Iraq's capital wants the United States to apologize and pay $1 billion for the damage done to the city not by bombs but by blast walls and Humvees since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
The city's government issued its demands in a statement on Wednesday that said Baghdad's infrastructure and aesthetics have been seriously damaged by the American military.
"The U.S. forces changed this beautiful city to a camp in an ugly and destructive way, which reflected deliberate ignorance and carelessness about the simplest forms of public taste," the statement said.The part of this story that makes me really angry has yet to come. That's the part where we give them the money.
We reported on this yesterday. Smarter heads have prevailed.
A sculpture of a shoe erected in Iraq to honour a journalist who threw his footwear at George W Bush has been dismantled, reports say.
Foreign media say the bronze-coloured fibre-glass shoe was removed from its site in the city of Tikrit on the orders of the local authorities.
It had been erected in the grounds of an orphanage.
The monument was reportedly taken down just a day after being unveiled in the late Saddam Hussein's home town.
The head of the Childhood organisation, which owns the orphanage, said she had been told to remove the monument immediately by the Salaheddin Provincial Joint Coordination Centre.
Turds!
Now, a giant fibreglass and copper statue of the shoe has been unveiled in Tikrit - the hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein.Here's a video report:
It is inscribed with a poem which pays tribute to the missile-throwing journalist.
Iraqi Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie addresses CodePink activists calling for the release of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush during a press conference in Baghdad.
Given the choice between rock n' roll and hip hop, they fail.
We finally made it to Kentucky Fried Chicken in downtown Fallujah. The quest for KFC is over!See the slide show here. Also, this previous video report:
But let me clarify: on closer inspection it turns out this is not one of Colonel Sanders’ officially sanctioned franchises. In fact, appart from the large “KFC” sign in the window you’d be hard pressed to distinguish this from many other chicken restaurants in Fallujah. The big difference though, is on the inside. Iraqis like baked chicken, and it turns out deep fried chicken is something of a novelty, and so they’ve been flocking to the restaurant over the past eight months since it opened - the local newspaper even ran a story about it, so I guess it’s not a Fox exclusive.
We were the only customers early Friday evening in KFC, so I bought enough chicken to feed the marines. In case you’re wondering, they only have one thing on the menu - a $5 meal which buys 2 pieces of fried chicken, French fries, a soda, bottle of water and 2 bread rolls.
It was Obama who said that Iran is not a grave threat.
US forces detained a senior Iranian Qods Force officer as he attempted to flee Baghdad, according to a statement from the military.
The officer, who was not named, was captured today as he was attempting to leave Iraq. Security guards at Baghdad International Airport detained the Iranian agent as Coalition forces were in "pursuit."
The Qods Force officer is suspected of being involved "in facilitating Iranian weapons shipments into Iraq," according the Multinational Forces Iraq press release. US forces found "an unspecified amount of the illegal drug Cocaine" in his possession.
Qods Force uses an unnamed construction company to shield its activities, the US military said. "The suspect works for an organization within the IRGC-QF [Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force] involved in the construction and repair of religious sites in Iraq," the statement said. "Intelligence assessments indicate that the IRGC-QF uses this organization as a cover to smuggle weapons in legitimate shipments of building materials."
Iraqi and US forces have killed one Qods Force operative and captured 10 since mid-October.
Qods Force has supported various Shia militias and terror groups inside Iraq, including the Mahdi Army, helping to build them along the same lines as Lebanese Hezbollah. Iran denies the charges, but captive Shia terrorists admit to being recruited by Iranian agents and then transported into Iran for training.
Iran established the Ramazan Corps immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime to direct operations inside Iraq. The US military says Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah have helped establish, fund, train, and arm, and have provided operational support for Shia terror groups such as the Hezbollah Brigades and the League of the Righteous. The US military refers to these groups as well as the Iranian-backed elements of the Mahdi Army as the "Special Groups." These groups train in camps inside Iran.
60th Street in the Doura district of Baghdad at the beginning of the Surge and now, at the end of the Surge.
Add to this video this, from Michael Yon, via Instapundit:
“THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:” Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. “There’s nothing going on. I’m with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I’m with haven’t fired their weapons on this tour and they’ve been here eight months. And the place we’re at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there’s nothing going on. I’ve been walking my feet off and haven’t seen anything. I’ve been asking Iraqis, ‘do you think the violence will kick up again,’ but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they’re usually dour.” There’s a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that’s a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.
He says the big problem everybody is talking about now is corruption. But hey, we have that here, too. He’ll be heading to Afghanistan next week. “Afghanistan is a bad situation, but on Iraq I can’t believe things have turned out so well.”
He thinks that Obama will be able to pull troops out, and send some to Afghanistan, without creating problems in Iraq. Michael will be reporting from Afghanistan soon, and sending back video, so stay tuned. Things aren’t going swimmingly there.
Not sure what to make of this:
Syrian state-run TV and witnesses said Sunday that American helicopters attacked an area close to the Iraqi border zone, killing at least nine people.UPDATE: From Breitbart:
Local residents in a Syrian border town said that American forces killed seven men in a helicopter-borne commando attack inside Syrian territory. State-run TV later raised the number of dead to nine. Doctors in the town of Al-Sukkariya, some eight kilometers from the Iraqi border, said seven corpses and four wounded had been delivered to a nearby clinic after the attack.
An official Syrian spokesman confirmed the attack.
The eyewitness accounts said that four helicopters were involved in the operation, with two of the helicopters landing in the town and eight American soldiers disembarking. The eyewitnesses said that the seven killed men were supposedly construction workers.
Afterwards, the U.S. helicopters left Syrian airspace with all the soldiers again on board.
There was no initial U.S. comment about the reported incident. If confirmed, it would be the first time that American forces had carried out an attack on Syrian soil.
U.S. military helicopters launched an extremely rare attack Sunday on Syrian territory close to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the government in Damascus condemned as "serious aggression."
A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the foreign fighter network that travels through Syria into Iraq. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area because Syria was out of the military's reach.
"We are taking matters into our own hands," the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids.
The attack came just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq said American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an "uncontrolled" gateway for fighters entering Iraq.
A Syrian government statement said the helicopters attacked the Sukkariyeh Farm near the town of Abu Kamal, five miles inside the Syrian border. Four helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction shortly before sundown and fired on workers inside, the statement said.
A resident of the nearby village of Hwijeh said some of the helicopters landed and troops exited the aircraft and fired on a building. He said the aircraft flew along the Euphrates River into the area of farms and several brick factories. The witness spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information,
The area targeted is near the Iraqi border city of Qaim, which had been a major crossing point for fighters, weapons and money coming into Iraq to fuel the Sunni insurgency.
Iraqi travelers making their way home across the border reported hearing many explosions, said Farhan al-Mahalawi, mayor of Qaim.
On Thursday, U.S. Maj. Gen. John Kelly said Iraq's western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries but that Syria was a "different story."
The foreign fighters network sends militants from North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East to Syria, where elements of the Syrian military are in league with al-Qaida and loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, the U.S. military official said.
He said that while American forces have had considerable success, with Iraqi help, in shutting down the "rat lines" in Iraq, and with foreign government help in North Africa, the Syrian node has been out of reach.
The flow of foreign fighters into Iraq has been cut to an estimated 20 a month, a senior U.S. military intelligence official told the Associated Press in July. That's a 50 percent decline from six months ago, and just a fifth of the estimated 100 foreign fighters who were infiltrating Iraq a year ago, according to the official.
From Drudge:
WASH TIMES Friday: Obama secretly tried to sway Iraqi government to ignore Bush deal on keeping troops in Iraq... Developing...I wonder if this is the same story that surfaced nearly a month ago?
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.At that time, the McCain camp issued the following statement:
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.
Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."
"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.
Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.
While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.
At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented. It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power. If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas. Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq's Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama's judgment and it demands an explanation.
This is from an interview of six months ago. It says what it says. 10 bucks says the Obama "truth squad" gets to this family and makes them change their story.
Barack Obama played the "me too" game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier that lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his had the name of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek of Merrill, Wisconsin.Democrats are some sick sumbitches! This is another story the mainstream media is not going to touch. So email it to everyone you know!
Shockingly, however, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.
Radio host Glenn Moberg of the show "Route 51" asked Mr. Jopek, a man who believes in the efforts in Iraq and is not in favor of Obama's positions on the war, what he and his ex-wife think of Obama continually using their son's name on the campaign trail.
Jopek began by saying that his ex-wife was taken aback, even upset, that Obama has made the death of her son a campaign issue. Jopek says his wife gave Obama the bracelet because "she just wanted Mr. Obama to know Ryan's name." Jopek went on to say that "she wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event" and "just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself." Apparently, they were all shocked it became such a big deal.
But, he also said that his ex-wife has refused further interviews on the matter and that she wanted Obama to stop wearing the reminder of her son's sacrifice that he keeps turning into a campaign soundbyte. This begins at about 10 minutes into the radio program. (Download radio show HERE)
TRANSCRIPT
Brian Jopek: Because of some of the negative feedback she's gotten on the Internet, you know Internet blogs, you know people accusing her of... or accusing Obama of trying to get votes doing it... and that sort of thing.
Radio Host Moberg: Yeah
Jopek: She has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media because she just didn't want it to get turned into something that it wasn't. She had told me in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet any more at any of his public appearances. Which I don't think he's...
Moberg: It has been a while since he's brought it up.
Jopek: Right. But, the other night I was watching the news and he was on, uh, speaking somewhere and he was still wearing it on his right wrist. I could see it on his right wrist. So, that's his own choice. I mean that's something Barack Obama, that's a choice that he continues to wear it despite Tracy asking him not to... Because she is a Barack Obama supporter and she didn't want to do anything to sabotage his campaign, so, if he's still wearing the bracelet then, uh, that of course is entirely up to him.
Moberg: Maybe there's a difference between wearing it and making a point to bring it up in your speeches?
Even the snow job that the radio host tried to pull off to cover for Barack's refusing the wishes of the family of the KIA soldier who's bracelet he wears doesn't pass the smell test. After all, now that Obama has made it a big point in the debates, I guess the silent observance of Sgt. Jopek is no longer so silent and Obama is back to exploiting the death of a soldier even when he was asked NOT to do so by that soldier's parents.
To pile insult onto injury here, the Mother doesn't even want to force the issue of telling Obama to stop exploiting her son because she wants to see him win the election. Obama is not only taking advantage of this brave soldier's death, he is taking advantage of the good wishes of the man's Mother who doesn't want to hurt the campaign.
And, why is the media not playing this story? The radio show on which this interview is heard happened all the way back in March. How is it the media missed this? Is it because they are also don't want to hurt Obama's campaign?
I can only say that if the parents of the soldier whose bracelet John McCain is wearing had said in public that they want him to stop wearing their son's bracelet the news would have been coast to coast, and wall to wall, not just ignored in Madison, Wisconsin.
Obama's use of this soldier that fell in the line of duty is tainted by his ambition and callousness. And the media is letting him get away with it.
Hurry! Get it done before Bush leaves office!
US forces detained five members of the Hezbollah Brigades in Baghdad on Saturday as part of a renewed push to blunt the return of Iranian-backed Shia terror groups reentering Iraq. The Iraqi and US military have stepped up operations against the Special Groups over the past two weeks. Iraqi and US forces killed two Special Groups fighters and captured 107 since Sept. 16.
The latest series of raids in Baghdad netted five members of the Hezbollah Brigades in New Baghdad, a former stronghold of Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army. The Hezbollah Brigades is an Iranian-backed terror group that has been behind multiple roadside bombings and rocket attacks against US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad. The group films these attacks and posts them on the internet. More than 30 Hezbollah Brigades operatives have been captured over the past two months. The group is estimated at having several hundred members.
The US military says Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah have helped establish, fund, train, and arm, and have provided operational support for Shia terror groups such as the Hezbollah Brigades and the League of the Righteous. The US military refers to these groups as well as the Iranian-backed elements of the Mahdi Army as the "Special Groups." These groups train in camps inside Iran. The US Treasury Department placed sanctions on a senior Iranian general and a Mahdi Army commander for arming, training, and funding Shia terror groups in Iraq on Sept. 16.
Recently an Iraqi police chief said Special Groups fighters and leaders were beginning to return into Iraq from bases in Iran.
"The Special Groups are returning from Iran after receiving training in using new tactics," Brigadier General Sabah al Fatlawi, the chief of police in the southern province of Dhi Qhar, told AFP on Sept. 16. "We have seized 20 motorcycle bombs in Nasiriyah. Some groups have arrived in Nasiriyah ... They are crossing the border through Amarah." Amarah borders Iran and served as the Mahdi Army and Special Group's headquarters in the South.
One of the largest single roundups of Iranian-backed fighters occurred on Sept. 25-26 north of Nasiriyah. Iraqi forces detained 53 Special Groups operatives and found large weapons caches during a series of operations north of the city.
Yet another patriot who has a real problem with Barack Obama...We support you and your husband...Even though our would-be President does not
The McCain camp isn't ignoring the story. But the mainstream media spends its time trying to find Sarah Palin's secret bible.
The McCain Campaign has issued a statement responding to the report from Amer Taheri that Sen. Obama secretly negotiated with the Iraqi government regarding U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. McCain spokesman Randy Scheunemann stated as follows:
At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented. It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power. If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas. Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq's Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama's judgment and it demands an explanation.
Not unbelievable...Expected. Look at him fight the notion of success every step of the way. He invested his political future on defeat in Iraq. We won. And now Joe's defeatist chickens are coming home to roost.
Mookie promises to disarm the remaining 5 members of his army if the US withdraws. Something the US is going to do anyway. Memo to Mookie. You got no street cred.
The Mehdi Army of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr would disarm if the United States withdraws troops according to plan, a spokesman said.
Iraqi negotiators have proposed a timetable of US troop withdrawal by October 2010, although Washington has not yet agreed to it, a senior Iraqi official said on Friday.
"We feel there's a serious intention by the American forces for a withdrawal timetable at the very least," Sadr's spokesman Salah Al Ubaidi said on Friday.
"It should not be considered an end to the Mehdi army, but it's a halfway step to dissolving the Mehdi Army. If the US began to implement a withdrawal timetable we shall complete the path to dissolution," Ubaidi said.
At least 144,000 US troops remain in Iraq.
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