*IRAQ: latest news and developments

[Barking_Mad]

'Iraq was awash in cash. We played football with bricks of $100 bills'

At the beginning of the Iraq war, the UN entrusted $23bn of Iraqi money to the US-led coalition to redevelop the country. With the infrastructure of the country still in ruins, where has all that money gone? Callum Macrae and Ali Fadhil on one of the greatest financial scandals of all time

In a dilapidated maternity and paediatric hospital in Diwaniyah, 100 miles south of Baghdad, Zahara and Abbas, premature twins just two days old, lie desperately ill. The hospital has neither the equipment nor the drugs that could save their lives. On the other side of the world, in a federal courthouse in Virginia, US, two men - one a former CIA agent and Republican candidate for Congress, the other a former army ranger - are found guilty of fraudulently obtaining $3m (£1.7m) intended for the reconstruction of Iraq. These two events have no direct link, but they are none the less products of the same thing: a financial scandal that in terms of sheer scale must rank as one of the greatest in history.

At the start of the Iraq war, around $23bn-worth of Iraqi money was placed in the trusteeship of the US-led coalition by the UN. The money, known as the Development Fund for Iraq and consisting of the proceeds of oil sales, frozen Iraqi bank accounts and seized Iraqi assets, was to be used in a "transparent manner", specified the UN, for "purposes benefiting the people of Iraq".

For the past few months we have been working on a Guardian Films investigation into what happened to that money. What we discovered was that a great deal of it has been wasted, stolen or frittered away. For the coalition, it has been a catastrophe of its own making. For the Iraqi people, it has been a tragedy. But it is also a financial and political scandal that runs right to the heart of the nightmare that is engulfing Iraq today.

Diwaniyah is a sprawling and neglected city with just one small state paediatric and maternity hospital to serve its one million people. Years of war, corruption under Saddam and western sanctions have reduced the hospital to penury, so when last year the Americans promised total refurbishment, the staff were elated. But the renovation has been partial and the work often shoddy, and where it really matters - funding frontline health care - there appears to have been little change at all.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Gunmen storm Iraqi police station, free prisoners

Insurgents stormed a jail about dawn Tuesday in the Sunni Muslim heartland north of Baghdad, killing at least 17 policemen and a courthouse guard. Authorities said all 33 prisoners in the lockup were freed and 10 attackers were killed in the battle.

As many as 100 insurgent fighters -- armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades -- stormed the judicial compound in Muqdadiyah, about 100 kilometres northeast of the capital. The assault began after the attackers fired a mortar round into the police and court complex, said police Brigadier Ali al-Jabouri.

After torching the police station, the insurgents detonated a string of roadside bombs as they fled, taking the bodies of many of their dead comrades with them, police said. At least 13 policemen and civilians and 15 gunmen were wounded in the attack.

Gunmen dressed in army uniforms attack family

Gunmen in army uniforms killed a man and wounded his wife when they attacked their apartment at midnight in Falluja, police said.

Police officer killed in Mosul

In Mosul, 225 miles northwest of the capital, three separate attacks on police patrols killed one officer and wounded four others and two civilians late Sunday.

Grocer killed in Baghdad, city council member wounded

Assailants in a speeding car shot and wounded a city council member for Karradah, a downtown Baghdad district, and gunmen killed a grocer in the capital at work, according to police.

Director of oil products and prison employee killed in Mosul

Gunmen killed Raad al-Asali, the director of oil products in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, as he was leaving his home, police said...Gunmen killed a prison employee in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

University lecturer and former commissioner gunned down

Gunmen killed a university lecturer in the western district of the capital, a source in Yarmouk hospital said...Gunmen killed a former district commissioner outside his house in Baghdad's Doura district, police said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Elaborate U.S. bases raise long-term questions

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq — The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a "heli-park" as good as any back in the States.

At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq's western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.

At a third hub down south, Tallil, they're planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.

Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.

"I think we'll be here forever," the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.

The Iraqi people suspect the same. Strong majorities tell pollsters they'd like to see a timetable for U.S. troops to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases in their country.

The question of America's future in Iraq looms larger as the U.S. military enters the fourth year of its war here, waged first to oust President Saddam Hussein, and now to crush an Iraqi insurgency.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, interim prime minister, has said he opposes permanent foreign bases. A wide range of American opinion is against them as well. Such bases would be a "stupid" provocation, says Gen. Anthony Zinni, former U.S. Mideast commander and a critic of the original U.S. invasion.

But events, in explosive situations like Iraq's, can turn "no" into "maybe" and even "yes."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Interesting read

Why Iraqs police are a menace

The bodies began to show up early last week. On Monday, 34 corpses were found. In the darkness of Tuesday morning, 15 more men, between the ages of 22 and 40 were found in the back of a pickup truck in the al-Khadra district of western Baghdad. They had been hanged. By daybreak, 40 more bodies were found around the city, most bearing signs of torture before the men were killed execution-style. The most gruesome discovery was an 18-by-24-foot mass grave in the Shi'ite slum of Kamaliyah in east Baghdad containing the bodies of 29 men, clad only in their underwear with their hands bound and their mouths covered with tape. Local residents only found it because the ground was oozing blood. In all, 87 bodies were found over two days in Baghdad.

The grisly discovery was horrible enough, the latest and perhaps most chilling sign that Iraq is descending further into butchery — and quite possibly civil war. But almost as disturbing is the growing evidence that the massacres and others like it are being tolerated and even abetted by Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated police forces, overseen by Iraq's Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr. On his watch, sectarian militias have swelled the ranks of the police units and, Sunnis charge, used their positions to carry out revenge killings against Sunnis. While allowing an Iranian-trained militia to take over the ministry, critics say, Jabr has authorized the targeted assassination of Sunni men and stymied investigations into Interior-run death squads. Despite numerous attempts to contact them, neither Jabr nor Interior Ministry spokesmen responded to requests for comment on this article.

Jabr's and his forces' growing reputation for brutality comes at a particularly inopportune moment for the Bush Administration, which would like to hand over security responsibilities to those same police units as quickly as possible. That has raised the distinct and disturbing possibility that the U.S. is in fact training and arming one side in a conflict seeming to grow worse by the day. "Militias are the infrastructure of civil war," U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told TIME recently. Khalilzad has been publicly critical of Jabr and warned that the new security ministries under the next, permanent Iraqi government should be run by competent people who have no ties to militias and who are "non-sectarian." Further U.S. support for training the police and army, he said, depends on it.

 

[Barking_Mad]

US troops hit by bombs, mortar attacks in Iraq

FALLUJAH, Iraq, March 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. troops were hit in separate roadside bombs and mortar attacks in western Iraq on Tuesday, causing casualties, local residents said.

"A roadside bomb went off at about 6:45 a.m. (0335 GMT) on the main road of Barwana town near Haditha city, some 250 km northwest of Baghdad," local residents told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The blast occurred as a U.S. military patrol was passing by, destroying a U.S. Humvee and prompting the U.S. troops to cordon off the scene and blocked the main road, they said. Another roadside bomb detonated Monday night near a U.S. patrol in the al-Zawiyah village near Haditha city, destroying a U.S. Humvee, they said, adding the U.S. soldiers surrounded the village and searched houses and detaining two suspects.

It was not clear whether there was any casualties among the U.S. soldiers in the two attacks as the troops sealed off the scenes, witnesses said.

In separate attack, insurgents lobbed three mortar rounds on a U.S. military base in east of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, witnesses told Xinhua.

"Three mortar rounds rocked the eastern part of Fallujah when they landed the U.S. base outside the city at about 7:00 a.m. (0400 GMT)," they said.

Ten minutes later, the U.S. troops fired back with artillery shelling at the source of the mortars, they said. Iraq's volatile Anbar province, which includes Haditha, Ramadi and Fallujah, has been a hot bed for insurgency since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 as insurgents frequently attack U.S. troops and Iraqi governmental forces. Enditem

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqi Shi'ite pilgrims ambushed, 13 dead

several vehicles returning from a Shi'ite festival were ambushed in the Amriya district 13 people were killed, either shot where they sat or gunned down as they tried to flee. Earlier two people died when pilgrims were attacked in two incidents.

One killed in market car bomb

A CAR bomb exploded near a busy Baghdad market overnight, killing at least one person and wounding three. Police said they expected the death toll to rise. Local residents had earlier reported seeing a number of bodies lying in the street.

Six more bodies found in Baghdad

Police also reported the discovery of six more bodies on the streets of Baghdad, all apparent victims of the communal bloodshed between majority Shi'ites and once-dominant Sunnis which some Iraqi officials fear could expand into open warfare.

Four bodyguards wounded in Baghdad

Four bodyguards for the electricity minister were wounded when gunmen ambushed their convoy as they headed to the airport to pick up the minister, police said.

British soldier wounded, Iraqi civilian killed in Basra

A roadside bomb struck a British patrol killing a civilian and wounding a British soldier in southern Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, the British military said.

Two Iraqi police killed in Baghdad attack

Two policemen were killed and one wounded when gunmen ambushed their patrol in western Baghdad, police said.

Two Iraqi police wounded in Baghdad

Two police commandos were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in southern Baghdad, police said.

Rebels attack Iraqi police station, kill four

Rebels blasted an Iraqi police station with grenade and mortar fire before dawn on Wednesday, killing four policemen in Madaen, south of Baghdad, police said.

Iraq Pipeline Watch # 302
March 2 - attack on an oil pipeline connecting the Al-Daura refinery and Al-Musayyib power plant, in southern Baghdad, causing a fire.

Iraq Pipeline Watch # 301
March 1 - attack on pipeline near Taji.

Iraq Pipeline Watch # 300
February 25 - attack on a pipeline near Bayji. 301.

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.S. general concedes he did not anticipate reluctance of Iraqis to embrace central government

The U.S. military's top commander said Wednesday that he underestimated the extent of the reluctance of the Iraqi people to accept a unified government, and he thought citizens would more quickly embrace the idea of a central government.

''I think that I certainly did not understand the depth of fear that was generated by the decades of Saddam's rule,'' said Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview en route to Saudi Arabia. ''I think a lot of Iraqis have been in the wait and see mode longer that I thought they would.''

The deep divisions within the country's religions sects have triggered deadly attacks, particularly in the more volatile region north of Baghdad, including in Samarra where a sacred mosque was bombed last month. The sectarian violence has slowed the move to a unified government - a process that U.S. officials have said is critical to the ability of the country to stand on its own, improve its economy, and allow U.S. forces to begin more substantial troop withdrawals.

Secrets of Baghdad Airport

The more revelations there are of detainee abuse by U.S. troops, the more evident it is that the guards who mistreated prisoners at Abu Ghraib were not just a few bad apples, as the Bush administration has described them. A New York Times report Sunday focused on a detention center at Baghdad airport where FBI, CIA and civilian Department of Defense officials complained to their superiors about the harsh tactics, including beatings, used by military interrogators.

The military could not ignore the Abu Ghraib abuses after soldiers who disapproved of what happened released photos to the media. The Bush administration then did its best to minimize Abu Ghraib as an isolated case and the work of untrained reservists. But the Baghdad airport center was staffed largely by highly trained Special Operations troops, with about 1,000 present at any time. According to the Times, 34 have been disciplined for mistreatment.

In late 2003, warnings of what was going on at the center came from medics who saw injuries on detainees that could have come from beatings. By 2004, relations between military and civilian officials were strained enough for reports to reach the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby. He informed the under secretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, who instructed his deputy, Lieutenant General William Boykin, to "get to the bottom of this immediately." Boykin, who kept his Pentagon job despite having publicly disparaged the Islamic faith, concluded at the time there was no pattern of misconduct at the center.

Since then, there has been a broader inquiry into allegations of prisoner abuse by Special Operations forces. Completed in 2005 by Brigadier General Richard Formica, it was sent to Congress, but the Pentagon has refused to release even an unclassified version.

America is paying for prisoner abuse in the animosity it engenders throughout the Middle East and the world. And U.S. soldiers will pay for it in future conflicts when they are captured and subjected to similar mistreatment. The public deserves to know the findings of the Pentagon inquiry on what happened at the airport. President George W. Bush should order Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release the Formica report.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Lucky man!

British Iraq hostage Kember freed

Peace activist Norman Kember is released in Iraq after being held hostage for almost four months.

Baghdad hit by 'suicide car bomb'

At least three people have been killed in a suspected suicide car bomb attack in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Police say the target was believed to have been a police building in Baghdad's eastern district of Karrada. A plume of smoke was seen rising above the area and windows in nearby buildings shook, says the BBC's correspondent in Baghdad Andrew North.

Other reports say an anti-terrorist court was hit, but it is not clear if this was the same incident.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The march of folly, that has led to a bloodbath

It is the march of folly. In 1914, the British, French, and Germans though they would be home by Christmas. On the 9th of April 2003, corporal David Breeze of the 3rd Battalion, 4th US Marine Regiment - the very first American to enter Baghdad - borrowed my satellite phone to call his home in Michigan. "Hi you guys, I'm in Baghdad," he told his mother. "I'm ringing to say 'Hi, I love you. I'm doing fine. I love you guys.' The war will be over in a few days. I'll see you all soon."

They were tough, those marines, big-boned men with muck on their faces and ferocity in their eyes - they had been fighting for days without sleep - but they too were on the same lonely journey of despair that the Old Contemptables and the Frenchpoilus and the Bavarian infantry embarked upon almost a century ago.

Was this because we no longer have leaders who have experienced war at first hand? When I grew up, Churchill and MacMillan were Prime Ministers, men who fought in the First World War and who led us through the Second World War. Eden had been in the wartime Cabinet with Churchill. Tito had been wounded by German shellfire in Yugoslavia, Jack Kennedy had commanded a torpedo boat in the Pacific, de Gaulle fought in the Great War, and later helped to liberate France from the Nazis, but Blair, however much he may claim to be a friend of God, has no such distinction; nor Bush, who dodged Vietnam; nor Cheney, who also dodged Vietnam; nor Gordon Brown, nor Condoleezza Rice; nor John Howard of Australia. Colin Powell was in Vietnam; but he has gone, trailing his ignominious February 2003 UN performance on weapons of mass destruction.

 

[Barking_Mad]

update from earlier post

Blast hits Iraq anti-terror unit

At least 23 people, 10 of them policemen, have been killed and dozens wounded in a series of bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. In the deadliest incident, a suicide bomber blew up his car outside the headquarters of the anti-terrorist unit in Karrada, killing 15 people.

Another car bomb near a Shia mosque in the south-western district of Shurta killed at least five people. At least three policemen were reported killed in an earlier roadside bombing. A third car bomb in the centre of the capital wounded two civilians.

In the central district of Karrada, the suicide bomber blew up his car at the gate of the car park of the anti-terrorist unit. The bomber had tried to drive into the car park, but was stopped by guards. After the explosion, Iraqi security forces sealed off the area as ambulances rushed to the scene.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Lots of violence and killing in Iraq today


Roadside bomb kills Iraqi policeman, three wounded in Babylon

Another policemen has been killed and three more injured by a roadside bomb in Babylon, 60 kilometres south of the capital

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Roadside bomb kills four in Baghdad

In the roadside blast in Baghdad's mostly Sunni Muslim neighborhood of Azamiyah, two policemen and two bystanders were killed, according to police Lt. Ahmed Mohammed Ali. At least seven others _ two policemen and five civilians _ were wounded.

Chief of the Iraqi army in Kirkuk escapes attack

The chief of the Iraqi army in Kirkuk, Major General Anwar Muhammed Ameen, escaped a roadside bomb attack on a road 45 km southwest of the northern city of Kirkik, Police Colonel Sarhat Qadir said.

Bomb outside Shiite mosque kills 6,wounds 20

Another bomb outside a Shiite Muslim mosque in the mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhood of Shurta in southwest Baghdad killed at least six people and wounded 20, police said.

Roadside bomb kills 1 policemen, wounded 2 civilians

In Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one policemen and wounded two pedestrians, police said.

Civilian wounded by Iraqi army patrol

Back in the capital, another civilian was seriously wounded by an Iraqi army patrol that was shooting in the air to clear traffic in the western neighborhood of Yarmouk, police said.

3 Policemen killed by car bomb north of the Baghdad

At least three other policemen have been killed and five people wounded in car bomb attack in the north of the city...the driver get out of the car, walk over to a small food stall...extract a remote control device from his pocket, set off the bomb...

 

[Barking_Mad]

IRAQ ANNIVERSARY - BBC WHITEWASH

The Magical Transformation of the Supreme War Crime into a "Miscalculation"

The third anniversary of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has brought out the very worst in our national news media. Consider an item on yesterday's Six O'Clock News on BBC1. Diplomatic Correspondent Bridget Kendall declared solemnly:

"There's still bitter disagreement over invading Iraq. Was it justified or a disastrous miscalculation?" (Kendall, BBC Six O'Clock News, March 20, 2006)

How could the war possibly be justified when the ‘justification’ was said by Tony Blair to be the "serious and current threat" posed by Iraqi WMD? And how can "disastrous miscalculation" be presented as the opposing argument?

Many people, including UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, believe the invasion was "illegal", clearly in breach of the UN Charter.

Many people believe, as did the prosecutors at the post-WW2 Nuremberg trials, that initiating a war of aggression is "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole". (Quoted, Walter J. Rockler, ‘War crimes law applies to U.S. too,’ Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1999)

By what right does the BBC airbrush from reality the huge swath of public opinion which sees the invasion as "the supreme international crime"? Why did the BBC adopt the far less damaging description of "a disastrous miscalculation"? The message is that viewers are to believe that our government can be guilty of mistakes and "miscalculations", but not war crimes.

In similar vein, the BBC’s World Affairs Correspondent, Paul Reynolds, reported:

"The third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq prompts some melancholy thoughts about how it was supposed to be - and how it has turned out.

"By now, according to the plan, Iraq should have emerged into a peaceful, stable representative democracy, an example to dictatorships and authoritarian regimes across the Middle East.

"The invasion would have been a memory." (Reynolds, ‘Iraq three years on: A bleak tale,’ March 17, 2006; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4812460.stm)

Imagine if Reynolds had been reviewing the horror in Kuwait after the 1990 Iraqi invasion - would it have prompted "melancholy thoughts"? Or would such thoughts have suggested that Saddam had been well-intentioned but, alas, in life sometimes things just don't go as planned?

Reynolds would surely have been castigated for suggesting that a murderous, illegal invasion might have been downgraded to a mere “memory", rather than remain a live issue to be addressed and passionately resisted by the international community.

Likewise, the suggestion that Saddam's stated "plan" for Kuwait bore any relation to his actual plan - based on his real, hidden priorities - would have left many a head shaking in disbelief.

Have these reporters and editors no shame? Have they no compassion for the terrible suffering of Iraqi people; suffering in which our government, and a compliant media, is deeply complicit?

 

[Barking_Mad]

Just when you thought you'd heard it all..........

Insurgent doctor killed dozens of wounded soldiers

When policemen, soldiers and officials in Kirkuk who were injured in insurgent attacks arrived in the emergency room of the hospital, they hoped their chances of surviving had gone up as doctors tended their wounds. In fact, many of the wounded were almost certain to die because one of the doctors at the Republic Hospital was a member of an insurgent cell. Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed 43 of them by secretly administering lethal injections, a police inquiry has revealed.

"He was called Dr Louay and when the terrorists had failed to kill a policeman or a soldier he would finish them off," Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah Jaff, a senior Kirkuk police chief, told The Independent. "He gave them a high dosage of a medicine which increased their bleeding so they died from loss of blood."

Dr Louay carried out his murder campaign over an eight to nine-month period, say police. He appeared to be a hard working assistant doctor who selflessly made himself available for work in any part of the hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk. He was particularly willing to assist in the emergency room. With 272 soldiers, policemen and civilians killed and 1,220 injured in insurgent attacks in Kirkuk in 2005, the doctors were rushed off their feet and glad of any help they could get. Nobody noticed how many patients were dying soon after being tended by their enthusiastic young colleague.

Dr Louay was finally arrested only after the leader of the cell to which he belonged, named Malla Yassin, was captured and confessed. "I was really shocked that a doctor and an educated men should do such a thing," said Col Jaff. The murderous work of Dr Louay is symbolic of the ferocity of the struggle for the oil province of Kirkuk. The dispute over its fate is the most important reason why the political parties in Baghdad have failed to create a new government three months after the election on 15 December. The Kurds, expelled from Kirkuk and replaced with Arab settlers by Saddam Hussein, captured the city on 10 April 2003. They have no intention of giving it up. "We will never leave Kirkuk," said Rizgar Ali Hamajan, the former Kurdish peshmerga (soldier) who heads the provincial council. "It is part of Kurdistan."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Bomb wounds one Iraqi near bus station in Baghdad

One civilian was wounded when a bomb exploded at a bus station in the eastern New Baghdad district of the capital, police said.

Mortar wounds two civilians in Baghdad

Two civilians were wounded when two mortars landed on a house in northern Baghdad, police said. The target was not immediately clear.

Iraqi soldier killed near Iskandariya

Police said that one Iraqi army soldier was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb was detonated near their patrol on a road between Latifiya and Iskandariya, south of Baghdad.

Car bomb kills three police in Baghdad

A car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in al-Maghrib street, northern Baghdad, killing three policemen and wounding six civilians, a police source said.

Roadside bomb kills four police in Baqubah

A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in western Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, killing four policemen, a police source said.

Bomb wounds four civilians in Baghdad

Another bomb in Karradah wounded four civilians but no police in the district, which is mostly Shiite but has a large Sunni minority.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Picture from today's bombings.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Fourteen bodies found in Iraq (up from 11 reported earlier)

Fourteen more bodies were found in the continuing string of shadowy sectarian killings: six in the capital and eight brought in by U.S. forces to a hospital in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, police said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

The Aftermath Of A Massacre: Have American troops been killing unarmed civilians in Iraq?

Newsnight report with the account of a 9 year old Iraq boy who apparently witnissed the killings.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraqis tired of U.S.-run show at criminal court

Baghdad's new courthouse is held up by U.S. officials as a symbol of the independent legal system three years of U.S. occupation has brought, but defence lawyers are angry at what they say is summary American justice.

"During Saddam's time we couldn't say a word. Now we scream and scream and nobody listens," defence attorney Thabit Zubeidi told Reuters as he waited on standby for officials to appoint him to defend those accused who had no other representation.

On Wednesday, an apparently typical day at the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI), Iraqi lawyers stood aside as U.S. troops escorted shackled prisoners, who were being made to carry heavy cases of bottled water into the building. Armed American soldiers are a visible presence throughout the low rise building, once Saddam Hussein's treasure store for official gifts he received. They are also on guard inside the courtrooms, where trials on "terrorism" charges are held.

U.S. military lawyers insisted the court is an Iraqi operation and their only role is to help gather evidence and observe sessions: "The Iraqi judges are the ones making the decisions," said Lieutenant Colonel John Carroll, who is a judge back home in the United States. "This is an Iraqi process."

It is a central part of a strategy to defeat an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis since 2003.

But defence lawyers involved in the process, in which a typical trial may consist of a single, hour-long hearing, complained they had little practical access to clients who are swept up by U.S. troops and detained for months at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail or the remote Camp Bucca in the south.

"We only learn what the charges are when they arrive here," said attorney Amer al-Kinnassy, who was in court to defend five men from one family accused of possessing weapons. "Even then, the Americans do not let us talk to our clients ... If I try to walk over there and talk to my clients they won't let me."

Interesting read on the insurgent attack on Muqdadiya

Anatomy of a Rebel Strike

An attack northeast of Baghdad, which freed 33 prisoners and killed 17 security officers, was a bold and highly coordinated operation. Since last year, the city of Muqdadiya had not been considered especially vulnerable. There were shootings and bombings from time to time, but police would round up suspected rebels in nearby villages, as they did last weekend, and haul them to cells in the downtown courthouse.

Then at dawn Tuesday, masked men came to break the detainees out. Descending from a dozen cars and pickup trucks laden with mortars and grenades, they surrounded the judicial compound and blasted away, killing at least 17 policemen and guards and freeing 33 prisoners in one of Iraq's boldest insurgent raids in months.

The highly coordinated attack, which featured car bombs to repel reinforcements, was a potent reminder of the Sunni-led insurgency's capacity to strike at Iraqi government and U.S. targets, despite almost constant sweeps against guerrilla forces and President Bush's frequent assertions of progress in combating the rebellion.

In 90 minutes of fighting, the rebels destroyed 12 police cars and set fire to the courthouse and adjacent police station, holding off outnumbered U.S. and Iraqi forces. Reinforcements, delayed by insurgent booby traps, eventually chased down some of the insurgents, capturing eight as they fled in two vehicles.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Dog handler jailed for Iraq abuse

US army dog handler Sgt Michael Smith has been jailed for six months for abusing detainees in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison from 2003 to 2004. Smith, 24, was convicted of using his black Belgian shepherd to menace prisoners for his own amusement. He expressed no remorse for his actions at the court martial, saying soldiers were not meant to be "soft and cuddly". Prosecutors said he had competed with another handler to see who could make a detainee soil himself out of fear. One of the photographs to emerge from Abu Ghraib prison depicts Smith holding his dog inches from the face of a detainee who appears to be cowering in terror.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Insurgents Kill 3 Baghdad Police Officers

Suspected insurgents killed three policemen and wounded another in a drive-by shooting in west Baghdad Friday morning, police said.

7 bodies handcuffed, blindfolded and shot found in Baghdad

In what appeared to be the latest in a series of sectarian killings, the bodies of seven men were found by police in Canal Street in eastern Baghdad. The victims had been handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head.

Iraq attacks kill 3 police, 4 bakery workers

Gunmen attacked a bakery in southwest Baghdad on Friday morning, killing four workers, and they left behind a bomb that killed a police officer who rushed to the scene to investigate the shooting, Baghdad police said.

Blast hits Sunni mosque in Iraq

A bomb planted near the entrance to a Sunni mosque in a town northeast of Baghdad exploded as worshippers were leaving midday prayers on Friday, and police said casualties were feared.

Danish soldier killed by roadside bomb in Iraq

Danish soldier was killed in southern Iraq on Thursday after his patrol vehicle hit a bomb by the side of the road near the city of Basra, the Danish central army command said.

Eight Iraqi soldiers killed near Haditha (update)

A suicide car bomber attacked an Iraqi army patrol near the U.S. Al Asad air base and killed nine soldiers in Baghdad near the town of Haditha, 200 km (125 miles) west of Baghdad.

No escape for fearful Palestinians in Iraq

Reports of kidnappings, murder and persecution of Palestinian refugees in Iraq have forced many to try to flee, but for most there is nowhere else to go....

 

[Barking_Mad]

Iraq Police force numbers over estimated

The administration often references the fact that there are now more than 230, 000 trained and equipped men in the Iraqi forces (240,600 as of March 8, 2006). This is true up to a point, but take a hard look at the numbers and the results appear very different:

88,900 of the total force are police and border police with little real equipment, major facility problems, weak training and serious shortcomings in manpower quality. These forces face major problems with death squads and discipline. The end result is that the United States has called 2006 the year of police, and is totally reorganizing the training effort to embed coalition teams within police stations and to strengthen the Ministry of Interior's control and management.

Most police are belong to sectarian or ethnic units. If they are local, their loyalties are sometimes uncertain. If they are not, they may be seen as a sectarian or ethnic threat. This situation is getting better, but slowly.

The police have almost no protected vehicles, few heavy weapons similar to those of the insurgents, are often located in extremely vulnerable buildings, and have weak communications. Corruption is a major issue. As a result, 37 percent of the total ISF manning is a major problem area, and will remain so at least through 2006, and probably through much of 2007.

The problem with the police is far more serious than even these numbers and data indicate, because in many areas the police are passive, or are supplemented with local police and militias that are actually in control of local security. Some 20,000 to 40,000 additional low-grade and sometimes rogue elements are involved. They control some key areas and cities, including Basra.

 

[Barking_Mad]

ROund-up of some news stories.

Nearly 25 citizens perish in attacks in Baghdad as United States, Iraqi troops sweep oil-rich north for insurgents

Drive-by shootings, roadside bombings and sectarian killings left nearly 20 Iraqis dead in Baghdad Friday. American and Iraqi troops swept the oil-rich region of Kirkuk for suspected insurgents and captured dozens. Drive-by gunmen killed three policemen in west Baghdad and three power station workers headed to their jobs in Taji, just north of the capital, police said.

In south Baghdad's Saydiyah district, gunmen killed four employees of a pastry shop, police said. Nearby, a roadside bomb killed a policeman. Retaliatory killings between Shiite and Sunni Muslims have become increasingly common in the capital since the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine that unleashed the continuing rash of sectarian murders. Baghdad police said they discovered 13 bodies, blindfolded and shot, on Friday in the Binok, Kazimiyah and Sadr City neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, soldiers of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division joined Iraqi troops in a sweep of five villages outside the city of Kirkuk, 290 kilometers (180 miles) north of Baghdad. Forty suspected insurgents were picked up in Hawija, police said. A day earlier, the U.S. military spokesman in Iraq asserted that major violence is largely confined to just three of the country's 18 provinces, where fighting raged on Thursday with at least 58 people killed in execution-style slayings, bombings and gunbattles.

For the third straight day Thursday, Sunni insurgents hit a major police and jail facility this time with a suicide car bombing that killed 25 in central Baghdad. The attacker detonated his explosives at the entrance to the Interior Ministry Major Crimes unit in the Karradah district, killing 10 civilians and 15 policemen, authorities said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Interesting read.

Battle for Baghdad 'has already started'

The battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims for control of Baghdad has already started, say Iraqi political leaders who predict fierce street fighting will break out as each community takes over districts in which it is strongest.

"The fighting will only stop when a new balance of power has emerged," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said. "Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area." He said sectarian cleansing had already begun.

Many Iraqi leaders now believe that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the population is mixed. "The real battle will be the battle for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control," said one senior official who did not want his name published. "The army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities and not to the government." He expected the Americans to stay largely on the sidelines.

Throughout the capital, communities, both Sunni and Shia, are on the move, fleeing districts where they are in a minority and feel under threat. Sometimes they fight back. In the mixed but majority Shia al-Amel district, Sunni householders recently received envelopes containing a Kalashnikov bullet and a letter telling them to get out at once. In this case they contacted the insurgents who killed several Shia neighbours suspected of sending the letters.

"The Sunni will fight for Baghdad," said Mr Hussein. "The Baath party already controls al-Dohra and other Sunni groups dominate Ghazaliyah and Abu Ghraib [districts in south and west Baghdad]."

The Iraqi army is likely to fall apart once inter-communal fighting begins. According to Peter Galbraith, former US diplomat and expert on Iraq, the Iraqi army last summer contained 60 Shia battalions, 45 Sunni battalions, nine Kurdish battalions and one mixed battalion.

The police are even more divided and in Baghdad are largely controlled by the Mehdi Army of the radical nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Organisation that has largely been in control of the interior ministry since last May. Sunni Arabs in Baghdad regard the ministry's paramilitary police commanders as Shia death squads.

Mr Hussein gave another reason why the army is weak. "Where you have 3,000 soldiers there will in fact be only 2,000 men [because of ghost soldiers who do not exist and whose salaries are taken by senior officers]," he said. "When it comes to fighting only 500 of those men will turn up."

Iraqi officials and ministers are increasingly in despair at the failure to put together an effective administration in Baghdad. A senior Arab minister, who asked not to be named, said: "The government could end up being only a few buildings in the Green Zone."

The mood among Iraqi leaders, both Arabs and Kurds, is far gloomier in private than the public declarations of the US and British governments. The US President George W Bush called this week for a national unity government in Iraq but Iraqi observers do not expect this to be any more effective than the present government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. One said this week: "The real problem is that the Shia and Sunni hate each other and not that we haven't been able to form a government."

The Shia and Kurds will have the advantage in the coming conflict because they have leaders and organisations. The Sunni are divided and only about 30 per cent of the population of the capital. Nevertheless they should be able to hold on to their stronghold in west Baghdad and the Adhamiyah district east of the Tigris. The Shia do not have the strength and probably do not wish to take over the Sunni towns and villages north and west of Baghdad.

Though the Kurds have long sought autonomy close to quasi-independence, their leaders are worried that civil war will increase Iranian and Turkish involvement in Iraq. Mr Hussein said he feared that civil war in Baghdad could spread north to Mosul and Kirkuk where the division is between Kurd and Arab rather than Sunni and Shia.

Already Baghdad resembles Beirut at the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, when Christians and Muslims fought each other for control of the city.

The battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims for control of Baghdad has already started, say Iraqi political leaders who predict fierce street fighting will break out as each community takes over districts in which it is strongest.

"The fighting will only stop when a new balance of power has emerged," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said. "Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area." He said sectarian cleansing had already begun.

Many Iraqi leaders now believe that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the population is mixed. "The real battle will be the battle for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control," said one senior official who did not want his name published. "The army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities and not to the government." He expected the Americans to stay largely on the sidelines.

Iraqi officials and ministers are increasingly in despair at the failure to put together an effective administration in Baghdad. A senior Arab minister, who asked not to be named, said: "The government could end up being only a few buildings in the Green Zone."

 

[Barking_Mad]

U.S.: Iraq on own to rebuild

The head of the U.S.-led program to rebuild Iraq said Thursday that the Iraqi government can no longer count on U.S. funds and must rely on its own revenues and other foreign aid, particularly from Gulf nations.

"The Iraqi government needs to build up its capability to do its own capital budget investment," Daniel Speckhard, director of the U.S. Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, told reporters.

The burden of funding reconstruction poses an extraordinary challenge for a country that needs tens of billions of dollars for repairing its infrastructure at the same time it's struggling to pay its bills. Iraq's main revenue source - oil - is hampered by insurgent attacks on production facilities and pipelines, forcing the country to spend $6 billion a year on oil imports.

Iraq's deputy finance minister, Kamal Field al-Basri, said it was "reasonable" for the United States to sharply cut back its reconstruction efforts after spending about $21 billion. "We should be very much dependent on ourselves," al-Basri said in an interview.

Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the U.S. reconstruction effort "a dismal failure. It hasn't met any of its goals. It's left a legacy of half-built projects, built to U.S. standards, which Iraq doesn't have the capability to maintain."

 

[Barking_Mad]

Police colonel kidnapped in Baghdad

Gunmen kidnapped police commando Colonel Muayyad al-Mashhadani in front of his home in eastern Baghdad, police said.

Two bodies found in Baiji

The bodies of two Iraqi soldiers who were killed by gunmen on Friday were found in Baiji, 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, said a source at a U.S.-Iraqi military coordination centre.

Iraqi official survived assassination attempt

Director General of the Health Ministry Court in Iraq, Dr. Jasib Lateef, survived an assassination attempt while he was on his way back on the University Road that leads to Baghdad International Airport--injuring one of his companions.

Sunni killed in Basra

In the southern port city of Basra, a Sunni was shot dead by unidentified gunmen, also on leaving a local mosque after prayers.

Gunmen kill four family members in Mahmudiya

Just south of the capital in Mahmudiya, in the notorious 'triangle of death', gunmen burst into a house and killed four family members, leaving the mother wounded. Police were not clear whether the family was Sunni or Shiite.

Five more bodies found in Sadr City

Police found five bodies, shot, blindfolded and with their hands bound, on the edge of the Shi'ite district of Sadr City, police said.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Up to 10 Iraqis killed, injured in two explosions

BAGHDAD, March 25 (KUNA) -- Four Iraqis were killed and six others were wounded in two bomb explosions that took place in Al-Wazeeriya and Al-Baladiyat areas east of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. An Iraqi Interior Ministry source told KUNA a bomb exploded at an Iraqi police quarters located near the Ministry of Finance at the Al-Wazeeriya area east of Baghdad. The explosion killed one policeman and three civilians and wounded six others who were taken to hospital for treatment, the source added.

In Al-Baladiyat, a second bomb exploded aimed at a US patrol but the amount of casualties was not reported, the source added. US soldiers cordoned off the area and prevented anyone from coming near the scene. Iraqi police said that one child was injured in the explosion.

Meanwhile, Iraqi police said six unidentified bodies were found last Friday in Al-Khadra province west of Baghdad. The police said the bodies, which were hanged, were discovered by US forces inside a car. Earlier today, Iraqi police announced that the number of bodies found in the past 12 hours reached 15.

In Mosul, an Iraqi Interior Ministry source said unknown men set up an ambush aimed at a convoy of trucks heading to a US base in Badoush west of Mosul, located 390 kilometers north of Baghdad.

The attack destroyed six trucks.

 

[Barking_Mad]

40 people killed or wounded in gunbattle near Mahmoudiya

Some 40 people were killed or wounded in a big gunbattle near the town of Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of the capital. Police said gunmen of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia were fighting insurgent forces, which are primarily Sunni Muslim.

Mosque targeted in Iraq bombing

Five Iraqis have been killed and 17 injured by a bomb planted outside a Sunni mosque in the town of Khalis, 60km (40 miles) north-east of Baghdad.
Earlier, a series of insurgent attacks in the capital left seven other people dead, including three policemen.

Police also discovered the bodies of seven men in the city's east. They had been handcuffed and shot in the head......

.....In Baghdad, four people were killed when gunmen raided a bakery in the predominantly Sunni district of Saidiya. A policeman was killed soon afterwards by a bomb that the attackers had left behind. Two other policemen were shot dead in an ambush in the city's west.

 

[Barking_Mad]

US forces kill 18 Iraqis

AT least 18 Iraqis were killed today when US troops clashed with a Shiite militia, medics and police said.

Police said the clashes erupted after the Mehdi Army militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr tried to stop US troops from entering a mosque.

A medic said 18 bodies were found around the mosque.

]

 

[Barking_Mad]

'Beheaded bodies' found in Iraq

Iraqi security forces say they have found 30 bodies - all of them beheaded - near the town of Baquba. Security officials said they found the bodies near the road by Mullah Eid, a village to the south-west of the town.

The area has been plagued by sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni Muslims since the bombing of a Shia shrine in the city of Samarra in February. Baquba, a mixed town home to Shia and Sunni Muslims, has itself been the focus of continuing violence.

The grim discovery came shortly after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested that the US could pull significant numbers of troops out of Iraq this year, depending on the security situation.

Iraqi authorities warn of exploding candy

Iraqi Ministry of State for National Security on Sunday warned of touching explosive-packed candy bars found on Baghdad streets. The ministry said that unknown gunmen threw candy bars that contain explosive materials nearby schools and residential areas

 

[Barking_Mad]

War hampers studies in Iraq - Students face death as fighting rages on

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The day began like any other at Dijla Primary School in Baghdad’s posh Mansour district.

Rows of students in neat gray-and-white uniforms gathered in the courtyard to raise the Iraqi flag and sing the national anthem. They read passages from religious texts, then cheerfully went to their classrooms.

Headmistress Wajida Sharhan was working in her office when a mortar shell slammed into a second-floor fifth-grade classroom.

"The sound of the explosion was so powerful, as if heaven and earth collided," she said. "I couldn’t open my eyes because of the dust. I heard loud screams from the children, and a girl came into my office with her arm nearly cut off."

The torrent of violence that has swept Baghdad and surrounding provinces since U.S. forces invaded three years ago and surged since last month’s attack on a Shiite shrine has left little unscathed - even schools. What were once sanctuaries of learning have become places of fear, undercutting efforts to rebuild the dilapidated education system left by Saddam Hussein.

Bombs, rockets, mortar and machine-gun fire killed 64 school children in the four months ending Feb. 28 alone, according to a report by the Education Ministry. At least 169 teachers and 84 other employees died in the same period.