More pictures

I quess those pictures get acceptance by most of my reader. A friend of mine, (An American friend), send me more pictures but this time the crowd is of thousands of protesters.
Here are some of the new pictures.











More and more sounds against the occupation, from every where, maily from the Americans veterans.

Read this:

"I Was Saying, See These Oil Fires? This Is Why We're Here, Guys. We're Not Defending Freedom"

And this:

"This Job Isn't Done" - "It's Our Responsibility, As Soldiers To See It Carried Out Till Every American Knows The Truth Of Why This War Has To Stop"

Not all the Americans are warmongers.

I have heard about the protest at som eof the American cities, against the war.

I looked in the internet and found some pictures of those protests.






Washington DC

"On Saturday, a Not in Our Name contingent made up of folks from across the country joined the sea of people that staged the largest protest yet in Washington DC against the unjust war and occupation of Iraq. Over a quarter of a million people marched by the White House gates."
" Thousands of Puget Sound anti-war activists marched down the streets of Seattle on Saturday, September 24th, demanding an end to the war in Iraq."

California

In San Francisco, Not in Our Name Bay Area marched along with tens of thousands in a youth-led funeral procession which included dozens of musicians, a dozen coffins draped in black to represent the thousands killed by the blatant aggression and neglect of the Bush Administration, and non-stop lively chants. Die-ins were staged along the route -- that, along with the coffins, made compelling visual representations of the human costs of the policies of the Bush Regime."

Colorado

"Two thousand people gathered in at the state capitol in Denver to demand "Get US Out Now!" The rally and march through downtown was organized by the recently formed 3 November Movement.

Not in Our Name national staff person Jeff Paterson spoke of his resistance to the first Gulf War as an active duty Marine, about those within the military who are objecting today to an unjust war, and the tactics that military recruiters are using to enlist the 200,000 troops needed yearly to sustain the war machine -- while not taking care of the veterans of this or past wars.

Local featured speakers included State Representative Morgan Carroll, union organizer Scott Silber, Mark Turner of Ripples Cross, high school students, Hashim Malik of Bay of Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation, Vietnam Veteran Mike Collins, Mike Miles, and Nita Gonzales of Escuela Tlatelolco -- with musican David Rovics."

Hawai'i

"More than 350 people - ages 1 to 87 - stepped into Honolulu's streets on Saturday to march against the war. The march, organized by Not in Our Name-Hawai`i, was joined by groups from labor, churches, the Democratic Party, World Can't Wait and more. There were pacifists, Hawaiian independence activists, communists, high school and college youth, Iraq war veterans, military families, active duty military personnel, business people and college professors. We missed a lot of the faces we usually see at the marches, but were really happy to see that many people who had not come out before had joined us."

"Friday, September 23, Not in Our Name joined the People Power Can End the War Collective for a direct action at the downtown Oakland Armed Forces Recruiting Station."





More pictures are still waiting to be published.

Who and Why...??

At June 2005, and in one of my blog, there was a discussion about the population of Mosul, does the majority of them Kurds or Arabs. I said the majority are Arabs, while the other idea was the majority are Kurds, mainly in the east side of the city. At that time I checked the Encyclopedias, mainly the Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia of the Orient, in which they said the residents of Mosul are mainly Kurds with minority of Christians and Turkomans, there were no mention of Arabs !!!. I excused the opponent commenter as he know nothing about Mosul but from the net and from what other told him.

What surprise me most is that I came accidentaly to the Wikipedia again, this time I saw the following:

"Wikipedia
Mosul

Mos?l (Arabic: موصل al-Mawsil), Kurdish: Mûsil, or Nineveh (Syriac: ?????) is a city in northern Iraq/Central Assyria. It stands on both banks of the Tigris River, with five bridges liking the two sides, some 396 km (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

The population of the area is largely Kurdish, but the majority of the city's inhabitants are Arabs. In 1987 the city's population was 664,221 people; the 2002 population estimate was 1,739,800.[1]"

majority of the city's inhabitants are Arabs.!!! The previous statement didn't mention the Arabs altogether!!!

I checked again the encyclopedia of the Orient and I found this:

"Mosul (m?'s?l, m?s?l') , Arab. al Mawsil, city (1987 pop. 664,221), provincial capital, N Iraq, on the Tigris River, opposite the ruins of Nineveh. It is the largest city in N Iraq and the third largest city in the country. Trade in agricultural goods and exploitation of oil in the nearby oil fields are the two main occupations of the inhabitants. Mosul has an oil refinery; its productivity in the 1980s was hindered by the Iran-Iraq War. While most of the urban population is Arab, the surrounding region has a large Kurdish population. The city is the seat of Mosul Univ. and a center of Nestorian Christianity."

While most of the urban population is Arab!!!. A big change!! isn't it?

I wonder, Did the American Encyclopedias are so ignorant, that they didn't know the real inhabitants of the city of Mosul.? Or, there were other things made them wrote that statements?
Did the referendum on the constitution had any relation to that issue.? If not. What make them change their mind.?

I really want to know.

Fraud and Corruption

The constitution passed the stage of obstructed labor. The biggest fraud in the history of Iraq. Don't say the referendum at Saddam time was bigger, NO, although those who vote yes to Saddam were 99.96%, they vote yes because they can vote nothing but yes.
In this referendum we vote "No" but the result appeared "Yes".
It is a miracle !!!.
The preliminary count early after the referendum revealed 80% "No" in Mosul, but the result 10 days later appeared 55% "Yes".
Did you know what that mean, it mean the puppet government won.

Why we don't want this government? Not only because it allied with the occupation. But also because it is a corrupted one.
you want a prove? Read this.

"There are widespread accusations that the interior ministry and SCIRI, with the complicity of US advisors, are behind a wave of terror being unleashed against people believed to be supportive of the armed anti-occupation resistance or critical of the Baghdad government."Link

"In June, Knight Ridder correspondent Yasser Salihee was shot dead

by a sniper at a US checkpoint just days before a major story he had researched with Tom Lasseter was published. The story documented accounts of killings and torture by the interior ministry police commando unit known as the Wolf Brigade, which was recruited from former members of HusseinÂ’s Iraqi Republican Guard."

"In July, the British Observer published allegations that the interior ministry was carrying out extra-judicial killings and widespread torture in the prisons under its control."

"On August 2, a witness identified one of the men who abducted and murdered American journalist Steven Vincent as an interior ministry employee. Vincent had written several exposures of extra-judicial killings by Shiite militias linked to SCIRI."

"There are widespread accusations that the interior ministry and SCIRI, with the complicity of US advisors, are behind a wave of terror being unleashed against people believed to be supportive of the armed anti-occupation resistance or critical of the Baghdad government."
Link

"The interior ministry of the pro-US government in Iraq is being directly accused of carrying out the murder of Sadoun Antar Nudsaif al-Janabi, a keydefensee lawyer in the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven others that began on October 19.

Janabi was seized from his office late in the evening on October 20 by as many as 10 men. Witnesses claim they were wearing police uniforms. Several hours later, JanabiÂ’s body was found on the street near BaghdadÂ’s Fardous Mosque. He had been killed execution-style with two gunshots to the head." "Link

Is that is enough for you? It proved to be enough for many here.

No more comments

Dear commenters

I would like to apologize for my decision to close the comments' section. I took this decision when I noticed that the comments took another way that is far from what I hoped.

When I started this blog , my intention was to put the facts as I saw them on the ground, in front of the world's eyes. My father used to tell me not to believe what I hear unless I see it. Now I believe in this statement more than before because I saw intellegent and educated people who believe what is really a pure political propaganda.

I hope you come to reality and take a fair look at the situation in Iraq, not only from the American viewpoint but from a human viewpoint, forget the interests and benefits, just put yourselves in our position. An invader occupied our land, killed our countrymen, divided our nation into different sects, destroyed the infra structure of our country and more and more.
When we complained, you said we came to free you, the freedom is expensive, you have to pay.

And so, dear readers, no more comments for you..

We and the Constitution

Two days left before the vote for the constitution, but till now no body in Mosul have seen a copy of it which supposed to be distributed to the population before the referendum.
In addition till now we and our neighbors don't know yet the place where to vote which is necessory to be known in advance since there is a curfew for all vehicles started from wednesday Oct 12 at 10 pm till monday Oct 17 at 5 am. That mean no body can use a car for trnsportation from place to place inside the city, the schools, the University and all the governmental offices are closed for 4 days.

"Saleh al-Mutlaq, head of the National Dialogue Council, stated that the decision of the Sunni Arabs is based on pure scientific grounds. This is the outcome of several meetings between prominent Sunni figures and other political blocs opposed to the constitution. As the constitution translates into the division of the country and the elimination of Iraq’s Arab identity, Al-Mutlaq says, the Sunni Arabs should combat this constitution by all possible peaceful means. In his eyes, only if the issue of federalism, for example, is postponed for future negotiations can this position be altered. This is a clear shift in the Sunnis’ stand: from boycotting the referendum to participating with a clear “No” vote."

Yesterday night there was a news from the Iraqi Islamic party, who declared that he will share in the vote on condition to reconsider the unsettled items after the election of the new government.

"The Shiites and Kurds have agreed that the newly elected parliament after December 15 will reopen negotiations with the Sunni Arabs on the constitution. This step was enough to convince the Iraqi Islamic Party to drop its call for a Sunni Arab rejection fo the constitution in the October 15 referendum."

Take a walk

My little daughter Najma wrote a post today, I found it very interesting and deserve reading, As I have no new post, I just published a copy of it here.

"It was meant to be a joke, but it makes sense:

"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes."

"Try and put yourself in their shoes".. I've been told to do so with American soldiers, over and over, and I did. It didn't give me a justification for what they did, do or have done.

You might have noticed that many incidents are caused by American soldiers, on this blog, for that, many people have turned against them in Iraq.. Latest: Mom is crossing the street in front of the university, the police start shooting too close, mom gets scared and screams.. After calming down, she looks around to see if one of her students is there and saw her.. None was there, she is relieved, she goes on..

Now, try to put yourself in her shoes! Hard? Try this:

A cousin, her children and her husband are in the car, they hear some shots and so the American soldiers go crazy and start shooting randomly.. A bullet then got really close and tore her hijab but didn't injure her..

Easy? No..

I'm sure it isn't easy.. It isn't easy for dad to come up and check if I'm alive, it's not easy for mom to call my sister every while to check if she's Okay.. Everytime a name is mentioned, the first things that comes to mind is : Is he/she shot?

For that I tell you, no one at all has the right to tell me how my country is now, unless that someone is IN Iraq, and knows how it is.. Otherwise, the most idea you have of the situation, is way less than what really is going on.

Just walk a mile in my shoes, if you finish that alive, then and only then, come and tell me what you think..

"Could you devote a post to civilian Iraqis who have been killed by insurgents, if any. And do these insurgents offer help in the same manner of the Americans who send wounded Iraqis to base hospitals and to hospitals in other countries. Do these insurgents offer help in the way of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure like schools, hospitals, oil refineries, etc. We don't hear of this because of the Bush controlled media."

For God's sake, I have a brain.. Insurgents are not helping. But who are the insurgents? Killing Iraqis, destroying homes, kidnapping people.. Their only aim is to terrorize.
But, for that person, who goes out to kill the occupier, I say it now clearly: I'm with the Mujahid.. And if you have a problem with it, well, imagine your country being torn the way mine is, and see if you allow that.
And I invite you to come and see how hospitals in Iraq are now.. An open invitation, not recommended for weak-hearted people though! See the reconstruction in Iraq, I doubt you'll find what will interest you!

"I have read your blogs for over a year and you have changed quite drastically and I am sorry for that. Our American Soldiers are getting themselves killed trying to bring you and your country a freedom similar to what we know. If you do not want or appreciate it I hope our military decides to hand it over to your military and walk away. It seems you and your fellow countryman would instead turn on your own people that are trying to deny you {especially females} these basic freedoms."

Another American trying to show me the "right" way.. Does anyone have statistics of how many Americans and Iraqis got killed in this war..? When you do, tell me who lost their lives because of this war!! Your soldiers lost their lives because war is death, and war is a hobby of your president.
Dare you say anything more about female rights, we're strong enough to claim them.. For me, I'm totally satisfied with what I had before, as a female. The freedom I want is the one I lost thanks to your country..

"President Bush or any other leader of a country must do what is best for his or her country. That's why they are elected, if it is democracy or how they stay in power if they have assumed power in any other manner."

Even if what is good for your country is having two other countries occupied and many many people killed..? In every country in the world, there is good and bad.. Look at your own faults, maybe then, you'll be too busy to look at other country's faults..!!

Just so you wouldn't get me wrong, I listen when you tell me what you think.. But you do not have the right to tell me how I should feel, who I should love and who I should hate.. You have no right to tell me that the situation is this and that, cuz I'm here, in the war-zone, and I'm pretty sure that regarding the situation, I know better.

I am surrounded by Iraqis 24/7, all kinds.. I know how they feel, and no person can tell me that I don't. Some Iraqis are good, some are bad, all have different opinions, and mine represents most of the ones' I speak for, Moslawis'..

Anyone has the urge to kill me right now? The door is wide enough for a camel as we say, you do not have to come across this blog again..

Open-minds are welcomed.. Being American doesn't mean having an opened-mind by the way.. Closed-minds?? There are blogs that are devoted to cursing Iraqi bloggers, go join.."

Who will answer these questions..?

What happened in Basra in the last week is well known to all of you. But the thing which is not known to all of us is why this is happened..?

This is an article throw some light on this subject, with questions to be answered.

Now it transpires that two British soldiers were dressed as Arabs and attacking the Iraqi security forces in Basra? And the British authorities have admitted they were members of the SAS? They were caught after shooting at and murdering an Iraqi police official and their car was found to be packed with explosives and a C4 detonator?

Or is it that the two troops were in fact undercover agents dressed as Sadrists, Al-Sadr's Mahdi army, trying to stir up a war in Iraq between rival anti-occupation forces to help the beleaguered Iraqi security forces to stay in control as events spiral ever downwards? Is it that they were planning a massive bomb attack against Shia targets, to blame on the Sunni?

Is it true that many of the killings in Iraq are not in fact perpetrated by Sunni extremists or foreign insurgents, but indeed by British and American security forces, trying to take the strain off their troops in their realization that the war in Iraq was a monumental mistake from day one, witness to freedom and democracy George Bush style and that followed by his sickening bunch of sycophants eager to make an easy buck on the international stage by breaking an international law or six?

At the end of the day, who are the terrorists in Iraq? Were not the international terrorists blocked from entering Iraq by Saddam Hussein and the floodgates heaved open by the USA and its allies? Was Saddam Hussein not the one telling the truth, along with Dr. David Kelly, on WMD? Was George Bush not the one "stiffing" the world? No? Where then is the WMD?

These are all questions which need to be addressed, and urgently, by the British and American governments.

We can assume the position of demanding an answer in the name of the international community. And now!!

This article is copied from KAVKAS CENTER.COM

Now Tal-Afar. . . . Who is next ??

There is some thing strange, that is the media's silence about what is going on in Tal-Afar.
Tal-Afar is a city about 80 km north-west of Mosul. For the last week, about 10,000 soldiers from the US troops, Kurdish peshmerga and Badir army (a shiee militia) were laying siege to the city.

Most of the residents have left their homes and settled in the neighboring villages and in Mosul.
Reports in the Iragia TV channel said, they killed about 200 terrorists in the operation, but what we heard from the people fled from their, that the fighters inside Tal-Afar have left the city already.
Some of the refugee said that most of the people killed were civilians who had no place to go so they chose to stay in their homes, stayed because they feared persecution at the hands of the Peshmerga and Badr Army.

Families fled from the city are staying in refugee camps out side the city, the government has not provided any shelter, food or drink for them.

Most people in Tal-Afar would choose rather to be detained by the Americans now, because they know if Iraqi soldiers or Iraqi police detain them they will be tortured severely, and possibly killed. This gives you an idea of how bad it is with these Iraqi soldiers.

I have difficulty in explaining my feeling. But just imagine how an Iraqi person prefer to be detained by an American but not by the Iraqis, his own countrymen...!!!

I am back

Hi very body.
I am back. Sorry for being too late.
I was in vacation, I spend it with the family in Syria and Jordan. You can read the details in Najma (The star of Mosul) blog.
Thank you to all who shared positively on my previous post, some, or at least one of them, is probably a psychopath (dan), I apologize for deleting his nonsense. I realize there should be a thought differences due to different culture, education and believes. But let discuss it in a civilized manner like civilized people.
If you agree I will continue, if you don't, I will close the comment section.
It is up to you my friends.

Did Paul Bremer steal billions of US budget for Iraq?

At the end of the Iraq war, huge sums of money were made available to the US-led provisional authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, to spend on rebuilding the country. By the time Bremer left the post eight months later, $8.8bn of that money had disappeared. Ed Harriman on the extraordinary scandal of Iraq’s missing billions!

*Thursday July 7, 2005*

*Guardian*

When Paul Bremer, the American pro consul in Baghdad until June last year, arrived in Iraq soon after the official end of hostilities, there was $6bn left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and at least $10bn from resumed Iraqi oil exports. Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on May 22 2003, all these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), and intended to be spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) "in a transparent manner … for the benefit of the Iraqi people".

The US Congress also voted to spend $18.4bn of US taxpayers’ money on the redevelopment of Iraq. By June 28 last year, however, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20bn of Iraqi money, compared with $300m of US funds. The "reconstruction" of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan - but the US government funded the Marshall Plan. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the "liberated" country, by the Iraqis themselves.

The CPA maintained one fund of nearly $600m cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces. The US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.
The "financial irregularities" described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community collectively give a detailed insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and the way they operated. Truckloads of dollars were handed out for which neither they nor the recipients felt they had to be accountable.

The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8bn that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it has gone. A further $3.4bn appropriated by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance "security".

Although Bremer was expected to manage Iraqi funds in a transparent manner, it was only in October 2003, six months after the fall of Saddam, that an International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB) was established to provide independent, international financial oversight of CPA spending. (This board includes representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development.)
The IAMB first spent months trying to find auditors acceptable to the US. The Bahrain office of KPMG was finally appointed in April 2004. It was stonewalled.

"KPMG has encountered resistance from CPA staff regarding the submission of information required to complete our procedures," they wrote in an interim report. "Staff have indicated … that cooperation with KPMG’s undertakings is given a low priority." KPMG had one meeting at the Iraqi Ministry of Finance; meetings at all the other ministries were repeatedly postponed. The auditors even had trouble getting passes to enter the Green Zone.

There appears to have been good reason for the Americans to stall. At the end of June 2004, the CPA would be disbanded and Bremer would leave Iraq. There was no way the Bush administration would want independent auditors to publish a report into the financial propriety of its Iraqi administration while the CPA was still in existence and Bremer at its head still answerable to the press. So the report was published in July.

The auditors found that the CPA didn’t keep accounts of the hundreds of millions of dollars of cash in its vault, had awarded contracts worth billions of dollars to American firms without tender, and had no idea what was happening to the money from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was being spent by the interim Iraqi government ministries.

This lack of transparency has led to allegations of corruption. An Iraqi hospital administrator told me that when he came to sign a contract, the American army officer representing the CPA had crossed out the original price and doubled it. The Iraqi protested that the original price was enough. The American officer explained that the increase (more than $1m) was his retirement package.

When the Iraqi Governing Council asked Bremer why a contract to repair the Samarah cement factory was costing $60m rather than the agreed $20m, the American representative reportedly told them that they should be grateful the coalition had saved them from Saddam. Iraqis who were close to the Americans, had access to the Green Zone or held prominent posts in the new government ministries were also in a position personally to benefit enormously. Iraqi businessmen complain endlessly that they had to offer substantial bribes to Iraqi middlemen just to be able to bid for CPA contracts. Iraqi ministers’ relatives got top jobs and fat contracts.

Further evidence of lack of transparency comes from a series of audits and reports carried out by the CPA’s own inspector general’s office (CPAIG). Set up in January 2004, it reports to Congress. Its auditors, accountants and criminal investigators often found themselves sitting alone at cafe tables in the Green Zone, shunned by their CPA compatriots. Their audit, published in July 2004, found that the American contracts officers in the CPA and Iraqi ministries "did not ensure that … contract files contained all the required documents, a fair and reasonable price was paid for the services received, contractors were capable of meeting delivery schedules, or that contractors were paid in accordance with contract requirements".

Pilfering was rife. Millions of dollars in cash went missing from the Iraqi Central Bank. Between $11m and $26m worth of Iraqi property sequestered by the CPA was unaccounted for. The payroll was padded with hundreds of ghost employees. Millions of dollars were paid to contractors for phantom work. Some $3,379,505 was billed, for example, for "personnel not in the field performing work" and "other improper charges" on just one oil pipeline repair contract.

Most of the 69 criminal investigations the CPAIG instigated related to alleged theft, fraud, waste, assault and extortion. It also investigated "a number of other cases that, because of their sensitivity, cannot be included in this report". One such case may have arisen when 19 billion new Iraqi dinars, worth about £6.5m, was found on a plane in Lebanon that had been sent there by the American-appointed Iraqi interior minister.

At the same time, the IAMB discovered that Iraqi oil exports were unmetered. Neither the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation nor the American authorities could give a satisfactory explanation for this. "The only reason you wouldn’t monitor them is if you don’t want anyone else to know how much is going through," one petroleum executive told me.

Officially, Iraq exported $10bn worth of oil in the first year of the American occupation. Christian Aid has estimated that up to $4bn more may have been exported and is unaccounted for. If so, this would have created an off-the-books fund that both the Americans and their Iraqi allies could use with impunity to cover expenditures they would rather keep secret - among them the occupation costs, which were rising far beyond what the Bush administration could comfortably admit to Congress and the international community.

In the few weeks before Bremer left Iraq, the CPA handed out more than $3bn in new contracts to be paid for with Iraqi funds and managed by the US embassy in Baghdad. The CPA inspector general, now called the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Sigir), has just released an audit report on the way the embassy has dealt with that responsibility. The auditors reviewed the files of 225 contracts totalling $327m to see if the embassy "could identify the current value of paid and unpaid contract obligations".

It couldn’t. "Our review showed that financial records … understated payments made by $108,255,875" and "overstated unpaid obligations by $119,361,286". The auditors also reviewed the paperwork of a further 300 contracts worth $332.9m: "Of 198 contract files reviewed, 154 did not contain evidence that goods and services were received, 169 did not contain invoices, and 14 did not contain evidence of payment."

Clearly, the Americans see no need to account for spending Iraqis’ national income now any more than they did when Bremer was in charge. Neither the embassy chief of mission nor the US military commander replied to the auditors’ invitation to comment. Instead, the US army contracting commander lamely pointed out that "the peaceful conditions envisioned in the early planning continue to elude the reconstruction efforts". This is a remarkable understatement. It’s also an admission that Americans can’t be expected to do their sums when they are spending other people’s money to finance a war.

Lack of accountability does not stop with the Americans. In January this year, the Sigir issued a report detailing evidence of fraud, corruption and waste by the Iraqi Interim Government when Bremer was in charge. They found that $8.8bn - the entire Iraqi Interim Government spending from October 2003 through June 2004 - was not properly accounted for. The Iraqi Office of Budget and Management at one point had only six staff, all of them inexperienced, and most of the ministries had no budget departments. Iraq’s newly appointed ministers and their senior officials were free to hand out hundreds of millions of dollars in cash as they pleased, while American "advisers" looked on.

"CPA personnel did not review and compare financial, budgetary and operational performance to planned or expected results," the auditors explained. One ministry gave out $430m in contracts without its CPA advisers seeing any of the paperwork. Another claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be found. There is simply no way of knowing how much of the $8.8bn has gone to pay for private militias and into private pockets.

"It’s remarkable that the inspector general’s office could have produced even a draft report with so many misconceptions and inaccuracies," Bremer said in his reply to the Sigir report. "At liberation, the Iraqi economy was dead in the water. So CPA’s top priority was to get the economy going."

The Sigir has responded by releasing another audit this April, an investigation into the way Bremer’s CPA managed cash payments from Iraqi funds in just one part of Iraq, the region around Hillah: "During the course of the audit, we identified deficiencies in the control of cash … of such magnitude as to require prompt attention. Those deficiencies were so significant that we were precluded from accomplishing our stated objectives." They found that CPA headquarters in Baghdad "did not maintain full control and accountability for approximately $119.9m", and that agents in the field "cannot properly account for or support over $96.6m in cash and receipts". The agents were mostly Americans in Iraq on short-term contracts. One agent’s account balance was "overstated by $2,825,755, and the error went undetected". Another agent was given $25m cash for which Bremer’s office "acknowledged not having any supporting documentation". Of more than $23m given to another agent, there are only records for $6,306,836 paid to contractors.

Many of the American agents submitted their paperwork only hours before they headed to the airport. Two left Iraq without accounting for $750,000 each, which has never been found. CPA head office cleared several agents’ balances of between $250,000 and $12m without any receipts. One agent who did submit receipts, on being told that he still owed $1,878,870, turned up three days later with exactly that amount. The auditors thought that "this suggests that the agent had a reserve of cash", pointing out that if his original figures had been correct, he would have accounted to the CPA for approximately $3.8m more than he had been given in the first place, which "suggests that the receipt documents provided to the DFI account manager were unreliable".

So where did the money go? You can’t see it in Hillah. The schools, hospitals, water supply and electricity, all of which were supposed to benefit from these funds, are in ruins. The inescapable conclusion is that many of the American paying agents grabbed large bundles of cash for themselves and made sweet deals with their Iraqi contacts.

And so it continues. The IAMB’s most recent audit of Iraqi government spending talks of "incomplete accounting", "lack of documented justification for limited competition for contracts at the Iraqi ministries", "possible misappropriation of oil revenues", "significant difficulties in ensuring completeness and accuracy of Iraqi budgets and controls over expenditures" and "non-deposit of proceeds of export sales of petroleum products into the appropriate accounts in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1483".

In the absence of any meaningful accountability, Iraqis have no way of knowing how much of the nation’s wealth is being used for reconstruction and how much is being handed out to ministers’ and civil servants’ friends and families or funnelled into secret overseas bank accounts. Given that many Ba’athists are now back in government, some of that money may even be financing the insurgents.

Both Saddam and the US profited handsomely during his reign. He controlled Iraq’s wealth while most of Iraq’s oil went to Californian refineries to provide cheap petrol for American voters. US corporations, like those who enjoyed Saddam’s favour, grew rich. Today, the system is much the same: the oil goes to California, and the new Iraqi government spends the national wealth with impunity.

*·* Bremer maintained one slush fund of nearly $600m in cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces

*·* 19 billion new Iraqi dinars, worth about £6.5m, was found on a plane in Lebanon that had been sent there by the new Iraqi interior minister

*·* One ministry claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be found

*·* One American agent was given $23m to spend on restructuring; only $6m is accounted for

This is an edited version of an article that appears in the current issue of the London Review of Books (lrb ).

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Ostomy Appliances reach the patients.

Today is Wednesday, 3 August. Every Wednesday we have the Ostomy and cancer pain relieve Clinic.
It is a special day because we received Waldschrat's shipment of Ostomy products few days ago, and we hand them to the patients today. It was a good help to those who receive them, thanks to Waldschrat.
Four patients with Ostomy received complete set of Rings and Pouches supply for one month. In addition to some accessories as sterile cleaning swaps and soothing ointments.
Another two patients received Rings only plus the accessories.

We took some pictures to the patients while receiving the supplies. The pictures still in the Camera, I will post them as soon as it will be available to me (the Camera is not mine).

Pain killing drugs

This is a statistic of the availability of the pain killing drugs (Narcotic analgesic) used to treat cancer pain in Mosul Cancer Pain Relief and Palliative Care Clinic.
I found a difficulty to make a table, but this may be clear enough to be understood by you.
the first column showed the present quantity of the drugs (availability). the second column showed the quantity received from January 1,2005 till the mid of July 2005, the third column showed the Annual need for 2005. The last column the Generic name and form of the drug.

Only two items are available now. and that because we received them lately and both are available in the private pharmacies.

Mosul Oncology& Nuclear Medicine Hospital
Mosul Cancer Pain Relief and Palliative Care Clinic
Cancer Pain Relief Drugs Needs 2005

Present...Received mid..Need 2005..........Form
account..July 2005........------------.......(Generic name)

...Nil.......... Nil..............1000 tab........ Buprenorphine as HCL SL 0.2 mg

...Nil.......... Nil..............250 amp........ Buprenorphine as HCL 0.3 mg Inj

...Nil.......... Nil..............1000 patch... Fentanyl transdermal 100 mcg\h

...Nil.......... Nil..............1000 patch... Fentanyl transdermal 25 mcg\h

...Nil.......... Nil..............1000 patch... Fentanyl transdermal 50 mcg\h

...Nil.......... Nil..............1500 patch... Fentanyl transdermal 75 mcg\h

...Nil.......... Nil..............10000 tab.... Morphine sulphate 10 mg (s/r)

...Nil.......... Nil..............20000 tab.... Morphine sulphate 30 mg (s/r)

...Nil.......... Nil..............20000 tab.... Morphine sulphate 60 mg (s/r)

...Nil.......... Nil..............15000 tab.... Morphine sulphate 100 mg (s/r)

...Nil.......... Nil..............15000 tab... Oxycodone HLC

..150........400............. 1500 amp.....Tramadol 100 mg

...Nil.......1000.............5000 supp....Tramadol 100 mg

..690......3000............. 20000 cap.... Tramadol 50 mg

...Nil.......... Nil..............100 drop.....Tramadol 100 mg

...Nil.......... Nil..............5000 tab......Tramadol 100 mg effervescent tab.

...Nil.......... Nil..............5000 tab......Tramadol 100 mg soluble tab

...Nil.......... Nil..............5000 tab......Tramadol 50 mg effervescent tab.

...Nil.......... Nil..............5000 tab......Tramadol 50 mg soluble tab


N.B.:
In 2004 Mosul Oncology& Nuclear Medicine Hospital treated :
2115 new cancer cases (1175 cases from Mosul Province & 940 from nearby Provinces ; Erbil, Dohuk & Kirkuk)

Abu Ghraib again ...!!!

This is an email I received today. It seemed to me as if Abu Ghraib scandal repeated it self. I publish it to let the world see and understand what is going on at dark.

Citizens for Fair Legislation
For Immediate Release
July 25, 2005
********************************
CFL ALERT: BUSH ADMINISTRATION TO LOBBY AGAINST LEGISLATION THAT WOULD BAR TORTURE AND INHUMANE TREATMENT OF PRISONERS.

This weekend the Pentagon blocked images from Abu Ghraib, in violation of a federal court order, that have been described by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as "blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane." Republican Senators who have seen the images said they contained scenes of "rape and murder." The Pentagon refuses to release these images on the basis that it is bad PR for the United States. This
comes at the heels of intensive lobbying efforts by the Bush administration to block legislation that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual. Take a moment to send our prewritten letter to the President and to your Representatives telling them that you are appalled that the American public is being kept in the dark about the abuse of Iraqi detainees and that you are outraged that the President is refusing to take measures to ensure these abuses don't occur again.

TALKING POINTS:
* A military report on the abuse at Abu Ghraib states that the images the Pentagon is blocking show detainees being threatened, sodomized with chemical lights and forced into sexually humiliating poses. After viewing these images, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told reporters, "'The American public needs to understand
we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience." A report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on the abuse says videotapes and photos also show naked detainees forced to masturbate while being photographed and videotaped, of guards having sex with female detainees, young boys
being sodomized and Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts for American soldiers. New York Times reporter, Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, said in a speech before an ACLU convention:
"...There are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications to their men....The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.
...Boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out."

*Last week Vice President Cheney met with Republican Senators that publicly expressed frustration about the administration's failure to hold senior military officials responsible for the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. At that meeting Cheney stated his opposition to congressional intervention regarding the treatment of
detainees at either Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. Later the White House issued a statement stating that President Bush would veto a $442 billion defense bill if representatives continued to attempt to impose restrictions on what the military can and cannot do to detainees.
That statement appeared to be directed at Republican Sen. John McCain who began circulating a letter to look into legislation that would outline the treatment of detainees held by the U.S. military. Sen. McCain's provisions would require that all foreign nationals in U.S. custody be registered with the Red Cross and would also prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in U.S. custody.

*Please take a moment to write to your representatives to express outrage at the treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and tell them that you resent that the Pentagon is keeping the American public in the dark about what is happening in Iraq. Tell the President that you expect him to stop taking measures in support of the crimes that happened at Abu Ghraib. By blocking legislation meant to prevent
torture, rape and cruel and unusual punishment the White House is clearly indicating approval for the barbaric treatment of men, women and children held in U.S. run detention centers.

EMAIL AND OR CALL THE WHITE HOUSE
WHITE HOUSE COMMENTS LINE: 202-456-1111
WHITE HOUSE SWITCHBOARD: 202-456-1414
WHITE HOUSE FAX: 202-456-2461
===============================
Citizens for Fair Legislation is a grassroots organization committed to encouraging a fair domestic and foreign policy with an emphasis on the US/Arab world.
http://www.cflweb.org

Please take it seriously and do what your moralistic principle ask you to do.

Horror Story

I get bored from the fruitless discussion about politics in general and the hopeless situation in Iraq in particular.
Waldschrat is (up to my knowledge) the only one who take positive steps to help.
I copied his last post here. I hope it will encourages the other for similar positive action

"Lets talk about horror stories. One of the worst I can think of is a cancer hospital with a total lack of chemotherapy drugs. Here is a list of chemotherapy drugs and a description of the shortages at the hospital in Mosul:

===============================================================
Mosul Oncology & Nuclear Medicine Hospital
Mosul, Iraq

Anticancer Drugs Urgently Needed (Not Available)
July 2005
Priority Generic Name Formulation
1. Vincristine inj. 0.5 mg. vials.
2. 5- Fluorouracil inj. 10 mg and 50mg vial
3. Adriamycin inj 15 mg amp.
4. Carmustine vials 100 mg vials
5. Procarbazine Hydrochloride 10 mg. and 50 mg. vials
6. Actinomycin-D inj. 20 mg. vials
7. Bleomycin inj. 100 mg. amp.
8. Cisplatin inj. 250 mg/ amp.
9. Etoposide inj. 1gm and 2 gm. Vials
10. Oxaliplatin inj. 50mg and 100mg vials
11. Gemcitabine inj. 50 mg caps
12. Docitaxel (Taxotere) inj. 1 mg and 2 mg. vials


N.B.
1. This hospital gives medical care for cancer patients living in Mosul (2.55 million population) and nearby northern provinces (Erbil, Duhok & Kirkuk - approximately 2.85 million population )
2. In 2004 the hospital treated 2115 new cancer patients ( Mosul : 1175 patients, nearby provinces : 940 patients )
===============================================================

I'm told by the hospital contact that Truth Teller put me in touch with that requisitions are submitted but supplies never arrive. I'm beating the bushes bigtime over the phone and the internet trying to figure out how to resolve these shortages but neither Truth Teller's contact nor I fully understand the best way to do this yet. The shortages seem totally believable considering the pathetic state of the Kimadia website (link) which is full of broken links and has apparently been penetrated by a hacker who replaced the organizations news releases with a list of online games.

My trial shipment of ostomy supplies to the hospital was stuck in Dubai for a few days waiting for a flight but seems to have begun to move again according to FedEx tracking.

If anybody out there knows how to lay hands on even limited quantities of those drugs, post here or email truth teller!

That's all for now. Go back to your nice discussion, folks."

Waldschrat

All what can I say is THANK YOU WALDSCHRAT we will never forget you.