*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

US attacks civilian cars fleeing onslaught - kills ten inc. three children

BBC Worldservice radio is reporting that US helicopters struck two cars full of families trying to escape the latest onslaught near the Syrian border during 'Operation Iron Fist' - killing 10 - including three children. The Worldservice report was broadcast at 11.00 AM. See daily telegraph story below, which does not give any detail concerning the reported deaths of '10 people'.

Danish soldier killed in Iraq

A DANISH soldier was killed and two others wounded when a roadside bomb blew up alongside a Danish military vehicle outside Basra in southern Iraq today, Iraqi police said.

An official at the Danish Ministry of Defence in Copenhagen confirmed that there had been an attack on a Danish military vehicle, but said he could not confirm the number of casualties. "We are investigating further at this time," the military official said, asking that his name not be used.

Iraqi police officer Mohammed Uraibi told Reuters from the scene that the attack occurred just outside Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

If confirmed, the death would be the second among Danish troops serving in Iraq. Denmark has a contingent of about 500 soldiers serving in and around Basra, where British forces have overall command. A Danish soldier was killed by friendly fire in August 2003.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Interesting read on the failure of the US to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry - partyl thanks to the usual suspects, KBR

Iraq oil industry threatened by failure to rebuild properly

Qarmat Ali, Iraq -- The failure to rebuild key components of Iraq's petroleum industry has impeded oil production and may have permanently damaged the largest of the country's vast oil fields, U.S. and Iraqi experts say. The deficiencies have deprived Iraq of possibly hundreds of millions of dollars needed for national rebuilding efforts, and kept millions of barrels of oil off the world market at a time of growing demand.

Engineering mistakes, poor leadership and shifting priorities have delayed or led to the cancellation of several projects critical to restoring Iraq's oil industry, according to interviews of more than two dozen current and former U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry experts. The troubles have been compounded in some cases by security issues, poor maintenance and disputes between the United States and its main contractor, Houston-based KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., according to the interviews and documents. Despite U.S. spending of more than $1.3 billion, oil production remains below prewar levels of 2.5 million barrels per day and well below a December 2004 goal of up to 3 million barrels per day.

Interviews and documents from whistle-blowers show problems with at least three projects deemed critical to Iraq's oil production:

-- Qarmat Ali water treatment plant. This massive pumping complex is needed to inject water into Iraq's southern oil fields to aid in oil extraction. Under a no-bid contract, KBR was to repair the complex at a cost of up to $225 million, but not the leaky pipelines carrying water to the fields. As a result, the water cannot be reliably delivered, raising concerns that some of Iraq's oil may not ever be recovered.

-- Al Fathah pipelines. As part of the same no-bid contract, the United States gave KBR a job worth up to $70 million to rebuild a pipeline network under the Tigris River in northern Iraq despite concerns that the project was unsound. In the end, less than half the pipelines were completed, and the project was given to another contractor. The delay has aggravated oil transport problems, forcing Iraq to inject millions of barrels of oil back into the ground, a harmful practice for the oil fields and the environment. A government audit based on a complaint by a whistle-blower is ongoing.

-- Southern oil well repairs. A $37 million project to boost production at dozens of Iraqi oil wells was canceled after KBR refused to proceed without a U.S. guarantee to protect it from possible lawsuits.

Perhaps most striking, some key problems have come despite the relative calm in southern Iraq. The reconstruction of the oil infrastructure in the north has been hampered by security issues, the southern oil fields -- which account for most oil production -- have been attacked only a few times since the invasion.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Al-Qaida Claims It Captured Two Marines In Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The U.S. military is brushing off claims that Iraqi militants have captured two Marines. Al-Qaida in Iraq said in a Web statement that it captured the Marines during a U.S. offensive in a town near the Syrian border. The statement set a 24-hour deadline for Sunni women to be released from Iraqi and U.S. prisons -- or else the Marines will be killed. The military said there are no indications that the capture claims are true. But it is conducting checks to verify that all Marines are accounted for.

Iraqi Schools Increase Security

Blast walls have been erected and security guards posted outside schools in the Iraqi capital in the days since suspected insurgents gunned down five Shiite Muslim teachers in a classroom south of Baghdad.

Two people killed at restaurant bombing in Hilla

Two civilians were killed and another six wounded when a bomb detonated inside a restaurant in the town of Hilla.

Provincial council woman and her son killed

In Mosul, a drive-by shooting killed Nafi'a Aziz, a female member of Ninevah's provincial council, and her son. Aziz was in charge of the council's human rights committee and a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

 

[jeff_leigh]

Sunni anger at Iraq vote change ( Shia's move the goalposts)

"Sunni Arabs have reacted angrily to a decision by Iraq's Shia-dominated parliament making it harder to reject the new constitution in 12 days' time.
The two-thirds majority needed in three provinces to defeat the constitution will now be counted from all registered - as opposed to actual - voters."

see here

 

[FruitandNut]

Lots more bombing ahead - 'Allah wakba'

 

[Barking_Mad]

Insurgents play cat-and-mouse game with American snipers

"Some people don't get the gravity of the situation here; people in the Green Zone are always trying to paint a rosy picture," said Molina, a 27-year-old sniper from Clearwater, Fla. He was referring to the fortified compound in Baghdad where U.S. officials work. "These politicians are all about sending people to war but they don't know what it's all about, being over here and getting shot at, walking through s--- swamps, having bombs go off, hearing bullets fly by. They have no idea what that's like."

Military commanders in Baghdad and Washington say four Iraqi provinces are home to 85 percent of the daily attacks. They claim that a relatively low attack rate in Iraq's 14 other provinces is proof that the insurgency is on its knees. Muqdadiyah is in one of those 14 provinces, Diyala. Yet five days in the field with a 3rd Infantry Division sniper team suggests that, to those on the ground here, the insurgency is anything but defeated. Many American troops on the ground in Muqdadiyah expect the violence to continue long after they're gone. They worry that Sunni Muslim insurgents - from a Sunni population that makes up 40 percent of Diyala - will simply move from targeting U.S. forces to ratcheting up attacks against Shiite Muslims, who compose 35 percent of the province. Shiites are a majority in Iraq, and they dominate the Baghdad government.

Muqdadiyah is a relative backwater of some 100,000 people. But the guerrilla war there, while gaining little attention, indicates wider instability than military leaders have acknowledged and could plague efforts to put the Iraqi government on its feet.

"As soon as we leave this place they're all going to kill each other," Molina said at a meeting in his barracks recently.

His sniper team commander, Staff Sgt. Donnie Hendricks, agreed: "It's going to be a f------ civil war."

Hendricks was quiet for a few moments.

"We go out and kill the bad guys one at a time," said Hendricks, 32, who speaks with the soft accent of his native Claremore, Okla., where his high school graduating class had 55 students. "But we're just whittling down one group so it's easier for the other groups to kill them."

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

Sitting in the darkness, near the edge of a palm grove, Molina looked at the street in front of him.

"The reason why they're fighting us is not Osama bin Laden. They're fighting us because we're here. ... They don't want us here. They just want us to leave. I guess that would be a victory for them," he said. "As far as I can see there's not going to be any victory for us." Sabin, sitting next to him, nodded.

"In past situations you've had a good guy and a bad guy and the troops were impassioned, but now troops just want to go home," Sabin said. "I don't feel like there's a cause. I don't personally think there's a reason for this."

The two fell silent. Slowly, they went back to peering through their scopes, out at the darkness

 

[Barking_Mad]

British civilian arrested in Iraq

Col. Thamer Kamel with the Iraqi border guard in Najaf said a British national by the name of Colin Peter was arrested around 8 p.m. (12 noon ET) Monday along with nine Iraqis on a highway between Anbar and Najaf.

Four Iraqi police killed in clashes with insurgents

Four police commandos were killed and 14 others wounded on Tuesday in clashes with insurgents in Yousfiyah town, south of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said. Yousfiyah, some 30 km south of Baghdad.

Lebanese hostage in Iraq freed

The source said Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh received a telephone call from the charge d`affaires in Baghdad informing him that Moufi Abou Farraj had been released. Another Lebanese hostage in Iraq was freed last week after a monthlong captivity.

Fighting reported south of Baghdad

In the south of the capital, Iraqi and U.S. forces fought a battle in broad daylight with more than 40 guerrillas, the U.S. military said, adding that "more than three dozen terrorists were ... killed, wounded ... or detained".

U.S. Soldiers, One Marine Killed In Iraq

The military says the Marine was killed by a roadside bomb Monday near the Syrian border. Three soldiers were killed by another roadside bomb in another town. The military is investigating the fatal shooting of a soldier Monday near Fallujah

 

[Barking_Mad]

BBC only reports 250 people not 900 families having fled.

More civilians flee al-Qaim as US offensive continues

BAGHDAD, 4 October (IRIN) More than 900 Iraqi families have fled from the al-Qaim district near the Syrian border to escape a US military offensive against Islamic militants and the exodus is continuing, humanitarian workers in al-Qaim said.

Most of those running to escape the five day-old offensive by 1,000 US troops backed by warplanes have remained within Iraq. However, several hundred have crossed the nearby border to seek sanctuary in Syria, according to residents in the eastern Syrian town of Deir-ez-Zour contacted by IRIN.

Aid workers with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in al-Qaim said on Monday night that large numbers of people were continuing to leave the town and nearby villages to escape the fighting. According to medical workers, it has already caused dozens of civilian casualties.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi parliament may review referendum rules: UN

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United Nations expects Iraq's parliament to review rules on a constitutional referendum after the world body criticized a decision that made it harder for voters to block the charter, a U.N. official said on Tuesday.

"We have expressed our position to the national assembly and to the leadership of the government and told them that the decision that was taken was not acceptable and would not meet international standards," Jose Aranaz, a legal adviser to the U.N. electoral team in Iraq, told Reuters.

"Hopefully by tomorrow the situation will be clarified."

Iraq's parliament made an interpretative ruling on Sunday which said that for the referendum to pass, only half of those who turn out to vote would have to say "Yes," but for it to be defeated, two thirds of registered voters in three provinces would have to say "No" — a much higher threshold.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq U-turn on charter vote rules

The constitution is seen as crucial to fulfilling US plans for Iraq
Iraq's parliament has reversed its decision to change the rules governing a referendum next week on the country's new constitution.

The altered rules would have made it much harder for Sunni opponents of the draft constitution to reject it. Parliament has now decided to revert to the original rules - as both the United Nations and Washington said it should.

UN legal advisors said that a referendum held under the new rules would not meet international standards. After a brief debate, MPs voted 119 to 28 to restore the original voting rules for the referendum. Only about half of the 275-member body attended the vote, although a quorum was achieved.

 

[Barking_Mad]

No Halliburton in sight!

Iraq rebuilds oil refinery unit crippled by war

LONDON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Iraqi crews have rebuilt a 70,000 barrels per day oil refinery unit, despite regular attacks, helping to plug shortages that cost over $5 billion a year in fuel imports, oil officials said on Tuesday. The crude distillation unit, one of three at the northern Baiji refinery, has re-opened after a total rebuild and is now operational, they told Reuters.

"It is back up and domestic output has risen as a result," said the official, adding that a second unit at Baiji is due for maintenance within six months.

The official, who declined to be named on security grounds, did not reveal how much Baiji was producing overall. Baiji's output shrank sharply over the last 25 years due to wars and a crippling embargo.

"It has been a long road, but the crews showed resilience that has been the hallmark of the Iraqi oil industry since the war with Iran in 1980," he said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Blood, Sweat & Tears: Asia’s Poor Build U.S. Bases in Iraq

Jing Soliman left his family in the Philippines for what sounded like a sure thing--a job as a warehouse worker at Camp Anaconda in Iraq. His new employer, Prime Projects International (PPI) of Dubai, is a major, but low-profile, subcontractor to Halliburton's multi-billion-dollar deal with the Pentagon to provide support services to U.S. forces.

But Soliman wouldn’t be making anything near the salaries-- starting $80,000 a year and often topping $100,000-- that Halliburton's engineering and construction unit, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) pays to the truck drivers, construction workers, office workers, and other laborers it recruits from the United States. Instead, the 35-year-old father of two anticipated $615 a month – including overtime. For a 40-hour work week, that would be just over $3 an hour. But for the 12-hour day, seven-day week that Soliman says was standard for him and many contractor employees in Iraq, he actually earned $1.56 an hour.

Soliman planned to send most of his $7,380 annual pay home to his family in the Philippines, where the combined unemployment and underemployment rate tops 28 percent. The average annual income in Manila is $4,384, and the World Bank estimates that nearly half of the nation's 84 million people live on less than $2 a day.

“I am an ordinary man,” said Soliman during a recent telephone interview from his home in Quezon City near Manila. “It was good money.”

His ambitions, like many U.S. civilians working in Iraq, were modest: “I wanted to save up, buy a house and provide for my family,” he says.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Our troops in Iraq ‘living on the edge’ as war hots up

TERRITORIAL Army soldiers from High Wycombe serving on the front line in Basra say they are "living on the edge" as Iraq slides towards all-out civil war. Scenes from the southern Iraqi city last week showed British soldiers coming under attack from 500 rioters outside the police station where two SAS men were held. Although the men were dramatically rescued hours later, this latest incident has made life in Basra more volatile than ever.

........


In the past two weeks there has been a 60 per cent drop in the number of patrols being carried out and no soldier ventures into Basra now unless absolutely necessary......

........."I have mixed feelings about the Iraqis," said LCpl Zachary. "A lot of them are friendly to your face but you get the feeling that it's not genuine. During one of my first patrols in Basra a young Iraqi boy pointed at me and pretended to slit his throat, which was a bit disturbing."

 

[Barking_Mad]

WARNING! Extra spin on the way

The White House Looks To Improve Iraq News

The White House is embarking on a new effort to try to leaven the bleak accounts emerging from Iraq. Administration officials tell TIME that Steve Schmidt, counselor to Vice President Cheney and one of the White House's most aggressive strategists, will leave for Baghdad early this week to spend up to a month assessing media relations in the war zone. Back home, Cheney and President Bush will give major speeches this week on Iraq's Oct. 15 constitutional referendum. Administration officials say the addresses aim to define the terrorist insurgency as an enemy with a clear strategy, and to portray dire consequences if the U.S. were to withdraw. Vice President Cheney flies to Camp Lejeune, N.C., for a Monday rally with Marines, while President Bush motorcades to the Ronald Reagan Building on Thursday.

One of Schmidt's missions, administration officials say, is to determine whether the White House can take any logistical steps to help American reporters and other journalists to gather news at a time when it is often too dangerous for them to leave their compounds. The officials say Schmidt's trip is at the request of the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalizad, but is supported at the highest levels of the White House. "We want to see if there's a disconnect between what people in the United States are seeing on their televisions and in their newspapers, and the reality on the ground," a senior administration official said.

For a preview of the tone of Bush's war speech, a top aide pointed to a statement last week by Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, who said as he was sworn in as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "This moment in history is one where we have an enemy whose stated public intent is to destroy our way of life; 2.4 million American men and women in uniform say, 'Not on our watch.' '' The question gnawing at White House officials is whether they can do anything more to convince everyday Americans, bombarded with discouraging news from 6,000 miles away, that it's their watch, too.

 

[Barking_Mad]

'Iraq guilt' mars morale, recruitment at British army

LONDON (AFP) - Army morale and recruitment are suffering because troops are seen as "guilty by association" with Prime Minister Tony's Blair's decision to invade Iraq, Britain's top soldier claimed. General Sir Michael Walker, chief of the defence of staff, also said, in an interview with the Sunday Times, that Britain and the United States will have to make do with a less-than-perfect outcome from the US-led war. The March 2003 invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein initially helped to attract new recruits and lift morale in the armed forces, despite being unpopular among the British public, said Walker.

"There was an understanding by members of the armed services that this was not an all-hands-up, popular event across the country," he said.

"But I think at that stage they were able to decouple in their own minds, as I was, the fact that the country was not necessarily behind the strategic decision to go to war, but once our boys and girls were out there, doing their various things, they would support them in that role," Walker said.

"Now I think that's shifted a bit, if I am absolutely honest. Some of the opprobrium attached to the war is also attached to the fact that the armed services are taking part in it. We are, if you like, guilty by association with a decision to go to war that not the whole of this country enjoined."

Asked what conditions are needed to withdraw from Iraq and whether the conflict there is "winnable", the general said: "Winnable is the wrong word. I think what it is, is that there is a 'my glass is half full'."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Guess who got away again?

Iraq Town Yields Arms, Not Men

BAGHDAD, Oct. 2 -- For a second day, U.S. and Iraqi troops combed the city of Sadah near the Syrian border for insurgents loyal to al Qaeda, witnesses and the U.S. and Iraqi militaries said Sunday.

An Iraqi army captain said security forces had conducted house-to-house searches in about 80 percent of Sadah by Sunday evening before taking control of most of the city. He said the searches yielded weapons but few foreign fighters from al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent network led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian.

"We think Zarqawi's group escaped before the assault, because the U.S. forces were not engaged in heavy clashes," said the captain, who declined to give his name, citing threats against Iraqi forces.

from the same article

At a hospital in the border town of Qaim, Ali Rawi, a doctor, said 12 civilians were killed in an airstrike on Sadah at the start of a U.S. military operation. The report could not be independently verified.

Noticed how when the US military says something there is no need for 'independent verification' but if an Iraqi doctor says "12 people were killed" the press quite often add that little tag line on the end.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Gunmen told: take British hostages

THE radical Shi’ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr has authorised his militia to kidnap two Britons in Iraq in the hope of swapping them for two of his senior officials who are held in Basra by British forces. A senior official from al-Sadr’s Mahdi army in Baghdad said that al-Sadr had given the order after last month’s dramatic rescue of two SAS men whom he had been hoping to use as bargaining chips.

The source said al-Sadr had given British authorities until yesterday to release his men, but they had failed to do so.

“In return for our two officials, two Britons will be taken,” the source said. The two need not necessarily be from the British military, but could be civilians, he added. The source claimed that the Mahdi army had already pinpointed two British targets working for private security companies in the affluent Mansour district of Baghdad. Several British security firms have bases in the area.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Right, so these nutjobs think God is killing straight soldiers because he hates gay people........ermmmmm

Topeka Church Group Pickets Soldier's Funeral

About six members of an extremist church from Topeka, Kansas, picketed the Yakima funeral of soldier killed in Iraq. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church waved signs saying "To Late to Pray," "God Hates You" and "Thank God For Dead Soldiers."

The church says God is killing soldiers to punish America for homosexuality. The demonstration Friday at the funeral of Lawrence Morrison was countered by 120 members of Operation Thank You, a Tri-Cities group that supports military families. Morrison was a 45-year-old Army medic killed by a bomb blast. He was a former postal worker who was called back to duty in Iraq from the inactive reserves.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iran 'behind attacks on British'

Britain has accused Iran of responsibility for explosions which have killed eight British soldiers and injured two others in Iraq this year. A senior British official, briefing correspondents in London, blamed Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

He said they provided the technology to a Shia group in southern Iraq. Our world affairs correspondent says that while British officials have hinted at an Iranian link before, they have never been so specific.

 

[Barking_Mad]

25 Killed, 80 Hurt In Iraq Mosque Bomb Blast

HILLAH, Iraq -- Police now say 25 Iraqis were killed and 80 wounded in a bomb attack on a Shiite mosque south of Baghdad.

The blast targeted the mosque entrance, as worshipers gathered for prayers toward the end of the day's Ramadan fast. Police are investigating whether the blast came from a car packed with explosives or a bomb left at the scene.

The explosion hit the Ibn al-Nama mosque in Hillah, a Shiite town that's been the scene of repeated militant attacks. Five days ago, a car bomb in a crowded town market killed 10 people, including three women and two children.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Violence rocks Baghdad as Bush to address US on Iraq

At least four people were killed in rebel attacks in Baghdad, adding to fears of spiralling violence in the run-up to the October 15 referendum on the new constitution for post-Saddam Hussein Iraq

Iran brands British claims 'fantasy'

Hamid Reza-Asefi of the Iranian foreign ministry appeared on national television to denounce as "fantasy" the allegations, made by an anonymous senior British official, that Iran had equipped the rebel militia in southern Iraq...

Gunmen clash with police in central Baghdad

As many as 30 gunmen on Thursday attacked a number of police checkpoints in the Mohammed Al-Qassem Highway in central Baghdad. Eyewitnesses told KUNA the gunmen stepped out of their cars and opened fire at the police checkpoints.

Suicide car bomb hits convoy in Baghdad

"A suicide bomber blew up his explosive-packed car near a convoy of Sport Utility Vehicles in Nidhal Street, destroying a vehicle and wounding at least eight Iraqi civilian pedestrians," police captain Ahmed Abdullah told Xinhua.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Just imagine what good you could put this money to...........

Iraq war costing $6 billion per month

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is spending about $7 billion a month to wage the war on terror, and costs could total $570 billion by the end of 2010, assuming troops are gradually brought home, a congressional report estimates.

The paper by the Congressional Research Service underscores how the price tag has been gradually rising for the war in Iraq. A year ago, the Pentagon was calculating its average monthly costs in that conflict at below $5 billion — an amount the research service says has now grown close to $6 billion.

Those expenses are growing even as recovery costs from hurricanes Katrina and Rita and mammoth federal deficits are intensifying pressure on the Bush administration and Congress to find ways to save money.

Iraqi police discover 22 bodies in southeastern Iraq

Police have discovered 22 bodies in southeastern Iraq, near the Iranian border, an Interior Ministry source said on Thursday.

"On late Wednesday, the Iraqi police found bodies of 22 people who were shot dead in the head while being blindfolded with hands tied to the back in Jassan area of Wassit province," the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. The identities of both the victims and killers were unclear. Dozens of bodies have been found across Iraq during the past few months amid rampant abductions and violence in the war-torn country.

US forces bomb Iraq's Euphrates bridges

Baghdad - US-led forces have bombed eight bridges on the Euphrates River in western Iraq to stop insurgents using them, US military spokesperson Major General Rick Lynch said Thursday.

"We have been taking out portions of bridges with precision strikes," he told a news conference. Of 12 bridges between the Syrian border and Ramadi, 110km west Baghdad, "four remain under control of the coalition forces and Iraqi forces after precision strikes on the others," he said.

"One of the vulnerabilities of this insurgency is freedom of movement," he added.

"We took out portions of these bridges to deny terrorists, foreign fighters and insurgents the capability to cross north to south or south to north across the Euphrates River."

 

[Barking_Mad]

At least 539 bodies have been found since Iraq's interim government was formed April 28 - 204 in Baghdad - according to an Associated Press count. The identities of many are unknown, but 116 are known to be Sunnis, 43 Shiites and one Kurd. Some are likely victims of crime - including kidnappings - rampant in some cities and as dangerous to Iraqis as political violence.

The count may be low since one or two bodies are found almost daily and are never reported

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/12847413.htm

 

[Barking_Mad]

BAGHDAD, Oct 7 (KUNA) -- Three security guards at an oil facility were killed and six others were wounded on Friday by unknown militants in northern Baghdad, a police source said.

The source added in a statement that the guards had stopped the fuel tanker they were driving near the village of Al-Adheem after an explosive device blew up near them to inspect the vehicle for damages, during which militants in three cars opened fire at them.

The wounded were taken to hospital for treatment, the source concluded. (pickup previous) ahh.

http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=776546

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq Pipeline Watch: #277
October 6 - gunmen shot dead five oil ministry security guards.
10/07/05 Iraq Pipeline Watch: #276
October 5 - bomb attack wounded six oil ministry guards.
10/07/05 Iraq Pipeline Watch: #275
October 5 - attack on an oil pipeline near the Kirkuk refinery.

http://www.iags.org/iraqpipelinewatch.htm

 

[Barking_Mad]

British troops seized 12 men, including members of the Iraqi police, during overnight raids in Basra on suspicion of involvement in deadly attacks on foreign troops, the military said on Friday.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/new...556Z_01_FLE727396_RTRUKOC_0_UK-IRAQ-BASRA.xml

 

[oi2002]

John Robb reports on the difficulties the US millitary faces in Iraq:

... unlike most of the places we have fought insurgencies, is a relatively modern urbanized environment. It has a large cell phone grid, a modern highway system, and Internet connectivity. People have the ability to both communicate and travel quickly throughout the entire country. This high level of connectivity makes possible for the insurgency to combine and recombine into new organizational networks that are similar to what we only see in advanced western settings.

This infrastructure has allowed the insurgents to leapfrog to a new organizational form that is more survivable, inclusive, and innovative than traditional hierarchies (I call this open source insurgency). It appears that the US military has finally taken actions to mitigate this advantage. It announced yesterday that it had bombed (with precision strikes) eight bridges across the Euphrates River inside western Iraq to stop insurgents from using them.

That the most mobile military on the planet is reduced to this suggests they are in deep trouble. I'd suspect there is also punitive motive here. The Yanks are resorting to tactics aimed at destroying the will of the Sunni population to resist.

 

[oi2002]

Pat Lang on Dubya's insistence that the enemy is monolithic.

The president's rationale for intervention in Iraq has disintegrated into progressively more embarassing disarray. WMD? Out. AQ-Saddam Alliance? Out. Fight them there rather than in Cleveland? Madrid and London pretty much defeat that argument. Fightng Terrorism wherever we find it? the number of lethal terrorist incidents is dramatically up the last two years. What is left? What is left is the assertion (made yesterday) that Iraq is THE central battlefield in the war against religious fanatics (now specifically Islamic) who are the most fell enemy the human race has faced in millennia, and who threaten the very existence of life as we know it. It is interestng if a few thousand jihadis from 3rd world countries are that potent. Interesting.
...
If the majority of the insurgents are Iraqis fighting us for specifically Iraqi reasons, then the president's argument over Iraq falls to bits. He doesn't have many more places of refuge in his rhetoric.

 

[oi2002]

LA Times says A Central Pillar of Iraq Policy Crumbling:

But within the last two months, U.S. analysts with access to classified intelligence have started to challenge this precept, noting a "significant and disturbing disconnect" between apparent advances on the political front and efforts to reduce insurgent attacks.

Now, with Saturday's constitutional referendum appearing more likely to divide than unify the country, some within the administration have concluded that the quest for democracy in Iraq, at least in its current form, could actually strengthen the insurgency.

It's worse than that; the hurried political process has created the conditions for civil war.

Newsweek has no more illusions:

Across the country many Iraqis have begun to fear the worst: that their society is breaking apart from within. "The vast majority of the population is resisting calls to take up arms against other ethnic and religious groups," said a senior Bush administration official whose portfolio includes Iraq but who is not authorized to speak on the record. Yet he also said there "is a settling of accounts and a splitting apart of communities that [once] did business together." Sunni insurgents, trying to prevent political dominance by the Shiite majority, are killing them in great numbers. Shiite militia and death squads are resisting. Now many ordinary citizens who are caught in the middle aren't waiting to become victims. They're moving to safer areas, creating trickles of internal refugees. "There is an undeclared civil war," Hussein Ali Kamal, head of intelligence at the Ministry of Interior, told NEWSWEEK.
...
Others say Iraq can exist, even thrive, under such a loose federalist system. What is not in dispute is that at the most basic level—of neighborhoods and communities—the tissue of Iraqi society is already rupturing. It's not just Shia who are displacing themselves to be among their own kind, though they are the main victims of the Sunni-led insurgents. Many Sunnis, terrified of death squads and Shia-dominated police who look the other way, are fleeing Shia areas even if they don't support the insurgency. Dozens of Sunni families left Basra in the past year, fearing attacks from Shiite militias that dominate that southern city. "For a Sunni family like mine that was swimming in a lagoon of Shiites, it was almost impossible to continue living in Basra," said one refugee, Abu Mishal. Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the National Assembly, concurs: "We never had this even under Saddam ... This is very dangerous."

For many Iraqis, the only sense of security they can find after two and a half years of chaos is in the bosom of their sect or tribe. One central government after another in Baghdad has failed to establish order. After two years of training, the new Iraqi Army has but one fully independent battalion—about 500 men—CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid told Congress last week. So, not surprisingly, militias and warlords have begun to take over and tend to their own.

 

[newharper]

An article on the alternative scenarios facing the U.S.

"And very shortsighted. The first two options offer only defeat for America and the Iraqi people. The third option looms. It is proffered by colonels and below, the generals being too obsequious. The spectre of another Vietnam is galvanising America into inaction, and Bush is reluctant to commit additional troops out of fear of a severe political backlash, and, yet that is exactly what he should do."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/87AB4347-4FDF-4BEE-AB27-32B01A6F5F4C.htm