Translated material
Dead Soldier's Bracelet
Barack Obama saves other people's sons from Iraq
The situation in Iraq is still an integral part of the election struggle in the United States. According to a Gallop poll published recently, when choosing a presidential candidate, Americans will primarily be guided by his ability to resolve the Iraqi issue.Iraq is a key issue in Democratic Senator Barack Obama's campaign program. In preparation for tomorrow's primaries in Hawaii and Wisconsin, he met Saturday with the mother of 20-year-old Sergeant Ryan David Jopak, who was killed in Iraq. Having handed Obama a personalized bracelet from her deceased son, the grieving mother ordered the senator to save other people's sons from Iraq. Obama accuses White House rivals Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain of supporting an "unnecessary war in Iraq" that cost "billions of dollars and thousands of lives."
The Iraqi issue was discussed very vigorously on February 13 at a hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate. Democratic legislator from Florida Robert Wexler accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who participated in the meeting, of lying: “The George W. Bush administration made 935 false statements on Iraq, of which 56 were made by you, Madam Secretary.” We are talking about statements that justified the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The White House also received criticism for the ineffectiveness of the 158,000-strong American contingent stationed in Iraq and for the lack of a strategy for political reconciliation in Iraq. But the secretary of state, while agreeing that there were problems, still saw “improvements in security” in Iraq and even discovered the sprouts of a “young political system that allows us to overcome existing differences.”
Rice added optimism to the country's 2008 budget of $48 billion, which was finally adopted by the Iraqi parliament on February 12. Of this amount, a 17 percent quota is allocated to Iraqi Kurdistan, which is what the Kurds sought. In one budget package, parliament voted for laws on amnesty, on the powers of local authorities and set local elections for October 1. Nevertheless, Condoleezza Rice left the Capitol amid the cries of American pacifists: “War criminal!”, “Resign and take Bush with you.”
Reconciliation in Iraq is still a long way off. From January 2007 to February 2008, female suicide bombers alone carried out at least a dozen terrorist attacks in Iraq, six of them in the last four months. Yesterday, two again became victims of suicide bombers in Baghdad. Three more were killed in northern Iraq in Mosul due to a car bomb. More than forty people were maimed by these explosions.
Earlier, on February 14, at dawn in the village of Auja, north of Baghdad, unknown assailants brutally shot a family of nine people, including seven boys. She belonged to the Sunni al-Tikriti clan, from which the late dictator Saddam Hussein came. It is possible that this is an act of blood feud.
The current US President George Bush does not admit his own mistakes for what is happening in Iraq, but is looking for culprits on the side. Thus, he placed responsibility on Syria, ordering to expand the list of American sanctions against Damascus. Washington is freezing the holdings of Syrian officials "responsible for decisions that undermine stabilization efforts in Iraq or allow the use of Syrian territory for these purposes."