anniversaries

lots of outlets focusing on the 5th anniversary of Iraq invasion...most are pessimistic. here are 2 from the LAT: signs of progress don't last long enough to report, and one Iraqi general's story of lost hope
"As the fifth anniversary of the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein nears, he serves as a singular witness to the hopes and horrors of the last five years: a man haunted by his role in a terrible stampede on a Baghdad bridge that left nearly 1,000 people dead; a man targeted for his involvement in the discovery of a Shiite police torture chamber; a man devastated by the killing of his son."

New Yorker: documenting life at Abu Ghraib
“'[the prison looked] Like something from a Mad Max movie,' Sergeant Javal Davis, of the 372nd, said. 'Just like that—like, medieval.' There were more than two and a half miles of wall with twenty-four towers, enclosing two hundred and eighty acres of prison ground. And inside, Davis said, 'it’s nothing but rubble, blown-up buildings, dogs running all over the place, rabid dogs, burnt remains. The stench was unbearable: urine, feces, body rot.'
The prisoners—several thousand of them, clad in orange—were crowded behind concertina wire. 'The encampment they were in when we saw it at first looked like one of those Hitler things, like a concentration camp, almost,' Davis said. 'They’re in there, in their little jumpsuits, outside in the mud. Their rest rooms was running over. It was just disgusting. You didn’t want to touch anything. Whatever the worst thing that comes to your mind, that was it—the place you would never, ever, ever, ever send your worst enemy.'”

Ind: older atrocities: remembering Mai Lai, 40 years later

NYT: US trying to convince Pakistan to embrace counterinsurgency (against militants) rather than conventional warfare (against India) (SV wonders if Musharraf cites Rumsfeld and Cheney)

Gdn: Tibet demonstrations, violence move to Xiahe
BBC: Taiwanese plan to demonstrate against anti-secession law

Ind: Iranian students reflect on the elections
Gdn: despite risks from the Morality Police, women resist restrictions through 'self expression' (indoors)

Ind: mercenary Mann agrees to give evidence of other coup plotters to Equatorial Guinea

BBC: the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) of Manipur claims 6 Indian soldiers' lives

WP: the Left (read: Communist Party) in Germany making a comeback