David Horsey

Shiite Account of Visitation ('pilgrimage') to Holy Shrines of Iraq

I left Iraq with a feeling of sadness, but not the same sadness that I felt entering it. That was the sadness at the approach of the month of Muharram, but I left with the sadness that in this day and age, in the land of the Imams , still there are those who seek to extinguish the fire from the Revolution of Al-Hussain (S). They fear its rememberance, for it teaches all that blood shall always defeat the swords. And these swords are the same ones that belonged to the army of Yazeed, only their wielders now seek to mask their identity. The Shia have always been opressed, be it by the poisoned pens or by the tyrant rulers, but under the wings of the imperial vulture seeking to overshadow Iraq, a false hope of respite and sanctuary had risen. I arrived in Damascus International Airport at about 12.30am local time, but it took an hour to get through the bribe-prone officials manning the various 'security' controls. I was immediately greeted with bad news by my driver, who informed me that the border was closed, but a few people had managed to get through one way or another. He said that our best hope was to be there before sunrise, when there were fewer police and it is easier to negotiate a path into Iraq. On this information, I left immediately from the airport to the Iraqi border, without stopping. The Syrian roads are awful, their main highway is a single lane pot-holed road carved through never-ending hills and mountains. Needless to say there is no streetlighting and only the most-experienced of drivers will do speeds over 120 km/h. We arrived at the Syrian control about 4.30am and I made my way to the passport control desk. A rather grumpy-looking man took a look at my passport, but threw it back rather roughly and said 'I'm off to sleep now, you will have to wait'. My initial disbelief was quickly set aside by anger and despite my pleading with him that only a small exit stamp that would take 10 seconds of his time was needed, he went into his room and locked the door. A two-hour wait inside this shoddy building surrounded by featureless desert with temperatures in the sub-zero range was not the best start to my trip. Needless to say there was no hospitality area, restaurants and cafes, but there were something resembling toilets. Thankfully, sleeping beauty awoke and duly smashed the stamp down on a new page in my passport (despite my telling him to do it on a partially filled one) and we were off. We paid the 'ikramiyah' (an almost official bribe) to one of the border guards to not search our car and hinder us any further and that was the last of the Syrian border. And that was the easy bit.

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  thanks to Juan Cole

Spring...

Discussions around the dinner table mainly focus on the Transitional Law these days. I asked a friend to print out the whole thing for me and have been looking it over these last two days. I watched only a part of the ceremony because the electricity went out in the middle of it and I didn't bother watching a recap of it later on. The words look good on paper- as words often do. Some parts of it sound hauntingly like our last constitution. The discussions about the Transitional Law all focus on the legitimacy of this document. Basically, an occupying power brought in a group of exiles, declared Iraq 'liberated', declared the constitution we've been using since the monarchy annulled and set up a group of puppets as a Governing Council. Can these laws be considered legitimate? Furthermore, just how sincere are these puppets about this new Transitional Law? For example, there's a lovely clause that reads, "No one may be unlawfully arrested or detained, and no one may be detained by reason of political or religious beliefs." Will the American troops discontinue the raids and arbitrary detentions (which are still quite common) come June 30? Or is the Transitional Law binding only to Iraqis?

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Why US Occupation Continues after June

Bush wants to claim that with the new Constitution passed, power will be turned over to Iraqis after June of this year. It's a lie. The new government under the new constitution will be barred from overturning any laws that the US has imposed on the country since the Occupation. Why can't they change them? cause of this provision in the Constitution, Article 26: )"A) Except as otherwise provided in this Law, the laws in force in Iraq on 30 June 2004 shall remain in effect unless and until rescinded or amended by the Iraqi Transitional Government in accordance with this Law." Note that the "Iraqi Transitional Government" doesn't come into existence until new elections occur, which can be as late as December 2005-- a long period to be governed by Paul Bremer's recently enacted pro-corporate laws.

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  thanks to Eschaton

Let the looting begin. Somehow I don't think the Iraqis will go along quietly with this.

An Insult to Our Soldiers
by Bob Herbert

Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, is chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform. He tells a story about Sgt. Daniel Romero of the Colorado Army National Guard, who was sent to fight in Afghanistan. In a letter dated March 23, 2002, Sergeant Romero asked a fellow sergeant: "Are they really fixing pay issues [or] are they putting them off until we return? If they are waiting, then what happens to those who (God forbid) don't make it back?" As Mr. Davis said at a hearing this past January, "Sergeant Romero was killed in action in Afghanistan in April 2002." The congressman added, "I would really like to hear today that his family isn't wasting their time and energy fixing errors in his pay." As we mobilize troops from around the country and send them off to fight and possibly die in that crucible of terror known as combat, is it too much to ask that they be paid in a timely way? Researchers from the General Accounting Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, studied the payroll processes of six Army National Guard units that were called up to active duty. What they found wasn't pretty.

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We send the Nation Guard into a war zone where they have to buy their own boots and flak jackets and then we can't even pay them.

Spanish leader accuses Bush and Blair
Threat to pull troops out of Iraq as row over election result escalates

Spain's new prime minister, the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, yesterday followed his dramatic election triumph with a pledge to bring troops home from Iraq and accusations that Tony Blair and George Bush lied about the war. "Mr Blair and Mr Bush must do some reflection ... you can't organise a war with lies," he said in his first radio interview after ousting the ruling conservative People's party in a Sunday election dominated by the terror attacks on trains that killed 200 Madrid commuters last week. "The Spanish troops will come back," he added.

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