Iraq Status Report
April 13th, 2008 at 02:23am Mark Noonan
Its a new site, dedicated to keeping up with the events in Iraq. There is much to say about Iraq, and most people only get a partial view of it, especially those who rely on televised news; television has its uses, but giving a complete story is just about impossible in an hour or half hour’s newscast - even if the whole broadcast was devoted to one issue. Always better to go out and find additional sources, if you really want to know the whole.
Amongst the articles linked at Iraq Status Report, I found this one very interesting:
Khalil Mohammed Abbas, a haggard, chainsmoking ex-Iraqi army officer, has good reason to puff on every cigarette as if it were his last.
After helping his neighbours in Baghdad rise up against the al-Qa’eda thugs who have terrorised them, he lives in constant expectation that the threats text-messaged to his mobile phone may one day come real.
“They are from al-Qa’eda, and they tell me I am a mercenary,” he says, reading out the latest missive to bleep into his inbox.
“They ask how I would feel if they kidnapped my wife and children and kill and rape them. But I am not worried about those bastards. I know they could kill me at any moment, but if we do not fight them we will all die anyway.”
The man al-Qa’eda describe as a mercenary is indeed a hired gun of sorts, however - as a leader of the so-called Sunni Muslim “Awakening”, he is one of around 500 residents in his neighbourhood paid by US forces to help drive al-Qa’eda from their midst.
Many of his comrades previously saw the Americans as their enemies, but their decision to change sides is not just for the money: after two years of al-Qa’eda violence, their hatred of the terrorist group outweighs any lingering dislike of the US “occupiers”.
People like Abbas are the people Democrats insult when they say that Iraqis aren’t stepping up - these Iraqis who have joined us in the fight are at daily risk of death for themselves and their families. Each one of them shows more dedication to liberty and more raw courage each day than 10,000 anti-war protestors in the United States will demonstrate in their entire lives.
There is just so much out there which is nauseating - so many people who operate entirely from base motives; it is encouraging to live in a world where a man like Abbas lives - would that I could show even a tenth of his courage in doing the right thing.
Entry Filed under: War on Terror
18 Comments
1. middlefinger | April 13th, 2008 at 3:55 am
Yes Mark,
I’m so sick of those darned anti-war protesters.
Christ himself would probably lay the lash to them.
Don’t they understand war is peace?
They’ll get theirs alright. When will they realize that might makes right?
Oh yes, by God’s hand, they’ll get theirs.
2. Freedom1 | April 13th, 2008 at 4:57 am
Al-Qaeda has wrought so much torture, terror, kidnapping, rape and death upon the Iraqi Sunnis and Iraqi Shias that Al-Qaeda may never again find safe haven with the majority of Iraqis. Iraqis en masse have turned against Al-Qaeda in favor of Americans.
More than anything else, Al-Qaeda’s reign of torture, 7th century Islamic totalitarianism and death upon the Iraqis caused the Iraqis to turn against Al Qaeda and to regard them as their monstrous enemy.
Morever, this will make it even more difficult for other, similar Al-Qaeda-type Islamic terrorist organizations to set up shop in Iraq, in the future.
With brave men like Khalil Mohammed Abbas, one of the leaders of the Sunni Muslim “Awakening”, fighting to drive al-Qa’eda from Iraq, we will soon win the Iraq War. God bless them and their efforts!
It’s amazing how direct experience with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda in Iraq, changes the minds and hearts of Muslims both Sunni and Shia - turning them against these Islamic terrorists.
3. bongoman | April 13th, 2008 at 6:09 am
Yeah, yeah, just another six months and victory will be ours!
4. Freedom1 | April 13th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Britain is in deep trouble…
Britain: 30 Active Terror Plots, 200 Networks, 22,000 Terrorists
5. Christian Wright | April 13th, 2008 at 8:30 am
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JD10Ak01.html
6. Christian Wright | April 13th, 2008 at 8:34 am
A journalist (Patrick Cockburn, 30 years experience in Iraq) observed that with surge troops still in place, there are 2000 deaths per month in Iraq. I think that deaths on this scale clearly amounts to an ongoing disaster. I wonder whether any Americans would regard an Iraqi military occupation of the US which involved 2000 American deaths per month as a success. Cockburn also pointed out that al-Sadr is supported by over 30% of the Iraqi people. The US objective in Iraq is to install a pro-US gvt and marrgianlise al-Sadr. Basically this boils down to a bunch of foreigners trying to marginalise over one third of the local population.. It is not a recipe for success in the long term. al-Maliki’s attack on the Iraqis failed. It is now expected that the US military will act themselves to impose America’s will on Iraq. This may have a short term impact but the fundamentals (Iraqi opposition to the US occupation) will remain and America will just postpone its defeat.
7. js | April 13th, 2008 at 8:54 am
did it ever occur to you that bias and disinformation really doesnt impress anyone CW?
according to what your cockburn article said, sadr didnt have the courage to stand up to saddam and fight for freedom for his people, but he gladly tries to grab the reins on america’s coat tails
and while he is in iran on vacation, making deals with the military industrial web to send bombs back to his home so they can kill other iraqi citizens, he is becoming a traitor to iraq, aptly demonstrated by his public statement, and much in fact responsible for the bulk majority of the (2000 deaths-that is clearly an impressive misrepresentation)….
so, basically, this boils down to the fall of one tyrant, and the attempt of another to take power over Iraq….congratulations, you support it with your shiite post, right up to your chin!!
8. majoriot | April 13th, 2008 at 9:07 am
I suppose the greatest insult to Iraqi civilians comes in the form of those who put this man, and others, in this position of danger in the first place. Who is it that created the situation that let al-Qa’eda into the country? Who has given them the opportunity to terrorize the Iraqi people?
And where is the dedication to liberty and raw courage of those who will type, but won’t fight?
9. Pain | April 13th, 2008 at 9:29 am
7. js | April 13th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Hojjatoleslam Muqtada al Sadr did not rise up against Saddam Hussein al Tikriti for the same reasons that the United States does not pour over the DMZ into North Korea, because without the use of very heavy weapons they would lose a tremendous defeat in numbers. This would play very poorly politically even if the Iranians came to his aid and in Washignton would be an executive branch political disaster with many hundreds of thousands of Koreans murdered senselessly.
Muqtada al Sadr was wise enough not to engage in a battle for any purpose which would end in a quagmire at best reminiscent of the Iran Iraq war of 1980-89. And in this much clear light who would the US have supported in 1991 if al Sadr had taken up arms against the Ba’athists after Gulf War I? If Iran had sided with Hojjatoleslam al Sadr that would have placed the US in a very curious position of having to prop up Saddam Hussein to keep Iran from dominating Iraq and its oil resources.
But wait We see that this may yet come to pass!
10. neocon | April 13th, 2008 at 10:07 am
“I know they could kill me at any moment, but if we do not fight them we will all die anyway.” - Khalil Mohammed Abbas.
I would trade one Khalil Abbas for a thousand liberals. This man has courage, integrity and common sense.
Traits that are sorely absent from the modern day left.
11. GOP4ME | April 13th, 2008 at 11:50 am
“thousand liberals”? Shoot, I’d give em the whole bunch in exchange for this one courageous fellow.
But then again, I am just bitter… Now where’s my gun and god…
12. Christian Wright | April 13th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government has dismissed about 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month’s offensive against Shiite militias and criminal gangs in Basra, officials said Sunday.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said 921 police and soldiers were fired in Basra. They included 37 senior police officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general.
The others were dismissed in Kut, one of the Shiite cities where the fight had spread.
Last month, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the security forces to confront armed groups in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city.
But they met fierce resistance and the attack quickly ground to a halt as fighting flared across the Shiite south and Baghdad.
Since then, government officials have revealed that about 1,000 members of the security forces — including an entire infantry battalion — had mutinied, on some cases handing over vehicles and weapons to the militias.
“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
13. JD | April 13th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were unsentimental in describing the road ahead. “We haven’t turned any corners,” Petraeus warned. “We haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.” Crocker, whose world-weary answers sometimes sound as if they were scripted by Graham Greene or Raymond Chandler, often reduced his message to five flinty words: Nothing is easy in Iraq.
14. jerry | April 13th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
This site I am sure gives good information, but looking at who is providing the information, NRO’s Cliff May, Kim Kagan (of the non-fighting Kagans) and Bill Rogio of Weekly Standard, I am skeptical. Though these people are accomplished writers and experts they have been wrong about Iraq from the begining and have a vested interest in providing good info. about this failed war. But more info. the better.
15. Magnum Serpentine | April 13th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
One wonders why this so-called Iraqi status report site does not have an E-mail address.
Are they afraid of the opinion of the Citizens of this nation, who want us to pull out of Iraq, right now?
“The World wonders…..” Chester Nimitz, Fleet Admiral, Pacific Theater, 1945.
16. Dennis | April 13th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
What is the Bush administration (or anybody else for that matter) going to do about the millions of refugees this war has created?
In the hearings last week, Petraeus “couldn’t even argue that we’re on a humanitarian mission on behalf of the Iraqi people. That would require him to acknowledge that roughly five million of those people, 60 percent of them children, are now refugees receiving scant help from either our government or Nuri al-Maliki’s. That’s nearly a fifth of the Iraqi population — the equivalent of 60 million Americans…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/opinion/13rich.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5087&em&en=1bccf6708428e583&ex=1208232000
17. Meanwhile on another plan&hellip | April 13th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
[...] these neocon sites are passed off as true news sites by right wingers like blogsforvicto(r)y which pretends the site is new with a new and newsworthy point of view, when in fact it’s yet [...]
18. Zach | April 14th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Ah F*ck it!
Its just 500 Iraqis…..They aren’t doing sh*t!
(sarcasm)