In October of 2007, US forces handed over control of Karbala governate to Iraq. On Friday, US forces conducted a dawn raid in the town of Janaja – killing one civilian – with no notice or coordination with Iraqi local, national or military. Janaja is a town “populated mostly by members of the Mailiki tribe.”

Raed Shakir Jowdet, the Iraqi military commander of Karbala operations, said that four Apache helicopters and a jet fighter soared over the area. About 60 U.S. soldiers then stormed the town, "terrifying the families," he said.

Jowdet said that an unarmed civilian named Ali Abdulhussein was killed in his home …

"Not one Iraqi soldier took part in the airdrop, and the operation was not coordinated with any Iraqi authority," he said. "We are still looking for an answer as to why this has taken place, and we still have no logical explanation from the American forces."

Khazaali, the U.S.-allied governor, denounced the operation at a news conference, saying the U.S. military hadn’t coordinated in advance with Iraqi forces, who assumed control of Karbala security in October 2007….

Khazaali said the raid was based on false intelligence and that the U.S. military should "submit a report to clarify all the circumstances and to point out the killers and hand over the names of everyone who participated in the military operation in order for them to appear before the Iraqi judicial system."

It’s worth noting that Governor Khazaali has been a strong ally of the US. Whether this was just a chance selection of target or a message to Al Maliki, is it any wonder Iraqis are not embracing the Status of Forces Agreement?

And this is just one of the recent incidents where US forces have again killed civilians. Of course, when you hit Prime Minister Maliki’s own tribe and family it’s harder to cover up. The same war crimes occur day in and day out in Iraq but neither the US press or Maliki and friends paid much attention on Wednesday when our forces bombed the town of Samra:

This is Khalid Mohammed, he’s nine years old. The village he’s from is called Samra and it is 15 Kilometres north of Tikrit. Today Wednesday June 25th 2008 the Americans bombed his uncle’s house — those are the ruins you can see Khalid sitting on and crying. The American killed, Khalid’s uncle, his aunt, and four of their children who were aged between four and 11, 3 other children are seriously wounded.

As Tom Englehardt writes today in his The Urge to Surge:

As a result, cratered Iraq — a land with at least 50% unemployment, still lacking decent electricity, potable water, hospitals with drugs (or even doctors, so many having fled), or courts with judges (40 of them having been assassinated and many more injured since 2003) or lawyers, many of whom joined the more than two million Iraqis who have gone into exile — is, today, modestly quieter. But don’t be fooled. So many years later, Iraqis are still dying in prodigious numbers, and significant numbers of those dying are doing so at the hands of Americans.

It’s not just the family, including possibly four children under the age of 12, who died last week when a U.S. jet blasted their house in Tikrit (after their father, evidently believing thieves were about, fired shots in the air with a U.S. patrol nearby); or the manager and two female employees of a bank at Baghdad International Airport ("three criminals," according to a U.S. military statement) killed when their car was shot up by soldiers from a U.S. convoy; or the unarmed civilian, a relative of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who died in an early morning American raid in the southern town of Janaja; or the men, woman, and child in a car "which failed to stop at a [U.S.] checkpoint on the outskirts of Mosul because, according to a U.S. military statement, the two men were armed and one man inside the car made ‘threatening movements’"; or, according to the U.N., the estimated 1,000 dead in Baghdad’s vast, heavily populated Shiite slum of Sadr City, mostly civilians, 60% women and children, in fighting in April and May in which U.S. troops and air power played a significant role.

And while the war on the people of Iraq continues, so does the failure of the Democrats in Congress to act on the clear will of the US people to stop it. On the same day as we attacked Janaja and killed Ali Abdulhussein, the latest Iraq Supplemental “was approved by 92 to 6, with most Republicans joining all of the Senate’s Democrats in favor of the measure.”

Meaning – more “non-permanent” bases, more troops heading to Iraq, and more Iraqi families devastated by the US raids and air strikes – but thanks to the new Supplemental the Iraqis now also get to pay for the cost of all this grand reconstruction.

Thanks Harry, Nancy and our so-called representatives.

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Links worth checking:

Evangelical Grunts – Matthew Harwood’s Comment is Free on the influence of right wing evangelicals on the military (h/t markfromireland)

Sy Hersh’s latest – and Emptywheel’s thoughts on Iran.

Youtube – This is a very good interview with Tom Englehardt of TomDispatch covering permanent bases, the SOFA, the air war, and more.

Related posts:

  1. Torture: Obama Heeded Maliki on Abuse Photos, Says McClatchy; What That Says for Our Occupation
  2. Changing of the Guard: US Troops Withdraw from Iraqi Cities; Maliki Declares “Sovereignty Day”
  3. In Iraq, As in So Many Contexts, Withdrawal is Victory
  4. Remember Iraq or Ray Odierno is Still Wrong
  5. US Contractors Held in Iraqi Jail for Green Zone Murder