"So I do believe the vice president said it correct: we will find these Jihadists and the Al Qaeda most dangerous when they are at the moment of greatest danger for them."
- Karl Rove on msnbc

U.S. to send more troops to Iraq

Thursday 25th August, 2005

On Tuesday the U.S. Secretary of Defense approved a request by the commander of Multi-National Forces-Iraq to deploy two additional infantry battalions to Iraq.

Two battalions from the 82nd Airborne Division will deploy to Iraq for an anticipated duration of approximately 4 months to support security efforts during the election period. Adjustments to troop levels in Iraq occurred prior to the transfer to Iraqi sovereignty in June 2004 and during the January Iraqi elections.

The troops will join 180,000 Iraqi security forces and 138,000 coalition forces in helping set the security conditions for successful elections.

Gen. Casey's request for the additional capability was made in close consultation with, and with the support of, the Iraqi government. The approved request temporarily adds an additional 1,500 active duty soldiers to the troop level in Iraq.

The decision follows a decision in July 2005 to deploy a battalion to Afghanistan in support of security efforts during the upcoming September elections.

The military said Tuesday it continued to assess security conditions, and additional adjustments to troop levels for the elections are possible. Big News Network.com

"The terrorist pointed a finger at another person saying that he was carrying explosives... and that led to the panic," Interior Minister Bayan Baker Solagh told state-owned Iraqia television.

The stampede occurred after the Kadhimiya mosque - the burial place of Imam Musa Kazim who died 12 centuries ago - came under mortar fire, leaving at least seven dead and 37 wounded. The incident could further stoke tensions between the country's Shia majority and the ousted Sunni elite which has provided the backbone to the raging insurgency, only days after divisions were revived over the writing of the country's post-Saddam constitution.

A carpet of shoes belonging to the victims littered the bridge where waist-high concrete barriers designed to foil car bombers were stained with the blood of victims who had been crushed against them.

"It was Saddamists and Zarqawists who spread rumours on the bridge and that is why people panicked," national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie told the television.

People injured lined the corridors of Baghdad's hospitals as they struggled to cope with the enormity of the disaster.

"The crowd started to panic and women and children were being trampled underfoot," said Abdul Walid, 54, lying dazed on a hospital floor. "My son was on my shoulders, I don't know where he is now - everybody was suffocating to death so I eventually had to jump."

An Al Qaeda linked group calling itself the Jaiech Al-Taifa al-Mansoura (Army of the Victorious Community) claimed it carried out the attack on the mosque to "punish the genocides committed against Sunnis."

The US military said its helicopters had fired on the rebels who carried out the mortar attack and Iraqi officials said seven of them were killed.

Officials said 25 people died of poisoning after eating or drinking products that had been deliberately contaminated. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, a member of the majority Shia community, declared a three-day mourning period and went on television to appeal for national unity.

He described it as a "terrorist attack not separate from terrorist attacks in the past".

The tragedy provoked an international outcry with messages of sympathy flowing in from the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and the Arab League. Neighbouring Shia Iran offered its condolences but warned that "suspicious hands are involved in conspiracies to incite violence and bloodshed among the different Iraqi groups and tribes."-AFP

Notice a pattern?

Shia death toll

* 29 August 2003:
A car bomb explodes outside a mosque in Najaf, killing 85 people, including Shia leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.

* 2 March:
Co-ordinated blasts from suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives strike Shia shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing 181 and wounding 573.

* 26 August:
A mortar barrage slams into a mosque near Najaf, killing 27 people and wounding 63.

* 19 December 2004:
Car bombs tear through Najaf funeral procession and Karbala's main bus station, killing 60 people and wounding more than 120.

* 18 February:
Two suicide bombers attack two mosques, leaving 28 people dead, while an explosion near a Shia ceremony kills two others.

* 28 February:
Suicide car bomber targets mostly Shia police and National Guard recruits in Hillah, killing 125 and wounding more than 140.

* 10 March:
Suicide bomber blows himself up at a Shia mosque during a funeral in Mosul, killing 47 and wounding more than 100.

* 31 August 2005:
Worshippers stampede in Baghdad during commemoration of Shia saint's death, killing as many as 1,000 pilgrims. [My note: Mortars fired into the crowd and a subsequent rumour of a suicide bomber are cited as reasons for the carnage]

taken from this source

US the new Saddam

By ERIC MARGOLIS

The most important news from Iraq last week was not the much ballyhooed constitutional pact by Shias and Kurds, nor the tragic stampede deaths of nearly 1,000 pilgrims in Baghdad.

The U.S. Air Force's senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated U.S. warplanes would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the American-installed regime "more or less indefinitely." Jumper's bombshell went largely unnoticed due to Hurricane Katrina.

Gen. Jumper let the cat out of the bag. While President George Bush hints at eventual troop withdrawals, the Pentagon is busy building four major, permanent air bases in Iraq that will require heavy infantry protection.

Jumper's revelation confirms what this column has long said: The Pentagon plans to copy Imperial Britain's method of ruling oil-rich Iraq. In the 1920s, the British cobbled together Iraq from three disparate Ottoman provinces to control newly-found oil fields in Kurdistan and along the Iranian border.

London installed a puppet king and built an army of sepoy (native) troops to keep order and put down minor uprisings. Government minister Winston Churchill authorized use of poisonous mustard gas against Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and Pushtuns in Afghanistan (today's Taliban). The RAF crushed all revolts.

It seems this is what Jumper has in mind. Mobile U.S. ground intervention forces will remain at the four major "Fort Apache" bases guarding Iraq's major oil fields. These bases will be "ceded" to the U.S. by a compliant Iraqi regime. The U.S. Air Force will police the Pax Americana with its precision-guided munitions and armed drones.

The USAF has developed an extremely effective new technique of wide area control. Small numbers of strike aircraft are kept in the air around the clock. When U.S. ground forces come under attack or foes are sighted, these aircraft deliver precision-guided bombs. This tactic has led Iraqi resistance fighters to favour roadside bombs over ambushes against U.S. convoys.

The USAF uses the same combat air patrol tactic in Afghanistan, with even more success. The U.S. is also developing three major air bases in Pakistan, and others across Central Asia, to support its plans to dominate the region's oil and gas reserves.

While the USAF is settling into West Asia, the mess in Iraq continues to worsen. Last week's so-called "constitutional deal" was the long-predicted, U.S.-crafted pact between Shias and Kurds, essentially giving them Iraq's oil and virtual independence. The proposed constitution assures American big business access to Iraq's oil riches and markets.

The furious but powerless Sunnis were left in the lurch. Sunnis will at least have the chance to vote on it in a Oct. 15 referendum, but many fear it will be rigged.

The U.S. reportedly offered the 15 Sunni delegates $5 million each to vote for the constitution -- but was turned down. No mention was made that a U.S.-guided constitution for Iraq would violate the Geneva Conventions.

Chinese Taoists say you become what you hate. In a zesty irony, the U.S. now finds itself in a similar position as demonized Saddam Hussein. Saddam had to use his Sunni-dominated army to hold Iraq together by fighting Kurdish and Shia rebels. His brutal police jailed tens of thousands and routinely used torture.

Today, Iraq's new ruler, the U.S., is battling Sunni insurgents, ("al-Qaida terrorists," in the latest Pentagon doublespeak), rebuilding Saddam's dreaded secret police, holding 15,000 prisoners and torturing captives, as the Abu Ghraib outrage showed.

Much of the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama National Guard were in Iraq last week week instead of at home. Meanwhile, the Kurds are de facto independent, the Shia are playing footsie with Iran, and large parts of Iraq resemble the storm-ravaged U.S. Gulf Coast -- or vice versa.

Toronto sun

British troops close down Iraq airport

(Friday, 9 September: 14.06 CET) - Iraqi troops will take control of security at Baghdad Airport, replacing a British company that refused to continue working on Friday, citing unpaid bills. The British company that polices Baghdad's airport closed the facility down on Friday for the second time in three months, in an attempt to force the Iraqi government to pay months of unpaid bills. The London-based Global Strategies Group has provided airport security with some 550 guards since mid-2004. "This issue is related to Iraq's sovereignty, and nobody is authorized to close the airport," acting Iraqi Transportation Minister Esmat Amer told the Associated Press, adding that the cabinet would dispatch Interior Ministry troops to take over the airport from the British company. - ISN SECURITY WATCH

Man said to be Zarqawi's No. 2 killed in Baghdad

Tue 27 Sep 2005 11:44 AM ET (Updates with comments by Iraqi govt spokesman, paragraph 8-9) By Luke Baker BAGHDAD, Sept 27 (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces said they have shot dead the second-in-command of al Qaeda in Iraq, dealing what a U.S. commander called on Tuesday a serious blow to the militant group at the heart of Iraq's insurgency.

U.S. and Iraqi forces tracked Abu Azzam, said to be the right-hand man of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, to a high-rise Baghdad apartment building where he was shot on Sunday, U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Boylan said. "We got specific information and intelligence that led us to him," Boylan said. "We've been tracking him for a while."

The death suggested progress against the two-year-old insurgency, particularly as the military said Azzam was behind a surge in violence in Baghdad since April that has killed and maimed hundreds. But attacks continued unabated.

In the latest act of violence, a suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of Iraqi police recruits north of Baghdad, killing at least 10, police said -- another in a series of such bombings in past days.

Iraqi police said on Tuesday that they also found 22 bodies of shooting victims near the town of Kut, southeast of Baghdad, another reminder of the security crisis gripping the country. It is uncertain how much intelligence Azzam's killing will deliver as he died before being questioned. U.S. and Iraqi forces tried to capture him alive but he shot at them, a statement said, and when troops returned fire, he was killed.

An Iraqi government spokesman said he was with other men at the time but it was not clear what happened to them. He said he was unsure how important the death of Azzam, an Iraqi, was.

"Even those members of this network who are arrested know nothing (about the organization) except noms de guerre and symbols," Laith Kubba told Al Jazeera television. Azzam commanded day-to-day operations in Baghdad and other cities, while financing attacks and the passage of militants into Iraq from abroad, the U.S. military said. "In spring 2005, he assumed the position of Emir of Baghdad, where he reportedly directed and controlled all terrorist activity and operations in and around the city," it said.

His death follows the capture or killing of several Zarqawi associates in recent months, including a driver and several junior commanders, that have led U.S. forces to believe they may be closing in on the guerrilla chief himself. However, the U.S. military has moved in on Zarqawi in the past, only to see him slip away and attacks persist. A bounty of $25 million has been offered for his death or capture. He is thought to be hiding out in the Euphrates valley of west Iraq. A Jordanian, Zarqawi is allied to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. His group has claimed many attacks in Iraq, and has pledged all-out war against Iraq's majority Shi'ite population, a bid to provoke civil war.

reuters

Journalists Under Fire in Iraq: Reuters Chief Debates Pentagon Over Slain and Detained Media Workers

US forces 'out of control', says Reuters chief

Julia Day - Wednesday September 28, 2005

Reuters has told the US government that American forces' conduct towards journalists in Iraq is "spiralling out of control" and preventing full coverage of the war reaching the public.

The detention and accidental shootings of journalists is limiting how journalists can operate, wrote David Schlesinger, the Reuters global managing editor, in a letter to Senator John Warner, head of the armed services committee.

The Reuters news service chief referred to "a long parade of disturbing incidents whereby professional journalists have been killed, wrongfully detained, and/or illegally abused by US forces in Iraq".

Mr Schlesinger urged the senator to raise the concerns with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is due to testify to the committee this Thursday. He asked Mr Warner to demand that Mr Rumsfeld resolve these issues "in a way that best balances the legitimate security interests of the US forces in Iraq and the equally legitimate rights of journalists in conflict zones under international law".

At least 66 journalists and media workers, most of them Iraqis, have been killed in the country since March 2003.

US forces admitted killing three Reuters journalists, most recently soundman Waleed Khaled, who was shot by American soldiers on August 28 while on assignment in Baghdad. But the military said the soldiers were justified in opening fire. Reuters believes a fourth journalist working for the agency, who died in Ramadi last year, was killed by a US sniper.

'A serious chilling effect on the media'

"The worsening situation for professional journalists in Iraq directly limits journalists' abilities to do their jobs and, more importantly, creates a serious chilling effect on the media overall," Mr Schlesinger wrote. "By limiting the ability of the media to fully and independently cover the events in Iraq, the US forces are unduly preventing US citizens from receiving information ... and undermining the very freedoms the US says it is seeking to foster every day that it commits US lives and US dollars."

Mr Schlesinger said the US military had refused to conduct independent and transparent investigations into the deaths of the Reuters journalists, relying instead on inquiries by officers from the units responsible, who had exonerated their soldiers. He noted that the US military had failed to implement recommendations by its own inquiry into the death of award-winning Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana, who was shot dead while filming outside Abu Ghraib prison in August 2003. He said that Reuters and other reputable international news organisations were concerned by the "sizeable and rapidly increasing number of journalists detained by US forces". He said detentions were prompted by legitimate journalistic activity such as possessing photographs and video of insurgents, which US soldiers assumed showed sympathy with the insurgency.

Earlier this week Reuters demanded the release of a freelance Iraqi cameraman after a secret tribunal ordered that he be detained indefinitely. Samir Mohammed Noor, a freelance cameraman working for Reuters, was arrested by Iraqi troops at his home in the northern town of Tal Afar four months ago.

A US military spokesman has told the agency that a secret hearing held last week had found him to be "an imperative threat to the coalition forces and the security of Iraq".

The news agency has demanded that he be released or given a chance to defend himself in open court.

The US network CBS has raised concerns over the arrest of its cameraman, Abdul Amir Younes, who was arrested in hospital in April after he was shot by US troops. CBS said it is concerned that he had no legal representation at the hearing and has had no chance to see the evidence against him.

- guardian.co.uk

- more from democracy now

CHRONOLOGY-Deadliest bomb attacks in Iraq

29 Sep 2005 21:37:41 GMT (Raises death toll in latest bombings)

Sept 29 (Reuters) - More than 60 people were killed in three apparently coordinated car bomb attacks in the mixed Shi'ite and Sunni Arab town of Balad north of Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi police sources said.

Here is a list of some of the deadliest bomb attacks in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein:

Aug 19, 2003- A truck bomb wrecks United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people, including U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Aug 29, 2003 - A car bomb kills at least 83 people, including top Shi'ite Muslim leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf.

Feb 1, 2004 - 117 people are killed when two suicide bombers blow themselves up in Arbil at the offices of the two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq.

March 2, 2004 - 171 people are killed in twin attacks, which involved three suicide bombers in Baghdad and a suicide bomber, hidden explosives and mortars in Kerbala on the day Iraqis marked Ashura.

Feb 28, 2005 - A suicide car bomb attack on a crowd of people in Hilla, south of Baghdad, kills 125 people.

July 16, 2005 - A suicide bomber in a fuel truck near a Shi'ite mosque in the town of Mussayib, near Kerbala, kills at least 98 people.

Sept. 14, 2005 - A suicide bomber kills 114 people and wounds 156 in a crowded Shi'ite district of Baghdad.

Sept. 29, 2005 - More than 60 people killed in three apparently coordinated car bomb attacks in the mixed Shi'ite and Sunni Arab town of Balad north of Baghdad.

Source: Reuters (Writing by World Desk in London) - reuters

IRAQ WRAPUP 3-Car bombs in Iraq kill more than 110 people

30 Sep 2005 11:32:17 GMT Source: Reuters - By Mussab Al-Khairalla and Haider Salahaddin BALAD, Iraq, Sept 30 (Reuters) -

Car bombs have killed more than 110 people, 25 of them children, in a surge of violence in Iraq ahead of an Oct. 15 referendum on a new constitution.

One of the four car bombs ripped through a crowded market in the southern town of Hilla killing at least 12 people and wounding 47 on Friday, police and health officials said.

In the mainly Shi'ite town of Balad, north of Baghdad, the death toll from three huge car bombs on Thursday rose to 98 on Friday, hospital director Kassim Aboud said.

Furious residents in Balad blamed the attacks on "foreign fighters", long accused by the U.S. military of infiltrating Iraq from Syria to carry out attacks across the country.

"What have those Jordanians and Palestinians and Saudis got to do with us? Shame on them!" Abu Waleed, a hotel owner in Balad who said seven people staying in his hotel died in the blasts, shouted angrily. "Why is this happening? This is a criminal act and the constitution is going to succeed in spite of them," he cried.

Outside a hospital a doctor, Dawoud Allam, posted lists of the dead and the 119 wounded on a wall. Of the dead, 25 were children under 15, while 14 could not be identified, he said.

Crowds voiced their defiance by chanting: "With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for the constitution".

Insurgents are waging a campaign of suicide bombings, shootings and assassinations to try to topple Iraq's U.S.-backed government. The constitution vote has raised sectarian tension between Iraq's Shi'ite majority and the Sunni Arab minority.

Five U.S. soldiers were also killed in one of the deadliest bombings on U.S. forces in weeks, near Ramadi, a bastion of the insurgency west of Baghdad, the U.S. army said on Thursday.

In Washington, the U.S. commander in Iraq told senators plans to cut troop numbers next year might be thwarted if violence continued through the referendum and an election due in December. The number of Iraqi troops able to operate without U.S. support had fallen to one battalion, he added.

The government, dominated by Shi'ites and Kurds, has faced intensified attacks by the Sunni-led insurgency since elections in January.

Minority Sunnis have dominated Iraq for decades but have lost most of their influence since Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, was ousted in 2003. They fear that if the constitution is approved their marginalisation will be sealed.

INSURGENT STRIKES

The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has claimed responsibility for the wave of bombings.

With the latest U.S. deaths, the total number of U.S. troops to have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003 rose to at least 1,929, with more than 13,000 wounded.

The United States has 149,000 troops in Iraq, with about 20,000 from other countries, nearly half of them from Britain.

Pentagon planners have said they hope to begin withdrawing U.S. troops once Iraqi security forces, numbering about 190,000, are strong enough to handle the insurgency by themselves.

But the number able to operate without U.S. forces has actually shrunk since July, U.S. generals told U.S. senators.

Just one of the 120 U.S.-trained Iraqi army and police battalions could operate independently, General George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and General John Abizaid, top commander in the Middle East, said.

The Pentagon said in July the number was three.

"We fully recognise that Iraqi armed forces will not have an independent capability for some time because they don't have the institutional base to support them," Casey said.

Casey had said earlier this year he hoped for a substantial reduction in the number of U.S. troops next year, but he said on Thursday that if things did not go well over the coming 2-1/2 months, troops would have to stay.

Reuters (Additional reporting by Habib al-Zubaidi in Hilla)

Security incidents in Iraq, Sept 30

Sept 30 (Reuters) - Following are security incidents reported in Iraq on Friday, Sept. 30, as of 1230 GMT.

U.S. and Iraqi forces are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shi'ite and Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.

HILLA - Police and health officials said at least 12 people were killed and 47 wounded when a car bomb ripped through a crowded market in the southern town of Hilla, 100 km (62 miles) south of Baghdad.

BALAD - The death toll from the three apparently coordinated car bomb attacks on Thursday near a busy market in the predominantly Shi'ite town of Balad, north of Baghdad, rose to 98 killed and 119 wounded, hospital director Kassim Aboud said.

KIRKUK - Gunmen attacked a motorcade carrying Housing and Reconstruction Ministry officials in the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad. Police said a guard was killed.

- (Reporting by Aref Mohammed in Kirkuk, Habib al-Zubaidi in Hilla and Sami al-Jumaili in Kerbala)