19-YEAR OLD OKLAHOMA GI KILLED IN BAGHDAD

02/26/08 AP: 19-year-old Ft. Campbell soldier killed near Baghdad The mother of 19-year-old Pfc. Michael Phillips of Ardmore, Okla., says she was told Sunday afternoon that her son was killed Sunday morning...near Baghdad when the Humvee he was in was hit by a roadside bomb.

http://icasualties.org/oif/

02/26/08 Reuters: Three bodies found in Baghdad, 1 in Hilla
Three bodies were found in different districts across Baghdad on Monday, police said...A body was found with gunshot wounds in central Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

02/26/08 Reuters: Gunmen kill 2 neighbourhood policemen in Kirkuk
Gunmen killed two U.S.-backed neighbourhood policemen in a drive-by shooting in an attack on their checkpoint in a town south of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

02/26/08 IRIN: Iraq's health sector under pressure
With scores of doctors killed over the past few years, an exodus of medical personnel, poor medical infrastructure and shortages of medicines, Iraq's health sector is under great pressure, a senior Health Ministry official said on 26 February.


02/26/08 Xinhua: 2 Turkish soldiers killed in operation in N Iraq
Two soldiers of the Turkish Armed Forces were killed in the latest fighting during the cross-border ground operation in northern Iraq on Tuesday, Turkish military said.

02/26/08 Xinhua: Three Iraqis killed in northern Iraq
Three people were killed in two attacks in a town in Salahudin province on Tuesday, a source from U.S. and Iraqi liaison office said. Unknown gunmen stormed a house early in the morning in the town of Tuz-Khurmato...

02/26/08 AFP: Suicide bomber kills nine on
Iraqi bus
A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a bus travelling from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to Syria on Tuesday, killing at least nine passengers, an Iraqi army officer told AFP.

02/26/08 PANews: Iraq condemns Turkish incursion
The Iraqi government has denounced Turkish incursions targeting Kurdish and demanded an immediate withdrawal of Turkish troops from northern Iraq. Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the military action was a violation of Iraqi sovereignty...

02/26/08 AP: Probe Sought in Marine Vehicle Delays
The Marine Corps has asked the Pentagon's inspector general to examine allegations that a nearly two-year delay in the fielding of blast-resistant vehicles led to hundreds of combat casualties in Iraq.

And still the mainstream media and FOX NEWS claim everything is just peachy in IRAQ.

WILL FOX NEWS' JENNIFER GRIFFIN IGNORE AGAIN THE MAYHEM AND VIOLENCE IN IRAQ?

Jennifer Griffin, a reporter for FOX NEWS, will present her second installment on news from Iraq on the Tuesday, February 26 BRIT HUME's FOX NEWS SPECIAL REPORT, however it remains to be seen if Ms. Griffin will actually report on what is happening in IRAQ or will she present another puff piece like she did Monday night.

Adding insult to the American public and to the 160,000 young Americans deployed to Iraq, Republican Sen. (Texas) Kay Bailey Hutchison appeared on the MSNBC "Morning Joe" show on Tuesday and told reporter Mika Bryzinski that "the surge" has been a wonderful success in Iraq.

Both Jennifer Griffin and Sen. Hutchison obviously are not reading what is taking place in Iraq, or they are simply propaganda merchants of the worst kind.

Scroll down through this list of mayhem and violence in Iraq on Tuesday, Feburary 26 alone, and if anyone can say "the surge" has been a roaring success they are either blind or too dumb to understand the truth.

Fred Barnes, of the ridiculous FOX NEWS "The Beltway Boys," is another right winger who can't see the truth about conditions in Iraq and goes on his own show and guests on FOX NEWS SPECIBRIT HUME'S SPECIAL REPORT and sings the praises of "the surge" when there is all kinds of information that contradicts his absurd comments.

Commentary by Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE, http://corksphere.blogspot.com/, the blog that dares to tell the TRUTH about what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and not Bush Administration "talking points" or FOX NEWS "spin."

War News for Tuesday, February 26, 2008

http://warnewstoday.blogspot.com/

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle is reporting the death Army Spc. Kevin Mow, 22, at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda Maryland on Monday, February 25th. He was originally injured from an IED attack in Baghdad on August 2nd 2007. Three soldiers were killed and eleven were wounded when the explosion hit their Stryker vehicle. Here's the MNF-Iraq release.

The Danish MoD is reporting the death of a soldier who appears to have been working with NATO in Iraq. Johnny Mikkelsen appears to have died from an accident while in Northern Iraq on January 22nd. We'll have an update for this when more details are found.

Security incidents:

Diyala Prv:Baquba:#1: A group of armed men set up a fake checkpoint north of Iraq's restive town of Baquba and kidnapped 21 civilians travelling in two minibuses on Tuesday, police said. Police Lieutenant Colonel Najim al-Sumaidaie from Baquba told AFP the checkpoint was set up in an area called Al-Adaim, 60 kilometres (35 miles) north of Baquba in the Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad. "At about 10:00 am (0700 GMT) several armed men stopped a minibus carrying 11 men and three women at the checkpoint. They released the women but abducted the men," Sumaidaie said. He said minutes later another minibus was stopped by the kidnappers and 10 men travelling in it were also abducted.

#2: In Baquba, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad, eight army troops were killed when militants attacked their patrol, the Iraqi news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) said.Hilla:

#1: A body was found with gunshot wounds in central Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.Basra:

#1: Unidentified gunmen fired two missiles at the Iranian consulate building in Basra but no casualties or damage were reported, a police source said. "Unidentified gunmen in a vehicle fired two RPG-7 shells at the building of the Iranian consulate in southern in southern Basra," the source, who preferred not be named, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of IraqTuz Khurmato:

#1: Fifteen gunmen broke into a house in the village of Tuz Khormato, 130 miles north of Baghdad, killing an Iraqi soldier and wounding his brother.

#2: A roadside bomb detonated near a civilian truck, carrying construction materials, on the main road near the town of SulaimanBek near the town of Tuz-Khurmato, killing the driver and another man, the source said..Hawija:

#1: In Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, two members of the local awakening council—Sunni fighters who have turned against al-Qaida—were killed after gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint.Kirkuk:

#1: In another incident, three members of the Awakening Council were killed in Kirkuk, some 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'Militants attacked Tuesday a checkpoint of the Awakening Councils in Abasseiya area in Kirkuk, killing at least three members,' Fatah Abdul-ah, an Iraqi official told dpa.Mosul:

#1: A suicide bomber killed 14 people in an attack on a bus in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, security sources said. Another seven people were wounded but few other details were immediately available. Another police source said the initial death toll was five. Iraqi police in Mosul, 350 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, said the bus was carrying passengers to Syria to Iraq's west. They said a wounded passenger had told them that the bomber boarded the bus and told the driver to change direction before detonating a belt packed with explosives.

A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a bus traveling west of Mosul in northern Iraq's Nineveh province on Tuesday, killing 40 people and wounding five others, a provincial police source said.Kurdistan:

#1: The Turkish military has said 153 rebels have been killed in the operation. The Kurdish rebels disputed the claim and warned that Turkey had entered a conflict that it cannot win. A statement posted on the military's Web site Monday also said two more soldiers were killed in fighting, but gave no details. The deaths would bring the total Turkish military fatalities since the start of the incursion Thursday to 17.

#2: Turkish troops were engaged in fierce clashes with Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq as they closed in on one of the main separatist camps, security sources here said Tuesday. Members of the Kurdish security force in the autonomous north of Iraq told AFP sustained fighting continued unabated since late Sunday as troops, backed by artillery and air cover, fought to seize a main rebel camp in the Zap area. The camp, situated in a deep valley just a six-kilometer (four-mile) walk from the Turkish border, is one of the main passages used by Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels to infiltrate Turkish territory for attacks.

#3: Clashes also continued since late Monday in the mountainous Hakurk area to the east, close to Iraq's border with Iran, where the Turkish army air-dropped troops and helicopter gunships pounded rebel positions, the sources said.

#4: Another PKK official said fighters launched an attack on Turkish troops overnight in four positions in Alzab. 'Turkish troops suffered 21 casualties, including five soldiers, whose bodies are kept by PKK fighters, PKK spokesman, Ahmed Denees, told the Voices of Iraq news agency.Fighters has foiled an attempt by Turkish commandos to parachute into the Jimji area and forced them to retreat, Denees said. Clashes continue in Alzab and Bazya but came to a halt in Irsh with the retreat of Turkish troops.

Afghanistan:#1: A roadside bomb hit a vehicle carrying five policemen and a child in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing all six, officials said. The blast happened in the eastern Khost province close to the border with Pakistan, said police chief Gen. Mohammad Ayub. He blamed the attack on Taliban militants.On the Home Front:

#1: Three people are dead following an apparent homicide/suicide at Tinker Air Force base, Okla., Feb. 25. Tinker AFB security forces and Oklahoma County law enforcement officials responded to a domestic disturbance in the military family housing area at approximately 2:30 p.m. after being advised of a potential hostage situation. At approximately 4:30 p.m., a joint response force entered the residence and discovered the remains of three individuals -- one adult and two children.

#2: An Army solider on leave from Iraq walked into a High Desert convenience story Sunday night with a gunshot wound to his thigh and an account of a confrontation with a robber. But Pfc. Matthew John Myers' story about a robber shooting him at point-blank range near an Apple Valley golf course didn't match the evidence, sheriff's officials said. After interviews, detectives said they suspected something different: The 20-year-old had asked a friend to shoot him so he wouldn't have to return to Iraq.

#3: Four soldiers were injured, one critically, Monday in a training accident involving an artillery ammunition supply vehicle at Fort Carson, the post said. The accident happened about 1:30 p.m. when an M992 armored vehicle rolled over in a training area a couple of miles southwest of the post, Fort Carson spokeswoman Dee McNutt said.

#4: The Government has been ordered to release the minutes of Cabinet meetings where military action against Iraq was discussed. Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said the papers should be released under the Freedom of Information Act because of the "gravity and controversial nature" of the discussions. "He believes that disclosure of this information would allow the public to more fully understand this particular decision of the Cabinet," the commissioner's office said in a statement.Casualty Reports:

#1: A Jersey Shore soldier hurt in a mortar and rocket attack last week in Baghdad is recovering from her injuries and wants to remain in Iraq, according to her mother. Army Staff Sgt. Vanessa Buck, 27, of Jersey Shore, was injured when a blast shattered walls and windows in the compound where she was working, her mother, Lynn Stockton, also of Jersey Shore, said. “There was heavy mortar fire and rockets in areas of Baghdad and my son got a phone call at about 9:30 Monday morning about it.” “They were working in Saddam’s (former) palace, which they made into an office building and mortars came in and shattered the windows,” Stockton said. “She was struck by glass and sustained injuries from the glass in her face, neck, chest and arm.”

FOX NEWS' JENNIFER GRIFFIN AVOIDS REPORTING ON WHAT IS REALLY HAPPENING IN IRAQ

FOX NEWS, which everyone knows by now is the propaganda branch of the Bush White House and the Department of Defense, dispatched reporter Jennifer Griffin to Iraq to try and "sell" the American public on how well things are going in Iraq.

During Brit Hume's FOX NEWS "Special Report" show on Monday, Griffin presented the first of her reports from Ramadi, Iraq. The report, as would be expected, painted a rosy scenario of life in Ramadi including an interview with a GI who talked about how a year before one of his buddies lost several limbs in a roadside bomb explosion.

The second part of Griffin's propaganda piece is expected to air Tuesday night on Brit Hume's FOX NEWS "Special Report" http://www.foxnews.com/specialreport/index.html
Griffin purposefully avoided mentioning anything about the suicide bombings, chaos, killings and death of American GIs that is REALLY taking place in Iraq as indicated in our report which combines news sources from all across the Middle East.

The Jennifer Griffin "report" is just another indication what lengths FOX NEWS will go to in trying to cover up what is really taking place in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq.

From our point of view, we feel FOX NEWS is not only doing a disservice to their viewers, but it is an insult to the 160,000 brave young men and women deployed to Iraq who are facing a growing threat of violence everyday.

Commentary by Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE, http://corksphere.blogspot.com/, the blog that tells the TRUTH about the violence and chaos that continues in Iraq and not Bush Administration "spin" aided and abetted by FOX NEWS, the mouthpiece for the Bush Administration.
Here is just a small portion of what is taking place in Iraq which FOX NEWS' Jennifer Griffin failed to report on.

DEATH AND MAYHEM SWEEP ACROSS IRAQ

Sunday: 2 US Soldiers, 75 Iraqis Killed
Monday: 26 Iraqis Killed, 31 Wounded
Blast Kills at Least 63 Shiite Pilgrims in Iraq
Mass grave of women found in Diala
A mass grave containing eight unidentified women was found in al-Khalis district, Diala, on Monday, a security source said. "The mass grave was found in the Harujah village, al-Khalis district, 15 km south of Baaquba," the source, who requested anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).

REPORTS – US/UK/OTHERS IN IRAQ
U.S. expects 140,000 troops in Iraq after drawdown
[And god only knows how many mercenaries. – dancewater]

Oil giants poised to move into Basra
Western oil giants are poised to enter southern Iraq to tap the country's vast reserves, despite the ongoing threat of violence, according to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's business emissary to the country. Michael Wareing, who heads the new Basra Development Commission, acknowledged that there would be concerns among Iraqis about multinationals exploiting natural resources. …. "If you look at many other economies in the world, particularly the oil-rich economies, many of these places are quite challenging countries in which to do business," he said. "Frankly, if you can successfully operate in the Niger Delta, that is a very different benchmark from imagining that Basra needs to be like London or Paris."

See a map of proposed or actual permanent US bases in Iraq.

Americans: 43 Percent of Your 2007 Taxes Go to War

The Calm Before the Conflagration
The United States is funding and in many cases arming the three ethnic factions in Iraq-the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunni Arabs. These factions rule over partitioned patches of Iraqi territory and brutally purge rival ethnic groups from their midst. Iraq no longer exists as a unified state. It is a series of heavily armed fiefdoms run by thugs, gangs, militias, radical Islamists and warlords who are often paid wages of $300 a month by the U.S. military. Iraq is Yugoslavia before the storm. It is a caldron of weapons, lawlessness, hate and criminality that is destined to implode. And the current U.S. policy, born of desperation and defeat, means that when Iraq goes up, the U.S. military will have to scurry like rats for cover.


Quote of the day: With the Iraqi Security Volunteers in place, the Americans are now arming both sides in the civil war. "Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems," as U.S. strategists like to say. David Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. Petraeus, calls it "balancing competing armed interest groups." ~ from the article “The Myth of the Surge” by Nir Rosen
Security incidents:

Baghdad:#1: Also Monday, a roadside bomb exploded in the middle of a crowd of Shiite Muslims in southeastern Baghdad on Monday, killing three and wounding 15, an Interior Ministry official told CNN. The strike, in the Zafaraniya district, is the latest in a flurry of attacks against pilgrims trekking to Karbala for al-Arbaeen, one of the holiest days of the Shiite religious calendar. It falls on Wednesday this year.

#2: An Iraqi militant group has posted a video on the internet showing the killings of 12 Nepalese men who worked for a Nepalese company with a US contract. In 2004, an Iraqi militant group killed 12 Nepali hostages who had gone to Iraq to work as cooks and cleaners for a Jordanian firm. It showed pictures of one being beheaded and the others with bullet wounds to the head and back.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has dismissed news reports of killing of 12 Nepali workers in Iraq by Islamic insurgents. MoFA spokesperson Hira Bahadur Thapa told Nepalnews that Nepali embassies in Islamabad and Saudi Arabia reported to the ministry, after being asked to find out the truth, that so far no proof had been found to corroborate the news.

#2: A traffic policeman was wounded when two improvised explosive devices went off simultaneously in downtown Baghdad, Baghdad operations command said on Monday. "Two roadside explosive charges detonated simultaneously on Muhammad al-Qasim highway while an Iraqi police patrol was passing the location, wounding a traffic cop who was close to the scene of the blast," a spokesman for the operations command, Major General Qassim Ata, told Aswat al-Iraq, Voices of Iraq,Around 12:30 p.m., two roadside bombs exploded at the Qasim highway near the Shaab stadium (east Baghdad). Two people were injured in that incident.#3: Around 7:30 a.m., a roadside bomb exploded at Zafaraniyah neighborhood (east Baghdad) near Al-Noor mosque. No casualties recorded

#4: The mayor of al-Aazamiya, central Baghdad, on Monday escaped a kidnapping by unknown gunmen in al-Kazemiya neighborhood in northern Baghdad because local residents saved him.Hussein al-Juburi told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq - (VOI) over the phone "Unidentified gunmen stopped his car after leaving a funeral in al-Kazemiya neighborhood in northern Baghdad, forced him to exit his car, and disarmed his bodyguards.""I tried to escape but they caught me, but some persons arrived from the funeral and saved my life along with two of my bodyguards," the mayor added.

#5: Around 2p.m., a roadside bomb exploded near Al-Dayer church .No casualties or damage reported.

#6: Around 4 p.m., mortars hit Qadisiyah neighborhood..No casualties recorded.

#7: Around 5:30 p.m., gunmen using Toyota sedan car opened fire on an army check point near the Um Al-Tibul mosque and ran away. No casualties recorded.

#8: Police found three dead bodies in Baghdad today. Two of them in Risafa bank : 1 in Ubaidi and 1 in Zafaraniyah while the third was found in Amil in Karkh bank.Diyala Prv:Baquba:#1: Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms stormed a house and killed a woman near Baquba, police said.

#2: Police found the decomposing bodies of eight women who had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in the head, in a grave in a town just north of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

#3: "Unidentified gunmen killed two persons near a garage in central Baaquba," the source, who declined to reveal his name, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq

#4: Five Iraqi soldiers, including their commanding officer, were killed when al Qaeda militants ambushed their patrol south of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, said Major-General Abdul Kareem al-Rubaie, leader of Iraqi security forces in Diyala province.Around 2:30 p.m., gunmen attacked an Iraqi army patrol at Buhrz (6km south of Baquba) and killed all the eight patrol members including a major.

#5: Around noon, a roadside bomb targeted a civilian car on the way between Qara taba and Khanaqeen in the north east of Baquba .Both passengers of the vehicle were killed in that incident. Iskandariya:#1: (update) The death toll from Sunday's suicide bomb attack on Iraqi pilgrims heading to a Shi'ite festival south of Baghdad has risen to 63, a health official said on Monday.Basra:

#1: This morning, gunmen opened fire on three oil company guards at Bahadriya of Abu Al-Khaseeb, southeast of Basra. One guard was killed and the other two were seriously injured.#2: Police found the body of the engineer Ali Mahmoud at Hamdan neighborhood in south Basra. Ali was kidnapped a month ago from his house at a residential compound by gunmen who were wearing police uniforms.Samarra:

#1: A disabled, wheelchair-bound man blew himself up on Monday in a northern Iraqi police station, killing a top police official and wounding six police officers, police told CNN. The attack, which occurred in Samarra in Salaheddin province. A high-ranking official with Samarra police said that the man came to meet with Brig. Gen. Abdul Jabbar Rabei Muttar, the deputy commander of security, at the security operations building in the city. The pair met last week as well. The man was searched when he entered the building, but police didn't look under his wheelchair seat, where the explosives had been placed. The man detonated the explosives when Muttar approached him.In a separate attack on Monday, a handicapped man in a wheel chair wearing an explosives vest blew himself up inside a police building in the central city of Samarra, killing three policemen, including a general, officials said.Hawija:

#1: A civilian was killed and nine people were wounded (6 of them are Sahwa members including the leader of Sahwa Colonel Hussein Khalaf Ali and a commander of battalion in Sahwa) when a car bomb exploded targeting Sahwa members in Hawija town south of Kirkuk on Monday morning.Kirkuk:

#1: In the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a police commander, General Sarhad Qadir, escaped an assassination attempt, according to security officials. A bomb went off as the general's motorcade was driving by the main hospital in central Kirkuk.In Kirkuk, police chief Brigadier Sarhad Qader escaped injury when a roadside explosive device detonated as his convoy passed, KUNA reported.

#2: A civilian was injured on Monday in a bomb blast in southern Kirkuk, a police source said. "An improvised explosive device went off in al-Khadraa neighborhood in southern Kirkuk, targeting a police vehicle patrol, wounding a civilian," the source, who asked to remain anonymous, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of IraqMosul:

#1: In the northern city of Mosul, three people from the same family including a child, and four women were injured in a blast. An object fell on a house in the Tal al-Roman area, in western Mosul, causing the blast, security sources told VOI.A mortar shell killed three and wounded four civilians.

#2: Also in Mosul, four policemen were killed in an attack by gunmen on their patrol in the eastern Muarid district, VOI reported.

#3: A boy was killed when insurgents opened fire on a U.S. patrol in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The boy, who was playing with children in the street, was hit by a stray bullet fired by the insurgents.

It will be interesting to see if FOX NEWS' Jennifer Griffin reports on any of these developments in Iraq in her next report on the Brit Hume FOX NEWS "Special Report" show on Tuesday, Feburary 26