Reuters reports that a U.S. human rights group, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has filed a criminal complaint with Germany's Federal Prosecutors alleging Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior U.S. officers are guilty of war crimes over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal:

CCR is taking advantage of a 2002 German law allowing prosecutions for human rights and war crimes regardless of where the acts took place or the nationalities of the perpetrators.

The group says Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, a senior defense official and seven U.S. military officers, including the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, were ultimately responsible for the torture and humiliation of the Iraqis by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

CCR says the action is a last resort after the failure of the U.S. Congress to properly investigate Abu Ghraib. It argues that the Pentagon has essentially appointed investigators into the abuse, while U.S. prosecutors look away.

From California Yankee.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A car bomb has exploded in a crowded market in a town north of Baghdad, killing at least seven people and wounding 20.

The bomb went off in a busy staging area in the oil refining town of Baiji, 180 kilometres north of Baghdad, as a US military patrol was passing.

Witnesses say that the blast destroyed market stalls and caused panic among the throng of shoppers.

A doctor at Baiji hospital, Samir Mehdi, says he has received seven dead civilians from the blast and 18 wounded, including a child.

A US military spokesman says that two US soldiers have also also wounded.

From CNN via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

US forces say they are continuing to find large caches of arms in the city of Fallujah several weeks after they gained total control of the former insurgent stronghold.

Army commanders say they are continuing their house-to-house searches in the devastated city.

They say they have made about 500 large weapons discoveries.

But Major General Richard Natonsky says they have made other more sinister finds as well.

“We found - and I've been in one of them - but I know we've found at least two or three chemical caches,” he said.

“I know cyanide was part of it, glycerin.”

Glycerin is commonly nitrated to become explosive. Cynaide isn't.

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

Two United States soldiers have been killed and three wounded when their convoy was targeted by a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad, the US military said in a statement.

”Two Task Force Baghdad soldiers were killed when their patrol struck an improvised explosive device at about 11:30am (7:30pm AEDT) in north-western Baghdad,” the statement said.

A homicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives next to a U.S. convoy on Baghdad's dangerous airport road on Tuesday, and several casualties were seen lying next to a damaged vehicle, witnesses and authorities said.

[…]

police Capt. Talib al-Alawani said a bomber drove his car into a U.S. convoy on the airport road, scene of near daily attacks against U.S. military and Western targets. The U.S. command confirmed that the attack occurred but had no further details.

Several casualties were seen lying next to a damaged vehicle, according to an eyewitness who arrived on the scene before troops sealed off the stretch of road where the blast occurred. A military ambulance drove up minutes later to evacuate the casualties.

Read more…

Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from Iraq that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday. This briefing is brought to you by Joel Gaines of No Pundit Intended and Andrew Olmsted of Andrew Olmsted dot com.

TOP TOPICS

• Despite calls for a six month postponement, the January elections in Iraq will go on. Look for calls to postpone to grow louder as election day nears.

• The fighting in Fallujah is over for now. Take a good look at the men who fought there and what they saw in two separate accounts of 2-2 Infantry's battle for the city. (Hat tip: Unqualified Offerings.)

• M. Simon of Power and Control also points us to the letter up at 2Slick's Forum from a soldier who served in the Battle of Fallujah.

Other Topics Today Include: “Charlie's Angels” in Iraq; Al Qaeda in Iraq; thoughts on Iraq's elections; Japan considers leaving Iraq; oil-for-food update; war advice from the Left; being like James.

Continue Reading “Winds Iraq Report: Nov 29/04”

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A suicide car bomber has blown up his vehicle outside a police station west of the Iraqi insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, killing at least 12 people and wounding 10, hospital officials said.

Nazar al-Hiti, a local doctor, said 90 per cent of the casualties were policemen, who had been queuing up to receive their salaries when the bomber struck.

Iraq's most feared terror group claimed responsibility Sunday for slaughtering members of the Iraqi security forces in Mosul, where dozens of bodies have been found. The claim raises fears the terror group has expanded to the north after the loss of its purported base in Fallujah.

[…]

A statement posted on an Islamist Web site in the name of Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search), claimed responsibility for killing 17 members of Iraq's security forces and a Kurdish militiaman in Mosul, where terrorists rose up this month in support of guerrillas facing a U.S.-led assault in Fallujah.

Updating previous posts, from The Australian :

Even though the US military said yesterday it had uncovered a “stunning” amount of arms in Fallujah, US officers later played down remarks by an Iraqi minister that they had found a chemical weapons workshop there - the US officers said the chemicals seemed destined for making ordinary explosives.
[…]
North of Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman was killed and nine people were wounded when two suicide car bombers attacked a police station and a convoy of US and Iraqi troops in Samarra
[…]
In another Sunni area, south of Baghdad, British forces claimed success in arresting key guerrilla suspects after a major overnight raid on an area they dubbed “Millionaires' Row” for the wealthy Saddam-era elite who lived there.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A car bomb exploded as a US convoy was passing in Samarra north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing five civilians and wounding four, police said.

Captain Saadoun Hamed said no US soldiers were wounded in the blast.
[…]
In another attack on Sunday, a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle beside a US convoy on the notorious airport road in Baghdad, the American military said.

Two soldiers were wounded.

From the AFP via The Australian :

Two US marines and at least three insurgents died south of the Iraqi capital, the first casualties of a US-led sweep of the so-called “death triangle”, a marine spokesman said today.

Captain David Nevers of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit said the two marines were killed in Babil province, without elaborating.

They were the first US victims of “Operation Plymouth Rock”, a crackdown against the insurgency in the lawless areas south of Baghdad launched on November 23 by more than 5000 US, British and Iraqi forces.

Capt Nevers said at least three rebels were killed in separate clashes in the area.

US forces hunted insurgents after their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb north of Iskandariyah, killing one and detaining another, he said.

Marines also shot and killed the driver of a car that was driving at high speed and failed to respond to warnings, west of the town of Musayyib, he said.

Further north, near the town of Mahmudiyah, US marines clashed with rebels who opened fire on their convoy, killing at least one of them.

Another insurgent was hit, but he was evacuated by the group of attackers and the US military could not determine whether he had been killed or wounded.

US-led forces reclaimed control of the town of Latifiyah last week without facing major resistance.

Latifiyah, Mahmudiyah and Iskandariyah are the main rebel hubs of the so-called “death triangle”, a majority Sunni area south of Baghdad, which has become a virtual no-go zone in recent months.

Latifiyah - which had been controlled by a ragtag army of ex-Baathists, Islamic extremists and criminals - earned the nickname of “Fallujah's second head”.

Iraq's 55 10 Most Wanted

Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri
Hani abd al-Latif al-Tilfah al-Tikriti
Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti
Sayf al-Din Fulayyih Hasan Taha al-Rawi
Rafi abd al-Latif Tilfah al-Tikriti
Rukan Razuki abd al-Ghafar Sulayman al-Majid al-Tikriti
(A.K.A. Rukan Razuki abd al-Ghafar Sulayman al-Nasiri)
Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti
abd al-Baqi abd al-Karim al-Abdallah al-Sadun
Yahya abdallah al-Ubaydi
Rashid Taan Kazim

From 2Slick :

Although American forces had not been into the city since April, we had been collecting intelligence on the city for months through unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's), human intelligence, and Special Forces. So we knew exactly where they stored their weapons and where they held meetings, and so on…all of these attacks from the air were precise and very effective in reducing the enemy's ability to fight us before thebattle even started.

With each attack, secondary explosions of weapons/ammo blowing up were heard. The Coalition also threw the enemy a curveball by destroying all the vehicles that had been parked in the same location for more than 3 days—-the enemy planned to use these as car bombs when we attacked. Again, almost every single vehicle the air assets attacked had huge secondary explosions.

After 12 hours of massive air strikes, Task Force 2-7 got the green light and was the first unit to enter the city. There is a big train station on the city's northern limit, so the engineers cleared a path with some serious explosives and our tanks led the way. While this was happening, my intelligence shop was flying our own UAV to determine where the enemy was. It is a very small plane that is launched by being thrown into the air. We flew it for 6 hours and reported grids to the tanks and bradleys of where we saw insurgents on the roof and moving in the street—-so our soldiers knew where the enemy was, before they even got to the location.
[…]
The enemy tried to fight us in “the city of mosques” as dirty as they could. They fired from the steeples of the mosques and the mosques themselves. They faked being hurt and then threw grenades at soldiers when they approached to give medical treatment. They waived surrender flags, only to shoot at our forces 20 seconds later when they approached to accept their surrender.

The next few days, TF 2-7 maintained our battle positions inside the city, coming out only for fuel and more ammo….
[…]
One fighter came running out of a building that our tanks set on fire…he was on fire and still shooting at us. As our Sergeant Major said, “going up against tanks and brads with an AK-47, you have to admire their effort!”

Over the next 5 days, the Marines and our Task Force killed over 1,000 more insurgents. In that time frame, over 900 more fighters made the decision to spend 30 years in prison rather than die.
[…]
We were very disturbed to find one house with 5 foreigners with bullets in their head, killed execution style. Marines also came upon a house where an Iraqi soldier in the Iraqi National Guard had been shackled to the wall for 11 days and was left there to die. These insurgents are some sick people and Fallujah proved that more than ever. 2 mosques were not being used for prayer…but rather for roadside bomb making. They were literally IED assembly line factories, with hundreds of IEDs complete or being built.
[…]
In Fallujah, the enemy had a military-type planning system going on. Some of the fighters were wearing body armor and kevlars, just like we do. Soldiers took fire from heavy machine guns (.50 cal) and came across the dead bodies of fighters from Chechnya, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Afghanistan, and so on…no, this was not just a city of pissed off Iraqis, mad at the Coalition for forcing Saddam out of power. It was a city full of people from all over the Middle East whose sole mission in life was to kill Americans. Problem for them is that they were in the wrong city in November 2004….

Read The Whole Thing.

But not Living In Paris. From the Sunday Times via The Australian :

New footage has emerged of two French reporters taken hostage in Iraq showing both men apparently well and in good spirits, Britain's the Sunday Times reported today.

Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who marked their 100th day in captivity yesterday, appear on a CD-Rom obtained by the paper, which said the recording was believed to have been made earlier this month.

The two are the longest-held Western hostages in Iraq.

Chesnot, 37, reportedly says he and Malbrunot are “here because there are security issues and investigations regarding our identities as we are journalists and the Islamic Army is doing the investigations”.

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

About 8,000 Indonesian Muslims have staged a peaceful rally against a major US-led assault on Iraq's rebel city of Fallujah, which has claimed 2,000 lives.

Protesters have marched along Jakarta's main thoroughfares to the United States embassy, chanting anti-American slogans and displaying posters critical of US President George W Bush.

“How many more people must die because of Bush's lies,” read leaflets handed out by the protesters, many of whom are women wearing headscarves and carrying babies.

“The US onslaught against Fallujah is an attack against Muslims because they destroyed mosques and killed innocent civilians,” a protester, who gave his name as Abu Ammar, said.

Protesters also distributed leaflets carrying a picture of Mr Bush alongside that of a monkey with a similar facial expression and a caption reading: “What's the difference?”

The rally has been organised by the Muslim group, Prosperous Justice Party, an increasingly popular organisation.

The group won 7.34 per cent of votes in this year's legislative elections.

The atmosphere at the rally is more like a picnic than a street protest, with parents carrying babies and little children taking pictures at Jakarta's landmark welcome statue before marching on to the US embassy.

Who knew that Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell was Indonesian?

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

US officers say US and Iraqi forces seized nine suspected insurgents in overnight raids on the lawless town of Latifiya, south of Baghdad.

It was the latest in a series of operations codenamed Operation Plymouth Rock, launched four days ago by US marines in a cluster of towns along the Euphrates river that have become popularly known as the “triangle of death”.

Another arrest was made further north.

Iraqi police commandos from the nearby city of Hilla formed the bulk of the 200 strong force in six raids in Latifiya coordinated by the marines, Captain Tad Douglas said.

“We got nine detainees,” he said.

A seized computer will also be analysed by intelligence officers.

Captain Douglas says the suspects put up no resistance and there was no fighting.

From The Australian :

A car bomb exploded today near a high school in the central Iraqi city of Samarra, killing three people and injuring five others, police said.

The blast occurred near the school in the 7-Nissan district of the city, 100km north of Baghdad, Major Qahtan Mohammed said.

He said it was unclear why the bomb was planted in that area.

With respect to the good Major, perhaps he should read some Iraqi blog accounts. The ones about how Al Qaeda is threatening anyone who sends their kids to school?

The Australian reports that in his new book “America's Secret War” George Friedman contends that although the US believed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, the real target of Operation Iraqi Freedom was Saudi Arabia:

The invasion and speedy subjugation of Afghanistan staggered the jihadists. But the US, having succeeded only in dispersing al-Qa'ida and the Taliban, rather than eliminating them, believed it needed to strike another heavy blow.

By then it had identified the jihadist campaign as “a Saudi problem”. Most of the September 11 suicide attackers had been Saudis. Bin Laden was a Saudi. Saudi money trails were everywhere. An invasion of Saudi Arabia presented the tactical problem of waging war against a country of vast area and the strategic one of disrupting the world's oil supplies.

The Americans had established and then strengthened a military presence in countries surrounding Saudi Arabia - Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Invasion of Iraq would complete the encirclement.

“From a purely military view,” Friedman adds, “Iraq is the most strategic single country in the Middle East, [bordering] six other countries: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iran.”

[. . .]

Friedman believes the US-jihadist war hangs in the balance. However, the measured actions of the US during the past three years, including its strong military presence in the Middle East, have caused significant moderation of the position on global jihad of Saudi Arabia and other Muslim regimes.

From California Yankee.

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

US ambassador in Iraq John Negroponte, visiting the former Iraqi rebel stronghold of Fallujah, told AFP today that the security situation should not prevent elections from being held as scheduled on January 30 next year.

”We believe there will be adequate security for these elections to be held on January 30,” he said during a surprise visit to the city of Fallujah, which has recently been the scene of the worst post-war fighting in Iraq.

“We support the implementation of the transitional law in Iraq,” Mr Negroponte added, a day after 10 leading Iraqi political parties requested the January 30 elections be postponed by six months due to security concerns.

From The Australian :

US forces have discovered 17 more bodies in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a US military spokesman said today, raising to more than 50 the number found in the restive city in the past two weeks.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings, spokesman for US forces in north Iraq, said the bodies were found in various locations in western Mosul, which has seen the bulk of violence since insurgents stepped up their campaign in mid-November.

“The bodies haven't been identified yet, but it all appears to be part of the same campaign of violence and intimidation,” Hastings said.
[…]
Insurgents have waged a months-long campaign of intimidation in the city, which lies 390km north of Baghdad, but while in months past most of the threats were written or verbal, in recent weeks they have been more direct and physical.

Ahead of the November 10-11 revolt, during which an estimated 500 insurgents overran more than a dozen police stations in Mosul and then looted, burnt and in some cases demolished them, repeated verbal threats were made against the police.

When the uprising was launched, the vast majority of the police immediately deserted, or didn't turn up to work. In all, 3200 of the city's 4000 police walked off the job.

The commander of US forces in the city, Brigadier General Carter Ham, has said it could take months – or longer – to re-establish the police force, which will not only mean rehiring and training new officers, but rebuilding police stations or finding new properties for them.

From Reuters via The Australian :

A roadside bomb detonated in one of Baghdad's busiest streets early today, killing two people and wounding at least 15, police sources said.

The bomb went off about 9am (5pm AEDT) close to the Iraqi central bank on Rasheed St, one of the capital's most crowded areas.

It was not immediately clear who was the target of the attack.

Insurgents usually detonate roadside bombs as US or Iraqi security forces are passing by, but have occasionally set them off in crowded areas to cause mayhem and intimidation.
[…]
Meanwhile, a US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb next to a tank patrol north of Baghdad today, the army said.

A statement from the 1st Infantry Division said the blast occurred near the town of Duluiya, 90km north of Baghdad, shortly after dawn.

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

Four employees of a British security firm were killed on Thursday in an attack on Baghdad's fortified “Green Zone”, a company spokesman in Dubai told AFP Friday.

“Four of our staffers were killed in Baghdad yesterday,” said Tim O'Brian, from the British security firm Global Risks Strategies.

He did not wish to reveal the nationalities of the victims until next of kin had been notified, but added that several other of the firm's employees were wounded in the attack.

Mr O'Brian says an investigation is under way but he could not specify what type of attack had killed the four men.

UPDATE : From the AFP via The Australian :

In Baghdad, four Nepalese nationals who once served with Britain's elite Gurkha army regiment were killed in a rocket attack in the highly fortified Green Zone claimed by an al-Qaeda linked group, their employer said.

From the AFP via The Australian :

Iraq's election commission was expected today to consider a call by top political parties to delay January's vote because of violence gripping the country, as US forces led an offensive against lawless towns.
[…]
Just five days after Iraq announced the first post-Saddam elections would be held on January 30, leading political parties called yesterday for a six-month delay because of a lack of security.

”Unrest and terrorist acts as well as insufficient preparations at the administrative, technical and political levels require the date to be reconsidered,” said a petition signed by 10 parties including Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord and the two main Kurdish parties.

Election commission chairman Abdel Hussein al-Hindawi said: “We will examine this request tomorrow morning. It's a very complicated question.”

Insurgents attacked and briefly occupied city hall in a town north of Baghdad early Saturday before being driven out by U.S. and Iraqi forces in a firefight that left several rebels dead and one policeman wounded, officials said.

[…]

On Saturday, about 100 insurgents attacked city hall and two police stations in Al Khalis, 40 miles north of Baghdad, said municipal official Saad Ahmed Abbas.

“They occupied the city hall for a while,” he said.

Abbas said that U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces regained control after a two-hour exchange of fire with the rebels. “Now the situation is calm,” he said.

Ghassan al-Khadran, deputy of governor of Diala province, said one policeman was injured in the shootout and that several rebels had been killed.

Read more…

From the AFP via The Australian :

Security cannot be truly established in Iraq until the country's own police, armed forces and other security organisations are firmly in place, Iraqi deputy prime minister Barham Salih said today.

Speaking to a group in Cwmaman, south Wales, Mr Salih declined to say how long British and US forces would be needed in Iraq, besides acknowledging that it would be “for as long as is necessary”.

But he said: “British and American troops, whom we admire and respect for their courage and sacrifice, without them we could not have overcome Saddam's regime, at the end of the day cannot establish security fully unless we have indigenous Iraqi forces.”

“The Americans and the British cannot build a new Iraq” in the wake of the downfall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime, he said. “You can only support us.”

HAARETZ: Iraq political party seeks relations with Israel

A new Iraqi political party calling for the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel will compete in the upcoming elections in Iraq.

Mithal al-Alusi, an Iraqi politician who visited Israel a few months ago, heads the new Iraqi Nation Democrat Party. According to Alusi, 1,150 people have signed the party's request to the elections committee to participate in the elections.

“We are keeping Iraqi interests in sight. These interests includes strategic relations with the United States and also ties with Israel,” Alusi Said.

Iraqis leveled bitter criticism at Alusi regarding his visit to Israel, which he made using his German passport.

Alusi was removed from his leadership position of his then political party, a warrant was put out for his arrest and he was forced to retreat within his home in the poor Shi'ite Sadr City area of Baghdad. Alusi himself is a Sunni.

From The Australian :

Insurgents in Fallujah have claimed in a statement that they have reorganised after a massive US-Iraqi onslaught against the rebel city and resumed their attacks.

”After reorganising, the Mujahedeen resumed their attacks Wednesday with the aim of shattering the myth of the invincibility of the coalition forces, and the traitors and collaborators who are under the orders of Allawi and Naqib.”
[…]
Friday's Mujahedeen statement, posted on an Islamist website (www.al-moharer.net), claimed that clashes took place in northern Fallujah in recent days.

“The Mujahedeen will teach a memorable lesson to the collaborators who sold Iraq and prove to Arab regimes that only the language of guns and martyrs makes a difference,” it said.

Historically, whenever one side talks about the “Myth of Invincibility” of the other, it means they've suffered nothing but an unending series of military catastrophes so far.

(www.al-moharer.net makes interesting reading. A mixture of Ba'athist Propaganda in the old Stalinist mold - for example :

Long live Iraq free!

Defeat for the Occupier!

Long live the heroic Iraqi Armed Resistance!

Long live the Arab Baath Arab a Socialist Party!

Long live Al-Mujahid Saddam Hussein who is the Comrade Leader secretary General of the Qotr of Iraq, President of the Republic, symbol of courage, defying the jail camps, conceiver, engineer and planner of the Glorious Iraqi Armed Resistance!

Long live Comrade deputy-secretary of the Qotr of Iraq, the leader of the Glorious Armed Resistance!

Honor and Glory to the officers of the Army, the Republican Guards, the National security and the Resisting Mujahideen!

Glory to the Martyrs of Iraq, of the Baath, of Palestine and of the Nation!

Death and destruction to the Collaborating authority and to those who back it!

God is the Greatest!

But mostly it's one long moan, mainly about the Jews and their American Puppets.

The generals had used the most sophisticated weapons in their arsenal and turned the city of Fallujah into ruins and hundreds of its citizens are buried under the rubble of their buildings and homes by the 500 pound bombs that were dropped indiscriminately to slaughter as much as they can of children, women and innocent people to score a brutal “victory” because the “price is worth it”.

These brutal generals who are imitating the butcher Sharon are denying the cities of Iraq water, electricity, medicine and food. They are reinforcing the deadly embargo on each family in Iraq and the hospital did not escape their grudge and hate. The doctors and medics in the hospitals of Fallujah were chained and beaten up; the equipments of the hospitals were smashed by their soldiers and by the thugs of the Peshmerga and the Badr Brigade who formed the so-called Iraqi Army.
[…]
The US government is lost in its lies to the World by claiming that the war was launched against Iraq to find the “weapons of mass destruction” but failed to tell the world that the war was to test the new US “weapons of mass destruction” on Iraq and that the Iraqis would be the victims of that inhumane test.

And another :

Mr. Bush why are you killing all these simple, innocent people in Iraq? Why are you destroying their homes, their holy shrines, their churches and mosques? Why are your troops raping their women and children and why is the mob you sent abusing them sexually? Just tell us what have the Iraqi people done to you or to the US? Why did you send your troops to kill an elderly man praying in a mosque, a place of refuge and serenity?
[…]
Mr. Bush, when someone is that violent, it doesn't mean he is strong. In fact, and this is a proven psychoanalytical point of view, it demonstrates that he is frightened to death. When you exercise violence towards the others, it really means that you are violent to yourself, towards your kin, and towards your family. As you know violence as a practice can't be split (i.e. I am violent with others but I am forgiving and serene with my people'). No this doesn't work like that, unless the person concerned is a psychopath, or is badly suffering from a syndrome called schizophrenia, whose symptoms are the ambivalence of thoughts, feelings and paradoxical behavior, which makes someone out of touch of reality. Only your dual personality can explain what is going on in Iraq! In the church you beg, “forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” while your troops slaughter the innocent in Bethlehem, I mean in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq.
[…]
There is something you should know Mr. Bush that the Iraq, you are crucifying today on the cross of genocide via chemical weapons, and that you think you are burying for ever, is going to rise again, then we shall see what your end will be.

So in summary, the only reason the dastardly Americans won in Fallujah was that they used Fiendish Jew-Poison Gas. Except they haven't won of course, they will never win, the heroic martyrs are beating them, they are dying by the thousand!

Thirteen more bodies were discovered in and around the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. military said Friday, as the number of corpses found in the area in the past week reached 35.

Eleven of the 35 have been identified as members of the Iraqi security forces, who have been targeted by terrorists. The others have not been identified.

U.S. forces patrolling Mosul and nearby Tal Afar on Thursday morning found nine bodies around 8:45 a.m. on the western side of Mosul, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman with Task Force Olympia. Two more bodies were found in the city later in the day.

Read more..

(Reuters) Two US Marines were killed in the Iraqi city of Falluja yesterday when insurgents threw grenades at them after they entered a house to search it, their commanding general said today.

Lieutenant General John Sattler said Marines had also killed three insurgents in the incident. Marines have been searching houses in Falluja for weapons and guerrillas after a major offensive in the city earlier this month.

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

More than 2,085 people were killed and 1,600 detained in the massive US-Iraqi offensive on the rebel city of Fallujah, Iraqi national security adviser Qassem Daoud has said.

The US military had previously said at least 1,200 rebels had been killed.

The US and aid organisations have only just started discussing the means of retrieving the bodies that are still believed to be strewn across the deserted former rebel bastion.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society was able for the first time to deliver aid directly to families stranded by fighting in Fallujah after a US-led offensive to wrest the Sunni Muslim city from insurgents.

A single Red Crescent team delivered food and water to five families in a battered northern Fallujah neighbourhood after US marines patrolling the area found them hiding in their homes.

The Red Crescent estimates that only 150 to 175 families remained in Fallujah after the US-led offensive started on November 8 and civilians living in the ruined city have become desperate for water and blankets.

Probably less than 3000 out of the original 300,000 then, even assuming a “Family” is an extended one with an average of 10-20 people in.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Three people have been killed and 14 others wounded in a series of bomb attacks in the Iraqi city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

In the first blast, a car-bomb exploded as a joint US/Iraqi patrol was passing, killing two people and injuring 13 others including six police officers and seven civilians.

A short time later a suicide bomber attacked a police station, but claimed no other victims.

A third bomb then exploded and injured an Iraqi national guard, as police were inspecting the area near the suicide attack.

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

Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix says he will be “surprised” if a chemical laboratory found in Iraq was capable of creating weapons.

”Let's see what the chemicals are,” Mr Blix said, after Iraqi officials claimed to have uncovered a chemical bomb factory in Fallujah.

“Many of these stories evaporate when they are looked at more closely,” he said.

“If there were to be found something, we would all be surprised.”
[…]
Mr Blix, a former Swedish diplomat, was charged with searching for weapons of mass destruction in the 15 weeks leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq last year.

From the International Herald Tribune :

Near the house with the cage, soldiers searched a house that officials said contained a primitive chemical weapons laboratory. They said the laboratory contained sodium cyanide, potassium cyanide, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid and other chemicals, along with indications that insurgents were trying to use them to make bombs.

Exactly what weaponry they were experimenting with is not clear. There were no reports of chemical weapons used in the battle for Falluja.

Actually, as noted in a previous post, there were quite a lot, in Arab media anyway. Almost as if there was a pre-planned disinformation campaign trying to shift the blame from what they expected to happen.

From the Chicago Tribune as quoted in another previous TCP post :

On a counter in the apparent bomb factory were a disassembled hand grenade, rubber gloves and numerous bottles of chemicals.

”This one says potassium cyanide,” said an Egyptian translator employed by the Marines. At that point Sunday afternoon, he was the only one who could talk.

Sodium cyanide, he continued reading. Sulfuric acid. Hydrochloric acid.

Eventually, Chief Warrant Officer Lee Fair, of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, said quietly, “Anyone that knew what they were doing could put these things together and make something very dangerous. Looks like [in the next room] they were trying to put crude weapons together.”

In that room, a hooded gas mask lay beside a large glass box, as did gloves, a carton of blasting caps and beakers full of chemicals.

Then there's this report from the AP, back in February, before Zarqawi became (in)Famous :

U.S. forces in Iraq found seven pounds of cyanide during a raid late last month on a Baghdad house believed connected to an al-Qaida operative, U.S. officials said.

The cyanide salt was in either one or several small bricks, and U.S. officials said they believe it was to have been used in an attack on U.S. or allied interests. Cyanide is extremely toxic and can be used as a chemical weapon, although it was unclear if the cyanide was in a form that could be used that way easily.

The raid took place on Jan. 23, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was unclear if anyone was captured in the raid. Parts for making bombs also were found in the house, the defense official said.

The house was inhabited by a suspected subordinate of Abu Musab Zarqawi, U.S. officials said. Zarqawi is a Jordanian whom CIA officials have described as a senior associate of Osama bin Laden.

Zarqawi is believed to have tried to direct al-Qaida operations inside Iraq, although it is unknown if he is in the country now.

He also is connected with Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic extremist group from northern Iraq. He and his followers are believed to have sought cyanide and other chemical weapons for use in attacks in the past, American officials say.

From the Virtual Chemistry Lab :

HCN is evolved when metal cyanides such as NaCN or KCN are treated with acids. This is one method by which prisoners in US jails are executed - they are strapped into a chair in a sealed, airtight room, and concentrated acid is dropped onto a large amount of a metal cyanide salt.

KCN is “Potassium Cyanide”.

From the CDC FactSheet on Cyanide :

• Hydrogen cyanide, under the name Zyklon B, was used as a genocidal agent by the Germans in World War II.
• Reports have indicated that during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, hydrogen cyanide gas may have been used along with other chemical agents against the inhabitants of the Kurdish city of Halabja in northern Iraq.

From The Australian :

Terrorists had attemped in 2002, last year and this year to use “chem-bio” weapons and “this is the best indication of the next attacks”.

”I believe they will try again next year,” Dr Gunaratna said.

He has also analysed videotapes showing al-Qa'ida testing of cyanide gas to kill dogs in the Afghanistan desert, using crudely manufactured gas chambers.

And he found al-Qa'ida cells uncovered in Jordan this year and London last year were “quite close” to targeting sites using chemical or biological weapons.

But of course, as Dr Blix says, the stuff could just be water, mislabelled as some sort of practical joke. But somehow I doubt he'd be prepared to drink it.

Updating a previous post, from Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

The group led by Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi says it carried out a shooting attack that killed a US civilian official near Baghdad's Green Zone government compound.

A US official said that on Wednesday State Department employee James Mollen was shot dead by gunfire.

He was an adviser to the Iraqi Education Ministry.

“This morning a hero from the Al Qaeda group in Baghdad managed to kill one of the American parasites who works as an adviser to the Ministry of Education,” said the statement from the Al Qaeda Organisation of Holy War in Iraq.

AL JAZEERA: Saddam's legal team slams ICRC

Saddam Hussein's legal team has accused the International Committee of the Red Cross of non-cooperation and said it holds the US and Iraqi interim governments responsible for his health.

A spokesman for the 23-member defence lawyers' team, Ziad Khassawnah, speaking at a news conference in Jordan's capital Amman, said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had played into America's hands.

He said any talk of deterioration in the former Iraqi president's health is a prelude to eliminating him.

Stating that according to information from the ICRC, Saddam is “in good health and not suffering from any serious illness”, Khassawnah said he considered the leaked medical reports proof that US forces and Iraq's interim government may try to “get rid” of the prisoner.

A chemical weapons laboratory has been found in Fallujah following the US-led offensive against insurgents, an Iraqi minister said today.

Minister of State Kassim Daoud said National Guard troops “found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons.”

“They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax,” he said.

More here.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

US military officials in Iraq say the amount of weapons they have discovered as they continue searching the city of Fallujah would have been enough to fuel a nationwide rebellion.

Us-led troops launched a huge operation three weeks ago to rid Fallujah of insurgents.

With the fighting in Fallujah all but done, US Marines are still searching building by building for weapons.

In a mosque complex in the east of the city they say they found grenades, mortars, rockets and bomb making materials.

They say they also discovered documents detailing interrogations of recent hostages.

A Marine commander described the weapons they had found in the city as a whole as “stunning”, enough to mount an insurgency across the country.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Iraq's main Sunni Muslim political party has threatened to boycott the country's first free election if it goes ahead on January 30 as scheduled.

”We called for elections to be postponed for six months because the security situation is not suitable,” Mohsen Abdul Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, told Reuters.

“Otherwise we will reconsider our stand. We may withdraw.”

The Iraqi Islamic Party said yesterday it wanted a role in the political process provided the election was postponed, as relentless violence in the central Sunni heartland would make it difficult to prepare and campaign, let alone hold a poll.

But Iraq's interim Government and the long-oppressed Shi'ite majority which stands to gain most from the election, are determined it take place on time.

Can't say they don't have Chutzpah.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Gunmen ambushed a convoy of Kurdish militiamen as they travelled to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul overnight, killing three and wounding nine, hospital sources in the nearby town of Arbil said.
[…]
The group led by Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Washington's top foe in Iraq, has claimed responsibility for killing them.

In Kirkuk, gunmen opened fire on National Guard soldiers late on Tuesday, killing one guardsman and a civilian, the US military said in a statement.

The military said soldiers had stopped to help the civilian with his car when gunmen drove past and fired at them.

In an attack in Baghdad on Wednesday morning (local time), a suicide bomber detonated his car near a US convoy on the airport road, but only the bomber was killed and no troops were wounded, police at the scene said.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Hundreds of British troops raided houses of suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists today in the latest phase of a US-led operation to crack down on guerrilla strongholds south of Baghdad.

Around 500 British soldiers searched a stretch of road lined with upscale villas where officials in Saddam's regime kept country retreats outside the capital.

They detained 80 Iraqis and confiscated suspected bomb making equipment.

No soldiers were wounded during the raids, which were part of Operation Plymouth Rock, a new offensive in the area that has been dubbed the “triangle of death”.

The operation, named in reference to the US Thanksgiving celebration, involves 5,000 US troops, Iraqi police commandos and British soldiers.

US and Iraqi troops also raided villages in the area overnight.

From the AFP via The Australian :

Britain's domestic news agency said 80 people had been detained at 8am (3pm AEDT) Thursday, but that 60 of them were released later.

The ministry of defence confirmed that British troops had undertaken an operation, but did not say how many people had been held.

“The objective is to counter the insurgents and get some stability and security accross Iraq as we run up to the elections” in January, a ministry spokesman said. “There aren't any plans to take any other active part in this American operation.”

Twenty suspects were still held for questioning to determine if they are linked to a wave of attacks against US and British forces occupying Iraq.

Police said Thursday that they have arrested five Arab foreign fighters who escaped from Fallujah with plans to attack coalition troops and Iraqi police in southern Basra.

Basra Police Chief Brig. Mohammed Khazim said the five men were detained on Wednesday night at a checkpoint in Qurnah, about 37 miles north of Basra. Their four-wheel-drive vehicle contained “personal weapons,” he said.

The men were identified as Mohammed Faleh and Bassem Faleh, from Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Hassan and Walid Mohammed, from Tunisia, and Mohammed al-Hadi, from Libya, he said.

Read more…

The Associated Press reports the insurgent's commanders in Fallujah were an electrician and a mosque preacher, both natives of the community:

After U.S. Marines lifted the siege of Fallujah last April, central government control collapsed. That enabled men like Hadid, an electrician who lived with his mother, and al-Janabi, a local imam and member of an important local clan, to emerge as powerbrokers until the Marines took the city back this month.

From California Yankee.

A U.S. civilian official was killed by gunfire near Baghdad's Green Zone government compound on Wednesday, a U.S. official said.

The official, who asked not to be named, identified the man as James Mollen and said he was a State Department employee who was serving as an adviser to the Iraqi Education Ministry.

Details were sketchy, but the U.S. official said Mollen, a political appointee to the State Department rather than a regular diplomat, was in a vehicle when he came under attack.

Statement by Powell on death of James Mollen

An audiotape purportedly made by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawiashed out Wednesday at Muslim scholars for not speaking out against U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan (search ), saying they have “let us down in the darkest circumstances.”

Al-Zarqawi, who leads the feared terror group Al Qaeda in Iraq, is believed to have escaped from his headquarters in the insurgent-held stronghold of Fallujah during the massive U.S.-led assault earlier this month.

Al-Zarqawi addressed his comments to the “ulama” — religious Muslim scholars — on the tape posted Wednesday on the Internet. Its authenticity could not be independently verified.

“You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy… You have quit supporting the mujahedeen,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence.”

Read more…

From The Australian :

Some 6000 Iraqi Army troops - the first batch of quick-reaction forces - graduated today from a southern military base, a military spokesman said.

The new graduates are the first group trained as quick-reaction forces, in charge of launching defensive and offensive operations in emergencies, said the spokesman.

A delegation of the Iraqi Defence Ministry and US military officers attended the graduation ceremony at Al-Nuimiyah base is 140km south of Baghdad.

An alliance of convenience, but they've signed a document to that effect. From the AFP via The Australian :

The group led by Iraq's most wanted man have joined other extremist Islamists and Saddam Hussein's old Baath party to threaten increased attacks on US-led forces following the international conference on Iraq.

”We are committed to intensifying armed attacks against coalition forces and their spies and agents… in response to the Sharm el-Sheikh conference, a sordid and suspect farce,” said the statement signed by groups including the al-Qaeda Group in the Land of Two Rivers (Iraq) of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The international conference that wound up in Egypt on Tuesday brought together the world's major powers, neighbours of Iraq, the United Nations and others to support the process of political transition, including the January 30 elections.

The signatories said they signed “the statement written by the Iraqi Baath party, not because we support the party or Saddam, but because it expresses the demands of resistance groups in Iraq”.

The authenticity of the statement could not be immediately verified.

But of course as we've been repeatedly told, despite the Terrorist Training Camps that used to be in Iraq, and the presence in Baghdad of major Al Qaeda commanders, the secular Ba'athists could never have anything to do with Al Qaeda etc etc.

To let TCP readers know what drivel is being fed to Iraqis and others in the Arab World, here's an article from Canada - Jihad Unspun (which according to Google is a News Source).

JUS[JihadUnSpun] has learned that Resistance fighters took revenge for their fellow citizens of Fallujah early Sunday morning by hitting the American Al-Bakr base in Balad with 4 rockets carrying chemical warheads.

Sources inside the base confirmed the presence of a white substance after the explosions of the rockets which came at the time when a large contingency of American soldiers were preparing to leave for Mosul. Approximately 2500 American soldiers occupy this base, which plays a pivotal role in providing logistics and personnel support to American occupation forces in the northern, north eastern and north western zones of Iraq.

According to this inside source, 270 Americans were killed in the attack. Black Hawk and Chinook aircraft took over 3 hours to evacuate the dead and the wounded. The Americans have cordoned off the area with red tape and started to spray a liquid over the chemical substance to neutralize it. The specific chemical used is not yet known however the damage is said to have extended to surrounding trees, which were either burnt or wilted.

This attack came as a response to the American chemical attack on Fallujah a few days ago. At press time, there is not one word in mainstream press about this large scale attack. Curiously, a quick search on Google netted virtually no information at all on the Iraq war – a war that is taking American lives daily.

There you go. Mainstream Media isn't reporting the dastardly use of US chemical weapons in Fallujah, either. Not even CBS.

From Mafkarat al-Islam via Crimes And Corruptions Of The New World Order News :

In a dispatch posted at 6:40pm Mecca time, the Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent reported that US troops got residents of the as-Saqlawiyah area on Monday and Tuesday to collect bodies of civilians killed on the outskirts of the al-Jawlan neighborhood in al-Fallujah’s northwest and to take them to as-Saqlawiyah for burial. The US troops insisted on going along with the as-Saqlawiyah residents from the moment they left their town and all along the route as they loaded and transported the bodies back for interment in as-Saqlawiyah. US troops also searched all the residents who were to go to transport the bodies, for fear lest any one of them have cameras with which to record the crimes of the American troops.

The correspondent reported that the as-Saqlawiyah residents transported 20 bodies on Monday, among them two women and two children. On Tuesday they transported 14 bodies. The correspondent noted that all those who had died were killed by some sort of chemical gas since their bodies were bloated, as if inflated from all sides, and yellow but without odor – except for a few that the witness said gave off a pleasant smell as is expected of the bodies of martyrs.
[…]
Mafkarat al-Islam stated that it hesitated to publish these reports, which it could have begun doing two days ago, for fear that they might provoke the Americans to prohibit efforts to clear away the bodies of the martyrs for burial, leaving them instead to become food for dogs, other predators, and vermin. The editorial board believed, however, that the issue of publishing this report had good and bad sides. The bad side of publishing the story being that it might halt the efforts to bury the martyrs. But the good side was that it would show up the enormity of US barbarism in al-Fallujah, and that, in turn could be “buried” if the story were never published. Therefore Mafkarat al-Islam’s editorial board decided to publish the story so that it could be recorded and so that history could bear witness to the crimes of the American forces.

From Jihad Unspun :

Anger that is seething throughout Iraq and the world over the assault on Fallujah turned to rage yesterday as an Iraqi physician came forward to confirm reports of the use of banned chemical weapons in Fallujah. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to the Panorama radio station, the physician said he had just examined two dead bodies and confirmed that the victims died of banned chemical weapons. The physician found no evidence of bullet wounds, shrapnel, or any objects penetrating the bodies.

It is worth noting that Mufkarat al-Islam was the first to alert readers to the use of chemical weapons by American occupying force on 11/11/2004. Since that time there have been several reports that US occupation troops has resorted to using chemical but none that could be independently verified.

From China's official Xinhua News Agency :

“At the beginning, the resistance in the Jolan district was strong and the American troops backed up. After rounds of airbombings, the area became relatively silent and the Americans pushed into the city with limited resistance,” he recalled. Rahman could not confirm if the US forces used any chemical weapons as some newspapers claimed.

But he told Xinhua that some doctors in Fallujah were shocked to see that many bodies were charred without apparent injuries.

Almost as if they'd been killed by blast…something that happens a lot, particularly from aircraft bombs.
We can confidently predict that John Pilger, Robert Fisk, and perhaps Michael Moore will soon pick this up. Though they might draw the line at the “bodies of martyrs smelling sweet” bit.

Updating a previous post, from Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Thousands of US and Iraqi troops and police commandos have swept through a cluster of lawless towns south-west of Baghdad in a new offensive against Sunni Muslim insurgents.

The raids by 5,000 American, Iraqi and some British troops in what has become known as the “triangle of death” come two weeks after US-led forces stormed the western Sunni city of Fallujah and routed rebels there.

The US military says Operation Plymouth Rock began in the town of Jabala but is planned to reach across the Sunni area south-west of Baghdad, where rebels have banished police and rule the streets.

Guerrilla and bandit attacks in the area, which straddles major highways between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, have threatened to cut Iraq in half by making travel between Baghdad and the Shiite Muslim south dangerous.

“The latest offensive … follows the swift seizure of the restive city of Fallujah, where terrorists and insurgents suffered significant losses and the elimination of a key sanctuary,” the US marines said in a statement.

“The joint Iraqi-US force captured 32 suspected insurgents, including a number of high-interest individuals, in a series of early morning raids.”

The US military says it is trying to cut the lines of communication between rebels in the western Fallujah area, Baghdad and the province of Babylon, south-west of the capital.

UPDATE : From the AFP via The Australian :

“Our area of operations includes the cities of Latifiyah, Mahmudiyah, Yusufiyah, Iskandariyah, Haswah and Musayyib,” Captain David Nevers from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit said.

”The operation… an intensification of what we've been doing for a few months now, will encompass our entire area,” he said.
[…]
“It will not involve a massive sweep across the province but a multitude of precision raids that will home in on high-interest targets,” Capt Nevers said.
[…]
Yesterday's raids focused on villages north of Hilla but the massive coalition force looked to set to make its way northwards to the lawless areas blocking access to the capital.

The United States will add more troops in Iraq in advance of Iraq's January 30 elections.

Agence France Presse reports that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said:

“We will have more troops, because the Iraqi security forces are going up, and we've decided to overlap some troops during the election period,” Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon. “So you're going to have additional troops during that period from both of those two sources.”

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

The world's main powers and countries across the Middle East have put on a rare show of unity to support elections in Iraq that United Nations chief Kofi Annan termed “critical” to quell rampant violence.

The stand was enshrined in a joint declaration approved by the United States, France and other Western states, the interim Government in Iraq, as well as Iran, Turkey, several Arab countries, China and Russia at the close of a two-day international conference in Egypt.

Mr Annan said the Iraqi elections scheduled for January 30 were a “critical part of Iraq's transition” and it was “critically important that they take place in a conducive environment”.

He said the chronic insecurity gripping Iraq since the United States-led invasion that divided the world last year was “the greatest impediment to a successful transition process”.

The foreign ministers and representatives in the conference effectively rubber-stamped a declaration whose wording had been worked out in preceding Cairo meetings marked by much wrangling between the US and France.

The communique stresses a UN role in preparing the elections, condemns “terrorism”, kidnapping and the murder of civilians, and urges cooperation or at least “non-interference” from neighbouring countries.

However, while saying the deployment of US-led troops in Iraq “is not open-ended”, it gives no timetable for their withdrawal, as some countries had been seeking.

Iraq and its neighbours Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey signed off on the document in a closed-door meeting, and the text was put to the rest of the delegates on Tuesday for approval.

From the AFP via The Australian :

Toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will go on trial on charges of crimes against humanity by the end of the year, the country's Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan said today.

”He will be tried before the end of the year,” Mr Shaalan told the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

Pressed on whether Saddam's trial would open before Iraqi elections scheduled for January 30, the minister said: “Yes, before the elections”.

A US official in Baghdad said in September that Saddam, who is currently in US custody in Iraq, was unlikely to go on trial before the end of the year.

The official said 21 investigative judges were working on different issues and that more time was needed to prepare the prosecution of former Iraqi officials charged with multiple crimes.

The official also stressed that the deteriorating security situation was impeding the collection of evidence, for instance making exhumations in parts of the country almost impossible.

Sounds as if they have enough to hang him once rather than dozens of times - but that's all that's needed.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

An international conference on the political future of Iraq has opened in Egypt with calls on the interim Iraqi Government to make sure as many people as possible take part in elections on January 30.

”As we approach the elections, every effort must be made to provide incentives for the various Iraqi groups to participate in a national reconciliation process,” United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan told the opening session.

“The broadest possible spectrum of Iraqi opinion must be persuaded to see a shared interest in realising the potential of a united and peaceful country,” he told delegates in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The conference brings together about 20 foreign ministers, some from countries that invaded Iraq last year and others from governments that opposed the invasion.

They say their aim is to help restore internal peace and security in Iraq, where insurgents are waging war on the Government, the United States military and other troops that keep it in power.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Iraq's salvation lay in making the election successful and ensuring that all “reasonable forces” take part.

“A consensus … will not come about except by expanding the scope of dialogue between national forces, bridging the gap which divides the various parties and rejecting the politics of violence and intimidation,” he said.

A statement prepared in advance advises the Iraqi Government to call a meeting of as many political groups as possible before the elections to encourage full participation.

Improvised Chemical munitions too. From the Chicago Tribune :

Acting on information from a man who claimed to have escaped from militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network, the U.S. military over the weekend inspected a house where intelligence officers believe hostages were detained, tortured and possibly killed.

A banner for Tawhid and Jihad—the name of al-Zarqawi's organization until he changed it last month to Al Qaeda in Iraq—was recovered Saturday from the home, as were several black face masks, volumes of documents, handcuffs and two long, apparently blood-stained knives, military officials said.
[…]
The Marine patrol also visited a second site Sunday that might have been another hostage holding area, this one in a building that contained a wire cage large enough for a human that had an intravenous bag beside it, as well as windowless, dungeon-like rooms, one of which had bloody fingerprints inside.

The house most closely linked to al-Zarqawi, which contained the Tawhid and Jihad banner, is the last in a jumble of four homes in a neighborhood where Fallujah melts into the desert.

Three empty bottles of whiskey were dropped beside the front walk, and a pair of the type of black gym shoes worn by many insurgents was in the doorway beside a black ski mask.

Inside, a black banner bearing Arabic writing was taken off a wall in an empty room. Translated, it read “There is no God but God” and “The Organization of Tawhid and Jihad.”

In the darkened hallway beside the empty room was a stained area where the informant told U.S. forces that captives had been tortured, said Maj. Lawrence Hussey, intelligence officer for the 7th Marine Regiment.

Thick nails protruded from the wall. A dirty black mask with holes cut for the eyes and mouth was on the floor beneath the stairs Sunday.

In a room to one side, there were torn mattresses and scattered blankets where intelligence officials believe insurgents had slept.

The informant told U.S. forces that the two rooms across the hall had been used to hold hostages. In one of them, seven more black masks, two British-made bulletproof vests, a pair of handcuffs and two AK-47 assault rifles were found.

In several of the videotaped beheadings of hostages, terrorists are seen wearing similar clothing, standing in front of a banner identical to the one torn off the wall of the house.

In addition to the knives found in the house, three cell phones and three ID cards—one for an Iraqi citizen and two for employees of an American contractor working in Iraq—were recovered.

There was a steel bar bolted into the bathroom wall. A chain dangled from it.

Holes through the walls connected the home to the three adjoining houses north of it, one of which the Marines identified as a chemistry lab and bombmaking factory.

On a counter in the apparent bomb factory were a disassembled hand grenade, rubber gloves and numerous bottles of chemicals.

“This one says potassium cyanide,” said an Egyptian translator employed by the Marines. At that point Sunday afternoon, he was the only one who could talk.

Sodium cyanide, he continued reading. Sulfuric acid. Hydrochloric acid.

Eventually, Chief Warrant Officer Lee Fair, of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, said quietly, “Anyone that knew what they were doing could put these things together and make something very dangerous. Looks like [in the next room] they were trying to put crude weapons together.”

In that room, a hooded gas mask lay beside a large glass box, as did gloves, a carton of blasting caps and beakers full of chemicals. The floor was littered with broken glass and concrete chips blown out of the walls during the attack.

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

South Korea's Government has agreed to extend the deployment of thousands of its troops in Iraq by one year until the end of 2005, officials said.

The decision to extend the mission, which was due to expire at the end of this year, was made at a cabinet meeting led by Prime Minister Lee Hae-Chan, the Prime Minister's office said.

“The Government will send a motion to Parliament seeking approval for extending the troop deployment in Iraq by another year,” said Chung Yong-Wook, an official from the office who attended the meeting.

Some 2,800 South Korean troops are based in Arbil, a Kurdish-controlled town in northern Iraq, on a rehabilitation and humanitarian mission.

Another contingent of more than 700 is set to join them soon.
[…]
Political analysts say the Government motion will easily win approval from Parliament since the ruling Uri Party, which has a Parliamentary majority, has pledged to endorse an extended mission.

The conservative main opposition Grand National Party has also approved the troop deployment in Iraq.

From the National Review Corner :

E-mail:

”Rich,

I am also a professor at a military-related institution, and my little brother is an enlisted Marine (a sniper with 1-3) in Fallujah. This weekend he called for the first time since the battle began. He informed us that a large number of the residents of Fallujah, before fleeing the battle, left blankets and bedding for the Marines and Soldiers along with notes thanking the Americans for liberating their city from the terrorists, as well as invitations to the Marines and Soldiers to sleep in their houses. I've yet to see a report in the media of this. Imagine that.

Additionally, he said their spirits are high, but they would certainly appreciate any “care packages” that folks in the States would care to send their way (preferably consisting of non-perishable food items, candy, deodorant, eye-drops, q-tips, toothpaste, toothbrushes, lip balm, hand/feet warmers, black/dark undershirts, underwear & socks, and non-aerosol bug spray)

It would be great if you could pass this message along to anyone interested in helping out.”

Also from the National Review Corner :

I asked someone who would know earlier today how to send stuff to troops. This is what was recommended—a few options:

1. http://www.uso.org/pubs/93_325_1391.cfm

2. Just looking around on the USO site see that they need $$ for phone cards. In most forward areas there are phone centers for the soldiers and Marines to call back to the US but they need phone cards (which they typically pay for at the PX). The PX is always out of phone cards though for some reason. Anyway the USO has come up with 'Operation Phone Home' to get phone cards to these guys so they can…phone home.

3. http://www.operationgratitude.com”>www.soldiersangels.com is a good one if people want to 'adopt' an individual soldier/Marine/sailor. The only thing is, packages need to be sent by this Saturday to make it to either Iraq or Afghanistan by Christmas.

4. www.operationgratitude.com is another good one- just send $$, they send packages. Their holiday drive is already completed but it doesn't mean the guys in the field don't still need stuff.

5. www.ustroopcarepackage.com also sends packages to the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed, and in Germany and Kuwait. The guys especially need underwear, socks and sweats.

Masked gunmen on Tuesday assassinated a Sunni cleric north of Baghdad, police said — the second such killing in as many days.

Sheik Ghalib Ali al-Zuhairi was a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerics group that has spoken out against nationwide elections to be held Jan. 30.

Al-Zuhairi was shot as he was leaving Thiyaba Mosque in the town of Muqdadiyah after dawn prayers, said Col. Raisan Hussein. He was taken to Muqdadiya Hospital where he later died, Hussein said. Muqdadiyah is about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Read more..

A homemade bomb was found on a commercial airliner in Iraq, the US embassy in Baghdad said.

It said US citizens should beware of travelling on commercial carriers flying to the war-torn country.

The embassy gave no further details in its statement, adding only that “additional screening measures are being put into place at the Baghdad International Airport”.

It did not say if the “improvised explosive device” was found on a plane that had just arrived in Baghdad or on one about to depart, saying only that it was found on a plane “inside Iraq”.

Gunmen on Monday assassinated a member of an influential Sunni clerics' group that has called for a boycott of national elections, just a day after Iraqi officials announced the balloting would be held Jan. 30 in spite of rising violence in Iraq.

Sheik Faidh Mohamed Amin al-Faidhi, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, was shot by gunmen at his home in northern Mosul — a sign of the continuing violence that wracks the country.

Read more…

IRAQ'S security forces recovered 12 bodies, including five decapitated ones, from an area south of Baghdad, police said today.

The bodies were found during a raid yesterday in Latifiyah, about 32km south of Baghdad, said Lt. Adnan Abdullah. The bodies were taken to the hospital in nearby Mahmoudiya, about 40km south of Baghdad.

Five of the men were decapitated and the rest had been shot in the head, Lt. Abdullah said, adding the bodies were found in different areas in Latifiyah. Two were recovered from a canal and the others from orchards in the area, he said.

Read more…

From Reuters via The Australian :

US Marines had detained what they believe is a senior commander in the Sunni Muslim insurgency in Iraq's western Anbar province, the US military said today.

Marines detained six suspected guerillas yesterday in Haqlaniya in Anbar, a province which includes the insurgent strongholds of Fallujah and Ramadi, a military statement said.

“One of the six detainees is believed to be a high-ranking cell leader of anti-Iraqi forces operating in and around the Al Anbar province,” it added, giving no further details.

From the New York Times :

For a correspondent who has covered a half dozen armed conflicts, including the war in Iraq since its start in March 2003, the fighting seen while traveling with a frontline unit in Falluja was a qualitatively different experience, a leap into a different kind of battle.
[…]
On one particularly grim night, a group of marines from Bravo Company's First Platoon turned a corner in the darkness and headed up an alley. As they did so, they came across men dressed in uniforms worn by the Iraqi National Guard. The uniforms were so perfect that they even carried pieces of red tape and white, the signal agreed upon to assure American soldiers that any Iraqis dressed that way would be friendly; the others could be killed.

The marines, spotting the red and white tape, waved, and the men in Iraqi uniforms opened fire. One American, Corporal Anderson, died instantly. One of the wounded men, Pfc. Andrew Russell, lay in the road, screaming from a nearly severed leg.

A group of marines ran forward into the gunfire to pull their comrades out. But the ambush, and the enemy flares and gunfire that followed, rattled the men of Bravo Company more than any event. In the darkness, the men began to argue. Others stood around in the road. As the platoon's leader, Lt. Andy Eckert, struggled to take charge, the Third Platoon seemed on the brink of panic.

“Everybody was scared,” Lieutenant Eckert said afterward. “If the leader can't hold, then the unit can't hold together.”

The unit did hold, but only after the intervention of Bravo Company's commanding officer, Capt. Read Omohundro.

Time and again through the week, Captain Omohundro kept his men from folding, if not by his resolute manner then by his calmness under fire. In the first 16 hours of battle, when the combat was continuous and the threat of death ever present, Captain Omohundro never flinched, moving his men through the warrens and back alleys of Falluja with an uncanny sense of space and time, sensing the enemy, sensing the location of his men, even in the darkness, entirely self-possessed.

“Damn it, get moving,” Captain Omohundro said, and his men, looking relieved that they had been given direction amid the anarchy, were only too happy to oblige.

A little later, Captain Omohundro, a 34-year-old Texan, allowed that the strain of the battle had weighed on him, but he said that he had long ago trained himself to keep any self-doubt hidden from view.

“It's not like I don't feel it,” Captain Omohundro said. “But if I were to show it, the whole thing would come apart.”

For Expert Opinion on how the US Marine Corps “re-wrote the book” on MOUT (Miliatary Operations in Urban Terrain) see these articles in the Post-Gazette,

From The Green Side :

Dear Dad -

Just came out of the city and I honestly do not know where to start. I am afraid that whatever I send you will not do sufficient honor to the men who fought and took Fallujah.

Shortly before the attack, Task Force Fallujah was built. It consisted of Regimental Combat Team 1 built around 1st Marine Regiment and Regimental Combat Team 7 built around 7th Marine Regiment. Each Regiment consisted of two Marine Rifle Battalions reinforced and one Army mechanized infantry battalion……

The fighting has been incredibly close inside the city. The enemy is willing to die and is literally waiting until they see the whites of the eyes of the Marines before they open up. Just two days ago, as a firefight raged in close quarters, one of the interpreters yelled for the enemy in the house to surrender. The enemy yelled back that it was better to die and go to heaven than to surrender to infidels. This exchange is a graphic window into the world that the Marines and Soldiers have been fighting in these last 10 days……

Cpl Mitchell is a squad leader. He was wounded as his squad was clearing a house when some enemy threw pineapple grenades down on top of them. As he was getting triaged, the doctor told him that he had been shot through the arm. Cpl Mitchell told the doctor that he had actually been shot “a couple of days ago” and had given himself self aide[sic] on the wound. When the doctor got on him about not coming off the line, he firmly told the doctor that he was a squad leader and did not have time to get treated as his men were still fighting. There are a number of Marines who have been wounded multiple times but refuse to leave their fellow Marines….

I will write you more the next time I come in about what we have found inside the city. All I can say is that even with everything that I knew and expected from the last nine months, the brutality and fanaticism of the enemy surprised me. The beheadings were even more common place than we thought but so were torture and summary executions. Even though it is an exaggeration, it seems as though every block in the northern part of the city has a torture chamber or execution site….

How confiscated Ba'athist cash is being spent on the Iraqi People. From 2Slick's Forum :

Here's how it worked. About one week after we (the 101st) arrived in Mosul (approx. May 8th), every major subordinate command in the 101st (including mine, of course) received an order to report to Finance Headquarters, draw $10,000 US cash (seized assets recovered from the old regime) and go out and spend it. There were rules and guidelines- no single purchase over the amount of $2,000. Any expenditure must benefit the Iraqi people only, and may not result in any kind benefit to Coalition Forces whatsoever. No spending on entertainment for the Iraqis. Other than that, it was pretty much go out there and spend. I was selected to be my brigade's project manager because of my experience handling budgets and my history of successfuly dealing with Iraqis.

I first went to a Civil Affairs guy who lived in the tent next to mine, and asked him if he had any good tips. He told me that the University had been severely looted, and that they could use some help with ADP products (monitors, disk drives, etc.). We went to the University, worked out the arrangements, made some connections, and delivered the products the next day. The purchase was simple- we went to a computer store across the street from the university, worked out a deal, and had them deliver the goods at the agreed time and place, at which time we paid them. We repeated this often. After our first purchase for the university we still had $8,000, so we stopped at a primary school and asked them how we could be of assistance. They were very happy to see us, and we communicated through our interpreter. We worked out a deal to get them school supplies, new school desks, chalkboards, etc.

When our $10,000 ran out, we drew more and repeated the process. Every other major subordinate command in the 101st did the same thing we did. This continued for about 3 weeks.

Once it became obvious that this operation was working, Division Headquarters decided to step things up. We were soon authorized to draw $250,000 at a time (usually about one draw every two weeks- and the maximum withdrawal amount continued to grow), and spend up to $10,000 on a single purchase (more if we obtained the CG's approval).

As they say, read the whole thing.

From the Sunday Times via The Australian :

It was the second day of the American offensive against insurgents in Fallujah. Abu Fatima, a 45-year-old shopkeeper who had joined the fighters in the belief he was defending his city, sensed he had only a short time to live.

As US forces closed in, he wrote a last letter to his wife Um Fatima, who was sheltering in their flat in another part of town with their four daughters. “The forces of infidels surround us,” he wrote.

“I have asked my friend Ahmad to deliver this letter to you in case of my death … I do not know whether we will read it together if I return or whether you will read on your own with tears flowing from your eyes.”
[…]
Ahmad had brought Um Fatima her husband's letter. She saw he had signed it “the living dead, Abu Fatima”.

“There was no time to wail and sob at the death of my husband,” said Um Fatima. “I knew that I had to leave immediately and get my girls out of Fallujah … there was no time to waste. I did not want to remain behind now. I was not afraid of death but I was afraid for the shame that might befall my daughters once the troops took the city.”

Helped by Ahmad, she and the girls – Fatima, 22, Hala, 18, Sarah, 15, and Hajer, 13 – reached the edge of the city and walked into the desert. Their problems were not over.

A passing American patrol left them alone, but the women then encountered a group of Iraqi national guards who questioned them incessantly. One of them eyed her eldest daughter and ordered her to be searched.

“I told him no and begged him to let her be. I reminded him that we were Arabs, Muslims, and that this was prohibited in our culture and religion,” Um Fatima said.

But he grabbed the young woman's hand and began to force a kiss on her, she said. The distraught mother hit him and tried to push him off as her other daughters began to cry.

“There was not a soul in sight – a barren desert,” she said. But suddenly two American soldiers appeared, perhaps from a passing patrol. One of them kicked the Iraqi, hit him and began to yell at him.

Fatima, a chemistry student who speaks English, said the American was shouting: “If you were really here to liberate this city you would not treat the women this way. This is what people here believe how we behave and what they expect us Americans to do, but they do not expect this of you Iraqis.”

Fatima added: “At that instant the evil forces that had killed my father became my angel and saviour. The American saved me and the Iraqi assaulted me.”
[…]
Among those who emerged alive from Fallujah was one of the men most wanted by the US – Abu Abdullah, a senior commander known as the godfather of Iraqi insurgents in the city. He was arrested by American marines but escaped.

Speaking last week, he said he had not taken part in the fighting and had strongly opposed the foreign and Arab fighters who flocked into the city to confront the Americans. Nevertheless, he said, he had opted to stay during the battle.

With hindsight, Abu Abdullah said, the local fighters and residents should have stood up to the newcomers and foreigners who, he said, had turned Fallujah into a bastion of terror.

In the early days of the battle he stayed with his brother and, he said, saw his 12-year-old nephew shot dead by a sniper after the boy had rushed out to investigate a loud explosion.

Abu Abdullah was eventually arrested and taken to a US military camp outside the city, where he estimated about 3000 prisoners were being held in open-air cells made from concrete slabs and barbed wire. The worst danger there, he said, was from missiles fired into the camp by insurgents.

Under interrogation he gave a fictitious name and said he was a freelance journalist working for Arab newspapers and news agencies. He was believed and freed in a group of about 100 prisoners who were each handed $US20 ($25) as expenses.

The US military estimates that about 1200 insurgents were killed in the 11 days of fighting, while 51 Americans died. There are no official estimates of civilian deaths. Relief organisations believe about 30,000 to 50,000 of the 300,000 population remained in Fallujah.

It sounds as if there's still a long way to go in educating Iraqis about how we do things - not just the ones we're fighting against, either. But some progress is being made.

This time though, the Insurgent shot first. From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

The US military says marines in Fallujah have shot and killed an insurgent who engaged them as he was faking being dead, a week after footage of a marine killing an apparently unarmed and wounded Iraqi caused a stir in the region.

”Marines from the 1st Marine Division shot and killed an insurgent who while faking dead opened fire on the marines who were conducting a security and clearing patrol through the streets,” a military statement said.

The point-blank shooting on November 13 of a wounded Iraqi was caught on tape and beamed around the world.

It raised questions about the degree of military restraint and fanned Arab resentment.

The marine was withdrawn from combat and an investigation launched.

Military sources had said that the rules of engagement were looser during the operation launched in Fallujah, for fear that rebels would be disguised, fake death or wear suicide explosives belts.

The picture of Fallujah under the Jihadis just keeps getting worse. From the AFP via The Australian :

The US military said today it had discovered nearly 20 torture sites in the course of its massive military operation against the insurgency in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

”They had a sick, depraved culture of violence in that city,” Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Wilson, from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters at a briefing near the former rebel stronghold.

“It looks like we found a number of houses” where torture took place, said intelligence officer Major Jim West.

The US officers said the number of torture sites was “close to 20”.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

The bodies of three men killed by insurgents have been found on a street in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

The find comes a day after US troops in the city discovered the bodies of nine Iraqi soldiers who had been shot in the head.

Those found on Sunday had also been shot in the head and lay on the ground in a street in the industrial sector of Mosul.

Scraps of paper left on the bodies said they were Kurdish militiamen.

From The Australian updating a previous post :

Major economic powers, including Australia, have agreed to write off billions of dollars of debt for Iraq.

The Paris Club of 19 creditor nations announced the decision today, marking a significant step in US-led efforts to help put the Iraqi economy back on its feet.

Under the agreement, the Paris Club would conditionally write off 80 per cent of the $US38.9 billion ($50.03 billion) Iraq owed them, said the group's chairman, Jean-Pierre Jouyet.

The Paris Club includes Australia, Canada, European countries, Japan, Russia and the US. Iraq owes another $US80 billion ($103 billion) to various Arab governments.
[…]
Iraq has said its overall foreign debt of $US122 billion ($157 billion) is hindering postwar reconstruction, already struggling amid the country's persistent insurgency.

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's cousin has been released by his kidnappers, the Iraqi leader's office said Saturday. Ghazi Allawi, 75, had been abducted by gunmen from his Baghdad home on Nov. 9, along with his wife and his pregnant daughter-in-law.

The prime minister's office had no other details on his release

Read more…

The bodies of nine Iraqi soldiers, all shot execution-style, were discovered in the northern city of Mosul on Saturday, the U.S. military said.

The discovery came on top of four beheaded bodies that the U.S. military reported on Saturday that troops had found several days earlier. Those four bodies were still being identified.

U.S. forces found the nine soldiers' bodies off a main road about a mile from the Tigris River after getting a tip from the Iraqi National Guard , said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings of Task Force Olympia.

Read more…

From The Australian :

The US military said today its forces and Iraqi troops had detained 1,450 people during the massive operation against insurgents in the rebel enclave of Fallujah.

”Iraqi Security Forces and Multi-National Forces-Iraq detained more than 1,450 people in the Fallujah area during Operation Al Fajr,” a statement said.

“More than 400 detainees have since been released after being deemed to be non-combatants,” the military said, adding than 100 more were due to be released today.

Bar a few pockets of rebels still active in some areas of Fallujah, US and Iraqi forces have all but wrapped up the largest post-war military operation in Iraq, which was launched on November 8.

According to a figure given by the US military on November 14, more than 1,200 rebels were killed in the fighting. A total of 51 marines and eight Iraqi soldiers, were also killed in the campaign.

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

A US soldier was killed and nine others wounded when their unit was ambushed in central Baghdad, the US military said.

The ambush occurred early on Saturday morning (local time).

“The unit came under coordinated attack, which included improvised explosive devices, small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades,” a statement said.

“The wounded were evacuated to a military medical treatment facility.”

From The Australian :

A suicide car bomber attempted to kill the police chief of Hillah by ramming his car into General Qais Abdullah's vehicle, police said today.

Capt. Hadi Hatif said the attacker's car detonated before it made contact, killing only the bomber in yesterday's incident.

Gen. Abdullah was on his way to work when the attack happened in this central Iraqi town about 95km south of Baghdad, Capt. Hatif said.

On Friday, another suicide bomber exploded his car outside the Jabal police station in Hillah, though there were no other casualties besides the bomber himself.

Police believed the target of the attack was the commander of that police station, who was unharmed.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is harder to catch than Saddam Hussein but the chances may have improved since he fled Fallujah, a US general says.

General Ray Odierno was part of the team who captured Saddam, after the ousting of his government last year.

He says that Zarqawi, an ally of Al Qaeda, has a well-organised guerrilla network moving him between hide-outs.

However, he says that US defeat of insurgents in Fallujah could have disrupted Zarqawi's co-ordination because he lost his main base.

“I think (with) Saddam, after the fall, there was no organisation, he was fleeing for his life, whereas I think Zarqawi is a little more organised… he has a more organised group around him than Saddam Hussein,” Gen Odierno said.

“That's what makes it a bit more difficult with Zarqawi.”

Zarqawi is believed to have escaped the insurgency's epicentre despite a US offensive that wrested control of Fallujah from his group.

“It's probably easier now (to catch him),” Gen Odierno said.

From Reuters via The Australian :

Seven people have been killed when a bus they were travelling in through the Iraqi city of Ramadi came under fire, police and witnesses said.

Ramadi police chief Brigadier Jasim al-Dulaimi said US troops yesterday opened fire on the bus, which was riddled with bullets, as it passed the governorate building in the central Hay al-Andalous area.

The US military had no immediate comment.

Reuters Television footage showed the bus peppered with bullet holes. Some of the windows were shattered and others spattered with blood. Flies buzzed around corpses in the vehicle, as men carried away bodies and loaded them into cars.

UPDATE : From the Los Angeles Times :

American troops opened fire on a bus carrying Iraqis in Ramadi, killing three people in an incident the U.S. military described as self-defense.
[…]
A U.S. military statement on the bus shooting said the vehicle swerved toward Marines at a checkpoint and that the driver “ignored a verbal warning and several warning shots.”

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

Four Iraqi civilians, including a woman, have been wounded in the fighting near the main market in the key refinery town of Baiji.

”We took four wounded, including a woman,” Mahmood Marah, director-general of the city's hospital, said.

He says that a curfew is still in place in northern and western neighbourhoods of the town.
[…]
Further south, in the city of Samarra, two Iraqi national guardsmen have been wounded by a roadside bomb,

Colonel Hassan Abbas says fighting then broke out between US troops and insurgents, and three large explosions have been heard from the the direction of the US army's main base in the city.

From Reuters via The Australian :

Iraq will hold national elections on January 30 to choose a transitional parliament that will pick a new government and oversee the writing of a permanent constitution, the Electoral Commission said today.

”The Electoral Commission set the date of January 30 as the date of the election in Iraq,” commission spokesman Farid Ayar told Reuters.

The date had previously been tentatively set for January 27.

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

It could be as late as February before hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who fled the US-led assault on Fallujah are allowed to return, US commanders warn.

”The bottom line is there is no firm date. It's not a date-driven trigger,” said Major Francis Piccoli, a spokesman for the First Marine Expeditionary Force.

“If we have a concern, it would be civilians returning to the city and it not being safe for them.”

The blistering eight-day offensive levelled much of the city of 300,000, the majority of whom made a dramatic exodus ahead of the US military's overwhelming display of force.

The fighting left the now-deserted city in shambles, littered with rubble, unexploded ordnance and corpses, and US and Iraqi forces are only now making small steps towards reconstruction.

But how long it will take to demolish unsound buildings, restore basic services, destroy unexploded ordnance and pull the bodies from the rubble is unknown.

This has stirred debate within the military on when civilians should be allowed back into the city.

Some military civil affairs officers argue that residents should be allowed to return after the US Thanksgiving holiday, which falls this Thursday.

But the Marine's 3-5 battalion command told its staff that it might not be until February that basic services like water and electricity would be restored to the city, said 3-5 battalion spokesman Captain PJ Batty.

Preliminary battle damage assessments have started but workers have yet to begin clearing the chunks of concrete and dangling power lines strewn on the streets.

One marine officer said that in a three or four-block radius, as much as 50 per cent of the buildings might not be structurally sound and would have to be demolished.

So far, reconstruction efforts have been limited to volunteers from the neighbouring town of Saqlawiya pulling decomposing corpses from the streets.

Before the offensive started, the US military had more than $US80 million allotted for Fallujah's reconstruction.

From News Ltd :

A US marine was killed in action in Iraq not knowing that his first child had been born just hours before.

Lance Corporal Shane Kielion, a rifleman in the 1st Marine Division of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed on Monday in Al Anbar Province, the military said.

His widow and high school sweetheart, April Kielion, gave birth to a boy in Omaha, Nebraska, the same day, said the marine's old high school football coach, Jay Ball. “She's hanging in there,” he said. “She's a strong woman. She's got a terrific family and lots of supportive friends.”

The baby was named Shane Kielion Jr, said April's father, Don Armstrong. He said his daughter was “doing as well as to be expected under the pressure”.

From News Ltd :

Four government employees from the Ministry of Public Works were gunned down today on their way to work, a ministry spokesman said.

Amal Abdul-Hameed, adviser to the ministry, and three employees from her office were killed when assailants chased down their car and opened fire, said spokesman Jassim Mohammed Salim.

Describing the attackers as “brutal terrorists,” Salim said the driveby shooting occurred in the western Qadisiyah neighbourhood of Baghdad.

From News Ltd :

The US, Germany and other G7 nations have agreed to write off up to 80 per cent of Iraq's $US120 billion ($154 billion) foreign debt in a move that could pave the way for a wider international accord, officials said.

The breakthrough came today in talks between German Finance Minister Hans Eichel and US Treasury Secretary John Snow on the margins of a meeting of finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the G20 group of rich and developing nations.

Officials from the Paris Club of creditor nations, meeting in Paris, have struggled for months to agree on the terms for an Iraq debt write-off, which has remained a thorn in trans-Atlantic relations since the end of the Iraq war.

Eichel said the tentative agreement would be put to other Paris Club members, who have been meeting in Paris since Thursday, for approval but it was unclear if a deal was close.

Eichel told reporters the draft agreement foresaw up to 80 per cent of Iraq's debts being written off in three stages.
[…]
Prior to the Paris Club talks, France and Germany had signalled they did not want to write off more than half of Iraq's debts. The US had been pushing for a 90-95 per cent reduction.

A Polish woman held hostage in Iraq by a militant group since late October has been freed, according to Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka.

Teresa Borcz Khalifa is married to an Iraqi and also holds Iraqi citizenship.

She was kidnapped on October 27 in Baghdad by a little-known group that demanded Poland withdraw its troops from Iraq, a call flatly rejected by Warsaw.

From Zeyad's blog Healing Iraq dated about 4 hours ago :

Fierce fighting has been going on in several areas of Baghdad for the last 4 hours. I was supposed to leave for Basrah this morning, as soon as I walked out of the front door I was face to face with ten or so hooded men dressed in black carrying Ak-47's and RPG's. They had set up a checkpoint right in front of our door.

Jihadis are still in his area.

From Baghdad Bureau Chief of Knight Ridder :

I first came to Baghdad in July 2003, sweltering days when electricity was scarce, but at least targets were clear: American troops were attacked; reporters just wrote about it. My stories from back then sound like a grim list of “firsts” : the first big car bombing, the first hostage video, the first helicopter shot down, the first mosque raided.

Now we barely take note of those commonplace events. Satellite television soon arrived, beaming rap videos and Dr. Phil into our hotel rooms. Cell phones replaced crackling, unreliable satellite phones, and our jobs grew easier. We hadn't yet been introduced to a Jordanian militant named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, so we wrote stories about the horse track and American troops watching the Super Bowl.

Camaraderie among foreign correspondents eased the pressures of deadline and danger. We played poker with useless old dinars imprinted with Saddam Hussein's face. New restaurants opened, including a Chinese place with a karaoke bar. Even then, though, we avoided “Great Balls of Fire” on the song list.

Hopping in the car as the sun rose over the Tigris River, we felt like explorers. Mythical places became three-dimensional as we arrived in Babylon and Nineveh, Najaf and Karbala.

We thrilled at covering the most important story in the world. Unlike for many of my colleagues, Iraq is my first war zone. I still feel indescribably lucky to get so close to history as it happens: boarding a Black Hawk helicopter with the Iraqi prime minister, eating beans with Shiite Muslim rebels while they're being pounded by a U.S. airstrike, strolling through Saddam's old Republican Palace with its new American occupants.

Then there's Iraq's incredible diversity. We've met Kurdish wedding musicians trying out a new keyboard, marsh Arabs zipping by on narrow boats, Iranian pilgrims ecstatic in ornate shrines, foreign guerrillas hiding among lush orchards, oil smugglers sweating at southern ports.

This, I thought, is the Iraq I want to show our readers.

But didn't.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Guerrillas armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades have attacked a police station in Baghdad, killing at least three policemen.
[…]
The fighting comes a day after Iraqi troops, backed by US soldiers, raided a major mosque in Aadhamiya and clashed with worshippers.

At least four people were killed in the clashes at the Abu Hanifa mosque and nine were wounded, the Muslim Clerics Association and witnesses said.

A roadside bomb attack in western Baghdad has killed three Iraqi National Guard forces, according to an Iraqi police official.

Shortly before the explosion, which happened at 9:15 a.m. (0615 GMT) Saturday, there were heavy clashes between insurgents and Iraqi National Guards — backed by U.S. forces — in the al-Amiriyah neighborhood.

Hours earlier, insurgents attacked a Baghdad police station, sparking a battle with police that lasted three hours, according to the police chief at the al-Adamiyah station.

At least three police were wounded in the fighting, Maj. General Kahlid al-Assel said

Read more…

From The Australian :

US troops discovered four decapitated bodies during military operations this week to purge northern Mosul of insurgents, a military spokesman said today.

All four bodies, whose identities were not established, were found on Thursday, and have been turned over to Iraqi authorities, said Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia.

Three of the bodies were found by the roadside in a north-eastern suburb of Mosul, the fourth in the southwestern part of the city, he said.

“Our troops came across them. They were by the roadside,” Hastings said.
[…]
US troops were “not able to identify them and say whether they were bodies of Iraqi National Guard, police or just anybody,” he said.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has strongly criticised what it calls the utter contempt for humanity shown by all sides in the fighting in Iraq.

The unusually pointed statement from the Geneva-based organisation reminds the warring parties that the killing of people not taking part in the fighting is prohibited under international humanitarian law.

The ICRC says complying with international law is not an option, it is an obligation.

Referring to the recent siege of the city of Fallujah, the committee also says events in Iraq have shown how difficult it has become for neutral aid organisations to bring help to those who are suffering.

From TownHall.com comes a summary of the facts as told to former Marine Colonel Oliver North :

For the record, here are the facts, because facts — not rumors or emotions — really are important. Here is what those who were there told me:

On Friday, Nov. 12, U.S. Marines were fired upon by terrorists armed with AK-47s, RPD machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades from a mosque and an adjacent building. The Marines returned fire, first with M-16s and 240G machine guns, and then, as they continued to take fire and casualties, they escalated to an MK-19, a 40mm grenade launcher and then an AT-4 missile.

When none of these weapons successfully eliminated enemy fire, the platoon commander called for and received permission to open fire with the main gun of an M-1 Abrams tank and then storm the buildings. In the ensuing assault, 10 terrorists were killed and five others were wounded, as the Marines went room-to-room clearing the buildings. Immediately afterward, two correspondents accompanying coalition forces were shown a large quantity of AK-47s, machine guns, mortar rounds, explosives, RPGs and hand grenades that had been stored in the mosque.

While the print and broadcast cameramen were photographing the evidence of a war crime — weapons being stored in a place of worship — the Marine unit received an order over the radio to advance and secure another building. As the bone-tired troops departed for their next objective, one of the correspondents asked what would become of the wounded terrorists. A Marine sergeant replied that another unit was to move up and evacuate the injured enemy to the rear for treatment and detention.

The following morning — Saturday — another platoon of Marines from a different company was attacked from the mosque. A second gunfight ensued, and once again, a squad of Marines assaulted the structure. They were accompanied by NBC correspondent Kevin Sites and his cameraman, taping for the “pool” — meaning that whatever tape he filed would be available to all the networks accredited to cover Operation New Dawn.

According to the videotape and the report filed after the action, as the Marines burst into one of the rooms inside the mosque, they found four terrorists — one dead and three wounded. In the video that has now been seen around the world, one of the battle-weary Marines points his weapon at one of the enemy combatants lying against the wall and shouts, “He's (expletive) faking he's dead. He's faking he's (expletive) dead.” An instant later, the Marine raises his rifle and fires into the insurgent's head. Immediately thereafter, another Marine can be heard saying, “Well, he's dead now.”
[…]
Only a few have seen the footage shot the day before — providing irrefutable evidence that the mosque was a well-defended arms depot. And fewer still have viewed the very next sequence after “the shooting,” which shows two Marines pointing their weapons at another combatant lying motionless. Suddenly, one of the Marines jumps back as the terrorist stretches out his hand, motioning that he is alive. Neither Marine opens fire.

This footage was shown in Australia, and the person in question shouts “Information! Information!” while the Marines back warily away, guns pointed at him.

According to the Marines, a Navy medical corpsman was then summoned to treat the two wounded prisoners.

From the Christian Science Monitor :

The scale of the weapons cache discovered Wednesday by Bravo Company at the suspected Zarqawi charity was the largest found in the city so far - and stashed in such a nondescript collection of buildings that US troops passed by several times without taking a closer look.

With an estimated 1,000 pounds of explosives, it could have caused damage up to six city blocks away, if detonated all at once. “Not all this stuff was being used for Fallujah - a lot was being exported out, and used as IEDs and car bombs in Ramadi and elsewhere,” says Colonel Tucker at the downtown site, just 200 yards from the central Hadra Mohamadiya mosque. “This was the central location for planning.”

The weapons store was laid out like an office, and worked under the legal name of the “Islamic Association - Fallujah Branch.” Offices were full of documents about prosthetic limbs, and emergency medical work.

Inside, too, were photographs of staffers handing out International Committee of the Red Cross food and medical packets. Some ICRC equipment still littered the rooms, along with orders for more crutches and wheelchairs.

But also mixed up in the paperwork were pamphlets about calls to jihad, similar to those found in Al Qaeda safe houses in Kabul after the Taliban fell.

Among the documents were listed the aims of the group, which made clear that “caring for those injured on the battlefield” - insurgents - take priority.

“On the surface, it looks real, with the Red Cross,” says an Arabic speaker who went through the documentation. “But their real job is something different…. It's like a front company. This is a medical facility to help insurgents.”

Ledgers listed big ticket, Iraqi donors. More ledgers were for those receiving cash or food. Outside, garbage sacks were full of car alarms - a favorite for rigging command-detonated car bombs and explosives. Homemade RPGs lay in the dirt, not far from scores of Iraqi-made RPGs, oiled and stacked like cordwood.

Antitank mines and mountains of rockets and mortars of every size and description choked the buildings. An initial explosion of larger ordnance including 14 SA-7 surface-to-air missiles sent a cement mixer flying 120 yards through the air.

Marines used wheelchairs as wheelbarrows Thursday to empty shipping containers of ammunition, gas masks, and mines, for further destruction.

As Fallujah yields up its secrets, US Marines say they will continue to push, even as they eye rebuilding efforts.

“We call it a 'three-block war.' You can be handing out relief supplies here,” says Tucker, pointing one way, “while fighting is taking place right over there - and you've got to be prepared to do both.

“Winning the fight is only part of it.”

Hat Tip : Powerline

From the AFP via the ABC :

Iraqi and US forces have killed 15 rebels and arrested 45 suspected insurgents over a 24-hour period in Mosul, which includes a dusk raid on a mosque and tea house in the northern city's old quarter.
[…]
The US military says it has received unconfirmed reports that 12 members of the Iraq's paramilitary National Guard had been kidnapped and possibly executed.

Rebels also left a trail of mayhem at a Government-owned food distribution warehouse on the west side of the city.

An AFP reporter embedded with the US military says voter registration forms for the January elections have been turned into smouldering ashes.

A force of about 400 newly-trained Iraqi commandos descended in pick-up trucks on the city's historic centre shortly after evening prayers.
[…]
Earlier, US commanders said up to 100 insurgents were thought to be in the neighbourhood, among them rebel leaders, and that the aim of the operation was to draw them out into the open.

“We are finding the (insurgent) pockets with Iraqis, and going and asking them to come out and fight,” Colonel Robert Brown, a senior US military commander in Mosul, said.

“Every time they fight, we will kill a lot of them.”

He said 15 rebels had been killed in joint operations throughout the city over the past 24 hours.

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

In the northern city of Kirkuk, US troops staged a raid in a neighbourhood suspected of housing militants involved in a string of attacks and nabbed 35 Iraqis.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A statement says one US soldier has been lightly wounded in another car bomb attack targeting a military patrol north-east of the city of Mosul.

In Samarra, a Sunni Muslim city north-east of Baghdad, two civilians have been killed by a roadside bomb.

In nearby Tikrit, a police officer and a civilian have been killed as unknown attackers opened fire on a police station, also wounding two people.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Muzher Khalaf says two policemen were also kidnapped and driven away towards the city of Kirkuk by armed attackers.

He also says further north, in Baiji, a woman and four other civilians have been shot dead by snipers after breaking the curfew.

It is not immediately known if the five have been killed by US or insurgent fire.

Elsewhere, the police chief of Babylon province survived a car bomb attack in the town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, although four people were wounded.

The attack is reportedly the third attempt on General Qais Hamza's life in the past month.

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

One policeman has been killed and 10 people have been wounded after a car bomb exploded in Baghdad, police said.

The blast occurred in the restive Palestine Street district.

The blast occurred as policemen from the nearby Zayuna station were setting up a checkpoint, police commander Jabbar Hassan said.

UPDATE: From the AFP via the ABC :

An explosives-laden car blew up in the restive Palestine Street district of the capital as policemen were setting up a checkpoint.

Police officers at a nearby hospital say one policeman and two civilians - a doctor and his wife - were killed in the attack and 13 wounded, most of them policemen.

Iraqi commandos backed by U.S. forces raided a hospital in northern Mosul (search) allegedly used by insurgents, and detained three people overnight, the U.S. military said Friday.

[…]

Commandos with the Ministry of Interior's Special Police Force cordoned off the al-Zaharawi Hospital in the western Shefa neighborhood on Thursday, after getting information that insurgents were treating their wounded there, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings with Task Force Olympia.

U.S. forces from the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment secured the area around the hospital, while Iraqi troops raided the building, detaining three individuals suspected of terrorist activities.

Read more…

The bodies of four Iraqi insurgents who died in the battle of Fallujah were expected to arrive Thursday night at Dover Air Force Base for autopsies as part of an expanding investigation into whether they were killed by U.S. forces after they surrendered or while they were wounded, Defense Department officials said.

The four are part of a Naval Criminal Investigative Service probe of the videotaped shooting of an apparently wounded and unarmed insurgent by a Marine at a Fallujah mosque last week, according to three officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Read more…

Bayan Jaber of the major Shiite political party said that a week ago, five Shiites traveling to Najaf from Diyala province near the Iranian border were waylaid in the “triangle of death” and shot dead. The attackers demanded — and received — $15,000 from their families to return the bodies.

According to Jaber, insurgent leaders in the area offer cash bounties for killing certain kinds of people: $1,000 for a Shiite, $2,000 for a member of the Iraqi National Guard and $3,000 for an American.

Read more…

U.S. troops sweeping through Fallujah on Thursday found what appeared to be a command center used by followers of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and a U.S. general expressed confidence the battle for the city has “broken the back of the insurgency.”

A separate raid near the suspected command center uncovered a bomb-making workshop where an SUV registered in Texas was being converted into a car bomb and a classroom that held flight plans and instructions on shooting down planes, according to a CNN crew embedded with the U.S. Army.

Read more..

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

The global managing editor of news provider Reuters says the US military is entirely to blame for the deaths of three of its employees in Iraq since the start of the war there in March 2003.

”All of them were killed by the American army,” Reuters chief David Schlesinger told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in the southern Portuguese resort of Vilamoura, national news agency Lusa reported.

“There is no understanding on the part of the US military regarding the the exercise of journalism,” the agency quoted him as saying.
[…]
Two Reuters photographers and a cameraman are among the more than 60 war-related deaths of media workers recorded in Iraq.

The most recent death occurred in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on November 1.

The US military says a cameraman killed there while on assignment for Reuters died in a gun battle between marines and insurgents.

But the Iraqi man's colleagues and family have said they believe he was shot by a US sniper.

Another Reuters cameraman, a Ukrainian citizen, was killed in April 2003 when a US Army tank fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

A cameraman from Spain's Telecinco television network was also killed in the strike, which injured three other reporters.

In October 2003, a Palestinian cameraman for Reuters was killed near Abu Ghraib prison during a shootout.

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

Clashes have broken out in Iraq after Iraqi national guardsmen raided a Sunni mosque in Baghdad's Adhamiya neighbourhood after weekly Friday prayers.

Eyewitnesses say at least two Iraqis were hurt in the clashes inside the Abu Hanifa mosque, which is considered one of the most important Sunni places of worship in Iraq.

Around 300 national guardsmen are reported to have stormed the mosque.

The purpose of the raid is not immediately clear.

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

At least 17 Iraqis died in attacks around the country, including a suicide car bombing in Baghdad and roadside bombings north of the capital, police said.

More details as they become available - the AFP story is being quoted verbatim by most MSM, without elaboration.

From Reuters via The Australian :

The group led by al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it had beheaded two Iraqi National Guards in broad daylight in Mosul, according to a statement found on an Islamist site today.

“They were both slaughtered in Mosul in front of a large group of people,'' the statement by Al Qaeda Organisation of Holy War in Iraq said, adding it happened yesterday afternoon.

The claim, dated November 18, could not be immediately verified.

“Just when the enemies of God thought they would crush us with their tyrannical military campaign in Fallujah … the al-Qaeda organisation in Iraq slaughtered two 'National Guards' on Thursday afternoon,'' the statement said, adding the men killed were at the rank of major and lieutenant.

From Islam Online :

Washington will win the military battle in the western Iraqi city of Fallujah but its strategic looses[sic] will certainly outweigh such a victory, said a French strategic expert.

Branding the US practices against the Fallujah residents as “state terrorism,” Pascal Boniface, Director of the Institute for International and Strategic Studies [sic] in Paris, expected the onslaught to further fan anti-US feelings in the entire Islamic world.

Addressing a seminar organized by the Arab World Institute on Wednesday, November 17, Boniface said the cold-blooded killing of an unarmed, wounded Iraqi by a US soldiers in a Fallujah mosques was not an isolated incident.

He said the murder as well as the prisoners abuses in the infamous Abu Ghreib and Guantanamo Bay detentions demonstrate an established policy and doctrine.
[…]
The French expert described the Fallujah offensive as a ” strategic loss” for the Bush administration.

The Americans would undoubtedly win the fighting but they would strategically lose the battle as they did with the Iraq invasion, Boniface said.
[…]
The French expert considered the Fallujah operation as a new proof of American troubles in the Iraqis quagmire.

He refuted American allegations that the offensive was to eliminate terrorists from the city.

Boniface expected the onslaught to fan the already spiraling anti-US sentiments across Arab and Muslim countries and create more generations of those described by Washington as terrorists, not only in Iraq but in other parts of the world.

He added that the operation also killed stone dead the legitimacy of the planned January elections and its outcome.

The interim government lost credibility among Iraqis and Arabs who see it as a puppet in the hands of the US occupation forces, said the French expert.
[…]
Boniface hailed Arab popular reaction to the Fallujah offensive.

He said that despite the absence of democracy and political pressure groups, the Arab public opinion is turning into a mighty force interacting with developments in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

The French expert noted that the emerging force of the public opinion, motivated by the Arab satellite channels, is now seen by the west and the Americans as the official spokesman of the Arab world.

The well-connected Paris-based IRIS (Institute for International and Strategic Relations) is not to be confused with the highly regarded IISS, (International Institute for Strategic Studies).

Elaborating on a previous post, from Middle East Online :

The US-led assault on Fallujah has “broken the back of the insurgency” in Iraq by taking away its safe haven, scattering operatives and disrupting their command networks, the top US marine commander in Iraq said.

Lieutenant General John Sattler said the city was secure 11 days after the start of Operation Dawn, but not safe. Heavy fighting was still erupting in some quarters of the city as marines and Iraqi troops clear buildings of holdouts.

“Based on some of the records and ledgers we've been able to uncover, we feel right now that we have … broken the back of the insurgency and we've taken away the safe haven,” Sattler said.

The offensive would force the insurgents to set up operations in less familiar areas with untested allies, he added.

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

…a statement posted on the website of Sunni Muslim militant group Ansar al-Sunna threatened to attack both candidates and voters in elections.

”We will target anyone who dares to stand in these elections because they will be considered apostates,” said the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently verified.

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

The marine and soldier died during continuing mop-up operations in the former insurgent bastion, raising the coalition toll in the fighting to retake the city to 51 US dead and eight Iraqis, the top US Marine commander there said.

US-led troops continued to engage in sporadic battles against rebels in Fallujah after launching a major assault to wrest the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad from insurgents 10 days ago.
[…]
Iraqi volunteers and US troops were able to clear 24 corpses from the battered city and evacuate five civilians.

The Iraqi Red Crescent said 150 families remained stranded.

From the New York Times :

The Department of Defense has identified 1,212 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans this week:

HEFLIN, Christopher T., 26, Sgt., Marines; Paducah, Ky.; First Marine Division.

QUALLS, Louis W., 20, Lance Cpl., Temple, Tex.; Fourth Marine Division.

WULLENWABER, Luke C., 24, First Lt., Army; Lewiston, Idaho; Second Infantry Division.

From The Age :

Senior US marine intelligence officers in Iraq are warning that insurgents will rebound from their defeat if planned cuts to US troop levels in Fallujah go ahead.

The rebels could thwart retraining of Iraqi security forces, intimidate local residents and derail January elections, the officers say.

They fear that despite the insurgents' heavy casualties in the week-long Fallujah battle, their numbers will continue to grow, there will be further guerilla attacks and fighters will foment unrest among Fallujah's returning residents, using the idea that expectations for better conditions have not been met.

The warning is contained in a classified report prepared by intelligence officers in the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force last weekend as the Fallujah offensive was winding down. The leaked assessment was distributed to senior officers in Iraq, where one called it “brutally honest”.
[…]
The intelligence assessment offers a stark counterpoint to more positive assessments by military chiefs in the wake of the Fallujah operation, which they say completed its goals well ahead of schedule and with fewer Iraqi civilian and US casualties than expected.

Senior military officers in Iraq and Washington who have read the report cautioned that the assessment was a subjective judgement by some marine intelligence officers near the front lines and did not reflect the views of all intelligence officials and senior commanders in Iraq.

“The assessment of the enemy is a worst-case assessment,” the senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, Brigadier-General John DeFreitas, said.

“We have no intention of creating a vacuum and walking away from Fallujah.”

A senior officer in Washington said the view from the tactical intelligence level had generally been more pessimistic than that from officers at the strategic level.

From the BBC :

Three Frenchmen have died fighting with insurgents against US-led troops in Iraq, reports say.

The men, all of Arab origin, were killed in the country over recent months as the insurgency has flared.

Two of the men were aged 19 and the third was 24 years old, a French official said.

Authorities estimate that around a dozen Frenchmen of North African or Arab background have travelled to Iraq to join the insurgency.

The men were identified as

• 24-year-old Tarek W, from Paris, killed on 17 September

• 19-year-old Redouane el-Hakim, killed on 17 July

• Abdel Halim Badjoudj, 19, killed on 20 October.

Note that a handful of Australians, Britons and Americans were caught fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

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

Iraqi police have arrested a senior aide to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr in the southern city of Najaf.

”Sheikh Hashem Abu Raghif was arrested at his home Wednesday night after detainees were forced to confess that he had ordered torture against prisoners detained by the Sadr movement,” Sheikh Ali Smeism said.

Before it was ousted from Najaf after an August offensive led by the US army, the Sadr movement had established its own tribunals and jails in the holy city.

Meanwhile Iraqi police and national guards have detained more than 100 suspected militants in raids around Haifa Street, a rebellious Sunni Muslim stronghold in Baghdad.

In all 104 people were arrested, including nine who were suspected of having escaped from the US-led offensive against the rebel city of Fallujah over the past 10 days.

From the New York Times :

A Senate committee investigating the United Nations oil-for-food program for Iraq estimates that during 13 years of international sanctions, Saddam Hussein's government made at least $21.3 billion illicitly - more than double previous government estimates.

Senator Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said at a subcommittee hearing on Monday that he doubted that fraud and abuse on this scale could have gone undetected by senior United Nations officials or their American counterparts. Because it was unknown where the illicit money ended up, he said, he was worried that it may be helping to finance the insurgency in Iraq.

From Reuters via News Ltd :

An Iraqi freelance journalist working for Dubai based Al-Arabiya television and The Associated Press had been detained by US troops in Fallujah since last week, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The US military said it was not aware of any such detention.

Citing another Al-Arabiya correspondent as its source, the Committee to Protect Journalists said the Arabic satellite station lost contact with Abdel Kader Saadi, a reporter and photographer living and working in the Sunni Muslim city, on November 11.

US forces launched a massive assault on Fallujah last week. US artillery was still pounding the city today as troops hunted remaining guerrillas, days after Washington said its offensive had destroyed rebel control of the city.

The Committee to Protect Journalists quoted Al-Arabiya as saying Mr Saadi had been detained in a mosque along with several other civilians, and had been wearing a flak jacket with the word “Press” on it in Arabic and English.
[…]
Lieutenant Colonel Joe Yoswa, a Defence Department spokesman, said the military had no information on such an incident.

“We are unaware of any journalist being detained by US forces during combat operations in Fallujah, or any request from news media about missing journalists in Fallujah,” he said.

A spokesman for The Associated Press could not confirm the detention.

From The Australian :

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has voiced his concern to the US military after footage of a US Marine killing a wounded Iraqi was broadcast on television channels worldwide.

”The prime minister is very concerned by allegations of an illegal killing by multinational forces in Fallujah. He has discussed the matter with the commander of the multinational force in Iraq, General (George) Casey,” the statement said.

“General Casey has assured the prime minister that an urgent inquiry is underway, and that he will share its findings with the Iraqi government in full and with complete transparency,” it added.

From The Australian :

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has denounced what he described as crimes committed by “infidels” in the shattered Iraq city of Fallujah and called on the Muslim world to protest.

”The massacre of civilians, women and children by the thousands, the execution of wounded, the destruction of homes, mosques and other places of prayer… makes every Muslim restless,” Khamenei said in a statement read out on state television.

He said the Americans wanted to spread “the events of Fallujah elsewhere in Iraq, notably Mosul, Samarra and Baquba”, as state television showed television pictures of a US Marine allegedly shooting dead an injured insurgent.

Muslim governments “must protest against the crimes committed by the infidel oppressors,” said Iran's all-powerful leader, while criticising “Arab and Islamic governments who stand by and watch while we hear appeals for help from the Iraqi people.”

“All of these crimes are committed by the occupation forces under the pretext that terrorists are among the population. Does this seriously doubted pretext give the right to murder innocent people, to leace the injured untreated and abandon starving women and children?” the statement said.

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

A car bomb has exploded outside an Iraqi police station in western Baghdad today, killing two Iraqis and wounding four others, the US military says.

An Iraqi woman was among the dead, according to US army specialist Stephen Rivera, who said no US soldiers or Iraqi security personnel were hurt.

The attack occurred shortly before 10:00am local time at the Yarmuk police station.

From Reuters via The Australian :

A roadside bomb killed four people - two women, a man and a child - in Baiji, in the restive Sunni Muslim region north of Baghdad, which has endured a sharp rise in violence over the past week.
[…]
In Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed oil-producing city 250km north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb that appeared to target a US military convoy left two Iraqi civilians dead. Police in Kirkuk said the blast damaged several vehicles.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed one Iraqi and wounded another.

From Reuters via The Australian :

Rebels attacked the provincial governor's office in Iraq's third city of Mosul today, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding four more, the US military said.
[…]
Insurgents lobbed 10 mortar rounds at the governor's office in Mosul, 390km north of Baghdad, setting ablaze a fuel tanker parked nearby, a US military spokeswoman said.

Governor Duraid Kashmoula, whose predecessor was assassinated in July, was unhurt.

Rebels also fired six mortar rounds at a US military base in Mosul, but there were no injuries.

From the Independant, via the South African Mercury :

In the background of these appalling pictures, there were none of the usual Islamic banners. There were none of the usual armed and hooded men. There were no Quranic recitations.

And when it percolated through to Fallujah and Ramadi that the mere act of kidnapping Margaret Hassan was close to heresy, the combined resistance groups of Fallujah - and the message genuinely came from them - demanded her release.

So, incredibly, did Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al-Qaeda man whom the Americans falsely claimed to be leading the Iraqi insurrection, but who has very definitely been involved in the kidnapping and beheading of foreigners.

Other abducted women - the two Italian aid workers, for example - were freed when their captors recognised their innocence. But not Margaret Hassan, even though she spoke fluent Arabic and could explain her work to her captors in their own language.

There was one mysterious video that floated to the surface this year - a group promising to seize al-Zarqawi, claiming he was anti-Iraqi, politely referring to the occupation armies as “the coalition forces”.

This was quickly nicknamed the “Alawi tape” - after the American- appointed ex-CIA agent and ex-Baathist who holds the title of “Interim Prime Minister” in Iraq, the same Alawi who fatuously claimed there had been no civilian deaths in Fallujah.

So if anyone doubted the murderous nature of the insurgents, what better way to prove their viciousness than to produce evidence of Margaret Hassan's murder?

What more ruthless way could there be of demonstrating to the world that America and Alawi's tinpot army was fighting “evil” in Fallujah and the other Iraqi cities that are now controlled by Washington's enemies.

No, of course we cannot say that Alawi was involved in Margaret Hassan's death, even though he would have hated her political views.

Just because the “Interim Prime Minister” is widely believed in Baghdad to have executed seven prisoners in the Amariya Police Station just before taking office - he denies this - should not suggest he would ever have a hand in so terrible a deed.

But the question remains: Who killed Margaret Hassan?

Updating a previous post, from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Britain has rejected an estimate by US researchers that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died as a result of the war, agreeing with an Iraqi Government figure of a much smaller body count.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the estimate, in a report published late last month by British medical journal The Lancet, was based on imprecise data.

London supports an estimate from Iraq's Ministry of Health that 3,853 civilians were killed and 15,517 injured between April and October this year, Mr Straw said in a statement.

Those figures may include insurgents.

The report from The Lancet was released just days before the US presidential election, where Iraq was a major campaign issue.

The Lancet report stated there was a 90% chance of the number of dead being somewhere between 8,000 and 192,000, excluding the figures for pre-assault Fallujah, where their method showed that everyone in it was dead or injured.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

US officers in Fallujah said Marines were “cleaning up” Iraqi and foreign Islamists and Saddam Hussein loyalists, and Iraq's interim government said some 1,600 rebels lay dead.

Mortar fire and heavy explosive rounds crashed on areas where insurgents were believed still to be holding out.
[…]
In Ramadi, just west of Fallujah, nine Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded when US forces confronted large groups of rocket and mortar-firing gunmen who fanned out through the streets, hospital officials and witnesses said.

Iraq's third city Mosul, another Sunni stronghold in the north, was quiet after days of clashes. The road north from Baghdad remained dangerous and three Turkish truck drivers were killed in two ambushes, police said.

Iraq's fledgling security forces, set up under US control to replace Saddam's discredited authorities, were targeted again. For once, a group of unarmed police recruits was able to outwit guerrillas who have killed dozens of their comrades.

Held up by gunmen at a hotel in Rutba on their way home from training in Jordan, 35 recruits from the southern, Shiite city of Kerbala hid their police papers pretending to be businessmen, Kerbala's police chief said. After three hours, the gunmen left.

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

The United Nations is investigating reports that British soldiers in Iraq have mistreated Iraqi citizens.

The UN committee is also looking at accusations that terrorist suspects held in Britain have been ill-treated.

The cases range from road traffic accidents, to incidents where people were caught in crossfire.

Only 17 could be classed as cruel or degrading treatment or torture, Britain said, and only one has so far been referred for trial.

Members of the committee on torture want more details of these investigations, but the most searching questions were on Britain's anti-terrorism laws.

Britain had said its policy of holding foreign nationals suspected of terrorist activities was justified, because there was an emergency, threatening the life of the nation.

The committee asked why detainees were not being brought before a judge.

From the Scotsman :

The 10 member UN Committee against Torture quizzed British officials on compliance with a 20-year-old accord imposing a broad ban on mistreatment.
[…]
The UN panel gathers in Geneva twice a year and is expected to release its conclusions on Friday.

Criticism by the UN body brings no penalties but draws international attention to a country’s record on torture.

Martin Howard, a senior Ministry of Defence official, told the inquiry that military police have probed 17 cases which ”could be categorised as alleging inhumane or degrading treatment or torture.”

Of the 17 cases, eight have been closed with no crime established, Howard said. Five are still under investigation, three have been passed to military prosecutors and one is set for trial.
[…]
Twelve of the total 17 Islamic terrorist suspects detained under the law remain in custody.

Last month, Britain’s highest court rejected an appeal from nine suspects, saying the law was a “legitimate and appropriate response” to the post-September 11 threat from international terrorism. The government has not told the detainees, some of whom have been held for almost three years, why they were arrested.

Jonathan Spencer, an official from Britain’s Department of Constitutional Affairs, told the UN panel that the rules are “a necessary and a vital weapon in the government’s armoury against suspected foreign terrorists who pose a serious and continuing threat to national security.”

The prisoners are well-treated, he added.

“They are not incommunicado, and if they wish to make any allegations about their treatment they can bring proceedings and claim damages.”

The UN Committee aganist Torture contains members from Senegal, Egypt, USA, Chile, Spain, Cyprus, Ecuador, Denmark, Russia, and China.

Updating a previous post, from Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Up to 15 Iraqis have been killed and 22 others wounded, when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a US armoured vehicle in the northern oil city of Baiji.

Witnesses say the bomb was detonated in a market area near the centre of the Sunni Muslim city. Six women and six children are reported to be among the dead.

It also damaged the US vehicle and wounded several troops.

Clashes between American-led troops and insurgents later erupted in several parts of Baiji, prompting the US military to seal off an oil refinery in the north of the city, to protect it from attack.

From The Mesopotamian :

Armed bands have effectively severed the road leading south through the triangle of Latifiya-Iskandariya-Yousifiya. This is a belt separating the south from Baghdad. The demography of this belt is characterized by tribes who had very close links to the defunct regime. Awful crimes are being perpetrated on these roads. People are being murdered simply for having the wrong names. It is a deliberate attempt to ignite a sectarian war. In fact a sectarian war has already been declared, unfortunately, by elements of certain tribal and sectarian affiliation. Some southern Shiaa tribes are already calling for armed committees to combat the armed bands who are killing people on the road. There are reports that the bandits are moving to cut the other road that bypasses Latifiya, which means severing the capital completely. This is a serious situation, and urgent measures are required before a general conflagration of a sectarian nature takes place on the southern approaches to Baghdad and in Baghdad itself, which can isolate the Capital and complicate things beyond control for the Iraqi Government and the MNF.

I repeat this is more important than any other thing, and should be addressed without delay before it gets out of control. Securing the capital is more important than anything that might happen to the provinces. Securing Baghdad is at least 80% of securing the country as a whole.

URGENT, URGENT, URGENT; I hope this message reaches some right places. Protect the roads- lift the siege on the capital. It does not require nearly as much resources as the Fallujah operation; but if the matter is left without swift remedy, it might escalate into something very serious and ugly indeed.

No word on whether he was injured or not though.

From The Australian :

A car bomber rammed into a US tank today as American forces battled militants north of Baghdad, leaving at least 10 people dead by the bombing and fighting, witnesses said.

At least 20 others were injured by the car bomb and the heavy clashes in Beiji, 250km north of the capital.

There was no immediate comment from the US military on the incident, and it was unclear whether there were any American casualties.

From The Australian :

Arabs were torn between seething rage at images of a US soldier shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in a mosque and dismay at Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah for turning holy mosques into battlegrounds.

Viewers said images, which Arab televisions aired repeatedly of a US Marine killing a severely injured Iraqi, fuelled growing hatred against America and helped create more “terrorists”.

“I am not a jihadist, I am just a normal Muslim but such scenes are pushing me to Jihad,” said Dubai-based engineer Abdallah.

“We don't expect this from the representative of democracy in the world.”

“This is one of the things we saw on TV. God knows how many crimes they have committed which we have not seen,” he added.

“If I was in the US soldier's place I would have killed all the insurgents because they are mercenaries,” said Saudi Zaher al-Saleh, a 32-year-old teacher.

”They have turned the mosques into battlefields and they're killing civilians.”

“It's as if they had killed every one of us. Today, it's that poor man, tomorrow, it will be me,” said Sherine Mohamed, 27, a financial analyst.

“Even if militants didn't respect mosque sanctities, US soldiers should have done so because they claim to help Iraqis.”

Muslims said pictures showing Marines lounging with their guns in a Fallujah mosque were “insulting”.

They said soldiers “sullied the ground with their boots” at the mosque where Muslims are obliged to take off their shoes in respect for the house of God.

“They are entering dangerous waters. If they think they are getting rid of terrorists this way, they are mistaken. They are creating more terrorists than killing them,” added Abdallah.

International human rights groups said the killing could amount to a war crime and showed the need to better train US forces about the laws of war.
[…]
The United Arab Emirates' Al-Ittihad newspaper said the killing was “shocking and provocative” and demanded Washington investigate the “horrifying crime”.

“If this crime goes unpunished it will set a dangerous precedent in US policies and will destroy everything (good) it has done for Iraq,” it added.

Arab animosity towards US presence in Iraq has ratcheted up since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that resulted in the sentencing of several US soldiers.

Lebanon's Shiite Muslim Hizbollah TV Al-Manar led its newscasts with the shooting and said it showed “the ugliness of the actions that occupation forces are carrying out in Iraq”.

“US forces violating laws and committing atrocities is not new. What has surfaced is only a small part of what Iraqis are facing,” said Shehab al-Ahdal, editor-in-chief of Yemen's al-Nahar newspaper.

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

Iraqi police say insurgent forces have attacked a domestic oil pipeline west of the city of Samarra in the latest strike against Iraq's major industry.

Police spokesman Mohammad Mahmud said the saboteurs used explosives in what was the sixth such attack in as many months.

“At 8:00am, four kilometres west of Samarra, insurgents detonated explosives on a pipeline that links the Baiji refinery with the refinery in Dora [south of Baghdad],” he said.

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

US-led forces say they are in control of most police stations on the western side of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul after launching a massive offensive against insurgents.

At least eight rebels were killed when they tried to ambush a US convoy near the old city of Mosul on Tuesday, a US commander said, while at least two soldiers were wounded when booby-trapped cars exploded near military convoys.

But Lieutenant Colonel Michael Kurilla said US and Iraqi forces sweeping through the city had occupied six police stations on the west bank of the Tigris without a fight and were also securing the provincial government building.

“In combined effort we are securing critical infrastructure in the city,” he said.

About 1,200 US soldiers and 1,600 Iraqi army and national guard units were involved in the operation which began on Tuesday after rebels overran about a dozen police stations, torching buildings and sending policemen fleeing.

And from the Boston Globe :

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Wednesday that Mosul appeared calmer after operations to restore control in the western part of the city, with only a handful of isolated attacks with small arms fire.

''It's been quiet overnight. We'll continue with operations to clear out the last remaining pockets of the insurgency,'' said Capt. Angela Bowman, with Task Force Olympia.

Troops met ''very little resistance'' Tuesday in securing several of the dozen or so police stations that had been captured by insurgents, the U.S. military command said. Loud explosions and gunfire rang out Tuesday as U.S. warplanes and helicopters circled over Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city with more than 1 million residents.

Mortar shells hit two areas near the main government building in the city center, killing three civilians and wounding 25, hospital officials said. One American soldier was wounded when a car bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy in western Mosul, the military said.

From News Limited :

Five Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded today when a car bomb exploded near a US military patrol in the northern oil city of Baiji, hospital officials said.

Witnesses said the bomb, which blew up in a market area near the centre of the Sunni Muslim city, damaged a US armoured vehicle, prompting some of the troops to open fire.

It was not clear whether they caused some of the casualties.

Several US soldiers appeared to have been hurt, witnesses said. There was no immediate comment from the US military.

Also in Sunni Muslim territory north of Baghdad, Iraqi police said they found the bodies of two Turkish drivers whose trucks had been destroyed when guerrillas attacked their convoy with rocket-propelled grenades.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Top United Nations human rights official Louise Arbour has called for investigation of alleged abuses in Fallujah, Iraq, including disproportionate use of force and the targeting of civilians.

Those responsible for any violations - US and multinational forces, Iraqi government troops or insurgents - should be brought to justice, the former UN war crimes prosecutor said in a statement.

“There have been a number of reports during the current confrontation alleging violations of the rules of war designed to protect civilians and combatants,” the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

She gave no specific examples. On Monday, Amnesty International accused both sides of breaking rules designed to protect civilians and wounded combatants during conflict.

Attacking US and Iraqi troops had failed to take necessary steps to ensure non-combatants did not come under fire and insurgents had abused flags of truce and fired indiscriminately, the London-based group said.

All violations of international humanitarian and human rights law must be investigated, including “the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons and the use of human shields”, Ms Arbour said.

From the Boston Globe :

Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S. Marines, freed a captive Iraqi truck driver during a raid south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

The Monday raid took place near Mahmoudiya, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, as the joint force swept through several buildings in search of militants in the area, a military statement said. The rescued hostage, who was not identified, was taken to a nearby U.S. base, where he received medical treatment before being released.

From News Ltd :

The Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has joined a growing chorus of concern over the killing of a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner by a US marine in Fallujah, while criticising US forces for denying access to the battle-scarred city.

Article three of the Geneva Conventions “clearly bans any attack against a person who is not taking part, or is no longer taking part, in hostilities, that includes those wounded, taken prisoner or a civilian”, ICRC spokeswoman Antonella Notari spelt out.

From the Boston Globe :

Insurgents attacked Iraqi security forces with mortars and roadside bombs across the rebellious Sunni Triangle on Wednesday, a day after U.S. and Iraqi troops launched an offensive to push militant fighters out of the northern city of Mosul.

South of Baghdad, a roadside bomb detonated Wednesday near an Iraqi National Guard convoy in the insurgent hotspot of Iskandariyah, killing two guardsmen and wounding three others, police and hospital officials said.

In the central city of Baqouba, insurgents attacked police headquarters with gunfire late Tuesday, then with a mortar attack Wednesday, though no casualties were reported, police said.

On Monday, U.S. troops and Iraqi forces fought insurgents in pitched battles that left at least 20 enemy fighters dead in the guerrilla hotspot of Baqouba. One Iraqi policeman and seven civilians were also killed. The Monday clashes left 15 others wounded, including four American 1st Infantry Division soldiers, the military said.

On Wednesday, a car bomb rammed into a civilian convoy along Baghdad's airport road, setting vehicles on fire, police said. American forces sealed off the area and helicopters were seen hovering overhead. It was unclear whether there were any casualties.

In Fallujah, heavy machine gunfire and explosions were heard Wednesday morning coming from the south-central parts of the city as US. Marines continued to hunt for remaining fighters.

In the city's northern Jolan neighborhood, Marines fought insurgents who officers said had snuck back into the city by swimming across the Euphrates river.

Bullets snapped overhead as Iraqi body-collection workers supervised by the Marines cowered against walls and in buildings. After 15 minutes of fighting, three rebels were dead and one Marine lightly injured in the hand, officers said.

From Middle East Online :

Sometimes, the killings in Fallujah resembled gangland hits, with nothing so elaborate as a torture room. On Monday, 12 male corpses were found in two homes, six in a living room, and another half dozen in a bedroom, their bodies tangled together, stacked on each other.

Next to one of the execution homes, seven Iraqi males were discovered locked in a yellow brick home, surrounded by violet flowers and tall grass.

The men could smell the corpses next door and appeared in shock.

“It was like they were beaten up dogs,” said Sergeant Gary Caduto.

One of the newly freed men said that the fighters had gathered them at gunpoint and, when they refused to fight, “they told us we will teach you what you get when you refuse,” he said.

Another of the men said: “They hit me” and showed a bruise on his neck.

A US marine intelligence officer said he believed the men were next in line to be executed by the insurgents.

From Reuters via The Australian :

Last year's US-led invasion of Iraq and ousting of President Saddam Hussein has made the world more dangerous, French President Jacques Chirac said on the eve of a state visit to key US ally Britain.

The French leader's interview with the BBC, excerpts of which were aired today, indicate little chance of success for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts to mend Franco-American ties damaged by the Iraq war.

“I'm not at all sure that one can say the world is safer,” Mr Chirac said. “There is no doubt there has been an increase in terrorism.”

“To a certain extent Saddam Hussein's departure was a positive thing but it also provoked reaction such as the mobilisation in a number of countries of men and women of Islam which has made the world more dangerous.”

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

The US military has charged an Army officer with premeditated murder for his part in the fatal shooting of an injured Iraqi man in Baghdad's Sadr City slum in August, officials have said.

Army 2nd Lieutenant Erick Anderson was charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, according to a statement provided by Lieutenant Colonel James Hutton, a spokesman for the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad.

If tried and convicted in a US military court, he could face the death penalty.

Military investigators had looked into whether Anderson authorised two subordinates, Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban and Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne, to shoot a young Iraqi man already grievously wounded and unlikely to survive.
[…]
Anderson, Alban and Horne were part of a US Army patrol going through the heavily Shiite Muslim Sadr City district during a period of intense clashes with fighters loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, according to military prosecutors.

US soldiers saw a group of Iraqi men in a dump truck who they suspected were placing bombs along a road, and opened fire on them. Several Iraqis were killed.

Alban and Horne were accused of fatally shooting an Iraqi man who suffered severe abdominal wounds and burns after the initial barrage of gunfire.

Military investigators looked into whether Anderson authorised Alban and Horne to shoot the wounded man to “put him out of his misery”.

Lt Col Hutton said the next step for Anderson may be a hearing in which evidence is presented to an investigating officer, who then makes a recommendation on whether to proceed to a court-martial.

“Wellington once observed that “nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.” Nothing about it is nice; but better them than us.”
  — Wretchard the Cat

As many of our readers know, there's a very significant battle going on in Fallujah right now. Want a one-stop shop that will help you keep track of what's going on as things develop, and link you to some of the smartest background analysis around so you understand the why and how, as well as the what? OK, you got it. One power-packed briefing, in depth and in detail.

Nov. 13/04: Evariste, of Discarded Lies, Obsidian of Obsidian Order, and Bill Roggio of the fourth rail have now joined in to help keep this briefing up to date. If you have a news item we've missed, please post it in the comments or email it to evariste, who will be updating this post periodically.

• Visual Aids
• Background & Context: Before the Battle
• Background & Context: The Bigger Picture
• Background & Context: The Military Dimension
• Background & Context: The Press' Performance
• Reports: Opening Moves - And So, It Begins…
• Reports: Into The Mid-Game
  ** Nov. 09
  ** Nov. 10
  ** Nov. 11
• Reports: Entering the Endgame
  ** Nov. 12
  ** Nov. 13
  ** Nov. 14
  ** Nov. 15
  ** Nov. 16

This briefing will be updated as excellent new sources are found and events continue to develop. Readers are welcome to suggest additional items for inclusion via the Winds of Change.NET Comments section.

Nov 16, 2004

Highlight of the Night: Bill Roggio at the fourth rail writes in Into the Sunni Triangle that the task now ahead of us is nothing less than the conquest of the Sunni Triangle (not reconquest, conquest)-because that had been the 4th ID's job, and it was denied permission to deploy from Turkish territory. By his lights, we serendipitously stumbled into a situation that, while hard, gives Iraqis a prominent role in the ultimate pacification of their country and is therefore a good thing.

Political solutions to the problems in the Sunni Triangle were sought by the Iraqi Governing council and the Interim government, but these attempts have failed. The Coalition and Iraqi government has demonstrated to the Iraqi people that the political options have been exhausted and has assembled Iraqi security forces able to participate in operations to establish government control. While the delayed timing of the pacification has fueled the resolve of insurgents, it has allowed the efforts to crush the insurgents to take on an Iraqi face. The Iraqis are committing to restoring order to their nation and have a stake in the outcome. While there is little doubt more American troops would have helped with restoring order sooner, it is beneficial in the long run with having the Iraqis actively participating in the restoration of order and their own liberation from the brutal coalition of terrorists and Saddam loyalists.

He has much more.

AP: Aid Worker's Family Believes She Is Dead

The family of Margaret Hassan, the 59-year-old aid worker kidnapped in Iraq last month, said Tuesday they believed she was dead.

A statement from Hassan's four brothers and sisters was released by Britain's Foreign Office.

“Our hearts are broken,” it said. “We have kept hoping for as long as we could, but we now have to accept that Margaret has probably gone and at last her suffering has ended.”

Update:

Kidnapped aid worker Margaret Hassan (search) was believed to be dead Tuesday after a video received by Al-Jazeera (search) television showed a hooded figure shooting a blindfolded woman in the head.

[…]

The video shows a militant firing a pistol into the head of a blindfolded woman wearing an orange jumpsuit, Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said. “She was presumed to be Mrs. Hassan,” he told The Associated Press.

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

US soldiers struggled to clear pockets of resistance in Fallujah, where guerrillas were said to be “fighting to the death,” as clashes spreading north-east of Baghdad killed more than 50 people.

At least five suicide car bombers targeted American troops elsewhere in volatile Sunni Muslim areas north and west of the capital on Monday, wounding at least nine Americans. Three of those bombings occurred nearly simultaneously in locations between Fallujah and the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, the US command said.
[…]
The zone between Fallujah and Ramadi was one of at least three areas on Monday in which insurgents pulled off almost-simultaneous attacks against US or Iraqi forces, suggesting a level of military sophistication and planning not seen in the early months of the insurgency last year.

In Mosul, where an uprising broke out last week in support of the Fallujah defenders, a suicide driver tried to ram his bomb-laden vehicle into a US convoy, the military said. He missed but set off the explosives, wounding five soldiers, four of them slightly.

”I expect the next few days will still bring some hard fighting,” Brigadier General Carter Ham, commander of US forces in Mosul, said in a statement.

“So, overall, I'd stand by my assessment that the situation in Mosul is tense, but certainly not desperate.”

Pressing their own offensive in central and northern Iraq, insurgents attacked police stations, Iraqi security forces, US military convoys and oil installations across a wide area of the Sunni Muslim heartland.

In a speech found on Monday on the internet, a speaker said to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the country's most feared terrorist leader, called on his followers to “shower” the Americans “with rockets and mortars” because US forces were spread too thin as they seek to “finish off Islam in Fallujah”.
[…]
The worst reported fighting on Monday took place about 55 kilometres north-east of Baghdad after assaults, at almost the same time, on police stations in Baqouba and its twin city, Buhriz.

Gunmen abducted police Colonel Qassim Mohammed, took him to the Buhriz police station and threatened to kill him if police didn't surrender the station.

When police refused, the gunmen tied the colonel's hands behind his back and shot him dead.

US and Iraqi troops rushed to the scene, setting off a gunbattle that killed 26 insurgents and five other Iraqi police, Iraqi officials said.

At the same time, insurgents attacked a police station in Baqouba and seized another building. US aircraft dropped two 225-kilogram bombs before the end of the fighting, in which four American soldiers were wounded, the US command said.

During the fighting, US troops came under fire from a mosque, the US military said. Iraqi security stormed the mosque and found rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and other weapons and ammunition, the statement said.

Saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline on Monday, shutting down Iraqi oil exports from the north, and set fire to a storage and pumping station in northern Iraq, officials said.

Gunmen carried out near-simultaneous attacks on a police station and an Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Suwayrah, 40km south of Baghdad, killing seven Iraqi police and soldiers.

From the AP :

The leader of a militant group involved in beheading hostages and other attacks has been arrested and the group was broken up, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Monday.

Allawi identified the group as Jaish Muhammad, Arabic for Muhammad's Army. The group “has been arrested … We arrested their leader,” Allawi said, identifying him as Moayad Ahmed Yasseen, also known as Abu Ahmed.

Muhammad's Army was known to have cooperated with Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida and Saddam loyalists and was responsible for killing and beheading a number of Iraqis, Arabs and foreigners in Iraq, Allawi said.
[…]
The militant group was arrested during U.S.-led military operations in Fallujah, the television station said.

Allawi also said officials had arrested members of another group, whom he did not name. He said they have been detained and will be interrogated.

The U.S. military has said in the past that Jaish Mohammed appears to be an umbrella group for former intelligence agents, army, security officials, and Baath Party members.

From the Telegraph :

The new patients at the field aid station screamed out in agony as they were gently laid on stretchers. Fresh from the battlefield, flies swarmed around their infected wounds. US army medics barked out orders beside the makeshift triage beds.

But the four men being treated were not American soldiers. Blindfolded, stripped to the waist, the tags tied to their stretchers identified them as “EPWs” - enemy prisoners of war.

Disorientated and perhaps bewildered, they were surrounded by doctors and US interrogators with their translators, seeking to gain intelligence that might be of use in the battle for Fallujah.

The four were all foreigners - three Jordanians and a Sudanese. “These were the guys shooting RPGs [Rocket Propelled Grenades] at us,” said a burly military intelligence NCO.

“They came out of their holes and just surrendered. We can't get any straight stories. They all say they came to work.”
[…]
Beside the aid station, battle-weary Task Force 2-2 soldiers debated whether prisoners should be helped. “They made a mistake not shooting those guys,” said one.

“We can't do that, dude,” another said angrily. “That would make us barbarians. We're Americans. They'll go to Guantanamo and have a nice stay at our facility there.”

Except these are foreigners, and the Iraqi Government may decide something quite different. See previous post.

From the BBC via the