On Saturday April 16, humanitarian aid worker and activist Marla Ruzicka died in a car bombing in Iraq. She was the founder of a group called Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. Since 2002 she spent most of her time in Iraq and Afghanistan. She continued going into Iraq even after most international aid organizations and relief agencies had bailed out. Ruzicka got much of her training in aid work at Global Exchange, an organization she left in order to start CIVIC. Ruzicka did not explicitly denounce the Iraq war, choosing rather to focus on working with all involved parties in an effort to relieve as much human suffering as possible. According to former Global Echange coworker Media Benjamin, "Marla seemed to have one speed: all-ahead-full. She had more courage than most people we know. She loved big challenges and she took them on with a radiant smile that could melt the coldest heart."

In Iraq Ruzicka was focused on recording and publicly releasing Iraqi civilian casualty numbers. Despite claims from the U.S. military that they "don't do body counts", Ruzicka had obtained statistics on civilian casualties from a high-ranking U.S. military official. Noting that this information was crucial to providing compensation to Iraqi victims, Ruzicka wrote an article shortly before her death calling for the U.S. to disclose more civilian casualty figures..

Disinformation and Reality in Iraq

Since the January 30, 2005 elections in Iraq, the US military and supporters of the ongoing occupation of Iraq have routinely stated that the situation in Iraq is getting better and that the insurgency is slowly losing its influence. This claim has been regularly made in light of declining attacks against US soldiers, which are down to 40 to 50 per day. However, Patrick Cockburn in Mosul reports that these numbers are likely much higher as few reporters travel far from their hotels in Baghdad and the military itself frequently understates the number of attacks. Two significant attacks took place this week in Iraq, one assassination attempt targeting outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and another in which a helicopter carrying private mercenaries hired by the Department of Defense was shot down by a missile, demonstrating that the security situation has made little improvement, despite claims to the contrary by the United States.

Meanwhile, a new statistical analysis shows that of attacks taking place from September 2003 to October of 2004, 75% targeted Coalition forces, showing that the insurgency (or resistance) is far more targeted than the US military admits. Only 4.5% of attacks are against civilians, and as Patrick Cockburn recently reported, much of the resistance is careful to select targets directly related to the occupation. This undermines a key claim by the United States, who continues to argue that the insurgency largely consists of random violence designed to terrorize the Iraqi civilian population. Cockburn also explains how fanatical groups at the margins of the insurgency have taken advantage of the occupation to conduct attacks on targets barely connected with the occupation in order to ferment a generalized state of war that they believe will increase chances of their extremist agenda becoming popularized.

In related misinformation news, the Bush administration announced that it will no longer be releasing annual statistics on terrorism deaths, ostensibly due to the retraction of last year's report after numbers were shown to be false. Congressman Henry Waxman has called for an investigation into the decision, stating that he believes numbers are not being release because they would show the failures of the "war on terror."

Lastly, new documents have been released by Michigan Senator Carl Levin that show there was never a link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and that moreover, the administration knew that there was no such link. This alleged link was widely reported in the lead-up to the Iraq war and was suggested by the highest levels of the US government, including President Bush himself.

Iraqi Security Forces not Ready

Only 39% of Iraq's 142,000 person national police force is ready for service according to an article published in Business Week. The creation of a new police force has been plagued by a number of problems - lack of weapons, infiltration by insurgent groups, rape and extortion committed by recruits, and insufficient training from the US corporations with contracts to train them. Without a large police force, the new Iraqi government will likely be unable to stay in power. This presents a problem for the Bush administration, who facing a domestic population increasingly opposed to the occupation, must find ways to give the impression that the United States is lessening its commitment in Iraq. In light of this situation, the Bush administration has begun to use militias comprised of former Ba'ath party members to hunt down insurgents, militias that in many cases are functioning essentially as death squads . The reports of death squads come one week after the United States announced its opposition to the Shiite government's plan to remove former Ba'ath party members from the government, as the military is increasingly relying on them for security.

The Occupation of Iraq and "Disaster Capitalism"

In an article in the upcoming issue of The Nation, journalist Naomi Klein analyzes the formation of the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization and the new policy of "disaster capitalism" being undertaken by the US government. Klein describes this process in which US corporations swiftly move into areas recovering from disasters as "a new form of colonialism" in which US corporations involved in the "reconstruction" industry are in awarded lucrative contracts to rebuild war ravaged countries. While Klein uses Iraq as an example of this new disaster capitalism, she explains how the US government has identified a list of countries likely to face impending "disaster" either by external force or internal strife and has, in some cases, already developed reconstruction plans and identified corporations that will receive reconstruction contracts. She elaborated on her conclusions this week in an interview on Democracy Now.

After two years of occupation, news continues to come in regarding the dismal state of Iraq's economy and the lives of its citizens as promises by the United States to rebuild the country have been shown to be empty. Iraq has become an "economic catastrophe" with a decline in living standards, increases in poverty and child malnutrition, and an unemployment rate that is as high as 65% according to some estimates. The World Food Programme estimates that one in four Iraqis survive on food rations distributed by the Ministry of Trade while 2.6 million are estimated to be so poor that they regularly sell a portion of their rations to meet other needs.

Another problem with the reconstruction has been in a lack of training given to Iraqis, with control being handed over to Iraqis to run water filtration plants without proper training resulting in a rapid deterioration of reconstructed industries while wasting millions of dollars in limited reconstruction funds. Consequently, the State Department has ordered the third major reevaluation of the Iraq reconstruction effort in the past nine months. According to an article in the LA Times, the United States is going to shift some funding from large-scale building projects, such as water filtration plants, into immediate job creation and training.

US Does not have an "Exit Strategy" for Iraq

During a surprise visit to Iraq this week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the United States does not have an "exit strategy" for Iraq or timetable for removing US forces from the country. Instead, Rumsfeld told soldiers that the United States has a "victory strategy" in Iraq. While Rumsfeld was in Iraq he met with the new Iraqi government and discussed the preparedness of Iraqi security forces, specifically relating the United States’ desire that former Ba'ath Party members be allowed to retain their positions in the security services. Despite public calls in Iraq for the dismissal of former Ba'ath Party members from the government. This is yet another example of how the United States tends to use the Iraqi government to maintain its occupation—a model of occupation perfected by Israel.

300,000 Iraqis Protest Occupation in Baghdad

Saturday, April 9, an estimated 300,000 Iraqis marched on Firdos Square in downtown Baghdad to show their opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Gathering in the same spot where Saddam's statue was pulled down two years previously, the crowd waved Iraqi flags while chanting "No, no to Americans" and "Yes to Islam." The protest was called for by cleric Moqtada Sadr and was primarily composed of Shiite Muslims drawn from the slums of Baghdad known as "Sadr City" as well as from other cities in Southern Iraq.

The protest is significant not only in that it is one of the largest public protests in Iraq since the U.S. invasion, but also in that it signifies a change in tactics by Sadr and his followers. Previously Sadr's militia had militarily engaged U.S. forces, although they have been adhering to an informal truce since last August. Unlike previous marches called by Sadr, this Saturday none of the protesters were carrying weapons. Sadr's followers said that the protest would be followed up with a non-violent campaign to force U.S and other foreign forces from Iraq

The U.S. military is reporting a decline in the number of attacks and U.S. casualties since January. While it is impossible to say with any certainty what the cause of this decline may be, it is reasonable to suggest that some of this reduction is due to splits within the various resistance factions. While the U.S. occupation remains very unpopular, Iraqis are becoming increasingly divided concerning resistance groups which target civilians. While some of the more militant Islamist groups continue to target Iraqi army and police, the influential Association of Muslim Scholars has reversed their position and called for Iraqis to join the army and police.

The Occupation Watch website has been restructured into a news and information resource focusing on the U.S./coalition occupation of Iraq. Every day, they will be posting a selection of the most significant English-language news articles on the site, along with personal accounts from Iraqi blogs, human rights reports, and more. The newly relaunched site is being directed by noted author and activist Rahul Mahajan. The site features links to commentary, in-depth analytical pieces, scholarly articles, and useful background information, as well as weekly in-house analysis on the evolving situation.

New Iraqi Speaker

The National Assembly has elected a new speaker, Hajim al-Hassani. A Sunni, Hassani was chosen by the Kurdish and Shi'a parties in order to placate Sunni Arabs. The post of speaker is a high profile but largely powerless position. Hassani has spent a considerable amount of time outside Iraq, having spent twelve years working in Los Angeles for an investment firm. Following that, Hassani returned to Iraq to become minister of industry for the interim government. In that capacity he led the privatization program which announced on March 21 a change in Iraq's investment law, allowing foreign investors to enter the Iraqi securities market and own up to 49% of publicly listed companies. Hassani provoked anger from many of his Sunni co-religionists when he tacitly backed the US-led assault on Falluja late in 2004. This was in spite of the fact that his party, the Iraqi Islamist Party, resigned from the government due to the assault.

New Iraqi President and Vice Presidents Chosen

After a considerable delay, three men have been selected as the new president and vice presidents of Iraq. As expected, the three posts were split which one of each being given to a representative of the three main religious or ethnic groups in Iraq. Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is now President; Shiite Islamist Adel Abdul Mahdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is one vice president while Sunni interim president Ghazi al-Yawir is the other VP.

Talabani has a long and varied past having been part of several organizations and political parties. According to an interview on Democracy Now with veteran journalist Dilip Hiro:

Also in that same Democracy Now broadcast, author and activist Antonia Juhasz described vice president Adel Abdul Mahdi, who served previously as the finance minister, as a proponent of privatizing Iraq's oil resources.

U.S. appoints new Ambassador to Iraq

The Bush Administration has appointed former ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, to be the new ambassador to Iraq. Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan, immigrated to the United States and began working for the U.S. government in 1984 in the State department. In 1988 he moved over to Defense Department, then under Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. In 1992, he was the author of the Defense Planning Guidance. This paper was one of the earlier articulations of the Neo–con philosophy of aggressive world military dominance by the United States. In 1995, he wrote a book entitled From Containment to Global Leadership, again pushing the neo-conservative agenda of extending U.S. power all around the world. During the 1990s Khalilzad was a consultant to Unocal, which at a time was negotiating with the then Taliban government for rights to conduct a pipeline across that country. When George W. Bush became president in 2000, Khalilzad became prominent as a National Security Council member.

Iraqi Leaders Call for Demonstration Against the Occupation

According to Al-Jazeera, Iraqi leaders have called for a mass demonstration against the US-led troop presence to coincide with the second anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government. Both Shia and Sunni leaders called on their congregations to rally in Firdus Square on Saturday in central Baghdad. Firdus Square is the location where U.S. troops staged the pulling down of a statue of Saddam Hussein which became the iconic media moment for the initial invasion. Said Shaikh Abd al-Zahra al-Suwaidi, a supporter of Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr: