*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

Kuwait police find attack plans

KUWAIT police had found documents detailing an apparent plot to attack the head of Iraq's caretaker government during a planned visit here next week, a security source said today. "A plan to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was uncovered in documents seized ... and related to suspects," the source told AFP, requesting anonymity. The documents were discovered "during raids over the past dew days in search of suspects", the source added, without elaborating.

US commanders report 13 Iraqi militants dead

It began early today near the city of Baqouba (bah-KOO'-bah) northeast of Baghdad when American troops and elements of the Iraqi National Guard searched an area of palm groves and destroyed what's believed to have been a staging ground for attacks on coalition forces. The insurgents battled back with small arms and mortars.

A spokesman for the First Infantry Division says troops confiscated an array of weapons at the site, including rocket propelled grenade launchers and a large artillery round. Elsewhere in Iraq, a suspected car bomb blew up in western Baghdad today. The explosion happened on a major east-west highway but the military says nobody was hurt.

U.S. Soldier Dies While Escorting Convoy

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A roadside bomb fatally injured a U.S. soldier as he was escorting a fuel convoy in northern Iraq (news - web sites), the military said Sunday. U.S. Army spokesman Master Sgt. Robert Powell said the bomb exploded around 4 p.m. Saturday near the city of Beiji, about 90 miles south of the northern city of Mosul. Two soldiers were wounded and one died later Saturday. He was with the U.S. 1st Infantry Division but his identity was not immediately released. The other soldier was hospitalized in stable condition.

2nd Bulgarian Hostage Dead

The body found two days ago near the Tigris River was that of Ivaylo Kepov, the second Bulgarian hostage in Iraq, Bulgarian bTV channel reported. The TV channel cited the spokesperson of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, who said that the remains found Wednesday night on the banks of the Tigris in the town of Beiji were those the second Bulgarian hostage Kepov.The decapitated body found on Wednesday was clad in an orange prison-style jumpsuit that kidnappers have forced some captives to wear before beheading them. Beside the body there was a head in a sack.

Five dead in latest Iraqi fighting

A SPATE of overnight violence in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk has left five people dead, including a Kurdish mother and her two sons. Colonel Sarhad Qadir, of Kirkuk police, said an Iraqi policeman and a militiaman with the pro-US Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party were also slain in drive-by shootings.

Qadir said the attacks had probably been coordinated by "a gang of criminals related to the previous regime (of Saddam Hussein) who want to create feuds between Arabs and Kurds by committing such crimes". Kirkuk, which sits atop vast northern oil reserves, is an ethnically diverse city whose residents include Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen.

The city has seen a string of assassinations and attacks on senior police and political leaders, some blamed on Ansar al-Islam, a violent splinter of the Islamic Movement in Kurdistan believed linked to al-Qaeda. Qadir said an Iraqi policeman was slain by unknown gunmen in a passing car at 8:30 am Sunday (1430 AEST) while waiting by a road for transport home after ending his shift guarding a pipeline belonging to the Northern Oil.

Also on Sunday morning, police forces patrolling in southern Kirkuk were attacked by unknown gunmen in a car, Qadir said. Police returned fire and one officer was injured in the gunbattle before the attackers fled. Meanwhile, gunmen sprayed bullets at the house of a Kurdish family in a southern area of Kirkuk called Festival Square, a predominantly Arab area, killing a woman and two of her sons and injuring her daughter, Qadir said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

NZ aid helps Basra's war-scarred hospitals

New Zealand has poured $1 million into Basra's 31 run-down hospitals. It is New Zealand's biggest financial commitment to reconstruction in Iraq to date. The money will buy items such as beds, intravenous drips, cabinets and tables. New Zealand troops embark on their final reconstruction project in Basra this week as Prime Minister Helen Clark dismisses renewed concerns about their safety.

The New Zealand engineers are due home in September after refurbishing the accident and emergency clinic at Basra Teaching Hospital. When The Press visited the hospital yesterday local contractors were clearing the clinic out so the New Zealanders could start their work.

Dried blood was still visible on the floor of the trauma rooms, and broken windows gave no protection from the dust and smell outside. This is Basra's main accident and emergency clinic. Toilets were blocked and the taps in the surgeons' scrub room barely managed a trickle of water.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Senior Iraqi official shot dead

A senior Iraqi interior ministry official has been shot dead by gunmen in the capital Baghdad. Musab al-Awadi, the ministry's deputy chief in charge of tribal affairs, was killed along with two of his bodyguards, a ministry spokesman said. The men were attacked as they left Mr Awadi's house in the al-Baya area of the capital.

It is the latest in a series of attacks by militants targeting senior officials in Iraq.

In other developments in Iraq:

- A suicide bombing outside an American military base in Mosul has killed at least three people, including the bomber

- A militant group threatening to kill seven foreign hostages says it has extended a deadline for negotiations

- A separate group says it has taken two Pakistani truck drivers and an Iraqi man hostage

In May, the leader of the defunct Iraqi Governing Council, Ezzedine Salim, was killed in a suicide bombing near the headquarters of the US-led coalition. Earlier this month, a suicide bomber targeted the justice minister, killing five people.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Gunmen kill two Iraqis working at UK-operated airport

Basra, July 26

Two Iraqi women working at the British-operated airport in the main southern city of Basra were shot dead by gunmen on Monday, medics said. "Two women were killed and two others wounded when their minibus was attacked in the Mishraq district," a medic at the Sadr teaching hospital said. Five women working for a private company contracted to work at the airport were in the bus when gunmen opened fire, the latest in a string of attacks on people working with the foreign troops still stationed across the country.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Attacks on Iraqi oil pipelines since 2003. There have been 14 in the last 21 days.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq hospital boss slain in drive-by

GUNMEN had assassinated the assistant director of a hospital south of Baghdad, the hospital's chief said today. Dr. Daoud al-Ta'i, director of Mahmoudiya Hospital, said his deputy, Dr Qassem el-Obaidi, was shot dead as he was driving home late yesterday. "El-Obaidi was killed after leaving hospital for his home at about 11:30 p.m. (0430 AEST) by unknown gunmen in a car," Mr al-Ta'i told The Associated Press.

Mahmoudiya, about 40km south of Baghdad, was the scene of a similar attack on Sunday, when gunmen killed two officers travelling to work at their police station in the town.

Blast Injures Six Iraqis Near Fallujah

An explosion outside the volatile city of Fallujah injured six Iraqis today. The blast damaged a house in the village of Niemieyah, south of the city, witnesses said. It was not immediately clear if the blast came from an air strike or mortar fire. The US military has conducted seven air strikes against suspected terror hideouts in Fallujah in recent weeks.

The blast injured three women, including two who were in serious condition, two men and a child, said Dr Thaer Abdullah of Fallujah General Hospital. Since US marines pulled back from Fallujah – a focal point of resistance to the US occupation – after besieging the city for three weeks in April, the military has been limited to using long distance strikes against targets there.

Garbage Collector Killed, 14 U.S. Troops Wounded In Baghdad Mortar Attack

BAGHDAD, July 27 (AFP) - An Iraqi garbage collector was killed and 14 US soldiers and a civilian were wounded Tuesday in a mortar attack on a residential neighbourhood in central Baghdad, the US military said. "One civilian was killed and one civilian was injured and 14 multinational force soldiers were wounded in a mortar attack on a residential building in central Baghdad at around 6:45 am (0245 GMT)," a spokesman said. Another military spokesman confirmed the 14 wounded soldiers were American.

South of Baghdad, Dr Kassem el-Abadi, 40, deputy director of Mahmudiyah hospital, was shot dead late Monday by unknown assailants in a car as he left work for home, the health ministry said. The dead garbage collector was covered with a light green cloth in the courtyard of a housing complex next to the Iranian embassy, as US soldiers and Iraqi police arrived on the scene, an AFP correspondent said.

"It was a mortar attack in which a garbage cleaner was killed and another man wounded," said a policeman, declining to give his name. The man was killed in the Karkh district on the west bank of the Tigris River, not far from the fortified Green Zone housing the interim Iraqi government and the US embassy that has been the target of repeated insurgent attacks. US helicopters hovered over the area shortly after the attack, in which two or three explosions of mortar rounds were heard. North of Baghdad, a US civilian contractor was wounded in a missile attack on a US base near Balad on Monday, the US military said Tuesday adding that it has detained six suspects in connection with the incident. Further north near Duluiyah, US troops and Iraqi National Guard discovered on Monday night a car laden with mortars and a propane gas tank, said the military adding that the vehicle was detonated on Tuesday morning.

In Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, rebels torched a trailer carrying concrete barriers after it broke down west of the restive city, said police chief General Walid Abdul Salam. In the restive Anbar province, US marines said they seized Monday a truck laden with more than 200 mortar rounds and arrested two people.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Suicide attacker kills 20 Iraqis outside police station

(AP) — A suicide attacker exploded a car bomb Wednesday outside a Baqouba police station being used as a recruiting center, killing at least 20 Iraqis and wounding dozens, the U.S. military said. A local police chief said at least 30 people were killed.

The attacker drove a car carrying explosives into a crowd of people gathered outside the al-Najda station in Babouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, to register for police jobs, said Gen. Walid al-Azawi, chief of police in Diyala Province. He said at least 30 people were killed in the blast. U.S. Army Capt. Marshall Jackson said he was aware of 20 people dying in the attack, which he said took place "in the heart of Baqouba" near a police station, government buildings and a crowded market place.

"It looked to be a white truck that just parked right in the heart of this area, right across the police station and blew up," Jackson told The Associated Press. "Right now it doesn't look great. It's all civilians casualties at this stage." Ali Hassan, in charge of the morgue at the Baqouba General Hospital, said between 20-30 Iraqis were killed in the blast.

Another hospital official, Hussein Ali, said at least 55 people were injured.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Many foreign truckers refusing to brave Iraq's dangerous roads

"Nobody wants to come here, it's not safe,' Suleyman told The Associated Press in the cab of his 16-wheeler Mercedes at a wind-swept truck-stop on the outskirts of Baghdad. Hitting home that point, black- masked, armed militants calling themselves "The Group of Death' threatened in a video Tuesday to sever the main highway linking Iraq to Jordan in 72 hours and target Jordanians to stop supplies from reaching U.S. troops.

"We consider all Jordanian interests, companies and businessmen and citizens as much a target as the Americans,' one militant said in the video obtained by Associated Press Television News. Since April, militants have abducted more than 70 foreigners mostly truckers traveling with little or no armed escort in an effort to hurt U.S. forces and hamper reconstruction efforts.

The campaign is clearly effective. On Tuesday, a Jordanian firm working with the U.S. military announced it was withdrawing from Iraq to secure the release of two abducted Jordanian drivers, whose families threatened to behead the company's director unless he yielded to the kidnappers' demands. Suleyman said he used to make the run from Amman to Baghdad twice a week, bringing in rice, sugar and flour until insurgent activity made the road too insecure in November.

Last week, he decided to test the waters again with a load he considered safe in Muslim-dominated Iraq: 50,000 copies of the Quran donated from a Cairo mosque. He was nervous. Colleagues advised him not to stop "even to drink water' and avoid driving late in the afternoon. When he pulled over to fix a flat tire near Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, he was relieved to see a police patrol car a rare sight. An officer told him, "Don't stay here long, this place is dangerous,' he said. After a few minutes, the police left, but not before demanding 10,000 dinars, or $7, for providing "protection.'

 

[Barking_Mad]

Two coalition members killed in Iraq fighting

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Insurgents in Anbar province killed two coalition troops in clashes Wednesday, and enemy fire forced two U.S. military aircraft to make emergency landings, the military said.
A spokesman from U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. Marines clashed with insurgents in several areas of Anbar province west of Baghdad.

The spokesman said initial reports indicated two multinational force members died of wounds suffered in the clashes and two coalition aircraft were forced to make emergency landings.

It was not immediately clear if the two troops died during the aircraft landings. No details were provided on what type of aircraft that made the landings or where the clashes occurred.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Baghdad carnage kills 70

Wed 28 July, 2004 17:59

BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) - A minibus packed with explosives has blown up near a police station and a market north of Baghdad, killing 70 people and wounding 30 in the worst attack since the handover of power one month ago.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Two planes forced down in Iraq

A military spokeswoman also said that two U.S. aircraft were damaged and one pilot injured by small arms fire. The aircraft were recovered, she added.

 

[Barking_Mad]

According to AP car bombs in Iraq this year have claimed the lives of at the very least 1,401 people.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Old video clip from back in April from a Canadian tv reporter who went into Ramadi and then reported back. Worth a watch.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi governor's sons taken captive

The Anbar governor's home was torched in the daring attack. A group of armed men torched the house of the governor of Iraq's Anbar province after seizing three of his children in a day that also saw US forces suffer many casualties. The men burst into governor Abd al-Karim al-Rawi's house on Wednesday and seized three of his sons after a fierce gun battle with his security personnel, an Aljazeera correspondent reported.

The home was then set ablaze, according to police in the city of Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad.

 

[Barking_Mad]

AL Jazeera reporting residents attacking US troops as they entered their houses to search them.

Unclear casualty toll in Baquba fighting

There are conflicting casualty tolls from the fierce battles between US occupation troops in the Buhruz area, south of Baquba, and Iraqis who resisted American troops' attempts to search civilian homes.

US military officials say Iraqi security forces killed 13 "insurgents" on Sunday - a considerably higher toll than the one given by Iraqi medics. Qaysar Hamid, an emergency worker at Baquba General Hospital, said two people, an Iraqi police officer and a civilian, were killed while six other civilians were injured. Some of the casualties had bullet wounds, others shrapnel wounds, he said. Earlier, Aljazeera's correspondent reported that at least four Iraqis, including a child, were wounded in the conflict. Salah Hasan said the toll was expected to rise.

Residents resisted the troops as they tried to enter their homes during search operations, said Hasan.

 

[Barking_Mad]

A good piece form a reporter in Baghdad a month of so before the 'handover'. An interesting read.

The Rough Guide to Baghdad

Iraq's badly battered infrastructure is another problem, explains Witwit. "For example, you cannot make paint if you do not have clean water. Salts and minerals in the water ruin the paint. Or to make ice, or to can food, or process meat, you need clean water. We don't have that," he says philosophically. Behind him his colleagues rage on in Arabic about the "son of a whore" who sold them the generator and then most likely stole it back himself.

Then there are the cheap imports that have flooded the country since the US invasion. Witwit's sole working factory is a plastics plant that makes thermoses and coolers, but he has laid off most of his thirty employees because Chinese and Iranian imports are driving down prices. To upgrade and retool requires capital. "We need loan programs, investment, but the Americans do nothing. They only talk about the free market."

............

At Sadr City's Al Jawadir hospital the halls are crowded with worried-looking men and women. An emaciated, greenish man is wheeled by on a gurney. Here one clearly sees the social impact of the sewer problem and the general chaos of which it is a subset.

The hospital director, Dr. Qasim al-Nuwesri, explains that the hospital serves at least a million and a half people and sees 3,000 patients a day, but suffers for lack of adequate medicine, equipment, clean water and security. "We have to get clean water shipped in," he says. "A German NGO delivers it in a tanker truck." Typhoid is rampant, he adds, and an outbreak of hepatitis E is gathering momentum, with forty new cases a week. "The coalition promises money and supplies, but there is never enough," says the director. "I am forced to reuse needles and deny people anesthesia. We only do serious emergency surgeries."

...........

On one of the slum's main thoroughfares, al-Radhewi Street, are several walls marked with a message in English. Big block letters read Vietnam Street. Farther on, a wall bears a crudely painted mural depicting a modified version of an infamous Abu Ghraib torture photo. It is the prisoner in the hood and cloak standing on a box, arms outstretched, electrical wires dangling from his limbs. Next to him in the mural is the Statue of Liberty, but in place of her torch she holds the lever of an electrical switch connected to the wires. Below is scrawled: The Freedom Form George Bosh. We snap photos and move on.

Then, before we find them, the Jeshi Mahdi find us. Two men in a sedan are suddenly next to us. "Pull over!" Now they are at our doors, hands on the pistols in their waistbands. "Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you photographing things?"

"Sahafee canadee, sahafee canadee!" I show them my counterfeit Canadian press pass. Our translator is talking fast, explaining that we are anti-occupation, that we are trying to show the truth. He's naming his family, naming sheiks, naming Sadr men who are old friends. The undercover Mahdi fire back questions and suggest that we get out of the car. We show them the digital photos of the graffiti and offer to erase all the shots, but we ignore their request to get out. More fast Arabic goes on. Finally the Mahdi begin to relax.

"This is called Vietnam Street because this is where we kill Americans," says one of them. "We are in a war with them. That is why we stopped you. You understand? We have to protect our people." The man in charge adjusts his pistol one more time, looks around, then says, "You can go." We thank them profusely and then hit the gas. The hard spike of adrenaline in my chest releases in a warm wash of endorphins.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi police in the firing line as bombers massacre 70 people hoping to join force

Yet again, the Iraqi police - and their hordes of impoverished would-be recruits - were massacred yesterday, up to a hundred of them in the Sunni Muslim city of Baquba as they lined up, unprotected, along a boulevard in the hope of finding work. The bomber - identity, as usual, unknown - drove his Renault car into a mass of 600 unemployed young men looking for jobs in the police force, detonated his explosives and cut them to pieces. The bomb left a seven-foot hole in the road and wounded at least another 150 men and women, many of them shopping in a market.

The pattern is familiar and the American-appointed Iraqi authorities, who have little control over Baquba, appear powerless to prevent such attacks. The police station there was surrounded by vast concrete blast walls but there had been so many men arriving at 8am to seek recruitment - the bomber, of course, would have known the time to strike - that police officers ordered many of them to queue along the open dual carriageway outside.

It was a death sentence. For more than three hours, rescue workers and medical staff were picking up body parts from the road and from burnt- out cars and buses.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Italian Troops In Firefight With Insurgents In Southern Iraq

ROME, July 29 (AFP) - Italian troops traded fire Thursday with insurgents in the southern Iraq town of Nasiriyah, Italy's ANSA news agency reported citing a spokesman at military headquarters in Rome who described the situation as tense.

No-one was injured in the exchanges, during which the militants took control of two bridges, the agency quoted Captain Ettore Sarli as saying. He said diplomatic contacts are underway to try to calm the situation.

Sarli said one of the clashes occurred at the Italian Libeccio military base, where an Italian soldier was killed on May 17.

Ukraine Looks to Reduce Troops in Iraq

KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine is negotiating with the United States and Poland to reduce and eventually withdraw its troops from Iraq, a top defense official said Thursday, becoming the latest country to consider pulling out its mission.

Vyacheslav Bolotniuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, gave no timeline. "There will be a decrease of troops," Bolotniuk told The Associated Press.

Ukrainian troops have begun turning over guard duties of several key facilities to Iraqi soldiers, the Defense Ministry said in a statement, and Iraqi border guards took over patrols on a section of the Iraqi-Iranian border from a Ukrainian contingent.

Earlier Thursday, Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk told the ITAR-Tass news agency that negotiations had started in Warsaw earlier this year and continued last month at the NATO summit in Istanbul.

The talks about the withdrawal are "probably related" to increased violence in Iraq, Bolotniuk said.

Fort Carson Soldier: I Was Ordered To Push Iraqis Off Bridge

One of four soldiers charged with shoving two Iraqi civilians into the Tigris River where one of them drowned says his superior officers ordered up the incident and told him what to say to officials looking into the death, an Army investigator testified Wednesday.

Spc. Terry Bowman said he "was told by his chain of command what version to give CID," Sgt. Irene Cintron of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID) said during a teleconference from Iraq as the military convened a hearing to determine whether the soldiers will be court-martialed.

Bowman said he had been ordered to push the men into the river, Cintron said. No names were disclosed, though three of the soldiers' commanders have received nonjudicial punishments for their roles in the incident. None of the punishments include jail time.

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.S. Lacks Records for Iraq Spending

WASHINGTON - U.S. civilian authorities in Baghdad failed to keep good track of nearly $1 billion in Iraqi money spent for reconstruction projects and can't produce records to show whether they got some services and products they paid for, anew audit concludes.

The former Coalition Provisional Authority paid nearly $200,000 for 15 police trucks without confirming they were delivered, and auditors have not located them, the report from the CPA's Inspector General said. Officials also didn't have records to justify the $24.7 million pricetag for replacing Iraqi currency which used to carry Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s portrait, the report said.

 

[pbman]

Its the barking mad forum.

No link to dodgy.

 

[slaar]

Feel free to post some good news pbman. I'm sure it's around...

Ummm...

 

[Barking_Mad]

Funny, I thought you didn't read this thread, what with all the bad news and all?

Still, feel free to pop in with some 'good news' from Iraq, you know - brighten the place up a bit.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Here's you go Peebster, a 'good news' story, of sorts, reproduced from today's Independent (Robert Fisk)

Protection, not oppression: How the new mobile police patrols have discovered job satisfaction

Their Kalashnikov automatic rifles regularly jam after firing two bullets, their flak jackets don't protect them, their promised £45 pay increase never arrived, their boss wants to take the air-conditioners from their vehicles and the hospitals can't cope with their wounded.

Apart from that, the men of the new Iraqi police mobile patrols in Baghdad - the front-line victims of the Iraq war - are fighting fit. More than that. They've found that protecting people, rather than oppressing them as they did under Saddam, makes them genuinely popular.

Sergeants Mahmoud and Mohamed and Constable Nahed drive their Land Cruiser, police number 365, through the streets of Baghdad with something approaching bravado. "The people like us now," Sergeant Mohamed says. "They want our patrols and we want to help them and we are ready for the looters and the troublemakers." Erhabi is the word he uses for troublemakers (it's the nearest Arabic equivalent to terrorists) and he will not use the word resistance. "These people want anarchy here so that the old Baathists can come back and take over again."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Powell Warns Iran On Iraq, Pledges To Speed Reconstruction Funds

BAGHDAD, July 30 (AFP) - US Secretary Colin Powell, making an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Friday, warned neighboring Iran against seeking undue influence in Iraq while pledging to speed the flow of reconstruction funds to the country. "Any actions taken by Iran which seek to gain influence in Iraq we would look at with disfavor," he said, adding: "We continue to monitor the situation."

Speaking at a joint press conference with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, he said: "We hope the Iran authorities realize that it is in their interest to have a stable Iraq as their neighbor." After talks with Saleh and the public works, minerals and housing ministers, Powell said: "We want to speed up the flow of funds into the reconstruction effort ... to get the job done."

He said improvements in supplies of water and electricity, as well as infrastructure would "contribute to the sense of safety and improve the security environment." Powell however was forced to admit that the wave of kidnappings in Iraq, with at least 25 people currently held captive or missing, had a "deterring effect" on reconstruction and the multinational coalition.

"There is nothing romantic about this. There is nothing justified about this. The world must stand united," he said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

A must read piece on the rise of radical islam in Iraq

Radical Islam grows among Iraq's Sunnis

BAGHDAD – Sheikh Mahdi Ahmed al-Sumaidi was detained in Abu Ghraib prison early this year after a weapons cache was found in his Ibn Taymiyyah mosque. Since released, his anti-US fervor is undiminished. "Neither the occupation forces nor the government they installed is acceptable,'' he says. "The legitimate power is the resistance."
Even so, he is grateful for the US invasion. "God uses many tools,'' he says. "America's brutality has caused many to understand that Islam is the answer to our problems. The only solution is Islamic government."

Sheikh Sumaidi is one of a cadre of Sunni preachers whose star has risen sharply in the past year. No longer constrained or exiled by a repressive regime, they are preaching jihad at key mosques and pushing to make Iraq an Islamic state. They are still on the fringes of mainstream Sunni practice here. But amid almost daily firefights in the Sunni Triangle, these radical preachers are emerging as the principal Sunni rallying point.

"The Islamists are growing up very quickly among the frustrated and disadvantaged,'' says Sadoun al-Dulame, who runs the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies in Baghdad. "All the violence is allowing extremists to mobilize and try to monopolize political space." The preachers' opponents call them Wahhabis, after the dominant religious ideology of Saudi Arabia. But many prefer to refer themselves as salafy, which emphasizes their desire to return the Islamic world to the practices that prevailed at the time of Mohammad, which they see as a golden age. While the US project was to mold a secular Iraq friendly to the West, the salafys' religious beliefs are not far from Al Qaeda's.

Now, they're playing an increasingly visible political role. When hostages are taken, diplomats quietly contact them, hoping they can secure their release. When interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi wants to negotiate with insurgents in the war-torn town of Fallujah, now in the hands of Sunni jihadis, he goes through their mosques. And increasingly, when young Iraqi Sunnis seek guidance in dealing with a dislocating and fraught time in their lives, they turn to these mosques.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Robert Fisk's latest piece via the Independent

'Can't Blair see that this country is about to explode? Can't Bush?'

Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching Tony Blair, grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition; so much for the Butler report.

Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realise that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't Bush realise this? The American-appointed "government" controls only parts of Baghdad - and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the "Prime Minister", is little more than mayor of Baghdad. "Some journalists," Blair announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't get it. The disaster exists now.

When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside police stations, how on earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even the National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been twice postponed. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary - be he American, British or South African - believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists weren't saying so.

But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the "coalition", that they support their new US-manufactured government, that the "war on terror" is being won, that Americans are safer. Then I go to an internet site and watch two hooded men hacking off the head of an American in Riyadh, tearing at the vertebrae of an American in Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers here list another construction company pulling out of the country. And I go down to visit the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we supposedly came to liberate, screaming and weeping and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in cheap coffins.

 

[bigfish]

Here's a recantation piece By Ken Dilanian of the Philidelphia Inquirer, a compliment to the theme of Fisk's piece above.

The situation in Iraq right now is not as bad as the news media are portraying it to be. It's worse

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/philly3.html

By Ken Dilanian

Inquirer Staff Writer

A kind of violence fatigue has descended over news coverage of Iraq. Car bombings that would have made the front page a year ago get scant mention these days.


Assassinations and kidnappings have become so common that they have lost their power to shock. More U.S. soldiers died in July (38) than in June (26), but that didn't make the nightly newscasts, either.


The U.S.-led effort to restore basic services has become a story of missed goals and frustrations. Hoped-for foreign investment in Iraq's economy hasn't materialized - what company is going to risk seeing its employees beheaded on television?


Simply by staving off stability and prosperity, the insurgents are winning.


These are painful observations for me to make, because in early April, I wrote on this page that the media had been underplaying the good things happening in Iraq, and were missing the potential for a turnaround.


I still believe the first part. But when I returned to Iraq in June, I found that the situation had deteriorated so dramatically that a lot of those good things have become irrelevant.


As for the turnaround, I couldn't have been more wrong.

 

[bigfish]

Iraqi group claims over 37,000 civilian toll

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66E32EAF-0E4E-4765-9339-594C323A777F.htm

By Ahmed Janabi

An Iraqi political group says more than 37,000 Iraqi civilians*were killed between the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003 and October 2003.


The People's Kifah, or Struggle Against Hegemony, movement said in a statement that it carried out a detailed survey of Iraqi civilian*fatalities during September and October 2003.

Its calculation was based on deaths among the Iraqi civilian population only, and did not count losses sustained by the Iraqi military and paramilitary forces.

The deputy general secretary and spokesperson of the movement told Aljazeera.net he*could vouch for the*accuracy of*the figure.

"We are 100% sure that 37,000 civilian deaths is a correct estimate. Our study is the result of two months of hard work which involved hundreds of Iraqi activists and academics. Of course there may be deaths that were not reported to us, but the toll in any case could not be lower*than our finding," said Muhammad al-Ubaidi.*

 

[Barking_Mad]

08/02/04 Knight Ridder: Troops clash with al-Sadr's supporters in Najaf
U.S. forces battled supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf in southern Iraq Monday and may have surrounded a house where al-Sadr was staying.

08/02/04 Arabic News: Algeria, Bangladesh will not send force to Iraq
The Algerian Foreign minister Abdul Aziz Balkhadem announced that Algeria rejects the plans of sending foces to Iraq.

08/02/04 FOCUS: Another Employee of Turkish Transport Company Bilintur Missing
Shortly after the Turkish company Bilintur confirmed that one of its employees had been executed in Iraq, it announced that another of its employees had disappeared in Iraq, AFP reported.

08/02/04 AFP: No troops to Iraq under present volatile conditions: Pakistan
Pakistan said on Monday that it would not send troops to Iraq under the present "volatile and unstable" situation, after being criticised for not ruling out military deployment in time to save two Pakistani hostages from being killed by militants.

08/02/04 NYT: Scholar to go on trial in Iraq relic smuggling
Joseph Braude ... goes on trial soon, facing charges of smuggling three 4,000-year-old cylindrical marble and alabaster stone seals.

08/02/04 Matamat.com: US forces arrest leading Iraqi editor
US occupation forces in Iraq have arrested Dr Muthana Harith al-Dhari the editor of al-Basaer newspaper (Insight) and media officer for the influential Association of Muslim Scholars.

08/02/04 AFP: Ukraine to discuss Iraq troop withdrawal

Ukraine made another strong hint on Monday that it planned to reduce or withdraw its 1,600 troops from Iraq, although the immediate date for the decision remained unclear.

08/02/04 Telegraph: American troops surround rebel cleric's house
American troops have been involved in gun battles with supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, after they surrounded the rebel cleric's house.

08/02/04 AP: U.S. Forces Clash With al-Sadr's Gunmen
U.S. forces clashed Monday with gunmen protecting the house of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the holy city of Kufa. One woman was killed and three people were wounded, a hospital official said.

08/02/04 AFP: Police gunned down in restaurant
THREE Iraqi policemen were shot dead and four wounded today as they were eating on the terrace of a restaurant in Kirkuk.

08/02/04 Kuna: U.S. forces arrest AMS member in Iraq
The U.S. forces arrested a member of the Association of Moslem Scholars (AMS) Dr. Mothanna Al-Dhari on Monday, along with two of his guards after being interview by the LBC television.

08/02/04 AP: Video Shows Iraqi Militants Killing Man
Militants have shot dead a Turkish hostage kidnapped in Iraq, according to a video posted on the Internet.

08/02/04 AP: Soldier Dies of Wounds Suffered Sunday in Samarra
A second U.S. soldier died of wounds he suffered Sunday in a roadside bombing in Samarra, the military said on Monday.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Bomb attack halts oil exports through Iraq's northern pipeline

BAGHDAD, Aug. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- A major bomb attack happened Tuesdayon the main northern pipeline from the oil fields of Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan stopped oil exports in northern Iraq, Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV reported. Huge fires, caused by an improvised explosion device in al-Fateha area west of Kirkuk, damaged the main pipeline running to Ceyhan and halted exports, the channel said.

The attack occurred at about 6:00 am (1400 GMT) and the fire fighters were still battling the raging flames, it added. Iraq's oil pipelines have been frequently attacked and sabotagedby insurgents, which badly limited the country's oil exports and undermined the interim Iraqi government's reconstruction effort.

MARINE KILLED IN ACTION IN AL ANBAR PROVINCE

FALLUJAH, Iraq - One Marine assigned to I Marine Expeditionary Force died of wounds received in action today in the Al Anbar Province while conducting security and stability operations. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending next of kin notification.

BLAST KILLS TWO SOLDIERS IN BAGHDAD

BAGHDAD - Two Task Force Baghdad Soldiers were killed and two were wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated around 11 p.m. Aug. 2. The wounded were evacuated to a military medical facility for treatment. The names of the deceased Soldiers are being withheld pending notification of next of kin. The incident is under investigation.

Iraqi police chief killed in Baghdad roadside bombing

BAGHDAD - A Baghdad police chief was killed and two policemen wounded Tuesday when their car hit a roadside bomb in the capital, said police and hospital sources.

Colonel Moyad Bashar al-Shamari was travelling to work with two sergeants when their car hit a roadside bomb at around 7:40 am (0340 GMT) close to the Abu Jafaar al-Mansour square west of the city centre, according to Omar Moyad, second lieutenant at the Al-Mamoun police station. Shamari died of his wounds shortly after he was taken to Yarmouk hospital, according to doctors there.

“After I heard a loud explosion, I rushed outside and saw the damaged police car with three bloodied people inside,” said Mohammed Abdulqader, a resident in the area of the attack.