Blasts kill 78 in Iraq's bloodiest day in a year

BAGHDAD – Suicide bomb blasts tore through crowds waiting for food aid in central Baghdad and inside a roadside restaurant filled with Iranian pilgrims Thursday, killing at least 78 people in Iraq's deadliest day in more than a year.
The toll — at least 31 dead in Baghdad and 47 to the north in Diyala province — follows a series of high-profile attacks this month blamed on Sunni insurgents. The violence highlights potential security gaps as Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead role from U.S. forces in protecting Baghdad and key areas around the capital.
The insurgent push is still nowhere near the scale of violence in past years, but it has undermined confidence that Iraq's security gains were on solid footing at a time when the U.S. military is shifting its focus and resources to Afghanistan.
Thursday's attacks happened as American soldiers who specialize in clearing bombs from roads boarded a plane from Iraq to the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan, part of the largest movement of personnel and equipment between the two war fronts.
Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, say they have struck back at the heart of the insurgency: claiming they arrested one of the most wanted leaders of a militant network linked to al-Qaida.
The reported capture of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State of Iraq, could mark a setback to insurgents as they try to intensify attacks after a relative lull.
In the past, however, Iraqi officials have reported al-Baghdadi's arrest or killing, only to acknowledge later that they were wrong. The U.S. military has even said al-Baghdadi could be a fictitious character used to give an Iraqi face to an organization dominated by foreign al-Qaida fighters.
A U.S. military could not confirm the arrest, said a spokesman, 1st Lt. John A. Brimley.
In 2007, Iraq's government reported that al-Baghdadi had been killed and released photos of what it said was his body. Later, security officials said they had arrested al-Baghdadi. In both cases, the U.S. military said at the time it could not be confirmed — and the reports turned out not to be true.
The two attacks — along with a suicide blast that killed three Sunnis who joined the anti-insurgent fight north of Baghdad — made it the deadliest day in Iraq since March 8, 2008, when at least 110 people were killed.
The two main blasts Thursday carried separate messages.
The carnage in Baghdad showed insurgents were still capable of hitting the center of the capital. The devastated restaurant, to the north in Diyala province, was a reminder that the area remains an insurgent stronghold despite sustained offensives by U.S.-led forces.
Diyala — with its good roads and proximity to Baghdad — is considered a crucial gateway to the capital and a key to its security. U.S. commanders, facing a planned end of combat operations in August 2010, have dedicated increasing firepower to the region to try to cripple insurgent networks.
The Baghdad attacker hit about noon as police were distributing Iraqi Red Crescent food parcels in the central neighborhood of Karradah — an area where many shops, restaurants and nightclubs have reopened in recent months as violence ebbed.
Police officials and staff members at Ibn al-Nafis hospital said at least 31 people were killed, including eight police officers, and that at least 50 were wounded. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the death toll.
It not immediately clear who carried out the attack, but one witness said it appeared to be a woman. Women have been used in suicide bombings in Iraq, most recently during a Feb. 13 attack on Shiite pilgrims.
Muhanad Harbi, a shop owner near the blast site, said he saw a woman wearing a black robe move into the crowd. He said it appeared she detonated an explosives belt.
Shanoon Humoud, 70, sat weeping among burned food packages scattered on the ground. Her husband, her son and two grandchildren were killed in the blast.
Humoud said she was in her apartment praying when she heard the blast.
"I came down to look for my relatives who were getting the food," she said. "But I couldn't find them."
Abbas Ibrahim, a 24-year-old college student, rushed to the scene, dodging through pools of blood and wincing at the smell of scorched human flesh.
"We regret that violence has come back to Baghdad," he said.
A spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent, Mohammad al-Khuzaie, called the attack "a brutal assault on humanitarian activities."
"We were trying to help the widows, orphans and divorced women when the blast occurred," he said.
North of Baghdad, the target was a crowded restaurant near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, and a popular rest stop for Iranian pilgrims traveling by road to and from Shiite shrines in southern Iraq.
At least 47 people were killed and 69 were wounded, said U.S. military spokesman Derrick Cheng. Iraqi officials gave the same death toll.
Iranian state television reported that the blast killed about 35 Iranian pilgrims and wounded 60 others. It did not elaborate and there was no immediate reaction from Iranian officials.
Iraq's Shiite-led government has close ties to Tehran and has dedicated significant security resources to protect processions during major Shiite pilgrimages.
In January, a suicide bomber mingling among Iranian pilgrims killed more than three dozen people outside a mosque in Baghdad.
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Associated Press

Reply:

U.S. troops...stay in your protected bases, protect the flow of oil, and let the Iraqi police their own civil mess. US will need to maintain small bases in Iraq, similar to Germany and Japan after WWII to protect oil interests.

Remember when soldiers were complaining that the armor proof vehicles we sent weren't really armor proof? Thank you Don Rumsfeld for supporting the troops. Or when the shame and embarrassment of Abu Ghraib came out and 11 U.S. soldiers were either imprisoned or demoted only to find out now that the torture methods they used came directly from the White House. Poor bastards were just left twisting in the wind, thanks for supporting our troops George and Dick. Sadly, 4,000+ dead U.S. soldiers later, it comes to light that George and Dick subverted the constitution, blurred the lines of separation of duties, watered down our founding fathers' system of checks and balances and bullied and lied their way into an unjust and uncessary war.

These people in the Middle East have been fighting for thousands of years over religion horses swords & knives. A religion that allows torture, dismemberment, slaves, multiple wives, and the only ones with rights were the clerics and the rich. Now, the only way that they have upgraded is their tools of war- cell phones, computers, AK47s, rocket launchers, high speed motorized vehicles. Only their tools have changed, not their ideals.

Marine acquitted of murder in Iraq slaying

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – A military jury on Thursday acquitted a Marine sergeant on charges of murdering an unarmed detainee during battle in Fallujah, Iraq. The jury also acquitted Sgt. Ryan Weemer of dereliction of duty in the November 2004 death.
The panel of eight Marines who served in Iraq or Afghanistan got the case Wednesday and deliberated more than four hours.
Weemer, of Hindsboro, Ill., could have faced a maximum sentence of life in prison and dishonorable discharge if convicted of murder. The maximum sentence for dereliction is six months in prison and a bad conduct discharge.
In closing arguments Wednesday, a defense attorney said the 26-year-old Weemer acted in self-defense.
The prosecutor, Capt. Nicholas Gannon, recounted that Weemer said in recorded interviews that he shot the man and told a squadmate that he would have to live with that for the rest of his life.
Weemer also said in interviews that he and other Marines shot a total of four men in a house after their squad suffered its first fatality.
"I can't bring you an autopsy report," Gannon said. "I don't have one, but we have a lot of evidence that shows you beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused shot an individual in the chest twice.... The killing was unlawful."
The prosecutor told jurors they should convict Weemer of lesser charges of voluntary manslaughter or assault if they acquit him of murder.
During the one-week court-martial, the defense argued that the government could not prove Weemer killed the unarmed captive because there are no bodies, no relatives complaining of a lost loved one and no forensic evidence.
Weemer's civilian attorney, Paul Hackett, said in his closing argument that Weemer fired while he and other Marines were trying to seize a house from insurgents. He recounted testimony and statements of Weemer's squadmates that portrayed a confusing scene.
"This was chaos!" he said. "(The detainees) were not cooperating. If they're not cooperating, they're not under control. If they're not under control, they pose a threat to these Marines."
Hackett told jurors to be skeptical of a 2006 recorded interview that Weemer gave to Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents in which he describes shooting the detainee. He said one agent was an experienced interrogator who knew how to wear Weemer down.
"It is a very, very, very complicated, confusing interview," Hackett said.
Weemer told two NCIS agents that he was covered with the blood of his best friend, who had been killed by a sniper, just before his squad leader ordered him to kill the prisoner, according to a tape recording played at the court martial.
"I grabbed a gun and took him to the back of the house," Weemer, 26, said on the tape. "I shot him twice in the chest."
Weemer said he argued with his squad leader, former Sgt. Jose Luis Nazario, before complying with the order to kill the man, who was taken prisoner when Marines stormed a house on the first day of the assault on Fallujah.
"I definitely wasn't the type to disobey an order," he said.
Last August, Nazario was acquitted in Riverside federal court of killing two prisoners and ordering Weemer and another Marine to each kill one.
Another sergeant, Jermaine Nelson, has pleaded not guilty to unpremeditated murder and dereliction of duty, but his court-martial has been indefinitely postponed because of a flurry of last-minute motions filed by his attorney.

REPLY: 1st I have to say read Kevin Sites book " In The Zone. One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars". Even in the 1st few chapters you will see the real side of things that have happened. 2nd at this moment I personaly know a PFC that is in jail for this same matter at hand. Difference is he wasn't the shooter, 2 other PFC's were and said they were. They also told the court that my friend did not shoot. The courts told him either plead guilty and hopefully get out in around 6-9 years or don't and plan on being there for 18- 25 years. They gave him no time to think about it. He was barely 21, scared and didn't know what to do. So he pled guilty hopeing that the truth would set him free. He's been there for over 3 years now.

He finally had a hearing and awaits the outcome. If they don't let him go he has to wait a year to file again. They bullied him into saying he did something he did not do. I know him very well, he is not a murder. Corey Clagett is his name. Look him up and you'll see what I'm talking about. He has many people pulling for him but not enough. Even Doctors, a radio DJ, an Author and many more know what I know and are trying to help him. I speak to him about once a week, I write him as much as I can. People have come and gone while he's been there. 1st saying they would support him and write him then slowly they fade away leaving him feeling even more alone. He has changed in these 3 years into someone else. He's angry (wouldn't you be?) and our hopes are that when he gets out that he can be helped to have a normal life again. There are a few of us that won't give up on him.

It makes me ill to know what has been done to him. I'll spare you the details about how they treat him (just think of how helpless you could be and can't do anything about it but just take it). I hope this reaches a few people and they too try to free a free man but hope is something that fades fast when you ask people to help in these matters. People either don't want to hear it, don't care, don't want to be bothered to do anything that might help, are to selfish and involved in their own lives to take any time to do something because they don't get anything out of it and much more. I have seen the UGLY side of humans (so many). I've also seen the good side. The good ones are out numbered 20 to 1 but those who fall in that 1 work 20 times as hard to do whats right. The blinders people wear do it by choice!!!!

Sinn Fein, IRA dissidents vie for Catholic support

LURGAN, Northern Ireland – Graffiti on the Catholic side of town condemn Sinn Fein politicians as British stooges. Alongside black-stenciled images of masked gunmen, slogans proclaim allegiance to IRA dissidents who fatally shot a policeman a few miles away.
On Saturday, teenage boys here blocked roads and threw bricks and Molotov cocktails at police who arrested a local man wanted for the killing of two off-duty British soldiers.
Sinn Fein has persuaded most of Northern Ireland's Irish Catholics to accept peace through compromise. But the Irish nationalist party still struggles for the loyalty of job-hungry, lawless Catholic neighborhoods like Kilwilkie, on the wrong side of the tracks in this mostly Protestant town.
If Sinn Fein cannot win over such pockets of bitterness and alienation, the dissidents could grow in numbers and strength — and eventually mount far deadlier attacks than this month's shootings of soldiers and a policeman. Analysts say power-sharing — the central achievement of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace deal — could not survive a sustained campaign of paramilitary bloodshed.
Sinn Fein pleasantly surprised its Protestant partners in government this month by calling on its backers to help police track down and imprison the gunmen. But the move means Sinn Fein has finally put itself on a collision course with dangerous die-hards in its own working-class base — people who still inspire a potent mixture of fear and reverence.
"You wouldn't want to be seen by certain neighbors calling the police, let's leave it at that," said Marie, a Catholic mother of four pushing her two youngest children in a stroller uphill from Kilwilkie, past the railway line, to the Protestant center of Lurgan.
Like several other residents interviewed before and after Saturday's riots, Marie would talk only if her last name and other details of her identity were concealed.
"The fear is back," she said. "When the `troubles' were on, you were always afraid of what the other side might do to you up in town. Now you're much more afraid to speak your mind for fear of what your own people might do to you back home."
The fear in Kilwilkie centers on supporters of Colin Duffy, whom police and locals alike regard as the IRA godfather figure of the neighborhood. He was repeatedly charged with IRA murders and other crimes in the 1990s — including for shooting two policemen through the back of the head in what was the IRA's last fatal attack — but was never successfully prosecuted.
Duffy publicly broke away from Sinn Fein last year and joined a new group fronted by IRA veterans called Eirigi, "Rise up" in Gaelic. The group said it wasn't promoting dissident violence but understood why people might want to keep attacking security forces in a state that remains firmly British territory.
Police arrested Duffy on Saturday on suspicion of involvement in the first deadly dissident attack March 7, when a splinter group called the Real IRA opened fire on off-duty soldiers collecting pizzas from two delivery men. Two soldiers were killed and four others, including both civilians, were badly wounded.
Duffy's mostly teenage acolytes covered their faces with masks, scarves and hoods — and bombarded police for hours. Because of their heavy protective equipment, officers reported only one minor injury. Sinn Fein, which often deploys officials to calm crowds and prevent riots in Belfast, was nowhere to be seen.
The area's Sinn Fein representative in the Northern Ireland Assembly, John O'Dowd, lives in the neighboring town of Craigavon. It was there that the Continuity IRA shot to death a policeman March 9 as his unit responded to an emergency call near the hard-line Catholic Drumbeg housing project.
O'Dowd called that killing "murder," a word that Sinn Fein never used when describing the IRA's killings of nearly 300 police from 1970 to 1997.
He said he has been trying to talk sense to dissident leaders in the area for more than a year, but they rejected his overtures.
"There is no point in building a power-sharing agreement, a new society and a new policing service just for people to take shots at them and kill people who are part of that new creation," said O'Dowd, 41, who unlike the previous generation of Sinn Fein leaders never spent time in prison for IRA convictions.
O'Dowd conceded that Sinn Fein's call for its supporters to tell police about the dissidents in their midst "is placing myself and others in my party in great personal difficulty. But we're prepared for that."
He said some of the dissident leaders "were never with us. Some may have been in the past, and they went away. And I'm glad they went away."
Just as police officers are having to increase their personal security precautions across Northern Ireland, so are Sinn Fein activists. They have learned from the fratricidal history of Irish republicanism — when splits lead to bloody feuds — that it could just be a matter of time before the Real IRA, Continuity IRA or another band of alienated militants turns its guns on republican peaceniks.
Some analysts even openly wonder whether Martin McGuinness — the former IRA commander who is Sinn Fein's top official in the power-sharing government — might face a dissident assassin's bomb or bullet someday. McGuinness infuriated the dissidents last week, before leaving on his current United States trip, by calling them "traitors to the island of Ireland."
Belfast commentator and author Malachi O'Doherty said McGuinness was taking the same blunt-spoken road as Michael Collins, the key figure in the old IRA's 1919-21 war of independence against Britain. When Collins signed a treaty that accepted the partition of Ireland and created a new southern state still symbolically tied to Britain, he was assassinated by the anti-treaty IRA faction within the year.
"I am not concerned about my safety and my security," McGuinness said during a public appearance Sunday in New York City. "I am not going to be intimidated."

Women in Congo speak out about rape despite taboo

DOSHU, Congo – Zamuda Sikujuwa shuffles to a bench in the sunshine, pushes apart her thighs with a grimace of pain and pumps her fist up and down in a lewd-looking gesture to show how the militiamen shoved an automatic rifle inside her.
The brutish act tore apart her insides after seven of the men had taken turns raping her. She lost consciousness and wishes now that her life also had ended on that day.
The rebels from the Tutsi tribe had come demanding U.S. dollars. But when her husband could not even produce local currency, they put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. When her two children started crying, the rebels killed them too. Then they attacked Sikujuwa and left her for dead.
The 53-year-old still has difficulty walking after two operations. Yet she wants to tell the world her story, even though repeating it brings back the nightmares.
"It's hard, hard, hard," she says. "I'm alone in this world. My body is partly mended but I don't know if my heart will ever heal. ... I want this violence to stop. I don't want other women to have to suffer what I am suffering."
Rape has been used as a brutal weapon of war in Congo, where conflicts based on tribal lines have spawned dozens of armed groups amid back-to-back civil wars that drew in several African nations. More than 5 million people have died since 1994. Women have become even more vulnerable since a rebel advance at the end of last year drove a quarter-million people from their homes and fighting this year left another 100,000 others homeless, according to aid workers.
Now some of the women are fighting back the only way they know how — by talking about what happened.
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A campaign spearheaded by the U.N. Children's Fund is working with local groups to break traditional taboos around talking about the violence. They're using radio stations broadcasting in local languages, and more activists are getting to remote areas.
"Many more victims are coming forward. We receive a lot of SMS text messages and cell phone calls from women who have been raped and need help," says campaign leader Esther Ntoto.
Five months ago, U.N. officials began bringing together women to tell their stories to rooms full of local officials, community leaders, even children. One sign of success is that more men than women have volunteered for training to encourage victims to come forward and their communities to confront the issues.
Video footage of the campaign Women Breaking the Silence shows officials startled by the atrocities recounted. A provincial minister interrupted to ask reporters not to film a woman's face. But she took the microphone to declare: "I am not ashamed to show my face and publish my identity. The shame lies with those who broke me open and with the authorities who failed to protect me.
"If you don't hear me, see me, you will not understand why it is so important that we fight this together."
That woman, Honorata Kizende, described how her life as a school teacher and the mother of seven children ended when she was kidnapped in 2001. She was held as a sex slave for 18 months and passed around from one Hutu fighter to another until she escaped. She is now a counselor and trains others to help survivors of sexual violence.
One of the difficulties is the "huge problem of impunity," said Mireille Kahatwa Amani, a lawyer working at an office at HEAL Africa Hospital opened a year ago by the Chicago-based American Bar Association.
"It's difficult to prosecute perpetrators because they can buy off the police or a judge. There's no guarantee of justice," she says.
Still, with funding from the U.S. State Department, lawyers have interviewed more than 250 victims and pursued more than 100 cases. In 11 months, they have received 30 judgments with only two acquittals. Those found guilty have been punished with sentences of five to 20 years in jail, Kahatwa says.
Her big success this year was against a man who has been condemned to 20 years in jail for raping a 6-year-old neighbor and infecting her with the AIDS virus. Kahatwa says the judgment came just a month after the complaint was filed, a record.
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Kasongo Manyema takes small, careful steps, fearful of unwrapping the cloth tied like a baby's diaper to catch the blood, urine and feces that has been dribbling from her body for 2 1/2 years.
She was 19 then, when men in military uniform attacked her as she weeded her family's cassava field.
A U.N. helicopter has brought her to HEAL Africa Hospital in Goma, where reconstructive surgery could help her incontinence and the stench that follows her and thousands of other Congolese women suffering from fistulas.
Fistulas usually result from giving birth in poor conditions. In Congo, they are caused by violent rapes that tear apart the flesh separating the bladder and rectum from the vagina.
Dr. Christophe Kinoma, one of only two surgeons who perform the reconstructive operations in east Congo, says there's a 50-50 chance that surgery can mend Manyema and others like her.
"Yesterday I did five fistula operations and we have more than 100 women waiting here and who knows how many out in the bush who never ever get to a hospital."
Kinoma says it has become the norm for armed men to use guns, knives and bayonets to rupture their victims' bodies. Sometimes they shoot bullets up women's vaginas. Victims often are rejected by their families, contract HIV, and are left to live in pain and shame.
In December, he operated on an 11-month-old baby raped by a 22-year-old neighbor. During one week in February, it was a 12-year-old girl who had been savagely raped by five soldiers. They stuffed a maize cob inside her.
Also treated last week was a 4-year-old whose mother sent her across the road to get something from a neighbor. She was kidnapped by soldiers and gang-raped.
"An American doctor who was here just burst into tears and collapsed. She couldn't believe what the soldiers had done to this child, just torn her body apart," he says.
Kinoma says he may be able to mend the physical damage, "but the psychological trauma never goes away for some." The hospital offers counseling but has no psychologists.
"The 11-month-old I operated on, every time she sees a man, including me, she starts screaming," he says.
The 4-year-old was infected with HIV, and they await results from a test on the 12-year-old. "If three, four, five soldiers rape you, you are almost assured of contracting AIDS," Kinoma says.
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The trauma that haunts these children and women also affects those who help them.
Hortense Tshomba, who has been counseling victims for three years, says she hopes to give them the courage to return to their homes. Many are rejected by husbands and fathers who say the attacks have left them "unclean."
"We try to counsel them as couples. For girls rejected by their parents, we try to intervene. Some families accept them back; others don't."
When counseling does not help, HEAL Africa offers lessons in sewing and handicrafts to teach them to survive financially. She says rejected women who don't get help often are forced from communities and become beggars.
"Sometimes I have nightmares," Tshomba says. "When I leave after hearing all these horror stories, really it's like my brain is on fire. I have to listen to some jazz to ease my soul."
But there are successes like 13-year-old Harriet, who came to HEAL Africa four years ago. Harriet's parents were killed by the rebels who attacked her and then burned down their home in Rutshuru, north of Goma. She nows lives with a woman who counseled her at the hospital.
On this day, Harriet is so delighted she cannot stop grinning, a wide beam that's infectious in its joy. Her fingernails are black with dirt, but she is wearing lip gloss and eyeliner.
"Today, I got my results and I am top of my class," she announces, flaunting a report that shows she averaged 88.5 percent in math, French and English exams.
"When I came to HEAL Africa, I had never been to school. I was 9 years old. Now I'm beating students who have been to school all their lives," she says. "My teacher says I'm very intelligent, that I should go to school in the United States."
As for the future: "I think I want to be a doctor, so that I can help people the way these doctors helped me."
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On the Net:
HEAL Africa: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_af/storytext/af_congo_stop_the_rape/31301335/SIG=10rp2f377/*http://www.healafrica.org
American Bar Association: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_af/storytext/af_congo_stop_the_rape/31301335/SIG=10nnn7oi5/*http://www.abanet.org

REPLY:

This reminds me off the three blind men trying to figure out the elephant. At one time no one understood fully the inner workings of the regime - how they operated; how the party controlled the county; how the police, rebels, hate crimes worked; that torture, rape, extermination and much more were going on and to the degree of that; the depth of misery and death.... We had the tail, the ears, the feet of the monster but no idea of it's overall shape. Now more and more things are coming to light. More are willling to speak up and out. We are still left not knowing what to do....

Court issues war crimes warrant for Sudan's Bashir

Court issues war crimes warrant for Sudan's Bashir

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. He is the first sitting head of state the court has ordered arrested.
Al-Bashir's government denounced the warrant as part of a Western conspiracy aimed at destabilizing the vast oil-rich nation south of Egypt. The U.N. said Sudan had ordered the expulsion of six to 10 humanitarian groups from Darfur including Oxfam, Solidarities and Mercy Corps, and seized assets.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the move a "serious setback to lifesaving operations in Darfur."
Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo had accused Sudanese troops and the janjaweed Arab militia they support of murdering civilians and preying on them in refugee camps. He said the militia also waged a campaign of rape to drive women into the desert, where they die of starvation.
But the three-judge panel in The Hague said there was insufficient evidence to support charges of genocide in a war in which up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes.
"He is suspected of being criminally responsible ... for intentionally directing attacks against an important part of the civilian population of Darfur, Sudan, murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians, and pillaging their property," court spokeswoman Laurence Blairon said. If al-Bashir is brought to trial and prosecuted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Blairon rejected accusations that the warrant was part of a political plot and said the decision was made purely on legal grounds.
But African and Arab nations fear the warrant will destabilize the whole region, bring even more conflict in Darfur and threaten the fragile peace deal that ended decades of civil war between northern and southern Sudan. China, which buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil, supports the African and Arab positions.
Some African nations reportedly threatened to pull out of the court in retaliation for a warrant. Thirty African countries are among the court's 108 member states.
In a show of defiance Tuesday in anticipation of the decision, al-Bashir told supporters at a rally, "We are telling them to immerse it in water and drink it," a common Arabic insult meant to show extreme disrespect.
Hundreds of Sudanese waving pictures of the president and denouncing the court quickly turned out in a rally at the Cabinet building in Khartoum. Security was increased around many embassies, and some diplomats and aid workers stayed home amid fears of retaliation against Westerners.
The U.N., which has a joint peacekeeping mission in Darfur with the African Union, will continue to deal with al-Bashir, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said at U.N. headquarters in New York.
"President al-Bashir is the head of state of Sudan, and United Nations officials will continue to deal with president al-Bashir when they need to do so," Montas said.
Al-Bashir denies the war crimes accusations and refuses to deal with the court. Sudan does not recognize its jurisdiction and refuses to arrest suspects and there is currently no international mechanism to arrest al-Bashir. The main tool the court has is diplomatic pressure for countries to hand over suspects.
U.N. peacekeepers and other international agencies operating in Sudan have no mandate to implement the warrant, and Sudanese officials have warned them not to go outside their mandates.
The United States is not a member of the international court, but Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told The Associated Press, that "the United States supports the ICC action to hold accountable those who are responsible for the heinous crimes in Darfur."
"Those who committed atrocities in Sudan, including genocide, should be brought to justice," she said.
The EU welcomed the court's decision to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir and urged Khartoum to cooperate "fully and provide any necessary assistance to the Court."
Ocampo suggested al-Bashir could be arrested if he flies out of Sudan.
"As soon as Mr. al-Bashir travels in international airspace, his plane could be intercepted and he could be arrested. That is what I expect," the prosecutor said.
"Like Slobodan Milosevic or Charles Taylor, Omar al-Bashir's destiny is to face justice," Moreno Ocampo said referring to the former presidents of Yugoslavia and Liberia who were indicted while in office and ended up on trial in The Hague.
Asked why judges, in a 2-1 split decision, did not issue the warrant for genocide, Blairon explained that genocide requires a clear intent to destroy in part or as a whole a specific group.
"In this particular case, the pretrial chamber has not been able to find there were reasonable grounds to establish a genocidal intent," she said.
She said prosecutors could ask again for genocide charges to be added to the warrant if they can produce new evidence. Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said he would study the ruling before deciding whether to keep pursuing genocide charges.
The war in Sudan's western Darfur region began in 2003, when rebel ethnic African groups, complaining of discrimination and neglect, took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. In 2005, the U.N. Security Council asked Moreno Ocampo to investigate crimes in Darfur.
"With this arrest warrant, the International Criminal Court has made Omar al-Bashir a wanted man," said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. "Not even presidents are guaranteed a free pass for horrific crimes. By ruling there is a case for President al-Bashir to answer for the horrors of Darfur, the warrant breaks through Khartoum's repeated denials of his responsibility."
The Rome statute that set up the International Criminal Court allows the Security Council to vote to defer or suspend for a year the investigation or prosecution of a case. It also gives the council authority to renew such a resolution.
The 52-member countries of the African Union and 26 states of the Arab League make up about a third of U.N. member states and they have said they would call for such a suspension.
But the council is sharply divided on suspending the case and is unlikely to take any action.

I'll say it again but in more detail:

Somewhat it gives me hope that things will be changing but only time will tell. I'm glad that the ICC and the U.N. has taken steps to establish what they deem to be going on even if it's war crimes and crimes against humanity ( better known as Genocide but deemed to hard to prove ) but it's one thing to talk the talk and another to walk the walk. With other countries turning their backs on what is happening in Darfur we have to make sure we hold the US,UN and ICC accountable for what it has promised and not allow them just to give him a slap on the hand. I truly hope that this is a start to the end of the nightmare these poor people have been living.

Truth be told there has never been a leader that has still been in power that has had these charges brought against him. With a mass of support from peoples this is a matter that will most likely see more terror before he's taken down and even when/if we do detain him the people that stood behind him are still going to rage war and terror. It maybe a start to an end but its far from over. My hope is that we haven't hit a hornets nest with a stone. The backlash could be far worse. "Al-Bashir denies the war crimes accusations and refuses to deal with the court. Sudan does not recognize its jurisdiction and refuses to arrest suspects and there is currently no international mechanism to arrest al-Bashir. The main tool the court has is diplomatic pressure for countries to hand over suspects".

It is a double edge sword here. These people (Darfur) need to see peace and an end to what has happened that never should have been. The fact it took so long to finally do something has made this much worse seeing as how his power got much stronger and his following larger. They are already starting to show that they won't give up power easily. Only time will tell what will happen next. I am glad however that Darfur is being heard now!!!!

PEACE ELUSIVE AS SECURITY WORSENS

The United Nations has described Sudan's western Darfur region as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
Over 2.9 million uprooted
World's biggest relief operation
2006 peace deal failed to improve security
The conflict flared in 2003 when rebels in Darfur took up arms, accusing the government of neglecting the region.
Since then, civilians have come under attack from government troops, nomadic militia and rebel groups. The United Nations says as many as 300,000 people may have died. Khartoum puts the figure at 10,000.
The violence has also forced some 2.9 million people - mostly farmers and villagers from non-Arab groups - to flee their homes.
Khartoum denies accusations it has used Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to crush the revolt.
But the International Criminal Court's prosecutor has charged Sudan's president with masterminding a campaign of genocide in Darfur.
The government and one rebel faction signed a peace deal in May 2006, but two others refused, and many new rebel groups have since formed. Relief agencies say the violence makes it difficult to deliver aid in parts of Darfur.
A combined United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force began deploying in 2008, taking over from a small, overstretched AU force. The deployment follows protracted wrangling between the international community and Khartoum.
The conflict has also spilled over Sudan's borders into Chad and Central African Republic.

KEY FACTS:

(Unless otherwise stated, data is for October 2008, taken from the Darfur Humanitarian Profile series issued by the United Nations)
Total no. of people affected by conflict in Darfur:
4.7 million
No. of internally displaced people in Darfur:
2.7 million
No. of Darfur refugees in Chad:
240,000 (UNHCR, December 2007)
Residential population affected by conflict:
2 million
No. of people receiving food aid:
3.4 million
Percentage of affected population accessible according to U.N. security standards:
65 percent
No. of humanitarians on the ground (national and international):
16,370
No. of humanitarian agencies supporting Darfur population:
85 NGOs (including Red Cross/Red Crescent); 16 U.N. agencies
Malnutrition (acute):
16.1 percent (2007) (U.N. report, Jan 2008)
Mortality:
0.29 per 10,000 people per day (2007) (U.N. report, Nov 2007)

Officials: US troops to leave Iraq by August 2010 (AP)

Officials: US troops to leave Iraq by August 2010 (AP)

WASHINGTON – The United States plans to withdraw most of its troops from Iraq by August 2010, 19 months after President Barack Obama's inauguration, according to administration officials. The withdrawal plan would fulfill one of Obama's central campaign pledges, albeit a little more slowly than he promised. He said he would withdraw troops within 16 months, roughly one brigade a month from the time of his inauguration.
The officials said they expect Obama to make the announcement this week. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been made public.
The U.S. military will leave behind a residual force, between 30,000 and 50,000 troops, to continue advising and training Iraqi security forces, the two officials said. Also staying beyond the 19 months will be intelligence and surveillance specialists and their equipment, including unmanned aircraft, they said.
A further withdrawal will take place before December 2011, the period by which the U.S. agreed with Iraq to remove all American troops.
A senior White House official said Tuesday that Obama is at least a day away from making a final decision. He further said an announcement on Wednesday was unlikely, but he said that Obama could discuss Iraq during a trip to North Carolina on Friday.
About 142,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, roughly 14 brigades, about 11,000 above the total in Iraq when President George W. Bush announced in January 2007 that he would "surge" the force to put down the insurgency. He sent an additional 21,000 combat troops to Baghdad and Anbar province.
Although the number of combat brigades has dropped from 20 to 14, the U.S. has increased the number of logistical and other support troops. A brigade is usually about 3,000 to 5,000 troops.
Obama's campaign promise to withdraw troops in 16 months was based on a military estimate on what would be an orderly pace of removing troops, given the logistical difficulties of removing so many people and tons of equipment, a U.S. military official said.
The 19-month strategy is a compromise between commanders and advisers who are worried that security gains could backslide in Iraq and those who think the bulk of U.S. combat work is long since done.
The White House considered at least two other options to withdraw combat forces — one that followed Obama's 16-month timeline and one that stretched withdrawal over 23 months, the AP reported earlier this month.
Some U.S. commanders have spoken more optimistically in recent months about prospects for reducing the force. Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, who commands U.S. forces in central and southern Iraq, told reporters earlier this month that he believed the gains in stability in that area were now irreversible.
According to officials, Obama had requested a range of options from his top military advisers, including one that would have withdrawn troops in 16 months. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had recently forwarded withdrawal alternatives to the White House for Obama's consideration.
In addition to the U.S. troops to be withdrawn, there is a sizable cadre of contractors who provide services to them who would pack their bags as well. There were 148,050 defense contractor personnel working in Iraq as of December, 39,262 of them U.S. citizens.
There are more than 200 U.S. military installations in Iraq. According to Army officials interviewed by the Government Accountability Office, it can take up to two months to shut down small outposts that hold up to 300 troops. Larger entrenched facilities, like Balad Air Base, could take up to 18 months to close, according to the GAO.
As of Monday, at least 4,250 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. More than 31,000 have been injured.
Congress has approved more than $657 billion so far for the Iraq war, according to a report last year from the Congressional Research Service.

REPLY:

In part I'm happy that they will be comeing home (we shouldn't have been there in the 1st place but what's done is done). As far as leaving these troops 30,000 or so behind is insane. Either they will be slaughtered or when they start to become so they will just send back our troops to a far even worse war. Seeing as how the technololgy is growing (albeit slow) there Obama is setting up a WWIII. If it doesn't start before then. At this point its a lose, lose situation either way. Yes, Bush had this plan and Obama is taking cedit but he's pushed out the date. Makes me wonder why? Does he hope that they will become a peaceful nation by then or that some how we will become BBF with them?

ADDED NOTE:

I feel for the people of this country that has been torn apart by war. I don't think I could ever know how it would feel to live everyday in fear. Not just fear for myself but for my family, friends and home. How they have managed to hold on is beyond something I can understand. Everyday they wake to this and every night they fall asleep wondering if they will see tomorrow. Seems that everyday brings bad news to these people. My heart goes out to them.

US pays $40,000 after 15 Afghans die in raid

U.S. commanders on Tuesday traveled to a poor Afghan village and distributed $40,000 to relatives of 15 people killed in a U.S. raid, including a known militant commander. The Americans also apologized for any civilians killed in the operation.
» Full Story on Yahoo! News

Reply:

So is that the going price for lives today???? 15 people 40,000 split. Ummm, I guess thats how we say opps sorry???? Wonder if we will ever read " The War that shouldn't have started is over.... American's payed back all that they have lost". Ha yeah right....

Israeli war against Hamas scars Gaza's children

JEBALIYA, Gaza Strip – Surrounded by mountains of rubble that were once their homes, two dozen children sat on a rainbow-colored blanket and drew with crayons.
They quickly filled the pages passed around by trauma counselors with pictures of Israeli tanks, dead bodies and Palestinians firing assault rifles — scenes they saw when Israel's war on Hamas came into their neighborhood.
"We felt we will die soon," 11-year-old Sharif Abed Rabbo told the group, describing his family's escape. "And I am sad I lost my house."
Psychologists say Israel's three-week offensive inflicted more severe trauma than previous conflicts in Gaza because civilians in the crowded sliver of territory had no safe place to run. A wartime study among hundreds of Gaza children showed a rise in nightmares, bedwetting and other signs of trauma, said psychologist Fadel Abu Hein.
Counselors and aid workers fear that Gaza's children, who make up 56 percent of the 1.4 million people here, will grow up hating Israel and become easier prey for extremists.
"We are losing the next generation," said John Ging, the top U.N. aid official in Gaza. As a buffer against militancy, U.N. schools are launching human rights classes for their 200,000 students this week.
Children and teens were particularly vulnerable in Israel's military offensive, launched Dec. 27 to try to halt eight years of Hamas rocket fire on towns in southern Israel. The rocket attacks have frightened children there and frequently sent them running for cover.
In Gaza, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights counted 280 children among 1,285 dead and said one in four of the more than 4,000 wounded was a minor.
Facing the Israeli invasion, Hamas gunmen often operated from densely populated Gaza neighborhoods, drawing massive Israeli fire that killed and wounded large numbers of civilians, along with fighters. Tens of thousands fled their homes, seeking shelter in U.N. schools.
Among the refugees was Ansam Rahel, 10, who fled shelling of her home in the town of Beit Lahiya and sought cover, along with her family, in the town's U.N. school. On Jan. 17, when an Israeli shell struck the shelter, Ansam was hit by shrapnel that sliced across the top of her head. A thick welt of stitches runs diagonally across her partially shaved scalp, and she covers it with a ski cap.
The little girl, who carries herself with quiet grace and sadness, is back home, but her life has changed. Her father is in Egypt, where her 5-year-old sister Dima is undergoing treatment for a serious war injury. Ansam said she takes painkillers and doesn't sleep well.
On Saturday, she briefly returned to her school to say goodbye to friends. She is not well enough to attend and was told by school officials she might be taken to France for further medical treatment. "I didn't let them cry or feel pity for me," she said of her classmates.
Abu Hein, a psychologist who runs a community health center in Gaza City, said his teams interviewed 950 families, among them 2,180 children, in U.N. shelters across Gaza during and after the war.
A majority of parents told the team their children had become more clingy, and about one-third said their children insisted on sleeping in the same room with them.
Since a cease-fire took hold a week ago, Abu Hein's center and other aid groups have sent teams to the most devastated areas, seeking out children for emergency counseling.
On Sunday, three of his counselors drove to the Abed Rabbo neighborhood of the town of Jebaliya, a few hundred yards from the Israeli border. The neighborhood came under heavy fire during Israel's ground offensive, which began Jan. 3. House after house in a radius of hundreds of yards were destroyed, with nothing left except mountains of rubble.
The counselors spread a large blanket on a small patch of grass, and children soon came running. About two dozen, from toddlers to young teens, sat in a circle and played games, raising their hands or clapping, to break the ice. A counselor then asked the older kids to tell what happened to them during the war.
Asra Aref, 8, said her father raised a white flag when soldiers came closer and spoke Hebrew to them. "The soldiers told him he has just five minutes to evacuate the house," she said.
Counselor Farraj al-Hau tried to assure the children, especially the boys, that it's OK to be scared, that he was also frightened during the war.
Then he asked the children to draw. The youngest ones just managed a few squiggles, but almost all the drawings of the older ones included tanks, helicopters or bodies sprawled on the ground. One boy drew a Palestinian gunman firing an assault rifle at a tank. In another picture, two blue dots meant to be land mines were planted under tanks.
At one point, 5-year-old Saja Abed Rabbo, in pigtails and pajamas, started crying. Counselor Mustafa Haj-Ahmed led her away and sat with her on a nearby chunk of cement, gently asking her what happened. She barely spoke.
Haj-Ahmed walked with her and a relative to her wrecked home. Her grandfather, Mohammed, explained that the family, Saja among them, came under heavy fire in the house for three days before fleeing. He said Saja saw the bodies of two cousins, ages 13 and 14, who were killed in the fighting.
The counselors said they'd return to the neighborhood for more intensive counseling.
Gaza's 221 U.N. schools are also trying to help the children cope. On Saturday, the first day of school, teachers asked students to share their stories.
The weekly human rights classes will include lessons about nonviolent ways of solving conflicts. Ging said the new program had been planned for awhile, but now has greater urgency.
"We have to stand with the mothers and fathers who want their children to grow up to be doctors, lawyers and civilized in their behavior and their thinking," Ging said. "But for sure, the circumstances here, day by day, are working against all of us who have that agenda."
For 14-year-old Zakariya Baroud, the trauma is still too real. He lost three classmates in an Israeli mortar attack that killed 42 people, most of them civilians, near a U.N. school in the Jebaliya refugee camp. Israel said at the time that troops were firing at a Palestinian rocket squad in the area.
Zakariya said he saw bodies strewn across the main road, including that of his best friend, Bashar Deeb, with a deep gash in his throat.
His father, Baker, spent eight years in Israeli prisons for activities in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a violent group. He said he'd like Zakariya to attend university, but wouldn't talk him out of taking up arms.
"He is seeing suffering right now," he said of his son. "For 22 days, we were not able to sleep. He has witnessed the events by himself, so he, by himself, hates Israel."

My thoughts:

Hamas is the problem that needs to be eliminated,But the cowards hide behind women and children when Israel fightsback.

It's a shame that people don't realize that the people of mideast are creating the violence by their inaction to rid themselves of the insanity of the terror groups. It is inevitable that a price will be paid by them for their support or indifference to the terrorists who have gained control. As long as these maniacs are in power the people of the mideast will continue to suffer. It will cost many lives to overthrow out these murders but no more than they are losing allowing these criminals to remain with the power of life or death over them.