangings in Yemen, India, Algeria and America.