Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 6:29 am Post subject: Conspiracy of Military Escalation
2007 is deadliest year in Iraq for U.S. military
A U.S. soldier at the scene of car bomb explosion in Baghdad.
By Damien Cave
November 6, 2007
BAGHDAD: Six American soldiers were killed in three separate attacks Monday, the military said Tuesday, taking the number of deaths this year to 852 and making 2007 the deadliest year of the war for American troops.
The military also said that nine Iranians being held in Iraq would soon be released, including two detained during a raid in January of a consulate office in Erbil. The potential release of the Iranians may reflect American approval of some signs that Iran is cooperating with demands that it stanch the flow of bomb-making materials into Iraq.
Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, a military spokesman, said that recently discovered caches of components used to make deadly roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs, "do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made," suggesting that Iran has limited explosives trafficking across the border after promising to do so.
American commanders have stopped short of declaring that Iran has in fact complied with the United States' demands, and Smith said Tuesday that the release of the nine Iranian prisoners was not a diplomatic reward but rather the perfunctory end to a criminal investigation.
"These individuals have no continuing value, nor do they pose a further threat to Iraqi security," he said.
Smith did not say why the two Iranians captured in January at an Iranian consulate office in Erbil were held for nine months, after Iran insisted that they were harmless government workers.
Five of the American soldiers killed on Monday died in two roadside bomb attacks near Kirkuk, Smith said.
A sixth soldier died Monday during combat operations in Anbar Province, according to a military statement.
The deaths came only a few days after the military announced a steep drop in the rate of American deaths this year. In October, 38 American service members died in Iraq, the third-lowest monthly tally since 2003, according to Iraq Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks military deaths. The November total, if the current pace continues, would be higher but still far below the war's average of 69 American military deaths per month.
Despite the decline, American commanders acknowledged that 2007 would be far deadlier than the second worst year, 2004, when 849 Americans died, many of them in major battles for control of insurgent strongholds like Falluja.
Military officials attribute the rise this year to an expanded troop presence during the so-called surge, which brought more than 165,000 troops to Iraq, and sent units out of large bases and into more dangerous communities.
Commanders maintain that despite the high cost in terms of lives lost, the strategy has brought improved security to the country and "tactical momentum" that could stabilize Iraq permanently.
But violence in the country continues. Military officials announced Tuesday the discovery of a mass grave holding 22 bodies in a rural area north of Falluja. The grave was found Saturday during a joint American-Iraqi operation in the Lake Tharthar area, a desolate rural area near the site of another grave, holding 25 bodies, that was found less than a month ago.
Local police officials said the bodies had been dumped in and around an abandoned building.
"Some were buried in wells and some were left in rooms used as prisons," said a police officer who helped clear the grave. "These corpses are part of what we expect to find more of in the future."
Defense bill agreed upon
Negotiators from the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate negotiators agreed Tuesday on a $460 billion Defense Department bill that bankrolls expensive weapons systems and bomb-resistant vehicles for troops, but has little for Iraq and Afghanistan, The Associated Press reported from Washington.
Democrats said they would not leave troops in the lurch, but were reluctant to say when Congress might consider President George W. Bush's $196 billion request to pay expressly for combat operations.
The $460 billion bill covers the 2008 budget year, which began Oct. 1.
Republicans supported the spending measure, but said the lack of war money would cause a tremendous strain on the military. To keep the wars afloat, they said, the Pentagon would have to transfer money from less urgent accounts, such as personnel and training programs.
Senator Ted Stevens, the top Republican on the Senate defense appropriations panel, said that if Congress did not act soon, the army would run out of money by January.
"I do believe that Congress would break the army if it refuses to fund the troops with what they need now," he said. Stevens suggested adding $70 billion to the bill for the wars, but Democrats, who hold sway on the panel, declined.
CHALLENGES 2007-2008: Iraq Progresses To Some Of Its Worst
By Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON, Dec 29 (IPS) - Despite all the claims of improvements, 2007 has been the worst year yet in Iraq.
One of the first big moves this year was the launch of a troop "surge" by the U.S. government in mid-February. The goal was to improve security in Baghdad and the western al-Anbar province, the two most violent areas. By June, an additional 28,000 troops had been deployed to Iraq, bringing the total number up to more than 160,000.
By autumn, there were over 175,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. This is the highest number of U.S. troops deployed yet, and while the U.S. government continues to talk of withdrawing some, the numbers on the ground appear to contradict these promises.
The Bush administration said the "surge" was also aimed at curbing sectarian killings, and to gain time for political reform for the government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
During the surge, the number of Iraqis displaced from their homes quadrupled, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. By the end of 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there are over 2.3 million internally displaced persons within Iraq, and over 2.3 million Iraqis who have fled the country.
Iraq has a population around 25 million.
The non-governmental organisation Refugees International describes Iraq's refugee problem as "the world's fastest growing refugee crisis."
In October the Syrian government began requiring visas for Iraqis. Until then it was the only country to allow Iraqis in without visas. The new restrictions have led some Iraqis to return to Baghdad, but that number is well below 50,000.
A recent UNHCR survey of families returning found that less than 18 percent did so by choice. Most came back because they lacked a visa, had run out of money abroad, or were deported.
Sectarian killings have decreased in recent months, but still continue. Bodies continue to be dumped on the streets of Baghdad daily.
One reason for a decrease in the level of violence is that most of Baghdad has essentially been divided along sectarian lines. Entire neighbourhoods are now surrounded by concrete blast walls several metres high, with strict security checkpoints. Normal life has all but vanished. [Additional reasons for the decrease in violence is that thousands of Iraqi's are fleeing the country and British troops are retreating/leaving.]
The Iraqi Red Crescent estimates that eight out of ten refugees are from Baghdad.
By the end of 2007, attacks against occupation forces decreased substantially, but still number more than 2,000 monthly. Iraqi infrastructure, like supply of potable water and electricity are improving, but remain below pre-invasion levels. Similarly with jobs and oil exports. Unemployment, according to the Iraqi government, ranges between 60-70 percent.
An Oxfam International report released in July says 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to safe drinking water, and 43 percent live on less than a dollar a day. The report also states that eight million Iraqis are in need of emergency assistance.
"Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, healthcare, education, and employment," the report says. "Of the four million Iraqis who are dependent on food assistance, only 60 percent currently have access to rations through the government-run Public Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 percent in 2004."
Nearly 10 million people depend on the fragile rationing system. In December, the Iraqi government announced it would cut the number of items in the food ration from ten to five due to "insufficient funds and spiralling inflation." The inflation rate is officially said to be around 70 percent.
The cuts are to be introduced in the beginning of 2008, and have led to warnings of social unrest if measures are not taken to address rising poverty and unemployment.
Iraq's children continue to suffer most. Child malnutrition rates have increased from 19 percent during the economic sanctions period prior to the invasion, to 28 percent today.
This year has also been one of the bloodiest of the entire occupation. The group Just Foreign Policy, "an independent and non-partisan mass membership organisation dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy," estimates the total number of Iraqis killed so far due to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation to be 1,139,602.
This year 894 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq, making 2007 the deadliest year of the entire occupation for the U.S. military, according to ICasualties.org.
To date, at least 3,896 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defence [which is known to regularly underestimate the number of U.S. casualties!]
A part of the U.S. military's effort to reduce violence has been to pay former resistance fighters. Late in 2007, the U.S. military began paying monthly wages of 300 dollars to former militants, calling them now "concerned local citizens."
While this policy has cut violence in al-Anbar, it has also increased political divisions between the dominant Shia political party and the Sunnis – the majority of these "concerned citizens" being paid are Sunni Muslims. Prime Minister Maliki has said these "concerned local citizens" will never be part of the government's security apparatus, which is predominantly composed of members of various Shia militias.
Underscoring another failure of the so-called surge is the fact that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad remains more divided than ever, and hopes of reconciliation have vanished.
According to a recent ABC/BBC poll, 98 percent of Sunnis and 84 percent of Shias in Iraq want all U.S. forces out of the country.
Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 7:31 am Post subject: Conspiracy of Military Escalation
US Military Deaths in Iraq at 3,901
Sat., Dec. 29, 2007
By The Associated Press
As of Saturday, Dec. 29, 2007, at least 3,901 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,175 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
The AP count is three higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EST.
The British military has reported 174 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.
The grim reality of Iraq rarely appears in the American press. This is a war the Bush administration does not want Americans to see. From the beginning, the U.S. government has attempted to censor information about the Iraq war, prohibiting photographs of the coffins of U.S. troops returning home and refusing as a matter of policy to keep track of the number of Iraqis who have been killed. President Bush has yet to attend a single funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq.
To be sure, this see-no-evil approach is neither surprising nor new. With the qualified exception of the Vietnam War, when images of body bags appeared frequently on the nightly news. American governments have always tightly controlled images of war. There is good reason for this. In war, a picture really is worth a thousand words. No story about a battle, no matter how eloquent, possesses the raw power of a photograph. And when it comes to war's ultimate consequences -- death and suffering -- there is simply no comparison: a photo of a dead man or woman has the capacity to unsettle those who see it, sometimes forever. The bloated corpses photographed by Mathew Brady after Antietam remain in the mind, their puffy, shocked faces haunting us like an obscene truth almost 150 years after the soldiers were cut down.
"War is hell," said Gen. Sherman, and everyone dutifully agrees. Yet the hell in Iraq is almost never shown. The few exceptions -- the charred bodies of American contractors hanging from a bridge in Fallujah, the blood-spattered little girl wailing after her parents were killed next to her -- only prove the rule.
Governments keep war hidden because it is hideous. To allow citizens to see its reality -- the shattered bodies, the wounded children, the incomprehensible mayhem -- is to risk eroding popular support for it. This is particularly true with wars that have less than overwhelming popular support to begin with. In the case of Vietnam, battlefield images played an important role in turning the tide of public opinion. And in Iraq, a war whose official justification has turned out to be false, and which a majority of the American people now believe to have been a mistake, the administration would prefer that these grim images never be seen.
But the media is also responsible for sanitizing the Iraq war, at times rendering it almost invisible. Most American publications have been reluctant to run graphic war images. Almost no photographs of the 3,901 U.S. troops who have been killed to date in Iraq have appeared in U.S. publications. In May 2005, the Los Angeles Times surveyed six major newspapers and the nation's two leading news magazines, and found that over a six-month period, no images of dead American troops appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Time or Newsweek. A single image of a covered body of a slain American ran in the Seattle Times. There were also comparatively few images of wounded Americans. The publications surveyed tended to run more images of dead or wounded Iraqis, but they have hardly been depicted in large numbers either.
There are a number of reasons why the media has shied away from running graphic images from Iraq. Some are simple logistics: There are very few photographers in Iraq. Freelance reporter and photographer Mitchell Prothero, a Salon contributor, estimates there are "maybe a dozen or two Western photographers" in Iraq, in addition to Iraqi and Arab stringers, who do most of the work for newswires. Ten or 20 photographers trying to cover a country the size of Sweden, under extremely difficult and dangerous conditions, are unlikely to be on the scene when violence erupts.
Moreover, most photographers are embedded with U.S. troops, a situation that imposes its own limits. Military regulations prevent photographers from publishing photographs of dead or wounded soldiers until their families have been notified, which can diminish the news value of the photographs. And although embed rules allow photographers to take pictures of dead or wounded troops, the reality on the ground can be different. Soldiers do not want photographers -- especially ones they aren't comfortable with -- taking pictures of their dead or wounded buddies. This is understandable, but it can result in de facto censorship.
One photographer, who requested anonymity because he didn't want to jeopardize his ongoing relationship with the U.S. military, told Salon, "I've had unit commanders tell me flat out that if anybody gets wounded on patrol, you can't take any pictures of them. Nearly every time I've landed at [a medevac] scene, guys have yelled at me, 'Get the **ck away from me. Don't take my friend's picture. Get back on the helicopter.' Part of me understands that. I am a stranger to them. And they are very emotional. Their friend has been badly hurt or wounded, and they've probably all just been shot at 15 minutes before. I totally understand that, although it is a violation of embed rules."
But it isn't just the troops. Editors in the States are reluctant to run graphic photographs. There are various reasons for this. Perhaps the most important is taste: Many publications think graphic images are just too disturbing. Business considerations doubtless also play a role, although few editors would admit that; graphic images upset some readers and can scare off advertisers. (Salon pulled all advertising, except house ads, off the pages of this gallery.) And there are political considerations: Supporters of the war often accuse the media of playing up bad news at the expense of more positive developments. To run images of corpses is to risk being criticized of antiwar bias. When "Nightline" ran photographs of the faces of all the U.S. troops who had been killed in Iraq, conservative groups were enraged and accused the network of harming morale. Not every publisher is anxious to walk into this kind of trouble.
The reluctance of American publications to run shocking images contrasts with the European press. "In my experience and in conversations with other people who've been doing this a lot longer than me, American publications shy away from extremely graphic material, compared to European ones," says Prothero. "I don't know whether the American audience reacts more strongly against seeing that over the breakfast table. I do know, anecdotally, that many very talented photographers, on staff, have taken pictures that have not run in magazines or newspapers. Maybe it's not a conscious decision but American publications very much shy away from showing casualties of U.S. troops on the ground. I think they're afraid the American public will freak out on them for showing dead American boys."
Photographer Stephanie Sinclair's unforgettable photograph of a 6-year-old Iraqi girl killed by an American cluster bomb, which appears in the gallery, originally ran in the Chicago Tribune. Robin Daughtridge, the Tribune's deputy director of photography, told Salon that after the photographs first came in, "the news editor was worried about running them without an accompanying story." Others in the newsroom thought the photographs "were too graphic, and too much, because we generally don't run tight pictures of dead bodies. We had run pictures of dead Iraqi soldiers and a dead bus driver before, so there was a precedent for running them, but we don't take it lightly." They ended up calling the paper's editor in chief, Ann Marie Lipinski, who assigned a reporter to do a piece on cluster bombs and their legacy.
Ultimately, Daughtridge said, politics didn't enter into the decision: "It was more about the fact that if we're going to show this death up close and personal, we better have a story behind it. All of us in the newsroom are trying to tell the story and letting the readers make up their own minds." She added, "I felt proud of what we did that day. All of this stuff that you hear about happening to families in Iraq doesn't really hit home until you see that picture of the little girl."
For her part, Sinclair praised the Tribune for running the photo and the story. But, she said, "some of the publications I've worked for didn't run a lot of the Iraqi civilian stuff, the graphic pictures, the emotional pictures. I found that the Iraqi civilian story was really hard to get published in U.S. publications. And I worked for many. I don't know why. I think they're looking at their readership and they think their readers want to know about American troops, since they can relate to them more. They think that's what the audience wants."
Sinclair also noted that American readers and viewers get only a sanitized view of the horrific consequences of suicide bombings. "A lot of the bombing stuff that you see is really toned down. To be honest, sometimes it should be. God, it's relentless. It's hard to look at. People have no idea what's happening in Iraq. You wonder, even as a photographer, if you're being gratuitous by photographing some of this. At the same time, as horrific as it is to see, people should know how horrific it is to live it every day. We should feel some sort of responsibility to make sure we have the best possible grasp of what's happening there."
It is because we believe that the American people are not getting a look at the reality of the Iraq war, for Americans and Iraqis alike, that we decided to run this photo gallery. It is no secret that Salon has published many more pieces questioning and challenging the Iraq war than supporting it. But that is not why we think it is important that these images be seen. We would have run them even if we supported the war. The reason is simple: The truth should be told. People should know the truth about war. Before a nation decides to go to war, it should know what its consequences are.
There is no way for any journalist, whether reporter or photographer, to capture the multifaceted reality of Iraq. But all of the journalists I have spoken to who have worked in Iraq say that the blandly optimistic pronouncements made by the Bush administration about the situation in Iraq are completely false. A picture of a dead child only represents a fragment of the truth about Iraq -- but it is one that we do not have the right to ignore. We believe we have an ethical responsibility to those who have been killed or wounded, whether Iraqis, Americans or those of other nationalities, not to simply pretend that their fate never happened. To face the bitter truth of war is painful. But it is better than hiding one's eyes.
Additional reporting by Kevin Berger, Page Rockwell and Aaron Kinney.
CAUTION: These photo galleries reveal some of the war's horrible human toll:
In a floor speech, Sen. Ted Stevens gave a higher figure for war costs than that of the administration.
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 27, 2007; Page A07
The latest estimate of the growing costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide battle against terrorism -- nearly $15 billion a month -- came last week from one of the Senate's leading proponents of a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq.
"This cost of this war is approaching $15 billion a month, with the Army spending $4.2 billion of that every month," Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska), the ranking Republican on the Appropriations defense subcommittee, said in a little-noticed floor speech Dec. 18. His remarks came in support of adding $70 billion to the omnibus fiscal 2008 spending legislation to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, as well as counterterrorism activities, for the six months from Oct. 1, 2007, through March 31 of next year.
While most of the public focus has been on the political fight over troop levels, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported this month that the Bush administration's request for the 2008 fiscal year of $189.3 billion for Defense Department operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and worldwide counterterrorism activities was 20 percent higher than for fiscal 2007 and 60 percent higher than for fiscal 2006.
Pentagon spokesmen would not comment last week on Stevens's figure but said their latest estimate for monthly spending for Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terrorism was $11.7 billion as of Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2007.
One reason for Stevens's larger cost figure may be that U.S. troop levels in Iraq peaked at 180,000 in November, which is part of the 2008 fiscal year, and will fall only slightly in the next three months. In addition, in its December report, the CRS noted that the Pentagon does not include intelligence operations and other classified activities in its cost estimates, nor does it tally congressional add-ons for the National Guard and reserve forces.
"Stevens is being realistic," said Gordon Adams, who served as the senior national security official at the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1997, in the Clinton administration.
Pointing out that Bush's request comes out to $15.8 billion per month, Adams said: "Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror are not getting cheaper. . . . This will go down some, as the surge comes home, but not as much as people think."
He added: "More and more of these so-called emergency funds are being used to repair and buy new military hardware," because "the Pentagon is worried that defense budgets will start to go down next year."
The CRS reports that a good part of the increased spending is not only for replacing lost equipment but "more often to upgrade and replace 'stressed' equipment and enhance force protection." It noted that a recent Congressional Budget Office study "found that more than 40% of the Army's spending for repair and replacement of war-worn equipment" was "spent to upgrade systems to increase capability, to buy equipment to eliminate longstanding shortfalls in inventory" and to convert new combat units to more flexible organizational structures.
Stevens made it clear that the $70 billion in the omnibus bill for the wars will cover only costs for the six months ending March 31, when Congress will again have to wrestle with a supplemental spending bill to pay for the wars. By then, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador, will have presented Congress with their update on the situation in Iraq.
Last Friday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that he hopes troop levels, which drive costs, could continue to go down in 2008. But he warned that they would continue only "if conditions on the ground" permit sustaining "the gains we have already made."
One indication of how fast costs are rising is that operations and maintenance costs for all of fiscal 2007 were $72 billion, and the entire fiscal year 2008 request was $81 billion, according to the CRS.
The Pentagon has anticipated rising war costs before. In January, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England told a House Budget Committee hearing that, nearly four years into the war, the Pentagon's war costs were rising because it had to replace big-ticket items such as helicopters, airplanes and armored vehicles, which were wearing out or were lost in combat. "We have a backlog and are seeing an increase," England told the panel.
At that time, 11 months ago, Pentagon spokesmen said the monthly costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007 would be $9.7 billion -- $2 billion less than their most recent estimate.
One relatively new cost is the $300 monthly payments to almost all Iraqis recruited as part of the "Concerned Local Citizens" (CLC) program, which arms neighborhood groups to provide local security. The latest quarterly Iraq report by the Pentagon puts the program total at 69,000 people.
Since more than 80 percent of the CLC participants are Sunni, the Shiite-led government has hesitated to integrate them into the police force. That means that the United States will need to continue paying them until the Iraqi government "assumes full responsibility for the program," according to the Pentagon report.
Much of the CLC money is coming out of the Commanders Emergency Response Program, which until now has been used mainly for small local assistance or development projects, such as school rebuilding, roads or sanitary systems. The omnibus spending package includes $500 million in these funds.
Another category Stevens identified in the spending bill was $587 million to reset pre-positioned stocks of military equipment taken from U.S. facilities around the world to support Iraq and Afghanistan. Replenishing such stocks, Stevens said, "enhances our nation's ability to respond to contingencies," noting that "we have forces in 141 different places."
Some of the bill's spending figures that Stevens described represent what the administration sought for the full 2008 fiscal year. For example, he listed "$4.3 billion for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Fund, which will help our troops detect and defeat the number one killer of our troops in Iraq." That is only slightly less than the figure the administration sought for the full year.
Another category that appears to have been fully funded is the military intelligence program. The administration requested $3.7 billion for the full year, and Stevens said there is "$3.7 billion to continue to enhance our intelligence activities in the theater."
Ron Paul Receives More Military Donations Than All Other Republicans Combined
A good man like this one deserves every ounce of support we Americans can give him! Bush and his cronies went into this war on false premises so we need to get out asap! The world will be better without people gunning and blasting each other to death.
Congressman and Dr. Ron Paul for President
February 4, 2008
Q4 FEC Reports: Ron Paul Receives More Military Donations Than All Other Republicans Combined
Total military donations nearly as much as the total of all other remaining candidates - Republican and Democrat
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – According to newly released FEC reports, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has received more military donations than the other three remaining Republican candidates combined.
“The latest numbers make it clear: the troops support Ron Paul,” said Ron Paul campaign chairman Kent Snyder. “Dr. Paul has worked his entire career working for veterans, and has many awards and endorsements due to his dedication to their cause.”
A search of the FEC database by employer reveals that Dr. Paul has received 1160 donations from military donors, nearly triple that of John McCain, and more than McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee combined.
Dr. Paul’s total military donations of $249 thousand are almost as much as the $260 thousand of combined donations received by the other five remaining candidates.
Congressman Paul is no stranger to military support. Former president Ronald Reagan once said, “Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first. We need to keep him fighting for our country!”
According to the FEC reports, these are the total number and amount of military donations for each of the presidential candidates*:
Ron Paul: 1160 $249k
John McCain: 438 $83k
Mike Huckabee: 126 $37k
Mitt Romney: 126 $24k
Barack Obama: 443 $76k
Hillary Clinton: 154 $41k
Ron Paul needs your support now more than ever. If you are unable to donate funds, donate your time, etc. Send emails to the GOP for them to nominate Ron Paul for the Republican presidential candidate. Be creative, there are many ways you can support Ron Paul. See links below:
This is what cluster bombs do! Any use of a cluster bomb can't be right!
Jan 16, 2008
By Robert Evans
'Cluster bombs, which nearly 100 countries are seeking to ban, should not be considered bad as long as states involved in conflicts use them responsibly, a senior United States official said on Wednesday.
The official, who declined to be identified, also told a background briefing that Washington was planning to create a "quick reaction force", or QRF, to handle threats to civilians from remnants of war, like cluster bombs. The official's remarks, which could not be quoted directly, clearly confirmed that Washington -- like Russia, China and some other powers -- remained opposed to banning the weapon.'
He spoke as negotiators on updating a 1981 international agreement on especially dangerous conventional weapons (CCW) met in Geneva to prepare for "expert discussions" on cluster weapons next year under the United Nations umbrella.
Cluster munitions include a variety of weapons that can spread up to hundreds of bomblets over a target area. Up to 30 percent fail to explode, posing a threat to civilians for many years after a conflict.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says some 400 million people in countries and regions like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Russia's Chechnya live in effective minefields, under daily threat of maiming from cluster bombs.
Other campaigners say at least 13,000 civilians are known to have been killed or injured by the bombs -- used heavily most recently by Israel in its 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon -- in recent years.
OSLO PROCESS
Norway has been leading an international effort known as the "Oslo Process" to shape a treaty banning the weapon by a meeting in Dublin in May this year, which would then be open for signature before the end of 2008.
Campaigning group Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC) says nearly 100 countries had come out in support of a ban by the last meeting in Vienna in December, although some like Germany, France Italy and Japan want a transitional period first.
CMC said after the Vienna gathering, attended by representatives from 138 countries that a lot of progress had been made on clearing affected areas and a deadline for destroying stockpiles.
"And those who do not sign the treaty need to be very aware what the international community will think of them," CMC spokesman Thomas Nash declared at the time.
At Wednesday's briefing, the senior U.S. official said Washington did not view the CCW talks, in which 103 countries are taking part, as in competition with Oslo but that they should be the prime focus for dealing with cluster weapons.
He said that the CCW should focus on ensuring that countries knew how to use the weapons in a way that was in full accordance with international humanitarian law.
A printed statement from U.S. officials said that "in keeping with the United States commitment to deal comprehensively with all threats posed by conventional weapons and explosive remnants of war" it would shortly move towards creating a QRF.
The move would come in the form of a "procurement notice" to develop the force.
"This force would respond globally to short notice and emergent humanitarian operations that require the removal or mitigation of explosive hazards to protect civilian populations," the statement said. (Editing by Charles Dick)
US-NATO Massacre of Afghan Children in Helmand Province Afghanistan
[Here is the truth folks! NATO has never been the world's peacekeepers. NATO is the US implemented and backed world army and murderous slaughtering monsters!]
Watch video here:
(Caution: Graphic death scenes)
20 min 25 sec - Jan 19, 2008
Afghan civilians--27 children were massacred by the US jets and helicopters/AC130 Gunship in Helmand Afghanistan. The people there were ... all » shocked to see gunners from the airplanes were targeting fleeing children. The elders in the village asked, "can't the Americans tell the difference between armed fighters and little children running to safety?" This is the type of "democracy" and "reconstruction" the US and her NATO allies--UK, Canada, Dutch, Australians and others---practice in Afghanistan.
The staggering scale of US bombing in Iraq - with all its depleted uranium
1/29/2008
'The U.S. military also said in a statement that it had dropped 19,000 pounds of explosives on the farmland of Arab Jabour south of Baghdad. The strikes targeted buried bombs and weapons caches. In the last 10 days, the military has dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of explosives on the area, which has been a gateway for Sunni militants into Baghdad.'
Bush's Holocaust Of Iraq - Operation Desert Slaughter
1-28-2008
By Felicity Arbuthnot
GlobalResearch.ca
'The forty two day carpet bombing, enjoined by thirty two other countries, against a country of just twenty five million souls, with a youthful, conscript army, with broadly half the population under sixteen, and no air force, was just the beginning of a United Nations led, global siege of near medieval ferocity. Having, as James Baker boasted they would, reduced 'Iraq to a pre-industrial age', the country was denied all normality : trade, aid, telecommunications, power, sanitation, water repairs, seeds, foods, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment.'
It is seventeen years since America and Britain embarked on their 'Final Solution' for the population of Iraq.
As I write, seventeen years ago, Iraq would be entering the second week of a barbaric, near twenty four hour a day, carpet bombing, which, then, as now (lest we forget - yet again) scrupulously ignored Protocol 1, Additional to the Geneva Convention of 1977: 'It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies such as irrigation works (denying them) to the civilian population or to the adverse Party ... for any motive.'
The blitzkrieg on Iraq deliberately targeted all 'indispensable to survival'.
Within twenty four hours, most was destroyed. The electricity went off within two hours, leaving patients on life support machines and vital equipment, babies in incubators, or those on oxygen to die. Refrigerators defrosted, all medicine needing refrigeration, blood banks and vital saline solutions for the injured were destroyed. Food rotted and between the bombing and the bank closures (latter for fear of looting) replacements were scarce to unbuyable.
In Najav, seventy dialysis patients, 'old friends', said the senior nurse in charge of the unit, died for want of electricity. The water supply was deliberately destroyed, parts denied subsequently by the pathetic, US-UK dominated Sanctions Committee - a Committee without a backbone between them - and remains lethal to this day.
This was the plan by US Central Command, it seems, all along. The destruction of Iraq's water system has been described by Professor Nagy and Stephanie Miller as: 'a slow motion holocaust'. Few could have put it better. See: How the US deliberately destroyed Iraq's water. by Thomas J Nagy http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NAG108A.html
The telecommunications tower was also one of the earliest casualties, an elegant, soaring, structure on the edge of Baghdad's Mansur district. It lay, broken and crumpled, as did the remains of those who worked inside it. Iraq was thus cut off from the world, the extent of the bombing and atrocities largely unknown for considerable time. Iraqis throughout the world had no way of knowing if their families, friends, loves, were dead or alive. Radio and television stations across Iraq were blitzed so no warnings to populous could be given (journalists too have special protection in wars, but decision makers, seemingly are not only illiterate, but ignore legalities.)
Hospitals, health clinics, schools and kindergartens were bombed, education eradicated so totally that the stores for educational materials, in buildings separate from the schools (usually in a central distribution point some miles away) were also bombed. Agriculture in all forms was deliberately targeted. Chicken farms bombed, flocks of sheep and goats, broadly half of all buffalo were killed, dairy farms obliterated. Crops, food processing factories reduced to rubble. A war crime stupendous in its immensity, for which not one murderous, genocidal, infanticidal, decision maker or pilot has stood trial.
Pharmaceutical factories were bombed, the medical syringe factory was destroyed. And in an especially psychotic policy, the countries who were Iraq's trading partners and had built factories and installations for the country, bombed those which they had built. America's gung-ho goons whooped over bombing the Pepsi and Coca Cola factories. 'Bravery' doesn't come more deviant, sub-normal and retarded than that.
Due to the use of defoliants and napalm, half of all Iraq's trees, including the great, ancient palms, died. Remaining palms did not bear their succulent fruit for about five years. In the tranquil, family farming settlements, amongst the palms, women and livestock alike aborted and often died. Survivors consistently described a 'vapor' coming from the 'planes, then the horrific aftermath, affecting those living in the shelter of the palm groves or copses of trees, where dwellers settled for relative cool from Iraq's searing summers. And, of course, in this decimation from above, which dropped more ordinance daily than was dropped daily in the second world war, five times more explosive power was dropped than on Hiroshima.
The weapons used were depleted uranium, which continues to irradiate Iraq and the region, the people, flora and fauna -and will continue to do so for four and a half billion years. '..protection of the natural environment against widespread, long term and severe damage', is another absolute dictate under the Geneva Convention. It proscribes absolutely '... damage to the natural environment (prejucing) the health and survival of the population.' Contraventions don't come bigger than condemning inestimable generations yet unborn, to death and deformity. The Nuremberg Principles are exercised by the treatment of both civilians and prisoners and the: '... murder or ill treatment ...of prisoners of war ... further, extermination ... and other inhuman acts against any civilian population'.
The 'inhuman acts', committed against the Iraqi people in 1991 constitute war crimes which, since no one was brought to justice, one can only hope haunt those responsible for all time.
The slaughter on the Basra Road, after the ceasefire, the fleeing civilians and retreating troops, ripped to pieces, or incinerated in General Norman Schwarzkopf's 'turkey shoot'. The whole war, of course, was nothing else. Saddam Hussein had offered, indeed, started to retreat from Kuwait before the carnage began, but as ever, for the United States, conciliation was 'too late'. Buses, lorries, cars were also targeted throughout the forty two day massacre. Lorries carrying medicines, meat, essentials were burned, with their drivers. Western troops took their repulsive 'trophy photos', with the pathetic remains of the incinerated and dismembered.
When the (UK) Observer, to its credit, printed the picture which became the symbol of the 1991 atrocities, the Iraqi soldier, with his near melted face welded to the windscreen of his vehicle, there was an outcry. The sensitivities of readers should not be exposed to such horrors. Maggie O'Kane, writing in the Guardian Weekly (16th December 1995) describes searingly, reality. Relatives, praying, hope against hope, that those they loved, had somehow miraculously survived the hadean inferno that was the Basra Road massacre. "On the day the war ended, at a bus station south of Baghdad, dusk was falling and the road was covered with weeping women.
The Iraqi survivors of the `turkey shoot' on the Basra Road were crawling home with fresh running wounds. Their women were throwing themselves at the battered minibuses and trucks, pulling, pleading, begging. `Where is he, have you seen him ? Is he not with you ?' Some fell to their knees on the road when they heard the news.
Others kept running from bus, to truck, to car, looking for their husbands, their sons or their lovers - the 37,000 Iraqi soldiers who would not come back. It went on all night and it was the most desperate and moving scene I have ever witnessed." There was worse. Think of the excesses of horrors the Western media has deluged its readers with over the years, those perpetrated by people of other cultures, with other features: Stalin, Pol Pot, indeed Saddam Hussein and consider this in Maggie O'Kane's article: '
When Sergeant Joe Queen returned to his home town of Bryson City North California, after the Gulf war, the first thing he saw was a huge banner draped outside Hardees Burger Restaurant, which read: `Welcome Home Joe Queen.' Joe Queen, who'd been awarded a bronze star, wanted to chill out after the war, but Bryson City wouldn't let him Joe, 19-years old, had gone straight from Desert Storm to become one of the first American troops to cross the Saudi border in an armored bulldozer. His job was to bury the Iraqis alive in their trenches and then cover over the trenches real smooth so the rest of the Big Red One, as The First Armored Mechanized Brigade is called, could come nice and easy behind him. 'Joe Queen doesn't know how many Iraqi troops he buried alive on the front line.
But five years later, in his military base in Georgia, he remembers well how it worked:
`The sand was so soft that once the blade hits the sand it just caves in right on the sides, so we never did go back and forth. So you are traveling at five, six, seven miles an hour just moving along the trench... You don't see him. You're up there in the half hatch and you know what you got to do. You did it so much you could close your eyes and do it... I don't think they had any idea because the look on their faces as we came through the berm was just a look of shock. `While I was retreating, I saw some of the soldiers trying to surrender, but they were buried. There were two kinds of bulldozers, real ones, actual ones, and also they had tanks and they put something like a bulldozer blade in front of them. Some of the soldiers were walking towards the troops holding their arms up to surrender and the tanks moved in and killed them. They dug a hole in the ground and then they buried the soldiers and leveled it.' One survivor described the friends buried alive, who he had laughed with, eaten with ...'I really don't know how to describe it. We were friends. I ate with some of them. I talked to some of them. I cannot express how I felt at that moment..... I saw one soldier and his body was just torn apart by a bulldozer. The upper part was on one side and the lower on the other side.'
I hope your nightmares and those of your colleagues haunt for all time Joe Queen. May the specter of those for whose live burial you and your murderous colleagues were responsible, follow in all your footsteps, for all
