Iraqi Kids Get Beanie Babies

March 27, 2006

The Cheney administration is beating up the media for better news out of Iraq – not very successful yet. But MoA yielded.

The effort induced me to search for the real, better news at U.S. Central Command’s Iraq website:

—

Hmmm.

But three years into the prolonged war, Central Command does know who they are up to.

There is this threat from terrorists & foreign fighters and there are saddamists and rejectionists.

Maybe they all do need some further development, but the basic structure is in place.

Hey don´t get cynic.

There IS good news. Centcom’s This Week In Iraq report, March 27, 2006 (PDF) edition, has this listed as one of six items under:

"Rebuilding Iraq – Projects that are shaping a nation"

Soldiers of the 142nd Corps Support Battalion handed out Beanie Babies to about 1,000 school children in Zakho.

Good news, indeed. That project should have made headlines. It does at MoA. So Rummy, please stop the beating now and Mr. Cheney, could you please put that gun away?

Posted by b on March 27, 2006 at 18:06 UTC | Permalink

Comments

First its good to see Billmon back.
Second: I saw the best bumper sticker of the month. I just don’t know where to get it: BUSH IS NOT A LAME DUCK! HE’S A FRIED CHICKEN!
Anyone know who’s putting them out?

Posted by: Diogenes | Mar 27 2006 18:32 utc | 1

This handing out toys and candy thing probably comes from all the preppies at the pentagon, who, after watching old WWII film footage think thats how the war was won — or at least, think thats what victory looks like. And like a Steven Spielberg movie, figure if you throw in every anecdote, metaphore, analogy, urban myth, and the kitchen sink, that go into establishing the dumbed down, commonly held misconceptions of what has happened — and call that the truth — well, good fucking luck, with your little plan at “creating new realities”, because when you live by fiction, you die by fiction.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 27 2006 19:51 utc | 2

Via The Huffington Post is an email from an American soldier in Ramadi. The picture is not all roses and flowers. Note to the children of Iraq: Beany Babies have no magical powers and they won’t protect you from shrapnel or bullets.

Posted by: SME in Seattle | Mar 27 2006 19:54 utc | 3

Excuse me….I have to go beat my head against the wall for a while. I’ve said before that things like this leave me with two thoughts “Jesus Wept” and/or “Whoopee We’re All Going To Die”!

Posted by: R.L. | Mar 28 2006 6:42 utc | 4

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq – A court in Erbil sentenced a writer who wrote an accusatory article about Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani to 18 months in prison Sunday in a case that has raised doubts about the judiciary’s independence. Kamal Karim Qadir, an Iraqi-born Kurd with Austrian citizenship, was arrested last fall and charged with threatening the national security of Kurdistan.
The charges came after he wrote a series of controversial articles in 2004 that were critical of the Barzanis, Kurdistan’s ruling family. The articles accused Barzani, the president of the Kurdish region, of cooperating with the Iranian government against the interests of the Kurdish people. It said his son, Masroor Barzani, had used prostitutes to spy on Kurds in Europe.
After a one-hour trial in December, Qadir was sentenced to 30 years in prison. At Sunday’s hearing, that sentence was reduced.
A high-ranking Kurdish official, Qubad Talabani, later told [i]CNN[/i] that Barzani probably would pardon Qadir. “Maybe it’s time to revise certain laws,” he said. “We are an emerging democracy. … We need to improve our institutions.”
The judge in the December proceeding, which was held in secret, had ties to the KDP’s intelligence service, which is headed by Masroor Barzani, according to a Kurdish government source with knowledge of the judicial proceedings who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Erbil Gov. Nawzad Hadi Mawlood said Qadir’s writings endangered the Kurdish region. “Kamal wrote that we sold Kurdish land to Israel — that kind of talk is very dangerous to us,” Mawlood said. “Our neighbors — Turkey, Iran, the Arabs — nobody would accept this, and the fact that a Kurd is writing these accusations makes them more credible. These writings could lead them to try to destroy us, to attack us.”
Writer sentenced to prison for criticizing Kurdish leader

Posted by: HS | Mar 28 2006 7:30 utc | 5

Ohh, Bush doesn´t like Jaafari:
Shiites Say U.S. Is Pressuring Iraqi Leader to Step Aside

Senior Shiite politicians said today that the American ambassador has told Shiite officials to inform the Iraqi prime minister that President Bush does not want him to remain the country’s leader in the next government.
It is the first time the Americans have directly intervened in the furious debate over the country’s top job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the Americans and some Shiite leaders.
The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the head of the main Shiite political bloc at a meeting last Saturday to pass a “personal message from President Bush” on to the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who the Shiites insist should stay in his post for four more years, said Redha Jowad Taki, a Shiite politician and member of Parliament who was at the meeting.

Ahh the joys of democracy and sovereign countries!
From a comment by Salah on Helena’s blog

I think its clear enough why US preferred Abd al-Mahdi, first I would mention that ‎US administration many times raised that they preferred Abd al-Mahdi to lead new ‎government and they push toward this right now.‎
Some points from the past about Abd al-Mahdi, he is one of three Iraqis chosen by ‎Noah Feldman in putting what we call “Iraqi Constitution” which I call it Noah ‎Constitution, also Abd al-Mahdi he had in the last three years regular trips to US ‎which involved meeting with GWB, and Dick Cheney many times in addition to other ‎US administration and cooperates, he is openly addressed that the privatisations ‎specially of Iraqi oil sector its shed be first priority to be done!!! This is naïve if we ‎looking inside Iraq there are more important things should be done and more affecting ‎day life of each Iraq after through the regime out and set new Iraq.‎
The other point I would make is Abd al-Mahdi he state his politic life as commonest ‎party member and supporters early days then he moved to Ba’ath party then he joined ‎the religious parties and follow Ahmad Aljalabi grope, this indicates that Abd al-‎Mahdi he knew how to colour himself and who the politics works and US need this ‎type of personality that looking ambition and not holding the national interest just to ‎run to his desire.

Handing out Beanie Babies!

Posted by: b | Mar 28 2006 21:09 utc | 6

I wonder just how many in the Moslem world are aware that an NYU NYC JEW was the chief architect of the Iraqi constitution. In years to come we will be treated to his whining visage on Charlie Rose talking about “misconceptions” in much the same way we have to stomach Jeffrey Sachs, another Jew, whinging on about the mistakes made in neo-liberalizing the Soviet Union.
On another note, we were treated to a full hour last night on the Charneolieberal Rose show with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. All I can say is why do other countries get bright leaders who can discourse cogently in a foreign language off the top of their head for a full hour without notes, prompting, or missing a beat, and we get Bush? Clinton was just as destructive, but, at least, I admired his intellect.

Posted by: Malooga | Mar 28 2006 22:24 utc | 7

Justin Raimondo has some thoughts on the reversal of US policy in iraq and some consequences:
With the American raid on the Mustafa mosque, the occupation of Iraq is rapidly reaching a point at which it is no longer tenable: as the Shi’ite giant awakens, the country is about to become a battleground in a much larger war, one that will envelop much of the Middle East.
………………………………………………………….
Whatever the truth of the matter, (the joint Iraqi US raid) this much is clear: the Americans have crossed the Rubicon, and are in for a head-on collision with the Shi’ite majority, the very forces their invasion and occupation have brought to power. The volatility of this incident is ramped up by its context: a looming political confrontation between U.S. officials and the Shi’ite Alliance, which has a majority in the newly elected parliament. The Americans are not too keen on having the Da’wa Party’s Ibrahim Jaafari installed as prime minister, and have been bringing pressure on the coalition to find someone else. But the Shi’ites must have been listening to President Bush’s many speeches about the wonders of capital-D Democracy, because they have insisted on keeping Jaafari, and, what’s more, have defied the Americans’ preference for a decentralized political structure, much to the chagrin of the Kurds.
The Americans, it seems, are turning on their one-time allies and launching a two-front war against both the Sunnis and the Shi’ites. This seems like a military strategy straight out of the Bizarro World version of Clausewitz. It makes no sense – unless, that is, the Americans are planning on extending the war into Iran.
…………………………………………………………..
Eric Haney, a founding member of Delta Force, the U.S. military’s elite covert counter-terrorist unit, and author of Inside Delta Force, succinctly summed up where we are in a recent interview. Asked his assessment of the war in Iraq, he averred:
“Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. [Army Gen.] Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and … pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That’s why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward. We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.”
……………………………………………………………
(….) As American forces begin to take on the Shi’ites in Iraq, and Iran is drawn into the conflict, this new turn – as I predicted here, and quite a while ago here – could not be more ominous. If you thought the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a major military production, with more shock and awe than anyone was prepared to withstand, then wait until you get a gander at what’s coming next. All I can say is: fasten your seat belts, because it’s going to be a very bumpy ride.
……………………………………………………………
LINK
Raimondo thinks its all part of the neo-con plan, to spread the war throughout the ME turning next to Iran and other areas of Shiite influence. Which of course it may be, however, I can’t see how this could ever be implimented, politically or militarily. What I see going on now, especially in the last several weeks, is a kind of disarray in what to do next. Because every plan the US has undertaken has failed, they are out of consistant options, and so consequently are now feeding upon themselves — by knocking down what little they have managed to put together, the new Iraqi government. The only logical reason I can see for such a (contradictory) reversal of intent is that the US position is on the brink of being delt out of game by the government they created, and suddenly have decided, the one they dont want. And are willing to risk a major Shiite revolt, or a full blown civil war, in order to prevent (POSTPONE) the inevitable Shiite political mandate. And while these options may act to polemically extend the OIF mission in the short run, it comes at the expense of the long run reasoning, which is ever eroding in the publics mind — to the tune of two fucking billion dollars every week, a broken military, and the growing and yawning political credibility gap. A Shiite rebellion or a civil war, in the publics mind, would be such a step in the wrong direction as to push any sense of resolution and troop withdrawl so far over the horizon to make any rhetorical justification even more hopeless than it already is. But I suppose they’ll try it anyway, change the equation, not so much as a new plan — but to further avoid facing up to the failure of all the other plans.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 29 2006 9:15 utc | 8

More from Eric Haney (quoted above)HEREin an interview:
Q: What is the cost to our country?
A: For the first thing, our credibility is utterly zero. So we destroyed whatever credibility we had. … And I say “we,” because the American public went along with this. They voted for a second Bush administration out of fear, so fear is what they’re going to have from now on.
Our military is completely consumed, so were there a real threat – thankfully, there is no real threat to the U.S. in the world, but were there one, we couldn’t confront it. Right now, that may not be a bad thing, because that keeps Bush from trying something with Iran or with Venezuela.
more…

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 29 2006 9:31 utc | 9

Knight Ridder again has the best reporting:
U.S. appeals to Iraq’s top cleric to help end political impasse

U.S. officials sent a message this week to Iraq’s senior religious cleric asking that he help end the impasse over forming a new Iraqi government and strongly implying that the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jafaari, should withdraw his candidacy for re-election, according to American officials.
…
But by contacting the revered Shiite Muslim leader, the administration risks further angering Iraqi leaders, who already complain that the United States is interfering too much with the process.
…
White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied reports in Baghdad that President Bush had sent a letter to leading Shiite politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a statement that, while true, was incomplete.
“What we are doing is encouraging the Iraqi leaders to move forward on a government of national unity, based on strong leadership. It is up to the Iraqi people to decide who the prime minister is,” McClellan said. “I know of no letter.”
It was unclear precisely how the message meant for al-Sistani was sent, but Haithem al-Husseini, a spokesman for al-Hakim, confirmed that the leader of the Shiite alliance bloc had received a message from the Bush administration. He wouldn’t say whether al-Hakim or al-Sistani was the intended recipient.
…
The administration’s outreach to al-Sistani underscored how much Bush has at stake in ending Iraq’s political stalemate, which has gone on for months as violence continues.
“What it reflects – we are, we’re deeper into this process,” the administration official said.
Judith Yaphe, a Persian Gulf expert at the National Defense University in Washington, called the reported attempts to pressure al-Jafaari to resign “heavy-handed.”
“They have to know that Sistani does not want to be seen as interfering in the political process,” she said. “You’re guaranteed to get the result that you don’t want.”

Posted by: b | Mar 29 2006 9:43 utc | 10