Iraq's biggest hospitals become sick
Arkan Hamed and Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service (Sep 25, 2008)
Not even the elevators work now at Baghdad Medical City, built once as the center for some of the best medical care. One of the ten elevators still does, and the priority for this is
patients who have lost their legs -- and there are many of them. The
rest, the doctors, patients and students at the four specialized
teaching hospitals within the building complex, just take the stairs,
sometimes to the 18th floor.
Awash in "Missing" Weapons
Pratap Chatterjee, Inter Press Service (Sep 23, 2008)
Clandestine gun suppliers, funded by the U.S. and
Iraqi governments, have flooded Iraq with a million weapons since 2003,
charges a new Amnesty International investigation. Because of faulty or non-existent government tracking systems, many of
those guns have gone missing, and some have turned up in the hands of
insurgents. Contracts with one of these companies, Taos Industries, account for
almost half of the 217 million dollars Baghdad and Washington have
officially spent to arm the Iraqi army, police and security forces
employed by various Iraqi ministries.
No Friends but the Kurds? The Biden Problem in Democratic Iraq Policy
Reidar Visser, Historiae (Sep 17, 2008)
In defining his "gravitas" on foreign policy, the statesmanlike thing
for Biden to do would be to admit mistakes when it comes to his
interpretation of Iraqi politics, and instead focus on those aspects of
his Middle East initiatives that are constructive, such as his warnings
against a war on Iran. Iraqi politicians already speak about Biden as
the father of a second "Balfour declaration" because of his "plans",
and the Democratic Party would lose its credibility in the entire Arab
world if these schemes were allowed to snowball.
Is the Maliki Government Jumping Off the American Ship of State?
Michael Schwartz , TomDispatch.com (Sep 8, 2008)
Whatever their disappointments, administration
officials never actually gave up on their grandiose ambitions. Through
thick and thin, Washington has sought to install a regime "aligned with
U.S. interests" -- a government ready to cooperate in establishing the
United States as the predominant power in the Middle East.
Recently, with significantly lower levels of violence in Iraq extending
into a second year, Washington insiders have begun crediting themselves
with--finally--a winning strategy.
A Hidden Agenda for an Endless Stay
Hasan Abu Nimah, Electronic Iraq (Aug 27, 2008)
There were reports last week of an agreement between Iraq and the
United States on how to regulate the status of foreign - mainly
American - forces in Iraq following the termination of the UN mandate
they were retrospectively given after invading the country in 2003. The reports proved to be inaccurate. There are still serious points of disagreement between the two sides.
Change the Iraqis Can Believe In? Why Obama-Biden Could Mean More of the Same (Or Maybe Something Worse)
Reidar Visser, Historiae (Aug 25, 2008)
During Obama's recent trip to the Middle East, he revealed an extremely
dated way of thinking about Iraq, more or less reiterating the Iraq
cosmology of those Bush administration officials that have been in
charge since 2003. During a press conference in Amman on 22 July
following a visit to Anbar where meetings with "Sunni tribal leaders"
were high on the agenda, this tendency could be seen very clearly, with
Obama consistently portraying the principal dynamic of Iraqi politics
as a struggle between Shiites and Sunnis.
Cold Shoulders
Kathy Kelly, Electronic Iraq (Jul 10, 2008)
Kathy Kelly writes from Amman, Jordan, demonstrating through the story of one mother and her son -- who's still in Iraq -- how violence is entrapping Iraq's boys and young men. In the process, she shows the ways in which US efforts in the name of security send dangerous messages and force painful choices on the young people who are the future of their country.
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