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.