Seven More U.S. Troops Killed In Iraq

The U.S. military said Sunday that seven U.S. troops were killed in fighting in the Baghdad area and the volatile Anbar province, west of the capital.

The most recent casualty was a soldier who was killed Sunday during combat operations in Baghdad.

Two soldiers assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters Group and one Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 also died Saturday from wounds sustained due to enemy action while operating in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar.

Two soldiers assigned to the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) died when a roadside bomb hit their security patrol in Anbar on Saturday, the U.S. command said.

A soldier from the Multinational Corps-Iraq died of injuries sustained when his convoy was struck a roadside bomb at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday near Taji, which is 12 miles north of the capital and home to a major U.S. air base.

The soldiers' names were withheld pending notification of relatives.

At least 2,894 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

In other developments:

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AP

30 killed in Afghanistan; Nato ’copter shot down
The News _International Pakistan
.....

Afghanistan’s Taliban militants on Sunday said they had shot down a Nato-chartered helicopter missing in the south of the country with eight people on board. The civilian helicopter left Kandahar with supplies for bases around Uruzgan province on Saturday, but later lost contact.

There were no personnel from the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on the helicopter and the cause of the crash in northern Kandahar province was still unknown, according to an ISAF statement. But eight crewmembers were aboard, ISAF added, without specifying their nationalities.

The Afghan interior ministry said the helicopter belonged to US security firm Dyncorp. A purported Taliban spokesman said the Islamists had downed the helicopter using a surface-to-air rocket.

Yusuf Ahmadi said “religious students” had “shot down the craft with a single rocket”. ISAF could not confirm or deny the statement. Also, Afghan and Nato troops fought a major skirmish on Sunday with the Taliban insurgents in a war-torn province in southern Afghanistan, police and the international ISAF force said.

.....

Helicopter missing in Afghanistan
The Nato-chartered MI25 helicopter that "disappeared" in Afghanistan on Sunday

Nato has lost contact with one of its chartered helicopters travelling from Kandahar to Tirin Kot base in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan.

Taliban fighters claim to have downed the aircraft, a Russian MI25, using a rocket.

Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) could not confirm that the helicopter had been shot down.

A spokesman said: "Searches are continuing to find the craft."

The MI25 helicopter, the largest Russian cargo helicopter in existence, was manned by a Russian crew and used to supply Dutch military bases in Afghanistan.

The helicopter left Kandahar on Saturday carrying supplies but no personnel.

An Al Jazeera film crew had travelled in the aircraft less than 24 hours before it went down.

Al Jazeera correspondent James Bays said: "Although the MI25 seemed serviceable, we were disturbed that the Russian crew did not ask us to fit our seat belts and a lot of the cargo was not strapped down properly - it was allowed to move freely around the hold."

He said that although the Taliban has claimed responsibility for shooting down the aircraft, the helicopter had been flying in bad weather.

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Nine U.S. troops killed in Iraq

Story Highlights
•Five killed by roadside bombs, four in other actions
•51 bodies found in Baghdad, likely victims of sectarian violence
•Six insurgents killed in coalition raids, military says

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Nine U.S. troops died in Iraq during the weekend, including five killed by roadside bombs, the U.S. military reported Sunday.

Two soldiers were killed and two wounded Sunday when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in northern Iraq, U.S. commanders in the northern city of Tikrit announced. The soldiers were assigned to the Army's 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division.

Two U.S. soldiers and a Marine died from unspecified "enemy action" in western Iraq's Anbar province Saturday, the American command in Baghdad reported, while two U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb.

Anbar, including the provincial capital Ramadi, has been a hotbed of the mostly Sunni Arab insurgency against U.S. troops that emerged after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

And two American soldiers were reported killed in Baghdad -- one slain by a roadside bomb Saturday, another killed in fighting Sunday.

The latest deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq to 2,900, including including seven civilians working for the Defense Department.

Other developments

more

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/03/iraq.main/

Relative to population, Canada now has the most deaths.

Marine Killed in Copter Crash in Iraq
3:49 AM PST, December 4, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A Marine helicopter carrying 16 people made an emergency landing in a lake in a volatile province west of Baghdad, killing one and leaving three missing, the military said Monday.

Twelve passengers survived the crash Sunday in Anbar province, according to a statement. The military said a Marine was pulled from the water but attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, while three other service members were listed as "duty status unknown."

The military said the incident did not appear to be due to enemy action but was still being investigated.

Dec 5, 2006

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How the Taliban prepare for battle
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - After the Taliban's successful spring offensive there are calls from Kabul for reconciliation with them, indications from the US and recognition of the fact from Pakistan that without striking a major deal with the Taliban, there can be no peace and stability in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, though, forced out of power by the US-led invasion of 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, are already

planning for next year's offensive, the central aim of which is to retake Kandahar, their previous spiritual capital.

Afghans know their traditions well and are aware that the current insurgency has the ability to turn into a mass rebellion against foreign forces, but most people do not know exactly how this will happen.

Asia Times Online traveled deep inside Taliban territory to get some answers.

Huge swaths of the Pashtun heartland in southwestern Afghanistan are now sympathetic to the Taliban-led resistance against foreign troops and the Hamid Karzai-led administration in Kabul. The Taliban have strongholds in most villages and they prove their presence through daily attacks. More than 4,000 people, mostly civilians, are believed to have died in fighting this year, including more than 100 foreign soldiers.

The soul of the southwest is the town of Kandahar, in the province of the same name. All surrounding districts are highly volatile, especially the Panjwai area, the strategic center of the Taliban near Kandahar.

There have only been a few isolated attacks in Kandahar itself, and driving through the city it appears to be very much a stronghold of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO vehicles are everywhere, and when they pass through the main arteries they occupy both lanes to cut off potential suicide vehicles. Taxi drivers and private motorists immediately pull off the road when they see NATO vehicles approaching.

All major roads and intersections are manned by Afghan police and the Afghan National Army. On the surface, Kabul appears to be in full control of Kandahar and its administration under no threat.

Appearances can be deceptive, though.

much more

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HL05Df01.html

4 Die in U.S. Copter Crash in Iraq

Monday December 4, 2006 5:16 PM
AP Photo BAG102
By QAIS AL-BASHIR
Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A U.S. helicopter carrying 16 Marines went down in a lake west of the Iraqi capital in volatile Anbar province, killing four of them, the military said Monday.

The twin-rotor CH-46 helicopter from 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing made the emergency landing Sunday near the shore of Lake Qadisiyah ``in which the pilots maintained control of the aircraft the entire time.''

It said the helicopter had experienced mechanical problems and was not hit by gunfire.

Twelve passengers survived the crash; a Marine was pulled from the water but attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful. A search was then conducted for three missing Marines whose bodies were found, the military said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6258149,00.html

Baghdad diary: The 'what to do' debate
Andrew North

By Andrew North
BBC News, Baghdad

NEW PLANS, NO CHANGE

It's a strange job being the BBC correspondent here at the moment. At times it can feel like I'm in the wrong place.

Because much of the news on Iraq is being made thousands of miles away in Washington, as the "what to do" debate heats up before the release of the much anticipated - and much-leaked - Iraq Study Group report.

So each day means spending nearly as much time on US websites, working out which policy idea is gaining ground, as on finding out what's happening on the ground.

More troops, or fewer? Speed up the handover to Iraqi units? Talk to the neighbours? The prescriptions change by the day.

Yet while I try to keep up with this US debate, I'm aware that outside of Iraq's political arena, few people here are paying any attention.

"What difference will it make?" said a shopkeeper. "The Americans have given us new plans before. But things only get worse."

.....

Playground gangs


The sectarian fissures now run through every level of society. "We have Sunni and Shia gangs now," a 14-year-old boy told me when I visited his school at the weekend.


"They fight each other in the playground."

......

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U.S. advisors lament Iraqi troops' conduct. America's exit strategy hangs in the balance.

By Solomon Moore, Times Staff Writer
December 4, 2006

Related Stories
- Rumsfeld memo was part of Bush plan, officials say
- U.S. forces, Iraqi residents disagree on deaths in raid

BURSTS of AK-47 fire hissed past them from several directions at once, showering the U.S. and Iraqi soldiers with pulverized cement and slapping spider-web fractures into their Humvees' bullet-resistant glass turret-guards.

The joint security forces, undertaking what officials described as a major counterinsurgency operation, were in pursuit of 70 "high-value targets" in Baghdad's crowded Fadhil quarter, a Sunni Arab neighborhood of multistory tenements along the east bank of the Tigris River.

Instead, the soldiers of the Iraqi army's 9th Mechanized Division and their American trainers had walked into a deadly ambush Friday. From upper-story apartments, insurgents stopped the soldiers' advance with grenades and shoulder-fired rockets. Others launched coordinated mortar strikes, hitting one of two nearby Iraqi field posts.

By the time the 11-hour battle was over, one Iraqi soldier had been killed and six others wounded, including one who shot himself in the foot. A U.S. soldier was also wounded and, according to American troops interviewed, additional casualties were averted only because U.S. Apache attack helicopters were called in and American trainers shot their way out of the ambush.

"Fear took over" among the Iraqis, Staff Sgt. Michael Baxter said.

"They refused to move. We were yelling at them to move," he said. "I grabbed one guy and shoved him into a building. I was saying, 'God get me out of this, because these guys are going to get me killed.' "

The offensive was initially billed by U.S. officials in Baghdad as an Iraqi-led success and a case study in support of the Pentagon's increasing reliance on using American troops as military advisors as a way to shift security responsibilities to Iraqi soldiers.

Expansion of teams

U.S. officials say an imminent expansion of the Military Transition Teams — squads of American military advisors traveling with Iraqi army units — will meet demands Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki made of President Bush at their meeting in Amman, the Jordanian capital, last week for more authority over his own security forces.

But interviews at their joint Rustamiya base with U.S. advisors and Iraqi soldiers involved in Friday's battle revealed a different story. The operation was hastily prepared and badly executed, they said, and plans to let the Iraqis take the lead in the battle were quickly scrapped.

"It started out that way," Baxter said. "But five minutes into it, we had to take over."

Staffed with veterans of the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s and equipped with a complement of refurbished Soviet tanks and American Humvees, the 4,000-soldier 9th division is considered Iraq's best hope for an eventual U.S. troop withdrawal.

But confusion swiftly reigned as insurgents in Fadhil pummeled dismounted Iraqi troops and their American advisors. U.S. radio jammers seeking to hinder communications between insurgents ended up blocking the Iraqi soldiers' walkie-talkies, forcing them to use unreliable cellphone signals to stay in contact. Voice commands were lost amid the explosions and gunfire echoing off the walls.

At one point, U.S. and Iraqi troops piled into a Humvee to escape the hail of insurgent bullets pinging off the armor cladding.

"I was pulling people in," said Army Sgt. 1st Class Kent McQueen. "We were all bunched in there together with the gunner. It was like a game of Twister."

An insurgent tried to throw a grenade into a Humvee's top hatch, but it bounced off and exploded on the ground.

At times, the overwhelmed Iraqi soldiers fired wildly, sweeping their machine-gun barrels across friendly and insurgent targets alike, witnesses said.

.....

Iraqi unit well regarded

Still, the division had conducted a number of successful joint U.S. and Iraqi operations north of Baghdad, officials say, and is well regarded by American commanders. The U.S. military believed the unit was ready to conduct the latest operation with minimal American ground support.

The operation was proposed by the Iraqi Defense Ministry and approved by U.S. Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, only hours before it was carried out.

"We could have used two more days to plan," said U.S. Army Maj. Thomas J. Boczar, who organized the strike with Iraqi division commanders.

Iraqi army Col. Bassim Mohammed, assigned to the division's reconnaissance company, said he learned about the mission only three hours before it began at 4 a.m. Friday.

"We didn't do any reconnaissance. Nobody was briefed on the area. We didn't know the area 100%," Mohammed said. Units that went into Fadhil hadn't plotted egress routes, he said.

U.S. advisors said impending operations were often kept secret because of infiltrators within Iraqi ranks.

But Boczar suggested that insurgents knew the attack was coming. Aerial drone footage captured before the assault appeared to show them positioning themselves in preparation for the raid, he said.

"This was a coordinated, complex attack," Boczar said of the insurgent ambush. "And the way they maneuvered shows us that they were ready for us."

...........
much more

December 6, 2006 - 7:54AM

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will send envoys to neighbouring countries to seek help in improving security in Iraq.

He will also call for a conference of regional states on the issue.

Maliki made his announcement hours after gunmen and bombers killed 30 people in Baghdad, including 14 Shi'ite religious employees who were ambushed on a highway north of the capital.

"We will send envoys to neighbouring countries to encourage the governments of those countries to reinforce security and stability," Maliki told a televised news conference in Baghdad.

Under pressure from his Washington backers to rein in soaring sectarian violence that is pushing Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war, Maliki, also said Iraqi political leaders would meet in mid-December to try to reconcile rival communities.

more here

Press Association
Tuesday December 5, 2006 8:13 PM
The Guardian

A Royal Marine has been killed and a second injured in a battle with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence has said.

A spokeswoman said British forces were engaged in fighting in southern Helmand.

"We can confirm that there has been a fatality," she said.

The spokeswoman said: "Afghan and UK forces launched an operation on the outskirts of the village of Garmsir. It was to dislodge Taliban forces who have been responsible for attacks on the town in recent days.

"During the operation, two Royal Marines were injured, one of whom later died of his wounds.

"They were both airlifted to the UK military hospital in Camp Bastion. The second Royal Marine has undergone surgery and is in a stable condition."

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By David Hambling
02:00 AM Dec, 05, 2006

The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.

You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.

According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games.

The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves -- 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.

The longer waves are thought to limit the effects of the radiation. If used properly, ADS will produce no lasting adverse affects, the military argues.

Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly.

The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.

"It will repel you," one test subject said. "If hit by the beam, you will move out of it -- reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again."

But while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, "some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters," the Air Force experiments concluded.

The reports describe an elaborate series of investigations involving human subjects.

The volunteers were military personnel: active, reserve or retired, who volunteered for the tests. They were unpaid, but the subjects would "benefit from direct knowledge that an effective nonlethal weapon system could soon be in the inventory," said one report. The tests ranged from simple exposure in the laboratory to elaborate war games involving hundreds of participants.

The military simulated crowd control situations, rescuing helicopter crews in a Black Hawk Down setting and urban assaults. More unusual tests involved alcohol, attack dogs and maze-like obstacle courses.

In more than 10,000 exposures, there were six cases of blistering and one instance of second-degree burns in a laboratory accident, the documents claim.

The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military's claims.

The ADS technology is ready to deploy, and the Army requested ADS-armed Strykers for Iraq last year. But the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN.

(...)

( ... Link ... )

U.S. woman collects Silly String for serious use -- finding land mine trip-wires in Iraq

The Associated Press
Wednesday, December 6, 2006

In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it is the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why an American mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq.

American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq.

Before entering a building, troops squirt the plastic goo, which can shoot strands about 10 to 12 feet (3 to 3.6 meters), across the room. If it falls to the ground, no trip wires. If it hangs in the air, they know they have a problem. The wires are otherwise nearly invisible.

Now, 1,000 cans of the neon-colored plastic goop are packed into Shriver's one-car garage in this town outside Philadelphia, ready to be shipped to the Middle East thanks to two churches and a pilot who heard about the drive.

"If I turn on the TV and see a soldier with a can of this on his vest, that would make this all worth it," said Shriver, 57, an office manager.

The maker of the Silly String brand, Just for Kicks Inc. of Watertown, New York, has contacted the Shrivers about donating some. Other manufacturers make the stuff, too, and call their products "party string" or "crazy string."

"Everyone in the entire corporation is very pleased that we can be involved in something like this," said Rob Oram, Just for Kicks product marketing manager. He called the troops' use of Silly String innovative.

The military is reluctant to talk about the use of Silly String, saying that discussing specific tactics will tip off insurgents.

But Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said Army soldiers and Marines are not forbidden to come up with new ways to do their jobs, especially in Iraq's ever-evolving battlefield. And he said commanders are given money to buy nonstandard supplies as needed.

In other cases of battlefield improvisation in Iraq, U.S. soldiers have bolted scrap metal to Humvees in what has come to be known as "Hillbilly Armor." Medics use tampons to plug bullet holes in the wounded until they can be patched up.

Also, soldiers put condoms and rubber bands around their rifle muzzles to keep out sand. And troops have welded old bulletproof windshields to the tops of Humvees to give gunners extra protection. They have dubbed it "Pope's glass" — a reference to the barriers that protect the pontiff.

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Christopher Dickey
Newsweek

....

Every day we move closer to the edge of a humanitarian abyss. Think the Balkans, Rwanda or Darfur, but with this grim difference: the United States won’t be able to stand back from the slaughter and wring its hands in Iraq. It is implicated up to its elbows already, and there’s more to come. Attempts to hold Iraq together by political compromise have failed. If the Americans stay there in any way, shape or form, they’re going to have to choose sides, backing Iraqi “friends” who will do whatever they think is necessary to impose order.

...

The essential point is that Iraqis on all sides of the divide think they know precisely what an effective counterinsurgency campaign looks like, and it’s not the relatively fastidious one the U.S. would have them wage. “The Iraqis under Saddam [Hussein] were world champions at counterinsurgency,” notes Van Creveld. The former dictator has been standing trial, and already has received one death sentence, for doing what he thought needed to be done to crush rebellions by Shiites and Kurds—and it worked. Now the United States has turned the tables, the former victims don’t want to be held back. “Maybe they are not trained in the American sense, but they are very well trained to do what they have to do in Iraq,” said Van Creveld.

The sad fact is that insurgencies are defeated only rarely, and then by imposing the peace of the grave on hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. How much more can Washington let itself be implicated in such carnage? How far over the horizon do American troops need to pull back to escape the stench of such a victory? One answer: all the way home.

Hassan Fattah | Dec 6 | Amman, Jordan

NYT - Every day at dusk as the streets of this brooding city empty, people like Halima Reyahi scramble to become invisible agaain.

She sticks to side streets, her eyes scanning for the increasingly frequent police dragnets and checkpoints set up in search of illegal Iraqi immigrants like her. The loneliness of her exile is magnified by the fact that all four of her sons have been turned away repeatedly at the Jordanian border.

Ms. Reyahi is one of nearly two million Iraqis who have fled the vicious chaos of their country since the American invasion nearly four years ago, flooding neighboring states, especially Jordan and Syria, but also Lebanon and Egypt.

As they leave Iraq at a rate of nearly 3,000 a day, the refugees are threatening the social and economic fabric of both Jordan and Syria. In Jordan, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are trying to blend into a country of only 6 million inhabitants, including about 1.5 million registered Palestinian refugees. The governments classify most of the Iraqis as visitors, not refugees.ore at link

_{"at some point I'm hopeful I'll figure out something to put here"}

U.S.-Led Forces Kill 20 Alleged `Terrorists' in Iraq (Update1)

By Alex Morales

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- U.S.-led coalition forces targeting al-Qaeda terrorists killed 20 people northwest of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, the military said.

The rebels died early today when coalition forces, acting on intelligence reports, hit a location near Lake Tharthar, the U.S. military said in an e-mailed statement. Two of the dead were women, it said. After an initial gun battle in which two terrorism suspects were killed, air support was called in, the military said in the statement.

``A coalition aircraft performed the air strike, resulting in 18 more armed terrorists killed,'' the military said. ``During a search of the objective, coalition forces found multiple weapons caches consisting of AK-47s, machine guns, rocket- propelled grenades, anti-personnel mines, explosives, blasting caps and suicide vests.''

The statement included attached photos of dust-covered automatic weapons, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades and explosives said to be recovered from the site of the strike.

The dead women would have been confirmed as combatants in an inspection of the target area, U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver told Agence France-Presse.

``If there is a weapon with or next to the person or they are holding it, they are a terrorist,'' AFP cited him as saying. Ownership of arms is common in Iraq, and many households keep at least one weapon.

more
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGSY6KuShduM&refer=home

Vigil honours the healing qualities of Afghanistan's al-Qa'ida cemetery

By Kim Sengupta in Kandahar
Published: 08 December 2006

There are new graves at the al-Qa'ida cemetery, the shrine to the "martyrs" who had died fighting in the US-led invasion four years ago. The fresh mounds of earth were dug for those killed in the ferocious fighting of the recent months as war returned to Afghanistan.

At this desolate place, with red dust swirling around jihadist flags, three old women sit rocking under a shelter, watching families who have come to pray and taste salt kept in dishes over the graves for their supposed miraculous healing qualities.

The women have been keeping vigil almost every day. Bibi Shah, 58, is one of them, and she insists: "I have seen a man who was crippled take the salt and then he was better. Hundreds of people come here, from all over Afghanistan and other countries. These men buried here are true Muslims respected by everyone."

Bibi Shah had been coming here for the past three years. She and her companions receive alms from those who come to visit. "My husband is dead and I am childless so there is no one to look after me. So I come here. There are a lot of new graves here, there are a lot of people getting killed. "

Twenty of those deaths have come from seven suicide bombings in nine days in which British marines, Canadian troops and American security contractors had been targeted on the main route to the airport, known as Baghdad Highway to local people. The vast majority of the victims have been Afghan civilians. There was another one killed and five others injured in a bombing yesterday.

The civilians are buried in their own plots. But it is the graves of the fighters which draw the largest crowds. Naqibullah Ali is taking the salt from one of them in the hope that it will heal his withered hand. "I know this can cure people," he says. "The dead here have been blessed by Allah."

Western people are not welcome here. "We used to throw stones at them. Now if they come we shall cut their throats," said 16-year-old Ali Waleed, waving a knife. This was bravado, but the killings are real enough. Three people I had interviewed six months ago, all associated with women's rights, have been assassinated. They included Safia Amajan, the most senior female rights activist to be murdered in Afghanistan.

Kandahar was the birthplace of the Taliban and they are desperate to wrest control of this symbol of Pashtun nationhood. They emerge in Kandahar at night when the city effectively shuts down. There was a drive-by shooting outside my hotel during the first night here, aimed at a police post, a fairly regular occurrence, as is the mortaring of the Nato base on the outskirts of the city.

..
Standing beside the Arab graves, 25-year-old Bari Ali Ahmed spoke of how the infidels had "corrupted" the government of Hamid Karzai and must be driven from the land. "Because of the infidels we have alcohol and prostitution in our country. They are oppressing our people and it is the duty of good Muslims to take up the struggle."
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That was the US military claim earlier today after air-strikes flattened several homes in Thar Thar...however - and, yet again, a "however" - Iraqi officials are saying that 17 deaths included 6 women and 5 children, with the US military already on record as saying that of the "20 al-Qaeda" killed, 2 were women, "who are now used in increasing numbers...", yadda-yadda. Presumably, the dead tots were also willing recruits for AQ in Iraq. And the beat goes on, ISG Report notwithstanding.

U.S., Iraqis dispute raid, at least 17 killed
By Ghazwan al-Jibouri
Reuters
Friday, December 8, 2006; 7:48 AM

ISHAQI, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi and U.S. officials gave sharply differing accounts of an overnight raid and air strike on Friday in which up to 20 people were killed, with a town mayor accusing American troops of killing five children.
...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/08/AR2006120800363.html

Brian Beutler

Published: Friday December 8, 2006

Though he referred to the war in Iraq and the deaths of American troops in that country as “criminal” in a speech on the Senate floor last night, Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) insists he did not mean the word to imply the conflict was a breach of either domestic or international law, RAW STORY has learned.

"Don't think of criminal in the sense that a law has been broken,” Smith spokesman R.C. Hammond told RAW STORY.

(...)

( ... Link ... )

Tight, spiraling corkscrew landings and takeoffs are used in Baghdad to avoid possible missile fire; the corkscrew takeoffs practiced in Kabul are much wider and more sweeping.

Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant based in Evergreen, Colo., said the corkscrew pattern could help pilots quickly gain altitude while allowing the control tower to maintain visual contact.

Kabul, located at an altitude of more than a mile, is ringed by the peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains.

Another reason for using the procedure, Boyd said, could be that planes have to fly over "real estate that’s not secure."

- this spiral is informally known as the "Dien Bien Phu" approach.

Ouch.

Perhaps these are metaphorical spirals.