One Utah

This may be the week that history records was the turning point. Our Congress finally found the courage to take action, to try to limit the damage the Bush administration is causing. In Iraq, it was just another typical, horrifying week. Note: a number of reported assassinations and murders in Iraq are omitted, I just listed the high-profile incidents. It’s important to remember that most deaths and kidnappings of Iraqis go unreported.

“There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. There is no military solution in Iraq. Iraq belongs to the 25 million people who live there.”
- Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE)

On Monday, US soldiers repelled an attack by thirty gunmen and two suicide truck bombers at an outpost near Fallujah. Nine US soldiers were injured in the attack, and the military estimates they killed 15 insurgent gunmen.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) tells Bill Bennett “There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.”

Gunmen described as Mahdi Army militiamen burned down five Sunni mosques in the town of Haswa, south of Baghdad.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted 50-48 against an amendment to strip Iraq troop withdrawal provisions from the emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) went against President Bush for the first time and sided with the Democrats.

In two Baghdad neighborhoods, residents report fighting between armed Sunni groups and elements described as Mahdi Army. In Sunni areas, militants have been re-occupying homes in areas cleared by US and Iraqi forces.

Three massive car bombs exploded in Tal Afar, killing 50 people and wounding 120 others. A suicide car bomb killed 17 north of Ramadi. Two Americans were killed and five wounded in a rocket attack on Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Nearly a million displaced people in Iraq’s increasingly volatile southern provinces are in urgent need of food, medicines and municipal services, local officials and NGOs say.

Heavy fighting broke out in the town of Sahla as US forces raided the residence of Muhammad al-Tabataba’i, a leader in the Sadrist organization.

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT): “It is clear that for the first time in a long time, there is reason for cautious optimism about Iraq.”

On Wednesday, President Bush blamed Democrats for his threatened veto of the emergency supplemental appropriations bill. “Funding for our forces in Iraq will begin to run out in mid-April,” Bush said. “Members of Congress need to stop making political statements and start providing vital funds for our troops. Need to get that bill to my desk so I can sign it into law.”

“Why doesn’t he get real with what’s going on with the world?” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said after Bush’s speech. “We’re not holding up funding in Iraq and he knows that. Why doesn’t he deal with the real issues facing the American people?”

Shiite police officers and militiamen went on a killing spree in Tal Afar, seeking revenge for Tuesday’s car bomb attacks. They shot and killed at least 45 men, while others were wounded or kidnapped.

Insurgents used two chlorine truck bombs as well as mortars and small arms to attack a local government building in Fallujah, wounding 15 Iraqi and US soldiers. Many more are suffering the effects of the chlorine gas.

CNN’s Michael Ware, reporting from a Baghdad rooftop while a gunbattle rages nearby: “Senator McCain’s statement that there are places in Baghdad where it is safe to walk is beyond ludicrous.”

For the second time this week, insurgents made another coordinated attack on a US outpost in Fallujah, using mortars, small arms fire and a truck bomb and killing eight Iraqi policemen. A three-day curfew has been imposed on Fallujah, with all entrances to the city closed and residents warned to keep indoors.

The king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, condemned the presence of American forces in Iraq as an “illegitimate foreign occupation” in a speech at the opening of the Arab League summit in Riyadh.

In a memo detailing observations during his most recent visit to Iraq, General Barry McCaffrey concludes “the US Armed Forces are in a position of strategic peril,” and that “Iraq is ripped by a low-grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3000 citizens murdered per month.”

On Thursday, the Senate voted 51-47 to approve $122 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with a non-binding resolution that U.S. combat troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq within 120 days and complete that pullout by next March. President Bush again threatened to veto the bill, which he claims is “a bill that doesn’t fund our troops.”

Later on CNN, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) exercised his gift for forcefully stating what everyone knows: “I say to President Bush: if he vetoes this bill, he’s the one cutting off funding for the troops.”

Ryan Crocker, the new American ambassador to Iraq, was sworn in at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone. He stated that the US faces “historic challenges” in Iraq that “will demand a strong commitment and broad performance from the Iraqi government and the international community.” Crocker emphasized that “all of these (challenges) will be very hard, but if I thought it was impossible I would not be standing here today.”

The predominantly Shiite town of Khalis, north of Baghdad, and a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, were targeted by multiple coordinated car bombs, killing more than 100 people. Reports from Khalis put the toll at 40 dead and at least 80 wounded. The Shaab neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad, one of those supposedly secured under the new security plan, suffered an estimated 60 dead, with scores of wounded.

Iraq commander General David Petreus blamed Al Qaida for the ever-increasing sectarian violence, while claiming that the security plan remains “generally on track,”, citing a drop in the number of bullet-riddled and tortured bodies found in and around Baghdad, and the recent capture of alleged high ranking members of the Mahdi Army militia.

The number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq has doubled, but the $4.4 billion Pentagon task force assigned to defeat them hasn’t. IEDs are the number one cause of American casualties.

This entry was posted Thursday, March 29th, 2007 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Iraq, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.