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POPSAl Qaeda Takes Credit for Last Week's Baghdad Bombings Since the attack, Maliki has ordered the concrete blast walls to be put back up around sensitive sites, and the military has arrested 11 officers for negligence or aiding in the attack. The Iraqi government has accused both al Qaeda in Iraq and former Ba'athists operating from Syria of conducting the attack. On Aug. 23, state-run television aired the confession of a senior member of the Ba'ath party who is accused of masterminding the attacks. The suspect claimed he was a former policeman in Miqdadiyah in eastern Diyala province, a region that has served as a bastion for al Qaeda in Iraq. He said the attackers paid $10,000 in bribes to ensure that their trucks would pass through checkpoints into Baghdad. The attack was ordered by a senior Ba'ath official based in Syria. Today, the Iraqi government asked Syria to turn over senior Ba'athists Sattam Farhan and Mohammad Younis al Ahmed for their involvement in last week's bombings.
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POPSRemains Identified as Navy Captain Michael Scott Speicher
Acting on information provided by an Iraqi citizen in early July, US Marines stationed in Al Anbar Province went to a location in the desert which was believed to be the crash site of Captain Speicher’s jet. The Iraqi citizen stated he knew of two Iraqi citizens who recalled an American jet impacting the desert and the remains of the pilot being buried in the desert. One of these Iraqi citizens stated that they were present when Captain Speicher was found dead at the crash site by Bedouins and his remains buried. The Iraqi citizens led US Marines to the site who searched the area. Remains were recovered over several days during the past week and flown to Dover Air Force Base for scientific identification by the AFIP’s Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner. The recovered remains include bones and multiple skeletal fragments. Positive identification was made by comparing Captain Speicher’s dental records with the jawbone recovered at the site.
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POPS IRAN ON FIRE Michael Totten (Continuously updated) Andrew Sullivan writes: "The last time a news event gave me chills like this was the Soviet coup. It ended the regime." Yes, it did. You know what this reminds me of? The convulsion that shook Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, Iraq. Hundreds of insurrection photos are uploaded right here on Twitter. Protests in Tehran, London, Sydney . . . . http://www.flickr.com/photos/mousavi1388/
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POPSAmerican Media’s Double Standard Right now -- as the American press corps celebrates itself for demanding Saberi's release in Iran -- the U.S. continues to imprison Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer, even though an Iraqi court last December found that there was no evidence to justify his detention and ordered him released. One finds only a tiny fraction of news coverage in the U.S. regarding the treatment of al-Haj, Hussein, Jassam and these other imprisoned journalists as has been devoted to Saberi. Arrogant America decries any oppressive/repressive action taken against an American as a blow against freedom and human rights and then commits the same act against a non-American under the cover of protecting America. The irony of this situation is overpowering. How can we claim to care about human rights only if it affects us? Unless we are egocentric. How can we object to infringements of press freedom only when done to Americans? Unless we are arrogant.
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POPSCombat Operations in Fallujah by Dahr Jamail As the calendar turned to May, April was the deadliest month since September for US troops, with at least 18 dead, doubling the previous month's total. April also found the most troops killed in combat in a month so far this year. April was also the deadliest month for Iraqis in over a year.
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POPSQuestions I'd like 'Teabaggers to answer
clipped from Matt Taibbi's blog-he also went on to state that a number of people wrote and complained that the only reason he wasn't seeing eye to eye with them is that he has no children and therefore doesn't care about debt burden in the future-he went on to state that the only reason that children are in the debate at all is because about 95% of the people protesting the tax outrage will actually be getting a tax break-and til the question of why future government debt burdens didn't bother them during the last 8 years of massive deficit spending- the whole "O the children!" b.s. needs to be put on the back shelf-or why? is it ok to spend billions handing out soccer balls in the Anbar province-but a waste when we build bridges in Peoria and Tulsa-Matt wants to know-and i would like an answer to this as welland while most 'teabaggers are hypocrites-it doesn't necessarily make them wrong to question Obamas budget-just loose the victims of fascism and tyranny-or threats to secede
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POPS Miracle Cure? I'm phobically allergic to the conservative Republican types the military is rife with, but I've only been in country four months and already I hate liberals. There's plenty of ugliness to report in Iraq (as there are thousands of stories of hope and headway)--and the U.S. military certainly isn't beyond reproach. Nobody's telling you to report on one side or the other. But manipulating the truth because of your own personal biases is wretched and works in the face of progress. The other end of the political spectrum disregards you, Dahr, and now I know why. I thought it was because you're a liar--but you aren't. You don't have enough backbone to be a liar. You're a craven obfuscationist, intent on promoting your agenda at the cost of a menagerie of much braver men and women. ... s.d. liddick For more observations from Iraq, go to sdliddick1.shutterfly.com/ http://sdliddick1.shutterfly.com/
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POPSOne Surge Does Not Fit All producing the forces necessary to help hold difficult neighborhoods against the enemy. By 2007, the surge, for most Iraqis, could have an Iraqi face. And the political scene in Iraq had shifted. Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric, declared a cease-fire in February 2007. The best indication that timing is everything may be that there had been earlier surges without the same effect as the 2007 surge. In 2005, troop levels in Iraq were increased to numbers nearly equal to the 2007 surge — twice. But the effects were not as durable because large segments of the Sunni population were still providing sanctuary to insurgents, and Iraq’s security forces were not sufficiently capable or large enough. During my last weeks in office, I recommended to President Bush that he consider Gen. David Petraeus as commander of coalition forces in Iraq, as General Casey’s tour was coming to an end.
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POPSAnbar is Iraq's once again In a day when more people seem to be concerned with the pregnancy of Bristol Palin than with hurricane Gustav, this story has barely made a blip. I suspect that with much of our media it wouldn't have seemed important.
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POPSGeneral: Timeline is most secure Iraq strategy "Brigadier Gen. Sean McFarland…credited the ‘growing concern that the U.S. would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al-Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias …’ as the main reason for the turn around in Al Anbar"
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POPSSometimes we Forget I think sometimes we forget what's going on in the world, or we try not to think about it...maybe we would appreciate our own lives and the people who are in them more if we remember the sacrifices of others...
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POPSDon't Look Now--but the Surge is About to Backfire as Iraq poised to Explode
The first is the brewing crisis over Kirkuk, where the pushy Kurds are demanding control and Iraq’s Arabs are resisting. The second is in the west, and Anbar, where the US-backed Sons of Iraq sahwa (”Awakening”) movement is moving to take power against the Iraqi Islamic Party, a fundamentalist Sunni bloc. And third is the restive Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is chafing at gains made by its Iranian-backed rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) The final crisis-to-be is the Sadr vs. Badr one. The Times today suggests that Sadr is weakening: The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq. Don’t believe it. Sadr’s rivals, ISCI, don’t have anything like the popular base that Sadr has. And underneath Sadr is a volatile mix of neighborhood, local and regional militias, mosques, and econom
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POPSRare Images of the War The US military has done an excellent job of censoring images like these. Perhaps if they hadn't been so skilled at denying free speech, support for the war in Iraq would have declined sooner rather than later. By the way, you are allowed to react to these images with your emotions. That's what makes you fully human. Don't let anyone tell you that you should view them solely from the cold aspect of reason. Such people are only censors of a different sort. They would censor your feelings.
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POPSBusting the Surge Myth Cont.... The Shiitization of Baghdad was thus a significant cause of falling casualty rates. But it is another war waiting to happen, when the Sunnis come back to find Shiite militiamen in their living rooms.
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POPSThe Democrats' Fairy Tale And the improvements in Anbar could never have been sustained without aggressive American military efforts — efforts that were more effective in 2007 than they had been in 2006, due in part to the addition of the surge forces. Last year’s success, in Anbar and elsewhere, was made possible by confidence among Iraqis that U.S. troops would stay and help protect them, that the U.S. would not abandon them to their enemies. Because the U.S. sent more troops instead of withdrawing — because, in other words, President Bush won his battles in 2007 with the Democratic Congress — we have been able to turn around the situation in Iraq. And now Iraq’s Parliament has passed a de-Baathification law — one of the so-called benchmarks Congress established for political reconciliation. For much of 2007, Democrats were able to deprecate the military progress and political reconciliation taking place on the ground by harping on the failure of the Iraqi government to pass the benchmark legislation
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