“What happened before, happened”

From Michael Totten's The Rings on Zarqawi's Finger: 'For all the hatred in the Middle East, there is also forgiveness, and moderation. Where are the moderate Muslims? ask many Americans. I find the question bizarre. I meet them every day in Iraq, and everywhere else in the Middle East, too. The problem is they have a hard time getting attention in newspapers and magazines that wallow in sensationalism.

"What happened before, happened," said Omar, returning to the discussion of the American invasion with the Iraqi Police. "One mistake was committed, but it's gone. Let's just close it and not keep analyzing the same problem again. According to our analysis, American troops are now here to help Iraq."

Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha made similar points, a bit more eloquently, to Johns Hopkins University Professor Fouad Ajami: "Our American friends had not understood us when they came. They were proud, stubborn people and so were we. They worked with the opportunists, now they have turned to the tribes, and this is as it should be. The tribes hate religious parties and religious fakers." '

 

Thanks Jeffrey for linking to this article. 

US imposes sanctions on Zawraa TV

The US has finally levied sanctions on Mishaan Jabouri's Zawraa TV - a late move in my view, since the insurgency is fizzling and broadcasts by the station have not been seen since July 27, according to the BBC.  The story is still interesting because an Iranian general is also targeted.  Why would an Iranian general be allied with a Saddamist who has ties with Al Qaeda?  The article below also mentions that "Saudi-controlled Arabsat satellite operator was carrying its signal", yet the Bush administration is moving forward with a proposed $20 billion arms deal with KSA.  Thanks to IraqPundit for posting about this and linking to the article below. 

U.S. levies sanctions on Arab channel

Al Zawraa TV, run by an Iraqi out of Syria, broadcast images of attacks on American soldiers. An Iranian general and two alleged Iraqi militants are also targeted.

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 10, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration Wednesday imposed financial sanctions on a satellite television operation in Syria that has outraged U.S. officials with broadcasts of attacks on Americans troops and calls to violence.

The administration also imposed sanctions on the Iraqi businessman who owns the station, along with a top general in Iran's Revolutionary Guard and two men accused of directing terrorist attacks.

 

All were accused of committing or promoting violence in Iraq. The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets that the station or individuals may have, and make it illegal for Americans or U.S. entities to do business with them.

Al Zawraa television, called "Muj TV," short for mujahedin, by some Westerners, has been a source of frustration for U.S. officials since 2005 as it has beamed bloody video of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq across the region. One program, called "Hidden Camera Jihad," showed clips of attacks along with laugh tracks, sound effects and mocking captions in English.

The station became an irritant to U.S.-Saudi relations because the Saudi-controlled Arabsat satellite operator was carrying its signal, despite entreaties from American officials. Saudi officials believed it represented a point of view that they had to tolerate, U.S. officials said.

The station was founded by Mishaan Jaburi, a former lawmaker who fled to Syria in 2006 amid charges that he had stolen millions from the Iraqi government. In a statement, U.S. Treasury Department officials alleged that the station has received money from the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and that it has aired coded messages to the Islamic Army in Iraq, another Sunni insurgent group.
 

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150,000 Iraqis have died violently since 2003

I wonder why the Lancet's estimate is so much higher than this one:

Post-invasion death toll in Iraq put at over 150,000

By Stephen Fidler in London and Steve Negus, Iraq,Correspondent

Published: January 10 2008 02:00 | Last updated: January 10 2008 02:00

At least 150,000 Iraqis died violently in the 40 months following the US-led invasion in 2003, according to an estimate derived from the most comprehensive survey yet of mortality in post-war Iraq.

The new estimate, based on an Iraqi government survey supervised by the World Health Organisation, falls in the middle of the two most commonly cited assessments of the death toll following the invasion. It is published in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Iraq Body Count, which uses media reports and is therefore considered likely to underestimate the actual numbers of people killed, counted 47,668 deaths between March 2003 until June 2006. A study published in the Lancet, another leading medical journal, based on far fewer household interviews, estimated more than 600,000 deaths.

There is no reliable death registration system in Iraq and the past efforts to estimate the numbers killed have become the focus of deep controversy.

The new estimate suggests violent deaths increased 17-fold when compared with the years immediately preceding the invasion. Salih al-Hasanawi, Iraq's health minister, said he viewed the survey as "very sound, based on an accurate methodology".

The article estimates with 95 per cent certainty a range of violent deaths between 104,000 and 223,000, with 151,000 the central estimate. It uses a survey of 9,345 households - five times more than the Lancet survey.

However, government researchers were unable to visit 10.6 per cent of the households they had planned to, mainly in Anbar province and Baghdad, because these areas were too dangerous. The article estimated deaths in these areas using ratios of reported deaths in the Iraq Body Count statistics.

Ties Boerma, a WHO director, said the discrepancy between the new estimate and the Lancet estimate could have derived from the smaller sample in the earlier survey that may have exaggerated results from some unusually violent areas.

Les Roberts, one of the authors of the Lancet article, said the two articles had more in common than appeared at first glance.

"The NEJM article found a doubling of mortality after the invasion, we found a tripling. The big difference is that we found almost all the increase from violence; they found half the increase from violence," he said.

He said the survey may have suffered under-reporting, because some people may have not have wanted to report deaths to government employees. The Lancet report, he said, showed a sharp jump in deaths to about 900 a day in 2005-06, an increase not reflected in the WHO-supported survey but reflected elsewhere, including in graveyards.

Since mid-2006, the IBC statistics show a sharp jump in the number of deaths, followed by a significant slowing later in 2007.

Dahr Jamail says no sectarian violence in Iraq before 2003

"The snow job by the corporate media on the issue of sectarianism in Iraq has ensured that the public buys into the line that the Sunni and Shia will dice one another up into little pieces if the occupation ends.

 

It may be worthwhile to consider that prior to the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq there had never been open warfare between the two groups and certainly not a civil war." -- Dahr Jamail

 

It is true that there was no "open warfare" between Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs before 2003, not like what has happened in Iraq in the last four years.  That's because the Iraqi government was controlled by Sunni Arabs before 2003, and the Iraqi Shia did not mass murder Iraqi Security Forces and government officials in order to punish the government, nor did they blow up marketplaces and shrines.  Furthermore, Jamail conveniently ignores the mass murder of Iraqi Shia in 1991 and the Anfal campaign during the 1980s.  Apparently for Jamail and Arab Americans like him, what Saddam's regime did to Iraqis before 2003 was acceptable. 

Saddam's Yacht For Sale

This may be old and the yacht may have been sold already, but I just wanted to post the photos to remind people how lavishly Saddam lived while Iraqis starved during the sanctions era. Thanks dad for the forward.

More on this story.

Solar Trees

Cool!

 

This is a great innovation — the streets of Europe could soon be lit by "solar trees". These self-contained streetlights could save cities energy and money too. Unlike regular streetlights, they do not require costly underground wiring to install, and they are immune to blackouts. Designed by Ross Lovegrove, the lights have 10 solar panels arrayed at the top of tree-like branches, which charge built-in batteries. The batteries then power LEDs for illumination. Compared to conventional streetlights, they emit much less light pollution, because LEDs generate a very directed light. The trees also incorporate light detectors! So the lights automatically turn on sunset and off at sunrise.

The solar trees went on display for four weeks in October on a busy street — the Ringstrasse — in Vienna, Austria. They were able to provide enough light during the night-time even when the sun did not show for as much as four days in a row. The director of the program, Christina Werner said. "Someday soon solar trees could well be the main form of street lighting in Europe."

Putting solar powered LED light systems on trees would cut down on the carbon emissions and also slash the bills of local authorities, she said.

Street lighting consumed 10 percent of all the electricity used in Europe in 2006 or 2,000 billion KWh, and resulted in carbon emissions of 2,900 million ton.

The use of more energy-efficient lighting in the Austrian city of Graz, with a population of almost 300,000 saved the city 524,000 KWh of electricity and 67,200 euros [US $96,800] in 2005.

Via: RenewableEnergyAccess

Meanwhile in America, Bush's EPA (the "Environmental Protection" Agency!) told the state of California that it could not raise its own emissions standards! At least we have people like Will Ferrell to make fun of it all:

Hakim Praises Awakening Groups

I am not a fan of fundamentalists, but when Abdul Aziz al Hakim praises Sunni Arabs for fighting Al Qaeda, I think it is worth repeating. 

 

Iraqi Shiite Praises Sunni Groups

By HAMZA HENDAWI

BAGHDAD (AP) — A top Shiite politician on Thursday acknowledged the contribution of U.S.-backed Sunni Arab groups to the decline in violence across Iraq and called for their use in the continuing fight against al-Qaida. Meanwhile, the U.S. military reported the deaths of three soldiers — the first Americans killed in the new year.

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim's praise for the role of the Sunni groups, many of which had fought U.S. and Iraq's Shiite-dominated security forces before switching sides last year, runs contrary to the hard-line position recently taken by Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki's government.

The government said last month it will disband the groups, known as Awakening Councils in some regions and Concerned Local Citizens in others, after restive areas are calmed. It said it did not want them to be a separate military force and would not allow them to have any infrastructure, such as offices.

The Sunni militias, more than 70,000-strong, have been credited by U.S. commanders as being instrumental in what they say is a nearly 60 percent reduction in violence in the last six months. It also was affected by the dispatch of additional U.S. troops and a six-month cease-fire declared in August by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia.

But al-Maliki's government has been deeply uneasy about the potential for the Sunni fighters — now better organized and armed — to switch sides again, posing a threat to stability and the Shiite domination that followed the ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime.

However, al-Hakim, head of parliament's largest bloc and the country's most powerful political party, was conciliatory in his comments Thursday, although his praise for the Sunni groups was moderate and he did not say whether their future role should be permanent.

Noting the decline in violence, he said the credit should go to the role played by the groups, adding: "We still believe in the necessity of continuing with this strategy."

"Today, we are witnessing the decline of terrorism and the progress of reconciliation on the popular level with Sunni-Shiite solidarity," he said, alluding to the government's perceived failure to achieve political reconciliation between Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish groups. 

 

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