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Mar 27, 2008, 14:14 GMT
At least 69 killed, 38 wounded in Iraqi violence (Roundup)
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www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/27/mideast/iraq.php
(Note also the loss of one of two major pipelines, which will cause a jump in gas prices)
BAGHDAD: Thousands of supporters of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr marched in Baghdad on Thursday to protest against a three-day-old crackdown against his followers and to call for the downfall of the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
There were demonstrations in the districts of Sadr City, Kadhimiya and Shula. An Interior Ministry source said hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets.
'We demand the downfall of the Maliki government,' said a Sadr City resident, Hussein Abu Ali. 'It does not represent the people. It represents Bush and Cheney.'
The authorities had imposed curfews across southern Iraq in an effort to halt the spread of violence after the largest military offensive carried out by Iraqi forces without major support from U.S. or British combat units.
Saboteurs blew up one of Iraq's two main oil-export pipelines from Basra, cutting off a third of the exports from the city. The exports account for 80 percent of the government's revenue. U.S. crude oil prices rose more than $1 to around $107 a barrel after the blast.
The main riverside police base at Basra palace was hit by mortar fire Thursday morning and heavy shooting broke out in a main commercial street in the city, Iraq's second-largest, where the crackdown began on Tuesday.
'The operation is still ongoing and will continue until Basra is free from criminals and outlaws,' Major General Abdul-Aziz Mohammed, head of operations at the Iraqi Defense Ministry, said in Baghdad.
Clashes have spread in the past two days to the southern cities of Kut, Hilla, Diwaniya, Amara and Kerbala, as well as to several Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. Basra's police chief survived an assassination attempt overnight. A roadside bomb killed three of his bodyguards.
Current events demonstrate just how much of the reduction in violence during the surge period could be theoretically attributable to the cease-fire Iraq has enjoyed. Technically it's still in force, but it sure looks like things have been pushed out of control. Iraq ends up in a power striggle between al-Maliki representing the official government, seen as fronting Bush and Cheney by many of the militants they're fighting.
al-Maliki has perviously called off U.S. troops' efforts to get Basra under control, and the British finally withdrew sometime back - and I doubt they're coming back, as the Labour government has its hands full with domestic problems, and the resurgence of the Conservatives.
I'm assuming that this latest action stems from Cheney's recent visit, and the Mahdi now see al-Maliki as nothing but a Bush puppet.
Our own economic news is on the minds of the U.S. public, and the question is how much entanglement by U.S. troops they'll put up with if the civil war in Iraq busts loose. al-Maliki is supposed to be battling al Qaeda in the North, so this would be a second front to control. McCain will have a tougher time retaining support for his Presidency.
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abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=4535114&page=1
(Key paragraph): 'Mahdi fury is focused on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who is personally overseeing an operation against the militias in Basra. The crisis over the control of Basra is seen as a test of the government's ability to take over security.'
Defiant Shiites flexed their muscle today by sending tens of thousands of supporters into the streets of Baghdad, raining shells into the Green Zone and holding the Iraqi army at bay in the key oil city of Basra.
Amid all the turmoil, a bomb blasted a crucial oil pipeline in Basra, triggering a massive fire and threatening the country's ability to export oil. The pipeline blast sent the world's price of oil to $107 a barrel.
The growing anger over the government's attempt in Basra to crack down on the forces of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatens to end a truce with the powerful Mahdi Army. The Madhi Army has twice embroiled U.S. troops in vicious fighting in much of southern Iraq. Another uprising could trigger a virtual civil war and bring into doubt the Bush administration's ability to withdraw U.S. troops.
Sadr's supporters lashed out at the U.S. and the Iraqi government today. Rockets and mortars fired from their Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City showered the Green Zone with rockets and mortar shells for the fourth straight day. One landed next to the U.S. Embassy compound.
Thick, black smoke billowed from inside the heavily fortified home to the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government, but no injuries were reported in today's barrage. Since the Green Zone attacks have started, however, one U.S. soldier, two American civilians and an Iraqi soldier have been wounded and an American financial analyst has been killed.
Anger over the Basra crackdown has spread across southern Iraq where the Mahdi Army is strongest and is vying for control with government forces as well as rival Shiite groups. Seventeen deaths were reported in scattered fighting around Sadr City and 60 were killed fighting in the southern city of Hilla.
'I'm assuming that this latest action stems from Cheney's recent visit, and the Mahdi now see al-Maliki as nothing but a Bush puppet.'
Get over your BDS. You really have things twisted around.
Sadr and Maliki are going to fight for power. There are 2 main shiite factions and neither want to share much. Bush/Cheney is a temporary sideshow for these guys. The prize is Iraq and billions in wealth.
Trying to make Bush the fountainhead of all that occurs in Iraq is really naive.
Hopefully Maliki would not have started this fight if he wasn't prepared to finish it.
We'll see what happens.
Sounds like a coup attempt in the making and al-Maliki is going to do it Saddam style. Great, this is what it has come to. Turns out Saddam had good judgement, I guess. Coups are always risky for the power to be because to deal with them (big ones anyways) effectively they need to be crushed genocide-style. Good luck with the bloodletting. Glad the U.S. can team up with the winning side this time, uh, I guess. Bring out the flying gun ships!
Give us some of the bullcrap propaganda you're so famous for; where you tell us how well things are going, and how victory has been achieved.
Tell us how well the U.S. economy is going ... whoops!
money.cnn.com/2008/03/27/news/economy/gdp/?postversion=2008032710
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Economic growth was nearly flat in the last three months of 2007, according to a government report released Thursday.
The Commerce Department's final reading on gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic activity, grew at an annual rate of 0.6%, adjusted for inflation, in the fourth quarter. The reading was unchanged from the preliminary fourth-quarter reading and in line with economists' expectations.
---------
Tell us what a stable leader we have ... whoops!
www.tomflocco.com/fs/SecretServIntelSay.htm
Washington—November 17, 2005—TomFlocco.com—Secret Service members attached to White House domestic security, FBI and CIA agents, and written national security field reports all confirm that President Bush has been using drugs which could be affecting his performance as the nation’s war-time commander-in-chief.
Multiple federal agents having direct knowledge and access to Bush’s medical records say the President has switched from using Ritalin to taking Prozac while also succumbing to periodic alcoholic binges which have led to tirades and explosive personal conduct among White House aides, absent required random drug testing of all public employees and elected officials.
archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/13/bush.fainting/
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush fainted for a brief time Sunday in the residence of the White House while eating a pretzel and watching a professional football game on television, the White House said.
Bush's physician, Air Force Col. Richard Tubb, said the president blacked out and fell to the floor from a couch but appeared to have recovered quickly.
RE:
'Sadr and Maliki are going to fight for power. There are 2 main shiite factions and neither want to share much. Bush/Cheney is a temporary sideshow for these guys. The prize is Iraq and billions in wealth.
Trying to make Bush the fountainhead of all that occurs in Iraq is really naive. Hopefully Maliki would not have started this fight if he wasn't prepared to finish it.'
-------------
Since Al-Maliki has not accomplished anything meaningful since taking office, at least success would be a first for him. How's Mosul going? Kirkuk?
The upcoming provincial elections are the primary trigger for this - the Shia groups in Basra have been funding projects for the poor (just as Hamas did in Gaza when they bear Fatah). I notice you did not mention those elections at all, since you're just spouting more of the rockheaded ignorance that got us into this position. What's naive here are your comments.
If Bush is not the catalyst, then who the hell is? Whose policies are these? Whose failed strategy has led to this? Who let idiot Bremer dismiss the Iraqi army, only to see them become the Sunni insurgency?
The key to the current crisis would be getting al-Sadr to reverse his recent statements, and to tamp down the violence now spreading out of the South towards Baghdad, where the Shia have taken over quite a lot of territory which was formerly Sunni-occupied. The question is whether al-Sadr actually has tangible control over his own forces, or if the splinter groups he was trying to get rid of now wield influence of their own.
www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Brinkley-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogi n
(From 'The Bush Tragedy')
'Cheney did not share Rove’s belief in Bush’s great political gifts. Instead, Weisberg argues, he saw in the new president an easily manipulable vehicle for his own longstanding agenda. He did not strive to be Bush’s friend, but he became the president’s continual and loyal courtier. “Cheney had figured out how to play on the son’s sense of his reborn self, flattering the maturity of his judgment,” Weisberg notes. “There was no need to spell out the implicit proposition: You have the self-confidence and inner security to rely on me.” Cheney was not alone in persuading Bush (who needed little persuasion) to launch the disastrous war in Iraq, but without Cheney the conflict might never have overcome the opposition of many in the administration. Cheney was even more central to some of the other damaging actions of Bush’s presidency: the assaults on due process and civil liberties; the defense of torture; the heightened secrecy; the contempt for international law and international organizations; and, perhaps most of all, the imperial view of the presidency, based on Cheney’s theory of the “unitary executive” and (in Weisberg’s words) his “lifelong goal” of “making the presidency stronger.”'
Iraq is not one country and it certainly will never know democracy. If not Saddam, than someone else from one faction controlling the rest. Why waste US lives and money on a lost cause?
Just Nukum and be over with it.
We should have helped Saddam take over Iran - it's just what these people needed. Someone to theaten them and keep them in order.
RE: 'Iraq is not one country and it certainly will never know democracy. If not Saddam, than someone else from one faction controlling the rest. Why waste US lives and money on a lost cause?'
---------------
A look at the history of Iraq and how it's leaders were installed show how the country was held together by strong leaders (and that included controlling the Shia majority) - that's why Bush Sr. left Saddam in power in 1991. The question over the next few days is whether the whole thing will fly apart, further strengthening Iran's position (another reason Bush Sr. left Saddam in charge).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq
'At the end of World War I, the League of Nations granted the area to the United Kingdom as a mandate. It initially formed two former Ottoman vilayets (regions): Baghdad, and Basra into a single country in August 1921. Five years later, in 1926, the northern vilayet of Mosul was added, forming the territorial boundaries of the modern Iraqi state.'
A government spokesman in Baghdad was just captured, and the demonstrations are in Sadr City, a Shia area. This is strictly now a Shia-on-Shia conflict, despite the cease-fire of al-Sadr. If al-Maliki exerts too much pressure, he could theoretically generate enough resentment that a true armed conflict could break out, imperiling U.S. diplomats and others in the Green Zone, which is only a few square miles in area.
The last paragraph included below describes the politics of the situation.
=================
www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq28mar28,1,3783015.stor y
The bold mid-afternoon kidnapping of Tahseen Sheikhly is a sign of the unrest spreading since Iraqi security forces started clamping down on Shiite militiamen in Basra.
BAGHDAD -- Rockets and mortars rained down on Baghdad today, and a high-ranking Iraqi government spokesman was abducted from his home, as violence continued in the wake of a crackdown on Shiite Muslim militiamen.
Scores of people have died since the fighting erupted early Tuesday, including at least 51 in the southern oil port city of Basra, where the Iraqi offensive began. At least 15 people, most of them civilians, were reported killed in attacks today in Baghdad and nearby Babil province to the south. Skirmishes also continued in Basra, where a pipeline carrying oil to the city's port was hit by a major blast that sent flames soaring into the sky.
In Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, thousands of supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr marched through the streets demanding the ouster of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and accusing him of targeting Sadr loyalists in the Basra offensive. Maliki, meanwhile, rejected negotiations with what he called 'criminal gangs' to end the violence.
'Their only choice is to hand over their weapons and sign pledges that they will henceforth abide by the law and return to the right path,' said Maliki, who Wednesday gave militiamen 72 hours to put down their weapons.
Police said gunmen attacked the east Baghdad home of Tahseen Sheikhly, a spokesman for the Baghdad security plan launched in February 2007 to stabilize the capital. According to officials in the Interior Ministry, which oversees police, the attackers shot and wounded at least one of Sheikhly's guards and ransacked his home before fleeing with the spokesman.
Sheikhly has appeared frequently at news conferences alongside U.S. officials discussing what they consider progress of the security plan. The bold abduction, in the middle of the afternoon, was a sign of the spreading insecurity since the Basra offensive began.
The Iraqi prime minister and U.S. officials have denied Sadr's charges that the operation is politically motivated and aimed at crushing the cleric and his supporters ahead of provincial elections in October. They insist the effort is aimed at rogue elements who have refused to abide by a cease-fire that Sadr called for his militiamen last August.
(Iran's influence is all over this, and while they support al-Sadr, they don't want his influence to grow to the point that they cannot control him - read the details in the link itself)
edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/27/basra.analysis/
(Key points)
'Iran's very good at putting pressure on you, forcing you to split, and anything that squeezes out the side, Iran picks up and turns into hardline factions,' Ware said. 'That's exactly what's happened to Muqtada. He's had purge after purge after purge of belligerent commanders, and they've all been swept up by Iran.
'And now the most lethal attacks on U.S. forces, the most coordinated attacks on U.S. forces, the most daring attacks on U.S. forces in the country are committed by Iranian-backed breakaway elements of Muqtada's militia faction.'
The violence in Basra -- which has spread to Shiite areas throughout the country, including Baghdad -- is a kind of fighting Americans are unaccustomed to seeing, said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald Sheppard, CNN's senior military analyst.
'This is intra-Shia. This is not Sunni vs. Shia, this is not civil war, this is not sectarian violence, it's intra-Shia politics for control of the government,' he said.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is trying to hold together his political alliance -- an alliance that includes the political wings of the militias he's fighting, Sheppard said.
'If this alliance breaks apart because of the fighting, you've got chaos within the Parliament,' Sheppard said.
'Multiple federal agents having direct knowledge and access to Bush’s medical records say the President has switched from using Ritalin to taking Prozac while also succumbing to periodic alcoholic binges which have led to tirades and explosive personal conduct among White House aides, absent required random drug testing of all public employees and elected officials.'
Heh heh - do you really believe that? You need to get back on YOUR meds...
I think its really too early to tell what the outcome of current crisis/conflict in Iraq. If Maliki started this before he could finish it, well then it will cost him (everyone). It certainly will clarify which units are loyal and if the Iraqi military is capable of conducting major operations. If he is able to keep a lid on things in Baghdad while he crushes the extra-governmental militias in Basra, it will be a huge step forward. Before the smoke clears, people will try their best to paint a picture of chaos/failure. Until the government is able to establish itself as THE authority with a monopoly on force, then there will not be significant progress that could lead to US disengagement.
This was a necessary step. Let's just hope the timing was right.
Gaiacomm International working on IED defense..
'Multiple federal agents having direct knowledge and access to Bush’s medical records say the President has switched from using Ritalin to taking Prozac while also succumbing to periodic alcoholic binges which have led to tirades and explosive personal conduct among White House aides, absent required random drug testing of all public employees and elected officials.'
Heh heh - do you really believe that? You need to get back on YOUR meds...
(Bush has a clear history of drug use and alcoholism, and in times of stress, there's a tendency to backslide. The White House has no drug-testing policy. I think Bush is paranoid, and not in touch with reality.)
--------------------------------------------
'I think its really too early to tell what the outcome of current crisis/conflict in Iraq. If Maliki started this before he could finish it, well then it will cost him (everyone). It certainly will clarify which units are loyal and if the Iraqi military is capable of conducting major operations. If he is able to keep a lid on things in Baghdad while he crushes the extra-governmental militias in Basra, it will be a huge step forward. Before the smoke clears, people will try their best to paint a picture of chaos/failure. Until the government is able to establish itself as THE authority with a monopoly on force, then there will not be significant progress that could lead to US disengagement.
This was a necessary step. Let's just hope the timing was right.'
(That's a very reasonable analysis - but I think we're seeing a lot of interference by Iran, and backing of certain Shia factions in Iraq. This has been building for a long time, and the U.S. is not in the best position to offer military backing for al-Maliki at this point. The more we interfere, the more al-Maliki is seen as being propped up by the U.S., rather than Iraq's elected leader. What it DOES point out is that al Qaeda is a minor problem in scale in terms of the potential damage from the Shia. This is all a leadup to Petraeus' next testimony in early April, and this Shia situation is not his preferred backdrop. Bush, even today, is deflecting from the current problem and using isolated statistics to attempt to talk about something else, while not acknowledging the corruption in Iraq's ministries, and their loss of income from the pipeline bombing. Getting Iraq to BUDGET, and getting them to SPEND, are two different issues).
(Even worse is Bush's blaming Congress for 'threatening' Iraq's leaders. If that's not paranoia, I don't know what is; and I doubt that the American public is buying it.)
www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSN27359266
'DAYTON, Ohio, March 27 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush defended the pace of political and economic reform in Iraq on Thursday and accused members of the U.S. Congress of 'hectoring' Baghdad and threatening its leaders.'
www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080327/GJLIFESTYLES_01/9267010 44/-1/FOSLIFESTYLES
U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel writes in a new book that the United States needs independent leadership and possibly another political party, while suggesting the Iraq war might be remembered as one of the five biggest blunders in history.
Hagel said that despite holding one of the Senate's strongest records of support for President Bush, his standing as a Republican has been called into question because of his opposition to what he deems 'a reckless foreign policy ... that is divorced from a strategic context.'
Hagel, who's been a harsh critic of the war since 2003, writes that the invasion of Iraq was 'the triumph of the so-called neoconservative ideology, as well as Bush administration arrogance and incompetence.'
The Vietnam veteran said he had hoped the lessons from that war would give the nation's leaders perspective before troops were sent to Iraq.
'To the astonishment of those of us who lived through the agony of Vietnam, these lessons were ignored in the run-up to the Iraq War,' he writes.
Hagel said Vice President Dick Cheney and others 'cherry-picked intelligence' and used fear to intensify 'war sloganeering.'
During visits to the Middle East in December 2002, Hagel said, Israel's top security officials asked, 'Do you really understand what you are getting yourselves into?'
Hagel said Bush personally assured him that he would exhaust diplomatic avenues before committing troops to Iraq. The senator said he voted for the war resolution based on those assurances, but regrets the vote because it's now clear that lawmakers were presented with lies and wishful thinking.
Last year, Hagel was the only member of his party on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support a nonbinding measure critical of Bush's decision to dispatch an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq.
Particularly of Shiites! It is a victory for Islam in actuality, as the crusaders realize that, in spite of ruining the teachings of Islam through agents like bin laden wahabies, saudie arabia, they cannot stop the on slought of Islam.
SO THEY HAVE ADOPTED THE POLICY OF SHIITE GENOCIDE! BUT THEY FORGET THAT POWERS OF ALMIGHTY GOD, GOD OF JESUS SON OF MARY, MOSES, ABRAHAM, AND ALIKE, ARE JUST UNLIMITED.
'...switched from using Ritalin to taking Prozac while also succumbing to periodic alcoholic binges...'
'SO THEY HAVE ADOPTED THE POLICY OF SHIITE GENOCIDE!'
So many raving kooks no wonder the world is a mess...
Only an idiot would lump together Bush's admitted past use of drugs and alcohol, and some fanatical Islamic nutcake.
Welcome, idiot.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_substance_abuse_controversy
An editorial letter by Graydon Carter in Vanity Fair for January, 2008, quotes a new book about Bush:
'a new book by former British foreign secretary Lord Owen may supply a clue. In The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair, and the Intoxication of Power (ISBN 1842752197), Owen recalls the time in 2002 when the commander in chief collapsed while sitting on a sofa watching a football game. (Official cause: he’d choked on a pretzel.) The presidential head hit a table on the way to the floor, he suffered an abrasion on the left side of his face, and a blood sample was rushed to Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore. Owen says he was told by a British doctor who had visited Johns Hopkins that lab technicians there found that the blood contained significant amounts of alcohol.'
www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Brinkley-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogi n&oref=slogin
(This was always a risk; seeing Shiite members of the 'official' Army defect to join militias, along with arms and vehicles. The British press is pointing out the failure of their own military to secure Basra when they had the chance; and giving more details)
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3635827.ece
Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, flew down to Saddam Hussain’s former palace in central Basra to take personal control of the offensive, led by 30,000 Iraqi troops backed by para-military police.
But reports from the city suggested that the Iraqi forces had failed to make any significant inroads and a deadline imposed for the militias to disarm was ignored. Instead Iraqi police were defecting to the militia ranks.
Mr al-Maliki had hoped to lead his army to victory in Shia militia strongholds in Basra, Iraq’s oil city in the south. Instead, Iraq’s Shia prime minister was left with the prospect of disaster as district after district of his own capital fell to the rival Mahdi Army.
Residents of Basra complained that water and electricity had been turned off in the three main areas besieged by the Iraqi Army. Estimates of the death toll in Basra are as high as 200, with hundreds more wounded.
www.csmonitor.com/2008/0328/p25s01-woiq.html
The US-funded Arab television station Al Hurra reported that a contingent of US Marines was now in Basra's city center and involved mainly in sniper operations. This could not be immediately confirmed with the US military. But several residents reported that they saw snipers posted on roof tops especially in the neighborhood of Tamimyah.
The US military has so far insisted that only US advisers and so-called 'transition teams' embedded with Iraqi troops are in Basra. Coalition aircraft are providing air cover and surveillance support.
Al Sharqiya TV, a private Iraqi station often critical of the Iraqi government, showed what it said were exclusive images of masked militiamen – some of them in military fatigues – parading in Humvees they had seized from Iraqi government forces in Basra. The words 'Mahdi Army' and 'Mahdi's Followers' were spray painted in black on the white-washed vehicles. There was also footage of what looked like the remains of burnt Iraqi Army vehicles. The militiamen chanted and danced, flashing victory signs.
Yahya al-Taiee, a Basra-based lawyer and member of the Sadr movement, said many Iraqi soldiers have surrendered themselves and their vehicles to the Mahdi Army. His claims could not be immediately verified.
'The White House has no drug-testing policy. I think Bush is paranoid, and not in touch with reality.'
It couldn't have been made any more clearer throughout our interaction that the same holds true for you. You are a sick person who needs to have people feel contempt for him. I am not kidding, you need to get help because you are out of touch with reality.
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