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TechnoratiRed Cross Warns of Complacency in Still-Bloody Iraq
BAGHDAD - Violence may have fallen sharply in Iraq from the worst days of sectarian killing, but an average monthly death toll of 500 people must not be considered "normal," the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
![[A mourner cries as he carries the coffin of a man killed by Iraqi forces in Baghdad Septemer 9, 2009. Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. troops, killed two men during a pre-dawn raid in southeastern Baghdad, witnesses and the U.S. military said. The U.S. military said the force returned fire on the two men after coming under fire themselves. (REUTERS/Saad Shalash)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/icrcwarns_complacency_iraq.jpg "icrcwarns_complacency_iraq.jpg")
"There is a lack of respect for human life. Even if security has improved a lot ... you still have dozens of people killed on a daily basis," Juan-Pedro Schaerer, the head of the Red Cross' Iraq delegation, told Reuters in an interview Tuesday.
The lingering violence in Iraq may have faded from world headlines, and Iraq's retreat from the brink of civil war two years ago may be presented as a good news story, but civilians continue to bear the brunt of ongoing attacks.
While the number of daily attacks have dropped sharply since the height of the sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, Iraqis still fall victim to regular roadside bombs, suicide attacks and other violence.
Militant activity is centred in ethnically mixed areas of central and northern Iraq, and local police and soldiers are prime targets. In August, the number of civilians killed shot up to 393, the highest level since April.
On August 19, around 100 people were killed in twin truck bombings at government ministries in Baghdad.
"This is a real concern. Civilians are paying the high price of this violence in Iraq ... Sometimes there is the impression that life is going on as normal," Schaerer said.
As attention in Europe and the United States shifts towards Afghanistan, the government of U.S. President Barack Obama is removing troops from Iraq as part of the plan to halt all combat activities in August of next year.
Some fear violence could flare anew in the lead-up to hotly contested national elections in January, in which Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is expected to face off against erstwhile allies from Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is aiming to shift more resources to Iraq's north, where attacks are reported almost daily in Nineveh province's violent capital Mosul, and to the disputed city of Kirkuk.
Iraq's minority Kurds claim oil-producing Kirkuk as their ancestral homeland and want to fold it into their largely autonomous enclave of Kurdistan, a move Arabs reject.
Disputes over Kirkuk and other regions in the last year have come close to outright conflict.
"The idea is ... to increase our presence in the so-called disputed territories, to be more present in Kirkuk and hopefully at one stage to be more present in Nineveh," Schaerer said.
ICRC's operations in Iraq include delivering aid, supporting water and health projects and visiting detainees in Iraqi and U.S. detention centres, one of its main activities.
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Iraq, was once called Assyria, then Babelon, and the ruins accrosss the river from Mosul are the site of ancient Nineveh, This ladies is where the record of history began, it is being dug up as we speak by treasure hunters and archeologists, it is a known fact that the oldest written records are found here, and these are not stories or geniologies or mythos.
these are records of DEBT.
Yes debt and history are the same thing, and we are at the climax of both.
It is our destiny to be caught up in the fate of this nation, with blood on our hands, and money on our mind.
It is poetic justice, and the fate of the occidental cycle of time. far from forgotten, it is embedded in the very fabric of recorded memory.
Islam was framed,
So the GOP and it's Religions Reich have weaned themselves down to only 500 murders per month in Iraq now? Should we all cheer?
We don't only need to find our spines on health care but on Iraq and Afghanistan-- that's three big pains in the American ass along with others. And we need to take care of them, if we're dying we need to go to the hospital. Out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, reform the American system of health care deliverance to make it less costly for ordinary people. How can we possibly afford, monetarily and emotionally, senseless, unjustifiable wars? If Al Qaeda is the target, it's like fleas anywhere in the world. Is the proper response drones that look like larval wasps and countless troops made up of strange, neo-con youths who only respond like Hitlerjugend to arbitrary authority, in fact want no substance in their lives, insist that "might makes right," and only want to be on the side of that might, a much stronger motivation for them than preservation of their own lives, which clearly they don't value very much? They and we haven't moved beyond the non-existent mentality of George W. Bush. Out of both places NOW. This has nothing to do with whether someone is "anti-war." That's just another stupid label. Our being in Iraq or Afghanistan, exactly the same thing, just doesn't make any sense, is surely an inexorable force taking this country down and preventing it from dealing with real problems.
If the AmeriKans were loosing 500 of their own a month, there would be a very loud outcry--but these deaths are only brown-skinned, rag-headed Iraqis, and of course we don't even count them--besides looky here we are bringing back a whole 4,000 pretty soon(what's that 2 maybe 3% of the uniformed troops)--no one bothers to count the mercenaries--coming or going. We say it's time to bring them all home we have no legitimate business there in the first place. Someone please remember to also mention that on a protest sign, 'cause it's not just about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran,--it's about the whole Middle East--See you all in five days in DC--if you're there, you care--if you don't you won't...
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
iraq..........the forgotten country.