I’d like to digress from my usual analysis of insurgent strategy and tactics to speak out on an issue of grave importance to Small Wars Journal readers. We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor.

Last week the Attorney General nominee Judge Michael Mukasey refused to define waterboarding terror suspects as torture. On the same day MSNBC television pundit and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough quickly spoke out in its favor. On his morning television broadcast, he asserted, without any basis in fact, that the efficacy of the waterboard a viable tool to be used on Al Qaeda suspects.

Scarborough said, "For those who don’t know, waterboarding is what we did to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is the Al Qaeda number two guy that planned 9/11. And he talked …" He then speculated that “If you ask Americans whether they think it’s okay for us to waterboard in a controlled environment … 90% of Americans will say ‘yes.’” Sensing that what he was saying sounded extreme, he then claimed he did not support torture but that waterboarding was debatable as a technique: "You know, that’s the debate. Is waterboarding torture? … I don’t want the United States to engage in the type of torture that [Senator] John McCain had to endure."

In fact, waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

Read in full: Waterboarding is Torture… Period (Updated) (SWJ Blog)

Erdla

BASRA, Iraq, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Residents of Iraq’s southern city of Basra have begun strolling riverfront streets again after four years of fear, their city much quieter since British troops withdrew from the grand Saddam Hussein-era Basra Palace.

Political assassinations and sectarian violence continue, some city officials say, but on a much smaller scale than at any time since British troops moved into the city after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Mortar rounds, rockets and small arms fire crashed almost daily into the palace, making life hazardous for British and Iraqis alike in Iraq’s second-largest city. To many Basrans the withdrawal of the British a month ago removed a proven target.

“The situation these days is better. We were living in hell … the area is calm since their withdrawal,” said housewife Khairiya Salman, who lives near the palace.

Civil servant Wisam Abdul Sada agreed. “We do not hear the sounds of explosions which were shaking our houses and terrifying our women and children,” he told Reuters.

Basra, in Iraq’s Shi’ite south, has enormous strategic importance as the hub for the country’s vital oil exports that account for 90 percent of its revenue and a centre of imports and exports throughout the Gulf.

(more…)

The humanitarian situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate with the number of displaced Iraqis, both inside and outside the country, rising. Now, an estimated 4.2 million Iraqis are have been uprooted from their homes, with the monthly rate of displacement climbing to over 60,000 people compared to 50,000 previously, according to UNHCR and the Iraqi Red Crescent. Displacement is rising as Iraqis are finding it harder to get access to social services inside Iraq and many Iraqis are choosing to leave ethnically mixed areas before they are forced to do so. Some Iraqis who stayed in the country until the end of the school year recently started leaving the country with their families.

More than 2 million Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq, with over 1 million displaced since the February 2006 Samarra bombings. While most of the security incidents happen in the centre and south of the country, the displaced are not confined to these regions. In the north, there are more than 780,000 displaced Iraqis, over 650,000 in the centre of the country, and 790,000 in the south. Many are barely surviving in makeshift camps, inaccessible to aid workers for security reasons.

(more…)

    ”Conditions facing many children are worsening, particularly amongst IDPs (internally displaced persons), whose numbers have now topped 1 million,” UNICEF said in an update on the situation.

    ”With little electricity available to power fans and air conditioners, children in central and southern Iraq are in increasing danger from heat-related conditions,” it said, adding that “moreover, everywhere adequate water remains a significant unmet need.”

    The UNICEF stressed that “of growing concern is that an increasing number of IDPs are being forced to stay in temporary camps longer,” noting that living conditions for IDPs and their host communities in Baghdad and Najaf are worst.

    It also emphasized that adequate nutrition remains a major issue for many Iraqi families, adding that it is continuing to respond as best as it can despite serious funding limitations.

UN reports worse conditions for Iraqi children

Editor’s Note: I am belatedly posting this — Erdla

Erdla

BAGHDAD, 19 July 2007 (IRIN) - “My age is the same as the olive tree,” reads the blue tattoo on Qaisar Tariq al-Essawi’s left shoulder.
Al-Eassawi, 36, got the tattoo so his family and close friends could recognise his remains if he ended up in a morgue.

“I selected this wording because only my family and close friends know about our olive tree which was planted by my father when I was born,” al-Essawi, a father of two boys, told IRIN in Baghdad.

(more…)

(more…)

Published: 07 April 2007

Laila al-Arian was wearing her headscarf at her desk at Nation Books, one of my New York publishers. No, she told me, it would be difficult to telephone her father. At the medical facility of his North Carolina prison, he can only make a few calls - monitored, of course - and he was growing steadily weaker.

Sami al-Arian is 49 but he stayed on hunger strike for 60 days to protest the government outrage committed against him, a burlesque of justice which has, of course, largely failed to rouse the sleeping dogs of American journalism in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

All praise, then, to the journalist John Sugg from Tampa, Florida, who has been cataloguing al-Arian’s little Golgotha for months, along with Alexander Cockburn of Counter Punch. (more…)

Azzaman (English), April 1, 2007

The carnage of Telafar is now seen is the deadliest single incident since the 2003 U.S. invasion with at least 150 Iraqis killed by car bombings or executed in retaliation.

Telafar to the west of the northern city of Mosul was hit by several bombings late last month targeting a densely populated district in the mixed town.

Telafar has always been a hotbed of anti-U.S. rebellion but also a stronghold breeding ground for al-Qaeda operatives believed to be behind most of the deadly attacks on civilians.

Iraqi politicians and clergy across the country, whether Shiites or Sunnis, Kurds or Arabs, strongly denounce attacks targeting civilians whether mounted by terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or foreign and Iraqi troops fighting it.

But amid rising sectarian strife, the confusion that resulted from U.S. invasion and the division of the country’s institutions along sectarian lines, anything happening in Iraq is being interpreted within a sectarian or ethnic context.

Immediately after the bombings in Telafar, Iraqi police, who are supposed to protect the civilian population, in apparent reprisal, killed in cold blood 70 people, mainly young men before the eyes of their families.

The government initially arrested a few policemen but they were released shortly after.

The families of the victims are pressing the authorities in the province of Nineveh of which Mosul is the capital and Telafar a major town, to arrest the policemen involved in the summary executions.

Tensions in Telafar have been rising and the town has seen no effective authority to restore law and order despite two massive U.S. attacks to subdue it.

Source: Families of victims executed by police ask for justice Azzaman in English

Erdla

“I’m tired of going to public hospitals in search of treatment for my son. He’s just a baby and is suffering from a condition that could kill him. Basic medicines can keep him alive. Omar has to take a drug called carbamazepine, which is used for the treatment of anxiety, epilepsy and convulsions.
“Each time he has a bout of convulsions, I get scared that it’s going to be the last day of his life. Initially, we were getting free treatment in public pharmacies, but for the past six months the situation has changed and we don’t get free treatment any more.
“My husband’s been unemployed for the past two years. We’re only able to survive because some relatives are helping us with food and clothes for the children. We don’t have money to buy medicines from private pharmacies for Omar, especially after a medicine shortage has made pharmacy owners raise their prices.
“I asked two local NGOs for help but until now they haven’t given me any medicine for his treatment, saying that none of the drugs in their stores can be used for the treatment of my child.

We are suffering violence in Iraq and the shortage in medicines is a result of the US invasion, which instead of bringing us peace and prosperity, has brought us suffering and poverty.

“I don’t know what else to do to get help for my son. I can’t buy the tablets from private pharmacies, which sell 10 tablets for nearly US $10. This money’s enough for my family to eat for the whole week. But I don’t want my son to die from a condition that can be simply treated.
“We are paying the price of being a poor family. If we had money, for sure we wouldn’t be suffering with this problem. I can’t have more children because of a myoma [a benign tumour in the wall of her uterus]. He is my only son and the hope of our family.
“I don’t want too much. I just need someone who can get treatment for my lovely son. We are suffering violence in Iraq and the shortage in medicines is a result of the US invasion, which instead of bringing us peace and prosperity, has brought us suffering and poverty.
“Some people might not understand why a mother should be frantic in asking for a so common a medicine to keep her son alive, but those who live in this country and who lack everything know how hard it is to find food and security as well as health care and education.”

Source: IRIN IRAQ: Um Mustafa Bakr, Iraq “I can’t find medicines for my son’s convulsions” Hear our voices

This is a miniscule part of what the American “reforms” have done to Irak’s health system. They used to have one of the best in the Middle East until the Americans got there. But that’s what happens when you get targeted by an empire run by a corrupt government that dishes out the contracts to incompetent and corrupt cronys.

Erdla