: "Iraq appoints US citizen as its American envoy | By David Rennie in Washington | (Filed: 24/11/2003)

The Iraqi Governing Council has appointed an Iraqi-American woman and human rights lobbyist its first ambassador to the United States.

Rend Rahim Francke is little known in Iraq. As a young girl she was sent for an education at boarding school in England, followed by Cambridge and the Sorbonne. She left Iraq for good in the 1970s and has been a US citizen since 1987.

A former banker and currency trader, Ms Francke is better known in the think-tanks and political salons of Washington DC, where she has been a prominent and passionate advocate for Iraqi regime change.

She worked with neo-conservative hawks in pushing for more US support for exile and opposition groups.

Advising on post-war planning, she shared the faith of neo-conservatives that building a democratic Iraq, and holding Saddam Hussein to account for human rights abuses, could transform the Middle East.
- posted by Editor @ 1:59 PM

Fear Grows Among Iraqis in U.S. Employ (washingtonpost.com): "Several American Allies Killed in Mosul | By Daniel Williams | Tuesday, November 18, 2003; Page A14

MOSUL, Iraq, Nov. 17 -- At city hall, the Iraqis who interpret for the Americans were silent, and other employees who cooperate with the United States refused to identify themselves to a reporter on Monday.

Even the media relations official who usually speaks to the Iraqi press gave his name only reluctantly. "I guess a media representative who doesn't represent himself isn't doing his job," Yaarub Ghanem said. "But you have to understand. We are all scared. We are under threat. Our families are in danger. It's easy to kill us."

Two days ago, gunmen killed Khalid Victor Paul, an interpreter, and his teenage son, Leith, as they were driving to a school. It was the third time since Oct. 29 that Iraqis supporting the occupation had been killed in Mosul, about 215 miles north of Baghdad. A journalist and a judge investigating human rights abuses under deposed president Saddam Hussein were previously gunned down.
- posted by Editor @ 12:27 PM

Excite News: "U.S. Raids Saddam's Hometown, Kills 6 | Nov 17, 9:46 AM (ET) | By JIM GOMEZ

TIKRIT, Iraq (AP) - In a show of force backed by tanks and mortars, U.S. forces assaulted dozens of suspected guerrilla positions in Saddam Hussein's hometown before dawn Monday, killing six alleged insurgents and capturing others, officials said.
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[The difficulty:] One such "cordon-and-search" raid early Monday in Baghdad's middle-class Azamiyah district netted 21 suspects along with 30 Kalashnikov AK-47 automatic rifles, about a dozen shotguns and 10 handguns. Most suspects had violated a coalition rule allowing only one weapon - a single AK-47 - per house.
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Residents of the neighborhood next to the Tigris River were furious over the sweep. They said those arrested included men who had revolvers or bird guns that could not have presented a serious threat to the security of the occupying forces.

"Of course everybody has weapons," said Samir al-Hadith, an engineer who works in Saudi Arabia and had returned to Baghdad to check on his home. "There are so many thieves nowadays. we have to defend our families."

"Under Saddam Hussein there was much more security and we could own guns," he said
- posted by Editor @ 8:25 AM

Brian Cloughley: Is Anyone Telling the Truth in the Bush Administration?: "November 14 / 23, 2003 | The Pentagon's War on the Facts | Is Anyone Telling the Truth? |By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY
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Here are quoted numbers of Iraqi forces, by dates.

October 9 : 60,000 (Bremer) ;
October 21 : roughly 85,000 (Rumsfeld) ;
October 30 : over 80,000 (Rice) ;
same date : 80 to 90 thousand (Wolfowitz) ;
same date : close to 100,000 (Rumsfeld) ;
November 1 : nearly 85,000 (Occupation Authority); November 2 : more than 100,000 (Rumsfeld) ;
November 11 : 131,000 (Myers).

In one month the official number of Iraqi police and para-militaries seems to have more than doubled. (The army has 1400 under training. That is one fact that can't be disguised or manipulated.) But somebody is telling lies. In fact it seems lots of people are telling lies.
- posted by Editor @ 10:28 AM

Excite News: "3 U.S. GIs Face Charges in POW Abuse Case | Nov 14, 8:03 AM (ET)

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - U.S. military prosecutors have decided to prosecute three American soldiers from Pennsylvania on charges of abusing Iraqi prisoners of war, a U.S. Army spokesman said Friday.
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The charges grew out of an alleged incident May 12 at a U.S. detention facility, Camp Bucca, in southern Iraq. The three soldiers, from the 320th Military Police Battalion, based in Ashley, Pa., are accused of punching and kicking Iraqi POWs while escorting them to Camp Bucca.
- posted by Editor @ 6:31 AM

Is This Hussein's Counterattack? (washingtonpost.com): "Commander Says Insurgence Has Earmarks of Planning | By Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks | Thursday, November 13, 2003; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Nov. 12 -- The recent string of high-profile attacks on U.S. and allied forces in Iraq has appeared to be so methodical and well crafted that some top U.S. commanders now fear this may be the war Saddam Hussein and his generals planned all along.
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"I believe Saddam Hussein always intended to fight an insurgency should Iraq fall," said Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division and the man responsible for combat operations in the lower Sunni Triangle, the most unstable part of Iraq. "That's why you see so many of these arms caches out there in significant numbers all over the country. They were planning to go ahead and fight an insurgency, should Iraq fall."
- posted by Editor @ 10:07 AM

Case for war made up, say top names: "By ANDREW GUMBEL in Los Angeles | 11/10/03: (The Independent)

An unprecedented array of United States intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambast the Bush Administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq.

In their view, the very foundations of intelligence-gathering have been damaged in ways that could take years, even decades, to repair.
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They also reconstruct the way senior White House officials - notably Vice-President Dick Cheney - leaned on the CIA to find evidence that would fit a preordained set of conclusions.

"There was never a clear and present danger. There was never an imminent threat. Iraq - and we have very good intelligence on this - was never part of the picture of terrorism," says Mel Goodman, a veteran CIA analyst who now teaches at the National War College.
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"The theory that you can bludgeon political grievances out of existence doesn't have much of a track record," he [George Bush snr's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman] says, "so essentially we have been neo-conned into applying a school of thought about foreign affairs that has failed everywhere it has been tried."
- posted by Editor @ 7:48 AM

Excite News: "S. Korea to Send Fewer Than 3,000 Troops | Nov 13, 7:20 AM (ET) | By JAE-SUK YOO

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea will not send more than 3,000 troops to Iraq, rebuffing Washington's request for a bigger deployment, President Roh Moo-hyun's office said Thursday.
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The decision came a day before a suicide bombing at the Italian compound in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah that killed more than 30 people.
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South Korea already has hundreds of non-combat troops, mostly medics and engineers, operating in Iraq, but South Koreans are widely divided over the issue.
- posted by Editor @ 5:35 AM

Excite - News: "Japan Stalls Iraq Deployment After Suicide Bombing | Nov 13, 7:43 am ET | By Rosalind Russell

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Japan ruled out on Thursday any rapid dispatch of forces to Iraq, in another setback for U.S. stabilization efforts a day after a devastating suicide attack on Italian troops in the south.

Italy's defense minister surveyed the destruction at the military police base in Nassiriya where at least 18 Italians and nine Iraqis died in a huge car bomb blast.
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In Washington, President Bush directed Iraq's U.S. governor, Paul Bremer, to speed the transfer of postwar authority to Iraqis, drawing the administration's policy closer to that of skeptical European allies [... so the US is moving to do what the French suggested months ago and was villified for. What next? Will the US start suggesting that the French were behind the Iraqi resistance like the suggestions about a French/Russian role in the war?.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said his country was ready to help with the reconstruction of Iraq once sovereignty was awarded to a provisional government.
- posted by Editor @ 5:28 AM

Telegraph | News | Don't hang on to power in Iraq, Britain tells America: "By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor | (Filed: 11/11/2003)

Britain is pressing the United States to hand over power to an Iraqi government within a year or risk a full-scale uprising against the military occupation.
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But in private, senior British officials are growing impatient with the slow rate of political progress, and fear that prolonged military rule by the allies will fan Iraqi nationalist sentiment. They say the transfer of power must be speeded up even if it means tearing up America's step-by-step plan for a return to Iraqi sovereignty.

Their view has support from elements of the US administration and is thought to have the backing of Paul Bremer, Washington's proconsul in Iraq. The issue is certain to be close to the top of the agenda at next week's state visit by President George W Bush to London.
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Another source complained: "We've wasted the whole summer. The Americans are only now thinking seriously about what to do about Iraq but the debate in Washington is not resolved."
- posted by Editor @ 5:39 AM

Excite News: "Doctors Dismiss Lynch Bio's Rape Claims | Nov 7, 8:28 PM (ET) | By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI

NASIRIYAH, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi doctors who treated former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch dismissed on Friday claims made in her biography that she was raped by her Iraqi captors.

Although Lynch said she has no memory of the sexual assault, medical records cited in 'I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story' indicate that she was raped by her Iraqi captors, according to U.S. media who said they had advance copies.
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Dr. Mahdi Khafazji, an orthopedic surgeon at Nasiriyah's main hospital performed surgery on Lynch to repair a fractured femur and said he found no signs that she was raped or sodomized.
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He said Lynch was fully clothed with her field jacket buttoned up. "Her clothes were not torn, buttons had not come off, her pants were zipped up," al-Saeidi said.

Al-Saeidi said he found no signs of rape during an examination although he acknowledged he was not looking for signs of sexual assault.
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"Why are they saying such things?" a bitter Dr. Khodheir al-Hazbar, the hospital's deputy director, said. "We were good to her."

- posted by Editor @ 7:17 AM

Fort Mill Times: "Friday, November 7, 2003 | DAN K. THOMASSON: The Senate ducks for cover

WASHINGTON (November 6, 1:48 p.m. EST) - The Senate vote on money mostly for Iraq was a real squeaker. Not in terms of numbers but in the mouselike noise in a nearly empty chamber that affirmed President Bush's demand for $87.5 billion to run the war and peace and rebuild the loser.

It was the largest request on record for such a purpose. And one would have thought that more than five senators would have shown up to cast the feeble voice affirmation - that is, if one didn't understand that the upper house of Congress is not a place known for courage. One also would have thought final approval of this amount of money needed a roll-call vote for history, if nothing else. After all, the House earlier had stood up to be counted, with 121 members actually voting against it.

In the Senate, however, one lone dissenter, the august Robert Byrd of West Virginia, had the temerity to shout 'no!' when the call to vote came from the presiding officer of the moment, Sen. Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island.

'The ayes appear to have it,' Chaffee said. 'The ayes do have it.'"
- posted by Editor @ 10:11 AM

Excite News: "Little Evidence Syrians Heading to Iraq | Nov 4, 8:38 AM (ET) | By SAM F. GHATTAS

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - What had once been an assembly point in Syria for Arabs eager to fight in Iraq is now abandoned. Posters of Palestinian 'martyrs' in Iraq in a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus are torn and faded.
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Yarmouk, on the outskirts of Damascus, was the source of an estimated 300 Arab volunteers who went to Iraq to fight during the war, in the spring.

Now, residents say it's been months since they've heard of volunteers going to fight, bodies returning home or memorials held for slain men.
- posted by Editor @ 9:44 AM

American spy chiefs want more pressure on settlements: "American spy chiefs want more pressure on settlements | By Amir Oren | Monday, November 03, 2003

The U.S. Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) has recommended to the Bush administration to apply 'clear and intentional pressure' on Israel regarding the settlements, as part of making headway with the Palestinians, as well as helping to calm the situation heating up in Iraq.
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Ford submitted that the urgency of advancing an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, which necessitates pressure on Israel regarding the settlements, was one of two conditions for stability in Iraq. The other was visible progress on democracy and welfare in Iraq itself. Ford expressed doubts over fulfilling these conditions, and described the chance of achieving success on both counts as "a miracle," but that without it, the U.S. should expect Arab and Muslim hostility to increase further, threatening prospects for the future.
- posted by Editor @ 6:23 AM

Excite - News: "Senate Faults White House Over Iraq Documents | Oct 31, 6:57 pm ET | By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee singled out the White House for failing to meet a noon EST deadline on Friday to turn over documents about intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction used to justify the U.S. invasion. ... Congressional officials said that step was intended to prod the administration to provide information the panel had requested as long as five months ago for its review of the quality of U.S. intelligence on Iraq leading up to the war.
- posted by Editor @ 5:55 AM