These are the archives for the week ending 7th April 2006
US referendum goes against war
Voters in 32 Wisconsin communities had their say on the Iraq War in a referendum Tuesday, and they decreed that enough is enough. Residents in 24 of the 32 towns and villages voted to start bringing the troops home now, a greater victory than supporters of the referendum had hoped to get.
The vote has no legal power, but it could be seen as indicating increasing discontent with the toll of the Iraq War, both in lives and money. Supporters of the referendum see it as a signal to Congress as the 2006 midterm election approaches.
Steve Burns, program coordinator of the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, which organized the referendum, said the results are "yet more evidence of a new anti-war majority in Wisconsin." Burns pointed out that 12 of the 32 communities that voted against the war also voted for President Bush in 2004.
ABC News, 5/4/06
Britain short of troops
Almost three times as many soldiers have left Scotland's infantry regiments in the past year as are currently in training to replace them. The Royal Regiment of Scotland is forecast on the Army's own figures to be 600 men under strength - the equivalent of more than a battalion - by the summer.
The Army is losing three infantry battalions as a cost-cutting measure announced in 2004 at a time when its overseas' commitments are increasing. There are more than 7000 troops in Iraq and a further 3300 will be needed in Afghanistan from July, when Britain takes over responsibility for security in the Taliban insurgent heartland of Helmand province.
Scottish Herald, 4/4/06
Interior ministry refusing police trained by US and UK
Iraq's interior ministry is refusing to deploy thousands of police recruits who have been trained by the US and the UK and is hiring its own men and putting them on the streets, according to western security advisers. The interior ministry, which is controlled by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), has not deployed any graduates of the civilian police assistance training team (CPATT), a joint US/UK unit, for the past three months.
Senior ministry officials say they refuse to deploy the graduates because they have no control over the CPATT's selection process. Sunni politicians and residents of Baghdad have claimed that the ministry supports several "death squads" which are said to be responsible for abducting and murdering hundreds of Sunnis in recent weeks.
Guardian, 4/4/06
Reid: laws get in the way of war
John Reid demanded sweeping changes to international law yesterday to free British soldiers from the restraints of the Geneva conventions and make it easier for the west to mount military actions against other states. In his speech, the defence secretary addressed three key issues: the treatment of prisoners, when to mount a pre-emptive strikes, and when to intervene to stop a humanitarian crisis. In all these areas, he indicated that the UK and west was being hamstrung by existing inadequate law.
Mr Reid declined to say whether he had come round to the US view that detainees at Guantánamo bay should not be allowed the protection of the conventions or the courts. Similarly, he would not say if he thought Britain should support the US practice of extraordinary rendition, the transferring of prisoners to secret camps where they risk being tortured. However, he said, it was not "sufficient just to say [Guantánamo] is wrong".
Guardian, 4/4/06
Majority in UK want troops out
More than half of Britons now want UK troops to pull out of Iraq, a new poll revealed today. It said that 55 per cent of those questioned want our troops out of the troubled country within 12 months.
This follows another poll that showed almost three in five of voters want Tony Blair, one of the invasion of Iraq's strongest supporters, to quit as Prime Minister as soon as possible.
Scotsman, 3/4/06
Food prices rise as free market bites
The price of some staple food has increased in Iraq after the Ministry of Trade announced last week that several items provided by a monthly food-ration programme would be cancelled. This prompted shopkeepers to raise the cost of items which are being imported at a high price.
Some products have seen their prices increase by as much as 300 percent or more. In 2002, lentil beans were sold for about US $0.50 per kilogramme. Since then, the retail price has jumped to around US $2 per kilogramme.
According to officials at the trade ministry, which is largely responsible for food distribution, the cut in rations is a direct result of a 25-percent, government-imposed reduction of the annual budget. In an effort to curtail state spending on subsidies and develop a free market economy, the national budget was reduced from US $4 billion to US $3 billion for the current fiscal year.
"If you keep Iraq under socialist laws, the economy won't improve," said Ra'ad Hamza, a senior trade ministry official.
Reuters, 2/4/06
Doctors fleeing country
Iraqi physicians are fleeing the country in droves because they increasingly are targeted for assassination and kidnapping by insurgents bent on disrupting everything important in the country. The Iraqi Medical Association estimates as many as 12,000 of the 34,000 doctors registered before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 have left the country in the past three years. The IMA says assailants have murdered at least another 2,000 Iraqi physicians, and kidnapped roughly 250 others during that period.
The doctors are not alone. Iraqi professionals from all fields, including academics, lawyers and businessmen, also are being murdered for political reasons, or kidnapped and held for ransoms by criminal gangs. But the shortage of medical doctors in Iraq, particularly highly trained specialists, is devastating the population, government officials say.
New Jersey Star-Ledger, 3/4/06
Iraqi jailers don't meet US 'standards of care'
Enough Iraqis should be trained within a year to run jails for insurgent suspects, but concern over torture and legality of detention without charge may see Washington keep legal custody for longer, a US official says.
The commander of US prison operations, which include Abu Ghraib and three other sites, said he could not predict when the Iraqi government will match US standards of care for detainees and pass laws allowing it to hold people without trial - key conditions for handing over detainees, numbering 14,700 today.
Daily Times, Pakistan, 4/4/06
Government discusses Iran attack
The Government is to hold secret talks with defence chiefs tomorrow to discuss possible military strikes against Iran. high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran. It is believed that an American-led attack, designed to destroy Iran's ability to develop a nuclear bomb, is "inevitable" if Teheran's leaders fail to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment programme.
The United States government is hopeful that the military operation will be a multinational mission, but defence chiefs believe that the Bush administration is prepared to launch the attack on its own or with the assistance of Israel, if there is little international support.
British military chiefs believe an attack would be limited to a series of air strikes against nuclear plants - a land assault is not being considered at the moment. But confirmation that Britain has started contingency planning will undermine the claim last month by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that a military attack against Iran was "inconceivable".
Daily Telegraph, 2/4/06
Building up bases.....
United States taxpayers have spent an inflation-adjusted $1 trillion to keep military bases in South Korea since the war ended there in 1953. Those bases remain in place, though they are shrinking. Some military analysts wonder if 20 or so years from now the US will still have costly "enduring" bases in Iraq. ("Permanent" is a term the Pentagon generally avoids in referring to the hundreds of bases it has around the globe.)
It seems clear that the Pentagon would prefer to keep its bases in Iraq. It has already spent $1 billion or more on them, outfitting some with underground bunkers and other characteristics of long-term bases. The $67.6 billion emergency bill to cover Iraq and Afghanistan military costs includes $348 million for further base construction.
Christian Science Monitor, 3/4/06
....but not clinics
A reconstruction contract for the building of 142 primary health centers across Iraq is running out of money, after two years and roughly $200 million, with no more than 20 clinics now expected to be completed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says. The contract, awarded to U.S. construction giant Parsons Inc. in the flush, early days of reconstruction in Iraq, was expected to lay the foundation of a modern health care system for the country, putting quality medical care within reach of all Iraqis.
Coming with little public warning, the 86 percent shortfall of completions dismayed the World Health Organization's representative for Iraq. "That's not good. That's shocking," Naeema al-Gasseer said by telephone from Cairo. "We're not sending the right message here. That's affecting people's expectations and people's trust, I must say."
Washington Post, 3/4/06
US air power will stay
Balad Air Base's two runways, among the world's busiest, launch 27,500 aircraft a month, hundreds of them bomb-laden jets flying close air support for U.S. troops moving against insurgents. But as the U.S. Army "stands down" and the Iraqi army "stands up," will American combat pilots likewise fly into battle behind Iraqi ground units?
"That's a good question," says the Air Force's tactical commander in Iraq. That good question may grow pressing as the year wears on, if Iraqi officers begin asking for U.S. air strikes on questionable targets in Iraq's shadowy, many-sided conflict. One U.S. counterinsurgency expert foresees a much-changed situation. "I seriously doubt that we would ever bomb any targets just on the Iraqis' say-so," said James Corum, an instructor at the Army's Command and General Staff College.
In place of Iraqi controllers with Iraqi combat units, U.S. planners talk of embedding American air liaisons with the Iraqis, in what may become a years-long struggle against Sunni Arab insurgents. But Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc, the Air Force tactical chief here, refers to that as "theory."
"The U.S. Air Force will be the last people to leave. We'll be here for a while," predicted Lt. Col. Peter Gersten, commander of an F-16 fighter squadron at Balad.
San Jose Mercury-News, 2/4/06
Official: War has made Britain terror target
Spy chiefs have warned Tony Blair that the war in Iraq has made Britain the target of a terror campaign by Al-Qaeda that will last "for many years to come." A leaked top-secret memo from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) says the war in Iraq has "exacerbated" the threat by radicalising British Muslims and attracting new recruits to anti-western terror attacks.
The four-page memo, entitled International Terrorism: Impact of Iraq, contradicts Blair's public assurances by concluding that the invasion of Iraq has fomented a jihad or holy war against Britain.
Sunday Times, 2/4/06
US and UK establishing 'enduring' bases
The Pentagon has revealed that coalition forces are spending millions of dollars establishing at least six "enduring" bases in Iraq - raising the prospect that US and UK forces could be involved in a long-term deployment in the country. It said it assumed British troops would operate one of the bases.
The US and British governments say troops will remain in Iraq "until the job is done". Yet while the withdrawal of a substantial number of troops remains an aim, it has become increasingly clear that the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) are preparing to retain some forces in Iraq for the longer term.
Major Joseph Breasseale, a senior spokesman for the coalition forces' headquarters in Iraq, told The Independent on Sunday: "The current plan is to reduce the coalition footprint into six consolidation bases - four of which are US....Right now, I don't have any information that tells me which nationality will comprise the remaining two bases, though my assumption is that at least one will be run by the Brits."
Zoltan Grossman, a geographer at Evergreen State College in Washington, said: "After every US military intervention since 1990 the Pentagon has left behind clusters of new bases in areas where it never before had a foothold. The new string of bases stretch from Kosovo and adjacent Balkan states, to Iraq and other Persian Gulf states, into Afghanistan and other central Asian states ... The only two obstacles to a geographically contiguous US sphere of influence are Iran and Syria."
Independent on Sunday, 2/4/06
More Iraqis dying
The war in Iraq has entered a bloodier phase, with American casualties steadily declining over the past five months while the killings of Iraqi civilians have risen tremendously in sectarian violence, spurring tens of thousands of Iraqis to flee from mixed Shiite-Sunni areas. About 900 Iraqi civilians were killed in March, up from about 700 the month before, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent organization that tracks deaths. Meanwhile, at least 29 American troops were killed in March, the second-lowest monthly total since the war began.
The Iraqi public's reaction to the violence has been substantial. Since the shrine bombing, 30,000 to 36,000 Iraqis have fled their homes because of sectarian violence or fear of reprisals, say officials at the International Organization for Migration in Geneva. The Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration estimated at least 5,500 families had moved, with the biggest group, 1,250 families, settling in the Shiite holy city of Najaf after leaving Baghdad and Sunni-dominated towns in central Iraq.
International Herald Tribune, 2/4/06
Iraqis united against occupation
Two years after U.S. authorities ceremoniously declared Iraq to be sovereign again, top religious leaders say Iraqis still don't govern themselves, remain under military occupation and have a right to fight foreign troops. Their statements, made at the conclusion of a peace conference in London on Tuesday, provided a stamp of approval from Iraq's most influential Sunni and Shiite Muslim clerics for their countrymen to step up attacks aimed at hastening the withdrawal of U.S., British and other troops.
Two Christian archbishops and ethnic Kurdish leaders, whose community has previously supported the foreign military presence, joined Jordan's Prince Hassan bin Talal in endorsing a communique underscoring the "legitimate right" of Iraqis to resist what they called the occupation.
"We are here to say that any military action against an occupying force is a legitimate act authorized under international law," said Sheik Majid al-Hafeed, a representative of the Ulmma Kurdish Union of Iraq.
"The occupation is something that everybody is calling for an end to," added Sayyid Salih al-Haydary, outgoing minister of Shiite religious affairs.
Sheik al-Hafeed and others took issue with Western characterizations of attacks on coalition troops as terrorism, citing the U.S. war of independence from Britain as one example of citizens taking up arms to eject foreign occupiers. Rather than condemn such a struggle, the sheik quipped, "Americans celebrate it as the Fourth of July, Independence Day."
The State, South Carolina, 31/3/06
Neighbourhood watch
As the sun goes down and most Baghdad residents take refuge in their homes, Maamoun Abdul Wahab takes to the streets - a pistol tucked in his clothes. For about 12 hours, he prowls the narrow alleys of Baghdad's heavily Sunni Azamiyah district, part of a neighborhood watch group formed to fend off Shiite militias and Interior Ministry commando units considered by many Sunnis as little more than death squads.
He says he started off as a volunteer, but the Sunni Endowment, a government agency that takes care of Sunni religious sites, decided to pay him about $65 a month to keep an eye on mosques and neighborhood streets.
Residents are happy to see the group standing guard, he says. Some make them tea. Others offer cake. Abdul Wahab has made other friends on the streets too: army soldiers who he says patrol the area unarmed. He plays backgammon and sips tea with them.
"I trust the army, but not the police. The police detain Sunnis. They torture them with electric drills and execute them," he says. The army falls under the Defense Ministry, which is led by a Sunni Arab.
Yahoo News, 31/3/06
British casualties top 6,000
Almost 6,700 Britons have needed hospital treatment in Iraq since the invasion three years ago - almost as many as the total number of British troops still stationed there. About 4,000 were sufficiently injured or ill to be sent home to Britain.
The figures include soldiers and civilians injured in accidents or taken ill, or who have suffered psychological problems, as well as those injured in fighting. They were posted on the Ministry of Defence website yesterday, on the day that MPs dispersed for their Easter break, after months of criticism directed at the Government for refusing to give details about the "forgotten" British casualties.
Belfast Telegraph, 31/3/06
Refusenik witnessed 'numerous attrocities'
A "trigger-happy" U.S. army squad leader shot the foot off an unarmed Iraqi man and soldiers kicked a severed head around like a soccer ball, a U.S. war deserter told an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing Thursday.
Joshua Key, the first U.S. deserter with combat experience in Iraq to apply for refugee status in Canada, told the board he witnessed numerous atrocities committed by U.S. forces while serving eight months as a combat engineer. Mr. Key, 27, said he was never trained on the Geneva Convention and was told in Iraq by superior officers that the international law guiding humanitarian standards was just a "guideline."
He recalled participating in almost nightly raids on homes of suspected insurgents in Ramadi and Fallujah as a member of the 43rd Combat Engineer Company. He said that while the raids seldom turned up anything of interest, he often saw soldiers ransack the homes and steal jewellery or money, while superior officers looked the other way.
He also said several Iraqis were shot dead, and that they were cases of soldiers "shooting out of fear and inventing reasons afterward."
Globe and Mail, Canada, 30/3/06
Iran responds to UN deadline
Iranian officials have rejected calls from world powers to halt uranium enrichment, a process which can produce fuel for nuclear power stations or atomic bombs. Western news agencies quote Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, Iran's representative to the United Nation's nuclear watchdog agency, as saying Tehran's decision to pursue enrichment is not reversible.
His comments came after the UN Security Council on March 30 unanimously approved a statement demanding that Tehran suspend uranium enrichment activities and calling on the UN nuclear agency to report on Iran's compliance in 30 days.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on March 30 said Iran could eventually face international sanctions if it refuses demands to halt enrichment. But senior diplomats from Russia and China, speaking after a meeting of the five permanent Security Council members in Berlin, indicated their governments did not support sanctions or the use of force against Iran.
Radio Free Europe, 31/3/06