Kagan Asserts There Is No Ethnic Cleansing In Iraq

You just can't ever take a break from watching these dishonest liars:

JIM LEHRER: So, Mr. Kagan, what Mr. Rosen is saying, essentially that both sides are laying low, the Sunnis for their reasons, the Shias for their reasons, that this is not a permanent thing.

FREDERICK KAGAN: Well, there's a magnificent myth out there that Mr. Rosen just reiterated for us that there are no mixed areas in Iraq anymore and that the cleansing is completed.

And it's astonishing to me that someone who's been in Baghdad for as long and as much as Mr. Rosen has been could say something like that. There are still Shia areas in western Baghdad, not only in Kadamiyah, around the Kadamiyah shrine, in which there will always be Shia, but also in west Rashid.

JIM LEHRER: What does that mean?

FREDERICK KAGAN: It means that you still have -- in neighborhoods that are predominantly Sunni, on the west side of the river, which is historically the Sunni side of the river, you still have Shia enclaves that are within those neighborhoods.

Now, they're more consolidated than they had been before, certainly. At a low level, you certainly have seen that kind of consolidation, but there is no natural dividing line between Sunni and Shia in Baghdad, let alone around Baghdad, let alone in Diyala.

Hmmm. Should I say it in words or with pictures? It kinda doesn't matter where you live in Iraq when there's ethnic cleansing involved. Millions have been displaced. But if you want to advance the notion that there has been no ethnic cleansing, the first thing you do is ignore the obvious--there are walls everywhere:



The next thing you do is hope that no one finds things like this article in Stars & Stripes, when the policy was enacted:

“We have been going into neighborhoods and sealing off certain exit and entrance points during initial sweeps,” Caldwell said. “Those were temporary measures.”

Caldwell, however, said that U.S. and Iraqi forces would continue to erect permanent barriers around city marketplaces. So far, he said, coalition forces had erected more than 3,000 individual sections of concrete blast walls throughout the city since the plan went into effect two months ago. These barriers included both Jersey barriers — short concrete dividers commonly seen on roadways in the United States — and larger 20-foot blast walls that commonly surround bases and living areas.

According to Wednesday’s news release from Multi-National Corps-Iraq, “the wall [in Adhamiyah] is one of the centerpieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence. Planners hope the creation of the wall will help restore law and order by providing a way to screen people entering and exiting the neighborhood — allowing residents and people with legitimate business in, while keeping death squads and militia groups out.”

A similar effort by U.S. troops in south Baghdad was reported earlier this month by the Wall Street Journal.

“That community [in Adhamiyah] will be completely gated and protected,” Lt. Col. Thomas Rogers, 407th Brigade Support Battalion, was quoted as saying in the release. “It’s really for the security of all the people of Adhamiyah, not just one side or the other.”

Adhamiyah is the Sunni enclave on the eastern side of the river, so that explains why Kagan didn't mention it. Here's a map to explain it all:



Yeah, no wonder Kagan doesn't want to talk about the completely segregated, Sunni-populated, walled-off area of Baghdad that completely refutes his assertion. You can't stop watching these slimy bastards try to slide off the hook for this war and you can't stop going through their public statements, looking for every lie and every vain attempt at rehabilitating their tattered and destroyed reputations.

In Iraq, hundreds of thousands are without water as the electric grid teeters on the brink of collapse

When a delusional halfwit like Pollack or O'Hanlon, or someone idiotic enough
to tout those fools as credible, insists it's looking up in Iraq,
show them this picture of Iraqi's gathered for Friday prayers in West Baghdad.

As temperatures in Baghdad soared to 120º Fahrenheit, the electric grid wheezed and strained and sputtered, leaving western Baghdad without water. It simply can’t deliver the electricity to operate water purification plants and pumping stations.

The electric grid is on the brink of collapse, unable to meet rising demand. Compounding the problems, provinces are taking local generating stations off the national grid. Coalition bombing runs and insurgent attacks have destroyed the infrastructure of the grid, while fuel shortages inhibit electricity production. Of 17 high-tension lines running into Baghdad, only two were operational at the time the AP filed their story.

Power supplies in Baghdad have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few hours a day, if that. The water supply in the capital has also been severely curtailed by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and filtration stations.

Karbala province south of Baghdad has been without power for three days, causing water mains to go dry in the provincial capital, the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

"We no longer need television documentaries about the Stone Age. We are actually living in it. We are in constant danger because of the filthy water and rotten food we are having," said Hazim Obeid, who sells clothing at a stall in the Karbala market.

Electricity shortages are a perennial problem in Iraq, even though it sits atop one of the world's largest crude oil reserves. The national power grid became decrepit under Saddam Hussein because his regime was under U.N. sanctions after the Gulf War and had trouble buying spare parts or equipment to upgrade the system.

The power problems are only adding to the misery of Iraqis, already suffering from the effects of more than four years of war and sectarian violence. Outages make life almost unbearable in the summer months, when average daily temperatures reach between 110 and 120 degrees.

Water is a necessity of life. In fact, it makes more sense to fight wars over water than it does over oil…(and even as I write that I get a chill up my spine, knowing that that day is coming, possibly in my lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of my grandchildren.)

None-the-less, it activates my irony meter that this war over oil – and an arrogant determination to keep squandering a precious and dwindling resource foolishly – has stolen that necessity of life away from hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

Some free advice to Lindsey Graham, et al - saying it doesn't make it so

Three Blind Lice

There seems to be a tremendous disconnect between the die-hard war supporters and reality.

On the one hand, you have Lindsey Graham drinking deep from the Raspberry Red and stepping up to the mike to declare that things in Iraq are definitely looking up. “The military part of the surge is working beyond my expectations,” Graham said. “We literally have the enemy on the run. The Sunni part of Iraq has really rejected al-Qaida all over the country. We’re getting more information about al-Qaida operations than we’ve ever received.”

It’s hard to tell, the way objectives shift and goalposts get moved, but I seem to recall that the purpose of the escalation was to secure Baghdad, and on that point the numbers do not lie. Violence in Baghdad is not appreciably down. In fact, 2% is a mere blip, and certainly not statistically significant. Between 20 June and 5 July, 472 civilians died in attacks in Baghdad. This represents a whopping 2 percent drop in civilian casualties from the previous 16-day period, according to a tally collected by the Associated Press from daily reports by Iraqi security and hospital officials.”

Just a brief perusal of the major news outlets would indicate that Graham is either delusional at best, or flat-out lying at worst. I’m going with the lying until proof is submitted to the contrary.

From Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Car bombs and mortar attacks killed 50 people in Iraq, police and local officials said on Saturday, while the U.S. military said six of its soldiers had been killed in the past two days.

One British soldier was also killed in the south.

The fresh violence follows a lull in Iraq, where tens of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops are on the offensive against insurgents in a bid to halt a slide into sectarian civil war.

And the Washington Post:

BAGHDAD, July 7 -- Suicide bombings across Iraq killed nearly 150 and injured scores, including a massive truck assault in a northern Shiite village that ripped through a crowded market, officials said Saturday.

The violence came as the U.S. military on Saturday reported the deaths of eight American soldiers over the past two days, all killed in combat or by roadside bombs in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar. A British soldier was reported killed in fighting in southern Iraq.

The worst carnage unfolded in the Shiite Turkoman village of Amarly, 50 miles south of Kirkuk, when a suicide bomber rammed a truck laden with explosives into the central market, which is near a police station, officials said. The attack killed at least 115 people and wounded at least 210, according to district and hospital officials, adding that they expected the death toll to rise.

And finally, from the New York Times:

BAGHDAD, July 7 — Suicide bombers killed at least 122 people in two attacks north of Baghdad, officials said Saturday, and the strikes raised questions about whether insurgents who had fled intense military operations in Baghdad and Diyala are turning to more vulnerable targets nearby.

In the worst blast, a truck loaded with explosives demolished dozens of fragile clay-built houses and shops on Saturday in Amerli, a village of poor Shiite Turkmen about 15 miles south of Tuz Khurmato. The Iraqi police said the blast killed 1o5 people and wounded 210 more.

The American military also reported Saturday the deaths of nine soldiers and marines on Thursday and Friday, eight of them during combat or from roadside bomb attacks.

Witnesses in Amerli described a horrific scene of people running while on fire, and others shrieking for rescuers to pull them free from beneath scores of buildings that were turned into rubble by the blast.

Perhaps Lindsey will do us all a favor and next time he visits Iraq and conduct one of his patented pep-rallies outside the Green Zone, in the middle of Baghdad – without two Apache gunships, three Blackhawks, an entire company of U.S. soldiers surrounding him – and enough body armor to pass himself off as a body double for RoboCop.

If he did that, I might, for a couple of minutes, stop bitching about the stupidity of these dog-and-pony-shows when potentates visit the “troops in the field” to “get the real story” – oh please! You can take my first-hand account on this – any “troop in the field” who might be inclined to say something the potentates don’t want to hear, doesn’t get anywhere near the potentates. These trips are a waste of taxpayer money, and for what just one of these junkets costs, at least ten teachers could be trained for placement in inner city schools, and a couple of doctors for inner-city hospitals, too.

And I can tell you something else first-hand…when the word comes down from on high that a dignitary is coming, the cursing is voluble and eye-rolling is blatant...even from the commanders making the announcement, in a lot of cases. I can only imagine the reaction of troops in a war zone.

Boom Town II

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At least 157 people were killed in Baghdad on Wednesday in a series of devastating bomb blasts that rocked the city. Baghdad is back to pre-Splurge levels. The adaptation seems wholly complete and the sectarian violence is back on pace.

• In the most deadly attack, a parked car-bomb exploded in the Shadriya market in a predominantly Shia neighborhood. That blast killed at least 112 people and seriously injured 115 more.

• About an hour before the Shadriya blast, a suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden vehicle at a police checkpoint at an entrance point to Sadr City, the largest Shia neighborhood in Baghdad. That explosion killed 30 and wounded 45 more. At least eight vehicles (and presumably their human occupants) were incinerated as they sat in the gridlock waiting to clear the checkpoint.

• A car parked near the Abdul Majid hospital in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah. Eleven were killed and thirteen were wounded in that blast that also damaged the health care facility and nearby infrastructure.

• A minibus blew up in the northwestern Risafi area killed four and wounded six.

Elsewhere in Baghdad on Wednesday, four policemen were killed when their patrol was ambushed south of the city center and six pedestrians were wounded in the crossfire. In another instance of innocents gunned down in the crossfire, twp brothers were killed and a policeman wounded when a gun battle erupted in Baqouba.

Let's have the conversation about getting the hell out of there. What say you?

Baghdad Bridges, Falling Down

A second bridge has been brought down in Baghdad. It is the second time in two days a suicide bomber has brought down a major bridge.

Baghdad is a city divided by a big river. Bridges have been a vital part of the life of that city for as long as we have had written history. The two halves of the city are joined by twelve ten bridges across the Tigris.

The impact of one bridge destroyed was palpable. Two is a devastating compromise. Traffic was already a nightmare, and the city was already a frustrating maze to navigate. traffic jams will increase - and a lot of sitting ducks will be trapped in gridlock for hours every day.

This action represents a new phase of warfare. It smacks of strategic objectives and planning. It strikes at the economic heart of the city. (I'm sure somebody will be along to tell me how this is really a good thing.)

And since Larry Johnson already explained it yesterday, so I'm linking to him and going to bed.

Was this a depressing fucking week, or what?

McCain takes a stroll outside the Green Zone

Desperate to shed the "doddering old fool" label that is sticking to him like a second skin, John McCain today took a stroll in Baghdad.

Wasn't quite unaccompanied tho' - he was in a flak-jacket, surrounded by a hundred heavily armed American troops and just for good measure, three Blackhawks and two Apache gunships were buzzing overhead.

About a mile away, six Americans were killed.

I wonder if some of them died because they were undermanned as a result of McCain's security detail?

Violence Returns to Baghdad

After initially abating in the face of increased American troop presence, the bloodletting resumed in Baghdad on Thursday. Twenty-five bodies were found in the streets, in an indication that militia / death squad activity was ticking back upwards. A particularly bloody day in Baghdad ended with a coordinated bombing attack in a crowded Shi’ite marketplace.

Another Shi’ite neighborhood was the target of bombings in the city of Khalis in the explosive Diyala province.

In both instances, attacks were coordinated to inflict maximum civilian casualties. In the Baghdad marketplace, the bombers positioned themselves at either end of a maze of shopping stalls and blew them selves up. Over a hundred were wounded, and hospital officials estimated, based on a crude tally of body parts, that eighty perished.

The attack in Khalis followed the same attack strategy. Fifty-two were killed and eighty more were wounded. The local health center was quickly overwhelmed and ran out of basic supplies.

In both attacks, the bombers struck around 6:00 p.m. on Thursday evening, in crowded marketplaces, as Muslim families hurried to purchase provisions before Friday, the Muslim holy day.

In Tal Afar, after three days of particularly vicious sectarian fighting, the city remained under curfew, patrolled by American forces to keep the sides separated long enough for the currently enflamed passions to cool.

The initial success of the troop build-up was short lived, and we are right back where we started, but now more heavily invested. It is time to accept reality. All the wishful thinking in the world is not going to salvage a hash-mark in the “Win” column for the United States in Iraq’s civil war, and to even pretend its possible is folly pure and simple.

Is this what "Success" looks like?

Revenge for the suicide bombings in Tal Afar two days ago have left scores of Sunni’s dead, after a suicide truck bomber targeted a Shi’ite Mosque by luring victims to the truck under the guise of selling wheat.

Within hours, Sunnis were rounded up and herded into the street, where many were shot in the head. The death squads were the local police. Tal Afar is a mixed city, but the police force is predominantly Shi’ite.

Back in Baghdad, more evidence that the insurgency is adapting to the increased American troop presence is accumulating rapidly.

In the areas that were targeted first for security sweeps by American forces, the bombs are going off again.

And here is a delightful new twist on insurgent tactics…Insurgents are capturing government buildings, like agriculture offices and the like, and blowing them up. This serves a dual purpose – it disrupts government operations at the local level – and it denies the Americans moving into the provinces in the attempt to “clear and hold” positions with too-few troops the opportunity to make a base of operations of the buildings most likely to have reliable water and power.

In light of these events, I’ll be stickin’ by that Bug Hunt assessment for now.