A Night in Baghdad

Appreciate what you have if you are not in Baghdad, Lebanon, Gaza, Somalia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Darfur...and the list goes on seemingly without end.

In an outdoor garden we ordered sweet, fresh orange juice and shared plates of chickpea dip, salads and grilled meat and chicken. For the first time in a long time we went out as an office and stayed out what could be called late in Baghdad. We were living on the edge. We didn't get home until a whopping 8:45 p.m.

Jesus H Christ at the wailing wall but I seem to be negative right now. Gotta fucking change that.

Note: Headline links to source.

99 dead in Baghdad pet market blasts

UPDATE: This from someone in Baghdad.

At least 99 [my update -ed] people were killed today in two bombings, one in a bird market and the other in a pet market bombing. My first thought when I heard was children. The image of a father relenting to a young son's pleas for a puppy, a bird or a cat ran through my head. I imagine that some child thought they were finally getting a pet they wanted and instead were faced with the reality of Iraq, blood [emphasis mine].

She has video, but warns its gruesome.

Interestingly enough, almost every other news source I've read reported 14 people were killed by a blast in one pet market in Baghdad.

My guess is most news sources don't have actual reporters in Iraq, but that's just a supposition. So they report the information they get.

At least 43 people were killed today when bombs tore through two separate pet markets in Baghdad.

Yeah, I went with fucking birds in a Baghdad pet market &mdash pre-blast. I'm not nuts about showing mutilated, bloody bodies and the dead.

Via BreakingNews.

"I just want one real friend"

This is real life. This is the world of a 13 year old boy in Baghdad.

I often try to put a human face on the ugly world we find ourselves in and its always gut wrenching.

A month ago gunmen came to his school and shot three guards during his last period. The U.S. Military came and the students ran out the door to catch their rides. That day he made it home safe. Tomorrow, he doesn't know.

The burden he carries is not fit for a 13-year-old. But this is not an R-rated movie; you can't keep the children out.

SPIIDERWEB™ Rulz!

Via Baghdad.

Truth?

Another attempt to bring you the human side of fighting in Iraq.

Personal accounts always provide more impact than dispassionate reports or even TV in many cases.

A lot of people have commented with questions asking me about the truth about Baghdad. First there is no ever lasting truth in Baghdad. Is this sudden relative calm a lasting change or a lull before the storm? Nobody really knows.

The violence has dropped to levels of 2005, I still wake up to shooting outside the windows and we hear explosions that shake our desks or sometimes are just a distant boom. Now bombs are killing one or two in Baghdad, it has been a long time since they've killed tens or hundreds. Thank God for any moment of peace for Iraqis.

Via Baghdad.

Must read IMHO

It ain't all roses, folks.

Baghdad.

Ordinary life hardly the norm in Baghdad

This is a "good" story only because it points out how "horrible" life is in Baghdad. If we can't know what's happening and have empathy for the people, we've no chance of ever leaving Iraq.

"Today, most of Baghdad's neighborhoods are being patrolled by coalition and Iraqi forces who live among the people they protect. Many schools and markets are reopening. Citizens are coming forward with vital intelligence. Sectarian killings are down. And ordinary life is beginning to return."

— President Bush in his speech Thursday on Iraq

Guess it depends on your definition of "ordinary".

Bush[...] is speaking the opposite of what's going on on the ground."

— Ali Mohammed, Saidiyah in southwest Baghdad

Via McClatchy.

Iraqi civilian deaths rise in countryside

Sometimes you really do wish you're wrong, but then reality strikes.

We were warned.

Newly released statistics for Iraqi civilian deaths in August reflect the strikingly mixed security picture that has emerged from a gradual six-month increase in U.S. troop strength here: The number of deaths across the country rose by about 20 percent since July, but in the capital itself, the number dropped sharply.

The figures, provided by Iraqi Interior Ministry officials Saturday, appeared to mirror the geographic pattern of the troop increase, which is focused on Baghdad. The national rise in mortality is partly a result of the enormous death toll in a truck bomb attack in August north of the capital, outside the areas directly affected by the additional troops.

More than 500 members of a small religious minority called the Yazidis died in the Aug. 14 bombing in the north, according to figures collected by the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, which paid compensation to victims' families.

As Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander of military forces here, prepare to brief Congress on the progress of the troop increase, Iraqi politicians, recognizing what is at stake, view the new figures through the lens of how their parties hope Congress will assess the situation in Iraq.

"We were hoping the figures would go down, but what happened was expected," said Haidar al-Ebadi, who sits in parliament as a senior member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party. The troop
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increase had made it harder for insurgent groups to operate in Baghdad, he said, so they had pushed outward to easier targets.

"I believe that we should not read these numbers as an assessment of the security plan," Ebadi said. "The security plan was a success so far." [emphasis mine]

Oh yeah, a success? Tell that to the surviving friends and families of those killed. What a tool.

Via Mercury News.

Top Al-Qaida leaders had fled before U.S.-led offensive began

You see the thing is, al-Qaeda is so stupid they have to read about an imminent attack in the newspapers or they have no idea its coming. When is the US military going to quit underestimating al-Qaeda fighters?

The American general commanding troops battling to clear fighters serving with Al-Qaida from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Al-Qaida leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week, just as the Al-Qaida leadership fled Al-Fallujah ahead of the American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al-Qaida in Iraq had been alerted to the Baquba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed the Al-Qaida leaders' escape as cowardice, saying that "when the fight comes, they leave," abandoning "mid-level" Al-Qaida leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops - just, he said, as they did in Al-Fallujah.

Some American officers in Baquba have blamed the Al-Qaida leaders' flight on public remarks about the offensive in the days before it began by top American commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, the overall commander in Iraq. But Odierno cast the issue in broader terms, saying Al-Qaida leaders were bound to know an attack was coming in light of President Bush's decision to pour nearly 30,000 additional troops into the fight in a bid to secure Baghdad and areas around the capital that have been insurgent strongholds. That included Baquba, which lies 40 miles north.

"Frankly, I think they knew an operation was coming in Baquba," Odierno said in a teleconference with Pentagon reporters from the American military headquarters in Baghdad. "They watched the news. They understood we had a surge. They understood Baquba was designated as a problem area. So they knew we were going to come, sooner or later."

Still, he implied American commanders may have played a part by flagging the offensive in advance. "I think they were tipped off by us talking about the surge, the fact that we have a problem in Diyala province," he said.

Jesus H Christ in a TV commercial, but reports have been coming out of Iraq for years about how the Iraqi police and military have been infiltrated by Al-Qaeda. The country's crawling with spies.

(read more)

I'm back...ho hum

My posts may be sporadic in the next few days, but life doesn't always conform to my wishes.

Let's start with horrible pictures from Baghdad. If you are squeamish, please don't follow the link.

McCain Says he Would Have Gone Into Baghdad Market Without Escort

Go back John. Prove it.

Sen. John McCain said Monday he would have taken his tour of an Iraqi market last week even if he hadn’t been accompanied by heavily armed U.S. soldiers.

The Republican presidential hopeful said he would have walked through the Bab al-Sharqi market in Baghdad without the military protection, but the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, had recommended the armed escort.

“I’m not notorious for being nervous about going anywhere,” said McCain, R-Ariz. “I’ll gladly go almost anywhere in the world, under any circumstances, but I did respond and do what General Petraeus asked me to do.”

(via True Blue Liberal)

Is surge working? US commanders hail fall in Baghdad killings

Hahaha. Just after I post about the lack of question marks in news headlines, I post one.

But much more seriously...

US military commanders in Iraq have accused insurgents of using children in suicide bombings and staging poison gas attacks in a campaign to undermine the month-old security "surge" in Baghdad and Anbar province.

The clampdown in the capital is credited with bringing a sharp reduction in civilian deaths in recent weeks, even though the number of attacks has remained fairly constant. "There are tanks and Humvees on every street corner," said an independent observer who returned from Baghdad last week. "There is a real change of atmosphere from earlier this year, before the operation began." According to David Kilcullen, senior counter-insurgency adviser to General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, heightened security has forced suicide bombers to detonate their devices at checkpoints well away from targets such as markets and other public gatherings, "killing far fewer people than intended, and far fewer than in similar attacks last year"

However, the story continues to say some of the bombs didn't explode. Which means they're still being planted and could have exploded to bring the death toll higher. My guess is, the insurgents can't train bombers to competence as fast as they're recruiting them.

Anyway, how does that fit with this story?

The Iraqi government yesterday raised its estimate of the death toll in a truck bombing in the northern town of Tal Afar on Tuesday to 152, making it the deadliest single bombing of the four-year-old war.

Both stories are from the independent.co.uk on the same day.

Sure sounds like the SURGE™ is a resounding success. They are juggling the numbers. Even if total deaths are down in Baghdad, it seems one attack elsewhere which is the most destructive to date mean things aren't working out.

Ever squeeze a balloon? Of course you can reduce the air (destruction) in one part of the balloon (Iraq), but the air just moves to another part of the balloon. You aren't gaining anything.

Everyone knows the insurgents have moved operations out of Baghdad until the heat's off. That doesn't mean they're slowing down their operations. What it means is new groups of Iraqis are now in far more danger than they were before the SURGE™.

Iraq death toll rises amid backlash fears

File under: Courage under fire. My gawd, but these people are devoted.

Iraqi insurgents killed nine more Shiite pilgrims on Wednesday as the toll from the previous day's suicide attack rose to 117, amid fears that a backlash could undermine the US-led Baghdad security plan.

At least two suicide bombers detonated explosive vests on Tuesday in a crowd of Shiites marching through the central town of Hilla on foot towards the holy city of Karbala for Friday's Arbaeen religious festival.

Doctor Saad al-Shemari of Hilla hospital told AFP that, along with the 117 dead, there were another 173 wounded -- many of them critically -- and that the number of fatalities was expected to rise still further.

"After every kind of attack, we're concerned about restarting the cycle of sectarian violence," said US spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Chris Garver.

"So we hope that people remain calm and don't play into the terrorists' hands, by restarting the cycle, and let the Iraqi security forces do their job. We're concerned about every attack," he said.

The killings continued on Wednesday as -- undaunted -- thousands of pilgrims continued their march of devotion, carrying banners and copies of the Koran and marching hundreds of kilometres to Karbala's revered shrines.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd guess you're afraid to walk a deserted street at night in the US.

These pilgrims know they will most likely be shot at and still take their chances.

(read more)

File under "no shit"

In an attempt to ensure no Democratic candidates will elicit my services in their races for office I chose the above title. I'm sure it will work.

OMG, what was I thinking? I could use the money.

Anyway, surprise, surprise. US forces are facing more sophisticated weapons. Duh!

A helicopter operated by a private security firm came down in Iraq last week, U.S. officials said on Thursday, an incident that marks the sixth downing of a helicopter in three weeks.

Reports of the January 31 incident, in which no one was killed, come a day after seven crew members and passengers aboard a U.S. Marine helicopter were killed when it crashed near Baghdad, possibly after being hit by ground fire.

The U.S. military, concerned that militants have changed tactics or are using more sophisticated weapons, has said it is adjusting its tactics.

(read more)

Huge Force Readying Crackdown in Baghdad

The emphasis is mine in this story because it seems the most important.

U.S. Army engineers have torn down houses and surrounded the newly cleared space with razor wire atop concrete blast walls for neighborhood bases, the first outward signs of the coming Baghdad security crackdown.

American and Iraqi commanders are pulling together a force that numbers - on paper at least - about 90,000 troops for what many see as a last-chance drive to curb the debilitating violence that has turned Baghdad into a battleground and killed - according to the United Nations - more than 34,000 civilians last year alone.

Is that a good way to win over the hearts and minds of Iraqis? By leveling their homes? And how do blast walls and razor wire stop a mortar such as was lobbed into the green zone last month? Just asking.

(read more)

121 killed as Baghdad market obliterated

When is the last time you saw the word obliterated in a headline?

How many fucking years before you want to see it again? Just asking.

(read more)

Two killed as US helicopter lost

Read rangeragainstwar's take on such news.

A US army helicopter “went down” today north of Baghdad and two US soldiers were killed, the US military said.