Summary: So far, almost 400 casualties of the Iran-Iraq earthquake have been reported. 

At least 400 people have died because of a devastating earthquake near the Iran-Iraq border, The Guardian reported. Emergency services in the area state that the number injured could reach as much as 6,000.

On early Monday, Iran’s Interior Ministry announced that most of those killed by the 7.3 magnitude earthquake were in the Kermansha Province, one of 31 provinces in Iran.  The earthquake centered 19 miles around the Iraqi city of Halabja, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and tremors could be felt in the capital cities of Tehran and Baghdad.

The earthquake hit at 9:48 p.m. local time on Sunday, and Iranian officials said they expect the casualty toll to rise. A member of Iranian parliament told the press that some of the new hospitals in the area have already been destroyed in the earthquake and that some housing projects have also seen severe damage. In Iraq, officials said that at least six people have died and at least 68 have been injured. Near the border of Iraq, at least 10 homes have collapsed.

“There are still people under the rubble. We hope the number of dead and injured won’t rise too much, but it will rise,” Mojtaba Nikkerdar, the provincial deputy governor in Iran’s western Kermanshah Province, said.

In Kermanshah, three days of mourning have been announced, and the local governor said that some villages have been completely destroyed.

“There isn’t enough food, nor fuel and freezing cold can take lives. Children and the old are particularly hungry and many families have not yet been sheltered,” one reporter told Ilna, the local news agency.

Last night, rescuers worked to find people trapped in collapsed buildings affected by the earthquake; and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged government agencies to help those who were affected. Iranian police and other military forces were sent to places overnight.

Iraqi nemesis, Turkey, sent emergency relief, despite the two country’s contentious relationship. Kerem Kinik, Turkish Red Crescent’s vice president, told The Associated Press that Turkey sent 33 aid trucks, carrying 3,000 tents, heaters, 10,000 beds, blankets, and food.

President Donald Trump has yet to tweet about the earthquake, but other prominent figures such as Pope Francis have issued statements, sharing their condolences.

“Upon the injured and the emergency and civil authorities engaged in rescue and recovery efforts, His Holiness invokes the divine blessings of consolation and strength,” a statement from the Vatican said.

Nearby Pakistan stated “[Our] thoughts and prayers are with the Iranian and Iraqi brothers who lost their lives in this tragic calamity and we pray for the speedy recovery of the injured.”

• Earthquake with 8.2 Magnitude Strikes Chile 
• Iranian Earthquake Shakes Middle East 

The post More than 400 People Die in Middle Eastern Earthquake first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: The Christian craft chain also agreed to give up thousands of clay artifacts it purchased in 2010.

Hobby Lobby may sell a variety of stamps, glitter, and paper for all your crafting needs; but it’s found itself in the news for another questionable past time–smuggling!

According to NBC News, the craft chain must pay $3 million to settle a federal case over smuggled Iraqi artifacts.

Before this scandal, Hobby Lobby was in the news in 2014 when it won a Supreme Court religious freedom case concerning birth control. The Christian company said that providing contraception to employees violated its religious views, and the court allowed it to continue its practices, despite the complaints from female employees.

Before the birth control case, the Oklahoma-based retail chain had never hidden its religious affiliation, and its “passion for the Bible” is the cited reason it smuggled the Iraqi antiquities.

In 2009, Hobby Lobby decided that it wanted to acquire a large collection of faith-based books and artifacts. Company president Steve Green flew to the United Arab Emirates to check out engraved seals, clay impressions, and cuneiform tablets that were thousands of years old. Hobby Lobby chose to buy the items; but according to a civil filing, they were warned that the items were possibly stolen.

Green said that they had made “regrettable mistakes” when it came to the $1.6 million purchase, and he said that they were inexperienced at buying the foreign goods.

“We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled,” Green said to NBC News. 

Green said that Hobby Lobby had cooperated with the New York U.S. attorney once the investigation commenced, and the company agreed to forfeit the thousands of clay artifacts it had acquired in 2010.

Prosecutors said that Hobby Lobby had shipped 5,500 artifacts without proper customs documentation, even though an in-house lawyer had warned the company to make sure the country of origin was properly stated on customs forms. The artifacts’ customs forms said that “ceramic tiles” or “samples” came from Turkey or Israel, but in fact, the items were from Iraq.

Before the case was settled, Hobby Lobby had put the Iraqi artifacts–cuneiform tablets and clay bullae–on its shelves. According to CNN, cuneiform is an ancient system of writing on clay tablets and clay bullae are balls of clays imprinted with seals.

After receiving the multimillion dollar fine, Hobby Lobby has vowed to set up better purchasing and training policies to avoid a similar situation.

“The protection of cultural heritage is a mission that Homeland Security Investigations and its partner US Customs and Border Protection take very seriously as we recognize that while some may put a price on these artifacts, the people of Iraq consider them priceless,” Angel Melendez, who led the investigation with the United States Attorney’s Office, told CNN.

• Employee claims Hobby Lobby fired her for giving birth
• Hobby Lobby mutual funds invest in company that makes abortion drugs
• Trump signs religious liberty order 

What do you think of Hobby Lobby? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Hobby Lobby Fined $3 Million for Smuggling Iraqi Artifacts first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: Lawyers for Leigh Day  claim “human error” over failure to release a list of their clients’ military association in relation to the Battle of Danny Boy ambush and Al-Sweady Inquiry.

A twist in the facts has turned things around for three Leigh Day lawyers. Martyn Day, Sapna Malik and Anna Crowther, all Leigh Day lawyers, represented clients from Iraq in their allegation against British soldiers. The truth of who the clients actually are has come forward, changing the validity of the claims.

The Leigh Day lawyers represented members of a militia of the Mahdi Army, a group which ambushed British troops. The Iraqi militia members claimed that British Army soldiers murdered, tortured and mutilated the Iraqi civilians. Leigh Day failed to properly disclose who their clients were during the compensation proceedings.

The tribunal is now hearing complaints about how the allegations from the members of the Iraqi “murderous” militia have caused years of suffering for the falsely accused soldiers. Day and Malik are facing 19 charges of misconduct while Crowther faces one charge of misconduct. Had the firm not withheld the information of who their clients are, a £31m public inquiry into the claims likely would not have needed to happen.

Timothy Dutton QC, who is representing the Solicitors Regulation Authority said, “Over a period of more than seven years, Martyn Day, Sapna Malik and Leigh Day made and maintained allegations that soldiers in the British Army had murdered, tortured, and mutilated Iraqi civilians.” He further explained that the lawyers had in their possession since 2004 the Shia militia group Office of the Martyr Al-Sadr detainee list which “’undermined their clients’ claims they were innocent bystanders in the Battle of Danny Boy.”

The battle in question occurred on May 14 when the British Army entered into an attack brought on up Iraqi insurgents of the Mahdi Army outside the city of Al Amara.

The tribunal received word that Leigh Day received around £9.5 million for their work on the case. The firm claims they did not commit any professional wrongdoing. They claim the lack of disclosing the detainee list was “human error” and not on purpose.

Dutton explains that if the list had been provided, legal aid would most likely not have been made available to Public Interest Lawyers and the inquiry, dubbed Al-Sweady, would not have progressed. Public Interests Lawyers submitted multiple allegations of misconduct by British soldiers. The group has since closed down and the lead lawyer, Phil Shiner, has been struck off over any misconduct.

Dutton said, “If the respondents had discharged their duties, British soldiers and their families would not have had to endure torment and years of worry arising from false accusations endorsed by solicitors and members of the profession, made not just in claims but to the world’s media.”

The findings of the Al-Sweady inquiry were that some soldiers’ actions breached the Geneva Convention. However, the claims were highly criticized from the beginning of the investigation. The same investigation found that British forces responded to the ambush with “exemplary courage, resolution and professionalism.”

Do you think the list should have been released? Tell us in the comments below.

To learn more about Iraq cases, read these articles:

• Four Blackwater Guards Convicted in 2007 Shootings of 31 Unarmed Iraqi Civilians
• Violence in Iraq Hits Historic Levels
• Iraq Executing Its Citizens at High Rate, Even with Evidence Confessions Induced by Torture

Photo: telegraph.co.uk

The post Leigh Day Lawyers Failed to Release Detainee List first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: A law student from Florida A&M spends 12 hours per day studying and two hours per night training for MMA. 

William Kelly is a law student in Professor Deleso Alford’s class at the Florida A&M University College of Law, according to The Orlando Sentinel.

On the street, Kelly is known as Hale. He told the rest of the class the following:

“William is my government name, but they call me Hale in the streets. I’m an MMA fighter, Brazilian jujitsu practitioner and Muay Thai kickboxer.”

To read more law school news stories, click here.

Kelly studies for 12 hours per day for final exams in law school and then heads to the gym to prepare for his upcoming fights.

“If you can handle this, you can handle anything,” he said. His training sessions last for some two hours each night.

He visits the gym five nights per week.

“It’s a family, most of all,” Kelly said, when discussing his friends from the gym.

Kelly is the youngest child out of five, with all four siblings being girls.

To read more about Florida A&M Law School, click here.

“He was the only boy and had to deal with all those females — that’s what made him so tough,” said his father, James Kelly.

Kelly served in the U.S. Army National Guard and was deployed to Iraq after high school.

Upon returning home from Iraq, Kelly attended the University of Florida, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history. He then worked as a substitute teacher. Then he worked as a financial representative.

Kelly said he needed more in his life and decided he wanted to help people who have been injured or gotten into legal trouble for the first time. He said he wanted to become either a criminal defender or a personal injury attorney.

Can Kelly succeed in both worlds? Use our poll to share your thoughts.

Image credit: Florida A&M

The post Law Student Studies By Day and Fights By Night first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: After celebrating Veteran’s Day this past week, we have come across an interview with a soldier, Wes Moore, who served overseas recently and it is a must-see.

Wes Moore recently sat down for an interview about his time in the military to celebrate Veteran’s Day. Moore talks about the sentiment spoken to him by many civilians ever since he returned home from overseas; “Thank you for your service.”

To read more Veteran’s Day-related stories, click here.

Moore is asked about the sentiment and responds with the following:

“And what was amazing to me was that I very naively started hearing this statement that I never fully understood, because right after 9/11, you start hearing this idea where people come up to you and they say, “Well, thank you for your service.” And I just kind of followed in and started saying the same things to all my soldiers. This is even before I deployed. But I really had no idea what that even meant. I just said it because it sounded right. I said it because it sounded like the right thing to say to people who had served overseas. “Thank you for your service.” But I had no idea what the context was or what that even,what it even meant to the people who heard it.”

One of his comments from late in the interview is incredibly telling and poignant:

“When I first came back from Afghanistan, I thought that if you make it back from conflict, then the dangers were all over. I thought that if you made it back from a conflict zone that somehow you could kind of wipe the sweat off your brow and say, “Whew, I’m glad I dodged that one,” without understanding that for so many people, as they come back home, the war keeps going. It keeps playing out in all of our minds. It plays out in all of our memories. It plays out in all of our emotions. Please forgive us if we don’t like being in big crowds. Please forgive us when you transition back to a family who has completely been maneuvering without you, and now when you come back, it’s not that easy to fall back into a sense of normality, because the whole normal has changed.”

To read more stories about our country’s veterans, click here.

To all veterans past and present, please use our poll to share your thoughts about Moore’s comments.

The post ‘Thank You For Your Service’ Means More Than We Think first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: A Marine veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars discusses his relationship with a service dog in this video and how it has helped him deal with PTSD.

There are thousands of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). There are various treatment methods out there, but one method that has been viewed as effective is that of pairing veterans with service dogs.

Pets for Vets is a non-profit group that rescues animals, trains them and matches them with veterans who have been diagnosed with PTSD. One of those veterans is Blade Anthony. He talks about his dog in the video embedded in this post.

Anthony describes his first interaction with the dog at the presentation:

“She said, “I would like to present to you, in the name of Pets for Vets, this service dog to thank you for your service to our country,” and I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw were her eyes looking at me. I just fell apart. I felt like that very moment, months and months of not being happy, and not feeling cool, and not feeling right, just got sucked away instantaneously, and I had this overwhelming feeling of the swine to fall asleep.”

Does this video hit home? Use our poll to share our thoughts.

The post Veteran Discusses Relationship with Dog to Aid PTSD first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: Four military veterans were convicted on Wednesday for their part in a 2007 shooting that killed 14 Iraqi citizens and wounded 17 more.

In 2007, 14 Iraqi citizens were killed and another 17 were wounded when American security contractors fired machine guns and grenades into a traffic circle in Baghdad. According to the Washington Post, on Wednesday, four Blackwater Worldwide guards were convicted of murder and manslaughter by a jury.

During the 10-week trial, prosecutors argued that the contractors fired carelessly in a failed security operation after one of the contractors falsely claimed he thought the driver of an approaching vehicle was a car bomber. They stated that they acted in self-defense and that their response was appropriate for a car-bomb threat and the sound of AK-47 gunfire. None of the victims was an insurgent.

David Schertler, an attorney for one of the guards, Dustin Heard, said that the verdict was “incomprehensible.” He added, “The verdict is wrong. We’re devastated. We’re going to fight this every step of the way.”

William Coffield, the attorney for Evan S. Liberty, stated that his client plans to appeal. He said, “It’s difficult to understand the verdict given the evidence. There are a lot of appellate issues here.”

The jury was composed of eight women and four men. They deliberated for 28 days before issuing a verdict. Nicholas A. Slatten, 30, of Sparta, Tennessee, was convicted of murder. Paul A. Slough, 35, of Keller, Texas was convicted of 13 counts of manslaughter and 17 counts of attempted manslaughter. Liberty, from Rochester, New Hampshire, was convicted of eight counts of manslaughter and 12 counts of attempted manslaughter. Finally, Heard, a 33-year-old from Knoxville, Tennessee, was found guilty of six counts of manslaughter and 11 counts of attempted manslaughter.

In addition, Slough, Liberty and Heard were convicted of using military firearms during the commission of a felony.

Slatten received a mandatory sentence of life in prison for the murder charge. The other three contractors face a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison. All four men are military veterans. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that sentencing would be held at a later date.

U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen, Jr., whose office prosecuted the case, said, “This verdict is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law, even in times of war. I pray that this verdict will bring some sense of comfort to the survivors of that massacre.”

Andrew G. McCabe, the chief of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, commented, “Today’s verdict demonstrates the FBI’s dedication to investigating violations of U.S. law no matter where they occur.”

Prosecutors had attempted for years to bring the case to trial, and is a landmark event in the government’s attempts to monitor security contractors’ behavior in war zones.

The United States government refused to allow the men to be tried in Iraq, and tension mounted between the two countries. “Blackwater” soon became a moniker for unaccountable American power.

Lawmakers condemned the shooting, which occurred in Nisour Square, as recently as July. However, legislation that would clarify jurisdiction for American prosecutors and investigators to pursue criminal acts overseas by private security contractors has stalled for years.

Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, praised the verdict, but said, “It should not have taken this long for justice to be served…Ensuring that our government has the ability to hold government contractors accountable should be a bipartisan issue, and I hope senators of both parties will work together to pass this important reform.”

Erik Prince, the founder of the company, eventually resigned. The company has since been renamed Xe Services and then Academi.

The verdicts against the security contractors were quite different from how a 2005 raid was handled. During that raid, 25 unarmed Iraqis were killed by U.S. service members. Women and children were killed in the Haditha home raid, which was located in the Anbar province.

Originally, eight Marines were charged, but seven Marines had their charges dropped. The dropped charges ranged from assault to involuntary manslaughter. Only Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich was convicted for the incident. He pleaded guilty to negligent dereliction of duty and received no jail time. His rank, however, was reduced.

The Blackwater defendants were part of a group of 19 guards who worked security for State Department officials in Iraq. During the incident, their convoy had cleared a path for a different Blackwater team that was evacuating a U.S. official from a car bombing that had occurred close by.

The prosecution faced several challenges in its case. Initially, charges were brought against six Blackwater contractors in 2008. One of the contractors, Jeremy Ridgeway, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and testified for the government at trial. Charges were dismissed against another contractor, Donald Ball.

Other indictments were dismissed by a federal judge in 2009. The judge stated that prosecutors should not have relied on statements that the guards provided to the State Department right after the incident, as they believed that the statements would not be used in court. However, an appeals court reversed the judge’s ruling in 2011, and prosecutors were able to obtain fresh indictments against the contractors.

The four defendants who remained claimed that the shooting was initiated by Ridgeway and Jimmy Watson, the convoy’s team leader. Prosecutors conceded that Ridgeway suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and that he “lost it” in Iraq. Watson was granted immunity for testifying against the other contractors.

Prosecutors called 70 witnesses to the stand. The defense called four. Some employees disagreed over who fired the first shots. Others agreed that they heard incoming AK-47 gunfire.

The prosecution also hit a snag in the trial when they realized that they had not turned over all the photographic evidence of the incident. This included a photograph of AK-47 shell casings from a bus stop near the area where the contractors heard gunfire.

However, the jury did not buy that the guards acted in self-defense. The jury felt that the contractors used excessive force and acted unreasonably by starting firefight with an unknown enemy, especially since civilians were killed without evaluating the threat they posed.

However, prosecutors maintained that the convoy’s command vehicle was slammed by shrapnel from an American grenade. They added that Slatten “lit the match that ignited the firestorm” in closing arguments. Slough, the convoy command vehicle’s turret gunner, was charged with causing the most damage.

The prosecution called 30 Iraqi witnesses, which was said to be the most foreign witnesses to have testified in a criminal trial in the United States.

The prosecution also added that both Slatten and Liberty felt negativity toward the civilian population in Iraq, and that Slough sometimes fired on Iraqi targets without provocation.

However, the defense maintained that the contractors acted reasonably at a time when the capital was the center of “horrific threats” from ambushes and car bombs. Some attacks were aided by Iraqi security forces and permeated by guerillas. They added that the government was overreaching past the limits of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows prosecution of government employees and contractors for criminal acts that are committed while abroad. The defense argued that the contractors had signed on with the State Department, not the Pentagon. The prosecution, however, argued that the MEJA covers those who work in relation to U.S. military missions.

Photo credit: NBC.com

The post Four Blackwater Guards Convicted in 2007 Shootings of 31 Unarmed Iraqi Civilians first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

Summary: According to a recent investigation by the United Nations, the Iraqi government is sentencing citizens to death in increasing numbers as torture-induced confessions are used as evidence against them.

In a disturbing report, the United Nations states that the Iraqi government is both torturing and wrongfully executing hundreds of its citizens. In recent months, genocidal slaughter led by the Islamic State, as well as extra-judicial killings implemented by Shia death squads, have made headlines around the world.

According to Vice News, in the report, the UN stated that in over half of the capital trials conducted in Iraq, judges “systematically ignored claims by defendants that they were subjected to torture to induce confessions.” The trials the UN reported on were monitored by their investigators.

According to the UN, the torture-induced confessions represent a criminal system that has no proper methodology in place to properly carry out criminal investigations. The Iraqi government is also accused of implementing anti-terrorism laws to expedite the executions of both dissidents and suspected terrorists.

The report noted, “The use of the death penalty in such circumstances carries the risk of grievous and irreversible miscarriages of justice since innocent people may face execution for crimes they did not commit.”

In 2004, capital punishment was reinstated in Iraq. Since that point, the government in Baghdad has executed over 675 prisoners. Eleven were executed in 2005, but the amount of death penalty cases has been rising steadily ever since. The number especially rose after U.S. forces withdrew from the area in 2011. Last year 177 Iraqi citizens were hanged. In 2013, only two countries executed a higher number of citizens than Iraq: China and Iran.

As of August, roughly 60 people had been hanged. Death row numbers in Iraqi jails total 1,724 detainees. The United States, in comparison, has just over 3,000 inmates on death row, but its population is nine times that of Iraq.

Another disturbing fact reported was that “many female detainees alleged that they had been detained in lieu of male family members.” Women make up a small portion of those awaiting execution. In addition, two cases were noted by the UN that suggested some prisoners were under 18 years of age at the time of their crimes, but they received the death sentence after “an ordinary medical doctor” testified that the inmates were older.

Francesco Motta, the head of the UN’s human rights office in Iraq, said, “Police are poorly trained and equipped. In the current environment police arrest a person, and, because they have to have evidence in order to charge and try the individual…they inevitably resort to forcing a confession from the accused—which in turn is often the only, or a significant part of the prosecution’s case.”

Both Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, and Nickolay Mladenov, its special representative for Iraq, urged the Iraqi government to halt the death penalty in light of the report’s release.

Zeid said, “Given the weaknesses of the criminal justice system in Iraq, executing individuals whose guilt may be questionable merely compounds the sense of injustice and alienation among certain sectors of the population, which in turn serves as one of the contributing factors that is exploited by extremists to fuel the violence.”

The Iraqi parliament passed a rigorous anti-terrorism law in 2005. Sunni leaders have felt that the law unfairly targets their communities and those who do not support Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The law reads, “…anyone who committed, as a main perpetrator or a participant, a terrorist act, along with anyone who incites, plans, finances or assists terrorists to commit such a crime” will receive the death penalty.

The former president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, opposed the death penalty. Mass hangings previously occurred when the Kurdish president was not in Iraq—in a single day in 2013, 34 prisoners were executed.

Under the laws in Iraq, there is no guaranteed right to an attorney or silence. This means that those who were charged under the 2005 anti-terrorism law can be held indefinitely in jail without ever having a trial or facing their charges.

UN investigators discovered that suspects who appear before a judge, for the most part, do so without an attorney present. If the court does appoint an attorney for the defendant—which is rare—“rarely is any time given to the defendant to prepare his or her defense, and the only intervention on the part of the lawyer is most likely—if at all—during sentencing, when a perfunctory plea for clemency or leniency is made,” according to Motta.

Nearly all prisoners—95 percent–who spoke with Motta’s staff said that they were subjected to abuse or torture in able to force them to confess. Michael Wahid Hanna, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, and a former researcher for Human Rights Watch in Baghdad, observed, “The system is at its weakest when you are practicing dragnet detention policies. That only gets worse in times of crisis and it means that a lot of otherwise innocent people get caught up.”

While the United States occupied Iraq, courts occasionally would see coalition soldiers offer testimony in terrorism cases. Hanna recalled, “We had this strange hybrid, at times we did have the introduction of forensic evidence.”

The judicial system, along with the country’s security forces, were included in the United States’ efforts to remove lingering pieces of Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, the process gave the public the impression that the judicial branch was ruled by components close to the government. “It’s been a broken system for a long time. That has only gotten worse as the sectarian violence has increased,” Hanna explained.

Both the UN and legal experts have noted that the death penalty itself is not illegal under international treaties. However, torture is banned, and the right to a fair trial is guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Motta said, “In our view, in order to address the root causes of terrorism and insurgency, the government must as urgently be seen to provide real justice to the people of Iraq, by undertaking reform of the criminal justice system to ensure due process and fair trial standards.”

Photo credit: businessinsider.my

The post Iraq Executing Its Citizens at High Rate, Even with Evidence Confessions Induced by Torture first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

As of 2009, the violence in Iraq had reached its lowest point since 2003, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki claimed that the country was peaceful and democratic. The violence has returned in a major way to the country as 2013 has become the deadliest year in Iraq since 2008 as an estimated 7,900-8,700 people have been killed. The data comes from the U.K-based website IraqBodyCount.org. The death toll is blamed on execution-style killings and suicide bombings.

According to Al Jazeera, some 92 people were killed on Monday of this week with 161 wounded in attacks across the country. The attacks have yet to be claimed by anyone, but they target security forces and civilians.

The first round of attacks occurred in Beiji, which is north of Baghdad. The suicide bomber in this attack drove his vehicle, filled with explosives, through the front gate of the town’s police station. Once this occurred, three bombers ran into the police station and blew themselves up, killing eight officers and wounding five more.

According to Reuters, two cars filled with bombs exploded near a funeral in Yusfiya, killing 24 Shia Muslim pilgrims. This town is located 12 miles south of Baghdad. Then, various car and roadside bombs exploded in Shia neighborhoods of Baghdad, killing 27 people.

The council building in Tikrit was attacked by three suicide bombers, killing three people using car bombs. The violence in the country has spiked due to a crackdown that began in April on a protest camp in a Northern Sunni province.

Outside of the bombings on Monday, an execution took place in Mosul by militants who captured a bus carrying Shia pilgrims. The bus was headed to Karbala when it was captured and 12 of the people on board were shot and killed.

The Associated Press estimates that some 262 people have been killed in the month of December in attacks across Iraq.

The post Violence in Iraq Hits Historic Levels first appeared on JDJournal Blog.

In 1988, the United States government conveyed important information that helped Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military to counter the Iranian military. The information given to the Iraqi military included maps and images regarding Iranian locations and troops, as well as critical logistics and details about Iranian air defense.

The United States was at that time aware that Hussein’s military would attack using chemical weapons. Iraq’s military had used mustard gas and a lethal nerve agent, sarin before, on “four major offensives in early 1988.” The U.S. helped Iraq to win the war, as Iraqi intelligence used the satellite imagery, maps and other information to their benefit. The result was that Iran was forced to “come to the negotiating table”

U.S. officials have “long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein’s government never announced he was going to use the weapons. “Retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona was a military attaché in Baghdad during 1988, he comments, “the Iraqi’s never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew.”

New CIA documents reveal new details that show the “depth of the United States’ knowledge of how and when Iraq employed the deadly agents. Though ForeignPolicy.com mentions that this is ultimately an “American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical attacks ever launched,” I don’t think complicit is an appropriate word. America has been the ‘world police’ since before my birth, but I still am clueless as to why it is the role of the U.S. military to control and observe every government’s doings. As much as I read history, I don’t see that Vietnam was a necessary war, cold-war notwithstanding. Why does having knowledge make you complicit?

The CIA commented that the nerve agent’s use “could have a significant impact on Iran’s human wave tactics, forcing Iran to give up that strategy.” The CIA also intuited that if the Iraqis had the nerve agent, surely they would use it on their enemies in the current war. Also the CIA went on to speculate that if the Iranians found out that the US was involved and had evidence, that they would take the situation to the international courts and to the UN.

Col. Francona reported that thousands were reported dead due to the nerve agent sarin, and that he himself scooped up sarin-cure injectors as proof from battlegrounds that the Iraqi’s were using the chemical in their warfare. The agent was put into bombs as well. The last large attack using the nerve toxin was called the ‘Blessed Ramadan Offensive’ and used more of the toxin than ever had been employed. Until the strikes at Damascus last week.

The post CIA Files Shows that the United States Government Assisted Iraq’s War Against Iran first appeared on JDJournal Blog.