The Command Post was created for, and built upon, coverage of the war in Iraq. When I consider the past year, several Iraq posts stand out in my mind … and here they are for your reminiscence.

Posted 20 March 2003:

We only thought the Gulf War was well televised. This one is incredible. I am glued to my television. I prefer to watch it without the sound though. That way I can choose the music. I'm working my way towards Wagner, not there yet, but I'm working that direction. I really don't care what Ted Koppel or the other embedded ones have to say. I want to watch our warrior class, men and women, move their machines. About every 5 minutes I have to hit myself in the chest and tell myself to breathe.

Posted March 21 2003:

Posted 27 March 2003:

I JUST SPOKE TO A WOMAN FROM CNN who said that The Command Post is very popular in their newsroom today. I love that.

Posted 30 March 2003:

Peter Arnett, "The First War Plan Has Failed" ... FoxNews (no link yet) just reported that Peter Arnett has given an interview to Iraqi state television, in which he utters not only the quote that titles this post, but went on to talk about how the increased resistance of the Iraqi fighters (no word if Arnett believes its a voluntary resistance) is encouraging the anti-war movement back home.

Posted 1 April 2003:

Media Source Tip: CENTCOM Briefing Will Involve POW Developments ... A tip to The Command Post from a source "in the business" ... note I can't confirm this nor link, as the CENTCOM briefing has not hit yet ... [this ended up being the rescue of Jessica Lynch]

Posted 3 April 2003:

Just moments ago The Command Post registered its millionth visit ... a goal reached in roughly 14 days, three hours.

Posted 4 April 2003:

Michael Kelly, the Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large and Washington Post columnist who abandoned the safety of editorial offices to cover the war in Iraq, has been killed in a Humvee accident while traveling with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

Posted 9 April 2003:

According to CNN's Rym Brahimi, sources in Baghdad report that the city is "eerily calm" with no explosions or shooting, no signs of soldiers or militia in the city and no signs government officials at the Palestine hotel. Update: Even the "minders" from the information ministry failed to show up for work at the Palestine hotel this morning.

Posted 9 April 2003:

CNN is reporting that no Information Ministry personnel showed up this morning at the Palestine Hotel. This means not only no Baghdad Bob, but no minders.

So either they are fading into the mist (most likely), or they have something really bad planned for the Palestine Hotel.

Indication of the former is that the government in Baghdad appears to have vanished. People driving around town are not finding the usual checkpoints.

Posted 9 April 2003:

Sky News just showed raw uncut footage of an older man with glasses overwhelmed with joy in front of a government building in Baghdad. He was holding a banner of Saddam's face that had been ripped down and was beating the picture of Saddam in his face with his shoe.

Sky had Iraqi analyst Hamid Ali Alikfay in the studio and he did free translation of what this man was yelling.

"Saddam has killed millions of us....this is the day we have been waiting for. We are Iraqis, but we are with the United States. We are Americans."

Posted 9 April 2003:

UPDATE : He's down... and the crowd goes Wild!

Posted 22 July 2003:

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.

Posted 14 December 2003:

Saddam Hussein has been captured alive in his hometown of Tikrit, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council said Sunday.

As we noted over on Op-Ed: It's been a wild ride ... and thanks for reading the Post.

A New Year's Eve car bomb ripped through a restaurant in Baghdad, killing at least five people.

At least 25 people were injured in the explosion at Nabil Restaurant Arasat Al-Hindiya, an upscale section of Baghdad.

U.S. soldiers were seen heading to the scene after the blast and several witnesses report hearing gunfire.

An unnamed source says there were about 400 pounds of artillery packed into the car that drove into the restaurant.

Nabil Restaurant was a popular destination for journalists and tourists. There was a New Year's Eve party going on inside - with about 50 people in attendance - at the time of the blast.

[Various sources]

DJ News: A car bomb exploded as a U.S. convoy passed on a street full of shops in Baghdad Wednesday, destroying one Humvee, police said. An eight-year-old Iraqi boy was killed and 11 other Iraqi bystanders were being treated for injuries, hospital doctors said.

AP: Gunfire erupted Wednesday as hundreds of Arab and Turkmens marched in protest over fears of Kurdish domination in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, and police said two people were killed.

DJ Newswire: Hundreds of pages of Iraqi military documents, bills, customs forms, ledgers and shipping orders reveal that for much of its conventional weaponry - such as the Volga/SA-2 missile engine - Iraq turned to rusting military hardware in Poland and elsewhere in the former Soviet Bloc, the Los Angeles Times reported in its Wednesday editions.

Interesting interview at MSNBC with notorious French attorney Jacques Verges , who has offered to defend Saddam Hussein: If things stay the way they are, I could also defend Saddam because you can defend the same people if they are being prosecuted for the same reasons… The charges against Saddam Hussein are likely to be part of larger, more global ones of Iraqi authorities. Yes, read the whole thing.

U.S. forces operating in the so-called Sunni Triangle -the region of Iraq most loyal to captured former dictator Saddam Hussein - found a significant weapons cache that included al Qaeda literature and videotapes, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

This could be a very interesting story to follow.

Also found in the cache were ammunition, mortar rounds, mortar tubes, RPGs, assault weapons, TNT and C4.

[CNN]

Central Command is pointing to signs that former officials of Saddam's Ba'ath Party have decided to help them out:

MOSUL, Iraq – Two second-tier Ba’ath Party leaders in northwest Iraq handed over weapons Dec. 29 to Coalition Forces with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault).

The two Farahs, once answerable to the close circle of senior Ba’athists around Saddam Hussein, turned in 48 AK-47 rifles, 59 magazines, and a bag of loose 7.62-millimeter ammunition to Tallafar police.

Also continuing to turn over weapons were fourth-tier Firqa Ba’athists.
The Tallafar chief of police reported that two Firqas turned in one AK-47 rifle each after hearing that Ba’ath Party personnel were turning in weapons. They said they wanted to be helpful, according to the report.

This is one of the first reports of a Ba'athist turnabout since Saddam's capture, and comes on a day when other significant signs of progress in the Coalition effort were bubbling to the surface.

(Cross-posted at Late Final.)

Victor Davis Hanson has a pretty fair assessment of the war on terrorists to date:

In liberating 50 million people from both the Taliban and Saddam Hussein it has lost so far less than 500 soldiers -- some of whom were killed precisely because they waged a war that sought to minimalize not just civilian casualties but even the killing of their enemies. Contrary to the invective of Western intellectuals, the American military's sins until recently have been of omission -- preferring not to shoot looters or hunt down and kill insurgents -- rather than brutal commission. While the United States has conducted these successive wars some 7,000 miles beyond its borders, it also avoided another terrorist attack of the scale of September 11 -- and all the while crafting a policy of containment of North Korea and soon-to-be nuclear Iran.

Thus by any comparative standard of military history, the last two difficult years, despite setbacks and disappointments, represent a remarkable military achievement. Yet no one would ever gather even the slightest acknowledgment of such success from our Democratic grandees. Al Gore dubbed the Iraqi liberation a quagmire and, absurdly, the worst mistake in the history of American foreign policy. Howard Dean, more absurdly, suggested that the president of the United States might have had foreknowledge of September 11. Most Americans now shudder at the thought that the former might have been president in this time of crisis -- and that the latter still could be.

Indeed.

After several paragraphs assessing the views of leftist pundits and Middle Eastern Islamists, Hanson argues

The so-called Arab street and its phony intellectuals sense that influential progressive Westerners will never censure Middle Eastern felonies if there is a chance to rage about Western misdemeanors. It is precisely this parasitic relationship between the foreign and domestic critics of the West that explains much of the strange confidence of those who planned September 11. It was the genius of bin Laden, after all, that he suspected after he had incinerated 3,000 Westerners an elite would be more likely to blame itself for the calamity -- searching for "root causes" than marshalling its legions to defeat a tribe that embraced theocracy, autocracy, gender apartheid, polygamy, anti-Semitism, and religious intolerance. And why not after Lebanon, the first World Trade Center bombing, the embassies in Africa, murder in Saudi Arabia, and the USS Cole? It was the folly of bin Laden only that he assumed the United States was as far gone as Europe and that a minority of its ashamed elites had completely assumed control of American political, cultural, and spiritual life.

(Hat tip: Randy Barnett)

Cross-post from OTB

Today's Iraq news from StrategyPage:

Five men were arrested as suspects in the December 27th attacks in Karbala. Their nationality was not given, but Shia leaders say they believe the attacks were carried out by Sunni Arabs and al Qaeda foreigners. There has been little, or no, political violence in the Shia areas since Saddam's government fell. The Shia are not intimidated by the Sunnis any more, and the attacks of the 27th just made more Shias determined to meet violence with violence if the Sunnis continue to use violence against other Iraqis.

Cross-posted from OTB

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The Washington Post has a very distressing report about the Bush administrations abandonment of liberal reforms in Iraq for the sake of "stability" (of course).

Full Article here.

My commentary here.

Via IraqNet Information Network. By Amir Taheri, Arab News Staff.

* * *

PARIS, 26 December 2003 - Has France shot itself in the foot by trying to prevent the toppling of Saddam Hussein?

The question is keeping French foreign policy circles buzzing as the year draws to the close.

Even a month ago, few would have dared pose the question.

In denial mode, the French elite did not wish to consider the possibility that President Jacques Chirac may have made a mistake by leading the bloc that opposed the liberation of Iraq last March. Now, however, the search is on for someone to blame for what the daily newspaper Liberation describes as “the disarray of French foreign policy.”

There are several reasons for this.

The French have seen Saddam Hussein’s capture on television and found him not worthy of the efforts that their government deployed to prolong his rule. They have also seen the Iranian mullas agreeing to curtail their nuclear program under the threat of US military action. And just this week they saw Muammar Qaddafi, possibly the most egocentric windbag among despots, crawl into a humiliating surrender to the “Anglo-Saxons”.

The fact that France was not even informed of the Qaddafi deal is seen in Paris as particularly painful.

The episode provoked some cacophony at the top of the French state.

On Monday, Defense Minister Mrs. Michelle Alliot-Marie claimed that Paris had been informed of the deal with Libya. Moments later, Dominique de Villepin, the foreign minister, denied any knowledge. Chirac was forced to intervene through his Elysee spokeswoman who tried to pretend that the French knew what was afoot but not directly from the US and Britain.

Some French commentators believe that the Bush administration is determined to isolate France and “teach her a lesson” as punishment for the French campaign against the war.

“ Vengeance is a hamburger that is eaten cold,” writes Georges Dupuy in Liberation. “The fingerprint of the United States could be detected in the setbacks suffered by France’s diplomacy.”

A similar analysis is made by some academics and politicians.

“France overdid it,” says Dominique Moisi, a foreign policy researcher close to the Chirac administration. “Our opposition to the war was principled. But the way we expressed it was excessive. The Americans might have accepted such behavior from Russia, but not from France which was regarded as an ally and friend.”

Moisi describes as “needlessly provocative” the campaign that Villepin conducted last spring to persuade Security Council members to vote against the US-backed draft resolution on Iraq. He says that the Chirac administration did not understand the impact of the Sept. 11 tragedy on America’s view of the world.

Pierre Lellouche, a member of Parliament, claims that the US has “a deliberate strategy to isolate France, echoing what happened during the Iraqi crisis.”

There is no doubt that France has suffered a number of diplomatic setbacks in the past year or so. But not all were linked to the Iraq issue or, as many French believe, the result of score-settling by Washington.

Soon after winning his second term as president last year, Chirac quarreled with British Prime Minister Tony Blair over a range of European issues. The two were not on speaking term for almost six months.

Chirac then had a row with Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi after a French minister described the Italian leader as a “dangerous populist”.

In the course of the past year Chirac has also quarreled with Spain’s Prime Minister Jose-Maria Aznar, both about Iraq and on a range of European issues. Last spring Chirac invited the leaders of Central and Eastern European nations to “shut up” after they published an op-ed in support of US policy on Iraq.

In September France decided to ignore the European Stability Pact, the cornerstone of the euro, to accommodate the biggest budget deficit of any European Union member. And last month, Chirac together with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, provoked a diplomatic fight with Poland and Spain, thus preventing the adoption of the much-advertised European Union Constitution.

France’s policy in the Middle East and Africa is also in a mess.

And many Arab leaders regard France as a maverick power that could get them involved in an unnecessary, and ultimately self-defeating, conflict with the United States.

In Africa, the recent Libyan accord with Britain and the US deals a severe blow to French prestige. Libya is the most active member of the African Union and its exclusion of France, also from talks on compensation for victims of Libyan terrorism, sets an example for other African nations.

To be fair, France is trying to repair some of the damage it has done to itself, and its allies, by trying to prolong Saddam’s rule.

This month, Chirac unrolled the red carpet for a delegation from the Iraqi Governing Council which had been described by Villepin as “an American tool” a few weeks earlier.

France has also agreed to write-off part of the Iraqi debt and to side with the US and Britain in convening the Paris Club of creditor nations to give new Iraq a helping hand.

And, yet, it is unlikely that France can restore its credibility without a reform of the way its foreign policy is made.

Villepin may end up as the scapegoat, though in France, foreign policy is the exclusive domain of the president, with the foreign minister acting as his secretary.

The system was created by Gen. De Gaulle, a larger than life figure.

It is not normal that France should be the only major democracy in which the prime minister and his Cabinet and the Parliament, not to mention the political parties and the media, have virtually no say in shaping foreign policy. The cliché about foreign policy being “the domain of the president” is an insult to democracy.

Had France had the debates over Iraq that other democracies, notably the United States and Britain, organized at all levels, especially in their respective legislatures, it is more than possible that Chirac would not have been able to impose a pro-Saddam strategy that was clearly doomed to failure.

France might have ended up opposing the war, all the same, as did Germany. But it would not have become involved in an active campaign against its allies and in favor of an Arab despot.

France must certainly review its foreign policy. But what it needs even more urgently is a reform of its institutions to end the monarchic aspects of the Fifth Republic.

* * *

An officer from the new Iraqi police force inspects munitions confiscated in a recent raid in Baghdad.

Published on Monday, December 29, 2003, in the New York Post.

Via Lucianne.com.

* * *

Startling new Army statistics show that strife-torn Baghdad - considered the most dangerous city in the world - now has a lower murder rate than New York.

The newest numbers, released by the Army's 1st Infantry Division, reveal that over the past three months, murders and other crimes in Baghdad are decreasing dramatically and that in the month of October, there were fewer murders per capita there than the Big Apple, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

The Bush administration and outside experts are touting these new figures as a sign that, eight months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, major progress is starting to be made in the oft-criticized effort by the United States and coalition partners to restore order and rebuild Iraq.

"If these numbers are accurate, they show that the systems we put in place four months ago to develop a police force based on the principles of a free and democratic society are starting to work," said former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who traveled to Iraq to oversee the rebuilding of the police force.

"It shows that the enforcement is working. It shows that the coordination between the Iraqi police and the U.S. military is working. It shows that having an Iraqi face out there standing up is working. The more you stand up, the more these crime numbers are going to go down," Kerik said.

According to the Army, there were 92 murders in Baghdad, a city of 5 million people, in July. The number dropped to 75 in August, 54 in September and 24 in October.

In New York, a city of 8 million people, there were 52 murders in July, 51 in August, 52 in September and 45 in October.

John Lott of the American Enterprise Institute, who recently published an extensive analysis on Iraqi crime figures, says the numbers indicate that Baghdad's murder rate dropped from 19.5 per 100,000 people in July to a rate of five killings per 100,000 people in October.

By contrast, New York's murder rate is seven murders per 100,000 people, Los Angeles' murder rate is 17 per 100,000, and Chicago's is 22, Lott said, citing FBI crime statistics.

The Army also said that the numbers of kidnappings in Baghdad have declined, from 28 in July to 11 in October, and the numbers of aggravated assaults has gone from 135 in July to 40 in October.

But Lott cautions that those numbers may be misleading because not all kidnappings and assaults are reported to police.

The Army's statistics do not take into account "political" attacks on U.S. and coalition personnel by Ba'athist death squads - or the terrorists showing up in Baghdad morgues after having been killed by the U.S. military in those battles.

Experts caution that Iraq's police force is still in the formative stages and it is possible that the Army's statistics might not be as accurate as those reported by police forces in the United States.

Nevertheless, there appears to be good reason for the Bush administration to cheer.

"When you consider that Saddam released thousands of criminals from prisons onto the streets during the war and that his military and security apparatus completely collapsed, the progress has been measurable," Lott said.

* * *

AP: U.S. forces hunting top and midlevel leaders of the Iraqi insurgency are close to unraveling a network of five powerful clans that have funneled money, weapons and instructions to street gunmen and bombmakers, according to a U.S. Army commander.

Dow Jones News: Government officials said Monday that despite five soldiers being killed in Karbala Saturday, Bulgaria would remain a firm member of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. "Keeping our military contingent in Iraq is a matter of principle," Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski said.

Anchorage News/AP: Rebels lobbed a grenade and fired on U.S. soldiers searching homes for insurgents in the northern city of Mosul on Monday, triggering a firefight that left three Iraqis dead and two U.S. soldiers wounded. The Iraqis killed were suspected of belonging to Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic militant group in northern Iraq believed to have ties to al-Qaida, the military said.

Fox: Providing a critical boost to the U.S. campaign to win debt relief for Iraq, major creditor Japan pledged Monday to forgive "the vast majority" of its Iraqi debt if other Paris Club nations do the same. China later said it would consider the idea.

From The Australian :

[member of the Governing Council]Iyad Allawi told the Arab dailies Asharq Al-Awsat and Al-Hayat that Saddam, who was captured two weeks ago, "has started to give information on Iraqi money that he invested abroad ... which the Iraqi Governing Council estimates at $US40 billion ($A54.04 billion)" placed in Switzerland, Japan, and Germany among others, under fictitious company names."
"Now questioning is focused on his relations with terrorist organisations. He has given the names of people who know the location of hidden arsenals used in terrorist attacks against coalition forces and the Governing Council," Allawi added.

Allawi put the number of "terrorists coming from abroad who are carrying out attacks in Iraq" at more than 5,000.

Of course Saddam has been known to tell the odd Porkie now and then, so even if the report is 100% accurate, the facts may not be.

The Seattle Times has posted a WaPo story offering some background on Paul Wolfowitz. The lead:

In September, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz appeared in Manhattan at an event sponsored by The New Yorker magazine. As he began to speak, he was interrupted by shouts of "War criminal!" and "Murderer!"

"I can't resist," he said evenly. "This is what is wonderful about this country. It is ... "

Another shout: "Shame on you."

Wolfowitz drove on: " ... and what is finally wonderful is 50 million, roughly 50 million Afghans and Iraqis, are finally able to speak this way without having their tongues cut out."

Wolfowitz is an important figure in the current passion play, but oddly, most observers--and many, many bloggers--offer commentary on Wolfowitz with only a casual understanding of his background and philosophy. The times article is worth reading as an introduction, and you may wish to supplement it with my own Wolfowitz primer posted here this Spring.

A U.S. soldier and two Iraqi children were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad.

The blast also injured nine Iraqis and five U.S. soldiers.

[Source: Fox]

From the AFP via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A twin bomb blast in the Iraqi capital Baghdad has killed one United States soldier and wounded five others.

A US military spokesman says an improvised explosive device was used in the attack.

The wounded were taken to a hospital, but there are no further details at this stage.

The death toll from earlier attacks in the southern holy city of Kerbala has
risen to 18, after five Iraqis died from wounds they received.

Four Bulgarians and two Thais were also killed in the multiple attacks blamed on suicide bombers.

A series of coordinated attacks on coalition forces killed eleven, "including six Iraqi police officers and four coalition soldiers, military and hospital officials said."

The three attacks - all in Karbala - were carried out using mortars, car bombs and machine guns. Two men have been detained in connection with the car bomb, which went off in front of the main police station in Karbala.

According to The Nation, four of the dead were with a Polish mutli-national force and may have been Bulgarian. The Nation is also reporting that there were four attacks, not three.

Iraqi terrorists launched several attacks in the southern city of Karbala on Saturday, and there were 25 coalition casualties, a military spokesman said.

The attackers struck with a car bomb, mortars and machine guns in separate places in Karbala, said U.S. Maj. Ralph Manos, a spokesman for the Polish-led multinational force responsible for security in the area.

"There were different types of attacks at different places," he said. The attackers targeted two military coalition camps at the city's university and at a police station, as well as the mayor's office.

[Fox]

Update: Four were killed in the attacks; the unofficial word is that they were all Bulgarian soldiers.

Iraqi insurgents shelled an American base northeast of Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers on a day of grenade, rocket and mortar attacks on the capital, the military said Friday.

Four other soldiers were wounded from the attack on the base in Baqouba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad on Thursday, Maj. Josslyn Aberle of the 4th Infantry Division said.

[Full story]

Reports that it was the U.S. forces that hit the Sheraton Hotel in Baghad yesterday were erroneous. It was insurgents who hit the hotel with a mortar shell. There were no injuries in that attack.

Hours later, the hotel was hit again when a grenade crashed through the atrium, followed by a gunfight.

There were several more rocket or grenade attacks during the night, many aimed at the Baghdad Hotel.

In northern Iraq, four civilians were killed and 101 people injured in a suicide bombing.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed near Samarra when a roadside bomb exploded as their convoy passed.

Insurgents had threatened increased attacks on Christmas, even passing out leaflets to Iraqi citizens telling them to stay home.

[Various sources]

A US armoured vehicle secures the area of a gas station in Baghdad

Per Iraq Information Network:

[Iraq's] interim oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum told AFP that output from Iraq's southern fields had reached two million barrels per day, the same level as before the US-led invasion.

The Sheraton Ishtar Hotel in Baghdad, a major hotel for Westerners, was rocked by an unidentified blast Wednesday and one U.S. military spokesman said the explosion may have been caused by Americans.

Fox News TV is confirming that the blast was caused by U.S. Troops, most likely by a rocket propelled grenade.

Updates to follow.

Part of discussion over Iraq between U.S. Ambassador in Egypt David Welch and some Al-Ahram Weekly journalists, as reported via FrontPage Magazine :

Nevine Khalil: And what if there is democracy in the region and the people decide to elect governments that are not friendly to the US? What would you do about that?

Welch: You mean like France?

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A roadside bomb killed two United States soldiers in Baghdad on Monday, hours after troops captured a former general in Saddam Hussein's once-feared security services on charges of recruiting ex-soldiers to attack Americans.

The blast that ripped through a military convoy in the late morning also killed an Iraqi interpreter and wounded two other soldiers, the US military said in a statement.
[...]
The US military said eight soldiers were wounded during raids in the mainly Sunni Muslim al-Anbar province which netted 40 "enemy personnel".

It did not say how the soldiers were hurt but added that one was evacuated to a combat support hospital.

A military convoy was hit with an explosive device near the town of Habbaniyah, seriously wounding one soldier.

Another three soldiers had minor wounds, a military statement said.
[...]
A US soldier was wounded by small arms fire in an attack in the northern town of Mosul on Monday morning, the US military said.

According to Australia's The Sunday Mail:

Saddam Hussein was captured through the demands of the one woman he still trusted. She is Samira Shahbander, the second of his four wives.

On December 11 she contacted Saddam from an Internet cafe in Ba'albeck, near Beirut.

Samira and Saddam's only surviving son, Ali, have lived under assumed names in Lebanon since leaving Baghdad months before the war started.

[...]

Instead, she went to a pre-arranged hideout ? a villa ? in the Beirut suburbs. That's where the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad found her.

Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, sent a team of surveillance specialists to bug Samira's every move.

[...]

Then she started to call Saddam.

Supported by Israeli Air Force surveillance planes, Mossad tracked the calls close to the Syrian border.

"The calls were affectionate. It was clear there was a close relationship still between them," said a high-ranking Mossad source in Tel Aviv after Saddam had been captured.

[...]

Mossad ? not for the first time ? decided to keep to itself the information it was gleaning from the surveillance of Samira. But on Thursday, December 11, that changed.

The Mossad team picked up a conversation between Samira and the man they were now certain was Saddam. He told her he would meet her close to the Syrian border. Details of the meeting were enough to have the Israelis finally alert Washington.

In the meantime, US forces had received their own tip-off and Samira and Ali heard the news of Saddam's capture on the radio. She burst into tears. Ali's reaction is not known.

(via Matt Drudge)

Per The Weekly Standard:

* * *

The Clinton View of Iraq-al Qaeda Ties

From the December 29, 2003 / January 5, 2004 issue: Connecting the dots in 1998, but not in 2003.

by Stephen F. Hayes
12/29/2003, Volume 009, Issue 16

ARE AL QAEDA'S links to Saddam Hussein's Iraq just a fantasy of the Bush administration? Hardly. The Clinton administration also warned the American public about those ties and defended its response to al Qaeda terror by citing an Iraqi connection.

* * *

The Clinton administration heavily emphasized the Iraq link to justify its 1998 strikes against al Qaeda. Just four days before the embassy bombings, Saddam Hussein had once again stepped up his defiance of U.N. weapons inspectors, causing what Senator Richard Lugar called another Iraqi "crisis." Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, one of those in the small circle of Clinton advisers involved in planning the strikes, briefed foreign reporters on August 25, 1998. He was asked about the connection directly and answered carefully.

Q: Ambassador Pickering, do you know of any connection between the so-called pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum and the Iraqi government in regard to production of precursors of VX?

PICKERING: Yeah, I would like to consult my notes just to be sure that what I have to say is stated clearly and correctly. We see evidence that we think is quite clear on contacts between Sudan and Iraq. In fact, al Shifa officials, early in the company's history, we believe were in touch with Iraqi individuals associated with Iraq's VX program.

Ambassador Bill Richardson, at the time U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, echoed those sentiments in an appearance on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," on August 30, 1998. He called the targeting "one of the finest hours of our intelligence people."

"We know for a fact, physical evidence, soil samples of VX precursor--chemical precursor at the site," said Richardson. "Secondly, Wolf, direct evidence of ties between Osama bin Laden and the Military Industrial Corporation--the al Shifa factory was part of that. This is an operation--a collection of buildings that does a lot of this dirty munitions stuff. And, thirdly, there is no evidence that this precursor has a commercial application. So, you combine that with Sudan support for terrorism, their connections with Iraq on VX, and you combine that, also, with the chemical precursor issue, and Sudan's leadership support for Osama bin Laden, and you've got a pretty clear cut case."

If the case appeared "clear cut" to top Clinton administration officials, it was not as open-and-shut to the news media. Press reports brimmed with speculation about bad intelligence or even the misuse of intelligence. In an October 27, 1999, article, New York Times reporter James Risen went back and reexamined the intelligence. He wrote: "At the pivotal meeting reviewing the targets, the Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet, was said to have cautioned Mr. Clinton's top advisers that while he believed that the evidence connecting Mr. Bin Laden to the factory was strong, it was less than ironclad." Risen also reported that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had shut down an investigation into the targeting after questions were raised by the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (the same intelligence team that raised questions about prewar intelligence relating to the war in Iraq).

Other questions persisted as well. Clinton administration officials initially scoffed at the notion that al Shifa produced any pharmaceutical products. But reporters searching through the rubble found empty aspirin bottles, as well as other indications that the plant was not used exclusively to produce chemical weapons. The strikes came in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, leaving some analysts to wonder whether President Clinton was following the conspiratorial news-management scenario laid out in "Wag the Dog," then a hit movie.

But the media failed to understand the case, according to Daniel Benjamin, who was a reporter himself before joining the Clinton National Security Council. "Intelligence is always incomplete, typically composed of pieces that refuse to fit neatly together and are subject to competing interpretations," writes Benjamin with coauthor Steven Simon in the 2002 book "The Age of Sacred Terror." "By disclosing the intelligence, the administration was asking journalists to connect the dots--assemble bits of evidence and construct a picture that would account for all the disparate information. In response, reporters cast doubt on the validity of each piece of the information provided and thus on the case for attacking al Shifa."

Now, however, there's a new wrinkle. Bush administration officials largely agree with their predecessors. "There's pretty good intelligence linking al Shifa to Iraq and also good information linking al Shifa to al Qaeda," says one administration official familiar with the intelligence. "I don't think there's much dispute that [Sudan's Military Industrial Corporation] was al Qaeda supported. The link from al Shifa to Iraq is what there is more dispute about."

According to this official, U.S. intelligence has obtained Iraqi documents showing that the head of al Shifa had been granted permission by the Iraqi government to travel to Baghdad to meet with Emad al-Ani, often described as "the father of Iraq's chemical weapons program." Said the official: "The reports can confirm that the trip was authorized, but the travel part hasn't been confirmed yet."

So why hasn't the Bush administration mentioned the al Shifa connection in its public case for war in Iraq? Even if one accepts Benjamin's proposition that Iraq may not have known that it was arming al Qaeda and that al Qaeda may not have known its chemicals came from Iraq, doesn't al Shifa demonstrate convincingly the dangers of attempting to "contain" a maniacal leader with WMD?

According to Bush officials, two factors contributed to their reluctance to discuss the Iraq-al Qaeda connection suggested by al Shifa. First, the level of proof never rose above the threshold of "highly suggestive circumstantial evidence"--indicating that on this question, Bush administration policymakers were somewhat more cautious about the public use of intelligence on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection than were their counterparts in the Clinton administration. Second, according to one Bush administration source, "there is a massive sensitivity at the Agency to bringing up this issue again because of the controversy in 1998."

But there is bound to be more discussion of al Shifa and Iraq-al Qaeda connections in the coming weeks. The Senate Intelligence Committee is nearing completion of its review of prewar intelligence. And although there is still no CIA team assigned to look at the links between Iraq and al Qaeda, investigators looking at documents from the fallen regime continue to uncover new information about those connections on a regular basis.

Democrats who before the war discounted the possibility of any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda have largely fallen silent. And in recent days, two prowar Democrats have spoken openly about the relationship. Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana who sits on the Intelligence Committee, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD, "the relationship seemed to have its roots in mutual exploitation. Saddam Hussein used terrorism for his own ends, and Osama bin Laden used a nation-state for the things that only a nation-state can provide."

And Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat and presidential candidate, discussed the connections in an appearance last week on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews." Said Lieberman: "I want to be real clear about the connection with terrorists. I've seen a lot of evidence on this. There are extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein's government and al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. I never could reach the conclusion that [Saddam] was part of September 11. Don't get me wrong about that. But there was so much smoke there that it made me worry. And you know, some people say with a great facility, al Qaeda and Saddam could never get together. He is secular and they're theological. But there's something that tied them together. It's their hatred of us."

* * *

Via the Drudge Report.

A British newspaper is claiming that the Kurds found Saddam first and then drugged him and left him for U.S. soldiers.

Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, which quoted an unnamed senior British military intelligence officer.

The newspaper said the full story of events leading up to the ousted Iraqi president's capture on December 13 near his hometown of Tikrit in northern Iraq, "exposes the version peddled by American spin doctors as incomplete".

None of the sources of this version of the event were named.

Update: I've been told that Sunday Express is a tabloid, much like the National Enquirer. So take the story with quite a few grains of salt.

From The Australian :

US troops detained a former Iraqi general suspected of recruiting ex-soldiers to attack American forces, the military said.

Ex-army Gen. Mumtaz al-Taji was discovered Sunday night in a house in Baqouba, about 50 kilometers north of Baghdad.

"Tonight we were on a mission to capture a former Iraqi intelligence service general who we believe is recruiting former military members of the Iraqi army to conduct attacks against US forces," Maj. Paul Owen of the 588th Engineer Battalion told Associated Press Television News.

"He runs a very active cell in our sector and hopefully what we have done tonight is to stall some of his efforts," Owen said. More than 30 soldiers took part in the raid and that they also seized a rifle, a pistol and ammunition, he said.

The US and Iraqi Police are continuing to roll up large parts of the Ba'athist network after Saddam's capture. From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Iraqi police have arrested four men who were allegedly planning to blow up a five-million litre fuel reservoir in the country's north.

The four men, who were allegedly caught with anti-tank rockets, mortar shells and 100 kilograms of explosives near the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, have been handed over to US forces.

Iraqi police claim the men were planning to attack a fuel reservoir near the country's biggest oil refinery, as well as launch strikes at US forces based at Kirkuk airport.

Not all the captures have gone according to plan though. From the same report :

"Forces encountered resistance to entry in one target location and used a door breaching charge to gain access to the target through a reinforced steel door," the US military said.

"The blast resulted in the death of one Iraqi female and injuries to two other females in the house."

The military said the incident, which occurred in the western Iraqi town of Rawa, was under investigation.

So says the British Defense Minister, reported here by VOA.

Mr. Hoon said he does not think Libya's decision can be separated from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last March.

He said the use of force in Iraq showed that the United States and Britain "mean business" when it comes to weapons issues. He said he hopes Libya and other countries have learned that lesson.

The question: “Do you think going to war with Iraq was the right thing for the US to do or the wrong thing?”

The results (and thanks to all who voted):

Accusations of national chauvinism aside, the readers have spoken. The winner of our Saddam Caption Contest is Peter. Peter, enjoy your 15 minutes, and thanks to all who entered and voted.

Although the announcement wasn't supposed to be made until later tonight, the word is out: Time's Person of the Year is The American Soldier.

They swept across Iraq and conquered it in 21 days. They stand guard on streets pot-holed with skepticism and rancor. They caught Saddam Hussein. They are the face of America, its might and good will, in a region unused to democracy. The U.S. G.I. is TIME's Person of the Year.

....To have pulled Saddam Hussein from his hole in the ground brings the possibility of pulling an entire country out of the dark. In an exhausting year when we've been witness to battles well beyond the battlefields—in the streets, in our homes, with our allies—to share good news felt like breaking a long fast, all the better since it came by surprise. And who delivered this gift, against all odds and risks? The same citizens who share the duty of living with, and dying for, a country's most fateful decisions.

Read more at Time (you have to be a subscriber to see the whole article)

From the AFP via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on former Baath official Lamia Abbas al-Chill early on Saturday as he walked his son to school, police Lieutenant Raed Jawad Abdel Sadeh said.

The son died instantly and Mr Chill was wounded in the head and chest, Lt Sadeh said.

Mr Chill was said to have been a close aide to Ali Abdullah al-Dhalimi, the former regional chief of the deposed Baath party who was beaten and shot dead by an angry crowd near Najaf on Wednesday.

Mr Dhalimi was suspected of helping to repress a Shiite insurrection in 1991.

Another former Baath party official was killed on Friday evening in a separate attack in Najaf, which lies about 130 kilometres south of Baghdad, Lt Sadeh said.

Gunmen killed Ali Qassem al-Tamimi, a former local official under the Baathist regime, and Mohammad Mokhtar Khdayr inside an electric supply store in Najaf, he said.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar paid a surprise visit to Iraq on Saturday, flying in with his defence minister to inspect Spanish troops deployed in the south of the country, national radio reported.

Mr Aznar left Madrid on Friday for Kuwait where he went by helicopter to Diwaniyah, the radio's special correspondent said
[...]
A delegation of 17 people, among them the Spanish Defence Minister Federico Trillo, accompanied Mr Aznar for this visit of several hours to the city 160 kilometres south-east of Baghdad.

The prime minister was to lunch with Spanish soldiers and meet with local authorities before flying back to Madrid in the afternoon.