Tag: Iraq

Before Execution, Saddam Was Handed One of His Own Red Cards of Death

Jon Ponder

Like all good fascist states, Saddam’s regime had its paperwork. The most dreaded document produced by Ba’athist bureaucracy was the “red card” — a death decree signed by a judge and printed on red paper. Guess what Saddam got a few hours before he was hanged yesterday:

Iraqi officials say as Hussein stood on the gallows he was handed a red card; the official order for his death, signed by the chief judge. The card was symbolic, as it was a staple of the many state-sponsored executions under the Hussein regime in Iraq.

Aside from giving him a taste of his own medicine, the red card was also meant as a symbol that it was the the Iraqi government, not the Americans, who tried and executed Saddam Hussein, thus making it less likely Saddam’s dead-enders will elevate him to martyrdom.

Even though the Saddam loyalists are probably smart enough to see through the “red car” ploy, they are not a particularly potent force in the insurgent wars today. Saddam probably lost a lot of his followers, and any chance of restoring his tyranny, when the Americans and British released photos showing him in very bad straits after his capture. First there was video of a doctor checking Saddam’s mangy beard for lice, followed by glamour stills of a beardless Saddam in his tighty-whiteys.

It’s hard to regain the adulation and fear of your subjects after they’ve seen you in your BVDs.

Iraqi Suicides on Rise Due to Stress of Violence

Buck Banks

Seeking relief: Medical experts in Iraq have noted a sharp rise in suicides in Iraq — most blamed on the psychological stress caused by unrelenting violence. The report was released today by IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service.

“We see more cases of suicide each month and all evidence shows that the main reason for the suicides has been the stress and pressure caused by the continuing violence,” said Dr. Muhammad Hamza, a specialist in suicide medical investigation at the Ministry of Health.

The Iraq Ministry of Health said that about 20 people have been committing suicide each month since January; 30 others attempted suicide but were saved.

Hamza said that he found that 70 percent of suicide victims chose to poison themselves using rat and cockroach poison. Others either shot or hanged themselves.

“Some of them leave letters to their parents and the most common excuse given for their act is that they can no longer bear the violence,” Hamza said.

“This week I had two cases of suicide. One person committed suicide because of the daily threats to his life which he had been receiving, and the other one because her husband had been killed and she became so desperate that she killed herself too,” Hamza added.

Based on statistics from the Baghdad mortuary and hospitals in five regions, the Ministry of Health said that about 20 people have been committing suicide each month since January. Thirty others attempted suicide but were saved.

“The numbers are high when compared to those during Saddam Hussein’s regime when we used to have one or two suicide cases a month,” said Ahmed Fatah, a member of the suicide investigation department at the Ministry of Health.
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Christmas Milestone in Iraq: More Dead than 9/11

Trish

Merry Christmas from George Bush:

The milestone in Iraq came on Christmas, nearly four years after the war began

In a span of a few hours, 2,973 people were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In a span of 45 months, the number of American troops killed in Iraq exceeded that grim toll as the war continues.

The milestone in Iraq came on Christmas, nearly four years after the war began, according to a count by The Associated Press.

The U.S. military on Tuesday announced the deaths of six more American soldiers, pushing the U.S. military death toll since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,977, four more than the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Mother of All News Dumps: Generals Agree to Bush’s Troop Surge

Jon Ponder
With the clock ticking down on his term in office, George W. Bush is only after one thing: saving his own sorry ass from the dustbin of history.

Operation Double Down: On the Friday before Christmas, when the news industry is essentially on hiatus, the Bush team announced that U.S. generals in Iraq have reversed course and will support the president’s plan for a troop surge.

It is increasingly clear that the surge has been Bush’s plan all along — that he will gamble America’s blood and treasure on a risky scheme to tamp down violence so he can declare a faux victory in Iraq in order to save his sorry-assed legacy from the dustbin of history.

The news dump came on the evening that newly sworn-in Sec. of Defense Bob Gates returned from a quick trip to Iraq to confer with his generals. Did Gates deliver marching orders on the surge to the generals? The connection between his trip and their abrupt reverse course is so obvious that it’s puzzling why — other than a reflexive need to lie about everything — the Bush team insists it’s all a big coincidence. And yet they do:

The U.S. command in Iraq decided to recommend an increase of troops several days ago, prior to meetings in Baghdad this week with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, the defense official said.

Looking back, it is apparent that the plan was set early this fall and that neither the results of the elections nor the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group could have ever made any difference.

The reason is simple: George W. Bush will do what is best for George W. Bush. Politically, and personally, the surge is his only option. With the clock running down on his failed presidency — and as has been discussed here, and more comprehensively here — salvaging what he can of his legacy trumps what is best for the troops, the nation and world peace.

The president’s “listening tour” and conferences with Democrats, experts and academics this month were simply for show. If his plans had been to bring the troops home, he would have gotten the good news out before the holidays. Tellingly, he delayed an address to the nation from mid-December until after the holidays. With two-thirds of the country opposing the war, his political handlers figured that a buzz kill by this president two weeks before Christmas risked shrinking his approval rating to Nixonian levels.

The surge strategy has been referred to as the president’s “double down” on Iraq. The reference to raising the stakes in Blackjack perfectly captures the cynicism of the present gambit.

The question is, can anyone — the Democrats or members of his own party who face reelection in 2008, even the American people — do anything to stop him.

GAO Cites Defense Dept. for Poor Oversight in Iraq – Again!

Buck Banks

Contractor con men: The Government Accountability Office has issued a report that chastizes the Pentagon for failing to provide adequate oversight of private contractors supporting American military operations in Iraq.

The report cites a shortage of front-line managers overseeing contractor support that has led to a lack of accountability or assurance that the military is getting the services it has paid for. Before he “retired,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had assured the GAO that the military would comply with recommendations made in earlier GAO reports. He must have had his fingers crossed at the time.

It appears the Pentagon has basically outsourced the war in Iraq:

The military’s global war on terror has coincided with a massive outsourcing of jobs traditionally performed by uniformed personnel. In Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of private companies provide battlefield support to the troops, supplying them with everything from food and housing to Internet service and intelligence analysis.

While 9,200 contractors supported the 1991 Gulf War, the Army alone estimates that at least 60,000 contractors support combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the new report (GAO-07-145).

The Pentagon does not know how many contractors currently are working in Iraq and living on the American bases that have sprung up around the country, GAO noted.

Besides getting bad service, the result is millions of dollars lost each year through waste and abuse. For instance, the Army estimates that $43 million is lost annually due to contractors eating free meals while receiving a per diem allowance for food. Hey,that sounds like good work if you can get it.

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Live Animals Eaten to Show Iraqi Machismo

Trish

As new Secretary of Defense Bob Gates visited Baghdad, a commemoration was held in Najaf province to mark the turnover of control from U.S. troops to Iraqis. To illustrate the potency of the new law enforcers, animals were eaten live. Yes, frogs and bunnies were ripped apart live and munched.

Chewing on live animals is a traditional display of ferocity for elite troops in Iraq and was also observed by special units during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

About 1,500 police officers, soldiers and security personnel staged a parade around an infield of stubby brown grass, in festivities complete with warriors on horseback.

At one point, a small group of soldiers stepped forward with a live rabbit and tore it to pieces. The leader bit out the heart with a yell, then passed around the blood-soaked remains to his comrades, each of whom took a bite. The group also bit the heads off frogs, as some of those in the crowd held their noses from the stench.

Chewing on live animals is a traditional display of ferocity for elite troops in Iraq and was also observed by special units during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Police then steered shiny new cruisers and motorcycles with ribbons and flowers stuck to their windshields around a track ringing the soccer field, which was still littered with fur and discarded frog legs.

“Our soldiers do a lot of things, but I’ve never seen them do anything like that,” said Maj. Gen. Kurt Cichowski, who attended the ceremony.

Our troops do indeed do a lot of things. Charges will be filed today against eight Marines accused of murdering 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November, 2005.

Good Lord. What are we doing in this place?

Groups Charge Iraqi Christians Being Persecuted

Buck Banks

Send in the lions: And we thought it was just Sunnis and Shiites who were duking it out in Iraq. It appears a third group — Christians — are bring systematically persecuted and forced to leave the country, according to UPI.

Now I’m no fan of religion in general, but this situation just points to yet another failure of George Bush’s ill-advised, poorly planned invasion of Iraq and its terrible aftermath.

‘They are being bludgeoned by the Islamic extremists. Their priests have been beheaded, churches bombed and there’s a recent report of a crucifixion of a teenage boy.
— Nina Shea

Several groups are calling for improved treatment of Christians in Iraq, who they say are being martyred, persecuted or forced to flee the country to survive.

Among the atrocities are the bombing of more than 15 churches, the kidnapping and murder of 13 Assyrian women in Baghdad in August, and the beheading of a priest in Mosul in October, says Julia Sorisho Rodgers of Christians for Assyrians of Iraq.

“A lot of people in Washington don’t know who the Assyrians are,” said Rodgers, who organized a Dec. 4 rally outside the White House to protest the treatment of Assyrians, who include Christians, Catholics and Orthodox Church members.

In addition to petitions circulating on the Internet, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has urged granting refugee status to these persecuted believers. In November, USCIRF wrote to Paula Dobriansky, under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs, urging her to expand refugee options for the Chaldo-Assyrian and Sabean Mandean communities.

It also asked Dobriansky to urge the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to resume full refugee status for Iraqi asylum seekers and speedily assess claims.
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Friedman: What History Will Damn Bush For

Trish

Reality is — unfortunately for the Bush Team — ideology-free.The New York Times’ “conservative” David Brooks and “liberal” Thomas Freidman reacted to clips shown by host Tim Russert on Meet the Press Sunday. The spots were of the First Lady and former Defense Secretary again bemoaning that the media doesn’t report on all the good things happening in Iraq.

Tim Russert: “What do you think?”

Brooks: “Get off of it!

“We’ve got a hero in our newspaper, John Burns, another hero, Dexter Filkins, a whole series of heroes over there. They’re not biased about this. They want the best for the Iraqi people, they want democracy. Listen to what they’re reporting. They’re reporting chaos. You have a hundred — I don’t know what it is — 1.6 million people leaving Iraq. You’ve got 9,000 Iraqis every week who are moving to the Shiia homeland or the Sunni homeland. This is a country…It’s not civil war, it’s just disintegration.

“So the idea that this is just some media concoction…I said that a year ago, two years ago, but at some point you have to face reality.”

Freidman: …The problem is, when you hear the First Lady, when you think of the way Bush is running this war, he thinks that in the Middle East, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It’s all straight, it’s a matter of just add a little more force here and you know, give another speech there. [Speaking slowly] It’s insane.

“I wanted this to suceed, you how, as much as anybody. Alright? Because I thought it was really important. I thought it was really important and really hard. And to me, what history will damn these people for is they thought it was really important and really easy.”

Bush Says He Sleeps Well Despite Thousands of Needless Deaths He’s Caused

Jon Ponder

The president and Laura Bush did an interview with People magazine for their final 2006 issue. This bit is particularly galling:

People’s interviewer also mentioned that readers had asked if he takes sleep aids. Bush said generally not, but he does occasionally when he travels.

“I must tell you, I’m sleeping a lot better than people would assume,” he said.

He said he drinks a couple of cups of coffee in the morning and drinks a lot of water and, of course, no alcohol.

“I don’t drink alcohol. I can remember when I used to drink, I had trouble sleeping at night,” the President said.