*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

Baghdad mayor 'ousted by gunmen'

Baghdad's mayor has been sacked by the Iraqi government, in circumstances that he has described as "dangerous" and "undemocratic". A government spokesman said Alaa al-Tamimi was fired on Monday, although he refused to elaborate further. However, Mr Tamimi himself said 120 gunmen stormed his office and installed the provincial governor in his place. He said tensions had broken out between him and Shia members of the provincial council in recent weeks.

"Acts like these set a very dangerous precedent for a country that wants to be free and democratic," Mr Tamimi told the Reuters news agency.

He said he had tendered his resignation because he "knew there would be trouble", but it was rejected several times. Spokesman Laith Kubba had said the governor of Baghdad province, which also includes a number of towns outside the capital, would administer the city for the time being. His statement came before the mayor - who was not at his office when it was taken over - raised any complaints. Mr Kubba said the provincial council had nominated a new mayor, but no decision had been taken by the central government.

Jessica Lynch: I was used

JESSICA LYNCH, the former US army supply clerk who became a national icon after her capture and rescue during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, says she was “used” by the Pentagon to “show the war was going great”. Ms Lynch, 22, told Time magazine: “I think I provided a way to boost everybody’s confidence about the war . . . I was used as a symbol. It doesn’t bother me anymore. It used to.” Ms Lynch says that her book, I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story, will “set the record straight”.

Ms Lynch said that the television movie of her life was inaccurate. Ms Lynch said that she hopes to become a teacher. In a few weeks she begins classes at West Virginia University, where her tuition fees have been paid for by the state. Ms Lynch, from Palestine, West Virginia, was a private in the US Army when she was captured in Iraq on March 23, 2003, near al-Nasiriyah, a crossing point over the Euphrates River. She suffered two spinal fractures, nerve damage and a shattered right arm, right foot and left leg when her Humvee crashed during a firefight. Eleven other soldiers in her unit were killed in the ambush. She was rescued from an Iraqi hospital by US forces on April 1, 2003 — the first rescue of an American prisoner of war since the Second World War. However, accounts of Ms Lynch’s rescue were contradictory and it was claimed that the rescue was staged.

Baghdad elite flees Iraq and the daily threat of death

Quietly, in their ones and twos, the professional classes of Baghdad are slipping out of the country to avoid becoming another fatal statistic. Iraq is losing the educated elite of doctors, lawyers, academics...

Sandstorms kill four in Baghdad

Four people were killed and 2,800 suffered critical health problems in sandstorms that hit Baghdad on Monday, the Al Sabah daily reported on Tuesday

 

[Barking_Mad]

Violence in Mosul Claim 15 Lives

Fifteen people were killed in separate incidents over the past 24 hours in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. A police source said that among the killed were two policemen who were gunned down while heading to work.

Car bomb blast in Baghdad kills at least seven

Police say the explosion targeted a joint U-S-Iraqi patrol in the western part of the city today, killing at least seven people. The dead include Iraqi police officers and civilians. It's not clear yet if any Americans were injured or killed.

In Other Tuesday Developments

Late Tuesday, gunmen killed an Iraqi Cabinet employee, Abbas Ibrahim Mohammed, in Baghdad. In addition, three civilians were killed in a mortar attack. U.S. troops Tuesday killed four insurgents trying to plant a roadside bomb in the city of Ramadi

Four Police and Security Guards Killed in Several Different Attacks

One Iraqi traffic policeman was killed and seven people were wounded when a mortar shell slammed into a central Baghdad square. Two oil security guards were killed by gunmen near the town of Baiji, while a policeman was gunned down in Kirkuk.

Four Killed in Attack on U.S. Iraqi Patrol

Two Iraqi soldiers and two civilians were killed in the town of Kashifa when a joint US-Iraqi patrol was hit by a roadside bomb, police said.

Suicide bomb kills six in attack on Baghdad police

A suicide bomber killed six people and wounded 14 when he drove a car at a police patrol in the Ghazaliya district of western Baghdad on Wednesday. Two of the dead and two of the wounded were policemen and the remaining casualties were civilians.

CENTCOM: FOUR TFL SOLDIERS KILLED, SIX WOUNDED NEAR BAYJI

Four Task Force Liberty Soldiers were killed and six were wounded when terrorists attacked a patrol near Bayji at about 11:30 p.m. on August 9.

 

[Barking_Mad]

43 dead US soldiers in the first 10 days of August.
54 died during the 31 days of July.

 

[bigfish]

"You killed my son, George Bush"

What One Mom has to Say to Bush

By Mike Ferner

I want him to tell me is ‘just what was the noble cause Casey died for?’ Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. - “There, I used the ‘I’ word – imperialism,” the 48 year-old mother quipped. “And now I’m going to use another ‘I’ word – impeachment – because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail.”

http://snipurl.com/guuj

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Dissent in the United States

“If you don’t love this country, get the f--- out!”

By James Rothenberg

Albert Einstein called racism our national disease. In a similar but narrower vein, I’ll offer what I consider to be our national, political disease: hypocrisy. And for the national hypocrisy, the pledge of allegiance, notably the phrases, “for which it stands”, and “under God”.

http://snipurl.com/guul

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Seven Killled In Baghdad Car Bombing:

The blast targeted a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol. It killed four civilians and three Iraqi police officers.

http://snipurl.com/guuo

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Five U.S. Soldiers Killed:

Convoy Attack Claims 4 U.S. Troops: Fifth U.S. Soldier Killed In Suicide Car Bomb Attack

http://snipurl.com/guup

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Two oil security guards were killed by gunmen:

A policeman was gunned down in Kirkuk.

http://snipurl.com/guuq

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Aussies kept gung-ho US in check:

AUSTRALIAN and British military legal advisers frequently had to "red card" more trigger-happy US forces to limit civilian casualties during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to one of the Australian advisers.

http://snipurl.com/guur

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Baghdad Mayor Is Ousted by a Shiite Group and Replaced:

Armed men entered Baghdad's municipal building during a blinding dust storm on Monday, deposed the city's mayor and installed a member of Iraq's most powerful Shiite militia.

http://snipurl.com/guus

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Baghdad elite flees Iraq and the daily threat of death:

Outside the shelter of the Green Zone, home to the American and Iraqi political leadership, lawlessness has overtaken the capital.

http://snipurl.com/guut

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The gates of hell:

The gates of hell are now wide open – thanks to U.S. invasion – and their fires have enveloped almost everything in our country. There is no electricity, no water, no fuel, no food rations, no security, no sewage …

http://snipurl.com/guuu

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Insurgency could get worse: Rumsfeld:

Forty US soldiers have died in violence in Iraq in the last 12 days

http://snipurl.com/guuv

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War pimp alert:

Bomb cache found in Iraq believed to be from Iranian Revolutionary Guard

US intelligence believes that a cache of manufactured bombs seized in Iraq about two weeks ago was smuggled into the country from Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an intelligence official said.

http://snipurl.com/guwi

 

[oi2002]

A Juan reader on US Rules Of Engagement.

Because almost all of our questioned actions have taken place under the penumbra of self-defense, and because our rules for self-defense are materially the same as the Brits', the difference must lie, and does lie, elsewhere. The difference arises primarily from our attitudes and personalities. The Brits explicitly view this as a police action. With that comes a "law enforcement" outlook on the use of deadly force. Specifically, deadly force is justified only when all lesser means have failed or cannot reasonably be employed. They may only use the minimum amount of force necessary to make the threat stop acting like a threat. We see this as a combat operation. Once you demonstrate hostile act/hostile intent, we take that as the green light to eliminate you. This attitude difference also leads to a different interpretation of what constitutes proportionate force. Where the Brits would try to take the utmost care to insure that innocent civilians are not killed and civilian property isn't damaged, our only concern is to insure that we don't recklessly kill more innocent civilians and damage more property then we consider to be reasonably necessary.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Jaafari: Iraqis fired mortar bombs into Kuwait http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=14244

BAGHDAD - Unnamed Iraqis have fired mortar bombs across the border into Kuwait, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said Wednesday, condemning the attack by "those who want to provoke a crisis". Jaafari, who was speaking to parliament, did not identify those behind the attack or specify when it took place, but said it was carried out "by those who want to provoke a crisis between Iraq and its neighbours". According to Kuwaiti press reports, one mortar bomb was fired from the town of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq onto the Kuwaiti side of the town on July 26.

The attack came a day after several hundred Iraqis tore down a barrier put up by Kuwaiti authorities along the border, saying the fence had been erected inside Iraqi territory. A government official in Kuwait City said at the time that the metal barrier in Umm Qasr was being installed inside Kuwaiti territory as part of a barrier being built along the 200-kilometre (125-mile) border between the two countries. Kuwaiti authorities ordered police in Umm Qasr not to respond to the mortar attack, and the incident was contained following contacts between the two countries, the reports said.

An official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), whose Badr Brigade Shiite paramilitaries were believed to be behind the incident, pledged during a visit to Kuwait that there would be no repeat, the Kuwaiti reports added. Jaafari also denied there had been any border violations by Kuwait, saying such accusations were "incorrect". Two days after Iraqis tore down the metal barrier, Kuwaiti soldiers fired into the air during a second border protest. Kuwait began the construction of the barrier several months ago to replace a three-meter-high (10 feet) sand mound that had been in place for a decade.

The barrier is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year, according to the Kuwaiti official. Angry Iraqi MPs, speaking on the 15th anniversary of their country's invasion of Kuwait, charged that their southern neighbour had repeatedly violated the border. An Iraqi delegation recently visited Kuwait to discuss the incidents, with an Iraqi official being quoted as saying he was satisfied that authorities in the oil-rich neighbour have not infringed upon Iraqi territory. Iraq's ousted leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. After a seven-month occupation his troops were ejected by a US-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War. A 1993 UN Security Council resolution marked the land and sea border between Iraq and Kuwait, granting Kuwait part of the southern port of Umm Qasr. The resolution was accepted by Iraq in 1994.

 

[Barking_Mad]

July in Baghdad - 1,100 dead. Sadly, it's worth reading the full article.

1,100 dead in Baghdad alone during July

BAGHDAD, Iraq - (KRT) - July was a record month at Baghdad's main morgue, where the bodies pile up so fast they often have to be buried before they can be identified to make way for the next day's arrivals. A total of 1,100 corpses were received in July, a sharp increase from the previous record of 879 in June, and far exceeding the morgue's 10-a-day capacity, according to its overworked director, Faed Bakr.

The figures exclude casualties from bombings, which are not taken for autopsy because the cause of death already is known. While car bombings and suicide attacks have garnered the most attention and have claimed thousands of lives, shootings have accounted for thousands more civilian deaths since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.

At the morgue last month, more than 60 percent of the deaths - 676, or more than 20 a day - came from shootings, in yet another indicator that overall violence in what already is the world's most violent capital keeps getting worse, even as the U.S. military and the Iraqi government insist that the insurgency is being tamed.

"When you have this number of killings every day, when you have 676 people die from shooting in a month, you're talking about mass killing," Bakr said. "It's not civil war, but it's instability, and it's out of control."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq: Insurgent leader urges followers to reorganize

An insurgency leader in northern Iraq has urged his followers to concentrate efforts on how to wrest control of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city.

The insurgents are active in the city bordering Syria and the Kurdish-held northern strip, but have seen their influence relatively diminishing recently.

U.S. troops in Mosul have reportedly intercepted a message from the insurgency leader in the region, called Emir or prince, addressed to his superiors in western Iraq.

A copy of the message, obtained by the newspaper, indicates that despite the relative lull in anti-U.S. and anti-government operations, the insurgency still has an upper hand at least in parts of the region.

The Emir calling himself Abu Ziyad says the full control of Mosul would eventually ease the pressure on insurgents currently battling U.S. and Iraqi government troops mainly in towns west of Baghdad.

Several towns within the geographical borders of the Province of Nineveh - of which Mosul is the capital - like Tel Affar and Selamiya have recently turned into major insurgent strongholds.

"The fall of Mosul in the hands of the Mujahideen (insurgents) is possible. This will lessen pressure on cities like al-Qaim and Tell Afar," Abu Ziyad said.

Abu Ziyad exhorts his followers to step up attacks in Mosul, advising them to concentrate "on quality of operations rather than their quantity."

He asks Iraqi insurgents and their sympathizers to pay particular attention to "foreign fighters" and warns against what he describes as "disobedience and lack of cooperation" among insurgent groups operating in Mosul

 

[Barking_Mad]

A good read taken from US soldiers perspective including some interesting comments about depleted uranium.

Dahr Jamail's latest piece

[A] two hour drive away in Dallas, at the Veterans for Peace National Convention in Dallas, I’m sitting with a roomful of veterans from the current quagmire.

When asked what he would say to Mr. Bush if he had the chance to speak to him, Abdul Henderson, a crorporal in the Marines who served in Iraq from March until May, 2003, took a deep breath and said, “It would be two hits-me hitting him and him hitting the floor. I see this guy in the most prestigious office in the world, and this guy says ‘bring it on.’ A guy who ain’t never been shot at, never seen anyone suffering, saying ‘bring it on?’ He gets to act like a cowboy in a western movie…it’s sickening to me.”

....

Camilo Mejia, an army staff sergeant who was sentenced to a year in military prison in May, 2004 for refusing to return to Iraq after being home on leave, talks openly about what he did there:

“What it all comes down to is redemption for what was done there. I was turning ambulances away from going to hospitals, I killed civilians, I tortured guys…and I’m ashamed of that. Once you are there, it has nothing to do with politics…it has to do with you as an individual being there and killing people for no reason. There is no purpose, and now I’m sick at myself for doing these things. I kept telling myself I was there for my buddies. It was a weak reasoning…because I still shut my mouth and did my job.”

 

[Barking_Mad]

Update on Samawah unrest

Supporters of fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who led two uprisings against US troops, have also stepped in to the fray in Samawah, 270km south of Baghdad.

Residents said his militiamen roamed the streets and fired rockets at police after the SCIRI-backed mayor was ousted. Sadr and SCIRI are generally seen as rivals for the allegiances of Shiite voters.

Sadr's spokesmen in Baghdad said they did not organise the Samawah unrest but his representative issued a clear warning today.

"The people of Samawah had given the governor a week to step down and two days have passed," said Sheikh Ghazi al-Zargani.

Samawah's political crisis came a day after the mayor of Baghdad said he was ousted by gunmen who installed a rival.

Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill said today that the Australian troops in al-Muthanna were not required to respond to rising civil unrest.

Senator Hill said the civil disputes did not involve Australian troops.

"Australians are not involved in providing a response to these civil differences," he told parliament.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Democracy's ugly consequence

WHEN British troops eventually pull out from southern Iraq, they will leave behind the Islamic Republic of Basra: a mini-state which is more solidly Islamicist than any other part of the country. After a controversial war and two years of painful nation-building, that is an ugly result.

Could Britain have done more to stop the south turning into a religiously repressive region riven with criminality and lethal sectarian violence? One senior British official said yesterday that it could not have done. “We have to be realistic about what we’re going to achieve. We have to accept the consequences of bringing democracy to Iraq.”

...

Basra used to be a byword for tolerance. But across the south, women are now generally veiled and cloaked. Alcohol sellers have shut down. Pictures of clerics are everywhere.

On top of that, feuds between Shia factions have erupted. The two main parties, Sciri and Dawa, each have their allies. So do tribes and local clerics. Everyone has an allegiance — including the police.

 

[Barking_Mad]

More on the civil unrest

here in Baghdad, the militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has called for Friday protests against the lack of power and water. This is part of an ongoing campaign to shore up his power base among the urban poor by targeting the failures of his more moderate political opponents, who are now in power.

In a rare statement calling for the protests, Mr. Sadr blamed "the occupier and the people who have traded on their religion and sold their people" for Iraq's problems, an apparent reference to the mainstream Shiite political parties that run the government.

Meanwhile, Baghdad has a new mayor, Hussein al-Tahhan, who replaced Alaa al-Tamimi after he was run out of office by Shiite militiamen. Mr. Tahhan told Reuters that, "I don't think a politician should be a mayor, it should be someone who can spend all of his time in the service of the people," criticizing Mr. Tamimi for not paying enough attention to Baghdad's already crippled public services.

 

[Barking_Mad]

10 doctors killed in Iraq

Karbala - Unidentified gunmen ambushed a group of doctors on their way to help at hospitals, west of Baghdad, killing 10 of them, said medical sources on Wednesday.

The sources said the physicians were travelling to the city of Ramadi when armed men intercepted their vehicle on Tuesday evening.

The sources said among the victims, were Dr Youssef Alewi and two of his assistants from the Karbala health department, in north Iraq

 

[Barking_Mad]

You know, it never ceases to amaze me, despite the obvious reasons as to why, that the western mass media refuse to print or show many of these photographs.

Iraq photo site

This piece has some especially poignant and tragic photos - http://crisispictures.org/2005/07/01/june/

 

[Barking_Mad]

Analysis: Iraq statistics tell grim story

WASHINGTON -- If the U.S. Army and its Iraqi allies are killing as many insurgents as reports indicate they are per month, why is the insurgency intensifying instead of collapsing?

The Bush administration has been extremely reluctant to comply with the requests of a Congress controlled by its own party and issue detailed figures, or "benchmarks" on progress in combating the insurgency. But a study of the best figures and estimates available publicly suggests that the level of attrition reported and widely believed to be inflicted on the insurgents is in reality a lot less than the figures indicate.

For if the figures widely quoted are accurate, then the insurgency should be either collapsing already or, at the very least, shrinking dramatically in its resources and capabilities as its combat units and intelligence networks should have been suffering unsustainable attrition.

Retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, attracted widespread publicity on July 25 when he told a meeting at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as reported in The Washington Times, that more than 50,000 insurgents had been killed since the start of the insurgency. Afterwards, official administration spokesmen refused to confirm that figure.

 

[Barking_Mad]

pictures of the Baghdad sandstorm which killed several people and put thousands in hospital

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/9EC65D86-9B80-4945-8012-12FC71488D56.htm

right hand side, in the 'In Pictures' section.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Two Kidnappings in Baghdad and Kirkuk

Rebels also kidnapped one businessman from Kirkuk and a police officer from Baghdad.

Two Police and an Iraqi Soldier Killed in Different Attacks

A police lieutenant was shot dead by gunmen in the Yarmuk district of Baghdad, while one Iraqi soldier was also killed in the capital. Another police officer was shot dead by gunmen in the town of Al-Dujail.

Three Other Civilians Killed in Iraq

Two civilians were killed and one child wounded when gunmen attacked a truck convoy in Baquba. Christian engineer-cum-interpretor, Said Adib Touma, 32, was kidnapped from the northern town of Kirkuk and his body found later

Four Civilians Killed by Gunmen in Two Attacks

In the northern town of Samarra, two civilians died and four Iraqi soldiers were wounded when a group of Iraqi soldiers came under fire from gunmen. In another incident two civilians were killed by gunmen in the northern town of Al-Isakh

Five Civilians Killed in Baiji

Five people were killed, four from one family including two children, in a roadside bombing in the oil town of Baiji

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.S. loses spy drone as Iraqis make off with wreck

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqis in the northern city Mosul have made off with a top secret American spy plane.

The U.S. military in Iraq said in a statement on Thursday that one of its "unmanned aerial vehicles" -- otherwise known as a drone -- had crashed in the town the night before.

"Within the hour, the crash site was investigated by nearby troops who assessed that no civilians or property were harmed or damaged as a result of the accident," it said.

"The UAV was not recovered, however, as the local population carried it away."

Seven People Died in Attacks by Insurgents in Iraq

Seven people died and several others were wounded in attacks by extremists in Iraq on Friday, AFPannounced, citing Iraqi security forces.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Sunni Arabs reject Shiite proposal for federal Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) — Sunni Arab leaders on Friday rejected calls for a Shiite federal region to be enshrined in the constitution, saying the proposal would fracture Iraq along religious and ethnic lines. The dispute threatens to delay completion of the charter by a Monday deadline.
Sunni Arab leaders were responding to a demand by a leading Shiite lawmaker for provisions to allow local Shiite control in the southern and central parts of the country. Sunni Arabs fear they will lose out on oil revenues if the country is split into federated zones.

"We reject it wherever it is, whether in the north or in the south, but we accept the Kurdish region as it was before the war," said Kamal Hamdoun, a Sunni member of the committee drafting the constitution. Some Shiite leaders want to replicate the success of Kurdish leaders in the north who govern an autonomous part of the country.

"The aim of federalism is to divide Iraq into ethnic and sectarian areas. We will cling to our stance of rejecting this," Hamdoun said.

.....


Although al-Sistani has issued no statement about federalism, an official close to the ayatollah said Thursday his silence should be interpreted as support. The official spoke on condition of anonymity under rules imposed on the ayatollah's entourage.

"The Shiite community feels in danger," the official said. "If Shiites are going to be threatened, they have many cards to play. And if Shiites are going to be sidelined, they will not lie down."

 

[Barking_Mad]

US Having Difficulties Recruiting Soldiers for Iraq

US Army has difficulties in recruiting men after the large number of attacks against occupational forces in Iraq, Reuters announced. On Wednesday US Defense Department announced that the new reinforcements in Iraq were reduced by 11% of the planned. It is the first time since 1999 when the US Army will not be able to fulfill its annual plan.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Here's what an *cough* 'Intellectual Conservative has to say about Iraq. Its one long self deluding ramble.

No, I am discouraged because I am starting to wonder whether Bush and his people (Rumsfeld, Rice, the Joint Chiefs, et al.) have reached the limit of their willingness to kill the enemy, to destroy their sanctuaries, and to punish those who harbor and support them. I am starting to wonder whether even our “warmongering” leaders lack the will and the stamina for this bloody, drawn-out fight between us and the millions of Islamic militants across the globe who want nothing less than to see us all dead or enslaved.

.......

Are we going to go after the mullahs in Iran, Assad of Syria, the Pakistani madrassahs and their Saudi supporters? But if that’s the plan, why are we waiting? Isn’t the whole point of the Bush Doctrine that we will take preemptive action against our enemies before they strike? That we will employ “hard” military measures to prevent and deter attacks, instead of “soft” law enforcement techniques to investigate them after the fact?

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4528.html

 

[jeff_leigh]

US Having Difficulties Recruiting Soldiers for Iraq

this is hardly news Barking we've been hearing for months about America's Difficulties Recruiting Soldiers for Iraq on the other hand won't they just take up the slack by enlisting recruits from Central American countries with the promise of Green Cards/Citizenship?

 

[Barking_Mad]

Yeah I know, Ive posted numerous articles before about this. The only reason I posted this article was because they have apparently had to reduce reinforcements by 11%.

 

[oi2002]

Rather hysterical piece on Iran in Iraq PDF. Take with large pinch of salt. Self interested sources like the MEK and Mossad are certainly not to be trusted espeacially when telling tales oddly suited to their policy agenda.

Ahmed Hashim's point that the Iranian establishment can not be seen as a monlithic body and that elements may have contradictory policies is well made. You'd also have to measure Ken Pollack's view that the Mullahs fear chaos in Iraq with the knowledge that Tehran's genuine fear of invasion only faded a year ago and their enthusastic embrace of Shi'ite rule in Baghdad is a even more recent bit of opportunism.

They'd have been fools not to activate their large Iraqi networks and plan a major guerilla war; this would include establishing relationships with ideological foes within the uprising. What I would not doubt is that Iran has the ability to tip Iraq over the precipice and destroy DC's troubled project there utterly. But the Mullahs now stand to gain (at worst) an allied, oil rich, Shi'a Iraqi province and that is a much greater prize than humiliating DC.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Im presuming these two articles are related.

15 killed when attacked U.S. patrol returns fire

RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - An attack on a U.S. military patrol followed by heavy U.S. gunfire left 15 Iraqis dead and 17 wounded in a town west of Baghdad, residents said on Saturday. Residents of Nasaf, a town just outside Ramadi, west of Baghdad, said a roadside bomb exploded next to a U.S. armoured patrol as it passed near the Ibn al-Jawzi mosque shortly after prayers on Friday.

Following the explosion, U.S. troops opened fire, the residents said, shooting towards those emerging from the mosque. Munem Aftan, the director of Ramadi General Hospital, said 15 people were killed, including eight children, and 17 wounded.

The U.S. military denied troops had opened fire indiscriminately.

"Indiscriminate U.S. fire on civilians? No, nothing even resembling this occurred," Captain Jeffrey Pool, a Marines spokesman in Ramadi, said in an e-mailed reply to questions. He did not say whether an attack on a U.S. patrol had occurred or whether any U.S. troops were wounded. The death toll was initially reported as two dead, but doctors said it had risen sharply overnight, with several of the severely wounded succumbing to their injuries.

Iraqi civilians frequently complain that U.S. troops open fire indiscriminately after they are attacked. The U.S. military says it does everything possible to avoid civilian casualties and is careful to respond to attacks in a measured fashion. Human rights groups have documented scores of cases in which civilians have been shot and killed after approaching U.S. military roadblocks too quickly, or not following instructions to keep away from U.S. military convoys as they pass.

Roadside bombs -- large or small amounts of explosives buried in the side of the road and detonated as U.S. vehicles pass -- are the biggest killer of U.S. troops in Iraq. A U.S. general said on Friday that roadside bomb attacks on U.S. supply convoys in Iraq had doubled in the past year, although the number of casualties had declined because of increased use of armoured vehicles

Blast near mosque kills three children and an adult

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A blast Friday near a mosque west of Baghdad killed four people, including three children, and wounded at least 19 other people, police and hospital officials said.

Iraqis blamed U.S. forces, but an American spokesman disputed the Iraqi claim.

The blast occurred on the outskirts of the town of Nasaf, near Ramadi, an insurgent center 70 miles west of Baghdad, according to police Lt. Mohammed al-Obeidi and Dr. Mohammed al-Ani of Ramadi General Hospital.

A hospital official, Ali Taleb, said a U.S. armored vehicle fired near the Ibn al-Jawzi mosque, about 15 miles east of Ramadi, after worshippers left the building following Friday prayers.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Half-price Colombian fighters offered for Iraq

A US company operating out of Ecuador says it has signed up about 1,000 Colombian police and military staff to work as hired guns in Iraq, for less than half of their US counterparts' salaries

Italy hastens troop reduction in Iraq

Italy, a month ahead of schedule, has started reducing its presence in Iraq by drawing down the first 130 forces in a planned 300-troop withdrawal, a Rome-based military source said on Saturday.

 

[Barking_Mad]

A Matthew Parris piece in The Times

The game is nearly up: not the military game, the psychological one. We can no longer take the strain in Iraq. We are going to make a bolt for it. You know that, don’t you? I suspect most British people do. It’s bearing down on us with a terrible inevitability.

Well? I am waiting. A number of us are waiting. We were expecting an angry chorus from a particular quarter. So why the silence? You could hear a pin drop. Why don’t they sing out, the armchair warriors of Fleet Street? George W. Bush and his friends are preparing to scuttle Iraq, and nobody’s complaining.

Where are they, those editorialisers whose confident “Tally-ho!” cheered our lads into Basra and Baghdad and whose cry was that we were “in this for the long haul”, to “finish the job”? Finish the job indeed — do they really think, does anybody think, that the job is finished? Does anyone seriously suggest that a free and democratic Iraq is now heading into the home straight?

Of course not. The place is going to hell in a handcart. So where are those who urged our forces in, now that the political will to keep them there is faltering?

 

[jonH]

good photo from iran,
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-25/0508126069183422.htm

 

[Barking_Mad]

Robert Fisk piece

Another US success......

"It was three-thirty in the morning and they were all asleep, Yassin and his friends Fahed and Walid Khaled. There was an American patrol outside and then suddenly, a Bradley armoured vehicle burst through the gate and wall and drove over Yassin. You know how heavy these things are. He died instantly. But the Americans didn't know what they'd done. He was lying crushed under the vehicle for 17 minutes. Um Khaled, his friends' mother, kept shouting in Arabic: "There is a boy under this vehicle."

According to Selim al-Sammerai, the Americans' first reaction was to put handcuffs on the two other boys. But a Lebanese Arabic interpreter working for the Americans arrived to explain that it was all a mistake. "We don't have anything against you,'' she said. The Americans produced a laminated paper in English and Arabic entitled "Iraqi Claims Pocket Card" which tells them how to claim compensation.

The unit whose Bradley drove over Yassin is listed as "256 BCT A/156 AR, Mortars". Under "Type of Incident", an American had written: "Raid destroyed gate and doors." No one told the family there had been a raid. And nowhere - but nowhere - on the form does it suggest that the "raid'' destroyed the life of the football-loving Yassin al-Sammerai.

Inside Yassin's father's home yesterday, Selim shakes with anger and then weeps softly, wiping his eyes. "He is surely in heaven," one of his surviving seven sons replies. And the old man looks at me and says: "He liked swimming too. "

A former technical manager at the Baghdad University college of arts, Selim is now just a shadow. He is half bent over on his seat, his face sallow and his cheeks drawn in. This is a Sunni household in a Sunni area. This is "insurgent country" for the Americans, which is why they crash into these narrow streets at night. Several days ago, a collaborator gave away the location of a group of Sunni guerrillas and US troops surrounded the house. A two-hour gun-battle followed until an Apache helicopter came barrelling out of the darkness and dropped a bomb on the building, killing all inside.

.....

"I told the American officer: 'You have killed the innocent and such things will lead the people to destroy you and the people will make a revolution against you. You said you had come to liberate us from the previous regime. But you are destroying our walls and doors.'"

 

[jeff_leigh]

The worshipers chanted "Peaceful uranium enrichment is our absolute right," and "Support for such a progress is our government's duty"

Doesn't really have the same ring as " you're gonna get your fuckin' heads kicked in" does it?