synergy-III

Iraq 12 September 2005 - 3rd report

2005-09-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

Iraq 12 September 2005 - 3rd report - posted at 11:33 am EDT by Synergy:

Iraq PM Jaafari visits rebel town of Tal Afar

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Iraq PM Jaafari visits rebel town of Tal Afar
12 Sep 2005 09:56:10 GMT
Source: Reuters
BAGHDAD, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari arrived in the northern town of Tal Afar on Monday for a surprise visit to see at first hand Iraqi and U.S. operations to rid it of suspected insurgents, his office said.

"I can confirm that Prime Minister Jaafari is paying a visit to Tal Afar," a spokeswoman in his office said.

Iraqi and U.S. troops launched an assault early on Saturday against an estimated 350-500 insurgents from the town near the Syrian border. They have said they have killed 141 terrorists and captured 211 suspects there since Aug. 26.

Iraqi militant group the Islamic Army in Iraq has offered up to $100,000 for killing Jaafari and top officials for launching the offensive, according to an Internet statement posted on Monday.

On Sunday, Iraq closed its border with Syria. The United States and Iraq say Tal Afar is a staging-post for foreign fighters and military equipment from Syria on their way to cities across central Iraq.

The Kurdish- and Shi'ite-Muslim led Iraqi government is facing an insurgency from Sunni Arabs, with bombings and attacks across the country on a daily basis.

More Than 150 Insurgents Killed in Iraq

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More Than 150 Insurgents Killed in Iraq

By JACOB SILBERBERG, Associated Press Writer

Insurgents melted into the countryside through a network of tunnels to escape an Iraqi-U.S. force that reported killing about 150 rebels while storming the militant bastion of Tal Afar.

Following the classic guerrilla retreat on Sunday, the city has now been swept clear of extremists for the second time in a year. Iraqi and U.S. military leaders vowed to redouble efforts to crush insurgents operating all along the Syrian frontier and in the Euphrates River valley.

"Tal Afar is just one piece of an overarching operation. We are not going to tolerate a safe haven anywhere in Iraq," said Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, deputy chief of staff for coalition forces in Iraq.

As Baghdad kept a border crossing into Syria closed about 60 miles west of Tal Afar, Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi issued a warning: "The Syrians have to stop sending destruction to Iraq. We know the terrorists have no other gateway into Iraq but Syria."

The United States and Iraq routinely charge that Syria's government does little to stop the flow of Arab fighters across the border. Syrian leaders contend they are doing all they can.

While insurgents were retreating from Tal Afar, militants elsewhere killed one U.S. soldier and a British soldier in separate roadside bombings Sunday and assassinated an official in Iraq's Interior Ministry.

A Task Force Liberty soldier was killed and two were wounded during a pre-dawn patrol near Samarra, 60 miles north of the capital. At least 1,897 U.S. personnel have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In the southern city of Basra, a British soldier was killed and three were wounded in an attack on their convoy, the British Ministry of Defense said in London. Britain has reported at least 96 deaths since the war began.

Police said Maj. Gen. Adnan Abdul Rihman, the Interior Ministry's director of police training, was fatally shot in front of his west Baghdad home as he waited for a ride to work.

Tal Afar had been cleared of militants a year ago, but insurgents moved back after U.S. troop numbers in the area were reduced.

U.S. warplanes bombed several suspected militant targets in the city last week, and the long-expected assault to again take Tal Afar was launched early Saturday by 5,000 Iraqi soldiers backed by a 3,500-strong American armored force.

By Sunday night, the joint force reported 156 insurgents killed and 246 captured. It said troops found a big bomb factory, 18 weapons caches and the network of escape tunnels beneath Tal Afar's ancient Sarai neighborhood.

After stiff initial resistance Saturday, insurgents fell back and their stronghold was nearly deserted when the joint force moved in.

"The terrorists had seen it coming (and prepared) tunnel complexes to be used as escape routes," Lynch said.

As troops continued house-to-house searches in Tal Afar, a group claiming to be an offshoot of al-Qaida in Iraq said it would strike U.S. positions and the Iraqi government in Baghdad with "chemical and unconventional weapons ... unless the military operations in Tal Afar stop within 24 hours."

The Mujahedeen of the Victorious Sect posted the threat on an Islamic Web site known as a clearing house for militant messages. The claim could not be authenticated, but it was the second such threat since Friday, when al-Qaida in Iraq said it would use chemical weapons against Baghdad's Green Zone, which houses the Iraqi government, parliament and the U.S. Embassy.

The al-Qaida leader in Iraq also purportedly criticized U.S. and Iraqi forces for the fighting in Tal Afar and urged his fighters to prepare for a "final" battle in an audiotape posted Sunday on the Internet.

The recording attributed to Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi claimed that the insurgents inflicted casualties on the allied troops in the Tal Afar battle.

"The Crusaders mobilized their big armies and used the most destructive and lethal weapons and the most deadly and hurtful poison gas together with their stooges," he said. "But God made them drink at the hands of the mujahedeen the different kinds of death and made them face horrible things that they will never forget."

The man on the audio recording also urged his fighters to be ready for a "final" battle and show no kindness to the Americans, whom he called "cowards who always seek to run away."

The voice could not be authenticated, however it was similar to previous recordings attributed to the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi. The tape was posted on an Islamic Web site often used as a clearinghouse for militant statements.

U.S. officials could not immediately be reached for comment, but the Americans have consistently denied using poison gas in warfare.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said it killed a key al-Qaida leader, identified only as Abu Zayd, during a raid on a safe house in Mosul, 45 miles east of Tal Afar. Four other al-Qaida militants were captured.

Al-Dulaimi said the offensive in Tal Afar would be a model as his forces soon thrust farther west toward the Syrian border and south into the Euphrates valley.

"After the Tal Afar operation ends, we will move on Rabiyah (on the Syrian border) and Sinjar (a region north of nearby Mosul) and then go down to the Euphrates valley," he said.

"We are warning those who have given shelter to terrorists that they must stop, kick them out or else we will cut off their hands, heads and tongues as we did in Tal Afar," al-Dulaimi added, apparently using figurative language.

He said only five government soldiers were killed and three wounded in the Tal Afar fighting, the biggest military operation in Iraq for months.

Most of Tal Afar's residents fled before the fighting, and tens of thousands are living in tent cities to the north and east. Food, water and medical supplies are scarce.

"This camp is suffering from the lack of medicine. I need an ambulance to evacuate the critical cases," said Dr. Abdullah Jassem, the only physician at a camp near the village of al-Alouliyah.

Women and children lined up with bowls waiting for small rations of rice, chicken and tomato gravy.

Bringing Baptism to Baghdad Auburn (NY) Citizen

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Bringing Baptism to Baghdad

By Jennifer Hogan / Special to The Citizen
Monday, September 12, 2005 9:45 AM EDT

Born in Lebanon and living in Tennessee, Dr. Edgar Feghaly has made it his life's work to bring the Baptist religion to the Middle East and Africa. He has opened 54 churches in Sudan, three in Egypt, four in Syria and one in Lebanon.

But perhaps his biggest feat was in bringing the first New Testament Baptist Church into Iraq.

"A friend of mine, who was born in Iraq, and is now an American citizen and I had prayed for Iraq for a long time," he said. "With America going into Iraq and removing Saddam, it really opened the way for a Baptist church to be opened there."

The New Testament Baptist Church in Baghdad opened just two months after U.S. forces entered Iraq.

Feghaly was a guest at the Freedom Baptist Church in Auburn on Sunday, where he spoke of his mission to place the church in Baghdad.

"Bible scholars believe that the Garden of Eden was actually in Iraq, where Tigris and Euphrates meets," he said. "Next to Israel, Iraq in the most mentioned country in the bible."

According to Feghaly, before the removal of Saddam in Iraq, there were many families who did not attend church.

"When America came into Iraq, it cleared the way for us to come in with the church," he said. "There are approximately 300 to 400 families that now attend our church."

Feghaly helps to train the pastors so that they are better able to help their people. He has sent more than 15,000 Bibles to Baghdad.

"Just three weeks ago, I sent 11,000 more Bibles to Baghdad," he said. "We sent 160,000 tracts. The Freedom Baptist Church in Auburn helped to write these tracts." Tracts are religious sermons, messages or vignettes.

Feghaly said that without the fear of Saddam and the secret police, more and more Iraqi citizens are attending church.

Right now, the New Testament Baptist Church in Baghdad is currently renting space for its church, but would like to raise enough funding to be able to erect its own building.

"I feel that God put this path in my heart," Feghaly said. "It is something that I want to do. No one had asked me. I just wanted it in my heart. I found out that there is not a lot of the Baptist religion in the Middle East. With the fall of Saddam, it not only opens the way for Iraq but for the whole Middle East."

For more reports from Iraq filed on September 12, 2005 see Iraq Coalition Casualty Count

Buildup In Iraq Gains Support Tulsa (OK) KTUL

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From NewsChannel 8:
Buildup In Iraq Gains Support
Location: Tulsa
Posted: September 12, 2005 7:34 AM EST

Tulsa (AP) - A new poll indicates a growing number of Oklahomans want to send more troops to Iraq.

The findings of an Oklahoma Poll taken in late August indicate the number of Oklahomans calling for complete withdrawal dropped to 20 percent. The share of those favoring additional troops jumped to 21 percent.

That's a significant shift from a poll taken in June. In that Oklahoma Poll, 23 percent called for bringing the troops home. Only 14 percent said more troops were needed.

Al Soltow, the poll's consultant, says it appears that Oklahomans -- in the words of President Bush -- are committed to staying the course.

The survey is sponsored by the Tulsa World and KOTV. A total of 560 were questioned statewide. The poll has a margin of error of 4-point-1 percent.

Iraqi army seeks to control Tal Afar, 200 dead

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Iraqi army seeks to control Tal Afar, 200 dead

By Nameer Nouredeen
Reuters 11:13 am EDT
September 12, 2005

The Iraqi army has killed up to 200 insurgents in Tal Afar, military officials said on Monday, as troops continued mopping up suspects in the northern town.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari defied a $100,000 bounty placed on his head by a militant Islamic group to visit the scene of the insurgency, while a senior officer in Tal Afar said he expected the fighting to be over by Thursday.

The Iraqi army, backed up by U.S. troops, launched an assault early on Saturday against an estimated 350-500 insurgents in the town near the Syrian border.

Iraq's Third Army Brigade launched a fresh offensive on Monday, killing 40 insurgents and arresting 21 "terrorist emirs," or senior insurgent leaders, the brigade's media officer said, in an operation ending at around 5.15 p.m. (1315 GMT).

"We also seized a cache of heavy weaponry, including mortars, artillery, explosives, TNT, ammunition and rocket- propelled grenades," he told Reuters.

Abdelaziz Jasim, the defense ministry official in charge of operations in Tal Afar, said his forces were nearly in control of western areas of the city.

"Overall 157 terrorists have been killed and 291 arrested since the beginning of the operations," he told a news briefing in Baghdad.

"We have cleared Sarai totally and now we will clear other neighborhoods," a senior officer in Tal Afar, who gave his name only as Colonel Khalaf, told Reuters, referring to a central district at the heart of the insurgency.

"Under our plan, by Thursday the city should be clear and safe," he added.

On Sunday, Iraq closed part of its border with Syria. The United States and Iraq say Tal Afar is a staging post for foreign fighters and military equipment from Syria on their way to cities across central Iraq.

The Kurdish- and Shi'ite Muslim- led Iraqi government is facing an insurgency by Sunni Arabs, with daily bombings and attacks across the country.

The Iraqi army lost its first soldier in the fighting in Tal Afar on Monday, Jasim said, adding that six civilians had also died. He said the rebels were well prepared for the assault -- the army found 41 weapons caches and even an "advanced medical treatment center for their own casualties."

CLEANING UP

Iraqi Captain Mohammed Abdullah, in Tal Afar, said the town effectively fell on Saturday.

"We usually surround a neighborhood and then start a house-to-house search operation, because militarily the city fell two days ago but now we are running a cleansing operation from street to street and house to house," he said.

"We are facing some resistance from terrorists who are hiding in houses and streets and other terrorists trying to escape."

Iraqi troops in Tal Afar said rebels were booby-trapping civilian homes with explosives to hit soldiers raiding them.

Interior Minister Bayan Jabor told a news briefing in Baghdad that at least 10 houses had been blown up by such devices and Sarai was full of them.

But Jaafari had given orders to take special care to protect civilian lives, Jabor added.

"This is the first clean military operation that has ever happened in Iraq," he said, adding that the government had put aside $50 million for rebuilding Tal Afar after the fighting.

Jaafari himself went to Tal Afar on Monday, disregarding a bounty of $100,000 placed on his head by Iraqi militant group The Islamic Army in Iraq for ordering the assault.

The government has made much of the fact that for the first time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 the Iraqi army is playing the lead role in the fighting, while the United States plays a support role.

President Jalal Talabani said in Washington on Sunday that Iraq had enough troops to take over frontline duties from the United States and that U.S. troops should not have to make daily sacrifices.

"It's our duty to sacrifice for our people and for our country," he said, in words designed to ease pressure on President George W. Bush, who faces increasing calls to withdraw U.S. troops.

Iraq has warned it will also go after insurgents in four other towns in western Iraq -- Ramadi, Qaim, Samarra and Rawa -- and other parts of northwestern Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla, Hiba Moussa, Mariam Karouny, Omar al-Ibadi in Baghdad ))

Iraq 12 September 2005 - 2nd report

2005-09-12T03:39:00.000-07:00

Iraq 12 September 2005 - 2nd report - posted at 6:44 am EDT by Synergy"

Hundreds join Sheehan in rally against Iraq war

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Hundreds join Sheehan in rally against Iraq war

Monday, September 12, 2005
By Nate Guidry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Shielded from the sun by a large tarpaulin, Cindy Sheehan walked to the microphone dressed in blue denim shorts and no shoes, then blasted the policies of President Bush.

-----------------------------
image: Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette
Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan prepares to speak to a crowd gathered on Flagstaff Hill in Oakland last evening as part of her "Bring Them Home Now" tour.
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"Every time Bush talks he should be removed from office," Sheehan screamed into the microphone. "None of the chicken hawks have served our country the way our children have," she continued, referring to Bush and members of his administration who support the Iraq war but did not fight in previous conflicts.

Sheehan, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, and more than 300 others gathered yesterday for a memorial service at Flagstaff Hill in Schenley Park. That was followed by a candlelight march to Soldiers & Sailors National Military Museum & Memorial in Oakland.

The event was part of the national "Bring the Troops Home Now" campaign to take the message of Sheehan's 26-day vigil in Crawford, Texas, to people across the country.

Sheehan, of Vacaville, Calif., camped out near Bush's ranch in August, attempting to get the president to talk to her about her son's death and the war. Others joined her at "Camp Casey," named after her son. She is now on the national tour, which is making its way to Washington, D.C., for a Sept. 24 rally.

The Thomas Merton Center helped organize the event and re-created Sheehan's encampment on Flagstaff, including crosses representing troops killed. It was called "Camp Neil" in honor of Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello, a Penn Hills native who died in August 2004 while serving in Iraq.

Santoriello's mother, Diane Davis Santoriello, told the crowd that her son died for a lie.

"The Pentagon has failed our troops," she said. "My son died for people who are worse off now than before we got there."

Santoriello said she was outraged at the callousness of the Bush administration.

"They betray our troops by not having an exit strategy, not having proper equipment, and not planning for an insurgency that had been predicted," she said. "It seems this administration never plans for a worst-case scenario."

For her, that worst-case scenario was the detonation of IEDs -- improvised explosive devices -- that killed Neil Santoriello. After his death, Santoriello said she saw photographs of Neil surrounded by Iraqi children.

----------------------------
image: Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette
Hundreds of people participate in last night's candlelight march through Oakland.
-------------------------------

"Those pictures haunt me," she said. "I wonder how many of those children or their families are still alive?

"The Army has a slogan, 'Mission First, People Always!' I am certain Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld have not comprehended this slogan. Neil did. He told me, 'Mom I can't think about politics while I am here. I just have to take care of my guys.' And he did. All of his men came home, except him."

Beatriz Saldivar of Fort Worth, Texas, provided an emotional account of the death in February of her nephew, Sgt. Daniel Torres, in Iraq.

"He was on his second tour in Iraq due to stop-loss orders when an improvised explosive device exploded and hit his unarmored Humvee," said Saldivar.

Bill Mitchell, whose son Sgt. Michael Mitchell was killed in Sadr City with Sheehan's son, Spc. Casey Sheehan, encouraged people to continue to support the cause.

"This [war] is illegal and immoral," he said. "We support the troops. We are the true American patriots."

Sheehan has clearly become the face of the movement.

"Our boys were killed by the failed policies of this administration," she said. "There have been four failures of this administration: Sept. 11, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Hurricane Katrina. We have to force our leaders to listen to us."

NMSU Physical Science Laboratory helps put the ICE on explosives in Iraq Las Cruces (NM) Sun-News

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From Las Cruces Sun-News

News
NMSU Physical Science Laboratory helps put the ICE on explosives in Iraq
New Mexico State University
Sep 12, 2005, 10:19 pm

The greatest threat to American military personnel in Iraq has been what the U.S. Army calls IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. These makeshift bombs are often placed along roadways and triggered remotely using garage door openers, cell phones or other electronic signals.

New signal-jamming equipment developed by New Mexico State University’s Physical Science Laboratory in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory is proving to be effective in defeating IEDs and saving soldiers’ lives.

Known as ICE, for IED Countermeasure Equipment, the system was recognized recently as one of the U.S. Army’s “Top Ten Greatest Inventions of 2004.” Sharing the award in June were Sam Mares, PSL’s lead engineer on the ICE project; Shane Cunico, the U.S. government lead engineer at White Sands Missile Range; and Maj. R.D. Pickering, who headed the team during its development.

All three are NMSU graduates, noted PSL Program Manager Joanne Esparza.

Motivated by the fact that more than half the deaths and injuries suffered by Americans in Iraq were being caused by IEDs, the team conceptualized and fielded the countermeasure device in a matter of months – an unusually short turnaround for new innovations. The design team consisted of several PSL employees who have worked on a variety of systems during their careers and therefore were able to design, fabricate and test the first prototype system in less than three weeks.

“Normally it takes years to develop a prototype, test, manufacture and field it,” Pickering told the Army News Service in a recent interview. “The desire to get a product in the hands of our fighting forces immediately and prevent further casualties overcame the lengthy process.”

That meant shortening the acquisition process and working “almost round the clock” at times, Esparza said. “A lot of long, hard hours went into the design, development and testing.”

PSL started work on the design in November 2003 when the government asked for the lab’s expertise in answering the new threat of remotely detonated explosives in Iraq. The team worked with a group of soldiers who had just returned from Iraq.

The countermeasure devices, about the size of a small microwave oven, are being used by the U.S. Army, U.S. Marines and the Navy Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit. Several thousand of the systems are now either in the hands of U.S. military personnel or on their way.

PSL personnel manufactured some of the initial ICE units “to become familiar with the system,” Esparza said, and they continue to do so at a low rate of production. Most units now are manufactured by Canberra Aquila and Delta Group Electronics of Albuquerque and Raytheon Technical Services Co. of Indianapolis.

The hardened design of the equipment allows it to withstand extreme conditions.

In describing its “Greatest Inventions of 2004,” the Army said ICE “provides new and improved capability in terms of effective ranges, power levels and ease of use. ICE’s unique design allows the warfighter to easily program operational threat parameters specific to the area of operation, resulting in increased survivability. ICE requires minimal user installation and maintenance training and imposes minimal logistical burden, allowing expanded utility for special operations.”

For more information about the NMSU Physical Science Laboratory and its capabilities, visit http://www.psl.nmsu.edu.

Third British soldier in a week killed in Iraq bomb attack The Independent online (UK)

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Third British soldier in a week killed in Iraq bomb attack
By Press Association writer
Published: 12 September 2005

John Reid, the Defence Secretary, condemned what he called an "appalling act of violence" which led to the death of a British soldier in Iraq.

Three others were wounded in the incident yesterday morning, believed to have been a roadside bomb exploding near their convoy in Basra.

The soldier has not been identified, but the death is the third in a week for the Army. Donal Meade and Stephen Manning, both fusiliers, were killed last Monday when their vehiclewas the target of a roadside bomb east of Shaibah airbase, in the same British-patrolled province.

Mr Reid - who was visiting UK troops forming part of the Nato force in Kosovo yesterday - said from Pristina: "I was greatly saddened to hear this morning of the death of a British soldier on duty in Iraq. As always, my thoughts are with the family, and the families of those injured, in this appalling act of violence." A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: "A British serviceman has been killed and three injured in an attack in Basra province. An investigation into the incident is now under way."

A spokesman in Basra said the injured soldiers were being treated at a field hospital in Shaibah.

Yesterday's death brings to 95 the number of British service personnel killed in Iraq since March 2003.

As Offensive in Iraq Continues, Troops Find Unexpected Quiet

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As Offensive in Iraq Continues, Troops Find Unexpected Quiet

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 12, 2005; A14

TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 11 -- For the second day, U.S. and Iraqi forces mounting a large-scale offensive in this northwestern city had little contact with insurgents Sunday, as troops conducted house-to-house searches through largely abandoned neighborhoods and detained a handful of young men.

The 8,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops involved in the operation had expected fighting to be most intense in the Sarai neighborhood, an insurgent stronghold in the eastern part of the city. But since entering Sarai on Saturday, they have found the neighborhood deserted, residents and insurgents apparently having fled during a week-long U.S. bombing campaign.

Hundreds of insurgents have been captured in the offensive. The military reported that 156 insurgents had been killed in the fighting so far, revising downward an earlier estimate of more than 200.

"The shaping operations that we conducted before crossing into Sarai are the reason why we haven't seen the resistance we expected," said Maj. Chris Kennedy, executive officer for the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault.

More than half of the 200,000 or so residents of Tall Afar have fled the city in the past year as sectarian and insurgent violence has flared. U.S. and Iraqi officials consider the city a logistics hub for insurgents operating across northern Iraq.

For the second consecutive day, U.S. forces followed several hundred Iraqi soldiers, from a unit made up mostly of troops from the Kurdish pesh merga militia, into a section of Sarai, where most residents are Sunni Muslim Turkmens, ethnic relatives of Turks.

With no one to fight and few suspects to detain, the troops treated the neighborhood as a large crime scene, gathering items they found suspicious from the dozens of homes they entered and searched over several hours. The only sounds of battle were occasional sporadic gunfire and resounding booms -- the controlled detonations of roadside bombs that were discovered throughout the day.

The operation is expected to continue in other parts of the city for several more days.

In Baghdad, Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters, "We will continue to work away so we have covered every inch of Sarai, and then every inch of Tall Afar, until we've killed all the terrorists and foreign fighters there."

A group linked to the insurgent organization al Qaeda in Iraq published a statement on a Web site used by such groups saying it would retaliate against Iraqi security forces in Baghdad for the operation in Tall Afar, according to the Associated Press.

"The Taifa al-Mansoura Army has decided to . . . strike at strategic and other targets of importance for the occupation and the infidels in Baghdad by using chemical and unconventional weapons developed by the mujaheddin, unless the military operations in Tall Afar stop within 24 hours," the statement said.

ilitants put price on Iraqi PM's head -Web

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Militants put price on Iraqi PM's head -Web

Reuters

An Iraqi militant group has offered up to $100,000 for killing the prime minister and top officials who launched an offensive on rebels in a northern town, according to an Internet statement posted on Monday.

The Islamic Army in Iraq, among several insurgent groups fighting U.S. troops and Iraqi forces, said Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and the defense and interior ministers should die for the fighting in Tal Afar.

"The leadership of the army has issued orders to all the mujahideen to intensify their attacks... to avenge the mass extermination occuring in Tal Afar," said the statement which was not dated but bore the group's logo.

The statement could not be immediately verified. It put a $100,000 price on Jaafari, $50,000 for Interior Minister Bayan Jabor and $30,000 for Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi.

U.S. and Iraqi troops are hunting rebels and foreign fighters in Tal Afar, a city of 200,000 near the Syrian border.

On Sunday, the leader of Iraq's al Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, accused the U.S. army of using poison gas on the town to "finish off the mujahideen."

Bush Supporters Question Iraq War Tactics Fox News

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Bush Supporters Question Iraq War Tactics

Monday, September 12, 2005

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
Fox News

WASHINGTON — When President Bush (search) meets with his Iraqi counterpart at the White House on Tuesday, the administration and its supporters are sure to extol the virtues and the wisdom of the American role in rebuilding Iraq.

But there's sure to be some head shaking and criticism as well, and this time from some unexpected corners.

Staunch supporters of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq have become more vocal and public with their concern over the way things are going there, prompting observers to suggest that even Republicans are getting nervous.

"The Administration is now starting to lose its base on the war, and if this continues, it will come under increasing pressure to accelerate our withdrawal," said Larry Diamond (search), senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority (search) in Iraq. He recently penned the book, "Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq."

"I have been struck that so many of the intellectual, neo-conservative supporters of the war have been quite critical of the Bush administration's management, or mismanagement, of the post-war situation in Iraq, both politically and militarily," Diamond told FOXNews.com.

Andrew Bacevich (search), a Vietnam veteran and professor of international relations at Boston University, said he sees a marked shift.

"There are people who view themselves on the Right, who were enthusiastic supporters of the war, who are now greatly concerned that the Bush administration or more in particular, the military, is losing its focus, its heart, and isn't fully committed," Bacevich said. "I think Bill Kristol (search) would be a good example of that."

Kristol, a FOX News contributor and editor of the Weekly Standard, advocated toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. But in the Aug. 15 edition of the magazine, Kristol accuses Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of "weakness and defeatism," for lowering the standards for success in Iraq and "emboldening" the enemy through his commanders' suggestion that U.S troops may come home as early as next spring if Iraqi forces are trained to secure the country in that time.

He also continues to blame Rumsfeld for not putting more U.S troops into Iraq at the start.

"The president knows we have to win this war. If some of his subordinates are trying to find ways to escape from it, he needs to assert control over them, overrule them or replace them," Kristol wrote. "What the president needs to do now is tell the Pentagon to stop talking about (and planning for) withdrawal, and make sure they are planning for victory."

President Bush has tamped down ideas of a spring withdrawal and has said repeatedly there will be no exit timetable. "As Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down," he said last month from his Crawford, Texas, ranch. "The important thing for Americans to know is that we are making progress."

Some of his supporters are now saying a more realistic view is necessary.

Ret. Col. David Hunt (search), a FOX News contributor, expressed frustration with how the administration is handling the war.

"This has been a terribly conducted war. It's been 28 months of this – it's time to get upset," he said. "We're getting shot at by people who put bombs in dead dogs. We’re not fighting it right."

Hunt said more troops are needed on Iraq's borders, but unlike Kristol, he advocates slimming down the force by 100,000 and putting in small special operations teams to counter the insurgency.

Ret. Col. Gary Anderson (search), another administration supporter, said, "I'm absolutely in agreement with the president" on not setting timetables for withdrawal, but he is also disappointed that clearer "milestones for success" haven't been established, particularly with regard to when the United States can start handing over security to the Iraqi forces.

"I do think there is some tension there, I think there is a need to hear from the field that at this point in time, we have stood up this many soldiers, and the reluctance to do that is causing some people to have some problems," he said.

"I think there are definite cracks" in the president's Republican support, said Peter Beinart (search), editor of The New Republic magazine, which has supported the invasion of Iraq from the beginning.

He said that aside from Republicans who have always been war critics, like Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, other Republicans have been more vocal about needing clarification on the war strategy and a better explanation to the American public.

‘‘Any effort to explain Iraq as ‘We are on track and making progress' is nonsense,'' former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (search) told the New York Times recently. "The daily and weekly casualties leave people feeling that things aren't going well.''

In July, Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (search), R-Md., a Vietnam War veteran who has supported the war in Iraq, became the fourth Republican to sign on to a bipartisan resolution urging the president to lay out a clear exit strategy, and has said publicly he's concerned about the effect of public opinion on congressional Republicans in 2006.

But David Winston (search), Republican pollster, cautioned against interpreting concern over war strategy as skittishness from the President's base and a lack of support for war overall.

"There is still support for this war," Winston said. What people are looking for from the President, he added, are more specifics and measures for success. "There is more demand for that right now."

Bush still has big guns to bolster his position, including the entire Republican leadership in Congress. Appearing on FOX News Sunday on August 14, Sen. John McCain (search), R-Ariz., warned of any whiff of troop withdrawal.

"I've got an idea for our Pentagon planners," he said. "The day I can land at the airport in Baghdad and ride in an unarmored car down the highway to the Green Zone is the day I'll start considering withdrawal from Iraq."

But Hunt told FOXNews.com that he believes "you will start seeing guys come out of Iraq before the 2006 elections" – and he isn't the only one.

"The conventional wisdom is the Republicans will have to reduce the force before the 2006 elections," said Harold Meyerson (search), editor-at-large for the conservative American Prospect magazine. He did not support the Iraq invasion.

"There are certainly a lot of leaks inside and outside the Pentagon and administration suggesting that is going to happen," said Beinart. "I wouldn't be surprised."

Iraq 12 September 2005 - 1st report

2005-09-12T01:58:00.000-07:00

Iraq 12 September 2005 - 1st report - posted at 5:02 am EDT by Synergy:

Iraqi-run TV widely covers Tal Afar sweep

quote:
Iraqi-run TV widely covers Tal Afar sweep

By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi and U.S. troops sweeping through the northern city of Tal Afar yesterday killed 15 suspected rebels and discovered a bomb factory during the second day of a high-profile counterinsurgency offensive.

About 5,000 Iraqi and 3,500 U.S. soldiers rummaging through the bombed-out mountain city found booby-trapped buildings, underground tunnels and large weapons caches but encountered little fighting during two days of operations. Residents estimated that 90 percent of the city of 200,000 had fled, many to a crowded tent camp.

As with similar offensives in other cities and towns this year, most of the rebels appear to have fled into the countryside before U.S. and Iraqi forces entered.

The joint operation has received heavy coverage on state-controlled Iraqi television. For two days, Al Iraqiya network has shown frequent footage from the scene of Iraqi soldiers kicking in doors as they hunt for rebels in the bombed-out city, which had been the site of insurgent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. In Baghdad, Iraqi officials have given regular updates on the fighting and announced plans to push into other cities along the border with Syria, including Sinjar, Rabiaa, Qaim and Akashat.

The offensive drew reproof from some government critics who charged that such operations served more to exacerbate tensions in the city with a mixed Shiite and Sunni population and divert attention from the government's failings to rebuild the country than to defeat the insurgency.

"What is going on there is nothing but a sectarian purge within an official cover," said Adnan al-Duleimi, a Sunni Arab leader. "This kind of policy would bring nothing but more bloodshed, more chaos, and more destruction to Iraq."

But in a televised news conference yesterday, Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi praised the offensive and the conduct of Iraqi troops.

"What is happening in Tal Afar is an example of what should happen in other troubled places of Iraq," said al-Duleimi, a descendant of the same large Iraqi tribe as Adnan al-Duleimi. "The Tal Afar operation is a quality operation by all measures."

The government's upbeat assessments were reflected in the footage on state-controlled television. Iraqis often criticize the nascent armed forces for firing their weapons wildly into the air. But last night, Al Iraqiya showed Iraqi soldiers in desert camouflage uniforms alertly marching through deserted Tal Afar neighborhoods and calmly guarding a group of about 20 bound, blindfolded and seated suspected insurgents.

Tal Afar residents at the camp outside the city described dire conditions, with more than 550 families crowded into 500 tents set up by overburdened relief workers. They described demolished homes and charged that children were killed in the fighting.

"The American forces and Iraqi soldiers ordered us to leave our houses," said Khudair Yas, 50, a Tal Afar resident living in the camp. "We left without extra clothes or food to a camp which has become like a prison."

Los Angeles Times reporters Suhail Ahmed, Shamil Aziz and a correspondent contributed to this report.

Iraqis flee town under US attack

quote:
Iraqis flee town under US attack

TAL AFAR (Iraq), Sept 11: Sporadic fighting flared in this northern Iraqi town on Sunday as American and Iraqi troops pressed home an all-out assault to recapture Tal Afar from guerrillas, sending thousands of residents fleeing. The US military said it expected to be in full control of the town in days following its largest counter-insurgency operation since a massive offensive against the rebel-held town of Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, last November.

An Internet statement in the name of an Al Qaeda-linked group threatened to retaliate against US forces with chemical weapons if the operation did not end within 24 hours but its authenticity could not be verified.

The Iraqi Red Crescent said up to 7,000 families were fleeing the fighting in Tal Afar, a town between Mosul and the Syrian border that US commanders say has become a major staging post for foreign fighters.

The US military said more than 141 �terrorists� had been killed in the town since late August and another 211 captured, along with weapons caches.

On Sunday, US and Iraqi troops were combing Sunni Arab neighbourhoods of the town for insurgents and arresting any men who had had remained in their homes despite an ultimatum to leave.

Sporadic fighting was continuing in the Saray and Kadissiyah districts as some rebels armed with light weapons and rocket-propelled grenades battled security forces, US sergeant Clarence McKaine said.

The internet statement posted in the name of the Jaish al-Taefa al-Mansura, or Army of the Victorious Community, warned of reprisal attacks using �non-conventional and chemical weapons ... developed by the mujahedeen... unless the armed onslaught against the city of Tal Afar stops within 24 hours.�

The Iraqi Red Crescent warned the humanitarian situation in the town was �critical� and reported a mass exodus of between 5,000 and 7,000 families.

Jaafari insisted the offensive was not aimed at any particular ethnic group in the town, which is divided between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Turkmen, some of whom have fled in recent months complaining of persecution by the Sunni Arab rebels.

But the town�s Sunni Arab mayor Mohammed Rasheed tendered his resignation in protest at an operation that he said was �targeting Sunni neighbourhoods.��AFP

Iraqi, US Forces Press Assault on Insurgents in Northern City

quote:
Iraqi, US Forces Press Assault on Insurgents in Northern City
By Alisha Ryu
VOA
Baghdad
11 September 2005

US solider is seen running for cover while Iraqi soliders provide security, in Tal Afar
US solider is seen running for cover while Iraqi soliders provide security, in Tal Afar
A day after launching an all-out assault, Iraqi and U.S. military officials say their troops are making significant progress in their efforts to rid the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar of insurgents and foreign fighters. VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu reports from Baghdad.

Giving reporters a detailed update of the day-old joint U.S.-Iraqi military operation in Tal Afar, the top spokesman for the multinational forces in Iraq, Major General Rick Lynch, says the troops there expect to have the town secured within the next few days.

"We have indeed been able to isolate the insurgents in specific areas of Tal Afar. The thing that we are focused on right now is the district called Sarai. It's about 600 meters by 800 meters in size. We have been able to, in the last four months, to essentially corner the insurgents, force them into this area, so that we can conduct decisive operations against them at the time and place of our choosing, and those operations are indeed underway as we speak," he said.

Several thousand Iraqi and U.S. troops are said to be involved in the operation, which began Saturday on the orders of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Tal Afar lies about 60 kilometers from the Syrian border, and has become one of several major staging areas for foreign fighters and Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgents opposed to the U.S. military presence in Iraq and Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated interim government. The prime minister's office says the all-out assault was approved after four months of fighting in Tal Afar failed to disrupt the insurgency there.

At a news conference Sunday, Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi accused neighboring Syria of trying to destroy Iraq by allowing foreign fighters to sneak into the country.

Through an interpreter, the defense minister warned foreign fighters and Iraqi insurgents that they would no longer find sanctuary anywhere in Iraq.

"I would like to confirm that, after the military operations in Tal Afar, we have other military operations stemming from Tal Afar, until we reach the Euphrates [River], and we will never let the terrorists take control of these areas,” he said. “What happened in Fallujah will not be repeated in this area, because we will kill any terrorists who flee from these cities."

General Lynch says about 300-to-500 insurgents and foreign fighters are still in Tal Afar. But he says they no longer control any part of the town.

During street-to-street, house-to-house searches in the Sarai district, Iraqi and U.S. forces say they discovered a large factory for making car bombs and improvised explosive devices (IUDs), 18 weapons caches, and two tunnels under construction, apparently to be used as escape routes.

Tal Afar's population, most of whom have either fled in recent months or have been evacuated from the city, is predominantly Sunni Arab and Turkmen. Iraqi officials have insisted that the military offensive in Tal Afar is not aimed at any particular ethnic group, but the town's Sunni mayor has resigned in protest of what he says are military sweeps targeting Sunni Arab neighborhoods.

On Sunday, a posting on an Internet Web site, claiming to be from an Iraqi Sunni extremist group with links to al-Qaida, threatened the use of non-conventional and chemical weapons against Iraqi and U.S. forces in Iraq unless the Tal Afar offensive was called off within 24 hours. The threat, posted in the name of Jaish al-Taefa al-Mansura, or Army of the Victorious Community, could not be independently confirmed.

Saddam is denied legal rights, his lawyer says

quote:
Saddam is denied legal rights, his lawyer says

By Khaled Yacoub OweisMon Sep 12, 1:27 AM ET

Saddam Hussein's new defense lawyers plan to prove he has been denied his legal rights when they defend him at a "show trial" next month, according to the lawyer assembling the team.

Iraqi officials have said the former Iraqi president will go on trial on October 19, but London-based barrister Abdel Haq Alani told Reuters on Sunday the U.S.-backed court had not even told him the trial date or the charges against him.

"We can prove in court that there has never been a due process of law. This is what is going to embarrass the Americans," said Alani, who was hired by Saddam's eldest daughter Raghd.

"We have not had any charge laid formally against the accused nor have we had any evidence as to what the elements are of the charge. There has not been a single document served to the defense on the charges, not any shred of evidence, nothing."

Alani said the defense strategy will focus on undermining the legitimacy of the court, by showing that the judges are not impartial and that Saddam has already been subject to legal bias, including failure to allow his lawyers to examine the supporting evidence of the prosecution.

"The man has been denied legal access, he has not been given enough legal advice or told of his rights, and he can't see the lawyer of his choice. That is not how it works," said Alani.

Independent legal scholars and human rights organizations have called for an international trial for Saddam, saying that Iraqi leaders have already pronounced him guilty and he may not receive a fair trial.

They say the tribunal is funded by the United States, its members were appointed by the now defunct U.S. occupation authority, and U.S. lawyers and officials still work with the prosecution and help gather evidence.

SHOW TRIAL

"If the trial is held on October 19, the Americans will have a difficult time convincing anyone that this is a fair and just trial when no proper procedure has been followed. It would be a show trial," Alani said.

Saddam, who has been held by U.S. forces since they captured him in 2003, sacked his defense team last month to bring in a more professional group.

Alani, who has been meeting the new lawyers in London, said the names of the new team will be presented to Saddam for approval next week.

Saddam, a Sunni Arab, was Iraq's strongman from 1968, when the Baath Party took power in a coup, to 2003 when the U.S.-led invasion removed him from power.

Thousands of Iraqis were killed under his rule, including Kurdish civilians attacked with gas in the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988. Some Iraqi officials said at the time that the attack was aimed at Iranian troops who had occupied the area and militant Islamist Kurds they backed.

Iraqi officials say the only charge leveled against Saddam so far is the killing of 143 men in the mostly Shi'ite village of Dujail after a failed assassination attempt against Saddam in the village in 1982.

Officials and village elders in Dujail, interviewed by Reuters, said Iraqi forces led by Saddam's half-brother Sabawi stormed the village after the assassination attempt and arrested scores of suspects, many of whom later disappeared after being transferred to a jail near the Saudi border.

Investigating judges have also probed the crushing by government forces of Shi'ite and Kurdish revolts.

Alani said he had seen no evidence that Saddam had ordered any killings.

"The Iraqi government wants to speed up the trial but the United States knows they are not ready." Alani said. "The Americans may want to show that this is a fair and just trial, which could work to our advantage."

On the inside: Mercer grad working with media to share military, Iraq's story Macon (GA) Telegraph

quote:
Posted on Mon, Sep. 12, 2005

On the inside: Mercer grad working with media to share military, Iraq's story
By Gray Beverley GEORGIA NEWS SERVICE

BAGHDAD, Iraq - About two decades ago, Steve Boylan was hanging out at his Mercer University fraternity and eating late-night breakfast at Denny's on Riverside Drive.

Today, he works with heads of state, the biggest names in journalism and has an office steps away from where Iraq drafted its constitution.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, 43, is the director of the Combined Press Information Center, the principle source for information about foreign military activity in Iraq.

Boylan himself is probably one of the most quoted individuals about the war, having fielded as many as 100 requests in a day from reporters from all over the world. He's rubbed shoulders with network anchors and appeared on numerous South American radio shows.

"As hard as it is to be away from family and friends and things like that, I'm glad I came here," he said. "It's not often you get to see a country born, or re-born."

Boylan, who had been the public affairs chief for 8th U.S. Army in Korea, volunteered for the Iraq duty because he thought it was an important job.

He arrived here last August.

Boylan helped get the word out about the election, was there when the results were announced and facilitated news conferences concerning the constitution.

Mostly, he and his CPIC staff of 66 people handle media requests and give out information about the 28-nation coalition force.

Staff Sgt. Don Dees, who worked at two Savannah area radio stations and formerly was a fire support sergeant in the 48th Brigade's 118th Field Artillery regiment, now is a member of the CPIC staff.

Dees, 37, said Boylan has a "common-sense approach to leadership."

"He'll fight to do what's right, even in the face of leaders who need to be educated on the role of public affairs and how best to execute the mission," Dees said.

Boylan also received high marks from several journalists who have reported extensively in Iraq.

Dees said his boss has "an understanding of the nature of news and what journalists need to tell the story of what our troops are doing."

Any bona fide journalist allowed into Iraq has access to their services, Boylan said. He said the Arab news organization Al-Jazeera, often accused of having an anti-coalition agenda, calls regularly but is banned by Iraqi government.

Its inquiries are referred elsewhere, he said.

Boylan said most journalists are fair and accurate about what they report, but that the reportage on Iraq is not complete.

"I think there needs to be more stories about the troops, what they are doing ... not just the explosions that go off or the ones that are killed or wounded," he said. "There's a whole lot of good that the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines are doing out in the field every day, every hour, that isn't covered."

Boylan said part of his job is to publicize the good. He said all press is "positive," as long as all sides are represented fairly and the information presented is accurate.

"People have to define what is "bad." A lot of people think that if it's a negative story, that's bad," he said. "Well, a negative story can be approached in the manner that it is still telling the story about what the unit's doing. As long as it's portrayed accurately, it's what's happened. We should be up front and honest about the good, the bad, the ugly. And that's part of our pact with America."

Boylan said he can't claim that the media at-large is against the Bush administration's efforts here, even if some anti-war views are reflected in certain reporters' writing.

"We will always have people out there who want to poke fingers, and there's just no way to get around it," he said.

Boylan also said that the media sometimes want to unfairly judge progress in the war by comparing one year's statistics to a previous year's or by setting unrealistic expectations.

"Everybody wants to see something right now. This isn't an in-and-out kind of war," he said. "The war has changed since Day 1. It's not the same Iraq we came into two years ago."

Part of what's changed, he said, is the level of danger in Baghdad. Boylan said that in January 2004, foreigners felt comfortable walking the streets, shopping and eating in restaurants.

Now most foreigners do not leave the heavily fortified International Zone without security personnel, and many wear body armor even when on the inside of the large concrete barriers that divide this government complex from the rest of the city.

Though protected by walls and guards, the IZ houses some of the insurgents' highest priority targets.

"When I first got here, we were getting rocketed and mortared daily here," Boylan said. "We've had suicide bombers make it into the International Zone. We've had car bombs go off that have knocked out the windows right out front here that actually shook this building so hard you thought it was hit."

From August to January, Boylan said, "You could hear the gun battles going off right down the street. You could watch the tracers going in and out at night. You could hear and feel the explosions."

A sniper once tried to kill Boylan at a checkpoint where he had gone to pick up a journalist, he said. But like many others who work and live in Iraq, Boylan said he's grown accustomed to being in jeopardy.

Still, he enjoys the job, even when it requires working around the clock and a full day off comes only about once a month.

"It's something new and different every day," Boylan said. "No two questions are the same that we get. No two journalists approach (questions) the same way."

Boylan had thought about becoming a chef and was on a pre-law track in his first year at Mercer. He went on to study history, political science and communications.

"(I) got involved in the ROTC more as a diversion, decided I kind of liked it," Boylan said. "Not wanting to be a reporter, I thought I'd give the Army a try. É It was one of those, 'I'll see if I like it, and when I don't like it I'll get out.' Well, I'm at 21-plus years, and I'm still in."

Boylan remembers hanging out at his fraternity house and in front of what was then known as New Man's Dorm. He said Macon was a great town for a history buff, and he'd frequently visit the Ocmulgee National Monument. Krystal burgers were another favorite.

His sister, Pam Hill, graduated from Mercer's law school and practices family law in Macon today, he said. His parents, Barbara and Lou Boylan, moved to Macon upon retirement.

Boylan is a Huey and Apache pilot who has four horses at his Wisconsin home. (He said he has his eye on an Arabian horse and two foals once belonging to Saddam Hussein, and that it would be a "pipe dream" to be able to take them home with him.)

Boylan's tour here wraps up in December. Next he'll serve as a public affairs instructor at the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Boylan said his Mercer education helped teach the value of being up-front and honest and gave him an understanding of the media.

Boylan said Mercer was the "foundation" that led him to a place like no other.
"No matter what anybody says (about the operation in Iraq), it's incredible to watch," he said. "And people all over the world don't have an appreciation for what the Iraqis and the troops that are here are going through unless they've been here."

To contact Gray Beverley, e-mail gray@ganews.org.

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 11 September 2005 - 3rd report

2005-09-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Iraq 11 September 2005 - 3rd report - posted at 3:04 pm EDT by Synergy:

Iraqi troops sweep through Tal Afar

quote:
Iraqi troops sweep through Tal Afar
by Aljazeera
Sunday 11 September 2005 8:56 AM GMT

The US army says 141 suspected fighters were killed

More than 5000 Iraqi troops backed by US soldiers swept into Tal Afar, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down stone walls in the narrow, winding streets of the city.

"Operation Restoring Rights is being conducted to remove terrorists and foreign fighters operating in Tal Afar. This operation is in support of the Iraqi governments efforts to bring safety and security to the citizens of the city," Colonel Billy J. Buckner, a military spokesman, said on Sunday.

Buckner said Iraqi and US troops had captured 211 people, killed 141 suspected fighters and confiscated nine weapons caches since 26 August.

Border closed

Late on Saturday, the prime minister ordered the Rabiyah border crossing closed in an attempt to stop the flow of fighters from Syria, which is 96km from Tal Afar.

While several hundred fighters using small arms initially put up stiff resistance in the city's ancient Sarai district, Iraqi forces reported only two men wounded in the day's fighting. The US military issued no casualty report for the 3500 Americans in the operation.

Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi
said the offensive would continue
As the day wore on, fighting died down, said Colonel HR McMasters, commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He said the joint force found the Sarai neighbourhood nearly deserted once the shooting ended.

"The enemy decided to bail out," he said.

McMasters said the vast majority of fighters captured in that period were "Iraqis and not foreigners".

Foreign fighters

According to a local Iraqi journalist interviewed by Aljazeera, there are very few foreign combatants in the area.

"Every time the US army and the Iraqi government want to destroy a specific city, they claim it hosts Arab fighters and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," Nasir Ali.

When asked about the presence of Iraqi fighters in Tal Afar, Ali said local fighters were confronting the US army.

Continued battles

With the Tal Afar offensive under way, the Iraqi defense
minister signalled his US-trained forces would not stop
after this operation and vowed to move against fighters opposed to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq everywhere.

"We say to our people ... we are coming," said Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi.

Sunni Turkmen say they are
badly treated by the government
The offensive in Tal Afar, 418km northwest of Baghdad, is delicate because of the tangle of ethnic sensitivities.

About 90% of the city's 200,000 people - most of whom fled
to the countryside before the fighting - are Sunni Turkmen
who have complained about their treatment from the Shia-dominated government and police force put in place after the US invasion in 2003.

Addressing that complaint, Jabr announced on Saturday that 1000 additional police officers would be hired in Tal Afar after the offensive and that they would be chosen from the Turkmen population.

Turkmen

The Turkmen have a vocal ally in their Turkish brethren to the north, where Turkey's government is a vital US ally and has fought against its own Kurdish insurgency for decades. Tal Afar is next to land controlled by Iraqi Kurds.

US forces are supporting Iraqi
troops in Tal Afar
Turkey voiced disapproval of US tactics when American forces ran fighters out of Tal Afar a year ago. The Turkmen residents complained that Iraqi Kurds were fighting alongside the Americans.

US and Kurdish officials denied the allegation, but the Turkish government threatened to stop cooperating with the Americans.

The siege was lifted the next day and fighters began returning when the Americans quickly pulled out, leaving behind only a skeleton force of 500 soldiers.

Neighbours blamed

For those reasons, US forces stood back during the new sweep through Tal Afar, allowing Iraqi forces to break down doors in the search for fighters. The Americans followed behind, securing positions while the Iraqis advanced.

Twelve hours after the offensive began, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said fighters had been trying to "to isolate Tal Afar from the political process as we are preparing for the referendum on the draft constitution".

Al-Dulaimi, who joined al-Jaafari at the news conference, said he expected the offensive to last three days and complained Iraq's neighbours had not done enough to stop the flow of foreign fighters.

"I regret to say that instead of sending medicines to us, our Arab brothers are sending terrorists," al-Dulaimi said.

The interior minister read al-Jaafari's order closing the border on Iraqi television late Saturday. The decree indefinitely shut the Rabiyah crossing to all transportation, including the railroad, except for vehicles with special permission from the Interior Ministry.

The order did not affect the frontier crossing near the town of Qaim or the major highway into Syria.

Aljazeera + Agencies

Tal Afar 'big warehouse' for arms

quote:
Tal Afar 'big warehouse' for arms

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's defense minister has called Tal Afar -- the latest object of a U.S. and Iraqi counter-insurgency offensive -- a "big warehouse for weapons."

Speaking in a press briefing on Sunday, Sadoun al-Dulaimi said several weapons caches and tunnels have been found during the offensive -- part of what the U.S. military calls Operation Restoring Rights.

"We discovered a factory to make IEDs (improvised explosive devices)," said al-Dulaimi, who gave an update on the offensive, in its second day.

"The technology used in this factory is high-level technology," an indication that foreigners are behind the work of the insurgency.

Tal Afar is 65 kilometers (40 miles) from the Syrian border and it is thought to be a hide-out and base for foreign fighters infiltrating the Iraqi-Syrian border. A part of the border was shut for security reasons on Sunday.

Al-Dulaimi said it appeared that many IEDs have been manufactured in the factory and transferred to other areas of Iraq.

The defense minister said that in addition to 141 insurgent deaths announced on Saturday, 15 more have been killed in the operation, which involves has house-to-house fighting.

He said some neighborhoods have been "liberated" and that prompted the move to bring back basic services.

Violence took place elsewhere on Sunday, with a U.S. soldier killed on near Samarra in a roadside bombing and six people killed in separate incidents over the last 24 hours in Baghdad.

A British soldier was also killed and three others were wounded Sunday in what a British military spokesman in Basra called a "hostile incident."

The incident took place in Basra province at 11:15 a.m., but there were no further details available.

A U.S. military statement on Sunday said Iraqi and coalition forces have detained "41 people during a cordon and search" in Tal Afar.

"Security forces also seized a mortar system with multiple rounds of ammunition and a cache consisting of hundreds of rounds of ammunition," the U.S. military said.

'Safe haven'

On Saturday, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced the start of a major push to oust insurgents.

But there have been confrontations leading up to the offensive. In recent days more than 140 insurgents have been killed and scores of arrests and several weapons cache seizures have been made.

Iraqi and U.S. forces have embarked on "a cordon and search operation against a known terrorist safe haven" in Rutba in western Iraq, the Second Marine Division in Ramadi said Sunday.

The operation, which is called Zoba'a or Cyclone, started early Sunday "with the objectives of rooting out al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists operating within the area and disrupting insurgent support systems in and around the city."

Rutba is more than 370 kilometers (230 miles) west of Baghdad.

"For the past several months, terrorists within Rutbah have escalated their intimidation and murder campaign against the local populace and city government officials. The resulting effect was an increased ability to move freely within the area and a base for them to launch attacks against innocent civilians, Iraqi security forces and coalition forces."

The U.S. soldier's death, which occurred when an improvised explosive device went off near a coalition forces combat patrol at about 4:45 a.m., brings the number of U.S. military dead in the war to 1,895.

The death of the British soldier in the southern city of Basra means 96 British troops have ben killed in the war in Iraq.

In Baghdad, four separate incidents were reported by police.

At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, gunmen fired randomly at civilians in a market in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora. Four civilians were killed and seven others were wounded in this attack, which is being investigated by police.

At 8 p.m., Saturday in the southwestern neighborhood of al-Bayya, Muhsen Abed al-Kilabi, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Abdulhasan Abbass, a Ministry of Oil employee were shot dead by gunmen on their way home from work. SCIRI is the most powerful Shiite political party in Iraq.

At 8 a.m. Sunday in northwest Baghdad's al-Hurriya neighborhood, three police officers were wounded in a roadside bombing.

At 8:15 a.m. Sunday, a high-ranking Interior Ministry official was shot and gravely wounded on Sunday, an emergency police official told CNN. Gunmen ambushed Maj. Gen. Adnan Abdulhamza in western Baghdad's al-Gazaliya neighborhood as he drove to work.

Other government officials have been assassinated in al-Gazaliya in recent months.

In Kirkuk, Task Force Liberty soldiers and Iraqi police "detained eight individuals suspected of making and emplacing improvised explosive devices," the U.S. military said.

Also, the U.S. military said multinational forces "captured" a top insurgent leader in the Ramadi area earlier this month.

He is Ammar 'Abd-Al-Hafiz 'Abd Muhummad (also know as Ammar Amam Wakhtif or Sheik Ammar) and is described as "an admitted terrorist and leader" of an insurgent group called the Nu'man Brigade."

"Sheik Ammar oversaw and directed the day-to-day operations of the organization. He ordered numerous vehicle borne improvised explosive device and improvised explosive device bombings and other direct attacks against Iraqi security and coalition forces," the U.S. military said.

CNN's Kevin Flower Enes Dulami, Mike Mount, Kianne Sadeq and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

Guns fall silent in second day of Iraq offensive Ireland online

quote:
Guns fall silent in second day of Iraq offensive
11/09/2005 - 16:54:21

Fighting eased today on the second day of a sweep through a militant stronghold near the Syrian border as insurgents melted into the countryside - many escaping through a tunnel network they dug under the ancient city in the north of Iraq.

The 8,500-strong Iraqi-US force continued house-to-house searches in Tal Afar, and military leaders said the assault would push all along the Syrian frontier and in the Euphrates River valley.

Cities and towns along the river are bastions of the insurgency, a collection of foreign fighters and disaffected Sunni Muslims, many of them Saddam Hussein loyalists.

About 5,000 Iraqi soldiers, backed by a 3,500-strong American armoured force, reported 156 insurgents killed and 246 captured.

The force discovered a big bomb factory, 18 weapons cache’s and the tunnel network in the ancient Sarai neighbourhood of Tal Afar, 60 miles east of the Syrian border.

“The terrorists had seen it coming (and prepared) tunnel complexes to be used as escape routes,” Major General Rick Lynch told reporters in Baghdad.

Iraqi Defence Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi said the sweep of Tal Afar was carried out at the request of city residents and would be a model as his forces attacked other insurgent-held cities in quick succession.

“After the Tal Afar operation ends, we will move on Rabiyah (on the Syrian border) and Sinjar (a region north of nearby Mosul) and then go down to the Euphrates valley,” al-Dulaimi said.

“We are warning those who have given shelter to terrorists that they must stop, kick them out or else we will cut off their hands, heads and tongues as we did in Tal Afar,” al-Dulaimi said, apparently using figurative language.

In Baghdad, the Interior Ministry director of police training was gunned down in front of his home in a western neighbourhood as he waited for a lift to work. Maj Gen Adnan Abdul Rihman died on the spot, said local police commander Maj Musa Abdul Karim.

The US military said a Task Force Liberty Soldier was killed in a roadside bombing before dawn today while on patrol near Samarra, 60 miles north of the capital.

In the southern city of Basra, one British soldier was killed and three were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy, the Ministry of Defence said in London.

In the Tal Afar sweep, Al-Dulaimi said five government soldiers were killed and three wound in what was the biggest military operation in Iraq for months.

Colonel HR McMasters, commander of the American contingent from 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, said the Sarai neighbourhood was nearly deserted when the fighting died down late on Saturday.

“The enemy decided to bail out,” he said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari ordered the nearby Rabiyah border crossing closed in an attempt to staunch the flow of insurgents from Syria. He said the closure would last indefinitely and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the region.

Insurgents Flee Iraq Town

quote:
Insurgents Flee Iraq Town
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 11, 2005
CBS/AP

Fighting eased Sunday, the second day of a U.S. and Iraqi sweep through the militant stronghold of Tal Afar near the Syrian border, as insurgents melted into the countryside, many escaping through a tunnel network dug under an ancient northern city.

Iraqi and U.S. military officials vowed to expand the offensive.

The 8,500-strong Iraqi-U.S. force continued house-to-house searches, and military leaders said the assault would push all along the Syrian frontier and in the Euphrates River valley.

Cities and towns along the fabled river are bastions of the insurgency, a collection of foreign fighters and disaffected Sunni Muslims, many of them Saddam Hussein loyalists.

About 5,000 Iraqi soldiers, backed by a 3,500-strong American armored force, reported 156 insurgents killed and 246 captured. The force discovered a big bomb factory, 18 weapons caches and the tunnel network in the ancient Sarai neighborhood of Tal Afar, 60 miles east of the Syrian border.

"The terrorists had seen it coming (and prepared) tunnel complexes to be used as escape routes," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said in Baghdad.

Lynch said operations in Tal Afar were part of a much larger, nationwide plan to destroy insurgent and al Qaeda bases, which included ongoing operations in Mosul, Qaim and the western town of Rutba.

A group claiming to be an offshoot of al Qaeda said it would retaliate against the government and security forces in the capital.

"The Taifa al-Mansoura Army has decided to ... strike at strategic and other targets of importance for the occupation and the infidels in Baghdad by using chemical and unconventional weapons developed by the mujahedeen, unless the military operations in Tal Afar stop within 24 hours," the statement said.

It was not immediately possible to determine the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on a Web site known for its militant contents.

Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi said the sweep of Tal Afar was carried out at the request of city residents and would be a model as his forces attacked other insurgent-held cities in quick succession.

"After the Tal Afar operation ends, we will move on Rabiyah (on the Syrian border) and Sinjar (a region north of nearby Mosul) and then go down to the Euphrates valley," al-Dulaimi said.

"We are warning those who have given shelter to terrorists that they must stop, kick them out or else we will cut off their hands, heads and tongues as we did in Tal Afar," al-Dulaimi said, apparently using figurative language.

In the Tal Afar sweep, Al-Dulaimi said five government soldiers were killed and three wound in what was the biggest military operation in Iraq for months.

In other developments:

# In Baghdad, the Interior Ministry director of police training was gunned down in front of his home in a western neighborhood as he waited for a ride to work. Maj. Gen. Adnan Abdul Rihman died on the spot, said local police commander Maj. Musa Abdul Karim.

# The U.S. military said a Task Force Liberty Soldier was killed in a roadside bombing before dawn Sunday while on patrol near Samarra, 60 miles north of the capital. Two soldiers were wounded. At least 1,897 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

# In the southern city of Basra, one British soldier was killed and three were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy, the Ministry of Defense said in London, confirming an Iraqi police report. The British military has reported at least 96 deaths since the war began. Two British troops died in a roadside bombing in southern Iraq on Monday.

The offensive in Tal Afar is especially delicate because of the tangle of ethnic sensitivities in the region.

About 90 percent of the city's population, most of which fled to the countryside before the fighting began, is Sunni Turkmen who have complained about their treatment from the Shiite-dominated government and police force put in place after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Addressing that complaint, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr announced Saturday that 1,000 additional police officers would be hired in Tal Afar after the offensive and that they would be chosen from the Turkmen population.

The Turkmen have a vocal ally in their Turkish brethren to the north, where Turkey's government is a vital U.S. ally and has fought against its own Kurdish insurgency for decades. Tal Afar is next to land controlled by Iraqi Kurds.

Turkey voiced disapproval of U.S. tactics when American forces ran insurgents out of Tal Afar a year ago. The Turkmen residents complained that Iraqi Kurds were fighting alongside the Americans.

U.S. and Kurdish officials denied the allegation, but the Turkish government threatened to stop cooperating with the Americans. The siege was lifted the next day and insurgents began returning when the Americans quickly pulled out, leaving behind only a skeleton force of 500 soldiers.

For those reasons, U.S. forces have stood back during the new sweep through Tal Afar, allowing Iraqi forces to break down doors in the search for insurgents.

Turkey sends humanitarian aid to Iraqis in Tal Afar

quote:
ANKARA, Sep. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- The Turkish Red Crescent on Sunday sent five trucks of goods of humanitarian aid to the war-torn Iraqi city of Tal Afar.

A ceremony was held at the Red Crescent Center in Etimesgut hereto bid farewell to the convoy carrying food bags, tents, chairs, gas ovens worth of about 358,000 US dollars.

Tal Afar has been a stronghold for foreign fighters and insurgents against the US and Iraqi government forces. The ethnic Turkmen account for 90 percent of residents in Tal Afar, some 420 km north of Baghdad.

Iraqi and US forces have launched a major offensive over the past days to rid the northern town of terrorists, which have also caused panic and sufferings to civilians there.

Speaking at the ceremony, Omer Tasli, chairman of the Red Crescent said that it has decided to send the aid to the Iraqis in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry and the International Cooperation Agency (TICA).

He called on the United Nations and the Federation of World Red Crescent and Red Cross Associations to help the Iraqi people to decrease their pain.

Tasli, meanwhile, urged all armed groups in Tal Afar not to hamper the humanitarian efforts of the Turkish Red Crescent.

US army says it killed Qaeda chief for Mosul

quote:
US army says it killed Qaeda chief for Mosul

AFP

The US army said it killed one of Al-Qaeda's military chiefs for Mosul in a raid near the main city of northern Iraq and launched an operation against Islamists in the west of the country.

"Multinational forces raided a safe house Saturday in Zanazil, near Mosul, resulting in the detention of four terrorists and the death of a key local leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq," it said in a statement.

"Abu Zayd, identified as the current Al-Qaeda in Iraq military emir of Mosul, was killed in the raid," it said, adding that the operation was launched after a tip-off from local residents.

It said he was "responsible for coordinating all terrorist operations in the city, which included kidnappings, extortion, murder, intimidation of Mosul citizens, and attacks against Iraqi security and coalition forces".

The US army also said it has launched a joint operation with Iraqi security forces against a suspected Al-Qaeda "safe haven" in the restive western province of Al-Anbar.

The operation in Rutbah, which lies on the highway to Jordan, came as US and Iraqi forces pressed on with an offensive against insurgents in Tal Afar in northern Iraq near the border with Syria.

"Operation Zobaa (Cyclone) began in the early morning hours with the objectives of rooting out Al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorists operating within the area and disrupting insurgent support systems in and around the city," the military said.

Qaeda group threatens chemical attack over Tal Afar

quote:
Qaeda group threatens chemical attack over Tal Afar

Sun Sep 11,11:51 AM ET
AFP

An Al-Qaeda linked Sunni group in Iraq threatened to use chemical weapons against "occupation" and Iraqi forces unless they halt their offensive against rebels in the northern town of Tal Afar.

"The military bureau of Jaish al-Taefa al-Mansura (Army of the Victorious Community) has decided to strike strategic and sensitive targets belonging to the (US) forces of occupation and apostates (Iraqi government forces) in Baghdad, with non-conventional and chemical weapons" unless the Tal Afar operation is called off, the Internet statement said Sunday.

Sporadic fighting flared in Tal Afar Sunday as 10,000 American and Iraqi troops pressed on with an all-out offensive to wrest control of the area from rebels, sending thousands of residents fleeing.

The US military said it expected to wrap up the operation by September 15.

The Internet statement, whose authenticity could not be verified, said weapons "developed by the mujahedeen (holy warriors)," would be used "unless the armed onslaught against the city of Tal Afar stops within 24 hours."

It was posted on one of the Islamist websites used by the group of Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, another insurgent group linked to the Al-Qaeda network.

Jaish al-Taefa al-Mansura slammed Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and Defense Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi for threatening to "launch an armed offensive against Sunnis in Tal Afar... Ramadi, Al-Qaim, Samarra, Haditha, Rawa and other cities in western" Iraq.

"God's enemies among the Americans and their lackeys who claim to be Iraqis are at their last breath, and trying by all means to escape from the mujahedeen," said the group, which has claimed several attacks against US forces and Iraqi policemen and Shiites.

These included a mortar attack close to a Shiite shrine in Baghdad at the end of August which killed seven people and wounded three dozen others as about one million Shiites gathered for a celebration.

The attack and rumours of a suicide bomber sparked a stampede that left almost 1,000 pilgrims dead.

Dulaimi accuses Syria of 'exporting destruction'

quote:
Dulaimi accuses Syria of 'exporting destruction'

Sun Sep 11,11:49 AM ET
AFP

Iraqi Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi accused neighbouring Syria of "exporting destruction" to his country by allowing insurgents to sneak across their border.

Iraqi authorities announced the closure of a border crossing to Syria near the rebel bastion town of Tal Afar where a major counter-insurgency offensive involving about 10,000 Iraqi and US troops was underway.

"I call on our neighbours to fear God and stop exporting destruction to Iraq," said the defence minister, in reference to Syria which stands accused in Baghdad of turning a blind eye to cross-border infiltrations.

"The regions of Al-Qaim, Hussayba, Rutbah and Rommana and others have been held hostage by terrorists coming from all countries and who have found no point of entry to Iraq other than Syria," Dulaimi said Sunday.

"Our problem is that all the infiltrations which bring death and terror take place through the 615-kilometre (370-mile) border with Syria," he said.

"We can not post a soldier every metre of the way but we will find a solution by the end of the year," he said. "They are wrong if they think that Iraq will deviate from its path to democracy."

The Iraqi government has closed the Rabia border crossing to Syria, with the exception of vehicles authorised by the interior minister.

Iraq 11 September 2005 - 2nd report

2005-09-11T05:34:00.000-07:00

Iraq 11 September 2005 - 2nd report - posted at 8:38 am EDT by Synergy:

UK soldier dies in southern Iraq (BBC News)

quote:
UK soldier dies in southern Iraq
One British soldier has been killed and three others injured in an attack in Iraq's Basra province, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed.

A spokesman in Basra, southern Iraq, told the BBC the casualties were being treated at Britain's Shaibah base.

A BBC correspondent in Baghdad said a roadside bomb was detonated as the soldiers' convoy passed. The MoD said an investigation was ongoing.

The death brings the number of UK soldiers killed in Iraq to 95.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this difficult time
MoD statement

In a statement, the MoD said the fatal attack took place at approximately 11.15 (0915 BST).

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this difficult time," it said.

The Shaibah base, about 10 miles south-west of Basra, is the British logistics headquarters in Iraq.

On 5 September two British soldiers were also killed by a roadside bomb as they travelled in a convoy five miles east of the base.

Suicide car bomb hits US convoy in western Baghdad

quote:
Suicide car bomb hits US convoy in western Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Sept. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- A suicide car bomb detonated near a US military convoy in Baghdad's western district on Sunday, wounding six Iraqis, police said.

"A suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden car and struck a US military convoy on the main road in Ghazaliyah district, wounding six people and damaging several civilian cars along with several nearby shops and houses," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

The source confirmed that there were casualties among the US troops but said "it was unknown yet as the US troops cordoned off the area preventing people from approaching the scene."

Members of Guard unit weary of role in Iraq

quote:
Members of Guard unit weary of role in Iraq
Short supplies, lack of manpower affect Minnesota group
BY JANNA GOERDT
Duluth News Tribune

When the 216th Air Defense Artillery Echo Battery left Cloquet, Minn., in August 2004, it left as one unit ready to join Operation Iraqi Freedom.

What the National Guard unit couldn't know is that they would soon be split — with half the soldiers sent to guard an American contractor's compound in Saudi Arabia and the other half sent "to hell," according to soldiers now guarding the Daura oil refinery near Baghdad.

There, soldiers describe pulling 48- to 72-hour shifts and being out on patrol or guarding the base when sleep deprivation clouds their judgment. They describe equipment shortages — of everything from flashlights to laser-sighted scopes to medicine for insect bites. And they describe a frenetic pace coupled with shifting missions that they believe has needlessly endangered their lives and left them soured on the military.

"I'm just tired of letting my troops get pushed around," wrote Staff Sgt. Doug Heller of Duluth in a series of e-mail interviews. He corresponded with the Duluth News Tribune despite recent orders not to speak to the media. His messages provide a look at the ordeals of serving in Iraq and its impact on one unit.

"All I'm asking for is the people to realize that their friends, families and loved ones have been through hell," Heller wrote. "If there is a way for me to prevent this from happening in the future, I will try anything, at the cost of my rank."

It's an unusual move for active-duty soldiers to speak out about their mission, said John Marshall, combined Honor Guard Commander in Duluth. Marshall served in the Army and was injured in the Persian Gulf War.

"The situation must be pretty bad for them to talk," Marshall said. "By doing this, they are sticking their necks out."

SPLIT BATTERY

Soldiers learned around November 2004 that the E-battery would be split in half, said former unit commander Major Tad Hervas.

"It's very unusual," Hervas said. "They never want to split a unit. But (military commanders) said they believed in Echo 216, and that they had no choice."

Soldiers were needed to guard a compound in Saudi Arabia, and they needed visas to enter the country. Minnesota soldiers were most quickly able to obtain visas, Hervas said from his parents' home in Coon Rapids, while he was home on leave in August.

Soldiers and their families soon discovered that the living and working conditions in Saudi Arabia and Iraq are quite different.

Those in Saudi Arabia live in a renovated palace with private rooms and access to a swimming pool and bowling alley. Soldiers in Iraq live in a compound where electricity has been intermittent, sand fleas swarm during the rainy seasons, and soldiers bathe in gritty water from the Tigris River.

Soldiers from the 216th ironically call the camp, located inside Baghdad's protected Green Zone, "Camelot."

Specialist James Silda, a Gilbert native now serving with the 216th E-Battery in Iraq, believes his unit is doing too much with too few people. Of the already halved E-Battery, now numbering just less than 60 soldiers, sometimes 20 soldiers or more are gone. Some go home on leave, some work at the nearby operating base and others monitor perimeter security. That leaves about 36 soldiers to patrol their sector within Baghdad, Silda said.

Doug Heller's father, Bob Heller of Duluth, is a Vietnam War veteran. He realizes soldiers living in a war zone shouldn't expect luxury.

"The mission comes first," Bob Heller acknowledged, "but these conditions transcend what you'd expect."

The stepped-up operations pace, which soldiers believe is a result of the split battery and fewer available soldiers, worries Bob Heller the most. "The harder you work, the more you do, the more careless you get," he said.

NEW MISSION

Early this summer, the battery was ordered to step up patrols and provide new security support for two Iraqi Army compounds. Trips through the streets of Baghdad increased dramatically during the new mission, Silda said, and soldiers sometimes slept for three to five hours every other day.

"The real kicker here is we are doing all this with 60 people, while other full units, over 120 people, are doing the same job," Silda said. Soldiers resorted to drinking Red Bull and other caffeine-rich drinks to help them stay awake, Silda said.

Sleep deprivation may have caused at least one serious accident in Iraq, Doug Heller believes. After a series of long shifts, a senior noncommissioned officer was severely burned when he used a lighter to check the fuel level in a generator. Fumes from the fuel tank ignited, causing burns to the officer's face and upper body.

Hervas confirmed the incident. He said the officer "pushed himself pretty hard" and was working on about five hours of sleep a night. Such sleep patterns were "not uncommon for us over here," Hervas said.

Hervas also said while it was true the unit was at half-strength, "we were not given a mission that required a full battery." He said the sector assigned to E-battery was about half as large as other assignments.

Hervas recently was removed from his three-year command of the 216th E-battery and assigned as a Division G-3 air officer, helping to coordinate the air space over Baghdad. He described his reassignment as a lateral move and one designed to take advantage of his experience with the U.S. Air Force.

After Hervas was reassigned, the 216th was given another new mission. They are now training the Iraqi Special Forces Police. Maj. Alayne Conway, the Fourth Brigade public affairs officer assigned to the Third Infantry Division, said comments about such severe lack of sleep were "a bit exaggerated."

The 216th E-Battery is assigned to the Third Infantry Division. Conway also said the unit's operational tempo during the first part of their deployment didn't allow for a lot of time off but the tempo has since eased.

"The important thing to remember is that the 216th is a very competent unit," Conway wrote in an e-mail interview from Baghdad. Soldiers "wanted to see their Iraqi brothers succeed and devoted all their energy to that mission."

The pace has slowed a bit in the past month, Doug Heller and Silda said, as the unit begins winding down operations and prepares to come home later this year. But the effects linger.

LASTING BITTERNESS

Doug Heller volunteered to deploy to Iraq two months after returning from a tour in Bosnia. He said he loves the Army, and he loves his unit. But he is ready to call it quits after eight years with the National Guard.

"I guarantee that after they let us off stop-loss half my unit will be done" with the National Guard, Doug Heller said.

Members of the 216th should start packing their gear in December and be home in February "if the timelines don't change that much," Hervas said. Donna Flaherty of Deer River, whose son, Ryan, is with the 216th E-battery in Iraq, said she believes her son also will leave the Guard.

Ryan Flaherty's tour was supposed to be up as of December 2004 but has been extended through the military's stop-loss policy, through which the U.S. Defense Department has forced some members of the volunteer armed forces to stay in the service beyond their contracted dates.

"Probably for most of us (in Iraq), this will be the end of our military career because of this experience," Silda said.

It might be anyway, Marshall said. The military doesn't look very charitably on soldiers who complain publicly about operation conditions, he said, and can stall or halt their career advancement.

Speaking out "compromises everything," he said. "The military will make their lives hell. My guess is that they are trying to inform the public that they need more governmental support over there."

Revenge Killings Fuel Fear of Escalation in Iraq

quote:
Revenge Killings Fuel Fear of Escalation in Iraq

By Alissa J. Rubin
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — Hassan Lami was herding some sheep to a garbage-strewn city lot to graze when six masked men, using guns with silencers, shot him more than 30 times.

As far as anyone can determine, the just-married 20-year-old was killed that July morning because he was a Shiite Muslim.

One week later, another 20-year-old was gunned down, this time by men who didn't bother to wear masks. In his neighborhood, the only reason anyone can think of that Ahmed Dhirgham was killed is that he was a Sunni whose father had worked for the Iraqi intelligence service under Saddam Hussein.

In the last six weeks in the Ghazaliya neighborhood on Baghdad's western edge, where both young men lived, more than 30 people have been killed in what appear to be purely sectarian attacks. Although other forms of violence, such as suicide bombings, have destabilized Iraq, many fear that the Shiite-Sunni targeted killings that have escalated in Baghdad and beyond are tipping the nation toward civil war.

The attention of the Iraqi elite and the media has been on the effort to draft a constitution, but the failure to stem the wave of sectarian killings could pose a greater threat to the country's stability than the failure to reach a constitutional consensus, said several Iraqi government officials who asked not to be named because they did not want to be seen as pointing fingers at members of another sect.

"The government now is so inefficient at controlling the situation that the security situation has deteriorated, and so the political situation has deteriorated," said a senior government official who took part in the negotiations on the constitution.

"They have to get security under control, otherwise it's not going to matter what we do here," he said, speaking from an office in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

"People don't want a constitution — they want security," said a former general in the Iraqi army, a Sunni who lives in Ghazaliya, home to Shiites and Sunnis alike. The man, who is known in his neighborhood as Abu Arab, asked that his full name not be used because he was afraid of becoming the target of assassins.

The tit-for-tat killings now stalk many of Baghdad's mixed neighborhoods, where Sunnis and Shiites used to live in peace. Often, the people killed, such as the two young men in Ghazaliya, have no involvement in politics.

Iraqi government statistics show that targeted killings have almost doubled over the last 12 months despite increases in the numbers of policemen on the streets and Iraqi national guard patrols. In July, nearly 700 of the 1,100 bodies brought to Baghdad's central morgue had fatal gunshot wounds. There are no figures for those that fail to make it to the morgue.

"The number of gunshot cases we see now is huge," said professor Abed Razaq Ibaidi, acting director of the Central Institute of Forensic Medicine in Baghdad, the largest morgue in the country.

Doctors believe that most gunshot victims are the targets of assassination-style attacks because they have multiple bullet wounds, many of them around the chest. "Most of the time they use machine guns, and it [seems] intentional because … they shoot more than once around the chest area," Ibaidi said.

Sometimes the slayings verge on the realm of massacre. In April, dozens of bodies, many believed to be Shiite villagers, were found in the Tigris River south of Baghdad. In May, 14 corpses, said to be those of members of a Sunni Arab clan, were discovered in a ditch in Baghdad. In July, the bodies of 12 Shiites were found in an empty lot in a Sunni enclave near Baghdad's southern edge.

The dead are left by the side of the road, in empty lots, slumped in cars or minibuses pocked with bullet marks. There are so many that the Central Institute has nearly tripled its pathology staff from nine doctors to 25, and they work almost round the clock.

Families in the ethnic minority in neighborhoods such as Ghazaliya are selling their homes and moving to places where they are in the majority. Without more than anecdotal evidence, it's unclear whether this could become an exodus. Hassan Lami's family is among those planning to leave: It has put its house up for sale.

Once people start to leave, the tide of instability can be hard to reverse, said Ed Joseph, a fellow at the Wilson Institute who worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina during that Balkan country's war in the mid-1990s.

He said the likelihood of civil war increases if, after attacks targeting a community, other members of the minority population flee, as Muslims in Bosnia did after villages were attacked by ethnic Serb soldiers.

"Once people leave en masse, they must find a place to go," he said. "They go toward places that are safe … where 'their kind' is in charge. Then, in turn, hostility there turns toward the minorities in the areas they have fled to.

"The question is: How does the minority community react after one of theirs is killed? If they don't flee, if they just hang around and then order up some reprisal killing a little later … it's probably less likely to be civil war.

"But if they start leaving, then watch out," he added. "Huge danger. That is what people only belatedly realized in the Balkans: Once displacement starts, it is a never-ending cycle."

So far, the Shiite clergy has counseled restraint amid suicide bombings that have targeted largely Shiite crowds, such as the attack in the town of Musayyib in mid-July that killed more than 90 people. But it appears that some Shiites are seeking revenge nonetheless.

Further complicating matters are the sectarian alliances of the security services. The Interior Ministry and the police are viewed as predominantly Shiite, while the Iraqi army and some other Defense Ministry units and officers are thought of as Sunni. And killers sometimes disguise themselves as security officers, making it difficult to know whether there are rogue units.

The Ghazaliya neighborhood offers a disturbing picture of the local landscape of sectarian terrorism. To enter Ghazaliya is to enter a world in which gunmen can kill at will and families sell their longtime homes at a loss or abandon them rather than risk becoming the next victims.

Ghazaliya was built as a bedroom community for members of the Iraqi army and intelligence services; it is at least 85% Sunni, the minority that dominated Iraq under Hussein.

The backdrop to the recent killings there is a neighborhood battle over mosque construction. The fight started almost immediately after the U.S.-led invasion, when Shiite imams came to the neighborhood and handed out permits to Shiite residents to build a hussainiya — the Shiite name for neighborhood mosques. The site the Shiites chose was already spoken for by Sunnis, who had their own plans to build a mosque there.

But the Shiites commenced construction, and a popular local Sunni doctor protested. Soon after, he was killed by gunmen who burst into his clinic after his last patient had left.

In the fall of 2004, neighborhood Shiites invited pilgrims who were walking to the holy city of Karbala to stop for food and tea. More than 1,000 Shiites rallied at the newly built mosque — an act that local Sunnis viewed as a provocative flexing of muscle designed to remind them that Shiites now held the balance of power.

A few weeks later, a Shiite butcher was slain. He had been planning to build a second hussainiya.

"A day later, another Shiite named Amar was killed and then we started to forget how many were killed," said Ahmed Najim, a neighborhood resident until two months ago, when his family moved out of fear. Najim, who still works in the hussainiya as a janitor, accompanied the Lami family to an interview with a reporter.

This summer, the number of slayings accelerated sharply. Stop almost anyone on the street in Ghazaliya, it seems, and they know someone who has been killed.

Graffiti recently scrawled on a neighborhood wall near the small shopping center where the Lami family has its butcher shop read, "We will kill 99 Shiites here; we have already killed 16."

On the day family members talked with a reporter, the number had risen to 21. By the beginning of September, the toll had risen to 25, including a patron of the hussainiya who was killed the morning after he delivered 24 fans to the mosque as a gift. Two more Sunnis were killed in the neighborhood in the same period.

Among those killed in recent weeks was Sadek Khafaji, a 36-year-old janitor at the hussainiya. He was gunned down just after dark as he tried to repair the wire running from a neighborhood generator to the mosque, said Najim, 24, who had been close to the slain man.

By contrast, most of the Sunnis targeted in Ghazaliya were affiliated with the former regime, neighborhood residents said. Neighborhood Sunnis believe that those killed were on lists compiled by the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia allied with the leading Shiite party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

"Badr came in with lists of names of Iraqi officers, especially Iraqi air force officers who bombed during the Iraq-Iran war; high-ranking Baathists were also on the lists. Organized liquidation of those people started," said Abu Arab, the former general who lives in Ghazaliya. He rarely leaves his house now and usually sits in a rear, windowless room.

"A pilot who lived about 500 feet from me was killed because he had flown missions during the Iraq-Iran war," he said.

In early August, gunmen attacked worshipers at a Sunni mosque in the neighborhood just after the midday prayer, said Abu Mohammed, another former Iraqi army general who had stopped by to talk with Abu Arab and also asked that his full name not be used.

"Everyone knows that people do not bring their guns into the mosque, so they opened fire right as they were coming out of the prayer," he said. "The imam was killed and several others too."

In Ghazaliya, Sunnis believe it is Shiites who are killing them and Shiites believe it is Sunnis, although Sunni residents say they still talk to Shiite neighbors and vice versa. But the generosity is dwindling.

Dhirgham's mother, distraught as she stood at the threshold of her house, blamed the Shiites, cursing Abdelaziz Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the Badr Brigade.

"It all comes from the vicious head of Al Hakim, and the Badr forces," said the grieving mother, who wouldn't give her name. "This is not a fair life."

The Lami family makes similar accusations about Sunnis, although its comments are more veiled.

"There is no condemnation from surrounding Sunni mosques about these assassinations," said Qassim Lami, 40, the brother of the slain sheepherder.

"President Bush said, referring to Sept. 11, whoever does not sympathize with us is against us," he said. "These Sunnis are not condemning it — they are against us."

His mother nodded. "The people doing this to us, they are all from Ghazaliya, all our neighbors are Sunnis," said Nooriya Mussawi Lami.

As the Lami family and two friends left the hotel where they had agreed to be interviewed about Ghazaliya, each of the men stopped at the front desk and picked up the handgun that he had left there on his way in.

Ahmed Najim gave a tight smile as he tucked his gun into his pants.

"Just remember," he said, "tomorrow you may hear I am dead."

Times staff writers Caesar Ahmed and Suhail Hussain contributed to this report.

Iraq families flee as US-led forces raid rebel town

quote:
Iraq families flee as US-led forces raid rebel town

AFP

Thousands of American and Iraqi troops pressed on with an all-out offensive to wrest control of a town near the Syrian border from insurgents, with the US military expecting to wrap up the operation in days.

The Iraq Red Crescent said up to 7,000 families were fleeing the fighting in the northern town of Tal Afar, scene of the biggest operation against rebels since the US-led onslaught on the restive town of Fallujah last November.

The US military said more than 141 "terrorists" had been killed in Tal Afar since late August and another 211 captured, along with weapons caches.

"By the 15th of September we should be done. The enemy will be defeated," said US commander Major Robert Molinari.

"There's no areas they are controlling, they are either on the run or dead," he said, adding that rebels had been isolated in the southeastern Saray district of the city.

Fighting has been raging for more than a week in Tal Afar, a town between the main northern city of Mosul and the Syrian border that US commanders say has become a major staging post for foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq.

Iraq announced Saturday the closure of the Rafia border crossing into Syria, imposed an overnight curfew in the area and banned the carrying of weapons.

The Iraqi Red Crescent warned that the humanitarian situation in the town of 300,000 was "critical" and reported a mass exodus of between 5,000 to 7,000 families.

A 500-tent camp has been set up in Abu Maria, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Tal Afar, and the Red Crescent has installed 40 toilets and 20 water tanker trucks. A team of doctors and volunteers have been sent to the scene.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said Friday he had given the go-ahead for the assault after days of deadly clashes failed to dislodge the rebels. Around 4,000 US troops and 6,000 Iraqis are involved in the operation, dubbed "Restoring Rights."

Jaafari insisted the offensive was not aimed at any particular ethnic group in the town, which is divided between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Turkmen, some of whom have fled in recent months complaining of persecution by the Sunni Arab rebels.

Iraqi and US troops were acting "on behalf of all the different religious and ethnic elements in Tal Afar and in response to their appeals for help," the premier said.

"They (the rebels) have driven people from their homes. They want to deny the citizens of Tal Afar their future in a democratic and peaceful Iraq. We want to guarantee those rights. These operations are being conducted precisely for that purpose."

But the town's Sunni Arab mayor, Mohammed Rasheed, tendered his resignation in protest at what he described as a sectarian operation.

"The operation is targeting Sunni neighbourhoods," he complained.

"The problem is sectarian," he said. "It cannot be solved through military operations. It should be done through negotiations and cooperation with the leaders of Sunni and Shiite tribes."

Tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have been running high over the drafting of a new constitution which is due to be put to a national referendum on October 15 ahead of elections in December.

The Iraqi parliament was due to convene on Sunday when it is thought a final draft of the constitution might be presented after last-minute changes were proposed to appease disenchanted Sunni Arabs.

Meanwhile, the US military said it launched a joint operation with Iraqi security forces against a suspected Al-Qaeda "safe haven" in Rutbah on the highway to Jordan in the western province of Al-Anbar.

"Operation Zobaa (Cyclone) began in the early morning hours with the objectives of rooting out Al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorists operating within the area and disrupting insurgent support systems in and around the city," the US military said.

"For the past several months, terrorists within Rutbah have escalated their intimidation and murder campaign against the local populace and city government officials," it said.

On Saturday, the military said it destroyed an Al-Qaeda safe house in western Iraq, claiming that a "senior Al-Qaeda terror consultant and foreign fighter facilitator known as 'Sheik' is believed to have been in the house at the time."

The US military also said that one of its soldiers was killed and two others wounded Sunday when a bomb went off near a military patrol outside the town of Samarra north of Baghdad.

The soldier's death brings to at least 1,884 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Friday in Washington that he hoped the US troop presence could be reduced to a few small bases within a couple of a years.

"I say there is not a need for a huge number of American forces. But I think there will be a need for two, three small bases for frightening others not to intervene in our internal affairs."

Six million Iraqi children head back to school

quote:
Six million Iraqi children head back to school

AFP

Around six million children were headed back to school in a violence-plagued Iraq where basic services have yet to be restored two-and-a-half years after the US-led invasion.

"About 20,000 school establishments ranging from kindergartens to high schools are ready to take in six million young Iraqis," out of a total population of 26 million, Education Minister Abdel Falah Hassan told reporters.

He said the ministry was building 500 new schools a year and providing pupils with free supplies and books wiped clean of the ideology of the former Baath party of dictator Saddam Hussein who was toppled in April 2003.

Iraq 11 September 2005 - 1st report

2005-09-11T03:27:00.000-07:00

Iraq 11 September 2005 - 1st report - posted at 6:30 am EDT by Synergy:

A U.S. soldier was killed and two others wounded on Sunday 11 September by a roadside bomb near Samarra. The AP puts the U.S. death toll in Iraq at 1897. (see last story posted below "Iraqi, U.S. Troops Clear Rebel Stronghold")

US military sees quick end to Iraq offensive

quote:
US military sees quick end to Iraq offensive

AFP

Thousands of American and Iraqi troops pressed on with an all-out offensive to wrest control of a town near the Syrian border from insurgents, with the US military expecting to wrap up the operation in days.

It said more than 141 "terrorists" had been killed in the raid on Tal Afar in northern Iraq since late August and another 211 captured in the biggest operation since the offensive against the restive town of Fallujah in November.

"By the 15th of September we should be done. The enemy will be defeated," said US commander Major Robert Molinari.

He said rebels had been isolated in the southeastern Saray district of the city. "There's no areas they are controlling, they are either on the run or dead."

Fighting has been raging for more than a week in Tal Afar, a town between the main northern city of Mosul and the Syrian border that US commanders say has become a major staging post for foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said Friday he had given the go-ahead for a major assault on Tal Afar after days of deadly clashes failed to dislodge the rebels.

Around 4,000 US troops and 6,000 Iraqis are involved in the operation, dubbed "Restoring Rights."

Iraqi Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi said Saturday that 141 insurgents had been killed and 197 captured in the previous two days alone.

Interior Minister Bayan Baker Solagh announced that Iraq was closing the Rafia border crossing with Syria, imposing an overnight curfew in the area and banning the carrying of weapons.

Jaafari insisted the offensive was not aimed at any particular ethnic group in the town, which is divided between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Turkmen, some of whom have fled the town in recent months complaining of persecution by the Sunni Arab rebels.

Iraqi and US troops were acting "on behalf of all the different religious and ethnic elements in Tal Afar and in response to their appeals for help," the premier said.

"They (the rebels) have driven people from their homes. They want to deny the citizens of Tal Afar their future in a democratic and peaceful Iraq. We want to guarantee those rights. These operations are being conducted precisely for that purpose."

But the town's Sunni Arab mayor, Mohammed Rasheed, tendered his resignation in protest at what he described as a sectarian operation.

"The operation is targeting Sunni neighbourhoods," he complained. "The problem is sectarian," he said. "It cannot be solved through military operations. It should be done through negotiations and cooperation with the leaders of Sunni and Shiite tribes."

Tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have been running high over the drafting of a new constituion which is due to be put to a national referendum on October 15.

The Iraqi parliament was due to convene on Sunday when it is thought a final draft of the constitution might be presented after last-minute changes were proposed to appease disenchanted Sunni Arabs.

Meanwhile, the US military said Saturday an air strike destroyed Al-Qaeda safe house in Ubaydi, in western Iraq, claiming that a "senior Al-Qaeda terror consultant and foreign fighter facilitator known as 'Sheik' is believed to have been in the house at the time of the attack."

Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran visited Baghdad Saturday for talks with Iraqi officials after months of often strained relations between the two neighbours.

He is the highest-ranking Jordanian official to visit Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.

Badran stressed the importance of strengthening cooperation, saying "security and stability in Iraq are linked to the security and stability of Jordan."

Jaafari praised the visit by his Jordanian counterpart as "a new and sharp turn in the relations between the two countries."

Jordan's King Abdullah II had voiced concern that the empowerment of Iraq's long oppressed Shiite majority might open the way to greater Iranian influence in the Arab world.

Iraq's Shiite-led government has in turn complained of the number of Jordanians fighting alongside Sunni insurgents, including Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In Washington, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Friday he hoped the US troop presence could be reduced to a few small bases within a couple of a years.

"I say there is not a need for a huge number of American forces. But I think there will be a need for two, three small bases for frightening others not to intervene in our internal affairs," Talabani said at a press conference with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Baghdad airport reopened Saturday after a one-day shutdown following a pay dispute between the government and the London-based firm in charge of security.

Sold ier killed in Iraq was someone others looked up to Winston-Salem (NC) Journal

quote:
Soldier killed in Iraq was someone others looked up to

Funeral held for Army Sgt. Monta Ruth, a Glenn High graduate, who was killed north of Baghdad in August
By Danielle Deaver
JOURNAL REPORTER
Sunday, September 11, 2005

The friends and family of Army Sgt. Monta Ruth gathered yesterday to say goodbye to him, the first soldier with Winston-Salem roots to die in Iraq.

Ruth, 26, was killed while on a security patrol Aug. 31. He was escorting an emergency ordnance disposal team to the site of an attack when an improvised explosive device struck his vehicle, killing him and wounding several others in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Maj. Gen. Virgil Packett presented Ruth's wife, Aylin, and daughter, Zoe, 3, with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart during the funeral.

"These are medals that are borne in defense of our nation," he said. "These are Sgt. Ruth's medals. He made the ultimate sacrifice."

The church was silent, except for a few muffled sobs. Packett took Zoe's hand as she reached up to him, and held it gently as he gave the medals to Ruth's wife.

People remembered Ruth as a man who wanted to make something of his life.

"Those of you who knew this young man, knew exactly who he was, a man of great character, of strength, someone you looked up to," said the Rev. Leroy Kelly of Christ Temple Church, where the funeral service was held.

"Monta Ruth loved all of us in this place today. He loved everyone, black and white, brown and red, men and women ... he loved you and I enough to put his life on the line every day for every one of us," Kelly said.

Spc. Edward Terrel was one of the men who looked up to Ruth. He served under him in Iraq and recently returned home after being wounded.

"He was a great leader and a great friend," Terrel said. "He had lots of military knowledge. He was my team leader and my best friend."

Another friend of Ruth's, Jennifer White, remembered Ruth from his years at Glenn High School, where they were classmates.

"He was awesome," she said. "He was the type of person that really loved everyone very deeply. He was the type of person who, if you were down, always picked you up."

Ruth liked hanging out with his friends, she said, going to movies and spending time with people.

He also loved the military and knew he wanted to join it from an early age, family members said. He was part of the Junior ROTC throughout high school, where school officials said that he was a good student.

After he graduated, he joined the military. He was an engineer with the 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Benning, Ga., when he died. It was his second tour of duty. He was expected to return home in October for a visit.

Ruth is survived by his parents, Barbara and Frederick Kluttz, seven brothers and sisters and several aunts and uncles. The family filled several pews of the church during the service and crowded close to the coffin during the graveside service. More than 100 other family members and friends attended the services.

Everyone watched in silence as two soldiers folded the American flag that laid on top of Monta Ruth's coffin into a precise triangle. Several people broke down in tears when Packett knelt to give the flag to Ruth's wife and daughter.

"On behalf of a grateful nation," Packett said.

Protesters, young and old, turn out in Oakland decrying war in Iraq Pittsburgh (PA) Post-Gazette

quote:
Protesters, young and old, turn out in Oakland decrying war in Iraq

Sunday, September 11, 2005
By Milan Simonich, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

On a gorgeous Saturday morning, 13-year-old Katee Neuhaus had but one activity in mind -- protesting the war in Iraq.

So Neuhaus, an eighth-grader at Keystone Oaks Middle School in Dormont, headed to Oakland for yesterday's demonstration outside a military recruiting station.

Her friend Dana Dobson, 15, went along with her. "I'm here because I think the war is wrong," said Dobson, a sophomore at Mt. Lebanon High School.

Neither girl is old enough to drive, so Neuhaus' mom dropped them off at the demonstration in the 3700 block of Forbes Avenue. Of the 60 or so war protesters who gathered there, about a third were teenagers.

Dobson said history has convinced her that public demonstrations against war can be effective.

"We can make a difference, like people did in protesting the war in Vietnam," she said.

Dobson said her study of documents pertaining to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks convinced her that Iraq had no part in hijacking commercial jets and flying them into landmark American buildings. This turned her into a regular protester at the Oakland recruiting station.

Neuhaus is just as dedicated to the cause. She said one reason is that a cousin of hers, from Illinois, died in the war.

The Oakland recruiting station was closed during yesterday's demonstration, but most protesters still patrolled the street in front for almost two hours.

Mel Packer, 60, of Point Breeze, carried a sign that said: "Recruiters lie. People die."

"The benefits people are promised by recruiters often don't materialize," he said.

Even more troubling to him, Packer said, is that mostly poor Americans are fighting and dying in Iraqi war zones. "We make war one of the only industries that poor people can find a job in," he said.

War protesters will stage two more events in the next two days.

Cindy Sheehan, who camped in front of President Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch in hopes of asking him about her son's death in Iraq, will be in Schenley Park tonight. She will help lead a candlelight march at 7 p.m.

Protesters also plan another round of picketing at the Oakland recruiting station at 11:45 a.m. tomorrow, when it is open for business.

Iraq and Japan: A tale of two U.S. occupations

quote:
Iraq and Japan: A tale of two U.S. occupations
By Jonathan E. Leightner and Hubert P. van Tuyll | Guest Columnists
Saturday, September 10, 2005

This month marks the two-and-a-half-year anniversary of our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Violence and terrorism continue and the future stability of the country is anything but certain. In contrast, our occupation of Japan (1945-1952) was peaceful and the transition to democratic self-government was relatively smooth. Why the difference?

The environments were quite different. Japan had an ancient and respected institution of a single ruler - the emperor - whose order to surrender was final for all save a few fanatics. It is not irrelevant that Japan, despite the war, the defeat, the surrender, and becoming a highly modern and progressive nation, still has a monarchy. Iraq had no such institution.

A second difference is that Japan was a homogeneous country. There was no real chance that the country would fall apart after the conquest. Iraq's identity as a nation remains uncertain, because of religious and racial differences.

Finally, the pre-war hostility of the Japanese toward America was less than Arab hostility toward the United States today. Many Japanese saw us as inferior barbarians; in contrast, many Arabs see us as the Great Satan.

THE POSTWAR political situation was entirely different. Steering Japan toward a constitutional democracy with an elected parliament was easier than doing the same in Iraq for a remarkably simple reason: Japan already had all these things. Japan had a constitution and a parliament, and its government was led by a prime minister - just like today. True, the modern system functions much better than its prewar counterpart, but Japan's political transition was in some ways less drastic than what Iraq is now attempting.

Expectations of the subordinate nations differed. The Japanese had been told that the Americans would be brutal and harsh conquerors. They were told that we would rape, pillage and burn Japan if we won. The effects of our bombing raids and the horror created by our atom bombs added credibility to this view. Instead, the Japanese experienced a mild and conciliatory occupation. This probably helped eliminate any latent motivations for violent resistance by taking away a potential reason for fighting. Certainly the United States was able to maintain a positive image in Japan.

IN IRAQ, THIS has proved far more difficult. Iraqis had higher expectations. Our war effort was aimed at the person of Saddam Hussein, not Iraq as a whole. But a number of problems occurred. While advances in technology made it possible to minimize civilian casualties, dropping a large number of bombs invariably causes death and destruction beyond the intended target. The dissolution of Iraq's armed forces and security services created a vacuum that we were not prepared to fill. The economy collapsed, social order was lost, electricity and water became unreliable, unemployment soared, and Iraqis constantly fear for their lives.

American efforts to rebuild the infrastructure and resume the exporting of oil were severely hampered by the bands of killers euphemistically called "insurgents." Furthermore, the insurgents have made it clear that they will kill anyone who cooperates with the Americans. Bad publicity further impaired our image.

The military situation is radically different. In a nutshell, Japan had not previously been conquered; the land of Iraq has been conquered by many. An entire college semester would not suffice to study all the nations that have invaded and occupied Iraq. For the Japanese, therefore, a foreign presence was a greater shock than for the Iraqis. The Iraqis had learned how to be defiant when defeated, the Japanese were stunned and paralyzed by their defeat.

THE ROLE OF religion is also quite a contrast. The Japanese had once defeated a Mongol invasion because a divine wind (kamikaze) had destroyed the Mongol fleet. The Japanese expected a similar storm to strike the Americans. It did - the U.S. Navy was struck by the worst typhoon in modern history - but it did not save Japan. Traditional Japanese had expected their religion to save them, and it had not. No such demoralization exists in Iraq. Iraqis did not expect God to save Saddam Hussein despite the latter's belated rediscovery of Islam.

Japan was also exhausted. Its war had begun with the invasion of China in 1937. Eight years and 2 million deaths later, Japan's enthusiasm for war was not what it had been. Iraq had also endured a war followed by a confrontation involving sanctions, but no serious fighting the 12 years before the recent invasion. Japan and America also clearly had a common enemy - the Soviet empire. Although Japan was technically a neutral power in the Cold War, there was never any question about its orientation. In Iraq, such a clear identification with the United States is not possible, largely because of Iraq's internal divisions and Arab neighbors.

The situation in Iraq is more difficult than that faced in Japan in 1945. The mission in World War II in the Pacific was straightforward; stop Japan's aggression. Nobody cared much about the methods. Japan had no friends or allies in Asia. Today the abuse of a handful of prisoners becomes a media event; in 1945 very few questioned the incineration of an entire city.

IN FACT, MANY Chinese considered the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima a beautiful and splendid thing. There was no need to be concerned about alienating anyone. The United States could kill anyone and everyone with full world indifference. If an American soldier had been shot in a Japanese village, the U.S. forces could have flattened the entire village without serious complaint. And there lies the paradox: Because the United States had the means and the opportunity to use all the force it had, it did not have to.

History plays tricks on us all. Only a few years ago, Republicans vigorously criticized the Democratic president for "nation-building." Now, a Republican administration finds itself involved in the biggest such program since World War II. It is too early to say whether it will end in success or failure, but we should hope it will be the former - especially if one cares about the long-suffering people of Iraq. However, our task in Iraq, in many ways, is more difficult than our task in Japan was after World War II.

(Editor's note: The writers are, respectively, professors of economics and history at Augusta State University.)

From the Sunday, September 11, 2005 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle

Iraqi, U.S. Troops Clear Rebel Stronghold

quote:
Iraqi, U.S. Troops Clear Rebel Stronghold

By JACOB SILBERBERG, Associated Press Writer

Insurgents melted into the countryside around Tal Afar, the militant stronghold near the Syrian border, and guns fell silent Sunday — the second day of an offensive by 5,000 Iraqi soldiers backed by 3,500 American troops and armor.

In Baghdad, the director of police training at the Interior Ministry was gunned down in front of his home in a western neighborhood as he waited for a ride to work. Maj. Gen. Adnan Abdul Rihman died on the spot, said local police commander Maj. Musa Abdul Karim.

The U.S. military said a Task Force Liberty Soldier was killed in a roadside bombing before dawn Sunday while on patrol near Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad. Two soldiers were wounded. At least 1,897 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In the southern city of Basra, Iraqi police Capt. Mushtaq Kadim said one British soldier was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy.

A British military spokesman, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said he could only "confirm that an incident took place ... The area has been secured and an investigation is ongoing."

In the Tal Afar assault, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr reported late Saturday that 141 insurgents had been killed since the operation began. Five government soldiers died and three were wounded, he said. No Americans were killed or injured in the first day of the all-out assault, the biggest military action in months.

Col. Billy J. Buckner, a U.S. military spokesman, said Iraqi and U.S. troops had captured 211 terror suspects and confiscated nine weapons caches since Aug. 26 when the joint U.S.-Iraqi force began encircling Tal Afar, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.

On the first day of the push into the city Saturday, troops conducted house-to-house searches and U.S. armor battered down stone walls in the narrow, winding streets of the old city.

After stiff initial resistance, insurgents in the largely ethnic Turkmen city of 200,000 had vanished. Tal Afar is about 60 miles from the Syrian border in northwestern Iraq.

Col. H.R. McMasters, commander of the American contingent of 3,500 U.S. troops from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, said the ancient Sarai neighborhood — thought to be insurgent headquarters — was nearly deserted when the fighting died down late Saturday.

"The enemy decided to bail out," he said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari ordered the Rabiyah border crossing closed in an attempt to stanch the flow of insurgents from Syria.

With the Tal Afar offensive under way after days of skirmishing on the outskirts of the city, Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi signaled his U.S.-trained forces would not stop after this operation and vowed to move against insurgent bastions throughout the country.

"We say to our people ... we are coming," he said.

The offensive in Tal Afar is especially delicate because of the tangle of ethnic sensitivities in the region.

About 90 percent of the city's population — most of which fled to the countryside before the fighting began — is Sunni Turkmen who have complained about their treatment from the Shiite-dominated government and police force put in place after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Addressing that complaint, Jabr announced Saturday that 1,000 additional police officers would be hired in Tal Afar after the offensive and that they would be chosen from the Turkmen population.

The Turkmen have a vocal ally in their Turkish brethren to the north, where Turkey's government is a vital U.S. ally and has fought against its own Kurdish insurgency for decades. Tal Afar is next to land controlled by Iraqi Kurds.

Turkey voiced disapproval of U.S. tactics when American forces ran insurgents out of Tal Afar a year ago. The Turkmen residents complained that Iraqi Kurds were fighting alongside the Americans.

U.S. and Kurdish officials denied the allegation, but the Turkish government threatened to stop cooperating with the Americans. The siege was lifted the next day and insurgents began returning when the Americans quickly pulled out, leaving behind only a skeleton force of 500 soldiers.

For those reasons, U.S. forces stood back during the new sweep through Tal Afar, allowing Iraqi forces to break down doors in the search for insurgents. The Americans followed behind, securing positions while the Iraqis advanced.

Twelve hours after the offensive began, al-Jaafari said insurgents had been trying to "to isolate Tal Afar from the political process as we are preparing for the referendum on the draft constitution."

Al-Dulaimi, who joined al-Jaafari at a news conference, said he expected the offensive to last three days and complained Iraq's neighbors had not done enough to stop the flow of foreign fighters.

"I regret to say that instead of sending medicines to us, our Arab brothers are sending terrorists," al-Dulaimi said.

The interior minister read al-Jaafari's order closing the border on Iraqi television late Saturday. The decree indefinitely shut the Rabiyah crossing to all transportation, including the railroad, except for vehicles with special permission from the Interior Ministry.

The order did not affect the frontier crossing near the insurgent stronghold of Qaim or the major highway into Syria.

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 10 September 2005 - 4th report

2005-09-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

Iraq 10 September 2005 - 4th report - posted at 9:05 pm EDT by Synergy:

Storm Warning

quote:
Storm Warning
How the flood compromises U.S. foreign policy.
By Richard N. Haass
Posted Friday, Sept. 9, 2005, at 8:56 AM PT
Slate

It has long been a tenet of American foreign policy that politics stop at the water's edge. The tradition is that too much is at stake to allow partisan interests to take precedence over the national interest. Sometimes this principle is honored, sometimes not, but either way, the water in question is the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

What happens when water floods an important American city, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless, is something else again. It will be no easier to cordon off U.S. foreign policy from the effects of Hurricane Katrina than it has been to protect New Orleans from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain.

That a purely domestic event should have profound consequences for American foreign policy is not in and of itself new. U.S. prestige suffered a blow in 1992 when the Los Angeles riots were broadcast around the world. By contrast, Ronald Reagan's firm handling of the air-traffic controllers strike a decade before communicated resolve and firmness.

The initial federal and local reactions to Hurricane Katrina, however, have sent the opposite message. The images seen around the world communicated a lack of competence and considerable chaos and suffering. The dominant overseas reaction has been sympathy mixed with shock and horror at what was seen by many as evidence of racism and a reminder of the extreme poverty in which many Americans live. America's enemies indulged in schadenfreude. Hugo Chávez could not resist the chance to taunt President Bush; North Korea radio linked the U.S. "defeat" in Iraq with its "defeat" by Katrina; jihadists celebrated what had happened and the possibility the price of oil would soar even higher. The world's only remaining superpower appeared to be anything but. In an era of 24-hour satellite television and the Internet, public diplomacy is about who Americans are and what they do, not just what they say. Unlike Las Vegas, what happens here does not stay here.

The global impact goes beyond impressions. A priority of this administration's foreign policy is to promote democracy around the world. But the attractiveness of the American model, and the ability of the United States to be an effective advocate for more democratic, capitalist societies, which had already been weakened by the disarray in Iraq, is now weaker still as a result of the disarray at home. It will be more difficult to make the case for free markets and more open societies if the results of such reforms come to be associated with the disorder seen in New Orleans.

Katrina will also have an impact on how citizens of the United States view foreign policy. The enormous problems and costs associated with the hurricane will raise additional questions about the ability of the United States to "stay the course" in Iraq. The aftermath of the catastrophe will inevitably increase political pressure on President Bush to begin to reduce the U.S. involvement in Iraq and refocus U.S. resources at home, be it on the expensive reconstruction of flood-ravaged areas or on improving the country's capacity to deal with future disasters of this magnitude.

A similar debate can be expected about the military. The National Guard is being used in unforeseen ways in Iraq, and it is clearly needed in foreseeable ways at home. The National Guard will not be able to do it all. Homeland security requirements, be they derived from hurricanes or terrorists, are and will be extensive. This reality highlights the fact that the Guard will not forever be available for overseas duty on anything like the current scale. The need clearly exists to expand the active duty Army, now too small to carry out its assigned tasks of fighting traditional wars and dealing with difficult aftermaths such as we are witnessing in Iraq.

U.S. energy policy or, to be coldly honest, the lack of one, is another reality that Katrina exposes. This time it was a storm in the vicinity of important refineries, but next time it could be instability in any one of the major oil-producing countries or simply the cumulative result of the growth in world demand for oil outstripping the growth in world supply. Americans cannot drill or diversify or substitute their way out of this shortage. The United States must act to cut its consumption of oil, something that can be accomplished most efficiently with new regulations mandating substantially higher fuel economy for all vehicles sold in the country. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the legislation recently passed by Congress failed to do.

The United States emerged from the Cold War as first among unequals, with an extraordinary opportunity to shape the world. This opportunity rested on many factors, but above all on a foundation of the country's strength. U.S. power—military, economic, diplomatic, cultural—is great by any yardstick and gives the United States the ability to get things done in the world at the same time it works to discourage other powers from challenging it.

Hurricane Katrina has delivered a painful but important warning. In ways similar to the 9/11 attacks four years ago, it demonstrates that U.S. power, however great, is not to be confused with invulnerability. In addition, U.S. power, however great, is still limited. And U.S. power, however great, cannot be taken for granted. In the end, American power is a reflection of the strength of the American economy and the cohesion of American society. Any country must balance what it allocates for guns and what for butter; the United States is no exception. Although we are wealthy enough to fund both, we are not wealthy enough to fund both to the extent we are now doing and to keep taxes as low as they are. Something will have to give.
Richard N. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was director of the State Department policy planning staff from 2001 to 2003. His most recent book is The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course.

48th draws safer assignment

quote:
48th draws safer assignment

By MONI BASU | Saturday, September 10, 2005, 07:43 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Camp Striker, Iraq - The 48th Brigade Combat Team will change bases and be assigned less risky missions in the next few months, National Guard officials confirmed Saturday.

While there are no clearly distinguished front lines in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the 48th, said his soldiers would be moving away from direct combat operations. Since the brigade arrived in Iraq in early June, 18 soldiers have been killed, 14 in insurgent bomb attacks.

“Sometime in the next couple of months, we are anticipating a mission change that will change our territory and our mission posture,” Rodeheaver said. “We’re going through [an] analysis to determine our mission requirements.”

Rodeheaver said the change was anticipated and is part of normal U.S. military maneuvering in Iraq. He said the new tasks would suit a large brigade such as the 48th, which has about 4,500 soldiers.

The brigade’s size is likely to increase as it moves out of Camp Striker near the Baghdad International Airport and into other bases. Rodeheaver said units already in Iraq as well as other troops from the U.S. would likely be attached to the 48th Brigade and fall under his command.

The new assignment will not cut short the yearlong tour in Iraq for Georgia Army National Guard soldiers, who are not scheduled to go home until May or June 2006.

“Our deployment dates are still the same,” Rodeheaver said.

Rodeheaver described the brigade’s new role as more of a combat support and security mission that “probably will not be as intense.”

He declined to provide details or specific move dates because of security issues.

“The operation tempo will still be high,” he said. “However, the most likely threat of conducting full spectrum combat will be reduced.”

Bigger territory

Georgia soldiers now operate in about a 115-square-mile area southwest of Baghdad. A majority of them are based at Camp Striker.

The 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment is spread out among three temporary forward operating bases in Mahmudiyah, Lutafiyah and Yusufiyah, towns in a mostly Sunni area known as the Triangle of Death. The 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment is stationed at Taji, north of Baghdad, and in Mahmudiyah.

The new mission will stretch the 48th’s territory throughout Iraq from the Syrian, Turkish and Kuwaiti borders. Soldiers will be based at U.S. military camps scattered across the war-ravaged nation.

“The brigade will be given multiple missions throughout the country,” Rodeheaver said. “I’m excited. With the new mission, I will see the whole country. That will be a big plus.”

In its new mission, the 48th will no longer fall under the command of the of Fort Stewart-based 3rd Infantry Division, which is due to return home in January.

Soldiers happy

Many of the 48th soldiers welcomed the shift, especially those in infantry units that have been patrolling and conducting ambushes in treacherous areas.

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” said Sgt. Bill Jones of the 121st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Battalion, which lost eight soldiers to bombs planted in roads near Camp Striker.

Others are looking forward to improved living conditions. Striker, a vast, dusty tent-city, was designed as a transitional camp for soldiers on their way in and out of Iraq.

But the 48th Brigade was asked to stay in the area because of security needs, Rodeheaver said. He said the 48th made several improvements to Striker and requested trailers similar to ones at larger camps such as Liberty and Taji. They are scheduled to start arriving within days.

Many 48th soldiers, especially those at the three forward operating bases, have complained of austere conditions and lack of basic amenities.

“Some soldiers have been in difficult conditions because of combat mission requirements,” Rodeheaver acknowledged, adding that their comforts are sure to grow in their new assignment.

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Make love not war

Iraq 10 September 2005 - 3rd report

2005-09-10T13:49:00.000-07:00

Iraq 10 September 2005 - 3rd report - posted at 3:54 pm EDT by Synergy:

Units' service in Iraq extended Champaign (IL) News-Gazette

quote:
Units' service in Iraq extended

By TIM MITCHELL
THE NEWS-GAZETTE
Published Online September 10, 2005

URBANA– The tour of duty in Iraq for four Illinois Army National Guard units, including one based in Urbana, has been extended for another 60 to 75 days.
Chief Warrant Officer Bud Roberts of the Illinois Army National Guard said Friday his office received word earlier this week from the Army Theater Commander at the Pentagon that the tour of duty has been extended for the following units:
– Second Battalion, 130th Infantry, based in Urbana, Effingham and Litchfield.
– Company A of the 133rd Signal Battalion, based in Crestwood.
– 135th Engineer Company, based in Lawrenceville.
– 126th Maintenance Company, Ordnance Platoon, based in Beardstown.
With the extended tour of duty, Roberts said he doesn't expect the soldiers to return to central Illinois before May or June.
"Their official date to return is now June 5, but they will probably return a few weeks earlier to get the accumulated leave time that is due to them," Roberts said.
Roberts said that 120 National Guardsmen and women from the Urbana unit, and 540 overall, are affected.
Mary Pat Dixon, whose husband, Maj. Henry S. Dixon, is second in command for the Urbana-based Second Battalion, said she was disappointed to find out that her husband's tour of duty was being extended.
"I miss him, and we've got two dogs, Lucy and Mabel, who miss him," Mary Pat Dixon said. "Iraq is a dangerous place, and I think about him all the time."
Dixon said her husband is in charge of strategy and planning for the Urbana unit.
"He sends me a short e-mail almost every day, and I get calls from him once a week," she said. "It helps being able to keep in touch, but we'll all feel better when he and the rest of the battalion is able to come home."
Roberts said this marks the second time the Illinois Army National Guard has had its units' tour of duty extended in Iraq.
The first extension for Illinois units occurred in April 2004, when the Peoria-based 106th Aviation Unit, the Freeport-based 333rd Military Police Company, the Chicago-based 933rd Military Police Company and the North Riverside-based 1244th Transportation Company had their time extended.
"I know the announcement of this extension is an adjustment for our soldiers and their families, friends and employers," said a statement from Maj. Gen. Randal Thomas of the Illinois National Guard.
"However, I also know the caliber of our soldiers and the dedication to the important mission they have been given. While their service continues in Iraq, we will continue to work to assist their families in any way we can."
Ron DuFrane of the Champaign County Veterans Association said his organization has already sent 325 "care packages" to the affected units.
"We were planning on sending some more packages in November," DuFrane said. "Now, with this extended tour of duty, we'll make plans to send a third round of 'care' packages in the spring of 2006."

Iran says continuous riots in Iraq threat all countries

quote:
Iran says continuous riots in Iraq threat all countries

TEHRAN, Sept. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Iran said on Saturday that the continuous riots in Iraq were a threat to all regional countries, stressing the root of the turbulent situation was the current foreign occupation, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iranian Minister of Interior Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said the insecurity and the terrorist acts in Iraq, which were associated with the foreign occupation, exerted detrimental impact on the security of the neighboring states, the report said.

"Such moves account for the promotion of regional insecurity andthe horror dominating Iraq," Mohammadi was quoted as saying at a meeting with a Jordanian delegation.

Iran has been keeping a close watch on its western neighbor since the downfall of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Tehran has also been enthusiastically urging the foreign troops to withdraw from Iraq, saying the end of occupation was a necessarystep helpful to the restoration of peace and stability to the war-torn country.

Iraqi police discover 18 bodies south of Baghdad

quote:
Iraqi police discover 18 bodies south of Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Sept. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi police have discovered 18 bodies shot dead in execution style in th south of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said on Saturday.

"A group of militants wearing national guard uniform kidnapped 19 people late on Thursday from their houses in Iskandriyah town, some 40 km south of Baghdad, and took them to an isolated open land," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Then the people were shot dead by the militants, but one of themmanaged to run away to tell the police, who searched the area on Friday to find the 18 bodies, the source said.

During the search, a group of armed men opened fire at the police force, killing two of them and wounding nine others, he added.

Tensions have flared up between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Muslims,as the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars blamed the Iraqi Shiite-dominated security forces for killing detainees on sectarian motives.

'Peace mom' chides Feinstein on Iraq stance Alameda (CA) Times-Star

quote:
Article Last Updated: 9/10/2005 09:16 AM
'Peace mom' chides Feinstein on Iraq stance
Vacaville woman calls Katrina victims war's 'collateral damage'
By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO — The Vacaville woman who made national headlines with a peace vigil outside President Bush's Texas ranch brought her rhetorical guns to bear Friday on one of California's U.S. senators.

Cindy Sheehan — whose son, Casey, 24, was a soldier killed in Baghdad in April 2004 — met briefly with an aide to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., before telling reporters the lawmaker's reasons for supporting Iraq's ongoing occupation are "very bogus."

The Iraqi constitution, supported by the United States, is based on Islamic law and severely curtails women's rights, she said, while Iraqi leaders are "puppet leaders who George Bush put into place."

U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers are seen as collaborators and can do little more than fight for survival, and Iraq's crucial infrastructure continues to be eroded by an insurgency fueled by the U.S. military presence, she said.

Feinstein previously has acknowledged she and other lawmakers were lied to about the reasons for going to war, and that if she knew then what she knew now, she wouldn't have voted to support the conflict, Sheehan said. "Well, if she knows it's wrong, it's time to bring our kids home," she said.

The government's inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina's devastation "has just proven that what George Bush is doing in Iraq is making us less safe. We're so vulnerable right now," Sheehan added, claiming money, resources and National Guard personnel deployed to the war and is, thus, unavailable to domestic disaster victims. "The people of New Orleans are collateral damage to the war in Iraq."

Sheehan said she spoke by phone Friday with U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., whom she described as "100 percent supportive" of efforts to bring the troops home.

Nooshin Razani of San Francisco accompanied Sheehan upstairs to Feinstein's office at One Post Street, and later said she felt aides there "agreed with us, that they felt us as human beings." Her brother, Omead Razani, 24, was an Army soldier who died of non-combat-related injuries in August 2004 in Habbaniyah, Iraq.

About 25 demonstrators stood outside the building during the meeting, holding signs with slogans such as "Cindy speaks for me" and "Let no more kids die for a lie."

Sheehan went to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in early August, demanding to speak with the president about the reasons for starting and continuing the war in Iraq. Her vigil there soon attracted a small army of people who've lost loved ones in the war, veterans and anti-war activists.

Now "Camp Casey" has dispersed, sending busloads of people across the nation to spread the word before converging upon Washington, D.C., for the United for Peace and Justice Mobilization, Sept. 24 through 26.

Sheehan arrived back in the Bay Area from Chicago on Thursday night, and later Friday was flying to Los Angeles to meet with several members of Congress or their aides; she's headed to Atlanta today.

Cameraman shot in Iraq The Australian

quote:

The Australian
Cameraman shot in Iraq

10sep05

A CAMERAMAN for the US news agency APTN (Associated Press Television News) was seriously injured when he came under fire from Iraqi forces while filming, Reporters without Borders (RSF) said today.

The Paris-based press freedom watchdog said Abdul Kamil Hassan, whose life is not in danger, was shot in the arm and stomach by Iraqi forces while he was filming a spot where a home-made bomb had been found.

The incident happened on Wednesday in Samarra, 100km north of Baghdad.

RSF issued a statement calling for Iraqi and US officials to take "energetic steps to halt the growing threats and dangers to news agency employees."

"Those responsible for restoring order in Iraq - the Iraqi army and police, and US troops," have become "serious persecutors" of journalists in recent months, RSF charged.

"Iraqi and Arab journalists working for international news agencies have a vital function as they are currently the only ones who can tell us what is happening amid the chaos in Iraq," it said.

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 10 September 2005 - 2nd report

2005-09-10T12:55:00.000-07:00

Iraq 10 September 2005 - 2nd report - posted at 3:38 pm EDT by Synergy:

Army changes story about soldier's death

quote:
Army changes story about soldier's death
Army knew for a year he was not killed in action

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Army said Saturday it knew for more than a year that 1st Lt. Kenneth Ballard was not killed in action in Iraq, as it initially reported.

The family was not told the truth until Friday.

Ballard's mother, Karen Meredith, of Mountain View, California, is a public critic of the war. She traveled last month to Crawford, Texas, to participate in the protest outside President Bush's ranch by another grieving mother, peace activist Cindy Sheehan.

On Memorial Day in 2004, the day after Kenneth Ballard died, the Army informed his family that he had been killed by enemy fire while on a combat mission in the south-central Iraqi city of Najaf.

The Army disclosed Saturday that Ballard, 26, actually died of wounds from the accidental discharge of a M240 machine gun on his tank after his platoon had returned from battling insurgents in Najaf.

An Army spokesman, Col. Joseph Curtin, said separate investigations by the local commander and by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division concluded within days Ballard's death was an accident.

The tank backed into a tree and a branch hit the mounted, unmanned machine gun, causing it to fire, Curtin said. Ballard was struck at close range and died of his wounds, he added.
Reason for year's delay unknown

For reasons that are not clear, the Army did not correct the public record and inform the family until Friday.

Curtin said the matter was a regrettable mistake and that the Army's top civilian official, Francis Harvey, has ordered a review of procedures in reporting accidental deaths. He said a personal letter of explanation from Harvey was hand-delivered to the family on Friday.

"Furthermore, the Army regrets that the initial casualty report from the field was in error as well as the time that it has taken to correct the report and to inform his family," Curtin said in a prepared statement.

Ballard was a platoon leader in 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

Iraq Seals Border Crossing With Syria

quote:
Iraq Seals Border Crossing With Syria

By JACOB SILBERBERG, Associated Press Writer

The Iraqi prime minister sealed the northern border crossing into Syria on Saturday after complaints the neighboring country was not doing enough to stop crossings by foreign fighters, and he imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the area near the Rabiaa frontier post.

The order went out as Iraqi forces, backed by American soldiers, swept into Tal Afar, an insurgent stronghold about 60 miles to the east, conducting house-to-house searches and battering down walls with armored vehicles in a second bid to clean the city of militant fighters.

The order by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was read on Iraqi television by Interior Minister Bayan Jabr. The decree closed the border to all transportation, including the railroad, except for vehicles with special permission from the Interior Ministry.

Iraq and the United States have complained bitterly that Syria has done too little to block the flow of so-called foreign fighters into Iraq across the long and porous border.

Jabr said the closure was in effect under further notice.

Some 30 miles south of Baghdad, meanwhile, police found the bodies of 18 men who had been handcuffed and shot to death in Iskandariya, a town where dozens of killings have been reported in escalating vengeance killings by Shiite Muslim and Sunni Aram "death squads."

"Two days ago gunmen in police uniforms broke into their houses in a Shiite neighborhood of Iskandariya," police Capt. Adel Kitab said of the latest victims.

In the capital, Baghdad International Airport reopened early Saturday after a day's closure in a payment dispute between the government and a British security company. Global Strategies Group said it agreed to resume security work after the government promised to pay half of what the company said it is owed.

Iraq police said two mortar shells were fired into the Green Zone that houses the U.S. Embassy, the Iraqi parliament and government offices. There was no word on casualties or damage.

In the Tal Afar offensive, which had been expected for weeks, coalition forces faced several hundred lightly armed insurgents in the largely deserted city, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad and about 60 miles east of the Syrian border.

There was heavy gunfire in the Sarai district, the oldest part of the city and the major insurgent stronghold.

"I can see why the terrorists chose this place for a fight, it's like a big funnel of death," Sgt. William Haslett of Rocklin, Calif., said of the twisting streets and alleys in the old city.

Al-Jaafari announced the 2 a.m. start of the offensive in a statement issued early Saturday. At a news conference later, he said the insurgents had been trying "to isolate Tal Afar from the political process as we are preparing for the referendum on the draft constitution."

Tal Afar residents were largely Turkomen, with ethnic and cultural ties to Turkey to the north. They are mostly Sunni Muslims but had been governed since the ouster of Saddam Hussein by a U.S.-backed Shiite Muslim city government and police force.

The interior minister said 48 insurgents had been captured so far, along with mortars and communications gear. He said Iraqi troops had suffered two wounded and no deaths.

Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi said that in the past two days, 141 "terrorists" had been killed and 197 wounded. Five government soldiers died and three were injured, he said.

Al-Dulaimi said 11 Iraqi army battalions and three battalions of paramilitary police were participating in the offensive, along with three battalions of U.S. troops, and promised Iraqi forces would broaden the offensive against insurgents north and west of Baghdad, right up to the Syrian border.

"We say to our people in (the insurgent strongholds of) Qaim, Rawa, Samarra and Ramadi, we are coming and terrorists and criminals will not be able to hide there," he said.

He complained that neighboring nations had not done enough to stop the flow of foreign fighters.

"I regret to say that instead of sending medicines to us, our Arab brothers are sending terrorists," al-Dulaimi said.

U.S. forces cleared Tal Afar of militants last year but quickly withdrew, leaving behind a force of only 500 that was unable to block the militants' return.

In a bid to soften resistance, the U.S. military carried out repeated air and artillery strikes on targets in the city, where most of the population of 200,000 was reported to have fled to the surrounding countryside.

On Friday, the government issued a statement hinting a major attack was imminent, and the U.S. military reported killing 11 insurgents during raids over the past two days. The Iraqi military claimed it had arrested 150 foreign fighters who had infiltrated from Syria.

In Baghdad, acting Transportation Minister Esmat Amer told The Associated Press that the city's main airport — Iraq's only reliable and relatively safe link to the outside world — reopened after negotiations overnight between the government and the British company.

"We have reached agreement with the Global security firm, and the airport is open now for domestic and international flights," Amer said.

Company spokesman Giles Morgan told AP from London that Global agreed to return to work after the government promised to pay 50 percent of what was owed. Morgan said the company and the government were continuing talks on a future contract.

Amer confirmed the 50 percent agreement.

The company has provided security at the airport 12 miles from central Baghdad since last year. On Friday, Global suspended operations, claiming the transportation ministry was six months behind in payments.

Iraq govt says storms city, closes Syria border

quote:
Iraq govt says storms city, closes Syria border

By Nameer Nouredeen, Reuters

Iraq's government said it launched thousands of troops against rebels in the city of Tal Afar on Saturday and ordered the nearby border with Syria closed to stem what Baghdad calls an influx of foreign fighters.

Keen to show off the muscle of their U.S.-trained forces, ministers said other towns were in the line of fire and state television ran repetitive footage from recent days in Tal Afar of Iraqi soldiers hunting and detaining men described as rebels.

Residents reported U.S. air strikes overnight, gunfire and an encirclement of U.S. armor in parts of the town as Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari announced an offensive had begun.

"At 2 a.m. today (2200 GMT), acting on my orders, Iraqi forces commenced an operation to remove all remaining terrorist elements from the city of Tal Afar," he said in a statement.

Later in the day, a dust storm hindered the offensive, U.S. officers in Tal Afar said. State television ran fresh footage, however, of more arrests and soldiers moving through a town that U.S. troops have seized in the past before withdrawing again.

Jaafari said the troops were responding to appeals for help from "all the different religious and ethnic elements in Tal Afar." The town, west of the northern city of Mosul and near the Syrian border, is mostly populated by ethnic Turkmen.

Civilians had been taken out of the town in recent days as military operations were stepped up, officials said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have long said Tal Afar was being used as a conduit for equipment and foreign Sunni Arab fighters smuggled in from Syria to fight the Shi'ite and Kurdish-led Iraqi government and occupying U.S. forces across the country.

Late on Saturday, the Iraqi government announced the closure of the Syrian border from Sunday morning.

"As part of continuing security efforts, we have decided to close the international border with Syria, and mainly at Rabiah," Interior Minister Bayan Jabor said, reading a statement by Jaafari on television.

Rabiah, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the northern city of Mosul, would be under curfew for 10 hours from 8 p.m., weapons would be banned and the border zone closed to non-residents.

POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Beyond any military value, the political importance of an operation in which Iraqi forces are shown on television taking the lead role is considerable; in power for five months and facing an election in December, Jaafari's much-criticized government is keen to show it is capable of restoring security.

For Washington, anxious to persuade U.S. voters it can bring troops home soon as Iraqi forces are trained, the operation is also a useful showcase for the new Iraqi army.

U.S. forces have taken the lead in all similar major offensives in the past, such as that on Falluja last November.

Jaafari stressed the lead role played by Iraqi troops. U.S. military spokesmen declined to comment.

Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi said that, after the assault, government forces were ready to strike insurgents in four other northwestern towns.

After telling a news conference that troops had killed 141 insurgents and captured 197 in the past two days at Tal Afar, he said: "We tell our people in Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim that we are coming; there will be no refuge for the terrorists, criminals and bloodsuckers."

He added that of 17 battalions -- several thousand troops -- involved in the operation, all but three were Iraqi.

Dulaimi gave no indication of when operations might start in the other towns, but said action would be swift.

"This operation will take less time than you think...You will see in the next two days that our forces are capable and will flush the terrorists out and wipe them out."

While the attack was under way, Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran flew to Baghdad on the first visit by a senior Arab official since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and Jaafari urged more to come.

"This visit means a great deal to us and marks a great political turning point. I call on all the Arab states to follow the Jordanian initiative. Today's visit has broken a barrier and sent a political message," he said.

Iraq has criticized fellow Arab countries for failing to halt Islamic militants flowing into the country or to staunch funding for the Sunni insurgency.

U.S. ally Jordan, like most other Arab states ruled by Sunni Muslims, has in the past echoed unease at the close relationship of the new Iraqi authorities with Shi'ite, non-Arab Iran.

Jaafari and U.S. commanders had warned that a full assault on Tal Afar was imminent. "The terrorist elements being targeted by this operation are guilty of blatant crimes against its people. They are enemies of Iraq," Jaafari said.

The insurgents are drawn mainly from Iraq's Sunni Arab community. Sunnis account for about 20 percent of the population and have dominated Iraqi politics for decades, under Saddam Hussein, who will be tried for mass killing next month.

Having shunned an election in January, many Sunnis are now mobilizing to vote, possibly against, a new constitution in a referendum on October 15 and in a new election due in December.

(Additional reporting by Sebastian Alison, Mussab Al- Khairalla, Mariam Karouny, Alastair Macdonald and Omar al-Ibadi in Baghdad, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul)

Iraq PM approves all-out assault on rebel town

quote:
Iraq PM approves all-out assault on rebel town

Sat Sep 10,11:38 AM ET
AFP

Iraqi and US troops pressed on with an all-out offensive to wrest control of a town from Sunni Arab insurgents, with the Iraqis reporting nearly 150 rebels killed and with the mayor resigning in protest.

The fighting raged as Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran arrived in Baghdad for talks with Iraqi officials after months of often strained relations between the two neighbours.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said Friday he had given the go-ahead for a major assault on Tal Afar after days of deadly clashes failed to dislodge the rebels from the town.

Fighting has been raging for more than a week in Tal Afar, a town between the main northern city of Mosul and the Syrian border that US commanders say has become a major staging post for foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq.

Iraqi Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi said Saturday that 141 insurgents had been killed and 197 captured in the previous two days.

Jaafari insisted that the offensive was not aimed at any particular ethnic group in the town, which is divided between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Turkmen, some of whom have fled the town in recent months complaining of persecution by the Sunni rebels.

Iraqi and US troops were acting "on behalf of all the different religious and ethnic elements in Tal Afar and in response to their appeals for help," the premier said.

"They (the rebels) have driven people from their homes. They want to deny the citizens of Tal Afar their future in a democratic and peaceful Iraq. We want to guarantee those rights. These operations are being conducted precisely for that purpose."

But the town's Sunni Arab mayor, Mohammed Rasheed, disagreed, tendering his resignation in protest at what he described as a sectarian operation.

"The operation is targeting Sunni neighbourhoods," he complained, adding that he did not believe the assault would solve the town's problems.

"The problem is sectarian," he said. "It cannot be solved through military operations. It should be done through negotiations and cooperation with the leaders of Sunni and Shiite tribes."

The US military said an air strike destroyed an "al-Qaeda safe house" in Ubaydi, in western Iraq, claiming that a "senior al-Qaeda terror consultant and foreign fighter facilitator known as 'Sheik' is believed to have been in the house at the time of the attack."

Badran is the highest-ranking Jordanian official to visit Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.

The Jordanian premier stressed the importance of strengthening cooperation between the two neighbouring countries and emphasised the "strong position" of Iraq within the Arab world, after he held talks with Jaafar.

He told a joint press conference that the common borders with Iraq are secured and that "security and stability in Iraq are linked to the security and stability of Jordan."

Jaafari praised the visit by his Jordanian counterpart as "a new and sharp turn in the relations between the two countries."

Ties have been strained since Saddam's ouster. King Abdullah II had voiced concern that the empowerment of Iraq's long oppressed Shiite majority might open the way to greater Iranian influence in the Arab world.

And Iraq's Shiite-led government has in turn complained of the number of Jordanians fighting alongside Sunni insurgents, including Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In Washington, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said late Friday that he hoped the US troop presence could be reduced to a few small bases within a couple of a years.

"I say there is not a need for a huge number of American forces. But I think there will be a need for two, three small bases for frightening others not to intervene in our internal affairs," Talabani said at a press conference with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The Baghdad airport reopened after a one-day shutdown following a pay dispute between the government and the London-based firm in charge of security.

And the Iraqi parliament is due to convene on Sunday when it is thought a final draft of the new constitution might be presented after last-minute changes to the wording were proposed to appease disenchanted Sunni Arabs.

Jordan PM in historic Iraq visit (BBC News)

quote:
Jordan PM in historic Iraq visit
Iraq has hailed Saturday's highly symbolic visit to Baghdad by the Jordanian prime minister.

Jordan's PM Adnan Badran met Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in Baghdad to bolster relations.

It comes weeks after Iraq accused its Arab neighbour of hosting people involved in "terrorist acts".

Mr Badran's visit was the first by an Arab head of state since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.

Secure border

In a press conference after the meeting, Mr al-Jaafari said: "This visit means a great deal to us and marks a great political turning point.

The security in Iraq is important for... the security and stability of Jordan
Jordanian PM Adnan Badran

"I call on all the Arab states to follow the Jordanian initiative. Today's visit has broken a barrier and sent a political message," he said.

Mr Badran said the two countries needed to work together to make their border more secure. Jordan has been identified as a major entry point for foreign fighters joining the insurgency against the occupying US-led forces.

"A joint security committee comprising the Jordanian Interior Minister and the Iraqi Interior Minister will be formed to study all joint security issues," Mr Badran said.

"The security in Iraq is important for... the security and stability of Jordan," he said.

Fellow Arabs attacked

Mr al-Jaafari urged other Arab states to follow Jordan's lead and send senior envoys to visit Baghdad.

Jordan withdrew its ambassador to Iraq shortly before the US-led invasion in 2003.

In August 2003, a suicide car bomb outside the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad killed 19 people, including some Jordanians visiting the building.

In July of this year, Algeria confirmed that two abducted diplomats in Iraq have been killed by their captors.

An Egyptian envoy was also killed in the same month after being abducted, with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq, taking responsibility.

Egypt later stepped down its diplomatic presence in the country because of security fears.

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 10 September 2005 - 1st report

2005-09-10T06:04:00.000-07:00

Iraq 10 September 2005 - 1st report - posted at 9:07 am EDT by Synergy:

Major attack on Iraq 'rebel town' (BBC News)

quote:
Major attack on Iraq 'rebel town'
Iraq says a major operation is under way to try to retake the northern town of Talafar from insurgents.

US and Iraqi troops swept through the town, smashing walls with armoured vehicles and engaging in gun battles.

The Americans believe the town is being used as a staging post by foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria.

Iraq's defence minister said 144 rebels had been killed in Talafar in the past two days. He said his forces were ready to strike rebels in four other towns.

The BBC's Jonathan Charles in Baghdad says the operation in Talafar is the biggest against rebels since the assault on Falluja last year.

In other developments:

* Jordan's prime minister arrives in Baghdad on what is thought to be the first visit by a top Arab official since the US-led invasion

* Baghdad International Airport re-opens after a dispute over payments to a security contractor is resolved

'Terrorist elements'

The assault on Talafar has been expected for some time and the authorities earlier urged Talafar's 200,000 residents to leave.

It has been the scene of heavy fighting and US air strikes in the past week.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said action had to be taken in Talafar because insurgents were trying to isolate it from the rest of Iraq and the political process.

"At 0200 [local time] today, acting on my orders, Iraqi forces commenced an operation to remove all remaining terrorist elements from the city of Talafar," Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said in a statement.

"These forces are operating with support from the Multi-National Force," he said.

There will be no refuge for terrorists, criminals and bloodsuckers
Saadoun Dulaimi
Iraqi Defence Minister

The US military drove the insurgents out of Talafar a year ago, only for them to return once the troops had withdrawn.

Iraqi Defence Minister Saadoun Dulaimi said 144 insurgents had been killed during the operation in Talafar in the last two days and 192 captured. Many of them were Arabs from other states.

He said attention would be turned to other parts of the country which needed help.

"We tell our people in Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim that we are coming," Mr Dulaimi told a news conference.

"There will be no refuge for the terrorists, criminals and bloodsuckers."

Tal Afar drive targets insurgents

quote:
Tal Afar drive targets insurgents
Baghdad airport reopens after pay dispute

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have been going from house to house in the restive northern city of Tal Afar to ferret out militants in an operation that will continue until it is "freed from insurgents," military officials said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces, traveling in Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, on Saturday swept through one-third of the city, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have been sparring with militants in recent weeks.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, in a printed announcement and later in remarks at a news conference, said he ordered the offensive "to remove all remaining terrorist elements from the city of Tel Afar" and stressed that residents and leaders there who are fed up with insurgents "asked us to intervene."

Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi, appearing at the press conference with al-Jaafari and other Cabinet ministers, said the planning for this ultimate siege has been going on over the weeks as Iraqi and U.S. forces massed on the city -- a largely Turkmen city in Nineveh province.

"The basic military operation to purge the city of Tal Afar from the terrorists, the killers has started today," al-Dulaimi said.

There had been efforts to remove the insurgency from the city in a peaceful manner, al-Dulaimi said, but fighting persisted just the same. Over the last two days, for example, 140 insurgents have been killed and more than 190 detained. Thirteen weapons caches have been discovered.

Five Iraqi soldiers have been killed and three injured in the operation.

Al-Dulaimi said he thought the operation -- focusing on two neighborhoods where insurgents are concentrated -- would last a few days and he promised similar operations in other Iraqi cities, even though the scale of the push was not the size of the one in Falluja last November.

Al-Dulaimi said there had been requests for similar actions in other places and said he wanted to tell the citizens in Ramadi, Qaim, and Samarra that "we are coming."

"There won't be any hideout for the terrorists and killers in these cities," said al-Dulaimi, who said in the next few weeks "we are going to carry out similar operations."

He called the Tal Afar operation "a good experiment for the Iraqi forces. It is an urban warfare experiment. And we are going to carry out such operations in any Iraqi city that does not abide by the rules of law."

The press conference -- with al-Dulaimi, al-Jaafari and three other Cabinet ministers -- was a relatively rare ministerial show of force with the government officials letting the country know they were united on the issue of combating the insurgency in Tal Afar.

The ministers talked about basic services for the people and measures to compensate citizens for damage done to their homes during the operation and provide food and medical care to the people of the area.

Citizens in the affected areas have been evacuated by officials, who have used bullhorns and broadcasting to urge citizens to get out of harm's way.

Initially, exchanges of gunfire and sniper fire could be heard in the city, but U.S. military officials in charge of the operation say they are encountering less resistance than expected.

Officials have set down a stiff curfew as the military push goes on; no one is allowed to leave their home. All shops and residences appear to be closed in the city and barbed wire can be seen across roads throughout the city.

Insurgents have established a presence in Tal Afar over the year because of its proximity to Syria and its logical location as a big-city hideout, observers believe.
Contractual dispute

Meanwhile on Saturday, Baghdad International Airport reopened after a brief shutdown prompted by a payment dispute with a British contractor that had been providing security services.

A Transportation Ministry official said Global Strategies Group has resumed its work at the airport after an agreement was forged between the government's ministers council and the company.

The dispute involved pay.

Global Strategies said it had not been paid for seven of the 16 months it has provided security there. Under this latest agreement, the company accepted a $12 million payment offer by the ministers council, the ministry official said.

Giles Morgan, a spokesman for Global, said the Iraqi government had agreed to make a payment to Global for half of the total money it is owed, but said "this payment does not cover the groups costs for work to date." The company is waiting to see how further discussions proceed.

"Pending the results of payment and the results of further discussions Global continues security operations at the airport," Morgan said.

Global suspended operations on Thursday, prompting the airport to close.

Other developments

* An al Qaeda in Iraq "terrorist safe house" in the western town of Ubaydi where an insurgent leader might have been holed up was destroyed in a coalition airstrike on Saturday, the U.S. military said.

* Police in Hilla investigating the execution-style slayings of 18 people near Iskandariya south of Baghdad were ambushed on Friday, leaving two officers dead and nine others wounded, according to emergency police in Baghdad.

* Gunmen on Saturday opened fire on workers heading to their jobs at a U.S. military base in Khalis and killed four people, police said. The incident took place in the village of Aswad nearly 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of Baquba. The dead were described as civilians. Four other people were wounded as well. Baquba and Khalis are in Diyala province north of Baghdad.

* The U.S. military presence in Iraq will be greatly reduced in two years, with troops based there only to intimidate neighbors, Iraq President Jalal Talabani said Friday during a visit to Washington.

* The U.S. National Guard was hindered in its ability to respond to Hurricane Katrina because many of its forces and vehicles were in Iraq, military and civilian officials told The Associated Press Friday. According to the AP, one general said the effort was delayed by "arguably" a day. (Full story)

* An American contractor rescued by coalition forces Wednesday after 10 months in captivity departed Iraq for the United States aboard a military plane Friday. Roy Hallums, who was freed along with an Iraqi from a farmhouse south of Baghdad based on a tip from an Iraqi detainee, departed from Balad Air Base on a U.S. Air Force C-17, according to a U.S. military statement.

CNN's Enes Dulami, Mike Mount and Kianne Sadeq contributed to this report.

Iraqi forces launch attack on Tal Afar

quote:
Iraqi forces launch attack on Tal Afar
Sat Sep 10, 2005 7:25 AM ET

By Nameer Nouredeen

TAL AFAR, Iraq (Reuters) - Thousands of Iraqi and U.S. troops launched an assault on the northern city of Tal Afar on Saturday to rid it of suspected insurgents and Iraq's government said it plans attacks on rebels in four other towns.

"At 2 a.m. today (2200 GMT), acting on my orders, Iraqi forces commenced an operation to remove all remaining terrorist elements from the city of Tal Afar. These forces are operating with support from the Multi-National Force," Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said in a statement.

Jaafari said the troops were responding to appeals for help from "all the different religious and ethnic elements in Tal Afar." The town, west of the northern city of Mosul and near the Syrian border, is mostly populated by ethnic Turkmen.

Hospital sources in Tal Afar said the assault started with U.S. air strikes on the center, adding that there were U.S. tanks surrounding the area and gunfire was heard overnight.

Civilians have been evacuated from the town as military operations were stepped up, officials said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have long said Tal Afar was being used as a conduit for equipment and foreign fighters smuggled in from Syria to fight the Kurdish- and Shi'ite Muslim-led Iraqi government and occupying U.S. forces across the country.

Beyond any military value, the political importance of an operation in which Iraqi forces are shown on television taking the lead role is considerable; in power for five months and facing an election in December, Jaafari's much-criticized government is keen to show it is capable of restoring security.

For Washington, anxious to persuade American voters that it can bring troops home soon as Iraqi forces are trained up, the operation is also a useful testing ground.

U.S. forces which have taken the lead in all similar major offensives in the past, such as that on Falluja last November, had previously taken Tal Afar but subsequently pulled out again.

Jaafari stressed the lead role played by Iraqi troops. U.S. military spokesmen declined comment. Iraqi television, as it has done over days of preparatory operations, showed repeated film of Iraqi troops in Tal Afar with no sign of U.S. soldiers.

Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi said that after the assault, government forces were ready to strike insurgents in four other northwestern towns.

After telling a news conference that troops had killed 141 insurgents and captured 197 in the past two days at Tal Afar, he said: "We tell our people in Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim that we are coming; there will be no refuge for the terrorists, criminals and bloodsuckers."

He added that of 17 battalions -- several thousand troops -- involved in the operation, all but three were Iraqi.

JORDANIAN VISIT

While the attack was under way, Jordan's Prime Minister Adnan Badran left for Baghdad on the first visit by a top Arab official since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, officials said.

The Iraqi government has criticized fellow Arab governments for failing to halt Islamic militants flowing into the country or staunch funding for the Sunni insurgency.

U.S. ally Jordan, like most other Arab states ruled by Sunni Muslims, has in the past echoed unease at the close relationship of the new Iraqi authorities with Shi'ite, non-Arab Iran.

Jaafari and U.S. commanders had warned in recent days that a full assault on Tal Afar was imminent.

"The terrorist elements being targeted by this operation are guilty of blatant crimes against its people. They are enemies of Iraq," Jaafari said.

"They have committed murder. They have driven people from their homes. They want to deny the citizens of Tal Afar their future in a democratic and peaceful Iraq. We want to guarantee those rights. These operations are being conducted precisely for that purpose."

The insurgents are mainly drawn from Iraq's Sunni Arab community. Sunnis account for some 20 percent of the population and have dominated Iraqi politics for decades, under ousted leader Saddam Hussein and before.

A U.S. military spokesman said last week intelligence reports suggested some 20 percent of insurgents in Tal Afar were "foreign fighters."

He said U.S. and Iraqi forces had been trying to wipe out the insurgency since May. They have so far failed, but he said the growing number of U.S.-trained Iraqi government troops -- there are now 190,000 of them, he said -- should mean the resources were in place to quell future insurgencies.

(Additional reporting by Sebastian Alison, Mussab Al- Khairalla and Mariam Karouny in Baghdad, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul)

IRAQ: Iraqi Leaders Voicing Anger at Arab Neighbors KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government)

quote:
10 Sep 2005
IRAQ: Iraqi Leaders Voicing Anger at Arab Neighbors

Introduction

Relations between Iraq and its Arab neighbors have worsened in recent weeks, highlighted by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s September 5 criticism of Arab leaders for failing to express sympathy or offer aid in the wake of the August 31 stampede that left nearly 1,000 Iraqi Shiites dead. “We stood with our Arab brothers in their hard times,” Talabani told reporters, referring to recent terrorist attacks in Egypt; he called their silence “gross negligence.” The stampede marked the largest one-day death toll since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Talabani was also responding to criticism from Arab leaders about Iraq’s newly drafted constitution, experts say. Amre Moussa, secretary of the Arab League, of which Iraq is one of the founding members, admonished Iraqi leaders for failing to meet Sunni demands to include a provision in the constitution calling Iraq an Arab state as well as an Islamic country. Talabani, a Kurd, says such a provision is unnecessary and unfair to Iraq’s religious and ethnic minorities. “The other [Arab constitutions] do not have this text…Why do they not make such a demand from Sudan? Why this insistence on demanding it from Iraq? They know Iraq is a multinational country,” Talabani said.

Iraqi leaders have also criticized their Arab neighbors for not establishing diplomatic missions in Baghdad. U.S. and Iraqi leaders say restoring their presence would help bolster the new government’s legitimacy. But Arab leaders say deploying diplomats to Iraq is still too dangerous, particularly after an Egyptian and two Algerian diplomats were slain by foreign insurgents in July. Arab foreign ministers are slated to hold a meeting in Cairo October 1 to address, among other issues, restoring full-fledged diplomatic relations with Iraq .

Foreign financing of the Iraqi insurgency

Iraqi leaders have recently accused neighboring Arab states, especially Jordan and Syria , of abetting the Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq by allowing Baathist sympathizers to finance insurgent activity from abroad. In Jordan, for instance, many of these finances flow from relatives of Saddam Hussein, who “have huge sums of money.” They “are supporting political and media activities and other efforts to revive the Baath Party,” Laith Kubba, a spokesman for Iraq ’s prime minister, told the New York Times August 22.

Jordan’s King Abdullah, one of the United States’ staunchest allies in the region, has not commented publicly about the accusations but claims his country has been tough on terrorism by securing its long border with Iraq and clamping down on extremist organizations based in Jordan. Jordanian officials have arrested several members of the al-Haramein Brigades and al-Qaeda in Iraq , the terrorist group led by Jordanian-born Abu al-Zarqawi that was allegedly behind the August 19 Katyusha rocket attack that nearly struck a U.S. warship in a Jordanian port.

The financing comes largely from private, not public, sources, experts say. "I suppose if Saddam had lots of money outside of Iraq, it’s just a guess, maybe some of this money is used to finance the Baathists," says Reuven Paz, an Israeli terrorism expert. "As to Iraq’s Islamic [insurgency], I suspect it comes from private Saudi sources." Still, some Iraqi leaders suspect the authorities in these Arab states are turning a blind eye to the flow of funds. "There’s no reason for these states to support [this financing] except for their general sympathy for their fellow Sunnis," says Jeffrey White, Berrie Defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Some experts say Iraq’s charges against Jordan are overblown. The country has begun to curb the activities of its large Iraqi community of Baathist sympathizers. "The Jordanian government is looking much more closely at [Saddam’s] family and restricting them and their activities," says Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director at the International Crisis Group. But more could be done, says Daniel Glaser, deputy assistant secretary of terrorist financing and financial crimes at the U.S. Treasury, who urged Jordan in July to enact tougher laws against money laundering and develop better financial intelligence.

Arab views on Iraqi federalism
Many of Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors are uneasy about Iraqi federalism—the division of power and wealth between its regions and Baghdad. Moussa, who heads the Arab League, called the constitution’s clauses on federalism "dangerous" and "a recipe for chaos." Some Arab leaders fear the splintering of Iraq into oil-rich regions run by Kurds in the north and Shiite clerics in the south. "The mainline view [in the Arab world] is Iraq should stay together and stay an effective political unit," White says. "Their concern is that Kurdish autonomy and potentially Shiite autonomy will leave some kind of rump of a state left over [for Sunnis]."

Other Arab leaders are worried by what they perceive as Iran’s growing influence over Iraq’s Shiite leadership, experts say. Earlier this year, King Abdullah of Jordan warned Iraq's leadership against creating a "Shiite crescent," stretching from Iran to Lebanon. "The Jordanians fear the new Iraqi government has been taken over by Iranian sympathizers and is basically a proxy for Iran," Hiltermann says. "They fear radical Shiites of the [Ayatollah] Khomeini brand are going to take over the Gulf and its oil. Keep in mind Jordan has no oil."

Arab views on Iraqi insurgency

A small but visible number of the insurgents in Iraq hail from Arab states in the region, namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan. Some Iraqi leaders have accused these states, particularly Syria, of not doing enough to shut down the insurgency’s "underground railroad" over Iraq’s borders, White says. "No question Syria has a good idea of what's going on. It's a question of using the powers of a police state to chase down and extradite those involved in the insurgency." Jordan, for example, is doing much more to stem the flow of insurgents—and financing—into Iraq than Syria, despite the fact that "the Jordanian state is weaker than the Syrian state," says Daniel Byman, senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "The Jordanian security forces are very organized and they do their best to protect the border from any attack from Jordanian soil either toward Israel or toward Iraq," Paz says. Hence, most smuggling of insurgents into Iraq—and U.S. combat missions designed to stop it—is occurring along the Iraq-Syria border.

There appears to be widespread sympathy among the Arab people for Iraq's Sunni insurgency, experts say, particularly in Jordan, with its sizable population of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees largely hostile to U.S. foreign policy in the region. "Jordan is a very important base for the development of local jihad,' Paz says, but argues that average Jordanians do not support the Sunni or foreign jihadi insurgents in Iraq. A July poll by the Pew Research Center, however, found that Jordan was the only Middle East country where support for suicide bombings against civilians, in Iraq or elsewhere, has risen. Another Pew poll released in June found just 21 percent of Jordanians had a favorable impression of the United States.

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Iraqi troops kill 141 insurgents in Tal Afar

quote:
Iraqi troops kill 141 insurgents in Tal Afar

BAGHDAD, Sep. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Iraqi defense minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi said Saturday that 141 insurgents had been killed and 197 others captured by Iraqi and US forces over the past two days in a major offensive to rid the northern town of Tal Afar of terrorists.

Dulaimi told a news conference that similar offensives would be imminent in other Iraqi cities.

Defense Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi said Iraqi and US forces have killed 141 rebels and arrested 197 others in the past two days in Tal Afar.
-------------------------------
image: A US solider runs for cover during fierce clashes in Tal Afar. (AFP)
---------------------------------
"We tell our people in Ramadi, Samarra, Rawa and Qaim that we are coming. There would be no refuge for the terrorists," Dulaimi said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said during the news conference that "we will hit with iron fist to get rid of the saboteur groups and restore the security and stability to Tal Afar."

"Insurgents wanted to isolate Tal Afar from the political process as we are preparing for the referendum on the draft constitution, so our duty is to protect the country and the people and exert every effort to help all Iraqi people regardless of their backgrounds," he said.

Iraqi and US forces have stepped up their offensive against rebels in the northern town of Tal Afar, while tightening security on the nearby Syrian border.
-----------------------------
image: A burnt Iraqi police car is seen at a highway following clashes between policemen and armed men in Baghdad. (AFP)
-----------------------------
Earlier Jaafari said he gave orders to Iraqi forces to launch an all-out offensive against insurgents in Tall Afar.

"At 2:00 a.m. today (2200 GMT Friday), acting on my orders, Iraqi forces commenced an operation to remove all remaining terrorist elements from the city of Tal Afar," Jaafari said in a statement.

"These forces are operating with support from the Multinational Force," he added.

Tal Afar has been a stronghold for foreign fighters and insurgents against the US and Iraqi government forces.

The ethnic Turkmen account for 90 percent of residents in Tal Afar, some 420 km north of Baghdad, and about 70 percent of them are Sunnis.

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 5th report

2005-09-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 5th report - posted at 7:48 pm EDT by Synergy:

Like I said in today's 4th report, Talabani continues to mouth off, I have zero confidence in anything he says (see his latest pronouncements in second post below)

Baghdad Airport Shuttered Over Pay Dispute

quote:
Baghdad Airport Shuttered Over Pay Dispute

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press

An embarrassing pay dispute between Iraq's government and a British security firm came to a head Friday and caused the shutdown of Baghdad International Airport, the country's only reliable and relatively safe link to the outside world.

The Interior Ministry sent troops to reopen the dusty, sprawling stone-and-marble facility but called them back after confronting U.S. forces at a checkpoint on the dangerous airport highway, notorious for frequent insurgent attacks.

The closure of the French-built airport was believed to have been the first serious public conflict involving a Western contractor since the U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein two years ago.

The United States has managed to keep its forces in Iraq — now at about 140,000 — to a minimum by hiring contractors for vast amounts of work the military normally would do. Congress has complained that oversight is lax and the U.S. government is routinely overcharged.

Meanwhile in Tal Afar, an insurgent bastion near the Syrian border in northwestern Iraq, two simultaneous car bombs Friday killed five Iraqi soldiers. The bodies of 10 men — in civilian clothes, handcuffed and decapitated — were found on the city's western outskirts, said Iraqi army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.

American and Iraqi forces have the city surrounded and were expected to launch a major offensive.

The U.S. military reported killing 11 insurgents during raids over the past two days, and an estimated 80 percent of the city's 200,000 residents have fled. Iraqis claim to have captured 150 foreign fighters from Syria, though the U.S. military has not confirmed that figure.

Iraq issued a statement Friday hinting the operation was imminent.

"In response to the call for help by the people, tribes and government officials in the city of Tel Afar ... we are taking additional measures to ensure security and stability," Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said.

In the airport dispute, cooler heads appeared to prevail after the angry threat of force from the Interior Ministry.

"We ordered the forces to pull back after American forces were deployed at the first checkpoint on the road. We did not want to create a confrontation," acting Transportation Minister Esmat Amer told The Associated Press.

He said negotiations with London-based Global Strategies Group, which has provided airport security since last year, continued late Friday. There was no report of progress, although Amer predicted a resolution by Saturday.

Brig. Gen. John Basilica Jr., commander of the 256th Brigade Combat Team of the Louisiana National Guard, said security remained "intact" at the airport.

Otherwise, the U.S. military, in an apparent attempt to play down the problem, said it had no information about the pay dispute or American and Iraqi force movements.

The airport, about 10 miles west of Baghdad, is connected to the capital by a four-lane highway once described by the State Department as one of the world's most dangerous roads. Safety along the thoroughfare has improved recently under the direction of a Louisiana National Guard unit.

One of Saddam's grandiose showcase projects, designed to handle up to 7.5 million passengers a year, the airport has fallen into disrepair. Huge windows looking out to a nearly empty tarmac appear to have gone unwashed for months.

A bas relief of Aladdin on a flying carpet welcomes passengers, whose voices now echo through the dusty, once-busy corridors and gates. Workers — a skeleton force — shuffle past closed shops and restaurants.

Iraqis who can afford it and foreigners overwhelming choose to fly in and out of the country, which is safer than driving but costly: $622 for a roundtrip to Amman, Jordan. Others can take a bus to Jordan, $25 each way but extremely dangerous because the route goes through insurgent-ridden Anbar province.

During the March 2003 invasion, U.S. troops quickly seized the airport — which Saddam named for himself — as they approached Baghdad, then used it as a staging ground for their sweep into the capital. The facility was renamed Baghdad International Airport.

Several U.S. bases are situated nearby, including Camp Victory, where Saddam is believed to be imprisoned awaiting trial on charges of crimes against humanity.

Keeping the airport open has become a matter of pride for the Iraqi government.

"This issue is related to Iraq's sovereignty, and nobody is authorized to close the airport," Amer, the acting Transportation Minister, told AP. He said the Cabinet had approved the dispatch of Interior Ministry troops.

Amer said the government has been trying since January to re-negotiate a $4.5 million monthly contract that Global signed with the U.S. Coalition Provision Authority, which gave sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in 2004.

Global said its workers would continue securing the facility but had suspended other operations because the Transportation Ministry, which owns the airport, was six months behind in payments.

"We're in continuing dialogue and we're hoping it'll be resolved as soon as possible," company spokesman Giles Morgan said, declining to give details.

Amer confirmed Global had not been paid since contract talks resumed around Jan. 1.

In June, Global suspended airport operations for 48 hours for the same reason.

The company also manages security at the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, home to Iraqi government offices, parliament, and the U.S. Embassy. It has about 1,100 employees, mainly former Nepalese and Fijian soldiers. About 500 Global workers staff the airport.

Iraq President Talabani: 'No Civil War' if Constitution Rejected (VOA)

quote:
Iraq President Talabani: 'No Civil War' if Constitution Rejected

PRESS RELEASE - Washington, D.C., September 9, 2005 - Iraq's President Jalal Talabani told reporters at a press conference today at the Voice of America (VOA) that "there will be no civil war in Iraq" if the draft constitution is not adopted in next month's nationwide referendum.

While stressing he was sure that the constitution would be approved, President Talabani said that if the referendum failed, a new national assembly would be elected to draft another constitution so "there is no room" for those kind of "rumors of civil war in Iraq."

Asked about fears among Sunni Arabs that a federated Iraq would divide the country, the president repeated his support for this type of government and said "those people who are against the federation are ...narrow-minded Arab nationalists who don't understand the spirit of the new era."

Questioned on when Iraqi security forces will be trained to a level that would allow U.S. and coalition forces to withdraw from his country, President Talabani said, "I think that within one year we will be able to rebuild our security forces, army, and police forces." He added that Iraq could "secure our country tomorrow, but we want to do it the regular way and not depend on militia" and non-government paramilitary groups.

The Iraqi leader's appearance at the VOA Newsmaker press conference was broadcast live via satellite to VOA television and radio audiences in Asia, Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. Excerpts were also used in VOA's radio and television broadcasts. Additional information is available at www.VOANews.com

The full Newsmaker press conference is available at: www.VOANews.com/real/voa/english/nnow/pres1500bv.ram

The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 100 million people. Programs are produced in 44 languages, including English.

For more information, call the Office of Public Affairs at (202) 401-7000, or E-Mail publicaffairs@voa.gov.

Iraq hurt Katrina response, general says

quote:
Iraq hurt Katrina response, general says
Pentagon says it can handle both the disaster and Iraq war

BAY ST. LOUIS, Mississippi (AP) -- The deployment of thousands of National Guard troops from Mississippi and Louisiana in Iraq when Hurricane Katrina struck hindered those states' initial storm response, military and civilian officials said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that "arguably" a day or so of response time was lost due to the absence of the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Infantry Brigade and Louisiana's 256th Infantry Brigade, each with thousands of troops in Iraq.

"Had that brigade been at home and not in Iraq, their expertise and capabilities could have been brought to bear," said Blum.

Blum said that to replace those units' command and control equipment, he dispatched personnel from Guard division headquarters from Kansas and Minnesota shortly after the storm struck.

Blum also said that in a worst-case scenario up to 50,000 additional Guardsmen per month will be needed in Louisiana or Mississippi over the next four months to continue providing relief, law enforcement and other post-hurricane services.

Those 200,000 troops, if needed, would represent nearly two-thirds of the approximately 319,000 Guard troops available nationwide.

Blum said his staff has almost completed a plan for 30-day rotations of Guard units so that no one will have to serve in the Gulf Coast for more than a month.

There are about 30,000 Guardsmen in Iraq and a smaller number in Afghanistan, Kosovo and elsewhere overseas.

Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, whose waterfront home in Bay St. Louis was washed away in the storm, told reporters the absence of the deployed Mississippi Guard units made it harder for local officials to coordinate their initial response.

"What you lost was a lot of local knowledge," Taylor said, as well as equipment that could have been used in recovery operations.

"The best equipment went with them, for obvious reasons," especially communications equipment, he added.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said this week the Pentagon has the ability to cope with both Katrina and the Iraq war: "We can and will do both."

Asked Tuesday about critics who said the commitment of large numbers of troops to the Iraq conflict hindered the military's response to Hurricane Katrina, Rumsfeld said, "Anyone who's saying that doesn't understand the situation."

Blum said that overall the Iraq mission for Guard units across the nation is not limiting the military's ability to expand and continue the rescue and recovery operations in storm-battered states.

"Iraq and other overseas commitments do not inhibit our ability to sustain this effort here at home," Blum said in an interview with three reporters who flew to Bay St. Louis with him Friday from Washington.

Blum and Taylor toured the heavily damaged areas around Bay St. Louis.

They also met with Guardsmen and other troops helping clean up and provide emergency assistance to those displaced by the wall of water that wiped out many homes and flooded a widespread area miles north of the coastline.

Blum also flew to New Orleans, where he met with troops and commanders and was given an extensive aerial tour of flooded portions of the city.

Afterward he flew to Baton Rouge and met with Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander of the military relief and recovery effort in the region.

Iraq war soldiers now doing Hurricane Katrina duty

quote:
Iraq war soldiers now doing Hurricane Katrina duty

Reuters

In Iraq, Staff Sgt. Rob Scott of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division, cleared mines and roadside bombs.

In New Orleans on Friday, he and his unit from the 307th Engineers cleared streets in the French Quarter, fixing a little of the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina almost two weeks ago.

Delicately, the engineers in red berets sawed away at a massive fallen tree that hung over a figure of Christ in the courtyard of St. Louis Cathedral, taking care to ensure the limbs did not crash down on the statue.

Then their earthmovers bit into the pile of tree limbs and garbage and, little by little, carted it away.

In some ways, they said, the debris of war and of natural disasters are similar.

"It is kind of weird to see it back here," Scott said. "I'd say the biggest comparison is over there you're dealing with crazy fools. Here they like you to be here, they appreciate our help."

The paratroopers of the 82nd, whose home base is Fort Bragg, North Carolina, have seen action in both Iraq and Afghanistan since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Alongside National Guard troops from several U.S. states, the soldiers are now helping to patrol the almost deserted streets of New Orleans, and to help the city recover from one of the worst disasters that has ever struck the United States.

The division has some experience - some of its units went to Florida after Hurricane Andrew destroyed the town of Homestead, south of Miami, in 1992.

But after several years of overseas missions, being deployed within the United States was not something many of its soldiers expected to see.

"It definitely is not everyday business. This is just like one of those freak things, one of those 100-year floods," said Sgt. David Cassidy. "It's good to get a chance to help in the country as opposed to going overseas getting shot at."

Most units of the 82nd are out patrolling the ghostly streets of a city that once housed a million people in its metropolitan area, but is now home to probably fewer than 10,000 determined holdouts and tens of thousands of police, troops and emergency personnel.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm, looters ran rampant, overwhelming the New Orleans police. But the city is probably now the most secure in the United States, patrolled not only by troops in the street but also by military helicopters overhead.

Scott said it was maybe too relaxed. Clearing mines and street bombs in Iraq gave him more of a kick.

"It's the thrills, living on the edge I guess. I knew I was saving other soldiers' lives," he said. "But here my present mission is to get everything cleaned up so people can move back into town."

U.N. Report Condemns Torture in Iraq

quote:
U.N. Report Condemns Torture in Iraq

AP

A new U.N. human rights report condemned continuing insurgent violence in Iraq while issuing a stinging indictment of alleged torture and summary executions by Interior Ministry forces.

The bimonthly report by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq cited "serious allegations of extra-judicial executions taking place which underline a deterioration in the situation of law and order."

The United Nations report, released Thursday, took special note of the Aug. 25 discovery of "the bodies of 36 men, blindfolded, handcuffed, bearing signs of torture and summarily executed" near the Iranian border.

A top Sunni cleric has said the men's bodies, found in a dry riverbed, were believed to be those of Sunni Arabs kidnapped a day earlier from their northern Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah.

"Families of the victims reported to the Human Rights Office that the men had been detained on 24 August ... following an operation carried out by forces linked to the Ministry of Interior," the United Nations said.

The same thing was reported after 11 men were detained by Interior Ministry forces on July 10 in a different Baghdad neighborhood and "found dead three days later at the Medico Legal Institute," according to the report.

In addition to the alleged summary executions and mass arrests, the U.N. said it had "first and second hand accounts from Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and the Kurdish governorates, as well as corroborating information from other credible sources ... (of) the systematic use of torture during interrogations at police stations and within other premises belonging to the Ministry of Interior."

The U.N. said it had brought the allegations before Iraqi authorities and "it is expected...violations will be investigated and the results of such investigations be made public."

Both the insurgents and some government-linked groups have been accused of running so-called death squads in a growing wave of vengeance killings in the shadows of the unrelenting sectarian and ethnic violence in the country, more than two years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.

Turkey, US discuss combating Kurdish rebels in Iraq

quote:
Turkey, US discuss combating Kurdish rebels in Iraq

Fri Sep 9, 1:32 PM ET
AFP

Ranking Turkish and US military officers discussed ways of combating armed Turkish Kurd rebels holed up in northern Iraq, but mentioned neither a timetable nor what concrete steps would be taken.

A Turkish general staff statement said talks between General James Jones, head of US land forces in Europe, and Turkish armed forces chief General Hilmi Ozkok, "underlined the need for joint determination and cooperation in the fight against" the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

It said the two agreed the PKK was a threat to Turkey as well as Iraq and the region, and that measures should be taken to end support for the PKK in northern Iraq and prevent rebels infiltrating into Turkey.

Jones told reporters afterward that they had focused on ways of military cooperation.

"The US central command participated in some very fruitful talks with the Turkish general staff to reaffirm the spirit of cooperation to talk concretely about some of the things that can be done... with the Turkish armed forces and US Central Command in northern Iraq," he said.

Asked whether US forces in Iraq might take military action against the rebels, Jones said he had assured Turkey of the US determination to wipe out the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union.

"The talks... should serve as a symbol of reassurance to the Turkish public... that the struggle against terrorism is real, the participants are committed and focused, and it will be resolved in a successful way," said Jones, who is also the Supreme Allied commander of NATO.

Turkey has long pressured the United States to act against thousands of PKK militants who found refuge in northern Iraq after 1999 and stepped up their attacks on Turkish targets over the past several months.

In July, the Turkish army said Washington had ordered the capture of PKK commanders in northern Iraq and warned of a Turkish military incursion into the region if Baghdad fails to curb the rebels.

The PKK announced a unilateral one-month ceasefire on August 19 to give Turkey time to take steps to resolve the conflict and improve rights and liberties for its Kurdish population.

The army has brushed aside the truce, vowing to press ahead with operations against the rebels.

Some 37,000 people have died since 1984, mostly in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, when the PKK first took up arms for self-rule in the region.

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 4th report

2005-09-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 4th report - posted at 3:00 pm EDT by Synergy. According to the AP story - last story below - the U.S. military death toll in Iraq stands at 1896. Also the interim President of Iraq Jalal Talabani (a Kurd) has been making outrageous statements over the past few days. He said that Saddam had confessed. Saddam's lawyers denied that. He called for Saddam to be executed "20 times", and now he say U.S. troops won't be needed in two years! I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth.

US raids on Iraq 'insurgent town' (BBC News)

quote:
US raids on Iraq 'insurgent town'
US forces have carried out overnight bombing raids on the Iraqi town of Talafar, near Syria, reports say.

The Americans say the town is being used as a staging post by foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria.

In a separate development, the international airport in the capital Baghdad was closed on Friday.

The British company providing security suspended operations because of a dispute over payment with Iraq's Ministry of Transport.

A statement by the company, London-based Global Strategies Group, said the ministry "is not currently paying the company for the services it has rendered".

No payment had been received for the last seven months, the statement said.

The company said its staff would continue to secure the airport, but that normal airport operations would be suspended until further notice.

The Ministry of Transport owns the sprawling airport complex 18km (12 miles) from central Baghdad.

Iraqi officials say the firm is demanding too much money for security, and, if necessary, Iraqi soldiers will replace the private security guards.

The airport was last closed for the same reason in June. It reopened two days later.

Inhabitants flee

In Talafar, air strikes were reportedly launched on a neighbourhood the Americans suspected of being under the control of insurgents.

Troops were then sent in to arrest all males over the age of 20 who remained there.

The town has been the scene of heavy fighting over the past week, and the authorities have urged residents to leave.

The BBC's Jon Brain in Baghdad says 80% of the town's inhabitants, who are mainly Sunni Muslims, are now believed to have left Talafar.

The US military drove the insurgents out of Talafar a year ago, only for them to return once the troops had withdrawn.

The spokesman for the American forces in Iraq, Major General Rick Lynch, has pledged that this time a sufficient military presence will remain to prevent the same thing happening again.

Also on Friday, Iraqi police say the have found six unidentified bodies in Rustamiyah, about 20km south of Baghdad. They said the men had been tied up and shot, before being dumped in the sewage system.

Iraqi troops to take over airport security

quote:
Posted on Fri, Sep. 09, 2005

Iraqi troops to take over airport security

Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi troops will take control of security at Baghdad Airport, replacing a British company that stopped working Friday in a pay dispute, a top Iraqi official said.

"This issue is related to Iraq's sovereignty, and nobody is authorized to close the airport," acting Transportation Minister Esmat Amer said.

He said the Cabinet decided to dispatch Interior Ministry troops to assume control of the airport from London-based Global Strategies Group, a company that has been providing security at the sprawling facility since last year.

Earlier Friday, Global said it had suspended operations, alleging the Ministry of Transportation - which owns the airport - was six months behind in payments. All flights in and out of the capital were suspended, it said.

Maryland family mourns contractor killed in Iraq The Baltimore Sun

quote:
Maryland family mourns contractor killed in Iraq
Ryan Young, 32, had military career that included 8 years as Navy SEAL

The Associated Press
Originally published September 9, 2005, 8:40 AM EDT
HALFWAY -- Ryan Brandt Young, a Halfway native working as a contractor performing diplomatic security in southern Iraq, was killed along with three other contractors Wednesday when a bomb destroyed an armored vehicle in which he was riding.

Young, 32, graduated from Williamsport High School in 1990 and served in the U.S. Navy for more than 13 years, including stints as a Navy SEAL and Navy SEAL instructor, said his father, Greg Young.

Ryan Young -- who most recently lived in San Diego -- was in Iraq as a security contractor for Triple Canopy and was working with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

He was riding in the lead vehicle of a motorcade escorting someone from an airport to the U.S. Embassy in Basra when the bomb went off, said his mother, Pam Young.

Three other Triple Canopy contractors -- Ronald Hyatt of Calera, Ala., Robert McCoy of Refugio, Texas, and Robert Pole of Miller Place, N.Y. -- were killed in the explosion.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on a Web site known as a clearinghouse of militant claims.

"We were told it was a devastating blast, that it was instant," Greg Young told The Hagerstown Herald-Mail.

Pam Young said when she last spoke to her son, about 10 days ago, "he was very happy, very up, but he usually was. He wasn't a person who was down."

The Youngs said their son had been in harm's way so many times that they tried not to think about the possibility that he would be killed.

He received a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for putting out a fire aboard the USS John F. Kennedy.

"Everyone else ran away from it and he ran toward it," Greg Young said.

He said his son once told him: "Dad, if anything should ever happen to me, I want you to know I enjoy what I'm doing. I'm doing what I want to do."

Ryan Young served as a Navy SEAL for eight years, the last three as a combat diving instructor. It was his childhood dream to join the SEALs, his parents said.

"He was a professional," said Wil Fisher, 32, who joined the Navy at the same time as Young. "He's done this for most of his adult life. It takes a unique individual to do that, to keep yourself in harm's way even after getting out of the military. ... I'm proud to say he's my friend."

Young spent his entire childhood in Washington County, attending Lincolnshire Elementary School, Springfield Middle School and Williamsport High. He played high school soccer and also played baseball and football growing up.

As an adult, Young competed in marathons and enjoyed surfing, mountain climbing and snowboarding. He graced the cover of the 2004 Men of the Navy SEALs calendar and worked occasionally as a model in California, once appearing in a commercial with former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, his mother said.

Young recently earned a bachelor's degree in business management from National University in San Diego. Greg Young said he asked his son if he would ever use his degree, and he responded, "Dad, I just can't see myself cooped up in an office."

U.S., Iraq pressure "rebel" town of Tal Afar

quote:
U.S., Iraq pressure "rebel" town of Tal Afar

By Nameer Nouredeen
Reuters
Fri Sep 9,11:19 AM ET

U.S. and Iraqi forces heaped pressure on suspected insurgents in the town of Tal Afar on Friday, as Iraq's prime minister vowed to restore order a day after the U.S. military threatened an all-out attack.

Tal Afar, west of Mosul in northern Iraq, is seen by the United States as a stronghold of rebellion. U.S. and Iraqi troops have been battling insurgents there for several days and said they had killed 7 on Wednesday.

"In response to the call for help by the people, tribes and government officials in the city of Tal Afar of all its different religious and ethnic elements, and in accordance with the law, we are taking additional measures to ensure security and stability in Tal Afar and to restore its people's rights," Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said in a statement.

"Terrorists in Tal Afar have been actively destroying life and property. With a true disregard for the residents of Tal Afar, they have launched attacks against men, women and children in an effort to intimidate and threaten them," he added.

His statement came after U.S. Major General Rick Lynch warned on Thursday that a U.S attack may be imminent, and that civilians were leaving the town ahead of a possible strike.

"In Tal Afar, coalition forces and members of the Iraqi security forces are preparing a possible military operation to rid that city of insurgents," he told a news briefing.

"If indeed decisive military operations are required, we want to ensure that the attacks take place to kill the insurgents without collateral damage in killing innocent civilians," he added.

A U.S. soldier told Reuters by telephone from the outskirts of Tal Afar on Friday that they had not yet moved into the town.

"We're taking care of the refugees. We're bringing them food and water," he said, without giving his name.

DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

State-run Iraqiya TV showed bodies lying among ruined buildings, with a ticker on the screen saying: "These are the crimes that the terrorists committed in Tal Afar."

He added that at least 15 bodies had been found. Iraqiya showed at least four cars and one truck destroyed, houses ruined and furniture strewn outside homes as women nearby wept.

Earlier, Iraqiya showed Iraqi soldiers carrying out house-to-house searches across the town, whose population is mostly ethnic Turkmen.

The United States sees Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, as a conduit for foreign fighters and military equipment coming into Iraq, for use by insurgents fighting the occupying U.S. forces and the Shi'ite Muslim- and Kurdish-dominated Iraqi government.

The insurgents are mainly drawn from Iraq's third main community, Sunni Arabs, who account for some 20 percent of the population and have dominated Iraqi politics for decades, under ousted leader Saddam Hussein and before.

"You will see, over the next several weeks -- we're not specifying any time -- specific military operations to target the insurgency in Tal Afar," Lynch said.

Lynch said intelligence reports suggested some 20 percent of the insurgents in Tal Afar were "foreign fighters," although he did not say where they came from.

He said U.S. and Iraqi forces had been trying to wipe out the insurgency in a series of operations since May, culminating in the operations of the last few days.

They have so far failed to put down rebellions, but Lynch said the growing number of U.S.-trained Iraqi government troops -- there are now 190,000 of them, he said -- should mean the resources were in place to quell future insurgencies.

(Additional reporting: Mariam Karouny and Sebastian Alison)

Conservative Groups Plan Pro-Troops Events

quote:
Conservative Groups Plan Pro-Troops Events
Conservative Groups Plan Pro-Troops Events in D.C. to Counter Anti-War Rally This Month
By ELIZABETH WHITE
The Associated Press

Sep. 9, 2005 - Conservative groups are rallying supporters to counter an anti-war march planned for this month that organizers hope will attract 100,000 marchers.

Freerepublic.com and RightMarch.com are among the groups organizing "Support the Troops and their Mission Weekend," scheduled for Sept. 23-26.

The groups' largest event to honor military families will be held on the National Mall on Sept. 25, a day after the anti-war rally being organized by the ANSWER Coalition and United for Peace and Justice.

The "Support the Troops" organizers hope to draw several thousand people.

"It's disingenuous to say that you support the troops and you don't support their mission that's who the troops are," said William Greene, president of RightMarch.com.

Some supporters will line parts of the anti-war march route Sept. 24, though they plan to remain peaceful.

The anti-war demonstration is expected to include Cindy Sheehan, whose protest outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, this summer injected new life into the anti-war movement. Her 24-year-old son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed last year in Iraq.

This Sunday, the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Defense Department will sponsor the America Supports You Freedom Walk to memorialize victims and honor the military. The walk will begin at the Pentagon and end up on the Mall for a concert with country singer Clint Black.

On the Net:

Support the Troops Weekend: http://www.supportthetroopsweekend.org

ANSWER Coalition: http://www.answercoalition.org

Freedom Walk: http://www.asyfreedomwalk.com/

2 Miami Soldiers Killed In Iraq Miami (FL) - CBS4

quote:
[/b] 2 Miami Soldiers Killed In Iraq[/b]

Sep 9, 2005 12:28 pm US/Eastern

Miami (A):
Two South Florida soldiers died in Iraq when an improvised explosive device detonated near their Humvee, causing it to roll over, the Department of Defense has announced.

Staff Sgt. Jude R. Jonaus, 27, and Sgt. Franklin R. Vilorio, 26, both of Miami, died Tuesday in Baghdad. Both were assigned to the Brigade Troops Battalion, Division Support Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.

Jonaus had called home Monday to wish his younger sister a happy 17th birthday, family members said. He joined the army after graduating high school in 1996.

"We didn't expect to lose him that way," said his father, Gernessoit Jonaus. "We thought he'd go to the Army see the country and come back."

Jonaus was deployed to Baghdad seven months ago as a pharmacy technician, his younger brother Ricky said.

"When he left, one of my cousins said 'Be careful,' and he answered, 'Man, I'm nowhere near danger. What am I going to do? Slip on a pill?"' Ricky Jonaus said.

Although Jonaus' family expressed no hesitation about his service to the United States, several questioned the wisdom of U.S. involvement in Iraq.

"I don't think that war was our business," said his mother, Amenia Jonaus. "Anything for this country, I'm all for it, but we have no business over there. I would help anybody who asks for it, but these people (in Iraq) don't want our help."

Military officials said that Vilorio listed Miami as his hometown but had no known relatives in the city.

Iraqi: U.S. troops not needed in 2 years

quote:
Sep 9, 1:24 PM EDT

Iraqi: U.S. troops not needed in 2 years

By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Friday he believes that within two years, there'll be no further need for U.S. forces there.

Praising U.S. forces for contributing to Iraq's emergence from hardline rule by Saddam Hussein, Talabani said, "We need American troops to intimidate our neighbors."

He warned that a quick withdrawal of American and multinational forces "could lead to the victory of the terrorists in Iraq and create grave threats to the region, the United States and the civilized world."

Holding a news conference after giving a speech at the Saban Center for Middle East policy, Talabani said: "We, and you, cannot afford to cede Iraq to the evil forces of terrorism and religious fanaticism. In two years, there will be no need for American forces."

President Bush's Iraq policy has fallen into greater disfavor in the United States, several polls have shown, and anti-war demonstrators led by Cindy Sheehan shadowed the president during his August vacation at his ranch in Texas. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., actually has called for setting a deadline for the removal of U.S. military forces from Iraq, the first member of the Senate to do so.

On Friday, Talabani described Iraq's quest for stability as a difficult one, and he was skeptical of Iraq's Arab neighbors. "All Arab media without exception are supporting terrorism," he asserted.

"Such states need to engage with us against terrorism," Talabani added.

The Iraqi president, who will meet with Bush next week, was upbeat on the prospects of all ethnic groups together for the country's sake.

"In the new Iraq, unlike the old regime, the state is based on the principle of inclusion, not exclusion," said Talabani, a Kurd. "Iraq will be for all Iraqis who have the vision of a democratic, pluralistic, federated country."

Reaching out to Sunni Arabs, many of whom questioned the provisions of a newly written constitution, Talabani said, "We will make any reasonable concession and use very waking hour to bring all, particularly the Sunni Arabs, into the fold."

But, he said, "we cannot bend so far that we break apart Iraqi democracy."

Talabani thanked American citizens for kindness and generosity in Iraq's postwar reconstruction. And, he said, "We honor the sacrifices the United States has made."

As of Thursday, 1,896 U.S. troops have died since the Iraq war in 2003.

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 3rd report

2005-09-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 3rd report - posted at 8:30 am EDT by Synergy:

UN envoy deplores HR situation in Iraq Dawn

quote:
UN envoy deplores HR situation in Iraq

By Our Correspondent

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 8: UN envoy to Iraq Ashraf Qazi expressed serious concern on Thursday over the human rights situation in the war-torn country, noting that he had repeatedly brought up the issue with various members of the government, the international community and non-governmental organizations.

“There is a continuing concern over the lack of protection of basic human rights in Iraq,” Mr Qazi said in releasing the report on the human rights situation in Iraq for July-August.

“Each Iraqi citizen should enjoy the rights and protections stipulated in international treaties and agreements that Iraq has ratified,” he stressed.

The report, compiled by the UN Assistance Mission for the country (UNAMI) Human Rights Office, also notes the flagrant disregard for human life demonstrated by armed opposition groups, and the impact of special security operations in central and northern areas, resulting in the displacement of population and inordinate suffering of innocent civilians.

UN Security Council Resolution-1546 mandates UNAMI “to promote the protection of human rights, national reconciliation, and judicial and legal reform in order to strengthen the rule of law in Iraq”.

UNAMI’s Human Rights Office will publish the results of its activities on a bimonthly basis, with the next report on the September-October period expected in early November.

Mr Qazi is expected to visit New York this month to present a report on the situation in Iraq and speak about the Iraqi constitution and its impact on the country.

Pay Dispute Forces Closure of Iraq Airport

quote:
Pay Dispute Forces Closure of Iraq Airport

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

The Baghdad International Airport, the country's only reliable link to the outside world, was closed Friday in an embarrassing pay dispute between the government and a British security company. The interior ministry said it was sending troops to reopen the facility.

The brewing standoff could involve American forces in a confrontation with Iraqi troops. An official close to the dispute said the U.S. military had joined security forces from the British company at a checkpoint to block Iraqi interior ministry troops. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of negotiations.

The U.S. military said it could not confirm that U.S. troops had taken up positions at the checkpoint on the dangerous airport road.

Iraqi officials said they were sending troops to reopen the facility because its closure was illegal.

"This issue is related to Iraq's sovereignty, and nobody is authorized to close the airport," acting Transportation Minister Esmat Amer told The Associated Press.

He said the Cabinet approved the dispatch of interior ministry troops to take over from the London-based Global Strategies Group, which had provided security at the sprawling airport since last year.

Amr said the government had been trying since the first of the year to renegotiate a now-lapsed $4.5 million monthly contract which Global had signed with the defunct U.S. Coalition Provision Authority. The CPA handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in June 2004.

This was believed to be the first serious dispute involving a Western contract operation since the U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein. The United States has managed to keep its forces in Iraq — now at about 140,000 — to a minimum by hiring out vast amounts of work the military normally would do to outside contractors. Congress has routinely complained that oversight is lax and the U.S. government is routinely overcharged.

Global said its workers would continue securing the facility but had suspended other operations because Iraq' transportation ministry — which owns the airport — was six months behind in payments. All flights in and out of the capital were suspended, it said.

"We're in continuing dialogue and we're hoping it'll be resolved as soon as possible," company spokesman Giles Morgan said. He declined to answer questions about the specifics of the dispute.

Amer confirmed that Global had not been paid since contract negotiations resumed about the first of the year.

Airport officials say about 15 civilian flights use the airport daily for both domestic and international travel. The flights are operated by Iraqi Airways, Royal Jordanian Airlines and three companies operating out of the United Arab Emirates — Jobotier, Ishtar and Tigris airlines.

There is service between Baghdad and Basra, Sulaimaniya and Irbil in Iraq as well as Jordan, Syria and the United Arab Emiteras

In June, Global suspended airport operations for 48 hours for the same reason.

The company also manages security at the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad — home to Iraqi government offices, parliament, and the U.S. Embassy. It has about 1,100 employees — mainly former Nepalese and Fijian soldiers. Five hundred Global workers staff the airport.

In the northern city of Tal Afar, a key insurgent staging ground near the Syrian border, and the Iraqi army said it arrested 200 suspected militants in the sweep — three-fourths of them foreign fighters.

A joint U.S.-Iraqi military operation has the city encircled and has reported heavy skirmishing with insurgent forces for several days. Tal Afar is about 260 miles north of Baghdad and 35 miles from Syria.

Most of the estimated civilian population of 200,000 have now fled this predominantly Turkmen city, where 70 percent of that ethnic group is Sunni Muslim — the sect that dominates the Iraqi insurgency. The U.S. military reported killing seven insurgents over the past two days amid growing indications the joint force was preparing to intensify the operation.

The sweep in Tal Afar came as election officials tallied figures from three Sunni-dominated provinces, where the voter registration was extended a week in preparation for the Oct. 15 nationwide referendum on the new constitution.

"Turnout was unbelievable and people were very enthusiastic, especially in Fallujah and Ramadi," Farid Ayar, an electoral commission spokesman in Baghdad, said Thursday. Those cities are Sunni insurgent bastions in Anbar province, which stretches west from Baghdad to the Syrian, Jordanian and Saudi borders.

The large voter signup suggests minority Sunnis are mobilizing to defeat the draft charter, a marked tactical shift from January, when their boycott of the parliamentary election handed control of the 275-member National Assembly to Shiites and Kurds.

The new basic law was approved and sent to voters by a coalition of Shiites and Kurds, over the objections of Sunni representatives, who fear it would allow the country to split into sectarian and ethnic mini-states. That could cut Sunnis out of Iraq's enormous oil wealth.

The very Sunni clerics who railed last January against an election "under foreign military occupation" are now urging their people to take part in both the referendum and the parliamentary balloting in December.

Rejection of the charter would mean elections in December for a new parliament under the rules of the interim constitution approved in March 2004. The new parliament would start the entire process of drafting a constitution from scratch.

Japan to Hold Off Pulling Troops From Iraq

quote:
Japan to Hold Off Pulling Troops From Iraq

By HANS GREIMEL, Associated Press Writer

Japan will wait to decide whether to withdraw its 600 troops from U.S.-led reconstruction efforts in Iraq until after Iraq's constitutional referendum, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.

The commitment, coming amid reports that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would like to bring the troops home by next summer, is a sign of support for Tokyo's biggest ally, the United States.

Iraq is preparing for an Oct. 15 nationwide vote on a new constitution. If the document passes, parliamentary elections are to be held in December to select a new legislature, which would then approve a government.

Rejection of the charter also would mean parliamentary elections in December. That new legislature, under rules of the interim charter adopted in March 2004, would then be required to start writing a permanent constitution from scratch.

"We have to take into consideration the political situation after the Iraqi government is established," a ministry spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity, citing ministry rules. "At this moment there is no final decision."

Japan dispatched troops to the southern Iraqi city of Samawah in January 2004 on a humanitarian mission to purify water, rebuild schools and other tasks, under a special law that was passed in 2003. The mission expires on Dec. 14.

Iraq asked Japan last month to extend the mission, but made no requests for a specific number of troops or the duration of an extension. Koizumi said at the time that Japan would make a decision based on the political situation in Iraq, relations with the United States and the needs of the international community.

Japan's foreign ministry spokeswoman declined to say what would happen if elections fall after the pullout deadline. But Tokyo is likely to temporarily extend the mission for a year with the aim of pulling out by next summer, Kyodo News Agency reported.

Japan is also considering withdrawing its warships from the Indian Ocean after their mission supporting U.S. troops in Afghanistan expires, amid criticism that Japan is running a "free gasoline station."

Japan's navy has provided fuel for coalition warships in the region since November 2001 under a special law that was last extended in 2003 but expires on Nov. 1.

"Our refueling efforts have been highly evaluated by the foreign countries, but there has also been criticism that we're running a 'free gasoline station,'" Defense Minister Yoshinori Ono said earlier this week.

Ono did not say who has criticized the mission as a giveaway for coalition partners. But Japan's military dispatches are unpopular with the public, and the opposition Democratic Party has vowed to curtail them if it wins power Japan's parliamentary election on Sunday.

Iraqi Army Assumes Control of Airport

quote:
Iraqi Army Assumes Control of Airport

Friday, September 09, 2005

TAL AFAR,Iraq — Iraqi troops will take over security at Baghdad Airport, replacing a British company that stopped working Friday in a pay dispute with the government, a top Iraqi official said.

"This issue is related to Iraq's sovereignty, and nobody is authorized to close the airport," acting Transportation Minister Esmat Amer told The Associated Press.

He said the Cabinet approved the dispatch of Interior Ministry troops to take over from the London-based Global Strategies Group, which had provided security at the sprawling airport since last year.

Amr said the government had been trying since the first of the year to renegotiate a now-lapsed $4.5 million monthly contract that Global had signed with the defunct U.S. Coalition Provision Authority. The CPA handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in June 2004.

Earlier Friday, Global said it suspended operations because the Ministry of Transportation, which owns the airport, was six months behind in payments. All flights in and out of the capital were suspended, it said.

Giles Morgan, a spokesman for the company, said the ministry "is not currently paying the company for the services it has rendered."

"We're in continuing dialogue and we're hoping it'll be resolved as soon as possible," Morgan said.

The company said its workers would continue securing the facility but that other operations were suspended.

Shortly after that, Amer said Iraqi forces would take over later Friday and reopen the airport, one of Iraq's few reliable links to the outside world, as quickly as possible. He confirmed that Global had not been paid since contract negotiations resume about the first of the year.

Airport officials say about 15 civilian flights use the airport daily for both domestic and international travel. The flights are operated by Iraqi Airways, Royal Jordanian Airlines and three companies operating out of the United Arab Emirates — Jobotier, Ishtar and Tigris airlines.

There is service between Baghdad and Basra, Sulaimaniya and Irbil in Iraq as well as Jordan, Syria and the UAE.

In June, Global suspended airport operations for 48 hours for the same reason.

The company also manages security at the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad — home to Iraqi government offices, parliament, and the U.S. Embassy. It has about 1,100 employees in Iraq — mainly former Nepalese and Fijian soldiers. Five hundred Global workers staff the airport.

Iraq veteran now recruiting at home Augusta (ME) Kennebec Journal

quote:
Kenneback Journal Online
Augusta, Maine
Friday, September 09, 2005

Iraq veteran now recruiting at home

By GARY REMAL
Staff Writer

2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

WHITEFIELD -- Truck mechanic Joy Pearson spent 12 months in the Iraq war zone with the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division.

The 20-year-old active-duty soldier from North Whitefield said she tended the needs of the military's largest wheeled vehicles in Baghdad from March 2004 to March 2005.

"We relieved the guys that took Baghdad," she said this week.

As a woman, Pearson said she was sheltered from the worst of the fighting. But she said she lost close friends to insurgent bombs and combat, and experienced mortar attacks on the camp where she lived.

"I knew there was a possibility I could get killed, but I knew that when I signed up," she said. "I love my family and I didn't want to leave them, but that's part of being in the military. I think it's the most honorable job a person can have."

Pearson said that before training as a heavy-vehicle mechanic in the Army, "I didn't know anything. I didn't even know how to change a tire."

Pearson returned to Maine on a two-week assignment as part of the Army's soldier recruiting assistance program, according to Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Lavertu, who runs the Augusta recruiting station.

"She's so forthright, she's great speaking to people," Lavertu said. "She was home-schooled, so she's been trying to speak to home-school people around here."

Most of the soldiers who volunteer for the program put in for assignments near their homes so they can visit while helping recruiters.

Pearson said she has been staying with her parents, Thomas and Leila Haddad, and her younger sister, Faith, during her two-week tour.

She also has an older sister and three brothers.

After she leaves Maine, Pearson will return to her new base in Texas where -- for the first time in more than two years of marriage to her husband, Michael -- the couple will have the opportunity to live under the same roof.

Pearson said Army officials try to assign married soldiers together. But their deployments until now have taken them in different directions.

"I got married the day after my 18th birthday (and) I have yet to live with him," Pearson said. "But, in a way, it's been kind of good because we've had a chance to get to know each other and learn who we are. It's actually made our marriage a lot stronger. It's been a trial-by-fire kind of thing. It hasn't been easy, but I'd do it all over again."

Joy and Michael, who grew up in Naples, Maine, met while both were participating in Civil War battle re-enactments in Maine. Joy took on the character the character of a 19th-century woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the war between the states.

"Carrying a 10-pound musket sort of made basic training easier; that and I was used to drill and ceremony already," she said.

With the Army at war, Pearson said parents and prospective soldiers are understandably concerned about the dangers of enlistment.

"They do ask me. I try to be honest. I'm not a combat-hardened veteran, so I'm not going to try to sell that. And there is stuff you have to be careful about over there. But it's not that bad.

"The media puts out constant negative stuff. But it's not like that all the time," Pearson said.

She said she was proud of the positive things her unit did: building water systems and schools. "We were pretty well received," she said.

Pearson said she is trying to turn her military service into financial support for college. She is already taking college courses and has dreams of becoming a veterinarian.

She said parents should understand their children's service to the country is important and can provide financial aid for school.

"It's never an easy thing to send your kids off. And I don't know what could happen with the draft. But, the fact of the matter is, it's an all-volunteer army now, and I'd rather come in on my own terms and get whatever advantage I can out of it," she said.

Pearson said the experience has been personally rewarding, too.

"Not only will you be able to say you did something a lot of other kids didn't do, but you grow up a lot. I used to be shy and not take initiative," Pearson said. "You honestly don't know if you will live another day, so you live life to the fullest. And it's the same in civilian life."

Suicide car bomb kills Iraqi woman, wounds 3

quote:
Suicide car bomb kills Iraqi woman, wounds 3

BAGHDAD, Sept. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- A suicide car bomb blew up near a US military convoy in southern Baghdad on Friday, killing an Iraqi woman and wounding three people, police said.

"A suspected suicide bomber blew up an explosive-laden vehicle near a US military convoy on the highway in Doura district, killing an Iraqi woman and wounding three civilians," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua.

It was not clear whether there were any US casualties in the attack as the US troops sealed off the area, preventing people and Iraqi police from approaching the scene, the source said.

Insurgents often resort to bombing attacks in a bid to undermine the US-backed government and drive out foreign forces.

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 2nd report

2005-09-09T04:11:00.000-07:00

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 2nd report - posted at 7:10 am EDT by Synergy:

For a U.S. Platoon in Iraq, Merciless Missions

quote:
For a U.S. Platoon in Iraq, Merciless Missions
Days Are Spent Pursuing Enemy, Fending Off Death

By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 9, 2005; A01

BALAD, Iraq -- On an asphalt road surrounded by apple trees and date palms, a bomb went off beneath an armored Humvee leading a midnight patrol. The towering fireball, followed by an explosion, lit up the night and propelled the five-ton vehicle two feet into the air.

The Humvee fell and sputtered to a halt, its bulletproof windshield cracked, its electrical system shut down. Inside, four American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter choked on dust and grit. The attack was witnessed by a reporter riding along on the Aug. 26 patrol and later described by soldiers involved.

"My face! My face! I can't see!" screamed Sgt. Jason Fishbein, 30, a diminutive gunner from the New York City borough of Queens. Along with the Humvee's other occupants, Fishbein was unharmed; the gray dust had momentarily blinded him and it was sweat -- not blood, as he feared -- that poured from his face.

"Man, I got a headache now," said Cpl. William Young, the 24-year-old driver of the second Humvee, which careened into a ditch as fist-sized chunks of asphalt hurtled toward it. Young reached into the back seat, where Sgt. Joseph Smith, 29 and deaf in his right ear from an earlier blast, handed him an extra-large bottle of migraine medicine.

Six hours after the attack, and with only a few hours of sleep, the soldiers of the 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, were back patrolling the bomb-cratered streets of Balad, an agricultural city about 50 miles north of Baghdad. The attack quickly faded, taking its place alongside myriad others that have occurred during the platoon's first eight months of a yearlong combat tour in Iraq.

The experiences of the 17-man "Blue Platoon," as the unit is called, go to the heart of the growing debate over the continued involvement of U.S. troops in Iraq. The days are infused not with the politics of war but the stark realities of it: tragedy and loss, loneliness and exhaustion, resilience and camaraderie in the face of a stubborn and deadly insurgency. The platoon's daily life has been ordered by nothing more than the merciless patrol schedule, twice-daily, four-hour combat missions that inevitably place the soldiers in the paths of attacks aimed at killing them.

"I can tell you right now: We ready to go home," said L.B. Baker, 38, a lanky trumpet player and farmer from Belcher, La., who as platoon sergeant is responsible for holding the unit together.

"I tell my guys every day, 'Look, this is the home stretch,' " Baker said. "I don't want them to relax right now. It's not the time to start thinking this is a game."

In three days of patrols culminating in the roadside attack, the physical and emotional toll of prosecuting the war in Iraq was vividly apparent in interviews, personal diaries written by the soldiers, and even songs they recorded in makeshift barracks studios. Weighted down by 50 pounds of body armor and ammunition, the soldiers venture out every day in 120-degree heat to find the insurgents. More often than not, they never do, even after bombs explode directly on them, a source of endless frustration compounded by what the soldiers said is the unwillingness of most Iraqis to help them.

"It's always kul shee maku ," said Sgt. Rob Hammer, a 32-year-old squad leader from Sublette, Kan., reciting the Arabic phrase for "there is nothing," which the entire platoon has memorized.

In such an unforgiving environment, the Americans said they found meaning in their commitment to each other, "the friends who would take a bullet for me, friends who would kill their own selves to save my life," said Sgt. Patrick Hagood, 24, of Anderson, S.C.

In the tense moments after that Friday's bombing, Blue Platoon's medic, Pfc. James Tickal, 23, of Oviedo, Fla., first checked to make sure his soldiers were okay. He then took out a brown, leather-bound diary he keeps inside his Humvee and recorded the incident in the middle of rubble.

Prefacing the entry with an obscenity, he wrote: "I'm still shaking. Boom! My humvee just got hit by an IED about two minutes ago. I am sick of getting hit w/ this crap. Aw man that was a big bomb that they blew up right underneath us. Thank God for keeping everyone OK in my humvee. Now that's a direct hit."
The First Losses

Tragedy hit the platoon on Feb. 13. While patrolling the outskirts of Balad around 4:30 a.m., one of the four Humvees overshot a right turn and tumbled upside down into a freezing, seven-foot-deep canal, and three soldiers drowned, along with an Air Force firefighter who fell in during the rescue effort.

Memories of the three popular men -- Sgt. Rene Knox Jr., 22, of New Orleans; Sgt. Chad Lake, 26, of Ocala, Fla., and Sgt. Dakotah Gooding, 21, of Des Moines -- hovered over soldiers "like a mist," said Tickal,

Tickal soon began to narrate what he was seeing, first in jottings in an all-weather field book he kept behind his Humvee's sun visor, then in the thick diary that his ex-girlfriend, Spec. Jessica Williams, a reservist, sent him from the United States.

"I am currently in Iraq, my tour is half way over," he wrote in June. "When we first got to Iraq I lost three friends in the first month: Gooding, Knox and Lake. Gooding and I were pretty chill. He told me how he met his wife and mostly how much he loved her. He was also the funniest guy I have ever met. He would always say, 'foreeeal.' "

Even as the scorching summer heated up, Tickal, a bespectacled 23-year-old who studied biology at the University of Central Florida before joining the Army, frequently began his entries: "Today is a beautiful day." A self-described "dreamer," he punctuated passages with smiley faces or frowning faces; on one page he sketched a picture of Garfield, the cartoon cat, firing an M-4 assault rifle from the turret of a Humvee.

Tickal described himself as apolitical: "Truthfully, I don't care who the president is. I would have signed up to come over here anyway." But he criticized the apathy of Americans who, he wrote, failed to understand the stakes in Iraq: "I hope people back home understand what we are doing, keeping our country free. Truthfully I think our country needs a kick in the *** . Most people believe it doesn't affect them. Who cares? Well, I CARE."

Tickal worried that he "could die any day." On July 4, he described a phone conversation in which Williams "asked me what my biggest fears are. I never told her but I imagine a car bomb going off all the time. People screaming in my dreams."

"If I was a cat I would be down to maybe 2 lives left, I hope," he wrote six days later. "There is no way I am going to die in a place like this."
Growing Frustration

By July, Blue Platoon was increasingly under attack.

The frequency of indirect fire -- mortars and rockets fired at Camp Paliwoda -- had diminished significantly. But the number of roadside bombs, which have accounted for about 26 percent of the nearly 1,900 deaths of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, had more than doubled, to nearly two a day, within the battalion's 20-by-15-mile area of operation.

Many of the attacks were concentrated in al-Ruashid, a Sunni tribal neighborhood northwest of Balad. The insurgents seemed to operate invisibly amid the orchards. The locus was a one-lane road known as the Isaki Highway, its asphalt surface pocked with an obstacle course of bomb craters.

Tickal's diary reflected the growing tension, the platoon's exhaustion and frustration. "The day is half way over. It's about 136 degrees out," he wrote on July 29. "This morning seemed to disappear. The heat kind of puts you to sleep."

On Aug. 5, the platoon was hit by a roadside bomb on the way back from picking up a commander, who was returning from leave in the United States. "I told the captain, Welcome home,' " wrote Tickal. Using a racial epithet, he wrote, "I am getting tired of getting bombed and not catching" them.

On Aug. 6, Charlie Company's "Red Platoon" captured some insurgents with an artillery round. "That make me feel really great when we catch these jerkoffs," Tickal wrote. "They think they can get away w/anything. The thing is that it could be anyone. Everyone is poor in this country and I don't blame them. If I was poor I would take a few thousand dollars to place a road bomb. Man, I hate these insurgents."

On Aug. 7, the company's "White Platoon" was "hit by an IED for the 6th time in 2 days," Tickal wrote. "This time Big Will got hit. His whole right leg was hit by shrapnel."

By Aug. 10, it was "full out war," Tickal wrote. White Platoon was attacked by two roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades, wounding two soldiers. When Blue Platoon arrived to assist, the soldiers came under small-arms fire. "I kept on hearing, pew, pew, pew," Tickal wrote. "Taylor my gunner started unloading amo can after amo can into the wood line. We ended up being there about 2 hours. The first hour was nothing but gunfire."

Each day, the platoon would seek out information to find the men who were attacking them. The soldiers acted on tips and stopped at random houses. They questioned nervous residents through masked translators who went by nicknames like "Fly" and "Steve" and struggled with English themselves.

The platoon did not expect much. Few residents offered information; some were openly hostile. On the morning of Aug. 24, the platoon dismounted and strolled through a neighborhood of modest homes and mud huts. The soldiers came upon a young farmer, Bassam Hazim Mohammed, 19, sitting in the shade beneath an arbor.

"He says he doesn't like coalition forces," the interpreter told the platoon.

"I'm gonna tell him right now the fastest way to get rid of us: Approve a constitution, stop shooting at us, and stop blowing stuff up," said 1st Lt. Lamarius Workman, 31, the platoon leader. As he spoke, a few Americans split off to search Mohammed's home.

"So, basically, the easiest way to get rid of us is to just fake like they like us, just fake it," implored Workman. "I'm serious. Just sacrifice a little pride and fake it for six months and you'll see we'll be gone in no time."
Lyrics of Loneliness

As the grueling month wore on, Baker, the platoon sergeant and an accomplished trumpet player, recorded his latest song about Iraq with Anthony Blocker, 27, of Marietta, Ga., another platoon sergeant in Charlie Company.

The two men used a music software program and microphone, mixing the songs on a laptop computer in a tiny wooden studio that Blocker built in his room. Baker wrote songs about the three drowned soldiers, the platoon's desolate base, the isolation of being away from family. "If it feels like I'm gonna cry a little bit, then I know it's good," he said.

Baker called this latest song, "August." Its haunting melody was set against lyrics that spoke of loneliness and resilience during endless separation:

A year long

A year gone

Is so damn long

Baby, hold on

It won't be long

Till I come home

There's been ups

There's been downs

We stay strong

Hold on

It won't be long

Till I come home
Midnight Attack

On Aug. 26, Blue Platoon went back on patrol at 8 p.m. It was the second patrol of the day; earlier that morning, the platoon had been shot at outside a mosque.

Dusk was fading as the soldiers made their way around the city, stopping to question residents, inspecting an Iraqi police checkpoint. The brutal afternoon heat broke, giving way to a soft summer night.

At 10:30, the four Humvees raced down the dangerous Isaki Highway. The platoon reached a shuttered white store at the end of the road, stopped to fix a jammed grenade launcher, then doubled back down the highway.

The convoy slowed to about 20 miles per hour and headed east, the vehicles' headlights cutting a path through the darkness. Every hundred yards or so, the Humvees swerved to avoid bomb craters in the asphalt road.

Baker, driving the lead vehicle, swerved right to avoid one of the three-foot-deep craters. Beside it, buried beneath the asphalt and unbeknownst to him, was another bomb. "I was just going around the hole and it blew," Baker said.

"The truck came off the ground, sir," he continued, recounting the incident the next day in his room. "It kind of lifted it up and set it back down on the ground."

"It felt like we were flying," said Fishbein, the gunner.

About 25 yards back, Young found himself driving toward an orange fireball. Rocks and huge chunks of the road smashed the windshield, spreading a web of cracks. Young jerked the Humvee to the right. "Stop! Stop!" yelled Hagood, who was seated in the passenger seat. The vehicle stopped in a ditch surrounded by tall grass.

The gunners shot illumination flares and lit up the night. Now, able to see across the orchards, the gunners opened a barrage of fire with their M-240 machine guns, hoping to kill the unseen insurgents who had detonated the bomb. The red-hot shell casings fell down into the Humvees; one landed on Smith, scorched him through his pants.

"Ow!" he screamed, swearing.

The soldiers became euphoric as they learned no one had been hurt.

Inside the lead vehicle, Baker and Sgt. Ernest Daniels, of Harlem, N.Y., patted the dashboard, thanking the Humvee for protecting them.

"Good job, baby," Baker said.

"Yeah, baby," Daniels said. "Good job, good job."

Young backed the second Humvee out of the ditch and parked in the middle of the road.

"Thank God, whoever's praying for us," he said as the shooting subsided.

Once bomb experts arrived to inspect the site, the soldiers got out of their Humvees and walked over to the crater.

It stretched about six feet wide and three feet deep. Thousands of pieces of rubble were spread across the road. Next to the new crater was the old one that had been used as a decoy. Inside it was a battery bound with masking tape and attached to a thin copper wire.

Young, Hammer, Hagood and an explosives expert followed the wire across the road, along a wide dirt path. The wire ended abruptly after about 50 yards away, at another path that led back into the orchard.

The soldiers used flashlights at the end of their M-16 assault rifles to search the darkened fields. They scanned the tall grass between the bushy, 20-foot apple trees, warily sweeping their weapons.

"Something's moving right there," Hammer said, pointing his rifle. "I got my laser on it."

The soldiers pointed in unison. Lights and three red dots danced over the grass, which seemed to move.

"It's a rabbit," someone said finally.

The soldiers hiked over gullies and through the scrub before finally turning back to the vehicles.

The Humvees slowly headed back to the base, Baker's vehicle hobbling on a flat tire. Their headlights were dark; to see, the drivers used night vision goggles.

About 20 minutes later, the platoon arrived at Camp Paliwoda. The sign outside the gate displayed the American and Iraqi flags and read: "Partners in Peace, Balad, Iraq."

Once inside, Young began to sing the Army promotional jingle: "Be all you can be."

Two days later, at the onset of a morning patrol, Tickal pulled out his diary. "The sun is starting to rise," he wrote. "Thank you God for another day on this beautiful planet. Yesterday my humvee's windshields were being replaced. Thank goodness for bullet proof glass, huh?"

U.S. Forces Chase Ghost Fighters Amid Iraqis

quote:
U.S. Forces Chase Ghost Fighters Amid Iraqis

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 9, 2005; A21

TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 8 -- The U.S. soldiers sensed something wasn't quite right when an ambulance carrying two dead bodies arrived Thursday morning at a checkpoint for people evacuating this city under siege.

Hanging off the sides of the vehicle were three young men who said they were escorting the remains of family members killed in the previous night's bombardment to a local hospital. But when an Iraqi policeman looked them over, he pointed to a man who wore white sweatpants and a white shirt and appeared to be in his early twenties. "I know him. He must be detained," the officer said. "He murdered a policeman."

The interrogation by American soldiers initially went nowhere. The man insisted he spoke Turkish, not Arabic, and therefore could not communicate with the Americans' interpreters. Asked his name, he kept alternating between "Habib" and "Faris." At one point, he rolled on the floor making retching noises as if he were going to throw up. But everything changed when exasperated soldiers said they had no choice but to turn him over to the Iraqis, who were anxious to take him into custody.

"Yes, I am a terrorist, yes," the man said in perfect Arabic, his ailment apparently forgotten. "I would rather you shoot me in the head than give me to them."

The episode underscored what many U.S. troops have said is among the most difficult tasks they face in battling the insurgency across Iraq: identifying fighters who blend seamlessly into the local population.

American commanders have long insisted that growing numbers of Iraqi security forces will make that job much easier by providing an insider's knowledge of local communities. Privately, U.S. commanders also acknowledge that the Iraqi troops' reputation for heavy-handed treatment of prisoners cuts two ways: It can terrify prisoners into talking but undermine the rapport policemen and soldiers have with the populations they serve.

In Tall Afar, where a week ago U.S. and Iraqi troops launched their largest urban assault since the push into Fallujah last November, soldiers are simultaneously working to help people flee in anticipation of an imminent attack on the city center and to prevent insurgents among them from escaping undetected.

Heavy bombing continued Thursday evening, as U.S. jets dropped 500-pound J-DAM precision bombs and other munitions into the insurgent-controlled neighborhood of Sarai, while playing messages over loudspeakers that called on residents to evacuate. Nearly 1,000 people left the city through U.S. checkpoints Thursday, and commanders said intelligence showed that insurgent leaders were attempting to vacate the city.

Iraqi policemen and soldiers are fully integrated into nearly every aspect of the Tall Afar operation, often attached to units from the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is leading the assault, or advised by small groups of U.S. Special Forces soldiers. Among the units here are several battalions of the Iraqi army's 3rd Division, which is based in northwestern Iraq, and a battalion of Kurdish soldiers assigned to Tall Afar for this operation. Hundreds of regular Iraqi policemen and police commandos are also being brought to the city to man stations that U.S. forces have said they will establish once the fighting wanes.

The performance of Iraqi troops in this region has improved dramatically since the 3rd Armored Cavalry arrived in April, U.S. commanders said. In early June, an Iraqi platoon led by two U.S. soldiers was ambushed in Sarai. When machine-gun fire rained down on the platoon, most of its members fled. An American lieutenant colonel was killed in the engagement.

"When we started with them, whenever they would receive a little fire they would either run or do what we called the 'death blossom' -- basically spraying in all directions, which was dangerous for us and dangerous for the town," said Lt. Col. Christopher Hickey, who leads the 3rd Armored Cavalry's Sabre Squadron and works closely with Iraqi commanders. "Through leadership and experience, they have become more disciplined."

Lacking sufficient numbers of skilled interpreters for interrogations, U.S. forces operating independently of Iraqi units have sometimes struggled in their attempts to find insurgents during several days of house-to-house searches in Tall Afar.

On Sunday, soldiers from Eagle Squadron's Blue Platoon raided the home of a suspected insurgent named Suleiman Dawou. When they arrived at the house, Dawou was gone, but they found a man they believed to be his cousin. They asked in English if the cousin knew where Dawou was, and the man said no. Believing he was lying, the soldiers placed him in plastic cuffs and told him that he was being detained. They began filling out paperwork required to take him into custody when an interpreter arrived and tried questioning him one last time.

"I thought the soldiers said Salman Dawou," the man told the interpreter. "I know Suleiman, but I have not seen him for months." The soldiers let him go.

But while Hickey and other commanders said the participation of Iraqi troops will help immeasurably with efforts to identify insurgents, there is also concern here, as in other Sunni Arab communities across Iraq, because the Iraqi units are predominantly composed of Shiite Muslims or ethnic Kurds. Hickey said that U.S. forces have met with local Sunni leaders to encourage recruitment of Sunnis into police and army units. But after a series of meetings last month in which the tribal leaders said they would provide lists of candidates, only three names were put forward.

"Part of the problem is the security situation is so bad here that no one wants to be a policeman," Hickey said. "Once that improves, we are hoping more of them will sign up. The ideal is for people to be policing their own people, their own neighborhoods, so they have a stake in doing it right."

Civilians fleeing Tall Afar, where most residents are Sunnis from the Turkmen ethnic group, were told by U.S. troops to evacuate through checkpoints in the southern part of the city. But many said they were too afraid to enter south-side neighborhoods where most police and residents are Shiites.

The Kurdish soldiers involved in the operation here are members of the pesh merga militia that battled the Sunni-led government of former president Saddam Hussein and that supports Kurdish forces fighting the government of neighboring Turkey. They will particularly relish their role invading a stronghold of the Turkmens, who have strong ethnic ties to Turkey, American commanders said.

"They are champing at the bit," said Hickey, who denied that zeal would lead to overly aggressive tactics. "They are a professional fighting force with a good reputation. They want to keep that intact."

The man who was plucked from the ambulance and interrogated Thursday appeared genuinely frightened of facing the Iraqi police. "Please no," he repeated several times. Once soldiers realized they had a lever to extract information, they called for Iraqi policemen to sit in on the questioning. The officers said the man was involved in a gruesome killing of a local policeman who was beheaded, his corpse placed on the street with a bomb lodged inside of it that exploded when a dog began sniffing at the body.

When the policemen first entered the room, the man turned to face the corner, refusing to look at them. After a series of increasingly pointed questions shouted at him, he became defiant.

"No matter what you say, I am a holy warrior. I am going to paradise," he told the interrogators, referring to the belief cited by many insurgent fighters that those who die for their cause have a special place in the afterlife. "The rest of you are infidels who will go to hell."

New Orleans and Baghdad

quote:
Op-Ed Columnist
September 9, 2005
New Orleans and Baghdad
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The New York Times

Memo to: Iraq's Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni leaders.

From: An American friend.

Dear Sirs: As someone who really wishes you well, I am writing to give you my best sense of how the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is going to affect the U.S. mission in Iraq. Let me begin with an analogy offered by Michael Mandelbaum, author of the forthcoming book "The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the 21st Century." He points out: "The U.S. military presence in Iraq today is like the dikes and levees that were protecting New Orleans from the flood. The equivalent of the flood for Iraq is a civil war between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. The U.S. military right now is holding that back."

Therefore, the key question in Iraq is whether your constitutional process now unfolding can produce a power-sharing accord between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that can be a homegrown, self-sustaining dike against civil war, replacing the Americans. In the wake of Katrina, this is now an urgent question. No, we will not be pulling out tomorrow just because of Katrina, let alone before your December parliamentary elections. But after that, when we will be in a Congressional election year, who knows what pressures may build.

Why? Because most Democrats have opposed the war from the start, and many Republicans no longer support the war per se, but only George Bush. The president has carried this war on his shoulders, and the more he's weakened politically by Katrina, the less he will be able to carry. Yes, Mr. Bush has said we'll do whatever it takes to finish the job in Iraq, but he said that before there was another huge job to do.

Can you imagine if Mr. Bush had to go to Congress this week to ask for yet another $100 billion to keep fixing Iraq, when an entire U.S. city needs rebuilding? And the Katrina TV drama is not going away. Hell hath no fury like journalists with a compelling TV story where they get to be the heroes and the government the fools.

Now, as for your draft constitution, it is at one level a remarkable document - a rare example of the elected citizens of an Arab state having a horizontal dialogue and forging their own social contract. There is already more free politics in Iraq than anywhere else in the Arab world except Lebanon. But this draft constitution will come to life only if Iraqi Sunnis of good will publicly embrace it, and up to now they have not.

Some Sunnis are intimidated, others are posturing for the elections, and some are acting in bad faith, still fantasizing that their Baath Party will come to power again. But Sunnis of good will, and Iraq has many, can be brought around if the constitution creates a politically and economically viable central government, and doesn't pave the way for Kurdish and Shiite separatism, which would leave the Sunnis isolated in central Iraq without power or oil.

As Yitzhak Nakash, the Brandeis University expert on the Shiites, put it: "We need to see a form of federalism in Iraq that is uniting Iraqis, not dividing them - a form of federalism that gives Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds a degree of cultural and religious autonomy without compromising either Iraq's political unity or Baghdad's role as the locus of national politics. The draft constitution is not quite there yet."

I know how justifiably bitter the Shiites and the Kurds of Iraq are over what they have suffered at the hands of murderous Sunni Baathists and jihadist fascists. But it is in their interest and ours to see if we can nurture more Iraqi Sunnis who understand that their best future lies in working with a new Iraq, rather than trying to subvert it. Will Iraqi Sunnis, like the Palestinians, waste a generation trying to reverse history - and destroy themselves and Iraq in the process? Or will they accept the fact that they are a minority that can no longer rule all of a fascist Iraq, but can get its fair share of power and oil in a free Iraq? I don't know.

The only way to find out is to make them an offer they can't refuse. If there is a constitution basically supported by all the key parties, a decent outcome is still possible in Iraq. Yes, Mr. Bush says he intends to stay the course there no matter what, but without a constitution embraced by all three communities, there will be no course to stay. The pressure on us to leave will only grow.

And if the dikes of stability that U.S. soldiers are holding together in Iraq give way, well, you all will envy the people of New Orleans. Most of them had somewhere to go when their floods hit. You and your neighbors will not.

Point Those Fingers

quote:
Op-Ed Columnist
September 9, 2005
Point Those Fingers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

To understand the history of the Bush administration's response to disaster, just follow the catchphrases.

First, look at 2001 Congressional testimony by Joseph Allbaugh, President Bush's first pick to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA, he said, would emphasize "Responsibility and Accountability" (capital letters and boldface in the original statement). He repeated the phrase several times.

What Mr. Allbaugh seems to have meant was that state and local government officials shouldn't count on FEMA to bail them out if they didn't prepare adequately for disasters. They should accept responsibility for protecting their constituents, and be held accountable if they don't.

But those were rules for the little people. Now that the Bush administration has botched its own response to disaster, we're not supposed to play the "blame game." Scott McClellan used that phrase 15 times over the course of just two White House press briefings.

It might make sense to hold off on the criticism if this were the first big disaster on Mr. Bush's watch, or if the chain of mistakes in handling Hurricane Katrina were out of character. But even with the most generous possible assessment, this is the administration's second big policy disaster, after Iraq. And the chain of mistakes was perfectly in character - there are striking parallels between the errors the administration made in Iraq and the errors it made last week.

In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure.

The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.

In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam's fall - the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency - was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer's brother was in charge of private-sector development.

The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a "turkey farm," a source of patronage jobs.

As Bloomberg News puts it, the agency's "upper ranks are mostly staffed with people who share two traits: loyalty to President George W. Bush and little or no background in emergency management." By now everyone knows FEMA's current head went from overseeing horse shows to overseeing the nation's response to disaster, with no obvious qualifications other than the fact that he was Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate.

All that's missing from the Katrina story is an expensive reconstruction effort, with lucrative deals for politically connected companies, that fails to deliver essential services. But give it time - they're working on that, too.

Why did the administration make the same mistakes twice? Because it paid no political price the first time.

Can the administration escape accountability again? Some of the tactics it has used to obscure its failure in Iraq won't be available this time. The reality of the catastrophe was right there on our TV's, although FEMA is now trying to prevent the media from showing pictures of the dead. And people who ask hard questions can't be accused of undermining the troops.

But the other factors that allowed the administration to evade responsibility for the mess in Iraq are still in place. The media will be tempted to revert to he-said-she-said stories rather than damning factual accounts. The effort to shift blame to state and local officials is under way. Smear campaigns against critics will start soon, if they haven't already. And raw political power will be used to block any independent investigation.

Will this be enough to let the administration get away with another failure? Let's hope not: if the administration isn't held accountable for what just happened, it will keep repeating its mistakes. Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff will receive presidential medals, and the next disaster will be even worse.

Army needs a new can-do motto

quote:
Army needs a new can-do motto | Letter to the Editor
Thursday, September 8, 2005

Recently, a member of our church received an urgent letter from his son-in-law, who is assigned to the Army's 17th Signal Battalion in Kitzingen, Germany, but is in Iraq. He is assigned to Forward Operating Base Speicher. In his letter, he requested a care package of hygiene products, hard candies and beef jerky. I offered to write to the command group at Fort Gordon to see if we could put these urgently needed and required items in with equipment shipments to Iraq.

The delayed response that I received back implied that any packages shipped to Iraq from Fort Gordon could end up in a warehouse and most likely would never get to the intended. Furthermore, it was suggested that we pass the collection plate and take up a love offering, and mail the packages. First of all, how many forward operating bases named Speicher are there in Iraq? Secondly, the post offices in foreign countries are operated by military supply technicians and Navy storekeepers. Duh.

Prior to 2001, the Army's slogan/motto was "Be all that you can be." The implications were very effective and led everyone to engender "all for one and one for all." ... Now the Army's motto is "An Army of one." The then-secretary of the Army who created this new motto failed to realize that "one" means a single, solitary, lone individual, separate, and, for one person. Where is the camaraderie? Where is the esprit de corps? ...

I propose that the Army come up with a new motto that indicates teamwork: "United we stand, proudly we serve." The church did pass the collection plate to pay for the shipment of our care package to the soldiers in Iraq. The $350 it cost to mail our eight care packages could have been provided to the Red Cross or the Salvation Army for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. ...

David G. Edmiston Sr., Grovetown

From the Friday, September 9, 2005 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle

Renewed sounds of protest

quote:
New songs join some standbys from the Vietnam era in questioning U.S. military policies in Iraq

By NICK MARINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/09/2005

When Joan Baez performed for the ad hoc commune of anti-war protestors gathered outside President Bush's Texas ranch late last month, she sang songs that date back generations.

The 64-year-old, who's been singing protest music for almost 50 years, gave the largely female crowd renditions of the campfire classic "Kumbaya" and the anthemic "We Shall Overcome."

"The 'Blowin' In The Wind' of the Iraq war, to my knowledge, doesn't exist," Baez said from Texas. "And so one tends to go back to the old songs, because they're good."

Although there's no shortage of new protest music, the modern songs — from Eminem's internally rhyming rap to Green Day's multi-platinum punk to Steve Earle's rebellious Americana — have yet to replace tunes from the Vietnam era, or before. The world — and music — have changed in ways that will make it difficult for new songs to ever match the impact of their ancestors.

The older songs worked, and continue to work, for several reasons. Their folky melodies made them easy to learn and sing, which isn't necessarily true of the punk and hip-hop that drives much of today's protest music.

More significantly, Syracuse University pop culture expert Robert Thompson says the Vietnam-era songs arrived at a time when a huge audience had simultaneously reached what is typically the most idealistic time in life. The Baby Boomers had just hit voting and drafting age, and they were filling college campuses with protests of everything from the war to civil rights injustices. Songs like "For What It's Worth" and "Give Peace A Chance" provided a galvanizing soundtrack for a movement that was already up and organized. Today's musicians are performing to a nation that has been divided in its sentiment about the war, and to young people not at risk of being sent to war against their will.

Modern performers' biggest challenge, though, is that the pop marketplace has become a niche culture.

"The current anti-war movement is like everything else in our modern society, a kind of splintered thing," said singer-songwriter Dan Bern, whose parents narrowly escaped the Holocaust, and whose satirical "Talkin' Al Kida Blues" remains one of the most damning post-9/11 protest songs. Bern likened the current state of music to the current state of television — "there's 300 channels now," he said. "There's not four."

All of this has made contemporary anti-war musicians' jobs more difficult, and pushed many of their protest songs to the margins. "They've been countercultural," Baez said. "As was ours at the beginning."

Even Green Day, the California punk trio with the runaway hit album "American Idiot," seems to be coming from the pop culture fringes, despite its commercial success.

"I think we're a dangerous band that sort of punched our way into the mainstream, and we're here now," said Green Day drummer Tre Cool, the son of a Vietnam veteran. "And it sort of changes the whole face of what would be popular music. If people are buying bands like Green Day, buying records like Eminem, it goes to show that people don't want to just be spoon-fed crap all the time. People are angry. They want to roar."

As of this week, fans can roar along with the Rolling Stones. On Tuesday, the band released "A Bigger Bang," a new album featuring a stomping protest track called "Sweet Neo Con," which sharply criticizes the Bush administration, though Mick Jagger has reportedly said it isn't "personally aimed" at the president.

The song is a bit of a departure for the decadent British rockers who, according to biographer Stephen Davis, had "zero, zilch, zip" involvement in the anti-war music of Vietnam, and whose 1991 protest song "Highwire" (which railed against the first Iraq war) "didn't make an impression on anybody but us Stones fans."

Apparently the prospect of this song didn't make much of an impression on California's Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger either. Despite the song, Schwarzenegger (who raved about President Bush at last year's Republican National Convention), went ahead with a fund-raiser at the Stones' tour opener in Boston.

It's possible that "Neo Con" will help recast the Stones as politically conscious artists, but it seems unlikely now that they're 30-odd years past the height of their influence.

Now, it seems, the burden is on smaller and scrappier artists to find a way to reach a critical mass while at the height of their influence.

The 25-year-old singer-songwriter Conor Oberst (who records and performs as Bright Eyes) has tried, singing his blistering protest song "When The President Talks To God" on "The Tonight Show" in May. The iconoclastic roots-rocker Steve Earle has written a sly come-on to Condoleeza Rice. Bern has toured with punk-folkie Ani DiFranco, whose 2002 song "Self Evident" made a big impression on longtime anti-war activist and clown Wavy Gravy, the 69-year-old entertainer born Hugh Romney, who was onstage at Woodstock and who is still speaking and singing on the peace circuit. The world has changed since the days when Wavy Gravy marched on Washington playing funeral marches on kazoo, but he thinks today's young peace activists are "sensational."Although he thinks it's harder to get a good protest song on the radio today, he believes contemporary artists can nonetheless make music that brings the world closer to peace.

"Little songs can become huge hits also, at the right time," Wavy Gravy said. "That's a miracle. You don't know when that is [going to happen], but there's a lot of them out there floating around."

THEN

"Blowin' In The Wind" by Bob Dylan: This searching bit of poetry not only helped launch Dylan's career, it became the gold standard for protest music to come.

"For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield: A song perhaps better known by its lyrics ("Stop, children, what's that sound/Everybody look what's going down") than by its name.

"Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: A biting piece of musical civil disobedience.

"I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag" by Country Joe & The Fish: It asked the immortal question, "One, two, three, what are we fightin' for?"

NOW

"Condi, Condi" by Steve Earle: The rabble-rouser addresses the former National Security Advisor and current Secretary of State: "People say you're cold, but I think you're hot."

"Mosh" by Eminem: A hip-hop tour de force about President Bush. "Let him go fight his own war," the rapper suggests. "Let him impress daddy that way."

"Sweet Neo Con" by the Rolling Stones: A fresh hunk of grimy blues-rock from the aging British rockers.

"When The President Talks To God" by Bright Eyes: Armed with an acoustic guitar, the Nebraska singer-songwriter paints the President as a dangerous religious zealot.

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 1st report

2005-09-09T02:39:00.000-07:00

Iraq 09 September 2005 - 1st report - posted at 5:45 am EDT by Synergy:

Diversity in Iraq's Armed Services Is General's Goal

quote:
Diversity in Iraq's Armed Services Is General's Goal
New head of the U.S. training operation aims for a system reflective of the country's mix.
By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 9, 2005

BAGHDAD — The American officer in charge of training Iraq's security forces vowed Thursday to promote diversity in order to cool sectarian passions.

"We have to build a system for them that is built for diversity," said Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who in a flag-festooned ceremony inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone took over as commander of the operation to train Iraqi security forces. "We are very careful to encourage and in some cases insist on diversity."

Iraq's armed forces, which under Saddam Hussein were dominated by Sunni Arabs, were dissolved in May 2003 by U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III. U.S. and NATO officials have struggled to get a new Iraqi army up and running. The new troops are predominantly Shiites and Kurds, many of them former members of political militias, exacerbating tensions with the Sunnis, who have driven the insurgency.

So far, 115 Iraqi army and special police battalions of about 700 troops each have been declared battle ready and deployed throughout Iraq, U.S. officials say. But U.S. officials acknowledge that only a few are able to operate without any U.S. support. In three dozen units, Americans play an advisory role.

U.S. and Iraqi commanders say they have been frustrated in their attempts to create an army that reflects Iraq's ethnic and sectarian mix.

Iraqi soldiers this week began chanting "Long live [Grand Ayatollah Ali] Sistani!" the clerical leader of Iraq's Shiites, as soon as they were handed control of the Shiite shrine city of Najaf, south of Baghdad.

"We should all thank Sistani," said an Iraqi sergeant who gave only his first name, Raad. "He spent the last two years putting out huge fires in Iraq. We pray for his health and vitality."

Iraq's Sunni Arabs fear the new armed forces will be used against their communities. Sunnis often make a play on words, referring to the U.S.-trained national guard as "heras al-wathani," which in Arabic means the guardians of the pagans.

A U.S. military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Americans tried to convince Iraqis that mixed units were important, but could not impose such demands on a sovereign nation.

"Ours is a cajoling function," he said.

Working with Iraq's Defense Ministry, U.S. forces have recruited more than 4,000 Sunnis in the last two months, the officer said. But new military units that start out with different ethnic and sectarian groups sometimes end up homogenous because soldiers quit.

Dempsey, who replaced Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, was commander of the Army's 1st Armored Division during its deployment to Baghdad from mid-2003 to mid-2004.

He told reporters that he hoped the diversity of the U.S. Army might inspire Iraqis to create an army that reflects their nation's ethnic and religious mix.

Dempsey denied published reports that the United States had refrained from giving the Iraqis sophisticated military equipment because of fears of a civil war. He said Iraqi troops aren't yet sufficiently trained to use certain types of equipment.

The Americans also have been frustrated by the level of professionalism in operations.

Outside Baqubah, 35 miles north of Baghdad, a battalion attached to the 42nd Infantry Division found progress slow. In one incident last week, a U.S. officer inspecting an Iraqi checkpoint chastised his local counterpart.

"Our problem is that your soldiers are not manning the checkpoints properly," Lt. Col. Oscar J. Hall IV told the Iraqi commander. "They stand out in the open. They don't wear their flak jackets. I'm not going to keep playing this game."

In other developments Thursday, three car bombs killed two Iraqis in Baghdad and injured 11, and the military reported that a U.S. soldier had died Wednesday near Fallouja in an industrial accident.

U.S. and Iraqi soldiers continued an offensive to root out insurgents in the northern city of Tall Afar, leaving seven dead, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said. U.S. forces captured a suspected insurgent bomb-maker known as Abu Mohammed near the western town of Husaybah, the military announced.

Times staff writers Noam N. Levey in Baqubah and Ashraf Khalil in Najaf contributed to this report.

Gunmen kill policeman in western Baghdad

quote:
BAGHDAD, Sept. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Gunmen attacked a police patrol in western Baghdad Friday, killing a policeman and wounding three others, the police said.

"Unknown armed men in two cars opened fire at 11:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) at a two-vehicle police patrol in al-Rabie Street. One police vehicle was burned and the other overturned," police officer Captain Ahmed Abdullah told Xinhua.

One policeman was killed and three others wounded in the overturned vehicle, Abdullah said, adding that the casualties in the burned vehicle were not known.

Security forces cordoned off the area as a fire-engine vehicle was seen at the scene.

Insurgents frequently target Iraq's army and security forces in an attempt to undermine the Shiite-dominated government formed in late April.

Baghdad airport closed (to the public) The Australian

quote:
Baghdad airport closed
From correspondents in Baghdad
09sep05

BAGHDAD International Airport was closed today "until further notice" over a contract dispute between Iraq's government and a London-based firm that provides airport security.

Global Security, whose contract was awarded by the US State Department in 2004, said "unresolved commercial issues" with Iraq's ministry of transport meant "normal airport operations (were) suspended until further notice".

In a press statement, the company said it had not been paid for its services since March and therefore decided cease operations as of 6am (1200 AEST) today, effectively closing the airport to commercial traffic.

"Once payment has been made by the client, Global will resume its work and thus allow normal air operations to resume," the statement said, without specifying when flights might restart.

A two-day shutdown occurred in June for similar reasons, leading to a back-log of flights and severe disruption for passengers.

The airport, which has more than 50 flights a day, is the only viable means of entry into Iraq for most international travellers due to the country's volatile security situation.

Panel to focus on repairs for Iraq Detroit Free Press

quote:
Panel to focus on repairs for Iraq

BY NIRAJ WARIKOO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

September 9, 2005

Before the Iraq war, the U.S. government tapped numerous Iraqi Americans from Michigan to help topple the regime of Saddam Hussein and rebuild the country. Some worked with the Pentagon, others with the State Department.

But over the past two years, local Iraqis say they have been increasingly ignored as the United States works on repairing Iraq. And so today, they are holding a conference that they hope will change that.

Hosted by the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce, the Rebuilding Iraq Conference will be held from 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. at the Shenandoah Country Club, 5600 Walnut Lake Road, West Bloomfield.

Speakers are expected to include Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a federal agency that distributes foreign aid, and Barham Saleh, a Kurdish leader who is Iraq's minister of planning.

With roots in two worlds, Iraqi Americans say they can be a valuable link for promoting development in their motherland. One goal of the conference is to increase economic investment in Iraq by local Iraqi Americans. Economics, they say, is just as important as politics in creating a vibrant nation.

Locally, some businesses are trying to invest in Iraqi projects, from Internet services to construction.

"Iraq's economy is anemic," said Adhid Miri, a West Bloomfield resident of Iraqi descent who was in northern Iraq last month. "It's very slow."

A major reason: the violence.

Nafa Khalaf, the head of Detroit Contracting Inc., works on construction projects, mostly in Michigan. Two years ago, the Iraqi native opened an office in Baghdad with the hope of creating waste-water and sewer plants.

But his office was a target of violence, in part because of its American connections.

Sabah Hermiz, who runs Summa Engineering in Farmington Hills, also has been trying to invest in the land where he was born. Hermiz specializes in developing electrical substations, and came close to getting a contract to develop in Iraq. But the company decided against it, to avoid exposing employees to violence.

He said he hopes that the conference will allow participants to convince officials that Iraqi Americans can bring something unique to Iraq's development.

"We know the lay of the land, the language; we have relatives and friends there," he said.

There is a $100 registration fee for the conference for nonmembers of the Chaldean Chamber; $50 for members.

Speicher inquiry led to Fallujah (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union

quote:
The Florida Times-Union

September 9, 2005

Speicher inquiry led to Fallujah

By GREGORY PIATT
The Times-Union

Last fall, military investigators following new leads into what happened to Scott Speicher -- the Navy pilot from Jacksonville shot down over Iraq in January 1991 -- were prevented from pursuing them because they led to Fallujah, the city that was an insurgent stronghold until November, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Thursday.

--------------------------------------------------
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The investigators could not follow up because there was a full assault by the Marine Corps along with fighter jets from the Jacksonville-based USS John F. Kennedy bombing insurgent strongholds, said Nelson, D-Fla.

"It was a hotbed," Nelson said in a telephone interview after a Navy board of inquiry concluded Wednesday that there is no credible evidence that Speicher is dead.

U.S. forces captured Fallujah, the insurgents left the area and much of city was leveled -- leaving few, if any, clues for the investigators. Since then, the board of inquiry has been examining Speicher's status and fate.

Navy Secretary Gordon England approved the board's findings and recommendations on Wednesday. The board concluded that ''elements of the former Iraqi regime know the whereabouts of Captain Speicher.'' It also decided to keep Speicher's official status as ''missing/captured'' and recommended intensifying the military's investigative efforts into finding out what happened to Speicher, who was 33 when he was shot down.

"The secretary of the Navy concurs with the board," said Lt. Erin Bailey, a Navy spokeswoman. But Bailey couldn't say Thursday what efforts the Navy will take as the result of the recommendations.

However, Nelson, who has for years pushed for further investigation into Speicher's fate, was happy to hear the board recommended the Navy pursue the Speicher investigation.

"This [the board and and England agreeing] says, 'Boys, you better intensify the search,'" Nelson said in a telephone interview from Washington.

Since the fall of Baghdad not much evidence has come forth because former Saddam Hussein regime members won't talk as war crimes trials are ongoing, Nelson said.

The case should be pursued to help Speicher's family and to assure that all military pilots will not be abandoned if shot down over hostile territory, Nelson added.

The Navy has changed its position on Speicher's status over the years. Hours after his plane went down in the desert on the first day of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon publicly declared him killed in action. Ten years later, the Navy changed his status to missing in action, citing an absence of evidence that Speicher, who attended Forrest High School, had died. In October 2002, the Navy switched his status to ''missing/captured,'' although it has never said what evidence it had that he ever was in captivity.

The board of inquiry, whose report was made public Thursday, did not go to Iraq or conduct its own investigation. The board considered the findings of an initial Navy inquiry in May 1991, a report that was filed after a search of the crash site in 1996, subsequent Navy deliberations on the case and a March 2005 intelligence report based on search efforts inside Iraq after Baghdad fell in 2003.

The board's finding and England's concurrence were to make sure there weren't any loose ends when a new Navy secretary takes over, said Buddy Harris, a friend of Speicher's who has since married the downed pilot's wife, Joanne. England has been nominated as the deputy defense secretary and will leave the Navy post in the coming months. Harris said England wanted an outside source to look at the facts and carry it forward before a new secretary took over.

"The board did a very good job," said Harris, who testified before the panel this year.

The board recommended, and England agreed, that the Pentagon should work with the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Iraqi government to ''increase the level of attention and effort inside Iraq'' to resolve the question of Speicher's fate.

Nelson said he would ask Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for details on how the Speicher case will be intensified.

"I'm going to push Secretary Rumsfeld," Nelson said.

Among the board's findings: Speicher likely ejected from the aircraft and may have been captured by Iraqi forces. Also, given that the Iraqi government turned over a flight suit and other items associated with Speicher's aircraft years ago, the board concluded that some members of the former Saddam Hussein regime know Speicher's whereabouts.

Material from The Associated Press was included in this report.

Panel Removes Judge, Rejecting Excuse Involving Iraq Work

quote:
September 9, 2005
Panel Removes Judge, Rejecting Excuse Involving Iraq Work
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
The New York Times

The town justice in the tiny upstate hamlet of North Hudson, population 266, did not make it to court this spring. He said he had a good excuse: Since March, he had been in Iraq carting fuel for the military as a civilian truck driver for Halliburton.

But yesterday, New York State's Commission on Judicial Conduct said that was not good enough. Money - not necessarily aiding the military - appeared to be the motive of the judge, Glenn T. Fiore Sr., the commission said. He wanted "to draw two salaries, one as a judge and the other as a corporate employee in Iraq," the commission found, and as a result, had abandoned his post as North Hudson's town justice.

The commission formally removed Mr. Fiore, 54, a truck driver and former marine, from the part-time position, which he had held since 1996.

The decision said that Mr. Fiore had evidently planned that his son, the court clerk, would cover for him while he was away and that Mr. Fiore would make rulings when he returned.

Yesterday, by telephone from North Hudson, Mr. Fiore called the case against him political and said it had been pressed by officials opposed to the war. He said he had resigned from Halliburton and had returned temporarily to New York to fight the case.

After the ruling yesterday, though, he said he had decided not to appeal and planned to return to driving a truck in the war zone.

He denied that he had given his son judicial authority.

"The State of New York does what they feel they have to do, and I did what I felt I had to do," he said. "Being a part-time judge is one thing, serving the United States is something else."

But the commission's administrator, Robert H. Tembeckjian, said yesterday, "This case is not about patriotism or the war in Iraq."

He said it was simply about a judge who had left his post but continued to collect his judicial salary of $10,500 a year.

Mr. Fiore said he was earning about $80,000 a year in Iraq.

Town officials said they had to pay another judge from a nearby town to take care of the court's business, which includes misdemeanor and traffic cases.

"He put us in a very poor situation," a town councilman, Alvin Provoncha, said.

Removal was a somewhat technical sanction because Mr. Fiore had resigned during the commission's investigation last month. But the decision yesterday noted that state law bars any judge who is removed from the bench from holding judicial office in the state again.

In his heated resignation letter on Aug. 8, Mr. Fiore did not seem interested in seeking re-election to the town justice position.

"I prefer," his letter to the town board said, "to serve the 'boots on the ground' than to serve you."

Iraq rebuilding under threat as US runs out of money

quote:
Iraq rebuilding under threat as US runs out of money

Rory Carroll in Baghdad and Julian Borger in Washington
Friday September 9, 2005

Guardian
Key rebuilding projects in Iraq are grinding to a halt because American money is running out and security has diverted funds intended for electricity, water and sanitation, according to US officials.

Plans to overhaul the country's infrastructure have been downsized, postponed or abandoned because the $24bn (£13bn) budget approved by Congress has been dwarfed by the scale of the task.

"We have scaled back our projects in many areas," James Jeffrey, a senior state department adviser on Iraq, told a congressional committee in Washington, in remarks quoted by the Los Angeles Times. "We do not have the money."

Water and sanitation have been particularly badly hit. According to a report published this week by Government Accountability Office, the investigative branch of Congress, $2.6bn has been spent on water projects, half the original budget, after the rest was diverted to security and other uses.

The report said "attacks, threats and intimidation against project contractors and subcontractors" were to blame. A quarter of the $200m-worth of completed US-funded water projects handed over to the Iraqi authorities no longer worked properly because of "looting, unreliable electricity or inadequate Iraqi staff and supplies", the report found.

Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress also said administrative bungling had played a part.

Stuart Bowen, the US special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, said he was reluctant to ask for cash immediately after Hurricane Katrina: "It is an issue that we need to address at the right time."

He said non-US sources might be asked to plug the gap.

After Congress approved funding two years ago, oil, electricity, water and sanitation facilities were found to be more degraded than expected. Amid the chaos and corruption of the post-Saddam administration, insurgents also began to target the infrastructure and anyone working for the US or the Iraqi government.

It is in this context that many of the estimated 20,000 foreign security contractors now in Iraq - some paid more than $1,000 a day - are employed. Mr Bowen said $5bn had been diverted to security.

Some areas now get less than four hours of electricity a day, and there has been a surge in cases of dehydration and diarrhoea among children and the elderly. The cost of providing enough electricity for the country by 2010 is put at $20bn.

Fuel shortages have produced mile-long queues at petrol stations. Crude oil production is around 2.2m barrels a day, still below its pre-war peaks, according to the Brookings Institution in Washington.

There have been improvements: the health ministry says the overall rate of disease among children under five has dropped; parts of Baghdad are noticeably sprucer; and thousands of schools have been built or rehabilitated. Electricity generation has recently climbed above pre-war levels.

But the house appropriations foreign operations subcommittee is losing patience.

"It seems almost incomprehensible to me that we haven't been able to do better," said Don Sherwood, a Pennsylvania Republican. Another Republican, the committee chairman, Jim Kolbe, said the Bush administration's vision of stabilising Iraq by funding reconstruction was "a castle built of sand".

· US and Iraqi troops detained 200 men, including 150 foreigners, near the town of Tal Afar yesterday. Meanwhile, near a farming town south of the capital, police found 17 people shot dead, possibly victims of a sectarian massacre; and in Basra British troops investigated two blasts that killed four US security contractors in a convoy and 16 Iraqi civilians at a restaurant on Wednesday.

Insurgents open 'southern front' with deadly car-bomb in Basra

quote:
Insurgents open 'southern front' with deadly car-bomb in Basra
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 09 September 2005
The Independent (UK) Online Edition

A series of deadly bomb attacks in and around the city of Basra this week has undermined the British Army's claim to have largely kept southern Iraq free from the violence engulfing the rest of the country.

Sixteen people were killed and 21 injured when a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant near a market in the centre of Basra on Wednesday. Two police cars and several shops were destroyed.

On the same day a roadside bomb killed four American private security guards when the explosion threw the SUV in which they were travelling into a ravine where it landed on its roof. The men were working for the US consulate. Al-Qa'ida militants based in Iraq claimed responsibility in a statement on the internet.

Earlier in the week, two British soldiers were killed by a bomb as they travelled west of Basra, a mostly Shia city of 1.5 million people.

The most likely explanation for the rise in violence in the area is that al-Qa'ida wants to show that it can strike anywhere in Iraq. The restaurant blown up was in Hayaniyah market in a Shiah district of Basra, which is in keeping with al-Qa'ida's policy of attackingplaces where Shia civilians are known to gather.

British authority in the far south of Iraq has been looking increasingly shaky in recent weeks as Shia militias, often in control of local police, gain in strength. There has been a spate of assassinations of Sunni political leaders and former Baath party members in the city by men wearing police uniforms and using vehicles with police markings.

The most powerful militia is the Badr Brigade (renamed the Badr Organisation and supposedly disarmed). It is the military arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is the largest Shia party and which did well in the elections in January. The Army of Mehdi, which is loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, is also influential.

Local officials acknowledge that three-quarters of the 13,600 police force in Basra gave their loyalty to the religious parties. More than 65 assassinations, mostly against Sunni, have been carried out in Basra since May. An American journalist who wrote about the infiltration of local police by the militias was murdered, apparently by policemen. If the Sunni community feels under threat from Shia militants then it may, as in Baghdad, become more inclined to support the insurgents.

There are an increasing number of sectarian killings all over Iraq. The police in Baghdad said yesterday they had found 15 bodies dressed in civilian clothes near the town of Mahmoudiyah, a militant Sunni stronghold 20 miles south of Baghdad. All had been shot dead. Two other bodies, blindfolded and handcuffed, were found closer to Baghdad. Last month 36 Sunnis arrested in Baghdad by Shia security men were found dead near the Iranian border.

US military operations frequently exacerbate sectarian tensions. In the city of Fallujah, much of which was destroyed when US Marines stormed it last November, insurgent fighters are reasserting control because of the arrival of Shia units of the Iraqi army, which are detested by local people. In the Sunni city of Tikrit, US troops are being reinforced by mainly Kurdish Iraqi army soldiers.

In the far north of the country, US and Iraqi army units are surrounding the Turkoman town of Tal Afar in the far north of Iraq close to the Syrian border, which they say is a stronghold for insurgents. Most of the population have fled. An Iraqi army captain, Mohammed Ahmed, said: "Our forces arrested 150 non-Iraqi Arabs yesterday in addition to 50 Iraqi terrorists with fake documents as they were trying to flee the city with civilian families."

Tal Afar is in an area that is contested between Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans. The Turkomans say Kurdish leaders are manipulating US officers to get them to advance Kurdish policies.

A series of deadly bomb attacks in and around the city of Basra this week has undermined the British Army's claim to have largely kept southern Iraq free from the violence engulfing the rest of the country.

Sixteen people were killed and 21 injured when a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant near a market in the centre of Basra on Wednesday. Two police cars and several shops were destroyed.

On the same day a roadside bomb killed four American private security guards when the explosion threw the SUV in which they were travelling into a ravine where it landed on its roof. The men were working for the US consulate. Al-Qa'ida militants based in Iraq claimed responsibility in a statement on the internet.

Earlier in the week, two British soldiers were killed by a bomb as they travelled west of Basra, a mostly Shia city of 1.5 million people.

The most likely explanation for the rise in violence in the area is that al-Qa'ida wants to show that it can strike anywhere in Iraq. The restaurant blown up was in Hayaniyah market in a Shiah district of Basra, which is in keeping with al-Qa'ida's policy of attackingplaces where Shia civilians are known to gather.

British authority in the far south of Iraq has been looking increasingly shaky in recent weeks as Shia militias, often in control of local police, gain in strength. There has been a spate of assassinations of Sunni political leaders and former Baath party members in the city by men wearing police uniforms and using vehicles with police markings.

The most powerful militia is the Badr Brigade (renamed the Badr Organisation and supposedly disarmed). It is the military arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is the largest Shia party and which did well in the elections in January. The Army of Mehdi, which is loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, is also influential.

Local officials acknowledge that three-quarters of the 13,600 police force in Basra gave their loyalty to the religious parties. More than 65 assassinations, mostly against Sunni, have been carried out in Basra since May. An American journalist who wrote about the infiltration of local police by the militias was murdered, apparently by policemen. If the Sunni community feels under threat from Shia militants then it may, as in Baghdad, become more inclined to support the insurgents.

There are an increasing number of sectarian killings all over Iraq. The police in Baghdad said yesterday they had found 15 bodies dressed in civilian clothes near the town of Mahmoudiyah, a militant Sunni stronghold 20 miles south of Baghdad. All had been shot dead. Two other bodies, blindfolded and handcuffed, were found closer to Baghdad. Last month 36 Sunnis arrested in Baghdad by Shia security men were found dead near the Iranian border.

US military operations frequently exacerbate sectarian tensions. In the city of Fallujah, much of which was destroyed when US Marines stormed it last November, insurgent fighters are reasserting control because of the arrival of Shia units of the Iraqi army, which are detested by local people. In the Sunni city of Tikrit, US troops are being reinforced by mainly Kurdish Iraqi army soldiers.

In the far north of the country, US and Iraqi army units are surrounding the Turkoman town of Tal Afar in the far north of Iraq close to the Syrian border, which they say is a stronghold for insurgents. Most of the population have fled. An Iraqi army captain, Mohammed Ahmed, said: "Our forces arrested 150 non-Iraqi Arabs yesterday in addition to 50 Iraqi terrorists with fake documents as they were trying to flee the city with civilian families."

Tal Afar is in an area that is contested between Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans. The Turkomans say Kurdish leaders are manipulating US officers to get them to advance Kurdish policies.

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 08 September 2005 - 4th report

2005-09-08T11:29:00.000-07:00

Iraq 08 September 2005 - 4th report - posted at 2:33 pm EDT by Synergy:

By 2:07 pm EDT the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count has been raised to 1895 U.S. military fatalities from the war in Iraq.

Iraq Coalition Casualty Count

Navy: Iraqis know missing pilot's whereabouts

quote:
Navy: Iraqis know missing pilot's whereabouts

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Navy pilot shot down over Iraq in January 1991 may have been captured by Iraqi forces, and members of the former Iraqi government "know the whereabouts" of the officer, the Navy has concluded.

A Navy board of inquiry concluded that there is no credible evidence that Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher is dead, and it reaffirmed his official status as "missing/captured," according to the board's final report.

The board also recommended that the Pentagon work with the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Iraqi government to "increase the level of attention and effort inside Iraq" to resolve the question of Speicher's fate.

Navy Secretary Gordon England approved the report on Wednesday, according to Lt. Erin Bailey, a Navy spokeswoman.

The Iraqi government under President Saddam Hussein maintained from the start that Speicher perished at the site where his F/A-18 fighter jet crashed in the desert. No evidence to contradict that has surfaced since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, but the new Navy inquiry concluded there was no credible evidence of his death, either.

"In view of the above findings, the board concludes as to the current whereabouts and status of the person that the person missing/captured," the report said. A copy of the report was provided to The Associated Press.

After the fall of Baghdad, a team of U.S. investigators searched for evidence of Speicher's fate, but reported finding nothing conclusive.

The board of inquiry noted that years after the shootdown, which happened on the opening night of the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi government turned over a flight suit and other items associated with Speicher's aircraft.

That fact "leads us to conclude that elements of the former Iraqi regime know the whereabouts of Captain Speicher," the report said.

The board of inquiry also said that a March 2005 U.S. intelligence report on the Speicher case contained unanswered questions, and it recommended that a POW/MIA analytical cell continue its efforts to resolve those questions. It did not provide details on this, noting that the March report is classified secret.

The Navy has changed its position on Speicher's status over the years. Hours after his plane went down, the Pentagon declared him killed in action. Ten years later, the Navy changed his status to MIA, citing an absence of evidence that he had died. In October 2002, the Navy switched his status to "missing-captured," although it has never said what evidence it had that he was in captivity.

A Pentagon team assigned to search for evidence of Speicher after the fall of Baghdad completed its efforts in May 2004. In congressional testimony shortly afterward, Marine Brig. Gen. Joseph J. McMenamin, who led the search team, said all in-country leads regarding the pilot's fate had been exhausted.

McMenamin also said, however, that some leads could not be fully pursued because of the security threat from the Iraq insurgency. Another problem, he said, was that nomadic Bedouin tribesmen who may have information of value are difficult to find. And some who might have information about Speicher may be intimidated by the threat of retribution by members of the former Saddam regime who are still at large.

U.S. mulls "decisive" attack on Iraqi rebel town

quote:
U.S. mulls "decisive" attack on Iraqi rebel town

By Sebastian Alison, Reuters

The United States is considering an all-out military attack in the coming weeks against the town of Tal Afar in northern Iraq, which it sees as a stronghold of rebellion, a U.S. general said on Thursday.

U.S. and Iraqi troops have been battling insurgents in Tal Afar, west of the northern city of Mosul, for several days. A joint U.S.-Iraqi military statement said they killed seven insurgents on Wednesday.

Many families have evacuated the town in recent days as violence increased.

"In Tal Afar, coalition forces and members of the Iraqi security forces are preparing a possible military operation to rid that city of insurgents," Major General Rick Lynch told a news briefing in Baghdad.

"As we speak, operations are ongoing to evacuate civilians from neighborhoods targeted by the insurgents."

The United States sees Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, as a conduit for foreign fighters and military equipment coming into Iraq to help insurgents fighting the occupying U.S. forces and the Shi'ite Muslim- and Kurdish- dominated Iraqi government.

The insurgents are mainly drawn from Iraq's third main community, Sunni Arabs, who account for some 20 percent of the population and have dominated Iraqi politics for decades, under ousted leader Saddam Hussein and before.

"You will see, over the next several weeks -- we're not specifying any time -- specific military operations to target the insurgency in Tal Afar," Lynch said.

FOREIGN FIGHTERS

He said U.S. forces were encouraging the evacuation so a possible military strike would avoid civilian deaths.

"If indeed decisive military operations are required, we want to ensure that the attacks take place to kill the insurgents without collateral damage in killing innocent civilians."

He said U.S. forces had "indications" that insurgents were living in Tal Afar, and intelligence reports suggested some 20 percent of them were "foreign fighters." He did not say where they came from.

Lynch added that U.S. and Iraqi forces had been trying to wipe out the insurgency in a series of operations since May, culminating in the operations of the last few days.

They have so far failed to put down rebellions, but Lynch said the growing number of U.S.-trained Iraqi government troops -- there are now 190,000 of them -- should mean the resources were in place to quell future insurgencies.

"We have now sufficient assets available between the coalition forces and Iraqi security forces ... to leave behind a robust security presence so the insurgents cannot return."

Lynch warned against seeing any attack on Tal Afar as a re-run of an attack in November on the city of Falluja.

U.S. troops surrounded that Sunni stronghold west of Baghdad and effectively cut it off, but encountered fierce resistance and bloodshed when they entered.

"Every situation is different. Don't try to equate Tal Afar with any previous operation," he said.

US warplanes strike terrorist hideout in western Iraq

quote:
US warplanes strike terrorist hideout in western Iraq

BAGHDAD, Sept. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- US warplanes bombarded on Thursday a hideout used by al-Qaida terrorists in western Iraq on the Syrianborder, the US military said.

The air strike took place in the Husaybah area at 1:11 a.m. (2111 GMT on Wednesday) and targeted a safe house used by Abu Muhammad, believed to be head of an insurgent cell known as manufacturing bombs, the military said in a statement.

Abu Muhammed is also known for his direct ties with Abu Islam, the emir of al-Qaida in Husaybah who was killed in a US air strike last week, the statement said.

The US military said they used special munition in the attack toavoid civilian casualties.

On Sept. 1, the US warplanes pounded a train station used by insurgents as a hideout in the same town near the Syrian border.

US Marines have launched several offensives against insurgents in the cluster of small towns scattered near the Syrian border, known by the US military as a smuggling route for foreign fighters.

UN won't print Iraq constitution The Australian

quote:
UN won't print Iraq constitution
From correspondents in Baghdad
09sep05

THE United Nations has refused to start printing Iraq's draft constitution, yet again delaying efforts to get millions of copies to voters before a referendum on October 15.

One negotiator from the Sunni Arab minority which has been lobbying for changes to the text adopted by parliament on August 28, said non-Arab Kurdish leaders agreed to an amendment to the draft to strengthen wording on Iraq's nature as an Arab state.

Others involved were not available for comment.

"We haven't been given authority to print it," said Nicholas Haysom, a UN official in Baghdad, adding that he could not say whether the existing draft had been amended.

"From our perspective, and we are helping in printing and distribution, we are awaiting a text certified by the National Assembly. We don't expect that to happen before Sunday."

Iraqi parliamentary officials had said earlier in the week that printing would start after last-minute efforts to fine-tune wording to appease Sunni leaders had failed.

Mr Haysom could not say whether the difficulty with the text as it stood was that parliament had failed to approve the text properly last week or whether that text had changed.

Sunni negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak said that in talks with Kurdish regional president Masoud Barzani, other Sunni leaders had persuaded the non-Arab Kurds to amend the wording of the draft referring to Iraq's Arab nature.

It had said Iraq's Arabs were part of the Arab nation. He said it now read "Iraq is a founding and an active member of the Arab League".

But Mr Mutlak said the text still did not meet with approval from the once dominant Sunni minority, which has voiced concerns about devolving power to Kurds and majority Shiites in northern and southern provinces.

"We will start a campaign to vote 'No' in the referendum," he said. If two thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces reject the constitution it will be vetoed and an election in December will choose a new interim parliament to draft a new text.

Earlier, the Independent Electoral Commission said the date of the referendum had now been fixed for October 15, the latest date possible under the interim constitution.

With little over a month for the electorate to digest the charter, Mr Haysom said starting printing was a priority to ensure that voters were fully informed.

The next scheduled sitting of the National Assembly is on Sunday.

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 08 September 2005 - 3rd report

2005-09-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

Iraq 08 September 2005 - 3rd report - posted at 10:55 am EDT by Synergy:

quote:
Katrina steals headlines, but war grinds on in Iraq

By Joseph L. Galloway, Knight Ridder Newspapers
Wed Sep 7, 5:11 PM ET

WASHINGTON - While all eyes were focused on the hurricane disaster on the home front, the war in Iraq ground on, almost unnoticed for a change, with a mixture of good and bad news.

While everyone looked elsewhere, American forces turned over control of the Shiite holy city of Najaf to Iraqi government security forces, who celebrated their new responsibility gleefully.

It was not that long ago that U.S. troops had to fight their way into Najaf and free the city and its mosques from radical Shiite militia forces who had been driven out of Baghdad's Sadr City.

And speaking of good news, there actually IS some good news in Sadr City, a slum neighborhood where the Shiites in Iraq's capital have long clustered in squalor and misery.

American troops of the 1st Cavalry Division, now back home, and the succeeding soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division (Mech), who now have responsibility, have quietly run their own civil action projects in Sadr City for the last 18 months.

They are seeing signs of hope where once there was none. Slowly, small project by small project, the soldiers have improved the water supply system in one part of the slum neighborhood, the sewer system in another, and garbage and trash cleanup everywhere.

When they first began patrolling Sadr City the 1st Cav soldiers fought pitched battles nearly every day with the Shiite militia commanded by rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Those days seem almost a distant memory.

The Army troops steered clear of big budget aid projects with foreign contractors, where security costs normally eat up to 30 percent of the total money spent. Instead they let small contracts to Iraqis, who hired locally in the neighborhood and thus had little or no security problems.

In fact, some of the rebel militiamen who once fought the Americans now have steady jobs working on projects to help their hometown.

In the good news/bad news department, the Pentagon cut urgent orders bringing home from Iraq the 3,000 troops of the 256th Infantry Brigade of the Louisiana National Guard. Their early return was triggered by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Some of the 256th soldiers have already begun arriving at Fort Polk, La., to an uncertain future.

The Guard brigade draws heavily from New Orleans and the Cajun areas of southern Louisiana hardest hit by Katrina.

Fort Polk was preparing to shelter the 256th troops and their families who were forced to evacuate their homes due to storm and flood damage.

Even as the active duty military was sending some 15,000 soldiers and Marines to work with the 43,000 National Guard troops doing relief, rescue and security work on the Gulf Coast, more than 2,000 Army troops were on their way to Iraq to help bolster security ahead of upcoming national elections. Pentagon officials said that reinforcement would continue despite the demands on the force of the Katrina operations at home.

The good news in Iraq was, as always, tempered by the bad news. Roadside bombs and mines daily claimed more American lives.

On the Iraq-Syrian border the foreign terrorists recruited by al-Qaida and led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi took control of a large part of the border town of Qaim. The United States was mounting bombing attacks in the area and putting increasing pressure on the terrorists who infiltrate from Syria.

The fact that the enemy still has the ability to take over such towns, even briefly, is testimony to the fact that American forces do not have the manpower to take and keep that vital territory. The best they can do is send in a task force to force the enemy out, knowing that when they leave the enemy comes right back in.

So there was hope and sorrow during the week in the war zone abroad, just as there was in the war zone that is coastal Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama at home.

---

ABOUT THE WRITER

Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and co-author of the national best-seller "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young." Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 12th St. N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005-3994.

Women religious call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq

quote:
Catholic Online
Women religious call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq

ANAHEIM, Calif. (CNS) -- The Leadership Conference of Women Religious has called on the U.S. government to "develop a responsible plan" for the withdrawal of troops in Iraq and to "redirect needed resources to meet human needs at home and in other parts of the world."

"War dehumanizes and diminishes all of the human community and devastates Earth," the leaders of women's religious orders said in a statement approved at the LCWR assembly in Anaheim.

"The ongoing war in Iraq is taking an immense toll on human life, not only of young men and women in the military but also the lives of innocent civilians of all ages," the statement added. "This war has caused untold damage to the land and to the infrastructures of Iraq."

The women religious also expressed "grave concerns about the alienation and diminishment of the moral and political leadership of the United States in the world community."

The statement reiterated the LCWR's longtime opposition to "the research, development, testing and use of nuclear weapons and of the diversion of funds from human services and needs to the buildup of armaments."

During their Aug. 19-22 meeting, LCWR members discussed their current work and future roles, elected new officers and honored a woman religious who is an author and researcher.

Sister Mary Daniel Turner, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, received the LCWR's outstanding leadership award for her contributions to the conference, her work in the renewal of religious life since the 1960s and her ministry to the marginalized.

When she accepted the award, she called the leaders of women religious to be "boldly responsive" to the demands of our times.

LCWR members chose Sister Mary Dacey, a Sister of St. Joseph of Philadelphia who served her order as a councilor and as a principal and teacher, as the president-elect of the conference. They also elected Franciscan Sister Jeanne Bessette, a councilor for her order in Joliet, Ill., who has worked in schools and nonprofit administrations, as secretary.

About 900 heads of women's religious orders attended the assembly. The combined membership of their orders in the United States is approximately 70,000.

Hundreds Begin Trip Home From Duty in Baghdad

quote:
Hundreds Begin Trip Home From Duty in Baghdad

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 8, 2005; A15

BAGHDAD, Sept. 7 -- Hundreds of Louisiana National Guard soldiers deployed in Iraq were in Kuwait on Wednesday as a first stop on the way home, where the majority of their 3,700-member brigade was likely to help with hurricane relief, U.S. military officials said.

The military was also sending advance teams to help members of the Louisiana Guard's 256th Brigade Combat Team with their families' disaster assistance, as well as 100 military chaplains to counsel the veterans returning to devastation at home.

"There's no question they got a double whammy after a year in a very tough combat environment and then a catastrophe like this, which might be the biggest disaster in U.S. history," Brig. Gen. Sean Byrne, the U.S. military's director of personnel management, said at Camp Victory in Kuwait.

Nearly 550 of the Louisiana brigade's troops lost homes or loved ones or were otherwise affected by Hurricane Katrina, said Lt. Col. Debbie Haston-Hilger, a U.S. military spokeswoman in Kuwait. Scores of the soldiers have family members not yet accounted for, she said. The brigade, which served in Baghdad, was coming to the end of its rotation, officials said.

Sgt. John Roger, 30, of lower St. Bernard Parish, said his wife and two children were safely at his mother-in-law's house in Kansas. But he said a neighbor back in Louisiana who was riding out the storm on her roof took a picture of Roger's house floating by.

Asked where his house was now, Roger said: "I don't know. Probably in the Gulf somewhere."

In Baghdad, Roger said, he was in convoys that were hit by roadside bombs at least 10 times. A car bomb claimed the life of another sergeant in his unit, he said.

Before Katrina, "I was looking forward to getting home, taking some time off, getting back into life," he said.

The military said separately in a statement in Baghdad that it was trying to speed transport home for the Louisiana Guard members. The entire brigade was expected to be out of Iraq by the third week of September.

Most members were expected to help with Katrina relief, said the brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. John Basilica Jr.

They might be ordered or allowed to take part in relief efforts in Louisiana, or they might be demobilized at Fort Polk, La., and return to civilian life, Lt. Col. Dave Sheridan, a National Guard member from New York state, said at Camp Victory.

A Mississippi National Guard unit based south of Baghdad also had hundreds of members affected by the hurricane. They are not due to return until January.

"Peacemakers" by Cindy Sheehan Daily Kos Diary

quote:
Peacemakers
by CindySheehan
Wed Sep 7th, 2005 at 20:51:18 PDT

What Kind of Extremist Will You Be?
Cindy Sheehan
Early morning, April 04, a shot rings out in the Memphis sky,
Free at last, they asked for your life,
But they could not take your pride.
In the name of love, one more in the name of love.
U2: Pride (In the name of love)

* CindySheehan's diary :: ::
*

Most everyone who is reading this knows what happened to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 04, 1968. Some of you may even know what happened to my son, Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan on April 04, 2004. If you don't know, Dr King and Casey were murdered by the same malevolent entities: People and ideologies that say that we have to be mortally afraid of the "ism" du jour and we, as Americans who have the "moral high-ground" in the world can send our innocent children to invade innocent countries and kill innocent people to fight the "ists" that go with the "isms." In Vietnam we were fighting the evil Communists and in Iraq we are fighting the evil terrorists. Our war against Communism out-stayed its welcome in the 1980's and the military industrial war complex was running out of excuses to build bombs, tanks, bullets, ships, submarines, and soldiers; so in 2001, our leaders who serve the war machine had to switch our enemy of the state to terrorism.

Dr. King had the temerity to challenge the war machine and war racketeers on April 04, 1967 in his famous speech on Vietnam...and he paid for that bit of inspired, courageous, honesty with his life exactly one year later. Casey had the naïve gall to join the US Army thinking he would be making the world a better, safer place... and he paid for that kind of immature (but honest) patriotic mistake with his wonderful life.

Casey was a brave and honorable man who we were told volunteered to go on the mission that killed him to save the lives of his buddies. He was shot in the back of the head and died a little while later in a medic's station while a medic was trying to hold his brains in while the doctors tried to keep him breathing. We have heard many wildly disparate stories of Casey's last few minutes on earth, I don't know if we will ever know the truth. One thing I do know, however, is that like Dr. King, Casey's murder will be to advance the cause for peace and in the name of love.

I am wholly and completely convinced that this aggression on Iraq is illegal, immoral and appallingly unnecessary. I am also convinced that one drop of blood was one drop of blood too much to be shed for this abomination in Iraq. Now oceans of blood--both Iraqi and American--have been spilled for ruinous and disturbing policies of very bad people in our government who have based their reasons for invasion and occupation on their twisted imaginations and their seemingly bottomless lust for power, profits, chaos and confusion.

Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote this from the Birmingham Jail in 1963 and it is so relevant today:

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

I must regretfully admit that before my son was killed, I didn't publicly speak out against the invasion/occupation of Iraq. I didn't shout out and say: "Stop! Stop this insane rush to an invasion that has no basis in reality--don't invade a country based on cherry-picked, prefabricated intelligence and contemptible scare tactics!"

I didn't stand up and scream: "Congress, don't you dare abrogate your constitutional rights and responsibilities! Do not, under ANY circumstances give the keys to our country to power-drunk, irresponsible and reckless maniacs!"

When George threateningly stated in his disordered and defiant headlong rush to disaster: "If you're not for us, you're against us," I will regret forever not calling him on the phone and screaming: "I am SO against you and your repulsive policies, you self-important man. I am against killing innocent people and I am against you telling me it's unpatriotic to be against you and your murderous philosophy!"

Why, oh why, was I silent when the cowardly and capricious arm-chair warriors of the Pentagon sent my son and over a million other brave young Americans to an atrocious excuse (that never should have been fought in the first place) for a war without the proper equipment, armor, training, supplies, or planning? I should have boldly strode up the Pentagon and said: "Look here, Donald, not only do you not go to war with the Army you "have", you make sure our precious life blood is well protected if you do send them off to fight and how about not sending our kids to die in the sand or soil of another country UNLESS it is absolutely necessary to defend our own sand and soil?"

If I had broken the bonds of my slavery to silence sooner, would Casey (and scores of others) still be alive? I don't know. There were and still are so many good people working for peace and justice and they have been for so many years. One thing I do know, however, is that no matter how much I scream and cry and rail against God, country, and humanity, I cannot bring Casey back. But, I have not shut up since Casey was killed, nor will I be silent until every last one of our nation's sons and daughters are brought back from this morally repugnant and ill-fated war!! Nor, will I give up when this occupation is finished. I will continue fighting for the children of the world and make sure a tragedy of historic proportions like this never happens again. If I can save even one mother here or there from the pain and agony I'm going through, then it will have been so immensely worth it.

I encourage and challenge every citizen of the world to do one small thing for peace each day. Even if it is to nag your elected officials to demand the keys of our country back from the all but convicted felons, liars and self-proclaimed pro-life hypocrites who have them now.

Casey and Dr. King were both violently killed on April 04 in different years and during different wars...two wars that are really just two different sides of the same coin. I want their deaths to mean something. I want them to count for peace and justice, not violence and hatred.

I can feel my son's presence urging me on to save his buddies. I can hear him whispering in my ear and in my dreams: "Mom, finish my mission. Bring my buddies home alive" I can hear Dr. King's words similarly challenging me to action: "The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be?"

Well, Casey, my son, my hero. Well, Dr. King, the hero of millions, I pledge to be the kind of extremist who works for peace with justice and who will never take "No" for an answer. I will strive to hold the bad people in our government accountable for all of the heartache and emptiness they have caused our world by their deliberate lies and deceptions and by their misuse of power and their abuse of our nation's precious human resources. I will be the kind of extremist who believes that our country can be taken back from the corporatocracy and unethical war profiteers that have control of it now. I will be the kind of extremist who believes that the people of Iraq can rebuild their own country without the dangerous "help" of the American military presence and I will be the kind of extremist who strives to bring our kids home from the Middle East immediately.

If there ever was a time in our nation's history that required the passion and compassion of extremists, it is now: This very minute.

What kind of extremist will you be?

--------------------
Make love not war

Iraq 08 September 2005 - 2nd report

2005-09-08T07:10:00.000-07:00

Iraq 08 September 2005 - 2nd report - posted at 10:13 am EDT by Synergy:

Iraq's Sunnis Register to Vote in Droves

quote:
Iraq's Sunnis Register to Vote in Droves
Minority Mobilizes To Win Rejection Of Draft Charter

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Bassam Sebti
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 8, 2005; A24

BAGHDAD, Sept. 7 -- Voter registration soared in some Sunni Arab parts of Iraq as Sunnis mobilized to try to vote down a draft constitution they believe will divide the country, according to figures released Wednesday at the close of registration for the Oct. 15 referendum.

The results of the Sunni registration campaign came on a day of violence in the predominantly Shiite south. Local officials in Basra, the largest city in the region, said a car bombing killed 16 people, including at least two children, news agencies reported.

A roadside bombing in Basra earlier in the day killed four American security contractors who were in the lead vehicle of a convoy of U.S. diplomatic officials. No one else was injured, an official said. While political tensions have been high in Basra, bombings have been rare.

The surge in voter registration in the heavily Sunni west signaled the minority's belated entry into the country's political process. Most Sunnis stood on the sidelines of the Jan. 30 national elections that seated the interim government, which was charged with drafting the constitution. As a result, Sunnis were left with diminished political leverage in negotiations over the document.

This time, "we registered to defeat the constitution," said Khalid Jubouri, a guard at a government ministry in Fallujah, a city in the volatile western province of Anbar. "This is considered fighting by word and thought. We are optimistic about the battle, and we will win it eventually."

Registration in Anbar swelled from a tiny percentage of eligible adults in January to nearly 85 percent, said Muhammed Ibrahim, the director of voter registration centers in the province.

Ibrahim said about 600,000 of the province's 715,000 eligible adults registered, despite pledges from al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent group led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, that anyone who took part in the voting would become a target for killing.

"It is a big number we didn't expect given the security situation in the province," Ibrahim said. "It is a great number."

Last month, suspected insurgents killed three Sunni activists who were working on voter registration in the northern city of Mosul. Their corpses were draped in a get-out-the-vote banner.

In the predominantly Sunni province of Salahuddin, 722,025 of 1.1 million eligible adults registered to vote, said Isam Hussein Samarraie, the provincial voter registration director. In the January elections, 532,069 people cast ballots there.

In Diyala province, 417,000 of 750,000 eligible adults registered. In January, only 119,000 cast ballots, according to Amir Latif Alyahya, director of the provincial elections commission.

Iraqis who voted in the January elections are automatically eligible to vote in the referendum on the constitution without registering. It was unclear whether the registration figures would be challenged.

If voters approve the constitution on Oct. 15, the country will vote in national elections on Dec. 15 for Iraq's first full-term post-invasion government. If the charter is defeated, Iraqis will vote on Dec. 15 for another temporary government, which would try again to draft a constitution. Defeating the constitution requires a two-thirds rejection in at least three of Iraq's 18 provinces.

Many Sunnis oppose the draft constitution because it would allow the Kurdish north and the heavily Shiite south to form separate, oil-rich regions. The split could leave the center and west with little political power and few resources.

Some Sunni leaders are working to forge an unusual alliance with Moqtada Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric whose militia twice battled U.S. forces last year.

Sadr called upon his followers this summer to register and then await word from him on whether to vote. The rejection of the charter by his followers, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and by the Sunnis would sink the draft document, some Sunnis say.

"So there is no doubt that many people registered their names in answer to his call," said Abdul Hadi Darraji, a Sadr spokesman in Baghdad. "And now, we await his instructions."

While U.S. and Iraqi leaders have said Sunni acceptance of the political system was essential to ending the Sunni-based insurgency, some leaders say Iraq could enter its most dangerous period yet if the Sunni-led vote against the charter prevailed and political struggle ensued.

Adil Lami, general manager of Iraq's electoral commission in Baghdad, said that he had no national figures for voter registration but that "large enthusiasm" in the heavily Sunni west had led the way in the drive.

In other violence Wednesday, gunmen killed four people at an Iraqi police checkpoint near Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, officials said.

One person was killed in the Kurdish town of Kalar during a riot over Iraq's chronic water and electricity shortages since the U.S.-led invasion, news agencies said.

Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes bombed a house in an al Qaeda stronghold near the Syrian border, the U.S. military said. Military officials said they believe the airstrike killed a key local al Qaeda figure who helped smuggle foreign fighters into the country.

Special correspondents Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad, Salih Saif Aldin in Tikrit and Hassan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.

Iraq army: 200 insurgents arrested in Tal Afar

quote:
Iraq army: 200 insurgents arrested in Tal Afar
U.S. military rescues American hostage after 10 months in captivity
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:03 a.m. ET Sept. 8, 2005

TAL AFAR,Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces have encircled the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar, and Iraqi authorities on Thursday announced the arrest of 200 suspected insurgents there — most of them foreign fighters.

The Iraqi military said 150 of those arrested Wednesday in this town near the Syrian border were Arabs from Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan.

The joint forces have reported heavy battles on the outskirts of the city and several deadly bombings that have mainly killed civilians. Iraqi authorities reported most of the civilian population had fled the city, which is 260 miles north of Baghdad and about 35 miles from the Syrian border.

“Our forces arrested 150 non-Iraqi Arabs yesterday in addition to 50 Iraqi terrorists with fake documents as they were trying to flee the city with the (civilian) families,” said Iraqi army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.

“We ordered the families to evacuate the Sunni neighborhood of Sarai, which is believed to be the main stronghold of the insurgents,” Ahmed said

Eight civilians were killed in the city Wednesday by a suicide car bomber at an Iraqi checkpoint, he said.

Tal Afar is 90 percent Turkmen, and 70 percent of them are Sunnis. After the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the United States installed a largely Shiite leadership in the city, including the mayor and much of the police force.

The Sunni majority has complained of oppression by the government and have turned to the insurgents — who are mainly Sunnis — for protection.

U.S. vehicle destroyed

Early Thursday, a militant Web site carried a videotape showing the destruction of a U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Tal Afar. The video, emblazoned with the logo of al-Qaida in Iraq, claimed the armored vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb.

The military issued no immediate response to the claim. The militant video did not say if there were casualties, although the force of the blast would suggest there had been. There were several large explosions of ordnance in the tank after the initial blast.

Twenty miles south of Baghdad, police Thursday reported finding 14 unidentified bodies near the farming town of Mahmoudiya. “All the bodies are in civilian clothes and have no identification documents,” said Lt. Adnan Abdullah of the Mahmoudiya police. They had been shot to death, he said.

Two more decomposing bodies, blindfolded and handcuffed, were found on the outskirts of Baghdad, near a sewage plant, police said.

American hostage freed after 10 months
On Wednesday, the U.S. military, acting on a tip, raided an isolated farmhouse outside Baghdad and rescued an American businessman held hostage for 10 months. The kidnappers, who had kept their captive bound and gagged.

Roy Hallums, 57, was “in good condition and is receiving medical care,” a military statement said after U.S. forces freed him and an unidentified Iraqi from the farmhouse 15 miles south of Baghdad.

Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman, said the tipster whose information led to Hallums’ release was captured just a few hours before the operation.

Hallums, formerly of Newport Beach, Calif., was kidnapped at gunpoint from his office in the Mansour district of Baghdad on Nov. 1, 2004. At the time, he was working for the Saudi Arabian Trading and Construction Co., supplying food to the Iraqi army. The kidnappers also seized a Filipino, a Nepalese and three Iraqis, but later freed them.

“Considering what he’s been through, I understand he’s in good condition,” said Hallums’ ex-wife, Susan Hallums, 53, of Corona, Calif.

The family Web site was topped with a headline: Roy IS FREE!!!!!! 9/7/05.

More than 200 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq since the war began in March 2003; more than 30 have been killed.

Deadly bombings

The rescue coincided with two deadly bombings detonated around the southern city of Basra. A roadside bomb killed four private American security agents working for the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security. And an Interior Ministry official said 16 people were killed and 21 were injured in a car bombing at a restaurant in a central market.

The bombing was noteworthy because attacks against Americans around Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, are rare. The U.S. has only a minimal presence in the area. Also, Shiites, who are the dominant population in the south, have found themselves the political winners as new government structures take shape after the U.S.-led invasion.

In a statement posted on a Web site known as a clearing house of militant claims, al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack.

The car bombing later Wednesday at a takeout restaurant in a central Basra market killed 16 and wounded 21, said an Interior Ministry official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

The felafel restaurant is in the Hayaniyah district market, a Shiite section of the city, Basra police Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaidi said. Two police vehicles and several nearby shops were destroyed in the blast.

Despite a peaceful postwar history in the south, violence has spiked in the past two months with attacks on Britons.

Navy hospitalman from Arizona killed in rollover crash in Iraq Rocky Mount (NC) Telegram

quote:
Navy hospitalman from Arizona killed in rollover crash in Iraq

Associated Press

PHOENIX — A 20-year-old Navy hospitalman from Arizona who was serving with the 2nd Marine Division near Baghdad has been killed in Iraq, authorities said.

Robert "Nathan" Martens, 20, of Queen Creek, died Tuesday after he was injured in a Humvee rollover crash in Al Qaim, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Wednesday.

More than 50 soldiers with ties to Arizona have been killed in Iraq.

Martens attended Hospital Corpsman school in Great Lakes, Ill., before he trained at the Field Medical Service School in Camp Lejeune, N.C., and was then assigned the 2nd Marine Division in December 2004.

He is survived by his wife, Erin, and their 10-month-old daughter, Riley Jo, and several other family members in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Martens was the son-in-law of Buckeye Police Chief Dan Saban.

"Please continue to pray for Erin, Riley Jo, Nathan's family and ours," Saban said in a statement.

Laura Metcalfe, a former teacher of Marten's at Queen Creek High School, remembered him as a caring young man who wanted to play college baseball.

"Nathan was an absolutely wonderful human being," Metcalfe said.

Funeral services for Martens were pending.

Warrenville man dies in Iraq explosion Chicago (IL) Tribune - Local* (Reg. Required)

quote:
Warrenville man dies in Iraq explosion
Soldier an '03 grad of Wheaton South

By John Biemer
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
Published September 8, 2005

A recent Wheaton Warrenville South graduate from a military family, who enlisted in the Army just days out of high school, was killed in an explosion earlier this week in the northwestern Iraqi town of Tel Afar, his mother said Wednesday.

The Department of Defense had not yet confirmed the Monday death of Army Spec. Jeffrey Allen Williams, 20, a combat medic formerly from Warrenville. But his mother, Sandra Smith, said military personnel came to her home Tuesday in Mansfield, Texas, to deliver the news.

Williams was the oldest of Smith's four sons.

"He was a leader, he wasn't a follower," said Smith, whose family moved to Texas after her son joined the Army. "The boys are really having a hard time. Every last one of the kids is having a hard time because they really looked up to Jeffrey."

She had no further details about the circumstances of his death.

Williams, who graduated from Wheaton Warrenville South in 2003, was born in Kansas City, Mo., raised around military bases in California and Maryland, had several relatives in the armed forces and always planned to join the Army, his mother said. She had worked as a civilian nurse at military hospitals--which helped spark his interest in medicine, she said.

He was hoping to become a doctor, his mother said, maybe a cardiologist or a surgeon. In his weekly calls from Iraq, the two would share stories of treating injuries. He was proud when he inserted his first chest tube in a wounded patient, his mother said, but he had been in Iraq since March and was looking forward to coming home in February.

"He was tired of it, because at first he said everything was peaceful and then the last four weeks they'd gotten rowdy again," she said about the increased violence. "Things had slacked up, but lately they started getting worse."

By Tuesday night, word of his death had been passed along from his family in Texas to his friends and neighbors in the western suburbs.

His girlfriend for the last two years, Stacey Kuhn, 20, of Warrenville said Williams was a "sweet guy." They had met when they both worked at a Family Foods grocery in Warrenville and went to the senior prom together.

"He was fun," said Kuhn, now a student at Indiana Tech. "He'd do anything for you. If he could do it, he would. He was really big with his friends--he never forgot his friends even when I was in the picture. He was really caring, he was so much fun."

Williams stood well over 6 feet, and his friends remembered him as a friendly and athletic young man. He played football and wrestled in high school and played a lot of basketball on the side. He had started boxing in the Army.

In high school, Williams was close friends with Raimondo Brown and Jamie Blair--now roommates in West Chicago who attend the College of DuPage. Brown, 20, said he was devastated when he found out about his friend.

"It's like losing a brother," he said. "Being a best friend so many years, it was like a loved one.

"If you had a bad day, you talked to him, he just made you laugh," Brown added. "He'd lighten up your day."

"He was like a brother," said Blair, 20. "It's really heartbreaking that [when] someone has plans for his life and it's going on the right track, he has to die at such a young age. It almost feels unfair. [He was] such a great person."

Car bomb blast in central Baghdad

quote:
BAGHDAD, Sept. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- A car bomb detonated Thursday near Sadir Hotel in central Baghdad, wounding a civilian, police said.

"A booby-trapped car was parking on the side of a road between Sadie Hotel and al-Sadoun Hospital, detonated afternoon, wounding a civilian," an Interior Ministry source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Insurgents targeted Sadir Hotel, in central Baghdad, several times as it usually houses foreign security contractors.

Iraq 08 September - 2005 - 1st report

2005-09-08T03:01:00.000-07:00

Iraq 08 September 2005 - 1st report - posted at 6:05 am EDT by Synergy:

Storm's Devastation Fans Antiwar Flame

quote:
Storm's Devastation Fans Antiwar Flame

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 8, 2005; A17

The calamity of Hurricane Katrina and criticism of the federal response are fast becoming a rallying cry in the antiwar debate.

About two dozen protesters staged a rally outside the White House yesterday and are redirecting their arguments to compare the relief effort in New Orleans with ongoing spending in Iraq. They even have a new slogan.

"From Iraq to New Orleans, fund human needs, not the war machine," many of the protesters shouted in Lafayette Square last night.

"We're reorienting the antiwar movement to make the connection between the vast expenditure for the war in Iraq and the woefully inadequate response to the victims of Katrina," said Brian Becker, national coordinator for the ANSWER Coalition, which sponsored the rally.

Protesters, who have sought to illustrate the domestic toll of the war, have seized on the disaster as a way to further their antiwar message.

War supporters said this tactic is predatory and political.

"It's an extremely cheap shot to go out and immediately spin an event that is so catastrophic," said Melanie Morgan, chairman of Move America Forward, a California-based group that supports the Bush administration. The group staged a counter-protest to a nearly month-long vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., by Cindy Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq.

The Katrina argument has spurred Morgan's group to begin fundraising to counter a planned Sept. 24 antiwar protest in Washington, Morgan said.

The group contends that National Guard troops were ready, available and came to do their job once summoned. But antiwar groups said most of the southern National Guard troops are in Iraq and the administration's attention was on the war abroad, not the crisis at home. They said the response to Katrina was the first palpable example .

"I believe it is the most vivid and compelling demonstration that the war in Iraq is not only needlessly taking lives of human beings, but it is needlessly diverting precious resources," Becker said.

For Howard University student and ANSWER organizer Caneisha Mills, going to New Orleans to see Katrina's impact "showed me that our government wasn't prepared and made the connection . . . clear."

The New York offices of United for Peace and Justice, a sponsor of the Sept. 24 rally with ANSWER, have been inundated with calls from people who want to join the movement because of their dissatisfaction with the federal response on the Gulf Coast, said Leslie Cagan, national coordinator for the group.

"Just in the past two or three days, the phones have been ringing off the hook here," Cagan said. "I think this disaster is helping more people make the connections and see the ways this war is impacting our nation."

Lawyer denies Saddam confession (BBC News)

quote:
Lawyer denies Saddam confession
The head of Saddam Hussein's legal team has strongly denied the ousted Iraqi president has confessed to crimes such as executions during his regime.

Khalil Dulaimi told Reuters news agency the former leader had not confessed to any of the charges brought against him.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Tuesday Saddam Hussein had admitted to a judge he waged a campaign against the Kurds that killed tens of thousands.

Saddam Hussein's trial will start on 19 October, the Iraqi government has said.

His legal team are trying to delay the start date on the grounds that they have not been given enough time to prepare.

"There was no confession by the president and all the investigations in this case do not implicate him at all," said Khalil Dulaimi in a statement to Reuters.

'100 reasons'

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told Iraqi state TV on Tuesday that an investigating judge "was able to extract confessions" from the ousted leader.

He said some of the confessions referred to crimes "such as executions" during Saddam Hussein's rule as well as cases under investigation but gave no further details. "There are 100 reasons to sentence Saddam to death," Mr Talabani, a former Kurdish rebel leader, told Iraqiya TV.

"Saddam deserves a death sentence 20 times a day because he tried to assassinate me 20 times."

However, the president - who has voiced public opposition to the death penalty in the past - said he would not sign any execution warrant himself.

Saddam Hussein and several of his closest aides are due to stand trial on charges relating to the massacre of 143 Shias in a town north of Baghdad.

The killings in Dujail in 1982 followed an attempt on Saddam Hussein's life.

Saddam Hussein could face capital punishment if found guilty in the case.

Talabani: Saddam confessed to crimes

quote:
Talabani: Saddam confessed to crimes

Iraq's president Jalal Talabani said former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had confessed to killings and other "crimes," including the massacre of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s, and should be executed many times over.

On Tuesday evening, Talabani told Iraqi television that an investigating judge "was able to extract confessions from Saddam's mouth" about numerous executions he had allegedly personally ordered during his 24 years in power.

But a legal consultant retained by Saddam's family expressed skepticism over the claim, saying the former strongman had not mentioned any confession when he met his lawyer on Monday.

Saddam's trial is scheduled to open on October 19. He and seven other senior Baath Party officials have been charges for their alleged role in the 1982 massacre of Shi'ites in Dujail, a town north of Baghdad, following an assassination attempt there against him. The trial is likely to be the first of a series of legal proceedings against Saddam on numerous other charges.

In the late-night TV interview, Talabani said Saddam was responsible form many more atrocities than just the killings in Dujail. These included the so-called Anfal campaign in 1987-88, which cost the lives of more than 180,000 Kurds and resulted in the ethnic cleansing of numerous Kurdish communities in the north of Iraq.

"Saddam Hussein is a war criminal and he deserves to be executed 20 times a day for his crimes against humanity," said Talabani, who heads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party. He added that Saddam had tried to assassinate him at least 20 times.

But Abdel Haq Alani, Saddam's family's legal consultant, said Talabani's allegations sounded like the president was trying to prejudice the trial.

"Let's not have a trial on TV. Let the court of law, not the media, make its ruling on this," Alani said.

Alani, condemned Talabani's remarks and said the alleged confession "comes to me as a surprise, a big surprise."

"I have heard nothing whatsoever about this alleged media speculation," Alani said in Amman, Jordan. "This is a matter for the judiciary to decide on, not for politicians and Jalal should know better than that."

Saddam's legal team said it plans to challenge the starting date as allowing insufficient time for a proper defence. Defence lawyers also said they would challenge the trial's legitimacy.

Saddam has been in US custody at an undisclosed site in Baghdad since his capture in December 2003.

Top Defence Ministry official killed

Just after Talabani made such comment in TV interview, gunmen shot and killed Major Geneneral Hadi Hassan Omran Wednesday, an Iraqi Defence Ministry director general, as he drove through the southern Dora neighborhood in Baghdad, said Doctor Muhanad Jawad at Yarmouk hospital.

In a separate incident, the doctor said, gunmen killed Colonel Ammar Ismail Arkan, an Interior Ministry commando, and wounded four bodyguards in Baghdad's western Ghazaliyah District. Both attacks occurred about midday.

In the southern city of Basra, police Lieutenant Colonel Karim Al-Zaidi said the roadside bombing targeted a convoy of "security contractors, killing three of them and wounding one." He did not know the victims' nationality or for whom they worked.

Also Wednesday, Baha al-Araji, deputy head of the Constitution Committee, said the new basic law would be sent to the government printing house today.

He claimed it stood unchanged from the version sent to parliament by the drafting committee August 28, after several deadlines were missed.

"The draft is unchanged from the one presented to the National Assembly. We will hand these five million copies to the Trade Ministry to be distributed in the monthly food ration allocations."

Iraqis will vote on the charter in an October 15 referendum, with the outcome still not assured because of fundamental opposition from the country's Sunni minority.

Source: China Daily

Iraqi President Elevates Office's Profile

quote:
Iraqi President Elevates Office's Profile
His post lacks power, but Jalal Talabani wields influence. He will bring an optimistic message to U.S. and U.N. next week.
By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 8, 2005

BAGHDAD — Iraq's equivalent of the West Wing was abuzz Wednesday as President Jalal Talabani and his staff raced to finalize details of his high-profile trip to Washington to shore up U.S. support for the war in Iraq. But there were a few glitches.

Rats had gnawed away the TV antenna cables in Talabani's "war room," leaving just one of the four sets working and curtailing his media team's access to the outside world.

His chief of protocol, responsible for arranging state visits and diplomatic niceties, lay in a hospital with a broken leg and arm after his car was struck by a U.S. military Humvee along the airport road Tuesday.

Then came word that security officials wanted everyone accompanying Talabani to the U.S. to have their bags packed and ready the night before for inspection. The demand sparked a minor panic among the president's aides and advisors, who worried about having to hurry home and get their luggage.

Despite such problems, Talabani said he planned to present Americans a positive picture of Iraq as it moves toward several milestones, including a referendum on the recently drafted constitution and the start of the trial of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein in October, and, if the charter is adopted, parliamentary elections in mid-December.

"I'd like to explain the realities of Iraq," Talabani said Wednesday in an interview in his Green Zone offices. "Not all of it is Fallouja," the violence-torn city west of Baghdad that has been a hotbed of the insurgency.

Talabani acknowledges that Iraq still faces serious problems nearly 2 1/2 years after Hussein's ouster, including electricity and gasoline shortages and insurgent attacks. But the 72-year-old president is loath to dwell on the negative and says life in Iraq today is better than under Hussein.

"When Iraq was liberated from dictatorship, the economic life was liberated from the monopoly of the state," he said. "We have free markets, free trade, and the standard of living has risen. We are going without any stop in our democratic process, regardless of all the difficulties that we are facing."

Although Iraq's presidency has much less power than the prime minister's post, Talabani is trying to make the most of his position. In addition to visiting Washington next week, he will head Iraq's delegation to the U.N. General Assembly.

Talabani, a rotund and bespectacled leader of Iraq's mostly pro-American Kurdish minority, said he wasn't coming to Washington "to make propaganda" for President Bush amid mounting criticism of his handling of the war. Nevertheless, he said he planned to shower Bush and the U.S. with gratitude for overthrowing Hussein.

"I consider President George W. Bush as one of the greatest leaders of the United States," he said, "and he's the hero of the liberation of Iraq."

Though Bush may be pleased with such sentiments, Talabani's gratitude is not limited to Washington. It extends to other countries that the U.S. considers adversaries, such as Syria, which sheltered Iraqi dissidents during Hussein's rule, and Iran, which provided Kurdish rebels sanctuary and support during their years of armed struggle against the Baghdad government.

Talabani even fondly recalled Iran's new hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been scorned by Washington. "Once together we prepared some kind of battle against Saddam Hussein," he said, declining to provide details.

Talabani did not outline any specific promises he hoped to extract from Bush or other American politicians when he meets with them. At the United Nations, he said, he hoped to bolster international support for Iraq's fledgling government.

"I will do my best to explain facts and figures to friends from both parties," he said. "It's up to them to choose to accept it or reject it."

A gifted raconteur who is fluent in English and Persian as well as Kurdish and Arabic, Talabani became active in politics as a law student in Baghdad during the 1950s. A few years after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, he became a leader of the Kurdish uprising against the central government.

After the collapse of that movement in 1975, he formed his own party. He and his fighters later escaped to Iran, and during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war they staged sporadic attacks on Hussein's forces.

When Iraq's Kurdish-dominated northern region gained de facto autonomy after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Talabani became leader of the eastern half of the territory. After the election in January of this year, his longtime Kurdish rival Massoud Barzani became president of the Kurdish region, and Talabani became president of Iraq.

Talabani relishes the spotlight and often shoots from the hip. This week, he caused a stir when he announced in a television interview that he had been told that Hussein, held by U.S. authorities in a special prison, had admitted to investigators that he had committed crimes.

But in the interview Wednesday, Talabani said Hussein had merely acknowledged that he had ordered military operations, including the use of chemical weapons in 1988 on Kurdish residents of the northern town of Halabja, as measures "necessary to protect Iraq."

"He killed people to protect them," Talabani said sarcastically. "He put hundreds of thousands of people in mass graves to protect Iraq."

Since assuming the presidency, Talabani has expanded the duties of office far beyond the largely ceremonial post it had been under his predecessor, Ghazi Ajil Yawer, analysts say.

Talabani has staffed his office, which sits on the ground floor of a palace that once belonged to one of Hussein's associates, with mostly young, energetic image-makers, lawyers and advisors.

He has set up a website, http://www.iraqipresidency.net , that enables citizens to check up on current events, hear his speeches and news conferences and e-mail him questions.

Iraqis write to ask him about jobs, imprisoned relatives and other matters. A third-year agronomy student wrote to tell Talabani he needed a laptop computer. Charmed by his gumption, the president ordered his staff to get him one.

"Day by day our duties are expanding," said Ava Nadir, 33, the president's assistant chief of staff.

On Wednesday, Talabani met with Yawer, who is now a vice president, and Adel Abdul Mehdi, Iraq's other vice president, in a weekly meeting of the three-member presidential council. As Iraqi TV cameramen jostled for position, the three held a moment of silence for the nearly 1,000 Iraqis killed in a stampede last week in Baghdad. Afterward, the president met with British Ambassador William Patey.

"There are a lot of jobs for the president of the country to do," Talabani said. "He represents the sovereignty of Iraq. He must participate in all policies, foreign and internal."

Talabani's newfound national stature has upset some Sunni Arabs who view him as a traitor and an ally of Iran. But the president notes that before Hussein's rule, Kurds had regularly held prestigious positions in Iraq.

"Even in the time of the monarch, many Kurds became prime minister," he said. "Many Kurds became chief of staff. Kurds even participated at the time of the Ottoman Empire as prime minister."

Still, Talabani said he had never harbored such ambitions before Iraq's tumultuous politics pushed him into armed struggle. "I was planning to be a professor of a university," he said, "not to be president of the republic."

Arizonan Who Helped Spread Democracy In Iraq DiesTucson (AZ) KOLD

quote:
Arizonan Who Helped Spread Democracy In Iraq Dies
Sept 8, 2005, 2:12 AM

KOLD News Staff

A man with Tucson ties who helped spread democracy in Iraq has died.

Friends say Ron St. John had a heart attack while working for the United Nations in Amman, Jordan. Here at KOLD News 13, we kept up with him as he led a program in Iraq teaching citizens how to participate in their government.

St. John gained experience in eastern Europe building democracy. He was also an aide to former Pima County supervisor Mike Boyd. At one time he was student body president at the University of Arizona.

St. John leaves behind a home and several friends in Tucson.

Some Iraq Projects Running Out of Money, U.S. Says

quote:
Some Iraq Projects Running Out of Money, U.S. Says
Work will be stopped on some utility plants, officials tell lawmakers, because security costs are depleting funds.
By T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 8, 2005

WASHINGTON — The U.S. will halt construction work on some water and power plants in Iraq because it is running out of money for projects, officials said Wednesday.

Security costs have cut into the money available to complete some major infrastructure projects that were started under the $18.4-billion U.S. plan to rebuild Iraq. As a result, the United States is funding only those projects deemed essential by the Iraqi government.

Although no overall figures are available, one contractor has stopped work on six of eight water treatment plants to which it was assigned.

"We have scaled back our projects in many areas," James Jeffrey, a senior advisor on Iraq for the State Department, told lawmakers at a hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations. "We do not have the money."

More than two years after Congress approved funding for the rebuilding effort, electricity and oil production in Iraq are at or below prewar levels; and unemployment remains high. Less than half of the U.S. reconstruction money has been spent, but in some sectors, such as electricity and water, security costs have eaten up much of the budget.

The slow pace of progress appeared to exasperate both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who compared the situation with the Bush administration's handling of damage from Hurricane Katrina.

Both situations reflected a lack of planning, poor execution and a failure by senior White House officials to follow through on commitments, Democrats said.

"We can't seem to get [the Iraq rebuilding] right. We see it in Katrina, the lack of leadership, the lack of coordination," said Rep. Nita M. Lowey of New York, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee.

Republican criticism of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq had been rare, a sign that bipartisan discontent with the White House response to Katrina may be spreading to other areas.

"It seems sort of almost incomprehensible to me that we haven't been able to do better on" restoring power to Iraq, said Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.), who recently visited areas damaged by Katrina. "Coming back up through Mississippi and Louisiana after being down on some relief effort, you know, when power shuts down, everything shuts down."

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), who has been critical of the Iraq rebuilding effort, said the Bush administration's vision for using reconstruction funds to stabilize Iraq "was largely a chimera, a castle built of sand."

"Reconstruction in Iraq has been slower, more painful, more complex, more fragmented and more inefficient than anyone in Washington or Baghdad could have imagined a couple of years ago," said Kolbe, chairman of the subcommittee.

U.S. officials said security costs, now estimated to account for 22% of all reconstruction contracts, had forced them to redirect money to pay for weapons and training of Iraqi troops.

They said that the United States was spending $150 million a week on reconstruction, and that more work was flowing directly to Iraqi contractors instead of U.S. multinational firms.

They also said that some infrastructure projects handed over to the Iraqis had suffered because of Iraqi government funding shortfalls. As a result, U.S. funds have been directed to simply maintaining electricity and water plants that the Iraqis cannot afford to operate.

"The last thing we wanted to do … is to put hundreds of millions of dollars in power generating plants and into water plants and then have them simply not work, or simply have them run down," Jeffrey said.

Another concern is corruption. Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said his office was conducting 58 criminal investigations in Iraq, including several that were close to prosecution. A few U.S. contractors have faced criminal charges.

"We need to lean forward and support, emphasize, do everything we can to stand up the anti-corruption structures within Iraq in an effective way," Bowen said. "I just think that without inculcating an ethic of integrity at the core of this democracy — this fledgling democracy — that it will founder very soon."

Al Qaeda 'safe house' hit in Iraq

quote:
Al Qaeda 'safe house' hit in Iraq
Basra suicide blast kills 16, U.S. hostage freed

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A coalition air strike has demolished what authorities believe was an al Qaeda-linked terrorist safe house in the western Iraqi city of al-Jaramil and a man believed to be a foreign fighter facilitator was killed, Multi-National Forces officials said early Thursday.

Abu Ali, described by the military as a "senior al Qaeda foreign fighter facilitator," was believed to be in the house at the time of the strike on Wednesday, authorities said.

They added Ali has been linked to other al Qaeda terrorists and facilitators in Hit, al Qaim, Karabila and Husayba. He also had al Qaeda connections in the Mosul area, officials said, including one man captured in June and another man killed in August.

Ali was also thought to have al Qaeda connections in Syria and Saudi Arabia where most of his foreign fighters were recruited, the military said in a written statement.

He was believed to have funneled the foreign fighters into Iraq and sent them to various terrorist groups, where they participated in attacks against Iraqi citizens along with Iraqi Security Forces and Coalition Forces, authorities said.

After the air strike, coalition forces saw large secondary explosions, indicating that a large weapons cache was destroyed, the military said.

Meanwhile, a car bomb detonated in a popular Basra neighborhood Wednesday evening, killing 16 civilians and wounding 21 others, authorities said.

Two women and two children were among the dead, according to an Iraqi army official said.

U.S. authorities also reported they had freed Roy Hallums, a U.S. contractor kidnapped in Baghdad 10 months ago.

Earlier Wednesday, four American private security contractors were killed when their vehicle, part of a U.S. diplomatic convoy, struck a roadside bomb in southern Basra, a western official in Baghdad told CNN.

The improvised explosive device detonated at the foot of the Ghazyza bridge about 8:30 a.m. (0430 GMT).

Three contractors were killed on the spot, the official said. One was flown to a hospital and later died of injuries.

The diplomats were attached to the U.S. consulate in Basra. No details are known about the convoy's mission.

A car bomb also exploded near a western convoy in central Baghdad Wednesday, injuring five bystanders, Iraqi police said. The convoy continued unharmed.

The parked car detonated around 9 a.m. in the capital's Karrada neighborhood.

Less than three hours later, an official with the Ministry of Defense was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in southern Baghdad's Dora neighborhood, police said. Killed in the attack was Hassan Umran. His driver was wounded.

At about the same time, police found the bullet-riddled bodies of three men near a water purification plant in the Rustumiye section of southeastern Baghdad. Police said the bodies were dumped without identification.

Iraqi police Wednesday said a U.S. Army Humvee was seen burning along the Mohammed al-Qasim highway in eastern Baghdad. A spokeswoman with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division said three U.S. soldiers were wounded when their convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device. At least one of the injured was in critical condition and medevaced to a field hospital.

Around midday, a top officer with Iraqi police commandos was killed after gunmen fired on his convoy in western Baghdad.

According to Baghdad police, Col. Imad Ismail Thyab was shot and killed in the Ghazaliya neighborhood when the attackers in two cars opened fire. Three other police commandos were wounded in the attack.

Amid the carnage Wednesday was some good news: Roy Hallums, an American hostage snatched off the Baghdad streets in November, has been rescued and freed.

The U.S. military said it freed Hallums and an Iraqi from a farmhouse south of Baghdad after getting information about their whereabouts from an Iraqi detainee.

The military said Hallums released this statement after his release: "I want to thank all of those who were involved in my rescue -- to those who continuously tracked my captors and location, and to those who physically brought me freedom today. To all of you, I will be forever grateful.

"Both of us are in good health and look forward to returning to our respective families. Thank you to all who kept me and my family in their thoughts and prayers."

Hallums' ex-wife, Susan, also told CNN of his release.
Saddam's fate

In other Iraq developments, President Jalal Talabani has said ousted leader Saddam Hussein deserved to be executed "20 times a day" for his crimes against humanity.

In an interview with Iraq's state-funded broadcaster al-Iraqiya, Talabani said Saddam had confessed he gave orders to execute thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s.

Talabani said Tuesday he had spoken to one of the Iraqi Special Tribunal judges involved in the investigation who said that "he was able to take important confessions from Saddam Hussein and he has signed these confessions and there is video and audio for these confessions."

Talabani, a high-ranking Kurdish official, said the judge told him Saddam confessed he gave orders for the executions and military operations directed against Kurds in what came to be called the Anfal campaign. He added though that Saddam was responsible for many more atrocities.

"Saddam Hussein is a war criminal and he deserves to be executed 20 times a day for his crimes against humanity," The Associated Press reported Talabani as saying.

He added that Saddam had tried to assassinate him at least 20 times.

Talabani has previously gone on record opposing the use of a death penalty even though he indicated there was plenty of evidence to warrant it in Saddam's case.

Abdel Haq Alani, Saddam's family's legal consultant, said he believed Talabani was trying to prejudice the trial.

"Let's not have a trial on TV. Let the court of law, not the media, make its ruling on this," Alani told AP.

Alani, criticized Talabani's remarks and said the alleged confession "comes to me as a surprise, a big surprise."

"I have heard nothing whatsoever about this alleged media speculation," Alani said from Amman, Jordan. "This is a matter for the judiciary to decide on, not for politicians, and Jalal should know better than that."

But in his interview Talabani refuted charges the current government was exerting political pressure to expedite the trial, saying: "The Iraqi judiciary will sentence Saddam with what it sees suitable. There is no political order."

On Sunday a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said the first trial of Saddam would begin on October 19.

Along with others, Saddam is charged in connection with a series of 1982 detentions and executions following an assassination attempt against him.

Saddam has been in custody since December 2003, when he was captured by U.S. troops.

The 1982 charges are the first of several Saddam is expected to face.

He appeared last year before an Iraqi tribunal to hear a list of preliminary charges against him, including the 1990 invasion of Kuwait; the 1986-88 Anfal campaign against the Kurdish minority in northern Iraq; the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja during that campaign; and the suppression of the 1991 revolts by Iraq's Kurdish and Shia populations.
Stampede victims

On Wednesday, Talabani observed a moment of silence in honor of the victims of a stampede that claimed 965 victims during a midday Shiite religious procession last week.

The moment of silence, which was shown on Iraqi TV, was observed at noon local time (0800 GMT) on Wednesday. Citizens were also shown in the streets of Baghdad marking the observance.

This is the second time Iraqis have observed an official minute of silence to commemorate victims of violence, Talabani's office said. The first came a few months ago, when 30 children were killed by a car bomb targeting a military convoy that was distributing treats.

The pilgrims drowned and were trampled August 31, and 465 people were injured in the stampede.

CNN's Arwa Damon and Enes Dulami contributed to this story.

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