Excite - News: "U.S. General Says Qaeda, Iraq Links May Be Growing | Jan 25, 8:34 am ET | By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The top U.S. military commander in Iraq said Sunday there was evidence ties might be growing between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein loyalists waging a bloody insurgency in the country.

'What you see is a lot of fingerprints in terms of the tactics and techniques and procedures that are being employed. We are working very hard to establish whether there are today positive links,' Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said in an interview.

'We believe that those links may be growing.'
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'Those are typically tactics al Qaeda has been using. That causes us to look with a little bit more focus, trying to establish what their operating capability is in the country.'
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Such an alliance would be a new one. The secular nature of Saddam's Iraq ran counter to the radical Muslim views of groups like Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.


- posted by Editor @ 10:52 AM

A Family in Baghdad: 2003-12-21

"Let me say this: what if somehow.. Lets say Russia occupied your country (which 'happens' to be a really rich country with oil and other resources) and actually destroyed the whole country.. Killed civilians.. Used cluster bombs.. Chemical weapons(believe it or not.. I have the pictures of the dead bodies).. Destroyed houses.. Caused the looting of the whole governmental system.. The ministries.. All the police stations and fire departments .. Airports.. Whatever you think.. And after that.. They make a new TV and newspaper and radio station and start telling you how happy you should be and how grateful you must be for them for liberating you.. And a while after.. They put the pictures of your country president (doenst matter if you hate him or not) on TV with people playing with his face.... Now take a moment.. Close your eyes.. Look through the window.. And imagine that everything you c is destroyed.. Every place you love is either bombed or looted.. Everyone you love is probably dead or injured.. And add to that a vey cold weather.. No electricity.. No petrol.. Now open your eyes and tell me... Does it really matte if the soldiers or their families are kind people? "
- posted by Editor @ 10:43 AM

Excite News: "Iraq Politics Poses Dilemma for U.S.
| Jan 18, 6:14 PM (ET) | By HAMZA HENDAWI

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - As the United States considers changing its plan to bring stable government to Iraq, its quandary grows more acute: stick with proposals for an unelected assembly and risk a revolt by the Shiite majority, or cave to a Shiite ayatollah's demand for a direct vote and possibly alienate Kurdish and Sunni minorities.

A wrong move could ignite the already combustible political climate in a nation of competing ethnic and cultural groups, all eager to promote their conflicting agendas after more than three decades of totalitarian rule.

Caught in the middle are 130,000 American troops who have suffered 500 dead since the Iraq war began March 20. At stake is the future of Iraq and President Bush's administration.

The dilemma centers on the June 30 deadline for the formal end of the occupation and establishment of a sovereign Iraqi government. American forces will stay in Iraq but in fewer numbers. They will gradually hand security responsibilities to the Iraqis, thereby reducing the risk of American casualties as Bush campaigns for re-election."
- posted by Editor @ 6:19 AM

ABCNEWS.com : Official Confirms O'Neill's Iraq Claim: "Official Confirms Claims That Saddam Was Bush's Focus Before 9/11 | By John Cochran

Jan. 13— President Bush ordered the Pentagon to explore the possibility of a ground invasion of Iraq well before the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, an official told ABCNEWS, confirming the account former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill gives in a book written by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind.

The official, who asked not to be identified, was present in the same National Security Council meetings as O'Neill immediately after Bush's inauguration in January and February of 2001.

"The president told his Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use of ground forces," the official told ABCNEWS. "That went beyond the Clinton administration's halfhearted attempts to overthrow Hussein without force." ...

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld disputed O'Neill's account today. "I don't know what meetings he could have been in," Rumsfeld told reporters during a Pentagon briefing.
- posted by Editor @ 9:12 PM

Excite News: "Shiites Protest U.S.-Backed Election Plan | Jan 15, 11:05 PM (ET) | By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Shouting 'no to America!' tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims took to the streets to protest a U.S.-backed formula for choosing Iraq's new legislature.

The protest came Thursday as an aide to Iraq's foremost Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, warned that he might issue a fatwa, or religious edict, rejecting a U.S.-backed government if his demands for direct elections are ignored.

The turnout in Basra, estimated by British soldiers at up to 30,000, was the biggest protest organized by Shiite clerics against the power transfer plan.

The United States wants regional caucuses to choose a new parliament, which will then select an Iraqi administration. It says security is too poor and voter records too incomplete for fair elections.

The clerics want direct elections, fearing the caucuses may be rigged to keep Shiites out of power.

The Americans are also wary of elections because of who might win. With Iraq in turmoil, Islamic radicals or Saddam Hussein's Baath party might dominate a vote simply because they have the best organizations."
- posted by Editor @ 8:49 PM

Democrat Challenges Bush on Iraqi Intelligence Lapse: "By DOUGLAS JEHL | Published: January 16, 2004

ASHINGTON, Jan. 15 � The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is calling on President Bush to provide a public accounting next week of why prewar American intelligence assessments that Iraq possessed illicit weapons now appear to have been mistaken.

Mr. Bush should use his State of the Union address on Tuesday 'to acknowledge the problems and outline specific steps to fix them,' Representative Jane Harman of California will say in a speech in Los Angeles, according to an advance text provided by her office.
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Despite months of intensive searches, American inspectors in Iraq have not yet found evidence of the chemical and biological weapons and the nuclear weapons program in Iraq that the intelligence agencies said existed. "
- posted by Editor @ 8:42 PM

Excite - News: "Over 60 Bulgarian Soldiers Quit Iraq-Bound Unit | Jan 14, 10:06 am ET

SOFIA, Bulgaria (Reuters) - A total of 62 Bulgarian soldiers have quit a peacekeeping unit due to replace troops in Iraq after a car bomb killed five of their compatriots last month, Chief of Staff Nikola Kolev said Wednesday.

The Balkan country, a staunch supporter of the U.S.-led military campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein, has sent a 480- strong light infantry battalion to serve in the Polish-led force in Iraq's holy city of Kerbala.
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Tuesday the government raised daily pay to troops in Kerbala to $82-$90 from $62-$75 after soldiers demanded their compensation be doubled because of higher risk.
- posted by Editor @ 10:21 AM

Excite News: "Tests Show No Agent in Iraq Mortar Shells | Jan 14, 12:54 PM (ET) | By MATTHEW ROSENBERG

CAMP EDEN, Iraq (AP) - U.S. tests on mortar shells found in Iraq and suspected of containing blister agents have turned up negative, though further tests will be conducted, a Danish army spokesman said Wednesday.

The 36 shells, discovered last week by Danish troops, are believed to be from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Four initial tests by British and Danish experts came up positive for blister agents, Danish spokesman, Capt. Kim Vibe Michelsen, told The Associated Press.

But later tests by U.S. experts from the Iraq Survey Group on five of the shells have shown no trace of chemical weapons, the Danish military said."
- posted by Editor @ 10:06 AM

Excite News: "Troops Disperse Iraqis Rioting for Food | Jan 12, 9:03 PM (ET) | By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD

KUT, Iraq (AP) - Ukrainian soldiers fired into the air Monday to disperse hundreds of Iraqis who rioted for jobs and food as a second southern Shiite Muslim city was rocked by unrest - a barometer of rising frustration with the U.S. led-occupation in a region of Iraq considered friendly to the Americans.
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Trouble started in Kut, 95 miles southeast of Baghdad, when about 400 protesters marched for a third straight day on a government building to demand jobs. Someone in the crowd threw a grenade at police and Ukrainian soldiers guarding the building, injuring four Iraqi policemen and one Ukrainian, according to Lt. Zafer Wedad, an Iraqi police official.

The Ukrainians then fired in the air to disperse the crowd, injuring one protester, Wedad said. He said the demonstrators hurled bricks at the building and trashed a post office in the city.

- posted by Editor @ 7:06 PM

Excite News: "Impatient Iraqis Rally Against Coalition | Jan 11, 3:02 PM (ET) | By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD

AMARAH, Iraq (AP) - Impatience with Iraq's occupying forces boiled over Sunday as unemployed Iraqis pelted British troops with stones and a top Shiite Muslim cleric demanded the country's next parliament be elected - not chosen by local caucuses, as foreseen by the Americans."
- posted by Editor @ 1:44 PM

Excite News: "Rice: No Evidence Iraq Moved WMD to Syria | Jan 9, 4:07 PM (ET)

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States has no credible evidence that Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria early last year before the U.S.-led war that drove Saddam Hussein from power, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

Rice said, 'Any indication that something like that happened would be a very serious matter.

'But I want to be very clear: we don't, at this point, have any indications that I would consider credible and firm that that has taken place, but we will tie down every lead,' she said at a White House briefing about Bush's trip Monday to a hemispheric summit in Mexico.

In nine months, arms control experts in Iraq have failed to find a single item from a long list of weapons of mass destruction. The Bush administration cited an alleged weapons stockpile in Iraq as a primary reason for launching the war against Saddam's government."
- posted by Editor @ 9:42 AM

Excite - News: "U.S. Callous in Hearing Iraqi Claims, Rights Group Says | Jan 10, 9:48 am ET | By Luke Baker

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military is negligent and callous in dealing with Iraqis seeking compensation for relatives accidentally killed or maimed by U.S. troops, a human rights group said on Saturday.

Occupation Watch, an international group of peace and justice organizations set up to monitor the conduct of occupying forces in Iraq, said the process for Iraqis to make claims was purposely opaque and U.S. treatment of families pursuing claims was often offhand and bordering on the cruel.

'There is a culture of impunity,' Occupation Watch's researcher Paola Gasparoli told a news conference in Baghdad, where many Iraqi families came to push their cases to the media.

'Many of the most important cases cannot be presented or are being rejected for entirely illogical reasons,' she said."
- posted by Editor @ 9:30 AM

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Carnegie group says Bush made wrong claims on WMD: "Julian Borger in Washington | Thursday January 8, 2004 | The Guardian

The Bush administration will today be accused of 'systematically misrepresenting' the threat posed by 'Iraq's weapons of mass destruction' in a comprehensive report on post-war findings. "
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The authors say the intelligence reports of Iraq's capabilities grew more shrill in October 2002 with the publication of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which included an unusual number of dissenting views by intelligence officials.

The intelligence community, the report says, began to be unduly influenced by policymakers' views "sometime in 2002". Repeated visits to the CIA by the US vice president, Dick Cheney, and demands by top officials to see unsubstantiated reports, created an atmosphere in which intelligence analysts were pressed to come to "more threatening" judgments of Iraq.

The report concludes that "administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programmes". ...
- posted by Editor @ 5:58 PM

Arms Search: U.S. Withdraws a Team of Weapons Hunters From Iraq: "By DOUGLAS JEHL | Published: January 8, 2004

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 � The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment, according to senior government officials.

The step was described by some military officials as a sign that the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March.

A separate military team that specializes in disposing of chemical and biological weapons remains part of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which has been searching Iraq for more that seven months at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. But that team is "still waiting for something to dispose of," said a survey group member. ...
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A report published Wednesday in The Washington Post cited a previously undisclosed document that suggested that Iraq might have destroyed its biological weapons as early as 1991. The report said investigators had otherwise found no evidence to support American beliefs that Iraq had maintained illicit weapons dating from the Persian Gulf war of 1991 or that it had advanced programs to build new ones.

The report also documented a pattern of deceit that was found in every field of special weaponry. It said that according to Iraqi designers and foreign investigators, program managers exaggerated the results they could achieve, or even promised results they knew they could not accomplish — all in an effort to appease Saddam Hussein. In some cases, though, they simply did it to advance their careers, the report said, or preserve jobs or even conduct intrigues against their rivals.
- posted by Editor @ 12:23 PM

Excite News: "U.S. Discharges Troops for Abuse in Iraq | Jan 5, 8:56 AM (ET) | By DIANA ELIAS

KUWAIT CITY (AP) - The U.S. Army discharged three soldiers for abusing prisoners at a detention center in Iraq, a U.S. military spokesman said Monday.
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Brig. Gen. Ennis Whitehead III, the acting commander of the 143d Transportation Command, found the three soldiers had maltreated prisoners at Camp Bucca, southern Iraq, on May 12. He demoted two of the soldiers and ordered that all three forfeit their salaries for two months. All three were also discharged.

The general found that Master Sgt. Lisa Marie Girman, 35, of Hazelton, Pa. knocked a prisoner to the ground, "repeatedly kicking him in the groin, abdomen, and head, and encouraging her subordinate soldiers to do the same," Harris said. ...
- posted by Editor @ 6:06 AM

MSNBC - Inquiry zeroes in on White House: "
Leak investigators ask officials to free reporters from confidentiality deals | MSNBC and NBC News | Updated: 8:46 p.m. ET Jan. 02, 2004"

WASHINGTON - The FBI is focusing on the White House as the probable source of the unauthorized disclosure of the identity an undercover CIA officer and has asked staffers to sign a form releasing reporters from any promises of confidentiality they may have made to their sources, NBC News has learned.

Legal experts said that while the signed forms would almost certainly have no legal standing, they could be used to push journalists, possibly under threat of subpoena, to disclose who was responsible for revealing the covert status of former CIA operative Valerie Plame. ...
- posted by Editor @ 2:32 PM