http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2006/20060721_5719.html

Sectarian Strife Skips Nineveh Province, Stryker Team Commander Says
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service


WASHINGTON, July 21, 2006 – Large-scale sectarian violence as displayed by Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad has seemingly bypassed Nineveh province in northern Iraq, a U.S. military commander told Pentagon reporters today.
"We have been fortunate in that we've not seen that level of sectarian violence in Nineveh province," said Col. Michael Shields, commander of the U.S. Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

Shields gives credit for this positive state of affairs to the efforts of Gov. Duraid Mohammed Daud Abbodi Kashmoula and the senior Iraqi military and police officials serving in the province.

"They have great outreach to the district and sub-district level," Shields said.

The 172nd SBCT is home-based at Fort Wainwright, Alaska. Shields and his contingent of "Arctic Wolves" have been deployed to Iraq for about 10 months.

Shields said his command is a 4,400-member joint-force unit that includes U.S. sailors and airmen as well as soldiers. The 172nd SBCT operates primarily in the Mosul area, he said, and is responsible for training Iraqi soldiers and police, as well as security missions.

It was not always so quiet in Shields' area-of-operations. In the fall of 2004, the Iraqi police force in Nineveh province "had collapsed," he noted, and a state of general lawlessness had extended over Mosul.

The Iraqi police had been routed and there was no viable Iraqi National Guard available, Shields said, so the coalition forces "shouldered the responsibility" for security in Mosul. However, the capabilities of Iraqi security forces based in Nineveh province greatly improved since the winter of 2004, Shields said.

And today, "the provincial police and Iraqi army have improved the security situation here in Nineveh," Shields continued, noting they've "been able to keep a good amount of the sectarian violence out of the province."

The insurgents have been unable to regain a foothold in Nineveh province since 2004, Shields said, primarily because of the steady street presence of Iraqi police and soldiers.

Shields said the insurgents also have failed to disrupt the continued partnering, training and advising occurring between coalition troops and Iraqi police and soldiers.

"One of the strengths of the security forces here in Nineveh," Shields pointed out, "is that Iraqi police and the Iraqi army are working better together."

That bond has produced more capable Iraqi soldiers and police, Shields said, which has also elevated the Iraqi forces' ability to lead combined operations rather than to just participate.

In fact, the Iraqi security forces have become such a threat to insurgent operations in Nineveh province, Shields said, that the insurgents are likely to increase their attacks against the Iraqi security forces.

Meanwhile, "we'll to continue to partner with and train them, make them more capable in the counterinsurgency -- and more lethal," Shields said.

http://www.defenselink.mil/home/faceofdefe...f20060721a.html

Lt. j.g. Alfred Nuzzolo mingles with school children in Iraq during his recent seven-month deployment. Nuzzolo helped local Iraqis rebuild a training base that had been damaged during the global war on terrorism. Courtesy Photo

U.S. Navy Lt. j.g. Alfred Nuzzolo
Engineer Returns from Helping Rebuild Iraq

By Pat Fisher
Marine Corps Logistics Base
MARINE CORPS LOGISTICS BASE ALBANY, Ga., July 21, 2006 — A Navy engineer assigned to the Resident Officer in Charge of Construction office here recently returned from a seven-month deployment to Iraq to help rebuild an Iraqi training base.

Lt. j.g. Alfred Nuzzolo, assistant resident in charge of construction, departed Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany in January to help rebuild the An Numaniyah Iraqi military training base, which is about 90 miles southeast of Baghdad. The base had been under construction by Yugoslavian contractors for the former regime. It now operates as an Iraqi training base for new recruits and serves as the home station for three battalions of the Iraqi Intervention Force — the Iraqi army’s counterinsurgency wing.

Nuzzolo provided engineering expertise on rebuilding infrastructure for the base including war-damaged existing buildings, electrical and septic systems, the addition of new structures, air conditioning, security and various other projects on the base.

“I was an advisor to 17 Iraqi engineers so I interacted with the locals quite a bit,” explained Nuzzolo. “The people I met were appreciative of us being there.”
Nuzzolo said most of the country looked “khaki” to him, which is how he described the brown and dusty countryside. “But sometime at dawn and dusk, we would climb onto the roofs of buildings on the base and watch the beautiful sunrises and sunsets. It could be very pretty at times,” said the 30-year-old.

Upon his June 30 return, Nuzzolo’s co-workers at the Albany office threw him a small welcome home party. The native of Brunswick, Ga., was accompanied by his wife Abby, who was cradling a new addition to the family — a baby girl.

“Sophia was born on March 12, and I knew Abby was expecting before I left. But when I called and found out she was in the hospital to give birth, I called the hospital every hour … and I talked to Abby 10 minutes after our daughter was born,” Nuzzolo said. “I also saw our daughter several times by videoconference.”

Nuzzolo said some of the most enjoyable times he had while in Iraq were during several “hearts and minds” missions he went on.

“We went to local schools and took supplies, clothes and candy. The kids really liked the candy,” he said. “It was a lot of fun.”

Nuzzolo added, “One of the most unusual things I observed was that most of the locals lived in very small mud huts, no bigger than an office, but almost all of them had satellite TV dishes mounted outside.”

While the six-year Navy veteran said he is glad to be back home, his life is still a bit unsettled. “My wife and I are house hunting here,” said Nuzzolo. “Once we find a house, I’ll take some leave.”

If the "surprises" have anything to do with WMD, Syria and Iran will be in serious trouble!!!


http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2006/0...3166582478.html



Defiant Hezbollah promises surprises
Date: July 22 2006


Jonathan Steele in Beirut

THE defiant leader of Hezbollah has vowed to resist the military assault on his organisation and said the two Israeli soldiers seized last week would only be released as part of a prisoner exchange.

"If the entire universe came [to pressure Hezbollah], it will not bring back the Israeli soldiers unless through indirect negotiations and a prisoner swap," Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said.

Mr Nasrallah, whose whereabouts is unknown, said his group "has remained firm and has been able to absorb the hit" and promised "there are still more surprises that we will keep to ourselves in the coming stage".

On Wednesday, Israeli jets dropped 23 tonnes of explosives on a suspected Hezbollah bunker in southern Beirut in the belief senior leaders of the Shiite group, including Mr Nasrallah, were there.

But Mr Nasrallah, who made the comments on television yesterday, said the group's leadership structure was intact.

"I can confirm without exaggeration … that the leadership structure of Hezbollah has not been hurt," he said. "All this Israeli talk that they hit 50 per cent of our rocket capabilities and warehouses, this talk is all wrong and nonsense."

Israel began its offensive on Lebanon after Hezbollah captured two soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid on July 12.

Finding anyone willing to criticise the Hezbollah leader on the streets of Lebanon is a hopeless venture.

The man who launched the attack into Israel last week that captured two soldiers is widely regarded as a hero, however grim the destruction that Israel's retaliation has caused.

"Hezbollah is doing more for the Palestinian cause than any Arab government has ever done. When he says he will resist Israel, he does," said Muhammad Hassan, who runs a small barber's shop. "We didn't know he had such technology - and especially the ability to hit an Israeli warship. It was a nice surprise."

His enthusiasm for Mr Nasrallah is not blind or unquestioning. A customer nodded in support as Mr Hassan conceded: "It's diverting attention from Gaza to Lebanon, and everyone's focusing on Lebanon now." After a pause, he added: "I'm not sure whether Hezbollah should have waited but it has lessened Israel's pressure on Gaza. He [Mr Nasrallah] may have wanted to give Gaza a breathing space."

About 400,000 Palestinians live in Lebanon, almost a 10th of the country's population. Although Israel's current onslaught has not specifically targeted any of the 12 camps registered by the UN relief agency, Palestinians have suffered as much as Lebanese. Most of the camps are in the south, three close to the stricken port of Tyre, two near Sidon and four in Beirut's southern suburbs, near the Shiite areas Israel has pounded in the past week.

Nohad, a volunteer for Najdeh, a women's rights organisation that works in the camps, said there was much criticism of Hezbollah before the current crisis. "But whatever people think of Hezbollah ideologically, it is weakening the enemy. It's showing the enemy is not as strong as it claims to be. Hezbollah is the only group that is doing something for Palestinians."

Reuters, The Guardian

In Iraq, Military Forgot the Lessons of Vietnam

By Thomas E. Ricks

The real war in Iraq -- the one to determine the future of the country -- began on Aug. 7, 2003, when a car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy, killing 11 and wounding more than 50. On the morning of Aug. 14, 2003 Capt. William Ponce, an officer in the "Human Intelligence Effects... In...

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

http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src...26479%2C00.html

Afghanistan close to anarchy, warns general

· Nato commander's view in stark contrast to ministers'
· Forces short of equipment and 'running out of time'

Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday July 22, 2006
The Guardian


British soldiers on patrol in Sangin, Helmand province. Photograph: Cpl Rob Knight/MoD/PA
The most senior British military commander in Afghanistan yesterday described the situation in the country as "close to anarchy" with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption.
The stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of Nato's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that western forces there were short of equipment and were "running out of time" if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people.

The assumption within Nato countries had been that the environment in Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 would be benign, Gen Richards said. "That is clearly not the case," he said yesterday. He referred to disputes between tribes crossing the border with Pakistan, and divisions between religious and secular factions cynically manipulated by "anarcho-warlords".

Corrupt local officials were fuelling the problem and Nato's provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan were sending out conflicting signals, Gen Richards told a conference at the Royal United Services Institute in London. "The situation is close to anarchy," he said, referring in particular to what he called "the lack of unity between different agencies".

He described "poorly regulated private security companies" as unethical and "all too ready to discharge firearms". Nato forces in Afghanistan were short of equipment, notably aircraft, but also of medical evacuation systems and life-saving equipment.

Officials said later that France and Turkey had sent troops to Kabul but without any helicopters to support them.

Gen Richards will also take command of the 4,500-strong British brigade in Helmand province at the heart of the hostile, poppy-growing south of the country when it comes under Nato's overall authority. He said yesterday that Nato "could not afford not to succeed" in its attempt to bring long-term stability to Afghanistan and build up the country's national army and security forces. He described the mission as a watershed for Nato, taking on "land combat operations for the first time in its history".

The picture Gen Richards painted yesterday contrasted markedly with optimistic comments by ministers when they agreed earlier this month to send reinforcements to southern Afghanistan at the request of British commanders there. Many of those will be engineers with the task of appealing to Afghan "hearts and minds" by repairing the infrastructure, including irrigation systems.

Gen Richards said yesterday that was a priority. How to eradicate opium poppies - an issue repeatedly highlighted by ministers - was a problem that could only be tackled later.

General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the British army, said recently: "To physically eradicate [opium poppies] before all the conditions are right seems to me to be counter-productive." The government admits that Helmand province is about to produce a bumper poppy crop and is now probably the biggest single source of heroin in the world. Ministers are concerned about criticism the government will face if planting over the next few months for next year's crop - in an area patrolled by British troops - is not significantly reduced.

Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Afghanistan, told the Guardian that the immediate target had to be the biggest poppy cultivators and dealers who control the £1bn-plus Afghan drug trade.

The strategy should be: "Go for the fat cats, very wealthy farmers, the movers and shakers of the drug trade" and their laboratories, he said. Asked about the concern of British military commanders that by depriving farmers - and warlords - of a lucrative crop, poppy eradication would feed the insurgency, Mr Howells admitted: "It's a big problem for us."

Backstory

Hamid Karzai was elected president of Afghanistan in October 2004 and a new constitution was signed and a parliament was inaugurated in December 2005. But he has not been able to exert much authority beyond the capital. The Taliban have re-emerged as a fighting force and hundreds of people have died in clashes over the past year.

In June this year a US-led force of 11,000 launched the biggest anti-Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan since 2001. The UK government has said the deployment of the 3,000-plus strong British brigade, based in Helmand province, would last for three years.

The following month it said an extra 850 soldiers would be deployed. Six British soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan in less than a month and 700 people have died over the past few weeks.

Afghanistan is now one of the poorest countries with an economy and infrastructure in ruins.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...7/23/wafg23.xml

Commanders want to withdraw troops from Afghan outposts
By Tom Coghlan in Lashkar Gah, Helmand, and Sean Rayment


(British troops are set to be "tactically withdrawn" from isolated military outposts in Afghanistan following a series of sustained attacks from Taliban fighters, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

The proposed move, described by commanders as a "rebalancing" of British forces, is to allow them to concentrate their force into a smaller area so that vital reconstruction work can begin.


Lt Gen Richards: Withdrawal


British troops have engaged Taliban fighters on more than 110 occasions since arriving in Helmand two months ago. Most of the attacks, in which six soldiers have died, have taken place close to the military outposts.

Commanders believe that the decision to place troops in a series of small, isolated outposts was a mistake because it gave the "military initiative" to the Taliban by allowing insurgents to concentrate their forces against the British.

Military commanders want the Afghan Army and the police to take control of the outposts in order to allow more troops to take part in combat operations against the Taliban.

Lt Gen Richards, the most senior British commander in Afghanistan, is understood to be a supporter of the "withdrawal" plan, but sources in the Ministry of Defence fear that the proposal faces "significant political resistance" because the Afghan government is keen to have British troops based in the country's remote and lawless areas.

Details of the proposed withdrawal emerged at the same time that Lt Gen Richards told a conference in London he believed that the country was close to "anarchy".

British troops initially deployed to the outposts, which are fortified Afghan police stations, at the behest of the provincial governor of Helmand, who feared that a series of towns in the north of the province were at risk off being overrun.

The original British plan has been described in terms of spreading "inkspots" of influence. According to the theory, security was to be imposed by British troops, maintained with the help of Afghan security forces, and popular support won through concentrated quick impact development work, leading to longer-term development.

Last night one senior officer in the Ministry of Defence said that the British forces were being asked to do "too much with too little". He said: "We have limited forces here. We can't be everywhere at once. It may be necessary to rebalance British forces; sometimes it is necessary to trade ground for influence. It is a mistake to develop an obsession with holding ground, though the Taliban will try to present this as a reverse for us."

British intelligence officers believe there are now up to 2,000 Taliban fighters operating in Helmand, an area approximately the size of Wales. British commanders have admitted that they probably underestimated the tenacity of the Taliban and Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, conceded two weeks ago that the deployment of 900 emergency reinforcements to the province would "energise" Taliban resistance.

Last night Patrick Mercer, the shadow homeland security minister, said: "Lt Gen Richards is trying to abide by one of the main principles of war: concentration of forces. If the political imperative is followed rather than the military one, then there will be more casualties."

Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 538 7505 or e-mail syndication@telegraph.co.uk

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=16757

Pentagon allowed sensitive mly equipment to be sold to public



WASHINGTON: Undercover government investigators purchased sensitive surplus military equipment such as launcher mounts for shoulder-fired missiles and guided missile radar test sets from a Defence Department contractor.

Much of the equipment could be useful to terrorists, according to a draft report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In June, two GAO investigators spent $1.1 million (euro870, 000) on such equipment at two excess property warehouses. Their purchases included several types of body armour inserts used by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, an all-band antenna used to track aircraft, and a digital signal converter used in naval surveillance.

"The body armour could be used by terrorists or other criminal activity," noted the report, obtained on Friday by The Associated Press. "Many of the other military items have weapons applications that would also be useful to terrorists."

Thousands of items that should have been destroyed were sold to the public, the report said. Much of the equipment was sold for pennies on the dollar.

The list included circuit cards used in computerized Navy systems, a caesium technology timing unit with global positioning capabilities, and 12 digital microcircuits used in F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft.

At least 2,669 sensitive military items were sold to 79 buyers in 216 sales transactions from November 2005 to June 2006. "DOD has not enforced security controls for preventing sensitive excess military equipment from release to the public," the report concluded. "GAO was able to purchase these items because controls broke down at virtually every step in the excess property turn-in and disposal process."

In the report, the GAO said it had briefed Pentagon officials on its findings but that the Pentagon had no response because it had not had time to perform a detailed review. Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee's national security panel, will hold a hearing on the matter on Tuesday.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13974639/

Accused troops: We were under orders to kill
Soldiers say officers commanded them to ‘kill all military age males’ in Iraq
NBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE
Updated: 4:56 p.m. ET July 21, 2006
EL PASO, Texas - Four U.S. soldiers accused of murdering suspected insurgents during a raid in Iraq said they were under orders to “kill all military age males,” according to sworn statements obtained by The Associated Press.

The soldiers first took some of the men into custody because they were using two women and a toddler as human shields. They shot three of the men after the women and child were safe and say the men attacked them.

“The ROE (rule of engagement) was to kill all military age males on Objective Murray,” Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard told investigators, referring to the target by its code name.

That target, an island on a canal in the northern Salhuddin province, was believed to be an al-Qaida training camp. The soldiers said officers in their chain of command gave them the order and explained that special forces had tried before to target the island and had come under fire from insurgents.

Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, and Spc. Juston R. Graber are charged with murder and other offenses in the shooting deaths of three of the men during the May 9 raid.

Girouard, Hunsaker and Clagett are also charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly threatening to kill another soldier if he told authorities what happened.

‘They did it admirably’
In sworn statements obtained this week by the AP, Girouard, Hunsaker, Clagett, and a witness, Sgt. Leonel Lemus, told Army investigators they were ordered to attack an island in northern Salahuddin province on May 9 and kill anti-Iraqi fighters with ties to al-Qaida.

All four soldiers charged are members of the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. They have been jailed in Kuwait since their June arrests. Their first hearing is Aug. 1 near Tikrit, Iraq.

Michael Waddington, Hunsaker’s civilian lawyer, said his client followed orders and killed the detainees in self-defense after he and Clagett were attacked.

“They did (their job) honorably, they did it admirably,” said Paul Bergrin, Clagett’s civilian attorney. “If they did want to kill these men, they could have and been within the rules of engagement.”

Officers from their unit initially cleared the soldiers of wrongdoing. Charges were filed when witnesses changed their testimony after repeated interviews with Army investigators, Bergrin said.

Military declines to comment
Reached by e-mail in Iraq, Girouard’s Army lawyer, Capt. Theodore Miller, declined to comment because the investigation was continuing.

An Army prosecutor, also deployed to Iraq, did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

Army spokesman Sheldon Smith asked that a request for comment be e-mailed to him in Virginia. He did not immediately respond.

Military officials have released few details of the case.


Click for related content
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Judge grants delay in Iraq rape-murder case



But statements from Girouard, Hunsaker and Clagett describe a tense early morning scene, with soldiers immediately opening fire on buildings.

Girouard told investigators he expected he and his comrades would immediately be attacked when they landed on the island. Intelligence officials had warned that at least 20 al-Qaida operatives were hiding there.

But it was only once the men moved to the northern half of the island that they found anyone, Girouard said. He said he and others shot and killed a man they spied in a window in one building and then rushed into a house where they found three other men hiding behind two women.

A fifth man, holding a 2-year-old girl in front of him, later came out of another building, Girouard and Hunsaker told investigators.

Struck on the face’
Girouard said the four surviving men were not immediately killed because of the human shields. Once the women and child were moved to safety, he told investigators, the men did not appear to pose a threat and the soldiers took them into custody.

But Hunsaker said three of the men then attacked him and Clagett as the soldiers were trying to bind the men’s hands with heavy-duty plastic ties.

“I had felt this action necessary for they had tried to use deadly force on me and my comrade,” Hunsaker wrote about the shooting.

Hunsaker told investigators he was stabbed. Clagett said he was “struck on the face with a fist or something.”

Lemus, who only saw the men fall to the ground, told investigators he thought the killings were justified.

“Proper escalation of force was used when the detainee became hostile and armed himself with a weapon and wounded one soldier and struck another,” Lemus said. “Our actions ... were in accordance to the ROE (rule of engagement) briefed to us prior to our mission and moments before our air assault was conducted.”

‘Telling the truth’
Girouard said he did not see the shooting either but was immediately told what happened.

“I think they are telling the truth,” Girouard’s statement said. “If it would have happened another way they would have told me and the story has been the same the whole time.”

Clagett and Hunsaker also told investigators they found AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition and gun parts after the men were killed.

Bergrin said the weapons and other evidence not mentioned in the statements were proof that the Iraqi men were a threat.

Several other service members face similar charges in unrelated cases involving the deaths of civilians in Iraq.

According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum penalty for murder is death, but it was unclear if the government will seek the death penalty in any of the pending cases.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/faireno...latimes276.html

From the Los Angeles Times
U.S. Plans Shift in Iraq Strategy
By Peter Spiegel
Times Staff Writer

July 22, 2006

WASHINGTON — President Bush is expected to announce a significant shift in strategy for improving Baghdad's security when the Iraqi prime minister visits Washington next week, an acknowledgment that a much-publicized military operation launched last month has failed to stem the violence.

The U.S.-Iraqi offensive was touted as a major initiative by the government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. But the operation has failed to prevent sectarian violence in Baghdad from escalating to unprecedented highs.

A United Nations study released this week found that 3,149 civilians were killed in Iraq in June — an 18% increase from May — and that most of the deaths occurred in Baghdad.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, as is routine when discussing future White House initiatives, said the new strategy that Bush and Maliki intended to hash out would include "shifts in resources" and "shifts in emphasis."

The change could include redeploying U.S. forces from elsewhere in the country to Baghdad.

"There's been a Baghdad security plan in place for about five weeks now, and I would say it's fair to say the results, or the initial results, of that plan have been disappointing," the official said. "There's an open question about whether … more forces will come from other parts of the country."

Iraqi forces have taken over security responsibilities in several Baghdad neighborhoods in recent months.

Asked whether the shift in strategy could lead U.S. forces to reassume control of those areas, the official said, "That certainly would be an appropriate thing … to discuss."

During a trip to Baghdad last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the number of U.S. forces in the Iraqi capital had already increased from 40,000 to 55,000 in response to the surge in attacks. Any additional increase would make it difficult for the Bush administration to follow through on its goal of reducing the U.S. troop level in Iraq before the November congressional elections.

The new security policy for Baghdad probably will include an increased emphasis on rounding up local leaders who are instigating and provoking sectarian violence, such as members of the militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. He has been blamed for inspiring much of the anti-Sunni violence perpetrated by Shiite death squads.

The early stages of this strategy have been rolled out in recent days in both Baghdad and Basra, the southern port city where unrest also has increased, and U.S. officials say the move has shown promise.

Maliki's U.S. visit, which is to begin Monday, will include an address Wednesday to a joint session of Congress. In his speech, he is expected to thank U.S. forces and the American people for the sacrifices they have made in Iraq and to extol his country's progress in establishing a democratic form of government.

But the visit will not be highlighted by the type of pomp and circumstance that, for example, accompanied Hamid Karzai's first visit to Washington as Afghan president, a reflection of the dire security situation in Iraq.

The administration official called the four-day trip "a quintessential working visit."

The administration's acknowledgment that the Maliki government has failed to improve security in Baghdad in its first months in office is the latest in a series of assessments about Iraq that are more sobering than those previously issued by U.S. officials.

The new tone comes as Republicans in Congress have urged the White House to be more open about the challenges in Iraq and less rigid about acknowledging mistakes.

Apart from the security situation, Bush and Maliki probably will discuss the prime minister's recent denunciation of Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, the first major policy split between the U.S. and Iraq since Maliki assumed office in May. Maliki heads a Shiite political party in majority Shiite Iraq; Hezbollah is a Shiite militant group that has become increasingly popular with Lebanese Shiites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/world/mi...st/22abuse.html

In Baghdad, a Courtroom for U.S. Troops
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By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: July 22, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 21 — In a musty courtroom overlooking a weed-choked lake created on orders from Saddam Hussein, Specialist Nathan B. Lynn and Sgt. Milton Ortiz Jr. sat quietly in a military hearing known as an Article 32, accused of crimes against two Iraqi citizens.

The courtroom, beside a mosque at Camp Victory, a sprawling military base near the airport, lacked the cool, antiseptic qualities of many criminal courtrooms back in the United States. A film of desert dust covered the floor and furnishings on Wednesday. The sole court exhibit, a map showing a cluster of homes in a dangerous area of Anbar Province, was nailed to a thick slab of plywood in the corner. Water from the dying wall-mounted air-conditioner spat down on the visitors’ gallery.

And the special hearing in this courtroom, which held Mr. Hussein when he was arraigned after his capture two years ago, has no equivalent outside the armed forces.

As obscure to the general public as they are crucial to the military’s criminal justice system, Article 32 hearings are neither grand jury proceedings nor full jury trials but contain elements of both — examination of witnesses, admission of evidence and often emotional summations from military lawyers — to determine whether there are “reasonable grounds” to recommend a soldier be court-martialed.

The decision is made by the investigating officer presiding over all such hearings. The officer may recommend to a convening authority that the accused either undergo a court-martial or receive nonjudicial punishment, like a demotion or loss of pay.

This week’s Article 32 hearing for Specialist Lynn and Sergeant Ortiz, members of the same Pennsylvania National Guard combat unit, ended Wednesday, and the investigator, Lt. Col. John McClory, made his recommendations on Thursday.

The hearing was the first of several Article 32 hearings scheduled for the next few months to determine the probable guilt of at least 16 American service members charged in the past two months with killing Iraqi civilians. That number itself is extraordinary — equal to the total number who were charged with such killings in the first three years of the war here.

The next hearing, for marines under investigation in the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha last November, is scheduled to begin next month, said one military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the hearing schedule.

At least four other investigations may also result in Article 32 hearings in coming months. They include the case of four soldiers from the 502nd Infantry who are accused of committing rape, murder and arson in Mahmudiya last March.

Specialist Lynn and Sergeant Ortiz, of the National Guard’s B Company, First Battalion, 109th Infantry, were charged in connection with two episodes, on Feb. 15 and March 8, near Ramadi, a volatile Sunni Arab city west of Baghdad where insurgents have launched several deadly attacks on American and Iraqi forces.

In the Feb. 15 episode, Specialist Lynn, 20, was charged with manslaughter in the fatal shooting an Iraqi man during a nighttime patrol to root out an insurgent cell. Government lawyers argued that the man was unarmed.

Sergeant Ortiz, 36, was charged with conspiracy to put an AK-47 taken from a nearby home alongside the body of the victim, Gani Ahmed Zaben, to give the impression that he had been armed.

Specialist Lynn, from South Williamsport, Pa., was also charged with conspiracy because, government lawyers said, he acquiesced to Sergeant Ortiz’s and another sergeant’s plan to plant the weapon.

In the March 8 case, government lawyers said that Sergeant Ortiz, who grew up in Brentwood, N.Y., took a 9-millimeter pistol found in a home that B Company had searched and put its barrel to the head of its owner, a local Iraqi man under the guard of other soldiers. They said that Sergeant Ortiz became agitated at the man, named Muhammad, for having denied having any weapons when the soldiers began their search. According to the government, Sergeant Ortiz verbally threatened the man, shouting, “I’m going to put you in Abu Ghraib for the rest of your life.”

Specialist Lynn denied both the manslaughter and conspiracy charges. He said that he had spotted Mr. Zaben emerging from bushes carrying an automatic rifle in the “low ready” position and that he had fired at him. He said he had nothing to do with a scheme to plant a weapon near Mr. Zaben’s body.

Sergeant Ortiz, in an interview Wednesday in his military lawyer’s office, declined to comment on the charges.

On Thursday, both men received word that Colonel McClory had recommended that both charges against Specialist Lynn be dropped, according to a military officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was barred from discussing the outcome with reporters.

As for Sergeant Ortiz, Colonel McClory recommended that he receive a nonjudicial punishment instead of proceeding to a court-martial, the officer said.

Specialist Lynn’s military lawyer, Capt. James D. Culp, said Article 32 hearings rarely resulted in recommendations for dismissal of serious charges like manslaughter, although he called it appropriate in this case. “It showed that the military justice system does work,” he said.

Captain Culp is also a lawyer for Specialist James P. Barker, one of the five soldiers charged in the Mahmudiya rape and murder case. Their Article 32 hearing, scheduled to begin on Aug. 6, will be a far tougher challenge.

“My expectation,” Captain Culp said, “is that there would be no rush to judgment before all of the facts are heard.”

Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from New York for this article.

An Iraqi City Where Tasks Often Turn Into Combat

By Ann Scott Tyson

RAMADI, Iraq -- The dusty neighborhood in east Ramadi was deserted last week as U.S. and Iraqi soldiers rolled up to deliver water at a mosque. Not a good sign in this urban war zone, where residents vanish whenever an insurgent attack is imminent.

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

Iraqi Leader to Visit Bush; Talks to Focus on Violence

By Michael Abramowitz and Andy Mosher

WACO, Tex., July 22 -- The last time President Bush met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, White House officials touted a new security plan for Baghdad as one of the centerpieces of Iraq's fledgling national unity government.

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

http://mca-marines.org/gazette/2006/06walger.html





The Iraqi Marines

by Capt Giles D. Walger

Assistance for a fledgling Marine organization.

Starting as the Iraqi Coastal Defense Force (ICDF) during the initial phases of the reconstruction of Iraq, the Iraqi Marines have undergone several name changes. At one point the ICDF was split in two. Half became the Iraqi Navy while the other half became the Iraqi Naval Infantry Battalion. In May 2005 the Iraqi Navy Board and the Iraqi Ministry of Defense agreed to expand the Iraqi Naval Infantry Battalion and its mission. With those changes a decision to formally change the title to the Iraqi Marines was reached. The Marine Corps should foster a relationship with these new Marines and in doing so consider their mission, operational tasks, training, and the development of a future relationship with them.

Background
It is no secret that Iraq’s economy revolves around oil. Most of Iraq’s oil is distributed to the world via two offshore oil terminals in the Persian Gulf. The Al-Basrah oil terminal (ABOT) is the economic center of gravity for Iraq. It is directly responsible for 75 percent of Iraq’s economy. It is two-thirds of a mile long and located approximately 50 miles from the Iraqi Naval Base at Umm Qasr. When demand is high—and the pipelines from the north are secure—the second terminal, the Khawr Al-Amaya oil terminal (KAAOT), meets the demand. The KAAOT borders Iran and sits 5 nautical miles (nm) from ABOT.

Iraq’s oil terminals are vital to its future. Together, ABOT and KAAOT are directly responsible for distributing 65 million barrels of oil to the world and contributing more than $12 billion annually to Iraq’s gross national product. There is a constant threat to the terminals from terrorist attack. The two terminals are targets representing the highest economic value for terrorists in Iraq. The two terminals were the first targets seized during the coalition invasion. The terminals have been targeted by al-Qaeda on three separate occasions since the invasion. They are of such critical value that U.S. forces (SEALs, fleet antiterrorism security team (FAST) company, and the U.S. Navy’s maritime security detachments) have been providing security on the terminals, while Coalition Task Force 58 (CTF–58) maintains a vigilant security posture in the sectors surrounding the terminals.

The Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (CMATT) for the Iraqi Navy and Marines is based in Umm Qasr. Since 2003 the Australian Commandos, Dutch Marines, Royal Marines, and U.S. Marines have all provided individual augments to the CMATT. The CMATT for the Iraqi Navy and Marines has been focused on three objectives: (1) to man, train, and equip them; (2) to assist the Iraqis in developing a roadmap to meet the requirements for handover of oil terminal responsibility, sustaining a Navy and Marine force capable of defending Iraq’s coast and protecting Iraqi national interests out to 12nm; and (3) to advise them in meeting the coalition’s operational requirements. Due to the drawdown of the CMATT for the Iraqi Navy and Marines, no U.S. Marines remain on the team, and the Royal Marines will draw down to termination in early 2006.

Mission
The Iraqi Marine mission is to provide security and point defense on ABOT and KAAOT; to provide base security for the Iraqi Naval Base, Umm Qasr; and to assist the Iraqi Navy with coastal maritime defense of Iraq’s vital national interests.

Operations
The Iraqi Marines have three explicit operational tasks. Providing security for the oil terminals is their primary operational task. Since May 2005 the Iraqi Marines have been embedded within the U.S. Navy’s maritime security detachment aboard ABOT. In order for the Iraqi Marines to meet the CTF requirements for security of the sectors around the oil terminals, they will also provide board and search teams, shipboard security teams for operational support vessels, and small boat quick reaction forces. Following CTF–58 assessments of the Iraqi Navy and Marines, the Iraqis will take over operational responsibility of Iraq’s oil terminals. Realistically, coalition advisors and Marine leaders should acknowledge that the Iraqi Navy and Marines will need mentoring, training, and interoperability events to ensure that readiness and a long-term security posture is sufficiently maintained.

The Iraqi Marines provide security for the Iraqi Naval Base, Umm Qasr. Due to its proximity to the commercial port at North Port, Umm Qasr that is adjacent to the Iraqi naval base, the Iraqi Marines reinforce and augment the Iraqi Security Forces for the commercial port and provide a quick reaction force at the commercial port on a weekly rotation. Multiple construction projects and training programs are underway to ensure that the port meets United Nations (U.N.) security standards. Because meeting U.N. security standards is a politically and economically charged issue that promises to help kick start Iraq’s economy in the coming years, the Iraqi Marine task there is a high-profile one. Once North Port meets U.N. standards, trade volume at the port will increase. Magnifying the importance of this task is another explicit subtask of the Iraqi Navy and Marines. The Iraqi Ministry of Defense directed the Iraqi Marines to provide security for the offload and temporary storage of all ammunition and war materials entering Iraq from the sea, all of which is now entering Iraq through Umm Qasr and secured by the Iraqi Marines.

The third operational task for the Iraqi Marines is to help the Iraqi Navy with coastal maritime interdiction. At this time the Iraqis interpret this task to mean board and search, which limits the offensive capability of the Iraqi Marines. However, the Iraqi Navy and Marines have developed an operations plan that increases their role in coastal maritime interdiction. The Iraqi Marines will likely grow in size and provide forces on the Al Faw peninsula to deter and interdict terrorist infiltration and smuggling of oil and drugs.

The Iraqi Navy and Marines work together to provide a maritime force that is capable of policing and defending Iraq’s coast, territorial waters, ports, and vital offshore infrastructure. It is a force capable of contributing to international efforts that ensure regional maritime security. Their operational tasks are critical to the security of Iraq.

Training
The coalition had been responsible for delivering training and is now focused on mentoring and guiding the Iraqi Navy and Marine training. In the fall of 2004 a common skills training package was delivered under the supervision of a U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and Royal Marine warrant officer 2/sergeant major. The 52-day training package, delivered by the coalition trainers, was designed to lay the groundwork and standardize training. In the winter of 2005 a noncommissioned officer (NCO) instructor course was delivered to selected and screened NCOs of the Iraqi Navy and Marines in order to develop a core of NCOs ready to take responsibility for training. Simultaneously, the training team delivered a senior staff NCO (SNCO) course and focused on developing the junior officers. The courses, training, and operations have formed the foundation for the battalion’s future.

In the spring of 2005 the focus of the coalition trainers was on advanced training for the NCOs to deliver. The coalition trained the NCOs in advanced skills of visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS); force protection/security; and physical and combat conditioning. The graduates of the NCO course, along with the new junior officers, are now responsible for the delivery of training and only receive guidance and mentoring from the Royal Marine advisors. Each of the Iraqi Marine platoons has undergone week-long enhanced training packages to increase proficiency and establish a benchmark standard in each of these common skills.

In the spring of 2005 the top graduates from the NCO instructor course received additional training and were selected to be drill instructors for the recruit training for 228 enlisted and officer recruits. The first direct recruit replacement boot camp graduated in July 2005. The new Marines will double the battalion’s current end strength to 452 personnel. However, they will require week-long training packages in VBSS, force protection/security, and physical and combat conditioning to bring them up to the standard of the rest of the Iraqi Marines. Since the Iraqi Ministry of Defense set the end strength of the Iraqi Marines to 900, several evolutions of boot camp will be required in the coming years to meet this objective.

Engagement
The Marine Corps has a window of opportunity to assist in the training and development of the Iraqi Marines. It is an opportunity that should not be squandered.


In June 2005 one platoon from the Iraqi Marines deployed to the USS Ponce (LPD 15) for a week-long training package. Due to weather conditions, training on the Ponce was restricted to the ship. The U.S. Marine assault amphibious vehicle platoon that was aboard assisted in training the Iraqi Marines with nightly martial arts training that the Iraqi and U.S. Marines thoroughly enjoyed. The captain of the Ponce worked with the Iraqi Marine battalion commander to ensure that the Iraqi Marines had appropriate spaces to conduct search operations. The fact that Marine Forces Central Command (MarCent), Navy Forces Central Command (NavCent), and CTF–58 helped to coordinate the Ponce training and followed it up with an evolution on the USS Ashland (LSD 48) suggests that more opportunities will exist in the future.

Communications from CTF–58, NavCent, and the expeditionary strike group (ESG) to the Iraqi Marines and the coalition trainers must improve to ensure proper coordination and planning. This will solidify the relationship between MarCent, U.S. Marines at sea, and the Iraqi Marines.

Marine expeditionary units (MEUs) and ESGs should coordinate and plan with MarCent to send U.S. Marines forward to Umm Qasr to help the Iraqi Marines plan and coordinate interoperability events. As new communications equipment is procured and delivered, MEUs and ESGs should consider communications and command and control training to continue to develop the junior and senior Iraqi Marine leaders. The battalion commander has been promoted out of the battalion, and therefore, coordination and planning should be forced on the new Iraqi Marine battalion commander. As the training areas in the vicinity of the Iraqi Naval Base, Umm Qasr improve and are developed, more opportunities for live fire training will present themselves. In the meantime, NavCent and MarCent can use the Marine Corps FAST company in Bahrain and the MEU/ESG that rotates into the area of operations (AO) to target the Iraqi Navy and Marines for interoperability and training events.

A deeper opportunity presents itself as the Iraqi Marines evolve. Because the mission of the Iraqi Marines is expanding along with their end strength, the U.S. Marine leadership should target the Iraqi Marines with a foreign military training unit (FMTU). Ideally, the training team will include NCOs, SNCOs, and junior officers with a background in communications, small boats, FAST company, and a marine combat instructor or drill instructor. An FMTU will provide continuity and should focus on mentoring the junior and senior officers to ensure that the progress made is not lost. Coordination with CMATT, U.S. Central Command, Multinational Division Support Element (MND SE), and the Iraqi Marines will ensure a comprehensive strategy is developed. Developing a sound plan will require the U.S. Marines to work together with the Royal Marines. Because the Commanding General, Royal Marines is also the commander of British Forces in MND SE, there is significant opportunity for coordination of a long-term strategy.

As the picture of Iraqi Marine training and education clears, the Marine Corps should consider opening formal school seats to Iraqi Marine junior NCO, SNCO, and officer leaders. As U.S. Marines prepare to train with the Iraqi Marines, care should be taken to learn the Iraqi tables of organization and equipment (especially weapons systems). They have WKM/DShK (Polish 12.7mm rifles) and general-purpose (M240G) crew-served weapons for oil terminal security. Their individual weapons include the AK, Walther P–99, and Pakistani copies of the MP–5k. Clearly there are opportunities for future joint and combined training and operations, and U.S. Marines should be prepared to work with the Iraqi Marines.

Future
Because of the significance of the Iraqi Navy and Marine mission to the vitality of Iraq, certain steps should be taken to train with and develop them. As the coalition advisors and trainers downsize, this need is magnified, and we must prepare to work with the Iraqi Marines. Since the timing of the Federal budget requires Department of State (DoS)/International Military Education and Training (IMET) funding to be determined now, the Marine Corps would be wise to identify a need for an FMTU to the Iraqi Marines now. The Department of Defense, DoS, and the Marine Corps should consider our future role with the Iraqi Marines in providing IMET funding for future FMTUs. MEU/ESGs must consider working with Iraqi Marines while in the AO, in the vicinity of the oil terminals, and at the Iraqi Naval Base, Umm Qasr.

>Capt Walger was a student at Expeditionary Warfare School when he wrote this article.

Pentagon moves ahead with Iraq deployments
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer

The Pentagon is moving ahead with scheduled troop deployments to Iraq next month as the U.S. military struggles to gain control of the escalating violence in Baghdad, according to a senior defense official.

The decision caps weeks of internal discussions about whether to delay or cancel the deployment of any units, which would have signaled an accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops. It also underscores the difficulties in quelling the sectarian fighting and reflects remarks by the top U.S. commander in Iraq that he may shift more soldiers into Baghdad.

The military's current sentiment is to keep the status quo in Iraq, rather than moving toward a withdrawal that might be ill-advised considering the violence between the Sunnis and Shiites, the senior defense official said.

As units in Iraq prepare for their scheduled departure, military leaders had considered not sending all of the units that had been planned to replace them. But that idea has been put on hold, at least for now, according to the official.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because discussions about troop decisions were private.

The move comes as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki prepares to make his first official visit to the United States, during which he is expected to talk about the progress being made by his 2-month-old national unity government.

Next week's high-profile visit could refocus Congress' attention on Iraq after a week consumed by the violence in Lebanon and Israel. And it will bring troop levels once again to the forefront in a nation becoming increasingly impatient with the war in Iraq — and a Congress eyeing its potential impact on the November elections with growing unease.

The past week was one of the most violent in Baghdad this year. Bombings and shootings soared by 40 percent, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said. Extremists were preparing "an all-out assault" on the capital in a decisive battle for the future of Iraq, he said.

Thousands more troops have been summoned to the capital to help quell the violence, and the top commander there, Gen. George Casey, said the U.S. would make sure "there are adequate forces available for the Iraqis to succeed in Baghdad."

During a visit to Iraq last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said political reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites is as important as the military effort in establishing security in Iraq. And he said it was too early to estimate when overall levels of U.S. forces in Iraq might begin to fall.

Rumsfeld and others have said repeatedly they will make decisions about troop levels based on conditions on the ground, and they have refused to be held to a timeline.

Among the units scheduled to deploy to Iraq later this summer are the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, out of Fort Bragg, N.C., and the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, out of Fort Drum, N.Y.

There are about 127,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and military leaders have said they hoped to reduce that to about 100,000 by year's end. U.S. troop levels in Iraq have dropped from a peak of about 160,000 late last fall.

But in a reflection of the increasing violence, one brigade that had been stationed in Kuwait as a reserve force earlier this year is now almost entirely in Iraq, and at least one of its battalions was sent to Baghdad to bolster security.
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Marines Recognize New Kind of Fighting

SAN DIEGO - Standards for awarding Combat Action Ribbons are
revised to honor those who come under fire from roadside bombs and
mortars. By Tony Perry.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e5o...Io30G2B0Hi7e0Ec

http://www.harpers.org/sb-sources-negropon...1153433546.html

Sources: Negroponte Blocks CIA Analysis of Iraq “Civil War”
Posted on Friday, July 21, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.
SourcesI reported in May that despite the deteriorating situation in Iraq, no National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has been produced on that country since the summer of 2004. The last NIE, a classified document that the CIA describes as “the most authoritative written judgment concerning a national security issue,” was rejected by the Bush Administration (after being leaked to the New York Times) as being too negative, though its grim assessment subsequently proved to be highly accurate.

The situation has gotten even darker since my initial story—a United Nations report cited in Wednesday's New York Times found that an average of more than 100 Iraqi civilians were killed each day in June—and I've learned from two sources that some senior figures at the CIA, along with a number of Iraq analysts, have been pushing to produce a new NIE. They've been stonewalled, however, by John Negroponte, the administration's Director of National Intelligence, who knows that any honest take on the situation would produce an NIE even more pessimistic than the 2004 version. That could create problems on the Hill and, if it is leaked as the last one was, with the public as well.

“What do you call the situation in Iraq right now?” asked one person familiar with the situation. “The analysts know that it's a civil war, but there's a feeling at the top that [using that term] will complicate matters.” Negroponte, said another source regarding the potential impact of a pessimistic assessment, “doesn't want the president to have to deal with that.”

The sources said that forces at the CIA have been lobbying for the new NIE for about six months. Not only is one overdue, but there's also a fear that if the Democrats win control of at least one chamber of Congress this November, the agency is going to get hammered for not having produced an NIE for so long.

When the topic of a new NIE was first raised, the Directorate of National Intelligence agreed to consider the matter, but advocates heard nothing back. They raised the topic again several months ago and were told that Negroponte was still mulling over the matter. Since then, there's been no indication that the DNI intends to authorize a new NIE. “He's not going to allow [analysts] to call the situation warts and all,” said one source. “There's real angst about it inside.”

A third source, a former CIA officer who served in Iraq, said he had no direct knowledge of Negroponte blocking the NIE but that it jibed with past practice. “The NIE is a crucial document . . . that tells you how to tweak your policy,” he said. “That's hard to do if you don't want to look at it.” He said he had two recent conversations with people in Iraq, one an official at the Ministry of Interior who told him that as of two days ago there were 1,600 bodies piled up at the central morgue in Baghdad. The second conversation, he said, was with an Iraqi general officer who told him, “I never thought I would see my capital like this. It's on fire.”

“[The administration] can call it whatever they want,” said the former CIA officer. “There's a civil war going on in Iraq.”

* * *

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From the Los Angeles Times
THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Plan for More U.S. Soldiers Greeted With Skepticism
By Julian E. Barnes and Suhail Ahmad
Times Staff Writers

July 23, 2006

BAGHDAD — Iraqis expressed doubt Saturday that a plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in the capital would reduce the violence that has warped daily life here, rendering stories of killings and kidnappings unremarkable.

Americans have staked victory in Iraq on the idea that if they can make residents feel safe, people will turn their backs on insurgent groups or local militias. But so far, every effort to make life more secure in Baghdad has failed. Lawlessness has spread to once-safe neighborhoods, and nearly the entire city is immersed in sectarian conflict.

Sunni and Shiite Muslim residents voiced skepticism Saturday that American troops could stop the bloodshed. U.S. forces have lost the confidence of many here, and any additional troops would face a challenge in rebuilding the trust of the population.

"People don't like the Americans anymore," said Nawar Abbas, a 24-year-old computer engineer and a Sunni. "They have a bad image of them, and I don't think it will change."

In fact, Abbas and others see the Americans as magnets for attacks, rather than protectors.

"I don't think that more American troops can achieve stability and security," Abbas said. "The more presence on the street, the more attacks they will get."

Some Shiites share that sentiment.

"More Americans in the street means more terrorist attacks, and that will lead to more civilian deaths," said Buthayna Fadhil, a 50-year-old homemaker and a Shiite. "We don't want more soldiers."

Improving the security of Baghdad has become the top priority of the military and the new Iraqi government.

A much-touted plan to beef up security, largely using Iraqi army and police forces, has failed to stop the violence. In fact, the security situation has worsened.

On Saturday, seven Shiite construction workers were gunned down in a Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad. Hospital officials reported that 16 other people were found slain in Baghdad and surrounding areas and at least five more were killed by mortar attacks.

A roadside bomb, one of at least two that exploded in Baghdad, killed a U.S. soldier. A second soldier was killed by small-arms fire south of Baghdad on Saturday evening.

The new proposal under consideration by the White House, the Iraqi prime minister and the U.S. military would relocate some American forces from other cities to Baghdad. Although the U.S. is considering retaking control of some areas that have been handed over to Iraqi forces, the primary focus of the additional troops will probably be cracking down on Shiite militias that have been held responsible for the kidnapping and killing of Sunnis.

The problem for the Americans is that some militias function like armed neighborhood watches. And some residents say what little security they do have is provided by the gunmen.

"I would not feel safer if more American troops come here," said a Shiite owner of a dairy shop in the Karada neighborhood. "The people of Karada are able to protect their neighborhood by themselves, so there is no need for American troops to come here and protect us."

The owner, like most people in the neighborhood, was afraid to give his name.

Kamal Saadi, a member of the Islamic Dawa Party, said he believed that an increase in the number of American troops might damp some of the sectarian violence. Still, Saadi said the problem with such a move was that people are afraid of U.S. troops after a string of reported deadly attacks against civilians, including one case that resulted in rape and murder charges against a group of American soldiers.

"American soldiers have made many mistakes," Saadi said. "This has created a barrier between Iraqi officials and American military members. There is no longer any trust."

On Saturday, top Iraqi leaders held the first meeting of a national reconciliation committee in an effort to resolve the country's sectarian and ethnic differences without direct American help.

Although some Iraqis have grown frustrated with the government's inability to stem the violence, some still hold out hope for a political solution.

"Iraq's problems cannot be solved by the military," said Mohammed abu Mustafa, a 45-year-old Sunni who owns an electronics shop. "They can only be solved by politicians. Three years of military operations have solved none of our problems."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Times staff writer Zainab Hussein contributed to this report.

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/The_Writin...n_Iraq_999.html

IRAQ WARS
The Writing On The Wall Does Not Look Good In Iraq

An US soldier walks past a concrete block bearing the graffiti that reads "Long life to Moqtada al-Sadr" during a routine patrol at a predominantly Sunni Al-Dura neighborhood, southwest of Baghdad. Photo courtesy of AFP.
By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Washington (UPI) Jul 21, 2006
The writing is on the wall in Iraq. U.S. policymakers and the new Iraqi government got that grim news this week. First, yet another suicide bomber in Iraq killed scores of people. This time, 59 people died in the provincial town of Kufa, a Shiite stronghold, in an attack Tuesday in a crowded market. The bomber lured day laborers to his mined minivan by offering them work.
The blast was one of the bloodiest attacks of the year. Only the day before, almost as many people were killed in a similar attack.

Both bombings were strategically significant as well as tactically devastating. For they displayed the continuing, and even escalating, capabilities of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq to inflict ever greater casualties in attacks against crowded civilian targets even in the heart of previously secure Shiite areas.

The attacks were like pouring petroleum on the rapidly escalating majority Shiite militia insurgency in Iraq. So far it has not challenged U.S. forces directly, but that could rapidly change. Already, the Shiite irregular forces have been wreaking havoc on Sunni civilians around the country, and especially in the capital Baghdad.

A new United Nations report released this week painted a grim, forthright picture of the state of anarchy and chaos into which Iraq has already fallen. The Human Rights report issued by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, UNAMI, covered the two months of May and June.

During that period, "A total of 5,818 civilians were reportedly killed and at least 5,762 wounded," the report said. If that figure should be maintained over the next year, almost 30,000 people would be killed in Iraq in a single year, even if the situation there does not deteriorate further.

The report also noted that in the first six months of this year, 14,338 people had been killed in Iraq. It also noted a steadily rising trend of victims killed in Iraq's strife month by month. As we have repeatedly noted in these columns, the violence metastasized across Iraq when the Shiite militias began reacting on a much greater scale against the Sunni minority community after the al-Askariya, or Golden Mosque, in Samara was bombed on Feb. 22.

"Killings, kidnappings and torture remain widespread," the UN report said.

Further, "the reported number of civilian casualties continues on an upward trend." And, "the overwhelming number of casualties were reported in Baghdad."

This conclusion alone is of striking significance. In past national insurgencies and civil wars, if a national government could not maintain or regain effective control of its own capital, it was doomed. The current situation in Iraq is therefore far worse than it was in South Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive of the Viet Cong was crushed by U.S. forces and by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or than the last years of the Algerian War of Independence, from 1959 through 1962, after the French Army regained control of the capital of the country from the FLN in the ferocious Battle of Algiers.

The new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is currently a helpless and ineffectual figurehead more in its own capital than anywhere else. Real power throughout the Shiite majority regions of Iraq is held by the Shiite militias. And the longer the Israeli military drive against the Shiite Hezbollah, or Party of God, in Southern Lebanon continues, the greater is the danger that the Shiite militias in Iraq will turn on U.S. forces in their country as Israel's protector and one great ally.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday denounced the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, marking a sharp break with U.S. President Georgh W. Bush.

"The Israeli attacks and air strikes are completely destroying Lebanon's infrastructure," Maliki said at a news conference inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, which is about as far as his writ runs -- thanks only to the U.S. armed forces -- in his own capital.

"I condemn these aggressions and call on the Arab League foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo to take quick action to stop these aggressions. We call on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression," Maliki said.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, obviously embarrassed by Maliki's statement, did not respond to it.

And on Sunday, Iraq's new 275-member parliament issued a statement calling the Israeli strikes an act of "criminal aggression."

Baghdad is not far from the ruins of ancient Babylon -- proudly restored by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. And it was there that the Biblical Book of Daniel reported the story of the miraculous "Writing on the Wall" that warned ancient Babylonian King Belshazzar of his coming doom. It was a message reminiscent of the disastrous failure of U.S. policies in Iraq over the past three years: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting."


Source: United Press International

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Terror_Sur...utlook_999.html

Terror Survey Has Frightening Outlook

Eighty-six percent of the hundred liberal, conservative, and moderate experts surveyed believe that the world is progressively becoming more perilous.
By David Grant
Washington DC (UPI) Jul 17, 2006
Terrorists are making the world an increasingly dangerous place for U.S. citizens, a new survey warns. Analysts and policy experts across the political spectrum believe that the world is becoming increasingly more dangerous for America and her citizens.
This is supported by the results of the Terrorism Index released last month by the liberal Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine.

Eighty-six percent of the hundred liberal, conservative, and moderate experts surveyed believe that the world is progressively becoming more perilous, with 30 percent attributing this condition to some form of Islamic animosity. Twenty-eight percent attributed the worsening of the situation to the war in Iraq.

Some 84 percent of the analysts disagreed with President George W. Bush's assessment that the United States was winning the war on terror.

Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit and author of Imperial Hubris, a critical study of the Bush administration's War on Terror policies, told a recent CAP meeting discussing the study, "The findings that the war is somehow out of our control is disturbing because it follows along with so many things in the country today that are 'too hard to do.'

Its too hard to control the borders, its too hard to secure the Soviet nuclear arsenal, it's too hard to do most of anything. I really think that America has it's future in it's own hands."

Forty-five of the respondents identified themselves as liberal, 40 as moderate, and 31 as conservative. The survey weighted each group to one-third of the total ranking said Joseph Cirincione, CAP senior vice president for national security.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served 31 years in the Department of Defense and as Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff from 2002-2005, said there was a discrepancy in the current U.S. budget between the $450 billion allocated for the Pentagon and the $30 billion allocated for the State Department.

He noted that 87 percent of respondents said the State Department and other federal diplomatic groups should receive an increase in funding while 52 percent wanted a decrease in the Defense and military budget.

"It's not the revenge of the Foggy Bottom crowd," said David Bosco, senior editor of Foreign Policy magazine. Foreign Policy magazine collaborated with the CAP to choose the 100 respondents.

"If there was just a new deal in the Middle East, if we could put people to work and give them schooling and provide more development aid that would make a difference," that idea goes, Scheuer said. "That is a tragic leftover of the last 30 years. It hasn't worked, it won't work."

Scheuer advocated a more confrontational approach in the war on terror for U.S. policymakers.

"We vastly underestimate the amount of killing we will have to do. The idea that somehow the military has done all that it can do is a mistake. It hasn't done all it can do because politicians won't let it and many more of the people who oppose us are going to have to be killed before we bring this to a tolerable state," he said.

Wilkerson said that at the first CIA briefing that he attended after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks one analyst claimed that between 40 million and 100 million of the 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide supported al-Qaida through their monetary contributions.

"Bombs, bullets, and bayonets are not the answer to this problem," Wilkerson said. "It's going after that 40 (million) or 100 million and convincing them that killing innocent men, women and children for political objectives is not the way to do business. And you don't do that with (the) military."


Source: United Press International

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060724/pl_af...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
US military plans to maintain current troop levels in Iraq Mon Jul 24, 4:26 PM ET

The US military plans to maintain US forces in Iraq at current levels even as it concentrates more troops in Baghdad to deal with rising violence, a Pentagon spokesman said.

US President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki are expected to take up the deteriorating security conditions in Baghdad and its implications when they meet here Tuesday.

The meeting comes amid growing recognition that a six-week-old security crackdown has failed to stem the onslaught of massacres, kidnappings and bombings in the Baghdad area, a key goal of Maliki's new government.

US commanders are planning to increase the number of US troops in Baghdad, but plans now call for bringing them in from other parts of the country rather than from outside Iraq.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said additional units will be identified to replace units coming home during a rotation of US forces that begins in September, but overall force levels are expected to remain roughly the same.

"The planning effort will reflect force levels consistent with what we have right now," Whitman said.

The United States currently has about 127,000 troops in Iraq.

So far, only 12 combat brigades have been identified to replace the 14 combat brigades currently in Iraq, suggesting that two more combat brigades remain to be identified.

"We're not done naming units for the '06-'08 rotation," Whitman told reporters.

In June, General George Casey, the US commander in Iraq, acknowledged that the sectarian violence has complicated the security situation. But he said he was still confident that the size of the force could be brought down gradually by the end of the year.

Even those gradual cuts now appear in doubt.

A brigade from the 1st Infantry Division whose deployment to Iraq had been put on hold was given its deployment orders on July 16, Whitman said.

Two other brigades whose deployment had been slowed in anticipation of possible cuts are back on the rotation schedule, army officials said.

"Right now everything is proceeding according to the rotation," said an army official, who asked not to be identified.




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Marines Recognize New Kind of Fighting
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Standards for awarding Combat Action Ribbons are revised to honor those who come under fire from roadside bombs and mortars.

By Tony Perry
Times Staff Writer

July 24 2006

SAN DIEGO; To the outside world, it may seem but a bit of brightly colored ribbon. But to Marines, the Combat Action Ribbon is greatly prized as proof they were in the fight, rather than in the rear with the gear.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...=la-home-nation

List of Top Pentagon Orders Reveals Strategy Shift

By Roseanne Gerin

The Defense Department's drive to transform the way it does business is reflected in a spate of new information technology contracts valued from $300 million to $30 billion.

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

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060724/pl_af...HE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

Rice in Mideast as Lebanon conflict rages on
by Stephen Collinson

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held crisis talks in Beirut and Jerusalem at the start of a high-stakes mission to end the conflict in Lebanon, where deadly violence raged on for the 13th straight day.

At least eight civilians were killed, including children, when Israeli fighter jets pounded southern Lebanon, turning homes to rubble, while troops were locked in pitched battles with Hezbollah guerrillas near the border.

Two soldiers were killed in the fighting with Shiite Muslim militiamen as troops in tanks and bulldozers pushed even deeper into Lebanon although the Israeli government says it has no plans for an all-out invasion -- for now.

Rice, whose administration has been steadfast in its support for Israel's fearsome war on Hezbollah, said she wanted an "urgent ceasefire" but insisted it should be sustainable.

She arrived in Israel late Monday with Washington saying it was now spearheading international diplomatic efforts to end a conflict that has killed 373 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, in barely two weeks.

Rice also held talks with Lebanese leaders including Prime Minister Fuad Siniora on a surprise trip to Beirut, where she reportedly outlined plans for a ceasefire that would involve creating an internationally-patrolled buffer zone in southern Lebanon and a Hezbollah withdrawal from the border area.

Her visit came as Washington appeared increasingly estranged from many European and Arab allies over Israel's massive onslaught that has set off fears of a humanitarian disaster as thousands of foreigners and Lebanese flee.

Washington had faced calls for bold action amid criticism it was stalling to allow Israel time to attempt to wipe out the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which provoked the conflict after seizing two soldiers on July 12.

Rice said she was "deeply concerned" about the plight of civilians and the government announced a 30 million dollar immediate aid package with US forces due to begin airlifting supplies on Tuesday.

But Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, who is acting as an intermediary for Hezbollah, rejected Rice's reported plan and said there must first be a ceasefire and a prisoner swap.

Israel is struggling to knock out Hezbollah despite its vastly superior military might and has now suggested it would accept some form of international force in southern Lebanon, currently in the grip of the Shiite militia.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington's closest ally, called the conflict a "catastrophe" that was damaging fledgling democracy in Lebanon, a country that had gradually been rebuilding since the 1975-90 civil war and the end of Syria's long military and political dominance last year.

He said he hoped a plan would be announced in the next few days to bring about an end to the worst cross-border conflict since Israel invaded its northern neighbour in 1982.

But clashes erupted again as Israeli forces moved towards Bint Jbeil, the largest town in the border zone and a Hezbollah stronghold, after taking control of the nearby strategic village of Marun al-Ras.

Two soldiers were killed in the fighting and another two died in a helicopter crash, bringing to 41 the number of Israelis killed since July 12.

The army said a barrage of about 20 rockets landed in towns across northern Israel, slightly wounding one person.

At least eight civilians including two children were also killed in a new round of air strikes largely around the port city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, which has borne the brunt of Israel's devastating bombardments.

Streams of people have been making a desperate trek from the area after Israel ordered them to leave their homes and massed troops on the border.

The Western-backed Siniora, in his meeting with Rice, again accused Israel of trying to set back his country 50 years.

The offensive has left Lebanon virtually cut off from the world, made hundreds of thousands of people refugees in their own country and destroyed billions of dollars of infrastructure.

Despite Israeli claims it would quickly hobble Hezbollah, a minister said it was time for the government to reevaluate its goals.

"We raised hopes too high by promising to disarm Hezbollah's armed wing and decapitate its leadership. There is no question of us losing this campaign but we will have to set ourselves realistic goals."

Israel also launched a public relations offensive led by its best-known elder statesman Shimon Peres to tell the world why it was not yet silencing its guns.

"The free world is facing a threat, the goal of Hezbollah is to set the world aflame and we will not let them succeed," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said after talks with Rice.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah remained defiant, vowing that deeper incursions would not stop the rocket fire, and ruling out any efforts for a negotiated settlement unless it involved a prisoner swap.

"We are truly in a state of war and Hezbollah's priority is to stop the savage Zionist aggression on Lebanon," he told As-Safir newspaper.

UN chief Kofi Annan said he would press for a truce and establishment of a buffer force at a crisis meeting on Lebanon in Rome on Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is to meet Rice on Tuesday, has said would accept a peacekeeping force in Lebanon made up of troops from EU nations.

UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland, issuing an urgent appeal for 150 million dollars for 800,000 people made homeless by Israel's onslaught, criticised both Israel and Hezbollah for attacking civilians.

"My position is very clear -- the hostilities must stop immediately. Civilian populations are not targets. That is against the law, humanitarian law."

In the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army is fighting a second offensive aimed at retrieving a captive soldier and halting rocket attacks, six Palestinians including two children were killed by Israeli fire.

The deaths bring to 113 the number of Palestinians killed since Israel began a massive military operation there late last month which has targeted the ruling Hamas movement.

Rice is due to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

President George W. Bush said her trip was also intended to rally support to sideline Iran and Syria, which the United States and Israel blame for funding and arming Hezbollah.

Damascus has warned that if Israel invaded Lebanon it would have no choice but to intervene but the United States has rebuffed Syrian offer of dialogue.

As the bombardments continued, foreign governments have laid on ferries, warships and cruise liners to evacuate stranded nationals, mainly to the nearby resort island of Cyprus which has been battling to find temporary accommodation and flights for the estimated 70,000 evacuees at peak summer holiday season.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...akers-war_x.htm

Military towns giving rise to Iraq war critics
Updated 7/25/2006 3:52 AM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |

CHALLENGING VIEWS IN CONSERVATIVE AREAS

Several members of Congress who have challenged the Bush administration on the Iraq war are up for re-election in areas with close ties to the military. Except for Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., they represent areas where President Bush won in 2004. Area's key factors Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa. Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. USA data

Median income $30,612 $40,900 $37,510 $25,630 $41,994

2004 pres. winners
John Kerry (51%) George W. Bush (51%) George W. Bush (68%) George W. Bush (53%) George W. Bush (51%)

Military veterans
15.3% 13% 15.7% 13.5% 12.6%

Source: Almanac of American Politics, 2006

By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Cupped in a dark green hollow of the Allegheny Mountains, this hard-luck city is far more familiar with floods than the desert. Yet, in a way, it's a crucial battleground of the Iraq war.
Southwestern Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District is a fiercely patriotic area, where storeowners still decorate their windows for Memorial Day and hang banners to welcome home returning soldiers. Military veterans account for more than 15% of the population.

So it has come as something of a shock, both to his neighbors here and colleagues in Washington, that Rep. John Murtha is leading the charge for a pullout from Iraq. A plain-spoken former Marine who has represented this district for 32 years, Murtha says it's his closeness to the troops that motivated him.

"I felt like I had to speak out," he says. "I go to the hospitals every week and see kids blown apart. ... There's times you've got to realize it isn't getting any better."

Some of the most pointed critiques of the administration's policy in Iraq are coming from lawmakers who represent constituencies with close ties to the military. Their criticism underscores how widespread concerns about the war have become, even in areas where support has been strong for President Bush or the troops.

Some examples:

•Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. Shortly after the war began in 2003, Jones attended a Marine's funeral at Camp Lejeune. He recalls it in vivid detail, down to the toy dropped by the fallen soldier's 4-year-old son and the gunnery sergeant who picked it up. "I'm seeing a boy who will never know his daddy, a wife who will never see her husband on this Earth again," says Jones, one of the few Republicans to call for a troop pullout.

•Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. From a state that traditionally sends high numbers to the military, Byrd calls himself "the last man out of Vietnam" because of his staunch support for that war. Yet he was one of the earliest critics of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Byrd calls Bush's policies "arrogant" and "reckless."

•Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn. In a debate last month in the House of Representatives, Gutknecht defended the U.S. presence in Iraq. "Now is not the time to go wobbly," he said. He visited Iraq last week hoping to meet some of the 2,900 Minnesota Guard and Reserve members stationed there, and returned shaken. "It's a much more dangerous place than I thought," says Gutknecht.

Now he's calling for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal and more Iraqi involvement in enforcing security.

"I don't think 'stay the course' sells," Gutknecht says.

Reaction from voters back home has been mixed. In North Carolina, Jones thought he might draw a Republican primary opponent, but he didn't. Non-partisan political analysts Charles Cook and Stuart Rothenberg don't consider him seriously threatened in November.

In Minnesota, Democrat Tim Walz, a 20-year National Guard veteran who is running against Gutknecht, contends the congressman's reassessment of the war is coming in response to questions that he has been raising. "There's a war going on. We're losing soldiers daily," says Walz. "What is the plan to win? What is the plan to bring them home?"

Republican John Raese, Byrd's challenger in West Virginia, is taking the opposite tack. He says Byrd's votes in favor of troop withdrawal "give comfort to the enemy." Both Cook and Rothenberg say Raese faces an uphill battle, and the candidate himself acknowledges that he needs to prove "there's a race in West Virginia."

The bellwether may be in Pennsylvania. Murtha has two Purple Hearts from Vietnam and a history as a Pentagon advocate as the top Democrat on the military spending panel. His background has made him a potent administration critic. "He gave the rest of us credibility," Jones says of Murtha.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, a close friend, agrees: "Jack Murtha has changed the debate in this country. He knows of what he speaks."

Murtha has also drawn the most sustained Republican fire. Vice President Cheney has singled out Murtha for criticism in campaign speeches.

Diana Irey, Murtha's Republican opponent, says she entered the race because of the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war. She's making it a central issue of her campaign.

"People are really outraged," Irey said during a walking tour of Kittanning, a town where flags fly from lamp posts along the main street and stores display fatigues and photos of local veterans in their windows.

Irey, a Washington County commissioner, has raised more than $300,000 and assembled a team of experienced national GOP operatives to run her campaign. This in a district that Murtha routinely has won by better than 2-to-1 ratios. In 2004, the Republican Party didn't even bother to field a candidate.

The district's voters are what used to be called Reagan Democrats. "They're very conservative: pro-life, 75% Catholic, pro-sports, pro-gun," says state Republican Chairman Robert Gleason.

Murtha is popular in the district, even with local Republicans. One reason: the federal largesse that he has been able to command as a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. It has been a welcome boost in a district struggling to recover from a massive loss of manufacturing jobs.

"I'm not so sure Johnstown wouldn't be a ghost town without what he's been doing," says Gleason, a local businessman.

Even so, Gleason predicts that Irey will "get more votes than anyone who ever ran against Murtha," citing "a negative undercurrent because of his stance on the war."

Among potential voters, opinions are mixed. At a GOP rally in Kittanning, Cliff Ridinger, 47, says he has voted for Murtha before but doesn't "like some of his views lately on the war." His mother, Elva Westlake, 66, says she's leaning toward Murtha. "I like what he's done for senior citizens," she says.

Others side with Fred Hoffman, a Bethlehem Steel retiree who says he admires Murtha's outspokenness. "We shouldn't be over there in the first place," says Hoffman, 71. "Bring those fellas home to take care of their own."

Posted 7/24/2006 10:26 PM ET

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middlee...bloody_Saturday
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- That which Americans should fear has come upon them: U.S. troops in Iraq killed 15 Shiite militiamen Saturday.

According to first reports, the fighting occurred in the town of Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad. The exchange was an intense one. It lasted three hours and dozens more people were injured.

The clash was not a random one. It was part of a systematic drive U.S. forces had been ordered to carry out against the Mahdi Army of anti-American firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr.

This clash was the most serious since the brief and potentially very dangeorus rising by Sadr`s militia against U.S. forces in April 2004. It came after popular Shiite opinion across Iraq has been inflamed against the United States by the continuing failure of U.S. forces to protect Shiite communities in the country from the continuing onslaught of Sunni insurgents. Also, it comes as Israel`s attacks on the Shiite militias of southern Lebanon are escalating towards a full-scale land invasion of Hezbollah-controlled territory.

The danger is therefore more imminent than ever that the U.S. drive against Sadr`s forces could trigger a more widespread rising of Shiite militias in Baghdad and across southern Iraq against U.S. forces. The already chaotic situation in Iraq would then become indescribable.

We make this prediction in these columns the same way we confidently -- and grimly -- predicted on May 1, 2003, that the Sunni population of Iraq would be enraged by the killing of 15 of their number in clashes with U.S. troops in the city of Fallujah, and that this would lead to a years-long widespread Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces in their country.

On that day -- the same day President George W. Bush confidently but erroneously declared 'Mission Accomplished ' in Iraq from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln -- UPI Analysis predicted: 'The killing of 15 anti-American demonstrators by U.S. troops in the Iraqi city of Fallujah this week, followed by the reported killing of at least two more Wednesday, is a dire omen for those who imagined Iraq could be quietly but firmly guided on the paths of stable, pro-American democracy in the next few months, or even years.

'It is, rather, the kind of event that Thomas Jefferson called `a fire-bell in the night` -- the harbinger of infinitely worse conflict and travails to come.'

We noted then in UPI Analysis, 'In its scale and likely repercussions, the Fallujah Massacre -- as it will soon clearly be known -- appears remarkably similar to the killing of 13 Northern Irish Catholics by the British army during fierce demonstrations in the city of Londonderry -- a provincial center comparable to Fallujah -- on what became known as `Bloody Sunday` on Jan. 30, 1972.

'That event, more than anything else, proved a windfall for the rapidly mobilizing paramilitary Provisional Irish Republican Army, at the time known popularly as the 'Provos.' And over the next few years, it launched a campaign of urban terror and bomb massacres that in its calculated efforts to kill and maim civilians was without parallel in Europe during the 46 years from the end of World War II to the beginning of the wars in the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

'It will be surprising if we do not see the same thing in Iraq in the coming months, and possibly even in the next few weeks.

'In fact, what happened in Fallujah and what is now likely to happen throughout Iraq is no more or less than a reversion to the traditional patterns of the 40 years of history that the Iraqi people previously spent under the control -- first direct then indirect -- of a major Western power determined to `educate` them into Western practices of democracy.'

Sure enough, Fallujah became one of the most ferocious centers of the Shiite insurgency in Iraq. It was repeatedly fought over by U.S. forces and militias in bitter, house-to-house battles reminiscent of Stalingrad, Budapest and Berlin in World War II.

And in the three years and nearly three months since Bush pronounced his famous 'Mission Accomplished' comment, more than 2,200 American soldiers have been killed serving in Iraq, more than seven times the number who had died when that statement was made.

Now, however, the destructive potential of a widespread Shiite uprising in Iraq is vastly worse than the Sunni threat was three-and-a-quarter years ago.

The Shiite population of Iraq is more than three times that of the Sunni community. It is greater by 10 million people. The Shiites control all of southern Iraq, including the U.S. Army`s crucial land supply route from Kuwait to Baghdad.

The Sunni militias in May 2003 needed a period of organization and recruiting before they could present a serious widespread threat to U.S. forces. As we have monitored in our companion 'UPI Iraq Benchmarks' column, this escalation gradually occurred over the following two-and-a-half years.

But the Shiite militias across Iraq are already organized and networked together. They have far more support, certainly financial and probably in terms of arms supply, than the Sunni insurgents ever did and there are potentially far more of them. Also, they enjoy potential support and, at the very least, protection and toleration, from the Shiite-controlled new Iraqi army and police force that U.S. policymakers have built up at a frantic speed to fight the Sunni insurgents. But the price of that rapid build-up was the failure to establish any effective American controls over the new forces that could easily turn against their American creators.

Bush administration and Pentagon policymakers never dreamed the Sunni insurgency would get as bad as it did. A widespread Shiite militia rising against U.S. forces will be infinitely more dangerous. But no one in Washington appears to realize that either.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06204/707729-192.stm

Editorial: The 'other' war / Being tied down in Iraq constrains America's role
Sunday, July 23, 2006

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A byproduct of Israeli fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinians in Gaza in recent days is that people may have lost sight of what has become for the moment the "other" Middle East war, the conflict in Iraq.

It is important that Americans not be distracted. The United States lost 61 there in June alone, the U.S. death toll now stands at more than 2,500 and the war continues to cost more than $200 million a day. The 134,000 American troops committed there serve as a major constraint on what the United States might do as part of an international peacekeeping effort to end the fighting and nail down an accord between Israel and Lebanon, not to mention an overall Middle East peace agreement.

In fact, the situation in Iraq continues to worsen in terms of peace and stability. The Iraqis now stand in what could be described as armed polarization, with the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds divided and represented by heavily armed forces, enforcing what has become increasingly ethnically cleansed segregation of the different groups.

In that context, killing has increased. It is reported that the insurgents may now feel strong enough to wrest control of at least parts of Baghdad, the capital, from the control of the occupation-installed Iraqi government and U.S. troops. The U.S.-trained, so-called national Iraqi security forces are as divided into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish groups as the country itself and so are ill-suited to deal with the internal fighting.

A senior American general said the United States needs more, rather than fewer, forces in Iraq to deal with the growing insecurity. In the meantime, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has attacked what he called "Israeli aggression" in Lebanon, consistent with a unanimous vote of the Iraqi parliament, thus publicly biting sharply the hand of the ally of those who feed him. Mr. al-Maliki's position is certainly consistent with the sympathies of Iraq's 60-percent-Shiite majority, who identify with Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon.

As the Israel-Lebanon-Gaza war heats up, another reason is added to others for the United States to phase down its involvement in Iraq. If America is to have the resources to play a constructive role in peacemaking and peacekeeping in the Middle East, it has to free some of them from the quicksand that Iraq has become.

An Elixir for the Military's Health Care Woes

By Cindy Williams

The Defense Health Program charges retrees unnaturally low premiums, costing money that could be better spent supporting uniformed soldiers.

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/books/25...serland&emc=rss

Books of The Times | 'Fiasco'
From Planning to Warfare to Occupation, How Iraq Went Wrong

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: July 25, 2006
The title of this devastating new book about the American war in Iraq says it all: “Fiasco.” That is the judgment that Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, passes on the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq and its management of the war and the occupation. And he serves up his portrait of that war as a misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly with a wealth of detail and evidence that is both staggeringly vivid and persuasive.

By virtue of the author’s wealth of sources within the American military and the book’s comprehensive timeline (beginning with the administration’s inflammatory statements about Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11, through the invasion and occupation, to the escalating religious and ethnic strife that afflicts the country today), “Fiasco” is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how the United States came to go to war in Iraq, how a bungled occupation fed a ballooning insurgency and how these events will affect the future of the American military. Though other books have depicted aspects of the Iraq war in more intimate and harrowing detail, though other books have broken more news about aspects of the war, this volume gives the reader a lucid, tough-minded overview of this tragic enterprise that stands apart from earlier assessments in terms of simple coherence and scope.

“President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy,” Mr. Ricks writes. “The consequences of his choice won’t be clear for decades, but it already is abundantly apparent in mid-2006 that the U.S. government went to war in Iraq with scant solid international support and on the basis of incorrect information — about weapons of mass destruction and a supposed nexus between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda’s terrorism — and then occupied the country negligently. Thousands of U.S. troops and an untold number of Iraqis have died. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, many of them squandered. Democracy may yet come to Iraq and the region, but so too may civil war or a regional conflagration, which in turn could lead to spiraling oil prices and a global economic shock.”

Much of the material dealing with the time just before the war has been chronicled in earlier books (not to mention an outpouring of newspaper and magazine articles), but Mr. Ricks provides a succinct narrative that emphasizes how this period “laid the shaky foundation for the derelict occupation that followed.” He reminds us that when it came to the threat posed by Mr. Hussein, the administration consistently emphasized “worst-case scenarios” even as it was “ ‘best-casing’ the subsequent cost and difficulty of occupying the country.” And he shows how this blinkered outlook resulted in a failure to plan for the realities of the occupation and a failure to allocate sufficient manpower and resources.

Mr. Ricks’s narrative is based on hundreds of interviews and more than 37,000 pages of documents, and many of the book’s most scorching assessments of the White House and Pentagon’s conduct of the war come from members of the uniformed military and official military reports.

An after-action review from the Third Infantry Division underscores the Pentagon’s paucity of postwar planning, stating that “there was no guidance for restoring order in Baghdad, creating an interim government, hiring government and essential services employees, and ensuring that the judicial system was operational.” And an end-of-tour report by a colonel assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority memorably summarized his office’s work as “pasting feathers together, hoping for a duck.”

Mr. Ricks writes in these pages as both a reporter and an analyst, and many of his findings amplify observations made by other journalists and former insiders in earlier books: namely that the Bush White House routinely ignored the advice of experts (be they military, diplomatic or Middle East experts); that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s determination to conduct the war with a light, fast force had crippling consequences for the American military’s ability to restore law and order in post-invasion Iraq; and that infighting between the State and Defense Departments, between civilians at the Pentagon and the uniformed military, and between the military and the Coalition Provisional Authority severely hampered the making and execution of United States policy.

“Fiasco” does not possess the dramatic combat details of “Cobra II” by Michael R. Gordon (chief military correspondent for The New York Times) and Bernard E. Trainor (a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former military correspondent for The Times), but unlike that book, which basically ends in the summer of 2003, it goes on to chronicle America’s flailing efforts to contain a metastasizing insurgency over the next three years.

Mr. Ricks argues that the invasion of Iraq “was based on perhaps the worst war plan in American history,” an incomplete plan that “confused removing Iraq’s regime with the far more difficult task of changing the entire country.” The result of going in with too few troops and no larger strategic plan, he says, was “that the U.S. effort resembled a banana republic coup d’état more than a full-scale war plan that reflected the ambition of a great power to alter the politics of a crucial region of the world.”

This was partly a byproduct of the Pollyannaish optimism of hawks like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who slapped down the estimate by the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, that several hundred thousand soldiers would be required to secure Iraq. And it was partly a byproduct of a conviction shared by Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks that speed, in Mr. Ricks’s words, “could be substituted for mass in military operations.”

Mr. Rumsfeld’s stubborn reluctance to acknowledge a growing insurgency and his resistance to making adjustments, Mr. Ricks says, contributed further to the military’s problems on the ground. A continuing shortage of troops meant that borders could not be sealed, armament caches could not be secured, and security and basic services could not be restored. As a consequence support for the occupation rapidly dwindled among the Iraqis.

To make matters worse, Mr. Ricks adds, the Army seemed to have “forgotten almost everything it had learned in the Vietnam War about counterinsurgency.” During 2003 and much of 2004 effective counterinsurgency measures aimed at winning the political support of the Iraqi people were not being employed; instead, an emphasis was put on “the use of force, on powerful retaliation and on protecting U.S. troops at all costs.”

There were mass roundups of Iraqis (many of them bystanders caught up in the sweeps), and some of those detainees were harshly treated by American troops who had not been “trained or mentally prepared for the mission” they faced in postwar Iraq. Mr. Ricks sees the Abu Ghraib scandal not as an anomalous incident but as “the logical and predictable outcome of a series of panicky decisions made by senior commanders, which in turn had resulted from the divided, troop-poor approach devised months earlier by Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Franks.”

Mr. Ricks notes that the Bush administration has tended “to dismiss critics as ‘Monday morning quarterbacks,’ ” but he points out that that phrase “conveniently disregarded the fact that many of the critics had expressed their worries before the war even began.” His book is replete with warnings from Middle East experts and military veterans (like Gen. Anthony C. Zinni and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf), who presciently cautioned that the invasion and its aftermath would not be as simple or as fast as many in the administration predicted.

In late 2002, Mr. Ricks reports, 70 national security experts and Mideast scholars met at the National Defense University to discuss the looming war and concluded that occupying Iraq would “be the most daunting and complex task the U.S. and the international community will have undertaken since the end of World War II.” The group’s emphasis on the importance of “maintaining a secure environment” in post-invasion Iraq and its recommendation against a swift dissolution of the Iraqi military would be ignored in the ensuing months.

“It isn’t clear that a large and persistent insurgency was inevitable,” Mr. Ricks concludes, adding that “the U.S. approach, both in occupation policy and military tactics, helped spur the insurgency and made it broader than it might have been.” Among the crucial post-invasion missteps made by the Bush administration, he suggests, were the decision, after the fall of Baghdad, not to send two additional divisions of troops immediately, which might have helped keep the lid on the insurgency, and the orders issued by the head of the American occupation, L. Paul Bremer III, disbanding the old Iraqi army and banning thousands of Baath Party officials from returning to their government jobs.

The failure to contain the insurgency would have dire consequences as the war dragged on. While the occupation of Iraq (which Mr. Wolfowitz had predicted would basically pay for itself through oil revenue) was costing American taxpayers an estimated $5 billion a month in 2004 and 2005, the chaos-ridden country was replacing Afghanistan as a training ground for a new generation of terrorists. Meanwhile, writes Mr. Ricks, the United States Army found itself in a strategic position that “painfully resembled that of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the early 1980’s.”

Not only had the war “stressed the U.S. Army to the breaking point,” a study published by the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute declared, but it had also turned out to be “an unnecessary preventive war of choice” that “created a new front in the Middle East for Islamic terrorism and diverted attention and resources away from securing the American homeland” against further attacks from Al Qaeda. The war “was not integral” to the global war on terrorism, the report concluded, but was a costly “detour from it.”

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,106763,00.html

U.S. Troops Combat Baghdad Violence
Associated Press | July 25, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - American troops are stepping up operations in the Baghdad area to combat death squads and dampen down the violence threatening the new unity government, a U.S. general said Monday.

Two more U.S. Soldiers were killed Monday, the U.S. military said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted 19 operations last week targeting death squads, U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told reporters. All but two were in Baghdad, he said.

"Clearly Baghdad is the center that everybody is fighting for," Caldwell said. "We will do whatever it takes to bring security to Baghdad."

Security in the Iraqi capital is expected to figure prominently in talks Tuesday in Washington between President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Many of the death squads are believed to be associated with either Sunni or Shiite armed groups, targeting members of the rival sect as part of a struggle for power between the country's two major religious communities.

The killings accelerated after the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra and have steadily increased despite establishment of al-Maliki's national unity government last May.

On Monday, the city morgue in Kut, a mostly Shiite city southeast of Baghdad, reported receiving 19 bodies - blindfolded and some showing signs of torture. They were believed to be victims of sectarian death squads, city officials said.

U.S. officials have avoided identifying death squads and militias by sect, preferring instead to refer to them as criminals and thugs.

"We have not seen the death squads associated with any one particular sect," Caldwell said. "But they're not part of a larger organization that we can see."

He said "very extremist elements" from both sectarian communities were "using murder and assassination as their means by which to further their personal goals."

Many Iraqis believe they are operated by Shiite militias and Sunni extremist groups, some of which have ties to political parties. Combatting death squads runs the risk of armed confrontation with militias such as the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose movement is part of al-Maliki's government.