U.S. POLICY IN IRAQ BACKFIRES

Very few people in the United States have even an inkling of what is taking place in Iraq because the media is fixated on the race for POTUS.

Reports of violence in Iraq are no longer carried on cable news stations, and even the deaths of American GIs no longer are mentioned.

The Iraq war has become the 21st century edition of "The Forgotten War" just like the Korean War was "The Forgotten War" in the 20th Century.

Two outstanding reporters who are determined not to allow the Iraq war be put on the back burner are Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail of IPS News.

These two outstanding journalists continue to bring their readers information that should be covered by the mainstream media in the United States but isn't anymore.

This blog is devoted to sharing reports with our readers from all over the Middle East about conditions on the ground in Iraq.

Here is just one of them that tells a story that you will NEVER see in the mainstream media in the United States.

By Bill Corcoran, editor/host of CORKSPHERE http://corksphere.blogspot.com/ the only blog in America dedicated exclusively to bringing readers information from both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

IRAQ: 'US the Biggest Producer of Terror'

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40924

By Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail*

BAQUBA, Jan 25 (IPS) - Broken promises have brought a dramatic increase in anti-U.S. sentiment across the capital city of Iraq's Diyala province.Many people in Baquba, capital of Diyala 40 km northeast of Baghdad, had supported U.S. forces when they ousted former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

But failed reconstruction projects and muddled policies mean the U.S. has lost that support. "The Americans based their strategy in Iraq on certain Shias here who have direct enmity with Sunnis and allegiance to Iran," resident Ayub Ibrahim told IPS. "This was the source of the gap between certain Shias which the U.S. backs, and certain Sunnis they back." Shias and Sunnis are different sects within Islam.

The U.S. has also alienated people through its policy of extensive detentions. Many believe that raids that lead to arrests are based on motivated information given to the U.S. military by Shia militiamen who have infiltrated the Iraqi army and police. "We never witnessed an attempt to arrest Shia people either by the U.S. army or the Iraqi police and army," resident Abdul Sattar al-Badri told IPS. Most people see no reasonable basis for many of the arrests.

In November the International Committee of the Red Cross said that around 60,000 people are currently detained in Iraq.

"The Americans occupied our country and put our men in prisons," Dhafir al-Rubaiee, an officer from Iraq's previous army told IPS. "The majority of these prisoners have been arrested for nothing other than for being Sunni. Every one of these prisoners has a family, and these families now have reason to hate Americans."

Others blame the lack of security and the destroyed infrastructure for the increasing anti-U.S. sentiment. "The lack of security is a direct result of the occupation," resident Abu Ali told IPS. "The Americans crossed thousands of miles to destroy our home and kill our men. They are the reason for all our disasters."

Another resident, speaking on condition of anonymity added, "We lived in need during the period of the Saddam government, but we were safe. We were compelled to work sometimes 20 hours a day to earn our living, but we were happy to see our children and relatives together." U.S. forces, he said, have ended all that.

Click on link above for the full story.

BUSHIES LIED 935 TIMES TO GET U.S. INTO WAR WITH IRAQ--NEW STUDY FINDS

For keen observers of the Iraq war, it should come as no surprise that the Bush administration LIED to the American public 935 times to get us into the Iraq quagmire.

From the moment President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their cohorts settled into the White House, they started making plans to invade and occupy Iraq. They were not going to be deterred.

Anyone like Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative, were "swift-boated" by the Bush administration and their puppet FOX NEWS when Wilson revealed he found no evidence Saddam Hussein was buying "yellow cake" (uranium) from Niger, Africa.

The lies continued with Vice President Cheney claiming there had been a meeting between Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers, and loyalists to Saddam Hussein. The meeting never took place.

Cheney also kept saying there were weapons of mass destruction even after UN inspectors said there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Cheney also claimed the 9/11 hijackers had ties to Saddam Hussein, which later proved to be totally false.

Colin Powell, who was then Secretary of State, went before the UN and claimed the tubes shown in pictures were for rocket launchers when it later turned out they were storage cylinders.

All the while the Bushies were pushing for war with Iraq, the lies kept building up and not one person in the media challenged the authenticity of what the Bush White House was telling the press and the American public.

Now a study has revealed the Bush White House lied 935 time to get the United States into the Iraq war. Nearly 4,000 young Americans have died, and the latest injury figures are put at 29,000. There are estimates that upward of 600,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S. invaded Iraq.

There is no end in sight for the Iraq war and the "surge" has had little impact on the violence that continues on a daily basis throughout Iraq.

For additional proof of the ongoing violence in Iraq turn to CORKSPHERE http://corksphere.blogspot.com/, a blog devoted exclusively to the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars.

Bill Corcoran, Editor/host of http://corksphere.blogspot.com/

Study: Bushies Lied 935 Times to Sell Iraq Invasion

By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith, The Center for Public IntegrityPosted on January 24, 2008, Printed on January 27, 2008


http://www.alternet.org/story/74715/


President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.


On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.


It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.


In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.


Click on link above for the full story about how the Bushies lied 935 times to get the U.S into war with Iraq.