The Iraq thread 3

[Koolkid101 0]

Why does Bush tell lies ? Saddam never was related to AQ. That has been proven. Why does he repeat that bull over and over ?

Make the mood right for his tumbling reelection plans ?

Kick him out of office. He´s incompetent and a harm to the world, not only to the US.

Oh and these are bad news for the TBA:

U.S. missed chances to stop abuses

Willingly ignoring ? Or don´t they read their post and mails also ?

Quote[/b] ]Pentagon (news - web sites) and White House officials missed numerous opportunities to head off abuses at Iraq (news - web sites)'s Abu Ghraib prison, according to interviews, testimony and public documents that have emerged since the scandal erupted last month.

From red flags raised months ago by prison guards at other facilities in Iraq to letters from lawmakers and non-government groups, the Pentagon and the Bush administration received a variety of complaints many months before the abuses began last fall.

Seven Army soldiers face criminal charges and seven others have been reprimanded in connection with abuse at Abu Ghraib in October, November and December of last year. The scandal, which has spawned six military investigations into misconduct, has damaged American credibility around the world and threatens to undermine the war effort in Iraq.

The missed warnings include reports by the International Committee of the Red Cross and at least one letter from a U.S. senator, concerns raised by military law specialists and commanders, and letters and phone calls from the relatives of U.S. troops serving at other prisons in Iraq.

• Last May, eight high-ranking military lawyers voiced concerns to Pentagon officials and the New York State Bar Association that new interrogation policies developed after the Sept. 11 attacks could lead to prisoner abuses. Scott Horton, former head of the New York Bar's committee on international law, said Thursday that the Army and Navy lawyers told him the new interrogation rules were "frightening" and might "reverse 50 years of a proud tradition of compliance with the Geneva Conventions." Horton said the lawyers came to him because they had been locked out of policy debates while the secret rules were being drafted. "It was a five-alarm fire," Horton said.

• Family members of guards at the Camp Bucca prison in southern Iraq told CBS' 60 Minutes II that they called Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's office repeatedly last year and wrote letters to the White House complaining of conditions at the prison..

• Numerous high-ranking U.S. officials, including Rumsfeld, visited Abu Ghraib last year before the abuses. Although an Army investigation has noted that guards had failed to follow basic procedures - including requirements that the Geneva Conventions' rules for the treatment of prisoners be displayed throughout the prison in English and Arabic - none of the visitors raised questions.

Other military officers began voicing fears about U.S. policies for handling prisoners earlier.

Walter Schumm, a retired Army Reserve colonel who once commanded a military police battalion, warned in an article that the U.S. military was headed for a catastrophe. In an essay published in 1998 in the influential journal Military Review, Schumm wrote that most military officers know very little about legal requirements for handling prisoners.

Schumm went on to write that most MPs designated to handle enemy prisoners of war were reservists with fewer than 50 days of training per year. In a passage that seemed to foreshadow problems at Abu Ghraib, Schumm wrote, "It only takes one improperly trained soldier among a thousand to commit an offense against the Geneva Conventions that would cause our nation considerable embarrassment."

In the past 12 months, independent groups that monitor treatment of prisoners, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), complained about the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. The Red Cross characterized problems as more widespread than just at Abu Ghraib.

Last June, Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., wrote letters to the White House, the CIA (news - web sites) and the Pentagon complaining about the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and "other locations outside the United States."

Leahy wrote that prisoners were being subjected to beatings, lengthy sleep- and food-deprivation, and "stress and duress" techniques. Pentagon and CIA officials wrote back to say the United States was not torturing prisoners

You be the judge.

Why didn't anyone say anything then?

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]Why does Bush tell lies ? Saddam never was related to AQ. That has been proven. Why does he repeat that bull over and over ?

Make the mood right for his tumbling reelection plans ?

Kick him out of office. He´s incompetent and a harm to the world, not only to the US.

Man, I hope Bush wins now......

[denoir 0]

The Red Cross is not a human rights watchgroup. On the contrary, they are very careful not to say anything as it could mean more restricted acess in the future.

Here's a good BBC article on the subject

Iraq scandal reveals Red Cross pressures

Quote[/b] ]

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been in the spotlight this week, following the revelations about the abuse of Iraqis held in Abu Ghraib prison by coalition forces.

The ICRC is the body officially mandated by the Geneva Conventions to visit prisoners of war to ensure they are being humanely treated. And the Red Cross had visited Abu Ghraib many times, it knew of the abuses, but only went public with its knowledge when forced to.

Critics now accuse the Red Cross - widely regarded as the guardian of the Geneva Conventions - of being the last to mention that the conventions are being violated.

No comment

The ICRC can be a difficult assignment for journalists: Red Cross delegates are active in some of the most newsworthy parts of the world, but they have a policy of not talking about their work. When the first, shocking pictures of Iraqi prisoners appeared - naked and terrified in Abu Ghraib prison - my first reaction as Geneva correspondent was to call the ICRC.

"We can't comment on those pictures', came the reply.

"But you've visited Abu Ghraib prison haven't you?" I asked.

"We never discuss our prison visits."

It went on like this all week, more pictures were published - and still the Red Cross would not talk. Getting information out of the sphinx seemed a more likely possibility. But the silence ended when the Red Cross' confidential report to the US government on conditions in Abu Ghraib was leaked to the media.

Something close to panic broke out at Red Cross headquarters. This normally peaceful, elegant building, overlooking Lake Geneva and surrounded just now by spring flowers, became a hive of frantic communication.

The determinedly neutral organisation, invented after all in neutral Switzerland, was going to have to comment on a major political scandal. At a hastily organised press conference, visibly nervous ICRC officials were forced to confirm that they had documented a systematic pattern of abuse by US troops at the prison, abuse, the report said, "which was tantamount to torture".

Registering prisoners

So why keep quiet about it for so long?

"We're not some dial-a-quote organisation," spokesman Florian Westphal said.

"There are human rights groups who can publicly denounce abuses."

Many people do confuse the Red Cross with groups like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. In fact, the organisation's real role is one my grandparents' generation would recognise.

To them, the Red Cross sent messages saying a loved husband or brother was alive, but a prisoner of war, somewhere in Germany. And for prisoners, Red Cross delegates were the ones who brought food, a bar of soap perhaps, and best of all, a letter from home.

That is what the Red Cross does now too - in 2003, their delegates visited 468,000 prisoners of war and other detainees in more than 70 countries. So if you are a detainee in some hot, dusty, forgotten corner of the world, and the white jeep with the Red Cross on the side turns up, do not assume that your liberation has arrived.

The Red Cross delegates will not spend time on the justice or otherwise of your imprisonment, but they will do their best to ensure you are not beaten, that you have food, water, and fresh air, and that your family knows where you are. Red Cross workers insist that the policy of talking only to prison authorities about abuses they have witnessed is what opens the prison gates for them.

Access is not easy, when the prison guards are often brutalised young men, scarcely out of their teens, who see no reason to behave humanely to prisoners they regard as enemies. But journalists always want proof for their stories; it is all very well for the Red Cross to claim confidentiality works - but if they take that policy so far they will not even give us any examples, it is hard to believe them.

And we do know that silence has led the organisation into some serious moral quandaries over the years - in World War II delegates knew about the Nazi death camps, but said nothing for fear of jeopardising their access to prisoners of war.

Subtle approach

I do wonder how people apparently motivated by their humanitarian convictions can bear to keep quiet in the face of such horrors. Florian Westphal says: "I've come out of some awful places and I've thought 'God I just have to get what I've seen off my chest', but who would it have helped? Me for sure, but not the prisoners.

"We did speak out over Bosnia and Rwanda - and it didn't help at all."

Instead, he says, the Red Cross goes about improving the lives of prisoners in subtle ways.

"I went to a prison where the inmates weren't being allowed any fresh air," he said.

"So every time I visited I told the guards I needed the prisoners out in the yard so I could count them. It worked, they were let out, and I could seem them stretching, looking up to the sun."

That is the kind of professional satisfaction Red Cross workers can expect - no media limelight. They go public about their prison visits only when they think every last avenue of private persuasion has been exhausted, and they did not think they had reached that point with the United States and Abu Ghraib. There had even been some improvements, Florian Westphal said.

Media demands

Red Cross officials have been repeating the confidentiality policy like a mantra all week - to the intense frustration of journalists hungry for credible details about Abu Ghraib prison. But complete confidentiality will be almost impossible to maintain in high profile conflicts like Iraq.

And if the Red Cross does bow to pressure to talk, how will that affect its work in all those nasty little conflicts the media is not really interested in?

Rebel militias holding hundreds of prisoners may have just seen the Red Cross on television, talking about bad prisons in Iraq.

That is what many ordinary ICRC delegates fear - not that they may lose a cosy, unscrutinised way of working, but that they may lose access to thousands of prisoners of war who desperately need help.

[bn880 5]

The only problem is, how can they be the guardian of geneva conventions if they can not make abuses public. I am not saying it is the best move etc. but, you cant have the cake and eat it too. However, "owners" of these abusive squads are given reports by the ICRC telling them things are not right. ("owners" as in people very high up in the C-o-C)

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]The only problem is, how can they be the guardian of geneva conventions if they can not make abuses public.  I am not saying it is the best move etc. but, you cant have the cake and eat it too.  However, "owners" of these abusive squads are given reports by the ICRC telling them things are not right. ("owners" as in people very high up in the C-o-C)

ICRC admitted that the US military/govt. was fixing the problems and that they should not of "leaked"/"release" a part of their report to wall street (look a couple pages back in this thread for quote).

[denoir 0]

Read:

<span style='font-size:9pt;line-height:100%'>THE GRAY ZONE</span>

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.

[ Original Article @ The New Yorker]

Quote[/b] ]The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.†The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld’s testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, “Some people think you can bullshit anyone.â€

The Abu Ghraib story began, in a sense, just weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, with the American bombing of Afghanistan. Almost from the start, the Administration’s search for Al Qaeda members in the war zone, and its worldwide search for terrorists, came up against major command-and-control problems. For example, combat forces that had Al Qaeda targets in sight had to obtain legal clearance before firing on them. On October 7th, the night the bombing began, an unmanned Predator aircraft tracked an automobile convoy that, American intelligence believed, contained Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader. A lawyer on duty at the United States Central Command headquarters, in Tampa, Florida, refused to authorize a strike. By the time an attack was approved, the target was out of reach. Rumsfeld was apoplectic over what he saw as a self-defeating hesitation to attack that was due to political correctness. One officer described him to me that fall as “kicking a lot of glass and breaking doors.†In November, the Washington Post reported that, as many as ten times since early October, Air Force pilots believed they’d had senior Al Qaeda and Taliban members in their sights but had been unable to act in time because of legalistic hurdles. There were similar problems throughout the world, as American Special Forces units seeking to move quickly against suspected terrorist cells were compelled to get prior approval from local American ambassadors and brief their superiors in the chain of command.

Rumsfeld reacted in his usual direct fashion: he authorized the establishment of a highly secret program that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate “high value†targets in the Bush Administration’s war on terror. A special-access program, or sap—subject to the Defense Department’s most stringent level of security—was set up, with an office in a secure area of the Pentagon. The program would recruit operatives and acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft, and would keep its activities under wraps. America’s most successful intelligence operations during the Cold War had been saps, including the Navy’s submarine penetration of underwater cables used by the Soviet high command and construction of the Air Force’s stealth bomber. All the so-called “black†programs had one element in common: the Secretary of Defense, or his deputy, had to conclude that the normal military classification restraints did not provide enough security.

“Rumsfeld’s goal was to get a capability in place to take on a high-value target—a standup group to hit quickly,†a former high-level intelligence official told me. “He got all the agencies together—the C.I.A. and the N.S.A.—to get pre-approval in place. Just say the code word and go.†The operation had across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and from Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser. President Bush was informed of the existence of the program, the former intelligence official said.

The people assigned to the program worked by the book, the former intelligence official told me. They created code words, and recruited, after careful screening, highly trained commandos and operatives from America’s élite forces—Navy seals, the Army’s Delta Force, and the C.I.A.’s paramilitary experts. They also asked some basic questions: “Do the people working the problem have to use aliases? Yes. Do we need dead drops for the mail? Yes. No traceability and no budget. And some special-access programs are never fully briefed to Congress.â€

In theory, the operation enabled the Bush Administration to respond immediately to time-sensitive intelligence: commandos crossed borders without visas and could interrogate terrorism suspects deemed too important for transfer to the military’s facilities at Guantánamo, Cuba. They carried out instant interrogations—using force if necessary—at secret C.I.A. detention centers scattered around the world. The intelligence would be relayed to the sap command center in the Pentagon in real time, and sifted for those pieces of information critical to the “white,†or overt, world.

Fewer than two hundred operatives and officials, including Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were “completely read into the program,†the former intelligence official said. The goal was to keep the operation protected. “We’re not going to read more people than necessary into our heart of darkness,†he said. “The rules are ‘Grab whom you must. Do what you want.’â€

One Pentagon official who was deeply involved in the program was Stephen Cambone, who was named Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in March, 2003. The office was new; it was created as part of Rumsfeld’s reorganization of the Pentagon. Cambone was unpopular among military and civilian intelligence bureaucrats in the Pentagon, essentially because he had little experience in running intelligence programs, though in 1998 he had served as staff director for a committee, headed by Rumsfeld, that warned of an emerging ballistic-missile threat to the United States. He was known instead for his closeness to Rumsfeld. “Remember Henry II—‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?’†the senior C.I.A. official said to me, with a laugh, last week. “Whatever Rumsfeld whimsically says, Cambone will do ten times that much.â€

Cambone was a strong advocate for war against Iraq. He shared Rumsfeld’s disdain for the analysis and assessments proffered by the C.I.A., viewing them as too cautious, and chafed, as did Rumsfeld, at the C.I.A.’s inability, before the Iraq war, to state conclusively that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction. Cambone’s military assistant, Army Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, was also controversial. Last fall, he generated unwanted headlines after it was reported that, in a speech at an Oregon church, he equated the Muslim world with Satan.

Early in his tenure, Cambone provoked a bureaucratic battle within the Pentagon by insisting that he be given control of all special-access programs that were relevant to the war on terror. Those programs, which had been viewed by many in the Pentagon as sacrosanct, were monitored by Kenneth deGraffenreid, who had experience in counter-intelligence programs. Cambone got control, and deGraffenreid subsequently left the Pentagon. Asked for comment on this story, a Pentagon spokesman said, “I will not discuss any covert programs; however, Dr. Cambone did not assume his position as the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence until March 7, 2003, and had no involvement in the decision-making process regarding interrogation procedures in Iraq or anywhere else.â€

In mid-2003, the special-access program was regarded in the Pentagon as one of the success stories of the war on terror. “It was an active program,†the former intelligence official told me. “It’s been the most important capability we have for dealing with an imminent threat. If we discover where Osama bin Laden is, we can get him. And we can remove an existing threat with a real capability to hit the United States—and do so without visibility.†Some of its methods were troubling and could not bear close scrutiny, however.

By then, the war in Iraq had begun. The sap was involved in some assignments in Iraq, the former official said. C.I.A. and other American Special Forces operatives secretly teamed up to hunt for Saddam Hussein and—without success—for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But they weren’t able to stop the evolving insurgency.

In the first months after the fall of Baghdad, Rumsfeld and his aides still had a limited view of the insurgency, seeing it as little more than the work of Baathist “dead-enders,†criminal gangs, and foreign terrorists who were Al Qaeda followers. The Administration measured its success in the war by how many of those on its list of the fifty-five most wanted members of the old regime—reproduced on playing cards—had been captured. Then, in August, 2003, terror bombings in Baghdad hit the Jordanian Embassy, killing nineteen people, and the United Nations headquarters, killing twenty-three people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, the head of the U.N. mission. On August 25th, less than a week after the U.N. bombing, Rumsfeld acknowledged, in a talk before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, that “the dead-enders are still with us.†He went on, “There are some today who are surprised that there are still pockets of resistance in Iraq, and they suggest that this represents some sort of failure on the part of the Coalition. But this is not the case.†Rumsfeld compared the insurgents with those true believers who “fought on during and after the defeat of the Nazi regime in Germany.†A few weeks later—and five months after the fall of Baghdad—the Defense Secretary declared,“It is, in my view, better to be dealing with terrorists in Iraq than in the United States.â€

Inside the Pentagon, there was a growing realization that the war was going badly. The increasingly beleaguered and baffled Army leadership was telling reporters that the insurgents consisted of five thousand Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein. “When you understand that they’re organized in a cellular structure,†General John Abizaid, the head of the Central Command, declared, “that . . . they have access to a lot of money and a lot of ammunition, you’ll understand how dangerous they are.â€

The American military and intelligence communities were having little success in penetrating the insurgency. One internal report prepared for the U.S. military, made available to me, concluded that the insurgents’“strategic and operational intelligence has proven to be quite good.†According to the study:

Their ability to attack convoys, other vulnerable targets and particular individuals has been the result of painstaking surveillance and reconnaissance. Inside information has been passed on to insurgent cells about convoy/troop movements and daily habits of Iraqis working with coalition from within the Iraqi security services, primarily the Iraqi Police force which is rife with sympathy for the insurgents, Iraqi ministries and from within pro-insurgent individuals working with the CPA’s so-called Green Zone.

The study concluded, “Politically, the U.S. has failed to date. Insurgencies can be fixed or ameliorated by dealing with what caused them in the first place. The disaster that is the reconstruction of Iraq has been the key cause of the insurgency. There is no legitimate government, and it behooves the Coalition Provisional Authority to absorb the sad but unvarnished fact that most Iraqis do not see the Governing Councilâ€â€”the Iraqi body appointed by the C.P.A.—“as the legitimate authority. Indeed, they know that the true power is the CPA.â€

By the fall, a military analyst told me, the extent of the Pentagon’s political and military misjudgments was clear. Donald Rumsfeld’s “dead-enders†now included not only Baathists but many marginal figures as well—thugs and criminals who were among the tens of thousands of prisoners freed the previous fall by Saddam as part of a prewar general amnesty. Their desperation was not driving the insurgency; it simply made them easy recruits for those who were. The analyst said, “We’d killed and captured guys who had been given two or three hundred dollars to ‘pray and spray’â€â€”that is, shoot randomly and hope for the best. “They weren’t really insurgents but down-and-outers who were paid by wealthy individuals sympathetic to the insurgency.†In many cases, the paymasters were Sunnis who had been members of the Baath Party. The analyst said that the insurgents “spent three or four months figuring out how we operated and developing their own countermeasures. If that meant putting up a hapless guy to go and attack a convoy and see how the American troops responded, they’d do it.†Then, the analyst said, “the clever ones began to get in on the action.â€

By contrast, according to the military report, the American and Coalition forces knew little about the insurgency: “Human intelligence is poor or lacking . . . due to the dearth of competence and expertise. . . . The intelligence effort is not coördinated since either too many groups are involved in gathering intelligence or the final product does not get to the troops in the field in a timely manner.†The success of the war was at risk; something had to be done to change the dynamic.

The solution, endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried out by Stephen Cambone, was to get tough with those Iraqis in the Army prison system who were suspected of being insurgents. A key player was Major General Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the detention and interrogation center at Guantánamo, who had been summoned to Baghdad in late August to review prison interrogation procedures. The internal Army report on the abuse charges, written by Major General Antonio Taguba in February, revealed that Miller urged that the commanders in Baghdad change policy and place military intelligence in charge of the prison. The report quoted Miller as recommending that “detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation.â€

Miller’s concept, as it emerged in recent Senate hearings, was to “Gitmoize†the prison system in Iraq—to make it more focussed on interrogation. He also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Cuba—methods that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in “stress positions†for agonizing lengths of time. (The Bush Administration had unilaterally declared Al Qaeda and other captured members of international terrorist networks to be illegal combatants, and not eligible for the protection of the Geneva Conventions.)

Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.

“They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq,†the former intelligence official told me. “No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up—the black special-access program—and I’m going in hot. So he pulls the switch, and the electricity begins flowing last summer. And it’s working. We’re getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We’re getting good stuff. But we’ve got more targetsâ€â€”prisoners in Iraqi jails—“than people who can handle them.â€

Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the sap’s rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap’sauspices. “So here are fundamentally good soldiers—military-intelligence guys—being told that no rules apply,†the former official, who has extensive knowledge of the special-access programs, added. “And, as far as they’re concerned, this is a covert operation, and it’s to be kept within Defense Department channels.â€

The military-police prison guards, the former official said, included “recycled hillbillies from Cumberland, Maryland.†He was referring to members of the 372nd Military Police Company. Seven members of the company are now facing charges for their role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. “How are these guys from Cumberland going to know anything? The Army Reserve doesn’t know what it’s doing.â€

Who was in charge of Abu Ghraib—whether military police or military intelligence—was no longer the only question that mattered. Hard-core special operatives, some of them with aliases, were working in the prison. The military police assigned to guard the prisoners wore uniforms, but many others—military intelligence officers, contract interpreters, C.I.A. officers, and the men from the special-access program—wore civilian clothes. It was not clear who was who, even to Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, then the commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, and the officer ostensibly in charge. “I thought most of the civilians there were interpreters, but there were some civilians that I didn’t know,†Karpinski told me. “I called them the disappearing ghosts. I’d seen them once in a while at Abu Ghraib and then I’d see them months later. They were nice—they’d always call out to me and say, ‘Hey, remember me? How are you doing?’†The mysterious civilians, she said, were “always bringing in somebody for interrogation or waiting to collect somebody going out.†Karpinski added that she had no idea who was operating in her prison system. (General Taguba found that Karpinski’s leadership failures contributed to the abuses.)

By fall, according to the former intelligence official, the senior leadership of the C.I.A. had had enough. “They said, ‘No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan—pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets—and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets’â€â€”the sort of prisoners who populate the Iraqi jails. “The C.I.A.’s legal people objected,†and the agency ended its sap involvement in Abu Ghraib, the former official said.

The C.I.A.’s complaints were echoed throughout the intelligence community. There was fear that the situation at Abu Ghraib would lead to the exposure of the secret sap, and thereby bring an end to what had been, before Iraq, a valuable cover operation. “This was stupidity,†a government consultant told me. “You’re taking a program that was operating in the chaos of Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, a stateless terror group, and bringing it into a structured, traditional war zone. Sooner or later, the commandos would bump into the legal and moral procedures of a conventional war with an Army of a hundred and thirty-five thousand soldiers.â€

The former senior intelligence official blamed hubris for the Abu Ghraib disaster. “There’s nothing more exhilarating for a pissant Pentagon civilian than dealing with an important national security issue without dealing with military planners, who are always worried about risk,†he told me. “What could be more boring than needing the coöperation of logistical planners?†The only difficulty, the former official added, is that, “as soon as you enlarge the secret program beyond the oversight capability of experienced people, you lose control. We’ve never had a case where a special-access program went sour—and this goes back to the Cold War.â€

In a separate interview, a Pentagon consultant, who spent much of his career directly involved with special-access programs, spread the blame. “The White House subcontracted this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to Cambone,†he said. “This is Cambone’s deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program.†When it came to the interrogation operation at Abu Ghraib, he said, Rumsfeld left the details to Cambone. Rumsfeld may not be personally culpable, the consultant added, “but he’s responsible for the checks and balances. The issue is that, since 9/11, we’ve changed the rules on how we deal with terrorism, and created conditions where the ends justify the means.â€

Last week, statements made by one of the seven accused M.P.s, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, who is expected to plead guilty, were released. In them, he claimed that senior commanders in his unit would have stopped the abuse had they witnessed it. One of the questions that will be explored at any trial, however, is why a group of Army Reserve military policemen, most of them from small towns, tormented their prisoners as they did, in a manner that was especially humiliating for Iraqi men.

The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was “The Arab Mind,†a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression. “The segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women . . . and all the other minute rules that govern and restrict contact between men and women, have the effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in the Arab world,†Patai wrote. Homosexual activity, “or any indication of homosexual leanings, as with all other expressions of sexuality, is never given any publicity. These are private affairs and remain in private.†The Patai book, an academic told me, was “the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.†In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged—“one, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation.â€

The government consultant said that there may have been a serious goal, in the beginning, behind the sexual humiliation and the posed photographs. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything—including spying on their associates—to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends. The government consultant said, “I was told that the purpose of the photographs was to create an army of informants, people you could insert back in the population.†The idea was that they would be motivated by fear of exposure, and gather information about pending insurgency action, the consultant said. If so, it wasn’t effective; the insurgency continued to grow.

“This shit has been brewing for months,†the Pentagon consultant who has dealt with saps told me. “You don’t keep prisoners naked in their cell and then let them get bitten by dogs. This is sick.†The consultant explained that he and his colleagues, all of whom had served for years on active duty in the military, had been appalled by the misuse of Army guard dogs inside Abu Ghraib. “We don’t raise kids to do things like that. When you go after Mullah Omar, that’s one thing. But when you give the authority to kids who don’t know the rules, that’s another.â€

In 2003, Rumsfeld’s apparent disregard for the requirements of the Geneva Conventions while carrying out the war on terror had led a group of senior military legal officers from the Judge Advocate General’s (jag) Corps to pay two surprise visits within five months to Scott Horton, who was then chairman of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on International Human Rights. “They wanted us to challenge the Bush Administration about its standards for detentions and interrogation,†Horton told me. “They were urging us to get involved and speak in a very loud voice. It came pretty much out of the blue. The message was that conditions are ripe for abuse, and it’s going to occur.†The military officials were most alarmed about the growing use of civilian contractors in the interrogation process, Horton recalled. “They said there was an atmosphere of legal ambiguity being created as a result of a policy decision at the highest levels in the Pentagon. The jag officers were being cut out of the policy formulation process.†They told him that, with the war on terror, a fifty-year history of exemplary application of the Geneva Conventions had come to an end.

The abuses at Abu Ghraib were exposed on January 13th, when Joseph Darby, a young military policeman assigned to Abu Ghraib, reported the wrongdoing to the Army’s Criminal Investigations Division. He also turned over a CD full of photographs. Within three days, a report made its way to Donald Rumsfeld, who informed President Bush.

The inquiry presented a dilemma for the Pentagon. The C.I.D. had to be allowed to continue, the former intelligence official said. “You can’t cover it up. You have to prosecute these guys for being off the reservation. But how do you prosecute them when they were covered by the special-access program? So you hope that maybe it’ll go away.†The Pentagon’s attitude last January, he said, was “Somebody got caught with some photos. What’s the big deal? Take care of it.†Rumsfeld’s explanation to the White House, the official added, was reassuring: “‘We’ve got a glitch in the program. We’ll prosecute it.’ The cover story was that some kids got out of control.â€

In their testimony before Congress last week, Rumsfeld and Cambone struggled to convince the legislators that Miller’s visit to Baghdad in late August had nothing to do with the subsequent abuse. Cambone sought to assure the Senate Armed Services Committee that the interplay between Miller and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, had only a casual connection to his office. Miller’s recommendations, Cambone said, were made to Sanchez. His own role, he said, was mainly to insure that the “flow of intelligence back to the commands†was “efficient and effective.†He added that Miller’s goal was “to provide a safe, secure and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence.â€

It was a hard sell. Senator Hillary Clinton, Democrat of New York, posed the essential question facing the senators:

If, indeed, General Miller was sent from Guantánamo to Iraq for the purpose of acquiring more actionable intelligence from detainees, then it is fair to conclude that the actions that are at point here in your report [on abuses at Abu Ghraib] are in some way connected to General Miller’s arrival and his specific orders, however they were interpreted, by those MPs and the military intelligence that were involved.. . .Therefore, I for one don’t believe I yet have adequate information from Mr. Cambone and the Defense Department as to exactly what General Miller’s orders were . . . how he carried out those orders, and the connection between his arrival in the fall of ’03 and the intensity of the abuses that occurred afterward.

Sometime before the Abu Ghraib abuses became public, the former intelligence official told me, Miller was “read inâ€â€”that is, briefed—on the special-access operation. In April, Miller returned to Baghdad to assume control of the Iraqi prisons; once the scandal hit, with its glaring headlines, General Sanchez presented him to the American and international media as the general who would clean up the Iraqi prison system and instill respect for the Geneva Conventions. “His job is to save what he can,†the former official said. “He’s there to protect the program while limiting any loss of core capability.†As for Antonio Taguba, the former intelligence official added, “He goes into it not knowing shit. And then: ‘Holy cow! What’s going on?’â€

If General Miller had been summoned by Congress to testify, he, like Rumsfeld and Cambone, would not have been able to mention the special-access program. “If you give away the fact that a special-access program exists,â€the former intelligence official told me, “you blow the whole quick-reaction program.â€

One puzzling aspect of Rumsfeld’s account of his initial reaction to news of the Abu Ghraib investigation was his lack of alarm and lack of curiosity. One factor may have been recent history: there had been many previous complaints of prisoner abuse from organization like Human Rights Watch and the International Red Cross, and the Pentagon had weathered them with ease. Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had not been provided with details of alleged abuses until late March, when he read the specific charges. “You read it, as I say, it’s one thing. You see these photographs and it’s just unbelievable. . . . It wasn’t three-dimensional. It wasn’t video. It wasn’t color. It was quite a different thing.†The former intelligence official said that, in his view, Rumsfeld and other senior Pentagon officials had not studied the photographs because “they thought what was in there was permitted under the rules of engagement,†as applied to the sap. “The photos,†he added, “turned out to be the result of the program run amok.â€

The former intelligence official made it clear that he was not alleging that Rumsfeld or General Myers knew that atrocities were committed. But, he said, “it was their permission granted to do the sap, generically, and there was enough ambiguity, which permitted the abuses.â€

This official went on, “The black guysâ€â€”those in the Pentagon’s secret program—“say we’ve got to accept the prosecution. They’re vaccinated from the reality.†The sap is still active, and “the United States is picking up guys for interrogation. The question is, how do they protect the quick-reaction force without blowing its cover?†The program was protected by the fact that no one on the outside was allowed to know of its existence. “If you even give a hint that you’re aware of a black program that you’re not read into, you lose your clearances,†the former official said. “Nobody will talk. So the only people left to prosecute are those who are undefended—the poor kids at the end of the food chain.â€

The most vulnerable senior official is Cambone. “The Pentagon is trying now to protect Cambone, and doesn’t know how to do it,†the former intelligence official said.

Last week, the government consultant, who has close ties to many conservatives, defended the Administration’s continued secrecy about the special-access program in Abu Ghraib. “Why keep it black?†the consultant asked. “Because the process is unpleasant. It’s like making sausage—you like the result but you don’t want to know how it was made. Also, you don’t want the Iraqi public, and the Arab world, to know. Remember, we went to Iraq to democratize the Middle East. The last thing you want to do is let the Arab world know how you treat Arab males in prison.â€

The former intelligence official told me he feared that one of the disastrous effects of the prison-abuse scandal would be the undermining of legitimate operations in the war on terror, which had already suffered from the draining of resources into Iraq. He portrayed Abu Ghraib as “a tumor†on the war on terror. He said, “As long as it’s benign and contained, the Pentagon can deal with the photo crisis without jeopardizing the secret program. As soon as it begins to grow, with nobody to diagnose it—it becomes a malignant tumor.â€

The Pentagon consultant made a similar point. Cambone and his superiors, the consultant said, “created the conditions that allowed transgressions to take place. And now we’re going to end up with another Church Commissionâ€â€”the 1975 Senate committee on intelligence, headed by Senator Frank Church, of Idaho, which investigated C.I.A. abuses during the previous two decades. Abu Ghraib had sent the message that the Pentagon leadership was unable to handle its discretionary power. “When the shit hits the fan, as it did on 9/11, how do you push the pedal?†the consultant asked. “You do it selectively and with intelligence.â€

“Congress is going to get to the bottom of this,†the Pentagon consultant said. “You have to demonstrate that there are checks and balances in the system.†He added, “When you live in a world of gray zones, you have to have very clear red lines.â€

Senator John McCain, of Arizona, said, “If this is true, it certainly increases the dimension of this issue and deserves significant scrutiny. I will do all possible to get to the bottom of this, and all other allegations.â€

“In an odd way,†Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said, “the sexual abuses at Abu Ghraib have become a diversion for the prisoner abuse and the violation of the Geneva Conventions that is authorized.†Since September 11th, Roth added, the military has systematically used third-degree techniques around the world on detainees. “Some jags hate this and are horrified that the tolerance of mistreatment will come back and haunt us in the next war,†Roth told me. “We’re giving the world a ready-made excuse to ignore the Geneva Conventions. Rumsfeld has lowered the bar.â€

[Tydium 0]

Quote[/b] ]

Miller's concept, as it emerged in recent Senate hearings, was to "Gitmoize" the prison system in Iraq-to make it more focussed on interrogation. He also briefed military commanders in Iraq on the interrogation methods used in Cuba-methods that could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in "stress positions" for agonizing lengths of time.

Here's what to "Gitmoize" means.

SkyNews

Quote[/b] ]

BRITON: 'ATTACKS FILMED'

Attacks by US guards on Guantanamo Bay prisoners were filmed, a British man held at held at the Camp Delta detention centre on Cuba has claimed.

Tarek Dergoul, one of five Britons released from the base in March, said a special squad called the Extreme Reaction Force (ERF) videotaped prisoners being brutalised by their interrogators.

He told the The Observer newspaper of the treatment meted out by Guantanamo guards.

The 26-year-old from Mile End, east London, spent 22 months in the camp before his release.

Describing an alleged assault by a five-man ERF team, he told the paper: "They pepper-sprayed me in the face and I started vomiting.

"They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes and forced my head down the toilet pan and flushed.

"They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching.

"Finally, they dragged me out of the cell in chains, into the rec(reation) yard and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows."

Mr Dergoul's description of his treatment at Guantanamo are similar to that of fellow British detainees Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, who wrote an open letter to US President George Bush alleging they were tortured.

Lieutenant Colonel Leon Sumpter, the Guantanamo Joint Task Force spokesman, confirmed that films were made so interrogations could be reviewed by senior officers.

All tapes are kept in an archive at the base, he added.

[Bernadotte 0]

Read:

<span style='font-size:9pt;line-height:100%'>THE GRAY ZONE</span>

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.

[ Original Article @ The New Yorker]

...

Hmmm... Where have we heard the name Seymour Hersh before?

Oh yeah:

- Won pulitzer prize for uncovering the My Lai Massacre in 1970.

- Investigated the Rumaila massacre and other GW1 excesses by Gen. Barry McCaffrey.

- Uncovered Whitehouse claims of Iraq procurring Niger uranium to be based on forged documents.

- Received and first published the photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused.

Man, this guy practically owes his career to the Bush family.  

[MLF 0]

British troops kill 20 in bayonet clash

Quote[/b] ]British troops kill 20 in bayonet clash

Stephen Grey, Basra, and Adam Nathan

BRITISH soldiers fixed bayonets and fought hand-to-hand with a Shi’ite militia in southern Iraq in one of their fiercest clashes since the war officially ended last May.

They mounted what were described as “classic infantry assaults†on firing and mortar positions held by more than 100 fighters loyal to the outlawed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, military sources revealed yesterday.

At least 20 men from al-Sadr’s Mehdi army were said to have been killed in more than three hours of fighting — the highest toll reported in any single incident involving British forces in the past 12 months. Three British soldiers were injured, none seriously, and nine fighters were captured.

“It was very bloody and it was difficult to count all their dead,†said one source. “There were bodies floating in the river.â€

Details of the incident emerged as General Sir Michael Walker, chief of the defence staff, told The Sunday Times that British forces would remain in strength at least until Iraq’s elections next year.

A further 3,000 troops may also be sent to boost troop strengths around Najaf in the centre of the country, also the scene of violent clashes.

The fighting began when soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were ambushed in two Land Rovers on Friday afternoon, about 15 miles south of the city of Amara.

They escaped, only to be ambushed a second time by a larger group armed with machineguns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Reinforcements were summoned from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment at a base nearby.

“There was some pretty fierce hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets fixed,†the source said. “There were some classic assaults on mortar positions held by the al-Sadr forces.â€

Major Ian Clooney, the official spokesman, confirmed that the Mehdi army “took a pretty heavy knocking†but declined to specify the tactics. “This was certainly an intense engagement,†he said.

Since their arrival in Amara just under a month ago, the Princess of Wales’s regiment had been engaged in a tough struggle with the Mehdi army, which has been launching mortar attacks at night on the British and the coalition civilian headquarters in the city.

Although armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), the militia has found it hard to cope with Britain’s heavily armoured Warriors, one of which is reputed to have been struck by seven different RPGs and still managed to continue safely to base.

Walker said that “sufficient superiority†of British forces would be required to deal with unrest in the run-up to 2005 elections.

“There are some incursions that will occur, particularly up to June 30, and during the period up to elections next year,†he said. “We will need to have sufficient superiority of force to be able to deal with civil unrest and terrorism.

“We are in discussions with the Americans about putting more people out. If one suddenly had a major reconstruction problem we would need more troops to be able to support that without removing people from their role.â€

Among the 3,000 troops under consideration to boost forces around Najaf is 3 Commando Brigade of the Royal Marines.

Tony Blair will come under pressure from some Labour MPs and the Liberal Democrats to hold a Commons vote before the troops are sent.

Blair is likely to dismiss Labour calls as being from what he will portray as the left of the party. But if the calls gain momentum and key figures such as the former foreign secretary Robin Cook speak out, he may have his hand forced.

Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “Before any further British troops are sent, the government should consult with and listen to parliament about the role they are to undertake.â€

However, Walker said the plan was gradually to reduce the 12,000 British troop presence in the southeast region of Basra and Amara as soon as local security forces gained control of the area.

“The main task is to continue to ensure that we prepare Iraq for the Iraqi people to be able to take sovereignty on June 30,†he said.

“The intention is to draw back the coalition face of the security activities in the southeast so it becomes increasingly Iraqi. When it gets to a stage where they can do it on their own we will reduce our numbers.â€

British troops in southeast Iraq are already significantly outnumbered by local Iraqi police and the 5,100-strong Iraqi civil defence corps.

Walker said that British troops would stay in Iraq as long as they were needed. “It is very difficult to say how long we will have to stay but we are committed to stay until we are no longer needed.â€

Article Link

o and to quote a truthful unbiast source.....

Al Jazeerah

Quote[/b] ]Reuters reported today (read below) that Aides to the Shi'i cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf accused British Troops in Amara of murdering prisoners from Sadr's Mehdi Army and mutilating their bodies, yesterday. Members of the Mehdi Army in Najaf buried 22 comrades, who they said died as a result of a battle with the British near the southern town of Amara Friday.

Al-Manar TV reported on May 15, 2004 that British troops captured 22 members of the Mahdi Army during a battle in Amara. Later in the day, they were brought to the hospital dead but with clear signs of torture and mutilation in their bodies. The eyewitness, Adel Al-Maliki, said some of them had poked eyes. Others had their hands cut off but most with signs of torture on their bodies.

Reuters reported yesterday (May 15, 2004) that a "British military spokesman said two British soldiers were wounded when their convoy came under attack and a second patrol racing to the rescue was ambushed by Iraqi fighters. " "About 20 were killed and 13 captured," he said. This gives evidence that British troops captured at least 13 Iraqi fighters, which supports the above story that the mutilation and torture signs happened to prisoners before killing them.

Residents said there was widespread anger at the British in Amara. British officers said they killed about 20 fighters on Friday when British occupation soldiers fought off a series of ambushes. A British defense ministry spokesman dismissed the accusations of maltreatment.

British newspapers quoted an unidentified military source as saying men from a Highland regiment fixed bayonets to charge Mehdi Army mortar positions in "fierce hand-to-hand fighting."

Article Link

[billybob2002 0]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20040516/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_fallujah_1

Quote[/b] ]

Iraqi General Urges Support of U.S. Troops

Sun May 16, 2:54 PM ET  

By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer

FALLUJAH, Iraq - A former Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)-era general appointed by the Americans to lead an Iraqi security force in the rebellious Sunni stronghold of Fallujah urged tribal elders and sheiks Sunday to support U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq (news - web sites).

Quote[/b] ]

"We can make them (Americans) use their rifles against us or we can make them build our country, it's your choice," Latif told a gathering of more than 40 sheiks, city council members and imams in an eastern Fallujah suburb.

Quote[/b] ]

Latif, 66, a native of Baghdad, urged the elders to talk freely, citing the Muslim holy book, the Quran.

"The Quran says we should sit together, discuss and make a decision, but let it be the right decision," the silver-haired Latif — a slim figure wearing a blue shirt and dark blue tie and pants — told the sheiks.

Quote[/b] ]

The venue offered a rare insight into Latif's interactions and influence over Fallujah elders. As he spoke, many sheiks nodded in approval and listened with reverence to his words. Later, they clasped his hands and patted Latif on the back.

Latif, speaking in Arabic to the sheiks, defended the Marines and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Quote[/b] ]

"Those bullets that are fired will not get the Americans out, let them finish their job here so that they can return to their country," Latif said.

"Our country is precious, stop allowing the bad guys to come from outside Iraq to destroy our country."

Quote[/b] ]

After the meeting, Latif told The Associated Press that the situation in Fallujah has greatly improved, that "winds of peace" prevail in the city and the people that fled the fighting have returned. He would not elaborate on the size or current activities of the Fallujah Brigade.

Smart man

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]Smart man

US man. What else did you expect him to say ?

Will that change anything ?

[billybob2002 0]

Quote[/b] ]US man. What else did you expect him to say ?

Common sense man! Let the coalition contractors with iraqi workers/foreigners (paid jobs!) "rebuild" Iraq in to a better country for free.

[denoir 0]

Quote[/b] ]Smart man

US man.

And former Saddam man.

Anyway, those were hardly words for the Iraqis, but more for the Americans considering that a significant part of the "Fallujah Brigade" consists of the same insurgents that were shooting US troops a month ago.

[quicksand 0]

Falluja delegation wants cooperation with Al-Sadr

Quote[/b] ]NAJAF, Iraq: Townsmen from the flashpoint town of Fallujah met radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Sunday, Shiite sources said, as Islam's rival sects made common cause against the US-led coalition.

"They met Sayed Moqtada and told him: 'We support you and call for the defense of Iraq, Najaf, Karbala and other holy cities,'" an aide of cleric Hussam al-Musawi told AFP.

Musawi also confirmed that Sunnis from Fallujah could fight alongside Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.

"Yes, if the request is made, that could happen," he said in response to questions.

The Fallujah delegation was headed by representatives from the Sunni Committee of ulama, or clerics.

Earlier, a convoy of nine pickup trucks filled with food and medicines from Fallujah arrived in the Shiite militia's stronghold of Kufa.

The trucks were parked outside Kufa's grand mosque, a stronghold of Sadr, who normally delivers the sermon at the main weekly Muslim prayers in the town.

They were filled with what appeared to be bags of flour and sugar as well as blankets, cans of cooking oil and boxes marked "surgical and medical" aid.

The trucks bore banners proclaiming: "The hearts of the people of Fallujah are with the patient people of Najaf." Another read: "From the delegation of the (Sunni) Muslim clergy in Fallujah to the brave people of Najaf." Announcements over the mosque's loudspeakers greeted the trucks arrival.

"The delegation of the noble people of Fallujah is welcome amid its mujahideen brothers." Inside the mosque, the delegation met with Sadr's representatives in Kufa.

"Muslims should be one arm against their common enemy," said Sheikh Fawzi Abdullah Abed, a delegate from Fallujah.

"Iraq is for everyone and it is our common duty to defend our land and honor." He refused to say whether Sunnis in Fallujah or elsewhere would be providing men and arms for Sadr, who has led an uprising against the coalition in central and southern Iraq since the start of April.

"This is not the kind of information we want to share with the press," he said.

One of Sadr's deputies in Kufa, Sheikh Taher al-Asadi, thanked the visitors for their "brotherly feelings." As he spoke, Sadr's fighters were moving boxes of rocket-propelled grenades inside the mosque.

Fallujah endured a month-long onslaught by US marines earlier this year that cost hundreds of lives after the killing and mutilation of four American security contractors in the town.

The Sunni bastion has become a byword for armed resistance to the occupation.

Guess Latif words didn`t mean much for this sheiks...

I am wondering what will come up from this,Fallujah Resistance fighters with millitary experience,lready prooven t in guerilla war and surface to air missles fighting US forces alongside Madhi millitia not a good development for US millitary.

edit:About anti-Sadr protests

Quote[/b] ]An anti-Sadr demonstration planned in Najaf on Friday by the pro-occupation Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) was called off, ostensibly to avoid a confrontation with his militiamen. The more likely reason was that it was abandoned due to lack of support. In an area with a population of several million, less than 1,000 people took part in anti-Sadr protests earlier in the week.

Can`t wait to see some new polls..

[ralphwiggum 6]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/17/iraq.main/index.html

Quote[/b] ]BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The president of the Iraqi Governing Council was among those killed Monday by a car bomb near coalition headquarters in Baghdad, officials said.

The blast that killed Izzedine Salim also caused an undetermined number of other casualties, witnesses said.

The explosion occurred at a checkpoint near the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area that is home to coalition headquarters. No other details were immediately available.

The presidency of the governing council is a rotating position.

[quicksand 0]

Huge blow to IGC

Quote[/b] ]BAGHDAD (AFP) The current head of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, Ezzedine Salim, was killed in a car-bomb explosion, Iraqi politicians said.

"He was in a convoy that stopped at the entrance to the Green Zone when the explosion happened. Ezzedine Salim was killed in the explosion," Hamid al-Bayati, spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRII), told AFP.

Imad Chebib, vice-president of the pro-US Iraqi National Accord and a fellow-member of the Governing Council, said: "He died as a result of the car bomb explosion against his convoy. Some guards were killed with him."

The US-led coalition was not immediately able to confirm that he was dead in the blast at a checkpoint at an entrance to the strongly-protected Green Zone surrounding the coalition headquarters around 9:30 am (0530 GMT).

A senior coalition military official said: "There are different numbers ranging from three to six killed and unknown numbers of wounded."

Salim, a Shiite Muslim who heads the Islamic Dawa movement in the southern city of Basra, took over on May 1 for a month's tenure as the head of the US-appointed governing council.

The Governing Council has been fiercely criticised by insurgents fighting coalition troops who accuse it of collaborating with the US-led occupation. Its members are surrounded by tight security.

What is this turning into?I can only imagine how much it will boost resistance confidence after many failed atempts to get high value targets.

[bn880 5]

The CIA doesn't lie. heh I don't mind good puns (unlike some poeple here )

[Longinius 1]

Dont mess with the Brits...

-------------------------

The Sun

Bayonet Brits kill 35 rebels

OUTNUMBERED British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.

The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.

Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.

The battle erupted after Land Rovers carrying 20 Argylls came under attack on a highway.

After radioing for back-up, they fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learned in drills.

When the fighting ended bodies lay all over the highway — and more were floating in a nearby river. Nine rebels were captured.

An Army spokesman said: “This was an intense engagement.â€

The last bayonet charge was by the Scots Guards and the Paras against Argentinian positions.

[bn880 5]

Nice story, would benice to have it confirmed by an external source.

[Longinius 1]

I second that BN. Sun alone doesnt quite do it for me

[denoir 0]

MLF posted an Al-Jazeera version of the story on the previous page.

Anyway, CNN breaking news:

Quote[/b] ]Coalition forces in convoy find sarin nerve agent in artillery round rigged as improvised explosive device, U.S. military says. Details soon.

[SpongeBob 0]

Sounds a bit like this

Quote[/b] ]Cpl. Samuel Toloza of El Salvador (news - web sites)'s Cuscatlan Battalion displays his bloodstained knife that he used to fend off Iraqi gunmen in Najaf, Iraq (news - web sites), Saturday May 1, 2004. One of his friends was dead, 12 others lay wounded and four soldiers still left were surrounded and out of ammunition, so Toloza used his switchblade knife to charge the Iraqi gunmen. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)

Salvadoran attacks Iraqis with knife

http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/printDS/21368.php

By Denis D. Gray

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Quote[/b] ]NAJAF, Iraq - One of his friends was dead, 12 others lay wounded and the four soldiers still left standing were surrounded and out of ammunition. So Salvadoran Cpl. Samuel Toloza said a prayer, whipped out his switchblade knife and charged the Iraqi gunmen.

In one of the few known instances of hand-to-hand combat in the Iraq conflict, Toloza stabbed several attackers who were swarming around a comrade. The stunned assailants backed away momentarily, just as a relief column came to the Salvadorans' rescue.

"We never considered surrender. I was trained to fight until the end," said the 25-year-old Toloza, one of 380 El Salvador soldiers whose heroism is being cited just as criticism is leveled against other members of the multinational force in Iraq.

[shinRaiden 0]

www.sfgate.com

www.lasvegassun.com

Another link on the Sarin IED, apparently copies from AP wire.

Quote[/b] ]"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy.

"A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent," he said.

Quote[/b] ]"The former regime had declared all such rounds destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War," Kimmitt said. "Two explosive ordinance team members were treated for minor exposure to nerve agent as a result of the partial detonation of the round."

As it is well known that Iraq did not have WMD's this is obviously a conspiritorial hoax perpetrated as an election stunt.

[denoir 0]

Don't be too quick to judge. There have been false alarms about ten or twenty times before. I'm not holding my breath.

Quote[/b] ]American-led coalition forces in Iraq found sarin gas in an artillery round that was rigged as an improvised explosive device, U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Monday.

The device went off before it could be disabled, Kimmitt said, causing a "small dispersal" of the nerve agent. Two members of an explosives ordnance team were treated for minor exposure, he said.

Kimmitt said the artillery round was of an old style that Saddam Hussein's regime had declared it no longer had after the Persian Gulf War. He said it was designed to explode after being fired from an artillery piece and that its effectiveness as an improvised explosive device was "limited."

Kimmitt did not say where the weapon was found nor did he say if it originated in Iraq.

In other news about the bombing of the IGC member:

Quote[/b] ]A senior coalition military official said the bombing had the hallmarks of an attack by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- an al Qaeda associate who has been tied to numerous attacks in Iraq. The official noted that al-Zarqawi-style attacks are typically a spectacular, symbolic suicide bombing.

Yeah, last week 'typical of him' was beheading people. What utter load of bullshit. This is political. They're trying to put a face on the resistance, one that people can hate. They're just so pathitically incompetent in doing it that it's laughable.

[Badgerboy 0]

Bit of speculation from myself, but have resistance forces been using standard artillery rounds for road side bombs previously? Possibly the gas filled shell was not recognised for what is was. You need to fire the shell in order for significant amounts of gas to be produced, not just blow it up.