they're killing each other

they're killing us. they're switching sides. they're angry. they're frightened. why? they've been f**ked over by us. the insanity goes on. day after day. we're allowing it to happen. we're NOT demaning an immediate halt to this shite. we're not demanding accountability. i just don't get it

the news is WORSE each day. yet we leave our heads stuck in the sand.
America's allies in Iraq under pressure as civil war breaks out among Sunni
By Patrick Cockburn Saturday, 19 April 2008
"God is Great," screamed a man seconds before he blew himself up, killing 10 people in a restaurant in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq. A series of suicide bombings have shown over the past week that al-Qa'ida in Iraq, though battered by defections over the past year, is striking back remorselessly at Sunni Arab leaders who ally themselves to the US.
In another attack in the village of Albu Mohammed, south of Kirkuk, an elderly man thought by guards to be too old to be a bomber, walked unsearched into a tent filled with mourners attending the funeral of two Sunni tribesmen who had been killed after they joined al-Sahwa, the Awakening Council, as the pro-US Sunni group is called. The man detonated the explosives hidden under his long Arab robes, killing at least 50 people.
A vicious civil war is now being fought within Iraq's Sunni Arab community between al-Qa'ida in Iraq and al-Sahwa while other groups continue to attack American forces. In Baghdad on a single day the head of al-Sahwa in the southern district of Dora was killed in his car by gunmen and seven others died by bombs and bullets in al-Adhamiya district.
US spokesmen speak of a "spike" in violence in recent weeks but in reality security in Sunni and Shia parts of Iraq has been deteriorating since January. The official daily death toll of civilians reached a low of 20 killed a day in that month and has since more than doubled to 41 a day in March. The US and the Iraqi government are now facing a war on two fronts.........

so let me get this straight

we're WINNING the 'war on terror' in iraq. but instead of us illegally and immorally invading the country to fight ONE war, we're actually watching THREE WARS occur? yeah, that's winning all right

In Iraq, Three Wars Engage U.S.
Shiite Extremists Pose Greatest Challenge, Military Officials Say

By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer
CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq-- Three separate but related wars are being waged in this country now, and the third one, against Shiite extremists, is the most worrisome, according to the commander and senior staff of the U.S. Army division patrolling Baghdad. The first, against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group that U.S. officials believe is foreign-led, is going well despite occasional spikes in violence, such as Friday's dual bombings of Baghdad marketplaces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is "frustrated" but "not defeated," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W. Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, said in an interview last week.
The second fight, against the domestic Sunni insurgency, has become dormant in many places in the past year, as about 80,000 armed men, many of them former insurgents, switched sides and came onto the U.S. payroll with groups that officers here call "Concerned Local Citizens."
The third conflict, and perhaps the most vexing for U.S. commanders, is with Shiite extremist militias. More than two-thirds of U.S. casualties are caused by roadside bombs, particularly by high-tech anti-armor devices, planted by those groups. .........

oh and one more little tiny thing, 3,943 of OUR men and women have given their lives for this shite. that does NOT include those injured (outside as well as inside)

more proof (as if we needed it)

of what the hell we did. even the iraqis KNOW they can't get it together within the next few years. it will take almost forever for them to all synch. it's NOT a good thing and king george and his court are directly responsible.
Top Iraqis Pull Back From Key U.S. Goal
Reconciliation Seen Unattainable Amid Struggle for Power

By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD -- For much of this year, the U.S. military strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce violence so that politicians could bring about national reconciliation, but several top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in that broad goal.
Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services. "I don't think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such," said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd. "To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power." ............

you know

whether you shoot someone in the head OR spray bullets all over their body, THEY ARE STILL DEAD. how absurd this is (well that comes well after tragic)
a MANUAL telling us what KIND of dead someone is? NO NO AND NO

What Defines a Killing as Sectarian?
U.S. Military Teams Analyze and Tally Each Civilian Death

By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer
On Sept. 1, the bullet-riddled bodies of four Iraqi men were found on a Baghdad street. Two days later, a single dead man, with one bullet in his head, was found on a different street. According to the U.S. military in Iraq, the solitary man was a victim of sectarian violence. The first four were not.
Such determinations are the building blocks for what the Bush administration has declared a downward trend in sectarian deaths and a sign that its war strategy is working. They are made by a specialized team of soldiers who spend their nights at computer terminals, sifting through data on the day's civilian victims for clues to the motivations of killers. The soldiers have a manual telling them what to look for. Signs of torture or a single shot to the head, corpses left in a "known body dump" -- as the body of the Sunni man found on Sept. 3 was -- spell sectarian violence, said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Dan Macomber, the team leader. Macomber, who has been at his job in Baghdad since February, rarely has to look it up anymore. .............

please note: the following is from may/june 2006 mother jones......
Dead Reckoning: Counting Iraq's Civilian Dead
News: Meet the men behind the Iraqi casualty numbers.
By Adam Shemper
When Hamit Dardagan leaves his flat in central London, he often feels that the people he sees around him aren’t living in the real world. “It is very strange that we are involved in a war, and things go on as if everything were normal,” he said recently. For Dardagan, a normal day is spent in a tiny home office in front of a computer screen, counting dead Iraqi civilians.
“It’s a bit like the movie Groundhog Day,” he said, his voice weary. “It just keeps repeating over and over and over. There might be new governments, new parliaments, new democracy in Iraq, but the violence just continues.” Three years ago, Dardagan, now 45, quit his job teaching computing and dedicated his nights and weekends to sifting through reports from more than 150 news sources, from Fox News to Al Jazeera, trying to determine how many innocent Iraqis were dying in the American invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. By his most current count, more than 37,000 Iraqi civilians have died since March 2003........

and now for some

REAL facts and figures.....

What They’re Saying in Anbar Province

by Gary Langer
IN his address to the nation on Thursday, President Bush singled out progress in Anbar Province as the model for United States success in Iraq. The president’s claims echoed those made earlier in the week by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, in his Congressional testimony. And they raised a question worth examining: Do United States military alliances with Sunni tribal leaders truly reflect a turning of hearts and minds away from Anbar’s bitter anti-Americanism?
The data from our latest Iraq poll suggest not.

Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in our survey opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq - 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar respondent called attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the country. All called the United States-led invasion wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely wrong.” No wonder: Anbar, in western Iraq, is almost entirely populated by Sunni Arabs, long protected by Saddam Hussein and dispossessed by his overthrow. There are critical improvements in Anbar. Most important have been remarkable advances in confidence in the Iraqi Army and police. In ABC’s survey in March, not a single respondent rated local security positively - now 38 percent do. Nonetheless, nobody surveyed in Anbar last month gave the United States any credit. Ratings of living conditions remain dismal: respondents were deeply dissatisfied with the availability of electricity and fuel, jobs, medical care and a host of other elements of daily life. And the violence, while sharply down, has hardly ended: One in four reported that car bombs or suicide attacks had occurred near them in the last six months. Last week’s murder of Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, an Anbar sheik who had allied himself with the United States, only underscored this grim reality.

and here's an example of that progress

NOT
Many Trainees Are Complicit With 'Enemy Targets'

By Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD -- The platoon of American soldiers was pinned down in an alley outside the holiest Shiite shrine in western Baghdad's Kadhimiyah neighborhood. Machine-gun fire sprayed from apartment windows and rooftops with a deafening clatter. The troops were 15 yards from their Humvees, but they didn't know if they could survive the dash.
Less than a mile away, a powerful Shiite parliament member stood inside an American military base, in the office of the Iraqi army brigade commander responsible for Kadhimiyah. The Americans had called for Iraqi army backup, but according to the brigade commander and American officers, the lawmaker would help ensure that no assistance arrived from the Iraqis that crucial day.
"No Iraqi army unit, of the 2,700 Iraqi security forces that are in Kadhimiyah, no Iraqi army unit would respond," said Lt. Col. Steven Miska, a deputy brigade commander based in this Shiite enclave of 200,000 people on the western shore of the Tigris River. "It shows you how difficult it is to root out the militia influence when they've got political top-cover."...........

one of THE biggest mistakes made (i mean beside invading a country for NO reason) was we DID NOT NOR DO WE STILL UNDERSTAND THEIR CULTURE and THEIR WAYS. that's important. guess what? they (king george and his court) STILL are ignoring that ONE MOST IMPORTANT factor

a good analysis (by Robert Scheer)

of the SHEER (just a coincidence here) lunacy that is the king george and his court administration. and this is just on ONE subject. arming the saudis.

Keeping Enemies Close--and Saudis Closer

Robert Scheer

Go figure: From the White House comes the news that self-styled anti-terrorism crusader George W. Bush wants to sell $20 billion in high-tech military equipment to Saudi Arabia, the source of most of the financing, and fifteen of the nineteen hijackers, for the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. ......

...........White House officials told the New York Times that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates intend to use the occasion of their joint visit to Saudi Arabia "to press the Saudis to do more to help Iraq's Shiite-dominated government." Huh? Why in the world would the Sunnis, who control Saudi Arabia and are frightened to their bones of Shiites throughout the Gulf, be party to consolidating Shiite power in Iraq?
To complete the circle of madness, White House officials tell reporters that the hope of the latest arms sale program is that the Saudis will be so thrilled with their new weapons that they will stop funding the Sunni insurgents who are currently killing Americans............