02.28.06
Posted in SSquirrel at 10:18 am by SSquirrel
The Ministry of the Interior was “acting as a rogue element within the government”. It is controlled by the main Shia party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri); the Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, is a former leader of Sciri’s Badr Brigade militia, which is one of the main groups accused of carrying out sectarian killings. Another is the Mehdi Army of the young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is part of the Shia coalition seeking to form a government after winning the mid-December election.
Many of the 110,000 policemen and police commandos under the ministry’s control are suspected of being former members of the Badr Brigade. Not only counter-insurgency units such as the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpions and the Tigers, but the commandos and even the highway patrol police have been accused of acting as death squads.
The paramilitary commandos, dressed in garish camouflage uniforms and driving around in pick-up trucks, are dreaded in Sunni neighbourhoods. People whom they have openly arrested have frequently been found dead several days later, with their bodies bearing obvious marks of torture.
Mr Pace, a Maltese-Australian who has now retired from his UN post to his home in Sydney, says the constant violence and utter lack of security in Iraq are creating a vicious circle in which ordinary citizens are turning to extremist sectarian groups for protection. Fear of anybody in official uniform inevitably strengthens the militias and the insurgents. In Sunni areas people will look to their own defences, and not to the regular army and police.
THE KILLERS
BADR BRIGADE:
Armed wing of the most powerful Shia party. Many police and paramilitaries ’still wear Badr T-shirts under their uniform,’ a US general said.
MEHDI ARMY:
Loyal to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Apart from open clashes with Sunnis, its members in the police are accused of death squad killings.
DEFENDERS OF KHADAMIYA:
Followers of Hussein al-Sadr, Moqtada relative. Among forces set up to guard Shia shrines, but having more sinister links.
SPECIAL POLICE
COMMANDOS:
Feared by Sunnis, despite having had some Sunni commanders.
On Tuesday morning, nine bullet-riddled bodies were found off a road southeast of Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.
The Iraqi army found the bodies near two burned minibuses in an open area off the road from Baghdad into Iraq’s strife prone Diyala province, Diyala police said.
The victims included Shaikh Hamid Irbat Ghazi of the influential Mahamda tribe, and two of his nephews, police said.
Two British soliders have been killed and a third injured in an incident at Al Amarah in Iraq. In Baghdad, dozens of people were killed in a series of explosions.
An MoD spokeswoman said of the Al amarah attack: “We can confirm it is an incident at Al Amarah. Two British soldiers were killed and a third sustained non-life-threatening injuries. Next of kin are being informed and no further information is being released.”
The deaths take the number of UK service personnel who have died since the Iraq conflict began to 103.
Al Amarah, on the river Tigris south of Baghdad, was where video footage obtained by the News of the World appeared to show British troops beating up Iraqi prisoners
In Baghdad today, four explosions, including two car bombs and a suicide bomber, killed at least 36 people and injuring scores, police said.
A man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up at a gas station in the eastern New Baghdad neighorhood, killing 23 people and injuring 51, said Interior Ministry official Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi.
A car bomb targeting a police patrol in the same neighborhood killed nine people and injured 17 — all civilians — said police Lt. Alu Abbas and medic Rahim al-Waedi.
Another car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in the crowded southeastern Karada neighborhood, killing four people and injuring 16, said al-Mohammedawi.
The vehicle was parked next to a small market opposite the Timimi mosque, which was closed for repairs, police said. Distraught residents rushed to the scene, as fire fighters fought back flames from a burning car.
A fourth blast took place in an open area near the downtown national theater, al-Mohammedawi said. Initial police reports indicated a mortar blast. There were no reports of casualties.
Permalink
Posted in SSquirrel at 9:32 am by SSquirrel
Anne Penketh
Libyan women and girls including rape victims are being placed in “social rehabilitation” centres which are being used as an ideological brainwashing tool by the authorities, Human Rights Watch claims.
A team from the human rights organisation was granted access to two of the centres, and releases its report today. Officially portrayed as protective homes for women and girls “vulnerable to engaging in moral misconduct”, Human Rights Watch says the facilities house rape victims who have been ostracised for “staining their families’ honour“.
Women and girls who have no male guardian have also been placed in the centres. They say they are treated like criminals.
Farida Deif, the researcher who visited the centres, said that “these facilities are far more punitive than protective”. She said she was told that the Libyan authorities “don’t just want to change the women’s behaviour, but their personalities”.
There is no time limit for the arbitrary detentions. The total number of centres in Libya is not known.
Responding to the charges in the report, the Libyan government said that Human Rights Watch was ignoring the Islamic values governing Libyan society, particularly the protection of women who might face “honour” killings
South Dakota is considering sending a delegation, led by Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) and State Senator William M. Napoli, Republican of Rapid City, to study these centers. They hope to incorporate something similar into legislation requiring all women to submit their uterus for inspection at border checkpoints along the state line.
Permalink
02.27.06
Posted in SSquirrel at 12:35 pm by SSquirrel
PENNSYLVANIA. The latest Rasmussen Reports poll shows US Senator Rick Santorum (R) continues to lag far behind State Treasurer Bob Casey Jr. (D). The numbers: Casey-52%, Santorum-36%. The gubernatorial contest is much closer: Governor Ed Rendell (D) - 46%, retired football player Lynn Swann (R) - 43%.
Permalink
Posted in SSquirrel at 12:29 pm by SSquirrel
Politics1
State Senator Robert Hagan (D-Ohio) says he will introduce legislation to ban Republican couples from adopting children. According to Hagan, “credible research'’ shows that adopted children raised in GOP households are more at risk for developing “emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities.” Hagan agrees there is no scientific evidence backing his claims about Republican parents — just, as Hagan notes, there is none backing State Representative Ron Hood’s (R) bill banning gay parents from adopting. Hood claims children purportedly suffer from emotional “harm” when they are adopted by gay couples. Hagen admits he created his proposal to mock Hood’s proposed ban on gay adoption in a way that people would see the “blatantly discriminatory and extremely divisive” nature of the bill. The GOP House leadership does not support Hood’s proposal.
It’s about time. Just thinking about innocent children being raised by people so lacking in Chritian values as to be members of the (shudder) Republican Party. The horror.
Permalink
Posted in SSquirrel at 12:12 pm by SSquirrel
The makers of the morning-after pill, known commercially as Plan B, asked the FDA for the right to sell the drug over the counter in April 2003, four years after it was first approved for use. The agency’s staff and an advisory panel strongly favored the application, saying that unprotected sex often occurs when it is difficult to get a doctor’s prescription. They said that easier and faster access to the drug would reduce the number of abortions.
But the FDA leadership first rejected and then deferred decision on the proposal. The agency has raised scientific and regulatory objections, but critics have pointed to the strong opposition from some social conservatives and antiabortion groups, who have lobbied the White House and Congress to make their position known. Plan B is officially listed as a contraceptive, and the medical community generally agrees that it stops a pregnancy from occurring rather than ending one. But many in the antiabortion movement disagree with that view and say that it amounts to a very early abortion.
The FDA’s inaction on Plan B has been sharply criticized by most major medical societies and many in Congress, and led to a lawsuit by the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. The federal magistrate judge hearing the case on Friday concluded that the center had established a “strong preliminary showing of ‘bad faith or misbehavior’ ” on the part of FDA officials, and so ordered the case to go forward and ruled that top current and past FDA leaders should be interviewed under oath.
~WaPo
The Fundies continue their campaign of lies and deceit which increases the number of abortions. These people aren’t against abortion. They are using the government to enforce their religous beliefs, a belief that makes women second class citizens. This isn’t about a “culture of life”, it’s about abuse of power. It’s about seperation of church and state. And it’s about hte Repugnant Party using religous beliefs to mantain power. Republicans are not Christian, they just play one on TV…
S(ister Mary)Squirrel
Permalink
02.26.06
Posted in SSquirrel at 2:10 pm by SSquirrel
Al Jazeera
At least 15 people are reported to have been killed and dozens more injured in a mortar attack on a southern Baghdad neighbourhood in the latest incident of violence pitching Iraq to the brink of civil war.
According to one report, the mortars fell on two predominantly Shia neighbourhoods in southern Baghdad at around 5.30pm (1430 GMT).
Earlier on Sunday, a bomb killed five people at a bus station in the town of Hilla south of Baghdad, while in Basra, a bomb in the washroom of a Shia mosque caused minor injuries, police said.
Overnight, after a round of calls to Iraqi leaders by US President George Bush, Iraq’s Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made a televised appeal urging Iraqis not to turn on each other following the Samarra bombing.
Al-Jaafari, under US pressure to forge a national unity government after an election in December, said he hoped that Iraqis would step back from sectarian strife.
“The Iraqi people have one enemy - it is terrorism and only terrorism. There are no Sunnis against Shias,” he said.
Al-Jaafari was speaking after a three-hour meeting which produced a commitment from the main factions to speed up efforts to form a unity coalition.
However, Sunni leader Tariq al-Hashimi said he was not ready to end a boycott of the US-sponsored coalition talks.
Four days of tit-for-tat reprisals have left more than 200 dead and mosques damaged despite a daytime curfew on Baghdad that went into its third day on Sunday.
The defence minister has warned that the violence risked developing into a civil war that “will never end”.
Speaking at Sunday’s rally in Basra, Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for Muslim unity against US occupation and urged his many followers to hold joint prayers next Friday at Sunni mosques, especially those damaged in the past days’ violence.
Shortly afterwards, journalists heard a loud blast nearby that turned out to have been in a Shia mosque.
Though al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi Army militia have been accused by officials of taking part in attacks on Sunni mosques, al-Sadr himself denies ordering violence.
However, the Shia show of force after the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra has exceeded any sparked by earlier attacks and may strengthen the rival militia leaders’ hands in negotiations with Sunnis and with fellow Shias.
Nice to see the Iraqis unifying against something, they agree they want us to leave, and they agree they want our soldiers to die. Bush, of course, believes in the Tinkerbell theory. If he’s a fuckup it’s the democrats fault cause they didn’t believe in his fairy tale view of Iraq. I say let’s see if Fearless Leader can fly.
Permalink
02.25.06
Posted in SSquirrel at 9:59 am by SSquirrel
Americablog
Today’s NY Times book review of Bremer’s book is worth a read. Why he is only now admitting that the US was well under-manned in the field is a mystery but I suppose he was too interested in playing the game. Say-nothings stick around for the long haul and those who question are sent packing. Bush did not want to admit that more troops were needed because it did not fit with his campaign strategy and Bremer and others were only too happy to tow the line.
Bremer turned to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, and asked him what he would do with two more divisions, as many as 40,000 more troops. General Sanchez did not hesitate to answer. “I’d control Baghdad,” he said. Bremer then mentioned some other uses for the soldiers, like securing Iraq’s borders and protecting its infrastructure, to which General Sanchez replied: “Got those spare troops handy, sir?”
Yet for most of the 14 months that Bremer oversaw the occupation, he and his aides, and General Sanchez and his, often seemed the only people in Iraq who refused to acknowledge the anarchy in the streets. Though confronted by the growing guerrilla insurgency and the brazen behavior of armed militias, Bremer and other senior American officials routinely batted down any suggestion that they needed more soldiers.
Paul Bremer and an honest to gosh General lied? To the American people? Causing the needless death of thousands? Gee, I wonder who told them to do that? FMTT
Permalink
Posted in SSquirrel at 9:21 am by SSquirrel
Jason Leopold
thanks Desi
The White House turned over last week 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office. Senior aides had sent the emails in the spring of 2003 related to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald revealed during a federal court hearing Friday.
The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.
Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.
Cheney was not under oath when he was interviewed. He told investigators how the White House came to rely on Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country.
Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing on the allegations in late December 2003, or early January 2004, and had asked the CIA for more information about the issue.
Cheney said he was unaware that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to look into the uranium claims, and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a CIA analyst upon his return which stated that the Niger claims were untrue. He said the CIA never told him about Wilson’s trip.
However, the emails say otherwise, and will show that the vice president spearheaded an effort in March 2003 to attack Wilson’s credibility and used the CIA to dig up information on the former ambassador that could be used against him, sources said.
Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from Fitzgerald’s probe citing “executive privilege” and “national security” concerns. These sources said that as of Friday there are still some emails that have not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified information in addition to references about the Wilsons.
Interesting timing, is this to weaken Dick “Friendly Fire” Cheney as a prelude to dumping him? Or a response to Fitzgerald making the missing e-mails public? Or just bait for further delays? It is garbage day after all…
Permalink
02.24.06
Posted in SSquirrel at 11:02 am by SSquirrel
Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
WEDNESDAY 22 FEBRUARY
Dawn attack destroys the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. No one is injured but violent protests soon break out.
* More than 50 Sunni mosques attacked in Baghdad alone.
* In Basra, protesters set fire to Sunni shrine containing the remains of one of Mohamed’s companions. Sunni cleric is shot dead in the afternoon.
* 11pm: Eleven prisoners taken from a jail in Basra by unidentified gunmen and shot in the head.
THURSDAY 23 FEBRUARY
9am: Bodies of three al-Arabiya journalists sent to cover the Samarra bombing found dumped.
* 10am: 47 people dragged from their cars and shot while returning from a protest against the Samarra bombing north of Baghdad.
* Iraqi President Jalal Talabani summons political leaders to a meeting but the biggest Sunni faction, the Iraqi Accordance Front, refuses to attend.
* Numerous bodies, many with their hands tied, found in east Baghdad and Basra. Most victims are Sunnis.
* As night falls, more than 130 people are believed to have been killed.
The militant Sunni Clerical Association of Muslim Scholars said 168 Sunni mosques had been attacked, 10 imams had been killed and 15 abducted.
Among those to die in the crescendo of violence were a correspondent of al-Arabiya television and two members of her crew who were taken away by gunmen when they were interviewing people in Samarra.
The fact that we are involved in a civil war in Iraq has been obvious for well over a year now. But until now it has been deniable, because most of the Shiites were labeled Iraqi government troops, or Ministry “commando” units (Pentagon bullshit tends to be unintentionally hilarious), or insurgents in police uniforms (easily obtainable of course).
Now it cannot be denied. Nor can it be denied that we are on the side funded by Iran (our enemies?) and fighting to exterminate (ethnically cleanse?) Sunnis who are being supported by the Saudis and Syrians (do we have any friends left?) our supposed “allies” in the GWOT.
How this present crisis will end is unclear. Sunni leaders reported that over 120 mosques had been attacked on Wednesday and Thursday, often by Shiite militias such as the Mahdi Army. The attacks ranged from drive-by shootings to groups of militiamen taking over mosques and torching them.
Khalizad said the government was attempting to secure Sunni mosques from further attacks. He said U.S. troops had also stepped up patrols, but in Baghdad, American forces were scarcely in sight.
Many Sunnis took the defense of their mosques into their own hands. At the Rawi mosque in a Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad, security was much tighter than usual. Over a dozen men with AK-47 assault rifles guarded the perimeter, saying they would protect their house of worship against attacks “by those wearing black shirts,” a reference to the black uniforms of the Mahdi Army.
On Friday afternoon, news services reported scattered attacks killed five Iraqis after troops and police threw up a web of checkpoints Baghdad and in the mixed Sunni-Shiite provinces of Diyala, Babil and Salahuddin. The ban was the first of its kind since the one imposed during parliamentary elections in December.
Anyone who doubts that the Pentagon is engaging in ethnic cleansing (urban pacification?) might want to look at aerial shots of Fallujah, Tal Afar, or any city along the northern border with Syria. They are mostly gone today, bombed off the map for the most part. While this has saved many lives of US soldiers, it was a direct result of a badly flawed strategy of invading with as few troops as possible in the first place. The perniciousness of this “strategy” is that several million Sunnis will become bitter enemies of our country with long lists of dead relatives to avenge.
The almost weekly discovery of abandoned buildings filled with the tortured and the dead (Sunni) show very clearly the likely tactics of a Shiite controlled government. The Pentagon is certainly aware that the Interior ministry is behind much of this killing, even as it publicly tries to obfuscate it’s source and denies any concrete knowledge of government involvement.
Our current policy of “hiding in place” is an open secret. Our troops only go out in force, almost always at night, in anyplace deemed dangerous. The only thing we are safe guarding in Iraq is ourselves. Things are not getting better, they keep getting worse. We are not protecting the Iraqi people, we are protecting our people. That would obviously be cheaper and easier if we booked them on alaskan cruises or suites in Maui instead.
And please can we stop calling everyone who attacks Shiite police and army “Al qaeda” or “Zarqawi terrorists”? Give credit where credit is due, how about the “Rumsfeld Brigades”?
It is time to withdraw, we have become part of the problem. The current administration will never be part of the solution. The Pentagon just wants to minimize casualties while sucking up enourmous amounts of tax dollars.
Let’s start to get out of the way and see if Iraqis can stand on their own. Pull back to the “No Fly” zones, see what happens. If nothing major happens pull out of the north. Any major fights let the Air Force take ‘em out. Start bringing in the UN, they know how to rebuild countries. It’s what they do.
The best we can hope for is a tribal republic with a UN monitored government, but that is much better than our sons and daughter dying in a barely controlled occupation littered with violence and bomb attacks, and that is all our current “leader” offers. Bring ‘em home, honor the dead by honoring those they died defending, their brothers in arms.
S(imple)Squirrel
Permalink
02.23.06
Posted in SSquirrel at 6:05 pm by SSquirrel
MONICA DAVEY ~NYT
Setting up South Dakota to become the first state in 14 years to start a direct legal attack on Roe v. Wade, lawmakers voted on Wednesday to outlaw nearly all abortions.
Across the country, abortion rights advocates reacted with outrage and dismay. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which runs the sole abortion clinic in South Dakota, said it was bracing to fight the move in court immediately, if the governor signs it.
“This represents a monumental step backward for personal privacy for women,” Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said.
Some opponents of abortion rights celebrated what they called a bold and brave move and lauded South Dakota for taking the lead in what they said they hoped would become a series of states to challenge Roe, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal.
The shifting makeup of the United States Supreme Court, the opponents said, offered a crucial opportunity, the first since at least 1992.
“It is a calculated risk, to be sure, but I believe it is a fight worth fighting,” State Senator Brock L. Greenfield, a Clark Republican who is also director of the South Dakota Right to Life, told his colleagues in a hushed, packed chamber here.
After more than an hour of fierce and emotional debate, the senators rejected pleas to add exceptions for incest or rape or for the health of the pregnant woman and instead voted, 23 to 12, to outlaw all abortions, except those to save the woman’s life.
“This state has a right and a duty to step up to the plate,” Senator William M. Napoli, Republican of Rapid City, told his colleagues before he voted for the ban.
The world will be a much nicer place when all the psychopaths like Senator William M. Napoli, who believes that God(what god I have no clue) gives him the right to use the government to force a twelve year old rape victim to give birth to the child of a rapist, have died. Hey Billy, please die soon, something horrible and painful if you can manage it. The world will be a much nicer place without you.
People who are truly against abortion vote for easy access to birth control, free pre-natal care, free child care, intelligent sex education for children and teens, a minumum wage that allows you to feed and house and care for a family, not to subjugate women in some delusional belief in a misogynist diety.
If you believe that life begins at conception, that’s fine, but you must acknowledge it is a truly fragile life, and if removing it from inside a persons body ends it’s life then it is a natural death. But using the government to enforce your narrow and deluded view of what offends God is morally repulsive and certainly ridiculous in the light of passages in the same Bible that advocates stoning to death on her father’s doorstep a women who becomes pregnant out of wedlock. I see no allowance for a fetus there. So please die soon, you are just not nice.
Permalink
Posted in SSquirrel at 5:21 pm by SSquirrel
The Hill
The House and Senate need not pass the same bill for a version of the legislation to become law, according to Republican leaders.
But that is not how the top brass viewed things three years ago, when both chambers authorized $221,000 to revise and publish a new edition of “How Our Laws Are Made,” a House parliamentarian’s report on the legislative process that originated in 1953.
“A bill cannot become a law of the land until it has been approved in identical form by both Houses of Congress,” the parliamentarian wrote in a report that is available on the Library of Congress website.
A central premise of bicameral lawmaking — that both houses must agree to the same legislation — was called into question earlier this month when the president endorsed a Senate-passed spending-cut package that differed slightly from the legislation approved by the House. Congressional aides blamed the discrepancy on a staff-level clerical error.
Typically, a correction could be drafted, passed by both chambers and endorsed by the president. But the highly controversial spending cuts were contained in a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill. A correction measure might be subject to a Senate filibuster.
Even before the latest mishap was revealed, the spending-cut package — $39 billion over five years — had taken a tortuous path to passage. The journey was littered with dime-thin votes in the House and Senate, including a 51-50 vote in the Senate that required Vice President Cheney to break a tie.
Some Democrats argue the spending solecism is just the latest in a string of procedural abuses by an arrogant majority drunk with power.
“Once again, Republican leaders have burned the book on how our laws are made,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said last week.
I always quietly shed a tear for the poor Repugnicans when they complain about how hard it is for them to cut benefits for the poor starving children and the elderly who can’t afford the medication keeping them alive just because the mean ol Democrats won’t let them have a dictatorship. It’s just so unfair to the billionaires whose hired lackeys buy them lunch and pay for their greens fees.
Permalink
Posted in SSquirrel at 2:21 am by SSquirrel
Askariya Shrine
It is the burial place of the 10th and 11th imams, revered by Shiites as the direct descendants and spiritual heirs to the prophet Muhammad.
Permalink