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 [Murdoc Online] Gotcha game about disbanding the old Iraqi Army continues: Another thing that rarely comes up when blaming the disbanding of the old army for the size of the insurgency is this: Would we be finding it easier to reach political unity and national reconciliation in Iraq with a largely Sunni army under the control of a largely Shiite government? Or would we be seeing the Shiite militias openly backed by much of the government and population, much more than we see today, in an effort to resist the brute force of the military?

 [Unreality Primetime] JON SNOW’S HIDDEN IRAQ: Five years after the invasion, Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow examines the brutal reality of life inside post-invasion Iraq, meeting a variety of its citizens, from victims of bomb blasts and war widows to human rights activists and politicians. While the coalition forces herald its burgeoning democracy, Snow ties together reports and unseen footage of recent violence and human rights abuses from beyond the Green Zone, which paint a picture of a fragmented state on the brink of anarchy and collapse.

 [Human Security News] Iraq War Mortality Estimates: A Systematic Review, Conflict and Health: 7); ARTICLE: 32000 Former Officers In Saddam's Army Join New Iraq Army, MEMRI (Mar. 7); ACADEMIC ARTICLE: Estimating Excess Mortality in Post-Invasion Iraq, New England Journal of Medicine (Jan. 9)

 [Medindia Health News] Red Cross Warns of Grave Health Crisis in Post-invasion Iraq: The humanitarian situation in post-war Iraq five years after the US-led invasion is one of the most critical in the worl.

 [Global Geopolitics News] Iraq Crisis News: John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, arrived in Baghdad yesterday for a visit with Iraqi and U.S. diplomatic and military officials. The trip by McCain, who has linked his political future to U.S. military success in the nearly five-year-old war, coincided with the 20th anniversary of a horrific chemical weapons attack in northern Iraq.

 [Maha Youssuf's Weblog] Farce UN report downplays war damage, puts Iraqi death toll at 151000: Citing what it alleges were researchers’ interviews of households in 1000 neighbourhoods and villages across Iraq, the World Health Organization issued a new report putting the Iraqi death toll during the period between March 2003 and June 2006 at 151,000 - a figure I, among many other political analysts and specialists highly dispute.The figure presented in the WHO’s survey, which suggests that over half of “violent deaths” took place in Baghdad, is actually quarter that released over a year ago in a famous Lancet article.

[Boulder Blog] Pre-emptive War For Fun and Profit...: Yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Committee held a hearing on contractor waste, fraud and corruption in Iraq. The testimony demonstrated not only that incompetence and greed have resulted in the wide scale theft of taxpayer money, but also that the lack of accountability and corruption is directly tied to the instability in that country:

 [An Arch Druid's take on the news] Michael Barone on Admiral Fallon--Spin zone: of Defense Donald Rumsfeld first determined that only X number of troops were needed to invade Iraq, they were on a strict timetable to reach Baghdad and topple the Hussein government. Because it was all about speed, an experiment on how to run a war on the basis of ideological theory, that the Iraq mess from the outset came from no less than the policies of the civilians in charge. 

 [MARC] Where are they now? The faces of the Iraq war five years on: MPs broke with tradition to applaud the 12-minute address after he predicted: "Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term - namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target." He remained loyal on all issues apart from Iraq and, ironically, played an important role bolstering support for Labour colleagues who had backed the party line on the invasion during the 2005 election.

[Patricia Thurston's Radio Weblog] Red Cross Slams "Critical" Situation In Post-Invasion Iraq. The ...: Sunni would accuse me of exaggerating their differences with the Shia, but when I mentioned prominent Shia leaders they would wave a hand dismissively and say: [base "]But they are all Iranians or paid by the Iranians.[per thou] Al-Qa[base ']ida in Iraq regarded the Shia as heretics as worthy of death as the Americans. Enormous suicide bombs exploded in Shia marketplaces and religious processions, slaughtering hundreds, and the Shia began to hit back with tit-for-tat killings of Sunni by Shia militia death squads or the police.

 [Gaz's Blogâ™] Mistaking the Mehdi...: Despite what might seem as being harsh criticism towards strategic operations in Iraq, I have overwhelming faith that the country will one day become a fully democratic, fully in-control one thanks to the continued presence of coalition forces there, and every day the Iraqi government's mere existence is living proof of this. I hope also however that the fury of the Mehdi Army can somehow be tamed before Iraq arrives at what is generally considered to be the most decisive factor in the future of middle-east politics...

 [Davidjoseph's Weblog] The Upcoming War on Iran, The “Short” Version: hundred thousand troops to stabilize a post invasion Iraq. He. assessment was ridiculed as “wildly off the mark” by Donald Rumsfeld. and Paul Wolfowitz. And he was undercut even before his already. scheduled retirement. ...

[verging_on_random] Why do gun nuts hate America?: I invited them to discuss whether post-invasion Iraq was a good example of the benefits bestowed on a society by the widespread private ownership of deadly weapons but none seemed disposed to tackle the question.

[Mondoweiss] Unreconstructed Neocon Wurmser Decants 'Regime Change,' Holy War ...: The only conclusion that can be drawn from Jews like Feith, Perle and the Wurmsers, who jet back and fourth between Israel and America strategizing with the Israeli government ways to get American soldiers killed fighting wars for Judeofascism, is that both they and the gentile "American" authorities who put up with it have been so corrupt, venal, and morally unhinged for so long that some organic change has taken place in their brains, rendering them inhuman.

 [Pacific Views] Iraqis Continue to Pay and Pay and Pay for Bush's War of Choice: According to James Glanz and Stephen Farrell of the New York Times, "American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived." The combined effect of the American offensive and accelerated ethnic expulsions generated an estimated displacement rate of 100,000 per month in Baghdad alone during the first half of 2007, a figure that surprised even Said Hakki, the director of the Iraqi Red Crescent, who had been monitoring the refugee crisis since the beginning of the war.

 [mytroops Blog] Changing American Soldier - US News “gets it”: observes Montague, now a master’s student in the prestigious School of Advanced Military Studies at the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth. “If you have fewer and fewer people who have served, you have to worry about whether you can have an intelligent conversation about how the military can best serve the country.”

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