elaine, mike, flyboy and i went to the howard zinn event tonight. i'm staying over at mike's which works out very well (thank you mike, trina -- mike's mother, and mike's father) because we won't have to come in tomorrow morning for the doctor's visit, we'll already be here. susan e-mailed c.i. who called me this morning. that's a wonderful idea - susan thought i could share the gender (which we find out tomorrow) of what's pushing out my stomach more and more each day in the gina & krista round-robin. those who have e-mailed already will get an e-mail telling you. but i do appreciate that susan didn't want to add to my things to do. so if any 1's curious and didn't want to e-mail, i will share the gender in friday's gina & krista round-robin.
and let me add, please read "Ruth's Report" which is just brilliant (no surprise there).
because of the event tonight, c.i. pulled things for me to read over on the topic of the gonzales' scandal & crimes. i'm going to start with buzzflash because they have been leading on this (so has mother jones but i don't see them among the 63 things c.i. e-mailed). so, from buzzflash:
Headlines proclaim millions of White House/RNC emails have been "lost." But does that mean they have been destroyed forever or are they simply missing? According to the two top Senate Judiciary members, the emails have not mysteriously disappeared but are actively being hidden by the Bush Administration.
"You can't erase e-mails, not today," Judiciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy declared on the Senate floor Thursday. "They've gone through too many servers. Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary.""There's good reason to believe that they can be found if we look hard enough," said Ranking Member Arlen Specter.These guys know what they are talking about, unlike Sen. Ted "series of tubes" Stevens. Just because Karl Rove hits the "delete" button on an email does not mean that all record of the message has been erased. All reasonably sized organizations typically monitor and record any incoming and outgoing activity behind the scenes.
Despite their better efforts, White House officials may not have succeeded in destroying their own records as they seem to have hoped. Since releasing more emails would reveal even more lies, the easiest thing to do at this point is to say there are no more emails to be found.
important to remember, this is about the cover up of the crimes. now bloomberg news reports that gonzales will not testify tomorrow as scheduled. he has dodged a bullet and gotten 2 more days to stall because of the shooting at virginia tech today that resulted in over 30 deaths. bloomberg news also covers the differences between gonzales' public statements and that of kyle sampson (gonzales' former right hand who left when the scandal broke) so this excerpt is about what the former chief of staff has testified to and what gonzales has stated publicly:
The Gonzales aide, D. Kyle Sampson, was interviewed yesterday by Senate Judiciary Committee lawyers as the panel prepares to hear from Gonzales later this week. Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat heading the committee's probe into the firings, discussed Sampson's latest account in a news conference today. Sampson's new testimony conflicts with accounts by Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, Schumer said.
For example, Gonzales told NBC News in a March 26 interview that he couldn't recall discussing U.S. attorneys with President George W. Bush. Just three weeks earlier, Sampson said, the attorney general had recounted to him a conversation with the president about David C. Iglesias, one of the fired federal prosecutors, Schumer said.
"Kyle Sampson appeared to contradict'' Gonzales's "blanket statements with regard to his involvement in the Iglesias firing,'' Schumer said. "Sampson had been aware of specific concerns raised about Mr. Iglesias, not only from Karl Rove,'' Bush's top political adviser, "but also from the president,'' Schumer said.
Gonzales's account of his role in the dismissals has been challenged before. The attorney general told reporters on March 13 he hadn't attended meetings on the firings. Subsequently, documents revealed that Gonzales held a Nov. 27 meeting to discuss the dismissals.
now sampson isn't the only 1 who is contradicting gonzales. this is from dan eggan and paul kane
(washington post):
The former Justice Department official who carried out the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year told Congress that several of the prosecutors had no performance problems and that a memo on the firings was distributed at a Nov. 27 meeting attended by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a Democratic senator said yesterday.
The statements to House and Senate investigators by Michael A. Battle, former director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, represent another potential challenge to the credibility of Gonzales, who has said that he never saw any documents about the firings and that he had "lost confidence" in the prosecutors because of performance problems.
Battle's statements, relayed to reporters yesterday by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), came as Gonzales prepares for a make-or-break appearance on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Prepared testimony released yesterday indicates Gonzales will apologize to the fired prosecutors for the way they were treated and will acknowledge that he has been "less than precise" in describing his role in the firings.
that was written before the delay was announced so let me repeat gonzales is now scheduled to testify thursday. mcclatchy newspapers reported that congress is most interested in how deep karl rove is in all of this and in the partisan nature of the firings:
When an attorney general is accused of letting politics interfere with the administration of justice, it's so sensitive a matter that predecessors are uncomfortable discussing it. Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, declined an interview request, as did President Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno.
Philip Heymann, a Harvard law professor and former deputy attorney general under Reno, said the Justice Department has always been vulnerable to allegations of playing politics with prosecutions.
"But these allegations are vastly greater and more credible," Heymann said. "Really good attorney generals go out of their way to keep appearances straight as well as realities. I think something serious has been going on, and I think it's terribly important that it come out.
if you're interested in what congressional people said on the sunday chat & chews click here.
now here's title 18 section 59 of federal law that has to do with the fact that those employed by the government are not to be engaging in preventing or interfering with people from voting:
Whoever, being a person employed in any administrative position by the United States, or by any department or agency thereof, or by the District of Columbia or any agency or instrumentality thereof, or by any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States, or any political subdivision, municipality, or agency thereof, or agency of such political subdivision or municipality (including any corporation owned or controlled by any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States or by any such political subdivision, municipality, or agency), in connection with any activity which is financed in whole or in part by loans or grants made by the United States, or any department or agency thereof, uses his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
ap notes that 'the long-scheduled hearing is widely viewed as the attorney general's last chance to quiet a controversy that has prompted calls in both parties for his resignation.' i'm more interested in what a former attorney with the department of justice has to say. this from law.com:
Since the day he arrived at the Department of Justice in February 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has "shattered" the department's tradition of independence and politicized its operation more than any other attorney general in more than 30 years.
So says Daniel Metcalfe, a senior attorney at the department who retired in January, before the current controversy over the firing of U.S. Attorneys erupted. He views the episode as an "awful embarrassment" that has only worsened already-low morale at the department, especially among career attorneys.
Metcalfe, 55, served most recently as director of the Office of Information and Privacy. He co-founded the office in 1981 with Richard Huff. But his career at the department began in 1971. He started as an intern, working at the department full-time while attending law school at George Washington University. Later, he worked as a trial attorney in DOJ's Civil Division before founding OIP.
At that office, Metcalfe oversaw Freedom of Information Act policy throughout the executive branch. He gained a reputation as a principled official who would adhere to the policies of whichever administration he served, but not at the expense of following the letter and spirit of FOIA. "Dan earned great respect for the policies he helped form, even though they sometimes put him at odds with access advocates," says Paul McMasters, the recently retired First Amendment ombudsman at the Freedom Forum. Metcalfe plans to begin teaching law in coming months.
In interviews in person and by e-mail with Legal Times Supreme Court correspondent Tony Mauro, Metcalfe recently detailed his views about Gonzales and the politicization of the department, as well as information policy.
that's the intro, to read the interview click here. now mike gallagher (albuquerque journal)
reports that republican senator pete domenici wanted david iglesias (whom he recommended for the job of attorney) fired and complained repeatedly since 2003, tried to get gonzales to move him over to a d.c. post but it didn't happen and here's the excerpt:
In the spring of 2006, Domenici told Gonzales he wanted Iglesias out. Gonzales refused.
He told Domenici he would fire Iglesias only on orders from the president.
At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president.
Domenici and Bush subsequently had a telephone conversation about the issue.
The conversation between Bush and Domenici occurred sometime after the election but before the firings of Iglesias and six other U.S. attorneys were announced on Dec. 7.
Iglesias' name first showed up on a Nov. 15 list of federal prosecutors who would be asked to resign. It was not on a similar list prepared in October.
so let's review this, for 3 years domenici tried to get iglesias fired or move and, as late as 2006 in the spring, gonzales was saying no and 'only on orders from the president' so when did bully boy give the orders? was bully boy involved? of course he was, but the public story from the white house and gonzales has been no! no! no! here's a bit from mcclatchy newspapers:
New details emerging from Justice Department interviews and e-mails suggest that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and perhaps President Bush were more active than they've acknowledged in the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, lawmakers said Monday.
Gonzales will be under pressure to explain those contradictions when he testifies Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his role in the firings. The hearing was scheduled for Tuesday, but lawmakers delayed it after a shooting spree Monday at Virginia Tech left at least 33 people dead, including the gunman.
The attorney general also faced more pressure after a group of conservatives that includes former Reagan administration Justice Department official Bruce Fein sent a letter Monday to Bush and Gonzales calling for the attorney general's resignation "for the good of the country."
that's it for me tonight. here's c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Monday, April 16, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, Moqtada al-Sadr's walks out on the Iraqi parliament, a spoiled brat gets a public spanking, the US military announces the deaths of two more service members in Iraq, and Norman Solomon, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chomsky talk realities of war with Andrea Lewis and Amy Goodman.
Starting with news of war resistance. The sound you here is a long WHIIIIINE as a spoiled brat gets a public spanking. Clancy Sigal (at The Daily Trojan) walks spoiled brat through some basic realities in his response column to the realities of broken contracts:
We've been here before during Vietnam, when the desertion rate skyrocketed as soldiers, sailors and marines began to realize what a bogus, pointless war it was. War-resistance inside the military, including going AWOL, finally broke the Army and forced the Nixon administration to the bargaining table. Once again we're faced with a dilemma: Who violated the 'contrat' -- the government or the runaway soldiers? Pope Benedict XVI deserted the Nazi Wehrmacht. Muhammad Ali refused to serve in the Vietnam War, which he believed was racist and warranted. And so it goes. Does the U.S. government, and its military and Veterans Administration, honor or dishonor its 'contract' by forcing combat-weary GIs back into battle through its notorious 'stop loss' policy of refusing to discharge soldiers on due ldate and extending their deployments in a horrendous civil war? Does the Pentagon honor its obligation when it sends medically unfit soldiers back to the meat-grinder - and, again notoriously, without the proper equipment or weapons?
Again, the sound you hear is a pampered, spolied brat getting a public spanking via Clancy Sigal. In other news of war resisters, Bully Boy's escalation has had many effects -- more Iraqis killed, more US service members killed and Linjamin Mull, Patrick Maloney (Canoe News) reports, reached the decision to self-check out of the US military and move to Canada following Bully Boy's announcement. Linjamin Mull was a NYC social worker who signed up as a result of "a crushing student debt" and achieved the rank of specialist in the army. Meanwhile, Jenny Deam (Denver Post) reports on Justin Colby who served as a medic in Iraq and made the decision to self-check out on July 4th of last year and moved to Canada. Deam notes, "Army figures released last week show 1,710 soldiers have deserted in the past six months. The numbers are rising as the war goes on: 3,101 walked away between October 2005 and October 2006; 2,659 walked away during the 12 months before."
Yes, it is a movement, a growing movement, an ever growing movement. Mull and Colby are part of a movement of war resistance within the military that also includes Dean Walcott,
Ehren Watada (whose next court-martial is scheduled for July 16th), Camilo Mejia, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Joshua Key, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Agustin Aguayo, Camilo Mejia, Patrick Hart, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake and Kevin Benderman. In total, thirty-eight US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
In Iraq today the six cabinets filled by Moqtada al-Sadr's block are now vacant. Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) explains: "A key Shiite Muslim bloc in Iraq's governmental pledged Sunday to quit over Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's refusal to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, a move that would further weaken the country's leadership at a time of soaring sectarian violence." Edward Wong and Graham Bowley (New York Times) listed "protest at the refusal of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to set a timetable for American troops to withdraw from Iraq." (No link. Currently the New York Times has 'withdrawn' the story. You can find it quoted here.) AFP quotes a statement issued by the puppet of the occupation: "Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki welcomed the announcement of his eminence Muqtada al-Sadr." The puppet was the only putting up a brave front, the Turkish Press quotes White House flack Dana Perino who steps away from her stand up schtick on the beleaguered US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales long enough to declare, "Doalitions in those types of parliamenty demoncracies can come and go." That funny Perino! "Democracies"! She cracks herself up. Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) noted: "The Sadr movement controls six cabinet posts and a quarter of seats in Iraq's parliament. The pullout follows one of Iraq's bloodiest weekends in months. McClatchy newspapers is reporting nearly 300 people were killed in violenace around Iraq Saturday." [CBS and AP's count on Sunday for the Karbala bombing Saturday was 47.] Jim Muir (BBC News) offers analysis, "Nobody expects Mr Sadr's move to bring the government down. Nor did observers believe that was his intention. Rather than leave the cabinet seats empty, he himself suggested that the six abandoned portfolios be given to non-partisan independents, and some of his aides urged that competent technocrats be appointed. . . . The Sadr bloc has 32 of the 275 seats in the current parliament, and intends to continue its activities there and in the Shia coalition, despite withdrawing from government. Another member of the Shia coalition, the Fadhila party, announced early last month that it was pulling out of that alliance because of the government's poor performance and sectarian quota composition. But only if other major factions such as the main Sunni bloc and Iyad Allawi's secular Iraqi List were also to walk out of the government, would it be at risk of collapse." Ross Colvin and Yara Bayoumy (Reuters) note "concerns about whether Sadr's Mehdi Army, which Washington calls the biggest threat to Iraq's security, will maintain the low profile it has so far duing a U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad."
Democracy installed into Iraq and controlled by the US, Perino's so funny. The reality of Iraq is noted by Dahr Jamail (Al Jazeera) who reports that attorney Badie Arief Izzat wasn't in Iraq today "for the trial of former Iraqi officials charged with participating in attacks against the Kurdish minority in the 1980s" due to being spirited out of the country and to Damascus by the US military who, when he was due to be arrested (for statements that Iran was responsible for the gassing, not Iraq) by Iraqi security forces, "surrounded him". Izzat tells Jamail, "I was taken to an American safe house in the Green Zone and guarded by US forces who refused to hand me over to the Iraqi court." US forces spiriting lawyers out of a country to protect them, from so-called 'insurgents,' but the Iraq legal system? Spin it, Perino, spin it.
And when she does, expect her remarks to be carefully jotted down and reported with a straight -- and non-questioning -- face. Today on KPFA's The Morning Show, Andrea Lewis spoke with Norman Solomon on a number of topics including any lesson learned by the media after they knowingly and eagerly enlisted as telemarketers in order to sell the illegal war:
Lewis: So, you think the media gets that now? That the war wasn't such a great idea and that maybe they need to have some distance? I should say the major media.
Solomon: Well, you know, it's like what Mark Twain said about smoking is easy to quit, I've done that hundreds of times. And so, after every war, especially it turns sour, there's this kind of high profile on the sleeves soul searching and then its back to square one. So I do think if you ever have another situation where there's a country called "Iraq" and a dictator called "Saddam Hussein" and a lot of talk about "weapons of mass destruction" there will be some exempliary skepticism from the US media but, that aside, I mean change "Iraq" to "Iran" and just a somewhat different configuration, we're on the same boat -- the same sort of madness -- if it's up to the mass media, that again is where independent media such as the one we're on, many other efforts around the country, web TV, radio, print is really essential to kind of counter and try to oppose and overcome the sort of, I won't say natural, but in place spin cycle that comes through. I know we'll mention this a little later but let me be sure and plug here there is an independent media guide out in Marin and North Bay and we're having a benefit sponsored by the Marin Peace & Justice coalition and Students for Social Responsibility. Everybody's invited to come see a pretty far along rough cut of this film. It's this Saturday night, the 21st of April, at 7:30 pm at the College of Marin in Kentfield in what they call Oleney Hall.
Tickets to the showing are $8 and the event is wheel chair accessible. The film bears the same title as Norman Solomon's most recent book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death. Though the themes are similar this isn't a Solomon reading his book in front of a camera -- it's an actual documentary film. Sean Penn narrates the film. For a review of the book click here. The war was also addressed on Democracy Now! today as Amy Goodman interviewed Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn for the hour:
AMY GOODMAN: Vice president Cheney is saying this war can be won.
NOAM CHOMSKY: There's an interesting study being done right now by a former Russian soldier in Afghanistan in the late 1980's, he's now a student in Toronto who's comparing the Russian press and the Russian political figures and military leaders, what they were saying about Afghanistan, comparing it with what Cheney, others and the press are saying about Iraq and not to your great surprise, change a few names and it comes out about the same.
They were also saying the war in Afghanistan could be won and they were right. If they had increased the level of violence sufficiently, they could have won the war in Ira--in Afghanistan. They're also pointing out -- of course they describe correctly the heroism of the Russian troops, the efforts to bring assistance to the poor people of Afghanistan, to protect them from U.S.-run Islamic fundamentalist terrorist forces, the dedication, the rights they have won for the people in Afghanistan, and the warning that if they pull out it will be total disaster, mayhem, they must stay and win.
Unfortunately they were right about that too, when they did pull out, it was a total disaster. The U.S.-backed forces tore the place to shreds, so terrible that the people even welcomed the Taliban when they came in. So yes, those arguments can always be given. The Germans could have argued if they had the force that they didn't, that they could have won the Second World War. I mean the question is not can you win. The question is should you be there.
[...]
HOWARD ZINN: And of course it was an educational experience for us. Noam was talking about in response to your question about victory and winning. And the question is, of course, why should we win if winning means destroying a country? And there's still people who say, oh, we could have won the Vietnam war, as if the question was, you know, can we win or can we lose, instead of what are we doing to these people.
And, yes, Noam said, yes, we could win in Iraq by destroying all of Iraq. The Russians could have won Afghanistan by destroying all of Afghanistan. We could have won in Vietnam by dropping nuclear bombs instead of killing two million people in Vietnam, killing 10 million people in Vietnam. And that would be considered victory, who would take satisfaction in that?
What we saw in Vietnam is, I think what people are seeing in Iraq. And that is huge numbers of people dying for no reason at all. What we saw in Vietnam was the American army being sent halfway around the world to a country, which was not threatening us and we were destroying the people in the country. And here in Iraq, we're going the other way, we're also going halfway around the world to do the same thing to them. And our experience in Iraq contradicted as I think the experiences of people who are on the ground in Iraq contradicted again and again the statements of American officials.
The statements of the high military, statements like, oh, we're only bombing military targets, oh, these are accidents when so many civilians are killed. And, yes, as Cheney said, victory is around the corner. What we saw in Vietnam was horrifying. And it was obviously horrifying even to G.I.'s in Vietnam because they began to come back from Vietnam and oppose the war and formed Vietnam Veterans against the war.
We saw villages as far away from any military target as you can imagine, absolutely destroyed. And children killed and their graves still fresh by American jet planes coming over in the middle of the night. When I hear them talk about John McCain as a hero, I say to myself, oh, yeah, he was a prisoner and prisoners are maltreated and everywhere and this is terrible. But John McCain, like the other American fliers, what were they doing? They were bombing defenseless people. And so, yes Vietnam is something that by the way, is still not taught very well in American schools. I spoke to a group of people in an advanced history class not long ago, 100 kids, asked them how many people here have heard of the My Lai Massacre? No hand was raised. We are not teaching -- if we were teaching the history of Vietnam as it should be taught, then the American people from the start would have opposed the war instead of waiting three or four years for a majority of the American people to declare their opposition to the war.
Turning to England, the so-called 'war on terror' lost some milage today when one of the popularizers of the phrase decided to drop it. Al Jazeera reports that "war on terror" is as out of date as gaucho pants according the Britain's international development secretary Hilary Benn who states: "We do not use the phrase 'war on terror' because we can't win by military means alone". However, that is the least of the problems for Bully Boy that are crossing the Atlantic. The Times of London reports that an inquest into the March 21, 2003 British helicopter crash opened with the cornorer Andrew Walker charging that the US military provided no assistance -- "inexcusable" was the word used to describe the non-action, that the US witnesses were no where to be found, that the inquest was provied only with the Jamgan Report and "not allowed to see an engineering report that could reveal problems with the helicopter" and that "Americans have also declined to let him see a recording by an air mission command aircraft, which is thought to reveal what the helicopter pilots see before the crash." And, still in England, Mark Oliver (Guardian of London) covers the release of photos from the postmortem on Iraqi Baha Mousa who died in British custody and whose death will be addressed by the upper house of parliament (House of Lords) tomorrow.
Turning to Iraq, Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) reports: "Over the past five months, enemy tactics have turned squarely against U.S. and Iraqi troops. As sectarian killings and kidnappings have fallen by about 70 percent in Diyala, attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops have increased by a corresponding amount, according to Col. David W. Sutherland, the top U.S. commander in the province." Richard A. Oppel Jr. (New York Times) notes the tactics of the resistance, "They meaneuver in squads, like the American infantrymen they try to kill. One squad fires furiously so another can attack from a better position. They operate in bad weather, knowing American helicopters and surveillance drones are grounded. Some carry G.P.S. receivers so mortar teams can calculate the coordinates of American armored vehicles. They kidnap and massacre police officers." Oppel also notes that in Diyala and Baquba, you're dealing with two populations -- Shia and Sunnie and that "Shiite-dominated security forces in the city inflamed tensions by persecuting Sunnis". The US government backs the attacks by training the attackers, by funding them. The US government created the split after invading the country. Sahar (McClatchy News' Inside Iraq) makes that point very clear by noting a friend named Um Noor: "She was happily married for twenty years, when Iraq was occupied. After a while strange, little used words start flying around. Sunni . . . Shiite . . . Sunni . . . Shite . . . Then fighting started breaking out because of this long submerged difference. In her neighborhood, as in the greater majority of Baghdad's neighborhoods, no one is really sure who on their bloc is Sunni, or Shiite; and nobody really cares. Soon after, the IEDs and car bombs started taking their toll from people still bewildered as to: Why is this happeng? BOOM! She loses her husbad, on his way to work, a Shiite. Being a Sunni herself, she is urged -- very strongly -- to move away; their part of Amil is Shiite controled. Having nowhere to go, she stays. A car stops in front of their home. BANG, BANG, BANG! She loses her son (20), her brother, and her nephew. She takes her remaining children and flees, finding no haven -- except in Abu Ghraib, (Sunni controlled) where she lives in perpetural fear lest her dark secret be uncovered: that her kids are -- of course -- Shiite. Her two remaining sons (16 and 10) live imprisoned in their hut; she has buried all their IDs and tells everyone that they got lost . . . . . . . . and as a result they cannot receive rations. They are starving to death. How, and why, has it suddenly become important, this Sunni-Shiite business; and since when did Iraqis care?"
In today's violence . . .
Bombings?
CNN reports 8 dead from a Baghdad bombing in the Karrada district (23 wounded). Reuters notes a bombing in Ishaqi that killed 9 (10 wounded), a mortar attack in Mahmudiya that killed 3 (18 wounded),
Shootings?
CBS and AP report a mass shooting in Mosul which left 13 Iraqi soldiers dead and 4 more wounded. Ed Johnson (Bloomberg News) reports on the shooting deaths of three Iraqi soldiers in Ramadi who were shot by US soldiers in what the US military says was a "mistake." Reuters reports that the US military shot a man in Baghdad who was "armed" and that "local Iraqis" stated "the dead man was an airport highway security guard"; Mohammed Abdullah al-Zubaidi was shot dead in Mosul, Talal al-Jalil was shot dead in Mosul (he had been "the Dean of the Political Science College"), a tribal leader shot dead in Baiji and an imam in Hawija.Corpses?
Reuters notes 7 corpses discovered in Falluja, 3 in Hawija, and 6 in Mosul.
Today, the US military announced: "A Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier died when a combat security patrol was attacked with small arms fire in a southwestern section of the Iraqi capital April 16. One other Soldier was wounded during the attack." And they announced: "A Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldier died and one other was wounded when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device in a southern section of Baghdad April 16. The unit was conducting a security patrol in the area when the attack occured." ICCC reports the total number of US service members who have died in the illegal war is 3308. (Sunday the 3,000 mark was passed.)
