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THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Baghdad's Walls Are Closing In

Shiites and Sunnis are virtually imprisoned in their enclaves. On the street, the wrong answer to a subtle question can be a death sentence.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Times Staff Writer

August 20, 2006

BAGHDAD — Curling through the desert, wind rattling its marshes, the Tigris once brought so much life to this city, where spices and silks were loaded on wooden boats bound for Basra and beyond. Shiites lived with Sunnis, Christians and Jews, but today, as in other times, unity splinters in bloodshed.

The river's bridges have turned into escape routes for families fleeing sectarian death squads. Some head one way, others go the opposite direction, and many fear that if full-scale civil war erupts, the Tigris will act as a green line, separating Sunni-dominated west Baghdad from the Shiite-controlled east.

The shoes of Akram Mustafa tell the story of a dividing city; the orange dust from the clay tennis courts is fading on them. One of his country's top-ranked tennis players, Mustafa seldom plays these days. Getting to his club along the Tigris would mean crossing from his eastern neighborhood of Sadr City into streets guarded by Sunnis.

"I haven't been out of Sadr City in five or six months," Mustafa said. "Each day we stand in the same place talking the same talk to the same people. We have nothing."

Travel west across the river to the Sunni neighborhood of Amiriya and listen to Fatima Omar: "I have a best friend who's leaving the country in six or seven weeks, and I can't go visit her because she lives in a Shiite neighborhood."

With each explosion, with each firefight, Omar's geography shrinks.

"We are prisoners of the city," she said.

Conditions that lead Pentagon generals to say civil war is close are already polarizing many neighborhoods. Although Shiites and Sunnis still live side by side in some places, about 200,000 Iraqis, most of them from Baghdad, have left their mixed neighborhoods and taken refuge in communities where they can live among their own. In July, the Baghdad morgue reported more than 1,800 violent deaths.

A widening war would strike at the city's religious complexities, which have grown over time: Each sect has holy sites in the other's territory, and neighborhoods such as Kadhimiya, a Shiite stronghold in west Baghdad, and Adhamiya, a Sunni pocket in the east, would be surrounded by enemies.

"The national character of Iraqis doesn't want the city divided," said Adnan Yassin, a sociologist at Baghdad University. "Sunni and Shiite have lived together for centuries. They've married one another. How can you divide this?"

Gone are the days of walking hand-in-hand with your lover along the Tigris, hearing the clack of backgammon through the scent of fish grilling beneath the moon. Sunni car bombers drive into Shiite marketplaces; Shiite death squads move through the night, leaving Sunni bodies in alleys and date palm groves. Some people carry two identity cards, one for who they really are, the other a lie to save them from death that often waits behind a suspicious gaze.

The Tigris rolls between the rage on both sides. Boatmen pull fish and bodies from the water. Iraqi and U.S. forces race along the banks, and sometimes a child, standing in the wrong place, will vanish in the dust of mortar rounds. It all gets whispered about along the Tigris, as if the river were a thread stitching together the vignettes of a city of 6 million that has lived on the edge for way too long.

Baghdad has become a sinister parlor game of unmasking affiliations with subtle and not so subtle questions: Where does your family come from, north or south? Who is your uncle? What tribe do you belong to? It is a place where death squads call the family of someone they've kidnapped and ask: Is he a Shiite, or a Sunni? A wrong answer can mean a trip to the morgue to identify a body streaked with acid burns and drill holes.

Jabbar Dulaimi bobs along in this vortex. A calm man with neatly combed hair, he's a councilman in Mansour, a once mixed neighborhood that is increasingly dominated by Sunnis. More than 150 shops are shuttered on 14th of Ramadan Street, many of them after owners received fliers from insurgents telling them to close or die. Garbage blows on sidewalks, rats scurry, sewage backs up in homes.

Dulaimi's cellphone buzzes and blinks with calls from constituents, but what can he do if fear keeps his municipal crews from work?

"I can't even pick up the garbage anymore," said Dulaimi, a Sunni. "One ward leader in Mansour told me, 'I can't send my trash collectors in there, they'll kill them.' "

Sectarian bloodshed has escalated since February, when Sunni insurgents attacked a Shiite shrine in Samarra. In the old arithmetic of Iraq, Sunni Arabs, many of them Baathists who benefited under Saddam Hussein, despised the American occupation. The majority Shiites wanted the U.S. to help rebuild a country. Now the Shiites are in control, and their death squads have forced Sunnis to inch toward the Americans for cover.

"One week ago a man came to me. His neighbor had been kidnapped," said Dulaimi, unfolding his anecdote as if were a parable from a sacred, if confounding, book. "The family was terrified. But then they found out he was in American custody, and they were very happy. They started throwing candy in the air. They were joyous the U.S. had him instead of Iraqi government forces or Shiite death squads."

The boys in Sadr City sell block ice and don't drift far from their corners. The neighborhood, with as many as 2 million people, is a poor, hot place devoted to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. It is a mesmerizing grid of wind-swept chadors and echoing gunfire guarded by Sadr's Al Mahdi militia, which runs an intelligence network marked by the incessant static of radios and walkie-talkies.

Mustafa feels safe here. His tennis career is suffering, but his life will lengthen if he doesn't too often slip out of any of the neighborhood's 37 entrances and exits. It is a narrow existence, and sometimes, he'd just like to take his wife to another part of town and smoke a water pipe and stroll until 2 a.m. Then he thinks of an uncle with a shrapnel wound and of three friends — a coach and two tennis players on Iraq's Davis Cup team — who were killed not long ago.

He has a daughter. What if he died and never saw her again? The courts at his old Alwiya Club along the Tigris stay mostly empty anyway. But he'd love to hit a topspin forehand again, the ball streaking down the line, a puff of dust.

He works construction when he can. He hasn't had a job in months. He watches people come and go, like the women at Jemila Wholesale, who shop quickly and race home against the possibility that something somewhere might explode.

He doesn't hate Sunnis; he has Sunni friends. But lines are being drawn and it's best not to blur where you stand. He watches every day as more Shiites fleeing Sunni-dominated neighborhoods gather in Sadr City. They pour in with nowhere to go, children straggling through alleys, and fathers visiting Sadr's Al Mahdi militia, hoping for work in a city that has little.

"We ask God to stop this. It can't go on," Mustafa said. "We ask the government to stop this, but how can we trust them? They have done nothing.

"We're all human beings. What is this Kurdish, Sunni, Christian, Shiite? It's selfishness for people wanting things for their groups."

Fatima Omar lives across the river in the Sunni neighborhood of Amiriya. The tallest female student in the English department at Baghdad University, she is slim and wears a hijab. She has a degree, but no job, and sometimes when she looks for one, she must cross into dangerous neighborhoods that U.S. troops are steadily turning over to Iraqi forces, which are often ambushed by insurgents.

Helicopters shake the night sky and flares float like bright ghosts over the rooftops. A curfew keeps the streets mostly empty, but come daylight, rolling sectarian checkpoints appear, looking for anyone with the wrong last name, like hers.

"A lot of Omars have been killed crossing certain checkpoints," she said. This is why the neighborhood boys, even though they swagger, don't roam far from home, and why her father wants to reinvent himself with a fake ID card.

"I had an interview not long ago," she said. "My dad drove me to the bus stop. I got on quickly and rode to Mansour. Out on the street, I passed a lot of shops and saw things that I needed. But I didn't stop. I went by running. It's been 1 1/2 months since summer vacation, and I haven't stepped outside the courtyard of our house."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times staff writers Zainab Hussein and Saif Rasheed contributed to this report.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

4 Killed as occupation continues:

U.S. forces killed a 10 year-old boy accidentally on Sunday when they fired at a car approaching their patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (150 miles) north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Monday.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAM128582.htm


Gunmen kill four in Iraqi capital :

Unidentified gunmen have killed three soldiers and a civilian in separate drive-by shootings in the war-torn Iraqi capital Baghdad, an interior ministry official has said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060821/wl_mi...aqunrestbaghdad


Four U.S. servicemen killed in Iraq:

The U.S. military said on Monday four U.S. servicemen had been killed in action in Iraq in the past 24 hours.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L2116970.htm


Bush Contemplates Rebirth of Dictatorship for Iraq:

The Bush Administration may be looking for an Iraqi Stroessner, or another, more reliable Saddam.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14636.htm


SAS men get £100,000 to bribe Iraqi fighters:

BRITISH Army officers in Iraq are being handed stashes of up to £100,000 in cash for “operational expenses” without formal controls on how it is spent.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14634.htm


In case you missed it:

John Pilger: Sinister Events in a Cynical War:

Here are questions that are not being asked about the latest twist of a cynical war. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two SAS special forces men "rescued" from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10425.htm


"I Was a Propaganda Intern in Iraq" :

Fmr. Lincoln Group Intern Describes Paying Iraqi Press to Plant Pro-American Articles Secretly Written by U.S. Military
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14637.htm

Saddam trial hears of gas attack BBC News
The first prosecution witness has appeared at the latest trial of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and six others on war crimes charges.The witness described a chemical weapons attack which he says was carried out on his village. Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants are being tried over the Anfal campaign in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq in the late 1980s. The prosecution alleges that up to 180,000 civilians were killed.The witness, Ali Mustapha Hama, said eight to 12 jets bombed his village of Balisan in April in 1987. Two of the defendants told the court that Anfal was a campaign targeting Iranian troops and Kurdish guerrillas supporting them. The Iran-Iraq war was not yet over.

'Many dead'
The explosions were not very loud, Ali Mustapha Hama said. There was greenish smoke, and minutes later, a smell like rotten apples or garlic."People were vomiting... We were blinded. We were screaming. There was no one to save us, only God." He spoke of a new-born infant who was trying to "smell life", but breathed in the chemicals and died. Many others died too, he added. During cross-examination, defence lawyers asked Mr Hama how he knew the aircraft were Iraqi, and prompted Hama to say he had helped shelter guerrillas in his village.

Iran-Iraq war
One of them, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, commander of the Anfal operation and a former defence minister, said his orders were to prevent the Iranians from occupying Iraq at whatever price.But he said civilians were moved safely to other areas. "The goal was to fight an organised, armed army - the goal was not civilians," he said. Saber Abdul Aziz, the director of military intelligence at the time, said Anfal aimed to clear northern Iraq of Iranian troops. "You will see that we are not guilty and that we defended our country honourably and sincerely," he said. All the defendants face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, while Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid are additionally charged with genocide. All seven face the death penalty if convicted. Saddam Hussein and seven different defendants have already been tried for the killing of 148 Shias in Dujail in 1982. A verdict is due on 16 October.

At least 16 killed in occupied Iraq:

Bodies of eight fruit traders were found with their throats slit on the roadside in Madaen, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, Ahmed Diabil, a spokesman for Najaf province, said on Tuesday.
http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticl...oryId=KAM228050

===
Iraqi Panel Launches Own Rape-Slay Probe:

An Iraqi investigative panel has launched an independent probe into the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl allegedly by American soldiers currently in U.S. custody, who will be tried in absentia if necessary, an official said Tuesday.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2341038

===
Bush: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11:

Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War. Watch it.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/21/bush-on-911/

===
Marines to issue involuntary call-ups:

Corps faces shortage of volunteers for deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14468245/

Mother recalls Iraqi gas attack BBC News
The third day of Saddam Hussein's genocide trial has seen a Kurdish woman testify about the death of one of her children in a poison gas attack. The former Iraqi leader and six others are being tried over the Anfal campaign in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq in the late 1980s. The prosecution alleges that up to 180,000 civilians were killed. Adiba Oula Bayez described the bombardment of her village, Balisan, on 16 April 1987. She said warplanes dropped bombs that spread a smoke that smelled "like rotten apples". "Then my daughter Narjis came to me, complaining about pain in her eyes, chest and stomach. When I got close to see what was wrong with her, she threw up all over me," she said. "When I took her in to wash her face... all my other children were throwing up. "Then my condition got bad, too. And that's when we realised that the weapon was poisonous and chemical." She then described how her family was blinded by the attack, sought shelter along with other villagers from Iraqi army fire, and was taken to a detention centre. "I went for four days without eyesight. My children could not see. I was just screaming. On the fifth day I slightly opened my eyes. And it was a terrible scene. My children and my skin had turned black," she said. Mrs Bayez told the court one of her children had died after the chemical attack, and she had subsequently had two miscarriages. "May God blind them all," she said, pointing at Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants. Mrs Bayez is married to one of the men who testified for the prosecution on Tuesday, Ali Mustapha Hama. The former leader, who faces the death penalty if found guilty of genocide, questioned the witness's account of one alleged chemical attack: "I wonder if the village in which she lived was struck with chemical weapons, why she was hurt while the others, her two sisters or daughters and a husband - not one of them was hurt? And why those who came to rescue her were not hurt too? Thank you." The trial has now been adjourned to 11 September.

Bleeding birds
Later on Wednesday, a former Kurdish peshmerga fighter described several attacks he witnessed in 1987 and 1988 - including an August 1988 chemical weapons attack on his village. Moussa Abdullah Moussa described how his brother's family was killed. "I found my brother, Saleh Abdullah and his son Shaabaan. They were 100 metres [yards] away. They were hugging and they were dead," he said. "I can't describe the feeling which I felt with my eyes and heart. We screamed." He said he ran past birds and chickens which lay dead after the gas attack, blood trickling from their beaks, while villagers washed their faces with milk to ease the pain of the chemicals. "People were certain they were going to die because the government had no mercy." Another Balisan resident, Badriya Said Khider, said nine of her relatives were killed in the attack, including her parents, husband and son, and that she still suffered the after-effects. "I can't speak. I am breathless," she said, wheezing. "I want the court to treat Saddam as he treated us." The accused say the campaign was a legitimate counter-insurgency operation aimed at clearing northern Iraq of Iranian troops and separatist guerrillas. All the defendants face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, while Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid are additionally charged with genocide. All seven face the death penalty if convicted. Saddam Hussein and seven different defendants have already been tried for the killing of 148 Shias in Dujail in 1982. A verdict in that case is due on 16 October.

At least 18 killed as U.S. occupation grinds on:

Police found the bodies of three people, handcuffed and with gunshot wounds, in Kut, 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IBO427510.htm


3 U.S. Soldiers Among Fatalities in Iraq :

A series of attacks across Iraq killed more than a dozen people, including three U.S. soldiers, authorities said Thursday. The killings came despite assurances from U.S. officials that progress was being made to improve security in the capital.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/stor...6035600,00.html


Iraq PM bans TV from showing attacks :

Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has banned television channels from broadcasting gory images of daily bloodshed in the country, the interior ministry said in a statement.
http://tinyurl.com/zhrsh


At least 19 killed in occupied Iraq:

Iraqi police pulled out six bodies from a small river near Latifiya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad on Tuesday, police said.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAM329576.htm


2,500 Marines Face Involuntary Recall:

The number of troops in Iraq has climbed back to 138,000 — the prevailing number for much of last year.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/22/...in1925647.shtml


UK troops to stay in Iraq 'to protect investment' : -

A force of around 4,000 British troops will stay behind in Iraq for an indefinite period, even after all provinces controlled by the UK are handed over to the Baghdad government in nine months' time, senior defence sources said yesterday.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14671.htm


McCain Faults Admin. For Painting Iraq As ‘Some Kind of Day At the Beach,’

Ignores Own Rosy Rhetoric
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/22/mccain-hypocrisy


The Kurds' fight for oil rights:

In Iraq, striking oil workers have shut the main pipeline supppling Baghdad with refined oil prodcuts.
http://tinyurl.com/zmsbs


An interview with an Iraqi insurgent:

The night before Jill Carroll was released, Abu Nour, her chief captor who claims to be a leader of the Sunni insurgency, ordered her to do one final interview.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0822/p11s02-woiq.html?s=t5


S General Says Iranian Forces Do Training in Iraq :

A senior U.S. military spokesman says Iranian forces have infiltrated Iraq to provide training, money and equipment to Shi'ite extremists and fuel their insurgency. The officer went farther than others have in detailing Iran's alleged role in Iraq's violence.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-08-23-voa58.cfm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2401721_pf.html

Sadr's Militia and the Slaughter in the Streets

Sadr's Militia and the Slaughter in the Streets
'We Don't Need a Verdict,' One Commander Says

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, August 25, 2006; A01



BAGHDAD -- In a grungy restaurant with plastic tables in central Baghdad, the young Mahdi Army commander was staring earnestly. His beard was closely cropped around his jaw, his face otherwise cleanshaven. The sleeves of his yellow shirt were rolled down to the wrists despite the intense late-afternoon heat. He spoke matter-of-factly: Sunni Arab fighters suspected of attacking Shiite Muslims had no claim to mercy, no need of a trial.

"These cases do not need to go back to the religious courts," said the commander, who sat elbow to elbow with a fellow fighter in a short-sleeved, striped shirt. Neither displayed weapons. "Our constitution, the Koran, dictates killing for those who kill."

His comments offered a rare acknowledgment of the role of the Mahdi Army in the sectarian bloodletting that has killed more than 10,400 Iraqis in recent months. The Mahdi Army is the militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, now one of the most powerful figures in the country.

The death squads that carry out the extrajudicial killings are widely feared but mysterious. Often, the only evidence is the bodies discovered in the streets. Several commanders in the Mahdi Army said in interviews that they act independently of the Shiite religious courts that have taken root here, meting out street justice on their own with what they believe to be the authorization of Sadr's organization and under the mantle of Islam.

"You can find in any religion the right of self-defense," said another commander, senior enough to be referred to as the Sheik, who was interviewed separately by telephone. Like the others, he lives and works in Sadr City, a trash-strewn, eight-square-mile district of east Baghdad that is home to more than 2 million Shiites. They spoke on condition that their names not be revealed and that specific areas of Sadr City under their control not be identified.

"The takfiris , the ones who kill, they should be killed," said the Sheik, using a term commonly employed by Shiites for violent Sunni extremists. "Also the Saddamists. Whose hands are stained with blood, they are sentenced to death."

"This is part of defending yourself," the commander said. "This is a ready-made verdict -- we don't need any verdict."

Before Feb. 22, when the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra unleashed a wave of sectarian killing and retribution, U.S. authorities and others believed the primary force behind Shiite death squads was the Badr Brigade, the militia of another large Shiite organization, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. But since the bombing, the Mahdi Army appears to have taken the lead in extrajudicial trials and executions, according to Joost Hiltermann, a project director in Jordan for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

For suspected enemies taken by the Mahdi Army, the outcome is swift, with guilt and punishment already determined, the commanders said.

"If we catch any of them, the takfiris, Saddamists, bombers, we don't hand them over to police. He could be freed the next day," the Sheik said.

The captured men get a rapid interrogation, he added. They are asked, "How do you come here? Who is working with you? Which organization is supporting you?"

"We get a full confession," he said. "Once we do, we know what to do with them."

A Widow's Story

In a darkened living room in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad, the widow of a retired army officer -- a Sunni allegedly taken by the Mahdi Army after the Samarra bombing -- recounted the last hours of her husband's life, stopping her account only to call aloud to God for revenge.

Gunmen from outside the neighborhood surrounded the mosque where her husband and other men were at late-afternoon prayer, she said. It was Feb. 23, the day after the shrine bombing. The armed strangers were wearing black clothes of the type then worn by the Mahdi Army. Sadr later ordered his fighters to discard the uniform, saying rivals were using it to commit killings in the guise of the Mahdi Army.

The gunmen took her husband and the other men to a police station in the Habibiya neighborhood of Sadr City, the black-clad widow said, surrounded by her daughters and granddaughters. Women of the neighborhood gathered in another room to pay their respects to the bereaved family. Some of the men were released, surviving to tell what happened. They recalled that her husband and three other retired officers from Saddam Hussein's military were subjected to a one-hour hearing.

"The trial was held in public, at 6 a.m., on Friday," she said. "At 10 a.m., they called us to tell us to pick the body up from the morgue."

As directed, male relatives retrieved her husband's body from the Baghdad morgue. The corpse bore bullet holes in the face and chest, with both hands still cuffed behind the back.

Fearful despite her anger, she refused to say who she thought killed her husband. An 8-year-old granddaughter whispered the answer into her ear: "The Mahdi Army."

"Darling," the widow scolded, frowning at the child to be silent.

Asked about the Mahdi Army's role in the surge of killings immediately after the Samarra mosque bombing, the Mahdi Army commander in short sleeves at the restaurant frowned, and answered carefully. "Terrorists" were at work then, he said, using a term employed by Shiites for Sunni insurgents. "There was an immediate need to move and contain these groups," he said.

Grisly Discoveries

Thousands of bodies turned up on the streets and vacant lots of Baghdad in the months after the Samarra bombing, found by U.S. Army patrols, Iraqi forces, passersby and families of the dead. Unlike earlier in the conflict, when the biggest share of victims were killed by the bombs of Sunni insurgents, these corpses were found shot to death, often bearing signs of torture and with their hands still bound. Shiite militias were blamed for many of these deaths.

The Mahdi Army commanders who were interviewed balked at detailing how many people the militia may have killed, and how. American forces, by contrast, saw nothing but the end results.

One small unit alone, made up of roughly two dozen Americans helping train the Iraqi army in Sadr City, happened upon more than 200 bodies this year along roads on the edges of Sadr City, said 1st Lt. Zeroy Lawson, the unit's intelligence officer.

Witnesses and residents of Sadr City told the Americans that the victims had been brought from all over Baghdad, said Lawson and Capt. Troy Wayman, an officer in the same squad. Victims typically had their shoes removed and their hands bound, Lawson said, and were executed in public. The Americans said they suspect that the women they found dead, like the men found with their genitals mutilated, were judged guilty of extramarital sex.

Lawson and Wayman offered several examples. One was a female worker at a Sadr City clinic that Mahdi Army members believed was a brothel. The militiamen warned the women there to shut the place down, pistol-whipped them in public and then shot the worker dead on the street, the two Americans said.

In another case, Lawson spotted the unmoving form of a paunchy man in a checked shirt by the side of the road. Residents told Lawson that the man, a Sunni, had been taken from his home in Mansour, an affluent neighborhood of Sunnis, Shiites and Christians in central Baghdad. Accused of conspiring to drive Shiites from their homes, the Sunni man had been brought to Sadr City and shot dead where he now lay, witnesses told the Americans.

In late spring, Wayman recalled, the Americans in Sadr City happened upon uniformed Iraqi security forces clustered around the body of an Iraqi man. Gunmen had shot the man dead seconds before, then sped off when the Iraqi and U.S. forces happened by, Wayman said.

Americans traced the killers' vehicle to a nearby police station, where they found two grateful captives inside. The men were Christians who told Wayman they worked at a store elsewhere in Baghdad that sold alcohol. Gunmen had visited the shop to tell the men that alcohol was forbidden by the Koran and that they must shut down. When the two refused, they told Wayman, the gunmen stuffed them into a car at gunpoint and brought them to a house in Sadr City.

A Shiite cleric visited the two Christians at the house, they told Wayman. The cleric demanded that the captives convert to Islam and, when they refused, informed them that alcohol was forbidden by Islam.

They would be punished, the cleric said, but he did not specify how. The captives said they believed they were second and third in line for execution, after the man who was found in the street.

Mahdi Army commanders interviewed uniformly denied that they kill people for selling alcohol. The Mahdi Army only warns liquor vendors, increasingly strongly, they said. If the vendors still refuse to stop selling, the Mahdi Army "beats them lightly, in accordance with the Koran," the commander known as the Sheik said.

Lawson, the intelligence officer, credits the Mahdi Army with an intelligence operation that has become skilled at feeding bad information to Americans about the militia's activities. But U.S. military officials say they know enough to condemn much of what the Mahdi Army does.

"I have no doubt . . . they hold trial courts and execute people," said Lt. Col. Mark Meadows, commander of a cavalry regiment with the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division. Meadows's men oversaw Shula, a northern Baghdad neighborhood under Sadr's control, at the time of the Samarra bombing. The Mahdi Army "is probably the largest, most aggressive militia in this country," Meadows said. "They are a terrorist organization. They terrorize people."

But Iraqi and U.S. security forces are often left as puzzled spectators in areas under the Mahdi Army's jurisdiction.

On patrol early one morning, Wayman and his convoy pulled over at the telltale sign of a group of Iraqi police gathered by the side of a road in northern Sadr City, eyes cast down.

The police officers made room for Wayman, who looked down at an Iraqi girl lying on her side. She appeared to be no more than 15. The morning light bathed her face, and her hands curled gently to her mouth. Wrapped in a blanket, she looked asleep, except for two bursts of pink flesh from bullet wounds in her back.

Neither American nor Iraqi forces had any inclination to investigate what had happened to the teenager.

"Who knows?" one of the Iraqi policeman said, preparing to bundle up the body. Wayman got back into his Humvee, and the Americans drove on.

"WHAT THE IRAQI PEOPLE WANT" - MARC LYNCH (ABU AARDVACK, AUGUST 24): Maybe there are reasons for keeping American troops in Iraq, but "it's what the Iraqi people want" really doesn't seem to be one of them.
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark...the_iraqi_.html

RETURNING SOME ORDER TO IRAQ'S MEAN STREETS - DAVID IGNATIUS (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 25): With enough troops and aggressive tactics, American forces can bring order to even the meanest streets, but it's only the Iraqis themselves who can stabilize these neighborhoods permanently.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2401331_pf.html

IRAQ: THREATENED TEACHERS FLEEING THE COUNTRY IRIN (ALERTNET, AUGUST 24)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/I...81cfa749748.htm
VIA
http://www.juancole.com/

A PLAN TO HOLD IRAQ TOGETHER - JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR. (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 24): The only way to hold Iraq together and create the conditions for our armed forces to responsibly withdraw is to give Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds incentives to pursue their interests peacefully and to forge a sustainable political settlement. (The writer is a senator from Delaware and the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2301419_pf.html

GETTING TO THE TRUTH ON IRAQ - MOLLY IVINS (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, AUGUST 24): Iraq is a Disaster.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...ncommentary-hed

BUSH'S NEW IRAQ ARGUMENT: IT COULD BE WORSE - PETER BAKER (WASHINGTON, AUGUST 24): For three years, the president tried to reassure Americans that more progress was being made in Iraq than they realized. But with Iraq either in civil war or on the brink of it, Bush dropped the unseen-progress argument in favor of the contention that things could be even worse.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2301878_pf.html

BUSH CLINGS TO A LOST CAUSE IN IRAQ - JOAN VENNOCHI (BOSTON GLOBE COLUMNIST, AUGUST 22): When it comes to Iraq, Bush, the rebel with a lost cause, continues to defy one thing above all: logic.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...6304081?mode=PF

NATION PAYS A HIGH PRICE FOR PRESIDENT'S IRAQ DELUSIONS - STEVE CHAPMAN (BALTIMORE SUN, AUGUST 23): We are not going to stay long enough to succeed in Iraq, and we have already stayed long enough to fail.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/o...-oped-headlines

LEARNING FROM IRAQ: IN A WAR, THINK BIG -- AT LEAST AT FIRST - JEFFREY SHAFFER (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, AUGUST 26): The public relations advantage of a massive force is that if the campaign goes well, you can start pulling some troops out right away and keep public opinion on the positive side.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0825/p09s03-cojs.html

IRAQ FOR SALE: THE MOVIE - SPIN OF THE DAY (CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY, AUGUST 23): Robert Greenwald, the director of last year?s influential "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," has a new film coming out in October, titled ?Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers.?
http://www.prwatch.org/spin (scroll down link for item)

Iraq: At least 19 killed as U.S. occupation continues:

U.S. tanks shelled a mosque in the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi after coming under attack from gunmen inside the building, the U.S. military said. A doctor at Ramadi hospital said three people were killed and 22 wounded by U.S. fire.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/MOU528836.htm


Poll: Iraqi's Want U.S. Occupation Forces Out Of Iraq:

91.7% of Iraqis oppose the presence of coalition troops in the country, up from 74.4% in 2004.
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark...the_iraqi_.html


'I can't go to Iraq. I can't kill those children' -

Suicide soldier's dying words to his mother
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_brit...icle1221649.ece


Shays Urges Iraq Withdrawal:

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), once an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq, said yesterday that the Bush administration should set a time frame for withdrawing U.S. troops. He added that most of the withdrawal could take place next year.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14692.htm


Hillary Still Hiding on War; Time Warner Provides Cover :

The cover story in the new issue of TIME, the flagship publication of the Time Warner media empire, informs readers that Hillary Clinton has “virtually nonexistent opposition for her senate seat.”
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0824-33.htm


Cost of Iraq war: $1,075 each:

The National Priorities Project has calculated the cost of the Iraq war by congressional district, city, state and even household. - You owe $1,075.
http://washtimes.com/upi/20060823-051747-8542r.htm


Is Iran Running Militias in Iraq?:

Iraqi politicians say the growing U.S. claims of a clear link between Shi'ite militias and Tehran is pure scapegoating. And renewed Tehran-bashing in Washington could further complicate its efforts to end the civil war
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14688.htm

Baghdad blasts claim more lives BBC News
At least 12 people have been killed and more than 30 injured in bombings in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. At least five died and 14 were hurt when a vehicle exploded near a hotel. Five more were killed at an open-air market, and a car bomb explosion near the state-run newspaper claimed at least two lives and wounded 20 people. The attacks come as US-led forces have been carrying out a major operation to improve security following a recent rise in violence in the city. They say the situation is improving. The US military has said a joint force of Iraqi and US soldiers has searched 31,000 buildings and 25 mosques, detained 70 suspected terrorists and seized 529 weapons in the past two weeks.

Media targets
The explosion outside the al-Sabah offices was the second car bomb attack on the newspaper this year. Al-Sabah is state-owned, but financed by the US. Correspondents say insurgents in Iraq often target journalists working for the state media.

At least 28 killed in occupied Iraq:

One day after Maliki won a promise from tribal leaders to rein in Iraq's violent factions, bombers targeted the busy heart of Baghdad and a state-run newspaper seen as friendly to the government.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060827/wl_mideast_afp/iraq

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20 bodies found in Baghdad :

Police said 20 bodies had been found in various districts of Baghdad on Saturday. Some bore signs of torture and most had been killed by gunshots to the head, a typical feature of the communal bloodshed between the Shi'ite and Sunni sects.
http://tinyurl.com/l5ukv

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Call for autonomy as Iraqi tribes demand peace :

A powerful Iraqi politician called yesterday for the Shi’ite south of the country to become an autonomous region as tribal leaders vowed to work together for peace.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14715.htm

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For an Iraq Cut in 3, Cast a Wary Glance at Kurdistan :

Children are not required to learn Arabic in schools, which means an entire generation is growing up without the ability to communicate with other Iraqis. Arabs arriving from other parts of the country have to register with local security forces.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14716.htm

===
Reuters seeks Pentagon probe on journalist's "unlawful". death:

Reuters news agency urged the U.S. military on Sunday to investigate the killing of one of its journalists by American troops in Baghdad a year ago.
http://tinyurl.com/hdxa3

===
You wouldn’t catch me dead in Iraq:

Scores of American troops are deserting — even from the front line in Iraq. But where have they gone? And why isn’t the US Army after them? Peter Laufer tracked down four of the deserters
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly...643-531,00.html

Fierce battles in south Iraq city BBC News
Iraqi troops have fought battles with Shia militiamen in the southern town of Diwaniya, amid an upsurge in violence in which dozens of people have died.At least 19 soldiers were killed and more than 40 people were wounded in Diwaniya. Officials said some 40 gunmen from the Mehdi Army had also died. Government forces had lost control of parts of the city, officials said. In Baghdad, 11 people died when a suicide car bomber attacked a compound of the Iraqi interior ministry. A spokesman for the Diwaniya general hospital said 34 bodies had been brought in, including soldiers and seven civilians and two militiamen.Local leaders are quoted as saying the gunmen in Diwaniya have split from the from the Mehdi Army after rejecting a call from their radical leader to take part in Iraq's political peace process. Members of the militia have set up their own checkpoints in the town, eyewitnesses said, and the government has sent large numbers of reinforcements. In Baghdad, dozens of people were injured in the mid-morning blast outside the interior ministry. The ministry complex has been frequently targeted in the past and is heavily guarded. At least eight policemen are reported to be among the fatalities.

'Improved security'
Insurgents have carried out almost daily attacks against Iraqi and coalition targets since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Thousands of Iraqis have died in apparently sectarian attacks in the past four months alone. However, a US general says violence has fallen in Baghdad by nearly a half since July, although he acknowledged a spike in bombings in the past 48 hours. "Insurgents and terrorists are hitting back in an attempt to offset the success of the Iraqi government and its security forces," Maj Gen William Caldwell told reporters. The Baghdad bomber struck as UK Defence Minister Des Browne was in the capital for talks with Iraqi officials. After meeting Iraqi Defence Minister Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jassim al-Mifarji, Mr Browne said Iraq was moving forward. "Each time I come, I see more progress," he said. Meanwhile, five US soldiers were killed in two separate bomb attacks in Iraq on Sunday afternoon, the US military said. Four soldiers died when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle north of Baghdad, a military statement said. A fifth soldier was killed when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle in the west of the capital.

IRAQI MUSEUM SEALED AGAINST LOOTERS: ANTIQUITIES CHIEF QUITS POST, FLEES COUNTRY, CITING LACK OF SAFEGUARDS FOR HISTORIC TREASURES - ELLEN KNICKMEYER (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 27)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2600810_pf.html

IRAQIS LAMENT DEMISE OF CINEMA - ISLAMONLINE.NET & NEWS AGENCIES (ISLAMONLINE.COM, AUGUST 27): Curfews, bomb attacks scare, continuous power blackouts and relentless sectarian violence have ruined the onetime bustling Iraqi cinemas and the film industry.
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2006-08/27/03.shtml

SERVICE IN IRAQ: JUST HOW RISKY? - SAMUEL H. PRESTON AND EMILY BUZZELL (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 26): The ratio of deaths to person-years, .00392, or 3.92 deaths per 1,000 person-years, is the death rate of military personnel in Iraq. For the civilian population of the United States, that rate was 8.42 per 1,000 in 2003, more than twice that for military personnel in Iraq.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2500940_pf.html

DEATHS DROP IN IRAQI CAPITAL: EVEN AS THE NATION'S TOLL CLIMBS BY AT LEAST 80, INCLUDING 6 U.S. SOLDIERS, OFFICIALS CREDIT A MILITARY SWEEP FOR BAGHDAD'S LOWER TALLY THIS MONTH - SOLOMON MOORE (LOS ANGELES TIMES, AUGUST 28)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...-home-headlines

CIVIL WAR VIOLENCE EXPLODES THROUGHOUT IRAQ - JUAN COLE (INFORMED COMMENT: THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST, HISTORY, AND RELIGION, AUGUST 28): The first question is whether the decline in deaths in Baghdad (which is only relative) has been offset by violence in Mosul, Baqubah and elsewhere. The second question is whether the violence will remain lower when the sweeps end, as inevitably they will.
http://www.juancole.com/ (scroll down link for item)

MORALITY IN IRAQ, THEN AND NOW - JIM HOAGLAND (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 27): Conducting a military occupation that has lost the ability to change the situation for the better for those being occupied is unwise and ultimately untenable. It is also immoral. U.S. involvement in Iraq is again perilously close to being just that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2501238_pf.html

IRAQ: STILL WORTH SOME WAITING - DAVID IGNATIUS (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 27): We'll be out of Iraq, one way or another, over the next few years. Rushing the process because of American impatience would make a bad situation even worse.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2501237_pf.html

RETURN TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME - FRANK RICH (NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 27): When the fifth anniversary of 9/11 arrives in two weeks, you can bet that the president will once again invoke the Qaeda attacks to justify the Iraq war, especially now that we are adding troops (through the involuntary call-up of reservists) rather than subtracting any. The new propaganda strategy will be right out of Lewis Carroll: If we leave the country that had nothing to do with 9/11, then 9/11 will happen again.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/opini...agewanted=print
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FOR AN IRAQ CUT IN 3, CAST A WARY GLANCE AT KURDISTAN - EDWARD WONG (NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 27): Whether Iraq?s neighbors like it or not, this country?s regions are heading toward greater autonomy, not less.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/weekinre...agewanted=print

BREAKING UP (A COUNTRY) IS HARD TO DO - GARY BASS (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 27): If Iraq is partitioned, it probably will be only after the United States experiences the same kind of panicky desperation that helped prompt Britain's mid-century partitions in its crumbling imperial possessions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2501172_pf.html

BREAK UP IRAQ TO SAVE IT: GETTING SHIITES, SUNNIS AND KURDS TO RELOCATE MIGHT BE THE ONLY WAY TO SALVAGE THE STATE - MICHAEL O'HANLON (LOS ANGELES TIMES, AUGUST 27): If we can encourage future ethnic relocation to occur voluntarily and peacefully, rather than through murder, rape and intimidation, we can still salvage an imperfect but real success that ultimately leaves most Iraqis better off than they were under Hussein.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions

AMERICAN PSYCHE: GEORGE BUSH SAYS IRAQ IS DRAINING FOR AMERICA. HE SHOULD SEE WHAT IT?S DOING TO THE IRAQIS - MICHAEL HASTINGS (NEWSWEEK, AUGUST 23): If America's soul is tied to Iraq, Iraq's soul is now desperately intertwined with America. The Iraqi psyche is badly damaged, mainly because Iraqis actually are at war with themselves.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14487361/site/newsweek/

PROLONGED WAR WASN'T IN THE DEAL - DERRICK Z. JACKSON (BOSTON GLOBE, AUGUST 26): Until we get out of Iraq, Bush has to soothe the American psyche. He can start by firing Rumsfeld, who told us the battle would not be prolonged. That would be a good first step to rearranging the chairs.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...he_deal?mode=PF

RETALIATION ALLEGED FOR TEACHING ON IRAQ WAR - JESSICA GARRISON (LOS ANGELES TIMES, AUGUST 26): Alberto Gutierrez, a 33-year-old social studies teacher who is known on campus as a passionate educator with a left-wing tilt, says in a suit filed this week that after he "offered objective discussion ... regarding the United States' involvement in the war in Iraq to his students," then-Principal Jose Luis Rodriguez began filling Gutierrez's personnel file with negative reviews and surreptitiously encouraging parents to complain about him.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me...dlines-politics

THE CHENEY PRESIDENCY - ROBERT KUTTNER (BOSTON GLOBE, AUGUST 26): The Iraq war is the work of Cheney and Rumsfeld.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...sidency?mode=PF

NEWS ANALYSIS: IRAQ WAR HAS BUSH DOCTRINE IN TATTERS - CAROLYN LOCHHEAD (SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, AUGUST 27): President Bush vowed last week that he would never abandon his goal of creating democracy in Iraq, but outside the White House, the foreign policy world is wondering how to contain a civil war that could engulf the Middle East.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...&type=printable

WILL WE CHOOSE TO WIN IN IRAQ? THE WAR IS FRUSTRATING. THAT DOESN'T MEAN WE OUGHT TO GET OUT - WILLIAM J. STUNTZ (WEEKLY STANDARD, SEPTEMBER 4): The territory over which we fight is among the most strategically important in the world. Victory will place the most dangerous regime on the planet, Iran's fascist theocracy, in serious peril. Defeat will leave that same regime inestimably strengthened.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...12/615hksxa.asp

THE CURRENT CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS - FREDERICK GRAB (WASHINGTON TIMES, AUGUST 28): Perhaps we can't subdue Iran through a ground invasion, but we could very well utilize air power, not to defeat a large, well-equipped army like Iran's, but to destroy the infrastructure and war-making capability of an enemy with which we were actually at war.
http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...27-100239-8074r

SQUEEZING IRAN EDITORIAL (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, AUGUST 27): Anything less than the Security Council's complete resolve to stop Iran's nuclear program through tough sanctions is destined to fail.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...newsopinion-hed

THE LEBANON CEASEFIRE: THE PLANNED ASSAULT ON IRAN - GARY LEUPP (COUNTERPUNCH, AUGUST 26/27)
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp08262006.html

IRAN'S 'CRISIS' OF OVERCONFIDENCE - JASON MOTLAGH (ASIA TIMES, AUGUST 26): The failure of the Israelis to rout Hezbollah suggests the high cost of a potential ground war on Iran to Israel and to US forces already bogged down in Iraq.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH26Ak02.html

WILL BUSH MAKE IRAN THE ONLY SUPERPOWER? - BRADLEY BURSTON (HAARETZ, AUGUST 27): Bush, who is fast nearing the mid-point of his second term, has yet to field a coherent policy regarding the grand dark-horse of 21st Century superpower politics, Iran.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/754892.html

PAVING THE WAY TO WAR WITH IRAN - WILLIAM M. ARKIN (WASHINGTONPOST.COM, AUGUST 24): In the absence of expert opinion that is neither myopic nor bought, in our earning for an explanation as to why the world is such a mess and in our patriotic duty not to see ourselves as responsible, in our myopia about WMD, in our polarized partisan grossness, we have unfortunately paved the way for war with Iran.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarnin...r_with_ira.html

TRAPPED BY HIS OWN RHETORIC: WHY BUSH WILL CHOOSE WAR AGAINST IRAN - RAY CLOSE, FORMER CIA ANALYST (COUNTERPUNCH, AUGUST 26/27)
http://www.counterpunch.org/close08262006.html

'FIXING' IRAN INTELLIGENCE - JOHN PRADOS (TOMPAINE.COM, AUGUST 25): More and more it appears that the pattern of manipulation and misuse of intelligence that served the Bush administration in the drive to start a war with Iraq is being repeated today for its neighbor Iran.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/08/2...ntelligence.php

HOEKSTRA'S HOAX: HYPING UP THE IRAN 'THREAT' - RAY MCGOVERN (ANTIWAR.COM, AUGUST 27): "Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States," released this week by House intelligence committee chair, is another sign pointing in the direction of a US attack on Iran.
http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=9609

REPUBLICAN REPORT HYPES IRAN 'THREAT' - JIM LOBE (ANTIWAR.COM, AUGUST 27): The fact that Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA officer, was the report's main author, suggests that his effort to undermine confidence in the intelligence community's estimates regarding Iran is part of a larger campaign that includes many of the same hawks who led the drive to war in Iraq.
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=9610

WHY IT'S NOT WORKING IN AFGHANISTAN - ANN JONES (TOMDISPATCH, AUGUST 27): The Karzai government, confined to a self-serving American agenda that is often at odds with Afghan interests, has delivered nothing at all to the average Afghan, still living in abysmal poverty.
http://tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=116512

COMMENTARY: ISLAMISTS' STAR RISES FOLLOWING WAR IN LEBANON ECCENTRIC STAR (AUGUST 23)
http://eccentricstar.typepad.com/public_di...ntary_isla.html

AMERICA'S MUSLIMS AREN'T AS ASSIMILATED AS YOU THINK - GENEIVE ABDO (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 27): U.S. foreign policy persists in dividing Muslim and Western societies, making it harder still for Americans to realize that there is a difference between their Muslim neighbor and the plotter in London or the kidnapper in Baghdad.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2501169_pf.html

OLD SHIITE-SUNNI BLOOD FEUD DRIVES THE MIDEAST'S NEW POWER PLAY: HEZBOLLAH'S PERCEIVED VICTORY IN THE LEBANON WAR PUTS FEUDING MUSLIMS ON A COLLISION COURSE - VALI NASR (LOS ANGELES TIMES, AUGUST 27): Sectarianism is a Muslim problem, but if unchecked, it can unleash conflicts detrimental to U.S. interests.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions

WITCH DOCTORS AND THUGS - ALAN REYNOLDS (WASHINGTON TIMES, AUGUST 27): If the phrase "Islamic fascism" is to become something more serious than a gratuitous slur, its value may lie in drawing attention to the dangers of mixing brutality and murder with quasi-religious excuses, force with fraud and thugs with witch doctors.
http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...26-101825-7882r

WRONG WAR, WRONG WORD KATHA POLLITT (NATION, AUGUST 24): As the Bush Administration's Middle Eastern policy sinks ever deeper into bloody incoherence, the "war on terror" has been getting a quiet linguistic makeover. It's becoming the "war on Islamic fascism."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060911/pollitt

RELEARNING LESSONS IN THE WAR ON TERROR - VICTOR DAVIS HANSON (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, AUGUST 25): Unless we in the West adapt more quickly than do canny Islamic terrorists in this constantly evolving war, cease our internecine fighting and stop forgetting what we've learned about our enemies -- there will be disasters to come far worse than Sept. 11.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...ncommentary-hed

ONE PICTURE OF 'MODERATE' ISLAM EDITORIAL (WASHINGTON TIMES, AUGUST 28): The Bush administration's cooperation with Indonesia in the pursuit of terrorists has been commendable. But the numbers don't lie as to the rest of its policy, which is insufficiently ambitious in light of such radicalized opinion in a country touted for its moderation.
http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...27-100219-2648r

THE LIQUID BOMB HOAX: THE LARGER IMPLICATIONS - JAMES PETRAS (GLOBALRESEARCH.CA, AUGUST 25): Some reports from British police insiders claim that the Bush Administration pushed Blair for early arrests and the announcement of the ?liquid bomb? plot. Security officials then launched a massive, all-out ?terror propaganda? campaign designed to capture the attention and support of the public with the total support of the mass media. The security-mass media campaign served its objective -- Bush?s popularity increased, Blair avoided censure and both continued on their vacations.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context...&articleId=3069

WHAT WENT WRONG?: NEW LOOKS AT THE BIN LADEN NETWORK AND THE PANEL THAT TRIED TO EXPLAIN ITS MOST VICIOUS ATTACK [REVIEW OF THE LOOMING TOWER: AL-QAEDA AND THE ROAD TO 9/11 BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT; WITHOUT PRECEDENT: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION BY THOMAS H. KEAN AND LEE H. HAMILTON WITH BENJAMIN RHODES] - BRUCE HOFFMAN (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 27)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2401147_pf.html

IRAQ: A WAR ABOUT NOTHING MARIE COCCO (BOULDER DAILY CAMERA, COLORADO, AUGUST 27/COMMON DREAMS): If we now are embarked on a contemporary hundred years' war, what will historians say was its cause? Certainly 9/11 was the watershed event, but before that was the founding of Israel in 1948 and before that, the carving up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0827-23.htm

At least 99 killed in occupied Iraq:

Fifty gunmen and 20 Iraqi soldiers have been killed in clashes in
the
town of Diwaniya south of Baghdad, the Ministry of Defence spokesman
said in Baghdad.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAM836303.htm

===
At least 67 killed as militia seizes key town:

Shiite militiamen killed at least 20 Iraqi soldiers in two days of
fighting that also left seven civilians dead, defence ministry
spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said Monday.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=17336

===
Eight U.S. occupation soldiers among at least 60 killed: :

The deaths followed bombings and shootings Sunday that killed more
than 60 people across the country, from the northern city of Kirkuk
to Baghdad and Basra in the south.
http://www.katu.com/printstory.asp?ID=88695

===
25 Iraqi soldiers killed amid nationwide violence :

Mohammed Abdul-Muhsen of Diwaniyah general hospital said 34 bodies
were brought in - 25 Iraqi soldiers, seven civilians and two
militiamen. He said at least 70 people were injured.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1859979,00.html

===
Baghdad violence cut by half: U.S. military:

Violence in Baghdad has dropped by nearly half since July, when
U.S.-led forces launched an operation to pacify the capital, a U.S.
general said on Monday
http://tinyurl.com/rqyba

===
Two Iraqi units have refused deployment

Members of two Iraqi military units have refused orders to deploy to
heavily contested areas, a top U.S. military general said.
http://tinyurl.com/hd5zm

===
Bush 'palace' shielded from Iraqi storm:

Washington is sending a clear message to Iraqis: "We're here to
stay."
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/age25.html

===
With thousands of Iraqis killed at hand of US soldiers, only few
charged-report ;

A review of military cases has found that the majority of US
soldiers
who served in Iraq and charged in the deaths of Iraqi civilians have
been acquitted, found guilty of relatively minor offenses or given
administrative punishments without trials.
http://tinyurl.com/n3yyf

===
"The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without
End." Video:

Peter Galbraith discusses his book . He describes his experiences in
Iraq, his impressions of the current situation and the leaders in
Iraq & the administration.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14731.htm

Iraq: Raging violence claims at least 91 lives as U.S. occupation
continues:

Police found the bodies of 20 men with gunshot wounds in two areas of
Baghdad on Tuesday
http://tinyurl.com/g8kr4

===
At least 100 die as militia force Iraqi troops out of town :

More than 10,000 Iraqis - the vast majority in Baghdad - have been
killed in the past four months alone, a figure that would send
shockwaves through the international community were it in any other
part of the world.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14737.htm

===
American toll is 10 killed in 2 days:

The U.S. military said today that nine U.S. soldiers were killed on
Sunday, eight of them in and around Baghdad and one in fighting in
Anbar province west of Baghdad. A 10th soldier died yesterday of
wounds sustained in a vehicle accident in Balad north of Baghdad.
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/nationworld/ci_4254845

===
Iraqi army agrees to truce with Shi'a militia:

Under the deal brokered by local political leaders, the army will
pull out of residential areas, while the Mahdi Army militia will
stand down its forces in the districts it seized during the fighting,
they said.
http://tinyurl.com/zlyzh

===
Attorneys want officials gagged in soldier's murder - rape case: -

Federal officials should be barred from speaking about the case of a
former soldier charged with raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi
girl, defense attorneys said.
http://tinyurl.com/fakp5

===
New 'Caught Red-Handed' Report:

Since the Iraq war began, the Republican-led Congress has spent more
than $300 Billion on President Bush's failed policy. $18 billion has
been awarded to Halliburton, much of which was in "no bid" contracts
and $9 billion is missing.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14738.htm

===
Turkish general vows to rout PKK :

He described the Kurdish rebels as "terrorists" who used democracy
and human rights as a shield.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5294438.stm

===
Rumsfeld: U.S. able to take new fight despite Iraq:

"It would be unfortunate if other countries thought that because we
have 136,000 troops in Iraq today, that we're not capable of
defending our country or doing anything that we might need to do," he
said in response to a question about military options for dealing with
Iran.
http://tinyurl.com/epcvp

===
The Spider's Web:

More people than ever are dying in Iraq while the United States looks
on powerlessly. In the wake of its invasion of Lebanon, Israel is
driven with self-doubt, while Europe tries to establish peace. But
there is one country that is benefiting from every crisis in the
region: Iran.
http://tinyurl.com/h6kt3

Iraq bombs leave at least 38 dead BBC News
A bomb has exploded at a busy Baghdad market killing 24 people and injuring more than 35, Iraqi police say. Witnesses said body parts and debris were strewn across the Shurja market, a scene of frequent attacks. At least two people died in a separate blast in the capital, while a bomb at an army recruitment centre in the town of Hilla killed 12 people, police said. Hilla, the capital of the mixed Sunni and Shia province of Babel, has been frequently targeted by insurgents. Wednesday's blasts are the latest in a series of attacks which have killed dozens of people across Iraq since the weekend. A roadside bomb went off at the Shurja market at around 1000 local time (0600 GMT), police said.

Renewed attack
"There are patches of blood everywhere in the area and firefighters are fighting to quell the fire as many shops are burning," a police officer told the French news agency AFP. The blast also injured at least 38 people, according to officials. Shurja, a teeming maze of streets and stalls, is one of Baghdad's biggest markets. It has been attacked before. A blast there three weeks ago left 10 people dead. Also on Wednesday, a petrol station in the capital was bombed, leaving at least two people dead. Just hours earlier, at around 0800 (0400 GMT) , a crowd had gathered outside an army recruitment centre in Hilla when a bomb exploded. A police spokesman said it was believed the bomb was attached to a bicycle or motorcycle. Recruitment centres for the Iraqi army and police have been frequent targets for insurgents. Hilla was the scene of the bloodiest single attack in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003 when about 125 people were killed by a suicide bomber in February 2005.

BUSH SPEECHES TO STRESS STAKES IN IRAQ: BID TO BOOST WAR SUPPORT WILL EMPHASIZE ADAPTING TO CONFLICT, NOT GAINS ON GROUND - JOHN D. MCKINNON (WALL STREET JOURNAL, AUGUST 30): President Bush will launch another major public-relations offensive to strengthen support for the Iraq war -- this time likely emphasizing the high stakes and changing nature of the battle more than the progress being made.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1156851380...e_whats_news_us
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IRAQI HOSPITALS ARE WAR'S NEW 'KILLING FIELDS': MEDICAL SITES TARGETED BY SHIITE MILITIAMEN - AMIT R. PALEY (WASHINGTON POST, AUGUST 30)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6082901680.html


IN IRAQ, FEWER KILLED, MORE ARE WOUNDED: NEW DATA SHOW BETTER TECHNOLOGY AND TACTICS ARE KEEPING FATALITIES DOWN, BUT INJURIES REMAIN HIGH - BRAD KNICKERBOCKER (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, AUGUST 29)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0829/p03s02-usmi.html


SPRINGTIME FOR KURDISTAN: THE SEMI-AUTONOMOUS NORTHERN REGION OF IRAQ IS AN ISLAND OF RELATIVE STABILITY IN AN OCEAN OF TURMOIL. IF AMERICA DOES NOT SUPPORT KURDISTAN?S INDEPENDENCE, WE MAY WELL LOSE OUR BEST SHOT OF HAVING A DESPERATELY NEEDED SECULAR ALLY IN THE REGION ? (PARAG KHANNA TRUTHDIG, AUGUST 29) http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200608..._for_kurdistan/


WHAT IF WE LEFT? - WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. (NATIONAL REVIEW, AUGUST 29): Lawrence Kaplan is a senior editor of The New Republic. He wrote last week, "U.S. troops are the only thing standing between what we see on our television sets today and butchery on a scale that would rival the worst of Saddam Hussein's depredations." Good men will perhaps not be finally governed by consideration of the moral question in Iraq, but they will not conceal that the point is there for men of good will to weigh.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTI1M...zcyNWZjZTEyZTY=


LIE BY LIE: CHRONICLE OF [THE IRAQ] WAR FORETOLD: AUGUST 1990 TO MARCH 2003 - MOTHER JONES (AUGUST 29)
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/


IRAQ ISN'T THE PHILIPPINES: A DECADES-LONG U.S. OCCUPATION EVENTUALLY BROUGHT DEMOCRACY TO MANILA, BUT ANALOGIES OVERLOOK HISTORICAL AMERICAN BRUTALITY AND IRAQ'S COMPARATIVE STRENGTH - JON WIENER (LOS ANGELES TIMES, AUGUST 30): U.S. history provides a much better model for the future of Iraq: the withdrawal from Vietnam.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...inion-rightrail

Iraqi Hospitals Are War's New 'Killing Fields'

By Amit R. Paley

BAGHDAD -- In a city with few real refuges from sectarian violence -- not government offices, not military bases, not even mosques -- one place always emerged as a safe haven: hospitals.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060830/wl_mi...raqunrestshiite

Wed Aug 30, 10:21 AM ET

Iraq's defence minister has declared the army's truce with Shiite militants in the central city of Diwaniyah null and void, and demanded an inquiry into the murder of 13 soldiers.

Fighting erupted in Diwaniyah on Sunday between Iraqi army troops and the Mahdi Army militia.

Officials reported that 23 soldiers, 50 militants and eight civilians were killed before local officials could negotiate a ceasefire.

Visiting the city Wednesday, Defence Minister Abdel Qader Jassim Mohammed denounced the truce under which the army agreed to pull out of residential areas, and rejected the idea of concessions to the gunmen.

He also said that 13 of the military's dead had been "executed" by the militia fighters and demanded that this be investigatied while an "extraordinary security plan" be implemented in the city.

From: Washington Post

Marine Who Led Haditha Attack Was Recommended for a Medal

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 30, 2006; A05

The platoon commander for the squad of Marines who killed as many as two dozen Iraqi civilians during an attack in Haditha last year recommended later that the sergeant who led the attack receive a medal for his heroism that day, according to military documents.

Lt. William T. Kallop wrote in a praise-filled memo that the incident on Nov. 19, 2005, was part of a complex insurgent ambush that included a powerful roadside bomb followed by a high volume of automatic-weapons fire from several houses in the neighborhood. He lauded Sgt. Frank Wuterich for his leadership in the "counterattack" on three houses while the unit received sporadic enemy fire.

The proposed citation indicates that Kallop -- the only Marine officer at the scene as the incident unfolded -- believed the unit was under a coordinated insurgent attack when Marines stormed civilian homes and opened fire, killing women and children. Whether Marines felt threatened and believed the homes to be hostile is a central element of their defense against potential criminal charges.

The documents offer one of the first public accounts of the incident from Kallop, 25, a University of Virginia graduate and New York City native. Kallop does not explicitly address the civilian deaths in his summary of the incident, which gives detailed support for Wuterich's combat actions from September to December 2005.

Representatives for Kallop, who was promoted to first lieutenant in May, could not be reached for comment yesterday. He is one of numerous Marines who are the subject of a Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation into civilian deaths in the Haditha attack, which has alternately been characterized as a vengeful massacre and as the unfortunate collateral damage of war. None has been charged so far.

Neal A. Puckett, an attorney for Wuterich, provided the documents and the Marine's regular fitness report dated Jan. 19 to The Washington Post, saying they support his client's version of events, and show that officers in the unit believe Wuterich and the other Marines did the right thing in the Haditha attack. Wuterich has since been promoted to staff sergeant. The award was approved by the Kilo Company commander and was sent to battalion and, later, regimental headquarters before being put on hold at the division level, Puckett said.

Lt. Col. Scott Fazekas, a Marine Corps spokesman, said Marine officials found no record of the award. Fazekas also declined to discuss the Haditha incident.

While residents in the Iraqi neighborhood have said the Marines went from house to house in a rage, killing civilians in cold blood, Kallop complimented Wuterich on his calm demeanor and suggested that the incident led the Marines to valuable intelligence. Kallop arrived on the scene after the initial explosion.

"Sgt. Wuterich ensured that he had 360 degree security and led a counterattack on the buildings to his south where his Marines were still receiving sporadic fire from," Kallop wrote in support of a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with a combat distinguishing device for Wuterich. "That counterattack turned the tide of the ambush and killed a number of insurgents still attempting to fight or attempting to flee the area."

In a summary of the incident, officials wrote that Wuterich's decisiveness "doubtlessly prevented further injury or death to fellow Marines and innocent civilians."

Puckett said Kallop approved the assault in the midst of battle: "This was a planned and orchestrated attack by insurgents, and the Marines were responding in accordance with their rules."

While it is possible that the Marines concocted a story after the shootings, Kallop's recommendation and the fitness report were completed in January, weeks after the incident but months before a criminal investigation was launched in March. Senior officials have said an investigation looking into command responsibility has concluded that officers should have been more diligent in investigating the shootings.

John Sifton, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said there is no doubt that civilians were killed in Haditha and that the real question is whether the shootings were accidental or intentional. He said Kallop's account notably does not describe the civilian deaths.

"Our concern has been that when a bunch of civilians get killed and there are a bunch of questions about it, why didn't the military ask those questions at the beginning?" Sifton said. "The issue is not solely Haditha; it's whether the military has the ability to police itself."

Kallop described the response to the bomb attack as successful, largely because it led to the arrest of 18 people, which in turn led to the capture of more insurgents who were "complicit in the ambush."

Iraq: At least77 killed as bloody U.S. occupation continues:

A blast in the Shurja market left 24 dead and 35 wounded Wednesday
and came just two hours after rebels targeted an Iraqi army
recruitment centre in the Shiite town of Hilla, south of Baghdad,
killing 12 volunteers and wounding 38.
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/06...0.gzgvn32q.html

===
Iraqi minister says gunmen executed 13 soldiers:

The 12-hour gun battle on Monday was among the bloodiest between
Iraqi government forces and Shiite militiamen. The Defence Ministry
had said 20 of its soldiers were killed.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200608/s1728480.htm

===
Five more US soldiers die in Iraq:

The US military announced the deaths of five US soldiers on Tuesday,
bringing to 13 the number of troops that have died over the past
three days.
http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=139797

===
Congressmember Murtha: " Disappointed" by Hillary Clinton's Refusal
to Endorse Troop Withdrawal Plan:

Democracy Now! interviews Congressmember John Murtha (D - PA) about
his position on the Iraq war, the Haditha massacre and Sen. Hillary
Clinton's refusal to endorse his troop withdrawal plan.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/30/1417256

===
Iraqi minister cancels truce with Shiite militia:

Iraq's defence minister has declared the army's truce with Shiite
militants in the central city of Diwaniyah null and void, and
demanded an inquiry into the killing of 13 soldiers.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060830/wl_mi...raqunrestshiite

Bush speech to back Iraq strategy BBC News
US President George W Bush is to give the first in a series of speeches defending his strategy in the "war on terror", as mid-term polls approach.Mr Bush, arriving in Salt Lake City, Utah, to address military veterans, said victory in Iraq would be "a major ideological triumph". He is to speak several times on Iraq and security in the next two weeks. Correspondents say his Republican party fears unease over the Iraq war could damage their standing in coming polls. BBC correspondent James Westhead says the White House is thought to be trying shift attention from the unpopular war in Iraq to the global terror threat. He says the threat remains a politically potent issue, and one over which the president has the backing of much of the US public.

'Wider context'
Speaking on Wednesday before leaving for Salt Lake City, Mr Bush said his planned speeches were "not political". "They're speeches to make it clear that, if we retreat before the job is done, this nation will become even more in jeopardy," he said. "These are important times, and I would seriously hope people wouldn't politicise these issues that I'm going to talk about." On arriving in Salt Lake City, President Bush told an audience at the airport that the US could not afford to abandon Iraq. "If we leave the streets of Baghdad before the job is done, we will have to face the terrorists in our own cities," he said. "We will stay the course, we will help this young Iraqi democracy succeed," he said. According to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, the president plans to put "the violence that Americans are seeing on their TV and reading in their papers into a larger context".

'UN address'
Mr Bush is also expected to discuss the recent conflict between Israel and Lebanon, as well as Iran's controversial nuclear programme. Iran has again said it has a right to a nuclear programme as a deadline set by UN asking it to stop controversial uranium enrichment expires. Mr Bush's two-week-long series of speeches on the "war on terror" coincides with the anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks and culminates in an address to the United Nations on 19 September. The US is to hold mid-term polls on 7 November.

IN IRAQ, SINGING FOR A SHOT AT HOPE AND GLORY: TV REALITY SHOWS OFFER RARE 'BREATH OF FRESH AIR' - SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN (WASHINGTON POST, SEPTEMBER 1): "Iraq Star," Iraq's version of "American Idol,' is one of a growing stream of made-in-Iraq reality television shows, produced under often-perilous conditions, that are being beamed across the Middle East.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...3101675_pf.html


HOW TO BRIDGE TWO VIEWS OF SUCCESS IN IRAQ - JANESSA GANS (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, AUGUST 31): If the US makes no attempt to understand its mistakes, Iraqis and Americans end up moving along two parallel tracks of self-made and self-perpetuated truths that never coincide.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0831/p09s01-coop.html


WHICH IRAQI ARMY? EDITORIAL (NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 1): The White House and the Pentagon keep assuring Americans that despite the obvious problems, the Iraqi Army is becoming increasingly capable of taking over basic defense responsibilities. But evidence continues to mount that it is not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/opinion/...agewanted=print


DEBATING WITHDRAWAL II: THE PHANTOM MENACE MARC LYNCH (ABU AARDVACK, AUGUST 29): The homegrown Iraqi insurgency does indeed want the US out of Iraq, but al-Qaeda wants us in.
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark...da_in_iraq.html


LOOSE LIPS SINK HISTORY EDITORIAL (BOSTON GLOBE, AUGUST 31): The Bush Administration has gone on the offensive this week to shore up collapsing support for its policies in Iraq. The latest effort -- transparent as it is inaccurate -- tries to draw parallels between Iraq and World War II. It's a misuse of history and the kind of propaganda that should have gone out with Liberty Bonds.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...history?mode=PF

At least 5 killed in as U.S. occupation continues:

A roadside bomb killed three Iraqi policemen in Baghdad's southern
Doura district on Friday, police said.
http://tinyurl.com/zudzc


16 Children among 72 killed in Baghdad blast:

The blasts flattened a multistory apartment building, buried women
and children under mounds of rubble and sent terrified shoppers
fleeing out of a major bazaar, authorities and witnesses said. The
death toll included 16 children, an Iraqi police official said
Friday.
http://tinyurl.com/l4bov


Two U.S. occupation forces soldiers killed in Iraq:

An Army specialist from Minneapolis was among four soldiers killed
when a bomb exploded while they were on a foot patrol in Iraq.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/15410604.htm


U.S. force in Iraq at 140,000 :

The United States has expanded its force in Iraq to 140,000 troops,
the most since January and 13,000 more than five weeks ago, the
Pentagon said on Thursday, amid relentless violence in Baghdad and
elsewhere.
http://tinyurl.com/kfn2f


Pentagon: Conditions ripe for civil war in Iraq:

“Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically
in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi
civilian population has increased in recent months,” it said in a
quarterly report to Congress on U.S. efforts to stabilize the
country.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14622992/


Speaking from his home in clouded cuckoo land:

Bush says Iraq the central front in war on terror:

“We will fight the terrorists overseas so we don’t have to fight
them
here at home,” he told the veterans and current military personnel
in
attendance at the Salt Palace.
http://tinyurl.com/zsjce

Kurdish leader bans Iraqi flag:

The leader of northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region has ordered
officials not to fly the Iraqi national flag, in a further sign of
the country's separatist tensions.
http://tinyurl.com/kh9pk


Halabja: Anger boils in Iraq's "town of martyrs":

They said Kurdish leaders had exploited Halabja for their political
ends, and that donations and investment from outside had not
translated into better schools, roads or services.
http://tinyurl.com/flquv


Peter W. Galbraith: The true Iraq appeasers:

The appeasement of Saddam Hussein by the Reagan and first Bush
administrations.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14782.htm


Iraq WMD inspector accuses Govt of cover up: Video report:

The second Australian scientist who worked on the fruitless hunt for
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has broken his silence. John Gee
has followed Rod Barton in claiming he gave the Government early
warning in 2004 that no weapons would be found.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14783.htm

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/nyt424.html

New York Times
September 1, 2006
Car Bomb and Rockets Kill 43 in Baghdad’s Shiite Strongholds

By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 31 — A series of explosions ripped through predominantly Shiite neighborhoods in eastern Baghdad on Thursday evening, killing at least 43 people and pushing the death toll for the day to 53, Iraqi police officials reported. Nearly 200 people were wounded, adding to a week of bloody attacks throughout the country.

Since Sunday, more than 300 Iraqis have been killed in bombings, murders and a deadly pipeline explosion that occurred when security forces were diverted from their normal duties to fight Shiite militiamen. The violence is generally believed to be the work of insurgents, militias and criminal gangs embroiled in Sunni-Shiite sectarian strife.

The recent surge in bombings calls into question the long-term effectiveness of a joint American-Iraqi security offensive in Baghdad. The security measures are expected to contribute to a relatively low civilian death toll in August, but there are increasing questions about whether that can be sustained.

The attack in eastern Baghdad appeared to be a well-organized strike on areas controlled by the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shiite militia led by Moktada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who led two uprisings in 2004.

Iraqi officials expressed fears that Thursday’s onslaught could ignite a wave of revenge killings by Shiite militiamen in the coming days, continuing a pattern of reprisals in the Sunni-Shiite conflict.

Police officials counted seven explosions from a combination of car bombs and rocket or mortar fire. They shook eastern Baghdad shortly after nightfall and were clearly aimed at civilian areas, including a crowded market. At least one explosion took place in the Sadr City district, a Mahdi Army stronghold.

Earlier on Thursday, a car bomb exploded in a line of drivers waiting for gas at a station in eastern Baghdad, killing at least four people and wounding 11, including four police commando recruits, an Interior Ministry official said. At least six other Iraqis were killed in scattered attacks across the country, The Associated Press reported.

The American military said a soldier was killed by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad on Wednesday.

The recent attacks have also brought into question whether Iraqi forces can take control of security in the country’s most troubled areas anytime soon.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, said Wednesday that Iraqi forces might be ready to take responsibility for security in 12 to 18 months. On Thursday, the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Iraqi forces would take over security in Dhi Qar Province in September. The province is in southern Iraq, is dominated by Shiites and has a contingent of Romanian troops operating under American guidance.

Things were somewhat brighter on the political front, where Iraqi politicians said Shiite and Kurdish leaders had put to rest, for now, their differences with the speaker of Parliament, a firebrand Sunni Arab, after weeks of pressuring him to step down.

The speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, reached an understanding with the Shiite and Kurdish leaders after meeting with several of them, the politicians said in interviews. “The whole issue has been settled,” said Hassan al-Shammari, a member of the main Shiite bloc in Parliament. He declined to give details.

The position of speaker of Parliament is the third highest-ranking job in the Iraqi government, and an ouster of Mr. Mashhadani would have been the biggest shake-up in Iraqi politics since the government was installed in late May.

A senior Kurdish legislator, Mahmoud Othman, said the Kurdish parties had backed down from their call for Mr. Mashhadani to withdraw after the Shiites made peace with him. The Kurds had simply been supporting the Shiites, Mr. Othman said.

“The Kurds had nothing specific against him,” he added.

He said the Shiites had become incensed over Mr. Mashhadani’s criticism of a possible Shiite autonomous region in the south, an idea championed by the head of the Shiite bloc, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Sunni Arabs are generally opposed to carving Iraq up into autonomous regions because of the lack of oil in provinces where they are in the majority.

Mr. Mashhadani said in an interview on Aug. 14 that he might resign because of the groups’ pressure.

American officials have expressed displeasure with the speaker, who earlier this summer called the American occupation “the work of butchers” and suggested that statues be built for insurgents who kill American soldiers.

Ali Adeeb contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Bush: Iraq a 'decisive ideological struggle'
President Bush on Thursday predicted victory in the war on terror at a time when Americans are disillusioned with his strategy, likening the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism with the fight against Nazis and communists in the last century.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14599961/from/ET/

Sunni, Shiite factions carve up Baghdad
A battle for Baghdad is well under way between the two major Muslim sects. Death squads are slaughtering people daily, and an estimated 160,000 Iraqis have fled their homes _ mostly in the capital.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14627075/from/ET/

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060902/ap_on_...i_ea/iraq_kurds

Kurdistan president replaces Iraqi flag Fri Sep 1, 9:25 PM ET

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani has ordered the Iraqi national flag to be replaced with the Kurdish one in his northern autonomous region in what appeared to be another move toward more self-rule in the north, local officials said Friday.

The order was issued Thursday and applies to the Kurdish region, said Beshraw Ahmed, a spokesman for the Sulaimaniyah municipality.

According to Azad Jundiyanim, a member of President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Sulaimaniyah, Barzani issued a formal message asking for the Iraqi flag to be lowered. The message was also broadcast on Kurdish radio.

Iraq's northern Kurdish region has slowly been gaining more autonomy since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

On May 7, its parliament in the northern city of Irbil unified the Kurdish region's two long-standing administrations, one headed by Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and the other by Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Kurds had until then enjoyed self-rule in three provinces of the north but under the separate administrations.

Sunni Arabs fear that Kurds are pushing for secession under the nation's new federal system, a step which, if imitated by the Shiite majority in the oil-rich south, would leave Sunnis with little more than date groves and sand.

The Kurdish region had been out of Saddam Hussein's control since the 1991 Gulf War, when the Kurds set up their autonomous region under the protection of U.S. and British warplanes. After the U.S.-led invasion, Kurdistan was the only region that did not witness major changes.

Iraq's new constitution recognizes Kurdish self-rule and provides a legal mechanism for other areas to govern themselves but within the Iraqi state

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/faireno...latimes393.html

Iraqi Casualties Increase by 1,000 a Month
By Julian E. Barnes
Times Staff Writer

2:24 PM PDT, September 1, 2006

WASHINGTON — In a dismal assessment, the Pentagon reported to Congress today that the number of attacks and civilian deaths in Iraq have risen sharply in recent months — with casualties increasing by 1,000 a month — as sectarian violence has engulfed larger areas of the country.

The quarterly report, based on new government figures, shows that the number of attacks in Iraq over the last four months increased 15% and the number of Iraqi casualties grew by 51%. In the last three months, the report says, the number of deaths and injuries increased by 1,000 people a month over the previous quarter — to more than 3,000 each month.

Over a longer time horizon, the spike is even more grim. The number of weekly attacks has increased from just over 400 in the spring of 2004 to nearly 800 during recent weeks. And the number of daily casualties has increased from just under 30 a day in 2004 to more than 110 a day in recent weeks.

"Extremists seeking to stoke ethno-sectarian strife have increasingly focused their efforts on civilians, inciting a cycle of retribution killings and driving civilian casualties to new highs," the report says.

The report says that Iraq is not in a civil war, but acknowledged that Iraqi civilians are increasingly worried about such a conflict. It reports that Iraqis are optimistic about the future, but cautions that the positive outlook is eroding. Stopping the ethnic and sectarian violence is the "most pressing immediate goal" of the American military and Iraqi government, it says.

The report comes amid a new effort by President Bush and his administration to shore up sagging public support for the Iraq war in advance of the fall elections, but may do little to help the president's case. Administration officials have tried to portray Iraq as the front line in the war on terrorism and have described the effort as part of a larger struggle against Islamic extremists. However, by putting hard numbers to the perception that Iraq is increasingly chaotic, the new Pentagon report stands to further undermine support for the administration's strategy in Iraq.

The violence in Iraq, according to the report, cannot be attributed to a unified or organized insurgency. Instead, violence is the result of a complex interplay between international terrorists, local insurgents, sectarian death squads, organized militias and criminal groups. The armed militias and other sectarian groups are contesting integrated neighborhoods in a bid to expand their area of influence, the report says.

"This is a pretty sober report," said Peter Rodman, the assistant secretary of Defense for international security. "The last quarter has been rough. The level of violence is up. And the sectarian quality of the violence is particularly acute and disturbing."

In arguing that Iraq is not yet in a full-scale civil war, Defense officials pointed out that Iraqi security forces remain loyal to the central government and that no rival government has emerged.

"History tells us in many cases you do not realize it until it is staring you in the face, but there are important things that have not happened," said Rear Adm. William Sullivan, the vice director for strategic plans and policy on the Pentagon's joint staff. "The sectarian violence is worrisome We are not blind to the possibility that this could continue down the wrong path."

Sullivan said he believed that despite the rise in killings, the U.S. was still making progress.

"The violence has increased, but it is primarily Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence," he said.

Although military officials in Iraq repeatedly have emphasized that the majority of recent violence is concentrated in Baghdad, the new report also says that violence has increased in Diyala, Mosul and Kirkuk. The sectarian violence that has enveloped Baghdad, the report says, is now spreading to those cities.

"Any spread of sectarian violence is cause for concern," Sullivan said.

The report says part of the reason for the increased violence is that the attacks on civilians have driven people to "endorse extremist actions on their behalf" — lending their support to the insurgent and militia groups in order to provide security for their neighborhoods. That dynamic is undermining the government's reconciliation efforts and ability to provide security.

According to the report, Muqtada Sadr's Al Mahdi army militia has achieved a "measure of tolerance" from Iraq's new government. But the report says that violence between the Al Madhi army and the Iraqi army is frequent, and says the militia receives support from Iran.

One key indicator of full-scale violence identified in previous Pentagon reports is the number of forced displacements of people and households. Although the U.S. military has been skeptical about reports of large numbers of displaced people in the past, the report quotes a U.N. estimate that 137,862 people have been pushed out of their homes since the Samarra mosque bombing in February.

The mosque bombing is widely seen as setting off the current cycle of sectarian violence. Sunnis allied with Abu Musab Zarqawi, the terrorist leader slain in June in a U.S. attack, were blamed for destroying the mosque, a holy site for Shiites in a largely Sunni city.

The report is optimistic about the new plan to increase security by promoting economic growth, but provides no numbers about the results of the renewed security initiative that began in earnest last month.

Rodman cited as a positive development the report's finding that the Iraqi security forces continue to grow in size and training, with the number of areas in which Iraqi army battalions have taken the lead in providing security expanding between October 2005 and August 2006. He said the number of Iraqi army battalions has increased from 23 in October 2005 to 85 today.

Also, major changes in the nation's police system are underway to address problems and deficiencies. The number of police battalions has decreased from 6 to 2. Last month, military officials said they had been forced to dissolve some national police battalions because they were loyal to militias, not to the central government. The report says public confidence in the national police has decreased and the program is being reformed.

"Unprofessional and, at times, criminal behavior has been attributed to certain units in the national police," the report says.

In its last report to Congress in May, Pentagon officials expressed hope that rapid political progress would earn confidence from Iraqis and blunt the increase in violence. However, delays in forming a new government under Prime Minister Nouri Maliki have quickly undermined those hopes.

Rodman said had the Iraqi government been able to form more quickly after the December election, the sectarian violence that rose from the Samarra mosque bombing might have been dampened.

The delay in forming a government really hurt, it was a partial vacuum," he said.

"For years people like Zarqawi have been aiming at this, trying to foment civil war," Rodman said. "In Samarra they hit pay dirt, in a sense. The system has been shaken by it."

The report notes that the violence has not subsided since the killing of Zarqawi in June. Rodman said although the U.S. has inflicted serious blows on his organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group's role was not decisive.

"The nature of the conflict has changed," Rodman said. "And maybe Zarqawi's legacy was the Samarra bombing, the effects of which have lived after him."

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

South Asian pilgrims shot in Iraq BBC News
Fourteen pilgrims from Pakistan and India have been ambushed and killed on their way to the Shia holy city of Karbala, Iraqi police have said.The pilgrims, believed to be 11 Pakistanis and three Indians, were shot dead at close range, police said. The motive for the attack is not clear but it comes amid increasing fears of sectarian strife in Iraq. A US Defense Department report on Friday warned of mounting violence between the Sunni and Shia communities. Police and hospital sources said the pilgrims were ambushed as they travelled in a minibus through Anbar province in western Iraq, a stronghold of Sunni insurgents. It is thought the attack took place up to three days ago, but reports vary.The pilgrims reportedly had their hands and legs bound and had been shot at close range. Conflicting accounts suggest women were among those killed. The pilgrims were understood to be on their way to Karbala, 80km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, to the shrine of Imam Hussein, one of the founders of the Shia branch of Islam. The ambush happened at a service station in the desert, about 160km (100 miles) west of Ramadi, which has been the scene of numerous killings in recent months, the BBC's James Shaw in Baghdad reports. It is not clear what the motive for the attack was with some reports suggesting they were ambushed by robbers who stole their belongings. However, Shia pilgrims, both Iraqi and foreign, have been frequent targets for attack, and last month, gunmen opened fire on pilgrims in Baghdad, killing at least 20 people.

Revenge attacks
This week saw bombings and shootings that left hundreds dead. On Thursday, suspected Sunni insurgents launched rocket and bomb attacks in mainly Shia neighbourhoods of Baghdad, killing 67 people. Correspondents say the capital is braced for possible revenge attacks by Shia militias. Iraq Prime Minister Nouri Maliki held talks with the country's most influential Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, on Saturday to discuss the violence. Mr Maliki went to Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, to meet the ayatollah who has previously called for an end to sectarian hatred and urged the majority Shia community to refrain from retaliation. "If the government does not do its duty in imposing security and order to the people and protecting them, it will give a chance to other powers to do this duty and this a very dangerous matter," the cleric's office quoted him as saying.

Militias 'entrenched'
Concern about sectarian conflict is growing in the Pentagon which issued its quarterly report on the situation in Iraq to Congress on Friday. Since its last report, the Pentagon said, "the core conflict in Iraq changed into a struggle between Sunni and Shia extremists." Illegal militias were becoming more entrenched, especially in Baghdad, the report said, while death squads targeting mainly Iraqi civilians were a growing problem. Armed factions from both sides of the religious divide "are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife". While stressing that the current violence did not amount to civil war, the Pentagon's assessment said "conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad."

Iraq holds 'key al-Qaeda figure' BBC News
The Iraqi authorities have announced the arrest of a man they say is the second-in-command of al-Qaeda in Iraq.Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, told a news conference the man, Hamad Jama al-Saedi, was detained a few days ago. Mr Rubaie said the man was behind the bombing of a Shia shrine in Samarra in February that drew revenge attacks. American troops killed the insurgent group's key leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in June."We announce today the arrest of the most important al-Qaeda leader after the criminal Abu Ayyub al-