Sun Jul 27, 2008 4:41am EDT

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A bomb wounded a member of an Iraqi provincial council and killed two of his bodyguards in the city of Falluja on Sunday, in what police said was an assassination attempt.

Zeki al-Mohammedi, a member of the Anbar provincial council and head of the Falluja branch of the Iraqi Islamic Party, escaped with minor wounds when the bomb exploded inside the garage of his home, police said.

"His attackers must have been watching him because he had just stepped into his garage when the bomb went off," police officer Ahmed al-Jumaili said.

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McClatchy, By Leila Fadel, July 27

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. military said Sunday that the three people killed last month after U.S. soldiers shot at their car in one of the most secured areas of Iraq were civilians, not criminals as the military initially reported.

The correction came more than a month after a bank manager at a branch inside the airport, Hafeth Aboud Mahdi, and two female bank employees were shot at by U.S. soldiers as they sped to work on a road within the secured airport compound. The road is used only by people with high-level security clearance badges. The car veered off the road, hit a concrete blast wall and burst into flames.

The original statement said that Mahdi and the two women were "criminals" and that an American convoy on the side of the secured road came under small-arms fire from the vehicle. Soldiers said they shot back. A weapon was found in the debris and two U.S. military vehicles were struck by bullets from the attack, the statement on June 25 said.

"When we are attacked, we will defend ourselves and will use deadly force if necessary," Maj. Joey Sullinger, a spokesman for 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, said in a statement at the time. "Such attacks endanger not only U.S. soldiers but also innocent civilians, including women and children, traveling the roadways of Baghdad."

On Sunday the story changed and the tone was apologetic. A military statement said that neither the civilians who were killed nor the soldiers were at fault for the deaths. An investigation found that "the driver and passengers were law-abiding citizens of Iraq."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080729/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_al_qaida

Study questions US strategy against al-Qaida

By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
Tue Jul 29, 12:32 AM ET

The United States can defeat al-Qaida if it relies less on force and more on policing and intelligence to root out the terror group's leaders, a new study contends.

"Keep in mind that terrorist groups are not eradicated overnight," said the study by the federally funded Rand research center, an organization that counsels the Pentagon.

Its report said that the use of military force by the United States or other countries should be reserved for quelling large, well-armed and well-organized insurgencies, and that American officials should stop using the term "war on terror" and replace it with "counterterrorism."

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests there is no battlefield solution to terrorism," said Seth Jones, the lead author of the study and a Rand political scientist.

But.... but.... but.... that was always the lllllliberal strategy, wasn't it?!?!? It can't possibly be, well, EFFECTIVE, can it?

Damn libs are destroying the perfectly good consensus Bush created on the military-industrial response to al-Quida (oh, and that attempt on Daddy's life) that has served our economy and our standing with the rest of the World so well.

Traitors. You're either with us, or against us. Stop already with the damn studies that try to figure out what'll actually work.

WSJ
By Susan Schmidt and Glenn R. Simpson

Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, according to people with knowledge of the matter and documents outlining possible deals.

Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq's Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents.

US News & World Report

Learning what drives militants away could help officials fight the terrorist group, a new paper says
By Alex Kingsbury
July 16, 2008

When it comes to exploring why people join the ranks of the al Qaeda terrorist network, scholars and intelligence officials have offered a host of possible motivators, ranging from the disenfranchisement of a particular tribe or sect to more general humiliation, marginalization, and alienation from society.
But what prompts a terrorist to quit an organization like al Qaeda?

For L'Houssaine Khertchou, it was $500. The Moroccan, who joined al Qaeda in 1991 and later trained to become Osama bin Laden's personal pilot, eventually turned in his al Qaeda membership card when a bin Laden aide refused to cover the cost of his wife's cesarean section. After another financial dispute, Khertchou had had enough. "If I had a gun, I would have shot [bin Laden] at that time," he later testified.

MORE at the link.

(Uhm, how much money per day is this War on Tourism costing again?)