By Donna Mulhearn
Dec 21st

Dear friends,
Tomorrow morning I will drive along the treacherous highway of death to the heavily fortified Baghdad airport and then fly to Jordan. I leave with a heavy heart. As the west shops for Christmas bargains, Iraq still struggles to survive the chaos and violence of occupation.

My month in Baghdad gave me joy and sadness, hope and despair, moments of light and times of darkness. Feeling overwhelmed by the human catastrophe around me, I have to remind myself that we can only do what we can do. But do this we must – whatever it is!

By Doug Pritchard

The large Chaldean Catholic church stood in a deserted yard. The road beside it was lined with razor wire, quiet and empty, in the pale morning light.

Sheila Provencher and I crossed the road, passed through the walls to the church door, and met by the young priest, who immediately burst into laughter. “I did not know you. Sheila with that old coat and headscarf. You, sir, with that long white beard and prayer cap. I thought it was a Muslim woman coming to our church to pray to Mary for a child as they sometimes do. But why would she come with her husband?”

In his study, he showed us his machine gun and the ski-mask he wears when he sometimes joins the three armed men guarding the church. “This is an abnormal situation. You in disguise. A priest with a gun. How can I do this?” His congregation has not worshipped in its church building since Aug. 1, 2004, when four other Baghdad churches were bombed simultaneously during Sunday evening worship. Christian education classes at his church have also been suspended. The congregation meets at a rented hall nearby. The priest tells his congregation, “The people are more important than the mass. I can’t replace one of you if you are killed.”

How Are The Funds Being Spent?

From the The Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project (CSIS)

The substantial U.S. funding for the reconstruction effort in Iraq is expected to have a significant impact on the ground.¹ Our analysis, however, shows that the impact will be diffused in a number of ways.

estimated breakdown of costs for reconstruction activities in Iraq

The above chart is an estimated breakdown of costs for reconstruction activities in Iraq across government agencies, drawn from information concerning the spending of both the $18.4 billion and other U.S. reconstruction monies. These estimates are drawn from a variety of sources, including official audits, independent and government research, interviews with contractors and U.S. government personnel directly involved in Iraq’s reconstruction, and the media. Attaining exact estimates about the costs discussed here is not possible, given the dearth of publicly available information. There tends to be a wide divergence in estimates: for example, estimates of security costs range from 15-50 percent of total contract costs.² We chose low to mid-range estimates for purposes of compiling this report.

For an indepth look into the breakdown of costs for reconstruction in Iraq, and a overview of the project, please see the full report (pdf) and visit the The Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project (CSIS) website.

A night-long protest under tarpaulin in Parliament Square

Voices in the Wilderness UK

INTRODUCTION
According to figures compiled by the International Organisation on Migration (IOM) more than 200,000 refugees from Fallujah have yet to return and ‘many are in desperate need of aid, with temperatures in Iraq heading towards freezing’ (Reuters, 2 Dec). If and when they do return to their devastated city they will have their finger prints taken, their retinas scanned, be forced to wear special ID badges, and possibly be dragooned into ‘work battalions’ to clear the rubble created by the US assault.

We in the anti-war movement must try to highlight the plight of the Fallujah refugees: protesting against the Orwellian plans to turn Fallujah into a “model city” and demanding housing and compensation for the homeless and bereaved and war crimes prosecutions for Bush and Blair.

The press has reported that the first refugees are likely to be returned to Fallujah on Christmas Eve (24 Dec).

Catherine Watson
Special to the Star Tribune

“Accident victims” families are worse — they’re not prepared. Military families are calmer. They’re half-expecting it.”

The speaker was a veteran journalist, giving advice to me and a few other young reporters nearly 40 years ago, as we worked on a gruesome task, in another ugly war. Today, every time I read a headline about American deaths in Iraq, I remember those words. I’ve been remembering them a lot lately.