The U.S. Senate funds continuing death and devastation in Iraq

[ProSense]

22 killed in Iraq attacks: officials

Tue Dec 18

BAQUBA, Iraq (AFP) - Insurgents killed at least 22 people in Iraq on Tuesday in a series of bomb attacks, including a suicide attack that killed 16 people in a cafe near the restive city of Baquba, police and medics said.

A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a cafe in the town of Al-Abbara, in the province of Diyala, killing 16 people and wounding 24, police Lieutenant Colonel Najim al-Sumadaie from Baquba told AFP.

Doctor Firaz al-Azzawi of Baquba hospital confirmed the toll.

In another incident, a bomber exploded his explosives-laden car at a police checkpoint in central Baquba, north of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 15, a police officer said.

more

Tuesday 18 December: 50 dead
Monday 17 December: 41 dead
Sunday 16 December: 30 dead
Saturday 15 December: 25 dead
Friday 14 December: 4 dead
Thursday 13 December: 28 dead
Wednesday 12 December: 80 dead

Week: 258 killed

All Iraqi Groups Blame U.S. Invasion for Discord, Study Shows

Wounded Iraqis cope with lifelong scars

By Aseel Kami
Tue Dec 18, 7:07 PM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - For generations to come, Iraqis will have to cope with the physical and mental scars of tens of thousands of people severely injured in the violence of the past four years.

They include thousands of amputees, many of them children.

<...>

The Baghdad centre alone has registered 2,700 amputees since 2003. The cost of looking after them is high -- especially in the case of children, who will need to replace prosthetic limbs regularly as they grow.

<...>

Besides the physical cost, there is a huge psychological toll.

"Some of them come here in despair, but we try to plant hope in them, because 50 percent of therapy is psychological," said Hussein Majeed, one of about 20 technicians in the centre's workshop, where the prosthetics are built using old machine tools, plaster casts, plastic and glue.

more

Want good news?

Iraqis demand better life amid new calm

With security improved in the Iraqi capital, the BBC's Crispin Thorold meets Iraqis who want to see other things get better, and meets the man charged with getting it done.

Now that bombs are relatively rare, and the gunfire is sporadic, the gentle whirring of generators have become the sound of Baghdad.

Electricity supply in the Iraqi capital is scarce at best. People have to make do with just a few hours of power every day, and sometimes there is none.

<...>

Until a few months ago this area was an al-Qaeda stronghold. Now the tribesmen are fighting against al-Qaeda, rather than alongside them. In exchange they expect the government to transform their lives.

"We have no services in this area", said Sheikh Jummah Ghanem Muhammad al-Zubae.

"No electricity, no water, no schools, no health care, no roads. It has been like this for a year," Sheikh Zubae added.

more

Progress in Iraq security, but reconciliation still elusive: Pentagon

by Daphne Benoit
Wed Dec 19

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US forces have achieved "significant security progress" in Iraq over the past three months, though national reconciliation -- key for an eventual US withdrawal -- remains elusive, a Pentagon report out Tuesday said.

The report also says that Iran continues to funnel weapons to Shiite insurgents, despite reassurances by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he would help halt the flow.

<...>

The total number of attacks in Iraq has dropped 62 percent since March, the report says, while the number of weekly attacks, including car bombs, stabilized at around 600 from mid-October, down from around 900 a week in late September and around 1,600 a week in late June.

The Pentagon attributes the progress to the 'surge' of US troops starting in early 2007, as well as the increasing efficiency of the Iraqi security forces and the US policy starting early in the year to mobilize Sunni tribes against Al-Qaeda forces.

more

Decline in Iraq news may have boosted U.S. opinion

By David Morgan
Wed Dec 19, 1:10 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A recent decline in U.S. news coverage from Iraq coincides with improved public opinion about the war just as the 2008 presidential campaign heads to an early showdown, a study released on Wednesday said.

The study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism said the volume of coverage from Iraq fell from 8 percent of all news stories in the first six months of 2007 to 5 percent between June and October due mainly to a decline in news accounts of daily attacks.

The falloff coincided with a 14 percentage point climb -- from 34 to 48 percent -- in the number of Americans who believe the military effort in Iraq is going either fairly or very well, according to Pew.

Pew researchers examined 1,109 news stories from Iraq from January 1 through October 31 by 40 news outlets including newspapers, Web sites and television and radio networks.

more

The real reason the violence is down, and it's not the "surge."

[madokie]

1. thats exactly what it is too

it matters not that the Iraqi did nothing to us nor intended too do anything to us but yet we allow these madmen to continue the carnage, Why are we still killing Iraqi's, why, other than to steal their oil and a few other reasons thats spelled out pretty much in the pnac doctrine, all of this down to a T

[spanone]

2. this war now belongs to pelosi and reid...you can't bitch when you fund criminals

[ProSense]

3. Senate approves $70 billion for war, why?

What stopped them, except the threat of a veto, to vote for both the Feingold bill and the funding?

Even if the funding bill wasn't attached to the appropriations bill, the money was promised and they didn't have to rush to provide additional funding. That is what all the Dems who voted for the policy bill, and against Feingold's bill, said the last round. The appropriations bill passed overwhelmingly and wasn't in jeopardy from a veto.

[DCKit]

11. S'what happens when you give in to blackmail. n/t

[ProSense]

4. Pentagon Says Services in Iraq Are Stagnant

Pentagon Says Services in Iraq Are Stagnant

By MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: December 19, 2007

<...>

But the sectarian agenda of the Shiite-dominated Iraq government has been a hindrance, the study said, noting that there have been only “minimal advances in the delivery of essential services to the people of Iraq, mainly due to sectarian bias in targeting and execution of remedial programs.”

<...>

But although electricity production has increased somewhat, supply still falls well short of demand, the report said. The shortfall in November 2007 was 42 percent of total demand compared with 53 percent in August 2007 and 47 percent in August 2006.

The United States has built 85 of 142 planned health care centers, many of which have been turned over to the Ministry of Health, which has been dominated in recent years by followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric. The report noted, however, that some of the medical centers have not been opened “due to a shortage of trained medical staff” and a “sectarian agenda” within the Health Ministry that has led to the discrimination against Sunni areas.

Sectarian politics has hampered progress in other areas, as well. The American military has recruited about 69,000 mostly Sunni volunteers to help secure Iraq. The United States would like the Iraqi government to institutionalize the arrangement by hiring many of the volunteers as policemen or soldiers. But the Pentagon report said that such efforts are “moving slowly” because of “fears by the Maliki government that those forces may return to violence or form new militias.”

more

Coming from the Petagon, this is most likely the best spin they could put on the information.

[ProSense]

5. Dems to broaden Iraq debate next year

Dems to broaden Iraq debate next year

By ANNE FLAHERTY and ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer 16 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats are planning to take on a broader policy focus next year on the Iraq debate after failing repeatedly to pass anti-war spending legislation this year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday.

While Democrats still will try to restrict war spending, they'll explore alternative policy measures aimed at advancing troop withdrawals, drawing attention to larger regional issues, and improving the training and equipping of military units headed into combat. Examples include legislation that would require that the Bush administration submit a plan to end combat or demanding that troops be given enough rest in between combat tours.

The goal, she said, would be to pass legislation that could muster the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate.

"We always will have to make choices about the funding," Pelosi said. "But it is thought by many members that it would be important to document for the public even further what some of the challenges are that we have there and make policy decisions that could get (60 votes) in the Senate."

more

[ProSense]

6. Congress sends Bush budget bill with Iraq money

Congress sends Bush budget bill with Iraq money

By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a $556 billion bill to fund most of the federal government through September 2008, ending a year-long budget fight with President George W. Bush by also including new money for the Iraq war.

<...>

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, sounded resigned to at least another year of funding the war in Iraq, against his wishes. He said the only option to changing direction in Iraq was to "elect more progressive voices to the United States Senate" and to "elect a president with a different set of priorities."

<...>

Democrats in Congress fought with Bush all year, scoring some victories, in their push to spend more to improve domestic social programs such as early education for poor children, home heating aid for low-income families and expanded health care.

But much of the fiscal 2008 budget fight centered on the Iraq war. The $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan included in the catch-all spending bill will inject enough new money to keep combat going through May or June, according to some estimates.

Its inclusion marked another defeat for anti-war Democrats in Congress who labored to link Iraq war money to timetables for withdrawing U.S. troops and bringing the nearly 5-year-old war to an end.

more

[ProSense]

8. House vote

Roll Call

[ProSense]

7. The Democrats Who Support George Bush's War

The Democrats Who Support George Bush's War

[bvar22]

10. K&R

"The Democrats Who Support George Bush's War
by BarbinMD
Wed Dec 19, 2007 at 05:02:14 PM PST

Yesterday, twenty-one Democratic senators' joined their Republican brethren and voted to hand George Bush another blank check for Iraq. Why? Because if you ignore the fact that every benchmark laid out by Bush has failed, we're winning. And with only forty or so soldiers dying in Iraq every month, what better way to support the troops than voting to keep them there indefinitely?

Daniel Akaka,
Max Baucus,
Evan Bayh,
Thomas Carper,
Bob Casey,
Kent Conrad,
Byron Dorgan,
Daniel Inouye,
Tim Johnson,
Mary Landrieu,
Carl Levin,
Blanche Lincoln,
Claire McCaskill,
Barbara Mikulski,
Bill Nelson,
Ben Nelson,
Mark Pryor,
John Rockefeller,
Ken Salazar,
Jon Tester,
Jim Webb

[fascisthunter]

9. War is a Racket and Many Dems Part of It

They may as well look the parents of dead soldiers in the eyes and say, "thank you for sacrificing your child for my greed".

[Orwellian_Ghost]

12. Kick n/t