*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

Interesting read

Exit strategy: Civil war

"In reality, the electoral process was designed to legitimize the occupation, rather than ridding the country of the occupation ... Anyone who sees himself capable of bringing about political reform should go ahead and try, but my belief is that the occupiers won't allow him."
- Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr

As Shi'ites and Kurds fought for three months to come up with an Iraqi cabinet, it is emerging from Baghdad that soon a broad front will emerge on the political scene composed of politicians, religious leaders, clan and tribal sheikhs - basically Sunni but with Shi'ite participation - with a single-minded agenda: the end of the US-led occupation.

This front will include, among others, what we have termed the Sinn Fein component of the resistance, the powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) and the Sadrists. It will refuse any kind of dialogue with new Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and his government unless there's a definite timetable for the complete withdrawal of the occupation forces. Even the top Marine in Iraq, Major General Stephen Johnson, has admitted, "There will be no progress as long as the insurgents are not implicated in a political process."

But the proliferation of what many moderate Sunnis and Shi'ites suspect as being Pentagon-organized black ops is putting the emergence of this front in jeopardy. This is obvious when we see Harith al-Dhari - the AMS leader - blaming the Badr Brigades (the armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution - SCIRI - in Iraq, a major partner in the government) for the killing of Sunni Arab clerics.

Breaking up Iraq
Several Iranian websites have widely reported a plan to break up Iraq into three Shi'ite southern mini-states, two Kurdish mini-states and one Sunni mini-state - with Baghdad as the seat of a federal government. Each mini-state would be in charge of law and order and the economy within its own borders, with Baghdad in charge of foreign policy and military coordination. The plan was allegedly conceived by David Philip, a former White House adviser working for the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). The AFPC is financed by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has also funded both the ultra-hawkish Project for a New American Century and American Enterprise Institute.

The plan would be "sold" under the admission that the recently elected, Shi'ite-dominated Jaafari government is incapable of controlling Iraq and bringing the Sunni Arab guerrillas to the negotiating table. More significantly, the plan is an exact replica of an extreme right-wing Israeli plan to balkanize Iraq - an essential part of the balkanization of the whole Middle East. Curiously, Henry Kissinger was selling the same idea even before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Attacks over 9th & 10th June (11.30am)

Minimum number of dead - 28

June 10th -

In Basra, Iraq's second city and centre of the southern oilfield, Colonel Abdelkarim al-Daraji was shot dead in his car with a second person, a police officer said at the hospital where they had been taken. Witnesses said neither victim was in uniform when three or four gunmen swerved in front of their unmarked car and opened fire.

The bodies of 16 people who were killed execution-style have been discovered in western Iraq, witnesses said on Friday, the latest grisly killings fueling fears of civil war in Iraq. Police said on Wednesday that 22 Iraqi soldiers from the mainly Shi'ite south were kidnapped after leaving their base in the town of Qaim, a stronghold of the Sunni Muslim insurgency near the Syrian border."

June 9th -

Gunmen killed the head of an Iraqi police unit charged with fighting guerrilla violence in the troubled northern oil city of Kirkuk ... The colonel and a second senior officer were shot dead late on Thursday …

Two civilians were killed and another three injured when insurgents fired a mortar on their house south of Baghdad on Thursday. The insurgents were targeting an adjacent base used by multinational forces in Yusifiyah.

Six unidentified bodies have been found in the western Iraqi province of al-Anbar near the border with Syria, a defence ministry source says, a day after 22 Iraqi soldiers were reported captured in the area. "Six male bodies wearing civilian clothing were discovered early on Thursday by Iraqi police in Akachat, near al-Qaim, 450km west of Baghdad," the source said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Woodward: Administration had 'fever' to take down Iraq

WASHINGTON - President Bush asked for a plan to invade Iraq in November 2001, about three months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and at a time when U.S. forces were still in the midst of ousting the Taliban regime from Afghanistan. The timing of Bush's war planning, revealed in a book to be released Monday and confirmed Friday by the White House, is likely to fuel criticism that the Bush administration was preoccupied with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein at the expense of pursuing al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

"You're talking about the late period of November, when things were winding down in Afghanistan," White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters, confirming that Bush spoke to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at that time "about planning related to Iraq."

"But there is a difference between planning and making a decision" to go to war, McClellan said.

The timing of Bush's planning to oust Saddam is one of several insights detailed in the book "Plan of Attack" by journalist Bob Woodward.

In two other recent books, former Bush administration insiders said that they were surprised by the president's early focus on Iraq.

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Bush's intense interest in Iraq became clear within days of the president's inauguration. Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism official for Bush and previous presidents, wrote that the day after the Sept. 11 attacks Bush aggressively instructed him and other aides to "see if Saddam did this," despite evidence pointing to al- Qaida. In his book, Woodward describes Vice President Dick Cheney as a "powerful, steamrolling force" in the administration that some in the government believed had a "fever" for taking down Saddam. The Iraqi leader had invaded Kuwait during the administration of Bush's father and later plotted to kill the former president.

After a CIA briefing on the spy data on Iraqi weapons, Bush said the intelligence would leave the public unconvinced. But CIA Director George Tenet described the case against Iraq as a "slam dunk."

 

[bigfish]

Grand Resistance Coalition Emerging in Iraq

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GF10Ak03.html

By Pepe Escobar - Against all odds, a national liberation front is emerging in Iraq. Washington hawks may see it coming, but they certainly don't want it. It is composed of politicians, religious leaders, clan and tribal sheikhs -both Sunni and Shi'ite- with a single-minded agenda: the end of the US-led occupation.

The front is also opposed to permanent Pentagon military bases; opposed to the privatization and corporate looting of the Iraqi economy; and opposed to the federation of Iraq, ie balkanization. Members of the front clearly see through the plan of fueling sectarianism to provoke an atmosphere of civil war, thus legitimizing the American presence.

This front will include the powerful Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) and the Sadrists. It will refuse any kind of dialogue with new Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and his government unless there's a definite timetable for the complete withdrawal of the occupation forces.

But the proliferation of what many moderate Sunnis and Shi'ites suspect as being Pentagon-organized black ops is putting the emergence of this front in jeopardy. This is obvious when we see Harith al-Dhari - the AMS leader - blaming the Badr Brigades (the armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution - SCIRI - in Iraq, a major partner in the government) for the killing of Sunni Arab clerics.

Several Iranian websites have widely reported a plan to break up Iraq into three Shi'ite southern mini-states, two Kurdish mini-states and one Sunni mini-state - with Baghdad as the seat of a federal government. The plan was allegedly conceived by David Philip, a former White House adviser working for the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). The AFPC is financed by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has also funded both the ultra-hawkish Project for a New American Century and American Enterprise Institute.

Once again this is classic divide and rule: the objective is the perpetuation of Arab disunity. Call it Iraqification; what it actually means is sectarian fever translated into civil war. Operation Lightning - the highly publicized counter-insurgency tour de force with its 40,000 mostly Shi'ite troops rounding up Sunni Arabs - can be read as the first salvo of the civil war....

 

[oi2002]

That's an interesting piece by Pepe Escobar above.

But looking at the facts it may not be DC shaping events. Tehran's ideal outcome would be a unified Shiite dominated Iraq and run by it's friends. Ethnic chaos offers Tehran only the smaller prize of a Southern Shia state, a distinct second best. Just what is Tehran up to? Baghdad and Tehran have been discussing future economic links. Al Sadr was despatched to talk to the Sunni Clerics last month. More and more Iranian trained Badr men are getting promoted in the security apparatus. Unlike the US Tehran has extensive intelligence networks in place in Iraq, it's been oddly reticent in their use. The mullah's are a canny bunch and they may be setting up the pieces for an entirely deniable checkmate that could leave Arab Iraq free of US influence and the Bush doctrine in tatters.

DC should be very worried not least because a united anti-American pan-Arab rebellion would have a very high level of popular support and would push Iraq towards it's old enemy Iran. I doubt that DC favors a failed and volently balkanised Iraq it would be an obvious and abject failure, even Rove can't make that play on Fox, but with options dwindling it might be better geopolitically for DC than Tehran effectively controlling all the Iraqi oil reserves.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Convoy attacked

HABBANIYA, Iraq, June 10 (Reuters) - A foreign-run convoy of civilian trucks was ambushed west of Baghdad this week and several of those working on it may be dead, the British-based security company that supervised it said on Friday. Reuters Television footage from near the town of Habbaniya, between Falluja and Ramadi, showed several burnt out trucks as well as documents apparently issued in Turkey.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Bodies of 28 shooting victims found in and around Baghdad

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) Iraqi police on Sunday dug up the bodies of 20 men who were found bound, blindfolded and shot in the head in shallow graves east of Baghdad, while eight more bodies were found in the Iraqi capital. Lt. Ayad Ottoman said a shepherd found the bodies of 20 men Friday in the Nahrawan desert region, 20 miles east of Baghdad.

``All were blindfolded and their hands were tied behind their backs and shot from behind,'' Ottoman said. ``The assassins excavated a hole and buried them inside it and seven were found naked.''

Witnesses claimed the slain men were Sunni Muslims, according to a statement from the influential Sunni Muslim organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars. No details were provided

 

[Barking_Mad]

Insurgents' financier turns himself in to Iraqi authorities

An insurgent responsible for financing insurgent groups in Mosul turned himself in to the Iraqi security authorities on Wednesday, said an Iraqi Government press release on Sunday.

Iraqi Kurds elect first regional president

The Kurdish parliament approved Sunday that Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) was elected the first president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

Iraq Struggles To Draft New Constitution

Iraqi efforts to draft a new constitution are weakened by the lack of political experience within the minority Sunni Arab community, the prime minister's spokesman said Sunday.

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.K. Memo Said to Question Postwar Plan

A staff paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair eight months before the invasion of Iraq concluded that U.S. military officials were not planning adequately for a postwar occupation, The Washington Post reported.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Another US fuck up?

At scene of Iraq air strikes, casualties unclear

KARABILAH, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqis inspecting the damage of U.S. air strikes in western Iraq on Sunday challenged American assertions that the raids had killed 40 insurgents, saying there were no guerrillas in the area.

"There were no mujahideen (fighters) or armed men in the area. The planes attacked indiscriminately," said one man, who did not give his name, as he inspected the rubble of a house. Quite how many may have died, or their identities, remained unclear. Residents would not let a Reuters cameraman film two of the houses that were hit by the strikes.

 

[laptop]

U.K. Memo Said to Question Postwar Plan

Bizarrely, that link goes to a story about a hurricane that wasn't. Though it has google ads for "Tony Blair"... so maybe it was there once.

Can't find the actual story on that site... here it is from the LA Times (and if you meet a registration block, use Google News).

 

[oi2002]

Iran blames Iraqis for bombing wave in Iran.

State-run television quoted hospital officials as saying at least eight people were killed and 86 injured in four bomb explosions in Ahvaz, capital of the southwestern Khuzestan province bordering Iraq.
...
A spokesman for the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body, blamed groups affiliated to Saddam's former Baathist regime in Iraq. State TV quoted spokesman Ali Agha Mohammadi as saying the perpetrators of the Ahvaz bombings had infiltrated into Iran from Basra in southern Iraq.

ABC Story

 

[Barking_Mad]

Minimum number of Iraqi dead in last week - 199
Minimum number of Iraqi dead in last month - 289
Minimum number of Iraqi dead in last year - 3,750

------------------------------------------------------

Minimum number of Iraqi dead in January - 556
Minimum number of Iraqi dead in February - 853
Minimum number of Iraqi dead in March - 688
Minimum number of Iraqi dead in April - 529
Minimum number of Iraqi dead in May - 843

 

[Barking_Mad]

Bizarrely, that link goes to a story about a hurricane that wasn't. Though it has google ads for "Tony Blair"... so maybe it was there once.

Can't find the actual story on that site... here it is from the LA Times (and if you meet a registration block, use Google News).

Ahh cheers for that, they must have altered the link!

 

[Barking_Mad]

As many incidents as I've found in news articles on the death of Iraqis from Saturday 11th June to Monday 13th June (up to 3.30pm)

- Insurgents attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint on the main road between Baghdad and the town of Baquba on Monday, killing four policemen and injuring 10, police said.

- In Samarra three soldiers were killed at a checkpoint. Another soldier was killed in Samarra when a bomb exploded in the path of his vehicle. Two Iraqi police commandos and two soldiers were killed in fighting in Samarra.

- An Iraqi army patrol shot and killed an Iraqi man in Fallujah, the town's hospital reported. Gunmen killed a female Interior Ministry employee in Baghdad's Sadr City district, police said. Police found the body of an unidentified man in Sadr City.

- Also on Monday a member of Iraq's infrastructure protection force was shot dead near the northern oil refinery town of Baiji, and an Iraqi businessman was gunned down as he left a US base at the airport in Dhuluiyah.

- Near Baghdad, a roadside bomb blew up next to a patrol of police commandos, an elite police unit, killing one and injuring four, the Interior Ministry said.

- Two suicide car bombers targeted Iraqi security forces killing eight people and wounding 16 on Monday, the Interior Ministry and police said. The first blast occurred in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit when police pursued a suspicious driver who blew up his car after being cornered. The blast killed two police officers and a firefighter and wounded 11 people, including seven civilians.

- Six more bodies have been found in Baghdad, most of them tortured before being executed, police said on Monday, bringing to 26 the grim tally of murdered cadavers found in recent days.

- A suicide car bomber struck a joint US-Iraqi patrol north of Baghdad today, killing three Iraqi policemen and wounding five. Meanwhile, the American death toll during the war in Iraq has pushed past 1,700 with the killing of four more US soldiers

- Eight other slain men were found shot in the head Sunday in two different locations in Baghdad's northern suburb of Shula, police Capt. Majed Abdul Aziz said. The bodies could not immediately be identified.

- Iraqi police on Sunday dug up the bodies of 20 men who were found bound, blindfolded and shot in the head in shallow graves east of Baghdad, while eight more bodies were found in the Iraqi capital. Lt. Ayad Ottoman said a shepherd found the bodies of 20 men Friday in the Nahrawan desert region, 20 miles east of Baghdad.

- The mortar attack, which killed two people and wounded 11, took place Sunday evening in Baghdad's northern Hurriyah district during a funeral for the mother of Maj. Gen. Rashid Flaiyeh, who commands the Interior Ministry's elite police units.

- In other violence, a mortar barrage intended for an Iraqi army barrack in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar missed its target and slammed into a house, killing a 6-year-old child and wounding five other people, police Capt. Amjad Hashim said.

- "Hamdi al-Alusi, chief of nearby Qaim hospital, said three civilians from houses in the nearby district of Rumana were brought in wounded after the air strikes, including a 12-year-old boy who later died. The U.S. military spokesman said Rumana was not targeted during or after the strikes. (airstrike where up to 40 people died - unclear as to how many were 'fighters')"

- The Iraqi Police on Saturday found the bodies of three Iraqi civilians on a highway nearby the area of Dourah, south of Baghdad, said an Iraqi Police source.

- "U.S. soldiers shot to death two Iraqis and wounded two others in Baghdad when their car came too close to an American armoured patrol, military spokesman Lt. Jamie Davis said."

- A bomb exploded in a cemetery in the southern city of Najaf, killing two Iraqis, including an eight-year-old girl, and wounding three others from the same family as they were visiting the graves of relatives.

- An unknown armed group launched an attack on a convoy of trucks for the Ministry of Trade while passing through Baladiyat neighborhood in Mosul, noting that the attack killed one driver and wounded another, and one of the trucks was completely burned.

- Also in the morning, the police found the bodies of three Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, the Interior Ministry official said. The men, who belonged to the Sunni-dominated Dulaim tribe in rebellious western Iraq, had been handcuffed and blindfolded, and there were signs of torture on their bodies, the official said. The victims were Saadi Khalaf, an Oil Ministry employee; Muhammad Khalaf, a reporter for Al-Majd, a newspaper; and Esam Fadhil, their cousin. 3

- "Just south of Baghdad, gunmen killed at least 11 Iraqi construction workers and wounded another three when they riddled their minibus with bullets as it drove in the so-called Triangle of Death, police said. The attack occurred in Diyara, 30 miles south of Baghdad, and the men worked on construction projects in Iraq and American bases, police added.
" 10

Minimum number of dead - 90

 

[Barking_Mad]

Clashes between US sodliers and insurgents in Mosul

Baghdad, 13 June (AKI) - New clashes are reported to have broken out between Iraqi guerrillas and US troops on Monday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, leaving scores injured. The Kuwaiti news agency Kuna reported eyewitnesses as saying that armed insurgents attacked American and Iraqi soldiers as they patrolled Liberation Square, in the west of the city.

The witnesses said the US troops then surrounded the whole area, attacking the insurgents with helicopter support from above. The nearest hospital said that following the clashes, around 50 people, most of them civilians, were taken in to be treated for injuries sustained during the fighting. No statement has been issued by the Iraqi security forces and it is not known how many troops and insurgents have been injured in the clashes.

18 killed, more than 50 wounded in Kirkuk bombing

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) - A bomb exploded outside a bank in this northern city and killed 18 people waiting Tuesday including pensioners and child street vendors selling groceries, police said.

Capt. Salam Zangana, an official at a hospital where the victims were being brought, said another 53 people were wounded.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq options paper: Full text - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9124.htm

IRAQ: CONDITIONS FOR MILITARY ACTION

Introduction

1. The US Government's military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace. But, as yet, it lacks a political framework. In particular, little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the aftermath and how to shape it.

2. When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, provided that certain conditions were met: efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine Crisis was quiescent, and the options for action to eliminate Iraq's WMD through the UN weapons inspectors had been exhausted.

3. We need now to reinforce this message and to encourage the US Government to place its military planning within a political framework, partly to forestall the risk that military action is precipitated in an unplanned way by, for example, an incident in the No Fly Zones. This is particularly important for the UK because it is necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action. Otherwise we face the real danger that the US will commit themselves to a course of action which we would find very difficult to support.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1648758,00.html

 

[Barking_Mad]

Seems like if you get captured in Iraq, these are the kidnappers you want to hold you!

Former Iraq hostage says captors gave her gifts of rings and perfume upon her release

PARIS - Former hostage Florence Aubenas says her captors gave her gifts of two rings and a bottle of perfume when they released her at the weekend after more than five months of captivity in Iraq. The veteran French reporter was to give more details about her ordeal at a press conference in Paris later Tuesday.

She told her newspaper, Liberation, that one of her guards said, “We have prepared some presents for you” just before she was freed Saturday. “They gave me two rings and a bottle of perfume.” Her captors also returned her purse, which still contained her identity papers and money, and served her tea and roast chicken, she said. For the first time since her kidnapping on Jan. 5, her captors also gave her a chair to sit on, she said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Car bombs explosion kills 8 in northeast Baghdad

Up to two Iraqi policemen were killed in a car explosion Tuesday in Khan Bani Saad area northeast of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. An Iraqi police source told KUNA that a booby-trapped vehicle exploded near an Iraqi police patrol in the province of Diyala. The source added that the explosion killed two policemen and injured four others.

This is the second car explosion today in Diyala, where the first explosion occurred in Kanaan village in Southern Baqouba killing six persons, of whom two are policemen, and injured four others

edit - number revised to 10 dead.

 

[Barking_Mad]

US dead so far this month - 38
Minimum Iraqi dead this month - 357
Minimum number of Iraqi dead today 59

Deaths reported today

- The bodies of 24 men _ some of which were beheaded _ that had been killed in recent ambushes on convoys in western Iraq were brought to a Baghdad hospital, a hospital morgue official Tuesday. Ali Chijan said two batches of bodies were brought to western Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital late Monday. Seventeen of the bodies believed to be all Iraqis were found near Khaldiyah, 75 miles west of Baghdad, Chijan said.

- Chijan said the badly decomposed bodies of another seven men, including one Iraqi and six believed to be ""Asians,"" were brought to the hospital after being killed in a convoy ambush several days ago. Most had been shot in the face. The slain Iraqi was identified as Ahmed Adnan, said his cousin, Hussein Ali, who was interviewed by The Associated Press at the hospital.

- 10 Iraqis, including two children, were killed and seven wounded by a car bomb north of Baghdad, according to security and hospital sources. “Ten people were killed in all and seven wounded,” an Iraqi army officer said, adding four deaths among his own soldiers to an earlier report of six dead and four wounded. The troops had been called in to reinforce a police station in the town of Kanaan that was under mortar attack, and were targetted by a car bomb parked nearby, a police officer said.

- Up to two Iraqi policemen were killed in a car explosion Tuesday in Khan Bani Saad area northeast of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. An Iraqi police source told KUNA that a booby-trapped vehicle exploded near an Iraqi police patrol in the province of Diyala. The source added that the explosion killed two policemen and injured four others.

- At least 22 people have been killed in a suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Police say most of the dead were civil servants lining up outside a government-owned bank to get their salaries or pensions. They believe the bomber walked up to the queue with up to 30kg (66lbs) of explosives hidden under his clothes [...] Police said, adding that 81 were wounded. Kirkuk police chief Major General Turhan Yusif said a suicide bomber blew himself up in the queue at Al-Rafidain bank in the city centre.

Links to stories -

http://www.wral.com/apworldnews/4605172/detail.html
http://www.wral.com/apworldnews/4605172/detail.html
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/152712/1/.html
http://www.wral.com/apworldnews/4605172/detail.html
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/152712/1/.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4090626.stm

 

[Wess]

I just read that 1565 American Military deaths have happened in Iraq since Bush said Mission Accomplished...
From here...

 

[Loki]

I just read that 1565 American Military deaths have happened in Iraq since Bush said Mission Accomplished...
From here...

Last time I looked (admittedly a while back) it was just topping 1,000. Good work Bush and Rumsfeld, Mission Accomplished indeed.

 

[Binkie]

I think that American deaths are as tragic as Iraqi civilian and insurgent deaths, except that perhaps the American soldiers are doing it for money rather than out of belief, and a lot more Iraqis have been killed than Americans.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Kurdish officials sanction Kirkuk abduction

WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Arabs and Turkmen have been seized off the streets of Kirkuk or in joint U.S.-Iraqi raids and secretly sent to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The detainees have been abducted by police and security units led by Kurdish political parties and sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. forces, the report said, citing government documents and families of the victims.

The newspaper said it had obtained a confidential State Department cable addressed to the White House, Pentagon and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that raises concern about the unlawful detentions and transfers. Kirkuk is claimed by three ethnic groups -- Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen -- and has seen an alarming increase in violence and tension, officials say. The cable described the detentions as being part of a "concerted and widespread initiative" by Kurdish political parties "to exercise authority in Kirkuk in an increasingly provocative manner," the newspaper said.

The report said the June 5 cable stated that the abductions had "greatly exacerbated tensions along purely ethnic lines" and endangered U.S. credibility. The abductions surged after the Jan. 30 elections consolidated the two main Kurdish parties' control over the Kirkuk provincial government, the newspaper said, citing U.S. officials, Kirkuk police and Arab leaders. During Saddam Hussein's rule, Kirkuk was subject to an "Arabisation" policy aiming to change the ethnic balance of the strategic oil city by offering Arab migrants homes and economic incentives. The plan angered Kurds and Turkmen. After the U.S-led invasion, Kurds returned to the city in large numbers and have had an ever-growing influence over the city, to the dismay of Arabs and Turkmen.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Last time I looked (admittedly a while back) it was just topping 1,000. Good work Bush and Rumsfeld, Mission Accomplished indeed.

Current US dead stands at 1,708

US dead in July stands at 41

 

[Barking_Mad]

Saddam interrogation screened - in silence. The question is: Why?

06/14/05 "The Independent" - - There he was, just as his victims looked on his own television screens, his words censored, his arguments unknown, his case as undemocratic as the "judicial" courts in which Saddam destroyed his own enemies. The Iraqis - or, let us speak frankly, the Americans who tried to censor the old reprobate's previous court appearance - decided yesterday that his words would also be censored. That is Saddamism. This is how Saddam ran Iraq.

The words were obliterated. And now the Americans and their obedient, Shia-led government, are acting out the same Saddamite line. The pictures, the BBC admitted, were "mute". What in God's name did this mean? Who emasculated the BBC to such a degree that it should say such a ridiculous thing? Why were they mute? The BBC didn't tell us.

If Saddam was really being charged with war crimes over the killings of Shias - which I hope he was - then why, in heaven's name, didn't we hear what he had to say? Why use the methods of Saddam himself? The silent film, the assumption of guilt? Or was Saddam telling the court that the United States was behind his regime, that Washington had given him the means to destroy the Halabja Kurds with gas? How can we know? And when so many of our journalistic brethren failed to challenge the reason why this tape should be "mute", what does this say of us? We are told, by Saddam's jailers of course, that he is being questioned about the murder of Shia villagers south of Baghdad in 1982. I hope so. But how do we know?

The reality is that Saddam is from Iraq's past, something from the era before "our" insecurity and destruction and the rape and insurgency and death which has now overwhelmed Iraq.

Yes, there are those who would like to see Saddam brought to justice. But they want safety and law and order and freedom - freedom from us, too - before they care about this crazed old man's trial. But we insist the Iraqis have bread and circuses before they have freedom. And they must experience our democracy by understanding that the defendant in a court must be shut up and denied his own words in order to appear on the BBC.

 

[nino_savatte]

Kurdish officials sanction Kirkuk abduction

This would be the snatch squads that have been sanctioned by Talabani no doubt.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Suicide bomber kills 17 on army base

A man wearing a belt packed with explosives killed at least 17 Iraqi soldiers and injured 28 others today when he blew himself up inside a restaurant on an Iraqi army base north of Baghdad. Iraqi army Colonel Saleh al-Obeidi said that the lunchtime explosion took place in Khalis, 20km (13 miles)from the town of Baqouba, which lies north-east of Baghdad. Colonel Al-Obeidi said that the bomber was wearing an army uniform and waited until soldiers had gathered for lunch before blowing himself up. The soldiers belonged to the Al-Salam battalion of the 2nd brigade of the Iraqi army in Diyala province. The injured were being evacuated to a nearby hospital, Iraqi army Major Abbas Timimi said.

Several British soldiers wounded in Baghdad bomb attack

Several British soldiers were wounded, one seriously, when a roadside bomb went off in Baghdad. The bomb blew up in the path of a British military vehicle in the west of the capital, US Lieutenant Jamie Davis told AFP on Wednesday. It was unclear where the convoy was headed, since British troops are based in southern

 

[Barking_Mad]

Update - bomb in Iraqi Army base kills 23

Suicide bomber kills at least 23 Iraqi soldiers

BAGHDAD (AP) — A man wearing a belt packed with explosives killed at least 23 Iraqi soldiers and wounded 29 others on Wednesday when he blew himself up inside a restaurant on an Iraqi army base north of Baghdad, army officials said.
The lunchtime explosion took place in Khalis, about 12 miles northwest of Baqouba, Iraqi army Col. Saleh al-Obeidi said. Baqouba is 35 miles northeast of Baghdad

Bomb explosion targets US army patrol in western Iraq

BAGHDAD, June 15 (KUNA) -- An explosive device went off Wednesday as a US army patrol was driving through a road in Al-Ramadi city in the province of Anbar, western Iraq. Eyewitnesses told KUNA that the explosion caused damage to one of the vehicles and US soldiers sealed-off the site making it impossible to assess casualties among American army personnel. The US army did not comment on the incident. Meanwhile, an Iraqi soldier was killed and three others were injured in an attack against an Iraqi army patrol on Tuesday in northeast Baghdad. A statement for the Multi-National Forces said today that unidentified insurgents attacked an Iraqi army patrol with missiles and light weapons in the south of Baqouba in Diyala province. Two car bomb explosions were witnessed in the province of Diyala yesterday killing 12 people and injuring 11 others.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi legislators [...] seemed close to agreement Wednesday on a demand by Sunni Arabs for more participation in the effort to draft a constitution. A Shiite-dominated parliamentary committee drafting Iraq's new constitution offered a compromise Wednesday to the country's Sunni Arab minority in an effort to break a deadlock over demands they have a bigger say in drawing up the charter.

The offer, announced by committee chairman Hummam Hammoudi after a meeting of the 55-member body, suggested that 13 Sunni Arabs join the committee in a parallel body. Two Sunni Arab representatives rejected Hammoudi's offer. The Sunni Arab community wants 25 people to join their two legislators already on the committee. Representatives from the committee and the Sunni Arab community are scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss the proposal. An agreement on the constitution would help defuse growing sectarian tension between the majority Shiites, who control the government, and the Sunnis. The minority is thought to make up the core of an insurgency that has killed at least 1,071 people since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's government was announced on April 28.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5076779,00.html