VSPs Gettin' Down Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

A few of the National Security Network's VSPs (Including yours truly) in a video, talking about Petraeus's testimony this week. 

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[Don Bacon]

Excerpts from Juan Cole, who got them from McClatchy:

* No July [civilian casualty] numbers were [officially] released because the ministry said the numbers weren't clear. But an official in the ministry who spoke anonymously because he wasn't authorized to release numbers said those numbers were heavily manipulated.

*The official said 1,980 Iraqis had been killed in July and that violent deaths soared in August, to 2,890. . ."

*Oxfam estimates that 28 percent of Iraqi children are malnourished

*Baghdad has gone from "65 percent Sunni to being 75 percent Shiite"

*Three weeks ago, fighters for the Islamic State of Iraq, an al Qaida in Iraq front organization, paraded through the streets of Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, said tribal sheik Fawaz Mohammed al Jarba. "It's very bad," Jarba said. "There are so many attacks that never make it in the media." .

*Maliki’s cabinet still has nearly as many vacancies as it has sitting ministers

*Last week, the parliament, back from its summer vacation, barely had a quorum in its first meetings.