nice find from cernig at Newshoggers

Gulf War POWs push for Iraqi reparations

By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Jan 25, 2008 14:30:59 EST
Army Times

U.S. veterans of the 1991 Gulf War who were captured and tortured by Iraqi forces are renewing their efforts to get President Bush to relent and allow them to pursue damages against the Iraqi government that were awarded by a federal court in 2003.

Bush vetoed the 2008 defense authorization bill Dec. 28 over a provision that, in essence, would allow former prisoners of war to sue Iraq for damages for their torture while in captivity. Bush claimed that enacting the provision would, among other things, “allow plaintiffs’ lawyers to tie up billions of dollars in Iraqi funds for reconstruction that our troops in the field depend on to maintain security gains.”

According to a Dec. 28 report in Congressional Quarterly, Bush issued his veto after lawyers for the Iraqi government threatened to withdraw $25 billion worth of assets from U.S. banks if the provision was allowed to become law.

The American POWs were granted damages by a U.S. federal district court in July 2003. But earlier that year, after signing a bill that allowed Americans to collect court-ordered damages from the frozen assets of terrorist states — a list that included Iraq at that time — Bush had confiscated what was then $1.7 billion in Iraqi assets held in private banks. He allowed the payment of two judgments, including one for so-called “human shield” hostages held by Iraq in 1990, but none for the Americans taken prisoner in the 1991 Gulf War.

Two of the former POWs, their attorneys and Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, made the case for a reversal of the Bush administration’s position at a Friday morning news conference in Washington.

“We are not here … to criticize the president of the United States,” said John Norton Moore, one of the attorneys and a former U.S. ambassador and counselor on international law for the State Department. “We are here, however, to call attention to a shameful failure by the administration with respect to the treatment of American prisoners of war tortured by Iraq — a failure which we firmly believe is a matter of national honor, with serious implications for our military, and particularly for future American POWs held by the enemy.”

“I was stunned and shocked and outraged and ashamed when I read why the president was choosing to veto this important bill,” Braley said. “This is outrageous, and we’re going to do something about it.”

Braley said he is about to introduce a bill, tentatively titled The Justice for Victims of Torture and Terrorism Act, that would point out that the U.S. is a signatory to Article 131 of the third 1949 Geneva Convention, which essentially states that no country or entity “shall be allowed to absolve itself or any other” country or entity “of any liability incurred by itself or by another” country or entity regarding violations of the convention. A separate bill is being co-sponsored by Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., who was invited to the news conference but could not attend.

Braley said that provision “prohibits the United States from absolving the government of Iraq of any liability incurred due to the torture of prisoners of war, such as these Gulf War POWs,” regardless of the fact that the Saddam Hussein regime that committed the torture is no longer in power in Iraq.

Despite Bush’s public comments, Moore said he didn’t know why the administration would balk at the provision. “What I am certain of, it’s not about money. ... I’ve been told by the staff of a number of committees of the Congress that that’s not the issue. There’s plenty of money.”

The court awarded $959 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the 17 POWs — some of whom remain on active duty today and are serving in Iraq, according to attorney Tony Onorato — and 37 of their family members.

Critics who say the veterans and spouses are only seeking to cash in on their misfortune “couldn’t be more wrong,” said retired Navy Capt. Larry Slade, a former F-14 pilot who was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on Jan. 22, 1991, captured and beaten black and blue throughout his 43 days of captivity. “Most of us wore the uniform for the majority of our adult lives. And all of us faced danger and hardship for service, not money.

“What we seek now is justice under the law – and a strong message to our future enemies that our nation will not tolerate abuse and torture of prisoners of war,” he said. “We cannot expect change if we as a nation refuse to take a stand.”

U.S. Cannot Manage Contractors In Wars, Officials Testify on Hill
Problem Is Linked to Lack of Trained Service Personnel

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 25, 2008; A05

With even more U.S. contractors now in Iraq and Afghanistan than U.S. military personnel, government officials told Congress yesterday that the Bush administration is not prepared to manage the contractors' critical involvement in the American war effort.

At the end of last September, there were "over 196,000 contractor personnel working for the Defense Department in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Jack Bell, deputy undersecretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness.

Contractors "have become part of our total force, a concept that DoD [the Defense Department] must manage on an integrated basis with our military forces," he also said in prepared testimony for a hearing yesterday of the Senate homeland security subcommittee. "Frankly," he continued, "we were not adequately prepared to address" what he termed "this unprecedented scale of our dependence on contractors."

Stuart W. Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, and William M. Solis, director of defense capabilities and management for the Government Accountability Office, testified that not enough trained service personnel are available to handle outsourcing to contractors in the wars.

Solis said a military officer with a Stryker brigade deployed in Iraq had told the GAO about a contractor that had mishandled security screenings of Iraqis and foreigners. In the end, Solis said, the officer used his own personnel to accomplish the task, diverting staff from "their primary intelligence gathering responsibilities."

Retired Army Gen. David M. Maddox, who has studied the contracting effort in Iraq as a member of an Army-appointed commission, said in his statement that it "has not fully recognized the impact of a large number of contractors" and "their potential impact to mission success."

Maddox said the Army had five general officer positions for career contracting professionals in 1990 but has none today. The two-star general who runs the Joint Contracting Command for Iraq/Afghanistan, Maddox said, is an Air Force officer.

Maddox added that 3 percent of Army contracting personnel are active-duty and that the acquisition workforce shrunk by 25 percent from 1990 to the end of fiscal 2000. While the contracting workload has increased sevenfold since 2000, he said, about half of the military officers and Army civilians in the contracting field "are certified for their current positions."

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I've another one for you Tina,

"The US has suffered more than 72,000 battlefield casualties since the start of the war on terror in 2001, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

The query by the campaigning Veterans for Common Sense organisation shows that 4372 American soldiers have died and another 67,671 have been wounded in action, injured in accidents or succumbed to illness in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The veterans' group had to force the US Defence Department to release the figures by persuading judges to uphold their FoI rights.

A second request to the Veterans' Administration, the government-funded body responsible for taking care of ex-servicemen and women, showed 263,909 soldiers with experience of the two 21st-century wars have so far received treatment for everything from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to the aftermath of amputated limbs.

It also showed 52,375 veterans had been diagnosed with PTSD and 34,138 have received approval for disability claims for the psychological disorder. As of October 31 last year, 1.6 million Americans have been deployed overseas since 2001.

Harvard University estimates the cost of caring for Iraq and Afghan veterans over the next 40 years will amount to between £125bn and £350bn, depending on the long-term effects of trauma."

Regards, C

by Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail

BAQUBA — Broken promises have brought a dramatic increase in anti-U.S. sentiment across the capital city of Iraq’s Diyala province.

Many people in Baquba, capital of Diyala 40 km northeast of Baghdad, had supported U.S. forces when they ousted former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. But failed reconstruction projects and muddled policies mean the U.S. has lost that support.0125 04

“The Americans based their strategy in Iraq on certain Shias here who have direct enmity with Sunnis and allegiance to Iran,” resident Ayub Ibrahim told IPS. “This was the source of the gap between certain Shias which the U.S. backs, and certain Sunnis they back.” Shias and Sunnis are different sects within Islam.

The U.S. has also alienated people through its policy of extensive detentions. Many believe that raids that lead to arrests are based on motivated information given to the U.S. military by Shia militiamen who have infiltrated the Iraqi army and police.

“We never witnessed an attempt to arrest Shia people either by the U.S. army or the Iraqi police and army,” resident Abdul Sattar al-Badri told IPS. Most people see no reasonable basis for many of the arrests.

In November the International Committee of the Red Cross said that around 60,000 people are currently detained in Iraq.

“The Americans occupied our country and put our men in prisons,” Dhafir al-Rubaiee, an officer from Iraq’s previous army told IPS. “The majority of these prisoners have been arrested for nothing other than for being Sunni. Every one of these prisoners has a family, and these families now have reason to hate Americans.”

Others blame the lack of security and the destroyed infrastructure for the increasing anti-U.S. sentiment.

“The lack of security is a direct result of the occupation,” resident Abu Ali told IPS. “The Americans crossed thousands of miles to destroy our home and kill our men. They are the reason for all our disasters.”

Another resident, speaking on condition of anonymity added, “We lived in need during the period of the Saddam government, but we were safe. We were compelled to work sometimes 20 hours a day to earn our living, but we were happy to see our children and relatives together.” U.S. forces, he said, have ended all that.

Abu Tariq believes the U.S. military intentionally destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure. “The Americans destroyed the electricity, water pumping stations, factories, bridges, highways, hospitals, schools, buildings, and opened the borders for strangers and terrorists to get easily into the country,” he said.

The large number of Iraqis killed by U.S. forces has also hardly endeared the forces to the people
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BOOK REVIEW
Black turbans rebound

Shortly after the overthrow of the Taliban government in the twilight of 2001, the new Afghan dispensation began facing a vigorous insurgency that buried hopes of stability and peace. While the American military was triumphantly announcing the demise of the Taliban, their trademark black turbans were back in view by 2003 and spread into the south and east of Afghanistan over the next four years.

In a revelatory new book, Antonio Giustozzi of the London School of Economics analyzes the violence, its perpetrators and their backers. Though the author does not underestimate the role of Pakistan in the renewed activity of the Taliban, he emphasizes that internal weaknesses of the Afghan state opened the window for the insurgents to establish themselves deep inside Afghanistan and pose a serious challenge.

Compared to the old Taliban movement of 1994-2001, the new insurgents have less orthodox attitudes towards imported technologies like video production. By 2005, some district commanders were equipped with laptops, despite the scarcity of electricity. The neo-Taliban have no qualms in exploiting free-market principles for military operations. They protect opium traffickers' convoys in exchange for favors and pay non-hardcore members by piece work, such as firing a rocket or carrying out an assassination. By late 2006, their commanders were even relaxing harsh imposition of their infamous moral codes.

Giustozzi partially attributes the re-entry of the Taliban to the feebleness of President Hamid Karzai's administration, which is geared to accommodating tribal strongmen and warlords rather than to building a professional bureaucracy. Corruption, infighting and arrogance among provincial authorities delegitimize the government and open space for the Taliban to re-emerge. For instance, the abuses of Helmand's governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, turned an uncommitted population into Taliban sympathizers by 2006. Harsh methods of the government's intelligence service drive many into the lap of the insurgency. The general weakness of the provincial administration alienates tribal elders who otherwise resent the Taliban's impudence.

Despite persistent efforts of the US and Afghan governments, Pakistan has arrested just a handful of Taliban on the whole. Under pressure to cooperate, Islamabad deports hundreds of suspects of little value to Afghanistan. Giustozzi cites evidence that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) protects Taliban leaders and bases "by keeping away unwanted presences" and allowing free passage of insurgents across the border.

"Cool" ISI advisers may be helping the Taliban develop aspects of strategy like bomb attacks. Some dissenting Taliban members accuse the ISI of forcing attacks on schools and development projects to undermine the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

By consensus, Afghans believe that "the Pakistani state is behind the Taliban" and resent Washington's failure to curb this sponsorship. While the total number of Taliban forces was around 17,000 men by 2006, it was supplemented by 2,000 "international volunteers" (affiliated to al-Qaeda) and a whopping 40,000 "Pakistani Taliban". More than 20% of total insurgent losses in the new Afghan jihad are "Pakistani martyrs".
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I am part of a group blog that does daily updates on what is happening in Iraq - the blog is Iraq Today at http://warnewstoday.blogspot.com

This blog is a continuation of the blog Today In Iraq, which was started in June 2003.

I also keep a blog of photos from Iraq - called Faces of Grief. The photos are from the AP, and the ones above will be added soon.
http://facesofgrief.blogspot.com

WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (IPS) - As President George W. Bush seeks to deeply entrench U.S. military forces in Iraq, the Congress and foreign policy pundits are looking beyond his term and debating the future of U.S. foreign policy there.

Violence is down in Iraq, and Bush hopes to use the apparent success of his surge strategy to solidify the relationship that he has laid out with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. For Bush, that constitutes a longstanding commitment to Iraqi security.

But there is concern among the Democrats that Bush is trying to shore up an Iraq policy within which the next president will be forced to operate.

In November, Bush and Maliki signed a declaration of principles around which an agreement is to be negotiated by July. The agreement is meant to replace the United Nations mandate -- set to expire next December -- which allows foreign troops on Iraqi soil.

With many cheerleaders of the war, such as Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, calling for an extended U.S. troop presence in Iraq, the security aspect of the agreement will set policy beyond the next president's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009.

Democrats have been railing against the idea that Bush is in a position to make these commitments. Presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both say they will pursue legislation requiring President Bush to seek congressional approval for the Iraq status of forces agreement, and a joint subcommittee meeting was convened on the topic Wednesday in the House of Representatives.

"The next president is going to inherit a situation where, maybe if they're lucky, there has been enough peace in the meantime for political progress to be made," said Phillip Gordon of the Brookings Institution at an event there. "But more likely is that any of these factors that I mention leads to a situation in which the president is actually faced with the dilemma that we've been facing for the past four years, which is 'Is it worth it?'

"Is it worth it in the context of opportunity costs, which are two billion dollars a week, American lives, American reputation in the world and so on?"

The event at Brookings, called "Iraq: An Assessment of Policy Options in 2008," assembled policy experts to discuss a comprehensive U.S. strategy in Iraq -- figuring out what's working and what's not.
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WASHINGTON -- An expensive Army effort to retain young officers with big cash bonuses has fallen short of its target, underscoring the military's continuing struggle to recruit and keep troops.

The program persuaded 11,933 captains to commit to additional Army service, short of the 14,184 goal. The military will pay out more than $349 million in bonuses to the officers who took the incentives.

All told, 67.6% of those eligible for the program -- which offered officers cash bonuses of as much as $35,000, the ability to choose their next assignment or military-funded graduate school -- agreed to serve an additional one to three years in the Army. The military had hoped that 80.5% of the eligible captains would extend their time in the Army.

The shortfall shows how difficult it is for the Army to keep young soldiers worn down by multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, a problem fueling the debate over whether the Bush administration has pushed the military to the breaking point.
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Afghanistan has made it clear it does not want Paddy Ashdown to be the new United Nations envoy to the country.

The British peer served as the UN's High Representative and EU envoy to Bosnia from 2002 to 2005.

The Afghan ambassador to the UN told the BBC that while Lord Ashdown was held in high regard, he was not Kabul's preferred candidate.

Zahir Tanin said Afghanistan's choice would be General John McColl, Nato's deputy commander in Europe.

The British general served as the first head of the international security force in Afghanistan in 2002.

Mr Tanin said the Afghan government had been surprised to see Lord Ashdown being portrayed in the British media as the final choice for the post.

Lord Ashdown has not commented on the Afghan remarks.

'Negative atmosphere'

"A negative atmosphere was generated through the media inside and outside Afghanistan, particularly in Britain, which hit a lot of nerves and paved the way for misunderstanding and concerns," Mr Tanin told the BBC.

He said Afghanistan's new preferred candidate was "another British respected figure, General McColl".

"It was about thinking who is going to be more helpful and who is going to be more able to work with the Afghan government and with different elements of the international community in Afghanistan," said Mr Tanin.

Strained relations

The dispute over the appointment comes at a time of strained relations between Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and the West, says the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, James Robbins.
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After two years in which the violence in Afghanistan has become worse, it is hard to see signs of hope in 2008.

The detailed new international commitments, and promises of more money, put forward at the London Conference in January 2006, made little headway as the war against the Taleban went into a new phase.

In the south, mainly British and Canadian forces have sustained far more casualties during this period than earlier, as they have fought for control of the Pashtun heartland.

In the east, US forces have been trying to contain the insurgency in the giant White Mountain range, hampered by a porous border to the Taleban recruiting grounds in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province on the other side.

Development assistance that matters, and the normal business of government, are difficult to provide in these areas.

To fill the vacuum the military have been taking an increasing role in providing aid; a task that they are not trained nor equipped for.

Taleban gains

Failure to bring other meaningful development means that tactical victories, such as the symbolically important capture of the town of Musa Qala in northern Helmand, have little value in the overall counter-insurgency campaign.
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OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed not to let politics dictate his government's decision on the future of the Afghanistan war on Friday, but continued to defer a clear response to the hard-hitting report on the mission by the Manley panel.

"The Manley panel report is a good report-strong, balanced and realistic. I urge you all to read it," Harper said in a campaign-stylespeech to commemorate his government's second year in power.

"Friends, let me just say this: on a matter of national and global security like this, we will never make a decision based on polls. We will make our decision based on what is right."

The prime minister's remarks come as analysts continue to digest a report on the war by a panel headed by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley. The report recommends extending the mission beyond the current expiration date of February 2009, provided Canada can convince its allies to commit more troops. But the report also criticizes the government's management of the mission and urges Harper to take a more active diplomatic role.

Despite his comments, Harper largely steered clear of addressing Afghanistan, an issue sure to be in the spotlight when Parliament resumes Monday. He did not comment on the brewing controversy over the government's decision to halt the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities.

Instead, the prime minister boasted of his government's record at cutting taxes, reducing Canada's debt, cracking down on crime and strengthening national unity. Harper said it is impossible to predict the timing of the next election, but vowed that his party will "run on our record" when the time comes.

Harper sprinkled his speech with references to his government's ability to manage the economy, another sign that he sees the risk of a downturn as a key issue in the months to come.
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Dion reveals he was briefed about detainee-policy change weeks ago, says Tories must have known, too

The Afghanistan prisoner controversy exploded yesterday on the Harper Conservatives with Liberal leader Stéphane Dion's revelation that he was briefed weeks ago that Canada had stopped transferring battlefield detainees to Afghan custody.

Mr. Dion's disclosure came as the Afghan detainee affair rippled overseas to NATO headquarters, where Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has asked Canada to explain its Nov. 6 decision to quietly suspend handing over detainees captured by the Canadian Forces to the Afghan government.

That detainee policy shift -- publicly disclosed this week in a Justice Department letter -- appears to contravene NATO's guidelines that Afghan detainees must be transferred within 96 hours.
Liberal leader Stephane Dion speaks to reporters at Parliament Hill, Friday.

"This came as something of a surprise to us," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said from Brussels yesterday.

"The policy that we have was developed with a very clear idea in mind and that is: this is a sovereign country in which we are invited guests. Therefore, it is not for us as NATO to create a separate parallel detention system."

While the issue left Canada's military allies scratching their heads, it left Liberals fuming about a coverup, as they accused the Conservatives of hiding important facts about the conduct of the war in Afghan-istan from Canadians.
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WASHINGTON – A group of American Iraq War veterans and other demonstrators gathered at the Canadian Embassy in Washington today to demand that the Canadian government allow hundreds of U.S. resisters to the Iraq conflict to remain in Canada.

The protesters presented a letter, addressed to Ambassador Michael Wilson, to an embassy representative. The letter asks the Canadian government not to allow the deportation of U.S. soldiers who have fled to Canada to avoid serving in Iraq.

Geoff Maillard, president of the Washington, D.C., chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, says the group was able to hand over both the letter and a supporting petition containing thousands of names.

Maillard says the Canadian government requires the U.S. soldiers who have to fled to Canada to go through a refugee process, but the refugee board refuses to consider the question of whether the Iraq war is legal.

He says that argument is central to the war resisters' claim that they are fleeing a conflict that "clearly violates" the Geneva Conventions' ban against wars of aggression.

A spokesman for a group called the War Resisters Support Campaign said it has organized rallies and other events for Saturday in several Canadian cities, including Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver. Source

TBI task force identifies shortfalls in care

By Gina Cavallaro - Army Times Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Jan 27, 2008 9:03:54 EST

The report can be seen online at http://www.armymedicine.army.mil/news/news.html.

An Army report on the cause, diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injuries among soldiers and Marines who have been in combat cited a number of gaps in services and care for those suffering TBI.

One in five soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq and Afghanistan may have suffered mild TBI, the task force estimated, and some may not be aware they need treatment.

“Many of the mild cases are overlooked,” Brig. Gen. Donald Bradshaw, commander of the Southeast Regional Medical Command and chairman of the TBI Task Force, said Jan. 17 at a press conference to release the report.

The task force of 17 medical professionals, writers and researchers from the Army, Marine Corps and Air Force conducted a review of policies governing TBI patient care, including diagnosis, education, research and case management.

The study was conducted between January and May. Task force members visited dozens of sites in the U.S., Germany and Puerto Rico, where they interviewed soldiers, family members, caregivers and TBI experts in and out of the military system.

Though the task force found that the Army has made important progress in the identification and treatment of severe or penetrating TBI, the mild form of the injury, similar to a concussion with symptoms such as headache, sleeplessness or grogginess, has been harder to detect and catalog.

Troopers exposed to blasts are checked immediately after the event in theater through a standardized test called the military acute concussion evaluation, a screening tool that uses a series of questions and observations by medical personnel to make an initial evaluation.

Among the shortfalls found by the task force was that identification and documentation of TBI was not standardized across the Army, nor were educational tools for soldiers, leaders and family members.

The task force also found “inefficient communication among levels of care” and within records-keeping systems, “which places an undue burden on family members to play the role of record keeper, communicator, advocate, and case manager.”

The task force proposed a number of steps to improve the screening and treatment of TBI cases.

The report can be seen online at http://www.armymedicine.army.mil/news/news.html.

Return to Fallujah

Three years after the devastating US assault, Patrick Cockburn enters this besieged Iraqi city to find it left without clean water, electricity and medicine, its streets still looking as if the fighting had finished only a few weeks ago.

Canada threatens to pull troops from Afghanistan

28 Jan 2008 18:42:04 GMT
Source: Reuters

(Recasts lead, adds details, comments)

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Canada will pull its 2,500 troops out of Afghanistan early next year unless NATO sends in significant reinforcements, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday, signaling Ottawa has lost patience with what it sees as foot-dragging by allies.

Harper, who wants the soldiers to stay longer than their current withdrawal date of February 2009, said NATO's failure to station enough forces in Afghanistan meant the whole future of the organization was under serious threat.

He said he accepted the recommendations of an independent panel which last week urged Canada to end its mission in the southern city of Kandahar unless NATO provided an extra 1,000 troops as well as helicopters and aerial reconnaissance vehicles.

"For this mission to go forward and achieve its objectives and be successful, we do have the need for a substantial increase in combat troops and particular needs in terms of military equipment," Harper told a news conference.

"Both of those recommendations will have to be fulfilled or Canada will not proceed with the mission in Afghanistan. We believe these are essential to our success."

Canada is exasperated at the refusal of many other NATO nations to commit more troops to Afghanistan, in particular to southern areas where the Taliban is strong.

So far, 78 Canadian soldiers and a diplomat have died since Ottawa deployed troops to Afghanistan in 2002. Polls show Canadians are split over the wisdom of the mission.

"NATO's reputation is on the line here ... all the increasing evidence suggests that NATO's efforts in Afghanistan as a whole are not adequate, but particularly in Kandahar province," Harper said.

"Canada has done what it said it would do and more. We now say we need help. I think if NATO can't come through with that help, then I think -- frankly -- NATO's own reputation and future will be in grave jeopardy."

Harper, saying he was "always optimistic on these things", said he would raise Canada's demand for more troops with its allies before NATO leaders hold a summit in the Romanian capital Bucharest in early April.

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N28481627.htm

How come the media doesn't give us reports about the accomplishments of our fine military overseas? Just be patient and let these trained professionals get the job done right.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,326065,00.html
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/01/the-final-missi.php

FALLUJAH, Iraq — Michael J. Totten is an independent journalist reporting on the war in Iraq. Here is a portion of his latest journal entry provided exclusively for FOXNews.com.

Click here to visit Michael J. Totten's Web site.

At the end of 2006 there were 3,000 Marines in Fallujah. Despite what you might expect during a surge of troops to Iraq, that number has been reduced by 90 percent. All Iraqi Army soldiers have likewise redeployed from the city. A skeleton crew of a mere 250 Marines is all that remains as the United States wraps up its final mission in what was once Iraq's most violent city.

“The Iraqi Police could almost take over now,” Second Lieutenant Gary Laughlin told me. “Most logistics problems are slowly being resolved. My platoon will probably be the last one out here in the Jolan neighborhood.”

“The Iraqi Police in Jolan are very good,” Second Lieutenant Mike Barefoot added. “Elsewhere in Fallujah they're not as far along yet. Theoretically we could leave the area now and they would be okay, except they would run out of money.”

RelatedStories
Iraq Journal: A Plan to Kill Everyone Iraq Journal: The Best Police Force in Iraq Iraq Journal: The Peace Corps With Muscles Iraq Journal: Al Qaeda Lost Iraq Journal: Anbar Awakens, Part II Iraq Journal: Anbar Awakens, Part I Iraq Journal: The Future of Iraq Iraq Journal: How to Spy in Iraq There's more to the final mission than keeping the Iraqi Police solvent, however. The effort is focused on the Police Transition Teams. Their job is to train the Iraqi Police and bring them up to international standards so the locals can hold the city together after the last Americans leave.

A senior Marine officer whose name I didn't catch grilled some of his men during a talk in the Camp Fallujah chow hall after dinner.

“Do you trust the Iraqi Police?” he said to a Marine who works on one of the teams.

“No, sir,” the Marine said without hesitation. That was the only acceptable answer. This was a test, not an inquiry.

“Why not?” the officer said.

“Because they're not honest,” the Marine said.

“What do the Iraqi Police watch?” the officer said. “What are they looking at on a daily basis?”

“Us,” said several Marines in unison.

“They will emulate you, gents,” the officer said. “They. Will. Emulate you. Why? Because we came over here twice and kicked their ass. I do not trust the Iraqi Police today. Our job is to get them up to speed. They don't need to be up to the standard of Americans. But they do need to be better than they are right now.”

The Marine Corps runs the American mission in Fallujah, but some of the Police Transition Team members are Military Police officers culled from the Texas National Guard. “We're like the red-headed stepchild of units,” one MP told me. “We're from different units from all over Texas, as well as from the Marine Corps.”

One Texas MP used to be a Marine. “I decided I would rather defend my state than my country,” he said jokingly. “But here I am, back in Iraq.”

After I adjusted my embed to focus specifically on Police Transition Teams, I was nearly surrounded by young men from Texas. Many seemed to instinctively understand Fallujah's infamous provincial “nationalism.”

“Fallujah pride is like Texas pride,” I heard from several MPs who, unlike Iraqis from Baghdad, didn't think that was a bad t

Page 1 of 2
A bitter taste to Iraqi reality
By Dahr Jamail

This March 19 will be the fifth anniversary of the shock-and-awe air assault on Baghdad that signaled the opening of the invasion of Iraq, and when it comes to the American occupation of that country, no end is yet in sight. If Republican presidential candidate John McCain has anything to say about it, the occupation may never end. On January 7, he assured reporters he was more than fine with the idea of the US military remaining in Iraq for 100 years. "We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea 50 years or so ... As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. That's fine with me."
He said nothing, of course, about Iraqis "injured or harmed or

wounded or killed". In fact, amid the flurries of words, accusations and "debates" which have filled the airways and add up to the primary-season presidential campaign, there has been a near thunderous silence on Iraq lately - and especially on Iraqis.

A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll indicated that 64% of Americans now feel the war in Iraq was not worth fighting. American opinion on the war and occupation, in fact, seems remarkably unaffected by the positive spin - all those "success" stories in the mainstream media - of these post-"surge" months. The media now tell us Iraq is going to be taking a distinct backseat to domestic economic issues, that Americans are no longer as concerned about it.

Once again, with rare exceptions, that media have had a hand in erasing the catastrophe of Iraq from the American landscape, if not the collective consciousness of the public. What, it occurred to me recently, do my friends and acquaintances back in Iraq (where I covered the occupation for eight months during the years 2003-2005) think not just about their lives and the fate of their country, but about our attitudes toward them? What do they think about the "success" - and the silence - in America?

On October 6, 2004, President George W Bush proclaimed: "Iraq is no diversion; it is the place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror - and we must not waver."

Iraqis, of course, continue to witness firsthand this "decisive stand against chaos and terror". In our world, however, they are largely mute witnesses. Americans may argue among themselves about just how much "success" or "progress" there really is in post-"surge" Iraq, but it is almost invariably an argument in which Iraqis are but stick figures - or dead bodies. Of late, I have been asking Iraqis I know by email what they make of the American version (or versions) of the unseemly reality that is their country, that they live and suffer with. What does it mean to become a "secondary issue" for your occupier?

much more

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-latiniraq28jan28,0,509677.story
From the Los Angeles Times

Iraq contractors tap Latin America's needy

Thousands with limited opportunities at home are lured by pay; but for some who are injured or disabled, the cost his high.

By Patrick J. McDonnell
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

January 28, 2008

LIMA, PERU — Sometimes he wakes up with a shudder, thinking he needs to take cover, fast. At other moments he dreams he's running and the mortar shell strikes again, fiery shards of metal ripping through his flesh.

"I take pills to help me sleep," Gregorio Calixto says, proffering a box of cheap over-the-counter medication, the only kind he can afford.

In the United States, Calixto might be under treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in Iraq, receiving daily physical therapy and counseling. Here he's an unemployed street vendor, renting a spartan room and struggling to recover physically and emotionally from severe shrapnel wounds.

He is one of several thousand Latin Americans who have taken jobs with U.S. contractors as security guards in Iraq and Afghanistan. About 1,200 Peruvians are in Iraq, mostly guarding sites in Baghdad's Green Zone. Chileans, Colombians, Salvadorans and Hondurans have also served as part of the polyglot assemblage providing "conflict labor" in U.S. war zones.

Although most appear to have returned to Latin America safely and with enough cash to buy houses, taxis and businesses, others, such as Calixto, have been unlucky: seriously injured in Iraq and left to negotiate a labyrinthine and what he terms inadequate U.S. insurance system.

The primary recruiter here, Triple Canopy, a Virginia-based firm founded by U.S. Special Forces and Delta Force veterans, defends its practices. Peruvians are treated no differently from U.S. employees, the company says, and 85% sign up for extensions.

"We believe that Triple Canopy has developed a fairly sophisticated model for managing third-country national security guard forces," Mark DeWitt, the company's senior director of government affairs, said in a statement.

The Latin American recruits are mostly former soldiers and police officers, many with experience fighting leftist rebels.

"They know that we come from a military tradition, that we are disciplined," says Norman Solano, 46, a strapping veteran of Peru's 1980s campaign against Maoist guerrillas who spent more than a year as a security guard in Iraq.

The Peruvians aren't among the $500-plus-a-day hotshots who escort U.S. and allied convoys, such as the Blackwater USA guards facing accusations of shooting first and asking questions later. Those top-end guns-for-hire typically come from the U.S. or Britain.

Rather, the Peruvians and others from developing nations are rent-a-cops, staffing checkpoints and guard towers and keeping alert. Many never fire their weapons.

Triple Canopy says no foreign national working for the firm has been killed in Iraq but declined to provide data on Latin Americans injured there. Two company officials who asked not to be named, however, said about a dozen Peruvian guards had been injured by "indirect fire" (mortar shells or rockets). The worst injury, the officials said, was suffered by a Peruvian who lost an eye. The noncombat casualties included one man who died of a heart attack and another who succumbed to leukemia shortly after being sent home.

For Latin American recruits, the pay is the major lure.

The Peruvian employees typically earn about $1,000 a month; $900 is wired to personal bank accounts, while $100 "spending money" is parceled out in Iraq. All expenses, including room and board and travel, are paid. They work six-day shifts.

It's a hard-to-match deal for ex-soldiers and cops with little education. Some returnees even describe the postings nostalgically as a kind of dream job, despite the dangers, bouts of boredom, time away from family and scorching summers.

"I just wish I could go back," says Solano, who, like Calixto, served from 2005 to 2007 as part of a detail of Peruvians protecting the U.S. mission in the southern city of Basra. "I never ate so much. We had salmon, meat, rice, every day! And dessert! Some of us got fat. We had to work out in the gym to keep the weight off."

Since returning to Peru more than a year ago, Solano has struggled to find steady work. He said his request to return to Iraq has been rejected because of a "stress" condition he developed there, resulting in shortness of breath.

"I'd rather die in a war than die of hunger in my own country," Solano says, taking a break from his current job guarding an outdoor municipal pump from thieves in the northern harbor city of Chimbote, a town reeking with the pungent aroma of fish-meal processing plants.

"Iraq was a good time for me," says Solano, a father of twowho now earns about $200 a month, though he hasn't been paid in two months.

Calixto, 27, a former sergeant in Peru's army and the seventh of 11 children, was selling cigarettes and sweets from a pushcart when he heard from a relative that a U.S. firm was seeking recruits for Iraq. He applied at the downtown office of a Triple Canopy subcontractor and was hired the next day, signing a one-year contract.

"I figured I'd be able save some money to study when I came back," says the soft-voiced Calixto, who would like to learn English and become an accountant someday.

He completed his year's contract in November 2006 and says he gladly accepted a four-month extension, at a significant raise -- $1,600 a month.

His luck ran out Jan. 7, 2007. The familiar screech of incoming sent everyone scrambling.

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Think tank: ‘Surge’ now needed in Afghanistan

By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jan 29, 2008 20:53:43 EST
Stars and Stripes

The American Enterprise Institute, the think tank that came up with the “surge” strategy for Iraq, has just completed a re-evaluation of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and concluded that another surge of U.S. forces is required, this time into southern Afghanistan.

AEI gathered at least “two dozen” experts for three days of discussions that finished Sunday, according to a Washington source familiar with the proposal. The AEI team was headed up by resident scholar Fred Kagan and included “many of the previous participants” from the discussions that preceded AEI’s Iraq surge proposal, including retired Army Gen. John M. “Jack” Keane, the source added.

In a telephone interview, Kagan said AEI did not conduct the study at the administration’s request. While a “core group” of AEI employees worked on both studies, along with a small number of retired Army officers, “otherwise the personnel were [experts on] Afghanistan instead of Iraq,” Kagan said.

“Our goals are just to take a look at this obviously very important issue, understand it and make recommendations about what should and should not be done,” he added.

The Iraq strategy of surging some 30,000 additional troops to conduct counterinsurgency operations in the Baghdad area, implemented by the administration early in 2007, closely tracked the recommendations made in a paper authored by Kagan and titled “Choosing Victory – a Plan for Success in Iraq.” The paper was based on the work of an ad-hoc collection of experts gathered by AEI and called the “Iraq Planning Group.”

AEI is referring to the Afghanistan policy experts who met over the long weekend as the “Afghanistan Planning Group.” Kagan said he planned to publish a report based on the group’s findings in March.

The Bush administration has given signs recently that it is becoming increasingly concerned about security in southern Afghanistan, where North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies provide the bulk of the coalition’s combat power. A Jan. 16 Los Angeles Times article quoted Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticizing those allies — without naming them — for not following proper counterinsurgency approaches.

But the White House has apparently come to the conclusion that trying to shame the allies into providing more troops and fighting harder is not working, and that more drastic steps might be required, according to the Washington source

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this is all too convenient All the recent press stories and posturing and all being played out to allow Bush to do a little democracy spreading in Pakistan...which will make Afghanistan and Iraq look like cakewalks.

Pakistani Taliban warlord arises as terrorist leader
By Saeed Shah and Tim Johnson | McClatchy Newspapers

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The shadowy new terrorist leader who's being blamed for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto embodies a growing threat to the U.S.-backed Pakistani government, to America's supply line to Afghanistan and to the Bush administration's hopes for tracking down Osama bin Laden and defeating al Qaida.

A few months ago, few Pakistanis and even fewer Americans had heard of Baitullah Mehsud, and there are no pictures of the face of the Pashtun-speaking tribal chief from the rugged border area with Afghanistan. But in December, he was chosen to lead the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, a nascent Islamist insurgent coalition on Pakistan's northwestern frontier that preaches a radical form of Islam and opposes nuclear-armed Pakistan's secular regime.

According to Pakistani authorities, Mehsud is behind the murderous bomb attacks that have shaken the country in the last year. They also accuse him of ordering the Dec. 27 killing of Bhutto, a charge that the CIA has backed up. Mehsud has denied any role.

So many accusations have been hung around Mehsud's neck that some observers question whether he can be so powerful. Others say his brutal rise is only beginning.

Mehsud operates from South Waziristan, within a wild mountainous region bordering Afghanistan that's known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He reportedly commands at least 5,000 armed followers — maybe many more — and models himself on Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of the Afghan Taliban, with whom he acknowledges spiritual links.

Cunning but not well-educated, Mehsud orchestrated the killings of more than 100 maliks — traditional tribal leaders — in his area, many of whom wanted to talk peace with Pakistani authorities. Late last year, he humiliated Pakistan's army by kidnapping 250 soldiers, holding them for weeks and letting them go only in exchange for militants held in Pakistani jails.

In his first television interview, given last week to al Jazeera, Mehsud said his armed militants sought to drive the Pakistani army out of the tribal areas. He acknowledged his links to al Qaida and voiced ambitions beyond Pakistan's borders. Al Jazeera didn't show his face.

"We pray to God to give us the ability to destroy the White House, New York and London," he told the network. "Very soon, we will be witnessing jihad's miracles." He called for a "defensive jihad," asking Muslims from around the world to support his fight.

The apparent success of Mehsud and his allies in Pakistan's tribal badlands has led the Pentagon and the CIA to lobby to be allowed to intervene.

For the last week, Pakistani troops backed by artillery and helicopter gunships have fought Mehsud's men in South Waziristan. On Tuesday, a missile struck a reputed hideout of Pakistani Taliban in a village in North Waziristan, in Pakistan's tribal belt.

Some 40 Pakistani Taliban leaders, representing all parts of the tribal areas and many settled regions in northwest Pakistan, formed the movement known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in December, demonstrating the organization's ambition and reach. The group's spokesman has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on security forces in the area.

President Pervez Musharraf said recently that "most if not all suicide bombings (in Pakistan) can be traced" to Mehsud.

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Study Finds Afghanistan Could Become Failed State
By VOA News
31 January 2008

U.S. experts have warned that Afghanistan risks becoming a failed state if urgent steps are not taken to improve security and reconstruction in the country.

In a report issued Wednesday, former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Marine Corps General James Jones called for NATO to increase troop levels, and for the U.S. government to appoint a special envoy for Afghanistan.

The report warns that reconstruction efforts and civil reforms are seriously threatened by increased insurgent violence, weakening international support, and a lack of confidence among the Afghan people.

Also Wednesday, President Bush spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss Afghanistan. A White House spokesman said the two leaders discussed the requirements to sustain the current mission and how to ensure its continued success.

Canadian officials say Mr. Harper told the president that Canada might remove its troops from Afghanistan next year unless NATO sends in more troops to fight Taliban insurgents.

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Soldier Suicides at Record Level
Increase Linked to Long Wars, Lack of Army Resources

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 31, 2008; A01

Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who was waiting for the Army to decide whether to court-martial her for endangering another soldier and turning a gun on herself last year in Iraq, attempted to kill herself Monday evening. In so doing, the 25-year-old Army reservist joined a record number of soldiers who have committed or tried to commit suicide after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"I'm very disappointed with the Army," Whiteside wrote in a note before swallowing dozens of antidepressants and other pills. "Hopefully this will help other soldiers." She was taken to the emergency room early Tuesday. Whiteside, who is now in stable physical condition, learned yesterday that the charges against her had been dismissed.

Whiteside's personal tragedy is part of an alarming phenomenon in the Army's ranks: Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.

At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

The Army was unprepared for the high number of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued far longer than anticipated. Many Army posts still do not offer enough individual counseling and some soldiers suffering psychological problems complain that they are stigmatized by commanders. Over the past year, four high-level commissions have recommended reforms and Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care, but critics charge that significant progress has not been made.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe stress on the Army, caused in part by repeated and lengthened deployments. Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years. From a suicide rate of 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 -- the lowest rate on record -- the Army reached an all-time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2006.

Last year, twice as many soldier suicides occurred in the United States than in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, the Army's top psychiatrist and author of the study, said that suicides and attempted suicides "are continuing to rise despite a lot of things we're doing now and have been doing." Ritchie added: "We need to improve training and education. We need to improve our capacity to provide behavioral health care."

Ritchie's team conducted more than 200 interviews in the United States and overseas and found that the common factors in suicides and attempted suicides include failed personal relationships; legal, financial or occupational problems; and the frequency and length of overseas deployments. She said the Army must do a better job of making sure that soldiers in distress receive mental health services. "We need to know what to do when we're concerned about one of our fellows."

The study, which the Army's top personnel chief ordered six months ago, acknowledges that the Army still does not know how to adequately assess, monitor and treat soldiers with psychological problems. In fact, it says that "the current Army Suicide Prevention Program was not originally designed for a combat/deployment environment."

Staff Sgt. Gladys Santos, an Army medic who attempted suicide after three tours in Iraq, said the Army urgently needs to hire more psychiatrists and psychologists who have an understanding of war. "They gave me an 800 number to call if I needed help," she said. "When I come to feeling overwhelmed, I don't care about the 800 number. I want a one-on-one talk with a trained psychiatrist who's either been to war or understands war."

Santos, who is being treated at Walter Reed, said the only effective therapy she has received there in the past year have been the one-on-one sessions with her psychiatrist, not the group sessions in which soldiers are told "Don't hit your wife, don't hit your kids" or the other groups where they play bingo or learn how to properly set a table.

much more

A January 21 Los Angeles Times Iraq piece by Ned Parker and Saif Rasheed led with an inter-tribal suicide bombing at a gathering in Fallujah in which members of the pro-American Anbar Awakening Council were killed. ("Asked why one member of his Albu Issa tribe would kill another, Aftan compared it to school shootings that happen in the United States.") Twenty-six paragraphs later, the story ended this way:

The US military also said in a statement that it had dropped 19,000 pounds [8,600 kilograms] of explosives on the farmland of Arab Jabour south of Baghdad. The strikes targeted buried bombs and weapons caches. In the last 10 days, the military has dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of explosives on the area, which has been a gateway for Sunni militants into Baghdad

And here's paragraph 22 of a 34-paragraph January 22 story by Stephen Farrell of the New York Times:

The threat from buried bombs was well known before the [Arab
Jabour] operation. To help clear the ground, the military had
dropped nearly 100,000 pounds of bombs to destroy weapons caches
and IEDs [improvised explosive devices].

Farrell led his piece with news that an American soldier had died in Arab Jabour from an IED that blew up "an MRAP, the new Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected armored vehicle that the American military is counting on to reduce casualties from roadside bombs in Iraq".

Note that both pieces started with bombing news - in one case a suicide bombing that killed several Iraqis; in another a roadside bombing that killed an American soldier and wounded others. But the major bombing story of these past days - those 45,000 kilograms or so of explosives that US planes dropped in a small area south of Baghdad - simply dangled unexplained off the far end of the Los Angeles Times piece; while in the New York Times it was buried inside a single sentence.
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KAPISA, Afghanistan - In the past two years, foreign fighters - Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens and Central Asians - have infiltrated in the direction of Kabul from insurgent redoubts in Pakistan to take up positions in the southern mountains of the country. They trek for days through harsh terrain, dodging road blocks and air strikes.

Their goal: to rally the province's Pashtun minority to fight against the predominantly Tajik north and their Western allies. Even as the Afghan winter reaches its frigid zenith, elite French mountain commandos have been deployed alongside Afghan forces with US back up in an effort to quell the mounting insurgency.

"Southern Kapisa is important for the Taliban and their allies for its proximity to Kabul," said the region's task force commander, US Army Colonel Jonathan Ives. "They have fought pretty hard to keep us from getting back up in there. We see that when a major insurgent financier arrives in an area, the level of insurgent activity spikes," he adds

Taking the fight to the enemy, however, is less about firing off bombs and bullets, says Ives, than about winning over the provinces leaders and its growing young generation.

To undercut the insurgents - whose forces are an unusual mix of al-Qaeda operatives and fighters loyal to American nemesis Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - Kapisa is fast becoming a litmus test for the US military's new and improved counter-insurgency campaign.

That means added urgency and stress on the work of a 75-man US-North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led Provincial Reconstruction Team - or "PRT". But while senior US officers see these teams - 12 of them run by the US military - as the "new wave" in non-combat counter-insurgency, in practice their soldiers look a lot like old-school peacekeepers and "nation-builders", the kind you find across the developing world under the oft-slandered banner of the United Nations.
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Breaking News - Fox and CNN:
However - the circumstances are extremely vague - and western military intelligence are mostly silent. At least there is one less bad guy out there:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,327206,00.html

CAIRO, Egypt — One of Al Qaeda's top commanders in Afghanistan, Abu Laith al-Libi was killed according to a Web site used by militant groups, reported the Washington-based SITE Institute which monitors the internet.

While the claim could not be verified independently, the announcement appeared as a banner in a section of the Web site reserved for affiliated militant organizations.

"As the banner was posted ... by a webmaster of the forum, it seems as if the announcement of his death has been confirmed to the forum administrators," noted SITE in its statement.

Al-Libi was an Al Qaeda training camp leader who has appeared in many Internet videos and who the U.S. says was likely behind the Feb. 2007 bombing at the U.S. base at Bagram during a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney that killed 23 people.

A knowledgeable Western official said that "it appears at this point that Al-Libi has met his demise," but declined to talk about the circumstances. "It was a major success in taking one of the top terrorists in the world off the street," the official said. He added that the death occurred "within the last few days."

Al-Libi was a key link between the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

He was listed among the 12 most-wanted men the U.S. offered a US$200,000 reward for five.

Pakistani counterterrorism officials say al-Libi — "the Libyan" in Arabic language — has served as an Al Qaeda spokesman and commander in eastern Afghanistan. They say they have no information on his current whereabouts.

Al Qaeda's media wing, al-Sahab, released a video interview with a bearded man identified as al-Libi in spring 2007. In it, the militant accused Shiite Muslims of fighting alongside American forces in Iraq, and claimed that mujahideen would crush foreign troops in Afghanistan. Al-Libi made no reference to the Feb. 27 attack at Bagram.

Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, said last year that al-Libi was a guerrilla fighter "knowledgeable about how to conduct suicide bombing missions and how to inflict the most civilian casualties." He had probably directed "one or more terror training camps."

In a tacit admission that terror camps have continued to operate on Afghan soil since the Taliban regime's ouster more than five years ago, Belcher said al-Libi had been the subject of "especially close focus" by U.S. intelligence since 2005, when U.S. forces destroyed a militant training camp believed set up by al-Libi in the eastern province of Khost.

But he described al-Libi as "transient," moving where the Libyan thinks he can count on support.

"Terrorists like al-Libi use the rugged terrain of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to conceal themselves while they plan violent insurgent activities. Our sources indicate that Abu Laith al-Libi favors tribal regions, including North Waziristan," Belcher said.

North Waziristan is a lawless enclave in neighboring Pakistan where last year the Pakistani government reached a peace deal with pro-Taliban militants. U.S. officials have since expressed concern that Al Qaeda could be regrouping in Pakistan's border zone.

Student sentenced to death for downloading a women's rights document from the internet.

And the Afghani Senate upheld the verdict. Let's hear more from the Great Polyp about newfound freedom in Afghanistan. (HT: Chris over at Americablog)

and whether the claim of al-Libi actually bear out, the important issue here is how the recent "pleadings" directed to Musharraf by the Pentagon for Pakistan to support "joint operations" against insurgents targets in Pakistan territory, and how Musharraf "rejected" anew such requests are nothing more than Kabuki theatre. Reuters reports that al-Libi was part of a group of 12 "militants" in a village in North Waziristan that was most likely struck by a (Tomahawk?) missile launched from a Predator drone. Last year, recall that another Predator-launched missile killed at least 18 civilians in Pakistan territory in an ill-gotten attempt to kill AQ "No.2", al-Zawahiri. So, regardless of what the actual status of US "advisors" or infiltrated Spec. Ops units is currently inside Pakisan (overtly or covertly), the US will continue to use air-power at its convenience, Musharraf's or the Pakistani peoples' opinions notwithstanding.

at least a couple I think....

Top al-Qaida Figure Killed in Pakistan

Thursday January 31, 2008 11:01 PM
By ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - One of al-Qaida's top figures, Abu Laith al-Libi, has been killed in Pakistan, an Islamist Web site announced Thursday. Pakistani officials and residents said a dozen people, including seven Arabs, died in a missile strike in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border.

Al-Libi was believed to be the key link between the Taliban and al-Qaida and was blamed for masterminding the bombing an American base while Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting Afghanistan last year. He was listed among the Americans' 12 most-wanted men with a bounty of $200,000 on his head.

Pakistani officials denied any knowledge of al-Libi's death. The killing of such a major al-Qaida figure is likely to embarrass President Pervez Musharraf, who has repeatedly said he would not sanction U.S. military action against al-Qaida members believed to be regrouping in the lawless area near the Afghan border.

A Web site that frequently carries announcements from militant groups said al-Libi had been ``martyred with a group of his brothers in the land of Muslim Pakistan'' but gave no further details.

However, Pakistani intelligence officials and residents said a missile struck a compound late Monday or early Tuesday about 2 miles from the Pakistani town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, killing 12 people, including seven Arabs as well as Pakistanis and Central Asians.

Residents said they could hear U.S. Predator drones flying in the area shortly before the explosion, which destroyed the compound.

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn said the victims were buried in a local cemetery.

Rumors spread Thursday in the border area that al-Libi or his deputy died in the missile strike. But Pakistan's Interior Ministry spokesman, Javed Iqbal Cheema, insisted authorities had ``no information'' indicating al-Libi was dead.

One intelligence official in the area, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the bodies of those killed were badly mangled by the force of the explosion and it was difficult to identify them. The official estimated 12 people were killed, including Arabs, Turkomen from Central Asia and local Taliban members.

In Washington, a Western official said that ``it appears at this point that al-Libi has met his demise,'' but declined to talk about the circumstances. ``It was a major success in taking one of the top terroristst few days.''

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he did not ``have anything definitive'' to say on reports of al-Libi's death.

MORE AT LINK

NYT

February 1, 2008
Kurds’ Power Wanes as Arab Anger Rises
By ALISSA J. RUBIN NYT

BAGHDAD — As a minority group in Iraq, the Kurds have enjoyed disproportionate influence in the country’s politics since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But now their leverage appears to be declining as tensions rise with Iraqi Arabs, raising the specter of another fissure alongside the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites.

The Kurds, who are mostly Sunni but not Arab, have steadfastly backed the government, most recently helping to keep it afloat when Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lacked support from much of Parliament.

With their political acumen, close ties to the Americans and technical competence at running government agencies, the Kurds cemented a position of enormous strength. This allowed them to all but dictate terms in Iraq’s Constitution that gave them considerable regional autonomy and some significant rights in oil development.

But now the Kurds are pursuing policies that are antagonizing the other factions. The Kurds’ efforts to seize control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and to gain a more advantageous division of national revenues are uniting most Sunnis and many Shiites with Mr. Maliki’s government in opposition to the Kurdish demands.

For the United States, the diminution in Kurdish power is part of a larger problem of political divisiveness that has plagued its efforts to build a functioning government in Iraq. While several political parties can come together to address a particular issue, none can seem to form the lasting allegiances needed for actual governance.

The Kurds, with their pro-American outlook, were a natural ally. But now the Americans are increasingly placed in the uncomfortable position of choosing between the Kurds, whom they have long supported and protected, and the Iraqi Arabs, whose government the Americans helped create.

One major Shiite group, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, has not publicly taken sides, but powerful people within the party have been openly critical of the Kurds. Others expressing frustration are leading members of Parliament and Hussain al-Shahristani, the oil minister and a prominent Shiite politician, who calls Kurdish oil contracts with foreign companies illegal.

Humam Hamoudi, a leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, said, “They are no longer the egg in the balance,” using an Arabic proverb that refers to the item that tips the scale. Mr. Hamoudi added, “The Kurds are not so powerful.”

Independent analysts largely back that assertion. “There’s a strong feeling that the Kurds have overreached,” said Joost Hiltermann, a senior analyst for the Middle East at the International Crisis Group who is based in Istanbul.

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At least 72 dead in Baghdad market bombings

Roxanne Escobales and agencies
Friday February 1, 2008
Guardian Unlimited

At least 72 have been killed in separate bomb attacks on popular pet markets in Baghdad, the deadliest bombings in Iraq since the US troops surge in the spring.

A female suicide bomber killed up to 45 people and wounded 78 at the central al-Ghazl pet market at about 10.20am.

A second bomb exploded 20 minutes later at a bird market in the southern part of the capital, killing at least 27 people and wounding 67, Reuters news agency said.

Police blamed either a second female suicide bomber or a roadside explosive device.

The attacks happened shortly before the weekly Islamic call to prayer sounded across the capital.

It was the third bomb in a year to hit the central al-Ghazl pet bazaar. In late November, a bomb hidden in a box of small birds killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens, but it had recently re-emerged as a popular shopping venue as Baghdad security improved and a Friday ban on driving was lifted.

Firefighters scooped up debris scattered among pools of blood, clothing and dead pigeons.

Police initially said the bomb was hidden in a box of birds but one officer, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said police realised it was a suicide attack when they found a woman's head.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2250669,00.html