These stinking lies get damn old, but Amurka still keeps chewing 'em?
Smile, Amurka!
"2007 becomes deadliest year of the war for US troops; But a reduction in violence seen in recent months" by Steven R. Hurst/Associated Press November 7, 2007
BAGHDAD - The US military yesterday announced six new deaths, making 2007 the bloodiest year for American troops in Iraq despite a recent decline in casualties and a sharp drop in roadside bombings that Washington links to Iran.
Iran is trying to help? No war then, right?
With nearly two months left in the year, the annual toll is now 853 - three more than the previous worst of 850 in 2004.
But the surge worked!
But the grim milestone comes as the Pentagon points toward encouraging signs as well - growing security in Baghdad and other former militant strongholds that could help consolidate gains against extremists.
Been hearing that same shit for five years!
A senior Navy officer, meanwhile, announced plans to release of nine Iranian prisoners and said that a major cache of Iranian-made weapons and bombs, displayed for reporters yesterday, appeared to have been shipped into Iraq before Tehran made a vow to stop the flow of armaments.
More propaganda for the cameras. Called a frame-up!
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said last week that Iran had made such assurances to the Iraqi government. He did not reveal when the pledge was issued.
A decline in Iranian weapons deliveries could be one of several factors for the decrease in both Iraqi and American deaths over the past two months.
Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, director of the Multi-National Force-Iraq's communications division, told reporters:
"It's our best judgment that these particular EFPs . . . in recent large cache finds do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made."
Among the weapons Washington has accused Iran of supplying to Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters are EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles. They fire a slug of molten metal capable of penetrating even the most heavily armored military vehicles, and thus are more deadly than other roadside bombs.
The number two US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, said last week that there had been a sharp decline in the number of EFPs found in Iraq over the last three months. At the time, he and Gates both said it was too early to tell whether the trend would hold, and whether it could be attributed to action by Iranian authorities. Iran publicly denies that it has sent weapons to Shi'ite militias in Iraq.
Two of the Iranians who will be freed "in the coming days" were among five captured in January in a US raid on an Iranian government facility in Irbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region in the north of the country.
We held them for 11 months? Why? And why no outcry in the papers?
When it's OUR GUYS, then they are front and center?
Not like a Zio-bias going on or anything, huh?
The Americans said the five were members of Iran's elite Quds Force, an arm of the Revolutionary Guards. Iran said the five were diplomats working in a facility that was undergoing preparations to be a consular office.
Smith told reporters the identities of the nine Iranians would be released later. He said the decision to release the nine was made after they were determined not to be a threat to US forces.
If they were not a threat, why did it take 11 MONTHS?!
The positive moves toward Iran coincided with the opening of two Iranian consulates, the facility in Irbil that was shut by American forces after the raid, and a second in Sulaimaniyah, the largest city in the Kurdish zone.
Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi inaugurated the building in Irbil and said both would have full diplomatic status.
Barzani told reporters: "This is a very important step to enhance relations and facilitate the commerce between the two sides."
The Iranian ambassador charged that the United States ran roughshod over Iraqi sovereignty in conducting the raid in January.
Qomi: "The American forces breached Iraqi sovereignty by detaining the five Iranian diplomats at this same office in Irbil. Iran has strong ties with Iraqi society, and opening these consulates will strengthen these ties. It will also strengthen commerce and travel between the two sides."
Ooooooooh, that's why the Kurds are terrorists now!
The US-backed Iraqi government has close ties to Iran, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq has sought to bring the antagonists together in hope that would reduce violence.
Iraqi Kurds, like the country's Shi'ite Arabs, maintain close ties with Shi'ite-dominated Iran, despite their warm relationship with the United States.
I'd never heard much about that, although I know that is one reason they got the gas -- fought on Iran's side during the 1980-88 war!
Strange how the U.S. ain't bitchin' about the Kurds close ties to Iran.
So Kurds are terrorists when attacking Turkey, but not terrorists when they are attacking Iran, but are terrorists when they are cooperating economically with Iran, but not terrorists when they are economically cooperating with Turkey.
Got it, readers? Called a DOUBLE-GAME, DOUBLE-CROSS!!!
Also yesterday, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh rejected as interference in Iraq's affairs an Iranian offer of troops to help stabilize the country when US forces leave. Iran floated the proposal at the weekend meeting in Istanbul of Iraq's neighbors, the European Union, and the G-8.
al-Dabbagh, in a statement: "The Iraqi government rejects the plan offered by the Iranian Foreign Ministry. It (the Iraqi government) will not accept interference in Iraq's internal affairs by any country of the region."
Except the occupier, 'ey, stooge?
The noticeable drop in US and Iraqi deaths in recent months follows a 30,000-strong US force buildup, along with a six-month cease-fire order by Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, among other factors. There were 39 deaths in October, compared with 65 in September and 84 in August.
Surge worked!
Five US soldiers were killed Monday in two separate roadside bomb attacks, according to Smith, the military spokesman. Later the military said a sailor had died of wounds from an explosion in Salahuddin Province, north of Baghdad.
WTF? What is a SAILOR doing ON the GROUND!?!
Sailors, airmen, I'm smelling a draft, kiddies!
The previous annual record for US military deaths in Iraq, in 2004, coincided with larger, more conventional battles such as the campaign to cleanse Fallujah of Sunni militants, as well as US clashes with Shi'ite militiamen in the sect's holy city of Najaf.
I don't like the word cleansed!
But the American military in Iraq reached its highest troop levels in Iraq this year - 165,000. The military's decision to send soldiers out of large bases and into Iraqi communities means more troops have seen contact with enemy forces than ever before, said Major Winfield Danielson, a US military spokesman in Baghdad.
When we are all against the fucking thing!
Danielson told the Associated Press Sunday: "It's due to the troop surge, which allowed us to go into areas that were previously safe havens for insurgents. Having more soldiers, and having them out in the communities, certainly contributes to our casualties."
Gonna have a hard time taking them out then, huh?
Probably gonna need more, right?
Also yesterday, the US military said Iraqi troops had discovered 22 bodies in a mass grave northwest of Baghdad during a joint operation Saturday. It was the second mass grave found in the area in less than a month.
After the discovery, US and Iraqi forces launched an operation Sunday, including ground raids targeting Al Qaeda in the area, the US statement said.
So if it included ground raids, then air strikes must have been a part of it, right?
But they don't say that, huh? Pfffffttttt!!!!
About 30 suspects were detained, it said, and two car bomb facilities and a number of weapons caches were found."
Yeah, we'll have to get more troops there!
"2007 Is Deadliest Year for U.S. Troops in Iraq" by DAMIEN CAVE
Bush's success!
BAGHDAD, Nov. 6 — Six American soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in Iraq on Monday, the military said Tuesday, taking the number of deaths this year to 852. The toll makes 2007 the deadliest year of the war for United States troops.
Military officials announced the discovery of a mass grave holding 22 bodies in a rural area north of Falluja. They also said that nine Iranians being held in Iraq would soon be released, including two of the five who were detained during a January raid of a consulate office in Erbil.
Despite the decline, American commanders acknowledged that 2007 would be far deadlier than the second-worst year, 2004, when 849 Americans died, many of them in major battles for control of insurgent strongholds like Falluja.
Military officials attribute the increase this year to an expanded troop presence during the so-called surge, which swelled the American force to more than 165,000 troops in Iraq, and sent units out of large bases and into more dangerous communities.
Commanders contend that despite the cost in terms of lives lost, the strategy has improved security in the country and created a “tactical momentum” that could stabilize Iraq permanently.
Been hearing the same shit for five fucking years!
The pending release of the Iranians may reflect American approval of some signs that Iran is cooperating with the United States’ demand that it stanch the flow of materials into Iraq used to make deadly roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles, or E.F.P.’s.
Admiral Smith did not say why the two Iranians who were among five captured in January at an Iranian Consulate office in Erbil had been held for nine months, after Iran insisted that they were harmless government workers. The military did not identify any other Iranians who were released or still being held.
Violence against Iraqis continued Tuesday. The mass grave was found Saturday during a joint American-Iraqi operation in the Tharthar Lake area, a desolate rural region near the site of another grave, holding 25 bodies, that was found less than a month ago.
Huh? Violence continued? You don't say, shitters?
Half the time you never report it, so how the fuck would we know?
Local police officials said the bodies had been dumped in and around an abandoned building.
A police officer who helped clear the graves:
“Some were buried in wells, and some were left in rooms used as prisons. These corpses are part of what we expect to find more of in the future.”
Oh, how nice!
Saddam had mass graves, and now the U.S. occupation has mass graves!
Ah, LIBERATION!
Just south of Kirkuk, the police said that clashes with Iraqi and American forces on Tuesday left four gunmen dead. In a separate attack, gunmen killed the mayor of a small village about 30 miles south of Kirkuk, and wounded his son, as they drove to a neighboring town.
A member of the governing council in Mosul was assassinated in a neighborhood on the city’s outskirts, the authorities said, and six police officers died when they were ambushed while driving to work.
In Baghdad, the police found four dead bodies: two east of the Tigris River, and two to the west. A roadside bomb exploded near an American patrol near Zawra Park in western Baghdad, and a second bomb exploded in Karada, a central Baghdad neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said. The official said it was unclear if there were any casualties.
South of the capital, in Latifiya, a bomb set for a joint Iraqi-American foot patrol killed one Iraqi soldier. North of Hilla, the authorities found the body of a man in his 20s floating in a small river. He had been stabbed to death."
Pfffffttt! Assassinations, bombings, bodies floating in the river!
Oh, yeah, Iraq is really improving!
This is how great it has been:
35 people killed every day, with the number of Iraqis killed by the surge around 300 per day, 10,000 per month -- with 1.2 million Iraqis dead since the invasion (not including the 1,654 killed in September), mainly due to the U.S. military's 75 air raids a day, and the five-fold increase in air bombings.
Also see: Story Iraq: MSM Lied About Death Tolls
Great, just great!
Fuck you, lying MSM!
