White House to Overhaul Iraq and Afghan Missions

The White House has ordered a major reorganization of American efforts to quell violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and to speed the reconstruction of both countries, according to senior administration officials.

The new effort includes the creation of an "Iraq Stabilization Group," which will be run by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. The decision to create the new group, five months after Mr. Bush declared the end of active combat in Iraq, appears part of an effort to assert more direct White House control over how Washington coordinates its efforts to fight terrorism, develop political structures and encourage economic development in the two countries.
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I'm sorry, but seeing Condi in charge of anything more complex than a stapler is really scary.

Senate: No extra funds for personal combat gear

An attempt Thursday night to provide more money to the Army so soldiers deploying to Iraq don’t have to buy their own combat gear failed after the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman showed little sympathy for the idea.
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  thanks to Magpie

This is so wrong. Any soldier that thinks the Republicans give a shit about them should take this as a sign.

Left waiting in Iraq

My son-in-law is a member of the Missouri National Guard, currently stationed in Baghdad. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently visited Iraq. A few days before Rumsfeld's visit, my son-in-law's unit had received the news it had been awaiting eagerly: Its departure date from Iraq would be Dec. 3. This was the first time the men had been given an actual date after many months of wondering and questioning.

My son-in-law was among a small group of men who had lunch with Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was queried about the Dec. 3 departure date, and he assured the men that it was correct.

Three days later the media reported that the Defense Department was extending the tours of reservists and national guardsmen well past the one-year deployment. (Some of the men actually received this new from their families over the phone.) My son-in-law's unit now has a departure date of April 22.
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  thanks to Eschaton

Lying sack of shit.

Force reduction in Iraq 'years' off
But general says coalition winning

The U.S. Army general who heads coalition forces in Iraq says it will be years before the United States is able to "draw down" its forces here, and he warned Americans to brace for more casualties, including a "significant engagement where tens of American soldiers or coalition soldiers" are killed.
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  thanks to Eschaton

It appears that they are starting to recycle newspaper articles from the Vietnam era. Were winning. Right! And there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Seeing Another War in Iraq in 2003

I entered Iraq from Kuwait on the first day of the ground invasion by U.S. and British military forces, sharing a four-wheel-drive SUV with two other friends, both Italian photographers. For the following five weeks I worked independent of the military. I made this choice consciously, as I had during the Gulf War in 1991, hoping it would let me have the broadest possible exposure to the war. While I appreciate the great work of many of my colleagues who were “embedded” with the military, that approach to covering war was not the one I preferred.

It must be said that, regardless of the benefits that do exist of allowing embedding, the full story of a conflict can never be told to the public without those journalists who work independently. It is difficult, if not impossible, while you are with an advancing military unit to linger in an area and report on the casualties seen in hospitals, or witness the aftermath of battle on the civilian population, or cover the humanitarian and refugee crises.

At Al Asskan Hospital in Baghdad, a pediatric hospital, two doctors perform cardiac massage on 10-year Worood Nasiaf, who died a few minutes later. She suffered from pulmonary pneumonia, and she was unable to be brought to the hospital for treatment by her father, because of traveling conditions during the war, and because many hospitals stopped functioning during the fighting. In the bed next to hers' lay patient, 2-year-old Mortalha Hameed, and her mother Eman Ali, 23. After the doctors declared Worood Nasiaf dead, they put her hands together on her chest, and covered her face, and her father entered the room and wept.

Iraqis' patience wears thin as America delays handover
As Europe and UN put pressure on Washington, Iraqi leaders say they fear being 'puppets' of US

When Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator in Baghdad, appointed the Iraqi governing council, he held out the promise of a significant Iraqi influence on America's postwar reconstruction.

But nearly three months later, widening differences are emerging between the chosen Iraqi leaders and Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that threaten American attempts to bring stability and security to Iraq. In a series of interviews with The Observer, several members of the council complained they had only a limited influence over American policies and were deeply frustrated at their lack of control over security and spending plans.

'They want to keep all the control for themselves,' said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish politician and one of the 24 council members. 'When you are not controlling the budgets, when the security file is not under your control, and when you cannot create jobs, what can you do? It is better to give up.'

'We will be looked at as puppets of the Americans and we will fail. If we fail, they fail.'
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First Day of School...

Today was the first day of the new academic year. Well, it was actually on October 1, but most students didn’t bother going on Wednesday. University students have decided they are not going to start classes until next week.

Yesterday, I went with my cousin, his wife and my brother, E., to shop for school supplies for his two daughters- a pretty 10-year-old and a loud 7-year-old. Every year his wife, S., takes the girls to pick out their own pencils, notebooks and backpacks but ever since the war, she hasn’t let them step outside of the house- unless it is to go visit a relative.

So we packed into the car and headed off for a shopping area in the middle of Baghdad. We don’t have shopping malls or huge shopping centers in Iraq. We have shops, big and small, up and down commercial streets and located on corners of residential blocks. School supplies are sold at ‘makatib’ or stationary shops that sell everything from toys to desk sets.

We pulled up in front of a little stationary shop and all got down. It felt a bit ridiculous- four grown people all out shopping for Barbie notebooks and strawberry-scented erasers… but I knew it was necessary. E. and the cousin loitered outside of the shop while we went inside to make our purchases.
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