*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

this is registration so here is the whole piece as its worth the read.

In City's Ruins, Military Faces New Mission: Building Trust

When the owners of one house near the farthest southern boundary of this city return, they will find a crater 40 feet across and 8 feet deep, with one wall still standing and recognizable pieces of a ceiling strewn beside it. A broken kebab stand, its canopy collapsed, its two wheels exposed, leans over crazily into one lip of the crater.

The entire street in this district looks about the same. On Monday morning, after they had seemingly been crushed the day before, insurgents began firing from windows, bunkers and piles of rubble, setting off a five-hour gun battle. The street, once flat, has been hit with so many 500-pound bombs that it looks like the zone of collision between oceanic ice sheets, with huge dips and shelves of pavement and soil. Now the American military faces the urgent but almost paradoxical imperative of rebuilding the city it just destroyed in order to defeat the rebels who had held it for so long. The devastation that the battle has wrought will not be easy to repair. The human and political effects of that devastation could rapidly spread far beyond Falluja.

Military engineers are already starting to deploy throughout the city with tens of millions of dollars at their disposal to fix some of the damage. If the engineers do not succeed, then the outrage that is likely to be generated among returning residents at the sight of obliterated mosques, cratered houses and ground-up streets will spread. Either way, the results will deeply mark the American-backed government's ability to gain the trust of the people here and carry out elections, scheduled for late January.

The radio code name for the artillery crews who bring in many of the big shells is "steel rain." That is what came down when the battle started at 7 a.m. on Monday. The day before, tanks and fighting vehicles had come roaring through here shooting at anything that moved, but dozens of the insurgents apparently lay low. They hid in the ugly concrete houses of this neighborhood, where the city of Falluja stops quite abruptly along a street running east to west. They also waited in a row of makeshift earthen bunkers in a field of slag heaps and trash about 100 yards south of the rubble-strewn street.

As always in this battle, at the center of the fight was one of the mosques the insurgents have surrounded with ramparts and firing positions, and where they have placed weapons caches. At one point the fighting swirled on all sides of the mosque, and Marine companies became confused about exactly where friendly troops were. "We've got a back-alley gunfight going on," said Capt. Read Omohundro, commander of Company B of the First Battalion, Eighth Marines. "So watch where you fire into the mosque!"

A tank fired a round at an insurgent sniper in the minaret and punched a hole straight through the middle of it - and scored a direct hit on the insurgent. "We turned a guy into rubble," a marine said. But the minaret, smoking like a chimney, stood there with the daylight showing through it, and later a marine in Company B was killed while climbing stairs inside, shot by an insurgent who had somehow remained above. After two other marines retrieved his body, a pair of 500-pound bombs were called in and the mosque was no more.

The incompatible images that have marked the battle for Falluja, like a fairy tale etched on a tombstone, turned up again in a trench dug around the mosque. An exercise book for learning to write in English lay open on the dirt, the last blank on the page neatly filled in with these words: "She isn't playing today. Neither is the other girl." The steel rain fell, and fell. Telephone poles came down, their wires threading in and out of rubble piles. Fires burned out of control. Tanks rolled over cars. Hungry dogs roamed the streets.

The insurgents killed at least one other marine today - he looked into a room where half a dozen were waiting, and they shot him before dragging off his body and his gun. Marines recovered his body. But however deadly the rebels were able to make this filthy dead-end in the desert, there was also something terribly pathetic about their stand. After the makeshift bunkers had been mercilessly bombed, a man in a white dishdasha emerged and tried to get away by crawling across the slag heaps. He was machine-gunned, he plopped to the ground, and he died where he fell.Despite what appeared to be the collapse of the insurgency here, Lt. Col. Gareth Brandl cautioned: "This is not won yet. Now we have to rebuild the city."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Ill find the link in a bit, ive lost it!

"Let Them Drink Sand!"

The United States is bringing "democracy" to Iraq on the same terms that the Russians imposed its federal mandate on Chechnya, a region which has Iraq's future written in its rubble. The advocates of intervention in Iraq, the epigones of Wolfowitz , should take a walk through Grozny, and measure against its ruins the fate of their proclaimed ambition to bring democracy to Fallujah and other cities in Iraq.

In the waning weeks of the US election campaign the antiwar movement here in the US, was largely corralled into the Kerry campaign and strangled by the bizarre contradiction of supporting a candidate whose "peace plank" was continuing war. Will it now turn out that for many Kerry supporters their interest in the US war on Iraq was in fact mostly its utility as a rationale for attacking Bush? Now that the race is over, will they forget the war along with Kerry's disastrous campaign?

If there is anything that should fuel the outrage of the antiwar movement, it is surely the destruction of Fallujah and the war crimes being inflicted by US commanders on its civilian population, who are now being denied the most basic and essential source of life, water. This is not the first time that US forces have cut water supplies, something explicitly forbidden under Article 14 of the second protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which reads as follows: "Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of food-stuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works."

 

[Barking_Mad]

UN seeks probe into Falluja war crimes

Top United Nations human rights official Louise Arbour has called for an investigation of alleged abuses in Falluja including disproportionate use of force and the targeting of civilians. Those responsible for any violations – US-led forces, Iraqi government troops or fighters - should be brought to justice, the former UN war crimes prosecutor said in a statement on Tuesday. "There have been a number of reports during the current confrontation alleging violations of the rules of war designed to protect civilians and combatants," Arbour said.

She gave no specific examples. But on Monday, Amnesty International accused both sides of breaking rules designed to protect civilians and wounded combatants during conflict. Attacking US and Iraqi troops had failed to take necessary steps to ensure non-combatants did not come under fire. Resistance fighters had abused flags of truce and fired indiscriminately, the London-based group said. All violations of international humanitarian and human rights law must be investigated, including "the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons and the use of human shields", Arbour said.

Controversy over the Falluja offensive has been fuelled by video footage showing a US marine shooting dead a wounded and unarmed Iraqi in a mosque in Falluja on Saturday. The US military has begun an investigation into possible war crimes over the incident, filmed in a television pool report by NBC. Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said she was especially worried about civilians still in Falluja, who might lack access to aid, and about the paucity of information on civilian casualties.

Iraq's interim government says civilian casualties during the US-led assault on Falluja have been minimal and that reports of a humanitarian crisis in the city are exaggerated. But a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) insisted in Geneva on Tuesday there were civilians still in the city, in need of food, water and medicine. "The ICRC is very worried about the humanitarian situation in Falluja, because we are receiving information from families that are still there that the injured have no access to medical care," Rana Sidani said. The ICRC did not know how many people were left in the shattered city of 300,000, but the Iraqi Red Crescent put the figure at around 150 families, she added.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqis killed in northern clashes

Iraqi fighters attacked the provincial governor's office in Iraq's third largest city, Mosul, on Thursday, killing one of the governor's bodyguards and wounding four more, the US military said. The fighters fired 10 mortar rounds at the building in the northern city, 390km from Baghdad, setting ablaze a fuel tanker parked nearby.

The fighters also fired six mortar rounds at a US military base in Mosul, but there were no injuries, a US military spokeswoman said.Violence has flared in the north in the 10 days since US-led forces attacked Falluja, where fighters had established control. US troops say they now control Falluja after killing hundreds of Iraqis, although fighting has continued in parts of the city.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Photos from Fallujah

 

[Barking_Mad]

David Hackworth - former Vietnam soldier with some interesting and relevant opinions on Fallujah.

Fallujah: Saved for democracy, but how long will it last?

Fallujah predictably fell like a bowling pin, proving once again that an insurgent force can't withstand the awesome air and ground firepower delivered by well-trained, well-led, numerically superior U.S. combat forces. But a lot of damn good grunts were gunned down during their second bloody go at that age-old bastion of resistance. In insurgency warfare, taking real estate -- mountain or city -- means zilch. Long-term winning is all about getting the people over to our side. As a Marine sergeant wrote last week from Fallujah, ''... for every one killed five more are recruited.''

Now, the tough part begins: how to convince the Sunni survivors to join President Bush's ''march to freedom.''

Key to co-opting the rebels who've been supporting the insurgents is rushing in reconstruction aid right behind our lead tanks -- a strategy that might incentivize the Sunnis to lay down their weapons and pick up tools to rebuild their city. Jobs must be followed with a long-term security blanket to protect the people from insurgent intimidation through beheadings, kidnappings, assassinations and car bombings, and allow them to play their part in electing a new Iraqi government. Ideally, this task should fall to Iraqi forces. But so far their performance, less a few elite units, has been amateur hour. They failed in the April Fallujah campaign and again in Najaf and Samarra, where more than 300 Iraqi soldiers beat feet in retreat after the first shot. Meanwhile, the complete police force in nearby Mosul -- which came under assault while our forces were taking Fallujah -- also cut and ran. Sources working closely with the Iraqis say that most units are penetrated by informants who rat out allied movements, plans and precise schedules before units even leave their assembly areas.

.........

Before the smoke cleared, our grunts were back fighting insurgents in the city (Samarra) -- ''liberated'' by us only two months before -- while American aircraft patrolled overhead. After announcing an indefinite curfew, the U.S. military issued a statement proclaim ing that Iraqi security forces and coalition forces were -- again -- in ''full control of Samarra.''

Expect the same hubris in dispatches from Fallujah, Mosul and other cities in days to come. In mid-1965, in one of the first large U.S. operations of the Vietnam War, the commanding general of the elite 173rd Airborne Brigade declared Vietnam's formidable guerrilla-infested Iron Triangle to be ''no more.''

By my count it was retaken at least 20 additional times and remained a hornet's nest until the end of the war 10 years later. The new Triangle, the Sunni Triangle, will be an equal butt-blaster. Yes, it can be temporarily secured, but until the Iraqi security forces are on their feet -- which won't be anytime soon -- expect more than the occasional bloody reversal. And get ready for security to be mainly made-in-the-USA, meaning that our forces will probably be stuck in Iraq for a long, hot spell. I predicated in my books ''Vietnam Primer'' in 1967 and ''About Face'' in 1989 that insurgency warfare was the new face of war. Although these warnings were totally ignored by the Pentagon, Command and General Staff College Commandant Lt. Gen. William Wallace did comment last summer, as Army authors were crashing a new counterinsurgency manual, ''We needed to update the counterinsurgency doctrine ... that hadn't been looked at since the post-Vietnam era.''

 

[Barking_Mad]

Deaths of US soldiers as listed between the 3rd and 16th November in and around Fallujah

16 died in Fallujah
3 died near Fallujah
43 died in Al Anbar province (which is where Falluja is situated)

Total = 62

Overall total for November stands at 94 although due to the back log that toal may now be over 100.

 

[Barking_Mad]

US troops battle guerrillas in Iraq's Ramadi

US troops clashed with heavily armed guerrillas in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Thursday, local residents said. At the US Marine headquarters in nearby Falluja, which is responsible for Ramadi, a spokesman said he had no details of new fighting there, a day after clashes in the city left at least nine Iraqis dead and 15 wounded.

Residents said it appeared that US armoured units had entered parts of eastern and central Ramadi on Thursday to confront guerrillas who opened fire on them with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns. The previous day, large groups of guerrillas had taken to the streets of the city. US aircraft bombed an industrial area in the east of Ramadi on Wednesday.

US-led forces launched a full-scale ground offensive in Falluja 10 days ago against foreign Islamists and Saddam Hussein loyalists they say are entrenched there. Ramadi, capital of the mainly Sunni Muslim desert province of Anbar, is another place where resentment against the US presence in Iraq runs high. Unlike Falluja, which US troops had not entered for six months before last week, they come under frequent attack from insurgents inside Ramadi and clashes are common.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Sporadic fighting erupts in Fallujah

US forces shelled insurgent holdouts in Fallujah and deadly bomb blasts hit several cities in Iraq on Thursday, as a report by marine intelligence warned the insurgency would grow despite massive offensives to crush the insurgents. US-led troops engaged in sporadic battles against insurgents in Fallujah after launching a major assault to wrest the Sunni Muslim stronghold west of Baghdad away from insurgents 10 days ago.

Shelling continued on the southern outskirts of the city, an AFP photographer said, even after a US marine officer had declared Wednesday that the "the battle is over." Iraqi volunteers and US troops were collecting scores of corpses littering the battered city while the Iraqi Red Crescent said 150 families remained stranded. But US marine intelligence officials have issued a report warning that any significant withdrawal of troops from Fallujah would strengthen the insurgency, The New York Times said.

.........

As fighting wound down in Fallujah, Iraqi commandos backed by US troops were set to storm insurgent stronghold in the northern city of Mosul, where US-led forces are trying to clear insurgents who overran police stations last week. Five Iraqi troops were wounded in a powerful blast in the west of the town, US military officials said. The military operations came as more deadly violence shook Iraq a day after at least 23 people killed in fighting and a bomb attack in Sunni Muslim hotspots. Two Iraqis were killed in a car bombing outside a police station in Baghdad and another two were killed in an explosion in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk.

Meanwhile, the United States became the latest nation to condemn the apparent murder of Margaret Hassan, the head of CARE International's Iraq operations who was seized by unknown attackers on October 19 while on her way to work.

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.S. reservists gingerly start to repair Fallujah

Two dozen members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Engineer Group crunched over gravel, charred shell casings and broken glass, rifles out as they bounded down a war-torn street that was once a commercial strip. They duck-walked through eerily empty streets as the sounds of a nearby gunfight echoed off the buildings and alleyways.

During a lull, one gravelly voice broke the silence, "Does the word `apocalyptic' apply?"

The men were reservists, with accents acquired from Boston and Chicago and central Pennsylvania, and hair tinged with gray. Their regular jobs were in electrical, plumbing and building trades; their house-to-house military skills were raw compared with the soldiers half their age who took the town. But the Navy Seabees and Marine and Army civil engineers running through Fallujah weren't there to take the town. They were there to repair it. Seizing their first objective, teams of rifle-toting engineers crouched behind cover and pointed M-16s in all directions. One man produced a pry bar, another a sturdy shovel. Together they heaved up a sewer cover.

The dank passageway of sewage was proceeding nicely. The heavy steel lid clanked shut. Onward, at a crouch. "There's cobwebs all over it," assessment team leader Navy Lt. Cmdr. Larry Merola said, "but much of the infrastructure that we went to--municipal electrical, water--it's in very good shape." Though sporadic firefights still erupt in Fallujah, military civil affairs officials have tentatively moved into town, saying they are unable to wait longer, out of humanitarian and public-relations concerns.

They bring with them civil engineering expertise and suitcases full of contracts worth more than $23 million--for solid waste and sewer equipment, landfills, new schools, sewer pumps and well drilling. No one knows how much of the work will go toward repairing damage inflicted in the seizure of the city and how much will address accumulated problems stemming from years of neglect. Though the hardest, most time-sensitive work will be done by American military specialists, most of the rest--repairing roads and buildings, stringing wire, rebuilding homes--will be contracted out to locals.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Blah blah blah - fucking speccy twatting fucking apologist.

Straw denies the killing of 100,000 Iraqi civilians since the beginning of Iraq's invasion

The British foreign office secretary Jack Straw yesterday denied estimated announced by British experts in the field of health which said that some 100,000 civilians were killed in Iraq since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. In a statement issued by the foreign office, Straw rejected these numbers, noting that the only source for the figures that can be considered reliable are the one given by the Iraqi hospitals. He added that in every and each conflict it is difficult to formulate a certain idea about civilian losses. Straw indicated that this is true, in particular, according to conditions standing in Iraq. According to the Iraqi ministry of health, 4,853 civilians were killed in Iraq between April fifth and October 5th, 2004 and15,517 civilians were wounded.

 

[ska invita]

So by his method no one died in fallujah...

 

[richtea]

Full FCO statement here

 

[Barking_Mad]

Fallujah is 60% safe.
Fallujah is 70% safe
'We control Fallujah'
Fallujah is 100% safe.
and the rest.........

US marine and Iraqi soldier die in Fallujah fighting

An American Marine and an Iraqi soldier died in Fallujah today when they came under fire from rebel gunmen hiding in a house. Lieutenant General John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said the city is not yet completely in American and Iraqi government control.

“The town is not quite secure at this point,” Sattler said. He said the total US death toll so far in the Fallujah offensive stands at 51, with about 425 wounded in action. Sattler said residents who fled before the US led offensive will not be allowed back until conditions are safer. He said the resettlement would be done in phases, starting with residences in the northern part of Fallujah.

Fallujah normally has a population of about 200,000. The vast majority fled before the fighting began.“The town must be secure before we let the Fallujah people back in,” he said. He gave no specific estimate of when that would happen, saying only that it would take ”some time.”

 

[Barking_Mad]

If you've not seen this, check it out - its a superb piece of reporting from inside Iraq.

The Streets of Baghdad

Iraqi reaction to military vehicles in the city continues to be cold. Actually, more than cold-it has become notably hostile.

I was walking with my interpreter along one of the main streets of Baghdad when a couple of different times patrols rolled by of two Humvees with guns pointing out the windows at people and the machine gunners atop them swinging their guns back and forth at the rooftops of buildings. Each time men nearby said to nobody in particular, “Get off our streets with your guns,” “You aren’t here to protect us you bastards,” or as one man laughed to his friend, “Can’t you see we have no weapons of mass destruction? Now go home!”

A little later a group of two white SUV’s full of (I presume) CIA and/or mercenaries followed by a GMC with several large antennae rolled down the road with their guns pointing out the tinted windows at pedestrians. As the GMC passed, the back was open because inside was literally a machine gun bunker-a black metal shield covered the opening, with a small rectangle on the top portion which had the barrel of a large caliber machine gun hanging out of it.

I noted several Iraqis around me shaking their heads who watched this entourage pass.....

....“The government only cares about themselves. They are obviously not here to help Iraq. It is such a simple thing to fix a hole in the street, you can just bring asphalt and fill it with a shovel…and they cannot even do this. You can see the city is rubbish…so how can they fix the big problems like the fighting? Fallujah is now a disaster and the resistance is everywhere around Iraq. They can do nothing because they are powerless. There is no army or police here worth anything. This is worse than the war in Lebanon. There is no solution.”

 

[butchersapron]

Don't think this has been mentioned yet:

New Report Mass Graves Of US Soldiers

Nov 16, 2004
By Bruce Kennedy, JUS

In August, reports began surfacing about incidents of dead American bodies being dumped into the Diali River by US helicopters in the early morning hours. Fishermen on the Diali river area , a small river originates in Iran and ends at Deglah, 60 kilometer east of Baghdad, were the first to notice the American practice of dumping bodies wrapped in black plastic bags from helicopters at dawn time into the river. Some of the bodies, still wrapped in plastic bags, were caught in their fishing nets.

Over the next few weeks more bodies were found in other locations including Al-Tharthar in Sammara and Wadi Hairan in Al-Ratibah. The bodies have been collected and buried in the general areas of those locations.

A new report has now surfaced on the Arabic website abolkhaseb.net, accompanied by some footage, which provides an in-depth analysis of the discovery of the bodies. The writer of the five page report (in Arabic) goes into great detail details about locations and how the bodies were dumped in rivers and remote desert locations. The author claims to have talked to two American female soldiers and an American communications officer who reluctantly confirmed the finding but said that most of these bodies were mercenaries who were promised high paying job and in some case US citizenship.

 

[bigfish]

 

[bigfish]

Greeks Protest US Aggressions in Fallujah:

At least 13,000 Greeks marched in downtown Athens on Wednesday, November 17, to protest the US military offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2004-11/18/article01.shtml

 

[ska invita]

New Report Mass Graves Of US Soldiers

This could be a BIG story...

 

[Barking_Mad]

is it on the internet anywhere else?

 

[Barking_Mad]

I need a lie down - its the first time Ive seen a major news organisation report that some of the fighting is down to a 'home grown resistance'.

U.S. wins Falluja but struggles elsewhere

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S.-led assault on Falluja was meant to pacify Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland ahead of January elections threatened by bloody rebellion. But with fighting erupting in other Sunni cities across Iraq and mounting threats of a poll boycott, analysts say U.S. forces are far from winning the wider fight for the hearts and minds of disaffected Iraqis.

Curfews have been imposed on at least five other cities, including the capital Baghdad, since U.S. and Iraqi forces attacked Falluja 11 days ago. American troops have battled insurgents in Iraq's third largest city, Mosul, after they overran police stations and seized control of entire neighbourhoods. "They have been saying that Falluja is the source of and therefore the solution to their problems. The violence in Mosul has shown that to be a crassly stupid thing to say," said Toby Dodge, an Iraq analyst at Queen Mary University of London.

"Insurgency is a national phenomenon fuelled by alienation. I don't think this war is winnable because they have alienated the base of support across Iraqi society." U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledge that foreign Islamists and hardcore Baathists leading the insurgency from Falluja slipped out of the city before the offensive. Some say they headed to other Sunni cities where they are behind attacks on Iraqi police and National Guards the government eventually wants to take control of Iraq's security.

...........

"American forces can continue to swat down these outbreaks as they have to but the real challenge is to get Iraqi security forces ready and to help do the job," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington-based defence research tank.

........

Some who once looked forward to casting their ballot say Falluja proved they were being squeezed between a long-oppressed Shi'ite majority in the south and semi-autonomous Kurds in the north -- both of which have much to gain from elections. "I am 100 percent against the attack on Falluja. They are attacking people in their homes," said Hasan Attiyeh, a young graduate who runs a clothing shop in the eastern city of Baquba. "I will not vote. Can I vote for Iyad Allawi? Ghazi al-Yawar? What have they done for us?"

Iraq's government has vowed to hit the rebels, who it says are led by foreign fighters, wherever they are in the country.

But persistent violence in Samarra, which Iraqi officials said was pacified in an October offensive, has shown a large part of the insurgency is fuelled by homegrown opposition to the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

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

"The victory in Falluja has highlighted the bankruptcy of the military strategy," Dodge said.

"The fight against insurgency is 90 percent political and no one in the Pentagon is listening."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Attacks on Iraqi oil infrastructure in the last 8 days, roughly from when the Fallujah assault started.

November 9 - explosion on oil pipeline near the Safa, 44 miles (70 km) southwest of Kirkuk.

November 10 - attack on gas pipeline connecting the Khubbaz fields to the Northern Gas Company.

November 13 - attack at Taji, 12 miles (19km) north of Baghdad on oil pipeline that runs to the Daura refinery in Baghdad.

November 14 - four oil wells set afire in the Khubbaz oilfield west of Kirkuk. The wells had been pumping 10-15,000 bpd of oil a piece.

November 15 - blast on oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan in Safra 37 miles (50 km) west of Kirkuk.

November 15 - gunmen set ablaze a storage depot and pumping station along the oil pipeline to Ceyhan near Ain al Jahish, 60 miles (96 km) south of Mosul.

November 15 - explosion at 11pm near Sarai, 47 miles (75 km) west of Kirkuk, on oil pipeline that feeds the Bayji refinery.

November 15 - explosion at 11pm near Riyadh, 25 miles (40 km) west of Kirkuk, on gas pipeline that feeds the power station in Bayji.

November 17 - blast at 1am on oil pipeline from the Bai Hassan field, 30 miles (42 km) west of Kirkuk, to storage facilities in Dibis, 20 miles (32 km) west of Kirkuk.

November 17 - bomb on oil well in Barajwan, 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Kirkuk.

November 17 - blast at 8am 2.5 miles (4 km) west of Samarrah on pipeline from Bayji to the Daura refinery in Baghdad.

All recorded attacks on Iraqi pipelines can be seen here: http://www.iags.org/iraqpipelinewatch.htm

 

[Barking_Mad]

updates....

US forces storm Iraqi hospital
Iraqi commandos, backed by United States forces, raided a hospital in northern Mosul allegedly used by insurgents, and detained three people overnight, the US military said on Friday.

Rebels hit governor's office in Mosul
Insurgents attacked the governor's office in Mosul on Thursday, even as the Iraqi government declared that the rebel uprising in the northern city had failed

Fierce clashes erupt in Baghdad
Clashes have broken out in Iraq after Iraqi national guardsmen raided a Sunni mosque in Baghdad's Adhamiya neighbourhood after weekly Friday prayers.

Two Iraqi soldiers 'beheaded'
THE group led by al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it had beheaded two Iraqi National Guards in broad daylight in Mosul, according to a statement found on an Islamist site today.

Brits Under Fierce Missile Fire In Baghdad
Camp Dogwood has been targeted by at least five missiles packed with explosives in one of the heaviest days of shelling since British forces arrived in central Iraq.

Rare Blood Infection Surfaces in Injured U.S. Soldiers
A total of 102 soldiers were found to be infected with the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii. The infections occurred among soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and three other sites ....

From yesterday

Fierce clashes erupt in Fallujah
U.S. air strikes continued on the southern outskirts of the city, one photographer reported, even after a U.S. marine officer had said Wednesday that the "the battle is over."

U.S., Iraq Arrest More Than 100 in Raid
U.S. and Iraqi forces swept Thursday through an insurgent neighborhood in central Baghdad, arresting 104 suspected guerrillas

Update on Iraqi Christian Pastor Shot by Terrorists
An Iraqi Christian leader who was shot three weeks ago by Muslim extremists is in stable condition but has been paralyzed from the chest down, according to reports

1-17 Cavalry deploys to Iraq
About 300 paratroopers from the 1st Squadron, 17 Cavalry, 82nd Airborne Division, deployed to Iraq from Green Ramp, Pope Air Force Base

 

[invisibleplanet]

This could be a BIG story...

the video has disappeared, but the story is also on http://www.infowars.com/articles/iraq/mass_graves_us_soldiers.htm

 

[Barking_Mad]

You know you have problems when the Fallujan clerics call for revenge as they bury the bodies of those the US have just laid waste to.

Grim, angry rites as Falluja buries its dead

Falluja (Iraq), November 19: The urban battlefield of Falluja is disgorging its dead. Slowly. Another truckload of bodies reached the outskirts of the city for burial on Friday in a ceremony marked by anger at US troops, who say they killed 1,200 Iraqi and foreign fighters. With Marines scouring the largely deserted city house by house and occasionally clashing with remnants of the insurgent force, travel in or out is limited but the Americans have allowed local voluntary organisations to retrieve some bodies. Two dozen arrived on a truck at the dusty outlying village of Saqlawiya on Friday, greeted by a crowd of about 150 men who removed the corpses from military body bags to try to identify them and to bury them in shrouds, according to Muslim custom.

Amid the flies and stench of the blackened and bloated bodies, apparently dead for many days, identification was next to impossible but most appeared to be of men of fighting age and at least one wore an ammunition vest. US commanders say they do not believe civilians were killed during the offensive begun 11 days ago. Some pits had been dug in expectation alongside several other freshly covered graves bearing simple headstones on a barren stretch of waste ground among electricity pylons.

As onlookers stood in line to hear the traditional prayers for the dead, the preacher also called for revenge on Americans and their Iraqi allies, who believe the assault on Falluja has "broken the back" of the Sunni Muslim insurgency. "We ask you God to be merciful," the preacher chanted.

"Shake the earth beneath the feet of the Americans, shake the earth beneath the feet of the Crusaders, shake the earth beneath the feet of the hypocrites that help them. "God grant victory to Iraq." Falluja, most of whose population of 300,000 fled before the assault, has been a bastion of revolt against the US-backed Iraqi interim government. Some in the city, just west of Baghdad, fear that planned elections will lead to them being dominated by the long-oppressed Shi'ite Muslim majority.

'Camp Incoming' under fire

Hundreds of British soldiers have come under fierce rocket fire at their camp outside Baghdad. Camp Dogwood has been targeted by at least five missiles packed with explosives in one of the heaviest days of shelling since British forces arrived in central Iraq. The British base is 25-miles south-west of Baghdad and home to 550 members of the Black Watch and more than 100 Queen's Dragoon Guards. Royal Engineers were caught in the open when the first rocket fell but managed to flee to safety in brick buildings on the site.

He said: "Rockets from up to ten miles away were dropping on to the camp but the launchers were well out beyond the range of the battalion's mortars.

"Dogwood has been hit by dozens of incoming rounds but this attack was the most intense with six rounds slamming into the camp in just over an hour." No casualties have been reported.

The rockets are being fired from the desert in the west and from the banks of the Euphrates river in the east where high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's regime had homes. Sgt Parsley, 33, said: "It could be former Special Republican Guards firing them from their back gardens. There's been a lot of them. You get to know the sound of one coming in." Soldiers in the camp have renamed it 'Camp Incoming'.

 

[Barking_Mad]

My bold emphisis. 'Insurgent hsopital' there goes another one.

US forces storm Iraqi hospital

Baghdad - Iraqi commandos, backed by United States forces, raided a hospital in northern Mosul allegedly used by insurgents, and detained three people overnight, the US military said on Friday.

Commandos with the Ministry of Interior's Special Police Force cordoned off the al-Zaharawi Hospital in the western Shefa neighbourhood of Mosul on Thursday, after getting information that insurgents were using the hospital to treat their wounded, said Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings with Task Force Olympia.

..........

"You can call it an insurgent hospital from what we found there," he said. "There is really no telling, they could have easily have... just barged their way in and used this hospital. They probably just went in and took it over.

"There are a lot of things to be answered. The three detained will hopefully provide intelligence how all this worked," he said.

Offensive operations were continuing in the rest of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city with more than a million residents, he said. Earlier this week, Interior Minister Falah Hassan al-Naqib said that insurgents had kidnapped a wounded policeman from a Mosul hospital and dismembered him. The November 14 kidnapping took place at a different hospital, Hastings said.

US and Iraqi troops began a major military operation on Tuesday to wrest control of the western part of the city after gunmen last week stormed police stations, bridges and political offices, overwhelming police forces who, in many places, failed to even put up a fight. Some officers also allegedly co-operated with insurgents. The US military said up to 2 500 US and Iraqi troops met "little resistance" during initial operations to re-secure about a dozen police stations and key bridges in the city. On Friday, three of the five bridges had been reopened to traffic and most of the city remained calm, though US forces came under some "indirect fire" that caused no injuries, Hastings said. Insurgents had fired mortars on Thursday at the provincial administration offices in the northern city of Mosul, wounding four of Governor Duraid Kashmoula's guards, the US military said. The governor was unhurt.

 

[Raisin D'etre]

More lies and disparaging of the Lancet Report by Straw....

The Lancet’s researchers acknowledge that they encountered no evidence of widespread wrongdoing on the part of individual Multi-National Force (MNF) soldiers on the ground. Jack Straw

Straw cleverly sidesteps the issue of indiscriminate aerial bombardment with this one deft statement from his hypnotic speech. Lancet said "Eighty-four percent of the deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery."

Of those, 61 deaths were attributed to Coalition forces, most of them in Fallujah, a sample which the authors admit is an “extreme statistical outlier”.

This is a blatant lie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lancet said "It happens, that the one place with a lot of bombings, Falluja, and we excluded that from our 100,000 estimate....thus if anything, assuming that there has not been any intensive bombing in Iraq.".

 

[invisibleplanet]

Major aid organisation quits Iraq

One of the few remaining aid agencies in Iraq is pulling out of the country.
World Vision announced it was ending operations, following the murder of its senior manager in Iraq, and attacks on other aid workers.
World Vision has been in Iraq for 18 months, and says it has helped about 600,000 people, by improving schools, hospitals, clinics, and water supplies.
Agencies like Care International and Medecins Sans Frontieres have already quit Iraq, saying it is too dangerous.
World Vision's Iraqi head of operations, Mohammed Hushiar, was shot dead by unknown gunmen in a crowded cafe in the northern city of Mosul on 29 September.
<snip>
Care ceased operations Mrs Hassan was kidnapped. She was apparently murdered weeks later.
source:

media reports are attempting to point to Zarqawi having fled Fallujah to Mosul, US troops say they have found an apparent command centre used by wanted militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Falluja.

According to CNN’s footage, the suspected al-Zarqawi command centre was in an imposing house with concrete columns and a large sign in Arabic reading “Al Qaida Organisation” and “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger”.

Al-Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaida in Iraq, is considered the deadliest terrorist network in the country, held responsible for a string of deadly car bombings and gruesome kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages, including Briton Kenneth Bigley.

Inside the building, US soldiers found documents, old computers, notebooks, photographs and copies of the Koran. Several bodies also were found.

There were also two letters inside the house, one from al-Zarqawi giving instructions to two of his lieutenants. Another sought money and help from the terrorist leader.

Iraqi authorities have acknowledged that al-Zarqawi, along with other insurgent leaders, escaped from Fallujah
source: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3777324

other sources mentioning the Zarqawi flight from Fallujah: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1279442/posts

 

[Barking_Mad]

Meanwhile, the top US marine commander in Iraq said the US-led assault on Falluja has "broken the back of the insurgency" in Iraq by taking away its safe haven, scattering operatives and disrupting their command networks.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9460A4FC-FB5F-4203-8E53-FDEBE97B6014.htm

Here's a quote I dug up from the 22nd January 2004 when a similar statement was made.....

A top American general in Iraq says the US army has brought supporters of Saddam Hussein "to their knees".

Major General Raymond Odierno also said he thought there would be a return to "some normalcy" within six months.

"Capturing Saddam was a major operational and psychological defeat for the enemy," he said.

General Odierno commands the 4th Infantry Division occupying an area north of Baghdad up to the oil fields of Kirkuk and the border of Iran.

"The former regime elements we've been combating have been brought to their knees," he said from Tikrit speaking via video link to reporters at the Pentagon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3421255.stm

 

[Barking_Mad]

Car Bomb Targets Baghdad Police, Several Casualties

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded as a convoy of five police cars drove past in Baghdad on Friday and there were several casualties, police said. Thick smoke rose from the site of the blast and ambulance sirens wailed. Guerrillas have repeatedly targeted Iraq's police and security forces.

Iraqi police have arrested a senior aide to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr in the southern city of Najaf, his spokesman says

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4025171.stm