These are the archives for the week ending 28th October 2005
Truth the first casualty
President George W. Bush's nominee to be the Pentagon's chief public affairs official told Congress on Tuesday he hoped to encourage more positive stories about the Iraq war by encouraging the practice of embedding reporters with U.S. troops in Iraq.
Dorrance Smith, a former television producer who spent nine months in Iraq as a senior adviser for former ambassador Paul Bremer, also defended his controversial article in the Wall Street Journal in April, in which he said extremists like Osama bin Laden had "a partner in Al-Jazeera, and by extension, most networks in the U.S."
Reuters,25/10/05
Anti-occupation alliance
Several of Iraq's major Sunni Arab political movements announced on Wednesday that they were forming an alliance to contest December parliamentary elections, in a sign of increased mobilisation of what has been until now the least organised of the country's main ethnic blocs. The Iraqi Islamic Party and the National Dialogue Council, two well-established Sunni organisations, declared they were joining with the Conference of the People of Iraq to form the Iraqi Concord Front. The front, which also aimed to pick up the non-Sunni vote, would run on a platform that included setting a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
Spokesmen for radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr also announced on Wednesday that they would seek to make alliances with Sunni groups. Mr Sadr's movement like many Sunni groups wants a withdrawal of foreign forces and is opposed to both the federal system enshrined in the constitution, but breaks with them in its opposition to the rehabilitation of the former ruling Baath party.
Financial Times, 26/10/05
Constitution scrapes through
Iraq's new constitution has been approved, according to official results from the nationwide referendum held earlier this month. Opponents of the constitution needed two-thirds of voters in three provinces to reject the document, and seriously delay the political process in Iraq. But electoral commission officials said 44% of voters in the key province of Nineveh had endorsed the constitution. This means only two provinces voted "No" by the required margin.
BBC, 25/10/05
Bush wants to exempt CIA from torture ban
The Bush administration has proposed exempting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency from a legislative measure endorsed earlier this month by 90 members of the Senate that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoners in U.S. custody.
The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the company of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, states that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by "an element of the United States government" other than the Defense Department.
Although most detainees in U.S. custody in the war on terrorism are held by the U.S. military, the CIA is said by former intelligence officials and others to be holding several dozen detainees of particular intelligence interest at locations overseas.
Washington Post, 25/10/05
Resistance attack in central Baghdad
At least 20 people were killed and 13 injured yesterday when suicide bombers launched an orchestrated attack on one of the main bases of international journalists in Baghdad, according to the Iraqi police. US commanders have been warning for weeks of spectacular attacks in Baghdad designed to maximise media attention.
The attack in the heart of the city, after a relative lull, demonstrates that there are few places left in Iraq beyond the reach of the insurgents. The hotels overlook Firdous Square, where the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003. The complex is outside the heavily protected Green Zone that houses the US and British embassies, but it too is guarded by a combination of US soldiers and Iraqi police.
Guardian, 25/10/05
The return of body counts
Eager to demonstrate success in Iraq, the U.S. military has abandoned its previous refusal to publicize enemy body counts and now cites such numbers periodically to show the impact of some counterinsurgency operations. On October 16th, for example, the 2nd Marine Division issued a statement saying an estimated 70 suspected insurgents had died in the Ramadi area as a result of three separate airstrikes by fighter jets and helicopters. Their statement reflected some of the pitfalls associated with releasing such statistics. The number was immediately challenged by witnesses, who said many of those killed were not insurgents but civilians, including women and children.
Privately, several uniformed military and civilian defense officials questioned the effectiveness of citing such figures in conflicts where the enemy has shown itself capable of rapidly replacing dead fighters and where commanders acknowledge great uncertainty about the total size of the enemy force.
During the Vietnam War, enemy body counts became a regular feature in military statements intended to demonstrate progress. But the statistics ended up proving poor indicators of the war's course. Pressure on U.S. units to produce high death tolls led to inflated tallies, which tore at Pentagon credibility.
Washington Post, 24/10/05
Severely wounded continue to pay cost
The human toll for the U.S. military in the Iraq war is not limited to the nearly 2,000 troops deaths since the March 2003 invasion. More than 15,220 also have been wounded in combat, including more than 7,100 injured too badly to return to duty, the Pentagon said. Thousands more have been hurt in incidents unrelated to combat.
Military doctors say U.S. troops are surviving wounds in Iraq that would have been fatal in previous wars due to advances in medical care and body armor. Military statistics showed that while 23 percent of U.S. troops wounded in combat in World War Two died and 17 percent in the Vietnam War, 9 percent of those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan died. Without the advances since Vietnam, the U.S. death toll in Iraq would be nearly double the current total.
"We look at patients oftentimes and feel like it's a miracle that they're alive," said Lt. Col. Paul Pasquina, chief of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Walter Reed, which has treated more than 4,400 troops hurt in Iraq.
"Someone who loses one limb is a challenge to get back to a meaningful, functional lifestyle," Pasquina said. "But somebody who loses three limbs, on top of other types of soft tissue wounds, fractures, head injury, spinal-cord injury, paralysis...?" But military doctors said some troops who may have died in previous wars are surviving, but with grievous injuries such as multiple limb amputations.
Reuters, 23/10/05
The 'iraq syndrome'
Most of all, it is mounting American casualties that is wearing away support for the war. This follows a pattern of the two previous times since 1945 that Americans have suffered significant casualties in war, Korea and Vietnam.
''The only thing remarkable about the current war in Iraq is how precipitously American public support has dropped off,'' argues Ohio State political scientist John Mueller, in an important new article in Foreign Affairs. ''Casualty for casualty, support has declined far more quickly than it did during either the Korean War or the Vietnam War. And if history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration can do to reverse this decline,'' concludes Mueller, an expert on war and public opinion.
The Bush administration inner circle believed that conquering Iraq would be the death, finally, of the Vietnam Syndrome, the fear of foreign entanglement that crippled the use of American power. It is darkly ironic then that the war has given birth to what Mueller calls ``the Iraq Syndrome.'' Potential support for a fresh front, whether it is in Iran, Syria or North Korea, is disappearing rapidly.
Miami Herald, 23/10/05
British call for death squad investigation
Britain's envoy in Baghdad urged the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government on Sunday to address accusations that its security forces are operating clandestine "death squads" against minority Sunnis by mounting an inquiry. The call by ambassador William Patey came after a week in which a journalist for a British newspaper was abducted by men driving a police car and a defence lawyer in the Saddam Hussein trial was shot by men claiming to be from the Interior Ministry.
Government denials have not silenced critics, especially in the Sunni minority, who complain that the new police force has been infiltrated by or cooperates with Shi'ite militias, like the armed Badr organisation, and so takes part in sectarian killings of Sunnis and assassinations of former government officials. Accounts of people being arrested by men in police uniform with police vehicles and then being found dead are not uncommon.
Reuters, 23/10/05
New constitution may have no effect
A week after a historic referendum on a new constitution, Iraq looks much as it did before the vote: Kurdish militias patrol the north, warring Shiite Muslim militias wrestle for control of the south and in the center, an insurgency supported by an angry Sunni Muslim Arab minority battles U.S. forces, the Iraqi government and the Shiites.
No one expected an overnight transformation. But it remains uncertain whether the new constitution and Wednesday's brief appearance of Saddam Hussein in a courtroom cage can halt or even slow the violence and sectarian divisions that have steadily gained momentum since the U.S.-led invasion 31 months ago.
The four-week moving average of attacks - which smoothes out daily fluctuations - has had peaks and valleys but generally has stayed about the same or increased during the past 18 months, according to military statistics. Perhaps most worrying, the weekly number of effective attacks - those that wounded or killed American and Iraqi troops or civilians - has on average more than doubled since February 2004 to 165 during the week of Oct. 7.
South Mississippi Sun Herald, 22/10/05
Arab League conference gains support
A push by the Cairo-based Arab League to gather Iraq's divided factions for a national reconciliation conference has gained momentum, after Iraq's top Shia cleric gave his blessing to the initiative. Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, whose views are influential among Iraq's Shia, told Amr Moussa, the head of the 22-state Arab League, that he supported the idea of a conference in Cairo next month, Moussa said on Saturday.
On Friday, some leading Arab Sunni leaders said they too had agreed to take part in the conference, to be held in the Egyptian capital on 15 November.Later on Saturday, Moussa flew to the Kurdish city of Arbil in northern Iraq for a historic visit to the autonomous region, saying he had always been close to Kurds.
Aljazeera, 22/10/05
Poll shows Iraqi support for resistance
Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed. The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country.
Immediately after the war the coalition embarked on a campaign of reconstruction in which it hoped to improve the electricity supply and the quality of drinking water. That appears to have failed, with the poll showing that 71 per cent of people rarely get safe clean water, 47 per cent never have enough electricity, 70 per cent say their sewerage system rarely works and 40 per cent of southern Iraqis are unemployed.
Sunday Telegraph, 23/10/05
US backing for Colombian president
Colombian business groups and US officials on Thursday cheered a landmark court ruling that virtually enables Alvaro Uribe to be the first president in a century to run for a second consecutive term - a vote he is likely to win. Eight of the nine magistrates that form Colombia's constitutional court late on Wednesday declared as legal a congressional amendment that lifts a historic ban on immediate presidential re-election.
Luis Carlos Villegas, president of Andi, the main business confederation, praised the ruling: "The private sector receives the court's decision with enormous satisfaction." The court ruling will please the Bush administration, which sees Mr Uribe's continuation in power as geopolitically beneficial. Mr Uribe is the main US ally in a region that has seen a rise in leftwing governments, such as that of Hugo Chávez in neighbouring Venezuela.
"It's no secret that the US government would like to see Uribe continue for another term," said a US military officer who works on Latin American policy. The prospect of Mr Uribe's likely re-election next year is bad news for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc the leftwing guerrilla group that has been seeking to overthrow the state for more than four decades. A US-backed military offensive has forced the guerrillas to retreat into southern Colombia's remote jungles.
But probably rejoicing today will be Colombia's outlaw paramilitary army, which is engaged in a demobilisation process with the Uribe government that human rights groups say amounts to impunity for paramilitary warlords.
Financial Times, 20/10/05
Iraq and Afghanistan lead corruption index
Iraq is the most corrupt country in the Middle East, and Afghanistan leads a nest of nations in Central Asia that fail the corruption test according to the Berlin-based Transparency International's 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index released Wednesday
Pakistan Tribune, 20/10/05
US army burns bodies of Taliban fighters
The U.S. Army is probing allegations that its troops in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters and used the smouldering corpses to taunt insurgents.
An Australian television show yesterday broadcast images of U.S. soldiers incinerating the corpses outside Gonbaz in southern Afghanistan in what appeared to be a deliberate violation of Islamic belief. Islam prohibits cremation and considers that the desecration of bodies to be blasphemous.
``This command takes all allegations of misconduct or inappropriate behaviour seriously and has directed an investigation,'' said Major General Jason Kamiya, head of U.S. ground forces in Afghanistan.
The video may further damage the image of the U.S. in the Islamic world. Allegations of disrespect for the Koran, the Muslim holy book, at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in May sparked violent protests in Afghanistan that left at least 16 dead. Photos of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad triggered outrage worldwide in 2003.
Bloomberg News 20/10/05
Guantanamo feeding tubes used as punishment
Prisoners on hunger strike in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said warders misused feeding tubes on them as punishment, according to affidavits filedby their attorneys. According to the affidavits released Thursday by a federal court in Washington DC, the hunger strikers said they were force-fed with dirty feeding tubes which were violently inserted and withdrawn.
The treatment was intended to persuade them to end the hunger strike, said the prisoners. Since Aug. 9, some 200 of the 500 prisoners in Guantanamo have been staging a hunger strike in rotation to protest abuses by warders while demanding for public trials or release instead of being detained indefinitely.
Xinhua, China, 20/10/05