BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Children 'starving' in new Iraq: "Wednesday, 30 March, 2005, 23:45 GMT 00:45 UK | Children 'starving' in new Iraq"

Increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically undernourished, a UN report says.

Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it says.
- posted by Editor @ 8:07 PM

The Scotsman - International - Two years after invasion, few are celebratingCOLIN FREEMAN | IN BAGHDAD

SCREAMING oaths and waving Kalashnikovs, the masked gunmen force their pick-up truck through the downtown Baghdad traffic jam, firing warning shots at anyone who fails to clear their path.

"These bastards shot a cousin of mine a few weeks ago for not getting out their way," snarls one driver over the grind of frantically reversing gearboxes. "Who the f*** do they think they are?"

The official answer is that they are the new Iraqi army, part of the US-trained security forces to which coalition armies hope to hand responsibility as soon as possible. To most Iraqis, however, they are just another group of unwelcome gunmen - and are less well-trained than the US forces or indeed the Saddam Hussein-era security goons they replaced.

Two years on from the first salvoes of coalition cruise missiles that heralded Saddam’s demise, the rookie militias charging nervously through the streets are the clearest sign of how fragile the new order is.

Their masks and aggressive manner make the capital feel as if it is run by terrorists - which, in many residents’ eyes, it is.

"Security is the constant worry," says Ruaa Jamal, a middle-class 23-year-old, whose demure appearance in traditional Muslim headscarf belies a hidden readiness for trouble.

In her handbag is a four-inch switchblade, ready at the flick of a button against robbers, rapists and kidnappers.

"I carry the knife whenever my father cannot take me to work, and I am thinking of buying a small ladies’ .22 calibre pistol, too. Many other girls I know already carry them."

What depresses Ms Jamal and many other Iraqis is that compared with this time last year, things seem to be getting worse, not better. Then, western diplomats in Baghdad were able to mark the anniversary by trumpeting achievements: the country’s creaking power network was back to pre-war levels, oil production had made a similar recovery, a mobile phone network was up and running and the security forces at last appeared to be taking shape.
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Iraq insurgency has worsened: US intelligence : HindustanTimes.com: "Press Trust of India | Washington, March 19, 2005|09:03 IST

Though US President George W Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have been giving the impression that the insurgency situation in Iraq is improving, the American Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), which monitors the situation daily, says it has worsened.

"The insurgency in Iraq has grown in size and complexity over the past year. Attacks numbered approximately 25 per day one year ago," DIA Director Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington.

"Attacks on Iraq's election day reached approximately 300, almost double the previous one day high of about 160 during last year's Ramadan. Since the January 30 election, attacks have averaged around 60 per day and in the 1st two weeks dropped to approximately 50 per day," Jacoby said.

The pattern of attacks, he said, remains the same as last year. Approximately 80 per cent of all attacks occur in Sunni-dominated central Iraq. ///
- posted by Editor @ 10:46 AM

BBC NEWS | Europe | Italy plans Iraq troop pull-out: "Tuesday, 15 March, 2005, 22:52 GM

Italy is to begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq in September 2005, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said.

He told Rai state television the pullout would take place "in agreement with our allies".

Italy has 3,000 troops in Iraq - the fourth largest foreign contingent.

Domestic opposition to Italy's involvement in Iraq intensified after the killing of an Italian agent by US troops in Baghdad earlier this month.
- posted by Editor @ 7:57 PM

Soldier Who Reported Abuse Was Sent to Psychiatrist (washingtonpost.com): "By R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White | Washington Post Staff Writers | Saturday, March 5, 2005; Page A15

An Army intelligence sergeant who accused fellow soldiers in Samarra, Iraq, of abusing detainees in 2003 was in turn accused by his commander of being delusional and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Germany, despite a military psychiatrist's initial judgment that the man was stable, according to internal Army records released yesterday.

The soldier had angered his commander by urging the unit's redeployment from the military base to prevent what the soldier feared would be the death of one or more detainees under interrogation, according to the documents. He told his commander three members of the counterintelligence team had hit detainees, pulled their hair, tried to asphyxiate them and staged mock executions with pistols pointed at the detainees' heads. ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:51 PM

The Australian: Pentagon faces PR disaster [March 09, 2005]: "AFP | March 09, 2005

MIAMI: US soldiers abused at least one wounded prisoner in Iraq and showed disrespect to dead Iraqis, including civilians, according to a video made public yesterday.

The 27-minute video, dubbed "Ramadi Madness", was made early last year by members of the Florida National Guard stationed in the insurgent hotspot and became part of the military investigation into alleged abuses by US troops.

... it was obtained by Florida newspaper the Palm Beach Post and displayed on its website yesterday. One of the scenes shows a wounded Iraqi detainee held at gunpoint by a US soldier. The Iraqi moans in pain while the soldier looks at the camera and says: "This (expletive) shot at me." He then proceeds to kick him.
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Yahoo! News - Italy Demands Justice from U.S. Over Iraq Death: "Tue Mar 8, 3:56 PM ET | By Crispian Balmer

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's foreign minister rejected on Tuesday a U.S. account of how its forces killed an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq (news - web sites) and urged Washington to punish any soldiers found guilty of wrongdoing in the shooting."
- posted by Editor @ 5:32 PM

Yahoo! News - Italy Demands Justice from U.S. Over Iraq Death: "Tue Mar 8, 3:56 PM ET | By Crispian Balmer

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's foreign minister rejected on Tuesday a U.S. account of how its forces killed an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq (news - web sites) and urged Washington to punish any soldiers found guilty of wrongdoing in the shooting."
- posted by Editor @ 5:32 PM

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The brutal truth: "The brutal truth | The outrages of Abu Ghraib are no accident, says Stephen Sedley | Saturday March 5, 2005 | The Guardian

The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib edited by Karen J Greenberg and Joshua L Dratel (900pp, Cambridge, �27.50)
Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror by Mark Danner (650pp, Granta, �16.99)

How cruelly is a captor allowed to treat a captive before the pain and fear amount to torture? According to advice given by US Assistant Attorney-General Jay S Bybee to President's Counsel Alberto Gonzales in August 2002, it "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death". With the sanction of such morally and legally ignoble advice, the US has been interrogating, and from time to time killing, an unknown number of captives in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, Iraq and almost certainly elsewhere.

Meanwhile the author of the advice had been made a judge of the ninth circuit federal appeal court, and the presidential counsel who accepted and adopted it is now the United States attorney general. The solitary governmental voice apparently raised against it was that of Colin Powell, who is no longer secretary of state.
...
Stripping Iraqi men of their clothing and making them wear women's underwear for days on end, or setting dogs on them when naked, makes a precise fit with the official doctrine that anything short of killing and maiming is a legitimate way of breaking people down for interrogation. Evidence has crept out of Afghanistan of the use of similar techniques there. Danner, in one of his own New York Review of Books articles which introduce his volume, traces "water-boarding" (repeated near-drowning) from the French war in Algeria through the dirty war in Argentina to the interrogation since 9/11 by CIA operatives of "high value" suspects in locations which have never been disclosed. ...

- posted by Editor @ 5:19 PM

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | US soldiers accused of sex assaults: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington | Tuesday March 8, 2005 | The Guardian

Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Brigade - the same military unit whose troops fired on the car carrying the freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena - were under investigation last year for raping Iraqi women, US army documents reveal.

Four soldiers were alleged to have raped the two women while on guard duty in a Baghdad shopping precinct. A US army investigator interviewed several soldiers from the military unit, the 1-15th battalion of the 3rd Infantry Brigade - but did not locate or interview the Iraqi women involved - before shutting down the inquiry for lack of evidence.

Transcripts of the investigation, obtained by the Guardian from the American Civil Liberties Union, show only the most cursory attempts by the investigator to establish whether the women were raped.

The soldiers claimed the women were prostitutes, or denied any knowledge of any one in their unit having sex while deployed in Iraq. The statements went largely unchallenged. "I know the women were Iraqi. I however don't know if they were raped, or were prostitutes, or just wanted sex," one soldier told investigators.
- posted by Editor @ 5:16 PM