World-News

More than 17,000 Iraqi civilians and police officers died violently in the latter half of 2006, according to Iraqi Health Ministry statistics - a sharp increase that coincided with rising sectarian strife since the February bombing of a landmark Shiite shrine.

https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807D.shtml

U.N. Ambassador's Oily Past
https://ga3.org/ct/Ad20pgF1URn9/

The Iraqi government has said that the executions of two senior associates of former leader Saddam Hussein will take place some time during the week. This is despite an appeal from the new UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, that they should not go ahead.

https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807M.shtml



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=executed

Bush's apparent determination to send extra troops, rather than set a timetable for withdrawal, represents a rejection of the Iraq Study Group report, and sets the stage for a major battle between a House and Senate newly under Democratic control. Iraq's Shia prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, pre-empted Bush's statement by announcing that Iraqi security forces, backed by Americans, were about to implement a major crackdown on illegal armed groups from all sectarian factions in Baghdad. Maliki's speech was a US condition for deploying extra troops, insisted on by Bush in a two-hour teleconference with Maliki last Thursday.

https://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807L.shtml



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Maliki
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Iraq+Study+Group
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=extra+troops

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3032493


Informant: ranger116



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=withdrawal
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Feingold

Slate
by John Dickerson

01/05/07

It's John McCain's war now. Next week, President Bush will announce a troop surge of between 20,000 and 40,000 troops, according to those who have been briefed on outlines of the plan. Though the president will give the speech, McCain is the politician whose career most depends on it. The senator has been advocating more troops since August of 2003. ... McCain has long benefited from being a supporter of the war but a critic of the tactics. Now they are his tactics, and his political neck is on the line...

https://www.slate.com/id/2156926


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=McCain
https://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=troops+surge

"You are on the list of the teachers who are going to be killed this month for not obeying our demands to leave Iraq," said a hand-written letter which was left at Dr Hamida Bakri's door. Now the 41-year old professor of gynecology at the college of medicine at the University of Baghdad, is ready to leave the country with her family before death threats become reality. She said two of her colleagues had already been killed. According to the Ministry of Higher Education, at least 280 academics have been killed since the US-led invasion in 2003 by insurgents and militias. "The targeting of such academics is generating a mess in our country. The health and educational systems are depleted of good professionals. Nearly one third of those living in Iraq before 2003 have fled violence," said Dr. Mustafa Jaboury, a research investigator at the Ministry of Higher Education.

https://electroniciraq.net/news/2801.shtml

Displaced families in the capital, Baghdad, have urged the Iraqi Red Crescent Society to continue supporting people who have been displaced as a result of sectarian violence. "We need urgent help because since the [Red Crescent] volunteers in the capital stopped their work, we have been seriously suffering with the lack of assistance, medical care at camps, and especially food," said Ibraheem Rabia'a, a displaced metal-worker who acts as a spokesperson for a group of 120 families living in abandoned government buildings on the outskirts of the capital. According to the Brookings Institution, 650,000 Iraqis are internally displaced, living in camps or abandoned buildings.

https://electroniciraq.net/news/2802.shtml

"So you think that American troops, fighting in the urban maze of Baghdad's huge Shiite slum, Sadr City, add up to nothing more than a horrible mistake, an unexpected fiasco?" asks Nick Turse in this chilling look at the Pentagon's urban warfare visions. "The Pentagon begs to differ. While the Joint Forces Command may already be war-gaming the 2015 Battle for Baghdad, right now it looks like the U.S. military will have trouble hanging on there for even a couple of more years. Still, if present plans become reality, odds are U.S. military planners will be attempting to occupy some city, in some fashion, come 2015 and 2025. In the future, as the Army's new Urban Operations Manual puts it, 'every Soldier - regardless of branch or military occupational specialty - must be committed and prepared to close with and kill or capture threat forces in an urban environment.'"

https://electroniciraq.net/news/2803.shtml

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=2771519&page=1


Informant: Amy Sasser

From ufpj-news