Friday,
October 30, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, the US military
announces more deaths, no movement on an election law, a new attack on
press freedoms in Iraq, nepotisim is an ugly thing, and more. Today the US military announced:
"BAGHDAD -- A Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier died, Oct. 30, of
non-combat related injuries sustained in a vehicle accident. The name
of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin
and release by the Department of Defense. The names of the service
members are announced through the U.S. Department of Defense Official Website
[. . .] The announcements are made on the Website no earlier than 24
hours after notification of the service member's primary next of kin.
The incident is under investigation." And they announced:
"CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE, Iraq -- A Soldier assigned to
Multi-National Division - South died of non-combat related injury
October 30. [. . .] The incident is under investigation." The
announcements bring the total number of US service members killed in
Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 4355. On the second hour of today's The Diane Rehm Show, Iraq was addressed by guest host Frank Senso, NPR's Tom Gjelten, CNN's Elise Labott and McClatchy Newspapers' Jonathan Landay. Frank
Senso: To Iraq now, and in a few minutes, to our phone calls, to bring
our audience into this and any other conversation that they may want to
have with respect to what's going on in the world. But in Iraq
discussions amidst ongoing, violence, intensifying violence in some
cases, about trying to fix the national election law because that is
what is looming large. Jonathan Landay, what's the landscape look like
right now? Jonathan
S. Landay: Well they've tried for a third time to pass an election law
in time for the January elections and they've failed again. The issue
-- there are a number of issues, but the main issue has to do with the
city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq and uh a city that sits atop billions
of gallons of untapped oil. Uh, the issue has to do with the -- what
census is going to be used to register voters there. Now this is a city
that the Kurds -- now this is right now a predominately Kurdish city.
It was, the Kurds say, a predominately Kurdish city before the reign of
Saddam Hussein who ethically [ethnically] cleansed Kurds out of the
city and brought in Arabs. The issue is, do you -- since the fall of
Saddam Hussein, the Kurds have been restoring their majority in that
city and, indeed, other ethnic groups claim over uh restoring their
majority, bringing in more Kurds than there had been before. The Kurds
want voter registration to be based on the most recent census, I think
it was in fact, done this year. The Sunni Arabs and other ethnic groups
there -- the Turkomen for instance -- want the voter registration based
on the 2004 census and they have not been able to come to an agreement
on this and this has hung up the passage of this law and what it really
-- and what it really comes down to it appears is contol over that
massive amount of untapped petroleum. Frank
Senso: And yet this-this-this dispute, this stand off over the election
law comes just after this Sunday terrible bombing in Baghdad, the worst
in two years killing more than 150, wounding hundreds more, severely
damaging three major government buildings now there's been an arrest
of some 50 odd security and there was some suggestion that this
intensifying violence might drive the politicians to nail down this
election law and drive those to some kind of political, if not
resolution, progress. Tom? Tom
Gjelten: Well it seems, Frank, that the Iranians, I mean the Iraqis,
have become so inured to this kind of violence that just sort of
everything proceeds normally and that's true I think in both a good
sense and a bad sense. In a good sense, there has been this move
towards stability and peace in Iraq and Iraq's been filling more
confident about their future and they seem amazingly enough to have
taken this bombing in stride in a sense. I mean there have been other
bombings -- Frank Sesno: It's almost unimaginable, isn't it? Tom
Gjelten: It's almost unaimaginable. But they have -- this is six years
that they've been through this and they seem to be able to cope with
these great tragedies. On the other hand, the negative side is that,
as you say, you know, you would -- you would hope that this would jolt
them into sort of some reality but, again, they become so used to this
that they just proceed with the same stalemate.
Frank Sesno: What's behind the uptick in violence, Elise?
Elise
Labott: Well, we saw -- first we saw an uptick in violence in August
and there were also some massive bombings at the Foreign Ministry, at
the Finance Ministry and this seemed to be kind of a way to sew
sectarian tensions once again and they thought that maybe this would
lead Iraq down the path it was in 2006, 2007 with major sectarian
tensions. Now what officials says is they think that these foreign
fighters are [or?] the real hard core al Qaeda in Iraq are trying just
at anything, they tried at religious targets, now they're just trying
at softer targets to kill a lot of people. They think maybe it can
effect the election in January. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been
running as the security candidate. He's the one that's bringing
stability to Iraq, he's the one that got US forces out of the city. The
question is now is this going to effect his standing as the security
candidate. Jonathan
S. Landay: There may be also something else going on here. The more
instability, I think perhaps the insurgen -- whoever is behind these
bombings create, in their mind, it delays perhaps the departure of
American forces and what do you get from that? Well you get a delay or
perhaps problems coming up with additional American forces to send to
Afghanistan and there may very well be that thinking going on on the
part of those who are responsible for these massive bombings. On the above. Jonathan S. Landay used the term census. That is incorrect. There has been no census. The issue, which McClatchy's Sarah Issa and Hannah Allem and which the New York Times' Timothy Williams
have outlines, is where the voting rolls for 2009 or the voting rolls
for 2004 will be used. There has been no census. "Census" is a
concrete term. And, in fact, a census in Kirkuk is mandated -- as is a
referendum -- by Iraq's 2005 Constitution. No census has been
conducted. This is not a minor issue and it goes to the dispute over
Kirkuk. "Census" was the wrong term to use. There is NO census thus
far. That's (A). (B) Tom Gjelten. What the
___ was that? I'm reminded of when Goodtime Gals Linda Robinson and
Gwen Ifill decided to discuss Blackwater's September 17, 2007 slaughter
( see the October 8, 2007 snapshot)
-- a discussion noteable for its appalling ignorance and gross lack of
concern for human life. Gjelten can argue that some of his remarks
were intended to be about officials. But he can only argue that about
some of his remarks. And what exactly does he want Iraqis to do?
They're shell shocked and just because he hasn't reported on the
multitude of studies, THE MULTITUDE OF STUDIES, on the effects this
illegal war has had on Iraqi children doesn't mean the damage isn't
real and doesn't exist. So his happy talk bulls**t was embarrassing.
That was really a shameful moment for NPR. The 'good' and the 'bad' of
the bombings? How appalling. What made it worse for NPR was that it
wasn't a guest from, for example, NBC News. It was an NPR reporter.
That's shameful. The good and the bad of bombings? Pay attention,
Tommy. Our children are surrounded by
violnce. Most of them are traumatized. I call them the silent victims.
Our Iraqi childeren are the silent vctims. From
January to March of last year, the World Health Organization worked
with Iraqi psychiatrists on a series of studies on the mental health of
children in the cities of Baghdad, Mosul and Dohuk. (Watch the effects of war on children  ) One
of the studies on primary-school-age children in Baghdad found that
nearly half of the 600 children surveyed had experienced a major
traumatic event since the war began. Just over one in every 10 suffered
from post-traumatic stress disorder, the study found. Another
of the studies found that older children in Mosul suffered even worse.
Thirty percent of the 1,090 children surveyed showed signs of
post-traumatic stress disorder. Nearly all of those with PTSD symptoms,
92 percent, had not received any treatment, according to the study. In
fact, the doctors aren't immune to the dangers of the conflict. Fifty
percent of Iraq's psychiatrists have fled the country or been killed
since the war began, said Dr. Naeema Al-Gasseer, the WHO's
representative for Iraq. A month after CNN filed that report, NPR's Linda Wertheimer spoke with Dr. Mohammed al-Aboudi about the mental stress Iraqi children were under.
Now we can go through various reports and studies. We can enlarge and
look at other segments of the country's population. But the above
alone demonstrates how offensive Tom's statements are. The population
is shell shocked and the illegal war has caused that trauma. The
bombings that he thinks have good and bad are the same violence
responsible for creating the world's largest refugee crisis. And the
UN has already advised that Sunday's bombings will most likely results
in Syria and Jordan receiving some additional Iraqi refugees. I'm not
seeing any "good and bad" to the bombings. And Tom's statements were
inarticulate and offensive. Frank Senso did a fine job this week
filling in for Diane but had Diane been present, she probably would
have said something. She generally does when gas baggery replaces
discussion -- when human beings are removed from the issue, she
generally brings them back into the picture even if it means she has to
disagree with a guest. (She did that most recently with a guest gas
bagging -- and glorifying -- the drone strikes in Pakistan when she
made a point to note the civilian deaths the man was dismissing.)
Tom's statements were offensive and it's only more so because he works
for NPR. He declared that "you would hope that this would jolt them
into sort of some reality" -- Tom, we'd hope the reality of the
violence in Iraq and the fact that it is an inhabited country would
jolt you into some sort of reality but there's no evidence, as yet,
that it has. Let's break that up for a moment to note this: What
are the lessons of Iraq that I carry with me? The cultures are as
different as mountains and desert, and for outsiders, there is a
familiar struggle to see the place as it truly is, not as we might wish
it would be. Back in 2003, the Americans wanted to believe that an age
of brotherhood and integration, loosed by American military might, had
come to Iraq. Many Iraqis wanted to believe it, too. Thinking too much
about the depth of distrust, long latent between sects and ethnicities,
would mean acknowledging that a frenzy of violence waited in the wings.
They swept into the desert sands the centuries-long struggle of Sunnis
and Shiites for dominance in the fertile river basin between the Tigris
and Euphrates Rivers. It was as if officials thought that perhaps by
saying they were brothers, they would become them. Back
to NPR, (C) Jonathan S. Landay and Elise Labott's speculation --
presented as such with Labott making clear she was referring to what
officials were stating. It's a shame that more time wasn't spent on
that. No one knows why the bombings are taking place (other than due
to the ongoing, illegal war). Could they be to influence the
elections? Possibly. Could they be to harm Nouri al-Maliki?
Possibly. But it's equally true that the message can be sent
throughout Iraq. The August 9th bombing just outside Mosul,
for example, was deadly (at least 35 dead) and it received huge
attention within Iraq and outside of it. Why target only Baghdad if
the issue is just the elections? It's not as if only residents of
Baghdad will be voting. Equally true is that there are other areas
that should be easier to attack than the region targeted on Sunday. So
why those targets? Puppet
government police forces arrested three people claimed to be wanted in
al Hadbaa area of eastern Mosul. In
al Furat area of Baghdad, continous arrest and raid campaigns
perpetrated by government army forces led indiscriminate arrests of
dozens. Eyewitnesses said that aforementioned forces used sectarian and
irritating slogans beating civilians. During the arrest campaigns the
area was monitored by American occupation forces. On
the other hand, government police and army forces arrested eight
civilians in various areas of Diyala Province. In Basra, government police forces arrested 20 people in raid and search campaign alleged to be wanted. In
Tuzkharmotu of Saladin Province, government police forces arrested
three civilians who were beaten, insulted and
irritated. In
Latifiya of southern Baghdad, sectarian government army forces arrested
seven civilians in raid and search attacks. Today Deng Shasha (Xinhua) reports
that Iraq's Sunni vice president (Iraq has two vice presidents -- one
Sunni, one Shia) Tariq al-Hashimi has "called on an evaluation of
running the security dossier after Sunday's bloody suicide bombings
that claimed the lives of 155 Iraqis." Meanwhile Prashant Rao (AFP) reports
that today saw many clerics using the sermons to call out "Iraqi
authorities" and quotes Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai stating, "With
insurgents having repeated the same bombings, with the same style and
in the same secure area, we have to review the security plan that has
been implemented in Baghdad" while Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani declared,
"I demand immediate and urgent checks for the reasons that led to teh
bombings." Nouri's government rsponse has been to attack Syria
(naturally) and to attack the press (ibid). On the latter, Azzaman reports
he has "banned movement by press vehicles with equipment to broadcast
live. [. . . ] The order has been issued by the military command of
Baghdad operations which specificially denies television broadcasters
the right of live coverage." Turning to some of today's reported violence . . . Bombings? Shootings? Corpses? Reuters notes
1 corpse discovered in Mosul while 1 police officer -- who may or may
not have been part of the investigation into Sunday's bombings -- was
discovered dead (from a shooting) in his Baghdad office.
Violence
was kind-of, sort-of an issue yesterday in the US House Armed Services
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The hearing was about
IEDs and the money spent on studying them. The Pentagon's James Schear
and Lt Gen Thomas Metz as well as the GAO's William Solis were the
witnesses, Vic Snyder is the Subcomittee Chair. Subcommittee
Chair Vic Snyder: IEDs remain the number one cause of casulities to
coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although IEDs are not a new
threat, they have been used with unprecedented frequency in Iraq and
Afghanistan. While the decrease in successful attacks in Iraq is
encouraging, that success has not been replicated in Afghanistan which
has seen an increase in success in fatality attacks with our increase
in forces there. Since former CENTCOM commander General [John]
Abizaid called for a Manhattan Project like effort 5 years ago to
defeat IEDs, Congress has provided nearly $17 billion to DoD's efforts.
This effort has grown from a twelve-man army task force to the Jointed
IED Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO, which currently employs a staff of
about 3600 dedicated government, military and contract personnel. Lt
Gen Thomas F. Metz declared, "What's really different in the two
theaters is that over time in Iraq, as we were experiencing 1500, 2500
IEDs a month -- and finding and clearing half of them, we were gaining
an enormous amount of forensics and biometrics information. We use that
in the COIC [Counter-IED Operations Integration Center] to our
advantage It is our asymetric advantage." US House Rep Duncan Hunter noted a lack of mobilization. He referred to NPR's report
on IEDs this week and how, despite all the money being spent, it was
human beings noting, for example, "that corpse wasn't there yesterday"
and guessing that it appeared to hide an IED. He noted that Marines in
Afghanistan report they have only rarely seen predator drones and that
instead they rely on "hand held mine sweepers -- a version of which
people use on the beach to find coins." He also showed a child's
innocence or foolilshness as he lived in a world where only the
'guilty' were killed. US House Rep
Duncan Hunter: This doesn't make me feel comfortable that we are truly
doing everything that we can right now. Once-once more, if Secretary
Gates said, "No more IEDs to be buried" -- I understand that there are
tons in Afghanistan and they can be turned on like that at any point in
time. But we could do that. We could stop IEDs from being buried if we
mobilize to do it. And -- and if we want to politically about this war
too -- it would fall off the map if nobody was dying. Iraq's not in the
paper anymore because nobody's dying. One reason is we've knocked off
IEDs, huge in 2007 and 2008, with [Gen William] Odum by killing over
3,000 IED placers. Project Odom with IEDS killed more people than every
single other person in Iraq put together -- with all the offensive
operations, Odom killed more and they were all bad guys -- not one
single civilian, they were all inputting IEDs. "Not
one single civilian." Just "bad guys." Because a drone is judge and
jury. So if a drone says it's "bad guys" that's all the proof Duncan
Hunter needs. (And, to clarify, this is Duncan Hunter the younger, the
32-year-old elected to his father's seat. Still wet behind the ears
and with a child's wide-eyes, he needs correcting, not the blanket
approval Snyder gave him when Snyder followed Hunter. And someone
might have bothered to inform Hunter that, despite his claims that
"nobody's dying" in Iraq, Iraq saw at least 155 people die on Sunday
alone. "Nobody's dying"? That didn't require a correction? Did he
mean no US service members? If so, even that's wrong because there are
8 announced dead in Iraq so far this month -- granted 2 of them were
announced today so, at the time of the hearing, only 6 had been
announced. And it's a good thing to Duncan Hunter that the news media
walked away from Iraq? Really? (Hunter is a veteran of both the Iraq
and Afghanistan Wars, FYI.) Congress had time for that nonsense
yesterday. Not for anything important, but they had time for that. Politicians
always clamor that we have to "support our troops" and take care of our
veterans first. The White House Web site quotes Obama's proclamation
that "we...owe our veterans the care they were promised and the
benefits that they have earned." But
the VA's latest failure to deliver on educational benefits--coming just
a few years after the scandal of VA health care negligence at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C.--leaves these lofty
assertions sounding like just another example of the politicians' empty
rhetoric. And given
Obama's increasingly clear record of impressive speeches followed by
little action, some veterans are calling his administration "the
audacity of nope." While the veterans at
the VA office in Chicago expressed relief at finally receiving their
first check, the bitterness persists. Bureaucratic red tape and
mismanagement always holds up money and benefits for veterans, but
there always seems to be an abundant supply of cash for bank bailouts,
the "cash for clunkers" program to help U.S. automakers, a failed
Olympic bid for the city of Chicago, or a bloated Pentagon
budget. How is that
related? One damn hearing. That's all the Congress is going to hold on
that scandal? Really? One damn hearing. They fawned over VA
Secretary Eric Shinseki October 14th
-- even when he admitted that the VA knew before he became the
Secretary (and that he found out as soon as he became the Secretary)
that they wouldn't be able to implement the benefit checks in a timely
manner. They acted like smiling zombies. October 15th,
when he was present, they were suddenly concerned for their one and
only hearing thus far into the scandal. That's disgusting. That
effected so many veterans and it got so little attention from
Congress. Most importantly, it's still not 'fixed.' Read Martin
Smith's report. But Congress has other things to do and, point of
fact, the Senate held no hearings on the issue. Want to explain how
that happened? Meanwhile Lauren DeFranco (WABC -- link has text and video) reports
Christal Wagenhauser gave birth to a two month premature daughter and
she and the family want Cpl [Keith] Wagenhouser -- currently stationed
in Iraq -- home to see the baby: "If the baby's condition deteriorates,
it would take Wagenhauser a week to get home. At that point, it would
be too late."Jennifer Logan (CBS) reports
that Keith Wagenhauser was finally given time to visit his family and
arrived in New York yesterday and explains: "In an incubator adorned
with her father's military photo, Madison, born by life-saving
caesarean section, weighing just 2-pounds 11-ounces is being treated in
the neonatal intensive care unit of Stony Brook University Medical
Center. Initially, marine brass explained that emergency leave is
granted only in cases of imminent or actual death in their immediate
family and that Madison's condition was not sufficiently life
threatening enough to grant an exception." So while the military brass
did the right thing, what's the hold up with the US Congress when it
comes to the latest (known) threat to deport the spouse of a veteran? Iraq War veteran Jack Barrios would probably love some downtime with his family but the government keeps creating problems as LA's KABC reports (link has text and video): Subha
Ravindhran: [. . .] Frances Barrios considers herself an American. She
grew up and went to high school here in Van Nuys but for the past 17
years, she's been living in this country illegally. Now she and her
husband, an Iraq War veteran, must deal with the consequences.
26-year-old Army Specialist Jack Barrios can barely talk about the time
he served in Iraq. Jack Barrios: I'll skip that. Subha Ravindhran: You don't want to talk about that. Jack Barrios: Yeah. Subha
Ravindhran: But what he can speak about is the battle his family is
going through now. His wife, 23-year-old Frances, is facing deporation
back to Guatemala -- a country she left when she was just
six-years-old. Jack Barrios: I'm pretty sad and angry that we will get separated. Subha
Ravindhran: Not only will three-year-old Matthew and one-year-old
Allanna be separated from their mother, but Jack will also lose his
main caretaker. Since he returned from Iraq in 2007, he's been
suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Frances Barrios: He was
an outgoing person, you could say. He used to like being outside with
his friends and just, you know, having a good time. When he came back,
like I said, he shut down. It wasn't him. Subha Ravindhran: Their attorney Jessica Dominguez says the chances of keeping Frances here are slim. Jessica
Dominguez: It's just mind boggling to try to understand that in a
situation like this, Mr. Barrios cannot be assured that his family is
going to stay together because immigration laws do not protect the
sanctity of his family at this point. The
US government wants to deport her. (She's from Guatemala originally,
entered the US with her mother when she was just six-years-old.) As
offensive as that is -- and it's really offensive -- it's also
economically stupid because Jack suffers from PTSD. The US government
is going to provide him a caretaker who will do all that Frances
currently does? Really? Teresa Watanabe (Los Angeles Times) reported earlier this week: But
as he undergoes counseling and swallows anti-depressants, the soldier
is fighting an even bigger battle: to keep his family from collapsing
as his wife, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, faces
deportation. His
wife, 23-year-old Frances, was illegally brought to the United States
by her mother at age 6, learned of her status in high school and
discovered just last year that removal proceedings have been started.
Her possible deportation has left Barrios in panic as he contemplates
life without her. The
Army reservist says his wife is the family's anchor, caring for their
year-old daughter and 3-year-old son and helping him battle his
post-traumatic stress."She's
my everything," Barrios said as he sat glumly in the family's sparsely
furnished but tidy Van Nuys apartment. "Without her, I can't function.
It would be like taking away a part of my soul." Hundreds
of U.S. soldiers are facing the same trouble as they fight to legalize
their spouses' status, a difficult process that has affected their
military readiness, according to Margaret Stock, a lieutenant colonel
in the Army Reserves and an immigration attorney specializing in
military cases. Dropping back to the October 21st snapshot, "In the US yesterday, a twenty-year-old Iraqi woman was run over along with her 43-year-old friend. James King (Phoenix News) reports
that police are looking for the twenty-year-old's father, Faleh Hassan
Almaleki, whom they supsect of running the two women down and that the
alleged motive is that the daughter was 'becoming too westernized.' Katie Fisher (ABC 15 -- link has text and video) reports
the 20-year-old woman is Noor Faleh Almaleki and her 43-year-old friend
is Amal Edan Khalaf and the friend is also the mother of the
twenty-year-old's boyfriend." CNN reports
he was arrested yesterday in Atlanta -- after he had gone to Mexico,
flown to London where British officials refuse him admittance in
England, and returned to the US. CNN states his daughter is still in
the hospital and "unresponsive" to treatment thus far. Sarah Netter (ABC News -- link has text and video) reports on the apparent attempted honor killing and notes that Noor's status as "life-threatening condition". TV notes. NOW on PBS begins
airing on many PBS stations tonight (check local listings for times and
for other dates if it doesn't air on your PBS station tonight): Home
to a worldwide summit on climate change in early December, Denmark is
setting a global example in creating clean power, storing it, and using
it responsibly. Their reliance on wind power to produce electricity
without contributing to global warming is well known, but now they're
looking to drive the point home with electric cars. To do this, they've
partnered with social entrepreneur Shai Agassi and his company Better
Place.This week, NOW
investigates how the Danish government and Better Place are working
together to put electric cars into the hands of as many Danish families
as possible. The idea is still having trouble getting out of the garage
here in America, but Denmark could be an inspiration.Will so much green enthusiasm bring about a "Copenhagen Protocol"?Washington Week
also begins airing tonight on many PBS stations and sitting around the
table with Gwen this week are Ceci Connolly (Washington Post), John
Dickerson (Slate and CBS News), Marilyn Serafini (National Journal) and
Nancy A. Youssef (McClatchy Newspapers). Meanwhile Bonnie Erbe
will sit down with Karen Czarnecki, Melinda Henneberger, Eleanor Holmes
Norton and Genevieve Wood to discuss the week's events on PBS' To The Contrary. Check local listings, on many stations, it begins airing tonight. And turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers: H1N1 Vaccine
Scott Pelley reports on the manufacture, distribution and safety of the H1N1 flu vaccine. | Watch Video
Yakuza
How
does a foreigner jump the line in America for a life-saving liver
transplant? It might be because he is a high-ranking member of Japan's
mafia, known as the Yakuza, whose criminal influence is worldwide. Lara
Logan reports.
The Movie Pirates
They
are the bane of Hollywood: criminals who copy films - sometimes before
the movies even reach the theater - and distribute them illegally on
the Internet, costing Hollywood billions in lost revenue. Lesley Stahl
reports.
60 Minutes, this Sunday, Nov. 1, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. |
mcclatchy newspapers