Ashoura Tragedy...
by Riverbend

The explosions in Karbala and Kadhimiya were horrible. We heard the ones in Kadhimiya from a distance. There were a couple of dull thuds and we didn't know what it was. We found out later on the news and everyone has been horrified ever since. It's so hard to believe this has happened. The shots on Al-Arabia and the other channels were terrible- body parts everywhere- people burning alive... who could do this? We've all been asking each other that... who would have anything to gain from this? Fingers are being pointed everywhere. Everyone has been afraid that this will be the metaphorical straw that breaks the camels back- except it's not a straw... it's more like an iron anchor that is just to heavy to carry. Fortunately, the reactions have been sane, yet sorrowful. Sunnis and Shi'a are sticking together... more now than ever before. It's like this catastrophe somehow made everyone realize that there are outside forces trying to drive us all apart and cause unrest or 'fitna'. People are refusing to believe that this was done by Iraqis. It's impossible. It's inexcusable and there is nothing that can justify it.

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Fresh U.S. troops in Iraq mean adjustments to violence, trust for both sides

Shaha Saleh and four of her daughters were planting peas when they heard the explosion last week near a U.S. military convoy that was passing through their speck of a village in remote northern farmlands. Saleh grabbed her daughters by the hands and the hair, dragging them out of range of American soldiers firing back at faceless attackers. But they didn't run fast enough, Saleh said Wednesday from her bed at a hospital in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad. The soldiers left one daughter dead, another unable to walk and their mother with a leg so mangled it had to be severed at the knee. This was the village's introduction to the 25th Infantry Division, based in Hawaii, which arrived in northern Iraq just weeks ago as part of the largest troop rotation in U.S. military history.

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  thanks to Yolanda Flanagan

'Bullet magnets' prepare for Iraqi frontline
The largest troop rotation in US history starts this month - but the reservists have little training or appetite for battle

Iraq civil war: Rumors and reality

As cracks appear in the Bush administration's campaign to portray Iraqi setbacks as the work of foreign terrorists and al-Qaeda, Iraq's homegrown factional fault lines are becoming increasingly evident. Repeated calls for direct elections by Iraq's majority Shi'ites have in effect pushed a succession of US plans and deadlines into the wastebin, with the United Nations issuing repeated cautions against a descent into civil war. Amid the exponentially expanding US reports of al-Qaeda and foreign-terrorist action in Iraq, the US-led coalition's failures in addressing domestic Iraqi pressures in the war's aftermath have made potential civil war a stark reality. Despite Washington's spin, domestic Iraqi lines have been drawn both along factional borders and between those who are Islamic and secular. The potential for conflict is abundant.

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Commander, USFI?

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is fielding all kinds of questions these days. He is asked about the need for a draft ("No, of course not."). He gets asked about rifts – past, present and future – with the State Department ("What rifts?"). He is asked about the progress in Iraq after "liberation" and says things are better, even that "the electricity is starting to come back on," albeit almost a year after we arrived to save the day. One topic he will soon be asked about is the new command he is proposing to ensure continued military control over Iraq after a so-called sovereign government takes the reins in July of this year. In the mode of United States Forces Korea (USFK), centered in Seoul since the mid-fifties and formalized just over 25 years ago, we may well see the permanent establishment of a United States Force Iraq, complete with a four-star general in Baghdad to run the place. The Washington Times reports this plan, and with their connections into the Pentagon hierarchy, it bears a reading. The new command set for Baghdad would be modeled on USFK, the four-star command within Pacific Command that controls US and South Korean Forces. When this information is combined with the words of other senior personnel, it becomes more believable. Chairman of the JCS Dick Meyers says that while the length of time U.S. troops will be deployed in Iraq is unknowable, it will be for some time. Retired Lt General Jay Garner is far more forthright, recently telling the Government Executive magazine that our troops will be in Iraq for the next few decades.

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  thanks to Information Clearing House

I think the Iraqis have a very different idea about the US Army hanging out for the next few decades.