Some stories in the media this week

US Businessman: Blackwater Paid Me to Buy Steroids and Weapons on Black Market

The Nation reports (September 23^rd): A Texas businessman who has worked extensively in Iraq claims that Blackwater paid him to purchase steroids and other drugs for its operatives in Baghdad, as well as more than 100 AK47s and massive amounts of ammunition on Baghdad's black market. Howard Lowry, who worked in Iraq from 2003-2009, also claims that he personally attended Blackwater parties where company personnel had large amounts of cocaine and blocks of hashish and would run around naked. At some of these parties, Lowry alleges, Blackwater operatives would randomly fire automatic weapons from their balconies into buildings full of Iraqi civilians. Lowry described the events as a "frat party gone wild" where "drug use was rampant."

Lowry made his statements in a deposition on September 10 as part of a whistleblower lawsuit brought by two former Blackwater employees. The suit was filed in 2008 by former employees Brad and Melan Davis. They allege that Blackwater tried to bill the US government for a prostitute for its men in Afghanistan and for strippers in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/154977/us-businessman-blackwater-paid-me-buy-steroids-and-weapons-black-market-its-shooters

Abuse and torture rife in Iraqi prisons

The Guardian reports (September 23^rd): Up to 30,000 prisoners, including many veterans of the US detention system, remain detained without rights in Iraq and are frequently tortured, or abused, according to a report by Amnesty International.

The study has found that the human rights situation remains dire in Iraq, with arbitrary arrests and secret detention common, as well as a lack of accountability throughout the security forces.

The abuses are systemic, the report claims, with alleged victims having little redress or access to trial — in many cases for longer than two years.

The allegations were released on Monday in a report titled New Order, Same Abuses; Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/23/iraq-prisons-and-probation

Iraqi journalists face daily threat

The National reports (September 25^th): After the Iraqi journalist Riyad Assariyeh was assassinated this month, his family advised other reporters to stay away from the traditional three-day funeral wake, fearing the gathering would present an easy target for militants.

It is a sign of just how vulnerable Iraqi journalists now feel that many of them took the advice, paying respect to their fallen colleague on the first day of mourning and not returning.

Assariyeh’s murder in Baghdad on September 7, and the killing one day later in Mosul of another reporter are part of an increasingly dangerous battle for control over information, that has seen insurgents and government institutions working to suppress the media, journalists and analysts say.

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100926/FOREIGN/100929728/1002

So much for the drawdown

Two stories that underline that the much-heralded US pull-out was largely smoke and mirrors...

Three day of mourning declared in Fallujah

Azzaman reports (September 16^th): The Iraqi city of Fallujah has declared three-day long mourning after a joint U.S.-Iraqi attack on the city killed at least 10 civilians and injured many others.

The raid has raised tensions and angered the city’s inhabitants as well as the nearly two million Muslim Sunnis who live in the Province of Anbar, west of Baghdad.

The Muslim Scholars Association, a group of powerful Muslim Sunni clerics in Iraq, described the raid as “a massacre in which two children were killed.”

U.S. and Iraqi officials claim that the raid killed a former Iraqi officer linked to al-Qaeda group in the country.

But the claim could not be substantiated and eyewitnesses and officials in the city said all the dead and injured were civilians.

http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news\2010-09-16\kurd.htm

Iraqi forces struggling, forcing U.S. troops to fight

McClatchy reports (September 17^th): In the two weeks since President Barack Obama declared the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq, a series of bloody skirmishes has sharpened the questions about the Iraqi security forces' ability to protect the country.

In three incidents in different parts of Iraq, American forces stepped in with ground troops and air support when their Iraqi counterparts were threatened by suicide attackers or well-armed gunmen, according to U.S. and Iraqi military accounts.

The incidents suggest that the 50,000 U.S. soldiers who remain in Iraq, far from merely "advising and assisting" Iraqi forces, as the Obama administration has described their new role, are still needed on the battlefields as insurgents try to exploit the diminished American military presence and the six-month political stalemate that's failed to produce a new Iraqi government since the country's March 7 elections.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/17/100778/iraqi-forces-struggling-as-us.html

Edited extract from Foreign Policy

What America Left Behind in Iraq

Foreign Policy reports (September 7^th): Hundreds of cars waiting in the heat to slowly pass through one of the dozens of checkpoints and searches they must endure every day. The constant roar of generators. The smell of fuel, of sewage. Automatic weapons pointed at your head out of military vehicles, out of SUVs with tinted windows. Mountains of garbage. Rumors of the latest assassination or explosion. Welcome to the new Iraq, same as the old Iraq -- even if Barack Obama has declared George W. Bush's Operation Iraqi

Since the Americans have declared the end of combat operations, U.S. Stryker and MRAP vehicles can be seen conducting patrols without Iraqi escorts in parts of the country and the Americans continue to conduct unilateral military operations in Mosul and elsewhere, even if under the guise of "force protection" or "countering improvised explosive devices." American military officers in Iraq told me they were irate with the politically driven announcement from the White House that combat troops had withdrawn. Those remaining still consider themselves combat troops, and commanders say there is little change in their rules of engagement -- they will still respond to threats pre-emptively.

Iraq is still being held back from full independence -- and not merely by the presence of 50,000 U.S. soldiers. The Status of Forces Agreement, which stipulates that U.S. forces will be totally out by 2011, deprives Iraq of full sovereignty. The U.N.'s Chapter 7 sanctions force Iraq to pay 5 percent of its oil revenues in reparations, mostly to the Kuwaitis. Saudi and Iranian interference, both political and financial, has also limited Iraq's scope for democracy and sovereignty. Throughout the occupation, major decisions concerning the shape of Iraq have been made by the Americans with no input or say by the Iraqis: the economic system, the political regime, the army and its loyalties, the control over airspace, and the formation of all kinds of militias and tribal military groups. The effects will linger for decades, regardless of any future milestones the United States might want to announce.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/07/what_america_left_behind_in_iraq

Interesting analysis in The Hindu

How real is the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq?

Atul Aneja reports in The Hindu (September 4^th): There are three significant markers that the Iraqi occupation is not ending and is being merely repackaged. First, the suggestion that the U.S. combat operations are ending is just not true. The nomenclature, however, has changed significantly. Instead of being called “combat operations,” the act of chasing militants, joint raids by U.S. Special Forces and their Iraqi counterparts on militant strongholds, and other offensive military tasks will henceforth be called “stability operations.”

In fact, the U.S. military officials in Iraq have surprisingly acknowledged that nothing on the ground, in terms of tactics, will change. Speaking recently to TheNew York Times, Maj. Gen. Stephen Lanza, chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said: “In practical terms, nothing will change. We are already doing stability operations.”

Secondly, decision-makers in Washington have decided to keep 50,000 military personnel in Iraq till the end of next year. However, their withdrawal is not a certainty. This was acknowledged by Gen. Ray Odierno, top U.S. commander in Iraq, during an interview with CBS television: “If they [Iraqis] ask us that they might want us to stay longer, we certainly would consider that.”

Even if the Americans pull out the remaining 50,000 troops at the end of 2011, the presence of security contractors, comprising a core element of mercenaries, is being beefed up and superimposed to safeguard U.S. interests. In other words, the process of privatising the U.S. occupation in Iraq through a mercenary “surge” is set to acquire momentum in the coming days and months.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article611950.ece?homepage=true

The so-called withdrawal

Lots of comment in the last few days about the fictitious nature of the US withdrawal from Iraq. Robert Fisk in The Independent was the most eloquent:

US troops say goodbye to Iraq

Robert Fisk reports for The Independent (August 20^th): We should not be taken in by the tomfoolery on the Kuwaiti border in the last few hours, the departure of the last "combat" troops from Iraq two weeks ahead of schedule. They are leaving behind 50,000 men and women – a third of the entire US occupation force – who will be attacked and who will still have to fight against the insurgency.

Yes, officially they are there to train the gunmen and militiamen and the poorest of the poor who have joined the new Iraqi army, whose own commander does not believe they will be ready to defend their country until 2020. But they will still be in occupation – for surely one of the "American interests" they must defend is their own presence – along with the thousands of armed and indisciplined mercenaries, western and eastern, who are shooting their way around Iraq to safeguard our precious western diplomats and businessmen. So say it out loud: we are not leaving.

Instead, the millions of American soldiers who have passed through Iraq have brought the Iraqis a plague. From Afghanistan they brought the infection of al-Qa'ida. They brought the disease of civil war. They injected Iraq with corruption on a grand scale. They stamped the seal of torture on Abu Ghraib. They sectarianised a country that, for all its Saddamite brutality and corruption, had hitherto held its Sunnis and Shias together.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-us-troops-say-goodbye-to-iraq-2057387.html

Ranj Alaaddin added in The Guardian (August 20^th): Fifty thousand US troops will stay in Iraq until 2011, down from 96,000, ostensibly to play a supporting role and advise Iraqi forces. That is, however, 50,000 armed US troops, backed up by major military hardware and artillery and who will operate in "self-defence" and could intervene in armed combat at the request of the Iraqi government.

As volatility continues to grip northern Iraq and the south experiences an increase in attacks, those triggers for American intervention could come sooner than most think, rendering the whole withdrawal of "combat" troops a meaningless, public relations stunt that makes a mockery of the intelligence of the Iraqi and American people.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/20/us-iraq-exit-phoney-withdrawal

And there's an interesting interview on Democracy Now!

US Withdrawal Plan Marks "Privatization of Military Occupation"

Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía, the first US combat veteran to publicly resist the war, on Democracy Now! Radio (August 20^th): What is not being reported as strongly as the final troop leaving Iraq is that we’re still leaving 50,000 troops in country, not to mention that the 4,000 who are leaving are being replaced by 7,000 security contractors.

We already have over 100,000 contractors in Iraq operating, many of them operating in the capacity of mercenaries. If you read the coverage by the New York Times, you realize that these are not just going to be security guards, these are going to be highly specialized former military personnel who are going to have the skills and the ability to operate radars, to go out there and find improvised explosive devices.

So, basically, it’s the privatization of a military occupation - the transferring of military authorities and duties from the US military into corporate paramilitary forces.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/20/iraq_war_vet_camilo_mejia_us

And here's the full statement of a coalition of anti-war groups in the US:

The Iraq Debacle: The Legacy of Seven Years of War

by Iraq Debacle Coalition

We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, mark the August 31st partial withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq with the following evaluation and recommendations:

• The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues and the reduction of U.S. troops in Iraq can at best be called only a rebranded occupation. While the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be reduced from a high of 165,000, there will still be 50,000 troops left behind, some 75,000 contractors, five huge "enduring bases" and an Embassy the size of Vatican City.
• The U.S. military's overthrow of the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein did not lead to a better life for Iraqis-just the opposite. It resulted in the further destruction of basic infrastructure-electricity, water, sewage-that continues to this day. The U.S. dropped more tons of bombs on Iraq than in all of WWII, destroying Iraq's electrical, water and sewage systems. Iraq's health care and higher education systems, once the best in the entire region, have been decimated. The U.S. war on Iraq unleashed a wave of violence that has left over one million Iraqis dead and four million displaced, as well as ethnic rivalries that continue to plague the nation. We have seriously wounded millions of Iraqis, creating a lifetime of suffering and economic hardship for them, their communities and the entire nation as it struggles to rebuild. Life expectancy for Iraqis fell from 71 years in 1996 to 67 years in 2007 due to the war and destruction of the healthcare system. The U.S. use of weapons such as depleted uranium and white phosphorous has taken a severe toll, with the cancer rate in Fallujah, for example, now worse than that of Hiroshima.
• The majority of the refugees and internally displaced persons created by the US intervention have been abandoned. Of the nearly 4 million refugees, many are now living in increasingly desperate circumstances in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and around the world. As undocumented refugees, most are not allowed to work and are forced to take extremely low paying, illegal jobs ($3/day) or rely on the UN and charity to survive. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has documented a spike in the sex trafficking of Iraqi women.
• Iraq still does not have a functioning government. Many months after the March 7 elections, there is still a political vacuum and violence that is killing roughly 300 civilians a month. There is no functioning democracy in place and little sign there will be one in the near future.
• The Iraq War has left a terrible toll on the U.S. troops. More than one million American service members have deployed in the Iraq War effort. Over 4,400 U.S. troops have been killed and tens of thousands severely injured. More than one in four U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment. PTSD rates in the military have skyrocketed. In 2009, a record number of 245 soldiers committed suicide.
• The war has drained our treasury. As of August 2010, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $750 billion on the Iraq War effort. Counting the cost of lifetime care of wounded vets and the interest payments on the money we borrowed to pay for this war, the real cost will be in the trillions. This misappropriation of funds has contributed to the economic crises we are experiencing, including the lack of funds for our schools, healthcare, infrastructure and investments in clean, green jobs.
• The U.S. officials who got us into this disastrous war on the basis of lies have not been held accountable. Not George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld. No one. Neither have the Bush administration lawyers who authorized torture, including Jay Bybee and John Yoo. The "think tanks," journalists and pundits who perpetuated the lies have not been fired-most are today cheerleading for the war in Afghanistan.
• The war has led to the pillaging of Iraqi resources and institutionalization of corruption. The U.S. Department of Defense has been unable to account for $8.7 billion of Iraqi oil and gas money meant for humanitarian needs and reconstruction after the 2003 invasion. The invasion has also led to the erosion of Iraqi government control over the nation's oil. In 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which included executives of America's largest energy companies, recommended opening up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment. The resulting draft Iraq Oil Law threatens global grab for Iraq's resources as the international oil cartel seeks to reestablish its control. Adoption of the oil law, however, has been stymied by stiff popular resistance, foremost by the oil workers and their union.
• The war has not made us more secure. The US policy of torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, violent and deadly raids on civilian homes, gunning down innocent civilians in the streets and absence of habeas corpus has fueled the fires of hatred and extremism toward Americans. The very presence of our troops in Iraq and other Muslim nations has become a recruiting tool.

Given the above, we, the undersigned individuals and organizations, mark the occasion of this troop withdrawal by calling on the Administration and Congress to take the following actions:

• Withdrawal of all U.S. troops and military contractors from Iraq and the closing of all U.S. bases;
• Reparations to help the Iraqis repair their basic infrastructure and increased funds for the millions of internally and externally displaced Iraqis;
• Full support for the U.S. troops who suffer from the internal and external wounds of war;
• Prosecution of those officials responsible for dragging our country into this disaster;
• Transfer of funds from war into resources to rebuild America, with a focus on green jobs.
• The lessons of this disastrous intervention should also be an impetus for Congress and the administration to end the war in Afghanistan. It's time to focus on creating real security here at home and rebuilding America.

To be listed as an Individual Signatory to above statement please click here.

To have your organization listed below email us:

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/19-10

Collateral Murder Continued...

Former GIs Describe US Policy of Firing on Civilians

Global Research reports (August 16^th): Three former U.S. soldiers involved in the infamous “Collateral Murder” helicopter gunship attack on Baghdad civilians in July 2007, say that attack was nothing out of the ordinary. The massacre---that killed more than a dozen Iraqis, two of them employed by Reuters---ignited a wave of international revulsion against the U.S. military in Iraq when a video of the massacre was released by WikiLeaks last April.

“What the world did not see is the months of training that led up to the incident, in which soldiers were taught to respond to threats with a barrage of fire---a “wall of steel,” in Army parlance---even if it put civilians at risk,” report Sarah Lazare and Ryan Harvey in the August 16th issue of The Nation magazine.

Former Army Specialist Josh Stieber said that newly arrived soldiers in Baghdad were asked if they would fire back at an attacker if they knew unarmed civilians might get hurt in the process. Those who did not respond affirmatively, or who hesitated, were “knocked around” until they realized what was expected of them, added former Army Specialist Ray Corcoles, who deployed with Stieber.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20605

The US isn't leaving Iraq, it's rebranding the occupation

Seumas Milne writes in The Guardian (August 4^th): The US isn't withdrawing from Iraq at all – it's rebranding the occupation. Just as George Bush's war on terror was retitled "overseas contingency operations" when Obama became president, US "combat operations" will be rebadged from next month as "stability operations".

But as Major General Stephen Lanza, the US military spokesman in Iraq, told the New York Times: "In practical terms, nothing will change". After this month's withdrawal, there will still be 50,000 US troops in 94 military bases, "advising" and training the Iraqi army, "providing security" and carrying out "counter-terrorism" missions. In US military speak, that covers pretty well everything they might want to do.

The US government isn't just rebranding the occupation, it's also privatising it. There are around 100,000 private contractors working for the occupying forces, of whom more than 11,000 are armed mercenaries, mostly "third country nationals", typically from the developing world.

Read more at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/04/us-iraq-rebranding-occupation