Iraqi civilians being urged to take up arms
Iraqis must protect themselves if government can't, officials say.

By Robert H. Reid, Associated Press

Last update: July 08, 2007 – 9:52 PM

BAGHDAD - Prominent Shiite and Sunni politicians called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves after a weekend of violence in which more than 220 people were killed, including 60 who died Sunday in a surge of bombings and shootings around Baghdad.
The calls reflect growing frustration with the inability of Iraqi security forces to prevent extremist attacks.

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http://www.startribune.com/722/story/1290639.html

Weekend of death and destruction dents Bush's hopes of turning the tide in Iraq

· Second worst attack since 2003 claims 150 lives
· Critics plan no-confidence vote in Baghdad regime

The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill & Jonathan Steele, July 9

Washington - President George Bush's hopes for making progress with his new Iraq strategy suffered a double blow when there was an upsurge in violence over the weekend and fresh political turmoil in the country.

Twenty-three Iraqi army recruits were killed yesterday the day after a truck bomb killed 150 people in Armili, the second worst attack on civilians since the US invasion in 2003.

The flare-up came as the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, on whom Mr Bush is dependent, faced renewed pressure from both Shia and Sunni parliamentarians. The latter disclosed they are planning a vote of no-confidence on July 15.

The US administration had been looking for respite after the full deployment of an extra 30,000 troops ordered to Iraq by Mr Bush in January. But US defence department statistics for May published yesterday showed there were 6,039 violent incidents, the highest since November 2004.

Both Mr Bush and Congress have set a series of benchmarks for Mr Maliki to reach but the Bush administration is reconciled to the fact that the Iraqi leader will not make it. The benchmarks included a deal to share oil revenue between Shia, Sunnis and Kurds, which might have helped with political reconciliation.

The lack of a deal will make it politically difficult for Mr Bush in September when the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, are due to report on progress. The Democrats are to embark on a new attempt in September to bring US troops home and lack of progress on the benchmarks could swing some disillusioned Republicans behind them.

"They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities."

Can you say cut and run? And Bush does not govern by polls or politics but from the gut? Did this righteous war just turn wrongeous?

Posted on Sun, Jul. 08, 2007
Reservist fighting his fifth war call-up
BY AMY DRISCOLL
Erik Botta believes he's done right by his country.

Days after 9/11, as a young Army reservist, he volunteered to go to war. He was soon in Afghanistan.

The next year, he was sent out again, this time to Iraq, part of a Special Operations team.

In the next two years, he was sent to Iraq again. And again.

He thought he was done. But now, the Army wants Sgt. Botta one more time.

The 26-year-old Port St. Lucie man has been ordered to report to Fort Jackson, S.C., on July 15 for his fifth deployment. And that has compelled Botta, a first-generation American who counts himself a quiet patriot, to do something he never thought he'd do: sue the Army.

''I'm proud of my service,'' he said. ``I never wanted it to end like this.''

Nearly seven years into his eight-year commitment to the reserves, the personal costs are higher for Botta. He could lose his home. His job at Sikorsky, working on the Black Hawk military helicopter, could be on the line. He's halfway to his electrical engineering degree, planning a career in defense work, but his professors say he'll suffer a significant setback if he is deployed. He doesn't mention the danger another deployment would bring, but his wife and parents do.

''I'm proud of being in the Army,'' he said. ``They taught me responsibility. They taught me maturity. And they gave me a good toolbox of technical skills to work with. I think I'd be more valuable to my country at this point by being here, getting my degree and working at Sikorsky.''

In a lawsuit he expects to file this week in federal court in Florida, Botta says he will ask for an exemption or delay so that he can complete his engineering studies. He will also ask the court to prevent the Army from requiring him to report for duty until the legal questions are settled.

His attorney, Mark Waple -- a West Point graduate and former military judge advocate who practices in Fayetteville, N.C. -- says Botta's case shows that the Army is inconsistent in its decisions when selecting reservists for involuntary mobilization, over and over.

''This is an arbitrary decision by the Army Human Resources Command with no rational basis,'' Waple said.
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US soldier killed at Afghan base

A US soldier injured after an Afghan soldier opened fire on Monday inside a military base in western Herat province has died, the US-led coalition says.

A coalition spokesman said three other Afghan soldiers and a civilian were killed immediately in the shooting.

Twelve others were injured, including the coalition soldier who later died.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6288180.stm

Elusive Victory
In the first post-9/11 battlefield, the challenges remain complex—and deadly
By Anna Mulrine
Posted 7/8/07

HELMAND PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN—From a lookout near a local prison, soldiers point toward the horizon and a wide swath of lush grass and palm trees that runs along the banks of the Helmand River. They have dubbed it "the Green Zone," an appellation that bears more than a trace of irony. This is not the sort of semisafe haven that the term conjures up in Iraq—it is the hiding place of the Taliban, a base for attacks and ambushes.

(USN&WR)

Now that opium poppy harvesting season is over, the Taliban, preoccupied with the drug trade in recent months, has lately gotten back to the business of fighting in this southern part of the country. "We've seen more ambushes, more deliberative attacks," says U.S. Col. Michael Clancy, who heads up training for Afghan security forces in Kandahar—best known as the stronghold and onetime home of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. And the attacks are increasingly sophisticated. "They know tactics. Some of their ambushes are classic, with kill zones and crossfire," Clancy adds. "They'll do coordinated attacks to hold a force so they can't respond—they'll do RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] in the front and back, then small arms fire out the wazoo. It gets pretty sporty down here."

Trust matters. Sporty is a soldierly understatement, but repulsing these attacks is the sort of dangerous work troops here are trained to do, they add, and they do it well. In any head-to-head confrontation with the Taliban, U.S. soldiers and their partners in the International Security Assistance Force tend to win handily. But the problems that most threaten the country today aren't often the sort the military can solve. Warlords jockeying for power in the national government. Rumors of corruption and drug trafficking involving high-level officials, including the brother of the president (true or not, officials say, they erode popular trust in the government). And low salaries for Afghan security forces that drive them to earn their money elsewhere—often by extracting bribes, occasionally by providing freelance muscle to the highest bidder.

Other tensions within the country have been exacerbated by the casualties of daily fighting. What soldiers here call the vital "third dimension"—the use of air power—wins battles with the Taliban but is not helping with the elusive war for hearts and minds. A spate of civilian deaths in recent months has angered Afghans and spurred President Hamid Karzai to accuse forces here of being careless and indiscriminate. According to the United Nations mission in Kabul, some 600 Afghan civilians have been killed this year, more than half of them by Afghan or international forces.

This has prompted arguments among senior U.S. military officials about how best to handle such incidents—and has drawn criticism from America's partners along the lines that more coordination and less high-altitude bombing might help avert such incidents. American military officials tend to privately point out that they might not have to rely quite so heavily on air power if NATO allies here would fulfill their troop commitments.

All sides can, however, agree that these are pivotal times for a country on the brink. "In Afghanistan, we face a choice between audacious success and dismal failure," says Ronald Neumann, who finished up a tour as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in May. The outcome hinges on the government having a wide measure of popular support—what Neumann calls "the rough equivalent of democracy." To that end, there are new efforts underway to root out corruption—much of it inextricably linked with the booming drug trade-as well as to promote national reconciliation efforts to bring some former Taliban officials to the table, even into government.

Frustration. In essence, it comes down to convincing the Afghan people that their government can protect and provide for them. "It's not that the people despise the government," Said Jawad, Afghan ambassador to the United States, tells U.S. News. "But they are frustrated by the fact that the government can't deliver." They still widely back the international troop presence, according to polls showing 80 percent support. But while Afghans are optimistic about their future, they are not quite as optimistic as before: Some 44 percent say their country is headed in the right direction, versus 64 percent in 2004. And while they say life is better today, it is not, they add, as good as it should be after six years of international attention. Half say they are more prosperous than they were under the Taliban; one quarter say they are less so.

Such economic factors are key, particularly when it comes to the Afghan security forces. In the training classes for new police recruits in Kandahar, there is frequent talk of salaries, with the topic woven into the day's lecture on "how to be a good person." On the blackboard at the front of the room are some figures. The first is 3,575. "This is my salary," says the instructor, pointing to the number of Afghanis, the country's currency, that he earns each month-about $72. He gestures toward another figure, 5,000, or about $100. "This is my house payment." Another police instructor notes, "We have children, we take out loans—and we will take from the people that money, like thieves." But he drives home the impact of such graft. "If we take from the people," he says, "our country will never change." And so, he says, the police "sell their belts, their uniforms." In the previous months, others left to harvest opium poppies and never returned.

Then there are those in the employ of warlords. Clancy discovered a number of them when his first class of recruits showed up for training last year. "They were half militia," he says—working for the governor and one of the major drug lords down south. Of the 327 men who came for training, many had visible needle marks and "glassed-over" eyes, signs of drug use. "So we asked them, 'What are you doing here?' And they said, 'Because the governor told me to be here.'" The trainers kept roughly 175 for the first class and ran them through a boot camp so tough that "a couple of the guys hid in the latrine," says Clancy, afraid, he adds, that their drill sergeant "was going to kill them."

But the sway of local warlords, some of whom are now government officials, remains strong. And charges of corruption abound. It has long been rumored that President Karzai's brother, the head of the provincial council in Kandahar, is involved in the drug trade. It is a charge that senior U.S. military officials say they have yet to see any solid evidence to support. "I think if President Karzai had it, he'd find it an intolerable situation," said a senior U.S. military official. Ambassador Jawad says that he has urged Karzai "to make this rumor into a case—or definitely say it's not true." Part of this, he adds, involves "helping to trace" large transfers of funds from Kabul to Dubai. An Afghan Ministry of Interior spokesman says there is no doubt that some high-level officials are involved in the drug trade and that the government is investigating.

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The mortars story is here - Al Aswat is a quite reliable independent Iraqi news service.

Main and Central
Of course, if the road supply routes were interrupted for some reason (violence being the most obvious) more than water would become scarce. Fresh food would quickly disappear. Most of the larger US bases look like a suburban mall, with Wendy’s or Burger Kings, Kentucky Fried Chicken stores, and even ice cream outlets. Much the same fare is available in the official mess halls, operated by KBR, a division of Mr Cheney’s Halliburton. I certainly don’t begrudge the troops anything, but this sort of home-style sustainment has a portion of the $12 Billion we’re spending each month. These little bits of home are operated and supplied by contractors and our grandchildren will be footing the bill when the Japanese and Chinese ask for payment. The troops could get along on MREs but it wouldn’t quite be the same. Say what you will about MREs, they do provide a balanced, if unexciting diet. The right calories to sustain a soldier in the field, low fat and high protein. And therein lies part of the problem about bringing America to Iraq.

BAGHDAD — When Spc. Matthew Curll left basic training for Iraq nearly a year ago, he traded a bland diet of MREs for burgers, pie and Fudgsicles.

"You go from a lot of MREs and crappy stuff at the mess hall to prime rib on Sundays," said Curll, 21, of Lancaster, Mass., over a dinner of baked chicken followed by ice cream in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

"I wasn't expecting it at all," added Spc. Joe Reen, 23, of Norwood, Mass., finishing a turkey wrap and green salad. "You wanted to try everything."
…
The Army has loaded the menu at the 70 chow halls, run by contractor KBR, with a buffet of fattening fare, from cheese steaks to tacos and Rocky Road ice cream. Many soldiers gain more than 15 pounds on a deployment, military dietitians say. They are also seeing soldiers return from Iraq with higher cholesterol, mostly due to their eating habits.

It’s probably true that the weight gains are more with base-bound troops rather than grunts going out every day or two, carrying 80 pounds of armor and combat gear in 120 degree heat. You’re not likely to put on poundage under those conditions unless you live on Haagen Dazs in the FOB.

So, water and food could become a problem. But there are other areas of concern.

Newshoggers takes a look at another vital logistical item that could be in short supply if we ever lost control of the supply routes.

The US Army and Marine Corps are massive users of supplies hauled a long distance from secure rear area bases, up the roads to large consolidated logistics bases, and then spoked and hubbed out to the forward operating base camps. Here the last few gallons of the barrel that started in Kuwait are poured into the tank or MRAP or the base generator that powers the radios. Fuel and easy access to fuel is ultimately one of the American military's great force multipliers and core competencies.

Noah Schactman over at Wired's Danger Room is a good (but slightly old) graph of where one particular type of fuel for daily operations in Iraq comes from.

Notice how there are only three entry points, and one, with approximately 15% of the total load is coming in from Turkey and travels through Kurdistan before reaching major US bases. As Cernig noted yesterday, there are 140,000 Turkish troops ready to invade northern Kurdistan, so I have severe doubts about the willingness of Turkish civilian truck drivers to drive through Kurdistan if the Turkish Army crosses the border in sustainable force.

Another 15% or so of the fuel comes in through the Anbar desert which right now is slightly safer than it has been over the past couple of years, but it is still one of the leading areas of insurgent activity. The last major route with 70% of the throughput is the Kuwait City to Baghdad route. USA Today notes that convoy busting is becoming a popular activity among insurgents, militias, and criminal gangs in the south.

Just keep this in mind --- if the fuel supply lines are cut, the US Army and Marines are immobile and operationally useless....

Actions against convoys have more than tripled in the last year. These convoys are protected by some of the more than 160,000 contractors in Iraq. No one really knows for certain, but it’s estimated there are about 30,000 armed civilian contractors in Iraq, with about 4,000 of them being Westerners, perhaps 15,000 Iraqis and the rest from other countries.

It has been noted that the US forces in Iraq don’t have the manpower to protect their own convoys.

Green Zone mortar barrage kills 3 - Iraqi police

BAGHDAD, July 10 (Reuters) - A big mortar and rocket attack on Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone compound on Tuesday killed two Iraqis and a Filipino and wounded 25 other people, Iraqi police said.

Police said some 30 mortars and rockets were fired at the compound, which houses the Iraqi government along with the U.S. and British embassies. It was one of the biggest barrages against the zone since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

A U.S. embassy spokesman said he was not aware of anyone getting killed, adding there had been around a dozen explosions inside the zone, which covers a large area of central Baghdad and is bounded on one side by the Tigris river.

Reuters reporters saw smoke rising in the vicinity of the U.S. embassy just after the strike.

Police said many of the wounded were Iraqis. Contractors of numerous nationalities work inside the compound, often employed by security companies.

Mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone are common but militants have stepped up their strikes in the past few months.

The United Nations, in a recent report in which it complained about the mounting risks of operating in the Green Zone, said there were almost daily attacks and 26 people had been killed between mid February and late May.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L10931429.htm

Iraqi police assisted gunmen in Karbala attack

By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
A previously undisclosed Army investigation into an audacious January attack in Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers concludes that Iraqi police working alongside American troops colluded with insurgents.
The assault on the night of Jan. 20 stunned U.S. officials with its planning and sophistication. A column of SUVs filled with gunmen who posed as an American security team passed through Iraqi police checkpoints at a provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city.

ASSAULT IN KARBALA: Insurgents familiar with compound

Within a few minutes, the attackers killed one American, wounded three and abducted four. The captives were later found shot to death; the gunmen escaped.

"(The American) defense hinged on a level of trust that … early warning and defense would be provided by the Karbala Iraqi police. This trust was violated," the report dated Feb. 27 says.

The information is contained in an investigative file made available to USA TODAY and authenticated by the Army.

The attack has drawn special scrutiny from Pentagon officials because of the unprecedented breach of security and the insurgents' tactics.

The investigation reveals several new details about the assault, including:

•Iraqi police suddenly vanished from the government compound before the shooting started.

•Attackers, evidently briefed on how U.S. forces would defend themselves, bottled up more than three dozen soldiers in a barracks and headquarters complex using a combination of smoke and fragment grenades and satchel charges to blow up Humvees.

•Gunmen knew exactly where to find and abduct U.S. officers.

•Iraqi vendors operating a PX and barbershop went home early.

•A back gate was left unlocked and unguarded.

Investigators recommended several changes to toughen defensive positions, including the installation of closed-circuit cameras to provide better early warnings, "duress devices" that can allow overrun outposts to signal headquarters, and requirements that any arriving convoy provide identification.

This month, Army officials publicly alleged that Iran played a direct role in the Karbala attack.

The Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards, helped plan and direct it with Iraqi militants, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a military spokesman, said at a news conference.

The Quds Force, he said, supplied Shiite militias with weapons and up to $3 million a month in aid.

Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group, is also working in Iraq and training militia groups, Bergner said.

The Iranian involvement in the Karbala attack may have even included planning with the Iraqi police who had colluded with the attackers.

Several U.S. troops who survived the attack later told investigators that they believe some gunmen were allowed to blend in among Iraqi police inside the headquarters compound hours before the assault, according to interviews included in the report.

"It appears an inside assault force was pre-staged," the report says.

American soldiers also told investigators that, as the assault ended, they saw an Iraqi police commander in the complex talking on his cellphone and laughing.

The infiltration of local police units by sectarian militias "remains a significant problem," according to a Pentagon status report on Iraq issued in June.

Such collusion is almost unavoidable, experts say.

"There's no way you can fight this kind of war without significant problems with infiltrators. It was a major problem in Vietnam. It was a major problem in Korea. It's a problem in any kind of campaign where you are working closely with local forces," says Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst and Iraq expert withthe Center for Strategic and International Studiesin Washington.

more with links

July 11, 2007

The New York Times

Interviews with US veterans show for the first time the pattern of brutality in Iraq
The Independent, By Leonard Doyle, July 12

Washington - It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances.

That perception will take a severe knock today with the publication in The Nation magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the US. In the interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity.

The report steers clear of widely reported atrocities, such as the massacre in Haditha in 2005, but instead unearths a pattern of human rights abuses. "It's not individual atrocity," Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. "It's the fact that the entire war is an atrocity."

A number of the troops have returned home bearing mental and physical scars from fighting a war in an environment in which the insurgents are supported by the population. Many of those interviewed have come to oppose the US military presence in Iraq, joining the groundswell of public opinion across the US that views the war as futile.

===

The Nation: The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness

AP, By Anne Flaherty, July 12

WASHINGTON (AP) - With both houses of Congress debating war-related legislation, lawmakers on Thursday awaited the Bush administration's assessment Thursday of political, economic and military progress made by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.

Administration officials said in advance the report concludes that the Iraqis have failed to pass long-promised laws that the administration has called key to national cohesion and economic recovery, such as legislation that would fairly divide Iraq's oil resources.

But officials said the report also would show progress in several areas, such as a drop in sectarian killings in Baghdad and opposition to al-Qaida terrorists by tribal sheiks in Anbar province.

Predictably, Democrats say the findings are proof the war effort is failing, while Republicans say the limited progress shows hope and that lawmakers should not lose faith.

Boehner, R-Ohio, made his ``wimps'' remark in a private meeting Wednesday with rank-and-file Republicans - ironically at nearly the same moment that several GOP senators beseeched the White House without apparent success for a quick change in course on Iraq.

reuters also reporting a british soldier was killed today

12 July 2007, 10:52 GMT 11:52 UK

Afghanistan hit by twin attacks

At least eight people - six Afghan policemen and two civilians - have been killed in two bomb explosions in Afghanistan, police say.

The policemen were killed in the eastern province of Khost, when a roadside bomb detonated near their vehicle patrolling with foreign forces.

There are no reports of any casualties among soldiers in the convoy.

Two civilians were killed when their vehicle was bombed in neighbouring Paktika province, Nato officials say.

'Tip of the spear'

Correspondents say this year the south and east of Afghanistan have seen the worst violence since 2001.

The police said additional troops had been sent to the area of the Khost attack for search operations.

Neither Nato nor US-led military forces have commented on the Khost attack, and it is not clear to which organisation the foreign troops belonged.

Reports quoted a Taleban spokesman as saying they were responsible for the attack.

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Kabul says that both Khost and Paktika share long borders with Pakistan and both have been hit hard by insurgency-related violence.

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U.S. Troops Raid Shiite District

Thursday July 12, 2007 3:46 PM

By HAMED AHMED

Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD (AP) - U.S. troops raided a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad on Thursday in a hunt for militiamen linked to Iran, sparking exchanges of fire and a mortar attack. Officials said 19 people were killed, and residents said some of the casualties were caused by U.S. helicopter fire.

The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the violence in the eastern Amin district of the capital.

The violence began with a pre-dawn raid by U.S. forces that the military said captured two militants involved in kidnappings and planting roadside bombs against U.S. and Iraqi troops. Militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the troops, hitting a nearby building, the military said.

U.S. troops later surrounded the neighborhood, announcing via loudspeakers to residents that they were seeking militants and that they should stay inside, said an Iraqi police official who was at the scene. As the Americans withdrew around 11 a.m., they came under fire, prompting troops to move back into the district, assaulting several buildings, the official said.

The result was an exchange of fire that included mortars and rockets, the official said. Residents - many of them Shiites who fled to Baghdad from Baqouba, where U.S. forces have been waging a three-week-old offensive - said that during the fighting, a U.S. helicopter hit several residential buildings and a minibus.

AP Television News video showed buildings riddled with holes from heavy machine guns and rockets, and a heavily damaged minibus.

Another police official involved in compiling casualties said 19 people were killed and 20 wounded, a toll confirmed by officials from the three hospitals where the victims were taken. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

An Iraqi photographer and driver employed by Reuters news agency were killed Thursday in eastern Baghdad, the London-based agency said. The hospital officials said the two Reuters staffers - identified as photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40 - were among the 19 dead in Amin.

``The cause of their deaths was unclear, although witnesses spoke of an explosion in the area,'' Reuters said. ``Iraqi police said either a U.S. airstrike or a mortar attack had occurred.''

U.S. and Iraqi forces have been cracking down on Shiite militants even as they wage offensives in and around Baghdad aimed at uprooting Sunni insurgents and extremists from al-Qaida in Iraq. The campaign seeks to reduce violence in the capital to boost the government as it tries to push through political reforms.

The military said the two captured militants belonged to Iranian-backed ``special groups'' linked to the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The U.S. has accused Iran's Revolutionary Guards of organizing and arming a network of the special groups to carry out attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and kidnappings.

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WaPo, By Bob Woodward, July 12

Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House.

For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one panel member called a "Churchillian" vision of "victory" in Iraq and defend the country's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. "A constitutional order is emerging," he said.

Later that morning, around the same conference table, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group. Hayden said "the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around," according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

"The government is unable to govern," Hayden concluded. "We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function."

Later in the interview, he qualified the statement somewhat: "A government that can govern, sustain and defend itself is not achievable," he said, "in the short term."

ALISSA J. RUBIN | Baghdad | July 12

NYT - Clashes in a southeastern neighborhood here between the American military and Shiite militias left at least 16 people dead on Thursday, including two Reuters journalists who had come to the area to cover the turbulence, according to an official at the Interior Ministry.

There were conflicting reports of how the two Reuters staffers, both of them Iraqis, were killed. Eyewitnesses said they died when troops on an American helicopter shot into an area where the two had just gotten out of their car, according to a photographer who arrived at the scene shortly after their bodies were taken away.

The two Reuters employees were a photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and a driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.

_{"George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," Shmuley Boteach}

NYT - Khalid W. Hassan, 23, an interpreter and reporter in the Baghdad bureau of The New York Times, was shot and killed today, the bureau chief, John F. Burns, reported. He was the second Iraqi employee of the Times to be killed during the current conflict.

Khalid Hassan, who worked for The New York Times, was killed in Baghdad today.

Mr. Hassan was shot in the Saidiya district of south central Baghdad while driving to work under circumstances that remain unclear, Mr. Burns said. He had called the bureau earlier and said his normal route to the office had been blocked by a security checkpoint.

_{"George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," Shmuley Boteach}

'Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active and 98 per cent passively sympathetic'

The Independent, Robert Fisk, Bastille Day (July 14)

Back in 1929, Lawrence of Arabia wrote the entry for "Guerrilla" in the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is a chilling read - and here I thank one of my favourite readers, Peter Metcalfe of Stevenage, for sending me TE's remarkable article - because it contains so ghastly a message to the American armies in Iraq.

Writing of the Arab resistance to Turkish occupation in the 1914-18 war, he asks of the insurgents (in Iraq and elsewhere): "... suppose they were an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. The Arabs might be a vapour..."

How typical of Lawrence to use the horror of gas warfare as a metaphor for insurgency. To control the land they occupied, he continued, the Turks "would have need of a fortified post every four square miles, and a post could not be less than 20 men. The Turks would need 600,000 men to meet the combined ill wills of all the local Arab people. They had 100,000 men available."

Failure in Afghanistan risks rise in terror, say generals

Military chiefs warn No.10 that defeat could lead to change of regime in Pakistan

Nicholas Watt and Ned Temko
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer

Britain's most senior generals have issued a blunt warning to Downing Street that the military campaign in Afghanistan is facing a catastrophic failure, a development that could lead to an Islamist government seizing power in neighbouring Pakistan.

Amid fears that London and Washington are taking their eye off Afghanistan as they grapple with Iraq, the generals have told Number 10 that the collapse of the government in Afghanistan, headed by Hamid Karzai, would present a grave threat to the security of Britain.

Lord Inge, the former chief of the defence staff, highlighted their fears in public last week when he warned of a 'strategic failure' in Afghanistan. The Observer understands that Inge was speaking with the direct authority of the general staff when he made an intervention in a House of Lords debate.

'The situation in Afghanistan is much worse than many people recognise,' Inge told peers. 'We need to face up to that issue, the consequence of strategic failure in Afghanistan and what that would mean for Nato... We need to recognise that the situation - in my view, and I have recently been in Afghanistan - is much, much more serious than people want to recognise.'

Inge's remarks reflect the fears of serving generals that the government is so overwhelmed by Iraq that it is in danger of losing sight of the threat of failure in Afghanistan. One source, who is familiar with the fears of the senior officers, told The Observer: 'If you talk privately to the generals they are very very worried. You heard it in Inge's speech. Inge said we are failing and remember Inge speaks for the generals.'

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Sunni extremists from Saudi Arabia make up half the foreign fighters in Iraq, many suicide bombers, a U.S. official says.

Los Angeles Times, By Ned Parker, July 15

BAGHDAD — Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.

Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, said the senior U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity. It is apparently the first time a U.S. official has given such a breakdown on the role played by Saudi nationals in Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.

He said 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here as suicide bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis.

The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key ally that at best has not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

The problem casts a spotlight on the tangled web of alliances and enmities that underlie the political relations between Muslim nations and the U.S.

New York Times, By Ismail Khan, July 15

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, July 14 — In the deadliest suicide bombing in Pakistan since January, 24 paramilitary soldiers were killed and 26 other people were wounded Saturday near Miram Shah, the headquarters of the restive North Waziristan’s tribal region.

Rocket attacks on government and security installations surged Saturday in different parts of the North-West Frontier Province. An attempt to detonate a car bomb outside a bank here failed.

The deadly surge in violence occurred barely a day after the Interior Ministry in Islamabad announced the end of Operation Silence after a bloody raid to get at militants holed up in the Red Mosque, known here as the Lal Masjid, and the adjoining seminary.

Marine says beatings urged in Iraq

Witness testifies that officers told troops to 'crank up the violence level' before the slaying of a civilian in Hamandiya.

By Tony Perry, LA Times Staff Writer
July 15, 2007

CAMP PENDLETON — A Marine corporal, testifying Saturday at the murder trial of a buddy, said that Marines in his unit began routinely beating Iraqis after being ordered by officers to "crank up the violence level."

Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo said Marines in his platoon, including the defendant, Cpl. Trent D. Thomas, were angry when officers criticized them as not being as tough as other Marine platoons.

"We're all hard-chargers, we're not there to mess around, so we took it as an insult," Lopezromo said.

Within weeks of allegedly being scolded, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night to find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamandiya near the Abu Ghraib prison. The Marines and corpsman were from 2nd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment.

Lopezromo said their target was known to his neighbors as the "prince of jihad" and had been arrested several times, only to be released by the Iraqi legal system.

Unable to find their target, the Marines and corpsman dragged another man from his house, fatally shot him, and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it look like he had been killed in a shootout, according to court testimony.

Four Marines and the corpsman, initially charged with murder in the April 2006 killing, have pleaded guilty to reduced charges and been given jail sentences ranging from 10 months to eight years. Thomas, 25, from St. Louis, pleaded guilty but withdrew his plea and is the first defendant to go to court-martial.

"We were told to crank up the violence level," said Lopezromo, who testified for the defense. He indicated that during daily patrols the Marines became much rougher with Iraqis. Asked by a juror to explain, he said, "We beat people, sir."

Lopezromo said he believed that officers knew of the beatings, and he suggested that the order to get tough soured him on the Marine Corps.

Lopezromo, who was not part of the squad on its late-night mission, said he saw nothing wrong in what Thomas and the others did.

"I don't see it as an execution, sir," he told the judge. "I see it as killing the enemy."

He added that Marines, in effect, consider all Iraqi men as part of the insurgency. "Because of the way they live, the clans, they're all in it together," he said.

In August, Lopezromo and two other Marines were charged with assaulting an Iraqi two weeks before the killing that led to charges against Thomas and the others. Charges against all three were dropped.

Thomas' attorneys have portrayed him as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury from his combat duty in Fallouja in 2004. Also, they have sought to convince the jury that Thomas believed he was following a lawful order to get tougher with suspected insurgents.

Prosecution witnesses testified that Thomas shot the 52-year-old Iraq at point-blank range after he had already been shot by other Marines and was lying on the ground.

Lopezromo said a procedure called "dead-checking" was routine. If Marines entered a house where a man was wounded, instead of checking to see whether he needed medical aid, they shot him to make sure he was dead, he testified.

"If somebody is worth shooting once, they're worth shooting twice," he said.

Marines are taught "dead-checking" in boot camp, the School of Infantry at Camp Pendleton, and the pre-deployment training at Twentynine Palms called Mojave Viper, he said.

Other Marines testified that Thomas was emotionally shaken by the deaths of Marines during the fighting in Fallouja in late 2004. After the death of Lance Cpl. George Payton, "he broke down and cried, he was angry, the usual effect when you lose a friend," Staff Sgt. Gage Coduto said.

Coduto said many Marines had difficulty adjusting to a change in the of rules of engagement from the Fallouja battle to places such as Hamandiya.

"It took a lot of patience for guys to bring it down a notch," he said.

The jury comprises three officers and six enlisted personnel, all of whom have served in Iraq. The trial resumes Monday.

24 Iranian prisoners escape, 7 Iraqis killed in Baghdad (Roundup)

Jul 15, 2007, 14:15 GMT
DPA

Baghdad - Twenty-four Iranians being held in an Iraqi prison near the border with Iran succeeded in escaping Saturday night, the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) reported Sunday.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, seven Iraqis were killed in three incidents on Sunday and two US servicemen were killed in two separate incidents the previous day.

VOI cited a security source in Wassit province, 180 kilometres south-east of Baghdad, as reporting the prison escape, and said that police had managed to recapture four.

The source, who declined to be identified, told VOI the 24 Iranians had broken through the prison's main gate to make their escape.

The report said a search for the escaped prisoners was underway and a state of siege declared in the area of Badra, 80 kilometres east of the Wassit capital of Kut.

Badra lies on the border with Iran. The Iranian escapees were all being held for allegedly having entered the country illegally.

Meanwhile a car bomb explosion ripped through Liberation Square in downtown Baghdad on Sunday afternoon, killing three persons and wounding four others, a security source who spoke on condition of anonymity told VOI.

The source said the number of victims would most likely rise. It was not immediately known whether the vehicle loaded with explosives was detonated by means of remote control or by a suicide bomber.

'The blast has also caused severe damage to a number of nearby civilian vehicles,' the source told VOI. Liberation Square is Baghdad's biggest and most central square located in the Rasafa part of the city on the eastern banks of the River Tigris.

In western Baghdad' Bayaa district, at least four people, including two Iraqi servicemen, were killed and a number others wounded in two separate incidents Sunday.

In the first attack armed men opened fire near a mosque, killing three people, including a policeman, and wounding of many others.

The second attack by unidentified gunmen targeted and killed an Iraqi police lieutenant, a police source told VOI. The source, who declined to be identified, said the police lieutenant was just getting off from work when he was shot and killed.

The first attack caused the closing down of the main road linking the two districts of Bayaa and Jihad, forcing most residents to stay at home, witnesses told VOI.

Reports said that local residents of the two districts appealed to security authorities to find them a safe alternative to the main road so that they could resume their normal lives.

Local residents of al-Jihad district told VOI that public transport drivers went on strike and picketed Iraqi army headquarters, calling for protection from sniper attacks.

Afghan president pardons failed suicide bomber boy
Sun 15 Jul 2007 4:51 AM ET

By Jon Hemming

KABUL, July 15 (Reuters) - A 14-year-old would-be suicide bomber from Pakistan, caught while on a mission to blow up an Afghan provincial governor, was pardoned on Sunday by President Hamid Karzai.

Taliban insurgents and their al Qaeda allies have launched a wave of suicide attacks against Afghan, NATO and U.S.-led forces in the last two years, seeking to show the government and its Western allies are incapable of providing security.

Most of the victims are Afghan civilians.

The first whiskers of a moustache on his top lip, Rafiqullah stood to one side of the Afghan president, his father, with a full beard, stood to the other, at a ceremony in the capital on Sunday.

Rafiqullah's father, a poor tradesman from South Waziristan in Pakistan, had sent his son to a religious school, or madrassa, to learn the Koran. Later, when he asked where his son was, the teachers there brushed him off, he said.

Then last month, the 14-year-old was caught wearing a suicide vest on a motorbike in the eastern Afghan city of Khost.

"Today we are facing a hard fact, that is a Muslim child was sent to madrassa to learn Islamic subjects, but the enemies of Afghanistan misled him towards suicide and prepared him to die and kill," Karzai told reporters, his arm on the boy's shoulder.

The boy and father bowed their heads as Karzai spoke.

"His family thought their child was learning Islamic studies. That is not his fault, nor his father's, the enemies of Islam wanted him to destroy his life and those of other Muslims. I pardon him and wish him a good life," the president said.

"You are now free and forgiven by the people of Afghanistan," he said turning to the boy and smiling.
more

Robot air attack squadron bound for Iraq

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent2 hours, 50 minutes ago

The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It's outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there's no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.

The arrival of these outsized U.S. "hunter-killer" drones, in aviation history's first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.

That moment, one the Air Force will likely low-key, is expected "soon," says the regional U.S. air commander. How soon? "We're still working that," Lt. Gen. Gary North said in an interview.

The Reaper's first combat deployment is expected in Afghanistan, and senior Air Force officers estimate it will land in Iraq sometime between this fall and next spring. They look forward to it.

"With more Reapers, I could send manned airplanes home," North said.

The Associated Press has learned that the Air Force is building a 400,000-square-foot expansion of the concrete ramp area now used for Predator drones here at Balad, the biggest U.S. air base in Iraq, 50 miles north of Baghdad. That new staging area could be turned over to Reapers.

It's another sign that the Air Force is planning for an extended stay in Iraq, supporting Iraqi government forces in any continuing conflict, even if U.S. ground troops are drawn down in the coming years.

The estimated two dozen or more unmanned MQ-1 Predators now doing surveillance over Iraq, as the 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, have become mainstays of the U.S. war effort, offering round-the-clock airborne "eyes" watching over road convoys, tracking nighttime insurgent movements via infrared sensors, and occasionally unleashing one of their two Hellfire missiles on a target.

more

found via Ten Percent

July 16, 2007
Mistrust as Iraqi Troops Encounter New U.S. Allies

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
NASR WA SALAM, Iraq, July 10 — Abu Azzam says the 2,300 men in his movement include members of fierce Sunni groups like the 1920s Revolutionary Brigade and the Mujahedeen Army that have fought the American occupation. Now his men patrol alongside the Americans, who want to turn them into a security force that can bring peace to this stretch between Baghdad and Falluja.

A few miles away, in the town of Abu Ghraib, Brig. Gen. Nassir al-Hiti and his brigade of Iraqi Army soldiers also have the support of the American military. But they have a different ambition, some American commanders here say: doing everything they can to undermine Abu Azzam’s men, even using a stolen membership list to single them out for wrongful detention.

General Nassir, a 37-year-old former special forces officer, denies that, but says he has strict orders not to support “unofficial” groups and to arrest armed men, no matter who they are. He says he supports those who join the security forces but objects to “those who have Iraqi blood on their hands and who kill our soldiers.”

The gulf between Abu Azzam’s men and the Iraqi soldiers remains vast, with American troops sometimes having to physically intercede. And it is an unmistakable caution that the full depths of the problems facing Iraq cannot be measured in the statistics about insurgent attacks and sectarian killings that carry so much weight in Washington.

The United States has placed great hope in its deepening ties with Sunni leaders like Abu Azzam who have vowed to fight Islamist militants. But his mostly Sunni group, the Volunteers, is different from the American-allied tribes in the Sunni heartland of Anbar Province, in part because it patrols only 40 minutes from central Baghdad and close to large Shiite districts. So American commanders view this as a crucial test case for whether Shiite leaders will tolerate new alliances with Sunni groups.

If General Nassir’s unit, the Muthanna Brigade, is any indication, the outlook is not promising, said Lt. Col. Kurt Pinkerton, a 41-year-old California native who has spent the past months cultivating his relationship with Abu Azzam.

About a month ago, the Iraqi brigade, which is predominantly Shiite, was assigned a new area and instructed to stay away from Nasr Wa Salam, Colonel Pinkerton said. But he said he believed that the Iraqi soldiers remain intent on preventing Sunni Arabs, a majority here, from controlling the area. He cites a pattern of aggression by Iraqi troops toward Abu Azzam’s men and other Sunnis, who he believes are often detained for no reason.

Recently, and without warning, Colonel Pinkerton said, 80 Iraqi soldiers in armored vehicles charged out of their sector toward Nasr Wa Salam but were blocked by an American platoon. The Iraqis refused to say where they were going and threatened to drive right through the American soldiers, whom they greatly outnumbered.

Eventually, with Apache helicopter gunships circling overhead and American gunners aiming their weapons at them, the Iraqi soldiers retreated. “It hasn’t come to firing bullets yet,” Colonel Pinkerton said.

A few weeks ago, he said, a Sunni detainee was beaten to death while in custody of the Muthanna Brigade. And in the past year, he said, Muthanna soldiers detained two of Abu Azzam’s brothers, both of whom said they were abused, and raided Abu Azzam’s house.

Colonel Pinkerton’s experiences here, he said, have inverted the usual American instincts born of years of hard fighting against Sunni insurgents.

“I could stand among 1,800 Sunnis in Abu Ghraib,” he said, “and feel more comfortable than standing in a formation of Iraqi soldiers.”

much more

"additional troops"?

The only source I can see is to commit all troops not already engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan to Surge II, and to keep them there until they become casualties or until the occupation ends.

That would do wonders for performance, morale and recruitment.

Hell, the squids are just riding around on ships all day, let's make them riflemen. Coasties too.

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}

Death by treachery
By Richard Mauer | Anchorage Daily News

Five U.S. soldiers were killed in a brazen attack in January, when Iraqi militants dressed like Americans stormed a compound in Karbala. Questions about who paid for and trained the attackers, and who betrayed the Americans, continue to bedevil U.S. commanders. » Part One

very detailed