Iraq Resistance News Options

[Mr. X]

So called Iraq resistance (=Al-qaeda+EX-Bathiest) only managed to kill inoccent people (young american solders and Iraqis) and delay Iraq reconstruction  and what they gained?

In future Federl Iraq Sunni will remain isolated  in Al-Anbar desert without oil revenue.

Shia are winners will get all the oil-fields in south (what makes Iraq different from Yeman) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4177266.stm
Kurds will have a practically indepent country closer  to  West than Iraq.

American modern weapons proved useless against  roaside bombs and 140,000
soldeir are on mercy of terorist inside sunni triangle.
Bush is lucky that kurds and Shia can help him to exit Iraq with dignity.
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good luck with turning iraq in to iran mullahsh.itcenteral thugcracy. :CLAPING:

iraq was divided long before americans and thats during sadam, bush just made it on paper and make sure that another theocracy come in to existance. wont be surprised if the same mullahs used the FREED OIL money to make WMD and then called the American a buzurg shiatan.. :wacko:

dont see this extending beyond baghedad either because every dog has its day either picking up bone from leftover or being shot at.

dont think that America is living in iraq with some diginity because of shias or kurds, that everybody knows. have you seen a big mad eliphant, and what it does when it get pissed off? american could have bulldozed the whole iraq in mongol style. btw that muqtada al sadar was shia clerc right? lol that coward was hiding in that shrine and in other words holding his own holly place hostage? if he was brave enough he could have chose a better place than that to fight like men. so dont brag about your stupid pride son.

This post has been edited by Psychosaint: Aug 24 2005, 08:32 PM

[Lunatock1031]

good luck with turning iraq in to iran mullahsh.itcenteral thugcracy.  :CLAPING:

iraq was divided long before americans and thats during sadam, bush just made it on paper and make sure that another theocracy come in to existance. wont be surprised if the same mullahs used the FREED OIL money to make WMD and then called the American a buzurg shiatan.. :wacko:

dont see this extending beyond baghedad either because every dog has its day either picking up bone from leftover or being shot at.

dont think that America is living in iraq with some diginity because of shias or kurds, that everybody knows. have you seen a big mad eliphant, and what it does when it get pissed off? american could have bulldozed the whole iraq in mongol style. btw that muqtada al sadar was shia clerc right? lol that coward was hiding in that shrine and in other words holding his own holly place hostage? if he was brave enough he could have chose a better place than that to fight like men. so dont brag about your stupid pride son.
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And some breaking news is that in Najaf, Muqtada Al-Sadr's men moved back into a closed office of theirs, and it was promptly attacked & burned down by the civilians living in that city.

[clutch]

Fuel for the insurgency....... The collapse of the constitution agreement could mean doom to the American Iraqi experiment.........

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news
Sunnis defiant as talks on 'new Iraq' collapse
By Oliver Poole in Baghdad
(Filed: 27/08/2005)

Tortuous negotiations to decide the constitution of the new Iraq collapsed early today with the government admitting that they had reached "the end of the road".

Saleh al-Mutlaq, a leading Sunni negotiator, said no agreement was reached on the draft text and called on Iraqis to reject it in a referendum in October.

People holding picture of Saddam
Sunnis demonstrated in Baquba, calling for the return of Saddam

His bloc rejected a compromise offered by the majority Shia and Kurds on the key issue of federalism, which Sunnis fear will rob them of influence and wealth derived from oil.

While a minority voice, the Sunnis can kill the constitution. Under the terms of the referendum, it will have to be torn up if, as anticipated, two thirds of voters in three of Iraq's 18 provinces vote No.

"The Iraqi people have to give their word now and reject the constitution because this constitution is the beginning of the division of the country and the beginning of creating disturbance in the country," Mr Mutlaq said.

Khaled al-Attiyah, a Shia negotiator, claimed a "consensus" had been reached and an amended version would be sent to parliament today. Asked about that, Mr Mutlaq said: "Let them."

Laith Kubba, a government spokesman, said: "This is the end of the road. In the end, we will put this constitution to the people to decide."

President George W Bush made his first direct intervention yesterday after delegates failed to meet in parliament to vote on the document as promised when the previous deadline was missed on Thursday night. He telephoned the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shia party that dominated January's elections, to encourage compromise with the Sunni Arab demands.

A minor concession was offered - with the relationship between central government and the regions to be determined after national elections in December. It was not enough.

As politicians wrestled with the subtleties of the draft text, callers to the city's talk radio shows focused on the daily challenges of life in Baghdad: the violence, the dirty petrol that is wrecking car engines and the power shortages that have blighted the capital for more than two years.

26 August 2005: Iraq on brink of meltdown

[M1Tanker]

Maybe Juba the Super Sniper can run for president of Iraq?

Tanky

[2DREZQ]

There will not be peace in Iraq until the President wakes up and deals effectively with Iran.

[Mr. X]

There will not be peace in Iraq until the President wakes up and deals effectively with Iran.
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rightly said brother! the real source of terrorism and hate is being ignored. i dont if bush scared from those mullahs or he in love with them in iran? why they are being given easy way. :wacko:

[csite]

rightly said brother! the real source of terrorism and hate is being ignored. i dont if bush scared from those mullahs or he in love with them in iran? why they are being given easy way. :wacko:
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There is no evidence that iran has had anything to do with ANY disturbance in iraq. Infact i belive iran is even playing a part in training the iraqi army to the best of my knowledge.

id be intrested why you would say iran is the real source of terrorism, do you have any facts to back it up? :sad:

Remmeber iran is a peaceful country, its not the one going invading other countries like iraq did.

[M1Tanker]

There is no evidence that iran has had anything to do with ANY disturbance in iraq. Infact i belive iran is even playing a part in training the iraqi army to the best of my knowledge.

id be intrested why you would say iran is the real source of terrorism, do you have any facts to back it up?  :sad:

Here is something else to be :sad: about:

Worldnet

Little Green Footballs?

Need more?

Remmeber iran is a peaceful country, its not the one going invading other countries like iraq did.

Countries are peaceful only when it suits them. This week it suits Iran just fine. Next week? Maybe not.

Tanky

[csite]

Here is something else to be  :sad:  about:

Worldnet

Little Green Footballs?

Need more?
Countries are peaceful only when it suits them. This week it suits Iran just fine. Next week? Maybe not.

Tanky
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Where is the factual hard solid proof?

Its all "He claims this and that"

Do you really think iran would both support the resistance AND support the shia's at the same time who are getting killed by the resistance fighters every day. I really doubt it. Sounds too unreal.

You also need to remmeber iran is VERY bitter about usa's part in the iran iraq war. They wouldn't forget too easily! But even then i doubt what that news report "claims" is true.

Countries are peaceful only when it suits them. This week it suits Iran just fine. Next week? Maybe not.

maybe thats true for germany, but iranians in general are pretty peaceful untill they are provoked.

[M1Tanker]

[quote=csite,Aug 27 2005, 04:33 PM]
Where is the factual hard solid proof?

Its all "He claims this and that" [/quote]

Where are the restance guys coming from who have Iranian documents coming from? [/quote]

[quote]You also need to remmeber iran is VERY bitter about usa's part in the iran iraq war. They wouldn't forget too easily! But even then i doubt what that news report "claims" is true.[/quote]

I'm sure they are and they have every right to be. What about those hostages Iran took in the 1970s? Does the US have a right to be bitter about that?

[quote]maybe thats true for germany, but iranians in general are pretty peaceful untill they are provoked. [/quote]

Maybe so, but who knows what the future will hold?

Tanky

[csite]

[quote=M1Tanker,Aug 27 2005, 03:51 PM]
Where are the restance guys coming from who have Iranian documents coming from? [/quote]
I'm sure they are and they have every right to be. What about those hostages Iran took in the 1970s? Does the US have a right to be bitter about that?
Maybe so, but who knows what the future will hold?

Tanky
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[/quote]


couple hostage for 1 year is not compared anything to the hundreds of thousands of iranians who lost their lives in the iran iraq war. EVERY iranian family has or knows someone who has been injured or killed in the iran iraq war.

I am very sure the hostages taken were VERY WELL looked after, unlike those iranians all brutally torchered in iraqi prisons.

Most of the iraqi prisoners in iran were very well looked after and most even stayed in iran after the war, they didnt want to go back!

Just like most people here in britain are bitter about nazi germany still, or the chinese bitter about the japanese. Iran is very bitter about usa's part in iran iraq war.

[clutch]

Updated: 2:41 p.m. ET Aug. 25, 2005

ROME - Italy’s Red Cross treated four Iraqi insurgents and hid them from U.S. forces in exchange for the freedom of two Italian aid workers kidnapped last year in Baghdad, an official said in an interview published Thursday.

Maurizio Scelli, the outgoing chief of the Italian Red Cross, told La Stampa newspaper that he kept the deal secret from U.S. officials, complying with “a nonnegotiable condition” imposed by Iraqi mediators who helped him secure the release of Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who were abducted on Sept. 7 and freed Sept. 28.

“The mediators asked us to save the lives of four alleged terrorists wanted by the Americans who were wounded in combat,” Scelli was quoted as saying. “We hid them and brought them to Red Cross doctors, who operated on them.”
Story continues below ↓ advertisement

Smuggled through checkpoints
They took the wounded insurgents to a Baghdad hospital in a jeep and in an ambulance, smuggling them through two U.S. checkpoints by hiding them under blankets and boxes of medicine, Scelli reportedly said.

Also as part of the deal, four Iraqi children suffering from leukemia were brought to Italy for treatment, he said.

Scelli told the newspaper he informed the Italian government of the deal and of the decision to hide it from the U.S. through Gianni Letta, an undersecretary in Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s government who has been in charge of Italy’s hostage crises in Iraq.

“Keeping quiet with the Americans about our efforts to free the hostages was an irrevocable condition to guarantee the safety of the hostages and ourselves,” he told La Stampa. He said Letta agreed.

Officials at the Italian Red Cross headquarters in Rome said Scelli was out of the office and could not be immediately reached.

Italian government: Scelli acted independently
In a statement Thursday, the Italian government stopped short of denying it knew about the deal but said Scelli acted independently and that the government “never conditioned or oriented his action, which ... was developed in complete autonomy.”

The statement also did not directly address whether or not Italy had kept the U.S. in the dark about Scelli’s efforts, but reiterated that Italy has always maintained a “full and reciprocal” cooperation with its American allies in Iraq.

Scelli told Italian TV news TG2 that Italian authorities had no direct role in the deal and that he informed the government of his efforts “only informally.”

“We have always claimed this operation as our own. The contacts were held by us, contacts with Iraqi personnel, contacts with the mediators,” Scelli said, adding that Red Cross officials had not conducted direct negotiations with the kidnappers.

At least eight Italians have been kidnapped in Iraq, and two were killed. An intelligence officer who was escorting a hostage to freedom mistakenly was killed by U.S. fire in Baghdad in March.

Rome’s handling of its hostage situations has come under scrutiny, with many at home and abroad contending that Italy paid ransoms for their release.

Berlusconi’s government has denied that ransom were paid, but some lawmakers have indicated money might have changed hands.

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So... now Bush's Coalition of The Willing is also turning against him!?

[clutch]

Rebels fight U.S. to Iraq standoff

`A WAR OF ATTRITION' ECHOING VIETNAM CONFLICT HAS SETTLED ON AL-ANBAR

By Tom Lasseter

Knight Ridder

AL-FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Insurgents in Al- Anbar province, the center of guerrilla resistance in Iraq, have fought the U.S. military to a stalemate.

After repeated major combat offensives in Al-Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi, and after losing hundreds of soldiers and Marines in Al-Anbar during the past two years -- including 75 since June 1 -- many American officers and enlisted men assigned to Al-Anbar have stopped talking about winning a military victory in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland.

Instead, they're trying to hold on to a handful of population centers and hit smaller towns in a series of quick-strike operations designed to disrupt insurgent activities temporarily.

``I don't think of this in terms of winning,'' said Col. Stephen Davis, who commands a task force of about 5,000 Marines in an area of some 24,000 square miles in the western portion of Al-Anbar. Instead, he said, his Marines are fighting a war of attrition.

``The frustrating part for the audience, if you will, is they want finality,'' Davis said. ``They want a fight for the town, and in the end the guy with the white hat wins.''

That's unlikely in Al-Anbar, Davis said. He expects the insurgency to last for years, hitting American and Iraqi forces with quick ambushes, bombs and mines. Roadside bombs have hit vehicles Davis was riding in three times this year already.

``We understand counterinsurgency. . . . We paid for these lessons in blood in Vietnam,'' Davis said. ``You'll get killed on a nice day when everything is quiet.''

Most of Iraq is far quieter than Al-Anbar. But Al-Anbar is Iraq's largest province and home to the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated the government under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. It's the strategic center of the country, and failure to secure it could thwart the Bush administration's hopes of helping to create a functioning Iraqi democracy.

Vietnam tactics

Military officials now frequently compare the fight in Al-Anbar to the Vietnam War, saying guerrillas, who blend back into the population, are trying to break the will of the U.S. military -- rather than defeat it outright -- and to erode public support for the war back home.

``If it were just killing people that would win this, it'd be easy,'' said Marine Maj. Nicholas Visconti, 35, of Brookfield, Conn., who served in southern Iraq in 2003. ``But look at Vietnam. We killed millions, and they kept coming. It's a war of attrition. They're not trying to win. It's just like in Vietnam. They won a long, protracted fight that the American public did not have the stomach for. . . . Killing people is not the answer; rebuilding the cities is.''

Minutes after he spoke, two mortar rounds flew over the building where he is based in Hit. Visconti didn't flinch as the explosions rang out.

During three weeks of reporting along the Euphrates River valley, home to Al-Anbar's main population centers and the core of insurgent activity, military officials offered three primary reasons that guerrillas have held and gained ground: the enemy's growing sophistication, insufficient numbers of U.S. troops and the lack of trained and reliable Iraqi security forces.

They described an enemy who is intelligent and adaptive:

• Military officials in Ar-Ramadi said insurgents had learned the times of their patrol shift changes. When one group of vehicles comes to relieve another, civilian traffic is pushed to the side of the road to allow the military to pass. Insurgents plan and use this opportunity, surrounded by other cars, to drop homemade bombs out their windows or through holes cut in the rear floor.

• The insurgents have figured out by trial and error the different viewing ranges of the optics systems in American tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Humvees.

• Faced with the U.S. military's technological might, guerrillas have relied on gathering intelligence and using cheap, effective devices to kill and maim.

Marines raided a home near their base in Hit and found three Sudanese insurgents with a crude map they had drawn of the U.S. base, including notes detailing when patrols left the gate, whether they were on foot or in vehicles and the numbers of Marines on the patrols.

The three men also had $11,000 in cash in an area in which insurgents pay locals $50 to plant bombs in the road.

One of the two Marine positions in the city receives mortar fire almost daily. Patrols from the other base are hit by frequent roadside bombings.

Instead of referring to the enemy derisively as ``terrorists'' -- as they used to -- Marines and Army soldiers now call the insurgents mujahedeen, an Arabic term often translated ``holy warrior'' that became popular during the Afghan guerrilla campaign against the Soviet Union.

New strategy

U.S. commanders in Al-Anbar hope to fight the insurgency through a multi-pronged strategy of political progress, reconstruction and training Iraqi security forces.

But there's been less political progress in Al-Anbar than in Iraq's Kurdish north and Shiite Muslim south, because the violence has stymied progress in rebuilding towns destroyed in the fighting and Iraqi forces are still a long way from being able to secure the province.

U.S. officials hope that a strong turnout in national elections in December will turn people away from violence. They expressed similar hopes before last January's elections. While they were a success in many parts, in Al-Anbar the turnout was in the single digits.

``Some of the Iraqis say they want to vote, but they're worried there'll be a bomb at the polling station,'' Marine Capt. James Haunty, 27, of Columbus, Ohio, said recently. ``It's a legitimate fear, but I always tell them, `Just trust me.' ''

Less than five minutes after Haunty spoke, near Hit, a roadside bomb exploded down the street.

Many Sunnis in Al-Anbar say they will vote against the constitution in October, having felt excluded from the drafting of the document.

Though fighting has badly damaged many towns and precluded widespread reconstruction, Marines in Al-Fallujah are working to make that city a centerpiece of rebuilding. Al-Fallujah residences sustained some $225 million in damage last November during a U.S. assault aimed at clearing the city of insurgents, according to Marine Lt. Col. Jim Haldeman, who oversees the civil military operations center in Al-Fallujah.

Homeowners have received 20 percent of that amount to rebuild homes, and will get the next 20 percent in the coming weeks, Haldeman said. Families are walking the streets once again and shops have reopened. The sound of hammers is constant, and men line the streets mixing concrete and laying bricks out to dry.

Even so, of the 250,000 population before the fighting, just 150,000 residents have returned. And the insurgency has come back to the area.

Iraqis are still a long way from being able to provide their own security in Al-Anbar. As with much of the province, Al-Fallujah has no functioning police force. Police in Ar-Ramadi are confined to two heavily fortified stations, after insurgents destroyed or seriously damaged eight others.

The Iraqi national guard, heralded last year as the answer to local security, was dissolved because of incompetence and insurgent infiltration, as was the guard's predecessor, the civil defense corps.

The new Iraqi army has participated in all the Marines' recent sweeps in Al-Anbar, in a limited way. While the Iraqi soldiers haven't thrown down their weapons and run, as they have in the past, many of them are still unable to operate without close U.S. supervision.

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Personally, I think the comparison of Iraq to Vietnam is false. Iraq is unique in its own way... the fact that the US can't hold ground (cause of local resistance) may be one of the few similarities with Vietnam otherwise no...

1. Iraq unlike Vietnam has no densely forested area for the insurgents to hide out in. Besides urban areas it’s easy for the US to pin point insurgents out in-the field.

2. Iraqi insurgency has no central command system unlike Ho-Chi-Min (spelling) nor does it have a leader or a rallying point (person).

3. Iraqi insurgency is not being provided support from an outside power (like China USSR in Vietnam) ....... there are allegations of Iranian involvement but no concrete proof.

Having said that... it does not mean the Iraqi insurgency does not pose a threat to America's designs for Iraq.... It does... and may well end up completely undermining the US Iraqi operation. America may well win every Battle BUT will end up loosing the War.

[OmaR UK]

Sunday, 28 August 2005.



· Resistance springs deadly trap on US column near al-Qa’im on Syrian border Sunday afternoon.



· Six US troops reported killed in Resistance car bomb attack on American-occupied house on road to Saddam International Airport Sunday morning.



· Thirty-six bodies found in river near al-Kut belong to Sunnis arrested by puppet security forces in Baghdad.



Al-Anbar Province.

Al-Qa’im.



Resistance springs deadly trap on US troops near Syrian border Sunday afternoon.



Iraqi Resistance fighters attacked a column of several US military vehicles on the road between al-‘Ubaydi and al-Karabilah east of the city of al-Qa’im (which is located on the Iraq-Syria frontier) at 3pm Sunday afternoon.



The al-Qa’im correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported residents of al-Karabilah as saying that a detachment of Iraqi Resistance fighters armed with light and medium weapons including RPG7 rocket-propelled grenades and PKS machine guns attacked a US column. One Humvee was set ablaze and three US troops were killed and three other American soldiers wounded.



The witnesses recounted that the Resistance fighters then drew the rest of the column into an ambush that they had prepared elsewhere on the same road. There, three more bombs that had been planted by the roadside blew up when the Americans tried to pursue the attacking Resistance fighters. Two more US Humvees were set on fire and another eight Americans were killed or wounded.



The witnesses reported that the Resistance fighters were able to withdraw from the scene of the attack without having suffered any casualties.



Al-Hadithah.



Two US soldiers killed in roadside bombing near al-Haqlaniyah Sunday.



An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US foot patrol on a farm road in the al-Haqlaniyah area, southeast of al-Hadithah, some 280km west of Baghdad on Sunday.



In a dispatch posted at 5:40pm Mecca time Sunday afternoon, the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam in al-Hadithah reported residents of al-Haqlaniyah as saying that a bomb that was planted by the side of an unpaved farm road north of al-Haqlaniyah exploded by a passing patrol of American soldiers on foot with four Humvees accompanying them. The blast killed two US troops and wounded a third, the witnesses said.



Resistance abducts 14 puppet army soldiers east of al-Hadithah.



Iraqi Resistance fighters abducted 14 members of the Iraqi puppet army in the area between Hit and al-Hadithah in western Iraq on Sunday morning.



Witnesses told the al-Hadithah correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam that Resistance fighters stopped their Kia vehicle that was carrying the 14 men along with their driver. Apparently they were on leave, as their vehicle was on the highway heading towards Baghdad. The witnesses reported that the Resistance fighters pointed their weapons at the Kia getting it to stop and then captured the 14 puppet army soldiers and the driver. The witnesses said that several of the puppet troops tried to resist but the Resistance fighters hit them with their rifle butts and then led all of them to an unknown destination.



The Squadrons of the Hosts of the Clear Victory, a detachment belonging to the First Army of Muhammad Resistance organization, announced its responsibility for the capture in a communiqué, a copy of which was obtained by the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in al-Hadithah.



Ar-Ramadi.



Resistance sharpshooters kill two US soldiers Sunday afternoon.



Iraqi Resistance marksmen shot and killed two US soldiers in the at-Ta’mim area south of ar-Ramadi, some 110km west of Baghdad at3:30pm local time Sunday afternoon.



The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in ar-Ramadi reported shopkeepers on the main road in at-Ta’mim who witnessed the attack as saying that an Iraqi Resistance sharpshooter killed a US soldier in their area. At the time of the attack, the soldier was standing in an American Humvee that was parked on the road in the midst of other members of a US patrol of several Humvees.



As American troops spread out in the area after the shooting, the Resistance sharpshooter, or perhaps a different one, picked off another US soldier, filling the surviving Americans with panic, according to the witnesses. The US troops then opened fire indiscriminately at civilians who happened to be in the area.



After the shootings, American troops recovered the bodies of their two companions and left the area in great haste.



Deputy chief of puppet police for al-Anbar Province abducted Sunday afternoon.



In a bulletin posted at 6:45pm Mecca time Sunday afternoon, Mafkarat al-Islam’s correspondent in ar-Ramadi reported that Resistance fighters had kidnapped the deputy commander of the puppet police for the province of al-Anbar along with two of his body guards in the middle of the city.



The correspondent reported eye witnesses as saying that Lieutenant Colonel Ra’id ‘Ali and two of his puppet police guards were kidnapped by Resistance fighters in the as-Sijariyah area of the city after ‘Ali had come out of the al-Hurriyah puppet police station on his way home.



There were no immediate reports on the fate of the deputy police chief for al-Anbar, other than one unconfirmed report claiming that the Resistance group Base [Qa‘idah] of the Jihad in the Land of the Two Rivers was behind the capture.



Baghdad.



Six US troops reported killed in Resistance attack on US-occupied house on Airport Road Sunday morning.



Iraqi Resistance fighters attacked a house that US occupation troops had been using as a camp on the road in the Baghdad area of ar-Ridwaniyah leading to Saddam International Airport.



In a dispatch posted at 10:31am Mecca time Sunday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported residents of ar-Ridwaniyah who witnessed the attack as saying that about 20 Resistance fighters armed with light and medium weapons, including pipe rockets and 82mm mortars, attacked the American-occupied house, destroying large parts of it and killing six US troops and wounding eight other American soldiers. Three Humvees were also destroyed in the attack.



Resistance bomb blasts fuel convoy in at-Taji Sunday morning.



An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a convoy of tanker trucks hauling fuel to US occupation forces on the main road leading from Baghdad to the north at 9am local time Sunday morning.



Residents of the northern Baghdad suburb of at-Taji told the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent that a bomb that was planted by the side of the road blew up as an American fuel convoy was passing by.



The blast destroyed one of the trucks, burning it up completely and killing its driver who was working for the US occupation troops.



US acknowledges prisoner escaped from Abu Ghurayb.



The US military occupation authorities admitted on Sunday that a prisoner being held in the notorious Abu Ghurayb prison camp had succeeded in escaping from the facility.



Agence France Presse (AFP), as monitored by Mafkarat al-Islam reported the US as saying that a prisoner, whose nationality was not disclosed, had escaped. The American statement said that the jailers found the prisoners missing during a roll call. In the course of an investigation, the Americans found to holes in the fence surrounding the compound, through which the prisoner is thought to have escaped.



Escapes from American occupation prisons in Iraq have increased in August. Five Iraqi prisoners escaped from Camp Bucca in Umm Qasr in the south of the country on 22 August.



As volunteers to puppet army dwindle, “Ministry of Defense” calls on pre-invasion Iraqi officers to join the regime’s army.



The “Ministry of Defense” in the US-installed regime in Baghdad issued a call on Sunday morning to officers in the Army of the Republic of Iraq – the national army that was formally declared “dissolved” after the US invasion in 2003 – to return to the “ranks of the army” but this time to serve the US occupation rather than to fight it.



Sa‘dun ad-Dulaymi, a spokesman for the “Defense Ministry,” told a press conference in the Defense Ministry building in Baghdad that a call had been issued to former Iraqi Army officers, particularly those who had served in the areas of supply, transport and intelligence, calling in them to join the puppet army in return for “attractive” salaries of as high as 10 times what they were paid before the American invasion.



Ad-Dulaymi said that the “Ministry” feels an urgent and pressing need for the services that these former officers can provide because of their experience – as he put it.



Recruiting centers in July and August have seen a severe decrease in the number of young volunteers seeking to join the ranks of the puppet army and police, following a series of nearly daily Resistance attacks on such offices.



Salah ad-Din Province.

Samarra’.



Resistance bomb blasts joint US-Iraqi puppet army patrol in al-‘Amrushiyah late Sunday morning.



An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a joint US-Iraqi puppet army patrol on the main road in the al-‘Amrushiyah area northeast of the city of Samarra’ at 11am local time Sunday morning.



The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported residents of al-‘Amrushiyah as saying that a bomb that was planted by the side of the road blew up as the patrol passed by. The explosion destroyed one Nissan pickup belonging to the Iraqi puppet army and damaged an American Humvee. Four Iraqi puppet soldiers were killed and a fifth wounded. One American soldier was also injured in the blast.



Diyala Province.

Ba‘qubah.



Three Americans reported killed midday Sunday when Resistance fighters lob hand grenades into their camp.



Iraqi Resistance fighters armed with hand grenades attacked a US military camp on the old road in the area of al-‘Azim, east of Diyala (which is northeast of Baghdad) at 12:30pm local time Sunday.



The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in the area reported residents of al-‘Azim as saying that Resistnce fighters in a pickup threw seven hand grenades into the American camp on the old road. The attack set fires burning in one American vehicle and inflicted great material damage on the camp. Three US troops were killed and another four were wounded, the witnesses reported.



The Resistance attackers were able to withdraw from the area without having suffered any casualties.



Babil Province.

Al-Musayyib.



Three US troops reported killed in car bomb attack on checkpoint early Sunday.



An Iraqi Resistance martyrdom fighter drove an explosives-laden car into a checkpoint jointly manned by US troops and Iraqi puppet army soldiers in al-Musayyib, south of Baghdad, on the main road leading to provinces in the Middle Euphrates area of Iraq south of Baghdad at 8am local time Sunday morning.



The al-Musayyib correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported a source in the Iraqi puppet army’s “rapid deployment force” as saying that the Resistance fighter drove his car bomb into the checkpoint despite efforts to stop him. The source said that the blast killed three American soldiers and wounded two more. Two Iraqi puppet army troops were killed and four more of them wounded. One American Humvee and two pickups belonging to the Iraqi puppef forces were set on fire.



Ninwa Province.

Mosul.



Five US troops reported killed in roadside bombing in Mosul early Sunday.



An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US foot patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul at 8am local time Sunday morning.



Residents of as-Sikak neighborhood in the south of Mosul told the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in the city that a bomb that was planted in a garbage container exploded by a US foot patrol that was nearby. Five US troops were killed and three more American soldiers were killed.



The correspondent reported a source in the Iraqi puppet army as saying that the blast left a number of American troops dead and wounded but did not give specific numbers. After the blast, US military vehicles and Marines encircled the scene and began searching the area in an operation that lasted for a full hour. The US troops found nothing and arrested no one, according to the source.



Wasit Province.

Al-Kut.



Thirty-six bodies belong to Sunni victims of puppet security forces.



Independent Iraqi sources have revealed that the 36 bodies discovered in a river near the southern Iraqi city of al-Kut are the remains of Sunni Iraqis who were arrested by “Interior Ministry” forces of the puppet regime in Baghdad.



Sources have told Quds Press that the victims were members of the Sunni al-Mushahdah tribe and that the so-called “shock troops” of the puppet regime’s “Interior Ministry” arrested them in the al-Hurriyah district of Baghdad on the night of 24 August.



Two days later their bodies were found, all of them shot in the head, execution style. The bodies were dumped in the river in an attempt apparently to hide the evidence of the murders.



Quds Press, meanwhile has learned that the puppet “Interior Minister” Bayan Jabr has refused to carry out the order of US-appointed “Iraqi President” Jalal at-Talibani to release all the prisoners arrested by his “Ministry” in the al-Mada’in area, southeast of Baghdad, who reportedly number 1,315 people and include women and children.

[clutch]

Does Anyone Know What
We're Doing In Iraq?
Mission: Unknown
By Paul Craig Roberts
Counterpunch.org
8-30-5


President Bush is out of touch with the American people, the US military, and international political reality.

With every poll showing smaller and smaller minorities approving of Bush and his war in Iraq, with top US generals sending signals that they want to reduce US troops in Iraq, and with the world at large viewing Bush as a fanatic who cannot acknowledge his blunders and mistakes, Bush announced in his weekly radio address that "our efforts in Iraq and the broader Middle East will require more time, more sacrifice and continued resolve."

Does Bush think he is a dictator?

The polls show that it is the American people's resolve that Bush bring his Iraq venture to an end, an orderly end if possible, but to an end. Every explanation Bush has given for his invasion of Iraq has proved to be false. Yet, Bush still speaks of "our noble cause," while taking great care to avoid Cindy Sheehan and her question, "What is the noble cause?"
...........(Oil & Israel) .... clutch


Perhaps Bush supplied the answer in his reference in his weekly radio address to "our efforts in . . . the broader Middle East."

What are our efforts "in the broader Middle East"?
......... (American Imperalism).........clutch

The only American efforts "in the broader Middle East" that have been defined are in the policy writings of Bush's neoconservative advisers who cooked up the invasion of Iraq. For the neocons, our efforts are in behalf of Israel's security.

The neocons' belief that Israel is made more secure by US military aggression in the Middle East is delusional. How is Israel made secure by an invasion that turns the Muslim world against America as all polls show and Iraq into a training ground for al Qaeda, as the CIA says has happened?

The US has been defeated in Iraq, both militarily by a limited insurgency drawn from only 20 percent of the population and politically by Iraqi divisions as the "constitutional process" demonstrates.

As Knight Ridder reported on August 25: "Insurgents in Anbar province, the center of guerrilla resistance in Iraq, have fought the US military to a stalemate. After repeated major combat offensives in Fallujah and Ramadi, and after losing hundreds of soldiers and Marines in Anbar during the past two years--including 75 since June 1--many American officers and enlisted men assigned to Anbar have stopped talking about winning a military victory in Iraq's Sunni heartland."

"I don't think of this in terms of winning," said Col. Stephen Davis, who commands a task force of about 5,000 Marines . . . The frustrating part for the (home) audience, if you will, is they want finality. They want a fight for the town and in the end the guy with the white hat wins."

That's unlikely in Anbar, Col. Davis said.

Frustrated by a determined insurgency, Bush administration officials predict that improvements will follow the Iraq constitution. However, the constitution may be leading to civil war.
.............(Problem is Iraq isn't nor ever was a homogenous society)......clutch

Sunnis say they will reject the constitution because it leaves them out of the oil wealth, which goes to the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south, and because it is punitive toward the old ruling party, that is, toward Sunnis.

Perhaps it is the neocon plan for Shiites and Kurds to join the US military in a war to the death against Sunnis.

But what comes next? How would Turkey regard a largely autonomous oil rich Kurdistan on the border of its own Kurdish province?
..........(The Turkish government has treated the Kurds as bad as Saddam did. Where is the international condemnation of that?)........... clutch

And how would a war in Iraq between Shiites and Sunnis play out in the Middle East divided along those lines? Does the US want to wed itself to Iranian Shiites against Saudi Sunnis?

It sounds like a lot of long term instability. Perhaps the old Islamic divisions are what the US government is relying on to enable it to continue to rule the Middle East. Muslims might consume themselves in their internal hatreds while the US builds its bases to control the oil.

That's been the tried and true practice of Western colonialists since the fall of the Turkish empire after World War I.

Can it work this time? US ambitions are too much of a threat to other countries which are well positioned to cause us grief. Will the world be able to resist the opportunities to undermine an over-extended and self-righteous United States?

Sooner or later, too, Shiite and Sunni leaders will realize that they are pawns in American hands bleeding themselves in behalf of American power. Sooner or later Muslim humiliation at the hands of the US and Israel will permit an Osama bin Laden to reunify the Muslim world.
.............. (That's what I'm afraid of. Muslims falling for leaders like Osama for their salvation).......clutch

These are, of course, speculations. But history has few events without unintended and unrecognized consequences.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08292005.html

[clutch]

Quote from Art of War:

1. Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war,
where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots,
as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand
mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them
a thousand li, the expenditure at home and at the front,
including entertainment of guests, small items such as
glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor,
will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day.
Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.

2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory
is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and
their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town,
you will exhaust your strength.
3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources
of the State will not be equal to the strain.

4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped,
your strength exhausted and your treasure spent,
other chieftains will spring up to take advantage
of your extremity. Then no man, however wise,
will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war,
cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited
from prolonged warfare.

[Pakistan First]

The Sunni option
By Ehsan Ahrari

The draft constitution of Iraq has been approved by 78% of voters nationwide. As expected, the Sunni Arabs were unable to defeat it by getting at least two-thirds of the voters in three provinces to vote against it. The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq reported that about 63% of Iraq's 15.5 million registered voters cast ballots.

Sunnis are not only viewing this reality as a permanent loss of power, but also as a way to partition their country into three parts. What are they to do now? They will do whatever a losing side does in an Arab polity that does not know how political battles are won or lost in a democracy. They will bide their time and attempt to sabotage the system, unless they are assured that the new Iraq is not just a euphemism for a permanent loss of their power.

Considering that a majority of voters in three provinces voted against the constitution, but one of them failed to reach the two-thirds threshold, there is hope on the Sunni side that they may be



able to change their bargaining position come December, when elections are due.

The greatest Sunni fear is that their country is well on its way to being split into three regions - the Kurdish north, well-endowed with oil, the Shi'ite south, equally enriched with oil, and the center, which has little to no oil. Even if there were to be no threats of an imminent splitting of Iraq, the Sunnis are wary about not having access to these resources and remaining at the mercy of the Kurds and the Shi'ites for future funding.

Here is the crux of the problem: The Sunnis were at the peak of power throughout the modern existence of Iraq as a state, despite the fact that they were in the minority. Now, they perceive themselves to be living in a system that will victimize them.

But while the Sunnis know they have lost a battle, the war is still there to be fought. From the Sunni perspective, the victory of the Shi'ites and the Kurds will be a temporary one, unless the US decides to stay in the country for at least the next decade or so, to guarantee the survival of the system that it has created.

(Ironically, October 25, the day the official ratification of the Iraqi construction was announced, coincided with the the American media reporting the 2,000th American soldier killed in Iraq.)

And the Sunnis will be aware of the grave limitations on America's ability to remain in Iraq. Not just Iraq, but the entire Arab world was watching the American generals' testimonies in early October before the US Congress, and their somber faces, while they used bureaucratic gobbledygook to underplay the poor state of readiness and performance of Iraqi security forces. They also read the US public opinion polls that regularly tell them that the American people want their country to get out of Iraq.

The ghosts of Vietnam may be viewed as ghosts in Washington; they are very much alive in the memories of the Arab world, and the Arab media.

That is why the Sunnis can afford to lose now and expect to emerge victorious later. Even after the resounding ratification of the constitution, let no one think that the new Iraq is well on its way toward becoming a Shi'ite and Kurdish-dominated country.

Is there room for compromise in this palpably messy situation? Perhaps in the long run, but it has to be done on the basis of some of the most-basic demands of the Sunnis. The federal nature of Iraq is the biggest red flag. If there ever were to be a compromise, it would have to be on a unitary system, where the central government plays a powerful role, especially in the distribution of oil revenue. As the past rulers of Iraq, the Sunnis are accustomed to this notion.

If the Shi'ites and the Kurds are to come to grips with sharing power through a unitary system, then there is some hope. The US knows it, and, in fact, prefers that option, but cannot do anything about it at present.

So at least for now, the Sunnis have to live with the fact that the Shi'ites and the Kurds outplayed (and outnumbered) them. They will have to wait for their chance, and wait they will.

Ehsan Ahrari is an independent strategic analyst based in Alexandria, VA, US. His columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. He is also a regular contributor to the Global Beat Syndicate. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

[liverpool4ever]

[/U]Moroccan Accused in Iraq Car Bomb Attack [/B]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi government on Tuesday blamed a Moroccan based in
Syria for a triple car bomb attack that killed at least 60 people north of Baghdad, and the defense minister called on Arab governments to demand that Syria curb the movement of foreign fighters into
Iraq.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. military said an American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in central Iraq the day before, raising to at least 93 the number of U.S. service members who died in October, the fourth deadliest month for the troops in the Iraq war.

In a statement, the Iraqi government identified the Moroccan as Muhsen Khayber, also known as Abdul-Majid al-Libi and Abdul-Rahim, who is also sought in his homeland for the terror bombings in Casablanca in May 2003.

The statement alleged that Khayber masterminded the Sept. 29 attack in which three vehicles exploded almost simultaneously in Balad, a mainly Shiite market town 50 miles north of Baghdad. At least 60 people were killed and about 70 were wounded. Iraqi officials offered an unspecified reward for information leading to Khayber's arrest.

Iraqi officials did not cite any evidence to link Khayber to the Balad attacks but have long maintained that foreign Islamic extremists play a major role in the suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis in recent months.

Spanish authorities, however, believe Khayber was part of a network linked to Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic extremist group based in northern Iraq that recruits foreign fighters to battle the U.S.-led coalition.

The Iraqi statement said Khayber moved last year to Syria, "where he helped organize terrorist cells for foreign terrorists" who were sent to Iraq.

Arab media said Khayber was arrested in Syria in May 2004 and handed over to the Moroccans.

Moroccan government spokesman Nabil Benabdallah, reached by telephone, would say only that he had not heard of Khayber.

However, a Moroccan analyst who attended high school with Khayber, Abdellah Rami, said he doubted Khayber was in custody because he still sends money to his two wives in the Moroccan city of Larache, where he was born in 1970. He also said Khayber was a vehement critic of Shiite Muslims, the main victims of the Balad attacks.

"Khayber used to support the killings of Shiites in Pakistan or the killing of Christians, even before Sept. 11," Rami said. "He became very animated in the discussions, very fanatic."

Syria has denied supporting Iraqi insurgent groups and insists it is trying to control the porous border.

But in a meeting with reporters, Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi warned the Damascus government against interfering in Iraq and called on Arab governments to pressure Damascus to crack down on Iraqi opposition groups operating from Syrian soil.

Al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Arab like most of the insurgents, said more than 400 foreign fighters, mostly Egyptians, have been arrested in Iraq, but he gave no timeframe. He said foreign fighters are met at the Damascus airport, trained for two to three weeks and then sent into Iraq.

"The silence of the Arab regimes regarding the Syrian role in Iraq is as if they approve," al-Dulaimi told reporters. "I call on all the Arab regimes to pressure the Syrian brothers to put an end to the spilling of the Iraqi blood. I don't want to say more because this is a painful and sad issue to me."

Al-Dulaimi said he had told the Syrians repeatedly to stop "playing with your destiny and the destiny of Iraq. Iraq will not be turned into a new Lebanon." Syria controlled Lebanon from 1976 until it withdrew its troops last April under international pressure after the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Iraqi allegations of a Syrian role were made as Damascus faces mounting international pressure to cooperate in a U.N. investigation into Hariri's killing. On Monday, the
U.N. Security Council warned of possible "further action" if Syria does not cooperate with the inquiry.

An Internet message posted Tuesday in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq said two kidnapped Moroccans would stand trial in an Islamic court.

On Oct. 25, the group claimed to have abducted the men, identified by the Moroccan government as Abdelkrim el Mouhafidi and Abderrahim Boualam, employees of its Baghdad embassy who were kidnapped while driving back from Jordan.

The authenticity of the statement could not be verified, but it was posted on an Islamic Web site known for publishing the group's material. Al-Qaida in Iraq has claimed responsibility for killing many hostages, including diplomats from Egypt and Algeria.

Meanwhile, to mark Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that concludes Ramadan, U.S. officials freed 500 detainees from
Abu Ghraib, the notorious prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

[Pakistan First]

Mujahideen Report More Deadly Attacks In Iraq
Nov 01, 2005
By Ubaidah Al-Saif, JUS

The number of attacks carried out by Iraq’s Mujahideen against US forces and their Iraqi collaborators this month has exceed those carried out in the previous nine months, which in part can be explained by the fact that the holy month of Ramadan, also the month of Jihad, has fuelled their efforts. Their increasing zealousness to oust US forces is also a key factor in the rise of attacks as their resolve to press on with their mission to rid the country of the aggressors strengthens with every successful military operation

In Al-Bouaythah, Mujahideen from the military division of Al-Qaida on Monday, Ramadan 28th 1426 (October 31st, 2005) bombarded that controlled area with a barrage of mortar rounds according to a statement released by the group. The number of casualties and damage in that attack is unknown.

Iraqi Spy Working For US Forces Assassinated

An Iraqi who has been working with US forces inside the Iraqi quagmire has been assassinated by Mujahideen working with Al-Qaida. The assassination took place yesterday in the area of Al-Iskan in Durra. The Iraqi was not named in the statement released by the group.

Ninwah District Council Building Bombed

According to a statement received from Al-Qaida in the Land of the Two Rivers yesterday, on Saturday their Mujahideen struck the Ninwah district council building with mortar rounds that were fired with deadly accuracy at the facility for over an hour. In addition, their Mujahideen engaged the so-called police with BKC automatic weapons fire that was subsequently reported by a few TV channels as well as in a statement released by the group. Meanwhile, the police director was arrested by the Americans for unknown reasons and some of his supporters demonstrated for his release.

US Collaborator Assassinated At Baghdad Airport

The military division of Al-Qaida Organisation in the Land of the Two Rivers reported on Monday, Ramadan 28th 1426 (October 31st, 2005) that their Mujahideen assassinated Mahdi Sami Al-Quaice, an Iraqi who was employed by the Americans at the Baghdad Airport in Durra.

Puppet Police In Baquba Targeted

Al-Qaida’s Mujahideen in a statement received yesterday detailed an attack on the so-called police in Baquba on Friday. During the attack, the Mujahideen killed seven puppet policemen before returning safely to their base.

Puppet Army Member Gunned Down In Hore Rajab

Al-Qaida sharp-shooters gunned down a puppet army member in the controlled area of Hore Rajab in Baghdad on Saturday, Ramadan 26th 1426 (October 30th 2005) according to a statement released by the group yesterday. No other details were available.

Two American Soldiers Killed

Two American soldiers were killed on Sunday, Ramadan 27th 1426 (October 30th 2005) when Al-Qaida’s Mujahideen detonated an explosive device at an American patrol that destroyed the Humvee they were travelling in according to a statement released by the group yesterday. It is unclear where the attack was carried out.

Explosives Target American Soldiers In Al-Sadah

The Al-Qua’Qua Brigade, a division of Al-Qaida on Saturday, Ramadan 26th 1426 (October 30th 2005) detonated an explosive device at an American patrol in Al-Sadah according to a statement released yesterday. The attack destroyed a Humvee, killing two American soldiers and injured two others according to the statement. (JUS)

[Pakistan First]

Does Zarqawi Have An Infinite Supply Of...
..Lieutenants/deputies/aides/associates/second-in-commands/etc?
Or, do we just arbitrarily declare that every 100th insurgent we capture or kill is "a top aide" to Zarqawi?

www.rense.com
11-2-5



Below is lengthy list of Zarqawi's "top lieutenants" we've captured, killed, or acknowledged over the last two and a half years.


"The No. 2 official in the al-Qaida in Iraq organization.'
"The top deputy to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."
Mohammed Salah Sutton, aka Abu Zubair (8/14/05)

"A lieutenant of al-Qaida terror boss Abu Musab al Zarqawi."
Abu Abd al-Aziz (7/13/05)

"Zarqawi's 'main leader in Baghdad'"
Khalid Suleiman Darwish, aka Abu Alghadiya (6/26/05)

A Syrian dentist...was described by Arab media as the 'number two' in Iraq's al Qaeda network and tipped to succeed its leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi."
Mohammed Khalaf Shakar, aka Abu Talha (6/17/05)

"A top lieutenant of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."
Mullah Mahdi, aka Abu Abdul Rahman (6/4/05)

"Suspected deputy of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi"
Abu Karrar (5/27/05)

"The Washington Post quoted a Zarqawi lieutenant by the nom-de-guerre of Abu Karrar as saying the Jordanian militant was shot and wounded in fighting with US forces near the western city of Ramadi."
Mullah Kamel al-Assawadi (5/25/05)

"Described as one of al-Zarqawi's top lieutenants."
Agha Umar (5/25/05)

"A top aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi"
Amar Adnan Muhammad Hamzah al-Zubaydi, aka Abu al-Abbas (5/9/05)

"A high-ranking aide to terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."
Ghassan Muhammed Amin Husayn al-Rawi (4/26/05)

"A key associate of Iraq's most wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."
Hamza Ali Ahmed al-Wdimizyar, aka Abu Majid (beginning of April-05)

"Zarqawi associate"
Salman Aref Abulkadir Khwamurad al-Zardowe, aka Abu Sharif (beginning of April-05)

"Zarqawi associate"
Taifor Abulsattar Malallah (3/8/05)

"One of the 'princes' of Musab al-Zarqawi's terrorist group."
Talib Mikhlif Arsan Walman al-Dulaymi, aka Abu Qutaybah (2/25/05)

"Iraqi forces have captured a man described as a trusted aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."
Mohammed Najm Ibrahim, aka Mohammed Najm (2/25/05)

"Zarqawi lieutenant"
Adel Mujtaba, aka Abu Rim (2/20/05)

"A propaganda chief of al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi"
Anat Mohammed Hamat al-Kays, aka Abu Alid (1/28/05)

"High-level Zarqawi lieutenant"
Sami Mohammed Ali Said Jaaf, aka Abu Omar Kurdi (1/25/05)

"A senior aide to Abu Musab al Zarqawi"
"The 'most lethal' top lieutenant of Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq."
Ismael Jeddan (1/23/05)

"The raids also netted a man identified as Ismael Jeddan, an alleged associate of al-Zarqawi."
Ali Hamad Ardani Yasin Isawi (1/20/05)

"top lieutenant"
Inad Mohammed Qais (1/20/05)

"The deputy prime minister for national security affairs, Barham Salih, later told a news conference that authorities have arrested a third Zarqawi lieutenant."
Salah Salman Idaaj Matar Luhaybi, aka Abu Sayf (12/31/04)

"Zarqawi's chief of operations in Baghdad"
Fadil Hussain Ahmed al-Kurdi, aka Abu Ubaydah al-Kurdi, aka Ridha (12/30/04)

"A senior member of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network."
Abdul Aziz Sa'dun Ahmed Hamduni, aka Abu Ahmed (12/22/04)

"Zarqawi-linked leader"
Hassan Ibrahim Farhan Zyda (12/14/04)

"An aide to Iraq's most-wanted man, Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi"
Abu Saeed (11/26/04)

"A lieutenant of Iraq's most feared terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi"
Nameless (10/23/04)

The US military has arrested a 'senior leader' in the network run by Jordanian mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."
Omar Yusef Juma'a, aka Abu Anas al-Shami (9/25/04)

"A senior aide of the Jordanian al Qaeda mastermind, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi"
Umar Baziyani (6/4/04)

"A top aide of al-Qaeda suspect Abu Musab al-Zarqawi"
"His capture removes one of Zarqawi's most valuable officers from his network."
Abu Mohammed Hamza (2/24/04)

"A key lieutenant to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."
Hassan Ghul (2/23/04)

"The letter was found on al-Zarqawi lieutenant Hassan Ghul, a Pakistani captured in Iraq."
The letter in reference was a "17-page letter to senior al Qaeda leaders written by terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who asked for help starting a Muslim civil war between Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites."
Nameless (4/30/03)

"An associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured in the Baghdad area."
From the looks of it, I think everyone in Iraq is about two-degrees from Zarqawi.

Note also that after many of these announcements, we were told that it would be a "fatal blow" to the Iraqi insurgency or that we were oh-so close to capturing Zarqawi himself.

Comment: The article above, as well as the next, show clearly the joke that constitutes US reporting from Iraq. It is propaganda, pure and simple, designed to hoodwink the US public into thinking that all is well, that the light is at the end of the tunnel, etc.

At some point, the best weapon is ridicule, which is what the next article does.

Headline:
[top | important | most wanted | close | key] al-Zarqawi [aide | lieutenant | associate | "cell prince" | figure] [captured | arrested]

Dateline:
(some date) (some place in Iraq)

Body:
[Iraqi | US | US and Iraqi] forces have [nabbed | captured | arrested] [a | one | two] [senior | middle] [figure | operations chief | terrorist operative] of [Jordanian | al-Qaeda-linked | Iraq's most wanted] terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi.

(arabic name), also know as (other arabic name), was [detained | picked up] on (some date) during an [Iraqi police | US military | US and Iraqi] [raid | road block | operation] in (some place in Iraq).

[spokesman | US General | Iraqi minister] said ["major catch" | "significant impact" | "big step forward"].

Some examples:

June 16, 2005 U.S. Says It Has Captured Al Qaeda Leader for Mosul Area

American and Iraqi military forces have captured Al Qaeda's top leader in the Mosul area of Northern Iraq, the United States military announced today, a man who associates said always wore a suicide vest and vowed that he would never be taken alive.

The military described the captured insurgent, Muhammad Khalaf Shakar, also known as Abu Talha, as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's most trusted operations agent in Iraq.
...

"He was known as the 'emir of Mosul,' " Lt. Gen. James T. Conway said of Mr. Shakar during a Pentagon briefing today. "He is a key lieutenant in Al Qaeda - that has been established. .."
...

The general said he believed the capture could reduce the rate of insurgent attacks in Northern Iraq. "In terms of impact, we think it will be significant," he said. "He has been in charge of the operation up there for a long time. Mosul, as you know, has become more and more a focal point for insurgent activities. So we have to think that the No. 2 won't be as capable as he."

June 5, 2005 Militant linked to Zarqawi arrested

Iraqi forces have arrested a senior militant leader who is linked to Jordanian mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and believed responsible for overseeing an array of deadly attacks in Iraq.

A Defence Ministry spokesman says Mullah Mahdi, sometimes known as Abu Abdul Rahman, was detained after a raid backed by US troops in the northern city of Mosul on Friday.

May 25, 2005 Top aide to al-Zarqawi arrested north of Baghdad

"The Iraqi security forces backed by US troops captured on Monday Agha Umar, a top aide for Zarqawi, in Baquba, some 60 km northeast of Baghdad," the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

May 25, 2005 US: al-Zarqawi aides arrested

Described as "one of the most wanted people" in northern Iraq, Mullah Kamel al-Assawadi was arrested after he allegedly tried to pass an Iraqi checkpoint, a US military statement said on Wednesday.
...

The Iraqi Defence Ministry also announced the arrest in Baquba on Tuesday of al-Zarqawi's secretary for Diyala province, Agha Omar, without providing further details. [see above]

May 9, 2005 Gains seen after new arrest of al-Zarqawi aide

Both men arrested are said to be close aides to al-Zarqawi, whose group is thought to be responsible for most of the suicide bombings and kidnappings in Iraq.

Amar Adnan Muhammad Hamzah al-Zubaydi was arrested in a Baghdad raid on May 5, the military said, while Ghassan Amin was captured in western Iraq in late April along with two associates.

April 19, 2005 Iraqi Security Forces Capture Two Zarqawi Associates

Iraq Security Forces are detaining two men suspected of working for al-Qaeda-linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Iraqi government said in a statement e- mailed from the capital, Baghdad.

Hamza Ali Ahmed al-Widmizyar, known as Abu Majid, and Salman Aref Abdulkadir Khwamurad al-Zardowe, also called Abu Sharif, were arrested at the beginning of April during a raid on the city of Ramadi, the government, said without explaining why the information was only released today.

March 12, 2005 Female Al Qaeda member arrested

US troops have detained a female Al Qaeda member headed by Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, US military officials said on Friday.

She is "someone who was picked up" within the last 30 days "and is part of the Zarqawi network. She is at Camp Cropper," Major General William Brandenburg, the head of US military detention operations in Iraq, said, adding that she was one of three females in custody.

March 9, 2005 A Zarqawi cell "prince", six others captured in Baquba

Iraqi security forces arrested a leader of one of Musaab Al-Zarqawi's terrorist cells in Baquba, northeast of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad on Wednesday.

An Iraqi police source told reporters that soldiers of the Iraqi Army captured Taifor Abdulsattar Malallah one of the "princes" of Musaeb Al-Zaraqi's terrorist group in Baquba.

March 1, 2005 Major Arrests Show a Shift in Iraq

The Iraqi government has arrested several key figures in the insurgency in the past two weeks, mainly aides to Zarqawi. One of the highest-profile captures was of Talib Mikhlif Arsan Walman al-Dulaimi, also known as Abu Qutaybah, who arranged safe houses and meetings for Zarqawi and was arrested Feb. 20 along with another man who occasionally served as Zarqawi's driver. Iraqi officials say Abu Qutaybah's contacts in the Anbar province of western Iraq, which has been an insurgency hotbed, make him a major catch.

February 26, 2005 Top al-Zarqawi aide captured

Iraqi forces have arrested a top lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, another indication that they are close to capturing Iraq's most wanted man, security officials said Friday.

The aide, Taleb Mikhlef al-Dulaimi, was "responsible for determining who, when and how terrorist leaders would meet with al-Zarqawi," the Iraqi government said in a statement. Al-Dulaimi was captured in a Feb. 20 raid in the town of Anah, about 150 miles west of Baghdad.

January 28, 2005 Three Top Zarqawi Lieutenants Arrested

Iraq's interim government today announced the capture of three men it described as top lieutenants of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi,..
...
According to Qasim Dawood, the Iraqi government's minister of state for national security, Zarqawi's chief of operations in Baghdad was captured Dec. 31 and another top lieutenant was caught west of the capital on Jan. 20. There was no immediate explanation for the delay in announcing the captures.

A government statement said the Baghdad operations chief, identified as Salah Salman Idaaj Matar Luhaybi, alias Abu Sayf, had met Zarqawi four times in December. The other top aide, Ali Hamad Ardani Yasin Isawi, had 40 meetings with Zarqawi in the past three months, the statement said.

The deputy prime minister for national security affairs, Barham Salih, later told a news conference that authorities have arrested a third Zarqawi lieutenant, Inad Mohammed Qais, Reuters news agency reported. Qais was said to be an al Qaeda member serving as a military adviser. It was not immediately clear when or how he was seized.

January 24, 2005 Zarqawi's 'Most Lethal' Lt. Nabbed

Iraqi security forces have arrested the "most lethal" top lieutenant of al Qaeda's leader in Iraq - a man allegedly behind 75 percent of the car bombings in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion, the prime minister's office said Monday.

Sami Mohammed Ali Said al-Jaaf, also known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, was arrested during a Jan. 15 raid in Baghdad, a government statement said Monday. Two other militants linked to Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror group also have been arrested, authorities announced Monday.

January 8, 2005 Zarqawi-linked leader arrested

U.S. occupation forces announced the arrest of a key leader in al-Zarqawi's network in Iraq.

The military said in a statement on Saturday that Abdul Aziz Sa'dun Ahmed Hamduni, also known as Abu Ahmed, was arrested on December 22.

The statement also said that Abu Ahmed was coordinating attacks in the northern city of Mosul, adding that he served as the deputy of the top leader in the city, identified as Abu Talha.

December 15, 2004 Iraq says aide to Zarqawi killed, two arrested

An aide to Iraq's most-wanted man, Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed in Iraq and two others captured, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Tuesday.

"I have been told that an individual by the name of Hassan Ibrahim Farhan Zyda from Zarqawi's group has been killed and that two of his deputies have been arrested," Allawi told the interim national assembly.

December 12, 2004 US Marines Arrest 2 Zarqawi-linked Insurgent Leaders

The men were arrested on December 8 and 12 during raids in the city of Ramadi, which is part of the restive al-Anbar province. The military did not announce the arrests until Saturday.

The Marines say Saleh Arugayan Khalil and Bassim Mohammed Hazem were cell leaders for a local Zarqawi-affiliated terrorist group called the "Harun terrorist network" that operates in and around Ramadi.

November 25, 2004 Iraq says top Zarqawi aide arrested in Mosul

One of the leaders of the top US foe in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ,was arrested in the northern city of Mosul, national security adviser Qassem Daoud said Thursday. "We arrested a few days ago Abu Said, one of the leaders of the Zarqawi network in the city of Mosul," Daoud told reporters.

He did not elaborate on the identity of the rebel leader and his rank in Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda linked organisation, but said information which led to the arrest came partly from local residents.

October 23, 2004 Senior Terrorist Arrested in Iraq

The U.S. military has arrested a "senior leader" in the network run by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search), along with five others during overnight raids in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah (search), officials said Saturday.

July 7, 2004 Zarqawi's brother-in-law arrested in Jordan: family

Jordanian authorities have arrested a brother-in-law of suspected Al Qaeda operative Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, following his appearance in a documentary on Al Jazeera television, according to family sources.

Saleh al-Hani, 38, was arrested at his home in Zarqa, north-east of Amman, by plainclothes policemen who gave no explanation for his arrest, the sources told AFP.

April 30, 2003 Associate of Al Qaeda-Linked Fugitive Caught in Baghdad

An associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured in the Baghdad area, a defense official confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday.

The name of the associate was not released but he was described as a midlevel terrorist operative.

Comment: Does the template come out of the Pentagon, or do the reporters no longer even need it, having been embedded for so long that the thought control has become habit.

Not only has al Zarqawi become a mythical figure, there is still the original Islamic bogeyman, Osama bin Laden, who appears from time to time when he is needed to bolster the sagging fortunes of the American president. To whit, the last-minute campaign endorsement of old family friend George W. from Osama days before last year's presidential election.

Well, Osama is back, at least via his buddies at the CIA.

Bin Laden to surface after new attack on US soil: ex-CIA expert
Oct 05 9:34 PM US/Eastern
Osama bin laden is expected to remain in hiding until he stages another attack on the United States, an ex-CIA expert who had tracked the terror mastermind for two decades warned in an interview.

"As soon as he hits us in the United States again we'll see how important he is in the Islamic world," Michael Scheuer, the former head of the "bin Laden unit" at the CIA, told AFP in an interview.

Despite his low profile, bin Laden remains powerful, Scheuer said, shrugging off reports that the Al-Qaeda chief was isolated and his communication network shattered due to a relentless hunt for him.

"We mistake quiet for defeat or irrelevance. And all quiet is disquiet," said Scheuer, a fierce critic of the Bush administration and its "War on Terror" policy since he left the CIA in November last year.

Comment: Yes, this fierce critic would have us treat the phoney Islamic threat with even more seriousness than we do now.

Scheuer said that bin Laden's right-hand-man Ayman al-Zawahiri, who last appeared on a video aired 10 days before the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, seemed to have temporarily taken over the Al-Qaeda leadership apparently for the boss to prepare for another US strike.

Bin Laden last surfaced in a video footage aired on the eve of the US presidential elections in November last year. In the tape, declared authentic by the authorities, the Saudi-born radical directly admitted he ordered the September 11 attacks.

Asked why he thought the al-Qaeda leader had not resurfaced since then, Scheuer said: "I don't think we are going to hear from him until he attacks us again.

"His feature on the eve of the election was simply to say that: This is it, I have warned you four times. I punched my ticket in the Islamic world, I've given you all the warning that the religion requires me.

"I think that's why Zawahiri is taking the lead at the moment," said Scheuer, the author of the best-selling book "Imperial Hubris," which was originally published anonymously as required by the CIA.

The United States has offered rewards of up to 25 million dollars each for bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri.

Pakistan said last month that bin Laden was now isolated as his communication network had been shattered.

One key Al-Qaeda suspect revealed under interrogation that bin Laden was using couriers travelling on foot or horseback instead of communicating by satellite telephone or the Internet to avoid being detected, according to Pakistan's chief military spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan.

But Scheuer, currently an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University, said, "I'm one that believes that we have not destroyed their (Al-Qaeda's) capability to attack us.

"I think bin Laden still commands the international media at a moment's notice if he decides to make a media appearance. He is very important. So, I think again there is lot of whistling past the graveyard at the moment."

Scheuer earlier Wednesday told a forum organized by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, that Al-Qaeda would survive even without bin Laden, "who is a unique combination of a 12th century theologian and a 21st century CEO."

[Pakistan First]

Why The US Will Lose In Iraq
Nov 05, 2005
By Abdul-Ilah Al-Bayaty

Throughout the history of the Iraqi patriotic movement, since the 1920s until now, it has been clear that the main criterion for true patriotism was to confront the "hegemony" of foreign powers in Iraq.

Iraq's nationalisation of its oil wealth, and its success in investing oil revenues in economic development and infrastructure projects, has demonstrated Iraq's ability to build its own cadre for the proper administration of oil industries, and then make the ultimate end of such industry serving the interests of Iraq. Even when expertise, capital or any sort of foreign assistance was required, Iraq could get it through contracting and cooperation. It has always insisted there is no justification for rendering ownership of its oil fields to any other party but the state.

The fate of Iraqi oil is vital for Iraq's future, and no government can survive -- unless it enlists the help of foreign armies -- if it accepts to put Iraq's oil in the hands of foreign parties. Iraq is well aware of that fact, and it will never concede sovereignty over its territory or resources. All international laws support Iraq in this regard.

The Iraqis as a society are opposing the United States' strategy of dividing Iraq through the so-called political process and draft constitution. Beside controlling and plundering the natural resources of Iraq, the United States' plan consisted in abolishing the concept of citizenship -- the basis of any modern state. It annulled sovereignty, destroyed heritage and memory, and took over Iraqi wealth in an attempt to divide the country and destroy its Arab and Islamic geopolitical and civilisation-based affiliations. The occupation has tried, and continues to try, to replace Iraq by a subordinate state based on ethnicity and sectarian identity: a state of parties, lineages and religious references rather than a state of equal and free citizens. By dividing the state into three or more weak and conflicting entities according to the virtual lines of blood and sectarianism, the US, in reality, draws a map corresponding to the occupation's own interests in oil. This programmed division necessitated the abolition of the Iraqi state; the dismantling of its apparatus and institutions and an ongoing plan of privatisation of state-owned industries, buildings, lands and services.

While it is true that this policy creates local corrupted individuals, feudalisms and warlords who profit from the occupation, society itself -- especially the marginalised and impoverished, educated middle classes, the working classes, which lost the benefit of state large services, and the youth, which suffers from unemployment and the absence of civil liberties -- reject US policy in Iraq. This will be the source of the never-ending social struggle against the occupation and eventually its defeat, and the defeat of its policies.

The United States established a collision course confrontation with Iraqi society when it liquidated the Iraqi state, destroying its accomplishments and erasing its memory. It was oblivious to the simple truth that society is not just a political movement that can be conquered, or a number of individuals who may be apprehended, bribed or even killed. It is all the living people in a given country. Like other live societies, Iraqi society possesses huge capabilities -- a sophisticated legacy, ancient civilisations and an experienced patriotic movement. American strategists, while building their model for Iraq, missed or disregarded the fact that social movements are based on solid realities and lived experience, and cannot just be created on the whim of a political decision or through insidious forms of pressure.

The Iraqis' experience of US policies explains the failure of the occupation forces in controlling Iraqi society through ethnic intrigue and repressive measures. Indeed, all the geopolitical dons in Iraq stand fast against ethnic and racial sensitivities, and against American imperialist plans in Iraq. If Iraqis now share any social attitude towards the US, it derives from their painful experience with the siege the US imposed on them through the UN for 13 years, and the destruction the American invasion caused to their country. Iraqi society has a wide civil, cultural and political heritage that enables it to unite against any reactionary imperialistic plan that seeks to take Iraq back to the Age of Darkness, with its attendant feudal systems and religious and ethnic bourgeoisie.

Since the very day the occupation forces came to Iraq and the Iraqi state collapsed, there has been an uprising by all Iraqi movements and organisations; including those defending women, or unemployed youth, human rights organisations, trade unions, professional syndicates, agencies defending environmental issues and the rights of prisoners, and all other cultural and political organisations, side-by-side with provincial and tribal communities and peaceful and armed resistance groups. They have all risen following an unwritten political agenda that symbolises the whole society and derives its legitimacy from the deep sense of belonging to Arab and Islamic tenets.

Geographically, historically, culturally and strategically, Iraq belongs to its Arab-Muslim context. This affiliation is neither ethnic nor religious, but rather cultural and geopolitical. The Arab-Islamic attitude is deeply rooted in the conscience and soul of every Iraqi citizen, regardless of ideology. Such an attitude reflects a mutual language and a joint political project for all Iraqis -- especially members of nationalist, Islamist and leftist groups. They all share the same principles, as follows.

First, our natural resources, our material heritage, and the riches of our culture and civilisation are the property of the totality of the Iraqi people in all its successive generations, both past and future. Ownership of this wealth, whether in whole or in part, cannot be alienated by any public or private entity. Second, the general interest and public services are the justification and basis for the operation of the state. It is forbidden to use the state apparatus, or its institutions, for personal or sectarian ends. Finally, responsibility for security, defence, justice, health, education, communication, water, energy and all major public services, including the management of public finances, natural resources and the country's material and cultural heritage, belongs to the state. Every citizen has the right to enjoy these services, free of any form of discrimination.

The Iraqi state should therefore adopt the following principles. The totality of the citizens constitutes the people of Iraq. The people are the sole source of sovereignty and of constitutional, political and judicial legitimacy. The government is responsible and accountable to all citizens. Solidarity between citizens -- between generations, between the different territories making up the country, and with the elderly, the ill, children and orphans, those in need, and every human being who finds himself in a state of weakness -- should form the basis of the Iraqi government's social policy.

As a point of fact, Iraq's commitment to its Arab and Islamic identity is not only a shield that protects Iraqi society from the claws of foreign business, but also a catalyst that pushes Iraqi society to the fore of the progressive social movement growing all over the world which opposes neoliberal globalisation and American imperial plans. Such a movement advocates building a new world that would be more humane than the contemporary world characterised by barbarism and flagrant abuses of power that crush the weak and the needy, destroy the environment, create wars and unemployment, and devour our civil and political liberties. It has been evident enough for everyone that American strategy in this region is one link in a long chain of imperialist design for various parts of the world, all aimed at similar targets and using similar justifications to tread upon others.

Yet, American imperialist hegemony that defends the free movement of capital over the freedom of people, grasps to command the natural wealth of other countries, raising the banner of the market economy, is being increasingly exposed and opposed by all peoples of the world. Opposition to American imperialism has spread even in developed countries; it is no longer a theoretical idea, but a reality, simply because it results in more poverty for the poor and more wealth for the rich while leaving the middle class completely marginalised, even inside the US itself. No one believes anymore in the neoliberal propaganda that "capital has no home" and that its unfettered passage through the portals of the global economy would bring about progress and development, and create more liberties leading to stability and justice.

The United States has no doubt achieved great progress through the democratic model it adopted on its territory. We don't contest this. Even we do not refuse to be members of the world's "one village" of which they are speaking. We are ready to exchange culture, ideas, goods, techniques, persons, to achieve mutual understanding and development. Yet, the Iraqis and their social movements stand fast in the shadow of American imperial efforts which would only lead to more destruction and ruin for them.

People around the world who care for justice and hope for a more human and humane world, should support the Iraqis in their struggle to recover their sovereignty, and ask for the complete and unconditional withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraqi soil along with compensation paid for all the material and human losses Iraq has experienced since the illegal invasion began.

*The writer is an Iraqi political analyst based in France.

[Pakistan First]

Meet The New Interrogators: Lockheed Martin
Nov 05, 2005
By Pratap Chatterjee

Dozens of people converged this summer in the high desert town of El Paso, Texas, en route to spending six months in Iraqi prisons. They were going not as prisoners, but as their interrogators, walking a legalistic tightrope stretched across the Geneva Conventions. Just for signing up, they got a $2,000 check from a company that is rapidly becoming one of the key employers in the world of intelligence: Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest military company, based in Bethesda, Maryland.

Before deployment to Iraq, they assemble in Building 503 on Pleasanton Road to mingle with the soldiers and government civilian workers at the welcome briefing that takes place every Sunday. There they get a government-issued duffel bag, filled with basic items for working in the war in the Middle East: cargo pants, tactical shirts, Kevlar helmets and Land Warrior chemical masks. After a week of orientation and medical processing, they fly to Tampa, Florida, and onto their final work destinations -- Iraq's infamous prisons including Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper, a prison at Baghdad International Airport, and Camp Whitehorse, near Nasariyah.

Known in the intelligence community as "97 Echoes" (97E is the official classification number for the interrogator course taught at military colleges including Fort Huachuca, Arizona), these contractors will work side-by-side with military interrogators conducting question-and-answer sessions using 17 officially sanctioned techniques, ranging from "love of comrades" to "fear up harsh." Their subjects will be the tens of thousands of men thrown into United States-run military jails on suspicion of links to terrorism.

The rules that govern all interrogators, both contract and military, are currently open to broad interpretation. Today there is much legal wrangling about where to draw the line between harsh treatment and torture. An amendment to the latest military spending bill introduced by Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, explicitly bars the use of torture on anyone in Unites States custody. His amendment was recently approved by a 90 to 9 votes in the United States Senate and is currently being negotiated in "conference" by both Houses of Congress this week before going to President Bush. McCain is fighting off Vice President Dick Cheney's suggestion that Central Intelligence Agency counter-terrorism agents working overseas be exempted from the torture ban.

Sytex

Jobs for this new breed of interrogators typically begin with a phone call or e-mail to retired Lieutenant Colonel Marc Michaelis, in the quaint old flour milling town of Ellicott City, on the banks of the Patapsco River in Maryland, about an hour's drive from Washington DC.

Michaelis, who is the main point of contact for new interrogators, came to Lockheed in February after it acquired his former employer Sytex in a $462 million takeover. Sytex was founded 1988 by Sydney Martin, a management graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who dabbles in collecting old Danish and Irish coins. In its first year, the Pennsylvania-based company earned $1,500. By 2004, according to Congressional Quarterly, Sytex was providing "personnel and technology solutions to government customers including the Pentagon's Northern Command, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, and the Department of Homeland Security." Its revenues had reached $425 million.

The bottom line was undoubtedly improved by the boom in hiring contract interrogators that began just weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Armed with new Pentagon contracts, Michaelis advertised job openings for 120 new "intelligence analysts" ranging from Arab linguists to counterintelligence and information warfare specialists. The private contractors would work at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and at the United States Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida.

At the same time, Lockheed Martin, then a completely different company, was also interested in entering this lucrative new business of intelligence contracting. It bought up Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), a small company with a General Services Administration (GSA) technology contract issued in Kansas City, Missouri. In November 2002, Lockheed used GSA to employ private interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The contract was then transferred to a Department of Interior office in Sierra Vista, Arizona.

The issue of private contractors in interrogation did not come to light until mid-2004, when a military investigation revealed that several interrogators at the Abu Ghraib prison were civilian employees of CACI. The contract to the Virginia-based company was also issued by the Department of Interior's Sierra Vista, Arizona office, located a stone's throw from the headquarters of the Army's main interrogation school.

(CACI did not actually bid on the original contract, but like Lockheed in Guantanamo, it had bought another company--Premier Technology Group-which did. The Fairfax, Virginia-based firm provided interrogators to the Pentagon in August 2003 under a GSA contract for information technology services.)

Scandal at Abu Ghraib

One of the CACI interrogators, Steven Stefanowicz, was accused of involvement in the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal that broke in May 2004. It was soon revealed that Stefanowicz, who was trained as a satellite image analyst, had received no formal training in military interrogation, which involves instruction in the Geneva Conventions on human rights.

A subsequent report in July 2004 by Lieutenant General Paul Mikolashek, on behalf of the Army Inspector General, found that a third of the interrogators supplied in Iraq by CACI had not been trained in military interrogation methods and policies. The same report mentioned that of the four contract interrogators employed by Sytex in Bagram, Afghanistan, only two had received military interrogation training, and the other two, who were former police officers, had not.

It also emerged that no one knew what laws applied to private contractors who engaged in torture in Iraq or whether they were in fact accountable to any legal authority or disciplinary procedures. When the media began to question the role of the private contractors and the legality of their presence under unrelated information technology contracts from non-military agencies, the Pentagon swiftly issued sole-source ("no bid") military contracts to CACI and Lockheed.

That CACI contract expired at the end of September this year. But before the company opted not to renew its contract, the company was already working with Sytex as a sub-contractor to supply new personnel to interrogate prisoners.

No new contractor in either Iraq or Afghanistan has been made officially announced to date, but Major Matthew McLaughlin, a spokesperson for United States Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, told CorpWatch: "The Army is the executive agent for contracting all interrogator type services for the Department of Defense. They work their contracts (writ large) from an office which operates out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia."

Web Recruiting

Sytex, and thus Lockheed after the takeover, appears to have subsequently emerged as one of the biggest recruiters of private interrogators. In June alone, Sytex advertised for 11 new interrogators for Iraq, and in July the company sought 23 interrogators for Afghanistan. It has also been seeking experienced report writers and program managers who have worked in military interrogations in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, former Yugoslavia, or the Persian Gulf War.


Ads on several websites frequented by current and former military personnel offered a $70,000 to $90,000 salary, a $2,000 sign-up bonus, $1,000 for a mid-tour break, and a $2,000 bonus for completing the normal six month deployment. Those returning for a second tour get double bonuses at the beginning and end of their stints. In return, the employees are expected to work as necessary-- up to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. (The companies, however, get to bill the military up to $200 an hour for this work, according to Cherif Bassiouni, the former United Nations Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan.)

"Sytex is one of our best customers," says Bill Golden, a former military intelligence analyst with 20 years Army experience, who now runs IntelligenceCareers.com, one of the biggest intelligence employment websites in the business. "They are the main company hiring 97E workers today."

Golden attributes the current boom in private contract interrogators to poor military planning over the last decade. "The military worked as hard as it could to create a brain drain by moving qualified intelligence people into other jobs, who then quit. As a result by September 11, 2001, there was no one left who had a clue. Now they are rushing to catch up and create 9,000 new specialists, but it takes at least five years to become really experienced. What we have now is a nursery full of babies in the army."

Yet even by 2003, just 237 new interrogators were graduated from the intelligence school at Fort Huachuca. Today, a Virginia-based company, Anteon, has contracted with the base to provide private instructors to increase the number of qualified interrogators completing intelligence courses to 1,000 a year in 2006. (See related article)

The scope of contracts for companies like Anteon and Sytex are difficult to determine because they have never been made public. Asked about the details of the interrogation contracts, Lockheed declined to comment. Joseph Wagovich, a spokesman for the company's information technology division that includes Sytex, initially told CorpWatch that the company had only a minor role in the interrogation business and that the company had wrapped up its interrogation contract on Guantanamo. But he confirmed that Lockheed was still supplying other kinds of "intelligence analysts" on the Cuban base.

Sytex itself also likes to keep a low profile. "Most of the law enforcement organizations, as well as the other surreptitious organizations we may be supporting, would just as soon not see their names in print," Ralph Palmieri Junior, the company's Chief Operating Officer told Congressional Quarterly in 2004.

Running the United States?

Even without all the specifics, it is clear that Lockheed is supplying the U.S. war in Iraq with a vast range of both personnel and materiel. In addition providing interrogators, it is currently seeking retired Army majors or lieutenant colonels to develop short- and long-range planning at the biggest U.S. base in Iraq: Camp Anaconda, in Balad, northern Iraq. Also being courted for work in Iraq are "red switch" experts to run the military's secure communications systems.

On the materiel side, Lockheed's Keyhole and Lacrosse satellites beam images from the war back to the military; its U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird spy planes, F-16, F/A-22 jet fighters, and F-117 stealth attack fighters were used to "shock and awe" the Iraqis at the start of the US invasion; and ground troops employed its Hellfire air-to-ground missiles and the Javelin portable missiles in the invasion of Fallujah last year.

The company's reach and influence go far beyond the military. A New York Times profile of the company in 2004 opened with the sentence: "Lockheed Martin doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it."

"Over the last decade, Lockheed, the nation's largest military contractor, has built a formidable information-technology empire that now stretches from the Pentagon to the Post Office. It sorts your mail and totals your taxes. It cuts Social Security checks and counts the United States census. It runs space flights and monitors air traffic. To make all that happen, Lockheed writes more computer code than Microsoft" writes Tim Weiner.

The national security reporter for the New York Times explains how Lockheed gets its business: "Men who have worked, lobbied and lawyered for Lockheed hold the posts of secretary of the Navy, secretary of transportation, director of the national nuclear weapons complex, and director of the national spy satellite agency."

"Giving one company this much power in matters of war and peace is as dangerous as it is undemocratic," says Bill Hartung, senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York. "Lockheed Martin is now positioned to profit from every level of the war on terror from targeting to intervention, and from occupation to interrogation.

Failed Experiment?

Apart from the monoply on war-related contracts to one single corporation, the increased outsourcing of interrogation to private contractors raises questions of accountability and of enforcement of regulations designed for the military.

Human rights groups are openly critical of this new trend. "The Army's use of contract interrogators has to date been a failed experiment," Deborah Pearlstein told CorpWatch. "Based on the Pentagon's own investigations and other reports that are already public, it seems clear that contractors are less well trained, less well controlled, and harder to hold accountable for things that go wrong than are regular troops." Pearlstein, who is the director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First (formerly Lawyers Committee on Human Rights), warned that "unless and until contract interrogators can be brought at the very least up to the standards of training and discipline expected of our uniformed soldiers, the United States may well be better off without their services."

Former interrogators have a more nuanced opinion. "The problem is not the use of civilian contractors," one former Army interrogator with over ten years of field experience, wrote in an e-mail to CorpWatch. "What is necessary is an active means of supervision and oversight on ALL of our assets in the field...not just the civilian ones. If you take a look at many of the investigations of the military intelligence activities, you will find just as many uniformed individuals breaking the law as contractors. I am more interested in providing proper guidance, training, supervision and oversight to ALL of our intelligence people."

But Susan Burke, a lawyer for Iraqi prisoners who say they were tortured at Abu Ghraib, challenges the legality of using private contractors for interrogation. "Interrogation has always been considered an inherently governmental function for obvious reasons. It is irresponsible and dangerous to use contractors in such settings given that there is a long history of repeated human rights abuses by contractors." The Philadephia attorney charges that the use of private contractors is illegal. "The United States Congress has passed laws (the Federal Acquisition Regulations) that prevent the executive branch from delegating "inherently governmental functions" to private parties."

BOX: Spy Cameras Meet Lie Detectors

Peter Rosenfeld designs technology that allow computers to interpret what a cameras "sees." Now, robotics expert for Advanced Technology Labs, a division of Lockheed Martin in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is turning this expertise to the imprecise science of interrogation.

His latest assignment is a three year project with Professor Dimitris Metaxas of Rutgers University to use cameras and a special computer program to track subjects' eyes, lips, shoulders, and hands movements to determine if they are lying.

Metaxas and Rosenfeld's work is paid for by a $3.5 million grant made in August by the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the U.S. immigration and border security system among a myriad other tasks. Lockheed Martin's Rosenfeld is supplying three-dimensional sensor technology for the project, while Rutgers is supplying student volunteers.

The government has used polygraphs for more than 50 years to track blood pressure and heart rate, but most experts believe that these "lie detectors" are inaccurate at least 50 percent of the time and that a trained liar can easily fool the machine.

The next steps in lie detection draw heavily from the work of psychologists including Paul Ekman, a professor at the University of California medical school in San Francisco, who has spent more than 40 years tracking the facial and body signals that people make when they answer questions. Early studies indicated, for example, that people looked to their left when recalling the past but to the right when making up a story about prior events.

Today Ekman and Metaxas are getting millions of dollars from the multiple military agencies to study the fleeting facial expressions and casual gestures that many observers do not notice, but that the scientists hope can help them develop more sophisticated lie detectors. "Micro-expressions and micro-gestures are a lot harder to mask and they do not vary among cultures and races," Metaxas told the Daily Targus, the Rutgers campus newspaper. "This gives interrogators tools to do their job confidently."

Pratap Chatterjee is Managing Editor/Project Director of CorpWatch.

[Pakistan First]

Iraq's forgotten war
By Michael Schwartz

So much of the Iraq war operates below the radar screen of the mainstream media that we rarely glimpse what is really going on - either in the daily lives of Iraqis or in the daily life of the war itself. The news we do get is generally filled with moments when large numbers of soldiers, policemen and civilians are killed in suicide attacks; or with the surreal machinations of American and Iraqi politicians so disconnected from Iraqi reality that they can hardly venture outside Baghdad's hermetically sealed "Green Zone", even with convoys of armed guards.

In the meantime, Western reporters in Iraq are, by and large,



locked into their own little Green-Zone-style situations, held back from anything like normal reporting by the dangers they face. Fortunately, there are significant exceptions to this rule. Many reporters do venture outside their protective cocoons - often at great peril to themselves - to chase down stories, do real investigative journalism, or explore as best they can the daily lives of Iraqis and the nature of the Iraqi resistance.

By normal journalistic standards, their reports should be plastered across front pages and dominate the TV news about Iraq; but, alas, they all too often are relegated to the inside pages or obscure locations on the Internet. And most Americans consequently get, at best, the briefest glimpses of any deeper Iraqi reality.

Nevertheless, some of the larger picture is out there, even if in hard to find places and so accessible only to those of us with the time and persistence to dig it up. Take, for example, Maysan province, a small Shi'ite area in southeastern Iraq abutting Iran. Maysan is not in the Sunni triangle, so it is not in the eye of the Sunni resistance hurricane. It is not occupied by American troops, but the British Staffordshire Regiment, renowned for its non-aggressive approach to occupying Iraq.

The region's only claim to newsworthiness has been its status as the historical home of the Marsh Arabs, infamously dispersed by Saddam Hussein when he drained the marshes that cover a substantial portion of the province. In 2003, there was a brief flurry of Maysan coverage when, just after the invasion, the marshes were partially re-flooded and some of the Marsh Arabs returned to their ancestral home.

An unnoticed hotspot
Maysan is worth our attention for another reason: for the past two-plus years it has been the site of a low-intensity, low-visibility war that may be a better measure of the fate of the occupation than higher profile battles in cities like Fallujah and Tal Afar.

It has been the subject of some excellent but little noted investigative journalism, notably a magnificent recent report by Pamela Hess of United Press International and an earlier background piece by Doug Struck of the Washington Post.

Maysan province has a rebellious history. Saddam was never able to bring it to heel and this was a key motivation for draining the marshes and displacing the Marsh Arabs. But even this draconian solution didn't pacify Maysan. For years, the Saddam regime maintained an occupying force of 20,000 troops there, partly because of the province's proximity to Iran and partly to suppress local guerrillas, who remained active right up to the American invasion.

When the American attack became imminent and Saddam pulled his troops out of the area to defend Baghdad, the local guerrillas immediately took control of the capital, Amarah, and installed their own government. The British - in charge of southern Iraq for the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority - arrived five days later, and local residents greeted them as invaders with no business in town.

According to Captain Andy McLannahan, the British commander, the local attitude was, "What are you doing here?" As far as the locals were concerned, "it was they who ousted Hussein's forces, not the US invasion". When the British imposed their authority and displaced the insurgent government, the residents were bitter. As UPI's Hess put it, "In the local eyes they had just traded one occupation for another."

Since then, the British have had no better success than Saddam in subduing the province. The resistance there has evolved through several stages, each a response to changing occupation strategies and their own capabilities. At first, insurgents fought sporadic guerrilla battles with the British. This so strained the capacity of the 1,000 strong occupation force that the British actually withdrew from Majar al Kabir, the town with the most militant and aggressive resistance cells. During this period, the province became a center of strength for the Mahdi Army, the military wing of the Sadrist movement that would eventually fight major battles with the Americans in Najaf and Sadr City, Baghdad's enormous Shi'ite slum.

In the spring of 2004, the poorly armed, poorly trained Sadrists felt strong enough to challenge the British directly, and a 100-day battle commenced in the provincial capital of Amarah. (There was little coverage of this, in part because the almost simultaneous and far larger battle in Najaf drew so much attention.)

The British claimed complete victory - 800 guerrillas killed without the loss of a single British soldier - but they also discontinued virtually all patrols in the city, leaving local governance to the supporters of the resistance. This withdrawal also marked an end to various ambitious reconstruction projects that had been promised and scheduled by the occupiers. In January 2005, the Sadrists won the provincial elections.

Finally, in April, the British ordered the Staffordshire Regiment to pacify Amarah and retake full control of the province. They utilized a strategy similar to the one the Americans were applying in the Sunni areas of the country: armed patrols invaded rebellious neighborhoods and broke into the homes of suspected resistance fighters (and their suspected supporters), arresting large numbers and killing anyone who resisted.

Construction began on 13 impregnable police stations in an attempt to convert the police into a viable weapon against the resistance. According to the US Command in Iraq, these stations were to be the most imposing structures in town, equipped with "guard towers, security walls, generator installation, exterior lighting, bullet-proof glass, bars on exterior windows, steel exterior doors, and an antenna". These, in turn, would "improve the morale of the police so they will do a better job", and so, supposedly, deal with a pattern found in rebellious areas across Iraq - police unwilling or unable to fight the guerrillas.

At this point, the guerrillas abandoned their failed effort to confront the British directly and settled into the pattern that characterizes the war everywhere in the country: improvised explosive devices (IEDs)by roadsides and hit-and-run attacks targeting the patrols of the occupying power. By the middle of summer, the new strategy had begun to inflict consistent casualties on the British, and Maysan province officially became a hot spot of insurgency.

A war of attrition
The ongoing battle in Maysan catches something of the nature of the guerrilla war in other under-reported parts of Iraq. UPI's Hess pointed to the hallmark of guerrilla warfare when reporting, "Despite the violence, the Iraqis here consider Maysan to be safe and secure because - unlike in the Sunni triangle - local civilians and police are not the targets of the insurgents."

In other words, the local Shi'ite resistance is mainly in the business of expelling the occupation. They target British soldiers, and mostly try to avoid civilian casualties. Because the police have not attacked them, they usually do not target the police. They are for the most part (in the classic guerrilla mode) defenders of the local order, and there would be little violence if the British did not enter the towns and cities where the resistance is strong. In these circumstances, the local population feels safe (when the British are not around) because they do not expect attacks from the resistance.

The British, like all historic occupation armies, have a great deal of trouble dealing with (or even understanding) this strategy. One intelligence officer told Hess: "Anything that smacks of the insurgency from the north [the police] jump on quite quickly," But the British seem bewildered by the local police's "live and let live" attitude toward the local resistance, an attitude captured by British commander McLannahan:
The local [Iraqi] army brigade patrols the rural areas of Maysan, interdicting smugglers and insurgents. Police forces patrol inside the cities, and are less likely - because of tribal ties and local loyalties - to crack down on militiamen. However, they reliably turn up weapons caches. When you ask them if they caught the people, they usually have "just got away".
Hess sums up the British position thusly:
The British estimate that, like much of Iraq, most of the locals only want to get on with the lives. It is a small minority that is up to no good. "But the large majority allow the small number to carry on," McLannahan acknowledged.
As in any low-intensity guerrilla war, the "large majority" allow the guerrillas to continue to operate. The police and National Guard do their part by failing to apprehend the local guerrillas, even when ordered to do so by their British superiors.

It is clear that the resistance in Maysan has now dug in for a protracted war of attrition. Their 2004 offensive, designed to expel the British entirely, failed while producing many casualties. But the new IED-based hit-and-run tactics can undoubtedly be sustained for as long as the British remain, just as the earlier campaign against Saddam continued for years.

In the meantime, the occupation guarantees support for the resistance, not only by arresting and killing suspected activists whose family and friends are then drawn into the battle, but also by stoking the continuing crisis that prevents residents from maintaining a viable local economy.

During the brief five-day period when local residents ruled the province, before the British asserted their control, they "broke the earthen levees and opened the floodgates" that had kept the marshes dry. This action, designed to restore their historic source of sustenance, was not successful in restoring the local economy.

Previous diversions of rivers north of Maysan (in Baghdad and elsewhere) meant that there was insufficient water to refill the marsh area. Later, constantly increasing pollution, thanks to destroyed sewage systems in these same upstream areas, contaminated the re-flooded parts of the marshes, making them unviable for cultivation.

This misfortune made clear, even to the most parochial locals, that the fate of Maysan province rests on larger national reconstruction programs now largely in abeyance. Virtually all of them blame the occupation for its failure to reconstruct the country and for the constantly escalating crises that result from that failure - the pollution of the marshes, the chronic electrical outages, the lack of medicine, and the absence of other infrastructural necessities that even the Saddam regime had delivered semi-reliably.

As local resident Rahan Nahie told the Washington Post's Doug Struck in early 2005, "All the babies are sick, and the environment all around is bad. There are no fish here. We have no jobs. We need help."

This discontent will continue to fuel the rebellion as long as the British, like the Americans, respond to protests, both peaceful and violent, with military violence. One British official expressed this imperial attitude perfectly when he told Struck, "The province is clearly in need of a strong authority." The comment reflects a British decision to continue to root out the resistance by military means, which in turn guarantees both ongoing misery for the local population and a growing guerrilla war.

Maysan is by no means a typical province, as the many elements in its history make clear. But then, each province (and each city within each province) is similarly unique. There are nevertheless enduring patterns here that catch something of the experience of Iraqis - with the exception of those in Kurdish areas of the country - under the American and British occupation.

Uninterrupted economic decline is an enduring pattern; brutal repression of dissent is another, as are the absence of a responsive government and an ever more fervent local desire to expel the occupation. Even where the war is largely invisible to us, there are resistance movements in ever expanding areas that the occupation simply cannot control.

The high-profile battles, the suicide car-bomb offensives, and the constitutional debates will have little impact on this inexorable drumbeat of occupation and resistance.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq appears regularly at TomDispatch, Asia Times Online, ZNET, Against the Current and Z Magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda. His e-mail address is Ms42@optonline.net@optonline.net

(Copyright 2005 Michael Schwartz)

[Pakistan First]

Two UK, US troops killed

BAGHDAD, Nov 20: A British and a US soldier were killed on Sunday in Iraq as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld vowed Washington would stay the course despite growing criticism of the war.

The killings followed two days of nationwide bombings in which at least 120 Iraqis were killed.

The British soldier died in Basra when his patrol vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb. Four other Britons were wounded in the blast, the military said.

The US soldier was shot dead north of Baghdad, the seventh US serviceman to die over the weekend.

In other violence on Sunday, an Iraqi policeman was killed and 11 civilians, including three children wounded in a spate of attacks. The latest unrest came as Iraqi leaders sought to overcome differences on organising a reconciliation conference.—Reuters

[Pakistan First]

48 Iraqis killed in suicide attacks

BAGHDAD, Nov 24: Forty-eight people were killed in two suicide bombings in Iraq on Thursday — the latest in a series of attacks that have killed over 200 people since last Friday.

In the first incident, a suicide car bomber attacked a hospital in Mahmoudiya, 30kms south of Baghdad, killing 34 people and wounding 39.

Seven policemen and three soldiers of the Iraqi Army were among the dead.

The explosives-packed car detonated as Iraqi security forces were gathered outside Mahmoudiya General Hospital and as US civil affairs soldiers were visiting the facility to look at ways to improve it, the US army and witnesses said.

Four US troops were wounded in the blast, but most of those killed and injured were civilians, including Hoda Ali Mahmoud, a 30-year-old woman who had just visited the hospital with her young son, who needed treatment for a cold.

“The glass flew at us,” she said as she sat up in hospital. “His nose was hit and he couldn’t breathe.” The body of her son, less than two years old, lay on the morgue floor at Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad, where many of the wounded were brought.

Hasna Aboud’s son, who was due to get married next week, was also killed. “My 22-year-old son was killed while trying to bring me some medicine,” she said. “I lost my only son.”

In a statement, the US military said the hospital had been the target of the suicide attack, but the bomber had failed to penetrate its security barriers. The building suffered minor damage to its facade, and three nearby houses were badly hit.

Mahmoudiya has seen considerable violence in the past two years. It sits in an area dubbed the Triangle of Death for the frequency of attacks.

The area consists of a belt of mixed Sunni- and Shia-dominated towns where sectarian tensions have spilled over, leading to fears Iraq could be sliding towards a full-blown civil war.

The defence ministry in Baghdad said earlier that soldiers had found a car west of the capital filled with children’s toys booby-trapped with hand grenades and explosives, and a government spokesman said two people had been detained.

MARKET BOMBING: In the other incident, a suicide car bomber attacked a crowded market in Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing 14 people and wounding 23 others.

In February, a similar attack killed 125 people in Hilla, 100kms south of the capital, in the worst single blast in Iraq since the invasion began in March 2003.

Hilla is a mixed town of Sunnis and Shias, with a hard core of guerillas who frequently launch attacks. —Reuters

http://www.dawn.com.pk/2005/11/25/top15.htm

[Pakistan First]

Osama alive, leading 'jihad'

http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/dec-2005/8/index8.php

DUBAI (AFP) - Fugitive Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri claimed in a new videotape aired Wednesday that the network’s leader Osama bin Laden was still alive and leading the “jihad” against the West.
The turbaned Islamist also called on Al-Qaeda fighters to attack oil installations in Muslim countries, according to Al-Jazeera television which broadcast the video, but later said the videotape it aired dates back to September.
“We got the videotape in September, and back then we aired what we thought were the important parts,” Al-Jazeera editor-in-chief Ahmad Sheikh said.
“Al-Qaeda for holy war is still, thanks to God, a base for jihad. Its prince Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, still leads the jihad,” Zawahiri said in the videoclips screened by the Qatar-based satellite channel.
US officials believe that Bin Laden, the Western world’s most wanted terror mastermind, and other key Qaeda militants have been sheltering somewhere along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
However his fate is unknown. Bin Laden has not been heard of since a December 27, 2004 audiotape in which he anointed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq’s most wanted man, as Al-Qaeda’s leader in the war-torn country.
Bin Laden’s last video appearance dates back to December 16 last year when he also called on his fighters to strike Gulf oil supplies and warned Saudi leaders they risked a popular uprising.
In Wednesday’s tape Zawahiri was quoted by Al-Jazeera as calling for attacks on oil installations in Muslim nations “because most of the revenues of this oil go to the enemies of Islam.”
A bespectacled Zawahiri appeared in good health in the new videotape, wearing a traditional white robe and black turban which observers say is an apparent sign of allegiance to the ousted Taliban militia in Afghanistan.
“All the lies that (US President George) Bush tries to delude the Americans with, saying that he destroyed half, or three quarters of Al-Qaeda are but nonsense merely in his own head,” he said.
“We want to tell all the Muslims and the mujahideen that Al-Qaeda, thank God, is expanding and increasing in strength,” he said.
Zawahiri said in the tape that Muslims were joining Al-Qaeda in “combating all the apostate and collaborating regimes,” referring to Arab and Muslim governments allied to the West.
“It has become with God’s will a natural popular organisation that is confronting the new Crusader-Zionist campaign to defend all violated Muslim territories.”

[Pakistan First]

Thursday, December 08, 2005

How Al Qaeda uses the Internet

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda’s sophisticated and fast-paced use of the Internet while effective in getting its message across is both risk-prone and challenging.

According to an analysis produced for Stratfor, the US-based online news and analysis site, by Kamran Bokhari, text-based, audio taped and video-recorded jihadi statements posted on numerous websites have become part of the daily diet of news. Al Qaeda leaders understand the value the media attach to the messages they send and have dedicated significant resources to public relations. The Internet offers Islamist militants a low-tech, cost-effective, minimal-risk medium through which they can demonstrate their existence and operational status, conveniently reach out to their constituents and participate in the battle for public support in the Muslim world. While the principal Al Qaeda leadership has relied on sending audio and video messages via more old-fashioned means, such as Arab-language satellite channels, its more vibrant Iraqi branch, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has not only been the most active in terms of staging attacks, but has also maintained a steady stream of messages through the Internet.

Bokhari writes that opportunity and ability have much to do with why Al Qaeda’s main leadership is not using the Internet for its communications but its Iraqi leadership is. There is a variance in the operational tempo between Al Qaeda ‘prime’ and its al-Zarqawi wing. Issuing online communiqués poses certain challenges for a jihadi group. At the material level, a group wishing to communicate online must have computer hardware and software and secure connections to the Internet, all of which need to be housed at a protected location that the group can access with relative ease when necessary. Many times, online jihadi messages are posted on local web-hosting sites in the Arab and Muslim world or via proxy server cut outs in Europe or Asia.

The analyst underlines the quick footwork involved in evading US and allied intelligence and security agencies fighting the war on global jihadism in cyberspace and searching for militants’ virtual outposts. The jihadis face two types of threats. When a jihadi website is detected, it is shut down by the company hosting the site. Some jihadi groups are accustomed to having their sites shut down, which is why the sites resurface at alternative addresses shortly after being taken down. The second more dangerous threat to the militants is the group’s physical location being traced from its virtual portal. While this happens infrequently, when it does occur, the best law enforcement can hope for is to catch the group’s webmaster or the middlemen who relay information to the webmaster. Just as it maintains multiple layers among its horizontal units and vertical echelons of leadership for security purposes, Al Qaeda maintains similar arrangements between those who order press releases and those who generate them.

Bokhari points out that if Al Qaeda were a normal organisation operating legally in the public sphere, there would still be a need for central coordination through one or more official spokespersons or a dedicated mass media team. “But for the most notorious and wanted organisation in the world, coordinating the flow of information is exponentially more cumbersome. The key issue is how to maintain secure, organised communications from the network’s sub-units to the central leadership, on to those in charge of making sure the message reaches the group’s websites, or the clearinghouses that disseminate discourse from a wide range of jihadi actors around the world,” he explains. More sophisticated jihadi groups likely operate their own servers, which is a more reliable means of making sure the media can locate the site and statements and provide them with a much larger audience than they could procure on their own.

According to the writer, militant Islamists are content to get the gist of their message out so that the general public comes to know that they are “alive and kicking”. Such knowledge helps build Al Qaeda’s reputation as a potent force that is able to sustain itself against insurmountable odds. That message gets out to the public even if only portions of the jihadis’ statements get reported. The Muslim world is the core audience and the militants know that once word of a new message is reported, those who are interested will seek them out by going to their websites. Nowadays, many terrorism-monitoring services provide full text translations of the messages, which can sometimes help the jihadis hold or gain ground in the battle for support. “Issuing communiqués is an integral part of a successful jihadi organisation’s operations. News media and jihadi supporters alike rely on the militants to disseminate messages that provide

[Pakistan First]

Bombers Strike Police Academy In Baghdad, Al-Qaeda Claims Responsibility
Dec 06, 2005


Two martyrdom seekers struck at Baghdad's police academy in an attack that killed at least 36 officers and cadets and wounding more than 50. Al-Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement saying that the attack was to avenge the persecution of Sunni Arabs by Shi’ite. The Shi'ite-led government, facing an election next week as daily attacks escalate has denied the accusations however their ruthless actions are widely know.
The military initially blamed the attack on two female bombers, but later said they were male. An Interior Ministry official said 36 were killed and 72 injured, while one police officer said 37 died and 76 were hurt. Police Captain Jalil Abdul-qadir said the death toll had reached 43, including seven policewomen. At least 73 people were wounded, including six policewomen and all were said to be officers or students at the academy, according to an AP report.

The first explosion occurred at 12.45pm local time as the cadets were going to lunch after shooting practice, said Nizal Mahmoud Khalaf, a police trainee who survived the blasts. The second bomber struck as the cadets ran for shelter, he told Reuters outside a hospital where the wounded were treated.

The US military, which initially said the bombers walked into a classroom and blew themselves up, later said one of the bombers struck near a group of students outside a classroom. Thinking the explosion was an attack from outside, Iraqi police officers and students ran for shelter to a bunker where the second bomber detonated his vest strapped with explosives.

Violence in Iraq has escalated ahead of next Thursday's parliamentary elections, as Sunni Mujahideen battle Shi'ite and Kurdish-led government backed by the United States for control of the country.

[Pakistan First]

Transcript: Zarqawi's Last Statement:
Dec 06, 2005

Here is the complete transcript of Al-Zarqawi statement issued on November 17, 2005 that addresses the Jordanian bombings and outlines the conditions under which Jordan’s King Abdullah II can achieve peace.

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The Foundation Of Jihad In The Land Of The Two Rivers presents the speech of Sheikh, the Mujahid, Abu Mus’ab Al Zarqawi, may Allah protect him.

Taste! For You Are The Mighty, The Wise!

In The Name Of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Praise be unto Allah, who gives might to Islam with His help, and humiliates Shirk with overpowering, the director of events with his command, who defeats the disbelievers with his plan, who allows days to be overturned through his justice, and may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon the one who raised the banner of Islam with his sword…

To Proceed:

It has reached the ears of the world, the lies and the fabrications by the apostate Jordanian government through their media, Controlled by their security services which portrayed to the Muslim people in Jordan that they have become a targeted sacrifice for “terrorism” and that those terrorists are only able to shed blood, and it showed that lie in a way that erupts emotions and the principle behind that all was after three lions from the two rivers left their den in Baghdad

to the heart of Amman to strike three nests, while its halls were filled with Jews and Christians and others who fight Allah and His messenger, and the Al-Qaeda organization has taken this blessed step for the following reasons:

First: The Jordanian government has sought help from disbelief, and has openly fought Allah and His messenger, fighting. His Sharee’ah, and has ruled without his laws.

Secondly: The army of this system has become the noble guard the Zionist entity, how many Mujahideen have tried to enter the holy lands to fight the brothers of the apes and ###### only to be shot dead by a treacherous bullet in his back by the soldiers of this traitor system.

Third: Its spreading of filth, for these lands have become swamps for immorality and whoever sees these hotels, these playgrounds, these clubs, these bars, these holiday resorts in Aqaba and at the Dead Sea and other places, his heart would tear up from pain and sorrow over the direction this good country and its people were directed to by the members of this family, men and women alike.

Fourth: This disbelieving government has allowed the Zionist enemy free reign in the land and has allowed him to interfere in society, economically, politically and socially. The Jewish capitalist heads have taken control over most companies, banks, and factories and refineries. They now control the source of income of hundreds of thousands of the sons of this country and the best example of this is Al-Hasan industrial city in the province of Irbid.

Fifth: The existence of secret prisons for the Americans in Jordan under the direct supervision of the Jordanian Intelligence who in its prison cells are dozens of Mujahideen from different countries, and in it they taste all sorts of torture and humiliation under the hands of torturers from the Jordanian secret service on behalf of the American secret service. The Los Angeles Times reported that the Jordanian secret service has become the strongest and most effective ally of the CIA in the Middle East with regards to the “war on terror”. This is the same status enjoyed by the Israeli secret service previously. The newspaper reported that there has been strong cooperation between the American and Jordanian forces in interrogating suspected “terrorists” and this news was faced with great criticism by the global media and human rights groups because of the practice of torture during these interrogations, and the paper disclosed that the CIA has set a side part of its budget to train the Jordanian secret service and it’s cadets in their base in Amman, Jordan.

Sixth: As for the situation in Iraq, Jordan was and remains a rear base for the American army. This regime has opened its doors to the crusader enemies allowing her to do what she pleases. This country was taken as a rear base from which American planes launch their raids, spilling fire on the people of Islam in Iraq and let us not forget the army of translators from the Jordanian agents in Iraq and also sadly the cargo and weapon laden carriers transported by Jordanian trucks on behalf of the American army in Iraq, so that they may use it in their war against Islam and to kill the Mujahideen.

This is a message to the people of Islam in Jordan. We would like to reassure you that we are the most concerned of your blood being shed. How can it not be so when you are the most beloved people to us. We love you more than ourselves and our children. We know that you are a victim of this criminal regime which has slaughtered your children as they have done with the Muslims in the city of Ma’an, they have raped your women, and have let you taste humiliation and disgrace. As for what this traitor regime has portrayed to you that you are a victim of the Mujahideen, these are all false accusations and lies, for if we wanted to kill innocent people as this apostate regime claims, then we would not have gone through the trouble of putting those lions in danger by crossing security perimeters which surround those hotels. If we wanted to shed your blood (We seek Allah’s refuge from that) then it would have been easier for those martyrs to blow themselves up in public places where hundreds of people gather like the Hashimi plain, or the Abdali compound, or trade centers like Safeway or similar places. Was it not possible for the lions of Al-Qaeda, who showered the rockets on the American ships in Eilat, to launch their rockets on housing compounds of innocent people in Amman, instead of exposing themselves to danger, to reach Aqaba which is surrounded by security apparatus and that has now become a closed off security zone?

Allah knows that we did not choose these hotels until it became apparent to us after long surveillance and observation for over two months and through information handed to us by trusted sources from inside these hotels and outside it that proved that these hotels have become headquaters for different intelligence organizations. As for the Radison hotel, most of the Israeli, American and Iraqi embassy officials reside there, and it is also a destination for Israeli tourists as is the Days Inn hotel. As for the Hayat Amman hotel, what will let you know what the Hayat Amman is? It is the nest of the Zionist, American and Iraqi intelligence forces. To know the reality of this hotel, it is the same place where the Israeli spy Azzam Azzam used to meet with the Israeli Mossad, and whoever knows these hotels knows with certain knowledge who visits it. The Hayat Amman hotel also has a special wing for the tyrant of Jordan, Abdullah the small, in which he spends many nights.

So oh our people of Jordan! What do we want from blowing up weddings? If this was our goal, then wedding halls are spread throughout Jordan and their doors are open and there is no security. As for what was spread that the martyr brother blew himself up in the wedding hall amongst the wedding goers is also a lie by the evil security organization of Jordan.

The one who bamboozled the people into believing he was an enemy of the Zionist entity all these years is also able to change facts and to fool the gullible among people. As for those who were killed from the Muslims in this operation, then we ask that Allah has mercy on them and forgive them, for by Allah they were not our targets, and we would not think once to target them even if they are sinners, this is presupposing that the explosion happened close to them, because the martyr brothers targeted halls in which gathered generals from some Crusader countries and their allies, and what killed some of the wedding goers was the collapsing part of the secondary roof because of the strength of the explosion, and this was not intentional but happened as a result of the explosion. The brother of the groom reported in Quds press that he doesn’t believe that the cause of the explosion, was a suicide operation because it was normal situation from the beginning as he described it, so there was no indications or signs that something was going on. He added that the roof completely fell with the décor and cement and iron and dust and sand covered up the place that all indicates as he believed a bomb planted in the roof, and there was no fire or flames.

As for the other two hotels, there were a number of American and Jewish personalities in them, and the brothers with the help of Allah, the Almighty, were able to pinpoint the place and time of their meeting after continuous surveillance of the area of the operation, and therefore the brothers knew very well their targets and their perimeters. In this regard, I challenge this apostate government to show the reality of its losses in the lines of the Jews and the Crusaders and their apostate allies or to show footage of the moment of explosion, because it is known that these hotels film around the clock all those who are in it so why has the government of apostasy hidden it? In fact if there was anything to support the governments claims they would have rushed to show it, but they knew that this would incriminate them so they did not show it. This media blackout is but a proof of the great losses suffered by the lords of this traitor regime, the Jews, and the crusaders and their apostate allies.

From another perspective, similar blessed operations had happened in Sharm Al Sheikh, Mombasa, and in Turkey and Riyadh and others and even In Tel’ Aviv such a media clamour had not happened, so is it possible that those who disbeleive would rush to call out and hold an emergency meeting for the sake of the dead in the wedding while they were silent not too long ago about the death of more than forty Muslims killed in a wedding in Al Qaim? Does sending specialists from the CIA and British Intelligence and the arrival of Kofi Annan and his request of the security council for a quick enquiry into these operations and the preparedness of the Zionist entity to give security and medical support, and the visiting of Bill Clinton to the Radison ecause of the concern of those Crusaders over the blood of Muslims in Jordan? If it is so, then where are they regarding the blood of Muslims in Palestine which is shed continuously on the hands of the descendants of ###### and apes. Where are they regarding the blood of Muslims in Iraq which flows like rivers on the hands of Americans and the descendants of Ibn Al Alqami and where are they regarding Muslim towns destroyed on the heads of its people in Al Qaim, Tal’Afar, Hadeetha, Ramadi, Falluja and Samiraa? Where were they when the planes of this regime were blowing up the brave city of Ma’aan?

And have you not asked yourselves, oh men of intelligence, that is it possible for generals who died in the operation to have been one of those invited to the wedding? Is it not strange that the media did not speak much of the two bombings at the other two hotels especially the one Bill Clinton and his wife visited, so was there another wedding? With all this unprecedented media cover-up, the real size and extent of their losses from among the Jews and Crusaders it is becoming clear.. We have heard of the death of three Chinese sergeants with the rank of brigadier general and six dead from the apostate Palestinian Authority and at their head the head of military intelligence in the West Bank, and Iraqi Oil specialists from the Iraqi government, Jews, Koreans, British, Americans, and what is hidden is even greater.

Oh people of Jordan, are you going to allow yourselves to be fooled on every occasion? How long will you remain slaves to this apostate regime, which pulls your religion away from your soul, and dirties your clean innocence, and plays with your honor and wealth and takes your sons as shields between the honest Mujahideen and the tribe of Zion? At the time that the planes of Allah’s enemy, Sharon, was bombing Muslims in Gaza, the tyrant of Jordan was calling to open a garden in Tel’Aviv in remembrance of the death of his father. At the time when the Romans were bombing Muslim homes in Tal-Afar this obedient son was signing contracts and conspiring with the government of Ibn Alqami (Iraq).

And we say to this apostate regime here we are today with the blessings of Allah alone, we are letting you taste a small taste of what you have let the people of Islam taste for decades, for the time has long gone when the Ummah accepted humiliation and disgrace, and we give you glad tidings the zero hour has arrived the time has come to settle our scores and we will not stop our raids on the Jews and Crusaders in the land where the blood of men has flowed from the purest religion known to history like Abi Ubaidah, Ja’far, Ibn rawaha and Zaid bin Haaritha and Mu’aadh bin Jabal, Shrahbeel and others, may Allah be pleased with them all, except by the following conditions:

• Removing all American and British forces based in the Jordanian lands and which the Crusaders use as a rear base for the war against the Mujahideen in Iraq.

• The closing of the American and Israeli embassies in Amman and from which the plots of war are mad e against the people of Islam, to achieve the plan of what is known the greater Middle East project.

• Stopping the training and graduating Rafidi forces from the Iraqi agent army and police forces.

• Closing the secret prisons of the Mujahideen.

• Bringing back the diplomatic representation from Baghdad and to stop sending any further diplomatic representatives no matter what their level, and we do not forget to remind our brothers in Jordan to stay away from the following places to keep their lives safe:

1. Military bases and airports which the American and British forces are based in, whether within cities or out of it.

2. Resort hotels which hold Jews and Crusaders in Amman, the Dead Sea, Aqaba, Petra, Jericho and other places.

3. All embassies and Consulates which joined their governments in the war
against Iraq.

And this is another message to the tyrant of Jordan, the small, I address you after you have terrorized and threatened a grave punishment to those who are behind these blessed explosions so listen to my words and perhaps it will find a listening ear and a receiving heart:

The historians narrated that AbdulRahman bin Awf, may Allah be pleased with him said:

“While I was standing in the front line on the day of the battle of Badr, I looked to my right and to my left, and I was standing between two young boys from the Ansar, I wished I was one of them, then one of them turned to me and said: Uncle, do you know Abu Jahl? I said: yes, and what do you want from him, oh son of my brother? He said: I have been told that he curses the prophet peace be upon him, and by the one whom my life is in His hands, if my eyes meet his, the closest to death amongst us will die. I was surprised by that, and then his brotherr told me the same thing. During the battle I saw Abu Jahl walking, so I told them, don’t you see your man you were asking about, there he is: So they attacked him with their swords until they killed him, then thery went to the prophet peace be upon him, and informed him so he said: So then he asked: which of the two of you killed him, so wach one said: I killed him. He asked: Did you wipe your swords clean? They replied no. So he looked at both swoords and said: You both killed him.”

And in a narration, by Abdullah bin Mas’ood, may Allah be pleased with him, he said:

“I found Abu Jahl on the day of Badr laying dead. So I said: oh enemy of Allah, Allah has disgraced you, and he disgraced me that others killed you while the sword is in my hands so I started hitting him with my sword and his good sword was in his hands so I cut off his arm so the sword fell so I took it then I cut off his head then I went to the prophet peace be upon him and told him, so he said: Allah, there is no god but Him, so I said: Allah, there is no god but Him. He said: Go back and make sure, and so I ran like a bird to make sure laughing, so i informed him and then I went back with the prophet and I showed him so the prophet peace be upon him stood there saying: This is Pharaouh of this Ummah, this is the enemy of Allah Abu Jahl, the Pharouh of this Ummah.”

He fought hard against Allah and His messenger and how many oppressed people in Makkah were tortured on his hands like Ibn Mas’ood and others? Now look how matters have turned against him after Allah humiliated his army and his soldiers and Ibn Mas’ood stood on the chest of this tyrant. You are now like your grandfathers from the tyrants of Qureish so think hard of what he has received of humiliation in the dunya and aakhira, and remember that you have followed their footsteps and have gone even further in agency and treachery against Allah and His messenger, than them. In fact, your grandfathers, despite their disbelief and fighting against Islam were braver than you because despite their disbelief and misguidance they would pass by the grave of Abi Righal and curse him because he guided Abraha the Abyssinian to the Ka’ba to destroy it. But you on the other hand have opened up the lands and submitted the people to the Jews and Crusaders and from your home their armies have marched to fight Iraq. The front part of the Crusader army entered Iraq from the door of Eastern Jordan, before the crusader forces entered from the Gulf and Kurdistan.

Ask those in the Anbar desert and they will tell you about this, so descendant of treachery remember that the one who allowed Ibn Mas’ood to stand on the chest of Abi Jahl and cut off his head is able to do the same to you at the hands of the oppressed among the Muslims who you have striven hard to fight against. Let me give you a verse of poetry because by the one who made the death of your father an example to every tyrant we don’t doubt for one moment that your star is fading. That is the way of Allah to those who oppress, and there is no change in the way of Allah. So if the promise of my Lord comes He will destroy it. And verily the promise of my Lord is true.

By Allah, those who knock stones together nor those who rely on birds (Sorcerers and fortune tellers) know what Allah is about to do. And Allah is victorious in His matters, but most of mankind do not know.

Shiekh Abu Mesab al-Zarqawi

[Pakistan First]

Ten US Soldiers Killed In IED Attack Near Fallujah
Dec 02, 2005


Ten US Marines were killed by an Mujahideen bomb in one of the deadliest incidents for Americans, a day after President George W. Bush laid out a strategy he said would defeat the insurgency.

Thursday's attack on the Marines, two weeks before Iraqis vote for a new parliament, struck a foot patrol near Fallujah. Eleven Marines were wounded by an improvised explosive device (IED), the military said on Friday.

"The patrol was attacked with an IED fashioned from several large artillery shells," the Marines said.

US commanders have expressed concern in recent months at the increasing use of more powerful and sophisticated roadside bombs. The high death toll on Thursday indicated an extremely powerful blast.

Local officials in Falluja said they were aware of a bomb attack on U.S. troops overnight near Amiriya, 30 km south of Fallujah. US officials declined further comment, however, and it was unclear if this was the same incident.

[Pakistan First]

Bush: 'Amazing progress' in Iraq


Wednesday 07 December 2005, 23:05 Makka Time, 20:05 GMT


US President George Bush has said the Iraqi people are making "amazing progress" but admitted that corruption and militant attacks are weighing down the country's new democracy.


His comments came in a speech on Wednesday looking ahead to the 15 December elections in Iraq as his administration tries to counter American unease with his war strategy.

"In two-and-a-half years, the Iraqi people have made amazing progress," he said. "They've gone from living under the boot of a brutal tyrant, to liberation, to free elections, to a democratic constitution."

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Bush vowed he would not be swayed by those critics arguing for a timetable for withdrawing US troops from Iraq.

"To do so," he said, "would be a victory for Iraq's al-Qaida leader Ab Musab al-Zarqawi and top al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden".

"We are not going to yield the future of Iraq to men like Zarqawi and we are not going to yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden. We will complete our mission in Iraq and leave behind a democracy that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself," Bush said.

Bush offensive

The White House has taken the offensive against critics who say the administration does not have a clear strategy for winning in Iraq and that there should be a plan for pulling out the roughly 155,000 US troops there.


Opposition to the Iraq war is
growing in the US


In his speech Bush cited Mosul and Najaf as examples of cities where reconstruction efforts are progressing.

"Over the course of this war we have learned that winning the battle for Iraqi cities is only the first step. We also have to win the battle after the battle, by helping Iraqis consolidate their gains and keep the terrorists from returning," Bush said.

"Construction jobs are putting local residents back to work in Najaf, the hospital is open and elected officials are in charge of the city's government," Bush said.

Problems galore

But he added problems remain, such as electrical outages, a shortage of clean water and the spate of kidnappings.

In Mosul, he said, local Iraqi leaders have upgraded key roads and bridges over the Tigris River, rebuilt schools and hospitals, improved the city's water and sewage network, and begun refurbishing the airport.

But he said Mosul – Iraq's third largest city with a mixed population of Sunni Arabs and Kurds – is still is not receiving enough electricity and militant intimidation remains a concern.



US troops have so far failed to
restore order in Iraq


Another obstacle, Bush said was corruption at both the local and national levels of the Iraqi government - a factor he said would not be tolerated.

He added that the US embassy in Baghdad is demanding openness and accountability for the billions of dollars being spent on reconstruction.

He also cited as a problem the infiltration of militant groups into some Iraqi security forces, particularly the Iraqi police, and said that "former militia members must shift their loyalty to the national government and learn to operate under the rule of law".

Declining popularity

Bush, whose public approval ratings at home have hit the lowest of his presidency, is scrambling to regain American support for the Iraq mission amid doubts about the war.

"We are not going to yield the future of Iraq to men like Zarqawi and we are not going to yield the future of the Middle East to men like bin Laden"

US President George Bush


More than 2100 US military personnel have been killed since the March 2003 invasion.

Democrats say the president needs to produce a clearer plan on Iraq.

On Tuesday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan and Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island wrote an open letter to Bush expressing their concerns.

"Only by outlining for the American people a full and complete strategy for success with the political, economic and military benchmarks by which to measure the progress and fully and publicly briefing the Congress about this strategy will the troops, their families and the American people truly benefit," the letter said.

[Pakistan First]

Abuse 'widespread' in Iraqi prisons

A US military doctor says US troops intervene when they can, but Iraqis run the jails.

By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD AND CAIRO - After a US raid on a secret Iraqi government jail last month revealed some detainees were tortured and abused there, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr insisted abuse claims were exaggerated and that torture will not be tolerated in the new Iraq.

US soldiers and some Iraqi officials disagree. They say not only is prisoner abuse widespread, but that much of it is carried out by Mr. Jabr's subordinates. Efforts to bring the problem under control during the past year have largely been frustrated by indifference from senior Iraqi officials, they say.

Privately, half a dozen US officers have acknowledged to the Monitor that prisoner abuse by Iraqi police is common.

Now, one officer is speaking out. Major R. John Stukey, a US Army doctor who served in Baghdad from January to June, frequently visited Interior Ministry facilities on the east side of Baghdad to assess the health of prisoners. He says he personally treated about a dozen men who had been tortured and observed an environment of overcrowding and neglect.

Many more of his patients alleged torture, but in most cases this couldn't be verified, since he often saw them for the first time months after their initial arrests and interrogations.

In one east Baghdad facility run by Iraq's Interior Ministry, a few miles from the secret jail that was raided by US forces on Nov. 13, Major Stukey says about 220 men were held in filthy conditions in a space so crowded that many couldn't lie down to sleep.

Stukey visited the facilities with members of the 720th US Military Police Battalion. The MPs filed frequent reports to their commanders about the ill-treatment and, Stukey says, did what they could to prevent torture and improve the prisoners' conditions. They made a point of distributing soap, toothbrushes, and Korans whenever they visited.

"We did report what we saw, but it was like trying to put out a forest fire with a bucket of water,'' says Stukey by telephone at Fort Rucker in Alabama, where he is currently based. "The MPs submitted reports at least several times a week on detention issues. We knew about it, and we tried to change it, but it was just one of those things you had to deal with."

Officials from the 720th, now back at its base in Fort Hood, Texas, did not respond to requests for comment.

Coalition troops, fighting a deadly insurgency, say they don't have the manpower to compel better behavior from their Iraqi partners, and that to do so would require them to court frequent conflict with their closest allies inside the country.

The Bush Administration has sent mixed messages on the subject. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that the US "does not authorize or condone torture of detainees." The US has also signed the UN Convention Against Torture. But administration officials have also argued that the treaty rules on "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment do not apply outside US territory.

The tension over the US position was illustrated at a press conference with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace on Nov. 29.

When General Pace said, "it's absolutely the responsibility of every US service member if they see inhumane treatment being conducted to intervene to stop it." Secretary Rumsfeld interjected, "I don't think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it's to report it."

To this, General Pace replied: "If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it."

Since that exchange, Rumsfeld has ordered military commanders to clarify the rules for how US troops should respond if they witness abuse of detainees.

Pat Lang, a retired colonel and former head of Middle East Intelligence for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, says it's important for the US to have a zero-tolerance policy toward torture.

"We know that left to their own devices the Iraqis are going to do these kinds of things, and there's no chance of stopping it all over the country,'' he says. "But to me, this is more about us than it is about them. We can't tolerate this when we see it. I don't want our standards eroded any further. It's bad for the force; so General Pace's policy statement is very important."

Human rights groups say that police abuse in Iraq is by now a well-established pattern: Iraq's police units, many filled with members of Shiite militias that fought against Saddam Hussein, generally have been left without oversight. Since many of these men view Iraq's Sunni Arab population, who were privileged under Mr. Hussein, as their enemies, abuse is reportedly widespread. When he has visited Baghdad's morgues and the offices of Sunni political parties, this reporter has been shown dozens of photographs of men who had been allegedly tortured to death.

Stukey recalls treating one Sunni businessman, about to be released, "who was beaten so badly that his fingernails had fallen off, some pulled off, and I felt ashamed to be associated with it."

Stukey says the MPs encountered frequent problems at the Iraqi police Major Crimes Unit in Adhamiya, a Sunni neighborhood where support for the insurgency is high. On two occasions, MPs of the 720th intervened to stop abuse of prisoners that was under way when they were in the building. In one case on May 3, a prisoner was "being severely tortured, the MPs could hear the screams,'' says Stukey. They took custody of the man and the equipment he was being tortured with.

"My understanding was that what trickled back down the US chain of command was that [the MPs] did the right thing. They weren't dissuaded in any way from doing this again,'' he says. "But the guidance that trickled down was that these are Iraqis in control of their own facilities, we've given them control, and we're not going to take back those facilities. How can a [US sergeant] take over a government facility from an Iraqi officer?"

In April, he says the 720th MPs also discovered an "off the books" detention facility in the Adhamiya neighborhood where torture was taking place, and that the Iraqi police general in charge of the area was fired as a consequence.

Stukey says from his admittedly narrow view of Baghdad, and from discussions with soldiers in other areas of Iraq, that abuse of detainees is standard operating procedure for the Iraqi police. Many senior Iraqi politicians agree with him.

Iyad Allawi, the former Iraqi prime minister and close US ally, told The Observer, a British newspaper, last month that "people are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse." The British are currently investigating allegations that the Iraqi police tortured two men to death with electric drills in the southern city of Basra. In Baghdad, this reporter met with four survivors of police custody who bore injuries consistent with their alleged torture with electric shocks and other implements.

To date, no Iraqi police officers have been arrested or charged in connection with the torture discovered by US troops at the jail in November. Jabr, a former member of the Badr Brigade, an Iranian-trained militia, told reporters he had personally ordered that the men be held at the secret facility. He promised swift action when the abuse was uncovered. Last week, Nouri al-Nouri, the ministry's inspector for human rights was fired. The Interior Ministry press office, the office of Jabr, and the office of the prime minister did not return calls seeking comment.

Iraq's prime minister had promised a full report into abuse of detainees in Iraq by Dec. 1, but the government says the joint US-Iraq investigation is still ongoing


*///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


US civil rights group to sue CIA

A US civil rights groups says it is taking the CIA to court to stop the transportation of terror suspects to countries outside US legal authority.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says the intelligence agency has broken both US and international law.

It is acting for a man allegedly flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she'll comment on recent reports of alleged CIA prisons abroad before starting a visit to Europe on Monday.

Ms Rice has said she will provide an answer to a EU letter expressing concern over reports last month alleging the US intelligence agency was using secret jails - particularly in eastern Europe.

'Extraordinary rendition'

"The lawsuit will charge that CIA officials at the highest level violated US and universal human rights laws when they authorised agents to abduct an innocent man, detain him incommunicado, beat him, drug and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan," the ACLU said in a news release.

The release identified the jail as the "Salt Pit".

The group did not provide the name or nationality of the plaintiff, saying only that he would appear at a news conference next week to reveal details of the lawsuit.

The ACLU also wants to name corporations which it accuses of owning and operating the aircraft used to transport detainees secretly from country to country.

The highly secretive process is known as "extraordinary rendition" whereby intelligence agencies move and interrogate terrorism suspects outside the US, where they have no American legal protection.

It has become extremely controversial, the BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington reports.

Some individuals have claimed they were flown by the CIA to countries like Syria and Egypt, where they were tortured.

The US government and its intelligence agencies maintain that all their operations are conducted within the law and they will no doubt fight this case vigorously, our correspondent says.

He says they will not want to see US intelligence officers forced publicly to defend their actions and they will not want to see one of their most secret procedures laid bare in open court.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/worl...cas/4494246.stm

Published: 2005/12/03 02:50:23 GMT

[clutch]

Who's Killing
Iraqi Intellectuals?

By David Hoskins
Workers World
12-5-5


Iraqis opposed to the U.S. occupation believe there is a systematic campaign of targeted assassinations aimed at Iraqi intellectuals and that a well-organized enemy intent on keeping Iraq weak and susceptible to foreign occupation is carrying out the killings.

The Monitoring Net for Human Rights in Iraq recently reported Iraqi police figures demonstrating that well over 1,000 Iraqi academics and scientists have been shot to death since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion. The U.S. State Department has confirmed that hundreds of university professors have been killed.

The shooting of peaceful academics clearly differentiates these killings from those attributable to the Iraqi resistance's effort to defend its homeland. The popular insurgency has primarily targeted U.S. and British forces along with Iraqi military and police personnel who cooperate with the occupation.

Whoever is responsible for the assassination of academics must also have access to sophisticated intelligence techniques that allow for the widespread targeting of a particular grouping of civilians.

The attacks on Iraqi intellectuals first began when U.S. forces purged at least 15,500 researchers, scientists, teachers and professors for alleged ties to the Baath Party. The dismissal, and subsequent emigration, of so many leading professionals contributed to a destabilized Iraq and provided the occupiers with an excuse for staying in the country.

An article in the [London] Times Higher Education Supplement (Sept. 15, 2004) points out that "there is a widespread feeling among the Iraqi academics that they are witnessing a deliberate attempt to destroy intellectual life in Iraq."

The cold-blooded nature of the assassinations leaves many wondering exactly who is responsible for this ongoing campaign. The Iraqi resistance denies it is responsible, and those interested in liberating Iraq from the occupation have no motive to carry out such wide-scale killings.

Osama Abed Al-Majeed, the president of the Department for Research and Development at the Iraqi Ministry for Higher Education, has accused the Israeli secret service, Mossad, of perpetuating the violence against Iraqi scientists. A June 2005 report by the Palestine Information Center claims that Mossad, in cooperation with U.S. military forces, was responsible for the assassination of 530 Iraqi scientists and professors in the seven months prior to the report's publication.

Mossad unquestionably has the motive and means to assassinate leading Iraqi intel lectuals. The Israeli intelligence agency contains a Special Operations Division called Metsada which is tasked with conducting assassinations, sabotage and paramilitary projects. Israel has a long history of interference in Iraq, going back to the 1981 bombing of a nuclear energy plant that stood 15 miles outside Baghdad that just before that attack had voluntarily undergone inspection by the Inter national Atomic Energy Agency.

Regardless of who is responsible for the killing of Iraqi scientists and academics, it is clear that the U.S. and Britain, as the leading occupying powers, have the responsibility for the precarious situation in which these intellectuals are forced to live.

Dr. Saad Jawad is a university professor who was known to speak out against certain Baathist policies. But he recently said, "To tell the truth, in the time of Saddam Hussein, we used to speak to our students freely. But now, a lot of people are not willing to say these kinds of things because of fear."

http://www.workers.org/2005/world/iraq-1208/