Thread: Iraq/Dinar News. 09/05 to 01/14/07

Yep, sorta makes you wonder uh? With so much on the line (oil) I wonder which Arab state will be next. Getting back to Iraq, 1 of the requirements is for the country to have an international currency. Well unfortunately Iraq does have one albeit not a true exchange rate. I think they will have to reval before the accession takes place, although I believe their done with the steps. I believe someone mentioned in November 06 they would transfer all the holdings over to the WTO. The thing that scares me about the WTO in it sounds like the one world government. One more thing before I go, after reading this article I wonder what else has been back doored in Iraq (reval maybe)?

Originally Posted by tiffany

Crap! I answered the wrong question.

Tiffany you are so funny..... nite all..

concerning the post about koran verse 9.11 : the " eagle " etc.
unfortunately it is a hoax. the real koran 9.11 is about repentance.
(my opinion) repentance to a islamic facist is an oxymoron !
bigred

USAID has really contributed to PRTs (Provincial reconstruction team) that assists local governing councils in developing transparency, increased security and rule of law, and the capability to promote political and economic development.

Today current efforts are focusing on assisting provincial councils in the development of strategic developments plans that will guide Iraqi reconstruction and development investments over the next five year.

USAID through PRTs and its local governance program sponsored seven regional conferences. These conferences has resulted in a draft local government code which will be introduced in the council of representatives in its next session.

USAID is strenghtening the efficiency, responsiveness, transparency, and accountabillity of local goernments throughout Iraq. Participation and the success of local governing institutions diminishes the “winner take all syndrom”.


Just to let you know what USAIDs programs have done for Iraqs governance programs and Democracy.

· 16 provincial councils elected and operational
· 96 district, 195 city & 437 neighbourhood councils established.
· 31,000 long term jobs created
· 26,700 months of short-term employment
· 4,897 community projects completed
· 1,500 Civil Society Organizations and 31,000 persons trained, 250 grants for advocacy
· Trained over 2,000 council members, 10% were women.
· Technical assistance provided to 5,000 department and ministry officials, 20% were women.
· Conducted 22,000 democracy with 750,000 Iraqi participants
· Trained more then 650 or 87% of the new provincial council members elected in January, 2004
· Over 1,000 CSOs covering over 5,000 people trained in advocacy campaigning
· Established and trained over 1,400 Community Action Groups.
· $14 million in community support of community action projects
· 750 professional staff mobilized and trained to continue implementing Local governance and CAP programs.


With participation comes responsibility and when the Iraqis feel that they are a part of Iraq and the future of Iraq, this is what USAID is trying to do. And I am seeing this happening at this moment, with reduced violence and more understanding about the situation they are in, Iraq will be a good place to live in the near future.

All they need now is a REVAL and SOON!!

Great informative post Raddie. Can always rely on you to find some information whilst everyone else is asleep. Gets really lonely in here at this time of my day. With all of the above and everything else we have learned one would think a r/v can't be far away. Thanks for your efforts.

Iraq-Arrests
Gunman killed, 68 suspects arrested in Iraq
Baghdad, Aug 23, (VOI)- The Iraqi army killed one gunman and arrested 68 others in operations in Iraq over the last two days, an Iraqi army press release said on Wednesday.
" One gunman was killed and three suspects were arrested in Mosul", said the release, received by the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
"The Iraqi army also arrested 15 suspects in Baghdad, 24 others in Ramadi, 17 in Salah al-din , Diala, and Kirkuk provinces and 9 in central and southern Iraq," added the release.

NEW SECURITY PLAN WORKING?

After seeing violence in Baghdad and its environs escalate constantly during the first half of the year, the Bush administration and the Maliki government in Iraq scrambled to find a better security plan. Although not too many news outlets have reported this, the new plan appears to have had an effect (via Big Lizards):

Violence in Baghdad has declined in the past two weeks and all but ended in some formerly deadly neighborhoods, the U.S. military said in a cautiously upbeat report on Tuesday on a major security clampdown in the city. ... Twenty-two raids in the past week against such groups in the capital had led to 37 arrests, Major General William Caldwell told a news conference. He presented statistics showing a 16 percent drop in the daily average of attacks in Baghdad since August 7, at 21 compared to 25 in the preceding two months.
"What we have seen in August is a downturn," Caldwell said, two weeks after beefed up U.S. forces and thousands of Iraqi troops and police launched a new phase of what Iraqi and U.S. leaders have called a make-or-break operation to pacify Baghdad.
In three particularly violent areas where intensive raids to root out militants have been completed this month, life was returning to normal and attacks were rare, Caldwell said -- a sentiment endorsed by a number of residents in the mainly Sunni areas of Ghazaliya and Amriya and the mixed district of Dora.

Two weeks is not much of a sample by which to extrapolate future performance. However, this does demonstrate that the US has finally applied force to the problem of the militias on both sides of the sectarian divide. Despite some initial griping from Nouri al-Maliki about the targeting of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army -- Sadr is a political ally of Maliki -- the Iraqis appear pleased with the results.

Over the past couple of weeks, supporters of the war in Iraq, including myself, wanted to see some strategic and tactical adaptation to the sectarian violence. Clearly the militias had adapted themselves to the security patterns of American and Iraqi forces and had plans to escalate the violence in the capital until we responded. The new security strategy that has seen more troop commitments, and more importantly, the resolve to address the militias, has made a positive difference, at least initially.

We cannot afford to lose Baghdad to sectarian militias; we have the means to prevail over them; all we need is the will to do so. For the last few months it appeared that the Bush administration had gotten so caught up in their efforts to show some troop drawdowns that the overall mission had gotten lost. Bush himself made it clear yesterday that he would not allow that to happen in the time remaining of his term, and these results appear to bear him out. Let's hope that we continue this renewed sense of mission and dispense with the petty politics.

IRAQIS KEEP REPORTING FOR DUTY

A week ago, I wrote that the United States needed a commitment to win in Iraq, rather than playing not to lose, or we should get out of the country. Rick Moran said much the same thing in his essay from yesterday. However, the Iraqis still show that they have committed to self-government and the rule of law, even in the difficult province of Anbar:

More than 500 Iraqi men have joined the police in restive Anbar province -- a focal point of the Sunni Arab insurgency -- in the most successful recruiting drive in the region by U.S. and Iraqi forces, the U.S. military said Tuesday. ... U.S. Marines screened thousands of applicants earlier this month in various regions along the western Euphrates River valley before shortlisting the recruits for the Anbar police force, said a statement by the U.S. command.
Most American deaths this month have been in Anbar province west of Baghdad, where support for the Sunni Arab insurgency runs deep. The latest casualties in Anbar were two Marines and a sailor who were killed in combat Sunday. All three belonged to the Regimental Combat Team 7, which conducted the three-day police recruitment.
Maj. Lowell Rector, head of the police transition team for RCT-7, called the recruiting drive the most successful the U.S. and Iraqi forces had launched since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to the statement.

Yesterday, George Bush told the nation that the US will not abandon Iraq as long as he remained President. He also discussed the redeployment of forces freed from police duty in other areas of Iraq to the Sunni Triangle in order to help secure an area blighted with sectarian and political violence. These are good steps, but we need to start seeing overwhelming force applied to the militias that have undermined the authority of the government and official security forces.

The Iraqis haven't quit yet, not even in Anbar. We need to muster the will to help these men quell the violence and restore security to central Iraq before it falls completely apart. Tuesday, August 22, 2006

THE ONGOING BATTLE FOR BAGHDAD

By Bill Roggio

Map of Baghdad and location of the for worst neighborhoods. Click map to view.

The city of Baghdad, as well as Baghdad Province has become the epicenter of violence in Iraq. In a recent press briefing, Major General Bill Caldwell stated an estimated eighty percent of the violence in Iraq is occurring in Baghdad province.
The Iraqi government must establish some semblance of control over the city. Baghdad is the political center of Iraq, as well as the focal point for the foreign media, which plays a large roll in influencing international opinion on Iraq. The legitimacy of the Iraqi government is at stake, as is the potential for support of America at risk. Prime Minister Maliki's reconciliation program, which has attracted interest from many Sunni insurgent groups, including two large factions, is also in jeopardy. The longer the sectarian violence goes uncontrolled, the greater the chance for the Sunni insurgent groups to give up on the program.
Baghdad has been difficult to secure for a variety of reasons. It is difficult to fight all-out counterinsurgency in a dense urban area such as Baghdad, a city with over six million residents. The potential for high civilian casualties along with the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure would be politically untenable for both the Maliki government and the Bush administration.
To combat the insurgency, and sectarian and criminal violence in Baghdad, the Iraqi government and Coalition announced Operation Together Forward. USA Today provides a simplified breakdown of the operation. "The offensive is planned in stages and is designed to avoid an all-out attack. In the first phase, launched July 9, Iraqi security forces positioned checkpoints throughout the city. In the second phase, launched last week, Iraqi forces supported by U.S. troops began isolating and clearing parts of the city block by block. Iraqi security forces will remain to provide security once areas are cleared. When areas are stable, the government will bring economic assistance into blighted neighborhoods." This strategy is essentially what the Marines call the "3 Block War."

While many pundits have dismissed the operation as a failure as it did not secure the city within weeks of launch, the Coalition appears to have a longer time line to secure Baghdad measured in months, not weeks. As USA Today reports, the second phase of the operation began in the second week of August.
Operation Together Forward is focusing on four of the most violent neighborhoods of Baghdad: Doura, Mansour, Shula and Azamiyah. These are neighborhoods where the sectarian violence has been at its worst. Coalition forces have begun operations in Doura and Ameriya. In both cases, the neighborhoods were cordoned off, and each building was searched. "Kilometer after kilometer of barriers emplaced, building what some may call the semblance of a gated community, affording them greater security with ingress and egress routes established and manned by Iraqi security forces with coalition forces in support," as the Multinational Forces - Iraq press release describes the operation in Doura.
A similar strategy of cordon, search, secure and rebuild was successfully executed in Tal Afar, and is currently being executed in the Sunni insurgent stronghold city of Ramadi. Tal Afar, with populations of 170,000 was secured in less than a month, while Ramadi, with a population of 400,000 is still up for grabs.
Securing Baghdad has its own unique problems other than the size and scale of the operation, as well as the number of forces needed. Baghdad is a multi-ethnic city, with large Shia and Sunni populations. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, is playing a large role in the sectarian violence, as is its sponsor Iran. Sadr's militia has been repeatedly been the target of Iraqi and Coalition operations. And the Shiite dominated police force is not trusted by the Iraqi public. They have been accused of corruption and complicity in the sectarian violence. In some cases, the police stand by as Sadr's militias rampage, and in other instances have actively participated in the murders. The Iraqi police must be reigned in if Baghdad is to be secured.
The strategy isolating neighborhoods from the insurgents and militias and restoring services has worked elsewhere in Iraq, and the question is can it succeed in a large city such as Baghdad. The insurgents, militias and criminals have the advantage of melting away during the major security operations, and infiltrating back in after the clearing operation ends as the entire city cannot be secured at once. This will be a challenge for the security forces left behind to police the neighborhoods, and it is vital the security force is vetted and supervised by Coalition teams and the Iraqi Army.
Time is working against the Iraqi government as they risk losing the gains made in forwarding reconciliation after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Every effort should be made to push every last available security asset into Baghdad lest the hard work in the provinces of the past two years be negated by a failure to secure Baghdad. Tuesday

Originally Posted by cigarman

Ding!Ding!Ding! we have a winner in Neno. Your one smart cookie. I don't believe Iraq is quite there yet, but give them another 3 years and they will be. The dinar IMHO is worth .68-.86 right now, but like they say (if G Bush has any say it will be 1:1).

What makes you say ".68-,.86 right now" stogeydude? Is there something they're not telling us?
wheeze! gasp gasp