View Full Version : Basra Police Chief: I've lost control to Sadr's militia and Badr Brigade
Basra out of control, says chief of police
Families can still stroll but militia gangs hold power in port city
Rory Carroll in Basra
Tuesday May 31, 2005
The Guardian
The chief of police in Basra admitted yesterday that he had effectively lost control of three-quarters of his officers and that sectarian militias had infiltrated the force and were using their posts to assassinate opponents.
Speaking to the Guardian, General Hassan al-Sade said half of his 13,750-strong force was secretly working for political parties in Iraq's second city and that some officers were involved in ambushes.
Other officers were politically neutral but had no interest in policing and did not follow his orders, he told the Guardian.
"I trust 25% of my force, no more."
The claim jarred with Basra's reputation as an oasis of stability and security and underlined the burgeoning influence of Shia militias in southern Iraq.
"The militias are the real power in Basra and they are made up of criminals and bad people," said the general.
"To defeat them I would need to use 75% of my force, but I can rely on only a quarter."
In fact the port city, part of the British zone, is remarkably peaceful. It is largely untouched by the insurgency and crimes such as kidnapping and theft have ebbed since the chaotic months after the March 2003 invasion.
In marked contrast to Baghdad, razor wire and blast walls are uncommon in Basra and instead of cowering indoors after dark families take strolls along the corniche.
But Gen Sade said the tranquillity had been bought by ceding authority to conservative Islamic parties and turning a blind eye to their militias' corruption scams and hit squads.
A former officer in Saddam Hussein's marine special forces, he was chosen to lead Basra's police force by the previous government headed by Ayad Allawi and he started the job five months ago.
He praised the establishment of a competent 530-strong tactical support unit and claimed that 90% of ordinary crime was detected.
But he was frustrated that a weak, fledgling state left him powerless to purge his force of members of Iraq's two main rival Shia militias: Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army and the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).
Sciri is one of the dominant parties in the Shia-led government in Baghdad and Mr Sadr, a radical cleric, has become a mainstream political player since leading two uprisings against occupation forces last year.
Both groups have been implicated in targeting officials from Saddam's ousted regime. Since such people tend to be Sunni Arabs, the score settling is often perceived as sectarian.
"Some of the police are involved in assassinations," said Gen Sade. "I am trying to sort this out, for example by putting numbers on police cars so they can be identified."
In March, police watched impassively as their friends in the Mahdi army members beat up scores of university students at a picnic deemed immoral because music was played and couples mingled. Gen Sade identified the officers, but did not punish them for fear of provoking the militia.
If there is trouble at Basra, university staff still phone the police, said Professor Saleh Najim, dean of the engineering college. "But you can't be sure they will do their duty."
The police chief felt cut off from his superiors at the interior ministry in Baghdad and lamented that a government commission was forcing some of his best officers to resign over alleged links with the ousted regime. He did not know how long he would keep his job.
Colin Smith, a deputy chief constable and Britain's senior police adviser in Iraq, said the Basra force's ability to patrol and investigate crimes was an "exponential development" from two years ago and he expected improvements to accelerate.
"I'm optimistic. It's a five to 10 year project, it won't be overnight," he said.
He criticised previous British and American trainers for setting the bar too high for a force being built from scratch. "Too often we have given the Iraqis plans that don't work. We still don't have an Iraq police strategy."
For example police stations were given expensive cameras to photograph suspects without heed to the Iraqis' difficulty in replacing the batteries, said Mr Smith.
"A lot of the time we're not moving forward but rectifying the mistakes made in the past two years."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1495800,00.html
knightroar
05-30-2005, 11:12 PM
what a clusterfuck
what a clusterfuck
This is how Sadr will continue to gain power... Just like the Taliban did... he offers the people SECURITY, which he brings about by brut force...
Its the same dynamics that put the Taliban in power... People in desperation regrettably will trade liberty for what they believe is security.
Bman
knightroar
05-30-2005, 11:17 PM
This is how Sadr will continue to gain power... Just like the Taliban did... he offers the people SECURITY, which he brings about by brut force...
Its the same dynamics that put the Taliban in power... People in desperation regrettably will trade liberty for what they believe is security.
Bman
how true. we are witnessing that to a degree here too
Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA)
September 21, 2005, Wednesday
Sadr militia's new muscle in south
By Jill Carroll Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
BAGHDAD
Iraqi Shiite cleric's loyal followers clashed with British troops Monday in Basra.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite cleric who promised to disband his militia after clashing with US forces last April, proved this week that he remains a potent threat to both coalition troops and Iraq's fledgling government.
In a dramatic battle against British forces in Basra, Mr. Sadr quickly mobilized scores of supporters to descend on tanks, setting at least one alight and injuring three British soldiers on Monday.
While the British Army's strategy of appeasement has brought quiet to the Shiite-dominated south for some time, it has allowed militias such as Sadr's Mahdi Army to quietly regroup and flourish. Consequently, Sadr's followers - who have close ties to the city police - have more control of Basra's streets than British troops.
This control has also created a climate of fear among many residents not unlike that under Saddam Hussein. There are whispers that Sadr has established his own sharia courts, which issue rulings based on Islamic law. The Mahdi Army enforces its decisions, Basra residents say.
To build his network of loyal followers, Sadr offers payments to the families of his militia members who died in the fighting in August. Some 3,000 families are dependent on money or other help from the Sadr movement.
When an Iraqi is in poor health in Baghdad, more often than not it's a Sadr movement member who provides aid. Sadr movement officials run the Health Ministry, extending influence from the hospitals to the ambulance service. Posters, stickers, and other memorabilia of Sadr are plastered on Ministry of Health checkpoints, hospitals, and the walls of Baghdad's main ambulance center.
Despite years of community outreach, British forces had no better recourse Monday to free two soldiers arrested by police loyal to Sadr than to ram the jail where they were initially held with tanks. When the British discovered the soldiers were not there, they raided a nearby house where the two were being kept by militia members, according to the British.
"I have no doubt that there was an institutional desire on the part of the British military to have good relations with as many Iraqis as possible," says Robert Springborg, director of the London Middle East Institute that gave Iraq-bound British solders cultural sensitivity training. "It's much less a military problem than a political problem. the resolution of the problems is beyond the control of the British government ... no one really is in control of this [political] process now and that's worrying."
The spark that caused the violence in Basra was the arrest Sunday of leading Sadr cleric Ahmed al-Fertusi and his assistant by British troops. The British claimed they were responsible for planning attacks on their forces. With tension already high between Sadr followers and British troops, Sadr demonstrators poured into the streets to demand Mr. Fertusi's release.
The next day, two British military personnel disguised as Iraqis engaged in a gun battle with Iraqi police, killing one police officer, according to varying accounts. The police eventually captured the two men. When British tanks arrived to free the detainees, crowds attacked them.
[B]Top Sadr official Abbas Rubaie has charged the two undercover British officers with planting roadside bombs in order to justify a longer military presence in the country.
"What the British are doing in Basra is terrorism. They are attacking [British] troops so they can say 'someone attacked us and we need to stay as long as possible,' " Rubaie said.
A statement from the Sadr movement claimed that the two British undercover officers had also been firing into a crowd of pilgrims Monday going to a local shrine to mark the birth of the Imam Mehdi, the 12th and last Imam, or Shiite saint.
They also charged that when "the people of Basra demonstrated" to stop British tanks from freeing the two officers from jail, the troops fired on the crowd "killing and wounding many of them." They said the British tanks crashed into the jail allowing "150 terrorists" to escape.
Iraqi officials Tuesday condemned the British operation. "It is a very unfortunate development that the British forces should try to release their forces the way it happened," Haider al-Ebadi, an adviser to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, said at a news conference in Baghdad.
While one of Iraq's major cities, Basra is more like a small town, residents say, where everyone knows everyone. People could once play music outside, unmarried couples could once walk together. But as several Shiite groups vie for power, many worry the militias, particularly Sadr's, have forever changed the mood of their city.
These days saying anything against the Mahdi Army or its rival, the Badr Organization backed by ruling Shiite Islamist party Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), can be deadly.
"No one trusts anyone," says Ali Abdel Zahara one of few Basra residents willing to discuss the situation and who gave a false name for fear of retribution from the militias. "You can't talk about this, even at home."
He says Sadr has emerged as the most powerful force among the many groups that are controlling different sections of the town and police. "The ones that are in control are the tribes and the parties. Each one in the police is a representative of his party or his tribe," says Zahara. "Sadr is the biggest because they always solve the problems they face with violence."
In further evidence of the violence that has gripped Basra, Fakher Haider, an Iraqi journalist working with The New York Times was killed Sunday after being abducted by men who witnesses said claimed to be police officers. He was found dead outside the city early Monday. Early last month, Monitor contributor Steven Vincent was abducted by men who, according to witnesses, drove police vehicles. Like Mr. Haider, he was discovered dead not long after being abducted.
Boom!
09-26-2005, 11:17 AM
Both of you seem to have forgotten.....things are getting better and they are in their last throes. :rolleyes:
stewey
09-26-2005, 01:05 PM
how true. we are witnessing that to a degree here too
Hah. How so?
Anyways, we should've killed Sadr when we had the chance.
Freedom is on the March!!
hut, two , three , four.... hut , two , three , four.....
The Express
October 14, 2005
U.K. 1st Edition; NEWS; Pg. 15
SUICIDE OVER IRAQ HORROR
PART-time soldier Peter Mahoney was so horrified by seeing a little girl lynched in Iraq that he killed himself, an inquest was told yesterday.
Father-of-four Mahoney, 45, was stationed in Basra where a mob hanged the girl who had been caught stealing a bar of chocolate. He also saw a boy's head split open with a brick as a crowd fought for food.
His wife Donna, who found his body in their fume-filled car, told the inquest in Carlisle that he could not get the images of horror out of his thoughts.
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 09:14 AM
Freedom is on the March!!
hut, two , three , four.... hut , two , three , four.....
The Express
October 14, 2005
U.K. 1st Edition; NEWS; Pg. 15
SUICIDE OVER IRAQ HORROR
PART-time soldier Peter Mahoney was so horrified by seeing a little girl lynched in Iraq that he killed himself, an inquest was told yesterday.
Father-of-four Mahoney, 45, was stationed in Basra where a mob hanged the girl who had been caught stealing a bar of chocolate. He also saw a boy's head split open with a brick as a crowd fought for food.
His wife Donna, who found his body in their fume-filled car, told the inquest in Carlisle that he could not get the images of horror out of his thoughts.
Link Please?
Rightwingnut
10-14-2005, 09:16 AM
what a clusterfuck
I have been saying for over a year now that we should have taken that fat fucker out when we had the chance. The mission was doomed the minute we started playing footsies with him and his spiritual clones.
No one wants to hear it, but the bottom line is that Iraq is what it is because our leadership lacks the political will and common sense needed to end it.
Link Please?
Nope.. no link.
I don't have one.
The article is from the British newspaper, "The Express"
here's another article about the guy and his death
The Press Association Limited
Press Association
October 12, 2005, Wednesday
HOME NEWS
EX-SOLDIER COMMITTED SUICIDE AFTER IRAQ TOUR
Will Batchelor, PA
A former soldier deliberately gassed himself after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq as "a changed man", an inquest heard today.
Peter Mahoney, 45, was wearing full regimental dress when he was found dead in the driver's seat of a Rover 820 at the family home in Carlisle in August 2004.
The father-of-four had placed family photographs on the passenger seat, as well as military documents. He had used a pipe to fill the car with exhaust fumes.
His body was found by wife Donna, from whom he had recently split, although the pair were trying to reconcile their differences.
Mrs Mahoney, a former care home manager, told North East Cumbria Coroners' Court that her husband, a member of the Territorial Army's Royal Logistics Corps, returned from a four-month stint in Iraq in July 2003 with a different attitude.
She said: "I just found his attitude to life had changed.
"He used to be a family person, family orientated, but he didn't seem to want to do the same kind of things.
"There were lots of things. He couldn't cope with Bonfire Night. He couldn't cope with being around a lot of people, he would go away and do his own thing.
"He would go off for two to three hours in his car on his own. He used to love football but he wouldn't even watch football with us after he came back, he would go away and watch it on his own."
Mrs Mahoney believed her husband was suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after witnessing harrowing events in Iraq, including the deaths of children.
She told the court: "The main one was when a little girl got hung for stealing a bar of chocolate, and there was a little boy who had been bashed on the head with a brick in a scramble for food."
Coroner Ian Morton said it was not possible to say whether Mr Mahoney was suffering PTSD, as he did not see a doctor before his death. He recorded a verdict of suicide.
Speaking after the inquest, Mrs Mahoney said: "I believe he was suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but no one else seems to.
"He said he had seen some terrible things out there, and seeing his own children must have brought it back to him."
The couple had four children, now aged seven, 11, 19 and 21.
Mr Mahoney had spoken to a local newspaper about his misgivings over the war in Iraq.
He told the Carlisle News & Star: "Then general consensus among the troops was that we were in Iraq so that George Bush could seize control of the oil fields.
"All this talk of weapons of mass destruction was simply a smokescreen as far as we were concerned.
"I think Tony Blair was just following whatever Bush said. He was simply his puppet. He got in too deep and couldn't back out.
"From what we saw, Saddam's regime did not have advanced weapons. Iraqi troops were using ancient Russian machines. They were firing sticks and stones. They might as well have had catapults."
Mr Mahoney gave the interview shortly after his return in July 2003, and resigned from the TA two months later.
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 09:25 AM
Nope.. no link.
I don't have one.
Well, where did you get it then? Im not testing you.:)
Well, where did you get it then? Im not testing you.:)
Lexis-Nexus database.
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 09:37 AM
His body was found by wife Donna, from whom he had recently split, although the pair were trying to reconcile their differences.
His body was found by wife Donna, from whom he had recently split, although the pair were trying to reconcile their differences.
What does that have to do with the hanging of a child in Basra?
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 09:50 AM
What does that have to do with the hanging of a child in Basra?
Well, Id say that this wasnt the sole reason why the guy offed himself. Id say him and his wife splitting had more bearing on the situation.
Anyways, you're surprised that these people are this fucked up to hang a child?
Whats your point? Were talking about SAdr and his gang.
The New York Times
October 9, 2005 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
IN BASRA, MILITIA CONTROLS BY FEAR
BYLINE: By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
BASRA, Iraq
The most feared institution in Iraq's third-largest city is a shadowy force of 200 to 300 police officers known collectively as the Jameat, who dominate the local police, who are said to murder and torture at will and who answer to the leaders of Basra's sectarian militias.
Their infiltration in Basra's police force and government goes far beyond the Jameat; even the police chief has said he trusts only a quarter of his men. But the Jameat may be the most ominous example of the degree to which Shiite militias hold sway in Iraq's largest southern city.
The extent of its power became clear in September when a force of British troops in armored vehicles tried to rescue two special operations soldiers who had been abducted and taken to the Jameat's headquarters, in a police building in southwestern Basra.
According to three British soldiers there that day, a mob of 1,000 to 2,000 people -- not the 200 or so first reported -- rapidly massed near the station, which the British troops had partly demolished in an effort to free the captives. They were ultimately rescued from a house nearby, where they were being held by militiamen.
The British soldiers said that many in the mob were armed with homemade bombs and grenades, and that the attack appeared to be a disciplined and coordinated response to the sacking of the Jameat headquarters. Iraqi men standing on cars ordered the mob to attack, they said, while rioters clambered on top of the armored vehicles and doused soldiers inside with gasoline. ''This was not a spontaneous public action,'' said Maj. Andy Hadfield, a British company commander. ''It was closely organized and closely coordinated by a series of agitators.''
Once a relaxed riverside getaway, Basra has slipped under the rule of fundamentalist Shiite militias and political parties -- many with strong ties to Iran -- that enforce strict Islamic mores. The city has only 2,500 to 3,000 police officers, and several times that number are in the rest of the province, while estimates of militia ranks have reached as high as 13,000 in Basra and its environs.
Recently, lethal attacks on British forces and other rising violence in the city -- including the murders of an Iraqi employee of The New York Times, Fakher Haider, and of a New York journalist, Steven Vincent -- have shattered a convenient myth: that no matter how brutal the Sunni insurgency became elsewhere, the Shiites in Basra would keep the city relatively peaceful, overseen by the soft touch of British forces.
The rise of the militias also represents another obstacle to the Bush administration's long-term goal of replacing American-led forces with Iraqis. As in many restive parts of Iraq, none of the regular Basra police stations are close to being ready to operate on their own, said Sgt. Maj. Andy Johnson, a British soldier who helps train the police. ''Progress is slow and you are fighting against decades of corruption,'' he said.
Even if the police and military units across Iraq achieve self-sufficiency, there is concern that they will disintegrate along sectarian lines when American and British forces withdraw. ''It's too early to tell'' whether they will favor their own ethnic groups, a senior American official said recently. ''You don't necessarily instill a national identity in a military in two years.''
Particularly not when the police ranks include groups like the Jameat. In the murky world of Basra's militias, it remains unclear how the Jameat emerged as such a powerful force. Officially, it is part of the Basra police, responsible for internal affairs and investigating major crimes like terrorism and murder -- a role that in practice, other police officers say, allows it to operate without restraint.
A British diplomat said fewer than a dozen Jameat commanders ''manage to exert a disproportionate influence and a policy of intimidation against the rest of the Iraqi police service and against ordinary people.'' The diplomat, unidentified because Britain permits only senior diplomats to speak for the record, said the Jameat had ''the power to intimidate everybody'' and ''their crimes are the most serious crimes.''
Like many other militias, the Jameat is involved in a wide variety of nefarious activities, according to other Iraqi police officers and officials, from the killings of former Baathists, to the kidnapping and murder of political rivals, to straightforward criminal pursuits.
''They consider themselves the No.1 power in Basra,'' said one police commander, who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution against him and his family. ''The people who like to murder and torture come from Internal Affairs. They get police uniforms, police vehicles and police identification.''
Many police officers feel the same, said one British military commander in Basra. ''All of the police stations complain about abduction of their men and torture by the Jameat,'' said the officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the subject.
Another British officer here, Lt. Col. Nick Henderson, commander of the First Battalion of the Coldstream Guards, the unit that patrols Basra, said, ''The militia influence is significant, but the fact that people are scared of them in other departments has an exponential effect.''
Men with police uniforms and identification regularly abduct and kill Sunni Arabs, said Sheik Abdul Karim al-Dosari, leader of a local arm of the Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the largest Sunni parties. ''Every week there are one or two incidents where the police come to arrest people and then we find the bodies of these people.''
In May, Basra's police chief, Hassan al-Sade, told The Guardian in London militias were the ''real power'' in Basra and he trusted only 25 percent of his force. An appointee of former prime minister Ayad Allawi -- a former Baathist often at odds with the conservative Shiite parties that dominate southern Iraq -- Mr. Sade also said that some police officers carried out assassinations.
Interviews with Iraqi police officers, other Iraqis and British soldiers suggest several Shiite factions have strong ties to the Jameat. One is the Mahdi Army, a militia associated with the firebrand cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Another is the Fadila Party, which won tenuous control of the provincial government this year after allying with smaller parties. The Basra governor, Muhammad al-Waeli, a Fadila member, criticized the raid on the Jameat as ''barbaric, savage and irresponsible.''
One British officer said there were signs of increasing cooperation between factions of Fadila and the Mahdi Army.
Another powerful militia is the Iranian-backed Badr Organization, an arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which effectively ran Basra before Fadila took over and which nearly won a majority in this year's provincial council elections. The Badr group has fought with the Mahdi Army and has also heavily infiltrated the police.
Sunni leaders have accused the Badr group of murdering Sunnis, a charge it denies. In December, before Fadila took over the Basra government, the Basra police reported that officers in the Internal Affairs unit -- now part of the Jameat -- were implicated in the killing of 10 former Baathists, according to a State Department report issued this year. The Basra chief of intelligence was removed, the report said, but kept command of Internal Affairs.
The Jameat headquarters is situated near Hayaniya, a giant Shiite slum and base of support for the Mahdi Army. The two British special operations soldiers were rescued from a house in Hayaniya. They were abducted the day after British troops arrested the Basra leader of the Mahdi Army, Ahmed Fartusi, on charges of attacking coalition forces. It is unclear how closely tied Mr. Fartusi remains to Mr. Sadr.
[On Friday, British forces arrested 12 more men in Basra -- mostly Mahdi supporters, including some policemen. No one who murders British soldiers ''should be allowed to hide behind their uniform,'' the British military said in a statement that noted that provincial leaders had barred the police in Basra from working with British forces.]
British soldiers say mortar attacks have increased. The militia influence is ''very heavy,'' said Lance Sgt. Richard Smith. He cautioned that Westerners who navigate Basra risk showing up on television in the orange jumpsuits worn by captives.
Residents speak of increasing hostility toward the British. ''Before, all people liked the British forces,'' said Fadel Mohsen. Like many in Basra, Mr. Mohsen accepts the version of events put forth by the militias -- a baseless claim that the two abducted British soldiers were Israeli spies.
British officials say the local Iraqi news media had until recently been willing to publish British statements but now appear too intimidated or otherwise unwilling to challenge accounts endorsed by militias .
Beyond worries about militia power is another concern. Iranians have long trained the Badr militia but there are growing signs Iran is providing substantial support to Badr rivals like Mahdi. [The British prime minister, Tony Blair, said ''Iranian elements'' might be behind the sophisticated explosives insurgents have used against British soldiers.]
Brig. Muter al-Saadi, commander of the Iraqi police south of Basra, calls Iran the ''the Devil's location.'' He said Iran wants havoc to convince the United States that it could never keep Iraq stable.
Yet he refused to answer questions about the growing influence of the militias or their illegal activities. Later, the interpreter said, ''He is too scared to talk about the militias.''
Well, Id say that this wasnt the sole reason why the guy offed himself. Id say him and his wife splitting had more bearing on the situation.
Anyways, you're surprised that these people are this fucked up to hang a child?
Whats your point? Were talking about SAdr and his gang.
But you see, Basra is considered a "success".
This is what the new "free" Iraq is going to look like..
This is why US soldiers are dying..
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 09:52 AM
I'd say its time to bring the Marines in.:)
I'd say its time to bring the Marines in.:)
For what?
That's the legitimate government in Basra.
That's what you people don't seem to understand.. these are the people we are fighting to support.
SCHICK
10-14-2005, 10:01 AM
I'd say its time to bring the Marines in.:)
Or perhaps another operation "iron fist" that should do it, now....who's handing out the cigars? wheres Hobbes when you need him? :mad_01:
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 10:09 AM
Or perhaps another operation "iron fist" that should do it, now....who's handing out the cigars? wheres Hobbes when you need him? :mad_01:
Well for starters Hobbes said that they have plenty of equipment over there and he couldnt understand why the MSM is putting out bogus stories.
Sorry but its not all DOOM and GLOOM like you and BMAN want it to be.
BMAN wants this operation to fail, only because he doesnt like BUSH. Thats pathetic.
Get over the BUSH obsession, and think about how important this is.
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 10:14 AM
I bet Hobbes has alot of news that you and BMAN arent going to like.
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17415&page=24&pp=10
They've ben spouting this shit for twenty years at least, and it hasn't happened yet. Americans are a risk-averse people, and we invariably look to low-risk, high-cost strategies to solve our problems. This "dispersed combat power" strategy is a load of crap.
Also, there's no shortage of equipment here. Hell, we have a bunch of expensive crap we don't need. Whoever keeps floating those stories needs to pull their head out of their ass.
I bet Hobbes has alot of news that you and BMAN arent going to like.
.
I happen to agree with Hobbes, nearly 100% of the time
For instance
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=223003&postcount=18
gotta say DC, that while you make a good argument, you're also answering the wrong question. Of course our military is doing their best at the job they're given. Of course most Iraqis are grateful to be free of Hussein's rule. And of course most people, Iraqis included, want to lives their lives free from opression, and with a say in their own destiny. All given, and all very irrelevant. Our efforts in Iraq, while laudable, are little more useful than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
[rant] We, America, are and have been for a decade, locked in a struggle to the death with militant Islam over the future of the world. Whether we will play a leading role in the affairs of other nations, or no role at all. Make no mistake, these people have the power and the will to destroy us. They cannot be dissuaded, they will not accept an honorable peace... they will fight us until they are destroyed... utterly and completely.
But instead of addressing this clear and imminent danger, Bush has chosen this moment in history to bet the farm on the chance that we can transform the character of the entire middle east through or efforts to better a single country. To do so, he has spent an enormous fortune, he has completely tied down our military, and he has squandered the goodwill of nearly the entire free world.
The Iraq effort, from a strategic standpoint, can only be called a collossal error in judgement. At the tactical level, good things are happening for individual Iraqis, excepting the ones who died in the course of their liberation. Few good things are happening, as a result, for Americans. We are less safe, we are more heavily in debt, we have lost some of our most promising, and we are pretty much universally despised in the world.
For 1,700 lives and $280 billion, I think we should expect more.
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 10:27 AM
I happen to agree with Hobbes, nearly 100% of the time
For instance
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=223003&postcount=18
Hey I happen to agree that it was a error. That doesnt change the fact that our boys are over there and they're not leaving.
Funny, that was before he went to Iraq.
Hey I happen to agree that it was a error. That doesnt change the fact that our boys are over there and they're not leaving.
Funny, that was before he went to Iraq.
More from Hobbes (on the Iraqi President)
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=379625#post379625
This is the same Talabani who would terrorize his fellow Kurds when they did not support his resistance efforts over his rivals. He was infamous for crushing men to death by running over them with a tank. Funny how times change people.
As far as I'm concerned, the article is entirely self-serving. We have gotten into bed with some very unsavory characters here, and I for one hope that the Iraqi people properly vote these criminals out.
Hey I happen to agree that it was a error. That doesnt change the fact that our boys are over there and they're not leaving.
Funny, that was before he went to Iraq.
Funny in what what?
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 10:32 AM
More from Hobbes (on the Iraqi President)
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=379625#post379625
More from hobbes:
I think what matters more is whether Sunnis vote. A successful vote will show the insugency as weak, no matter the outcome. A no vote may be a chance for a Sunni "do-over" in the national elections, and a chance for more representation. I know I said otherwise before, but now I think that time matters less, because GW is going to keep us in here through the end of his term, no matter what happens. He's going to let the next Pres suffer the inevitable negative consequences of withdrawal.
Understanding that the president is going to keep them there, you should be supporting them, instead of feeding off the negative.
Negativity isnt going to bring them back BMAN.
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 10:33 AM
Funny in what what?
Well I wonder what his opinion is now that he is there?
SCHICK
10-14-2005, 10:38 AM
I bet Hobbes has alot of news that you and BMAN arent going to like.
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17415&page=24&pp=10
They've ben spouting this shit for twenty years at least, and it hasn't happened yet. Americans are a risk-averse people, and we invariably look to low-risk, high-cost strategies to solve our problems. This "dispersed combat power" strategy is a load of crap.
Also, there's no shortage of equipment here. Hell, we have a bunch of expensive crap we don't need. Whoever keeps floating those stories needs to pull their head out of their ass.
The hobbes "news" report on "iron fist" was enough for me, credibility is a major component in sensible discourse he failed!...miserably.
Dubya's latest news update about Iraq is personalised for viewers like you...make ya feel good?
More from hobbes:
I think what matters more is whether Sunnis vote. A successful vote will show the insugency as weak, no matter the outcome. A no vote may be a chance for a Sunni "do-over" in the national elections, and a chance for more representation. I know I said otherwise before, but now I think that time matters less, because GW is going to keep us in here through the end of his term, no matter what happens. He's going to let the next Pres suffer the inevitable negative consequences of withdrawal.
Understanding that the president is going to keep them there, you should be supporting them, instead of feeding off the negative.
Negativity isnt going to bring them back BMAN.
Well, we'll see if he doesn't bring them back..
the point is this: I couldn't care less about the insurgency
The insurgency could end tomorrow, and SO WHAT??
THE TERRORISTS and AMERICA HATERS are the government in Iraq...
For Christ sake, why are US soldiers laying down their lives to support assholes like Talabani and Fucking Jaafari who supports Iraq.
Can't you understand simple english, about what is going on in Basra??
WTF is wrong with you?
This is how Sadr will continue to gain power... Just like the Taliban did... he offers the people SECURITY, which he brings about by brut force...
Its the same dynamics that put the Taliban in power... People in desperation regrettably will trade liberty for what they believe is security.
Bman
Not according to Hobbes, who is actually OVER THERE.
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 10:40 AM
The hobbes "news" report on "iron fist" was enough for me, credibility is a major component in sensible discourse he failed!...miserably.
Dubya's latest news update about Iraq is personalised for viewers like you...make ya feel good?
Link me to that article. Hobbes is in Iraq now and he hasnt been spouting off much Doom and Gloom.
I would like to hear more from Hobbes now that he was in Iraq. His news report, please link me to it if you can?
For now I must go. Finished with the coffee. Wifey wants to take our 2 year old to get a pumpkin.:)
Not according to Hobbes, who is actually OVER THERE.
Where are these posts that you all are referring to??
Strike4ce
10-14-2005, 10:41 AM
Not according to Hobbes, who is actually OVER THERE.
THANK YOU!!! Im really interested in what Hobbes has to say now that he is there. YOu have his email Alli?
BBL
Hobbes:
Strike... how can you possibly ignore the very real disagreements for which the 3 factions have now failed to find a solution?
Do you recall that I have been saying since before the invasion that this is exactly where they would end up?!
So, when the Sunni provinces torpedo the thing (which they will in Oct), and this government is dissolved and they have to start over... will you still keep claiming "progress" in Iraq?
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=325165&postcount=27
More Hobbes:
The Shiites are clearly trying to codify an already de facto Islamic state (closely allied with Iran, of course). The Kurds have already cemented their autonomy deal, and the Sunnis are simply trying not to be left out in the cold.
Simple enough?
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showpost.php?p=326800&postcount=11
That hardly sounds like 'lost control'
Spectre
10-14-2005, 10:46 AM
Not according to Hobbes, who is actually OVER THERE.
Where'd he say that??
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/search.php?searchid=253622
He also said, today, that all that 'soldiers don't have enough weapons etc it total bullshit'
Spectre
10-14-2005, 10:50 AM
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/search.php?searchid=253622
He also said, today, that all that 'soldiers don't have enough weapons etc it total bullshit'
Sorry no matches??
That hardly sounds like 'lost control'
The "lost control" is in Basra.
Hobbes is in Al Qaim, on the border with Syria.
Its an entirely different part of the country
Basra is supposed to be one of the "good" areas..
:add09:
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/search.php?searchid=253622
He also said, today, that all that 'soldiers don't have enough weapons etc it total bullshit'
Who is making the claim that the soldiers don't have enough weapons???
Where are these posts that you all are referring to??
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/search.php?searchid=253622
re: supplies http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=381730#post381730
Here is a thread on Hobbes outfit:
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=375538#post375538
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/search.php?searchid=253622
re: supplies http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=381730#post381730
Here is a thread on Hobbes outfit:
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=375538#post375538
Hobbes isn't saying anything that contradicts what I'm saying in this thread, ie, that we're fighting to support an Islamic theocracy allied with Iran in Iraq.
Spectre
10-14-2005, 10:56 AM
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/search.php?searchid=253622
re: supplies http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=381730#post381730
Here is a thread on Hobbes outfit:
http://www.wincoast.com/forum/showthread.php?p=375538#post375538
That top search you keep linking keeps coming up with no results.
Who is making the claim that the soldiers don't have enough weapons???
You ARE kidding?
I cannot locate the specific thread(s), but do recall several articles on how the troops are practically threadbare, and their families have to send them kevlar jackets and socks etc.
Spectre
10-14-2005, 10:58 AM
You ARE kidding?
I cannot locate the specific thread(s), but do recall several articles on how the troops are practically threadbare, and their families have to send them kevlar jackets and socks etc.
Umm, that was two years ago.
That top search you keep linking keeps coming up with no results.
Odd, go to members list, find Hobbes, and click on 'view posts by hobbes'. That is what that link is to.
You ARE kidding?
I cannot locate the specific thread(s), but do recall several articles on how the troops are practically threadbare, and their families have to send them kevlar jackets and socks etc.
Maybe a year or two ago. I certainly am not making that claim here.
Spectre
10-14-2005, 10:58 AM
Odd, go to members list, find Hobbes, and click on 'view posts by hobbes'. That is what that link is to.
Gotcha.
Odd, go to members list, find Hobbes, and click on 'view posts by hobbes'. That is what that link is to.
I did that.
now what is it that you claim "Hobbes" is saying ??
Where is the contradiction between what he is saying and what I'm saying?
Hobbes is probably the person on IH who I have agreed with the most over the years (certainly Hobbes and Spectre more than anyone else)
Spectre
10-14-2005, 11:02 AM
I did that.
now what is it that you claim "Hobbes" is saying ??
Where is the contradiction between what he is saying and what I'm saying?
Hobbes is probably the person on IH who I have agreed with the most over the years (certainly Hobbes and Spectre more than anyone else)
Yup, I agree. He's been very much in line with how I think.
Yup, I agree. He's been very much in line with how I think.
In fact, you and Hobbes (it was "Civics Teacher" then) were the two guys that emailed me when I left IH back in January, convincing me to come back!!
LOL
In fact, you and Hobbes (it was "Civics Teacher" then) were the two guys that emailed me when I left IH back in January, convincing me to come back!!
LOL
Hobbes rules.
Hobbes rules.
Too bad more people didn't listen to him over the past 2-3 years.
Newsday (New York)
November 16, 2005 Wednesday
ALL EDITIONS
IRAQ SECURITY SCANDALS;
REPORTS FROM IRAQ
James Rupert
BAGHDAD - Among the varied armed security men on Baghdad's streets these days, you can't miss the police commandos. In combat uniforms, bulletproof vests and wrap-around sunglasses or ski masks, they muscle through Baghdad's traffic jams in police cars or camouflage-painted pickup trucks, clearing nervous drivers from their path with shouted commands and the occasional gunshot in the air.
The commandos are part of the Iraqi security forces that the Bush administration says will gradually replace American troops in this war. But the commandos are being blamed for a wave of kidnappings and executions around Baghdad since the spring.
One such group, the Volcano Brigade, is operating as a death squad, under the influence or control of Iraq's most potent Shia factional militia, the Iranian-backed Badr Organization, said several Iraqi government officials and western Baghdad residents.
In the past six months, Badr has heavily infiltrated the Interior Ministry, under which the commandos operate, the sources said. Badr also was accused of running the secret Interior Ministry prison raided Sunday by U.S. troops.
About 2 a.m. on Aug. 23, men in Volcano Brigade uniforms and trucks rolled into the streets of Dolay, a mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhood of western Baghdad, residents say. "I got a call from my cousins" around the corner, said Ahmed Abu Yusuf, 33, an unemployed Sunni. "They told me to stay hidden because the Volcano were in the streets, arresting Sunnis."
For three hours, the raiders burst into Sunni homes, handcuffed dozens of men and loaded them into vans. They ended the assault and drove out of the neighborhood just before the dawn call to prayer, which would bring men into the streets, walking to the local mosques, Abu Yusuf said.
Two days later and 90 miles away, residents of the desert town of Badrah, near the Iranian border, found the bodies of 36 of the men in a gully, their hands still bound and their skulls shattered by bullets. Two were the cousins who had phoned him the warning, Abu Yusuf said.
Massacre denied
The Volcano Brigade's commander, Bassem Gharawi, has denied his force committed the massacre. But Shia and Sunni Iraqis close to the unit, some of them high-ranking security officials, said it took part - whether on its own or with the Badr militia. "No one can talk openly about the Volcanoes because we could easily be killed," said a government official who discussed the matter in hushed tones this month in a corridor away from his office.
The night after Dolay's Sunni families received their men's bodies from the morgue, "someone put letters in the street in front of our homes, warning us not to hold funerals" for the victims and vowing to kill Sunnis who remained in Dolay, Abu Yusuf said. His family fled their home the next morning.
These days, the streets of Dolay and adjoining neighborhoods of the Hurriya district look like battle zones in a civil war. Many Sunni businesses, including the tire repair shop once run by Abu Yusuf's cousins, never open. Remaining Sunnis in Dolay have closed off their side streets with barricades of logs, debris and razor wire. At night, neighbors stand guard with assault rifles, and sometimes battle police.
Life is miserable, too, for those who fled, Abu Yusuf said. "We are living like refugees in Tarmiya or Taji," Sunni towns north of Baghdad, "and we have no money because we had to leave our businesses behind," he said.
The Bush administration says a buildup of Iraq's army and police is helping to stabilize the country and ultimately will permit a U.S. withdrawal. "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down," President George W. Bush told troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., this summer.
In the past year, the U.S. military has helped build up the commandos under guidance from James Steele, a former Army Special Forces officer who led U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in El Salvador in the 1980s. Salvadoran army units trained by Steele's team were accused of a pattern of atrocities.
Civilian death toll rising
The first commando units - the Lion Brigade, Scorpion Brigade and others - were formed last year under a Sunni interior minister, Falah Naqib, and include many Sunnis who worked in the repressive security organs of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The Volcano Brigade was built up under the current, Shia-led government and "is mostly made of [Shia] men from the Badr militia," said a Shia source close to the unit. Like most of a dozen people interviewed about the commandos, he asked not to be named for fear of being killed.
If this year's buildup of commandos in Baghdad is helping stabilize the capital, that cannot be measured in the civilian death toll, which has been running 10 percent to 20 percent ahead of last year, according to the city's morgue. The morgue cannot handle the daily river of bodies, so it declines to take those of bombing victims. Still, it gets 1,000 to 1,100 people killed by gunfire or other means each month.
In the first two years of the occupation, Sunni extremists dominated the violence among Iraqis, notably with suicide bombings that killed hundreds of Shia worshipers at shrines and religious festivals. Following the Shias' domination of the election in January for an interim government, Shias seem to have been striking back, notably in attacks on Sunnis in Baghdad neighborhoods such as Dolay, Iskan, Ur and Shaab.
Execution-style massacres are now routine. In the 11 weeks since the Dolay victims were discovered in the desert, at least 17 groups of apparent Baghdad residents - 158 men in all - have been found dumped in empty fields, back streets or at Baghdad's sewage plant, most shot to death with their hands tied, according to a compilation of reports from news agencies and Iraq Body Count, an Internet-based voluntary organization that monitors civilian casualties.
Many are the victims of the Shia-Sunni battles in western Baghdad and, according to news agency and Iraqi press accounts, scores of them had last been seen alive in the hands of men in police uniforms. Bodies of 22 men, who later were identified as Sunni Muslims, were found blindfolded in eastern Iraq in early October. An additional 27 bodies were found Thursday in the desert near where Sunni victims from Dolay and another Baghdad neighborhood were dumped.
Investigation under way
Interior Minister Bayan Jabr denies his ministry condones such killings and has said the department is investigating human rights abuses by police. The U.S. government has "not been satisfied with the results of these investigations," a Western diplomat said, and is "pressing to make them public to demonstrate that Iraq's security forces cannot operate in a culture of impunity."
Jabr is a leader of Iraq's most powerful Shia political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The party's longtime military wing, the Badr militia, was formed in Iran as an adjunct to Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guards to help fight the 1980-88 war against Hussein's Baathists.
Jabr took the interior minister's post after SCIRI won big in January's vote, and he quickly named SCIRI and Badr loyalists to key security positions, said Shia and Sunni sources in the ministry.
"Each sector of the police" has Badr cells, said Salah Matlaq, a leading Sunni politician and foe of SCIRI. They form a parallel command structure within the ministry and "are able to operate on their own, using police cars, uniforms and weapons for Badr operations, while people in leadership positions can say, some of them truthfully, that they don't know about it," he said.
Sunni and Shia officials in two government ministries that monitor the police commandos' work said Matlaq's description was basically correct, and said Volcano is one of the units most penetrated by the Badr militia. With the overlapping lines of authority, it is impossible to know who gives the orders for any given operation by the Volcanos, they said.
The Interior Ministry is divided between officials who "want a professional police system with international standards and help from the Americans" and those who are "preoccupied with keeping Shias in power," said an officer who placed himself in the former camp.
SmokedYourDSM
11-17-2005, 11:57 AM
hi Zapcomix!
stewey
11-17-2005, 12:21 PM
We should've killed Sadr when we had the chance.
I said that then and I say that now.
We should've killed Sadr when we had the chance.
I said that then and I say that now.
Funny thing is, Sadr's such a loose cannon that his guys were actually at war with the Badr brigades earlier this year
So who's side do you pick in that one?
Myself? I vote to let Saddam and his folks have another shot at them.. What was wrong with that?
stewey
11-17-2005, 12:28 PM
Funny thing is, Sadr's such a loose cannon that his guys were actually at war with the Badr brigades earlier this year
So who's side do you pick in that one?
Myself? I vote to let Saddam and his folks have another shot at them.. What was wrong with that?
I would vote to just let them kill each other off.
However, I still say just kill Al Sadr already.
I would vote to just let them kill each other off.
However, I still say just kill Al Sadr already.
Why him, and not Chalabi??
Why not invited Sadr to the State of the Union Address, and give her a plush seat next to Laura Bush?
I've got 2 comments
1) Hobbes is going to be amused/pissed to see how he has become the IH oracle on Iraq.
2) Don't forget the Badr Brigade is part of SCIRI, which is connected to Iran and is the current ruling party in Iraq. Sadr and Badr made-up last week and are now pal-sie-wal-sies. SCIRI/Badr was also mentioned in connection to the Interior Ministry torture case.
I.E. this IS the Iraq government
I've got 2 comments
1) Hobbes is going to be amused/pissed to see how he has become the IH oracle on Iraq.
2) Don't forget the Badr Brigade is part of SCIRI, which is connected to Iran and is the current ruling party in Iraq. Sadr and Badr made-up last week and are now pal-sie-wal-sies. SCIRI/Badr was also mentioned in connection to the Interior Ministry torture case.
I.E. this IS the Iraq government
Right.. thanks for clarifying that... You're 100% right
SCIRI = BADR = SADR = Jaafari = ruling majority in Iraq.
All of them are closely allied with Iran
stewey
11-17-2005, 01:49 PM
Why him, and not Chalabi??
Why not invited Sadr to the State of the Union Address, and give her a plush seat next to Laura Bush?
I say off both of them.
I say off both of them.
Well, Condi had the chance recently, when he came to Washington to meet with her..
Instead, she embraced him warmly (as it was described by many accounts)
Well, Condi had the chance recently, when he came to Washington to meet with her..
Instead, she embraced him warmly (as it was described by many accounts)
BTW, I heard that Chalabi's visit was in part about arms purchases. I don't have the link. Someone mailed the story to me at work.
Hobbes
11-23-2005, 12:57 PM
It's all good. We've been dropping houses like nobody's business here. After this tour I think I'll open a Home Depot in Karabila (or, as we call it.. "Karubble-a")...
So, the point is... we can and are doing awesome work here, but none of us believes it's going to make any real difference. At some point, we will leave, and this place will go to hell. It's pretty much inevitable. The Sunnis will continue to bomb Shia mosques, the Shias will try (and probably fail) to maintain a hold on their majority rule, and the Kurds will continue to slide away from the whole mess.
But the foreign element of the insurgency will be put down quick and hard. These guys don't play. They beat the holy hell out of every foreign fighter they got hold of before we did. Rumor is they executed one too. The fight for power here will without question be entirely between Iraqis.
It's all good. We've been dropping houses like nobody's business here. After this tour I think I'll open a Home Depot in Karabila (or, as we call it.. "Karubble-a")...
So, the point is... we can and are doing awesome work here, but none of us believes it's going to make any real difference. At some point, we will leave, and this place will go to hell. It's pretty much inevitable. The Sunnis will continue to bomb Shia mosques, the Shias will try (and probably fail) to maintain a hold on their majority rule, and the Kurds will continue to slide away from the whole mess.
But the foreign element of the insurgency will be put down quick and hard. These guys don't play. They beat the holy hell out of every foreign fighter they got hold of before we did. Rumor is they executed one too. The fight for power here will without question be entirely between Iraqis.
Do you consider Iranians to be foreigners? What about the reports of Iranian intelligence having infitrated the police, the militias and the ruling shia coaltion?
Hobbes
11-23-2005, 01:16 PM
Do you consider Iranians to be foreigners? What about the reports of Iranian intelligence having infitrated the police, the militias and the ruling shia coaltion?
I gotta plead no clue on that. The Iraqis I've met now are intensely nationalistic, but I don't know if that's as much the case with the Shia. There is the historical Arab/Persian divide to consider...
Fictious Actor
11-23-2005, 01:22 PM
Hobbes............
Is Civil War in the cards? And if so.... who walks away with Iraq?
Obviously Home Depot would do well, but how about a Hooters?
I gotta plead no clue on that. The Iraqis I've met now are intensely nationalistic, but I don't know if that's as much the case with the Shia. There is the historical Arab/Persian divide to consider...
Thanks... Keep safe, and keep up the fight against the bad guys!
Hobbes
11-23-2005, 01:40 PM
Hobbes............
Is Civil War in the cards? And if so.... who walks away with Iraq?
Obviously Home Depot would do well, but how about a Hooters?
I just can't see orange and white burkhas being a big hit...
The Washington Post
March 3, 2006 Friday
Final Edition
Ex-Envoy: Execution Victims Spike at Baghdad Morgue
Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD March 2
Nearly three years into a war epitomized by car bombs and suicide attacks, executions -- many of them following torture -- now account for up to three-fourths of the hundreds of corpses coming in to Baghdad's main morgue each week, the former U.N. human rights chief for Iraq said Thursday.
John Pace, who headed the U.N. human rights mission here until Feb. 13, said that between two-thirds and three-fourths of the victims brought to Baghdad's main morgue are recorded as casualties of gunshot wounds. Nearly all showed signs of having been executed, tortured or both, Pace said by telephone from his home in Sydney.
Pace said he held one of Iraq's factional militias principally responsible -- the Badr Organization, the armed faction of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim religious party that is one of the most powerful members of Iraq's governing coalition.
"They have caused havoc," Pace said of the Badr group in a separate interview with the Associated Press. "They do basically as they please. They arrest people, they torture people, they execute people, they detain people, they negotiate ransom, and they do that with impunity."
Since the middle of last year, Shiite militias -- private armies that are sometimes closely integrated with the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry -- have been accused of operating as death squads and of carrying out extrajudicial killings. The accusations have increased sharply over the past week, with the killing of hundreds of Sunni Arabs in retaliation for the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine, the Golden Mosque in Samarra. Spokesmen for several factions have denied involvement in retaliatory killings.
An international official in Baghdad who is familiar with the tabulation of the death toll said Thursday that roughly 1,000 people were killed between the day of the bombing and Monday, when the government lifted a curfew imposed to stem the violence.
The international official, who spoke on condition he not be identified further, said the figure came from morgue officials and others before the government announced a much lower toll.
He said morgue officials and others acceded to the reduced official count because they feared the militias, the death squads and the government. "They're afraid," the official said.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari said on Tuesday that 379 people had been killed since Feb. 22, and he described as inaccurate and exaggerated a Washington Post report that put the death toll at 1,300. The Post's tally was provided by a morgue worker, and an international human rights official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the source's job entailed close familiarity with the number of bodies the facility received.
The acting director of the morgue, Qais Hassan, also denied The Post's figure. "That's a lie," he said of the number on Thursday.
Hassan began running the morgue when the director, Faik Bakir, fled the country a few months ago after being threatened over the release of morgue information seen as linking many killings to death squads, officials said.
Another morgue official declined to comment, and the spokesman for the Health Ministry, which oversees the facility, did not answer his telephone Thursday. The Health portfolio is held by the party of the Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.
The number of bodies processed by the Baghdad morgue has overtaken the toll from suicide and car bombings, most of which are blamed on Sunni Muslim insurgents. Morgue statistics are one way to measure cause of death in the cases of Iraqi victims of violence, because those killed by gunfire are taken to the city morgue, while victims of bombings are taken to hospital morgues because the cause of death is considered clear.
At the Baghdad morgue and in neighborhoods throughout the capital this week and last, families spoke of abductions by men wearing the black shirts and pants of the Mahdi Army, Sadr's militia.
In one Baghdad neighborhood Thursday, a widow draped in black said black-clad gunmen had burst into a mosque on Feb. 23 and abducted her husband and other men as they were finishing afternoon prayers. She said the captured men were subjected to a one-hour mock trial in a detention center near Sadr City, the heart of Baghdad's Shiite population and Sadr's base in the city.
Some of the men were released, but her husband and three others were executed, she said. His family found his corpse in the Baghdad morgue on Saturday, shot in the face and chest, with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Fearful, the widow hesitated to say who she believed killed her husband. "Who is running the country?" she finally responded. "The Americans. The Mahdi Army. The Badr Brigade. They are responsible."
She hushed her daughters and granddaughter when they assigned blame more specifically. "Mahdi Army," her 8-year-old granddaughter whispered into her ear. "Darling," the widow said, frowning and quieting the girl.
Sadr officials have denied responsibility for the killings. Sadr aides said other factions' militiamen were adopting black clothes to deflect blame onto the Mahdi Army.
The burst of slayings and resulting accusations unleashed by the mosque bombing follow nearly a year of charges by Sunni leaders that Shiite fighters in militias and in the Interior Ministry were carrying out widespread killings of Sunni men. The bodies of hundreds of Sunnis have been found dumped in various places around Iraq, after the men were abducted from Sunni or mixed neighborhoods and communities.
After numbering in the dozens each month before the U.S. invasion and roughly 500 a month in the first half of 2005, bodies processed at Baghdad's morgue peaked at about 1,100 last July.
In November, 555 of the 886 bodies brought to the morgue bore gunshot wounds, as did 479 of the 787 brought to the morgue in December, according to the U.N. mission in Iraq, which tracks deaths reported by Baghdad's morgue.
The figures "are believed to underrepresent the actual number of casualties," the United Nations said in a report.
While violent crime has surged in Iraq in the upheaval following the U.S. overthrow of President Saddam Hussein, and while Sunni insurgents use guns as well as bombs, public suspicion with regard to the spike in execution-style deaths has centered on the Shiite militias and security forces.
Jafari's government has denied the existence of death squads within the Interior Ministry. U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson said last month, however, that American troops in January arrested a group of Interior Ministry police commandos on the verge of executing a detained Sunni man.
The international human rights official said workers were under growing pressure to minimize anything seen as linking killings to death squads. Even before the past nine days' sectarian violence, the official said, morgue officials were reluctant "to give even the most basic information on the number of victims."
"You can see that, over time, attitudes have changed," the official said, citing "a mix of pressure not to divulge and fear that there will be repercussions."
Militiamen and insurgents alike had threatened morgue workers against conducting autopsies or doing other investigations that would link the killers to their crimes, Pace said. "They are told it is not necessary and not in their interests,'' he said.
LANMaster
03-03-2006, 11:28 AM
But you see, Basra is considered a "success".
This is what the new "free" Iraq is going to look like..
This is why US soldiers are dying..
Basra is under the UK military control.
Basra is under the UK military control.
Sounds to me like its under Sadr's control..
23 February 2007
Revealed: The true extent of Britain's failure in Basra
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 23 February 2007
The partial British military withdrawal from southern Iraq announced by Tony Blair this week follows political and military failure, and is not because of any improvement in local security, say specialists on Iraq.
In a comment entitled "The British Defeat in Iraq" the pre-eminent American analyst on Iraq, Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, asserts that British forces lost control of the situation in and around Basra by the second half of 2005.
Mr Cordesman says that while the British won some tactical clashes in Basra and Maysan province in 2004, that "did not stop Islamists from taking more local political power and controlling security at the neighbourhood level when British troops were not present". As a result, southern Iraq has, in effect, long been under the control of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) and the so-called "Sadrist" factions.
Mr Blair said for three years Britain had worked to create, train and equip Iraqi Security Forces capable of taking on the security of the country themselves. But Mr Cordesman concludes: "The Iraqi forces that Britain helped create in the area were little more than an extension of Shia Islamist control by other means."
The British control of southern Iraq was precarious from the beginning. Its forces had neither experience of the areas in which they were operating nor reliable local allies. Like the Americans in Baghdad, they failed to stop the mass looting of Basra on the fall of Saddam Hussein and never established law and order.
American and British officials never appeared to take on board the unpopularity of the occupation among Shia as well as Sunni Iraqis. Mr Blair even denies that the occupation was unpopular or a cause of armed resistance. But from the fall of Saddam Hussein, mounting anger against it provided an environment in which bigoted Sunni insurgents and often criminal Shia militias could flourish.
The British forces had a lesson in the dangers of provoking the heavily armed local population when six British military police were killed in Majar al-Kabir on 24 June 2003. During the uprising of Mehdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr in 2004, British units were victorious in several bloody clashes in Amara, the capital of Maysan province.
But in the elections in January 2005, lauded by Mr Blair this week, Sciri became the largest party in Basra followed by Fadhila, followers of the Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, the father of Muqtada al-Sadr. The latter's supporters became the largest party in Maysan.
Mr Cordesman says the British suffered political defeat in the provincial elections of 2005, and lost at the military level in autumn of the same year when increased attacks meant they they could operate only through armoured patrols. Much-lauded military operations, such as "Corrode" in May 2006, did not alter the balance of forces.
Mr Cordesman's gloomy conclusions about British defeat are confirmed by a study called "The Calm before the Storm: The British Experience in Southern Iraq" by Michael Knights and Ed Williams, published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Comparing the original British ambitions with present reality the paper concludes that "instead of a stable, united, law-abiding region with a representative government and police primacy, the deep south is unstable, factionalised, lawless, ruled as a kleptocracy and subject to militia primacy".
Local militias are often not only out of control of the Iraqi government, but of their supposed leaders in Baghdad. The big money earner for local factions is the diversion of oil and oil products, with the profits a continual source of rivalry and a cause of armed clashes. Mr Knights and Mr Williams say that control in the south is with a "well-armed political-criminal Mafiosi [who] have locked both the central government and the people out of power".
Could the British Army have pursued a different strategy? It has been accused of caving in to the militias. But it had little alternative because of the lack of any powerful local support. The theme of President Bush and Mr Blair since the invasion has been that they are training Iraqi forces.
Police and army number 265,000, but the problem is not training or equipment but lack of loyalty to the central government. Vicious though the militias and insurgents usually are, they have a legitimacy in the eyes of Iraqis which the government's official forces lack. Periodic clean-ups like "Corrode" and "Sinbad" do not change this.
There is no doubt the deterioration in the situation is contrary to the rosy picture presented by Downing Street. Messrs Knights and Williams note: "By September 2006, British forces needed to deploy a convoy of Warrior armoured vehicles to ferry police trainers to a single police station and deliver a consignment of toys to a nearby hospital." Some British army positions were being hit by more mortar bombs than anywhere else in Iraq. There was continual friction with local political factions.
Why is the British Army still in south Iraq and what good does it do there? The suspicion grows that Mr Blair did not withdraw them because to do so would be too gross an admission of failure and of soldiers' lives uselessly lost. It would also have left the US embarrassingly bereft of allies. Reidar Visser, an expert on Basra, says after all the publicity about the British "soft" approach in Basra in 2003, local people began to notice that the soldiers were less and less in the streets and the militias were taking over. "This, in turn, created a situation where critics claim the sole remaining objective of the British forces in Iraq is to hold out and maintain a physical presence somewhere within the borders of the governorates in the south formally left under their control, while at the same minimising their own casualties.' Mr Visser said.
In other words, British soldiers have stayed and died in southern Iraq, and will continue to do so, because Mr Blair finds it too embarrassing to end what has become a symbolic presence and withdraw them.
Other premiers' foreign policy misjudgements...
Lord Salisbury The Boer War 1899-1902
The discovery of gold in the two independent Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State led Britain to flex its military muscle in South Africa. There was enthusiastic support for the war back home in Britain, giving Salisbury a landslide in the 1900 general election. However, support began to wane as the war dragged on, and there was outrage at Britain's brutal tactics - although they led to the Boers' surrender in 1902. Despite the apparently successful outcome, it contributed in large part to the catastrophic defeat for the Conservatives in 1906, and signified the beginning of the end for the British Empire.
David Lloyd George The Easter Rising 1916
Prior to the 1916 Easter Rising, there had been little appetite among the Irish for armed struggle. But the execution of the leaders of the uprising, and subsequent atrocities, most notably the 1921 Croke Park massacre, only served to strengthen the resolve of those fighting for independence. What had begun as a small-scale armed rebellion escalated rapidly. Sinn Fein won 70 per cent of Irish seats in the 1918 general election, which was followed by an upsurge in violence, retaliations, a declaration of independence, a war of independence, and finally, in 1922, independence itself.
Anthony Eden The Suez Crisis, 1956
Covertly arranged in collusion with France and Israel, the mission was to regain control of the Suez canal (nationalised by Egypt), and to overthrow the nationalist Nasser regime. While the initial outcome was successful from a military point of view, and with minimal British casualties, the perception that Britain and France were seeking some kind of colonial resurgence did not sit well in Washington. Eisenhower made it clear to Eden that he did not want the operation to go ahead, and was willing to back it up with economic threats. Eden caved in, ending his career and Britain's status as world superpower.
Robert Peel The First Anglo-Afghan War 1839-42
The mission to curb Russian influence by deposing Dost Mohammed and restoring former ruler Shoja Shah, was launched to strengthen British interests. The British took Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul, captured Dost Mohammed and restored the Shoja to the throne. Their job seemingly done, they withdrew, leaving a garrison of troops and two envoys in Kabul. In 1841, however, there was an uprising, and the garrison was forced to surrender. The retreating British troops and civilians were massacred, bolstering Afghanistan's growing reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2296829.ece
keith
02-23-2007, 09:53 AM
That could be the best quick exit strategy. Pacifying the situation will take many lives and troops, but a second and easier option would be to assist the Shias consolidate power and “remove” the other minority from the scene. It wouldn’t take much, just keep the militias lying low and hammer the hell out of the Sunnis groups. Perform sweeps of the neighborhood and remove all arms from all Sunni homes. Then call mission complete and turn the enterprise over to the Iraqi government, who can effectively kick out the media (no western journalist would stay w/o coalition support). Then the Shia can clean up the neighborhood and exert their rule over 2/3 of the country, with a possible deal for the Kurds.
The only problem is the Iranian Shia connection. We have pushed Sadr into Iran’s arms, so the next goal would be to try and split the Shia alliance by playing up the Persian and Arabic split, which already causes the Persians problems within their borders.
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