Coming Soon! Police Academy: Baghdad!

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you'll want to run away

Horror movie: A U.S. soldier chews out an Iraqi police academy trainee. Yes, that's an American football helmet. (DOD photo)

FOR MONTHS NOW, we've been hearing that Iraqi police and other security forces are being trained to take over control of their chaotic, dangerous country.

But a Voice review of the Bush regime's official weekly "status reports" indicates that the number of police may have actually fallen by more than 33 percent in the past year.

And that's not counting Bernie Kerik, who was supposed to train them back in '03 but left before doing anything.

Before we further examine the number of Iraqis available to take over the killing for our soldiers, here's a recent example of how numbers are just lying around waiting to be lied about.

It was considered good news last week that Iraqi police commandos, with U.S. troops in only a supporting role for a change, killed 85 rebels in what was touted as a major battle at Tharthar Lake, northwest of Baghdad.

Well, that's what the Iraqi government (our puppet regime) reported. But U.S. troops who arrived after the battle, which took place at a clandestine training camp for rebels, found no bodies, the Washington Post's Steve Fainaru reported. His story continued:

A spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, meanwhile, said he presumed the announced death toll was accurate, but he played down the scope of the fighting.

"I wouldn't call it a major incident," said the spokesman, Sabah Kadhim. Its significance, he said, was that it was "the first major operation" to be conceived and executed by the nascent Iraqi security forces with U.S. soldiers in a supporting role.

The reported rout appeared to bolster recent claims by U.S. commanders that Iraq's beleaguered security forces are improving. U.S. officials have said repeatedly that American troops will withdraw from Iraq only after the Iraqis are deemed able to defend the country.

So how many rebels were killed in the Battle of Tharthar Lake? The Post's reporter tried to find out:

Major Richard L. Goldenberg, spokesman for the 42nd Infantry Division, said, "I can't confirm the estimate" given by Iraq about the number of insurgents killed in the fight. He said that by the time additional U.S. ground forces arrived, "the insurgent forces who had fled . . . were able to recover their casualties and take them with them."

Noting that an Islamic militant group had said 11 insurgents were killed, Goldenberg said: "I would tell you that somewhere between 11 and 80 lies an accurate number."

Oh, between 11 and 80. Fainaru was fair, letting the American major explain:

Goldenberg said uncertainty surrounding the casualty figures should not take away from the performance of the Iraqi commandos. "We could spend years going back and forth on body counts," he said. "The important thing is the effect this has on the organized insurgency."

Yes, I'm sure we will spend years going back and forth on body counts. Part of the reason is that we can't get any straight information out of the Bush regime's puppet governments in D.C. or Baghdad about the number of people being killed. In fact, we're no longer even being told the number of people available to do the killing.

I pointed out last month that breakdown in the breakdown of just how many Iraqis are fighting on "our" side, and how the Defense Department and now the State Department are releasing fewer and fewer details in their official weekly reports.

Astoundingly, the already hazy totals are admittedly padded: There's an asterisk to note that "unauthorized absences personnel are included in these numbers."

In other words, we're counting the Iraqi cops and soldiers who have run away for fear of being branded collaborators and getting blown up by the insurgents.

The figures, bad as they were last month, are no better now. In the February 2, 2005, official report, the total number of "trained & equipped police and highway patrol" was listed by the U.S. State Department as 57,290. The March 9 report puts that figure at 55,015. That's progress?

But of course, the total of "other forces" went up by about 5,000. What these "others" are is not known. Please. We weren't born yesterday.

But why stop at yesterday when we're going backward? Let's go back a year, when the weekly reports, issued in those days by the U.S. Defense Department, provided much more detailed breakdowns. The March 2, 2004, weekly report listed the number of Iraqi police at 81,852.

So, there were 81,852 police in March 2004, and in March 2005 there are 55,015? That's a drop of 32.8 percent.

Keep in mind that it's difficult to compare the figures, but that's not our fault. The reports look the same and have the same format, but the government is no longer releasing the detailed breakdowns it was routinely issuing last year. (See the flimsy chart from the March 9, 2005, report below.)

Charting a grim future: The asterisk atached to the figure 81,889 is explained by the U.S. government this way: "Unauthorized absences personnel are included in these numbers." In other words, even these meager numbers are padded. (State Dept. graphic)

It's no surprise the U.S. government is trying to massage these numbers (mostly by not releasing them), considering how depressing the breakdowns were. Here's the one from March 2, 2004:

Total required: 75,000
On payroll (untrained): 54,270
On duty (partially trained): 20,299
On duty (fully qualified): 2,718
In training: 4,565

Frightening, isn't it? Only 2,718 fully qualified and on-duty cops.

By September 2004, the weekly reports no longer broke down the totals into untrained, trained, qualified, and all that. Guess the news was just too terrible to share with the American public.

Let's forget about the breakdowns. That's what our government has done. This year's reports no longer even list the number of security forces "required."

General Tommy Franks's immortal comment at the beginning of the war, "We don't do body counts," referred to dead Iraqis. Apparently, the news is so bad concerning live Iraqis that we're not counting them either.

Posted by Harkavy at 01:26 AM, March 28, 2005

100,000 Murdered Iraqis

March 29, 2005

100,000 Murdered Iraqis: A “Model for How Democracy Can Take Hold”

In Bushzarro world, as reflected by the corporate media, flattening large swaths of Fallujah is considered democracy. “The commander of the Marine force that drove Iraqi insurgents from Fallujah last fall says the town will become a model for how democracy can take hold in Iraq,” writes John E. Mulligan of the Providence Journal. “[Gen. John Satler] held out the story of Fallujah as a source of great hope for Iraq’s future and—by implication—for the prospects of reducing and eventually concluding the commitment of U.S. troops here.”

If we are to believe the corporate media—the Strausscon lie machine on steroids—only “insurgents” were killed in Fallujah. “Like the Nazi media, the major US radio and TV networks only report what they call ‘military casualties’ —failing to report the civilians killed since the war started and the thousands of women and children killed and wounded since the assault of Fallujah began,” writes James Petras. “The mass media fabricates a web of lies to secure a gloss of legitimacy for totalitarian methods in order that the US armed forces continue to destroy cities with impunity. The technique perfected by Goebbels in Germany and practiced in the US is to repeat lies and euphemism until they become accepted ‘truths’, and embedded in everyday language.”

Consider the “everyday language” of J. Grant Swank, Jr., church pastor and graduate of Harvard Divinity School:

“It’s the spark for freedom that’s inspiring neighborhoods to keep their homes safe from murderers global. At the grassroots level increasingly the Iraqis themselves are taking care of the malcontents out to undo the historic January 30 Victory Vote. In other words, it just won’t happen; that is, the foes won’t win. The victors will continue to win; the enemy will be deposed, one by one, place by place, and the local Iraqis will see to it.”

In other words, thousands of Iraqis resisting the occupation of their country will be “deposed, one by one, place by place.” In fact, as Gen. John Satler noted above, the “model for how democracy can take hold in Iraq” does not accept Swank’s ill-informed delusion that patriotic Iraqis will slaughter their fellow countrymen “one by one, place by place,” but rather en masse in U.S. directed medieval sieges, complete with internationally outlawed chemical weapons, including nerve gas. This fact was revealed by Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, an official at Iraq’s health ministry, apparently one of Swank’s heralded “local Iraqis.”

Meanwhile, as if to add legitimacy to the mass murder of non-combatant Fallujans—even though most Americans remain oblivious to this fact—the Pentagon is stepping up its effort to portray the resistance as “tens of thousands of hardened criminals… driven by devotion to Saddam,” as Rowan Scarborough of the ever-faithful to the Strausscon cause Washington Post reports.

“Above all the mass propaganda media has done everything possible to deny Iraqi national consciousness,” explains James Petras. “Everyday in every way the reference is to religious loyalties, ethnic identities, past political labels, ‘tribal’ and family clans. The purpose is to divide and conquer, and to present the world with a ‘chaotic’ Iraq in which the only coherent, stable force is the US colonial regime. The purpose of the savage colonial assaults and the political labeling is to destroy the idea of the Iraqi nation—and in its place to substitute a series of mini-entities run by imperial satraps obedient to Washington.”

However, corporate media spin, engineered at the Pentagon, will not diminish or blunt the resistance, especially in the wake of “the historic January 30 Victory Vote” that has yet to result in a viable or representative government in Iraq. “The countdown has begun to the day a legitimate Iraqi government, dominated by the Shias, will politely ask the Americans to leave and take their bases with them,” writes Phil Toler. “Once again, the spectre of a Sunni/Shia alliance with regard to the resistance would be too compelling to ignore.”

Delusional wishful thinking on the part of pastors and analysts at the Pentagon will not put an end to the resistance, nor will the continued characterization of the resistance as a criminal enterprise spawned when Saddam Hussein emptied the prisons prior to Bush’s invasion. Iraqis understand the Strausscon “model for how democracy can take hold in Iraq” and realize all too well this will translate into more mass murder, more suffering and privation. For now the Shia are holding their cards close to their vest, but eventually they will demand Bush remove his troops and bases from their country. Of course, Bush will not do this—in fact, he will antagonize and possibly begin murdering fellow Shia Muslims in neighboring Iran. And when this happens there will be hell to pay and no amount of corporate media spin will paper over the disastrous results.

G.W. I 200,000 casualties

More than 200,000 US casualties from Gulf War 1


Wolfgang Geist

• During Gulf War 1 more than 300 tons of depleted Uranium were discharged.
• During Gulf War 2 more than 1000 tons of depleted Uranium were discharged.

Norman Schwarzkopf asked Rokke to oversee the environmental clean up and medical care of soldiers injured in friendly fire incidents involving DU weapons. Rokke later wrote the DU safety rules adopted by the Army, but was relieved of subsequent duties after he criticized commanders for not following those rules and not treating exposed troops from NATO's war in Yugoslavia.

Gulf War Casualties

By Dr. Doug Rokke
The upcoming battle Gulf War II will result in casualties that include:

* killed in action
* wounded in action
* killed in accidents
* and additional casualties that do not show up until after the completion of hostilities. During the Gulf War between 1990 and 1991 the United States military incurred: 467 individuals wounded in action, 148 killed in battle, and 145 killed in other than battle (i.e. accidents). Therefore, the total number of US Gulf War casualties was 760 at the time of redeployment.

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs' Veterans Benefit Administration Office of Performance Analysis and Integrity Data and Information Services Gulf War Veterans Information System report that was just published (May 2002) states that as of May 2002: 696,778 individuals had served during the Gulf War with 572,833 individuals now eligible for Department of Veterans Affairs benefits to include lifetime medical care, financial compensation, and a lifetime pension.

The difference of 123,945 individuals includes Desert Storm veterans who are still on active duty, who already received a disability rating directly from the military, and those who are ineligible for benefits for various reasons.

As of May 2002, 206,861 veterans had filed claims for benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses caused by Gulf War combat related duties
http://www.rense.com/general29/gulf.htm
http://traprockpeace.org/depleteduranium.html

Former Maj. Douglas Rokke, who was director of the Army's depleted uranium project, spoke to 125 people at the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society.
A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs report says over 221,000 of our sons and daughters are on permanent disability and over 10,000 dead - one-third of our Gulf War I force. And they're coming back sick right now."
http://traprockpeace.org/rokkedepleteduranium220703.html

But the casualty rate now for Gulf War veterans is approximately 30 percent.
Of those stationed in the theater, including after the conflict, 221,000 have been awarded disability, according to a Veterans Affairs (VA) report issued September 10, 2002.
http://traprockpeace.org/rokkesummerdutour03.html

Poisoned?
Shocking report reveals local troops may be victims of america's high-tech weapons
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180333p-156685c.html

Briton sues US giant over 'uranium poison' Landmark court case could establish critical link for Gulf war veterans
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1258632,
00.html

Iraq's cancer children overlooked in war
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2982609.stm

When the Dust Settles: Do Armor-Piercing Munitions Pose Threat Long After War?
http://www.ccmep.org/2003_articles/Iraq/050503_when_the_dust
_settles__do_armor.htm


Gulf War Syndrome, The Sequel

Soldiers now fighting in Iraq are being exposed to battlefield hazards that have been associated with the Gulf War Syndrome that afflicts a quarter-million veterans of the 1991 war, said a former Central Command Army officer in Operation Desert Storm. In 1991, Desert Storm Commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf asked Rokke to oversee the environmental clean up and medical care of soldiers injured in friendly fire incidents involving DU weapons. Rokke later wrote the DU safety rules adopted by the Army, but was relieved of subsequent duties after he criticized commanders for not following those rules and not treating exposed troops from NATO's war in Yugoslavia. What Rokke and other outspoken Desert Storm veterans fear is today's troops are being exposed to many of the same battlefield conditions that they believe are responsible for Gulf War Syndrome. These illnesses have left 221,000 veterans on medical disability and another 51,000 seeking that status from the Veterans Administration as of May 2002.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7570


The Real Casualty Rate from America's Iraq Wars

Even more alarmingly, the VA revealed that 206,861 veterans, almost a third of General Schwarzkopf's entire army, had filed claims for medical care, compensation, and pension benefits based on injuries and illnesses caused by combat in 1991.
http://www.refusingtokill.net/realcasualtyratefromamerica.htm
http://www.pcusa.org/pcusa/wmd/hunger/empire_sorrows.pdf

dao integration

Be still to know the absolute. Be active to know the outer. The two spring from the same source, All of life is one whole. In stillness, one seeks the absolute Tao. There is neither beauty nor ugliness in it. Because it has no opposites, it is called absolute. By contrast, nothing of this world is absolute, because all things that we experience are relative. Seeking the absolute may be among the greatest goals, but you cannot remain on your meditation cushion forever. You must go out and explore life as well. This is the investigation of the outer Tao—that aspect of Tao that flows through all existence. You must not fail to explore anything that interests you. Any skill you want to master should be learned. Any subject that arouses curiosity should be examined. Every insecurity should be overcome. Every question should be answered. If you do not do this, then you cannot freely flow with the outer Tao: Every one of your uncertainties will be an obstacle. Initially, it will seem as if there is no connection between your time meditating and the outer things in your life. After all, the masters themselves constantly stress the difference between the spiritual and the social. But eventually, you will reach a point where the quiescence of contemplation and the activeness of living are integrated. Then there is no anxiety about whether one is living a spiritual life or not. You realize that it is all part of the same seamless whole. integration 365 Tao Daily Meditations Deng Ming-Dao ISBN 0-06-250223-9 the artist:Monbati Yadev I am 27. When I was little my father sold milk from our buffaloes and worked in other people's fields. He had to support five children and his parents. My father had studied up to third class and thought there was no reason to study if one could work. I never went to school. But with the help of my uncle, my youngest brother is now in college. At home I gathered grass for animals, twigs for cooking, and cut rice in other people's fields. I would be so hungry sometimes I'd even take some uncooked rice, grind it and eat it quickly. I was married late, when I was 18, because we had no money. If there was a fair I had to borrow a sari from someone else. Only last year when I came to work at the center did I get my first pair of sandals. After marriage I went to live with my husband and his three brothers and parents. There were 18 people in the house and I had more work than at my own house. But when I started painting at the center each day, the brothers said, "since you can't help with housework now, you should live separately." So now my three children and my husband live in a different hut in our compound and I cook only for us. My life has become much easier since working at the center. I have learned to read, and I have learned how to make art on paper because before I only painted on the walls of the house for Deepawali. I especially like making animal designs. At home we have a buffalo. Each day when I leave the center I cut grass and feed the buffalo before I cook for my family. text and integration © JWDC T A O t e C H I N G f i f t y - n i n e In caring for others and serving heaven, There is nothing like using restraint. Restraint begins with giving up one's own ideas. This depends on Virtue gathered in the past. If there is a good store of Virtue, then nothing is impossible. If nothing is impossible, then there are no limits. If a man knows no limits, then he is fit to be a ruler. The mother principle of ruling holds good for a long time. This is called having deep roots and a firm foundation, The Tao of long life and eternal vision. — translation by GIA-FU FENG For governing a country well there is nothing better than moderation. The mark of a moderate man is freedom from his own ideas. Tolerant like the sky, all-pervading like sunlight, firm like a mountain, supple like a tree in the wind, he has no destination in view and makes use of anything life happens to bring his way. Nothing is impossible for him. Because he has let go, he can care for the people's welfare as a mother cares for her child. — translation by STEVEN MITCHELL a reading list of books and interpretations of the Daodejing is available at http://wwww.duckdaotsu.org/dao_books.html for a meditation sent to your email address each day, please write ’subscribe tao’ in the subject line and send to lisbeth at duckdaotsu

Sgrena Sets the Record Straight

“There was No Checkpoint; No Self-Defense”

By JEREMY SCAHILL

Giuliana Sgrena would probably be the first to say that to focus on her case would be to miss the point on the extent of the daily, horrific violence Iraqis face at the hands of US soldiers. Sgrena is the Italian war correspondent that was shot by US forces as she was en route to the Baghdad airport after being freed from a month of being held hostage by an Iraqi resistance group. She knows better than most that if she and the senior Italian intelligence official killed by US troops as he tried to save her were merely Iraqi civilians, this would be even more of a non-story than it already is in the US press.

With Terri Schiavo and Michael Jackson to cover, it is pretty difficult for most media outlets to find the time to report on any of the more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion 2 years ago. That's why cases like Sgrena's become so important-because they represent a chance to show the world that part of the reality Iraqis face every day of their lives: They are kidnapped in alarming numbers; they are shot by trigger-happy US soldiers; their deaths are justified-if they are even acknowledged-by US officials floating flimsy cover stories that would never stand up in any US court (except perhaps a military court).

New details are emerging about Sgrena's shooting and the death of the Italian official, Nicola Calipari, that bear reporting in English (this, of course, remains a significant story in Italy). Independent journalist Naomi Klein recently met with Sgrena in the Rome military hospital where she has been since returning to Italy on March 5.

"Giuliana is quite a bit sicker than we have been led to believe," says Klein. "She was fired on by a gun at the top of a tank, which means that the artillery was very, very large. It was a four-inch bullet that entered her body and broke apart. And it didn't just injure her shoulder, it punctured her lung. Her lung continues to fill with fluid and there continues to be complications stemming from that fairly serious injury."

This case has been written off by US officials as a "horrific accident" that occurred on what we are told is "the most dangerous road in Iraq," where insurgents are constantly waiting in the bushes to attack. The Pentagon further contends that the Italians failed to slow down at a checkpoint and only after repeated attempts to stop the car did soldiers fire on the Italians. The problem is, according to Sgrena, this shooting didn't happen on that road. What's more, Sgrena says that there was no US checkpoint for which to slow down.

"This is treated as a fairly common and understandable incident that there would be a shooting like this on that road," Klein says. "I was on that road myself, and it is a really treacherous place with explosions going off all the time and a lot of checkpoints. What Giuliana told me that I had not realized before is that she wasn't on that road at all."

According to Klein, when Calipari was killed and Sgrena wounded, they were on a secured road that can only be accessed through the heavily-fortified Green Zone and is reserved exclusively for top foreign embassy and US officials. "It's a completely separate road, actually a Saddam-era road, it would seem, that allowed his vehicles to pass directly from the airport to his palace," says Klein. "And now that is the secured route between the U.S. military base at the airport and the U.S. controlled Green Zone and the U.S. embassy."

"It was a VIP road, for embassy people, not for normal people," Sgrena told Klein. "I was only able to be on that road because I was with people from the Italian embassy."

So when Calipari, the Italian security intelligence officer, picked up Sgrena from the abandoned vehicle where her captors left her, they drove directly to that road via Green Zone.

That explains why Sgrena said that when they drove to the airport she "thought we were finally safe, because the area where we were was under the control of the United States."

Klein says that Sgrena is very frustrated by the US government's claim, repeated consistently by the media, that the Italians were fired at from a checkpoint. "She says it wasn't a checkpoint at all," Klein says. "It was simply a tank parked on the side of the road that opened fire on them. There was no process of trying to stop the car, she said, or any signals. From her perspective, it was just opening fire by a tank."

"It was not a checkpoint. Nobody asked us to stop," Sgrena told Klein "All the streets we were on were USA controlled so we thought they knew we were going through. They didn't try to stop us, they just shot us. They have a way to signal us to stop but they didn't give us any signals to stop and they were at least 10 meters off the street to the side."

Sgrena also says that the US soldiers fired at them from behind, which of course contradicts the claim that the soldiers fired in self-defense. "Part of what we're hearing is that the U.S. soldiers opened fire on their car, because they didn't know who they were, and they were afraid," says Klein. "The fear, of course, is that their car could have blown up or that the soldiers might come under attack themselves. And what Giuliana Sgrena really stressed with me was that the bullet that injured her so badly came from behind, entered through the back of the car. And the only person who was not severely injured in the car was the driver, and she said that this is because the shots weren't coming from the front."

"They were coming from the right and behind, i.e. they were driving away. So, the idea that this was an act of self-defense, I think becomes much more questionable," says Klein. "Because if indeed the majority of the gunfire is coming from behind, then clearly, the soldiers were firing at a car that was driving away from them."

That could explain why the US military in Iraq has blocked the Italian government from inspecting the Italians' vehicle, even though the car is the property of the Italian government which bought it from the rental agency after this incident. "I think they have something to hide if they won't give the car over for inspection," Sgrena told Klein. "It's very strange. If there is nothing to hide, why not let Italian justice officials see the car?"

"It was not self-defense," Sgrena said. "The soldiers were to the right of us on the side of the road, they started to shoot from the right and kept shooting from behind but most of the shots came from behind, Calipari was shot from the right and I was shot in the shoulder from behind. When we stopped, they were behind us. We could see that all the back windows of the car were broken from behind. If they are afraid, they can stop the car, they can ask it to stop, then you can shoot at the wheels but they didn't do that. They didn't try to stop the car and they shot at least ten bullets at the level of people sitting inside the car. If Calipari had not pushed me down they could have killed me."

This case sheds important light on the culture of impunity surrounding the US occupation of Iraq. If this is how Washington treats Italy, one of its closest allies in the so-called war on terror, when US soldiers kill the country's second-highest ranking intelligence official, imagine the struggle Iraqis face as they die in the tens of thousands. They don't have a powerful figure like Sylvio Berlusconi to advocate for them. Instead, they have unembedded reporters like Giuliana Sgrena who risk their lives to tell these stories.

"You have to protect the life of journalists who are going and speaking to the people," says Luciana Castellina, one of the founders of Sgrena's newspaper Il Manifesto. "Otherwise, the result would be that we wouldn't have any journalists anymore or only the embedded journalists."

Jeremy Scahill is a journalist with the radio/TV program Democracy Now! He can be reached at jeremy@democracynow.org.

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