Iraq, coming unglued!

I suspect it was inevitable but it appears to be happening, Iraq is coming unglued. Violence Breaks Out All Over Baghdad. This is in addition to the violence in Mosul and the rest of the Sunni Triangle since the US stormed Falluja and is also in response to the raid on a Sunni Mosque yesterday.

AP, BAGHDAD, Iraq - Baghdad exploded in violence Saturday, as insurgents attacked a U.S. patrol and a police station, assassinated four government employees and detonated several bombs. One American soldier was killed and nine were wounded during clashes that also left three Iraqi troops and a police officer dead.
Some of the heaviest violence came in Azamiyah, a largely Sunni Arab district of Baghdad where a day earlier U.S. troops raided the capitol's main Sunni mosque. Shops were in flames, and a U.S. Humvee burned, with the body of what appeared to be its driver inside.

Jazz's post on a blog from Baghdad gives us a pretty good idea of how bad things are in that city, but much of the Sunni area in Iraq is the same.

U.S. forces and insurgents also battled in the Sunni Triangle city of Ramadi, where clashes have been seen almost daily. Nine Iraqis were killed and five wounded in Saturday's fighting, hospital officials said.


In northern Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces uncovered four decapitated bodies as they continued a campaign to crush militants who rose up last week. American and Iraqi forces detained 30 suspected guerrillas overnight in Mosul, the U.S. military said Saturday.

Tom Englehardt has a good piece in Mother Jones today on root causes of the Iraqi violence that is worth a read. It is going to be increasingly difficult for the administration and Faux news to spin Iraq as the chaos continues to mount.

Why I'm liberal

Perhaps I read too much Shel Silverstein as a child.

Listen to the musn'ts, child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts,
The impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
Then listen close to me.
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.

-Shel Silverstein

Arafat is still Dead

French to release Arafat medical records

"Making the records public could curb some of the speculation in the Arab world that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned by Israel."

Funny, I hadn't heard that rumor at all! I only heard the one where the US poisoned him so that we could re-energize the peace process. Which is some quality black humor, right there.

Winning all the battles and losing the war

Hamza Hendawi of the Associated Press has an analysis of the situation in Iraq that has resulted from the storming of Fallaju. In addition to jeopardizing the legitimacy of the elections still scheduled for January it has opened riffs between the various social and religious groups within Iraq and not accomplished the military goals of stopping the insurgency.

The recapture of Fallujah has not broken the insurgents' will to fight and may not pay the big dividend U.S. planners had hoped - to improve security enough to hold national elections in Sunni Muslim areas of central Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi assessments.

Instead, the battle for control of the Sunni city 40 miles west of Baghdad has sharpened divisions among Iraq's major ethnic and religious groups, fueled anti-American sentiment and stoked the 18-month-old Sunni insurgency.

Those grim assessments, expressed privately by some U.S. military officials and by some private experts on Iraq, raise doubts as to whether the January election will produce a government with sufficient legitimacy, especially in the eyes of the country's powerful Sunni Muslim minority.

While the Sunnis threaten to boycott the elections the Shiite community insists they go forward. At the same time, the Kurds see their hope of a federalist government that preserves their system of self-rule in the north fading under a Shiite dominated central government. The storming of Falluja has not stopped the insurgents and has resulted in conditions that may result in civil war.

Juan Cole also does a good job of covering this topic this morning.

Another Blogger from Iraq

Raed in the Middle is another blogger from Iraq. This one is unique because it is mostly pictures.

Election Boycott in Iraq

Juan Cole reports on the election boycott announced by forty-seven Iraqi poltical parties,

including many with a religious base, have announced that they will boycott the planned January elections. They met at the Umm al-Qura mosque in Baghdad under the auspices of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars and its allies among Sunni fundamentalists, but they were joined by 8 Shiite parties and one Christian one. The Iraqi Turkmen Front and the People's Union Party (Communist) also joined in the boycott.

It would appear the the storming of Fajulla has not made the January election anymore likely. He also reports that violence is increasing throughout the country.

Even with all the massive violence going on in the country, some 3,000 angry Iraqis demonstrated in front of the Green Zone on Wednesday, demanding the release of al-Hasani's followers. AP said, that Hassani's ' spokesman Maath al-Zargawi told The Associated Press . . . [that] the seven had been arrested from Ayatollah al-Hassani's offices in Karbala, Amarah, Shamiya, and Diwaniya . . . "We call on the coalition forces to free them," Zargawi said. He said the office did not know the reason for their arrests. '

See my post at MEJ on some disturbing intelligence from Falluja.

Bah Humbug!

Here is yet another rant about how early the Christmas crap comes out. One of my friends who feels lucky to have his retail job tells me his first display went up July 12 this year. And now, they have most of their decorations up. I have been watching Christmas commercial on every single channel now since before Halloween. And while looking at the on sale Back to School stuff, I noticed I was humming a Christmas carol, because it was being piped in the overhead music. I immediately stopped and yelled an expletive. What the heck are they doing to us?

I was really annoyed this weekend, when I had planned an event for people to travel to from all over NY and PA, and I did not know the street on which I had expected all of the travellers to drive was taken over by the city's annual Christmas Parade. Yes, the Christmas Parade! And I had not known about it until I heard all of the noise and wondered where all of my friends were. They were stuck in traffic wondering if our fair city has looked at a calendar.

Now, I don't mind shopping early for the holiday - in fact my shopping is done. So I don't mind getting some advertising suggesting what I ought to be buying for those near and dear to me. But there's so many unrealistic expectations created by advertising, that it fairly sets my blood to boiling. I do not expect ever to find a bow-wrapped car on my driveway, for instance. Nor will I ever buy every member of my family a cellular phone so we can talk as long as we like. Heck, some members of my family are barely on speaking terms except for holidays. The most recent ad that bothered me was the two kids roughly 8 and 6 admiring a toolbox that had to cost several hundred dollars. How the heck are they supposed to pay for it? That's right, they can't - but they'll look cute which may get Mom to consider it.

Too much advertising only rubs my nose into how much I hate the holidays. My family isn't religious. We don't bother going to church on Christmas (well, ok, my brother's family does, but we don't as a family. And that is the true Purpose of Christmas, or so most people should say. Go and celebrate the birth of the Christian saviour. I haven't seen a commercial yet where Jesus appears and tells you to go buy this-and-so, but I am confident it's just a matter of time. I call the holiday kissmoose. This is celebrated by a family reunion, and obligatory gifts, and we don't mind the pagan trappings of gorging ourselves and lighting a tree to guard the light in the dark of the year.

It's the obligation part that bothers me most. One doesn't have much choice but to make the journey to see one's family, assuming of course that one is lucky enough to be blessed with family. And I imagine all of these commercials must really bother those who do not have anyone to feel obliged to, or simply enjoy the company of. It's bad enough to have it all December long... but the more of the year spent gearing up for the enormous let down of not having the brand new car or shiny tool box or whatever thing you've been primed to expect by the advertisers... Who really needs it? Bah humbug.

It really just makes me wish I could afford TIVO or other method of never ever watching commercials again.

Where was Sistani???

Over at MEJ last week we reported that River at Baghdad Burning was asking "Where is Sistani"?

Furthermore, where is Sistani? Why isn't he saying anything about the situation? When the South was being attacked, Sunni clerics everywhere decried the attacks. Where is Sistani now, when people are looking to him for some reaction? The silence is deafening.

Juan Cole reports that the Arab press has picked up that question.

Al-Hayat, Ja`far al-Ahmar: The battle of Fallujah uncovered some of the fissures, contradictions, and criticisms that had not been admitted by any local, Arab or regional party. The reaction to the American assault on Fallujah has been muted among Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and other major Shiite clerics, leading to angry editorials in the Arabic press decrying "silence" and "collaboration with the Americans in implementing their crimes in Fallujah."

At he same time Sistani is trying to establish a Shiite power base. If the elections in January are boycotted by the Sunnis, as they have threatened, the Kurds may boycott as well to insure that a Shiite controlled government does not have the appearance of legitimacy. After years of oppression the main concern of the Shiite leaders is a big piece of the political pie. Can a religious civil war be too far away?

How was ancient Athens like the Bush administration?

There is someone more long winded than Jazz, pessimist at The Left Coaster. Like Jazz he is usually worth the read and today's post is no exception, We Have All Been Here Before. I'm going to snip out a "small" piece below that pessimist got from Pull No Punches.com, but the entire post is worth a read.

In 431 BC, the Greek world went to war against Athens. Thucydides claims that the reason for war was the �growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused.� The Athenians were a proud people who had ultimate faith in their institutions. They saw themselves as a model upon which the whole Greek world should mold itself. �I would prefer ...that you fix your eyes everyday on the greatness of Athens as she really is,� stated Pericles, �and you shall fall in love with her.�
The problem for Athens was that the majority of city-states in the Greek world did not share the Athenian vision. To most of the city states, especially those within the Delian League, Athens was an arrogant, power-hungry entity that would do anything to keep and maintain power. Athens bullied members of the Delian League into providing cash for security.
The brutal actions of Athens toward the people of Lesbos and Melos sparked uprisings all over the empire. Although much of these were suppressed by Athens, this weakened the great democracy, eventually bringing a tragic defeat to the once mighty empire. Athens had to give up all colonies and the people were forced to stand by as the tattered remains of their glorious navy was put to the torch.
History has a way of repeating itself. I am afraid that we are setting a course for the same fate that Athens experienced in the 5th century B.C. And recent events in Fallujah have only helped clarify that idea in my mind.

While rereading Pericles� funeral oration from Book 2 of The Peloponnesian War, I could see George W. Bush, standing in front of a joint session of Congress or on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The locations may have changed, but much of the rhetoric is the same: we are great, the world envies us because we are free, the world wants to be like us, we don�t have to apologize for anything, we are the greatest idea to ever become a reality. Same basic ideas broken only by 2,500 years of history.

In Fallujah, we are battling insurgents who are rebelling against our empire. But we are not only killing insurgents, but women and children�entire families are being gunned down as they try to flee their burning city. We came to liberate them from Saddam, yet in the process of their �liberation� some 100,000 Iraqi civilians have now died. We are punishing the very people we are purportedly �liberating.�

History certainly does repeat itself if you let it.

From little credibility to none

It is being reported that Condiliar Rice will be nominated to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State. If this isn't the Peter Principle at work I don't know what is. She is without a doubt the most incompetent National Security Advisor in history but she had apparently not reached her level on maximum incompetence. She will have absolutely zero credibility in the capitols of the world.

Dust off the Tin Foil Hat

I have avoided donning my tin foil hat when it comes to election fraud but Zogby pollster Colin Shea is making it difficult. It's easy to cast aside the theories from the left wing media and blogs but this report with lots of statistics is hard not to take seriously.

The facts as I see them now defy all logical explanations save one--massive and systematic vote fraud. We cannot accept the result of the 2004 presidential election as legitimate until these discrepancies are rigorously and completely explained. From the Valerie Plame case to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, George Bush has been reluctant to seek answers and assign accountability when it does not suit his purposes. But this is one time when no American should accept not getting a straight answer. Until then, George Bush is still, and will remain, the �Accidental President' of 2000. One of his many enduring and shameful legacies will be that of seizing power through two illegitimate elections conducted on his brother's watch, and engineering a fundamental corruption at the very heart of the greatest democracy the world has known. We must not permit this to happen again.

It's too late to turn this election around but "We must not permit this to happen again".

On the Frontiers of Freedom in Iraq

Jazz has a good post at MEJ this morning on the mess in the Sunni areas of Iraq. Juan Cole has some additional details and some history.

Most Americans do not realize that Fallujah is celebrated in Iraqi history and poetry for its defiance of the British in the Great Rebellion of 1920. The 1920 revolution against the British is key to modern Iraqi history. One of the guerrilla groups taking hostages named itself the "1920 Revolution Brigades." Western journalists who don't know Iraqi history have routinely mistranslated the name of this group.

Professor Cole points out the the Iraqis don't have enough security forces to maintain the peace and security and with the outbreaks in Mosul the Americans are streched thin.

"The most immediate concern for the interim government is manpower. Iraq has no more than eight battalions of the newly trained troops, whose main job is to occupy cities after U.S. forces defeat insurgents. Duty in Samarra and Fallujah, which have about a half million people between them, already was stretching that force thin. Adding duty in Mosul "means you're operating right out on the edge of what forces you have -- Iraqi forces," the U.S. official said.

American forces may be stretched thin as well. A battalion deployed outside Fallujah raced back to its Mosul base when insurgents struck, attacking in groups as large as 50 at a time, numbers not previously seen in the city, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings of Task Force Olympia, the brigade that in February replaced a much larger unit, the 101st Airborne Division."

There is a real danger that the Sunnis will boycott the election. This is making the Kurds nervous since without the Sunnis there will be nothing to keep the Shiites from taking complete control. That would be like having the Radical Christian Right take control of all four branches of the US government. Oh wait, that's happened!!!!!!

Let the purge begin

More shameless cross posting but his is important.

Atrios discusses this piece in Newsday on how all those "liberals" in the CIA who have the nerve to leak their actual intelligence findings are to be purged.

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Another example of the real danger of an administration that despises facts and the truth. The CIA is about to become just another arm of the White House spin machine. If your not really frightened you should be.
Also see Jazz's post yesterday