30th April, 2005 - After fasting - or watching non-stop squabbling - for almost three months since the January 30 elections, Iraqis finally got a new cabinet no one likes (except the Kurds).

Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari didn't get what he wanted. No wonder: the Washington/Green Zone is wary of him. The Sunnis are threatening to walk out of the government altogether. Approved by 180 parliamentarians against five, with a significant 90 absences, this is not even a full cabinet: Jaafari was unable to appoint permanent ministers to the Oil, Defense, Electricity, Industry and Human Rights ministries. All posts are meant to be filled by May 7.

The crucial Oil Ministry post is expected to go to a Shi'ite. But the conflicting factions within the election-winning United Iraqi Alliance simply could not reach an agreement. Alarm bells have been ringing all over the Green Zone on the news that the Sadrists of the Fadila Party badly want the Oil Ministry.

But for the moment, even more alarmingly, the acting minister is none other than the unsinkable convicted fraudster, former Pentagon darling and purported Iranian agent Ahmad Chalabi. "For the moment" could last a lifetime: Chalabi - who has been oiling his connections with leading Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for a long time - will undoubtedly waste no time filling the Oil Ministry with his Iraqi National Congress cronies. Not a few in Baghdad firmly believe that the Green Zone may have had a perverse hand on his appointment.

To say that Sunnis are angry would be an understatement. Powerful Sunni tribal Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer, one of the vice presidents, is threatening that all Sunnis may withdraw from the government - because this cabinet lineup is not what they had agreed to with Jaafari. No wonder: Sunnis wanted to finish off once and for all with de-Ba'athification, and insisted on a very firm Arab nationalist government.

Shi'ites from religious parties would never agree to these demands. Some Sunnis have already pulled out, such as the Front of Sunni Arab Blocs, which includes the Front of National Blocs and the National Dialogue Council. The Sunnis wanted seven ministries, especially Defense (they will probably get it; Jaafari is the acting minister). An alert Sistani was wise enough to have pressed for 10 ministries for the Sunnis.

One fears for Jaafari: he still has an uphill negotiation battle ahead. Some powerful Sunni tribal sheikhs and religious leaders have been fiercely denouncing "an occupation of Kurds and Shi'ites". Only a month ago, Sheikh Abu D'ham was saying that "the Kurds are asking for Kirkuk. Later on they will start asking for Baghdad. It was Saddam Hussein who gave the Kurds too much, more than they deserved."

Kurds may have received too much once again. They keep Hoshyar Zebari as foreign minister, an affable, American-approved Iraqi face to the world, and they have important positions in ministries such as as Planning and Development Cooperation (Barham Salih), Communications (Jwan Maasoum, a woman), Labor and Social Affairs (Idris Hadi) and Water Resources (Abdul Latif Rashi). Shi'ites predictably got several important ministries: Interior (Baqir Jabbur), Finance (Ali Allawi), Agriculture (Ali al-Bahadli), Justice (Abdul Hussein Shandal) and Transport (Salam al-Malik). A welcome development is that the Science and Technology Ministry is attributed to Bassima Boutros, a Christian woman.

As things stand, there's not a chance of the new government and parliament writing a draft constitution by mid-August. The political calendar will have to be delayed. Ominous signs abound. Moderates are dwindling, such as respected former diplomat Adnan Pachachi: he fled to the United Arab Emirates, perhaps in disgust, after his secular list received only one parliamentary seat in the elections.

The unsettling feeling about the cabinet is that it is hostage to a big picture it won't be able to control. This is because the foundations for a new Iraq - in fact, the Year Zero imposed by the Americans after Shock and Awe - simply do not exist.

The country's infrastructure and administration were totally devastated. Everything the Americans did pointed to an incendiary division on sectarian lines. Major players - fiercely against the occupation - are absent from this cabinet or any previous interim government. Scores of employees in most Iraqi ministries simply don't go to work; as far as the Ministry of Interior is concerned, according to the Jordanian press, this means hundreds of staff in the counterinsurgency sections.

With unemployment at a staggering 70%, many won't think twice to secure a US$400 monthly salary as a police officer; but when the going gets tough, as it does on a daily basis, these forces instantly dissolve. As for the Iraqi Armed Forces, $400 a month is unlikely to change the minds of disgruntled youngsters, already fierce nationalists more inclined to fight the occupiers.

There are even more ominous prospects. Outgoing interim prime minister and former US intelligence asset Iyad Allawi - known in Baghdad as "Saddam without a mustache" - badly wanted the Interior Ministry, so he could control his Ba'athist, Mukhabarat pals in charge of security and counterinsurgency. He didn't get it - the chosen minister is a moderate Shi'ite, Baqir Jabbur - nor any other cabinet posts he craved. So Allawi refashioned himself as opposition leader (his party had 40 seats in the elections), which would be tantamount to saying that the White House/Pentagon/Green Zone is now the opposition, since Allawi is the Americans' man. President George W Bush may have never thought he would be minority leader one day.

A least six militias are rampaging throughout Iraq, armed, trained and funded by the Pentagon. One of these - the powerful Special Police Commandos, with at least 10,000 men - as already acknowledged by US generals - is widely involved in applying the dreaded "Salvador option" that retired General Wayne Downing, former head of all US special operations forces, considers a "very valid tactic". The Special Commandos were active in the assault on Samarra last October, which American generals hailed as a "model" of counterinsurgency operations (not exactly: the resistance continues). They are also active in Ramadi and Mosul.

Their commander is the feared Major General Adnan Thavit al-Samarra'i, a member of an aborted, Allawi-conceived coup against Saddam in 1996. Thavit until now has been none other than the "security adviser" in charge of the face-lifted, Saddam-era General Security Directorate - infested with Saddam-era Mukhabarat agents. This is the organization Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld considers so precious that he had to fly to Baghdad to personally order Jaafari not to dismantle it. Thavit also happens to be the uncle of the former minister of interior. All this explains Allawi's obsession in controlling a ministry that so graciously houses his Pentagon-cherished top militia. Two other militias - the Muthana Brigade and the Defenders of Khadamiya - are also subordinated to Allawi.

From the White House/Pentagon point of view, the Special Police Commandos are the vanguard in the fight against the Sunni Arab resistance. But even with the commandos and with the Iraqi prison population swelling to more than 10,000, the resistance keeps averaging at least 60 attacks a day - and counting. Economic sabotage - the repeated bombing of electrical plants and oil pipelines - is relentless.

The Marines also have their own pet militias, such as the Iraqi Freedom Guard and the Freedom Fighters: these are usually Shi'ites from the south sent to fight against Sunnis in explosive Anbar province - the heart of the resistance. Pentagon financing of these myriad militias and the active involvement of Allawi in all these operations suggest that the Pentagon itself is destabilizing the country it is supposed to control. Destination: civil war.

It is not difficult to believe that Sunni Arab public opinion has not by any measure started to believe in the political process. It's true that many powerful Sunni Arabs, at least for the moment, are making a distinction between terror and resistance. But the moment the majority of Sunni Arab public opinion equates illegal occupation to the Shi'ites, Kurds and the political process, civil war is inevitable. There's nothing this hostage cabinet can do about it. We're not there yet, but it's getting closer by the minute. - Pepe Escobar - Asia Times via bnn

May 1, 2005 "In city after city and town after town, security forces who had signed up to secure Iraq and replace US forces appear to have abandoned posts or taken refuge inside them for fear of attacks" by Iraqi resistance fighters, the April 23 Washington Post reported.

As an example of this, the Post cited the situation in the town of Husaybah on the Syrian border, near a US Marine Corp base that came under a well coordinated attack by up to 100 insurgents on April 12. It reported that a puppet "Iraqi army unit that had once grown to 400 members has dwindled to a few dozen guardsmen 'holed up' inside a phosphate plant outside of Husaybah for their protection, a marine commander said".

Furthermore, according to the Post, "Many attacks have gone unchallenged by [US-recruited] Iraqi forces in large areas of the country dominated by insurgents".

In the 10 days before the Post carried its report on the collapse of the puppet Iraqi security forces, there was a dramatic escalation in attacks by Iraqi resistance fighters on US targets:

* Three GIs were killed and seven wounded in a mortar attack on the US military camp in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

* A suicide car bomb detonated as a Pentagon military convoy passed through Mosul.

* A Turkish truck carrying supplies to refresh US troops came under siege in Baiji and was burned.

* A military base for US troops and puppet Iraqi forces in Al Touz, north of Baghdad, came under rocket fire.

* A GI died during an attack on the Pentagon base in Tikrit.

* Near Tarmiya, north of Baghdad airport, insurgents downed a helicopter using a shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missile, killing the three Bulgarian crewmembers, two Fijian security guards and six US mercenaries employed by the North Carolina-based Blackwater company.

* A US soldier killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a US military convoy west of Baghdad. Doug Lorimer, Green Left Weekly

January 21, 2004 - President George Bush last night declared the US to be on a mission to "lead the cause of freedom" and claimed his doctrine of pre-emptive military action had advanced the cause of democracy and non-proliferation around the world.

In a defiantly worded state of the union address to Congress, the president significantly scaled down his claims over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction but was unapologetic over the country's invasion, arguing Saddam Hussein's removal had made the world "a better and safer place".

"Because of American leadership and resolve, the world is changing for the better," the president declared to the joint session of Congress. He said the resolve shown in the Iraqi campaign had persuaded Libya to renounce weapons of mass destruction.

"For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible and no one can now doubt the word of America," Mr Bush said. - Julian Borger- Guardian

WASHINGTON, April 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate on whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said on Tuesday. The number of "significant" international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by U.S. State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.

The aides were told the surge partly reflected an increased tally of violence in Kashmir, which is claimed by India and Pakistan, and the devotion of more manpower to U.S. monitoring efforts, which resulted in more attacks being counted overall. The State Department last year initially released erroneous figures that understated the attacks, fatalities and casualties in 2003 and used the figures to claim the Bush administration was prevailing in the war on terrorism.

It later said the number killed and injured in 2003 was more than double its original count and said "significant" terrorist attacks -- those that kill or seriously injure someone, cause more than $10,000 in damage or attempt to do either of those things -- rose to a 20-year high of 175. alertnet.

Friday 27th May, 2005 - Defense Department officials have garnered more than 70 acres of land to expand the sprawling 600-plus-acres on the west bank of the Potomac River overlooking the nation's capital.

The Arlington National Cemetery will be expanded by the inclusion of a newly acquired 70 acres.

'We estimated that we would run out of grave space between the year 2025 and 2030,' said cemetery superintendent John Metzler Jr. 'So one of the things we were directed to do was to develop a new master plan and to look at not only what we needed to do internally to maintain the cemetery, but also how we could look at expanding the cemetery beyond the year 2025.'

Officials searched around the cemetery in all directions to see who owned the land, what it was currently being used for, and the likelihood of being able to acquire the land.

'As a result of all this, we've been able to acquire three parcels of land so far, including the 44-acre Navy Annex that lies to our south,' Metzler noted. 'We also acquired a piece of property inside the cemetery that had belonged to the National Park Service, which was being used as a buffer zone between the Arlington House and the cemetery. There was a 24-acre tract, and we were able to acquire half of that -- 12 acres.'

The Arlington House mansion is where Gen. Robert E. Lee lived before the Civil War. After he joined the Confederacy, the plantation mansion was confiscated at the outbreak of the Civil War and converted to headquarters for the Union's Army of the Potomac. The grounds were used as a burial site for families that were too poor to claim their deceased loved ones from the battlefield.

Today, the mansion house is restored as a museum, and the grounds are considered a sacred shrine.

The cemetery also will use a 17-acre tract of land that's now a picnic area at adjacent Fort Myer, Metzler noted. 'We're also looking at relocating our utilities inside the cemetery from underneath the grass-tufted area and placing them underneath our roads,' he said.

With these initiatives in place, Metzler said, Arlington would be able to continue operations until at least 2060, and that would include development for both ground and columbarium burials.

He pointed out that the cemetery averages 26 burials a day, with 6,452 burials held during fiscal 2004. More than 292,000 people are buried at Arlington.

Eligibility for burial at Arlington includes:

Anyone who dies on active duty;
Any retired veteran with 20 years service or greater from the regular military;
Reservists who have one period of active duty service other than training, who are aged 60 or older, and have a total of 20 years or more; and Honorably discharged recipients of the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star and Purple.
Other eligible servicemembers include former prisoners of war and veterans who are medically disabled with a 30 percent rating or greater before Oct. 1, 1949, as a result of their military service and were discharged for that reason. The spouses of these servicemembers are eligible for burial alongside their husbands or wives.

Metzler said any veteran with one period of active duty service ending with an honorable discharge is entitled to have his or her cremated remains placed into the Arlington Cemetery columbarium. Ashes of their spouses can be interred in the same location.

Caissons are authorized for any officer or Medal of Honor recipient. E-9s are included in some cases, varying with each service branch, Metzler noted.

Several little-known historic sites are located at the cemetery. For example, there are two different locations for remains from the Civil War era. One has 'USCT' engraved on the headstones, which stands for U.S. Colored Troops.

'We have several sections within the cemetery where the predominated burials are USCT,' Metzler noted. 'Plus, we have the former residents of Freedmen's Village. These were blacks who would be called in today's terminology 'homeless.' They had no place to go. They'd come off the plantations, had no education, no money, no means to support themselves, and the government created a bureau -- the Freedmen's Bureau -- to address this issue.'

Metzler said six villages were constructed in the Washington area. One was constructed on the grounds of Arlington Cemetery. 'For some 30 years, this village existed, and over that period of time, 3,500 residents of Freedmen's Village passed away and are buried here in Arlington Cemetery in Section 27,' he said.

There's a plaque in Section 8 designated in memory of American Indians. The inscription reads, 'The Viet-Nam Era Vets. We are honored to remember you. The indigenous people of America. Dedicated to our Indian warriors and their brothers who have served us so well.'

President John F. Kenney's gravesite and the Tomb of the Unknowns are the most visited sites on the grounds of the cemetery. Metzler noted these sites draw about 4 million visitors each year. Big News Network.com

Johnson Outdoors Inc. (stock: JOUT) announced Friday that it has received a $15.9 million order for military tents.

The government's "urgent need" order requires the Racine-based manufacturer of outdoor equipment deliver 2,510 modular general purpose tent systems over the next eight months. Urgent need orders are issued based on a company's ability to produce a product quickly.

Cynthia Georgeson, spokeswoman for Johnson Outdoors, said that work on the project will begin immediately, and she did not know whether more workers will be hired to help fill the order. - jsonline.com