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By Rebecca Skloot
$15.21
$10.99
$22
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AP Photo
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Two women were shot and killed on Tuesday when private security contractors guarding a convoy of four cars in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood opened fire on the women’s Oldsmobile as it moved toward the convoy. Unfortunately, it was not the day’s only violent episode in Iraq. According to The Washington Post, a series of bombings claimed at least 34 lives in and around Baghdad.
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AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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By Robert Scheer — How did it come to be that the ostensibly best-educated and most refined representatives of the United States in Iraq are guarded by gun-toting mercenaries who kill innocent civilians? More urgently, why did State Department employees and their bosses in Washington tolerate—and pay to conceal—the wanton murder conducted on their watch?
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Well, this particular motion picture decidedly won’t be the feel-good family drama of the year—and that’s just one more excellent reason to go see “Heavy Metal in Baghdad,” an inside glimpse into the Baghdad metalhead scene, when it (hopefully) comes to a theater near you. Meanwhile, check out the theatrical trailer here.
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uncorrelated.com
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Sen. Joe Biden’s plan to divide Iraq along sectarian lines has had an unintended consequence: It has united much of the country, Shiite and Sunni alike, in opposition to the measure.
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unitedcats.wordpress.com
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Any lingering question as to whether Blackwater USA security contractors were to blame in the Sept. 16 shootout in Baghdad that left 11 Iraqis dead and 12 wounded may be cleared up by a videotape of the incident, which was reportedly filmed from a nearby police station.
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Macleans.ca
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Chances are pretty darn slim that this is President Bush’s favorite cover model moment: Canadian magazine Maclean’s whipped up quite a provocative picture for its latest cover story, which makes the claim that “a desperate Washington is reaching out to the late dictator’s henchmen.”
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By Marie Cocco — There is no set piece more emblematic of the tragic farce that is the American involvement in Iraq than the grotesque episode of Blackwater USA and the killing of civilians in Baghdad—at least nine and as many as 28—on Sunday.
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jfkclub.com
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The State Department has restricted all U.S. diplomats to the Green Zone in Baghdad while it conducts a security review, presumably inspired by the suspension of its preferred mercenary bodyguards.
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Rep. Henry Waxman has accused the State Department’s top oversight official of looking out for the best interests of the Bush administration, and not the American taxpayer. A number of current and former subordinates of the State Department’s inspector general contacted Waxman to report interference with investigations into fraud and corruption in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
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iraqfact.com
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By Robert Scheer — The latest Blackwater USA scandal, in which privately contracted American security troops gunned down innocent bystanders in Baghdad, might cause the Iraqi government to finally give firms like Blackwater their marching orders—if only it could command the power to order these mercenary operations out of the country.
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change-links.org
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The Iraqi government has ordered employees of the North Carolina-based security firm Blackwater USA to leave the country and is opening a criminal investigation following Sunday’s deadly shootout in Baghdad, during which a group of Blackwater contractors escorting a convoy of U.S. officials opened fire on nearby civilians.
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By Will Durst — Political comedian Will Durst provides the answers to some frequently asked (and vexing) questions about Gen. David Petraeus’ testimony.
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other officials have condemned the actions of security contractors who were guarding a State Department convoy that came under fire in downtown Baghdad on Sunday. The unnamed contractors are accused of firing indiscriminately and escalating the violence, which killed nine civilians. Update: The security firm in question was Blackwater USA.
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By Eugene Robinson — Gen. David Petraeus likes to describe the Iraq he envisions as a patchwork quilt. You establish security in a neighborhood over here, bring peace to a village over there, create more and more of these scraps of relative tranquility—and then stitch the heterogeneous pieces together. The problem is with the seams. They have a tendency to unravel.
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By Joe Conason — Following two days of carefully staged theatrics on Capitol Hill and cable television, the essential facts about Iraq remain unchanged. Despite the big charts and the blustering fanfare highlighted by Fox News, neither Gen. David H. Petraeus nor Ambassador Ryan Crocker could convincingly claim that the American military escalation in Iraq is achieving its original goals.
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The definition of “progress” in Iraq clearly depends upon whom you ask—while the Petraeuses and Crockers of the world are claiming that the U.S. troop “surge” is (slowly) showing signs of success, a BBC/ABC/NHK poll of 2,000 Iraqis suggests quite a different story.
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This week’s highly anticipated Iraq progress report will no doubt be highly predictable, says The New Yorker’s George Packer, who’s more concerned about the longer view than America’s current leadership, whom he considers to be “trapped in the eternal present” in ways that can only spell trouble for Iraqis.
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AP Photo / Charles Dharapak
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By Scott Ritter — Katie Couric’s “entertainment-as-news” excursion to Baghdad, Ritter argues, is symptomatic of an America that consistently refuses to properly identify and address the real problems in Iraq.
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Well, it’s not as bad as last week’s leaked version, but the Government Accountability Office’s Iraq progress report is still pretty grim. According to the GAO’s findings, the current Iraqi government has failed to meet 11 out of 18 benchmarks set last May by U.S. officials.
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Being heavily in debt is prompting some U.S. military members to volunteer to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. Take Air Force Capt. Nick Sloan, who admits that the need to get out of debt was a significant factor in his choice to go to Iraq.
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Three U.S. senators and a member of the House got a taste of life in the combat zone when their military cargo plane came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades as they left Baghdad en route to Jordan Thursday night.
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“The Daily Show,” on the scene in Iraq, goes to town on the ridiculous yet timelessly entertaining assertion of Rep. Mike Pence that a particularly deadly Baghdad market he visited was “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.”
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AP Photo / Dusan Vranic
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By Anonymous — A self-confessed “overpaid Department of Defense contractor” writes about his experiences living and working in Baghdad and the suffering of his Iraqi friends, who risk life and limb every day to get by in the “sinking ship” of Iraq.
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The Security Council is set to approve an expansion of the U.N.‘s presence in Iraq. Meanwhile, the organization’s staff association, representing thousands of employees around the globe, voted unanimously to oppose the measure and recall U.N. workers already in Baghdad.
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AP Photo / Karim Kadim
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An overnight attack carried out by American and Iraqi forces against an alleged militant cell killed 32 people in Sadr City, U.S. military sources reported Wednesday. The raid targeted members of the Mahdi Army militia believed to be smuggling weapons and working in tandem with Iranian militants against U.S. forces, but other sources claimed that women and children numbered among the dead.
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AP Photo / Irwin Fedriansyah
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At least some of the gunfire heard in Baghdad on Sunday was celebratory, for a change: Jubilant Iraqis flouted a government ban by firing shots into the air following Iraq’s 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia in the final match of the Asian Cup soccer tournament.
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According to the testimony of two American civilian contractors, the construction of the massive U.S. Embassy in Iraq involved the tacit abduction and abuse of migrant workers. One contractor testified that he was told to furtively escort a group of Filipinos onto a Baghdad-bound plane even though their tickets read “Dubai,” while another called working conditions at the $600-million project “deplorable.”
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iraqsport.com
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Multiple car bombings killed at least 50 Iraqis in Baghdad on Wednesday as thousands celebrated a victory in the Asian Cup that advanced Iraq to the finals for the first time.
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Iraqi officials are attributing the deaths of 29 people in Duwailiya, in Diyala province north of Baghdad, to al-Qaida militants who disguised themselves in military uniforms and surrounded the village before opening fire Tuesday on men, women and children. This latest report follows other news of widespread violence as the U.S. troop “surge” continues.
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Looks like war isn’t hell for everyone, at least not for some employees of KBR, a company that contracts with the U.S. government. KBR, once a Halliburton subsidiary, allegedly put its workers in larger than warranted living spaces and served meals that cost more than necessary under a government contract, The Washington Post reported.
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Living inside Baghdad’s Green Zone seems to encourage a dangerous disconnect between its occupants—American or Iraqi—and the chaotic and violent reality outside its bounds. American journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes a sobering look inside for the UK paper The Sunday Times.
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Saturday was a particularly deadly day in and around Baghdad. Eight U.S. soldiers were killed by explosions or gunfire in different parts of the capital, raising the fatality count to 30 in the last six days, according to The Washington Post.
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The U.S. troop surge is topping out in terms of numbers—and, unfortunately, the death toll for American forces and Iraqis is also climbing this month. The BBC reports that 14 U.S. soldiers were reported killed Wednesday and Thursday, and suicide bombings continued to claim lives elsewhere in the country.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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A devastating explosion near a Shiite mosque in the center of Baghdad has killed at least 78 people and injured more than 200. The mosque’s imam said the attack was carried out by “sick souls” who targeted worshipers as they left the prayer hall. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that such attacks have “scarred the beautiful face of Baghdad by destroying the religious landmarks it has known over the centuries.”
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AP Photo / Andrew Gray, pool
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It’s now five months into the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, and although Defense Secretary Robert Gates (center) claimed during his visit to Baghdad this weekend that it’s still too early to tell if the surge is working, one U.S. military higher-up, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, admitted that only 40 percent of Iraq’s capital city is consistently safe.
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AP Photo / Charlie Riedel
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By Eugene Robinson — Here’s a surprise: Remember how we were told that if we just waited until the fall, we’d see that George W. Bush’s “surge” was working in Iraq? Well, now it turns out that we shouldn’t expect answers in September after all.
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Further evidence that the U.S. military buildup in Iraq is failing to quell violence in the country came Wednesday with the release of a Pentagon report detailing the sobering statistics about widespread bloodshed in Baghdad and other areas.
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Dr. Dahlia Wasfi joins Robert Scheer and James Harris to discuss the past, present and future of the Iraq war. Wasfi (pictured), who has twice visited Iraq during the occupation, says it is only a matter of time and casualties before the U.S. leaves: “It’s really simple: You bring the troops home, they stop dying there.” Update: Full transcript now available.
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Top congressional Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid sent President Bush a pre-emptive strike in the form of a letter Wednesday, prior to a meeting with him later in the day, declaring that the “surge” strategy in Iraq was a failure on several fronts. Reid and Pelosi’s challenge came on the same day as news broke about an “indefinite” curfew imposed in Baghdad.
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AP Photo / Karim Kadim, file
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By Robert Scheer — What would have happened if, by some twist of political fate, Sen. Joe Lieberman had assumed the U.S.‘s highest office instead of George W. Bush? Judging by his hawkish leanings of late, particularly vis-à-vis Iran, the man who ran alongside Al Gore in 2000 proves the point that not every (once) Democratic candidate would have been better than Bush.
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Dr. Dahlia Wasfi joins Robert Scheer and James Harris to discuss the past, present and future of the Iraq war. Wasfi, who has twice visited Iraq during the occupation, says it is only a matter of time and casualties before the U.S. leaves: “It’s really simple: You bring the troops home, they stop dying there.”
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A group of U.S. troops were posted at a checkpoint on a bridge near Baghdad Sunday when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb from below, killing three American soldiers and wounding six others. The BBC reports that this latest attack brings the death toll of U.S. troops to at least 28 already this month.
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Seven American troops were killed in half a dozen separate attacks around Iraq on Saturday. Roadside bombs, the biggest problem for U.S. troops, were responsible for most of the deaths. May was the deadliest month for U.S. troops since November 2004.
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Joe Lieberman made an unexpected jaunt to Iraq this week and praised the progress he saw in the form of—listen up—a bustling market. But the troops recruited to have lunch with the ex-Democrat had a different take: “It just seems like we drive around and wait to get shot at.”
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American and Iraqi troops raided houses and buildings in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood on Wednesday to arrest five suspected members of a Shiite terror cell following Tuesday’s brazen kidnapping of a British computer expert and his four bodyguards from a government building in the capital city.
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Security contractor Blackwater USA was involved in two shootings in Baghdad last week. After firing on and killing an Iraqi driver, Blackwater guards found themselves in a standoff with heavily armed Iraqi Interior Ministry forces. A senior U.S. adviser said Iraq-American relations at the ministry have suffered greatly since the incident.
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AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
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Nearly 1,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines have died in Iraq since last Memorial Day, and President Bush has said he expects the surge in casualties to continue through the summer: “It could be a bloody—it could be a very difficult August.”
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Recent morgue figures show a rise in sectarian violence in Iraq, challenging the effectiveness of the U.S. troop surge and a three-month old security crackdown. The Bush administration had cited a drop in violence as evidence of success, but many attributed the relative lull in killings, now but a memory, to an order from Moqtada al-Sadr for his militia to temporarily stand down.
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Two more members of the news media have sacrificed their lives covering the Iraq war. Cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz and sound technician Saif Laith Yousuf, both Iraqi journalists working for ABC in Baghdad, were abducted Thursday and found dead at the city morgue Friday, according to an ABC executive.
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dailymail.co.uk
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Tony Blair is getting one last glimpse of the mess he helped make before stepping down. The outgoing prime minister’s staff says the purpose of Blair’s Baghdad visit is to highlight the connection between security and political stability, but we can’t help but notice an emerging trend. Remember Donald Rumsfeld’s farewell tour of Iraq?
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