*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

Kill Iraqi Foreign Ministry Official

Gunmen assassinated a top Iraqi Foreign Ministry official Saturday evening in a drive-by shooting while he stood outside his Baghdad home, police said. Jassim Mohammed Ghani, the ministry's director-general, was killed at about 9 p.m. ...

Warrants out for former Iraqi ministers

Iraqi authorities have issued arrest warrants against two former Cabinet ministers as the country's new government cracks down on widespread corruption, a lawmaker and the prime minister's office said Saturday.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Fallujah - safe as houses......ermm not.

Coalition Warplanes Fire Near Fallujah

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Coalition warplanes fired precision-guided missiles near Fallujah on Saturday, destroying two unoccupied buildings that the military identified as an insurgent command center.

U.S. Marines based in the area said the targeted buildings were about 20 miles northwest of Fallujah, the scene of a large scale November campaign west of Baghdad to rout militants responsible for multiple attacks.

``Coalition aircraft today bombed two unoccupied buildings outside Fallujah that had been used as an insurgent command center, weapons hide site and detention and possible torture facility,'' the military said in a statement.

It was unclear what country the planes came from or if the attack caused any casualties. Fallujah is 40 miles west of Baghdad.

Ground forces inspected the site after the bombings and discovered mortar rounds, machine gun ammunition, homemade bomb making materials and anti-coalition propaganda, the statement added.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Kidnapped Iraqi Governor Freed

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Gunmen freed the kidnapped governor of Iraq's western Anbar province Sunday after U.S. troops ended a weeklong offensive in the region, relatives and a government official said.

Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was kidnapped May 10 as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi. The kidnappers later called his family and said they were holding the governor until U.S. forces pull out of Qaim, a Syrian border town about 200 miles west of Baghdad.

But the governor's cousin, Safi Jalal, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the captive had been freed.

"He was released and he is currently in the (village) of Obeidi,'' he said. "People celebrated by firing shots in the air.''

 

[Barking_Mad]

Bodies of 13 Men Discovered in Sadr City

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The bodies of 13 blindfolded and bound men were found shot multiple times in the head execution style in Baghdad's Sadr City on Sunday, police said. The grisly discovery came as two separate drive-by shootings in Baghdad killed a senior Industry Ministry official, his driver and a Shiite cleric.

Police Lt. Col. Shaker Wadi Al-Maliki said the 13 slain men, most appearing to be in their early 20s, were discovered early Sunday wearing civilian clothes and lying in a shallow grave in a vacant lot in eastern Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City.

Judging by the nature of the wounds and the condition of the bodies, police officials believed the men were shot either late Saturday or early Sunday.

An Associated Press photographer saw the bodies lying in the grave with their hands tied behind their back, eyes blindfolded and at least three bullet wounds in each of their heads.

Also on Sunday, two carloads of gunmen opened fire on an Industry Ministry official and his driver, killing both in a hail of bullets, police Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim said.

The victims were traveling in a pickup truck through Baghdad's Al-Gazaliya area when they were attacked, Karim said.

An Interior Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified one of the victims as Col. Jassam Muhammed al-Lahibi, a former intelligence officer who worked as an assistant director in charge of government-owned buildings.

Industry Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.

In another drive-by shooting, unidentified attackers killed Shiite cleric, Sheik Qassim al-Gharawi, and his nephew at about 9 a.m. in the capital's New Baghdad neighborhood, according to police Lt. Col. Ahmed Aboud.

The violence came the same day that Secretary of State of Condoleezza Rice arrived in Iraq for a one-day visit. She met with political leaders to discuss the new government's upcoming tasks, including writing a constitution.

Rice was the first senior American official to visit the country since the new government was sworn in. Her trip was weeks in the planning, but kept secret even from top State Department officials until the last minute.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Ouch.

$50 bln more asked for US Iraq, Afghan, terror wars

WASHINGTON, May 13 (Reuters) - The Senate Armed Services Committee has recommended a further $50 billion be set aside to fund U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S.-declared global war on terrorism. The proposed new war spending for fiscal 2006, which starts Oct. 1, would push the cost of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath toward $250 billion, far ahead of initial expectations voiced by the Bush administration.

Officials advocating the invasion played down the financial cost. Then White House budget director Mitch Daniels predicted Iraq would be "an affordable endeavor". The recommendation for fresh emergency spending was sent to the full Senate on Thursday night as part of a bill that also would authorize $441.6 billion in regular defense spending in fiscal 2006, a 3.1 percent real increase over last year's authorized sum.

Three days ago Congress gave final approval for an $82 billion emergency war-spending bill, of which about $76 billion would go to war-fighting. Even with such a large, emergency funding measure, the Pentagon has said more money would be needed as early as October. By 2010, war costs could top $500 billion, some experts have projected.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Hearts & erm....Minds

NPR reporter Philip Reeves followed American soldiers around Mosul. At one point, the soldiers decided to take over a civilian house for two hours as a surveillance post.

A lieutenant said to the surprised family of the house, ''Listen to me. Let me make this really clear for you. We need to be in your house for two hours. Everybody in this house will stay here."

When the family continue to appear to be ''baffled and unhappy," another soldier stepped in and said (with obscenities bleeped out by NPR): ''Look, check this out. You tell them this. You're not [bleep] leaving. Nobody's [bleep] leaving this house. You're not using the phone. Anybody comes, they're going to [bleep] stay here. OK? You give me a [bleep] hard time, I'll turn you [bleep] guys into the commandos, and they'll [bleep] you up."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Interesting read re: media

So the phone rings and I answered it while trying to navigate Memorial Drive in Cambridge - yes, at that moment I was the jerk on his cell phone who almost kills you with his car - and on the line is a producer from MSNBC who wanted me on the Connie Chung show. Hot damn, I thought. This is getting serious. The producer wanted me on the show to talk about Hans Blix and the weapons inspections taking place in Iraq. Great, I said. Yeah, she went on, we want you to talk about how the inspectors are doing a really bad job.

So picture this moment. There I was, trying to drive down one of the worst roads in Cambridge with a cell phone the size of a gallon of milk stuck to my ear, and I have this MSNBC producer telling me that if I go on the show, I have to dump all over the inspectors who at that time had been in-country about a week. Coincidentally, that was exactly the same line of rhetoric being pushed by the White House at exactly that time. I'm sure the look on my face was priceless, and I'm lucky me, the car and the giant cell phone didn't wind up in the Charles River.


I asked her if she knew who she was talking to. She didn't understand. My book, I told her, says there are no weapons of mass destruction and therefore no reason to go to war there. I'm the last person on the planet, therefore, who is going to haul water for the idea that there are weapons in Iraq. Furthermore, I said, I don't know where you get off trying to gin up resentment against the inspectors. They just got there, and if they can finish their work without getting derailed by nonsense like this, it'll hopefully keep a lot of people from getting killed. The MSNBC producer laughed quietly - that's the part I will never forget, how she laughed - and hung up.

For me, that's it in a nutshell. That's what ails us as a nation. The corporate media does not report the news anymore. They create consensus, they manufacture the common fictions under which we are expected to live. With the TV media, this behavior is all the more insidious because TV reaches everyone.

Television is the most extraordinarily effective tool of mass control that has ever been invented by anyone anywhere.

 

[Barking_Mad]

more mass killings.....

34 bodies discovered in Iraq

Iraqi authorities say they have discovered the bodies of 34 people who had been killed execution-style then dumped in three separate locations. Iraqi police said they had found the bodies of 13 people who were shot dead and left in a garbage dump in Baghdad.

A police official said the handcuffed men, mostly bearded, were shot in the head and left in an area of eastern Baghdad.

"Residents of the area called us and said a garbage truck came early this morning and dumped the bodies and we confirmed it," a police official said. Police in Iskandariya, a town south of Baghdad, said they found 11 bodies on Sunday.

Four of the corpses had been beheaded and at least three were identified as Iraqi soldiers. The corpses of 10 Iraqi soldiers killed by insurgents have also been found in the western city of Ramadi, the Defence Ministry said.

In a statement, it said the bodies were found on Saturday and the men had been dead for around two days. Ramadi, 110 kilometres west of Baghdad, is one of the strongholds of the insurgency in Iraq. Insurgents have killed scores of Iraqis they suspect of ties to US troops or the Iraqi government and dumped their bodies.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq is a bloody no man's land. America has failed to win the war. But has it lost it?

Iraq is a bloody no man's land. America has failed to win the war. But has it lost it? And in Afghanistan, the Taliban rises again for fighting season "The battlefield is a great place for liars," Stonewall Jackson once said on viewing the aftermath of a battle in the American civil war.

The great general meant that the confusion of battle is such that anybody can claim anything during a war and hope to get away with it. But even by the standards of other conflicts, Iraq has been particularly fertile in lies. Going by the claims of President George Bush, the war should long be over since his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech on 1 May 2003. In fact most of the 1,600 US dead and 12,000 wounded have become casualties in the following two years.

The ferocious resistance encountered last week by the 1,000-strong US marine task force trying to fight its way into villages around the towns of Qaim and Obeidi in western Iraq shows that the war is far from over. So far nine marines have been killed in the week-long campaign, while another US soldier was killed and four wounded in central Iraq on Friday. Meanwhile, a car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in central Baghdad yesterday, killing at least five Iraqis and injuring 12.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, the leader of one of the Kurdish parties, confidently told a meeting in Brasilia last week that there is war in only three or four out of 18 Iraqi provinces. Back in Baghdad Mr Talabani, an experienced guerrilla leader, has deployed no fewer than 3,000 Kurdish soldiers or peshmerga around his residence in case of attack. One visitor was amused to hear the newly elected President interrupt his own relentlessly upbeat account of government achievements to snap orders to his aides on the correct positioning of troops and heavy weapons around his house.

There is no doubt that the US has failed to win the war. Much of Iraq is a bloody no man's land. The army has not been able to secure the short highway to the airport, though it is the most important road in the country, linking the US civil headquarters in the Green Zone with its military HQ at Camp Victory.

 

[nino_savatte]

the US civil headquarters in the Green Zone with its military HQ at Camp Victory

Naming a base Camp Victory was wishful thinking - non? Either that or it's another example of American denial.

 

[Gumbert]

While watching Bob Mcnamara in the drama doc - The Fog of War, up flashed all the named Vietnam operations, one being...

Operation Victory

what goes round, comes back round eh...

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.S. troops, insurgents clash in Mosul

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. troops and militants clashed in this northern city on Tuesday, with heavy exchanges of machine gun fire being heard, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. U.S. forces were seen advancing into the eastern neighborhood of Dhubbat, a known insurgent stronghold in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. Heavy machine gun exchanges were taking place in the area between militants and U.S. forces, said the AP reporter who witnessed the clashes from the rooftop of a nearby home. American helicopters were also seen circling overhead.

It was unclear what sparked the clashes or if there were any casualties. Efforts to contact American forces in Mosul were not immediately successful; the U.S. military in Baghdad said it was not aware of any operation in Mosul. A statement released by U.S. and Iraqi forces in Mosul said troops had detained nine suspected terrorists in separate operations conducted Monday and Tuesday. The statement said the operations took place in central and western Mosul and provided no further details. It was not immediately clear if the operations were related to the ongoing clashes in Dhubbat.

Netherlands to withdraw troops from Iraq

The Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende announced the withdrawal of all Dutch troops from Iraq. All 1350 military personnel are expected to be back home before mid March.

'Martyrs' In Iraq Mostly Saudis

......Who are the suicide bombers of Iraq? By the radicals' account, they are an internationalist brigade of Arabs, with the largest share in the online lists from Saudi Arabia and a significant minority from other countries on Iraq's borders, such as Syria and Kuwait. The roster of the dead on just one extremist Web site reviewed by The Washington Post runs to nearly 250 names, ranging from a 13-year-old Syrian boy said to have died fighting the Americans in Fallujah to the reigning kung fu champion of Jordan, who sneaked off to wage war by telling his family he was going to a tournament.

Among the dead are students of engineering and English, the son of a Moroccan restaurateur and a smattering of Europeanized Arabs. There are also long lists of names about whom nothing more is recorded than a country of origin and the word "martyr."

Some counterterrorism officials are skeptical about relying on information from publicly available Web sites, which they say may be used for disinformation. But other observers of the jihadist Web sites view the lists of the dead "for internal purposes" more than for propaganda, as British researcher Paul Eedle put it. "These are efforts on the part of jihadis to collate deaths. It's like footballers on the Net getting a buzz out of knowing somebody's transferred from Chelsea to Liverpool." Or, as Col. Thomas X. Hammes, an expert on insurgency with the National Defense University, said, "they are targeted marketing. They are not aimed at the West."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Minimum number of Iraqis dead this month 568

Minimum number of dead Iraqis this year 3,217

Minimum number of dead Iraqis on the 16th May 74

I dont keep the links, but here's a list of the recorded deaths from yesterday.......

"Nine bodies were found in the Tigris river south-east of Baghdad where up to 60 victims have been found over the past two months. "

"Another body was also found Monday, this time an Iraqi Kurd shot in the head and chest and left in a garbage dump in Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said. An AP reporter saw the victim, identified by police as Najat Saadoun, with his hands tied behind his back."

"…..two suicide bombers blew themselves up near a town courthouse just north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing five other people and narrowly missing a regional governor"

"Armed men also opened fire on an Iraqi National Guard patrol, killing two civilians and wounding three people, one of them a guardsman and the others civilians, the official said."

"A roadside bomb killed two Iraqis and wounded two other Iraqis and an American -- all security contractors working for a Western firm -- in eastern Baghdad on Monday night, Iraqi police said. "

"Two car bombs at the Baghdad market went off in quick succession, killing the nine soldiers and a civilian. The second blast targeted soldiers who rushed to help the victims of the first explosion."

"A suicide car bomber killed at least five people and wounded 30 at a customs checkpoint near Iraq's border with Syria on Monday, an Iraqi official said. Some of the wounded were in critical condition, he said. "

"In central Baghdad, a mortar fell on the College of Engineering, killing two students and wounding 12 others. It is believed that the same group opened fire on local shops,leaving at least one man dead, the official said."

"In Al Muwelha, armed men attacked a preliminary school, two teachers were killed. In Sadat al Hindiya a police officer and his wife were killed by an unidentified armed group and their three children were badly wounded. "

"At least eight Iraqis were found shot near a Baghdad dam and a slain Iraqi Kurd was left in a garbage dump in northern Iraq, police said Monday"

"The three men -- two journalists and a driver -- were on their way back to Baghdad from the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala when they were ambushed near the towns of Mahmudiya and Latafiya in the lawless area known as the triangle of death"

"The bodies of 12 Iraqi men, all of whom had been shot dead, have been found dumped in northeastern Baghdad, police said on Monday. They said the bodies had been found overnight."

 

[Barking_Mad]

20 Iraqi Militants Killed in Mosul Clash

U.S. forces were seen advancing into the eastern neighborhood of Dhubbat, a known insurgent stronghold in Iraq's third-largest city, which is 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. The city has suffered well-organized attacks by insurgents and dozens of deadly car bombs in past months.

U.S. military spokesman Sgt. John H. Franzen said American troops were investigating reports that a homemade bomb was planted in the area when they came under fire from militants.

"Forces were attacked and called in helicopters to support them in the battle with insurgents," Franzen said. He added that U.S. soldiers reported minimal damage to the two buildings and found no injured or dead insurgents.

But Lt. Gen. Ahmad Mohammed Khalaf, commander of Mosul's police forces, told a press conference later that U.S. aircraft destroyed two homes where the militants were holed up, killing 20.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Interview with an embedded reporter who was on the US mission near the Syrian border.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june05/iraq_5-16.html

 

[Barking_Mad]

Three corpses of Iraqi soldiers found in Qa''em

Iraqi military forces found the dead bodies of three Iraqi soldiers in the town of Qa'em, in western Iraq. An Iraqi Army source told reporters that two of the soldiers were shot dead, and the third was beheaded.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi Village Scarred After U.S. Offensive

ROMMANA, Iraq - For nearly a week, this dusty farming village near the Syrian border was surrounded by armored troop carriers on the ground and helicopter gunships overhead. Then, suddenly, the fighting stopped. The U.S. military declared a major offensive against followers of Iraq's most wanted terrorist officially over Saturday, and farmers here went back to tending their potatoes and pistachios.

Flattened homes, bullet-pocked walls and two charred personnel carriers at the entrance to the Sunni Arab village stood as testimony to the violent upheaval. One of the walls of the local mosque had collapsed, and dozens of buildings were damaged by shells and machine-gun fire. A gaping crater in the bridge linking Rommana and Husaybah reduced traffic to a crawl across the Euphrates River.

The U.S. military said it "neutralized" an insurgent haven in the remote desert region of western Iraq used by supporters of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But residents here remained defiant.

"The village witnessed heavy fighting, but despite that they (the Americans) were not able to enter it," said one man, who gave his name only as Abu Abdullah. The U.S. military said it killed an estimated 125 insurgents during the campaign through villages along the Euphrates River to the Syrian border. Nine Marines also died, but the civilian toll remains uncounted.

Dr. Hamid al-Alousi, director of the hospital in nearby Qaim, said at least 35 Iraqis were killed and more than 70 wounded in Rommana and nearby Karabilah, where fierce clashes took place. But his claim could not be verified, and it was impossible to tell how many of the victims were fighters.

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.S. and Iraqi military forces detain journalists

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is demanding an explanation from U.S. and Iraqi military forces regarding the whereabouts of least eight Iraqi journalists who have been detained since March 2005

Generals Offer Sober Outlook on Iraqi War

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 18 - American military commanders in Baghdad and Washington gave a sobering new assessment on Wednesday of the war in Iraq, adding to the mood of anxiety that prompted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to come to Baghdad last weekend to consult with the new government.

In interviews and briefings this week, some of the generals pulled back from recent suggestions, some by the same officers, that positive trends in Iraq could allow a major drawdown in the 138,000 American troops late this year or early in 2006. One officer suggested Wednesday that American military involvement could last "many years."

Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American officer in the Middle East, said in a briefing in Washington that one problem was the disappointing progress in developing Iraqi police units cohesive enough to mount an effective challenge to insurgents and allow American forces to begin stepping back from the fighting. General Abizaid, who speaks with President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld regularly, was in Washington this week for a meeting of regional commanders.

In Baghdad, a senior officer said Wednesday in a background briefing that the 21 car bombings in Baghdad so far this month almost matched the total of 25 in all of last year.

 

[Barking_Mad]

House-to-house searches are a mainstay of the Marines' work in Iraq. They work their way through towns to look for insurgents, weapons and bombmaking material and to draw fire from anyone who might be looking for a fight. The young Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, estimated that in their first few months here, they had searched 1,000 houses.

Sometimes, the Marines busted up wooden furniture belonging to poor farm families and threw their polyester blankets and clothes in a jumble on the floor. A handful of the hundreds of Marines involved in Operation Matador walked out of homes with a pillow or blanket to cushion the ride in the Amtrac. Sometimes, Marines agreed at one commandeered house as they drank a rousted family's tea, they beat up suspicious-looking men if that was what it took to get information that could save lives.

At the end of a day of searches, Marines generally commandeer houses for the night, shooing the families out in case the Americans' presence makes the homes targets for attack...........

"Where the [expletive] are these guys?" Maj. Kei Braun exclaimed in frustration.

It was noon Friday. The Marines had swept Arabi and found only frightened Iraqi families hiding in their homes. They had found more bombs in the roads, but no enemy to fight.

Marines said many of the foreign fighters fled west into Syria or to Husaybah, a lawless Iraqi border town where foreign fighters and local tribesmen have battled each other this month for control, shooting it out in the streets with AK-47s and mortars, American officials say. But the Marines lack the manpower to go into Husaybah.

So, within sight of Syria, they searched caves in the high, sheer rock escarpment that circles part of Arabi. Seeing a man come out of a cave, look out and go back in, a U.S. helicopter crew shot a Hellfire missile. Commanders came on the radio. Those were ordinary Iraqis hiding inside the caves, the commanders said. Hold off.

"These people here, it's not their fault," Kalouf, a young combat engineer with a mission to blow things up, said at the house commandeered by Brown's platoon. "They're scared for their lives. I used to get mad at them, but now I understand."

The insurgents were the only enemies, but they wouldn't come out to fight. "Frankly, I'm tired of going around not seeing anything, not knowing anything, and then having Marines, guys I know, get blown up by mines," Kalouf said.

"I'd much rather foreign fighters come out and shoot at us. We can respond to that," Kalouf said, as the Americans got ready to head back across the Euphrates. "We can't stand all their IEDs and mines, crap like that. Because we can't do that.''

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/15/AR2005051500785_4.html

 

[Barking_Mad]

The Dead and the Undead

The last two weeks have been violent. The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations- bodies being found here and there. It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places. Many people will tell you it's not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river. That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night. It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.

The latest corpses were those of some Sunni and Shia clerics- several of them well-known. People are being patient and there is a general consensus that these killings are being done to provoke civil war. Also worrisome is the fact that we are hearing of people being rounded up by security forces (Iraqi) and then being found dead days later- apparently when the new Iraqi government recently decided to reinstate the death penalty, they had something else in mind.

But back to the explosions. One of the larger blasts was in an area called Ma'moun, which is a middle class area located in west Baghdad. It's a relatively calm residential area with shops that provide the basics and a bit more. It happened in the morning, as the shops were opening up for their daily business and it occurred right in front of a butchers shop. Immediately after, we heard that a man living in a house in front of the blast site was hauled off by the Americans because it was said that after the bomb went off, he sniped an Iraqi National Guardsman.

I didn't think much about the story- nothing about it stood out: an explosion and a sniper- hardly an anomaly. The interesting news started circulating a couple of days later. People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.

The bombs are mysterious. Some of them explode in the midst of National Guard and near American troops or Iraqi Police and others explode near mosques, churches, and shops or in the middle of sougs. One thing that surprises us about the news reports of these bombs is that they are inevitably linked to suicide bombers. The reality is that some of these bombs are not suicide bombs- they are car bombs that are either being remotely detonated or maybe time bombs. All we know is that the techniques differ and apparently so do the intentions. Some will tell you they are resistance. Some say Chalabi and his thugs are responsible for a number of them. Others blame Iran and the SCIRI militia Badir.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Hmmm..........

TURKEY LAUNCHES ATTACKS ON KURDISH BASES IN IRAQ

Turkey's military has launched strikes on Kurdish insurgency bases in northern Iraq. After two years of threats, Ankara has sent ground forces, attack helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to Kandil mountain strongholds of the Kurdish Workers Party. Most of the weapons used by Turkey were imported from the United States.

The government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has not reported the attacks. But Kurdish sources in southeastern Turkey said Ankara began attacks in late April against PKK strongholds with F-16 multi-role fighters, AH-1G attack helicopters and M-60 main battle tanks.

The Turkish military said in a statement this week that PKK insurgents were infiltrating Turkey from Iraq in increasing numbers. The military said the insurgents were bringing large amounts of explosives into Turkey.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq Torture: 'Claims Against Soldiers Swept under Carpet'

Allegations by nine Iraqi men who claim to have been tortured at the hands of British soldiers at an aid camp were set out today. The men say they were subjected to beatings and abuse at Camp Breadbasket, just outside Basra, in May 2003.

Their British human rights lawyer, Phil Shiner, called for an independent public inquiry and the men could ultimately attempt to sue for substantial damages. One claims he was kicked so hard in the genitals that he cannot have children and another says that British soldiers tried to get him to cut off the finger of a fellow Iraqi.

Mistreatment of civilian detainees at Breadbasket emerged in “trophy” photographs taken by a soldier, which included scenes of sexual humiliation. Four low-ranking soldiers were convicted over their roles in the scandal at courts-martial in Germany earlier this year. Two of the men are appealing.

But Mr Shiner said the court-martial process had been a “farce”, a “put-up job” and produced an “Alice in Wonderland” version of events. He said three of the alleged victims, including a man photographed being suspended from a forklift truck, had told their stories to him before the court-martial verdict.

Mr Shiner said he contacted the attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, to tell him of the development and was instructed to contact the Army Prosecuting Authority at the court-martial in Osnabruck. But he said he was told by them that the hearing would proceed without the men’s evidence and that, if he revealed it publicly during the court-martial process, he would be in contempt of court.

Mr Shiner claimed today that the men’s evidence had been “swept under the carpet” and that Lord Goldsmith had been “grossly deficient in exercising his provisions, which include supervising the Army Prosecuting Authority”.

He went on: “If he doesn’t give us an independent public inquiry – one by the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service would probably be good enough – then we will have to go through judicial review to force the issue.

“Here there is the clearest evidence that the military are incapable of prosecuting and investigating themselves.

“If they are allowed to, all we get is a whitewash and a few bad apples thrown to the dogs.

“Clearly, here something has gone badly wrong, officers were involved and a whole lot of people were abused.”

 

[Barking_Mad]

Bodies of 7 security men found in Iraq

Seven Iraqi Turkmen captured in an ambush on a security convoy near Falluja were found dead on Wednesday, shot in the head and with their hands bound, police said. Captain Ahmad Ali of Khalidiya police station said the bodies were dumped south of Falluja in Anbar province, one of the regions where the insurgency in Iraq is strongest.

Identity documents showed the men were ethnic Turkmen from Kirkuk who were working for a security firm, police said. Since Saturday, the bodies of about 60 people have been found dumped in various locations in Iraq.Insurgents often kidnap and kill Iraqis they accuse of cooperating with the security forces and dump their bodies as a warning to others.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq violence

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen killed an Oil Ministry official on Thursday and escalating violence claimed at least 18 more lives, fuelling fears Iraq may be moving towards civil war. The oil official, Ali Hameed, was shot outside his home as he left for work, a police official said.

Mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents have stepped up attacks on officials and security forces since a Shi'ite-led government was announced last month. They have killed more than 500 people in a campaign that has challenged government promises of stability. In the worst violence on Thursday, seven people were killed in clashes in the northern city of Mosul after insurgents attacked the house of a local Sunni Muslim politician, witnesses and hospital officials said. The politician, Fawwaz al-Jarba, said his driver and three guards were among the dead. He said U.S. troops backed by helicopters responded to his request for help.

In Baghdad, a university professor was shot dead, an Iraqi soldier was killed in a suicide bombing, and four other Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped. A roadside bomb also killed an American soldier in the capital, the U.S. military said. The escalation in violence has raised concerns the country could erupt into a full-scale civil war. Discoveries of people killed execution-style and dumped at various sites -- 50 have been found since Saturday -- have stirred sectarian passions. Most victims were Shi'ite Muslims but some were Sunnis.

A funeral service was held for Muhammad al-Allaq, a Shi'ite cleric who was gunned down on Wednesday, relatives said. Top Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari has publicly accused the Badr Brigades, the militia of the main Shi'ite political party, of assassinating Sunni preachers.

It was the first time Dhari publicly accused the armed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which was part of the Shi'ite coalition that won a majority in parliament in the historic January 30 elections.

Dhari's Muslim Clerics Association called for a three-day closure of Sunni mosques in protest at the killings and warned that Sunnis would not keep silent. The top Badr Brigades official denied the accusations and said Sunnis and Shi'ites should avoid sectarian strife.

 

[Barking_Mad]

At home in the rubble: siege city reborn as giant gated community

By the standards of most of the inhabitants of the Askari neighbourhood in Fallujah, Majid Ahmad should consider himself lucky. His house may have been looted of all its valuables, the windows smashed and several walls punched through by large chunks of shrapnel, but at least he still has a roof over his head.

“It’s not much, but I’m better off than my neighbours,” he said, pointing at the huge piles of rubble either side of his home, which workers were clearing with their bare hands in the baking sun yesterday. “I plan to move back in here tomorrow and then maybe my wife and children can follow. Being a refugee is worse.”

Like most of the residents of this luckless market town west of Baghdad, Mr Ahmad has the drawn, defeated look of someone who has endured one of the toughest experiences anywhere in postwar Iraq.

Fallujah, which was known for its many mosques, its strict tribal customs and its proud, some would say arrogant, citizens, has lurched from one bloody episode to another as it has earned the reputation as being the most dangerous city in Iraq.

Now a tour of Fallujah, once feared by foreigners as the headquarters of the most militant of the Islamic insurgents, is akin to visiting a violent psychiatric patient after a lobotomy. Children wave, shopkeepers smile, and it is even possible at dusk to walk through a residential neighbourhood with only the odd crack of distant gunfire punctuating an otherwise calm evening.

By the standards of Iraq today, Fallujah is peaceful. Where other cities are subjected to suicide car bombs, Fallujans stop meekly to allow US military convoys to overtake or wait for hours in long queues to be searched and checked before entering the municipal boundaries.

The reason for the city’s passivity is the thousands of US Marines who have built such a tight security cordon around it that it is jokingly referred to by the Americans as “Iraq’s largest gated community”. The Marines led the offensive last November to reclaim Fallujah, which had become the headquarters for the insurgency and a haven for militant Mujahidin volunteers, who flocked here from across the Arab world.

In the three-week battle, more than 1,000 insurgents and 38 Americans were killed, the city was left in ruins and the population homeless. The Americans vowed that it would never return to its former lawlessness.

“If we removed the controls, there is no doubt that those for whom we shed so much blood to remove would return to Fallujah once more,” Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Miles, one of the Marine commanders in the city, said.

Yet, with the controls in place, it is not clear that the city will ever recover properly. Only about half of Fallujah’s 250,000 population have returned home; large residential and commercial areas lie in ruins and basic services such as water and electricity are patchy at best. For those who do live in Fallujah, life is made even more difficult by the draconian security measures that make it difficult to conduct business and trade, the lifeblood of the city.

Each resident must obtain a security pass from the US military. The pass contains the holder’s names, other personal details, a photograph, fingerprints and an iris scan, which is fed into a computer and can be cross-checked with the names of suspected insurgents and former detainees. The cutting-edge biometic technology may give the Americans a security edge, but it has won them few friends.

“Everyone is out of work,” Shafi Mohammed Khalaf said. “I am a driver, but I am trapped in Fallujah. How can I drive when I can’t leave the city?” The restrictions have led to growing calls from local leaders for the need to ease the security cordon and allow normal life to return. Sheikh Khaled al-Jumaili, a formidable turbaned and bearded tribal chieftain who was elected head of the city council this week, boasted that Fallujah’s days of violence were over for good.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Military recruitment in US Schools

Garfield, whose highly diverse student body of 1,600 is 56.9 percent non-white, has taken controversial stands before. In 2002, it came up with a resolution opposing an invasion of Iraq.

The new PTSA anti-recruiting resolution states that joining the military can be a "life and death" decision.

Opinions on it have been strong from all quarters. Navy Chief Petty Officer Robert Born wrote in to the school's newspaper: "I find this to be quite bothersome, as it is the military that provides your school and our country the freedom to speak without fear of censorship."

 

[Barking_Mad]

update on violence

In violence elsewhere, a suicide bombing targeting the house of Iraqi national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, killed two civilians and wounded three in the Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah, police said.

After the explosion, gunmen in the nearby Azamiyah area opened fire at a U.S. base in Kazimiyah on the western side of the Tigris River, witnesses said. The gunmen later fled, they added. Witnesses reported seeing U.S. Apache attack helicopters firing rockets into the neighborhood.

A U.S. soldier also was killed early Friday in a vehicle accident caused by roadside bomb attack near Taji, 10 miles north of Baghdad, the military said. The soldier's identity was withheld pending notification of relatives.

At least 1,628 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A roadside bomb also destroyed a U.S. military truck and wounded an unspecified number of American soldiers on a highway in southeastern Baghdad, said a military spokeswoman and police Lt. Mazin Saeed.

A rocket attack on Abu Ghraib prison, western Baghdad, meanwhile, wounded five detainees, three seriously, the military said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

and from the above article.....

"From this platform, we warn the government not to fight the al-Sadr movement because all the tyrants of the world could not beat it," Hazim al-Araji, the imam of a mosque in Kufa during Friday;s sermon. "We say to the government do not be a tyrant like Saddam or (former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad) Allawi."

In the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Kufa, al-Sadr followers painted American and Israeli flags on most streets near mosques before stepping on them.

"Down, down Israel; down, down USA," chanted protesters following midday prayers at a Kufa mosque.

In Nasiriyah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, al-Sadr supporters clashed with guards at the headquarters of Dhi Qar provincial governor, Aziz Abed Alwan.

The fighting broke out before noon as about 2,000 members of al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Amy marched toward the cleric's local office, which is near the governor's headquarters.

Armed men guarding the headquarters shot toward the crowd in an apparent bid to disperse it, prompting retaliatory fire from al-Sadr supporters. Four policemen and four civilians were wounded, as were nine al-Sadr supporters, said Sheik al-Khafaji, an official at al-Sadr's Nasiriyah office.

Around Sunni mosques on Friday, clerics repeated a call from three of Iraq's most influential Sunni Muslim organizations for the places of worship to be shut for three days to protest alleged Shiite violence against them.

One of those organizations, the influential Sunni Muslim Association of Muslim Scholars, on Wednesday accused a Shiite militia of allegedly killing Sunni clerics - a charge the group denied.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Minimum number of Iraqi dead this year 3,267

Minumum number of Iraqi dead this month 618

Minimum number of Iraqi dead in the last week 119

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American dead this year 296

American dead this month 43

American dead in the last week 9

 

[Barking_Mad]

Two Iraqi soldiers killed, US gunships set house ablaze

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded five people, three of them soldiers, on Friday near a military convoy in the Baghdad Shiite neighbourhood of Kadhimiya, an interior ministry official said. Iraqi forces called in air support after the car bomb attack, the US military said.

Two US gunships responded, striking a house with at least four rockets and setting it on fire, an AFP correspondent said. It appeared the house was in the Sunni Muslim Adhamiya neighborhood. The US military did not say why the house was a target.

Iraqi forces came under mortar round fire in the area near the car bomb and US and Iraqi troops were involved in clashes around the Kadhimiya and Adhamiya neighbourhoods across the Tigris River. A second bomb targeted a US convoy in southeast Baghdad about an hour later, the official said. There were no immediate reports of casualties but a column of smoke could be seen rising over the area.