These Iraqis don't want the U.S. to stay

they don't want maliki and bush to force through the status of forces agreement...

from juan cole...

Thousands of followers of Shiite leader Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr peacefully protested across southern Iraq on Friday, according to McClatchy. They prayed and then stood silently in solidarity against the security agreement being negotiated by PM Nuri al-Maliki with George W. Bush.

Sadrists Demonstrate in Kufa


Sadrists Demonstrate in Kufa

more from professor cole...

On both the Iraqi and American side, this agreement is being characterized as a mere understanding between two executives. It is not being categorized as a treaty and there is no plan to submit it either to the Iraqi parliament or to the US Congress. It seems that the Bush team hopes it will take on the force of law just by virtue of existing and having been signed by the two leaders.

[...]

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that there is broad Sunni and Shiite uneasiness with the agreement, even inside Iraqi governing circles.

Al-Hayat says that those familiar with the current draft of the agreement says that it speaks of the establishment of 400 US military sites and bases through the country, of legal immunity for American troops and citizens, and an abrogation of any undertakings previously made, to share in the reconstruction of the country.

Another source told al-Hayat that US Ambassador Ryan Crocker is pressing for language permitting permanent US bases, and removal of other language forbidding the US to attack a third country from Iraqi soil. (This source does not sound reliable to me. US officials have repeatedly said they do not want "permanent" bases, and the provision disallowing the use of Iraqi soil as a launching pad for one country to attack another is in the Iraqi constitution.

so, if ambassador crocker is pressing for u.s. bases, listen to senior iraq advisor at the u.s. state department, david satterfield, categorically deny it in this al jazeera interview...



somebody's lyin' through their teeth and, given the past seven-plus years of the bush administration, i'm not inclined to point the finger at al-hayat...

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"The Iraqi war is a war for Israeli territorial expansion" - Paul Craig Roberts on why the U.S. is bankrupting itself for Iraq

roberts' explanation strikes me as too simplistic and it also begs another question... what's in it for the u.s...? or, to be specific, what goodies does "greater israel" offer to the mostly-jewish neocons here in the u.s. who are so hell-bent on supporting iraq and, in roberts' view, buttressing israel...?

The fact is that Bush invaded Iraq with the intent of turning Iraq into an American colony. The so-called government of Maliki is not a government. Maliki is the well paid front man for U.S. colonial rule. Maliki's government does not exist outside the protected Green Zone, the headquarters of the American occupation.

If colonial rule were not the intent, the U.S. would not be going out of its way to force Sadr's 60,000-man militia into a fight. Sadr is a Shi'ite who is a real Iraqi leader, perhaps the only Iraqi who could end the sectarian conflict and restore some unity to Iraq. As such he is regarded by the Bush regime as a danger to the American puppet Maliki. Unless the U.S. is able to purchase or rig the upcoming Iraqi election, Sadr is likely to emerge as the dominant figure. This would be a highly unfavorable development for the Bush regime's hopes of establishing its colonial rule behind the facade of a Maliki fake democracy. Rather than work with Sadr in order to extract themselves from a quagmire, the Americans will be doing everything possible to assassinate Sadr.

Why does the Bush regime want to rule Iraq? Some speculate that it is a matter of "peak oil." Oil supplies are said to be declining even as demand for oil multiplies from developing countries such as China. According to this argument, the U.S. decided to seize Iraq to ensure its own oil supply.

[...]

The more likely explanation for the U.S. invasion of Iraq is the neoconservative Bush regime's commitment to the defense of Israeli territorial expansion. There is no such thing as a neoconservative who is not allied with Israel. Israel hopes to steal all of the West Bank and southern Lebanon for its territorial expansion. An American colonial regime in Iraq not only buttresses Israel from attack, but also can pressure Syria and Iran not to support the Palestinians and Lebanese. The Iraqi war is a war for Israeli territorial expansion. Americans are dying and bleeding to death financially for Israel. Bush's "war on terror" is a hoax that serves to cover U.S. intervention in the Middle East on behalf of "greater Israel."

i'm going to stick with the explanation i've been touting for several years...

yes, the bush administration supports israel, but it's for a much larger purpose than the creation of a "greater israel"... first of all, keeping in mind that the rulers of israel and their neo-con brethren in the u.s. do not equate with the jewish religion any more than the fundamentalist christian nut-jobs in the u.s. equate with christianity, the "unholy alliance" that's playing out here is for nothing more and nothing less than the full global consolidation and control of power and money...

the folks that pull the strings of the bush administration, the israeli government and the neo-cons, are the same super-rich elites you will find behind the defense industries, the mega transnational corporations, the global investment houses, the giant banking organizations, and the governments of many other countries... they're not necessarily all working as a bloc, but they have, nonetheless, been slaving away ceaselessly for years to insure that they have the first, last and only say about the direction of global affairs...

these people learned a long time ago that war and the resultant chaos present extraordinary opportunities to increase their power and wealth... now that it's possible to maintain war and chaos as permanent conditions across the globe, they are finally able to consider fulfilling their dream of bringing all global wealth and power into their hands... war and chaos are merely strategic tools to achieve that dream as are world-wide food shortages which can, in turn, serve to provoke more war, more chaos and, thus, more opportunity...

also, let's be clear on one point... when roberts says americans are "bleeding to death financially" for israel and iraq, he fails to point out that the super-rich elites who are calling the shots - not just in the u.s., but around the world - are raking in the cash like there's no tomorrow... it may be trite and it may be a cliche, but, hey, it's true... follow the money...

what's not to understand...?

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A Dana Perino clone on Iraq - down is up, black is white, bad is good, failure is success, war is peace

in a perverse sort of way, you gotta admire the chutzpah of the bush administration... they can take the stinkiest shit imaginable and convince you you're smelling roses... they're also good at making you think that, if the source is supposedly a credible one that operates at arm's length from the white house, it must be believable... but since we now know that a pentagon press secretary is really only a dana perino/tony fratto clone, that sweet smell of roses is almost impossible to detect...

The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government forces were battling Shiite militias, was a "by-product of the success of the surge."

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said it showed that the Iraqi government and security forces were now confident enough to take the initiative against Shiite extremists in the southern port of Basra.

"Citizens down there have been living in a city of chaos and corruption for some time and they and the prime minister clearly have had enough of it," he said at a Pentagon press conference.

At least 20 people were reported to have been killed in two days of fighting in Basra and another 20 in clashes in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, a bastion of Shiite militias that follow radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

< sniffs the air, gags, retches, reaches for handkerchief to cover nostrils >

now, after that brief interlude, let's rejoin reality, shall we...?

following on to brother tim's post from yesterday, from the ap...

Shiite militiamen are everywhere. Police and Iraqi army checkpoints are nowhere in sight. U.S. soldiers are keeping their distance.

Sadr City — the Baghdad nerve center for the powerful Mahdi Army — is suddenly back on edge as the militia leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, and Iraq's government lock in a dangerous confrontation over clout and control among the nation's majority Shiites.

The epicenter of the showdown has been the southern oil hub of Basra, where clashes have claimed dozens of lives this week and al-Sadr's forces face a Friday deadline to surrender.

But a more finely tuned measure of the tensions may be found among the one- and two-story homes and shabby storefronts of Sadr City. As the crisis deepened, The Associated Press toured Sadr City on Wednesday to observe its rapid swing from relative quiet to a return of the Mahdi Army swagger before the U.S. military troop buildup in Baghdad last year.

Sadr City — named after Muqtada al-Sadr's father, who was assassinated in 1999 — is seen as critical to the overall stability and security of the capital.

A resurgence of Mahdi Army attacks and opposition could roll back the gains that have allowed Baghdad residents to take cautious steps toward normal life and offered Washington hope of accelerating troop withdrawals.

and if the above doesn't do it for ya, try this from gareth porter...

The escalation of fighting between Mahdi Army militiamen and their Shiite rivals, which could mark the end of Moqtada al-Sadr's self-imposed ceasefire, also exposes Gen. David Petraeus's strategy for controlling Sadr's forces as a failure.

Petraeus reacted immediately to Sunday's rocket attacks on the Green Zone by blaming them on Iran. He told the BBC the rockets were "Iranian provided, Iranian-made rockets", and that they were launched by groups that were funded and trained by the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Petraeus said this was "in complete violation of promises made by President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts".

Petraeus statement was clearly intended to divert attention from a development that threatens one of the two main pillars of the administration's claim of progress in Iraq -- the willingness of Sadr to restrain the Mahdi Army, even in the face of systematic raids on its leadership by the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies.

The rocket attacks appear to have been one of several actions by the Mahdi Army to warn the United States and the Iraqi government to halt their systematic raids aimed at driving the Sadrists out of key Shiite centres in the south. They were followed almost immediately by Mahdi Army clashes with rival Shiite militiamen in Basra, Sadr City and Kut and a call for a nationwide general strike to demand the release of Sadrist detainees.

once again, we are forced to attempt to make sense out of conflicting interpretations... however, unlike a similar conflict of interpretation i noted in an earlier post about afghanistan, in this situation, we know there's a liar and we know who it is...

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Taking a ballbat to the hornet's nest

For people who just can't stand prosperity. From Reuters:

Iraq's Sadr threatens "civil revolt"

NAJAF, Iraq, March 25 (Reuters) - Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on Iraqis to stage sit-ins and threatened a countrywide "civil revolt" if attacks by U.S. and Iraqi security forces continue against his followers.


"We call upon all Iraqis to stage sit-ins all over Iraq as a first step. And if the people's demands are not respected by the Iraqi government, the second step will be to declare civil revolt in Baghdad and all other provinces," Sadr said in a statement read out by senior aide Hazim al-Araji.

If you're not happy with Sadr's truce........

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Finally.....................

..........a video on he proper use of hand-grenades.





and Muqtada is right..........it's the musicians that get all the women.

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A glimpse into the daily life of Baghdad

US Army soldiers from D Company of the 2-12 Cavalry from Fort Bliss, Texas, conduct house to house reconnaissance in the most dangerous city in the world.

put yourself in the place of that woman and her children... this is the kind of perspective most of us never get and, now that riverbend and her family are leaving the country (most likely have already left), those of us who try to get more are left with the tremendous vacuum our bought and paid for media maintain on descriptions of REAL iraqis living their lives...

spiegel offers up a series of narrative snapshots compiled by four iraqis and describes a day in the world's most dangerous city through their eyes... here's one of them...

It's Sunday, May 13 -- 1,496 days after the US military invaded the country. Another day begins for the 5 million residents of a city that was once the most advanced in the Arab world. Those days are long gone. Today Baghdad is a nightmare -- the world's most horrible city.

According to press reports, at least 35 people died in Baghdad on May 13, 2007, and dozens were injured. But no one will ever know exactly how many people have died since March 2003, when the war began. Baghdad is a city in which life lost its value long ago, a place where no one really knows how many murders, kidnappings and rapes the war has in fact brought to the city.

[...]

6:00 a.m., ISKAN

Imad, the body collector, is awakened by the sun. He unrolls his small rug and says his morning prayers, then he reads from the Koran. It is important to him to know that God is at his side because his work could cost him his life at any time. Imad, a former taxi driver, now makes a living driving bodies. He finds them and recovers them when their families are unable to. It's a good business. He is 39, a thin, nervous-looking man with a black beard and coarse hands. He lives in Iskan, a poor, crowded neighborhood near downtown Baghdad. Since Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia assumed control, only Shiites live in the district. Imad's house is tiny: four rooms on two floors. He sleeps in one of the upper rooms and his mother and two sisters sleep in the other one. Imad is single and says he is too busy to look for a wife.

it's worth reading the whole thing...

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Juan Cole's top 10 Bush Iraq mistakes

if it hadn't been for #1, the other 9 wouldn't have mattered...

Bush's Top Ten Mistakes in Iraq during the Past 4 Years

10. Refusing to fire Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when his incompetence and maliciousness became apparent in the growing guerrilla war and the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

9. Declining to intervene in the collapsed economy or help put Iraqi state industries back on a good footing, on the grounds that the "market" would magically produce prosperity effortlessly.

8. Invading and destroying the Sunni Arab city of Fallujah in November, 2004, thus pushing the Sunni Arabs into the arms of the insurgency in protest and ensuring that they would boycott the January, 2005, parliamentary elections, a boycott that excluded them from power and from a significant voice in crafting the new constitution, which they then rejected.

7. Suddenly announcing that the US would "kill or capture" young nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in spring, 2004, throwing the country into massive turmoil for months.

6. Replying to Baathist guerrilla provocations with harsh search and destroy missions that humiliated and angered ever more Sunni Arab clans, driving them to support or join the budding guerrilla movement.

5. Putting vengeful Shiites in charge of a Debaathification Commission that fired tens of thousands of mostly Sunni Arab state employees simply for having belonged to the Baath Party, leaving large numbers of Sunnis penniless and without hope of employment.

4. Dissolving the Iraqi Army in May, 2003, and sending 400,000 men home, unemployed, resentful and heavily armed.

3. Allowing widespread looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, on the grounds that "stuff happens," "democracy is messy," and "how many vases can they have?"-- and thus signalling that there would be no serious attempt to provide law and order in American Iraq.

2. Plotting to install corrupt financier, notorious liar, and shady operator Ahmad Chalabi as the soft dictator of Iraq, and refusing to plan for a post-war administration of the country because that might forestall Chalabi's coronation.

1. Invading Iraq.

it's a litany of absolute disaster that, tragically, is still being written...

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