A Slideshow of 30 Photos from the Peace Vigil at the White House

"'Hit Men Kill 240 Iraqi Officials'"
by Press TV, Jan. 11, 2011

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22752

Iraqi Interior Ministry's Under-Secretary for Security Major General Hussein Kamal says nearly 240 security men and intelligence officials have recently been killed by hit men.

Nearly 360 Iraqis, including 240 high-level security officials, have been killed by so-called 'hit men,' a recent phenomenon that has taken root in Iraq, General Kamal added on Tuesday, the Iraqi daily Al-Zaman, a newspaper published simultaneously in London and Baghdad, reported.

The tactic involves utilizing silencers on pistols and rifles to enable an attacker to silently kill their victim and then flee without being noticed, the Iraqi official added.

Such weapons were produced during the Baath regime; however, there is a possibility that they are smuggled into the country from the porous northern, eastern and southern borders, General Kamal explained.

The deputy Iraqi interior minister further added that Iraqi counter-terrorism forces were taking measures to track down the attackers supposedly belonging to al-Qaeda and the Baath Party of executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi Council of Ministers has agreed to recruit 200,000 policemen and interior ministry staff for better protecting Baghdad, Kamal said earlier.

The force will approximately double the number of the current policemen in the Iraqi capital.

Militant threats and a lack of hotel space for delegations pose stiff challenges to Iraq's plans to host for the first time in 20 years the annual Arab League meeting on March 23.

"Insecurity surges as unidentified assassins spread terror in Iraqi security ranks"

by Fatih Abdulsalam, Azzaman.com, January 14, 2011

www.uruknet.info/?p=m73901

The last two years saw an upsurge in insecurity due to an unprecedented hike in assassinations whether in Baghdad or other major Iraqi cities.

These assassinations, which have so far claimed more than 2,000 lives among the country’s security forces, are carried out in two major ways.

In the first, the assassins rely on silencer guns which are either imported or produced locally. In the second, the assassins rely on stick explosive charges most of which are imported.

The problem with these assassinations is two-fold. First, the assassins select their victims very carefully and make sure they have a role to play in the country’s armed forces and security ranks. Second, they have turned into an unstoppable contagious disease.

The paradox is that no one can say exactly who is behind these assassinations and why they are being carried out at this particular junction.

There are no Wikileaks reports to reveal the secrets behind these terrifying killings. But one can say with certainty that both U.S. and Iraqi government claims of having succeeded to reinstate relative calm in the country are false and hollow.

Blaming them on al-Qaeda branch in Iraq, the so-called the Iraqi Islamic state, is the worst conspiracy theory-hatched scenario one can imagine. If the assassinations are truly of al-Qaeda making, then we the Iraqis and the whole world with us should lament not only our future but the future of our children.

Such an allegation, if true, it will mean that al-Qaeda is unbeatable and that the U.S. has cut and run in Iraq and that our shaky government will soon be overthrown with the terror group’s operatives taking over.

Who other than the world’s mightiest intelligence agencies is capable of carrying out such highly coordinated and well-targeted assassinations? (my emphasis) How come that the mighty U.S. armed forces could not put an end to them?

The ongoing assassinations leave more than on question mark about whatever the U.S. and Iraqi government officials say in regard to conditions in Iraq.

They tell every Iraqi person that nothing is secure in Iraq. If government army and security officers can be killed in droves every day, what about ordinary Iraqis? If those supposed to protect Iraqis cannot protect themselves, one can imagine the hell the Iraqi people have been in since the 2003-U.S. invasion.

Large-scale assassinations carried out with such intensity and precision are not the work of an individual or even a group firing at random or planting a bomb on the side of a road.

These assassinations are the product of a complex intelligence effort determined to liquidate a class of Iraqis for purely strategic benefits. (my emphasis)

This year will turn into a fertile ground for the agencies carrying out their assassinations. There is good reason to believe that 2011 will see further intensification by these assassinations targeting and selecting more important individuals in government ranks.

2011 will become one of the most difficult years for the Iraqi street since the 2003-U.S. invasion.

Some additional articles:

I got the following link from a copy of the piece at Uruknet. This copy includes an embedded video for part 1 of 4 of "Iraq's Secret War Files" posted at Youtube last October. The full length of the 4 parts is roughly 48 minutes and the first paragraph of the description provided at Youtube begins by saying, "The only TV documentary to have advance access to the biggest WikiLeaks release ever. This is what really happened during the Iraq war, not what the US PR machine of the time wanted us to believe. The reality behind the civilian death count; al-Qaeda's fictitious presence; torture, torture and more torture. A wall of truth revealing unprecedented levels of unwarranted aggression. Dispatches, Channel 4's flagship current affairs strand, exposes the full and unreported horror of the Iraqi conflict and its aftermath, ....".

Now the article.

"Iraq Is Bleeding Every Day"
by Siun, January 2, 2011

http://firedoglake.com/2011/01/02/iraq-is-bleeding-every-day

Iraq enters 2011 – the year in which American forces are supposed to finally leave – with all too many wounds from our occupation. While we hear little here in the US about the effects of our war and occupation, Iraqis live with the results daily.

Take for example, the continuing level of violence. Western media keep reminding us that the casualty count is lower than at the height of the war – but for 2010, conservative estimates, from Iraqi government sources, place the dead and injured from violence at unbearable numbers:

"“The statistics carried out during the periiod from 01/1/2010 and 31/12/2010, the violence acts, including killings, assassinations, along with unknown dead bodies and victims of the security forces in Iraq has registered 4,561 killings and 12,749 injuries,” the report, copy of which landed in Aswat al-Iraq news agency, said."

(snip)

Part 1 of 4 of the Channel 4 documentary:

"Iraq's Secret War Files 1/4" (15:00)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUDxADbXhuU

The only TV documentary to have advance access to the biggest WikiLeaks release ever. This is what really happened during the Iraq war, not what the US PR machine of the time wanted us to believe. The reality behind the civilian death count; al-Qaeda's fictitious presence; torture, torture and more torture. A wall of truth revealing unprecedented levels of unwarranted aggression.

Dispatches, Channel 4's flagship current affairs strand, exposes the full and unreported horror of the Iraqi conflict and its aftermath, revealing the true scale of civilian casualties; and allegations that after the scandal of Abu Ghraib, American soldiers continued to abuse prisoners; and that US forces did not systematically intervene in the torture and murder of detainees by the Iraqi security services. The programme also features previously unreported material of insurgents being killed while trying to surrender.

Channel 4 is the only UK broadcaster to have been given access to nearly 400,000 secret military significant activities reports (SIGACTS) logged by the US military in Iraq between 2004 and 2009. These reports tell the story of the war and occupation which the US military did not want the world to know.

(snip)

The data shows that the Americans were aware of the horrific level of violence inflicted by Iraqi sectarian militias: over 32,500 murders; more than 10,000 shot in the head; nearly 450 decapitated; over 160 were children.

One of the reasons given for the invasion of Iraq was the suggestion of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The US told the UN Security Council in 2003 that Iraq 'harboured' the terrorist network. However, in the leaked data there are only seven reports mentioning Al Qaeda in 2004, and none of these refer to Al Qaeda killing anyone. By 2008, there are 8,208 reports mentioning Al Qaeda attributing to it the deaths of 45 coalition soldiers, 486 members of the Iraqi Security Services and 1,291 civilians.

(snip)

The rest of the text with the video provides links, including one for downloading the documentary.

Re. what the last two excerpted paragraphs say:

a) I doubt that there's actual proof that it was Iraqi fighters against the occupation of their country who killed 32,500 Iraqis, et cetera. Many killings were by covert "black" ops of both Iraqi government "security" forces members as well as US and UK special ops, perhaps also Israelis. For this I can only recommend reading through the "Salvador Option and Death Squads" index of articles at www.brussellstribunal.org .

b) The "8,208 reports mentioning Al Qaeda" by 2008 might again be false reports. It's very possible that all of this was actually attributable to covert "black" ops, special forces ops.

In the side column of the Youtube page for the above video clip and where there are links for suggested videos there's a link for an AlJazeera documentary of 56 minutes and which is similarly titled, "The Secret Iraq Files", btw. I didn't view it yet, but it was posted last October and is based on the Iraq war logs released by Wikileaks; or is at least partly based on those logs.

Like US diplomatic cables, inaccurate war logs:

I only viewed part 1 of the Dispatches documentary, so far, but some of what it tells us is that the war logs must not be taken as accurate. Some, if not many, definitely are false. But what I have more in mind is that we need to treat the diplomatic cables being released (not produced, only released) by Wikileaks in the same way. They aren't necessarily accurate and many evidently aren't. They can contain errors as well as lies and they need to be carefully vetted.

Some diplomatic cables seem to have a high probability of being accurate, and some are clearly accurate, tout court; f.e., the cable sent from the US embassy in Honduras about the June 2009 coup there. But surely few people can know that most of the cables are accurate or very accurate without some investigation being carefully performed in order to vet what the cables say.

Diplomats work for imperialist and corporatist Washington. Few soldiers and other military people can be trusted; very, very few.

It seems like a good documentary and I'm now going to view the rest.

More assassinations of Iraqis, and Cui bono?:

And another article fitting to refer to with the slideshow for the vigil held in Washington January 15, 2011, is the following one. The last part of the article, under the subheading of "A dark summer for Iraqi academics", tells of the or some of the assassinations of important Iraqi academics in 2010 or summer 2010.

"Iraq: The Age Of Darkness"
by Dirk Adriaensens, Sept. 19, 2010

The article is linked in the page for "recent BRussells Tribunal articles, analyses and newsletters...", which is linked just beneath "ENTER THE WEBSITE" at www.brussellstribunal.org. I'm not providing the direct link because people should check out other parts of the Web site, which I rarely see any references to.

Who stands to benefit and/or profit?

Iraqis won't benefit from the killings of their academics and the US can certainly and strategically exploit the apparent lack of security caused by the assassinations of Iraqi security people. Some anti-occupation Iraqis, the ones willing to fight and capable of fighting, might want to kill Iraqi security force members, such as for treason, f.e.; but any serious Iraqi resistance leadership would know that this would only encourage lengthening of the presence of the US et al.

Length of the US war(s):

US war on Iraq, 20 years, and still counting, the counter hasn't stopped, yet everyone says the war on Afghanistan has been the longest war or the longest US war or US-led war, and it hasn't been going on for 20 years straight. It basically is 20 years in total, counting the 1980s and since October 2001, for the 1980s war in Afghanistan basically or essentially was the doing or making of the US; but Iraq has been 20 years straight. The US warred on Iraq throughout the two Clinton terms, since he was C-in-C of continuous bombings of Iraq; not bombings every day, but repeated many times in order to destroy Iraqi military capabilities. And the criminal economic sanctions were an even greater act of warfare against Iraq and these were constantly applied, enforced.

I and some other people still hold to the Vietnam War having been longer than the present war on Afghanistan, for it did not last for only 8 years. Even the Wikipedia page provides information or a description that informs us that this war started in, I believe, 1960 or 1959 and ended in either 1972 or '73. And the US did war there during all of those years, but there's also information that tells readers of it that when France was warring there, the US provided most of the funding, which essentially meant that the US was warring there through proxy. If a party wars through proxy, then the the former party is committing war and both parties are guilty. And in that sense, the US war on Vietnam was longer than 12 or 13 years. Forget 8, for while it usually, often anyway, is not meant in half-truth terms, it still is half of the truth, very incomplete.

The war on Iraq has been longer in terms of direct or overt US involvement and being led by the US.

20 years and still counting ...

UPDATE:

I finished viewing all four parts of "Iraq's Secret War Files" from Channel 4 Dispatches and have comments about it, but if anyone's interested in knowing what the comments are, then they're posted in the Youtube pages for the four clips. It's a fine documentary even if far from complete, but it repeats Washington claims and Washington is the last place that I'll look for for truth. Washington doesn't "rain" truth; it "rains", "downpours" lies.