http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9332851/

Al-Qaida in Iraq declares all-out war

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/14/afr....0914iraqAA.php

Explosions thunder across Baghdad as 160 killed

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/289...9831FB06ACA.htm

Scores die in multiple Iraq explosions

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/internat...4iraq-wire.html

Attacks Kill More Than 100 Iraqi Capital

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5091400471.html

series of Bahdad Attacks Kill at Least 160

Iraqi insurgents are a moving target
As the attacks in west Iraq ended, insurgents' bombs in Baghdad killed
at least 152. By Jill Carroll and Dan Murphy
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0915/p06s01-woiq.html?s=hns

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI16Ak03.html

Welcome to Civil War
Pepe Escobar


Undeclared civil war in Iraq has been raging for months. Now it's "official": using the customary audio clip on a website, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - who may or may not be a cipher, but is certainly the leader of Monotheism and Holy War, or al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers - has declared "all-out war" on Iraqi Shi'ites.

To prove it, he unleashed Black Wednesday - including a horrendous attack in the Kadhimiyah neighborhood in Baghdad, with at least 112 dead and more than 200 wounded, all of them poor, helpless Shi'ite construction workers, many of them enticed toward the killer with promises of jobs before he detonated his lethal load. Baghdad was paralyzed on Wednesday, trying to cope with more than 150 dead and more than 500 wounded in a string of coordinated attacks marking the bloodiest day in the country since the end of major combat two years ago.

According to the Zarqawi audio, "The al-Qaeda Organization in the
Land of Two Rivers [Iraq] is declaring all-out war on the Rafidha, wherever they are in Iraq". Rafidha is the pejorative Arabic term referring to Shi'ites as apostates. "As for the government, servants of the crusaders headed by [Prime Minister] Ibrahim al-Jaafari, they have declared a war on Sunnis in Tal Afar." So, following Zarqawi's logic, the civil war against Shi'ites is a response to what happened in Tal Afar.

Tal Afar is a poor northern town in the middle of the desert whose majority population of roughly 200,000 is 70% Sunni Turkmen and 30% Shi'ite Turkmen. Just as former prime minister Iyad Allawi was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Fallujah, current prime minister Jaafari ordered what amounts to ethnic cleansing in Tal Afar.

Tal Afar revisited
Yet one more heavily hyped Pentagon/Baghdad production yielded no box office results - for obvious reasons. The Salafi jihadis, reportedly a couple of hundred, who were holed up in Tal Afar easily melted away, like the fish in Mao Zedong's pool of resistance. And the "pool" itself - most of the civilian population - turned into a stream of refugees. The operation was doomed to failure from the beginning because the Iraqi "army" involved consisted basically of Kurdish Peshmerga militias supported by local Shi'ite Turkmen informers. They may be Turkmen, but they are allied with Sunni Arabs.

Once again, the Sunni Arab Salafi jihadis got away by using classic guerrilla tactics: while the Pentagon/Jaafari armory was chasing shadows in empty Tal Afar, they mounted spectacular, deadly, highly visible attacks against Shi'ites in Baghdad, the heart of power.

So the pattern is always the same. The Baghdad/Pentagon axis unleashes massive, highly publicized repression - in Fallujah, in Tal Afar (many times over), in Qaim near the Syrian border, soon in Ramadi (it has been already announced); the Salafi jihadis melt away and later regroup.

The palpable effect is always the same, as University of Michigan professor Juan Cole suggests: de-urbanization of the Sunni Arab heartland. In other words, ethnic cleansing. Yet it's folly to believe that the Pentagon/Jaafari axis will be able to depopulate or destroy every major Sunni city opposed to the new, emerging Shi'ite-Kurd majority in power. Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers has fully capitalized on the matter. The voice on the Zarqawi tape warns Sunni Arabs to "wake up from your slumber ... the war to exterminate Sunnis will never end".

Who profits from all this? Certainly al-Qaeda in Iraq, with its agenda of keeping permanent chaos and anarchy. But also the Pentagon - as undeclared (and now declared) civil war is the perfect excuse for an indefinite American military occupation. In the long run, this ghastly state of affairs will profit "the crusaders" - in Zarqawi lingo - those hawks in the Bush administration who dream of the breakup of once-unified Iraq into a Kurdish north, a southern "Shi'iteistan" (both swimming in oil and allied with the US) and an enfeebled, dried out Sunni center.

What does al-Qaeda want?
"Zarqawi" - cipher or not cipher, performing or not performing miracles with just one leg and a US$25 million bounty on his head - has caused tremendous havoc since pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda in October 2004 , when his network adopted its current denomination, al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers (Tanzim al-Qaeda fi Bilad al-Rafidayn) and Osama bin Laden recognized him as the jihadi-in-chief in Iraq in a December 2004 audiotape.

The long-term strategy of al-Qaeda in Iraq is not Jordanian, like Zarqawi himself: it is dictated by the Saudi branch of al-Qaeda. The strategy has been spelled out in a series of documents supervised by Sheikh Yussef al-Ayeeri. The most strategic of these documents is called Iraq al-jihad, awal wa akhtar (The jihad in Iraq, hopes and dangers).

It's all there: centralized resistance in Sunni Arab cities and villages; close collaboration with Saddam's former Mukhabarat intelligence officers; attacks against other members of the coalition to isolate the Americans and the new Iraqi defense forces; keeping an atmosphere of chaos at all costs; and crucially disrupting by all means the flow of oil. Another point of the document is now becoming clear: the setting up of jihadi networks in the Shi'ite south capable of protecting Sunni minorities in case of civil war - a de facto situation with the escalation of sectarian killings.

Last month in Amman, Jordan, Asia Times Online came across a book by Fouad Hussein, an Amman-based journalist who has shared jail time with Zarqawi. The Arabic-language book, "Al-Zarqawi - al-Qaeda's Second Generation", aims to detail nothing less than al-Qaeda's strategy toward establishing an Islamic caliphate before 2020. The key source that lends credence to the book is Saif al-Adl.

Mohammad Ibrahim al-Mekkawi, aka Saif al-Adl, a colonel in the Egyptian armed forces, was the former number two of the Egyptian al-Jihad and an instructor in al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan. He became al-Qaeda's military chief after Palestinian Abu Zubayda al-Filastini was arrested. In late 2001, he managed to flee from Afghanistan and found refuge in Iran. The US offers $5 million for his head. Iranian diplomats refuse to admit on the record that al-Adl is in the country, although they admit they hold a number of al-Qaeda operatives.

In his book, Hussein uses his personal knowledge of Zarqawi as well as privileged information passed to him by al-Adl, including heated debate between bin Laden and Zarqawi, to uncover what would be the master plan of global jihad. The book has received extensive coverage in the Persian-language Iranian media and has been analyzed very seriously in Tehran.

Hussein lists seven crucial stages. The first, dubbed "the awakening" (of the Muslim world), has already happened: from September 11 to the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. The second stage is dubbed "opening eyes": it involves al-Qaeda blossoming into a movement (it is already an idea), with Iraq as its headquarters; it should last until 2006. The third stage, dubbed "Arising and Standing up", should last until 2010, with a focus on jihad inside Syria, and increased attacks on Turkey, Jordan and Israel. All these stages make sense when confronted with the progression of facts on the ground.

Then it gets fuzzy. The fourth stage lasts until 2013 and it involves the total defeat by al-Qaeda of all Western-supported Arab governments, as well as a series of attacks against the global flow of oil and sophisticated cyber-terrorism designed to debilitate the American economy. The fifth stage is the proclamation of an Islamic caliphate between 2013 and 2016 - as Western interference in the Arab world should be by this time reduced to a minimum. The sixth stage, starting in 2016, will be "total confrontation", with an "Islamic army" fighting infidels all over the world. And the seventh stage, to be completed by 2020, should be nothing less than the triumph of the caliphate.

The year 2020, by the way, is the date former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad set for Malaysia - a moderate Muslim nation - to become a fully developed, globally integrated country, ie the total antithesis of the al-Qaeda utopia. It is also the date many economists believe will mark the point when China's economy will become the world's number one - and would have taken decisive steps to free itself from dependence of Arab oil, striking major supply deals with Iran and Kazakhstan.

Hussein in his book lists these seven stages as the field manual for global jihadis. He interprets - correctly - the attacks on Manhattan, Madrid and London as just a means to an end: provoking a paranoia about security in major Western capitals as one of the privileged tools in building up the Islamic caliphate. The problem is Hussein regards "al-Qaeda" as a centralized brain delivering instructions: that's not the case since Tora Bora in late 2001, with "al-Qaeda" becoming a nebula, a virus constantly mutating with lethal speed.

The idea of al-Qaeda reenacting a caliphate in the whole Islamic world, Shi'ite Iran included, may be seen by Westerners, Asians and moderate Muslims alike as an absolute lunacy. But Franco-Lebanese historian Ghassan Tueni considers "bin Laden's utopia, as monstrous as its form reveals", as steeped in history, "a morbid rejection of one century of defeat and impasse, with plenty of frustration and humiliation".

Utopias can become deadly. Up to now, the Bush administration's "war on terror" has done nothing to puncture the myth. Four years after September 11, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri - both apparently alive and well - continue to inspire Salafi jihadis with their iconic status, while "Zarqawi" causes increasing havoc in Iraq.

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

US: Spike in Iraq Violence Predictable Guardian Unlimited
Brutal insurgent bombings that killed nearly 200 people in Baghdad over the past two days were a "predictable spike in violence'' tied to the coming referendum on Iraq's new constitution, the U.S. military said Thursday. As suicide bombers kept up their campaign for a second day, at least 31 people were killed - 23 of them Iraqi police and Interior Ministry commandos, now targets of choice for the Sunni-dominated insurgency. At least seven of 570 people wounded in Wednesday's attacks have died, hospital officials said, raising the toll to at least 167 in the worst day of killing to hit the capital since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. "These spikes of violence are predictable around certain critical events that highlight the progress of democracy,'' said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the chief American military spokesman. "Remember, democracy equals failure for the insurgency. So there has to be heightened awareness now as we work our way toward the referendum'' on Oct. 15, he said. "That's power, that's movement toward democracy.'' Al-Qaida in Iraq, headed by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the bombing campaign launched after an Iraqi-U.S. force of 8,500 stormed the northern city of Tal Afar, an insurgent bastion, this week. Al-Zarqawi purportedly declared "all-out war'' on Shiite Muslims, Iraqi troops and the government in what the United States has called a desperate propaganda campaign to derail the political process. Leaders of the Sunni Arab minority in Iraq have vowed to defeat the constitution, which they claim favors the Shiite majority and the Kurds. Lynch said the joint force killed 145 insurgents and captured 361 in the second operation in a year to rid Tal Afar of militants, including foreign fighters crossing from Syria. Now, he said, U.S. forces along with the Iraqis were fighting to regain control of the Syrian border, near the western insurgent stronghold of Qaim well to the south of Tal Afar. "The focus is ... to restore control of the border and in this particular case the border with Syria,'' he said. ``We believe that the terrorists and foreign fighters are entering Iraq across the Syrian border, down the Euphrates River Valley into Baghdad.'' Recent violence only served to deepen the misery in Baghdad, where streets were noticeably quieter Thursday - deserted in the southern Dora district where the latest bombings were concentrated. U.S. and Iraqi forces using loudspeakers roamed the district warning residents to stay indoors because five more suicide car bombers were believed to be in the area. Many victims of Wednesday's attacks were killed shortly after dawn when a bomber lured day laborers to his small van with the promise of work, then detonated his explosives in the heavily Shiite Kazimiyah district. Some of the dead were taken for burial Thursday to the huge Shiite cemetery in the holy city of Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad. "We appeal to the government to punish those criminals immediately,'' said Ali Hamza, a victim's father, in tears. As al-Qaida in Iraq intensified its bombing and propaganda campaign, the government hit back with threats. "We will not retreat or be silent. There will be no room for you (insurgents) in all of Iraq. We will chase you wherever you go,'' Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, told reporters. Iraqi authorities have taken pains in recent days to convince the population that the insurgency is overwhelmingly foreign, claiming, for example, that they arrested a Palestinian and a Libyan in the Kazimiyah attack. The bomber was a Syrian, the government said without detailing evidence. The Americans have quietly contradicted that government line, saying the insurgency is only about 20 percent foreign. The massive bombings took place with both Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in the United States. "Today, Iraq is facing one of the most brutal campaigns of terror at the hands of the forces of darkness,'' Talabani said Thursday, addressing the U.N. General Assembly with an appeal for international help. "We are in desperate need of your experience, investment and your moral support for the effort to fight terrorism.'' With bombs continuing to exploded in Baghdad, U.S. forces and insurgents reportedly clashed in Ramadi, a militant stronghold on the road to neighboring Jordan. A Web posting purportedly from Al-Qaida in Iraq said its forces engaged the American military in the predominantly Sunni city. Police Capt. Nasir Alusi said U.S. and Iraqi troops in Ramadi came under mortar attack as militants roamed the streets. Shops were closed and streets empty. Automatic gunfire echoed through the area, he said. The Americans did not confirm the engagement, but Lynch said U.S. operations were continuing in Anbar province, where Ramadi is the capital. Meanwhile, The Associated Press obtained the text of minor, final changes to Iraq's draft constitution. The United Nations is to print the draft in Baghdad and insure its distribution before the referendum, but the world body said it was awaiting final approval. There were conflicting reports on when Iraq's parliament would sign off on the document. Two articles in the draft were changed, one was dropped entirely and one was added. Of those, the main change was a new clause noting that Iraq was a founding member of the Arab League, an addition Sunni Arabs sought to underline the country's links with the Arab world. The dropped passage gave the constitution precedence over international human rights agreements, which the United States asked to be removed.
16 killed in suicide attack in Baghdad Sify
More suicide bombs kill in Iraq CBC News
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US tempers its view of victory in Iraq
The Pentagon hoped to quell unrest before a pullout, but violence is
changing US goals. By Mark Sappenfield
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0916/p01s02-usfp.html?s=hns

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...-home-headlines

More Iraqis Joining Zarqawi's Cause
By Greg Miller and Tyler Marshall, Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda's top operative in Iraq is drawing growing numbers of Iraqi nationals to his organization, increasing the reach and threat of an insurgent group that has been behind many of the most devastating attacks in the country, U.S. officials and Iraqi government leaders say.

The group, headed by Jordanian-born radical Abu Musab Zarqawi, previously was composed almost exclusively of militants from other Arab nations, and has symbolized the foreign dimension of a stubborn insurgency fighting to oust U.S. forces.

But Zarqawi "is bringing more and more Iraqi fighters into his fold," a U.S. official said, adding that Iraqis accounted for "more than half his organization."

Although Zarqawi is believed to command fewer than 1,000 fighters, the daring and lethal nature of their attacks, coupled with Zarqawi's links to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, have made him the most notorious figure in the Iraq insurgency.

The U.S. has set a $25-million bounty on Zarqawi, whose organization has been behind a series of beheadings, suicide bombings and other gruesome attacks.

Zarqawi's faction has claimed responsibility for a bombing campaign this week that has left at least 169 dead in Baghdad, apparently in reprisal for a U.S.-Iraqi campaign against insurgents in the northern city of Tall Afar. One of the car bombers reportedly lured day laborers to his vehicle by posing as an employer. It was unclear whether he was Iraqi.

Details of a growing Iraqi dimension to Zarqawi's group were provided by three U.S. officials with access to classified intelligence data and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Their comments reflect the government's latest attempt to come to grips with a multi-layered insurgency that has often confounded U.S. forces and intelligence agencies.

The U.S. officials indicated that the infusion of Iraqis, including, apparently, former members of the Iraqi intelligence service and military, represented a change in the group's makeup rather than a major expansion.

A significant Iraqi presence in the Zarqawi group carries ominous implications, both for the Bush administration and the fledgling, popularly elected government it supports in Baghdad.

The Iraqis under Zarqawi's wing could provide him with better intelligence, and give legitimacy to a group viewed by many Iraqis as unwanted outsiders. In addition, Iraqi recruits are being exposed to the workings of a highly efficient Islamic extremist group.

The influx of Iraqis also would diminish the effect of any tightening of border controls — a key Bush administration objective — on the insurgency's strength.

U.S. intelligence in Iraq has frequently been wrong. However, two factors add credence to the reports of the shifting composition of Zarqawi's group: Several of his senior lieutenants have been captured by U.S. forces in recent months and some reportedly have talked extensively under interrogation.

Senior Iraqi officials have reported seeing the same development.

Mowaffak Rubaie, Iraq's national security advisor and a former Shiite activist, said "there's no doubt" that once-nationalistic elements of the insurgency were drifting toward Zarqawi and his extremist Salafi sect of Islam.

"There's a tendency to religion-ize the insurgency," he said. "Religion is a strong motive. You're not going to find someone who's going to die for Baathists. But Salafists have a very strong message. If you use the Koran selectively, it could be a weapon of mass destruction."

Few Iraqis appear to share Zarqawi's goal of establishing a radical Islamic state, but small numbers of Iraqi hard-liners apparently are attracted by the effectiveness of Zarqawi's group.

"They're the best game in town, the most organized organization," said a U.S. official, who added that Zarqawi's network was also a "well-funded organization that is willing to pay people for their work" when many Iraqis, particularly police, have little or no income.

The officials noted that police in three cities, including Mosul, are not being paid. They declined to name the others.

Officials said it was not clear how dedicated these Iraqis were to the broader Al Qaeda cause, or whether they would be willing to travel outside the country to carry out terrorist attacks in Arab or western nations.

Zarqawi escaped capture in February year near the city of Ramadi, authorities say. He fled on foot as coalition forces at a checkpoint intercepted a truck containing a laptop and documents. Coalition forces since have killed or captured several of his lieutenants. The latest such incident was announced Sept. 9, when a U.S. military official said a high-level aide had been killed in western Iraq.

But the U.S. officials who are familiar with intelligence on Zarqawi's group said the organization had proven remarkably resilient and was organized to withstand losses of key leaders, including Zarqawi.

One of the officials noted that coalition forces thought they had delivered a major blow in January with the capture of Zarqawi's principal bomb maker in Baghdad. But since then, the official said, "car bombs are way up in Baghdad."

Overall, the officials said, the insurgency in Iraq is divided into three "clumps": religious extremists such as Zarqawi; former members of the long-ruling Baath Party of Saddam Hussein; and disparate Iraqi groups acting out of local or national interests.

The officials described a steady flow of Saudis, Yemenis and other Arab nationals into — and, in some cases, out of — the country. But officials said foreign fighters accounted for less than 10% of the insurgents in Iraq.

Zarqawi's reported success in recruiting Iraqis to his cause comes as frustration is mounting among the minority Sunni Arabs, who fear they will be marginalized in a democratic Iraq and are prepared to fight its emergence.

The CIA and other agencies have resisted pressure to provide an estimate of the number of insurgents in Iraq, partly out of concern that it would foster the impression that there is a finite population that can be stamped out.

Rather, officials said intelligence analysts had noted that there were an estimated 800,000 to 1 million Iraqi Sunni Arab men of military age who represent the pool of potential insurgents. How many might turn to violence depends on several factors, starting with the extent to which Sunnis are satisfied with their stake in any new government.

Some Sunnis have objected to the draft constitution that is to be presented to Iraqis in a national referendum next month. The community's sense of estrangement could be heightened if the document is passed, as is likely, over their objections.

"They're going to be extremely disappointed when they fail, and they're going to believe this is the result of fraud and being cheated out of what they deserve," one of the U.S. officials said. "There's going to be some real ratcheting up of Sunni disaffection with the process."

The trial of Hussein, scheduled to begin next month, is also likely to add to a sense of victimization among Sunnis, analysts say.

Times staff writer Borzou Daragahi in Baghdad contributed to this report.

http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=7288

The Bloodbath Becomes a Flood

by Dahr Jamail
For the last several days, at least 6,000 US soldiers along with approximately 4,000 Iraqi soldiers (read: members of the Kurdish peshmerga and Shia Badr Army) were laying siege to the city of Tal Afar, near Mosul in northern Iraq. It is estimated that 90 percent of the residents have left their homes because of the violence and destruction of the siege, as well as to avoid home raids and snipers.

The Fallujah model is being applied yet again, albeit on a smaller scale. I haven't received any reports yet of biometrics being used (retina scans, finger printing, bar-coding of human beings) like in Fallujah, but there are other striking similarities to the tactics used in November.

While the U.S. military claims to have killed roughly 200 "terrorists" in the operation, reports from the ground state that most of the fighters inside the city had long since left to avoid direct confrontation with the overwhelming military force (a basic tenet of guerrilla warfare).

Again like Fallujah, most of the families who fled are staying in refugee camps outside the city in tents amid horrible conditions in the inferno-like heat of the Iraqi summer.

The L.A. Times reported that Ezzedin Dowla, a Turkmen leader in the area said, "Families are homeless and the government has not provided any shelter, food, or drink for them." Nor has the U.S. military.

The targets of this military operation are the Sunni Turkmen who are politically on the side of the Sunni Arabs. Most Sunnis will be voting against the constitution during the coming vote of Oct. 15.

The Cheney administration is desperate for something it can spin as "good news" from Iraq; thus it most certainly behooves them to have the referendum on the constitution to boast about. But in order to do so, the voting ability and power of the Sunni (and Sunni Turkmen) must be severely compromised, as well as punishment meted out for rightfully assuming what will be a Sunni no-vote on the constitution.

Both the Cheney administration and its current puppet government in Iraq benefit from destroying the voting (and living) ability of the majority of people in the "Sunni triangle," so we have the operation in Tal Afar, most likely to be followed by similar operations in al-Qa'im, Haditha, Samarra, and possibly more.

In Tal Afar, the propaganda spewed by the U.S. military (and the Iraqi "government") was that the operation was to fight terrorists coming into Iraq via Syria. If that were true, why did the U.S. military remove troops from the border with Syria who were supposed to be preventing infiltration by foreign fighters? Instead of guarding the border, as they should, they engaged in the operation against Iraqi Sunni Turkmen. Working in unison, the U.S. military launched the heavy-handed attack with the "authorization" of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, the leader of the Shia Da'wa Party. Jaafari even went so far as to venture to Tal Afar on Tuesday to visit troops and have his photograph taken.

"Authorization" was given by the Iraqi government for the attack on Tal Afar, just as "authorization" was given by then-interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi for the November 2004 massacre in Fallujah. "Authorization," when the U.S. military would never, ever allow any foreign power jurisdiction over American forces, least of all a puppet government.

Correspondents with Azzaman media in Tal Afar miraculously made it into the city and reported that residents are disputing reports that U.S. and Iraqi soldiers have killed scores of "insurgents." Like Fallujah, these residents of Tal Afar are reporting that most of the people killed were civilians who had no place to go so they chose to stay in their homes. People also stayed because they feared persecution at the hands of the peshmerga and Badr Army.

I recently interviewed an Iraqi man from that area at the Peoples' UN Conference in Perugia, Italy. He told me, "Most people in Mosul and Tal Afar would rather be detained by the Americans now, because they know if Iraqi soldiers or Iraqi police detain them they will be tortured severely, and possibly killed. This gives you an idea of how bad it is with these Iraqi soldiers, even in the shadow of what the Americans are still doing in Abu Ghraib."

As for "foreign fighters," one of the Azzaman correspondents quoted a resident of Tal Afar as saying, "We used to hear [from news reports] of the presence of some Arab [foreign] fighters in the city, but we have seen none of them."

Life in Iraq remains a living hell. Blood flowed in the streets of Khadamiya yesterday as a horrendous car bomb killed 112 people in the predominantly Shia neighborhood. And once again, calls of solidarity were made from the nearby Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, and residents emerged from their homes to help their brothers and sisters across the river, just as they did after the panic and chaos that recently took the lives of nearly 1,000 Shia.

The horrendous totals from yesterday were 160 dead, 570 wounded Iraqis as the result of the string of attacks and at least a dozen car bombs. The blowback from the Jafaari "authorized" state-sponsored terrorism in Tal Afar took little time to materialize in the capital city.

If Jafaari were more honest with his press appearances, along with his photo-op in Tal Afar he should have had his photo taken amid the charred, smoking body parts strewn about the streets of Khadamiya, which was a result (albeit just as horrific) of his Tal Afar "authorization."

On that note, Jalal Talabani, Iraq's puppet president, was at a press conference in Washington D.C. with Mr. Bush just hours before the blowback began.

Meanwhile, one of my friends in Baghdad writes me, "Dear Dahr, how are you dear pal? I am very sorry for what happened after Hurricane Katrina. It is a real tragedy. I hope none of your friends or family was affected. It is a tragedy which makes one speechless."

This when he goes to work each day hoping to make it home alive to see his wife and newborn daughter.

And another of my friends in Baghdad wrote me recently, "I'm so sorry that I didn't e-mail you the previous days … the situation in Tal Afar has become so much worse for the people. It is terrible what is going on there and nobody can say anything because as usual the military operation is still going on and they are trying to keep all the media out. They have also started another operation in another area of al-Anbar province, and they will soon start one in Samarra."

My interpreter when I'm in Iraq, Abu Talat, has been willing to take the risk of working with me there. To give you an idea of the lengths he's willing to go to, he gave me the green light to come to Iraq last November, just before the massacre in Fallujah began. It is safe to say times were quite tense then, with kidnappings and beheadings having long since become the norm.

"The minister of defense is threatening not only Fallujah but all of the Ramadi governorate, I can tell you very surely about that," he wrote in a recent e-mail to me and a colleague who was hoping to enter Iraq to work as a reporter. (Today, U.S. warplanes began dropping bombs inside the city of Ramadi.)

"No one can support you working here. We are having a very critical situation. For this reason, I think that coming to Iraq in this critical time is not accepted. I was very, very welcoming to any of your friends, Dahr, but not in this time. Sorry, but for your own safety. Take good care of yourself."

Today at least 30 more Iraqis have died in violence across their occupied country, and it will only continue to worsen.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0916/p01s02-usfp.html

US tempers its view of victory in Iraq

The Pentagon hoped to quell unrest before a pullout, but violence is changing US goals.

By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – Since the day in May 2003 when President Bush stood beneath a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," the course of the conflict in Iraq has been one of optimism followed by revision.
From the earliest battle plans, which called for the quick return home of tens of thousands of troops, to the campaign in Fallujah and national elections that followed, the Pentagon had hoped it could largely eliminate lingering unrest before turning security over to Iraqis.

The increasingly bracing tone from the White House and Pentagon, however, points to a new calculus. The persistence of the attacks, as well as their undiminished capacity - witnessed by Wednesday's bombings in Baghdad, which killed more than 150 Iraqis - seems to have confirmed that the insurgency will probably outlast the American occupation.

Indeed, the inability of American forces to defeat the insurgency through strikes such as the current offensive in Tal Afar raises doubts about the possibility of any clear victory for the administration. And it could leave the Iraqis with a years-long task that many planners had not anticipated.

"There has been a clear realization that this war is not winnable in the short term," says Seth Jones, a terrorism expert at RAND Corp. in Arlington, Va.

The change in thinking has come gradually, as pivotal moments in the maturation of the Iraqi state have come and gone - and the insurgency has remained. In the first months after Mr. Bush declared victory, Pentagon officials were loath even to use the word "insurgency" to describe the attacks that killed some two dozen troops in May and June of 2003.

In testimony before Congress that July, Gen. Tommy Franks argued that the attacks did not fit his definition of an insurgency.

A year later, however, the continuing toll of the insurgency was reshaping the Pentagon's expectations. By the spring of 2005, a spike in violence, despite the previous November's successful campaign against the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah and January's relatively peaceful elections, made it clear that political momentum was not enough.

Part of the reason for the failure to plan for uncertainties came from the ideological insistence that almost all Iraqis would see Americans as liberators. Yet it also came from a political calculation that dismissed the lessons of the Clinton years. "There was a sense that there was nothing to learn from Somalia or Haiti or Bosnia," says Dr. Jones.

Some parts of the administration have been slower to reach this point than others. In the midst of the May attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney famously said that the insurgency was in its "last throes." But less than a month later, on June 26, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, 10, 12 years. Coalition forces, foreign forces are not going to repress that insurgency. We're going to create an environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi security forces can win against that insurgency."

It is this attitude that has moved from post-invasion rhetoric to Pentagon doctrine. In some ways, it is the same measure of victory that the Pentagon laid out two years ago. "At an absolute minimum, we'll be here for [two years], and probably longer, to make sure that [Iraqi forces] are capable of protecting the sovereignty of Iraq," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez in an Aug. 7, 2003, Pentagon briefing.

Administration officials have always insisted that events on the ground - and not artificial timelines - would dictate American actions in Iraq. Yet today, the finish line is no more certain than it was two years ago - and the threat that Iraqi forces will be facing when US troops leave is more dire than many military officials imagined.

The result is that Bush's characteristic steel about Iraq still lacks any specifics or certainty. "As a practical matter, no one in the administration is going to admit this," says Anthony Cordesman, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. "Nobody's making military promises that are unrealistic."

There are some positive signs. The offensive to roust insurgents from Tal Afar, which began in May and intensified the past two weeks, has put more responsibility in the hands of the Iraqi military. "It's a very important step in turning over security to the Iraqis," says Rachel Bronson, an analyst for the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

But there is a long way to go, she and others say. Significantly, when Iraqi President Jalal Talabani suggested this week that Iraqi forces would be ready to replace 50,000 US troops by the end of the year, he quickly reversed his statement and later added that US soldiers might be needed for another two years, though he set no deadline.

Amid this military uncertainty, administration officials have turned to political events as the primary marks of progress. "The referendum on the constitution and the elections at the end of December are the most important aspects of what we're doing now," Gen. George Casey told Congress in June.

Yet Wednesday's attacks in Baghdad suggest that the practical matter of adequately preparing the Iraqi military - not the grand clash of political ideas - will ultimately determine the success or failure of American hopes, analysts say. In a recent paper, Dr. Cordesman writes: "If political developments do have a positive effect, it will be ... because a substantially larger number of Iraqi Sunnis ... see the military balance shifting decisively in favor of Iraqi government forces

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...15-033551-4317r

Outside view: A losing strategy
By Anthony H. Cordesman
Outside View Commentator
Published September 15, 2005


WASHINGTON -- It now seems unlikely that either the draft Iraqi constitution or the election that may follow will persuade a large number of Sunnis to support the government more actively, or reduce Iraqi Sunni support for the insurgency in the near term.

If political developments do have a positive effect, it will be more out of compulsion than persuasion. It will be because a substantially larger number of Iraqi Sunnis feel they have no real chance of winning, and see the military balance shifting decisively in favor of Iraqi government forces that can largely suppress a civil war and which -- unlike coalition forces -- cannot be driven out of the country.


For this to happen, U.S. and Iraqi forces must win both an urban battle -- centered in Baghdad, Mosul, and their environs -- and a battle for the rural areas and towns and smaller cities in the west of the country. In both cases, military victories will be largely unimportant unless they can be followed up by an enduring Iraqi government presence in terms of both effective governance and effective police forces.

The article by Jonathan Finer in the Sept. 13 issue of Washington Post -- "Informants Decide on Fate of Iraqi Detainees" -- is both excellent reporting and a confirmation of warnings I have heard from both U.S. officers and Iraqi officials.

The usual official claims are being made about tactical victories. For example, Iraqi officials made the following statement about Tal Afar: "Six Iraqi civilians have been killed and eight others were injured. Voting centers have been opened in the town of Tal-Afar. The combat operations are over now and reconstruction missions are due to start throughout the town.

"In the last 24 hours there has been no resistance of any kind in Tal-Afar. Total of terrorists killed is 157 and 440 others were arrested. Search and sweep operations are ongoing at this stage.

"Terrorists attached explosives to the body of an Iraqi child then sent him to his family before blowing him up in the town of Tal-Afar.

"A peacekeeping force will be deployed in the town.

"I agree that the government was late in responding to what was happening in Tal-Afar.

"Eight Iraqi servicemen were martyred and six others were injured in the operations."

The problem with such claims is that they do not necessarily indicate that this kind of fighting does more to end the insurgency that it does to provoke it. In fact, the fighting in western Iraq is again raising some of the key problems exposed in Fallujah:

-- The United States seems to be conducting broad sweeps without adequate intelligence or "targeting," plays a highly intrusive role in urban areas, and cannot really distinguish friend from foe. Enemies and civilians mix as they flee and disperse, most real insurgents get away, and inexperienced U.S. troops create hostility in dealing with already politically hostile Iraqis in the area.

-- The Iraqi combat forces are still clearly in a support role, and could not operate without U.S. airpower, artillery, armor and support.

-- Some of the key Iraqi combat forces have a strong ethnic and sectarian character (Pesh Merga), have no better intelligence than U.S. forces, and if anything, do more to alienate an already largely hostile population.

-- There is no evidence of Iraqi police forces and governance coming in to rapidly provide non-military security, aid, and "legitimacy" on the ground. Talk and token visits, but not the kind of action necessary to actually secure a military victory.

-- The United States is talking a level of aid it cannot really execute, an open-ended series of new detentions, and an extend presence as a substitute for an Iraqi government presence that can breed further hostility.

The United States and Iraq both still seem to have serious problems in following up tactical operations with the kind of stability operations that are the key to any meaningful kind of victory.

A combination of U.S. and Iraqi forces can win virtually any battle or clash, but this is largely irrelevant. What they have not demonstrated is that they can give such victories meaning in terms of governance, political support, security, or even enough lasting damage to the insurgents to compensate for the hostility its actions create.

Moreover, as the bombings in Baghdad and constant threat to the airport road illustrate all too clearly, the government has not secured hostile Sunni urban areas in Iraq's two largest cities, much less their environs. It is also all too possible that the debate over the constitution may make things worse, and not better.

As was the case with pacification in Vietnam, nothing is actually "won" where the government cannot safely operate with officials and police on a day-to-day basis, where citizens are not safe, and where the night makes so-called secure areas into "no go" zones.

Unfortunately, neither the coalition nor the Iraqi government seems to provide any meaningful reporting on this aspect of operations. There are countless press releases on what essentially are tactical trivia, but no convincing report on the measures of progress that actually count.

--

(Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the CSIS.)

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/954...1878BF5D28D.htm

Iraq attacks kill dozens
Friday 16 September 2005, 15:22 Makka Time, 12:22 GMT

Police have been the targets of attacks in recent months

Several Muslim worshippers have been killed and wounded by a car bomb detontated outside a mosque in the central Iraqi city of Tuz Khurmatu, police sources said.

Captain Saed Ahmed said the bomb went off as people were emerging from the Great Prophet shrine in the town north of Baghdad.

He said nine people were killed and another 21 wounded in the Friday afternoon attack.

Earlier, at least two people were killed and 13 others wounded in an attack on a crowd of day labourers gathered at a Baghdad square, medics and security officials said.

Security sources said a group of armed men in a minibus opened fire on the labourers in the south-eastern al-Jadida district.

"The labourers were gathered at their meeting place when two cars drove up at 7.30 am (0330 GMT)," a police source said.

"They opened fire on the crowd."

The two cars then sped away from the scene. As they left they opened fire on a government vehicle travelling on one of eastern Baghdad's main highways, killing one man and wounding two more, police said.

Earlier, police sources said the third man was a transport ministry employee.

The morning attack followed a series of car bombings on Wednesday morning in the northern Baghdad district of Kadhimiyah against another group of day labourers.

Cleric killed

Also in al-Jadida, police said a Shia cleric, Sheikh Fadel Alami, was killed in his car.
An Iraqi-US operation in Tal Afar
has triggered a violent backlash

South of Baghdad, a bomber killed three policemen and wounded six others after ramming his explosives-packed car into a police convoy on a highway near Hasswa, some 60km from the capital, police said.

And a senior regional official, Amer al-Khafaji, was assassinated along with four bodyguards in a night raid on his home in nearby Iskandariyah. Two other guards were wounded.

On Thursday, at least 25 members of an elite police commando unit were killed in three separate car bomb attacks in the southern Baghdad district of Dora.

In Baquba, north of Baghdad, another police commando was killed when a group of armed men attacked his unit, police sources said.

Four Iraqi soldiers were also killed when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in the town of Khalidiya, west of Baghdad, policeman Mohammed Abbass said.

On Friday, the US military announced that a marine was killed near Ramadi, 110km west of Baghdad.

The soldier from the 2nd Marine Division was killed "from an indirect fire explosion" on Thursday, it said, using the normal term for a mortar attack.

Rising toll

The death brings to at least 1897 the number of American military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003, according to Pentagon figures.

The Iraqi capital has witnessed a surge in attacks against Iraqi security forces, US military targets, and civilians since al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declared all-out war against the Iraqi Shia community.

Al-Zarqawi warned Shia and
Sunnis ahead of the referendum

In an audio tape recording that has not yet been authenticated, al-Zarqawi said all Iraqis working with US forces and/or supporting the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari would now become targets.

He also warned the Sunni community not to participate in an upcoming referendum vote.

On Thursday afternoon, Sheikh Mehdi al-Attar, a senior member of the al-Dawa party, was killed when his car was attacked by unidentified assailants in Hilla, 100km south of Baghdad.

Car bomb attack kills 30 Advertiser Adelaide
A CAR bomb killed at least 30 and wounded 38 overnight on the outskirts of Baghdad in what appeared to be the latest attack on Iraq's majority Shiite population.
Car bomb kills 30 in market east of Baghdad ABC Online
Clerics Call for Restraint as More Violence Hits Iraq Los Angeles Times
WESH.com - OCRegister (subscription) - ABC News - Salon - all 1,045 related »

19 police and 2 civilians killed in fresh attacks :

Iraqi police say a suicide car bomber struck a joint U-S-Iraqi patrol (near Taji) north of Baghdad last night, killing 14 Iraqi soldiers. Another suicide bomber blew himself up today near an Iraqi police commando patrol. Five policemen and two civilians were killed.
http://tinyurl.com/85mg3


Suicide bombers kill 10 as Shia pilgrimage gets underway:

Two suicide car bombers killed 10 when they struck checkpoints south of Baghdad on Monday on a road used by thousands of Iraqi Shia pilgrims making their way by foot to the holy city of Karbala.
http://tinyurl.com/c4weo


Iraqi working for NYT found shot dead in Basra:

An Iraqi working as a reporter for the New York Times was found dead in the southern city of Basra on Monday after being kidnapped by masked men, family members and a doctor said.
http://tinyurl.com/cqskx


Iraqi MP assassinated, 24 bodies found in Tigris:

Insurgents assassinated a Kurdish member of parliament and police found 24 bodies shot to death and dumped in the Tigris River 50 miles north of the capital
http://tinyurl.com/cc95g


15 Iraqi soldiers taken hostage west of Samara.
http://tinyurl.com/7h4k6


Two Britons detained in Iraq for firing at police:

Violence erupted in Basra on Monday after Iraqi authorities said they had detained two British undercover soldiers
http://tinyurl.com/9vchh


British forces attack Iraqi jail, free 2 captured Britons:

British forces using tanks broke down the walls of the central jail in the southern city of Basra late Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos, who had been arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen.
http://tinyurl.com/d9c4g


Iraq invasion radicalized Saudi fighters: report:

Hundreds of Saudi fighters who joined the insurgency in Iraq showed few signs of militancy before the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, according to a detailed study based on Saudi intelligence reports.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1136691


Bulgaria Begins Iraq Withdrawal Mid October:

Bulgaria's troops will begin their withdrawal from Iraq in the middle of October, the Chief of General Staff of the Bulgarian Army General Nikola Kolev announced.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=52607


Top Dems Ignore the Public :

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll tells us what we already know: a strong majority of Americans favor bringing troops home from Iraq. Specifically, 55% support a withdrawal, while just 36% back Bush's position that current troop levels should be maintained
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0915-35.htm


Cindy Sheehan: What Noble Cause?

Upon reflection on the events of this past August, I have come up with two reasons why George could not meet with me: He is a coward and there is no Noble Cause.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10330.htm


What has happened to Iraq's missing $1bn? :

One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10329.htm


New twist on aid for Iraq: U.S. seeks donations:

Contributors have no way of knowing who's getting the money or precisely where it's headed because the government says it must keep the details secret for security reasons.
http://tinyurl.com/c8w2w

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Group: Moderator
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http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=7324

September 20, 2005
Democratic Hallucinations in Afghanistan and Iraq

by Ivan Eland
Insular and secretive presidential administrations often deny reality to the point of absurdity when they blunder into foreign misadventures. The classic example is the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War. The Bush administration’s current quagmires in Iraq and even Afghanistan are taking on that air. For example, the administration is congratulating itself on the Afghan legislative and provincial election day passing without rampant strikes by a resurgent Taliban; recent attacks have spiked to the worst levels since that group was removed from power in 2001. In fact, U.S. military sources have already started floating a proposal to pull out some U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Similar talk of a U.S. troop drawdown from Iraq after the December Iraqi elections also has come from the U.S. military.

All this chatter about U.S. troop withdrawal comes at a time of increased Taliban strikes—which have killed a record number of U.S. troops, seven Afghan electoral candidates, and four campaign workers—and a wave of insurgent carnage in Iraq that has caused the third largest monthly U.S. military death toll and the worst death count in Baghdad since the U.S. invasion. In Afghanistan, the reduced violence on election day probably indicates that the guerrillas were smart enough to lay low to avoid intensified security measures. The Taliban will likely renew the ferocity of their attacks again shortly. Unfortunately, U.S.-led efforts to stand up Afghan security forces have floundered, and the Bush administration would depend on increasing levels of NATO troops to pick up the slack from any U.S. drawdown. But many NATO countries prefer peacekeeping in secure areas and are unenthusiastic about having their forces actively fight against the Taliban. Similarly, in Iraq, the problems of creating Iraqi security forces to replace any reductions in U.S. troops are well known.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the disconnect between talk of troop withdrawal and increased violence can partially be attributed to the U.S. military putting pressure on the Bush administration for relief from its globally overstretched condition. But with next year’s congressional elections in the United States looming, the Republicans would like to show some sort of troop reduction to insulate themselves from Democratic attacks on the issue.

Of course, the short-term goal of reducing U.S. forces exacerbates the administration’s difficulty in achieving its long-term objective in both conflicts: winning. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if existing force levels of the world’s best army cannot stamp out the Taliban and Iraqi insurgencies, then their partial replacement with inferior forces are unlikely to do so either. The administration’s goal in both conflicts—if there is a coherent plan at all—seems to be: buy time until democratic processes dampen the rebellion.

Yet in Afghanistan, the authority of the “democratically-elected” central government of Hamid Karzai is weak in most of the country. The elections are likely to produce a parliament filled with ex-communist commanders, Islamist warlords, and former Taliban leaders—many with non-democratic tendencies and murderous pasts.

In Iraq, the rancor over the proposed constitution has Sunni Arabs registering in droves to defeat it and will probably end up further inflaming the already intensifying insurgency. As a demonstration of how bad things are, the best outcome for the United States in Iraq might be the constitution’s defeat. If rejection occurred, negotiations among the Kurds, Shi’a, and Sunni Arabs would have to begin again. If the constitution passes over Sunni attempts to derail it, the increased sense of Sunni alienation might very well spark increased levels of violence.

In short, regrettably, neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is yet ready for democracy. Experts on the democratization of countries speak of a democratic culture being required before genuinely democratic institutions and processes can take hold. Afghanistan and Iraq, like South Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s, have not developed such a culture.

Other comparisons with the Vietnam War can be made. After first avoiding Vietnam-like body counts of enemy dead, wounded, and captured, the U.S. military is now doing them to demonstrate that it is winning—at the same time that increasing violence indicates that the opposite is happening. Also, U.S. government pronouncements are being made that are ludicrous on their face. For example, after two days of bombing and shooting attacks attributed to the foreign Islamic jihadists under Abu Musab Zarqawi, which killed a record 190 people, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the senior U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, claimed, “Zarqawi is on the ropes.” This whopper resembles U.S. claims before the 1968 communist Tet Offensive that the United States was winning the Vietnam War. Although the U.S. military defeated the offensive by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, the “credibility gap” exposed by the strength of the offensive was the beginning of the end of U.S. popular support for the war.

Similar U.S. credibility gaps are yawning in both Afghanistan and Iraq at a time when the public at home is already restless about such foreign entanglements and when the Bush administration seems to have no coherent long-term plan to extricate the United States with dignity from such quagmires. To those who lived through the 1960s and early 1970s, the situation is unfortunately all too familiar.

Iraq probe into soldier incident BBC News
The Iraqi government has launched an investigation into the events that led the British Army to storm a police station in search of two UK soldiers. Both men were members of the SAS elite special forces, sources told the BBC's Richard Galpin in Baghdad.
Your view: civil war in Iraq? Telegraph.co.uk
Britain defends use of force in freeing soldiers CTV.ca
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Five Soldiers Killed in Three Separate Iraq Incidents

By Jonathan Finer and Fred Barbash

BAGHDAD, Sept. 20 -- The military announced the deaths Tuesday of five U.S. soldiers in three separate roadside bomb explosions, pushing the number of U.S. fatalities since March 2003 past the 1,900 mark.

Four of the soldiers were assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. They were "conducting combat operations" and died in two separate incidents, said the military, declining to provide further details.

A fifth soldier belonged to the 18th Military Police Brigade and was killed 75 miles north of Baghdad when his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device, according to an official press release.

According to the Associated Press, the number of U.S combat deaths in Iraq stands at 1,904.

Separately, an American diplomat and three private security contractors died Monday in the northern city of Mosul when their armored SUV was attacked by a suicide car bomber, a Western official in Baghdad confirmed Tuesday morning.

Two others riding in the three-vehicle convoy -- which was departing a U.S. embassy satellite office in Mosul -- suffered minor injuries in the attack, which occurred at 9:49 a.m., the official said.

A lone driver pulled alongside the convoy and detonated an explosion next to the second vehicle. U.S. security personnel immediately cordoned the area and administered first aid, but the four appeared to have died instantly.

The diplomat killed in the attack was not named, but was described as a diplomatic security agent.

The incident marked the third U.S. diplomat killed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Diplomatic Security Agent Edward Seitz died in an October 2004 mortar attack on a U.S. base near Baghdad International Airport. And last November, James Mollen, a U.S. special adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, was shot to death near the capital's fortified Green Zone.

Fred Barbash reported from Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/e...er=emailarticle

Military: Troop Deaths Hit 1,903 in Iraq ABC News
In this picture made available by the US Army, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005 Lt. Col. Christopher Gibson, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, stands in the shade on a deserted street during a break while patrolling with Company A in Tall Afar, Iraq, Monday Sept. 19, 2005. Residents started returning to town after fleeing the fighting between insurgents and Iraqi army supported by US forces last week.The operation began Sept. 10, when a force of 5,000 Iraqi soldiers backed by 3,500 Americans stormed the city to clean it of insurgents for the second time in a year. Mopping-up operations continued Sunday with the Iraqi military reporting a total of 157 insurgents killed and 440 captured during the 10-day offensive.
US military: Troop deaths hit 1,904 in Iraq China Daily
Four US Soldiers Killed in Action in Ramadi, Western Iraq Bloomberg
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lets us face it the so called AL-Quida is a non existant organization fabricated by the CIA and this administration to mislead the public while the goverment removes our freedoms whithou a shout from us .. Plausible fact .. Iraq did not want The non existant Ben Ladin in its country so why would the Al-Q fight ??? These so called insurgents are the people of Iraq fighithg for their leader and their homeland .. We the USA are the agressors and insurgents .. As out president put it so well this is GOD'S way and fight .. God is on our side .. Have I missed something??? Is our national anthium ONEWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS ///

Sadr militia's new muscle in south
The radical Shiite cleric's loyal followers clashed with British troops
Monday in Basra. By Jill Carroll
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0921/p01s03-woiq.html?s=hns

Five soldiers killed in separate bombings :

Four soldiers attached to the Marines were killed in two separate roadside bombings near the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi and a military police soldier died in a bombing north of Baghdad, the military said Tuesday
http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1113938.php


Attack in Mosul kills 4 Americans:

A U-S official says the victims are a Diplomatic Security agent and three private security guards attached to the U-S Consulate in Mosul, Iraq's third largest city.
http://www.kristv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3871433&nav=Bsmh


Iraqi police accused British soldiers of planting bombs. :

Monday's clashes stemmed from the arrest by Iraqi police on Sunday of two Britons, whom Iraqi police accused of planting bombs.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10341.htm


British Undercover Unit Has Weapons Confiscated

Picture shows weapons which Iraqi police said were confiscated from two undercover British soldiers after their arrest in Basra
http://tinyurl.com/cd6e9


The day that Iraqi anger exploded in the face of the British occupiers :

Dressed in plain clothes - according to some they were wearing traditional Arab dress - the two men had been driving in an unmarked car when they arrived at a checkpoint in the city. In the confrontation that followed, shots were fired, and two Iraqi policemen were shot, one of whom later died.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10342.htm


Iraqi police detain two British soldiers in Basra :

The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, the source said.
http://tinyurl.com/9hm7v


Mike Whitney : Who's Blowing Up Iraq? :

New evidence that bombs are being planted by British Commandos
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10343.htm


Iraq criticises British rescue in Basra:

The operation followed rioting that began, according to police and local officials, when the two men fired on a police patrol. At least two Iraqis were killed in the violence.
http://tinyurl.com/a42pd


Iraq images shock Britain, but Blair is safe:

But the signs are that Britain's Iraq adventure is in its endgame. A leaked memo signed by Defence Secretary John Reid in July envisioned bringing most of them home over the next year.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20701998.htm


Ex-Iraqi defence minister wanted over $1bn fraud :

"What Shaalan and his ministry were responsible for is possibly the largest robbery in the world. Our estimates begin at $1.3bn [£720m] and go up to $2.3bn," Judge Radhi, who is Iraq's senior anti-corruption official, told Reuters.
http://tinyurl.com/bhjbs


Bishops suggest apology for war :

Church of England bishops have suggested Christian leaders apologise to Muslim leaders for the war in Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/7awmf


Extended tours of some US military units eyed in Iraq::

Lawrence DiRita, the defense department's chief spokesman, said it was "entirely possible" commanders would want to boost the force in Iraq beyond its current level of 140,000.
http://tinyurl.com/9y3kl


Liberal Democrats call for Iraq withdrawal:

The Liberal Democrats urged the government to start withdrawing its troops from Iraq to avoid further risk.
http://tinyurl.com/bgzav


Bush Has No Exit Plan for Iraq, Say Americans :

According to a poll by the New York Times and CBS News. 72 per cent of respondents believe their president has not developed a clear plan for getting American troops out of Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/9lj7u

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=...210065428&par=0

IRAQ: WE ONLY STRIKE CERTAIN SHIITES, SAYS AL-ZARQAWI GROUP

Baghdad, 20 Sept. (AKI) - After declaring war on Shiites in Iraq last week, al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has issued a new statement stating that "not all Shiites are our target." The message, titled "The al-Qaeda organisation in the country of the two rivers makes an exception for some Shiites", has appeared on various Islamic Internet forums, and follows a message on Monday denying that al-Zarqawi threatened Sunnis with death if they vote in the upcoming referendum on the Iraqi constitution, due to take place on October 15.

The latest message says, "In a previous audio message issued by Sheikh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, he declared total war on Shiites for the massacre perpetrated by the Shiite government of Ibraham al-Jafaari against the Sunnis of Tel Afar. Despite this, it should be stressed that in that speech, al-Zarqawi specified that 'all Shiites who condemn the crimes committed against the Sunnis at Tel Afar and who don't support the occupation will be excluded from attacks by the mujahadeen'. Those groups therefore include three Shiite movements: those of al-Sadr, al-Khalisi and al-Hussani."

Despite announcing that its militants will not strike targets linked to the movement of the Shiite Imam Moqtada al-Sadr and the other two smaller religious groups, the Sunni terror group's declaration of "total war" remains valid for other Shiite groups. The message concludes by saying: "The following groups remain targets for al-Qaeda: Al-Jaafari's Dawa Party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution (SCIRI), Ahmad Chalabi's National Congress Party and Iyad Allawi's National Accord Party."

It is the first time that al-Zarqawi's group has made a distinction of this kind. For some time al-Sadr has been carrying out his political activity with the Committee of the Sunni Ulema of Baghdad, which is regularly accused by the Shiites of colluding with terrorists.

Al-Zarqawi declared war on the Shiites after a suicide bombing last week which killed more than a hundred people. The bomber drove a minibus packed with explosives into a square in a Shiite area of Baghdad where labourers seeking employment usually go, and blew himself up after luring the men towards the vehicle with promises of work.

http://www.aljazeerah.info/21%20n/$1....ha'alan.htm


$1.3 Billion to $2.3 Billion Stolen by Members of the Allawi Government, Particularly by former Defense Minister, Hazem Al-Sha'alan

September 20, 2005

Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper reported today that a warrant to arrest the former defense minister Hazem Al-Sha'alan will be issued within a by the Iraqi government for stealing more than a billion dollars, during his work in the Allawi government, in 2004. It is estimated that the theft was between $1.3 billion and $2.3 billion by members of the US-backed Allawi government.

$1billion plundered from Iraq funds

Jordan Times, September 20, 2005

Large-scale corruption in Iraq's ministries, particularly the defence ministry, has led to one of the biggest thefts in history with more than $1 billion going missing, Iraq's finance minister said in an interview. "Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal," Finance Minister Ali Allawi told British newspaper The Independent in a report published on Monday. "It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history." Corruption, both in the bidding for and the awarding of contracts, and in the administration of public offices, is one of the most frequent accusations made by Iraqis against their government and foreign firms operating in the country.

Some of the worst allegations of impropriety concern the purchasing of military equipment by the defence ministry under the previous government, including more than $230 million spent on 28-year-old second-hand Polish helicopters.

"If you compare the amount that was allegedly stolen of about $1 billion compared with the budget of the ministry of defence, it is nearly 100 per cent of the ministry's [procurement] budget that has gone [missing]," Allawi said.

Most of the questionable contracts are said to have been signed under the previous government, headed by Iyad Allawi, which served from June 28, 2004 until late February this year.

The former defence minister, Hazim Shaalan, is now living as a private citizen in Jordan. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Allawi, the finance minister, was also quoted by the newspaper as saying $500-$600 million had vanished from the electricity, transport, interior and other ministries.

The newspaper reported that the total amount missing from all the ministries could be as much as $2 billion.

Iraq's Board of Supreme Audit, set up in 2004 by the US administration then running the country, said in February it would investigate all government contracts signed since the 2003 war after repeated allegations of corruption. It gave a report to the government in May.

Parts of the board's findings were quoted last month by Knight Ridder newspapers as showing that upwards of $1 billion had gone missing or was unaccounted for.

Knight Ridder said that in some cases contracts had been signed on scrap pieces of paper with unnamed intermediaries and that it was not always clear what products were supposed to be supplied for the vast sums of money quoted.

The Independent said that one contract involved purchasing armoured cars that were so poorly made that their armour could be pierced by a single shot from an AK-47 assault rifle.

An Iraqi politician on Sunday accused the ministries of mass corruption and incompetence and quoted from the Board of Supreme Audit's report, which has not been made public.

"Our funds are under the control of ignorant people," Hadi Amiri, the head of parliament's integrity commission, told lawmakers in an angry address.

"There have been many violations of the bidding process that have led to huge losses of public funds. Many bids weren't properly conducted and were awarded by ministers without any input from committees set up to assess the bids," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1574820,00.html

Comment

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To say we must stay in Iraq to save it from chaos is a lie

This is a fiasco without parallel in recent British history. Iraqis must run their country: we've made enough mess of it already

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday September 21, 2005
The Guardian


Don't be fooled a second time. They told you Britain must invade Iraq because of its weapons of mass destruction. They were wrong. Now they say British troops must stay in Iraq because otherwise it will collapse into chaos.
This second lie is infecting everyone. It is spouted by Labour and Tory opponents of the war and even by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell. Its axiom is that western soldiers are so competent that, wherever they go, only good can result. It is their duty not to leave Iraq until order is established, infrastructure rebuilt and democracy entrenched.

Note the word "until". It hides a bloodstained half century of western self-delusion and arrogance. The white man's burden is still alive and well in the skies over Baghdad (the streets are now too dangerous). Soldiers and civilians may die by the hundred. Money may be squandered by the million. But Tony Blair tells us that only western values enforced by the barrel of a gun can save the hapless Mussulman from his own worst enemy, himself.

The first lie at least had tactical logic. The Rumsfeld doctrine was to travel light, hit hard and get out. Neoconservatives might fantasise over Iraq as a democratic Garden of Eden, a land re-engineered to stability and prosperity. Harder noses were content to dump the place in Ahmad Chalabi's lap and let it go to hell. Had that happened, I suspect there would have been a bloody settling of scores but by now a tripartite republic hauling itself back to peace and reconstruction. Iraq is, after all, one of the richest nations on earth.

Instead the invasion came with tanks of glue. Decisions were taken, with British compliance, to make Iraq an experiment in "ground zero" nation-building. All sensible advice was ignored on the assumption that whatever America and Britain did would seem better than Saddam, and better than our doing nothing. Kipling's demons danced through Downing Street. Britain did not want to colonise Iraq. Yet somehow Blair's "fighting not for territory but for values" needed territory after all, as if to prove itself more than a soundbite.

The scenes broadcast yesterday from Basra show how far authority in southern Iraq has collapsed. This is tragic. When I was there two years ago the south was, in its own terms, a success. While the Americans were unleashing mayhem to the north, the British were methodically applying Lugard-style colonialism in Basra. They formed alliances with sheikhs, bribed warlords and won hearts and minds by going unarmoured. There was optimism in the air.

British policy demanded one thing, momentum towards local sovereignty and early withdrawal. There was no such momentum. An ever more confident insurrection was allowed first to impede and then dictate the timetable of withdrawal. Sunni terrorists now hold American and British policy in their grip. The result has been an inevitable civil collapse. We do not even know on which side are the Basra police.

The British government - and opposition - is in total denial. Ministerial boasts can't conceal the gloom of private briefings. Blair has done what no prime minister should do. He has put his soldiers at a foreign power's mercy. First that power was America. Now, according to the defence secretary, John Reid, it is a band of brave but desperate Iraqis entombed in Baghdad's Green Zone. He says he will stay until they request him to go, when local troops are trained and loyal and infrastructure is restored. That means doomsday. Everyone knows it.

Iraqis of my acquaintance are numb at the violence unleashed by the west's failure to impose order on their country. They are baffled at the ineptitude, the counter-productive cruelty of the arrests, bombings and suppressions. They are past caring whether it was better or worse under Saddam. They know only that more people a month are being killed than at any time since the massacres of the early 1990s. If death and destruction are any guide, Britain's pre-invasion policy of containment was far more successful than occupation.

Infrastructure is not being restored. Baghdad's water, electricity and sewers are in worse shape than a decade ago. Huge sums - such as the alleged $1bn for military supplies - are being stolen and stashed in Jordanian banks. The new constitution is a dead letter except the clauses that are blatantly sharia. These are already being enforced de facto in Shia areas.

British soldiers are in a war over whose course, conduct and outcome their leaders have no control. Their government's exit strategy is no longer realistic, indeed is dishonest. Talk of reducing troop levels from 8,000 to 3,000 next year has been abandoned. Everyone seems on the wrong planet. Meanwhile daily groping for good news and the sickening litany of the bad is reminiscent of Vietnam. Nobody reads Barbara Tuchman on folly.

Signalling withdrawal would, it is said, give a green light to the gangs and private militias, to revenge attacks, ethnic cleansing and even partition. That threat is no longer meaningful since these are all happening anyway. The militias have reportedly infiltrated at least half the police and internal security forces in each area. Barely a tenth of the army is considered loyal to the central authority. That a Basra police station should be vulnerable to al-Sadr irregulars is appalling.

The 150,000 foreign troops on Iraqi soil are overwhelmingly committed to self-protection. They do not do law and order any more. Power is finding its new locus, in the mafias, sheikhdoms, militias and warlords that flourish amid anarchy. Where there is no security, the gunman is always king.

The alleged reason for occupying Iraq was to build security and democracy. We have dismantled the first and failed to construct the second. Iraq is a fiasco without parallel in recent British policy. Now we are told that we must "stay the course" or worse will befall. This is code for ministers refusing to admit a mistake and hoping someone else will after they are gone. By then the Kurds will be more detached, the Sunnis more enraged and the Shias more fundamentalist. A hundred British soldiers will have died.

America left Vietnam and Lebanon to their fate. They survived. We left Aden and other colonies. Some, such as Malaya and Cyprus, saw bloodshed and partition. We said rightly that this was their business. So too is Iraq for the Iraqis. We have made enough mess there already.

British soldiers may indeed be the best in the world. But why then is Blair driving them to humiliation?

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?sectio...articleId=10333

Becoming The Bogeyman
Bin Laden claims that the United States is at war with all Sunnis. We're in danger of making that seem true.
By Matthew Yglesias
Web Exclusive: 09.20.05

Writing in Wednesday's Washington Post, Joe Biden warned that unless we get things right in Iraq, "violence might escalate into a full-blown civil war." It used to be that we had to stay in Iraq in order to avoid a civil war; now it's a full-blown civil war that our presence is preventing. (A recent Daily Telegraph article worries about a "full-scale civil war.") The status quo, then would seem to be a partially inflated civil war, or maybe a miniature-scale one.

A look at the operation in Tal Afar -- in which the United States took the town, absurdly, for the third time -- the weekend before Biden's op-ed suggests that civil war is well on its way to being full-blown. Tal Afar is inhabited mainly by members of Iraq's small Turkmen community, the people of which speak a language similar to Turkish and enjoy good relations with Turkey. Turkey, famously, enjoys poor relations with its own Kurdish minority as well as with the newly empowered Kurdish minority in northern Iraq. Most Iraqi Turkmen live within the sphere of Iraq that local Kurds want to turn into a highly autonomous -- if not outright independent -- Kurdistan. Iraqi Turkmen, sensibly, would rather be one minority group among many in a largely unitary, pluralistic Iraq than a disenfranchised minority inside a largely monolithic Kurdistan.

Meanwhile, most Turkmen -- including those in Tal Afar -- are Sunni Muslims, though a minority follow the Shia faith. Sunni Turkmen largely sympathize with the insurgency, and, as a result, the town has repeatedly become an insurgent stronghold and apparently plays an important role as a way station for foreign fighters infiltrating from across the Syrian border. Thus, American troops, operating under orders from the Shia-dominated central government and backed by Iraqi-army troops who turn out to be relabeled Kurdish militiamen, attacked the city. Working with them to provide intelligence were a group of Shia Turkmen. According to The Washington Post, in the wake of the attack, detentions of Sunni Turkmen have frequently been undertaken "solely on the hearsay" of these Shia informants who may or may not know what they're talking about and may or may not simply be settling old scores.

The forces loyal to insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had largely already left the city. But for now, at least, the Kurdish-Shia coalition retains control over the city.

Following these events, a voice recording thought to be from al-Zarqawi was released, proclaiming, "The al-Qaeda organization in the Land of the Two Rivers [Iraq] is declaring all-out war on the Rafidha [a pejorative term for the Shia], wherever they are in Iraq," and argued that "as for the government, servants of the crusaders headed by Ibrahim al-Jafari, they have declared a war on Sunnis in Tal Afar." In the days that followed, insurgents unleashed a massive wave of violence, including terrorist attacks against Shia civilians and bomb assaults on American forces and security services loyal to the Iraqi government.

This, in other words, is the civil war, an event presaged last fall by fighting in the ethnically mixed city of Mosul. Shia and Kurds, backed by the United States, are fighting Sunnis. Whatever justification may exist for indefinitely prolonging the American presence in Iraq, it must be seen that this is what we're doing -- helping our preferred side to win a civil war, not preventing one from breaking out.

Americans need to ask themselves at least two questions about this state of affairs: Is it wise, and is it moral? On wisdom, it's well-known that the United States has something of an al-Qaeda problem. We're afflicted by a global jihad movement that likes to portray itself as merely defending the interests of Sunni Muslims against a hostile "crusader" coalition directed from Washington. Deploying American troops on the Shia side of a Sunni-Shia civil war is much more likely to enhance, rather than reduce, the appeal of that message. On morality, proponents of an indefinite military commitment have done a good job of seizing the high ground of responsibility and idealism, but must be forced to confront the reality of what's happening. Ethnic and sectarian conflicts are legendarily ugly affairs. The Iraqi political forces with which we've aligned ourselves have no record of commitment to democracy, liberalism, human rights, or any of the other high ideals under whose banner our troops are operating. A desire, no matter how strongly or sincerely held, to make it the case that we are fighting for those things will not make it so.

Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.

Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Matthew Yglesias, "Becoming The Bogeyman", The American Prospect Online, Sep 20, 2005. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7335

September 21, 2005
Iraq: The Battle of Basra
‘Democratic’ Iraq rises up – against the occupiers

by Justin Raimondo
As the Iraqi police checkpoint in Basra loomed up ahead, the two elite British special forces soldiers – dressed in plainclothes, i.e., traditional Arab dress – readied their weapons. For some reason, they weren't too eager to be questioned or examined too closely. As the [UK] Independent reports:

"In the confrontation that followed, shots were fired, and two Iraqi policemen were shot, one of whom later died. The Iraqi authorities blamed the men, reported to be undercover commandos, and arrested them.

"Mohammed al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate said that the two men had looked suspicious to police. 'A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them,' he said. 'They refused to say what their mission was. They said they were British soldiers and [suggested they] ask their commander about their mission,' he added."

The Brits were hauled off to the hoosegow, where their minor wounds were dressed – and word of the incident spread quickly across the city. A British tank on routine patrol was surrounded and pelted with stones.

The British response: the iron fist. Tanks moved on the Basra police headquarters as a crowd began to gather. Soon hundreds of Basrans were at the scene, as Shi'ite Paul Reveres called out the Iraqi equivalent of "The British are coming!"

Outgunned, the Iraqis stood their ground as frantic negotiations went on behind the scenes, with the Brits demanding the release of their two spies and the police – under pressure from the surly crowd gathered outside – continuing to delay and refuse, even when the Interior Ministry in Baghdad intervened on behalf of the Brits. The standoff quickly escalated into an all-out pitched battle, pitting the Iraqi police and the residents of Basra against the redcoats in what will go down in Iraqi history as their equivalent of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

"In a clear demonstration that the holding of the soldiers would not be tolerated" – as The Independent puts it – the British commander gave the order to attack the police station. His tanks brought down an entire wall before they found out the two captured Brits were being held at a nearby house: the captives were freed, but none of this occurred without resistance and some pretty dramatic television footage, which was broadcast via al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyah all over the Muslim world, as well as the West. By this time, the crowd was serving up Molotov cocktails, and news crews got a dramatic shot of a soldier aflame as he leapt off his tank and ran off in a hail of stones. A citywide riot followed, in which at least two Iraqis were killed and several injured.

The unraveling of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq has been going on for some time: with the recent battle of Basra, however, it seems to have reached the point of no return. The coalition forces are no longer fighting just Sunni insurgents – they are coming up against the elected Shi'ite authorities in the south, where the latest incident bodes ill for the occupiers.

The coalition propaganda campaign has already commenced, with the Brits claiming this is all the work of the evil Iranians, who are just trying to cause trouble because they're being pressed on the nuke issue. That's what the Times of London is peddling, at any rate. Yet this explanation is cut to shreds by Occam's Razor, which suggests a simpler explanation for the outbreak of violence: local discontent with British actions, including the arrest of prominent members of the Sadrist party a few days before.

The Financial Times takes a shot at the local angle and frames the Basra events as stemming from a murky internecine struggle involving the various party militias, such as the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade. Yet this view overlooks an important point. The overwhelming majority of those blue-fingered voters in the south of Iraq, of which Basra is the hub, cast their votes for the parties behind the militias: the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which sponsors the Badr Brigade, the Da'wa Party militia, and the Sadrists – supporters of Shi'ite firebrand Moqtada Sadr – whose armed wing is the Mahdi Army. These parties are not trying to seize power – they're the elected authorities.

There is much talk of how the militias have "infiltrated" the Iraqi police, but this is nonsense. What is really happening is that the politicians who won the much vaunted elections, hailed by Bush and the War Party as a great step forward for "democracy" in Iraq, are not just taking office, they are taking power. They are also hiring their supporters – especially the ones who have military experience – as the local cops on the beat.

When these Iraqi cops ran into two undercover British soldiers who were "acting suspiciously," according to the Iraqis, a battle ensued. The Brits objected so strenuously to being questioned by the legally constituted authorities that they preferred to shoot first and ask questions later.

Hmmmmm… Something tells me they were up to no good.

A series of attacks on coalition troops, as well as the murder of an Iraqi journalist employed by the New York Times, have been attributed to the party militias acting under color of authority, "posing" as police. The Times reporter was arrested at home, and his family was told that he would be taken down to the station only for an hour or so. His beaten body was found with several bullet holes in the head. Steven Vincent, the New York City art critic-turned-journalist, was also murdered by these assassins. Vincent, a war supporter who went to Iraq on behalf of "the cause," was kidnapped and thrown into a white van marked "police." His body was found a few days later, beaten and shot several times. Slain, as he was, by the very forces unleashed by America's "victory" for Iraqi "democracy," I noted at the time:

"In 'liberated' Iraq, the police are the criminals: instead of protecting people from harm by thugs, they are the thugs who inflict harm on others. It's a Bizarro World rendition of law enforcement, albeit one that perfectly fits in to the upside-down logic – not to mention the inverted morality – of those who brought us this war."

Taking the Bizarro World scenario a few steps further, we are now faced with the sight of the "liberators" fighting the "liberated." And this isn't the Sunni Triangle we're talking about, but a Shi'ite rebellion against the Anglo-American usurpation of authority. The governor of Basra denounced the British attack as "barbaric, savage, and irresponsible." We're taking on the elected government, not just in Basra and the solid Shi'ite south, but also the federal authorities in Baghdad. A spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari deplored the attack on police headquarters as "unfortunate," and questioned whether the Interior Ministry was in any way involved. The same Associated Press story that reports al-Jaafari's displeasure also reveals the extent of the duplicity engaged in by those liars in London:

"British officials initially claimed the men were released after negotiations. But Iraqi authorities and witnesses in Basra, about 340 miles southwest of Baghdad, said the British laid siege to the jail Monday afternoon and hours later, with rioting engulfing the area, smashed through its walls using armored vehicles."


In contemplating this almost limitless capacity for deception, one is reminded of what Mary McCarthy, in an appearance on the Dick Cavett Show, said of Lillian Hellman, the Stalinist playwright:

"Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"

In the Bizarro World universe we've been thrust into ever since 9/11/01 – when the force of the explosion that brought down the World Trade Center pushed us into an alternate and cruelly inverted reality – lies are truth, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and the function of government (and much of our media) is to keep everyone in almost total ignorance of what is really going on. Because, you see, ignorance is strength.

Incidents such as what happened in Basra are like lightning at midnight: the landscape, formerly covered in murk, is illuminated with shocking suddenness, its outline starkly visible if only for a brilliant moment. We can see, all to clearly, what this war is really about.

It isn't about oil, although that was part of the long-range objective. Iraq's wells are not flowing due to sabotage. Wolfowitz promised that oil revenues would cover the cost of the occupation, yet now the Iraqis must bring in refined oil from outside. It isn't about "weapons of mass destruction": that was a lie. It isn't about "democracy," either – that was yet another lie, unless the sinister theocracy emerging out of the rubble is the closest the Iraqis can come, which seems a bit harsh.

The rush to detect the long hand of Tehran in Basra shows the direction we are headed. Increased fighting along the border with Syria and charges emanating from Washington that Damascus is actively aiding the insurgency make the future all too clear. The Middle East escalator is going full speed ahead, and the portents of a regional war are all around us. This war is about provoking the next major war – with Iran, or perhaps Syria. Whichever comes first.

– Justin Raimondo

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=7343


September 21, 2005
Uncertain Anniversary for Iraq War Champions

by Jim Lobe
It was four years ago that a little-known group called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) published an open letter to President George W. Bush advising him on how precisely he should carry out his brand-new "war on terrorism."

In addition to ousting Afghanistan's Taliban, the letter's mostly neoconservative signatories called for implementing regime change "by all necessary means" in Iraq, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [Sept. 11] attack." It also urged "appropriate measures of retaliation" against Iran and Syria if they refused to comply with U.S. demands to cut off support to Hezbollah, which they considered part of the terror network.

The letter called for cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority unless it immediately halted attacks against Israel and Israeli settlements, and for a "large increase in defense spending" in order to rein in the conflict that some of its signers, notably former CIA director James Woolsey, were soon describing as "World War IV."

Six months later, PNAC published a second letter – again little-noticed by the U.S. mainstream media – calling for Washington to "accelerate plans for removing Saddam Hussein from power," "lend full support to Israel" whose "fight against terrorism is our fight," and greatly increase the defense budget to ensure that the impending war could be successfully carried out in all its aspects.

PNAC's prescription and subsequent events fostered the impression, particularly in Europe and the Arab world, that the group had successfully and – given the lack of media coverage – covertly "hijacked" U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.

These included the administration's fulsome embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, followed by the invasion of Iraq, not to mention the effective cutoff of communications with both Damascus and Tehran (albeit not precisely because of their ties to Hezbollah).

Indeed, when the historical record of what the Bush administration has actually done in the region is compared with PNAC's recommendations, the correspondence can only be described as stunning.

But they were hardly the result of some covert conspiracy.

In fact, PNAC, whose staff consists of only about half a dozen people, had been issuing letters, statements, and reports quite openly for several years before. It called in particular for regime change in Iraq as part of a larger foreign policy project inspired mainly by a policy paper drafted by hawks in the Pentagon under former President George H.W. Bush after the first Gulf War, and by a 1996 article by PNAC co-founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan in Foreign Affairs that called for the U.S. to practice "benevolent global hegemony" based on "military supremacy and moral confidence."

The ideas contained in those works attracted – indeed reflected – the thinking of what could best be called a coalition of hawks, including assertive nationalists, neo-conservatives, and the Christian Right, that have worked together since the mid-1970s.

And it was that coalition that seized the initiative after Sept. 11, 2001 within the administration. Guided by Kristol, who doubles as editor of The Weekly Standard, PNAC simply became the public voice of that coalition.

After all, among the signatories of its 1997 charter statement were Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their two top aides, I. Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz (who had authored the 1992 Pentagon paper), respectively, as well as several other top administration officials.

Thus, in its Sept. 20, 2001 letter to Bush, PNAC was not "recommending" anything that these men were not already pushing within the administration's highest councils, as Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward among others has since made clear. It was acting as a combination of transmission belt, echo chamber, and cheerleader on the outside, as it has since.

So, four years later, how is PNAC is doing?

The short answer is not so well.

Because it represents a coalition of different, although like-minded varieties of hawks, its own influence – or at least the perception of that influence – is highly dependent on the coalition's unity.

But that unity began to fray even as U.S. troops were flowing into Iraq. Sensing that Rumsfeld, in particular, was not committed to using the kind of overwhelming force – and keeping it there – necessary for "transforming" Iraq (and the region), Kristol and Kagan, among other neoconservatives, began attacking the defense secretary and have repeatedly called for his resignation.

Moreover, their tactical alliance with "liberal internationalists" – mostly Democrats – in appealing for the resources required for "nation-building" has, by many accounts, deeply offended Rumsfeld and other "assertive nationalists" in and outside the administration.

Some in turn have blamed neoconservatives for deluding themselves and Bush into thinking that U.S. troops would be greeted with "sweets and flowers" in Iraq. The exile of Wolfowitz to the World Bank and the resignation last summer of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith should be seen in this light.

But the breakdown in the coalition's unity and coherence resulted at least as much from external factors, as well, beginning with the tenacity of the Iraq insurgency. In bogging down U.S. land forces, it has put paid to the coalition's original dreams of the armed forces prepared to intervene in any crisis anytime, anywhere.

In addition, the unanticipated and enormous costs associated with the occupation in Iraq – to which might now be added the unanticipated and enormous costs of recovery from Hurricane Katrina – has also demonstrated, both to some right-wing but budget-conscious nationalists, as well as to the rest of the world, that the money for the kind of military PNAC has always lobbied for is simply not available.

Thus, significant hikes in the defense budget, or for the occupation force in Iraq, as called for by PNAC in its most recent letter this January, are simply beyond the political pale.

Indeed, the growing public perception that Iraq has become a "quagmire" has added to the burdens of the PNAC coalition, members of which now must spend an inordinate amount of time defending the original decision to invade. A group that is temperamentally best suited to offense has found itself over the past two years in an increasingly defensive crouch.

Another external event that has clearly divided the PNAC coalition, and even the neoconservatives who have dominated it, was Sharon's determination to disengage from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

The Sept. 20, 2001 letter and its April 3, 2002 follow-up on the Israel-Palestinian conflict both reflected the coalition's commitment to the closest possible alliance between the U.S. and a Likud-led Israel.

But just as the Likud Party in Israel has split over Sharon's disengagement, so PNAC hawks, particularly the neoconservatives and the Christian Right, have split here. And because Israel holds such a central position in the worldview of both groups, internal disagreement on such a key issue is particularly debilitating.

But it would be a mistake to believe that because PNAC and the coalition it represents are down, they must be out, particularly with respect to the other policy initiatives they recommended four years ago.

Confrontation with Iran, particularly under the leadership of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, is something that the coalition remains unified about, particularly with respect to the prospect of Tehran's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

While PNAC has not explicitly addressed what to do about Iran, there is little question that the coalition – like the hawks within the administration – remains fundamentally united on its own hardline policy and, in any event, an absolute refusal to directly engage the new government.

What to do about Syria is more uncertain, although more hawkish sectors within the coalition clearly favor "regime change," possibly with the help of cross-border attacks in the name of preempting the infiltration of insurgents into Iraq, as has been called for by Kristol, among others.

While realists within the administration argue in favor of engaging President Bashar Assad, if only because the alternative could be so much worse, the hawks, particularly the neoconservatives who often refer to Damascus as "low-lying fruit," appear determined to prevent any weakening of their policy of isolation and economic pressure on the assumption that the regime will soon collapse.

As in Iraq, however, the question of what will take its place has not yet been fully thought through.

(Inter Press Service)

well snuffy .. There are no such thing as insurgents .. They are defending their home land as out forfathers did

The following summarizes an address by the Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal to the CFR on September 20 in which he raises Saudi alarm over growing Iranian influence in Iraq. His message is that the US should stay engaged in order to prevent a civil war.

Saudi says U.S. policy handing Iraq over to Iran
By Robert Gibbons

NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) - U.S. policy in Iraq is widening sectarian divisions to the point of effectively handing the country to Iran, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said on Tuesday. "(Iraq's) people have been separated from each other," Faisal told the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. "You talk now about Sunnis as if they were separate entity from the Shi'ite."

He urged the United States, which is battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against occupying U.S. forces and backs the Kurdish- and Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, to work "to bring these people together." Saudi Arabia has voiced fears that an Iraqi constitution, due to be put to a referendum in four weeks, could split the country apart and disenfranchise a Sunni minority that lost power when a U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

"If you allow civil war, Iraq is finished forever," Faisal said.

Such a conflict, he said, would bring in Iran because of its interest in the Shi'ite-dominated southern part of Iraq, the Turks because of their concern about an autonomous Kurdish surfacing in the north, and Arab nations in the region. "We fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait," said Faisal, referring to the first Gulf War in 1991, when Saudi Arabia fought with U.S. and other allied forces to liberate Kuwait after Iraq invaded. "Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason," he said.

IRANIAN INROADS

Iranians, Faisal said, go into areas that American forces have pacified and "pay money ... install their own people (and) even establish police forces and arm the militias that are there." "And they are protected in doing all this by the British and American forces," he added.

Turning to another area of friction, Faisal pointed to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as "the main overriding issue that separates" the Islamic and Arabic world and the United States. He said Palestinian security services had been weakened by Israeli military action and it was "too much" to expect they could control militant groups such as Hamas. "Hamas is better armed than them," he said. Israel, which has been battling a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000, has said there could be no move towards a Palestinian state until militants are disarmed.

Faisal said he disagreed with U.S. President George W. Bush's thesis that tyrannical governments in the Middle East and other Islamic regions were the source and sustenance of extremists. The foreign minister noted that repression in the Soviet Union had not bred Russian terrorists threatening the United States."The real cause of terrorism (is that) people see injustice being perpetrated in this world and they use that to fire up the young to end their life," Faisal said.

No Exit; Descending into hell with George Bush

By Mike Whitney

The bodies of the mangled and bloated corpses are no where to be found on America's news programs. Like the countless dead in Iraq they're purged from the coverage and stripped from the public record. They've been replaced by the well-scrubbed visage of the Potemkin-president issuing his comforting words for his people.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10357.htm


Nineteen bodies discovered north of Baghdad :

Iraqi police discovered 19 bodies of Iraqi border guards north of Baghdad on Wednesday,police and medical sources said.
http://tinyurl.com/76mb8


12 Americans killed in Iraq:

U.S. officials reported 12 more Americans were killed - eight of them members of the armed forces, raising to more than 1,900 the number of U.S. service members who have died in the country since the invasion.
http://tinyurl.com/8a4vy


Gunbattle in Baghdad kills 8:

At least eight people were killed on Wednesday in a gun battle in Baghdad between troops and insurgents and the U.S. military said a child died in a fire fight in the northern city of Mosul.
http://tinyurl.com/amzme


'Five Iraqi civilians killed' in SAS rescue operation:

Five Iraqi civilians died in clashes surrounding the controversial operation to free two British SAS men captured in Basra, it was claimed today.
http://tinyurl.com/9bqbt


Army tactics shattered by day of chaos :
Police complained the British had behaved like "terrorists".