Last time, it was 82...
103 Iraqi Parliamentarians Demand Withdrawal of US Troops
By Juan Cole
Gilber Achcar kindly shares his translation of an al-Hayat article

[More than] 103 MPs Demand a Timetable for the Withdrawal of Foreign Troops

Baghdad – Abdel-Wahed Tohmeh – Al-Hayat

103 members of the National Assembly (the Parliament) have demanded the adoption of a resolution cancelling the request made by the Government to the UN Security Council to extend the presence of multinational forces, and urging the Government to put “a clear plan for army building and a timetable for the withdrawal of occupation troops” from Iraq.

Falah Hassan Shneishel MP (of the "Independent National Bloc") [the INB is the parliamentary bloc of Muqtada al-Sadr's Current, which plays a prominent role in the organization of the political fight against the occupation] explained that the number of MPs demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of occupation troops has exceeded 103 after more than 20 additional MPs have adopted the statement issued two weeks ago in this regard.

Shneishel threatened to call for popular demonstrations in case “the authorities were not serious about the implementation of the demands of the Iraqis for an end to occupation.”



11 Sth. Iraqi Oil Fields up for tender

Eleven oil fields in southern Iraq, capable of boosting the country's production to three million barrels a day will soon be tendered to international investors, the Iraqi oil ministry announced Friday. "The ministry needs legislation which will allow it to fix international work criteria with companies that are involved in petroleum investments," said the ministry's spokesman, Asim Jihad.

"Iraq needs capital investments to develop its petroleum industry, he said, adding that the government had estimated that some 25 billion dollars in investments were required to boost oil production to 5-6 million barrels a day.

Jihad also said that the government has no intention to privatise the oil sector, but would remain under state control. "We will seek foreign investments, that will allow us to develop our industry but without paving the way for foreign monopolies to take over," he said.

Iraq currently produces 2.2 million barrels a day - with only 1.5 million of these for export - a situation determined by the suspension of operations in the country's southern areas after sabotage attacks.

© Adnki.com



Number Of Iraq Casualties Is Double Official Figures
By Jeœs De Vila, El Diario
Translated from Spanish by Carolina Gonzalez

Official US. government reports on soldiers under US command killed in Iraq are so fragmented that they account for less than half of the total number, according to information uncovered as part of an inquiry by the Government of Puerto Rico regarding the total number of Puerto Rican war casualties.

This analysis was confirmed by El Diario/La Prensa's review of multiple documents, including official reports issued by the US Department of Defense, the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior and more than 230 battlefront reports, which reveal that more than 4,076 troops under US command have been killed in 799 days of battle.

This information contrasts markedly with the limited information on casualties generally issued by US military authorities, which focus only on US uniformed troops. These total 1,649.

Military affairs expert José Rodriguez Beruff from the University of Puerto Rico said that the figures showing more than 4,000 dead indicate that, far from winning the war in Iraq, "what is happening is that the troops are being worn down." He said that traditional theorists calculate that for an armed invading force to win a guerrilla war, its casualties should be one to ten of its enemy's. In this case, that would require 40,000 casualties among the insurgents.

In addition, Rodriguez Reduff warned that the reports should be reviewed on an ongoing basis, as he suspects that the number of casualties is even higher.

Calculations are even more difficult when it comes to the wounded, which US authorities number at more than 12,600, and medical discharges -- those maimed or suffering from physical and mental injuries -- about whom only partial reports can be obtained. In this category, large discrepancies in counts have been publicized by news outlets such as the national German Press Agency (DPA), which ran a story reporting on US Army documents putting the number of US soldiers with war-related mental ailments at 100,000.

That issue is more controversial. The Argentine press agency Argenpress reported about 17,000 unreported cases of war-related mental illness. But no matter the scenario, the numbers of wounded and medical discharges are larger than those officially announced, as is the case with casualties.

The figures came to light in the course of an ongoing investigation that El Diario/La Prensa is making on the number of Puerto Rican and Hispanic casualties in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That inquiry prompted Congressman JosŽ Serrano (D-NY) and An’bal Acevedo Vila, then Resident Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, to request a full casualty report, which yielded a partial list with 200 Puerto Rican losses, including casualties, wounded and medical discharges.

After his election as Governor, Acevedo Vila renewed his request to the Department of Defense for a total and specific accounting, but as of press time he had yet to receive an answer.

According to documents reviewed by this paper, in addition to the 1,649 fatalities among US uniformed troops, there were 88 from Great Britain, 92 from other coalition member countries, 238 reported by private contractors, and at least 2,000 from members of the Iraqi Army. The biggest defect in published counts is the missing casualties among Iraqi troops under command of the occupying forces.

© El Diario


• Data Shows Faster-Rising Death Toll Among Iraqi Civilians


Stop Shooting Journalists
by Aaron Glantz

It’s time the U.S. military stopped shooting journalists.

In the last three weeks, the American soldiers have killed at least four journalists in Iraq – each while the reporter was driving his car.

Two of the cases are especially telling.

There is the case of Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi correspondent for Knight-Ridder newspapers. He was driving alone in his own West Baghdad neighborhood when an American sniper’s bullet pierced his windshield and struck him in the head as he approached a U.S. military patrol.

Four days later, a news producer for Iraq’s independent (that is not controlled by the occupation) TV-station, al-Sharqiyah, was shot to death as he drove to his in-laws home in Southern Baghdad. The Associated Press reports U.S. soldiers fired on his car fifteen times when he failed to pull over for an American convoy.

Those killings, plus the shooting death of a Baghdad TV editor and a stringer for a Western news agency bring the total number of journalists killed by U.S. forces in Iraq to 17 according to the International Federation of Journalists.

So much for freedom of speech and democracy.

Unembedded journalists in Iraq are also frequently arrested by the U.S. military. On June 17th, the director of the daily newspaper al-Sabah (which is funded by U.S. tax-payers) was detained by American soldiers during one of the military’s regular security sweeps. A week later, the U.S. troops detained an Associated Press Television News cameraman in Fallujah. Both have since been released, but the situation in Iraq is hardly free. The most important Arab media outlet, al-Jazeera television, remains banned from Iraq.

Hearing these stories I think about to my own time as an unembedded journalist in Iraq. In six months reporting from the ground, I never once had a gun pointed at me by an “insurgent,” but on two occasions I felt personally threatened by an American soldier’s machine gun.

The first incident occurred at the beginning of the occupation. I had just arrived in Baghdad, in a beat up orange and white checkered taxi and was pulling up to a meeting at the al-Fanar hotel across the street from the mammoth Palestine Hotel, where many military contractors were staying. The soldier, who had to be younger than 20, was under orders to block all Iraqis from entering the hotel compound. When I got out of the car to explain that I was an American journalist, my brown hair and mustache giving me the appearance of a native, he cocked his gun before I spoke. Fortunately, my traveling companion was a blond. When the soldier saw my friend, disaster was averted. A year later, when insurgents blew up the Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad, I faced death again. Rushing over to cover the explosion, I grabbed by camera and tape recorder. But when I lifted my camera to photograph an American soldier on top of a tank, he cocked his gun and screamed, “No photos! No journalists!”

What are we to make of all these stories? At the very least, the Pentagon owes journalists an explanation because to date no American soldier has been punished for killing or arresting a reporter.

And the obvious: U.S. soldiers need to stop shooting journalists.

© Aaron Glantz


• 10 Sunnis Suffocate in Iraqi Police Custody

• Bush's POW-MIA Chief Accused of Abuse


Iraqi civilian casualties
By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi humanitarian organization is reporting that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began in March 2003.

Mafkarat al-Islam reported that chairman of the 'Iraqiyun humanitarian organization in Baghdad, Dr. Hatim al-'Alwani, said that the toll includes everyone who has been killed since that time, adding that 55 percent of those killed have been women and children aged 12 and under.

'Iraqiyun obtained data from relatives and families of the deceased, as well as from Iraqi hospitals in all the country's provinces. The 128,000 figure only includes those whose relatives have been informed of their deaths and does not include those were abducted, assassinated or simply disappeared.

The number includes those who died during the U.S. assaults on al-Fallujah and al-Qa'im. 'Iraqiyun's figures conflict with the Iraqi Body Count public database compiled by Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. According to the Graduate Institute of International Studies' database, 39,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of combat or armed violence since March 2003. No official estimates of Iraqi casualties from the war have been issued by the Pentagon, which insists that it does not do "body counts." The Washington Post on July 12 reported that U.S. military deaths in Iraq now total 1,758.

© UPI


• 39,000 Iraqis killed in fighting, new study finds

Op-ed:
Bush said he 'preciates folks dyin' for the cause
Are The Good Times Really Over For Good?
By Sheila Samples

Are we rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the flag or the liberty bell...
Is the best of the free life behind us now...
Are the good times really over for good?
~Merle Haggard

"For thou are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not sojourn with thee. The boastful may not stand before thy eyes; thou hatest all evildoers. Thou destroyest those who speak lies; the Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men." ~
~ David, Psalms 5:4

On Memorial Day, George W. Bush, the world's most bloodthirsty and deceitful man strutted to the podium at our National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, to once again regurgitate his woefully shallow and inappropriate stump speech -- "Across the globe (sly smile), our military is standing directly between our people and the worst dangers in the world (pause, smirk)...the war on terror has brought great costs (no-nonsense head bob)...two terror regimes are gone forever (narrowed eyes darting nervously back and forth across the crowd), freedom is on the march (leaning forward earnestly), and America is more secure."

Unfazed by plummeting poll numbers at home or spiraling fatality numbers abroad, Bush remarked with shudderingly bad taste that all headstones look alike -- a Texan's crude way of saying, "You seen one skull orchard, you seen 'em all," and announced with devilish arrogance that his mission remains unchanged -- he has the terrorists on the run and he isn't going to stop until he has spread God's gifts of freedom and democracy and liberty and neat stuff like that throughout the world. His will will never be broken. His mission is God's mission; together, he and God will rid the world of evil. On behalf of God, Bush said he 'preciates folks dyin' for the cause. Heck, he even honors 'em.

They applauded him. It was astonishing. They applauded, when they should have been wailing in anguish while collapsing under an unbearable sense of national loss. But no. Grinning like cartoon caricatures, they applauded an in-your-face war criminal -- a great deceiver who is openly intent on destroying everything that is, or ever was, good in their lives. Bush's mission will be over when the good times are over; when they're over for good -- when all that remains is broken. Broken families. Broken bodies. Broken societies. Broken cultures. Broken hearts. Broken world.

Where are the Christians? Where is the revulsion at Bush roaming freely on hallowed ground while belching out lies and deceit that have caused the slaughter of more than 100,000 Iraqi's, 1,942 coalition troops -- 1,752 of them American -- more than American 18,000 wounded or maimed; 10,000 striken with lifelong disease? (No figures are available for the number of Iraqi wounded or maimed ) Where is the raw horror that Christians should feel for a charlaton who boasts that he is on a mission from God -- a mission to rule over a world of hate and lies and fear and death and disease?

You'd think the souls of true Christians would surely shrivel when a man who claims Jesus Christ as his "philosopher" murders hundreds of thousands of innocents, abuses and tortures hundreds, maybe even thousands, more and then raises blood-stained fists -- shakes them in the face of the Almighty, and shouts, "Thou Fool!" You'd think, as a minimum, Christians would remember who in the Bible is known as the "Great Deceiver." You'd think. But alas...

Actually, people who claim to speak to, as well as for, God are everywhere. Most are Republicans, members of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement whose lust for power and obsession with Biblical control extends beyond the wildest fantasies of the most radical evangelical. With flags in one hand and Bibles in the other, they are militant, intolerant, boastful -- eaten up with messianic hubris. They proudly call themselves "people of faith," and are brazenly committed to religion, but their religion is politics and vice versa. They're the God people -- George Bush's voting base. Ironically, followers of Jesus are awakening to find themselves in the midst of religious plenty, yet are literally dying of thirst, much like the lone sailor in Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" who was surrounded by water but dared not drink. They are discovering it is dangerous for Christian love to be surrounded by religious hate.

I wonder if Americans know just how close to the abyss we really are. I hate to sound yet another terror warning, but if we were in theological Vietnam, we'd be in deep, deep spiritual kimche. Bush is the perfect pawn for the Reconstructionists. He owes them, big time, and he's paying them back at dizzying and destructive speed. Never has a more bloodthirsty and vengeful bully so devoid of reason and sanity been given universal free rein to act out his incorrigible delusions. Bush believes -- has been led to believe -- that he has been commissioned by God to slay all those whom he fantasizes might someday oppose him -- and to justify the slaughter by brandishing the double-edged sword of freedom and liberty.

As early as 1994, Frederick Clarkson, author of "Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Democracy and Theocracy in the United States," warned Americans about the fundie-fascist danger in a critical, indepth article on Christian Reconstructionists. Clarkson said, "...the movement is Very Disturbing in it's ideology. And if it ever came to political power, it would be disasterous for this civilization. Freedom under a Christian Reconstructionist government would be similar to that of Stalan (sic) or Hitler."

If they need proof, Bush's "freedom-loving Americans" would do well to listen to the mad ravings of Gary North, one of the more frightening Reconstructionist shepherds, who is determined to place people of faith in every political office, in every schoolroom, every church, and in every societal nook and cranny in order to "gain exclusive control over the American franchise." North, from Tyler, Texas, says, "Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church's public marks of the covenant -- baptism and holy communion -- must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel."

It is not by chance that Reconstructionists are Republicans or that their crusade against Democrats and all things liberal mirrors that of Bush's jihad against the Muslim world. Clarkson cites Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton, who very succinctly describes the movement's mission -- "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law."

Nobody has worked harder nor longer to bring this madness to fruition than Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson. For him, the "rule of God's law" does not extend to Liberals and there's no place for gays to hide in a Robertson world. He believes that homosexuals have nothing better to do than to "come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers."

And, if you're a Democrat, chances are if Robertson and the Reconstructionists have their way, you're going to get your ass kicked. "The strategy against the American Radical Left should be the same as General Douglas MacArthur employed against the Japanese in the Pacific," Robertson said. "...Bypass their strongholds, then surround them, isolate them, bombard them, then blast the individuals out of their power bunkers with hand-to-hand combat..."

Sound like a plan?

Well, listen up, because it gets better. Christian Reconstructionists soar into a divine frenzy at the mere thought of capital punishment. Those of us who do not see things their way will very quickly turn into collateral damage. Clarkson says Reconstructionists "call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, "sodomy or homosexuality," incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, "unchastity before marriage."

Like Bush, who stolidly refuses to accept blame for his actions, the Reconstructionists believe that both men and nations must obey God's laws or God must invoke the death penalty against them. According to North, women who have abortions should be publicly executed, "along with those who advised them to abort their children." But, not to worry. Theocracies, according to theologian Rev. Ray Sutton, are "happy" places to which people flock because "capital punishment is one of the best evangelistic tools of a society."

Clarkson said the Biblically approved methods of execution include burning at the stake, stoning, hanging, and "the sword." So, if you slap your mama or do the "wild thaing" before the wedding, a "person of faith" will be happy to behead you... But North says not to worry. He prefers stoning because, among other things, stones are cheap, plentiful, and convenient. Punishments for non-capital crimes generally involve whipping, restitution in the form of indentured servitude, or slavery. Prisons would likely be only temporary holding tanks, prior to imposition of the actual sentence.

In April, Rev. Jim Wallis of "Sojourners" magazine addresed this problem at a Lewisville rally. Wallis said, "Those on the Religious Right are declaring a religious war to give their version of faith religious supremacy in America. And some members of the Republican Party seem ready almost to declare a Christian theocracy in America. It is time," Wallis said firmly, "to take back both our faith and our Constitution."

I agree, but how do we do this? Many of us are weary of feeling like we're the the last person standing -- sloshing around in a Stepford world of hate and fear and blood -- where every man, woman and child we meet has "9-11" tattooed on their foreheads, and they don't even know it.

What can we tell them that is more horrible than what Christians have already accepted without question -- lies, treason, deceit, abuse and torture, body parts of innocents littering the landscape, the slaughter of their own children, and freedom ebbing away? If we tell them what the Great Deceiver and his Christian Reconstructionist God have in store for them, will they continue to stare at us vacantly while waving their flags? Or, when they see that our foreheads do not proclaim the patriotic "9-11," will they skitter fearfully into the shadows?

We have a choice. We can either take our places in line at the tattoo parlor or we can grab a taser in each hand and start walking cross-country, kicking doors down and jolting folks awake. It may already be too late, but before this vast herd of comatose sheep goes plodding blindly over the edge of the cliff; before they pull the rest of us into the morass with them, we have earned the right to see one last collective shock of recognition -- a final terrified realization that they know the good times are over -- really over for good.

And they will know, at long last, it didn't have to be this way.

Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net

© Sheila Samples

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