The heroic city of Portland, Oregon may drop out of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. They’re “worried that the task force could lead to illicit surveillance of local citizens”, as NPR puts it.
Also, check any of these stories. They’re definitely not on board the Bush bandwagon up in Portland. What can they possibly be thinking?
Knight Ridder’s Tom Lasseter reports some Iraqi election returns:
In final results released Friday for local elections in Baghdad, a city with large Sunni neighborhoods, Shiite cleric-led parties posted large numbers and Sunni tickets gathered relatively few votes.
The local ticket backed by the Shiite Dawa party got 694,800 votes; the ticket backed by the Shiite Supreme Council for Revolution in Iraq got 264,130 votes; and another Shiite group received 156,229 votes.
The slate headed by elder Sunni statesman Adnan Pachachi received just 22,170 votes; and the Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni party in Iraq, got 17,558.
That would mean that in a city of approximately 5 million, 1,154,887 voted. If we assume 2.5 million were eligible to vote, that would mean the turnout in Baghdad was less than 50%.
Iran: Next Target of US Military Aggression
Selected articles and essays
Michel Chossudovsky, Editor
Global Research E-Monograph and Reports Series, No. 3, February 2005
PREFACE
The Bush administration has officially identified Iran and Syria as the next stage of “the road map to war”.
Targeting Iran is a bipartisan project, which broadly serves the interests of the Anglo-American oil conglomerates, the Wall Street financial establishment and the military-industrial complex.
The broader Middle East-Central Asian region encompasses more than 70% of the World’s reserves of oil and natural gas. Iraq possesses 11% of the world’s oil and ranks only second to Saudi Arabia in the size of its reserves
The announcement to target Iran should come as no surprise. Already during the Clinton administration, US Central Command (USCENTCOM) had formulated “in war theater plans” to invade both Iraq and Iran:
“The broad national security interests and objectives expressed in the President’s National Security Strategy (NSS) and the Chairman’s National Military Strategy (NMS) form the foundation of the United States Central Command’s theater strategy. The NSS directs implementation of a strategy of dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran as long as those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, to other states in the region, and to their own citizens. Dual containment is designed to maintain the balance of power in the region without depending on either Iraq or Iran. USCENTCOM’s theater strategy is interest-based and threat-focused. The purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused in the NSS, is to protect the United States’ vital interest in the region – uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil.
(USCENTCOM, http://www.milnet.com/milnet/pentagon/centcom/chap1/stratgic.htm#USPolicy , emphasis added)
Continue reading “Iran: Next Target of US Military Aggression”
Ali, disgruntled former IraqtheModel blogger, now of the Free Iraqi blog decided to comment on the Michael Totten post in which he tells of how he and Christopher Hitchens manage to piss some Iraqis off so badly, they nearly came to blows in a restaurant.
Shorter Ali: You should’ve picked me!
True to form, he comes up with an anecdote to illustrate his point:
Ghassan AL Atiyyah happens to be a friend of my father, not a close one though. This man wants to include the “resistance” in the political process in Iraq. This maybe a good cause if it’s done to save Iraq from further meaningless violence, but the problem is that Mr. Atiyyah sees that the “resistance” has actually done Iraq good by forcing the Americans to work harder!
This reminds me with a conversation I had with a similarly disturbed-minded friend who was hailing the “resistance”. I asked him if he wanted the Americans to leave and he replied, “of course not! That would lead to a disaster” and I said, “then why do you support them in killing Americans?” and he said, “it’s good for us because when they get attacked they work better and faster in rebuilding Iraq since such attacks would show them they’re not doing a good job” I swear to God this was his answer!
Do Muslims swear to God? Just asking. Anyway, here’s the main mistake Americans made in Iraq, according to Ali:
“…such quarrels are avoidable and such impressions could be changed if they had hosted and seeked the assistance of the right Iraqis.
Well, there you go. But, there’s still hope!
I was asked many times what are America’s mistakes in Iraq and I didn’t answer for many reasons. First because I’m truly too grateful to count America’s mistakes, second because I didn’t think this was a policy but rather a mistake out of understandable ignorance and one that would be corrected fast.
But it wasn’t corrected fast! Ali is still blogging and not running things in Iraq. Maybe Ahmed Chalabi needs an aide.
Oh, and lest you be left with the mistaken impression that Ali represented Ghassan AL Atiyyah’s views correctly when he attributes this bizarre view to him – Mr. Atiyyah sees that the “resistance” has actually done Iraq good by forcing the Americans to work harder! – here’s a real quote:
On January 30, 2005, elections will be held for an Iraqi National Assembly, which will draft the new Iraqi constitution. These elections could be instrumental in bolstering the new government and helping Iraq out of its current quagmire. Yet, they must be administered in a manner that does not lead to civil war. In particular, Sunni Arab moderates must be empowered. Although Sunni Arabs are a minority in Iraq, they are still very influential. An Iraq without a role for the Sunni Arabs would be as unworkable as a Lebanon without a role for the Maronites. Sunni Arabs are also needed as a balancing force between the Shiites and the Kurds. Without their active presence in political institutions, Iraq could become polarized between Kurds and extremist Shiites.
Accordingly, Iraqis must reach prior agreement on electoral policies that allow for Sunni Arab participation.
Yeah, I can’t imagine why this “disturbed-minded” guy is more respected than Ali.
Hundreds of Arab and Turkmen protestors took to the streets of Iraq’s disputed northern oil city of Kirkuk Friday, charging that last month’s election had been riddled with fraud and demanding a re-run.
“No, no to federalism! No, no to fraud!”, chanted the demonstrators, who gathered in the city centre before heading south to march past the offices of the two main Kurdish parties.
Kurds want Kirkuk to be made the capital of an enlarged autonomous region, and thousands of Kurds who were displaced from the city under Saddam Hussein were allowed to vote two weeks ago.
“There are documents and plenty of evidence showing that fraud took place during the elections in Kirkuk,” said a statement which was distributed to protestors and signed by 16 Arab and Turkmen groups.
Among the signatories were the Ankara-funded Iraqi Turkmen Front, the Shiite religious party Dawa, and the movement of Shiite radical leader Moqtada Sadr.
“We ask for new elections to be held in Kirkuk to guarantee they are transparent, because Kirkuk is on the edge of a flaming pit,” the document said.
Turkmen, Dawa and Sadrists? An odd combination, although if you consider the fact that whoever controls Kirkuk controls the northern Iraqi oil, it is reasonable for the Shi`a (Dawa and the Sadrists are Shiite) and Turkmen, who want a united Iraq, to object to the Kurds’ attempt to hijack it.
(MSNBC)
New book reveals military code names
A new book that reveals hundreds of secret code names has created a stir
in the Pentagon, reports NBC’s Lisa Myers.
