Note: Also available at the “Opinion Journal” and Chrenkoff. Many thanks to James Taranto, Joe Katzman, and all of you for your continuing support for the series.

“After a heroic election day comes the practical business of forming a stable government. And in that sense, the new Iraq is proving to be no different from any other democracy. Iraqis are talking about politics this week, rather than suicide bombers. The political elite is bargaining over who will get what job in the new government, rather than who will get killed by the insurgents. The public mood, at least judging from conversations with Iraqis here, is much lighter than when I visited Baghdad two months ago.”

So writes David Ignatius in his recent column. Ignatius could hardly be described as an optimist on Iraq; much can still go wrong, as he and everyday news coverage painfully remind us, but as he writes,

“…for the moment, Iraq does seem to have turned a corner politically. The most telling sign is that the Sunnis who mostly boycotted the political process are now said to be looking for ways to get back in. One prominent Iraqi describes a recent meeting with leading Sunni sheikhs who complained that they had mistakenly assumed the Americans would lose their nerve, postpone the elections and thereby enhance the power of the insurgents. Now the sheikhs want a piece of the action.”

The fact that so many people, and not just the Sunni sheikhs, now want the piece of the Iraqi action perhaps tells us more about the true situation and future prospects in Iraq than most current news reports. As the old saying goes; victory has many fathers, defeat is an orphan. That the waiting room of the Middle Eastern maternity ward is getting increasingly crowded with paternity claimants is a good - if an indirect sign - that the things in Iraq might be going better than one would think based on the mainstream media coverage. Below, some good news and positive developments in Iraq that you might have missed over the past two weeks.

• Society
• Economy
• Reconstruction
• The Coalition Troops
• Security

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

• The Six of Diamonds is in custody. Saddam Hussein's half-brother will have a chance to say hi in jail after apparently being captured by the Syrian government. Sabawi Ibrahim al-Tikriti marks the first capture of a major Baathist in more than a year, some good news for the nascent Iraqi government.

• The Iraqi government captured another of Zarqawi's top aides, Jordanian Abu Qutaybah. Al Qaeda in Iraq dismisses the capture as mere propaganda, but it's hard to see how the fall of numerous senior members of the organization isn't a bad thing for our enemies.

• The People, United, Can Never Be Defeated. 30 years after Saigon fell, Armed Liberal is beginning to understand what that really means.

Other Topics Today Include: REFORME; water treatment in Kirkuk; oil fire in northern Iraq; coalitions jockey for advantage in the new government; 450 Aussies head to Iraq; British investigations; the Nazis and the Baathists.

Read the Rest…

Updating a previous post, from the Associated Press:

Iraqi officials said Sunday that Syrian authorities had captured Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s half-brother and 29 other officials of the deposed dictator's Baath Party in Syria and handed them over to Iraq (news - web sites) in an apparent goodwill gesture.

Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan, a former Saddam adviser suspected of financing insurgents after U.S. troops ousted Saddam, was captured in Hasakah in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border, two senior Iraqi officials told The Associated Press by telephone on condition of anonymity. Hasakah is about 30 miles from the Iraqi border.

They added that al-Hassan was captured and handed over to Iraqi authorities along with 29 other members of Saddam's collapsed Baath Party, whose Syrian branch has been in power in Damascus since 1963.

A suicide car bomber drove into a crowd of people applying for work in a government office south of Baghdad and detonated his explosives on Monday, killing 30 people and wounding at least 50, a senior Interior Ministry official and witnesses said.

The attack occurred in Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, where a suicide car bomber drove into a crowd looking for work at the government office, witnesses said.

A police colonel in Hilla, Col. Ali Iskandir, put the toll at 30 dead and 50 wounded. A senior Interior Ministry official, speaking earlier on condition of anonymity, said the blast killed 25 people and wounded 71 others.

Dozens of bodies could be seen laying on the ground after the blast, and half a dozen ambulances ferried casualties to a nearby hospital, witnesses said. The huge blast damaged nearby shops and parked cars, and sent panicked people fleeing.

In a separate attack in Musayyib, about 20 miles north of Hillah, another car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint, killing at least one policeman and wounding several others, police said on condition of anonymity.

Read more..

Update: MSNBC reports that the death toll from the Hilla attack is at 105 and there are at least 130 injured.

ABC is reporting that “several people” were arrested after the bombing.

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

Iraq's interim Government says security forces were closing in on Al Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 24 hours after announcing the arrest of another top aide of the Jordanian militant.

”We are really close to Zarqawi,” national security chief Kassem Daoud told reporters in the Shiite Muslim pilgrimage city of Najaf.

“You will hear very good news soon,” added the secular Shiite, who was elected a Member of Parliament on the same ticket as outgoing prime minister Iyad Allawi in the January 30 elections.

Time will tell. There's many a slip etc etc

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A bomb has exploded near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul killing eight people, the US military said.

”An explosion detonated by insurgents in Hamam Al Alil killed eight and injured at least another two Iraqi citizens. The injured citizens were taken to a local hospital,” a military statement said.

Several of those killed were Iraqi security guards, police said.

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

A US Marine was killed in action overnight in the Iraqi province of Babil, the US military said.

”A Marine assigned to the First Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action February 26th while conducting security and stability operations in Babil province,” a military statement said.

Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan, a half brother of Saddam Hussein who was the former dictator's intelligence chief before becoming a presidential adviser, has been captured, officials in the prime minister's office said Sunday.

Hasan is No. 36 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis released by U.S. authorities after troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, and one of only 12 remaining at large. He is also suspected of financing insurgents in the post-Saddam era, and Washington had put a $1 million bounty on his head.

According to the U.S. Central Command, Hasan is among the 29 most-wanted supporters of insurgent groups in post-Saddam Iraq.

More..

He was Six of Diamonds in the deck, if you're still keeping count.

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

A roadside bomb has killed three American soldiers north of Baghdad and 10 Iraqis have died in other attacks.

Nine other US soldiers were wounded, five of them “very seriously,” when the Task Force Baghdad troops were hit by a roadside bomb while on patrol near the town of Tarmiya, the military says.

Security sources say that in addition to the latest attack near Baghdad, a US marine, two members of the Iraqi security forces, four civilians and four insurgents had been killed since Thursday.

The toll included two women and a child who were killed near the northern refinery town of Baiji when their car was blown up by a bomb that exploded just after a US army convoy passed, police say.

An oil pipeline in northern Iraq was ablaze Saturday after saboteurs blew it up in the latest attack against the insurgent-wracked country's vital oil industry. In the capital, a roadside bomb killed two people, officials and witnesses said.

[…]

The pipeline connecting oil fields in Dibis with the northern city of Kirkuk about 20 miles away was blown up late Friday, an official of the state-run North Oil Co. said on condition of anonymity. He said it would take at least four days to repair the line.

More…

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

Ukraine says it would pull all of its 1,650 troops out of the country by the end of the year.

”I believe that our troops will be withdrawn this year,” Interfax news agency quoted Defence Minister Anatoly Hrytsenko as saying.

New pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko promised during his election campaign late last year to pull Ukrainian troops out of Iraq, where 18 of their number have been killed.

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

A top aide to Al Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been arrested.

”The terrorist Mohammed Najm Ibrahim, alias Mohammed Najm, who with one of his brothers runs a Zarqawi cell, is responsible for the beheading of several citizens and for attacks against Iraqi security forces,” the Iraq Government said.

It says Ibrahim was arrested in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad, without giving the date of his arrest.

On February 21 police in Baquba announced the arrest of another member of the Zarqawi group.

Updating a previous post, from the BBC :

It has been a struggle. After months of effort the final commitment came only today. Nato has managed to show a united front on Iraq. Every Nato nation including France is now helping with the programme to train Iraqi army officers.

Some of the contributions are very small. France will send one officer to help support the mission from here in Brussels.

Now we know exactly how much we can count on them. Their generousity will no doubt be returned, in the same spirit in which it was given.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Two US soldiers have been killed in separate attacks north of Baghdad, the US military said.

One soldier was killed in a roadside bomb blast near the town of Qaryat, north-east of the capital, and another was killed in a blast near Samarra, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Two soldiers were also wounded in the second explosion.

All of the soldiers were from Task Force Liberty, the unit charged with enforcing security in a large swathe of the country stretching from near the capital up to the Kurdish region.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A suspected suicide car bomber has blown up his vehicle near a police station in the northern Iraq city of Tikrit, killing at least 12 people and wounding 35.

Police captain Husam Musseyif says a man wearing a police uniform tried to drive into the police station grounds and then detonated the vehicle when he was challenged.

Captain Musseyif, who was wounded in the explosion, said the toll was high because the police were going through a shift rotation and a large part of the force was in the police compound at the time.

U.S. News & World Report has a fascinating article about General John Abizaid's views on the war against terrorism.

Abizaid believes that the radical Islamists must be confronted:

“What we can't allow to happen is guys like Abu Musab Zarqawi to get started,” Abizaid told Benoit and the soldiers of the 1-141 Field Artillery. “It's the same way that we turned our back when Hitler was getting going and Lenin was getting going. You just cannot turn your back on these types of people. You have to stand up and fight.”

[. . .]

America has a chance to confront and stop an Islamic extremist movement akin to fascism or communism in its early stages, the general believes, before it metastasizes and dominates a significant chunk of the world.

[. . .]

We didn't have the guts to get out in front of the fascists or the Bolsheviks. This time we have to get in front. This time we have a chance. If we don't fight this fight here, we will fight it at home.

From California Yankee.

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

It is reported that a US marine, who was captured on film killing a wounded Iraqi at point blank range during November's assault on Fallujah, will not be formally charged due to lack of evidence.
[…]
In the incident, a trooper raised his rifle and shot point blank at an apparently unarmed, wounded Iraqi who was slumped against one of the mosque walls.
[…]
Although the insurgents have been found to be unarmed, investigators say the one the marine believed he had seen moving could have been reaching for a weapon.

There's lots of evidence that the shooting happened : none has been found after the event that it was unlawful or wrong.

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

A court martial at a British barracks in Germany has found two British soldiers guilty of abusing Iraqi civilians.

A third soldier had already pleaded guilty to one charge of assault after he was pictured standing on a detained Iraqi looter.
[…]
The mistreatment in this case happened after British troops rounded up looters who were stealing powdered milk from a humanitarian aid depot known as Camp Bread Basket, near the southern Iraqi city of Basra, in May 2003.

The most senior of the three accused, 33-year-old Corporal Daniel Kenyon, was found guilty on two charges of failing to report that soldiers under his command had abused Iraqis, including an incident in which two naked men were forced to simulate sex.

He was also found guilty of aiding and abetting another of the accused in beating a detainee.

The court martial also found 25-year-old Lance Corporal Mark Cooley guilty of suspending a bound Iraqi from a forklift and of simulating a punch on an Iraqi for a photograph.

Judge Advocate Michael Hunter said Kenyon and Cooley face up to two years in prison.

Lance Corporal Darren Larkin, 30, had pleaded guilty to assault after he was pictured standing on an Iraqi. He faces a possible six-month prison sentence.

The trial heard that the soldiers' commanding officer, Major Dan Taylor, had ordered his men to detain looters and “work them hard” after the camp was plagued by repeated intrusions in the chaotic weeks after the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Prosecutors said this order was in breach of the Geneva Convention.

Whereas shooting looters out of hand would not. I'm very much afraid that in future, it will be a case of “Lesson learned”.

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

“A Task Force Liberty soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device,” said a US army statement, adding that the blast occurred near Tuz, around 200 kilometres north of Baghdad.
[…]
…in Kirkuk, two civilians were injured in a car bomb attack on a US convoy in an industrial area.

The US army had no immediate comment on the attack.

In the same city's eastern Wahda district, two Kurdish civilians were shot dead at their home by unknown attackers.

An Iraqi soldier was killed and another wounded in a mortar attack on their base early Wednesday (local time) near Dhuluiya, 75 kilometres north of Baghdad, police said.

Another mortar strike on an Iraqi base near Tarmiya, north of Baghdad, killed two soldiers, an army officer said.

An Iraqi subcontractor working on an Iraqi base was killed and another wounded in an attack on their car near Suleyman Beg, 200 km north of Baghdad, the wounded man told AFP.

“The attackers concentrated on my colleague Nader Shawkat and they left as soon as they saw he was dead,” said Ahmad Ghali.

“We work for the Iraqi army, not the American,” he added.
[…]
Also on Wednesday (local time), police said an official from the Shiite Dawa party, whose leader Ibrahim Jaafari has been nominated to become Iraq's next prime minister, was killed.

raqi state television aired a video Wednesday showing what the U.S.-funded channel said was the confession of a captured Syrian officer who said he trained Iraqi insurgents to behead people and build car bombs to attack American and Iraqi troops.

The video also showed an Iraqi who said the insurgents practiced beheading animals to train for decapitating hostages.

Syrian officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the claims.

[..]]

In the video, the man, identified as Lt. Anas Ahmed al-Essa of the Syrian intelligence service, said his group had been recruited to “cause chaos in Iraq … to bar America from reaching Syria.”

“We received all the instructions from Syrian intelligence,” al-Essa, 30, said on a video broadcast by state-run Iraqiya TV, which can be seen nationwide.

The tape was apparently made in the northern city of Mosul but no date was provided. It was not possible to authenticate the claims.

Read more…

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A car bomb has exploded in the northern Iraq city of Mosul, killing two and wounding 14 others.
[…]
“Insurgents continue to disregard the safety of their fellow citizens during their attacks,” the US military said in a statement.

”Insurgents have killed two and injured 20 Iraqi citizens during attacks in the last three days.”
[…]
“A police officer was killed and another wounded this morning at 6:00am (local time) when an unknown person opened fire on them in a restaurant in the centre of Kirkuk,” police Colonel Adel Zin al Abidin said.

Two suspects have been arrested.

Two Iraqi civilians have also been killed and another has been seriously wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the car they were travelling in near Kirkuk, a key oil city.

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

The US military has confirmed that it is investigating an allegation that an American soldier raped a female detainee in Iraq.

Claims of sexual misconduct by US military personnel surfaced last year during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, but this is the first known case of a soldier being accused of raping a detainee.

A Pentagon spokesman says a number of allegations have been made and investigated.

He says one of them is still under investigation, while another has been closed for lack of evidence.

The spokesman says he did not know when or where the rapes are alleged to have occurred.

After many longstanding Iraqi calls for urgent assistance, much internal wrangling, and some patient US Diplomacy, there's this from the AFP via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

On the second full day of a generally well-received diplomatic campaign, Mr Bush was hoping not just to banish any lingering divisions over the war but also to secure more NATO and EU support for Iraq after the January 30 elections.

In a sign that Mr Bush's charm offensive is bearing fruit, NATO announced on Tuesday that all 26 allies, including former hold-outs France, are on board to aid a NATO training mission in Iraq.

“All 26 allies are working together to respond to the Iraqi Government's request for support: by training Iraqi security forces, providing equipment and helping to fund NATO's efforts,” NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said at a key US-NATO summit in Brussels.

Of course the actual assistance has yet to be given, and the Dutch are still operating under the old scheme, currently withdrawing their troops in Iraq as planned.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A car bomb has detonated near an Iraqi troop convoy as it left Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, killing two soldiers and wounding 30, police and hospital sources said.

The attack happened shortly after midday as the convoy was leaving a main Green Zone exit near the Mansour district of western Baghdad.

Police said the car blew up as a commando unit was passing, spraying shrapnel across a wide area.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Iraq's US-backed interim government is stepping up its propaganda war with insurgents by broadcasting videotaped interviews with suspects who appear to confess to killings, rape and theft on the orders of guerrillas.

The offensive was launched in recent weeks on state-run Iraqiya television, which broadcast lengthy interrogations of Iraqis it said had carried out terrorist acts under the direction of “Abdullah”, described as a criminal with close ties to Syria.

There is no obvious way to verify the authenticity of the confessions.
[…]
A state-run local television station in northern Iraq showed a video of what it said was a Syrian intelligence agent whom it accused of planting roadside bombs and attacking US troops.

Nineveh Television in the town of Mosul said the man was a Syrian guerrilla working for Syrian intelligence.

The Reuters report's wording, full of caveats and warnings about being unable to veify etc are in striking contrast to the way it reports other events.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

Three US soldiers have been killed in a bomb attack in Iraq and eight wounded, the US military says.

”At approximately 8:00 am [local time] on February 21, three US soldiers were killed and eight were wounded when an IED (improvised explosive device) detonated during a medical evacuation of a soldier,” a statement said.

“The soldier was injured in a convoy accident caused by a civilian vehicle,” it said, without specifying where the attack took place.

ANALYSIS: without further detail, this is only a surmise: but to stage an accident near an IED, then detonate it when a maximum number of scarce medical personnel are in the immediate vicinity, would be far more damaging than yet another suicide bomb on a random convoy.
US Medical teams have been very effective, not merely treating US wounded, but in winning “hearts and minds” through helping the local populace. This makes them a priority target.

From the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

[Australian] Prime Minister John Howard has announced a dramatic escalation in Australia's military contribution to Iraq, at a cost of up to $300 million a year.

Mr Howard says Iraq is at a “tilting point” after the country's landmark elections and Australia will send an extra 450 soldiers to what he describes as a “reasonably violence-free” area of southern Iraq.

The soldiers will mostly come from Darwin's 1st Brigade will leave in about 10 weeks. They will train Iraqi forces and provide security for Japanese troops involved in the humanitarian effort.

Mr Howard says the extra soldiers will replace a withdrawing Dutch contingent.

“Unless additional security could be provided to replace the Dutch, then there was a real possibility the Japanese could no longer remain there and that would be a serious blow to the coalition effort,” Mr Howard said.

Australia will also send 40 armoured vehicles.

See previous post about an Iraqi request for a greater Australian involvement, this one about the Netherlands' already delayed plans to leave, and this one about Japan's commitment.

Mr Howard says it is essential that Australia contribute more to help rebuild Iraq.

”The Government believes that Iraq is very much at a tilting point and it's very important that the opportunity of democracy, not only in Iraq but also in other parts of the Middle East, be seized and consolidated,” he said.

Mr Howard says the additional Australian forces will be needed in the country for at least a year.

“This has not been, is not and will not be an easy decision for the Government,” he said. “I know it will be unpopular with many.

“I ask those people to take into account the reasons that I have given. I believe this is the right decision. It will make a significant contribution to the coalition effort.”

The Prime Minister says there are currently about 950 Australian Defence Force personnel in and around Iraq.

He says Britain and the US are already carrying a heavy commitment and Australia's involvement in Iraq is under continual review.

“The circumstances have changed and it is now four-and-a-half-weeks since the Iraq election and we have to respond to those changed circumstances,” he said.

“Self-evidently we would have liked the major combat to have gone differently … [but] coalition withdrawal or defeat is unimaginable.”

Mr Howard says the coalition must stay in Iraq if the country is to make a successful transition to democracy.

“It will take time and if we were to see a crumbling of coalition commitment, I think the likelihood of Iraq completing the transition to democracy would be absolutely non-existent,” he said.

On the weekend, the Federal Government said Australia would take up its most senior role of the Iraq conflict by taking command of the naval force at the northern end of the Persian Gulf.

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

Controversial Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi says he believes he has the votes to become the war-torn country's new prime minister.

Mr Chalabi, once supported by the United States only to fall from favour, is part of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list that won 140 seats of the 275-member national assembly in the January 30 elections.

“I believe I have a majority of the [UIA] votes on my side right now” to become the new government's prime minister, Mr Chalabi told United States ABC television.

However, the former exile remained cautious, saying the choice of premier “will be decided by the parliamentary bloc”, which he did not want to “second guess”.

On Tuesday, sources in the Shiite coalition said it had chosen interim vice president and Dawa party leader Ibrahim Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister.

We shall see, Time will Tell etc. In the meantime, colour me sceptical.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

The anchorwoman of one of Iraq's regional broadcasters has been abducted in the northern city of Mosul.

Raiida al-Wazan, 36, the only woman news presenter for Nineveh province regional television, was seized on Sunday while travelling to work in east Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad, station director Razi Faisal said.

Ms Wazan's 10-year old daughter was also in the car when she was abducted but it was not clear if she was missing as well, Ms Faisal told Reuters.

He said there had been no word so far from the abductors.

He added that his staff frequently receive threats from insurgents battling the US-backed Government.

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

Two Indonesian journalists taken hostage in Iraq have been freed by their abductors, the Foreign Ministry in Jakarta has confirmed.

A member of the Sunni Muslim authorities in the Iraqi city of Ramadi had earlier said the journalists were freed, as did the Al Arabiya TV channel, which quoted its correspondent in Baghdad.

A member in Ramadi of the country's main Sunni organisation, the Committee of Muslim Scholars, said reporter Meutya Hafid and cameraman Budiyanto had been released in the town.
[…]
In the Indonesian capital Jakarta, a high-ranking diplomat with the foreign ministry, Umar, said that the government was “still trying to confirm” the reported release.

“If it's true that they have been released, we are relieved and thank God Almighty,” he told AFP.

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

• Is the United States conducting secret negotiations with Iraqi insurgents to deliver their surrender? That's the report coming out of Time magazine, though it has been denied by the White House. The negotiations are reported to be with one or more indiginous Iraqi groups seeking to shift from open warfare to political recognition. Chester offers some analysis, and explains the dynamics involved. Wretchard puts this story together with several other reports to suggest the insurgency in Iraq is in dire straits, though this will not mean that it will be clear sailing from here on out.

• Patrick Ruffini has a map of the Iraqi Electoral results, and some analysis.

• Operation River Blitz has begun, an attempt to restore order to Iraq in the wake of the election. The operation may yet involve an attack on Ramadi, one of the last remaining strongholds of the insurgency, but U.S. generals are playing close to the vest thus far to keep the enemy guessing.

• At least 91 Iraqis died in Friday's bombings in Baghdad. The bombings, coming on a Shiite holy day, aimed at triggering an Iraqi civil war. Thus far the Shiites refuse to take the bait, increasing security measures while vowing to use their new government to address the problem.

Other Topics Today Include: A report from a Marine sniper; a little time in the rear; decentralizing Iraq's economy; speculation on the new Iraqi government's makeup; the Sunni's want in; Carnival of the Liberated; searching for the missing; a father and son head to Iraq; Clinton says insurgency failing; Support the troops.

Read the Rest…

From the AFP via The Australian :

“A car bomb exploded on a provincial road near Hawija and the driver of the car was killed,” said Kirkuk police chief General Turhan Yussef.

No US soldiers or Iraqi patrol were in the area at the time of the blast, said Gen. Yussef, adding that an investigation was under way to establish if the explosion was a suicide attack.
[…]
In Kirkuk itself, two Kurds were killed in the apparently accidental explosion of an ammunition dump dating back to before the US-led invasion, Gen. Yussef said.

In Basra, two civilians were wounded when a bomb exploded as an Iraqi police patrol passed, a police spokesman said.

The patrol pursued a suspect who filmed the attack and detained him after he hid in a tree nursery where they found ammunition and explosives, he said.

No word on whether he was an indpendent, a Terrorist with a cemera, or a stringer for Al Jazeera or CNN.

From Reuters via The Australian :

US and Iraqi troops launched a large-scale operation around the rebellious city of Ramadi today, as part of a nationwide effort to restore order in the wake of last month's election.

Troops from the 1st Marine expeditionary force, supported by Iraqi soldiers, set up a ring of checkpoints around the city, 110km west of Baghdad, and imposed an 8pm to 6am curfew under Operation River Blitz.
[…]
“Operation River Blitz is designed to target insurgents and terrorists who have attempted to destabilise the Anbar province by terrorising the populace through wanton acts of violence and intimidation,” the US military said in a statement.

“We were asked by the Iraqi government to increase our security operations in the city to locate, isolate and defeat anti-Iraqi forces and terrorists,” said Major General Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marines expeditionary force.
[…]
Natonski described the militants in Ramadi as “intent on preventing a peaceful transition of power between the interim Iraqi government and the Iraqi transitional government”, which is being currently formed following the election.

And a senior Ba'athist too.

From the AFP via the Pakistan Dawn :

Iraqi security forces on Saturday arrested the alleged commander of an insurgent cell close to Al Qaeda frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, police said.

”Early this morning Iraqi security forces assisted by US forces raided the house of Haidar Abu al-Buwari in western Baquba,” said a police spokesman for Diyala province, whose capital is Baquba.

“He is one of the mujahideen princes who works with Zarqawi in the position of cell leader,” he said. Police found rocket-propelled grenades, grenades, drugs, computers and a photocopier in the house, he added.

Iraqi security forces also arrested a former high-ranking officer under Saddam Hussein allegedly involved in the insurgency in the northern city of Mosul, said a government statement. “Harbi Abd al-Khudaier Hamudi, 50, also known as Abu Nur, was arrested on February 12,” it said.

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

Officials said nineteen people were blown apart in a suicide attack carried out by a bomber on a bicycle against a bus carrying pilgrims in Baghdad's Aden Square in which 40 other people were wounded.

Apart from the deaths described in a previous post, numerous other attacks have killed a dozen victims. Continuing the AFP/ABC report:

Two people died in Baquba, north-east of the capital, in an apparent attempt to assassinate an Iraqi general, security sources said, while two Iraqis were killed by a shell in Samarra, and two policemen died from an improvised bomb north of the city.

The Baquba attack was claimed by militants loyal to Iraq's Al Qaeda frontman, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in an Internet statement whose authenticity could not be verified.

In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, a Sunni sheikh linked to the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two main Kurdish parties, was shot dead.

Near Balad, south of Samarra, the corpses of five soldiers were found overnight riddled with bullet and with their hands tied.

From Reuters via the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) :

A US Marine has been killed in action in Iraq's western Al Anbar province, the US military said on Sunday.

The soldier, who belonged to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, died on Saturday, the military said in a statement.

It gave few details on grounds that information could help guerrillas and put US troops at greater risk.

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

There have been a series of attacks against Shiite Muslims in Iraq as the holy festival of Ashura reaches its climax.

At least 13 people have been killed.

A number of mortars were fired at pilgrims as they made their way to a shrine in Baghdad, killing up to five.

Later, a suicide bomber apparently got among a crowd of mourners at a funeral in western Baghdad, killing four people.

There were four more deaths after an explosion on a public bus in a northern part of the capital.

More on the Suicide Bombing :

A suicide bomber on a motorbike has blown himself up among a crowd of mourners near a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 37.

Police say the man detonated himself among a group of people attending the funeral of a woman killed on Friday in another suicide bombing in the same area.

“A black skinned man arrived on a bicycle at around 12:45 (local time) and rode into the tent before exploding,” Mohammed Khalil Ibrahim, a relative of the deceased, said.

The funeral tent, which had been erected opposite the Sunni mosque of Fattah Pasha, was torn apart by the blast.

Hospital sources say they expect the death toll to rise.

“We have received four dead and 37 wounded,” a doctor at Yarmuk Hospital said.