The Rag Blog

The United States is expanding its two major detention centers in Iraq with the expectation that the new security crackdown in Baghdad will add hundreds and perhaps thousands of prisoners to the 17,000 it holds, U.S. military spokesmen said.

The U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq runs two large prison facilities: Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, and Camp Cropper outside Baghdad. Camp Bucca today holds 13,800 Iraqi detainees, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Clifford A. Siegfried, a military spokesman, whereas Camp Cropper holds 3,300 Iraqi detainees. But the population at Cropper is expected to grow to 5,000 within 12 months, according to a one-year military contract proposal to handle food services for detainees and Iraqi correctional officers at the facility beginning in July.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, reiterated the expected increase in detainees when he told reporters last week that the effort “to expand the U.S. capacity for detention” in Iraq was one reason 2,200 U.S. Army military police personnel are part of the troop increase in Iraq.

The Camp Cropper contract proposal, reviewed by The Washington Post, underscores the detainee increase and offers insight into U.S. detention practices in Iraq — including a ban against hiring local staffers and an emphasis on meal practices sensitive to local traditions.

According to the food contract, local Iraqis and Iraqi companies are prohibited from preparing and serving food for the detainees. Neither the U.S. government nor Iraqi government “presently has a vetting process which would accommodate Iraqi employees while ensuring adequate security,” according to the contract proposal.

Instead, the contactor is to use “expatriates and third-country nationals.” Any third-country nationals hired must live in trailers or tents provided by the contractor on a U.S. military base near the food facility. “This was done for the security and safety of the installation and the workers” and at the request of the U.S. military police battalion on the base, Siegfried said.

TANAF, Iraq, March 16 (Reuters) – Hameda Um Firas has lived most of her 70-odd years as a refugee — now she is stranded in a tent again at Iraq’s border with Syria where hundreds of Palestinians have fled to escape violence in Baghdad.

“We escaped in fear of our lives. My granddaughter was decapitated by a missile attack and our sons were killed, we fled Iraq to spare our lives,” she said, barely able to contain tears of anger at Arab countries she said should be helping.

“We are living in a miserable state in this camp,” she said as children played in dusty lanes between white tents with clothes hanging to dry on the guy ropes.

A 25-year-old who gave only his first name, Alaa, fled to the camp at the Tanaf border crossing after gunmen killed one of his brothers. “All my family are separated now, I know nothing about my brothers and where they are,” he said.

Sectarian violence and bomb attacks are driving up to 50,000 Iraqis a month from their homes, according to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which says close to 2 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq and another 2 million abroad.

UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort said there were around 34,000 Palestinians in Iraq in 2003, before the U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and around 15,000 remain.

The Palestinians came in three waves in 1948, 1967 and in the 1990s, and were given subsidised housing and the right to work — privileges compared to other refugees and a source of tension with some Iraqis forced out to make way for them.

Saddam gave them assistance and portrayed himself as a defender of the Palestinian cause.

While the numbers are relatively small, van Genderen Stort said the Palestinians were in a uniquely difficult situation because without passports they can not go to Syria, Jordan or other neighbouring countries where many Iraqis have fled.

“The difference with Palestinians is they have nowhere to go,” she said. “A lot of them have expired identity papers which the Iraqis are not extending because it’s not their priority.”

“They’re in a Catch-22. They’re targeted, they have death threats, they have these raids, but they can’t flee and when they flee they either have to do it illegally or they are stuck at the border,” she said.

Sunni Arab militant groups including al Qaeda have claimed some of the worst bomb attacks in Iraq, including many targeting Shi’ites, and foreign Arabs are viewed with deep suspicion by many Iraqis, particularly in Shi’ite areas.

“Palestinians are seen as insurgents or trouble makers … because they’re Sunnis,” said van Genderen Stort.

BAGHDAD RAID

The UNHCR said on Friday it was “deeply disturbed” by a raid on Wednesday on a Baghdad compound housing Palestinians in which at least one Palestinian was killed and several more detained.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul Karim Khalaf said the raid was in response to information a car bomb was in the complex. He said shooting broke out and three gunmen were killed and 25 arrested, including Iraqis and Palestinians.

Speaking on Al Hurra television, he rejected charges that Palestinians were deliberately targeted because of their nationality, saying that violence in Iraq was effecting everybody and the raid was based on specific intelligence.

UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said at a briefing in Geneva on Friday the Palestinians resisted the raid out of fear after months of being targeted by militias and other groups.

He said the UNCHR had reports of Palestinians forced to pay thousands of dollars to Iraqi security forces for protection from torture of family members in detention.

Iraq’s police force has been plagued by reports of infiltration by Shi’ite militias, though the Interior Ministry says it has recently taken steps to purge such elements.

The UNHCR said it was also concerned about non-governmental organisations working with Palestinians after a staff member of one group was abducted on Tuesday and found dead the next day.

Wednesday’s raid prompted at least 41 Palestinians to flee the capital to join around 850 others who have been stranded at the Syrian border since last May, the UNHCR said.

Abu Rami, who runs the refugee camp there, said tribal leaders in the mostly Sunni Arab western province of Anbar were helping support the refugees but they needed a place to go.

UNHCR is deeply disturbed by a raid conducted by the Iraqi security forces on Wednesday (14 March) in a Palestinian area in Baghdad. It left at least one Palestinian dead. Nine Palestinians are reportedly still in detention. Fifty-one people were reportedly detained initially, but released later. The raid prompted at least 41 other Palestinians to flee the capital, and they have joined 850 other Palestinians who have been stranded at the Iraq-Syria border since last May. More are expected to be on their way. Police forces and multinational forces have confirmed that the raid took place as part of the Baghdad security plan.

The dead man was a guard at one of the Baghdad mosques and reportedly suffered at least one gunshot to the head. UNHCR and other organisations have also received allegations of physical abuse and possibly torture being carried out in detention, an allegation denied by the Iraqi authorities. One ex-detainee reported he was beaten on his back and suffered a broken hand. He believed that others had been subjected to worse treatment.

The violence reportedly broke out when the Palestinians tried to resist the raid. They said they were frightened following months of being targeted by various groups. Several have been kidnapped, arrested and killed. They have often expressed concern about the lack of protection by the Iraqi security forces.

Recently, UNHCR has received reports that the families of several detained Palestinians have been forced to pay thousands of US dollars to some members of the Iraqi security forces – allegedly for protection from torture and mutilation of their family members while in detention. Higher sums have reportedly been demanded to ensure their release.

The Palestinians who arrived at the border claimed that their houses had been raided by the special forces, their furniture thrown out of their homes and that they were told they had two days to leave their homes. Others claimed they had been detained and maltreated before being released.

UNHCR is also very much concerned about the safety of NGOs working with the Palestinians. On 13 March one NGO staff dealing with the Palestinian community was abducted in front of his son by unknown men and found dead the next day.

UNHCR is working with crucial partners on the ground in Baghdad to get more information on those killed and the detained Palestinians as well as the NGO staff. At least 186 Palestinians have been confirmed murdered in Baghdad between April 2004 and January 2007. UNHCR believes the number may be significantly higher. Their enclaves in Baghdad have been the target of many militia attacks. Hundreds of Palestinian families have been evicted from their homes with nowhere to go, prevented from seeking refuge in neighbouring countries.

NAJAF, Iraq — While the Bush administration works to stop Iran from meddling in Iraq, Iranian air-conditioners fill Iraqi appliance stores, Iranian tomatoes ripen on the windowsills of kitchens here and legions of white Iranian-made Peugeots sit in Iraqi driveways.

Some Iraqi cities, including Basra, the southern oil center, buy or plan to buy electricity from Iran. The Iraqi government relies on Iranian companies to bring gasoline from Turkmenistan to alleviate a severe shortage. Iraqi officials are reviewing an application by Iran to open a branch of an Iranian bank in Baghdad, and Iran has offered to lend Iraq $1 billion.

The economies of Iraq and Iran, the largest Shiite-majority countries in the world, are becoming closely integrated, with Iranian goods flooding Iraqi markets and Iraqi cities looking to Iran for basic services.

After the two countries fought a devastating war from 1980 to 1988, Saddam Hussein maintained tight control over cross-border trade, but commerce has exploded since the American-led invasion of 2003.

Much of the money is heading in one direction, though: Iraq is becoming dependent on imports because industries here have been ravaged by the economic sanctions of the 1990s and the current sectarian violence. Reconstruction and security have lagged so far behind the expectations of ordinary Iraqis that cheap goods from Iran and neighboring countries often provide the only comforts in their lives.

“What is happening in Iraq at the moment is a lot of trade, but it’s almost all one-way trade,” Barham Salih, the Iraqi deputy prime minister for finance, said of the country’s economic ties with Iran and other neighbors. “If you take oil away, there’s a lot of imbalance in this.”

Iraqi leaders from the Shiite bloc currently in power say political and economic ties with Iran, which is governed by Shiite Persians, will inevitably strengthen. As driving factors, they cite the hostility of Sunni Arab nations to a Shiite-run Iraq and the ambivalence of the White House toward the devout Shiite parties here.

“If the Shiites do not feel protected, if they feel what they’ve achieved can’t be maintained, much of the leadership will have to work with Iran,” said Sami al-Askari, a Shiite legislator who advises Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, himself a religious Shiite with close ties to Iran. “The Arabs and the Americans are saying Iran is bad, but it’s the only recourse.”

According to one commonly cited statistic, trade between Iraq and Iran has grown by 30 percent a year since the 2003 invasion. But American officials here say no accurate numbers are available because Iran refuses to release complete figures.

Statistics from the American Embassy’s economic section show that Syria accounted for 22 percent of Iraq’s imports in 2005, and Turkey 21 percent. Iran, which has the longest border with Iraq, would be likely to fall in that range, officials said. The C.I.A. World Factbook estimates Iraq’s total imports in 2006 at $20.8 billion.

Iran has divulged a few trade numbers. Tehran told the government of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region that trade with the region amounted to more than $1 billion in 2006, said Hassan Baqi, president of the chamber of commerce in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya.

The Bush administration’s greatest success is its ability to escape accountability for its numerous impeachable offenses.

The administration’s offenses against US law, the US Constitution, civil liberties, human rights, and the Geneva Conventions, its lies to Congress and the American people, its vote-rigging scandals, its sweetheart no-bid contracts to favored firms, its political firing of Republican US Attorneys, its practice of kidnapping and torturing people in foreign hellholes, and its persecution of whistle blowers are altogether so vast that it is a major undertaking just to list them all.

Bush admits that he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spied on US citizens without warrants, a felony under the Act. Bush has shown total disrespect for civil liberty and the Constitution and has suffered rebukes from the Supreme Count. The evidence is overwhelming that the Bush administration manufactured false “intelligence” to justify military aggression against Iraq. The Halliburton contract scandals are notorious, as is the use of electronic voting machines programmed to miscount the actual vote.

The chief-of-staff to Vice President Cheney has been convicted for obstructing justice in the outing of a covert CIA officer. Proof of torture is overwhelming, and the Bush administration has even had the temerity to have permissive legislation passed after the fact that permits it to continue to torture “detainees.” The Sibel Edmonds and other whistle blower cases are well known. The Senate Judiciary Committee has just issued subpoenas to Justice (sic) Dept. officials involved in the scandalous removal of US Attorneys who refused to be politicized.

Yet the Democrats have taken impeachment “off the table.” Many Democrats and Republicans and a great many Christians can contemplate illegal military aggression against Iran, but not the impeachment of the greatest criminal administration in US history. Far from being scandalized by what the entire world views as an unjust invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US, leading Democratic and Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination rushed to inform the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, that they, if elected, will keep US troops in Iraq.

The previous occupant of the White House could not escape being impeached by the House of Representatives for lying about a consensual Oval Office sexual affair. President Nixon and his vice president, a saintly pair compared to Bush-Cheney, were both driven from office for offenses that are inconsequential by comparison. Liberals branded Ronald Reagan the “Teflon President,” but the neoconservatives’ Iran-Contra scandal was a mere dress rehearsal for their machinations in the Bush regime.

What explains Bush-Cheney invulnerability to accountability?

Perhaps the answer is that Bush has desensitized us. Like kids desensitized to violence by violent video games and movies and pornography addicts desensitized to sex, we have become desensitized by the avalanche of Bush-Cheney crimes, lies, and disdain for Congress, courts, and public opinion.

Our elected representatives, if not the American people, now regard as normal such heinous actions as war crimes, the rape of the Constitution, self-serving use of government office, and the constant stream of lies and propaganda from the highest offices of the executive branch.

Perhaps that is what disillusioned foreigners, who once looked with hope to America, mean when they say that America does not exist anymore.

If the notion has departed that the highest political offices in the land are supposed to be occupied by people who are honest and faithful to their oath to the Constitution, then we are far advanced on the road to tyranny.

LONDON (AFP) – A coroner on Friday accused the US military of a criminal breach of the international law of armed conflict after the “friendly fire” death of a British soldier in the early days of the Iraq war.

Andrew Walker ruled that Lance Corporal Matty Hull was unlawfully killed when two US jets mistakenly attacked his clearly-marked convoy in southern Iraq and criticised the Pentagon for failing to cooperate fully with the inquest.

Hull’s widow, Susan, said she was relieved with the ruling but accused the United States of letting down its main ally in Iraq by failing to explain the exact circumstances.

The US Defence Department hit back, reaffirming its own finding that the 25-year-old’s death near Basra on March 28, 2003, was a “tragic accident” and said it had given all relevant information to its British counterparts.

In a strongly-worded ruling at the hearing in Oxford, Walker said Hull’s death was avoidable and tantamount to manslaughter.

“I find there was no lawful authority to fire on the convoy. The attack on the convoy therefore amounted to an assault. It was unlawful because there was no lawful reason for it and in that respect it was criminal,” he added.

At a news conference, Susan Hull criticised US President George W. Bush, to whom she appealed directly on Thursday to release 11 censored lines from an interview between a ground controller and one of the pilots.

Al-Quds al-Arabi and Al-Hayat both give prominent play to a report in a Russian newspaper that said the US has past the point of no return for an attack on around 20 Iranian nuclear and military locations, scheduled for April 6 and code-named “Sting”. The report also said the plant the Russians are helping build (Bushehr) will be spared. Russia, for its part, has warned the Iranian authorities of the planned attack and said it can’t count on Russian support if it doesn’t cooperate with the UN process. The original report was in a Russian newspaper called Argumenti Nedelja or some such name, and picked up from there by the Novosti news agency. Al-Quds cites the news agency; Al-Hayat cites the paper.

Al-Quds, after summarizing the gist of the report, adds that the countries of the Gulf are taking steps to get ready for Iranian retaliation, the idea being that although Iran has hinted at preparations for retaliation against the US directly, the Al-Quds reporter says Arab military people don’t believe they have the capacity for that, so the more likely targets (according to these Arab sources) would be US installations and other assets in the region. He mentions Saudi Arabia and the UAE as places where authorities are taking intensive steps for the protection of US installations. “And,” he adds, “they are intensifying domestic intelligence operations within the communities [no doubt meaning Shiite communities], fearing the possible existence of sleeper cells”.

The findings of a new Pentagon study – “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” – are sobering: The conflict, it concludes, has clearly morphed from a Sunni-led insurgency fighting foreign occupation “to a struggle for the division of political and economic influence among sectarian groups and organized criminal activity.”
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In other words, “some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a civil war.” Most of the daily, convulsive conflicts are characterized by a sectarian competition for power and influence, “principally,” the report notes, “through murders, executions, and high-profile bombings.” But the report emphasizes that the violence remains relatively localized–at least among the country’s 18 provinces. While four provinces, among them Baghdad, Anbar, and Diyala, are home to 37 percent of the population, they account for some 80 percent of the country’s attacks (chart on Page 15 of the report).

The report includes cautions that it was undertaken before the current Baghdad security plan had a chance to gain steam and should be viewed as a baseline from which to measure future progress.

In that regard, as America approaches the start of the fifth year of the war in Iraq, the so-called surge plan is starting to show modest but encouraging signs under Gen. David Petraeus, who commands all U.S. military forces there. According to an Iraqi military spokesman, since the start of the plan on February 14, violent incidents in the capital are down from 1,440 between January and February to some 265 since then. Those figures most likely do not include unidentified bodies of those found murdered in Baghdad, which some estimates indicate may add another 200 people to the month’s death toll.

Residents report that market squares are coming back to life under recent U.S. efforts to close the areas to traffic even as Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the chief spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, cautioned that February had seen “an all-time high” for car bombs and reiterated calls for patience.

A slip of a girl faced one of Israel’s most feared war machines in the Occupied Palestinian Territories–the armed bulldozer–and died. This deliberate killing was no accident. Maybe the Israeli authorities would have preferred it not to happen because of the public relations backlash, but the driver of the bulldozer was wielding power that day. He had a mandate from his government to clear Palestinians out of their homes at a moment’s notice and he knew that he would be protected regardless of the crimes he dared to commit. Rachel Corrie was a US citizen, but even the US government closed ranks behind Israel and the bulldozer operator. Being an American did not protect Rachel, and four years later, the US administration still refuses to investigate her death denying her American family justice and closure.

The bulldozer killing of Rachel Corrie was not the only case of such a death in Palestine, but it was the first time a US citizen had become the target of Israel’s military. Rachel was a peace activist who had gone to Rafah in Gaza because she wanted to help bring the terrible plight of the Palestinians to the notice of the world. With others in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she believed that non-violent resistance was a means of doing that, and tragically, she achieved that with her death more than she could have ever done with her life.

Rachel was one of hundreds of foreigners who work as human shields in the Occupied Palestinian Territories–dedicated men and women committed to social justice who are seeking to keep the lines of communication open with the outside world while Israel is doing everything to close them. Rachel was trying to stop the bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian physician’s family home–one of thousands that have been demolished for Jewish settlements and to make way for the Separation Wall. She wore an orange safety flap- jacket with reflective stripes, and photos clearly show her holding a megaphone. According to witnesses, she was talking to the driver and he knew that she was there. But, that did not stop him from pushing the dirt up against where she was standing into a mound with his blade and as she fell, he drove the bulldozer over her, reversed the killing machine, and ran over her again.

Israel: Scrambling for Cover

Israel’s investigations cleared itself of any wrongdoing: Rachel was not run over by the bulldozer, “but rather was struck by a hard object, most probably a slab of concrete, which moved or slid down while the mound of earth which she was standing behind was moved”; the driver of the bulldozer had a “blindspot” and could not see Rachel in front of him; the soldiers who should have been flanking the bulldozer were called away to deal with another emergency; the Israeli army had not intended to demolish the physician’s house, but was only looking for explosives in a security zone; the peace activists “were acting very irresponsibly, putting everyone in danger–the Palestinians, themselves and our forces–by intentionally placing themselves in a combat zone”; the Israeli army was not guilty of any misconduct, and therefore, was not responsible for Rachel’s death.

Only days before the Israeli findings were reported, another peace activist working with the ISM, Tom Hurndall lay in a London hospital with severe brain damage after being shot in the head by an Israeli soldier as he tried to protect Palestinian children from Israeli sniper fire being shot over their heads. Other internationals shot and killed by Israeli soldiers were: German doctor Harald Fischer, Italian cameraman Rafaeli Ciriello, British United Nations worker Iain Hook and British national James Miller. As for the Palestinians, more than 5,050 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed by Israeli troops and Israeli settler paramilitary units since September 2000.

ABC News reports that new emails reveal that the plan for firing U.S. Attorneys originated in the White House. Both Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys in early January 2005. From the article:

New unreleased e-mails from top administration officials show the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by White House adviser Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than previously acknowledged by the White House.

The e-mails also show Attorney General Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing the attorneys en masse while he was still White House counsel — weeks before he was confirmed as attorney general.

The e-mails directly contradict White House assertions that the notion originated with recently departed White House counsel Harriet Miers and was her idea alone.

Google will erase personal information on billions of internet searches in an attempt to secure the privacy of its users, the company has announced.

The search engine, which is being sued for $1bn by the media company Viacom for alleged copyright infringement, said it would destroy huge tracts of identifying information it holds on internet searches. Information such as who made what search and when is kept “for as long as useful” but under the new policy, all identifying data will be erased after 18-24 months.

Peter Fleischer, a lawyer for Google, said: “We believe that privacy is one of the cornerstones of trust. We will be retroactively going back into our log database and anonymising all the information there.”