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Monday,
October 15, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri's State of Law
threatens to dissolve Parliament, still no amnesty law, the war caused
birth defects in Iraqi children get some media attention, Barack
continues to try to distract from what happened in Benghazi and the
cover up that followed, and more.
Lagash. Enyclopedia Britannica explains,
was "one of the most important capital cities in ancient Sumer, located
midway between the Tirgris and Euphrates rivers in southeastern Iraq.
[. . .] Lagash was endowed with many temples, including the Eninnu,
'House of the Fifty,' a seat of the high god Enil.
Architecturally the most remarkable structure was a weir and regulator,
once doubtless possessing sluice gates, which conserved the area's
water supply in reservoirs." The University of Chicago has a slide show
of Lagash here. The Louvre houses a statue of Lagash's Prince Gudea. The statue is thought to date back to 2120 BC. Another statue of Gudea can be found at the Detroit Institute of Arts and this one is thought to date back to 2141-2122 BC.
It is near this area that the first recorded war was fought -- Sumer's
war with Elam (modern day Iran) back in 2700 BC (the war would have been
fought in what is now Basra). In antiquities news, Al-Shorfa notes that yesterday Iraq and Italy "signed a memorandum of cooperation" regarding the restoration of archaeological sites in Iraq.
If
another part of Iraq, Falluja, was excavated centuries from now, what
would they find? Most likely evidence of massive birth defects as a
result of the Iraq War. Falluja was twice assaulted in 2004. First,
briefly in April and then a much more prologned assault immediately
after the US presidential election in November. It was duing the second
assault that Dexter Filkins, then a New York Times 'reporter,' wrote his rah-rah bit of nonsense. We called it out when the paper ran it on the front page November 21, 2004.
But a lot of people like their war porn. Which is why 'reporter' Dexter
won a little award for that piece. Someone reading it today, after the
admission by the US military that white phosphorus was used in that
attack on Falluja, would probably first notice how Dexy missed that. But
even back then there was something fishy about a report about actions
on November 15th that carried a dateline of November 18th and ran
November 21st. Apparently, the military that vetted 'embed' Dexy's copy
wasn't too concerned about print deadlines.
The
humanitarian disaster in Fallujah worsened as the U.S. military
continued to refuse entry to the Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC) convoys of
relief supplies. I was told at the Red Crescent headquarters in Baghdad
that they had appealed to the UN to intervene, but once again the UN
proved its impotence in all matters. While there, I also heard that
Iraqi Army members, under U.S. control, engaged in the supervised
looting of Fallujah General Hospital during the first week of the siege.
Inside
Fallujah, the U.S. military allowed some bodies to be buried by
residents, but others were being eaten by dogs and cats in the streets,
as reported both by refugees coming out of the city and residents still
trapped there. The military claimed that there was no need for the IRC
to deliver aid to people inside Fallujah, since there were no more
civilians inside the city. (Later, officials acknowledged that thirty
thousand to fifty thousand residents had remained in the city.)
While
speaking to survivors of the assault, Dar encountered Abu Sabah who
told him, "They used these weird bombs that first put up smoke in a
cloud and then small pieces fell from the air with long tails of smoke
behind them. These exploded on the ground with large fires that burned
for half an hour. They used these near the train tracks. When anyone
touched those fires, their body burned for hours."
Some
artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of
fire that cannot be extinguished with water. Insurgents reported being
attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent
with white phosphorous burns.
Kamal
Hadeethi, a physician at a regional hospital, said, "The corpses of the
mujaheddin which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted."
Dexy
couldn't report any of that truth. And when even the US military
stopped denying the truth, it was left to Scott Shane (in November 2005,
a year later) to mop up after Dexy with " Defense of Phosphorus Use Turns Into Damage Control" (Shane was speaking of the US government's damage control but so intwined are the Times and the US government that it also spoke to the paper's previous 'reporting'):
After
the Italian documentary was broadcast, the American ambassadors to
Italy, Ronald P. Spogli, and to Britain, Robert H. Tuttle, echoed the
stock defense, denying that white phosphorus munitions had been used
against enemy fighters, let alone civilians. At home, on
the public radio program "Democracy Now," Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, an
American military spokesman, said, "I know of no cases where people were
deliberately targeted by the use of white phosphorus."
But those
statements were incorrect. Firsthand accounts by American officers in
two military journals note that white phosphorus munitions had been
aimed directly at insurgents in Falluja to flush them out. War critics
and journalists soon discovered those articles.
In the face of such
evidence, the Bush administration made an embarrassing public reversal
last week. Pentagon spokesmen admitted that white phosphorus had been
used directly against Iraqi insurgents. "It's perfectly legitimate to
use this stuff against enemy combatants," Colonel Venable said Friday.
While
he said he could not rule out that white phosphorus hit some civilians,
"U.S. and coalition forces took extraordinary measures to prevent
civilian casualties in Falluja."
And now a new study by the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology is getting attention from the press.
The study is entitled "Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of
Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities." Early on, the study's authors
point out, "It is old knowledge that exposure to chemicals can harm
human reproduction. Ancient Romans were aware that lead (Pb) poisoning
can cause miscarriage and infertility (Gilfillan 1965; Retief and
Cilliers 2006). Today it is well established that human pregnancy and
fetal development are susceptible to parents' environmental exposure to
chemical, biological and physical agents (Mattison 2010)." The war --
specifically the weapons -- contaminated Iraq and led to a skyrocketing
in the number of birth defects. Press TV explains:
Between
2007 and 2010 in F[a]llujah, over half of all the surveyed babies were
born with birth defects. Before the US-led invasion of Iraq, the figure
was one in 10.
In Basrah's Maternity Hospital, over 20 babies out of
1000 were born with defects in 2003, which makes the figure 17 times
higher than it was in the previous decade.
Al Arabiya adds
that samples demonstrate residents of Falluja are exposed to extremely
high levels of mercury, lead and other "poisonous metals." And when
those are in the eco-system, exposure becomes highly common. RT offers,
"According to the WHO, a pregnant woman can be exposed to lead or
mercury through the air, water and soil. The woman can then pass the
exposure to her unborn child through her bones, and high levels of
toxins can damage kidneys and brains, and cause blindness, seizures,
muteness, lack of coordination and even death." Sarah Morrison (Independent of London) notes:
The
report's authors link the rising number of babies born with birth
defects in the two cities to increased exposure to metals released by
bombs and bullets used over the past two decades. Scientists who studied
hair samples of the population in Fallujah found that levels of lead
were five times higher in the hair of children with birth defects than
in other children; mercury levels were six times higher. Children with
defects in Basra had three times more lead in their teeth than children
living in non-impacted areas. Dr Savabieasfahani said that for the first
time, there is a "footprint of metal in the population" and that there
is "compelling evidence linking the staggering increases in Iraqi birth
defects to neuro-toxic metal contamination following the repeated
bombardments of Iraqi cities". She called the "epidemic" a "public
health crisis". "In utero exposure to pollutants can drastically change
the outcome of an otherwise normal pregnancy. The metal levels we see
in the Fallujah children with birth defects clearly indicates that
metals were involved in manifestation of birth defects in these
children," she said. "The massive and repeated bombardment of these
cities is clearly implicated here. I have no knowledge of any
alternative source of metal contamination in these areas." She added
that the data was likely to be an "underestimate", as many parents who
give birth to children with defects hide them from public view.
Professor
Alastair Hay, a professor of environmental toxicology at Leeds
University, said the figures presented in the study were "absolutely
extraordinary". He added: "People here would be worried if there was a
five or 10 per cent increase [in birth defects]. If there's a fivefold
increase in Fallujah, no one could possibly ignore that; it's crying out
for an explanation as to what's the cause. A rapid increase in exposure
to lead and mercury seems reasonable if lots of ammunition is going
off. I would have also thought a major factor would be the extreme
stress people are under in that period; we know this can cause major
physiological changes."
The study
finds that, of central nervous system defects, the most common since the
start of the Iraq War has been anencephaly. The Center for Disease Control explains,
"Anencephaly is a serious birth defect in which a baby is born without
parts of the brain and skull. It is a type of neural tube defect (NTD).
These are birth defects that happen during the first month of pregnancy,
usually before a woman knows she is pregnant. As the neural tube forms
and closes, it helps form the baby's brain and skull (upper part of the
neural tube), spinal cord, and back bones (lower part of the neural
tube). Anencephaly happens if the upper part of the neural tube does not
close all the way. This often results in a baby being born without the
front part of the brain (forebrain) and the thinking and coordinating
part of the brain (cerebrum). The remaining parts of the brain are
often not covered by bone or skin. Unfortunately, almost all babies born
with anencephaly will die shortly after birth." It is also known as an
ONTD -- Open Neural Tube defect. St. Jude's Medical Center provides
this means of reference, "Anencephaly and spina bifida are the most
common types of ONTD, while encephalocele (in which there is a
protrusion of the brain or its covering through the skull) is much
rarer. Anencephaly occurs when the neural tube failes to close at the
base of the skull, while spina bifida occurs when the neural tube fails
to close somewhere along the spine."
Moving over to today's continued violence. Wang Yuanyuan (Xinhua) reports
an al-Riyadh car bombing injured five people and 2 car bombings and one
roadside bombing in Kirkuk have left 1 person dead and eighteen
injured. Alsumaria is calling the Kirkuk car bombings an attempted assassination attemp on the life of police Colonel Mekdad al-Mohammed. All Iraq News notes an Albuaath armed attack left three Iraqi soldiers injured, and a Tuz Khurmatu armed attack left 2 police officers dead, and a Tarmiyah home bombing left three members of a police officer's family injured. AFP reports
a Tuz Khurmatu car bombing has left nine people injured, a Samarra home
invasion killed 2 Sahwas who were brothers and the two men's father and
an attack on a Baghdad checkpoint has left three Iraqi troops injured.
On Sahwa, Alsumaria reports another died from a Kirkuk sticky bombing. All Iraq News notes that one Ministry of Justice employee was shot dead in Baghdad. Alsumaria notes
the government employee shot dead and also notes 1 attorney was shot
dead on Palestine Street in Baghdad, and 1 Ministry of Defense
intelligence officer was shot dead in Baghdad. If that seems like a lot
of violence it is. And it puts to rest a ridiculous claim that last
week's violence was down due to Nouri's latest series of never-ending
mass arrests.
Violence continued over the weekend and included a high profile assassination attempt. Saturday, Alsumaria reported
that Iraqiya MP Ahmed al-Alwani was the target of assassination attempt
that left him unharmed but injured two members of his security detail.
It was a bombing between Baghdad and Falluja. Petra refers to him as "an outspoken critic of the government of Prime Minister Noui Maliki."
Iraqiya,
led by Ayad Allawi, came in first in the March 2010 Parliamentary
elections. Nouri got a second term as prime minister despite his State
of Law coming in second due to the fact that the White House backed him
and then the White House apparently lied to the political blocs getting
them to sign a contract, the Erbil Agreement, that they said they would
back but the White House quickly forgot about the contract after Nouri
used it to get a second term as prime minister but refused to honor the
promises made to the political blocs in the contract.
The
failure to implement the Erbil Agreement has been publicly called out
by Iraqiya, Moqtada al-Sadr and the Kurdish bloc since the summer of
2011.
Saturday, Ayad al-Tamimi (Al Mada) reported
that, for the tenth time, the Parliament failed to pass the amnesty
bill today. Iraqiya accuses State of Law of behind the scene proceedings
that helped torpedo the bill. An MP with Iraqiya told All Iraq News that the roots of the failure to pass the amnesty bill can be found in the continuing political crisis in Iraq. The outlet notes
that the version of the bill proposed today would have included
granting amnesty to Awakenings and various former milita groups who had
joined the political process.
The
amnesty law could do many things. One thing it could do was end the
need for the Justice and Accountability Commission and it's hard to
believe that isn't part of the reason that State of Law continues to try
to torpedo it. Another thing it would do, and numerous MPs have pointed
this out, is calm the situation in Iraq -- for families whose loved
ones have disappeared into the Iraqi justice labyrinth and for those who
are imprisoned. It could also lead to some death row prisoners being
taken off death row. Many Sunnis believe the huge number of executions
taking place in Iraq are Nouri's efforts to kill as many Sunnis as
possible before an amnesty law passes.
So
far this year, Iraq is known to have executed 119 people. It has
ignored calls from the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty
International and others to impose a moratorium on the death penalty.
Despite the fact that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani insists he is
against the death penalty and regularly basks in applause for that
stance, he has not blocked one execution. (His 'opposition' is refusing
to sign the death warrants, leaving it for a vice president to sign it.
As president, he could object to any or all executions and stop them
immediately. He refuses to use that power.)
The amnesty bill wasn't the only thing the Parliament didn't pass today. Alsumaria notes
the infrastructure bill did not become law and that the Kurdistan
Alliance is stating that they need to know what projects they are voting
for. State of Law MP Hadi al-Yasiri tells All Iraq News that if the infrastructure law is blocked, they will take retaliation. What does he mean? Al Mada explains
it: State of Law is threatening it will dissolve the Parliament if the
infrastructure law is not passed as is. Iraqiya MP Haidar al-Mullah
explains that State of law wants billions authorized for Nouri to spend
but will not detail on what and that their fears and concerns are
brushed aside. He offers that the bill is intended to allow State of Law
to remain in power -- while pretending to be about infrastructure --
when they've had six years to address the situation but haven't and that
the bill, as written, is ripe for theft and corruption.
Today Al Mada reports
Yassin Majeed, an MP with Nouri's State of Law, is declaring that KRG
President Massoud Barzani is a threat to Iraq. Majeed held a press
conference outside Parliament to denounce Barzani. Alsumaria notes
that among Barzani's supposed outrageous offenses is objecting to the
infrastructure bill and objecting to the recent weapons shopping spree
Nouri's been on ($1 billion dollar deal with the Czech Republic, $4.2
billion dollar deal with Russia). All Iraq News notes
that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani issued a statement noting that, at a
time when they are trying to resolve the current political crisis, the
remarks are not helpful.
Nouri's shopping spree took him out of Iraq last week. Tuesday, he signed a deal in Moscow where Iraq would pay Russia $4.2 billion dollars for various weapons. Thursday found Nouri in Prague signing a weapons deal worth $1 billion. Today, Def Pro News adds,
"Defence ministers also discussed possible delivery of new small arms
from the Ceska Zbrojovka Uhersky Brod to Iraq and Czech offer to
modernise T-72 tanks of Iraqi Armed Forces. " The Khaleej Times editorial board argues, " Political
pundits either see this move as flexing of muscles or a cautiously
calculated move by Baghdad to realign itself with Moscow as the war
hysteria looms large over Syria. However, the deal indeed is a clear
sign that Iraq is prepared to look beyond Washington for weapons." Former CIA analyst and visiting Georgetown University professor Paul R. Pillar offers:
We
can draw several implications from this news. One is that it fills in
further the picture of what legacy was left in Iraq by the US war that
ousted Saddam. The regime that emerged from the rubble is not only
increasingly authoritarian and narrowly sectarian and not only chummy
with Iran; it also is becoming a client of Moscow. A trifecta of
failure.
A
second lesson concerns the notion that committing military support to a
new regime in the making is essential for having a good relationship
with it and to be considered a friend rather than an adversary once such
a regime comes to power. This idea is being heard increasingly as an
argument for doing more to assist rebels in Syria.
We
need to get in on the ground floor with the new bunch and accept risks
and commit major resources, it is said, in order to be held in favor by
whatever regime emerges fromthatrubble.
But the United States got in on the ground floor more than once in Iraq
— with the Baathists in 1958 and with the successors to Saddam after he
was overthrown. In the latter case it did so with the expenditure of
enormous resources. And look how much friendship and influence it
bought.
Finally,
the fact that Iraq's latest turn is reminiscent of what happened in the
late 1950s suggests that the arrow of time in the Middle East does not
point as much in one direction as many like to think it does. The
progression of events there, even with pushes or leadership by the
United States, does not necessarily run in the direction of more
political freedom, more free enterprise, or whatever.
Friday, Aswat al-Iraq reported
that Iraqiya MP Itab al-Douri was calling for Nouri to appear before
Parliament to clarify a few questions and that she also declared "the
contracted weapons should be of the best and modern arms to enable Iraq
facing the internal and external challenges, as well as repelling any
foreign aggression."
Moving over to England, the Ministry of Defence created the Iraq Historic Allegations Team some time ago. November 1, 2010, the MoD was proclaiming,
"The Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), which will investigate
allegations of abuse of Iraqi citizens by British Service personnel, has
now started work, Minister for the Armed Forces Nick Harvey announced
today. The team is led by a retired senior civilian policeman and
consists of military and ex-civilian police detectives." Harvey was
quoted then stating, "These allegations [of abuse] are as yet unproven,
but their existence is corrosive to both the morale and reputation of
our armed forces." The MoD had no proud proclamations last week as the
Iraq Historic Allegations Team has its most high profile media moment so
far. Thursday, Ian Cobain (Guardian) reported
MoD was reeling from charges that IHAT was conduction "a whitewash" and
Louise Thomas had stepped down from the team: "Thomas, 45, a former
Wren who also served as a police officer for five years, told the
Guardian she had seen around 1,600 videos of interrogation sessions, a
number of which showed prisoners being abused, humiliated and
threatened. They suggested that some of the detainees were being subject
to extreme sleep deprivation and beaten between interrogation
sessions." The Telegraph of London notes
the videos in question "were recorded at an interrogation centre in
Basra operated by the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT), in the
South-East of Iraq, between March 2003 and December 2008. In November
2010 JFIT was described in the high court by lawyers for the prisoners
as 'Britain's Abu Ghraib'." Ian Cobain reports
also that despite the MoD declaring in November 2011 that the Royal
Military Police would be removed from the committee, Thomas explains
they have remained with the investigation. This despite the fact that
"[m]embers of the same unit had been involved in the detention of
prisoners during the six-year occupation."
Today
in the United States the White House is pounding chests. Why? To cover
their weakness and the truth. Last Wednesday, the House Oversight
Committee held a hearing into the September 11, 2012 attack on the US
Consulate in Benghazi. (Community coverage includes " Iraq snapshot," " Iraq snapshot," " Iraq snapshot," Ava's " 2 disgrace in the Committee hearing," Wally's " The White House's Jimmy Carter moment" and Kat's " What we learned at today's hearing.") The media did a very poor job of covering the hearing, as Ava and I noted Sunday,
choosing to either ignore it or cover trivia as opposed to the actual
news emerging from the hearing. Before the bad coverage began, the White
House had been worried that the various deceptions might be made
public (and the American public might start asking why someone in the
government -- not the FBI -- has video of the attack and will not
release it to Congress) and so they staged a press conference in Libya
-- that provided nothing -- to distract the media. (Again, the lazy
media was already distracted.) During the Benghazi attack, as Ava and I
pointed out, not only were four Americans working on diplomacy killed,
but the CIA was also under attack. If you paid attention in the hearing
-- especially to objections about classified material and about a
photographic map of the area the State Dept was using as a visual -- you
grasped that the CIA was present during the attacks. It appears the CIA
was blindsided by the attack. The lie that the intelligence community
got it wrong is a lie. CIA agents under attack do not make a point to
mistake attackers with modern weapons for protesters.
As
the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi unfolded, the intelligence
community did not start trumpeting that this was inspired by an
anti-Muslim video. Having
worked "breaking news crises" like this as both an analyst at CIA and as
a Counter Terrorism official at State, the so-called "intel" community
is really not consulted or at the forefront of the information flow.
That is handled, instead, through action officers and watch centers. In
this case, for example, once the attack started on the Benghazi
Consulate, someone at that site literally got on the phone and alerted
the Bureau of Diplomatic Security's Command Post back in DC that an
incident was underway. The DS Command Center in turn alerted the State
Department OPs Center.
This led to a
NOIWON alert. NOIWON is an acronym for the National Operational
Intelligence Watch Officer's Network. The "news" of the attack on the
consulate was immediately shared via a secure telephone conference call
with reps from the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the CIA,
the FBI, DIA, NSA and NCTC. Within an hour of the NOIWON alert, the
intel bureaucracy was alerted and preparing briefs for principals.
I
know for a fact that the briefs prepared that night, as the attack
unfolded, for senior US military commanders, including the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, specifically identified the group believed to be responsible
for the attack and identified prior intelligence pointing to planning by
that group. None of those briefs claimed or insisted that this attack
was the result of "spontaneous mob violence" in response to some stupid
movie. The decision to seize on the riot in Cairo as a pretext to
explain the attack in Benghazi was a political decision by the White
House. It was not a consequence of "intelligence analysis."
In
fact, when an event like Benghazi is unfolding, the intel community
rarely would take a definitive position. It would identify a variety of
possible causes or perpetrators. What is stunning about the briefings
presented on 9-11 and 9-12 to senior U.S. military officials is that
there was a high degree of confidence that the attack in Benghazi was
carried out by a group with ties to Al Qaeda.
WHAT ABOUT THE BUDGET CUTS?
That's
irrelevant to putting appropriate, requested security assets in place
on the ground. A cut in State's budget does not mean that high threat
posts are forced to go without adequate security. The audacity and
shamelessness of Obama and his team appears to know no boundary. They
try to pin their failure to respond to specific security requests from
the Diplomatic Security officers on the ground in Libya by a reduction
in State Department's "security" budget. What the average American does
not know is that most of those cuts will fall on programs like the
Anti-Terrorism Assistance Training Program. As the former Deputy in
charge of the policy of that program I can assure you that it can be cut
without jeopardizing US security. That program has nothing to do
directly with protecting the Ambassador.
To distract from the unraveling lies, the White House leaks details of a planned strike team to the Associated Press.
A few things on that -- none of which is a slap at the AP which needs
to report anything the government's providing. First, notice that the
desire to protect Barack the person outweighs national security yet
again. As it did before, the White House is leaking details they
shouldn't be in order to try to make Barack look better. They may in
fact be jeopardizing any retaliation mission US forces might be
planning. It's strange that alleged leaking gets Bradley Manning locked
away without trial for over 500-plus days but White House leakers of
classified information to the press never seem to be arrested. Second,
Barack may be able to pull this lie off, to trick the American people
through the election. But the truth will come out and if he thinks
he's had to struggle for support this year, imagine how much worse it'll
be -- from Congress and the public -- when we all grasp that the
YouTube video was a lie the White House told the American people, that
it was a lie and the White House knew it before they ever repeated it,
that it was a lie crafted to benefit the Obama re-election campaign,
that Barack went to Las Vegas for a fundraiser instead of addressing a
terrorist attack?
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