Robert Naiman:

At the intersection of Cermak and Michigan streets in Chicago yesterday, veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq told their stories when they threw back their service medals in protest at NATO leaders, echoing a famous protest against the Vietnam War.

A lot of media coming out of Chicago last night focused on street skirmishes between a handful of apolitical adventurists and the Chicago police. But some media got the real story.

Zach LaPorte, a 28-year-old mechanical engineer from Milwaukee who served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006, said, "I witnessed civilian casualties and civilians being arrested in what I consider an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation," Reuters reported. Former U.S. Army Sergeant Alejandro Villatoro of Chicago, who served during the Iraq 2003 invasion and in Afghanistan in 2011, said: "There's no honor in these wars... There's just shame."

After the EU delisted the MeK on the back of a well-funded lobbying campaign by the MeK and it's neocon allies, there was always going to be huge political pressure for the U.S. to follow suit. The MeK has poured large sums, millions of dollars, into paying for lobbyists and former government officials to speak up on its behalf. Now it seems their efforts are to pay off. The WSJ is reporting insiders who say the delisting is likely to happen.

Glenn Greenwald explains why this is not just a bad idea but encapsulates everything that's wrong with Washington. It will cheapen the terrorist listing into simply a means to punish those the U.S. sees as its enemies, show that the U.S. is indeed an agressor against Iran, prove that national security decisions are available to the highest bidder and make a mockery of the rule of law by showing that the law is "not even a purported constraint on the conduct of Washington political elites".

As Andrew Exum put it this morning: “I guess Hizballah and LeT just need to buy off more former administration officials.”

Sadly I expected this, but it makes it no less disgusting that yet again the Obama administration doesn't even bother to make a passing nod to legality or ethics.

That's the general implicit thrust of this piece today from the NY Times explaining that Iraq doesn't like and doesn't really want U.S. attempts to train its police and so justify keeping a heavy presence "under the radar" in the country it invaded and occupied on a pretext.

I'm inclined to agree with BooMan:

I didn't want Iraq to continue in a state of ruinous violence. But I also didn't want America to come out the other end of this with big benefits that might cause some to rationalize what we've done. It's an tension between wanting to mitigate a disaster and still make sure everyone is clear that it was a disaster. A tension between wanting to avoid the full potential consequences of the calamity and wanting us to take our well-deserved beating.

In the end, that all translates out to hoping that we patch things up as best we can, apologize, and get the hell out. And, maybe, if we act like a decent ally for a while, we can have good relations with Iraq in the future. For Iraq to survive and prosper, they probably will need our help and support. But not if we haven't learned anything.

But definitely read Jim White on how, yet again, the Teflon General, Saint David Petraeus, manages to get away with failing upwards. We haven't learned a thing.

There's a new chapter that needs added to any account of the many sins and stains on America's character perpetrated in the war of choice in Iraq. The exploitation of sub-Saharan Africans, mainly from Uganda, by America's shady security contracting industry. Le Monde Diplomatique has the story (h/t Tina):

“I realised immediately that I’d just made the worst mistake in my life. But it was too late. I’d signed up for a year. I had to take it like a man,” said Bernard (1), a young Ugandan who worked for an American private military company (PMC) operating in Iraq. He was part of the “invisible army” (2) recruited by the US to support its war effort. Bernard returned to Uganda last year. He is ill, but has been denied the welfare and healthcare benefits promised in his contract.

White recruits — from the US, Israel, South Africa, the UK, France and Serbia — hired by PMCs that have won contracts with the Pentagon (worth $120bn since 2003) have received substantial pay, often more than $10,000 a month; “third country nationals” (TCNs) like Bernard have been treated badly and their rights as employees have been abused. Some, sent home after being wounded, get no help from their former employers.

The Independent - Special Report day one: The phosphorus shells that devastated this city were fired in 2004. But are the victims of America's dirty war still being born?

Apr 2

AFP - Iraq's Kurdish region halted oil exports on Sunday after Baghdad's top energy official warned it to reconsider before following through on the threat over the government's non-payment of funds.

The move by Kurdistan is the latest in a long-running row between Baghdad and Kurdish authorities in Arbil, who have squabbled over payments, revenue-sharing and the central government's refusal to recognise deals Kurdish officials have signed with foreign energy firms.

Kurdistan said a week ago that it had reduced exports to 50,000 barrels of oil per day, and threatened to stop exports entirely if Iraq did not hand over $1.5 billion Arbil said was owed to foreign oil companies working in the region.

On Sunday, Kurdistan followed through.

"After consultation with the producing companies, the ministry (of natural resources) has reluctantly decided to halt exports until further notice," the Kurdistan regional government said in a statement on its website.

"There have been no payments for 10 months, nor any indication from federal authorities that payments are forthcoming."

At "Today's Zaman", distinguished columnist Abdullah Bozkurt quotes Turkish government sources as saying that, faced with the Iraqi government's continued repression of its Sunni and Kurdish minorities, Turkey is readying a plan B after years of supporting a united Iraqi state.

According to a senior government official who I talked to last week, Turkey has set things in motion to beef up a contingency plan for the future of Iraq in the face of the increasing likelihood that the country may be divided along sectarian lines under the joint pressure of the militant Shiite regime in Tehran and its co-conspirators in Baghdad.

The fallback position for Turkey now or Plan B for the future of Iraq is to create a united front, consisting of Sunni Arabs and Kurds, against the Shiite majority. Because of the sensitivity of the partition issue, the official spoke under the condition of anonymity.

On the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Ned Parker looks at our legacy there. It's not pretty.

Nine years after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein and just a few months after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, the country has become something close to a failed state. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki presides over a system rife with corruption and brutality, in which political leaders use security forces and militias to repress enemies and intimidate the general population. The law exists as a weapon to be wielded against rivals and to hide the misdeeds of allies. The dream of an Iraq governed by elected leaders answerable to the people is rapidly fading away.

Baghdad | Mar 17

AFP - The movement loyal to anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq on Saturday released a man it identified as a captive former American soldier, but US officials declined to confirm the man's identity.

The man was named by followers of Sadr as 59-year-old army sergeant Randy Michael Hills, and Sadrist officials said he was freed in a humanitarian gesture and handed over to the United Nations mission in Iraq (UNAMI).

The UN said he was an American citizen, but provided no further details about the man's identity.

Two senior lawmakers loyal to Sadr "handed over to UNAMI in the evening of Saturday 17 March an American citizen whom they said has been in detention for about nine months by an Iraqi armed faction," UN spokeswoman Radhia Achouri said.
"UNAMI is currently in contact with the US embassy in Baghdad to follow up on the matter," she added, but did not elaborate.

An official in Sadr's headquarters in the holy Shiite city of Najaf said the man, whom he described as a "soldier," was captured on June 18, 2011.

"He was released for humanitarian reasons," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There was no direct or indirect deal or negotiations with Americans or other sides."

Exodus From North Signals Iraqi Christians’ Slow Decline

NYT - Iraq’s dwindling Christians, driven from their homes by attacks and intimidation, are beginning to abandon the havens they had found in the country’s north, discouraged by unemployment and a creeping fear that the violence they had fled was catching up to them.

Jesus wept

We really did turn Iraq into a shining example of peace and freedom, didn't we? (/snark)

At least 14 youths have been stoned to death in Baghdad in the past three weeks in what appears to be a campaign by Shi'ite militants against youths wearing Western-style "emo" clothes and haircuts, security and hospital sources say.

Militants in Shi'ite neighbourhoods where the stonings have taken place circulated lists on Saturday naming more youths targeted to be killed if they do not change the way they dress.

The killings have taken place since Iraq's interior ministry drew attention to the "emo" subculture last month, labeling it "Satanism" and ordering a community police force to stamp it out.

The Iraq we created is also a world leader in prisoner executions, torture and officlally-sanctioned disappearances - just like Saddam's Iraq. But at least Saddam's Iraq was reasonably secular and open to outside fashions and memes.

Washington | Mar 7

AFP - A US court has ordered the government to examine quickly a request by the main Iranian opposition group to be taken off a US terror blacklist, according to documents seen Wednesday by AFP.

The People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), Iran's main exiled opposition, has appealed to US courts to rule urgently on the issue "to prevent the Iraqi government from continuing to endanger the lives of PMOI at Camp Ashraf, Iraq."

What so they can be relocated in the states? Would the same lawmakers who refuse to relocate the innocent Guantanamo victims here be behind this?

Baghdad | Feb 18

AFP - Hundreds of Iranian exiles arrived at a camp near Baghdad on Saturday, a first step in a process aimed at seeing them exit Iraq, where they were based for decades, a legal adviser to the exiles said.

The move is part of a December 25 deal between the UN and Iraq, which was reached after extensive talks, under which around 3,400 Iranians opposed to the regime in Tehran will be moved to a new location called Camp Liberty.

Under the plan they will eventually be resettled outside Iraq.

** The UN thinks some should come here, how many republicans/dems will cry NIMBY or will they still continue to make money off of them?

Tim Arango | Baghdad | Feb 7

NYT - Less than two months after American troops left, the State Department is preparing to slash by as much as half the enormous diplomatic presence it had planned for Iraq, a sharp sign of declining American influence in the country.

Officials in Baghdad and Washington said that Ambassador James F. Jeffrey and other senior State Department officials were reconsidering the size and scope of the embassy, where the staff has swelled to nearly 16,000 people, mostly contractors.

The expansive diplomatic operation and the $750 million embassy building, the largest of its kind in the world, were billed as necessary to nurture a postwar Iraq on its shaky path to democracy and establish normal relations between two countries linked by blood and mutual suspicion. But the Americans have been frustrated by what they see as Iraqi obstructionism and are now largely confined to the embassy because of security concerns, unable to interact enough with ordinary Iraqis to justify the $6 billion annual price tag.

The swift realization among some top officials that the diplomatic buildup may have been ill advised represents a remarkable pivot for the State Department, in that officials spent more than a year planning the expansion and that many of the thousands of additional personnel have only recently arrived. Michael W. McClellan, the embassy spokesman, said in a statement, “Over the last year and continuing this year the Department of State and the Embassy in Baghdad have been considering ways to appropriately reduce the size of the U.S. mission in Iraq, primarily by decreasing the number of contractors needed to support the embassy’s operations.”

Mr. McClellan said the number of diplomats — currently about 2,000 — was also “subject to adjustment as appropriate.”

To make the cuts, he said the embassy was “hiring Iraqi staff and sourcing more goods and services to the local economy.”

After the American troops departed in December, life became more difficult for the thousands of diplomats and contractors left behind. Convoys of food that had been escorted by the United States military from Kuwait were delayed at border crossings as Iraqis demanded documentation that the Americans were unaccustomed to providing.

Within days, the salad bar at the embassy dining hall ran low. Sometimes there was no sugar or Splenda for coffee. On chicken-wing night, wings were rationed at six per person. Over the holidays, housing units were stocked with Meals Ready to Eat, the prepared food for soldiers in the field.

no comment ;)

. . . murder two dozen innocent Iraqis. Get zero jail time and even manage to stay in the service.

In 2010 the Defense Department spend $20 billion on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's the same amount as NASA's entire budget.

Baghdad | Dec 31

USA Today/AP - Iraq's prime minister hailed the end of the American military presence in Iraq as a new dawn for his country and urged Iraqis to preserve the unity of a nation still under attack by insurgents and beset by sectarian divisions.

At a televised celebration in Baghdad on Saturday, Nouri al-Maliki declared Dec. 31 a national holiday marking "a new dawn" in which Iraq would focus on rebuilding a nation shattered by nearly nine years of war.

"Your country has become free," he said. "The faithful sons of Iraq have to preserve its sovereignty, unity and independence."

The prime minister sought to credit Iraqis with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and made no mention of the role played by U.S. forces that invaded in March of 2003.

Istanbul | Dec 29

CNN - A Turkish airstrike on the border with Iraq killed 35 people who are now thought to have been smuggling cigarettes, a senior Turkish lawmaker said Thursday.

Turkish air force jets launched the strike late Wednesday after unmanned aerial vehicles showed a group moving from Iraq toward the border with Turkey in an area "mostly used by terrorists," a statement from the military general staff said.

But a senior member of Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) said early indications are that those identified by the drones and subsequently killed were civilians.

"These people were thought to be terrorists; however, the first initial investigative information we have from the local authorities, especially from Sirnak Governor's office, indicate that these people are involved in cigarette smuggling," said the AKP's deputy chairman and spokesman Huseyin Celik.

He said the strike had killed many members of the same family.

"Even if there was a situation 100% that these people were smugglers, these people should not have been subjected to this, they should not have been bombed. It is out of question," he said.

Expressing his condolences to the affected families, he vowed that a full investigation would be carried out and no cover-up would be allowed.

yada yada yada where have we heard that before

Dan Morse | Baghdad | Dec 27

WaPo - A group of Iraqi lawmakers linked to anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called Monday for the dissolution of their country’s parliament and said elections should be held within six months.

The move signals a growing rift between Sadr and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — both leading Shiites — and underscores the political uncertainty that has swirled around Baghdad since the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq more than a week ago.

Just a day after the formal end of the nearly nine-year U.S. effort here, Maliki’s domestic security forces accused Tariq al-Hashimi, the country’s Sunni vice president, of running a hit squad, prompting him to flee the capital. The political crisis here had been playing out mostly along Shiite-Sunni lines, but Monday’s move by the Sadrists marks the first crack in Maliki’s Shiite coalition since the troop pullout.

The political maneuvering came as Baghdad was again rocked by violence. On Monday, a suicide bomber blew up his car outside the main gate of Iraq’s Interior Ministry — a compound that houses the domestic security forces — killing at least five people and injuring at least 39, according to government officials.

At least one of those killed and 14 of the injured were police officers. The attack followed a wave of bombings here Thursday.

. . . we set up in Iraq working out?

Personally, I blame the dirty fucking hippies for this.

Army Spec. David E. Hickman is apparently the last American soldier to die for the mistake that was the Iraq War. He was thirteen years-old when the war began.

Liz Sly | Baghdad | December 17

WaPo - Iraq’s political process was unraveling faster than had been anticipated Saturday, with Sunni politicians walking out of the nation’s parliament and threatening to resign from the government even before the last U.S. troops had left the country.

The crisis was triggered by reports that security forces loyal to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, are planning to arrest the country’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, and charge him with terrorism.

Patrick Markey & Joseph Logan | Baghdad | December 18

Reuters - The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq on Sunday, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left a country grappling with political uncertainty.

The war launched in March 2003 with missiles striking Baghdad to oust President Saddam Hussein closes with a fragile democracy still facing insurgents, sectarian tensions and the challenge of defining its place in an Arab region in turmoil.

The final column of around 100 mostly U.S. military MRAP armored vehicles carrying 500 U.S. troops trundled across the southern Iraq desert from their last base through the night and daybreak along an empty highway to the Kuwaiti border.

How's that democracy working out for you?

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has moved swiftly to consolidate power in advance of the American military withdrawal, offering a glimpse of how Iraq’s post-American identity may take shape, by rounding up hundreds of former Baath Party members and evicting Western companies from the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Hoodcoodanode?

Liz Sly | Haditha | Dec 10

WaPo - In the accounting of what was won and lost in America’s Iraq war, this sleepy farming town deep in the western desert will rank as a place where almost everything was lost.

It was here, on Nov. 19, 2005, that a group of Marines went on a shooting spree in which 24 Iraqi civilians were killed. Their patrol had been hit by a roadside bomb and one of their comrades was dead. They ordered five men out of a taxi and gunned them down. Then they went into three nearby homes and shot 19 people, including 11 women and children.

On those facts, U.S. and Iraqi accounts agree. On just about everything else — why it happened, whether it was justified and how it was resolved — they do not.

And in those dueling perceptions, over the killings in Haditha and others nationwide, lay the undoing of the U.S. military’s hopes of maintaining a long-term presence here. When it came to deciding the future of American troops in Iraq, the irreconcilable difference that stood in the way of an agreement was a demand by Iraqi politicians for an end to the grant of immunity that has protected on-duty U.S. soldiers from Iraqi courts.

“The image of the American soldier is as a killer, not a defender. And how can you give a killer immunity?” said Sami al-Askari, a lawmaker who is also a close aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

So the troops are going home this month, leaving a question mark over what had been one of the chief goals of the war — to nurture a strategic ally in the heart of the Middle East.

They leave behind a legacy that will forever be tainted in the minds of many Iraqis by the casualties inflicted by the American military on civilians. It’s the raw nerve that jangles, a sensitivity that grates on both sides even as the troops stream out of the country.

justified?