Short Critical Summary

Some of the main themes in my blog are "the plans for the future in Iraq" and the "the difficulty of life in Iraq for civilians today." There are about nine articles that deal directly with the plans for Iraqi futures, and a few others dealing with combat that mention their future plans; and there are ten articles dealing with Iraqi quality of life.

Over the course of the semester, my "future" articles went from "when are we going to remove the troops" and "how are we going to fix the culture problems there" to "how much money should we send over to help pull out troops" and "we should have them out by 2008!" The quality of life articles did not get any better or worse generally, but they would vary almost weekly stating that "children were playing" and "2 children killed in roadside bombs."

In the future, based on the articles i read recently, i can hypothesize, based on the fact that there is so much back and forth discussion about the issue, that we will not be out by 2008, but probably some time near then. The recent articles about the life in Iraq suggest that there is a lot of inter-cultural unrest, but that people are trying to continue life as best as they can. In the near future, I can guess that there will be a lot more "time limit" deliberating in Congress, but that we will soon come up with a decently efficient plan for our future in Iraq. I cannot say what the future may hold for the Iraqi people, but i will say based on the articles that things will stay bad if not get worse before they get better. It is good that they are trying to generally keep good spirits.

By doing this project, i learned a lot more about the war that i would not have learned without the necessary research. I did not know anything about the specifics, really, at the beginning of the year, but have increased my knowledge about the intricacies of war that I will keep in mind when hearing about it in the future. I was very pleased with the commenting process, and think that reading other people's blogs was a VERY informative thing to do. I would read them without commenting all the time, just so I could know what other people were talking about, and was very interested (especially by the person in my group that was talking about the environment) in learning what they knew as well. I learned, for example, that the power researchers are trying to form a type of energy from algae! I am going to read more about this this weekend when I have free time to, because reading this blog (http://torncountry.blogspot.com/) was the first time I had heard about this, and I find their efforts thought-provoking. I only recieved one comment, but it was extremely insightful and posed interesting questions for me to think about.

Obama defends votes in favor of Iraq funding: Says he backs troops, not war

By James W. Pindell and Rick Klein, Globe Staff | March 22, 2007

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/03/22/
obama_defends_votes_in_favor_of_iraq_funding/

"Senator Barack Obama yesterday defended his votes on behalf of funding the Iraq war, asserting that he has always made clear that he supports funding for US troops despite his consistent opposition to the war."

His statements make it very clear that he is responding to Hillary Clinton's statements that he is not in support of anything in Iraq because of his "anti-war rhetoric." He says that he was against the war before it started, and would have voted so; however, now that we're there, he says that he DOES support our troops for their bravery, so he voted to send them help.

GAO: Iraq munitions looting widespread

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4652933.html
"Explosives looted from Iraq munitions sites will likely continue to support terrorist attacks throughout the region, a congressional report said Thursday, finding that some sites were still not secured more than three and a half years after the war started."

It is this looting that is what goes to making roadside bombs, this article states, and it could be a serious problem. I think that this is one of the major problems, as it is a contributer to the insurgents ability to create such items of destruction.

"Explosives looted from Iraq munitions sites will likely continue to support terrorist attacks throughout the region, a congressional report said Thursday, finding that some sites were still not secured more than three and a half years after the war started." This may not be good enough, and i think that maybe this statement could be a cover up for their mistake of allowing the looting.

Iraq Pullout Measure Moves With War Bill

Senate Panel Moves $122B War Spending Bill With U.S. Troop Pullout Language
By ANNE FLAHERTY
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2973881
"The House's $124 billion spending bill would require that combat troops leave Iraq by fall of 2008, and possibly sooner if the Iraqi government does not make progress on its political and security commitments. That chamber planned a vote for Friday."

This is the last paragraph of this article that was released three hours ago. This looks bright! I think that we are making efforts to move some troops out, but hopefully we won't do so too soon, and mess up any chance that we have of solving the problems there first. It is possible, though that it is an impossible problem to solve, and we may just have to let them do what they must to reach stability.

Some other current events from the same page as the last entry.

Other developments

Members of al-Sadr's militia, the Mehdi Army, attacked the offices of rival parties Wednesday night in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, an official with the Basra provincial council said Thursday. Using small arms, Mehdi Army gunmen attacked the headquarters of the military wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Fadhila party. Guards fired back at the attackers, but no casualties were reported, the official said. Al-Sadr's movement and the more established SCIRI have been rivals for political influence in Iraq's Shiite regions.

The U.N. children's agency said an operation designed to supply clean water to Iraqis needs major financial replenishment. For four years, UNICEF has shipped tankers with clean water into deprived neighborhoods, primarily in Basra and Baghdad. The Baghdad operation -- which reached an average population of 70,000 every day -- stopped after running out of money on March 1. The Basra effort was halted two years ago because of lack of funds. "Iraq is still in an emergency situation, and many families simply have no alternative," UNICEF said in a statement Wednesday requesting more support.

U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces began sweeps through two Baghdad neighborhoods Thursday, targeting al Qaeda and illegal militias, a U.S. military statement said. The operations began in the Ghazaliya and Ameriya neighborhoods, with about 1,100 U.S. soldiers working with 500 Iraqi soldiers and police. In separate operations northeast of Karma, coalition forces freed three hostages and detained 13 suspected terrorists, the military said.

A civilian was killed and three others were injured Thursday in fighting between Iraqi soldiers and militants in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil, police said.

A U.S. soldier and two Marines were killed Wednesday in combat in Iraq, the U.S. military said. With the deaths, 3,229 U.S. military personnel, including seven civilian contractors of the Defense Department, have died in the four-year-old Iraq war.

I felt like it was necessary for me to post some of these, just because I have been rambling about them for a few posts. Here's the long and short. All in all, i don't think this is as bad as it could be, frankly, the suffering going on with the people because of the near-civil-war there is much worse.

Man with al-Sadr ties held in attack on U.S. troops

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/03/22/iraq.main/index.html
"A man with ties to a radical Shiite cleric is in U.S. custody in connection with an attack that killed five American soldiers in Karbala in January, U.S. officials said....Qais Khazali was known as a spokesman for Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's political movement in 2004 in Baghdad's Sadr City, but it is not clear whether he is still involved with al-Sadr's movement."

The shiite militia that he is said to be associated with, Al-Sadr's Mehdi army, is responsible for a lot of the distress caused to the efforts in Iraq today. They are said to have close ties to the sectarian violence. This article touches on some of the attacks that they believe this group to be responsible for.

Rocket hits near U.N. head in Iraq

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/03/22/iraq.moon/index.html
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon ducked in surprise when an explosion rattled Baghdad's Green Zone on Thursday where he was delivering a televised news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Two mortar rounds were fired at the Green Zone, an Interior Ministry official said. The Associated Press reported that small chips of debris fell from the ceiling.The explosion startled Ban, who swiftly regained his composure as the briefing continued."

Dispite all of this, the meeting that they were attending went well, and they added to their plans for the future of iraq. They suspect that a Shiite militia, AL-Sadhr's Mehdi army, might be behind this attack and others that have occurred recently.