The Rag Blog

Women face an increased risk of rape and murder by militias and criminal gangs as lawlessness takes over the country.

Nobody is safe. Taysseer Al-Mashadani, the Sunni woman minister from the al-Tawafuq political party was abducted by members of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi army militia July 1 this year. After being held for nearly three months, she was only released after much pressure was applied from both the U.S. and Iraqi governments.

Thousands of other women have not been so lucky. Many have been executed, assaulted, or released only after their families paid considerable ransom money.

Few women like to talk about what they have to go through. “I was taken by Americans for three days recently,” Um Ahmed said in Baghdad. “They told me they would rape me if I didn’t tell them where my husband was, but I really didn’t know.”

She said that she was turned over to the Iraqi National Guard “who were even worse than the Americans.”

Her husband eventually surrendered to the U.S. military, but she continued to be held “to apply pressure on him to confess things he never did,” she said. “They told him they would rape me right in front of him if he did not confess he was a terrorist. They forced me to watch them beat him hard until he told them what they wanted to hear.”

The Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq has estimated from anecdotal evidence that over 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in the period from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 until spring 2006.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s case for attacking Iraq has been dealt a new blow with the release of once-secret evidence from a former British diplomat who dismissed the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

Carne Ross, who was responsible for handling Britain’s Iraq policy at the United Nations from 1998 to 2002, accused the British government of overstating the danger posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime to support the invasion.

“During my posting, at no time did HMG [her majesty’s government] assess that Iraq’s WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests,” Mr Ross wrote in evidence submitted to the Butler inquiry in June 2004.

“It was the commonly held view among the officials dealing with Iraq that any threat had been effectively contained.” Mr Ross said when the United States raised the topic of regime change.

He and others would argue against such a move, “primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos”, he said in written testimony given to an inquiry into the run-up to the March 2003 conflict.

Several years before the 2003 U.S. invasion, western media had already divided the Iraqi society into several ethnic and sectarian groups. Even western powers, particularly the U.S. and the U.K. had their prior invasion policies based on the fact that Iraq was divisible into at least three separate ethnic, sectarian and geographical regions.

The two powers even resorted to military means to translate their strategy of partitioning the country on the ground. They create two no-fly zones one in the north and one in the south ostensibly to protect the northern Sunni Kurds and the southern Arab Shiites from the ‘oppressive’ Arab Sunni regime in the center.

When the two powers occupied Iraq, they pressed ahead with their strategy. Instead of working for a unified and multicolored Iraq, they began driving one wedge after another between the different components of the society.

THE PRESIDENT wanted to continue his crusade despite all opposition. And Robert Gates helped make sure it happened.

Under Ronald Reagan, that meant manipulating CIA intelligence to make the former USSR and its “evil empire” seem like a growing threat–and organizing the covert war against the people of Nicaragua.

Now Gates has a chance to serve another president bent on war–as George W. Bush’s new defense secretary.

Republicans and Democrats alike seem certain that Gates will clip the wings of the White House’s neoconservative hawks and engineer a “change of course” in Bush’s disastrous war on Iraq. Gates got the kid gloves’ treatment in questioning by the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the vote of the full Senate to confirm him was a lopsided 95 to 2.

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s schools, long touted by American officials as a success story in a land short on successes, increasingly are being caught in the crossfire of the country’s escalating civil war.

President Bush has routinely talked about the refurbishment and construction of schools as a neglected story of progress in Iraq. The U.S. Agency for International Development has spent about $100 million on Iraq’s education system and cites the rehabilitation of 2,962 school buildings as a signal accomplishment.

But today, across the country, campuses are being shuttered, students and teachers driven from their classrooms and parents left to worry that a generation of traumatized children will go without education.

Teachers tell of students kidnapped on their way to school, mortar rounds landing on or near campuses and educators shot in front of children.

This month insurgents distributed pamphlets at campuses, some sealed inside an envelope with an AK-47 bullet.

Azzaman devotes a lot of space this morning to coverage of the Istanbul conference of Wednesday and Thursday (December 13 and 14), with a picture of the group. There were around 100 attendees, including politicians, clerics, intellectuals and activists, the reporter says, from Iraq and from outside of Iraq. Following an exibition of photos and videos to indicate the realities of what is occuring in Iraq, the meeting was convened by Abdulrahman bin Amir al-Nuaimi. He said the purpose of the meeting was to link up Sunnis in Iraq and outside of Iraq and to present a clear idea to those outside of conditions that Iraqi Sunnis are facing. He then read a letter from Safr al-Hawali, who is one of the big names among Saudi clerical activists, described by Nuaimi as the original proponent of this type of conference, but prevented from coming to Istanbul for health reasons. The Hawali letter made three points: Necessity for unity of the Iraqi resistance to the occupation; need for organized assistance to Iraqi Sunnis from the Sunni community world-wide; and political efforts to build a new Iraq for all its groups.

The conference adopted a list of conclusions and recommendations.

(1) Iraq is of central importance, and throughout its history has been subject to occupation and so on, but a loyal population has always resisted that.

(2) Sunnis elsewhere cannot tolerate what the Iraqis are going through in terms of violation of their territory, sovereignty and rights, at the hands of the occupation, without taking concrete steps to provide Iraq with assistance.

(3) The occupation bears the reponsibility for the slaughter that is occurring in Iraq, in practical terms because it is providing the political umbrella under which this is going on, and in legal terms because the occupation forces’ continuing attacks give Iraqis the right to prosecute them under international law.

(4) The Safavid political parties share in the responsibility, both because of their connivance with the occupation generally, and more particularly because of the activities of their militias.

(5) The current political process in Iraq, under the aegis of the occupation, is without legal right.

(6) Criticism of Arab and Islamic governments for their silence about this, their lack of aid to Iraqis, and particularly to Sunnis. These regimes are doing nothing about the aggressive steps of both America and Iran.

That’s OK, I Wasn’t Using My Civil Liberties Anyway

Let’s Fix Democracy in This Country First

If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran

Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.

If You Can Read This, You’re Not Our President

Of Course It Hurts: You’re Getting Screwed by an Elephant

Hey, Bush Supporters: Embarrassed Yet?

George Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to Fight

Impeachment: It’s Not Just for Blowjobs Anymore

America: One Nation, Under Surveillance

They Call Him “W” So He Can Spell It

Whose God Do You Kill For?

Cheney/Satan ’08

Jail to the Chief

No, Seriously, Why Did We Invade Iraq?

Bush: God’s Way of Proving Intelligent Design is Full Of Crap

Bad President! No Candy.

We Need a President Who’s Fluent In At Least One Language

We’re Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them

Is It Vietnam Yet?

Bush Doesn’t Care About White People, Either

Where Are We Going? And Why Are We In This Hand Basket?

You Elected Him. You Deserve Him.

Impeach Cheney First

Dubya, Your Dad Shoulda Pulled Out, Too

When Bush Took Office, Gas Was $1.46

Pray For Impeachment

The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century

What Part of “Bush Lied” Don’t You Understand?

One Nation Under Clod

2004: Embarrassed

2005: Horrified

2006: Terrified

Bush Never Exhaled

“Straight talking” John McCain’s call for thousands more troops in Iraq is just a pathetic ploy to seem like a patriot for the presidential elections.

GENEVA (AP) — Harassment from U.S. forces is a greater threat to the work of the Iraqi Red Crescent than insurgent attacks, a senior official of the Red Cross-linked humanitarian organization said Friday.

Dr. Jamal Al-Karbouli, vice president of the Iraqi Red Crescent, said some U.S. forces appeared not to realize that the society, which uses as its symbol the Muslim red crescent instead of the red cross, was part of the international humanitarian movement.

”The main problem we are facing is the American forces more than the other forces,” Al-Karbouli told reporters in Geneva. ”We are spending a lot of time to explain about the Red Crescent.”

Al-Karbouli said insurgent groups in Iraq did not pose as great a problem for the organization.

”The insurgents, they are Iraqis, a lot of them are Iraqis, and they respect the Iraqis. And they respect our (the Red Crescent’s) identity, which is neutrality.”

He also complained that Red Crescent offices in Baghdad, Anbar and Najaf provinces had been repeatedly ”attacked” by U.S.-led multi-national forces searching for insurgents.

The United States does not tell the truth about the reconstruction projects it executes in the country, the governor of the southern province of Diwayniya said.

Khaleel Hamza said U.S. generals in charge of reconstruction exaggerate the sums of money they spend and the number of projects they carry out.

Hamza was reacting to a U.S. army statement regarding the projects it has implemented in the province.

“They (U.S. occupation troops) must verify their statements with documents and evidence otherwise we shall not allow them to make such irresponsible remarks,” Hamza told Azzaman.

He said U.S. troops do contribute to the implementation of certain project but they usually exaggerate their contribution and do not tell the truth.

“They (U.S. troops) prevent the implementation of strategic projects that are of benefit to the provincial population at large,” he said.

More than 90 per cent of Iraqis believe the country is worse off now than before the war in 2003, according to new research obtained by Al Jazeera.

The Holiday Season has arrived, unfolding before us, like a cheap vinyl wallet, here in The United States of American Express. The days spill forth, their hours comprised of shopping and shooting sprees, of retail and retaliation. Jingle bells and the crackle of gunfire. This is the way an empire falls, with armies of confused killers abroad and legions of killer clowns at home.

A decade and half ago, we watched smugly as The Kremlin came undone. Yet, somehow we believe ourselves to be immune from the rot that causes empires to collapse from within.

The Social Realist poets of the former Soviet Union made themselves the objects of much (deserved) derision, when, in the service of the dogmatic dictates of state communism, they penned poetic odes to crop yields, tractors and other farm implements.

When a Russian attempts to convey his passions, his soul is prone to reach inward seeking poetic depths. In contrast, nowadays, in situations of crucial importance, such as the anxious waiting in long lines involved when attempting to procure PlayStation 3s among the throngs of their fellow Home Entertainment Unit-lusting Fred C. Dobbs types, Americans express their ardor — by reaching for a gun. For we all know that The Baby Jesus would find the sound of Yuletide gunfire to be as soothing as a celestial lullaby.

Back down here on earth, while it was damn silly for Soviet aesthetes to go into a poetic swoon over farm equipment, somehow, the act of going collectively round-heeled over electronic appliances (including jealous rages that lead to homicidal outbursts) doesn’t seem like the sort of communal practices that will allow an empire to endure for long.

The former Soviet Union had the risible excesses of her Social Realists — but what is one to make of our culture of Wal*Mart Nihilists. Although, these acts are revelatory: These are the kinds of “crimes of passion” that contemporary Americans perpetrate. Such actions reveal what it is we truly care about, deep down. And, sadly, our concerns have little to do with being the keepers of Liberty’s flame — or even being good stewards of our children’s future.