952 replies to this topic

[Lazarus Long]

http://story.news.ya..._1049892300&e=5
Iraq War May Heighten Militancy in India, Say Experts
53 minutes ago
Kalyani,OneWorld South Asia

NEW DELHI, April 9 (OneWorld) - The war on Iraq (news - web sites) may stoke the fires of militancy in India long after the battle is over, experts from the south Asian nation have warned.

India's former foreign secretary and political commentator J.N Dixit feared the bombing of Iraq by U.S-led forces could give rise to militant movements in India and other parts of the world, especially in those countries seen to be supporting the U.S. in the war.

"It is an apprehension based on reality," said Dixit. "The effect of the war will be a long-term one," he predicted.

He pointed out that already, there were signs of disquiet in India, referring to the recent acts of violence in Indian administered Kashmir (news - web sites). In March, 24 Kashmiri Hindus were gunned down by suspected militants in the state. The incident followed the gunning down of a top separatist leader, Majid Dar, believed to have been supporting an Indian government move for peace talks in Kashmir.

"The revenge killings and minority massacres only indicate that a reaction to Iraq is already building up," cautioned Dixit.

The fear that the impact of the war on Iraq would be far-reaching was also echoed by the London-based global human rights body, Amnesty International (AI). AI believed that human rights violations, war crimes and displacement of people in a war had a long-term effect on people.

"Repeated human rights violations in wars and war-like situations create a sense of injustice," said Vijay Nagaraj, the head of the South Asia chapter of Amnesty. "When what is perceived as wrong is not addressed, or those responsible accounted for, the feeling of injustice is fuelled," he said.

Nagaraj pointed out that long after a war was over, its impact on people continued to be felt. At least 5,000 Iraqi refugees from the 1991 U.S.-led war on Iraq, for instance, still lived in prison-like conditions in camps in Saudi Arabia.

"As long as there are human rights violations, there can neither be peace nor security," he said. "As long as there is injustice, there will be a fertile ground for resistance."

Dixit believed the effects of the war would not be confined to Kashmir, but could spread to different parts of India. He pointed out that Indians who had left for Iraq last month as part of a human shield to defend the civilians of Iraq belonged to India's financial capital, Mumbai.

Dixit's apprehensions were, however, not shared by Delhi-based political and human rights activist, Kamal Mitra Chenoy. Chenoy, a professor of international studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, believed the overwhelming support to the anti-war movement in India indicated that the war was not being seen as an Islamic issue.

"In most parts of the world - including Muslim-dominated or Islamic nations - the anti-war movement is being led by people from other religions," he said. Chenoy pointed out that a poll conducted by a leading Indian newsmagazine said that 89 percent of the people surveyed opposed the war. "That shows the majority of Hindus - who constitute about 80 percent of the Indian population - are against the war," he said.

Chenoy argued that since the war was not being seen as an assault on Islam, it was unlikely to spawn Islamic militant movements. "This is what the United States would like us to believe," said Chenoy. "But actually, in countries such as India, the opposition to the war is a feeling against the hegemony of the United States and its role as a global policeman," he stressed.

Chenoy agreed though that U.S efforts to marginalize moderate forces could trigger the growth of more militant movements. "The Hamas grew in West Asia because of efforts aimed at sidelining the secularist Palestine Liberation Organization (news - web sites)," Chenoy said. "Militancy is the last resort of the desperate," he stressed.

[Limitless]

In case anyone was wondering which side the troops were on...

'Angry' Ark Royal crew switch off BBC

The BBC has been axed from the nation's flagship naval vessel following claims of pro-Iraqi bias.



The Navy says it has switched off News 24 aboard HMS Ark Royal after complaints by the crew.

It is one of a handful of task force ships which receives live TV direct from Britain.

Rolling news plus two entertainment channels are beamed into the warship.

A BBC correspondent has been on board but the crew say they have no gripe with his reports.

However they were annoyed by the comments of presenters and commentators reporting on the carrier's Sea King tragedy a fortnight ago.

The BBC suggested poor levels of maintenance played a hand in the deaths of seven fliers.

Sailors also believe the news organisation places more faith in Iraqi reports than information coming from British or Allied sources.

One senior rating said: "The BBC always takes the Iraqis' side. It reports what they say as gospel but when it comes to us it questions and doubts everything the British and Americans are reporting. A lot of people on board are very unhappy."

Ark has replaced the BBC with rival broadcaster Sky News.

And to think a country other than Canada still relies on Sea King Helicopters...... lol

What's the point [?] Of course the British and American troops will disagree with reports that they do not like / agree with.......This is to be expected. So what are you saying, that its anti-American or Anti-British to report something that doesn't please them [?] Have you even watched the BBC [?] They are MUCH more objective than any American news station. Ask anyone else...Bobdrake for instance............or maybe it really is American/British cheerleading you are looking for.......

[Limitless]

You can argue all you want about the effectiveness of coalition troops in post war Afghanistan.

Funny....I guess you'd rather not touch this issue with a ten-foot pole........surely an opinionated guy like you would have an opinion [?] .........Kissinger: "When in doubt, say nothing." [ggg] [ggg] [ggg] lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol

-To be quite honest, if you'd look at the facts for a change, you'd realized that this is less of a debate than you claim it is.....the truth hurts, I know.

But to claim that the attacks were revenge is bullshit.  

Human nature dictates that most military action following an attack, unrelated or not, is partly about revenge. This is not very debatable. That being said, if you'd follow something other than your overly-biased, paid-for and shrink-wrapped media, then you'd realize that as oppressive as the Taliban were - the September 11th attacks had NOTHING to do with them. So they (the Taliban) didn't actively seek to kick out terrorists. Big deal. Terrorists could attack the U.S. from anywhere they choose to.....they would have found another way.

-Chess pounding attitudes don't interest me.......the Septembr 11th attacks were plotted outside of Afghanistan, by people who were not from Afghanistan.....that being said, it's understandable that America would stage a pointless attack, against a defence-less opposition, in attempt to "Save-face", and avoid discussing the complete & total failure of their poorly-organized intelligence agencies, the CIA and FBI. (besides their many secret spy agencies.)

Stay in Canada where you belong, peacenik.

1- I thought immortalists were progressive, avoiders-of-death.

2- I have dual (Canadian and American) citizenship........ Kissinger: " [huh] "........ [ggg] [ggg]

-Not only can I visit your country, I can work in your country, and vote in your corrupt elections..... lol

I refuse to stoop to your mindless, drum-beating level. You can't faze me, and you can't provoke the reaction you're looking for......and you can't win a mud-slinging contest - the younger generation is much better at that. [B)] lol

If you'd like to debate issues based on facts, I'd be happy to do so.


Peace be with you, too. lol

Edited by Limitless, 09 April 2003 - 10:18 PM.

[Limitless]

Also, about the British media:

- it's understandable that they'd provide an overly-objective (in your opinion, Kissinger) view of the war.....Britain, like America, -is trying to define their place in the world. British reporters are merely human. Tony Blair's actions are not well-supported in Britain, and he is therefore committing political-suicide by supporting the current war. Of course the BBC, CBC etc. will occasionally be overly-critical of America, but that is to be expected, understood......

[DJS]

I thought immortalists were progressive, avoiders-of-death.

No political philosophy has a monopoly within the immortalist community. I am proof of that. [ph34r]

[DJS]

What's the point  [?]  Of course the British and American troops will disagree with reports that they do not like / agree with.......This is to be expected. So what are you saying, that its anti-American or Anti-British to report something that doesn't please them [?]  Have you even watched the BBC [?] They are MUCH more objective than any American news station. Ask anyone else...Bobdrake for instance............or maybe it really is American/British cheerleading you are looking for......

My point is that the British media has been infiltrated by the liberal establishment's agenda. Much more so than in the United States. This is indicative of most of Western Europe.

Your arguments do not phase me. I have heard it all before. I would rather debate with Lazarus because he brings a more original, complex debate to the table which makes me think more critically about why I believe what I believe.

You throw out little snippets about what you believe, but you have yet to present a coherent policy statement. Trying to argue that Afghanistan was not necessary, and simply an act of vengeance, shows your ignorance on the true nature of the terrorist threat.

[bobdrake12]

They are MUCH more objective than any American news station. Ask anyone else...Bobdrake for instance............or maybe it really is American/British cheerleading you are looking for.......

Limitless,

I use the BBC as well as the Guardian a lot for more source materials.

Not everyone trusts these sources, which they should not on face value. I believe in reading everything and listening to everybody, but believing nothing until I perform my own research.

A recent BBC article is posted below which states the obvious:

Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq through fear, torture and execution.

bob

http://news.bbc.co.u...ast/2930739.stm



Wednesday, 9 April, 2003, 00:04 GMT 01:04 UK

Inside Saddam's torture chamber

By Bill Neely - Basra, southern Iraq


Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a state of terror, and the security apparatus was at the heart of it.

As I walked into the secret police headquarters in Basra - which is now in British hands - I met former inmates and ordinary Iraqis had been terrified to come here until now.

What was to follow was a horrific education in terror.

In the smoking basement of the bombed building was a warren of cells where prisoners had been tortured.

"People died, people were imprisoned without trial," one man told me.

We went further down, to cells that had no light and little air. They were covered with cockroaches and filth - and on the ground I saw a gas mask and bottles of chemicals.

One man said he had spent eight years inside, just for attending Friday prayers. He prayed too much and was seen as a dangerous radical.

But the secret police headquarters had more horrors to reveal.

One man whose relatives had been killed here said they had their hands tied behind their backs, and were left to hang from their arms for days on end.

Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq through fear, torture and execution. It happened here to tens of thousands of Iraqis deemed dangerous by the secret police.


A man cowered for months, crammed with 300 others into a huge cell.

Hameed Fatil told me he was tortured, along with his two brothers who were executed, and re-enacted their ordeal.

Security officers kept record of prisoners. Their fingerprints are all that is left of them - apart from photographs of their interrogations.

On the ground I found a book called the Psychology of Interrogation, as if the men who worked here needed a handbook.

Edited by bobdrake12, 10 April 2003 - 12:59 AM.

[DJS]

Funny....I guess you'd rather not touch this issue with a ten-foot pole........surely an opinionated guy like you would have an opinion [?] .........Kissinger: "When in doubt, say nothing."

-To be quite honest, if you'd look at the facts for a change, you'd realized that this is less of a debate than you claim it is.....the truth hurts, I know.

I'm just not following you. We are onto Iraq and you are still debating Afghanistan?? Would you like to reopen the argument about the 2000 Presidential election? [B)] . My side is taking no prisoners and your stuck whining like a little..., well you know.

What do you want to debate about Afghanistan? Afghanistan was a base for the terrorist activities of Al Qaeda. One of the objectives of fighting the War on Terror is to deprive the terrorists of their bases of operation, thus making it more difficult for them to plan and carry out attacks.

Or do you want to debate the rebuilding effort after the fall of the Taliban? Afghanistan is one of the poorest nations on the face of the earth. It is also plagued by an extremist philosophy that makes development and modernization nearly impossible. Afghanistan was a rat hole before we went in, and it will be a rat hole after we leave. I never had any pretenses. To hope that a vibrant democracy would be created in such a brutal, desolate land is idiotic. Our main objective in Afghanistan was to eliminate the terrorist element which had infected the country, and to prevent that element from reconstituting at a later date.

[bobdrake12]

Today, once the Iraqi people saw that Saddam's ruthless regime was finished, the people of Iraq finally begain to show how they really felt about Saddam.


BBC


BBC

Why was this the case? Quoting the BBC article, "Inside Saddam's torture chamber":

Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq through fear, torture and execution.

The article below displays how Saddam's regime controlled the people of Iraq through fear.

bob


http://www.nzherald....ubsection=world




UK Govt dossier decribes torture, rape and killing in Iraq (excerpts)

03.12.2002 - 1.00pm - By BEN RUSSELL


Detailed accounts of systematic torture, rape, arbitrary arrests and killings are outlined in the British Foreign Office's 24-page dossier on human rights abuses in Iraq.

Beheading, eye gouging, acid baths, drilling through hands and other lurid examples of torture and execution are detailed to paint a picture of "a cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering".

The document, a compilation of published accounts by human rights groups, media reports and the stories of exiles and dissidents, places the blame for abuse firmly at the door of Saddam Hussein and his immediate subordinates.

It concludes: "Iraq is a terrifying place to live. People are in constant fear of being denounced as opponents of the regime. They are encouraged to report on the activities of family and neighbours. The security services can strike at any time."

Much of the detail dates from the 1980s and 1990s, and quotes extensively from documents held by the Iraq Research and Documentation Project at Harvard University. It also draws heavily on reports by organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. There are also reports of harassment and intimidation among Iraqi dissidents in exile.

The dossier, a pamphlet-style publication, portrays Saddam as "ruthless in his treatment of any opposition", outlining examples of torture, death and ill-treatment as "a faithful representation of what ordinary Iraqis face in their daily lives."

The dossier warns: "These grave violations of human rights are not the work of a number of over-zealous individuals, but the deliberate policy of the regime. Fear is Saddam's chosen method for staying in power."

The dossier insists that torture in Iraq is "systematic". In 1992, the Revolutionary Command Council, presided by Saddam, granted immunity for any member of the ruling Ba'ath Party who "cause damage to property, bodily harm and even death when pursuing enemies of the regime."

It points out that the council has established severe penalties for criminal offences and approved amputation of the tongue as a penalty for slander about Saddam or him family. Saddam's elder son Uday Hussein is said to have been repeatedly accused of the serial rape and murder of young women. He is accused of maintaining a private torture chamber, and of ordering the national football team to be caned on the soles of their feet after losing a World Cup qualifying match.

In one example of Iraqi torture, a family arrested two years ago were tortured over the sale of a vehicle said to have been used by opposition forces. The husband was shot at close range and hung from a hook on their ceiling. In a separate centre, the woman was stripped naked, beaten and burned with cigarettes in front of her children.

Torture techniques include electric shocks, sexual abuse, beatings, mock executions and acid baths.

Women have been tortured, ill-treated and summarily executed, according to Amnesty International reports quoted by the Foreign Office dossier. It argues that "under Saddam Hussein's regime, women lack even the basic right to life," citing a 1990 decree allowing male relatives to kill women in the name of honour.

It adds: "Human rights organisations and opposition groups continue to receive reports of women who have suffered psychological trauma after being raped by Iraqi personnel while in custody." The dossier claims to have evidence of an Iraqi official acting as a "professional rapist". A government personnel card, taken from an Iraq research project at Harvard University, describes a man's occupation as "violation of women's honour" .

An account by Nidal Shaikh Shallal, given in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington last month, said: "The heads of many Iraqi women have been publicly cut off in the streets under the pretext of being liars, while in fact they mostly belonged to families opposing the Iraqi regime. Members of Saddam Hussein's gang have raped women, especially dissident women.

Conditions in Iraqi jails are described as "inhumane and degrading". In one prison, the Mahjar jail in central Baghdad, "prisoners are beaten twice a day and the women regularly raped by the guards."

©Copyright 2003, New Zealand Herald

Edited by bobdrake12, 10 April 2003 - 01:23 AM.

[DJS]

Human nature dictates that most military action following an attack, unrelated or not, is partly about revenge. This is not very debatable.

Didn't you just say, "When in doubt say nothing"? I think you are confusing revenge with justice.

That being said, if you'd follow something other than your overly-biased, paid-for and shrink-wrapped media, then you'd realize that as oppressive as the Taliban were - the September 11th attacks had NOTHING to do with them.

First, I go to a variety of news sources, not just right wing. I like to know what my opponents are saying. The Taliban most certainly did have something to do with 9/11. They provided aid and comfort to the enemy. And they most certainly knew of the terrorist training camps within their country. Your argument is flawed and baseless.

So they (the Taliban) didn't actively seek to kick out terrorists. Big deal. Terrorists could attack the U.S. from anywhere they choose to.....they would have found another way.

It is a very big deal. Don't try to trivialize the relationships at play here for your own short sighted political agenda. And I think you are missing the whole point about base of operations. Terrorist need safe havens from which to plan and organize. Do you understand?

the Septembr 11th attacks were plotted outside of Afghanistan, by people who were not from Afghanistan.....

That is simply false. What proof do you have for this assertion?

and avoid discussing the complete & total failure of their poorly-organized intelligence agencies, the CIA and FBI. (besides their many secret spy agencies.)

Which was brought about by under funding and the systematic and intentional dismantling of our intelligence infrastructure by the Clinton Administration. The Left is responsible for the weakening of our national security. That is not debatable.

I have dual (Canadian and American) citizenship........ Kissinger: "

-Not only can I visit your country, I can work in your country, and vote in your corrupt elections.....

Yes, most of you do have dual citizenship. Maybe it is because you realize that despite all of your whining and complaining about American policies, America is the greatest nation on the face of the Earth and you are lucky to be allowed access to its opportunities.

I refuse to stoop to your  mindless, drum-beating level. You can't faze me, and you can't provoke the reaction you're looking for......and you can't win a mud-slinging contest - the younger generation is much better at that.  [B)]  lol

Younger generation?? I just turned 24. I am not quite over the hill. lol

If you'd like to debate issues based on facts, I'd be happy to do so.

As would I. If you can put up with my crassness, then come and meet me on this anonymous battle field of words.

Peace be with you, too. lol.

That sounds like something a Christian would say.

Edited by Kissinger, 10 April 2003 - 01:36 AM.

[bobdrake12]

Trust in a news service is based up their track record.

Does anyone trust Al-Jazeera?


bob


http://www.foxnews.c...3,83704,00.html

Arabs Shocked, Awed by Fall of Baghdad

Wednesday, April 09, 2003


RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The fall of Baghdad provoked shock and disbelief among Arabs, who expressed hope that other oppressive regimes would crumble but also disappointment that Saddam Hussein did not put up a better fight against America.


"Why did he fall that way? Why so fast?" asked Yemeni homemaker Umm Ahmed, tears streaming down her face. "He's a coward. Now I feel sorry for his people."

Arabs clustered at TV sets in shop windows, coffee shops, kitchens and offices to watch the astounding pictures of U.S. troops overwhelming an Arab capital for the first time ever. Feeling betrayed and misled, some turned off their sets in disgust when jubilant crowds in Baghdad celebrated the arrival of U.S. troops.

"We discovered that all what the [Iraqi] information minister was saying was all lies," said Ali Hassan, a government employee in Cairo, Egypt. "Now no one believes Al-Jazeera anymore."

In a live report from Baghdad, correspondent Shaker Hamed of Abu Dhabi Television said: "We are all in shock. How did things come to such an end? How did U.S. tanks enter the center of the city? Where is the resistance? This collapse is puzzling. Was it the result of the collapse of communications between the commanders? Between the political leadership? How come Baghdad falls so easily."

The shock came after weeks of hearing Saddam's government pledge a "great victory" or fight to the death against "infidel invaders."

"We Arabs are clever only at talking," Haitham Baghdadi, 45, said bitterly in Damascus, Syria. "Where are the Iraqi weapons? Where are the Iraqi soldiers?"

Behind the disbelief lay a worry over the prospect of an American occupation of an Arab nation.

However, Tannous Basil, a 47-year-old cardiologist in Sidon, Lebanon, said Saddam's regime was a "dictatorship and had to go."

"I don't like the idea of having the Americans here, but we asked for it," he said. "Why don't we see the Americans going to Finland, for example? They come here because our area is filled with dictatorships like Saddam's."

Tarek al-Absi, a Yemeni university professor, was hopeful Saddam's end presaged more democracy in the region.

"This is a message for the Arab regimes, and could be the beginning of transformation in the Arab region," al-Absi said. "Without the honest help of the Western nations, the reforms will not take place in these countries."

From Kuwait, which was occupied by Saddam's forces before the 1991 Gulf War, came one of the few statements of unadulterated support. Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, Kuwait's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, said, "Joy fills our hearts as we see our Iraqi brothers ... express their jubilation at victory."

In comments carried by state-owned Kuwait Television, he praised "the huge sacrifices made by the coalition" to free Iraqis.

But for most Arabs, the overwhelming emotions were those of distaste and worry.

Three men having tea and smoking in a coffee shop in Riyadh were unsettled as they watched television, even though they said they were against Saddam and felt sorry for the long-suffering Iraqis.

"I can't say that I'm happy about what's going on because these are non-Muslim forces that have gone in and I hope they will not stay," said Mohammed al-Sakkaf, a 58-year-old businessman.

Another of the three, Walid Abdul-Rahman, said he was disturbed by the sight of U.S. troops lounging in Saddam's palaces or draping the U.S. flag around the head of a Saddam statue. "Liberation is nobler than that," he said. "They should not be so provocative."

In Jordan, hotel receptionist Wissam Fakhoury, 28, expressed disgust at the Baghdad crowds.

"I spit on them," he said. "Do those crowds who are saluting the Americans believe that the United States will let them live better?" Fakhoury said. Americans "will loot their oil and control their resources, leaving them nothing."

Bahraini physician Hassan Fakhro, 62, said he was saddened because even if Saddam "was a dictator, he represented some kind of Arab national resistance to the foreign invaders -- the Americans and the British."

After an anti-war march in Khartoum, Sudan, lawyer Ali al-Sayed said U.S. troops should not misinterpret the relief as an invitation to stay.

"Those people under oppression will not have any national feeling, so they will be happy to see someone removing a dictator and liberating them," al-Sayed said. "But the moment they feel free and liberated, they will not tolerate a foreign presence."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, an uncomfortable U.S. ally in the war, said the quickest way to achieve stability now would be for U.S. troops to withdraw. "Iraqis must take control over of their country as fast as possible," Mubarak told Egypt's official news agency, MENA.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud, looking upset at a news conference, called for a quick end to Iraq's "occupation." In a rare departure from diplomacy, Saud responded to a question about Arab anger toward the United States with: "I don't want to talk about anger if you don't mind today."

© Associated Press

[bobdrake12]

CBC

Mohamed al-Douri


http://story.news.ya...raqi_ambassador

Wed, Apr 09, 2003

Iraq's U.N. Envoy Concedes Defeat in War

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - With the fall of Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites)'s U.N. ambassador declared Wednesday, "the game is over" — and became the first Iraqi official to concede defeat in the U.S.-led war.

Mohammed Al-Douri expressed hope that the Iraqi people will now be able to live in peace.

"My work now is peace," he told reporters outside his New York residence. "The game is over, and I hope the peace will prevail. I hope the Iraqi people will have a happy life."

Al-Douri was asked what he meant when he said "the game is over."

"The war," he responded.

His comments were the first admission by an Iraqi official that coalition forces had overwhelmed Iraqi troops after a three-week campaign.

In an AP interview Wednesday night, Al-Douri said he will continue to work at the United Nations (news - web sites) and had no intention of defecting.

"Defecting from who?" he asked. "I think the government has already defected. There is no more Iraqi government to be defected from."

Two weeks ago, during a heated U.N. debate, Al-Douri accused the United States of "criminal aggression" against Iraq and warned the U.S.-led coalition was "about to start a real war of extermination that will kill everything and destroy everything."

He said U.S. and British forces were being "hoodwinked" into believing "that the Iraqi people would receive them with flowers and hugs."

The outburst caused U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte to walk out of the open Security Council meeting, saying he'd "heard enough."

On Wednesday, when asked about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), Al-Douri said he had no "relationship with Saddam."

"I have no communication with Iraq," the ambassador said.

Edited by bobdrake12, 10 April 2003 - 02:01 AM.

[bobdrake12]

Did anyone really believe what Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf had to say?

bob

http://story.news.ya..._s_mouthpiece_3

Iraqi Information Minister Uses Insults (excerpts)
Tue Apr 8, 2:26 PM ET

By SAM F. GHATTAS, Associated Press Writer




Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, seen in this image from video, talks to the media outside the Palestine Hotel Tuesday, April 8, 2003, in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites). (AP Photo/APTN)


DOHA, Qatar - The television pictures of U.S. tanks in Baghdad seemed undeniable, but Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s spokesman denied them anyway — with his usual flair for insult.

There is no presence of American infidels in the city of Baghdad," Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf asserted outside Baghdad's Palestine Hotel on Monday.

A day later, when the hotel came under U.S. tank fire, the Iraqi information minister had to admit to the journalists staying there that coalition forces were in the capital. But, smiling, he made it sound like it was all part of Iraq (news - web sites)'s plan:

"We blocked them inside the city. Their rear is blocked," he said in hurried remarks that were a departure from his daily news conference.

Across the region, Arabs hoping for victory over the United States — hated for its support of Israel and portrayed as attacking Iraq only for its oil — embrace al-Sahhaf's version. And even when they can't believe what he is saying, they like the way he says it.

They get a kick out of the way he ridicules President Bush (news - web sites) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) in daily news conferences, broadcast live. Some call it the "al-Sahhaf show."

Al-Sahhaf has even introduced insults virtually unknown to the Arab public. His use, for example, of "uluj," an obscure and particularly insulting term for "infidel," sent viewers leafing through their dictionaries and calling TV stations for a definition.

His enemies are never just the Americans or the British. They are "outlaws," "war criminals," "fools," "stooges," an "international gang of villains."

Al-Sahhaf has singled out Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, describing him as a "crook" and "the most despicable creature."

Al-Sahhaf's face, clean-shaven in contrast to most Iraqi officials who sport Saddam-style mustaches, has become a TV fixture, along with his black beret and green Baath party uniform.

"American cruise Tomahawk missiles bomb Iraq, and al-Sahhaf missiles of words deafen the American and allied ears," read a headline in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

Edited by bobdrake12, 10 April 2003 - 02:21 AM.

[DJS]

Does anyone trust Al-Jazeera?

NO. But I must admit that I was surprised that they actually aired the fall of Baghdad and the celebrations in the streets. I didn't think the Arab world would see that scene for many years. Maybe this time the truth was too big to hide.

I have long felt that Al-Jezeera crossed the line from news agency to propaganda machine.

Edited by Kissinger, 10 April 2003 - 03:06 AM.

[DJS]

Did anyone really believe what Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf had to say?

I trusted him about as far as I could throw him.

Edited by Kissinger, 10 April 2003 - 06:43 AM.

[DJS]

Killing a Regime, Not a People

Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, April 10, 2003


Gulf War II, the Three Week War (or possibly Four), is a monumental event: the first war ever aimed at destroying a totalitarian regime -- and sparing the invaded country. Surgically removing a one-party police state while trying to leave the civilians and the infrastructure as untouched as possible is an operation of unusual difficulty. Yet the pictures from the opening nights of the war told the story: plumes of smoke from precision strikes on Saddam Hussein's instruments of power while the city lights remained on and cars casually traversed the streets.

This kind of war is totally new. We have, of course, destroyed totalitarian regimes in the past, Nazi Germany and imperial Japan most notably. But in World War II, we made war not just on the regime but on the whole country. Cities were firebombed with the intent of breaking the people ("the Hun," as Churchill liked to call the Germans) and destroying the whole of their industrial civilization. And we damn near succeeded. It took decades to rebuild those countries from the ashes.

Recent wars have been far more modest both in means and ends. Neither Gulf War I nor Kosovo attempted regime change; they simply expelled an occupying army. And in Afghanistan we did indeed remove a repressive regime while leaving the country intact. But the Taliban were too primitive, and the country too premodern and tribal, to merit the distinction of "totalitarian."

Hussein's Baath dictatorship deserves the honor. The Baath Party, consciously modeled on the fascist parties of the early 20th century, exercised control through a one-party apparatus that infiltrated every aspect of life. Every town and village, every trade union and military unit, every school and mosque had its Baath Party agents, who were given absolute power to torture and terrorize in the service of the centralized state.

At the beginning of the war, no one knew the state of health of Baath totalitarianism. Did it have the youthful vigor of early Nazi and communist regimes? Or was it a desiccated shell like the superannuated Ceausescu dictatorship in Romania, which collapsed overnight?

Baath totalitarianism turned out to be somewhere in between, middle-aged. It was no longer highly mobilized and energetic. The Soviet experience demonstrated that no people can remain in that state of thrall forever; they tire of the endless rallies, the empty slogans, the messianic prophecies. But the Baath leadership still commanded a fanatical core, a Hitler youth, with a thirst for terror and a will to fight.

The sight of them panicked Cassandras here in the United States who were quick to predict that the evidence of any armed resistance meant that we were in for a long guerrilla war. But the Vietnam analogy was absurd. It was not the people of southern Iraq who harassed our troops on the drive to Baghdad but the regime's shock troops. These "irregulars" were not insurgents; they were counterinsurgents. They did not represent the people they used as human shields; they ruthlessly repressed them.

Most of these enforcers were Sunnis from northern tribes, alien to the Shiite population they ruled. In the secret police prison in Basra, seven of the 16 officers were surnamed Tikriti, i.e., they came from Tikrit, Hussein's hometown in Sunni north-central Iraq. They were not guerrillas, Mao's "fish swimming in the sea of the people." They were aliens who survived by torturing the locals and, when the British liberators arrived, by shooting civilians in the back. Rooting out these Baath thugs in the middle of a war was difficult, but as soon as the local population became convinced that the regime was finished, the thugs were finished too.

Ever since Vietnam, people have been justly skeptical of the claim of "surgical strikes." There was nothing surgical about the Vietnam War. But the war in Iraq was radically different. Hussein was not waging a popular war; he was defending a regime that made war on its own people.

Not only the enemy was different, however. So were the technology and the doctrine. We can speak today of a surgical war not only because technology yields weapons of astonishing precision, but also because the coalition war strategy has had one supreme objective: the surgical destruction of a totalitarian regime. This had never been done before.

Which is what makes the Three Week War a revolution in world affairs. It is one thing to depose tin-pot dictators. Anyone can do that. It is another thing to destroy a Stalinist demigod and his three-decade apparatus of repression -- and leave the country standing. From Damascus to Pyongyang, totalitarians everywhere are watching this war with shock and awe.

[Lazarus Long]

Look everybody I don't want to rain on the parade and get labelled a crank but slow down. Serious military planners are not as jubilant at the moment as the public. Most of the weapons and troops are still unaccounted for and the tactics so far applied baffle serious experts as profoundly incompetant for Saddam or intended to lull us into complacency. No one that had any comprehesion of the strength of military might being mustered had any doubt as to the eventual outcome but resistence has been less than futile, it hasn't really been much more than token.

True this is because it was a totalitarian regime and few troops had any serious loyalty. Those folks deserted early and often. Between the bilateral force we have 12K prisoners (more or less) and I would guess ten times that went to home and to the woods. That makes 120K, fine so where are the roughly 400K rest of the troops and weapons they possessed?

The answer to this question will be the primary concern of field commanders for weeks to come. We know many troops are returning to tribal affiliated paramilitaries and taking light and medium weapons systems with them. We know the commitment has been for the real resistence to be made as a guerrilla war and we know that Saddam didn't even try to make Baghdad defensible in the final period. The answers to these questions are as important as the location of NBC stockpiles which still aren't particularly forthcoming.

I suggest that this is no time to let our guard down. I will celebrate when we leave the country with our promises kept.

[Lazarus Long]

It is true that we have demonstrated our technological prowess and it is possible that Saddam had simply mustered a bluff but I see more questions than answers still. This isn't even close to over.

[DJS]

Jubilant V-I Day
WILLIAM SAFIRE


WASHINGTON — Like newly freed Parisians tossing flowers at allied tanks; like newly freed Germans tearing down the Berlin wall; like newly freed Russians pulling down the statue of the hated secret police chief in Dzerzinsky Square, the newly freed Iraqis toppled the figure of their tyrant and ground their shoes into the face of Saddam Hussein.

All these pictures flow together in the farrago of freedom's victories over despotism in the past two generations. Just as video of human suffering understandably triggers demonstrations against any war, unforgettable images of the jubilation of enslaved people tasting liberty drives home the wisdom of just wars.

Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals' forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)

The most insulting question is this: considering their Islamist religious schisms and tribal hatreds, their tradition of monarchy and obedience to dictatorial regimes, their turbulent "street," easily inflamed by demagogues — how can any population of Arabs be entrusted with democracy?

The answer to that is the experiment on which the Iraqis are now embarked. Most start with the advantages of being literate, not fundamentalist and extravagantly oil-rich.

If Iraqis are able to adopt a system of free enterprise and representative government, they will become the center of an arc of freedom from Turkey in the north to Israel in the south (with Lebanon freed from Syrian occupation, if France will liberate the state it created). Egypt, the largest Arab nation, could not long resist such a tidal wave of liberty.

A parade of former U.S. ambassadors to Arab nations pooh-pooh this vision, deriding the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz idealists as the four horsemen of hubris.

But consider one example of a big segment of Iraq's population that proved itself willing to ally itself wholeheartedly with the coalition, and showed under fire its eagerness to make sacrifices for its freedom.

Nobody came out of this war more nobly than the 3.5 million long-suffering Kurds of Iraq. After Gulf War I, we at first left them to the poison-gas savagery of Saddam, then expiated that sin by provided them air cover for the next decade. In that time, this ethnic group built a model state: a lively parliament, schools, hospitals, a thriving economy built on farming and a little smuggling on the side.

Their rival leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, realized that what they call "our friends to the north" — the Turks — suspected a plot to declare an independent Kurdistan, which might encourage Turkey's Kurdish minority to break away.

Because the U.S. believed that we would get Turkey's cooperation against Saddam, we refused to arm the Kurds, even though they were under attack from terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda. Despite this, when we launched our invasion, the 70,000 Kurdish pesh merga troops volunteered to serve in the coalition under the command of our small airborne units in the north. The Kurds were and still are the only indigenous force fighting against Saddam's regime.

One tragic test of loyalty came last week when one of our aircraft mistakenly bombed a convoy carrying pesh merga to engage Saddam's troops. Nineteen Kurds died, with two of the Barzani clan wounded. A Barzani aide, Hoshyar Zabari, told me by cellphone afterward: "We do not blame anyone. This happens in war. We are fighting together for our freedom."

That's an ally. The Kurds have decided their cultural autonomy — and their future safety — lies not in independence but as part of Iraq's new confederation, with its capital Baghdad. "We will always retain our Kurdish identity, but we are Iraqis," emphasizes Barham Salih, Mr. Talabani's prime minister.

My guess is that the urbane Mr. Talabani will serve in Iraq's national government, with the locally rooted Mr. Barzani in its regional capital in the north. They have learned how democracy works, and have earned a seat at the governing table. They also know, and will bear witness to their Iraqi compatriots in this great experiment, that the U.S. and Britain are freedom's best friends.

[DJS]

That makes 120K, fine so where are the roughly 400K rest of the troops and weapons they possessed?

I think that 400K number was exaggerated from the beginning. Many were killed, some went home. Some are still lurking in the darkness, no doubt, but now that the regime has symbolically "fallen" the resistance will be completely uncoordinated and, hopefully, half hearted. I think this conflict is winding down from military action to policing action.

I suggest that this is no time to let our guard down.  I will celebrate when we leave the country with our promises kept.

I agree, completely. This is not over yet. For all we know, Tehkrit could be the last stand with the utilization of massive quantities of chem/bio. That is what really concerns me, where is the WMD? Not just a few canisters, where are the thousands of liters of this stuff? And I am not saying this because I doubt it is there. I sincerely believe that the goods are there. That is the problem.

I would be surprised if some kind of WMD attack did not take place in the next few months. It only makes sense, doesn't it? Considering the fact that we are not just dealing with the Baath regime, but rogue terrorist elements which have infiltrated Iraq for the express purpose of carrying out gorilla attacks on our troops. These elements are not fighting for the Baath regime, they are fighting for Islamic Jihad. Their only goal is a martyrs death. It may take months to weed out these elements. I for one, have never claimed that this was going to be a cake walk, but I think this is very doable. We need to make the citizens of a new, liberated Iraq view terrorism as a threat to their way of life as well as ours. If we can do this, we will succeed.

[Lazarus Long]

We are already facing widespread looting, riot, mayhem and also the internecine retributional fratricides. We aren't in control, we are present and now responsible for all that goes wrong. You see now we cannot blame Saddam. We have a logistical nightmare. We are being given the opportunity to succeed or fail with our policy but the entire Islamic world is monitoring carefully to determine our intention and practices. The mood in the street is not universal jubilation even in Iraq.

This is an old strategy that the guerrilla forces have long employed and they effectively have retreated in better order than the media credits for one very simple logical reason. We don't know where they are.

Yesterday while a party was been filmed for global media three blocks away and off camera the Marines got into a sudden firefight with elements that they just wandered into at the University as well as another firefight from intense organized resistence at a mosque, where again after taking and drawing blood the enemy was able to retreat. There is much more going on then our press is explaining to the people including the mounting battle for the "diplomatic" phase of recovery. What we do is being used to recruit forces in dozens of neighboring States and the target for many of these groups are not Iraqi instituitions but their own. Also many "irregulars" that came over the border to get bloodies have been captured or killed but even more recieved training in how to face US troops on the ground. This was a tactic again utilized in Africa and by the VC to train combatants in lieu of a formal training facilities.

It is clear we didn't have the battle we expected for Baghdad and the question is why?

They didn't blow the bridges, he didn't take advantage of strategic position, and the message coming from intelligence is that we didn't actually take him out with the B1 hit. We did kill a lot of civilians however. Apparantly the bombs were off center of the target and it is unclear if it was even him or a body double intended to draw fire. Intelligence is saying that vast quanitites of documents as well as weapons are missing from Baghdad and it appears from the initial reports they were removed weeks to months ago. Again why? and also where did they go? If it is too easy it is suspect and there has been only enough resistence to lend credibility to the idea that there is resistence.

One reason none of the "leadership" of these organizations are coming forward to "boast" on the media is that they are convinced that when they do we can utilize our Electronic advantage to locate and destroy them. So now what?

The Turks are threatening to go to war against the Kurds that are in possession of Kurkuk, Iranians and Turks are in talks about how to develop a policy with regard to Kurdish populations and the Kurds are not claiming independence yet but they are distinctly moving towards it strategically.

If they declare Northern Iraq independent then we have a serious dilemma and the Yugoslavia comparison becomes far more credible. Also reports say that we do not have a precise location on ten divisions of regular army and republican guard that were in the north. Not all the numbers are exaggerated. And yes we did kill a lot but again initial ground intelligence is coming in saying that many of the targets we hit were emptied well before getting bombed.

While most people are expecting the WMD attack here at home in the next few weeks to months I think that it is as much as a year or two away, the enemy is patient and likes to wait till we are complacent. I expect a period of brutal assassinations, strikes against concentrated forces and Command structures or targets of opportunity, as well as steadilly rising internecine conflict. And I suspect the attacks here in the US will coincide with our election process.

The issue of WMD's is crucial, I argued containment because we needed more intelligence and better restrictions on transport to prevent what I suspect has happened, these arsenals that we suspect exist are now in the possession of other States and Terrorist organizations and many have already left the country in the fog of war.

Like I said, I am hopeful for the Iraqi people but I will wait to celebrate when the real objectives are achieved and the troops are safely home. I will support Democracy but be careful if the popular Democratic sentiment turns against us, I and many, if not most around the world will still support their right to a Democracy.

Edited by Lazarus Long, 10 April 2003 - 12:40 PM.

[bobdrake12]

I agree, completely. This is not over yet. For all we know, Tehkrit could be the last stand with the utilization of massive quantities of chem/bio. That is what really concerns me, where is the WMD?

Kissinger,

You nailed it!

Check out the article below.

bob


http://www.csmonitor.../brieflies.html

Marines may have broken seals on known radioactive material (excerpts)

Posted: Thursday, April 10, 5:48pm EDT


American troops who suggested they uncovered evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq unwittingly may have stumbled across known stocks of low-grade uranium, officials said Thursday. They said the US troops may have broken UN seals meant to keep control of the radioactive material.

Leaders of a US Marine Corps combat engineering unit claimed earlier this week to have found an underground network of laboratories, warehouses and bombproof offices beneath the closely monitored Tuwaitha nuclear research center just south of Baghdad.

The Marines said they discovered 14 buildings at the site which emitted unusually high levels of radiation, and that a search of one building revealed "many, many drums" containing highly radioactive material. If documented, such a discovery could bolster Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weaponry.

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2003

Edited by bobdrake12, 11 April 2003 - 12:31 AM.

[bobdrake12]

http://story.news.ya..._weapons_hunt_2


Thu, Apr 10, 2003

Search for Iraqi Scientists May Be Hard (excerpts)

By DAFNA LINZER, Associated Press Writer

Finding any chemical or biological weapons in Iraq (news - web sites) is already proving hard enough, but locating hundreds of people involved in the programs — from the scientist who produced some of the most lethal weapons in the world to the Iraqi generals who may know where they are hidden — could be even tougher.

Many Iraqis have fled the capital since the war began on March 20, suspected sites are shut down and the whereabouts of employees are unknown. Some scientists, technicians, traders and special security thought to have handled the weapons could have been among the hundreds of Iraqi casualties of war.


Key members of Saddam's Cabinet — such as Lt. Gen. Amir al-Saadi, a special adviser who oversaw Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, and Maj. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, who oversaw the biological weapons program — haven't been seen in days.


"It's a little ironic," said one U.N. inspector. "We could find them but they wouldn't talk. Now they might talk but who is going to find them?"

[Lazarus Long]

http://story.news.ya...y_be_unknowable

Number of Iraqi Dead May Be Unknowable
Thu Apr 10, 9:01 AM ET Add Top Stories - The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER The New York Times

DOHA, Qatar, April 9 The effort to number the dead on the Iraqi side in the war begins with a conundrum: who is a civilian and who is a soldier?

In Basra, for example, ambulance drivers and hospital workers estimate that they have handled between 1,000 and 2,000 corpses in three weeks of war.

Some were clearly military: they wore uniforms and military boots. Others were obviously civilians: women, children and older people. Some were burned or blasted beyond recognition by bombs, artillery or grenades.

But perhaps hundreds more were men and boys of fighting age who arrived at hospitals and morgues in civilian clothes. Were they members of the Republican Guard who threw off their uniforms? Were they armed Baath party loyalists fighting for Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government? Were they Fedayeen or other irregulars? If they were, could they have been trying to surrender and been killed by their own side?

The same puzzle exists across the country, more acutely and on a much larger scale in and around Baghdad. For example, relentless bombing and a week of ground combat left the Baghdad Division of Iraq (news - web sites)'s army reduced to "zero percent strength," according to Marine officers who engaged the division, once thought to number about 10,000 soldiers. Where are they?

One military official here said the number of Iraqi dead was certainly high but ultimately unknowable.

"In the bombing of the different divisions, the destruction there was terrifying," the official said, speaking on condition that he not be named. "Whole divisions were destroyed. Many went home, but many were killed. It won't be until after the war that we get a better accounting, if then."

In some incidents, there has been no doubt about the number of dead and their status as combatants or civilians. The shooting by American soldiers of a van at a checkpoint near Najaf in the first week of the war, for example, killed seven women and children. A marketplace bombing in Baghdad killed dozens of civilians, although which side was responsible is not clear.

But more broadly, the problem of sorting out and then trying to quantify the dead in this war is one that will trouble journalists, human rights groups and military historians for years.

Neither British nor American military officials will provide even rough estimates of the number of Iraqi soldiers killed in the war, although they occasionally release figures on individual engagements. The most startling such estimate came from Central Command officials on Saturday, when they said that 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi soldiers had been killed in a three-hour sweep through part of Baghdad by a column of American armored vehicles. No evidence was offered to back the assertion.

The bombing campaign that accompanied ground actions to squeeze Iraqi military units into ever-smaller "kill boxes" almost certainly left thousands of soldiers dead, perhaps tens of thousands. But the world will probably never know how many, and no Iraqi authority is left to count them and notify their families.

The question of enemy dead does not come up in daily briefings for senior commanders at Central Command, a senior official here said. They are interested only in the combat effectiveness of the units they face and how that can be further reduced, the official said.

Nor are field commanders being asked to count the Iraqi battlefield casualties, although some, out of pride or the military impulse to quantify things, estimate casualties after battles. But at the policy level, no such estimates exist.

"We cannot look at combat as a scorecard," said Capt. Frank Thorp of the Navy, the chief military spokesman at Central Command headquarters here. "Out there in the combat environment the commander on the ground is focused on the present, the future and how his troops are doing. We are not going to ask him to make specific reports on enemy casualties."

He said that lingering on the battlefield to count the enemy dead was "too time-consuming and, frankly, too risky."

Mark Burgess, a researcher at the Center for Defense Information in Washington, a private research group, said that the war in Iraq presented unusually difficult problems in estimating the dead because few Iraqi military units fought in an organized manner. It was also hard to tell who was an enemy combatant, because many fought out of uniform and many were forced to fight by their superiors.

"It's an unanswerable question," Mr. Burgess said. "We don't know the exact number who stood and fought. There really wasn't much in the way of conventional battles."

He said the powerful munitions used by American and British air forces probably left hundreds or thousands of battlefield victims pulverized, burned or buried in rubble.

The center had been posting the official Iraqi government estimates of civilian deaths on its Web site, but dropped it today because the figures coming out of Baghdad had become "outlandish," Mr. Burgess said.

Another group, the Iraq Body Count Project, posts a daily estimate of civilian casualties culled from Arab and Western media reports. The tally today was 961 to 1,139. But officials from the group cautioned that those were only the reported deaths and that actual deaths may be much higher.

That effort also suffers from the same problem that pervades the entire enterprise of counting the Iraqi casualties. Are people working in government ministries civilians or, as the Pentagon (news - web sites) likes to call them, "regime targets"? Is a woman suicide bomber a civilian or an enemy combatant?

The Iraqi government's figures and the estimates from the Body Count Project both suffer from "dubious methodologies," Mr. Burgess said.

"We just don't know, and we might as well just make up a number," he added.

[Lazarus Long]

http://story.news.ya...najaf_leader_dc

Iraqi Shi'ite Leader, Aide Knifed to Death in Najaf
Thu Apr 10, 4:32 PM ET World - Reuters
By Mehrdad Balali

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Men burst into Iraq (news - web sites)'s holiest Shi'ite shrine on Thursday and stabbed and shot dead senior cleric Abdul Majid al-Khoei and an aide, apparently as part of power struggle in the city of Najaf, now under U.S. control.

"This mob armed to the hilt with knives and guns entered the mosque. They were targeting us for sure," said Ma'ad Fayad, an Iraqi journalist with the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

"They grabbed hold of the Imam and stabbed him. Then they shot him. The sanctuary became a battlefield," he told Reuters. The killings took place in the revered Shi-ite gold-domed Ali Mosque in the central Iraqi city of Najaf.

Officials at the London-based Khoei Foundation said Khoei, the son of the late leader of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim majority, and his aide Haider Kelidar had been assassinated.

The killings are expected to fuel tension among Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslims, long oppressed by ousted president Saddam Hussein, himself a Sunni Muslim.

"Right now what we need in Iraq is stability, calm and peace and whoever did this damaged these things," said Mohsen Hakim, a senior official in the Tehran-based Iraqi Shi'ite group, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Iraqi opposition sources in neighboring Kuwait and witnesses in Najaf said the two clerics might have been killed due to infighting between Shi'ite groups vying for power in the city of half a million under U.S. control since last week.

Shi'ite Muslims make up 60 percent of Iraq's population but were persecuted for decades by Saddam's Sunni-dominated administration. Saddam's overthrow was expected to prompt sectarian feuding and score-settling between rival groups.

Khoei is the son of Ayatollah Seyyid Abdulqasim Musawi al-Khoei, who died in 1992 after being placed under house arrest after Saddam crushed a Shi'ite uprising after the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).

Abdul Majid al-Khoei defected to London shortly after the uprising and returned to Najaf after U.S. forces took control last week. Supporters said he was helping the Americans restore order in the city, 100 miles south of Baghdad.


SHI'ITE RIVALRY

Other Iraqi dissidents say Khoei's rapid return to Iraq -- and the United States' clear backing for him -- had sparked intense criticism from other Iraqi Shi'ites also keen to assert their authority after the fall of Saddam.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) said he was "appalled" by the death of Khoei who he had met several times in London.

"He was a religious leader who embodied hope and reconciliation and he was committed to building a better future for the people of Iraq," Blair said in a statement.

Khoei's critics allege he was not as anti-Saddam as he wanted his followers to believe. Arabic satellite channel al-Jazeera said the other dead man, Haider Kelidar, had apparently worked for Saddam's ministry of religious affairs.

Khoei was poorly received in a recent trip to Shi'ite bastion Iran, where opponents rallied against him chanting: "Go Back to America."

Asharq al-Awsat's Fayad said Najaf residents had asked the Americans to help Khoei on Thursday, but they did not respond. Since occupying Najaf last week, U.S. troops have trod carefully around the holy shrine for fear of upsetting the Shi'ites.

The Ali Mosque where the two men were killed on Thursday contains the tomb of Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed and the first Shi'ite leader.

Iraqi dissident cleric Sheikh Fazel al-Haidari said Abdul Majid was killed by fighters loyal to Saddam, but Ghanem Jawad of the Khoei Foundation told al-Jazeera television the attack was aimed at inciting sectarian strife between Shi'ites.

Khoei's nephew, Jawad al-Khoei told Reuters from the Iranian holy city of Qom that Abdul Majid was knifed to death by "treacherous hands."

Abdul Majid's father was close to Iraq's leading Shi'ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who last week urged his followers not to hinder the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

[Lazarus Long]

http://story.news.ya.../bin_laden_tape
CIA: New bin Laden Tape Likely Authentic
1 hour, 51 minutes ago AP
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) has determined that a new audiotape obtained earlier his week is likely an authentic recording of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), a U.S. intelligence official said Thursday.

The audiotape exhorts Muslims to rise up against Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bahrain and Afghanistan (news - web sites), which it claims are "agents of America," and calls for suicide attacks against U.S. and British interests to "avenge the innocent children" of Iraq;

CIA analysts, after listening to the audio, were fairly certain the voice was bin Laden's, according to the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The agency analyzed a brief excerpt from the tape after The Associated Press and other news organizations sought to authenticate whether the speaker was that of the terrorist leader.

There was also no clear indication of when the recording was made. It refers to the outbreak of war in Iraq, so officials suspect it was a recent recording. However, the references are so general that it is conceivable it was recorded before the war, the official said.

The 27-minute tape quotes extensively from the Muslim holy book, the Quran, and says jihad, or holy war, is the "only solution to all the problems."

The tape was obtained Monday by The Associated Press from an Algerian national, known as Aadil, who said he had slipped across the border from Afghanistan, where the tape was apparently recorded.

The message focused exclusively on suicide attacks, unlike many of bin Laden's previous messages, which bore many themes.

"Do not be afraid of their tanks and armored personnel carriers. These are artificial things," he said. "If you started suicide attacks you will see the fear of Americans all over the world. Those people who cannot join forces in jihad should give financial help to those mujahedeen who are fighting against U.S. aggression."

"The United States has attacked Iraq and soon he will also attack Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan. The attacks in Saudi Arabia and Egypt will be against Islamic movements there," the speaker says.

[Lazarus Long]

http://uk.news.yahoo...0/80/dxi5k.html
U.S. faces chaos after fall of Saddam
By Hassan Hafidh
Thursday April 10, 10:02 PM

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces in Iraq are grappling with looting and civil disorder, scattered gun fights, the brutal murder of a Shi'ite religious leader in a holy shrine and a suicide bomb attack which have shattered much of the euphoria that marked the end of Saddam Hussein's rule.

As reality set in following Wednesday's wild celebrations, the United States also faced political complications with Turkey after Kurdish fighters took the northern city of Kirkuk in a bloodless rout of Iraqi forces.

Some U.S. troops also entered the key oil centre on Thursday and were moving reinforcements to take control of the city while a Kurdish commander said his men would pull out by Friday.

In the holy city of Najaf, Iraqi Shi'ite leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei and an aide were stabbed and shot to death by a mob in an attack in the gold-domed Imam Ali Mosque, the city's holiest shrine. The killings seemed certain to widen divisions and sow hatred among Shi'ites, who are 60 percent of the population.

"This mob armed to the hilt with knives and guns entered the mosque," Ma'ad Fayad, an Iraqi journalist with the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, told Reuters.

"They grabbed hold of the Imam and stabbed him. Then they shot him. The sanctuary became a battlefield," he said.

Abdul Majid had returned to Iraq only last week but his presence had provoked intense criticism from other Iraqi Shi'ite dissidents keen to assert their authority after the fall of Saddam.

A day after U.S. forces drove tanks into the heart of Baghdad to cheers from Iraqis, Saddam's whereabouts were still unknown. Some of the soldiers and paramilitaries who enforced his once-fearsome rule continued to fight on his behalf and looters ransacked the homes of government officials.


SUICIDE BOMBING

A suicide bomber detonated explosives at a U.S. checkpoint in the capital.

"Some are dead in the attack but I don't know how many," Marine officer Matt Baker told Reuters. Some U.S. news networks said four U.S. soldiers were wounded.

The attack came hours after one Marine was killed and more than 20 wounded in a four-hour battle with Saddam loyalists firing from the Imam al-Adham Mosque on the east bank of the Tigris river.

In the three-week war prior to the latest losses, U.S. forces had suffered 105 dead. Another 11 were listed as missing. Britain had 30 of its troops killed. There is no authoritative estimate for Iraqi military and civilian casualties but they certainly run into the thousands.

The immediate problem facing U.S. invaders was quelling remaining pockets of resistance and restoring a vestige of law and order. Mostly, they did not try to check the rampant looting that exploded in Baghdad and other cities.

Looters carted off bottles of wine and whiskey, guns and paintings of half-naked women from the luxury home of Uday, the playboy son of Saddam Hussein. They also picked clean his yacht and made off with some of the white Arabian horses he kept.

What they could not carry, they trashed.

Looters also descended on the homes Saddam's feared cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and Izzat Ibrahim, Saddam's right-hand man.

International aid officials criticised U.S. and British troops for failing to rein in looting mobs, saying they were obliged as an occupying force under international law to prevent chaos.

"The picture is a very dark one. There is absolutely no security on the street," said Veronique Taveau, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (UNOHCI).


U.N. LOOTED

"There is widespread looting and every official building and most of the U.N. compounds have been looted. Humanitarian assistance will be hurt," she added.

The United States is trying to organise a meeting in southern Iraq this weekend of Iraqi opposition leaders, both from outside and inside the country to start the process of selecting an interim government.

A humanitarian effort to bring food and other supplies to Iraq was beginning. Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said a British ship unloaded over 200,000 tons of food, water and medicine at the port of Umm Qasr.

"The United States sent off two ships from Galveston (Texas) with a total of more than 50,000 tons of wheat for Iraq. Australia is shipping 100,000 tons of wheat," she said.

The United States has still not confirmed finding any of the weapons of mass destruction it said Iraq had been hiding -- the issue which prompted the invasion.

Military officials cautioned that the war was still not over. Saddam's home town and power centre of Tikrit was still not subdued and dangerous pockets of resistance remained elsewhere, including in Baghdad.

U.S. planes bombed positions held by non-Iraqi Arab fighters in the western Mansur district close to an Iraqi secret police building.

In the north, hundreds of Kurdish guerrillas moved largely unopposed into Kirkuk, a move that sparked celebrations in the streets but alarm in Turkey. Iraqi Kurds consider the city, source of 40 percent of Iraq's oil revenue, their capital. Turkomans claim it as theirs.

"It's the first time I've been happy in 50 years," said one exulted Kurd, Abu Sardar Mostafa.

Turkey fears Iraqi Kurds could use the city's wealth to finance an independent state and stimulate separatist demands among its own Kurdish minority.

Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, commander of one of the two main Kurdish factions, said he had ordered his fighters to pull out of Kirkuk by Friday, to ease Turkish concerns.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Washington had assured Ankara U.S. forces would remove Kurdish fighters from the city and the White House said U.S. forces would soon take control of the region.

A dozen U.S. tanks and other armoured vehicles were seen rolling toward Iraq's third city of Mosul, making their debut on the northern front in the war, now in its fourth week.

U.S. Lieutenant Mark Kitchens said elements of Iraq's Republican Guard were gathering around Mosul and Tikrit. U.S. planes were bombing those formations.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said a Baghdad hospital, stretched to capacity treating war wounded, was ransacked on Thursday.

Spokeswoman Nada Doumani said the Al Kindi hospital was attacked by a group of armed looters who had stripped it of everything, including beds, electrical fittings and equipment.

"Security in the city is very bad and people are not daring to go to the hospitals," she told Reuters. "Small hospitals have closed their doors and big hospitals are inaccessible."

[bobdrake12]

International aid officials criticised U.S. and British troops for failing to rein in looting mobs, saying they were obliged as an occupying force under international law to prevent chaos.

"The picture is a very dark one. There is absolutely no security on the street," said Veronique Taveau, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (UNOHCI).

No matter what the US does, I believe the UN will be criticising its actions because the UN wants a significant role in post war Iraq.

bob

[bobdrake12]

Were the atrocities during Saddam's regime overstated? I don't believe so. As reports continue to come out, it looks like that regime was every bit as bad as President Bush claimed it was.

bob

http://www.nytimes.c...&partner=GOOGLE




The News We Kept to Ourselves
By EASON JORDAN

April 11, 2003

ATLANTA — Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.

We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).

Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.

I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.

Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would "suffer the severest possible consequences." CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

Eason Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.

Edited by bobdrake12, 11 April 2003 - 10:59 AM.

[Lazarus Long]

No matter what the US does, I believe the UN will be criticising its actions because the UN wants a significant role in post war Iraq.

bob

Belief is irrelevant, we are responsible to bring order to this chaos immediately under the 4th Geneva Convention as an occupying power and the British aren't too happy with our performance either.

They see us as incompetant, unwilling, and unprepared for what we are facing both in terms of preparations and logistics as well as training; I am referring to "peacekeeping not combat. There is a big difference between what they are going through in Basra and we are in Baghdad.

One reason that many have argued that we didn't have nearly enough "boots on the ground" was the to face the probability that this outcome would occur and thus be able to maintain BOTH the police action and the pacification process. The reports on the looting, pillage, revenge, killings, AND rape are worsening not improving. And these reports aren't coming from al Jazeera.

The US has set up a Command facility in Baghdad and has started offering amnesty to civil servants and police (many that were involved in torure) to come back and work for us to help set up an infrastructure.

This is going to deteriorate before improving. Also the Kurds continue to advance their hold on the North, the Turks are coming along as "Observers" and we will be very hard pressed to alter the face of the "democratic shift" in power.

http://news.bbc.co.u...ast/2938535.stm
US moves to tackle looting

US forces in Baghdad say they are taking measures to try to end the serious security problems in the city caused by looting.
The Americans are setting up a civil military operations centre at the Palestine hotel and have appealed for Iraqis running the public services in Baghdad to come forward and aid them.

Correspondents say it is the first sign that the US military is attempting to tackle disorder in the city since law and order broke down after American troops rolled into the heart of the Iraqi capital and seized control.

On Thursday, the United Nations and international aid officials criticised US and British troops for failing to curb the looting in Baghdad and in southern Iraq, saying it threatened to deepen the country's humanitarian crisis.

Hospitals ransacked

BBC correspondents say looting in Baghdad has reached epidemic proportions. The BBC's Rageh Omaar in Baghdad says many Iraqis are barricading themselves in their homes for fear of looters and essential services have been crippled.

Two key Baghdad hospitals and many smaller ones have been ransacked, International Red Cross officials say.

The BBC's Andrew Gilligan says he saw heart monitors and incubators being dragged out the building by looters, along with anything else that could be moved.

One boy, allegedly a looter, was beaten to death in front of him by residents taking the law into their own hands, he adds.

Fighting continues

Despite appearing to control large parts of the capital, US troops were engaged in fierce fighting on Thursday as they battled die-hard supporters of President Saddam Hussein.

In northern Baghdad, US Central Command said fighting raged for four hours around the Imam al-Adham mosque, before US marines crushed the Iraqi resistance.

At one point the US military believed senior Iraqi leaders might be hiding there.

One US marine was killed and up to 20 wounded when Iraqi troops - thought to be members of the elite Republican Guard - ambushed a marine convoy in the area with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

On Thursday night, at least four US marines were injured in an apparent suicide bomb attack on a military checkpoint in the area of Saddam City, a poor area in the north of Baghdad.

US marines told the BBC they saw an Iraqi man approach the checkpoint and detonate a number of grenades.

The Pentagon says US troops have been dealing with pockets of resistance as a top priority, before turning their attention to restoring law and order.

Edited by Lazarus Long, 11 April 2003 - 11:56 AM.