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By J.R. Moehringer
$27.99
By Daniel Ellsberg
$101.79
$18
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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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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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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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Reese Erlich and Muhammad Sahimi —
The writers explain why a pre-emptive attack on Iran would backfire, and they challenge the Bush administration’s claims that Iran is supplying explosives to Iraqi insurgent groups.
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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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news.yahoo.com
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has blamed Saddam loyalists for a market bombing that killed at least 130 people and injured 305. The market is in a predominantly Shiite district. Meanwhile, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani made an appeal for unity.
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U.S. and Iraqi soldiers killed 250 militants Sunday in a day of fighting in Najaf. According to an Iraqi official, the battle with the previously unknown militia involved tanks, jets and helicopters, one of which was shot down.
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By Joe Conason — Should the United States attack Iran, which side would the Iraqi government support? The answer to that simple question is far from clear, despite the thousands of lives and billions of dollars we have sacrificed to support the ruling coalition in Baghdad.
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President Bush has authorized the CIA to take covert action in Lebanon against Hezbollah, according to a secret presidential finding obtained by The Daily Telegraph. As part of the policy, the CIA and other intelligence groups will subvert Hezbollah’s influence by funding activists who are supportive of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government.
(h/t: Largest Minority)
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npr.org
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President Bush may have assurances that Nouri al-Maliki will not tolerate sectarian violence in Iraq, but the prime minister’s refusal to publicly confront his militant backers suggests he may be more interested in consolidating Shiite power than fostering stability.
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Tensions in Iraq were already running high with the execution of Saddam Hussein and the ongoing violence there. Now Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has scolded Sunni clerics for warning that militias were planning to attack Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad.
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msnbcmedia.msn.com
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Muqtada al-Sadr may call for a monthlong unilateral cease-fire amid the formation of a new political coalition in Iraq. Sadr is set to meet Thursday with key Shiite political leaders and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to discuss his role, or lack thereof, in the changing political landscape.
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nytimes.com
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Iraqi politicians have been meeting, with help from the Bush administration, to see if they can form a new coalition in Parliament to sideline the troublemaking Moqtada al-Sadr. The new group of Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites would have to attract moderates to find a way to handle Sadr’s militia, with its estimated 60,000 men.
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news.yahoo.com
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Hezbollah has threatened an escalation in its campaign against Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora unless he resigns. Hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah supporters took to the streets on Sunday, but Christian and Sunni leaders appear unlikely to bow to the pressure.
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greatestcities.com
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Private Saudi Arabians have allegedly donated millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq, according to the Iraq Study Group and Iraqi officials. It’s an open secret that Iran has supported Shiite militants, causing some to worry that Iraq’s sectarian strife could develop into a regional quagmire.
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epic-usa.org
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Americans weren’t the only ones watching election returns late into the night. Iraqi politicians, dependent on America for money, power and protection, held a meeting to debate the impact of a Democratic Congress.
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By Chris Hedges — The former New York Times Mideast bureau chief argues that America’s failure in Iraq and Israel’s humiliation in Lebanon have emboldened and empowered those in the Arab world who seek to topple U.S.-backed regimes in the Middle East and cripple the Jewish state.
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Gen. George W. Casey announced that he is considering sending more U.S. troops to Iraq in order to help quell the violence. This is a major reversal of the military withdrawal that started last December. The reductions stopped in June when the violence in Baghdad showed no signs of abatement.
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Composite: Blair Golson
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Many of the elected officials and law enforcement heads playing leading roles in America’s counter-terrorism fight still don’t know the difference between Iraq’s two main religious groups.
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UPDATE: The numbers keep rising.
It’s carnage so grisly that the largest Sunni group demanded that the Shiite-led government take steps to disarm militias. The AP called it a “violent day even by the standards of Baghdad.”
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Flickr/YourLocalDave
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Iraqis have been taking great pains to conceal their identities in order to avoid sectarian violence. Because personal information, such as a name and province of origin, can hint at whether they are Shiite or Sunni, the fake ID trade is booming and worried Iraqis sometimes even change their license plates.
Posted on Sep 6, 2006
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Civilian casualties in Iraq rose by 50% during the last three months, according to a report released by the Pentagon. The report on security and stability in Iraq examined the sectarian violence that grips the country, saying ?Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq? but that the fighting does not meet the ?strict? definition of a civil war.
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Illustration by Peter Scheer
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Shiite militias have been conducting death raids on Iraqi hospitals, signaling an escalation in the sectarian violence that plagues the country. Many Sunnis, some seriously wounded, have been forced to seek medical attention at home, or in illegal clinics.
Posted on Aug 30, 2006
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“Iran is pressing Shiite militias here to step up attacks against the American-led forces in retaliation for the Israeli assault on Lebanon, the American ambassador to Iraq said Friday,” according to the N.Y. Times.
It remains to be seen whether the peace deal between Israel and Hezbollah will blunt Iran’s alleged fomentation of violence.
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From georgetownheckler.com
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More inspiring news about our leader from Raw Story: “Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq.”
Can’t say we didn’t see this coming. Remember Bush’s infamous “World Leaders Pop Quiz”? (video)
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Over 100,000 protesters filled the streets of Baghdad to show support for Hezbollah. Attendees burned American and Israeli flags, and pledged their willingness to die for Hezbollah. (WashPo, NYT)
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Shiite militiamen have overrun Iraq’s prison system. “We cannot control the prisons. It’s as simple as that,” says the country’s deputy justice minister. The prisons won’t be turned over to Iraqi control until relative order is restored.
Hard to know which side to take on this one: There’s apparently a fair chance of Iraqi prisoners getting tortured no matter which country runs the jails.
Posted on Jun 16, 2006
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AP
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Beheading videos were the favored means of propaganda of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and this new one was clearly made to quash hopes his death would hamper the insurgency.
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Jaafari’s decision to step aside as prime minister removes a major obstacle to forming a unity government in Iraq, says the N.Y. Times.
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By Robert Scheer — “A once swaggering president, who so convincingly wielded a bullhorn and modeled a flight suit, now has assumed the pretzel pose of a supplicant attempting to cajole our old enemy in Tehran into dropping its nuclear ambitions while simultaneously initiating talks with Iran aimed at bailing us out in Iraq.”
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The New York Times reports that many Middle Eastern countries that made moves toward democracy are now pulling back, emboldened to ignore Bush’s demands in the wake of the Iraq debacle.
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AP / Assad Muhsin
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Suicide bombers dressed in women’s clothes caused the single deadliest blast this year—at a religious bastion of a powerful Shiite party. This, combined with Thursday’s shrine bombing, could escalate the already horrific violence…. (more)
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The U.S. ambassador has told Shiite officials that the president does not want Ibrahim al-Jaafari to remain in power, mocking the notion that U.S.-sponsored elections were intended to give Iraqis control over their government.
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Shiite officials say that American-led forces killed many civilians in a raid on a mosque complex on Sunday. The U.S. has promised a full investigation.
Posted on Mar 27, 2006
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From Max Becherer / Polaris / The New York Times
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As Baghdad’s murder rate triples from 11 to 33 a day, bodies are turning up with horrific signs of torture. “This is sectarian cleansing,” says a Kurdish member of parliament.
Posted on Mar 25, 2006
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Time magazine says evidence is mounting that the Shiite-dominated police force has become a corps of shock troops bent on killing Sunnis.
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From healingiraq.blogspot.com
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The Washington Post ran a week’s worth of postings by a young, UK-raised Iraqi dentist who describes the unnerving experience of living “between the hammer of terrorists and the anvil of American, British and Iraqi security forces.”
(Also, check out his blog, Healing Iraq, with his bio.)
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Khalid Mohammed / AP
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By Robert Scheer — “If such constant mayhem is taken as a sign of progress, three years after the U.S. invasion, then Bush will surely be thrilled by what the future holds.”
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The latest carnage appears to be almost wholly sectarian—that is, Shiite versus Sunni—and linked to last month’s destruction of an important Shiite shrine. The single-day death tally of 87 follows a spate of weekend attacks that claimed 58 lives.
Posted on Mar 14, 2006
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The violence unleashed after last week’s bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine claimed 1,300 Iraqi lives, triple the number reported by the U.S. military. Outside of major U.S. offensives, these have been the deadliest few days in the last three years in Iraq.
UPDATE: The violence continues with multiple attacks claiming 68 lives on Tuesday.
Posted on Feb 27, 2006
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From weekly.ahram.org.eg
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Moqtada al-Sadr, who led two deadly uprisings against American troops, now controls enough seats in the Iraqi parliament to be a puppet master. Read the New York Times profile, or check out Truthdig’s Robert Scheer on the ominous implications of Sadr’s ascendancy.
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AP
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By Robert Scheer — There is no way to soft-pedal it: The astounding rise of an anti-American firebrand like Moqtada al-Sadr is an indicator of how wide and complete a political defeat pro-Western forces have suffered in Iraq.
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AP
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The rebuilding of Iraq was hobbled and mismanaged from the get-go, according to an official history of the program leaked to the New York Times. | story
The Kurds, in exchange for a quasi-autonomous secular state of their own, will allow Shiite theocracy to dominate the rest of the country. Hardly the neocon fantasy of a secular, united and American-friendly Iraq. | story
Meanwhile, a mass exodus of Iraq’s professional, educated class is resulting in a brain drain, just when the country needs its thinkers most. | story
Also, an influential cleric who has led uprisings against the U.S. says that his militia would defend Iran if it was attacked. | story
Posted on Jan 23, 2006
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We’re settling for reducing the pro-Iranian militia’s influence over the military and police. | story
Posted on Jan 22, 2006
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Haraz Ghanbari / AP
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Bush and the new German chancellor are pushing diplomacy on the Iranian nuclear issue. | story
If this seems in stark contrast with the president’s Iraq policy, read Truthdig’s Robert Scheer or Juan Cole—who argue that we’ve lost leverage over Iran because the Iraq war has empowered the Shiites in both countries to link arms against us.
Posted on Jan 12, 2006
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Benghazi: Dissecting Congressional Follies, Media Coverage and ‘Cover-Up’ Charges
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