I'd sentence him to restoring order in Iraq within, say, 2 years. If he achieves this, he's exonerated. If he fails, it's off with 'is 'ead.

I doubt. Therefore I could be.

Over on the New World Order discussion sites when someone "dies" of say a "heart attack" it has been said that the person was "Sloboed".
In reference of course to Slobodan Milosevic.

Saddam? Perhaps the term "Saddamed" will come to mean convicted by a kangaroo court.

LONDON AFP - Most of the staff at the British consulate in the southern Iraqi city of Basra will be evacuated through the course of Monday due to concerns over the safety of its staff, The Daily Telegraph reported.

The newspaper said that a private security assessment had recommended the measure after the consulate was hit by regular mortar attacks over the past two months.

According to the paper, there are about 200 staff at the heavily-fortified consulate building, including bodyguards and Gurkhas. Some 12 of them are full-time staff.

Some have already been evacuated by helicopter, and more are expected to go this week. They will either be moved to Basra air station, eight miles ((13 kilometers) outside the city, or back to Britain, while a small staff will continue to run the consulate's operations until it is deemed safe enough for more to return.

A spokesman for the British foreign ministry, while insisting its officials were "not bailing out" told the newspaper: "This is a temporary measure as a response to increased mortar attacks ... Core staff will remain at Basra Palace and the consulate will continue to maintain a full range of activities."

Most of Britain's 7,000-strong force in
Iraq is based predominantly in the south of the country.

And so it begins....the first helicopters on the roof

October 30, 2006
U.S. Is Said to Fail in Tracking Arms for Iraqis

By JAMES GLANZ
The American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces and has failed to provide spare parts, maintenance personnel or even repair manuals for most of the weapons given to the Iraqis, a federal report released Sunday has concluded.

The report was undertaken at the request of Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and who recently expressed an assessment far darker than the Bush administration’s on the situation in Iraq.

Mr. Warner sent his request in May to a federal oversight agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. He also asked the inspector general to examine whether Iraqi security forces were developing a logistics operation capable of sustaining the hundreds of thousands of troops and police officers the American military says it has trained.

The answers came Sunday from the inspector general’s office, which found major discrepancies in American military records on where thousands of 9-millimeter pistols and hundreds of assault rifles and other weapons have ended up. The American military did not even take the elementary step of recording the serial numbers of nearly half a million weapons provided to Iraqis, the inspector general found, making it impossible to track or identify any that might be in the wrong hands.

Exactly where untracked weapons could end up — and whether some have been used against American soldiers — were not examined in the report, although black-market arms dealers thrive on the streets of Baghdad, and official Iraq Army and police uniforms can easily be purchased as well, presumably because government shipments are intercepted or otherwise corrupted.

In a written response to the inspector general’s findings, the American military largely conceded the shortcomings. The military said it would assist the Iraqis in determining the spare parts and maintenance requirements for the weapons. The military also said it has now instituted a “process to accurately issue weapons by quantity and serial number listing.”

Because the inspector general is charged only with looking at weaponry financed directly by the American taxpayer, the total of lost weapons could end up being higher. The Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon inspector general are expected to look at weapons financed by all sources, including the Iraqi government.

The inspector general’s office, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., also a Republican, responded to Mr. Warner’s query about the Iraqi Army’s logistical capabilities with another report released at the same time, concluding that Iraqi security forces still depended heavily on the Americans for the operations that sustain a modern army: deliveries of fuel and ammunition, troop transport, health care and maintenance.

Mr. Bowen found that the American military was not able to say how many Iraqi logistics personnel it had trained — in this case because, the military told the inspector general, a computer network crash erased records. Those problems have occurred even though the United States has spent $133 million on the weapons program and $666 million on Iraqi logistics capabilities.

more
NYT

This is Baghdad. What could be worse?

By Anthony Shadid
Sunday, October 29, 2006; B01

BAGHDAD

There was an almost forgettable exchange earlier this month in the Iraqi National Assembly, itself on the fringe of relevance in today's disintegrating Iraq. Lawmakers debated whether legislation should be submitted to a committee to determine if it was compatible with Islam. Ideas were put forth, as well as criticism. Why not a committee to determine whether legislation endorses democratic principles? one asked. In stepped Mahmoud Mashadani, the assembly's speaker, to settle the dispute.

"Any law or decision that goes against Islam, we'll put it under the kundara!" he thundered.

"God is greatest!" lawmakers shouted back, in a rare moment of agreement between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Kundara means shoe, and the bit of bluster by Mashadani said a lot about Baghdad today.

It had been almost a year since I was in the Iraqi capital, where I worked as a reporter in the days of Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and the occupation, guerrilla war and religious resurgence that followed. On my return, it was difficult to grasp how atomized and violent the 1,250-year-old city has become. Even on the worst days, I had always found Baghdad's most redeeming quality to be its resilience, a tenacious refusal among people I met over three years to surrender to the chaos unleashed when the Americans arrived. That resilience is gone, overwhelmed by civil war, anarchy or whatever term could possibly fit. Baghdad now is convulsed by hatred, paralyzed by suspicion; fear has forced many to leave. Carnage its rhythm and despair its mantra, the capital, it seems, no longer embraces life.

"A city of ghosts," a friend told me, her tone almost funereal.

The commotion in the streets -- goods spilling across sidewalks, traffic snarled under a searing sun -- once prompted the uninitiated to conclude that Baghdad was reviving. Of course, they were seeing the city through a windshield, the often angry voices on the streets inaudible. Today, with traffic dwindling, stores shuttered and streets empty by nightfall, that conceit no longer holds.

Even the propaganda, once ubiquitous and often incongruous, is gone. One piece I recalled from two years ago: a map of Iraq divided into three colored bands. In white, it read, "Progress." In red, "Iraq." In white again, "Prosperity." The promises are now more modest: "However strong the wind," reads a new poster of a woman clutching her child, "it will pass." More indicative of the mood, perhaps, was one of the old banners still hanging. Faded and draped over a building scarred with craters from the invasion, it was an ad for the U.S.-funded Iraqi network, al-Iraqiya. In Arabic, its slogan reads, "Prepare your eyes for more."

As I spoke to friends, some for the first time in more than a year, that was their fear: more of the kundara.

"When anyone is against you, when anyone has differences with me, I will put a kundara in his mouth, I will shove a kundara down his throat, I will hit him with a kundara, and so on," another friend told me.

"We live in a kundara culture today."

I had first met Karima Salman during the U.S. invasion. She was a stout Shiite Muslim matriarch with eight children, living in a three-room apartment in the working-class district of Karrada. Trash was piled at her entrance, a dented, rusted steel gate perched along a sagging brick sidewalk. When I visited last year, the street, still one of the safer ones in Baghdad, exuded a veneer of normalcy. Makeshift markets overflowed with goods piled on rickety stands: socks imported from China, T-shirts from Syria and stacks of shoes, sunglasses and lingerie. Down the street were toys: plastic guns, a Barbie knockoff in a black veil, and a pirate carrying an AK-47 and a grenade. There was a "Super Mega Heavy Metal Fighter" action figure and a doll that, when squeezed, played "It's a Small World."

On this day, the metal stands were empty, as were the streets.

"Praise God," Karima said as I asked how she was. In a moment, her smile faded as she realized the absurdity of her words. "Of course, it's not good," she said, shaking her head. "There's nothing that's ever happened like what's happening in Iraq."

On June 23, 2005, three car bombs detonated in Karrada, outside her home, wrecking the Abdul-Rasul Ali mosque and spraying shrapnel that sliced into the forearm of one of her five daughters, Hiba. Friends at school nicknamed her "Shrapnel Hiba." Two months ago, yet another bomb hurled glass through their window, cutting the head of Hiba's twin sister, Duaa. Four stitches sealed the wound. Over that time, Karima lost her job as a maid at the Palm Hotel, where she had earned about $33 a month.

"People are too scared to come," she said matter of factly.

Next to her sat her son Mohammed. During the invasion, Mohammed, an ex-convict, had joined a motley unit of a dozen men patrolling Baghdad's streets as part of the Baath Party militia. Now he had entered the ranks of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia loyal to a young cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, and blamed for many of today's sectarian killings in Baghdad. Karima's son-in-law Ali had been an officer in the American-equipped police force, earning $300 a month. He quit after receiving a death threat. Now he, too, had joined the Mahdi Army.

"Not all of them are good," Karima told me, casting a glance at her son.

Stocky and a little surly, Mohammed smiled. "Who else is going to protect Iraq?" he asked.

more
WaPo

Blair accused of trying to 'privatise' war in Iraq

By Kim Sengupta
Published: 30 October 2006
The Government has been accused of reneging on pledges to control private security companies operating in Iraq because it wants to "privatise the war" as part of its exit strategy.

The Government has not only failed to bring in legislation promised four years ago, but has actively encouraged security firms in Iraq by giving them multimillion -pound contracts to take over duties which could have been performed by British forces, says the report published today by the charity War on Want.

Humanitarian groups, MPs and international lawyers have called for tighter controls on "mercenaries".

In Britain both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence are believed to favour such a move. But, with the clamour for withdrawal from Iraq, Downing Street is said to view the private firms as a favoured option in expediting the pullout.

War on Want's campaigns director, John Hilary, said: "There are genuine worries that the Government is trying to privatise the Iraq conflict. The occupation of Iraq has allowed British mercenaries to reap huge profits. But the Government has failed to enact laws to punish their human rights abuses, including firing on Iraqi civilians.

"How can Tony Blair hope to restore peace and security in Iraq while allowing mercenary armies to operate completely outside the law?"

The study charts how the result has been boom times for security firms with the industry making $100bn a year (£53bn), mainly from Iraq and Afghanistan, with British firms among some of the top earners. Just one firm, Aegis Defence Services, run by Col Tim Spicer, who was formerly enmeshed in the controversy over supplying arms to Sierra Leone, has increased its turnover from £554,000 before the war began in 2003 to £62m last year.

While British troop levels in Iraq currently stand at 7,200 - with plans to halve this number in the next six months - there are almost 21,000 British private security guards, part of an international force of 48,000 described by US senators as the "largest private army in the world".

The report, Corporate Mercenaries: The threat of private military and security companies, comes on the same day the British security industry holds its first annual conference in London, and also on the deadline given by the US General George Casey to improve security in Iraq. On Friday a National Audit Office report is expected to warn that Britain's armed forces are failing to recruit and retain sufficient soldiers to deliver the " required military capability".

In Iraq, all non-Iraqi military personnel and private military contractors were made immune from prosecution under the Coalition Provisional Authority's Order 17 for acts performed within terms of their contract by Paul Bremer, the American head of the CPA in June 2004.

It is unclear whether that has changed since the inauguration of the new Iraqi government. But, while British and American soldiers have faced courts martial over alleged crimes carried out in Iraq, not one security contractor has been prosecuted at home or in Iraq despite a significant number of allegations of abuse.

* The Foreign Office has confirmed that staff are to be evacuated from the British consulate in Basra because of an increased number mortar and rocket attacks. They will leave the heavily fortified compound of Basra Palace for the relative safety of Basra airport. Key staff will remain in the palace, a spokeswoman said.

more about the companies
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1940825.ece

Thomas E. Ricks & Peter Baker | October 30

WaPo - October 2006 may be remembered as the month that the U.S. experience in Iraq hit a tipping point, when the violence flared and shook both the military command in Iraq and the political establishment back in Washington.

Plans to stabilize Baghdad collided with a surge in violence during the holy month of Ramadan. Sectarian revenge killings spread, consuming a town 50 miles from the capital. U.S. officials spoke of setting benchmarks for the Iraqi government to take on more responsibility, only to have the Iraqi prime minister call that suggestion election-year grandstanding. Bush compared the situation to the 1968 Tet Offensive -- often seen as a turning point in the Vietnam War -- and urged Americans not to become disillusioned.

Terrorism & Security
posted October 30, 2006 at 11:40 a.m.

British to evacuate some consulate staff from Basra

Move reportedly infuriates military who says it sends wrong message to Iraqi insurgents.
By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

The British consulate in Basra, in the south of Iraq, will evacuate all but a skeleton staff from "its heavily defended building" within the next 24 hours over safety concerns.

much more
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1030/dailyUpdate.html

Nigel Morris | October 31

The Independent - Tony Blair faces the risk of a humiliating Commons defeat today over his refusal to allow a wide-ranging inquiry into the crisis in Iraq. The Tories, Liberal Democrats and as many as 40 Labour rebels are threatening to support a nationalist demand for a parliamentary examination of the war and its aftermath.

The suggestion of any investigation is being fiercely opposed by Downing Street, which argues that it would undermine the British forces and give succour to Iraqi insurgents.

US's Afghan policies going up in smoke
By Ann Jones

On the fifth anniversary of the start of the Bush administration's war in Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld wrote an upbeat op-ed in the Washington Post on that hapless country's "hopeful and promising" trajectory. He cited only two items as less than "encouraging": "the legitimate worry that increased poppy production could be a destabilizing factor" and the "rising violence in southern Afghanistan".

That rising violence - a full-scale onslaught by the resurgent Taliban - put Afghanistan back in the headlines this summer and

brought consternation to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) governments (from Canada to Australia) whose soldiers are now dying in a land they had been led to believe was a peaceful "success story".

Lieutenant-General David Richards, the British commander of NATO troops that took over security in embattled southern Afghanistan from the US in July, warned at the time, "We could actually fail here." In October, he argued that if NATO did not bring security and significant reconstruction to the alienated Pashtun south within six months - the mission the US failed to accomplish during the past five years - the majority of the populace might well switch sympathies to the Taliban.

But coming in the midst of NATO anxieties and Taliban assaults, what are we to make of Rumsfeld's "legitimate worry" about Afghan poppy production, which this year will provide 92% of the world's heroin supply? And what are we to make of President George W Bush's presidential determination, issued just before Afghan President Hamid Karzai's September visit to Washington, that the Afghan government must be "held accountable" for that poppy harvest; that it must not only "deter and eradicate poppy cultivation" in the country, but "investigate, prosecute and extradite all the narco-traffickers" in the land?

Undeniably, the poppy trade and the resurgence of the Taliban are intimately connected, for the Taliban, who briefly banned poppy cultivation in 2000 in an effort to gain US diplomatic recognition and aid, now both support and draw support from that profitable crop. Yet Western policies aimed at the Taliban and the poppy are quite separate and at odds with each other. While NATO troops scramble, between battles, to rebuild rural infrastructure, US advisers urge Afghan anti-narcotics police to eradicate the livelihood of 2 million poor farmers.

So far the poppy-eradication program, largely funded by the US, hasn't made a dent. Last year, it claimed to have destroyed 15,380 hectares of poppies, up from 4,850 the year before; but during the same period overall poppy cultivation soared from 104,000 hectares to 165,000.

much more
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HK01Df01.html

Iraqi data suggests civilian deaths still rising
01 Nov 2006 14:29:54 GMT

More By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD, Nov 1 (Reuters) - The number of Iraqi civilians killed in violence may have jumped to another record high in October, data from the Iraqi government indicated on Wednesday.

Statistics issued by the Interior Ministry for Iraqis killed in political violence put civilian deaths last month at 1,289, nearly 42 a day and up 18 percent from the 1,089 seen in September, itself a record for this particular series of data.

Bloodshed intensified in the holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week, as rival Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim communities vied for power in a continuing cycle of sectarian reprisals.

Such figures have become increasingly controversial, notably since the United Nations put the monthly civilian toll at over 3,000 this summer and a group of medical statisticians estimated that over 650,000 may have died since the U.S. invasion of 2003.

U.S. officials, mindful that dismay over violence in Iraq could cost President George W. Bush's Republicans control of Congress in elections on Tuesday, question the U.N. estimate.

Bush and Iraq's prime minister dismissed the statisticians' survey in the medical journal The Lancet last month.

Calls for a U.S. troop withdrawal have also strengthened with the deaths of 104 U.S. soldiers in Iraq in October, the bloodiest month for Americans in nearly two years.

Evidence of civilian casualties is scarce and collecting data fraught with danger. The Iraqi government has also tightened rules to prevent officials outside the prime minister's office releasing figures.

Reuters typically reports between a dozen and several dozen killings a day in Iraq, most of them of civilians.

The Interior Ministry data is a nationwide compilation of reports from its officials as well as the Defence and Health ministries, the official who provides the statistics said.

It does not include all violent deaths but those judged the result of political, sectarian or ethnic killings, as opposed to criminal murder, the Interior Ministry official added. He would give no further detail on how the distinctions are drawn.

The figures also showed 139 Iraqi soldiers and police were killed in October -- substantially fewer than the more than 300 that the U.S. military commander in Iraq said were killed in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended a week ago.

TRENDS

Nonetheless, the Interior Ministry figures have matched trends reported by other officials, both Iraqi and U.S., this year -- notably a sharp increase in killings after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in February and a decline in deaths at the start of a major military operation in Baghdad in August.

The Interior Ministry said 582 civilians were killed in political violence in January, rising to 782 in March. It said 889 died in June, 1,065 in July and 769 in August.

Officials at Baghdad morgue, which has routinely taken in over 1,000 bodies a month this year, many suffering from gunshot and torture wounds, say they have been told not to release data.

more

posted October 31, 2006 at 2:00 p.m.

Audit slams US training of Iraqi provincial governments
Inspector general's audits also cite thousands of missing US weapons, concerns about security handover to Iraqis.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

A series of reports and audits presented to the US Congress by the office of Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq, indicates glaring problems with the US role in the country.

The Boston Globe reports that in an audit presented Monday, Mr. Bowen's office found that US efforts to train Iraqi provincial governments have been hampered by deteriorating security woes and the inability of the US State Department and the Pentagon to find a way to work together.

The training, done by "provincial reconstruction teams" of soldiers, aid workers, and diplomats, is meant to coach local authorities in Iraq on how to deliver basic services to their municipalities, and to take over duties from the US-led coalition, such as running elections and making decisions over local budgets.

The teams were considered such a critical part of the Bush administration's strategy to build up the new Iraqi government that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presided over the inauguration of the first team in Mosul last November.

But disagreements over which branch of the US government would fund and protect the teams, along with threats and attacks on personnel, have greatly hindered the effort.

One year after the provincial-training program began, the audit says that only four provinces out of 13 had US personnel that were "generally able" to carry out their mission. Of the other nine provinces, "four were somewhat able, three were less able and two were generally unable." In the two provinces labelled "generally unable," Anbar and Basra, US personnel could not work with Iraqi counterparts "because of the risk of violence, seriously hindering their mission of mentoring and skill-building."

more with links HERE

Coalition forces help bolster Afghan economy by buying local water
(AFP)

27 October 2006

KABUL - For the first time since deploying here five years ago, the US-led coalition is drinking Afghanistan’s water.

Since the international force arrived in 2001 to topple the Taleban, its thousands of mainly US soldiers have been drinking water from Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan at a cost of 58 million dollars a year, mainly in transport.

But starting this month the water bottles that are as ubiquitous as the soldiers’ guns have been coming from a gleaming new factory in a scruffy industrial park on the outskirts of Kabul.

It is a first for the coalition, which imports every other food item that passes the lips of the roughly 10,000 soldiers under its command.

Investors say it is also a tentative vote of confidence in Afghanistan’s stuttering post-Taleban economy.

The coalition awarded the contract to Afghan Beverage Industries (ABI), a subsidiary of a Dubai-based company, after testing its water not only for purity but also security against being poisoned.

The move was part of the force’s ‘Afghan First’ initiative launched in March to award more contracts to local suppliers.

Since then, the number of contracts awarded to Afghan-based firms has increased to 86 percent, from 58 percent, covering a wide range of services from buying tents to cleaning.

The aim, said coalition deputy commanding general Brigadier William Chambers, is to help ‘bolster the Afghan economy and build a more self-reliant country’.

The water contract is also a great saving, costing about 600,000 dollars a month, or just over 10 percent of the cost of importing water.

more

http://www.juancole.com/

Troubled troops in no-win plight

Updated 11/2/2006 8:39 AM ET
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Chris Packley returned from Fallujah in 2004 a top marksman on a sniper team showcased in the Marine Corps Times for its 22 kills.

"I was exceptionally proud of that Marine," says Gunnery Sgt. Scott Guise, his former team leader.

He also came home with flashbacks — memories of his friend, Lance Cpl. Michael Blake Wafford, 20, dying on the battlefield. Packley says he smoked marijuana to try to escape the images. He also left the base without permission. "I wanted out," Packley says.

ON DEADLINE: Have you experienced PTSD?

Last year he got his wish and was expelled from the Marine Corps. As a consequence, he lost access to the free counseling and medication he needed to treat the mental wounds left from combat, according to Packley, his former defense lawyer and documents from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Scores of combat veterans like Packley are being dismissed from the Marines without the medical benefits needed to treat combat stress, says Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, who supervises the legal defense of Marines in the western USA, including here at Camp Pendleton.

When classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) arise — including alcoholism and drug abuse — the veterans are punished for the behavior, Vokey says. Their less-than-honorable discharges can lead to a denial of VA benefits. Vokey calls it a Catch-22, referring to the no-win situation showcased in Joseph Heller's 1961 satirical war novel Catch-22.

"The Marine Corps has created these mental health issues" in combat veterans, Vokey says, "and then we just kind of kick them out into the streets."

Characters in Catch-22 were caught in a contradiction. They could be relieved of dangerous flying missions if crazy. But if they claimed to be crazy, they were deemed sane for trying to avoid danger and had to keep flying.

In Iraq, Marines who perform well in combat can be lauded for it. But if they develop PTSD, they can be punished for stress-related misconduct, kicked out of the military and denied treatment for their illness.

In recent months, the Marine Corps has begun investigating the matter, identifying 1,019 Marines who may fall into this group since the war in Iraq began. All served at least one year in the Marines and one tour overseas before being discharged for misconduct.

"We're digging down into the data sources we have to try and come up with answers," says Navy Capt. William Nash, who coordinates the Marine Corps' combat stress programs. "That it happens at all is obviously not ideal."

He says each case will be examined to learn whether the Marine suffered combat stress and whether that might have contributed to the misconduct.

The results could help the Marine Corps flag combat-stressed Marines and help them avoid getting into trouble, Nash says.

much more
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-01-troubled-troops_x.htm

Gen. Sanchez;Abu Ghraib main reason he was forced to retire

Gen. Sanchez, former top U.S. commander in Iraq, steps down after 33 years in the military

November 02,2006
Travis M. Whitehead
Monitor Staff Writer

RIO GRANDE CITY — Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez blamed the ghosts of Abu Ghraib for forcing him out of a military career that spanned 33 years.

The 55-year-old Rio Grande City native and one-time top U.S. commander in Iraq retired in a formal ceremony at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio on Wednesday.

Sanchez took command of U.S. troops in Iraq on June 14, 2003, the same day he was promoted from a two-star major general to the three-star lieutenant general he remains now. He served in that capacity until July 2004 — in charge during both the capture of Saddam Hussein and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, in which members of the U.S. Army Reserves abused Iraqi prisoners.

Though Sanchez was later cleared of any wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib affair, his tenure in Iraq remained tainted.

"That’s the key reason, the sole reason, that I was forced to retire," he said Wednesday.

Celebrating with his family in San Antonio after the retirement ceremony, Sanchez said there was simply nothing left for him to do in his military career but to retire.

"I was essentially not offered another position in either a three-star or four-star command," he said.

Sanchez declined to say whether he was the U.S. military’s fall guy in the Abu Ghraib fallout.

"That’s not for me to judge," he said with a good-natured laugh.

MORE
LINK

Violence rips Baghdad social fabric
By :
Date : 03 November 2006 0012 hrs (SST)
URL : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/239088/1/.html

BAGHDAD : Bombers and death squads attacked what remains of Iraq's tattered social fabric on Thursday, targeting academics, athletes, police, markets, and professionals in a series of deadly attacks.

At least two bombs exploded in crowded street markets, killing at least five people and wounding more than 30, an interior ministry spokesman said.

American forces said they had killed a leading member of Al-Qaeda, one of the insurgent groups which has done the most to tip Iraq into bloody chaos, but the death toll was mounting despite a large-scale security operation.

Attackers gunned down Jassim Mohammed al-Dahabi, the dean of Baghdad's College of Economics and Administration, along with his wife and son, in an unexplained early morning attack that was condemned by senior officials.

"We demand that security forces take action to protect academic and scientific insitututions and not just stand by in the face of this plot against us," the ministry of higher education said.

Meanwhile, insurgents shot dead three police officers manning a checkpoint in the commercial heart of the city and set off a bomb in a popular butchers' market, killing one person and wounding 22 more, medics said.

In another attack, a motorcycle bomb was detonated in the flashpoint Sadr City district, killing four people and wounding eight, said interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf.

Explosions continued to rock the central district of Baghdad near the defence and interior ministries and the Green Zone, the heavily fortified home of the embattled Iraqi government and the US embassy.

Sports officials said the coach of Iraq's disabled handball team and a player - both members of Baghdad's Sunni minority - had been kidnapped by gunmen from their gym during a training session in central Baghdad.

more carnage at link

German troops 'had Nazi symbol'
By Steve Rosenberg
BBC News, Berlin

A German magazine has published a photograph showing a Nazi-like symbol on a vehicle allegedly used by German troops bound for Afghanistan.

The defence ministry is investigating the photograph, published on Thursday in the weekly magazine Stern.

It follows the recent scandal of photographs of German soldiers posing with human skulls and skeletons.

Six servicemen were suspended over the first case, and a total of 23 are being investigated in connection with it.

At the end of last month, the German government announced a grand new role for the country's military.

It decided that more troops would be sent abroad on peacekeeping missions and Germany would expand its efforts to maintain international security.

New scandal

But the army has been embarrassed and shamed by a stream of photographs in German newspapers.

First were the images of German troops desecrating human remains, taken in Afghanistan.

Now a new photograph in Stern shows a vehicle with a palm tree and an iron cross painted onto it.

The symbol is reminiscent of that used by the Nazi commander General Erwin Rommel - the "Desert Fox" - in North Africa during World War II.

The defence ministry has promised another investigation.

The recent scandals have sparked a fierce debate in Germany about whether the army here is ready to take on a greater role abroad.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6110518.stm

Posted on Tue, Oct. 31, 2006
By Nancy A. Youssef
McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ali Abbas decided that his upper right thigh was the best place for a tattoo because no one gets tortured there.

He'd seen hundred of bodies in the city morgue and dozens of hospitals during his 18-day search for his missing uncle. He'd seen drill marks in swollen, often unrecognizable heads, slash marks across necks, bullet holes in backs, abdomens and swollen hands. He'd seen bodies that had been thrown into the river, so swollen they'd barely looked human. But by and large, the thighs had been intact.

So that's where he decided to have his name, address and phone number tattooed, in case the day comes when someone is searching for his body.

Tattoos are considered a sin in Islam, which holds that believers shouldn't deface their bodies. And tattoo shops are difficult to find in Baghdad. They're often in the basements of more reputable shops.

But at least some tattoo shops are seeing more and more Iraqis who, like Abbas, are willing to risk offending Islam to ease their families' grief in the event of their deaths. The owner of one tattoo shop in central Baghdad admitted that he'd done such tattoos, but said he didn't want to talk about it for fear that he'd be killed.

That some Muslims are getting tattoos is an intimate reflection of national chaos, and an outward symbol of the inner turmoil the chaos has created.

There's nothing artful about these tattoos. The branding has the efficient look of a business card, written in clear, bland type.

"This is our life now," Abbas said as he explained why he doesn't think that having a tattoo makes him a bad Shiite. "I think this is the best way for my family to recognize me. Everyone knows in my family that I have it: my mother, my brother, my wife."

There's no way to know how many Iraqis have made Abbas' choice. Officials at Baghdad's morgue say they've used tattoos to identify bodies, but never one with a name and address. Police officers told McClatchy Newspapers that they've encountered bodies with names and phone numbers tattooed on them. They've called the numbers and let the families pick up the bodies instead of taking them to the morgue.

Jalal Ahmed, a police officer in southern Baghdad, said residents called his station three months ago because they'd found a body in the street. Fearful that a militia would kill them for approaching the body, they put off calling until dogs began eating it.

Ahmed found the tattoo: "The dogs had torn part of the clothes, and I saw a tattoo with his full name, on the upper part of one of his arms. He was Atheer Mohammad," Ahmed said. "We asked around, and nobody knew him. He was from a different neighborhood, so we called" the number.

Whatever the extent of its use, the decision to tattoo reflects the country's level of violence. It seems that anyone can be kidnapped and killed for any reason.

Abbas realized how possible that was a few days before he got the tattoo. "I saw two vehicles, and they took five people out and shot them in front of my eyes," he recalled. "I was about to drive away. They stared at me, and I thought they were going to shoot me too, but they drove away. And I thought, `What if I were one of the five people?' Nobody knows them. Everyone is scared. No one will help them."

There are few Iraqis who haven't had to search for family members who've been kidnapped, tortured and tossed in another neighborhood. Or who know of someone killed by a homemade bomb, a shooting or a car bombing. Or taken on the way home from work only to show up at the morgue days later. Or discovered by American soldiers in makeshift graves.

A family's search can take days, and frequently it doesn't turn up a body. The idea of not properly burying a loved one is almost as torturous to a pious Muslim as not knowing how or why the person died.

About 100 bodies are found each day nationwide. Most people have been taken from one neighborhood and killed in another.

In Baghdad, the morgue has become a Shiite-dominated wing of the Ministry of Health, and some Sunni Muslims dread going there to pick up loved ones for fear they'll be kidnapped while they're there. Some police officers are afraid to approach bodies in their communities, fearing that they've been booby-trapped.

Moreover, in the absence of an able nonsectarian security force, many assume that the government can't defend them from the raging ethnic and religious violence. In some cases, they charge that the government is contributing to it.

Abbas, 24, who cuts meat off kabob racks for a living, lives in Kefah, a poorer western Baghdad neighborhood. He has a car, and his neighbors often ask him where he got the money to purchase one. He worries that the decision to kill could be fickle.

"They ask: How did I get it? And they don't know that I work hard. Maybe they will kill me for this car."

//SNIP//
More at http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/15895442.htm

David Bier
CADRE Intel Mgr
techadvisor@helloworld.com
http://groups.google.com/group/publicintel

Thu Nov 2, 2006 10:36 AM ET

By Claudia Parsons

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A senior U.S. general compared Iraq on Thursday to a "work of art" in progress, saying it was too soon to judge the outcome and playing down violence and friction with Iraqi leaders as "speed bumps" on the road.

"A lump of clay can become a sculpture, blobs of paint become paintings which inspire," Major General William Caldwell, chief military spokesman, told his weekly Baghdad news briefing.

"The final test of our efforts will not be the isolated incidents reported daily but the country that the Iraqis build."

Three-and-a-half years after the U.S.-led invasion, President George W. Bush is under intense pressure over his Iraq policy ahead of next week's Congressional elections where polls show he could lose control of both houses halfway through his second term in office.

Rising U.S. casualties and spiraling sectarian violence and insurgent attacks that kill hundreds of Iraqi civilians every week have sparked heated debate in the United States over whether Iraq is descending into civil war.

"Every great work of art goes through messy phases while it is in transition," Caldwell said.

(...)

( ... Link ... )

FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Nov 3
03 Nov 2006 09:24:48 GMT
Source: Reuters

Nov 3 (Reuters) - Following are security and other developments in Iraq as of 0910 GMT on Friday.

* indicates new or updated item.

* BAGHDAD - U.S.-led forces killed 13 suspected insurgents, detained one more and seized explosives in two raids near Mahmudiya, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, the military said. It said one of the dead was wearing a suicide-bombing vest and several appeared to be foreign fighters linked to al Qaeda.

BAGHDAD - Three U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad and a Marine was killed by enemy action in Anbar province on Thursday, the U.S. military said. Another soldier died from non-combat injuries north of Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - Police found 56 bodies and a severed head in different parts of Baghdad over the last 24 hours, an Interior ministry source said. The bodies showed signs of torture and bullet wounds.

BAGHDAD - Two mortar rounds slammed into a house in the southern district of Dora in Baghdad, killing three family members and wounding six, Interior ministry sources said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed Resan al-Sayab, a local singer, in western Baghdad on Thursday, police said.

KIRKUK - Gunmen killed a fuel station employee in the town of Zab, 70 km (40 miles) southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk, police said

KIRKUK - Gunmen shot dead a Sunni mosque preacher in the northern oil city of Kirkuk on Thursday evening, police said.

KIRKUK - A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, wounding two policemen in central Kirkuk, police said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PAR331049.htm

Two-thirds of teenagers too fat to be soldiers

Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday November 3, 2006
The Guardian

British soldiers patrol the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan. Photograph: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty images

The British army is planning to extend its training for young recruits because so many potential soldiers are obese, an official report discloses today. The military has had to relax its criteria over the physique and weight of recruits as a result of the problem.
"Increasing levels of obesity and resultant health problems reduces the number of young people able to join the services", warns the National Audit Office, parliament's independent watchdog. It points to research by the army last year which showed that only a third of all 16 year-olds would pass the body mass index set for all recruits to the forces.

Article continues

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Earlier this year, the army changed the index targets for male recruits from 28 to 32 because of the increased levels of obesity among Britain's youth.
The NAO report also warns that the armed forces are undermanned, suffering from severe shortages in crucial roles, and that the problems have been compounded by more service personnel across the ranks leaving early.

It paints a picture of an army, navy, and airforce struggling to cope with the demands placed on them in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no end in sight to a tempo of operations more intense than military planning chiefs ever envisaged.

Mark Andrews, who oversaw the report, said: "The longer [this] goes on, the more strain it puts on people ... clearly the armed forces are under strength."

more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,,1938440,00.html

Deployment of Convicted Soldier Stopped

Friday November 3, 2006 6:46 PM

By ROBERT BURNS

AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A soldier convicted in connection with prisoner abuse in Iraq was sent this week with his military police unit for another tour in Iraq, but the Army on Friday stopped him before he got there, a spokesman said.

Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said the soldier, Spec. Santos A. Cardona, deployed on Monday from Fort Bragg, N.C., with the 23rd Military Police Company. He and his unit were in Kuwait preparing for movement into Iraq when the Army decided that for safety reasons he would not go into Iraq.

``We are extremely concerned, in light of the publicity about his situation, about his personal safety,'' Boyce said. ``So for the good of the soldier, as well as the situation, he has been stopped in Kuwait pending review by the chain of command.''

In a court martial this summer, Cardona was convicted of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault for allowing his police dog to bark within inches of a prisoner's face at Abu Ghraib prison. The Army said he did 90 days of hard labor, was reduced in rank from sergeant to specialist and ordered to pay $600 per month in fines for 12 months. His sentence did not include jail time, and after his 90 days of hard labor he chose to remain in the Army, although he is no longer assigned dog handling duties in his MP unit, Boyce said.

The Army believes his personal safety, and potentially the safety of others in his unit, would be endangered if he deployed into Iraq because he might be targeted by insurgents who know of his link to the Abu Ghraib abuse.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6190014,00.html

Military Times Media Group Calls for Rumsfeld Resignation
Submitted by Julie on Fri, 2006-11-03 20:13.

According to MSNBC, an editorial to be published on Monday in the Military Times is said to call for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. The voice of military community saying Rumsfeld must go is huge, and may swing Conservative votes.

The article is reported to say that Rumsfeld should resign or be fired regardless of who wins the majority after the elections on Tuesday.

The Military Times provides publications for the 4 main branches of the military - The Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Times, and the Marine Corp. Times, which is the favored reading of troops overseas, on military bases, and the military families who traditional vote conservatively.

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/648