IRAQ

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we have stated here at Iraq space that we are not aiming to raise money for Iraq but rather to educate and remind people about the situation,but we have been asked to provide places in which if you wanted to, you can donate to help people in Iraq.

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MY INTERESTS ( Iraq doctor film up for an Emmy )

A Guardian documentary that offers unprecedented insight into conditions inside an Iraqi hospital is competing for an Emmy award tonight in New York.
The film, ER Baghdad: A Doctor's Story, made by Guardian Films, a division of Guardian News and Media, depicts life inside Al Yarmouk hospital, one of the biggest in Baghdad.
Shot during the summer of 2006, and broadcast on BBC2's This World strand last autumn, the film was made by Omer Salih, an Iraqi doctor. Although Salih is not seen or heard on the film, his standing as a former Baghdad emergency room doctor gained him precious access to the inside of one of Baghdad's busiest hospitals.

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MY INTERESTS

People who see that intervention must take place now to preserve our world. I believe that the answers are within us. Governments have not solve any of the problems that are currently before us, because it has not been in the corporate interest to do so. I do not care what your political motives are, you religious beliefs, or your opinions of America and "the West"; if you have an idea, or solution, do not just speak up...yell it to the heavens. To just blame others is petty. There is enough stupidity in the world to go around. To blame those people, or these people, or this or that situation does not help the matter. The world is NOT void of great leaders, we just need a few of them to step up to the challenge that is before us now.

Shall we forget

Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi (???? ???? ???? ???????; August 19, 1991 – March 12, 2006) was a 14-year-old Iraqi girl who lived in the village of Mahmoudiyah southeast of Baghdad who was gang-raped, killed and burned, by American troops. [1][2] Hamza, her parents and her younger sister were shot and killed in their home in Mahmoudiyah on or around March 12, 2006. A discharged U.S. serviceman, Pfc. Steven D. Green, was arrested and charged on July 3, 2006 with raping and killing Hamza and killing her father Qassim Hamza Raheem, 45, her mother Fakhriya Taha Muhasen, 34, and her seven-year-old sister, Hadeel Qassim Hamza. Initial details published by American media reported that Abeer Qassim Hamza was 25 years old, and that the others killed were her husband and child, details which were incorrect. Others reported that her parents were killed before the soldiers raped Abeer. [3]According to one witness, Omar, a 13 year old neighbour, Abeer's father was told that there were Americans in his house. Abeer always told her mother that she was afraid of the soldiers. Her mother was sending her to stay with a neighbor, but she didn't get there in time. Qassim Hamza entered the house thereafter to "see what was happening". Omar reports to hearing a sound "like beating a tin barrel with a stick a few times", and later saw five Americans leave the house, one of whom carried two guns. Omar's mother claims that she and her son went to the neighbour's door, shouting through asking if they required assistance, but received no reply. She says she then noticed smoke coming from their window which led her to scream for help from neighbours, several of whom knocked down the door into the house. When she entered she found the remains of Abeer Qassim Hamza. "She lay there, one leg stretched and the other bended and her dress was lifted to her neck".[1]In November, Specialist James Barker , 24, admitted rape and murder over the killings and was sentenced to 90 years. Paul Cortez broke down as he confessed to raping the girl as her parents and sister were shot dead in another room.The case is one of several in which US troops are accused of killing Iraqis.According to the plea agreement, Sgt. Cortez admitted conspiring with three other soldiers, Pfc. Steven Green, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, and Spc. Barker to rape Abeer Qassim Hamza. [4]In court, Cortez admitted the plan was hatched as they played cards and that the girl had been targeted because there was only one male in her house, making it an easy target.He said: "During the time me and Barker were raping Abeer, I heard five or six gunshots that came from the bedroom."After Barker was done, Green came out of the bedroom and said that he had killed them all, that all of them were dead."Paul Cortez added: "Green then placed himself between Abeer's legs to rape her. When Green was finished, he stood up and shot Abeer in the head two or three times."The entire crime took about five minutes and the girl knew her parents and sister had been shot while she was being raped, the hearing heard.All five belonged to the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which is also where the hearing took place. Military investigators believe that Green and as many as four other soldiers were involved in the commission of the murders while on active duty. A criminal affidavit filed in U.S. federal court states that Green and one other participant raped Hamza and that Green killed all four individuals himself. Abeer's uncle, Ahmad, says he has "no faith" in the Court Martial, requesting that the Americans "hand the criminals to us, to an Iraqi Court. We don't trust their justice, they should be tried here in Iraq."[1]Iraqi insurgents kidnapped two American troops whom they later killed, claiming that the killing was retaliation for Abeer's rape.[1]Army Sgt. Paul Cortez was sentenced Thursday, February 22, 2007 to 100 years in prison for his participation in the rape and murder. Cortez, 24, also was given a dishonorable discharge. Cortez wept as he apologized for the crimes, saying he could not explain why he took part. [5]

Attack on Iraq

In his first State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, President Bush says that Iraq -- as well as Iran and North Korea -- are part of an "axis of evil." The comments signal an increase in rhetoric from the White House against Saddam Hussein and in support of U.S. action in Iraq.
In frequent public appearances over the next several months, top officials in the Bush administration call for a "regime change" and threaten military action if Iraq does not allow unfettered weapons inspections and destroy its weapons of mass destruction arsenal and program. Iraq accuses the United States of lying in order to control Iraq's oil and serve Israel's interests.
In September 2002 President Bush urged the United Nations to encourage Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to comply with U.N. resolutions or "actions will be unavoidable." Bush said that Saddam has repeatedly violated 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, which include a call for Iraq to "disarm its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs".
Iraqi officials rejected Bush's assertions. In November, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passes a new resolution (UNSC 1441) giving Iraq a 30 day to provide the Security Council a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its military programs, demanding that Baghdad allow U.N. arms inspectors unhindered access to any site suspected of producing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, recalls, that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations.
Iraq agreed to the resolution and inspectors returned to Iraq on November 26. The resolution also requires Baghdad to provide a list of its weapons of mass destruction to the Security Council by December 8.
Iraq denies having any weapons of mass destruction and says the resolution is the result of the desire of the United States and Britain to launch military attacks on Iraq.
On 17th of March 2003, President Bush gave Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq, threatening that their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of his choosing.
Saddam has rejected President Bush's ultimatum that he and his sons leave Iraq before early Thursday the 20th of March, or face military action. A statement from the Revolutionary Command Council was broadcast on Iraqi television, saying the Iraqi regime "denounced the reckless ultimatum directed by American President George Bush." It said Iraq is ready to confront a U.S.-led attack.
It was 5:45 in the morning in Baghdad on Thursday 20th of March 23, 2003 (Wednesday 9:45 PM EST) when more than 40 satellite-guided Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from U.S. warships in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf at a "target of opportunity" as described by U.S. military sources. U.S. President George W. Bush announced Wednesday night he had ordered the coalition attack on Iraq to begin with what the Pentagon called a "decapitation attack."

NO GRACEFUL EXIT

Summary: The White House still avoids the label, but by any reasonable historical standard, the Iraqi civil war has begun. The record of past such wars suggests that Washington cannot stop this one -- and that Iraqis will be able to reach a power-sharing deal only after much more fighting, if then. The United States can help bring about a settlement eventually by balancing Iraqi factions from afar, but there is little it can do to avert bloodshed now.

James D. Fearon is Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

NO GRACEFUL EXIT

As sectarian violence spiked in Baghdad around last Thanksgiving, Bush administration spokespeople found themselves engaged in a strange semantic fight with American journalists over whether the conflict in Iraq is appropriately described as a civil war. It is not hard to understand why the administration strongly resists the label. For one thing, the U.S. media would interpret a change in the White House's position on this question as a major concession, an open acknowledgment of dashed hopes and failed policy. For another, the administration worries that if the U.S. public comes to see the violence in Iraq as a civil war, it will be even less willing to tolerate continued U.S. military engagement. "If it's a civil war, what are we doing there, mixed up in someone else's fight?" Americans may ask.
But if semantics could matter a lot, it is less obvious whether they should influence U.S. policy. Is it just a matter of domestic political games and public perceptions, or does the existence of civil war in Iraq have implications for what can be achieved there and what strategy Washington should pursue?
In fact, there is a civil war in progress in Iraq, one comparable in important respects to other civil wars that have occurred in postcolonial states with weak political institutions. Those cases suggest that the Bush administration's political objective in Iraq -- creating a stable, peaceful, somewhat democratic regime that can survive the departure of U.S. troops -- is unrealistic. Given this unrealistic political objective, military strategy of any sort is doomed to fail almost regardless of whether the administration goes with the "surge" option, as President George W. Bush has proposed, or shifts toward a pure training mission, as advised by the Iraq Study Group.
Even if an increase in the number of U.S. combat troops reduces violence in Baghdad and so buys time for negotiations on power sharing in the current Iraqi government, there is no good reason to expect that subsequent reductions would not revive the violent power struggle. Civil wars are rarely ended by stable power-sharing agreements. When they are, it typically takes combatants who are not highly factionalized and years of fighting to clarify the balance of power. Neither condition is satisfied by Iraq at present. Factionalism among the Sunnis and the Shiites approaches levels seen in Somalia, and multiple armed groups on both sides appear to believe that they could wrest control of the government if U.S. forces left. Such beliefs will not change quickly while large numbers of U.S. troops remain.
As the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad proceeds, the weak Shiite-dominated government is inevitably becoming an open partisan in a nasty civil war between Sunni and Shiite Arabs. As a result, President Bush's commitment to making a "success" of the current government will increasingly amount to siding with the Shiites, a position that is morally dubious and probably not in the interest of either the United States or long-term regional peace and stability. A decisive military victory by a Shiite-dominated government is not possible anytime soon given the favorable conditions for insurgency fought from the Sunni-dominated provinces. Furthermore, this course encourages Sunni nationalists to turn to al Qaeda in Iraq for support against Shiite militias and the Iraqi army. It also essentially aligns Washington with Tehran against the Sunni-dominated states to the west.
As long as the Bush administration remains absolutely committed to propping up the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki or a similarly configured successor, the U.S. government will have limited leverage with almost all of the relevant parties. By contrast, moving away from absolute commitment -- for example, by beginning to shift U.S. combat troops out of the central theaters -- would increase U.S. diplomatic and military leverage on almost all fronts. Doing so would not allow the current or the next U.S. administration to bring a quick end to the civil war, which most likely will last for some time. But it would allow the United States to play a balancing role between the combatants that would be more conducive to reaching, in the long run, a stable resolution in which Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish interests are well represented in a decent Iraqi government. If the Iraqis ever manage to settle on the power-sharing agreement that is the objective of current U.S. policy, it will come only after bitter fighting in the civil war that is already under way.

WAR RECORDS

A civil war is a violent conflict within a country fought by organized groups that aim to take power at the center or in a region, or to change government policies. Everyday usage of the term "civil war" does not entail a clear threshold for how much violence is necessary to qualify a conflict as a civil war, as opposed to terrorism or low-level political strife. Political scientists sometimes use a threshold of at least 1,000 killed over the course of a conflict. Based on this arguably rather low figure, there have been around 125 civil wars since the end of World War II, and there are roughly 20 ongoing today. If that threshold is increased to an average of 1,000 people killed per year, there have still been over 90 civil wars since 1945. (It is often assumed that the prevalence of civil wars is a post-Cold War phenomenon, but in fact the number of ongoing civil wars increased steadily from 1945 to the early 1990s, before receding somewhat to late-1970s levels.) The rate of killing in Iraq -- easily more than 60,000 in the last three years -- puts the conflict in the company of many recent ones that are routinely described as civil wars (for example, those in Algeria, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and Sri Lanka). Indeed, even the conservative estimate of 60,000 deaths would make Iraq the ninth-deadliest civil war since 1945 in terms of annual casualties.
A major reason for the prevalence of civil wars is that they have been hard to end. Their average duration since 1945 has been about ten years, with half lasting more than seven years. Their long duration seems to result from the way in which most of these conflicts have been fought: namely, by rebel groups using guerrilla tactics, usually operating in rural regions of postcolonial countries with weak administrative, police, and military capabilities. Civil wars like that of the United States, featuring conventional armies facing off along well-defined fronts, have been highly unusual. Far more typical have been conflicts such as those in Algeria, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and southern and western Sudan. As these cases illustrate, rural guerrilla warfare can be an extremely robust tactic, allowing relatively small numbers of rebels to gain partial control of large amounts of territory for years despite expensive and brutal military campaigns against them.