VIDEO: BAGHDAD: CITY OF WALLS AFTER 5 YEARS OF WAR

In this video and Iraqi journalist returns to his hometown of Baghdad, Iraq five years after the war started to chronicle what life is like inside of Baghdad. It is not the picture the American media is presenting to the American public. It is graphic: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/mar/17/baghdad.city.of.walls?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

VETERANS ADMINISTRATION WON'T HELP SOLDIERS REGISTER TO VOTE

The problems within the Veterans Administration continue to mount, and the latest finding is the VA is doing everything within its power to keep soldiers from registering to vote.

VA PUTS UP ROADBLOCKS TO KEEP SOLDIERS FROM REGISTERING

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNetPosted on March 18, 2008, Printed on March 18, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/80024/

For at least four years, since the 2004 presidential election, when a veteran, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was the Democratic Party nominee, the Department of Veterans Affairs has blocked efforts to help U.S. soldiers register to vote at its facilities in all 50 states.

"This is politically motivated voter suppression," said Scott Rafferty, an attorney based in Washington, D.C., who has fought the VA in federal courts since 2004 over the right to assist homeless people, including veterans, register to vote at a shelter on VA property in Menlo Park, Calif. "Now the political motivation might be different that the veteran running for president is a Republican."

The issue has resurfaced, not merely on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and in the midst of a heated presidential campaign, but because the VA -- whose public affairs office did not answer telephone calls nor return requests to comment Monday -- apparently has also stonewalled requests by U.S. senators for an explanation.

"We write today to once again highlight our concerns about voter registration in VA facilities," began a March 6, 2008, letter from Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, and Sen. Kerry, to James B. Peake, secretary of Veterans Affairs. "Nearly one year ago, your predecessor, Secretary Nicholson, was questioned about the lack of access to nonpartisan voter registration services for our nation's veterans. A response to this inquiry was never received."

Click on link to read the full story.

HOW MANY IRAQI CHILD PROSTITUTES IS BUSH RESPONSIBLE FOR?

George Bush has been tied to a prostitution ring involving as many as 50,000 women and girls. The prostitutes, some as young as 13, are among the 1.2 million desperate Iraqis who fled to Syria after Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the U.K. Independent.

By Bob Fertik, Democrats.comPosted on March 18, 2008, Printed on March 18, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/79770/

Bush's invasion destroyed the Iraqi government and unleashed a wave of political and sectarian violence that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4 million to become refugees, according to the UN.

Facing starvation, as many as 50,000 women and girls have been forced into prostitution in Syria alone, according to Hana Ibrahim of the Women's Will Association.

"70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis," 23-year-old Abeer told the New York Times. "The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they'll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available."

According to the Times, "inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club's parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates."

Driving women and girls into prostitution violates numerous human rights agreements, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. George Bush himself denounced sex trafficking at the United Nations in 2003.

Bush's invasion of a country that posed no threat to the U.S. was illegal under both U.S. and international law, according to legal experts. Bush has been convicted of war crimes by citizen tribunals around the world, including New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Istanbul. Just las week, the towns of Brattleboro and Marlboro Vermont voted to indict and arrest Bush and Cheney.

NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO OF CHENEY IN IRAQ SPINNING SUCCESS OF THE WAR

Vice President Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday and in this YouTube video Cheney talks about all the successes that have been accomplished since the United States invaded and occupied Iraq five years ago. Cheney boasts about how the Iraqi people held an election and now have a functioning government. He also pays respects to General Petraeus and "the surge." There are only a couple of glowing errors in Cheney's robust report. The Iraqi government is a government in name only. They haven't accomplished anything. "The Surge" is more of a tribute to the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province who ran the terrorists out of their town and cities than anything the U.S. military has done. Not seen here, but during his press conference, Cheney is still clinging to the notion that Saddam Hussein had links with Al Qaeda before the war even though all intelligence proves otherwise.

See the Cheney video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K-KsfALlYY

FIVE YEARS LATER, IRAQIS STILL LACK BASIC SERVICES

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion in Iraq. While security has improved, there are growing concerns by both Iraqis and U.S. military officials that it will rise again in the near future. As has been widely noted, this lull in violence has not led to political progress.

It also hasn’t led to an increase in services in Iraqis’ everyday lives.

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/17/iraq-poll-anniversary/

McClatchy reports on these “worms in the water” five years after “liberation”:

To them, the real crime is that five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, they still swelter in the summer and freeze in the winter because of a lack of electricity. Government rations are inevitably late, incomplete or expired. Garbage piles up for days, sometimes weeks, emanating toxic fumes.

The list goes on: black-market fuel, phone bills for land lines that haven’t worked in years, education and health-care systems degraded by the flight of thousands of Iraq’s best teachers and doctors. […]

In some poor areas of Baghdad, militias or Iranian-backed charities have become the main source of propane tanks, food staples, garbage collection and other services that the government should provide.

A new poll for BBC, ABC, ARD and NHK finds that a majority of Iraqis think their lives are good, “more than at any time in the last three years.” Yet at the same time, 72 percent oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq and 61 percent believe that these troops are making the security situation worse. Additionally, 53 percent say that Bush’s “surge” has “made overall security worse, not better,” and a plurality want foreign forces to leave immediately.

A look at some areas of Iraqi life that the surge hasn’t been able to lift up. In many cases, these services are worse than they were before the U.S. invasion:
Services
% Rating ‘Bad’
% Rating ‘Good’
Snapshot Of Problems
Availability Of Jobs
70
29
The nationwide unemployment rate is currently between 25-40%, where it has remained since November 2005, according to the Brookings Institution.
Supply Of Electricity
88
12
The average hours of electricity per day is at 9.7 hours nationwide, one of the lowest levels since the surge began in early 2007. Baghdad currently has an average of 7.5 hours of electricity, down from pre-war levels of 16-24 hours.
Availability Of Clean Water
68
30
In late 2007, the World Health Organization confirmed that cholera had infected at over 7,000 Iraqis. Cholera is “typically spread by drinking contaminated water.”
Availability Of Medical Care
62
37
New ICRC report finds that hospitals lack “qualified staff and basic drugs.” Health care facilities “have not been properly maintained, and the care they provide is often too expensive for ordinary Iraqis.”
Freedom To Live Anywhere Without Persecution
60
40
In August 2007, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization indicated that “the total number of internally displaced Iraqis [had] more than doubled, to 1.1 million from 499,000” since the surge started in February. Baghdad, which once used to be a 65 percent Sunni majority city, “is now 75 percent Shia.”

CHENEY TELLS REPORTERS IN BAGHDAD THERE WAS A LINK BETWEEN IRAQ AND AL QAEDA

Over five years ago, Vice President Dick Cheney was telling anyone who would listen to him that there was a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Since then all intelligence reports have indicated there NEVER was a tie between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but that hasn't stopped Cheney.

At a press conference in Baghdad Monday, Cheney was still talking about how there was a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda before the United States invaded and occupied Iraq five years ago.

During the press conference, Cheney again cited a thoroughly-debunked Weekly Standard article written by his own biographer Stephen Hayes as laying out the best case of an Iraq/al Qaeda connection. “It was the Weekly Standard that dealt with this subject,” Cheney said.

Though Cheney urged reporters to “go read the report,” reporters will have a difficult time doing that. According to ABC News, the new Pentagon report “won’t be emailed to reporters and it won’t be posted online.” So you’ll just have to take Dick Cheney’s word for it.

Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/17/cheney-iraq-al-qaeda-again/

Before the Iraq war began, Dick Cheney was among the most prominent messengers of the false claim that Saddam Hussein had a relationship with al Qaeda. For example, he said it was “pretty well confirmed” that a 9/11 hijacker met with Iraqi intelligence officials before 9/11.

Over the past five years, numerous intelligence reports have conclusively proved that there was no Iraq/al Qaeda relationship. A Senate Intelligence Committee report stated in Sept. 2006 that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were not collaborators, but rather enemies.

More recently, a study commissioned by the Defense Department to look into the Iraq/al Qaeda ties “showed no connection between the two.” But Dick Cheney still isn’t convinced. Speaking at a press conference in Iraq today, Cheney shot down the new report. He acknowledged that — while no “operational link” has been found between Iraq and al Qaeda — it’s “pretty clear” there is a link:

CHENEY: Well, this is no operational link. But there was, as I recall from looking at it, extensive links with Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Egyptian Islamic Jihad was the organization headed by Zawahiri, and he merged EIJ with Al Qaeda when he became the deputy director of Al Qaida, Osama bin Laden’s number two. Now, was that a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda? Seems to me pretty clear that there was.

But it’s a question — I would urge you to go read the report. I know ABC reported on it. If you dig into the report in depth, I think you may find that there was an extensive relationship with a broad range of terrorist groups, that he was a state sponsor of terror. And I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.

To refresh everyone’s memories about Zarqawi, he operated in a region of Iraq before the war that was independent of Saddam and completely outside his control.

During the press conference, Cheney again cited a thoroughly-debunked Weekly Standard article written by his own biographer Stephen Hayes as laying out the best case of an Iraq/al Qaeda connection. “It was the Weekly Standard that dealt with this subject,” Cheney said.

Though Cheney urged reporters to “go read the report,” reporters will have a difficult time doing that. According to ABC News, the new Pentagon report “won’t be emailed to reporters and it won’t be posted online.” So you’ll just have to take Dick Cheney’s word for it.

Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »

CNN REPORTS: FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBER KILLS 40 IN IRAQ. TWO U.S. SOLDIERS ALSO KILLED

Vice President Dick Cheney was no sooner on the ground in Baghdad than a female suicide bomber blew herself up and killed 40 Iraqis in Karbala and injured another 65. Two U.S. soldiers were also killed Monday in Iraq.

CNN's John King reported Baghdad is much calmer than when he last visited the city, but he said their are parts of Baghdad that no Western journalist can go out of fear of being killed or kidnapped.

Female suicide bomber kills 40 in Iraq, official says

Story Highlights
NEW: 2 U.S. soldiers killed by roadside bomb in Baghdad on Monday, U.S. says
NEW: Other roadside bombs in Baghdad kill one police officer, injure four people

Death toll rises to 40 in explosion in Karbala, official says; 65 injured

Explosion was near holy shrine for Shiite Muslims, burial spot of Hussein bin Ali

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/17/iraq.main/index.html

KARBALA, Iraq (CNN) -- A female suicide bomber apparently targeting Shiite worshippers killed at least 40 people and wounded at least 65 in Karbala on Monday, according to an Interior Ministry official.

The incident occurred one-half mile from the Imam Hussein shrine of Karbala.
Karbala is a Shiite holy city, and the Imam Hussein shrine is one of Shiite Islam's holiest locations. The shrine marks the burial spot of Hussein bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, who was killed in battle nearby in 680.
No more information was immediately available about the blast southwest of the capital city, Baghdad.

Earlier Monday, in Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol, killing one officer and wounding another, the Interior Ministry told CNN.

A short time later, another roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, wounding four bystanders, a ministry official said.

The first attack took place about 8:30 a.m. in the upscale Mansour neighborhood, where law enforcement officials have come under frequent attacks in recent weeks.

Also Monday, two American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, officials said.
The incident occurred about 12:20 p.m. as the soldiers were "conducting a route-clearance combat operation north of Baghdad," according to a news release.
The names of the soldiers were not immediately released.

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in the Iraqi capital Monday on an unannounced visit.
Cheney told reporters that the five years in Iraq since the war's start has been "well worth the effort."
He said he met with top Iraqi officials. He appeared at a news conference with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to the country.
Cheney began a trip to the Middle East on Sunday with an official itinerary that listed stops in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and the West Bank, according to the White House.

CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

IF BAGHDAD IS SO SECURE, WHY ALL THIS SECURITY FOR CHENEY'S VISIT?

Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Baghdad under extremely tight security that had him flying by helicopter to the Green Zone because the streets are too dangerous to drive on. The Vice President's plane arrived at the Baghdad airport with all but the landing lights turned off because mortar fire from insurgents could easily bring it down if they could see it.

Cheney wore a flak-jacket during his ride on the chopper from the airport to the Green Zone.

Despite all these security precautions, Cheney claims Baghdad is a city enjoying peace and quiet due to the success of "the surge."

Naturally, FOX NEWS will ONLY report how successful the Cheney visit was to Baghdad and how pleased Cheney is with "the surge."


Explaining Dick's Trip to Iraq

Posted: 17 Mar 2008 12:40 PM CDT

By Brandon Friedman

http://www.vetvoice.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=783

Vice President Dick Cheney has been in Iraq to highlight just how safe and secure the country actually is. In fact, according to the AP, he
said there was no question but there had been a dramatic improvement in security.

So let's take a look at that:

To prove his point, Cheney landed at Baghdad International Airport, then flew by helicopter into the dusty, heavily secured Green Zone for talks with U.S. military and diplomatic officials and the Iraqi prime minister.

He flew by helicopter because the roads are too dangerous for him to drive. The Green Zone is "heavily secured" because, if it weren't, it would either be overrun or it would be the scene of intense sectarian fighting.

For security reasons, Cheney officials divulged few details about the vice president's schedule and asked reporters not to report on his location until he had moved on to another.

Cheney officials declined to divulge details on his whereabouts because if people knew where he was, the location would likely be attacked. And not only would the Vice President be a target, but these "Cheney officials" have no faith in the Iraqi security forces or the American military to stop such an attack, otherwise there would be no reason to keep his visits secret.

Cheney's motorcade zigzagged through Baghdad to meetings as helicopter gunships circled overhead. Explosions were heard in parts of the city, but none were near the vice president.
Cheney's motorcade "zigzagged through Baghdad" because stopping--or even slowing down--can, and often does, mean that you'll be hit.

Helicopter gunships "circled overhead" because there was no other way to guarantee the Vice President's safety. To be clear, this was not an issue that could be handled safely by a Secret Service detail or a light infantry company. This was a situation that called for 30mm chain guns, Hellfire rockets, and Sidewinder missiles.

Explosions were "heard in parts of the city" because there's always somebody in contact in Baghdad.

Despite what Vice President Cheney would have you believe, Iraq is a country locked in a cyclical, bloody sectarian conflict. In fact, while he was there, two American soldiers were killed just north of Baghdad and a female suicide bomber killed 39 in an attack near a mosque in Karbala.

IRAQ WAR DISAPPEARS FROM TV

The Bush White House and their propaganda arm, FOX NEWS, have been doing their level best to "spike" any story about the Iraq War, but is there any reason why the rest of electronic have bailed out of Iraq War coverage?

Why is it there has to be wall-to-wall coverage on the upcoming election? Why does every lurid detail of former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer's tryst with a hooker have to get so much coverage? New York is ONLY one of the 51 states.

Why is it FOX NEWS will use any excuse to trot out footage of scantily-clad Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and even dipping into the archives to run footage of the late Anna Nicole Smith showing off her enmormous breasts?

The flimsly excuse that all these are what the public wants is bogus.

Judging by the success of my blog, CORKSPHERE, http://corksphere.blogspot.com/ which pulls in over 1,000 "hits" a day, there is a huge appetite for new of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because that is all I write about.

Television news is a disgrace, if not a total joke.

The United States has 160,000 young Amerians deployed to Iraq and 30,000 deployed to Afghanistan and we are fast approaching 4,000 young Americans KILLED in Iraq, and the television media considers covering the Iraq war a waste of time.

What is a waste of time is watching network and cable news.

Commentary by Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE, http://corksphere.blogspot.com/

Remember the war in Iraq?
By Miami Herald. 17 Mar 2008-->

The question isn’t entirely facetious. The war has nearly vanished from TV screens over the past few months, replaced by stories about the fascinating presidential campaign and faltering economy.

Yet Americans continue to fight and die there, five years after the war started in March 2003.

“It’s no big secret that this is a war that everyone has grown tired of,” said CNN correspondent Arwa Damon, whose documentary “On Deadly Ground: The Women of Iraq” is airing several times this month. “Iraqis are aware of it. They think it’s a story that people are tired of hearing about. That’s what makes our job more crucial.”

ABC News will draw attention to the war this week with the fifth edition of its “Where Things Stand” series, polling and interviewing Iraqis about what is happening in their country.

Statistics clearly illustrate the diminished attention. For the first 10 weeks of the year, the war accounted for 3 percent of television, newspaper and Internet stories in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s survey of news coverage. During the same period in 2007, Iraq filled 23 percent of the news hole.

The difference is even more stark on cable news networks: 24 percent of the time spent on Iraq last year, just 1 percent this year.

“The fact that it went down didn’t surprise me,” said Tom Rosenstiel, the project’s director. “But the fact that it almost disappeared is something I didn’t expect.”

The fatigue factor is hard to fight.

From a journalist’s standpoint, the story hasn’t changed for several months. The American “surge” appears to have made progress, and while Iraq is hardly safe, pockets of the country are much safer than before.

It’s possible to pinpoint the exact week that the switch turned off. The war averaged 30 minutes per week of coverage last year on the three network evening newscasts up until Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces, testified in September about the surge’s progress, according to news consultant Andrew Tyndall. In the last 15 weeks of the year, the broadcasts collectively spent four minutes per week on the war.

A week before Petraeus’ testimony, Katie Couric did some of her best journalism since joining CBS during a trip to Iraq and Syria.
Her reward? The least-watched week for the “CBS Evening News” since at least 1987, and probably long before.

“The story there is so difficult to cover and there’s so little to get to that represents something you haven’t said already and haven’t shown already,” said Paul Friedman, senior vice president of CBS News.

It’s also dangerous and expensive, he said.
Unless the story changes dramatically, Friedman said, the point may come when a network pulls full-time staff from the country.

Whether the media is to blame or not, people clearly know less about what’s going on in Iraq than they used to. About half of Americans have consistently been able to correctly estimate how many U.S. military personnel have died there, most recently last August. But a survey conducted two weeks ago by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found only 28 percent knew that just about 4,000 Americans have been killed.

To this point, the networks say they haven’t cut back on their staffing and commitment to covering Iraq.

“It’s clear that this is going to be a big story for some time to come,” said ABC News President David Westin. “It’s our job to find ways of presenting that story in the most memorable and compelling ways to our audience because they need to know what’s going on there.”
That means replacing micro stories - how many people were killed by the latest roadside bomb - with macro stories of investigations and subtle changes in Iraqi society, said NBC News President Steve Capus.

For correspondents, the trade-off is less exposure on the air for more interesting stories that show enterprise. ABC’s Terry McCarthy reported a love story with a Sunni woman and Shiite man marrying to the backdrop of sectarian violence in Baghdad. NBC’s Richard Engel spent 10 days in Najaf reporting on Iranian influence there, and Damon got a strong viewer reaction to her story about a 5-year-old boy whose face was doused with gasoline.

“There is always news out there if you look for it,” said Jon Klein, CNN U.S. president. “What too many news organizations were doing was covering the car bomb du jour, and when the car bombing ceased, the coverage ceased.”

Still, Engel senses a growing dissatisfaction among some correspondents about the lack of air time.

Engel said he believed war news would come back to the fore. It was pushed back following the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, but those stories faded. This interval is just longer than the others, he said.

“Obviously, the economy is really critical and the campaign is really critical,” Rosenstiel said. “But you do have a sense that when all is said and done, when we have a new president, the thing that will dominate the presidency is the war.”

WAR IN IRAQ KEPT AWAY FROM PUBLIC

We have been writing on this blog for months how the mainstream media in the United States has abandoned coverage of the Iraq war.

Now comes a story backing up what we have been writing.

War In Iraq Kept Away From Public

By Connecticut Post. 17 Mar 2008-->

Q: Professor News, what happened to the war in Iraq? A: If you have lost track, I am not surprised. Americans are still being killed and wounded there. So are Iraqis. Yet the war is receiving less and less news coverage.

It’s a vanishing war. Are the news media bored with it?

Last Monday The New York Times had only one story from Iraq. It was about a 2-year-old Iraqi girl who had been flown to Nashville for heart surgery. U.S. Marines picked up the expenses. Nice, but was that all there was from Iraq?

At least the Times had a heart-warming feature. Other news outlets seem to have forgotten about the war entirely unless something really bad happens to our forces.

Try to find something about the war in the March 17 issues of Time and Newsweek. Zilch.
Later Monday, five U.S. soldiers on foot patrol were reported killed in a suicide bombing. It was the deadliest attack against the U.S. military since five soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing on Jan. 28.

That got some attention on TV and radio on Monday and in the newspapers on Tuesday. It made Page 1 of The New York Times but not The Washington Post.

We can expect a lot of stories about the war in Iraq to mark its fifth anniversary next Wednesday. It was on March 19, 2003, that coalition forces, led by the U.S., started the invasion.

But after an orgy of look-backs, I bet coverage will fade again. It shouldn’t.

This war is the second longest in U.S. history, after Vietnam, and the second costliest, after World War II. About 157,000 U.S. service members are now in Iraq, many on their second or third tour. Another 10,000 are from the United Kingdom and other coalition countries.

As of March 7, 3,975 Americans had been killed in Iraq and 29,320 had been wounded. At least 81,000 Iraqi civilians — including children — have been killed in various forms of violence since March 2003. Some studies put the total at 600,000. Epidemiologists believe another 650,000 Iraqis have died from indirect causes.

The cost of the war is staggering. One estimate says it will total at least $3 trillion dollars, many times more than the official total of $600 billion to date. The $3 trillion total comes from Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate, and Linda Bilmes of Harvard University in their new book titled, appropriately, “The Three Trillion Dollar War.”

To the direct cost of the war, the two American economists added costs that will be absorbed in the defense budget (to refit the military and help veterans) and costs to our economy (for increasing an already massive deficit).

Fortunately, NPR is still filing regular reports from Iraq. “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS is still running photos, names and hometowns of American service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Otherwise, we can go for days without being told anything substantial about the war. Maybe we will see a brief item in the newspaper, or hear a passing mention on TV or radio.

Yes, the rate of violence is down in Iraq. But typically five or six Americans are killed there each week. The war is not going away. There is no end in sight.

I think it is worth at least a Page 1 box in the newspapers every day and a report near the top of every TV and radio news program.

The war in Iraq deserves much more coverage. It should still be considered a big story five years later.

5th ANNIVERSARY OF IRAQ WAR AND THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT "THE SURGE"

There has been much written and said in the past few days about the success of "the surge" in Iraq as the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War will be held on Wednesday.

Vice President Cheney and Senators' McCain, Lieberman and Graham are all visiting Iraq and will no doubt be holding press conferences to sing the praises of "the surge."

But what about the real truth about "the surge" and not just Bush administration and Republican spin.

Here is a story that sheds an entirely different picture of "the surge" and the consequences it is sure to bring in Iraq.

Rule, Not Reconciliation
Foreign Policy in Focus

Dahr Jamail March 17, 2008
Editor: Erik Leaver

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5074

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, rhetoric around the "success" of the so-called surge continues. Presidential hopefuls, along with members of the Bush administration, continue to tout "progress," citing fewer U.S. casualties and moves amongst Iraqi groups towards "reconciliation." While indeed, there has been a reduction in violence, it is lost in the headlines that thousands of Iraqis still are losing their lives each month in the conflict.

But even worse, the "success" of the surge has the potential to bring violence to all time highs.

In his final State of the Union address in January, George W. Bush proudly held up the newly formed "Awakening Groups," known locally in Iraq as the Sahwa, as examples of both Iraqi cooperation and independence. Members of these groups now total nearly 80,000, and are paid $300 of U.S. taxpayer money a month to not attack occupation forces.

These groups are referred to as "Concerned Local Citizens" by the military, as though they are comprised of concerned fathers and uncles who suddenly became keen to collaborate with members of a foreign occupation force which has eviscerated their country.

In reality, most of the Sahwa are resistance fighters who are taking the money, arms, and ammunition, whilst biding their time to build their forces to move, once again, against the occupation forces which now support them, in addition to planning to move against the Shia dominated government. Furthermore, it is widely known in Iraq that many of the Sahwa are al-Qaeda members, the irony of which is not lost to Iraqis, who heard the U.S. propaganda as to the reasons the Sahwa were formed: to drive al-Qaeda from Iraq and to promote security so as to enable political reconciliation within the government in Baghdad by providing the space for this to occur.

Illustrating the counter-productive nature of Bush's plan, Iraq's puppet government, led by U.S.-installed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is having nothing to do with the Sahwa. When the U.S. military began to organize the Sahwa by buying off prominent Tribal Sheikhs across Iraq's al-Anbar province, Maliki made it clear that none of the Sahwa would ever be granted positions within the government security apparatus.

And why should he feel differently? With Shia mlitiamen and death squad members he supports comprising the brunt of the Iraqi military and police, why would Maliki choose to grant legitimacy to the very groups who wish to gain a counter-balance of power in the Baghdad government?

Despite the periodic bickering and blaming from the Bush administration aimed at Maliki and his government, the Prime Minister remains in power for the sole reason that he and his cronies enjoy the backing of the occupation forces. After all, this is an "Iraqi" government that is located within the Green Zone. It is an "Iraqi" government that would not last five minutes without that kind of protection, as polls in Iraq indicate that it enjoys less than one percent support from the Iraqi population.

Arming (and splitting) Shia and Sunni
"I can't think of a more classic example of divide and rule," Phil Aliff, a then active duty U.S. soldier with the 10th Mountain Division told me at Fort Drum last October. He served nearly one year in Iraq from August 2005 to July 2006, in the areas of Abu Ghraib City and Fallujah, both west of Baghdad. Aliff was disgusted in the U.S. policy of, as he described it, "Arming the Sunni while politically supporting the Shia ... how is that promoting reconciliation?"

According to the U.S. military, 82 percent of the Sahwa are Sunnis. Now the Sahwa, as my Iraqi colleague Ahmed Ali and I have been reporting for Inter Press Service, are openly challenging the government in Baghdad. In Baquba, the capital city of Diyala province, they are in the process of forcing the resignation of the Shia police chief of the province, Gen. Ghanim al-Qureyshi. A local Sahwa member told Ali in Baquba recently that their demands also include "the nomination of four Sunni assistants to be available as the new police chief, hiring 5,000 members of the Sahwa to serve as government security personnel, and government police no longer to be allowed into certain predominantly Sunni districts in an effort to eliminate the sectarian conduct of the police."

So much for reconciliation. The Sahwa albeit wrought with its own infighting, corruption, and power struggles, now form an effective counterweight to the Iraqi government and are beginning to demand posts in various ministries in Baghdad, as well as power within government security forces.

Click on link above to read full story....

A MUST VIEW VIDEO OF 101ST AIRBORNE GIS' EXPERIENCE WITH IRAQI ARMY

The Iraq Veterans Against the War wrapped up their press conference in Washington yesterday and in this must see VIDEO http://therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitch=0&thisid=1140&thisview=item 101st Airborne soldier Jesse Hamilton talks about how the Iraqi Army refused to follow the "Rules of Engagement" and would shoot indiscriminately at anyone they saw, including Iraqi civilians.

SURVEY: VETS HAVE TROUBLE ADJUSTING BACK HOME

At least one in four Connecticut soldiers in a recent survey fit the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder after they returned from overseas deployments, according to a new study.

It also suggested troops are reluctant to seek counseling from mental health workers, and about half said their general health was “much worse” or “somewhat worse” than before their wartime deployments.

Survey: Vets have trouble adjusting back home

The Hartford Courant via The Associated PressPosted : Sunday Mar 16, 2008 15:40:17 EDT

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/03/ap_readjustment_031608/

HARTFORD, Conn.— At least one in four Connecticut soldiers in a recent survey fit the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder after they returned from overseas deployments, according to a new study.

It also suggested troops are reluctant to seek counseling from mental health workers, and about half said their general health was “much worse” or “somewhat worse” than before their wartime deployments.

The findings come from surveys sent to 1,000 Connecticut troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The study is being conducted by Central Connecticut State University’s Center for Public Policy and Social Research with help from the Yale School of Medicine.

More than 11,000 state residents have returned from wartime deployments in the past five years, according to state officials. In the last nine months, a state hot line has fielded more than 300 calls for help from Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their family members.

"CAN I GET YOU A GLASS OF WATER MR. VICE PRESIDENT?"

Vice President Dick Cheney has made an unannounced visit to Iraq.

We can only hope he is thirsty and somebody offers him a glass of water. The "dance of the seven veils" will look like a hoedown compared to how Cheney will dance around so he avoids having a glass of water while he is in Iraq.

I'm sure the veep knows his old company, Halliburton and their subsidiary, KBR, have been providing U.S. troops in Iraq with contaminated water according to the Inspector General's office.

A recent report by the Inspector General found KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton the company that Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of at one time, has been delivering contaminated water to U.S. troops in Iraq. On a video seen here, Senator (ND-D) Byron Dorgan talks about the Inspector General report and provides charts indicating how KBR was sending contaminated water to the U.S. military personnel in Iraq. http://therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitch=0&thisid=1113&thisview=item

I'm sure Vice President Cheney brought his own bottled water from Washington, D.C. to Baghdad.

God forbid Vice President Dick Cheney would have to drink the same contaminated water his old company, Halliburton, has been providing our U.S. military in Iraq.

CNN REPORTS: CHENEY MAKES SURPRISE VISIT TO IRAQ

Vice President Dick Cheney has made an unannounced visit to Iraq where he is expected to meeting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Cheney's visit comes one day after Sen. John McCain, Sen. Joe Lieberman and Sen. Lindsay Graham all visited Baghdad.

(Editor's comment: The PSD (Personal Security Detail) will be bumping into each other trying to protect all the visiting VIPs from Washington. One wonders how much all the extra security will cost and how much money will be spent on gasoline for choppers flying overhead and Humvees prowling the streets just to make sure nobody takes a potshot at Cheney.)

Cheney makes unannounced visit to Iraq

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/17/cheney.iraq/index.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in Baghdad on Monday on an unannounced visit, the Iraqi prime minister's office said.

Cheney plans to meet with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister's office said.

Cheney began a trip to the Middle East on Sunday with an official itinerary that listed stops in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and the West Bank, according to the White House.

IRAQIS UNMOVED BY MCCAIN VISIT---TIME MAGAZINE

Apparently Republican Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain was under the false assumption that Iraqis would be greeting him with flowers and candy like Vice President Dick Cheney said five years ago when U.S. forces invaded and occupied Iraq.

However, McCain was treated as just another politician making a junket to Baghdad to try and boost his Oval office aspirations and he didn't fool the Iraqi people.

McCain is expected to return to the U.S. after making a stop in London for a fund-raiser and FOX NEWS will be giving him plenty of "face time" so he can talk about how wonderful everything is going in Iraq and how "the surge" has been a roaring success.

It is just a pity there are so many Americans who are taken in by the propaganda of the FOX NEWS reichwing Republican public relations machine.

There is hardly a day goes by this blogger doesn't present a long list of security incidents in Iraq, and, yes, in the area supposedly cleared up by "the surge," as well as a growing list of Americans killed in Iraq. There have been 14 deaths of American GIs in Iraq in the past four days.

McCain was accompanied on his "pep talk" tour of Baghdad's "Green Zone" by turncoat Senator Joseph Lieberman and military wannabe Senator Lindsay Graham, who lives under the delusion that serving in the JAG office was the same as being in combat.

When FOX NEWS does show McCain, Lieberman and Graham touring a Baghdad neighborhood, take a look around at the security precautions. The cameras won't show it all, but you can bet your bottom dollar there will be PSD (Personal Security Detail) soldiers everywhere, plus Humvees and overhead choppers will be circling over the "good will tour."

What a farce.

Comments by Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE.

Iraqis Unmoved by McCain Visit

By Charles Crain/Baghdad
TIME MAGAZINE

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1722800,00.html?xid=feed-cnn-topics

"All American leaders — and people — know what is going on in Iraq," said Hassan Suneid, a member of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party on Sunday. Senator John McCain's surprise visit to Baghdad, he said, was "only for the sake of his candidacy."
McCain, who is making his eighth trip to Iraq since the U.S. invaded the country in 2003, arrived on Sunday, although for security reasons, only a handful of Iraqis had been made aware of his visit.

"Unfortunately," said Faleh Hassan Shansal, a member of the parliamentary bloc loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr, "all American politicians and leaders sneak into Iraq in the darkness, without letting anyone know."

The U.S. Embassy, citing security concerns, has not released McCain's itinerary, but he is expected to meet with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and author of the "surge" strategy backed by McCain, as well as with some Iraqi officials. But by entering Iraq unannounced, staying about a day, and leaving before many Iraqis will even know he was there, chances are slim that the Arizona senator will learn much he didn't already know.

McCain is being accompanied by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham and former Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, who broke with his party in large part over his support for the war. Both men are strong supporters of McCain's campaign for president.

Perhaps recognizing that the visit might be perceived as a campaign stop rather than a Senate fact-finding mission, McCain has no plans to meet with the media while in Iraq.

McCain's trips have not always garnered the kind of publicity he may have liked. In early 2007, as the U.S. troop surge was getting underway, he pointed to his trip to a Baghdad market as proof that it was possible to "walk freely" in Baghdad, and that the media was not providing Americans with a full picture of the situation in Iraq. It was soon revealed that McCain had been accompanied on his market trip by two attack helicopters and dozens of American soldiers, calling into question his grasp of the situation.

That embarrassment has since been softened somewhat by the drop in violence that began in mid-2007, although violence levels have begun rising again in recent months. But, while McCain's strong support for the surge has set him apart from his potential Democratic opponents and even from many Republicans, the perception in the U.S. that McCain offers a significantly different approach to Iraq than can be expected from his rivals is not shared by many Iraqis. They see more similarities than differences among U.S. politicians, and are not expecting much to change in 2009.

"Things will never change, whether Clinton or Obama or McCain comes to the White House," said Suneid. "Whoever is in the White House will continue the American agenda."

IRAQ: 'RULES OF ENGAGEMENT THROWN OUT THE WINDOW'

Do many people know what the ROE are? They are the "Rules of Engagement" and they are printed on a little card you carry in the breast pocket of your fatigues. And that is where it stays....at least in Iraq.

The ROE is kind of like General Orders in the military. The General Orders state you are not supposed to leave your post. Makes sense. But like the Rules of Engagement, the General Orders can get a little muddied up in the heat of battle.

You may not abandon your post until relieved, but if your position is being overrun by the enemy you sure as hell aren't going to stand there and be slaughtered. The same goes for the Rules of Engagement in a war like the Iraq war where you can't tell the good guys from the bad guys.

You are instructed not to kill innocent civilians, but sometimes an innocent civilian can turn into a deadly killer in the blink of an eye.

Forget about the ROE, or Rules of Engagement in Iraq. ROE should be changed to CYA, and I think everyone knows what CYA stands for.

Commentary by Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE, and a former Squad Leader with the United States Army Combat Engineers and a Korean War veteran.

Iraq: 'Rules of Engagement Thrown out the Window'

By Dahr Jamail, IPS NewsPosted on March 16, 2008, Printed on March 16, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/story/79878/

Garret Reppenhagen received integral training about the Geneva Conventions and the Rules of Engagement during his deployment in Kosovo. But in Iraq, "Much of this was thrown out the window," he says.

"The men I served with are professionals," Reppenhagen told the audience at a panel of U.S. veterans speaking of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, "They went to Iraq to defend the U.S. But we found rapidly we were killing Iraqis in horrible ways. But we had to in order to remain safe ourselves. The war is the atrocity."
The event, which has drawn international media attention, was organised by Iraq Veterans Against the War. It aims to show that their stories of wrongdoing in both countries were not isolated incidents limited to a few "bad apples", as the Pentagon claims, but were everyday occurrences.
The panel on the "Rules of Engagement" (ROE) during the first full day of the gathering, named "Winter Soldier" to honour a similar gathering 30 years ago of veterans of the Vietnam War, was held in front of a visibly moved audience of several hundred, including veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. Winter soldiers, according to U.S. founding father Thomas Paine, are the people who stand up for the soul of their country, even in its darkest hours
Reppenhagen served in Iraq from February 2004-2005 in the city of Baquba, 40 kms northeast of Baghdad. He said his first experience in Iraq was being on a patrol that killed two Iraqi farmers as they worked in their field at night.

"I was told they were out in the fields farming because their pumps only operated with electricity, which meant they had to go out in the dark when there was electricity," he explained, "I asked the sergeant, if he knew this, why did he fire on the men. He told me because the men were out after curfew. I was never given another ROE during my time in Iraq."

Click on link above to read Dahr Jamail's full story.

THERE RARELY WAS A SUICIDE IN IRAQ BEFORE 2003

One of George Bush's most insidious legacies in Iraq thus remains its most mysterious; the marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity, the birth of an unprecedentedly huge army of Muslims inspired by the idea of death.

The US's occupation of Iraq will see to it that the Lion of Babylon rises again .. سنـُبعـَث ُ من جَديد ، وإلى ضَـيـرِِهِـم

This is perhaps the most frightening and ghoulish legacy of George Bush's invasion of Iraq five years ago. Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed at least 13,000 men, women and children – our most conservative estimate gives a total figure of 13,132 – and wounded a minimum of 16,112 people. If we include the dead and wounded in the mass stampede at the Baghdad Tigris river bridge in the summer of 2005 – caused by fear of suicide bombers – the figures rise to 14,132 and 16,612 respectively. Again, it must be emphasised that these statistics are minimums. For 529 of the suicide bombings in Iraq, no figures for wounded are available. Where wounded have been listed in news reports as "several", we have made no addition to the figures. And the number of critically injured who later died remains unknown. Set against a possible death toll of half a million Iraqis since the March 2003 invasion, the suicide bombers' victims may appear insignificant; but the killers' ability to terrorise civilians, militiamen and Western troops and mercenaries is incalculable.

Robert Fisk

The cult of the suicide bomber

http://abutamam.blogspot.com/

There rarely was a suicide in Iraq before 2003 ... نادراً ما سمعنا عن إنتحار عراقي قبل الإحتلال

Few players in the 'war on terror' are more chilling, or misunderstood, than suicide bombers. Yet the true scale of their grisly activities has never been properly calculated. Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Robert Fisk details the shocking extent of the most widespread campaign of self-liquidation in human history

Never before has the Arab world witnessed a phenomenon of suicide-death on this scale. During Israel's occupation of Lebanon after 1982, one Hizbollah suicide-bombing a month was considered remarkable. During the Palestinian intifadas of the 1980s and 1990s, four per month was regarded as unprecedented. But suicide bombers in Iraq have been attacking at the average rate of two every three days since the 2003 Anglo-American invasion.

And, although neither the Iraqi government nor their American mentors will admit this, scarcely 10 out of more than a thousand suicide killers have been identified. We know from their families that Palestinians, Saudis, Syrians and Algerians have been among the bombers. In a few cases, we have names. But in most attacks, the authorities in Iraq – if they can still be called "authorities" after five years of catastrophe – have no idea to whom the bloodied limbs and headless torsos of the bombers belong.

Even more profoundly disturbing is that the "cult" of the suicide bomber has seeped across national frontiers. Within a year of the Iraqi invasion, Afghan Taliban bombers were blowing themselves up alongside Western troops or bases in Helmand province and in the capital Kabul. The practice leached into Pakistan, striking down thousands of troops and civilians, killing even the principal opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto. The London Tube and bus bombings – despite the denials of Tony Blair – were obviously deeply influenced by events in Iraq.

Throughout the five years of war, suicide bombers have focused on Iraq's own American-trained security forces rather than US troops. At least 365 attacks have been staged against Iraqi police or paramilitary forces. Their targets included at least 147 police stations (1,577 deaths), 43 army and police recruitment centres (939 deaths), 91 checkpoints (with a minimum of 564 fatalities), 92 security patrols (465 deaths) and numerous other police targets (escorts, convoys accompanying government ministers, etc). One of the recruitment centres – in the centre of Baghdad – was assaulted by suicide bombers on eight separate occasions.

By contrast, suicide bombers have attacked only 24 US bases at a cost of 100 American dead and 15 Iraqis, and 43 American patrols and checkpoints, during which 116 US personnel were killed along with at least 56 civilians, 15 of whom appear to have been shot by American soldiers in response to the attacks, and another 26 of whom were children standing next to a US patrol.

Most of the Americans were killed west or north of Baghdad. Suicide attacks on the police concentrated on Baghdad and Mosul and the Sunni towns to the immediate north and south of Baghdad.

The trajectory of the suicide bombers shows a clear preference for military targets throughout the insurgency, with attacks on Americans gradually decreasing from 2006 and individual attacks on Iraqi police patrols and police recruits increasing over the past two years, especially in the 100 miles north of Baghdad. Just as the Islamist murderers of Algeria – and their military opponents – favoured the fasting month of Ramadan for their bloodiest assaults in the 1990s, so the suicide bombers of Iraq mobilise on the eve of religious festivals. There was a pronounced drop in suicide assaults during the period of sectarian liquidations after 2005, either because the bombers feared interception by the throat-cutters of tribal gangs working their way across Baghdad, or because – a grim possibility – they were themselves being used in the sectarian murder campaign.

The most politically powerful attacks occurred inside military bases – including the Green Zone in Baghdad (two in one day in October 2004) – and against the UN headquarters (in which the UN envoy Sergio de Mello was killed) and the International Red Cross offices in Baghdad in 2003. By December 2003, British officials were warning that there were more "spectacular" suicide bombings to come, and the first suicide assault on a mosque took place in January of the following year when a bomber on a bicycle blew himself up in a Shia mosque in Baquba, killing four worshippers and wounding another 39.

Scarcely a year later, another suicider attacked a second Shia mosque, killing 14 worshippers and wounding 40. In February 2004, a man blew himself up on a bus outside the Shia mosque at Khadamiyah in Baghdad, killing 17 more Shia Muslims. Only a few days earlier, a man wearing an explosives belt killed four at yet another Shia mosque in the Doura district of Baghdad. The suicide campaign against Shia places of worship continued with an attack on a Mosul mosque in March 2005, killing at least 50, two more attacks in April that killed 26, and another in May in Baghdad.

While Shia mosques were being targeted in a deliberate campaign of provocation by al-Qa'ida-type suiciders, markets and hospitals frequented by Shia Muslims were also attacked. Almost all the 600 Iraqis killed by suicide bombs in May 2005 were Shias. After the partial demolition of the Shia mosque at Samarra on 22 February 2006, the "war of the mosques" began in earnest for the suicide bombers of Iraq. A Sunni mosque was blown up, with nine dead and "dozens" of wounded, and two Shia mosques were the target of suicide bombers in the same week. In early July 2006, seven suicide killers blew themselves up in Sunni and Shia mosques, leaving a total of 51 civilians dead. During the same period, a suicide bomber launched the first attack of its kind on Shia pilgrims arriving from Iran.

To read the full version of Robert Fisk's report click on the link above.

SEE VIDEO ABOUT HALLIBURTON SENDING CONTAMINATED WATER TO TROOPS IN IRAQ

A recent report by the Inspector General found KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton the company that Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of at one time, has been delivering contaminated water to U.S. troops in Iraq.

On the video seen here, Senator (ND-D) Byron Dorgan talks about the Inspector General report and provides charts indicating how KBR was sending contaminated water to the U.S. military personnel in Iraq.

http://therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitch=0&thisid=1113&thisview=item

New Inspector General report finds that Halliburton delivered contaminated water to US bases in Iraq

Transcript:MATTHEW PALEVSKY, JOURNALIST: Senator Byron Dorgan held a press conference in the US Senate to discuss a recent report by the inspector general, a report that found that US contractors had been delivering contaminated water to US troops in Iraq. The report cited KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton.(CLIP BEGINS)March 10, 2008 BYRON DORGAN, US SENATOR (ND-D): So the Pentagon is saying, well, no, Senator Dorgan and those that are disclosing this are inaccurate. Halliburton is saying it's inaccurate; the Pentagon is saying it's inaccurate; everthing's just fine. Here's what the inspector general said.

Things aren't fine.

The water was not treated as it was supposed to have been treated. Contaminated water was provided to the troops. Some troops got sick. In some cases, this water that was twice as contaminated as raw water from the Euphrates River was flowing as non-potable water to these military bases. When we got the information from the Halliburton corporation whistleblowers, Halliburton denied it, and so too did America's military. Now we know that the inspector general says, no, no, that's exactly what was happening. Exactly what was happening is this corporation's being paid to provide good-quality, disinfected water to the troops, and the fact is they weren't doing the job.(CLIP ENDS)

While most of Senator Dorgan's complaints focused on private contractors, he also took issue with the Department of Defense.(CLIP BEGINS)DORGAN: Who's going to be standing up for American soldiers if it's not going to be the Pentagon? And who's going to be standing up for the American taxpayer's interest here? Who's going to stand up on behalf of the American taxpayer if this government doesn't? If we're paying a company to treat water and make certain that water's good quality water and they're not doing it, then there ought to be consequences. We're spending billions, tens and tens of billions of dollars on these kinds of contracts. And the question is: who's doing the oversight? Who's looking over the shoulders to find out (A) the taxpayer's being properly served and (B) someone's protecting American soldiers? In this instance, the answer is no one. No one seemed to give a damn.

DISCLAIMER:Please note that TRNN (The Real News Network) transcripts are typed from a recording of the program; The Real News Network http://therealnews.com/web/index.php cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

NEW LIST OF NAMES OF GIS KILLED OR SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN IRAQ

We have a list of the latest names of U.S. military personnel killed or seriously wounded in Iraq as well as a list of violence that swept across Iraq on Sunday.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

War News for Sunday, March 16, 2008
MNF-Iraq is reporting the death of a Multi-National Division - Baghdad soldier by small-arms fire in a southwestern neighborhood of Baghdad on Saturday, March 15th.

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting the death of a Marine who died in his sleep in Camp Lejeune, N.C on Monday, March 10th.Gunnery Sgt. Christopher Scott Bachus was wounded in an explosion in Iraq and received a concussion, and he lost much of his hearing. He returned from Iraq last March 2007. The cause of his death is speculation at this point, his family said. It could take months for test results to come in. But the explosion might well have caused an undetected injury that led to his death, his brother said.

Casualty Reports:Army Sgt. Matthew Lammers, 25, of Olathe, Kan., had both legs and his left arm blown off June 10, 2007, in south Baghdad.

Ryan Kelly, 27, of Buda. Kelly lost his right leg in July 2003 to a roadside bomb in Iraq.Army Sgt. Robert Bartlett suffered brain injuries after being hit by improvised explosives in seperate incidents. Bartlett too says he often has times where he can't remember names like he did in the past.

Marine Sgt Kevin Denton suffered brain injuries after being hit by improvised explosives in seperate incidents. Denton says he still suffers headaches from the injury which happened in 2004. He also had trouble with short term memory.

Sgt. Maj. Diane Cochran of the U.S. Army career came to an abrupt halt when the Humvee ambulance she was in met head on with a Russian land mine left over from a previous war in Afghanistan. She was the only one in the ambulance who survived the explosion that was set off by a remote device. Her neck, hands and wrist were broken and her back was broken in two places and she was unconscious until after her rescue. She also suffers the residual effects of chemicals she came in contact with at the former Russian camp where her unit was assigned. She has blind spots in her right eye and a tumor behind it.

Sgt. Norris Galatas nearly three years and 19 surgeries after a bomb in Iraq sent shrapnel tearing through his abdomen in the explosion in April 2005. “He appeared to be dead “swollen and yellow” in a medically induced coma. it took nearly three months for him to become mobile.


Security incidents:Baghdad:#1: A civilian was killed and two others were injured when a car bomb detonated near a convoy of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) in western Baghdad on Sunday, an Interior Ministry source said. "A car bomb parked on the al-Amirat Street in the upscale neighborhood of Mansour blew up in the morning near a convoy of SUVs believed to be affiliated to a foreign security firm was," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The attack resulted in the damaging one of the convoy's vehicles and a nearby civilian car, along with the killing of a bystander and the wounding two others, the source said.

Diyala Prv:Baquba:#1: Two policemen were killed and three others wounded in clashes that erupted between police forces and fighters believed to belong to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militias in Baaquba, an official security source said on Sunday. "The clashes, which broke out on Sunday morning in al-Huwayder village between policemen and Mahdi Army fighters, left two security personnel killed and three others wounded," Brig. Ragheb al-Umayri, the head of the joint coordination center in Baaquba, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of IraqNajaf:#1: Unidentified gunmen on Sunday kidnapped the headmaster of the al-Mustafa School in front of his house in eastern Najaf and led him to an unknown place, a local police source said.

Baiji:#1: A power cut shut down operations at Iraq's largest oil refinery on Sunday, officials at the plant said, adding it was unclear when work would resume. Officials said exports were not affected by the incident. "This morning at 8:15 work at the refinery was stopped completely because of the shutdown of electricity," said a senior official at the refinery. An engineer at the plant said it was unclear when operations would resume.

Tikrit:#1: Two Iraqi soldiers from the 14th brigade 4th Iraqi army division were kidnapped on Tikrit_ Toz Street about14 miles east of Tikrit on Saturday evening.Hawija:#1: A car bomb exploded on Sunday morning in Hawija district, 70 km southwest of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk with no casualties reported, a police source said.

Mosul:#1: At least nine people were injured Sunday in a suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said. A suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt blew himself up near the offices of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan in Mosul, police told the Voices of Iraq VOI news agency. Two policemen and seven civilians were wounded.

Afghanistan:#1: At least 16 people have been killed in a missile strike on a building near Pakistan's northern border with Afghanistan, state television has said. The attack took place in the South Waziristan region, where tribal militants are based, Reuters news agency reported residents as saying. The Pakistani state TV report said several missiles destroyed the house of a suspected militant leader. Reuters reported the military saying seven militants were among the dead.On the home front:

VIDEO OF ANGELINA JOLIE TALKING ABOUT HER CONCERNS ABOUT IRAQI REFUGEES TO CNN'S ARWA DAMON

Actress Angelina Jolie visited Iraq about a month ago and she sat down with CNN's Arwa Damon to talk about her concerns for the four million Iraqi refugees. Since taping this interview, Jolie has expressed in a Washington Post editorial how she feels the United States military should stay in Iraq until the mission is accomplished and how she feels "the surge" is working.

Watch the CNN interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX6K9a0KIZE