PENTAGON BIGS WARN BUSH

AP: Behind the Pentagon’s closed doors, U.S. military leaders told President Bush Wednesday they are worried about the Iraq war’s mounting strain on troops and their families. But they indicated they’d go along with a brief halt in pulling out troops this summer.

NYT: Maliki Gives Shiite Militias 72 Hours to Halt Fighting

Fighting in two of Iraq’s largest cities threatens to destabilize a long-term truce that had helped reduce the level of violence in the five-year-old war.

Gareth Porter : Sadr Offensive Shows Failure of Petraeus Strategy

WASHINGTON, Mar 26 (IPS) - The escalation of fighting between Mahdi Army militiamen and their Shiite rivals, which could mark the end of Moqtada al-Sadr’s self-imposed ceasefire, also exposes Gen. David Petraeus’s strategy for controlling Sadr’s forces as a failure.
Petraeus reacted immediately to Sunday’s rocket attacks on the Green Zone by blaming them on Iran. He told the BBC the rockets were “Iranian provided, Iranian-made rockets”, and that they were launched by groups that were funded and trained by the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Petraeus said this was “in complete violation of promises made by President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts”.

Petraeus statement was clearly intended to divert attention from a development that threatens one of the two main pillars of the administration’s claim of progress in Iraq — the willingness of Sadr to restrain the Mahdi Army, even in the face of systematic raids on its leadership by the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies.

The rocket attacks appear to have been one of several actions by the Mahdi Army to warn the United States and the Iraqi government to halt their systematic raids aimed at driving the Sadrists out of key Shiite centres in the south. They were followed almost immediately by Mahdi Army clashes with rival Shiite militiamen in Basra, Sadr City and Kut and a call for a nationwide general strike to demand the release of Sadrist detainees.

SECRET MILITARY MEMO CONFIRMS “UNBELIEVABLE” FALLUJAH GULAG

Today the transparency group Wikileaks released a classified military memo exposing horrific conditions in Iraq’s Fallujah jail.

The document, written last month by the commander of U.S forces in western Iraq, Maj. Gen. John Kelly, describes “unbelievable overcrowding, total lack of anything approaching even minimal levels of hygiene for human beings, no food, little water, no ventilation… There is zero support from the (Iraqi) government for any of the jails in Anbar. No funds, food or medical support has been provided from any ministry.” and says “We need to go to general quarters on this issue right now… To state that the current system is broken would erroneously imply that there is a system in place to be broken.”

The jail is situated next to the U.S. Joint Communications Center in downtown Fallujah. It was built in 2005 by U.S. contractors to house 110 prisoners, but now reportedly holds around 900, mostly awaiting trial or transfer to Baghdad.

The document has been privately verified by Wikileaks staff and not was denied by MNF-W when questioned by UPI’s national security editor, Shaun Waterman.

See http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Classified_memo_from_US_Maj._Gen._Kelly_confirms_Fallujah_Gulag
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Fallujah_jail_challenges_US
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Fallujah_background
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_and_Abu_Ghraib_scuttled_US_war_in_Fallujah

GREENWALD: WHAT YOU CAN AND CAN’T TALK ABOUT ON TV (SALON)

FAIR ON NPR: DOWNPLAYING IRAQI DEATHS AGAIN

There is no more important question about the Iraq War than the question of how many Iraqis have died. It is impossible to truly evaluate the war or discuss where to go from here without knowing the human cost of the war, and that cost has overwhelmingly been borne by Iraqis. That’s why it’s so disappointing that NPR, looking back on the 5th anniversary of the war, treated this issue with either extreme sloppiness or deliberate dishonesty.

Here’s how NPR anchor Scott Simon introduced a segment on March 15 in which senators James Webb and Jon Kyl talked about “what the war has meant and what the future might hold”:

“This coming Wednesday marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq. So far 3,975 U.S. service men and women have died. Estimates on the number of Iraqis killed range from 47,000 to 151,000, depending on the source.”

But what sources are those? The New England Journal of Medicine (1/31/08) published a survey conducted by the Iraqi government on behalf of the World Health Organization, which estimated that 151,000 Iraqis had been killed by violence between the March 2003 invasion and June 2006. This, presumably, is the source of NPR’s 151,000 figure. The write-up in NEJM begins: “Estimates of the death toll in Iraq from the time of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 until June 2006 have ranged from 47,668 (from the Iraq Body Count) to 601,027 (from a national survey).” alliance.

POLITICS

OBAMA STILL DISTANCING HIMSELF

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday sought to quell concerns over anti-American remarks by his former pastor, saying people are paying too much attention to a small number of “stupid” comments.

REV WRIGHT: DEATH THREATS CANCEL HOUSTON SERMONS

Jackie Newberry explains: “He has given sermons one Sunday a year at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, one of the largest black churches in the city. He was scheduled to speak at 3 services this Sunday.”

MoveOn Pressure the Democrats on Iraq? Don’t Hold Your Breath. (via John Stauber)

Two leading anti-war journalists are challenging MoveOn, one “of the most prominent anti-war voices,” to turn its activism against Democratic Party presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein write, “we should direct our energy where it can still have an impact: the leading Democratic contenders. … While Clinton and Obama denounce the war with great passion, they both have detailed plans to continue it.” But why would MoveOn pressure the Democrats or Barack Obama? Blaming the Iraq war on the Republicans and avoiding criticism of Democrats has been MoveOn’s strategy for years.

MoveOn is now raising and spending millions of dollars to elect Barack Obama, but has made it clear it will support Clinton if she is the nominee. Furthermore, Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes of Hildebrand Tewes Consulting simultaneously run MoveOn’s anti-war coalition, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), while also employed by Obama as two of his top campaign officials. Tom Matzzie, previously the top lobbyist for MoveOn and AAEI, is trying to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the Campaign to Defend America, a new organization run by him and MoveOn’s founder Wes Boyd to attack John McCain. Simply put, MoveOn refuses to pressure the Democrats because they are the Democrats.

Iraq contractor fights suit over toxic exposure
Tax loophole may subject construction firm to damages

By Farah Stockman, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON - When the American team arrived in Iraq in the summer of 2003 to repair the Qarmat Ali water injection plant, supervisors told them the orange, sand-like substance strewn around the looted facility was just a “mild irritant,”
workers recall.

The workers got it on their hands and clothing every day while racing for 2-1/2 months to meet a deadline to get the plant, a crucial part of Iraq’s oil infrastructure, up and running.

But the chemical turned out to be sodium dichromate, a substance so dangerous that even limited exposure greatly increases the risk of cancer. Soon, many of the 22 Americans and 100-plus Iraqis began to complain of nosebleeds, ulcers, and shortness of breath. Within weeks, nearly 60 percent exhibited symptoms of
exposure, according to the minutes of a meeting of project managers from KBR, the Houston-based construction company in charge of the repairs.

Now, nine Americans are accusing KBR, then a subsidiary of the oil conglomerate Halliburton, of knowingly exposing them to the deadly substance and failing to provide them with the protective equipment needed to keep them safe.

NEWS FROM IRAN (BASIC)

On March 14th, Iran held parliamentary elections for the 290-seat, Majles-e-Shura-ye-Eslami, the Islamic Consultative Assembly. Iranian government sources gave varying reports of voter turnout, which was somewhere between 52% and 60% of the 44 million eligible voters. More than 90% of independent and reformist candidates who wished to participate were banned from doing so by Iran’s most powerful body, the Guardian Council.

Six of the Council’s members are theologians appointed by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and six nominated by the judiciary and approved by Parliament. As a result of the veto, the EU condemned the vote as neither free nor fair, and the only significant challenge to the President from this election was from other conservatives who hope to change his economic policies. But this challenge in itself could prove to be an important one to the future of the President, who stands for reelection next year. Many within the Conservative parties have themselves moved towards a reformist position.

Ali Larijani, who resigned as Iran’s nuclear negotiator last October in a disagreement over tactics, received a boost to his political career when he won a seat representing the religious capital of Qom with 76% of the votes against important allies of Ahmadinejad. If elected as speaker of the Majlis he could present a powerful force of balance to the President.