Families of Fallen US Troops Raise $600,000 for Refugees
From AFP - US National Bureau
Excerpt: A delegation of military family members whose sons died while fighting in the Iraq war will travel to Jordan from December 27, 2004 to January 4, 2005 to deliver $600,000 worth of humanitarian supplies for refugees from the U.S. attack on Falluja.
"This delegation is a way for me to express my sympathy and support for the Iraqi people. The Iraq war took away my son's life, and it's taken away the lives of so many innocent Iraqis. It's time to stop the killing and to help the children of Iraq," said Rosa Suarez of Escondido, CA, whose son Jesus was a marine who died in Iraq on March 27, 2003."
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US Military Experts: Prepare for a Decades-Long Counterinsurgency Campaign
From the Christian Science Monitor
Excerpt: In a week that saw the deadliest single attack on Americans in Iraq - and the first major US contractor to pull out - more and more military experts are warning that drastic changes are needed to both US strategy and American public expectations if there's to be success there. ...
... The ICG and others don't expect the insurgents to fade away after Iraq's January 30 election. The best scenarios say it will take years to defeat them. But the game plan so far - including the November assault on Fallujah that killed over 1,000 alleged fighters - has failed to stop the bombings and attacks around the country.
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Labels: iraq, troops

What happened to Iraq’s oil money?
From NBC Nightly News
Excerpt: Iraq's oil resources generate billions of dollars — money the United States promised to protect after overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Now, Frank Willis, a former senior American official in Iraq, tells NBC News the United States failed to safeguard the oil money known as the Development Fund for Iraq. "There was, in my mind, pervasive leakage in assets of Iraq, and to some extent, those assets were squandered," says Willis. ...
...Iraq’s U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer, pledged last year to hire a certified public accounting firm to ensure proper controls. But the United States gave the contract not to an accounting firm but to a tiny consulting company, Northstar — which NBC News found is headquartered at a private home near San Diego...
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Labels: contractors, iraq, oil, reconstruction