U.S. official says Iraq can defend itself

By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

A spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq told USA TODAY Tuesday that Iraqi forces can defend their country from an insurgency in spite of two days of violence that has some military experts calling on U.S. troops to remain beyond a Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline.

Speaking to USA TODAY's Editorial Board, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan said horrific insurgent terrorist attacks this week will not threaten the Iraqi government.

"I think the Iraqi government understands the threat that both al-Qaeda poses and that these militant groups pose and has the ability to defeat them," Buchanan said. "Defeating any of those is going to take consistent pressure on all parts of their networks for a long time."

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Surging Iraq violence

The Christian Science Monitor

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / August 16, 2011

Policemen and residents gather at the site of a bomb attack in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, on Aug. 15. Ali Abu Shish/Reuters

The death toll in Iraq yesterday, with at least 70 murdered in attacks across the country, was bad enough. But the scope of the killing carries worrying echoes of the way sectarian warfare ramped up across Iraq starting in late 2003, leading to the country's civil war. [...]

The sheer scale of the activity yesterday makes it hard to dismiss events as the work of a handful of terrorists. Car bombs at a market in the southern city of Kut killed about 40. A suicide attack killed three policemen at the government counterterrorism center in Tikrit, the hometown of executed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Four Iraqi soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in the Sunni town of Baquba, north of Baghdad. Separate car bombs in Baquba and nearby Khan Bani Saad killed eight.

In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, a suicide car bomb attacked the police headquarters, seeking to open the way for other militants. Seven people were murdered in that attack. There were multiple attacks in the ethnically and religiously mixed city of Kirkuk, with extensive damage done to a Syriac Orthodox Christian church there.

The Minister of Higher Education's convoy was attacked in Baghdad's wealthy diplomatic neighborhood of Mansour. Capping the day's violence off was an attack in Youssifiyah. The Associated Press reports that a group of men in military uniforms entered a mosque there during evening prayers yesterday, dragged out seven men and then murdered them.

Those killings were reminiscent of hundreds of murders in the area between 2004-07, when Youssifiyah – a town 12 miles south of Baghdad – lay squarely within a mixed Sunni-Shiite area that foreigners and locals referred to as the the triangle of death. Murders by men in uniform were common, whether insurgents dressed as security officials or actual police and soldiers moonlighting as death squads.

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If the cities of Iraq burn, causing the U.S. to abandon the land out of frustration at the failure of reconstruction, two more judgments on Babylon will have occurred, just as the prophet Jeremiah predicted. Invasion, capture, execution, burning and abandonment. Then civil war with the Kurds, plundering, flood and drought, leading to utter desolation. So decreed the prophet, before tossing the scroll of judgment into the Euphrates twenty-six hundred years ago.

Could his prophecy be coming true today?

If the cities burn...

Gulf News reviews devastation inflicted on Iraq

Patrick Seale, Special Correspondent to the Gulf News, recounts in an August 12, 2011 article the destruction inflicted upon Iraq in the last 30 years:

Iraq was once a proud and powerful Arab country. With its vast oil resources, its great rivers, and its educated middle class, it was in many ways an Arab success story — before things started to go wrong. The last 30 years have been terrible.

Among the gruesome landmarks were first, the eight-year-long life-and-death struggle with the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1980-88, which Iraq managed to survive, but only with great loss of life and material destruction; second, the Gulf War of 1991, when it was forcibly expelled from Kuwait by America and its allies after Saddam Hussain was rash enough to invade his neighbour; third, the 13 years of punitive international sanctions which followed the Kuwait war and which are said to have cost the lives of half a million Iraqi children; and fourth, America’s devastating invasion of 2003 and its long occupation of the country, which is due, at least in principle, to end on December 31 this year.

Jeremiah the Hebrew prophet of 2,600 years ago predicted an invasion and occupation of the land of the Chaldeans by "a great nation and many kings... aroused from the remote parts of the earth... (who are) cruel and have no mercy" (Jer 50:41-42) who then "cry out with shouts of victory over (it)" (51:14), foreigners who "winnow (Babylon) and... devastate her land" (51:2).

Seale continues:

Iraq’s dilemma today is that it may still need help from the United States, the power which, more than any other, has destroyed it.

Jeremiah describes this destruction: "How (you have) been cut off and broken! How Babylon has become an object of horror among the nations!...The LORD has opened his armory and has brought forth the weapons of his indignation... Come to her from the farthest border; open up her barns, pile her up like heaps and utterly destroy her" (50:23-27).

Despite an agreement of withdrawal, a possible extension of U.S. troops may be in the works:

This is the background to the current discussions between Baghdad and Washington about a possible extension of America’s military presence in Iraq beyond 2011 — the date set by the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (Sofa) for a final US evacuation.

There are still some 46,000 American soldiers in Iraq,

While the respective political leaders of today hold "divided" opinions on the extension, Jeremiah describes the scenario that will precipitate a rapid abandonment of Iraq by its occupying reconstructionists -- "I shall set fire to his cities, and it will devour all his environs... The broad wall of Babylon will be completely razed, and her high gates will be set on fire; so the (foreigners) will toil for nothing, and the nations become exhausted (because of the) fire" (50:32; 51:58). Then they will say, "We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven and towers up to the very skies" (51:8).

Writes Seale:

The Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid declared last month that ‘now is the time for our military mission to come to a close.’ Republicans, in contrast, want America to remain in Iraq — to defend its interests and confront Iran. Senator John McCain, for example, has argued that there is a ‘compelling case’ for the US to keep at least 13,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. Opinion is divided in Iraq also. The Kurds desperately want the Americans to stay as guarantors of their fragile semi-independence from Baghdad, while hardline Shiite factions, notably the Sadrists, who are close to Iran, want to get rid of the Americans altogether, and the sooner the better. In between these two poles are a number of more moderate parties, both Shiite and Sunni, who have no great love for the Americans, and would rather be free of them, but recognise that they may still be needed to stabilise a highly volatile situation — both inside the country and in the surrounding neighbourhood.

But when the fires break out and consume the cities, the occupiers will "forsake" the land, and the rest of the judgments will then play out, leading to a final and complete "desolation" (51:62), "and it will never again be inhabited or dwelt in from generation to generation" (50:39).

Seale declares the present state of Iraq:

There is a vast amount of rebuilding to be done in Iraq. The 2003 war overthrew Saddam Hussain’s brutal regime, but the horrors which followed have been at least as bad as — and probably a good deal worse than — anything he was guilty of.

Just as Jeremiah quoted the occupying reconstructionists lamenting in his vision: "'Suddenly Babylon has fallen and been broken; Wail over her! Bring balm for her pain; Perhaps she may be healed...'" (51:8). But of course she will not be healed, but abandoned.

Seale then counts off the "horrors" -- just as Jeremiah called them -- inflicted upon the land:

The US invasion triggered a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites which killed tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions inside the country and sent millions more fleeing as refugees abroad (including much of the Christian community).

And so Jeremiah recites the same: "There is a sound of fugitives and refugees from the land of Babylon... Flee from the midst of Babylon, and each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment... Come forth from her midst, my people, and each of you save yourselves..." (50:28; 51:6, 45).

It destroyed Iraq as a unitary state by encouraging the emergence of a Kurdish statelet, now linked awkwardly to the rest of the country in a loose federation.

The prophecy envisions the rising again of this nation to the north, which shall itself be "aroused" against Babylon, the kingdoms of "Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz... the kings of the Medes" (51:11,27-28), who are in fact none other than the Kurds [Who are the Kurds?; Are Kurds descended from the Medes?].

It smashed Iraq’s infrastructure to the extent that, in this summer’s heat, with temperatures climbing to over 50 degrees Celsius, the country suffers from crippling power cuts. On average in the south, electricity is on for one hour and off for four. The population is clamouring for better services.

As Jeremiah recounts: "She will be the least of the nations, a wilderness, a parched land, and a desert... Everyone who passes by Babylon will be horrified and will hiss because of all her wounds" (50:12-13).

And so Seale concludes:

Al things considered, it does not look as if America’s involvement with Iraq — which has proved catastrophic for both countries – will be ended soon.

Until the fires begin. Then we shall "forsake her", and each return to his own country.

23 wounded in church attack in north Iraq

By YAHYA BARZANJI - Associated Press | AP

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) — A car bomb outside a Christian church wounded 23 people on Tuesday morning, police said, as security forces found and disabled vehicles packed with explosives outside two other parishes in northern Iraq.

The bombing and the two averted attacks in the northern city ofKirkuk signal continued violence against Iraqi Christians, nearly 1 million of whom have fled since the war began in 2003.

"The terrorists want to make us flee Iraq, but they will fail," said the Rev. Haithem Akram, the priest of one of the churches that was targeted. "We are staying in our country. The Iraqi Christians are easy targets because they do not have militias to protect them. The terrorists want to terrorize us, but they will fail."

The assault began at 6 a.m., when the car blew up outside the Syrian Catholic church, severely damaging the church and nearby houses, said police Col. Taha Salaheddin.

The parish's leader, the Rev. Imad Yalda, was the only person inside at the time of the blast and was wounded. The 22 other wounded were people whose nearby homes were hit by the blast, said Kirkuk police chief Maj. Gen. Jamal Tahir.

Following the blast at the Syrian Catholic church, police discovered two more car bombs parked outside the Christian Anglican church and the Mar Gourgis church, both in downtown Kirkuk.

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Jeremiah warned, "Wander away from the midst of Babylon, and go forth from the land of the Chaldeans... Flee from the midst of Babylon, and each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, for this is the LORD's time of vengeance; he is going to render recompense to her... Babylon (will be made) a desolation without inhabitants... Come forth from her midst, my people, and each of you save yourselves from the fierce anger of the LORD" (Jer 50:8, 51:6, 29, 45).

Rev. Akram, heed Jeremiah.