The Rag Blog

BAGHDAD, Nov. 4 — When armed insurgents moved into her southern Baghdad neighborhood last spring and started threatening Shiite families like hers, Umm Hussein called Iraq’s widely publicized 24-hour terrorism hot line. Nobody answered.

After several attempts over several days she finally got through and was assured that the police would follow up. “But nothing happened and no one ever came,” recalled Umm Hussein, who told her story on the condition that she be identified only by her Shiite nickname. Several days later she moved her family from their neighborhood, Hor Rijeb, to the relative safety of Zayouna, a mixed neighborhood in central Baghdad.

The hot line, she said, is “a joke.”

The National Tips Hot Line, as it is known, was founded in 2003 by the Coalition Provisional Authority, guaranteeing callers anonymity and collecting information about insurgent activity, bomb threats, kidnappings, killings and other major crimes. The hot line, which later became a joint coalition-Iraqi venture, was a foreign concept in a country that associated intelligence gathering by the state with brutal coercion.

Even for a people used to waking up to the sound of explosions, Iraqis were jolted by a Friday morning bombshell: the news, first reported on time.com, that Sgt. Santos Cardona, viewed here as one of the villains of Abu Ghraib, had been ordered back to their country. Although Iraqi and Arab media have been slow to pick up on the story (the news cycle here tends to be a day or two behind the U.S.) many in Baghdad read about it online, and word quickly spread. The reaction was predictable: total outrage.

“This is America spitting in our face,” said Imad al-Hashimi, a Baghdad paediatrician. “The sheer arrogance of it is unbelievable.”

It wasn’t until midday that the news began to circulate in the Green Zone, the Baghdad enclave that includes many key government offices, including that of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. There, it was greeted with incredulity—and warnings of a backlash. “The reaction in the street will be very bad,” warns Maryam al-Rais, a member of the Iraqi parliament. “This is just the latest in a long list of insults to Iraqi dignity by the Americans.”

Iraqi security forces closed two Sunni Muslim television stations for violating curfew and a law that bans airing material that could undermine the country’s stability, the Interior Ministry said.

Brig Gen Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said on Sunday that the Al-Zawraa and Salahuddin stations were closed on the approval of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Khalaf said that the stations violated a curfew imposed in three provinces by speaking to people in the streets and airing their comments that were deemed to “incite violence.”

Chinese police have rounded up a group of people who tried to offer free hugs to passers-by on a busy street in downtown Shanghai.

Organisers say they began the campaign after seeing an Internet video of a man in Australia offering free hugs on a street. They say they wanted to melt coldness in people’s hearts with their hugs.

Police detained 11 ‘huggers’ and confiscated their signs. The group was released after about an hour in police custody. Authorities say their actions were deemed illegal because they did not have a permit.

Plans for other hugging sessions over the next fortnight have been put on hold.

GREELEY, Colo., Nov. 4 — During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. “Nonsense,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. “This is not about that,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil — President Bush.

As he barnstorms across the country campaigning for Republican candidates in Tuesday’s elections, Bush has been citing oil as a reason to stay in Iraq. If the United States pulled its troops out prematurely and surrendered the country to insurgents, he warns audiences, it would effectively hand over Iraq’s considerable petroleum reserves to terrorists who would use it as a weapon against other countries.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Nov. 6) – Former Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega appeared headed for victory Monday in his longtime quest to regain power, 16 years after a U.S.-backed rebellion helped drive the former Marxist revolutionary from office.

WASHINGTON (Nov. 5) – U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will spend Election Day Tuesday on his first hunting trip since he accidentally shot a companion last February while aiming at a covey of quail on a private Texas ranch.

The vice president, after working at the White House on Monday morning, will head to South Dakota to spend several days at a private hunting lodge near Pierre. Lea Anne McBride, his press secretary, said it was an annual hunting outing and said Cheney spent Election Day in 2002 at the same lodge.