The sound you now hear...

...is the sound of my head banging against a brick wall (and - yes - it fucking hurts). The Iraq government has plans to reopen Abu Ghraib prison including a museum of the "crimes committed by the previous regime". There is no word as yet if the years 2003 - 2007 will be included as part of this magnificent exhibit.

Does this mean there won't be any oil?

Traitorous Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is sticking to his guns and insisting that all US troops will have to leave the country by the end of 2011. Strangely the US government position is that "there's no agreement yet".

Arm twisting, blackmail, bribery and extortion to follow....

If it walks like a timetable...

...and talks like a timetable it's probably a timetable. Why does Captain Codpiece want to cut and run?

Perhaps The Aged One will explain.

Back to hearts and minds

There are reports out of Afghanistan, although you would hardly know it if you rely on US news sources, that a US air strike has killed over 70 civilians, many of them children, in Herat province. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned the attacks by his American masters allies claiming that the strikes had led to nothing but civilian death and destruction.

Whilst you weren't watching....

I know you have all been busy watching the news from Georgia (and wondering why no one there seems to speak English) or possibly enjoying the Freedom Olympics live from Beijing or, if you are a Faux News aficionado (or as I like to call them "afauxionados"), worrying about John Edward's sex life. Therefore I find it my duty to tell that, in and around Kirkuk at least, the surge doesn't seem to be working anymore and civil war in brewing.

"Hurry up, please, it's time!"

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has suggested that, if the US and Iraq cannot agree on a military pact, he may have to ask US forces to leave the country. (Please don't slam the door on the way out.) One would think that he has deluded himself into believing that his country is actually a sovereign nation.

This can only be a good thing

Nouri Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, has said that talks with the Americans that would allow the US to have up-to-58-not-really-permanent-since-we're-fucking-off-once-the-oil-runs-out-military-bases are at an impasse. Should an agreement not be reached bilaterally the US will have to seek an extension of the UN Security Council Mandate, the one that made the illegal occupation legal after the fact, before it expires in December.

I thought we didn't do peacekeeping

Through a policy of appeasement which has seen a number of truces agreed with terrorists Iraqi freedom fighters the US military has been able to shift from war fighting to peacekeeping in Iraq. Of course none of this matters to John McCain who thinks American troops should stay as long as they aren't being killed. He doesn't mention the level of Iraqi carnage that he views as acceptable but then it is the Iraqis country and I assume that he feels it is fitting that they should die there.

War in a time of cholera

It's been over five years since the illegal invasion of Iraq and things have gotten so much better for the people of Baghdad that they have decided to celebrate by infecting their municipal water with cholera. Not how I would have celebrated but perhaps it is a cultural thing.

Standing up for independence

Resistance to the US Iraq (not really a) defence treaty that would see the Republic of Iraq ceding sovereignty over much of its defence and military to the United States continues to grow as this opinion piece in The Independent by former finance minister Ali Allawi demonstrates. With any luck the voice of Allawi and others will put an end to this neo-imperial "agreement" and Captain Codpiece's beloved "Freedom Agenda" will be the better for it!

"Well maybe after all this it isn't you money after all"

As I noted yesterday if Iraq wants to remain become a sovereign nation it needs to deliver an emphatic "no" to Washington's "offer" of a defence alliance (not to be confused with a defence treaty) that would see permanent US bases, immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and officials and American control of Iraqi air space. Now I learn from Patrick Cockburn in The Independent that Captain Codpiece and his evil minions are playing hardball with the Iraqi "government" by threatening with seizure around 50 billion USD of Iraqi assets held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

How times flies...

...whilst you're waiting for electricity. Iraq's Minister of Electricity expects that the country's electricity supply should be "nearly stable" in only three years time. Well done everyone.

Perhaps progress

I don't want any wing nuts to accuse me of not noting that last month's combat deaths in Iraq were the lowest since the illegal invasion. Let us hope it continues and that it is not just a blip. Civilian deaths apparently declined dramatically as well.

Not progress

Leila Hussein, an Iraqi woman who spoke out in condemnation after her teenage daughter was murdered by her husband for befriending a British soldier in Basra, has been gunned down in Iraq. Ms. Hussein had been living in hiding and had been planning to emigrate to Jordan but was murdered before she could do so. Her husband has never been charged or punished for the "honour" killing despite freely admitting his participation in the crime (or non-crime). Some aspects of Iraqi live may now be better than under the Ba'athists but the condition of women is certainly much, much worse.

Above the law

This Associate Press report about an Iraqi by the name of Yahya Ali Humadi should help to shatter any illusions that you might have the Iraq is a sovereign state and that the United States is not an omnipotent (illegal) occupier. Humadi, who had been detained by American forces in Baghdad over a year ago after a raid on his home. They charged him with illegally possessing weapons (what no Second Amendment!) and attacking US forces for a three judge Iraqi court found that the evidence provided by the Americans did not support the charges and ordered Humadi released. That was in July of last year. Humadi is still being held, without charge, at an American detention camp. The Americans insist this is all legal and above board and most importantly "in the spirit" of the Geneva Conventions. Mr. Humadi and his attorneys are not so sure and neither am I.

Ain't gonna play Sadr City

Surge or no surge almost nothing has changed in the impoverished Sh'ia stronghold in Baghdad and American forces remain unable to consolidate their gains. Is there a military solution? Probably not but that won't deter those, like Captain Codpiece and John McCain who believe that there is always a military solution.

Another benchmark about to be met?

We will know that we have won in Iraq when every single Iraqi left in the country qualifies as internally displaced?

Good thing we don't do hearts and minds, innt?

American aircraft launched a brave assault against a rats' nest of jihadis hospital in Sadr City today. According to the Americans they killed 14 armed militiamen they also said that a "battle damage assessment is currently ongoing". Curious how they can be certain that they killed exactly 14 evildoers but need more time to determine if they bombed a hospital. Possibly the hospital was constructed overnight without appropriate planning permission and therefore the Yanks were understandably unaware of its existence; or not.

Progress report

US forces have killed 800 people in Sadr City over the past three weeks; some of whom may have even been terrorists!

Progress report

Even as General David Petraeus carefully toed the Captain Codpiece party line on his trip across Capitol Hill in Washington last week, despite being cruelly denied a fifth star, US forces actually on the ground in Iraq suffered their worst and bloodiest week of the year with at least fifteen deaths.

No word if this satisfied one of the un-discussed benchmarks.