The Baghdad Green Zone and the Airport. Quite an airstrip there. It was built with USA dollars. The longest of the airstrips is two milies to accommodate any military aircraft regardless of size. Use that reference to realize the size of area involved in 'The Green Zone' and it's proximity to the airport. Now realize it is this area with many of the deaths. Why? Because. Because of the USA occupation there. Whether or not the Unity Government survives makes no difference to the average Iraqi. The provinces already have viable leadership that are autonomously prepared to care for their populous. The Unity Government is important to the international community, primarily Bush, because of oil rights and contractual obligations. If the Unity Government dissolves so does 'Iraq' and it's fiscal obligations to the world. The USA would not have claim to Iraqi oil if the Unity Government implodes. Now what do Americans want? Imperialism? Or societies chosen by Iraqis to sustain their well being? What will bring peace to these people?
Green Zone is taking more hits (click here)
Rockets and mortar shells are landing almost daily, causing fatalities and raising anxiety in the high-security area.
By Tina Susman, Times Staff WriterJune 21, 2007
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military acknowledged Wednesday that insurgents are firing more mortar rounds and rockets into Baghdad's Green Zone, a former haven that now is rocked almost daily by explosions.
Rockets and mortar shells are landing almost daily, causing fatalities and raising anxiety in the high-security area.
By Tina Susman, Times Staff WriterJune 21, 2007
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military acknowledged Wednesday that insurgents are firing more mortar rounds and rockets into Baghdad's Green Zone, a former haven that now is rocked almost daily by explosions.
At a news conference, Navy Rear Adm. Mark Fox refused to disclose the number of attacks, saying he did not want to "give the people shooting any indication of how effective they might be."
But he added, "There is unquestionably an increasing pattern of attacks against the International Zone. There's no doubt about that."
In a report this month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone, where the United Nations has its Iraq headquarters, had totaled 17 in March, 30 in April and 39 by May 22.
The attacks have killed at least 26 people since Feb. 19, the report says.
Ban report says the risk of incoming fire is so great that U.N. staff have been temporarily moved to safer quarters better able to withstand strikes. At Wednesday's news conference, Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Qassim Musawi underscored the proble
m of preventing the attacks, which strike homes, streets, the parliament building and even politicians' gardens. He said that the rockets and mortar shells often are fired from residential areas and that military strikes on such areas would lead to many civilian casualties...
If the Iraq Unity Government is to be the authority of the people of Iraq then it needs to have the support of the people there. The USA cannot forever cause conflict between the people of this country and it's government by defending it beyond what is reasonable to consider. It is unconscionable to believe any government that meets with the resistance from every venue of the population is a good government.
What the USA is meeting up with is not 'bands of insurgents' that can be remedied. What the USA is meeting up with are populous trying to eliminate the central authority they are concerned will govern unjustly and with deadly force. This is not an insurgency in Iraq. It is a rebellion against the authority instilled by Bremer and Bush.
The provinces feel safer within their own authority. It simply needs to be. Iraq's Baghdad is not the central authority to these people, it is however the internationally recognized authority that currently has the loyalty of an occupying USA force that sees to it that the oil is delivered to the extent it does.
Iraq has only a population of 25 million people. Minimally, 2 million are refugees. That is at least 10% of the population known to exist BEFORE the invasion that no longer live in Iraq. The estimates to refugees are speculated as high as 6 million from Iraq. That would be 25% of the population of that country.
Iraq's refugees are responsibility of U.S. (click here)
Rebecca Mahfouz
Issue date: 6/19/07 Section: Perspectives
Having created one of the worst refugee crises in recent memory, the United States is once again avoiding responsibility for the damage it has wrought by refusing to admit significant numbers of Iraqi refugees. We are, as has become our habit, unleashing mayhem, then sitting idly by while the rest of the world cleans up the mess.
Rebecca Mahfouz
Issue date: 6/19/07 Section: Perspectives
Having created one of the worst refugee crises in recent memory, the United States is once again avoiding responsibility for the damage it has wrought by refusing to admit significant numbers of Iraqi refugees. We are, as has become our habit, unleashing mayhem, then sitting idly by while the rest of the world cleans up the mess.
An estimated four million Iraqis have been displaced in the wake of the devastation visited upon their country by the Bush Administration's war of aggression. While Syria and Jordan have taken in around two million refugees combined, Germany 150,000 and Sweden 70,000, the United States, with its usual compassion, has taken in just 700 since 2003. That's fewer than 200 refugees for each blood-soaked year of American occupation.
For an administration that's forever badgering us about the importance of "responsibility" and "accountability," the Bush team has done a stellar job of avoiding both when it comes to those Iraqis whose lives they've destroyed. It seems that, in the mysterious neo-con code of "ethics," responsibility is only important when it can be pinned on the weak. Welfare recipients, the elderly and most especially those who've been displaced by our bombs are all responsible for their own misfortunes and should expect no help from us. America's job is to use our military might to impose predatory capitalism (sometimes termed "democracy" by those running the show) on the world. If there is anyone unlucky enough not to benefit from American policy - foreign or domestic -it must be his own fault and he'll have to bear the consequences....
And the USA thought they had immigration problems now. Huh ! Here they come, all the cheap labor the Republicans can handle. The war weary of Iraq come to nest. Ain't life great, huh?
Posted GMT 6-22-2007 14:39:18
They've been hounded, kidnapped and in some cases, killed.
Now, Iraq's minorities are fleeing their homeland by the hundreds of thousands, with an estimated 2,000 of them headed for Michigan by the end of September.
Expected to be the largest influx of refugees in the state since the early 1990s, the Iraqis are fleeing a crumbling society where Islamic extremism threatens the lives of Christians and others whose ancestors were the original people of Iraq. So far, about 2.2 million Iraqis have fled their country since the start of the war.
"We have a mass exodus on hand," said Joseph Kassab, a West Bloomfield scientist who is overseeing the refugee influx as executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America. "We need to help these people."
Working 80-hour weeks, Kassab and his team have registered about 5,000 U.S. residents -- 3,000 of them in Michigan -- who have more than 20,000 family members stranded outside their native land, many of them in Syria and Jordan.
Hani Yousif, 50, of Troy has nieces and cousins who fled to Syria, where they're stuck with no jobs and a bleak future.
"They keep asking us the same question every time we call: When can we get there to America?" Yousif said.
Kassab said he expects about 90 Iraqi refugees to arrive in metro Detroit in weeks, with more arriving by Sept. 30.
In April, the U.S. Department of State said that up to 25,000 Iraqi refugees will be admitted into the United States this year. Michigan is a natural choice for many of them, given its high concentration of Iraqi Americans and people of other nationalities who speak Arabic....
They've been hounded, kidnapped and in some cases, killed.
Now, Iraq's minorities are fleeing their homeland by the hundreds of thousands, with an estimated 2,000 of them headed for Michigan by the end of September.
Expected to be the largest influx of refugees in the state since the early 1990s, the Iraqis are fleeing a crumbling society where Islamic extremism threatens the lives of Christians and others whose ancestors were the original people of Iraq. So far, about 2.2 million Iraqis have fled their country since the start of the war.
"We have a mass exodus on hand," said Joseph Kassab, a West Bloomfield scientist who is overseeing the refugee influx as executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America. "We need to help these people."
Working 80-hour weeks, Kassab and his team have registered about 5,000 U.S. residents -- 3,000 of them in Michigan -- who have more than 20,000 family members stranded outside their native land, many of them in Syria and Jordan.
Hani Yousif, 50, of Troy has nieces and cousins who fled to Syria, where they're stuck with no jobs and a bleak future.
"They keep asking us the same question every time we call: When can we get there to America?" Yousif said.
Kassab said he expects about 90 Iraqi refugees to arrive in metro Detroit in weeks, with more arriving by Sept. 30.
In April, the U.S. Department of State said that up to 25,000 Iraqi refugees will be admitted into the United States this year. Michigan is a natural choice for many of them, given its high concentration of Iraqi Americans and people of other nationalities who speak Arabic....
Michigan cannot take this responsiblity on by itself. There needs to be assistance for these refugees through a federal funding program. This is outrageous to expect one state in the USA to absorb all the incoming from an illegal war zone.
