Never forget
Vietnam veteran Lyle Hurley is reflected in the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC, this week. Organisers commemorated the 25th anniversary of the wall with "The Reading of the Names", the four-day event during which the more than 58 000 names inscribed on the memorial are read aloud.


American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan (click here)
November 7, 2007
According to an Associated Press count, at least 3,856 members of the US military have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003. At least 28,385 have been wounded, the military says. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan, at least 387 US personnel have died and 1,742 have been wounded since late 2001, according the Defense Department....


The Bush/Cheney Administration and their pandering media report violence in Iraq is down. There are current estimates of 1 million dead and now a report from inside Iraq to answer the 'Benchmarks' that a full 14% of Iraqis are displaced. There is a reason for the drop in violence and it has NOTHING to do with success in Iraq. Annihilating people, either through death or displacement is a real strategy to MAKE THE NUMBERS look good. I knew this was the reason and stated same many times on this blog, I was just waiting for the reports to manifest. My estimates were about 8 percent if I recall. It's about double of that, not including deaths.



Report: 14 percent of Iraqis now displaced (click here)
Posted on Tuesday, November 6, 2007
WASHINGTON — The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction offered a generally optimistic picture of security developments in Iraq in his quarterly report to Congress on Tuesday, but noted that while violence was down, one of every seven Iraqis — 14 percent of Iraq's population — is now displaced by the war.
The report said that electricity production in Iraq reached its highest level since early 2003, in part because insurgent attacks on power-lines and repair crews have declined. Corruption, however, remains a major problem, the report said.
The deaths of 72 civilian contractors working on U.S.-funded projects in Iraq were reported to the U.S. Department of Labor during the third quarter of the year, a 22 percent increase over the average of previous quarters, the report said.
The deaths brought to 1,073 the number of civilians working on U.S.-funded projects who've died in Iraq since the war there began, the report said. The report did not say how the 72 died.
Private companies with U.S. contracts are required to report any deaths to the Department of Labor under U.S. regulations.
The report, which was released on the same day Special Inspector General Stuart Bowen testified before a congressional subcommittee, also said that the number of mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad during the quarter had declined to the lowest levels in a year. But mortar and rocket attacks on Camp Victory, where the U.S. military is headquarters, increased during the same period. Attacks there killed one person on Sept. 11 and two people on October 11, the report said.

Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Iraq

http://www.sigir.mil/reports/quarterlyreports/Oct07/pdf/Report_-_October_2007.pdf

Seven killed in Iraq attacks (click here)
2 hours ago
BAGHDAD (AFP) — At least seven people were killed on Saturday in Iraq, a day after a suicide bombing claimed the lives of four tribal leaders fighting Al-Qaeda, security officials said.
Four civilians were killed when a roadside bomb struck their bus in the centre of the northern city of Mosul, police Brigadier General Abdel Karim al-Juburi said.
Another six people, including a woman and her daughter, were wounded in the morning attack in the city's Raas al-Jadha area, he said.
Two people were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad, while a street vendor walking on a road in the city of Baquba was shot dead by unknown gunmen, security officials said.
The early morning bombing in Baghdad's eastern Al-Baladiyat neighbourhood that also wounded seven civilians was aimed at police but instead hit a minibus, an official said.
"The explosion missed a police patrol and ripped through a bus carrying civilians," he said.



Mass grave of 17 bodies found in Baghdad (click here)
Malaysia Sun
Wednesday 7th November, 2007 (IANS)
Baghdad, Nov 7 (Xinhua) Iraqi troops have discovered the remains of some 17 bodies dumped in an area in the volatile province of Diyala, a source from provincial and Iraq liaison office said Wednesday.The badly decomposed bodies were found Tuesday night in a small river near the village of Hashimiyat, west of Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, said the source from the provincial joint coordination centre on condition of anonymity.'The security forces could not retrieve the bodies because we need some back up as the area was booby-trapped,' the source said.On Tuesday, the Iraqi security forces announced they had discovered the remains of 22 bodies in a mass grave in the western province of Anbar.Diyala in northeast of Baghdad has long been the hot-bed of insurgency led by Al Qaeda in Iraq network, and sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shiite communities.





Blackwater's impunity (click here)
Neither Iraqi nor U.S. laws apply to its contractors, so a controversial shooting may go unpunished.
November 9, 2007
'They can get away with murder" has been the cry of critics of hiring private companies such as Blackwater to provide security for the U.S. military and diplomats in Iraq and other war zones. Now it looks as though the critics may be right -- and in the worst way.
Legal experts say the Blackwater contractors accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians and wounding 24 others while guarding a State Department convoy in Baghdad in September cannot be prosecuted under either Iraqi or U.S. law -- even if an FBI investigation validates the Iraqi view that the contractors opened fire unprovoked. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, quizzed by a congressional committee last month, agreed that "there is a lacuna in our law about this. And even though this particular case . . . has been referred to the Department of Justice for further action, we believe that there is a hole." What Rice didn't say was that the State Department has been aware of that "hole" for at least two years and has rejected Pentagon suggestions to plug it by making security contractors subject to military law...



Iraq is now policing the USA. When is the war going to be DEFUNDED !?!?!?!



An Act of Terrorism? Blackwater Sniper Shot Dead Three Iraqi Guards At Iraqi Media Center in February (click here)
Legal and political woes continue for the private military firm Blackwater. Iraq's Interior Minister announced this week he would authorize raids against Western military firms to ensure compliance with Iraqi weaponry laws. Scrutiny of the private military industry in Iraq has peaked following the killing of seventeen Iraqis by Blackwater guards in September.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, the Bush administration has shown its first audible signs of distancing itself from Blackwater. On Tuesday, the White House quietly missed a deadline to weigh in on a wrongful death case brought by families of three American servicemembers who died when a Blackwater aircraft crashed in Afghanistan. Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, a major Republican donor, said: "After the President has said that as commander-in-chief he is ultimately responsible for contractors on the battlefield, it is disappointing that his administration has been unwilling to make that interest clear before the courts.”...

US Releases 9 Iranians in Iraq (click here)
By LAUREN FRAYER – 7 hours ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — In a possible break in the U.S.-Iranian standoff in Iraq, the U.S. military on Friday released nine Iranians no longer deemed a threat, including two accused of membership in an elite force suspected of arming Shiite militias.
The handover — planned for several days — still leaves at least three high-profile Iranians in U.S. custody and doesn't significantly ease the many disputes between Washington and Tehran in Iraq. But it could open the door for another round of groundbreaking talks between the two nations, which have been without diplomatic relations for 28 years.
It also is seen as a possible gesture for Iran's pledge to block suspected cross-border weapons shipments to armed Shiite factions, whose attacks have been sharply reduced.
American soldiers delivered the nine men to the offices of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, where they were met by Iran's ambassador, according to Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh. The former captives arrived in Tehran later Friday, Iranian state TV said.
The group included two men — identified by the military as Brujerd Chegini and Hamid Reza Asgari Shukuh — who were among five captured when U.S. forces stormed an Iranian government office in the northern city of Irbil in January....


2007 Is Deadliest Year for U.S. Troops in Iraq (click here)
BAGHDAD, Nov. 6 — Six American soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in Iraq on Monday, the military said Tuesday, taking the number of deaths this year to 852. The toll makes 2007 the deadliest year of the war for United States troops.
Military officials announced the discovery of a mass grave holding 22 bodies in a rural area north of Falluja. They also said that nine Iranians being held in Iraq would soon be released, including two of the five who were detained during a January raid of a consulate office in Erbil....


The entire region, from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Kashmir and Iraq remain unstable and to think Turkey wants more chaos in a place where the West can't even hold it's own anymore. Musharraf as a coup leader in Pakistan does little to nothing to improve the instability in the region. He simply has provided comfort to the enemy, namely the Taliban, while they have regrouped and redeployed against the West's forces.

Nine troops dead in Afghan ambush (click here)

This year has been one of the deadliest for coalition forcesSix US soldiers and three Afghan troops have been killed in fighting in eastern Afghanistan, Nato officials have said.
Militants ambushed a patrol of Afghan soldiers and US troops from Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Nuristan province.
The ambush is one of the costliest for US forces this year, already the deadliest for the US since it helped overthrow the Taleban in 2001.
Eight US troops and 11 Afghans were also wounded, Isaf officials said.
The Taleban said they carried out the attack, which took place on Friday.
The rebels attacked from several positions simultaneously with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades as the patrol returned from a meeting with village elders, said Isaf spokesman Brig Gen Carlos Branco...


Iraq's Kurdish leaders walk fine line (click here)
Public's distrust of Turkey complicates regional government's tack on PKK crisis
By Bay Fang Tribune correspondent
November 11, 2007
ZAWITA, Iraq — Hamid Nabi remembers 1988 like it was yesterday. Stringing his plastic worry beads through wind-chapped hands, the retired Kurdish fighter recalls watching his village razed to the ground by Saddam Hussein's bulldozers. He remembers carrying his month-old son into the mountains with thousands of other Kurds to escape the government's chemical bombs.
But when asked who he considers his greatest enemy, the man who spent half his life fighting Hussein's army readily answered, "I hate Turkey more than Saddam. Turkey is more dangerous than Saddam was—if it could, it would destroy all the Kurdish villages in the country."
Nabi and his neighbors in this village 30 miles from the Turkish border say they are ready to take up arms if Turkey invades northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels. "When Turkey said, 'We're on the border,' we also say, 'We're on the border,' " he said....