Brave New Iraq

A few more 'successes' for the Bush Junta and their fellow travelers:

IRAQ: Ethnic violence forces more Arabs to flee Kirkuk

KIRKUK, 16 September 2007 (IRIN) - Iraqi Arab residents of the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, some 250km from Baghdad, say scores of Arab families are fleeing the city as ethnic violence increases there.

“The attacks on our community have worsened since February 2007. We are being forced to leave the city almost empty-handed and the government isn’t taking any action to support us,” said Ali Akram Mahmoud, a spokesperson for Kirkuk’s Arabs Association (KAA), formed in 2003 with the aim of safeguarding the rights of Arabs who had settled in the city.

“The number of [Arab] families fleeing the city has increased by 20 percent on previous years. Their flight will seriously affect the upcoming referendum in which Kurds will have a majority not because of their numbers but because, with guns in their hands, they will have forced all Arabs to flee the city. It is absolutely unfair,” he said.

The December 2007 Kirkuk status referendum is due to decide whether the city becomes part of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

“The most common scene in Kirkuk is of families filling cars with their relatives and fleeing the city in the early morning,” said Jihad Muhammad, a political analyst at Mustansiriyah University.

IRAQ: Diyala the worst province for basic services

BAQUBAH, 16 September 2007 (IRIN) - Diyala province, on Iraq’s eastern border with Iran, is the scene of some of the worst violence in Iraq today, making the province’s shortages of basic services worse than anywhere else in the country, according to the local council and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

“Few schools are functioning properly, with few numbers of teachers and students. Hospitals lack essential supplies as the militants and insurgents fight over them. On top of that, some police stations are under the control of local militias,” Fatah Ahmed, a spokesman for the Iraq Aid Association (IAA), said.

Again I ask how can you pro war people contiue to support this occupation?

More 'Success' to Chalk up to the Bush Junta

8 Million Iraqis in Immediate Need
New Oxfam Report Appeals to Global Community for Help

According to the report, more than eight million Iraqis are in desperate need of immediate humanitarian assistance:

* Four million Iraqis – 15% - regularly cannot buy enough to eat.

* 70% are without adequate water supplies, compared to 50% in 2003.

* 80% do not have access to proper sanitation.

* 43% live on less than a dollar a day.

* 28% of children are malnourished, compared to 19% before the 2003 invasion.

* 92% of Iraqi children suffer learning problems, mostly due to the climate of fear.

* 90% of the country's hospitals lack basic medical supplies.

* More than 15% are either internally or externally displaced.

As a result of the lack of adequate nutrition or clean water, resulting illnesses, particularly diarrhoeal diseases, have been on the rise.

This is the result of not planning or even thinking about the aftermath of a military invasion, and still the war supporters contiue to claim that Iraq is a country full of painted schools, what a delusion that proved to be and continues to be for them. To even point out what a clusterfuck Iraq is, opens you up to abuse, of being called a 'terrorist sympathies' or an 'islamocommiefascist', their depth of denial and ignorance continues to appall me.

Four Years On!

Multiple blasts strike Kirkuk

Three car bombs and two roadside devices have killed 18 people and wounded 37 in Kirkuk, police say.

The blasts happened in different parts of the Iraqi city but exploded within a few minutes of each other. Police Colonel Taha Salaheddin said the first and largest attack on Monday, a car bomb near two mosques, killed 10 and wounded eight.

The bomb exploded in central Kirkuk's Sector 90 district which houses the two mosques, one Shia and one Sunni, as well as the emergency police command, Salaheddin said.

He said 10 cars were burned and 20 shops damaged.

The surge does not seem to have much effective in Iraq, deaths continue and have now approached the one million mark and the increase in pessimism amongst Iraqis about the current situation, and still the war supporters continue to insist everything is wonderful and that we who opposed it since the start are clearly 'islamofascists' and 'terrorist supporters' weakening their manliness, there need to kill, to live out their violent fantasies, sending other people's children to die for it. They cannot admit where and when they have gone wrong, instead choosing to bury their heads in the sand.

Iraqis do not trust U.S. Forces

A tale of two surveys.

Bush the Perfunctory