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Developments in Iraq, March 1

SECURITY INCIDENTS

**Four policemen were killed and eight wounded when a convoy they were travelling in was attacked by gunmen, according to police. Some 22 officers were seized by the gunmen but later released, police said. Another 16 officers fled at the time of the incident and made their own way to safety, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two people were killed and 10 wounded when a bomb in a car exploded near a bus station in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Twenty five people were killed and 58 wounded, most of them civilians, when a car bomb went off near a police checkpoint in a mainly Shi'ite district of eastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead two people and wounded five while they were attending a Shi'ite funeral in western Baghdad, a hospital source said.

GARMA - U.S. forces arrested 75 residents on Tuesday in Garma, near Falluja, 50 km (35 miles) west of Baghdad, Iraqi police said. No immediate comment by the U.S. military.

BAIJI - Gunmen kidnapped a goldsmith in Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, local authorities said.

BAGHDAD - A parked car exploded close to a Sunni mosque in northeast Baghdad but there were no casualties, police said.

MAHMUDIYA - Mortar rounds targeting a U.S. base in Mahmudiya 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad hit a nearby house killing three Sunni civilians and wounding two from the same family, police said.

BAGHDAD - Eight civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near an oil tanker in the southern district of al-Dura, police said. In a separate incident nine bodies were found in the western side of Baghdad riddled with bullets, police said.

**KIRKUK - Three policemen were killed and five wounded when their patrol was ambushed by gunmen in Riyad 60 km (40 miles) southwest of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police colonel Sarhat Khadir said.

RAMADI - Three people were killed and seven wounded when U.S. helicopters bombed houses surrounding the provincial building in Ramadi 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad after they had been attacked by gunmen, according to doctor Sabah Duleimi from Ramadi hospital.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

NAJAF - Iraqiya state television said Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shi'ite cleric, met fiery young Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Al-Sadr denies sending his Mehdi Army militia against Sunni targets.

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein appeared in court.

ANKARA - Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said he would press on with forming a broad, national unity government. - alertnet.org

Saddam in defiant admission, bombs blast Baghdad

By Mussab Al-Khairalla and Lutfi Abu Oun BAGHDAD, March 1 (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein acknowledged on Wednesday he ordered trials that led to the execution of dozens of Shi'ites in the 1980s but said he acted within the law as Iraq's president. The former leader's defiance in a Baghdad courtroom came as bombs killed some 30 people in the city in the bloodiest week of sectarian violence since U.S. forces overthrew his Sunni-led government. Iraq has teetered on the brink of civil war.

"Where is the crime?" Saddam demanded to know after offering what a U.S. official at the court called a "damning" admission of his role in killing 148 men from Dujail and razing the farms around the town after an attempt on his life there in 1982.

Since bombs destroyed a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22, at least 450 people have been killed, according to even the most cautious estimates from officials playing down the crisis. Many say relatives are simply missing, absent from statistics.

A car bomb killed 25 people in mainly Shi'ite east Baghdad, one of three such attacks just before the court sat. After dark, mortar rounds shook the city centre and residents reported a gunbattle around a Sunni mosque in the south of the capital.

A convoy of unarmed police recruits was ambushed near the northern city of Kirkuk, police said. Four were killed and eight wounded, while 22 survived a brief abduction by the gunmen.

Minority Sunni Arab rebels have massacred similar groups before, highlighting weaknesses in the new, U.S.-trained forces.

The Shi'ite-led interim government has ordered thousands of police and its few tanks onto the streets of Baghdad, backed up by U.S. troops, but their effectiveness is untested and their loyalties questionable in the face of myriad sectarian militias.

SUNNI FEARS Sunni religious body the Muslim Clerics Association accused Shi'ite militiamen working in the police of attacking their community and called on Sunnis to patrol their neighbourhoods: "Our brothers in all areas must protect their mosques as the government has failed to do so," the Association spokesman said.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari was under new pressure as it emerged he was warned of attacks on Shi'ite shrines two weeks before the demolition of the Golden Mosque in Samarra by bombers who spent all night planting charges and left guards unharmed.

U.S. and Iraqi leaders accuse Sunni al Qaeda of bombing the shrine to provoke Shi'ites into a civil war that would wreck U.S. hopes of stability and so of withdrawing its troops. Some Sunnis say Iranian-backed Shi'ites did it to justify reprisals.

Scenting weakness as concerned U.S. officials step up calls on the Shi'ites to accept Sunnis in a national unity coalition, Sunni, Kurdish and secular political leaders were collaborating to try to unseat Jaafari as the Shi'ites' choice as premier.

"If Jaafari remains ... then there will be no (national unity) government," one senior Iraqi politician told Reuters.

Eleven weeks after Washington trumpeted a peaceful election that saw most Sunnis elect representatives to the U.S.-backed parliament for the first time, disarray is evident -- Iraqi officials say it will take months more to form a new coalition.

Jaafari, on a visit to Turkey that drew pointed and public criticism from Iraq's Kurdish president, said: "The government will be set up soon. The government will be broad based."

After a year running the interim government, however, many accuse him of being ineffectual and both Sunni leaders and U.S. officials have raised concerns about his ties to Shi'ite Iran.

U.S. CONCERNS

The crisis threatens turmoil across the Middle East and has jeopardised President George W. Bush's hopes of starting to pull out U.S. forces before congressional elections in November.

After a poll showed his popularity at a new low, Bush said Iraqis faced a choice between "chaos or unity". But he dismissed talk of civil war when asked how U.S. troops would respond.

One in four American soldiers told another pollster that U.S. forces should leave Iraq now and 72 percent said the 133,000-strong contingent should be out within the year.

The spike in violence has the Pentagon discussing the wisdom of further cutting U.S. forces there, U.S. officials said.

"Is this the right time to be able to announce any decision that would send the message that we intend to draw down our forces in the near term?" one defence official said.

In some districts, residents have formed armed patrols and thrown up barricades. Families have fled their homes in some areas. Others say they are packed and ready to run if need be.

Saddam, who faces hanging if convicted of crimes against humanity, appeared to have changed tactics in his defence, a U.S. official involved in the trial said, after four months of graphic witness testimony and documents produced by prosecutors.

Rather than haranguing a court he has branded a tool of U.S. occupation and Shi'ite and Kurdish revenge, the official said, he had staked his life on arguing he acted within the law -- but the statements on his responsibility for orders were "damning". - alertnet.org

Iraq Political Leaders Agree to Seek PM

By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA Associated Press Writers

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Mar 1, 6:03 PM EST - Key political groups agreed Wednesday to mount a campaign to deny Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari another term in a bid to jump-start stalled talks on a new national unity government, as at least 47 people died in bombings and shootings across the country.

The move against al-Jaafari, which has been building for weeks, is spearheaded by three major political blocs that have been in U.S.-backed talks with the Shiite alliance on forming a new government.

Those talks broke down last week when the Sunni parties pulled out of the negotiations to protest attacks on Sunni mosques in reprisal for the Feb. 22 bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra.

During a meeting Wednesday, leaders of three parties, including Sunnis, Kurds and the secularists of ex-Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, agreed to ask the Shiite alliance to withdraw al-Jaafari's nomination and put forward another candidate.

Officials of all three groups confirmed the plan but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Under the constitution, the nominee of the biggest bloc in parliament gets the first chance to form a new government. The Shiites won 130 of the 275 seats - giving them the biggest bloc, but not enough to govern without partners.

Al-Jaafari won the nomination by a single vote during an election Feb. 12 among Shiite lawmakers who won seats in the Dec. 15 parliament balloting. He defeated Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi in large part because of the support of radical, anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr's militiamen were believed behind many of the attacks against Sunni mosques last week, and the prospect of a prime minister in debt to the young radical has alarmed mainstream politicians, including some in the Shiite alliance.

Steven Hurst, A-P correspondent: Hurst reports that unlike those on Tuesday, the new attacks don't seem to have been aimed at religious targets.

They fear a strong role for al-Sadr could sharpen sectarian tensions which have already pushed the country to the brink of civil war and complicate U.S. plans to begin drawing down their forces this year.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the influential Sunni clerical Association of Muslim Scholars denounced the Shiite-led government and its security forces for failing to prevent the reprisal attacks.

Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi appealed for calm and urged hundreds of displaced Shiites to return to the mostly Sunni neighborhoods they fled last week.

Although the level of sectarian attacks has diminished, the bloodshed continued Wednesday.

In the deadliest attack, a car bomb exploded near a market and traffic police office in a mostly Shiite neighborhood in southeast Baghdad, killing 29 people and wounding 67, the Interior Ministry said. Dazed, bloodied victims were rushed to Kindi Hospital, where staff cut off the shirt of a screaming child whose face and arms were singed in the blast.

Another bomb hidden under a parked car detonated as a police patrol was passing near downtown Tahrir Square. The patrol escaped unharmed, but six civilians were killed and 17 wounded, the Interior Ministry said.

North of the capital, gunmen ambushed a convoy of police trainees about 20 miles south of Kirkuk, killing five and wounding 11, police said.

The 50 trainees, on leave from their academy in Sulaimaniyah, were traveling in four minibuses to Tikrit. Two blood-spattered vehicles made it back to Kirkuk carrying three dead and seven wounded, police there said. Another one turned up in Tikrit, about 45 miles to the south, with two dead and four wounded. The fourth minibus escaped unscathed.

South of the capital, mortar shells slammed into a market in the volatile, Shiite-Sunni town of Mahmoudiya, killing two civilians and wounding three, the ministry said. Another shell landed in a house in a mixed western Baghdad neighborhood, killing a woman and wounding a child, police said.

At least four other people were killed in shootings in Baqouba and Kut. - Assoc Press

Baghdad official who exposed executions flees

Jonathan Steele - Thursday March 2, 2006 - The Guardian

Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq has disclosed.

"The vast majority of bodies showed signs of summary execution - many with their hands tied behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms and leg joints broken by electric drills," said John Pace, the Maltese UN official. The killings had been happening long before the bloodshed after last week's bombing of the Shia shrine in Samarra.

Mr Pace, whose contract in Iraq ended last month, said many killings were carried out by Shia militias linked to the industry ministry run by Bayan Jabr, a leading figure in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).

Mr Pace said records, supported by photographs, came from Baghdad's forensic institute, which passed them to the UN. The Baghdad morgue has been receiving 700 or more bodies a month. The figures peaked at 1,100 last July - many showing signs of torture.

Reports of government-sponsored death squads have sparked fear among many prominent Iraqis, prompting a rise in the number leaving the country. Mr Pace said the morgue's director had received death threats after he reported the murders. "He's out of the country now," said Mr Pace, adding that the attribution of the killings to government-linked militias did not come from Dr Bakir.

"There are other sources for that. Some militias are integrated with the police and wear police uniforms," he said. "The Badr brigade [Sciri's armed wing] are in the police and are mainly the ones doing the killing. They're the most notorious."

Some Iraqis accuse the Mahdi army militia, linked to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, of seizing and killing people. But Mr Pace said: "I'm not as sure of the Mahdi army as I am of the others." - guardian.co.uk

my note: what of the P2OG? what of Negropontes deathsquad past?

Australian TV transcript : Roberst Fisk

TONY JONES: Now, unless you've changed your position in recent days, the one thing that you and President Bush agree on is there's not going to be a civil war in Iraq.

ROBERT FISK: Yeah, I listened to Bush. It made me doubt myself when I heard him say that. I still go along and say what I said before - Iraq is not a sectarian society, but a tribal society. People are intermarried. Shiites and Sunnis marry each other. It's not a question of having a huge block of people here called Shiites and a huge block of people called Sunnis any more than you can do the same with the United States, saying Blacks are here and Protestants are here and so on.

But certainly, somebody at the moment is trying to provoke a civil war in Iraq. Someone wants a civil war. Some form of militias and death squads want a civil war. There never has been a civil war in Iraq.

The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war?

Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads?

We do, the occupation authorities.

I'd like to know what the Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to provoke the civil war. It seems to me not very much. We don't hear of any suicide bombers being stopped before they blow themselves up. We don't hear of anybody stopping a mosque getting blown up. We're not hearing of death squads all being arrested.

Something is going very, very wrong in Baghdad. Something is going wrong with the Administration.

Mr Bush says, "Oh, yes, sure, I talk to the Shiites and I talk to the Sunnis." He's talking to a small bunch of people living behind American machine guns inside the so-called Green Zone, the former Republican palace of Saddam Hussein, which is surrounded by massive concrete walls like a crusader castle. These people do not and cannot even leave this crusader castle. If they want to leave to the airport, they're helicoptered to the airport. They can't even travel on the airport road. What we've got at the moment is a little nexus of people all of whom live under American protection and talk on the telephone to George W Bush who says, "I've been talking to them and they have to choose between chaos and unity." These people can't even control the roads 50 metres from the Green Zone in which they work.

- TV transcript : Roberst Fisk shares his Middle East knowledge Reporter: Tony Jones

Developments in Iraq, March 2

SECURITY INCIDENTS

*ANBAR PROVINCE - U.S. military operations in the province of Anbar, west of Baghdad, have resulted in the capture of 61 members of al Qaeda in Iraq, Major General Rick Lynch, a U.S. military spokesman, said on Thursday.

*ANBAR PROVINCE - A U.S. soldier was killed on Wednesday while conducting combat operations in Anbar, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Sunni political leader Adnan al-Dulaimi escaped an assassination attempt when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle in Ghazaliya district, western Baghdad, said a spokesman for Dulaimi's Iraqi Accordance Front who witnessed the incident. One of Dulaimi's bodyguards was killed and five wounded in the attack.

BAGHDAD - Five people were killed and eight wounded when a bus they were travelling in was struck by a blast in the Shi'ite Sadr City slum in northeastern Baghdad, police said. It was not clear what caused the blast.

BAGHDAD - Three people were killed and 10 were wounded when a roadside bomb planted near a police station exploded in a market in the district of Zafaraniya in southeastern Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - Interior Ministry sources said a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one police commando and injured another two in al-Jihad district in southwestern Baghdad.

SALMAN PAK - Local police said a roadside bomb killed one police commando and seriously wounded another in the town of Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad.

BAQUBA - Insurgents gunned down police Lieutenant Abbas Jaleel while he was travelling in his car in western Baquba, a police source said.

BASRA - Mahdi Abu Saleh, a Sunni Imam of a mosque, was killed by gunmen in western Basra, 550 km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, said a local member of the Sunni Clerics Association.

MUSAYYIB - Two policemen were seriously wounded on Wednesday when they were ambushed by gunmen in Musayyib, an area 85 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. Supporting police came to the scene and seized seven gunmen and 200 rockets, police added.

DAWR - Six Iraqi soldiers and three policemen were killed on Wednesday when gunmen attacked their checkpoint in Dawr, near Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, the U.S military and Iraqi officials said.

BALAD - Gunmen attacked Iraqi army and police on Wednesday in Balad, 90 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad. Police wounded two gunmen and seized five others, police said. The police were unharmed, U.S. military and Iraqi officials said.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

*BAGHDAD - Iraq's government declared a daytime curfew on Friday, the Muslim day of prayers, state televison said late on Thursday.

*Jawad al-Maliki, a spokesman for the ruling Shi'ite Alliance and an ally of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said after discussions among leaders of the main political parties on Thursday that all had agreed to continue talks on a national unity coalition. Among those present at the talks, shown briefly on state television, was Adnan al-Dulaimi, a leader of the Sunni Accordance Front which had said last week it was boycotting talks on forming a government in protest at sectarian violence.

BAGHDAD - Militias loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will take a key defence role in Baghdad's Sadr City after a blast in a minibus that killed five people there, a Sadr official said. - alertnet.org/

At least 19 killed in attack on Iraq town

By Alastair Macdonald and Mariam Karouny - 3rd March

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen raided a small town near Baghdad and shot dead at least 19 people in what police said on Friday was a sectarian attack by Sunnis on Shi'ites, latest in a string of killings since a Shi'ite shrine was bombed last week.

Among the dead were Shi'ite migrant laborers shot down at a brick factory in a dusk raid on Thursday by a suspected al Qaeda-linked group. One local politician said at least 25 died, among them three children.

Hours after U.S. and Iraqi troops forced the 50 or so gunmen to withdraw, the Iraqi government imposed a new daytime traffic curfew on Baghdad to avert clashes on the Muslim day of prayer after 10 days of sectarian violence that has killed hundreds.

Iraqi police and troops, some in Soviet-built tanks, blocked deserted streets, but U.S. forces kept a low profile. American troops' hopes of going home soon have been in the balance since Iraq went to the brink of civil war over the past week.

Embattled Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari warned clergy against "inflammatory" language from pulpits on Friday.

Fiery Shi'ite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr told followers to pray with Sunnis. In mosques across the country, preachers made similar calls for unity after the destruction of the Shi'ite Golden Mosque in Samarra on February 22.

Jaafari, who with U.S. officials blames al Qaeda for the bombing, rallied Sunni and other leaders into resuming talks on a U.S.-sponsored unity coalition to help stem the violence.

The main minority Sunni bloc ended a boycott it called in protest at reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. Violence has killed at least 500 people, by conservative official accounts.

But after Jaafari hosted a late-night meeting on Thursday of the main parties elected to parliament in December, political sources said Sunnis, Kurds and other leaders were still pushing the dominant Shi'ite Alliance to ditch him as premier.

"The negotiations will go on but we still insist on removing Jaafari," said an official in the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front.

FACTORY

Interior Ministry officials in Baghdad said 19 bodies had been recovered after the attack at Nahrawan near Baghdad, including nine at the local power station, which was wrecked.

Municipal council leader Alaa Abdul Sahab al-Lamy said 21 bodies, mostly of Shi'ite Muslim migrants were found at the brick factory and four at the power station. "This was a sectarian attack," Lamy told Reuters by telephone from a police station where bodies had been brought.

It was one of the bloodiest incidents of the conflict. Last week, 47 people were killed near Nahrawan in one attack.

The rural area southeast of Baghdad, on Iraq's sectarian faultline between the Shi'ite south and Sunni Arab northwest, has seen considerable violence in the past two years. Guerrilla groups operate there in defiance of government and U.S. forces. Police sources said the gunmen attacked the power plant before U.S. and Iraqi troops responded. As the gunmen withdrew, they entered the brick factory and killed people working there. Lamy said that of the bodies recovered from the factory, one was a woman and three were children, including a girl aged about six. Many had a single bullet wound to the forehead.

DISSENT

Critics accuse Jaafari, a soft-spoken Islamist doctor, of failing to combat rebel violence and economic collapse in his year as interim prime minister. Some, including U.S. officials, look askance at his ties to Iran. He narrowly won the backing of his Shi'ite Alliance coalition to lead the new government with the crucial support of Sadr, who commands the Mehdi Army militia. As the biggest group in parliament, the Alliance nominates the prime minister.

Since Sunni Arabs took part in the U.S.-sponsored election in December, President George W. Bush has been pushing hard for the ruling Shi'ites to bring them into a national coalition. He says that could bring stability and let him start bringing home some of the 133,000 American soldiers now in Iraq. He said this week Iraqis had a choice between "chaos or unity."

Jaafari has ordered thousands of troops and police onto the streets of Baghdad, backed by U.S. soldiers, but their effectiveness is untested and their loyalties are uncertain in the face of sectarian militias to which some once belonged.

Many Sunnis, dominant under Saddam Hussein and suspicious of the U.S.-installed political system, view the police and army as hostile and under the control of Shi'ite and Kurdish interests.

At the Sunni Saadiya mosque in the west of the capital, protected by two police cars, about 150 worshippers heard praise from the pulpit for local Shi'ites who came to help defend the building from reprisal attacks after the Samarra bombing.

Abu Alaa, a 46-year-old Shi'ite who went to the Sunni mosque to pray, said: "This is a time when we need to stand united." - news.yahoo.com

Developments in Iraq, March 3

A wave of sectarian killing since a bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22 has killed more than 450 people, by conservative estimates.

SECURITY INCIDENTS

NAHRAWAN - More than 50 suspected Sunni insurgents attacked a small town near Baghdad at dusk on Thursday and killed a large number of Shi'ite workers, police and Interior Ministry sources confirmed on Friday. A local politician had said at least 25 people were killed in the attack on the town of Nahrawan, just southeast of the capital, in what he called a "sectarian attack" on Shi'ites.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

BAGHDAD - Iraqi troops and police patrolled the deserted streets of Baghdad on Friday after the government imposed a daytime traffic curfew to avert violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites on the Muslim day of prayer. Embattled Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari warned clerics not to use "inflammatory" language from pulpits.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. security official told Reuters that forces were on the alert for another major attack by the group led by Jordanian Sunni militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "There's been concern that Zarqawi might try to launch a large-scale attack," the official said. "That's been the case for some time ... not just been since the Samarra attack." - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 4 04 Mar 2006 16:12:57 GMT

SECURITY INCIDENTS

BAGHDAD - Seven people were killed and 20 injured when a mortar round hit a crowded market near a bus station in a town just southeast of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two civilians were killed and three policemen injured when a car bomb detonated near a police checkpoint in southeast of Baghdad, police said.

* KIRKUK - Two civilians were killed when gunmen opened fire on a Shi'ite mosque in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A mortar round landed near a building in the green zone 15 minutes after the Interior Minister Bayan Jabur had given a news conference there, a source from the Interior Ministry said. No details of casualties or damage were available, they said.

BAQUBA - Six policemen were injured when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in Baquba 65 km (40 miles) to the north of Baghdad, police said. In a separate incident a girl was killed and eight other civilians injured when a roadside bomb exploded in Baquba, police said.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Gen. John Abizaid, the Central Command chief who oversees military operations in the Middle East, met Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari and President Jalal Talabani during a visit to Baghdad. - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 5

SECURITY INCIDENTS

** MOSUL - A mortar or rocket damaged doors and windows of a Sunni mosque in northern Mosul 340 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad on Sunday, the cleric at the mosque said.

BAIJI - Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and two others wounded on Sunday when gunmen attacked their patrol in the oil refinery city of Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, local authorities said.

BAIJI - Two barbers were killed in their shop on Saturday by gunmen in Baiji, local authorities said on Sunday.

SAMARRA - Two children were wounded on Saturday when a roadside bomb went off near an ancient Caliphate palace in Samarra, local authorities said on Sunday.

BAGHDAD - Two mosque guards were killed and three wounded on Saturday night when gunmen attacked a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad, police said.

RAMADI - Police on Sunday found the body of a tribal leader in the city of Ramadi, 110 km (68 km) west of Baghdad, two weeks after he was abducted.

BAGHDAD - Two cousins and the nephew of the secretary general of the Muslim Scholars Association, a Sunni religious group, were killed when gunmen ambushed their car in Baghdad's western Adl district.

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi army said a man taken into custody, Ibnal Masriya, had confessed to beheading a Japanese backpacker in October 2004, Al-Iraqiya state television reported on Sunday. - alertnet.org

Japans interesting definition of a 'self defense force'

INTERVIEW-Iraq stability said key to Japan troop withdrawal

By Linda Sieg TOKYO, March 7 (Reuters) - A top Japanese diplomat on Tuesday dismissed reports that Tokyo could start withdrawing troops from Iraq as early as this month, saying a decision had to take into account public order and nation-building in the troubled country.

Japan has about 600 non-combat troops in Iraq on the nation's riskiest military mission since World War Two, a deployment that won praise from Tokyo's close ally the United States but was opposed by most Japanese voters.

"It is important for them (Iraqis) to be able to maintain public order themselves as much as possible and to achieve stability of civilian life," Senior Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Yasuhisa Shiozaki told Reuters in an interview. "We will decide on whether to withdraw the Self-Defence Forces (military) while watching whether such things are becoming possible," he said.

The Yomiuri newspaper reported last month that Japan planned to move its troops from Samawa in southern Iraq to Kuwait starting in late March and bring all personnel home by the end of July, but it said the start of the withdrawal might be delayed.

"I don't know why, but there has been talk of withdrawing in March," Shiozaki said. "That is not possible. Currently, Iraq is in an extremely difficult situation as to whether it can form a real government, and terrorism among religious groups...has intensified. While looking at the situation overall and to what degree we have achieved our basic goal, we will decide what to do."

Sectarian violence has killed hundreds in Iraq since the Feb. 22 bombing of Samarra's Golden Mosque.

NATION-BUILDING PROGRESS

Shiozaki said progress in Iraqi nation-building was another factor in deciding the timing of Japan's troop withdrawal.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Monday he would convene parliament in six days, but political wrangling means a government of national unity is unlikely to be formed soon.

"We have to decide this based on discussions with other countries involved," Shiozaki said.

"Other countries are deciding in the context of Iraq's nation-building. Japan needs to consider that as well."

With their activities strictly limited by Japan's pacifist constitution, Japanese troops have been engaged in reconstruction activities such as repairing buildings and providing medical training. They rely heavily on British and Australian forces to maintain security in the area.

An Australian newspaper reported on Tuesday that Canberra had committed its forces to remain in Iraq until 2007.

Britain's most senior officer in Iraq, Lieutenant General Nick Houghton, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper that Britain planned to pull out nearly all its 8,000 troops by mid-2008 but also said the timeline would only work if sectarian tensions did not worsen and a national unity government was formed.

Britain's Defence Ministry said no timetable had been finalised. - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 6

SECURITY DEVELOPMENTS

* MAHMUDIYA - Three people were killed, including two Iraqi soldiers, and five wounded when two car bombs, about 10 minutes apart, one driven by a suicide bomber, detonated in the town of Mahmudiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

One civilian was killed and five people were wounded, including two policemen, when a car bomb went off in Mahmudiya earlier in the day, police said.

* BAGHDAD - Mubdir al-Dulaimi, a senior Iraqi Army official, was assassinated while travelling in his convoy in the western Ghazaliya district of the capital, police said.

BAGHDAD - Three policemen were killed and one was wounded when a car bomb went off near their patrol in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Three civilians were wounded when a car bomb went off in central Baghdad, police said. The target was not known.

BAGHDAD - Ali Hussein al-Khafaji, the dean of the college of engineering, was abducted by gunmen while going to work in Baghdad, police said.

BAQUBA - A car bomb exploded in a busy market in Baquba northeast of Baghdad on Monday, killing six people, including two girls under four, and wounding 23, police said, adding most of the casualties were children.

BAGHDAD - One civilian was killed and 10 were wounded when a car bomb went off in northern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - One civilian was wounded when four mortar rounds landed in Sadr city in eastern Baghdad, police said.

ANBAR PROVINCE - A U.S. soldier was killed by "enemy action" on Sunday in western Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Two civilians and two policemen were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up near a bank in Baghdad's Doura district, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two policemen and four civilians were wounded when a car bomb exploded as their patrol passed by in northern Baghdad, police said.

BAQUBA - Three civilians were killed by gunmen in separate attacks in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

President Jalal Talabani said on Monday he would summon Iraq's new parliament to hold its first sitting on March 12. - alertnet.org

Top Iraqi general killed during insurgent attack in Baghdad

By JOHN WARD ANDERSON and ANN SCOTT TYSON The Washington Post - BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The top commander of the Iraqi army division in Baghdad was killed Monday afternoon when his car came under small-arms fire while traveling through the capital, the U.S. military said.

Maj. Gen. Mubdar Hatim Hazya al-Dulaimi was one of the highest-ranking members of the new Iraqi army to be killed in insurgent violence. Under his leadership, the 6th Iraqi Army Division has been gradually assuming control over parts of the capital from U.S. forces.

His killing could set back security efforts in Baghdad, particularly after the recent outbreak of sectarian violence, according to a senior U.S. commander who worked closely with him.

"It could be a blow that takes a long time to overcome," said Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr., commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, who oversaw U.S. troops in Baghdad for a year ending in January. "Losing a strong commander for even a little while in Baghdad could cause a further power shift toward what looks like the Shia control of the city."

The attack was one of a number of violent incidents across Iraq on Monday that left more than 20 people dead after a relative lull in bloodshed over the weekend.

President Jalal Talabani, meanwhile, announced that Iraq's new parliament, which was elected Dec. 15, will hold its first meeting on Sunday, the deadline set by the constitution for its first session. Lawmakers and political parties have been unable to agree on the composition of a new government, delaying the opening of parliament.

A U.S. military statement said Dulaimi "had been visiting his soldiers in Kadamiyah and was returning to his headquarters when his convoy came under small-arms-fire attack." It was not clear whether anyone else had been killed or injured in the incident.

Iraqi forces are in charge of security in about 60 percent of Baghdad. Only two weeks ago, Dulaimi had predicted that insurgent activity would decline because of the Iraqi army's operations.

A Sunni Arab sheik from southern Baghdad, Dulaimi led a division under Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and since Saddam's fall had commanded two other divisions before being selected by the Defense Ministry for the crucial job in Baghdad. "He was certainly destined to be a senior leader of all the armed forces," Webster said.

But Dulaimi's hands-on style and unique drive to lead from the front -- as well as his habit of shunning body armor -- also put him in greater danger. "He knew he had to be out with his soldiers for them to trust him," Webster said. "He put himself at more risk than his predecessors."

Elsewhere in the capital on Monday, at least four car bombs exploded, killing four people and injuring 24, police said. Four more people were killed and 10 wounded when three car bombs detonated in the town of Mahmudiyah, about 15 miles south of the capital, security officials said.

The U.S. military reported the death of a U.S. soldier in Anbar province on Sunday. Additional details were not available. - www.dfw.com

Developments in Iraq, March 7

* KHALIS - A car bomb killed three Iraqi soldiers and wounded one other in the town of Khalis, north east of Baghdad, the Iraqi army said.

* BAGHDAD - Six civilians were wounded when two car bombs parked on the side of the road were detonated in northern and northeastern Baghdad, police said. The target of the explosions was not clear, they said.

* BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb exploded in the New Baghdad district in the east of the capital, police said. There were no casualties.

BAQUBA - Gunmen killed three members of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's office in Baquba, police and hospital sources said. Two other members were wounded.

BAGHDAD - Three mortar rounds landed on the headquarters of the National Dialogue Front, a Sunni Arab party headed by Salih al-Mutlak. No casualties were reported.

KIRKUK - Three students and a soldier were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi army patrol drove by Kirkuk University in central Kirkuk, 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

HAWIJA - A policeman was killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting on the Kirkuk-Hawija highway, 60 km (40 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police said.

BAGHDAD - Five civilians were wounded when a car bomb exploded in southern Baghdad, police said. The target of the explosion was not clear.

BAGHDAD - A civilian was killed and his wife was wounded when a car bomb struck at a U.S. patrol in western Baghdad, police said.

BAQUBA - A car bomb killed one civilian and wounded three police officers. The policemen had arrived at the scene after gunmen had killed a policeman on a patrol.

HILLA - Three traffic policemen and four civilians were wounded when a car bomb went off in central Hilla, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad. Another car bomb exploded in northern Hilla but no casualties were reported.

BALAD - A policeman was wounded when four mortar rounds landed in and around Balad police station in Balad, 90 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAIJI - Three policemen were killed and four were wounded when gunmen attacked their patrol in the oil refinery city of Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

TIKRIT - A Sunni shrine was destroyed on Monday when gunmen planted bombs inside it in the city of Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. - alertnet.org

More than a dozen bodies of strangled Iraqis found in Baghdad

Big News Network.com Wednesday 8th March, 2006

Iraqi police say a roadside bomb blast hit an Interior Ministry security convoy in central Baghdad Wednesday, killing at least two people.

Earlier, a security patrol found the bound bodies of 18 young men in an abandoned vehicle in Amiriyah, a predominantly Sunni Muslim neighborhood of the capital.

Iraqi officials say two of the men appear to have been shot, and most had their hands bound and were blindfolded. They say most of the victims had been strangled recently.

There is no word on who the victims were, or the motive for their killing, but the grisly discovery comes during a surge in sectarian violence. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed following last month's bombing of a landmark golden-domed mosque in Samarra that was a shrine for Shi'ite Muslim faithful.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, says the sectarian attacks could develop into a civil war. He told the Los Angeles Times that the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions.

President Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said Tuesday he does not believe Iraq is in a state of civil war now, but he acknowledged the potential for such a conflict has always been present in the country.

Meanwhile, Iraqi political parties are continuing their efforts to form a new government, amid efforts by the main Shi'ite alliance to delay the scheduled opening of Parliament.

President Jalal Talabani has ordered Parliament to convene on Sunday, in order to meet a deadline mandated by the nation's post-Saddam constitution. However, the Shi'ite alliance - the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - told Mr. Talabani Tuesday the naming of a prime minister could not take place until several days after March 12. - bignewsnetwork

Rumsfeld says Iran stirring up trouble in Iraq

Big News Network.com Wednesday 8th March, 2006

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused Iran of sending members of an elite military force into Iraq to stir up trouble.

U.S. officials have long accused Iran of allowing insurgents and their supporters to cross its border with Iraq. Some media reports have indicated that Iran is sending in specially trained soldiers. But this is the first time Secretary Rumsfeld has made such an accusation.

"They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq," said Donald Rumsfeld. "And we know it. And it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment."

Secretary Rumsfeld said the people being sent are part of what is called the "Quds" Force, an elite unit of Iran's Republican Guards.

"They're putting Iranian 'Quds' Force type people into the country," he said. "I don't think we could consider them religious pilgrims."

Secretary Rumsfeld and the top U.S. military officer, General Peter Pace, indicated that some of the Iranian soldiers have been intercepted recently. But they could not say how long such forces have been operating in Iraq. General Pace said he has an idea how many are there, but he would not share that information. He noted that in the past, the U.S. military has found weapons and bombs in Iraq that it believes had come from Iran. But he said the latest reports refer to what he called "individuals crossing the border."

Secretary Rumsfeld said he does not have specific evidence that the Iranian government is behind the deployment of the "Quds" operatives, but he indicated he believes it is a reasonable assumption.

"Of course, 'Quds' Force, the Revolutionary Guard, doesn't go milling around willy nilly, one would think," stated Donald Rumsfeld.

Secretary Rumsfeld called the development a threat to Iraqi security, which could result in the deaths of more Iraqis. And he said the alleged Iranian operation stems from concerns about the effort to establish democracy in Iraq.

"It's certainly not to be in support of placing on their border a country that's democratic and notably unlike the regime in Iran," said U.S. defense secretary.

The allegation that Iran is sending the specially trained forces into Iraq comes as Iraqi leaders are trying to maintain order in spite of anger generated by the bombing of an important Shiite mosque two weeks ago. Secretary Rumsfeld said the attack and its aftermath have delayed the formation of a new Iraqi government. But he praised the Iraqi security forces, officials and political party leaders for preventing the outbreak of a civil war. And he accused the media of exaggerating the violence that followed the mosque bombing. - bignewsnetwork

Gunmen Abduct 50 Iraqis; Bombings Kill Two

By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - 9th March 2006 - Gunmen wearing commando uniforms of the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry on Wednesday stormed an Iraqi security company that relied heavily on Sunni ex-military men from the Saddam regime, spiriting away 50 hostages. The ministry denied involvement and called the operation a "terrorist act."

On Thursday, two roadside bombings targeting Iraqi patrols killed at least two civilians and injured 10, police said.

One blast missed an army patrol in Amariyah, a mostly Sunni neighborhood in west Baghdad, but killed two civilians and injured seven, said police Capt. Jassim al-Wahish.

Another was aimed at a police patrol in Jihad, a mostly Sunni western neighborhood, injuring three civilians bystanders, said police Lt. Mohammed Kheyoun.

Meanwhile, police and the U.S. military reported finding the bodies of 24 men garroted or shot in the head, most of them in an abandoned bus in a tough Baghdad Sunni neighborhood. They also reported the deaths of at least 15 others across Iraq, including a U.S. soldier and two Marines.

The Sunni minority, which was dominant in the country under Saddam Hussein, has complained bitterly that it is under attack from death squads associated with the Interior Ministry, in charge of Iraq's police. And, over the past two weeks - since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra - violence has become increasingly sectarian. Nearly 600 people have been killed since Feb. 22.

Many of the dead in that period were Sunnis, killed at close range after apparently being captured by overwhelming numbers of attackers. The nature of the killings suggested that a well-armed and organized force carried out the attacks.

There have also been repeated attacks against the Shiite-led security forces. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr and one of his assistants may themselves have been targets of assassination attempts Wednesday.

A bomb hidden under a parked car detonated as police from Jabr's protection force were driving through Baghdad, killing two officers and wounding a third, police said. Four bystanders were injured.

And gunmen attacked the convoy of Interior Ministry Undersecretary Hekmet Moussa in west Baghdad, killing two bodyguards and injuring two others, police said. Neither Jabr nor Moussa were in the convoys.

The sectarian bloodshed has complicated Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's bid for a second term. Al-Jaafari is opposed by a coalition of Sunni Arab, Kurdish and secular Shiite politicians - led by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd.

The president has openly challenged al-Jaafari's candidacy on grounds he is too divisive and would be unable to form a government representing all Iraq's religious and ethnic factions. There was also great unease over al-Jaafari's close ties to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

On Wednesday, Shiite Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi finally co-signed a presidential decree to call parliament into session for the first time since the Dec. 15 elections. The about-face appeared to break a political deadlock that had blocked attempts to begin the process of forming the country's first permanent, post-invasion government.

"He signed the decree today. I expect the first session to be held on Sunday or by the end of next week at the latest," said Nadim al-Jabiri, head of one of seven Shiite parties that make up the United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament.

At the same time, however, Abdul-Mahdi's change of heart signaled a potentially dangerous and growing internal dispute among the country's majority Shiite political factions over the nomination of al-Jaafari, who has been criticized for not addressing Sunni complaints about the Interior Ministry.

The al-Rawafid Security Co. was attacked after gunmen arrived in a convoy of vehicles, including several white SUVs and a pickup truck mounted with a heavy gun, that they used to carry away the hostages, said Interior Ministry Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi. He said the victims, who included bodyguards, drivers, computer technicians and other employees, did not resist because they believed their abductors were police special forces working for the Interior Ministry. "It was a terrorist act," ministry Undersecretary Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Khefaji said.

Al-Rawafid, which employs a large number of Saddam's former military officers, is one of dozens of companies providing security against the rampant violence in Iraq. Company headquarters are in Zayouna, a volatile and mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood in east Baghdad. One of its main clients is Iraqna, a cell phone company owned by Egyptian telecom giant Orascom.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said an American soldier was killed Tuesday in a roadside bombing in the northwestern city of Tal Afar and a Marine died the same day in enemy action in western Anbar province. Another Marine was killed in Anbar on Wednesday.

Their deaths raised to at least 2,303 the number of U.S. military members who have died since the beginning of the war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians.

The grisly discovery of corpses began when an American military patrol found 18 bodies - all men - in a bus on a road between two dangerous and mostly Sunni west Baghdad neighborhoods.

The bodies were brought to Yarmouk Hospital and lined up on stretchers for identification. Most had bruises indicating they were garroted and two were shot, said Dr. Muhanad Jawad. Police believed at least two of the men were foreign Arabs. Police found the bodies of six more men - four of them strangled and two shot - discarded in other parts of the city.

One often overlooked undercurrent of the daily bloodshed in today's Iraq is its effect on children. At least two boys were killed Wednesday in a roadside bombing, police said. And gunmen stopped a school bus carrying about 25 high school girls, shooting the driver in front of his terrified passengers. He later died of his injuries, police said.

Wednesday's political breakthrough - the signing of the decree calling parliament into session - did not mean the country's political crisis was over. It could, however, bring the deepening feud to a head.

The Shiite Alliance is itself divided over al-Jaafari's candidacy. He defeated Abdul-Mahdi, a Shiite and one of two vice presidents, by a single vote in the Shiite caucus last month, largely because of al-Sadr's backing.

Talabani, whose job it is to call parliament into session, sought to do that three days ago but was unable to persuade Abdul-Mahdi to sign as required by the constitution. Talabani was trying to force the hand of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the country's senior Shiite politician and head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Abdul-Mahdi heads the Shiite parliamentary bloc loyal to al-Hakim.

A senior Shiite politician, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity nature of the information, said Abdul-Mahdi signed Talabani's presidential decree after U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad sought al-Hakim's intervention during a meeting Tuesday.

Political insiders now say al-Jaafari's candidacy depends on how the bloc loyal to al-Hakim and Abdul-Mahdi decides to vote. Al-Hakim and Abdul-Mahdi are widely said by politicians to oppose his nomination but have held back from outright opposition because they fear incurring the wrath of al-Sadr.

Nadim al-Jabiri, head of one of six other Shiite political factions, said the decision to sign was made on advice Wednesday from Iraq's Federal Court, which said parliament could be convened through an alternative process if Abdul-Mahdi continued to hold out. By law, parliament has 15 days after it is convened to elect a new president. It then has 15 more days to approve the prime minister, and 30 days after that to vote on his Cabinet. - associated press

Developments in Iraq, March 8

* MOSUL - Hospital and police sources said they received five bodies shot dead by U.S. forces in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. No details of the incident were available. The U.S. military said it was checking the report.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen attacked the house of Interior Minister advisor Major General Hikmat Moussa Salman in western Baghdad. Police said two of his bodyguards were killed and two wounded.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen wearing Iraqi police commando uniforms seized about 50 employees from the offices of a security company in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Four civilians were wounded when a car bomb exploded near a U.S. patrol in the western part of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two Interior Ministry personnel were killed and five wounded when a roadside bomb went off near minister of interior's convoy in eastern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.

TAL AFAR - A U.S. soldier was killed and four others wounded on Tuesday when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Tal Afar northwest of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, U.S. military said in a statement.

BAQUBA - Iraqi army and police arrested 19 suspects in raids in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of 18 men, bound and blindfolded, were found on Tuesday night in a minibus in western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

FALLUJA - Four civilians were killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in a main road in Falluja, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two policemen were killed and six civilians and two policemen wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of two people were found, bound and blindfolded, after they were shot dead in eastern Baghdad, police said. - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 8

BAGHDAD - The bodies of 18 men, bound and blindfolded, were found on Tuesday night in a minibus in western Baghdad, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

FALLUJA - Four civilians were killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in a main road in Falluja, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two policemen were killed and six civilians and two policemen wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of two people were found, bound and blindfolded, after they were shot dead in eastern Baghdad, police said. - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 9

BAGHDAD - President Jalal Talabani to meet political leaders to agree a plan on when parliament will convene. Under a constitutional deadline, deputies should meet by Sunday.

BAGHDAD - Six civilians were killed and eight wounded when a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in western Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.

FALLUJA - A U.S, Marine was killed in combat on Wednesday in Anbar Province, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed two people employed in the Green Zone, home to the Iraqi government and foreign embassies. The two were on their way to work when they were attacked in the western Mansour district, police said. -

Developments in Iraq, March 10

SECURITY DEVELOPMENTS

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded two others near Yarmouk Hospital on the western side of Baghdad, sources at the hospital said.

ISKANDARIYA - One person was killed and two wounded by a roadside bomb in Iskandariya, 50 km (30 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. Abrams tank was set ablaze when a roadside bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The tank crew was not injured.

* FALLUJA - At least 11 people, including five policemen, were killed when a suicide truck bomber struck a checkpoint manned by U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces in eastern Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, police said. The U.S. military, apparently referring to the same incident, said a U.S. Marine, an Iraqi soldier and three Iraqi civilians from one family were killed. The U.S. statement made no mention of policemen.

SAMARRA - An imam of a Sunni mosque was killed and two people wounded when a car bomb exploded in front of a mosque in central Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

SAMARRA - Two civilians were killed and another two were injured when a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol missed its target in southwestern Samarra, police said.

TIKRIT - Two roadside bombs targeting a police patrol exploded in the centre of the town of Tikrit 175 km (110 miles), killing one policeman and injuring another four, police said.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

BAGHDAD - Iraq's president Jalal Talabani invited parliament to convene on March 19, a statement from the presidential office said. - alertnet.org

State Department: Tom Fox Killed

(AP) WASHINGTON A State Department spokesman says American hostage Tom Fox has been killed.

Al-Jazeera television on Monday broadcast a 25-second, silent videotape showing three of four hostage Christian Peacemaker activists, and said that the men asked their governments and countries in the Persian Gulf to work for their release. Absent from the tape was the only American among the four captives.

The hostages disappeared on Nov. 26 and the previously unknown Swords of Righteousness Brigades had claimed responsibility for his caputer. The tape broadcast Tuesday carried a Feb. 28 date.

The four were last seen together on a videotape, also broadcast by al-Jazeera, on Jan. 28. It was dated seven days earlier.

In that broadcast, an al-Jazeera newsreader said the hostage-takers issued a statement saying it was the "last chance" for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to "release all Iraqi prisoners in return of freeing the hostages otherwise their fate will be death." No deadline was set. - cbs13.com

Developments in Iraq, March 11

FALLUJA - Three civilians, one Iraqi soldier and a U.S. soldier were killed when a suicide car bomb detonated near the western city of Falluja on Friday, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - The body of American hostage Tom Fox was found with gun shot wounds and his hands tied behind his back near a railway line in western Baghdad on Thursday, police said on Saturday.

BAGHDAD - A director of Al-Iraqiya state owned television Amjad Hameed was killed and his driver wounded when gunmen ambushed his car in western Baghdad, police said.

BALAD - A roadside bomb exploded near a mosque killing two people and wounding one in the small town of Yathrib near Balad 85 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad on Friday, police said on Saturday. In a separate incident a U.S. military unit raided a house and killed a 25-year-old man in al-Thuluya near Balad on Friday, police said on Saturday. (IRAQ-DEVELOPMENTS; reporting by Gazwan Hassan in Tikrit, Faris al-Mahdawi in Baquba and Baghdad newsroom; writing by Ahmed Rasheed)) - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 12

SECURITY INCIDENTS

* BAGHDAD - At least 40 people were killed and 95 wounded in three car bombs that exploded almost simultaneously in two markets in the Shi'ite Sadr district of Baghdad on Sunday. Police dismantled a fourth bomb in the same area, they said.

* LATIFIYA - Gunmen ambushed and killed a local football player (Mohammad Najah) in Latifiya 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, local police said.

* BAGHDAD - Two civilians were killed and four wounded when a mortar round landed on a paint shop in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Eight bodies were found with their hands tied and gun shot wounds to the head in Rustamiya, a suburb in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Six people were killed and 14 wounded, including policemen, when a roadside bomb exploded as a U.S convoy passed by in southern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed two police officers in separate incidents in Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two soldiers were killed and four wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Five soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad received at least twenty bodies overnight, some with gun shot wounds, a source in the hospital said.

DHULUIYA - Gunmen killed two army officers who work in the Joint Coordination Centre in Dhuluiya, 40 km (25 miles) north of Baghdad, the Joint Coordination Centre of Dhuluiya said.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

BAGHDAD - The trail of Saddam Hussein and seven co-defendants resumed on Sunday in the heavily fortified green zone. Saddam and seven others are charged with crimes against humanity in connection with the execution of 148 villagers from Dujail after an assassination attempt on his life there in 1982.

BAGHDAD - Iraq's president said on Sunday he was bringing forward the first session of parliament to March 16 from March 19, the date of a Shi'ite Muslim religious festival. - alertnet.org

British soldier quits army, accuses US troops of illegal tactics in Iraq

(AFP) 12 March 2006 LONDON - An elite British soldier revealed on Sunday that he quit the army after refusing to fight in Iraq anymore on moral grounds because of the "illegal" tactics used by US troops on the ground.

Ben Griffin, a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) described in an interview with the The Sunday Telegraph the experiences that led him to end his impressive army career after just three months in Baghdad. The 28-year-old, who was discharged last June, is believed to be the first SAS soldier to refuse to go into combat and to quit the army on moral grounds.

"I saw a lot of things in Baghdad that were illegal or just wrong," Griffin told the weekly newspaper in his first interview since leaving the SAS. "I knew, so others must have known, that this was not the way to conduct operations if you wanted to win the hearts and minds of the local population. "And if you can't win the hearts and minds of the people, you can't win the war."

Griffin, who worked in the SAS's counter-terrorist team, recalled joint operations to tackle insurgents with his American counterparts. "We would radio back to our headquarters that we were not going to detain certain people because, as far as we were concerned, they were not a threat because they were old men or obviously farmers, but the Americans would say: "No, bring them back'," Griffin said. "The Americans had this catch-all approach to lifting suspects. The tactics were draconian and completely ineffective."

The SAS soldier spoke of another operation, which netted a group of innocent civilians who were clearly nothing to do with the insurgency. "I couldn't understand why we had done this, so I said to my troop commander: "Would we have behaved in the same way in the Balkans or Northern Ireland?' He shrugged his shoulders and said: 'This is Iraq', and I thought: "And that makes it all right?'"

Griffin said he believed US soldiers had no respect for Iraqis, whom they regarded as "sub-human". "You could almost split the Americans into two groups: ones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing Iraqis, and the others who were in Iraq because the army was going to pay their college fees," he said. "They had no understanding or interest in the Arab culture. The Americans would talk to the Iraqis as if they were stupid and these weren't isolated cases, this was from the top down. "There might be one or two enlightened officers who understood the situation a bit better but on the whole that was their general attitude. Their attitude fuelled the insurgency. I think the Iraqis detested them."

Griffin said he had reservations about going to Iraq in the first place, but went because he was a soldier and had to obey orders. He soon found it impossible to separate his personal views from his work.

"It was at that stage that I knew I couldn't carry on. I was very angry, and still am, at the way the politicians in this country and America have lied to the British public about the war," Griffin said. "But most importantly, I didn't join the British army to conduct American foreign policy."

In March 2005, Griffin told his commanding officer while on leave that he had no intention of returning to Iraq because he thought the war was morally wrong. The Ministry of Defence, when contacted by The Sunday Telegraph, declined to comment. - financialexpress

Developments in Iraq, March 13

*BAGHDAD - A child was killed and three people wounded when a mortar round landed on a house in the Shula district of Baghdad, police said.

*BAGHDAD - Two civilians were killed and four wounded when a car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy exploded in southern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier died of wounds from a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

ISKANDARIYA - A civilian was killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol went off in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, police said.

TIKRIT - Five bodyguards were wounded when a car bomb exploded near the convoy of the governor of Salahaddin province in Tikrit, 170 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

TIKRIT - Five people were killed and 18 wounded when a bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in Tikrit, police said.

KIRKUK - Two policemen were killed and four wounded when two car bombs exploded in separate attacks on a police patrol in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Four policemen and six civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb hit a police patrol in central Baghdad, police said.

FALLUJA - A U.S. Marine was killed on Sunday by "enemy action" in Anbar Province, the U.S. military said.

TAJI - One person was killed and six wounded when a roadside bomb went off in Taji, some 20 km north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of four people were found in Sadr City, in eastern Baghdad, police said. They had been shot and there were signs of torture. - alertnet.org

FEATURE-When Iraq death squads come calling: a family story

By Ibon Villelabeitia and Mussab Al-Khairalla - BAGHDAD, March 14 (Reuters) - It didn't take long for the wave of sectarian hatred that washed over Iraq last month to hit the Baghdad home of the Samarrai family -- just a few hours, in fact, before black-clad militiamen came calling.

Screaming for revenge for the bombing at dawn that day of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, about 40 gunmen burst into the villa of the Sunni Muslim family who, as their name suggests, have roots in the mainly Sunni city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Brandishing Kalashnikov rifles, the men dragged Ziad al- Samarrai, 39, from the house, kicked and punched him in front of his mother, threw him into the boot of a car and sped away. Then things got worse. The band returned half an hour later, neighbours said, to the religiously mixed district of eastern Baghdad where the Samarrai family has lived for 20 years. They pursued Ziad's 60-year-old mother to the home of a Shi'ite neighbour where she had sought refuge and shot her dead. Ziad's ordeal lasted about seven hours, into the night. He was blindfolded and beaten with cables, he said, showing his wounds. His captors dropped burning plastic on his legs. Dumping him back on a city street that same night, the gunmen threatened to kill him and "everybody you know" if they did not get out of Baghdad. He now thinks of little but fleeing.

"I see the image of my dead mother in my sleep," Ziad told Reuters as he drank coffee last week, nursing his wounds and lying low at the home of friends elsewhere in the capital. "We were targeted because we are Sunnis from Samarra."

His account is typical of many and was corroborated in interviews with other family members known to Reuters reporters and with neighbours in the modestly prosperous Palestine Street district, where Sunnis and Shi'ites live side-by-side, close to the Sadr City slum where Shi'ite militiamen are a major force.

MISSING

Fear that Iraq is descending into all-out civil war, three years after U.S.-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein's minority Sunni-dominated government, has prompted others to flee homes where they felt exposed or to join neighbourhood patrols. Officials, clearly anxious to play down the bloodshed, put the death toll in days of sectarian violence after the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra at some 500. Many suspect the toll may be higher, given the numbers of people who have simply disappeared. Tales are legion over the past months of armed men, some in police and other uniforms, seizing people from their homes, never to be seen again.

Like many families in Baghdad, home to 7 million people, it had happened to the Samarrais even before Feb. 22.

Four months ago, gunmen who identified themselves as Interior Ministry commandos seized Ziad's 20-year-old cousin and one of his uncles, family members told Reuters. The two men were taken after commandos raided one of the family's businesses and the two have been missing since then.

"We looked for them at the Interior Ministry and at local police stations," said Ziad al-Samarrai's aunt, who did not wish to be named. "We have been going to the morgue every week to see if we can find them there, but we haven't heard anything about them ever since the day they were taken," she said.

Sunni leaders accuse the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry of running death squads in a dirty war that may be meant to target Sunni insurgents but also traumatises whole communities. Shi'ites too complain of night-time sectarian killings.

The discovery of bodies, many bearing signs of torture, is a daily occurrence in Baghdad. Last week, 18 men from the Sunni suburb of Abu Ghraib were found garrotted in a minibus. Dozens more such bodies were found this week, after multiple car bombs in a Shi'ite militia stronghold killed more than 50 people.

The government admits some uniformed forces may be out of control but says it is trying to stamp out abuses. In a report this month, the U.S. State Department said killings by the government or its agents increased in 2005 and that militias dominated many police units.

SCREAMING

After the gunmen sped away with her son Ziad, Buthaina al- Samarrai called her sister: "She was crying on the phone and wanted me to go to her," the sister said. "The house had been ransacked ... She was screaming and beating herself." The sister, who did not want to be named, left to try to organise help in finding Ziad al-Samarrai. Then she heard shots. Neighbours said later that gunmen had returned and found Buthaina al-Samarrai in one of the neighbours' homes. They took her to a separate room and shot her dead despite neighbours' pleas.

"I went and saw her covered with a bed sheet. I removed the cover and saw her face disfigured by the bullets. I was terrified and ran into the street screaming," her sister said.

Ziad said his captors tortured him into confessing he was a "Wahhabi terrorist," referring to the austere school of Sunni Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and by al Qaeda militants. "They asked me if I listened to Osama bin Laden or to Sistani," he said, referring to Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric. "I told them that I listened to music, watched Western movies and drank alcohol."

Samarrai, who had some of his teeth knocked out, said he just wants out now: "I want to leave Iraq as soon as I can. I want to seek asylum in any non-Arab country I can find." - alertnet.org

Blair was warned of US strategy mess in Iraq: leaked memos

Tue Mar 14, LONDON (AFP) - Top British officials warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that the US plan for postwar Iraq was a mess and outlined major blunders made once the coalition took control, leaked memos revealed.

John Sawers, Blair's envoy in Baghdad immediately after the March 2003 invasion, sent a series of confidential messages to London in May and June of that year, The Guardian newspaper reported, citing the memos themselves which were obtained by the co-author of a new book on the war.

Michael Gordon co-wrote "Cobra II: the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq" with General Bernard Trainor. Extracts of the book have also been published in The Guardian. In the memos, Sawers reportedly described the US postwar administration in Iraq, led by the retired general Jay Garner, as "an unbelievable mess".

He said: "Garner and his top team of 60-year-old retired generals" were "well meaning but out of their depth".

On May 11, 2003, just four days after arriving in Baghdad, the British diplomat sent a damning memo to Blair's key advisors titled: "Iraq: What's Going Wrong". He wrote: "No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis."

Sawers, who is now political director at the Foreign Office, said urgent action was needed by the United States, noting: "The clock is ticking." Major General Albert Whitely, the most senior British officer with the US land forces, reinforced the grim message in a separate note weeks later that suggested the US-led coalition was in danger of failure. "We may have been seduced into something we might be inclined to regret. Is strategic failure a possibility? The answer has to be 'yes'," he said. Sawers and Whitely said a decision by Washington to cut troops after the invasion was one of the biggest blunders of the occupation.

In addition, Sawers criticised the US Third Infantry Division, which he described as "a big part of the problem" in Baghdad, accusing its soldiers of staying in their armoured cars when on patrol.

He recalled an incident when British troops saw them fire three tank rounds into a building in response to relatively harmless rifle fire.

The arrival of Paul Bremer to replace Garner as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority was welcomed by Sawers, but by late June he still concluded that the situation in Iraq was worsening. At the same time, Sawers and Whitely continued to believe Bremer would turn things around. Whitely was less flattering about Garner whom he accused of showing little interest in the postwar period known as Phase IV. The British general assessed that this period did not work well because too much focus had been put on the invasion.

"There was a blind faith that Phase IV would work. There was a failure to anticipate the extent of the backlash or mood of Iraqi society," he wrote. Iraq is still a scene of daily violence and bloodshed now, almost three years after the US-led invasion to topple - yahoo.com

Bush ties Iran to deadly Iraq bombs

Tue Mar 14, WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush, stepping up a war of words with Iran, accused Tehran of contributing to ever-deadlier roadside bombs used against US-led forces and civilians in Iraq.

"Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing Shia militia with the capability to build improvised explosive devices in Iraq," the US president said on Monday.

Bush said that support for terrorism and international suspicions that the Islamic republic seeks nuclear weapons were "increasingly isolating" Tehran and promised "America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats."

Asked about the linkage to Shiite forces, two US officials who declined to be named pointed to previously reported ties between the government of Iran and radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr. Bush's charge came as he launched a public relations campaign to revive support for the war he launched three years ago, with polls showing the US public sour on his handling of the conflict and seeking a quick US withdrawal.

Some 2,300 US troops have been killed, thousands more wounded or maimed, and the conflict has cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Even some of the most prominent conservative backers of the March 2003 invasion have questioned whether the United States can achieve victory amid deepening fears that sectarian violence in Iraq will flare up into civil war.

"I wish I could tell you that the violence is waning and that the road ahead will be smooth. It will not," he said. "We will see more images of chaos and carnage in the days and months to come."

At the same time, as he has in the past, Bush rejected calls to set a timetable for bringing home the roughly 130,000 US troops in Iraq and pleaded for patience from the skeptical US public. "We will not lose our nerve," said the president. "The battle lines in Iraq are clearly drawn for the world to see, and there is no middle ground. The enemy will emerge from Iraq one of two ways: Emboldened or defeated."

Bush also declared that the United States has a strategy for dealing with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) like roadside bombs, a weapon of choice for the insurgents targeting US and Iraqi forces.

US military intelligence sources have said that increasingly powerful IEDs, with greater armor-piercing power and sophisticated triggers, have been traced to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, or to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia in Lebanon.

Bush said that there was evidence that some components in the most powerful IEDs came from Iran, and that coalition forces had "seized IEDs and components that were clearly produced in Iran."

Last week, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld directly accused the Islamic government in Tehran for the first time of sending Iranian Revolutionary Guard into Iraq to make trouble.

Bush on Monday renewed sanctions barring US firms and citizens from oil dealings with Iran, citing an "unusual and extraordinary threat" from Tehran. Meanwhile, Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted Tuesday there was no going back on the country's nuclear ambitions, ahead of a key UN Security Council meeting on Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment.

On Monday, at least 14 Iraqis were killed in attacks around the country, including a journalist and a young girl, as police discovered 21 executed bodies, security sources said. That came a day after six car bombs ripped through four market places in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City, killing at least 46 people and wounding over 200 in Iraq's worst blood-letting so far this year.

Bush acknowledged the violence but pointed to Iraqi elections and efforts to form a government as critical victories and saying that US troops can only go home when fledgling Iraqi security forces can replace them. Although he has rejected "artificial timetables" for a US withdrawal, Bush said Monday he wanted "the Iraqis (to) control more territory than the coalition by the end of 2006." - .yahoo news.com/

Reports From the Future of Iraq Project

Over 1,200 Pages of Previously Unavailable Reports From State Dept Planning for Post-Saddam Iraq

Warnings and Recommendations by Experts and Iraqi Exiles Ignored by Administration


The Reports
all are in Acrobat/PDF format

Overview | 60 pgs | 2 meg

Transitional Justice | 248 pgs | 12 meg

Democratic Principles and Procedures | 212 pgs | 10.2 meg

Water, Agriculture, and Environment | 21 pgs | 850 K

Public Health and Humanitarian Needs | 64 pgs | 4.4 meg

Defense Policy and Institutions | 73 pgs | 3.2 meg

Local Government | 144 pgs | 1.7 meg

Economy and Infrastructure (Public Finance) | 198 pgs | 9.5 meg

Civil Society Capacity Building | 37 pgs | 1.3 meg

Transparency and Anti-Corruption Measures | 170 pgs | 6.5 meg

Education | 8 pgs | 330 K

Free Media | 18 pgs | 900 K

Oil and Energy | 94 pgs | 3.9 meg

Introduction
Russ Kick

>>> Starting in October 2001, about a year and a half before the US and its allies invaded Iraq, the State Department spearheaded an effort called the Future of Iraq Project. Dozens of Iraqi exiles and international experts were brought together to figure out how to create a new Iraq should Saddam Hussein somehow be taken out of power.

Within the project, seventeen working groups covered such areas as the justice system, local government, agriculture, media, education, and oil. The various working groups began meeting in July 2002 and continued through March/April 2003. Twelve of the groups released reports. The project cost $5 million.

The project's observations and recommendations were almost wholly ignored by the administration during its pre-war planning for the occupation. Soon after the invasion, though, CD-ROMs of the reports were sent to the staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Among other things, the working groups foresaw the widespread looting in the aftermath of invasion and warned against quickly disbanding the Iraqi Army.

The project's reports have never been made available to the public. In October 2003, "Congressional officials" allowed two New York Times reporters to view the reports, but they were not allowed to take them. Upon reading this, I immediately filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the reports, which was granted in February 2006. Eight of the reports were released in their entirety, while the rest were redacted to some degree. I have scanned them and created a PDF file of each report, all of which are posted to the left.

 

More Info

State Dept. Study Foresaw Trouble Now Plaguing Iraq (New York Times). "A yearlong State Department study predicted many of the problems that have plagued the American-led occupation of Iraq, according to internal State Department documents and interviews with administration and Congressional officials."

State Department experts warned CENTCOM before Iraq war about lack of plans for post-war Iraq security (National Security Archive)

Future of Iraq Project (SourceWatch)

Preparing for Post-Saddam Iraq: Plans and Actions by Charles Patterson. Written by a member of the Future of Iraq Project. "One failing of the project was that State, perhaps due to insularity, did not insist that other key agencies, DoD, CIA, and NSC, be forced to buy into the planning. A cynic might say that plan was only given to State to distract it from the plan to invade and occupy Iraq."

Memory Hole

Christian Peace Activists Stay In Iraq Despite Danger

By Chris Herlinger - Religion News Service

The North American peace activist group Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) says it will continue its work in Iraq despite the murder of one of four team members abducted in January.

The body of American Quaker peace activist and CPT brigade member Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Va., was discovered Thursday (March 9) in Baghdad by U.S. troops. His death was announced Friday.

The peace activist apparently had been tortured before his death, officials said. No reason has been given for his murder.

"Our work continues," Kryss Chupp, a spokeswoman for the peace activist organization said in an interview Monday (March 13).

The fate of the other three team members remains unknown. Chupp said the CPT will remain in Iraq "to greet our missing team members when they are released." She said despite Fox's murder, the organization remains hopeful that the other three -- Norman Kember, 74, of Great Britain and James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both of Canada -- will be released.

Fox and the others traveled to Baghdad in November to work with Iraqi peace groups in defense of Iraqi prison detainees and their families. The four were abducted Nov. 26, and a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigades has claimed responsibility for the kidnappings. The group threatened to kill the peace activists unless Iraqi detainees in U.S. and Iraqi prisons were immediately released. The kidnapped activists have been seen on several videotapes, though the last one, broadcast March 7, did not show Fox.

Fox's life and death are being marked in vigils and religious services.

"In response to Tom's passing, we ask that everyone set aside inclinations to vilify or demonize others, no matter what they have done," CPT said in a statement.

CPT is committed to non-violent action in conflict zones, such as Iraq. The group has offices in Chicago and Toronto and was organized in 1984 by Mennonites, Brethren and Quakers -- members of the traditional peace churches. - beliefnet

Developments in Iraq, March 14

SECURITY DEVELOPMENTS

BAGHDAD - Iraqi police said they found 31 bodies with gunshot wounds in southeast Baghdad on Tuesday. Two people had been killed about a week to 10 days ago, police said. The other 29 appeared to have been tortured and killed in the last few days and were shot, gagged and bound.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of 15 people were found bound and strangled in western Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Baghdad hospital received the bodies of 40 people killed in separate incidents in Baghdad during the last 24 hours, a source in the hospital said.

* BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed the editor of an Iraqi weekly magazine near his home and wounded two of his relatives on Monday in southern Baghdad, police said.

NEAR BAQUBA - A person was killed and eight others wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a group of pilgrims on the main road between Baghdad and Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

BAGHDAD - Baghdad will be put under an extended vehicle curfew from 8 p.m. on Wednesday to 4 p.m. on Thursday as parliament opens for the first time, Iraqi state television reported on Tuesday, quoting the Interior Ministry.

The capital already has an overnight curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. - alertnet

Developments in Iraq, March 15

BAGHDAD - Police said 22 bodies had been found in Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb targeting a police patrol killed one person and wounded 13, police said.

ANBAR - Two U.S. soldiers were killed in action on Monday in the western Anbar province, a U.S. military statement said.

NEAR BALAD - The U.S. military said an insurgent, two women and a child were killed during clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents in an operation against a militant linked to al Qaeda near Balad, 90 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad.

Iraqi police said 11 members of one family, including six children, were killed during the operation.

BAQUBA - A suicide bomber on a bicycle attacked a police patrol, killing two civilians and wounding six others, including a woman and two children in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

* BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed southwest of Baghdad.

BAQUBA - Two people were killed and 11 wounded when a bomb exploded inside a photography studio.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed two Shi'ite pilgrims in Baghdad, a source in Yarmouk hospital said. They had been walking from Baghdad to the holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala.

BAQUBA - A police lieutenant was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his patrol in Baquba, police said.

BASRA - A British soldier was wounded when a roadside bomb went off near his patrol in the southern city of Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, a British military spokesman said.

NEAR BAQUBA - Iraqi soldiers arrested 20 insurgent suspects in an operation in a village near Baquba, police said.

BAGHDAD - One person was killed and two wounded when a minibus exploded in eastern Baghdad, police said. - alertnet.org

Iraqis say US raid on home killed 11 family members

Wed Mar 15, 2006 - By Amer Amery TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Eleven members of an Iraqi family were killed in a U.S. raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an al Qaeda militant from a house.

A senior Iraqi police officer said autopsies on the bodies, which included five children, showed each had been shot in the head. Community leaders said they were outraged at the killings and demanded an explanation from the U.S. military. Television footage showed the bodies in the Tikrit morgue -- five children, two men and four women. Their wounds were not clear though one infant had a gaping head wound.

A freelance photographer later saw them being buried by weeping men in Ishaqi, the town 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad where the raid took place.

The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi early on Wednesday to capture a "foreign fighter facilitator for the al Qaeda in Iraq network". "Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building," spokesman Major Tim Keefe said. "Coalition Forces returned fire utilising both air and ground assets. "There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building ... (was) destroyed."

Keefe said the al Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.

RUBBLE

Major Ali Ahmed of the Ishaqi police said U.S. forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children. "After they left the house they blew it up," he said. Another policeman, Colonel Farouq Hussein, said autopsies had been carried out at Tikrit hospital and found "all the victims had gunshot wounds to the head". The bodies, their hands bound, had been dumped in one room before the house was destroyed, Hussein said. Police had found spent American-issue cartridges in the rubble."It's a clear and perfect crime without any doubt," he said.

Police in Salahaddin province, a heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency and the home region of Saddam Hussein, have frequently criticised U.S. military tactics in the area. Police officers said the U.S. military had asked for a meeting with local tribal leaders. The Joint Co-ordination Centre in Tikrit which coordinates between U.S. and Iraqi security forces said later the meeting would happen on Friday. Ishaqi's town administrator, Rasheed Shather, said the town was shocked: "Everyone went to the funeral. We want the Americans to give us an explanation for this horrible crime."

Photographs of the funeral showed men crying as five children, who all looked under the age of five, were wrapped in blankets and then lined up in a row. One man who described himself as a relative said one was just seven months old.

"They killed these innocent children. Are these considered terrorists? Is a seven-month-old child a terrorist?" he said angrily, speaking close to the remains of the house.

Local teacher Faeq Nsaef was also outraged: ""An entire family was killed. It's a barbarian act."

In January a U.S. air strike on a house in Baiji, further north, killed several members of a family. In December U.S. fighter jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on a village, also in the region, killing 10 people. The U.S. military said the people targeted had been suspected of planting roadside bombs.

(Additional reporting by Ghazwan al-Jibouri in Tikrit and Aseel Kami in Baghdad) - .reuters.co.uk

U.S. disputes toll killed in Iraq raid

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A U.S. raid north of the capital Wednesday killed 11 people -- most of them women and children, said police and relatives of the victims. The American military confirmed the attack but said only four people died -- a man, two women and a child.

Police Capt. Laith Mohammed said the attack near Balad, north of Baghdad, involved U.S. warplanes and armor that flattened a house in the village of Isahaqi.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said the roof of the house had collapsed, three cars were destroyed and two cows were killed.

The 11 victims were wrapped in blankets and driven in three pickup trucks to the Tikrit General Hospital, about 45 miles to the north, relatives said. AP photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at the hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives. The victims were covered in dust with bits of rubble tangled in their hair.

The U.S. military said the target of the raid was a man suspected of supporting foreign fighters of the al-Qaida in Iraq network, and he was captured. "Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building," said Tech. Sgt. Stacy Simon, a military spokeswoman. "Coalition forces returned fire utilizing both air and ground assets."

Riyadh Majid, who identified himself as the nephew of Faez Khalaf, the head of the household who was killed, told AP at the hospital that U.S. forces landed in helicopters and raided the home early Wednesday. Khalaf's brother, Ahmed, said nine of the victims were family members who lived at the house and two were visitors.

"The dead family was not part of the resistance, they were women and children," he said. "The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death." - detnews.com

Iraqi PM 'prepared to step down'

Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari says he is willing to withdraw his nomination to lead the new government if the Iraqi people want him to do so.

"If my people ask me to step aside I will do this," Mr Jaafari said, shortly after attending the much-delayed inaugural session of Iraq's parliament.

The Shias' nomination of Mr Jaafari has been a major sticking point in forming a government as he lacks wider support. He has been criticised for not doing more to curb Iraq's violence. Growing sectarian violence in the country has prompted predictions that Iraq is on the brink of civil war.

Despite the first session of parliament being brought forward by three days from its postponed date, the BBC's Jim Muir in Iraq says this is not a sign of accord. It is three months since the election, and unresolved differences between the parties are likely to delay the formation of a new government for several more weeks at least, our correspondent says.

The inaugural session lasted just 30 minutes as wrangling over power meant members were not even able to elect a speaker. The job is part of a wider power-sharing package.

Possible solution?

Political sources say one idea that has been agreed in principle, partly because of heavy pressure from the US ambassador, is the formation of a new leadership council. This would be made up of the president, the prime minister, the speaker of parliament, the head of the judiciary and political chiefs. Its exact function - and even its title - have not been agreed, but if it does see the light of day, it might help take some of the heat out of the debate over who should be the next prime minister, our correspondent says.

Iraqi and international observers believe a national unity government is the only hope of saving the country from worsening civil strife and will help lessen insurgent attacks.

The streets of the capital were quiet as the parliament held its first session thanks to a vehicle ban introduced in an effort to curb car bombings.

Appeal for calm

The meeting was held inside a convention centre behind the concrete blast walls of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. The ceremonial session, in which the 275-members of parliament were sworn in, was broadcast live on Iraqi television. It began with a recitation of the Koran, followed by a minute of silence in memory of Iraqis who gave their lives in the struggle against the Baathist regime of former President Saddam Hussein.

Adnan Pachachi, the oldest member, addressed those gathered, urging Iraqis to avoid a civil war. "The country is going through very difficult times and it faces a big dilemma after the Samarra bombing and the attacks that followed. Sectarian tension has increased and it threatens national disaster," Mr Pachachi said. BBC

Operation Swarmer - Samarra flattened? another Fallujah?

U.S. soldiers and aircraft take their position at Forward Operating Base Remagen airstrip shortly before they launched Operation Swarmer, an assault operation with the combined U.S. and Iraqi forces targeting insurgents near the town of Samarra, about 100 km (60miles) north of Baghdad March 16, 2006. The U.S. military said on Thursday it had launched its biggest air offensive in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. A military statement said the operation involving more than 50 aircraft and 1,500 Iraqi and U.S. troops as well as 200 tactical vehicles targeted suspected insurgents operating near the town of Samarra. more


U.S. launches largest Iraq air assault in 3 years

50 aircraft, 1,500 soldiers attack targets north of Baghdad

NBC News BAGHDAD, Iraq 16th March 2006 - The U.S. military said on Thursday it had launched its biggest air offensive in Iraq since the 2003 invasion of the country.

A military statement said the operation involving more than 50 aircraft and 1,500 Iraqi and U.S. troops as well as 200 tactical vehicles targeted suspected insurgents operating in Salahuddin, a province that includes Samarra, a town located 60 miles north of Baghdad.

"Initial reports from the objective area indicate that a number of enemy weapons caches have been captured, containing artillery shells, explosives, IED-making materials, and military uniforms," the military said in a statement. IEDs are improvised explosive devices.

The military said the operation began Thursday morning and was likely to continue for several days.

Waqas al-Juwanya, a spokesman for Iraq's joint coordination center in nearby Dowr, said "unknown gunmen exist in this area, killing and kidnapping policemen, soldiers and civilians."

The province is a major part of the so-called Sunni triangle where insurgents have been active since shortly after the U.S.-led invasion three years ago. Saddam Hussein was captured in the province, not far from its capital, Tikrit.

Samarra was the site of a bombing attack last month on a Shiite shrine that set off sectarian reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war. - msnbc

Developments in Iraq, March 16

SECURITY DEVELOPMENTS

* SAMARRA -The U.S. military said on Thursday it launched its biggest air offensive in Iraq since the 2003 invasion to root out insurgents near Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, where recent violence raised fears of civil war. A military statement said more than 50 aircraft and 1,500 Iraqi and U.S. troops as well as 200 armoured vehicles were involved in the operation.

KIRKUK - A roadside bomb hit a convoy of cars used by the chief of staff of the Iraqi armed forces in the small town of Tuz 10 km (7 miles) south of the northern oil city of Kirkuk on Thursday, but Babakir Zebari, head of all Iraqi forces, was not present, police said.

BAGHDAD - Four bodies were found in different parts of Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - Four college students were shot dead by gunmen in Mosul 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - One civilian was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. patrol in Mosul, police said.

HALABJA - One demonstrator was killed and eight were wounded when Kurdish security forces opened fire to disperse protesters in the northern town of Halabja, in the northern province of Sulaymaniya, witnesses said. The protesters set fire to a memorial to 5,000 local people killed in 1988 in a gas attack blamed on Saddam Hussein's forces.

RAMADI - Three civilians were killed and six wounded when gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by U.S. and Iraqi army personnel near Ramadi 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.

BAIJI - A translator working for the U.S. military and his son were killed and four members of his family wounded when gunmen attacked their house in Baiji 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAQUBA - Three girl students were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a school in al-Ghalbiya town near Baquba 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

BAGHDAD - Iraq's first full-term parliament since the U.S. invasion convened on Thursday, three months after being elected in December, but was reduced to 20 minutes of protocol that satisfied a constitutional deadline and little else. The session was opened by Adnan Pachachi, the oldest member, in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

BAGHDAD - Baghdad's normally clogged streets were empty of cars as authorities imposed a vehicle ban to prevent violence. - alertnet.org

U.S. launches major assault Skepticism over mission's timing

Bush reasserts 1st-strike doctrine

Mar. 17, 2006. TIM HARPER WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON

-American and Iraqi forces launched Operation Swarmer in an area north of Baghdad yesterday, the largest air assault in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that marks its third anniversary this weekend.

The Pentagon said the show of force in the area northeast of Samarra included as many as 1,500 troops, more than 200 tactical vehicles and 50 aircraft aimed at clearing out an insurgent stronghold and was expected to last several days.

But details were hard to come by because, in a break with past policy, journalists were not initially allowed to accompany troops and news was being provided by the military itself.

The blitz came as U.S. President George W. Bush was again trying to stem the bleeding of support for the war among the American electorate.It also came the same day his government released a long-overdue security strategy that reaffirms the so-called Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes and identified Iran as the major threat facing the United States.

Cynicism in the United States over the war is such that there were immediate suggestions the mission was planned to take the focus off an expected spate of negative publicity for the administration as the anniversary for an unpopular war nears. It also appeared the Pentagon was trying to showcase the Iraqis involved in the mission to give rationale to the political imperative at home - bringing some U.S. troops home before this autumn's mid-term elections.

The White House denied all such suggestions.

Spokesperson Scott McClellan said the decision to launch the assault was made by commanders in the field and had nothing to do with political considerations at home, where a new low of 37 per cent said they believed the war was worth fighting, according to one poll released yesterday. McClellan said Bush was briefed on the decision once it had been made.

Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, said the assault was not related to the recent outbreak of sectarian violence in Iraq which had its roots in Samarra, about 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, when a Shiite shrine was bombed Feb. 22.

Since then, more than 500 Iraqis have been killed and hundreds more have been wounded, in bloodshed threatening to tip the country into civil war.

Abizaid said he had no information that the troops were targeting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most notorious insurgent who has been the driving force behind a litany of bombings, assassinations and the beheading of foreign hostages.

"I wouldn't characterize this as being anything that's a big departure from normal, or from the need to prosecute a target that we think was lucrative enough to commit this much force," he said.

In an interview with CNN, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said insurgents had been trying to replicate Falluja in the area under assault, a reference to the target of one of the most aggressive ground assaults launched by U.S. troops in late 2004.

"After the Falluja operation, many of the insurgents moved on to other parts of the country," Zebari said.

Late yesterday, there were no reports of casualties or confrontation with insurgents, although the Pentagon said it had arrested 41 people.

A Pentagon spokesperson said more than 650 Americans, including the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team and the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade were joined by more than 800 Iraqis in the assault.

The aircraft included UH-60 Black Hawks, AH-64D Apaches and CH-47 Chinooks, but none fired their weapons as they provided cover for the landing of ground troops, the Pentagon said.

The joint forces had found artillery and mortar rounds, small arms ammunition, medical supplies and materials to construct improvised explosive devices (IEDs), officials said. They were also searching for stolen military uniforms, used by insurgents in brazen kidnappings and murders.

The massive assault overshadowed the first sitting of the Iraqi parliament and the swearing-in ceremony for 275 members elected last December. The sitting was largely symbolic and the session was quickly adjourned after 20 minutes because there is still no consensus on the ground on how to form a government. The U.S. State Department also said it would agree to talks with Iran on the situation in Iraq after the Bush administration blamed Tehran for feeding the sectarian violence in Iraq.

And in another development, the U.S. military announced it had launched a criminal investigation into possible wrongdoing by U.S. Marines in the deaths of 15 Iraqi civilians in an incident in November in the town of Haditha. The U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service said it is looking into the possible role played by Marines in the deaths.

Although senior Bush administration officials have acknowledged the possibility of civil war in Iraq, they maintain that the vast majority of the Iraqi population does not want that outcome and they say sectarian violence can be contained.

Car bomb attacks in Baghdad have risen 65 per cent in one week and other attacks in the capital have risen threefold over the same time frame.

"The vast majority of the Iraqi people clearly do not want civil war,'' National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said in unveiling the administration's security strategy, its first formal report since the Iraq war began. "They do not want sectarian violence to rob all Iraqis of the hope of a common future. And their elected leaders are doing the difficult work of binding the nation together and forming a national unity government.'' Hadley stressed the pre-emptive strike doctrine remains central to Bush's foreign security policy."The president believes that we must remember the clearest lesson of Sept.11 - that the United States of America must confront threats before they fully materialize,'' he said. "The president's strategy affirms that the doctrine of pre-emption remains sound.''

As the country marks the third anniversary of the invasion this weekend, a CNN/USA Today Gallup poll found only 37 per cent believe it was worth going to war and only 22 per cent are certain the U.S. will win (although another 32 per cent believe it was likely). But 39 per cent of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, even in the absence of any credible evidence. Over three years, the Iraqi war has cost 2,312 U.S. lives and 17,124 Americans have been injured. - thestar.com

Operation Swarm of Lies

By Dahr Jamail - t r u t h o u t | Report - Monday 20 March 2006

The stated mission of Operation Swarmer, launched late last week in an area just northeast of Samarra, in Iraq, was to "break up a center of insurgent resistance" and to disrupt "terrorist activity," according to the US military.

Comprised of over 1,500 US and Iraqi soldiers, 50 US attack and transport helicopters airlifted the bold force into a flat area of farmland filled not with fighters belonging to the "center of insurgent resistance," but with impoverished farmers, cows, goats and women baking bread. The first drop of soldiers onto the ground from this air-operation doubled the meager population of 1,500 souls living in the 50 square-mile area.

US troops acted bravely, snatching up 48 "suspected insurgents," then promptly releasing 17 of them. They were precise in their operations, and did not detain a single cow or goat.

What did the military say about why no resistance was met?

"We believe we achieved tactical surprise," said Lt. Col. Edward Loomis, the spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division.

Fallaciously hailed as the largest air assault in Iraq since the Anglo-American invasion three years ago, Lt. Col. Loomis said that two days into the operation his forces "continue to move" through the area, and "tactical interviews began immediately." According to Time magazine reporters:

"Four Black Hawk helicopters landed in a wheat field and dropped off a television crew, three photographers, three print reporters and three Iraqi government officials right into the middle of Operation Swarmer. Iraqi soldiers in newly painted humvees, green and red Iraqi flags stenciled on the tailgates, had just finished searching the farm populated by a half-dozen skinny cows and a woman kneading freshly risen dough and slapping it to the walls of a mud oven. But contrary to what many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. ("Air Assault" is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no air-strikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What's more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the US and Iraqi commanders."

Of course, the US military claimed that two local leaders of the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were to have been in the area, but alas, they were not to be caught up in Operation Swarmer or any of the "tactical interviews."

Meanwhile on Sunday, fresh from a relaxing weekend at Camp David, Mr. Bush said of Iraq, "I'm encouraged by the progress," while talking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House.

Bush, his comments sticking to the talking points of his administration which surround this three year anniversary of the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom, nearly mirrored those made recently by General Peter Pace. Pace, as you recall, when asked on "Meet the Press" about Iraq, said things were "going very, very well from everything you look at."

Operation Swarm of Lies is part of yet another Cheney administration media blitz to put a happy face on this horrendously failed misadventure in Iraq. All too aware of the plummeting US public support for the war effort, and with approval ratings for the so-called president at an all time low, Bush had been sent out on the campaign trail to apply fresh gloss to the tattered sheen of the US occupation of Iraq. Sticking with their talking points of having Iraqi forces take over security responsibilities, the primary purpose of Operation Swarm of Lies was obviously to send the message to Americans that the US military are allowing Iraqis to "take the fight to the enemy."

But this operation of mass distraction has served other purposes as well.

Operation Swarm of Lies served well in diverting media attention in the US from US/UK covert operations in Iran last Friday.

Even the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Iran's national police chief, Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddamm, accused US and British agents of playing a role in the deaths of 21 people in southeastern Iran. Moghaddamm accused the intelligence services of both the US and UK of encouraging attacks by Iranian rebel groups against civilians.

Operation Swarm of Lies also effectively distracted media attention from the arrest of an American "security contractor" in Tikrit last week. According to the Joint Coordination Center between the US and Iraqi military in Tikrit, "the man is described as a security contractor working for a private company," and he "possessed explosives which were found in his car" when he was arrested last Tuesday.

This incident was also reported on al-Sharqiyah Television on March 14th , where they added that the man was arrested during an imposed curfew, and "he had explosives in his car, noting that contacts are being held between officials in Salah al-Din Governorate and US Army officials regarding the incident."

Meanwhile back in the Motherland, "Vice" President Cheney said this past weekend that Iraq is not in a civil war, but that terrorists there were involved in desperate tactics to stop Iraq's move towards democracy.

"What we've seen is a serious effort by them to foment a civil war," Cheney said during an interview on the CBS program "Face the Nation" recently, "But I don't think they've been successful."

He's right - the Iraqi people have thus far managed, miraculously, to thwart the ongoing attempts by the occupiers to "foment civil war."

Because the recent incident in Tikrit is but one example of many which have shown who the real terrorists are in Iraq. Even just last September, two undercover British SAS soldiers were detained by Iraqi police in Basra. The Brits were dressed as Iraqis, traveling in an unmarked civilian car, and "Iraqi security officials ... accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives. Photographs of the two men in custody showed them in civilian clothes."

According the same article by the Washington Post, the British military promptly razed the Iraqi jail in order to free their two soldiers. In response, Mohammed Walli, the governor of the province, told news agencies that the British assault was "barbaric, savage and irresponsible."

Barbaric, savage and irresponsible are words that can also be used to describe the true nature of Operation Swarm of Lies.

Just this past Sunday, the Director of the Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI), Muhamad al-Deraji, issued an appeal to the UN mission in Baghdad regarding violations committed by the US military operation near Samarra.

"We have received information from citizens and human rights activists in Samarra stating that the region, under American and Iraqi military operation ... is witnessing dangerous human rights violations, which is confirmed by the following:

1 - The Red Crescent aiding missions are not allowed to enter the region.
2 - [Independent] Press and media are, as well, forbidden from entering the region.
3 - Women and children are not allowed to leave the region of military operations.
4 - Receipt of news indicates presence of violations and assault for citizens aiming to terrorize them and forces them to emigrate from this region, through arresting the men and forcing women and their horrified children to escape later, on and leave the region aiming to build a military base there."

Most importantly, however, is the human tragedy which Operation Swarm of Lies has both generated as well as diverted attention from.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, via the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) reported on Sunday, "Hundreds of families displaced due to major offensive."

The report says "hundreds of families have fled the city of Samarra" as the result of Operation Swarmer. Barakat Muhammad, a resident and father of five who lives in Samarra told IRIN, "When they started to hit our city I didn't take anything. I just took my family and ran like hell. We don't have anything to eat or wear."

Despite claims by the US military that no shots were fired, obviously bombs were dropped on civilians.

The IRIN report adds that "local doctors say that at least 35 civilians, including women and children, have been treated at the local hospital with injuries caused by the air strikes. In addition, 18 bodies had been taken to the hospital since 17 March."

Yet there have been ongoing air strikes north/northeast of Baghdad since at least last Wednesday.

According to the aforementioned Iraqi NGO MHRI, as well as AP reporters, "eleven people - most of them women and children - have been killed after US forces bombed a house during a raid north of Baghdad." The US military acknowledged the raid which occurred near Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, but said only four people were killed - a man, two women and a child.

Relatives, however, said 11 bodies wrapped in blankets were driven in the back of three pickup trucks to the Tikrit General Hospital, about 40 miles north of where the air strike occurred.

As usual, reality contradicted the claims by the US military of only four dead, when AP photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered figures arriving at the hospital accompanied by grief-stricken relatives.

Even a police captain from nearby Samarra, Laith Mohammed, said that American warplanes and armor were used in the strike which flatted the house, killing all 11 people inside.

An AP reporter at the scene of the bombing in the rural area of Isahaqi said "the roof of the house collapsed, three cars were destroyed and two cows killed."

Riyadh Majid, the nephew of the head of the family who was killed, told the AP that US forces landed in helicopters and raided the home early last Wednesday. Ahmed Khalaf, the brother of the deceased head of the household, said nine of the victims were family members who lived at the house and two were visitors.

"The killed family was not part of the resistance, they were women and children," said Khalaf, "The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death."

As per their now standard operating procedure, the US military claimed the strike targeted an individual "suspected" of supporting al-Qaida. And as usual, the military claimed they were under attack from the house.

"Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building," according to Tech. Sgt. Stacy Simon, "Coalition forces returned fire utilizing both air and ground assets."

And the al-Qaida suspects killed by this particular air strike were of the younger variety this time around, again as usual for the US military in Iraq.

But of course, all of this was effectively overshadowed by Operation Swarm of Lies.

Airstrikes kill children:

U.S.-led raid kills civilians north of Balad

Police, American military differ on number of casualties

BAGHDAD (CNN) -- A U.S.-led raid on a suspected site of terror network al Qaeda in Iraq killed 11 civilians -- including five children -- according to Iraqi police, but the U.S. military said the death toll from the strike north of Balad was four.

In addition to the children, the youngest of whom was 6 months old, the dead included four women and two men, police said.

A U.S. military spokesman said a suspected insurgent, two women and a child were killed in the raid on a building about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Balad.

U.S.-led forces came under fire as they raided the building, said Maj. Tim O'Keefe. Air support fired on the site, and the targeted building and a vehicle were destroyed, O'Keefe said. A man suspected of being a "foreign fighter facilitator" was taken into coalition custody and is being questioned.

Police Capt. Laith Mohammed told The Associated Press that U.S. warplanes and armor were involved in the strike, which flattened a house and killed the 11 people inside.

An AP reporter at the scene said the roof of the house collapsed, three cars were destroyed and two cows killed. AP photographs showed the bodies of two men, five children and four other covered bodies arriving at a hospital in Tikrit accompanied by grieving relatives.

More U.S. troops headed to Iraq

An armored battalion of up to 700 U.S. troops from the 1st Armored Division has been ordered into Iraq, military officials saidWednesday. The move comes amid rising sectarian violence, but a U.S. official attributed the need for extra backup to the seating of the new Iraqi parliament and an upcoming Shiite religious holiday. (Watch U.S. officials express unease about execution killings -- 2:36) Some troops already have arrived in the Baghdad area. About 132,000 U.S. forces are in Iraq.

A brigade of about 3,500 troops from the 1st Armored Division has been on standby in Kuwait as a backup force. The battalion will stay in Iraq for some weeks, and then officials said they would evaluate how much longer they are needed.

Blasts in Baquba, Baghdad

Three bombings killed five people and left more than a dozen injured Wednesday in Baquba, about 37 miles (60 kilometers) north of Baghdad. In the morning, a roadside bomb attack killed an Iraqi police officer and wounded a second one while they were on patrol, said an official with the Diyala Joint Coordination Center.

Around midday, a motorcycle bomb exploded in a Baquba marketplace, killing two people and wounding six others, police said. An Iraqi army convoy had just passed by the area. A third bomb exploded in a cell phone shop in a central shopping center, killing two people and wounding a dozen others, said a spokesman from the Diyala Joint Coordination Center. Five shops were damaged in the blast.

Police found detonators in a search of the shop and suspect it was used to manufacture bombs, the spokesman said.

In eastern Baghdad's Sadr City, a car bomb also turned deadly Wednesday, killing one civilian and wounding two others, said a Baghdad emergency police official.

Hussein testifies for first time; trial adjourns till April 5

The judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein closed the Wednesday session to the media after the former Iraqi leader made political statements, including a call on Iraqis to unite and resist U.S.-led coalition forces. (Watch a report on Hussein pushing the judge's buttons -- 6:36)

Judge Raouf Abdel Rahman said he considered the comments incendiary, and he cut off Hussein's microphone at least nine times. (Full story)

Hussein's remarks came amid fears of an outbreak of civil war. Sectarian violence across Iraq left nearly 90 dead within a 30-hour period ending midday Tuesday. The trial was reopened to reporters later but then was adjourned for three weeks, to April 5.

In a separate case, Europe's human rights court has thrown out a lawsuit filed by Hussein against 21 European countries whose troops joined the U.S.-led military campaign in Iraq. (Full story)

CNN's Arwa Damon, Nic Robertson, Barbara Starr and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report. - CNN

POLICE REPORT

This is a translation of the Iraqi police report obtained by Knight Ridder, including accounts of events not related to the Ishaqi raid.

In the name of God, the most merciful

This is the morning and afternoon events of 15/3/2006

1. Interior Ministry Operations:

All forces belonging to the Interior Ministry will go on 100 percent alert status starting Wednesday 15/3/2006 until 1000 hours Friday 17/3/2006.

2. Coordination Center of Beji

At 810 gunmen in a white vehicle, duck type (a reference to the local name for a Toyota model) kidnapped the child Mohamed (Badei Khaled) from Samaha school in Beji (map coordinates 617667).

3. Coordination Center of Dujail

At 730 a benzene truck burned near Gassem al Queisy fuel station after one of its tires caught fire. The incident burned the driver (Hamed Abdalilah) and he was transported to the hospital (map coordinates 263519).

4. Coordination Center of Balad

At 230 of 15/3/2006, according to the telegram (report) of the Ishaqi police directorate, American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district. The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including 5 children, 4 women and 2 men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals (map coordinates 098702).

They were:

Turkiya Muhammed Ali, 75 years
Faiza Harat Khalaf, 30 years
Faiz Harat Khalaf, 28 years
Um Ahmad, 23 years
Sumaya Abdulrazak, 22 years
Aziz Khalil Jarmoot, 22 years
Hawra Harat Khalaf, 5 years
Asma Yousef Maruf, 5 years
Osama Yousef Maruf, 3 years
Aisha Harat Khalaf, 3 years
Husam Harat Khalaf, 6 months

(Signed)

Staff Colonel Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf -
Assistant Chief of the Joint Coordination Center

3/16/2006

War Opponents Protest Around the Globe

War Opponents Demonstrate in U.S. and Elsewhere on Third Anniversary of Iraq Invasion

By MICHELLE ROBERTS - The Associated Press - CHALMETTE, La. - The third anniversary of the U.S.-led war in Iraq drew tens of thousands of protesters around the globe, from hurricane-ravaged Louisiana to Australia, with chants of "Stop the War" and calls for the withdrawal of troops.

About 200 war veterans, hurricane survivors and demonstrators gathered Sunday at the Chalmette National Cemetery to protest how the military conflict overseas had hurt the country's ability to help the Gulf Coast recover from last year's hurricanes.

"We attacked a country who never did anything to us," said Philadelphia resident Al Zappala, whose 30-year-old son was killed in Iraq in April 2004. He said his son joined the National Guard to help his community. "He was sent to Iraq based on lies," Zappala said.

Many of the weekend demonstrations across Australia, Asia and Europe drew smaller-than-anticipated crowds.

In London, police said 15,000 people joined a march Saturday from Parliament and Big Ben to a rally in Trafalgar Square; last year's anniversary drew attracted 45,000 demonstrators to the city. Anti-war rallies in Japan stretched into a second day Sunday, with about 800 protesters chanting "No war! Stop the war!" and banging drums as they marched peacefully through downtown Tokyo toward the U.S. Embassy. A day earlier, about 2,000 rallied in the city.

"The Iraq war was President Bush's big mistake and the whole world is against him," said organizer Ayako Nishimura. "Iraq must decide its own affairs."

Protesters also gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia, and at least 1,000 people turned out in Seoul, South Korea, which has the third-largest contingent of foreign troops in Iraq after the U.S. and Britain.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld answered critics of the war in a guest column in Sunday's editions of The Washington Post. Turning away from Iraq would be "the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis," Rumsfeld he wrote. "It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries," he said.

Joining the marchers in Chalmette was former Florida National Guard Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, a conscientious objector from Miami Beach, Fla., who was court-martialed and jailed for desertion. "I joined the military because it seemed to offer stability and camaraderie," he said. "No soldier signs up for a war for oil." His fellow demonstrators had set out Tuesday on a 140-mile march from Mobile, Ala., to New Orleans to draw attention both to the war and to the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

David Cline, president of Veterans For Peace, said the nation can't have both "guns and butter," a reference to President Lyndon Johnson's statement that the country could fight the war in Vietnam and enjoy the good life at home."The reality is you get either A or B, you don't get A and B," he said.

Activist Cindy Sheehan, who energized the anti-war movement last summer with her month-long protest outside President Bush's Texas ranch, joined the Gulf Coast marchers in Mississippi on Friday, but left early Sunday for events in Washington. "Katrina only happened because of the incompetence and callousness of the (Bush) administration, just as we've seen in Iraq," Sheehan said Sunday.

More than 7,000 people marched through Chicago on Saturday in one of the largest U.S. protests, saying the war diverts money from domestic needs and demanding the U.S. pull out of Iraq. One sign read "Bush is a category 5 disaster." "I'm against this war, I'm against the torture," said protester Martha Conrad, 54. "We're doing this for the people of Iraq."

Protesters also gathered in Boston, San Francisco and Pittsburgh, and more than 1,000 packed into New York's Times Square on Saturday chanting: "Stop the U.S. war machine, from Iraq to Korea to the Philippines." - abc news

Developments in Iraq, March 17

March 17 (Reuters) - Following are security incidents and political developments in Iraq as of 2130 GMT on Friday.

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said one U.S. soldier was shot and killed while manning an observation post in the town of Samarra.

MIQDADIYA - A landmine near a police checkpoint in the area of the town of Miqdadiya, northeast of Baghdad, exploded, killing four U.S. soldiers and wounding another four, Iraqi police said. They said U.S. forces sealed off the area and arrested a dozen policmen manning the checkpoint. The U.S. military said it was checking the report. Iraqi security force reports often give higher casualty figures than those issued by the U.S. military after its checks.

RAMADI - Gunmen in a car killed Khudr Abdaly, the former head of the municipality in Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a minibus, killing the driver and wounding four passersby in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Three bodies were found with signs of torture and bullet holes in the head. Two were found in the eastern Sadr City and one in western Baghdad, police said.

LATIFIYA - One policeman was killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb struck a police patrol near Latifiya 50 km (32 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

MAHMUDIYA - Two pilgrims walking to the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala were killed and seven wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in al-Mahmudiya 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 18

* KIRKUK - The U.S. military said in a statement that the head of the Iraqi armed forces was in a convoy struck by a roadside bomb near Kirkuk on Thursday, but escaped injury. In the initial report on Thursday, Iraqi police said General Babakir Zebari, Iraq's chief of staff, was not in the motorcade, although it was comprised of vehicles he normally used. Three Iraqi soldiers were wounded in the attack, the U.S. military said on Saturday.

BAGHDAD - The bodies of 16 victims of shootings were found in different areas of the capital, police said.

BAQUBA - Two gunmen were killed and 18 suspects arrested when the Iraqi army launched a search operation near Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, the Iraqi military said.

DUJAIL - Two civilians were found dead inside their car near Dujail, 50 km north of Baghdad on Saturday. The bodies of two brothers were also found in the same area on Friday, police said.

BAIJI - A police officer and his brother were killed by gunmen in Baiji, 180 km north of Baghdad, police said.

TIKRIT - Two U.S. soldiers were killed and another wounded in an attack northwest of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, on Thursday, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Five Iraqi soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in northern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two pilgrims walking to the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala were killed and eight wounded by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad, police said. - alertnet.org

Psyops - Saddm Al Qaeda links

Released Saddam papers hint at links to Al-Qaeda

Sarah Baxter -- March 19, 2006

NEWLY released documents seized in Iraq immediately after the American invasion in 2003 point to the presence of Al-Qaeda members in the country before the war and moves to hide traces of "chemical or biological materials" from United Nations weapons inspectors.

The documents were posted on the internet as part of a rolling programme by the US government to make public the contents of 48,000 boxes of untranslated papers and tapes relating to the workings of Saddam Hussein's regime. Saddam is said to have routinely taped talks with cabinet members and intelligence chiefs.

John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, was ordered by President George W Bush to release the material. Hundreds of thousands of previously unseen documents and hundreds of hours of tapes will be placed on the web in the coming weeks.

The first documents to be released offer tantalising clues to possible Iraqi contacts with Al-Qaeda. An Iraqi intelligence report dated September 15, 2001 - four days after the attacks on America - says Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were in contact with Iraq and Al-Qaeda members had visited the country.

It claims America had proof that the Iraqi government and "Bin Laden's group" had agreed to co-operate to attack targets in America and that the US might strike Iraq and Afghanistan in retaliation.

However, the information comes from an unidentified Afghan informant who states merely that he heard it from an Afghan consul, also unnamed. According to ABC News, which translated the tapes, the claims are "sensational" but the sourcing is "questionable".

Another document from a "trustworthy" source and dated August 2002 claims people with links to Al-Qaeda were in Iraq. There is a picture a few pages later of the Jordanian terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But the papers suggest Saddam's agents were trying to verify the presence of Al-Qaeda rather than colluding with it.

Documents from 1997 confirm that Saddam was giving UN weapons inspectors the runaround by removing correspondence concerned with "prohibited weapons" and clearing "labs and storages of any traces of chemical or biological materials".

The transcript of one tape recording shows an official named as Comrade Husayn expressing concern to Saddam that outsiders would find out about imported material, including some from America, apparently for chemical weapons.

"They have a bigger problem with the chemical programme than the biological programme," he tells Saddam. "We have not told them that we used it on Iran, nor have we told them about the size or kind of chemical weapons that we produced and we have not told them the truth about the imported material."

In another taped conversation from the mid-1990s, a man called al-Sahhaf - possibly a former information minister - says: "On the nuclear file, sir, are we saying we disclosed everything? No, we have uncleared problems in the nuclear field."

Apparently confirming that the nuclear programme had been abandoned, he adds: "Everything is over, but did they know? No, sir, they did not know, not all the methods, not all the means, not all the scientists and not all the places."

Saddam expelled the UN inspectors from Iraq in 1998.

Bush intervened personally to secure the release of the documents after Bill Tierney, an Arabic-speaking former UN weapons inspector hired by the government to translate

12 hours of Saddam's tapes, revealed their contents at a private intelligence conference near Washington last month.

On one tape, recorded in the mid-1990s, the Iraqi dictator is heard to say: "Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans . . . and told the British as well . . . that in future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction." - times online

Saddam wanted Zarqarwi arrested?

Saddam 'suspected al-Qaia inside Iraq in 2002'

16/03/2006 - 16:55:48

Iraqi documents collected by US intelligence during the Iraq war and released by the Bush administration show Saddam Hussein's regime was investigating "rumours" that 3,000 Iraqis and Saudis had travelled unofficially to Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks to fight US troops.

The documents, the first of thousands expected to be declassified over the next several months, were released last night via a Pentagon website at the direction of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

Many were in Arabic - with no English translation - including one the administration said showed that Iraqi intelligence officials suspected al Qaida members were inside Iraq in 2002.

However, one of the documents, a letter from an Iraqi intelligence official, dated August 17, 2002, asked agents in the country to be on the lookout for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and another unnamed man whose picture was attached. - IOL

Bin Laden links to Saddam? not according to this:

Flashback 2003: Bin Laden Labels Saddam an Infidel - Jazeera TV

Published on Tuesday, February 11, 2003 by Reuters - Samia Nakhoul DUBAI - A taped message believed to be from fugitive militant Osama bin Laden on Tuesday warned Arab nations against supporting a war against Iraq as threatened by the United States -- but branded Saddam Hussein an infidel.

In a broadcast coinciding with a major Muslim festival that prompted tight security in the United States and Britain to avert possible attacks, the man blamed for September 11 urged Muslims to fight America and repel any war against Iraq.

"We stress the importance of martyrdom (suicide) attacks against the enemy. These attacks inflicted on America and Israel a disaster they have never experienced before," said the statement, broadcast on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television channel. Any Arab ruler supporting America or providing logistical or verbal backing for a war on Iraq would be "an apostate whose blood should be spilled," it said.

The broadcast coincided with the start of the three-day Muslim Eid al-Adha festival marking the end of the annual Haj -- the pilgrimage to Mecca.

U.S. officials said the tape was probably genuine, the strongest evidence so far that bin Laden survived the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan to drive out the Taliban government and the al Qaeda network of the Saudi-born militant.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the tape corroborated the allegations that Secretary of State Colin Powell made to the U.N. Security Council last week to justify U.S. threats to go to war against Iraq -- that al Qaeda and the Iraqis were in contact and cooperating.

But the statement did not express support for Saddam. It said Muslims should support the Iraqi people rather than the country's government.

Concern that the United States has not made a valid case for war against Iraq has already divided the NATO Western alliance, with France, Germany and Belgium refusing to back preparations to assist fellow-member Turkey in the event of war. A NATO official in Brussels said after two days of deadlock that efforts to break the impasse in the alliance would continue through the night, with a meeting of its North Atlantic Council set for 3:45 a.m. EST on Wednesday.

While urging Muslims to support the Iraqi people and repel any attack on their country, the tape said Saddam's secular "socialist" government had lost credibility.

"Socialists are infidels wherever they are," the statement said. But it added: "It does not hurt that in current circumstances, the interests of Muslims coincide with the interests of the socialists in the war against crusaders."

BROADCAST FOLLOWS SENATE TESTIMONY

The United States accuses Baghdad of having biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs and has said it is prepared to disarm Iraq by force without further U.N. approval if necessary. Iraq denies the allegations.

The broadcast followed testimony to the U.S. Senate intelligence committee in which CIA director George Tenet said there had been specific threats of attacks in the next few days. These included targets in the United States or on the Arabian peninsula using a radioactive "dirty bomb" or poisons, Tenet said. He said information came from several sources with "strong al Qaeda ties" and the U.S. security alert had been raised to Orange, its second highest level. Staunch U.S. ally Britain dramatically stepped up security at London's major Heathrow airport on Tuesday.

Hundred of troops were drafted in what a police source said was partly a precaution against an al Qaeda rocket attack on a plane. Troops were also called to other sites in London. A police statement said attacks might be linked to Eid al-Adha.

Serious Western differences over Iraq had already been laid bare on Monday as France, Germany and Belgium held up military deployments for NATO member Turkey intended to protect it from Iraqi retaliation if U.S. troops attack Iraq from Turkish soil. They argued, to U.S. annoyance, that to send surveillance planes, Patriot missiles and anti-chemical and biological warfare teams to Turkey would be a premature signal that war had begun and diplomatic efforts had ended.

France insisted on its solidarity with Turkey but said Paris had to base its approach on November's U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, which sent U.N. arms inspectors back to Iraq.

Russia and China have backed the French insistence that arms inspectors be given more time to investigate Iraq's alleged banned weapons programs, with war only as a last resort. Russian President Vladimir Putin, visiting Paris, told French television: "It would be a grave error if unilateral actions were taken outside the framework of international law."

The threat of war is already affecting the global economy. In Washington, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the uncertainties posed "formidable barriers" to business spending and made it hard to gauge the state of the U.S. economy.

Germany pushed for a European plan to confront economic weakness that is threatening to push it into another recession -- which an Iraq war would exacerbate.

Oil prices rose to two-year highs after the head of the world's biggest oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp, said U.S. strategic reserves should not be used to curb prices.

SADDAM ON TELEVISION

In Iraq, Saddam was shown on television receiving officials to mark the Eid al-Adha holiday.

"I could not wish for a greater, higher or better state that we are in...of Iraqi men and women and their growing readiness and ability to confront evil" in attacking Iraq, he said.

A personal peace envoy from Pope John Paul arrived in Baghdad with a message to Saddam "crucial for peace in Iraq" and was due to meet Iraqi officials on Wednesday.

The U.S. military said aircraft taking part in U.S.-British patrols over north and south Iraq attacked and destroyed a mobile Ababil-100 surface-to-surface missile and support vehicles. There was no immediate report from Baghdad.

The European Union, which includes many NATO member states, announced meanwhile that heads of state and government would gather for a summit on Iraq in Brussels next Monday. - commondreams.org

Developments in Iraq, March 19

*BAGHDAD - Police said they found 12 bodies dumped in different parts of Baghdad on Sunday.

BAQUBA - A policeman was killed and 12 people were wounded when two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession targeting a police patrol in the city of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. One of the wounded was a police colonel, police added.

HAWIJA - Iraqi police found the bodies of two beheaded soldiers in Hawija, 60 km (43 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police Lieutenant Naji al-Ubaidi said. The two soldiers were abducted by gunmen on Saturday.

LATIFIYA - Gunmen killed a policeman and wounded four civilians when they were driving a civilian car in Latifiya, in an area dubbed the 'Triangle of death' south of Baghdad, police said. The policeman was wearing civilian clothes.

*DULUIYA - Eight people were killed, six wounded and seven arrested by U.S. forces in Duluiya, 90 km ( 55 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. The U.S. military said a patrol had killed seven "attacking terrorists" after being hit by rifle fire and rocket propelled grenades.

MOSUL - Gunmen shot dead four people, including two policemen in civilian clothes, and wounded another policeman in the northern city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police and hospital sources said.

MOSUL - Two civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in Mosul, police said. - alertnet.org

a couple more years of this?

Bush marks third anniversary of Iraq invasion

Big News Network.com Monday 20th March, 2006

Three years to the day after the start of the Iraq War, President Bush is hailing progress in that country on the political front, and praising the work of coalition troops.

The president is focusing on the positive. He says he is encouraged by progress in the creation of an Iraqi unity government, and urges Iraqi leaders to get it up and running as soon as possible.

"The Iraqi people voted for democracy last December," said President Bush. "Seventy five percent of the eligible citizens went to the polls to vote. And now the Iraqi leaders are working together to enact a government that reflects the will of the people."

Bush made the comments to White House reporters as he returned from a weekend at his Camp David retreat. He said as the nation marks the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq conflict, his thoughts are with the troops far from home.

"On this third anniversary of the beginning of the liberation of Iraq, I think all Americans should offer thanks to the men and women who wear the uniform and their families who support them," he said.

Earlier in the day, Vice-President Dick Cheney defended the administration's policy at a time of declining public support for U.S. involvment in Iraq.

During an appearance on the CBS television program, Face the Nation, Cheney insisted Iraq is not on the verge of civil war, though he added insurgents are doing all they can to tear the country apart.

"Clearly, there is an attempt under way by the terrorists, by Zarqawi and others, to ferment civil war," said Dick Cheney. "That has been their strategy all along. But my view would be, they have reached a stage of desperation from their standpoint."

Cheney denied the administration has presented an overly optimistic view of the war. He said the Iraqi people have met every benchmark set for political progress, and there has been movement forward on the security side.

In a commentary written for the opinion page of Sunday's Washington Post newspaper, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld detailed military gains in Iraq over the last three years. He said turning away from the Iraqi people now, would be the modern equivalent of handing post-World War II Germany back to the Nazis.

On NBC's Meet the Press program, the chief commander of coalition forces in Iraq, General George Casey, said it may take several years before U.S. forces can completely withdraw from Iraq. However, he indicated a slow drawdown in coming months is likely, as Iraqi troops and police take over the country's security responsibilities.

"I see a couple more years of this, with a gradually reducing coalition presence here in Iraq," said General Casey.

Appearing on the same television news program, a leading opponent of the war, Democratic Congressman John Murtha, said he still has not seen any major sign of progress on the security front. Murtha, a veteran of the Vietnam war, repeated his call for a rapid redeployment of U.S. forces currently serving on Iraqi soil.

"At some point you have to change direction," said Congressman Murtha. "What I am saying is, we have to redeploy our troops, because they are caught in a civil war."

President Bush is taking on his critics in a series of speeches on Iraq scheduled to mark the passage of three years since the start of the conflict. On Monday, he travels to Cleveland, Ohio, to talk about efforts being made to rebuild Iraqi communities and achieve stability. - bignewsnetwork.com

Millions of Shiites Surround Iraq Shrine

By QASSID JABAR Associated Press Writer - Mar 20, 9:25 AM EST - KARBALA, Iraq (AP) -- Millions of Shiite pilgrims, some of them flogging themselves with chains, surrounded a shrine in the holy city of Karbala on Monday to commemorate the 40th and final day of symbolic mourning for the Prophet Muhammad's grandson.

Tight security appeared to be holding sectarian violence at bay in the city, though five pilgrims making their way to Karbala were attacked in a drive-by shooting in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad. All survived, police said.

On Sunday, insurgents fired a mortar round into a parking lot near the shrine 50 miles south of Baghdad, but no one was hurt.

"We are not deterred by the attacks by terrorists and extremists, who want to prevent us from doing our rituals," said Mohamed al-Khazali, a 58-year-old Shiite pilgrim from Najaf.

Some 4 million pilgrims had arrived at the city, said Karbala Governor Akeel al-Khuzai, who expected more to pour in through Tuesday. Many performed rituals of self-flagellation with chains and hit themselves with machetes to display grief over Imam Hussein's death.

Some Sunni Muslims were even among those gathered.

"Imam Hussein is a symbol for all Muslims, not just for Shiites," said Amer al-Nuami, 55.

The commemoration has been marked by deadly insurgent attacks in the past. In 2004, coordinated blasts involving suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives hit Shiite shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad, killing at least 181 people.

An increased number of Iraqi soldiers and police officers patrolled the streets and manned several checkpoints Monday. Baghdad International Airport also was ordered closed through Tuesday "to avoid any violence during the (religious) commemoration," Transportation Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abdul-Wahab said.

The airport has been closed in the past for security reasons, including during elections. - Associated Press

Developments in Iraq, March 20

*BAGHDAD - Three people were killed and 15 wounded in a bomb explosion at a coffee shop in northern Baghdad, police said. It was not clear whether it was a suicide bombing.

BAQUBA - One policeman was killed and two were wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded near their checkpoint in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, Baquba police said.

JARF AL-SAKKHAR - Gunmen killed two security force members protecting oil facilities in Jarf al-Sakkhar, 80 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad.

GAYARA - A car bomb wounded two policemen in Gayara, near Mosul, police said.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed a prison employee in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Three policemen and three prisoners were killed when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle in southern Baghdad. A policeman and two prisoners were wounded, police said.

FALLUJA - Gunmen in army uniforms killed a man and wounded his wife when they attacked their apartment at midnight in Falluja, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed a university lecturer in the western district of the capital, a source in Yarmouk hospital said.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed Raad al-Asali, the director of oil products in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, as he was leaving his home, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed a former district commissioner outside his house in Baghdad's Doura district, police said.

BAGHDAD - A Baghdad hospital received six bodies, including that of a woman, with gunshot wounds, a security guard said.

MAHMUDIYA - Gunmen shot and wounded four pilgrims in Mahmudiya, just south of Baghdad, police said. - alertnet.org

US marines massacred 15 Iraqi civilians: report

New York, March 20 (PTI): US Marines went on a rampage in a village in Iraq, killing 15 unarmed residents including seven women and three children last year after a roadside bomb struck their convoy and killed one of the personnel, a media report has said.

On the morning of November 19, 2005, a bomb struck a humvee carrying Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, on a road near Haditha, a restive town in western Iraq killing Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, Time magazine reported.

The next day, a Marine communiqui reported that Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by the blast and that "gunmen attacked the convoy with small arms fire," prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another.

But details of what happened that morning in Haditha are more "disturbing, disputed and horrific" than the military initially reported, the magazine said.

It quoted eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks as saying that the civilians who died in Haditha on November 19 were killed by the Marines, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack.

The magazine also said it has obtained a videotape that purportedly shows the aftermath of the Marines' assault and provides graphic documentation of its human toll.

Human rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the incident would rank as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by US service members since the war began. - hindu.com

UN calls on Iraq's Government to assert control as killings and torture increase

22 March 2006 - The United Nations today called on Iraq's Government to urgently assert control over the security forces and all armed groups in the war-torn country, saying February's attack on a shrine in Samarra had led to a worsening situation, resulting in hundreds of cases of killings, torture, illegal detention and displacement.

"Throughout the reporting period, insurgent activities, including terrorist acts, intensified after 22 February and continue to affect the civilian population," says the bi-monthly rights report by the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) covering the first two months of this year.

"Allegations that 'death squads' operate in the country grew stronger following the discovery by the Multi-National Forces in Iraq (MNF-I) and the Iraqi Security Forces of a suspicious group, acting within the structures of the Ministry of Interior," the report says.

It also points out that "families living in mixed neighbourhoods were forcibly evicted from their homes or left voluntarily because of threats of violence from militias, insurgents and other armed groups," adding that civilians - "especially women and children" - continue to bear the brunt of the human rights violations.

Following the destruction of the Shia Shrine in Samarra, the report notes that "serious incidents of violence erupted in and around Baghdad, in Basra as well as in other parts of the country," and in retaliation a significant number of Sunni mosques were reportedly attacked "and clerics were among those assassinated."

"Street clashes and assaults by armed groups continued for days. Many individuals were reportedly detained at improvised checkpoints, or were abducted from homes and mosques," it adds.

The report also says that the Ministry of Interior announced that 249 people had been killed from 22-25 February, figures that "reflect a new high in a trend that has been steadily increasing and provide an important indicator of the absence of protection of the right to life which still prevails at this time in Iraq."

UNAMI is continuing to receive reports that minorities, including Palestinians, Syrians and Sudanese, are still suffering human rights violations, and also that Christians, among other religious groups, "continue to live in fear."

The seven-page report also emphasizes throughout UNAMI's apprehension over the treatment of detainees in Iraq, adding that international law and best practice must be upheld.

UNAMI has repeatedly expressed concerns to relevant members of the Government about allegations of systematic human rights violations in detention centres under the direct or indirect control of the Ministries of Interior and Defence. - UN.Org

Developments in Iraq, March 21

MIQDADIYA - Guerrillas equipped with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and assault rifles attacked the police headquarters and courthouse in Miqdadiya, about 100 km (60 miles) northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 22 policemen, police said. The gunmen released 33 prisoners in the attack on the police headquarters, police said.

*BAGHDAD - Four bodies with bullet wounds were found in the Hay al-Jamaa district of Baghdad, police said.

BAQUBA - Two policemen were killed and one was wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed by small arms fire while on patrol in western Baghdad, the military said. - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 22

*BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot and killed at least 13 Shi'ite pilgrims aS they returned from a religious festival south of Baghdad. Some of those who managed to escape the initial attack were shot as they fled, police said.

BASRA - A roadside bomb struck a British patrol killing a civilian and wounding a British soldier in southern Basra 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, the British military said.

BAGHDAD - Two pilgrims were killed when gunmen opened fire on group of pilgrims heading to the holy site of Kthimiya, ministry of national security stated.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen ambushed a bus carrying Shi'ites pilgrim returning from the Arbain mourning ritual in Kerbala, killing one and wounding 18, police said.

BAGHDAD - Police found three bodies with their hands bound and gunshots to the head in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Four bodyguards for the electricity minister were wounded when gunmen ambushed their convoy as they headed to the airport to pick up the minister, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen attacked a police station in Madaen town, about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Baghdad, with rocket propelled grenades and mortar bombs, killing a police commander and three policemen and wounding six, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two police commandos were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in southern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two policemen were killed and one wounded when gunmen ambushed their patrol as they headed to the scene of one of the pilgrim attacks, police said.

BAGHDAD - Police said they found three bodies with gunshot wounds to the head and with their hands bound in southern Baghdad. - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 23

* BAGHDADY - A suicide car bomber attacked an Iraqi army patrol near the U.S. Al Asad air base and killed nine soldiers in Baghdady near the town of Haditha, 200 km (125 miles) west of Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - One U.S. soldier was killed in action, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi troops and security forces detained 169 insurgents and seized weapons caches in several cities, the government said.

* BAGHDAD - At least seven people were killed and another 12 wounded when a car bomb exploded in a market close to a Shi'ite mosque in the southwestern district of Shurta al-Khamisa, the Interior Ministry said.

BAQUBA - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in western Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, killing four policemen, a police source said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi army and security forces arrested 169 insurgents in operations in several cities, said a government statement.

KIRKUK - The chief of the Iraqi army in Kirkuk, Major General Anwar Muhammed Ameen, escaped a roadside bomb attack on a road 45 km southwest of the northern city of Kirkik, Police Colonel Sarhat Qadir said.

BAGHDAD - At least 25 people, including 10 policemen, were killed and 35 wounded when a suicide car bomber detonated his car outside the headquarters of the Iraqi police's major crimes unit in central Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in al-Maghrib street, northern Baghdad, killing three policemen and wounding six civilians, a police source said.

ISKANDARIYA - One policeman was killed and another three injured when their patrol was struck by a roadside bomb in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR LATIFIYA - Police said that one Iraqi army soldier was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb was detonated near their patrol on a road between Latifiya and Iskandariya, south of Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - Police said that three civilians were wounded when a car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in central Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - Two civilians were wounded when two mortars landed on a house in northern Baghdad, police said. The target was not immediately clear.

BAGHDAD - One civilian was wounded when a bomb exploded at a bus station in the eastern New Baghdad district of the capital, police said. - alertnet.org

Thousands of Shiites march to Baghdad shrine

23/03/2006 - Thousands of Shiite Muslims marched through the streets of a northern Baghdad neighbourhood today carrying 17 wooden coffins with the bodies of fellow Shiites killed while returning home from a pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala.

The residents of Kazimiyah pounded on drums, chanted religious slogans and threw perfumed water at the coffins as they made their way to the shrine of the mostly Shiite neighbourhood.

Gunmen in the capital had targeted the pilgrims as they returned from Karbala, where millions gathered this week to commemorate the 40th and final day of symbolic mourning for the Prophet Mohammed's grandson.

Police reported that at least six Shiite Muslims were killed yesterday and 50 more wounded in attacks on buses and trucks transporting the pilgrims. Officials also discovered the bodies of at least 16 other pilgrims, all dressed in black, on a Baghdad highway.

The 17 victims being honoured were all from the Kazimiyah community.

Police have discovered hundreds of corpses in the past four weeks, victims of religious militants on a rampage of revenge killing since the February 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

Tight security in the city of Karbala appeared to hold most sectarian violence at bay during the religious event. Insurgents fired a mortar round into a car park near the Karbala shrine on Sunday.

No one was hurt.

The commemoration has been marked by deadly insurgent attacks in the past. In 2004, co-ordinated blasts involving suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives hit Shiite shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad, killing at least 181 people. - IOL

Roadside bombs kill five in central Iraq

23/03/2006 - Roadside bombs targeting police patrols exploded in Baghdad and nearby Iskandariyah today, killing at least five people and wounding a dozen others.

The blast in Baghdad's mostly Sunni Muslim neighbourhood of Azamiyah killed two policemen and two bystanders, said police Lieutenant Ahmed Mohammed Ali.

At least seven more, two policemen and five civilians, were wounded, he said.

Another bomb in the capital wounded four civilians and no police in the district of Karradah, which is mostly Shiite but has a large Sunni minority.

In Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one policeman and wounded two pedestrians.

Back in the capital, another civilian was seriously wounded by an Iraqi army patrol that was shooting in the air to clear traffic in the western neighbourhood of Yarmouk, said police Lieutenant Maitham Abdul-Razaq said. - IOL

freed or rescued? so did they arrest the kidnappers? no news of that small detail...

Kember freed in Iraq

Thu Mar 23, 2006 BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Three Western peace activists, including Norman Kember, were freed from kidnappers on Thursday in an operation mounted by U.S.-led forces in Iraq, a British embassy spokeswoman said.

The two Canadians and a Briton from the Christian Peacemaker Teams were snatched in Baghdad in November. The tortured body of their American colleague Tom Fox was found dumped in the city two weeks ago.

"Norman Kember, Harmeet Sooden and Jim Loney were freed early this morning ... in a planned operation mounted by the Multinational Forces in Iraq," embassy spokeswoman Lisa Glover said.

The three were being checked by doctors and were in the care of consular staff. Glover had no comment on their state of health but said they had spoken to diplomats. She declined to say where in Iraq the operation took place or whether there were any casualties or arrests made. - reuters.

Freed from an Empty building

Hostage Kember freed after 118 days

SPECIAL forces today freed British peace campaigner Norman Kember and two fellow Canadian activists who had been held hostage in Iraq for 118 days. British forces, believed to be members of an SAS snatch squad, were involved in the major military operation in the town of Mishahda, about 20 miles north of Baghdad. Special forces from the United States and Iraq were also part of the dramatic rescue of 74-year-old Mr Kember and his Canadian colleagues, James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden.

The operation, put together after months of intelligence gathering, comes just two weeks after a fourth hostage was found dead in a Baghdad suburb.

The body of American Tom Fox, 54, was found on March 10 near a west Baghdad railway line with gunshot wounds to his head and chest. His body also showed signs of having been tortured. The discovery raised fears for the lives of the other three members of the Christian Peacemakers Teams, who had days earlier appeared on Arab television in a video sent by their kidnappers.

Prime Minister Tony Blair today said he was delighted by the news and congratulated the forces involved in the operation.

Mr Kember was said to be in "reasonable condition" and was recovering in the high security Green Zone in Baghdad. His wife Pat was said to be "absolutely delighted" at the happy ending to the kidnap ordeal. Mr Kember's brother was overcome with emotion at the news of the release. Speaking from his home in Taunton, Ian Kember said: "It's fresh news to me, I haven't got my thoughts together yet. "It's a wonderful thing, and it's obviously a great relief, but beyond that I haven't come to terms with it yet. This has been the news we have been waiting for for a long time."

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the rescue had been carried out by a multinational force operation. Mr Straw said: "I have, on the two occasions I have been to Iraq since Christmas, spoken to the great team that has been involved in trying to secure the release of these hostages and I am delighted that now we have a happy ending to this terrible ordeal for Norman Kember, for his family, for the Canadian hostages and for their families as well. "There is one last very sad point, which is that there were four hostages captured originally, including one American, Mr Fox, and it is a matter of great sorrow to everybody that he was killed a little time ago." Mr Straw said that it was "very important" he should not give out details of the rescue. He said he had spoken to Mrs Kember, who was "absolutely delighted, elated at this news".

Mr Straw said the men were freed in a multinational operation. He said: "British forces were involved in this operation. "It follows weeks and weeks of very careful work by our military and coalition personnel in Iraq and many civilians as well." When asked when Mr Kember would be returning to the UK, he said: "That's a matter to be decided. What is really important is that Norman Kember and his two Canadian colleagues are safe."

Mr Kember, a retired professor, was seized during a peace mission to Baghdad on November 26. The grandfather, a former medical physicist at a teaching hospital, from Pinner, north-west London, was visiting the country with Christian Peacemaker Teams, a Canada-based international peace group.

Al-Jazeera television later showed a video of the hostages sent by a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. They were accused of being spies. A few days later, on December 2, the group released a second video threatening to kill Mr Kember and the three other hostages if all Iraqi detainees were not freed.

Today, the Rev Alan Betteridge, a friend of Mr Kember for more than 40 years, said he was overjoyed to hear of his release. He said: "We are immensely relieved and thankful, especially after the death of Tom Fox, which made us very fearful. "We were praying for his release this morning. We have been praying for them every day." Fellow peace campaigner Bruce Kent, who has been involved in weekly vigils for Mr Kember's release since his capture, said: "This is news beyond belief". He added: "In this awful mess of Baghdad, thank God there is one bright light anyway." Speaking about his friend's ordeal, he added: "It was absolute torture. And thinking of the unfortunate American Tom Fox who was murdered, they must have had the most terrible time."

Ihtisham Hibatullah, of the Muslim Association of Britain, said the group was "greatly relieved" by the news. Speaking about moves to secure their release, he said: "The hostage takers were ruthless and did not heed this call. "Now we all feel that this should be the last time in Iraq that anyone should be taken and put through this kind of trauma."

In a statement, a Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister is delighted by the news. He is particularly pleased for those released and their families. He congratulates everyone involved in the operation to rescue the hostages."

Other kidnap victims were not so lucky

THE rescue of Norman Kember will highlight the plight of other Britons abducted while abroad.

Previous kidnap victims have spent years in captivity before being released, while others have not survived. One of the highest-profile kidnappings and murders in recent years was that of Kenneth Bigley, from Liverpool. He was taken hostage in Iraq in September 2004 and murdered just over three weeks later, with his death captured on video. The 62-year-old was preparing to retire to a new home in Bangkok when he was snatched from the Baghdad suburb in which he lived and worked. Also kidnapped were Americans Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong from the home they shared in the Mansour district. All three captives were beheaded after images of them were broadcast across the globe.

Last year, Iraqi police seemed to come one step closer to finding the killers of British aid worker Margaret Hassan. Four men were detained when Iraqi and US forces raided homes south-east of Baghdad in May.

Police found ID, clothing and a handbag belonging to Mrs Hassan, who was abducted in October 2004. A video showing her apparent death was released a month after her abduction but her body has never been found.

- The Scotsman

Suprise at Kember apparent good health

Bruce Kent talks of delight at Kember release

Thursday, 23rd March 2006, 10:45 LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - Peace campaigner Bruce Kent said he was "absolutely delighted" after the dramatic rescue of his friend Norman Kember in Iraq. The former leader of CND admitted his hopes for the hostage had gone downhill following the murder of American captive Tom Fox almost two weeks ago.

Speaking at home, Mr Kent said: "I am astonished. I had no idea this was about to happen and am surprised as anyone. "The news came completely out of the blue this morning. Our hopes had obviously fallen a lot in recent weeks."

But Mr Kent said he fully expected Mr Kember to make a complete recovery from his horrendous ordeal. He said: "He is a tough bloke, and has got a deep faith in providence. If anyone can put up with something like this, he can."

But even Mr Kent was surprised at how well his fellow campaigner looked in a recent video released by his captors.

He said: "Norman has a blood pressure problem, and he would have been without his medication all this time. But he certainly appears alright, considering what he has been through." Added Mr Kent: "I am still sitting in my pyjamas, because the phone has not stopped ringing. This is news beyond belief. "In this awful mess of Baghdad thank God there is one bright light anyway. "I can hardly believe it. It is wonderful news, particularly for his wife and family. It has been a bad few weeks after the death of Mr Fox. "We thought that if one was killed there would be others. Obviously our hopes were much further down than they were before. This news makes my day." - lse.co.uk

His wife in shock

Norman Kember's wife speaks

Thursday, 23rd March 2006, 17:03 LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - The wife of freed hostage Norman Kember was told of her husband's release in an early morning call from Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, she revealed today. But when Mr Straw told her that her husband was in the Green Zone, she had no idea what that was.

Reverend Bob Gardiner, the minister at Harrow Baptist Church, which Mr Kember has attended for 35 years, said he had spoken to Pat Kember at as soon as he heard the news 9am this morning.

He said she told him: "Yes it's true. Jack Straw has rung me this morning and told me he has been released. "He's in reasonable health and is in the Green Zone. I don't know what the Green Zone is."

Rev Gardiner added that as far as he was aware the couple still had not spoken to each other. He added: "When I spoke to her she was still a little shocked and surprised. "She is absolutely overjoyed. She is calming down. She's beginning to take it on board and is getting ready to receive him." He added Mrs Kember was at first unable to enjoy the good news because of the emotional wall she'd built up to help her cope during the 117 days he was held by kidnappers in Iraq. He said: "She has had to defend herself against her feelings for so long against the bad news. Then when the good news comes you defend yourself from that. "It's taken her half a day for it to sink in." He said Mr Kember's elderly wife, who like her husband is deeply religious, had had moments of doubt. He added: "She always remained strong. It would be understandable for her to have periods of doubt. "When suddenly Tom Fox's body was found she had to face up to the reality that Norman could be next."

Rev Gardiner said peace-loving Mr Kember, who has not yet spoken to his wife, would forgive the kidnappers behind his horrific ordeal unless the experience changed him. He said: "I hope he does. It would be unlike him not to. Pat has already forgiven them. Norman believed in loving your enemies. But you can't speak for how he might have changed."

Speaking at the north-west London church, Graeme Sparkes, head of international affairs at the Baptist World Alliance, said Mr Kember was well aware of the dangers he faced in Iraq. He said: "There are always those that will say that someone like Norman and the steps he took are irresponsible. "But Norman understood very well what he was doing. He knew the costs he was paying but he still tried to take the steps to make peace. "The irresponsibilty lies with those who create wars and start violence."

David Coffey, president of the Baptist World Alliance and general secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, said Norman's kidnapping would have a positive impact on the peace process. He said: "The kidnapping has exposed the tremendous amount of peace-making that goes on. "Norman's story will be very powerful. He is a very radical Christian and we will have to wait for his story." Mr Coffey, said he rang the office of Ans al Tikriti today to thank him for his efforts at securing Mr Kember's release. He added: "I don't believe that Norman would have been released without the help of the Muslim community."

Harrow Baptist Church's pastoral assistant, Shaggy Abdon Shortly -- who drove Mr Kember to Heathrow for his flight to Iraq, said the celebrations had already begun at the church's coffee morning today. She said: "People of all ages, even people with difficulty moving, were jumping up and down. There was laughing and hugging. It was a picture of perfect joy. There was no reserve in showing the joy."

Rev Gardiner, who described the entire church community as "thrilled", said he was unsure if Mr Kember's terrifying ordeal would stop him going abroad to spread the message of peace. He added: "I'm not sure if Pat will let him go. I'm not sure if Norman Kember at his age would want to go. You have to consider not only what it does to yourself but also your loved ones." The minister said he had remained close to Pat throughout the ordeal while much "confidential" work took place behind the scenes. He said she would approve of the "considerable patience and concern" exercised by the British government during Mr Kember's incarceration. He added: "I wish to give them a big plus for this." lse.co.uk/

not a shot fired

How Iraq hostages were freed

Briton Norman Kember and his Canadian colleagues James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden were freed after a multinational military raid acting on information provided by a detainee, the US military says. The rescue was completed without any shots being fired and with no kidnappers present, suggesting the operation was carefully planned and carried out. But the crucial bit of intelligence that enabled the rescue came only after two men were captured by US forces on Wednesday night.

One of the suspects had the information which led officials to the Baghdad house where the hostages were four months into their ordeal. "We got that information at 0800 (0500 GMT) this morning and we conducted the operation," said Maj Gen Rick Lynch. "We moved to the location in western Baghdad that was reported for the location of the Christian Peacemaker Team. "We conducted an assault on the house and inside the house we found the three hostages, in good condition. "There were no kidnappers there at the time. The three hostages were by themselves." The hostages were bound, he said.

Hostage James Loney reportedly confirmed that one person had led the forces to where they were held. In a telephone conversation with a friend, Mr Loney is said to have described the kidnappers as a criminal gang.

Gen Lynch described the men thought to be responsible as "a kidnapping cell that has been robust over the last several months in conducting these kind of kidnappings".

Textbook operation

Multinational special forces, police negotiators and Iraqi intermediaries were understood to have taken part in the rescue, says the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner. It was a textbook operation, our correspondent says.

The mission was spearheaded by British troops with the participation of forces from other coalition countries in Iraq.

"This was several weeks in the planning. It was an operation that was rolling, in a sense that it went on for some time," said the UK's Defence Secretary John Reid.

The multinational team included representatives from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

"Other agencies from Canada - they did a terrific job with us as well as the Americans," UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said. The foreign secretary said civilians had been involved in the operation "in the background". Announcing the hostage release in London, Mr Straw said: "Mercifully no shots were fired."

This was clearly a major success for the British-led force, says the BBC's defence correspondent Rob Watson. Although foreign hostages have been freed in Iraq before, most were released as the result of secret negotiations, many involving the payment of ransom money, our correspondent adds. But the body of the fourth member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams - US hostage Tom Fox - was found dumped in Baghdad nearly two weeks ago.

Kidnap victims

At least about 43 foreigners are still being held in Iraq.

And it is thought some 10 to 30 Iraqis are kidnapped every day - most of them for ransom.

Overall more than 400 foreigners have been taken hostage since the US-led invasion - about 55 of them have been killed by their captors.

But it does appear fewer foreigners are now being taken and fewer killed, says our correspondent. BBC

not a shot fired

isn't that strange?

"Mercifully no shots were fired."

This all in an operation against supposedly henious 'criminal gang' of kidnappers...of which there is NO MENTION of their identity or whereabouts...

While in villages near Sammara Houses full of women & children were bombed from the air...& US Marines killed 11 innocents in a revenge attack [see above]

questions asked of UK US contradictions
US say 2 wekks planning
but Tom Fox was killed more recently

Questions asked about intelligence that preceded Christian peacemaker's release -24/03/06

Questions are being raised about how much US and UK forces knew, at what stage, and for how long before the operation to release three Christian peacemakers in Iraq.

Norman Kember, 74, of north-west London, James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, both Canadians were freed on Thursday morning without a shot being fired.

The British government has said that the operation had been going on for weeks. Other sources however have emphasised its immediacy, with one saying it had been going on for two days and a US Major General suggesting that he received the necessary intelligence to pinpoint the hostage's location from a detainee just a few hours before US and UK forces acted.

In particular it remains unclear what US and UK forces knew at the time that one of the peacemaker hostages, Tom Fox, was killed - less than two weeks ago.

In a television interview on Thursday night the BBC's Newnight programme raised questions about how long the operation had been planned for, with the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Jack Straw however refused to "go into the operational details."

But in his initial statement after the hostages were released the Foreign Secretary emphasised that the operation followed "weeks and weeks of very careful work by military and coalition personnel in Iraq, and many civilians as well."

The Reuters news agency also reported that the release followed "weeks of intelligence work."

Just a few hours later, however, US General Rick Lynch suggested that an important piece of intelligence had enabled the operation to take place after two men were taken into custody by US forces on Wednesday night.

But a conflicting report followed from a senior Iraqi military officer who told The Associated Press that the operation had been under way for two days in the Abu Ghraib suburb west of Baghdad, site of the notorious prison. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his position.

It is not yet known either the extent to which the work of the Christian peacemakers on behalf of Iraqi detainees, in the field of human rights, and the immense goodwill that their work generated in Iraq, played a part in the gaining of the intelligence that led to their release. - ekklesia.co.uk

24th March 2006 - Kember Smeared...along with anyone else who disagrees with the Coalitions Militaristic invasion & chaos via sectarian divide & rule

Kembers wife pat said ""I thought when he wanted to go to Iraq he was a bit silly" - this was then capitalised on by the Media Reich...Joining the chorus of dissaproval was Terry Waite, who questioned the decision by Norman Kember and other Christian peace campaigners to travel to Iraq, saying that by doing so they had put others' lives at risk.

This was all amplified by the ITV Mid-day News which held its 'The Pulse' psuedo debate, featuring the father of Tom Hurdnall, who was shot dead by Isreali soldiers...Viewers were treated to mindless patriots phoning in delightfully naive opinions such as:

"Kember put our boys lives at risk"..."he shoudn't have been out there"..."young soldiers, who are keeping the peace in Iraq, risked their lives for a 73 yr old man"....at which the other pundit, a Christian friend of Kembers, piped up..."but the Peace group had helped arrange a situation so that there were to be no shots fired...the house was left empty...so no lives were out at risk"

Still missing is Jill Carroll, a freelance writer for the Christian Science Monitor who was abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad. She was last seen in a video broadcast Feb. 9 by the private Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai.

But Maybe we should stop peace groups investigating the abuses of Iraqis under coalition military rule...Perhaps we should leave it to the Army to investigate...

unfortunately the last Military investigation saw senior British military police officer in Iraq, Captain Ken Masters, hanging from a rope in his military accommodation in Basra on October 15 2005...Masters was commander of the Royal Military Police's Special Investigations Branch (SIB), charged with investigating allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers.

firing at civilians

flashback: Christian peacemakers highlight prisoner abuse in Iraq -12/01/06

Although they are still waiting anxiously for news of their four colleagues who were abducted more than six weeks ago, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) in Iraq s continuing its work.

Greg Rollins, one of their number, writes:

"The other day I accompanied a friend of mine to an Iraqi police station. He was detained there for a couple weeks for no reason. It might sound odd that he was held while innocent, but that is how things are done in Iraq. "Iraq is a place where the police are not always your friends. People here fear them for good reasons. Some police are responsible for kidnappings and murders. Many Iraqis arrested are innocent. The police are notorious for torture and abuse, and the prison conditions are poor.

"I asked my friend if the police abused him or tortured anyone while he was in jail. My friend said no, the police treated everyone well but he did meet some prisoners who were tortured in the summer, their bodies still scared or deformed.

"According to these prisoners the police tortured and abused them on a regular basis until the US forces stopped them. The story goes that US soldiers were visiting the station when they heard the screams of a prisoner being tortured. "They entered the room where the torture was taking place, took the man off the walk and took away the badges of the police in the room. To make sure the police don't continue abusing prisoners, the US forces now inspect the police station every couple days. "Yet the conditions are still poor. My friend said the cells are cold, dirty and over crowded. He told me that he slept on a thin foam mattress on the floor with another prisoner.

"Because the cell was so crowded the only available place for them to sleep was near the toilet where the floor was wet and dirty from people constantly walking in and out. My friend said he believed about two thirds of the prisoners there were innocent.

"The day my friend and I went to the police station, the police had asked him to come back simply to go over a few matters. To be on the safe side my friend asked me and another CPTer to go along with him.

"What made the trip interesting was while we waited in the reception area, a policeman walked by that my friend knew from his stay in jail. When the two saw each other, they shook hands and kissed each other on the cheeks three times like old friends in Iraq do.

"My team mate and I laughed. This was not something we expected to see, especially considering the reputation of the police.

"I asked my friend why he kissed the policeman. My friend replied that while he was in jail the policeman treated him with respect. He said there were several there who did the same.

"Our work at the police station was short. The policeman who called my friend in was uncomfortable seeing my team mate and I, so business was handled quickly and we went on our way.

"My friend was glad to leave. He was grateful that they hadn't arrested him again without any reason. That was how it happened the first time; they called him up and wanted to talk to him about something he had seen. Two and half weeks later they let him go home."

Peggy Gish adds a comment on the spiritual discipline and difficulty of waiting for news of Tom Fox, Norman Kember, Jim Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden, who were snatched by a previously unknown armed group on 26 November 2005.

"It's easier to talk about not being controlled by fear than it is to actually do it. It takes some struggling to be able to give the underlying tension and fear over to God and to really trust God's care for us and our four colleagues.

"We need to give each other grace in this. We ask ourselves daily where to draw the line between continuing the work we feel called to do and caution. Should we visit Iraqi friends, attend local worship services, or meet with particular organizations we worked with in the past?

"Our struggle is to be wisely cautious, but not allow fear to dominate."

Meanwhile Christian Peacemaker Teams asks supporters around the world to keep up the profile not just of their own friends in captivity, but of the many Iraqis who are missing, those held in detention, and victims of violence and injustice.

- ekklesia.co.uk

firing at civilians

Security teams said firing at civilians

2006-03-23 BAGHDAD, March 23 (UPI) -- About 6,000 non-Iraqi security contractors are reported operating in Iraq and are alleged to be firing weapons into civilian vehicles with impunity.

In some 400 documents covering nine months of the 3-year-old war, in 2004 and 2005, contractors fired into 61 vehicles and no one was prosecuted, the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, which did the survey, reports. In just seven cases, the documents say, were Iraqis clearly on the attack.

Because the reports are voluntary, experts say they probably represent only a fraction of such incidents.

There are believed to be about 20,000 non-Iraqi civilian contractors supporting a range of U.S. efforts. - United Press International

Kember thanks troops...not soon enough for some

Freed Kember thanks rescue troops

Freed hostage Norman Kember thanked the soldiers who rescued him from kidnappers in Iraq as he arrived home. But, in a statement released as he was reunited with wife Pat at Heathrow airport, he said he did not believe armed force achieved lasting peace. He had faced criticism after apparently failing to thank the men who freed him.

Mr Kember, 74, a peace campaigner from Pinner, London, was kidnapped in Iraq last November. He and two Canadian hostages were rescued on Thursday.

Tribute paid

Head of the British Army, Gen Sir Mike Jackson, had said he was "saddened" there did not seem to be any gratitude after the rescue of Mr Kember, James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32.

But on Saturday, Mr Kember said: "I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue."

And Christian Peacemaker Teams, the group all three men were campaigning for, insisted it had thanked the soldiers. Mrs Kember added: "I am overjoyed that Norman is free to come home and I am very grateful for all those who have helped secure his release."

Mr Kember left Baghdad on Friday on a military transporter after 117 days in captivity. He arrived in London on a flight from Kuwait at 12.22pm. He was taken off the British Airways plane to a VIP area, for an emotional reunion with his wife and family, before leaving the airport.

No lives lost

Meanwhile, Mr Kember's church has said UK authorities gave an assurance the men would not be rescued unless they were reasonably confident no-one would be killed. The Rev Bob Gardiner, of Harrow Baptist Church, said: "We are grateful to the British government for its close co-operation with myself and the Kember family since Norman was kidnapped in November.

"We were impressed by the sensitivity with which it responded to our concerns about any possible use of force in any rescue attempt. "We are thankful for the way in which they honoured their promises to intervene only when there was a considerable degree of assurance that there would be no loss of life. "We are also grateful for the compassionate way in which Pat in particular was guided and protected, encouraged and kept up to date during the period of Norman's captivity and the kindness shown by those in direct contact with her."

Mr Kember had said he had enjoyed a shave, a bath and a "good English breakfast" since returning to freedom.

The two Canadians were due to leave Iraq on Saturday.

They were due to arrive in Dubai at 1730 local time before making their way back to Canada, CPT said.

Campaign continues

Despite the kidnappings, another CPT member, Jan Benvie has told BBC News she intends to go to Iraq in July. She said she did not accept her presence should mean an extra responsibility for the security forces.

The rescue followed a weeks-long operation led by British troops and involving US and Canadian special forces, and information gleaned from two detainees just three hours before the rescue. US citizen Tom Fox, kidnapped along with the freed men on 26 November in Baghdad, was found shot dead earlier this month.

His three colleagues did not find out he was dead until after their release, according to CPT. It said the men had not been bound during their captivity.

They were not given much food but Mr Kember had received medicine he needed.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has paid tribute to the soldiers involved in the rescue while Foreign Secretary Jack Straw urged people planning to undertake humanitarian work in Iraq to think again.

Between 10 and 40 Iraqis are kidnapped every day - often children snatched on their way to school and held for a ransom of between £3,000 and £30,000. BBC

Developments in Iraq, March 24

*FALLUJA - Two U.S. soldiers were killed in action in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, on Thursday, the military said in a statement.

*BAGHDAD - U.S. troops found six bodies, apparently victims of a death squad killing, in the Khodra area of Baghdad and turned them over to Iraqi police, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen kidnapped police commando Colonel Muayyad al-Mashhadani in front of his home in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAIJI - The bodies of two Iraqi soldiers who were killed by gunmen on Friday were found in Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, said a source at a U.S.-Iraqi military coordination centre.

MAHMUDIYA - Four members of a Shi'ite family, including a child, were killed and the mother was critically wounded when gunmen shot them in their house in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, police said.

KHALIS - Five worshippers were killed and 17 wounded by a bomb planted near a Sunni mosque in the town of Khalis, 60 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Police found five bodies, shot, blindfolded and with their hands bound, on the edge of the Shi'ite district of Sadr City, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed four bakery workers in a mostly Sunni district of Baghdad and planted an explosive booby-trap that killed a policeman responding to the attack, police said.

BAGHDAD - Three policemen were killed and one wounded when gunmen opened fire on their patrol in western Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Police found seven bodies with their hands bound and shot in the head in northern Baghdad. A police source said the bodies were dumped on a street in al-Binouk district.

TAL AFAR - Six children were wounded when a mortar bomb landed in the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, police said. - alertnet.org

New Pentagon Report Says Russia Fed Iraq Intelligence

March 24, 2006 5:15 p.m. EST

Julie Farby - All Headline News Staff Writer

Washington, D.C. (AHN)-A Pentagon report reveals that Russia provided intelligence to Iraq's government in the opening days of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, including information that fed Iraqi suspicions that the main U.S. invasion force coming from Kuwait was actually a diversion.

According to the report, a document from the Iraqi minister of foreign affairs to President Saddam Hussein stated that Russian intelligence had reported information on American troops plans to the Iraqis through the Russian ambassador.

The leaks were contained in a report by the U.S. military's Joint Forces Command assessing the events in the opening months of the war, saying "Significantly, the regime was also receiving intelligence from the Russians that fed suspicions that the attack out of Kuwait was merely a diversion."

Wayne Madsen - March 25, 2006 --

The Pentagon's role as a source of media disinformation. First it was the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs, which morphed into the Office of Special Plans. Both served as conduits for neo-con propaganda spewed forth by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Heritage Foundation, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Hudson Institute, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), among others prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Now the Pentagon has issued an "unclassified report" stating that in the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Russia obtained war plans and planned U.S. troop movements from inside the American Central Command. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) denied the charge, stating that "similar, baseless accusations concerning Russias intelligence have been made more than once."

The Pentagon cited as its source two captured Iraqi documents that describe Russian penetration of the US Central Command in Qatar. However, the Pentagon's story later changed. The revised story stated the Russian obtained the war plans from signals intelligence intercepts of pre-war U.S. military communications. In either case, the citing of "captured" Iraqi documents has been used in the past to falsely implicate various anti-war international politicians with being in league with Saddam's "Oil for Food" program. Many of these "captured" documents were forgeries emanating from notorious Iraqi con man Ahmad Chalabi. Bogus Niger government documents were forged by a neo-con cabal based in Rome, Washington, and Jerusalem to justify an attack on Iraq based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction. The information contained in the two "secret" Iraqi documents could have been obtained from any number of open sources, including Jane's Defence Weekly. The "sic" appearing next to "special forces unit 'Papa'" in the purported Iraqi documents is a clue to a forgery. The standard NATO/DoD phonetic code for the letter "P" is "Papa." Why the authors would indicate a possible misspelling of Papa in the document is curious unless its because the real authors include some of our most noted neo-con draft dodgers who are unfamiliar with U.S. and NATO military nomenclatures. The two secret Iraqi documents are handwritten and contain no official government seal or stamps, another clear indication of a forgery.

The neo-con stranglehold on the Pentagon continues to permit this cabal of provocateurs and dual loyalists to pump out false charges in an attempt to damage relations with Russia and President Vladimir Putin as Russia continues to push for negotiations with Iran and lay the possible groundwork for Russian casualties at Iranian nuclear facilities in the event of war with Iran. Neo-cons would argue that such casualties were legitimate considering previous Russian support for Saddam against the United States.

In fact, the Pentagon neo-cons now have more power than ever considering the current presence of anti-Russian neo-con-influenced governments in Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia. Polish Defense Minister Radek Sikorski, an AEI alum and colleague of Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen, is married to the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum. All four are virulently anti-Putin, especially since Putin began cracking down on the Russian oligarchs who looted the USSR's treasury and resources and made themselves instant billionaires, at the expense of the peoples of the former Soviet Union.

Over 70 percent of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs carry Israeli passports. Ukraine President Viktor Yuschenko's wife, Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, is an American citizen and held positions in the Reagan White House that were directed against "the evil empire." She was, and remains, close to the leading neo-con war hawks of the Reagan years, including Perle, Ledeen, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Ken Adelman. Georgia's President, Mikhail Saakashvili, in an anti-Putin U.S.-trained lawyer who ousted his predecessor in a U.S.-financed and supported coup backed by oil companies like Halliburton and Exxon Mobil. In addition to the offices of AEI, AIPAC, Hudson, WINEP, and Heritage, in addition to the Pentagon, the embassies of Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia in Washington have become virtual neo-con nesting places, working overtime to formulate all sorts of anti-Russian propaganda aimed at destabilizing Russia and toppling Putin. They are assisted in these efforts by the US Mission to the United Nations, which under arch neo-con John Bolton, has become a favorite off-site meeting place for Washington-based neo-cons right in the middle of Manhattan.

The two latest possible forgeries, courtesy of the neo-con disinformation machine:

Secret and Urgent

Keep your enemy before your eyes, act before he does, and do not let him behind your back.
-- President Saddam Hussein (God keep and preserve him)

Date: March 25, 2003

To: The Office of the President, Mr. Secretary

Subject: American Aggression against Iraq

First: The Russian ambassador informed us on the evening of March 24, 2003 of the following:

Point 1: In relation to the position paper that we delivered to them on March 23, 2003 (the subject of our report 459 dated March 23, 2003), he noted that the Russian foreign minister is in agreement. The time has come to raise the subject of American aggression against Iraq in the [UN] Security Council. For this reason, he has directed the Russian envoy to the UN to meet with his counterparts from China, France, Syria, and Germany to discuss elements of the Iraqi position paper and to prepare a draft resolution to present to the [Security] Council. The Russian foreign minister feels that the resolution's chances of success in the Security Council are nil because the Anglo-Saxons have a veto. But Russia considers talks in the Security Council important to convey that the American-British military effort consists of aggression and the unilateral use of force in violation of international law, the UN Charter, and Security Council resolutions. If the Security Council fails to adopt the resolution, the matter will be transferred to the UN General Assembly. The Russian foreign minister proposes that Iraq coordinate with Arab countries and the non-aligned movement to demand the holding of a session of the Council.

Point 2: As concerns the proposals by Kofi Annan to introduce changes to the Oil for Food program, the Russian foreign minister has directed Russia's permanent representative to the UN to freeze any discussion of Kofi Annan's proposals. There will be a meeting in Paris on March 27 at the level of departments within the foreign ministries of Russia, France, China, and Germany, to agree on proposals about the program that these countries will present.

Point 3: Information Russia has obtained from its sources in the U.S. Central Command in Doha [Qatar] indicates that the Americans have concluded that the occupation of Iraqi cities is impossible. They have changed their approach and now intend to spread out along the Euphrates River from Al-Basrah in the south to Al-Qa'im in the north, avoiding entering cities. The goal is to cut Iraq off from its Western border. The Americans also plan to occupy oil wells in Kirkuk.

Point 4: Information received indicates that Jordan has agreed to accept the American 4th Mechanized [Infantry] Division. It had been decided that this division would enter Turkey, but after the Turkish parliament's refusal to permit it entry, it changed direction and it is crossing the Suez Canal at present and is expected to arrive in Aqaba.

Point 5: The Russian ambassador noted that two days ago he gave us [information] on American special forces units Delta and Papa [sic] based on information from Russian intelligence (the subject of our report 446 dated March 20, 2003). He did not have instructions to convey to us the above-mentioned information. Yesterday, Iraqi intelligence officers contacted their counterparts at the Russian embassy and inquired about the matter, noting that the Russian ambassador in Baghdad was the one who gave them this information. This caused him embarrassment. He would like us not to mention in discussions with other Russian agencies the source of the information that he is giving us.

Second: Pursuant to the resolution of the Arab Foreign Ministers' Conference dated March 24, 2003, the Arab group in the UN held a meeting on the evening of March 24, 2003 and decided to send a letter to the chairman of the Security Council demanding an immediate emergency session of the Security Council [to ensure] a halt to the American-British aggression against Iraq; the immediate withdrawal of hostile forces beyond the borders of the Republic of Iraq; respect for Iraq's sovereignty, political independence, and territorial unity; and a ban on [other] countries' interference in its internal affairs. Kuwait objected to sending the letter.

The Arab group also discussed the issue of presenting a draft resolution to the Security Council and considered it appropriate to consult with the non-aligned movement to present a draft resolution that has the support of at least nine members of the Council so that it does not have a negative effect and so the Americans cannot use it to lend legitimacy to the aggression if the draft resolution fails in the Council without a veto.

Elsewhere, our permanent representative to the UN met with the Malaysian representative. It was agreed that Malaysia, acting in the name of the non-aligned movement, will present a demand for an emergency session of the Security Council on the American aggression against Iraq.

For your information. With respect,

Humam Abd-al-Khaliq
Acting Foreign Minister

 

Document No. 2 (cmpc-2003-001950)

[Handwritten, undated]

To: Office of the President, Mr. Secretary

Re: Meeting with the Russian Ambassador

Our warmest greetings!

We would like to inform you that the Russian ambassador met this evening with the general director for external economic relations and the general director for grain trade and he informed us of the following:

1. The provision of facilities for the departure of Russian specialists working on projects belonging to our ministry without delay for the period March 5-8, with the last plane departing on March 9, as he conveyed. He explained that the request for the evacuation of Russian citizens came at the order of the Russian president.

2. He explained that Russia has been working with France and Germany, and it is expected that they will be joined by Syria and China, to prepare a draft Security Council resolution in response to the U.S.-British resolution that has been presented to the [UN] Security Council. Voting will take place on the two resolutions on March 9. He indicated that it is expected that a number of countries on the Security Council will abstain, including Pakistan, Chile, and Kenya.

3. During this meeting the ambassador presented the following information about the American military presence in the Gulf and the region as of March 2:

- Number of forces: 206,500, including 98,000 marines and 36,500 infantry. Ninety percent of these forces are in Kuwait and on American military vessels.
- American forces have also reached Bubiyan Island
- Number of tanks: 480
- Number of armored vehicles: 1,132
- Number of artillery pieces: 296
- Helicopters (Apache): 735
- Fighter planes: 871
- Units of the American fleet: 106, including 68 in the Gulf and the remainder in Oman, Aden, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean
- Number of aircraft carriers: 5, including one nuclear-powered [carrier]; three of them are in the Gulf, one in the Mediterranean, and the other in [unclear, ed.]
- Number of cruise missiles: 583, belonging to the American navy, distributed among 22 naval vessels
- Number of aircraft-borne cruise missiles: 64
- Number of heavy planes (B-52H) in the Indian Ocean: 10
- Number of B-1B at the American base in Oman (Thumrait): 8

4. The ambassador indicated that what concerns us is the increase in the number of planes in Jordan. He explained that the number of these planes at Al-Salt base is now as follows:

- 24 F-16s
- 10 Tornadoes - 11 Carriers [F-18s]

He also indicated that there are five A-10 tank killers at the King Faisal base in Jordan.

5. The ambassador also indicated that a number of individuals from the 82nd [Airborne] Division have begun arriving Kuwait. This division was located in Afghanistan, and the number of individuals who have arrived is 750.

 

Russia denies Iraq secrets claim

Russia has denied providing Saddam Hussein with intelligence on US military moves in the opening days of the US-led invasion in 2003.

"Similar, baseless accusations concerning Russia's intelligence have been made more than once," a Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman said.

A US Pentagon report said Russia passed details through its Baghdad ambassador. One piece of intelligence passed on was false, and in fact helped a key US deception effort, the report said. The report also quoted an Iraqi memo which mentioned Russian "sources" at the US military headquarters in Qatar.

"The information that the Russians have collected from their sources inside the American Central Command in Doha is that the United States is convinced that occupying Iraqi cities are [sic] impossible," said the Iraqi document, quoted by the Pentagon report.

Surprise attack

The false intelligence apparently passed on by Russia concerned the date the US was likely to start its main attack on Baghdad.

A document from the Iraqi foreign minister to Saddam Hussein, dated 2 April 2003, and quoting Russian intelligence, said the attack would not begin until the Army's 4th Infantry Division arrived about 15 April. This reinforced an impression that the US military were trying to create, in order to catch Iraqis by surprise with an earlier attack, the Pentagon report said.

In fact, the assault on the Iraqi capital began well before the 4th Division arrived, and the city fell about a week before 15 April.

The same Iraqi memo said that US troops were moving to cut off Baghdad from the south, east and north.

"Significantly, the (Iraqi) regime was also receiving intelligence from the Russians that fed suspicions that the attack out of Kuwait was merely a diversion," the report said. The Pentagon report noted that there were Russian business interests in Iraqi oil, and a senior US military spokesman said Russia's actions were being seen as "driven by economic interests".

Saddam 'interference'

The report also said Saddam Hussein's inept military leadership was a key factor in the defeat of his forces.

"The largest contributing factor to the complete defeat of Iraq's military forces was the continued interference by Saddam (Hussein)," it said.

The BBC's Pentagon correspondent, Adam Brookes, says that overall the report portrays Saddam Hussein as chronically out of touch with reality - preoccupied with the prevention of domestic unrest and with the threat posed by Iran.

The 210-page report - Iraqi Perspectives Project - aims to help US officials understand in hindsight how the Iraqi military prepared for and fought during the invasion. There are both classified and unclassified versions of the report. BBC

meanwhile:

Blast hits Iraq anti-terror unit

More than 30 people have been killed, many of them policemen, and dozens wounded in a series of bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. In the deadliest incident, a suicide bomber blew up his car outside the headquarters of the anti-terrorist unit in Karrada, killing 25 people. Another car bomb near a Shia mosque in the south-western district of Shurta killed at least five people. At least three policemen were reported killed in an earlier roadside bombing.

Sealed off

Ten policemen were among the dead in the blast in the central Karrada district, the Iraqi interior ministry said. At least 32 people were injured. The suicide bomber blew up his car at the gate of the car park of the anti-terrorist unit. The bomber had tried to drive into the car park, but was stopped by guards. After the explosion, Iraqi security forces sealed off the area as ambulances rushed to the scene.

Insurgents fighting the Iraqi government and US-led forces have mounted almost daily attacks in the capital. The level of violence increased further when one of the most important Shia Muslim shrines was bombed at Samarra last month, sparking sectarian reprisals.

The formation of the new Iraqi government has been delayed amid major disagreement over the Shia majority's choice of Ibrahim Jaafari as prime minister. The failure to form a government is seen as one of the factors fuelling the violence.

BBC

meanwhile: Get 'stood up' for Victory!

The president is conducting a public relations blitz on Iraq

Bush calls for Iraqi government

US President George W Bush has said Iraqi leaders must urgently form a government to unify the nation.

Rival political groups in Iraq have been unable to agree on a candidate for prime minister, more than three months after elections for a new parliament.

Speaking to military families West Virginia, Mr Bush said he understood Americans' deep concern about Iraq, three years after the invasion. The speech comes at a time when his popularity is at an all-time low. Mr Bush has been making a series of speeches to coincide with the third anniversary of the US-led invasion.

The BBC's James Coomarasamy in Washington says the addresses have contained unusually frank exchanges between Mr Bush and members of the public and press.

'Come together'

Mr Bush said Iraq urgently needed to have a representative government to help curb the civil strife which has affected parts of the country in recent months. "It's time for a government to get stood up," he said. "There's time for the elected representatives - or those who represent the voters, the political parties - to come together and form a unity government." He added that Iraq's security forces had to be prepared to fight for their country's future. "It's the Iraqis' fight," he said. "These troops that we're training are going to have to stand up and defend their democracy." - BBC

In Falluja, Iraqi forces riven by sectarianism

24 Mar 2006 Source: Reuters - By Fadel al-Badrani FALLUJA, Iraq, March 24 (Reuters) -

If all goes to plan, U.S.-trained Iraqi troops and police will work together, gain the trust of volatile cities like Falluja and battle insurgents on their own as the Americans gradually withdraw troops.

But, judging by the mood of this former rebel stronghold west of Baghdad, that is wishful thinking.

Iraqi soldiers and police, charged with making sure al Qaeda-linked militants and Saddam Hussein loyalists who once took over the city never return, are deeply divided, raising questions about the prospects of stability.

This week, the mostly Arab Sunni police staged a strike to protest what they said were abuses committed by Shi'ite Muslim soldiers. The police have returned to their posts, but the mistrust remains.

"The soldiers attacked a 17-year-old grocer and took him away to an area where he was found dead two hours later," said a police major, who asked not to be named. He said the youth had been shot in the eye and his stomach ripped open.

There was no way to independently verify the account but facts rarely matter in Iraq's chaos, where word of kidnappings and killings are all it takes to fuel sectarian violence.

A surge in communal bloodshed since the bombing of a major Shi'ite mosque on Feb. 22 has raised fears of civil war. An Iraqi army official in Baghdad said any abuses in Falluja were isolated incidents.

"If there are abuses they are carried out by individuals and do not reflect the policy of the Iraqi army. Soldiers are under orders to treat people with respect," said the official.

Iraqi leaders and U.S. officials hope Iraqi security forces can eventually stabilise the country themselves, with any U.S. troop withdrawal hinging on their ability to combat the Sunni Arab insurgency and spreading sectarian violence.

Saddam loyalists and Islamist militants were crushed in a U.S. offensive on Falluja in 2004 that was designed to stabilise the city and hand it over to local forces, but resentment towards Iraqi soldiers remains and is growing.

"The army raided my shop a few days ago and they beat and kicked me," said Alaa Majeed, a mobile telephone dealer. "They stole my money and the mobiles I had left. I closed my shop because I don't want to be robbed again."

"OUTSIDERS"

Residents support the estimated 1,200 policemen mainly because they are Sunnis from Falluja, but they loathe the soldiers, who are Shi'ites from other towns and are seen as close to Iraq's former war foe, Shi'ite neighbour Iran.

"They are sectarian people and most of them speak Farsi. We think the Americans have more mercy than they do," said Nawaf Alwan, 43, a businessman in the city.

Residents say Falluja, 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad, is still recovering from the 2004 U.S. air strikes, artillery and tank fire that left most of the city in ruins.

The Iraqi government and the U.S. military hoped the offensive would deter rebels from trying to take over other towns, but Iraqi soldiers say insurgents have crept back. Aside from renewed violence, residents complain of sporadic electricity, poor water supplies and slow reconstruction. But one of their biggest problem appears to be the Iraqi forces charged with protecting them.

"As long as Iraqi army troops are in our city we will never see any security or feel any relief. Most attacks are carried out by them because they do not want to see any stability here," said Fahd Saadoun, 30, a teacher. - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq, March 25

BAGHDAD - Police found ten bodies in different parts of Baghdad, police said. The corpses showed signs of torture and some had been garrotted, police said.

MOSUL - Gunmen ambushed a convoy of trucks heading to a U.S. base in Badush, west of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. Six trucks were destroyed.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed a traffic policeman in central Baghdad then placed a bomb inside his booth which killed four civilians in a minibus and wounded four, police said. - alertnet.org

'Beheaded bodies' found in Iraq

26th March 2006 Iraqi security forces have found 30 bodies, all of them beheaded, near the town of Baquba, reports say.

Security officials said they found the bodies near the road by the village of Mulla Eed, to the south-west of Baquba.

The area has been plagued by sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni Muslims since the bombing of a Shia shrine in the city of Samarra in February.

Baquba, a mixed town home to Shia and Sunni Muslims, has itself been the focus of continuing violence.

Iraqi security officials confirmed that they had discovered the bodies of 30 people, thought to be men, near Mulla Eed,

Security forces were heading to the scene to collect the bodies and begin investigations, officials said.

Earlier on Sunday police in Baghdad said they had found at least 10 bodies, some of which had been handcuffed and shot. - news.bbc.co.uk

US navy ship, merchant vessel collide off Iraq

Sun Mar 26, MANAMA (Reuters) - A United States Navy destroyer collided with a merchant vessel off Iraq's coast in the Gulf, injuring four people, the Navy Fifth Fleet said on Sunday.

It said two U.S. soldiers and two crew members from the merchant vessel were injured when the McCampbell and the Kiribati-flagged Rokya 1 collided late on Saturday about 30 nautical miles southeast of the Iraqi coastline.

"The cause of the accident is under investigation," it said in a statement, adding that both ships had sustained damage to their bows but were seaworthy.

McCampbell is conducting maritime security operations under the Combined Task Force 58, which is responsible for the security of Iraqi oil terminals, the Navy said.

Pro-Western Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet. - news.yahoo.com

why are US/Iraqi deathsquads targetting Sadr?

16 Sadr Loyalists Killed in Assault

U.S.-Iraqi Mission Heightens Tensions With Shiite Cleric

By Jonathan Finer and John Ward Anderson - BAGHDAD, March 26 -- U.S. and Iraqi special forces killed at least 16 followers of the Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Sunday in a twilight assault on what the U.S. military said was a "terrorist cell" responsible for attacks on soldiers and civilians.

Also Sunday, Iraqi forces found 30 headless bodies in an area north of the capital. A health official said the killings appeared to have taken place earlier in the day.

No U.S. or Iraqi service members were killed in the clash with Sadr's supporters, which occurred in the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Adhamiyah, in northern Baghdad, according to a U.S. military statement. One Iraqi soldier was wounded, and 15 people were detained. An unidentified hostage was found at the site, the statement said, along with materials used to fashion homemade bombs.

Aides to Sadr, who is backed by one of the country's largest and most feared militias, said those killed were innocents praying in the al-Moustafa mosque in the Shaab neighborhood, well north of Adhamiyah, when the assault began at 6 p.m.

The U.S. military said in a statement that "no mosques were entered or damaged during this operation." The military also said U.S. forces came under fire as the raid began and then returned fire. It was impossible to verify where the raid took place because of the nightly government-imposed curfew that began at 8 p.m., hours before news of the incident broke.

The killings further inflamed an already volatile political situation as Iraqi leaders struggle to form a new government in the face of mounting sectarian violence. An outspoken opponent of the U.S. presence in Iraq, Sadr has become a potent political force, fielding more than 30 loyal members in Iraq's new parliament. The incident Sunday was one of the deadliest encounters between his followers and U.S. and Iraqi forces since his Mahdi Army militia waged two violent uprisings in 2004.

"I think we are going to have a firm stance against the American forces because of this crime," Salam al-Maliki, the country's transportation minister and a close Sadr ally, said on al-Iraqiya television. The network aired footage throughout the night of bloody bodies lying on a concrete floor and men wrapping the corpses in blankets by the light of glow sticks and carrying them away.

Maliki blamed the incident on U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has accused the Mahdi Army of carrying out a slew of recent killings in the wake of the bombing last month of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

In a statement read by a government spokesman on al-Iraqiya, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari called for calm and said he had discussed the incident with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who Jafari said had "promised to investigate."

"We call upon the sons of our people to be aware of what is being plotted against the country," Jafari said. "We hope that they will enjoy patience till the conclusion of the ongoing, immediate investigations."

An aide to Jafari, who was endorsed by Sadr's political wing to retain his job in the next government but is opposed by other Iraqi factions, said the government was not notified about the raid in advance.

"The incident has injured the whole political process," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the deliberations about the composition of the next government that have deadlocked since elections in December. "Some leaders will be dismayed of this situation and hesitate to participate knowing that such an incident took place and how the government was not aware. We need to sort of calm down the situation now."

The clash in the Iraqi capital was one of several incidents Sunday that had potentially far-reaching political ramifications. Also in Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi forces stormed an Interior Ministry detention facility and found 17 foreign prisoners. News services reported that as many as 40 police officers were detained in the operation, which came after pledges by U.S. commanders to crack down on abuse of detainees following recent disclosures of torture in at least two Iraqi-run prisons.

The aide to Jafari said that no evidence of torture was found and that the prisoners included Sudanese, Egyptians and other Arab nationals, all of whom were awaiting deportation because they lacked proper identification. A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said he had "no releasable information" on the incident.

Elsewhere in Iraq, army and medical officials in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, said 30 headless bodies were discovered at 6:30 p.m. in a deserted brush area in Tarfiya, a village outside Baqubah, 35 miles from the capital.

Tariq Shallal Hiyali, deputy director of the provincial health department, said all of the bodies were male.

In an unrelated case also in Diyala province, a source in the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Sunday that a security officer had been arrested about three days earlier and charged with heading a criminal gang whose members dressed as security officers to kidnap and kill people. The official, who would not be quoted by name, identified the arrested man as Arkan Mohammed al-Bawi, 32. He said Bawi had confessed during interrogation that his gang members wore police uniforms stolen during attacks on police checkpoints and that they had killed "many people."

The Reuters news service reported that Bawi was a police major and that his brother is the chief of police in Diyala province.

Iraq has been plagued by incidents in which gunmen dressed as security officers have abducted and killed civilians. Sunni politicians have charged that the groups are targeting Sunni Arabs and are being harbored by the Shiite-led Interior Ministry, an allegation denied by the Iraqi government.

Also on Sunday, at least 10 more bodies were found in three places in the capital, an official in the Baghdad police operations room said on condition of anonymity. Five had their hands bound and had been shot in the head, and five showed signs of torture and had been shot in the chest and stomach, he said. All were unidentified men between the ages of 20 and 40, he said.

Meanwhile, in an incident apparently unrelated to the clashes involving his followers in Baghdad, Sadr escaped injury when two mortar shells struck near his Najaf home while he was inside.

Mustafa Yacoubi, a top aide to Sadr in Najaf, said the shells appeared to have been fired at close range from another house in the neighborhood, an area in northeastern Najaf that is controlled by Sadr's Mahdi Army. Angry followers of the young cleric surrounded Sadr's home after the attack.

The cleric, who is believed to be in his thirties, issued a statement calling for calm among his followers, who have been accused of deadly retaliatory attacks on Sunnis following other provocations, which Sadr often blames on the West.

"I call upon my brothers not to be dragged into the West's plots," he said in the statement. "Everybody should stay calm." - washingtonpost.com

Developments in Iraq, March 26

*NAJAF - Mortar bombs landed in the neighbourhood of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, wounding two of his bodyguards, his security guards and police said.

*BAGHDAD - Police found a house they said was rented by terrorists for making roadside bombs. Two car bombs were also discovered, said a government statement.

The statement also said police killed what they said were eight terrorists, arrested 49 others, and defused a number of roadside bomb in different cities of Iraq.

*BAGHDAD - Iraqi authorities arrested a police major accused of taking part in death squads in Baquba, north of Baghdad, a source in the Ministry of Interior said.

*BASRA - A fourteen-year-old student was killed and two others wounded by a bomb planted in front of a school in the southern city of Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol in eastern Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A woman was killed and three others wounded by a bomb planted in front of her house in central Baghdad, police said.

WAJIHIYA - Gunmen killed two policemen in Wajihiya, a small town east of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, police said. Three guards of the mayor of Wajihiya were wounded by a roadside bomb as they headed to the scene of the attack, police added. - alertnet.org/

Developments in Iraq on March 27

MOSUL - A suicide bomber strapped with explosives killed 40 people at an army recruiting post near Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, the Defence Ministry said in a statement. It said 30 people were also wounded in the attack.

*BAGHDAD - Gunmen kidnapped 16 employees of the Baghdad trading company Al Saeed Import Export, Interior Ministry sources said. The abductions took place in the upscale Mansour district of the capital.

*BAGHDAD - Iraqi police officials said a rocket slammed into a commercial building in the Za'afaraniya section of capital, killing at least seven people and wounding 30.

The blast was followed by another rocket attack that hit a nearby house, killing one person and wounding two in the Za'afaraniya area of Baghdad.

*BAGHDAD - Iraqi authorities arrested a police major-general on Monday accused of corruption and threatening security, security sources said.

Ghassan al-Bawi, the police chief in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, was arrested one day after the authorities detained his brother, police major Arkan al-Bawi, on accusations of taking part in death squads in Baquba, north of Baghdad.

*BAGHDAD - Foreigners rescued from an Iraqi Interior Ministry bunker by U.S. forces on Sunday were being held for visa violations, not terrorism charges, and are free to go home, the Interior Minister said.

Asked about the incident in a news conference, Bayan Jabor did not comment on the 40 Iraqi Interior Ministry forces controlling the secret bunker who were arrested by U.S. troops. Jabor said 17 Sudanese and one Egyptian had been detained.

NEAR BALAD - Police said they found the body of a man who works as an Iraqi army supplier in the town of Yathrib, near Balad, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad.

NEAR DUJAIL - Police found the body of a man with gunshot wounds in an area near Dujail, 90 km (55 miles) north of Baghdad, a police source said.

BAGHDAD - A policeman and three civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb hit a police patrol in the city's south.

BAGHDAD - Four mortar rounds landed in different districts of the city, wounding two civilians, police said.

BAQUBA - A mortar round landed on the Sadr office in Baquba, wounding two guards, police said.

MOSUL - Five policemen were wounded when insurgents threw a grenade at their patrol in the northern city, police said.

BAGHDAD - At least one person was killed and three wounded when a car bomb exploded in Sadr city, a Shi'ite Muslim slum, police said.

NEAR TIKRIT - Four people who work in the U.S. military base near Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, were wounded when gunmen attacked them while they were heading to the base. - alertnet.org

Developments in Iraq on March 28

BAGHDAD - Gunmen wearing police uniforms kidnapped six people from a currency exchange shop and stole $50,000, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen wearing police uniforms attacked an electronics shop and kidnapped the manager and two other employees, police said.

KIRKUK - A civilian was killed and four policemen and a women wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

LATIFIYA - A woman bystander and 11 policemen were wounded when gunmen attacked a police station on the main road between Iskandariya and Latifiya, south of Baghdad, police said. Mortars were also fired at the area. - reuters -

Half truth

U.S. troops believe latest mass execution was staged

Bodies found in Baqouba called an example of fake sectarian killings

By Andrew Tilghman, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Stars & Stripes, Tuesday, March 28, 2006 BAQOUBA, Iraq -

A mass execution in a rural village north of Baghdad on Sunday night was the latest example of insurgents staging fake sectarian killings in order to fuel tensions between the Sunnis and Shiites, U.S. soldiers investigating the incident said.

An estimated 18 bodies were carted away from a small strip of stores that was strewn with bullets and covered with blood. The killings occurred in a predominantly Sunni area about 40 miles north of Baghdad where several insurgent groups operate, U.S. soldiers said.

Local villagers told U.S. troops Sunday night that the killers wore Iraqi Army uniforms and claimed to be part of the Mahdi militia, a Shiite group loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. But Mahdi militia activity in this mostly Sunni area is almost unheard of and U.S. troops here speculate that the attackers were actually a team of Sunni insurgents trying to heighten the sectarian tensions that many believe have sparked hundreds of killings in recent weeks.

"We think that an AIF (Anti-Iraqi Forces) cell working to create the perception of more sectarian violence moved to a predominantly Sunni area and executed people and said they were the Mahdi Army in order to foment more sectarian unrest," said Maj. John Digiambattista, the operations officer for the 1st Battalion, 68th Armor Regiment, 4th Infantry Division.

The incident remains under investigation, military officials said, and highlights a fundamental debate that has intensified in Iraq since the Feb. 22 explosion that ripped apart a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra. Some prominent Iraqis, including former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, say dangerous sectarian tensions are pushing the country towards the "point of no return" and a full-scale civil war.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, recently urged Iraqi leaders to crack down on sectarian militias. "More Iraqis are dying from the militia violence than from the terrorists," the ambassador said.

Yet many U.S. troops on the ground in demographically mixed cities like Baghdad and Baqouba say traditional insurgents - such as radical Muslims, foreign fighters and former Baathists - in fact commit most of the apparent sectarian violence. The contrived attacks are designed to ignite civil unrest and undermine the fledgling democracy in a way that more direct attacks on U.S. and Iraqi security forces have been unable to do, soldiers said.

"It's not sectarian violence," Lt. Col. Thomas Fisher, the 1-68 battalion commander, said of the string of recent killings. "This is a historical tribal fault line, and that would be an ideal location to stir up sectarian problems."

During the past several weeks, Fisher has seen numerous incidents of civilian killings in his sector surrounding Baqouba, one of Iraq's few major cities that is almost evenly split between Sunnis and Shiites. One day after the bombing of the Samarra mosque, 47 people were found dead at a brick-making factory.

While initial reports suggested all the victims were Shiites, further investigation showed the dead were a mix of both sects. U.S. soldiers said the bodies discovered Sunday night appeared to be those of Shiites, and their attackers may have mistaken them for Sunnis. Initial reports indicated 30 bodies were discovered, but officials later recovered 18.

In the current climate of fear about sectarian attacks, U.S. troops believe that battle for public perception is more important than ever.

"If people don't understand the facts, then that is going to increase the tensions," Digiambattista said. "It is important for us to find the facts so we can inform the public. If this was not sectarian violence, then they should know it was not." - estripes.com

Gunmen wearing the military uniform

Developments in Iraq on March 29

*BAGHDAD - Three bodyguards for the head of the Sunni Endowment, a leading religious institution, were wounded when gunmen in a car strafed their convoy northeast of Baghdad. A spokesman for the Endowment said its leader, Ahmed Abdul Ghafour was not in the motorcade at the time.

BALAD - Three insurgents were killed on Tuesday when a Predator drone fired a Hellfire missile at them while they were placing a bomb on a road near Balad airbase, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement.

ABU GHRAIB - One Iraqi army soldier was killed and another two wounded when their patrol was struck by a roadside bomb near Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, a police source said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen wearing the uniform worn by Iraqi police commandos killed at least nine people and wounded several more in a raid on an electronics store in the city's west.

BAGHDAD - A general director in the Central Bank was wounded when gunmen attacked him while he was driving, police said.

HAWIJA - Three Iraqi soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Hawija, 70 km (40 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police said.

HABBANIYA - One U.S soldier was killed and three were wounded on Tuesday when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle outside Habbaniya, near Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement.

BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was shot dead on Tuesday just south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said in a statement. - alertnet.org

Gunmen wearing the military uniform

Gunmen in Iraqi uniform kill 8

BAGHDAD (Reuters) 29 / 3 / 2006 - Gunmen wearing the military uniform worn by Iraqi police commandos killed at least eight people in a raid on an electronics store in western Baghdad on Wednesday, police sources said.

A hospital source put the death toll at nine, three women and six men, from the raid on the Al-Ibtikar Company in the relatively affluent Mansour neighborhood. Police said six people were wounded by the assailants, who pulled up at the store in three civilian cars, leapt out, ran into the store and opened fire.

There has been a spate of attacks and robberies by uniformed raiders on electronics stores and other businesses in the city this week. On Monday and Tuesday, a total of 35 people were abducted in four attacks, two of them on electronics dealers. The fate of those kidnapped is unknown.

Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the end of international sanctions three years ago, Baghdad has seen big demand for hitherto unattainable consumer goods, at least among that portion of the population not living in deep poverty. Also attacked on Tuesday was a currency exchange office, where police said raiders in police uniform got away with more than $50,000 in U.S. dollars and Iraqi dinars. - news.yahoo.com

Gunmen wearing the Police uniform

Gunmen Storm Iraq Trading Firm, Killing 8

By VANESSA ARRINGTON, Associated Press March 29th 2006 - BAGHDAD, Iraq -

Unidentified gunmen opened fire in a trading company in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood Wednesday, killing eight employees and wounding six, police said.

The men, some in police uniform, arrived at the al-Ibtikar Trade Contracting Co. in five black BMWs about 8:15 a.m., police Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq said. Those killed included five men and three women, he said.

The motive of the attack in west Baghdad's Mansour district was not immediately clear. The assailants burned part of the building and didn't appear to have taken any money, Abdul-Razzaq said.

Those who survived told police that the gunmen identified themselves as Iraqi Interior Ministry intelligence agents. They first asked for the manager, who was not in, then apparently gathered the victims together and shot each of them before fleeing, police and survivors said.

Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in sectarian violence and by death squads operating inside the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry since the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine set off a wave of revenge attacks. Usually, the victims are killed secretively, their bodies discovered hours or days after the attack.

Another trading company in Mansour was targeted Monday by gunmen who abducted 16 employees. The gunmen wore military uniforms and masks and showed up in civilian cars at the headquarters of the Saeed Import and Export Co. Police said they went through papers and computer files before leaving with their captives, al-Mohammedawi said.

On Tuesday, gunmen stormed a currency exchange and two electronic stores in Baghdad, kidnapping 24 workers and making off with tens of thousands of dollars. The attacks occurred within a 30-minute period, and police were investigating whether they were linked. - news.yahoo.com

Kember shown Movie

Former Hostage Says Captors Showed Film

29th March - LONDON - A British man held prisoner in Iraq for four months before being rescued by U.S. and British forces said in an interview published Tuesday that his captors showed him and his fellow hostages a movie about Jesus Christ.

"One night, our captors took us downstairs, sat us in front of the TV, and showed us the life of Jesus on DVD in Arabic. But these are the people who shot Tom Fox in the head. People are very complex," Norman Kember told the weekly Baptist Times newspaper. "Also, I think they wanted to keep us happy, so that we wouldn't try any desperate escape."

The 74-year-old Londoner was freed March 23 from a house west of Baghdad along with Canadians Harmeet Singh Sooden, 33, and James Loney, 41.

On being freed, the three learned that their fellow hostage - 54-year-old Tom Fox of Clear Brook, Va. - had been killed weeks earlier, shot in the head and chest and his body dumped in western Baghdad.

Kember said there was "no point in regretting" his decision to go to Iraq but he was very happy to be back home attending his church in London. "When you're free, and you don't go to church, what's the point in being free?" he said.

The four activists were kidnapped Nov. 26. They were shown as prisoners in several videos, the most recent a silent clip dated Feb. 28 in which Kember, Loney and Sooden appeared without Fox, whose body was found March 9.

The previously unknown Swords of Righteousness Brigades claimed responsibility for the kidnappings.

"The experience of being confined is desperate. Not going outside for four months - it's having that time stolen. I'd want to remind your readers how precious life is, and how precious the sight of a green tree would be when you're deprived of it," Kember said.

Christian Peacemaker Teams volunteers have been in Iraq since October 2002, investigating allegations of Iraqi detainees being held without cause by U.S. and Iraqi forces. The group says its teams promote peaceful solutions in conflict zones. - news.yahoo.com

Evangelical Christian Movie?

is this the film?:

Dr. Bill Bright, founder and president of Campus Crusade for Christ International, dreamed of developing an appealing biblically accurate film about the life of Christ. A team of 500 scholars and leaders from a variety of secular and Christian organizations began a five-year program in the mid-1970s to determine how to best portray Jesus on the motion picture screen.

In 1978, "JESUS" was produced at a cost of $6 million, primarily funded by a businessman and long-time friend of Campus Crusade for Christ International. John Heyman, a film producer and financier with more than 30 films to his credit, provided the driving force behind the production of "JESUS". Warner Brothers distributed the completed film, and "JESUS" opened in U.S. theaters in late 1979. Within a year, millions of Americans in 2,000 theaters had seen the "JESUS" film, inspiring many decisions by viewers across the country to accept Christ into their lives.

An Evangelistism Tool - From it's inception the "JESUS" film was envisioned as an evangelistism tool to be used worldwide. Dr. Bright asked Paul Eshleman, who had been involved with the film from the start, to head The "JESUS" Film Project. And thus, this worldwide evangelistic film ministry was born. - thejesusvideo.org

did they show Kember, US Pentagon, Evangelical Psyops Movie?

Makers of the Jesus film

Founded in 2001 by David Goad, the American Renewal Movement is poised and ready to assist in bringing together the Body of Christ in America. We know government programs don't work as a long-term solution, and we were very pleased and encouraged to hear that President George W. Bush is promoting faithbased solutions to the problems that ail our society. The time is ripe for Christians to come together and show the world that the love of Christ makes a difference in people's lives.

The American Renewal Movement focuses on three primary areas:

Faith Based Initiatives.

Based on a model already in place in San Diego, California, The American Renewal Movement seeks to serve as a conduit and clearinghouse of information for already existing ministries, churches and social service agencies within a community. Many times, organizations are not aware of what other organizations are doing, and end up duplicating services, or are unable to refer people to someone who can help them. Using a chapter approach, the American Renewal Movement brings together these groups in communities and links them so that they can share information and resources, and be a unified force for healing and change where they live.

Media Outreach.

The American Renewal Movement is involved with several different media projects that seek to provide resources for accurate information and quality entertainment to the American public. Some of these projects include syndicated radio spots called "American Moment" aimed at secular radio, short programs for Christian radio, and a film production company.

Evangelism Outreach Events.

From conferences, to training seminars, to youth rallies, the American Renewal Movement is involved in providing evangelism outreach opportunities throughout the country. Other youth events are being planned that will reach out to both Christian kids and unchurched children. Christians across America are sensing that the time is now for us to unite and cooperate with each other as never before. There are many ways for this unity to be expressed, but it must occur if our country is to regain its Godly heritage. Please join us at the American Renewal Movement, and let's show the world just who Jesus Christ is! - www.thejesusvideo.org

Jill Caroll

Sister of kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll pleads for her release

BOSTON (AP) 29th March 2006 -- The twin sister of kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll pleads for her release today on Arab television. Katie Carroll says on Al Arabiya TV that her family is living a "nightmare" because they have not heard from her sister's captors in Iraq in almost two months. The U-Mass Amherst graduate was kidnapped in Baghdad on January seventh. She was working for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor.

Katie Carroll says her 28-year-old sister loves Iraq and the Iraqi people and is a wonderful person. She also says the Carroll family would like to thank Iraqis for their support during a trying time.

It's been 82 days since Carroll's abduction by gunman who killed her translator.

Katie Carroll says no family should have to endure having their loved one taken away from them by kidnappers. - www1.whdh.com/

After 82 days Jill Caroll released

U.S. hostage Carroll released in Iraq

Thu Mar 30, 2006 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

U.S. journalist Jill Carroll, who has been held hostage in Iraq since January 7, has been released, her employer, The Christian Science Monitor, said on Thursday. The newspaper's spokeswoman Ellen Tuttle said the release has been confirmed by Carroll's father. Carroll, 28, was working as a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor when she was abducted by gunmen in Baghdad on January 7. Her driver escaped, but her interpreter, Allan Enwiyah, was killed. - .reuters.co.uk

Carroll Says Captors Treated Her Well

By MARIAM FAM, Associated Press 30th March 2006 BAGHDAD, Iraq -

American reporter Jill Carroll was set free Thursday, nearly three months after she was kidnapped in an ambush that killed her translator. She said she had been treated well. Carroll, 28, was dropped off near the Iraqi Islamic Party offices. She walked inside, and people there called American officials, Iraqi police said.

"I was treated well, but I don't know why I was kidnapped," Carroll said in a brief interview on Baghdad television.

Carroll was kidnapped Jan. 7 in Baghdad's western Adil neighborhood while going to interview Sunni Arab politician Adnan al-Dulaimi. Her translator was killed in the attack about 300 yards from al-Dulaimi's office.

The previously unknown Revenge Brigades claimed responsibility. Even though the group threatened twice in videotapes to kill Carroll, she said, "They never hit me. They never even threatened to hit me."

The Italian news agency ANSA reported that Carroll underwent a medical checkup at the American hospital in the Green Zone. During the TV interview, Carroll wore a light green Islamic headscarf and a gray Arabic robe.

"I'm just happy to be free. I want to be with my family," she was heard to say under the Arabic voiceover. Carroll said she was kept in a furnished room with a window and a shower, but she did not know where she was. "I felt I was not free. It was difficult because I didn't know what would happen to me," she said. She said she was allowed to watch TV once and read a newspaper once.

Asked about the circumstances of her release, she said, "They just came to me and said we're going. They didn't tell me what was going on."

Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said Carroll was released near an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni political organization, in western Baghdad. "She is healthy and we handed her over to the Americans," party member Nasir al-Ani told The Associated Press.

In Berlin, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was "pleased" by the news of Carroll's release. "This is something that people have across the world worked for and prayed for and I think we are all very pleased and happy to hear of her release," Rice said.

Carroll's family said they were elated at news of her release. Her father, Jim, said at his house in Chapel Hill, N.C., that he was waiting to learn more about his daughter before making travel plans to reunite with her. "Obviously, we are thrilled and relieved that she has been released," he said on the porch of his home. "We want to thank all that have supported and prayed for her. We want to especially thank The Christian Science Monitor, who did so much work to keep her image alive in Iraq."

During Carroll's months in captivity, she had appeared twice in videos broadcast on Arab television, pleading for her life. Her captors had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26 and said Carroll would be killed if that did not happen. The date came and went with no word about her fate. On Feb. 28, Iraq's Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Carroll was being held by the Islamic Army in Iraq, the insurgent group that freed two French journalists in 2004 after four months in captivity.

She was last seen in a videotape broadcast Feb. 9 by the private Kuwaiti television station Al-Rai. Her twin sister, Katie, issued a plea for her release on Al-Arabiya television late Wednesday.

News of her release also left friends overjoyed. "I don't know whether to cry or skip down my street," Jackie Spinner, a friend who is a reporter for The Washington Post, told ABC's "Good Morning America."

Carroll went to the Middle East in 2002 after being laid off from a newspaper job. She had long dreamed of covering a war. In American Journalism Review last year, Carroll wrote that she moved to Jordan in late 2002, six months before the war started, "to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began." "There was bound to be plenty of parachute journalism once the war started, and I didn't want to be a part of that," she wrote.

Carroll has had work from Iraq published in the Monitor, AJR, U.S. News & World Report, ANSA and other publications. She has been interviewed often on National Public Radio.

ANSA's editor-in-chief, Pierluigi Magnaschi, wrote Carroll an e-mail, telling her: "Welcome back, Jill. We worried about you and rooted for you for a long time, with all our strength." Magnaschi invited her to Rome saying, "You deserve this stupendous Rome that is blossoming into spring. We await you."

On Wednesday, Katie Carroll said her sister is a "wonderful person" who is an "innocent woman." "I've been living a nightmare, worrying if she is hurt or ill," she in a statement read on the Al-Arabiya network.

Carroll is the fourth Western hostage to be freed in eight days. On March 23, U.S. and British soldiers, acting on intelligence gained from a detainee, freed Briton Norman Kember, 74, and Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, from a house west of Baghdad.

The three belonged to the Christian Peacemakers Teams group and had been kidnapped with an American colleague, Tom Fox, 54, on Nov. 26. Fox was killed and his body was dumped in western Baghdad on March - yahoo.com

Developments in Iraq on March 30

*BAGHDAD - American journalist Jill Carroll was freed in Iraq, almost three months after being kidnapped in Baghdad.

*BAGHDAD - The bodies of two people were found in two different districts in the capital, police said.

*BAGHDAD - Three civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb hit a police patrol in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - One U.S. airman was killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb while conducting an operation near Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

KIRKUK - A policeman was killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Five police commandos were wounded when a suicide bomber in a car attacked their convoy in southwest Baghdad, Interior Ministry sources said. - alertnet

Freed US journalist 'manipulated'

The US journalist released after being held hostage in Iraq for three months has distanced herself from comments published straight after her release. Jill Carroll said she was forced to make a "propaganda video" on her last night in captivity. Speaking at a US base in Germany, Ms Carroll also said she did not speak freely in an Iraqi TV interview, which she was told would never be broadcast. She called her captors "criminals, at best" saying she was often threatened.

In a statement read to the media by the editor of the Christian Science Monitor, the US newspaper she reported for before her capture, Ms Carroll said she no longer stood by remarks she made on her release.

"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. "They told me I would be released if I co-operated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. So I agreed."

'Fear of retribution'

Ms Carroll was kidnapped and her translator was killed in west Baghdad on 7 January. She was freed on 30 March and was dropped off at the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party. In her statement on Saturday she accused the group of breaking an agreement not to broadcast an interview recorded after her release.

"The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word," she said. "At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times."

In the interview, Ms Carroll, 28, had said her captors treated her "very well" and did not hit her. In Germany, however, the freelance reporter was much more direct.

"The people who kidnapped me and murdered Alan Enwiya are criminals, at best," the statement read. "They robbed Alan of his life and devastated his family. They put me, my family and my friends - and all those around the world, who have prayed so fervently for my release - through a horrific experience. "I was, and remain, deeply angry with the people who did this." - BBC

Now, remember back to the case of Guiliana Sgrena -who was almost killed on her way to Baghdad Airport after her release.

So, you would figure that Carroll would be immediately taken to the safety of the Green Zone -where she could give her press conference.

No. She WENT to the headquarters of the Sunni Iraq Islamic Party, where she went on to give a television interview there to a TV station owned by the same party.

Which was a bit of a propaganda/publicity boost for that party. As seen left. Just look at the number of mikes:

So who the F. are the Iraqi Islamic Party??

Quote: "The Muslim Association of Britain, ....is the British offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and richest Islamic-fundamentalist political movement in the Arab world. The Iraq Islamic Party is its Iraqi offshoot. As it happens, the Iraq Islamic Party, which represents the "softest" strand of Sunni Islamism in Iraq, now says that it wants the US forces not to leave Iraq but to first "fix what they have destroyed".

http://www.workersliberty.org

LISTEN AUDIO ENHANCED INTERVIEW JILL CARROLL:

The soundtrack is enhanced so you can hear the interviewer and the interjection by a female "handler" who stops Carroll from talkng too much.

The Iraqi journalist soon realizes that he is being stonewalled. So with deft soft sarcasm he humorously reminds Carroll that she is a journalist -- implying that she should be well able to speak at more length.

"....I didn't really know what was going on, says Carroll. (Licks lips nervously in the pause...)

"Yes......(pause).. Eh, well.....(pause)... Now, you are a journalist?" he asks.

"Yeah," Carroll rather sheepishly replies.

At that point Jill's "handler" interjects. (perhaps realizing that Carroll is putting in a terrible "ex-hostage" performance).

"Is this too early to talk about this Jill? I mean do you wanna.... (unintelligible)," interjects the handler.

"Yes," agrees Carroll, taking the hint and ending the interview.

Just one problem ...this video was broadcast after it was announced she had been released...on Iraqi Islamic Party TV station...so how did Carrol & the Islamic Party get past the US forces and present this news globally to the waiting media...what is going on?

This source reported that The Italian news agency ANSA reported that Carroll underwent a medical checkup at the American hospital in the Green Zone. During the TV interview, Carroll wore a light green Islamic headscarf and a gray Arabic robe.

Iraqi girl tells of US attack

8.58PM, Thu Mar 30 2006 - A young Iraqi girl has exclusively given ITV News a shocking first hand account of what witnesses claim amounts to mass murder by US troops in the war-torn country.

Ten-year-old Iman Walid lost seven members of her family in an attack by American marines last November. The interview with Iman was filmed exclusively for ITV News by Ali Hamdani,our Iraqi video diarist.

If Iman's story is true - and it has been disputed by the US military - human rights workers say it is the worst massacre of civilians by US troops in the country.

Iman tells of screaming soldiers entering her house in the Iraqi town of Haditha spraying bullets in every direction. Fifteen people in all were killed, including her parents and grandparents. Her account has been corroborated by other eyewitnesses who say it was a revenge attack after a roadside bomb killed a marine.

US authorities have launched an investigation to determine whether the killings were the result of self defence, crossfire or murder. Initially, the US marines issued a statement saying that a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians, while eight insurgents had been killed in a later gunbattle. US military officials have since confirmed the 15 civilians were actually shot dead. - itv.com

Iraq conflict grows ever more confusing

Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:30 AM ET By Michael Georgy, - ANALYSIS BAGHDAD (Reuters) -

Gunmen in police uniform kill and kidnap at electronics shops. A mosque raid draws government charges that U.S. troops run Iraqi forces beyond its control. Bodies turn up on streets as militia death squads roam freely.

This week's violence in Iraq suggests the conflict has entered an ominous new stage where crime gangs, Sunni Arab insurgents and pro-government Shi'ite militias overlap as violence pushes the country closer to sectarian civil war.

What began with a murky Sunni revolt against occupation and then the U.S.-backed interim government has exploded into a communal and criminal battlefield where determining who is killing whom -- let alone why -- is getting harder every day.

"The Sunni insurgency is now complemented by the Shi'ite militias who are getting very powerful and are able to wreak havoc on the Sunnis," said Martin Navias, at the Center for Defense Studies at King's College in London. "The various groups are killing each other and kidnapping but not openly doing it. It is a type of ethnic cleansing. But it is not an open civil war."

Iraqi leaders are struggling to form a unity government more than three months after elections, raising concerns that a widening political vacuum will foster ever more violence.

Analysts say that while the new trends were alarming, there were no signs that the violence is about to spill over into open warfare with street battles between Iraq's main Shi'ite, Arab Sunni and ethnic Kurdish groups.

A fall in American casualties since last summer suggests that U.S. troops, with growing numbers of Iraqi allies, have made gains over insurgents. March should show one of the lowest monthly U.S. death tolls of the war, possibly the lowest in two years.

But measuring success in those terms on that conventional military front is easier than gauging progress in the battle against a complex network of criminals, militias and insurgents -- all of whom can show up in police or army uniforms.

UNCLEAR ENEMIES

Gunmen dressed as police commandos -- precise accounts of the uniforms varied -- killed nine people in an attack on an electronics store in Baghdad on Wednesday, one of a series of raids against lucrative businesses in the capital this week.

Workers, including women, were rounded up and then killed.

On Monday and Tuesday, a total of 35 people were abducted in four attacks, including two on electronics dealers and one on a money-changer where the attackers also stole $50,000. Determining whether they were criminals or insurgents seeking funds seems impossible in Iraq's chaos.

Police officers in the area where the raids were carried out said they had no idea who was responsible. "Many security groups work in Iraq and nobody knows who they are or what they are doing," said one police lieutenant colonel, who would give his name only as the familiar Abu Mohammed for fear of reprisals from his shadowy adversaries. "There are now many organised crime groups working under formal cover, as militias or security companies. It's hard to figure out who they are, let alone who is behind them."

One businessman who said he was familiar with some of the businesses targeted said several belonged to one man, suggesting attacks by racketeers. That could not be confirmed, however.

Hazim al-Naimi, a politics professor at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University, said the raids were another disturbing sign that the conflict has been escalating since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine last month touched off bloody reprisals. Since then, hundreds of bodies have turned up in the streets, many shot or strangled with signs of torture.

"The crisis has become very complicated now. We are seeing raids on electronics shops that make no sense. It could be a campaign to wreck the economy so Iraqis don't set up businesses. It's hard to tell," said Naimi.

Al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who has been most predictable in Iraq's conflict, has been keeping a low profile. His suicide bombers have eased off, leading Interior Minister Bayan Jabor to conclude Zarqawi is no longer a threat. But U.S. officers say he is shifting attacks away from American soldiers and Shi'ite civilians to Iraqi security forces and more targeted killing, raising fears of new violence as the authorities try to grapple with deepening mayhem.

Long-term stability ultimately depends on whether Iraqi forces can take on militants and insurgents on their own. U.S. commanders have been praising Iraqi special forces for a raid on a Baghdad mosque compound on Sunday night which left what they said were 16 "terrorists" dead. But as government-run state television showed lengthy footage of the bullet-ridden bodies, Shi'ite leaders accused the Americans of a massacre of unarmed worshippers and directing Iraqi forces without a green light from the Iraqi government. Police and local residents said the compound was a base for the Mehdi Army, a Shi'ite militia. But the U.S. military says it still has no idea who the 16 were despite extensive intelligence work ahead of the raid and the rescue of a tortured hostage.

"People ought to be focused on the fact that 50 members of the Iraqi special operations forces planned and conducted this. And it was flawless. Flawless," U.S. Major General Rick Lynch told a news conference on Thursday. But of the identity of the militants he said: "Right now, if I were to tell you something, I'd be hazarding a guess." - reuters.

 

 

Captain Wardrobes

Down with Murder inc.