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By Adam Johnson
By Carl Safina
$15.55
$24
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The Sunni insurgent coalition known as the Islamic State in Iraq has claimed responsibility for an attack that led to the deaths of four U.S. soldiers and the purported capture of three more. About 4,000 American troops were dispatched to search for their missing comrades on an especially brutal day in Iraq, with a civilian death toll of more than 124.
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AP Photo / Hadi Mizban
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The Iraqi Interior Ministry says the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was killed in an internal fight among Sunni insurgents. However, the U.S. and at least one Iraqi official have expressed only cautious optimism, as a body has not yet been recovered. Update: al-Masri’s umbrella organization has denied reports of his death.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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A car bomb explosion in the holy city of Karbala has killed 68 people. After the attack, an angry crowd gathered and began attacking Iraqi police, accusing them of failing to protect the population. Elsewhere in Iraq, nine U.S. soldiers have been killed in the last two days.
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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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A group of off-duty Shiite policemen is suspected of shooting about 70 Sunni men inside their homes Tuesday night in Talafar, an Iraqi border town that President Bush once pointed to as proof that Iraqi forces were able to contain insurgent violence.
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The former weapons inspector and military intelligence officer plumbs the depths of American ignorance and offers this history of Iraq, the Mideast and Islam. When so few of our politicians, and even fewer of the citizens who elect them, understand the forces at work in Baghdad and beyond, is it any wonder the occupation has been a disaster?
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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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rollingstone.com
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Rolling Stone gathered notables ranging from Zbigniew Brzezinski to Juan Cole to learn their takes on the future of Iraq. They agreed on one thing: The war is lost. Gen. Tony McPeak (ret.), formerly of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it this way: “Even if we had a million men to go in, it’s too late now.”
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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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A series of attacks targeting Shiite pilgrims killed more than 100 people in Iraq on Tuesday. Some victims said they blamed the Sunnis, but also the lack of security provided by Iraqi police and U.S. forces. Though reports vary, Reuters has reported the death toll at 149.
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By Kasia Anderson — The proliferation of conflicting, even contradictory, media accounts of Tuesday’s explosion in Ramadi is reaching head-spinning proportions. The mystery deepened Wednesday, a full day after the BBC and other news outlets originally reported that 18 children were killed and 20 others injured by a car bomb as they gathered to play football in the western Iraqi city.
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Breaking story: The BBC originally reported the deaths of at least 18 Iraqi boys who were lining up to play football today in Ramadi. However, the BBC story has apparently changed: The headline now reads “Confusion over Iraq soccer blast,” and the article cites an American official who claims that U.S. troops carried out a “controlled explosion” near a football field in the volatile western city.
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iraqdevelopmentprogram.org
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The Iraqi Cabinet has approved an oil revenue sharing plan that would divide profits among the provinces based on population, and allow foreign oil companies unprecedented access to Iraq’s reserves. Distributing the wealth of Iraq’s natural resources has been a major political obstacle, as most of the nation’s current oil fields are in Shiite territory.
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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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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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From brandeis.edu
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Tom Friedman, the N.Y. Times columnist whose Mideast and Iraq war analyses formed the “conventional thinking” for centrists and lefties the world ‘round, has thrown in the towel on his three-year-long support of the Iraq war: “It is now obvious that we are not midwifing democracy in Iraq. We are baby-sitting a civil war.” (more…)
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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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Saying “Iraq as a political project is finished,” an unnamed senior government official tells The Independent that Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties are looking at ways to divide the country, perhaps splitting Baghdad into a Shiite east and Sunni west.
Posted on Jul 24, 2006
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Over 100 people were killed in a three-day stretch. A N.Y. Times reporter writes, “Militias now appear to be dictating the ebb and flow of life in Iraq.”
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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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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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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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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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In a big story that is receiving scant media attention, the U.S. claims that Iraqi police forces are acting as “death squads” to wipe out Sunnis.
At the same time, the Iraq parliament is condemning the U.S. for the newly released pictures of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib.
Posted on Feb 16, 2006
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The action, in search of kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll, comes on the heels of a raid of a Sunni scholar group. | story
Posted on Jan 10, 2006
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Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
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