meehawl

The 21-year-old Marine corporal explained what it was like to practice his lethal skill in the battle for this city. “It’s a sniper’s dream,” he said in polite, matter-of-fact tones. “You can go anywhere and there are so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are.” … A sign on the wall of sniper school at Camp Pendleton displays a Chinese proverb: “Kill One Man, Terrorize a Thousand.” “Sometimes a guy will go down, and I’ll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies,” said the Marine corporal. “Then I’ll use a second shot.”

Earlier here.

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The battle of Fallujah, together with the conflicts unfolding in Shiia cities and Baghdad slums, are high-stakes tests, not just of U.S. policy in Iraq, but of Washington’s ability to dominate what Pentagon planners consider the “key battlespace of the future” the Third World city … “Insurgents are following their followers into the cities,” … “setting up ‘liberated zones’ in urban shantytowns. Neither U.S. doctrine, nor training, nor equipment is designed for urban counterinsurgency.” As a result, the slum has become the weakest link in the American empire … The occupation of Iraq has, of course, been portrayed by Bush ideologues as a “laboratory for democracy” in the Middle East … on the other hand, it is a laboratory of a different kind, where Marine snipers and Air Force pilots test out new killing techniques in an emergent world war against the urban poor.

More here.

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Heading into the 2000 election, then-candidate George W. Bush blasted the Clinton administration’s 1990s deployments to places like Bosnia and Kosovo, saying they depleted our military’s readiness. “Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander in chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, ‘Not ready for duty, sir,’ ” said then-Gov. Bush.

Intense combat in Iraq is chewing up military hardware and consuming money at an unexpectedly rapid rate — depleting military coffers, straining defense contractors and putting pressure on Bush administration officials to seek a major boost in war funding long before they had hoped … Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, charged that the president is playing political games by postponing further funding requests until after the election, to try to avoid reopening debate on the war’s cost and future. Weldon described the administration’s current defense budget request as “outrageous” and “immoral” and said that at least $10 billion is needed for Iraqi operations over the next five months.

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Humanitarian workers speak of US gunmen firing at ambulances and civilians … The head of mission of a European humanitarian agency with staff in Falluja told BBC News Online that, according to his staff, two of their ambulances had been shot at. “By who? The probability is by US snipers,” he said. Asked whether these were warning or attacking shots, he said: “One was shot two or three times – a sniper does not shoot an ambulance three times by mistake.” British aid worker Jo Wilding said an ambulance she was in, with flashing lights, siren blaring and “ambulance” written on it in English, was hit as it drove to collect a woman in premature labour … In a separate incident, Dr Obaidi said, a driver and paramedic in an ambulance were shot in a US-controlled area – one in the chest, the other in the eyes. The injured civilians inside the ambulance bled to death during the next two days as warning shots were fired when the team tried – four times – to return to collect the ambulance.

Earlier here.

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At least 20 percent of U.S. spending in Iraq is lost to corruption … Iraqi Ministry of Health officials sell hospital supplies on the black market, depriving sick people of vital equipment. Dr. Ali Rajeb, a young Iraqi cardiologist, takes Davidson to Sa’adoun Street in Baghdad, where a row of medical supply shops offer stolen goods … In Washington, congressional initiatives that would have sent a strong anti-corruption signal to contractors in Iraq were derailed by the House Republican leadership and the White House. These included amendments to the Iraq appropriations bill last fall that would have criminalized war profiteering and required ongoing audits by the General Accounting Office.

A leading anti-corruption group claims that at least 20% of U.S. money spent in Iraq is being lost to corruption. From Halliburton subsidiaries charging double for gas, Iraqi officials and Arabic translators unrestrained from pocketing millions of dollars, or even members of the interim governing Council accusing each other of taking tens of millions in bribes.

Jay Garner, the first US administrator of Iraq, told the BBC that he was sacked in part because he wanted to hold quick elections. His superiors wanted to privatize Iraqi industries first as part of a plan that, according to Mr. Garner, was drawn up in late 2001.

The Financial Times reports that the head of the CPA, Paul Bremer, is asking that the CPA be exempt from some of the rules that Washington did impose to create transparency with the awarding of contracts in Iraq.

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Iran-Contra involved a network of aides outsourcing U.S. foreign policy like a separate government to circumvent the separation of powers, by selling missiles to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. The Iraq war was not conceived by aides but by the president and his war Cabinet in an apparent effort to evade constitutional checks and balances … in July 2002 Bush ordered the use of $700 million to prepare for the invasion of Iraq, funds that had not been specifically appropriated by the Congress, which alone holds that constitutional authority. No adequate explanation has been offered for what, strictly speaking, might well be an impeachable offense. Woodward also reports that the battle plan was unfurled for Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.: On its top it was stamped “TOP SECRET–NOFORN”–”No Foreign,” not to be seen by anyone but Americans with the highest security clearance.

Earlier here.

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So King Bush has appointed the Torturer’s Friend John Negroponte as Ambassador to Iraq. While he was Ambassador in Honduras during the 1980s he shielded the Honduran military from fallout concerning their use of death squads and torture tactics to combat trade unionism, anti-Americanism, and other social movements judged by them to imperil their US-sponsored clandestine terrorist war against Nicaragua. Negroponte facilitated a massive, illegal training and supply regime by the CIA and other shadowy US agencies in direct contravention of several US laws forbidding such aid going to countries with consistent patterns of abuses of human rights. He collaborated with the death squads while lying about their existence to the US Congress. How eminently diplomatic. Yes, all in all I think he’s the perfect choice as liason to oversee a new puppet Iraqi regime who will doubtless rely on his expertise in extreme counter-insurgency tactics.

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[private] security costs could claim up to 25 percent of the $18 billion budgeted for reconstruction … that could delay or force the cancellation of billions of dollars worth of projects to rebuild schools, water treatment plants, electric lines and oil refineries … officials said they have no precise tally of how many private security guards are being paid with government funds, much less how many have been killed or wounded … One measure of the growing danger comes from the federal Department of Labor, which handles workers’ compensation claims for deaths and injuries among among contract employees working for the military in war zones. Since the start of 2003, contractors have filed claims for 94 deaths and 1,164 injuries. For all of 2001 and 2002, by contrast, contractors reported 10 deaths and 843 injuries … an overwhelming majority of the cases since 2003 were from Iraq.

Earlier here.

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Why mess with the Boston Globe’s original headline?

Following an important meeting on Iraq war planning in late 2001, President Bush told the public that the discussions were about Afghanistan. He made no mention afterward about Iraq even though that was the real focus of the session at his ranch. “I’m right now focused on the military operations in Afghanistan,” Bush told reporters … Franks presented a list of assumptions that were behind the [war] plan. They included that Iraq would be the main effort of the United States and would get priority on resources, and that the Afghan operation and the global fight against terrorism would provide a noise level under which Iraq operations could proceed.

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During an interview in Basra last week Brig Carter acknowledged that the Coalition’s presence in southern Iraq was entirely dependent on the goodwill of the local Shia Muslim leader, Sayid Ali al-Safi al-Musawi. He represents Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shia cleric. “The moment that Sayid Ali says, ‘We don’t want the Coalition here’, we might as well go home”.

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