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By Avi Shlaim
By Melvyn P. Leffler
$13.60
$22
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U.S. forces are making a military and multimedia blitz in and around Baghdad to find the three American soldiers missing since last weekend. Planes dropped leaflets offering a $200,000 reward, the same message was broadcast over loudspeakers and local radio, and hundreds of Iraqis have been held for questioning in recent days, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, in charge of southern and eastern areas of Baghdad, delivered the grim prediction Sunday that U.S. troop casualties will rise as American forces infiltrate the biggest danger zones in and around the capital. Lynch gave his forecast on a deadly day for Americans and Iraqis alike.
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pensitoreview.com
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Twelve American soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend, six and a civilian journalist in one attack alone. Meanwhile, bombings in Baghdad and Samarra on Sunday killed at least 44 Iraqis, including a police chief and 11 of his officers.
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In the latest installment of “Hometown Baghdad,” Ausama shows the damage that callous American forces inflicted on his safe haven—his grandmother’s house. You can almost see the gears turning in his head as he ponders what kind of security the occupation provides.
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The American commander in charge of Baghdad’s Camp Cropper, which holds about 3,300 detainees, has been arrested by U.S. forces for a range of alleged offenses. Lt. Col. William Steele stands accused of providing a phone to detainees, having an inappropriate relationship with both an interpreter and a detainee’s daughter and mishandling classified information, among other charges.
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AP Photo / David Guttenfelder
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By Scott Ritter — With his security barrier in Baghdad, a wall along the Mexican border and the provocative missile defense shield plan in Europe, President Bush’s interest in barrier-building is a betrayal of his conservative forebears that does not bode well for the spread of freedom and democracy.
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American military officials reported that a suicide bomber killed nine U.S. soldiers and wounded 20 Monday. The bomber detonated a car explosive close to the soldiers’ base in Diyala province, according to the Los Angeles Times. Another American casualty was recorded in Muqdadiya the same day.
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By Eugene Robinson — Walls don’t unite, they divide. Contrary to Bush’s rosy estimation of the “surge,” the news that the U.S. is ghettoizing Baghdad is a sign of how chaotic the situation has become.
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Last week U.S. forces began building a controversial wall around a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, ostensibly to protect its residents from sectarian violence. On Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he opposed the construction and had ordered it stopped.
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Apparently hoping that good fences make good neighbors, American forces in Baghdad are erecting a concrete wall in Baghdad’s turbulent Adhamiya district to separate Sunnis from Shiites—the first barrier specifically built along sectarian lines. The wall, which will be three miles long and 12 feet high when it is finished later this month, is not a popular project among Iraqis from either side.
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The BBC’s Andrew North gives a sobering analysis of the facts on the ground in Baghdad, where frustration, desperation and fear abound among Iraqi civilians as U.S. troops struggle to contain the violence that has only grown since the surge began.
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Updated: Wednesday brought further tragic evidence that the surge isn’t working to secure Iraq: As many as 200 people were killed in a series of explosions in Baghdad. The worst of the bombings took place at a crowded market in the Sadriya district that was being reconstructed after a blast in February that claimed 130 lives.
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salon.com
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Private U.S. contractors roam the battle zones of Iraq with impunity, and the Bush administration doesn’t even know if the actions of these hired guns are governed by any code of law.
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As we enter the third month of the U.S. military buildup, the devastating suicide attacks on two bridges in Baghdad and a bloody assault on a holy city undermine the Bush administration’s claims of progress in Iraq.
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msnbc.com
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Iraq’s parliament convened for a special meeting Friday to send a “clear message” of its strength and solidarity to insurgent groups after Thursday’s fatal bombing in a government cafeteria.
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A bomb killed two Iraqi government officials and six other people and injured at least 23 when it exploded in the Iraqi parliament building’s cafeteria inside Baghdad’s Green Zone. This first bombing of the government building came just after the speaker of parliament condemned the bombing of Baghdad’s Sarafiya bridge, which partially collapsed into the Tigris River on Thursday, killing at least eight people. So much for the “surge.”
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Did the CIA torture an Iranian diplomat? The Red Cross head in Tehran says he saw wounds on Jalal Sharafi’s body—and after the Bush administration’s defense of torture, anything is possible.
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army-technology.com
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Imagine if helicopters were firing on civilians in downtown Omaha or Manhattan, and that might come close to the scene in a busy section of downtown Baghdad on Tuesday, when Black Hawk and Apache helicopters zoomed in and battled insurgent forces.
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Baghdad’s government could fall over demands from key Iraqi Cabinet ministers to end the U.S. occupation of their country. The ministers support Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, the driving force behind this week’s huge anti-American rallies in Iraq.
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A new report from the Red Cross says living conditions in Iraq, from healthcare to general safety, continue to worsen. One woman interviewed by the ICRC said it would be helpful if someone removed the bodies piling up in front of her house so her children wouldn’t have to look at them on the way to school.
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If you missed John McCain’s recent damage control session on “60 Minutes,” here are the highlights. The senator tried to blame his ill-conceived springtime-in-Baghdad campaign on his shoot-from-the-hip style. The straight-talk express, with nonstop service to a concession speech.
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Following religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr’s call, thousands of Iraqi Shiites held an anti-U.S. demonstration Monday, marking the fourth anniversary of the American occupation of Baghdad.
Updated
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Iraq’s former trade, defense and finance minister has written a scathing assessment of the war. A book by Ali A. Allawi, a prominent member of the post-Saddam regime, offers a surprisingly frank appraisal of what he calls the “monumental ignorance” and “rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance” of the occupation of his country.
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Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militia to redouble efforts to oust U.S. forces and called on Iraq’s army and police to join him. The U.S. military, meantime, said 10 American troops were killed over the weekend, including six on Sunday.
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American officials have rejected claims made by Iranian diplomat Jalal Sharafi that he was tortured “day and night” by members of the CIA after being captured in February while stationed in Baghdad.
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washingtonpost.com
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John McCain will attempt to resurrect his struggling presidential campaign by launching a coordinated effort to reaffirm his support for the Iraq war. While his rosy take on “progress” in Baghdad just blew up in his face, the candidate has effectively painted himself into a corner.
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By Joe Conason — Sen. John McCain invaded a Baghdad market with a small army this week, determined to sell the surge. But Americans and Iraqis know better: No matter how many soldiers are sacrificed to delay the fact, the war is lost.
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Iraqi police are searching for victims of mass kidnappings that occurred Wednesday. At least 43 people were abducted in two areas of Iraq. Some of the gunmen responsible for the attacks reportedly wore uniforms resembling those of Iraqi security forces.
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In this episode of “Hometown Baghdad,” Adel, Ausama and Saif comment on the violence that has become so commonplace a daylong gun battle feels more like an inconvenience than cause for alarm.
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telegraph.co.uk
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Sen. John McCain stood by his optimistic view of the surge on Sunday after visiting a Baghdad market under heavy guard with a group of Republican lawmakers wearing body armor. Southwest of Baghdad, six American soldiers were killed by roadside bombings.
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albawaba.com
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At the close of a particularly bloody week in and around Baghdad, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr railed against the U.S. on Friday, urging Iraqis to join in a protest against American “occupation, destruction and terrorism.” The date set for the protest is April 9, four years after the fall of Baghdad.
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Multiple bombings in and around Baghdad killed at least 100 people Thursday and may cast doubt upon the efficacy of the U.S.‘s “surge” strategy to crack down on violence.
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CNN’s John Roberts refutes John McCain’s idealized presentation of Iraq a day after the senator said the U.S. troop surge was working. McCain tried to claim that the media are stuck in a time warp of three-month-old bad news, but it turns out he was either misinformed, mistaken or lying about the results of the surge in Baghdad.
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Last week the Iraq war entered its fifth year. We mark the occasion by revisiting striking moments from March 19, 2003, onward. It would be impossible for one slide show to capture every iconic frame or ghastly scene. Still, these images remind us that little has changed in the years since George Bush stood before a banner reading “Mission Accomplished.”
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news.yahoo.com
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A visit to Baghdad by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took a turn for the dramatic today when an explosion went off near the building where he was holding a discussion with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. The blast, apparently caused by a mortar, shook things up in the middle of the televised event Thursday afternoon.
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The BBC’s John Simpson paints a gloomy picture of the situation in Baghdad these days, opining that the signs of death and widespread despondency and anger in the Iraqi capital “represent a major failure of the hopes and expectations which many Iraqis entertained four years ago.”
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Gen. David Petraeus sounded confident about the surge of new U.S. forces in Iraq, telling the BBC that the influx of American troops has already reduced insurgent violence in Baghdad and the volatile Anbar province. Still, this weekend’s death toll of four Iraqis and seven Americans proves Petraeus has a big job ahead of him.
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Yet another deadly attack on Iraqi pilgrims underscored the importance of this weekend’s talks between international officials about insurgent violence in Iraq. A suicide bomber in Baghdad on Sunday targeted a truck carrying Shiites going home from a pilgrimage, leaving 19 dead and 25 wounded.
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More American troops are being deployed to hot spots of insurgent activity near Baghdad, Gen. David Petraeus announced Thursday. Petraeus, just beginning his tenure as U.S. military commander in Iraq, called for future negotiations with anti-government groups as well as those in support of the new Iraqi regime.
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Moqtada al-Sadr pulled his forces off the streets of Baghdad in response to the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown, but a devastating bombing at a university Sunday and other Sunni attacks have caused the cleric to rethink his position: “Here we are, watching car bombs continue to explode to harvest thousands of innocent lives from our beloved people in the middle of a security plan controlled by an occupier.”
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