The bit that gets me is where it says: 'American forces have been responding to fire from Shiite militias...' It doesn't occur to the Americans that it is they that are in a foreign country killing its inhabitants and that it is actually the inhabitants that are responding to invasion and occupation. If the US had been invaded by Iraq, would Americans have behaved any differently?

Deaths and injuries are soaring in the Sadr City as U.S. troops increase their military and economic pressure on the city home to more than 2.5 million people.

The sources, refusing to be named, said they have so far treated 2,563 serious injuries.

A top Iraqi official said Sunday there was no conclusive evidence that Shiite extremists have been directly supplied with some Iranian arms as alleged by the United States.

The US military in Iraq says Iran continues to aid militants, but Iraqis now say that they want their own evidence.

Kurdish rebels could launch suicide attacks against American interests to punish the U.S. for sharing intelligence with Turkey after Turkey bombed rebel bases, a spokeswoman for a wing of a rebel group warned.

The Iraqi Government seemed to distance itself from U.S. accusations towards Iran Sunday saying it would not be forced into conflict with its Shiite neighbor. And Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ordered the formation of a committee to look into foreign intervention in Iraq.

The government is massing troops for an imminent attack on the northern city of Mosul, the interior minister said.

U.S. troops will assist with aerial bombardment, logistics and artillery. U.S. marines will intervene if necessary.

The battle to overtake Mosul is billed as the 'last' major offensive Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki intends to launch to bring the country under control.

'Miracle' Marine dies...

Amidst unemployment and impoverishment, Iraqis now face a cutting down of their monthly food ration - much of it already eaten away by official corruption.

"When the Americans came to occupy Iraq, they promised us a better life," Ina'm Majeed, a teacher at a girls school told IPS in Fallujah. "After killing our sons and husbands, they are killing us by hunger now. The food ration that was once enough for our survival is now close to nothing, and the market prices are incredibly high. It is impossible for 80 percent of Iraqis now to buy the same items they used to get from the previous regime's food rations."

"I can confirm that we conducted a strike in Sadr City this morning," a US military spokesman told AFP. "The targets were known criminal elements. Battle damage assessment is currently ongoing."

However, witnesses and an AFP reporter at the scene said the main Al-Sadr hospital had been badly damaged and a fleet of ambulances were destroyed.

That's the news: Continued American bombing of residential areas with prohibited weapons; solidarity with nationalist tribes elsewhere in Iraq in the fight against oppression; "the accused person Maliki" lined up with the criminals of the prior regime on the path leading from major crimes to eventual execution. This is the current news for a very large part of the Iraqi population.

"They (the Americans) will say it was a weapons cache" that was hit, said the head of the Baghdad health department, Dr Ali Bistan, who arrived to assess the damage.

"But in fact they want to destroy the infrastructure of the country."

Parents Tell ABC News About the US Bombing that Killed Their 2-Year-Old Boy

Bush details $70 billion war funding request for 2009...

But the final straw came when the Iraqi authorities, facing mounting public anger at rising food prices brought about by the devaluation, arrested some 500 merchants on charges of speculation and profiteering and then executed 42 of them in an effort to force prices lower.

This week saw some of the bloodiest clashes between U.S. and Iraqi forces against the Mahdi Army militia loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The urban street fights recalled the kind waged in the first years of the war in Iraq and contributed to the highest death toll for U.S. forces in seven months.

By using rockets and mortars, the militias can attack U.S. and Iraqi forces without coming face-to-face in close battle. The salvos into the Green Zone have had the added effect of embarrassing al-Maliki by demonstrating that even from across the city, the Shiite fighters can inflict damage on the seat of his government.

His sharp tongued conclusion: "Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty."

Former US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has claimed that the occupation of Iraq by American forces 'ended in June 2004'.

As Congress gears up to debate the Bush administration's latest request for an additional $108 billion in war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, Iraqis are fuming at suggestions being floated by lawmakers that Baghdad should start paying a share of the war's costs by providing cheap fuel to the U.S. military.

"America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. "This is an immoral request because we didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn't have all these needs."

A Pentagon official denied on Wednesday that the surge of U.S. casualties in Iraq in April reflected deteriorated security in the Middle East country.

"While it is sad to see an increase in casualties, I don't think it is necessarily indicative of a major change in the operating environment," Lt Gen. Carter Ham, Joint Staff director for operations, told a Pentagon news conference.

Reliable sources in Baghdad and Washington trace the provocation against al-Sadr back to Vice President Dick Cheney's recent visit to Baghdad, during his ten-day tour of the region. In his meetings with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to the sources, Cheney pressed for a military assault on the Madhi Army, even though a ceasefire between rival Shi'ite factions had been recently extended. U.S. intelligence sources report that the combined Iraqi-American-British military operations aim to crush al-Sadr's militia long before the scheduled provincial elections in October. Al-Sadr's forces are in control of Basra, and by all projections, would likely win the provincial vote, further undermining the Bush Administration-backed al-Maliki coalition, which also includes the al-Hakim SCIRI (Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) group. All three Shi'ite factions-al-Maliki, al-Hakim, and al-Sadr-enjoy the backing of Iran.

"Moqtada al-Sadr did not permit his leaders to meet the Iraqi delegation," said Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, the cleric's spokesman in the central holy city of Najaf.

"Sadr insists that the crisis can be solved only through a parliamentary initiative backed by president Jalal Talabani and speaker Mahmud Mashhadani."

White House admits fault on 'Mission Accomplished' banner...

Pipes' calculations are completely ruthless. The US and its allies invaded Iraq on false pretexts, including that of establishing "democracy". Yet Pipes rejects completely that the United States has any obligations toward the population. "Iraq's plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West," he wrote in the New York Sun.

At least 925 killed in Iraq's Sadr City clashes...

Clashes between Shiite militiamen and security forces have killed more than 900 people in Baghdad's Sadr City, Iraqi officials said Wednesday, as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki vowed to press the offensive to its conclusion.

The latest death toll from the Sadr City fighting that began late last month is set to make April the deadliest month this year, denting US and Iraqi government claims of improved security.

Pentagon cuts funding for Iraq under pressure from Congress...

Obit Reveals: Ex-Commander in Iraq Dies -- Suffering from 'Depression'...

FLASHBACK: Israeli Snipers Killing U.S. Troops in Iraq...

Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., has introduced a bill to prohibit the sale of "sexually explicit" material at military installations.

"Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit," Broun said in a statement.

KBR employees working in Iraq stole weapons, artwork and even gold to make spurs for cowboy boots, two former company workers told Senate Democrats on Monday.

Appearing before a Democrats-only panel looking into allegations of contracting abuses in Iraq, the witnesses accused their former co-workers of widespread improper activity.

KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company would not comment at length because the claims are part of ongoing lawsuits.

"The witnesses who testified today raised claims that KBR has previously addressed. The government has reviewed the claims and refused to join lawsuits asserting them," Browne said.

Bombing by warplanes, helicopter gun ships and rockets is going on unabated in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq while our politicians mull revising the 'constitution'.

Ferocious fighting from street to street currently takes place in several parts of the country which makes ludicrous any talk about the constitution and its revision.

Did I miss anything?

The moment she got her signed book back, she took her letter out from within the pages of the book and extended it to Laura and Jenna. Not 500 words long, it was laminated so it would clearly not be in something as suspicious-looking as an envelope.

"At that moment, swooping down out of absolutely nowhere, a Secret Service agent grabbed it out of my hand," Gilda explained.

"DynCorp's site manager was involved in bringing prostitutes into hotels operated by DynCorp. A co-worker unrelated to the ring was killed when he was travelling in an unsecure car and shot performing a high-risk mission. I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by the contractor's manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad."

Analysts say the fact that the government's determination to reinstate the draft is an indication that the army is not finding enough volunteers.

The government cannot find enough troops to embark on new military operations to bring major cities under a semblance of control such us the northern city of Mosul which is now completely in rebel hands.

About 50 leaders representing a variety of Iraqi political blocs took to Baghdad's Sadr City on Sunday, a stronghold of fiery religious leader Muqtada al Sadr, to protest the U.S.-led siege of that area.

The leaders promised to work together with Sadrists to remove insurgents and weapons in the area. But they also had six other demands of the government, including that it immediately suspend military activity in the city, supply basic services to residents and prioritize peaceful solutions over military conflicts.

Millions of dollars of lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts were never finished because of excessive delays, poor performance or other factors, including failed projects that are being falsely described by the U.S. government as complete, federal investigators say.

The audit released Sunday by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, provides the latest snapshot of an uneven reconstruction effort that has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $100 billion. It also comes as several lawmakers have said they want the Iraqis to pick up more of the cost of reconstruction.

Militants bombarded Baghdad's Green Zone with rockets on Sunday, taking advantage of the cover of a blinding dust storm to launch one of the heaviest strikes in weeks on the fortified compound.

Shiite extremists lobbed more rockets or mortar shells at the U.S. protected Green Zone on Monday as American and Iraqi troops engaged militants in the most violent clashes in weeks in Baghdad.

The War in Iraq Costs...

Iraqi Death Estimate...

Millions of dollars of lucrative Iraq reconstruction contracts were never finished because of excessive delays, poor performance or other factors, including failed projects that are being falsely described by the U.S. government as complete, federal investigators say.

Militants bombarded Baghdad's Green Zone with rockets on Sunday, taking advantage of the cover of a blinding dust storm to launch one of the heaviest strikes in weeks on the fortified compound.

Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has rejected conditions set by Iraq's prime minister for stopping the military crackdown against his Mahdi Army militia.

An al-Sadr spokesman accused Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of wanting to resolve the problem by force instead of dialogue.

An Iraqi member of parliament has revealed that the US forces have used forbidden weapons against Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Sadr City.

"I want to thank you for your support of Israel and in particular for waging a war against Iraq." Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger to President George W. Bush Wed January 09,2008(J.Post)

A member of the health and environment committee of the Iraqi legislature, Liqaa Al-Yassin (Sadrist) says Iraqi authorities have medical and forensic proof that the Americans have been using cluster bombs in their air-strikes on Sadr City,

Iraq's prime minister set four conditions Friday for stopping a government-led crackdown against anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.

Kirkuk has been the object of a bitter struggle over the past five years among Iraq´s competing ethnic and sectarian groups. And now Arab, Kurd, and Turkmen factions seem to be digging in, anticipating that tensions may erupt in an area that is the center of northern Iraq´s oil industry ahead of a promised referendum on the fate of Kirkuk Province, officially still called Tamim, its previous Baath Party-era name.

t was the second time in the past year the pipeline had been hit and the latest in a series of attacks on Iraqi oil refineries, blamed on insurgents.

Questions Linger on Scope of Iran's Threat in Iraq...

The more likely explanation for the US invasion of Iraq is the neoconservative Bush Regime's commitment to the defense of Israeli territorial expansion. There is no such thing as a neoconservative who is not allied with Israel. Israel hopes to steal all of the West Bank and southern Lebanon for its territorial expansion. An American colonial regime in Iraq not only buttresses Israel from attack, but also can pressure Syria and Iran from giving support to the Palestinians and Lebanese. The Iraqi war is a war for Israeli territorial expansion. Americans are dying and bleeding to death financially for Israel. Bush's "war on terror" is a hoax that serves to cover US intervention in the Middle East in behalf of "greater Israel."

The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room" -- the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.

Sadr, whose call for calm was read out in a major mosque in Baghdad, said his recent threat of "open war" was directed only at U.S. forces, not the Iraqi government.

A possible breakaway path -- described to The Associated Press by Shiite lawmakers and politicians -- would represent the ultimate backlash to the Iraqi government's pressure on al-Sadr to renounce and disband his Shiite militia.

Congressional lawmakers from Oklahoma are looking into allegations that members of the Oklahoma National Guard's 45th Infantry Brigade are not being regularly fed in Iraq.

Iraq War: What you think you know , dumb Americans!...

Although most Democrats in Congress favor withdrawing troops from Iraq, many are pushing for a $172 billion war spending package that would fund the occupation beyond the end of the Bush administration.

Why does the Bush Regime want to rule Iraq? Some speculate that it is a matter of "peak oil." Oil supplies are said to be declining even as demand for oil multiplies from developing countries such as China. According to this argument, the US decided to seize Iraq to insure its own oil supply.

This explanation is problematic. Most US oil comes from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela. The best way for the US to insure its oil supplies would be to protect the dollar's role as world reserve currency. Moreover, $3-5 trillion would have purchased a tremendous amount of oil. Prior to the US invasions, the US oil import bill was running less than $100 billion per year. Even in 2006 total US imports from OPEC countries was $145 billion, and the US trade deficit with OPEC totaled $106 billion. Three trillion dollars could have paid for US oil imports for 30 years; five trillion dollars could pay the US oil bill for a half century had the Bush Regime preserved a sound dollar.

The more likely explanation for the US invasion of Iraq is the neoconservative Bush Regime's commitment to the defense of Israeli territorial expansion. There is no such thing as a neoconservative who is not allied with Israel. Israel hopes to steal all of the West Bank and southern Lebanon for its territorial expansion. An American colonial regime in Iraq not only buttresses Israel from attack, but also can pressure Syria and Iran from giving support to the Palestinians and Lebanese. The Iraqi war is a war for Israeli territorial expansion. Americans are dying and bleeding to death financially for Israel. Bush's "war on terror" is a hoax that serves to cover US intervention in the Middle East in behalf of "greater Israel."

A number of Democratic senators said they were appalled at e-mails showing Katz and other VA officials apparently trying to conceal the number of suicides by veterans. An e-mail message from Katz disclosed this week as part of a lawsuit that went to trial in San Francisco starts with "Shh!" and claims 12,000 veterans a year attempt suicide while under department treatment.

...

Another e-mail said an average of 18 war veterans kill themselves each day - and five of them are under VA care when they commit suicide.

Muqtada al-Sadr is considering setting aside his political ambitions and restarting a full-scale fight against U.S.-led forces -- a worrisome shift that may reflect Iranian influence on the young cleric and could open the way for a shadow state protected by his powerful Mahdi Army.

U.S. occupation forces have killed more than 800 people, most of them innocent civilians, in their three-week long military campaign to subdue the Mahdi Army in Sadr City, the leader of Sadr movement in Baghdad said.

Sheikh Salaman al-fariji said the troops have also injured more than 1,800 people and caused large-scale destruction of private property and the city's rickety infrastructure.

The US cannot afford these costs. Prior to his resignation last month, US Comptroller General David Walker reported that the accumulated unfunded liabilities of the US government total $53 trillion dollars. The US government cannot cover these liabilities. The Bush Regime even has to borrow the money from foreigners to pay for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no more certain way to bankrupt the country and dethrone the dollar as world reserve currency.

...

The more likely explanation for the US invasion of Iraq is the neoconservative Bush Regime's commitment to the defense of Israeli territorial expansion. There is no such thing as a neoconservative who is not allied with Israel. Israel hopes to steal all of the West Bank and southern Lebanon for its territorial expansion. An American colonial regime in Iraq not only buttresses Israel from attack, but also can pressure Syria and Iran from giving support to the Palestinians and Lebanese. The Iraqi war is a war for Israeli territorial expansion. Americans are dying and bleeding to death financially for Israel. Bush's "war on terror" is a hoax that serves to cover US intervention in the Middle East in behalf of "greater Israel."

The senior-most Iraqi general in charge of the security operation in Basrah has issued an ultimatum for wanted Mahdi Army leaders and fighters to surrender in the next 24 hours as the Iraqi and US military ignore Muqtada al Sadr's threat to conduct a third uprising. US troops killed 15 Mahdi Army fighters in Baghdad yesterday and have killed 56 fighters since Sadr issued his threat last weekend.

As the war in Iraq enters its sixth year, Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky have published a "definitive, footnoted, hilarious but depressing compilation of experts who were in error" about the war from the beginning.

Another 19 people were killed in fighting between militiamen and security forces in Shiite areas of Baghdad, officials said on Wednesday, as the death toll from weeks of street battles passed 360.

About 300,000 U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or major depression. Another 320,000 veterans likely suffer from traumatic brain injury (TBI), a type of physical brain damage often caused by explosions from roadside bombs.

What gets lost in all the saber rattling and bellicosity concerning Iraq is the WHY of the impending war. Because the Iraqis "hate our freedom?" No, obviously not. Because they are too evil to exist? Come on. Because they have used awful weapons, still possess them and will use them again? Give me a break - on the basis of that rationale, we should be marching on every member of NATO.

In a lengthy article in The American Conservative criticizing the rationale for the projected U.S. attack on Iraq, the veteran diplomatic historian Paul W. Schroeder noted (only in passing) "what is possibly the unacknowledged real reason and motive behind the policy -- security for Israel." If Israel's security were indeed the real American motive for war, Schroeder wrote,

It would represent something to my knowledge unique in history. It is common for great powers to try to fight wars by proxy, getting smaller powers to fight for their interests. This would be the first instance I know where a great power (in fact, a superpower) would do the fighting as the proxy of a small client state

While the coffee klatches between Marine commanders and Sunni tribal sheikhs may garner all the publicity, the real story on the ground in Iraq is that from Baghdad to Mosul, the U.S. military has been busy constructing scores of concrete walls and barriers between and around Iraqi neighborhoods, which it terms "Gated Communities." In Baghdad alone, 12-foot-high walls now separate and surround at least eleven Sunni and Shiite enclaves. Broken by narrow checkpoints where soldiers monitor traffic via newly issued ID cards, these walls have turned Baghdad into dozens of replica Green Zones, dividing neighbor from neighbor and choking off normal commerce and communications.

US warplanes have dropped bombs on east Baghdad district of Sadr City where hundreds of civilians have already been killed in air strikes.

The old war was primarily between the Sunni community -- which contested the American occupation -- and an Iraqi government dominated by the Shia in alliance with the Kurds. That conflict has not ended. But the most important battles likely to be waged in Iraq this year will be within the Shia community. They pit the US-backed Iraqi government against the supporters of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who represents the impoverished Shia masses of Iraq.

arly reports from Sadr City and Baghdad suggest that fighting between the Mahdi army and security forces has increased. Meanwhile, two mass graves were found in Diyala province. At least 108 Iraqis were killed and another 60 were wounded in violence across Iraq. No Coalition deaths were reported.

Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling? And here's the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the "success" of the president's surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well.

Mr. Sadr's stock has recently fallen in Iranian eyes, the Iranian ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, on Saturday expressed his government's strong support for the Iraqi assault on Basra. He even called the militias in Basra "outlaws," the same term that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has used to describe them.

Washington keeps spinning the success of a "war on terror" narrative in northern Iraq against "al-Qaeda". This is false. The US is basically fighting indigenous Sunni Arab guerrilla groups - some with Islamic overtones, some neo-Ba'athists. These are no terrorists. Their agenda is unmistakable: occupation out.

US military threatens to hit back if Sadr launches war...

An Iraqi lawmaker warned the U.S. military Sunday that if it doesn't immediately end its attacks on Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, "all options are open to us."

Fawzi Tarzi, a Sadrist member of parliament, made his remarks as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit to Baghdad.

A top US general on Sunday warned that the military would strike back after hardline Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr threatened to launch a new uprising by his militia.

Claiming improved security in Iraq and a determined bid by its Shiite Arab leadership to defend national rather than sectarian interests, Rice urged Sunni Arab leaders to send their diplomats back to Baghdad and ease Iraq's debt load.

Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday threatened an "open war" against the Iraqi government unless it halted a crackdown by Iraqi and U.S. security forces on his followers.

The specter of a full-scale uprising by Sadr sharply raises the stakes in his confrontation with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has threatened to ban the anti-American cleric's movement from political life unless he disbands his militia.

As the cleric Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters squatted in the Sadr City district's main highways on Friday, planting homemade bombs less than a mile from Iraqi and American troops, his political bloc offered on Friday to negotiate with the Iraqi government to end fighting in the area.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki insists that the offensive is aimed at criminals and illegal militias, not at the Sadrists in particular. But Mr. Shanshal said Mr. Maliki was using the accusation of criminal activity in Sadr City as a pretext for "mass punishment" intended to discourage Mr. Sadr's supporters from participating in the provincial elections.

Three weeks after U.S. troops were ordered into the sprawling Shiite Muslim slum of Sadr City to stop rockets from raining down on the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad's Green Zone, they're caught in crossfire between Shiite militiamen and the mostly Shiite Iraqi army.

Pentagon institute calls Iraq war 'a major debacle' with outcome 'in doubt'...

Iraqi troops clashed with Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's militia on Friday in what was described as some of the heaviest fighting in Baghdad for weeks.

"The Iraqi Army still hold their positions in Sadr City," U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Stover said, quoting a dispatch from U.S. troops at the front. "They are currently under attack ... but are organizing a counter-attack."

According to a report released Tuesday by Refugees International (RI), none of these has been able to provide sufficient assistance to the most vulnerable Iraqis. As a result, they are turning increasingly to local religious-political armed groups for their humanitarian needs - often Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, or the Sunni militias known as Sahwa or Awakening groups, made up of former insurgents armed and funded by the US military, though other militias and strongmen exist as well.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.

Thou shalt not launch preventive wars.

How about the Iraqi government? It has done little. While the rising price of oil has enabled the Iraqi government to amass $30 billion in reserves, the Refugees International Report said little funding has gone to help Iraq's most vulnerable. And there are many of them. Oxfam said more than half of all Iraqis are living in "absolute poverty.

Part of the reason for the lack of government aid is that corruption is pervasive and organization poor. According to Younes, the government has "proven to be unwilling and unable" to respond to the needs of Iraqis.

Iraq Oil to be Shipped to Israel...

Sadr's political power appears to be growing even as the crisis wears on. A new report by Refugees International says the Mahdi Army ranks are swelling with new recruits drawn from internally displaced people who've gotten aid from the militia. "Displaced men have joined armed groups," said the report, which put the number of internally displaced people in Iraq at 2.7 million. "As a result of the vacuum created by the failure of both the Iraqi government and the international community to act in a timely and adequate manner, non-state actors play a major role in providing assistance to vulnerable Iraqis.

Many Iraqis have come to believe that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is just as much a dictator as Saddam Hussein was.

A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.

"The current mass graves we are talking about are not those of Saddam Hussein," said Ubaidi.

They are, he added, a feature of the U.S.-dominated, post-Saddam era.

No one says the U.S. itself dug mass graves in Iraq. U.S. occupation troops are notorious for their being trigger-happy bands and the worst jailors the world has ever known. There is enough evidence of this in Iraq.

But many Iraqis today have none to blame for the atrocities unfolding in their country but the United States and specifically its current President.

Army Spc. Jason Hubbard was forced to leave the combat zone after his two brothers died in the Iraq war, but once at home the soldier faced another battle: The military cut off his family's health care, stopped his G.I. educational subsidies and wanted him to repay his sign-up bonus.

Several Reasons Why it isn't about Oil...

More than 55 people were killed in three car bomb attacks across Iraq today, including two blasts near restaurants filled with lunchtime crowds in Sunni Arab cities that had been relatively calm.

"The brutal destruction of Fallujah by the American army was not followed by any reconstruction, as if the city is being punished for its attitude against the occupation," said an engineer in Fallujah, Kaltan Fadhil.

The US Military has won every battle it has fought in Iraq, but it has lost the war. Wars are won politically, not militarily. Bush doesn't understand this. He still clings to the belief that a political settlement can be imposed through force. But he is mistaken. The use of overwhelming force has only spread the violence and added to the political instability. Now Iraq is ungovernable. Was that the objective?

I can't look at Petraeus -- his uniform ornamented like a Christmas tree with honors, medals and ribbons -- without thinking of the great Mort Sahl at the peak of his brilliance. He talked about meeting General Westmoreland in the Vietnam days. Mort, in a virtuoso display of his uncanny detailed knowledge -- and memory -- of such things, recited the lengthy list ("Distinguished Service Medal, Croix de Guerre with Chevron, Bronze Star, Pacific Campaign" and on and on), naming each of the half-acre of decorations, medals, ornaments, campaign ribbons and other fripperies festooning the general's sternum in gaudy display. Finishing the detailed list, Mort observed, "Very impressive!" Adding, "If you're twelve."

Dozens Killed in Iraq Attacks...

In one of the more bizarre meetings NATO has ever held, the military alliance decided this week to approve a US plan to build an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic against a threat that does not exist. Then, in a quid pro quo, the NATO members turned down US demands to admit the Black Sea nations of Ukraine and Georgia to the North Atlantic alliance.

What is important to realize is that (1) the Maliki administration, instead of leaving the Basra campaign as something to be eventually forgotten about, has instead explicitly locked itself into a military confrontation with the Sadrists, and (2) the decision to take this course was made in Washington, and the real declaration of war was the Gates comment. Since this is something that risks reigniting fitna in the country, it is important to realize where the decision was made to ignite this.

I had the opportunity to visit some of the areas where the Filipino people live. These people are here to do our laundry and to clean our bathrooms and showers . They are very hard working people who have to live in very sad conditions.

They have been placed in little trailers that have small beds and they are not allowed to go out of their working places alone. They must be escorted back and forth from their work place to their 'homes' .and they must be at their gate by 10 o'clock. Filipinos have their own place to eat, travel in their own buses and they have no recreation or any other activities other than work and are not permitted to interact with others here.

The Iraqi government has dismissed about 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month's offensive against Shiite militias and criminal gangs in Basra, officials said Sunday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said 921 police and soldiers were fired in Basra. They included 37 senior police officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general.

The general says progress is underway in Iraq. Meanwhile, in the increasingly bombarded Green Zone, embassy officials have been told to avoid going outdoors.

President Bush has not fired any of the architects of the Iraq war. In fact, a review of the key planners of the conflict reveals that they have been rewarded -- not blamed -- for their incompetence.

The US military says an Apache helicopter has accidentally destroyed one of its own armoured vehicles in eastern Baghdad.

THE toll from fierce fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City has risen to at least 200 dead and more than 1,000 injured, according to doctors in the besieged suburb.

There was no sign of a cessation of hostilities between al-Sadr and Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister. "Children, women and old men have been injured and killed and there are no ambulances," said Um Ali, a housewife, by telephone from her home in Sadr City. "The hospitals have no first-aid supplies and there are so few doctors."

A roadside bomb killed an American soldier in Baghdad on Saturday, capping the bloodiest week for U.S. troops in Iraq this year. Clashes persisted in Shiite areas, even as the biggest Shiite militia sought to rein in its fighters.

Al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, repeated on Saturday his demand for American soldiers to leave the country and urged his fighters not to target fellow Iraqis "unless they are helping the (U.S.) occupation."

Gunmen kill Sadrist official in Iraq...

The war in Iraq has been more expensive than every other US military conflict except World War II, but President Bush says we haven't spent enough there yet, nor does he think the war is all that costly in relative terms.

The US plans to send several envoys to Arab states to urge them increase their support for Iraq and reopen their embassies in Bagdad.

WRH: THE LIE OF THE CENTURY...

Several years later, Kanjorski said he learned that the pictures were "a god-damned lie," apparently taken by CIA photographers in the desert in the southwest of the US. The drone story itself had already been disproved, although not many major media carried that story.

Ray McGovern: Was Cheney behind Iraqi army's failed Basra offensive?

Nearly all of the $516 billion allocated by Congress to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has come in the form of emergency spending requests, a method the White House has abused, depriving Congress the ability to scrutinize how the Pentagon spends money in the so-called global war on terror. The use of emergency supplemental bills to fund the wars has likely resulted in the waste of billions of taxpayer dollars, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office.

A new congresswoman from California began her career Thursday by demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, drawing boos from some colleagues.

President George W. Bush on Thursday announced a suspension of U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq this summer to allow the military to reassess the security situation, as U.S. air strikes killed 10 people in a Baghdad slum where dozens of people died in clashes this week.

Amid this political atmosphere, dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all U.S. West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers' Day, to call for an end to the war.

"Sadr City and Shula are in a very tragic humanitarian situation as residents are suffering acute shortages of food and medicines," Iraq's parliamentary committee on human rights said in a statement.

Up to 73 people have died in Sadr City since Sunday in battles between black-masked militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and U.S. and Iraqi troops.

"The floor of the