AP:

Two of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s daughters took refuge in Jordan on Thursday[...]

Raghad and Rana Saddam Hussein, whose father had their husbands killed in 1996, arrived in Amman with their nine children Thursday, Jordanian Information Minister Nabil al-Sharif told The Associated Press. They were allowed sanctuary in Jordan on humanitarian grounds on King Abdullah II's orders.

Al-Sharif did not say whether they had come through a third country. The daughters had reportedly been living in poor circumstances in neighboring Iraq.

Reuters

Colin Powell has approved a $30 million (18.6 million pounds) reward to the person who led U.S. forces to Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay.

Dutch Government

The Dutch SFIR (Stabilisation Force Iraq) troops took command of peacekeeping operations in Al-Muthanna province on 31 July. They have relieved the American forces there.

Dossier

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A sniper killed a US soldier and four more were wounded in a grenade attack as American troops stepped up raids around Iraq on Thursday in a bid to catch toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.
...
A US soldier was killed and another two wounded late on Wednesday in an ambush on a small American base in north-east Iraq, a military spokesperson said.
The soldiers were hit by small arms fire on Wednesday evening, and returned fire, wounding four Iraqis, at least three of them attackers, the military said.
...
At least four soldiers were wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on Thursday on the main highway near Baghdad international airport, an AFP photographer witnessed.

PBS:

The national security adviser discusses the inclusion of controversial information in the State of the Union address, North Korea and the refusal to declassify parts of the 9.11 report.

CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The two top U.S. officials in charge of the search for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction will tell Congress on Thursday that so far the United States has not discovered a "smoking gun" in Iraq, but it has growing evidence Iraq had an "active WMD program," sources tell CNN.

The officials are not expected to make any startling disclosures but instead describe a more thorough understanding of how Iraqi's WMD program worked, what officials were in charge and how decisions were made, sources said. A government source said the progress in discovering the banned weapons is still described in "inches," rather than a breakthrough leap ahead.

David Kay, the top CIA consultant in Iraq on WMD, and Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, the head of the Pentagon's Iraq Survey Group, will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in a closed, classified session.

AP:

ALONG THE IRAQ-SYRIA BORDER - The first train from Syria through northern Iraq to Mosul was a few minutes late, but after more than a year without service, the residents of Rabiyah weren't complaining.

The train, consisting of dozens of freight and tanker cars, one sleeper and several passenger cars, resumed service only half full Wednesday. But it was sold out with goodwill.

"It brings us to the future, this train," said Mohsin al Naif, a leader of the Schamar tribe that has strong ties with Rabiyah, an Iraqi border town of 25,000 residents, and in Syria as well. "We are bound by blood on both sides of the border."

That's the story - not his capture, just that it's rumoured that he might have been. From The Australian :

The Pentagon said today it could not confirm or deny rumours that Saddam Hussein had already been captured by US forces.

Whispers of the Iraqi leader's capture swept US markets just after 11am local time (2am AEST) causing an afternoon spike in stocks.

But the Pentagon said although US forces were closing in on Saddam, it had no news of his capture.

"The short answer is I have no information on that," said Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz of the Pentagon's Joint Operations Staff.

Responding to further inquiries, acting Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said US authorities were not being evasive about the rumours.

"There's just nothing more to report. We're simply trying to state what we have at the moment," Mr Di Rita said.

IOL:

A hitherto unknown group of Iraqi Muslim militants warned in a videotape aired on an Arab channel on Monday they would fight a "holy war" against US President George Bush and his administration.

"Bush, Rumsfeld and decision makers in the 'black house' and in the Pentagon... we will shake the ground under your feet and we will send a fire upon you which only God can prevent," a masked man said on a tape aired on Dubai-based Al Arabiya.

The man called his group the "Salafist Jihad Group".

Salafist is a general term that fundamentalist movements in mainstream Sunni Islam use to describe a desire to live according to a strict interpretation of early Islam.

ABC:

A new audio tape purportedly from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein vows to defeat the United States to avenge the deaths of his two sons.

"I mourn to you the deaths of Uday and Qusay and those who struggled with them ... America will be defeated," said the voice on the tape aired by Dubai-based Al Arabiya television.

"They ... died martyrs in the name of jihad [holy war]," the voice said.

The speech was rambling, breaking off in mid-sentence on occasions but a Reuters correspondent familiar with Saddam's voice said it sounded like the deposed dictator. The CIA said it was trying to determine whether the tape was genuine.

Updating this post comes a story from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

US soldiers captured four loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Baath party in a pre-dawn raid in Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

A military spokesman in the capital backed down from a claim that one of the men was a bodyguard for Saddam, but said the quartet were all under investigation to assess their connections to the fugitive strongman.

The suspected regime loyalists included a possible brigadier general, Major Troy Smith of the Fourth Infantry Division (4ID) said, which is scouring Saddam's old hunting grounds for holdouts of the defeated Baath party.

AP Reports:

TIKRIT, Iraq - U.S. soldiers captured one of Saddam Hussein's bodyguards during a raid early Tuesday in the former dictator's hometown, where hours earlier troops found enough anti-tank mines and gunpowder for a month of attacks on American forces.

The military reported a U.S. soldier killed in an attack in the capital Monday, while guerrillas blew up a major civilian bridge in an attempt to disrupt the U.S. occupation.

During the pre-dawn Tikrit raid, soldiers fired two shots before storming a house to capture the bodyguard. He was escorted from the home minutes later, blood seeping through his hat.

"We got our prime target," said Lt. Col. Steve Russell. "This man was a close associate of Saddam Hussein."

He declined to identify the man, saying only that he was "one of Saddam's lifelong bodyguards."

An Associated Press reporter with the troops said at least two other suspected associates of Saddam were also taken into custody Tuesday.

The Army had targeted three men in the raids and captured all of them, Russell said.

The unidentified bodyguard had close ties to Watban Ibrahim Hasan, Saddam's half brother and presidential adviser, Russell said, but did not elaborate.

Watban had been number 37 on the U.S. most wanted Iraqis list and was arrested on April 13 in the northern city of Mosul as he tried to flee through Syria, U.S. officials said at the time.

[Fox News]

.S. soldiers discovered a huge cache of weapons in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit on Monday -- enough weapons for a month of attacks on U.S. troops, the military said. The soldiers uncovered 40 anti-tank mines, dozens of mortar rounds and hundreds of pounds of gunpowder buried in the city.

Full story...

From The Australian :

Iraq's Governing Council met today to examine issues including who will preside over the 25-member body and the appointment of ministers, council members said.

The meeting, which opened at 10:25 am (1525 AEST), was chaired by acting council head Mohammed Bahr al-Ulum.

It is the first in a series of key meetings to be held this week to iron out the procedural rules for its presidency, to name key ministers and establish a working party to prepare the ground for a new constitution, a council source said.

From The Australian :

Two US soldiers were wounded when a grenade was hurled at their convoy from a bridge on a main road in central Baghdad, a military officer said on the scene.

"Someone threw a device from off of the bridge. It exploded and hit one of our trucks. We have two casualties. They are now at an aid facility," said Staff Sergeant Maximilian Sloat.

The attack occurred at 11:45 am (0745 GMT) as their Humvee was carrying supplies, Sloat said.

UPDATE: The BBC is reporting that

"Two US soldiers are believed to have been killed in a fresh attack on American troops in Iraq."

From The Australian :

A Japanese reporter was manhandled and briefly detained by US troops in Baghdad after filming their weekend raid on a house in search for ousted president Saddam Hussein, Japanese press reports said.

Kazutaka Sato, 47, was held in an arm-lock, thrown to the ground and kicked by several US soldiers Sunday when he was filming the bodies of Iraqis being removed from a car which was shot up in the raid, the reports said.

...

Kyodo [Newsagency- AEB] said US troops had tried to bar Sato[Independent Japanese News Service - AEB] from filming the raid. The soldiers did not explain why photography was forbidden in the area, it added.

"US troops might have tried to conceal the deaths of civilians," he was quoted by the Asahi [newspaper-AEB]as saying. "Violence against journalists means the obstruction of news gathering activities and supresses speech."

UPDATE : The BBC has already positively identified the 5 dead as "innocent civilians" on BBC World, though discards the word "innocent" on its website.

The death of five civilians here at the hands of an elite task force hunting members of the former regime has prompted condemnation from many Iraqis at what they call heavy-handed and uncaring tactics.
...
I went to the scene in the wealthy Mansur district after the task force had left, saying nothing except that they were fired on first.
Local people told a different story.

Something from the original story in The Australian that might explain this:

The owner of the home was Sheikh Amir Rabiha Mohammed al-Shammar, a relative of Saddam Hussein. Shammar said he believed five Iraqis were killed in an exchange of fire, but he was not there when US troops raided the home, which was targeted during the air war on Iraq.

From Yahoo / AFP:

The top US military official, General Richard Myers, reported a spike in information about Saddam Hussein loyalists waging attacks on US soldiers since the dictator's sons were killed.

"What I found today ... there's been a big spike in Iraqis coming forward, about weapons caches and where people are," said Myers, who arrived from Kuwait and toured Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam, north of Baghdad.

"It probably is having some impact," he said, in reference to the killing last Tuesday of Saddam's powerful sons Uday and Qusay in a gunbattle with US troops in the northern city of Mosul.

The Christian Science Monitor is good enough to include us on their editorial preview list. Tomorrow they will publish this story which suggests that the noose is tightening, and that the "of Saddam may be around the corner."

We can only hope. Read the story here.

A bodyguard Tells All. Maybe. Via The Australian :

Uday Hussein's personal bodyguard broke a three-month silence yesterday to give the first authoritative account of how Saddam Hussein and his sons spent the war.

In an exclusive interview, the bodyguard claimed that far from fleeing Baghdad, the three men held out in the capital for at least a week after its fall.

He said they evaded repeated US attempts to assassinate or capture them, and even appeared in public under the noses of American troops.

The man, whose father served as a bodyguard to Saddam Hussein, was one of Uday's tiny coterie of hand-picked personal bodyguards from 1997 until the moment his former boss finally left Baghdad to organise guerilla resistance further north.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

One US marine was killed and another wounded in a grenade blast early on Sunday morning in southern Iraq, a military spokesman said.

"At 2:35am (local time), a marine was killed and one wounded during a grenade attack by a bridge" in southern Iraq, said Specialist Nicole Thompson.

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

The military has charged four US soldiers with abusing prisoners of war in Iraq. The soldiers and their families deny the accusations.

The four military police from a Pennsylvania-based Army Reserve unit are accused of punching, kicking and breaking bones of prisoners at Camp Bucca, the largest US-run POW camp in Iraq.

The soldiers, charged this month, are the first US troops known to face charges of abusing prisoners during the Iraq conflict.

The military's investigation continues, said Lieutenant Commander Nick Balice, a spokesman for US Central Command. Balice confirmed four soldiers had been charged as part of that investigation.

The soldiers say their actions were in self-defence when Iraqi prisoners attacked them.

From ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

One soldier has been killed and two wounded when their convoy was attacked with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and possibly an improvised explosive device, the US military says.

The attack occurred on Highway 10 near Abu Ghuraib on Saturday afternoon local time.

US Central Command says the soldiers were with an engineer unit attached to the 3rd Infantry Division.

It says two soldiers have been evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital for emergency treatment where one subsequently died and the other is in stable condition.

A third soldier has been treated on site and returned to duty. Three Iraqis have also (been) wounded in the attack.

From The Australian :

Thirty-One Iraqis were killed in the capital by stray bullets from celebratory gunfire marking the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, a Baghdad newspaper reported today.

Seventy-six people were also wounded, 40 of them seriously, Al-Moatamar, mouthpiece of Ahmed Chalabi's Pentagon-backed Iraqi National Congress, reported citing hospital figures.

The victims included two children, the paper added.

The US government announced the deaths of Uday and his younger brother Qusay on Tuesday after a blistering gunbattle in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The US-led administration outlawed celebratory gunfire as part of new weapons controls introduced in early June, but acknowledged that the practice would be difficult to stamp out.

From CNN:

Three U.S. soldiers guarding a hospital north-northeast of Baghdad were killed in a grenade attack Saturday, U.S. Central Command said.

The soldiers, from the 4th Infantry Division, were guarding the Ba'qubah Children's Hospital.

Four soldiers were wounded in the attack and were evacuated to a U.S. medical treatment facility, according to Central Command.

The Charleston Post & Courier / WaPo are reporting that the Bush administration hopes to persuade former Secretary of State James Baker to "take charge of the physical and economic reconstruction of Iraq as part of a broad restructuring of postwar efforts." If Baker were on board, Bremer would focus on political reconstruction. No word yet from Baker.

CNN:

An Iraqi scientist associated with Saddam Hussein's nuclear program has surrendered to U.S. authorities in Baghdad, U.S. defense officials said Friday.

The officials identified the scientist as Abdullah Abbus Khandush, and said he was cooperating with the United States but that any information he was providing would not be made public, at least in the short term.

It's hoped the scientist, who was captured Thursday, will be able to provide information about Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Disarming the regime of suspected nuclear, chemical and biological weapons was a prime reason given by the Bush administration for launching the war that toppled Saddam. To date, no such weapons have been found.

From the Telegraph :

The idea that American troops are lavishly equipped is also a myth, a fantasy bred out of resentment of American wealth in general. The battalion in which I was first embedded came to war in creaky, Vietnam-vintage M113 armoured personnel carriers, which frequently broke down in the desert.

The battalion fought in green heavyweight fatigues because the desert camouflage ones never arrived. And, though a shipment of desert boots turned up just before the invasion, many were the wrong size, so that these GIs had to make do with black leather clompers designed for northern Europe in December. Perhaps most resented by the troops, they were not issued with bullet-resistant vests, only flak jackets, making them vulnerable to small-arms fire.

Another myth is that the Americans are also softies who live and fight in amazing, air-conditioned comfort. The truth is that the GIs encamped in and outside palaces and Ba'ath party mansions not only lack air-conditioning but also running water, unlike most of the population they guard.

And, unlike their British counterparts, they have no communication with their families at home. Many British troops are able to use the "e-bluey" system to email their loved ones on a frequent basis. The only times most GIs in Iraq ever get to let their spouses know they are well is if a passing journalist lets them have a couple of minutes on the Satphone.

And I remember what a thrill it was when I got my hands on a British ration box after nearly three months on American MREs (meals ready to eat). GIs bored of endless variations upon chilli and macaroni were amazed to find that British rations included things such as chicken and herb paté. And they were willing to trade everything from boots to whole cases of their own rations to get some.

Reuters

U.S. forces, acting on a tip from an informant, have arrested several men believed to be part of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's personal security detachment during a raid south of Tikrit, a senior U.S. military commander said on Friday.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

US forces have arrested 16 men in a pre-dawn raid north of Baghdad, including two suspected of being behind a bomb and gun ambush that killed a US soldier and Iraqi interpreter in the capital.

The soldier and interpreter were killed when an improvised bomb went off and they were shot at on a highway in Baghdad on Monday local time.

The company commander who led the raid at Fahhama north of they city, said he believed two of the men were behind the attack, but could not say which two.

From the AP via the Australian comes an entry for "worst pun of the year award":

The US military today showed journalists the bodies of Saddam Hussein's slain sons Uday and Qusay, as part of efforts to dispel doubts that the two were indeed killed.

The bodies were taken to the US base at Baghdad International Airport after Tuesday's gunfight in Mosul, where the two were holed up in a relative's palatial residence."

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Iraqis have reacted with a mixture of scepticism, suspicion and some relief to the release of pictures of the bloodied corpses of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, with many still in disbelief that the dreaded brothers were really killed.

The United States announced the deaths of the brothers on Tuesday after a blistering gunbattle in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

But despite the release of five grisly photographs depicting the two corpses, Iraqis on the streets of the capital Baghdad were left largely unconvinced.
"Anybody can fake something like that," 41-year-old Bassum Shimmary said of the photographs which were distributed on computer disc by the coalition in Baghdad and shown on Iraqi television.

"I don't believe it, because the Americans acted so unbelievably," he said in reference to the heavy-handed US force in Mosul which led to the brothers' death instead of their capture.

In Mosul, a few dozen Iraqis gathered around the shell of the house in which the two took refuge.
Several said they did not believe Uday and Qusay had been inside.
"We decided the people in the house were not Uday and Qusay," 30-year-old Shabib Hassom said.
"There is no clear evidence, we think they were just some innocent people there."

Baghdad gas station employee 53-year-old Mohsen Mallah said the facial swelling and extent of the injuries made it impossible to prove the pictures were those of the two brothers.
"Anyway, there are rumours they are living in the United States."

The vast majority of Iraqis have no access to television or the Internet.
Dental records, which the Americans stressed were used to help confirm Uday and Qusay's identities, are an unfamiliar concept in Iraq.

"Qusay and Uday, it's not them," 31-year-old Najim Aboud said, a worker in the former Saddam palace in Baghdad which now houses the coalition headquarters.
"We are not convinced, nobody in Iraq believes it," another man said at a Baghdad street market, where men had gathered round to discuss the fate of two of the most hated Iraqis.

Still, some were confident the photographs spoke the truth.
...
Meanwhile, a group loyal to the former Iraqi leader has vowed in a videotape broadcast on an Arab television network to avenge the killing of his sons.

From CNN:

The provisional authority in Iraq has released photographs Thursday it said were of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, aimed at convincing skeptical Iraqis that they were killed in a raid by U.S. troops.

The pictures, said to have been taken after the brothers died in a firefight with U.S. troops Tuesday in Mosul, show grim images of the heads and upper torsos of the sons, their faces heavily bearded.

An image identified as that of Uday is seen with his head shaved and with black marks on his face and head. Qusay's purported image reveals wounds apparently received in the gunbattle and missile attack in which the two men died.

The U.S. government intentionally released the photographs on CD-ROM through the provisional authority in Baghdad because the U.S. military has traditionally been reluctant to release images of slain combatants. The Bush administration complained loudly when images of American dead were broadcast on Arab television networks during the war with Iraq.

Update: For those who wish to see them (parental guidance advised), Reuters has them here.

[Fox News]

Troops were part of the 101st Airborne Division, the group that led Tuesday's deadly raid on Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay.

Full story...

"The U.S. military has used dental records and Xrays of previous injuries Saddam Hussein's sons sustained to confirm the deaths of the much-feared Qusay and Uday Hussein, a military spokesman said Wednesday."

Full story...

MSNBC has a great article that sheds considerable new light on both the Special Operations Soldier Letter From Iraq we published Monday, and our stories yesterday about the op that killed Saddam's sons (yay!!!). Both involve a shift in tactics by allied forces, and that shift made a big difference.

It's called "Little targets led to the top", and the template it offers is worth remembering next time someone talks about combatting terrorism, organized crime with global reach, or other kinds of "4th generation warfare" threats.

We ran this on Winds of Change.NET a couple days ago, and backchecking leaves me confident in the genuineness of this letter. Some great excerpts:

"...things have been pretty hectic since the end of hostilities and the start of the real war. Despite what the assholes in the press like to say over and over:

1. We did expect some armed resistance from the Ba'ath Party and Feydaheen;
2. It isn't any worse than expected;
3. Things are getting better each day, and
4. The morale of the troops is A-1, except for the normal bitching and griping.

My brief love affair with the press, especially the guys who had the cajones to be embedded with the troops during the fighting, is probably over, especially since we are back being criticized by the same Roland Headly types that used to hang around the Palestine Hotel drinking Baghdad Bob's whiskey and parroting his ridiculous B.S."

"the vast majority don't and more and more see that the GIs don't start anything, are by-and-large friendly, and very compassionate, especially to kids and old people. I saw a bunch of 19 year-olds [deleted] not return fire coming from a mosque until they got a group of elderly civilians out of harm's way. So did the Iraqis.

A bunch of bad guys used a group of women and children as human shields. The GIs surrounded them and negotiated their surrender fifteen hours later and when they discovered a three year-old girl had been injured by the big tough guys throwing her down a flight of stairs, the GIs called in a MedVac helicopter to take her and her mother to the nearest field hospital. The Iraqis watched it all, and there hasn't been a problem in that neighborhood since. How many such stories, and there are hundreds of them, ever get reported in the fair and balanced press? You know, nada.

The civilians who have figured it out faster than anyone are the local teenagers.... They participate less and less in the demonstrations and help keep us informed when a wannabe bad-ass shows up in the neighborhood."

"P.S. A couple of you asked me about Curly and his two sons, Dumb and Dumber. I still think we got him and one son, but the slugs may have gotten away. If they are alive, I can't believe they are hanging around here. Even Curly isn't that stupid ... then again. He might be in Syria or Lebanon. If he is, he's too moronic to keep quiet, then we'll get him. I promise."

If you want to read the whole thing, here it is. We've removed information that might compromise the author or American forces, or which we otherwise had doubts about. The rest is still a rip-roaringly excellent read.

Our coverage continues. Trent Telenko dropped me this email tonight:

"Col. David Hunt on Fox's O'Reilly Factor program just reported that the raid on the house where the terrible twins were killed started off as a classic Special Ops raid with the initial firefight lasting a couple of minutes and resulting in everyone in house being dead. The rest of the fighting was the 101st [Airborne] fighting off reinforcements who tried to come to the aid of those in the house. He also reported that there was over $50M in cash, sat phones, computers and lists of fighters from all over Iraq. For what it is worth."

Amateurs.

Meanwhile, Boomshock notes that our best "Ba'ath Poker" hand from the deck remains unchanged, despite adding 2 aces! And the hilarious satirist Scrappleface offers this delightful story: "Saddam to Offer Eulogy at Sons' Funeral." Oh yeahhh. Suuuure you're invited Mr. Hussein. Just stand right up there, in clear line of sight so we can hear you... that's it.... a bit to the right....

This just in via FOX news from a live press conference by US military (Lt. Gen Ricardo Sanchez, coalition commander for Iraq).

The military has CONFIRMED that Uday and Qusay are among the dead. Multiple sources have been used to identify the bodies. The bodies were in a condition where they could be readily identified. A question about DNA testing was not answered directly.

They do not yet have confirmation on the identities of the other two bodies.

A walk-in intelligence source provided the information leading to the raid.

Four coalition soldiers were wounded in the operation [previous report was one wounded].

A detailed briefing will be performed tomorrow (Mideast Time).

Per FOX News: Pentagon sources say Saddam's personal secretary and bodyguard [Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, the Ace of Diamonds] played an intimate role in confirmation of the bodies, and that he has been providing information to the coalition.

This story from ABC News (Australia) is the best current summary I've found of the assault. It also states:

Relatives of the homeowner in the city of Mosul and local officials also said they believed the bodies of Uday and Qusay were pulled from the house bombed by US forces.

Owner Nawaf al-Zaidan "is believed to have informed US forces that Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay, Qusay's son, and a bodyguard named Abdul Samad took refuge in his house and he wanted to get rid of them", said a female relative of Zaidan who asked not to be named.

From MSNBC:

Widespread and sporadic gunfire crackled across Baghdad after dark on Tuesday as word spread that Saddam Hussein's feared and hated sons may have been killed in a gunbattle with U.S. troops.

"It's celebration. People have heard about what happened,'' a U.S. military spokesman said.

That's the headline, but it still doesn't sound certain to me. Here's the link, and here's the summary:

TWO sons of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein were likely two of the four people killed in a US raid in northern Iraq, US media reported today.

CNN television quoted an unnamed US official as saying that the government was reasonably certain that Uday and Qusay Hussein had "met their maker".

Fox News: A live interview with a general who was on scene indicates that the attack started at 10AM. They received small arms fire from the building, and were unable to secure the building with small arms. Hence they used .50 caliber machine guns, TOW missiles, and M-19 grenade launchers. 2.75" rockets may also have been used [a helicopter, OH-58D, was used which is capable of employing either the 2.75" rockets or Hellfire missiles. Fox speculated that the 2.75" were used, but the Hellfire is more likely because it is far more accurate and less likely to cause collateral damage. This blogger has been on aircraft many times when the 2.75's were fired, and the accuracy was less than impressive].

The building is "massive, steel reinforced ceramic."

One American was shot but is "doing fine and did not suffer life threatening injuries". No civilians were injured other than the four persons inside the structure.

Fox quotes Al Jazeera as quoting the owner of the house that the sons were in the house, as was a grandson.

White house sources are giving 90-95% odds that it was the sons that were killed.

Fox sources are also reporting intelligence that Saddam's wife and two daughters have been in the Mosul recently.

From Fox News TV: They have high level military sources saying it is "very likely" that Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay were killed in the raid. Senior pentagon officials say that some sort of announcement will be made later today.

Four bodies have been transported from the scene. The bodies were "shot up pretty bad" and there will be DNA and other forensic testing for final confirmation. Two are believed to be Qusay and Uday (they bear a "strong resemblance"), one a bodyguard, and one a teenager who may be one of Saddam's grandsons.

The operation was performed by Task Force 20 and the CIA, acting on specific intelligence that Uday and Qusay were in the house which belongs to a cousin of Saddam.

FOX is running live shots from the scene in Mosul.

Many truckloads of 101st Airborne troops are now arriving on the scene - purpose unknown.

No online source yet - this just breaking.

REUTERS has quite a bit more information than previously reported.

WASHINGTON/MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein's two sons may have been found by U.S. forces during a shootout on Tuesday in Iraq's northern city of Mosul in which four high-ranking Saddam allies were killed, U.S. officials said.

"There is a pretty decent chance (Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were there during the shootout)," one official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters in Washington.

"There was a shootout in Mosul, and there is a number of dead people and a couple of them could be Uday and Qusay," the official said, but added it had not been definitively confirmed.

U.S. forces said earlier they had stormed a house in Mosul and killed four high-ranking allies of Saddam, who was ousted as Iraqi president by U.S.-led forces on April 9.

Some 200 soldiers blasted the villa with machineguns and rockets during a four-hour battle before storming the building and bringing out four bodies, U.S. officers in Iraq said.

The officers declined to identify them or comment on local rumors Saddam's sons might have been present.

Breaking from CNN:

U.S. troops are investigating whether Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay were among those killed or captured during a firefight with American troops in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Pentagon officials told CNN.

A U.S. official told CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr that no people were captured at the house raided in Mosul, and that four people were killed. Further details were expected shortly.

However, Fox News is sounding a bit more definite about it:

Saddam's Sons Likely Killed, U.S. Officials Say

AP:

U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded Tuesday in an ambush along a dangerous road north of Baghdad in the "Sunni Triangle," the U.S. military reported.

Far to the north, a big gun battle broke out when U.S. soldiers surrounded a house in Mosul belonging to a cousin of Saddam Hussein, according to an Associated Press Television News cameraman at the scene.

The soldier's death brought to 153 the number of U.S. troops killed in action since the March 20 start of war — six more than during the 1991 Gulf War.

Annan to U.S.: Return Iraq to Self-Rule via ABC News:

UNITED NATIONS July 21 — Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the United States Monday to quickly restore control of Iraq to its people, warning that "democracy can't be imposed from the outside."
In the 23-page report to the Security Council, Annan also noted concerns about the U.S. treatment of Iraqi detainees and the failure to improve security in Baghdad.
While Annan welcomed the creation of a U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council, he wrote that Iraqis had expressed "an overwhelming demand for self-rule."

AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military convoy in north Baghdad on Monday, killing an American soldier and his Iraqi interpreter. Three other members of the 1st Armored Division were injured, and the U.S. military credited an Iraqi bystander with saving one of their lives.

The bombing, which hit two Humvees, brought to 152 the number of U.S. troops killed in action since the March 20 start of war — five more than during the 1991 Gulf War.

"One man who worked at a nearby stand helped the soldiers out of the vehicles. That probably saved one soldier's life," Lt. Col. John Kem said at the scene of the attack.

The Arab satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera, meanwhile, aired what it said was videotape of a newly created group of insurgents called the "Jihad Brigade."

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

One US soldier and an Iraqi translator have been killed and three other people wounded, in an explosive attack in northern Baghdad, US military sources said.

"One armoured division soldier was killed along with an Iraqi interpreter," specialist Brian Sharkey said, adding the attack was carried out with an improvised explosive device together with small arms fire.

He says the attack occurred at around 10:30am local time in the Al-Sulaykh area of northern Baghdad, without providing fuller details.
...
The attack takes to 38 the number of US troops killed in action since an end to major combat operations in Iraq was declared on May 1, and to 152 the number killed in combat during the entire Iraq campaign.

Figures for the number of Iraqis working with the US-led coalition forces who have been killed are not available, although anecdotal evidence from families suggests that several may have been targeted and killed for cooperating with the occupiers.

NY Times:

The United States is creating a new Iraqi civil defense force within the next 45 days that will free up thousands of American troops for anti-guerrilla missions and put an Iraqi face on the coalition's postwar security efforts, two top American generals said today.

The immediate goal is to field about 7,000 American-trained Iraqi militia in several areas around the country to protect coalition supply convoys and replace American troops that are now guarding buildings like power plants and ammunition depots.

"These are not forces intended to conduct offensive operations," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the ground commander of all American forces in Iraq, told reporters in a lunch interview today. "They will be on patrol with us. They will be on fixed sites."

From Canadian Press:

The two U.S. soldiers died when rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire struck their convoy early Sunday near Tal Afar, a town west of the northern city of Mosul, said military spokesman Cpl. Todd Pruden. Another soldier was injured. All the victims were from the 101st Airborne Division ...

... Meanwhile, in Najaf, thousands of followers of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr set out from the Imam Ali shrine on a 10-kilometre march to U.S. headquarters there, shouting slogans against the new, U.S.-sanctioned Iraqi Governing Council and the Americans.

"Long live al-Sadr. America and the Council are infidels," chanted the crowds. "Muqtada, go ahead. We are your soldiers of liberation."

Via reader Sondra comes an email from her cousin Joe, currently in Iraq:

Again starting to be a busy time, we had 4 ambushes last night and then this morning a UN worker was killed in our area by a drive by shooting. Time to get back to heavy patrols and check points...I think pictures say it better than words

He attached three pictures: "One is of prisoners, second is a MEDEVAC helicopter taking off and the third is the damage of an RPG attack on two HUMMVs."

[click each for full pictures]

Attack:

From WaPo:

U.S. military commanders plan to train and arm thousands of Iraqis to conduct military missions alongside U.S. and British troops in an effort to restore security and quell resistance by forces loyal to ousted president Saddam Hussein, the new head of U.S. military forces in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East said today.

"The Iraqis want to be in the fight," Army Gen. John P. Abizaid said in his first interview since taking over U.S. Central Command this month. "We intend to get them in the fight."

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A United Nations convoy has come under attack in Iraq, a senior UN official says.
The incident happened near Hilla, south of Baghdad, Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for the UN special representative, told reporters.
He had no word of any casualties.

From the Washington Post via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

The US military plans to train and equip Iraqis to conduct military missions alongside US and British troops in Iraq, army General John Abizaid told The Washington Post.
"The Iraqis want to be in the fight. We intend to get them in the fight," Gen Abizaid said in his first interview since taking over as head of the US Central Command, which oversees operations in Iraq.
Speaking at US Central Command headquarters at As Saliyah, Qatar, Gen Abizaid said it would take "years" to create a new Iraqi army and "in the interim, we need civil defence forces that can operate with coalition forces, and eventually alone".
The plan calls for forming 10 battalions of 350 Iraqis each.
Each battalion would be trained by a US division or regiment and operate alongside it, a senior Central Command official told the Post.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation);

Two US soldiers have been killed and a third wounded in an ambush in northern Iraq, a US military spokesman said.
"Two soldiers were killed and one wounded," Corporal Todd Pruden said, adding that the three were from the US Army's 101st Airborne Division.
"Their unit was ambushed with rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and small arms fire near Tall Afar, west of Mosul," in northern Iraq, he said, adding that the attack happened early on Sunday.

Note that the press is now moved from calling the enemy "Saddam loyalists" to "guerrillas." From Reuters:

A U.S. soldier was killed by guerrillas in Iraq Saturday as one of the key U.S. architects of the war to topple Saddam Hussein toured the chaotic and lawless country.

With U.S. troops being killed every week in Iraq, the United States is considering returning to the United Nations to try to persuade countries to send in soldiers or share costs, running about $4 billion a month.

From the Hindustan Times:

Muqtada al-Sadr, addressing thousands of Shiites at a mosque in the central holy city of Kufa, vowed on Friday to establish a council "of the righteous" that would rival the new government.

From VOA:

The White House has released part of an intelligence report compiled last year that warned Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was trying to build nuclear weapons.

A summary of the National Intelligence Assessment on Iraq says American analysts felt there was compelling evidence that the former Iraqi government was actively working on a nuclear weapons program. The report predicted that Iraq was on course to complete work on a nuclear weapon before the end of this decade.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Coporation)

The British Government says it will hold an independent judicial inquiry if a body found near Oxford is found to be that of David Kelly, an adviser to the Ministry of Defence.
Dr Kelly, an expert on weapons of mass destruction who has been working for the British Ministry of Defence, went missing after telling his family he was going for a walk.

Earlier this week, Dr Kelly denied to a parliamentary inquiry that he was the source of the BBC story which accused the Government of embellishing evidence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

He voluntarily admitted to the Ministry of Defence that he had held an unauthorised meeting with the journalist who wrote the story.
Committee members then suggested he was the "fall guy" and the committee agreed he was most unlikely to have been the story's source.

And from the BBC

Dr Kelly, 59, had been caught up in a row between the BBC and the government about the use of intelligence reports in the run-up to the war with Iraq.

On Tuesday he told the Foreign Affairs select committee he had spoken to BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan but denied he was the main source for a story about claims that a dossier on Iraq had been "sexed up".

Guardian

The Army is considering whether to punish soldiers in Iraq who griped about conditions there to a television reporter, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Friday.

Some soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division complained to ABC-TV this week after their units were told they would be leaving Iraq soon, then had their homecoming postponed. One called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Criticism of superior officers is a breach of military rules. The Army will determine whether any soldier will be charged with breaking those rules, said Pentagon spokeswoman Chief Petty Officer Diane Perry.

Well, it's been a hectic day here at The Command Post. But everything is now moved over to a bright, shiny new SQL database, and we anticipate (we hope) no further problems. But as always, any fight worth fighting is not without casualties. In our case, we lost some comments, and in some cases, some whole threads.

But such is the price we paid.

And yes, Sekimori has gone above and beyond in her support, as usual. Help say thanks by visiting Sekimori.com. And thanks to the donations we received from you, our kind readers, earlier this year, we can afford to support a blog the size and complexity of ours. How complex? Some figures:

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From The Australian

With a thunderous explosion from five kilos of plastic explosives and huge symbolism, the US military toppled a 10 metre statue of Saddam Hussein on horseback from its perch overlooking the dictator's hometown today.
The US military also defused a huge homemade bomb near Baghdad's airport.

Testing

[Reuters via Yahoo]

As noted previously, today marks the 35th anniversary of the Baath Party's rise to power. Troops were warned to be on high alert today, and it looks like things may heat up. Even if this is not Saddam on the tape, it still gives cause to worry.

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, not seen since he was toppled in April, appeared to call on Iraqis to mount a jihad, or holy struggle, to oust occupying U.S. troops in an audiotape aired on Thursday.

"The enemy wants to weaken Iraq and the only genuine solution is to resist the occupation through Jihad (holy struggle) so to inflict losses and evict the enemy from Iraq," said the speaker on the tape broadcast by two Arabic language stations.

Full story....

[Fox News]

U.S. forces were on heightened alert for new trouble Thursday, marking the anniversary of the 1968 Baathist revolution that enabled Saddam Hussein's political party to rise to power -- sparking rumors that the fallen leader would make some sort of public appearance.

As troops were on the lookout for possible trouble, senior defense officials told Fox News that U.S. troops discovered documents from the Iraqi secret police, known as the Mukhabarat, stating that the current rash of postwar attacks, ambushes and organized chaos against coalition forces were planned months before the war in Iraq even began.

Full story...

MSNBC Breaking News: A missile was fired at a US C-130 cargo plane over Iraq. It missed.

IOL:

Baghdad - A grenade exploded on Monday outside army headquarters here, in a bold assault on the symbol of United States power in Iraq, two days ahead of the anniversary of Saddam Hussein becoming president.

A car drove up and an assailant hurled the grenade, which landed under a black jeep, before speeding away, said Iraqi police captain Mohammed Muauyez, without reporting casualties.

The grenade shattered the jeep, which belonged to the Tunisian embassy, said Muauyez, whose station was near the location of the blast. A Russian embassy vehicle was also lightly damaged. Witnesses said no one was inside the jeep.

A member of Iraq's new Governing Council accused foreign extremists of being behind the blast and other attacks aimed at destabilising the country.
More...

CBS/AP:

As the U.S. army postponed a summer homecoming for disappointed thousands of troops, the top civilian administrator said the length of the U.S occupation was in Iraqis' hands.

Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount III, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said last week he hoped the division's 1st and 2nd Brigade Combat Teams of roughly 9,000 soldiers could return home to Fort Stewart within the next six weeks.

But the timing of homecomings for those soldiers, as well as the division's 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, is now indefinite.

The units have been ordered to stay "due to the uncertainty of the situation in Iraq and the recent increase in attacks on the coalition forces," Blount said Monday in an e-mail message to Army spouses that was obtained by The Associated Press.

Military.Com

BALAD, Iraq - Facing an increasingly organized and violent resistance, the U.S. Army stepped up pressure on pro-Saddam Hussein holdouts Sunday with a fourth large offensive in central Iraq.

At least four suspected loyalists were killed and big weapons caches were captured in the operation, called Ivy Serpent, which aims to blunt potential anti-American attacks ahead of now-banned holidays of Saddam's Baath Party.

On Monday, the military said a U.S. soldier was killed and four were wounded in fighting in Baghdad. The soldiers were with the 3rd Infantry Division, which is charged with patrolling the capital, Baghdad, said Spc. Giovanni Llorente, a military spokesman.

CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A group calling itself an al Qaeda affiliate claimed responsibility Sunday for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, but a U.S. intelligence official said the claim should be taken "with a huge grain of salt."

The videotaped statement took credit for recent attacks on behalf of a previously unknown group, The Armed Islamic Movement of al Qaeda Organization -- Al Fallujah Branch. It also warned Iraqis to expect "a strike that will permanently break the back of America" in the coming days.

The tape warned that the group -- and not followers of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein -- is behind recent attacks that have killed 31 U.S. troops since President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1.

CNN:

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of U.S. Army troops initially scheduled to come home from Iraq during the next two months are being told they will have to stay for an unknown length of time, U.S. Army officials said Monday.

The delay affects 9,000 men in the Army's battle-weary 3rd Infantry Division, which has been in Iraq since the start of the war. A soldier in that division was killed Monday in Baghdad when his convoy was attacked with multiple rocket-propelled grenades.

With security in Iraq still a concern, Army officials said that U.S. troops are still needed in the country.

[Washington Post]

After weeks of high-level discussions with the United States, India today rejected an American request to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq, saying it would only consider doing so under an "explicit" U.N. mandate.

The announcement following a cabinet-level security meeting this afternoon was a setback to the Pentagon's efforts to bolster its forces in Iraq with contributions from allies. For the past several weeks, India has been seriously considering the deployment to Iraq of a full army division -- about 17,000 men -- which would have been the second-largest foreign contingent in the country after that of the United States.

Full story...

[hat tip to reader Lucky]

AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The new governing council — a U.S.-sanctioned first step toward democracy in postwar Iraq (news - web sites) — voted Monday to send a delegation to the U.N. Security Council. Violence against U.S. forces erupted again in the capital, with one soldier killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack. roll over Iraq intelligence contretemps

Meanwhile, thousands of people — including Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds — attended a ceremony in honor of the possible successor to the long-deposed Iraqi throne, Sharif Ali bin Hussein, who greeted well-wishers at his palatial headquarters.

The occasion was Revolution Day, the 45th anniversary of a bloody coup in 1958 when nationalists killed King Faisal II, Iraq's last monarch, provoking years of political unrest. The day had been celebrated under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), but Monday was the first time monarchists in Baghdad were able to gather to mourn the king's assassination.

CBS/AP:

The U.S. military said Monday it had nabbed six former regime leaders in the latest sweep aimed at snuffing out elements that have attacked and killed American troops.

But violence against U.S. forces erupted again in west Baghdad, where one American soldier was killed and six wounded in the attack by insurgents who fired several rocket-propelled grenades at the military convoy early Monday, said Spc. Giovanni Llorente, a military spokesman.

The military said 226 people had been captured in the sweep, dubbed Operation Ivy Serpent. It said six former regime leaders were among them. None, however, appeared to be part of a list of 55 most wanted fugitives from the old regime. No Iraqi civilians or coalition troops have been killed in the operation.

[Fox News]

With the blessing of U.S. administrators, Iraqis inaugurated a broadly representative governing council Sunday dominated by the Shiites once oppressed by Saddam Hussein, planting the seeds of the nation's political future three months after the dictator's ouster. In a deeply symbolic first public action, the council set April 9 -- the day Baghdad fell to U.S. forces -- as a national holiday and banned celebrations on six dates important to Saddam and his Baath Party. And the act was announced, significantly, by a prominent Shiite cleric. Shiites, long oppressed by Saddam, now dominate the 25-member council.

Full Story...

BBC:

At least one person has been killed and another injured in a blast outside a police station in a suburb of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Witnesses said a headless body was found at the scene after the blast in the western suburb of Maysaloun on Sunday.

The police station is sometimes visited by US soldiers.

Ananova:

A group claiming to be an Iraqi branch of al-Qaida says it - and not Saddam Hussein - is behind the armed resistance against US forces in Iraq.

The claims were made in a four-minute video tape aired on the Dubai-based al-Arabiya satellite television station.

The name is Operation Ivy Serpent. From the Tacoma News Tribune / AP:

American forces killed four suspected pro-Saddam insurgents and arrested more than 50 people as they launched a fourth major offensive in central Iraq, an operation meant to blunt expected attacks on U.S. soldiers, military officials said.

The officials say the anti-U.S. attacks will be timed with upcoming holidays that mark major events in the history of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

Being reported here by IRIB, the official Iranian news service:

A strong explosion was heard Saturday night in the flashpoint town of Fallujah west of Baghdad, residents reported.

They said the sirens of ambulances were heard in the town 50 kilometers west of the Iraqi capital, and US forces closed the main road linking Fallujah to Ramadi, another restive city further west.

Shots were fired at residents who rushed home after the blast was heard at 10:00 PM (1800 GMT), they added.

A US military spokesman said he had no information on an explosion in Fallujah, where plans are a foot to scale back the inflammatory presence of American soldiers.

From ABC (US):

A 25-member governing council of prominent Iraqis from diverse political and religious backgrounds was named at an inaugural meeting Sunday, a crucial first step on the nation's path to democracy.

The panel will have real political muscle with the power to name ministers and approve the 2004 budget but final control of Iraq still rests with U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer.

The New Yorker has posted online a Q&A with correspondent John Cassidy about the fate of Iraq's oil reserves. Read the whole piece here, and here's a taste:

You mentioned that you interviewed a lot of Iraqis who work in the petroleum industry. Did you get the sense that they believed that the Americans and the British had their best interests at heart?

Very difficult to say. Some did. The two executives from the Northern Oil Company, whom I write about at the end of the piece, seemed genuinely hopeful about the future. They believed that Saddam was an ignorant brute, who channelled a lot of oil money to himself and his cronies, and they were delighted to see him go. Inevitably, however, there is a lot of suspicion among ordinary Iraqis about the invaders' true motives. If I had to characterize the attitude of the country as a whole, I would say that the Iraqis initially adopted a wait-and-see attitude.

Somehow I don't think so. From Newsday:

The White House yesterday said that the CIA's statement that it erred in approving inconclusive intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program cited in President George W. Bush's State of the Union address puts the controversy to rest. But intelligence officials contend that CIA Director George Tenet's mea culpa Friday produced instead clear evidence that the administration knowingly exaggerated data to press for war against Iraq.

[NYT]

American intelligence agencies are warning of a possible new wave of attacks against United States forces in Iraq during the next week to coincide with anniversaries tied to Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party, military officials said today.

The anniversaries include July 14, the date of the 1958 coup against the British-backed monarchy, which is celebrated as Iraq's National Day; July 16, the date that Mr. Hussein took power in 1979; and July 17, the date of the Baath Party revolution in 1968.

Full story...

[Fox News]

President Bush on Saturday welcomed CIA Director George Tenet's mea culpa for letting Bush make allegations in a January speech about Iraq's nuclear weapons program -- charges the administration later admitted were unfounded.

"The president is pleased that the director of Central Intelligence acknowledged what needed to be acknowledged, which was the circumstances surrounding the State of the Union speech," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "The president said that line because it was based on information from the intelligence community, and the speech was vetted."

Full story...

Glenn Reynolds just published the scoop of the day. Or has he?

Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, who has been in Iraq on a judicial-assistance mission with the ABA, was the judge Glenn clerked for. He is "a lifelong Democrat and a man of unimpeachable integrity." So what's the scoop?

"I said, yes, of course. He said that the list contained not only the names of the 55 ''deck of cards'' players who have already been revealed, but also 550 others.

When I began questioning him about the list, how he obtained it and what else it showed, he asked would it be of interest to the Americans to know that Saddam had an ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

I said yes, the Americans have, so far as I am aware, have never been able to prove that relationship, but the president and others have said that they believe it exists. He said, ''Well, judge, there is no doubt it exists, and I will bring you the proof tomorrow.''

So today he brought me the proof, and there is no doubt in my mind that he is right."

UPDATE: For the rrrrest of the story, you'll also want to read my own analysis at Winds of Change.NET. It sheds new light on the evidence, and answers the question: how is this incident related to the WMD issue?

From Newsday:

The U.S. military reported yesterday that two more soldiers had been killed in separate attacks and the commander of American ground forces here said he was not surprised by what seemed to be escalated opposition to occupation forces.

The commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said attacks have gotten bigger and more sophisticated in recent weeks - but he said the overall security situation is not notably changed.

From Newsday:

The former U.S. commander in Iraq said yesterday that American troops still could be patrolling that nation four years from now and cautioned that the U.S. presence there would not shrink significantly until at least next year.

Retiring Gen. Tommy Franks capped two days of testimony before key congressional committees in which he and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered their starkest assessments yet of the length and scope of the U.S. commitment in Iraq - a commitment the Pentagon had predicted before the war would be sharply decreasing by now.

In an exclusive interview with Newsday's Mohamad Bazzi, a leader of Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen militia group says Saddam loyalists are making plans for extended guerrilla war against Americans in Iraq.

"We have many more people and we're a lot better organized than the Americans realize," said Khaled, 29, who gave an hour-long interview yesterday on the condition that only his first name be published. "We have been preparing for this kind of guerrilla war for a long time, and we're much more patient than the Americans. We have nowhere else to go."

Khaled described the workings of a loosely organized network of former Baath Party members, Iraqi soldiers, intelligence officers and other die-hard Hussein supporters who have been responsible for an unknown number of the attacks that have killed 29 U.S. soldiers and injured dozens since May 1.

Full Story...

Ananova:

An Army technician has discovered a surprise souvenir from the conflict in Iraq - a Kalashnikov bullet lodged in a pair of his shorts.

Dave Cox's wife found the 7.62mm cartridge as she washed his kit following his return from the war.

The 44-year-old corporal, a part-time Territorial Army soldier, believes the round stuck in his kitbag as his unit came under heavy fire in Basra, southern Iraq.

Winds of Change.NET runs "Winds of War" every Monday & Thursday - a fast, convenient, high-powered round-up of global developments that matter in the War on Terror.

Thanks to a scheduling glitch, we have 2 editions today. Venemous Kate's Winds of War: 2003-07-10 is up right now on Winds of Change.NET. As a bonus, I'm posting excerpts from Dan Darling's Winds of War bulletin here in relevant areas of The Command Post.

Iraq Report

• According to the British government, the UK is standing by the claim that Saddam Hussein's government tried to buy uranium from Niger, citing other evidence than the now infamous forged documents.

• Whatever one may think of the current Turkish government or its policy decisions in regard to the US, no one should question the right of the Turkish military to defend themselves against terrorists. The PKK or KADEK as it is now calling itself these days, is every bit as nasty as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, or any other organization that one wishes to name. They've established a really freaky enclave in northern Iraq that appears to be serving as their main base and now it seems that their leadership has decided to reject the Turkish amnesty offer and go back to Armed Struggle(tm). This appears to have taken the form of an attack on the governor of Tunceli and other attempts to cross the border that have thus far been stopped by Turkish troops. In addition, KADEK appears to be threatening German Kurds publicly critical of their agenda and tactics.

• The Coalition Provisional Authority appears to be taking the first steps towards restoring self-government in Iraq.

• Iran appears to be moving its border posts into Iraq. This makes a certain degree of sense, as the ayatollahs likely plan on annexing the southern region of the country in toto as soon as SCIRI is in power there.

From VOA:

One American soldier was killed on Wednesday evening, near the city of Mahmudiyah, about 25 kilometers south of Baghdad. The U.S. military says the soldier was in a military convoy, which was hit by small arms fire.

Later, near the deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, another U.S. soldier was killed and one was wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade fired at their convoy. The wounded soldier's condition is not known. He has been evacuated to a military hospital.

From Rueters:

Almost four months after the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, a senior British official said on Thursday it would be "extremely difficult" to find banned weapons they said justified war.

The British official, who has closely monitored Iraq's military capability, said it was more likely Iraqi scientists or army officers would eventually come forward with evidence to support the U.S.-British charges -- instead of leading them to the weapons themselves.

From MSNBC:

Iran firmly denied on Thursday an accusation by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that it had moved some border posts several kilometres into Iraq.

''I strongly deny it. Since before the American presence in Iraq until the present day there have been no changes in Iran's border posts,'' government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told Reuters.

From the Boston Globe:

The soldiers of the Third Infantry Division, some of whom have been deployed in the Persian Gulf region since the middle of last year, will return from Iraq and Kuwait by the end of September, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told a congressional panel yesterday.

From Jim Dunnigan's StrategyPage

IRAQ: New Tactics Against Baath Attacks

July 9, 2003: Thousands of Iraqi policemen have finished their training, received their new blue uniforms (the old ones were green) and gone to work. Most of these men worked as police for Saddam. All of those police were screened to remove the most corrupt and abusive. Under Saddam, the police were part of the system of repression. Force, random violence and corruption were used to keep the population terrorized and the police were often called in to help out. But most of the time the police just dealt with catching criminals and directly traffic. Their work was complicated when Saddam, in a 2002 "good will gesture", released several thousand of the worst criminals from prison (and kept most of the political prisoners locked up.)

July 8, 2003: Coalition forces are screening former members of the Iraqi military in order to find suitable candidates for the first division (12,000 troops) of the new Iraqi army. This unit is to be put together and ready for service by the end of the year. An army of 40,000 is to be ready within three years. Press reports of "a million unemployed Iraqi soldiers" are wildly inaccurate and misleading. The Iraqi army was down to about 400,000 troops before the coalition invaded, and the vast majority of those were conscripts who were paid little, abused much and eager to go home. But about 80,000 troops were career professionals, and these are the ones who are out of a job and possibly looking for revenge. The Republican Guard troops were recruited exclusively from the Sunni Arab minority that was loyal to Saddam (and on his payroll.)

[Fox News]

Saddam Hussein's former interior minister and a top member of his Baath party have been taken into custody, the latest arrests from a list of 55 most wanted Iraqi fugitives, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Mizban Khadr Al Hadi, a high-ranking member of the Baath Party regional command and revolutionary command council, and former interior minister Mahmud Dhiyab Al-Ahmad were taken into custody on Tuesday, according to a statement from Tampa, Fla.-based U.S. Central Command.

Al Hadi, number 23 on the U.S. list of 55 most wanted Iraqis from Saddam's ousted regime, turned himself in in the capital. Al-Ahmad, number 29 on the list, was also captured on Tuesday, the Central Command statement said. It gave no further details.

That's the Nine of Hearts and Seven of Spades, respectively, for those keeping score at home.

Full story...

[AP via Yahoo]

"Rough road behind, rough road ahead," Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded U.S. forces in the war, said Monday at a ceremony in which he handed over command of the operation to Gen. John Abizaid.

Full Story...

[NYT]

Prime Minister Tony Blair firmly turned aside charges today that he had manipulated intelligence or misled Parliament to go to war, and declared he was convinced that Britain had taken military action at the right time for the right reasons.

"I refute any suggestion that we misled Parliament and the people totally," Mr. Blair told a House of Commons committee in a two-and-a-half-hour shirtsleeves performance that various British commentators termed aggressive, bullish and defiant.

"I think we did the right thing in relation to Iraq," Mr. Blair said. "I stand 100 percent by it, and I think our intelligence services gave us the correct information at the time."

Full story...

CBS/AP:

Three Iraqis were killed and seven U.S. soldiers injured Tuesday in attacks throughout Iraq, as a voice attributed to Saddam Hussein called again for more violence.

Witnesses said three Iraqis — including a 13-year-old boy — were killed following a grenade attack on a police station in a Baghdad suburb. Witnesses told Associated Press Television News that those killed when troops returned fire were not among those who attacked the police station.

Insurgents dropped a homemade bomb from a bridge onto a passing U.S. military convoy in Baghdad, while another military vehicle struck a land mine in the capital. Two soldiers were injured in each incident, said Sgt. Patrick Compton.

In Kirkuk, 175 miles north of the capital, assailants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a military convoy, injuring three servicemen. The patrol returned fire, but there was no word of Iraqi casualties or arrests.

From the Chicago Sun Times:

A Marine whose unit was involved in rescuing Army Pvt. Jessica Lynch died in a weekend car crash after returning home for the first time since fighting in Iraq, authorities said.

Josh Daniel Speer, 21, died instantly Sunday morning while en route to his fiancee's house, said Kent Dill, a Greenville County deputy coroner.

A view from Middle East Online (UK):

John Abizaid, a Lebanese-American general and Middle East expert fluent in Arabic, replaced Tommy Franks Monday as head of the US Central Command, which directs forces in a vast region that includes Iraq and Afghanistan ...

... Abizaid, 52, will oversee troops in a region that encompasses 25 countries in the Middle East and southwest Asia, an area that spans some 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) east to west and 3,600 miles (5,750 kilometers) north to south.

Yes, a new tape. From FOXNews:

Lebanese Broadcasting Company just aired an audio tape with a purported "new" message from Saddam Hussein, Fox News has learned.

Part of the message on the tape says the western media is guilty of distorting the news out of Iraq.

The purported Saddam tape was left outside the Baghdad office of LBC. No date is given for when the tape was made.

The voice on the tape says:

- I am addressing you from inside Iraq.

- I am happy that some of you celebrated my birthday on April 28.

- I encourage you to boycott American goods.

- I encourage you to write anti-American graffiti.

- American foreign policy is influenced by the Zionists.

- Western media are lying about/misrepresenting what's going in Iraq.

From the Washington Times:

The Bush administration yesterday warned Turkey against unilateral military operations in northern Iraq as the weekend arrest of 11 Turkish commandos by U.S. forces on suspicions of anti-Kurdish activity strained relations anew between the two NATO allies.

Behind the warning lies a belief by U.S. officials that Turkish troops were preparing to harm civilian Kurdish officials. Turkey denies that and warned that the incident had "created the biggest crisis of confidence" ever between the two armed forces.

From Reuters:

Iraq's northern export pipeline to Turkey was damaged by a new sabotage blast over the weekend and repairs will take two weeks, a senior Iraqi oil ministry official said on Tuesday.

The official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters Iraq was also facing what he called widespread "economic sabotage" along a pipeline from Iraq's southern oilfields.

BBC:

A British soldier has been shot and wounded in a sniper attack on UK troops in southern Iraq, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.

The man was shot in the leg during the incident on the outskirts of Basra.

He is being treated in a British Army field hospital where he is said to be in a "stable" condition.

The soldier was part of a routine patrol in the southern city late on Sunday when it came under fire from two gunmen.

It looks like Saddam's portrait is about to come off Iraqi banknotes. Reuters reports:

BAGHDAD, July 7 (Reuters) - Iraq's U.S.-led civilian authority announced on Monday it would free the country's central bank from government control and print new banknotes to replace dinars bearing the face of ex-President Saddam Hussein.

U.S. civilian ruler Paul Bremer, who announced the move on Iraqi television, said the new unit would be a variation on the older so-called Swiss dinar now circulating in the northern-controlled Kurdish area.

[...]

Bremer signed an order making Iraq's central bank independent under interim governor Faleh Salman, another senior official working for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) ruling Iraq, he said.

The move effectively frees the central bank from government control for the first time in decades and allows it to set monetary policy, the CPA official said.

Read the rest.

CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two American soldiers were killed overnight in separate attacks in Baghdad, U.S. military officials said Monday, and four others were wounded in Ramadi, west of the Iraqi capital.

The first incident took place late Sunday when a member of the U.S. Army's 1st Armored Division was killed while pursuing Iraqi gunmen. An Iraqi gunman was killed and another wounded in the exchange.

A second 1st Armored Division soldier was killed around 1 a.m. Monday when an "improvised explosive device" hit his vehicle, military officials said.

Four U.S. soldiers were wounded late Sunday when a joint patrol of the 124th Infantry and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades in Ramadi, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) west of Baghdad, a military spokesman said. The troops returned fire, killing one Iraqi and wounding another.

BBC:

A US official in charge of setting up Iraq's police is due to unveil later on Monday a reward scheme for information relating to the murder of coalition forces or Iraqi police officers.

Bernard Kerik, a former New York police chief, told the BBC that the minimum reward would be $2,500.

BBC:

The Commons foreign affairs select committee published its verdict on the Iraq weapons row on Monday.

BBC:

Baghdad's city council has held its first meeting, hailed by the United States as a major step towards democracy.

The top US official in Iraq, Paul Bremer, praised the 37 delegates, who were chosen at local meetings around the capital, for volunteering to serve "this wonderful city".

The meeting came amid further violence in and around Baghdad, with three US soldiers and two Iraqis killed in three separate attacks since Sunday.

AP:

WASHINGTON - The recording of Saddam Hussein aired Friday is probably authentic, CIA officials said. But the poor quality of the recording prevents absolute certainty.

"The CIA's assessment, after a technical analysis of the tape, is that it's most likely his voice," said CIA spokesman Bill Harlow on Monday. "The exact date of the recording cannot be determined."

Intelligence officials said the recording is filled with background noise that prevents their technical analysts from being more certain.

From FOXNews:

Gen. Tommy Franks said rising casualties among coalition occupation forces come in pursuit of "a worthy cause" — attempting to establish democracy in Iraq. And he agreed with the much criticized comment by President Bush, who taunted attackers with the phrase "Bring 'em on!"

"The sense that I have right now is that it's not time to send in additional troops," the four-star general said in an interview marking his retirement. "We want ... to continue to move forward with establishing security by working with the Iraqis."

There are some 145,000 Americans and 12,000 coalition forces including British, Poles and others in Iraq now. Up to 20,000 international soldiers will flow into Iraq to help, beginning later this month and concluding the deployments at the end of September, the Pentagon has said.

From the Baltimore Sun:

Three U.S. soldiers from the Army's 1st Armored Division were killed in separate incidents over a 24-hour period in Baghdad, military officials said early today. The methods of attack included a homemade bomb, an ambush and an assassination-style shooting.

CBS:

(CBS/AP) The point-blank shooting of an unarmed British reporter on a Baghdad street and a grenade attack on a U.N. compound raised concern Sunday that Iraq's worsening insurgency — until now targeting only coalition troops and Iraqis accused of U.S. collaboration — will spread to Westerners in general.

On Sunday, an assailant shot and killed a U.S. soldier waiting to buy a soft drink at Baghdad University, firing once from close range in the third such assault in nine days. The style was coldly similar to the killing of the young British freelance cameraman, who was shot in the head outside a Baghdad museum on Saturday.

A perspective from Islam Online (UK):

With power outages for long hours that could reach 20 to 23 hours a day and people resorting to primitive methods to cope with backbreaking hardships in the searing 50 degree celsius, the U.S. troops have turned Baghdad into a Stone Age city.

A water vat in the house's corner and a lantern barely spreading its dim light through a lightening wick that helps children study for tomorrow's exams though with drooping eyes, while the mother stand cooking for her children with coal and the daughter fanning with fronds in the stifling heat of July.

This is almost the case in every house in Baghdad as put by Maisaa, an Iraqi girl living in the elite Al-Khadra district in Baghdad ...

... "When you pronounce words like electricity and water you, no doubt, conjures up visions of civilization and life…But we are no leading our lives without water or civilization," Thurayaa Mohidin, a biologist, echoed the same feelings.

She continued: "But such appalling conditions is nothing new for Iraqis, who suffered for 12 years the same hardships under the ousted Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein…The Americans only added insult to injury."

From the Austin American Statesman / AP:

Zionists are spreading drugs and prostitution, they say, and Americans - not Saddam Hussein loyalists - bombed a procession of U.S.-trained police cadets. U.S. occupiers also are withholding electricity on purpose, the story goes.

Lies and half-truths - readily believed by a nation of people who learned long ago to be skeptical of rulers' motives - are complicating America's mission in Iraq, fueling anti-U.S. sentiment as troops struggle to quell a growing uprising.

From Reuters:

U.S. soldier was shot and critically wounded at Baghdad University on Sunday, witnesses and the U.S. military said.

Students near the scene said the soldier had been inside the university campus in the southern part of the city when he was shot. A U.S. military helicopter evacuated the soldier and troops sealed off the campus, they said.

One student, Abdullah Saad, said he had seen the soldier lying on the ground bleeding from a head wound.

Update: Here's more from the Washington Post, less than an hour old.

The Guardian has the list here.

From Reuters:

A grenade was fired at the offices of an international organization in northern Iraq on Saturday, causing minor damage and slightly injuring a local guard, a U.N. spokesman said on Sunday.

A security team is investigating the incident at the headquarters of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the city of Mosul, said Hamid Abdeljaber, deputy spokesman for the U.N. mission in Iraq.

Not flame wars nor censorship nor comment policies nor dark of night shall keep us from our appointed rounds. This, from The Adverstiser (Australia):

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair's claim that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction will be found eventually was dealt a massive blow last night after it was revealed that the Foreign Office no longer believes they exist.

Senior Government sources have told The Mail On Sunday that the Foreign Office has given up hope of finding chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.

The source said: "We live in hope but we just can't find them. Most people at the Foreign Office don't think we ever will. The Prime Minister still thinks they will be found – perhaps he has more information."

Now piling on: Joseph Wilson. From Reuters:

A former U.S. ambassador who investigated a report about Iraq buying uranium from Niger for the CIA accused the Bush administration on Sunday of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Joseph Wilson, Washington's envoy to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, detailed in his role in investigating the report -- which turned out to be a forgery -- in an article in the New York Times on Sunday.

Chicago Sun-Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A British journalist was shot and killed outside the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad on Saturday, witnesses said.

The identity of the journalist, a freelance television producer, was not immediately known. Fellow journalists, asking that their names not be used, said the male journalist was outside Iraq's National Museum when an assailant shot him.

The British Foreign Office contacted in London confirmed that a British national had been shot.

"We are urgently investigating reports of a British freelance journalist being shot today in Baghdad," a spokesman said.

BBC:

Turkey has protested to the United States, after accusing American troops of arresting 11 of its soldiers in northern Iraq.

"It's a totally ugly incident, it's something that shouldn't have happened," said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Several hours later, Mr Erdogan said some of the men had been released but did not specify the number.

Reports in the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet suggested the special forces troops were detained in the city of Sulaymaniyah on Friday on suspicion of planning an attack on a regional governor.

From CNN.com:

Seven Iraqi police recruits were killed Saturday morning when an "improvised explosive device" detonated in Ramadi, about 75 miles west of Baghdad, according to coalition authorities in Baghdad.

There were reports of at least 40 others wounded in the blast near the graduation site, authorities said. The recruits had been close to graduating from their training program.

BBC:

Japan's lower house of parliament has given the go-ahead for troops to be sent to help with the reconstruction of post-war Iraq.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi could send about 1,000 non-combatant troops to Iraq by October if the bill becomes law, as expected, later this month.

It would be the largest foreign deployment for Japan's armed forces since World War II, which has angered some critics.

The Mercury / AP has the full text of the videotape here.

Oh great people, our great military, children of our great country, we are now on June 14, 2003.

People have been asking why they haven't heard the voice of Saddam Hussein. We face a lot of trouble in getting our voice to you even though we have been trying.

I first say that I am still in Iraq and I miss you all, even though I am in your midst, but you know how things are.

I talk to you today and all the honorable Arabs across the world. I told you before this last battle and during it that we would not fail you and would not cause God to be angry at us.

What happened has happened, we sacrificed what we sacrificed: our rule, but not our principles ...

From the Porterville Recorder / AP:

U.S. troops killed 11 Iraqis who ambushed a convoy outside Baghdad on Friday, one of the heaviest clashes yet in the daily grind of attacks on American forces, and a message purportedly from Saddam Hussein called for stepped-up resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

The ambush came hours after mortars hit a nearby base, wounding 18 U.S. soldiers, and a sniper shot and killed an American soldier guarding the Baghdad museum, the military said.

Heeee's baaaack. Can't we just stake out the VHS supply stores? From Reuters:

An audio tape purporting to be from ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and aired by the Arabic television channel al Jazeera on Friday said he was alive and living in Iraq.

No confirmation was immediately available that the voice on the tape was indeed that of Saddam, who has not been seen in public since he and his government were ousted from power on April 9 during the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

The poor-quality recording, which sounded very much like Saddam, urged Iraqis to support resistance against the "infidel" U.S. presence and not to aid the occupiers. It also warned the Americans of more bloodshed to come.

"I am in Iraq and with a comrade," said the voice on the tape. "My aides and the leadership are now in Iraq and I salute them."

"I tell you that I miss you, miss you, oh beloved people, even though I am among you and in your ranks," said the voice. It said the recording had been made on June 14.

As a follow-up to this post, I thought that for the 4th of July we might play a round of "Match The Headlines" with the US Senators / Iraq WMD story. Here are the headlines:

Senators Disagree on WMD Facts After Returning From Iraq

US Promises WMD Soon

US 'Has Solid Evidence Of Iraqi Arms Programmes'

Seantor Says Some Success in WMD Hunt

ABC News (US)

News24 (S. Africa)

Ireland Online

FOX News

BBC:

One United States soldier serving in Iraq has been killed and at least 19 wounded in two separate attacks, the US military says.

One serviceman from the First Armoured Division was shot dead in Baghdad on Thursday night, when his Bradley vehicle came under sniper fire.

In the second attack, mortar rounds were fired at a US military base near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad.

More...

CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Just back from a trip to Iraq, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, suggested proof is coming soon that deposed leader Saddam Hussein had a WMD program that could have turned out an operational weapon on short notice .

"My judgment is that there is going to be breaking positive news in the very near future," Roberts told a Capitol Hill news conference where he joined colleagues in talking about their trip to Iraq. Roberts said scientists involved with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program are talking to the U.S. inspection team.

Roberts later told reporters that while the top Iraqi scientist in U.S. custody, Rihab Taha (dubbed "Dr. Germ") is not being helpful, "people under her are telling a different story." He said inspectors are now going through WMD documents.

"There are several items of real interest I think that really make a breakthrough in terms of a positive thing," said Roberts. "I'd be a little careful were I overly critical about the lack of finding any WMD. You may end up with WMD and some egg on your face."

More...

From CNN.com:

The United States is offering a $25 million reward for information that either leads to the capture of Saddam Hussein or confirms that the former Iraqi leader is dead, U.S. officials announced Thursday.

In addition, they offered a $15 million reward for similar information about Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay.

From today's "Winds of War" briefing, over at Winds of Change.NET:

U.S. authorities discovered that the acronym of the reconstituted Iraqi army, the New Iraqi Corps, is an Arabic slang word for fornication. The name has been changed to the New Iraqi Army. (Hat Tip: The Week magazine)

AP:

CAIRO, Egypt - A leader of a prominent Shiite group accused the Bush administration on Wednesday of reneging on pledges to hand over power to local political groups in Iraq.

Hamid al-Bayati, of the Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, also blamed Americans for failing to secure Iraq after Saddam's fall and "plunging the country into an unending cycle of violence."

"They kept promising us Iraq would be ruled by its people once there was a regime change and Saddam was removed, but that didn't happen and seems far from happening," he told The Associated Press from his London office.

Full article...

AP via Yahoo:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. Marine was killed and three others were injured Wednesday while clearing mines near the south central Iraqi city of Karbala, the U.S. military said.

An Iraqi fire department technician accompanying the Marines was also injured, said a statement from U.S. Central Command.

The injured were taken to a nearby medical facility.

The names of the dead and injured were being withheld pending family notification.

No other details were immediately available.

Full article...

FYI, I've posted an entry on my site to remind folks that as we approach our Independence Day we need to remember our fallen heroes who have died fighting so that others can enjoy the freedoms we all share.

BBC:

A fatal explosion at a mosque in the Iraqi town of Falluja was caused by a bomb-making class, the US military has said.

Local residents have blamed the blast, which killed nine people, on a US missile attack, saying aircraft had been heard overhead just beforehand.

The US denies this version of events, saying investigations by the military and the Fallujah police had exonerated US military forces of any involvement.

The flashpoint town, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, has been the scene of regular attacks on US troops since clashes with the local population in April in which the Americans killed at least 15 people.[...]

"The explosion was apparently related to a bomb manufacturing class that was being taught inside the mosque," US Central Command said in a statement.

Full article...

BBC:

The United States and Britain have insisted they will not pull out of Iraq, despite attacks on their troops.

On a visit to Iraq, UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the incidents had increased London's and Washington's determination to root out remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime and his Baath party.

Mr Straw's comments echoed US President George W Bush's pledge on Tuesday to meet attacks with "direct and decisive force".

Full article...

[Rueters via Yahoo]

Six American soldiers were wounded in Iraq on Tuesday and a group of visiting senators said there could be more attacks on U.S. troops after a fatal blast at a mosque fueled Muslim anger with the occupying forces. "The war is still on, the risks are still there and casualties could well be taken," said Sen. John Warner, a Republican from Virginia.

There were no signs of easing tensions on Tuesday as three attacks injured six U.S. troops. Attacks on occupying forces have killed 22 U.S. and six British soldiers since May 1.

An unexplained explosion damaged a mosque in the already tense town of Falluja, dominated by minority Sunnis. The blast killed nine people, including the imam.

Full story..

UPDATE Via LGF, and a reader in the comments, supposedly the bomb in the Mosque went off during a bomb-making class.

BBC:

US troops have come under fresh attack in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, with reports saying at least three soldiers were injured.

In one incident in central Baghdad, a military vehicle was wrecked, apparently by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Reports from the scene quoted eyewitnesses as saying three soldiers and one other person were killed, but several hours later there was no confirmation from the American authorities.

Full article...

Says FOX TV.

More from AP, via Statesman.com.

[Fox News]

A massive explosion in a mosque killed at least five Iraqis and injured four others in this restive town, witnesses and officials said Tuesday. The blast raised tensions in a region already simmering with anti-American activity.

Iraqi civilians said the explosion late Monday in Fallujah was caused by a missile or bomb strike, but American soldiers at the scene disputed that account, saying it was likely caused when explosives hidden at the site went off.

Full story...