One of Ours

I’ve moved down the street. This has mainly advantages but one notable disadvantage in that I’m a couple of hundred metres closer to “The Green Zone”, as in “They’re bombing the…” The Green Zone, for those who have never needed to know, is the heavily fortified bit which most of the decision makers and foreign workers in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) never leave because of a theory that it’s somehow more dangerous to be on the streets of Baghdad than walled into the most heavily attacked part of it.

Sure enough, first thing in the morning there was a car bomb just outside it...

...The US military says it will begin patrols through the town again on May 10th. The many people of Falluja that I’ve talked to say they can never accept US troops on their streets again after all they’ve done. They say the Mujahedin are still there, are waiting, will kill them if they try to re-enter the town.

Perhaps the US command is hoping that, having gone home after so long away, people will have lost their will to go through it all again and will beg their sons and brothers and fathers not to fight anymore, leaving the troops an unhindered passage back into the town...

...The extra difficulty in Najaf – apart from the obvious one of US troops preparing to attack the city - is the increasing number of factions involved. The various leaders are starting to publicly express disagreement, and people in the town, dependent on the pilgrim trade for their income, are none too impressed with the economic effects of the stand off...

...A few things have changed at the camp at Shuala [a Palestinian refugee camp]. There’s been no aid at all for a month, partly because most of what was available went to Falluja and partly because most of the international organisations had to pull out for security reasons. There are no jobs for the same reasons – the security problems and the fighting. Even we are afraid to go out, they said, even the Iraqis. Wasn’t I afraid to go out?...

...Speaking to top military and civilian officials in Jeddah last Saturday when four terrorists went on a shooting spree in Yanbu killing five Westerners and a National Guard officer, the crown prince said he believed Zionists were behind most terrorist attacks in the Kingdom.

But in a press statement after the attack, Prince Naif blamed Al-Qaeda.

“I don’t see any contradiction in the two statements, because Al-Qaeda is backed by Israel and Zionism,” he said...

...Al Qaeeda is a front for the Mossad. Osama Bin Laden is really a Jewish kid from the Bronx, went out one day to buy some bagels but somehow ended up in Afghanistan where he led all those good Arab boys astray and got them to practice blowing things up with historic Buddha statues. But you have to admit that the Jews are clever, the way they threaten themselves with oblivion; there's nothing more deceptive than a double-bluff.

It typifies our two Arab diseases - self-denial of the blindingly obvious, and blaming everyone else. With attitudes like that permeating the highest levels of government, we can be assured that our War on Terrorism will continue to be a futile farce. We might as well save ourselves the bother, let's invite the Talibaan in right now...

Thousands of Iraqi Kurds have fled homes in Fallujah to northern Iraq after being threatened by Arab insurgents for supporting the coalition and refusing to fight against the U.S. military.

More than 2,000 people have arrived since April 9 in the Kurdish town of Kalar...

...Displaced and traumatized families arriving from Fallujah in Kalar yesterday said a mixture of die-hard Saddam loyalists and foreign "mujahideen" were accusing Kurdish residents in the city of being traitors and collaborators.

Others said the insurgents had chosen to conduct their attacks on U.S. forces from the rooftops and narrow lanes of the mainly Kurdish Jolan district — which saw the fiercest fighting between guerrillas and Marines — knowing that any retaliatory fire would destroy Kurdish houses and civilians.

"On the first day of the fighting, a masked man came to my husband and told him either to fight the Americans, leave the city or die," said Sobyar Abdullah, who escaped Fallujah on foot with her husband and five children.

"He demanded that we leave our house, so the fighters could take control."

Mrs. Abdullah said four masked guerrillas then charged through their living room and up to the roof, from which they fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. forces before moving to another house.

"My children were terrified," she said. "We had just got out when the Americans fired back. Now everything is rubble."

Their lives in turmoil after the war to remove Saddam and the recent fighting, Mrs. Abdullah and her family refused to blame the destruction of her home on U.S. forces.

"They are not Americans; they are angels sent from God to free us from Saddam," she said...

...many of the displaced families were too terrified of reprisals by Arab fighters to return to their homes in the volatile heart of the Sunni triangle.

"Much of the Arab world has hailed the Fallujah insurgents as heroes fighting the U.S. occupation, but these stories of fear and intimidation by their Arab compatriots tell a different story...

...Malihah Osman...said graffiti promoting the killing of Kurds had begun to appear on walls near the home she abandoned in Fallujah...

...Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of the Iraqi population, were strong supporters of the war to remove the former regime and have remained staunchly supportive of U.S. forces.

But many have been alarmed by the resurfacing of anti-Kurdish sentiments among Sunni Arabs and supporters of Sheik al-Sadr.

Gunmen yesterday assassinated a prominent Kurdish official in Kirkuk in a drive-by shooting that also killed his driver and wounded his wife.

Also, a bomb exploded in front of the headquarters of one of the two main Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.

Who gave the Taguba report to Seymour Hersh? As I noted yesterday, the most likely suspect seems to be Gary Myers, the civilian defense attorney for Chip Frederick. Frederick is one of the six soldiers currently facing prosecution for the events at Abu Ghraib...

But what about the photos? Who gave the photos to 60 Minutes II? Answer: apparently Chip Frederick's father...

...this part of the story could use a little more attention too:

The irony, Mr. Lawson said, is that the public spectacle might have been avoided if the military and the federal government had been responsive to his claims that his nephew was simply following orders. Mr. Lawson said he sent letters to 17 members of Congress about the case earlier this year, with virtually no response, and that he ultimately contacted Mr. Hackworth's Web site out of frustration, leading him to cooperate with a consultant for "60 Minutes II."

"The Army had the opportunity for this not to come out, not to be on 60 Minutes," he said. "But the Army decided to prosecute those six G.I.'s because they thought me and my family were a bunch of poor, dirt people who could not do anything about it. But unfortunately, that was not the case."

[...]

[...]

Interviewer - So tell me what did you see there? How’s the situation of the prisoners? Did you see any abuse? Do they get proper medical care? (I was excited to see someone who was actually there, and he was a friend!)

Doctor X - Hey, slow down! I’ll tell you what I know. First of all, the prisoners are divided into two groups; the ordinary criminals and the political ones. I used to visit the ordinary criminals during every shift, and after that, the guards would bring anyone who has a complaint to me at the prison’s hospital.

- What about the “political” ones?

- I’m not allowed to go to their camps, but when one of them feels ill, the guards bring him to me.

- Are the guards all Americans?

- No, the American soldiers with the IP watch over and take care of the ordinary criminals, but no one except the Americans is allowed to get near the political ones

- How are the medical supplies in the prison?

- Not very great, but certainly better from what it was on Saddam’s times. However my work is mainly at night, but in the morning the supplies are usually better.

- How many doctors, beside you, were there?

- There was an American doctor, who’s always their (His name is Eric, a very nice guy, he and I became friends very fast), and other Iraqi doctors with whom I shared the work, and in the morning, there are always some Iraqi senior doctors; surgeons, physicians…etc.

[...]

...Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji, a leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI, whose over-all leader is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim), wants to give Muqtada and his supporters a choice between leaving Najaf voluntarily and confronting a Shiite alliance of the grand ayatollahs, the Shiite parties and militias, and Shiite notables who blame him for their expulsion from the city. He implied that the Badr Corps militia might be ued to expel the Sadrists from the city...