Free Republic

Virtually all the people I know of indirectly who voted Obama are either unemployed, drug or alcohol addicts or disabled people. With the exception of few such as the genuinely disabled ones, the rest are just a bunch of lazy free-loaders. So of course the economy doesn’t matter to them. Obama is their champion. They live on our taxes and it’s going to get alot worse :(

I finally figured out how to browse through the wikileaks documents. Apparently you have to give a score for each document before you can see the next.
But what I saw is mostly routine army logs of little interest, except that they show the horrors of war. On the documents I saw, they removed specifics such as names and locations. But I am sure the original docs contain these specifics and are in untrustworthy hands. It’s a shame that such culprits can go unpunished.

Can anyone tell me if the wikileaks culprits have actually issued names of Iraqis helping the security forces? I have some close friends in Iraq who worked for the US and am extremely concerned for their welfare.

I tried to get some info on the wikleaks site, but it directs me to some French website (big surprise!) and then the software interface for the database is throwing some errors on my computer.
I am appalled by this action. I bet this would never happen under Bush or a conservative administration :(

Actually Allawi has now sadly become Sadr's greatest ally! In fact Sadr and his supporters want Maliki out because he doesn't like them. And Allawi INSISTS on having the Sadrists in! Allawi's meeting with Sadr was headlines news few days ago and he is relying on them to form a government, which is very sad indeed.

from this link: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0720/Breakthrough-for-new-Iraq-government-Allawi-meets-Maliki-Sadr

I don’t understand why no charges could be brought up against Julian Assenge, the founder of WikiLeaks. He knew what he was doing and was warned against it before publishing. It’s absurd that there is no law against such an irresponsible act. Its almost certain that this guy now has blood on his hands.
Anyone thinking of helping US and Nato forces would be too reluctant to do it now.

She said all the children of school age are enrolled and going to school, although Adams said they have not attended classes since she took up residence in the hotel. She said she can't get them to school.

This is really the sadest part of the story. No education means the kids would grow up to do the same mistakes their parents did and the cycle goes on :(

I read somewhere that president Bush used to contact Iraqi leaders by phone once a week to check on progress there. Whereas Obama rarely ever contacts them!

Obama is no champion for democracy and his lack of enthusiasm to protests in Iran is a proof of that.

The conspiracy obsessed Arabs claimed that it was an act by the CIA to get rid of the 32 Egyptian officers on board!

Actually, the NTSB’s finding were put in a rather vague language as stated in their 2002 report:

“The NTSB determines that the probable cause of the EgyptAir flight 990 accident is the airplane’s departure from normal cruise flight and subsequent impact with the Atlantic Ocean as a result of the relief first officer’s flight control inputs. The reason for the relief first officer’s actions was not determined.”

This is why the Egyptions refused to accept that the relief first officer dived the plane deliberately.
It was a deliberate act of terrorism which the NTSB failed to defined as such.

Why am I not surprised for this prize? I am currently on a business trip in Norway and I can tell you everyone here is full of admiration to Obama. It is sickening.

Iraqi democray is taking roots, sllowly but surely.

I read few funny incidences from this link Arabic link: http://ar.aswataliraq.info/?p=125173

- One old man put his welfare ticket in the polling box by mistake and was attempting to get it out before officials stopped him. They advised him that he has no option but to wait until the end of the day when they open the box and get his welfare ticket out.

- One woman was attempting to vote for herself as well as her late husband who died 3 years ago. She was carrying a large picture of her late husband and was seriously arguing with officials saying “ he is always with us”

- One man was attempting to vote for his new wife who was not registered instead of his old deceased wife. His argument is that this is my wife and it should matter if it’s a different wife.

According to the Iraqi news agency (VoI), the assailant was an Iraqi soldier and has already been arrested by an Iraqi army checkpoint.
Check the link:

http://en.aswataliraq.info/?p=103742

I agree that banning any political party is not good. The problem is that the militias interfere with the elections, attack other candidates and their supporters, intimidate people and even force them to vote their way. I guess the solution would be for the state to be able to handle the militias and enforce order. But the state forces are still rather fragile. So they Iraqi politcians opted to try to deprive the militias from political cover. I am not sure if this would work either. Whichever way, I think that Sadr and his supporters would still be with us for a while, unfortunately.

This is not a good thing. The Iraqi government should not be excluding people from government

Actually it wasn't the Iraqi government who decided on this, but the Iraqi Security Council (a constitutional body representing the Iraqi parliament) which met last Saturday and decided on excluding the militias. My concern is whether the executive under Maliki is really capable of cleaning those thugs from the streets.

There is alot of angry voices in the Iraqi parliament, mostly from the sunnis and sadrists, calling it gross interference in their affairs, bla bla bla.
Some MPs are calling on the government never to allow Jo Biden to step into Iraq anymore.
The MPs from the government coalition are trying to calm things down by reminding everyone that the US administration is not obliged to follow this ‘resolution’.

A senior aide to al-Maliki said Friday that three of the Blackwater guards were Iraqis and could be subject to prosecution. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

And would you move these three out or would you leave them to be leveled with the rest?

C’mon, man......since you’ve been to irak, you know perfectly well that this accusers “name” is “friend of Sadr”, so he must be entirely trustworthy, yes? /s

The name Sadr is popular in Iraq and this guy is no relation to that 'fat boy'. He is the head of the official media in Iraq (TV, Radio and main newspaper). So he is not exactly your average anti-American. As for this incident at the Iraqi TV station, it is said that it happened as the BW guards were coming to visit a nearby government department. May be they mistook the Iraqi guards for insurgents. I don't know. And then there is this:

A U.S. diplomat confirmed that Blackwater guards carried out the shooting, but said he did not know the results of the State Department security office's inquiry. He raised concerns that the investigation into the North Carolina-based firm was being conducted in too secretive a manner.

The motives of the NY & LA Times are obvious, anything Iraq is bad and evil, it’s all Bush’s fault and BW is a major security contractor in Iraq, so anything negative is a cover page story.

I am sure LA Times would try to bash Bush at any opportunity. I am not an LA Times fan and actually found the story first on another website. I agree that guards (military or private security) should be able to protect themselves and its particularly difficult in places like that with all sorts of suicide bombers. But its rather worrying when you have the head of the Iraqi media network involved in another case of BW as he said here:

"We discovered it was Blackwater who did this thing. They fired at our martyrs without any reason. They didn't do anything. They were just standing at their checkpoint. Everyone knows this is the site of the Iraqi Media Network," said Sadr, who is head of Iraqi state media. "It's a strange thing. Animals get killed and gain more attention. Here we have human lives lost. We respect the laws, we filed the case, I was keen to take the thing through the official channels."