Baghdad: The Price of a Bullet Has Tripled

[georgephillip]

Patrick Cockburn has covered the Middle East, often unembedded, since 1979. In his latest post from Baghdad (18 June 2014) he reveals the cost of a bullet for an AK47 has tripled to 3,000 Iraqi dinars or about $2, Kalashinikovs "are almost impossible to buy from arms dealers though pistols can still be obtained at three times the price of a week ago."

The Iraqi government also "closed down the internet at 9am" after previously closing YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Cockburn's article is brief and worth a read:

"Iraq is breaking up, with Shia and ethnic minorities fleeing massacres as a general Sunni revolt, led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis) sweeps through northern Iraq.

"The Isis assault is still gaining victories, capturing the Shia Turkoman town of Tal Afar west of Mosul after heavy fighting against one of the Iraqi army’s more effective units.

"Iraq could soon see sectarian slaughter similar to that which took place at the time of the partition of India in 1947.

"Pictures and evidence from eye witnesses confirm that Isis massacred some 1,700 Shia captives, many of them air force cadets, at the air force academy outside Tikrit, which proves that Isis intends to cleanse its new conquests of Shia.

"Sunni cadets were told to go home.

"If the battle moves to Baghdad, then the Shia majority in the capital might see the Sunni enclaves, particularly those in west Baghdad, such as Amiriya and Khadra, as weak points in their defences, and drive out the inhabitants..."

One Iraqi general had a one word answer when asked about the cause of the government's collapse:

"'Corruption! Corruption! Corruption!'

"He said it started when the Americans told the Iraqi army to outsource food and other supplies in about 2005. A battalion commander was paid for a unit of 600 soldiers, but had only 200 men under arms and pocketed the difference which meant enormous profits.

"The army became a money-making machine for senior officers and often an extortion racket for ordinary soldiers who manned the checkpoints."

The Baghdad Fear Index » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

 

[Freewill]

Sad, sad, sad. There is going to be much bloodshed and it ain't the fault of the USA.

 

[georgephillip]

Sad, sad, sad. There is going to be much bloodshed and it ain't the fault of the USA.

Of course it's not.
It is all Wesley's fault!

"In Clark's book, Winning Modern Wars, published in 2003, he describes his conversation with a military officer in the Pentagon shortly after 9/11 regarding a plan to attack seven Middle Eastern countries in five years: 'As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Clark#General_Clark.27s_Book_on_Modern_Wars

 

[Freewill]

Sad, sad, sad. There is going to be much bloodshed and it ain't the fault of the USA.

Of course it's not.
It is all Wesley's fault!

"In Clark's book, Winning Modern Wars, published in 2003, he describes his conversation with a military officer in the Pentagon shortly after 9/11 regarding a plan to attack seven Middle Eastern countries in five years: 'As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran.'"

Wesley Clark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And all those countries indeed are crap holes that are against a civilized world.

 

[georgephillip]

Sad, sad, sad. There is going to be much bloodshed and it ain't the fault of the USA.

Of course it's not.
It is all Wesley's fault!

"In Clark's book, Winning Modern Wars, published in 2003, he describes his conversation with a military officer in the Pentagon shortly after 9/11 regarding a plan to attack seven Middle Eastern countries in five years: 'As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran.'"

Wesley Clark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And all those countries indeed are crap holes that are against a civilized world.

When was the last time any one of them shot up your neighborhood?

 

[georgephillip]

"Who is Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi...?"

"There are disputes over his career depending on whether the source is Isis itself, US or Iraqi intelligence but the overall picture appears fairly clear.

"He was born in Samarra, a largely Sunni city north of Baghdad, in 1971 and is well educated.

"With black hair and brown eyes, a picture of al-Baghdadi taken when he was a prisoner of the Americans in Bocca Camp in southern Iraq between 2005 and 2009, makes him look like any Iraqi man in his thirties.

"His real name is believed to be Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai, who has degrees in Islamic Studies, including poetry, history and genealogy, from the Islamic University of Baghdad.

"He may have been an Islamic militant under Saddam as a preacher in Diyala province, to the north east of Baghdad, where, after the US invasion of 2003, he had his own armed group.

"Insurgent movements have a strong motive for giving out misleading information about their command structure and leadership, but it appears al-Baghdadi spent five years as prisoner of the Americans."

Who is Behind ISIS? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names